Rarity has always had a small problem with... dirt. Despite how dedicated she is to her personal bathing routine, there are just certain problems that prevent a pony from getting truly clean. Until, at the latest Innovation Exposition, she sees a convenience that is right up her alley: a new kind of shower, one that provides jets of water from three hundred and sixty degrees, ensuring total cleanliness.
Well, she just has to have it. So what if the inventors warn her that it's merely a practical mockup and not meant to be used right now. What better "proof of concept" than having it installed? And so what if it means she will have to hire the services of the odious Pipe Fitter? After all, revolutionary as it is, it's still just a shower...
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This story contains examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Twilight Sparkle assures Mayor Mare that it was completely unintentional when, in the process of saving Rarity from drowning in her own shower, she managed to propel the water completely across Ponyville and simultaneously utterly drench Pipe Fitter and flood his house.
- Bullying a Dragon: When two of Lady Sally Forth's attendants at the bathhouse tire of having to perform a bucket brigade routine to provide clean water, they try to persuade Spike to grow into a giant again to move the water tower once more. This doesn't work out well for them.
- Crooked Contractor: Pipe Fitter is both the "Criminally Lazy" and the "Plainly Criminal" variety. He's a miserable slacker of a pony who finds every excuse he can to delay the actual work he needs to do, but he also takes full advantage of the fact he's the only plumber in Ponyville with tricks like gouging prices and other such shenanigans. Furthering the "Plainly Criminal" aspect, it's plainly stated that he ensues his monopoly by physically threatening off any would-be plumber who tries to even work on a job in Ponyville, ensuring that the ponies have no choice but to continue suffering his ineptitude. Making things worse, he runs a family business, and his foals are well and truly on the way to supporting him in his criminal handling of the local plumbing jobs.
- Fat Bastard: Pipe Fitter is hugely overweight, an unpleasantly gray hue, a Crooked Contractor without any shame, and a huge Jerkass to boot.
- Gone Horribly Right: When Rarity finally gets enough water pressure to her shower and turns it on... it proceeds to empty the entire contents of Ponyville's water tower into its stall in a matter of minutes, nearly drowning her.
- Here We Go Again!: Zigzagged. In the epilogue of the story, Rarity falls in love with a related convenience, a full-body hot air dryer, that shows up at the next Innovation Exposition. This time, however, an irritated Twilight puts Rarity in a field bubble and carries her away kicking and screaming before she can buy it.
- Laser-Guided Karma: By the end of the story, Pipe Fitter has been utterly drenched by a cascade of water from Rarity's shower and arrested for fraud. The police have seized his bank account and refunded the money Rarity paid him, and honest plumbers have set up shop in Ponyville to replace Pipe.
- Noodle Incident: The Mane 6 are sent off on a mission at the midpoint of the story, about which we are told... absolutely nothing, except that it involves a beast with eight limbs and a key (found by Fluttershy) that saves the group from being killed.
- "Number of Objects" Title: To reflect just how soaked Rarity gets when things have Gone Horribly Right with her new shower.
- Plumber's Crack: In true fat, shady plumber fashion, Pipe Fitter wears pants seemingly just for the purpose of them not coming all the way up to his tail. It's implied, though, that the problem isn't so much that they show off his buttock cleavage as that they do all too little to hide the bulge of his genitalia. This is a particularly strange example because most ponies don't bother wearing pants in the first place.
- Poor Communication Kills: Lampshaded roughly two thirds of the way into the story, when an angry Rarity points out that "pipes into the thing ain't gonna do it" is absurdly vague and Pipe Fitter could and indeed should have explained both that the parts provided are incompatible with the piping already installed into Carousel Boutique and that the building's distance from the water tower meant that they wouldn't have sufficient pressure to work. It's also implied he did this deliberately because Pipe Fitter is a Jerkass.
- Rhyming Title: The only chapter, "Shower Power".
- Too Dumb to Live: As mentioned under Bullying a Dragon, Sally Forth's attendants seriously offend and anger Spike by referring to his unfortunate "greed-spurt" incident. They then compound this error by, after narrowly avoiding getting fire spat over them by the insulted dragon, turning to Twilight Sparkle in order to compel her to make him go along with their hairbrained scheme. Needless to say, this did not end well for them.
