Pinkie’s party is a huge success. Especially since she opened it by tapping the ends of two giant Amazon boxes, the result being that the party cannons unpacked themselves with blasts of party decor. Apparently, they had seemed to simply appear in Sugarcube Corner’s receiving area between times she checked it. Since she had been, reportedly, checking it every twenty-seven and a half seconds, that would seem to be quite the feat by the delivery crew. She’d been puzzled by the UPS shipping labels, but hadn’t dwelt on it. Brand-new party cannons, brand-new…
Rarity had shown up for the party late, reporting that everything had arrived. She’d only just finished putting it all away- and she can’t wait to get started.
Applejack and Fluttershy had been quiet, with no more than a statement that it had arrived on schedule- and been exactly what they expected.
Two hours later, Rainbow bursts into the room, showing off a new book. “It arrived early!” she screams, for the whole room to hear.
“What?” Twilight asks… Yes, it’s Princess Twilight.
She then stuffs the latest Daring Do novel, officially published just yesterday, in Twilight’s face. “It just arrived!”
The previous day, she’d gotten a couple random background ponies coming in to make small orders, referred by the Crusaders. Good to hear they’re being effective.
Today, she’s also had a tiny trickle. The night comes uneventfully.
Then the morning starts.
First in line is Princess Twilight. It’s a good thing she’d thought to order an extension cord on Monday, after Fluttershy’s order; it reaches the power to her laptop by the front door while she works her way through the long, long line of ponies waiting to place orders. After Pinkie’s, Rainbow’s, and Rarity’s flaunted successes, everypony wants to try.
But again, first in line is Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Several hundred thaumic resonance coils, a half ton of wiring, an entire pallet of pens, several three-quarter-ton rolls of sheetmetal, including one of each type she could think of…
The list goes on. At the very bottom of the list, of course, is a 3.7GW-rated arc reactor.
It’s a good thing Twilight has the bits required for the purchase. She cuts her markup for that order down to a hundredth of a percent.
She’s still wondering where even a Princess might have gotten eighty million bits.
But then, she gets to the second pony… person… whatever in line.
Discord.
He seems determined to find something she doesn’t carry- but everything he asks for, she finds. Even the stuff she wouldn’t normally have expected- like a gentle breeze. She actually asks if he could record the delivery on video- she’s curious exactly how they plan on delivering a breeze, a waterfall, or that other thing, 793.41 Newtons.
His bill is also in the millions- but she’s utterly unsurprised both by his possession of over half a billion bits and his ability to shove them into her bank account with the snap of his fingers.
The rest of her customers have much, much smaller orders- and it takes all day to get through everypony.
So she tickers in and orders a few things for herself. With today’s profits totaling close to sixty thousand bits, even after the fifty-fifty profitshare with the Crusaders, she’s got plenty to acquire a few things to help the ordering process go smoother.
Saturday. Everything arrives.
Most ponies simply find packages sitting on their doorstep.
Twilight comes to the door of the library, just past noon, to answer the knock.
A unicorn, wearing some kind of sparking red-and-gold metal armor, offers her a paperless clipboard thingy with lots of buttons on it and an attached inkless pen. “I’m going to need you to sign for the delivery,” he states.
So she signs for it. And refrains from examining the clipboard, much like she’d refrained from examining Golden Locks’ ‘computer’.
He steps back, holding out one hoof to the side. “There’s most of your order… But the arc reactor. Where do you want us to build it?”
She takes one glance at the stacked shipping containers before smiling at him. “Just outside of town, please. Can I show you?”
“Yes please.” He then takes off, riding some kind of fire coming from his hooves; she takes to the air on her wings and flies to her target land: The land she’d acquired for the purpose just last night. She lands in front of it, and holds out her hoof. “Right here, please.”
He nods, and punches a button.
Golden Locks pauses on her way past, watching the spectacle.
A flurry of activity- banging, crunching, rumbling, hissing, sparking, everything, sounds from the cloud of motion that is that plot of land for about five seconds… before the reactor is completely built. A bulldozer is spotted backing away from it, fading into nothingness as its beeper also fades out.
Twilight’s jaw drops.
“Wait,” Golden Locks states. “Did that dozer have ‘Stark Construction’ written on it?”
With a deep, momentary rumble, the reactor comes on.