FoE: Snippet Story

by Windrunner

She Really Hated That Science Oven

'

One decade before war end:

"You wildly worthless piece of trash. Why..won't..you...work ya useless garbage heap!?" The very upset slightly lime-coated earth pony slammed the door of the object of her ire with a hind hoof and much to her surprise it whirred to life. An older model of scientific apparatus built by a company whose name was long smudged off the machinery before it was ever obtained.

"What a hunk of junk. Why do they only give me this stuff to work with? This equipment is nearly useless now." She sighed and continued working on other assigned tasks.

Tasks given by the headmare of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences no less. They were skewed and odd works. Why these particular works were given over to her was an unknown. A very junior scientist in a fairly large staff. These work quarters were quiet and not well maintained at all. She was merely told these experiments were considered a high priority. Oddly, she was the only one assigned to these tests. They seemed easy enough to run. The sort of thing main groups would never bother over lack of time to perform them. Some of them were quite long-term.

Whatever the reason, she was given a surprisingly large budget and amount of leeway to approach the tests. Why the ministry chose her was a complete mystery. There was one addendum. Only report all results directly to the headmare once per year. None other. No staff member or other eyes were ever to see them. This was the most unusual request, but coming from on high as it were gave an air of prestige despite the odd state of affairs surrounding it. Some of the other scientists were even visibly jealous of her being given such a weighty position at first.

These things were not her concern. The real concern was why she was only being allowed to use antiquated equipment nearly on the verge of being completely obsolete. This was an order that must be obeyed coming from the ministry. This made little logical sense. If they wanted such secretive and important results why all the massively outdated tech? Modern machines would be half the size and some would more than half the complexity of utilizing them. This was so extremely unusual. Occasionally she would have to resort to sourcing parts from all over.

It was becoming more and more difficult to keep all this instrumentation operating, calibrated and otherwise functional. Let alone performing some of the more complicated things on the workscrolls. Headway was being made however. Years piled on as this work continued, hidden from potentially prying eyes in such a way that even if it was discovered it would be indecipherable except to her and the headmare herself. Given a living and expenses stipend so large was nearly unheard of. Twilight was effectively royalty after all. The princess own protege in fact.

Naturally the ministry budgets dwarfed this by leagues which made this quite easy to conceal. It was practically a minor expense to them. Hardly worth a note on report scrolls. Under their auspices and with their authority she could do whatever she wanted so long as it continued the work. One year. Three years. For the scientist they were slow, but still productive. She filed her reports and was rewarded well for doing so. Even given time off at reasonable intervals. What an oddity this was while the entire country was on a war positioning. Times were getting rough out there.

She knew this. Her own fiancee went off to fight three years before to never return. With grief in her heart and mind she turned to the pure work of scientific discovery to keep her thoughts off it, becoming a truly learned student in the process. To be granted this position, chosen by Twilight herself was an immense honor for one so young. Whatever the headmare was after, she wished to provide it. If all of these strange tests meant so much to her she would continue to plow through them as difficult as they could be. This was an enormous responsibility.

Her reasoning concluded using this type of equipment would garner little to no attention. Perhaps that was the meaning behind being given all this barely functional technology. She learned as she went. Sometimes forced to improvise when parts simply no longer existed to be found or salvaged. It was strangely satisfying keeping these things in some semblance of working condition and even managing to get decently accurate results. The tests themselves were almost a bore in comparison. Long, tedious and time-consuming. They must be really important.

What she could not piece together was the end goal of this. Clearly there must be a reason, but after four, six, eight years of this it was becoming tremendously wearing. Especially concerning the large pressure vessel chamber. Immense enough for multiple ponies to walk inside it was once a terrifically expensive construction of steel and pipes, valves and safety mechanisms to prevent one from accidentally being roasted, frozen, magically disrupted or any other number of terrible potential hazards it presented. She was disgusted with this gigantic mass of failure.

It finally hummed to life after that hard kick. It would almost be funny if it wasn't becoming a commonality between everything. Sometimes just plain hammering on things brought them back to life. Ridiculous. Finally, the tenth year was about to pass, none knowing what was about to collapse in upon the whole. That day there in the lab sitting behind the door of the open pressure vessel she was greeted by a most unexpected sight. A large basket full of fruits, wines, cheeses and a letter of congratulations and recommendation from Twilight herself. Her work was completed.

'I am ever so grateful for all of your hard work. Take this as a token of my appreciation and gratitude. We've done it.' Read the note within. Done what? She read in stunned silence and glanced about at the hated machines she would finally be free of. Despite not knowing what grand accomplishment she contributed towards, this kind of award was an amazing get. A letter of commendation from that far above would open so many paths. It was so hard to take in she began crying and then smashing on the chamber with her hooves in some sort of demented glee.

Laughing all the while. Huffing heavily she finally stopped after hammering and bucking it as hard as she could multiple times, not really having inflicted any damage on such a heavily reinforced thing. Barely a dent or scratch on it. Three weeks later she was visiting the little office beside the pressure vessel to clear out the remainder of her things. Unfortunately for her the most terrible timing of all conspired to make her look up in terror as the building began to shake considerably. Warning alarms indicated the magical shielding was near collapse. Was the lab complex being attacked somehow?

"What's happening!?" Of course there was no one near to hear her cry, and most likely consumed by confusion themselves. There was no way to know what was going on from in here. As the building began to collapse from the immense blastwave around it she had little choice but to fling herself through the open pressure vessel door and heave it shut from inside or be crushed by mountains of falling debris. The hefty steel door clanged shut with a disturbing finality just as everything went black.

---

I guess she really did hate that science oven.

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