“Hey, Sparky! Heads up!”
A perky voice shook Spike from Daring Do and the Crystal Sphere of Khnum. Sitting on an easy chair, Spike looked up from his copy to see Twilight Sparkle jolt at the sound of her mother's perky voice. The alicorn flinched on the couch as Twilight Velvet tossed her a lighter, managing to catch it in the air with her magic just before it hit her temple. Twilight frowned as Velvet let out a snicker from the other side of the living room.
“Mom!” Twilight said. “Could you please not call me that?”
“What? ‘Sparky?’” Velvet said, her sleek and well-toned body leaning on a nearby bookshelf as she smirked at her daughter. “It's a nice nickname! Besides—” Velvet gestured a hoof at a yellow cat curling itself on top of the book Twilight had been reading “—North there seems to like it.”
Twilight sputtered wordlessly at the cat, then shooed him off the couch. “I'm not a filly anymore!”
Velvet recoiled, placing a hoof on her chest in “surprise.” “Oh, I'm sorry. Would you rather be called ‘Princess?’”
“I-it's not like that, Mom! I…I just—”
Velvet let out a laugh, walked to her daughter, and ruffled her mane. “I'm just screwing with you!” Velvet picked up the lighter and levitated it in front of her. “Here; cooked this up in my lab downstairs after your coronation. I wanna show you what this baby can do.”
Part of Spike wanted to get back to his book, but he kept his eyes focused on Velvet's lighter, which the mare flicked on with her magic. His eyes widened at the small, green flame dancing on the lighter's mouth.
“Like it?” Velvet said. “It's got more tricks up its sleeve. Spike, I'm gonna need your help for this one.”
Spike raised an eyebrow and set the book aside. “Um…sure, I guess.”
One of Velvet's hooves gestured at the book by Twilight's side. “You too, Sparky. Do you trust me?”
A grimace formed on Twilight's face as she looked away from her mother.
“The future of Equestria depends on it,” chirped Velvet.
“No.”
Velvet deflated slightly. “Look, I promise, things are going to be just fine…”
A grumble emanated from her daughter's mouth. "Yeah, right."
”Look, this won't be like that time with Inkwell.” Velvet's eyebrows were creased, and her voice had lost a bit of its perkiness. “Besides, I said I was sorry! This is different, okay? Just...trust me for once.”
A cloud of magenta magic encased the book and levitated it towards Velvet, accompanied by a sigh.
“Thank you.” Velvet transferred the book to her own magic and suspended it a few inches over a coffee table.
The aura surrounding the lighter disappeared. It tumbled through the air and hit the book, setting it ablaze.
“Wha— Noooooooo!” Twilight shouted. Her hooves flailed at the burning book, trying to put the smokeless fire out, but it was too late. The book had burned to nothing in just a few seconds. Meanwhile, Velvet, who hadn't moved from her initial position all the while, snatched the lighter with her magic just before it hit the floor and closed the cap.
“H-how could you? That's one of the only books that survived my fight with Tirek! Why are you always like this—”
Spike gagged hard, the feeling of something stiff coming out of his throat causing him to fall to his knees. Mother and daughter turned their eyes to him, Twilight stepping towards him in concern. A moment later, she gaped as a green flame erupted out of her assistant's mouth in a loud belch to reveal an unscorched copy of Meadowbrook's Translated Corpus: the same book she'd been reading earlier. Spike hacked and wheezed. He wasn't used to impromptu deliveries like this, certainly not when it involved packages this size. It was like Hearth's Warming Eve all over again.
“Neat, huh?” Velvet smiled, though Spike noted that it seemed more subdued than her previous beaming. She then faced away while the younger Twilight levitated her book back and examined it for any damage. “I mean, no need to apologize.”
Spike, having finished coughing and gagging, looked at Velvet curiously. “How did—”
“What—” Velvet raised an eyebrow “—get your magical signature so the flame would send the book to you?” Velvet said, plucking the thought from Spike's brain. “I just asked Sunbutt. We're actually pretty tight, you know?”
“Sunbutt...” Spike muttered. He then rubbed his chin with his claw. “What if I want to send something to you?”
“I haven't thought that far ahead." Velvet punctuated her statement with an awkward chuckle. "I don't know if the lighter can receive letters yet.”
Twilight set her book down and rolled her eyes. “Of course you haven't,” she muttered under her breath. “At least my book's still fine,”
“So, um,” Twilight spoke up as she glanced downwards, “does Dad know I'm here?”
Spike sensed that Twilight was struggling to stay tactful. Years of spending time with her allowed him to decode Twilight's body language. Meanwhile, Velvet pointed to the stairs; Spike couldn't tell if she didn't get the hint or she decided not to act on it.
“I dunno. Why don't you ask him?”
Spike watched Twilight's frown turn into a smile as her father trotted down the stairs.
“Dad!”
“Hey! Is that my favorite little star I see?”
Twilight jumped from the sofa and flew to her father, almost knocking him onto his back as he caught her in his embrace. “What brings my little princess to Canterlot?”
“It's my books. Spike and I have to get some books from the Canterlot library to replace the ones that were destroyed in my fight with Tirek.”
“Oh, yes, that makes sense, ” Night Light said, chuckling to himself. “I mean, it's not like your new castle came with books when it sprang from the ground.” He paused, then put a hoof on his chin. “Wait, don't you have your own room in Canterlot castle?”
“What? You're not glad to see me?” Twilight said.
Night Light rolled his eyes before giving Twilight another hug. “Of course I'm glad to see you, you little bookworm.”
Spike smiled at the pair as Twilight giggled.
“So... are you coming with me and Spike?”
“Actually, I still have some errands to run with your mom. Isn't that right, Vel?” Night Light said while placing a hoof on Velvet's flank.
“Sure is,” Velvet replied, most definitely, positively, honestly not blushing in the slightest. “We have to drop by Inkwell's for some writing supplies, pay the cable bill, and then head to Starry Eyed's for some mirrors.”
“Well, not that I need mirrors now anyway,” Night Light said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hoof. “I can do just fine with my refracting telescope for the next few weeks.”
“Fine? Fine?” exclaimed Velvet “You can't even see the moon with that thing, even if you pointed it at Luna's backside.”
“It's not nice to poke fun at a stallion's equipment.” Night Light then turned to Spike and Twilight as he opened the door for Velvet. “Just sit tight, you two. We'll be back before you know it!”
“And if I need something from you,” Velvet said, jiggling the lighter with her magic, “you know what to expect!”
A churn tied Spike's stomach to knots. For once, he was silently wishing that Twilight had replaced him with a cellphone.
Twilight waved goodbye to her parents as Night Light shut the door behind him. Spike heard Night Light explaining how he compensated for the size of his equipment just before the couple's voices faded into the distance.
Twilight Velvet and Night Light were not back before either Twilight Sparkle or Spike knew it.
After a few minutes of reading, Spike set his Daring Do book down. He had finished reading it a couple of weeks before, and the book, for some reason, had lost its charm on the second run. Perhaps “QP613” from the Daring Do forums had a point when he said the original trilogy was better.
Silence filled the living room, save for the wall clock and the muffled voices of pedestrians outside. Spike reclined on the easy chair, watching Twilight furrow her eyebrows at her book as if watching for anypony who wanted to snatch it from her again. Spike huffed. Celestia knew how many times he tried to tell Twilight to get one of Orange Industries' new tablet computers—all the books she could ever want, crammed into a slab only slightly bigger than a piece of paper.
In retrospect, though, Twilight had a point when she kept rebutting his suggestion. If she'd left the tablet in the treehouse when Tirek blew it up, none of her books would have survived, as opposed to the less than a dozen survivors Twilight currently possessed.
After that train of thought passed, Spike's eyes gravitated towards Twilight. She glanced out the window—the same direction where her parents disappeared to—before returning to her book. Spike looked down and tapped his claws together. Sure, he knew the names of Twilight's parents. He knew what they looked like. He knew where they lived in Canterlot. He even knew of their two cats, the second of whom, Rose, purred and snuggled up beside him on the arm of his easy chair, much to his annoyance.
But really know them? Hardly. Spike mostly interacted with Twilight and Princess Celestia during his younger years, only seeing Twilight's parents whenever they came to visit or take her on the occasional holiday. Maybe now would be a good time to get some answers.
“So,” Spike said, trying to break the ice, “how's the book...'Sparky?’”
Twilight huffed and brought her book closer to her face with her magic.
“Okay, okay, touchy subject,” said Spike. “If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine. It's just that, well—” Spike twiddled his thumbs and momentarily glanced at the floor “—your mom is certainly the…feisty type.”
“That's not even half of it,” Twilight moaned. “Do you know how many times I've had to tell Mom to act her age? Can you even believe it? The world's going mad, Spike, and that was even before Discord returned.”
“You seemed to get along just fine with her during Shining Armor and Princess Cadance's wedding—not to mention your coronation.”
Twilight waved him off with a hoof. “That was out in public. You think it would have been appropriate for all the guests in those events to see a family squabble?”
“No, I guess not.”
There was another pause. Spike took a moment to consider his next question.
“Is your mom also like that with Shining Armor?”
“Yes, but he doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he sort of…likes it.” A small smile formed on Twilight's lips, which then developed into a snicker. “Except for the nickname. He really doesn't like it when Mom calls him ‘Shiny.’”
“And why is that?”
“I don't know. He won't tell me,” she said with a shrug. “Why do you ask?”
Spike looked downwards as he pondered on his next words. Considering the subject matter, Spike was doubtful he would get a satisfactory answer.
“It seems like you don't get along with your mom.” Twilight furrowed her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Spike recoiled slightly. Did he strike a nerve?
The dragon's tensed muscles relaxed when he saw Twilight put a hoof on her chest, close her eyes, and exhale. Cadance's breathing exercises: effective ninety percent of the time.
“Listen,” Twilight said, “it's been like this since before I can remember, and it does seem like I butt heads with her more often than Shining…” Twilight frowned slightly, lost in thought for a moment. “But I don't have doubt that she legitimately loves Shining and me equally. I guess it's…”
“She has a funny way of showing love?”
“Maybe, but it's the thought that counts... so why do I still feel bothered? I just…” Twilight sighed. “I don't know. I don't wanna talk about it.”
His hunch was right. It wasn't a satisfactory answer. But Spike couldn't bring himself to press for more information. He decided to ditch the subject before the discussion got heated.
“If it's all the same to you, Twilight,” Spike said as he got out of the easy chair, “I'm gonna go explore your parents' house a bit.”
Twilight took a deep breath before she managed to smile at Spike. “I promise I'll be more open about it some other time. Also, make sure to check the attic, I'm pretty sure my dad left something up there that you might like.
“Like what?”
“First edition Power Ponies.”
Spike ran up the stairs without another word. When he reached the top, he found himself in a drafty room with wooden floors, walls, and rafters. Particles of dust danced around the shafts of light shining through the various small holes on the walls. A daddy longlegs crawled out of a hole on the floor.
There were two black hooded leather jackets hanging on a coat hook to the right of the stairs, along with a pillow on the floor. Spike made a mental note not to get close: Celestia knows how much dust accumulated on it for the past decade or two.
“Yoo-hoo! First edition Power Ponies!” Spike called out. His pupils darted this way and that as he sensed the air with his forked tongue and grinned, showing off his baby canines. "You can't hide from me forever, my sweet little comics, Don't be shy." His nictitating membrane joined in on the fun, clouding his eyes to complete the savage look. "Join me, and together we will rule the imagination-verse, and defeat the villains—you, me, and Hum Drum!"
There was no response. The predatory facade shattered.
“Argh, where are they?” Spike whined. Part of him wanted the comic to pop out of a corner and run towards him, eager to be read. He wouldn't be surprised if it actually did that: the last Power Ponies comic he read sucked him into an alternate dimension, after all.
Spike's eyes drifted to a shaft of light shining onto a book on the floor. The light drew him close to the book as if the dust shimmering across it had cast a spell on him. He picked it up excitedly, but his heart fell when he realized it wasn't the prize he sought.
Spike figured he should put it on one of the shelves. It wasn't his business anyway, but a touch of curiosity struck him. One peek wouldn't hurt.
He walked back to the light, lay on the floor, and opened somewhere in the first half of the book.
Dear Journal,
Son of a mule, I hate airships.
No matter how calm the wind is, I never feel like I'm standing on anything stable. Even though my room is far from the propellers, their droning is so loud that I can't even sleep properly. And my room…dear Celestia, my room. It's cramped, it's dusty, and it's full of useless shit that I can't throw out because it might attract attention. And to top off the cake of suck, my bunk-mate's snores are louder than the propeller.
I don't even know why I'm complaining. This is a cargo vessel, not a luxury cruise. I don't even have a ticket to be here! I have the money for a legit passenger airship to the Orient, but would she take it? No, of course not. “Those pigskins are too slow,” she says. “Where's the fun in that?” she says. “Save your money for the medical bills,” she says.
Okay, keep it together. It's only a few days. I was the one who volunteered for this. I'm the one who needs to see it through.
I just hope Night Light doesn't worry too much about me. I haven't contacted him in days, and he has big plans for our wedding. Times like this, I wish I had adopted a baby messenger dragon from Fillydelphia…
Twilight Velvet exited a lavatory in the airship, a sigh of relief and relaxation escaping from her lips as she fixed her mane. Normally, she'd grumble about being reduced to using a public restroom, but after the past couple of days, she was grateful to see something that resembled an actual toilet instead of, say, a bunch of creosote bushes.
Her eyes drifted to the window at the right side of the hall. There was a small chain of islands to the east, but aside from that, the ocean was a canvas bathed in turquoise. Several clouds floated by, as if to greet the Canterlot unicorn and wish her well on her travels.
That, or they were laughing at her for making such a stupid commitment.
Velvet sighed and leaned by the window, the droning of the airship's propellers fading into the background. She would've taken the time to marvel at the hybrid airship's engineering if other thoughts weren't eating her mind at the moment. Was this trip even worth it at all?
The chattering of voices snapped Velvet out of her musings.
“Hey! Tell the greenhorn here about your job in South Abyssinia,” called the voice of a gruff stallion.
“You sure that's a good idea?” replied a mare's voice. “The last one who heard about it couldn't sleep for a week!”
The voices came from the far end of the hall, accompanied by hoofsteps on wood. Velvet hurried behind a corner and tried to hide. She didn't recognize the owners of the voices—all the more reason to avoid them.
“Patrols—great timing,” she muttered. "At least no one from this posse had to answer the call to nature."
Cursing her lack of knowledge of invisibility spells, Velvet hugged the wall. The window showed the reflections of the voices’ owners: two stallions and a mare, all of whom wore tan fatigues and radio headsets. One had a shotgun, and the other two had fully semiautomatic .22 caliber heavy machine guns.
Wait, that couldn't be right. Was it .30? .40? What even is a fully semiautomatic? To hell with it. It's black. It's scary. That was all she needed to know.
Velvet could feel their hoofsteps through the floor. Her heart raced. Her fur stood on end. They were getting close. She needed a distraction. Maybe...their headsets could be put to good use.
A devilish smile materialized on Velvet's face. Her horn lit up while several electrical sparks danced on its surface. Now was the opportunity to put a graduate school prank to good use.
“All right, all right, you got me,” the mare mercenary started. “Back then, the warlords provided us with EEEEAAAAAHH!!”
The older mare fell to the ground, clutching her headset. Even though Velvet's ears weren't the ones flooded with deafening white noise, she could still hear it crackling as it materialized from her horn and into the older mare's radio. The stallions beside the older mare rushed to her side and yanked the headset off. As much as she wanted to stay behind and watch, Velvet knew she had to hightail it out before they started searching around. Light on her hooves, she slunk down the hallway away from the three ponies, hoping to find a way around them through the inner corridors.
Thankfully, there weren't many other gunponies in the path Velvet was snaking through. There were many storage rooms and other places to hide in, and the gunponies usually came in groups of three, five at the most. It just rubbed Velvet the wrong way that the simple act of going to the bathroom required her to sneak through a gauntlet of thugs who would shoot her on sight. Anyway, that was all behind her now that she was in front of the door to her cabin…or at least, a storage closet that functioned as a cabin. When you're a stowaway, you don't have the luxury of even a third-class room.
Velvet locked the door behind her and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Just two more days, and she'd be in the Orient. Add in a few more days of catching her big scoop there, plus a few more for the return trip, and it wouldn't be long before she could see Night Light again. It wouldn't be the first time he had to put up with her shit, but he was a patient stallion. He would wait for her.
There was a rustling sound. Velvet spun around.
She was staring down the barrel of a pistol.
Every muscle in Velvet's body tensed. But then she allowed herself to relax and breathe a sigh of relief when she saw the mare behind the gun.
“Damn it, girl, you gave me a heart attack,” Daring Do said.
“Fourth time,” Velvet said, “that's the fourth time you nearly got me killed this week.”
“Chin up,” Daring said, holstering the gun. “That just means more juicy details for your article, right?”
“Yeah, if anypony in Scientific Equestrian even believes the things I'm going to write about.” The words were puffed out of Velvet's mouth as she collapsed onto a heap of clothes, fabrics, and bags on the floor, waving her legs as if she were swimming. These weren't bedroom linens, sure. They smelled musty, chafed her skin through her fur, and carried more dust than that last cave system she and Daring explored. As an improvised bed, though, it sure beat the linoleum floor.
“That's clean laundry,” Daring said.
“Don't care.” Velvet waved dismissively without looking. “It's not ours. We don't have to wash it.”
Daring sat behind a cardboard-box–turned–makeshift-desk and began scribbling on a notebook with some pencils. “Funny, I expected you to be all fussy about your bed being just a bundle of clothes on the floor. You're from Canterlot after all.”
“After nearly getting my tail burned off in the Badlands because of you? Compared to that, this place is the Mareiott.”
“Well, I'm sorry I couldn't get you an actual passenger blimp, but—”
“Airship,” interrupted Velvet as she sat up. “For the hundredth time, it's an airship. Blimps don't have rigid metal skeletons.”
“Don't care,” echoed Daring. “As long as it gets us to the Orient.”
“Yeah, about that... What do we do when we get there?”
Daring flipped her notebook around so Velvet could see the sketches. “I'm thinking that we're gonna take a look at the tunnels the Neighponese Empire dug during the Second Global Conflict,” she said, dancing her hoof around the scribbles. “Dunno how he did it, but Uncle Ad mapped them all out here. He theorized that the Neighponese were able to recover the Spectrum of Lightning in the war, but couldn't get it out of the country before the Equestrians kicked them out.”
Velvet blinked a few times, then suppressed a snicker.
“What?” Daring cocked her head.
“I…I'm sorry,” said Velvet, continuing to suppress her laughter. “I still can't get over the fact that you nicknamed your uncle ‘Uncle Ad.’”
“I was young and stupid, okay?” Daring said, pounding the box with her hoof. “It's short for ‘Uncle Adventure’!”
“Then why didn't you shorten it to something like ‘Uncle Venture?’ ‘Uncle Ad,’ my ass. That sounds like the name of a Billy Hays-type salespony!”
Daring crossed her arms and huffed as she laid the notebook flat on the box. “You weren't listening to anything else I was saying, were you?”
“Nope!”
“Well, I'm glad I at least managed to entertain you.”
Daring got back to writing on her notebook, muttering to herself in both Ponish and in some other weird language. “Kabayitos,” Velvet recalled its name to be. There was a reason she left all the linguistics and soft science stuff to Daring.
On the outside, Velvet was still smiling at Daring's poor nickname choices. Inside, the thoughts that had been eating her mind earlier began to resurface. It made Velvet feel unsettled: she wasn't usually this introspective... that was Night Light's shtick.
Daring wasn't exactly the most academically rigorous archeologist out there. If Velvet wrote an article on Daring, what would the ponies in Scientific Equestrian think? What self-respecting archaeologist carries a whip along with a trowel? The trowel, she could understand, but a whip? Isn't that a circus tool?
And the less said about Daring's predilection of stealing AK rifles from the ponies shooting at her, the better.
She tried to distract herself with the airship's engineering, but that was hard to do at the moment, considering she couldn't just march out the door and survey it from the outside. Her magic wasn't strong enough to levitate herself and “fly,” not that she wanted to anyway. The sky had no cover.
Her eyes once again drifted out the window. Nothing but turquoise in the horizon, the chain of islands gone from sight. Here she was, embarking on a journey to the other side of the world, traveling farther and farther away from her husband-to-be.
He's a patient stallion. And when I get back… then the real adventure starts. That is…if she could handle the whip-cracking crusader's antics long enough to get home.
Velvet breathed out a sigh, losing herself again in the calm motions of the sea.
This was gonna be one hell of a trip.