She just barely made it to work before the morning assignments were given out, and knew her boss wasn't happy about it. Rainbow found out just how very unhappy he was during the five-minute dressing-down he provided (with only two near nod-offs) concerning his personal inspection of her first work site, along with a detailed list of every stray she'd missed. That part went on until the rest of the team was awkwardly shuffling during their hovers, while Rainbow waited for him to start giving each scrap of cloud its very own name. The only miraculous part was his never mentioning the incident with the earth pony, who apparently hadn't filed a complaint. But he'd already been angry with her, provided with an excuse she'd left in her first-day wake, and then she'd very nearly been late...
It couldn't be helped. Rainbow had needed every scrap of time she could scrounge in order to create one of the fastest -- and the single largest -- weavings of her life. The weather schedule had arranged for a hot day, and all she truly knew about the wonder's issues was that its activation threshold was far too low. Without her inside making direct (and sometimes subconscious) microadjustments to the temperature, even the smallest degree spike which got past the standard techniques could potentially set off the alarm. Over and over again. She suspected the local police would be investigating long before the constant rumbling reached its third hour, they might even summon the building inspector to determine what was wrong, and she could return to find mist dissipating over the furnishings which had been abandoned in the vacant lot below. Whatever was left of them.
She'd never made a heat shield that large. She wasn't sure how long it was going to hold, and she was sure that if Passing Shower happened to fly by her house at any point before he returned, he'd treat it as an unscheduled alternation. (There was also the possibility of a coworker spotting the change and reporting her: she hadn't made any friends, was barely starting to get a tooth clamp on names.) Another dressing-down was the least of the possibilities there. And then she'd had to regain the energy lost in creating the shield, she hadn't planned on eating that much and her food budget was starting to reach the point where the next step would be grass.
Rainbow desperately hoped for an assignment near her house, leaving her as the only pony using techniques in the area. It would have allowed her to check on whether the weave was holding, minimized the chance of outside discovery. She wound up on the outskirts of the settled zone, cloudbreaking again. Passing Shower had created every one of the clouds himself, declared it to be a milk run for a filly who wasn't quite ready to finish nursing yet: his exact words, with so many of the pegasi around her cringing in matching concert as the sentences pummeled vulnerable ears. And then he told her about every last consequence should he find any leftover strays again.
She couldn't check on her weave. She had no way of leaving the work site which didn't create a chance of being spotted, not when the only clouds in the area had been created as a punishment detail. All she could do was cloudbreak as fast as she could, and then faster still, constantly glancing over her shoulder to see if any angry pegasi were coming towards her. Occasionally, she would remember that there was now a new direction from which trouble might arrive and look down. And all the while, her thoughts looped in on themselves, a constant near-begging to the Princess to let her have a break just this once, at least this once, more than once would be nice because she was going to be a Wonderbolt and having additional breaks on standby wouldn't hurt, but the best way to provide a little reassurance of that future's approach would be to help her now.
There were far too many clouds, and she got through them all at a speed she'd never known. Techniques were altered on the fly in order to disperse the moisture faster. Experimental tight spirals served as vapor-killing drills. She'd never thought that there might be so many ways to do cloudbreaking, and she wasn't thinking now. It was all precious instinct, reason pushed out of the way so that her body could do the necessary without thought slowing her down.
It didn't take all that long to finish. It took far longer than she'd wanted it to, and she sped for her house. There was no time for examining a sample at Barnyard Bargains, not yet. She had to see if she'd been discovered, because the work site was too far out for any rumbling to have reached her. It was possible that everypony was just waiting for her to return, and if she'd somehow made everything hold, she had to refresh the weave...
...which was holding.
It wasn't holding well. In pegasus sight, she could spot where some of the threads were beginning to fray, for heat-shifting had never been her strongest technique. But It had held. There were no police waiting at (or below) her home: just normal traffic trotting by, with nopony else in the air. At least for the moment, she was safe.
The original weave had been created under Moon. The touch-ups had to be rendered beneath Sun, making it all that much more likely that somepony would spot her. Rainbow quickly became acquainted with the finer details of her left shoulder, because she seemed to spend most of the time looking over it. (It needed grooming. The fur was in an oddly uneven lie.) Still -- it didn't seem as if she'd been spotted, and that left her free to go inside.
The wonder was still nestled within the white ceiling. Small, light blue, and quiet. No vibration at all.
All right. This is -- comparison. Compare and contrast. She vaguely remembered having put that phrase on an exam paper: she couldn't recall the year or subject. I need a reminder of what the right weave feels like. Fly down to Barnyard Bargains. I can probably get an hour before they start staring at me again. Maybe half an hour because I'll be in the same aisle two days galloping. Then come back and try to adjust this.
Actually...
Wouldn't it be faster if she got a sense of this one first? Then she could fly into the store -- trot: there was actually a sign up asking that pegasus customers trot, it was insult disguised as theft prevention -- and she'd have the first part of the comparison ready to go. It might speed up the contrasting part, which could only make the repair go faster.
Rainbow took off, hovered close to the ceiling. The small dome did nothing.
Careful. Not too close. Don't start to sweat. I can reroute any heat which reaches it if it starts to react, but probably not before I get a rumble. I can't put a shield directly around it right now --
-- she facehoofed, just a little too hard, and in doing so, found the true last remaining uninjured spot on her body.
I could have put a heat shield directly around this instead of doing the whole house.
She'd done all that work when less than a minute would have sufficed, leaving her with no risk of discovery at all.
It... doesn't matter now. I'll do that before I go to ground. (She still couldn't do it now: she would be trying to feel the wonder through her own weave.) At least I found out I can create one that big all by myself. That's got to be good for something, sometime...
Right now, it was mostly good for making her feel stupid.
She inspected the wonder. Her creation, so much less than adequate. Memorized its feel, made the tiny shield, went out and undid the huge one. Back to ground.
Rainbow trotted back into the store, feeling every step. Every gaze.
This time, she'd gone the extra gallop, or at least the additional rotation. It had occurred to her that if a manufacturing location was written on one side of the box and the company logo plus picture of the contents was on another, that left four other sides to work with. And sure enough, there was some promotional text covering the remaining surfaces. One of those little paragraphs concerned the threshold adjustment feature, boasting that it allowed those pegasi who enjoyed grilling peppers indoors to do so without concern. It meant there was a way for the wonder's owner to raise the threshold, when that of her creation was far too low.
Rainbow had then followed that up with another realization: if there was a way to adjust the threshold, then the purchaser had to know how to do it. That suggested instructions.
A little careful tooth work, some nibbling around the edges, a lot of glancing in all directions, and she'd had the lid up. Getting the paper out of the box was more complicated, but she'd extracted it without knocking more than three, five, maybe ten other boxes over, it had given her some time to look at the contents, but then she'd heard hoofsteps approaching and it had taken all of her speed to get everything closed up before the middle-aged brown earth pony with the worried eyes passed her for the second time. Twice had been too many, and the concern had chased her out of the store.
But she'd thought she'd seen enough. She still had a chance, and she found a smile as she entered her house again.
(Well, it could be claimed as having been found. There was no way she was going to admit to the actual effort involved.)
Hovering again, close to the wonder. She removed the little weave, then began to mentally review what she'd rememorized. The feel.
Okay. I can feel where it's off now. (She didn't have time for the shame, and pushed it away to await her in the nightscape.) But I don't know which threads do what. I just -- tried to duplicate it. I didn't think about what I was copying.
So the first thing is to figure out exactly which part of the weave is the current threshold setting, and the best way to do that is to -- set it off. More hastily, Just for a second.
That part was easy. She just had to gather some of the thermal energy in the living room into a small hot spot, then increase the temperature degree by degree. Probably fractions of a degree, based on what had happened in the bedroom. When she saw a thread react as the rumble began, then she'd know where the first adjustment had to be made.
The box said the normal low end for the threshold is one hundred and forty degrees. Hot enough to singe fur during extended contact with a solid surface, shortly followed by wounding the skin. It was possible for the air to get that hot -- say, above a grill -- without doing direct damage, and that was why thresholds could be adjusted: keeping normal cooking from setting off the walls. But it still wasn't an environment a pony should try to live in for long. This isn't anywhere close to that. It's closer to body temperature. For a pegasus, that's a hundred and two. Her metabolism ran a little faster, and so she burned a little hotter to suit. Start there.
Her forelegs began to move. The temperature in most of the living room dropped, and that energy was gathered in to make a tiny ball of increasing heat just in front of her snout, a miniature (and underpowered) Sun which was only visible to pegasus eyes. The room's normal temperature, with Rainbow in the house to power the waiting techniques, was seventy-five degrees. She just needed to make one little area slightly warmer than her own skin.
Eighty-seven. Ninety-two. Ninety-six... This part was easy: she'd gathered more than this at higher speed when delivering a prankster's hothoof. Rainbow was actually trying to take her time, slowing down the increase rate as the little ball got close to her body temperature: she needed to see exactly where the threshold was. One hundred and one -- and maybe a third... a half...
Watching the light-invisible Sun. Looking at the dome.
One hundred and two. Point one. Point two. Point three --
The rumble hit her ears before the color change was registered in sight, the deep sound almost painful at close proximity.
-- there! That's the thread! I saw it surge! Now I just have to dissipate the ball, and then I --
The grey was surging outwards now, faster than she'd ever seen it change before. There was absolute black around the wonder's base and a heartbeat later, there was near-night in her living room. The rumble kept getting louder, and her forelegs abandoned the pattern which would have dissipated the heat ball, went up to futilely press down on skull-flattened ears. The heat stayed where it was, and the walls kept getting darker and darker as the sound of something getting ready to happen spread throughout the house, Rainbow knew her neighbors could hear it, she was starting to wonder if all of Ponyville could hear it while her parents looked to the east and wondered if that distant noise had anything to do with their daughter, the power of that rumble was making fur and feathers vibrate as her mane was shaken into something more suited to a post-crash state and one more thread within the wonder surged --
-- and then it was raining.
Actually, that was something of an understatement. There was a downpour in progress, and it was all taking place inside her living room. She could barely see through the curtains of water which fell past her, and 'barely' was only during the brief moments after blinking rivers away from her eyes.
"Oh," Rainbow said, completely missing the stun in her own voice. "So that's how it works."
It made sense, really. She lived in a state where she was surrounded by water at all times. Water put out the majority of fires, at least for those started in normal ways with conventional materials. So when the threshold was breached, the wonder eventually tapped into the moisture of her home and began to channel it to where it believed the fire was. The shower functioned in the same fashion, only at a much slower rate of pull and without any of the visual or sonic effects. This was just her everyday personal washing up being conducted with far greater force.
So it taps into the house. She looked around. Actually, right now, it's mostly tapping into the living room: I think the black's a little lighter over there. Down. And the floor isn't absorbing it back, because this isn't the bathroom and the molding isn't set for anywhere near this kind of moisture. So there's water pooling on the floor, and water soaking all my stuff, and -- water, which is probably cooling the hot spot a little as the drops pass through. And suddenly, there was a benefit to not having brought in all that much stuff yet: that much less to dry out.
For her part, there was no point in trying to flee the room. Everypony would have heard the rumble, and it wasn't as if she could possibly become more soaked.
I didn't even know a technique could channel water this fast. Is this how much it's supposed to be conducting? She wasn't even sure there was this much to work with in the entire room, much less the --
-- and she heard it, as one table leg suddenly dropped by a hoof-height, with her morning leftovers sliding off and falling partially into the floor.
The moisture creates the support matrix.
The wonder is pulling out all the moisture because it's trying to put out what it thinks is a fire, faster than the normal molding can replace it from the air.
And when there's no more moisture --
Her couch tilted right.
-- there's no more cloud.
There were several reasons why Rainbow would remember the exact moment when the floor vanished for the rest of her life, and having spontaneously realized what 'critical overtap' meant was not the least of them.
She dove. She had just enough acceleration to get ahead of the couch and put her right shoulder into it, redirecting its angle into something which would bounce towards the back of the vacant lot. Several of the ponies who had begun to cluster at ground level, all summoned by the rumble, stared at her in shock while the scant remaining furnishings which had once made up her living room splintered around her. One of the tiny pieces flew towards her left foreleg, and Rainbow learned about the other thing wood could do.
"Run!" she screamed, taking off again so she could wave both forelegs at the spectators, as if trying to push them from so many body lengths away. "It's all going to come down! I'll deflect what I can, keep it away from everypony! And there's going to be pucky! Just run, before the fountains come down! Please, you all have to --"
-- and with enough heat carried away by the cascade of water, the downpour stopped.
Rainbow went silent, all at once. Looked up, saw that nothing more than the living room floor had vanished, although some of the walls had thinned out quite a bit. Looked around and saw all the watching, staring, stunned ponies, including some of the new arrivals: the ones whose chest straps bore the badges of Ponyville's fire department. A glance towards the back of the group found Thunderlane, who had been assigned to work that part of the settled zone. And finally, flying in at her best speed from the west, Mrs. Cruelneigh.
Slowly, Rainbow touched down, forced herself to trot to the very edge of the house's gutted shadow. And when she was just short of the sunlight, she sank down, belly and barrel pressed against the hard, unwelcoming ground, and waited for the end.
After a few seconds, two members of the fire department helped her up and led her away, with the town inspector trotting close behind.