Gah! Bucket please!

by StormDancer

Bucket!

Many many things had happened to Princess Twilight Sparkle since she had been sent to Ponyville 5 years ago. She had discovered the Elements of Harmony, she had teamed up with a group of five strangers and defeated the evil sister of Princess Celestia, she had restored said sister to her former (non-evil) self, defeated the eldrich spirit of Chaos, beaten back swarms of monsters, seen things that cannot be unseen, and even closed the gates of Tartarus after returning Cerberus there with the use of a squeaky ball conveniently hidden in a tree trunk in case of ball emergencies.

She may have also become a princess in the process.

That being said, she was no stranger to embarrassing situations, having been the source of no small number of blunders over the years.

And all of that failed to compare to the realization that with all her accomplishments, all her knowledge, and all her magic, she had failed to remember the basic concept of cause and effect.

With a groan, she stood from her seat, trying her best to ignore the sound of wet fur shlicking off polished wood, and turned to clean up her mess. The chair was a complete loss: no amount of polish would ever remove the bleaching of ... that... once it had sat for so many hours. The floor could be handled. The desk, well, technically drool could damage the finish, but with her habit of falling asleep, she wagered the prospective life of the desk over the likelihood of anypony seeing it before she would have to dispose of it anyway. After a moment, the assorted books were floated out of the room, save the damp-paged book turned pillow, and the desk received a nice new flash polish, courtesy of the Princess' magic.

A few more moments were spent teleporting another experiment into the vault under the dump before she turned to the source of her embarrassment with a flush cheeked scowl.

The chair.

---

It had taken some three minutes and forty-seven seconds to appropriately clean, sterilize, and ultimately dispose of said chair. Despite it having been enchanted and magically reinforced, apparently the result of too many cups of extremely concentrated tea being filtered through the Element of Magic's own kidneys was beyond simple protection spells. The amount of frustration she had found in teleporting the warded piece of furniture was only exceeded by the realization that upon her third attempt, the wards had simply given out, resulting in the smouldering wreck that she had finally disposed of.

Evidence of her embarrassing evening gone, she had turned to go wash up when she noticed the whiff of fresh air, and only then realized that the stink of the burnt smooze goo had never left the room.

With a growl that threatened to become habitual, she stomped out of the lab with a softly glowing magical field around her... in case Spike had returned unexpectedly.

That, and she didn't want to have to clean her entire castle on her way to the shower. A brisk walk and a careful check of the main hall assured her that Spike was indeed still out, and thankfully unaware of her little accident. No amount of excuses or explanations would have deterred her number one assistant from asking the obvious questions. And no amount of mental manipulation would be capable of erasing those memories from his young mind. A dragon, after all, would live for centuries, and she had no intention of letting a story like that be something others would find out about in the years to come.

Spike was a good dragon, but he was still a baby dragon and prone to slips of the tongue.

Regardless, with his absence, Twilight drew some slight amount of comfort as she hurried to her bathroom, slammed the door, and turned on the hot water.

As she waited for the water to heat up, she quickly brushed the tangles from her mane before turning to look at herself in the mirror.

'Yep' she thought to herself, 'looks like I fell asleep on a book again.' With a roll of her eyes, she turned from the mirror, and beheld her blissfully steamy shower before hopping past the raised stonework and onto the pristine tiles of the room sized stall.

The sooner she could get clean, the sooner she could feel clean. And the sooner she could remove all evidence of the night, the sooner she could get back to work..... and try to bury all the embarrassment that went with those memories.

---

The shower had taken longer than she had expected.

Not only had the smear of drool and book glue on her cheek proven remarkably difficult to wash off, but no matter how hard she had scrubbed, she couldn't quite seem to get the feeling of filth from her hindquarters. After fifteen minutes of brushing and scrubbing, she realized that the clingy cloying feeling of being dirty was most likely psychological and had resolved to a nice shampoo and conditioning wash rather than risk scrubbing her hide 'clean' of her coat.

Personal hygiene or not, going out with a patchy coat would not only raise a few eyebrows, but all the wrong kinds of questions.

Besides, Rarity's weekly spa invitation was only 3 days away and if she wasn't feeling normal by then, the spa ponies would likely have just the right additive for her bath to ease her worries away.

The smell of burnt Smooze goo though, ~that~ was something she was finding remarkably difficult to get rid of once she had noticed it.

At first, it hadn't been so bad, but once the third rinse had taken the suds from her coat, she had started to wonder if the Smooze's natural magical resistance somehow also included an aversion to floral scents.

That curiosity aside, after her forty eight minute shower, she had quickly dried herself, brushed out her mane and tail, and tossed her towel into the drying cabinet when she blinked at the gurgling sound of her stomach.

Ah.... the late night burro-itos.

Mental note to self, eating burro-itos late at night, while chugging tea and performing gratuitous amounts of science, could lead to discomfort and bloating.

Wonderful. As if the morning hadn't been unpleasant enough.

With another roll of her eyes, she checked herself over in the mirror one last time.

If nothing else, at least the excessive amount of conditioner had left her mane, tail, and coat with a glossy, almost wet, sheen.

She giggled softly, Rarity would kill for this look.

With one last check to make sure the shower was properly drained, Twilight trotted out of the bathroom and back to her lab, hearing the front door close just as she returned to her newly polished desk.

Just as she had pulled out a new book and began taking notes on the table of contents, the muffled shout of her assistant reached her ears.

"EEEeeeeew! What is this stuff on the bathroom floor!?!?!?"

And with a pop and a flash of light, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of a lot of things, gained a new, self imposed title: Lord High Queen of Embarrassing Excuses and Attempts of Justify 'Stuff' as Spilled Tile Polish.

Which probably would have worked... if Spike hadn't seen the toilet paper stuck to her hoof.

Comments

[Shadowshame]

OK this is a good comedy fic so far