Gah! Bucket please!

by StormDancer

Gah!

The smell of burning socks and turpentine should never be the result of magical conductance testing.

This was a fact known to Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, books, and assorted other world-saving endeavors. That such a smell was currently filling her 'research room', since her basement lab no longer existed, was both worrisome and frustrating.

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she trotted back over to a glass apparatus which currently belched a thin yellow/gray smoke and covered the whole thing with a shimmering dome of lavender magic before siphoning out all the air and sealing the monstrosity in a blob of gray goo. Thus sealed, she waited a few more seconds for the goo to harden before teleporting the entire worktable out of the room and into a large dumpster some 200 feet under the Ponyville landfill... which, admittedly, consisted of little more than a few broken carts, some flowerpots, cans of drab colored paint, and an unusual number of striped socks.

Shaking her head at the loss of yet another table, she returned to her existing project and peered through an arcane lens to observe a thin green slime bubbling in an Erlenmeyer flask set above a small Bunsen burner.

The slime, predictably, bubbled as it was heated. The flask, predictably sat there. The flame, predictably, glowed with the steady supply of both gas and the surrounding air. The thermal probe stuck into the flask continued to display a slow, but steady, rise in the temperature of the slime. The flask sat there doing nothing, also predictably.

With no small amount of joy, Twilight Sparkle scribbled down her notes on the experiment, glancing through various scopes and taking readings in accordance with a rigidly controlled checklist pinned next to her notes... which even included time for suppressing fires and teleporting failed experiments should she become distracted.

As she had been.

When she had run to the kitchen for her fifteenth mug of camomile tea that evening.

Chuckling nervously at the slight discomfort she was beginning to experience, she glanced at her checklist one more time before rifling through a series of observations and darting out to use the royal little-filly's room.

Three minutes later, and floating another three mugs of tea behind her, she returned to the room feeling much relieved. With a smile, she plopped back down, pulled out her checklist, glanced over the room to note a decided lack of flames, and inhaled deeply as she turned to peer once more through the arcane lens at her sample of Smooze goo (politely and surreptitiously obtained) from the Grand Galloping Gala.... only to suddenly feel her nose burn, sinuses constrict, and eyes squint as the horrid smell of something burning forced a violent sneeze from her.

A few moments of hacking and coughing from the smell that had suddenly filled the room, and Twilight managed to regain enough breath to freeze the room, seal the table in gray goo, and teleport it to the landfill as well.

Sitting back down, she placed a hoof to her muzzle and wiped a bit of the splattered goo from her face.

"Eyuck! This stuff is STILL nasty after all these months. I can't believe the Smooze is made of this stuff... how he... she... er, it, can even move around without pseudopods, let alone while oozing this stuff, is beyond me."

Another few minutes were spent wiping down the floor and walls, replacing the air in the room with fresh air from outside, and generally cleaning up from the spontaneous ignition of the Smooze goo and her subsequent smooze-vapor related sneeze.

A small dustbin full of rags, all covered in the bile-yellow burnt slime, floated over to a magical hazard bin before being sealed in the familiar gray goo and being locked into a control cabinet.

Twilight took a minute more to look over her research room, assemble another table from the pile of boxes in the corner, and shake her head at the waste of another valuable sample. There just wasn't much Smooze goo to go around.

After Discord's little stunt, and Treehugger's 'auditory bliss', most of the Smooze goo had simply been reabsorbed by the Smooze itself. Only a few small patches of the magically resistant goop had been left behind, and most of those had been cleaned up by the castles Magical Hazards Crew. That Twilight had managed to collect any was testament to her nearly religious belief that nopony should go anywhere without scientific equipment. After all, the outside world was the best example of 'field testing' available.

Floating one last rag over and wiping a bit of smoking goop from her shoulder, Twilight frowned.

"And now that's gone too" she muttered. "And asking Discord for more is simply not an option.... way too many bad jokes and insinuations from him to be worth it."

Frowning, she turned back to her newly assembled table, floated a pile of books over, plopped down, and started in on her sixteenth mug of tea... and summoning another three for good measure.

After all, one loss shouldn't mean the end to a perfectly good evening of study. Oooo.... Burro-itos sounded like a great study aide too.

And, unbeknownst to her, a single drop of unburned ooze dripped, at that exact moment, from the ceiling and onto the tip of her horn.

-~oOo~-

---

Twilight Sparkle woke to the familiar sensation of a book stuck to her face.

The room was brightly lit, the nine empty mugs of tea still stacked with mathematical precision on the end of the table, and the entire plane of page 439 of Thaumaud's Reticulating Rapture Principle glued to her face via a puddle of half dried drool.

Groaning as she sat up, the book still stuck to her cheek, she blinked owlishly for a moment before grasping the book with her magic and prying, carefully, the tome from her face.

After a few moments of resistance the soft shlicking sound of half-dry drool mixed with book glue announced the end of her book-related confinement.

It was at that moment that Twilight Sparkle, Princess of a whole lot of fancy sounding things, made a discovery.

Falling asleep, after having drunk that much tea, led to a horrible bout of blushing, embarrassment, and the puddle she was apparently sitting in.

Comments

[Antiquarian]

Three minutes later, and floating another three mugs of tea behind her, she returned to the room feeling much relieved. With a smile, she plopped back down, pulled out her checklist, glanced over the room to note a decided lack of flames, and inhaled deeply as she turned to peer once more through the arcane lens at her sample of Smooze goo (politely and serepticiously obtained) from the Grand Galloping Gala.... only to suddenly feel her nose burn, sinuses constrict, and eyes squint as the horrid smell of something burning forced a violent sneeze from her.

*surreptitiously

[StormDancer]

9325605
Yay! Typo caught... I wonder if I can use it to battle against pokemon?
Seriously though, Thanks! I don't edit these things, so if's great when someone catches something and helps me to look more competent.