Doctor, I shrunk the Fillies...

Chapter 5: Messes

It was still raining ropes when Rarity stepped out of the boutique, Opal-in-bag in-hoof. The wind had died down a little from before, but the rain seemed to compensate for it. She could hear the fat droplets smacking the cobbles as she turned and locked the door. Normally, Opal was enough to keep anypony from burgling the boutique - her reputation as a sourpuss was far-spread and well deserved - but she wan't going to leave anything to chance. If anypony was outside in this weather - Celestia forbid; they have no idea what that'd do to their manes! - and thought to pop inside, they're in for a sore surprise. Plopping the key in her raincoat pocket - the most cliché, banana-colored variety in existence, with matching hat - she suddenly felt awful. What if somepony actually did happen to be out-and-about - she was, after all - and they genuinely needed a place to get out of the rain for a bit.

She unlocked the door, and went back into the boutique, setting Opal's bag unceremoniously on the floor and earning a disapproving hiss in return.

"Patience, Opal. Momma's going to be just a minute. Now, where's that paper..."

After searching ceiling to floor of the boutique, she finally managed to accrue a piece of paper, and all the necessities for writing. She dipped the quill into the inkwell, and hurriedly wrote a simple note.

Passerby,

Out visiting friends. If still raining, and you need place to stay, key is under mat. Please wipe hooves; I like my studio clean.

~Rarity

She scrutinized the paper, void of all decorum and even basic rules of sentence structure. She was about to crumple it up and write another, more proper note, when she realized what she was doing.

Waiting here all day's not going to make the rain go away any sooner. Besides, if anypony was traipsing about Ponyville on this fine day, they probably wouldn't care about grammatical rules or the proper way to write a letter. Picking up her slapdash note, Opal's bag, and plopping her rain-hat back on, she stepped outside into the tumult. She stuck the note into the door, took the key from her pocket and placed it under the rug, and stepped out into the tumult - for real, this time. Last time, she stopped under the awning.

How many clouds did they have to gather to put this together? Rarity slodged down what she thought was the road. It was hard to tell; her hooves were starting to go numb, and it was actually raining so hard that she couldn't see the road she was supposedly standing on. One hoof in front of the other, Rarity. For the past half-hour at least, her mind had adopted a quasi-war-chant; One more step, one more step, one more step. She hurt all over - the rain had to get even worse, and freezing besides - but the pain was distant. She felt herself trudging along, but beside the fact that progress might be being made, she didn't think about it. This left her mind to ponder other things, like the weather Pegasi. I'm not a weather-pony, but I'd put my bits on 'from all of Equestria'. She toyed with the idea a bit, wondering if the rest of Equestria was in the midst of a drought.

Suddenly, she felt her hoof slide out from beneath her. Lulled into her state of semi-consciousness, she couldn't react in time, and she felt herself fall face-first into the biggest mud pie she'd ever seen. After the initial revulsion, she toyed with the idea that Pinkie might have a long-lost brother. But if Mud Pie existed, what would he be like? Maybe...

Opal gave a furious howl from underneath her. How'd that get there? Quickly, she righted the bag that sheltered the poor cat within. She then found that the buckle that had fastened it securely around her neck had somehow snapped, rendering it completely useless. She groaned in frustration. Opal hissed.

"I know, Opal. I know," she hefted the satchel over her shoulder, securing the ends with her mouth. As she began trudging down the road again, she felt it bounce off her side with a rhythm that she was certain Opal would not appreciate.

She grimaced.

I just hope that we get there before something else happens... But on the bright side, her gaze turned skyward, towards the grey clouds she was sure were hidden somewhere up there, there's been no more lightning for a while.

And so she plodded on, mindful of her footing, and mindless of the time and her groaning body.

"But w'cain't just let it roam 'round unsupervised, neither," said Applebloom. She looked at the now-ransacked lab, with its once-navigable pathways cluttered with mechanical debris from all quarters. Broken glass glittered on the floor like diamonds set in pearl, and more than a few lights flickered on the verge of going out. She grimaced - it had been bad before, but this looked like ten tornadoes went through in tandem - and turned back to Scootaloo and Dinky, her hoof pointing at the obvious mess in emphasis.

"Not if all it does is jus' that. An' so far, it don't look like it does do anythin' else."

"You could-" Dinky piped up from where she stood, but was verbally steamrolled by Scootaloo.

"What if we put it in a cage somewhere? There has to be something in here that thing can't break."

"Or, you might-"

"T'sa good idea, Scootaloo. Question is," she surveyed the room again, noticing for the first time how thoroughly destroyed it was, "if there's anythin' left to cage it with."

"Or-"

"Scootaloo, you look over yonder. Watch yer step; there's glass everywhere."

"But, what if-"

"Dinky, you look 'round here fer a place we can build it. It needs ta be kinda big, so we- oh, and ah'll need one of them weldin' torches fer when we actually-"

"Can you just listen to me for a second!?"

Applebloom fell silent, and just stood looking at Dinky impassively. She looked around, and noticed that everyone present, pony and robot alike, were looking at her with varied reactions. Scootaloo was arching an eyebrow, and alternating her view between herself and Applebloom. Sweetie Belle looked almost embarrassed, and when Dinky caught her observing, she turned back to what she had been doing before, which was apparently trying to teach Samson the alphabet. The robot's iris eye closed just a fraction, and it seemed to almost be measuring her. After a second, he turned back to Sweetie Belle, and she held up another flashcard for him to observe. Scootaloo had walked over to Sweetie Belle to observe the learning robot, presumably unsure of whether or not she should continue with Applebloom's assignment for her.

She finally looked back at Applebloom, a little fearful of retribution, but the other filly just stood there, yet clearly asking her to elaborate. She cleared her throat before continuing.

"Samson's...Well, he does make messes, but do we really need to cage him?"

"And why not?"

"Well, it's just a bit...much, don't you think?"

"No, ah don't think it's too much."

"Oh, well...Ah...He thinks he's a pony."

"And you think it's a colt, but it ain't. Yer point?"

"I just think...Maybe he can learn how to not destroy things? Or maybe he thinks it's what he does best, and that it's his cutie-mark or something. Or maybe there's actually something wrong with him. Whichever it is," she motioned to the robot, beeping as it ran through the alphabet with surprising speed, "it's not a reason to keep him under lock and key forever. The only way he can get better is if we help him."

Suddenly, Sweetie Belle screamed in surprise. Dinky and Applebloom turned to watch Samson speed away towards a nearby desk, lined with everything a desk should and could have on it, and then some. He didn't slow as he approached the bureau, and when it became obvious that he was going to ram it, Scootaloo jumped to intercept him. Too little and too late, she didn't cover a quarter of the distance between them when his metallic body hit the desk full-on, toppling a few things from the menagerie onto the already-cluttered floor, and then wheeling back to do it again. This time, Applebloom moved in to stop him, but he swerved around her and went careening into the desk again, this time dislodging an inkwell from its previously precarious perch. It sped through the spilled ink, and started dodging around the two fillies in a mad dervish as they both tried to apprehend him. Dinky felt her heart sinking; this would surely solidify Applebloom's belief that he needs to be caged before somepony gets seriously hurt. She turned to Sweetie Belle to find the other filly sitting there, calmly, and actually looking a bit thoughtful. She tilted her head and squinted, a perfect replication of some feral beast in thought. Then, her eyes shot open, and Dinky could practically see the light bulb flicker on over her head, as she moved to stop the other two from interfering.

"Wait, you two. I think he's trying to tell us something."

"Yeah, he's tellin' us that he - it - really does need ta go locked up somewhere."

"No, look," she pointed and turned to where the robot was doing crazed laps on the floor. Suddenly, they took on a form visible to everyone. Applebloom drew a sharp breath, and Sweetie Belle nodded in affirmation.

"Letters..."

They saw, for the first time - excepting Sweetie Belle - that Samson had been writing something with the spilled ink. Dinky's chest puffed out, and then promptly sagged with relief. That had been a close one. If not for Sweetie Belle...

"It wants a piece of chalk," said Scootaloo from her point of observation. Dinky nodded, and disappeared for nigh upon five minutes. She brought back both a piece of chalk and an old blackboard of sufficient size. She placed both objects in front of Samson, curious to see what he had to say. Suddenly, a small robotic arm shot out from his undercarriage, its business end split into three, equidistant prongs. It gripped the chalk and, with amazing dexterity and speed, wrote out a message on the chalkboard. When he was finished, he dropped the chalk and turned the board so everyone could look. Sweetie Belle, reading out loud, gave voice to what was written on the blackboard.

"'Broken voice synthesizer. Need repair.' But," she turned to the others, but was talking to the robot, "we can't. We're not scientists, or robot doctors, or whatever."

"But Dr. Whooves is," said Scootaloo.

"If there's anything wrong with it - him - he'd know how to fix it."

After a quick round of voiced agreements, they turned to leave. As they reached the door, the robot gave a loud, ear-piercing squeal of what is assumed to be pure terror. The four fillies cringed at the noise, and turned around in tandem. Another message was on the blackboard, again read out loud by Sweetie Belle.

"'Not Doctor. He'll fix everything.' Yeah, that's kind of the point, Samson. If you're broken, he can probably do something about it. Unless...You're scared of him?"

It pivoted horizontally, the robot equivalent for shaking his head.

"Then what is it?"

A small whistling noise, another flurry of wiping the board clean and scribbling furiously on it, and another message was ready to be read aloud by the only filly among the four who never learned to read in her head.

"'I'm only like this because of malfunction.' What do you mean? Like what?"

Another round of cleaning and writing. Another message, white chicken-scratch on black. One word.

"'Sentient'."

Everyone fell silent, even Samson. All unnecessary sound synthesizers and machinery was temporarily stalled, so as not to ruin the sobriety of the moment. And, for all that he was a sum of his parts, he knew that his continued existence was pivoted to this one decision. Finally, after what seemed like a small eternity, Scootaloo spoke up.

"Well, if we can't get the Doctor, then how do we fix him?"

"Ya can't be serious," said Applebloom. "Even if we don't get th' doc, how're we s'posed to fix 'im ourselves? Ah mean..." she cleared her throat before continuing. "Ah'm handy with tools'n the like, but lookit how tiny 'e is. If ah don't burn his innards t' a crisp, it'd be a miracle; even if ah don't fix a darn'd thing."

Sweetie Belle plopped her head studiously onto her fore-hoof, obviously in thought and obviously imitating the pose of thought.

"That is a glaring problem," she turned back to the robot and Dinky, who had since then moved over to him.

"How are we going to go about this? Applebloom's right; we don't have the skills or coordination (I think I used that right.) for it. Maybe we can convince the doctor to not fix him completely?" She knew, even as she said it, what the result was going to be. Scootaloo just stood there, kicking her fore-leg back and forth. Applebloom was lost in her planning phase; no doubt she was trying to engineer some way to remedy the situation herself. It was Dinky who spoke up, though.

"I think I might know something..."

Everyone turned to look at her simultaneously, and she flinched away from all the sudden attention. After clearing her throat, she continued.

"Mom told me something about a...I think she said 'moleculizer'. It's supposed to make things really small." Sweetie Belle suddenly seemed apprehensive, Scootaloo's eyes lit up, and Applebloom was somehow shocked out of her planning mentality, looking around the room as if to make sure she didn't accidentally leave.

"We could use that, and poke around inside him, where all the wires and stuff are, and fix him that way."

Sweetie Belle spoke up first, verbally steamrolling both Scootaloo and Applebloom.

"But what if we get lost inside him? What if the machine only makes you smaller, but not bigger? And even if it still works - it's probably soaked, broken, or something else - and we can get everything to work as planned, how are we going to know what's what?"

"No, the...Moleculizer," she said the word with an odd contorting of the face, and half-stumbled over it, "makes things bigger just like it makes things smaller. And we probably wont get lost; there have to be some plans for him around here somewhere. As for knowing if we're there or not, all the parts are labeled," she continued, her face full of hope and fervor, "and if we shrink all the things we need before-hoof, we don't  have to worry about not having what we might need. Besides," she turned, and went over to a honeycombed section of the wall, stuffed predominantly with blueprints, but with other knickknacks and doodads lying about, "he usually only makes and fixes things according to these." She motioned to the wall, and continued her search. "Which means our jobs will be," she grunted as she pulled a piece of blue paper, lined with white pencil sketches from beneath a pile of detritus. She looked at the front, and broke into a huge grin.

"Easy."

They stood before the hulking machine. Sweetie Belle felt her neck arcing ever-backwards as she looked upon the truly massive thing that was the Moleculizer. Her earlier protests about it being fried, busted, or otherwise unusable seemed to pale before its monumental size, even as she felt the blood flow out of her face as she envisioned it falling over on top of her. By Celestia... Her face flushed. If I had said that out loud, and Rarity was here... Suddenly, she tasted some kind of generic soap - Rarity was stingy with her good soap when it came to punishments - in her mouth, along with an intense urge to spit it out. She shook herself, and the taste vanished, leaving behind the impression of a tongue and breath that now smelled of generic-clean. But even so, she felt emboldened; her first time saying 'Celestia'. Even if it was in her head. It wasn't really bad, is it? Just saying her name. For a second, she mused and pondered it. Then she remembered; Twilight was also a princess now. Will I get in trouble if I say her name now, too?

"Hey Sweetie Belle, snap to it," she shook herself back to the present, and was surprised to see the three others looking at her from the pad that was presumably the area affected by the Moleculizer. It was Scootaloo talking to her, and motioning to the control panel on the side of the machine, still pristine despite the mountains of debris surrounding the machine.

"This thing isn't gonna start itself, and everything that's getting shrunk is on here when the button's pressed, or it's not getting shrunk."

Suddenly, the implications of that hit her like a freight train. She was being left behind.

"But what about me? I thought I was going with you."

Applebloom shook her head, and Scootaloo continued to talk.

"One of us has to stay behind, to tell Derpy and maybe Rarity, if she ever gets back from wherever she went. Since you didn't really sound like you wanted to come along, we decided - behind your back, a bit - to, er, elect you to be that one of us."

"About that part 'bout tellin' Derpy an' Rarity," Applebloom moved to stand beside Scootaloo, taking the reins of the conversation from the other, "yer only s'posed t' do that if we're down 'n a bad way, a'right? Ah'm not sure how we'll tell ya," she turned away, a little embarassed at not having a plan for that, "but we'll pro'bly be fine."

"But...Cutie Mark Crusaders forever?"

Scootaloo and Applebloom put out a hoof to hers. She put her hoof in, and couldn't help but notice Dinky shying away from it. She motioned for the other to do the same, and it took all three of them to coax her into the most tenuous tap of her hoof on theirs. Scootaloo laughed good-naturedly, Applebloom shook her head with a wry smile, and even Sweetie Belle giggled a little. Derpy, initially either flustered or angry, eventually warmed up to the coordinated breakdown of sobriety, and giggled at her own awkwardness. When the mood died back down, the room seemed darker for it. Nothing else was said as Sweetie Belle went over to the console. Scootaloo and the rest nodded, and she hit the bright, red button labeled 'FIRE'. There was no flash of light, no sounds or explosions, or even a feeling of there being anything different. She was looking around the machine to where they were, about to suggest she try hitting the button again, when she saw that they were gone. Not a trace of them remained. She only vaguely saw what she thought was the faint outline of three fillies, climbing the insides of Samson's treads, all the painstakingly-assembled gear dangling from their shoulders. She squinted, and was surprised that she actually did see them climbing up into the machine. One of them - Dinky, she thought - turned and waved vigorously at her. She made a small wave back, and the figure turned and followed the rest into the machine.

She shook her head, and spoke softly to herself.

"What kind of a mess did we get ourselves into this time?"

End