//------------------------------// // Experimentation // Story: A Rubber Pony in Equestria // by Lightbuster30 //------------------------------// It was an early morning in Ponyville. Inside Golden Oaks Library while Spike was making breakfast. Twilight had awoken Luffy to begin conducting experiments on his devil fruit. "Come on Luffy." She tried nudging him. "You promised me research on you're devil fruit." Waking Luffy was not easy, the guy was a heavy sleeper. Then an idea popped inside Twilight's head. "Ok Luffy if you want to miss out on breakfast that's just fine with me." Luffy's eyes shot right open. "Breakfast?" Luffy eagerly jumped out of bed down the stairs giggling, not noticing the Alicorn he knocked over in his excitement. "Rude." She thought to herself. "Luffy will you calm down it's not ready yet!" Spike shouted at Luffy, who was chanting 'breakfast breakfast breakfast!' "Aw but I'm hungry!" Luffy whined. "Seriously dude? After everything you ate last night you should be full for a week." Spike spoke from the kitchen. A sound of magic then a voice came crom behind Luffy. "Sorry Luffy but Spike is right." It was Twilight, who had teleported behind Luffy. "Spike just got started making breakfast, you will have to wait." Luffy's eyes instantly lit up, and his attention turned to Twilight's teleportation. "Whoa how'd you do that?! Did you eat a devil fruit too?!" "Nope that was just magic. Any skilled unicorn is capable of it, although it isn't easy and takes practice. Now let's go to the basement, the experiments shouldn't take very long, and Spike should be finished by the time we are done. Spike be sure to rearrange the books when you are finished." She said as she took Luffy to her lab in the basement. "You can count on me Twilight!" Inside Twilight's basement, Twilight had Luffy strapped into a metal chair, behind it was a thundercloud, trapped inside a glass tube, attached to the chair. "Alright Luffy this is test number 1. If you are a rubberman you should be able to handle a lightning bolt without injury. Once I pull the switch, negatively charged electricity should flow through the chair, this will attract the positively charged lightning from the cloud into the chair." "So what you're saying is that it's mystery lightning?" Luffy's childlike personality and antics never ceased to amaze Twilight. By this point she was starting to wave it off as Luffy just being Luffy. "No Luffy, think of lightning as a massive static shock. Now are you sure about this? Lightning can reach 1 billion volts, even if you're made of rubber that kind of voltage is still dangerous, even rubber has it's limits, and I don't want to hurt you." Her voice was full of concern for her friend. "It's fine I beat a guy with lightning powers before." Luffy didn't seem to care at all. "If you say so." With that she flipped the switch. Luffy hardly felt a thing, his body wasn't conducting the electricity at all. His only reaction was to suck in his lips. Twilight mistook it as an act of pain and promptly flipped the switch down. "Luffy! Are you alright? Omigosh I'm so sorry!" "What are you talking about? I didn't feel a thing." "But your lips, I-I thought you were in pain!" "Oh that? Thats just a habit I do when attacks don't do anything." Twilight let out a sigh of relief at this, and pulled out her notes. "Subject appears unaffected by high amounts of electricity." "Is Spike done with breakfast?" "Not yet Luffy. We still have a few more things I want to try. Now hold out your leg and stretch it under this microscope." She held out a microscope. If your body is made of rubber then you should be capable of compressing it. I want to see your molecular structure." "Ok whatever you say, lets hurry up, I'm starving." Luffy said as he flattened his leg beneath the glass plates. Twilight was in awe. "This is incredible! Your entire body is like rubber, yet it's molecular structure is no different than that of a normal living cell. This explains why you can breathe, eat, and well...be alive in general! Your body isn't literally made of rubber, it only exhibits it's properties!" She was frantically scribbling notes down. "But I still don't know HOW you do it." "I already told you I don't know how devil fruits work!" Thats fine Luffy, maybe we can find one at some point, if we can then maybe I could figure out how it works. It obviously has reasons for how it works, all we need is a sample." She pulled out a grey machine with a pad, and what appeared to be a screen. "The hell is that thing?" "This Luffy, is an energy testing machine I came up with. You throw an attack at the black pad, which absorbs the force of the attack and determines it's energy on a scale of 1 to 10." She demonstrated by blasting the machine with a full power magic beam, earning a 10. "So what do I do?" "You hit it of course." You're strength is enough to knock out an Ursa Major. I want to put it to the test, see what you're upper limits are." "So you want to know if I can throw a punch huh?" Luffy remarked with a cheeky grin, cracking his hooves. "All you had to do was ask Gomu Gomu no Pistol!" The attack slammed into the machine, and after a few moments a 9 appeared on the screen. "A 9? Thats great! Thats at least half as powerful as a 10! But that isn't what I wanted. I wanted to see your strength when you have steam coming from your body." "You mean Gear Second? Gear...Second? Twilight was perplexed. "Yeah." Luffy said standing on his hind legs and putting them in a wierd position again. "I kept running into people who were stronger and stronger, so I came up with new techniques to fight with everything I have. To protect my friends." Luffy's legs once again appeared to expand and contract with his cost becomkng shiny and pink, and steam covering his body. "Alright that did the trick. Gomu Gomu Gomu no..." Luffy had his hoof cocked backwards with the other one outstretched. Twilight's eyes shrunk to pinpricks at what she saw. "Are you aiming?" "Yep" He dissapeared and reappeared in front of the machine. "Jet Pistol! The force knocked it back a few inches, and after a few moments it flashed a 10. "Amazing." Twilight whispered to herself. "Bu-but how are you doing this? It looks like you teleported! Wait a moment, sudden increase in body temperature, swollen legs resulting from odd positioning...you're doing blood doping aren't you?! "Blood what?" Luffy questioned. "You're forcibly clogging your blood using your legs, and when you release it, all that clogged blood bursts forwards at high speed, effectively doubling your heart rate! Thats why blood is dripping from your wound!" She pointed to Luffy's stab wound from Luffen. "But this is so foolish! What you are doing is tearing apart your own body. I can't permit you to do this!" "It's my body, I can do what I want with it." "But I." Luffy responded in a stern tone "I don't care. I did this for my friends, as long as it saves them, I'll keep going and going. My body isn't important to me." He said letting the affects of the gear wear off. "And just how far will you take it?" Twilight shot back. "Until I die." "Until...you... die?" Twilight's ears drooped, this idiot was willing to rip apart his own body if it meant protecting his loved ones. She searched for words but couldn't find any, Luffy's mind was made up. She gave a sad sigh, and asked about Luffy's teleportation. "Ok fine, if you're sure, I won't try to stop you. Now, how did you move like that?" "When It looked like I was teleporting, I was really just moving my feet 10 to 20 times per second." "So it's not teleportation, just high speed movement? Incredible, I've never heard of such a thing. At least not to the point of mimicking teleportation that is." "Ok are we done now?" Luffy asked impatiently. With a roll of her eyes Twilight sighed and gave in, she was getting hungry as well. As they walked up the stairs she had no idea how hectic the rest of the day would be.