The Voices Told Me to Hug You

by Aquaman

Not Great, Not Terrible (August 2019) [E-Rated] [Starlight Glimmer] [Double Diamond] [Party Favor] [Comedy] [Crossover]

Author's Note:

This, my entry into Jaxie's second Speedwrite contest (Prompt: "Technically Not Terrible"), is arguably the dumbest thing I've ever written. It is also arguably one of my favorite things I've ever written, even though it once again went out in the first round (a real tendency of mine, huh?) to an eventual finalist.

Chernobyl's a great show, y'all. Go and watch it if you haven't.

When the ringing in Double Diamond’s ears faded, an equally grating sound grew to replace it: the grinding crunch of stones tumbling overtop one another, as well as the rumble of billowing smoke and, far in the distance… a honking party favor?

No, Party Favor was on the day shift with Sugar Belle. Right now, it was just him, Night Glider, and Starlight Glimmer. And also, magisteel control rods didn’t honk. Nor did they crunch, typically, though rumbling wasn’t technically out of the question. So, technically, everything was still more or less normal.

“What…”

A bout of hacking coughs temporarily took the words from Starlight’s mouth. Double Diamond couldn’t blame her. Out of all the ponies in the Town, Miss Glimmer spent the least amount of time in the Cutie Reactor, busy as she was with Town-ly business. She was just here in a supervisory capacity, overseeing one final safety test before she loaded the rest of the Town’s cutie marks in the next morning. Of course she wouldn’t be accustomed to the conditions inside such a high-tech, powerful, definitely-not-on-fire facility.

“What just happened?” she finally managed to croak.

Double Diamond glanced at Night Glider, who glanced at the reactor, which hummed a happy little tune before crunching again. “Good news, Mayor Starlight!” Double replied cheerfully without turning around. “We’ve completed the safety test!”

“Well, you definitely did something,” Starlight said, in a tone Double Diamond could almost convince himself was level. “What’s the reactor’s power level?”

Double Diamond smiled. Now this he knew how to handle. “Night Glider,” he said, his skin prickling with raw magical confidence, “Mayor Starlight wants to know what the reactor’s power level is.”

Night Glider was still looking at the reactor--or rather, as it turned out, an afterimage of her was that quickly faded into butterflies shaped like shards of confetti. In reality, Night Glider was standing behind him, her face blackened with soot and her mane stood up on end. She must’ve gotten a new haircut. Double reminded himself to compliment her on it once the walls went back to their usual color.

“The reactor’s power level,” she reported, “is… very powerful.”

“It’s very powerful, Mayor Starlight!”

“Stop shouting!” Starlight shouted. “A number, Diamond. I need a number.”

“We have one very powerful reactor, Mayor Starlight!”

Overcome with pride in her townspony’s obedience and can-do spirit, Starlight raised a hoof to her brow and positively groaned. “Night Glider, what number is the needle on the main console’s dial pointing at?”

One of the Night Gliders blinked. Double Diamond was pretty sure it was the one that actually existed. “The Cutie Reactor’s power dial has been malfunctioning, Mayor Starlight,” Night Glider said in a wavery but still perfectly audible voice. “I’ve put in a request for maintenance.”

Starlight Glimmer blinked. Double Diamond was absolutely sure she did. “Night Glider, you’re the maintenance pony for this reactor. That’s your job.”

“Fortunately, I’ve also received a maintenance request for the reactor’s power dial. I’ll be sure to get to work on it right away.”

For a few moments, Starlight just swiveled her head back and forth between her two loyal and extremely non-luminescent subjects, before squeezing her eyes shut and sighing deeply. “Double Diamond,” she slowly said, “tell me my Cutie Reactor--the one meant to safely contain the Cutie Mark of everypony in our Town--didn’t just explode.”

Double Diamond snorted. “Of course not, Mayor Starlight!” he assured her through a toothy grin. “Cutie Reactor can’t explode. It’s scientifically impossible!”

“It certainly looks like it exploded.”

“It’s just a trick of the light. Localized magical anomalies happen all the time around active reactors.”

“There are chunks of changelite on the ground.”

Double Diamond laughed. “Oh, that isn’t changelite, Mayor. Changelite is an incredible rare mineral changelings use to suppress arcane control rods. We only use it inside the reactor’s core.”

“Which just exploded.”

“Cutie Reactor cores can’t explode, Mayor,” Night Glider helpfully reminded her. “It’s scientifically impossible.”

Starlight Glimmer blinked again. Double Diamond giggled, much the way a pony who was nervous would but also totally different in this particular case. “Okay,” Starlight said, “so if it didn’t explode, why is it on fire?”

“It’s not on…” Double Diamond started to say before the look in Starlight’s eyes--and the fact that she was floating six inches off the ground--inspired him to reconsider. “We may have had a slight technical fault during the test, but a small fire is nothing to worry about. The reactor’s core is still completely intact.”

Starlight seemed, in a word, skeptical. “Right. Because if it wasn’t intact, we’d all have just been exposed to a historically massive surge of unfiltered magic that would have wild and unpredictable effects on us, the reactor, and the Town in large.”

Double Diamond grinned, a feat made somewhat trickier by the fact that his teeth currently resembled black and white piano keys. “Exactly, Mayor Starlight!” he said. “You understand this reactor better than any of us!”

“It is literally your job to run the reactor,” Starlight growled.

“Except me, obviously. And I’m telling you the reactor’s fine, so… it’s fine.”

Starlight still looked, in a series of four-letter words coalesced into a single polite one, unconvinced. “Look, I’ll prove it to you,” Double Diamond said, grimacing through a hiccup that released a stream of pink bubbles into the shimmering air. “Night Glider, what does the arcameter read?”

Night Glider shuffled around in her saddlebag and pulled out a small black gizmo which immediately started screeching in frankly overblown alarm. “3.6 Poentgen per hour,” she read off its dial. “That’s the maximum this thing goes to, tho-”

“3.6 Poentgen per hour.” Diamond told Starlight. “Not great, not terrible. No more magic than you’d get from a chest X-ray. Perfectly normal for a reactor fire.”

Starlight stared at Double Diamond. Double Diamond stared back. Night Glider stared at her hoof, which seemed to have split into three smaller hooves which proceeded to bicker with each other. Pretty typical stuff for a day on the job. Double Diamond was sure he’d seen worse.

“Okay,” Starlight finally said, “just hypothetically, let’s say the reactor did impossibly explode. How long would it take for the magic to dissipate so we could come back and rebuild the reactor?”

“Well,” Double Diamond, “purely hypothetically… with the amount of magical energy contained in each control rod, and with a control rod for each cutie mark contained in the reactor, and with 50 ponies in the Town as of the last census…” Double Diamond’s teeth played a jaunty tune as he flashed them again. “You know, the Everfree Forest can be a lovely place to visit if you take the proper precautions.”

Starlight Glimmer blinked one last time. “Okay, I’ve heard enough. You two go to the clinic while I clean this up. We’ll gather a search party to go collect everyone’s cutie marks in the morning.”

“Excellent suggestion, Mayor Starlight!” Double Diamond said as he calmly sprinted for the exit. “Your leadership is exemplary!”

As her two townsponies galloped for the Town, Starlight rolled her eyes. “Lousy Stalliongrad engineering…” she muttered as she lit her horn. “No wonder everyone buys Equestrian.”

Comments

[PresentPerfect]

I love "Poentgen". XD