Sick
Sick
I knew a dumb pegasus who tried to swallow a dragon
She had an ego as big as a wagon
And needed the dragon to catch the lizard
That skittered and flickered her spleen and her gizzard
She swallowed the lizard to catch a fly
I dunno know why she swallowed the fly
With luck, she'll die!
“Hey, that's kinda catchy. Let me try,” Sweetie piped up, while Twilight groaned and rubbed her forehead. The weight her two companions was getting to her more than the weight of what remained of her portable lab gear, by now.
“Sure thing. Just remember it's gotta be a boingy tune ya can whistle while ya walk all smooth and stuff. Oh yeah, and it hazta rhyme, that's really important or it's not catchy. And a one, and a two, and a three...” Spike led the little pony on with a deft wave of his claws.
I know a dumb dragon who swallowed a rock
“Hey, that's not how that goes!” Spike protested.
To help his breath 'cause it stank like old socks
“My breath does NOT – oh, wait, never mind. It was the asparagus fritters.”
He thought was a pony but he's just a lil phony
“Yeah, yeah, you'll see the light soon enough, sister.”
And that's why this 'speriment's a ton of... BALONEEEEEYYYYY!
Spike and Twilight picked themselves up from opposite sides of the road where Sweetie Belle's enthusiastic sound wave had physically smashed them into small indentations in the grass, rubbing at their ears.
“Alright, my little po – I mean, Sweetie and emergency food supply, that's enough singing for today. I don't think it's very nice of you to make up bad songs about this Rainbow Dash pony, Spike. What if she's flying overhead and hears? A food supply to the Princess's student has to behave better than that, ya know. Canterlot manners!”
“Yeah, I guess so. But still!” Spike sprang back up again and glared at Sweetie till the latter stopped sniffing at him with a snacker's idle interest, then hopped back to the vaguely enforced five foot invisible space Rarity had insisted Twilight keep between the two of them at all times. It was getting more vaguely enforced by the minute, too. “You don't know what this means t'me, Twilight. Rainbow Dash is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, jerkiest jerk pony I've ever met, and now we don't need her at all! The other elements could be anypony, anypony at all! Like really nice ponies who won't try to chomp on me as soon as they see me! Ain't it great?”
Twilight shook her head. Poor little dragon would always just have the brains of... a dragon. He was awfully cute when he allowed himself to be openly enthusiastic, though.
“Like I said before, you're jumping to conclusions. What if there's a genetic component? We'd still need to deal with her in that case. And we still aren't even sure about Sweetie, since all the tests on pinning down her exact element haven't managed to do anything more than melt half my thaumaturgical equipment.” She was still rather unhappy about that. It was embarrassing to admit to the Princess, and was SO coming out of her allowance. And Sweetie had been disappointed about not getting a science-defying Cutie Mark!
“Of course, even if you're right, I don't see why you'd be happy about it,” she went on thoughtfully.
“Huh? Whadja mean?”
“Even if you're right, you've saved yourself the trouble of dealing with a pony you have bad feelings for at the cost of a big setback in honing in on the designated research subjects. We can't keep wandering around just asking ponies at random to let us examine them! I won't lie to ya, Spike, we're not doing terribly so far, but if we don't pick up the results a notch soon, we'll be headed back to Canterlot and this project will have to be classified a dead-end.” She chewed on her lip. “I hope not. It would be really bad to disappoint the Princess like that. What if she punished me? What if she took away my late night reading privileges?” The horror. The horror. Twilight was briefly trapped in a world where she had to go to bed without reading a book until she fell asleep with it draped over her head like a cozy tent, and shuddered.
“I don't think the Princess would do that, Twilight.”
“Says you,” Sweetie butted in petulantly. She still hadn't decided to forgive Spike yet, even though she was perfectly happy to come with them to visit her big sister's spa-date friend. “Twilight's the Princess's personal prototype, she knows the Princess WAY better than YOU do!”
“What's a prototype?”
“She means protege. I think.” The mild pleasure of correcting a moldable young mind's vocabulary snapped Twilight out of her personal hell as gently as the wafting aroma of a baby mice latte.
“Yeah, that! I think.”
“Regardless, Spike, you know our schedule.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Twilight's eyes drifted over to the smaller pony trotting tirelessly beside them. Sweetie's mood was perpetually undimmed when she wasn't directing petty vindictiveness over at Spike, who returned it with a halfhearted, sullen self-defensiveness. Their interactions certainly didn't seem to generate any kind of harmony. The opposite, really.
And then there was the matter of the element specifically. Generosity. Rarity's backstory had seemed to click so well, yet when it came down to it, the pony also valued other things, her sense of aesthetics, her manners, her appearance in the eyes of other ponies... had that muted the element, forced it to migrate? The possibility of an infectious or mobile element of harmony was a new idea to cope with.
Assuming that Sweetie was the Bearer of Generosity, she only displayed it so far in limited and highly specialized spurts. There had been that great display towards her sister, of course. And then afterward, her willingness to come along and spend a day or so helping out with their research, with her sister's permission, if only because Fluttershy was a good friend of Rarity's. But any little filly might have been excited at the same, treated it like an adventure, a chance to get out from under familial supervision. As much as Twilight wanted to believe... as much as something in her craved it... there was simply not enough evidence to go on.
That was why this next visit would be the clincher, she felt. If Spike was right and getting Fluttershy (“Totally abso-friggin'-lutely the Bearer of Kindness or you can eat my tail!”) into extended interaction with Sweetie and herself was enough to spark a real manifestation, well, there would soon be something definite to go on besides vague readings and misbehaving equipment. If not... well, the thing with Sweetie could only rationally be considered a fluke, an anomaly. That was statistical outliers for you, they were such teases.
Of course, Spike was insistent in her, Twilight Sparkle, being yet another piece of the harmony puzzle, but Twilight still couldn't get herself to even think about such a crazy possibility. Her entire life had been books, learning, magic, growing up under the Princess. What did she need with friends? She had left her family, left everything... with everything's permission, of course... and now all she wanted was to make the Princess proud. What room was there in her life for something silly like friendship? She didn't even understand how friendship and magic could possibly interact anyway. If you had friends, you had less time to study magic, not more. It was obvious.
Maybe she'd feel better when she learned more about the test subjects. Nothing wrong with a little interrogation, even if it wasn't nearly as helpful as the electrodes that Rarity had very specifically insisted Twilight not use on her little sister on pain of 'being utterly ruined in ways you could never even begin dreaming of.' Of course, she'd made conversation with Sweetie throughout the walk, but so far it'd been pretty limited, with Spike and Sweetie taking up the bulk of the atmosphere with their bickering when Spike wasn't busy hiding from local ponies who recognized him enough to glare balefully.
“So, Sweetie, how do you spend your leisure time?”
“My what time?”
“You know, for fun!” Twilight gave a little hop and hoof clap in an attempt to visually demonstrate the idea of 'fun' briefly, resulting in both the dragon and smaller pony rolling their eyes. No respect for adults, those two.
“Oh. Why didn't you just say that then? I usually go looking for my Cutie Mark with my friends, the Cutie Mark Crusaders! I dunno what I'd do if we ever got them, though.” She frowned, screwing up her forehead to match her down-turned lips as she thought. “As long as we don't have 'em, it's like, 'Hey Scootaloo, how about we try to get our Cutie Marks in climbing trees to hunt birds?' Or 'Hey Apple Bloom, maybe we can get our Cutie Marks in making deep-fried pastrami sandwiches!' But what if they get theirs first?”
“You could get yours first. Or all at the same time,” Spike pointed out.
“I guess, but somepony's probably gonna get left out. How often do ponies usually get their Cutie Marks all at the same time?”
That last was addressed to the adult in the metaphorical room, of course, not the foodstuff. Ah, yes, Twilight was happy to get another chance to educate, but a little upset that Sweetie hadn't even been exposed to the historical treatises of Ponce De Hoof! Rarity'd seemed like such a classy mare, too, it was a shame that she put so much thought into appearance and manners and so little into the truly important things in this world, like learning!
“It's uncommon but not unheard of,” Twilight explained. “The biggest known case was the Great Cutie Minotaur-Wrangling Hunt, where the hunters' foals snuck along behind their parents and got all of their Cutie Marks in one go when the minotaurs got confused and charged in circles until they fell down. A hundred at once, one for every minotaur. Of course, that was decades ago.” She snorted. “It'd be hard to find a minotaur town near Equestria these days, we have to import most of the meat we don't raise ourselves. Shame, those haunch steaks are just....”
Two claws pinched her.
“Ow! Spike, what was that for?!”
“You were drooling again.”
“Well, excuse me for having a little culinary appreciation,” she huffed, wiping her chin and ignoring her flushed cheeks.
She returned her mind to perusing what background information she'd been given. So the little filly had a pair of friends she played with, ostensibly to get their Cutie Marks. There might've been some tinge of generosity to that if it hadn't also been self-interested. Then again, maybe she was overanalyzing. Perhaps everything in a pony's life didn't have to relate directly to whatever element it was they were supposed to be corralling. Or it could start small with youth and grow with age. Or perhaps...
The fact that Sweetie was still looking pensive, head hanging and not even energized enough to bother picking another fight with Spike, caused Twilight to remember that she was the adult authority figure and as such had a responsibility to the little one. She couldn't begin to imagine how the Princess would feel if her 'faithful student' led a mere unmarked filly into depression....
'My little pony....'
Yes. Just as the Princess was so kind to all those lesser than her, she, Twilight Sparkle, had to live up to that example and be kind to young, malleable minds!
She put a hoof on Sweetie's back, although it made walking a little awkward.
“Don't worry, my little pony, I'm sure your friendships will only be even more special after you all get your Cutie Marks.” Okay, Twilight, time to bluff. You can do this. You don't know squat about being friends with ponies, but you know about Cutie Marks! “After all, once you have your Cutie Marks, you'll be filled with certainty about your destiny is and know that who you are is who you're meant to be! That can only bring you closer to your friends because then you don't have all these fears and uncertainties in the way anymore.” There, that sounded believable enough. She liked to imagine the warmth of the sun was the Princess's own approval beaming down on her for not screwing that up.
“Oh, that sounds pretty neat.” Sweetie beamed up at her, bad mood dispelled just like that. “I don't really care what my Cutie Mark is as long as I've got Scootaloo and Apple Bloom to hang out with!”
“I suppose anything that promotes a healthy interplay between the psychodynamics of Cutie Mark generation and self-identity can be deemed psychologically healthy,” Twilight replied with a smile of her own, until Sweetie's face melded into one of vague confusion.
“Yeeesss, let the friendship flow through you....” Spike hissed softly, his tongue sticking out several inches longer than a pony equivalent would have managed, rubbing his hands together in an incongruously sinister way.
“Spike, I am an adult and she's a little filly. We cannot be friends by definition, that would be a gross breach of my role as authority figure and her role as test sub – I mean, child!”
“Oh, I see. So I suppose we're not friends either, then,” Spike huffed, crossing his arms.
“No, we're not and never will be! You're food! I keep telling you that!”
“You're not very smart, are you?” Sweetie asked the dragon chirpily. “Don't feel bad, it's okay. Dragons don't need big brains, they're not very delicious. Now, diamond dog brains, those're great mashed 'tatoes.”
“You keep saying I'm food, but you keep talkin' to me,” Spike insisted with the righteous certainty of a complete dummy. “You both keep talkin' to me,” he pointed out, smirking and lifting his head up a bit at Sweetie's sudden glare. “I think you don't wanna eat me. You wanna be my friend. 'Cause ain't nodragon more awesome than Spike to be friends with.”
“Don't push it, buster,” Twilight warned, pulling some trail mix out of her saddlebags and munching away to quell the hunger pangs. Mmm, salted weasel eyes and dried minotaur backsteak. “I'm talking to you because you're a useful second pair of hooves. Sometimes. Under highly controlled conditions. And Sweetie's talking to you because she doesn't know any better and you keep goading her.”
“Goading her?! She's goading me! All the time! She said she hated me like fifteen minutes ago, you heard her say it!”
“I did say it,” Sweetie admitted.
“Yes, but her aggression is derived from a healthy degree of familial protectiveness combined with new exposure to your bizarre 'ponies shouldn't eat dragons' occultism,” Twilight explained calmly. “It's only natural for her to try and engage you in dialogue when you instigate her with your crazy ideas, since she's not allowed to just eat you. Even though you keep tempting me to change my mind on that,” she added warningly, eyes narrowing. He didn't seem intimidated. Honestly, he was getting worse and worse the longer they knew each other....
Worse. It was worse. Had to remind herself that. Couldn't just let him be himself, the Princess would be appalled and disappointed. Wouldn't she? What had the Princess and Spike talked about that day? Surely Princess Celestia wouldn't confide in anything important to a little baby dragon that she wouldn't tell her own student....
“So, what was your Cutie Mark?” Sweetie asked, innocently derailing Twilight's thought process with all the charm of a bulldozer operated by a decapitated chicken running through a pillow fort.
The vast majority of Twilight's actual capacity to 'feel' simply switched off, her emotions entombed in a comforting embrace of do-not-analyze-do-not-think-do-not-remember-never-ever-ever while she kept on walking. Her expression locked with ironclad ferocity into a perfectly gentle, calm smile that she hoped was reminiscent of the Princess's habitual expression. Spike was looking nervous, though, so she tried lowering the smile a tad. It didn't help. Skittish little gu – skittish food.
Sweetie seemed oblivious.
“Did it hurt when you lost it?” Sweetie went on, nothing more in her voice or eyes than the meaningless inquisitiveness of all small foals to all things that caught their eyes for seconds at a time.
“Oh, that's not really important,” Twilight answered with well-rehearsed smoothness.
“You didn't forget what it was, did you?” Sweetie continued, her voice broaching the possibility with the horror usually reserved for late night ghost stories about the old mare with the rusty horseshoe.
“No. I remember what it was, and as long as I do, it's not important if anypony else knows or remembers. So,” Twilight said as brightly as the sun itself, “what grade are you in, Sweetie?”
It didn't take much to distract a pony of Sweetie's age. Further conversation made it clear that Sweetie was an energetic, inquisitive and friendly little filly who probably got into more trouble than she needed to by dint of her raw energy reserves and lack of mental brakes on bad ideas. So, she was ironically somepony who could get along with Spike perfectly, if she ever got over that ridiculous thing with Rarity... which was really more Rarity's fault than Sweetie's, after all, if an adult took something so seriously, it was only natural for the child to follow likewise. Hadn't Rarity ever read Dr. Slick Fetlock's Anatomy of Youthful Minds?
And this could actually be interfering in the research, too – at least the harmonizing angle of it, if not necessarily the chaos parasite branch of the study. Controlled conditions required as few barriers between Sweetie and displays of generosity in specific and harmony in general as possible. She had to do something about this. Which meant that she was going to have to stand up for Spike as if he were more than just portable and conveniently subservient rations.
It was an odd feeling. She wasn't sure if she liked it or not.
Don't get the wrong idea, Spike, she pleaded with him silently. This was for science.
“Sweetie, you know Spike's really sorry about what he did, right?”
Sweetie stared at her with such suspicious that Twilight might as well have been explaining how there was a concealed pit trap several feet in front of them, then directed her glare to Spike, who immediately tried to look very, very sincerely sad. As always when a child was intentionally trying to look sincere, Spike only managed to look amusingly ridiculous.
“Being sorry doesn't make my sis happy,” Sweetie said cautiously after a moment.
“Only you can make you happy,” Twilight quoted the Princess with perfectly-copied intonation. “If Rarity feels really hurt, then she has a right to feel that way, but that doesn't mean we all have to go hate Spike forever because of it. He's just a dragon, after all, and I wouldn't have brought him on this trip if I wasn't one hundred percent sure that he'll never, ever hurt anypony deliberately ever again.” She put some extra emphasis on that last line to drive the point home to Spike himself, whose eyes watered. Ah, the gullibility of prey species. Maybe saying it would make it true.
“Yeah, I guess. Sorry Spike.”
Err, an apology really wasn't necessary, but....
“Hey, if you can forgive me for making your sister wear a dorky mask, I'll forgive you for thinking I look delicious!”
“Deal!” Sweetie giggled while Twilight stared at the two of them, mystified. Then Sweetie's pupils contracted and she whipped her head over to Twilight. “Can I have some of that snack mix miss Twilight?”
“Sure, Sweetie, here ya go.”
The rest of the route to Fluttershy's home continued to be filled with Spike and Sweetie Belle's bickering... but it was the kind of bickering that didn't have any kind of sincere upset behind it anymore. In her role as neutral observer, emissary of the scientific method and adult supervisor alike, Twilight merely watched them, noting the details of their interactions. She tried to formulate theories on childhood development and exposure to unusual culinary circumstances as a backdrop to the overarching theory on the chaos parasite, but her mind refused to click together right. Maybe it was just because of Sweetie's earlier questions, but something about watching this... it hurt in a way she kind of liked.
That, too, was familiar, but from completely different circumstances, and the inadvertent mental comparison left her mouth dry no matter how much water she chugged from her travel canteen. Then a gentle curve in the road down a few hills lead them to a sight that quite blew away all other thoughts from Twilight's head.
“That... is a lot of food. I mean pets,” she corrected herself, grabbing the handkerchief Spike offered automatically and wiping drool away from both hers and Sweetie's mouths.
“Yeah, miss Fluttershy doesn't like anypony eating 'em though. I mean she won't stop you, but she'll look at you really sad and stuff and make you feel like you have a tummy ache so you stop yourself. Well, most of us stop. Scootaloo really likes to snack on the snakes. I don't like snakes, they're too crunchy.”
“I think snakes are alright, personally,” Twilight commented absentmindedly, eyes roaming over the bears and the cougars and the spiders and the lizards and all other things carnivorous.
They really should have been aggressive towards the other species encroaching on their territory, let alone the ponies, but they weren't. It was fascinating. Perhaps this was a side effect of the Element of Kindness that Spike was so sure Fluttershy had? To what extent could using an Element be conscious as opposed to subconscious? Was intentionally directing such an artifact's power even viable at all? Maybe that was why all the experiments had failed so badly, maybe it was just something you needed to let happen, like, like whatever that thing was that had just happened between Sweetie and Spike-
Twilight almost doubled over from a sudden stomach cramp, eyes watering.
“Twi! Are you okay?”
The nickname seemed all the more presumptive now somehow than it'd been back when there hadn't been other ponies around, especially young, impressionable ponies. All this inappropriate familiarity, argh, it was stressing her out and making her stomach hurt even worse. It had to be all the physical activity, she was so out of shape and not used to eating anything that didn't come from the castle kitchens or an upscale cafe....
“Twi?”
She shoved him away with one hoof, ignoring the hurt look he gave her.
“I've just got an upset stomach, stop hovering,” she snapped, made irate by the smell of his chubby dragon flesh so close to her. It wasn't like she was sick or anything! His eyes teared up, and Sweetie stared silently from the sidelines. Wait, no, this wasn't conducive to... to the research. That was why she felt so bad about it, it was a violation of basic environmental sterility. Her stomach cramp finally loosened up and she gave a sigh of relief. “Um, I guess that wasn't very nice of me, was it? Sorry, I'm sure I'll feel better once we get off our hooves. Sweetie, would you like to run say hello to miss Fluttershy while I double-check to make my equipment's all in order?” What was left of it, at least.
“Okay!” Sweetie scampered, hopping over several predatory mammals along the way and stealing a taste-testing lick from a passing weasel without so much as a pause.
She and Spike ran through the much-reduced checklist of her scientific gear, making sure what little she had left was still in good condition and ready for deployment.
“Hey Twi....”
“Yes, Spike?” she asked, suppressing her irritation at him slowing down the checklist.
“This doesn't hurt you, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean... I just started thinking... if you've all got little mini-Discords in you or whatever, then maybe they'd get mad if you suddenly started thinking about being nice to, uh, food and stuff. 'Specially if you'd had the mini-Discord in you for like tons of years. It doesn't hurt, does it?”
“That's an interesting line of inquiry, but no, I'm fine. It's just a stomach ache,” Twilight replied automatically without really thinking about whether or not it was true. Too much to think about already, she was so tired and hungry, had to isolate the variables instead of getting sidetracked by Spi- by the food's random daydreams. And it was not touching that he actually cared. It was annoying. He was smothering her with his crazy 'don't eat me'ness. “Anyway, item twenty-two, carbon-arc lamp....”
“Still triple A quality,” Spike confirmed happily. “Ya know, I dunno why you even wanted that.”
“I don't remember.” She tilted her head. “Oh well, better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it! Item twenty-three...”
“Spike!”
“FLUTTERSHY!”
And with that, the sacred rite of the checklist was broken. Twilight was left to watch the bizarre sight of her emergency food supply running over to an enthusiastic but disconcertingly thin butter-yellow pegasus, the two of them hugging and nuzzling each other fondly.
“Oohhhkaaaayyyyy,” she muttered, quickly turning her eyes back to her equipment so she wouldn't have to deal with the indigestion the sentimental sight was giving her. Item twenty-four, item twenty-five, lalala....
When she felt up to it, she put everything back in the saddlebags and introduced herself to the pegasus.
“Hi, miss Fluttershy? I'm Twilight Sparkle-”
Fluttershy squeaked and tried to hide behind the (obviously) much smaller bodies of Spike and Sweetie.
“-Princess Celestia's student-” Twilight went on, a little confused.
Fluttershy squeaked again, somehow contracting inside herself to shrink.
“-and I'm conducting localized research on a pair of interrelated but distinct bio-arcane phenomena. Do you have a little time?”
“It's okay, Twilight's a nice pony,” Spike encouraged the pegasus, who straightened up the barest little bit.
“Um... I guess I have some time... but where did you find my poor little Spike?” Her voice was just barely audible now, far from the enthusiastic yell of earlier. She hugged the dragon to herself again, causing Spike's eyes to glaze from excessively comfortable snuggles.
“Hey! What does the food get hugs and not me?” Sweetie asked, hurt.
“Oh, I'm sorry, Sweetie, you can both get all the hugs you want,” Fluttershy soothed her, grabbing Sweetie with her free hoof, who giggled and squirmed and spat pink mane out of her mouth.
It was just a bit adorable and more than a bit strange.
“Um, yeah,” Twilight said slowly, fumbling for her sense of professionalism and missing by a good mile. “I actually met Spike while he was making a little trouble in Canterlot.”
“Oh no! Spike! I thought you said you were going to be a good little dragon!”
“Yeah, I lied,” Spike said back with a smirk.
“Not as much as you'd think, actually. He's been a very useful little emergency food supply since we met,” Twilight explained. Fluttershy's thawing demeanor suddenly froze over and for a brief but terrifying moment, Twilight felt like her entire soul was being swallowed by those huge blue irises. What was the problem?! Oh, wait, the 'food supply' thing. Right. Fluttershy was a... special... kind of pony. “I mean, I've basically been treating him like a research assistant and he's done a very good job of it,” she went on hastily, and whatever bizarre spell was in Fluttershy's gaze broke, allowing Twilight to breathe again with relief. “We wouldn't even be here if it weren't for him, and from what he tells me, he wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, so I guess I owe you some thanks. So, uh... thanks?”
She knew she was rambling. This was not how it was supposed to go. But at least the strange pegasus didn't have a friggin' wax mask or anything else crazy. It was just going to be tough to remember that miss Fluttershy was a pony who didn't like to eat meat, as deranged as it sounded. A pony who lived with food all around her and didn't eat it. There was definitely something going on here, Spike was right about that much.
“Oh, you're welcome,” Fluttershy said, letting the two little ones squirm out of her grasp as she dropped her head, draping her face in a curtain of hair. “I've been so worried about Spike ever since he left. Rarity just hasn't been the same, and even Rainbow Dash and Pinkie have been very upset... but not, um, for the same reasons as me. I'm glad you've kept him safe. It's not always easy to, to, um....”
“Not eat a stick-to-your-ribs yummy baby dragon?” Spike piped up.
“That sounds about right,” Twilight agreed, and the three ponies laughed gently.
:Why don't you all come in and I'll fix us some tea and things?”
Fluttershy's cottage was as humble and cozy as it'd seemed to be from the outside, all warm wood and gentle curves and doilies. Very unlike Twilight's preferred lodgings, or anything remotely Canterlotian, but it had its own charm once you got over finding fur and feathers in unexpected places. But as it turned out, the tea had no mice, shrews, rats or other meat-based additives whatsoever, and the 'and things' part of the snack was... small salads. Without bacon. Whoever heard of a salad without bacon?!
“Yeah, she's like this,” Sweetie confided in Twilight over the munchies while trying to slip the contents of her salad bowl to a nearby dog – and then eat the dog, who was just a bit too quick to fall for the sudden snap of Sweetie's teeth. “It's why Rarity never does lunch dates with her even though they're friends and stuff. I think they mostly go to the spa.”
“I hope this is alright, I'm not really used to entertaining guests,” Fluttershy apologized.
Twilight smiled and ate a plain, totally no meat in it whatsoever vinaigretted tomato while Spike just watched and smirked like the little sadist he was.
“Oh, no, this is fine! It's... expertly prepared!” Twilight finally said, coming up with a reasonably honest compliment that wouldn't have to address the horrible lack of anything resembling bloody red protein. “I'm not really much of a cook myself.”
“She can make sandwiches and that's about it,” Spike offered completely ignoring Twilight's reactionary glare and causing Sweetie to giggle. “Sometimes I even wonder about the sandwiches.”
“Oh my.”
“You're exaggerating, Spike!”
“Remember that time you had to measure the crust?”
“It wasn't symmetrical! Diagonal cuts are tricky, especially with more than one layer of meat!”
“Oh my.”
“Anyway, miss Fluttershy, I suppose I should get around to explaining why we're wasting your time like this.”
“How could it possibly be a waste of time to be around my favorite little dragon and my favorite little filly?” Fluttershy asked, seemingly with total sincerity. Angel halos practically floated over Spike's and Sweetie's heads. “I'm just glad to see them both again. Sweetie, please stop trying to eat Mister Flufferwhiskers.”
Flufferwhiskers yowled and ran off in a clatter of pans and cutlery.
“I'm glad we're all enjoying ourselves, but this is actually very serious business.” And to show it, Twilight put on her serious business face. Fluttershy squeaked. “Okay, maybe not that serious...” She tried smiling and Fluttershy calmed down. There. “I've come from Canterlot on a research project to examine the possibility of discordant parasites affecting pony psychochemistry, as well as to try to determine the possible existence of the so-called Elements of Harmony, a half dozen old artifacts with similar influences, but positive instead of negative. Have you ever heard of either of these things before my mentioning them, ma'am?”
“Oh no... I don't think so. Unless the parasites you're talking about are lampreys? I've met some lampreys. They were very sweet little guys once you got to know them.”
“Errr, no, I don't think so.” Twilight was once again struck with the feeling of being inside the home of a madpony. Why did this keep happening? It was hard not to start counting Fluttershy's ribs and scream at her to eat a steak or something, for the love of sun and moon. “Spike theorizes that you might be the Bearer of the Element of Harmony called Kindness, because you're apparently so, well, nice.”
Fluttershy blushed and waved her hooves in immediate rejection of the concept. “Oh no! I'm sure there are much nicer ponies than me,” she objected while patting the uneaten dog on the head, seemingly out of pure reflex.
“Mmmhmm. And Sweetie Belle is here because she also appears to be a Bearer, currently estimated as Generosity. Sweetie, stop scraping your salad into my bowl.”
“Sorry!” Sweetie apologized with a huge blush at Fluttershy's hurt stare. “I was just trying to be, uh, generous!”
Twilight sighed. All this contamination. She'd be lucky if she could crank a single decent thesis out of it by the end.
“We're hoping that prolonged interaction can get some sort of spark going to confirm this theory, if you don't have any problems with playing with Sweetie for a while?”
“Of course I don't have any problems with it, that sounds wonderful. Sweetie, since you don't like your salad very much, why don't you help me pick out something from the garden that's more to your tastes?”
“Yaaaaay,” Sweetie said with a huge smile while her eyes turned to Twilight and said 'Help me!'
Twilight covered her mouth with a hoof.
“Maybe you'll get your Cutie Mark in gardening, Sweets,” Spike put in with an evil grin while Sweetie's face contorted in terror. “A great big rutabaga Cutie Mark....”
The garden was a small homebrew affair, clearly just for Fluttershy to use as a supplement for her groceries. Nonetheless, its very existence in addition to everything else going on with the pegasus was a huge clue as to the level of commitment Fluttershy had to her current... lifestyle.
Fluttershy was only a few moments through explaining to the four of them how to check a potato for bad spots when a drawn out grumpy squawk interrupted their gardening lesson. While Twilight, Spike and Sweetie looked around in all directions rather foolishly, Fluttershy straightened up with an assertive snap, honing in on the source of the sound immediately.
“Petra! Is that you? Petra?”
The pegasus hadn't used her wings once since Twilight had seen her... till now. With a skin and bone frame propelled with the almost erratic speed of a locust or a dragonfly, Fluttershy zipped through the air in a few short pushes of her wings, nearer to the where the trees of the Everfree Forest began to encroach on her backyard. Even those few flaps seemed to tire her, she was noticeably panting as she continued to call out questioningly, searching through bushes and shadows.
“Oh no! Petra! You poor thing!”
A foul, burping buGAWK rang through the meadow as Fluttershy took a chicken in her front hooves, lifting it to her shoulder. Twilight stared bemusedly while Spike trotted up closer to the spectacle, followed by Sweetie Belle.
“Is it okay? It doesn't look hur – HOLY JEEZ IT'S A SNAKE MONSTER THING!” Spike interrupted himself, jumping backwards and landing on top of Sweetie, who immediately collapsed from the weight.
“No it's not! It's a chicken! It clucks and has a beak and everything!” Sweetie insisted, squirming and flailing until she managed to get herself out from under Spike in the least efficient and most undignified way possible.
Taking stock of the situation, Twilight smiled.
“Actually, you're both right, sort of. It's a cockatrice – half chicken, half snake! I've never seen one this close before. Fluttershy, are you sure it's safe to hold one like that? I've heard they can turn ponies to stone.” Confound it, she had goggles designed just for such situations... back at Canterlot! She could have taken an extra pair of saddlebags, but noooo, Spike had said they wouldn't need them! Hah, never take advice from your meals-in-waiting.
“Oh no, not at all! Well, they can, I suppose,” Fluttershy consented reluctantly, cradling Petra closer to her chest. “But Petra would never do such a thing, would you Petra?”
Petra glared evilly over Fluttershy's shoulder, and the remaining two ponies and dragon twitched nervously in unison.
“Especially in her current condition! She must have scraped her bottom scales, she's got a bad-looking infection on her tummy. Poor Petra, that looks really painful! Why don't you come inside and sit on a nice soft pillow and we'll get you some ointment, okay?”
Twilight didn't really mind the research being put on hold, since it gave her a chance to examine a rather interesting specimen of a species she'd only read about in books. Sweetie immediately wanted to have a staring contest with the creature, which Twilight forbade, since Sweetie was technically her responsibility and she didn't need to give Rarity any more reasons to go dramatically unhinged, like returning her little sister to her in statuette form. Fluttershy insisted that Petra was completely safe and a 'complete sweetie pie,' but Twilight and Spike wore equally guarded expressions of cynicism at the pegasus's verdict on her ward's personality.
“I wonder what they taste like,” Sweetie asked of the ceiling while they all listened to Fluttershy rummaging in her medicine cabinet in the distance.
“Previous research studies in the area of exotic culinary arts have led ponies to discover that cockatrices taste just like chicken, only with an unpleasant chalky aftertaste. Kind of a shame, really. They seem to have a surprising amount of meat on them.”
“Ya know, it wouldn't kill you ponies to think about somethin' besides your stomachs for a change,” Spike said scathingly. “Especially since the 'food' can hear you talk about it and has magic pontification powers!”
Petra opened her beak to give a serpentine hiss, glancing over at Spike with a dignified but sluggish look of venom, as if to say 'When the time comes for me to kill you all, out of respect, I'll kill you last.' Or maybe that was just Twilight projecting her hungry thoughts onto the creature. It was hard to think with a stomach full of baconless salad, blech.
“I'm afraid I've got some bad news everypony,” Fluttershy broke to them as she drifted back in as silent and graceful and utterly unnoticeable as a dandelion seed. “I'm all out of the special ointment I need for treating Petra's infection and the market's not open today. Don't worry, though, Petra, I know where I can get some more! I already have most of the ingredients here, so I just need to fetch a couple herbs from the forest. It should only take an hour or two.”
“Cool. How can we help?”
“I guess Cutie Mark Crusader herb finders is better than gardeners. A little better.”
Twilight's mock-parental supervision alarm went off shrilly. She didn't even know she had one of those in her head until just now.
“Whoa, whoa, you two, I am not letting either of you go into the Everfree Forest! Sweetie, the Everfree Forest is far too dangerous for a little filly like you, and-”
“I'm not that little!”
“-Spike,” Twilight went on without pausing, “I am not sacrificing my emergency rations for some random forest animal to get their fangs in you. You have put me through too much trouble to not at least get a meal out of you one of these days, mister.” She blinked, then, realizing that Spike and Fluttershy were both staring at her with identical nonexpressions. “What?”
“Well when you put it like that I'm probably safer away from you anyway,” Spike said, blowing a raspberry.
“I'm sorry, Spike,” Fluttershy said with a heartwrenching vocal regret that seemed more properly reserved for live readings of romance novels. “But you really shouldn't come with me to the forest, it is dangerous. Don't worry, I'll be back really soon. And Twilight's certainly not going to eat you while I'm gone, are you Twilight?”
“I dunno, the disrespectful way he's acting-”
Twilight briefly drowned in Fluttershy's aqua-ringed pupils, pits into an infinity of something she didn't know, couldn't know, didn't and couldn't want to know.
“Miss Twilight, you aren't going to eat Spike while I'm gone, are you?” she asked again, much more firmly.
“No of course not, I'd never do something like that,” Twilight responded automatically, blinking and shaking herself afterward. She felt weird. What had just happened?
“Good.” Fluttershy nodded, mane swaying faintly. “Petra, don't you worry, I'll be back really soon. I'm sure you all can keep each other entertained until I get back, right?”
“Yes, Fluttershy,” Spike and Sweetie droned with the automatic apparent (whether genuine or not) obedience of the young to their elders. Twilight almost said it with them, she still felt a little odd in the head.
Wait, could this be Fluttershy's magic? The magic of kindness? Was it ocular-based, like some variants of traditional hypnotism? Oh, she hadn't even gotten time to do any proper experiments yet! She jumped up out of her seat to call to the pegasus urgently, but Fluttershy was already gone. The skinny little mare could move fairly fast when she wanted to, at least in short doses. Frustrating.
Twilight sank back into the coach, rubbing her forehead.
“Spike, Sweetie, has Fluttershy always been able to do that eye thing?”
“What eye thing?” the two young ones chorused, still in sync. They stuck their tongues out at each other, then Sweetie tried to bite Spike's, who dodged back, then they both broke into snickers. “Stop copying me!” they said next, doing it on purpose this time. Then they devolved into air-fighting each other with vaguely rude gestures.
Twilight Sparkle, student to Princess Celestia herself, straight A student... now a babysitter.
Why had she thought this stupid trip had been a good idea?
Oh, right. She hadn't. It had always seemed like a stupid idea. But she'd gone along with it anyway, because Spike just whined and whined and chipped away at her with his infernal optimism and helpfulness! If only he'd been a bad assistant, she could have eaten him weeks ago and her life would've been so much easier. So much easier.
And lonely, a part of her she hadn't known existed whispered.
Ridiculous. She worked hard to make Princess Celestia proud and that was all she needed. She didn't need friends, or talking food that liked her back, or a bunch of pets. She saw Shiny and Cadance every few months and her parents once or twice a year, that was good enough.
She was happy the way she was.
And she could eat Spike any time she wanted.
Her eyes drifted over to the now dozing Petra, with a belly of unhealthy green mixed up with the natural green of her scales. Just a few nasty-looking, flaking streaks of it right now, but no telling how much was on the inside, or how much it could grow if left untreated. Fluttershy was right to hurry if she cared about the creature, which for some strange reason, she did. Things could seem almost entirely alright with your meat on the outside except for a few odd spots, when on the inside, your prey could be dying sick. And most of the time they'd never tell.
Not like ponies.
Twilight shivered and dug in her saddlebags for more snack mix.
“Sweetie, Spike, do either of you want....”
Her eyes widened as she whipped her head around the room. The room that was entirely lacking in other ponies or in little baby dragons.
No, no, how could she be so careless?! They'd been so loud that she'd just tuned out their noise as a background thing, when had they just decided to walk off without telling her?!
“SWEETIE! SPIKE!”
She checked every room in the first floor, then outside, then back in to the second floor. They weren't there. They had just crept off while she'd been distracted for just half a blasted second, like thieves in the night! Spike had been around her long enough to know what the rules were! And Sweetie was a pony, she ought to have a bare minimum of sense! How could they do something like this to her?!
No, this was her fault. HER fault. A milkwater-mild pony like Fluttershy could corral tons of beasts, and Twilight Sparkle couldn't even keep track of a baby dragon and a filly. She was a bad pony, completely irresponsible, and the Princess was going to banish her to a rocky island devoid of trees or hamburgers or anything to read!
“Y-you didn't happen to see where they went, did you?” she asked Petra shakily, who tilted her avian head to one side scornfully and made a plainly fraudulent show of going back to sleep.
How quickly did fear transmute into fury.
She wasn't falling for Spike's little self-serving hoax, and she wasn't Fluttershy, either. Respecting other ponies' property was one thing, but the responsibilities of her position took precedent over some dumb little chicken headed critter's naptime, even if the critter was sick!
Twilight prodded the cockatrice firmly with a hoof.
“I asked you if you say which way they went,” she repeated icily. “Come on, Petra, Fluttershy would be really upset with you if you let anything happen to them just because you didn't feel like telling me! Did they go outside? Did they go to play hide and seek? Did they try to follow Fluttershy?! Well?!”
Throughout the interrogation, she'd been poking with her hoof a little more firmly each time, awakening and grumpying the cockatrice further until they were both glaring at each other with identical irateness, Twilight's teeth clenched, Petra's feathers ruffled. And as she said that last question, it occurred to Twilight that that very probably was what they'd done. If they'd followed Fluttershy, they were probably lost in the woods already. They could get hurt or killed!
It was okay, she had spells for this. She could teleport, she'd just jerry-rig a quasi-quantum navigational echolocation radar that could bounce off the branches and-
As she turned to leave at the breakneck trot of blind panic, Twilight tripped over her numbed back hooves and fell painfully onto her collarbone and jaw. With a snarling groan of frustration, she tried to get to her hooves... and stumbled. A quick look back told her why she was having trouble.
At some point during the one-sided conversation, Petra had turned her hind legs from fetlocks on down to stone.
Struck with horror, Twilight just gaped openmouthed for a second before trying to struggle to her hooves again, lighting up her horn and sending bolts of a crude material-softening spell (ordinarily used to help stale bread) in the direction of her back hooves. The spell didn't do anything. Then again maybe that was good – if she softened the rock till it broke off, she'd be crippled for life. If she wasn't already. It hadn't even hurt or tingled or tickled! How could a predator evolve with such a completely ridiculous means of assault?! It was completely unfair!
Turning her head to look back at Petra accusingly, she was met with non-mammalian eyes that were alien in their intelligence. Aware, but with priorities substantially different from her own. Well-behaved when she wanted to be, maybe, but Petra clearly had no interest in playing her rightful place in the pecking order of prey and ponies, and Twilight Sparkle was, after all, no Fluttershy.
This time Twilight felt the stone creeping up all of her legs equally, and contrary to all reason it felt as slimy and vile and slick as the moisture of Petra's stomach injection. It wasn't just the surface, it was hide and flesh and the bone beneath and all the veins throughout, stiffening and chilling into something that wasn't meant to support life.
In that beautiful, cozy little cottage, next to a cute little blue table with cute little daisies in a cute little vase on it, Twilight found herself as terrified as she'd been around Discord. Then her wits came back to her and she remembered who she was, what she was. Too bad, Fluttershy. Amends would have to be made later, but no way was this featherbrain going to get the best of Twilight Sparkle.
Petra was surprisingly agile at avoiding magical assault... but hadn't anticipated Twilight just using her flashy spells to lure the beast closer to her teeth.
The passing of seconds and minutes went vague for a bit, but her hooves didn't get any better. After some time, and Twilight really wasn't sure how much time, another pegasus burst into the room – but, to what seemed to be completely mutual surprise, Fluttershy was not involved.
“Hey, what're you doing chowing on Fluttershy's pet cockatrice?!” the blue pegasus yelled raspily, while Twilight just lifted her head from the gaping rupture in Petra's neck and licked her lips with guilty satisfaction.
Ugh, tainted meat. She just knew she was going to get sick from this.
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MOAR!
My favorite story, updated?
You Sir, have made my night!
Loved the Sweetie and Spike interaction. I was quite entertained by this chapter. I just love Spike so much in this story.
I can't imagine why you would unhappy with this. Also, are going to be sticking with Twilight's perspective for the rest of the run, or switch back to Spike at some point?
Of shit! Rainbow Dash is there. Hope Petra lives. Fluttershy might stare Twi to death if she killed one of her pets... or at least demand an apology.... maybe.
I really want to give Twilight a good sock right now.
Hmmm. Oh Twilight, why did you eat what may be the only way to undo your petrification? You should know better than that.
Getting an odd vibe from Fluttershy. I'm starting to wonder if she's not going to be kindness but, rather, will end up as Loyalty due to how loyal she seems to be with the animals - to a point where she's clearly starving herself (or, rather, starving the thing in her belly which in turn starves her) well beyond what we first thought. Something about her just seems to be putting me off the idea that she's still kindness and I wonder if thats due to how it's been made too obvious that she's acting kind.
Spike and Sweetie were later found curled up snoozing in the chicken coop.
2944211 But do they work orally?
Also, wonderful fic here. Going to be one of those people who say's that this needs more views.
When is Spike going to kill them all and eat their livers?
Yay! your back!
and your front!
You're all here!
Keep up the good work!
this needs more views.
I really like the interactions in this fic, it's a shame it will all go downhill if the changeling dream comes true.
I really don't understand why this is so unpopular. 150k well written words of a unique concept, and barely anyone seems interested. I've seen fics that are so cliché they might have been copy pasted from the thousands of downright identical fics that are misspelt, have poor grammar and missing or misplaced punctuation that are hundreds of times more popular than this masterpiece. It boggles the mind.
2954833
It's probably the pain.
It honestly hurts me reading this story.
Not because of any quality problems.
It's just the massive logical fallacy it's premise is based on.
It kind of spoiled Discords involvement as well. Since it's so nonsensical only he could be responsible for it.
Also. Damn that is some impressively subtle mindfucking. This Discord is a true master of his craft. They even think it's perfectly logical to eat meat with the teeth they have, and the lack of natural weapons, and the blatant reality warping those imps seem able to pull off.
They gotta be like mini discords or something. The things ponies seem able to do when trying to eat something it's like they all suddenly become more powerful then Canon Twilight. Every single one of them.
Also, I really need to figure out how the Changeling masquerade got broken here, that parts confusing.
“Yeeesss, let the friendship flow through you....”