A Series Of Egotistical Events

by Estee

(No) Fire! (No) Fire!

In legislated theory, Rainbow was just old enough to drink, and therefore was also just old enough to legally have direct experience of what waking up with a hangover was like. In reality, having to wait two more years had taken a distant second place to being at a totally kick-flank party where the host's parents had never bothered to put a lock on the liquor cabinet, and -- she remembered most of what had happened after that, plus all of what her momentarily not-quite-as-great parents had said once they'd caught her stumbling through her bedroom window, just before they'd grounded her for a week and put a lock on the medicine cabinet.

It still gave her a point of comparison, and so she learned that waking up after an enchantment was much like waking up with a hangover. The central difference was that instead of feeling like something had recently died on her tongue, it felt as if her own tongue had become thoroughly sick of Rainbow and huffily marched off to find better quarters, words with more syllables, and probably somepony who knew what 'ostentatious' meant.

Ugh.

That didn't seem to sum up the miasma of dense exhaustion pressing into her fur.

Urk.

Somewhat better.

Bleargh.

Perfect.

She forced her eyes open, and found that she'd collapsed facing the open housing. Her second major series of movements involved forcing herself forward enough to seal it. The initial set was reserved for the food, and she quickly learned she would have been better off taking home something suitable to the raw bar. Rainbow didn't cook, but she'd wanted to celebrate having her house ready to pass inspection through actually using her kitchen for the first time, and so had mostly purchased things which required some degree of heating. It meant she went with just enough bites to get her on her hooves, and then she sat down again until her floor no longer appeared to be shifting any more than it should.

A moment was spared for wondering just how the factories operated when their employees had to be scheduled for regular fainting breaks.

Maybe it's just like that when you do it for the first time. Like flying the Junior Overlander in your first eligible year. It gets easier.

Once a few of the calories had found their way to the proper locations, she looked at her clock. Still under Moon, but not all that far away from Sun. She wanted to go back to sleep, but to do so for even a nap would risk being late for her second day of work. It seemed to be a little too early in her career for that, and so Rainbow decided there were things she could do before heading out for her shift. Besides, she'd find a place to catch a nap later. Ponyville had horrible restaurants and mean librarians and stallions who gave you weird looks when you preened in public: asking for one good place to nap seemed like fair compensation.

There were things she could do, and the first was to mount the completed wonder in the living room ceiling, where the vapor partially enveloped and accepted the little burden: the final result was only slightly larger than her snout. The second was to once again extend her senses, try to feel what she had wrought --

-- huh.

It doesn't quite feel like...

...actually, what did that store one feel like yesterday?

She'd been out for hours and as with exam cramming, certain amounts of information seemed to have vanished upon contact with the paper or in this case, the floor.

I'm not all the way back yet. I need to eat more, and my fur feels like I fell through that swamp preparation test at school again, and my feathers feel like they're still in there.

She wanted to shower. She wanted a bath, but she hadn't installed one yet. Magically, the arrangements were pretty much the same, but a shower just required an enclosure to stand within and baths meant wrangling a tub up to house level, along with being able to pay for one. The shower would have to suffice. Wash, then eat, and if there was any time left after that, she was sure she could think of some other things to do. Checking the wonder might have to wait until after she'd gotten back to Barnyard Bargains and had a fully-alert fresh impression to compare her results with.

Not that she was really worried. Rainbow was sure she'd done things correctly, because obviously the enchantment had stayed within the housing. She'd danced. Dancing like that was actually... kind of cool.

Rainbow staggered towards the bathroom and, with the automatic movement of somepony who hadn't even begun to adjust for the total lack of parents who might come down the hall, closed the door behind her. The shower was quickly set for maximum heat and, after an extra moment of consideration, minimal water pressure. Rainbow generally enjoyed showers which felt as if they were kicking the dirt off, but it had been a bruising day in several respects: a hot mist seemed best.

The water ran down her wings. Some of it soaked into feathers: more streamed towards her legs, where a portion saturated her fur and the rest was reabsorbed by the floor, once again becoming part of the clouds. It was how that part of the room's molding technique worked: liquid which came from the bathroom was returned to it. There was some moisture loss overall: she would walk out with a portion of that, and still more was filling the air as steam. Rainbow loved a hot shower, hot enough to be a single tail strand away from the border of scalding. It was something which sent billows of false fog through her Cloudsdale home whenever she'd exited that much larger bathroom, and her mother had often mock-grumbled about how practicing weather systems on the second floor was taking things a little too far.

Her parents wouldn't be complaining about that any more.

Home is west...

Eventually, she felt cleaner. She certainly felt wetter. Moderately more alert, which brought her to the point where she remembered that all of her (mostly-used, all unwashed) towels were currently in the bedroom. A soft groan announced the arrival of chill knowledge, and her dripping form exited the bathroom as the usual plumes of steam filled the air --

-- and that was when the rumble hit.

It was a familiar sort of rumble: the warning sound produced by a wild zone cloud which was on the verge of setting itself off. It was the low thrum of power waiting to be unleashed, and it was coming from the very walls of her house. Walls which were starting to flush grey.

Rainbow froze. The grey rushed across her walls, and the rumble just kept on coming.

That's... not supposed to happen.

Molded houses don't turn into thunderheads. Not on their own, not when they've been done right...

She said I was adequate! That the only thing missing was the fire stuff! This shouldn't be --

The invisible ice broke, and droplets went in all directions as her wings flared and she flew through her house, trying to see what was wrong, attempting to feel it, find the problem before things got worse --

-- and there it was.

The housing mounted in her living room ceiling was vibrating. The grey was darkest immediately around the supporting vapor, closest to black. And as the steam dispersed into the cooler air, hot and cold forever battling in the eternal war which cost troops from both sides, the sound slowed. Her walls began to fade into white again, and once the molded hue had fully reasserted itself, the rumbling stopped.

Rainbow stared at the housing. And then she laughed.

"So that's how it works!" she crowed to the air, needing to tell somepony about her triumph and finding nopony there at all, no mother smiling or father longing to go out and show her accomplishment off to the other parents. She could only tell the air, and so she told the atmosphere everything it might want to know about her total previous (and current) lack of doubt. "It works!"

Because you wouldn't expect a pegasus to make something which could talk: that was a unicorn domain. But the alarm still had to be sounded, and so it did that by the most natural means available: the sounds any cloud could make when conditions were right. If somepony managed to miss that -- say, during a really good party, one where the floor would have been shaking a little anyway, or so it had appeared after the third bottle came out of that cabinet -- there was a color change to serve as an additional level of alert.

Rainbow beamed at the little wonder, proud of it. Proud of herself, because she'd proven that she could do it and if there was nopony around to see it just yet, then Mrs. Cruelneigh would return in less than a week. Rainbow could tell her, right after the official approval had been passed over. Just to watch her face.

But...

...okay, I take hot showers. I know that. Mom and Dad know it. Mom complained about it a lot. But... that hot? There's only so far you can push water before it starts to hurt, and even that's short of a fire. Our home alarm never went off when I got out of the bathroom. Not even at school when I was cleaning up with the rest of the team.

It works. But maybe it's a little... sensitive?

That was something the town inspector was probably going to test for. Actually, given what she'd seen of that mare, she felt it was something which would definitely be tested for, which further meant it was something Rainbow's house could be failed for: the most minor, petty, stupid of reasons...

...no. She was going to be okay. She'd worked the enchantment. She'd just been a little -- off. She wasn't entirely sure what she'd done wrong (and trying to review her effort-fogged memories from the enchantment left her not entirely sure as to what she'd done, period), but if she could create the wonder, then she could adjust it. Go to Barnyard Bargains after her shift, get a fresh impression, and then make shelf and ceiling match. It wasn't a problem, and it would be even more of a non-problem after she had a proper breakfast.

Rainbow, still dripping onto the floor (a floor which did not automatically absorb the water, because that wasn't part of the molding for this section), landed long enough to collect the food which was still waiting on the table, then headed for the kitchen. She only had the lone burner, but that was more than enough for a simple heat-and-eat.

---

This time, it felt as if it took significantly more time before the walls stopped rumbling, perhaps because the vibrations were throwing off her clock and making it tick along at half the normal rate.

The burner. I didn't even have it turned up all that high...

Rainbow took a deep breath, forced herself to go outside under Moon, flew to the edge of her house and looked down.

She had neighbors, if not of the sort she was used to. There was no other molded construct nearby. Instead, there was a wood house on her immediate left, and another across the ground-level street from her residence. Directly below wasn't a problem: that was just a vacant lot because it seemed as if a lot of ponies didn't like living right under a pegasus residence, possibly because of the shade. But she did have a few neighbors, and she hadn't lived among them long enough to know if their lights were supposed to be on at this hour.

The rumbling was... loud. More than enough to wake a sleeping pegasus and alert them to the danger. Loud enough to be heard outside...

Another deep breath. None of the oxygen seemed to get past her ribs.

She was starting to feel -- stressed. Her muscles were tight, her wings shivered against her sides, her skin felt as if it was shrinking from too much time in the water, compressing her from the outside-in. And that was just a stupid way to feel. She had no reason to be stressed. She would come back to her house after work and adjust the wonder. Everything would be fine.

Rainbow repeated those thoughts a few times, let them vibrate in her head to create a reassuring massage which worked from the inside out. It didn't seem to be happening.

Well... actually, she did still have some time before she had to leave for work. Time which could be used to relax, and it was a form of relaxation she hadn't been able to indulge in for over a week, because she'd initially been traveling and after she'd arrived, she hadn't had an enclosed space to work with. Admittedly, it was a form of relaxation which tended to make her a little sweaty from a very local source of heat, but there was also plenty of time for another, colder shower and since the towels were at her next destination anyway...

---

*RUMBLE*

Rainbow stared up from the bed, furious eyes fixed on her rapidly greying ceiling.

"OH, COME ON!"

Comments

[Crack-Fic Casey]

A moment was spared for wondering just how the factories operated when their employees had to be scheduled for regular fainting breaks.

It's not so bad.

[Brumby_Run]

Admittedly, it was a form of relaxation which tended to make her a little sweaty from a very local source of heat...

Wow. A fire alarm is really sensitive if that can set it off. How frustrating. And embarrassing, if it also wakes the neighbors...

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

IMO, a cloud house is most like a house trailer. Yours seem to get part of their water from the air, but I'd bet that you still need a cistern for some things. Also, if the water is recycled by the cloud, it is IMPERATIVE to keep some parts (cleaned out?), (replaced?) (whatever). Like a kitty litter box but more so.

Also, the stove. Magic, or gas tanks (propane, butane, whatever)?

[djthomp]

Hey, it not only works but it really works. I'm making a note here, huge success.

[Estee]

8451248

And where do you work as to have personal knowledge of that?

8451251

Eighty stories.
Second masturbation joke.
(The first is actually in A Mark Of Appeal: 'time alone'. Even Princesses...)

8451737

Thus the talk in the first chapter about proper plumbing and pucky crews. All water is removed from waste by built-in evaporation stations as that waste travels to storage areas within the cloud. However, this leaves residue. Uric salts aren't much of an issue, but the solids have to be cleaned out seasonally.

[Malandy]

OMG. Reading it on mobile made me miss the linebreak at the end of the chapter! I thought she was just thinking about it, then it rumbled!

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

....her own tongue had become thoroughly sick of Rainbow and huffily marched off to find better quarters, words with more syllables, and probably somepony who knew what 'ostentatious' meant.

Q What's the difference between an entomologist and an etymologist?
A An etymologist knows the difference without having to look it up