My Little Inferno

by GMBlackjack

V - Burn

Twilight was in her full experimentation getup - labcoat filled with charms and devices, her face covered in goggles. “Okay Spike, commence with operation ‘burn all the excess Hearthswarming wrapping paper.’ We’ve kept it long enough.”

“With pleasure.” he said, tossing one roll at a time into the Little Inferno while Twilight took notes. “You know… I used to hate this thing. But I guess I can see the appeal to it now. Still think you’re all going a bit crazy though.”

Twilight shrugged. “We’re experimenting - well disposing this time. There’s a purpose to all this burning.”

“Yeah…” Spike said. “Tell that to Starlight.”

“She did open up a rather successful noise juice stand.”

Spike shrugged, tossing in the last roll of paper. “So what’s the experiment today?”

“Using the miniature moon, I will be testing the impact of various objects from varying distances.” She pulled out the miniature moon and let it float inside the Little Inferno. “We will start with rocks, move on to crystals, then metals, then goo balls. Then we will burn it all and refresh so we can test orbital velocities while aflame and not.

She levitated out a clipboard and a pen. “Here we go. Beginning test… now!”

For the next few minutes the lab was the scene of experimentation. They did not stop at the gravity experiment - they continued testing other things. The resilience of thermometers (Only one didn’t explode, it still burned though), the effectiveness of anti-beam spells (most were useless in the Inferno), and some new heat resistant materials.

“Mhm…” Twilight hummed. “Interesting... Very interesting…”

“I thought it was going to explode.” Spike said. “Not just, you know, poof.”

“Poof was unexpected, but useful. The material can vanish when exposed to heat and therefore may have industrial applications.” She put down her notes. “What’s next Spike?”

Spike looked at the list they had been compiling. “Dragon pudding.”

Twilight made a face. “Yech… That’s going to smell…”

“I’m sure the soot has filled our nostrils already.”

“Huh.” Twilight said, looking at the soot clinging to most areas of her body. “Good point. Perhaps we should invest in a cleaning system.”

“Definitely.” Spike said. Then he felt something burn in his stomach and require immediate ejection. “MMM-BELGFF!” He retched, producing a letter. It was on grey parchment, with a seal different than any letter Twilight had received before.

“Huh…” Twilight said, levitating it over to her eyes. “I wonder what this is…”

Dear Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and esteemed customer.

I have personally reviewed your request to have the blueprints of the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace forwarded to you for study. You have been approved - against the wishes of my advising council. You will find two copies of the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace’s plans attached to this letter. You are free to use them so long as you give credit, and contact us before releasing any product based off them. For your own research and construction purposes, however, there is no restriction.

I was personally delighted to hear that you have been using the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace for scientific research, an ideal I hold close to my own heart. I even read some of the papers you published where you used my invention as a key tool and was very impressed. I would never have considered using it to simulate weather control.

I thank you for your dedicated use of the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace, and hope you will continue to discover new things with the intense fire. Never forget to just burn something and loosen up on the science from time to time though!

-Soot

Twilight grinned, laying out one of the blueprints on the table. Now she could actually understand how the Little Inferno worked. She closely examined every inch of the blueprints. The ricks were made of compressed ash, given color by an illusion spell. The only reason they didn’t burn because they had already. The Fireplace also had a re-arrangement matrix that would use excess soot to fill in any defects that formed, as well as allow the Little Inferno to shoot out a chimney with minimal structural damage.

“Genius…” She said.

But that was just the walls - at long last she got to see the inner workings of that serene Core, always looking like it knew something. The wires from it sent hundreds of complex spell matrices out into the Fireplace - spells that kept the user safe while endlessly burning anything placed into the enclosure. It also cast a ‘sticky’ spell on all created soot to help with the self-repairing of the walls.

Most impressive, however, were the spells that instantly reduced the temperature of anything leaving the fireplace drastically - many many safeguards were in place to keep any libs from being burnt. A highly complex series of interlaced forcefields kept the fire at bay while allowing limbs to be placed inside, keeping all interactions safe. But, geniously, they let just enough heat out of the Fireplace to give a good feeling of warmth.

Spike poked Twilight. “You’ve been looking at that for over an hour. You sure you’re not obsessed?”

“Oh uh…” Twilight bit her lip. “Yeah I may be obsessed. But you have to admit this is fascinating!”

Spike turned to the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace and was taken in by its flames. “Yeah… It kinda is…” His defenses dropped as he let his mind wander…

“I’m going to give this other one to Sunset.” Twilight said. “She’s been telling me in her entries that she’s interested in the one I have! Don’t burn down the castle while i’m gone Spike!”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” He said, throwing a paper ball into the Inferno.

The moment Twilight left through the Mirror Portal, Starlight stuck her head into the room. “She gone for a while?”

“Yep.” Spike responded.

“Good. I’m going to burn some highly volatile and rare magic crystals I don’t want Twilight to know I’m wasting.” She smirked. “You in on it this time?”

Spike paused for a moment. Then shrugged. “Eh, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” The two began a game of toss the explosive crystal into the fire…

~~~

Sunset met Twilight in Canterlot High’s mostly empty lab. “What did you want to show me?” Sunset asked.

Twilight pulled a blue piece of paper out of her dress. “Remember that fireplace I told you I got?”

“Yeah?” Sunset’s eyes widened. “Are those the blueprints?”

“Yep! The inventor was kind enough to provide me with them!”

Sunset grinned, rolling the blueprints out. She looked at them closely, running a finger over all the points. Several minutes later she spoke up. “This is genius.”

“I know! Who knew how long it took him to make it?” Twilight smiled. “Now I know there isn’t much magic here on Earth, but I was thinking, with your prowess maybe you could make it work?”

Sunset held the blueprints to the light. She smiled. “This… This would be a large undertaking. But…” She looked at the lab’s equipment. “I might be able to make something similar. Not as safe - forcefields are far too complicated - but something useable… I’ll run it by Celestia, see if the school would like another piece of lab equipment…”

Twilight smirked. “I knew you’d like it.”

“More than you know. My special talent was literally fire and light magic Twilight. I… I haven’t gotten to use fire extensively in a long time.” She smiled. “Thank you, seriously.” She pulled Twilight into a hug.

“Well it’s not done yet!” Twilight said. “Don’t go celebrating quite yet!”

“Oh, I know.” Sunset glanced at the blueprints once more. “But I have ideas… I’ll see if any of the girls want to help me, other Twilight too…”

“Have fun! Keep me posted!”

“Will do!” Sunset said, waving to Twilight as she left the room - presumably to say hi to her other friends while she was here. After Twilight left, Sunset came to notice that she’d had some soot sticking to her.

She shook her head. Twilight needed to worry more about staying clean. She was mildly surprised that any of the soot had stuck to her, the Mirror Portal transformation usually didn’t let things like that stay during translation. Sunset rolled up the blueprints and marched down the hall to see principal Celestia.

Later, after she had visited her friends on Earth, Twilight returned to her castle. Spike and Starlight were having fun blowing stuff up, and she decided not to bother them. Instead she walked out onto the balcony and looked out across Ponyville. The snow was getting sparse - Winter Wrap Up was tomorrow - and she could see almost a hundred smokestacks in the town, all pushing up a trail of smoke towards the sky.

Twilight breathed in deep - and started coughing. She reminded herself not to do that again. She regained control of her spastic coughing, continuing to gaze over Ponyville.

Months ago, she would have found the smoky landscape distasteful. Now?

She thought it tantalizing.

~~~

The next day, Twilight stood at the end of her balcony. Once more winter had been wrapped up, and the snow was gone.

The view of the smokestacks was largely unchanged - still grey and smoky. And cold.

Something at the back of Twilight’s mind told her this was weird. That this was not how things were supposed to be.

She ignored this urge, continuing to stare at the trails of smoke coalescing into the cloud above them…

Comments

[Twilight Connor]

This is exedingly odd. WELP! More noise juice!