You Ought to Be In Pictures

by McPoodle

Chapter 5

The time had finally come for Spike and Trixie to travel to New Zealand for the Smaug audition. He had done quite well as Finley, the winged monkey character from Oz the Great and Powerful, and Sam had helped him improve his audition reel by leaps and bounds.

Trixie came along as Spike’s caretaker, of course, but also because she was a massive Sherlock groupie, and Smaug’s Voice was going to be none other than Benedict Cumberbatch.

Unfortunately, they had both overslept. Combine that with the horrible L.A. traffic, and they arrived at the airport twenty minutes too late for the only daily flight out to Auckland.

Spike started panicking. “The auditions are today! Why didn’t we leave a day earlier? Or a week?”

“Stop Twilighting and listen to Trixie. Trixie knows a human in Brisbane. Getting from there to New Zealand will be a snap. We just need a videophone.”

A few minutes later, they had both squeezed into the tight videophone booth while Trixie dialed the number.

A human woman with short red hair answered. “Hello?”

“Tegan!” Trixie exclaimed. “This is Trixie. You remember Trixie, don’t you?”

The woman scowled. “You’re calling in your favor, aren’t you?”

“Hey, this one will be easy. Trixie will even pay for it. We just need to...”

Trixie pushed her hoof into the screen. She grabbed Spike’s hand and before he knew it, both of them had been transmitted across the Pacific Ocean and found themselves on the floor of a modest apartment kitchen.

Tegan hung up the phone, which now only showed the inside of the empty booth.

Trixie calmly got up and dusted herself off. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Tegan sighed. In a sarcastic voice she said, “Gee! Sometimes I wish I was a toon, so I didn’t have to use planes to get from place to place.”

“You’re a stewardess. It’s not like it’s hard for you either. Now could you be a dear and drive Trixie and her charge to the airport? We need to get to Auckland before noon.”

“...There is no way that the human’s name was Tegan.”

“Well...no, I was protecting her privacy. It’s an inside joke.”

“An extremely obvious inside joke. And yet you didn’t disguise Lauren’s name at all.”

“Are you still on that? Artistic integrity!”

As they were walking out of the apartment, Spike pulled Trixie aside. “Hey, can any toon do that?”

“Sure,” said Trixie. “The trick is to keep yourself from accidentally beaming yourself any time you touch a screen, once you know you can do it.”

$ $ $

“You’re the only toon dragon to apply for the part,” the director Peter told the pair at 12:15. “So that’s a big plus. What do you think?”

Benedict was still leaning over the computer workstation, using a mouse to scrub Spike’s audition reel back and forth. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “You don’t exactly look the part.”

(Trixie silently squealed to herself on hearing the master’s voice.)

“True, but you can make me look the part,” Spike replied, giving a pleading look at Peter.

Peter got up. “Well, I’ve been dying to see the character model that Weta put together for me. Let’s go out onto the big stage and try it out.”

---

Back in Vancouver, shooting was interrupted with the news that the Hasbro executives were visiting the set. Everyone gathered in front of the library tree exterior.

“Ah, there are our stars!” proclaimed the Hasbro exec. “Come on, let’s take a picture of the stars of our hit toy line!” An assistant whispered in her ear. “Hit television show,” she then corrected herself. The team of photographers she had brought with her then stepped forward.

“Well, that’s funny, she said flatly. The villain of the piece shows up, and she has no name! Where’s your ‘artistic integrity’ now?”

“...I’m trying to keep everybody else in character. I don’t like Ms. Name-Redacted, so I’m mangling her character to Heck and back, and that means I don’t feel comfortable using her real name.”

“Is Heck a different place than Hell in the vast cosmology of worlds?”

“Yes. Don’t you read Dilbert?”

Afterwards she led the cast into the library tree interior set, where a table with several contracts and pens had been set up. “I’ve got your new contracts all drawn up and ready, extending your time out to sixty-five episodes, and a movie! Isn’t that great?”

Rainbow Dash picked up her contract and started hoofing through it. It was a lot thicker than the previous contract and had a big “CONFIDENTIAL” watermark across every page. “Wow, you’re giving everything away in here.” And then she stopped, and looked nervously over at Fluttershy, who was going through the pages at a slower rate. “Ah, you might want to re-think the Second Season finale,” she told XXXXX the executive.

“That finale is going to be wonderful, even better than the premiere!” the executive exclaimed. She looked over at Daffy standing just outside the door and beckoned him forward. “Daffy Duck here took care of the re-write, and I think he did a fantastic job!”

Daffy walked over, his chest puffed out from the flattery. “I just punched it up a bit.”

“A bit? You fixed all of our plot holes!” the exec exclaimed.

Twilight, who was in the middle of reading the revised script, wondered if there was some fundamental difference in how the two of them defined the term “plot hole”.

“Ha! Shots fired!”

“Dodo, the controversial opinion is not that “A Royal Wedding” is flawless; it’s insisting that the script has no plot holes whatsoever.”

“Well, you’re no fun.”

“I don’t even mind how, in warning Twilight of the danger of the false Cadance, you basically made yourself into Spike’s replacement,” the bigwig continued to gush. “I mean, you’re Daffy Duck, for crying out loud! If that doesn’t pull in more of those ‘bronies’, then I don’t know what will!”

“Do bronies actually buy the toys?” one of the executive’s assistants asked another.

“We’re working on that,” the other replied.

“This is wrong,” Fluttershy said in a dangerously quiet voice. “Lauren promised me that this would be a show about friendship. How it can solve all of our problems.” She put down the contract and started advancing on the executives. “She said she was tired of all of the shows telling girls that they would only be happy if they fell in love. She wanted this show to be the alternative to that, a show to tell girls that they didn’t have to live that way.”

The executive looked incredulously at Fluttershy, the one she always identified as the pushover. Was she a little bit bigger now? And off-model? “Well, I’m not going to change anything,” she said defiantly. “Love sells way better than friendship. In fact, that’s going to be the name for the show starting with the third season—”

“You really don’t want to be doing this!” Rainbow Dash warned. “Why don’t we take a few days to think this over? Fluttershy, don’t you want to give the folks at Hasbro a few days to reconsider?”

“I’d like to hear an answer now!” Fluttershy barked, her voice noticeably deeper. “What’s the new show going to be called?”

The proud executive stuck up her nose in the air with pride. “We’re going to call it My Little Pony: Love Is the Answer!”

That was the wrong answer.

---

The transformed Spike was marching through the holographically-projected town of Laketown with abandon, stomping one cottage after another like he was Godzilla. “I’ve always dreamed of being this big!” he bellowed.

“You’re not convincing me,” Benedict said sourly.

“Right, right,” Spike said, calming down. “Can you give me the Lonely Mountain set? That’s where all the good lines are.”

At that moment, an assistant raced into the sound stage. “Excuse me, Mr. The Dragon?” he asked, looking around him.

“Up here,” said Spike.

The assistant looked up, and up, at Spike putting on a terrifying visage. He dropped to his rear in abject terror.

“OK, that’s better,” noted Benedict.

“I’ve got a video call from America for you, from a Miss Twilight Sparkle?”

“I...um...how hard is it to turn this Smaug skin off?” asked Spike.

“Hard,” said Peter, sitting at the computer. “Ah, here’s the call. I’m routing it to the east wall.”

One whole wall of the simulated town disappeared, to be replaced by the gigantic face of Twilight Sparkle. “Spike, Daffy told me where you were, and...wow! You make a great Smaug! Anyway, how good are you at talking Fluttershy down from one of her attacks?”

“Second only to Angel, I’d say.”

“Good. We need you here, now. As Smaug.”

“As Smaug?”

There was the sound of a distant explosion, and the light behind Twilight’s head briefly flared. “In case the talking doesn’t work. Fluttershy’s kind of...big now.”

Spike looked down helplessly at Trixie. Trixie shrugged.

“Well, it’s a good thing this screen is so big.” He started advancing towards it and then stopped. “Hey, you look like you’re inside.”

“So?”

Spike gestured at his size.

“Oh. Well this cord isn’t very long. Rob, do you think—?”

There was another explosion.

Rob appeared in frame, bodily picking up a surprised Twilight. “Just count to three and do it! And prepare for a big entrance.” He then ran straight for the door.

---

“It was YOU!” the Beast roared at Daffy as it reached its full size of forty feet, completely demolishing the Library Tree set. “You didn’t take away my Angel for me, and you didn’t talk Spike into leaving for him. You did it all for yourself, and your enormous ego!”

“Are you going to describe ‘the beast’?”

“No. Reader, if you have the special on VHS then you know. And if not...what you are imagining right now is much better than how the character was originally drawn.”

“Well, you’re not so little yourself, Sister!” Daffy sneered.

A giant fist then flattened him, but he sprang right back to three dimensions. “Can’t catch me! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

A few minutes later poor Rob’s office was similarly obliterated, and now Spike was surveying the scene. “Hey, why didn’t you call Lauren?” he asked.

“I did that first,” Twilight explained. “She’s over there in the chair, eating some of Pinkie Pie’s popcorn. She’s on Fluttershy’s side.”

“Oh.”

“And then Daffy ran by and told me to call you.”

“You’re running out of sets,” Spike remarked as the Beast, aka Fluttershy, destroyed another one in her rampage.

“That’s kind of why I called you,” Twilight dead-panned.

“Look, you’ve got to do something, and fast,” Rainbow Dash pleaded, flying up in front of Spike’s face. “Sooner or later she’ll remember who she’s really mad at, and although I think that guy honestly deserves a pounding, I hate to think what the collateral damage is going to look like.”

“All right,” said Spike. He strode out to stand before the Beast. “Hey, Fluttershy,” he said casually.

The Beast stopped its rampage, and blinked. Being a toon, she immediately knew who she was looking at. “Spike? You...got the part? You’re Smaug?”

“Well it’s not guaranteed, but I think I made a good impression on my Voice.”

“Well that’s wonderful!” the giant Fluttershy exclaimed.

“So, what are you doing?” Spike asked innocently.

“Destroying the patriarchy.”

Spike gave her a look.

Fluttershy reconsidered. “Well alright. I’m just trying to smash Daffy over there. Say hi, Daffy.”

Daffy poked his head out from behind the piece of rubble he had been using as cover. He didn’t say anything.

“I said: SAY HI, DAFFY!” Fluttershy bellowed.

“hi,” Daffy squeaked with a little wave, after nearly being blown over by Fluttershy’s scream. He was then flattened again by Fluttershy’s fist.

“Daffy here has demonstrated the first lesson of Not Being Seen,” Spike said in a faux-British accent. “Not to stand up.”

Fluttershy tittered, which sounded very odd with the deep tone of her voice. “Oh Spike! I just found out that Daffy here tricked you into leaving so he could take your place as Twilight’s sidekick.”

“I wasn’t going to let him have the part!” Twilight’s voice shouted from a few feet away.

Spike frowned. “Is that true?” he asked the swaying Daffy.

“Absolutely!” Daffy said brightly, a dopey grin on his face. “All part of my evil plan!”

“I’m going to have to smash you now,” Spike said seriously.

“Smash away!” Daffy cried out giddily. As he saw the Fist of Doom approaching, he asked himself, “Why does this seem familiar?” His expression darkened. “Oh. I remember now: Duck Season.”

*SMASH!*

Mitch took that moment to step out of the port-a-potty. He looked up at the two giants, and promptly returned to his tiny refuge...until he remembered what happened to the lawyer in Jurassic Park. Then he stepped back out, waved awkwardly, and made his way back to his trailer.

“...”

“What?”

---

“We’re agreed that we can’t sign these contracts,” Twilight said to the Hasbro executive in the parking lot a couple of hours later. “Daffy’s fired, and if he’s willing, Spike’s re-hired.” Everyone was sitting in director’s chairs, facing each other in a circle.

By this time both Fluttershy and Spike were back in their Friendship Is Magic forms, the later due to the simple expedient of Peter turning off the workstation with the Smaug program on it.

“Well, I’ve got a little cameo in the first Hobbit movie to film, but I’m sure I can fit into your schedule otherwise.” Turning to Rob he asked, “What about my contract?”

“I tore up a blank,” Rob admitted. “Here’s your contract right here. I knew you’d come back, once your leaving had done its job of shaking up the company. I, uh, didn’t think that the ‘shaking’ would be literal.”

“‘Shaking up’ is an understatement,” said the executive, who seemed surprisingly calm. “We’ll be taking the damages out of your paycheck, young lady.”

“We’ll all cover the expenses,” Rainbow Dash said.

“That includes us,” said Rob.

“And me,” Lauren said from her chair. “I’ve got a bit stashed away for a rainy day.”

“Oh no, Lauren,” Fluttershy said. “You’ve got better things to spend your money on than the results of my mental problems.”

“Don’t ever say that,” Lauren said firmly. “And besides, I’ve already put a lot of money into Hasbro. I’m a stockholder now, and quite a substantial one. I’ve figured out that money is the only real way to influence how the company runs this production. I may no longer be in charge, but I still care about all of you.”

A massive group hug ensued.

“Now what about the episodes?” Lauren asked the executive.

“Spike, you’ll have plenty of time to film your scene in New Zealand while we rebuild the sets and re-write the scripts. Mitch here has a great idea for how to re-write ‘Secret of My Excess’, keeping Spike sympathetic. As for the finale...I’m open to ideas. Given the following constraints: it needs to be an event episode, there has to be a royal wedding, and Tori Spelling’s doing the promotions.”

Fluttershy looked at Twilight, and an unspoken communication went between them. “Give the episode to Lauren,” she said, in a tone that left no room for argument.

Everyone looked at the ex-producer. “Aw, really?” she asked. “I sort of left so I wouldn’t have to do a wedding episode. But if that’s the only way we’re going to get through this...then fine. I’m not helping you on the movie, though.”

“Why?” asked Fluttershy, picking up one of the rejected contracts. “What happens in the movie?”

“No!” Rainbow said firmly, taking the contract away. “We’re not going through that again.” And she pointed at the flattened sets.

Meghan shrunk down in her chair. “I also had a list of bullet items I had to satisfy,” she muttered.

And that’s how my little plan to get Spike to save Season Two worked out. And Daffy helped, completely unintentionally.

“Your plan? What was your motive?”

“I’m one of the main characters, silly! Ooh, and I’m late to my day job!”

“Wait, where did that zipper pull come from. What are you...PINKIE PIE?!”

“Surprise! Oh, and I’m her, too.”

“...I need a vacation.”

Comments

[TrainDude90S]

Looks like Daffy being there helped out in the long run after all. They should be thanking him for if it wasn't for him, season two wouldn't have been fixed & the main cast wouldn't have realize the folly of their treatment towards Spike & realizing how much they do need him in their lives.