It was a nice day in the Crystal Empire. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and everypony was walking around as if it was summer and they had nothing to do but to enjoy the day. Except for those who were stuck in offices and behind counters, but let’s not get caught up in the details. Besides, it’s not like they were alone in their suffering.
A group of schoolponies from Ponyville were gathered at the Crystal Heart. They weren't sightseeing.
“So, you see, fillies and colts,” Twilight Sparkle said with a proudly uplifted chin as she held the strange device in her hoof and was about to teach her young students something about the world few ponies knew, “If there would be any radiation around us, the needle would move and you would all hear a clicking sound.”
With a knowledgeable grin on her muzzle, she pointed to the dormant needle and the obvious lack of any clicking noises. She was so proud of herself, and with good reason. She'd built Equestria's first ever Geiger counter, and here it was, actually working! A second later, when nopony acknowledged the information she had given them in any meaningful way, she looked at her audience.
Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were sitting in the center of the small group of children that she had taken on a school trip to the Chrystal Empire. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were there, as well as that annoying photography-obsessed colt that had given her so many headaches with the school newspaper, but whose name she couldn’t – and didn’t want to – recall. Other colts and fillies were also present, although as long as the count came to twenty when they returned to Ponyville, she didn’t really care who was who. Yet, despite the diversity in front of her, there was one thing they all had in common; every one of the schoolponies was looking at her with big, confused eyes. Something had gone wrong.
“Uhm,” she started before a nervous smile manifested itself on her face, “Are there any questions?”
She looked at the group, whose members were busy glancing at each other in a desperate attempt to find somepony who knew what was happening.
“Any at all?”
Sweetie Belle couldn’t stand the awkward silence anymore. She couldn’t stand seeing Twilight nervously standing there, in front of her, having clearly made a mistake somewhere along the line in the last fifteen minutes. She had to save her big sister’s friend from the awkward situation, only she was too shy to say anything. So she drove her elbow into Apple Bloom’s rib cage.
“Agh! What are you-” Apple Bloom tried to contain her voice to avoid disturbing the lecture, but Twilight was all too happy to hear it.
“Yes!”
Twilight took the lifeline with her hooves, wrapped herself in it and threw a magic floater in for good measure. Apple Bloom had just asked her something, and she wasn’t going to disappoint her!
“What do you want to know, Apple Bloom?” The wide grin sealed the deal.
“I-uhm…” Apple Bloom deadpanned for a second and looked at the ground to avoid Twilight eager eyes.
There was really only one question that Apple Bloom wanted to ask, but she knew that would make things worse than if she’d tell Granny Smith what she saw in the barn last Thursday when she went to look for Applejack. She still shuddered when she thought about it. On the plus side, that one sleepless night, when she stared at the ceiling and those images flashed through her head, translated into the easiest week of her life. It was strange how happy AJ suddenly was to take over all of her chores. For the foreseeable future, even!
“Apple Bloom?” Twilight asked, as the filly suddenly bobbed her head in contemplation of how much she could sell her silence for.
“Huh?”
Apple Bloom awoke from her musing with a gentle shake and looked around. Her smile faded as she realized she was the center of attention; every eye was fixed firmly on her. The ponies around her were waiting for her to relieve them of the agony of silence and a possible random selection by Twilight, while Twilight was waiting for her to actually tug on that lifeline, if she was so kind as to offer it in the first place.
“You wanted to ask me something?”
The look in Twilight’s eyes was terrifying. Apple Bloom had never seen Twilight borderline scared before, but that’s the look she was giving her. That, and she noticed the traces of the first twitches in Twilight’s eyes, which was always cause for alarm. Somepony had to move things along, and it had to be Apple Bloom. She swallowed hard and was racing to find a question that wouldn’t reveal her as stupid or her substitute teacher as poor at teaching, but she was failing hard. Kind of like at math, but everypony knew Earth ponies can’t do math, so that was expected.
Twilight was starting to sweat.
Apple Bloom mentally cursed Miss Cheerilee for having the audacity to fall sick on the day of their excursion. As for Sweetie Belle – no, she hadn’t forgotten her, but the punishment for Sweetie Belle would have to be expertly planned and executed, such was her guilt. She briefly looked at the ground and lowered her head before looking at Twilight again.
“Uhm. What-” She prepared herself. “What is radioactivity?”
Twilight nudged her head back at a slight angle. Her eyes grew but her pupils shrunk. She blinked once. Apple Bloom started shifting around nervously, not sure if she was about to be called an idiot for not knowing that, or if Twilight had just remembered she’d left her fanfics lying around the library again. Mayor Mare still couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Oh, silly me!” Twilight suddenly snapped back to normal, which is a trait of perfectly ordinary ponies. “Here I am talking about radiation and you’re not even old enough to learn that in school!”
A bedazzled array of eyes stared back at her, but Twilight was happy to know the cause of the silence. She shook her head and wiped a nonexistent tear from her eye, all the while snickering at her own quirkiness. Then she looked at Apple Bloom with a thankful smile and started talking.
“Radiation is just the emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles.” She waved a hoof to show how unimportant that was. “But the radiation I’ve been talking about comes from the natural decay of atoms, which are the building blocks of everything around us. Only not just any old atoms, oh no! I’m talking about isotopes! When they decay, they release radioactive rays, such as Alpha, Beta and Gamma rays. Now, there are three...different…processes…”
Twilight trailed off as she noticed that the bedazzled array of eyes hadn’t changed much. Only now some ponies were drooling. Twilight’s jaw cracked open.
“Does anypony understand?” she slowly asked.
A pink hoof appeared in front of her, followed by the anxious body of Pinkie Pie, waving her foreleg around like it was a jellybean.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Pinkie screamed, “Pick me! Pick me!”
“Pinkie? What are you doing here?”
She wasn’t on the train to the Chrystal Empire. But, seeing as she was the only one not having her brain cells realigned by the lecture, Twilight had no choice but to oblige. That, and she was hoping that Pinkie Pie would help bring the young ponies back to normal with cake and whatever drugs she was regularly stuffing herself with. There was no way she could afford to bring the kids back broken. Especially after they made her sign extra papers when she volunteered - nay – insisted to take the kids. And to think she had always assumed Celestia was being sarcastic when she regularly started their encounters by asking if Spike was still alive.
“You don’t have the batteries in!” Pinkie shouted as Twilight begrudgingly pointed at her.
Twilight facehoofed.
“Pinkie!” she shouted, “That isn’t even a-”
Question, she was going to say, but Pinkie was diligently pointing at the side of the Geiger counter, right at the open panel for the batteries.
“Whoa, you’re right,” Twilight said, stunned.
“Here you go!” Pinkie happily presented a pair of industrial-looking batteries that power the Geiger counters.
“How did you-” Twilight started, but realized in time the futility of her question. “No, I don’t want to know.”
Twilight grabbed the batteries, only to see Pinkie Pie happily squee and bounce away. She shook her head again and fumbled with the batteries to slot them in.
“Come on!”
A final, carefully measured kick to the batteries ensured a snug fit, and Twilight once again proudly lifted her head up, a content smirk on her muzzle, and her right hoof high in the air. She was eager to continue the lecture before lunchtime took away the opportunity to teach the little ones some valuable life lessons. Who could possibly go through life without knowing the details of radiation detection?
“Now, as you can see-”
A distinct clicking sound interrupted her. She looked down at the Geiger counter and went quiet. The needle was rising, and with it, the frequency of the clicks. She moved it to the children; it clicked. She moved it to the ground; it clicked. She turned it to the Crystal Heath; it clicked. And the children watched.
The more Twilight told herself not to panic, the more her eyes widened in fear as she looked at the Geiger counter. Her clenched teeth were showing and beads of sweat appeared on her forehead with increasing frequency before dropping down or being absorbed into her fur. She had to get the younglings away as soon as possible, and she had to do it without causing chaos. But then, Twilight did always excel under pressure.
“IT’S EVERYWHERE!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. The kids wasted no time in scattering.
Twilight froze in place and opened her eyes as she heard the unmistakable sound of a few dozen tiny hooves clicking away to the backdrop of high-pitched screaming. She glanced around. The colts and fillies were busy galloping away, some crying, all screaming, much to the surprise of the Chrystal Ponies that happened to be nearby at the time. Twilight blinked, then dropped her head and narrowed her eyes at the thought that she just lost the entire class.
“Well, buck.”