Nimble fingers carefully grasped the ignition key, and did so in precise timing with the foot which had just been told to lower itself onto the scooter's accelerator. The foot was more or less under full control, but the driver always kept an eye on the fingers. Smooth, coordinated movement often felt like a lot to ask of such fragile anatomy, especially when it technically didn't have a lot of experience with existing.
The motor caught. Headlights ignited, the fast-darkening asphalt took on highlights of illuminated black, and the driver carefully pulled out of her driveway. (She had made the mistake of asking why it was called a 'driveway' early on, and was still operating under the delusion that further investigation would eventually prove why people had felt the mere question was funny.) Stopped at the first light, adjusted her helmet and mirrors again because the vibrations from two traversed blocks was more than enough to knock matters out of alignment, tucked the phone deeper into a pocket until the last of Applejack's mangled text messages vanished, and impatiently waited for the moment when acceleration could resume.
The scooter...
It was an ongoing expense in Sunset's life, and she hated adding another one to the towering pile when one of her greatest fears was for someone in a position of legal authority to ask where she'd been getting the money. (The only query more awkward than that would have discovered how she'd arranged for the documents which had allowed her to get a fully-legal license.) But she'd needed it. Public transportation wasn't great in the city, you practically needed an airport to reach any place which mattered in the world -- well, in this one -- and... if you were a human of the right age, you needed mobility. This was proven.
She'd thought about that, because there had been a time early in the transition process when regularly and carefully going over the differences between worlds had been most of what had prevented her from going mad.
Ultimately, Sunset had decided it was about freedom. But it was also very much about walking, because she was among a supposedly-sapient species -- a species, no less: singular -- which had to learn how to do that. In fact, it took them about a year to get the basics down, followed by a significantly longer period before anyone would apparently trust them to perform the action unsupervised. (Those who reached a truly advanced age might find that supervision returning, possibly due to the fear that the observed might suddenly forget about the how.)
You had to figure out how to move. And once you finally had that, then you found yourself in an environment where everyone was very carefully telling you exactly where not to go. Oh, and for the few places you could visit? No running.
She pulled the scooter out into traffic, taking the lane which put her on early track for the city's outskirts. A fast-accelerating truck, furious that she hadn't allowed it to achieve the eternal dream of doing 100 mph in the merge lane, blared its horn at her for thirty seconds. Sunset carefully maintained her own responding finger elevation the whole time.
Old enough to drive, or so the paperwork said. The local infants could barely walk, and they wanted to know everything, and the adults wouldn't even let them run...
Perhaps some portion of her outrage was a lingering residue of form. For Sunset, movement was normalcy. The high-speed variety constituted joy.
You were born. Within seconds, you were up and exploring. That was how it worked. And if you could move, then you could surely move faster. And you galloped headlong into life...
...that was the part which the humans understood, oddly enough -- although they did so with an imperfection which Sunset sometimes swore had to have been designed. They knew about the gallop, though. Rushing forward at full speed and doing so without a lot of planning because most of your thoughts were about what was coming up behind you.
Also, the adults didn't want their offspring going much of anywhere alone and actual running was right out, but the period of childhood? That could just race by because until you were producing something other than happiness, you were useless.
But she had been born elsewhere, and she had started to explore.
(She'd... gone a little farther than originally planned.)
A human infant trapped in a crib was usually put there with the colorful cloth pictures of Baby's First Career Guide and assigned their first challenge: without knowing what any of this means, pick a path for the rest of your life. Maybe you'll get lucky if you just go for the brightest colors. Also, nothing sewn into this fabric is going to concern saving for retirement, so good luck with figuring that out on your own.
A human had to learn how to move. (Sunset understood that. In her experience, figuring out how to do it on two legs came with a steep learning curve.) Then they had to learn how to think for themselves and by the time they finished that, the lucky ones realized that those who'd been thinking for them early on had mostly lied a lot.
And that recently-graduated party had better have a career picked. Because school, preschool, specialized pre-preschools, and a certain number of DNA exams were all pointing the infant towards their destiny. There wasn't probably much hope for the ones who failed the genetic test.
Movement: a difference. (She still wasn't entirely sure she was bending her thumbs the right way. It was worst when she caught herself thinking about her thumbs.)
A society which demanded that you know exactly what you were supposed to do with your life early on...
...too early...
...that was a commonality.
You could try to be good at many things. But before you left primary school, you needed to have a very good idea of your greatest skill. The single aspect where you had a chance to be perfect and if you didn't have at least a rough (tooth) grasp on that before you were even old enough to think about dating, you weren't sure how to smile at another person without feeling like your face was about to fall off and you needed to have already picked out the path for the rest of your life...
...or perhaps another would do that.
Peer into the teeming masses, because a species born to movement will tend to keep going. Make a judgment: this one is most suitable for that. And, with the determination announced, watch the chosen candidate for --
-- perfection.
The ability to do what no others can.
On instinct.
In the most ideal fashion.
And apparently without much in the way of, you know, actually being taught.
Of course, no one's saying that the party doing the picking is perfect. (Or rather, they do -- in public.) Perhaps she didn't see the right things, with violet eyes trying to peer through desperation which thickens with every flip of a calendar page. Maybe the person in charge got it wrong, but it's not as if she can ever admit to a mistake and all the one who's supposed to be the ideal choice knows is that if she was truly the right one, it would have worked by now, but it's not working it never works it can't ever work and there isn't any plan which doesn't center on her and nopony understands that it can't work...
...it was about freedom, wasn't it? Sunset knew about chasing freedom. It was part of why she'd overworked for her driver's license, focusing to the point where the studies began to blur and she wound up feeling like she'd taken the stupid test three times.
She'd passed, though. And she was licensed for a car, but -- a scooter was what she'd been able to afford, especially with the ridiculous insurance premiums which were automatically assigned to her claimed age. And the only reason she could keep up the costs was because she'd decided to do nearly all of the work on it herself.
...well, why not? All right, so she couldn't program the little onboard computer and as it turned out, neither could Twilight. (The other student had figured out where to find a new kernel online, though.) And electronics weren't her strongest suit: she understood the physics behind the energy, but when it came to things like resistances and blown fuses... no. Sunset had a lot of trouble preventing blown fuses, and had only figured out why Applejack thought that was funny two weeks ago. But when it came to the motor...
Heat, moving in its own unilaterally predetermined and channeled pattern, created pressure unending.
Push enough force into an object and it would depart.
Maybe it wouldn't come back...
If you grew up in a palace, you understood motors.
A human body had to learn about basic walking, and then it didn't ever go fast enough. Sunset also understood the drive for acceleration. She would have freely tried something like the scooter back home. Of course, back home, she would have been waiting for a wayward casting to take the whole thing out from between her legs and that was a lot worse when you had an extra set. But it was still the same principle. Humans didn't have enough speed on their own, and did whatever they could to acquire more. To feel the wind in their fur.
...when they didn't even have fur.
And couldn't feel anything in their hair like this either. Not when safety gear was involved.
Stupid helmet.
Horns were unbreakable. Skulls...
...at least Winona got to stick her head out of the pickup's open window sometimes, but just catch the looks from everyone on the sidewalk when Sunset wanted to do it...
(You absolutely could not do it with a gecko. She'd tried. Ray didn't appreciate the experience.)
Maintenance. Repairs. She could do the basics and was learning how to manage more, because... a human could learn anything they desired, as long as they cared to make the effort. For example, it had taken less than ten seconds to discover that her vehicle would not fix itself and once she'd learned that, she pulled ahead on most of the planet.
(Also, if you did all of your own work, then clearly you weren't going to rig a part to very slowly rub against the casing and set up a much more expensive repair eight months down the road. And if she fixed everything, then it was all her own work and her responsibility and nopony else's failure and)
She could try out just about any subject, freely and of her own will. And maybe she couldn't be perfect at more than one thing (whatever that was), but she could try to be decent at a lot of them and that wasn't bad, what was wrong with having a wide range of skills if they were all things you wanted to learn of your own free will --
-- commonalities. You exist now. Pick a career path and make sure it'll still be viable in seventy years.
Or maybe someone would see potential in you.
They might be wrong.
You couldn't ever control what other people saw. Knowing what those visions were... that was harsh enough. To compare inner dreams of perfection to reality, while understanding nothing could ever match --
-- that was her exit: the last regular ramp, leading out towards the more rural roads. Sunset, now driving through full night traffic, headed into the less regulated darkness.
Two worlds. In both, you were expected to just figure out your destiny and stick with it. But in this one...
This was how Sunset saw it: everyone in this world had at least the potential to theoretically attempt whatever they wanted. And they chose to...
...play games.
Watch movies.
Tell the same joke for the fiftieth time, because repetition was what created humor.
Talk about each other's clothes.
And then make a joke about that outfit.
Fifty-first time.
They could do and be anything. And they chose to create traffic laws for the sake of gleefully breaking them and honking at anyone who wasn't speeding as much as they were...
They could choose to do anything. And when it came to the defining purpose of their lives, the drive -- so many of them chose to...
...drift.
Sunset squinted behind the scratched plastic of the helmet. Spotted the proper turn.
The unicorn-in-abeyance drove towards the Acres of a world which hadn't changed enough.
It was just possible to make Applejack's outline in the light which streamed through the farmhouse's open front door and because of who was in front of it, it was barely possible to make out the edges of the doorway. There were several words which could be used to describe the blonde girl: those students who'd decided to form an odd attachment to having intact fingers usually went with 'solid'.
"The one with the fastest ride," the resident groused, "is the last t' turn up. Because of course she is." Long, barely-bound strands flounced across the aggravated head shake. "Not like we can get 'Shy t' hit the speed limit in her Mini an' Ah figure we're havin' a good day when she breaks double digits, but you..."
"Traffic," Sunset sighed, and killed the engine before taking off the helmet and starting the process of locking down the scooter. (Applejack generally treated the thought of having property stolen off the Acres as an insult -- but wasn't sure the thieves knew that.)
"Figured," the farmer groaned. "First night of a weekend, people out of work..." With a soft chuckle, "Good thing none of us have really great social lives right now, ain't it? Ah mean, apart from each other."
Sunset, who'd just tied the helmet to a handlebar, gave Applejack a long, steady look under the cool porch lights.
Just about everyone in the school saw me turn into a monster.
It's still possible to get a date after that, by the way.
Most of the people doing the asking got into some very specific stuff extremely early.
I looked those interests up.
All of them.
If I ever turn evil again, the first thing I might do is show everyone else where to look it up.
Behind the broader back, high-pitched voices broke into a brief argument. There was a sound like bits of flowing glass being poured through a sieve, and the debate stopped.
"...anyway," the blonde finally said, "it means the others got started early. So there's some progress on board already, or what can pass for it in a dim light. Ah ain't countin' on that t' hold --"
"-- Applejack?"
"Listenin'."
"What are we doing?"
A boot-clad foot raised just enough to get some momentum going before crashing down into the wooden porch with a very hooflike stomp. "Ah texted you --"
Sunset extracted her phone. Powered up the screen, and then held up the double, triple, and occasionally-quadrupled inputs which made up the straining contents of the farmer's text balloons.
Applejack blushed.
"Oh," the farmer said, and big hands awkwardly slipped into pockets. "Yeah. Um. ...yeah."
'Solid'. Applejack insisted that she could manage texting without the use of a stylus and in shorter messages, it was sometimes possible to determine which character she'd actually meant to hit. When it came to the lengthy tapped-out speech which had eventually put Sunset onto the scooter... well, sometimes, it was just quicker to get a direct explanation, especially after spellcheckers and autosend had already been involved.
"Others figured most of it," Applejack muttered. "Even Twi, an' she ain't got the same degree of experience. Takes some brains t' work backwards from 'dress stranded'. Although Rares got real confused for a minute there --"
Patiently, "-- Applejack..."
Boots scraped again.
"Quick version," the farmer finally said as green eyes stared down at the painted wood. "Hobby store gets some scratch-and-dent stuff. Damaged in transit. Can't always sell it t' the collectors after that, especially if it's somethin' where there's so many fiddly little bits that y'can't be sure nothin' got loose or lost. So if'fin they don't think they can get a full refund from the manufacturer, sometimes they'll find other ways t' get rid of it. Like raffles. That's what happened with this one. Big construction kit. But it took a heavy hit. Inside could be fine, outside ain't. No one picked it up. So the store, they said... you could win it. Maybe. If'fin you could build it."
The magic of the portal allows me to understand the language in the area of my arrival.
I really wish someone would go tell the magic that.
"I don't get it," Sunset reluctantly admitted. Her right hand moved, and fingers unconsciously tugged on a bra strap.
Adjusting to new anatomy. Normal. It was just that hers had the potential to go away again. Every trip back, however brief, left her stumbling. Few things were more awkward than trying to create an appealing display of parts which you didn't currently have.
"Made it into a point of pride," Applejack promptly said. "Even for a prize. Shop said it right there in the rules: winner had t' put the whole thing together, or as close as the contents allow. Timed challenge. Shop staff comes around after a few days t' check and if you're done, it's yours. If y'ain't, then pack it up an' maybe the next winner will put in the work. Y'get it now?"
"Yes."
And the employees put their own name into the draw, wait for enough people to give up, and eventually, the odds come around. Maybe they even remove a few parts, just to make sure no other winners can finish until they get their chance...
That was one of the problems with having tried out evil for a while. You never quite forgot how to think that way. Sunset could scheme her way into world conquest during a boring class lecture, and tried to save those daydreams for History because at least in theory, she then stood a chance to accidentally match a lesson.
"So tonight's the last chance," Applejack finished. "Shop people comin' around a little after dawn. T' get a picture for the store, they say. Or t' bring it back when it ain't done. Ah aim t' be finished before the deadline."
A certain thought was beginning to occur to Sunset.
"You didn't win this," the intermittent unicorn realized.
Green eyes twinkled under porchlight. "An' y'say that because...?"
"Because you'd never leave a lot of work until the last minute," was automatic. "So that means..."
Sunset facepalmed. (It was crucial to do this. When you had palms, certain actions were expected.) The farmer simply grinned.
"...that mah sister put her name in, won the drawin', didn't tell no one, fretted an' hawed for days while not making an attempt on Step One, then told me jus' before she went out the door t'night."
Slowly, the grin faded. Another brief argument drifted past the farmer's back and broke up while crossing the shoulder blades.
"An' here Ah am, savin' her from herself," Applejack sighed. "Ain't sure Ah'm teachin' the right lesson here. She's gonna stay with her friends all night, hidin' because she's ashamed 'bout not havin' had a go. An' Ah'll try t' keep the thing, jus' because she did win it fair, an'... because it's expensive, Ah guess. Not somethin' we'd buy for ourselves. Mostly figure she entered because she didn't think she'd win, an' -- it was somethin' t' build. Jus' -- bigger than she could manage by herself. An' she was afraid t' ask for help, an' -- it scared her from tryin'."
"So what are you going to do?" Sunset softly asked.
"What Ah already did." This smile was much fainter. "Called in the crew. Hopin' we can all put it together before dawn hits. Store people stop by, get the picture, an' when mah sister gets home... show her. An' then?"
Sunset was silent. She pictured a blank-paged book, waiting in the lonely residence for her return. Waited.
"We take it apart," Applejack said. "The two of us. Slow. An' then we put it all back together over the next month. Hour a night or so. So she knows she can do it." She glanced at the door, then moved her attention to the scooter and finally, its rider. "Sunset, now that y'know what it is --"
"-- I'll try," always seemed to be the most she could offer. (It wasn't always what anypony -- anyone wanted to hear.) "So how long is this supposed to take?"
"If'fin all the pieces are there?" Thoughtfully, "An' maybe we got lucky with that. Pinkie's been -- well, you'll see. Anyway, the box says that if you've worked on this sort of thing before an' you're decent with instructions, then maybe twenty-five hours of work. Twenty for an expert. So figure for amateurs, divide up by the people we've got on it --"
"-- so we may not even see the wrong side of midnight --" Sunset valiantly tried --
"-- an' then double everything."
On the distant road, trucks rumbled along. Someone blared a horn, and an unseen car failed to reach 120mph accordingly.
"Double," Sunset helplessly said.
"Minimum."
"Why?"
With a placid calm and only incidental utter lack of mercy, "'cause it's us. Come on in. And watch where y'step. No bare feet. It's okay t' leave the socks on, but y'really don't want one of these things going into your sole without some protection." The girl paused. "Guess that's one of those new problems for you, ain't it?"
The Acres are primarily a produce operation. You keep a few chickens around and there's a couple of other animals, but you don't have a lot of experience with equines. You know how to ride and that means someone taught you to be careful around horses, but I doubt you'd held a lot of hooves. You may have spent more time with hooves than in touching any.
So you don't know how sensitive the center can be.
How vulnerable.
You think you're protected. Hardened. And still, if something strikes in just the right place...
...was the farmer waiting for Sunset to answer? Sunset didn't have an answer --
-- a sharp, brash laugh came through the doorway. The words, which were extremely proud of their own wit, scrambled to follow.
"So did anyone else see this glossary?"
"There's a glossary?" asked the most reticent tones in the room. "Does it have any hyperlink information? I could really use something about how much mass each piece is designed to support. Because I was thinking about the base, and --"
"-- not yet, Twilight. I was just going through the words, you know? Because hobbyists always have dumb vocabulary for stuff to make it sound more important than it is, and I thought I'd better check in case we ran into some of the weird stuff in the directions."
"I've been looking for weird words," Pinkie announced, and the flowing glass sound briefly resumed. "As part of my -- part? Anyway, weird words would be nice. Or words. Just words. Maybe words would mean less squinting. So you found a glossary, Rainbow? Where?"
"Looked it up online," the athlete declared. "And it says the 'base unit' -- the smallest piece, the littlest one you can get with this stuff, where it's just that one tiny raised dot in the center of the single square? That's called a stud!"
She laughed. Then she kept laughing, while Applejack and Sunset remained on the porch. When that kind of ego decided to consider itself funny, it helped to provide a little extra room for the inevitable crash.
"Stud," an earlier voice carefully repeated.
"This teeny little section which has to penetrate..." Rainbow snickered. "That's their stud! The smallest thing they could make is --"
"-- I don't get it."
The sad part, Sunset considered as she closed the door in the exact center of Rainbow's outraged gasp, was that Twilight legitimately didn't.
It took until they reached the living room before Sunset recognized that she'd never asked about what kind of construction kit they were working on and by the time the question was about to arise, it didn't matter any more.
The battered box showed what, when complete, was meant to be a rough sphere -- albeit one which apparently had all of its mass connected to a arcing curve of plastic which rose from what didn't look to be the world's most supportive base. But it was only a sphere when it was complete. Multiple sections existed to be pulled away from the main body as curving pieces of hard plastic skin, revealing rooms within.
Take away a solid piece, and then you could get a look at what was happening inside. It wasn't as if it required any real effort to remove the shields and reveal the hidden. No one had any choice in the matter. All Sunset had to do was touch --
-- seven rooms. That one near the top was probably a meeting area. Another section felt like a prison cell. The launch bay for a nowhere-near-proportional tiny starfaring vessel..
More than anything else, the display image looked like an attempt to capture the human idea of 'science fiction' in hard plastic, along with using so many layers of right angles as to create the illusion of curves. Someone had attempted to render a vision of the future as a much-work-in-minimal-progress toy, and the future was mostly unremarkable shades of grey -- which explained why Rarity kept running her hands through pieces, then letting them fall between her fingers as the increasing boredom visibly pressed the designer into the room's old carpet.
The pieces themselves mostly consisted of variant dimensions for rectangles. Some were curved, others formed dish shapes, and round protrusions on the top were always meant to lock into hollows on a different piece's bottom. They were slightly kinder to the average human foot than the typical four-sided die, but also had a much easier time getting lost among carpet strands. In bulk.
There were seven girls in the room, and the work had been divided up accordingly --
-- in theory.
The only one with glasses had retreated to a private corner, as she so often did. She had but a few pieces, and was -- taking pictures of them with her phone. The resulting images were then sent to the laptop, and reflected dimensions twisted upon thick lenses.
Several of the others seemed to have taken a model interior room each, and -- Sunset wasn't sure that was right. There was something modular about the design, yes: looking at the half-crushed box suggested certain sections could be independently constructed. But the main body of the sphere seemed as if it would have to be layered together during the main build process. Maybe the instructions --
-- it took a few seconds before Sunset spotted them. There were no words in any section: simply illustrations of the pieces needed for a section, and then step-by-step displays of how they were to be layered together. You just scrolled down the phone's screen until --
-- the (occasional) unicorn blinked. Looked again.
There was one master set of instructions, creased and dented and visibly damaged from whatever had happened to the box. Pinkie had it. And she was taking pictures, section by section. Sometimes she would get up and, moving carefully while every shift of body and limbs made the girl audibly rattle, make her way over to Twilight. A few taps on a secondary program would clean up the images, and the results were distributed to the phones of those who were working on the proper sections, followed by Pinkie --
-- Sunset blinked again, and then very carefully headed towards the other girl.
Seven.
There were ways in which they didn't know each other all that well. There had been five in the school system prior to Sunset's arrival, and they had all known of one another -- but they hadn't all been friends. There had certainly been some early connections: a few tentative, others stronger -- and then the newcomer had decided the school was going to revolve around her. Doing a little strategic damage to anything which might get in the way of that made sense, and so she'd only learned about extant relationships to the degree necessary for disrupting them.
Sunset, who had filed her world's worth of new resources under Assets, Potential Problems, and Look, I'm Very Busy With The Rest Of The Planet, Can I Postpone Conquering This One Government Until The Halfway Mark -- hadn't been very concerned with who any of them were as people. The time since her final fall and start of the slow climb back had been just enough to let her recognize how much she'd missed, how far there was still to go -- and poor Twilight was just at the start of the journey, trying to work it all out.
Sunset was still learning about all of them.
She knew just enough to recognize what each brought to the process of making a simple process go stupidly wrong.
After the fact.
Pinkie, who'd taken the position closest to the inactive fireplace, was sitting in the middle of what had to be, at a minimum, two thousand tiny pieces of plastic. (The actual count was over double that.) And she was wearing a scoop-top blouse, which had been mostly hidden by an apron which was covered in miniature pockets: none able to hold more than a pair of thimbles.
Warm blue eyes glanced around, chose a piece and made visible measurements. Pink fingers delicately picked it up, a single look was made at a battered instruction page, and then the piece was dropped into one of the little pockets. The apron rattled.
Sunset carefully knelt down in front of Pinkie. It wasn't easy, and her body felt as if it was rocking above the heels too much. But she didn't want to disturb any pieces and besides, the concept of 'kneel' could really ambush any quadruped who wasn't ready for it.
"Hi, Pinkie," was, as openers went, about as safe as they got: it wasn't, but you kept trying anyway.
"Hi, Sunset!" the girl half-chirped. "I can get you some instructions in a few minutes! Did you want the meeting room? Because that's the place for the ones in charge and I guess that's sort of you? Sometimes. Except for when you don't want it to be, which is usually." Three more pieces: three different pockets. More plastic was shifted across her fingers, with a sound like flowing glass. "It's funny. I know they didn't expect this to be damaged, because who does? Unless you're a baker, because you sort of have to assume that you'll lose a few cookies in the oven. But there's just the one set of instructions. And people work on these together. So including a copy would have made a lot of sense." And mercifully paused. "Um. Do you know what this even is?"
"A kit," Sunset promptly said. "For building. Applejack said."
"But it's building something from a movie," Pinkie said. "One which was filmed before any of us were born. And it's still popular, mostly because the script created so many questions that people can't stop arguing about what the answers are. I don't know if you're familiar with the movie." A little more awkwardly, "It's weird to think about it. All the stuff I know without knowing I know it, because I grew up with it and I just think everyone else knows it too. But everyone doesn't. Because 'every'one'' stops working." Carefully, "People must ask you about a lot of movies. And shows, and even books. Without knowing they're asking. How do you deal with --"
"'Are people still talking about that old thing?'" Sunset's extensive school experience immediately sneered.
Pinkie blinked.
"...oh."
"Straight dismissal," Sunset told her. "It used to work on anything which had been out for over a month."
"Used to?"
"Once Tik-Tok really caught, I got it down to a week. Pinkie, what's with the apron?"
"Well, it's my memory, you see?" the girl brightly explained. "There's thousands of pieces, Sunset! And just the one instruction set, which got kind of beat up. And the pieces are normally in little plastic envelopes, but some of those got torn and the contents were scattered all around the box. And maybe some worked their way out through little rents in the box. Or big ones. We don't know yet. It's like trying to keep track of sugar grains after a whole sack spills."
Sunset patiently nodded. Tracking stray sugar grains might not feel vitally important, but this was Pinkie and when you needed to compare with any activity being done for the sake of safety, the metaphor of sugar was right there.
"So I'm looking at all of the pieces," Pinkie told her. "Then if I haven't seen that piece before, I search the instructions until I find where it goes. So that off-off-off grey one -- there's a lot of greys -- with the little clip shape is..." She folded her way through the instructions. "There! And now I put it in this pocket. That's for off-off-off grey with a clip shape on one side. Which will be in the section Fluttershy's working on, and I hold it until she needs it! Or go over every so often, if she looks like she's low on pieces." Volume dropped. "But not too often. I don't want to overwhelm her! Also, don't call them studs. Rainbow's just gonna start laughing again."
Hands darted here and there. Eight more bits were sorted out. The apron rattled. Tiny sections bulged.
"Running low on pockets, though," Pinkie murmured. "And the envelopes were too beat up to use again -- oh, here's a new one! And another, and another -- all these must have been together in the box! Can you nudge that over a little? There's one by your right foot. Foot. Not a hoof. Foot -- yes, that's the one! The non-reflective black one-by-ones with the sharp-looking sides! There must be at least two dozen of them!"
The one free hand shifted instructions.
"Found the section," Pinkie announced. "No one's working on it yet." She frowned. "But I don't want to sort these out all over again. Someone will need them eventually..."
She tapped the apron's pockets. Every last one rattled.
"This is a problem," the girl sadly stated. "Apron. Pants. Purse. I've been reviewing. All of my storage space is gone."
"I can just hold --" Sunset started to offer.
Pinkie's eyes went wide.
"Wait! I forgot about the newest one!"
Which, with any version of Pinkie in any world, represented the one and only chance to stop her.
It passed.
"The newest --"
"-- well, I sort of had to wait for it, didn't I? And this always works in the movies! Hang on!"
And with that, Pinkie's free hand reached out, across, over, and then pulled both the apron's top and the neckline of the scoop-top blouse forward.
Two dozen small pieces of hard, ridged plastic with sharp-looking sides were deposited into the new storage area.
Something very odd happened to Pinkie's eyes. They were still blue, and bright. They just appeared to have scrunched into each other. From the outside in.
"Um," Pinkie said, and then her lips froze.
Sunset's right hand stretched out --
"-- no!" Pinkie stridently announced, and every head in the room turned. "No touchie!"
Applejack rather quickly began to get up.
"...not that kind of no touchie," Pinkie rapidly qualified. "This is maybe more 'I touchie'. Only me. In private. When I shouldn't have. And now I have to. A lot. I -- think I have some regrets. At least two. Um..." And slowly, slowly stood up.
Everyone watched. The motion made the apron rattle. Among other things.
"I am... going into the bathroom," the girl told the world. "I'm going to be in there for a while. Because I really need it. And maybe some skin cream for scratches. And a notebook so I can write something down about never doing that again."
"Pinkie?" asked a rather confused Rainbow.
"AND NO STUD JOKES!"
Sunset wound up with several of the nonreflective black pieces -- mostly of different sizes, which meant that the majority weren't oddly warm to the touch. She didn't like those parts. They tended to blur into each other within the warm lights of the living room, making join seams that much harder to make out. All the better for the illusion of a solid construct, but her phone clearly showed a precise alignment was needed on the stacked corners and any error on that sort of thing tended to echo into the rest of the structure. She needed everything to match. Especially when experts were going to be inspecting it later. One mistake...
Her fingernails carefully worked at the area. A little push here, another there. Once she had the main joist ready, she could work outwards from there.
It think it's going to be really close to the base...
She squinted at her screen. Then she tried to read somepony else's, failed to get the right angle, and started to stand up from her self-assigned place on the floor.
The other girls kept moving. Get pieces from Pinkie, at least when the baker hadn't vanished into the bathroom for another ice session. Check with each other. Go to the main table and try to place their current section into where the group had silently agreed the central mass was being kept: sometimes this worked, and more often it didn't. Rainbow tended to walk away with empty hands, the belief that the next piece in would support whatever she'd just done, and the sounds of creaking plastic straining in her wake.
They all spoke to each other. Casually, almost constantly -- except for Sunset, who was too used to telling others when to speak (or, more often for her past, to shut up) to readily pick her own moments -- and the one she was approaching, who hadn't picked up on the full patterns of the group yet.
Two needed to make exacting efforts. When it came to growing closer, the others made it look so easy. As if they just -- drifted together.
The shortest girl in the room saw the incoming shadow cross her screen, and timidly looked up.
"Oh," Twilight tried. "Hi, Sunset --"
"-- you've got the base, right?"
"I'm working on it," Twilight said. Glanced down, and made a few adjustments on the touchpad while reflected images danced across the glasses. "It's just a matter of principles."
"Principles," Sunset reluctantly tried, because Twilight had been raised to speak in Perfectionist and as that was Sunset's first acquired tongue, she usually did her best not to use it. "Principle of support? Because I think the attachment point is broad enough --"
"--- for support, yes," Twilight readily agreed. "If you're just using it as a display piece. I've been working out the torque." She gestured towards the most minimized of the windows. "If you even rotate that thing slightly over the safe maximum speed, it could come flying off the base! And I'm not sure it's possible for a human to move so slowly as to be completely safe."
Which meant Rainbow definitely couldn't. "So you're going to add some adhesive?"
Very calmly, "I'm redesigning the support."
Slowly, a little too carefully, Sunset looked down at the screen. Glowing numbers spun. Her head quickly followed.
"I'm not violating patent laws!" Twilight quickly explained. "Or trademarks. These people put trademarks on everything. I'm just making a new base from scratch! Which has a broader footprint, more stability along the arc, and a much better platform at the top. Which will still interface perfectly with the original parts."
"...original..." was all Sunset had, and it wasn't enough.
Twilight looked -- hurt.
"I know what you're about to say," the smaller girl decided.
"You do?" She tugged on the left strap.
Primly, "Obviously 3D printing takes hours and we have a deadline."
"...obviously..."
"So I started the process as soon as I got a look at the problem. I sent the instructions to my home system. It's already running. I've even made some microadjustments along the way!" Brightly, "Don't worry, Sunset. It'll have time to cure before the store employees show up. I'm sure of that! It's my newest batch on that plastic and I was going for fast curing, so this is the perfect time to try it out!" Beaming now, "Honestly, the only hard part was going to be delivering it here on time. But then I remembered where I left that one drone..."
"Rarity?"
Slim white fingers briefly ceased their drumming against the worn carpet.
"Grey," the designer said.
When speaking with Rarity, it was vitally important for the other party in the conversation to accurately measure the current amount of insanity on the other side and decide how to deal with it. There was theoretically a plan for encountering a result of zero, but no one had ever needed to put it into action
Sunset, who was still relatively new to the process, placed her fresh error at 3.
"What's grey?" she mistaked.
"I suppose one could argue for fascism going with the supposed gunmetal 'aesthetic'," Rarity sighed. "Incidentally, do not approach me with the supposed theory of 'the more repressive the regime, the more spectacular the uniforms'. That is not the last outlet for creativity permitted under such a society, and you do not wish to see the true display." With a shudder, "In both cases, there will be far too much red. But 'grey', my dear Sunset, is the look of this -- thing."
Sunset looked. The model's dominant color was grey. (The miniature figures which populated it defaulted to a perfectly natural skin tone of bright yellow, and had as much acquaintance with 'fingers' as the average Equestrian.) The hull was grey. The main weapons dish was grey. The floors were grey. At least one uniform was grey, but Sunset was presuming that was for internal camo. Some lower ranks were best off not being noticed.
"What is the point of this shade?" the designer inquired. "Clearly you wish to be spotted from a rather long way off as you close in --"
"-- you do?"
Rarity sniffed. "The reason for this weapon's existence is terror. Those whose goal is to invoke fear hardly wish to go unnoticed."
and she'll talk about the demon how much larger it was how easy to see how my voice changed and everyone had to look at me
"And in the end, this sort of villain is about ego, are they not?" Another sniff. "Color, Sunset? Is a language, and so the choice of hues provides an idea of personal vocabulary. In this case, if they had chosen a hull which could change color, perfectly reflect the stars which the weapon obscures -- then it is a statement of fear. They would believe there was a chance to beat them, and so they must sneak up on their opponent. Unnoticed until the moment they strike. Grey, in this precise shade? 'You can see me coming, you can do nothing about it, and incidentally, I have no imagination or sense of personal design'." She sighed. "Not as if there could ever be any such thing as a tasteful genocide, of course. And we are thankfully doing no more than arguing over the design standards for a work of fiction. But still... boring."
She paused.
"Incidentally," Rarity added, "there is a lighting add-on available for this model. But it only affects the interiors and the weapon disc. Having that last glow green does help, though." And sighed. "So much grey..."
Sunset looked down.
"Those translucent red pieces seem to set it off nicely."
"Oh, you noticed?" Openly pleased, "You're the first to say anything! Maybe I should have made them more prevalent, instead of simply suggesting highlights..."
"Where did you get them?" Because she hadn't seen Pinkie sort out any, nor had they appeared in the instructions yet.
"Oh, I have a supply at home," Rarity assured her.
"...you do?"
"When one dreams in cloth," the designer told her, "one might begin through practicing in plastic. And quite frankly, if I can make an outfit work on these forms, then people should be easy. In any case, Sunset, it's all from the same series! Official parts only. There's even a few of the crystals in this set. Mostly for the power core, I think, and of course we haven't gotten to that yet. But as soon as I deciphered Applejack's text? I raided part of my own childhood supply. Sadly, I only had time to grab a few of the dark reds." Thoughtfully, "Maybe that's why you're the first to notice..."
"Dark red."
"Power supply. For the weapons. And the engines. And in fact, that dreadful planet-breaker is a hypermatter reactor which channels its energies through blameless crystals. Whose replicas will take the weight of the surrounding plates perfectly well, as long as I remember to keep a ratio of fourteen to three throughout."
"...a what?"
"Believe me," Rarity said, "an entire fictional universe would be better off if certain parties had decided to use their gems for nothing more than decoration. You haven't actually seen the film, have you? ...any of them? Then it will be my pleasure to introduce you to the arguments! Those are the 'wars' of the title, in case you were wondering. Most don't. And don't worry: I will warn you before the head goes into the door frame. I find it's funnier when you can watch for it!"
"Um," was all Sunset had left.
"Costume design is an art," indicated the fashionista. "Fantasy and science fiction? Place the lowest number of constraints upon that art. So I go to seek it out wherever it might appear. And really, it's amazing what a basic dark vest can accomplish!" Which was when she rolled her eyes. "Just don't ask me about that idiotic plot."
Applejack. Rainbow.
They were two very different girls. Each could spend hours in listing just how different she was from the other, and would: it was very important to make sure any perceived similarities were explained away. With a vengeance.
They were so different that when it came to creating their part of the little disaster, their identical wrong answer had completely altered approach paths.
It was like taking a math test. The truest way to see where you'd gone wrong was to show the work.
They'd already been going for well over two hours, and that was just with Sunset present and participating. It felt as if they should have been further along than this...
(It wasn't Sunset's fault, of course. She just needed to make sure her joist was ready to go. When so much support depended on a single piece, you couldn't just neglect adjustments until the last minute. It was easier to make sure everything would be perfect at the moment it went in.)
Girls talked. That was a constant: one that meant it didn't matter which world they were in. Having adolescent females involved in an activity meant the talking was going to be most of it.
Take the time required for a normal task and double it.
Because it's us.
She wasn't seeing the reasoning. But she still felt it should have been going faster.
Sunset, who'd found her eyesight getting bleary around the stupid piece corners, had gone over to Applejack. The farmer was carefully working on a curving, layered section of the outer hull. Solid fingers moved steadily and carefully, applying only the force needed.
*click*
"Y'got this?" the blonde asked as she noticed Sunset's approach. "Back home?"
"We've been over my movies," Sunset said. "Nothing this fancy ---"
"-- toy model build kits. Like these. With lots of little press-an'-hold pieces. No glue."
Sunset briefly considered the problems inherent in trying to explain a world for which the Choking Hazard toy warning didn't have an age limit.
"Not like this," she finally said. "The pieces are too small. They'd get swallowed."
Rarity, now off to their right, was muttering again. The sounds seemed to be getting darker.
"Ah -- guess," Applejack finally allowed. Two more pieces were squeezed into a *click*. "Nothin' close, though?"
"On a larger scale, for very young foals," Sunset admitted. "Or there should be now. It was a new spell. Wooden pieces. They adhered to each other on command. The working was being tried out on toys." With a soft snort, "It was one of the last journal articles I read before I left. Some idiot was worried about the magic leaking into hooves and having those stick to things." Probably on command.
The farmer slowly nodded. Hesitated.
"Ain't easy t' talk 'bout this with you," she said. "Kinda like havin' a friend who fights crime -- an' Ah guess we've got that irony goin' too, if we want it."
"I don't understand," even after so much time in their world, still felt like something Sunset said far too often.
"Ah want t' know 'bout you," Applejack carefully offered. "Your whole life. But askin' 'bout the parts which take place with the horn all of the time makes it sound like Ah might care more 'bout the costume than the girl wearin' it."
It's not a costume.
It's my body.
This, in front of you right now, is the costu --
It had been years. She still didn't know.
The awkward silence stretched out.
"That's a weird piece," Sunset said, mostly just to break it.
"It's a lot of little pieces which Ah put together into one big weird one," Applejack clarified.
"Still. It's weird."
There were more words after that and several hours later, Sunset would recognize them as being among the most important of her life. But just then, they were -- words.
More work got done. You expected that, with Applejack.
*click*
And then, *clunk*.
Sunset automatically looked down.
The newest section of model, still held in Applejack's hands -- looked a little less layered. Two outermost pieces were partially covering up a rather visible central gap. And a little pocket on the farmer's sleeve bulged with a fresh piece of weight.
Green eyes sharply looked up. Registered the scrutiny --
"-- relax," Applejack said. "We don't need that one."
This time, Sunset's eyes went to Applejack's phone. Carefully-photographed instructions had their parts count tallied.
"Ow," Pinkie said.
"You okay there?" Rainbow asked.
"Funny how you always miss one," Pinkie sighed. "Or maybe not-funny. Or maybe I'll just be right back..."
"We don't need it?" Sunset-half whispered.
"Ah've put together some barns in my time," said a girl who hadn't managed to have 'her time' include high school graduation yet. "Ah understand principles. Shouldn't change too much between wood an' plastic, now should it? Don't need this part of the hull. The rest can cover for it."
"But why --"
"-- 'cause of why this thing was up for raffle t' start with. Could be missin' pieces. An' then the staff shows up later an' says we didn't beat it because it don't look right? Too many parts gone, so Apple Bloom's gotta return the kit? Ain't gonna happen, Sunset. Ah save a part here? Then Ah can use that somewhere else."
"But --"
"-- already got a dozen," the blonde confidentally said. "All sizes, too. Been lookin' for potential substitutes."
"-- the instructions --"
"An' who is gonna know better how t' put somethin' together?" Applejack challenged. "Someone who just designs models, or a girl who knows how t' work with the real thing?"
The real thing is a spaceship.
If we wind up having to work with the real thing, then life is getting very weird and I'd like another mirror now please.
"But --"
" -- be prepared," Applejack firmly said. "That's somethin' they tell the boys t' do. If it's good enough for a boy, then Ah can look it over an' figure out whether it's good enough for me too. Dozen pieces found so far. Let me know if y'find any y'ain't usin'. Especially since you've been kinda minimalist." Bemusedly, "Corners are kind of a hassle here, ain't they? Especially on what's supposed t' be a sphere. Twilight, y'got any science which explains that? Where straight lines make curved ones?"
"Asymptotes?" Twilight immediately called out. "Is that what you're looking for?"
"Could be. What are those?"
"Equations where, when you graph them out, the answers come out on a near-infinity of little lines -- but the progression between them is so smooth, it shows up as a curve." The small girl was beginning to stand. "I can show you! The graphics on my laptop work against me because the resolution's too good, but once I print the grid out from my calculator --"
Six females were staring at the newest member of the group.
"...it's retro," Twilight said. "I like being able to pass around my work. While keeping my calculator. So if I print --"
"...how do you load up the ink?" Fluttershy softly asked.
"What?"
"...it's a calculator. So it has to be a tiny little tank, right? Do you use an eyedropper?"
"It's thermal paper."
Sunset's eyes went wide.
"YOU HAVE MAGIC WHICH REVEALS SECRET WRITING WHEN TEMPERATURES OF A THOUSAND DEGREES ABOVE OR TWO HUNDRED BELOW --"
"-- it has a crystalline coating which turns black in thin lines when heat is applied," Twilight carefully cut her off. "Yours does what?"
And that cost them nearly an hour.
Softly, "Rainbow?"
"Yeah, Sunset? Hey, you were over by AJ earlier, right? How's her part of the hull coming along? Because I'm about ready to go attach this. Don't worry! It'll look a lot better once Twilight's base gets delivered." Thoughtfully, "Do you hear a drone? I've been keeping an ear out, but nothing so far. Just Applejack saying to keep it down because her grandmother is sleeping. Maybe you can hear it better from the kitchen. Anyway, if you go into the kitchen, Applejack hides the good stuff under --"
"-- why did you just put that piece inside your jacket?"
Confidently, "We don't need it."
"...and -- you're saying that because you're going to use it to fill in any gap we might get later if pieces are missing --"
"-- look. You are the expert on a few things around here, right? Magic. Social manipulation. Taking hits from magical stones. We need any of that, we turn to you. Because you trust the expert. Right?"
Sunset very carefully considered the full nature of her own suggested list, then recognized that Rainbow tended to consider herself an expert on anything important and braced for impact.
"...yes...?"
"I," Rainbow announced, "am this group's expert on speed. And this thing is a spaceship, right? Or satellite." Frowned. "It's a satellite which travels through space. But they all do that. Only this one has to do it faster than light, or it can't go blow up the next planet in less than four hundred years."
"The light from the explosions," considered a disgruntled mid-Atlantic accent, "would at least break up the grey..."
"The point," Rainbow quickly decided, "is that I know about speed. The more mass, the more energy you need to make it move. And the less you've got available for stuff like blowing up planets. So it does not need this piece. The hull will be fine without it. And lighter!"
"Rainbow," Sunset's sanity valiantly tried, "it's an artificial satellite the size of a small moon. I can't even image how much that would weigh. Why does it matter if it's just a little lighter?"
"Actually," Rarity interrupted, "when one considers power output --"
"There's this stuff called 'solar wind'," Rainbow abruptly told the room.
"Oh, come on..." Applejack groaned.
"No, that's right!" Twilight called out. "It's the flow of charged particles coming off the sun."
Words flow off the sun.
Charged ones.
"So if you have solar wind," Rainbow finished, "then you have solar wind resistance!" Triumphantly, "And when it comes to moving faster? Obviously you've gotta cut that down." She peered at the instructions again. "Actually, is a sphere even the best shape for that sort of thing? Maybe we've got to change the angling. What happens if I toss on a spoiler?"
Twilight stood up. The speed of the movement bumped the touchpad, which redirected one tiny layer of distantly-printed plastic.
"That," she harshly stated, "is not how solar wind works."
"So how does it work, genius?"
More time vanished.
It was well after midnight now. Sunset told herself that the little inspections were just making sure the others were coming along on some sort of pace. And awake. Plus getting up to move around the room kept her awake. Especially the limbs. She knew what to do when her legs fell asleep. Arms seemed to want their own instructions. Anatomy was weird that way.
"...tentacles," Fluttershy said. "Most of the crushing is done by the waste compaction process, of course. I guess it's like getting your food prechewed." A little sadly, "I like to think someone... just found an old one. Who couldn't really get by alone any more. Maybe on a planet where they were getting the supplies to build it all. And they smuggled it up to the station, and... gave it a home..."
Sunset forced herself to inspect the twisting pieces of painted plastic again.
"Those are supposed to be tentacles."
"...I said that."
"For the monster which lives in the garbage."
"...it can't help where its environment is," said a very mildly offended Fluttershy. "Or where someone places it. Possibly because a whole planet got used up through being strip-mined for station resources, and there was just the one nice rescuer." The offense was beginning to intensify. "Not that it mattered. Not when they all died."
"...they all..."
"...oh!" The girl sighed. "Right. You wouldn't know. I'm sorry about the spoilers..."
"Everyone in the movie dies? Her experiences had the local film industry effectively addicted to the happy ending. The perfect one...
Her fingernails pushed against the pieces she was carrying. The resulting adjustment almost felt right.
"...the ones who lose in the bad place," Fluttershy awkwardly said. "I think that's as much as I can say without making the spoilers worse. But you don't really see anyone get out. People only come back later in the franchise. When they shouldn't. And you never see any of them get out either, so at least they're consistent?" Hesitated. "Sunset, I've seen this movie a few times. With Rarity, because she always wants a second opinion. On plots. And medals. I worry when she starts designing for medals. And says she can make them jingle in bootstep. Musically. But for the movie... this whole giant space station, with what had to be thousands of people on it..."
"Just under two million living beings," Rarity called out. "It takes a city to make that sort of thing function. A large one."
Twilight blinked.
"One million," the newest girl said, "nine hundred and fifty thousand. Plus four hundred thousand droids."
"I did say just under two million," had a mild note of miff. "And living --"
"-- you just know that?"
"I was curious," Rarity said, "and I looked it up. When one questions the plot, one attempts to find answers."
"But hardly anyone just knows --"
"-- I also happen to have a theory on the exhaust port."
Twilight got up. Rarity moved over to make room. Whispering ensued.
"...I hope her answer is better than mine," Fluttershy sighed. "Rarity didn't talk to me for a week after mine. Anyway, I don't think this station, with nearly two million people living there -- and maybe their pets, because people have pets in this world, Sunset. Pets whom they mourn when the so-called hero doesn't think about the possibility that they might be killing a pet --"
"-- an' Ah've still got a grandparent upstairs!"
"...sorry..." was much quieter. "Sunset, the whole thing starts with an escape pod. I don't know if the bad place had escape pods. Why would it? They thought they were invincible. There was nothing they needed to escape from. So none of them got out. No people, no pets, and not what was probably just the last survivor of a devastated mining colony who got labeled as a monster."
Her hands met in her lap. Clenched.
"They shot at it," Fluttershy said. "The 'heroes'. It was just hungry. All it had to eat was trash. Actual trash."
"Um," wasn't improving in effectiveness with repetition.
"Of course," was a little more thoughtful, "maybe it's a natural scavenger. And the station was incorporating it in its role. That would be very intelligent. Ask nature to do what its supposed to, only for you. Brilliant design."
"I -- guess..."
"...and we know it has some way out," Fluttershy semi-abruptly half-hissed, "because it left when the real crushing started. But is that a path to safety, Sunset? Is there a pod which can home in on just the right planet? For this poor 'monster' which didn't ask to be there and just wants the intruders who really shouldn't have ever been there to stop shooting at it?"
Slowly, the girl shook her head. Coral strands twisted against each other.
"...destroying the station was the right thing to do, of course," she said. "Numerically. There were a lot more living creatures on the target. And the bad guys were very evil." Another head shake. "But... still. When you see enough of these films, you start to realize that no one ever cares about who's getting left behind in the sanitation system..."
Technically, the first attempt officially ended at 2:19 a.m. Sunset knew this for an absolute fact. The group had spent some collective time together before this. There was a policy for when when you heard that level of crash, even if -- perhaps especially if -- you were the one who'd just caused it. You verified the exact time. Your precise location. Exactly who was around you, and what they were doing. And then you tried to figure out exactly how much the authorities were actually going to believe.
Sunset waited for the last echoes of the shattering to fade. Then she put all reactions on further standby, because a horrified Applejack had defrosted just enough to race upstairs and make sure Granny Smith had somehow slept through all of it. The entire group thus got to wait through several minutes of horrified, completely frozen not-silence until the elder's promises of future vengeance finally decided to wait for daylight.
Applejack, ears still burning, slowly came down the steps and had her legs lock up halfway through. Staring over the banister at a portion of plastic debris field.
Sunset slowly got up. Her legs tried to cramp. A hard, ill-aligned presence made itself known between her fingertips, and she ignored it.
"So let me see if I can work this out," she said. "Rainbow, move your elbow?"
The "Um," didn't sound any better coming from a new home.
"You don't have to," Sunset decided. "Especially since you'd have to scoot in order to move it very far. And that's going to leave you with all of those tiny studs poking into your butt."
"Lack of butt," Applejack's stun automatically supplied.
"Hey!"
"An' tiny studs too," added permanently-primed reflexes. "Never figured Rainbow for short kings, but since she's always lookin' down on most people anyway..."
Sunset, who had once been picked out of the endless flows of herd and time in the hopes of discovering perfection, was now practicing her kneeling again. It was the sort of thing which a born quadruped needed to work on and besides, it got her all the closer to the flaws.
"It's pretty easy, actually," she decided. "We were all yawning, because we've been at this for hours. I'm not sure at what. We talk and we move around and we talk about solar wind a lot and at some point, there were fart jokes and before anyone asks me, ponies make fart jokes and that includes the mares and when your leader is a Princess who moves the sun with her mind and eats an actual ton of gluten with all of her pastries, you make industrial-strength fart jokes."
Twilight risked a breath.
"Did you ever notice any helium production --"
" -- only you two yawned --"
"HEY!" was mostly implied. Granny had been loud.
"Look, Ah'm not responsible for what that one starts --"
"-- and that meant you both had to prove you were awake! To each other! And somehow, you both decided that meant an arm-wrestling contest! On the most suitable surface. The main table. The one with everything we'd sort of finished of the model on it."
"It's a challenge!" Applejack protested.
"You can't just not --" Rainbow started.
"-- arm wrestling challenge."
"YEAH!" Rainbow re-implied.
"Against the girl with super-strength?"
Silence.
"...well," Rainbow huffed as her arms folded across her chest, "if she was going to cheat..."
"Ah didn't! Y'just have nearly everythin' in the lower body! Runners, Sunset: every day of that one's life is Leg Day --"
"-- so when the impact hit the table," Sunset mercilessly continued, "then it jolted -- okay, I'm pretty sure some of this came up through the base -- this peg doesn't look quite right..."
Twilight's face was immediately buried in her hands.
"I knew it!" the small girl moaned. "I should never try to work with someone else's idea of a stud! Everyone just gets so upset...!"
Sunset's left foot shoved a few too-light hull pieces around. (They would watch the movie itself three days later, all of them together, and she would conclude the artificial satellite had been destroyed so readily because half of the components had been skimmed and sold off to traveling unicorns in straw boaters. For cheap.) None of the studs went into the tender soles of her feet. When you lived and worked around this crew, you learned to keep your boots on at all times.
She absently noted a hole in the floor of the waste disposal room, and recognized that it was wide enough for the loss of integrity to have contributed to the collapse. Then she gave it a more precise mental measurement, and realized that the nearby section of tentacles would have been able to race through on their way to the dispersed hull with room to spare.
There was also a small, grey, very crude spheroid near her left heel. It was mostly recognizable for not having turned up anywhere in the instructions.
"Escape pod?" she asked Fluttershy.
"...it was meant to be..."
"A real route to the fake escape pod for the fictional creature. Which isn't a monster and shouldn't have to die when -- spoilers." Sunset squinted. "And the dark red patch?"
"Viewport," Rarity admitted. "I'm afraid the donation rather ruined my reinforcement ratio on the floor plates." Paused. "Also, the engines wouldn't be delivering enough power now."
Twilight stared. Applejack snorted.
"Admittedly," the designer pressed on, "a rather secondary consideration at this point compared to the fact that the station has been destroyed several reels too early."
Rainbow's elbow slipped, and a direct funny bone hit had the runner jump backwards from a sitting start.
"OW!"
"I'll get the cream," Pinkie sighed. "Really, Rainbow, you should have learned from me."
"From you? What did you --"
"Right at the start," Pinkie said. "More studs than I could handle. You just got the same treatment. Only lower. So now we know, in case it ever comes up again. Rainbow has an absolute limit for taking studs in the rear."
Silence.
Utter.
Complete.
Dead.
Silence.
"It could come up again," Pinkie's rather questionable innocence said. "It's us. We're a little weird that way. Collectively. So we need to be very careful around massive quantities of studs. Not much of a problem at school, obviously. But did you know that some of this stuff is made over in the capital? It's near the college! So if we ever visit the stud factory --"
And then they were laughing.
It was questionable as to whether they all knew what they were laughing at: Twilight often needed to have matters explained, and tended to laugh because someone else was doing it and participation helped. Fluttershy, by contrast, would be looking for a means of blending in, and sometimes Rainbow was just waiting for everyone to look away so she could check her phone for the search engine results which would explain the dumb joke: in the current case, the last wasn't a factor.
They were laughing because... there was a 'they'. Somehow, there was a 'they'. And when one laughed, the others went along. It felt better that way, so -- why not?
Sunset, in the midst of her mirth, felt the tiny weight in her palm. Glanced down, saw non-reflective black, and wondered just how many pieces she'd actually assembled when she'd been trying to line up the joist edges to what she'd told herself were palace standards, glanced back at her miniature pile of results --
-- I am so messed up --
-- and laughed all the harder.
What else could she do? You couldn't even control what other people saw. The best you could manage was to recognize what it all looked like from the outside. And just then, she looked like a total idiot.
It was funny.
The 'demon' form, in some student pictures, had come across as a cheap CGI effect from a low-budget show.
You had to laugh.
If you were ever going to get past your own ego, you had to laugh...
Time tended to blur when they all worked together. Truly worked, because the time had come for that.
They got organized. Twilight and Pinkie resorted pieces. They both went through the instructions, figuring out the most logical order of progression for construction. Applejack arranged the processing area, and then Rarity went back to her home and 'borrowed' a selection of older pieces from the overall release line, matching colors and shapes on the smallest studs as precisely as she could, returning a mere ninety-three minutes before sunrise.
They worked, and it all came together. A very few pieces were missing, and it could have been so many more -- but they managed to substitute, and carefully-blended nail polish covered for the last of the false shades. A small number of extra bits were rendered into an escape pod and eventually acquired a solar sail.
The store staff members came by. Pictures were taken and much to the surprise of the employees, that was all they left with. (The attempts to secure phone numbers from Fluttershy and Twilight were considered as pre-doomed.)
A completed model was delivered to the youngest daughter's bedroom. More pictures were taken, and then Applejack directed all the girls into various parts of the house. Wherever couches and comfy chairs and beds could be found.
A good hostess had responsibilities. And they were all too tired to go home.
It had taken a few hours of sleep before Sunset felt herself to have recovered driving skills. Most of that centered around making sure her hands remembered what to do. When flipping off angry motorists, it was utterly vital to use the correct finger. The best way to keep people from realizing you were wearing a costume was to utilize it correctly.
The scooter wove in and out of traffic. A unicorn knew how to wind her way through a galloping herd. Cars were easy.
No one said anything about how badly my joist was coming along.
They just talked to me. Or let me talk to them. Over and over. The whole night.
...they probably would have said something right around the time when it all broke. When we still had time to make the least important part right.
She didn't pull over. Jamming on the brakes in the middle of traffic flow would have been fatal. Instead, she drove on, and simply examined the thought a little more closely.
Making the model wasn't the crucial aspect.
The important part had been having all of them in the same room.
Talking.
Listening.
Learning.
Just... being together...
...the model wasn't perfect. Some pieces had been swapped in. Other parts were battered: they'd gone through a lot just to reach that stage, but they still worked. You could see what the original design had been, and what they'd created passed -- but it was hardly perfect. And it definitely hadn't been what anyone had intended at the start.
But it worked.
Two worlds. Each seemed to believe that you were supposed to work out the whole of your life before graduation: prior to getting out of primary -- elementary school was the ideal. And just about every last pony acted that way, with so many humans unknowingly agreeing with them --
-- but ponies, once they found their marks, were sort of locked in. Their destinies had found them.
(Had Sunset's destiny truly found her, so long ago? Or simply a Princess, one who was the only mare that could ever say what had been seen...)
Humans... maybe they only told themselves they'd worked it out. Some of them got it wrong and kept up the lie anyway, because surely they would become good at their chosen skill of Being Rich if they just wished hard enough. And others...
The majority of humans didn't have the same fierce, almost furious connections to destiny. The lucky ones could choose to be -- anything. And yet... so many of them chose to drift.
Destiny.
A set destination.
Which meant you never discovered all the things outside the instructions. Off to the sides of the path. You didn't explore.
Drift, and you wandered directly into Life.
Earlier:
"That's a weird piece."
"It's a lot of little pieces which Ah put together into one big weird one."
"Still. It's weird."
"Why?"
"They mold things in machines. All the plastics. I was reading about that for some of the scooter's parts. This model wants something in that shape. So the company could make one large piece, in that exact configuration, and then you wouldn't have to assemble this one or worry about any of its parts getting lost..."
"True. But y'lose the strength."
"A single perfect piece --"
"-- conglomerates are stronger."
"...really?"
"Check with Twi if'fin y'don't believe me. One big piece can look perfect from the outside, but it could be hiding a lot of flaws. Goes down easy if you hit it in the right place. An' then there's no backup. Lots of little pieces... sort of support each other. Tougher than the individual parts."
"Seriously."
"Yeah."
"That's weird."
It wasn't just weird. It was stupid. Counter-intuitive. Like the way the girls worked. At cross-purposes and against each other and even against themselves, to the point where any true observation of the cumulative building errors produced by all the little flaws would tell a spectator exactly how the approaching disaster would go.
It was all so stupid.
But the stupid parts were what made it wonderful.
Perfection? Perhaps that was the place you found when you followed instructions exactly. Conformed to destiny, and did so to the most precise possible degree. But you would do so without exploring, experimenting, learning, or -- laughing. You laughed when there was something to laugh at or, better yet, when there was someone to laugh with.
Sunset moved the scooter through traffic. The proper finger was repeatedly deployed. The others kept asking about equivalent gestures, for use in those times when she had to bring them back with her for a while, and... she wasn't sure how to tell Twilight about how a temporary mare had been carrying her ears.
The group, when operating as a whole, were asked to deal with wild effects, now and again. To investigate the consequences which arose when worlds touched, and to explore the magic which appeared when hearts did the same.
If we'd done nothing but work... a few hours. And I'd feel better about being on the gallop with that much more sleep.
I also wouldn't have heard Rainbow and Twilight talking about science. Fluttershy trying to figure out waste disposal through ecology. Or needed to puzzle out AJ's latest four-character/one-finger hit, or set up for all of us to see the first movie -- fourth movie? -- first movie at Rarity's, or...
The next lane looked as if it would open up soon. Her exit was getting close, and swerving too hard at the last minute had its own price.
Sunset carefully measured her advancement, and chose to drift.
