"I'm not sure what you mean by 'what's their deal'," admitted Widget as he continued to carry out boxes. "They're the princesses. They can go and do whatever they want. It's a perk of being a princess, I suppose." He shrugged absently as he began to sort his bracing bands and gears into several piles. "Luna said she'd be in town for a few days. Maybe you could go meet her. She seems rather eager to meet with her subjects. Then you can ask her yourself 'what her deal' is."

He glanced up and grinned slightly at the sight of Quill sorting his springs and discovering that one fit easily inside the other. "Those springs can pinch if you aren't careful, Quill," he warned, but still seemed more amused than worried.

"Wait, they... they," Quill fished out one of the springs from the box and looked it over, turning it around and around in his claw, trying to work out just how they'd pinch him, "they pinch too? Is there anything else you're hiding from me, springs?"

Turning about to show the spring to Widget as, after all, he was likely to be an expert on such things, the tail of the young dragon swept through the pile of little-shiny-springs. Not only did this send half of the pile scattering and spinning across the floor, it also answered the question of "what do you mean, springs can pinch?". The sudden short, sharp pain made him spin around on the spot again to face the springs that so rudely attacked him, his tail catching the other piles of springs that he'd just organised, this sending the brownish-thick-springs flying.

Without really thinking about it, and his tail still stinging from the pinching, he closed his eyes and blew out fire from his mouth, the small gout of flame bathing the little-shiny-springs until they began to glow hot. Fortunately, Quill couldn't maintain this for long and, opening his eyes, he began taking deep breaths, his claws clenched tightly and his chest heaving up and down with every breath.

Starcrasher blinked at Widget's reply, though she hadn't meant it in an offensive way it seemed she had been misunderstood. Then again, if Princess Luna was going to be in town for the better part of a week she supposed it would be better to ask her instead -- she had assumed the princess to be returning to Canterlot today now that the festivities had concluded.

She did not immediately follow Widget to the workshop, instead putting her own dishes in the sink alongside the ones that were already there. As a growing pony, she needed seconds after all. Once everything was neatly arranged, she headed back to the main room where Widget and Quill were already working, being spared the initial look of despair when Widget had opened the first of the boxes.

- "Okay, so umm... Before i start, where's everything supposed to go? Because i think it's fairly obvious i have no idea how you want it to be organized."

Widget laughed as Quill blew fire on his springs, doing little more than causing them to glow white with heat for a few minutes. "Easy there, Quill. Just be cautious not to stick anything between the coils, and try not to melt them." Still snickering he turned his attention back to Starcrasher.

"Well, for right now, let's just pull everything out and sort it," he said as he magicked a box of bolts before her. "Separate by thread pattern and length, please. They were in different cups, but I actually do have a little cupboard for them. Unfortunately, an inventor's work shop has a lot of little bits and pieces to keep straight. It would be disastrous if I got hex bolts mixed up with carriage bolts, or socket screws with elevator bolts. Whatever I made or fixed would fall apart within a few days of consistent use!" He adjusted his glasses by hoof and continued sorting gears. "Luckily, we don't have all that many boxes to go through. Just a few dozen. Between the three of us, we should be mostly done by lunch time."

Armed with a new found respect regarding the dangers of handling springs, Quill set to work collecting the springs he'd scattered across the floor. It didn't take very long to hunt down every errant spring, although he handled every spring like it was some kind of trap waiting to go off, which slowed things down a little. The piles of springs began to pile up once again.

Eventually, the box was clear of springs. Four piles of springs were haphazardly arranged around the box; the original three piles (little-shiny-springs, thick-brown-springs and other-springs-awaiting-classification) plus a special pile made up of the ones Quill had recently tried to melt after pinching his tail. As the presumed troublemakers amongst the springs, it seemed only sensible that they should be kept separate from the others, at least until they've learned their lesson.

With the springs dealt with, his eyes glanced over the other-springs-awaiting-classification pile; as far as Quill could tell, they just seemed to be some random collection of springs with little in the way of similarities. Paying a bit more attention to the whereabouts of his tail, he crouched down to look at the pile before picking out of one of the unclassifiable springs. It was the colour of brass, tightly coiled with a cap on one end, and made a rather pleasing sproing noise when flicked with the tip of a claw. As he went back to looking at the pile once more, he idly brought the spring to his mouth, though he caught himself just before he was about to begin chewing upon it like he would a writing implement. Still, the thing tasted quite pleasant.

So Quill began to sort the pile of unclassifiable springs in to smaller sub-piles. For each spring, he would pick the spring up, turn away from Widget and Starcrasher, give the thing a surreptitious lick and then place it in one of three new piles - mentally labeled as "Sweet-ish Springs", "Bitter Like Coffee Springs" and "Doesn't Really Taste Of Anything Much Springs".

"This box of springs is clear, boss," he said triumphantly, completely unaware of how much or how little time had elapsed, "just the bolts at the bottom of the box!"

Starcrasher stood there for a couple of seconds before shrugging, and moving to the first box she was planning to sort out. She didn't know the difference between the hex screws and socket bolts and carriages with elevators, but figured that as long as each type looked the same as others of its type, the naming thing could come later.

She sat down, rummaging in the box she remembered putting the gears in. Unsurprisingly they were still there, but in the light it seemed that some had little teeth on one side, others along the entire edge and others still had diagonal grooves. Not knowing whether they were supposed to be treated differently, she simply started putting each type in its own little pile. She'd get them sorted by size later.

"Excellent, excellent. You are both doing great," he said as he at last finished his box of gears. He glanced at both Starcrasher and Quill's piles, and found them to be satisfactory. At least they had the general idea down and all of the components were completely mixed up together. He magicked, one after another, different piles of gears, and placed them on pegs that stuck from the wall, or in tiny cups that lined the back of the desk. The gears varied in size from tinier than a Penny to as large as a full grown Clydesdale's hoof, and everything in between. The bolts and springs, similarly, the smallest was no longer than a few millimeters long and tinier than the smallest gear, while the largest was as thick and long as the horn on his head, and likely as rigid by the looks of the metal's thickness.

It felt good to be getting back on track again and getting organized. But of course, there were more things in an inventor's shop than just bolts and gears. There were belts made of leather and rubber that had to be sorted, synthetic feathers of different shapes and lengths he used for his wing creations, hollow metal pipes and squares that were molded into framework, the tools used to actually create and repair, hundreds of blueprints rolled up and tucked away into tubes for protection, hundreds of books about physics and mechanical engineering, and loads of other bits and pieces that had to be kept in order.

No wonder Widget was so out of sorts all the time, with all of this to keep straight.

Nevertheless, he attacked the mess with gusto, even eventually putting on his phonograph to play a record while they worked. The music he played was classical orchestral arrangement, which, according to the record sheath, featured the musical prowess of the famous cello player named Octavia. Apparently, he knew this record by heart, for he hummed along with it as he sorted the boxes of items.

Quill watched in fascination as Widget set to work moving gears on to the pegs upon the walls. He couldn't help but wonder just how much easier everything would be if he could do that sort of thing; nothing would ever be out of reach, he'd be able to carry things more easily, he could make it light... it was only as the music began to play that Quill snapped out of his daydreaming.

The next box he chose contained nothing quite as dangerous as the springs. A quick peek inside revealed a selection of wrenches and other tools, plus various tubes of metal that were of similar length to the tools. Seeing no springs, Quill decided to climb in to the box and have a proper rummage through it. Finding a smaller length of pipe, he put it up to his forehead as if it were a horn, and stared at one of the wrenches intently for a few seconds.

Nothing happened.

He tried imagining the wrench moving out of the box on it's own accord, floated by magic.

Nothing happened.

He tried imagining the wrench moving just a little bit. Just a tiny bit.

Nothing happened.

Starcrasher, now getting used to the sorting process, was picking up the speed at little with which she was sorting out the items in the boxes, despite not having a clue what each was supposed to do making piles of the ones that looked alike gave her as little trouble as it sounded like. She was focused enough not to notice the addition of music until after a few minutes, though when she did it was quickly categorized as 'background music' and absently listened to it while she was working.

Looking up again, she noticed Quill sitting with a pipe on his head, staring intently at a wrench. Sending a conspiratory wink at Widget, she focused on the items Quill was looking at, her horn starting to glow softly as she wanted to play a joke on the small dragon.

Nothing happened.

She tried harder, the glow intensifying as she placed more effort into it.

The music ended abruptly as another major power failure struck the workshop.

Sweatdropping, she gave Widget a frightful look before turning back to the box she was currently working on, very obviously not looking in any other direction that a suddenly particularly interesting set of gears.

Quill remained blissfully unaware of the prank that Starcrasher was trying to pull until the joke backfired and, as the record came to a stop, he slowly lowered the makeshift horn and looked around, his eyes settling on Starcrasher - who seemed to be trying very, very hard to identify those gears.

"What happened? Why'd the music stop? Is.." he glanced down at the length of pipe he was holding, thinking that perhaps the power going out and the experiment in unlocking latent magical powers were related, "..oh, wow! Hey, boss, Starcrasher! I think I, um, this pipe, look! Look!"

The dragon proudly held the length of pipe up.

"I'm sorry it broke the.. um.. music thing, but, this is important! The pipe is special!"

Widget watched a bit warily as Starcrasher winked at him and moved to play her little trick on Quill, apparently to move the boxes around and startled him. However, that didn't exactly go as planned, it seemed, as his record player sputtered and died, and, to his shock, so did Tik-Tok. The magical batteries in both had been drained dry by Starcrasher's antics, just like the night before. He gave a dark look to the back of her head as he moved quickly forward to give a magical boost of power to both his clockwork bird, and his music player. The bird chirped and fluttered up to the desk again while the record player began to turn and warbled back to life.

He wanted to tell Starcrasher to be more careful, but he figured she'd know it, and Quill's enthusiasm was too adorable to shoot down. So, with a meaningful glance back at Starcrasher, he turned to Quill and smiled at his apprentice. "I see that! I didn't have any idea it was special." He moved forward and peered down at the pipe in his claws as he adjusted his glasses. "You best hang on to it, wouldn't want it to get mixed back up with the other equipment and get molded into a wing brace or something. And, be careful not to shut down anymore equipment, huh?"

"If it went in a wing brace, that could cause it to fail, and, if you were flying at fifty feet and weighed, um," he looked at the pipe as he started considering the numbers involved, his eyes widening a little as he arrived at his conclusion, "well, it'd be bad. No need to tell me twice, boss, I'll keep it somewhere safe!"

Quill tried to both hold the pipe and climb out of the box at the same time but, finding that he simply didn't have enough claws to handle both these tasks simultaneously, he gripped the pipe in his mouth and proceeded to climb out.

"Mh'll buh ruh.." he muttered around the pipe, before taking the pipe out and starting again, "I'll be right back!"

And with that said, the young dragon wandered over to the staircase and began to climb each step, still holding the pipe with all the awe and reverence such a magical thing deserved. At the top of the stairs, he pushed open the door to the spare room. With no sign of the Thing Underneath The Bed - quite possibly it was afraid of the magical powers of the Pipe - Quill dashed over to the bed and clambered up. Resting the pipe upon the pillow of his bed, he looked it over one more time.

"It'd be pretty bad of me to let this thing fall in to the wrong hands, or break something downstairs," he sat down heavily on the bed, idly drawing the blanket up around him, "so, it's.. probably best to keep on eye on this. Just in case."

A few minutes later, and Quill was sprawled out on the bed, eyes closed and snoring quietly, the pipe clutched tightly to his chest.

Starcrasher figured that last comment of Widget's had been intended for her more than it had been aimed at the pipe Quill was holding, and did her best to pretend not to notice it despite the light blush of embarrassment on her face. After Quill left, she turned to Widget.

- "Thanks... and sorry about that. It's like... i want to cast magic, but it feels like every time i try i break everything around me. Some Unicorn i am, huh?"

She gave a weak smile, though her heart was not really in it. At least she was almost done with the boxes in 'her' corner of the room too now.

Widget couldnt help but chuckle as Quill scampered quickly up the stairs, and again when he heard tge little dragon snoring away. Though Widget wouldn't call Quill a baby, at least not to his face, his youth definitely showed more than it didnt. Stull, he was pleased to have brought a smile to the dragon's face, and let him have something to keep himself occupied with. He went back to work organizing and stacking things neatly back inside the shop, turning to Starcrasher and smiling perhaps more sympathetically than she might have expected.

"On the contrary," said the inventor as he pulled out one of the last boxes from the stack of randoms, this one full of all the red bits of everything he had kept around the shop, "the fact that you effect magical objects so intensely speaks volumes about your potential, Star. But it's unbridled, wild, and frankly, could be dangerous. It happens when a powerful unicorn isn't given proper training. I find myself intrigued, to be honest."

Ge considered a moment, rubbing his chin with his hoof. "If Twilight is too busy to train you, I would be happy to. Now that I have an assistant, I will hopefully have more time to devote to other prospects, including you. If you want, of course."

- "Yeah, that's what my teachers said, right before flunking me. The only reason i'm still attending school is because i'm too dangerous not to. Figured i was sent out here because they finally gave up on me."

Starcrasher looked at the gears, turning one over as she tried to see whether this particular one had a pile of its own yet. It didn't, and therefore was added to the 'None of the Above' pile. It took a few seconds for her to realize just what Widget had said though, but she looked up in surprise, almost dropping the part.

- "Yu-Wait, What? Eh, sure, i'd love that! I mean, i'd need to tell you about my magic, and what happened when i thought i'd get my cutie mark and everything... You sure about this? No joke, right?"

Widget gave the filly a slightly crooked expression as he finished tucking away the red screw covers and plastic washers into their own little cups on his desk, along with all the other colors, seeing as color mattered little with such things. "Well, of course I will," he chuckled, as if this were obvious. "No joke, I wouldn't jerk you around like that. As I said, you have very potent magic. You just need someone to help show you how to wield it, and I would be happy to do that."

He paused, looking a bit startled. "Your teachers flunked you? And sent you here? Without proper training? Without a guardian? Well, that was... incredibly irresponsible. Firstly, you are a very young filly, too young to be on your own, if I may say so. There are a lot of dangers out there in the world and you should certainly not have to face them alone. Secondly, it's hard to believe they would so easily throw away such potential just because it will require work to bear fruit. If there is time later, I'd like the names of your teachers. But for now, it sounds like you have something else to tell me."

Starcrasher nodded in response to Widget, oblivious of the startled look on his face.

- "Mhm... The problem is that you're graded on what you can do, not what you'd one day be able to do. So yeah, they were stuck with giving me bad grades. They eventually suggested i be sent here to see if a change of scenery would help and my parents agreed. I have enough money to rent a house here and buy what i need, so it's not like i was tossed out of house and home. And besides, i agreed with it."

She smiled a bit, then looked around to see if Quill was around. When he wasn't, she continued, though she kept her voice down, making it clear that she didn't really want to have leak out what she was about to say.

- "Widget, my folks... My family can trace its lineage all the way back to Starswirl himself. Nearly all my relatives have a cutie mark related to magic, and we've had a few ancestors strong enough in magic to fuel rumors we have alicorn blood as well though that's never been proven. Eh... What i'm trying to say is there's a tremendous pressure to perform where i'm from, and i'm having trouble with even the simplest spells and don't even have my cutie mark yet. Potential alone isn't always enough to save my flank here."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:14, Wed 06 June 2012.

"Well, that is certainly an impressive lineage, Star," admitted Widget as he listened to his, apparently, new student, still putting things away by magic, most of them by, it seemed, memory. "If I may be so bold... I don't think it means anything. Well, I mean, it does mean something about the potency of your magic, of course, but I mean that it doesn't, or shouldn't, mean anything to you. Being powerful in magic is great, but is it what makes you happy? Is being excellent at spells what you want from your life?"

Very few ponies could understand what Star felt like, with the pressures of her family all around her to excel at something she might not be disposed to be good at, but lucky for the filly, Widget was precisely able to sympathize. He knew what it was like to try and be forced into a role he did not fit. "Just because your family lineage has exceptional magic users, and magic is their special talent doesn't mean that is what you are destined to be. I would venture that one of the big reasons you can't control your magic is because of all that pressure. Without feeling like you have to perform to live up to your family name, and without your teachers bearing down on you, I think you'll do much better."

He cocked his head very slightly in thought, turning back to look at his house guest. "Pause a moment and think hard about this question. What would make you happy? Say you got your cutie mark tomorrow. What would you want to be good at for the rest of your life? Oh, sure, magical prowess is certainly a worthy subject to excel in, but will that make you happy? Really happy? Or will it just make your family happy?"

- "I... don't know. Well, everyone in my family's pretty much had to live up to those expectations, so it's not like i'm a special case or anything. Well, i am, just... not because of that. Only ones who didn't are my youngest aunt's foals, but they're Earth ponies so that pretty much exempts them from the family tradition i guess. Maybe my teachers were thinking the same thing you are, maybe they weren't, i dunno."

Starcrasher listened to Widget ask his question, putting the boxes she was working with down for a moment to focus fully on the answer. After a moment of thinking, she grinned at some old memories.

- "Magic? Oh yeah. Definitely. When i was a little foal, my grandmother used to do little tricks for me using magic. Some basic magician's stuff, but also sneaking up on me and making me think i was moving stuff with magic, kind of like what i tried to do with Quill. I really looked up to her, she was my big example, y'know?"

The grin then faded, making way for a small lump in her throat that was forming. Feeling a little frustrated over it, she tried to stomp it down, resulting in increasingly wilder movements of her forelegs to support what she was trying to explain.

- "It's just... That i can't use my magic. It's not that i'm letting my folks down, or my teachers, it's not even that i feel i'm letting my grandma down... It's that i feel i'm letting myself down. And i... honest to Celestia have absolutely no idea what it is i'm doing wrong. I could have lived with something simple like not having the potential or be stupid or anything, but everything's there! So-so why do i... why doesn't it work?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:13, Thu 07 June 2012.

Quill quietly sneaked out from the spare room and, just as he was about to come running down the flight of stairs to apologise about taking so long with the pipe, he paused. While he had missed most of the conversation, Starcrasher's tone of voice suggested that something rather important was being discussed. Rather than head downstairs, he just sat on the top step, peering down with his head in his claws, listening.

Truly, the young dragon considered, the most important skill an assistant could have was knowing when to keep out the way.

from Books & Branches Library

Spike stood up on tiptoes to have a peek through a window into the cluttered workshop. He too saw that Widget and Starcrasher were having some kind of serious conversation, and a moment of accidental eye contact with the two ponies made him nervous that he'd come in at a bad time. "Oh... Hi, guys! Sorry if this is a bad time. Should I come back later?"

Widget watched Star with obvious sympathy in his face as she looked so angry and frustrated. He knew what it was like to be frustrated, of course, but to feel like your own body was betraying you, your magic has forsaken you, with no answers to be had... He imagined little could be as frustrating as that. As her exhasperation and frustration boiled when she talkwd about it and tried to explain it, Widget very gently raised his hoof and placed it on her shoulder in an attemp to calm her.

"I don't know, Star. And if your teachers sent you here, they don't know, either." He smiled at her. "But if you truly believe in your heart of hearts that magic is what you were meant to do, that magic is what will complete you and make you happy, then it is. I believe that firmly; that ponies choose their own cutie marks and their special talents, not vice versa. You just need to learn how to coax it out. And I will do my very best to help you not only to succeed, but to excel." His smile broadened. "I do nothing by half and this will be no exception."

He caught movement put of the corner of his eye and looked up, spotting Spike at the window. "Good morning, Spike," he said cheerfully. "Bad time? Not necessarily. But I think Quill is asleep, if he is who you have come to see."   

Spike just waited his turn to reply, but Widget's comment about special talents seemed to have an effect on him. He'd been pondering such things himself, and how that mysterious feature of ponykind worked. "I can come back later, then. And cheer up, ma'am! It could be worse. You could have been some kind of creature that doesn't even get a cutie mark. I mean, uh, not that I'm complaining... I was just reading a book about it by the great minotaur philosopher, Albert Canmoo."

The young dragon simply couldn't get down the stairs fast enough as he overheard Widget and Spike talking; certainly, for the last few steps, it was more a kind of barely controlled fall, as the perfidious forces of gravity and momentum ganged up on him.

"I'm awake, I'm awake, I'm awake" he repeated as he half-ran, half-fell down the stairs, "there's no need to come back later!" Coming to at stop at the bottom of the staircase, he spotted Spike peering through the window and smiled broadly, although it seemed that even Spike was getting caught up in this discussion about cutie marks.

"You can come in, there's no need to stay out there," Quill called out to Spike, before quickly looking up at Widget, realising that there might be some kind of new rule about inviting people in to the workshop without asking permission from him first, "or, um, we.. could.. um, I could take a break and get some food, right?"

Widget putting his hoof on Starcrasher's shoulder did help to calm her down, and during the brief exchange between Widget and Spike, and the arrival of Quill she focused on controlling her breathing, with varying degrees of success. She figured she could tell him the rest later.

- "Eh, Widget? Can i uhh... take some time off to take a walk and clear my head?"

Having already noticed the arrival of a second dragon, she gave it a small wave in greeting. According to Widget its name was Spike. He was a lot like Quill, it seemed, at least in thinking.

- "Hey uhh... Spike, was it? I'm Starcrasher. And don't worry, i'll get it sooner or later."