//------------------------------// // Why I should be more careful // Story: Everypony Hates Spike // by Pony-Berserker //------------------------------// There was only one pony who could help. Or rather a zebra. Yep, Zecora, who technically is a pony. She even got a cutie mark. But I’m not sure if her special talent is poetry or shamanism. Why would Zecora be helpful, you ask? Well, she can make potions and that was exactly what I needed. When I entered her hut, she was, um, falling into her cauldron. The sudden noise I made while entering caused her to fall from a bamboo stick. She seemed to have meditated upside-down on it. When she finally clambered out of the cauldron, she didn’t even bother with her usual rhyming and simply shouted: “HAVE YOU GONE MAD!?” Well, that wasn’t a good start but fortunately, Zecora agreed to listen to me. I asked her to make me a potion that could help solve my problem with my feelings for Rarity. She thought I had asked her for a love poison and wanted me to leave the hut. “No, no, no! I need a potion that will make me un-love Rarity!” I shouted desperately, falling on the floor. “Say what!?” That was the second time I heard Zecora speak without using any of her fancy rhymes. I explained to her what was going on. I told her that my fruitless efforts to impress Rarirty frustrated me and that I couldn’t help myself trying again and again. She hesitated for a moment but finally opened a wooden box, where she’d been keeping an enormous amount of small vials. She gave me one of them and explained briefly that this would make me feel disgust at the sight of the first pony I would see after drinking this dense orange liquid. I thanked her and rushed back to Ponyville. This sounded like a solution that couldn’t possibly go wrong. How naive was I... I found Rarity at the restaurant. She was probably waiting for her order or a waiter. I decided to walk up to her as if nothing was going on, then drink the potion and not love her anymore. The first part of the plan went great. I stopped next to her table. “Oh, good day, Spikey! Would you join me, maybe? I suppose you haven’t eaten dinner yet, right?” she encouraged me with her beautiful voice to take a sit. Well, after this unexpected twist of events the un-loving could wait, right? So I took the seat, instinctively putting the vial on the table. “Oh, what is this, Spike?” she asked. At that moment I regretted that I don’t have pockets in my scale-covered body. I could hide the vial and nothing would go wrong. “Um, you know...” I couldn’t find a believable lie. I did some fake coughs to prolong the time I needed to fabricate a lie and answered uncertainly: “Um, an orange... juice! Yes. Juice.” I faceclawed instinctively, confusing Rarity at the same time. I should have told her it was some ingredient for something Twilight wanted to brew. But this had already been l’esprit de l’escalier... “Oh, I just love orange juice!” Out of all the sentences she could have uttered, this was the worst. Possible. ONE! “You know, I’m thirsty. The waiter is not coming, so I will drink a bit, okay?” She was not going to wait for my answer and just took the vial and drank a bit. I should have hidden myself under the table to avoid her look but I sat paralyzed instead. She put the vial on its place and looked at me. She felt sickened from doing it. She covered her mouth with her hooves, fear combined with disgust spreading across her face. She looked confused and terrified at the same time. After a while of weird silence, she galloped away. I felt anger rising in my body. How could I had not seen that coming!? I resisted the urge to start shouting – instead, I tried to break the table with my head. Six or seven times. I regained my consciousness in the Ponyville hospital. I had a really awful headache. Well, that wasn’t surprising. Thankfully, my skull didn’t seem to be fractured in any way. I could just wait for my friends to visit me. Just a few minutes after I’d opened my eyes, Twilight and her friends came in to my room. “Spike! You can’t imagine how worried I was, when Rainbow Dash told me what had happened!” she cried upon entering the room. Well, she’s my stepmother after all. She had to be very worried. Her tears made me feel bad about the incident at the restaurant. “Spikey! Something was definitely wrong with that restaurant! I got a horrible stomach ache BEFORE I was even able to order the meal! And now you are lying here!” the sound of Rarity’s dramatic voice filled the room. The melody of her voice worked like a painkiller for my head. She was whining with her eyes closed. After she’d opened them, she suddenly squatted. “Um, ohmygosh! The pain in my stomach! Again!” she ran out of the room, much to everypony’s confusion. At that moment, I wished I could drink Zecora’s potion and look in the mirror. Each of my friends gave me a lot of hugs to make me feel better. “Oh, poor thing,” Fluttershy said quietly and put a beatufil flower on the table next to my bed. “Big hug for our little dragon!” Pinkie nearly strangled me with her forelegs. I started to wonder why I had a crush on Rarity, not on any of them. Well, Twilight didn’t count as she is my stepmother, kinda. Anyway, I don’t have Neighdipus complex. But Fluttershy is actually a pretty mare too and her beauty is natural unlike Rarity’s. Pinkie Pie, for that matter, could be a beauty if she paid attention to her look. All my arguments to have a crush on any of my friends, even Twilight, seemed very rational but Rarity was still stuck in my head. After I had left the hospital, I decided to get back to Zecora’s place and get some memory-erasing or mind-blowing potion. After Zecora had scrambled out of her cauldron for the second time that day, she shouted at me, again without bothering to rhyme: “LEAVE MY HOUSE AT ONCE!” “I need a memory-erasing potion!” I exclaimed. Zecora rolled her eyes. She explained to me that I could only erase all my memories or nothing at all. I couldn’t just pick a single memory out of my head with any mixture. That didn’t sound encouraging. I fell on the floor, crying: “I’m never gonna get rid of my love for Rarity! And now she can’t even look at meeeee!” “She drank the potion, such is my notion,” she rhymed and smiled. “And I believe you’ve seen that coming...” I remarked and wiped my eyes from tears. Then she rhymed something about love and potions not going together because alchemy can’t work with real magic of love. She patted me on the head, causing a vibrating pain in it, and suggested to look for help from somepony else. As I was leaving the hut, she shouted: “And don’t come here again! Oh, horsepples...” She didn’t rhyme for the fourth time that day. I tried to figure out if the potion she had given me wasn’t some kind of revenge for making her fall into the cauldron. But she was right that I needed help from somepony else. I knew I couldn’t solve the problem myself. I wanted to finally start dating other mares, um, any mares actually. But it was absolutely impossible with my aching head full of Rarity. I was desperate at that moment so I decided to visit a pony who had brilliant ideas hidden under a thick layer of crazy ones. I thought that if she wouldn’t solve my problems, even unaware of the fact, nopony would. But I was also afraid of consequences of her help. There were so many things that could go wrong... I opened the door to her room and asked uncertainly: “Are you there, Pinkie? I, I need your help...” TO BE CONTINUED