* * *
When she awoke the next morning, the thunderstorm was long gone. She found herself lying in a puddle of mud with a headache that only true misery and Flim-Flam brothers special cider could generate, two things that often went together. Besides her laid her invention, a home-built accumulator now containing a fraction of one of the most powerful forces in Equestria. She picked it up, still in a haze, and dragged it behind her while she made her way into the wagon.
The mirror on her make-up table showed a mare with the same colour-scheme as her, but with her mane standing on end like a stereotypical Canterlotian scientist. When she realized that the maniac in the mirror was her, she burst out in giggles. A sketch of this manestyle appeared in her notebook afterwards, next to the comment Trixie – MAD SCIENTIST?! Where to get lab coat?
Her stomach let out a growl that could match any thunder, reminding her that dinner was at least a day overdue. More than just nutrition, she longed for flavour. The meals of dry roadside grass became tedious. When she hunted trough the cupboards, it was to find something, anything, she could eat that didn't taste like grass. But no matter how many times she looked trough her kitchen, it remained disappointingly empty save for a bouquet of basil she had left out to dry and nearly forgotten about.
The basil did lend some flavour to the grass, or at least it added some texture. It was still pretty bland, but it filled up her stomach at least.
“Did I actually catch the lighting?” She asked herself while idly chewing on the slightly bitter straws. There was no indication at all that the acumulator had actually stored the charge, it couldv'e simply went straight into the ground and she wouldn't have noticed.
She had an image in her head of her letting the lighting out on stage in front of a crowd of anticipative ponies, only to have the wase cough up a weak charge of static elctricity and nothing else.
Trixie took the vase deep into the forest, where it couldn't harm anypony or gave away her position. She found a spot right by a lake where if she aimed the device over the water, there wouldn't be any trees to hit for at least twenty meters.
So, how was she supposed to do this? She only had the vaugest notion of the alchemical principles involved and rankly didn't know if it was possible just to release a quick test-spark. Caution wrestled with curiosity and as usual, curiosity eventually won out. She loosened the screws with her levitation one at a time.
First screw, nothing happened. Second screw, nothing happened. Third screw...
Something very powerful launched out just in front of her, accompanied by a sound that looked like burnt ozone. For the second time that day she cound herself lying hooves-up in the mud with a feeling like somepony had bucked her very hard in the stomach. In the edge of her vision, she could just barely catch the contours of a blue lighting bolt as it dove straight into the lake. Then everything was peaceful again, like her bottled thunderbolt had never existed.
She found herself stuck between two emotions. On one hoof, she just wasted her one shot after all the trouble she went trough to get it, but on the other hoof, that sort of violent electrical blast would've almost certainly fried and entire audience if she actually tried it in a crowd...
She was still wrestlnig with whether she should feel relieved or dissapointed when her thoughts got interrupted by a curious bubbling sound. One second later, every fish in the lake floated belly-up to the surface right before her eyes. As the death-count reached triple-digits, she felt like saying something, but the words stubbornly refused to form in her head. In the end, the only thing she could muster was:
“Oops...”
* * *