Twilight Discovers Lasers
Twilight let out a mighty cry of victory as she held aloft the completed version of her five months of experimentation. Almost half a year ago, Spike held up one of his rubies for her to see. The sun hit the gem and in an instant she was almost blinded by the stunning light being emitted by the gem. Since then she has discovered that that particular type of gem acts as an amplifier of light. Not being one to let science go untested, she began large scale experiments involving a series of mirrors focusing light onto the gem. Months later, and she had created a small, portable replication of the event.
The device was a metallic cylinder about half the length of her hoof with a small magic receiver on one end, and a small opening on the other. Magic would be fed into the cylinder through the receiver. From there, the magical charge would pass through a one-way mirror and enter the small rectangular bit of ruby. The natural properties of the ruby would amplify the magic, bouncing the signal off a second mirror back to the first. The signal will continue to increase in power until it overwhelmed the second mirror, letting out a solid beam of light infused magic out of the open end of the cylinder.
The amount of magic required was so little, Twilight barely needed to light her horn to see the final results of her work. With but a flicker of thought her new invention blasted out an invisible beam of light. Where it struck the wall, a small purple dot appeared. With a huge smile Twilight began to flick her hoof in random directions, seeming to draw random shapes and words on her basement walls.
She gasped with a sudden idea, “I need to show Spike! He did give me the idea in a way.” She said as she trotted up the steps and out to the main room of the library. “Spike? Spike!” she called.
“What?!” Spike called from upstairs, slightly grumpy from his interrupted dream, it was after sundown after all.
“Come down here quick, I want to show you something!” Twilight yelled back. She heard him moaning as he opened the door to their room and made his way down the steps.
“Okay okay, I’m here. Now what was so important that you had to wake me from my dream?” Spike asked. In his dream he was the Candy King, and his beloved Rarity was his Queen. He was in the middle of feeding his love another small candy when he was awoken.
“You know that project I’ve been working on?” Spike simply crossed his arms in annoyance, he knew very well the project that was Twilight’s latest obsession. Getting the hint, Twilight continued, “Well, it’s done!” She declared, proudly presenting the small cylinder to Spike.
“It’s a pen?” he asked.
“No silly, why would I obsess over a simple pen?”
“I can think of one time…” Spike trailed off, memories best left forgotten slowly beginning to surface.
Twilight waved her hoof as though to dispel the memory, “Okay, I get it! What I meant was that this is no ordinary pen, look!” Twilight fed a sliver of her magic into the device.
Spike stared at it for a moment, “Yeah, I’m not seeing a difference.”
Twilight sighed loudly, “Just look behind you.”
Spike turned around only to have his mind blown. There on the wall was something he had never seen before, a bright purple dot. It sat there casually, as if begging for attention. Without a second thought Spike knew he had to have it.
As quickly as he could, he bounded across the library and leapt off of a reading table, where he smashed into the wall with enough force to knock several books off the shelves.
“Spike! What do you think you’re doing?” Twilight gasped as she cut off the flow of magic.
“Did I get it?” Spike asked as he pulled himself up and examined his hands.
“No Spike, there’s nothing to get, it’s a point of light! See?” She pointed it at the floor and lit her horn.
The elusive dot suddenly appeared on the floor before Spike. In his mad desire to capture the dot he scrambled after it on all fours, his claws tearing into the wooden floor as he did so. Twilight panicked and pointed the laser against the far wall, causing Spike to dash after it once again. This time it was beyond his reach, so he simply resorted to jumping as high as his stubby legs would allow.
Twilight watched Spike destroy the library in his single minded desire to get the dot of purple light. Normally she would reprimand him for making such a mess, but another part of her mind had a very dangerous question: Do others act this way?
Absentmindedly she led Spike on a merry chase around the library as she looked around for her owl. Owlowiscious was nowhere to be found, she assumed he was out hunting for field mice. With a sigh she cut the power to her ‘pen’ as Spike called it.
“Hey, where did it go?” Spike asked, rubbing his head from where he slammed into the wall at full tilt.
“I’m going out for a bit Spike. Clean up this mess and then head to bed okay?”
Spike looked around, noticing a broken lamp, several overturned tables, and a number of books littering the place. “Oh no! Twilight, this will take me-” The front door slammed shut, signaling Twilight’s departure. “…forever.”
Outside, Twilight looked around for any possible test subjects. To her incredible luck, about a block away she saw the flower sisters, all three of them chattering happily in front of a store. Twilight quickly and stealthily dove into a nearby bush. Cover secured, she set about her dastardly deed and pointed the pen in their direction.
“And then he said-” Daisy was interrupted by a tap on her shoulder from Lily, who was fixated on the store they were in front of. Wondering what she was staring at, she turned to look herself. What she saw simply took her breath away. It was a bright purple dot seemingly stuck on the wall.
Together with her sisters, they all dashed forward to get the dot. They pounded on it with their hooves and snapped at it with their teeth, yet nothing they did allowed them to catch the tricky dot.
Suddenly it darted along the wall and across the ground. The three mares galloped after it as it stopped in the middle of the road. They each jumped and dog piled on top of it.
“I think we got it that time!” Lily called as they carefully got up. Looking around, the dot was nowhere to be seen. In the distance they heard the mad laughter of a mare as she dashed around a corner.
Twilight fled the scene, no longer able to be quite as she erupted with mad laughter. Seeing three normally docile ponies chasing after something as simple as a spot of light was just too much for her. She slowed to a walk as she tried to catch her breath, finding herself next to Sugarcube Corner.
She remembered that she never really did get Pinkie back for replacing her ink with the kind that disappeared. Hours of research down the drain from the ruined experiment, and she knew just what to do.
With an evil grin, she snuck up to one of the windows and peered inside. She saw Pinkie wiping down the counter and closing up shop for the night. She ducked back down and prepared her pen.
“This will get Pinkie, I’m sure of it!” She said.
“What’ll get me?”
Twilight screamed in surprise, Pinkie was right next to her ducked under the window. Pinkie slowly stood up and peered inside just as Twilight had done. “Ooo! Who are we pranking?!”
“How did you know I was out here?!” Twilight exclaimed.
“My left eye was itchy and my knee was pinchy, which means that somepony was outside my window so I came to see who it was and it was you and I thought ‘hmm, why would anypony be sneaking around outside my window?’ and then it hit me that you were trying to prank somepony so I asked who you were pranking and you screamed!” Pinkie rattled off in a single breath, before she gasped in horror, “Oh no! I was the pony being pranked! I’m so sorry Twilight, if you want I can go back inside and pretend I didn’t notice you!” Without waiting for a reply Pinkie rushed back inside and began cleaning the counters once again.
Twilight watched her through the window as Pinkie stopped cleaning and locked eyes with Twilight. She then slowly and obviously winked exaggeratedly at Twilight before returning to cleaning. Twilight groaned, the moment was ruined so she set off to look for another victim.
As she approached the boutique she decided to mess with Rarity. She didn’t have a personal vendetta against her, she just wanted to see what the prim and proper mare will do. Walking around to the back, Twilight noticed some lights still on inside. Getting a closer look, it was Rarity’s work room and as usual she was ears deep in a new dress.
Giggling to herself, Twilight readied her pen and aimed it through the window onto Rarity’s dress in progress. Her reaction was instantaneous.
The purple dot clashed horribly with the light green ensemble, so horribly that she was forced to punch it with her hoof in an effort to make it disappear. This tore off a section of the fabric, further enraging the fashion designer.
“How dare you! Not only are you a horrid color for this dress, but you made me rip off a sleeve! I will make you pay!” Rarity leapt at the wall, missing the dot as it zigzagged around the room. Not one to risk further damaging her dresses and fabric, she grabbed a large number of scissors and needles in her magic.
She began throwing the sharp objects with enough force to bury them halfway in the walls. After a few minutes of this, her walls looked like something out of a horror film. Twilight quickly darted away as the giggles once again threatened to overtake her.
Walking through town yet again, she heard the sound of soft snoring. Glancing up she was able to make out the end of a rainbow colored tail hanging over the edge of a small cloud. Thinking she could at least get revenge on one of the pranksters, Twilight quickly dove into a bush at the edge of the road.
Pen at the ready, she aimed the beam up at the cloud. To her surprise, the cloud seemed to trap the beam inside, making the cloud glow a bright purple.
“Mh, wha-? Morning already?” Dash asked in confusion. She glanced around, noticing it was just a tad darker than when she originally lay down to sleep. “Aw man, what gives…?” She glanced over the edge of her cloud to the ground; there she saw a bright purple dot against the darkness. “The hay is that?”
She fluttered down in order to get a closer look, but as she approached it zipped a block away with insane speed. Dash was awake in an instant, that was some fast movement, but she was faster. Tasting the challenge she lunged after the dot. The dot responded in kind and shot off down the street, easily leaving Rainbow behind as it shown brightly on the side of the windmill clear on the other side of town.
Rainbow’s jaw unhinged at the sight. Even at her fastest it still took her about twelve seconds to fly across town from a dead stop, nowhere near the seemingly instantaneous speeds presented by the dot. Dash heard the sound of giggles and saw a figure hop out of a bush and dash off toward the library.
Twilight had her fun, it was almost midnight and she needed to get to bed early so she could report her new invention and its effects on ponies and dragons to the Princess. What she didn’t know was that she was being followed by a rainbow pegasus thinking dastardly things.
Once Twilight got home she went straight up to her shower, all that running around was making her sweaty and tired, but it was entirely worth it. Perhaps in the morning she could get AJ with the pen? Either her of Big Mac, and the thought of seeing Big Mac charging after the dot of light sent her into another bout of giggles.
She got into her shower and took her time, simply relaxing and letting the water massage her back for close to an hour. Once she was finished she hopped out and toweled herself off. She was completely at ease and relaxed, her fur was still steaming from the heat of her shower as she stepped into her main bedroom.
Her eyes popped open in horror, everything was gone! Her blankets, sheets, even the mattress and box spring were missing. Along the walls, every book, scroll, and photo was gone, leaving a blank room. She hurried downstairs and to her dismay all the books were removed from their shelves. She quickly began to panic, had she been robbed?
She ran upstairs to alert Spike, but he and his entire basket were missing too! Thinking quickly, she decided she needed to tell someone about the theft, but without Spike how would she contact the Princess? Would the Princess even bother to respond at this time of night? What if she got mad and decided to punish Twilight?
These thoughts and more circled around in her head as she frantically ran about the empty library. One thing was for certain, she needed to tell somepony immediately. She ran to her front door and threw it open, in an instant her world was flooded with a mind numbing chill as buckets of ice water were dumped on her head, snapping her out of her panic attack.
She looked around at the ponies laughing at her in confusion and anger, “Why are you laughing?! This isn’t funny, I just got robbed!”
Rainbow landed in front of her, “Chill out Twi, we just relocated your stuff,” She motioned toward a large pile of books and pictures beside the library. “We all saw that you were messing with us so we decided to get you back, I’d say that it worked.” She said with a grin.
“Oh, um, hehe,” Twilight rubbed the back of her head awkwardly as she turned to Rarity, “I’m sorry about your dress. And your walls. But you were just so funny, I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry for having fun at all of your expenses, can you ever forgive me?”
The flower sisters, Rarity and Dash gave their forgiveness that no real damage had been done and fabric can be re-sewn. With great relief Twilight hugged all the mares around her in a group hug.
“Hey, where’s Spike?” Twilight asked, looking around for her reptilian assistant.
“Oh the poor dear, he was simply too tired after helping us move everything outside that he simply fell asleep. I didn’t want my poor Spikey Wikey to sleep on the ground so I took him to my boutique.” Rarity said.
“Oh, thanks Rarity, I-”
“Who are we pranking!?” Pinkie yelled as she exploded out of the massive pile of books. She looked around expectantly, noticing a wet Twilight and a bare library. “Awe, shoot! I missed it!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think so, Pinkie.” Twilight said as she brought out the pen and pointed the dot on the ground in front of Pinkie.
“OH MY GOSH! The missing purple dot! Thought you could escape me did you?!” Pinkie zipped after the dot of light, somehow staying right on its trail as it zigged and zagged all around Ponyville, much to the delight of Twilight and her friends.
