Rarity looked left and right no make sure nopony was around, and then up at the sky to make sure there were no ponies up in the clouds.
“Okay…” Rarity said, adjusting her hat and scarf. “The coast… is clear.”
The top of the picnic basket opened and Spike poked his head out. “Whoa. Is it winter already?”
Rarity looked down at the white ground. “Oh that.”
Spike climbed out of the basket and discovered that it wasn’t snow everywhere but soft white petals instead.
“This is one of my little inspiration corners,” Rarity mused. “Or at least it used to be. These trees have the most gorgeous white flowers all over their droopy branches, and when they sway in the summer breeze it’s like standing in a delicate snowfall. Hmmm.” Rarity closed her eyes and drifted.
Spike looked at the ground. He looked up at the bare and broken trunks around the grove. He looked back at the ground.
“Let me guess,” he said. “The Event did this?”
Rarity opened her eyes again. They seemed duller now. “Every day now I find something else that’s been broken or covered in dirt. Ohhh… I wish the cleanup effort would hurry along.”
“Well. It still looks kind of pretty,” Spike tried.
Rarity shrugged and opened the picnic basket. “Pretty, maybe. But I also picked this venue because other ponies hardly come here. And we shall have the place to ourselves for a few hours while you tell me all about your extravagant adventure.”
“Right… That…”
Using her magic, Rarity took out the picnic blanket and laid it perfectly upon the petal-covered ground. Then she tried to levitate two apples from the picnic basket and almost dropped them.
“Oooh, why is this so difficult?” Rarity huffed, putting the fruits down at last.
“You handled that blanket pretty well,” Spike said, helping to unpack.
“Fabric is easy,” Rarity said. “Apples are not.”
“Heh. I know somepony who would say apples are easy and fabrics were hard.”
Rarity glared. She grabbed spike with her magic and shoved him onto the blanket. “No more of that tone.”
“What tone?”
“That tone where you know something! I’ve had enough.” She smiled and went to finish unpacking. “I’ll deal with this but I insist you start your story at once.”
Spike wrung his crawls together. “Alright. Alright. Here goes.” He took a deep breath. “My name is Spike. I hatched from an egg—”
“Ooookay, darling, stop,” Rarity said. “Not quite that far back.”
“But that’s when it all started,” Spike said. “The day of the Event was my birthday.”
Rarity blinked. “You didn’t tell me that. I would have taken you for cake. Or… well… I would have brought some cake up to my room.”
“That’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just tell the story.”
Rarity nodded and finished unpacking their lunch. She sat down with her apple and watched. “Right. So you hatched from an egg.”
“Yes. And the reason I hatched was because of a Sonic Rainboom.”
“A what now?”
“A Sonic Rainboom,” Spike said. “It’s when a pegasus flies really, really super fast and then BOOM!”
“…they smack into a tree?”
“No. They make a magical rainbow blast.”
“Ooooh. Wait, is that what the Starburst Event was?”
“No. That was a spell that went wrong,” Spike said. “A Sonic Rainboom is… well… prettier. And it doesn’t break all the windows, or rip all the flowers off the trees.”
“Well I should hope not. I like the sound of it already. But how exactly did this help you to, er… hatch?”
“Because,” Spike went on. “All around Equestria that day there were six little ponies who were about to get their cutiemarks. The Rainboom helped them discover who they were meant to be.”
“All at the same time?”
“Yes. Because they had a magical destiny.”
Rarity finished her apple and leant forward, propping up her chin on her forelegs. “Tell me more.”
Spike puffed up a bit. “One of those fillies was named Twilight Sparkles. The smartest and most magical unicorn I ever knew. Twilight’s cutiemark was about magic,” Spike said. “And she got it by hatching a baby dragon from an egg.” He grinned. “This is where I come in.”
“Wait…” Rarity said. “I thought you said these ponies got their cutiemarks from the Rainboom thingy.”
“Yesss…” Spike said. “The Rainboom sort of… it um…” He snapped his fingers. “It gave everypony inspiration.”
“Ah! I see.”
“And so they all got their cutiemarks. And I lived with Twilight and we were best friends and I was her number one assistant. Fetching books, mostly. Twilight loved to read. Also I was good at sending letters, tidying up, cooking meals—”
“Spike, that’s lovely. But could you maybe move things along a bit?” Rarity suggested. “Maybe to the um… the important parts.”
Spike paused and thought about how to explain everything. Where to go next. “All the ponies grew up…”
“Okay… And you didn’t?”
Spike blinked at her. “What? No. I did.”
Rarity looked him up and down. “If you say so.”
Spike ignored her. “Well anyway. That’s when Princess Celestia sent me and Twilight to Ponyville.”
“By order of the Princess? Oh. You do have a magical destiny.”
“All six of the ponies met, but they didn’t all becomes friends at first,” Spike went on. “Not until Nightmare Moon returned to Equestria and threatened to bring about eternal night.”
Rarity blinked. “…Nightmare Moon?”
“Yes.”
“You mean… from Nightmare Night?”
“Yeah,” Spike said.
Rarity’s mouth twitched. “Well now I know you’re making this up.”
Spike huffed. “I am not. Nightmare Moon is real. She was a real problem for us and if I don’t sort thing mess out she’s going to be a real problem fro you, too.”
Rarity lifted a hoof in defence. “Alright, alright. Keep going, then.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I’m trying,” Rarity said. “Keep going. Nightmare Moon turned up and made it night time. That about right?”
“That’s close enough,” Spike agreed. “So the six friends got together. And they found these magical artefacts called the Elements of Harmony. Because Twilight had read about them in one of her books. And when everypony went to stop Nightmare Moon they all realised that they were the powers of the Elements of Harmony. And that they had become friends. And that friendship made them stronger than darkness. Nightmare Moon was defeated and balance was restored.”
Rarity took a sip of her orange juice. “Meh.”
“Meh?” Spike repeated.
“Well the Elements sounded cool. And Nightmare Moon, even if it’s a bit cheap. And the six chosen ones, and the spell books. But… Friendship was the answer?”
Spike folded his arms. “Maybe I should tell you about the time I saved the Crystal Empire and they built a huge statue of me.”
“The where?” Rarity said.
Spike groaned and sat down. “Fine. Let’s cut to the so-called Starburst Event.”
“Yes. Tell me that part.”
“Twilight and me—”
“Twilight and I, you mean.”
Spike groaned again. “Twilight and I were coming home to our castle—”
“You lived in a castle!?” Rarity exclaimed.
“You wanted me to skip ahead so I skipped. This is my story and I’m telling it my way. Okay?”
Rarity huffed. “Okay, okay…”
“Right. Well we’d just gotten home when we found Starlight Glimmer waiting for us. She’s this unicorn Twilight had dealt with before. She kind of brainwashed a whole town of ponies unto giving up their cutiemarks and, like, all having the same mane style and everything.”
“How horrid. The same mane style as everypony else… Ugh.”
“But then Twilight and her friends rescued everypony and got their cutiemarks back. But Starlight Glimmer escaped. And then… Well, we found her in our castle.” Spike shrugged. “Anyway, she’s a super powerful unicorn. I mean, she had to be to steal all those cutiemarks. And it turned out she’d been working on a revenge spell.”
“Ohhh…” Rarity said. “The Starburst Event. You mean her horrible plan for revenge was to blow up Flight Camp and break everypony’s windows?”
“Uhhh…” Spike wrung his claws together again. “This is the part where things get complicated. See… None of this has actually… technically… happened. Yet.”
“Spike, whatever does that mean?”
“It’s um… well… Have you ever studied Starswirl the Bearded’s theories on the magic of time travel?”
Rarity deadpanned. “What do you think?”
Spike swallowed. “Okay. I’ll just come right out with it. Rarity, I’m… I’m from the future.”
Rarity looked him up and down again. “If you say so.”
“No, Rarity. Really. All of this happens in the future. Or… it’s what was supposed to happen. Except for the part where Starlight cast a time travel spell and went back to the past to try and stop the Rainboom.”
“Oh, you mean the colourful inspiration rainbow thing?”
“Yes. She thought if she could stop it from happening then those six ponies wouldn’t get their cutiemarks and they wouldn’t become friends.”
“Well didn’t she know about their magical destiny?”
“I don’t think so,” Spike said. “All she knew was that once…” He looked down. “Once she had a friend. But then her friend got his cutiemark and he left her. And that’s why she started stealing other ponies’ cutiemarks. But Twilight stopped her. So she got mad at Twilight and wanted to stop Twilight—”
“To stop Twilight from ever having friends… or a cutiemark.”
Spike nodded.
Rarity sipped orange juice and placed her cup aside. “Well I can understand where the poor dear is coming from but if you ask me…” Rarity leaned in to whisper, “I think she’s gone a little crazy by now.”
Spike snorted. “Yeah. You’re telling me. She’s the one who trapped me in that pink crystal thing and tried to throw me off the clouds.”
“So what were you three even doing at Flight Camp?”
“That’s where the Rainboom happened,” Spike said. “Or… was supposed to happen. A filly—one of the six—named Rainbow Dash. She flew really fast and made the Rainboom.”
Rarity nodded. “And Starlight Glimmer went back in time to kill Rainbow Dash.”
“What? No. Not kill her. Starlight just wanted to stop her from doing to Rainboom. I don’t think Starlight’s evil. I just think she’s… confused. And hurt.” Spike frowned. “But she ruined the future and she’s ruined things here.”
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Honestly. Some unicorns have more power than they know what to properly do with. I mean really.”
Spike grabbed one of the little sandwiches and started eating.
Rarity watched. “…so wait. That’s the end?”
Spike shrugged. “Mmf. Pretty much. Then I fell out of the sky and… here we are.”
Rarity looked around a bit. “Aaaaand Twilight and Starlight are…?”
Spike shrugged again. “I think they got sucked back into the time portal.”
“The time portal. That brought you here from the future.”
“Yes.”
Rarity narrowed her eyes at him. “Okayyy… If you’re from the future then who wins the Fashion Finales at the Cheque-Magnifique concours in Manehatten next month?”
Spike shrugged once more. “I don’t know. I don’t really follow fashion.”
“Well what do you know?” Rarity asked.
Spike glanced aside. He put down his sandwich and tell looked her in the eyes. “You. I know you, Rarity. I know you grow up to be the most beautiful, most generous, most fashionable pony I’ve ever met. I know you have big dreams. You want to visit Canterlot and open a fashion boutique in Manehatten. I know your little sister might seem really annoying right now, but you are gonna be the best big sister she could ever ask for and you two are going to be the best of friends.
“And I know right now it might seem like nopony is paying attention to you and that the dresses you like to make aren’t actually going to get you anywhere, but you have got to believe me when I tell you…” Spike drew a shaky breath. “That you are going to succeed at all those dreams and more. Because the fate of Equestria is your destiny, Rarity. You’re one of the Elements of harmony. But more importantly you’re a pony who was supposed to have her cutiemark by now, and you were supposed—to know—that everything was going—to be—” Spike sniffed. “Okay.”
His claws tightened on the picnic blanket and he wiped at his face with his other arm.
“Oh—” Rarity picked up a napkin to help him. “Here. It’s alright. Of course everything’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” Spike whimpered. “Twilight is missing and I’m stuck here and time is still broken and your bedroom windows are covered in plastic.”
“Spike. We can replace the windows,” Rarity reminded him. “I think you need to worry a little less about fixing my problems, and focus a little more on yourself for a change.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” Spike mumbled, curling up on the blanket. “Twilight’s gone. The spell is gone. I can’t fix time by myself. Or am I supposed to wait for Twilight to fix things? Do you think she’ll fix things for us?”
“Umm… Well it has been a few days.”
“Right. That was a stupid plan. Stupid Spike.”
“No. Not stupid Spike,” Rarity insisted. “You didn’t get to be Twilight’s number one assistant by being a silly dragon, did you?”
Spike stroked his tale. “…no.”
“There. You see? It’s going to be okay. I’m sure if we work together we can think of something we can do to help clean up this mess.”
Spike sat up and wiped his face with the napkin. “Okay.” He smiled. “Together.”
Rarity smiled back.
Then an idea clicked. “Maybe…” Spike said. “Maybe there is something we can do.”
“Oh?” Rarity’s eyes lit up.
“We need to find some ponies,” Spike said. “Five friends. Only they don’t know it yet. And you.”
“To be the Elements?”
“Yes,” Spike said, suddenly determined. “If there’s one thing I know it’s that the Elements of Harmony can solve pretty much any problem. As long as everypony is together.”
Rarity nodded. “Where should we start?”