//------------------------------// // Twilight's Feelings, Spike's Mistake (Fixed) // Story: Backfire // by Zoom zoom //------------------------------// Twilight slowly trotted to help clear her head and consider what had happened since the start of the day. First there was Spike, who was depressed because he had broken up with Rarity only the night before waking with seemingly no memory of it and babbling about things she didn’t understand. He had a music box? The weird part was Twilight sort of remembered one but couldn’t place how or why it wasn’t there anymore. Likely it was one from when the two were still very young and she just forgot about it over time. Why Spike wanted to know where it was now of all times was lost to her. Then there was that orange flesh winged Pegasus stallion that came back with Spike when they suddenly winked into her personal collection of books she had from Canterlot. Thinking about it, he wasn’t especially attractive and yet she had thrown herself at him like a school filly on a hit pop star only without the security to keep them apart. He mentioned some kind of spell as if he was versed well in magic too, but he was a Pegasus pony. How had some pony who shouldn’t know that much about magic suddenly know what to do to get her out of the trance that spell, whatever it was, caused? The solution seemed obvious, the “want it need it” spell, but if that was the case why wasn’t Spike affected by it? Her train of thought was interrupted by seeing Applejack and Big Mac pulling a truck load of Lumber across her. Applejack was straining with what seemed to be easy enough for her to have gotten without Big Mac’s help. Curious Twilight asked, “What are you two doing?” Applejack replied after seeing Twilight in hard breaths. “Oh… hey.... Twi…. sorry…. I… can’t…. talk…. much. RD… said…. she…. needed… help…. repairin’… some…. damage…. she… did…. lickity… split.” Her knees started to buckle a bit as she said this, “Me and Big Mac were in such a rush getting everything and finishing our Applebucking I forgot to pace myself. I’d kindly accept a little help if ya don’t mind.” Twilight decided to use her magic to try and lighten the load. It didn’t help much, but it kept both earth ponies in a good pace with far less strain. “So what did she do?” Applejack was able to speak normally now, “Broke this new feller’s house, that orange pegasus that came in from Cloudsdale last night.” Twilight was taken aback, but not enough to stop her magic as Applejack continued. “Apparently he’s some old friend or something with some weird spell on him. You can ask RD and Fluttershy for the details since I didn’t care to keep up with it much.” With that Twilight made up her mind to find out everything she could about what was going on before returning to her home. She was sure Spike and Wishful would be there anyway. And if she knew more about Wishful, maybe she could help him. For a moment she felt his taste him her mouth and blushed at the memory but shook it off and focused again to take even more weight off. Wishful sighed. None of the books he found helped. “That just leaves the two options I have left to undo this, neither of which is very good. I’d have to convince Twilight, both princesses and at least one other mage to help with supplying the power, and given how mares react to me lately and the likelihood of finding a mage even close to them in power it’s going to be hard. The other option though, it’s easy. I could get it done simply enough. All I’d need to do is-“ He cut himself off and slammed his head into the wall, “NO! Neither Spike nor myself could live with the price….well actually I could at least but I can’t put Spike through that. Not yet anyway.” Owlicious awoke then and looked at the orange pegasus. It hooted happily at him and dropped a book in front of him. Wishful hesitated but opened the book and skimmed through it having nothing better to do as he waited. His eyes landed on a particular paragraph on Dragon winged pegasus ponies and he read out loud: “While only on a small scale a Dragon Winged pony can actually cast a magic spell once a day. This makes up for their in inability to recover damage to their wings as quickly and Feather Wings. Said spell can in fact be stored for more power and be very powerful if held back for a full cycle of the moon thanks to a degree spell made by Nightmare Moon before her fall as Dragon winged pegasus were her most loyal subjects. To this authors knowledge, Celestia has not undid said degree due to the max power of said spells too be low thanks to them not being able to train it like a Unicorn and natural evolution causing cases of Dragon Wing to be so rare it is only a one fourth chance of occurring if all four of the grandparents of said foal had the recessive gene and passed it to their children, with a male pegasus and a female unicorn. Thus making it very unlikely more than a half dozen natural born Dragonwings exist at one time.” Wishful read over it a few more times before deciding. “It’s worth a shot,” he told the owl as it hooted in agreement. Wishful spread his wings out as he focused and closed his eyes. When he opened them he was on top of the book. Only about half as far as he was able to wink before, but that wasn’t the point. He COULD do magic. If he waited till the moon cycled around once and a starry night when a shooting star came he could make most of the magic up for the spell. But he frowned, it still meant he’d need Twilight’s help since she super charged his original wish magic and the two princesses just in case he wasn’t strong enough and needed them too. Wishful hung his head. He couldn’t dare ask any of them for help. Celestia maybe, she was always known to be a kind and helpful ruler. But there was no way Twilight would let herself be taken by whatever got her to fawn over him before and now he’d likely be on even worse terms with her after all this and not their history together. Heck since she was Celestia’s student that meant she may even stop Celestia from even seeing him or taking him seriously. But worst of all was Princess Luna. The fact was that in his old reality with Spike as a dragon he avoided the night. In a way his powers were partly because of her in both this world and the last. And in both cases she would be the type to have nothing to do with him out of principle that he seemed to not respect anything she did to go as far as to ensure he slept through the night. Of that he was sure both versions of himself kept as baring changes on a grand scale from him being a unicorn, his life and personality should be the same. “Well I’m not going to get anywhere thinking about it now,” Wishful told the owl. “Guess I might as well sit back and read until Spike or Twilight show up to kick me out of here.” He glanced up at a volume marked “The Dragon King” and started reading it as he waited for some pony to return to the house. “That’s just,” said Twilight is shock, “impossible.” Rainbowdash and Fluttershy were taking some clouds to shape a roof for the house they had partly destroyed. The lumber Applejack brought wasn’t enough to fix everything so they were patching up some of the parts they had to cover from the weather with clouds until then. “It’s true,” said Fluttershy handing a torn up picture album to Twilight. It showed Wishful and an older male unicorn that must have been his father waving happily. “Wishful was always a good friend whenever he could come to school. He even dated Ditzy Doo for a while, but it was pretty much only because she didn’t have any issues emotionally with him like other mares and that eventually led to a pretty bad break up. They are still sort of friends though which is why we use her as a go between when we need to talk to him.” “But,” said Twilight still confused, “how was he able to stay in school without you all attacking him or loving him then? By the sounds of it he’s always had this.” Rainbow Dash chimed in, “Oh that’s because of his dad. Up to our last year at school he would always put Wishful in an anti magic field. It only broke every time wishful tried using his dragon wing magic to help some pony. Problem was when he found his cutie mark was in helping other ponies he kept using it whenever he couldn’t find some other way.” “So his father,” It was starting to come together. “What about his mom then? And where is his father now?” Fluttershy took over as Rainbow suddenly winced at the questions. “Oh I don’t know. Wishful’s father had a hard enough time finding work when he moved to Cloudsdale so I never talked to him and Wishful never wanted to talk about it. After his dad died in our junior year he really didn’t talk to any pony and just became a hermit since he didn’t have the magic to make a field for himself. Poor guy probably spent most of the time not trusting in any mares because of that spell, and Ditzy said he blamed himself for his dad’s death since he would make the barrier despite being tired many times.” Twilight felt kinda sorry for Wishful, but in the back of her mind she thought that something was off about the fact his mother wasn’t in any of the pictures she could see. She’d have to ask him about that. “But why are you asking about him all of the sudden?” Fluttershy’s question had caught Twilight off guard. “Well,” she said trying to think but with no good way to say it just told the truth. “He kind of decided to hide at my place. He and Spike seem to talk like they were old friends and everything.” Rainbow arced and eyebrow, “Wait that means you saw him. That means you beat him up or did you….” As she trailed off a smile mischievous grin came over her face as she looked at Twilight who was starting to panic. “No I’d never!” That came out so quick Rainbow was laughing as was Applejack who was listening the entire time without saying anything. Twilight blushed. Pinkie snickered, but was busy helping Big Mac with holding the board to repair a wall. She would have been more talkative if her coltfriend had not kissed her every time she was about to chime in and melted like glue from it and only said anything as to confirming to him that her reaction was angry and not lustful. “That is still creepy,” Applejack said mouthing the lovey dovey couple the last board they had to fix into place. Big Mac smiled and gave his lover another kiss out of usual brotherly annoyance to Pinkie’s excitement. “Well,” said Rainbow, “at least I won’t have to feel bad about him not having a place to stay. Twilight can keep him for a bit till were done. And if it’s so imposing I’ll even pay for it. Take responsibility and what not.” “I didn’t agree he could stay,” said Twilight, “But it is true that I can block that spells power. And who knows I might be able to undo it with enough research.” “If you two will ever get out of bed,” said Rainbow slyly. Twilight shook her head, “I told you it isn’t like that. That spell did that to me, I’m not going to let that happen again.” “Sure you won’t,” said Rainbow stretching the sentence as long as possible. Twilight just gave up and started to walk home. Spike wondered around aimlessly. He wasn’t sure what to do. Sweetie Belle and Rarity were both so mad at him he couldn’t go back to talk to them until he knew what he did to Rarity. Plus all the mares in town seemed to be giving him a mean look now that they were corrected that they were not to run him out of town. This was going to be hard, and apparently Twilight didn’t know either so he had to find someone to talk to. Begrudgingly he decided it was best to ask Sweetie Belle’s two best friends. They were easy enough to find and as he expected when he approached they scoffed at him. “Oh kay,” Spike finally said with a deep breath. “I wanted to ask you two if you could remind me what I did wrong with Rarity. I’m kinda fuzzy on what happened the last few days.” It was half true, but he couldn’t say it was for most of his life after all. The two ponies started at each other for a moment then back at Spike. Applebloom broke the silence, “you really don’t know?” “Honest,” Spike said giving a Pinkie Promise. He apparently didn’t do this much in his new life because he poked his eye too hard and had to hold it for a bit. Scootaloo answered, “It’s because you two-timed her. Duh.” “Two-timed?” Spike was really surprised. Of all things that was the last thing to come to his mind as to what he could have done wrong. Granted it wasn’t past him to do it by his greedy nature, but for Rarity he fought his nature all the time. Before either of the two could elaborate however a streak flew into Spike and hugged him. Spike looked down and the filly in horror and thought. “Please tell me this isn’t the ‘other mare’. Please any pony but her.” Diamond Tiara beamed at him in her hug and said, “Sorry honey bun. But I had to tell that mean old lady you were mine. You’re not upset are you?”