Title:           Week7 - GreentextSavant
Author:          AlexanderGrey
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/uRcjQJHN
First Edit:      Saturday 7th of May 2016 11:22:36 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Saturday 7th of May 2016 11:22:36 PM CDT

FriENDship
 
>By the time the sliver of dim light is practically within arm’s reach, Sunset fights the urge to rush towards it.
>The cautious walk over to the door couldn’t possibly be quiet enough; April can only imagine the zombie somehow seeing the two carefully striding through the dark in the direction of the exit. She can hardly decide whether or not to pause halfway though to possibly dodge any attacks if it came to that.
>But her eagerness to reach the handle is too strong, and she ends up surveying the surface fo the door with her fingers in search for that longed for handle.
>In the bathroom, the ripping and tearing sounds temporarily die down for a momentary cluster of tense seconds. April was just about to open the door as this happens, only stopping when she imagines the zombie noticing the light from the door.
>The two at the door wait, now shivering so hard that their movement might as well be audible. April’s hand brushes past the handle of the door, almost jumping back when it recognizes the cold surface.
>Uneventful seconds pass followed by the resume of the eating sounds. This is when April takes the leap of faith of grabbing onto the handle itself.
>In a split second, the two slip by the door in a swift and orderly fashion, being sure to close it as soon and silently as possible.
>April doesn’t even need to give the order to run; the two are already darting across the gym, Rarity holding her skirt up to be able to move her legs further apart in her steps. Neither of them even look back to find out of the zombie heard enough of their movements to follow them out the door.
>The gym, coated with small spurts of blood in places, echoes with the frightened footsteps. It starts to fall silent once more as the two make it to the double doors.
>Rarity nearly slips on the blood all over the hallway floor, and takes less than a second to spot Sunset’s bright hair towards the end of the hallway. The two girls gaze at eachother, already empathizing with how horrible the other one feels.
>Sunset turns to face her friend, and locks her fingers together in front of her as Officer Moss struggles to hold the jammed doors in place behind her. Rarity approaches her with April rushing to help her comrade.
>”I…” Sunset’s lips quiver as she notices how many tears must have run down Rarity’s face. “Y-you… I’m s-so sorry…” She does everything she can to hold back the tears as she sees one of her friends alive.
>Without another word, Rarity pulls Sunset in for a hug, already letting her face contort as she feels Sunset’s arms wrap themselves around her. Her breathing intensifies and quickens, while Sunset shuts her eyes and tries to imagine that she and her friend are somewhere else.
>Not in this school. Not in the midst of this disaster.
>”Girls, we gotta go.” April is already trying to pull them apart. “We gotta go NOW! Moss?” She glances over to the other officer.
>April would have asked how he’s holding up, but the soft cracking sound in the broomstick says it all.
>Officer Moss is violently shivering as his stamina runs dangerously low. “There’s… a hell of a lot more now…” he grunts. “At least twenty… this thing’s not gonna hold.”
>It isn’t hard to see what would happen if Moss lets go of the doors. Whatever little strength he has left is the only thing that keeps the zombies from swarming into the hallway, likely planning to run in one huge pack. Their fingers begin to poke through the forming gap between the struggling doors.
>”MOSS!” April blares, sternly gesturing for the two girls next to her to escape through the door leading outside. “I’m gonna count to three! And when I say three, you follow me out that door, do you hear me?”
>Officer Moss looks back at the doors he keeps sealed, now almost ajar enough for the zombies right on the other side to stick their entire hands and arms through. He pushes harder, shutting his eyes as his maximum effort is reaches a lot more quickly than before.
>”Do you hear me?” April repeats as Sunset and Rarity race over to the door before checking outside.
>So far, there don’t appear to be any zombies waiting for anyone to come outside. It could probably be assumed that all of the zombies at the school are either behind that door, or chowing down in that locker room. The clear school grounds prompt Rarity and Sunset to open the door without hesitation.
>A gust of wind blasts the two in their faces, giving them a reminder of how hot and stuffy it had been in the school.
>”I… d-don’t think I can outrun them…” Moss confesses, growing a pained look on his face as he loses even more strength. “I don’t… I don’t have the head start you have.” Tears start to fill his own eyes as his situation becomes more and more apparent.
>”Moss, listen to me!” April backs up towards the exit next, feeling for the door with shaky hands. “I’m gonna hold the door open for you! You gotta run fast, okay?”
>”I’m not gonna make it!” Moss shakes his head.
>”You better if you don’t wanna die!”
>Now just around the corner from the front of the school, Sunset explains the location of the police SUV to Rarity. “It’s right in front of the school, right by the main entrance, okay?” She grabs Rarity by the shoulders and shakes her to get her to come to. “Rarity?”
>Disoriented, Rarity lets out a small peep of an answer.
>”Listen to me, we gotta wait for the officers to catch up to us. They’ll drive us back to the station, you hear me?” Sunset’s voice starts to crack.
>Rarity nods, resisting her state of shock the best she can. Sunset looks back towards the door leading back into the hallway; April stands in the doorway, holding the door open and shouting back inside.
>”MOSS!” She barks the orders at her comrade. “YOU COME RACING OVER HERE ON THE COUNT OF THREE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
>Officer Moss quivers in his shoes, losing his stance and starting to fall back. There are streams of tears running down his cheeks. “I-I’m sorry!”
>”NO YOU’RE NOT YOU GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE NOW!” April harshly encourages. “NOW, DO YOU HEAR ME?” She holds up her right hand with her left arm propping the door wide open. “Once you’re out here, I’ll slam this shit in their faces.”
>Moss shakes his head with forlorn defeat.
>”One…” April tilts her hand forward and sticks out her index finger, concentrating on her fellow officer. “Two…”
>”N-no…” Whimpers the exhausted Officer Moss.
>”THREE!” April’s face explodes with aggression.
>Instinctively listening to April, Moss weakly jumps away from the door and stumbles in the direction of the exit. The snapping of the broomstick couldn’t even be heard over the crowd of zombies on the other side.
>April turns even more red in the face as she screams for her comrade to pick up his pace, but he only slows down and trips; one of them dove in and grabbed his ankle. April screams as she pulls out every ounce of resistance to going in to help him.
>She knows that she has those two girls to save.
>Instinctively slamming the door, April catches the horrifying glimpse of half of the zombies piling on top of Moss… while the other half blocks her view by drawing closer to the door. She bolts away to the front of the school.
>Before either of the girls can see her, April takes them by the hands and practically drags them over to the SUV with the crowd soon emerging from the inside of the school and swarming around the school grounds in search of their prey. The fact that April came back alone is all Sunset needed to know that Moss didn’t make it.
>It’s as though Rarity had blacked out between the time she was next to the brick side of the building and the moment she finds herself in the back seat of the SUV. Sunset embraces her once more from right beside her as the front door on the driver’s side slams shut and the engine starts up.
>The loud sound of April’s foot slamming on the gas pedal might as well have been one last gunshot. Neither Rarity nor Sunset take a look of any kind out the window as the vehicle jolts forward.
>Rarity solemnly gazes out the window as the world flies by. Her eyes are still adjusting to the outside lighting after being in the dark for so long.
>There are a million and one things Sunset could say to Rarity. Apologies, expressions of concern, questions asking how she managed to last in there. Sunset even turns towards Rarity to say something multiple times, but nothing escapes her mouth.
>April resists the urge to run over the stray zombies meandering along the sidewalks. Just any form of retribution would have soothed her boiling rage and calmed her nerves.
>But she does nothing, almost not even saying anything.
>”April Snow… officer of the Law.” She blurts out, hardly in a hesitant fashion.
>The three in the car share a long moment of silence after April introduces herself to Rarity out of nowhere — several minutes until Rarity speaks up. “I… she’s the one who saved me from the locker room.” She tries to find something to say within the spinning depths of her head.
>Just anything to make the silence go away. Anything to give this car ride a little bit more life as it rolls through a realm of death.
>”I… I know…” Sunset answers with a lack of a desire to speak.
>Rarity feels a twinge of guilt for a split second. She takes a brief glance at the officer driving, only feeling more sick in her stomach when she remembers seeing one more officer in the school holding those doors together.
>”How many of you were there before you came to save me?” Rarity winces and waits for whatever answer is sent her way.
>April bites her lower lip after making a right turn. “Just… just Officer Moss and I.” She forces her voice not to sound shaky, still skeptical about what happened to Moss. “We d-didn’t lose anyone else.”
>And that was it… the last words before the silence resumed to last all the way back to the station.
>…
>The entire police station falls even more silent as the notice only three people exit the vehicle. Officer Silver ceases his barking of orders for a few minutes as he looks around for Officer Moss.
>The trio approaches the police station ever so slowly, with Rarity letting tears roll down her cheeks once more.
>Sweetie Belle could have recognized her sister anywhere.
>April Snow walks right up to Officer Silver, and gives him the most hardhearted look he has ever seen from her. Nobody can hear what she says to him, but they apparently didn’t need to.
>After telling Silver what she needed to say, April turns away from the officer and looks back at Sunset and Rarity. She watches them lumber towards their loved ones, embracing them as they collide with them.
>Rarity embraces Sweetie Belle as tightly as she can, having though of everything other than the possibility of seeing her again.
>Pinkie Pie has to pick Sunset up as the girl starts to fall to the ground with tears of her own flooding out of her eyes. The memories of Twilight just can’t help but come back to her thoughts after seeing more of the girl’s friend… how she’s always seen Twilight with them.
>How she’s going to have to find a way to let them know what she discovered.
>The group has to retreat back into the safety of the station before more of the zombies notice them loitering outside. They return to their posts, with no intention of going back outside until the long awaited military arrives.
>Or so their hopes pray for.
>…
>And there it is… a small twin-sized mattress on the floor.
>Rainbow Dash frowns at the sight, shagging her shoulders as the voices downstairs continue to argue with each other.
>Her ax lie propped against a far corner, looking as though it will slip away at any second.
>Despite the nature of this new bed that the girl has gazed upon, she sets herself down on top of the soft surface. Right away, she feels a wave of comfort pull her into a state of tranquility. Something she hasn’t felt for a good while.
>But the comfort doesn’t last very long as Rainbow Dash spends more time to think.
>A familiar wave of guilt starts to smother the girl once more as she stares at the ceiling. It screams at her the names of those whom she knows is surely dead, those she could have saved.
>Or at least gave an extra shoulder to lean on when everything they know and love is crumbling to the ground around them.
>”Rainbow?” Applejack’s voice breaks Dash’s train of thought out of nowhere.
>The athlete springs to a sitting position as her friend remains stationary in the doorway.
>”So uh… how ya doin’?” Applejack begins.
>Rainbow Dash waits a few seconds for Applejack to say anything else. Her friend just stand there in the same position, at least wearing an expression of concern.
>”Rainbow?” Applejack repeats, leaning in a little bit.
>With a quiet grunt, Rainbow Dash exhales and looks down to the wooden floor beside her mattress. “I… I don’t know what to say…” She keeps her ax in the corner of her eye, keeping note of how far away it is.
>For the slightest of a split second, Rainbow Dash considers jolting up to get the ax. She almost even comes up with a little plan to casually get up and pretend to be doing something else while working her way over to the weapon.
>”I guess… I guess I…” Rainbow Dash thinks of so many words she could use to describe whatever it is she’s feeling right now.
>Applejack cuts in and keeps her from finishing the stuttering sentence. “Hey, hey… you did the best ya could.” She rests her hand on Dash’s shoulder.
>Dash can only clench her fists and try to think of a way to go back and make it so she did better.
>But all she can do is keep going back in her mind to the places where she screwed up. Where she could have done something different, and still chose the wrong thing. Something that she had accused Applejack of doing. Except the difference is… Rainbow is supposed to be loyal while Applejack is supposed to be honest.
>And times like these, they do things to people. where it brings out the truth while killing away the morals and values that held friendships together. If anything, Applejack was better suited to do what she did, and that is what makes Rainbow’s hands begin to shake again.
>So much of Rainbow Dash wants to fill in the empty spaces in time, so she at least has a reason to point her quivering finger at Applejack without being a hypocrite. She truly wants it more than anything else, for presumably the most selfish reasons.
>She doesn’t want the guilt to eat away at her any more, there must be some way to at least ensure that she doesn’t have to feel alone. Because Rainbow Dash has been feeling along quite a lot these days… and most of that is her own fault.
>Just someth-
>Rainbow Dash didn’t even realize that she’s crying until Applejack’s hand wipes the tear away from her cheek.
>”You’re shivering, sugarcube.” Applejack sympathetically watches Dash tremble before pulling her into an embrace.
>”I…” Rainbow forces an answer out.
>”Yeah?”
>”I j-just need some time alone… okay?” Rainbow Dash’s voice croaks as it bends to the point where it’s about to break completely.
>Applejack pets Rainbow’s back a couple of times. “Ah understand.” She holds her friend in the embrace for another minute or two before slowly releasing her.
>During the whole time she was holding her, she had no idea how many times Dash’s eyes went back to that ax in the corner. And she still doesn’t register how many times Dash takes quick glances at that same ax when she has her head turned as she walks through the door.
>And she has no idea how long Rainbow Dash sits there on the edge of the mattress on the floor, staring at the ax when she knows that Applejack is nowhere near the room.
>It’s hard to see the details on the thing with the tears clouding everything up. And it’s hard to decide what to do with the ax with the guilt clouding everything up.
>…
>Later on in the day, the urgency from an hour or two before finally starts to lift.
>Everyone in the police station huddles together in a group as they notice the light of the sky begin to change through their view of the windows. Rarity rests in a fetal position on the floor next to Sweetie Belle, with their friends close by. Sunset keeps her face covered.
>Celestia, Luna and Cadence all stay in one group facing one another; they occasionally comfort each other with memories of brighter days during the deceased era of smiles.
>Fluttershy leans on Bulk Biceps’s right shoulder while Derpy leans on his left, both of the girls shutting their eyes in order to make it easier to pretend that they are somewhere else.
>The rest of the students and everyone else continues to shiver in despair as the sky outside begins to grow considerably dark.
>April Snow stands aside Officer Silver, perched against a wall. One would have thought that the absence of any incidents would be a good thing, but all it does is heighten the anticipation with each minute of decreasing visibility goes by.
>They could very well be waiting.
>Each officer keeps a steadfast hand close to their reloaded guns, keeping the well-being of the station at the surface of their minds.
>Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash drifts off to sleep, having taken her ax and placed it parallel to the edge of the mattress. She and Applejack both think about their friends, as those whom they think about reciprocate.
>The sky grows pitch black.
~
>”How are the generators doing?” Asks Officer Silver with his gun remaining pointed towards the blackness outside.
>”The outlook isn’t too good.” His deputy explains before he leads Silver over to the door to a utility room. “I really want to say that these back up generators will last the night, but…” He quiets down before the next thing he was about to say.
>The last working back up power generator struggling to keep the lights on lets out a few sputtering noises as it continues to run. Officer Silver’s expression grows increasingly concerned the longer he watches and listens to the machine.
>”How low does it have to be running to at least keep the lights on?” Silver steps towards the generator. “Maybe we can get the others working again from this one. You give that a try yet?”
>His deputy twiddles his thumbs as he softens his answer in his head as much as he can. “There’s no easy way of telling.” He can tell that Silver is mentally crossing his fingers through his attention towards the generator.
>”But did you give it a try yet?” Silver repeats a little bit mote loudly.
>”Yes… and it didn’t do anything. This is all we’ve got.” Says the deputy right before a worried sigh from Silver makes him wish his answer came off as a little bit less dire.
>Silver is just about to order the deputy to check again, but finds himself distracted by the gunshots coming from the direction of April Snow’s post.
>Everyone inside the gym heard the shots as well. They all huddle closer to each other as the notice some of the officers running by the doors to the gym.
>Officer Silver holds onto his gun as steadily as he can as he leads three deputies towards the back storage room. Two more louder shots ring out as the cops draw closer to April Snow’s position. But the next sound they pick up is the sound of the garage door opening.
>April is nowhere to be found when the cops reach her position. They glance out the open door and point their guns towards the darkness of the night outside.
>Two more nearby gunshots almost force Officer Silver’s finger to clench the trigger. April soon appears from around a corner with a startled expression.
>”Snow!” Silver begins to bark, soon figuring out the dangers of April being away from her post. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
>April frantically spins herself around. “They’re trying to cut out the power!”
>After making sure he heard April correctly, Silver becomes skeptical about this claim. He keeps his sights on a few moving bushes across the street as April continues.
>”I already got like three of them. They were trying to get one of those fuse boxes open… or whatever you call them! The things on the sides of the-” She’s soon interrupted by a growl that comes from the exact spot Silver was pointing the barrel of his gun at.
>Silver pulls the trigger and sends a single bullet at where he sees the most motion in the bushes. Whatever was in there flies back.
>”We need to go around the perimeter of this place and take them out.” Explains April as she head back into the night. “This is crucial! they were really going for those things!”
>The lights begin to flicker.
>Everyone in the gym jolts to the momentary darkness, jumping out of their skin with horrific images in their heads. And the shouting form the back of the station isn’t helping them feel any more assured that they are in  zone f safety.
>Some of them, namely Rarity and Sunset, listen closely to the sounds to at least gain a tiny idea of what is going on.
>Scanning the outside perimeter of the station, each of the officers have a brief couple of seconds when they think about the citizens they must protect. They try to figure out whether or not the small amount of officers left behind would be enough to guard the gym.
>The beams of their flashlights catch nothing at first, but they still keep their guns raised.
>A slight sweep against the grass is all April needs to pull the trigger, and she hits the zombie right in the head. Everything starts to get out of control in a matter of seconds.
>Three more zombies attempt an ambush from behind, having somehow avoided being noticed in the dark. Shots ring out, and only one of them is hit with one of the many bullets. An officer is tackled to the ground by the other two zombies, and fights to push them off as he tries his best to avoid getting bitten.
>April’s next bullet pierces through one of the attackers’ heads, and her foot sweeps the leg of the next. The last zombie falls over before April stands on top of its neck to hold it still while Officer Silver carefully aims.
>The zombie goes limp, and the three standing officers check on their comrade.
>”Hazel!” Officer Silver’s voice frightfully calls out the deputy’s name. “You okay?”
>April eyes a line of bushes next the the station, pointing her gun in the direction when she could have sworn something is out of place. “We got more!” She warns the others anyway just in case.
>Fluttershy hides her face as she sits on the gym floor, imagining the officers going through the worst outside.
 
SCIENCE!
 
PROLOGUE
>The ground begins to shake, and everyone’s heads perk up from their desks.
>All of the class lessons are stopped, and a sock is sent through everyone’s spines once again for the fifth or sixth time so far this week. They already know what just happened in the basement — Twilight.
>Right after the vibrations stop, the teacher gazes over to the classroom door and spots a few students turning towards the direction of the sound in the hall.
>…
>Twilight opens the window in the basement lab to get the smoke to leave as quickly as possible. The reason being: she needs to be able to see well in order to jump right into her next experiment. It’s a good thing she didn’t brink Spike to school today.
>”Alright… alright alright alright alright…” She stammers excitedly as her shivering hands wave away the rest of the smoke. “Hurry up, hurry up! Come on…” Her hands frantically bat away at the smoke. “COME ON ALREADY! I MUST BE ABLE TO CONTINUE!”
>She’s literally talking to the smoke in hopes of it clearing up.
>It’s almost the smoke itself is obeying her, soon dissipating to reveal the new compound before Twilight on the table. The beaker teems with a bubbling product resembling something between the sate of a liquid and a vapor, nothing else really describes it in Twilight’s mind. And this puts a wide grin on her face.
>It shifts around more than water would whenever Twilight grabs the beaker and slides it around a little bit on the work table to see how supple the resulting substance turned out to be.
>There’s no real way to describe what Twilight made, but she can tell its potency through the fact that this explosion was much stronger than the previous few. She did something right this time.
>”Haha! Excellent!” The girl throws her arms up into the air in victory, but still keeping her next project embedded into her mind. “Improvement at last!” She carefully places the beaker to the side next to another solution from just an hour ago, like setting a baby down to rest.
>The chatter from the outside hallways doesn’t even faze Twilight in the slightest bit as she scouts her available materials for what it is she needs next. No time to waste, not even a second. The girl keeps the memorized list of ingredients at the surface of her thoughts, haphazardly searching every inch of the table as her breathing rate accelerates with each grab.
>More than five ingredients are singled out and brought closer to the scientist in a matter of second. She imagines them all being mixed together, along with all of the things she’s about to put them through.
>Every little thing about this is undeniably exhilarating to Twilight Sparkle, the chemicals fusing in the beakers and graduation cylinders and so on, the flame being set under them to provoke them to… to interact.
>It’s the interaction that really gets under Twilight’s skin.
>Those cells… those molecules….. the very atoms themselves. Following the rules of nature when mixed just the right way. Put together to erupt in a glorious reaction. Boiling, churning, burning. Transforming to break apart on a molecular level and come back together or fly away in a spectacular show.
>Twilight can feel it happen to her as she watches in awe at what she does. She feels it flood through her heart, wanting to swim through endless seas of chemical reactions for ages upon ages for eternity. That most recent explosion still resounds in her heartbeat.
>”Oh… oh absolutely! That will do just wonderfully!” She reels in a few more plastic containers towards her, examining the colorful contents. She pictures them changing, shapeshifting at the whim of her experimenting.
>A few voices now reside right outside the door, almost as though someone’s about to knock. Twilight only tries to see if she can get something poured into the next beaker before the first knock sounds. As though it’s some sort of a contest to see how fast she can do something.
>”Miss Sparkle?”
>It’s one of the teachers already… this is the first sign of a knock coming.
>But still… she didn’t knock yet! There’s still time to do this.
>Twilight aggressively pries the lid open and pours the contents into a brand new beaker. She basically forces the green liquid out of the container as though it were a jammed bottle of ketchup, that stuff could not get into that beaker fast enough.
>”Twilight, what’s going on in there? Are you okay?” Another voice shows its concern. “Twilight?”
>”THERE IS NO NEED TO PANIC! THE SITUATION IS UNDER MY DIRECT CONTROL!” Twilight shouts back in an attempt to prevent the first knock from happening.
>She already put two more liquids into the beaker, and fumbles to turn on the burner. It’s a good thing she kept her safety equipment on.
>”Twilight!” The voices continue, all saying her name in larger and larger numbers. “This is a safety hazard! We need to ask you to stop!” One voice points out.
>”THERE IS NO NEED!” Twilight repeats. “Did you not register what I just informed you? There is NO safety hazard here!”
>The burner is switched onto full blast. Twilight wants to heat this baby up as fast as she can. She starts to nod her head as the bubbling instantly starts up… and right before an angry knock resounds from the door. Twilight knew she could pull this off; she continues her journey.
>”Miss Sparkle!” Principal Cinch’s voice rises above the voices of the others. “I order you to open this door right now!”
>Twilight happily springs out of her chair and leaps over tot he door, keeping a cautious eye on the experiment. Of course, she turned off the burner right before doing this, keeping actual safety as one of her top priorities. One of them.
>Cinch furrows her brow as the opening door unveils her. “Miss Sparkle…” Her fists clench as she enters the room, passing Twilight to spot the experiment in progress before her.
>”The experiment has already begun!” Proclaims the grinning scientist. “But you all are free to conduct a walk-in if you feel that doing so is the logical thing to-”
>”My office. Now.” Cinch sternly cuts her off, fanning her face with her hand from the radiating heat emitting from the room. “NOW!”
>Twilight looks around the room, as though she’s a cat watching a red dot scurrying around the ceiling, walls and floor. But soon processes the message that was just delivered to her.
>The students watch the Principal make sure everything in the basement laboratory is turned off before following the student up to her office.
>All of them talk with one another, mostly whispering the same things they always do whenever something like this happens. Almost out of fear, but mostly out of embarrassment on Twilight’s behalf.
>But Twilight herself?
>She feels nothing, at least in terms of embarrassment. She looks through the hallways as she goes past everything that could have fallen over. She looks for a few brief seconds, only caring about the most severe of possible damages, with science still being the top priority in her mind.
>Which compounds that were used caused the blast to do this much? Twilight goes over the ingredients again and again in her head, soon singling out the main two as she reaches one of the hallways closer to the Principal’s office.
>A couple of trophies have fallen over in their cases… and Twilight can tell what it was that provoked the Principal to come knocking on her door. But the thought of Cinch being triggered in such a way is replaced by an approximate calculation of the distance between the current hallway and Twilight’s basement laboratory.
>How thick are these walls again? Do the blasts from certain elements or combinations of elements travel through solid walls faster than others? Which trophies were more likely to fall over?
>”I said my office, Miss Sparkle.” Cinch almost breaks Twilight’s concentration… almost. “This way.” she points the student in the correct direction.
>Twilight obediently heads in the direction. “Affirmative.” She keeps the approximations of the room distances in a small bubble in her thoughts as she answers.
>Cinch slams the door after Twilight is inside.
>And it’s over just like that.
>…
>”I’m having to call you up here far too often, Miss Sparkle.” Cinch sits at her desk, perched facing forward like an eagle. Her fingers lock together in front her, tightening every time she says another sentence. “Far too much time has been spent addressing these issues we have been having regarding your….”
>”Experiments?” Twilight finished the sentences for her, not even intimidated in the slightest bit. The only thing she thinks about is how to perform her experiments to become a lot more quiet and less likely to be interrupted like this.
>Cinch narrows her eyes. “Don’t get sly with me, Miss Sparkle. This has become a very pressing issue to the point where something… further must be done.”
>Twilight widens her eyes slightly, thinking back to her lab. “H-huh?”
>”I’m sorry, but this is out of my hands, now. This is happening too often nowadays.” Cinch takes a glance out the window, with an expression that says that she’s about to say something that might hurt. “It’s nothing personal, Miss Twilight…. but your proximity to the valuables in this school is… more than concerning. It’s a hazard.”
>”What is it about my proximity that requires adjustment? I will do everything in my power to neutralize the hazard and ensure that your trophies are not in any way affected by my experiments.” Twilight already comes up with a plan in her head to counter any future shockwaves from escaping the basement.
>She could put pads on the wall, perhaps making the room itself soundproof enough to repress the shockwaves. She could add springs to the table to absorb the impact from whenever something does that thing she just can’t stop loving so much.
>She cannot give up those explosions, not those reactions that send waves of joy into her heart.
>Twilight is, in a sense, addicted. Especially so after new shipments of supplies came in, expanding her potential. Most likely the reason for the most recent blast she created. In her mind. the thrill is certainly worth it, if not more.
>”Miss Sparkle, look at me.” Cinch sounds a little bit more annoyed.
>Twilight, not having realized she was staring at the floor, redirects her attention towards the authority figure. “If I could make a suggestion, if you don’t mind…” She starts off.
>”Let me speak, Miss Sparkle.” Cinch holds her hand up. “Now… seeing how things played out last time, the freedom to experiment at your own will resolved the… previous set of obstacles.”
>”Mhm, yes.” Twilight responds with a sharp nod and waits for Cinch to say the rest of her piece so she can give a reasonable response.
>”But I’m afraid that the time of peace is being hindered once again… isn’t it?“ Cinch tilts her head slightly forward, eyeing Twilight from above the frames of her glasses.
>”Certainly just a factor of trial and error. What happened a few minutes ago was…. not predicted. But that can only mean…” Twilight trails off, seeing that Cinch isn’t going to be convinced. Not with that glazed look in the eyes.
>The principal tightens her locking fingers once more. “Apparently, moving you to the basement was not enough last time.” She looks out the window once more, now making it more obvious that there is something out there she is looking at. Twilight catches on, and soon finds herself doing the same.
>All she can see is a single small building standing between a cluster of trees on one side and a steep hill on another — the old recreation center.
>Twilight would have caught on if it weren’t for her trying to figure out which one of the compounds she used was the main culprit in the blast. She knows it couldn’t have been any of the ones she’s used in previous, less dangerous experiments.
>”It has come to my attention that your proximity to the school is still not suitable in order for routine daily functions.” Cinch adds. “It was my mistake for not seeing this before, but then again, whatever it was that you just did in that basement room couldn’t have been what the lab itself was made for. I mean, just look at you.”
>For the first time in hours, Twilight takes a look at herself. This entire time, she had not even noticed how many scorches stained her once white lab coat. She grabs the sides of her head to find her hair completely blown back from what she did. The first thing she wonders in which compound would do this.
>Approximately for how long would this linger in the air, let alone on one’s person?
>”Miss Sparkle, are you listening to me?” Principal Cinch notices Twilight staring into empty space once more. “Pay attention!”
>”Oh!” Twilight snaps out of her train of thought, puts it back in that little bubble, and returns her gaze back to the principal behind the desk. “Could you repeat that please?” She assumes that Cinch had said something that she hadn’t picked up.
>This conversation goes on for several more minutes before Cinch can get a chance to convey what her newfound plans regarding the old recreation center out in the field. She tries to get her words to stick to Twilight’s mind as the girl still listens intently.
>Twilight hears and understand every word that Cinch tells her. But her focus keeps going back to the lab, and the fact that she left her two beakers out. the very thought of them being there starts to eat a hole in her attention to what Principal Cinch say to her.
>A part of her looks back in the direction of the lab, wanting to run in its direction as Cinch explains the history of the recreation center from a few years back.
>She doesn’t physically look, but might as well be physically looking given her rising level of concern.
>There is crucial data she could be gathering at this very moment. That beaker that initiated that magnificent blast… its contents are still changing, whether it’s cooling down or otherwise. Something is surely happening with it at this very moment. Twilight wants to watch it, instead of wondering what she could have seen if that thing were right in front of her on top of that table.
>The mystery of what caused that blast is being unveiled right now, and Twilight isn’t present to learn from the aftermath of the reaction.
>What if it is continuing to boil? What if the boiling part reaches the other beaker next to it? Twilight specifically kept the completed products just close enough to her so she could pull them apart as she does the next one if need be.
>”Do you understand, Miss Sparkle?” Cinch checks to see if Twilight was genuinely paying attention, raising an eyebrow with a belittling scowl.
>This time, Twilight had kept her gaze directly centered on Principal Cinch’s eyes, giving the impression that her mind wasn’t somewhere else. Given how good she’s become at doing this, it doesn’t make sense why Twilight didn’t think to do this in the first place.
>”Yes.” She blindly answers, looking as certain as she can with her own hands locking together on the desk the same ways Cinch’s hands do. “I understand completely.”
>Twilight hasn’t even started to comprehend how much time has gone by as she sat there pretending to listen to Principal Cinch.
>Cinch fixes her glasses, now growing a look of satisfaction on her face. “Excellent. I’m glad that you were willing enough to agree.” She conclusively states this in a way as though Twilight didn’t have a chance no matter what she had to say about whatever Principal Cinch’s plan is.
>Twilight just nods along.
>”With that settled, I will be taking the liberty of letting you know when the plans for the arrangements will be completed.” Cinch now sounds a lot more complacent. “Now please… clean yourself up.”
>…
>After Twilight had been momentarily released form the principal’s office, she instinctively rushes back to her lab, ready to pick up that pen and paper as soon as she gets her hands on them. The room has cooled down a little bit since Twilight was gone… for who knows how long.
>It’s a bit difficult to reorganize everything as she’s jotting down notes on her clipboard. Twilight ricochets back and forth from the work table to almost every other place imaginable in the lab with her notes, soon getting paragraph after paragraph documented as she notices slight changes in the solution that still rests atop the table’s surface.
>The solution looks as though it had risen a couple more inches in the beaker, the residue line is a lot higher than the surface of the pseudo-liquid at this point in time. Twilight imagines all of the possible scenarios in which this could happen. She matches the more possible scenarios with the materials she just used to make this product.
>But the third and most recent beaker is the one that catches the most attention from a surprised Twilight.
>Everything she had mixed into the beaker has… and Twilight has to look again to make sure her eyes don’t deceive her… it has formed a mound in the center of the beaker as the material gravitates away from the glass walls. Twilight almost forgets about Cinch’s orders to clean up the place as she monitors the unfinished experiment.
>A happy accident has resulted from this interruption.
>By the time Twilight has gotten the lab to look at leas halfway decent, the residue in all of the beakers have cooled to the point where they have become nearly completely solidified. This is when Twilight’s mind can stop racing for a second and begin to comprehend what Cinch had meant by everything she told her in the office back there.
>All of the words that Twilight had listened to…. they all begin to process in her no longer excited brain. Everything that the principal had explained about the recreation center.
>She had put across that the center had been minimally used after the improvement to the gym had been made a couple of months ago, and she had considered re-purposing it as one of the possibilities for making any necessary changes to the school.
>Twilight remembers Cinch mentioning construction being scheduled for the building… and this couldn’t make the principal’s message any clearer — she wants to move Twilight’s lab to the former recreation center.
>It’s surprising how this turned out to be what Cinch wanted to get across to Twilight after how angry she seemed after seeing her trophies being knocked over as a result of Twilight’s usual lab antics. But this is due to deductive reasoning, since it had been established that Cinch’s usual point to get across was how long the restrictions of lab use and other punishments would last.
>If it weren’t for Twilight’s exceptional grades, Cinch would have gone a lot harder on the girl.
>The lab is finished being tidied up, with a few more pages eventually being added to Twilight’s report. The only thing the girl wishes is that she had been in the room during the entire aftermath so she wouldn’t have missed a beat.
>She instantly wonders when the earliest time to begin moving the equipment would be. She goes back up the the office in a matter of minutes, eager to listen this time.
>…
~
PART 1
~
>Months after the last incident.
>The door to the basement room slowly creaks open, being pushed by a large, heavy rolling shelved cart loaded with equipment.
>”Ergh… almost… almost…” One of the girls on the other side struggles to get the door fully open.
>The cart makes it into the room in a few more seconds, as Moondancer and Starlight put their last bit if effort into the shoving. The two girls take a short breather as they look around the empty room, planning in their heads where to put what.
>Starlight leans against one of the walls. “Dang, this place looks a lot bigger without everything in it.” She catches her breath. “Looks like we really will get to fit everything in here.”
>”Yup. You can thank Twilight for doing the measurements for me. She went through everything from the cabinets and shelves to the tabletop stuff.” Moondancer takes a loot back at the rest of the equipment still in the hallway. “Oh, and thanks to you for helping me get all of this down here. Saves me a lot of reading time.”
>Starlight starts to pull tools off of the cart to make room for more things to be rolled in. “No problem. But…” She looks over at Moondancer. “Did she… really measure like, the test tubes and everything?”
>”Heh, yup.” Moondancer responds with a giggle. “I don’t understand why she was that thorough either.”
>”Well it’s not like I’m surprised or anything, but it’s just that something like measuring the little things… doesn’t seem necessary.” Starlight thinks about what use doing such a thing could serve. “Well anyway, what are you gonna be reading about after we’re done? If you don’t mind me asking again.”
>”It’s fine, it’s fine!” Moondancer flops her hand forward and turns to go back into the hallway. “I’m not reading anything secret. Just a few more chapters on Quantum Mechanics.”
>”Wow, really? I thought you finished that book last week.”
>”Oh, heh, well yeah. I rented the next one in the series after finishing the one last week. Been burning through those things to get a good grip on what to do first once everything’s set up in here.”
>The rest of the equipment is momentarily hauled into the room. Moondancer starts to pick out which spots she wants to move her bookshelves to and begins to go through her belongings. She tells Starlight about the things she plans to learn more about from her books, and how she intends to use her knowledge to perform productive experiments in the lab she’s setting up.
>During the last couple of weeks, Moondancer has been getting more and more reasons to improve on her lab work. From the occurrences regarding Twilight’s antics that used to happen in this room, Moondancer has noticed a significant amount of productivity in her peer’s projects.
>Moondancer herself has been working to get a thing or two done, but the amount of difficulty she has run into since became an obstacle in recent days. And it only makes her scratch her head a little bit more when she catches wind of how quickly Twilight has been completing experiment after experiment in that lab of hers.
>She can even feel the energy Twilight had left behind from all of her times here; it’s practically lingering in the room still.
>And it feels as though the echo of… whatever it is from Twilight that Moondancer senses… is something the girl can’t find herself empathizing with. It’s surely different than the stress she felt when she was doing her own slowly-paced experiments. Well… her experiments are at least slowly paced in comparison to those by Twilight.
>Moondancer doesn’t want to say that she’s jealous… but she knows that it never helps to lie to oneself.
>She and Starlight continue working on getting the new lab set up in the basement. Across the school grounds, another already set up laboratory starts to light up from within its windows. And the ground begins to shake again.
>Twilight stands before her work table, holding the liquids side by side as she pours them in virtually groups of two. The beaker she has started out with was looking rather plain in the beginning, so Twilight decided to get adventurous and added some ice to the heated substance to see what would happen.
>And that was before she made the walls of the former recreation center shake one more time.
>Three more shockwaves are sent out… and Moondancer can’t help but notice how much more frequent they are becoming. Something within her urges the girl to head on over… to at least get a glimpse of what it’s like to be Twilight whenever she excels at this.