//------------------------------// // A Little to High // Story: Spike Pie // by Silver Butcher //------------------------------// It had been one month since Spike and Pinkie had moved into Sugar Cube Corner, and it was fun. Though they both had to make a Pinkie promise not to eat any of the food. Unless, of course, they paid for it, or it was closing time and the Cakes were giving them the leftovers that hadn't been sold. Spike was floating over the town when he saw Applebloom. "Hey Applebloom," Spike yelled to her while he descended from the sky. Applebloom looked up and saw Spike. "Hey Spike, what's up?" "Me." Spike responded, "Where you going, and by any chance does that place need a party of some sort to happen?" Applebloom smiled, "I'm just walking around, looking to spend some bits on useless junk." "Well look no further," Spike said, "I have tons of useless junk all at the low, low cost of a balloon and bubbles!" "Oh really? One sec," Applebloom ran ahead and after a minute came back with a huge bag of unused balloons and an XL container of Bubble soap "So if I give you these, you'll give me...?" Spike responded by dumping a wheeled bathtub filled with the most random things, from a lava lamp and a disco ball to a rubber chicken in a suit, a sombrero, a set of bagpipes, a book of jokes, a seven-layer cake, and lots of other trinkets and miscellaneous things. Applebloom's jaw dropped, "Was he for real?" "Now the payment!" Spike said happily as he floated to Applebloom happily. "How am I supposed to get this stuff home?" "That's why the tub is on wheels," Spike said as he flew off with his bubbles and balloons. After several stunned seconds in silence, Applebloom started pushing the tub, after about 10 minutes she ran into her big brother Big Mac. Mac just looked at her confused and surprised. "If you help me you can have half the stuff In the tub," Applebloom offered. -Meanwhile- Spike had never tried flying around with more than ten balloons before, but now he was holding about 500, or so the package said. The best balloon to buy, fun for all ages, Fill it with air, fill it with water, fill it with Helium, just have fun! Spike opened the bag, grabbed one balloon, and pulled a helium tank and a spool of string out of who knows where. Without much thought he started adding more balloons to his back one by one, failing to notice just how high he was getting until he added the last balloon. "There we go!" Spike yelled, "510 Balloons! Who's the best?" After several seconds of silence, Spike looked around, eyes widening now that he noticed just how high up he was. "Is that Cloudsdale?!" he yelled in shock, the cloud city about half a mile below him and getting further away by the second. He tried to use his tail to move but realized just how futile it was to steer 510 balloons. "Emergency bubbles away!!" Spike yelled as he whipped out the XL container of Bubble soap, and drank it all. He then took a deep breath and started spitting out a huge amount of smoke-filled bubbles, he hoped somepony would notice that. Indeed, somepony did. "What the heck?" Rainbow Dash said as she watched the giant flow of bubbles spewing out of what she thought was a bunch of balloons. What surprised her more was when the bubbles all came together and formed a dark S.O.S. She flew to the balloons and found what was probably the least likely thing she could expect: a shrimpy dragon tied to a large bundle of balloons. "Hey there," Spike said happily. "I don't suppose you could help me?" Rainbow frowned, she didn't know what was going on but she was pretty sure it was a trap of some kind. "Sorry guy, but whatever you did to make a bunch of ponies tie you up and send you flying away, must have been pretty bad." "I actually did this to myself." "Yeah, sure you did," she replied skeptically. A quick trip down to Ponyville was in order to ask what the whole balloon dragon thing was about. Spike just helplessly watched her fly off. "Oh well," Spike shrugged, "Guess I'll just slowly pop one balloon at a time to get do...." He heard a squeak and glanced up to see a bunch of birds landing on his balloons "Oh no." Spike muttered a second before one of the balloons popped under the bird, the other balloons popped too. For some reason, the birds started attacking all of them. "WAIT, COME BACK!" Spike yelled as loud as he could for the rainbow pegasus. -Meanwhile- At first, Pinkie had thought she and Spike were playing a secret hide and seek game, but after about 30 minutes she knew something was wrong. Spike had missed dinner, and that wasn't something Spike did. The entire town knew he was gone within 30 seconds of her popping out of every barrel, opening every door, and just plain yelling as loud as she could. "SPIKE! WHERE ARE YOU!?" she yelled as she ran around, only stopping when Rainbow Dash landed next to her. "Whoa, whoa," Rainbow said, "Calm down, I could hear you from Cloudsdale. What are you yelling about?" "I'm looking for my brother, a small purple and green dragon named Spike, have you seen him?" Rainbow sat there with a blank look on her face. "One sec," Rainbow said before she shot off like a rocket, straight up. She found the dragon with less than a quarter of his balloons left. "A pink pony said she was looking for you." "Oh, Pinkie's looking for me." A second later there was a snap and Spike fell ten feet. "HELP!" Rainbow grabbed Spike, "Now what?" "Well, now that you're holding me," Spike grabbed the strings from around his waist and released all the balloons, "can you take me to the ground?" Once back on the ground... "SPIKE!" Pinkie shouted, giving him a hug. "I went a little too high," he said. Pinkie glared at him then shook him like a snow globe. "Why didn't you bring me!?" She demanded.