a brief synopsis of one unicorn's journey into heavier than air flight
You're in for a ride of the century. I wrote this on my phone on a plane, sorry not sorry.
I can't describe this better than this: this is the best possible trollfic that I can write, and it's about Twilight Sparkle inventing a flying train, and what happens. Written in a hasty, slightly stilted narrative, spelling mistakes left uncorrected, story slapdashedly crafted as the inspiration came. It is a story of friendship, of adventure, and most importantly flying trains.
It all began one midsummer morning, as Twilight and her friends were engaged in pleasant conversation, reminiscing about their trip to Cloudsdale together. Rarity huffed, and turned her snout to the air when the other five joked about her wings failing from her boisterous showboating.
“I thought we agreed to never speak of this again!” She complained.
Suddenly, twilight jumped up and spread her wings. “AHA!” She cried. “Heavier than air flight must be possible! A pegasus is living proof!” The other five looked confused as she suddenly screamed for Spike, making the poor purple dragon rush to her aid, quickly hurtling himself to fetch a quill and parchment despite that his alicorn master could have simply summoned it for herself. She immediately penned a letter and foisted the dragon to send it, while the others looked on in bewilderment.
“Dear princess celestia, i have a brilliant idea! I will take the railroads to the skies! Send funding at once! Your faithful genius student, Twilight sparkle.”
In the dawn of the morning next, Celestia had poor spike burping up sacks of gold nuggets, one nugget at a time. The poor dragon was so violently ill that Twilight set him outside of the castle so that his burping would not disturb her furious notetaking. Taking a depth-first approach to study, Twilight found that the best wood for the construction of her idea was spruce for its mechanical properties. “Spruce! Spruce!” She would cry out, insisting that it all must be spruce, and the Everfree forest just happened to be chock full of the stuff. Already a crew of ponies was demolishing the everfree forest in part, logging it and also clearing it for room to build, this was all much to Fluttershys incredible dismay.
Over the second night Twilight had written four course curriculums to the school of friendship for aviation and pilot training classes, which were foisted off on Rainbow dash to teach.
“But i dont want to teach all this egghead math stuff” rainbow complained upon review of the material at their next gathering, Twilight frazzled from several days without sleep.
“Good!” Twilight answered with undue cheer. “I know you are the best at the job of glossing over the details i have yet to figure out, but I know I will! Carry on!”
She promptly threw the 493 page long book of curriculums at Rainbow who would receive her students in that afternoon and proceed to ignore directions entirely and show off her aerial tricks.
Rarity was immediately and most eagerly conscripted into the design department for this monumental achievement. Since the flight was to be heavier than air, twilight determined that opulence was the name of the game. Unlike the inferior baloons, heavier than air flight spares no restriction on the weight of the craft! Twilight insisted. Therefore, it is our objective to make our creation opulent and well ballasted!
Twilight spent the next afternoon locked in her crystal castle folding paper and throwing it until she had determined the precisely optimal airfoil shape. Then, Starlight glimmer came and pointed out that testing this design with a kite was far more practical. This design was revised after a long afternoon of kite flying when applejack appeared from her work forest clearing.
“Well that wont work worth hot apple ice cream on a summer day” Applejack argued, trying her best to make a failed apple analogy about the improbable flying the tetrahedral kite design Twilight had constructed. “Why a kite works by dragging on the air you sure you want something that wont make lift as air passes under it, like a pegasus’ wing?”
Suddenly, Applejack was promoted from chief forest destroyer to second-tier mechanical engineer. Over the next afternoon, a better design of “running kite” was devised, a triplane like configuration with airfoiled wings modeled in direct study of the still-crying fluttershys remarkably well proportioned wings.
The first design of this was haphazardly constructed onto a art deco caboose and was towed at full speed behind a running locomotive. The caboose achieved a height of ten feet from the ground before it caught a stiff breeze, the tow rope snapped, and the beautiful thing sailed and ended its life in a frighteningly loud crash into lake Maggiore. Twilight looked onwards and noted with her quill that some form of steering was required, following the input of Rainbow dash who had been riding the contraption up until the disaster.
“Hm. Some kind of steering would be good.” She agreed to Dash, who was in the midst of waving her forelegs wildly in attempt to explain how the thing handled. "I think it needs a vertical sail of some kind, maybe that twists and turns...
The third design iteration incorporated control surfaces and a special railroad was constructed to test it, thanks to massive public support to moving the project slightly away from town. Most of this 'support' came after a miriad of complaints due to the crudely fashioned second iteration destroying town hall and roseluck’s house. It was an initiative taken by the apple family, and in the process the forward thinking Twilight Sparkle had insisted on designing the ‘landing area’ for the aerotrain could take place here also. Being a flying train, the idea suggested that rails be used, with a horizontal funnel type system to ‘gently guide the flying unit to safety.’ This was tested on the third glider and worked to perfection. The landing mast was lowered through the car, caught the funnel, and the car crashed into the rails on landing and screeched to a stop after about one mile, just before froggy bottom bog. The flaming wooden brake shoes were identified as the cause of the issue, and a greater braking force was determined to be required.
Now that the design of cars in general had been perfected, Rarity went onwards with her designing powers, ignoring all requirements that the craft be lightened, as she had been instructed. The resulting design was aerodynamic only by accident, and opulently elegant, with a use of gems that would clearly become dangerous projectiles in the event of any accident but nopony would have anything less beautiful would they? The first car of this design tested was so heavy that on its test it did not exit the ground and the brakes still failed, causing the whole locomotive and the car to end up in the bottom of Froggy bottom bog. Suddenly, weight became of slight concern.
Thanks to the virtually unlimited funding, Twilight simply purchased two new locomotives and two boilers of the finest type as a rush order, brand new wood burning 4-4-0 dutch-wagon constructed engines with steam cannons connected to perforated dry pipes running through the boiler for more power. At the boiler works, Twilight was so obsessed with 'More power!' that the concerned designers themselves felt uneasy around her, with her horn perpetually lit aglow with a tinge of magic, her wide grin, and the constant rubbing of her hooves - they feared something might happen while she was there.
The locomotives and boilers were painted in crystal castle themed livery and decorated with real gold foil. The boilers were calculated to have enough power to propel her new machine into the air and would be fitted to the first ‘self flyer’ - a massive quadraplane that was being constructed near Fluttershy's house so that the sounds of progress might distract her from her lamentations. It was Rainbow’s idea. The rushed construction caused all of Equestria’s miniscule metal production capacity to be used instantaneously and as a result nopony in the entire continent would be able to purchase cookware or other objects for weeks afterwards. The two locomotives serve Equestria to this day, the 'Marmora' and the 'Star of the Crystal Empire' dutifully transport passengers in the usual manner, now repainted from their colors and fitted with fake cylinders that hang outside of the front bogie wheels in order to look like other more conventional locomotives. This was undertaken by the railway that took the locomotives in order to avoid public scandal, outcry, and general fear about anything related to the project and its aftermath. Every now and then the trains pull into ponyville, set apart from other trains by the fake cylinders obviously not connected to the driving wheels.
Again, the design of craft and car were taken into review. Rarity this time was forced to concern herself with this new concept of 'aero-dynamics' that Twilight had come up with. After multiple tests, multiple crashes, and a few new wing designs that were absolutely terrible, it was determined that Rarity had accidentally found aerodynamic perfection by simply trying to make the cars "look fast, darling." The 50-wing 'multiwing' design was an absolut failure, as were channel-wings, rotating wings, and a brief return to the 'Flying tetrahedral kite' despite Applejack's sincerest protests. A new slogan had been coined by Starlight for the train 'Safety Fast' which she assured would help with public concern. The way that Rarity decided to make the letters in stylized cursive however caused the logo to read as "Safety Last" - but the ponies involved willfully ignored this after the livery was found to be aesthetically pleasing.
Rarity maintained that only a doldrum earthpony would not read it the way it was intended, and dismissed the frown from Applejack about this. After all, She was the best at aerodynamics, who dare insinuate her skills also at logo design - certainly not some earthpony who would use her own genetically inherited cutie mark for logos on their farm, and not the absolutely gorgeous diamond-themed logo she designed for free for her that they NEVER EVER USED.
After more tests, more designs, and a lesson in friendship overcoming differences in opinion or something - Rarity and Applejack perfected the design of the flying car, with biplane wings, vertical 'winglets' for stabilization, Rarity's uncanny perfection at eyeballing aerodynamic concerns even though she did not understand them by making the car 'look fast' and Twilight's constant insistance now that weight was of primary concern despite her earlier refusal. To reduce rolling friction on takeoff and landing, even the wheel bearings on the cars were looked at - jewels were tried at first but they shattered - so standard bearings were tried, but Twilight insisted on making everything better so she accidentally invented the tapered roller bearing which is an invention that subtly benefits equestrians to this day.
Twilight and Applejack came to the conclusion of rotating groups of four wings to make the ‘propellor’ in short order, after a night of hard cider and kite flying. In actuality however, Spike brought a fan into the room and asked “what about this?” much earlier, but he wasn't to receive credit for anything. As punishment for trying to take credit, Twilight requested more funding to ensure her assistant would stay in line next time. Celestia mysteriously and happily obliged.
With eight propellors mounted to locomotive wheels all connected to a single massive cylinder by a long linkage of connecting rods, boilers mounted low for stability, the head of the aerial train was tested for lift. With a long rope for safely keeping it from galavanting into the bog before its properties could be studied. This turned out to be a very good idea for when it was first tested it attempted a nosedive instead of upward force. Additionally, the crew found that this test was rather ineffective, because somehow it was overlooked that the craft needed to be traveling forward at speed in order to generate lift.
It was guessed that the cars were essential to the dynamics of the beast, and so five were fitted and the second test at full steam resulted in a resoundingly beautiful accident. Standard train couplers, it was discovered, do not provide any holding in the upwards or downwards sliding direction. The aerotrain had climbed to an altitude of approximately one foot - before the cars had divorced themselves from the quadroplane. Lacking any kind of tail - the entire thing immediately nosedived into the bog, followed by a almost perfect upside-down check-mark shaped trail of black smoke. Rainbow dash jumped from the crash in the nick of time.
Though crude, a variation of the link and pin coupler system would be employed to good success, after the fortuitous recovery of the incredibly expensive boilers, which were undamaged thanks to the soft muck of froggy bottom bog. During the recovery, it was discovered that the crash had also solved the hydra problem that had been ignored in ponyville despite the bogs proximity to ponyville for nine years. Fluttershy lamented this despite the creature's attempt to murder her, insisting that the rare Hydra was part of the ecosystem all the same. Nopony else cared.
With "all" the "possible" "engineering difficulties" "eliminated" Er With all the possible engineering difficulties eliminated, the aerotrain was ready for its first service to Cloudsdale. Due to a communication problem, it was determined that Cloudsdale city officials had believed that their landing area could be constructed of “standard materials” which to them meant cloud. Laden with daring ponies, mostly flying ones who had a chance to escape, the contraption took to the skies with a grinning sparkle at the cab furiously taking notes and a daring rainbow dash fearlessly piloting, the most eager young griffin cadet from her class also present for his enthusiastic cheering to Rainbow Dash’s aerial antics. Twilight had not slept in three days prior to this triumph, and despite all her friends insistences, she adamantly refused to be anywhere but in the cockpit at that instant. The hour before takeoff she was bouncing around the crystal castle, screaming enthusiastically about how she had 'caught the second wind' after drinking a half gallon of Starlight Glimmer's extra special Shires Hollow espresso.
The magnificent craft hurtled down the rickety track toward froggy bottom bog. A hollering Rainbow dash grabbing hold of the steering tiller, connected to a rediculously intricate series of steam powered metering valves of Twilight's proprietary design, all connected to sails and flaps for controls. Twilight grinned mischeviously as she rammed the throttle lever to full, watching as the train stayed on the track, hurtling well past the point of no return that the brakes allowed. Spike cried in the corner, clutching onto an elegant parachute backpack fashioned for him by Rarity herself, contemplating its absolute lack of utility if the vehicle had not left the ground. The young griffin simply leaned against the exit door, hoping Rainbow would not see his lack of faith, in hope to wait to the last moment before his galliant jump away from certain doom.
Twilight's insistence to keep her controls system on the train entirely secret set back the technological development of equestria by 100 years if not more. Inadvertently in the design process she had toyed briefly with the idea of the internal combustion engine but decided that she simply didn't like the idea. While thinking about this, she thought up of how a modern Hydraulic system might work, with relief valves, proportioning valves, cylinders, and the rotary vane pump but she also simply did not like how that would work. She wrote these ideas down in a notebook and then told nopony about them for decades. While actively dismissing the ideas that would have enabled her project to succeed, Twilight herself shaped the technological progress and regress of a nation forever. To her - multiple sources and transmissions of energy were wasteful - steam for everything - steam for all was the only answer. Very briefly, while the aerotrain hurtled down the trestle, she thought about the 'what if' with testing these other ideas she came up with essentially by mistake, but she came dangerously close to feeling regret. Regret was not an option.
"We're not gonna make it!" Rainbow screeched as the train neared the final inch of trestle above Froggy bottom bog, a collective scream coming from the passengers who witnessed the magnificent quadroplane dip lower and lower. Twilight calmly jerked against the throttle harder, stressing the linkage as much as her foreleg allowed in vain attempt to open the steam valve just a little more, grinning smugly, her eyes dead set on the path ahead with no regard to the water below.
"I SWEAR THIS WILL WORK!" She hollered in adament refusal to use her magic to stop the disaster incoming, mashing down the intercom button as she let out her rebel call, believing this would calm the passengers. Somehow, the sudden acceleration catching enough wind that the craft plowed forwards, and upwards, the engines laboring and chugging, black wood smoke trailing behind the boilers, orange hot cinders gracefully bouncing on the canvas wings. Despite the craft's miraculous stabilization in the air, and remarkable control at the helm of its brash but inexperienced captains, ponies began to exit the vehicle in droves, the few Earthponies and Unicorns in the cabins began to promise bribes, sometimes exorbitant ones, for Pegasi to airlift them out of there - by the time Ponyville had shrunk appreciably, only die-hard pegasi, a donkey seeking a massive lawsuit settlement, and a unicorn with a fascination about death remained on the craft.
The disastrous lack of a landing in cloudsdale would be well remembered for the aereal train simply cut the city in half like a giant blade, destroying the aerena and the rainbow factory. Cloudsdale city officials hastily banned the aereal train from ever returning that afternoon and with a serious lack of fuel, rainbow dash had no choice but to call for an emergency landing short of the landing area in ponyville, which destroyed most of roselucks house again. With all the ponies evacuating the train as it screeched off toward the bog, Applejack laid a foreleg on Twilights back as the train: flaming brakes and all crashed again into the bog. The last car, the useless and elegant caboose was catapulted by a whipping action of the train as it fell off the trestle. In a testament to the heavier than air flight, it was the last object in equestria to be propelled by this fashion beyond the usual paper airplane and such. It sailed beautifully the whole four miles into lake maggiore, where it will rest forever in the cool deep water with her cousin. As the cold water surrounded the hot hot boilers, a magnificent explosion rumbled in the bog, a fountain of dirty swamp water and frogs erupting from the murk. It rained frogs, bog water, and frog soup in ponyville that day, and this too upset Fluttershy terribly.
A memorial plaque was placed there for public viewing, accessible by the hiking trail that follows along past the remaining sites of this moment in history. The wooden trestle remains though in poor repair, though the rails and boilers were immediately scrapped in order to provide metal supply for the commodity-starved continent.
By some miracle, no injuries were ever reported, even the donkey adamant for his big lawsuit was simply pushed out of the train by a pegasus who wanted to survive. His hope for payment had only emotional grounds to stand on and the court rejected his claim, determining that Twilight Sparkle’s existence was both ‘an act of god’ and that she herself could be considered an ‘ongoing natural disaster that plagues ponyville’ as such, any resident of ponyville willfully resides in a natural disaster area and cannot sue the government for damages.
From that point on heavier than air flight not powered by pegasus means was banned in equestria forever. A letter from canterlot was personally sent to Twilight, commending her efforts to combine friendship and engineering, but regretably expressing that: "The citizens of Equestria are simply not ready for your brilliant designs, Twilight, but I do hope somepony learned a lesson or two." Twilight knew that Spike had.
“Aha!” Said Twilight, holding up a crude drawing of a oceangoing boat held aloft by a massive oblong baloon. “I have circumvented the regulation with my miraculous final solution! I shall call it the airship!”
Half (assed) chapter - twi improves the mail, the story of the canterlot gun
After the aftermath of her invention calmed and Ponyville more or less returned to normal, Twilight Sparkle found herself feeling idly bored in her giant crystal castle that loomed over Ponyville. Her friends had dissuaded her for now from the airship invention of hers, which be it or be it not ‘rock solid’ and ‘foolproof’ was a poor choice of timing. Hi
As she careened into her library in search of poor spike, a featherbrained scheme that would be instantaneously forgotten fresh on her mind, the poor dragon recognized the look in her eyes and immediately began to cry and beg. “Please Twilight! Please! No more funding! No more fun-d-ding!” He sobbed. Briefly taking pity on him, the Princess suddenly was aglow with brilliance.
“I know! I will improve the mail system!” She exclaimed, heralding her idea with a stamp of her hoof. Spike backed into a corner, shivvering in fear of the incoming funding request.
“Do not worry spike! We shouldnt need funding! As it turns out i had the foresight to divert a massive amount of the aerotrain funds secretly into a pile i reserved for rebuilding ponyville but I didn’t need to this time! We have all the funding we need!” Spike opened his mouth to speak, but then decided that was a bad idea and closed it.
“I will visit the post office at once!” She affirmed, and was immediately off to visit Derpy Hooves.
“How can i help?” The scatterbrained Pegasus asked, which launched Twilight into a two hour long interrogation about every aspect of mail delivery that left the poor mail carrier in tears mostly of bewilderment confusion and anxiety from the overwhelming barrage of questions. Twilight took notes. After this study was complete, she spent the rest of the day ambushing any pony that came within 47 yards 3 inches and 14 thousandths of the post office with a similar tirade until she was satisfied with her 287 pages of notes. To be precisely accurate an invisible magical forcefield was used to alert her which ponies needed to be interviewed.
The most common response was in her notes beseeching her not to improve the mail in equestria, but Twilight rightfully dismissed these comments as an outlier. Twilight instead began to craft a series of magical packages to hopefully make her understanding of mail delivery more comprehensive, it was a simple affair, a small unassuming box that as intended would explode in a cloud of glitter as soon as it was opened. At first only one was sent to test its effectiveness. Roseluck was chosen at random.
The spell was unfortunately sligtly stronger than anticipated, and the auto-alert feature resulted in the destruction of all the windows of the home and a tidal wave of glitter exploding over the street. Fortunately the package was destroyed in the process, and while suspicions were passed around, there was no conclusive evidence to the culprit. Twilight, deciding that this method was too dangerous, instead chose a more conventional approach.
The next series of packages simply contained a note stating that they had to be placed outside immediately. After a 30 second delay, they would rocket up into the air and explode. Twilight sat on the deck of her castle with binoculars and observed fourteen successful deliveries, one house fire, and one accident with a mail carrier. It was possible, she noted, that a package may have come undone in transit, ignited the other packages, and caused the most impressive display over the center of town. Derpy was singed, but mostly unharmed.
Twilight gathered her friends for an urgent meeting. Confused the six shuffled into the castle bleary eyed at 3 am. Applejack asked simply “Twi, is everything ok? Have you been sleepin?” When she saw the Alicorns frazzled mane and wild look. Rarity nuzzled Twilight and Fluttershy simply said “Oh my...”
“Its an emergency!” Twilight decried, attracting the attention of the ponies. They hung on her every word, leaning forward.
“Its terrible!”
“Yes?”
“Its the worst possible thing!”
“Yes?”
“The state of equestrias mail system is in total disarray and I KNOW HOW TO FIX IT!”
The six other ponies looked at each other in bewilderment. “Oh come on!” Rainbow dash cried out. “I was sleeping for Celestias sake! Starlight have you been giving her coffee? You know what we SAID about that!”
Starlight gazed down to her hooves and sighed. “M... maybe a little coffee...” she admitted. “But she usually doesnt go this twilynanas on me... i... i keep a well regulated supply, the key to the cabinet is always around my... neck...” she reached up and felt for the key to the coffee cabinet, which she had kept around her neck since the train incident. The magically enchanted golden 30 tumbler lock was provided by Celestia herself so that Twilight could only get coffee through starlight. The key wasnt there.
“Oh for petes sake...” Applejack lamented. “Alright, Twi... I ... i-yawn-i’ll help you in the morning with your idea... its the only way to put you to rest, but im going to bed. Try and get some shut eye... please.”
But twilight would not get shut eye. Over the night, while her lazy friends slept, she produced a massive manifesto as to how mail would be delivered from now on, and all equestria was sure to benefit.
The catapults were constructed that next afternoon. War was declared on Equestria by Yakyakistan that afternoon also, and peace brokered by the evening. The miscommunication between countries Twilight blamed entirely on the mail system, and an overzealous report to the Yaks by pinkie pie about what was being built. Evidently the drawing of a flying cake being launched from ponyville to the yaks was interpreted as a declaration of hostile intent.
Mail was to be loaded into a projectile and launched at speed - to its intended five digit ‘crash code’ from then mail carriers in each town could fetch the mail and use smaller catapults to launch the mail in smaller containers to individual residences. The first day of mail service caused 21 broken windows, it having been poorly communicated that windows in ponyville had to be open on that day. The projectile was designed by the brilliant aviation engineer Rarity and flew perfectly in an arc, inspired by an arrow, it was essentially an arrow with a bullet shaped container at the front, with the cargo cushioned inside with a shock absorber of Applejacks design.
The first projectile was loaded with cloudsdale as the intended destination. With much fear and anticipation, Ponyville watched as Twilight pulled the trigger cord. The mail was launched in a graceful arc towards cloudsdale, sailing perfectly for a whole 931 yards seven inches before landing softly in a field. This was only about 93 miles short of cloudsdale. Roseluck screamed as the catapult sling snapped threateningly towards her house. Twilight furiously calculated and determined this catapult was ideal for sending mail to Zecora and Fluttershy.
Zecora hastily applied for a stop mail to her address and Fluttershy wisely purchased the last post office box in Ponyville. Starlight Glimmer had the prescience to buy ten and scalp them for a massive profit.
Twilight spent the night furiously designing and redesigning, and the next morning more everfree forest was destroyed. Fluttershy lamented. A giant redwood tree was sourced from far away near the mountains, providing a 150 foot long lever arm. Twilight and Applejack overnight had concieved the ‘floating arm trebuchet’ design, and it was hastily built out of two parallel railroad trestles, a entire redwood tree, an axle made of an entire 100 year old oak, two horizontal flatbed rail cars to support the axle, and four railroad trucks on a vertical track system for the weight. A massive water tank was used as the counterweight, so the weight could be finely adjusted.
The massive construct loomed menacingly over ponyville the afternoon the mail was to be sent. Twilight gazed over the horizon with her binoculars and then pulled the cord. The trebuchet swung, with a deafening sonic boom the sling cracked through the air like a whip, hurtling the mail out and away, sailing on a beautiful trajectory. The water sloshed out of the tank in an unbalanced wave when the arm descended, dumping all of it out, the Trebuchet wobbled to a stop, soaking everypony with a tidal wave of water that destroyed every garden nearby.
The projectile was located two hours later having made it an incredible distance of 6 miles. Twilight reviewed the mathematics and realized this idea was physically impossible. She slept that night but awoke in a fit of brilliance. Pinkie Pie was immediately summoned.
“A long distance party cannon? Sure!” Pinkie cheered, as Twilight tried to comprehend how her friends ingenious device worked. Somehow nopony dared to question how the pink one had such a thing in the first place but after exhaustive review Twilight understood the theory well enough to scale it into something massive.
Armed with a back of napkin calculation, Twilight designed a cannon like no other, using the same powder that Pinkie sourced from a local cave plus some processing that could deliver mail just about anywhere. When she surmised the amount of steel required it became apparent that this object simply could not be constructed.
Instead of being dissauded, Twilight simply chose to do some work for a change and used magic to craft her steel herself. Ponyville was immediately threatened with a river of molten metal that oh so fortunately landed in the local creek, diverting it away from local homes and businesses. The night was marked with the most eerie red glow, after the massive steam cloud faded away from the boiling river as it met the steel. Granny smith thought the world was ending and barricaded herself in the root cellar.
“Twi... i know how important this is to you, but could we please pick another city than Cloudsdale?” Applejack begged. “You make one pony a bad batch of cider and the remember for a year, when ya do it twice they remember it for life...”
Twilght nodded in agreement. Hastily she renamed her invention “The Canterlot Gun!” Instead of the cloudsdale gun. Rarity couldnt have been happier that her boutique was still being rented.
Unbeknownst to ponies, Yakyakistani spies had stolen plans for the Canterlot gun, and while it was being constructed they attempted their own made of stone. Fortunately, the barrel was so loosely assembled that the explosive pressure was minimal, and beside the loud noise and the crumbling, damage was minimal.
The construction of the canterlot gun happened in the usual hasty fashion. Ponies looked on in horror as this monstrosity was assembled, loaded with mail, aimed, and of course tested without hardly any study. With a sound that made every ear young and old ring with tinnitus for the next hour, the gun released its load. With remarkable aim thanks to Twilights uncanny mathematical skills, the mail in ponyville flew to canterlot that day and obliterated The Tasty Treat restaraunt. Fortunately it was some kind of holiday and nopony was there.
Princess Celestia promptly responded with a stamped, not signed, typewritten cease and desist letter coined by her legal team, which was sent by conventional means and arrived the next day. Derpy hooves returned to delivering letters like she did before, and the Canterlot gun was quietly disassembled, collapsing when the order of operations of its removal were mistakenly shuffled due to multiple pages of instructions written by twilight. The guy wire supporting the barrel was removed first and the barrel fell and demolished roselucks house.
0.431 - assed chapter: Twilight does into concrete
Twilight Sparkle had gotten some sleep. Starlight's morning coffee was now safely stored in Fluttershy's cottage - and considering the recent (fluttershy equivalent of) animosity between the yellow and the purple horses, it would be some time hopefully before Twilight was able to get her hooves on the stuff. Life in ponyville resumed to the normal calm, which could last anywhere between two weeks and a few months depending on random chance.
Pinkie Pie - with her uncanny perceptions to things going wrong, had practically a cult following at this point, her every 'sense' could trigger widespread emergency preparations in ponyville. One day, she had flappy ears, twitchy eyes, and a swishy tail, a combo she had not felt before. Suddenly, in the midst of lunch, she jumped on a table in Sugarcube corner, screamed that "THE CRYSTAL CASTLE IS GONNA FALL DOWN!" and rushed to Twilight's aid.
Starlight and Twilight were confused. Everything about the structure seemed fine at that moment, there were no problems that anypony could identify - top to bottom all seemed well.
Then, spike took the last bite. Years earlier, Twilight had discovered her pet dragon had quite the affinity for munching on various fixtures and decorations that were in idle corners of the Castle. Evidently, the structure was quite delicious, but after a little bit of discipline she believed the problem had been satisfactorilly resolved. In the central room, Spike suddenly burst out of a painting, behind which was a long tunnel, from which a loud rumbling sound was emitting.
"I'm So SORRY!" Spike cried out. "EVERYPONY RUN!" As it turned out, Spike had only curtailed his appetite for about a week before coming up with the ingenious plan to consume the structure from a series of tunnels swiss-cheesed into the very structure, using to his advantage that the dark tunnels could not be seen behind the translucent crystal walls, but he could see when a wall became too thin. Unfortunately, Spike was no structural engineer, and when he removed a column believed not to be essential, the miracle of finding the load bearer was a lesson pressed fresh on his mind.
Fluttershy rejoiced quietly to Twilight's misfortune, and then felt deeply ashamed for doing so. Applejack stared her down until she shrank to her knees. "But... but isn't it amazing... that such a little dragon could?" Applejack shook her head. Twilight muttered something about punishment and then wandered off toward Fluttershy's cottage. Starlight was busy trying to locate her personal belongings and didn't notice the Alicorn's dissapearance until too late.
Starlight teleported into the cottage but it was too late. Twilight was twenty three cups in and was completely Twily-nanas. Armed with her accessory ACTION-QUILL (TM) she was already furiously writing down a checklist of some kind. Glimmer rushed to warn the others as the purple natural disaster flew in overhead at incredibly high speed. Landing on the castle rubble, she proudly declared. "Lets rebuild the castle!" The mayor attempted to reassure the townsponies that this was a perfectly sensible idea for Twilight to have, despite the truly massive shipment of funding that was incoming from the Princess Celestia. Most of the town were eased, clinging onto the hope that the castle collapse was the disaster they had been waiting for over the past five weeks of unusual calm. The sight of the princess' frazzled mane however did not ease public opinion well enough. Roseluck packed all her things in a go-bag and pre-emptively moved into Octavia's house. The insurance had been working really well for her so far. Filthy rich was losing his shirt, she was sure. More everfree forest was promptly clear-cut. When asked about the aggressive destruction of this natural treasure, Twilight dismissively waved her hoof and muttered something about progress. Applejack quickly wrote a letter to Celestia, and was most remarkably awarded the land and mineral rights to the 'distressed asset'. Fluttershy cried so hard she threw up. Applejack couldn't stop dancing back at home to her good fortune, she could cover the world with Apple trees at that rate, and she quickly formed an agreement with Rarity that would become the most mutually-profitable business conglomerate in Equestria's history. Rarity also was finally able to use that beautiful logo she designed. Rarity and Twilight sat down then to design the new castle. Using nothing but imagination, frienship, and some back of back of napkin calculations, a new castle precisely in the same shape and form of the old castle was hastily constructed. It attained half its intended height before collapsing in a tidal-wave of timber, and a thunderous sound that heard as far away as Zecora's cottage. Twilight took notes. "Well shucks." Applejack lamented, looking over the wreckage. "I guess I can spare some time from business plannin to help y'all design this - I designed the aero-train after all." She offered - two construction workers that overheard backed away slowly as Applejack grinned - chosing to remember the triumphs of the achievement instead of the failures. Applejack in truth was enjoying the engineering stuff, and had been providing Twilight with both XXX hard cider and coffee, often the two mixed. It wasn't quite as good as Starlight's coffee however. Applejack traveled to Canterlot for inspiration. Despite making a complete arse of herself surrounded by fancy ponies as she went from building to building jumping on floors and looking at things - she came back to ponyville brimming with ideas.
"Stone!" She exclaimed, smacking her forehooves together.
"That's all you learned?" Starlight questioned. "Yeah! Stone! Who'da thunk it. Are you second-in-engineering command?"
"No..." Starlight sighed. "No I'm not..."
The next castle would be constructed out of stone. Again in the form of the tree like the one before. A wooden structure was constructed as it was built for support, and every pony in equestria who was a mason, had some kind of gray blob for a cutie mark, or was named 'mason' was conscripted, along with a massive influx of cheap yak labor. Affordable housing was constructed near ponyville for the workers, half of which fell over in a stiff breeze. Slowly, Twilight was getting an idea.
With a keen, red-eyed obeservation of every detail while the castle was being constructed, Twilight observed how masonry construction worked. While the castle was collapsing into dust for a second time, suddenly, like a flash of lightning, it came to her that something could be built entirely of mortar and not stone at all! She began to experiment, while Ponyville recovered. Roselucks house was obliterated by a flying boulder. The pie family became rich from the massive influx of rock orders to their farm, enough to purchase a tractor from the Flim-Flam Brothers Farm Implement Company. The tractor exploded. After a wrongful death lawsuit for a pet rock skyrocketed into a payment in the billions of bits when maud shed a single tear at the jury stand and everypony was so emotionally moved that the court had to adjourn to treat major depression in six out of ten jurors, the Pies had a settlement large enough to be able to abandon rock farming and live happily ever after.
Flim and Flam were so moved by Maud's tesimony that they came up with a marvelous idea to be able to pay it. The first Pyramid Scheme in Equestria was founded, the money was all given as per the settlement to the Pie Family. At the end of the massive Fiasco, Flim and Flam actually overpaid their lawsuit settlement, the pie family was saved from rock farming, and Maud found her pet rock a week later. Boulder had been hiding in a tree. Back in Ponyville, Applejack and Twilight had invented concrete. Instead of trying to build another castle, they elected to build Roseluck's house out of the stuff. Strangely, Roseluck agreed, hoping for the best. A horribly square beige brick with windows and no door was constructed in the midst of Ponyville. It was knocked down, and rebuilt with a door. Twilight attempted to destroy it, and couldn't. Roseluck was overjoyed. Rarity turned her nose up at the construction at first and then suddenly cried out "Ideaaaaa!" in a singsong voice. Archetectural brutalism was born. The crystal castle was re-imagined as a giant cube atop a thin stick, all made of concrete and absolutely covered with identical rectangular windows. Ponyvillians hated it. Twilight, faced with public outrage retreated to her castle to think.
After several nights of no sleep, she wrote to Celestia:
"Dear Princess Celestia. I believe some buildings in ponyvville are unsafe and I want to improve the lives of ponies. May I have permission to regulate what buildings are allowed in ponyville?"
Celestia didn't even read it. She replied with a form letter drafted by her legal team which not only gave Twilight this permission, but also the right to condemn buildings. Overnight, Twilight wrote 1127 pages of building codes. Ponyville was condemned. Applejack bribed Twilight with the stolen recipe to Starlight's coffee in exchange for an exemption for barns and farm concerns that specifically pertained to apples. The rest of ponyville was replaced with what looked like a nightmare of precast concrete buildings. Rarity loved it. Depression skyrocketed. One week later, that disaster everypony had been waiting for happened and ponyville was destroyed again. Public outrage erupted as Twilight planned to rebuild everything except the mysteriously unharmed Brutalist Castle of Friendship or Something Like That. Everypony in town threatened to move out. Twilight relented.
"I suppose it all gets destroyed all the same." She resigned. Ponyvillians rejoiced and rebuilt. Inadvertently, while helping rebuild everything, Applejack invented the idea of prefabricated, modular housing. She crafted this idea with such brilliance that while ponyville looked the same from the outside, every home was built on a concrete foundation and was constructed of panels of standard size made in an assembly-line fashion. In some years, Suburban development would spiral out of control and Equestria would become a land of waste and misery because of this idea, but for the moment all was well.