Twilight raised an eyebrow at Starlight and Trixie. "So, after the three of you had earned your freedom, what happened next?"
Starlight and Trixie nervously glanced at one another. "Honestly Twilight," Starlight offered, "there's nothing to tell. The three of us managed to make it back to Ponyville after we caught a train. Isn't that right, Trixie?" Trixie quickly nodded her assent.
"REALLY?" Twilight almost-shouted incredulously. "So, I'm to assume that the NEW calls for your imprisonment, the bounty on your heads from the Camel Kingdom, and the disabling of half of their Royal Guard was just a figment of our imaginations, then?"
"There are BOUNTIES on our heads?" Trixie seemed almost pleased with that statement, until Starlight smacked her upside the head with her hoof, whereupon she tried to adopt a grave a look as possible, but didn't seem to be succeeding.
"Well, we got taken to see the King," Trixie said, "apparently to congratulate us for putting on a show in the prison, and finally to get to the bottom of why the Cutie Map had even sent us there...as well as clear up the whole pigeon destroying thing..."
"Look, none of us were to know that they spoke Germain..." Starlight started explaining, "and Trixie didn't seem to realise that insulting one's host, REGARDLESS OF LANGUAGE, is both rude and deeply insulting."
"He implied that Trixie's hat deserved to be ruined by that infernal bird of his!"
"And...that led to the new calls for your arrest?" Twilight's anger had briefly been shunted aside in favour of awe on how spectacularly this went wrong, but she found the energy to wind herself back up again.
"Well, we weren't of course going to take it lying down," Trixie said, "and so naturally, we fled."
"We aborted the Friendship Problem and decided to just go home," Starlight shrugged. "Our guest insisted on just packing it in and refused to get involved. So we took 'em and fled out the city..."
"And that somehow resulted in half of the army having to be treated for burns and several broken bones, with insistence that Ponyville foot all the medical bills?" Twilight glared at the pair.
"THAT...was entirely the fault of that puzzle-solving genius," Starlight said.
"And why, exactly, is that?"
"Well, it started when we came across a bridge as we were fleeing from the mob," Trixie chimed in, "and they came up with a rather admittedly brilliant plan of collapsing the bridge while the army were still on it..."
"You did WHAT!?" Twilight shouted.
"I DID say it was all on them," Starlight threw her hooves up. "They stole some of Trixie's leftover fireworks, strapped it to one of the bridge's struts, and timed it to blow at the right moment..."
"By the Elysian Fields..." Twilight felt the urge to down a pint of headache pills at that exact moment. "And you couldn't have just been happy with destroying the bridge to avoid capture...why?"
Starlight and Trixie looked momentarily stunned, as though the idea was seemingly revolutionary. They stared at each other for a good ten seconds, trying to justify such a response, before finally decided to simply be honest. "Extraordinarily petty revenge?"
"OH MY GOSH YOU ABSOLUTE CRETINS."
"How DID that pony know to blow it up at the right time?" Starlight turned to Trixie again.
"Well, Trixie was lacking any form of pocket watch, but luckily, Trixie had two irregular string fuses which burnt after a minute. And they said that was all they needed to time forty-five seconds, which was when every one of the camels was on the bridge..."
cut one fuse in half and the other into four, then tie the half and the quarter together
9253759
They're irregular fuses. They don't work if cut in half
9253969
so that's what you meant by irregular.... I thought you meant 'different lengths'
in that case, fold them then
It was too easy, yes.
Light both ends of one fuse and one end of the other fuse at the same time. When the fuse with both ends lit burns out, 30 seconds will have passed. At that point, light the other end of the other fuse. It will have been burning for 30 seconds and therefore will have 30 seconds left on it. But when you light the other end of it, that time gets cut in half, so it will burn for 15 seconds more. The original 30 plus 15 equals 45 seconds.
What does "irregular fuse" even mean ?
Anyway, 1 minute = 60 seconds, and 45 / 60 = 15 / 20 = 3 / 4, so one just needs to fold a 1-minute fuse 4-fold to measure 3 / 4 of said fuse, to make a knot there, and then to light that knot. The 3 / 4 of the fuse should be connected to the fireworks .
But what's an "irregular fuse" ??
9253969
Oh, so THAT's what it means !