Chapter 3 : Mending Monetary Meagerness
Dave sat at the table, absentmindedly poking at the remains of the dessert.
The situation looked rather dire, no matter how you look at it: No money, no place to stay.
Sure, he was laying it on a bit thick: Twilight was happy to provide him with allowance and a roof over his head, and the surprising generousness and kindness of locals provided at least some footing, but for Dave even the idea of leeching off their hospitality was extremely repulsive.
He was many things, but he certainly was no deadbeat!
However, there was one big issue with applying his professional skills: no tools. Just for about anything engineer needs some sort of tool, from a compact electric drill to a huge several ton lathe.
And that's not counting all the funky computer-aided goodness - from CAD with finite element analysis simulations to programmable CNC machines with costs dangling somewhere in upper atmosphere. Jupiter's upper atmosphere.
Dave snapped out of gloomy thoughts just to notice that he apparently constructed a miniature crossbow out of kitchen utensils and a rubber-band.
Whoops.
He hastily disassembled the incriminating evidence while trying to look inconspicuous, hoping that nobody saw his blunder.
What was he thinking about again? Ah, right, the tools.
He mentally went over his possessions one more time: a sizable knife, wallet with ID, caliper, tangled mess of wires with phone appliances somewhere in there, and an engineering calculator. Not much to work with.
If he planned to put together anything more complicated than toy crossbows, he would have to shell out for some decent tools. Drills, angle grinders, the whole package.
That's not even mentioning stockpiling required materials, mostly various steel.
"Dang it! Jimmy's expertise in get-rich-quick schemes would come incredibly handy right now!"
Jim was the last member of the 'Trouble Trio', apart from Dave and Boris. Thin as a rake and more devious than devil's dozen of lawyers, he served as a level-headed catalyst to most of Trio's antics.
In his free time Jim indulged in running extremely elaborate schemes for fun and profit. Their key part - Jim's pride and joy - was to leave the mark happy and none-the-wiser while taking their money and remaining perfectly within margins of the law. Could it even be called a scam at that point?
Dave didn't know the real scale of Jim's operations but he knew that Jim had enough money to pay for his education in full, and enough loose cash on top of that to decorate his room wall to wall with all sorts of freaky knives.
"Now that I'm thinking about it, Jim must have been some sort of con-artist prodigy."
Still, the idea of scamming the kind folk of Ponyville did not sit well with Dave, even it was fully lawful and left everyone happy.
Dave considered his options again, and found himself with only one immediately applicable one.
"I guess I can work as a handyman at first. Well, I've got a pair of working hands, and a sorta-working head on my shoulders, so sky's the limit!"
Dave was getting ready to search far and wide for potential jobs, but to his surprise, he didn't have to go any further than next room.
Turns out, Twilight had a decent suggestion.
"Oh, Applejack is working on some sort of construction project, I guess she could use another pair of hoofs, I mean, hands."
Spike joined in, "I recall Rarity needing help with gem collection too!"
"Alright, where can I find our fine ladies?"
The large map of town was brought to the table and several minutes of Twilight's admittedly very systematized and clear directions later Dave was feeling ready to navigate to first potential jobs.
It was time to get down to the some actual work. Finally.
It didn't take long to navigate out of town.
Dave breathed in fresh air with the thirst of solitary convict.
It was really nice to finally just walk outside, without prying eyes of somepony constantly documenting every little thing you do.
Still, Dave couldn't shake the strange feeling of being watched.
"Oh come on, Mr. Paranoid," said he to himself, "You're out of town, on the road in the middle of nowhere. Who could possibly be watching you? Naaah, even Twilight would need a telescope to spy on you! Chill!"
Adding a bit of spring to his step, he sped up his walking.
Meanwhile, at the roof of Golden Oak Library Twilight peered into hastily re-purposed telescope, leaving eyepiece only to scribble down her findings. The gait section of her observations was growing more complete and fascinating by the minute!
"Gait section? Seriously, Twilight?"
"Eeep!" Twilight jumped several feet in air, nearly knocking the telescope off the balcony.
Once both the telescope and Twilight found solid footing, Spike pouted, "Didn't you see enough of me walking around on my two already?"
Deciding not to press the issue, he continued, "Oh and I... may have gone a bit overboard preparing tea today and I hoped you would help me with not letting it all go to waste."
"Sure! Nothing quite like tea for productive research!"
With a bit of scouting, Dave found Applejack busy at work in the middle of a wooden building frame.
From the looks of things, she was trying to get a pallet of planks lifted to the top of the frame by the rope.
She pulled and pulled, but the stack of planks was too heavy, pulling her back every time. Judging by the amount of hoof-grooves it wasn't her third and not even fifth attempt.
She finally noticed Dave, and spat the rope out.
"Howdy!"
"Hello. I'm looking for a job, and Twilight said you need help with a construction project."
"Just raising this here barn," She waved to the entirety of the wooden construction, "I'm almost done with my part, just need to get this wood all the way up there."
"We could technically both pull it, but who would secure the weight at the top, then?"
This was a perfect opportunity to put some basic engineering knowledge to use.
"I got a better idea. Do you have two pulleys that could hold this weight? Oh, and longer rope too."
Applejack nodded and headed for house. After rummaging through half of attic, she produced two pulleys of hilariously mismatching sizes and a length of rope.
Confident smile crept onto Dave's face.
"Perfect."
Dave mounted one of pulleys on the top beam, and started feeding rope through second pulley, then through the mounted pulley again, and kept going, creating several loops. Satisfied with results, he tied one end of the rope of the beam.
Applejack's face displayed genuine curiosity with a tinge of puzzlement.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm just setting up a block and tackle."
Dave jumped down.
"Also known as polyspast! It allows you to apply less force when lifting heavy load, something we engineers call 'mechanical advantage'."
He continued on, as he worked the rope around pallet, "You still do same amount of work, it's just spread across longer time period. Can't really cheat physics."
Once the second pulley was safely secured to the stack of planks, Dave gently pulled the rope with one hand. The heavy pallet rose up in the air by few inches.
The apparent effortlessness of the lift took AJ by surprise.
"Whoa."
"See? This is how you work smarter rather than harder! Pulling is supposed to be six times as easy now - try it!"
"But if the rope is that long, I'll back up into that there fence while pulling it!"
Dave rubbed his forehead, estimating distance, "You're right, I should have positioned this differently. Dang... Actually, I could pull the rope and you could secure the weight. I can use both hands and just stand still."
He looked around. Apparently Applejack already climbed up and waved at him to start pulling.
"Well that was fast."
Indeed, they pulled off this in surprisingly expedient manner, and now Dave found himself walking back to town, weighing his honestly-earned bits in hand. The coins were much lighter than he expected for their size. Making a mental note to figure out a way to hold them efficiently, he stuffed them in the pocket.
"Strictly saying, er, thinking, I just screwed myself out of potential repeated payment."
"On the other hand, I introduced her to safer handling of heavy loads. Teach a man to fish, er, pony to lift..."
Now to find Rarity's shop.
Dave tried hard to find a word that he could use to describe Rarity's shop building but nothing seemed to come to his mind. The closest he could do was a cross-breed between "pompous" and "pretentious" with a hint of "unnecessary".
Whatever it was, it was radically different to other buildings in town, except maybe town hall.
Once Dave stopped doing the exact opposite of admiring the building, he pushed the door open.
The first thing he saw was the amount of sparklingly bedazzling dresses in all colors Dave knew, tons of that he didn't and a few that he was pretty sure weren't supposed to exist. Blinking profusely, he stumbled inside.
Chime of the bell alerted Rarity to a new potential customer.
Oh. It was him.
Perhaps the human finally understood the apparent lackluster nature of his garments and was seeking fashion guidance?
Dave could tell by subtle ways Rarity's giant eyes changed that his appearance was not up to her standards. So be it. He wasn't signing up for a model work.
"Hi, I'm looking for a job. I heard you need some help with gems?"
No, he was still hopelessly clueless.
"Yes, darling. There is a certain cave not far from Ponyville, where I used to go before all the time, however, with this season's collection..."
Feeling that the discussion went in unproductive direction, Dave coughed, interrupting Rarity.
"This cave, what needs to be done about it? In short."
Slight sign of displeasure appeared for a moment on Rarity's face. She was gracefully getting to the point, but the human apparently desired to cut to the chase right this instant.
She pointed towards lantern with some fireflies inside.
"You could take this lamp and go gather gems for my new collection."
Dave immediately lifted it up and started inspecting bugs inside. They were much larger than fireflies back on Earth, and that piqued his interest.
"Never seen a firefly, dear?"
Dave snapped out of bug observation.
"Gem gathering sounds nice. Are there any dangers in the cave?"
"Well, darling, outside of myriads of nasty, icky bats ready to swarm you at the drop of a hat..."
"Where can I get something to protect myself with? Us humans don't exactly get magic, claws, thick scales, sharp teeth or wings!"
Rarity tilted her head and asked with jokingly condescending tone, "What you humans are good at, anyway?"
Dave bit his tongue before he could divulge anything too sensitive; instead he pulled on the most exaggerated comically sour scowl he could and headed for exit.
"Being miserable and then finding a way out of that."
He closed door behind him and sighed. The offer seemed good, but he wasn't sure if he could take any more sass from this uptight lady.
Temptation to go and check out the cave first was great but Dave stopped himself. Caves can be dangerous and he needed a plan.
"OK, what am I going to need for this?"
Dave knitted his eyebrows; he was trying to remember any relevant information about caves.
"Rope, in case I encounter shafts in the cave. I guess I can buy it."
At this point any relevant information ran out. Dave started rubbing his temples in frustration.
"I need to think logically. I am going to collect bunch of rocks and haul them back. How am I going to carry them? A crate? Maybe a wheelbarrow? What about actually extracting said rocks? That one's a no-brainer - pickaxe can be rather versatile."
It seemed that he had to do a little shopping first.
Dave moved into the cave opening in a slow, carefully paced manner, trying to keep light as dim as possible.
Rarity wasn't exaggerating - the entire ceiling seemed to be in motion from sheer amount of bats hanging off it, rocking in sleep.
But what hid just around the corner had Dave bewildered, jaw ajar. Not only the gems in this cave were cut, they were coruscating vividly in the dim light of the lantern!
He expected to go on a wild goose chase tracking gems in the rough without any idea how they might look, but this certainly was much easier!
After emerging from the cave, Dave scanned surroundings before dumping gems from all of his pockets into sizeable wheelbarrow. Even though he didn't see a soul, in a fit of paranoia he covered unearthed gems with all the coils of rope he bought.
With few successful trips to the cave, wheelbarrow started getting dangerously full and Dave didn't even make a dent in the myriad of gems in the very first chamber of the cave.
Satisfied with the amount of gems, he grabbed wheelbarrow's handles, but stopped himself.
"Wait. Won't gems cut and scratch one another if I just dump them like that and let them jump around with every littlest pebble and pothole? That'll get me in trouble for sure."
The problem, as per usual, emerged from completely unexpected angle.
Dave paced around the accursed wheelbarrow.
"If only I had foam peanuts or one of these bubblewrap pocket sheets... Maybe I can figure something out? Ugh! I got a mechanical engineering degree, not packaging engineering degree!"
He rubbed his eyebrows in annoyance.
"Think. Think! What can I use to prevent scratching? Mud? Hay? Crumpled newspapers? Maybe sand? No, sand's pretty rough, was it, like, seven on Mohs scale or something? Can't risk that. And I can't go shopping either, leaving this unattended just begs for trouble."
Dave wiped his hands off his shirt.
"If only I could wrap them in some kind of fabric..."
He stood still for a second and then sound of a head slap resounded through cave entrance.
Rarity pushed the boutique's door open, and froze up, eyes wide.
Gems, hundreds of gems! They were evenly spread out across boutique and roughly sorted by color and size. Almost every horizontal surface in sight had some sort of gem lineup resting on it.
Dave sat across the entrance, clutching the wheelbarrow. He had a creeping suspicion that he went a bit overkill.
Navigating carefully across gem minefield, Rarity voiced her concerns,
"Dave, dear, I'm not sure I can pay you for all these gemstones!"
"That's fine, I'm not saying it's all-or-nothing kind of deal. Pick whatever you need for your collection, and I'll hold on to the rest."
Dave nodded towards wheelbarrow.
Despite Rarity's concerns, Dave walked out of boutique with only handful of gems. The other handful was several heavy bags with bits that gems earned him, now placed in a wheelbarrow that he rolled, whistling some tune.
"Rarity might be one sassy lady, but she sure pays well."
Weighing the bags in his admittedly strained hand, Dave wondered the equivalent in dollars. Would it be in the ballpark of thousand? Maybe ten thousand? Five hundred dollars? Local economics still was plenty weird for him.
One thing was for sure: this was definitely way more profitable than some farm work. It was a bit upsetting that applying his engineering skills earned him less than basic manual job, even though he went completely overboard with gem gathering.
In fact, it was outrageously more profitable. Extremely suspiciously so. Making that amount of shiny coins in such short notice - it almost felt unfair, like he didn't really earn it. Did he just inadvertently abuse the goodwill and kindness of someone who just couldn't say 'no'? This situation reminded him more and more of a certain uncle...
Addressing no-one in particular, Dave burst out, "Fine! I'll find a way to make it up for her!"
His guilty conscience seemed to be placated with the promise. For now.
On the bright side, with this kind of money, he could now attempt to solve some of the looming problems.
Dave headed for the town.
Once last of the bags was stuffed under separate bed that Twilight so generously provided him with, Dave wiped the sweat off his forehead.
"Man, with all this running around in the sun, I'm drenched. Would be nice to get a change of clothes."
He looked around nonplussed as if his surroundings were to blame.
"IF I ACTUALLY HAD ANY!"
"So. Getting clothes. Normal human clothes. In this crazy backwards horse-land. Sounds like a challenge..."
He technically could brave his barely-suppressed guilt and go back to Rarity, but he definitely didn't need any diamond-plated underwear.
Besides, just hearing the ordeals that he would put all of the clothes through on a regular basis would probably give her a heart attack.
She couldn't be the only tailor in town, right?
It'd be probably faster to go and ask Twilight for direction but being completely reasonable and self-sufficient adult Dave was, he decided to comb the town for clothier shop by himself. By the second hour he realized error of his ways thoroughly, yet adamantly refused to go get help. After all, at this point only small part of town remained unexplored.
The tailor shop, sure enough, hid away on precisely the last street he decided to check out. Typical, really.
With a grunt of displeasure, Dave headed inside.
Frankly saying, it took some time for Twilight to actually notice the bags under Dave's bed. Which was surprising, as the bags stacked so high that they propped up the bed into a slanted position.
Looking around to confirm Dave's absence, she game the bags a little kick. Tell-tale jingle of coins gave out the contents.
Twilight's brows flew up. Just what Dave was up to?
Half an hour of pure awkwardness and embarrassment later Dave emerged from the tailor's shop.
No, seriously, how do you explain a concept of underwear to somebody who doesn't have the need for it?
The situation was particularly exacerbated by the tailor mare who got very confused by the "the pants STAY ON" concept.
On the flipside, he'd get a set of decent clothes soon. Hopefully.
His current garments seemed to have dried up, with unsavory trails of salt proudly displaying like some weird abstract art print. Great.
The awkwardness of this predicament increased tenfold with the grandiose return of faint but persistent feeling of being watched. Frowning, Dave forcefully evicted that feeling; he had things to do and places to be.
For example, now that this little apparel-themed detour was done, it was time to pay a visit to town hall, but not until he grabs one of the problem-solving bags.
Somewhere halfway across the town, mare with light aquamarine coat lowered her binoculars. The day suddenly got a lot more curious.
Heavy bag of bits hit the table with dull thud.
"How much would it cost to get a plot of land for a cottage?"
Mayor Mare looked a bit confused. Realizing that he forgot to factor in location of the plot, Dave hastily added,
"It does not have to be in the center of the town, on the contrary, it'd be good if it was out of the way, as I'm planning to set up a workshop, and I don't want noise to bother anyone."
Mayor tilted her head even further.
"You don't have to pay for that."
"I, uh, what?", Dave stammered in surprise.
Evidently, it was Dave's turn to get confused. He was getting ready to jump through all sorts of legal hoops with inordinate fees.
"Are you for serious? Not that I'm complaining, but isn't there some sort of legal procedure tied to obtaining plot of land or something?"
"Well, maybe in Canterlot or some bigger cities..." Mayor Mare shrugged with a polite smile.
Dave left town hall content and slightly confused. One thought seemed to bother him, though.
"Either inhabitants of Equestria are too kind, or I just used up all of my luck in a single day and I'm going to live miserably for the rest of my days."
Not long after, Dave marched across the particular plot of land he had his eye on since his walk to Sweet Apple Acres.
He was closely followed by Hard Hat and bunch of other stallions of similar talents.
Luckily, the construction crew was not that expensive to hire, and as an added bonus, here you didn't need to pander to HOA's slightest whims.
Dave paced around, outlining imaginary zones.
"Hmm, main building will go here, with supply sheds here here and here, here's a neat place for a range, here a foundation for backup generator could go, all of it ferroconcrete, of course, oh, also gotta have good distance to the entrance to establish kill-zone..."
Construction ponies tailed him, outlining rough building plans and getting considerably confused and mildly disturbed by Dave's mumbling.
It was almost evening when Dave returned to Golden Oak Library.
Twilight seemed to give weird looks to his poorly-hidden riches. She didn't say anything, but her muzzle was displaying concern.
Dave preempted the question.
"What? Turns out fetching three wheelbarrows worth of best-looking gems pays well."
Twilight seemed to be too enthralled in thought to answer. Finally she snapped out of it and started writing something on a lengthy parchment.
Dave yawned.
Whatever. There were more entertaining ideas on his mind than explaining his funds.
To be exact, he had a perfect payback for her excessive research shenanigans. He just had to put himself into the workload mindset.
Twilight awoke with a start.
Dave stood, towering over her, pulling on some sort of makeshift gloves. His eyes gleamed with a spark of madness in the morning light.
"Wake up, Twilight! It's TIME FOR SCIENCE!"
The magic word got her attention.
Next four hours went by in a blur. Dave managed to find more and more new ways to test this strange anti-magical property of his, with Twilight only pouring more gasoline into the fire with her additional test suggestions and cross-validation. They tested with pieces of string and paper, towels, metallic, wooden and ceramic objects, heavy objects, light objects, while standing, while running, while jumping - anything went. One time Spike, intrigued by the noise, wandered into the room, observed the organized chaos of rapid testing for a few seconds, and silently backed out before he could become part of a next test.
Finally, Twilight plopped on her haunches and leaned against the wall, panting heavily.
"Phew! That was... something!"
She levitated thick stack of notes on tests to the table.
Dave steadied his breathing and summarized his own observations.
"Hmmm, that was interesting. Apparently magic cannot move me, or anything within certain distance of me, yet this magic glow thing remains."
That was about as far as his observations went.
"Pretty much," shot back Twilight.
Suddenly Dave turned back to Twilight and grinned devilishly.
"Ready for round two?"
"What?" yelped Twilight.
Dave began emptying his pockets and putting all of the extracted items on the table.
"Now, we will cross-test with all of these," he said as his grin grew ever wider.
"Oh nooo!" squeezed out Twilight, but lifted herself back up again, readying herself for more testing craziness.
"Oh yes," Dave's grin at this point looked more like something you'd find on a shark, "And kick up the pace, Twilight, we're facing combinatorial explosion here!"
Spike, who has been attracted by the intrigue of sudden quiet, knew that it was his cue to evacuate room once again, which he did immediately.
It became evident pretty soon into cross-testing that all of the items bore exactly same properties that Dave himself did. Seeing how the results turned up the same every single time, they put off testing all of Dave's personal effects for later. Possibly much later.
By this time, even Dave started getting worn out, despite his today's tidal wave of enthusiasm, so he more than welcomed a good opportunity to take a breather.
"To think, we haven't even eaten yet!" exhaled Twilight with a slight concern.
"Who needs food, when you can have"- Dave grasped at air, as if he grabbed something substantial -"answers!"
His gesturing along with really exaggerated facial expression made Twilight snort and break into series of giggles.
"But seriously, let's get some grub before stomach grumbling gets too obnoxious."
Now that stack of sandwiches was thoroughly destroyed and stack of notes grew considerably, it would be optimal time to grab a breather.
Dave planned that by this time Twilight would get worn out by nonstop testing, but there seemed to be some miscalculation on his part. However, it could be remedied easily.
"Wait, it just hit me. We've tested only levitation."
Twilight beamed up and her eyes went wide. That didn't escape Dave.
"Yes - exactly. What about other magic? How many spells can you do? Can you do a list?"
Twilight's squeeeing was heard at least in half of Ponyville.
While Twilight's library could lack books on industry or machining, there surely was no shortage of various magical tomes, grimoires, how-tos and even coloring books for aspiring magic wielders.
"Let's start with something simple," declared Twilight, and her horn lit up.
"Whoa-whoa-whoa, what spell we're talking about, here?" Dave cautiously held hands in front of him.
An orb of magical light appeared in front of Twilight.
"Oh."
Dave waved his hands around and even through it, but nothing changed. The light shone dimly, unperturbed.
Dave and Twilight exchanged intrigued looks.
"You expected it to go out too, right?"
"Yep."
Dave waved his hands at the light some more and faced Twilight.
"But yeah - tell me what you're going to cast next time. I expected something harmful and got this instead," he pointed towards the light.
"We can do stun blast next, if you want."
Dave audibly gulped.
Bed creaked under Dave's weight.
"If I fall, I don't wanna fall on the floor," he explained his choice of test location.
He moved around, picking the position with the least risk of hitting his head on any surroundings.
Unsatisfied with the safety of the best result, he covered his head with hands, placing them this way and that, trying to cover temples and the face at the same time. Finally he settled on one particularly awkward-looking configuration.
"Alright, hit me."
The beam made contact with Dave. Nothing happened.
Still covering his head with hands, he muttered, "Are you going to cast it or not? I think I'm about to get a cramp."
Twilight cast it again. Then again. Then with full force. And once more, with feeling.
Dave's patience finally ran thin, and he opened his eyes and turned to see what Twilight was doing. That was when the full-power beam hit him squarely in the forehead.
He blinked for a few seconds, and then shrugged.
"Should I be feeling something?"
Twilight crossed off another spell off the list. All of spells she cast so far did absolutely nothing, disappearing without a trace within this strange invisible shell that surrounded Dave and his belongings.
Just poof - and gone, no matter how much power she pumped in the spell. It was almost insulting. Her slowly growing frustration was currently battling with curiosity. Dave's incessant quipping did not exactly help the matter, either.
She sighed and moved on to the next item in long, long list. Oh, this one is ought to be interesting.
She narrowed her eyes. "How about a... sleep spell?"
Her horn lit up for a second.
"Doesn't seem to be working," Dave shrugged in trained motion.
Suddenly his jaw went slack, eyes rolled back and, with a loud snore, he started dangerously lurching to the back.
With a full-body twitch he snapped out of the dream's embrace and made several steps back, barely managing to restore his balance.
"Whoa-"
Twilight's eyebrows flew up. "That's weird!"
"I know, right? At this point I expected for everything you throw at me to just... fizzle out."
Twilight shook her head, "No, it's not that; well, that too, but spell was supposed to put you to sleep for at least an hour!"
"I mean-" Dave yawned, "-it does make me sleepy, but not too much."
Triumphantly, Twilight put a first check mark across the sleep spell on the list. Thinking back to it, it was not exactly a complete success, so she added a question mark next to it.
It went on like this for some while. It was only when Twilight reached mind spells when Dave drew the line.
"No, no and no. None of this mind affecting mumbo-jumbo. I need my head fully working and operational! What if you mess up!?"
Twilight looked at him, pleading.
Dave did not relent.
"No means no, Twilight!"
Dave frantically searched for something - anything - to divert her attention to before she would get any more ideas or take matters in her own hooves.
"But! I've got a new experiment in mind, you game?"
"Sure!"
"To add credibility to the experiment, we'll pull a blind test. See that book over there? Lift it up with magic."
"That book? Ha, you got it!"
The book flew up in cloud of magic.
Twilight raised her brow. "But hey, isn't the book too far away from you for this effect to occur?"
"Exactly."
All of a sudden, Dave outstretched his hand and wrapped the palm around Twilight's horn.
The sound of book hitting the table confirmed his hypothesis.
"Hey!"
Twilight shook his hand off her horn. She was not amused in the slightest.
"Sorry!" Dave apologized, yet he was not sure what was the true source of Twilight's disapproval - magical appendage grappling, potential damage to the book or something else completely unrelated.
"I couldn't help but notice that magic seems to emanate from your horn," Dave started with his reasoning slowly, "so I wondered if you could do these magic things with me holding the horn? Well, you saw the result."
Sudden particularly unpleasant thought pushed itself forward. What if this was a big no-no in pony culture? He REALLY didn't think this one through.
"I hope that wasn't weird or anything." Dave tapped index fingers, suddenly looking shifty-eyed and mighty embarrassed.
Twilight tilted her head, perplexed by Dave's sudden mood whiplash.
"It's weird, but not weird-weird. Like grabbing somepony by an eyebrow," she clarified.
"Thank goodness," Dave exhaled with a relief. "Anyway, I think this will conclude our today's research. It's almost evening and I got some errands to run."
Dave couldn't believe his eyes. He blinked a few times and even rubbed his eyes to be extra sure.
"Damn, these guys work fast!"
The plot of land that was just grass yesterday already had bunch of concrete patches with supports and walls sticking out. One of the storage sheds had already been fully built and currently was being painted.
He gave Hard Hat a nod of approval and continued his stroll towards tailor shop.
He made a mental note to pay an immediate visit to local equivalent of a laundromat. If his quest for fresh undergarments and unrelated apparel happens to end in success, that is.
Library door swung open, with Dave barging in, barely visible behind a whole heap of clothes.
"What up, Twilight? Figured this anti-magic thing out yet?", he excitedly inquired, his voice slightly muffled by towering fabric.
"Not yet, but I have some theories. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject first, though."
Dave finally found a suitable place to dump his cargo, and faced Twilight.
"Mine? Why?"
"Well, you seem to have the grasp of the scientific method-" Twilight gave a few rolls of hoof "-and your insight may prove really valuable."
"Okay then. I think it's something to do with the matter. Whatever me, my stuff and my entire world built of - it's... uh... non-magic-conducive or something. I dunno really. It's just a hunch."
"Just a hunch, eh?" Twilight peeked in her notes: this theory, blunt as it may be, fell surprisingly in line with her own observations.
Dave shrugged.
"Well, I'm not one of those PhD toting eggheads, so I don't know first thing about creating proper theories, but Earth-matter-is-anti-magic doesn't sound like a sound theory. After all - magic fizzles out all around me, not on, like, skin contact. Tiny pieces of skin and hairs that flake off me all the time, along with skin oil thing don't seem to have the effect either, otherwise anything I'd touch would be magic proof. And then there's semi-working spells like sleep spell. Too many holes for a waterproof theory, and thus it's more of a hunch."
Quill in Twilight's magic reached ridiculous speeds. She was mostly just being polite when asking Dave, but he indeed happened to have some serious insight.
"Anyway, I see you are a long way off from creating Grand Unifying Theory of Why The Fracking Heck Human Stuff Be Sorta Immune To Magic But Not Quite. So get to it! I expect to see at least 3 volumes by the morning," he dropped with a playful wink and headed to his bed.
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Let’s see where this will go shall we.
Hope to see more soon.
So, what, no magic guns, then?
10308424
Technically magic in Equestria would be a part of physics, so magic guns are not out of the question. Although Dave will have to figure out a way around anti-magic property of his for that to happen, otherwise said guns would just be glorified paperweights in his hands.
Okay cool. If you have any question about any kinds of guns just asked me I know a lot about the.
I havent read it yet, but THIS
THIS is what I'm looking for.
I bet she takes him seriously and makes them as thick as yellow pages.
i'm slightly disappointed with where he decided to make his workshop i thought he should make it next to a river so he can use A water wheel but i guess he can use a steam engine
10309389
But electricity and electrical appliances do exist in Equestria. It's mostly glossed over in the show, but you can see power dam in Mare Do Well episode as well as hear typical lightswitch noise every time light is turned on or off. I'm not even talking about minor details implying electricity, i.e. x-ray requiring some serious electrical input, giant TV screens in Manehattan, DJ turntable, laser shows and such.
Making synthetic rubber with a pocket knife.
10309608
that's true enough but he could have saved On the electricity bill too
10309663
No this is how to do it
10309695
Can you turn hedge apples into rubber?
10309898
I don't know
So when will we see the next chapter?
10310059
Hello there
10310144
sorry it's just that i often see you on the site
10309908
How about sugar from apples?
Apple Jack: What's wrong?
Apple Bloom: My teeth hurt..
Apple Jack: Well let's se...GOOD LORD! Granny. We're going to the dentist
Apple Bloom: Dentis...My teeth feel..
Apple Jack: No they don't... we you not to eat them sugar apples, fer your own good! Don't add lyin' to disobeying.
10311257
I dont tink rubber is made by sugar
10311275
No.
If you can extract rubber from golden rods, surely you can extract sugar from apples because we know its there!
10311281
It's possible but goldenrod has more rubber for the weight so that's why tomas edison chose it
10311347
Oh wait you meant to get sugar out of apple probably like this
10311359
Borscht......
Having gone to college for mechanical engineering, and working professionally as a machinist for 15 years, I will keep my eye on this one.
If you want some professional consulting/opinion/questions, feel free to ask... Otherwise I generally don't read fanfictions unless they pass the 15k word count or are marked as complete.
10314456
Thank you for the offer!
Fact-checking, figuring how stuff is done and doing research to know where exactly the elusive 'technically possible' line lies are main time-sinks for this project.
10314862
Feel free to ask then, to maybe reduce the time
10309954
Now!
Hmmm, well now we know that the levitation field is bigger than most think and that magic spells. once complete, isn't effected (so far, that might depend on its 'pull' on ambient mana) ...