Twilight Sparkle Makes a Coltfriend… Literally
The Best Laid Plans… or is it the other way around?
“Twilight, I’m warning you. Either answer me or… I’ll send a letter to Princess Celestia! Without checking the spelling!”
Spike was getting tired of calling through the thick locked crystal door, but kept it up rather than just chew a hole through it. Again.
Threatening to send an unedited letter was his last and most desperate gambit, which by Spike’s reckoning, he had only needed to resort to three times over the years. Admittedly, this time she had not incited a riot with a cloth doll, but there had been a lot of cloth in the supplies Twilight had him carry into her laboratory, as well as some deranged cackling from from behind the door over the last few days.
There had not been any lightning, which Spike viewed as a good sign, but there was a thunderstorm scheduled for the afternoon, so he was trying to hurry up before she got any ideas.
“Just a minute, Spike! I’ve only got one last stitch. There!” The door clicked and swung open, showing the inevitable result of one alicorn princess-level experiment that Spike knew he was going to be cleaning up for most of the next week, and… something else.
“You made a plushie,” said Spike, looking at the pony-sized pegasus doll. “That’s all?”
Admittedly, it was a fairly good doll, with neat stitching and proper stuffing so it stood up. Even the wings had been put together with a great deal of care, and seemed as if they could be extended in the way a pegasus would fly. He really did not like the shade of blue-green she had picked, but since Twilight had gotten the cloth from Rarity, Spike thought he could get used to it. Plus, it was not radiating the blinding magical aura of a Want-It-Need-It spell, or any other signs that Twilight had gone around the bend in the direction of world domination or evil.
In fact, the huge plushie looked oddly normal, in a weird way, with a dopey, happy expression and ever-so-slightly crossed eyes. On a scale of one to ten on the Weird-o-Meter, it was probably a four at best, or a two when adjusted for Ponyville standards.
It was a little upsetting to the young dragon that Twilight considered his own company insufficient, and that she had decided to make a plushie to stand around while she worked, but Spike thought about it for a few moments. Other than possibly making a little more dusting around the castle, it might distract Twilight enough for Spike to spend a little more time with Rarity which was a good thing. It did bring up one point, though.
“You know, I bet if you told Rarity, she would have made it for you.”
“Him,” corrected Twilight. “He’s the perfect practice romantic companion. I was thinking after my last date—”
“The one where you set him on fire, or the one where he dove through the restaurant window?” asked Spike.
“Spike!” Twilight nibbled on her bottom lip. “The one with fire. Anyway, I figured the reason my dates keep going wrong is because I don’t have any practice. So…” She waved a hoof at the doll. “Ta-da!”
“You’ve been hanging around Trixie too much,” said Spike. “Besides, how is a doll supposed to help you get dates?”
“Not get dates, Spike. Make the dates more romantic so I’m not scaring off any more stallions. I think I’m getting a reputation,” she added with a slightly nervous fidget. “Anyway, Nimbus here is fully fireproof, so that won’t happen again. And scratchproof,” she added. “Just in case. Also lightning-resistant, acid-resistant, there’s an anti-raveling charm built-in, and the cloth won’t fade at all in the sun for years.”
“Now I think you’ve been hanging around Starlight Glimmer too much,” he groused. “Still, it’s good to be prepared,” said Spike, walking up closer to the doll to get a look at his wings. “So why did you decide to call him Nimbus?”
“Because that’s my name,” said the doll.
It took the two of them an hour to get Spike out from under the bed.
- - Ω - -
“Twilight, darling?” Rarity nosed open the castle door and looked around the empty hallway. “Spikie has the most improbable story, and I was wondering…”
The hallway was lacking in ponies — either the flesh and blood variety or any other — and Rarity turned her disbelieving gaze on the little dragon to her side.
“He’s gotta be lurking around here somewhere, Rarity!” Spike peeked out from under Rarity’s good saucepan lid, which he was using as a shield. “Maybe the dark magic of his creation has already corrupted Twilight into a being of eternal nightmare!” He paused, and glanced upwards at Rarity’s skeptical expression. “That’s not to say dark magic is all bad. I mean just because you were corrupted by Nightmare once on the moon.⁽*⁾ Oh, and that book. Um…” Spike paused, obviously trying to think of other embarrassing examples, but Rarity just rolled her eyes.
(*) IDW comics, Issue 5-8
“Spike, do try to focus. I find it difficult to believe that our Twilight has gone, how did you put it?”
“Loco in the coconuts, one page short of a book report—”
“Yes, I know,” said Rarity rather rapidly while walking. “But this is Twilight Sparkle we are talking about. Our friend. I know she’s rather… um… clueless when it comes to young stallions. And she might have accidently set one on fire.”
“Two,” said Spike. “Three, if you count the one I swear she did intentionally.”
After rolling her eyes, Rarity opened the door to the crystal table room to find her friend and the pony-sized doll were next to the map, looking down at it. “Ah, there you are, darling.”
“Rarity!” called out Twilight. “Come in. I was just getting Nimbus familiar with the castle and surrounding area so we can determine where he should take me for our first date.”
“Date.” There was just the smallest of hesitations in Rarity’s stride while she looked between her friend and the plushie, interrupted when the doll looked back at her from where it had been studying the crystal map.
What stunning eyes, although they really need to be restitched for symmetry. A nice shade of gold, most likely from the thread she borrowed, and quite lifelike. Oh, I need to say something about this… date concept.
“Between you and… what exactly is this again?”
“A Type Six semi-autonomous cloth golem with full fractal sensory integration and hierarchical learning enchantments,” recited Twilight with a squeal. “Isn’t he wonderful?”
“Well.” Rarity considered her words and the inscrutable observation of the cloth doll. “It certainly does seem like a more… interesting companion than when you attended the Statistician’s Ball in Manehattan with Mister Slipstick.”
“We were totally incompatible,” said Twilight rapidly. “He prefers degrees while I know that radians are the only true measure of angular velocity. Nimbus is nothing like that. His personality is made up of my own memories and experiences, so he’s going to be the perfect date. Say something witty, Nimbus.”
“Something witty, Nimbus,” said the doll in a mischievous tone. The doll moved and spoke in such a lifelike manner that Rarity was convinced that his stitched golden eyes had even twinkled just for a moment. She jumped back despite herself, and judging by Spike’s shriek and the rapid patter of dragon feet behind her, the feeling of surprise was mutual.
Well, almost mutual.
“Back, you fiend! Back into the pits of Tartarus which spawned you!” Spike came running past, waving one of the silver soup ladles which Rarity had generously gifted to the castle for special occasions, since crystal castles that magically spring up from the ground were notably lacking in proper place settings. The little dragon gave an impressive leap, landing on top of the doll and swinging wildly with his bare claws, because the soup ladle had been plucked from his grasp at the last moment by Twilight’s magic.
“Spike, please stop that. Spike? Spike!” Twilight waved the ladle at the dragon. “You could have bent this, or even broken it.”
“Tickles!” giggled the doll, rolling around on the floor with Spike pummeling him. “Stop it! Please!”
“Um… Twilight?” Rarity took an abrupt step backwards to avoid the ongoing one-sided fight. “Aren’t you concerned about Nimbus? Or Spike?”
“He’s scratchproof,” said Twilight, preening a little. “And he’s all cloth so he can’t hurt Spike.”
“Oh.” Rarity watched as Spike, seeming having grown tired of his ineffective scratching, began to bounce up and down on the fallen doll’s chest. “I see. Um… As I recall, you mentioned something about taking Nimbus out on a date?”
“Oh, yes! Since my previous stallion interactions have been a little less than optimal—” Rarity withheld comment by the smallest of margins “—I decided to make an assistant, kind of a training aide. This way I’ll be ready for the next stallion who comes along and tries to sweep me off my hooves. So, what do you think?”
Since Rarity had already attempted several times over the last week to find a suitable stallion to ‘sweep’ her friend off her hooves, so to say, and had discovered that Twilight’s reputation had swept, mopped and vacuumed ahead of her by a substantial margin, she was in a bit of a pickle. Thankfully, she was not the Element of Honesty, and had certain options excluded to at least one of her other friends. Also thankfully, there was at least one obvious flaw in her friend’s chain of logic, making the doll she had created less of an Equestria-shaking problem and more of a quirky oddity.
“Twilight,” started Rarity in a very calm tone of voice, much like when she was attempting to coax Opalescence off a high shelf, “since you created the doll—”
“Type Six semi-autonomous cloth golem,” corrected Twilight.
“Ah… yes. Since you created the golem and the magical commands it is following, how do you expect it to teach you how to be romantic on a date? After all, you said that’s something which you don’t know, and therefore could not include in its programming.”
“That’s the best part!” Twilight produced a stack of books with little colored sticky labels in them. “I used a subset of the library to accumulate all of the romantic knowledge Nimbus is going to need in order to guide us through some of the more common dating pitfalls. You know, first dates, romantic dinners, shared public occasions, meeting parents, which of course I’ll only be able to do half of since I didn’t create parents for him. Do you think that would be a good idea?”
Rarity’s head filled with a mental picture of Princess Twilight Sparkle showing up in Canterlot to a fancy dress party with three stuffed dolls at her side and the subsequent city-wide screaming and panic that would follow. Or worse, the dramatic reaction that Twilight’s parents would have when she showed up with her creations. “Ah… no.”
“Or you could stitch together parents for him, and I could enchant—”
“No, Twilight.” Rarity took a deep breath. “Certainly you can see the problems with taking your… date out in public. Why don’t we go out for a nice cup of tea in town, and talk about it while Spike is—” Rarity glanced sideways at where Spike had gradually transitioned from attempting to stomp the doll, to seeing how high he could bounce “—otherwise occupied.”
“Actually…” Twilight’s ears drooped and she looked at Spike proudly sitting on top of his defeated opponent after one final, epic bounce. “You have a point, Rarity.”
“Good.” Rarity arranged her mane before considering the triumphant dragon and the defeated doll, which was still panting for ‘breath’ after its failed tickling defense. One thing that Rarity had to admit was that Twilight Sparkle really threw herself into whatever project she was working on. The stitching and make of the doll was exquisite, nearly as high a quality as Rarity would have been able to do with sufficient time and materials, and to create such a high-order cloth golem bespoke of the incredible amount of magical talent that the whole town had grown to expect. Or dread, depending on the situation.
“I should waterproof him first,” said Twilight. “Otherwise, he would get soggy if he gets wet, and I don’t know how long it would take to dry him out afterwards.”
The problem is that Twilight can be such a ditz sometimes.
“I’ll just leave you two alone for a while, then.” Rarity strode for the door, trying to keep her rapid departure ladylike and majestic instead of a retreat for reinforcements. “You know, so you and your… date can get prepared.”