The Study of a Winning Pony

by Ponibius


The Big Bang

The Study of a Winning Pony

Chapter 5: The Big Bang

Blossomforth chose a fairly nice restaurant in Ponyville, one that was going to take a good chunk out of my food budget for the month. I suppose this is what you should expect when you offer somepony a free meal without specifying any kind of price range. That will have to be something I keep in mind in the future when I offer meals as compensation for future interviews. Admittedly, Blossomforth knew her salads.

Blossomforth seemed to be enjoying her salad with generous portions of cherry tomatoes and cucumber slices when I cleared my throat to get her attention. “So, Blossomforth, about those interview questions I wanted to ask.”

She finished chewing and swallowed the mouthful of salad. “Oh right, that.” She wiped her face with a napkin before going on. “What did you want to know?”

I pulled out a pencil and a notepad from my saddlebags. “I just wanted to ask a few questions about your relationship with Cloud Kicker, and any observations you might have about her.”

Blossomforth fidgeted a bit in her chair. “So Cloud Kicker told me you're studying her for some sort of sociology report?”

I nodded. “That’s correct.”

“Seems really odd, don’t you think?” she asked. “Cloud Kicker doesn’t strike me as a typical subject for an academic report.”

“It is a bit odd.” I rubbed the back of my neck in discomfort. She was certainly not my first choice for a sociology study.

Blossomforth pursed her lips. “So why, why Cloud Kicker of all ponies?”

I thought for a moment. I really needed to come up with a more diplomatic way to explain what I was going to be doing with most of my time in the coming days, and saying ‘I’m studying Cloud Kicker because Princess Luna wants to learn about the sexually promiscuous pony in Ponyville’ was not going to cut it. Instead, I went with the first thing that sounded halfway decent in my head. “Sompony in Canterlot seems to think Cloud Kicker’s ... unusual role in society is worthy of study.” I shrugged as I continued. “So I’m going to do the best job I can for my part of the study.”

Blossomforth seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding her head. “Well alright then, ask away. You’re paying for lunch after all.”

I drew upon my mental checklist of questions as I levitated my pencil before me. “When did you first meet Cloud Kicker?”

Blossomforth’s ears perked to attention. “Oh, we first met on the job. I had just come to Ponyville after graduating from Cloudsdale University, starting my job here in the weather service. Since I didn't have any real work experience or good connections, I had to start out on the night shift.” She looked down at a cherry tomato that had fallen off her salad and started to fiddle with it on the table. “It can get pretty lonely working that shift since there's only a skeleton crew working nights unless there's some major weather scheduled, and most of the groundside ponies are asleep. It didn’t help that I didn’t know any of the ponies in Ponyville either. It was a pretty solitary existence for a while.”

She turned from the tomato to look at me and smiled. “But Cloud Kicker saw that I was keeping to myself most of the time and didn’t have any friends. So she came right on over during our lunch break one night, she slapped me on the back and said ‘Blossom, you look way too lonely for a pegasus as cute as you are, let’s bang.’ At first I was mortified by what she’d said, but when she saw that I was blushing hard enough to make my cheeks feel like they were on fire, she just laughed.”

She looked out the window next to us and focused on something in the distance. “I couldn’t even put two words together, so she gave me another pat on the back and said, ‘Well if that’s moving too fast for you then we can just go ahead and be friends for now. We can work on the with-benefits part later.’ After that she wouldn't leave me alone, and I guess I got used to having her around. So ... that's how we became friends.”

I pursed my lips as I considered Blossomforth’s story. “So her hitting on you caused you to become friends? That seems … unconventional.”

Blossomforth’s attention snapped from the window and back to me, and she shook her head vigorously. “Oh no, it’s not like that. That’s just her way of getting another pony to open up, or interacting with ponies in general. She saw that I was always just standing off to the side whenever everypony was socializing, and she was nice enough to come over and talk to me.”

I scribbled notes down on what she had just told me. “How would you describe your relationship with Cloud Kicker?”

Blossomforth fidgeted in her seat, and turned her head to look at her salad. “Oh, we’re totally friends, like BFF’s. We always hang out and have fun with each other, that’s all.”

I slammed the top of the table slightly harder than I had intended. My voice took on an irritated tone. “But she’s always so mean to you! She’s always teasing you, getting you all flustered, and making you uncomfortable. I don’t think there has been a single time you two have been together where she hasn’t made a sexual proposition towards you.” Why was I letting myself sound so vexed at his point?

Blossomforth’s eyebrows rose in surprise at my slightly explosive reaction to her answer, and she leaned back in her chair away from me. “Well, yeah, that’s just Cloud Kicker’s nature. She interacts with everypony she wants to be friendly with that way.”

I let out a low groan, and I ran a hoof through my mane. “Alright then, now this question is a bit risque, so please brace yourself.” I gave her a moment to brace herself mentally. “Have you ever had intercourse with Cloud Kicker?” Blossomforth’s eyes widened in surprise and she started coughing on open air. Note to self: find a better way to ask that question.

I began to worry that I was about to commit equicide through sheer embarrassment when she finally managed to catch her breath. “W-what?! NO!” she finally gasped out. “We’re just friends! Always have been, always will be!”

I crossed my forelegs across my chest. Yeah, just friends. Come on, I’ve seen married couples who don't spend as much time around each other--my parents, for instance. So I had more than a little trouble believing Cloud Kicker could spend more than five minutes with a pony without trying to ‘bang’ them. “So you’re saying that you, who was near as I can tell, spends the most time around Cloud Kicker, have never … you know, um, slept together, cuddled, had carnal relations with one another-”

“Stop! Enough already! No, we haven’t done anything like that!” Blossomforth’s face had been getting redder and redder as I had been going. Her heavy breathing suggested that I should probably stop pressing on this point. “We are friends, just friends, only friends.” She looked down at the table with a frown and sighed. “Always will just be friends.”

I tapped on the table as I considered the sincerity of Blossomforth’s words. She seemed pretty upset over the matter if she was just lying about it. Pushing her harder on this would likely just shut her down at this point, so I decided to throw her a question she was probably going to be more comfortable with to help calm her down. “I was curious, were there any reasons why you decided to come work at Ponyville?”

Blossomforth took a calming breath and nodded. “Yeah, after I graduated from college, I wanted to enter the weather service.  It’s solid, respectable field of work that has good pay and benefits, and it has clear paths for advancement for somepony with a degree in weather engineering like me.” She looked away and to the side for a moment before turning back to me to continue. “I spent my entire life in Cloudsdale. I didn’t exactly have any roots holding me down there, so I wanted to go new places, meet new ponies, spend a bit of time groundside, that kind of thing.”

This topic seemed to be one Blossomforth was more comfortable with. For starters, her face was no longer the color of a tomato, so I saw no reason not to continue with this line of questions. It was a bit interesting, and less embarrassing than anything Cloud Kicker related. Though I did detect a contradiction in Blossomforth’s last statement caught my interest. “Wait, you said that you spent your entire life in Cloudsdale, but that you also didn’t have any roots there? What about your family?”

Blossomforth frowned at my question. “Oh, uh, I don’t really have any family there. None that I know of anyways. I was needing a change in scenery, only so much white on white I could stand.”

I tapped my pencil on my lips as I thought over her answer. “So where is your family then if you spent most of your life in Cloudsdale?”

“I’d rather not go into that, please. It’s a bit personal.” She looked down at the table and did not elaborate.

This looked like a topic she was not longer comfortable with, and it seemed like I was getting into some personal business that was not for me. Blossomforth was not the center of my study anyways, so I decided to drop it in favor of a new line of questioning. “So why Ponyville then? There had to have been plenty of places to pick up and move to.”  

She tapped her chin and took a few moments to answer my question. “Well, it’s easier to advance in a small town’s weather service where there are more management positions available, and it isn’t as hard to stand out from the crowd. If I was in Manehatten or Canterlot as a weather worker, I would just be Cloud Pusher #244 to the higher-ups. I put in applications at a whole bunch of small towns and got a lot of offers, but out of all the potential bosses I interviewed with, Rainbow Dash seemed like the best choice. She seemed like she’d be a good boss, and it looked like she was somepony who was going places, so I signed up with Ponyville. I got promoted to an assistant weather manager a little bit ago, so I guess I made the right choice.”

I couldn’t deny that Rainbow Dash had a certain charisma to her. Even if she had the organizational abilities of a hurricane. “So, I guess you like being in the weather service?”

Blossomforth nodded. “I’ve been happy with it overall. It can be long hours and kinda dangerous at times though. I’ve been to the hospital...” She looked up at the ceiling while thinking for a moment. “Twelve or so times now.” My eyes widened in surprise at that. Seeing my reaction, she waved her hooves to reassure me. “Nothing serious, just the usual sprains, broken bones, and minor electrocution burns you get while in the weather service. Rainbow's always insistent on sending anypony to the hospital for even minor injuries, just to be safe. Which is kinda ironic, since getting her to go when she's hurt is about as easy as flying when your pinions are moulting.” We both let out a hearty laugh at that. The only time I had managed to get Dash to a hospital was because she was too unconscious to have a word about it. She was only second to Applejack in the stubborn department.

Blossomforth ran a hoof over her eye to wipe away a couple tears she had given while laughing. “But really, it’s rewarding work, and I enjoy it. Besides, whenever I’m on the no-fly list because of an injury, I get to give Dash’s office some much-needed organization and cleanup. She kinda makes our branch of the weather service look like some kind of second rate backwater weather branch because of that.”

“Yeah, I saw what her office was like just a little while ago,” I said in irritation. “I’d just finished organizing all her paperwork for her, and not five minutes after I was done she had already blown half of the forms onto the floor.”

Blossomforth giggled at the mention of her boss’s messiness. “That certainly sounds like her. I’ll set everything up for her, and the next day it looks like a tornado has gone through the office. She claims that it's all organized chaos and that she has a 'system' that I keep messing up, but I think that's just an excuse.”

From the sounds of it, Blossomforth was a far more organized and detailed-oriented pony than Dash. Little wonder that Dash had made her one of her assistant managers. Though Blossomforth seemed to be working up quite the rant now that I had her on the topic of work. “I mean really, I got all the paperwork and forms filled out for us to get a special weather monitor to help our team deal with all the crazy weather that keeps hitting us from the Everfree Forest. There was a government grant out there that would have paid for most of it, and that was probably the one chance we were ever going to get one for a small town like Ponyville. And what does she do with the file I had it all in? She loses it! Can you believe it! That’s the closest I’ve ever come to hoofticuffs with a pony.”

I internally grimaced at her less than generous take on my friend’s managerial ability. “Sounds like you're not that thrilled to work under her.”

Blossomforth’s ears twisted in confusion. “Huh? Nonono, she’s a great manager! I don’t really regret coming to work for her.” She leaned towards me in her chair and talked quickly to explain what she meant. “Like I said, she always makes sure her employees are safe and healthy as is manageable in this occupation. She knows everything there is to know about the practical side of cloud pushing, and she busts her flank everyday and puts in the long hours.” She leaned back and let out a long sigh. “The only reason you groundside ponies probably think she spends all her time napping is because she probably doesn’t get enough sleep at home when she should, and takes power naps near the ground when she does get a break.”

She rubbed her hooves lightly together slowly. “It’s just--she could use some personal improvement on the administrative side of things. She really should've hired a couple assistant managers a long time ago, but she kept insisting that she could handle everything herself. I know it sounds kind of wrong to say it, but if she hadn't gotten into that crash that left her grounded for two weeks, she'd probably still be trying to do it all without any help.”

With the assurance that one of my best friends was not a disaster waiting to happen, my thoughts turned to something else Blossomforth had mentioned. “You know Blossomforth, I have a weather tracker down in the library’s basement, and-”

“What?!” Blossomforth nearly tipped the table over when she stood up in excitement and surprise. She blushed when she saw the ponies at the tables near us look at her, and sat back down. She leaned in closer to me to talk more quietly. “Where did you get one? Those things costs tens of thousands of bits apiece. Even if you got some rundown piece of junk that no respectable weather branch would use, the scrap parts would still net you thousands on the market.”

“Oh um...” That was an uncomfortable question I did not particularly want to answer. Especially when it sounded like Blossomforth had worked so hard to get one, only for Dash to bungle the opportunity. I did not want to sound like I was bragging or anything. “It was a -- uh … grant -- of the student type … for research … because I do research for the princesses and stuff.” Smooth as silk, Twilight.

Her raised eyebrow did not suggest confidence in my explanation. “Twilight, I’ve been to college, and I’ve never heard of student research grants even half that large.”

“They do if you’re Princess Celestia’s personal student.” I gave a chuckle that did not at all come across as forced. I decided to turn the conversation to something away from this line of questioning. “Would you like to see it? I know you're bummed about not getting one for your branch here, but at least you can get to play around with one first-hoof right here in Ponyville.”

Blossomforth’s ears perked up in interest at the suggestion. “Really? You don’t have to waste your time or anything. Besides, there is the storm coming, and I should probably at least get a nap in be-”

“Of course you’re welcome to see it,” I interrupted. I smiled encouragingly at her. “I wouldn’t be offering if I wasn’t serious about it.” Plus how many times did I get to show off my weather tracker to anypony that cared, I mean really? Science could be such a lonely pursuit. I loved my friends, but none of them were terribly interested in any kind of scientific or academic pursuits. It took me months of work just to get Dash to read a popular series of fictional literature. “And if the rainstorm hits while you are looking at it, or you don’t want to fly home you can just crash in my guest bed, no problem.”

Blossomforth sat back and considered my offer for a couple moments before sighing in resignation. “Alright, this is probably going to be my only chance to see one outside of a weather service convention, much less play around with.”

I clapped my forehooves together in glee. “Excellent, let’s finish up here, and I’ll show you my entire science lab!”

“Lab?” Blossomforth asked.

***

I opened the first layer of magical shields protecting my science lab so that Blossomforth and I could enter, and with a touch of magic I resealed the hole in the pink energy field after us. We were now in one of the basement chambers of the library. Dominating the room before us sat a trio of large pink shield cylinders evenly spaced around the room that went from floor to ceiling.

I extended a hoof to welcome Blossomforth to my lab. “And here we are! Welcome to my science lab!” It was so rare that I got to show anypony what I was up to down here. Especially somepony who might have a clue about what I was talking about. I was more than a little bit excited. “How about I give you the tour while you're here?” Ok, so maybe I wanted to show off what I was doing a tiny, wincy, little bit. Sue me, we all want a little attention at least sometimes.

“Um, yeah, it sure is pink,” replied Blossomforth. She seem far from wowed when she walked up to the nearest shield on the right to looked at it.

“Oh, yeah.” I chuckled as I walked up to stand next to Blossomforth. “I keep everything under lockdown to be on the safe side.” My face scowled at bad memories of past incidents. Explosions, meltdowns, things unleashed on the world, embarrassments, of a whole wing of the School for Gifted Unicorns melting, pain, the science building for Canterlot University ceasing to exist for a few hours. “Yes, better safe than sorry I say.”

“I-it is safe down here right?” asked Blossomforth. She now looked at the shields with worry rather than curiosity. Perhaps she was merely too stunned by the largeness of it all and needed a bit of time to take it all in?

“Of course it is,” I said in a chipper mood. “These shields are meant to prevent any horrific disasters from being unleashed upon the world, after all.”

“Right,” said Blossomforth in a less than confident manner. “I think I might be having second-”

I opened a hole in the cylinder shield she was standing next to and I pushed her inside. “Come on, lots of science to show off!”

Inside of the first shield sat a pair of tables spaced far enough apart from one another to allow a pony to walk between without being too cramped. Beakers, tubes, wires, pots, and other assorted chemistry and alchemy related tools laid astrue across the tables. I had a couple of long term experiments going on, and a small black pot slowly bubbled on one of the tables, while liquids moved about in an apparatus I had set up on the other one. A pair of shelves filled with tomes and alchemical ingredients lined the wall of the shield.

“Here is my chemistry and alchemy lab!” I trotted to between the two tables and sat down to rub my two front hooves together. “As you can probably guess, this is where do some alchemical and chemical experiments.”

Blossomforth walked up to one of my beakers that contained a bubbling red liquid. “Yeah, I gathered that.”

I pointed to a beaker and tube system I had set up. “Right here, I’m trying to see if I can create a cheaper potion that would allow ponies to walk on clouds. Though thus far all I’ve been able to do is make ponies float without any control to where they are going. But that’s progress compared to my first attempt when the mixture caused a delayed concussive blast. So I think I’m getting there.” Failures were every bit as important as successes to science. A few explosions along the way was sometimes necessary to figure out what I was doing wrong.  

Blossomforth had moved along the table until she got to a vial filled with a silvery white power next to a cup of tea I had forgotten there a day or two ago. “Uh, Twilight?” I wondered why she sounded so worried.

I turned towards Blossomforth. “Yes Blossomforth?” I asked eagerly. I could not wait to answer questions.

“Is this potassium you have right next to this tea?” She gulped as she looked between the two containers.

“Why yes it is.” I nodded my head sagely. “I see you must have taken some chemistry in school. I was using it try and create an elixir to create a more efficient fertilizer. Unfortunately, all my test subjects died.” I looked at the pots and withered husks that used to be my tomato plant test subjects. “Within hours...” I really needed Spike to clean those out and get me more plants. Science needed to march on, after all.

She looked back between the potassium, the tea next to it, and myself as she shifted uncomfortably from hoof to hoof. “And you don’t see anything wrong -- nevermind.” For some reason she gingerly slid the tea cup away from the potassium. It probably wasn’t anything important.

“Anything else you have questions about?” I asked eagerly. I smiled at her as she looked at my tables with increasingly wider eyes. I guess she was impressed by the setup I had. It was not as large as the one I had back at the university … before that one incident anyways, but I was still proud of it.

“No, I think I’d best not--I mean I’m good.” I frowned in disappointment as Blossomforth glance nervously from one half finished experiment to the next. She eventually found a place to stand as far away from the tables as the shield allowed. Maybe she just felt too awkward to ask questions about a topic she didn’t fully understand? That was fine, I still had two more stations to show her.

I stood up and trotted to where Blossomforth stood against the shield. “Come on, let me show you what else I have set up.” I opened up the shield and Blossomforth quickly stepped through the hole. Good, she seemed anxious to see what else I had to show her.

I hummed to myself as I walked to the next station. I opened it up and turned to motion for Blossomforth to go on in.

She stopped short of the shield as she looked inside. “You know Twilight, I was just here to look at the perfectly safe weather tracker, and-”

“Oh don’t be shy.” I pushed her into the protective shield and closed it after I followed her in.

Within the shield lay on the floor a series of large interlocking rings made of copper, silver, gold, and mythril. On each of the rings was a precisely carved series of runes and sigils I had carved into them. The summoning circle had taken a good month's hard work to get just right, and more than a few bits, but it had been worth it as far as I was concerned. Within the circle was a shifting mass of air, clouds, and wind. Blossomforth tilted her head as she examined what she was seeing.

I pointed at the summoning circle and beamed a smile at Blossomforth. “This here is my summoning circle. I use it to, well, summon things in addition to a few other purposes.”

Blossomforth raised a shaky hoof towards the mass of air. “A-and what is that exactly?”

My ears perked. Good, questions, I liked answering questions. I’m good at answering questions about things. “Oh, that’s the Elemental of Air and Intellect I summoned a while ago. His …. her … um, it’s name is kinda unpronounceable in Equestrian, so I just call him Calvariam. Say hi Calvariam.” I activated the spell I had inlaid into the circle to allow communication between equines and beings of other planes of existence. Handy if you want to have meaningful conversations with beings not of this world.

The mass of clouds shifted and a pair of glowing yellow eyes appeared at its center. Its voice sounded like a rush of air with a slight rumble of thunder. “Why hello Twilight Sparkle, it is oh so nice to see you again. And what’s this?” It turned its eyes to look Blossomforth up and down, and she took a couple steps back away from the circle while under its gaze. “My my, did you finally get yourself a date my darling? It was about time. I was worried your nethers would never find another ponies touch. Oh, and a delightful choice indeed. I do like the freckles, they really make her quite cute don’t you think? And those flan-”

Blossomforth let out a squeak and backed another couple of steps from the summoning circle. “I-it talks?”

“Calvariam,” I said in a warning tone. I swear, it was always like this. “Play nice. This is the first time I’ve let you near a guest, so I suggest you don’t ruin it for yourself or I might just send you back to where you came from.”

It turned its eyes back towards me. “Now now, lets not do anything hasty. I do rather enjoy what I can study on the material plane.” Even without pupils I got the sense s/he/it was looking out of the corner of its eyes at me. “The equine form is quite marvelous if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Blossomforth slowly started to approach the circle, and she looked up at Calvariam with her ears flat to her head. “Twilight, why in Equestria do you have something like this in your basement? And did that … thing make a pass at me?”

“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly harmless as long as-” My eyes widened when I saw just how close she had gotten to the circle. My horn glowed and a shield snapped up just short of the circle, and Blossomforth bumped into it with her snout.

She let out a complaining little groan and rubbed her nose. “What was that for?”

“First rule of summoning circles: never break the circle,” I warned. I pointed to just how close Blossomforth was to the edge of the circle. “Break the circle with anything material, and it gets out. That is generally classified as a Bad Thing to happen.” Blossomforth gulped and walked around the circle to place me between her and the summoning circle.

“Aw, so close,” Calvariam said in disappointment. “Almost as close as that time I convinced your familiar that I had candy.”

I groaned and rubbed my forehead. “To answer your question, I’m using him to do some research on the elemental plane of air. Its breadth of knowledge is quite impressive.”

Calvariam let out a chuckle. “Yes, she let me ride her in exchange for information.”

“Possess,” I quickly clarified as Blossomforth looked at me, mouth ajar. My redding cheeks were not helping my cause. “I let it possess me once for information. Under very controlled conditions.”

That had been true. We had signed a contract. It would give me considerable information on its plane in addition to other topics in exchange for letting it ri-possess me for a short period of time. I had very clearly outlined things it could and could not do. It could do nothing to leave the lab, harm me or others in any way, shape, or manner, or do anything else I could think of to get into trouble. All it wanted in exchange was access to my body and be allowed to read a single book of its choice. To be fair, it had kept its end of the bargain. But I had made a couple of mistakes when dealing with Calvariam. I did not check ahead of time what type of book it would want to read. I had only forbidden him from trying to read anything that would get me into trouble. It instead chose something considerably more embarrassing. And I had to sit there reading that book with it every paragraph of the way. It thought it was funny to tease me. Since then, I’ve kept it locked up in the circle to keep it from causing any further trouble.

I suddenly decided that Calvariam was just not ready for the public at large. “You know what, let’s just move on to the weather tracker.”

Blossomforth had by this point slowly backed into the shield and away from the being of air and intellect. “I think that’s a good idea.”

“I hope you two mares have fun with each other,” said Calvariam cheerfully. “Don’t be shy.”

I opened the shield and let the two of us out. It was time for the climax of the show anyways. We made our way to the last shield cylinder, and I opened it up with a push of magic.

“So, the weather tracker then?” asked Blossomforth hopefully.

I gave her a grin. “Yep, here it is.” I let her in and followed after her.

Inside was my weather tracker. If you chopped it in half, it would probably have filled up the main library. The magical computer was made up of a variety of different buttons, consoles, and levers, and a pair of wires ran up into the ceiling. The device hummed, glowed, and beeped as it monitored the local weather conditions through the sensors I had attached to the roof (Was that the word for the top of a library that was also a tree? Canopy perhaps? Note to self: research building codes involving buildings that were also trees so I know what to call the top of the place I live).

Blossomforth gave a squeal of delight upon seeing the weather tracker and galloped up to it. She began to run from on console to colsole to examine its various features. “It’s wonderful! Really, a Hoofington Grand Tracker 8000? How in the world did you manage to get one of these? I couldn’t afford it with a full year's wage, possibly not even three.” She turned to me with wide eyed wonderment. “And you keep this in your basement? There are weather teams that would kill for a piece of equipment like this.”

My ears lowered in embarrassment. “Well, I was really hoping to figure out a way to help the weather teams located along the length of the Everfree better track its weather.” I walked up to the weather tracker and began to play with some of its controls. “It’s not like normal weather in Equestria where all you have to do is track what the pegasi are doing and the weather patterns they create. The Everfree just creates its own weather, and causes all sorts of trouble for the weather ponies as a result.”

“Tell me about it,” Blossomforth groaned. She looked over the screen I had activated that showed the weather of the nearby section of the Everfree. “Nothing is more annoying than having your carefully planned and prepared weather blown away by some unexpected rogue storm from the Everfree.”

“I don’t doubt it.” I looked at the monitor and rumbled in disapproval. “Uh, still not enough range.” I turned my head away from the monitor and faced Blossomforth. “Unfortunately, my problem is that I don’t have enough range to really get a deep, penetrating scans of the Everfree’s weather.” I tapped on one of the screens. “So my data is too limited. All I’m getting it the very edge of whatever is coming our way. Which isn’t enough to really help predict future weather patterns.”

Blossomforth bent over a couple other screens and examined them with intense interest. “At least you can monitor all Ponyville’s weather. Seems the storm has already started.” She looked up at the ceiling. “That roof must be really thick if I can’t even hear the rain.”

“Yeah, that’s why I put most of this equipment down here. I can only hear thunder down here, for the most part. It helps me to concentrate on my work.” I trotted over next to her to see which screen she was watching the building storm outside.

She rubbed her chin and hummed to herself. “Have you heard of the new weather balloons Cloudsdale is developing? The ones that have divination talismans attached to them that allow for tracking weather at longer distances?”

I sat down besides the weather monitor and tapped the ground as I tried to recall if I had heard anything about what Blossomforth had mentioned. “No, I don’t believe I have. Sounds interesting.”

“Yeah.” She bobbed her head in excitement. “If you could get a few of those and get them keyed into this baby right here, and anchored them along the edge of the Everfree, I’m willing to bet you would get much better range and data as a result.”

I looked up and considered what she was suggesting. “That has some real possibilities.” I smiled at my scientific companion. “I’ll have to look into that. You can bet you will be the first one to find out when I do.” I used my levitation magic to pull a panel along the floor from the machine. “Thus far all I have been able to do is make some modifications to try and boost the power, but it still hasn’t been enough. But if your weather balloons work then we might be able to revolutionize the study of the Everfree’s weather.”

She gave me a wide smile. “That sounds like a great idea. It would certainly be nice to know what the Everfree is throwing at us for once.”

Blossomforth walked up to where I had removed the panel and bent down to look at the guts of the machine. She whistled when she got a look. “Yeah, it looks like you did a real number to this thing to upgrade its performance. It’s hard to tell where the original parts start and the custom job ends.” She hummed to herself as she examined my work. “Hey, aren’t you putting a lot of stress on the central spell matrix here? All this extra power is really pushing it to its limits.”

I knelt down next to Blossomforth, and she pointed to the spell matrix she was referencing to. “Oh, yeah, that’s why I installed a couple of fail safes in the event anything should go wrong. They should keep any magical backlashes or fluctuations under control. Worst comes to worst, it should just shut down until I repair it.”

“If you say so.” For some reason, Blossomforth sounded less than convinced. She crawled out of the weather tracker and stretched her back with a few pops as she stood up. She sighed and frowned at me. “Twilight … don’t you think that … well, isn’t this whole place a big old disaster waiting to happen?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Blossomforth glanced back and forth along the shield walls. “This whole place looks like it is about to explode! The dangerously laid out alchemy lab, that thing you keep in the easily-escapable circle, your weather tracker that’s one bad jolt from blowing a fuse, it seems you're just setting yourself up for Bad Things to happen.”

I gave the shield a couple of hard knocks. “That’s what these are for obviously. Even if there’s an incident with one of my experiments, these shields will contain it. I might lose one of the experiment stations, but nopony should get hurt. I made sure the shield for the alchemy lab is specifically designed to resist burns and explosions. Even if Calvariam should be able to escape the circle due to some mishap, it will just return to its plane within a minute’s time without the circle’s energy holding him together and nopony to inhabit. The shield should be more than strong enough to give entropy time to do its job.” I tapped the weather track a couple of times. “And this is a simple weather tracker, it’s not like its highly explosive or anything. It’s shield is more to protect it from the other experiments then anything.”

Blossomforth placed a hoof against the shield and gave it a good shove. “Are you sure they are sturdy enough to take enough punishment should anything happen?”

It was like she did not have any confidence in my safety features. I gave the shield a good bucking to show its solidity. I told myself that the fact it had hurt my rear hooves more than it did the shield was a good sign. “Trust me, I learned how to cast shield spells from the best. My big brother is the premier shield caster in all of Equestria, and you better believe he taught me the ins and outs of the spell and its variants. My brother takes two things very seriously, shields and the safety of his little sis. Granted, I didn’t think he was doing a very good job of it while making me balance a bucket full of cold water on my head while tossing tennis balls at me, but the training paid dividends later on.” The fact I had managed to block Discord’s chaos magic long enough to use the Elements of Harmony said that much.

Blossomforth chewed on her bottom lip. “If you say so. I’m just a bit concerned for your safety is all. The shields still wouldn’t protect you if you were inside them when something bad should happen.”

“Hello, most magically talented unicorn in Equestria,” I said confidently. “I can take care of myself, you know.” To show this, I brought up a personal shield that gave me protection from all directions with my magic. I then opened up a hole in the shield wall for the weather tracker, and teleported outside of both shields. I waved at Blossomforth from outside the shield, and I closed the hole in the shield. I then teleported back into the personal shield I had placed inside of the weather tracker’s shield and then dispelled the personal shield.

Blossomforth whistled at my little display of magic. “See.” I bowed to her with a flourish. “I’m more than capable of either protecting myself or escaping in the event of an emergency. The only way things could truly get serious is if all the shields were dropped at the same time. And really, you would either have to be insane or incompetent to do that and--” I would have gone with my explanation, but it was at that point when all the shields were dropped.

“SPIKE!” I yelled, knowing exactly who the perpetrator was. I turned quickly towards the doorway to the lab to see my number one assistant. Spike was holding a brass tube with arcane runes crafted all along its surface, as I knew he would be. He chuckled when he saw us and tried to hold the talisman keyed to the basement shields behind his back. “What have I told you time and again about laboratory safety procedures and the shields? You mind explaining yourself, buster?”

“Oh come on, Twilight,” Spike pleaded. “It’s so inconvenient to have to clean down here when I run into one of your stupid shields everytime I turn around.”

I groaned angrily and rubbed my face. “Those inconvenient shields are designed to keep everypony -- and everydragon -- safe. You can’t just lower all of them at the same time without it becoming a safety hazard.”

Spike stomped a foot on the ground and moaned. “But the noise from the shields hurts my ears and gives me a headache. I don’t like working around them. They weren’t designed with a dragon’s hearing in mind you know.”

“Spike,” I trotted up to a table placed next to the doorway to the lab with various pieces of safety equipment, and slammed a paper on the wall. “Remember this safety checklist I put here for you to sign off on every time you come down to the lab? I got you those custom made earplugs and ear-mitts for a reason. Did you even plan on putting on any of this safety equipment I got for you?” Did he even understand how much extra it cost me to get safety equipment specifically to fit a baby dragon? There was not exactly a market for that type of thing.

He crossed his arms over his chest and glared up at me. It could get annoying how stubborn Spike could become when he chose to be. “All I’m doing is cleaning. Not like I’m going to be mixing chemicals or whatever you’re doing down that is always causing a ruckus.”

“Just give me the talisman, Spike.” I extended a hoof out to Spike. “You clearly aren’t responsible enough to be allowed to use that. We have a guest over anyways, so I don’t really want to get into an argument with you in front of her. I’m putting the shields back up and that’s that.”

Spike placed his claws on his hips. “No, I’ve got cleaning to do down here, and I don’t like the shields up when I do that.”

If he was not going to give it to me, then I was just going to have to take it away. I used my levitation to get a grasp of the talisman and started to pull on it to get it away from Spike. “Give it over, we can have a talk about laboratory safety later after Blossomforth leaves.”

Spike grasped the talisman in both claws and refused to let go as I slowly dragged him across the ground. “No, I’m busy cleaning.”

What had gotten into him all of a sudden? Blossomforth seemed content to stay out of our quasi-sibling argument considering she was standing to the side and trying to not be noticed. We struggled back and forth over the talisman for a minute as I tried to shake it from Spike’s grip, but his grasp was surprisingly strong for just being a baby dragon. He was getting his whole body into the act when he suddenly spun and slammed right into me. He nearly knocked me over, and I had to stumble a bit before I regained my balance.

“Ouch! Watch it Spike!” I lost my concentration on my levitation spell. The sudden loss of an opposing force caused Spike to lose his balance and he fell to the floor. He lost his grip on the talisman, and it went sliding off along the floor, coming to a stop under one of my alchemy tables.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” Spike grumbled. He picked himself off the ground and ran over to climb under the table.

I rubbed my leg and shoulder where Spike had collided with me. “Spike, be careful under there.” I swear, he lives to vex me sometimes.

“Got it,” I heard from under the table.

I lowered my head in time to see Spike try and stand up, only to hit his head against the bottom of the table. I glanced up and saw a couple of beakers and vials start to sway and threaten to fall. I tried to grab as many as I could with my telekinesis before they could fall over, but I was not fast enough and a couple of instruments came crashing down. A couple of the liquids combined on the tabletop and started to hiss and bubble. I noticed that Spike was right under where the chemical reaction was happening, and I yanked on my assistant before the chemical finished burning its way through the table and fall onto the floor where Spike had been standing.

My heart thumped in my chest at the serious accident that had nearly happened. I carefully gave Spike a visual examination to make sure he had not gotten any of the substance on him. “Are you okay? You didn’t get any of that stuff on you, did you?”

Spike rubbed the top of his head where he had hit the table. “I’m fine, but did you have to yank me so hard? You made me drop the talisman, and now it’s...” He stopped when he looked at the slowly melting table and floor.

I looked under the table and saw that Spike had indeed dropped the talisman under the table … where it was now melting. Perfect, just perfect, now there was no way to easily put the shields back up. I could do it manually, but that took a few minutes.

“Uh, Twilight.” Blossomforth trotted up next to me. “Aren’t those shields supposed to keep some great disaster from happening?”

“Yes, yes they are Blossomforth.” I dragged Spike further away from the alchemy tables to keep him safe and waved for Blossomforth to come with me.

“Then I think we should be a bit concerned.” She pointed a shaking hoof at the slowly growing hole in the table and floor. “So do you know how much that acid is going to end up melting before its done?”

I looked at the acid and my eyes widened. That was not good. “Err, good question. Let me check.” I began to levitate all the materials from the gradually eroding table to the one that was still fine. While doing that I trotted up to a nearby blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk. “Alright, I think that was my mixtures of Benson’s Reactive Elixir and Blackroot Extract. So...” I began to quickly write down the two alchemical substances chemical bonds and then put them together. “Oh dear...” I did not like what I was seeing. That stuff was way too reactive to make me comfortable.

“What? What is it?” asked Blossom. She kept a cautious distance from the hole as she walked up to look at the chalkboard. “That stuff is going to stop soon, right?”

“Uh, eventually.” After it lowers the library into a sinkhole. I took a moment to think, and then began to make additions to the chemical bonds I had already written down. “Spike, grab some of the salt from the shelf and put it in a circle around the chemical. Carefully! I think that should counteract the stuff.”

Spike raised an eyebrow at me. “Should?”

I did not have time for this. “Just do it Spike, you’re in enough hot water without you arguing with me right now.” Spike grumbled something under his breath  He walked over to the shelves and started to quickly rummage through them to find the salt as I instructed. The good news was that the chemical burn was not spreading that quickly.

Blossomforth pointed at the doorway leading out of the lab. “Perhaps now would be a good time for me to leave. Seems you’re really busy with the whole keeping your lab from melting thing.”

She moved towards the door when there the sound of thunder boomed through the library. There was a scream of surprise from only Blossomforth as the lights in the basement went out. The weather tracker shot out sparks and two of the consoles blew out completely. We were left with no lighting but the sparks and flashing monitors of the weather tracker. At least until I lit my horn with magic anyways, but it was still pretty dark in the room.

Blossomforth slowly stood up from her hunkered down stance on the floor and looked at the weather tracker. “Uh, Twilight? I’m really not liking how that thing sounds right now.”

Neither did I honestly. All the sparks and irregular, labored humming it was giving off were not good indicators for its operating condition. I moved over to the machine and gave it a cautious look over. It looked like several circuits had been fried, and a couple of screens had blown out. Two consoles looked completely ruined--one’s top had blown completely off, leaving nothing but burned wired hanging out, while the other only had a flickering blue screen and was constantly shooting off sparks. I began to pull off one of the weather tracker’s panels to see what was wrong inside when I head Spike call from across the room.

“Uh, Twilight, can you come back this way? I can’t see without the light of your horn.” I heard the sound of several boxes and glasses falling onto the floor. “And I’m having trouble finding the salt. Where did all of that stuff go?”

I yelled across the room. “If you can’t see, look for the chemical glow sticks on the table by the entrance to the lab Spike. You know, with all the safety equipment I tell you to use but you don’t?” I heard more crashing and the breaking of glass from across the room. This evening was shaping up nicely. “And watch the floor near the tables. Go around the edge of the room if you have to, but do not step in that chemical!”

I knew the chemical was only slowly eating its way through everything, but I had no idea how bad the weather tracker was. Given how my life had gone up to this juncture, I was just going to guess that whatever had happened to my weather tracker, it was bad. So I decided to check with the disaster I knew the least about, and hope Spike would pull through on the other one that was only slowly going to turn my home into hole in the ground.

“I’ll see if I can help Spike out there,” said Blossomforth.

I gave her a nod of my head in agreement. “That would be a big help, thanks.” I went back to looking inside the weather tracker. Smoke filled the machine, and I tried to wave the putrid vapors away so that I could look at the mangled interior.

Blossomforth trotted over to the table and grabbed a chem stick. She picked one up from the table, bent it in half for a second, and then shook it vigorously to light a portion of the room in a green glow. She slowly walked into the center of the room, and lit more of it up. Glancing over I could now see Spike fumbling his way around the edge of the room, and … watched as Spike’s foot hit the edge of my summoning circle. His arms flailed as he tried to regain his balance, but he lost the battle and he tripped and fell right into the middle of the circle.

There was an audible pop and crack as the magical forces that held Calvariam in place broke. There was a rush of air and wind that moved about the room and blew light objects about. The airflow suddenly coalesced near the roof, and then struck down on Blossomforth. She screeched and fell to the floor as the wind blew over her and formed a small storm around her. The storm swirled about her trembling form for several seconds before slowly diminishing in strength. After slowly removing her shaking hooves from her eyes, Blossomforth looked around the room cautiously. “What in all of Equestria was that?”

“Oh, that was just me jumping on for a ride,” came a deep, wheezing voice from Blossomforth’s mouth.

She let out a high pitch squeal and put her hooves over her mouth. I noticed that her eyes had taken on a yellowish glow. Oh this was perfect, just perfect. Exactly what I needed right now on top of everything else.

Blossomforth cautiously moved her hooves away from her mouth. She looked at me and trembled slightly. “Twilight, would you mind explaining what’s going on?”

I really did not have time for this. Not with everything going wrong at exactly the same time. But things were not going to get easier if I had Blossomforth panicking on me to add to my problems of my weather tracker possibly exploding, or that gradually growing hole of acid. So I had little choice but to try and quickly reassure Blossomforth everything was going to be okay, even if the whole situation was falling apart. I moved my front two hooves in a calming motion. “It’s alright Blossomforth, Calvariam only possessed you. It’s not a huge deal, and we’ll fix it in good time.”

“N-not a b-big d-deal,” she spluttered out. She pointed a shakily at her head. “There is another--thing in my head!”

“Well, not so much in your head as attached to your soul really,” added Calvariam not-so-helpfully. “It’s kind of a metaphysical thing. If it makes you feel any better, I’m in no way parasitic in nature. I just jumped onto your soul and took up residence so that I didn’t have to return to my home plane. It can get so boring there after a few millennia of existence.”

Hmm, it seemed that the glowing in Blossomforth’s eyes increased when Calvariam was speaking. I wonder if that was due to it imparting its new physical presence to us, or a result of him using more power to--not now Twilight. Keep things from exploding now, metaphysics and the nature of possessions later.

“Calvarim, would you kindly stop harassing Blossomforth. I’m trying to save my laboratory thank-you-very-much.” I could not help but glance at the weather tracker and its violently sparking ways. “Look, I need you to stay calm. I know its scary, but Calvariam can’t actually hurt you. All it can do it talk through your voicebox, and a few other relatively harmless things. Trust me, it can be annoying at times … most of the time--well, just about all the time, but it isn’t malicious.”

“Quite right,” said Calvariam. Endless Night, that was creepy to see another voice coming out of Blossomforth’s mouth. It was slightly distracting me from trying to keep my basement from becoming a national disaster area. “I can’t really take control of your body … much anyways. Not enough to matter. But I can do nifty things like read your active thoughts. Can’t just peruse through you memories like they were an open book, but there are ways around that for a clever being of air and intellect such as myself. For instance, I don’t know if you have any romantic interests, but if I ask you if you ‘do have secret crushes,’ you are likely to start thinking about that. So I’m curious, do you have any secret crushes?”

Blossomforth gave a squeaking sound. She looked up and looked around with her eyes as though trying to see Calvariam. “Hey, don’t just go looking at my thoughts. Those are private! As in not for you to know!”

“Hmmm, oh, I see,” Calvariam said mischievously. “I do approve. Quite the nice flank on that one. It is quite easy to see why you are pining after her.”

She covered her ears with her hooves and squinted her eyes close. “I don’t care if it isn’t malicious,” she protested loudly. “Get this thing out of me now! I don’t want it reading my thoughts about--things I don’t want to talk about.” She looked around suspiciously and lowered her head as she whispered to me. “Besides, you know how weird it is for this thing to be speaking with my mouth?”

“Hey, no one be concerned about me over here or anything,” protested Spike. He rubbed his face where it had collided with the floor. He slowly picked himself up from the floor, and glowered at the two--three of us. “Just ignore the baby dragon who fell on the floor. He’s probably just fine.”

The humming and throbbing  noise from the weather tracker was picking up at a threatening pace. I was having trouble not paying attention to both it, and giving Blossomforth at least most of my attention. “I’m sorry, but I need to deal with some of the other things that are threatening to cause a completely disaster right now.”

“Indeed, let the silly girl play around with her explosive instruments,” Calvariam said with amusement. “Besides, think of all the fun the two of us could have. You know, if you let me help you I could get you into the sack of that hot lavender flank. Within the hour she will be like butter in your hooves with my knowledge and the many fine features you bring to the table. Here, let me give you a few images to give you an idea of what you can look forward to. Just imagine her in a nice pair of socks, oh my.”

Blossomforth’s eyes widened in horror and embarrassment. She grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me violently. “Twilight! Get! This! Thing! Out! Of! My! Head! It’s putting images in there, and I do not like it!”

I was not going to get anything productive done with Blossomforth shaking me around like a ragdoll, and things were moving way too quickly for me to just sit there and let the desperate mare give me whiplash.  “Alright, alright, I just need a few things to help you!” I managed to finally get break her grasp on me. I had to take a moment to shake my head to make the room stop spinning. “Get me some chalk, silver dust, and … salt, yes, help Spike get that salt he was looking for earlier. That’s all I need to banish Calvariam properly.” Maybe if I could get her to help me we would be able to get through this without me having to explain to Mayor Mare why Ponyville had a new water reservoir where the library used to be.

Blossomforth nodded quickly in affirmation. “Chalk, silver, salt, right! I’ll find those, and be back as quickly as I can.” She galloped over to my ingredient shelves and desperately began to shuffle her way through them. And by that, I mean she would look at something and then shove it to the floor when it was not what she was looking for. I could already hear the sound of bits falling out of my coin purse. It sounded like breaking glass and metal containers hitting the floor.

With Blossomforth’s helpfulness now a debatable thing, I lowered myself to the floor, and stuck my head into the open panel of the weather tracker.

“Hey, don’t break everything,” I heard Spike protest. “I have to organize and clean all of that you know.”

“So I guess this panicked searching is a no to the idea of sexy time then?” asked Calvariam in disappointment. “Have you ever imagined her with a wet mane? Like ... this. It’s raining outside after all.”

I tried to ignore the horrified screech as I tried to examine the damage done to the weather tracker. By the looks of it a lightning strike ran through it and fried large portions of the arcane circuitry. I got to the heart of the machine and examined the central spell matrix. What I saw was not comforting. The arcane sphere was badly cracked. It was giving a nasty hissing noise as black smoke escaped it. Looking around I saw that the failsafes I had installed had completely melted, and the auto-shutoff was nice and crispy. The fact that the manual shutoff was now a pile of steaming, melted goo on the floor of the weather tracker was not a fact of comfort.

I licked my lips as I considered what I was looking at. I thought I might be able to stave off a disaster if I could quickly disable and disconnect the central spell matrix. It would not be easy with three quarters of the nearby systems zapped into oblivion, but I am a genius like that. Perhaps genius enough to avoid mass property damage. Well--more than had already been suffered, I’m not perfect.

I began to get to work to save the weather tracker and I unhooked a couple of its connections. Things were going pretty well until I suddenly felt a hoof grope along my plot. I let out a yelp and I jerked up to slam my head against the central spell matrix. Which was about as good as you would expect for the spell matrix and my now throbbing head. One of the cracks on the spell matrix had widened and more ominous smoke was billowing out of it. Guessing what the problem was, I looked down to see a white hoof jerk itself away from my rump and heard Blossomforth squeak out from outside the machine. It seems Blossomforth had just discovered that Calvariam could control her limbs if she was not paying attention, not the best timing for that type of thing.

I growled and shoved myself out of the weather tracker. “Calvariam, what the hay!” I really did not need these types of shenanigans right now. I saw Blossomforth and Spike both standing besides the weather tracker. Blossomforth face was starting take on a nice reddish tone that spoke volumes of her guilt. Spike was glaring at her and was tapping his foot in annoyance.

Blossomforth waved her hooves at me. “It wasn’t me. M-my hoof acted on its own.”

“No, that was my bad,” chuckled Calvariam.

I messaged my forehead where I had hit my head. “Uh, watch your hooves. Calvariam can move your limbs a little bit if you aren’t paying attention. Did you get the components I asked for at least?” It would perhaps have been more prudent to have gone right back to working on the weather tracker, but I had been quite distracted by Calvariam’s--antics. The book I had found his name in said he was ‘Safe but Annoying,’ and I now understood why the ‘annoying’ part of that statement had been both bolded and triple underlined. Ponies tended to do that type of thing for good reasons in summoning books.

Blossomforth hurriedly dropped a piece of chalk and a small metal contained on the floor in front of me. “We found the chalk and silver, but not the salt.”

I took my two forehooves and began to rub my face in irritation. This was going to be even harder than I originally calculated. “Spike, what happened to all the salt we had down here? You know we are supposed to keep a solid stock of the stuff at all times.”

Spike tapped his chin with a talon. Realization dawned in his eyes, and he slapped his forehead with a claw. “That’s right, we ran out of salt upstairs, so I borrowed the salt from the lab to eat with. I guess I forgot to return it when I was done, sorry.”

“Spike!” I groan angrily. Spike was being an endless source of problems today. “Lab ingredients are not to be used for food. Did you not read the laboratory safety guidelines list I-just forget it. Just go and-”

I became very aware of a couple of things happening in the lab. I saw in the light of the glowstick that the chemical burn was on the verge of eating its way through the other alchemy tables nearer legs and also all the material components Spike and Blossomforth have dumped on the floor. The fact that the weather tracker was now pumping out a disturbing amount of smoke and sparks was also a worrying trend that I could not ignore. In short, I was out of time to manage this disaster.

“Oh buck it,” I said with finality. I tossed a shield up around Spike, Blossomforth, and I (I guess Calvariam counts too, due to being in the right place, at the right time).

I honestly can not tell you what finally did it. It could easily have been any of the somewhat dangerous alchemical and chemical material components in the lab interacting with any variety of other dangerous substances, heat, or energy. It may very well have been my weather tracker. In the end, Blossomforth had been right. I had placed too much stress on the central spell matrix, and it was probably only a matter of time for something to go wrong with that. Perhaps my summoning circle had simply gotten tired with being left out, and it had also decided to dog pile onto the disaster wage. Maybe all three of my lab stations simply decided to conspire against me and meltdown at the exact same time. Didn’t really matter in the end in the grand scheme of things really. All that mattered were the results.

The basement exploded.

***

I walked out of the smoke filled basement with an unconscious Blossomforth held in my levitation field and Spike on my back. My mane and coat were a mess from the smoke, ash, and I did not want to know what else. Blossomforth was not in any better shape, and you would have trouble telling what color Spike’s scales were. Luckily my shield had held and had absorbed the worst of the explosion. Though it didn’t prevent the floor from under my protective bubble from getting blown away and sending the lot of us rolling around the library. But all things considered it could have been worse.

I dumped Spike unceremoniously on the floor, and gently placed Blossomforth onto the main library room floor. I was sore, I was tired, I ached, and I was not in a good mood.

“Spike,” I said with barely contained fury. I prodded my ‘number one assistant.’ “Spike.”

Spike rolled over and away from me. “Uh, just five more minutes.”

“Spike!” I snapped at him.

He slowly sat up and rubbed his head. “Alright, alright, I’m up.” He looked up into my seething glare. “Oh, so I guess everyone’s okay?” He attempted an innocent smile. It was compromised by his guilt.

“Spike,” I spoke so cooly the temperature of the room likely dropped. “The library basement exploded. Everything down there is on fire. My lab and months of work has either been destroyed or is having its combustibility sorely tested as we speak.” I lowered my head to Spike’s level and looked him right in the eyes. “Do you know why this has happened, Spike?”

Spike raise a single claw and smiled with embarrassment. “Rotten luck?”

My glare did not soften. My tone of voice did not change from its icy inflection. “Because someone did not follow proper lab safety procedure, Spike.” The mask broke, and my fiery rage came out. My mane was smoking. I hoped it was not on fire. “That talisman is for Emergencies Only, Mister!”

“The basement only explod-” He withered when I intensified my glare. “Okay, yeah, you win this one. This was kinda my bad.”

“Spike, I just...” My eye twitched. “Just-” I gave a loud groan of frustration. I jabbed a hoof in the direction of the door to the library basement. “Clean it up,” I said with finality.

Spike looked at the doorway and then back to me. “But it’s on fire.”

I trembled. “You. Are. Fireproof!” I gestured sharply at the door again. “Put it out and clean it up!”

Spike groaned in irritation. “Fine, figures you would remember that I can’t burn.” He stood up from the floor and stomped angrily down the stairs into the basement.

I watched him drop down out of view. “I love that little dragon, but--Gaagh!” I turned to face Blossomforth. “And as for you...” My horn glowed and a trio of glowing bands of magic formed to hold Blossomforth onto the ground.

“Oh, hey, that isn’t very neighborly,” said a voice that came out of Blossomforth’s mouth but was not her own. Glowing yellow eyes snapped open, and her head turned as best it could to look at me. “Hm, seems you weren’t convinced with my playing dead trick. But really, come now, I was just hoping to have a bit of fun before I had to go.”

I began to trot to the kitchen. “Nope, it is past time for you to be evicted, Calvariam. You’re late on the rent, you created a mess in your living space, and you disturb the neighbors. You ... are ... done.”

“Oh come now,” pleaded Calvariam, “don’t be like that. We had plenty of intellectual discussions that you found useful. So I took your friend for a ride. No big deal. I can’t actually do anything without her permission. Besides, I think I could give her some help with her relationship issues. The poor mare really could use some action in her life.”

I came out of the kitchen with the cylinder of salt that should have been in the basement to prevent an explosion. Not its first intended purpose, but life works in funny ways sometimes. I began to pour it in a circle around Blossomforth’s body. “Sorry, Calvariam, but my patience is at an end. Maybe I’ll summon you again when I’m not so short on patience, but for now you need to go.” I tossed the empty container of salt, and began to cast the complicated spell. This was going to take a bit out of me without the silver dust from downstairs, but I would just have to do without.

Blossomforth’s mouth formed a frown. “You know, you really just need to relax and-” Whatever it had been about to say was cut off when I cast the first part of the spell was cast. Calvariam was drawn out as a gust of wind from Blossomforth’s mouth. I held the mass of air together over Blossomforth’s prone form. “Call me,” begged the air elemental. With a final effort of will and magic I finished the banishment spell, and the mass of air and wind lost strength and dissipated as Calvariam returned to its home plane.

I fell to my knees briefly as I tried to catch my breath. The last hour had been on the unexpectedly trying end of things. Remembering something I had read in the book that I had discovered Calvariam, I crawled over to Blossomforth and lowered my head to her mouth. As I feared, she was not breathing. The book had warned that forcefully expunging the air elemental might ‘steal the subjects breath away.” Luckily, there was a relatively easy way to correct the problem, if on the slightly embarrassing side of things. All one had to do was ‘give the victim a breath’ to correct the problem. I figured Blossomforth would be more concerned about her lack of breathing then what I was about to do. I’m sure she would understand once I explained it to her.

I steeled my nerves, and I bent down to lock lips with Blossomforth and breathed a breath into her. Her eyes snapped open in surprise, and she took in a staggered breath.

This is of course when Cloud Kicker charged into the library’s front door.

Cloud Kicker was breathing heavily and was soaking wet from the storm outside. She looked down at the two of us. Our lips were still locked, but we were too horrified and shocked to stop as we both looked at Cloud Kicker with wide eyes.

She grinned at the two of us. “I have no idea what is going on here, but I want in on it.” She pointed straight up. “Because the banging is literally loud enough for me to hear it clear from cloud level.”

The universe is conspiring against me. What other explanation was there?