Spike had not enjoyed his time at the waterpark. After seeing Pharynx he became completely paranoid and afraid. Not a second was spent having fun. Instead, he took every moment to look for where the madman may strike next.
Now, he was at home, sitting at his desk in his bedroom, wondering when and where Pharynx may appear, and what terrible things he may do.
After drumming his fingers on the desk for the thousandth time, Spike glanced over at the clock on his desk. Five minutes before ten o'clock, and Twilight still hadn’t come home. Had Pharynx gotten her while she was out with Thorax? Was she alright?
There came a knock on the door, snapping Spike from his paranoid musings.
“Come in,” Spike said, after jumping in his seat.
The door softly opened, and to Spike’s everlasting relief Twilight walked in.
“Spike?” she asked.
“Twilight!” Spike said, as he got off his seat, and rushed to hug his adoptive sister.
“I know I was out late, but I didn’t think you’d be this happy to see me,” Twilight said, as she returned the hug
Spike nearly smiled at the sight of Twilight in his doorway. He nearly made himself sick with worry only seconds ago, and was now nearly trembling.
“Spike? Are you alright? You look a little flushed,” Twilight said, as she placed a hand against his forehead. “Did you get sick at the water park today?”
“No. I’m alright. I was just wondering what you were doing out so late,” Spike lied.
“Oh, it was nothing, really. Me and Thorax just ended up going to a movie a little later than we expected,” Twilight explained, as she let go of Spike. “Are mom and dad asleep right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, good. Listen: if you could do me a favor, and not tell them that I was out so late, that’d be great.”
“I think they’ll notice that you weren’t here when they went to bed.”
“Shoot. You’re right. I’ll have to think of something,” Twilight said, as she took a step backward into the hallway. “Whatever I come up with, you’ll cover for me, won’t you?”
“Sure,” Spike answered.
“Thanks,” Twilight said, before she quietly made off for her own room next door.
After Twilight left, Spike realized how much his new family meant to him. If anything were to happen to them, it would be like losing his mum all over again.
Pharynx would have to be dealt with.
It was a large undertaking for a little boy like him. But, if he was ever to keep the ones he loved safe from harm, he would have to go and meet the madman. How he would keep Pharynx from returning again, he didn’t know. Pharynx was nothing like Garble, who was sorted out and sent away in one day. Pharynx would need the point driven to him hard. Whether or not he would succeed, or even survive, he was afraid to know. But, he had to at least try to make the world safer for his new family.
Summoning all his courage, the boy quietly crept down to the kitchen to arm himself. There, he picked up the largest knife he could find.
“I’m gonna need a bigger knife,” Spike said, knowing that Pharynx would not go down without a fight.
His mind went back to the day when he was taken to Canterlot Prison by Pharynx. How the madman told him that when they met again, there would be blood on Spike’s hands.
Spike sighed long and silently, as he slipped the knife back into its wooden block. He knew that going out at night unarmed was not wise, but his mind was resolved to undertake the matter.
The boy walked out the front door, knowing that tonight his life would change.
For hours, into the early part of the morning, Spike was patrolling the city. The only sounds here were the steps of his shoes, and the blowing of the wind, with the occasional passing car. Yet, there was no sight of Pharynx.
After so long, he found himself back at Canterlot High. Here was where so many things had gone wrong before. There, by the statue where Discord held his friends hostage only days before.
Spike walked up to the statue, and examined it. Was there some kind of power in there that made Discord go crazy and try to destroy everything?
“No. That doesn’t make any sense,” Spike thought to himself.
He took his phone out of his pocket, and saw the hour was growing late. In only a few hours, the sun would be up, and his family would be sure to notice he was missing.
Partly grateful the night had been uneventful, Spike sighed and leaned his back against the side of the statue. This would prove to be the biggest mistake he ever made.
With a shout, Spike found that he was now falling backwards as if he hadn’t leaned on anything at all.
Spike was unable to see much of anything, let alone any process of travel. In the next moment, he found himself tumbling to the floor in an unfamiliar room.
“Ow!” he said aloud.
He looked around, and found that he was in a room that looked like pure crystal. Behind him, there was a large mirror, the surface of which was rippling like water.
Spike looked at the mirror and touched a claw to its surface, making it ripple more.
“Wait a second! A claw!?”
Spike looked to his hands, and found that they were now scaly and purple, with tiny claws on the tips.
“What the hell happened to my hands!? Am I some kind of dinosaur now!?” he thought to himself.
There came voices from somewhere nearby. Voices that were just barely audible, and completely unintelligible.
If Spike knew what was good for him, he simply would have walked back through that mirror and paid no mind to what happened just then. But, curiosity won over caution, Spike went to find the source of the voices.
After leaving the room he was in, Spike found he was in a hallway loaded with doors. It was as if the room was nothing but endless passageways that led to more passageways.
Following the sounds of the voices, Spike found himself in more and more hallways. Finally, his travels took him to a golden door.
He placed an ear on the door, and heard voices inside talking. He still couldn’t understand the words they were saying, but he thought he could at least recognize their voices. Then, one voice spoke, and he knew exactly who the owner was.
“Twilight?” Spike said.
The door was suddenly surrounded by a pink aura, and opened as if by magic.
Spike was dumbfounded by what he saw. There, sitting around a table were a bunch of ponies. Not normal ponies, though. Ponies in every possible color of the spectrum were present. The most normal ones he could see looked only vaguely like the four-legged animals from back home.
The others: two of them had horns on their heads. Two others had wings on their sides. And one of them had both wings and a horn.
“Twilight?” he asked again.
“Spike?” asked the lavender pony with wings and a horn, as she trotted to the door. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the Dragon Lands.”
“Dragon Lands?” Spike asked. Nothing about what the pony who sounded like Twilight made any sense to him.
“Sorry, Spike. As nice as it is to see you here, I’m pretty busy right now. And it’s past your bedtime anyway. Come on. I’ll take you to your room,” the pony said, before leading Spike away.
Back in the more familiar Canterlot, Sweetie Belle woke up smiling that morning. Today, she was going to visit Spike again. And she was going to spend the day with him. Just the two of them together.
Almost as quickly as she got out of bed, she changed into her street clothes and went to have breakfast with her sister.
“Hey, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle enthusiastically greeted.
“Sweetie Belle, please! It was only yesterday I told you not to yell when I’m this close,” Rarity said, holding her head.
“Sorry. I’m just a bit excited about today,” Sweetie said, as she poured herself a bowl of cereal.
Rarity didn’t have to see her sister’s face to know what she was planning.
“If you want a ride, I’ll gladly drive you to Twilight’s house,” Rarity offered.
“That’s alright. I can just take a tram, and walk the rest of the way,” Sweetie said, as she sat down to eat.
“Ah, c’est l’amour,” Rarity muttered to herself.
“Hm?” Sweetie asked, after she had taken her first bite of breakfast.
“You’ll know soon enough,” Rarity answered.
Spike awoke from his sleep the next morning, feeling as if everything before had been a dream. But, knowing how things went for him: it was sure to have been otherwise.
He sat up, and found he was in an unfamiliar room.
“Great…” Spike muttered.
He looked down at one of his clawed hands, still unclear about what had changed about himself. After a brief scan, Spike found there was a mirror in the room.
Getting up from the bed he was in, Spike walked over to the mirror, and looked at himself in the reflective surface.
“I’m a dragon!!” Spike thought to himself.
To his everlasting shock, he was now a tiny, purple dragon with green eyes, a row of green spines down his back, and a pair of leathery wings on his back.
Why he was a dragon, or how it had come to be, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he couldn’t stay in this place, and had to get back home.
When Spike opened the door to his room, he was greeted by the labyrinthine halls from before. How was he supposed to find the mirror that led back home this way? Still, he wouldn’t get anywhere by simply dawdling. Putting his best foot forward, he started his search for a way home.
“Hiya, Spike!” greeted an energetic voice behind the dragon.
Spike jumped, and turned around, finding himself face to face with a pink pony, who had no wings or a horn.
“Hi!” Spike yelped. Even though she greeted him by name, Spike wasn’t about to attempt to pretend he knew her’s. However, there was something familiar about her that he couldn’t put his claw on.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something on my face? Did I get some frosting on my nose again? I knew I shouldn’t have had cupcakes for breakfast,” the pink mare said.
Cupcakes for breakfast? Spike only knew one other person like that.
“Pinkie Pie?” he asked.
“Yes?” the pink pony said, snapping to alertness.
“Nothing…” Spike said, bewildered that this pony answered to the same name as Twilight’s friend.
“Okay. See you around,” Pinkie said, before patting Spike on the head and bouncing away.
“Something is very wrong here,” Spike thought to himself.
He continued down the thousands upon thousands of hallways, and found his way back to the room with the golden door. Curious as to what might have been happening behind it the night before, Spike opened it up.
“Whoah,” he said, as he entered the room. His eyes settled upon a massive table with seven thrones placed around it. In the center of the table, there was what appeared to be an image of a large map. One look at the map, and he didn’t recognize a single place on it. All the more evidence that he was far from his own home.
“Spike? Well, here’s a surprise,” came another voice Spike recognized.
There came a flash of light, and Spike was faced with the form of a strange creature that looked like a mashup of at least ten different animals.
“I thought you’d be gone longer, the way you’re always talking about that friend of yours in the Dragon Lands,” the creature said.
“Discord…?” Spike said.
“The one and only,” the creature said, as he flexed his muscles in front of a mirror that appeared next to him.
“Right…” Spike said.This was all becoming too much for him to handle. Instead of leaving, like he felt like doing, he decided to simply make pleasant conversation, if only for the sake of formality. “What are you up to today?”
“So glad you asked,” Discord said, “I was just thinking that since Twilight and the others aren’t here, we could get Big Mac and play some O&O.”
“Sure,” Spike said.
He had no idea what O&O was, or how to play it. It was only for the sake of going along to get along that he answered positively. Whatever he was getting himself into, Spike was beginning to feel he was in way over his young head.
Back in Canterlot, Sweetie Belle’s ride on the tram ended, and she was walking merrily toward Spike’s house. Her mind whorled with ideas about how she and Spike would spend their day together, just the two of them. What to do, where to go. Even what she may end up saying.
She was in Spike’s neighborhood, feeling a gentle pounding in her chest. Partly from the long walk, and partly from the prospect of seeing Spike.
When she reached the front door of Twilight’s house, she paused briefly. This was it. The moment of truth.
She raised her hand, and rapped her knuckles on the door.
In only moments, Twilight opened the door, and smiled at the younger girl before her.
“Sweetie Belle. Hey, what brings you here?” Twilight asked.
“Uh…” Sweetie Belle stalled briefly. She had hoped that Spike would have answered, feeling it would have made the situation less tense and awkward for herself. “I was just wondering if Spike was home,” she meekly replied.
Twilight didn’t say anything at first, but nodded her head as she lifted her eyebrows and smirked slightly.
“Follow me,” she said. Twilight led Sweetie Belle indoors, and up the stairs to Spike’s closed bedroom door. “Spike, you’ve got a visitor,” she called through the door.
“It’s me. Sweetie Belle,” Sweetie added, knowing that would get his attention.
There was no answer inside Spike’s room.
“Spike?” Twilight asked, as she knocked again.
Still no answer.
Feeling the slightest concern, Twilight opened his bedroom door.
Spike was gone. No trace of where he could have left to. No note. No prior word. Not even a text message was left.
“Spike?” Twilight asked again. A brief scan of the room, and her adoptive brother was nowhere to be seen. “Great. He left without telling anyone.”
Sweetie Belle began to grow anxious. Spike had already been acting weird at the water park yesterday. What if he had gone away again, just like he had before?
“Why does he keep doing this!?” Sweetie Belle said, as she took out her phone to send Spike a text message, asking where he was. “Every time I think he’s going to stay around, he goes and runs off again. What kind of friend keeps doing this to the people he cares about!?”
“He’s probably just gone out is all,” Twilight suggested. Though, in the back of her mind, she thought there was a chance that Sweetie Belle was right.
Back in the unfamiliar throne room, Spike had sat down at the table with the creature called Discord, after they were joined by a very large pony called Big Macintosh. A very large pony who very much reminded Spike of Twilight’s friend Applejack’s brother.
“So...how do we start?” Spike asked.
“Don’t tell me you fergot already,” Big Mac said.
“Well…,” Spike couldn't think of any excuses. His eyes darted between the older players, before saying the first thing that came to his mind. “Ah, stupid me. I guess I’ve been away for so long, I forgot how to play.”
One look to Discord and Big Mac, and he could tell they weren’t buying it.
“Let’s just play some O&O,” Discord said with finality. He snapped his fingers, and the three of them disappeared.