Chapter 1: Prologue
3rd Pony POV
"Spike?" Twilight called out as she started walking through the main hall. "Where are you?"
Stopping in the center of the hall, she looked at the multiple doorways that lead to most of the important rooms of the castle. There was an even amount of doors on either side, the entrance to the castle directly ahead of her, and the doors at the top of the stairs that opened up to The Courtroom. Or at least, that's what Twilight decided to call the room.
It was really the Throne Room, but that name never sat well with her. Besides, she may have been a princess, but she wasn't in charge of anything. She didn't rule Equestria, Canterlot, Ponyville, or even her own castle apparently, considering how she was still getting used to the size of it all.
Back to the doors, there were four to the left, four to the right, and at the top of the stairs there were two more doors, not counting The Courtroom entrance, that lead higher up into the castle. The doors on the left lead to the library, kitchen, dining room, and a ballroom. The last of which was sadly just a storage room at the moment. Something that Pinkie Pie and the others were upset about, but had to happen nonetheless.
At the right were four more other rooms. Luckily, her basement from her old home was mostly salvageable, so her alchemy set was all set up in the first room. Then the second room was what Twilight had decided to turn into a training room of sorts for magic. Third room was simply a staircase that lead to a hallway for a closet or two and a stairway down to the basement of the castle. And finally the last room was where the science equipment, charts, and stuff similar to that nature stayed.
"I'm in here!" After a few seconds, Spike called back out to Twilight. Sounding caught up in something else at the moment.
"Uh...Could you be a bit more specific?" Twilight asked him, turning towards where his voice came from. Or, where she think she heard his voice come from. With how the room was made of crystals, sound tended to echo a bit. So it seemed she had a fifty-fifty chance.
"In the Ballroom!" Spike clarified, to which Twilight nodded and headed inside the very room. Only to find that some of the boxes were jamming the door so it could only open halfway. "Ah! Spike, I thought you said you'd get the boxes straightened out."
"Sorry Twilight! I'm trying my best, but some of these boxes are heavier than I thought they'd be." Spike walked out from behind one of the bigger boxes that was moved towards one of the windows. "I thought we didn't have too much stuff left over after we got everything in the right rooms."
Twilight sighed silently as Spike started walking to walk towards another box. It was true that they didn't have too much left from the library, but after losing most of their stuff, their friends and neighbors helped to make it back up.
The most important thing Twilight wanted to replace were her pictures. And for whoever said pictures are irreplaceable, they apparently had never met Pinkie Pie. Thankfully, Pinkie had a copy of nearly every picture that her friends had ever taken. Save for family pictures. In which case, Twi's parents and Shining Armor had copies of the most of them. So even though they were missing a few, Twilight and Spike were content with what they had.
As for furniture, that was a bit more difficult. When the tree had grown from the ground up, the walls and rooms formed nicely, but aside from the chairs in The Courtroom, there was nothing else. Luckily, their friends had a few extra chairs, an end table or two, and some paintings to hang on the walls. But oddly enough, the real help came from the Quills and Sofas store. They donated a few cushioned chairs for the library, a couple of sofas, and best of all, two beds for the two of them.
That was something that Spike was overjoyed about. His own room. He didn't mind his old bed and sharing a room back in the old library, but having his own bed made him as happy as ever. Which was probably why he was offering to help out so much. Case in point, organizing the boxes for Twilight.
There weren't really as many boxes as you'd expect in the ballroom. Everything that had a designated room to go to was already in said room. So there weren't any books, equipment, or potions to move around. Instead, there were housewarming gifts. Boxes upon boxes of housewarming gifts. And there had to be almost two gifts per pony in Ponyville.
"Spike, I appreciate all the help you've been doing for me, but you shouldn't tire yourself out." Twilight levitated the box Spike was about to pick up and moved it out of the way. "Moving into a house like this takes time. And it's only the third day."
"I know, but," Spike began picking up a smaller box that was beside the one he was about to pick up before. "I can't just leave you to unpack everything by yourself. Your a-"
"Spike, stop saying that." Twilight interrupted gently. "I've been a Princess for five months now. The only thing that's changed is that we live somewhere else. Besides," Her horn began to glow brighter as about five more boxes levitated up into the air and moved over towards the pile of boxes towards the window. "I still have some extra power left over from when the Princesses gave all of theirs to me. These boxes are as light as feathers."
"So that's why you're turning the parlor into a training room." Spike added as he put his box on top of one of the larger ones. "I was wondering why you did that. Usually you practice your magic outside where you can't break anything."
"What?! I-I don't break anything with my magic!" Twilight started to blush as she quickly looked anywhere else to cover it up.
"Because you practice outside!" Spike repeated before breaking out in laughter.
Twilight sighed, but knew there was no point in arguing. "Look, I think it'll be a better idea if you go ahead and have a break. We've already stocked the kitchen, and the gems that some of the ponies gave us are all in there too."
"Well...Alright Twilight, if you say so. Thanks." He gave her a small smile before suddenly remembering something. "Oh yeah, I found something in one of the boxes!" He started running over to a smaller box that was separated from all the others. "I put it over here so I wouldn't lose it."
He opened up the box and pulled out a small clipboard, two inkwells, and a few quills. "You said that we needed to start making a list of all this stuff sooner or later, so I thought this would help."
"Oh! I almost forgot about that." Twilight levitated most of it over, save for the extra quills. Which Spike simply tucked behind the scales on his back. He always used to do that back when Twilight wrote letters to the Princess, so he was used to it. "Thanks Spike."
"Your Welcome Twilight. Good luck." Spike waved goodbye as he left the room, closing the door behind him before leaning against it. "Finally! I thought I was going to take all day to moving those boxes."
As he stood up, he began looking around the room. He wasn't exactly hungry since he had snuck in a few gems to eat before moving everything around. That probably being the real reason why the boxes weren't already out of the doorway. So the kitchen and dining room was ruled out for now.
But seeing as how Twilight didn't want him to wear himself out, he wasn't able to unpack one of the other rooms. Besides, Twilight would probably want to supervise unpacking the rooms herself. Save for his room of course. Spike was aloud to unpack and rearrange everything however he wanted it to be.
Still, like Twilight thought, Spike was pretty tired out. So he wasn't about to try doing anything else anyways. Leaving Spike to figure out just what else he should do for the rest of the day.
It was only about ten in the morning, so not too many ponies were probably walking around right now. As a matter of fact, they were probably busy regardless since some of the town was still destroyed from the Tirek attack. This counting the others too.
Pinkie Pie was helping the town with odd jobs and helping the cakes pass out some complementary sweets to help lift everypony's spirits, Fluttershy was taking care of the animals that had their homes destroyed in the fight, Applejack had to salvage what was left of the crops, Rarity was helping ponies style the inside of their houses, and Rainbow Dash...
Well, actually, Spike couldn't remember just what Rainbow Dash was doing. He vaguely recalled her mentioning something about Scootaloo, but that was about it.
Before Spike could think of any of his other friends, there was a knock at the door. Knowing that Twilight wouldn't mind somepony visiting, he shrugged and headed over towards the entrance. They were pretty large doors, but surprisingly enough, they weren't too hard to open. Or at least, they weren't too hard to open just enough for somepony to come inside. It was opening them up completely that was the hard part.
So knowing that he didn't have to put too much strength into it, he pushed open one of the doors with ease. Only to be met with coming face to face with a pony just his height near inches from his face.
"Heya Spike!"
"Gah!" Spike jumped back from the door, tripping and falling on his back from the sudden surprise of Applebloom. "What was that for?!"
"Oops! Ahehehe, sorry there Spike. Didn't mean ta scare ya." She apologized awkwardly as she walked over and offered a hoof to help him up. Sweetie Belle walking in soon after her.
"Why were you that close to the door anyway?" Sweetie asked as Spike got to his feet. "It could've hit you in the face. I mean, it's not like you know which door Spike was gonna open."
"Yeah I do. He always opens the left door." Applebloom nodded.
"I do?"
"Yep. Every time ya answer the door, ya always open the left door if'n there is one. And if there's only one door, ya just look ta tha left anyhow." Applebloom explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Huh. I never noticed that." Spike spoke more to himself than her as he walked over and started closing the door behind them.
"Me neither." Sweetie Belle added. "How's come you know that?"
"Oh, well, erm, Applejack always opens the right door an' Big Macintosh opens the left door. I guess I just, uh, take notice a that kinda thing." Applebloom shrugged with a small smile.
"Well, what door do I open?" She asked, now curious herself.
"Now how am I supposed ta know that?" Applebloom shook her head as she returned the focus back to Spike. "Besides, that ain't what we came here for, is it?"
"Oh! Yeah, we came to see if you and Twilight needed any help moving in!" Sweetie Belle cheered happily. "Because if you did, we wanted to try and see if we could get our Cutie Marks in moving!"
"Moving?" Spike questioned.
"Yep!" Applebloom and Sweetie Belle took in a quick breath.
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADER MOVERS! YAY!"
"OW!" Spike cringed and covered his ears. Temporarily going deaf by the girls' cheering. "Not so loud! You're screaming's bouncing off the walls!"
"Oh yeah...Sorry 'bout that." Applebloom frowned as she and Sweetie cringed a bit at the echo's volume. "Still, how can we help? Need any boxes moved around?"
"We tried to help ponies around Ponyville, but for some reason they didn't want our help moving anything fragile." Sweetie Belle put a hoof to her chin in thought. "Come to think of it, that's what everypony told us..."
"Well, sorry, but we don't really need any help either. Twilight always wants everything organized just right. so she'll want to move everything herself." Spike shrugged.
Applebloom sighed in defeat as she and Sweetie sat in place. "Yeah, we figured as much. There's just nothin' ta do right now. Hay, the school ain't even up an' runnin' yet. Ms. Cheerilee said it'd be at least a week."
"So what do we do now?" Sweetie looked between her two friends, hoping that one of them would have an answer.
"I dunno. I was trying to think of something myself, but with this giant castle still empty there's nothing going on." Spike answered.
"Whelp, castle's only been around fer a few days. Maybe we could look around an' find somethin' ta do?" Applebloom offered
"We already did that, remember?" Sweetie reminded her. "After we celebrated our sisters stopping that goat guy, we all got to go around and have a tour of the palace."
"Castle." Spike corrected.
"Castle, palace, you get what I mean." Sweetie Belle waved the thought away.
"Well, what if there's some kinda hidin' rooms. Y'all said that the old castle in the woods had secrets, right Spike?"
"That's different. That castle had those traps built in. This castle's entirely brand new. It doesn't have any secrets. Believe me, I looked. All the top of the tree has is bedrooms, balconies, and other normal rooms. And you already know what's on this floor." Spike reminded them.
"...What about the basement?" Applebloom asked, grasping at straws for something to do.
"The basement?"
"Yeah, the basement. Has anypony even been down there yet?" Applebloom looked towards the door. They all saw the staircase that led down there, but she didn't remember anypony going down there yet. Unless they did and no pony brought it up.
"Well, no, but...Don't you think there's a reason for that?" Sweetie Belle rose a worried eyebrow.
"Aw come on Sweetie Belle, don't tell me yer scared ta go into tha basement."
"Again, there's a reason for that." Sweetie repeated. "It's a dark, creepy basement that no pony goes down into. It's probably wet and filled with dust and bugs. Why would you want to go down in there?"
"I swear, yer actin' more an' more like yer sister everyday." Applebloom deadpanned before standing up. "Besides, it ain't got any bugs er dust in it. Castle's only been around fer three days."
"Oh yeah. I forgot that part..." Sweetie admitted. "Well, it's still dark and creepy! How are we supposed to even see where we're going?"
"Easy. We get our dragon friend ta lead tha way." Applebloom pointed to Spike with a simple grin. "He can just light a candle and we'd be set."
"I think I saw a candlestick in the dining room." Spike said out loud. Not minding the idea to go along with Applebloom's plan. After all, he had been through way worse than some dark basement.
"Perfect! You go get it and we'll wait at the stairs." Gettig excited at the thought of finally doing something interesting, Applebloom turned to her fellow Crusader. "Come on Sweetie! We gotta basement ta go through!" Applebloom began trotting over towards the door that lead to the staircase while Spike ran to the dining room to get the candlestick. Leaving Sweetie Belle to stand in the middle of the Main Hall with an unamused look on her face.
"Here we go..." Sweetie Belle muttered under her breath, knowing that there really wasn't any way out of this. So with one last sigh, she slowly trotted behind Applebloom. Ready to get this Cutie Mark Crusader Mission over with.