//------------------------------// // Magitekarachnophobia (renamed) // Story: Return to sender // by NaN //------------------------------// Having more than the usual scheduled transports from other towns was uncommon in Ponyville and often indicated that new building material was shipped in to repair damages from the last of the increasingly frequent, destructive events. The last months however, had brought only three things to Ponyville. Peace, autumn and enough technological advances for the mayor to declare Ponyville ‘the new center of technology outside Canterlot’. Princess Twilight Sparkle, who still preferred simply Twilight, was also declared unofficial Minister of Technology, although nopony knew on whose authority or what the title exactly meant. The townsponies had their own nicknames anyway, including ‘Princess Eyebags’, ‘Twilight Cackle’ and ‘the other Princess of the Night’. The latter arose from the fact, that there was always a light burning in the building across the town library. Twilight Sparkle had rented the building seven weeks ago and moved a lot of strange equipment into it. Every week another researcher from Canterlot or Manehattan seemed to move in and take on some project. A week or so later, they would emerge again and present another invention to the impressed public of Ponyville. It started with a new material, that could be extracted from wood pulp with a simple spell and some chemicals. Since it was a lot like wood, except that it was malleable at higher temperatures, it had a multitude of uses. Soon, most shops offered some form of novelty with the new material. It was commonly known as soft wood. Other inventions were such a novelty, that not all of them had immediate uses. But many agreed, that sooner or later they would be incorporated into everyday life too. The general public of Ponyville had accepted that some changes were inbound and the work of Twilight Sparkle was seen indifferently at worst. This fact was not lost on Spike, but did little to ease his mind, as he locked the library one evening and went towards the building across. Twilight was only coming to the library to eat, sleep and shower. Shirking her duties as librarian, most of the work fell on to Spike, with some help from the local reading club and copious amounts of self-organization. Patrons were encouraged to reshelf their borrowed books themselves and nopony had to pay late return fees. Determined to make Twilight eat at least one proper meal this day, Spike balanced a tray with steaming rice and fried vegetables as he entered the building. Rice wasn’t easy to come by in Ponyville, so it was always something special when they got their hooves on a shipment. Inside, he navigated a maze of tables, all filled with different instruments, glassware, books and half-finished machinery. Spike nodded a greeting to a stallion writing a report of sorts. Other researchers absently responded to Spike’s greeting as well, immediately returning to their work. Spike found Twilight in her ‘domain’, the largest room in the building. Her current project concerned the bigger of the devices they found in the package months ago. The device stood on its own table, cables connecting it to the other device, nicknamed ‘controller’, because Twilight couldn’t figure out why it was named a netbook in the documents. She had come to the conclusion that the bigger device was supposed to be a printing press, which explained the name of ‘3D-printer’. But instead of ink, it used malleable materials like soft wood, gallium or chocolade; a fact well hidden from Pinkie Pie. And instead of flat patterns on paper, it produced thin layers stacked upon each other, until a three-dimensional structure emerged. Spike placed the tray on a free spot on a table and approached Twilight. “Hey Twilight, I brought you some food and I swear upon my drago-” “Spike! You’ve come at the right time. I just made a great breakthrough!” Twilight bounced excitedly up and down, before handing over a small object made of soft wood. Spike didn’t know what it was, but it looked like a bracket. “What is this? And why is it so exciting?” “Don’t you see? I made it with the printer.” “Oh, so you got it to work? That’s great, I guess? I just don’t see why you’d want make anything in a such a complicated manner. But at least you can make... uhm, what is this exactly?” Twilight looked a bit confused at Spike’s underwhelmed response. “It’s a bracket.” “I can see that. I mean, a bracket for what?” Twilight pointed at one part of the printer, where three metal rods joined together. The part looked very much like the one in Spike’s claw. “Wait, you made a part of the printer with the printer itself?” “Yes. Even better, in the controller I found more blueprints for a lot of the other parts of the printer. With some replacements, I guess I can print almost every part of it. I’m having Copy Cat research a lightning spell matrix with the same function as the internal circuit parts, because I can’t replicate those.” Spike looked at Twilight in confusion, then his face lit up, as he understood what she was hinting at. “You want to print another printer!” “That’s what I’ve been telling you. Didn’t you listen?” “You can’t do that! Don’t you remember the Great Parasprite Infestation? I don’t think Pinkie Pie can sing a song to save our hides this time.” Twilight held a hoof up and giggled. “Oh Spike, you have a vivid imagination. Don’t worry, this has nothing to do with parasprites. This is just a machine. It doesn’t do anything when there are no commands from the controller.” “I remember that you were not very sceptical of parasprites at first either.” “This is different. I am not dealing with an invasive lifeform; I’m simply creating more of a machine, that I have researched very thoroughly.” Spike continued to look at Twilight, who turned back to the controller and typed something into it. After a minute of thinking, Spike shook his head and walked over to the tray. “I really don’t think that this is a good idea. But I trust your judgment. Just don’t make me regret it.” “Don’t worry Spike. I have everything under control.” “What you certainly do not have under control, is your appearance.” “What do you mean?” Twilight turned to Spike again and looked at him quizzically. “Your mane is dishevelled, your wings haven’t been preened in a week, you have eyebags and Nurse Redheart would not be amused by your eating habits. I won’t tell you what the other ponies start to call you these days.” “But- But who cares how I look? That doesn’t matter.” “It certainly does, Princess Twilight Sparkle.” “Well, that’s their problem. I have better things to do.” “Yes, of course, Princess Eyebags.” “What was that?” “I’ll tell you, if you promise to eat the food before it gets cold. Look, I made rice.” Twilight looked up and licked her lips. “Oh, you did? I suppose I can spare a few minutes. Thanks, Spike.” Twilight trotted towards the tray and dug in as though she had not eaten anything that day. Halfway through the meal, Spike remarked “Oh, and you have an appointment at the spa tomorrow afternoon.” Twilight abruptly stopped chewing and looked at Spike, her eyes narrowing. He could not help but to grin. ~~~ The night of the following day brought a cloud cover to Ponyville, scheduled to water the last of the crop later that night. Spike had already gone to bed, hoping that Twilight would not wake him when she got home. The day gone had served well to restore some of the tarnish her neglect had caused. Reluctantly, she had gone to the spa to meet with the others. Even Rainbow Dash had shown up. After that, Spike had convinced her to make proper dinner with him and they had gone an entire conversation without talking about the countless projects Twilight worked on. Seeing how Twilight was back on track, he was not concerned that she went off to work after the dinner and went to bed, finally once without being worried. His slumber was only disturbed when Spike awoke some hours later to a faint noise. The noise repeated itself and vaguely resembled somepony yelling commands or arguing loudly. The yelling continued and was accompanied by the sound of things breaking, being dropped or otherwise mishandled. Deciding that this was not normal, Spike got up to locate the source of the noises. Going on a hunch, he left the library and across the empty square towards the building on the other side. Some lights were still on, as always, but from one of the windows, Spike could see the purple glow of Twilight’s magic being repeatedly fired on something. This alone was enough to send shivers down his spine, but Spike really got scared when suddenly the window broke and a small construct, looking like a spider, fell down on the street. The construct did not waste time and walked right at Spike, intentions unclear. He was not sure what to do and began to panic. When the construct had reached him, the only thing that came to his mind, was to breath fire. Spike rarely used his non-magic fire, but seeing no choice, he breathed nonetheless. Instead of the red-hot fire he intended, he actually did use magic fire and promptly sent the spider to Princess Celestia. At least she was most likely able to handle the magic construct. More constructs were crawling and jumping out of the broken window, all of them with the same spider-like design. To Spike’s relief, none of them headed towards him. To his horror, they were scattering across the town. Quickly, all of the constructs had left the building and no new ones were crawling out. Still, about three dozens had escaped into the night. Twilight appeared in a purple flash on the street, looking around in bewilderment. Spike ran over to her. “Twilight! What happened? What are those constructs?” “It was only supposed to be one. Oh, this isn’t good! I tried to deactivate them all, but I can only do one at a time.” She began to run in a random direction, darting around and looking for any constructs she could find. Spike followed her, still confused about the event. “What do you mean? Did you create those? We have to stop them!” “I’ll explain later. I’ll just hope I can get them all before they do too much damage.” One construct crawled out of a flower arrangement, holding a freshly-cut branch of rambler rose. Twilight quickly zapped the construct with a beam of magic, deactivating it in the process. “They will try to gather wood.” she continued. “Why?” “I really don’t have time to explain. Can you cover the other side of the street? Just hit them hard on the body and they stop. They won’t attack you.” “But one of them came straight at me!” “It probably was heading to the library. Now quick, we can’t let them spread too far!” Twilight took flight, leaving Spike on the ground. Reaching the height of the rooftops with some difficulty, she pointed down the street and called back down “There are two at the clock shop over there. Can you get them? I’ll take on the cluster of buildings across the square.” Having not much choice in the matter, Spike ran over to the shop and saw the two constructs starting to cut down the sign above the door. Shortly after, the sign fell down; the constructs hanging onto it and carrying it towards the square. Meanwhile, Spike had picked up a stick from a cart nearby and proceeded to hit the constructs with all the force his tiny arms could muster. The constructs stopped moving after two hits each. Many windows were now filled with light as the other ponies in town woke up. They quickly discovered the ‘spiders’ crawling around town. Only the fact that they were already at home prevented one of the famous Ponyville Panic Stampedes; much to the chagrin of a close-knit group of ponies, who always readily partook in them. It took Twilight, Spike and a quickly recruited, very sleepy Pinkie Pie the better of two hours to find and deactivate all constructs. Rarity was nowhere to be seen. Seeing no more movement and hearing no more frightened yelps, Twilight descended back to earth in front of the library, where Spike and Pinkie had gathered, leaning on each other and looking ready to sleep on the spot. “I think that were all of them. I cannot thank you two enough for the help. Who knows how long it would have taken me to find them all alone. I’m glad that this did not happen during the day. The mayor would probably have sent a letter to notify Princess Celestia.” Spike looked up and jerked upright, when he saw something behind Twilight. He raised a claw to point, but was cut off by a new voice, sounding regal and very much not amused. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, you have some explaining to do. Why was I awakened in the middle of the night by a magical construct dismantling my two-hundred year old bed?” Twilight turned around and gulped.