Pick-Up Bricks
It was the day after Sunset Shimmer was defeated and Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria had returned to her home world. Although not a single person throughout the entire city had been seriously harmed, there was still a lot of cleaning up to do. That was to be expected, considering how Sunset had briefly taken control of the entire population and gave Twilight’s team quite a struggle.
However, there was one particular mess out in the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres that could have easily been avoided. It was the custom-built spaceship that Twilight’s team had crash-landed in upon their return to Canterlot City. Even though it had almost nothing to do with the battle that had taken place downtown the previous night, it still had to be removed. Naturally, the task was left to the one who had built the original model: the top engineer of the local branch of the LEGO Team, Rusty Wrench.
The tan-skinned minifig with messy brown hair looked over the crash site in mild contempt. Even though he was very often a rather jittery person, there were still some things that could get on his nerves, and the sight in front of him was one of them.
Rusty scoffed. “Ran out of fuel,” he muttered in disapproval. “What a rookie mistake. Don’t they know the importance of checking the gauges?” With his frustrations vented, he then sighed and simply said, “Well… better get to work.”
Rusty turned back to the large truck he had driven over to the site. The flatbed trailer was large enough to carry large vehicles, like a spaceship, and attached to the back of the cab was a small crane with a three-pronged grappling claw on the end to pick up massive objects. If he was going to get that wrecked spaceship out of here quickly and intact, then this was the best vehicle for the job.
Rusty climbed up into the crane side of the cab and started up the engine. He manipulated the controls to swing the arm out over the wreck and lower the grappling claw down onto it. Then he made the claw grip onto the wreck and slowly lift it up. However, the wrecked spaceship had barely budged when it slipped loose from the claw.
Rusty stared at the wreck with an unamused expression for a brief moment. He then lowered the claw, made it grip the wreck, and tried to lift it again. Just seconds later, the claw slipped loose again. Rusty growled lightly in frustration before trying again. Lower, grip, and lift. Once again, the wrecked spaceship barely budged before the claw slipped loose. Rusty groaned in frustration and tried again. Lower, grip, and lift. The result remained the same.
Rusty grunted at the apparent inability of this crane to do something so simple. Not wanting to let his frustrations get the better of him, he took a deep breath and slowly exhaled to calm his nerves. He was an expert engineer and mechanic, and if there was a problem with this crane, he was going to fix it. “Okay, let’s see what the problem is,” he said to himself before climbing out of the cab.
Rusty walked around to the side of the crane and removed a large flat piece — which served as a covering panel — to take a look at the interior workings. It didn’t take him long to determine what was ailing the crane. “Hmm… Hydraulic pressure seems to be a little low.” He quickly pulled out a wrench and began twisting something with it as he stated, “A slight adjustment, and…”
Unfortunately, that “slight adjustment” went a bit too far. One of the hoses suddenly ruptured, spraying hydraulic fluid directly in Rusty’s face. Rusty yelped in shock and was thrown backwards off the truck. After hitting the ground, he muttered, “Ouchy.”
After cleaning up and repairing all of the unintended damages, Rusty Wrench climbed back into the cab of the small crane. He sighed and said to himself, “Okay… let’s try this again.” He swung the arm over the wreck and lowered the grappling claw onto it. He then made the claw grip onto the wreck and began lifting. He smiled as he saw the claw’s grip remain firmly on the wreck, but that smile soon faded as the wreck still did little more than budge.
Rusty continued to hold the controls to lift the claw. He watched intently and nervously, knowing that eventually, something had to give. After a few tense moments, the chunk of the wrecked spaceship that the claw held onto tore completely off from the rest of the wreckage. Now freed from the huge mass holding it down, the chunk began swinging around uncontrollably, which quickly made it very dangerous.
“Whoa!” shouted a very terrified Rusty as the chunk came very close to slamming right into the cab. With some quick thinking, he moved the arm back and forth a little to counteract the momentum of the swinging chunk and quickly brought it under control.
Rusty let out a sigh of relief after averting that disaster. He then turned his attention back to the rest of the wrecked spaceship and quickly inspected the crash site to determine what the problem might be this time. From what he could see, he could draw only one conclusion. “Wow… that thing must’ve buried itself into the ground pretty good,” he stated. As he loaded the removed chunk onto the bed of the truck, he added, “Looks like I’ll need to do some excavating before going any further.”
Once the claw had released the large chunk, Rusty climbed out of the cab, stumbling on his way out the door and falling to the ground. “Ouchy,” he quickly muttered before getting back up and walking away from the crash site.
Just a few moments later, Rusty returned to the site, now operating a small backhoe. He drove the backhoe up to the wrecked spaceship and began scooping out large amounts of dirt from around the wreck.
Once enough dirt — and uprooted apple trees — had been removed to completely unbury the crashed spaceship, Rusty Wrench moved the backhoe out of the way and hopped back into the small crane. He sighed and muttered, “Okay… let’s try this one more time.”
Once again, he swung the arm out over the wreck and lowered the grappling claw onto it. He then made the claw grip onto the wreck and began lifting. This time, not only did the claw’s grip remain solid, but the entire wreck also began to slowly rise up out of the large pit.
“Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere!” he said cheerfully at finally seeing real success. All he had to do now was swing the wreck over and gently lower it down onto the bed of the truck.
However, just halfway over to the truck, the part of the wreck that was being held by the claw suddenly collapsed, causing the whole wreck to crash to the ground and completely fall apart into pieces.
Rusty just sat still with his jaw wide open, staring silently at the pile of Lego pieces that used to be a spaceship. It took a few moments for his brain to fully process what had just happened before he could make his next reaction, and that was to punch the dashboard in frustration. That was immediately followed by a grunt of pain as he shook his hand around and muttered, “Ouchy.”
After shaking off the pain, Rusty took another look at the scene in front of him to determine what his next step should be. There was no way a pile of loose pieces could be safely transported on a flatbed truck, so he sighed in disbelief and stated, “Well, looks like I’ll need to make a few modifications.”
Rusty got out of the crane and quickly went to work. The solution was simple: using some bricks from the pile, build some simple walls along the edge of the flatbed part of the truck, basically turning it into a roofless container to properly store all of the remaining loose pieces. Once the crude walls had reached the height he desired, he climbed back into the crane and began using the claw to grab some pieces and start loading them into the back of the truck.
“Oh well,” he muttered in disbelief as he continued working. “It’s not like I intended to keep this thing intact, anyway.” The original model that he had built had actually been destroyed by Lightning Dust while Twilight’s team was on the Moon, and they had used its pieces to create a new spaceship. Although he didn’t mind others putting their creativity to good use, he found it mildly annoying that none of the builders even knew how to fly it properly, which pretty much defeated the purpose of creating something as complex as a spaceship in the first place.
“Good thing I kept the instructions to the original model,” added Rusty as he grappled onto the last bunch of pieces and dropped them into the back of the truck.
“There!” said Rusty, smiling in satisfaction. “Now all I have to do it haul this back to headquarters.” Now that his work in the crane was done, he spun around in his seat so that he was now using the controls for the truck side of the cab. He shifted the truck into gear and carefully drove off, taking the remains of the wrecked spaceship with him.
Not long after Rusty had left, Granny Smith decided to visit the crash site to see how well he had done with cleaning up the mess. What she saw was only a half-done job. Although the engineer had done well at removing all of that debris, there was still a big hole in the ground, with a few uprooted apple trees lying on the ground nearby. Knowing exactly who to blame for what was still a big mess in the middle of the apple orchard, she muttered, “Darn aliens.”