//------------------------------//
// 2. Rainbow Dash Tries Science :: E/Co 
// Story: Kaidan's Short Stories: Vol. 1 - Teen 
// by Kaidan 
//------------------------------//


{Random}{Comedy}{Science}


Perched upon a cumulus cloud, Dash waited patiently. Down below, her quarry was just finishing up her preparations. Soon, the mare and her assistant, would be headed to Canterlot to meet with Celestia. Once she left, Dash would make her move. Struggling to stay awake, Dash finally saw the last checklist get put away in her saddlebags. She set off towards Canterlot, and Dash had the whole laboratory underneath the library to herself.

Descending from the cloud slowly, Dash made her way to the window she had unlocked yesterday. She was about to fly through when she heard a familiar voice.

"Dash! Hey wanna see my new trick?" Scootaloo was buzzing her wings on a scooter down below.

Dash didn't want to be bothered, but she couldn't just turn away the filly. "Hey squirt, I've got something 20% cooler than some scooter tricks, come on!" Dash quickly scooped the filly up and flew through the window, closing it behind her.

"Uh Dash, why are we breaking into the library? The front door was unlocked." Dash sped down to the front door and locked the deadbolt, then turned a sign around to read "Closed" in the window. 

"I'm going to borrow Twilight's lab and make some spectra fireworks, it'll be like a sonic rainboom but cooler!"

"Wow that's so awesome, can I help? Can I?" Scootaloo was hopping around like a rabbit with hummingbird wings.

"Yeah you can be my. . ." Dash grinned mischievously. "Number one assistant."

The duo went downstairs and turned on the lights. There was a massive laboratory under the library that Dash had found out about from Pinkie. When Pinkie Pie told Dash about the "pinkie sense" machine and the underground lair, Dash thought it was another practical joke. Now, armed with a saddle bag full of spectra, Dash was going to make some fireworks for the coronation.

Heading down the hallway they found the room with all the complicated computers and wires. A little further down was a room filled with meticulously labeled bottles and beakers.

"Here we are squirt: One firework factory." Dash held the door open as they walked inside. "Here I think we're supposed to wear these." Dash put on some goggles and handed Scootaloo a pair. They were comically oversized on her, resting on her muzzle and reaching up to her ears.

"Wow, can I start playing with this stuff now?" Scootaloo picked up a beaker with 500ml of a clear fluid.

"Hey put that down! We don't know what they are yet." Dash examined the label on the beaker. "Dye--hydra--gen--man--ox--ide?"

"Cool! What's dihydrogen monoxide? Can I mix it with this purple stuff?"

"No Scootaloo, that stuff sounds deadly. Let's stick to my plan. I got a book from the prank shop on homemade fireworks for dummies, a book that tells me what all the sciency-stuff means, and a few jars of spectra. Now, stand back. I’m going to try science.”



Dash laid everything out on the table in the middle of the room and began reading. The first ingredient called for was charcoal. "Heh, that's an easy one. Charcoal is just some burnt up stuff from a barbeque." Dash walked along the shelves until she reached C. "Hmm, cadmium telluride, calcium carbonate, crocoite, and charcoal! Here, take this squirt. Squirt?"

Dash turned around to see Scootaloo playing with a metal cylinder that was sitting upright on the table. A rubber tube ran from the base of the cylinder to the underside of the table. Scootaloo had something in her hooves that resembled half a coat hanger, with a bell on the end. She was squeezing it together to see what it did. "Hey Dash I found this sparky thingy and some tube that smells like rotten eggs!"

"Maybe you shou--" Dash was interrupted by a massive fireball that startled Scootaloo, causing her to fall off the table.

"WOW! Let's do it again! Did you see that? It was all hissing and then sparking and BOOM!"

Dash was at her side in an instant. She appeared undamaged, though most of the orange peach fuzz covering her face was gone. "Careful squirt, Twilight always gets in trouble with this sciency stuff. Let's only touch the stuff I tell you too, or you have to leave."

"Awwww, alright Dash." Scootaloo pointed at the one foot flaming cylinder. "But how do we turn that off?"

Dash followed the rubber tube from the cylinder to the underside of the table and saw a lever. Pushing it to the left, the flame died out. "There, now as I was saying we got the Charcoal. Next we need... Pot--assium Night--rate. Potassium Nitrate! You got that squirt?"

"I'm on it Dash!" Scootaloo rushed over to the shelves labeled P. "Phos--pour--us, Pot--assium." Scootaloo glanced at Dash who was busy reading, and set that one aside. Looking to the next container she found what she was looking for. " Potassium nitrate! Got it!" Scootaloo carried the container over to Dash, who set it on the table. 

"Alright, now I just need some sulfur." Dash walked over to a shelf, and found sulfur easily. Meanwhile, Scootaloo grabbed the dihydrogen monoxide and the potassium from earlier and went to a small table in the corner.

"Just sit tight, squirt, while the book tells me how to mix them. Then I just take a tube, add wings, and instant firework!" Dash began mixing the ingredients together by eye, and ended up with half a dozen mixtures. Some of the ingredients were in larger chunks. The book said a mortar and pestle might be needed to grind up the mixture to a fine powder. Dash found one using the handy illustrations in the book.

Just then Dash heard something explode behind her. Turning to look at Scootaloo, she was hit by a wall of vapor. "Scootaloo!"

"Awww, but you wouldn't let me help with the powder."

"It's 'gunpowder', and what was that?"

"Oh, I mixed the potassium and dihydrogen monoxide and it exploded the stuff everywhere! It's kinda burny though."

Sure enough, Dash could feel bits of something burning her skin, and tried to wipe them off. Luckily, neither of them was covered in too much of the stuff. "Careful! That dihydrogen monoxide could have killed us. Ok, come up here and you can help me grind this stuff up with the mortar and the pestle thingy."

Scootaloo hopped up to the table with a quick fluttering of her wings. "I'm on it!" Scootaloo took the mortar full of gunpowder, and took the pestle up in her hooves. Dash went back to reading, and then realized she had just put a member of the Cutie Mark Crusaders in charge of mixing gunpowder. "WAIT!--"

Scootaloo swung the pestle down like a hammer on the powder. There was a loud flash and a lot of smoke. The next thing Scootaloo knew she was on the floor across the room, with a wicked headache, and a shocked grin on her face. The room had been drained of color, and Dash was standing over her in slow motion. Dash was speaking, but Scootaloo couldn't hear her over the ringing in her ears. Scootaloo stood up in slow motion, and looked to her flank for a cutie mark in being "awesome." The world began to come back into focus, color and sounds were returning to her. Sadly, there was no cutie mark on her flank.

"YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED! You even burned off half your mane! Go upstairs and wash up, you're done here squirt."

"Aww Dash, but I'm fine and that was so awesome!" Scootaloo smiled, her teeth seeming pearly white compared to the black scorch marks surrounding her goggles.

"Look, I'll let you fire off one of the fireworks, you just need to leave the lab, ok?"

"Alright." Scootaloo walked out of the lab, putting on a show of looking dejected. Dash didn't fall for her act, and closed the door behind her. Slowly navigating the labyrinth that Twilight calls a lab, Scootaloo made it to the library bathroom. Looking in the mirror she saw what had made Dash so worried. Scootaloo removed her goggles. Everywhere, except around her eyes, black soot covered her skin. Her mane from forehead to behind the ears was gone, and the rest had singed ends. She could still hear some ringing in her ears, but decided it was worth it. If a little gunpowder was that amazing, then the fireworks would be radical.

After cleaning off her face she heard knocking at the door. Scootaloo went over and answered it, to see Sweetie Belle and Applebloom.

"Hey Scoots, we saw your scooter out--" Applebloom glanced at Scootaloo, glanced away, and immediately glanced back, locking onto her bald head. "Scootaloo! What happened!"

"Hey gals, well Dash was letting me help her make fireworks, but she was being kinda boring. So then I got her to let me mix the gunpowder!"

"YOU WERE MIXING GUNPOWDER!" Sweetie Belle's eyes flew wide open and her mouth hung agape. "Don't you know how dangerous that stuff is? The slightest spark or a hard impact could blow up half the laboratory!"

"I know, it was totally awesome! And then there was this pottyassium and diehydrigin manoxide that exploded, and this metal tube that shot fire out everywhere!"

"WHAT! Who on Equestria would let you and Dash into a chemistry lab unsupervised?" Sweetie Bell slapped a hoof to her forehead. "Ugh, doesn't anypony pay attention when Cheerilee teaches about chemistry?"

"Is that the boring stuff 'bout all the chemicals and symbols and stuff?" Applebloom and Scootaloo looked to Sweetie for an answer.

"YES! Ugh, if you want to get a cutie mark for chemistry you two are going to have to do exactly as I say. Now, let's go down to this 'lab' and I'll show you girls how it's done."

CUTIE MARK CRUSADER CHEMISTS. YAY!

The three fillies bumped hooves, and headed downstairs.





Dash wiped the sweat off her brow, and tried to steady her hands. She poured the last of the gunpowder into the crudely fashioned firework. She had been able to use some duck tape and plywood to form the wings on the sides of the metal cylinder. Then she had punched a hole through the bottom for a fuse. She poured the spectra in, and it began to bubble and seep into the gunpowder. Placing a funnel on top to act as a nose cone, she taped it in place. Then she headed upstairs to make good on her promise to let Scootaloo fire the first rocket. The long fuse would give Dash plenty of time to fly Scootaloo to a safe distance for the test launch.

"Scootaloo? Where are you?" Dash had arrived upstairs but couldn't find Scootaloo anywhere. Near the door was a pair of saddlebags. One of them looked like a fancy bag stitched by Rarity, the other had a single red apple on the clasp.

"Wait--Scootaloo--and those look like--" Rainbow Dash gulped. "Sweetie Belle and Applebloom's saddlebags!"

Dash's pupils dilated so wide her magenta irises nearly vanished completely. Dropping the rocket, she took to the air and flew back to the lab. She could feel her heart rate speed up, her lungs pulling in air faster and faster. "omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh, they're in the lab!" The sound of her wings was drowned out, and she began to get tunnel vision.

Bursting through the door of the lab, she found it was empty. Breathing a sigh of relief, she felt her body relaxing back to normal. "Heh, those fillies nearly scared me half to death. Imagine the 3 of them loose in Twilight's lab."

Dash heard some laughing that she had missed in her panic to get to the lab. Three fillies were laughing, and their echoes carried down the hallways. Following the sound of the laughter, Dash returned to the room with all the computers and wires. The three fillies were standing in front of a glowing cylinder that was whirring softly.

"Girls, what's going on?" Dash flew over to their side.

"Sweetie here was trying to tell us what this is, it's some sort of power gene-- hmm." Scootaloo put a hoof to her chin.

"It's a fusion power generator, and it's what is powering the whole lab. I never thought I'd see something this sophisticated in Ponyville. In fact, the generator in Manehatten is only 2 years old. I wonder if Twilight built this herself."

"Yeah Dash, and look at all the buttons and levers!" Scootaloo pointed over to the console attached to the device, bumping a lever up.

"Careful Scootaloo!" Sweetie rushed over and put the lever back down. A red light began to flash, and a warning beep sounded. Sweetie, for all her book smarts, only knew what half the levers meant. Each time she would get one red light to vanish, another would appear. Each lever, and every button push, added to the growing cacophony of beeping.





"And that, Twilight, is what will happen after the Princess coronation." Celestia and Twilight stood on the balcony of the sun tower, looking out over the peaceful valley that contained Ponyville.

"Look, Twilight." Celestia waved a hoof over the valley. "Everything the light touches will be your kingdom."

"What about that shadowy place?"

Celestia opened her mouth to respond, when a bright flash blinded both mares. Shielding their eyes too late, they were dazed as something brighter than Celestia's sun began to fade. The mares felt the entire tower rumbling. Rubbing their eyes, they were then hit by a wave of air and knocked off their hooves. A deafening noise arrived with the wall of air, and the air warmed slightly.

Standing back up, a weaker wave of air began to rush in the opposite direction. Twilight and Celestia stared in utter disbelief. Down in the valley there was an enormous cloud shaped like a mushroom. The smoky cloud billowed up through the air, and the entire valley was lost in the dust storm kicked up. Everything that had once been the valley, from the rivers and trees, to the rolling hills and farmland, was gone. The Everfree forest was gone. All that used to make the valley beautiful, was flattened and turned to glass.

Celestia facehoofed. "Damn it Twilight! I told you to lock your lab before you left."