//------------------------------//
// Plans and Other Bad Ideas 
// Story: My Little Scrapheap: Junk is Magic 
// by Ryvaken 
//------------------------------//

	The teams are absolutely not allowed to just hoof their muffins to our judge. Their machines have to be stationary, or near enough. Carriages, chariots, and airships are strictly prohibited.

Cheese took quill in mouth and sketched over the canvas. "Now," he mumbled, "th' bef way to deplowy a muffon is to hoof it. Bu' we can' do thad." He put down the quill and sat back on his haunches. "So instead we're going with plan B. A party cannon!"

"YES!" Pinkie shouted, throwing her hooves into the air. She caught them on the way back down. "But wait, the Princesses confiscated my cannon already."

"Wait, somepony actually figured out how to do that?" Rainbow asked, her mouth hanging open.

Pinkie nodded sadly.

Rainbow blinked. "Did they say if they were giving it back?"

"Of course they'll give it back," Twilight gasped, putting a foreleg around Pinkie. "They just wanted to make sure you had a chance to build an all new party cannon."

Pinkie looked up at Twilight. "Really?" she asked tremulously.

Twilight nodded once, firmly. "Absolutely."

"Well then what are we waiting for?" Pinkie yelled. She jumped up and bit down hard on the quill.

Cheese watched Pinkie draw furiously. "There you go, a little bit more reinforcement there. We don't know what we'll actually be able to make it out of. Longer barrel for range. A bit more confetti. You're really good at this."

"How are we going to make sure the muffin lands safely?" Twilight asked. She nudged her way between the two earth ponies and got a look at their final design.

It was complete gibberish. The Cake twins had made more coherent drawings. A stick-pony labeled "Pinkie" was standing next to a cucumber that spouted icicles that were on fire with a blob labeled "muffin" flying off in the distance.

Twilight took the quill in her field and wiped the enchanted canvas clean of the mess. "What say I try my hoof at laying out blueprints?" she asked.





Daring drew a primary feather over the Roughs' canvas, quickly creating a series of crude drawings. "We only have ten hours, so we'll stick with the basics. That means a catapult."

"Sounds good," Applejack drawled. "Just rig up a giant slingshot or something?"

"Not for a muffin," Daring mused. "Anything that shoots like that puts a lot of pressure really fast on the projectile. A muffin won't hold up under that. We want something with an arm that can throw the muffin. There are a bunch of different types, but we have time to do a proper job of it. Trebuchet or onager."

"What's the difference?" Rarity asked.

"A trebuchet is will send the muffin practically into orbit. Have you ever seen foals try and turn a seesaw into a catapult?"

"I was the heavy weight in one of those," Applejack said. "Don't remember much about it though. That was a bad week."

"Well, a trebuchet is a lot like that, only you lift up the seesaw so it has more room to swing. And instead of dropping something on the arm, you have a weight built into it and use ropes to hold the arm in place until you want to let go."

"So nothing like a seesaw," Rarity observed dryly.

"Pretty much. It's reliable and powerful, but if we need to fire more than once, it's slow."

"What about the other one?" Applejack asked. "The onathingy."

"Onager. This design uses spring action." Daring looked back at her own back, drawing attention to her right wing. A moment later she snapped the wing up and forward to her crest. "That's the motion of an onager, basically. It's a simpler build and a lot faster to fire, but we'll have a lot harder time adjusting the range."

Rarity hummed and sat on her haunches, looking over the sketches Daring had made. "What would our sisters do?" she asked Applejack.

"Tree-bucket's bigger," Applejack said.

"I agree," Rarity said. "And since we do not wish to explode, we shall go for the onager."

Daring quirked an eyebrow. "Interesting logic. Your sisters're some kind of scamps?"

"They're Cutie Mark Crusaders, darling," Rarity said sadly.

Daring Do's jaw dropped. "You mean those stories are true?" she yelled.





Twilight backed away from her design. All this practical engineering and scrounging for whatever material could possibly work was really teaching her to be less precise and more flexible with her plans. The freedom it allowed her was a rush. Almost...naughty. She only sketched the orthagonal view and the side view was inaccurate after four decimal places. Such a naughty mare!

Rainbow scratched her head. "Where are we going to get a barrel capable of containing a nuclear explosion?"

"Two clouds, a plank of wood, four large garbage bags, and ten rolls of ducttape will get the job done," Twilight said confidently.

"I think you underestimated the explosive power of cake batter in sector 4-6B," Pinkie added.

Twilight blinked. "Uh, there is no 4-6B."

"Well that would be why!" Cheese inserted. "Look your alicornness, this design might hold up to whatever wimpy blasts you were planning on using, but we're planning to use some serious munitions here. We'll need at least a pound of gouda for reinforcement."

Twilight blinked again. It didn't help. "You want to build the cannon with cheese."

"Exactly."

"Cheese from a junkyard. In order to use uncooked bakery products as a propellant. Also from a junkyard."

"Yuh-huh," Pinkie agreed.

Twilight hung her head. "Why do I even bother?"





Daring pointed her hoof at the finished sketch. "We need something heavy for the base, that's going to be critical. We need a rope to build up tension with, that's going to be critical."

"We need to make it fabulous," Rarity added.

"That's not critical," Daring grumped. "Just go scrounge, okay?"





"Rainbow, we need a base, a barrel, and a sabot," Twilight said. "Pinkie, you just do whatever it is you do. Get to it, girls!"