//------------------------------//
// A Plaster Disaster 
// Story: Celestia Repairs Drywall 
// by Some Leech 
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Squinting down at the innocuous tub balanced on her hoof, Celestia sorcerously adjusted her hardhat. As unfortunate as it was, due to her unkempt excitement over freshly baked blueberry scones the morning prior, she’d unintentionally kicked the wall of her bedroom and created a small hole. While any sensible Princess would have summoned a laborer to address the minuscule faux pas, the indignity of explaining why she’d created the damage demanded she fix the problem herself - as such, she’d put herself to task.

Nopony questioned why she’d gone to the Canterlot Hardware Shoppe, nor why she’d purchased and worn a rather dapper hardhat and reflector jacket back to her castle, but she did get a number of questioning looks on her way home. As the oldest, most distinguished royal in all of Equestria, it was her solemn duty to tend to problems wherever they lay, so she hoped her faithful subjects would admire her tenacity. Smiling and waving to the ponies she passed, she’d brought her purchases through the city, into the keep, and directly to the eyesore she’d caused.

“Let’s see here,” she murmured to herself, lifting the tub of drywall putty. “Step one: clean the area of dust and debris. Well that’s easy enough!”

Leaning in and bringing her muzzle to the pockmark, she pursed her lips and blew upon the crumbly cavity. As bits of gypsum fell to the floor, pattering around her hooves, her brow furrowed. A second puff of air did nothing, brushing at the area only seemed to make it worse, and the spot refused to get clean. Small chips of plaster stubbornly clung to their paper backing, while powder continued to accumulate on the floor. Try as she might, no matter what she tried, nothing seemed to work.

Stepping back and scrunching her snout, she called upon her nearly limitless arcane might. If conventional means wouldn’t sterilize the blemish, perhaps an unconventional solution would. Lowering her head, she leveled her glowing horn at the chip in the wall and unleashed a fraction of her power. Like the luminous spear of a wrathful god, a blazing beam of pure energy lanced through the wall and exited the castle.

Peeking out, a smug smile played across her muzzle. “Much better…”

While she had increased the caliber of the hole by a few millimeters, she’d successfully accomplished the first step of her repair work. The smoldering, perfectly round portal, while having nearly doubled in size, had been surgically cauterized by her blast, allowing her to enter the next phase. Tipping and staring down at the little pail, she cocked her head.

“Stir thoroughly?” she inquired aloud, levitating the tub from between her hooves. “Perhaps they included a stirrer inside.”

Effortlessly popping the lid, she stared into the container and recoiled. Though the packaging assured her that the compound was meant for drywall, the thick plaster was a vivid pink - nearly the same hue as Princess Cadance’s coat! Reading and re-reading the label, her mood souring by the second, she snatched up a putty knife and began aggressively stirring the gummy substance. Even though the color was off, definitely not the snow white she’d been promised, she should be able to paint over it with little to no trouble.

Shoveling a generous amount of the compound onto her tool, she pressed the dense substance into the hole, gathered up another scoop, then repeated the process. It wasn’t until she’d shoveled nearly a pint of the stuff into the cavity that she realized something was amiss. Setting the tiny vat down, she trotted over to and peeked out her veranda.

In spite of the beautiful, sunlit day, her focus lay solely on the obscene pink flow of goo dripping down the side of the tower. Not only had she overfilled the blasted hollow, but she’d managed to tarnish her castle’s pristine exterior in the process. Slamming the window closed and storming back to the infuriating plaster, she hovered the bucket over to herself.

The corners of her lips turned up and she stifled a demure laugh, as she noticed a detail she’d missed. Apparently the mortar-like material was supposed to dry before additional layers could be applied, though the instructions failed to remark on exactly how long the process would take. Proceeding back to the overfilled hole, she evoked her magic once again.

Her horn went alight, a warmth bathed the area, and her smile broadened. “Just need to be extra careful this time…”

While she had every intention of repairing the wall herself, it was true that she couldn’t spend all day with the endeavor. There were meetings to attend, dignitaries to meet, and grievances to address - not to mention she hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. Musing on what her chef would have doubtlessly already prepared for her, wondering if she’d be lucky enough to receive chocolate chip pancakes, her concentration slipped for a fraction of a second.

The smell of smoke drifted to her nostrils, snapping her from her ravenous stupor. “Oh goodness!”

Her lapse in focus, though fleeting, was disastrous. The paint on her wall peeled, the carpeting beneath her smoldered, and an oil painting directly beside her had burst into flame - nevertheless, her solution had worked wondrously. As if by some miracle, the vividly colored putty had cured to a pure white and hardened to the touch. Overjoyed with herself, she teleported the blazing portrait to the far-flung north of Yakyakistan, snuffed out the rug, and victoriously grinned.

As she stepped forward, intent on finishing her repair work, her delight was her undoing. A wet thunk cut through the air, moments before a cool sensation embraced her forehoof. Peering downward, she froze. Somehow, swearing she’d placed the tub further away, she’d stepped directly into the container of uncured plaster.

“For buck’s…” she trailed off, cursing under her breath.

Lifting her forehoof and unwittingly carrying the little bucket along with it, she grimaced. She’d been so very close to completing the job, yet she’d managed to stumble right at the finish line. Though her determination was shaken, her temper slowly flaring like a blossoming nova, she closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and attempted to free her leg - a move which bore nigh cataclysmic results.

Perhaps she’d underestimated her strength, or maybe she was angrier than she’d first thought - whatever the case, the pail sailed from her hoof, knocked against the wall, and discharged its gluey contents over the floor, wall, and herself. As if being spattered with stucco wasn’t unpleasant enough, she quickly noticed she’d created yet another chip in her lightly roasted and spackled wall.

Her eye twitched, realizing she’d have to fix a second divot. Had she known the morning would devolve into a comedy of errors, quite possibly orchestrated by none other than the lord of Chaos himself, she would have suffered the indignity of hiring a laborer - alas, it was far too late for that. Explaining a small bit of damage was one thing, but trying to justify scorch marks, peeled paint, and a smattering of dried putty was quite another, but she couldn’t get ahead of herself.

Before she could even try to clean up the mess she’d made, she’d have to deal with her sullied hoof. Though she was unsure of how best to address the dilemma, her only obvious solution was to wash off her sullied forehoof. Since her bathroom was only a few dozen feet away, not wanting to recreate the immolatory incident from minutes prior, she turned in place, promptly stepped on a dollop of paste, then lost her balance.

As she fell to the floor, the flow of time seemingly slowing and warping to magnify her misery, she came to an abrupt and wholly unexpected halt. With her snout mere inches from the carpet, thankful that she was spared a trip to the infirmary, her silent gratitude was fleeting. Lifting her gaze, she only then noticed her horn lodged in the baseboard.

She’d falsely presumed repairing the drywall would be an easy task, but she was shrewd enough to know that carpentry would be immeasurably more difficult - nevertheless, that was a problem she could see to later. As if by some mocking, heavenly sign, she watched a feather drift down and land just beside her. Suddenly aware of the wings on her back, feeling dumber than ever, she cautiously flapped the feathery appendages and flew off to her washroom.

Her time in the bathroom was humbling to say the least, but it allowed her to gather her thoughts, calm herself, and devise a plan. Her first step would be to clean the plaster, dried or otherwise, from her chamber, then she would finish mending her wall, and finally she would move her dresser to conceal the damaged baseboard. While the blemished wood would serve as a reminder of her failure, the chances of anypony ever noticing it would be next to zero.

Peeking out and surveying the small disaster in her room, she lifted a dampened cloth and steeled her resolve. “Alright, let’s get this done.”

The putty she’d spilled hadn’t fully dried, much to her mercy, and she was able to clean up almost everything in a matter of minutes - sure, the wall would need a fresh coat of paint, and she’d need to find a replacement for the portrait she’d abandoned, but those were trivial concerns. Once she was done with the drywall, she could leave, get a well-earned breakfast, and begin her regal duties in earnest.

Having filled the second scar in the wall, and successfully curing it with her magic, she stepped back to inspect her work. Aside from applying a touch of paint, there was only one step left to do - leveling the surface. As her hoof crept into her bag of purchases, her blood instantly ran cold. In her haste earlier, while attempting to extract her leg from the bucket of plaster, she’d managed to utterly ruin the sandpaper she’d procured.

“Hmmph!” she petulantly harrumphed, snubbing her nose at the paste-covered paper. “Who needs such a pedestrian thing anyways…”

Leaning in and eyeing the duo of filled holes, seeing only the slightest bit of uneven texture, she smirked. She’d learned her lesson from earlier, been reminded of just how unbelievably potent her sorcery could be, so there was no possible way she’d make the same mistake a second time. Shuffling closer and pressing her cheek to the wall, she brought her horn to the barely perceptible bump of hardened plaster, stuck her tongue between her lips, and called upon her mystical power.

“My Princess,” a voice called, preceded by three loud knocks on her door. “I hate to be a bother, but the royal chef is preparing crepes with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.”

Be it from fate, Discord’s surreptitious intervention, poor timing, or some combination of the three, the interruption and promise of a delectable meal shattered her concentration. The devastation she unleashed, fueled by a heady cocktail of gluttonous excitement and apprehension, rivaled that of a siege engine. Her head whipped toward the doorway, lightning crackled around her horn, and a ray of concentrated light sheared a fissure through the tower like a hot knife through butter.

Celestia’s reign had been long, spanning well over a millennia, yet in all her time as a Princess the Canterlot castle had never received such a disastrous blow. Perfectly hewn marble blocks fell and crumbled from their placements, debris littered the floor, and an ominous groaning rang through the air. What was supposed to be a laughably easy endeavor had transformed into a grievous injury to the keep’s tower - all because of her foolish hubris.

“Celestia,” her unseen visitor shouted, a note of alarm in their voice, as the beating on her door began again, “is everything alright?”

Panic - raw, unbridled panic surged through Celestia, as fissures spread through the superstructure around her. Though she was no engineer, she knew she needed to act quickly, lest the castle - her castle be irreparably damaged. In the blink of an eye, she called upon the full force of her power and created and expanded a bubble of energy to halt the spire’s collapse - regrettably, she overcompensated in a spectacular fashion.

Instead of a reinforcing, mystical sphere, the sorcerous orb grew with such speed and force that it dislodged the upper story of the tower and flung it into the heavens. Unable to move, locked in place, it was all she could do to watch the section of castle sail through the sky, over Canterlot, and all but disintegrate when it impacted a vacant field outside of town. While she did take some solace that nopony was injured, considering her room sat at the very apex of the spire, she was shocked by the havoc she’d wrought.

“P…Princess?” the all too familiar voice timidly inquired, bringing her eye over to a trembling maid just outside of what remained of her room.

Celestia instantly recognized the shaken mare, yet the dire circumstances erased the servant’s name from her memory. A cold bead of sweat rolled down her brow, she held her breath, and her thoughts ran rampant, as she stared at the trembling pony. There was no villain responsible for the demolition, nor any natural disaster to blame - no, it was by her hoof alone that the castle suffered a calamitous remodeling.

“A chicken,” she blurted, saying the first thing that came to mind.

The maid stared blankly at her, her shivering diminishing ever so slightly, and cocked her head. “A c…chicken?”

“A chicken, yes,” Celestia repeated, clutching to the justification like a drowning pony to a life preserver. “The foulest fowl I’ve ever laid eyes upon. This was probably the doing of Chrysalis - no, possibly even Grogar!”

With but a hoofful of words, spurred by desperation and dread, she’d crafted an alibi - a flimsy alibi that would likely collapse under the smallest bit of scrutiny, but an alibi nonetheless. Trotting over to the stricken servant, she forced a smile and patted the pony’s shoulder. There was no possible way the maid would question her, not while she was in shock, so she did the only reasonable thing she could do - she lied through her teeth.

“I should have known that Grogar would rear his ugly head,” she muttered, shaking her hoof at the sky. “But fear not, my sister and I will hunt down and bring the evildoer to justice.”

The maid’s eyes went alight, a timid smile split her muzzle, and her shaking halted entirely, emboldened by her valiant Princess’ words. “Shall I send word to Twilight?”

“No!” Celestia croaked, reflexively drawing the little pony to her bosom. “N…no, that won’t be necessary. That vile creature may anticipate such a move. It would be best not to mention this incident to anypony,” she uneasily stated, barely managing to compose herself. “What I’d like you to do is summon the royal architect and have her meet me in the dining hall.”

“The dining hall?” the servant parroted.

“Just so,” the Princess replied, bringing her muzzle to the mare’s ear. “Think about it. Would a villain expect me to calmly go downstairs and feast upon those hot, succulent crepes you mentioned?”

Thinking for a moment, the pony shook her head. “I suppose not.”

“Exactly! And that’s why, should anypony ask you about this little incident, you’ll tell them that it was - uh…” Celestia faltered, stumbling to concoct a plausible explanation for the tragic blunder. “Should somepony ask about this,” she placidly instructed, motioning to her ruined chamber, “tell them it was Discord.”

“But you just said it was -”

“Ah ah ah,” she cut the servant off, pressing a hoof to the mare’s lips. “I know it wasn’t Discord, but doesn’t this seem like something he would do?” she asked, drawing a hesitant nod from the maid. “Besides, I don’t personally see the harm - after all, he did deceive Cozy, Tirek, and Chrysalis into nearly bringing an apocalypse onto all of Equestria.

“Hmmmmmm,” the pony hummed, rubbing her chin. “It does sound pretty believable.”

Placing a wing around the mare’s shoulder, Celestia guided the servant away from the demolished chamber and toward the nearest stairwell. She wasn’t normally one to deceive anypony, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Even if Discord did catch wind of being framed, it would ultimately come down to his word against hers - a contest he would lose mismatched hands down.

While it was true that a select few would more than likely see through her trickery, namely Luna and Twilight, she could always bend the truth in her favor. Yes, she would admit that she was solely responsible for the disastrous accident, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t embellish the tale slightly. As she descended what remained of the spire, spying a gaggle of royal guards rushing up the stairs, she dismissively waved a hoof.

“Nothing to worry about,” she calmly noted, shooing them away. “I just had a bit of a spat with everypony’s favorite draconequus - isn’t that right…”

“Y…yeah,” the servant anxiously stated, “it was Discord. I saw the whole thing!”

Though the soldiers looked confused and more than a little concerned, they drew to a halt, bowed, then reversed course. There were certain perks to being an exceptionally long-lived Princess, and one of them was that nearly any problem could be put off - if only for a time. Continuing along on her way, with her stomach giving the tiniest grumble, she licked her lips. She could deal with the fallout of her gaffe later, once the literal and figurative dust had settled - for the time being, she had a steaming plate of crepes waiting for her…