Sketch.
Sketch sketch.
Sketch sketch sketch.
It’s a quiet night in for you, the only sound keeping you company is the scratching of pencil-lead on paper. It’s a good sound, really. You could listen to it all night.
The moonlight glows behind the closed curtain of your window, all but driven aside by the gentle glow of your bedside lamp, lighting up the off-white paper that you scribble on with the pencil nestled firmly between your teeth.
What an idea to play with! You’ve been considering it for a while, but you’ve never had the chance to sit down and weigh this idea on paper. You bear with yourself; What if you could take the same technology that’s on a train - steam powered locomotive gears, simple lightweight chassis, all that stuff - and apply it to… anything!? Anything else in the world! Genius!
But what could you test it on? A hot-air balloon? A carriage? Maybe a boat, if it could support the extra weight? You can’t exactly put this idea to use on your train set, since that already has such technology. It’d be redundant! Maybe Apple Bloom and the Crusaders could come up with something. They’re always coming up with things, after all.
Especially that Apple Bloom. No wonder she’s the ringleader. You hope she’s feeling better after whatever brought her down. Maybe it was those two mean fillies again, the rich ones that put everypony down when they can? Nah, the cute girl can usually brush them right off.
Wait, what did you call Apple Bloom just now?
Cute girl. Yeah, you guess she is.
She’s nicer than you thought she’d be, at least. With that cute little bow that bobs up and down with each step she takes. Those rosy eyes that are always on the looking for fun things to do. Her reddish mane that smells a little bit like almonds whenever you give her a cuddle, her adorable nose nuzzling into your shoulder as you share each other’s warmth, her soft, pale hooves wrapping around you, what you wouldn’t give just to drift off to sleep by her side, holding her like a teddy bear…
What the heck are you thinking?
You snap out of your daze. You look down at your sketchpad. Your face turns bright red.
There, sketched from your own memory and into the pencil-lead of the sheet, is none other than Apple Bloom’s adorable face smiling back to you.
Oh Celestia, how embarrassing.
Before anypony even has half a chance of seeing your work of art, you tear it from the sketchpad, taking care not to damage the picture itself. As crude as the picture is, it stirs you with a sense that nothing else could. What’s wrong with you? What did Apple Bloom do to make you feel like this!? Why did she invade your mind!? And how!?
Yet… you can’t bring yourself to tear up the paper and forget about her.
As precisely as possible, you fold the picture in half twice, before slipping it under your mattress. It’s best to lie there for now, at least until you can figure out what to do with it. What to do with her.
Returning to your sketchbook, ignoring the jarring feeling of your little drawing incident, you try to recall the train of thought you had before…
Yes. Train. Using a train’s technology on other vehicles, wasn’t it? Maybe you should start small if you’re going to try attaching gears and chassis and goddess-knows-what onto things. Think small. Think a block of wood with wheels, or a skateboard or rollerblades or-
*******
“My scooter?”
The pegasus of Apple Bloom’s crew, Scootaloo, gives you a suspicous look once you'd finished explaining last night's brainstorm. And rightfully so. “I dunno, something tells me I don’t want somepony giving it the Frankenstein-Train treatment. What if you break it? What if your little experiment screws up and I can’t use my own scooter anymore?”
You eye the blue scooter as it lies on a table in the centre of the Cutie Mark Crusader’s clubhouse. The midday sun provides ample lighting for any work that might need to be done on it. By the side of the table sits a bulky toolbox, hopefully with everything you’ll need for the scooter’s ‘surgery’. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom are also there, but you try your best to ignore the latter; even when she’s quietly watching over things, she’s still a major presence in your mind.
“Don’t worry,” you reassure the pegasus, “If anything happens to your scooter, I’ll pay for a new one myself. And that’s only if something goes wrong. Which it won’t, I remind you. Besides, imagine how awesome it would be to ride the first ever mechanical scooter around!”
Despite her hesitance, Scootaloo agrees that, yes, it would be pretty awesome. She backs off slowly, not taking her eyes off her prized scooter, as she joins her friend Sweetie Belle. Apple Bloom, on the other hoof…
“Hey, if you’re really makin’ this into a gear-driven machine,” she steps forward, nudging the toolbox with a hoof, “maybe you could use an assistant? Y’know, to pass you different tools and such. Might get a Cutie Mark in that!”
She makes a good point. And honestly, you couldn’t say no to that face even if you wanted to. An assistant she is! The other two Crusaders decide to hang back, however, to reduce the chances of overcrowding. Almost as if going at something three-at-once has ruined the chance for a Cutie Mark on more than one occasion. Good to see them learning.
The first fifteen minutes of the experiment drift by smoothly, considering how you’re doing most of this with your mouth. Now to finish hooking up the wheels to a set of well-oiled, locomotive gears that should, hopefully, turn at the command of a lever you have yet to install on the scooter’s handle.
No problems so far, at least. Apple Bloom obediently passes you one tinkering instrument after another. Now there’s only one more tool you need from her.
“Pass me the wrench.” you tell her, holding a lever over the scooter’s handle, “It’s time to tighten this thing on.”
At your request, she picks up the wrench from the box with her mouth and places it on the table for you to pick up with your own mouth. As awkward as that setup is, it’s better than just passing it from one mouth to another. Because of girly-germs and all that. It'd just be weird, too. Can’t be too careful.
Huh. For some reason the lever’s not fastening onto the handle correctly. Maybe you should twist it on tighter.
You ask Apple Bloom to give you a hoof; it’ll take more than just twisting it in your mouth to screw this on.
With two sets of hooves firmly holding the wrench, you push. Slowly, the handle starts to obey the concept of having a gear-activating lever attached to it. Soon it should be ready for…
Hey, you know Apple Bloom’s hoof is touching your own right now? You might as well be holding hooves with her!
Wow, that thought came out of nowhere. But it's true. In fact, she’s practically pushing right up against you, helping you with the wrench-work. Her face is just inches away from yours, the scent of her almond hair-
PANG!
The sudden shock slaps you out of your daze. The lever you were trying to attach had been twisted far too much, firing off the handle due to the immense pressure you both had been putting on it. It ricochets off the door of the clubhouse at a dangerous speed, causing a very uncomfortable crunching sound within the door itself, before smacking into an overhanging lamp directly above the scooter.
With only a second’s warning, you and Apple Bloom jump back from the table in time - your toolbox snatched up by the filly herself - to see the lamp fall, smashing into the scooter itself with an ear-ringing shatter.
The lamp’s metallic frame scrapes against the newly-oiled gears on the scooter. A stray spark from the collision flickers to life.
The spark becomes an ember. And the ember becomes a burst of fire.
In the blink of an eye, the gears, the scooter, the whole table is set aflame.