Unnatural Selection

by Karkadinn

Eyes

Eyes

Well-trained, the dogs were no longer barking, but they were clearly ready to turn on him as soon as a signal was given. Still in the sweat of his now-extinguished fear, Spike became suddenly conscious of how cold it was – the altitude change had been gradual but significant, and he could the breaths of every pony and dog, his own too, outlined in faint puffs of mist. He waited patiently for the ponies to finish him off while he made a mental note of his body's every ache and throb resentfully.

Meanwhile the two fanciest of the hunting party ponies were busy having a very polite argument over how edible he was.

“...come now, you can't very well expect them to come out of a struggle for their little lives all spic and span, unless, perhaps, we chased our prey through a washroom,” the mustached one was saying, causing a light chuckle to drift through the ponies at his little joke. “Why, I daresay every bump and bruise on this little fellow's hide is a testament to his noble spirit! Giving his all, as it were, and we must treat him with the same respect as he's accorded us, mmm?”

The other unicorn rolled his eyes.

“Noble spirit, pfaugh. You do a disservice to the idea of nobility, Fancy Pants... not that that's particularly uncharacteristic of you. I can have the finest seasoned dragon steaks imported from the Principality of Sehorsa any time I'm feeling peckish, and I repeat, you're welcome to this one's filthy blubber.”

Spike felt offended.

“So what, I'm not even worth eating now? I'll have you know tons of ponies have thought I looked delicious! You have no idea how many ponies have tried to eat me by now!” Spike started to count in his head, and quickly gave up. “Like... lots.”

The snooty unicorn just turned his face away with a faint grimace, clearly not interested in talking to the food.

“You appear to have quite a bit of pep left for a dragon who's given up,” Fancy Pants pointed out. “Perhaps a wager is in order, a sporting-”

“NO, Fancy Pants, we are not wasting our time with that balderdash AGAIN!” the other unicorn burst out. “Every time you find an excuse to give our prey a 'sporting' second chance, we end up wasting hours trekking through this wretched wilderness-”

It was actually mostly hilly, pleasantly green plain with a few trees dotted around, as far as Spike could tell.

“-and corner the beast a second time anyway. Why not cut to the chase and just be done with it for once?”

“Ah, Blueblood, I daresay your sense of adventure is a trifle malnourished! But never let it be said that Fancy Pants is one to run roughshod over his fellow hunters. Let us put it to a vote, then. All ponies who wish to give this little fellow a second shot, hooves up!”

Besides Fancy Pants, three other hunters raised their hooves. Spike watched stonily, knowing that even if he was given a 'second shot,' it was just delaying the inevitable. His whole life had been just one big delay of the inevitable.

“Mmm, I see. And all ponies who are with Prince Blueblood for putting the beast to bed, as it were?”

The rest of the ponies (mostly, Spike couldn't help but notice, soft-looking unicorns with pipes and monocles who'd probably never had to fight for the right to live or even gotten into a brawl in their whole lives) raised their hooves. There wasn't even any point in counting, it was obvious that Fancy Pants was in the minority.

“Good, glad that's over then,” Spike said bluntly, flopping down on his back and resting hands behind his head.

It would be over any moment now. Any moment now, and he'd just focus on the peaceful swaying of the tree branches in the breeze....

Instead of descending upon him with forks and knives, they parted while one in the back rolled up an uncomfortable-looking cage, flimsy top and bottom and steel wire sides. They must've not encountered dragons very much; he could've broken it easily if he'd actually tried.

“You're not gonna eat me now?”

Somehow he was disappointed.

“Yes, let's just gobble him down in the middle of all this dirt like caveponies,” Blueblood responded, but by pretending like he was talking to another unicorn next to him. “What does the creature take us for, Manehattanites?”

Laughter spread through the group of hunters as they shoved Spike into confinement. He didn't resist, but he didn't make it any easier either. Great, so now he had to deal with a whole new trip back to... their larder, the kitchen, what? And even though he'd already given up, the delay in his fate caused Spike to begin to regret his decision, to feel that old fear crawling over his spine again. Hard not to think about the different ways they could kill him. Even harder not to think about what he might go through before then. Would they just stuff him with food until he burst? Throw him in a giant pickle jar? He remembered what happened at Ample Acres all too well.

“Afraid to get your hooves dirty, huh? Yeah, I know your type. Keep on trottin', wusses.”

It shouldn't've been like this. He should've gone down in a real fight, against Rainbow Dash, maybe, or Braeburn, or that really strong-looking red pony at Ample Acres. Instead, he'd just run out of the energy and surrendered to these fancy ponies who thought hunting was just a 'jolly rejuvenating dalliance for the senses,' to quote one of the poshest ones. And most of them were unicorns, so even if he did lash out, they'd just smother him in magic with all the effort a mommy had to take when spanking a naughty kid.

“You lookin' at me? Come on, you got something to say, say it!”

The accosted pony shied away from his glare uncomfortably, putting a few hunters between himself and the cage.

Wusses, all of 'em. They thought they were so tough.

“See, this is why I keep telling you we should snip their tongues first thing,” Blueblood murmured to a female unicorn, who giggled, her emerald-bedecked beehive hairdo quaking slightly.

Spike contemplated for a moment and, after coming to a well-thought-out and mature conclusion, took careful, deliberate aim and spat on Blueblood's face. The beehive maned pony fainted while Blueblood stood paralyzed in shock, all the hunters around gasping – except for Fancy Pants, who just looked back with one eyebrow raised curiously.

“You VILE little thing! MAKEUUUUP!” the unicorn screeched with an almost feminine pitch to his panic, just before being swarmed by ponies wielding fluffy pads of powder and other tools of the makeup artist's craft.

What a giant poof.

After that, the hunters took care to keep their distance. Fancy Pants was the only exception, and seemed to be more amused by their skittishness than anything else, even if he somehow managed to trot through the grass in a way that still left his clothes, mane and tail as impeccable as Blueblood's. They were moving along rolling hills now, and that didn't do much to make Spike's ride any more comfortable, but he took the jostles and bumps as they came, quiet and resigned in his bitterness.

He was both surprised and unhappy when Fancy Pants opened up conversation.

“Do you mind enlightening me on what your diet has consisted of thus far, little fellow?”

Spike blinked, thrown off by the unexpected question (not to mention finding a pony that still used the word 'thus' in regular conversation) and immediately on the defensive because of it.

“What's it matter to you?”

“Diet affects the flavor of the meat, you see,” Fancy Pants explained, dodging a small rock in his way with stylish lack of effort without even looking at it. “I do hope you haven't been eating berries and such, it makes it ever so difficult for the cooks to work in that expected sense of piquancy into the dish. Whoever heard of a mild dragon, I ask you in all seriousness?”

“I've been eating gems and veggies.”

“Oh dear, at even ratios? Chef Piping Blanch will be most put out. But perhaps he could use a good, solid turn out of his comfort zone, the fellow is far too much of a traditionalist when hovering about the stove.”

“Sure.”

Why was this pony talking to him? Normally he had to provoke the ponies into talking and prove that prey was worth having a conversation with. This one seemed to want to even though Spike just felt like waiting for the sweet release of death.

Then something about earlier came back to him, like a boomerang, and clocked him in the backside of his thought stream. Fancy Pants had caught prey before... and then let them go to catch them again. There was self-restraint in that, wasn't there?

“...you don't drink tea by any chance, do ya?”

“Tea? You mean that beverage composed of water brewed with plant matter?” Fancy Pants wrinkled his nose delicately. “Afraid I've never partaken. I usually take a glass of mulled doe's blood with my meals.”

So much for that idea. Man, if they had just all been like Fluttershy, what a different world it coulda been. An irritatingly wimpy world, but still.

“But you let prey go when you could just eat them right away. If you're doing that already, why're you even bothering to hunt them in the first pla-”

They rounded a particularly big hill and the view took Spike's words away along with his breath. Buildings of marble and polished stone, accented with gold, sprawled over a mountain and around it, even over steep inclines that seemed in danger of dropping the massive weight at any second – magic at work in the architecture, for sure. The airy, towering designs of the buildings lent themselves well to gentle curves, swells narrowing to points, alabaster and mauve that dwarfed the tiny shapes of the ponies moving beneath them and through them. The predominance of archways and other such fluff in gold, along with bright-colored canopies, kept the place from seeming brutish or utilitarian. It was art, like the fanciest birthday cake ever brought to life for ponies to live in.

But the centerpiece of it all was a massive castle made up of impossibly light limbs stretching out to main tower hubs. It was halfway off of the mountain, built out into thin air, and yet it seemed like it had stood there forever and intended to go on doing that for another forever. Pink flags waved at the greatest heights, looking flimsy against the winds even though the distance involved had to mean they were pretty huge.

“Positively breathtaking, isn't it?” Fancy Pants said with mixed pride and empathy. “Nowhere else in all the world will you find such a marvel as Canterlot, my boy! Of course, to be fair, nowhere else in the world will you find architects and engineered properly fueled with their rightful allowances of rejuvenating red meat. It's no wonder your zeal for the chase gave out! Who could possibly maintain an enthusiasm for life while turning up their noses at a good steak to subsist on mere weeds and rocks?”

It was beautiful, that was the problem. It was prettier than it had any right to be. Spike's heart ached with the unfairness of it all. Unless it was fair, and ponies really were destined to just eat everything else that lived and breathed. Sometimes he still wondered, and he wondered if Braeburn would be happy in knowing his words hadn't been totally forgotten.

The ponies split off from here. Half continued onward towards Canterlot with Blueblood, while Fancy Pants and his people took Spike over to a small but well-paved path that led to an estate just outside the city. It was a mansion almost as gorgeous as Canterlot itself – if it hadn't been for the ornamental fence, its spikes decorated with the preserved heads of other 'game.' Spike wasn't the first dragon to be caught, but by far the smallest, judging from the display. Lions (or maybe manticores), bears, bulls (or minotaurs?), even a small hydra head were held high in a display of a successful hunter's pride, extending with the fence well out of sight.

They'd all had their eyes taken out, though. Their replacements were gems, polished and cut in neat facets, and carved with Fancy Pants cutie mark – a trio of crowns, half disintegrated into rust.

“And here we are! I daresay the cooks will want their hooves on you soon enough. But before we part ways, I'd like to see that dreadful scowl part from your face, little fellow. After all, bitter humors tarnish the flavor of the feast, quoth our dear, radiant Princess!”

“Oh, you're quite right, Fancy Pants!” one of the remaining hunters chimed in adoringly.

“Very perceptive as always, even when it comes to the most negligible things!”

“Who among us knows more about the disposition of game than Fancy Pants? Nopony, that's who!”

“Lads, lads, please, all this undue adulation is making me blush!” Fancy Pants objected to his entourage, even though he wasn't blushing at all.

He turned his attention back to Spike. “It is true, though. We've tracked down many a game here at the Estate de Fantaisie, and I've seen your like before, lad.”

Spike hmphed and crossed his arms tighter. “I doubt it.”

Why couldn't they just get it over with already? He didn't want to have to listen to another manifest destiny speech about how ponies were awesome and everything that wasn't a pony wasn't.

“Come come now, keep an open mind!” Fancy Pants chided him mildly while the hunters giggled. “Prey that's not unable, but is unwilling to fight... it depresses me so to have to end a hunt on such a note as that. You seem bitter, lad, but you must understand, it's not as though you were bested in a contest of strength of arms or sharpness of wit.”

“Are you stupid? Of COURSE that's what it is!” Spike snarled, causing all the other hunters to gasp at how rude he was being. He even saw one pony stomp forward with a sharpened horn glowing menacingly, but Fancy Pants waved the hunter back off. “If I were a full-grown dragon, you'd be dead!”

“A common misconception!” Fancy Pants said happily, eyes shut on account of how much his smile was pushing his face around. “Take a look at yon heads, if you will be so kind.”

“Yeah, I see 'em,” Spike growled. “What's your point?”

“Well, do you not see some very fine and handsome beasts on those spikes, my boy?”

“...so you got more hunters to kill 'em.”

“Certainly not. It's not about your mien in battle, little fellow, nor even about your cunning in strategizing out such conflicts. You strike me as one used to such things. But eventually, at some point or other, they all just... give up. Get tired, you see.”

Spike frowned and opened his eyes a little wider, watching his captor and trying to make himself stop ignoring the words that were being said just cause the guy looked like a posh spoiled idiot. Maybe that dumb little mustache had some smarts behind it, couldn't hurt to listen either way.

“And can you blame them?” Fancy Pants went on, surprisingly sympathetic. “After all, even the best of us – ponies or prey – can't keep our brains at peak tactical efficiency all the time, and muscles get tired, oh my, they certainly do. It's really a matter of simple endurance more than anything else. We ponies may be clever and mighty, but we aren't always the cleverest or the mightiest. These things aren't truly relevant, because we never give up.”

“You really don't,” Spike mumbled, and shuddered, hugging his tail.

“It's all about stamina in the end, lad! Looking at things that way, you mustn't see this conclusion as a failing on your part. A momentary weakness, perhaps, but it would have come to that sooner or later in any case. It's my fervent wish that you will go to your end knowing that your fate was simply inevitable, and that you are not a bad dragon... just a dragon.”

Staring, Spike felt that Fancy Pants meant that in the nicest possible way. Coming from anyone who wasn't a pony, it would've been mocking. From the pony, though, it was like Fancy Pants was giving the utmost sympathy that it was possible for him to give. Like he really didn't want the fat little baby dragon he'd caught to be miserable – even though his death was gonna come whether he was miserable or happy.

Stamina. Not a bad dragon. Just a dragon. The ponies never got tired.

He sighed.

“Thanks, Fancy Pants,” he told his enemy, not insincerely, who beamed through his monocle back at him.

It was hard to even remember that they were the enemy. But that was what had gotten him this far in the first place, right? Wanting peace. Wanting everyone to just relax and let the fighting and hurting stop. Maybe... maybe trying to think of it as a war had gotten him worn out faster than he would've been worn out normally. He definitely felt tired to death.

And that was appropriate.

As they took him inside (not the front way, of course... he got a little side entrance for servants, straightaway to the kitchens) Spike's thoughts drifted to Rarity. He'd been so angry, felt so betrayed by her, and had wanted to hurt her back. Had that done any good? It'd made him look like the beast they all said he was and got all of Ponyville hunting for him. If he'd kept his cool, he could've talked to her more. Maybe tried to convince her. If Fluttershy could do it, anypony could. He just didn't know the magic words to break it to them.

Piping Blanch was super annoyed, and the first thing Spike heard from the chef was about how awful his scales looked and how they would never do for a garnish in their current state, absolutely not! Now was he going to behave for the scale-polishing, or would a de-fanging and de-clawing be in order?

Spike told him very quickly that he would behave, and sat through a no-nonsense scrubbing that was thorough, painful and humiliating without a peep of complaint. It felt dreamlike, having given up and being ready to just sit through whatever ponies did with their food before he was executed. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to think of it as all real.

If he'd been a smart dragon, he could've walked the other way in that desert, maybe headed to Griffonia or the Sphinxian Empire. The ponies probably would've found him anyway though. They always found him. It was just his luck to keep running into them again and again. They didn't know what it was like, but it wasn't their fault.

After the scrubbing he was fed a meal of something the chef called turducken stew. It seemed fancy enough to not be worth wasting on 'prey,' which made Spike wonder how fancy the meals they actually served were, if this was the estate's equivalent of fodder. For his part, Spike was grateful that there wasn't a whole head floating in the brown slush and gulped it down with slow, steady swallows without tasting it much. Still, the steaming richness of it coated the back of his throat and tongue and stayed there for hours.

He was tossed in a comfortable but tiny little cell in the larder, strings of tomatoes and onions hanging in front of the grilled door like jungle vines. There were even toilet facilities and a tiny sink and towel, how thoughtful. As far as death sentence prisons went, this was a classy one.

Since the half-air door didn't give any real privacy, Spike was free to watch and listen to the cooks going about their cooking stuff. Washing pans, setting pots to bubble, shoving things in ovens, swearing at the ponies lower-ranking in the chain, all that. If he put his mind away from the kind of food that was being served, it would've come across as comfortingly normal. Like the Inn.

The Inn....

Had he really made such a big mistake back there?

It wasn't like he was a bad dragon for getting mad at things that were trying to kill him. But lashing out like that at Rarity had been... different. It hadn't been about survival. It'd been about trying to make a point, to hurt her because she'd hurt him. And she still probably didn't get it. What'd it really done for him? Made him more scared, made the ponies more determined to get him, left him with memories he didn't like the taste of.

Things had been different with the others, like Pinkie. Especially Braeburn. He had actually bitten Braeburn and tasted pony blood and it didn't bother him no matter how many times he went over it, because he'd done it for Little Strongheart.

Was that the trick to lasting forever? Do it for other people instead of for yourself?

Kind of hard when 'other people' in the middle of pony country all consisted of people that wanted to gulp you down.

No, that wasn't what'd really bothered him. What'd worn him down to the point of not caring – or at least not ADMITTING to caring. He was as good as dead now, might as well think through what'd gotten him to this state so it'd have some meaning. That way it'd be poetic and stuff, even if he was stew in the end anyway.

Inhaling the smell of dried onion, Spike thought of Rarity. Those huge dewy eyes... one slashed, maybe blind and milky-white. The idea horrified him. And he thought about cowponies out in Appleloosa just expanding their borders over and over, never getting that the lives they were shoving into their cooking pots could've been friends. Little Strongheart had been a good buffalo right till she'd been forced not to be. Maybe dying was better than giving in to something like that. Into letting survival turn you into something mean and alone like a starved rattlesnake.

He thought about poor Fluttershy, hiding at the edges of Ponyville because she couldn't fit in with a society she couldn't bring herself to stand against. And Rainbow Dash, so desperate to prove herself a good hunter and stand up for her friends. Factory workers murdering harmless animals and laughing about it, not understanding, never understanding, that creatures they thought of as meat were also worth being nice to, or at least being respectful to....

Friends. That's what they needed. Friends who were prey, till 'prey' stopped being an excuse to just pretend non-pony people didn't count as people. Revolution wasn't just about the body, it was about the brain too. It seemed like his body got tired even if it was safe if he didn't get his head on straight too, and he needed buddies for that.

This would've been so much easier to think about if he'd had a second head to bounce ideas off of. But Spike made a decision by himself, since there wasn't anyone around to help tell him it might not be a great idea. He decided that if he somehow lived through this and saw Rarity again, he'd tell her he was sorry and that he didn't really hate her.

He wanted to, he still wanted to, but he just....

He just couldn't.

So Spike accepted that part of him as a wuss and breathed all the anger and bad feelings out, along with it that desire to just be over with it all no matter what. He wasn't so dog-tired after that.

They didn't pay any attention to him for the rest of the day. Apparently he wasn't immediately on the menu, maybe they needed to plan it out or something, he didn't know how ponies organized their meals in a place like this. He had to put up with the smell of slow-cooking meat all night, but eventually he got used to it (even though, in some ways, that was even worse).

One of the chef's assistants tossed him a little bag of fresh-baked muffins for breakfast, and Spike couldn't stop laughing even though it was kind of a horrible reminder. By the looks the servants were giving him, he was probably coming off as totally bonkers, but whatever, they could just deal with it. He had never really liked bran muffins but they tasted good today as they never had before, warm and soft with just a bit of resistance on the outer edges.

While he was licking the last of his crumbs out from between his fangs and gums, it occurred to Spike to wonder if maybe there was something more to ponies and eating. He'd tried to tell Pinkie to just not eat him, and she could've held off, but she just... hadn't. Neither had that train attendant. For that matter, why would ponies risk their lives and get hurt hunting wild stuff when they could have food delivered to their doors? They all did that, from the fanciest of the fancy all the way down the ladder. The ponies at the Inn might've been exceptions, he wasn't sure since he hadn't really kept track of what they did when they weren't on the clock.

And they all ate meat a lot. With every single meal, plus snacks. Even though they didn't have to and also enjoyed other non-meat things, but the vegetables and stuff were always secondary to the main dish, the dead animals. Even griffins didn't value meat that much, and they were two different meat-eating animals smooshed together.

Fluttershy was the exception to all of that, but was that because of the tea or something else? Spike had just about convinced himself that he'd imagined that weird thing with her stomach just because it didn't make any sense and he had way too much to worry about already. He just didn't know enough.

So many questions, and Discord would have, if not the answers, at least the means to get the ponies off his back so he could find the answers. Okay, so maybe jailbreaking a supernatural prankster spirit wasn't a totally foolproof plan that could never ever backfire, but it wasn't like he wasn't aware of the risks. And frankly, no offense to Fluttershy, ponies were so messed up right now that he was sure that nothing Discord could do to them would make them worse.

But it didn't matter anymore. He'd had a bad day and called it quits.

Increasing awareness of how stupid he'd been to do that kept creeping up on Spike, dominating more and more of his thinking, but instead of making him angry, it made him giggly. It was just so funny that after everything he'd gone through he'd just thrown his hand of cards away after one bad draw. Like the kid everyone kept saying he was.

It'd been such a neat backpack, though!

The kitchen staff kept looking at him nervously, and then started to very specifically not look at him when he started smiling and waving back. He was tempted to try to make conversation, but decided he didn't wanna give the mean-looking chef an excuse to de-tongue him.

Predictably, he was having second thoughts about giving up on this whole annoying but addictive 'life' thing, but there wasn't much he could do about it now. The piping of his toilet wasn't exactly big enough for an escape unless he magically turned into a snake or fish, and even if he could eventually claw and bite his way out of the cell, there were always a few unicorns around. And he couldn't fight magic. And there definitely wasn't any way he could just talk the ponies into not eating him....

Spike's eyes widened and he almost jumped up in excitement.

That was it.

Ponies had self-control issues about NOT eating meat right in front of them.

He didn't need to break out, he needed to convince them to break him out themselves! It was about time he found out just how badly they couldn't resist a nibble on something tasty. That still didn't help him get past their magic, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Spike wanted to try out his super awesome idea right away, but that was a no go. He had to wait until it was just one pony around, and somehow there always seemed to be bunches of them shuffling around doing kitcheny things. The hours ticked by at the slowest possible pace as he thought about how they might serve him up for dinner or supper or lunch or lupper or a midnight snack. There was no telling when they'd want to do him in.

It was really his fault for throwing away his chances though. Imagine what Fluttershy would feel like if she knew he just gave up and got eaten after everything she'd done for him! That made him feel awfully guilty, but it also made him feel better in a lot of ways. He had a friend who would care if he was gone. Even if she was quiet and timid and had an army of ravening beasts and weird in a million other ways, she was his friend. He was proud of that.

He owed it to her to at least try.

A little after lunch cleanup, his moment came. It was a fragile thing, with most of the help being whisked away to gossip over a supposed kissy face thing between somepony called Fleur and a haberdasher, their chores all done – except for one last pony, finishing scrubbing a particularly stubborn pot.

“Hey there,” he called out to the lime-green unicorn, who, like all the rest, had learned to ignore him.

Scrubscrubscrubscrubscrub.

“Kind of a shame to let a tasty morsel like me just go to waste, dontcha think?” he asked her, sticking his belly out and slapping it slowly.

Scrub... scrub... scrubscrubscrubscrubscrub.

“Fancy Pants probably just ate more for lunch than you've had all day, right? I see how you guys eat, little nibbles here and there. You should totally form a union.”

“We get enough,” the scrubber pony replied reluctantly. “It just doesn't seem like a lot because we snatch bites here and there instead of sitting down to it all at once.”

Spike nodded mock-sympathetically even though she couldn't see him do it.

“Yeah, I'll bet. Wouldn't it be nice to just sit down and dig your teeth into something nice and juicy and satisfying for a change, though? Like a little baby dragon that would fill you right up?”

She whimpered, tap-dancing back and forth on her hooves in a way that could've been... no, it was cute, even if she was doing it because she wanted to eat him!

“Why are you tempting me with your deliciousness?!” she whined, finally throwing down the pot and jabbing an accusing, sudsy hoof in his direction.

Drat! He hadn't even thought about plausible excuses or anything! Spike's mind went back to the second conversation with Pinkie for some reason.

“Because I'm a tummytheist,” he babbled with a wide grin, “and we tummytheists hold it as our sacred doctorine to be digested in a pony's tummy! For us, it's just like going to heaven!”

He kept the smile up, sweating slightly, as she scrutinized him with a suspicious wrinkled forehead.

“That doesn't sound very believable to me...” she said slowly, but she was licking her lips while she did it, and she kept blinking, trying to shake off that glazed 'I'm HUNGRY' look that ponies always seemed to get.

“Hey, why else would I just give up and let them capture me? You heard about that right?”

She was buying it. After a little more back and forth and some more made up details about tummytheism (anyone could be a priest – as long as they owned a fork!), he got greeny to open the door up with the keys that the chef so carelessly left hanging on the kitchen wall peg all the time.

Which brought with it new problems in the form of an enormous pony mouth opening up to apparently gulp him down whole. Now what was that tip he'd gotten about dealing with unicorns?

Oh, right.

The eyes.

Spike jumped up and slashed as violently, one hand at each eye. The poor pony staggered back down on her haunches, shrieking, all thoughts of using magic forgotten in the pain – at least for now.

“Sorry!” he told her very quickly but sincerely, because he had enough apologies to give out already, and busted his scaly butt running outside.

It was a good thing the kitchen had a servant door leading to the courtyard right there. And a good thing that Fancy Pants didn't seem to think much of guards – if it'd been protected, he never would've made it through. Even the estate gates didn't have any guardsponies.

That only helped him so much, though. Spike knew he couldn't run as fast as a pony, and it would only be a minute or so at best before they started looking for him. Hiding was out of the question – they'd search the estate top to bottom if they had to, and the immediate outdoors was way too open to get away with anything like that. He had to go somewhere fast where they couldn't follow, but he had no idea where that would be.

Spike's eyes desperately sought out the far-away, high-up vision of Canterlot, with its sleek curves, sun-sparkling domes and pretty little banners and flags and canopies. And he noticed something that he hadn't caught before.

Thick white lines with flecks of dark gray – iron painted white, he thought – led down from Canterlot and through the surrounding countryside and mountainside, always at a serious angle. For a heated, panicky moment, his brain couldn't get what he was seeing, but then he understood. They were pipes, set so that gravity would do most of the work.

Probably storm drains, by how big they were. Storm drains were supposed to be big, right? Not like itty-bitty sewer pipes.

And Spike was ninety-nine percent sure that dragon claws could dig into iron, and that pony hooves couldn't scale sheer surfaces.

Heart surging with hope and a new plan to (what else?) live another petty, frantic day, Spike ran as fast as his feet could take him. The nearest pipe was still way further than he liked. By the time he reached it, he was hearing yells and hoofclops getting louder and louder. The pipe didn't end here, it kept on going, and for a terribly dismayed moment Spike thought he was doomed, but then he saw the hole in a joint as the pipe bent. It was just big enough for a Spike-sized something to get through. Maybe. If he didn't mind losing some scales.

Spike didn't mind losing some scales, and jammed his little self through that sharp-edged hole as fast as very ungainly lightning. It didn't smell great, and it was absolutely dark, but he didn't need his nose or his eyes to know he needed to climb up.

It was way harder than he'd thought it would be, and he'd thought it would be pretty hard. The pipe was just a little too big to get his back up against, and the inside was all gunked up with something sticky and halfway between dry and wet. At least it wasn't slippery, and the edges of joints from pipe to pipe helped a little. Still, he quickly found his arms and legs trembling with the strain.

He couldn't stop for a breather, if he did that he'd just fall down when his arms got too tired. And it was a long way down, long enough to hurt him or maybe worse. So Spike kept on climbing, half hoping that the pipe would end soon, half hoping it would keep on going for an infinity so he had a better chance of getting far away from the ponies who wanted to eat him.

The sound of ponies making a fuss over him quieted down after a while. But just when Spike had started to bother being hopeful, he heard a disturbing sludgey, banging noise from above that echoed all the way down the pipe, sending little tremors through the metal he was clinging to so desperately.

He couldn't see, so he couldn't anticipate when to close his eyes or hold his breath, and as a result got an eyeful, mouthful, earful and noseful of something as it schlurped its way around him and own past him. He felt hard bits in whatever it was, but mostly squishy bits, and it left him wet. His eyes stung and that bad smell that was all around the pipe was suddenly much more intense.

He spat the stuff out of his mouth, then clung to the pipe in paralyzed realization.

This wasn't a storm drain.

Not unless storms in Canterlot had blood in them, because that was what he tasted in his mouth.

All the more certain that he didn't want to have any light to see what was going on in his little oh-so-bright-idea of an escape tunnel, Spike hurried up, climbing with an unfamiliar feeling of claustrophobia. His arms were starting to burn now and his legs were getting dangerously shaky. He didn't know how long he could keep this up.

But he had to keep it up, no matter how long it took, right?

Fluttershy would be disappointed, and he still had to apologize to Rarity.

He kept those two ponies in mind along with all that he'd gone through to get this far, and kept on going. Even when his arms and legs turned into white-hot fire, even when he was too tired to think anymore. Even after a second, third, tenth, twentieth load of bloody mess flooded through him and left him increasingly caked in filth till he couldn't smell it or feel that it was there.

So that was how Spike made his way from one danger to the next one, from Top Hat's home to Canterlot. Covered in filth, blood and worse biting at his eyes and trickling down his throat, soaking into his scales and the bits between the scales. Frightened, exhausted to animal mindlessness, driven by wordless, heart-squeezing images of ponies both good and bad, he kept on going, making way one clawful of iron at a time to the capital of Equestria and its lords and ladies with all their finery.

Spike was so tired by the time it was over that his mind refused to acknowledge it until he was already there. He went all the way to the top, to that shining hole of daylight, and pulled himself over and to the ground, and only THEN, coughing and choking, did he realize that it was done. He'd done it. How long had it been? It felt like miles and miles and miles. An infinity.

Shaking and wobbling like a drunken thing, Spike got to his feet and blinked till his eyes, which felt like his dragon biowhatsit had malfunctioned and started breathing fire out of them instead of his mouth. All was good, he was in a little side lane between buildings, no ponies around....

Except for one light purple pony, sitting on a street bench nearby, staring straight at him, a book forgotten in her hooves. Well, crud. It never gets to be easy, does it Spikey ol' boy?

Spike's eyes honed in on her horn. He wanted to run, but as he saw that little tower of bone start to glow, he knew that he didn't have any time to waste on little luxuries like being nice.

Without even bothering to take the time for an apology this time, he lunged forward with both claws, eyes eyes eyes, had to go for those amethyst-purple eyes or they'll GET you, Spike, and you can say you're sorry after!

Comments

[Rookee Alding]

I was wondering when we were going to get to her. Keep up the good work! Every time I see this update It's a "read immediately" in my book!

[Drawdex]

Hints to do againts a unicorn... THE EYES!!!!

Hints to do againts a Twilight Sparkle... well you're fucked.

DON"T GIVE UP SPIKE!!!!

But i'm sure he can't do anything againts Twilight so....

Can't wait for next chapter.

1684566
True true, it's 12:30 AM in a Sunday and I say. I WILL NOT MISS THIS STORY!!!!! NEVER!!!!

[Karkadinn]

1684621

Dude, you guys touch me, right here. <3

Remind me to release these things at more reasonable hours!

[Pyro The Reader]

...Oh no!

[Seether00]

Crap, Twilight. Well, Spike, how are you going to get out of this mess?

[Styrofoam]

I was chanting "Go Spike! Go! You can do it!!!"

And then I read the description of Twilight Sparkle, and I was like "COME ON!" He was so almost there! Twilight is like the Goku of MLP, so I'm curious as to how Spike gets out of this one.

[Registered Anonymous]

All I can imagine about the ending this chapter is a freeze-frame of Spike, all dirtied from blood from the drainage pipe, lunging at Twilight while Twilight slowly charges her horn. The scene just fills me with a sense of epicness in it and by far this has been one of my favorite cliffhangers that has happened in this entire series. Not too much info to keep me interested, but just enough info/detail to keep me from going stir-crazy while waiting for the next chapter.

[MasterSpike]

Keep going Spike!!

[Drawdex]

1684656

Don't worry about releasing it at a good time, I could have just waited to the next day in a better time to read it (IT'S TOO AWESOME!!!) worry about releasing it the fastest way possible and let me worry about when to read it.

And where do you live to see if there's a time difference, I'm from the Dominican Republic, you?

[CIA]

And then comes twilight
Then I'm suspecting a shocking revelation
I'm calling it now!

[Karkadinn]

1686956

Over in Louisiana, so it's a two hour time gap but not too bad. If I can remember to release things around late afternoon/early evening I figure that ought to hit most of my audience at a reasonable hour....

[Flutterbrave]

OH SHIT SON

Seriously, why is this so awesome?

[Clocklike]

Discord is actually the one responsible for the blood-thirst of the ponies, as a parting gift if you will.

...Nah! No way!