//------------------------------// // Exile? More like arrival! // Story: Rocket-Powered Pony // by bronyZ //------------------------------// Exile? More like arrival! “How was I supposed to know that clouds don’t support tall towers? It’s not like I’ve ever actually been up there to touch them,” Whirlie Gears muttered to herself as she walked down the road, kicking a rock and towing a cart of her possessions. Memories of the catastrophe in Trottingham flashed through her mind. The excitement as she laid down the stone bricks that brought her tower’s height to just below the cloud level. She could almost touch them now. A few more blocks and she would be standing inside the clouds and, from there, she would be in the realm of the pegasi. Surely she could just walk to Cloudsdale, since it was not far today. She hastily returned to her work, extending one wall of the tower upward. She never knew exactly what caused the tremors; likely some geological activity below. Since there had been shudders before and they had never damaged her tower, and she had started ignoring them. As she stood at the top, her head finally literally in the clouds, another struck. The trembling had turned to swaying, and Whirlie quickly found herself on a narrow ledge that was moving at least a meter back and forth. She dropped to her stomach to wrap her hooves around the one wall of the tower she had built up. The motion was terrifying as she stopped looking up and, instead, glanced down. It was a long way to the ground. As everything settled, she wiped the sweat off her brow and started to stand. “Safe!” she called down to no one in particular. She started to look wistfully up again. With a sickening lurch, Whirlie was swept sideways through the air as something in the structure below silently gave way. She screamed. Now on pure adrenaline, she was going to make her way down the inner stairs, but down was becoming sideways as the tower tipped. She saw her neighborhood below as she galloped down the outside of the toppling structure as if it were a ramp. The ground below her rushed up and the stone beneath her feet began to crumble. She didn’t remember anything after that. She still felt bad about all the damaged buildings, and it did not help that she had been in the hospital for most of the cleanup. A number of her neighbors’ houses had been demolished in the catastrophe. Her trial had been quick, and most of the townfolk had attended. For being a menace to society, wonton property damage, and reckless endangerment, she was sentenced to leave Trottingham forever. -/- Whirlie paused on a hill overlooking Ponyville and sighed, gazing wistfully up to the sky. “Here we go again, Whirlie. You’ll do better this time,” the gray-coated, green-maned unicorn told herself. From her vantage point, she spotted her new house described by the local with whom she had been corresponding. It did look ideal: sturdy stone walls, outskirts of town, plenty of open space in back. She smiled to herself, “Stone isn’t flammable, so that’s a relief! So far so good!” Whirlie picked up her pace and headed down the hill to the house, cart of gear in tow. The rest would arrive by moving company the next day. Her route in skirted town, so she arrived at the house without encountering anypony. As she approached, her curiosity and growing excitement drove her to investigate her new home. She inspected the outside and, without even thinking about it, telekinesed one of her notebooks and pencils out of her saddlebag and began scribbling. As she walked (and the cart squeaked) around the property, she made notes for herself, “That window will need to be reinforced...this wall will have to go...needs a stone deck...definitely on the back...don’t want it to face town...anvil goes here...have to build a forge there...” Before too long, she had become cheery, and decided she should go inside. Going inside was, of course, easier after she remembered to unhitch the cart that unhelpfully wedged itself in the doorway. Whirlie stepped into her new home / laboratory / workshop and repeated the process from the outside. She investigated every nook and cranny and, before long, had drawn up space diagrams in her book indicating where everything would go. Hours later, she was still wandering about her new house, updating her notes. It wasn’t until she noticed how dizzy she was feeling that she realized she had completely forgotten to eat...breakfast? lunch? “Oh,” she said to herself, “the sun is already down. And I haven’t even found a place to buy groceries!” In her hurry to get out, she again forgot about the cart and rammed headlong into it. After she rolled the cart around the back and snatched up her lantern, she strolled toward Ponyville proper. The lantern she carried in her teeth, and used a combination of her own magic and a backpack contraption to light the way. While the lantern looked normal on the outside, inside it contained a small glass sphere attached to a cable that ran to the backpack. With a bit of concentration, Whirlie manipulated the energies in the machinery on her back to cause the small orb to glow white-hot. Path thus illuminated, Whirlie made her way into the town square. Ponyville was quiet this late at night; most ponies, by now, had gone to bed. Light shone out of only a few windows. In fact, she only saw one pony on the street, curiously darting about and peering under rocks and within bushes. That pony, a curly maned pink earth pony, spotted her quickly and charged toward her. Whirlie froze in her tracks and went wide-eyed, dropping the lantern and losing her concentration, then braced herself for the inevitable, she assumed, collision. “Force is mass times acceleration,” she began muttering to herself. She opened one eye in an attempt to judge the onrushing force, “or is it momentum here?” She screwed up her face in thought, forgetting the bracing, and flopped on the ground, grabbed a stick, and began scratching the equations into the dirt at her feet. “Hi!” came a squeaky, high-pitched voice. Whirlie blinked a few times, remembering she was in danger of being run-over and discovering that she was not. She looked up into the face. “AH!” she screamed and jumped back, the cabled lantern clinking as it fell over. “Uhh...hi?” “I’m Pinkie!” came the response. “You are pink, yes,” she said, tilting her head in confusion. “Not pink! Pinkie! It’s short for ‘Pinkamena Diane’. I’ve been looking all over for you. You’re the new unicorn moving in today right? Right?!” “Looking for me?” she asked, feeling more confused than before. Whirlie had hoped news of the catastrophe had not already followed her all the way to Ponyville, at least not before she could make a first impression. “I guess you’re supposed to evict me? Word travels fast. I haven’t even moved in yet,” she replied. “Evict you? Nononononono! Welcome you! To Ponyville! Your new home, silly!” Pinkie announced, as she stood up on her hind legs and tossed confetti into the air, the smile on her face not once flinching. “Oh well in that case you don’t happen to know of any place that’s open for dinner, do you?” “Of course...” Whirlie’s ears perked up at this “...not!” and then drooped. “What are you crazy? It’s midnight! Everypony is asleep!” Whirlie noticed that a number of windows were now lit and she guessed that was no longer the case, at least around the town square. She did not think this was helping her make a good first impression. Pinkie continued, “But if you’re hungry, I’m sure we can find something to eat at the bakery! C’mon!” The two ponies trod on down the street to a bakery, Sugarcube Corner, and chatted while Whirlie ate dinner. Day-old cupcakes did not make for an ideal dinner, but they sated her hunger just the same. “What do the gears mean?” Pinkie commented, indicating Whirlie’s cutie mark. This caused Whirlie to pause and examine her flank for a moment. She had always thought the intricate clockwork was a little strange herself, considering she’d never tried her hoof at building a clock and spent most of her time hammering metal. “I assume it’s because I’m an engineer,” Whirlie replied softly. “Then why didn’t you take the train?! I waited on the platform for three hours! Is it because you had to drive the train back to Canterlot and then walk here?” “I’m not a train engineer. I build things,” she explained. “Ohh! Like clocks! I get it!” “Not clocks, exactly. I’m usually more of a blacksmith or tinker. I build tools, reinforce parts with metal fittings, that sort of thing. I’ve cultivated a talent for channeling unicorn magic to power devices.” “Like that lantern?” Pinkie indicated the small backpack on the floor attached to the lantern. “Exactly. I learned it from my father, but I think most unicorns could learn to do it; it’s not that hard.” Whirlie walked over and pulled the device out of the pack: a metal canister with the cable coming out of one end. Popping open a hatch on the side, Whirlie showed Pinky a coil of glass that was faintly glowing. “This thing is a phase coil; my magic can superheat matter inside of it to convert it to plasma; that goes out the cable and into the glass sphere in the lantern. See?” Whirlie concentrated and the material in the glass began to glow brighter, followed shortly by the lantern illuminating. Pinkie watched, mesmerized. “The implications for the future of all ponydom are enormous,” Whirlie went on, her excitement growing as she explained, “I use it now to power my lantern and heat my forge, but it could power all kinds of machinery. My next plan is to use it to fly and visit Cloudsdale. I haven’t had much luck in that area yet, though, nor have any of the ponies around me...” she trailed off. She had cycled back to her memories of Trottingham and the devastation her tower collapse had caused; she frowned at her cupcake. She looked up to see Pinkie staring at her seriously, brow furrowed. Whirlie gave her a sheepish grin, brows raised. “That’s better!” she exclaimed. “You know, there’s someone in town you really should talk to, I’m sure she’ll understand all your glowing magic stuff. She’s an expert wizard and Princess Celestia’s apprentice!” Whirlie blinked at this revelation. “The Princess has an apprentice?” she frowned at the tongue twister. “And she’s here?! She could really be helpful. That really raises the stakes though...” “What do you mean?” “With my luck, I’ll maim the Princess’s apprentice and wind up banished from the whole kingdom, instead of just Trottingham,” she replied flatly.