Whirlie Gears, the absent-minded unicorn shows up in Ponyville with one dream -- fly like a pegasus.
Whirlie Gears has wanted to fly like a pegasus ever since she was a foal, but that is no easy task for a unicorn. She's a blacksmith by trade, but fancies herself an arcane engineer. Setting out for Ponyville for a new beginning, will she become the first rocket-powered pony to take to the skies, or will her dream [literally] go down in flames?
“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.
After their late-night chat, Whirlie stayed over at Pinkie’s, having no furniture and having not even unpacked what little she hauled herself. The next day, Pinkie followed Whirlie home to assist in the unpacking and, by some failure of logic, keep her on track. Most of what Whirlie had brought with her was books and a curious assortment of tools. Unfortunately, with no tables or bookcases (yet), most of the contents of the cart ended up in piles on the floor.
Whirlie was in the process of organizing a stack of notebooks for the third time when she happened to glance over at Pinkie. She tilted her head and frowned, “Why are you wearing an umbrella on your head?”
“My tail is twitchin’!” Pinkie explained. “That means something’s gonna fall...”
*BOOM*
The house shuddered at the sound and Whirlie fell down. Pinkie promptly removed her hat and announced, “All safe!”
The two cautiously opened the front door to find Whirlie’s anvil embedded in the front walk.
“Sorry about that!” called a gray moving pegasus with a bubble cutie mark.
“Don’t worry,” Pinkie explained, “she’s always dropping anvils on ponies. Good thing we were inside!”
-/-
Hours later, the movers had left, but the interior of the house had still not been put away. Whirlie had helpfully provided her diagrams, but the moving ponies had trouble deciphering them while Whirlie had been out front directing the removal and placement of her anvil. She came inside, exasperated to find none of her things where she wanted them. Pinkie just shrugged, explaining that she’d helped (which explained a lot).
“Did they forget to bring your forge?” Pinkie asked after glancing out front.
“No, I’m going to have to have one built. You can’t really move them,” Whirlie explained. “I’m also going to need to make a number of modifications to the house if I’m going to get any work done,” she said, holding open one of her notebooks. Pinkie eyed it intently.
“Well, I know where we can get plenty of rocks!” Pinkie explained. “Tomorrow we can go to my family rock farm and get what you need.”
-/-
Some weeks later, Whirlie was settling into life in Ponyville comfortably. Although she had met a few local ponies, she spent most of her time at home. Being on the outskirts of town, most of the ponies she met were there specifically to do business (either selling her materials, or commissioning repairs or manufacturing).
The modifications to her house were complete: she had a pair of large doors on the back that opened onto a wide, flat, stone platform. A couple of workbenches and bookcases lined the walls of the bottom floor, which was generally open and empty, while her living space was upstairs. Most of her smithing she did out front.
Her business was up and running. She spent most of the day repairing tools and tinkering. Her neighbors only occasionally complained about the hammering noises; and most of those problems were solved by her convincing herself to quit working after dark.
Before too long, she was ready to begin her next personal project. “To the clouds, Whirlie,” she sighed to herself, looking up. She noted Cloudsdale floating by in the distance. “This time, I’m going to make it up there.”
She set off for the town library to research unicorn magic.
Whirlie found the library, which she found to be curiously built into a tree. Neither arbormancy nor archimancy were among her abilities, but she paused to admire the structure. While she did so, a small, purple dragon popped the door open and came marching out carrying a stack of books. She went from admiring the building to gawking at the creature as he walked away. He paused, and looked back at her, asking “Whaddaryou lookin’ at?” At this, she blinked. “It speaks,” she muttered to herself, blinking. Sighing, the dragon headed on about his business, leaving Whirlie at the door.
Whirlie made her way into the building, or was it a tree? She wasn’t sure. Inside, she found bookcases upon bookcases of hardbound volumes. Taking yet another moment to stare about in awe, she was startled when a purple mare welcomed her to the library. “You must be the new pony in town...the blacksmith?” she asked.
“Well I’m a blacksmith by trade,” she began explaining, “but I’m really more of an engineer, or a tinkerer. I’m actually interested in magic theory, or rather putting magic theory into practice. You don’t happen to know somepony who could help me with that do you? Pinkie Pie mentioned that Princess Celestia’s magic prodigy was around here somewhere, and I was hoping to meet her.”
Blushing, the purple pony replied, “Hi, I’m Twilight Sparkle and I,” she hesitated, “think I’m the pony you’re looking for.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Whirlie Gears.”
“So, which theory were you interested in? I keep up with all of the latest research from the unicorn universities all over Equestria. In fact, the latest journals just arrived,” she explained, indicating a small stack of hardbound volumes on the floor.
“Well...” she trailed off. “I...uhh...need...umm...want to learn how to fly like the pegasi do...” she said sheepishly, looking away. She perked up and her speech gained speed as she followed with, “...and I think I can do it, but I need a way to convert magic power into heat and maybe store it temporarily. I suspect other applications might power all sorts of machinery,” she went on to explain. “And it would certainly be more practical than trying to build a tower to reach Cloudsdale and have it fall on the town...but nopony could have foreseen that, except maybe Pinkie. But I wouldn’t try that...again...here...” By the time she finished she was trailing off again; she grimaced as her eyes roved about the room.
“You were the crazy pony that built that tower in Trottingham?!” came a new, scratchy voice from the window. Twilight’s head spun around to glare at a blue pegasus peeking in the window. “What? It was a pretty impressive amount of destruction for one pony, I have to say. And you could see the dust cloud for miiiiles! Heh, and they called me ‘Crash’!”
“Rainbow!” Twilight snapped, looking irritated.
Whirlie was getting nervous now, and started to back slowly toward the door. She thought to herself, “Darnit, Whirlie! Why did you have to let that slip!” Out loud she replied, “Umm...I just failed to account for the amount of wind up there is all and I didn’t realize that clouds didn’t support any un-flightbound weight. The whole thing just kind of got out of control.” She sped up with, “Please don’t kick me out of town and throw me in a dungeon!”
Twilight looked at her with one eyebrow arched. “I don’t think I could do that. And besides, what somepony did before she came to town is no reason to judge her now,” Twilight explained, nearly growling at Rainbow Dash. “The news said you built the whole thing by yourself. You did the design work and the construction?” She looked shocked.
“I always do everything myself,” Whirlie explained, blinking. “I mean...I don’t think anypony else is really interested in getting into the clouds; except the pegasi, but that’s like their whole thing,” she glanced at Rainbow. “Besides, most ponies avoid me once they know who I am. I guess they’d rather be injured as bystanders than in the line of research. I was the only one in the hospital for four weeks after the...err...incident...so I guess the math is on their side.”
“You know, Whirlie, I’d help you out. Have you ever asked anypony if they wanted to help?”
Whirlie responded by staring at her blankly.
Twilight went on, “With some help, the work probably won’t be so dangerous...”
Whirlie continued staring, her head slowly tilting to one side before she regained her senses. “Umm...I guess no pony ever offered and I never thought to ask,” she responded, blushing. “Working together would be...an honor. And probably considerably less dangerous,” she said, looking up.
“I should tell you, though, I’ve been to Cloudsdale before by hot-air balloon, you don’t have to go build anything, tower or otherwise, to get there. And the spell to let you walk on clouds is really not that difficult either. Giving you wings, THAT is difficult,” Twilight explained, starting to pace about the room, adopting her lecturing tone.
“I guess I hadn’t thought about using pure magic,” Whirlie admitted. “I’m no wizard, and I’m not even particularly good at basic spells. And...the freedom to soar among the clouds,” she sighed, gazing out the window. Rainbow Dash caught her gaze and nodded in agreement.
“Nothin’ like it,” she agreed.
“What is your idea, anyway? And what are you good at? I would have assumed you were a clockmaker, judging by your cutie mark.” Twilight interjected.
“Well...I design things, and work with metal. I’m...pretty good at math, but you kind of have to be to build anything worthwhile. The idea is pretty simple, really,” Whirlie explained, pulling a notebook out of her pack and opening it in front of Twilight. The pages were coated in of diagrams, formulae, and notes. “You see, we siphon off our unicorn magic...” she pointed to a diagram of a ring with some sort of cable attached, looped over a unicorn horn. “That’s the real hard part, I think.”
She flipped through several pages, then indicated the next diagram, showing a backpack with a ridge of spine-shaped objects down the back and large, tank-like contraptions on the sides. She went on, “...we convert that magic into heat, plasma really, through this phase coil array.” A number of pages flitted by showing various drawings of the backpack and its internals. “I’ve already built this thing. I have one attached to my forge and I power it using my horn. But it doesn’t get hot enough for the next part. I think we really need that siphon to get a better efficiency out of the energy feed.” Twilight nodded, looking like she was following without difficulty, while Rainbow, still perched in the window, was squinting and frowning at the pair on the ground.
The next series of diagrams showed an array of metal nozzles attached to a pony’s leg, each with a tube running up from it, “we drive the plasma down these tubes and through these nozzles attached to our hooves. When it leaves the containment structure, it expands. If we can get the right amount of power, I think we could achieve lift!” She was getting excited again, and Twilight began to get a little enthusiastic herself. “And, with enough control and practice, we could be aerial acrobats as good as the Wonderbolts!” The last bit she shouted, then looked around, embarrassed.
Rainbow Dash gave her a sidelong look, while leaning her head on her forehoof. “See what I was saying about a crazy pony?”
“Rainbow!” Twilight responded in a harsh tone. “There’s nothing wrong with her idea, it’s theoretically sound...assuming it doesn’t blow up,” she amended.
“Just make sure you two don’t blow up Ponyville, okay?” Rainbow asked. Twilight just responded by glaring.
“I’ve played with rockets since I was a foal, and I think that part will be easy,” she explained, pages of notes fluttering by. “And I’ve even done some work on transferring the plasma out of the phase coil array,” she went on, pulling more notebooks out of her pack. “But, I haven’t figured out how to efficiently transfer magic power in such a way that I can drive the coil. You don’t happen to have any ideas that might help with that, do you?”
“I think I have just the book you need,” Twilight responded, as she headed over to one of the bookshelves.
“Thanks so much, Twilight, this might just work!” Whirlie exclaimed one afternoon as Twilight brought in a stack of notes she had taken. Whirlie had been working on her project for months now, and Twilight enjoyed working with her from time-to-time, delving into a new magic theory and providing the engineer her expert advice.
The work often meant spending some days in the library, and some in Whirlie’s workshop; Twilight frequently made trips back to Canterlot to visit the Royal Library. Today, the pair were at the workshop, which had gone from its pristine state when Whirlie moved in, to a complete mess. Bits of metal, cable, glass, gemstones, paper, and canvas were strewn about on the floor and the tables lining the walls. While Twilight complained every visit, Whirlie insisted there was a great deal of organization involved: everything was precisely where she meant it to be. She needed the mess to assemble her ideas, consider the materials, and design all the gear. Besides, she explained, if Twilight didn’t believe that Whirlie was naturally organized, she should look at the bookcases. The bookcases were, miraculously, perfectly straight with the texts sorted by topic and notebooks labeled and sorted by date. “I guess I just have to give in to your ‘organized’ chaos here, huh?” Twilight one day admitted.
Today was a big day. Twilight had uncovered and had been studying a method for siphoning energy from a unicorn’s horn. The text from which she derived it was an old one and had been under lock-and-key deep in the Canterlot special collections. The reason for the high security was that the text in question was the journal of a unicorn sorcerer named Darkmane, and the purpose of the device was not to power machinery, but rather to render powerless a captive unicorn. Twilight had been working on adapting it, because the device drew out magic efficiently, precisely what they needed. She had been poring over the text for weeks, being an avid academician, and collected notes on the parts relevant to their work.
Twilight had assembled a list of special materials needed for the project. From her list, the two had been gathering what they would need. As Whirlie pulled out a number of boxes, Twilight stood by with a clipboard with checklist and pencil levitated in the air before her.
“200 grams of high-quality sapphires,” Twilight called out.
“I picked up 500 grams from Rarity today,” Whirlie explained, pulling out a small box with her teeth.
“Right here!” Whirlie explained, lifting up two rings with her telekinesis, “I made two.”
"And the measurements are exact? The texts are very clear that that size is essential to bend the horn's spectral field," Twilight explained.
Whirlie snatched a pair of calipers and a ring-measuring stick off one of the tables and confirmed the size of the two rings for Twilight, who nodded in agreement.
“Oh, when you made them, did you infuse the molten metal with that sap from Everfree Forest I brought by last week?” Twilight inquired.
“Yup! Just like the recipe called for and simmered for the required 32 and a half hours,” she pointed at an hourglass and then at a clock.
“Check! Okay...platinum wire,” Twilight looked up and around the room, “plenty of that around...so check.” And so on, down the list.
-/-
It now came down to assembly. This was the part where Whirlie stepped in, and Twilight observed and commented, adding her asides from what she had researched. Her part would come later, when the device needed to be enchanted.
Whirlie set to work, firing up the forge outside, gathering crucibles, tongs, tweezers, magnifying glasses, and other equipment. Under the close eye of Twilight Sparkle, Whirlie followed the diagrams she had derived from Twilight’s notes.
To begin, they needed sapphire dust. Whirlie used her telekinesis to wield a heavy hammer, crushing the gemstones. Moving to a small mill, she ground the smaller stones until they were powder. Collecting the variety of dusts and oils that Twilight had brought by earlier in the week, she mixed all of it in a bowl.
Setting the bowl on a table near the front door, Whirlie moved on to the golden rings she had forged and infused. Her horn glowing, she lifted them and set them spinning, such that they rotated about an invisible line that ran tangent to the midpoint of their inner- and outer-diameters. As she looked at them, she applied more and more momentum, until they looked like golden tori, floating in the center of the workshop. She aligned them to the center of the room, one on top of the other. Whirlie's focus shifted into the distance as she entered a trance-like state. Twilight stepped out of the way as the engineer started to walk backwards across the room, without taking her eyes off of her work. She stepped over and around the materials laid out on the floor, each hoofstep landing in an open space.
From a nearby table, she used her power to pluck up a spool of platinum wire. It drifted into her line of vision, although she clearly did not focus on it. Carrying the wire near her face, she nearly pranced her way in a circle around the floating rings. She began unwinding the wire in mid-air, trailing it behind her a few feet off the ground. She made two circuits around the room, resulting in the wire looping twice around the workspace in a perfect circle. Lifting a pair of wire-cutters, she snipped the wire from the spool, and then snipped the floating part in half.
Whirlie stepped off to the side, continuing to stare, blank-eyed, at the spinning gold. Twilight frowned, feeling unsure about what was going on. Whirlie continued to stand, her horn gently glowing, off to the side. Taking this to be her cue to start the enchantment, Twilight began muttering the words of power she had found in the journals. As she closed her eyes, her horn sparked to light. Glowing runes appeared under the spinning rings. This process continued for hours, as Twilight chanted the spell. Throughout the process, Whirlie stood, transfixed, rarely blinking.
Twilight announced, a clear trace of exhaustion in her voice, "There, that should finish the spell." She looked over at her cohort, "Uhh... Whirlie? You still in there?" She waved a hoof.
Whirlie responded by stepping from her vantage point and continuing her strange dance-like progression around the mess of the room. As she did so, the wires came to life. Their tips each moved toward a ring, each like the head of a snake. With a flash of power from Whrilie's horn, the wires coiled in on themselves, tighter and tighter, until they became small spheres. The spheres began orbiting the same points as the rings, until they, too became glittering blurs. Whirlie stepped close to the center of the activity now and, with deep concentration on her face, the spheres disappeared into the golden blur of the rings.
Tilting her head, Whirlie continued to work the assembly. From the outside, it appeared that the golden rings were slowly turning to platinum. As she finished, the two rings slowed, revealing that they were now wrapped, tightly, precisely, and completely, with platinum wire. One of the two had a bit of the wire sticking straight out, the other did not.
"All done with the hard part!" she announced to the watching Twilight. "Now we just need to coat them in glass."
-/-
The two unicorns worked through the night, and, by the next morning, they finished the devices. The two gold rings, wrapped in the platinum wire, had been coated in blue glass infused with the sapphires and other components. They hung in the air before the girls, a line of fine cable dangling from one of them.
Whirlie started to get nervous; Twilight had gotten this thing from a dark text. But its entire purpose was to efficiently draw out magic energy. It was precisely what she needed to make the rocket pack work. With it, she could soar with the pegasi.
“Well,” Twilight announced, “the moment of truth!”
“Aren’t you a little nervous,” Whirlie asked, noticing her hoof was trembling as she held it up to point at what they had made. “I mean... there’s no telling what this thing might do...”
“Sure there is!” Twilight went on, pacing, “We designed it based on sound magic theory, we didn’t just build it from nothing. Consequently, it should be at least a little predictable. If there were any tests I could run on it, I would, but the only thing to do is to put it on. Besides,” she smiled at Whirlie, “you’ve got a friend here. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
Whirlie nodded at this. “Right!” she exclaimed, stamping her hoof and trying to hide her nervousness. “Time to do this!”
With that, her horn glowed gently as she lifted the ring with the cable toward her head. Her eyes crossed as she tried to follow its slow, drifting motion closer and closer. As it cleared the tip of her horn, the ring shot out of her control, the simple telekinesis spell ending with a *SNAP*. Moving under its own force, the ring flew down until its inside edge clacked against the wide part of Whirlie’s horn. The ring made an awful screeching noise as it continued to drive itself down, sparks flying off. Twilight looked on, stunned momentarily, and could see that the ring had scraped her friend’s horn where it had pushed farther down than the inner diameter should have allowed.
As all this happened, Whirlie's eyes twirled in confusion, then she started to wobble. As her dazed friend started to topple, Twilight sprang into action to hold her up. “Are you alright?!” Whirlie blinked, then tried and failed to focus her eyes on Twilight. “Whirlie! Hello? I think something is wrong,” alarm entering her voice.
“Uhh... alright... just dizzy,” Whirlie explained in a high, sing-song voice as she collapsed against Twilight. Whirlie’s chest was heaving. Twilight led her over to a chair.
Whirlie sat in the chair, blinking, as her horn started to glow. The cable trailing off of the ring sputtered sparks.
"Can you take it off?" Twilight asked.
Whirlie closed her eyes, then made a frown of concentration. Her horn glowed brighter and sparks sprayed off the end of the cable, illuminating the room and lighting a nearby stack of parchment on fire, which Twilight promptly stamped out.
“I’m going to take it off,” Twilight explained, trying to get Whirlie’s eyes to focus on her. Twilight's horn lit up as she used her own telekinesis spell. The ring took on the same purple glow, but nothing more. Twilight tried to pull the ring off again. Despite her telekinesis, the ring did not budge. She dug in her hooves and tried again, and again, her eyes shut tight as she put her entire body into the motion.
“Umm...” Whirlie started, “I think... I’m okay now?” She opened her eyes and seemed to be focused on Twilight, but she moved as if her head were too heavy for her neck, and she sounded like she was gasping for air.
“That may be, but I can’t pull that thing off of you,” Twilight responded, struggling and becoming worried.
“Can’t... pick... it up,” Whirlie gasped, clearly trying to concentrate on something on the nearby table. “Made... nullifier,” she went on, going cross-eyed again. Twilight followed her gaze to what she had taken to be a duplicate that Whirlie had inexplicably constructed alongside the first. The differences between this other ring, and the one on Whirlie's horn, were slight, and she had not noticed them. She realized with a start that the coiling on the second ring wound backward and that this one had no cabling come off of it.
“Of course!” Twilight exclaimed. “Maristocrates’ Theory of Counter-Enchantment! You were spinning the other ring backwards the whole time so that it absorbed a counter-spell. I'm so glad you found that book useful, but, Whirlie, why didn’t you mention--”
Whirlie fell out of the chair, face-first. Twilight snatched up the ring with her magic and approached the prone unicorn, getting nervous. Whirlie’s horn was now shining brightly, and fluorescent fluid seemed to drip from it, almost as if it were melting. The ring’s cable was dancing as a spray of sparks flew from the end. Whirlie wheezed, “Put... on...”.
As Twilight stepped closer, the ring flew out of her grip and snapped, with a clanging noise, onto the first ring. The original reaction, whatever it was, stopped immediately. The work room was suddenly dark and silent. As Whirlie passed out on the floor, her head tilted and the two rings sild off her horn, rolling to bounce off of Twilight’s hoof as a single unit.
---/reviewer stop here/---
-/-
Whirlie slowly lifted her eyelids. She blinked, struggling with even that small motion. Her foreleg felt cold, like there was ice water running through her veins. With great effort, she tilted her head slightly to look down. She was covered in a white blanket, and something was sticking out of her foreleg. "Owwch," she slurred.
“Relax,” came Twilight’s voice from beside the bed. “You passed out after the siphon ring’s uncontrolled reaction. Try not to move too much,” at this, Whirlie promptly got worried and started trying to move, finding she could barely lift her hoof. “That ring burned off a lot of your power, it’s made you weak. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the effect would be so powerful, or that I wouldn’t be able to get it off. The text said it was used to nullify, not to kill.”
“No casts,” she muttered aloud, her voice coming out a croak, but sounding pleased with herself.
Twilight gave her a sidelong look. "No broken bones," she confirmed. "The power for our magic comes from within, just like any other pony. If you use it too much, you’ll get tired and hungry, just like when an earth pony tills the field or a pegasus uses her wings. When we hooked up the siphon, it pulled out too much of your energy, so you’re overtired and undernourished. I'm afraid you won't be going anywhere for awhile... and your horn...” she trailed off, sounding sad.
"What about it?" Whirlie asked, glancing about for a reflection of herself and finding none. She then found she was exhausted from the effort.
“That’s okay,” Whirlie responded, “I was worried that might happen; that’s why I built the anti-ring to counter-balance the first.”
“Uhh...yeah...why didn’t you mention that before we started?”
Whirlie looked confused for a moment, then up at the ceiling. “I guess I forgot and I just sort of figured I’d be able to do it myself anyway. It’s always kind of a standard procedure to build a counter enchantment.”
“What standard procedure? You know, Whirlie, it’s important that I know what you’re up to if we’re going to work together at this,” Twilight chided.
Whirlie looked dejected and nodded. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right. I suspect you’ve learned a valuable lesson about friendship from this. Let’s write to Princess Celestia about what happened,” she said, pulling a parchment, quill, and ink from her bags.
-/-
Whirlie made it out of the hospital after being held overnight. As it turned out, Twilight explained,
“I think part of the problem,” Whirlie countered, “is that we didn’t have it under any load. There wasn’t anything to stop the power from just spilling out all over the place. I mean, that text you found it in was all about using it to imprison by nullifying magic, not about killing, so there must be more to the design. I wonder if we were to actually attach the phase coil to it if it would drain so quickly. And now that you, err,” and Whirlie blushed, “know how to use the anti-ring, it should be safer.” Twilight gave her a somewhat irritated look at that, but then smiled, caught back up in the discussion of arcane lore.
“That’s true. The original had an additional device attached to it, probably some sort of buffer or battery. I didn’t think it was important at the time, so I focused on the siphon ring itself. I spent some time looking over the ring and the anti-ring,” she went on, “It looks like the anti-ring’s cancellation effect is dependent on its distance from the siphon. So, we could use it as a kind of a...”
“Throttle!” Whirlie interrupted.
“Yep!” Twilight replied, smiling. “I think you know what that means...”
Shortly after the visit to the hospital, the two were back at work. Whirlie was in her workshop, machining, hammering, cutting, and drilling. Following Twilight’s idea, she began building what she was calling the “siphon throttle.”
Meanwhile, Twilight was back at the Royal Canterlot Library. She was poring over the dark texts she had found, looking at the interface between the siphon the buffer that prevented one imprisoned by the device from simply being drained of all energy. Whirlie was correct, the device was never intended to kill, only to soak up a constant amount of power, rendering a unicorn incapable of performing magic.
The device Whirlie assembled looked like a small metal cylinder with slots cut through it, longways. Inside of it, an array of springs, small gears, and rods held the two rings at an adjustable distance from one another. The closer they were together, the less the effect of the siphon, the less energy pulled from the user, and the less power output. If she could manipulate it, she would be able to fly further, have control over her speed, and, most importantly, stay alive!
The real question, at this point, was how she was going to manipulate it. She had not thought that far ahead. With the cylinder on her horn, preventing her from employing telekinesis, she could not move the throttle. Further, if she saw the rest of the design through, there would be rocket pods on her hooves, preventing her from using them to manipulate anything.
Then she had an idea.
Then she thought she might test that idea.
And then she stopped herself because Twilight was no where nearby and would not be able to assist if her idea went horribly wrong. And, besides, Twilight’s theoretical approach to their problems probably meant that she knew the answer without Whirlie endangering herself by putting on the siphon. Though just putting it on would be faster. Luckily she stopped herself from random, dangerous self-experimentation. This time.
She paced back and forth in the workshop, now stuck without Twilight around. Waiting could take a week or more, she realized. “Naturally, she took Spike with her, so I can’t get him to write a letter,” she grumbled to herself. She could work on the rocket pods, but she had been attending to those off-and-on and was not really worried about them.
“Oh well...nothing for it, Whirlie,” she said, tossing the throttle into its box, and the box into a saddle bag, along with another few sundries (primarily tools and notebooks). She set out for Ponyville Station to take the sleeper train to Canterlot.
-/-
The next morning, Whirlie arrived at Canterlot Central Station. She spent some time wandering up and down the platform, marveling at the trains. Steam engines had always held some appeal, and when she’d been asked to on one as a filly, she seemed to have a knack for making them work. After a few hours of pacing up and down the platforms, she was directed out of the station by an irritated security guard complaining something about her not getting on the tracks.
She soon found herself on the streets of Canterlot, wondering where to go next. Asking directions, she found herself rebuffed or ignored by the locals, who were considerably more stuck up than those in Ponyville. She had not realized how friendly everyone was until she left. It did not help that it had not occurred to her to clean all the grease off before leaving home. Finding even the local guards impossible to talk to, she eventually found a signpost, and made her way to the library.
The glass and stone structure was immense, and Whirlie realized she had her work cut out for her if she was going to find Twilight Sparkle. Recalling that most of the basic research had come from the special collections, Whirlie used the building’s directory, and made her way through its maze of corridors and side passages. After what felt like hours, she found the special collections and discovered it was gated and guarded by a pair of unicorns. When she asked if she could go in, she was rebuked and told that she needed the princess’s permission to enter.
Whirlie settled in to wait across from the entrance. “What’s a few more hours?” she asked herself. “Besides, Twilight will surely come out soon.” The guards gave her an odd look when she spoke to herself. She began by pacing and running through her ideas in her head, jotting down a few in a notebook. Eventually she grew tired, and slumped against the wall. As the sun set, she fell asleep on the floor.
She woke when Twilight nudged her. “Morning, sleepyhead!” she said, smiling. It was still dark outside the window. “We aren’t supposed to sleep in the library, Whirlie, why don’t you come back with me to my apartment in the castle?”
“Huh? Oh...uhh...sure,” she replied, still half asleep. The two trotted off out of the library, Spike asleep on Twilight’s back.
“So what are you doing here? I thought you were still working on the throttle back at the workshop,” Twilight inquired.
“I was working on it, and I finished it, more or less,” she explained, “but I realized that there would be no real way to manipulate it when it was equipped. It occurred to me that, if I built a block into to prevent the anti-ring from being pushed too far from the siphon ring, that I might be able to manipulate it using my magic, even when it is on. But, umm...rather than just trying it out, I thought it might be a good idea to talk to you about it.”
“Hmm...” Twilight had now gone off into her own thoughts, walking the route back to the castle by memory, rather than paying attention to where she was going. “It should work, as long as you have the concentration to use it and, like you said, build in a failsafe. I think it will take some practice. Just to be sure, before we try anything else, let’s go to the special collections and do the math tomorrow. And I’m glad you didn’t just try it yourself. That thing is dangerous.”
-/-
The following morning the two were back at the library. Escorted by Twilight (and having showered), Whirlie had no trouble getting in to the special collections. Using Twilight’s notes, Whirlie’s design, and a number of (double-checked) measurements of the throttle device, the two began their calculations.
By the late afternoon, they had commandeered approximately a quarter of the special collections by covering it with notes, papers, and a few blackboards that Twilight had managed to conjure. Whirlie had raided the nearby university for tools and supplies and was modifying the device on the floor, according to Twilight’s specifications. The pair had gotten into a reverie about the work.
Their reverie was broken when a sharp voice demanded Twilight’s attention. “Twilight Sparkle! What are you doing?!” The two ponies’ heads snapped around at once to see a tall, white alicorn with a flowing rainbow mane, clad in gold and gems.
“Princess Celestia!” Twilight said, with some alarm in her voice, and promptly bowed. A moment later, she popped the stunned Whirlie with a hoof, and she bowed as well. “I...err...we were just undertaking some magic research, or research and engineering really,” she explained, the faintest tremor in her voice.
“You seem to be making a mess of the special collections. Word reached me that my star apprentice had taken over the place. Is there some reason you are not doing this work in one of the workshops? There’s...grease? all over the place!”
“Well...umm...we kind of needed some of the books in here, and they’re not supposed to leave the collection, and we just kind of got lost in what we were doing, I guess,” Twilight explained, giving a nervous chuckle. The princess’s demeanor seemed to soften at this explanation.
“In the future, try to keep your hands-on work in the labs or the workshops. What are you working on, anyway?” the princess inquired, becoming interested. She looked about at the blackboards covered in diagrams and equations.
“We’re figuring out how to fly,” Whirlie interjected. “I mean, not like you or the pegasi, but using a high-pressure plasma-based hoof-mounted rocket system powered by a magic siphon linked with a phase coil pack. We’ve managed to assemble the siphon but after I almost killed myself with it, we’re working on making it safer and controllable” At the mention of a siphon, Princess Celestia started to frown. Whirlie finally processed this and decided it was time to go back to bowing and not babbling. The princess looked back and forth between the two of them, then cast her gaze over to the center of where they had been working -- a desk with an open book on it. She walked past them, then flipped the book shut to look at its cover.
When she spun back to look at Twilight and Whirlie, her gaze was fierce. “This book is one of the Chronicles of Y’mar Darkmane, one of the most dangerous and feared unicorns I ever had the misfortune to face.” Her voice was trembling with anger, “My most faithful student,” she continued, her teeth clenched in anger, “please tell me you have not been neglecting your writing to me to reproduce his most terrible work.”
Twilight and Whrilie gulped in unison, now cowering before their princess. Almost in-audibly, Twilight squeaked, “Umm...I have?” The princess’s gaze turned withering, and the two started to back away, Whrilie absently grabbing the siphon throttle with her teeth when she spotted it on the ground nearby.
“Have you any idea what pain and suffering that sorcerer wrought on unicorn-kind?! And your friend here tested it on herself? Or you put it on her?” she asked, accusingly.
“I put it on myself,” Whirlie responded, dropping the throttle, but remembering to catch it by telekinesis at the last moment. “If it weren’t for Twilight, the mistake might have been fatal, but she didn’t force me to do it,” she went on. “The whole thing was my idea, not Twilight’s. She was helping me with my dream the best she knew how. And we learned a valuable lesson about friendship in the process,” she finished.
“That is why you wrote me from the hospital,” the princess replied, looking slightly less terrifying. “My dear ponies, you do realize the danger that artifact represents? Do you understand the untold suffering caused by its use in Darkmane’s dungeons? As a student of history, this could not possibly be lost on you.”
Becoming more confident, now that she believed she would not be banished to the moon in the next few moments, Twilight spoke up, “I...was aware, teacher, but I studied that book because Whirlie thought that we might be able to harness our magic and use it for good, to help ponykind. Just because that knowledge was put to nefarious purposes doesn’t mean it’s inherently evil. Whirlie needed something more efficient than channeling directly and I thought it might be a solution,” she said, starting to stand up. “I...we...were not meaning any harm by it, and we’ve learned to be more careful,” she finished, bowing her head.
“May I examine what you’ve built?” the princess inquired. In response, Whirlie caused the siphon throttle to drift nearer the princess, who took over levitating it. “Show me how it works,” she directed, then amended, “without putting it on anyone.”
Whirlie showed her how the mechanism held the two rings apart, and how minute adjustments could be made using telekinesis. By now, they had built in failsafes to prevent the rings from even separating enough to cause a “full burn” as Whirlie had taken to calling it. “We think it’s completely safe, teacher,” Twilight concluded.
Whirlie picked up with, “If you look here,” she indicated, through a slot in the casing where the rings were held in place, “I used an unbreakable weld spell. If you were to try to remove it, you’d shatter the ring. So it would be hard to put it to...dark uses,” she explained.
“It seems,” the Princess admitted, “that you have been thorough and careful in your work. My dear Twilight, as your advisor, I feel it is important to remind you that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a wonderful thing, but we must be careful with what we learn. With something this dangerous, you really should have come to me first. Please do not make this mistake again.”
“Yes, Princess Celestia,” Twilight replied.
“I never should have doubted you,” she said, and started to leave. “But you will both still need to clean all this mess up. And I would prefer it if you filed your notes in the special collection when you are finished.”
Whrilie and Twilight returned to Ponyville a few days later, taking the weekend for Twilight and Spike to show the new pony around Canterlot as a mini-vacation. Spike insisted on visiting his favorite doughnut shop, and Twilight’s tour of the remainder of the library took up a full day. They spent the evenings relaxing in the royal gardens.
By the time they returned, they were ready to continue on the project, or so they kept telling each other. The truth was, even though the siphon throttle should be safe, they still were not sure that it was. After the last incident, Whirlie was feeling nervous about putting it on, and, especially after Princess Celestia’s admonishments, Twilight was feeling the same way. She did not think it was wrong, but the level of danger seemed higher than before.
Delaying the day of the test, Twilight insisted they put together a “safety protocol”. Whirlie was not sure what this was, or why they would do this, but given her track record for destruction, that was not all too surprising. Twilight explained that it was a set of rules that they would follow to test the design. It would help them not only gather proper data, but ensure that everypony (including the neighbors) remained uninjured. They would need to follow it to the letter.
Whirlie set to finishing up some blacksmithing she had been delaying while Twilight sat in the workshop, scribbling away on parchment. As the sun set, Whirlie came in, followed by Rainbow Dash. She was exhausted and sweating from working the forge and hammering steel all afternoon, but Dash looked her usual cool self. Whirlie trotted past Twilight, who had her tongue lolling out one side in concentration, and headed to the small kitchen to find something to drink. Meanwhile, Rainbow just hovered over Twilight, trying to make out what she was up to. When Whirlie returned, bringing two glasses of water and a pitcher, she realized just how much work Twilight had done. Three tall stacks of parchment were situated around the purple pony, along with a sizable pile of broken quills and empty ink bottles. Unfamiliar books were open everywhere. Glancing about, she realized there were several more paper stacks all over the room.
“Umm...where did all of this come from?” Whirlie asked, a little confused.
“Huh?” Twilight shook her head and looked up, in something of a daze. “Oh, most of it was in my head, until I wrote it down. I didn’t have any reference guides for this. I mean, there are a few texts on rudimentary unicorn magic that I used for some of the baselines and several books for doing the measurements. All of my sources are cited appropriately,” she explained with a smile, indicating one of the smaller stacks of parchment.
“I meant the parchment and the books,” Whirlie replied flatly, sipping the cool water.
“Oh. I found most of it in those boxes,” she said, indicating the various boxes around Whirlie’s workshop lying open on the floor. “The rest I sent Spike out for.” Whirlie shifted to glaring at Twilight. “Oh, hi, Rainbow!” Twilight said, when she finally noticed the pegasus hovering nearby. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey, Twilight,” she replied. “I had dropped by to see if Whirlie could fix the pump for my fountain. Turns out she’s not a cloud...smith,” she explained, feeling somewhat confused.
The two unicorns corrected in unison, “Nimbomancer.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever, it just sort of fell apart when she touched it. After all that, I figured I’d just drop in and see how you two were doing. I haven’t seen Whirlie up in Cloudsdale yet,” she teased.
Twilight replied, “Well, before anyone goes flying, I have to finish this safety protocol, then we have to actually execute it successfully, then make sure that the rest of the pack works, which will probably require a few more protocols to get through.”
“And I thought I was nervous about this,” Whirlie stated, walking over to flip through one of the stacks. “Wait, you said we have to follow this to the letter. Am I supposed to read all this stuff you wrote down? It doesn’t look much like a reference guide...”
“Boooooring!” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “You just need to get out there and go!” she explained, and demonstrated by flying rapidly around the room. This caused Twilight to jump up from her work and run around, snagging loose sheets caught up in Rainbow Dash’s whirlwind.
“Knock that off!” Twilight shouted at the hyper pegasus. Rather than continuing to grab paper, she decided to use her telekinesis on Rainbow’s tail instead, ending the source of the problem. “It’s not boring, it’s safe.” Twilight looked over at Whirlie smugly. “And of course you need to read it all! It’s for your---our---own good. I expect you to remember and apply it all too,” she finished, with the air of a pony who knew better.
Flopping onto the floor and crossing her hooves across her chest, while she moved page after page past her face, Whirlie gave a “Hrmph.”
“Well, call me when you’re ready to fly!” Rainbow said. “See ya later!” and she zipped out of the workshop, a trail of papers sucked into her wake, leaving Twilight growling. Whirlie half-heartedly helped Twilight gather the loose pages back up.
“I never thought it would take this long to make it all work,” Whirlie explained. “I’d like to just go...” she looked wistfully out the open door as Dash disappeared.
“Whirlie, this is serious,” Twilight implored, ”I got too caught up in the excitement of it all to realize at first, but Princess Celestia is right. This device we built is founded on principles used for very dark purposes. We’re adapting it, but it’s still not safe. It nearly killed you the first time you tried it and I was stuck just standing there, completely helpless. And flying itself will be even more dangerous. We’ve never done it before, especially not with this equipment.” Whirlie thought she saw tears welling under Twilight’s eyes. “I’m sorry it’s not fast, but this is the only way I can protect you,” she explained. Forcing a small smile, she continued “It’s also the only way we’re going to soar among the clouds, at least, in one piece. You know, I wouldn’t mind trying it myself, once we get it all working.”
Whirlie looked at her blankly, then gave a small smile. “You’re right. We need to be careful and if you say this is the safe way to proceed, it’s how we’ll proceed.” She crossed the room and gave Twilight a small hug.
“Great!” Twilight exclaimed, then spun around and started prancing about the room, rearranging pages and laying them out on the floor. Putting on her instructor’s mein again, she began explaining. “The foundation of all of this is to perform tests and record the data, so we know what is safe and what you are capable of with the device equipped; I’ll have to do the same, of course. We’ll have to get a baseline on how much each of us can levitate and for how long. Then we’ll move to using the siphon throttle. One of us will record how the other is feeling before and after the test, and during, We’ll observe the nature of the sparks coming off of the output feed---oh yes, that was another source, Metamagical Measurements, I think we can use the Sparkscale in the appendix. When one of us has the throttle equipped, she’ll need to perform the levitation tests again, so we can see how those change.” Whirlie was unclear on how Twilight was breathing through all of the fast explanation. She continued, nonstop, “Naturally, we’ll start small, with the throttle completely closed, and see what happens. Then we’ll open it more and more, until we find the danger zone. I think by the end, we’ll need to adjust the failsafes on the device, but we should know what is safe to use and start to get some idea of the energy output. Oh this is so exciting!” she exclaimed, bouncing in place, without Whirlie being able to get a word in edgewise.
“So...if that’s it,” Whirlie interjected, “then why so many sheets of parchment?” She looked around the workshop, clearly a bit irritated as well as confused.
“Well, it’s not all protocol, Silly!” Twilight went on. “That stack,” she pointed at one of the neat, small stacks in the corner, “is the trash-heap,” she explained proudly.
“Wait, you organized your trash?”
“Can’t go around making a mess of things!” Twilight announced in a sing-song voice, then much more quietly, “Or more of a mess of things.” Undaunted, she went on, “There are a number of conditions we have to take into account during the test. We’ll need a safe open space, optimal and consistent lighting to observe the sparks coming off the cable, a set of carefully tuned weights, oh---something to hold the cable in place---I should add that---you’ll need to build it.” Twilight had gone into one of her reverie states again, continuing to rattle off all of the necessary precursors and procedures to the experiments in more detail.
By the time she was done explaining and amending the protocol, it had been hours, and the sun had long since set. Whirlie was exhausted. “So...” Twilight explained, “You should read the protocol, internalize it, oh...and don’t forget those modifications. I’ll need you to build that cable-holding rig...”
“And the weights,” Whirlie added from the spot on the floor where she had curled up, nearly asleep. “I’ll just make those. Tomorrow...I’ll read it all tomorrow.” She yawned.
“Great!” Twilight chirruped as she gathered up her things to head home for the night. “There’ll be a test the day after!” Whirlie’s head popped up in alarm as Twilight strode out into the evening.
Whirlie woke the next morning lying on her back in the middle of the workshop. She ached from the awkward sleeping position. She blinked her eyes a few times at the upside-down stack of parchment in front of her face, shut her eyes again, and rolled onto her side, making a low growl. When she opened her eyes again a few minutes later, her nose was touching a different stack. “ARGH!” she shouted, as the stack teetered over her head. Still half asleep, she sleep-ran her way toward her bedroom. Just as she reached the stairs, she started, realizing she was actually living her nightmare: there were stacks and stacks of reading material all over her workshop. Fortunately, unlike what she had dreamed all night, these papers did not collapse on her and sweep her out to sea. Unfortunately, there was still paper everywhere. And her friend expected her to read all of it. And she expected the project to wait in the meantime. Whirlie surveyed the room, feeling her spirits drop. Instead of reading, she headed out to town for coffee.
On her return, she was much more awake, but no less depressed and irritated about all of the paper. She stood just inside the doorway, thinking as her coffee hovered nearby. She jumped, nearly spilling her coffee and toppling a stack of parchment, as Twilight burst into the workshop behind her with a cheery, sing-song, “Good morning! I hope you slept well and are ready to study!” She had a number of books in her saddlebags.
Whirlie turned and glared at her.
“Umm...not a good morning?” Twilight hazarded. Without saying a word, Whirlie turned and tromped off to the basement, the cup of coffee floating along behind her. “I guess she’s not a morning-pony,” Twilight said, puzzled, to the empty room.
Whirlie was feeling more and more irritated about the whole ordeal. She slammed the coffee down on one of the work benches, and stomped around the basement, selecting equipment and materials. She did not do this in the usual unicorn way of levitating things before her face to assess them; she was working off anger. She stormed in circles around the basement, yanking objects seemingly at random and either placing them on one of the benches, or tossing them into corners. Her name started to seem fitting as the basement became a whirlwind of parts, tools, and pony.
Twilight Sparkle, apparently sensing that this was no simple case of morning grouchiness, decided Whirlie was best left alone. She peeked down the entrance every so often, observing with a scientific interest the activity that had taken on a ritual quality below.
The basement transitioned into a huge mess, save the one workbench with the coffee and a neatly arrayed set of parts. Whirlie stood next to it, her front hooves on the table, and she set to work. Building things always helped her calm down.
A few hours later, when Whirlie came back up, Twilight was sitting on the floor again, writing away on parchment. Whirlie walked through, with a cluster of parts made up of bits of metal, an egg-shaped object of some sort, and some folded up canvas, floating along behind her. She walked into the room, surveyed it, found it still irritating, and stormed out the front door. Twilight quietly watched, curious and confused as the door slammed.
Out front, Whirlie meticulously arranged her materials in midair, then let them crash to the ground. Focusing her magic on the phase coil, which was still attached to the forge and not yet installed in a backpack, she started heating metal. Getting into her work, she hammered away for several hours.
Finally starting to cool down, Whirlie decided she would try out what she had made while going for a walk. She strapped on an array of gear and set off, muttering to herself. “I know I sometimes screw things up, but we’re being very careful this time. I don’t see why Twilight won’t just let me test out the equipment! Why doesn’t she trust me...” She stopped occasionally to adjust a strap here and there.
Her self-absorbed reverie was broken when she noticed the sound of flapping wings. She looked up to see Rainbow Dash pacing her a few feet to the side and up. Apparently ready to make her entrance now that she was noticed, Rainbow rolled in midair, backwards, in front of Whirlie, pausing just long enough to eye her dead-on with a slight tilt of her head. “You’re lopsided,” Rainbow Dash commented by way of greeting, “I think you forgot a few parts.” She snickered.
“I’m not flying yet, am I?” Whirlie retorted, sarcastically. “I’m just trying to see how this stuff fits,” she explained. Rainbow Dash paused to stare at her oddly equipped acquaintance. Whirlie had spent the morning and most of the afternoon building a harness for the phase coil and finishing the prototype rocket pod she had been working on. She was now wearing the harness on her back with the phase coil tied to it, just to test the weight and positioning. The rocket pod had the overall shape of an egg, and her hoof fit inside it so that it wrapped three-quarters of the way around. It had small holes in the bottom, which were covered by a cloth wrapping to keep from damaging them while she walked. The way the pod was positioned on her right foreleg meant that it was not flush with the end of her hoof, not to mention that it was heavy steel, so she walked with an odd limp. She made a klunking noise with every fourth step.
“You look a little like you’re going to start Spike’s fanclub,” Rainbow giggled.
She was referring to a ridge of metal plates that stuck out of the back of the harness. It did give her a bit of a dragon look, Whirlie supposed, eyeing herself. “They’re heat sinks to keep it from catching fire,” she explained.
“Got any good aerial stunts worked out yet?” Rainbow asked Whirlie.
“No, we haven’t even achieved first liftoff!” she explained, a bit of exasperation entering her voice.
“It’s never too early to start thinking about your repertoire,” Rainbow chided.
“I think it’s still a little early for that,” Whirlie warmed.
“But how will you even control your flight with all that...stuff...on? You said you were gonna take on the Wonderbolts earlier.”
“I didn’t say that...exactly. But since you asked,” and here Whirlie unconsciously adopted Twilight’s teacher demeanor, “with one pod on each hoof, we, that is, the flyer, can control the direction of thrust by pointing our legs in the opposite direction that we want to fly.” She demonstrated by pointing with her right forehoof. Unused to the additional weight, she promptly toppled onto her face before she could stop herself.
“Nice control!” Rainbow Dash giggled.
Unflustered, she picked herself up and went on. “So, if I wanted to go forward, I would point my front hooves toward the ground, to maintain lift, and point my rear ones behind me, giving me thrust.”
“Huh. And if you wanted to turn, you’d just point your leg in the opposite direction you wanted to go. I get it. But what about a barrel roll?” the pegasus asked, getting excited. After Whirlie’s puzzled expression, Rainbow began demonstrating by rolling in midair in front of the unicorn.
Whirlie watched for a few moments, contemplating. “I think...something like...” she trailed off. Using her magic and a stick, she started scratching diagrams in the dirt. After a few minutes of talkative (to herself) contemplation, she looked up at Rainbow Dash. “I don’t know that it can be done in the current design. You would need to vary the thrust on a per-rocket basis,” she explained.
Now it was Rainbow Dash’s turn to look puzzled.
“When you do your...barrel roll? You flap one wing a little harder, and the other a little softer, right?” Rainbow nodded an affirmative. “That gives you more lift on one side than the other, so you flip over in midair. You do some other maneuvering in there, too, so that you perform a lateral slide. I think to do the same thing with this pack, you would need more thrust from the rockets on one side, and less on the other. Which we can’t do: all of the rockets will fire with the same power. You might be able to adjust the thrust vector angle, but that does not seem likely to provide enough control. We’ll have to work out some way to regulate the plasma flows to the individual rockets, and design an additional control to go with the throttle. Oh why didn’t I bring my notebook!?”
“You’re welcome,” Rainbow said, crossing her forehooves while hovering nearby, “Glad I could help.”
Whirlie blinked at her, then smiled.
“I am soooo going to fly circles around both of you. But it’ll be fun to see if you can put up any kind of a challenge in a straightaway,” she said excitedly. Whirlie frowned, trying to work out when this had become a competition. “But you guys are soooo slow! I’m ready to see a unicorn fly now, but you’re telling me you have to do more work?!” Rainbow’s idle comment, intended more as a joke than anything else, drew Whirlie back to the source of her frustration, making her remember Twilight and her protocol, both of which were sitting in her house right now.
Whirlie suddenly looked furious. “You know, I may have a knack for breaking things, but no one seems to notice all the successes along the way. I modified the train engines in Trottingham and they now run 14.2% more efficiently than they used to. And none of them blew up. Not to mention the modifications to the propulsion system on what is now Princess Celestia’s airship. And that didn’t blow up either!” she stated with finality. “Just because that tower to Cloudsdale fell over and destroyed half the neighborhood, Twilight doesn’t think I can do this! I am not in favor of going so slow!” she almost shouted at the bewildered pegasus. “If I were running this project my way I’d already be up there with you. Failure is how we learn!”
Rainbow looked taken aback by the sudden change, as she dropped to the ground to face Whirlie. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she started, then went on, “I don’t think Twilight is judging you like that. She’s just really into checklists and stuff. She can be like that sometimes. Twilight taught me to be a little more careful, that’s one of the great things about her.”
Whirlie looked unconvinced, continuing to frown at Rainbow.
“Ya know, and I don’t tell this to anypony,” she confided, “I once had a crash landing and broke my wing. After that, Twilight brought me this huuuge scroll!” Rainbow had started snickering again. “It was a pre-flight checklist to make sure I monitored the weather conditions and checked all my wing feathers before I took off!” She had started laughing uncontrollably now, and poked Whirlie to try to get her to laugh. The unicorn lightened up a bit.
“So...you use it every time you go flying?”
“Nope!” she laughed. She straightened up before continuing, “But I appreciated her thinking about me. And there was some good thought that went into it. So I internalized some of it.” Kicking the dirt with her front hoof, Dash went on, “Actually, it was all good advice. Twilight just has this way of making things really complicated sometimes.”
“I guess so,” Whirlie sighed. “I probably owe her an apology. She did say she was looking out for me. And,” she said, perking up, “I think she’ll be interested in seeing what I made. Thanks, Rainbow, for the advice...and the inspiration.”
The two ponies waved goodbye as Dash hurtled away at top speed, while Whirlie slowly clunked and clopped her way back to the workshop.
