Stuck In The Middle With You

by CoffeeMinion

Starlight fixes “Spike At Your Service” with… Admonishment! (Shakespearicles' Starlight Fixes Everything project)

Author's Note:

Starlight Fixes Everything is a group collab project led by Shakespearicles, and its tagline says it all:

Starlight Glimmer has gotten her hooves on Twilight Sparkle's Friendship Journal and she realizes that she could fix everything with time travel...

... So she does.

Starlight Fixes Everything

In Thirty Seconds or Less

( Or the pizza is free! )

Additional ground rules for the collab are that Starlight only has thirty seconds to "fix" the episode, and pizza should somehow be involved.

“Spike At Your Service” is, of course, MLP:FiM Episode #61 (S3 E9).

A gentle breeze from an open window carried the faint scent of cooking pizza all throughout Golden Oaks library, and for a moment displaced even its usual all-pervasive smells of pine sap and aging paper.

Nopony was there to enjoy it, though. A solitary lavender unicorn was technically present, but she’d already spent long hours with her muzzle pressed close to one particularly bewitching tome out of the dozen she’d set out to read, and her senses were engrossed. Her lips occasionally quirked upward as she absorbed line after line of effervescent prose. And the only scent that reached her was the weathered old tome’s earthy musk.

The pony—Twilight Sparkle—lit her horn and carefully turned a page with her magic.

Suddenly there was a huge *BANG!* from behind her. Twilight leapt up off her rump, shouting involuntarily and jerking her head about to see—

—she made a slight choking sound as she realized she’d kept her magical grip on the page she’d been turning, and had ripped it from the book in the process. “No,” Twilight croaked through a dry throat. “No, nononono, what have I done?!”

“You haven’t done anything yet!” said another purplish unicorn who was suddenly standing before her amid a scorched circle on the floor. Twilight recoiled with shock at the unexpected arrival, much less the evidence that they’d arrived via some kind of high-level spell. “Don’t start,” the pony said, raising a foreleg and then cursing at her watch. “Okay, twenty-five seconds left. Twilight—”

“I recognize you,” Twilight said, furrowing her brow. “You’re that… mare… who fixes things?”

“I said there’s no time!” The pony set her jaw and blew a strand of mane out of her eyes. “Twilight, what does Spike mean to you?”

“Spike…”

“Ugh!” The mare pressed a hoof to her eyes. “Come on, are we talking… brother? Son? Indentured servant?”

“Indentured…!” Twilight shook her head. “N…no, Spike is my friend, first and foremost!”

The mare nodded once. “Friend. Perfect. Okay, so what’s the best way to respond to a friend who comes to you in confidence about something big that they’re trying to work through?”

Twilight lowered the paper. “What do you mean?”

“Twilight…” The pony checked her watch again, and bit her lip. “You listen, Twilight. You give him your undivided attention for at least the minute or two it takes to figure out what kind of conversation you’re dealing with.”

“Well of course I would.” Twilight frowned deeply. “I know that’s how friends treat each other.”

“You say that, but I’m pretty sure—” The mare’s watch started ringing, and she gritted her teeth. “Just remember! Oh, and if he starts going on about some kind of ‘dragon code,’ ask him if he’s read the newer commentaries by Ember the Younger about—”

She vanished in a burst of white light and a sound like clocks exploding. In her place were fresh scorch-marks on the wood floor.

A solitary pizza box lay in their center.

As Twilight worked her jaw in a halting effort to think of what to say, she heard a soft rap at the library’s door. A moment later, its knob turned, and Spike poked his head in.

“Hey, Twilight. Got a minute to talk?”

Twilight glanced back at the book, then down at the page she’d inadvertently ripped out of it, before greeting her friend with a smile.

“Of course, Spike; I’ve always got time for my number one assistant… and my oldest friend. Want some pizza?”