Shining Armor looked up from the book as he heard the front door open. The unicorn stallion caught sight of a rather irritated looking young dragon entering, slamming the door shut behind him harder than necessary.
"Something wrong, Spike?"
"I think that Twilight was right," Spike answered as he walked closer. "Somepony should stand up to her and put an end to her bragging. You should have taught her a lesson when you were on stage earlier."
"What do you expect me to do?" Shining asked.
"Twilight mentioned putting her in a shield sphere," the young dragon replied. "Maybe we could do that and send her rolling down a hill into the pond."
"SPIKE! That's not very nice. What's got you so upset over this anyways?" Shining Armor tilted his head, raising one eyebrow.
"Snips and Snails," Spike finally answered with a huff. "The two of them are practically ready to serve Sunset Shimmer's every whim without question just because of all the stuff she claims she did. They don't even care about how she treats them or other ponies."
"I don't think a little hero worship is going to hurt anyone," Shining responded. "Besides, what's the worst that could happen?"
"I suppose," Spike said, rolling his eyes. "But I still don't like it. Anyway, you said something about a letter?"
"Oh that was taken care of. I managed to get it sent with today's mail."
"Why didn't you have me send it to Princess Celestia?" Spike asked.
"I'm pretty sure she has more important things to deal with," Shining replied, "than looking for information on one former student. It doesn't seem right to pull her away from her royal duties to ask somepony else to search through a bunch of old files."
"I'm back," a voice called from the door.
"Welcome home Twil-AAAAaahh!" Spike screamed, falling over at the sight of the filly.
"What happened to you?" Shining Armor asked as he stared at his little sister
Twilight stood in the doorway, or at least something the same general size and shape of the filly. The thing also had purple eyes like the filly, which were currently looking at the young stallion and dragon. The thing that was supposedly Twilight, however, was mostly a mud brown in color, with sticks and what looked like wet plants sticking out from it.
"All sorts of neat stuff," Twilight said excitedly, grinning through the mud. "We got to see Scootaloo do some stunts on her scooter, she's really good. She even let me try. I'm not very good though. Ended up driving it into a pond. I'm okay though, and it didn't break. Oh oh. I also caught a frog. I was going to bring it home, but it peed on me. Scootaloo thought it was funny, but Sweetie Belle says that's how you get warts. Is that true?"
"No," Shining answered. "But, Twiley? Why are you covered in mud?"
"I am?" She looked at herself. "Oh. I guess I that was when I was helping pull the scooter out of the mud after I crashed. It was stuck really deep."
"Well now you need a bath really bad. Head on upstairs."
Twilight gave a nod and started walking across the library, leaving a trail of mud in her wake, as she headed for the stairs.
"She's really dirty," Spike said.
"Yeah," Shining Armor agreed. "I think she's going to need more soap and shampoo to get it all out. Keep on eye on things here while I go and get some."
"I guess I could start mopping up her trail." The young dragon looked at the floor, seeing the path of mud the filly had left.
"Appreciate it," the young stallion called out as he headed out the door.