...Or the Matter Essay.
Perilously Prevalent Pony Portals and Caustic Corroding Chemistry for the Chemically Inclined
OR
The Matter Essay
Dr. Twilight Sparkle, Unicorn, Arch-Magus of Equestria, and Scientist extraordinaire, was busy doing what she usually did on Wednesday nights: reading.
Nosing through the pages of the three inch tome, brushing up on her understanding of chemical properties and cross dimensional matter transportation devices, a page fluttered free of the book, rustled from its place by the wind from the open window.
Catching it with her magic, she examined the loose paper. It looked like a research paper that somepony had left in the book when they checked it out. Reading the inscriptions surrounded by detailed sketches of what looked like element compounds, molecules, and most curiously, a skull.
“Hmm… this looks like a lab procedure...” said Twilight as she flipped the page around looking if there was more.
“No name…I wonder...”
“…”
“No.”
“It can’t be.”
“It couldn’t possibly…!”
Reading through the entire procedure for a fourth time, Twilight finally conceded.
“It is! Starswirl the Bearded’s experiment on inter-dimensional portals using chemical change!”
Wide eyed and mouth agape, Twilight examined the procedure intensely.
“The greatest discovery of portal travel was in my library this whole time, and I had no idea! I have- I have to test this. I if I can do this successfully, I can shove it in the snooty educational board’s face! Denying my research? I’ll show them just what Twilight Sparkle can do!”
Twilight’s usually strait hair began to spring and curl like a mad ponies’.
Spike the young dragon, number one assistant, familiar, and surrogate brother to Twilight Sparkle, stretched in his basket with a yawn, popping his spine in the process.
“Twilight?” He called sleepily as he rubbed the sand from his eyes.
On most days, he woke up long before his caretaker, spending an hour or two cooking breakfast and tidying up before she woke.
This was not most days.
When he walked down to the first floor, he was met with what appeared to be several thousand papers and books strewn throughout the room.
Loud noises emanated from the basement. However, before he could investigate, a knock from the front door drew his attention away.
Wading through the sea of wood pulp, he opened the front door to admit Rainbow Dash, Pegasus weather mare of ponyville, and self-proclaimed fastest flier in Equestria.
“Hey Dash, Twilights gone crazy again, but I can help you out if you want.”
Once her pupils shrank back to their normal size, she shook her head and responded.
“I was gonna borrow the new book, but that can wait. Looks like you got a bigger problem on your hooves. Need some help?”
Spike glanced back at the once pristine floor.
“Yeah.”
Down in the basement, Spike and Dash passed an assortment of aqueous substances of varying colors (some with odd looking precipitates in them), Tesla coils, humming instruments, and other machines and items that would be at home in a mad-scientist movie.
And in the very center was Twilight, mane in shambles, working on a golden ring twice as big as she, that had tubes and wires running out of it.
She was talking to herself. Again.
“Yes, yes, the bronze alloy should be strong and conductive enough to give the jump-start charge! Some lead may have gotten in there, but that’s fine! I just have to avoid touching it! Now where did I put that hac- WHOA!”
Twilight turned around and nearly ran into Spike, seeing both of them for the first time that morning.
“Spike! Rainbow! How long have you two been standing there!?”
“Enough to know you need a break. Were you up all night working on this?”
“I don’t need a break! I’m on the verge of a Magi-technical breakthrough! And I don’t need sleep either, I just had a triple shot latte; that should keep me going for another couple hours!”
Dash looked pass the purple mare to the pile of crushed paper cups next to the espresso machine.
“I’m seriously starting to regret buying you that thing. You have had way too much coffee.”
“There’s no such thing as too much coffee!”
“Twilight?”
“What!?”
“Your eye is twitching.”
Looking into a mirror to confirm that, yes, her eye was indeed twitching, she quickly covered it with a hoof.
“So what!? There is Science to be done, and you’re not going to stop me!”
“Twilight, you are taking a break, and you are going to sleep.”
“No!”
“Twi, don’t make me get rough.”
“I’m not moving!”
Rainbow Dash sighed.
“It’s too early for this.”
Grabbing Twilight roughly by the shoulders, Rainbow began to drag her to the stair case, but Twilight would not be going anywhere without a struggle.
“I. said. I’m. not. Going. Anywhere!”
Grunting with effort, Twilight's horned glowed in the telltale sign of magic being used. Her cells began to increase in density, and her mass increased exponentially. Rainbow’s meager weight was no match for the solid that was a stubborn Twilight Sparkle aided by magic to convert her flesh and fur into granite.
Rainbow’s grip slipped, and she fell backwards into a control panel. A number of buttons were pushed, and several tanks of unknown liquids were pumped out of their containers and into the metal ring. A large jolt of electricity shortly followed, leaving everyone’s hairs on end and the smell of ozone in the air.
The ring started to vibrate violently, and the whole room started to shake. Rainbow ran for cover under a cardboard box, and Twilight turned into steel.
Suddenly a small bang went off and the vibrations stopped, sending the room into complete silence.
Rainbow peeked out of her box. Twilight unsolidified herself. The silence was broken by Dash.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think it failed. Ah, horseapples.”
As soon as the equine expletive escaped her lips, an explosion rocked the basement, and a blue glow began to emanate from the ring. A blue dot formed in the very center and began to increase in volume until it filled the entire ring.
Rainbow peeked out of her box. Twilight unsolidified herself.
“It- It worked! By Celestia’s shaggy beard, it worked! Huzzah!”
Twilight ran up to the glowing ring and began to examine the new development.
“The Ring and contents appear to be stable. So is energy flow, and the Chemicals I used haven’t combusted yet, so that’s good.”
“Yet?”
“In a manner of speaking. Hmm.”
“What is it?”
“This blue homogeneous substance. It’s extremely interesting.”
Waving her hoof through it she continued her examination.
“It doesn’t appear to be a gas, but it’s not a liquid either. And it’s definitely not a solid. The electrical charge must have interacted with the chemicals in a different way than normal.”
“What do you mean “a different way than normal?””
“Exactly that. Like instead of the mercury…“
By this point, Dash had completely tuned her friend out and began to let her thoughts wander. Somehow they ended up in her high School Chemistry Class and in particular, Fire Spark, her teacher.
Huh. Now that I think about it, he was a pretty good looking teacher.
“Uh…that was kinda random Rainbow, but thank you! I appreciate the compliment.”
Rainbow shook her head out of her thoughts in time to catch the very end of that sentence.
“Oh, uh, you’re welcome.”
Twilight finished her notes on the ethereal material and turned to another control panel.
“Okay! Now it’s time to see what happens if we add more power!”
Grabbing a lever, she began to apply a steady pressure, increasing the power going to the ring.
The material began to shift hues from blue to a light lavender.
“Note: Physical change of color.” Twilight stated aloud as a pencil controlled by her magic wrote away on a pad.
The material was now a deep violet, and it began to warp, the color beginning to move around as well, forming a writhing, twisting, heterogeneous blob.
The ring began to hum again, and the distortions in the material began to become more violent. Suddenly a rip formed and bright light spilled forth from it. The tear grew bigger, and bigger, until the entire bronze ring was pouring white light into the room.
“Twilight! What’s going on now!”
“I don’t know! I can’t stop it!”
Suddenly a man burst forth from the light, and it darkened behind him. This was no pony, but a human. He stood up tall and shouted to the ceiling:
“I AM DELTA, AND I AM THE-“
The ring burst open into light again, and sucked the man back into it, immediately closing after him.
The door burst open, and Applejack, the orange Earth Pony apple farmer, Rarity, the white Unicorn designer, Pinkie Pie, the pink party planner and baker, and Fluttershy, the yellow Pegasus animal caretaker, poured down the stairs into the basement.
“I heard an explosion and came with everypony as fast I could! Is everything okay?”
A loud “fwoosh” drew everyone’s attention to the ring, who’s highly corrosive and highly flammable chemicals spontaneously combusted.
“Horseapples.”
THE END