//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: On Her Majesty's Dragonish Service // by DinoDenver //------------------------------// Spike opened his eyes. Everything was pitch black. Again. It was almost like he went right back to the realm of dreams. But this time he was hurting all over and was hungry, so there was a good chance he was awake and alive. Of course being dead and burning in hell was also a possibility, especially with his lifestyle choices, but with current evidence there couldn't be any definitive answers. Not yet. Spike was lying on his back, or at least he felt like that was the case. It was so dark, that even his dragon eyes weren't helping. He decided that standing up was taking top place on his to-do list. He didn't succeed the first time. Spike couldn't move at all, something was holding him. He decided the best solution will be to try again - this time harder. As they say, if at first you don't succeed, brute force. Brute force makes wonders. "I have no idea where I'm now..." Spike began to analyze his situation. "But it looks like after all I wasn't squashed to death and I didn't drown. So at the very least I've got that going for me, which is nice. He was now standing. Problem was, he didn't know where. He couldn't reach ceiling, which with his height taken into consideration wasn't that weird. The air surrounding him was still, which wasn't good news. There might be no connection to the outside. And that meant his air supply might be limited. But without light source he might as well sit and wait to die. So he took a deep breath and breathed out small green fireball, size of his fist. But instead of flying straight, like a normal old fashion fireball, it started circling around him, illuminating his surroundings. It looked like somehow he ended up in some other corridor of the facility, one that wasn't entirely flooded when volcano erupted. He was really tired, hungry and pretty much beat, but lying down and waiting for death would be way too boring. So he started to look for a good place to create another exit. "Guess there is no time for break for this dragon." *** "This should be good enough." Spike said to himself. He managed to get up several floors, but it was dead end after all. And that was something that Spike was going to change in a minute. He looked at the wall in front of him and inhaled, focusing his fire. But effects weren't too impressive, as he started coughing. There was no one to hear Spike's swear afterwards, and even if there was, it was drowned out by yellowish magical beam, that missed Spike by few meters. "That's new." Thought Spike. He had an idea who could've casted such a powerful spell, that pierced whole mountain. Moments later yellow figure emerged from the smoke. "I was looking for you." "I know." Spike replied. "You look hungry, would you like a banana?" *** Enormous banana drifted around one of the corners of Manehattan suburbs with frantic speed, kicking up clouds of dust and destroying somepony's mailbox in the process. Inside Spike was consuming regular-sized banana, next to Princess Celestia in her bizarre banana outfit. Apparently Dragonfly was now renamed to Bananamobile, and as such was driven by Banana-mare herself. Spike took out his spare tuxedo from glove box. Q, that old pony really knows him well. *** Spike looked at his reflection in side mirror. He straightened his bow tie and conjured moustache. And he even managed to do it all before the side mirror was lost, due to some reckless tree growing too close to Dragonfly. "C, you do realize we don't have to fly so close to the ground, right?" Asked Spike. Celestia had to evade orange cart while drifting through another corner, which resulted in destroyed fence. On the bright side the front of Dragonfly was damaged too, which reverted some of the bananamobile conversion. "Banana-mare works in mysterious ways." She replied. "And I guess Banana-mare realizes, that flying higher would get us to Twilight faster, right?" Wind noise and whiz of Dragonfly's engine were the only sounds breaking the silence for a few moments. That is apart from the yelling of ponies, that were nearly killed or had their property damaged. "Point taken." Dragonfly shoot up almost vertically before speeding up in direction of Ponyville. *** Dark, stormy clouds obscured the skies over Ponyville, big raindrops were hitting Dragonfly's windshield. They were hitting Princess Celestia as well, because she didn't fit behind the windshield. She didn't seem to mind though. Spike was looking for Doctor Nope, or rather for his Lighting-bolt-inator. "OK, C. We need some kind of plan." He stopped for a moment. Celestia didn't say anything, so Spike continued. "Doctor Nope looked like pretty potent mage. His subordinates also looked like a decent bunch of fighters. But that shouldn't be much of a problem." Spike stopped for a moment and looked at Princess once again. She appeared to be focused. "Of course they would be dead within thirty seconds if we were to fight them fair and square, but this is not going to be the case. His target is Twilight, and we must take into account that she is practically his hostage as long as Lighting-bolt-inator is operational. Of course, Twilight being herself, she probably will be reading books in library, so there is little chance to hit her directly. But we can't take any risk." Lighting bolt, that hit few hundred meters from Dragonfly interrupted Spike. He looked around and quickly spotted suspicious looking group of ponies not so far from them. They had something resembling piano with them. "Bingo!" "Ok, C. There they are. We should use element of surprise and snipe them from abo-" "OK! LET'S DO THIS!" Princess Celestia was already on the hood of Dragonfly. "BANANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Spike grabbed something in last the moment, before Celestia launched herself to the ground, leaving Dragonfly spinning. "MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE!!!" "Should have seen that one coming." Spike thought to himself while moving over to Dragonfly's controls. It took few seconds, but he managed to stabilize the craft. But it was still falling rapidly. Ground was closer with each passing second, too close. Even with engine in full reverse there was no chance to stop. And at this point there was no chance to change Dragonfly's trajectory. He was in for a crash landing. "This is precisely why I can't have nice things." *** Dragonfly took the beating surprisingly well. It was still in one piece. Smoking and rattling, but singular piece. Spike's body also preserved unity, and that was great news, considering he'll need all his limbs for what was coming. He could've do without bump on his head and split eyebrow though. But since when some blood in his eye was a problem? Spike assessed the situation: he was about a kilometer away from Princess Celestia, Doctor Nope and his soldiers, and of course the Lighting-bolt-inator. And it looked like almost everyone was focused on Princess. Perfect opportunity for destroying that wicked machine (and Doctor's plans with it), which Spike decided to seize. He started to run on all fours. While he doesn't really like it running like that it is the fastest way of running for him. And of course he wanted to get there as soon as he could. Crash landing wasn't exactly the stealthiest kind of landing, it was bound to grab somepony's attention. And that was the case indeed. Spike noticed that one of the ponies in the back saw him and alarmed the others. But he already covered about a hundred meters. Eight ponies started galloping to Lighting-bolt-inator, majority (including Doctor) was still attacking Princess Celestia. Seven hundred meters left. Eight ponies will be easy to kill, but they will have to wait patiently for their turn. Lighting-bolt-inator is going down first. Five hundred meters. But these ponies didn't face Spike, well, at least not all of them. They gathered around the inator, facing outside, and started some incantations. Three hundred. Spike wasn't going to wait any longer, the machine was in his range (be it barely). He fired three fire balls while still running. It looked like the incantation wasn't going to change anything, but the octagonal barrier formed in the almost last possible moment. The fireballs were deflected, first two were sent into the skies, third one on the other hand hit handful of Doctor's soldiers before hitting the ground and killing another dozen. With the barrier formed Spike had to adjust his plans a little. He turned a little and got to Doctor's underlings before they could realize what happened. He was done running on all fours, and there were at least three good reasons for that. First of all, he wanted to make use of his claws, and standing on his legs made it considerably easier. Second: at short distances he was more than quick enough. And perhaps most important of all: he felt way cooler this way. Gray stallion wasn't admiring Spike's coolness though, as he was staring in awe at his comrade, as this poor bastard's internal organs were falling to the ground. Being the next one on Spike's list wasn't something he considered cool. He saw the purple dragon approach him, he saw claws closing in on his throat. But his body was unable to move. And to be fair, he wouldn't be able to avoid the blow anyway. Spike sank his claws into this unfortunate stallion's throat and threw him over his head and to the ground. That way he died because of broken neck before he had chance to bleed to death. Or was it because of skull fracture? It wasn't something that would preoccupy Spike. He looked around for Princess while shaking off gray corpse from his right hand. There she was, standing in the middle, taking a beating. "What the hell is she thinking?!" It didn't took Spike long to get to the Princess, which was pretty unfortunate for the ponies that happened to be standing on his way. "The hell you're thinking?!" He shouted after casting shield spell, so the beams won't burn her any further. "...Princess." She looked around to make sure there was no one around (and ignored that there were plenty ponies around), lowered her head as well as her voice and spoke to Spike. "I don't have my costume." "Excuse me?" "You know, -" She lowered her voice even more. "- my Banana-mare costume. It burned off when I used Banana Beam. That's my new attack." "And this explains why you don't defend yourself how exactly?" "Fighting is not feminine enough activity for a Princess of Equestria." She explained calmly. "You're depressed because of your costume?" "Yeah..." She looked at her hooves. "Sorry, S. You'll have to do this without me, I'm not really in the mood." "No problem." He cracked his knuckles. "Give me 3 minutes." *** Two minutes and thirty seven seconds later Spike shook off some blood from his claws and looked toward octagonal barrier. Inside there was 9 more enemies to deal with, and from the look on their faces being dealt with was definitely something they would like to avoid (although Doctor Nope didn't seem to notice, he was fiddling with Lighting-bolt-inator). Something that was quite understandable, considering they've witnessed massacre during last three minutes. "Let's see..." Spike said to himself as he approached the barrier. "FUCK!" He narrowly dodged his own fireball, after it was reflected by the barrier. "Should have seen that one coming..." "Are we done yet?" "No Princess, We must first deal with Nope..." "But... but... three minutes!" She looked at him, full of reproach. "I know, and I'm sorry, but we've got to deal with them." "Yeah, fine, whatever." "Muahahaha! DIE Twilight Sparkle!" Doctor Nope laughed maniacally as he pressed button.