Chapter 33 - Move That Bus!
“You want me to remodel your clubhouse?”
Scootaloo nodded so hard she thought her head might fall right off. She’d worked so hard for this, strived and struggled for so long to convince her friends that out of all possible ponies, Rainbow Dash was the one and only one they needed to fix the Crusader Clubhouse.
It was something they’d been arguing about for a while now. It wasn’t that the clubhouse was falling down around their ears or anything… but it was visibly kinda shabbier than when they’d first gotten it. Crusading tended to take a toll on… everything in the general vicinity of a crusade, and they did a lot of smaller crusades (and pre-planning sessions) at the clubhouse.
She often said that it ‘nobly bore the scars and stains of countless adventures’ (a phrase she’d shamelessly stolen from a book describing Daring Do’s hat).
Sweetie Belle often said it was ‘a growing safety concern and fire hazard’.
Applebloom often said ‘Girls my hoof’s stuck in that hole again, I thought you said you were gonna fix that, Scootaloo, not just put a rug over it’.
Opinions differed.
But after one particular ill-fated crusade had ended up blowing a hole in the ceiling big enough to fly through… they all agreed that something had to be done.
Sweetie Belle wanted Twilight to fix it, and Applebloom nominated her sister (of course), but the first was so busy she had to call in extra friends to offload some of her business and the other didn’t have any cool new magic skills that had to do with wood. (That wasn’t a requirement but they all agreed it’d be a real letdown to have that option and not use it when they had the chance.)
And thus, with much convincing, Scootaloo had gotten everyone to agree to turn to Rainbow Dash first (which should have been the obvious choice from the beginning without needing to be explained, but for as awesome as they were, her friends weren’t perfect).
The only slight hiccup in the plan… was that she didn’t actually know if Dash would agree to it. She was a busy pony, after all. It took a lot of time to be the best. Practicing, training, power-napping, drilling—
“Yeah, sure. Sounds like a way to kill an afternoon.”
Scootaloo stumbled out of her woolgathering as her hero unexpectedly agreed without needing any additional convincing. And she’d prepared so many offers and incentives too!
“I’ve never built a building before, but after all the chairs and furniture Twilight made me make, how hard can it be?”
As it turned out, once they arrived on-site, that was something of a tricky question.
“Oh, wow. Yeah, I can see why it needs an upgrade.” Rainbow Dash said as she took in an aerial view of the clubhouse. She landed on the ramp and it creaked ominous under her. When the creaking started to stretch out into a worrying groan, she gave her wings a quick beat and elected to inspect the damage from a hover instead. Personally, Scootaloo agreed with her and would have joined if she could. She’d been entering via the ladder instead of the ramp for a month already.
“Mother of Celestia!”
“Is it really that bad?” Scootaloo called up. She knew it was bad (she’d have to be blind not to), but swear-worthy bad? Suddenly she was a lot more worried about Rainbow Dash bumping into a bad beam and learning the hard way what the table under a jenga game felt like.
Dash’s head poked out of the accidental skylight. “What the heck were you doing that did this?”
She cringed. That had been an… interesting day. “Jewelry-making”.
“Jewelry!? Out of what, dynamite!?”
“Just some wire and some neat gems Spike gave us.”
“...were there any kinda smokey grey ones?”
She shrugged. “Maybe?” The details of that day beyond ‘BOOM’ were a bit hazy.
“Yeah… maybe leave those alone if you find any more. And run away. To wherever Twilight is and have her deal with it.” She flew out through the hole and landed. “There’s a lotta damage, but yeah, I can soup it up. Most of the supporting beams are surprisingly okay, you just need a lot of new planks for the walls. And the ceiling. And the floor.”
“That’s great!” Scootaloo said. “I already got a bunch of wood and nails and tools ready for you.” All part of the incentive package she’d put together, plus a big box of Rainbow Dash’s favorite snacks.
“Awesome! Let’s go then!”
What happened next was a whirlwind of activity. Scootaloo knew Dash was the fastest pony around, but this speed was just crazy. She’d expected to be able to help, but Scootaloo soon found that the only tasks she could even keep up with was holding up different tools on request for Rainbow Dash to hotswap between as she worked. It barely took an hour to remove all the damaged parts and start laying out supports for an expanded floor.
And then Rainbow Dash stopped.
Froze, really. With her hammer pulled back and ready to nail down another board.
“What’s wrong?” Scootaloo called up. “Are you okay?”
Rainbow Dash quivered in a full-body shiver then stiffness vanished. “Yeah, I’m okay. Better than okay.” A wild grin crossed her features. One that promised something awesome. “You said you wanted some upgrades, right? Not just a rebuild?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel about reinforced armored plating?”
Scootaloo’s soul escaped her body and did a backflip. “That… sounds… awesome!”
“Thought so. You hold down the fort. I need to go pick up some junk from… about five or six places around town. And some extra tools from Pinkie. Hang tight!” With a multi-colored blast of light, Rainbow Dash shot off.
Scootaloo collapsed to her knees in shock and wonder. An armored treehouse clubhouse.
She couldn’t wait to show her friends the finished thing and rub it in their faces. She’d been right. Rainbow Dash was the best choice.
As if there’d ever been any doubt.
Much to her surprise, Rainbow Dash didn't return with a cart full of scrap metal, rocks, and heavy machinery. Instead, she returned with more wood. Special wood, apparently, but to her untrained eye it looked like any other stacked pile of lumber.
Not that it remained a pile for very long. If anything, Rainbow Dash seemed to move even faster now than she had earlier. Just watching her build was incredible. Boards and planks disappeared from the pile, blurred through the area where the tools were, then appeared on the growing skeleton of a treehouse like a film reel being played way too fast.
Almost more impressive was that she managed to talk normally despite her neck-breaking pace.
"So I had a bit of inspiration earlier—Hammer. Thanks.—If you wanna build a wall, you take a couple planks of wood, cut them about the same size, and nail them together. That'll work pretty good for most things you'd need a wall for. It's simple, obvious. Anypony can do it with a few basic lessons—Planer. No, the big one.—But when you really look at it, when you know a lot about how woodworks works—heh, woodworks works—there's kind of a trick to it. A way you can cut the wood just right so the planks hold onto each other and the whole thing ends up stronger. If you do it well enough, you barely even need nails. Toss me the hacksaw."
"So..." Scootaloo ventured as the tool left her grip. She hadn't been prepared for descent into philosophy of wood, but she took a stab at where she thought it might be leading. "You thought of a way to make the treehouse better?"
"Better?" Dash stopped working just longer enough to throw her foreleg around the smaller pegasus and muss up her mane. "Squirt, when I'm done, you won't even recognize the place."
A couple hours into the afternoon, Rainbow Dash proved herself a truther. She shook herself like a dog, sending up a cloud of sawdust and splinters.
"And that's how you make an awesome fort!" Awesome was definitely the word for it. The old clubhouse had been nice, but this one looked professional. If Diamond Tiara ever decided to try and one-up them with a "better" treehouse, this was the kind of fort Scootaloo imagined her rich daddy's checkbook could buy. The planks were straight and level with fancy-looking crossbeams. The windows had shutters and (empty) planter boxes. Even the corners and edges looked expensive with little decorative carvings.
"Lemme give you the grand tour." Rainbow Dash ushered her up the ramp (which didn't creak at all!) and inside. "You've got the main room here with plenty of space for all your meetings and crusade-planning and hanging out and stuff. I saved the old podium you had, but cleaned it up a bit and added some new features."
"Features?" Scootaloo didn't know a podium could have features!
Dash guided her around the back and pulled open a hidden door. Instead of Applebloom's emergency snack supply (all apples) there were a trio of simple wooden levers.
"The left one brings out the stairs to get to the second floor." She flipped it, and with a clattering clack, a dozen boards in the wall that hadn't looked anything special fell on hidden hinges and turned into a simple staircase.
"There's not much up there now, but I figured you could use it for storage space or something. I've got way more cabinets and cupboards and shelves than I'll ever need, so you can come by later to take whatever you want. There's also a skylight up there for either seeing the stars or emergency landings."
She pulled the lever back and the stairs rose back up and rejoined the wall without a trace. "The middle one's more for emergencies, but I think it might be the coolest."
The second lever went down and with it a steady clicking and ticking sound started coming from all around. Then, with a slam! and a w-w-w-wham! the ramp pulled up like a drawbridge and rolling shutters slid down over every window, sealing them in pitch darkness.
"I call it Bunker Mode," came Dash's voice from the utter blackness. "In case you gotta hunker down and hide from some Everfree monster. This place could tank a tackle from a cragodile and I bet you wouldn't even notice." She paused. "Might wanna get some lights in here though. I can't help with that."
Her hoofsteps sounded like she was turning around, but it was impossible to tell for sure. "So, what do you think? Do I make an awesome clubhouse or what?"
Scootaloo's eyes sparkled so hard they nearly made light on their own. A spy house. Rainbow Dash built a spy house. For her. Her spyhouse with secret functions and moving parts and hidden panels and, okay, maybe it didn't have a secret underground section or paintings that rotated to reveal racks of weapons but still it was just like a comic book and it was hers and wow what were all those colored spots dancing in the air?
She cut off her racing train of thought and took a deep breath as she realized that, in her excitement, she'd totally forgotten to breathe.
Sweet oxygen rushing back to her brain cleared her head for a moment. Not only had things turned out way better than she'd hoped, but this was also a chance! A golden moment to show Rainbow Dash that she could also be cool and collected and awesome and not just break down into excited manic giggles the moment she opens her mouth.
“Super awesome!” she said very coolly and definitely didn’t squeak. Quickly! A smart question to recover her face. "How'd you make all the moving parts with just wood?"
“Well, not to brag or anything, but that trap making skill I got? A lot of it is how to build stuff so it's collapsible and portable, but it came with some basics about pulleys and counterweights and gears too.”
“Neat! So how do you undo Bunker Mode so we can get out? Oh! I bet you pull the same lever again, right?”
She reached a hoof into the podium (good thing she hadn’t stepped away, otherwise she’d have never found it) and rummaged blindly till she found the middle lever. She pushed it back up.
Only for nothing to happen.
“Huh. You said the middle one, right?”
She pulled it back down and up again. There was no clicking, no rattling.
Just silence.
“Rainbow Dash?”
The silence persisted in a very alarming way.
“Rainbow Dash, how do we unlock it?”
“Ah. Huh. Yeah.” Those were not the reassuring noises she was looking for. “I knew I forgot something.”
“...Dash… are we locked in?”
“Kinda looks like it.”
“And you said these walls could take a tackle from a crocodile?”
“...I did say that, yeah.”
Scootaloo took a deep breath and considered the situation. She was trapped inside her newly rebuilt clubhouse with Rainbow Dash. The pony who had locked them there. Her idol who was always so busy that Scootaloo’d pounce on any chance to spend more time with her. And they were stuck, possibly overnight until someone figured out they were missing, with nothing but each other and a large pile of snacks.
Which meant…
Surprise sleepover with Rainbow Dash.
A tear glistened, unseen, in the corner of her eye. It truly was the best day of her life.
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Damn, add another to the pile of Rainbow's absolutely wild kit. Every single perk she's rolled has just improved her already incredible building skills. By the end of this thing the other 5 are gonna have a grab bag of wild abilities and Rainbow's gonna be completely cannon strength, just with the power to build a Death Star in a matter of minutes lol
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Indeed. The Wheel has been unusually favoring her lately. So far she's collected [Trap Building], [Build Up to 10x Faster], [Find Materials You Need], [Learn Faster (with no cap)], and now [Inbuilt Armor]. That's some solid synergy.
Most of the possible abilities are crafting based, the others have just gotten the weirdest luck in mostly avoiding them.
For example, in the latest spin, Fluttershy was 50CP short of getting Franken Fran medical skills. Specifically one that can transplant around biologically-based superpowers. But, alas, not in this timeline.
Sugoy! This Is the best!
where's the door hole
Looks like Ponyville is now home to several genius craftponies. I have a feeling it will become Equestria's technologies hub within a few years.
Rainbows going to be a monster of a seige pony
Whoa mama. Definitely another very good chapter with great work on the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up. So Rainbow helped the Crusaders remodel their clubhouse and, in the process, unlocked another perk that is going to get her one step closer to being a downright formidable engineer.
Definitely looking forward to more of this.
This was hilarious. Even with all the extra skills, Rainbow Dash is still Rainbow Dash.
As amusing as this was, Rainbow Dash doesn't seem to touch the ground if she can help it. It's hard to notice with all the unplanned lithobraking she does, but it's an interesting character tidbit.
me in the joker's voice
oops almost forgot to add some AIR holes lol
...huh. Celestia needs to see about hiring Rainbow to fortify her castle. With extra focus on the cake vault.
... actually, that might not be the case? Why didn't Rainbow just use her key to open it to any of her friends' house? I am pretty sure Golden Oak's door remain open most of the time due to Moondancer.
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Even so, she needs a door with a keyhole to use it on.
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Does keyhole need to be metallic and working? Judging from the fact it works on every size of keyhole suggested me even the simple hole in the wall would do the job. Because if it is not then it cannot be used on the malfunction keyhole either.
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i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/025/820/thumbdrake.jpg
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A Warehouse Key is somewhat conceptual. Generally speaking, there needs to be a working door and a hole that could reasonably function as a lock. Anything more depends on the author.
Simply drilling a hole in a door wouldn't work, let alone just a random hole in the wall as you suggest. However putting a latch on a door with an attached padlock could.
A broken lock is unlikely to be an issue, as technically speaking you aren't unlocking that lock. You are simply allowing the key to use the existing doorway as an anchor point for the portal to the Warehouse and unlocking the Warehouse's lock.
I love how the powers are fitting together well! Also, I love your humor so much XD "Scootaloo’s soul escaped her body and did a backflip" AHAHAHA