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// Mixed Drink 
// Story: Mayor's Break Time 
// by Soufriere 
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A crisp wind blew through the streets of central Ponyville, perhaps heralding the vaunted ‘three months of Winter coolness and awesome holidays’ the town leaders relied upon to keep its citizens satisfied with their existence. After all, a happy populace is a populace not storming your office with pitchforks and torches.

Spike bopped down the main street as quickly as his stubby baby dragon legs could carry him. Several times he found himself nearly being run over by an unobservant stallion or some even less observant mare pulling a wagon, prompting him to mutter under his breath about mare drivers. But even that could not faze him, as this day would be a good day – the newest issue of Power Ponies Ultra (a spinoff of the original) had dropped and, as a regular subscription holder, he stood a fair chance of getting a copy with the legendary holofoil cover.

However, to make sure of landing the prize, he needed to get to the comic store – The Pondroid’s Dungeon – as soon as it opened. This meant skipping out on his chore for the morning, cleaning out the owl cage. Spike had long since made his piece with Twilight Sparkle’s second assistant, but he still didn’t much like the bird. After all, birds are messy; carnivorous birds are even messier. Of course, cleaning would be a joke if he could simply use flame breath to burn the mess into tiny briquettes, which would also kill any harmful bacteria. Alas, Twilight banned it, not because it was a violation of fire codes, but because she feared smoke damage to her books – not the library’s books (which were owned by the citizenry regardless of Twilight’s opinion on the matter); her books, kept on a completely separate floor.

Before leaving Golden Oaks, he had left a note for Twilight saying “How about you clean up after him for once!”. He had calculated that her needing to process such blatant disrespect would buy him more time than no note at all.

Spike noticed the large clock on City Hall’s central tower; he had just ten minutes before the comic shop opened, so he poured every ounce of energy he could into his run. Just as he had made it past the building’s main entrance, he crashed full-force into someone. Once his head and eyes stopped spinning, he realized his unlucky victim was Apple Bloom.

The yellow filly lay in a crumpled mess on the ground for a moment, her red mane draped across the grass, trademark pink bow off kilter. Luckily for both of them, she eventually got back on her hooves. Spike saw she looked much worse for wear even accounting for his collision; her eyes had noticeable bags.

“Sorry about that, Apple Bloom,” Spike said, feeling genuinely sorry.

Apple Bloom needed another minute for her eyes to refocus on her surroundings. Once they did, her entire body perked up, but not in a manner suggesting she was pleased to see him. Or anyone. In fact, she appeared to be terrified.

“Spike! Thank Celestia you’re here!” she cried, frantic. “I was just ‘bout ta call ya!”

“Uh, okay. Why?”

Apple Bloom hung her head, eyes closed, for a second. When she looked back to Spike, she had an expression similar to what the navigator of the EMB Everfree likely had when he was forced to inform his captain that he had inadvertently guided Equestria’s greatest ship into an iceberg.

“I swear I was only doin’ what I was told to!” she insisted.

Spike narrowed his gaze in a bid for more context, which she soon gave.

“I’ve been outta school for the past couple days makin’ more Happy Juice fer the Mayor ‘cause she said she’d pay me once I was done! Well this mornin’ I brought up the first batch for her an’ she jus’ took it an’…”

“And what?” Spike prompted.

“…an’ she started mixin’ it with a big ol’ bottle of fortified Ponyville Nog!”

This answer made Spike roll his eyes. “So? Everyone knows Mayor Mare likes mixed drinks. You’re not turning into a prude like your sister, are you?”

“No!” Apple Bloom cried a bit louder than necessary. “That ain’t it! Do ya know what goes in ta each o’ those drinks?”

“No,” admitted Spike, shaking his head.

“I do. An’ if what I’ve learned from Zecora’s potion-making lessons is even halfway right, the liquids and gases in those drinks ‘re super-volatile in combination! All it needs is a spark, an’ she’s fixed herself up a bomb!”

Spike’s eyes widened at this. “We need to get up to her office!” he said.

The dragon and filly raced into the City Hall, completely ignoring the main floor receptionist’s attempts to stop them as they reached the creaky wooden staircase. With all the speed of Rainbow Dash at mealtime, they made their way up to the third storey in record time – would have been even faster had they both not had such stubby legs.

Just past the landing sat Mayor Mare’s personal secretary, Raven, at her desk. She peered down at the two diminutive visitors, immediately inferring there was a reason why they had appeared. Seeing the looks of panic on their faces, she could only shut her eyes and facehoof when thinking of what her boss could possibly have done this time.

Spike and Apple Bloom took Raven’s silence as an invitation to pass her and enter the mayor’s office, the door to which was closed for once – never a good sign.

Using themselves as tiny battering rams, they busted down the door, making sure to close it behind them for they were not savages, only to find Mayor Mare sitting at her desk as usual, eyes even more glassed-over than normal. She stared at her two visitors for several minutes while her brain – what was left of it, at any rate – attempted to process the image being relayed to its visual cortex.

“Ohai, Shpaaaaa,” the mayor slurred pleasantly, a goofy grin plastered across her face.

“It’s worse than I thought,” Spike stage-whispered to Apple Bloom. “Good thing you found me when you did.”

“Yeah, so, what’re we gonna do?” asked Apple Bloom.

Spike pursed his lips as his brows furrowed in deep thought. “Well, first things first, we need to get the sauce away from her.”

He motioned to two glass bottles on her desk, one of which was once filled with Apple Bloom’s so-called ‘Happy Juice’ (of which only about a quarter remained), the other a milky yellow substance full of black flecks. Both emitted visible stink lines that curled around themselves near the ceiling in a twisted infernal ballet, creating minuscule sparks that fizzled after a microsecond once they touched.

Unfortunately, once he hopped up on the desk to take one of the bottles, Mayor Mare was ready for him… with a second glass.

“Ye don’… khumm an’ gejjurshelf a dhreeenk! Sh’ gooooood shhhhhii~,” the Mayor attempted to say. “Shwear, Aal-vluum izzza graaaaaytt misher. Have yershelf a li’l glash uh…”

Spike turned to Apple Bloom, who had reared herself up on her hind hooves to better see over the top of the desk. “She stopped speaking.”

Apple Bloom cocked her head, unsure. “Spike, does her face look kinda green to you?”

A quick glance back to the mayor allowed him to confirm this. Her cheeks seemed puffy too, and her eyes resembled those of Ponyville’s friendly-but-useless cockeyed grey postmare. Once the import of this became apparent, he immediately assumed a look of concern. “We should probably go,” he said.

Just then, the door was blasted off its hinges, flying at the trio and just barely missing them but shattering the two bottles of liquor, whose liquids spilled all over the desk and cascaded onto the wooden floor, mingling like star-crossed lovers as they permeated the poorly-sealed planks. Spike and Apple Bloom had ducked, but Mayor Mare continued to sit in her chair, unmoving as her face resembled the colour of oak leaves in Spring.

Neither Spike nor Apple Bloom needed to look to the door to know who had intruded, but they did anyway. Sure enough, in the damaged threshold stood a beyond-livid Twilight Sparkle, unicorn horn already aglow with an attack spell she needed only speak a power-word to unleash.

“Spike!” Twilight bellowed. “You are in big trouble this time! How dare you tell me to care for my own pet!! And now you’ve got sweet little Apple Bloom acting as your accomplice and hiding out in City Hall?! Oh once I tell Princess Celestia about this you’ll be so gr…”

As Twilight continued to rant, Mayor Mare leaned forward across her desk until she was directly facing Twilight, who took no notice. Spike, sensing what was coming, jumped off the desk and grabbed Apple Bloom in a protective embrace, eventually pushing themselves toward the wall. Apple Bloom, thoroughly confused, mouthed words of questioning but no sound escaped her lips.

Finally, the Mayor could take no more. All of her mistakes came spilling out of her, green with regret, directly into Twilight’s face.

Spike took this opportunity to usher Apple Bloom and himself from the room and out of City Hall, where they found Raven already standing in the street.

“What’re you doin’ out here?” Apple Bloom asked the secretary.

“I have enough life experience to know to run the other way whenever Twilight is on the warpath,” Raven replied with a frown.

“Heh, nice,” Spike said with a half-chuckle, “It took me years to figure that out, and I live with her.”

All as one, the three turned their heads skyward to the Mayor’s Office, its corner windows closed to block out the elements and the occasional angry screams of the townsponies. For a moment, calm prevailed, an uneasy quiet lessened only by the random noise of the street.

Then the room exploded.

Ponies in the vicinity scattered like cockroaches as they tried desperately to avoid being crushed by the massive chunks of wood and plaster crashing around them. Spike did not move, as his thick dragon scales made him impervious to just about everything, and because he had stopped caring. Raven and Apple Bloom, meanwhile, ran to a spot in the middle of the wide unpaved avenue where a crumpled brown figure lay in a pathetic heap a few feet away from some debris.

“Meyer! Meyer! Are you okay??” Raven near-screamed, her face etched with profound worry. Neither Spike nor Apple Bloom had ever heard such emotion in her voice before.

Spike slowly sauntered up to the prone body of Ponyville’s mayor. “Hey, Mayor. You alright?”

Mayor Mare coughed, releasing another round of verdant regret into the street. Then she hiccuped.

He turned to the worried mare and filly, saying simply, “Yeah, she’s gonna be fine.”