2.6
2-6
Sunbeam could feel her blood pressure rising as she looked at the trio of sorry-looking ponies sitting glumly in the sitting area outside the lab. Scootaloo shifted an ice-pack on her head, hidden beneath a hard hat. A silken band tightly gripped her around her barrel, holding her wings firmly to her sides. Neither of the fillies’s companions were any better off, for that matter. Twilight sported an unhealthy-looking black eye and Sweetie Belle worryingly was rubbing her head, which had a small scrape on its side, and they had joined their orange friend in wearing hard-hats.
“We were inside for less than an hour!” She proclaimed, sweeping a hoof to gesture at all three of them. “How did you all get hurt so fast, and why are you wearing hard hats?” Sunbeam knew she was probably petulant-sounding, but the frustration of the sight was only adding to the tension jangling all of her nerves and the worry over Sweetie’s own test.
Twilight pointed sourly at Scootaloo before speaking at last. “She needs adult supervision.” The princess’s wings fidgeted with her own frustration.
“But you are an adult!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As they began hooking up Sweetie Belle into the test apparatus in the lab, Sunbeam still worried about leaving Scootaloo and Applebloom outside and unsupervised. But there was nothing she could do about the matter, as she and Twilight would both be needed if her worries about the nature of Sweetie Belle’s talent were true. She hoped she was just reading into things.
Twilight pulled her to one side after a few minutes of hooking wires onto the scanning gear on the filly to voice her own concerns. “Are you certain everything will be fine? Absolutely certain? I was doing a little bit of research on ‘song-spells’, and I-“
“Twilight, Twilight… Don’t worry. Yes, the strongest song-spells I know of can be dangerous, but Sweetie Belle should be fine.” Sunbeam reassured. Sure, there had been powerful songspells in the past, but the trait had died out over the years. She draped a wing over Twilight’s back, letting the warm down of her underwing ticklishly rest around the back of Twilight’s neck. “It would take an alicorn to develop the same flare that you did in your magic exam. I’ve never heard of anypony being a song-spell that powerful besides Princess Celestia herself.”
“Do I have to wear this thing? Rarity would freak if she saw me wearing it.” Sweetie’s voice creaked in the middle of ‘freak’ as she interrupted the student/teacher bonding moment going on. The little filly pointed at the magic monitoring apparatus on her head as Sunbeam and Twilight awkwardly broke away from each other blushing slightly.
The poor bowl-like object blinked furiously in wild patterns, likely cursing its lot in life to be repeatedly overcharged with magic. Too bad, it had been made for the job.
Poor Sweetie Belle squeaked again as Twilight teleported twice in rapid succession to grab more sensors and hopped over the filly’s back to jam them onto the side of the big helmet. Sweetie’s little white hooves waved in frustration at Twilight to try and shoo her off before Twilight teleported from her side to the main console to adjust more settings. “Will you stop that!?”
“Sorry, I just need to make sure I get this right.”
Sunbeam felt the heat slowly leave her cheeks as she got over the realization that she had been treating Twilight like her daughter again. Chuckling ruefully, she slowly trotted over to the filly and began stroking her back to calm her down from her jumpy high. They still had a great deal of work to go on Twilight’s manners when she was in the middle of an experiment. The least Sunbeam could do would be to calm the little filly and keep her from unnerving herself further over the frantic activity. “Yes, yes you do, Sweetie Belle. I know, Twilight could be a bit more courteous, but we need to study your magic a little in order to help you.”
“I don’t see how wearing a salad bowl with lights on it is going to help me.” Sweetie complained as she slowly laid down tensely and laid her head on her forelegs in a sulk.
Carefully putting a hoof to her mouth to hide the twitching smirk of her agreement, Sunbeam noted to herself that it did look rather like a big metal salad bowl. Best not to let the filly hear that. No, it wouldn’t do at all to laugh. “Don’t let Twilight hear this, but it does look rather silly, doesn’t it?” Sunbeam conspiratorially whispered to Sweetie Belle.
Sweetie nodded vigorously, shaking her salad-hat wildly on her head.
“Yes, well, it’s called a Thaumatoscope. It scans your magic as you use it so we can compare it to everypony else’s. We’ll figure out how you control your magic through it.”
“Oh.” Sweetie said, disappointed that her silly hat had a purpose and that she couldn’t be rid of it yet. Any second now, Rarity would inexplicibly walk through the door like she always did whenever something silly was on her, and start yelling at her for looking horrible. It always happened. “Does it have to look like I have a salad bowl on my head?”
Squatting, Sunbeam nuzzled her new student comfortingly at the bottom of her neck. “No. That’s just to make it easy and stressless for everypony.”
“It’s stressing ME out.” Sweetie squeaked indignantly.
Sunbeam didn’t notice how her foamy bristles were slowly annoying the filly further with each moment. “We could put them on without it and stick them to your head directly, but it would look even worse and take longer. You’d look like you had wire mane at the end of it.”
“Never Again!” Twilight proclaimed across the lab before she went back to calibrating the machine again.
“See? Listen to Twilight, she knows the danger.” Sunbeam warned, still trying to calm the tensed up filly. She knew the poor girl had to be close to quitting the experiment out of frustration and stress. But, maybe hearing of Twilight’s misadventures might help a little. “You know, Twilight invented the ‘salad bowl’ after her own bad experience with the old way of using a thaumatoscope.”
“Really?”
“Sunbeam, so help me, if you say it I will turn you plaid myself!” Twilight grumbled as she finished her adjustments on the main board and started to head for the recording board. Sunset-colored magic arced upon her horn, teleporting her to it involuntarily with a yelp, a grunt, and a slight fall from head height. “Aughgrble!”
Sunbeam looked around carefully, then stooped as low as she could manage to whisper into Sweetie’s ear as quietly as a mouse. “She got so frustrated by how putting all the wires on her head took that she suffered a magic surge that turned her mane into fire temporarily. The heat melted all the wires in her mane.” She looked up carefully to make sure Twilight hadn’t somehow snuck over to startle them. But the alicorn was busying herself with starting up the data feeds on the board.
Turning back presented her with Sweetie Belle looking at her with her own hooves jammed in her mouth to muffle her squeak of horror.
“She was fine.” Sunbeam clarified as quickly as she could to relax Sweetie before she could run in terror. Laying down, Sunbeam rested her head beside Sweetie’s own and nudged up as closely as she could to continue. “When the flare ended, the final burst of magic took the heat with it, and left her with a solid mane due to the way the melted wires all clumped into her mane.”
“No!”
“Yes! It took her a month just to get it to grow long enough to be able to cut it all out, and she was stuck for most of a year with a manecut like your friend Scootaloo’s because of how slowly her mane grows. I think she would have liked it if it wasn’t for the way other ponies in her classes teased her over her style every time my back was turned.”
“Mom, Dad, and Rarity would kill me if I did that!”
“I thought you wanted to get out of your sister’s shadow? Why would you care about her?”
“She’d still kill me.”
Sunbeam rolled her eyes at the statement. Fillies were always so overdramat- no, she couldn’t say that. Luna, despite her valid reasons for it, still took the title of Queen of the Overdramatic. Alright, so she herself wasn’t blameless in her sister’s madness, but Luna had let things spiral far out of control. Sigh. The filly had a point, though. And maybe a counterpoint as well… “Oh, you silly filly. She wouldn’t kill you.”
“Yes she would!”
“No, because you would become Doomy Belle! Evil villainess of sound and metal! And your sister would become a valiant hero out to save the world from your insidious plot to end school plays and replace all the music in the world with Sapphire Shores albums!” Sunbeam proclaimed to the filly. Twilight’s tail frazzled and flipped in place like a dying fish for a moment before she calmed down again.
As Sunbeam nuzzled the filly once more, the foamy bristles finally irritated her beyond the point of tolerance, resulting in decisive retaliation. Sharp pain burned at the side of Sunbeam’s face as Sweetie nipped at one of the darts and ripped it from the mare’s skin savagely. Well, more of a sharp tug and the sensation of superglued fur ripping out. Or getting a really bad shot. Why, it might have been both at once!
Sunbeam wanted to yelp in anguish at the lump of pain on the side of her head, but the inarticulate cry died in her throat as the colors of her coat began to twist and shimmer before her eyes. The pleasant lightly burnt orange of her fur twisted and churned before her eyes as a wave of unreality marched down her legs like an army of ants. Pricking touched every point on her body as chaotic magic worked into her, swirling into a psycadellic array of hot pink, electric blue, forest green, and warning yellow plaid. Stuffing a hoof into her mouth to try and stifle the keening wail of ‘Oh Tree, WHAT!?’ failed miserably as she bit down on it.
Her lungs trembled and burned as she started to hyperventilate at the unnatural colors she had been painted in threatened to drive her mad. It was the Worst Possible Thing, and she couldn’t dare let herself-
“DOOM!” Sweetie Belle cried in relieved amusement as she poked Sunbeam in her soft sides, making the pegasus curl up on herself.
“No Doom! Tirek used up all the doom allotted for the next two years!”
Wait… Doom could be allotted? Did it come in metric units, or as floating time periods? How did somepony even schedule or predict doom?
Sunbeam’s rapid –fire hitching hysteric breaths slowed as the interruption of her old student’s fobiles wedged itself into her mind. Deep, desperate breaths of utter embarrassment shifted into short hitches of amusement as she started to realize how worked up she was getting over the situation herself. She could beat Discord with a stick until he turned her back if she had to! And in the meantime, why couldn’t plaid be a distinctive fashion statement? It was mortifying, but oddly hypnotic at the same time with the way the stripes of neon colors seemed to move over her new green undercoat.
Her breaths turned to coughs, then hiccupping giggles as the initial shock escaped her to roam freely on the four winds. A confused and lost guffaw escaped her at last, glad to be free of the stuffy old mare as she let her guard fall away at last. “Heh. Heh- Heh. No Doom for you. Doom for Me. Doom for Filly. No Doom for You. Always more Doom for me.”
“Doom?” Sweetie innocently asked as she realized that Sunbeam had calmed down fully from her fit.
“Doom!”
Perking up, she chanted back louder. “DOOM! Doomy-DOOM!”
Twilight growled in exasperated frustration as Sunglow-in-the-Dark and Doomy Belle continued to chant the Doomed Hymn of Doomyness at each other behind her. It was entirely inappropriate to be carrying on like that in the middle of an important experiment! Completely unprofessional! Science wasn’t something to mock!
Head met console through Gravity’s helpful dating service several times as Twilight wondered why life and Harmony hated her so much. With a final yowl of her nerves going completely shot, she thumped her head against the console one last time and let it stay there as she contemplated whether or not her BBBFF needed a secretary. Laying there, her frowny scowl twisted and squiggled in the sudden silence, and with great reluctance she finally looked back.
Sweetie was standing right behind her on one side, looking up with great downy eyes of worry as Sunb-Sunglow stood on the other side. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I was getting all freaky-outty. I didn’t know you were so upset.”
Sunb-Sunglow hung her head in shame as she stood at Twilight’s other shoulder. “I’m sorry. Things have been tense for me as well. I was just trying to get you to relax with us. I-… I shouldn’t have.”
And there was the accidentally guilt trip. How wonderful. Darn it, she was good and mad and- Twilight made a mental note to herself to stop looking at upset fillies in the eyes. It wasn’t good for her resolve. But they were right. Excessive tension in the middle of an examination could lead to anomalous results, resulting in more examination and worse results and- she needed to stop thinking in circles. Here they were trying to be nice and silly to keep them distracted from the wait, and here she was being the fun police.
Pinkie was going to stuff her in a cake if she found out.
But… Sunglow… Glowlight? Oh, her teacher did look pretty ‘DOOM!’ey dressed in neon shades of Princess Celestia’s colors. A small squiggle of amusement distractedly crawled along her lips as she decided to stop letting things affect her so greatly. Only one thing she could do about that.
Two darts were plucked from her teacher’s already neon form and found themselves quickly planted on Twilight’s ears. Whipping her hooves up, she ripped them free from herself in a gesture much like a mare blowing her mind as she tested whether or not the darts would work twice. For Science. Hot Pink, Neon Purple, and Navy Blue confirmation scribbled in over her coat across her body. “DOOM!”
Sweetie shrugged. “Doom?”
Sunbeam pumped a hoof in the air. “Doom!”
Sweetie Belle perked up, then crossed her hooves as well as her eyes as an urgent matter buzzed near the base of her tail. “Can we doom our way through this test? I’ve been waiting for hours, and I kinda drank too much this morning…”
“Gah! Yes, yes! Sunbeam, get the broom!”
“The broom? But I hav-“
“Not to use on you, you need it for the test!”
“Oh.”
Sunbeam trotted over with the broom in her mouth and laid it at Sweetie’s hooves. “We need you to lift the broom and do some basic sweeping to test your telekinesis.” Sweetie started to open her mouth to protest how easy that was. “Without humming, singing, or any sound at all verbal or in your mind.”
Sweetie clammed up instantly and her pupils dilated as she processed that. “But that’s so hard!”
Sunbeam lightly touched her own day-glow pink nose to the filly’s. “I know. But we need you to focus on it. Please.”
Gulping worriedly, Sweetie nodded. “Okay, I’ll try.” With that, she closed her eyes and concentrated.
Sunbeam ambled over to Twilight, standing just between her and Sweetie Belle as Twilight worriedly whispered. “Absolutely certain that it will be a small surge at worst?” Twilight asked.
“Yes.” Sunbeam said, hiding the tiny spark of worry at the center of her own heart.
Tiny arcs of her green magic fitfully jumped along the filly’s horn as she tried to summon her magic into her mind. Each one escaped her grasp in a small burst of sparks as it reached the tip of her pointy appendage. Whines rattled in her throat as her hooves shook against the floor amidst her effort to force her uncooperative magic out through the deafening silence of her mind.
Twilight winced as Sweetie fought to wake up her magic like a normal unicorn would, all the while hoping that the filly wouldn’t suffer a surge or magic blow-out. She had seen her suffer one once before, and Twilight knew how painful it could be from her own surges and flares in her youth. Somehow, though, the little filly was slowly managing it. The end of the broom was slowly enveloped in a slim green aura, and gingerly lifted from the floor shaking in the ethereal grip.
But what worried Twilight was the way that Sunbeam bent down to Sweetie’s ear, and mouthed to Twilight to watch. Before she could object to the action, Sunbeam began to hum a simple repeating tune into Sweetie’s ear that seemed hauntingly familiar. A nervous gulp of worry slithered down Twilight’s throat as she watched every hair in the filly’s coat and mane suddenly stand on end and a double corona flare to life around her horn.
“Wha-what? No! I can’t stop i-it!”
The broom slowly shivered and shimmied into the air, standing upright as a crackling arc connected it to the filly. That was good, a nice calm, controlled reaction that meant that Sweetie had things well in hoof despite being thrust into the middle of a spell. With a bit of training, she’d probably become quite the mage. She would have to be taught the old language to let her read the journals of c-
“Sunbeam! Remember that worst case scenario you talked about?”
“What do you-“Sunbeam’s words died mercilessly as mops, rags, dust pans and everything in between shimmied back and forth enveloped in green auras. She turned back to the filly, and gulped a little as she noticed how she had nearly perfect time alongside the objects as they began to sway purposefully in time with the filly’s shaking.
So that was what real unadaltered fear felt like. She had almost forgotten it. The rush of cold icy clarity felt good in a way she didn’t particularly care for as it reached every inch of her body. She hadn’t even considered the slightest chance that Sweetie Belle might have been a more powerful spellsong than she was. “Forget the scenario. This is far worse!”
“I can’t get it out of my head!” Sweetie cried as a third corona rippled to life around her horn and a great burst of sparks burst from its tip. The sparks shot across the room, animating more objects to dance about in place. Snapping open, the filly’s eyes blazed green light as she began to float off of the ground.
Twilight didn’t get a chance to answer as a rag latched onto her face and drove her into the ground to clean the ragged bags of sleeplessness from her eyes in a soapy assault. The alicorn’s hooves kicked wildly as she rolled onto her back amidst the horror.
“Sweetie, this is going to hurt a lot! I’m sorr-“ Sunbeam pushed her hoof through the aura surrounding Sweetie Belle desperately, preparing to flick the little white horn to stem the tide of uncontrolled magic.
A sickly sound, like that of an aluminum bat being delivered through a wood chipper at the speed of a sonic rainboom split the air as the magic reacted violently to the intrusion. In a dazed corner of her mind, Sunbeam made a note that the microseconds when one flew through the air seemed to always be drawn out slightly, and that she really should look into it. A wall broke her fall, and she slumped down as everything hurt in her body while she writhed from the intense magic shock.
Hovering higher off the floor, the filly kicked her legs helplessly in the air as a bubble of magic swallowed her whole and left her at its center while random zaps of magic burst from her horn. “Do Not Want!” She squealed as she turned about in place…
And got a good look directly at Celestia’s exposed horn.
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Ah crap. Celly doomed.
4983492
DOOOOOOM!
Spelling mistake:
"had had"
"hat had"
Word missing:
“She got so frustrated by how putting all the wires on her head took"
“She got so frustrated by how long putting all the wires on her head took"
4983495 Doomy Doom of Dooms or just the regular kind?
"What could possibly go wrong"
*breathing in through closed teeth*
Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
4983669
did the first 4 paragraphs come after the rest of the chapter?
4983681 Hooray! We're doomed!
So what's next my "little pony fantasia"
4983681 I thought it was THAT Doom song
All hail Grr
So..... the CMC are special in the three fillies of the apocalypse sort of way.
hat
________
move down a line.
________
Move that paragraph down a line.
___________
move down a line
_______________
accidental
_______________
Poor, poor Celestia. You had to deal with Twilight's flares as a filly that could take out buildings, and a room full of adult Unicorns. Now you have a spell-song mage that's pulling a Twilight. If only you weren't being all secretive you could've been at full power and stopped this before it went as far as it did.
Although you described the old way, I couldn't help but think of a line from Futurama:
*reads the title, then the desc*
Ok.
Wanna know what could go wrong?
Imagine everything just stopped existing. Or the entire universe imploding in on itself. Whichever you choose.
*edit* Or both.
4983675
At the worst possible moment.
Well, now Celestia is exposed. I'm curious to see Twilight's reaction to this.
I AM ZIM!!!!!
So, WMG. The CMC are proto-alicorns?
oh wow . . .
. of course that's only if they work together.
!
It looks like the CMC are pretty much the third most powerful beings in existance in this story so far
seriously Sweetie's sing-song spells are more powerful then sunbeam's/tia's are. that's twilight absorbing the tree of harmony level scary
4984247
Hard to tell. She has a facehugger at the moment. It's a very soapious situation.
4984750 Oh, that's just terrible!
Only one spellsong in the universe that could have sweetie belles controlling brooms en-masse.
Hooray for Doom music.
This chapter confused me
I always knew that the Crusaders were special (and special-special, not dumb-special). I suspect that Celestia has found her new personal student.
I have an ear/headache now just from reading that.
DOOM!!!
disappointed that her silly had had a purpose
Second Had needs to be hat?
Pls let there be more! It is so incredibly awesome my head exploded from awesomeness!
Doom, doom, doomity, doom....
DOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!
4985261
Me: Nice gag
Sweetie Belle: Idont get it.
Me: you controlled brooms en-mass and Mickey did so as well.
Sweetie Belle: ummm.....
broom flies toward my head
Me: SWEETIE BELLE!?!?!? What the hell was that for?!?!?!?!?
I don't know how to feel about this new development. The psychotic majority wants to see just how much of a musical Sombra Sweetie can be, while the small remaining dictionary definition sanity is having a bit of a stomach-turn. Now that I think about it, that's probably when my sanity is centered.
But yeah, someone already said Sorcerer's Apprentice, so I'm gonna go with Siren. Or Calypso.
Dammit, now I'm reminded of that Children of the Night thing.
Well, that was doomtacular. Especially with Celetia's cover blown. She's got some explaining to do there. I just hope the data was preserved. Dooming around is fun and all, but heaven help them if the experiment needs to be repeated. Or all of the experiments.
Looking forward to more, especially the findings.
4991884
You know, you keep saying this, but with Twilight getting a rago-morph humping her face, who'd believe Sweetie Belle?
She could have hallucinated the whole thing from magic shock.
4997784
Point. But if she believes her eyes, and if the other Crusaders believe her, then two possibilities present themselves. Either they conspire to reveal Celestia, or they realize it's Celestia and assume a state of
terrifiedrespectful compliance.Of course, that's a double-if right there.
5000542
Oh, you have no idea.
Well, yes. One Doom is divided into 1,000 millidooms. Stubbing your toe is about 5 millidooms. Having Tirek as a house guest? 2 Dooms.
this is such an amazing line I don't even
who else would read a book based on that line
"Poor Sweetie Belle squeaked again as Twilight teleported twice in rapid succession"
^Ganon, stop that! XP
Is there a Doom Song comment? *looks* Yes, there is. Good. All is right in the world.