//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: Professor Charles Hoofington and the Temple of the Moon Queen // by ProfCharles //------------------------------// Chapter 4 Knock Knock Knock Twilight and Spike froze, staring at the door as if a terrible monster lay waiting outside. This was terrible timing, thought Spike. The room is a mess, Twilights mane is in disarray and the enchanted broom had began to attack the furniture with a surprising ferocity. Knock Knock BOOM "YOU BLOODY IDIOT!" roared a stallion's voice from the other side of the door. Twilight crept up to the door and tentatively opened it. She gasped as she saw a very stunned brown earth pony whose mane was stuck on end with a face covered in black soot. His rather fine waistcoat had a small flame along the shoulder, but it quickly died out. "Heh, sorry about that. My automatic knocking device still has a few ... Kinks to work out." the stallion said, raising a hoof. Twilight saw that it was holding a mangled mass of bronze metal. The automatic knocking device, she summarised, although she wondered how it ended up like that, yet the pony had barely a scratch on him. "KINKS! YOU CALL THAT A KINK?" came an enraged voice from above, the same voice as before. Looking up twilight was surprised to see a near identical pair of unicorns clinging to a  branch over the door, well out of harms reach. As they climbed down Twilight noted that the only major differences between the two was that one bore a monocle whilst the other sported an eye patch. "Uh, you wouldn't happen to be the professor Princess Luna sent would you?" Twilight asked, almost fearing the answer. "Why yes, I am. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Professor Charles Hoofington, inventor and explorer extraordinaire!" the brown pony said with a flourish. "The only thing extraordinary about you is the fact that you haven't killed yourself yet." said the unicorn with the monocle. "And these two are my stallionservants, Sterling Silver and Stanely Steel." Charles said with a sigh. "Long suffering stallionservants" Steel corrected. Twilights eyes flicked back and forth nervously between the ponies as they engaged in banter. "I'm Twilight Sparkle, nice to meet you" she said, hoping to cut off the worst of the banter before it escalated.  "Would you like to come in?" Twilight mentaly flinched, remembering the mess the library was in. "We would love to, come along chaps, no point standing here like piffy on a rock bun,  as my dear old mum always said." Charles replied, following Twilight into the library. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as she saw that the library had gained some semblance of order- the books were on the shelves (although out of order), the furiture arranged and the enchanted broom had been chopped into small pieces and put in the log basket. "Spike! Could you put the kettle on? We have -oh" she called put as Spike entered the room with a tray bearing 4 cups of tea. "This is Spike, my number 1 assistant." "Ooh, a baby dragon" said Charles "Hey guys, we should-" "No" "But-" "No" Charles moodily slouched into a chair and picked up his cup. Twilight saw this and decided to lighten the mood with a change in topic. "So your an inventor then? Made anything I would know of?" she asked Charles perked up at this. Inventing was one of his favourite topics. "oh i have invented a whole varity of things. For staters there is the automatic door knocker, but you saw how well that one went. Then theres the clockwork messenger pigeon-" "It got lost and blew up." Steel interjected. Charles ignored this and plowed on. "Then theres the steam powered steam cooker-" "That also blew up." This time Silver interupted. "The wind-up dishwasher-" "Decapicated a statue at a hundred paces, then blew up." "The solar-powered toaster-" "Blew up whilst I was holding it and cost me my eye." Steel said, glaring at an oblivious Charles. Twilight put a hoof over her mouth in surprise at this. "The Hoofington faimly special, the firework display in a box-" "Which, surprisingly, didn't blow up." Charles shot a glare at his stallionservants and they took the hint. Meanwhile, throughout this triade Tiwlight was struggling not to despair. Who was this madpony Luna had set on her? "But my greatest and latest invention, one I feel will change Equestria for ever, is this!" the Professor exclaimed, pulling a bronze orb out of his coat pocket. Twilight leaned forwards. "What is it?" "This is a fully functioning clockwork eye! Anypony who has one installed will be able to see through it as a normal eye. In addition, it comes with night vision-" the orb lit up with a green glow "a torch-" a light shown out into twilights face "a holographic projector-" a semi transparent image of a pony appeared on the table "and a laser!" a red light shot out and set the curtains on fire. Fortunately the twin unicorns were prepared for this and managed to put it out without much difficultly. "Whoops, sorry!"