There was a blast, and Brooke made a note on her clipboard. “That’s another failed attempt.”
“Aghh,” I growled as I cleared the soot and debris from my coat and feathers again. “That’s, what, ten failures to launch?”
“Twelve. And we’ve been here for nearly three hours.”
“Gahh!”
“Maybe we need a break. Let’s take a break.”
I relented under her extremely well crafted and persuasive argument. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
“Plus, we can go over the notes together. Maybe we’ll figure something out from each test.”
“Yeah. See what went wrong and what little worked. I really thought the gravity altering one would have been the way to go.” I gathered up the books and notes for the experiment and we made our way to Mr. Slice’s Pizzeria.
“What happened to you two?” Soprano asked as she set our pizza on the table. “You both look like you’ve been to one of Machina’s ranges.”
“Inova talked me into helping her with an experiment,” Brooke explained. “The Alicorn Takeoff Launch And Soar Project.”
“Or just the ATLAS Project,” I said. “I want to figure out how to get up high as fast as possible. I figured that having all three types of pony magic would let me do something, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“We spent half an hour on the first method: kicking off upwards with her rear legs and wings alone.”
“All I got was tired and not as much height as I wanted.”
“So she made a small low gravity zone next. Somehow, it made her flip around as soon as she left it. How did you even find that spell?”
I looked side to side. “I may have gotten some advanced spell books from Aunt Twilight. When I was in second grade. It was her attempt to get me more motivated to learn magic. It didn’t quite work. Well, it is now. On a side note, Brooke knows that spell now, and we had the same results when she was the one casting it, so it’s not a matter of who’s casting it.”
Soprano gave an amused smile. “Well, good luck with that.” She zipped off to go take a pizza to another table.
We ate our first slices in relative quiet. “So, am I going to be your lab assistant from now on?” Brooke eventually asked.
“Probably,” I answered.
A week later, I ended up on Girder’s back after more failed launch experiments. “Ow. . .”
“I told you to stop with the reflex enhancement spells,” Brooke chided.
“I thought I could use them to enhance my launches. And now I know that it doesn’t help anything, so there’s that. Ow.” Nearly every muscle in my body was hurting, and it was not pleasant. The only part of me that wasn’t hurting was my face.
“Why are you doing this anyways?” Girder asked.
“I saw Gilda take off that way, but I’ve never seen a pegasus take off like that. I want to do that, and since I have three kinds of magic, I thought I could copy her method.”
“It’s probably something griffons can do that pegasi can’t,” Brooke suggested. “That’s the simplest explanation I’ve got.”
“That might be it. Well, at least we tried, right?”
While we were waiting in the waiting room at the hospital, I saw some ponies come out that I wasn’t expecting to see. “Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?” They both looked fine, but mom’s body was showing a very slight hint of roundness.
They were just as surprised to see me. “Never mind that, what are you doing here?” Dad asked.
“Overuse of a reflex enhancement spell,” Brooke explained.
“She warned me,” I added. “Ow.”
Mom indirectly explained why she and dad were there. “Inova, you and Skyla are going to have a little sister later this year.”
“Okay, cool.” The implication suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks, and I prioritized what I needed to know. “Does that mean I’ll have to move my bricks somewhere else?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” dad said.
“Princess Inova, it’s your turn with the doctor,” a nurse called out.
“I’ll see you later,” I said as Girder and Brooke took me to see the doctor.
The doctor ordered me to soak in a hot tub for my muscles, limit my physical activities, and take a little bit of pain medicine. It was a common medicine that was in a medicine cabinet at home, so that wasn’t too big of a deal.
The next day, I invited all my friends and Skyla to join me in the hot tub at the water park after school. To my delight, everypony was able to make it. “This is good,” I said as we sat in the tub. I could feel the lingering aches in my muscles lessen as the heat did its work.
“It is,” Soprano said. “But why not an actual spa?”
“It’s not about the Bits,” Skyla said. “She’s got lots of those.”
“The spas have special deals going on, so there’s more ponies going there,” I explained. “Nopony thinks to come to the water park for a spa treatment, which means we get in faster and we can relax longer without worrying about anypony behind us.”
“Does that make you nopony?” Quick Quip asked.
“Only sometimes. I’m Inova the rest of the time.” Truly, Quick Quip was a terrible influence on me.
School very quickly became something for me to dread, and all in the span of less than a single day. My classwork in all areas was just as easy as usual, and it was nice when I could focus on it, but the times I could focus on it diminished rapidly. News had gotten out about mom’s pregnancy, and everypony had questions.
“Are you excited for your new sister?”
“When do you think your mom will deliver the filly?”
“Is it one foal or two?”
“What color do you think her coat will be?”
“Will she be an alicorn?”
“Would you like some shredded cheese on your salad?”
“Do you think she’ll also have a human in her?”
“Why is everypony so caught up in the news about your new sister?”
I did my best to keep a level head under all the questions. The fact that my schoolmates were just curious instead of whatever most of the Canterlot nobles were helped a bit, but like a chisel, every question chipped away at my patience, and there were a lot of questions.
“Hey, sis?” Skyla asked over lunch. She sounded drained, and I suspected the reason was much the same as mine.
“Yeah?” I couldn’t hide the drained feeling from my voice.
“How about we just go home after our last class?”
“That sounds good. Running sounds good. Let’s do some running.”
The end of the day came, we met up at the usual exit we took, and immediately ran towards home as fast as we could. Our more persistent schoolmates were hot on our trail, which helped motivate us to run at full speed.
Unfortunately, we both forgot to factor in the fact that some of our schoolmates had wings, and the open road became our enemy. I looked around for something, anything that could let us hide for a minute to let the herd go past us. Skyla did the same, and she found a spot before I did. I followed her, and we leapt over a wall that blocked off an alleyway. She stopped right after the leap and I crashed into her. She wasn’t fazed and leapt back, pushing me against the wall while she cast some illusion spells. “Shh.”
I waited with bated breath as our schoolmates leapt over us and ran down the alley. “Are we safe?” I quietly asked, doing my best to not let the stench in the alley get to me.
Skyla carefully looked around, including upward. “We’re safe. Let’s go.”
We leapt out the way we came and took off to fly the rest of the way home. “Where did you come up with that maneuver?” Tactical thinking wasn’t exactly Skyla’s forte, as evidenced by our Battlefleet games.
“I read about it in a book once. I think the character’s name was Queen Nova or something like that.” She smirked my way. “No idea who came up with her, but she must be pretty smart.”
A grin crossed my face. “Yeah, she probably is. And she’s probably going to take a shower after being in a smelly and gross alleyway.”
“How about a bath instead? You wash my wings, I wash yours?”
“I like that idea.”
Being the one to wash and clean Skyla’s wings was quite a change of perspective for me. It also revealed, through multiple pointers and corrections from her, that my wing care skills still needed work.
Where once I felt pitiful for needing Skyla’s help to clean up, the spontaneous event had was much less of a source of stress for me, and was actually enjoyable. The fact that we both lightly stank of the alleyway gave us something to laugh about as well.
Mom noticed both of us coming out of the bathroom once we were clean and dried off. “Inova, did you forget about your wings again?” She teased.
“We had to run from a third of our schoolmates,” I explained. “Maybe. I wasn’t counting.”
“We hid in an alleyway to lose everypony, and then we stank because it’s a stinky alleyway,” Skyla added. “So we cleaned each other.”
“Can’t do homework smelling like that.”
“You never have homework.”
“I’m still catching up on what I missed, so for now, I do. And you’re right: homework sucks.”
“It’s a lot like being a Princess,” mom said. “Lots of paperwork is needed to make sure things get done. Speaking of which, I put your saddlebags by the dining table. Go ahead and start on your homework.”
“Yes, mom,” we both said before trudging over to the table to start on it. As we worked on our own stuff and helped each other, I decided that, once I was officially a Princess, I would do everything possible to minimize the paperwork aspect.
“Girls, it’s time to teach you how to handle the paparazzi,” dad said after supper. “They will ask you a lot of the same questions-”
“Check,” I said.
“-chase you down to ask questions-”
“Check,” Skyla said.
“-and the smart ones will predict where you’re going to be so they’ll have less competition.”
“No check,” Skyla and I said at the same time.
“Hm?”
“Everypony was asking us questions about the new filly,” Skyla explained. “I don’t think I learned anything in Equish class today.”
“I should have used the earplug shields,” I said. “Skyla, remind me to teach you that one.”
“Dad already did.”
“I rescind my statement.”
Dad cleared his throat to get our attention. “There are a few ways to deal with the paparazzi. You can answer their questions, but the more you feed them, the more they’ll come after you. You can ignore them and try to go on with your day, which might end well or bad. However, you must not be the first to get mad, and if you do, you must make sure not to explode like Inova does with the nobles.”
“What if they ask really stupid questions?” Skyla asked.
“Have you heard any stupid questions about your new sister?”
“Lots of them. Somepony even asked me if Sombra was the father. He’s dead, so that’s not possible.”
“How did you answer it?”
“Well. . . It was so stupid, I couldn’t answer.”
“And by not answering, that can let rumors grow and spread. That one should die off on its own after a while.”
As the lesson on dealing with the paparazzi, crowds, and inevitable fans wore on, the idea of taking a more subdued and less visible role as a Princess sounded better and better.
After a couple weeks, the excitement over the news of mom’s pregnancy and the stream of questions died down, so things were mostly back to normal for us. I was happy to be back with my friends on another H&H adventure after school.
Skyla’s evasion trick coming from a move I made with Queen Nova lingered in my mind, and I started thinking about other things I could use or make from the game. My focus remained on completing the Valor System, and aside from the weight distribution issue that Gilda pointed out, it went pretty well.
By the time the Artificing final came around, I’d managed to build a few other things. Most were simple, a couple remained unfinished, and one had great potential.
Mr. Forger got a notebook in his magic and faced us. “Alright everypony, it’s time to start showing off what we’ve built and completed throughout the year. Flashlights first.” He turned off the lights and began calling out names in alphabetical order. One by one, we showed that our flashlights did work. Mine was just as basic and functional as everypony else’s, though I’d wanted to put a rotating cube in mine for some reason that had nothing to do with brightness. That plan was set aside for another time.
He turned the lights back on. “Bracelets next.” Once again, we went through the class and presented what we built. Most of them had simple illusion enchantments, others were even less creative and were just wearable flashlights. A couple of them had proximity charms for detecting specific things. Mine was bigger and had a levitation enchantment that let me pick up my desk without touching it or using my own levitation. I called it the gravity gauntlet, and I had plans to make a pair that would fit my human arms and hands as well.
Over multiple days, the rest of what we’d designed and built was shown off. Many of the things that my classmates and I built were little trinkets and jewelry with enchantments in them. I could see practical applications for most of the items as well, if not entertainment value. I did manage to build Queen Nova’s belt, though I didn’t get any illusion or light enchantments in to go with the sounds, which was mostly just my voice.
Some of the items were bigger, and were demonstrated outdoors. One was a modified bicycle that didn’t require pedaling to move, though it could only go forward and be steered. There were also some modified wagons that could do something similar, though they either broke down or wouldn’t move with as little as five ponies on them. I made an offer to buy copies of the schematics. To my delight, I only had to spend ten bits per plan, and forty bits for the plans was a great bargain. I made sure to get names on the plans in case I needed to get some help or, more importantly, credit the original designers.
I was the only one that made anything resembling weapons. My alicorn sword was little more than a sword with moving parts and illusion enchantments, and swinging it around to show off the effects was enough to make one of the more faint of heart fillies in my class faint.
The Valor System demonstration went perfectly, except for one little detail. When I swung the hammer and hit the crystalline ground, it made a three foot deep crater, dropped me and some of my classmates into it, and broke some windows in the school. “Uh, whoops.” The silence that followed was eerie.
Mr. Forger wasn’t happy. “Inova, I thought I told you not to use the combat enchantments.”
I took the yellow gem out of the hammer and inspected the carvings on it. It was just what I suspected. “I got the two mixed up.”
“How could you mix up the enchantments? The casting processes are wildly different.”
“I didn’t get the enchantments mixed up! I mixed up the enchanted gems. Big difference.” I looked at the rim of the crater about fifteen feet away from me in all directions. “This is a bit bigger than the cracks I had to fix.” I wanted to know just how much property damage I’d done in Bits, but I was also afraid it would be more than what I had.
“That’s awesome!” A colt exclaimed from the rim of the crater. “Can you make one of those for me, Inova?”
“No, I won’t.” I sheathed the hammer to punctuate my statement. “And that decision is not up for appeal.”
Principal Hall appeared overhead and looked very disappointed. “I presume Inova did this?”
“Yes,” Mr. Forger said. “She’s already admitted to her mistake.”
“I should have inspected my engravings more closely,” I added.
“Mr. Forger, please lock up Inova’s artificing projects and I’ll take care of the disciplinary action,” Principal Hall said. “Do you have any recommendations?”
“She might be able to fix the windows,” Mr. Forger said. “That’s all I have to add.”
I gently set the Valor System and the enchanted gem on the ground in front of Mr. Forger as I got out of the crater. Whatever punishment was ahead, I would take it.
“In here.” I followed Principal Hall into an empty room, the walls all faded white. “You will spend the rest of the day here. Lunch and any finals you have will be brought here. You may step out during breaks, but you have to be back here before the break ends. Additionally, that crater is impossible to simply fix, so you will also come up with something to do with it. After school is out, you will go around to fix all the windows that you can and clean out the crater.”
“Yes, Principal,” I meekly said as I sat at one of the desks. The idea of splitting up to take the finals faster crossed my mind, but that would just result in way more boredom.
“I will be back.” He left the room and closed the door.
I turned to go through my saddlebags, only to become incredibly disappointed when I saw that they weren’t there. There was nothing for me to do to pass the time. No books, no paper, no pencils, nothing.
Fifteen minutes in, Principal Hall came back with a piece of paper and a pen, which he put on my desk. “I need you to read and sign this.”
I read the written letter. It was addressed to mom and dad, it detailed what I did, what my punishment was, and how I had behaved. I found everything to be accurate, and with the intent of maintaining the silver lining of good behavior noted on it, I signed it. I did not want any more trouble than needed.
“Thank you. I’ll be back again.” He took the letter and left me alone again.
I started thinking about the gravity gauntlet design and what else I could do with it for the human model. Lifting things was good and all, but I wanted it to do more. I just had to figure out how.
Time crawled by. Principal Hall brought me my saddlebags, the paper finals I had, and a mediocre lunch. The finals were easy enough, the lunch was okay, and then I was confronted with lots of boredom, even as I tried to figure out what to do with the crater.
I was given respite by the breaks between classes. I was on my way to the fillies’ room during one break when Soprano’s path crossed with mine. “Inova, did you feel the school shake earlier? Everypony’s blaming you for it.”
“That’s because I caused it,” I explained. “There’s a crater out there now and a bunch of broken windows. I’m going to be fixing what I can later.”
“Oof. Well, I’d better get to music class. See you.” She left to go to her class and I took care of what I had to.
I was grateful for the end of the boredom I was suffering through when the end of the day came and Principal Hall started taking me around to fix the windows. The time my unicorn part had spent fixing what my earth and pegasus parts damaged was now of use, as the repair spell came easily to me, and each window took less than thirty seconds to fix, according to the clocks in the classrooms. There were a lot of them though, and I didn’t feel quite confident enough to cast while flying.
Finally, we came to the crater. “What do you think we should do here?” Principal Hall asked.
“Clean it up first.” I went about doing just that. The repair spell, to my dismay, did not bring the crater up to where it was. It only smoothed it out and filled in the cracks. The rubble and debris went into a pile nearby. “The best idea I came up with is a fountain.”
“A fountain?”
“Yep. I even have a name for it: Inova’s Regret. Around the edges would be plaques that say what happened. ‘Princess Inova, in her excitement one day, forgot to double check that the enchanted gem in her hammer was the right one, resulting in a terrible mistake. On this spot, her hammer struck the ground, making a crater, shaking the school, and breaking windows. She took the rightful blame for what happened without objection and cleaned up the mess herself.’ Does that sound good?”
Principal Hall thought it over. “It does sound good, and very accurate, but I’ll have to give it some more consideration. Perhaps a shorter version or multiple plaques. Anyways, you’re free to go home now, and you’ll be able to retrieve your projects during your next artificing class.”
“Thank you.” I got my saddlebags on and took off to fly home, though I had a stop to make on the way.
Mom and dad both looked disappointed when I got home. “Inova, explain what happened,” dad said.
“I got the illusion and combat gems mixed up for my artificing project,” I explained. “The illusion was supposed to be a huge plume of dust going up from the ground.”
“Why would you even make something like that?”
“Because I. . .” I tried to come up with a good explanation to hide behind, but turned back towards the truth. “I wanted to build what I’ve imagined from the H&H games.”
“You will be skipping dinner tonight, Inova,” mom stated. “Dessert too.”
“Yes, mom.” I went to my room and set my saddlebags down. I’d considered the possibility of being punished that way, and I was hungry after leaving school, so I came home prepared. As soon as dinner was underway for everypony else, I got the paper bag with a hayburger and fries from my saddlebag and had dinner alone at my desk. As I ate, I wondered what the summer would bring.