//------------------------------// // E1 Ch3: Waterlogged // Story: Destiny Is Magic // by ColdGoldLazarus //------------------------------// Episode 1: Strange Mares in a Strange Place (part 1) Chapter 3: Waterlogged Unknown Time "I'm home!" Sweetie Belle hollered as she walked in the front door. Carousel Boutique looked as spotless as ever, though the lights in the main room being off, the 'closed' sign on the front door, and the whiny, repetitive sound of a sewing machine from upstairs told her that her older sister was hard at work, likely with some important order or another. That suited the filly just fine for the moment; she quickly made her way to the mirrored platform and shrugged her saddlebags off. "Opal!" She softly called out, "Here, kitty." Now, Sweetie Belle normally was not one to call to the cat in such a manner; Opalescence got along with pretty much everypony as well as oil did with water, and Sweetie returned the sentiment wholeheartedly. But she had a plan today; no longer would she have to hide away from the cat in her own home. And with that in mind, she opened up her saddlebags and gently dumped the contents out across the plinth. There were two items; a number of short wooden planks wrapped in a cardboard loop, bearing the logo of 'Cotton Tail's Completely Safe Build-It-Yourself Rabbit Trap', and a small and slightly crumpled paper bag marked 'Time Turner's Clock Shop'. Sweetie ignored the bag for now, turning to the rabbit trap and using her fledgling telekinesis to pull the sleeve off the wooden planks, and spreading the planks out across the floor like a set of cards. In the middle, formerly wedged between two of the wooden pieces, she found a wide mesh of metal wires, a small baggie with some gears, axles, screws, and other mechanical doodads, and a sheet of instructions. It was this last item that Sweetie pulled out, reading twice to make sure she understood; there was no way she would let her usual clumsiness interfere with something important like this. Laying down on the floor, Sweetie began to assemble the trap, periodically checking on the instructions to make sure she was doing okay. She was surprised that everything was going so smoothly; Applebloom was the crusader who seemed to have the least problems with construction or building. Sweetie would have asked her to help, but she had a feeling her friend wouldn't really sympathize with her intentions towards Opal. Regardless, the hutch was actually looking like it was supposed to, so the filly couldn't complain. Once it was done, she surveyed her work, making sure it matched the diagram exactly. The metal grid was the door, held open for now, while the wooden planks made up the walls, floor, and ceiling. The floor section looked somewhat taller than normal; it was designed so that once enough weight -say, perhaps, the weight of a rabbit, or a certain cat- was put on it, it would sink down, releasing a mechanism that would slam the door shut. If she wanted to release the occupant later, the top could be opened up and the animal lifted out. Now that that was done, Sweetie pushed the contraption into a shadowed corner behind some dress-forms, and put the remaining packaging and instruction sheet, along with the paper bag from the clock shop, back into her saddlebags. Trying to look as casual as possible, she made her way upstairs, pushing open the door to Rarity's 'inspiration room.' "Heya, sis." She grinned, and said sister gave back a distracted greeting like always, hardly sparing a glance from whatever she was pushing through the sowing machine with carefully measured movements. Normally the abstract dismissal would leave Sweetie Belle slightly put-out, but today, she just repressed a wicked grin and walked down the hall to her own bedroom. Everything was going according to plan. Once she'd hidden the evidence of the rabbit trap deep in her closet, Sweetie turned to the other object, the paper bag. Dumping it out onto her desk before also stowing it, Sweetie found what appeared to be a regular stuffed animal, a mouse to be exact, sitting under the lamp's glare. She turned it over, revealing a copper metal plate with a quartet of wheels poking out from the belly area. That confirmed, she placed it back down, picking up a small fold-out square of paper that had also fallen out of the bag, and began to read. This day was going to be perfect. This was decidedly less than perfect, Sweetie decided, glaring at the white ball of fur that was stubbornly remaining in her basket and making a show of ignoring the fake mouse. It was night now; the moon shining in through the boutique's front windows and leaving a pattern of bright rectangles in the middle of the floor. By contrast, the rest of the room was dark and moody, shadows gathering in the far corners. Sweetie could almost imagine them morphing, black on black, making eerie images of ponies wailing in silent agony... No, she had to focus here. She'd stopped being truly afraid of the dark a long time ago, and besides, she was down here so late to execute 'Operation: Behave', not make up stupid ghost stories. She knew she'd be in trouble if Rarity woke up and found her still awake, anyway, so she wanted to make this as quick as possible. Which brought her back to the current problem: Opal wasn't taking the bait. A trail of sourceless illumination across the floor led from the basket to the hutch trap, and the mouse was sitting there, well within the cat's reach, waiting for a magical signal from Sweetie that would send it on it's way, but Opal refused to budge, taking turns glaring at the mouse as though it had insulted her family, and giving Sweetie Belle an eerily expressive expression of disdain. Do you seriously expect me to fall for that? the feline seemed to be saying. Sweetie Belle wouldn't give up, though; she just returned to face and settled down to wait. Part of her was tempted to try casting a want-it-need-it spell on the mouse, but even if she'd known it in the first place, remembering the events of a few weeks ago thoroughly dissuaded her. She and the other crusaders had been leery of Twilight for a while after that incident; it had felt like she was forcing her way into their minds and overriding their own thoughts with the spell. Sweetie wouldn't wish such an experience on anypony, or even any cat in this case. But it still left her with the problem of how to get Opal to chase the mouse. This was a difficult problem, but she was sure she'd figure something out. It was four hours later, and Sweetie finally had to admit defeat. Her legs were numb, her eyelids were getting heavy, and Opal had long since curled up for a nap. Shakily getting on her hooves, Sweetie made her way to the mouse and picked it up. The front door to Carousel Boutique opened slightly, and after a loud yawn, a small object came hurtling out of the crack, hitting the side of the trash bins with a loud clang before falling limply to the ground. "Dumb machine." The next morning dawned; a weekend, so there was no school for Sweetie today. Rarity softly closed the door to her sister's room again; sympathetically letting the filly sleep in. All attempts to rouse her had failed, and the dressmaker had to admit her sister looked quite peaceful lying there, even if her snores were causing a somewhat worrying vibration in the ceiling. She must have worn herself out crusading after school yesterday. Rarity herself had a number of items on her 'to do' list for this morning, a habit she'd picked up from Twilight at some point or another, so she made her way downstairs and began to bustle around the shop, cleaning here, moving things around there, and all the while cooking a rare and thankfully smoke-alarm-free breakfast. Rarity was almost done with that now; two plates were set out; once she finished it up, she'd go back upstairs and wake up Sweetie Belle. Yes, having a morning without any cooking disasters was quite refreshing. On that note, she opened up the cabinets to find the salt and pepper. Instead, she found herself wrinkling her nose in disgust; a toxic stench was making it's way from the back. Blindly groping with one hoof, she finally resorted to telekinesis to pull out... something. She couldn't even tell what it was; a glass bottle without any markings or stickers, containing some sort of awful brownish liquid. She turned it over, finding an expiration date printed at the bottom. Two years ago. How had this thing sat there so long, and why was it only now releasing that awful stench? Well, it didn't matter either way; at least she'd found it now, and she knew exactly what to do with it. The front door to Carousel Boutique opened slightly, and after a loud groan of disgust, Rarity walked out and carefully levitated the vial of nastiness into the bottom of one of the bins. She didn't want the glass to break and splash the stuff all over, naturally. Satisfied the situation had been dealt with, she turned to go back inside, only to hear a loud crack from under her hooves. Shaking her head in distaste, -she must still be a little out of it this morning- she backed up to examine what she had stepped on. It appeared to be a mouse of some sort, though closer inspection revealed it to be mechanical in nature, beneath the cloth exterior. It had some wheels poking out of the bottom, but one of them had had part of the edge snapped off; Rarity realized that was the part she had stepped on. It would still work, likely, but it's gait would be a touch uneven. But what was such a thing doing outside? Perhaps somepony had dropped it by accident, but this close to the boutique? She took it inside with her, deciding she'd ask around later in case somepony had lost it. Anyway, back to preparing breakfast. Rarity forgot all about the mouse for the next few hours, and for her part, Sweetie didn't mention it despite noticing it on the countertop. The attempt to get Opal in a position where she could lay down the law had failed miserably, and she didn't need her sister angry with her on top of that. Finally, once Sweetie had been seen off with the other crusaders and the Boutique was opened for business, did Rarity finally remember it, and as nopony had come in yet, she decided to bring it into the main shop and examine it. It was a curious device; clockwork running on magic. She set it down on the floor and rolled it back and forth a few times, and it produced a squeaking noise at regular intervals. Perhaps it was a toy for very young foals, or maybe cats. The way Opalescence turned her snout up at it, though, put that theory into question. She soon realized what the lens was for; it could seek out and follow trails of magical residue. Rarity spent a few minutes amusing herself by making it follow increasingly confusing, spiraling, overlapping paths, the broken wheel combined with it's confusion giving it an almost pitiful disposition as it attempted to stay true to the path. So absorbed by this did she get, that she completely missed the sound of the bell tinkling. "Um, what are you doing?" Rarity looked up -when had she sat down?- to see a very confused looking Fluttershy staring at her. "Aheh, um..." A quick bust of telekinesis shunted the toy into a far corner, and Rarity stood up and brushed herself off as though nothing had happened. "I'm sorry, I completely forgot about Spa day! Let me just close things back up, and we may go." Fluttershy nodded, but her eyes gravitated toward the mouse, sitting forlornly in the corner. "Are you-" "Fine, just fine." Rarity interrupted. "Are you su-" "Yes!" Present Day Now, not so much walking as pushing herself along the beach, slogging through the sand as her vision danced and swayed drunkenly, Rarity was starting to feel like that little faux mouse, mindlessly following the shoreline and hoping she'd reach safety, hoping nothing would burst out of the jungle and put a violent end to her travels. Such a thought had ceased to be scary some time ago; in her exhausted and befuddled state, it was little more than an idea she tried to escape without really knowing or caring why. After her panic attack earlier, she'd found herself emotionally drained, everything already let loose and washed away. So she was in some strange and unknown place, so she had no idea how she got there or how to get back home, so she didn't even know where home was in relation to her present location. So this, so that, so what? All she really knew was that she wanted to find some sort of shelter, and that the village she had spotted earlier was the most likely candidate. She'd begun following the shoreline as the sun set, only to discover that the bay was actually much wider than she'd thought at first glance. It would take longer than she'd expected to reach the sign of civilization, and being the terrible swimmer she was, crossing the waters directly to it wasn't an option. And on top of that, she had no guarantee the inhabitants would be ponies, let alone friendly. Still, she decided she'd rather take her chances in there than with staying out in the wild all night, so the long slog along the inner shore began. She lost track of time rather quickly after the sun set, as the sky tonight was moonless, but still she'd kept going, ignoring that some washed-up seaweed had wrapped itself around her left forehoof, or that strange lights were starting to appear in the bay's waters here and there. She couldn't care less about the lightning storm to the south, and seeing just how bedraggled she was looking, in the reflection off a tide-pool, failed to move her at all. Then the exhaustion had set in, but she didn't really care that her path along the beach was becoming increasingly zig-zagged and meandering. She'd all but completely shut down, a vaguely Rarity-shaped shell plodding along despite being well past the limits of her endurance. A vague thought crossed her mind about proving something to an apple, but then her legs finally gave out, and the proud unicorn slumped down onto the sand. She lay there for a long time. My Notes