Spike was not fine by himself. In fact, he was doing very not very good at the moment. He had gotten himself stuck in some sort of critter trap on his way to Fluttershy's, and even though the trap itself wasn't hurting him due to his hard layer of natural armor, Spike wasn't having the best time ever by any means.
He'd been stuck for what felt like decades at this point, but he suspected it had been more like a couple of hours. Spike didn't really know, he was far too hungry, tired, and stuck to think about time. If only he had a gem or two with him, he might feel more inclined to enjoy the situation. As it was, he was stuck without food, water, or the purple problem fixer he usually had with him.
Assuming he wouldn't get out of the trap before morning, Spike knew it was going to be a long, cold, gem-less night, and he wasn't very happy about that at all. As it was, he was passing the time attempting to cut through the metal cage surrounding him and calling for help. He really missed Twilight, she had the gems.
As the sky grew darker and darker, Spike ceased his shouting and forced all of his energy onto escaping the cage. It wasn't a big cage, but unfortunately for Spike, it was big enough. The air was chilly too, and even with Spike's naturally heated body, he was beginning to get cold. He'd just have to make it through the cage.
Spike immersed the steel around him with flames, glimmering blue and yellow from their impressively hot temperature. The metal wasn't faltering though, not even a bit. If anything, it seemed to Spike like he was just wasting energy.
It was time he called it a night. Perhaps he was lucky he had been caught in a cage rather than a pit or a tree trap. This way he would at least be somewhat protected from the nature around him. There were just a few, few times that Spike almost wished he was a big, strong, powerful fire hurling death dragon of ultimate doom-ness. This was one of those times.
***
When Larry woke up, he found himself in some sort of house. Some sort of pony house. This was not good, just like most of the other things that had happened to Larry in his recent life. He saw no ponies, and there weren't any creatures at all around him. Jeff... he had to find Jeff.
As he started to get up to find his friend, Larry noticed yet another problem. There was a door between him and any chance of escape. A big door with a handle which made it ridiculously hard for anything other than a unicorn to open it. Larry wasn't getting out of the room, and while he was in the room, there would be no finding Jeff.
He walked over to the door. It was big, even for a normal pony door. And the handle was slightly different than any he'd ever seen. Maybe different enough that he could turn it. The handle was almost exactly like any unicorn handle, except for a single big difference. It had some sort of rubber like material over it. Some substance to make it easier to turn, likely made for earth ponies to open with their mouths. Larry might be able to reach it, if he had a ladder or a tall stool of some sort.
He would have to try and find something. He had to save Jeff, and he wasn't sure he could count on Mr. Edison any more. There was a good chance their last encounter had been just an illusion anyway.
With that thought, Larry looked around the room. It wasn't a very big room, but it had a lot of things in it. There were lots of candles and vials hanging from the ceiling with pieces of string, as well as pins stuck all over the walls to attach papers and maps to them. Larry then had an idea. A risky, dangerous sort of idea, but an idea nonetheless.
Larry reached up as far as he could, straining his arms against his body as he gripped onto the nearest pin and pulled himself upwards. He could already tell that this was going to be hard and possibly not worth it, but he had to do this to save Jeff, so he continued.
He reached out his other arm, pushing himself completely off the ground with his legs and shooting up to the next level. He was getting somewhere. As he reached for the pin above his head, his heart raced with a swiftly deepening fear. Something on the other side was opening the door.
Larry had two options. He could let the fear shock him enough to make him fall from his precarious footing, and that would be very bad, or, he could man up and hold on tight like a man bulb.
The door swung open beside Larry, and behind it stood a strange looking creature. It was very much like an earth pony, but white with its entirety covered with black stripes. It would have been rather interesting to Larry actually, had he not been in the position he was in when he saw it.
And then the creature walked in, and looked at him. Larry didn't know if he should be happy that the creature was laughing so hard it was shaking the room, or scared for his life, but Larry had been through crap, so he just hung there and smiled at the creature. The type of smile only a light bulb could smile.
***
Twilight was really, really worried. None of her books said anything about light bulbs coming to life, not even anything like that. And there was also the minor problem that Spike had been gone for over four hours and it was nighttime. What was worse, she needed Spike to get her friends. They'd probably have something to say about all of this.
Twilight spent another hour looking through her books again before she heard the front door being opened. She almost didn't notice it, but she did.
"Yes! You're here! Spike, what took you so long?" she asked, turning to the dragon as he entered the room.
"I don't want to talk about it," Spike replied.
"What? Why not? Wh... oh."
"Yes, it's about as uncomfortable as it looks."
"But how did you get it stuck like that? And...oh, Spike. Whatever happened to you? Was it the light bulb?"
"No, Twilight, it was just a trap. Now could you please help me get this cage off of me?"
Twilight pushed her magic through her horn and out onto the cage which was completely covering Spike's body. The only thing outside the cage were his feet, which he'd somehow been able to make holes for. With a screech and a yelp from the dragon, the cage came right off him, scraping against his armor and grinding against him on the way out. When it was over, Spike felt like he had scraped his finger nails across glass, except that his entire body felt this way. It was very much not a good feeling.
When he was in full view, Twilight could see that he was caked in dirt, mud, grass and other stuff. "You're going to tell me exactly what happened," she said. "How did this happen to you?"
"I just slipped and fell, Twilight. The trap was off to the side of the road and the way it was shining it kinda looked like a gem. I figured out that hard way that that wasn't the case. I guess shiny things aren't always good things after all," Spike said.
"Yeah... that might be something good to remember for the future. Did you just stay trapped like that for all this time?"
"Yes. I spent all evening trying to get out of the cage. May I tell you all about it tomorrow instead of tonight, Twilight? I've had a really long day."
***
Zecora was staring, wide eyed, at what might be the funniest looking creature she had ever seen. For once, she didn't think she could come up with a good rhyme for the situation.