Sweetie Belle vs. a lemon
Sweetie Belle vs. a lemon
By: Fimbulvinter
Within the embrace of the Ponyville library, two unicorns were hard at work attempting to levitate a lemon. Or, rather one was attempting to levitate the lemon; the other was setting up a tape recorder deck in order to play a tape she had found.
The filly Sweetie Belle had decided that she was old enough to start learning how to control the magic that all unicorns were born with. Ponyville’s resident magic expert - Twilight Sparkle was more than happy to help teach the little filly the basics, showing her how to cast a light spell and now was working on how to levitate small objects.
“Remember Sweetie, don’t think about trying to lift the lemon, rather just lift the lemon up, and it will rise of its own accord” Twilight called over her shoulder, still working on setting up her tape decks.
Earlier in the day, as she was getting ready to help Sweetie, Twilight had found a lemon and a tape reel seemingly abandoned on the ground outside her home. Nothing on either object could be seen to identify their owners except for a strange circle on the tape reel.It looked like the iris shutter on a camera, with the word ‘Aperture’ printed beneath it. Naturally Twilight had taken both objects with her, eager to find out what secrets they may have hidden.
Now she was almost ready to listen to the tape, but first she had to help Sweetie after all.
Sweetie concentrated hard, a light green aura surrounding her horn and enveloping the lemon Twilight had found. Once, twice, three times the lemon bounced around on the floor, but never seemed to get any active lift. Eventually, Sweetie shut off her magic and fell down to the floor dejected.
“I just can’t do it, I’m never going to get my cutie mark” she called out.
Twilight came over and sat down before her. “Don’t worry about it. When I was your age, my magic seemed really hard as well. It took me ages to learn how to turn a single page, but now look at me. This morning you could not even make an apple wiggle, but now you were able to make that lemon bounce a few times. That’s a great improvement in one day."
Sweetie smiled weakly at that and got back up. Twilight was right, if she just stuck at it she would get her long sought after cutie-mark. Concentrating again, Sweetie focused on lifting the lemon again. It bounced up and managed to hang in the air for a few moments, enveloped in a green light before Sweetie’s horn flickered out, causing the lemon to drop back to the floor. Sweetie however did not care, she had managed to do it all on her own, even if only for a moment.
“I did it Twilight. Did you see me, huh did you?”
Twilight laughed, looking down at the fallen lemon. “I sure did Sweetie Belle. That was a great first effort."
"Did I get my cutie mark yet?" Sweetie quickly ran to a mirror, eager to look at her flank in the reflection. Her sides remained resolutly blank.
"Awww, still nothing. maybe I have to try again." Sweetie eagerly tried to pick up the lemon again, but her horn refused to stay aglow, only lasting for a moment or two. Sweetie paused and tried again, reaching inside herself towards the pool of energy that Twilight and Rarity had been teaching her to tap over the last few days.
Where once there had been a pulsing mass of raw energy, now there only seemed to be a trickle, like a roaring fire burning down to a glowing ember. It was still there but diminished.
"Huh, Twilight. Whats going on, why can't I use my magic now?" Sweete asked, Confused.
Twilight knew what it was. Sweetie had used up all of her stored magic. Being her first time using it, her reserve was minimal. Like a muscle though, the more she used it, the larger her reserve would get. "It looks like you have depleted your magic reserve for the moment. Let’s take a break, have some lunch. Eating food will help to recharge your magic reserve faster than just waiting for it. I think I almost have this tape ready to play, but it can wait until after we eat."
Sweetie Belle followed Twilight into the kitchen room of the tree house, a small affair that mostly was only used by Spike. Within moments the sounds and smells of cooking began to waft through the air, as Twilight put a pair of carrots and some celery into a pot to form a soup base. Sweetie watched as Twilight was able to cast a small flame under the pot with no apparent effort, quickly bringing the pot to a boil.
'Someday I will be as good as she it, I swear it to Celestia' Sweetie thought to herself, vowing that she would become as strong a mage as Twilight was, even if such a vow was a foolish notion, but she never knew, maybe magic could also be her talent as well.
With the pot beginning to boil, Twilight left Sweetie to keep an eye on it and returned to the tape decks eager to finish setting it up. After lunch she would have the chance to listen to the whole thing, and maybe find out what this mystery Aperture was.
The tape was an enticing mystery. Despite clearly being an audio tape, it was made out of materials she had never seen before, and in a style that was not normal to pony technology. It had taken her all morning, but she had adapted her tape player to use this new type of tape.
Back in the kitchen, Sweetie was keeping an eye on the pot, every few moment attempting to catch the wooden stirring spoon in her telekinetic grip. Each time she managed to grip it for a moment or two before her horn flickered out again. It seemed that Twilight was right, her magic was depleted, and she had no idea how long it would take to recharge. Her spirits remained high, she had managed to use her magic for the first time, and it would only get stronger as she used it more.
After a few minutes the soup in the pot was finished and she called Twilight back into the kitchen to serve it out. Two bowls of soup and some bread were passed out. Sweetie watched in envy as Twilight was able to use her magic to lift her spoon for each sip of the liquid, while Sweetie still had to resort to the Earth Pony tactic of lifting the bowl with her hooves. Soon she would be able to do that herself.
“What do you think is on that tape Twilight?” Sweetie asked, swallowing the last of her soup down in one big mouthful. While the soup and bread was nourishing in its own right, this time Sweetie could feel it refreshing her in a new way, one she hadn’t felt before. Sure enough, when she tried to light her horn it stayed lit and she could grab her untouched soup spoon with her magic, lifting it up with less effort than the first time she had tried to lift the lemon.
“That’s it Sweetie Belle, keep trying and soon you will have the hang of it. As for the tape, I have no idea. Let’s go and find out." Twilight led Sweetie back out into the main room of the library. While technically it was a public library and anypony could come and borrow books from it, very few actually did, something that had disappointed Twilight immensely when she had first moved in. Now however she appreciated it as it mean she could get much more study and experimenting done. The few ponies that did come in were generally handled by Spike, who knew the exact position of every book on every shelf, mostly because he had to clean them up so many times after Rainbow Dash had crashed into something.
Twilight moved over to her modified tape deck and hooked the reel in, levitating a quill and pad over to record anything that she could when it started playing. Once again Sweetie marvelled at how Twilight could do these things seemingly without even noticing that she was doing them.
As the tape deck started to turn over, a harsh static noise washed over the speakers before resolving itself into a confident male voice.
‘Greetings friend. I'm Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science. You might know us as a vital participant of the 1968 senate hearing on missing astronauts, and you've most likely used one of the many products we invented but other people have somehow managed to steal from us. Black Mesa can eat my bankrupt...'
The recording cut to static again and twilight quickly turned it off, dutifully taking down notes. There was still plenty of tape on the reel but she wanted to listen to this part again. Several things struck her as off about it. Firstly in 1968, there was no chance that audio tape could have been invented, that was about 30 years to early. Second what was an astronaut? And who was this Cave Johnson. There was no such thing as Aperture Science or a Black Mesa as far as Twilight knew.
Twilight and Sweetie listened to the recorded voice again, and allowed it to play on to the next recording.
‘Alright this next test may involve trace amounts of time travel. So word of advice: if you meet yourself on the testing track don't make eye contact. Lab boys tell me that'll wipe out time - entirely. Forward and backward. So do both of yourselves a favour and let that handsome devil go about his business’.
Twilight paused again at that comment, it was simply wrong. She had travelled in time and met her past and future self with no serious ill effects. Either this Cave Johnson was a raving maniac, a distinct possibility, or the other option was that this tape was from an alternative dimension, though how it had ended up here was unknown. It sounded like the voice was running some kind of science lab, so maybe they had developed a dimensional portal device or something.
Sweetie Belle quickly became bored with the talking voice. It wasn’t saying anything that she could understand so she went back to her practice with the lemon, catching it in her magic, picking it up, holding it and then putting it back down. Each time she was able to hold the lemon for a few seconds longer than the last.
Twilight kept listening to the voice, not bothering to watch Sweetie Belle practice with the lemon. The voice of Cave Johnson continued listing off the achievements of his company, advice for testing volunteers, and thinly veiled threats against a rival company, the so called ‘Black Mesa’.
“Hey Twilight look at this” Sweetie called out, pulling Twilights attention away from the tape. She had managed to get the lemon off the ground and was moving it in a slow lopsided circle in front of her. Childs play for any practiced unicorn, but for her it was an amazing accomplishment, especially given that earlier in the morning she could not even lift it. such progress so quickly was almost unheard of. The last pony Twilight could remember progressing so quickly through the basics was herself.
Her talent may just turn out to be magic after all Mused Twilight, turning back to the tape, which she noticed had kept running through a few messages while she was watching Sweetie. As the new message, seemingly the last one on the reel came on, it was clear that something had gone wrong in Cave’s world. He sounded angry, very angry at something.
‘Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!’
“A combustible lemon? This pony is insane” Twilight said softly to herself, a moment before alarm bells began to ring inside her mind. Lemons, a combustible lemon, and this tape had been found right next to a… lemon. Turning around quickly Twilight watched as the lemon that Sweetie had been levitating burst into flames, belching thick black smoke as Sweetie jumped back in fright, dropping the lemon onto the floor, where it began to smoulder into the wooden roots of the tree. Smoke fully engulfed Sweetie as Twilight quickly summoned a wave of water with her magic to put out the incendiary citrus, soaking much of her precious book collection in the process.
With the lemon now extinguished, Twilight opened her door and windows to let out the smoke, revealing a soaking wet and soot covered Sweetie Belle standing in the middle of a puddle. Plastered to her flank was an image, identical to the one that Twilight had seen on the tape reel.
“Sweetie Belle, you got your Cutie mark!”
“What really, wow it’s a… what is it?” Sweetie Belle asked, not quite sure what it meant
“I think it is a science cutie mark. It must mean you are going to be a great scientist” Twilight said, secretly hoping that it didn’t mean that she was going to end up a crazy as the voice on the tape had sounded. Building explosive fruit, who thinks of that?
“Then what happened?” Scootaloo asked Sweetie.
After the lemon incident, Sweetie had gone home and showered before meeting Scoot and Apple Bloom at their clubhouse. Both of them had been amazed when Sweetie had turned up sporting her new cutie mark and had demanded to know how she came about it.
“Twilight thought that it was some kind of special explosive lemon and moved off to try and work out how such a thing could work. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was me. I tried to see if I could do the fire spell, and well, it caught fire alright."
“That would have been so cool, I wish I could have seen it” Scootaloo kept on about it.
“Got any lemons?” Sweetie replied back with a sly smile.
A/N: Just a short, somewhat silly idea I had, and spent about 2 hours writing it. I know its been done before, I just wanted some practice working on story pacing and descriptions. Usual caveats about copyrights: Hasbro, Valve and what not.
