You've Got Gems, Sir

by The Young and Free Dragon

Like Scraping Barnacles Off A Ship

LIKE SCRAPING BARNACLES OFF A SHIP

Shining Armor returned to his suite in the Crystal Kingdom to find the door locked tight. He sighed and began weighing his options. Do I really want to deal with this right now? It was obvious that Cadence had decided for him that he was guilty of some form of adultery. Funny, it really wasn't much like her to act so narrow-minded but, he supposed she was justified in thinking so, since he had been so easily fooled and controlled by a bad copy of her. Everypony had though... He murmured in the back of his head before knocking.

“Honey?” He called. “Please let me in.”

He waited for several minutes before repeating his call, but no pony answered. She had to be in there though, he couldn't imagine where else she could have gone when she had stormed away.

“Cadence, you have my things. You can't expect me to stay in some new area without my things.”

He grimaced as he heard crashing and clattering faintly to his left, which was also where the window inside the suite was located...

[][][]

As Shining Armor picked up his various items from the dirt outside of the two story building, just below the suite, he grumbled to himself. Okay, he could understand her being angry, but was that really necessary? He supposed it was better than her having simply kept his things or thrown them away. He glanced up after packing the last item into a saddle-bag Twilight had given him and noticed that the window was open.

This opened up a new possibility. He glanced around himself and noted that the castle had a stairway just outside of the building that housed the suites, and a tree just beside it that looked sturdy enough to jump on. He could probably jump from the tree to the window sill and get in to talk some sense into his wife. It was the best plan he had.

He dropped the saddle-bag where he was standing and headed up. Climbing the stairs was easy, and making the jump was quite simple. However, grabbing on to the branch with hooves was much easier to do in his mind than it was in real life. But as he clawed at the thin area about him, he managed to grab on to the branch and his muscular legs pulled him up.

He crawled across the branch and measured the jump to the window. This jump had looked a lot smaller from where he had been standing on the ground. Now, he was not completely sure he could make it. But... nothing ventured nothing gained.

Cadence hopped out of bed where she had been reading a novel to calm her nerves when she heard a loud cracking sound, the shaking of a branch and then suddenly, Shining Armor dropped from nowhere and landed halfway in, and halfway out of the window. He managed to grab on with his forelegs before he fell out of the window.

“Honey...” he grunted as he struggled to keep himself on the windowsill, “We need to talk about... my...problem...I promise that it was...King Sombra's...attack that...infected me....”

Cadence couldn't help but giggle slightly as she watched her husband attempt to explain himself from his current stand point. In all honest, she wasn't that mad anymore, after doing a bit of reading about HTD's and reading one of her favorite books, but she couldn't take any chances currently.

“You're not even going to try to pull yourself in?” she observed.

“I...will think about it...once you drop the...big...heavy book...” he grunted.

Cadence now realized that she was still magically levitating the large novel, but she kept it suspended in the air.

“How can I be sure that it was King Sombra?” Cadence asked.

Shining Armor was openly disappointed she didn't drop the book but said, “I...kind of hoped...you'd take my...word for it....”

“I'll think about it,” she replied after some thought.

“Can I... come in... then...?” he grunted, about to lose his grip.

“Sorry dear, my mind's not made up yet,” she replied, and shut the window, though slowly enough that he was forced to let go, rather than be smashed in it.

He let out a cry as he fell, but magic suddenly caught him seconds before he hit the ground and he looked up at his wife who looked at him through the window for a few moments before turning away and shutting the drapes.

“Well she doesn't want to kill me... that's a good sign...” he murmured to himself.

[][][]

Shining Armor wore a hat that covered his gem infected horn, but it did nothing to cover the blush that was on his face as he entered “Sapphire's Secrets”. He knew these stores were geared more toward female patrons, but he had come to understand that stallions were allow in to buy for their wives and so on. He wasn't exactly getting Cadence anything tonight though....

He approached the counter, where a female attendant, dressed in skimpy clothing that revealed the “Sapphire” brand lingerie she was wearing.

“Could I get some...” He trailed off as he glanced over to where two stallions were examining tubes of greasy fluid. “A tube of...'Sapphire's Slippery Shores Lubrication'?”

He felt like an idiot just saying the name. He wasn't sure whether to be glad or horrified that Sapphire Shores had a monopoly on these products.

“Of course, hun,” the mare replied ,and brought one out of the counter. “Five bucks,”

“Is that er...the biggest size you have?” He asked, examining the rather slender tube.

“This is small. We also have medium, large, and extra large.”

“Better go with extra large,”

[][][]

Shining Armor sighed heavily as he used his magic to wipe of his horn with a towel. The same towel had caught most of his magical discharge, and wiped away most of the lubrication, and was not glowing faintly. His hooves were rubbed raw from stroking the hard gems on his horn, but he had to get that out of the way somehow....

The entire tube of lubrication had been used unfortunately, and as he looked at the discharge on the towel and the few specks on the sheets of the hotel bed, he worried whether this stuff would wash out. The doctor had said not to touch anypony with it.... How easily spread was it?

He supposed he would find out in the morning when he went to get it washed. He turned out the lights and lay in bed for awhile, unaware of the dark figures wearing gas masks and rubber hoof-gloves moving around outside the hotel.