//------------------------------//
// 3 - Spike 
// Story: Grouchisaurus Rex 
// by Baal Bunny 
//------------------------------//

The whole thing was a giant nuisance, of course. Spike didn't have any other sort of nuisances anymore.

"It's not a problem!" Dolores kept insisting, the team of pegasi, unicorns, and griffons from Doodle Construction carefully unfastening the clamps from the back edge of the theater roof in preparation for folding it open. "I mean, Great-Granddad designed this place with you specially in mind. It's supposed to do this."

Spike's snort came out way grouchier than he intended. He took a breath, very deliberately didn't fold his arms across his chest, and said, "I appreciate that, Dolores, really. But I told Nate when he built it that he didn't need to worry, and we've never bothered opening it up before! I'd rather just stick my head in through the side door." He waved his claws at Glimmer Park, dappled and shady beside the Ponyville Community Theater. "I can stretch out in the park like I usually do." And not have everypony make a big deal about it, he didn't add though the thought was always there in the back of his head.

"Well, yeah," Dolores said, her attention on the workers above them. "But since the others are gonna be here, too, I—" Her ears folded, and her wide eyes snapped in Spike's direction. "I mean—"

"Others?" The word trickled into Spike's head like rain water through a broken window. "What others?"

Having watched her grow up, Spike knew that Dolores could be a pretty good liar, but only when nothing big was at stake. Now, though, her ears were folding, her mane bristling, and her voice stammering, "I just mean, y'know, all the princesses! 'Cause, yeah, we, uhhh, we wanna have the roof open in case...in case they need to fly off somewhere in a hurry!"

He didn't even bother scowling at her, just leaped into the air and gave a flap that he knew would've tipped over anycreature less solidly built than Dolores. "Spike!" he heard her call after him, but he knew who he needed to talk to if what he thought was going on was really going on.

Once in the air, he adjusted his profile to cut down on the turbulence he was creating—no need making things worse for any other fliers out today—and tried to breathe away the weird mix of pride and dismay that soaring over Ponyville kicked up inside him these days. For more than half a century, the Chamber of Commerce had been using the slogan, "The Biggest Small Town in Equestria," but looking over the rooftops spilling out from the wedge bounded by Sweet Apple Acres, the Everfree Forest, and the Whitetail Woods, Spike had to wonder if the place had maybe outgrown that claim...

The castle had expanded over the years, too, with multiple spires now and a horseshoe shape that Twilight ascribed to the Tree of Harmony's weird sense of humor. At least it was still the tallest building in town: no Planning Commission document said anything about that, but every construction company kept it as an unspoken guideline. Spike swooped over the central wing, dropped onto the courtyard's landing pad, and padded toward the big main doors.

Noontime saw the park and gardens that made up most of the courtyard bustling with ponies and griffons, changelings and hippogriffs, a lot of them workers from the government offices in the west wing. They waved to him as he tromped along, the tourists in the crowd staring with loose jaws before raising their cameras to snap photos. It took some effort to keep the tightness in his middle from showing on his face, but he did his best to wave and smile and call out to those who actually called out to him.

Once inside, he turned for the east wing, the residential part of the palace. Ducking into the main corridor, he gave the guards a nod as he slipped between them and sent a puff of yellow smoke in Twilight's direction. They didn't need written scrolls anymore, not between the two of them. Yellow meant 'important but not life-threatening,' and while a part of Spike wanted to use red smoke, telling her to drop whatever she was doing and find him immediately, he had to admit that this wasn't quite a Tirek- or Grogar-level event...

The carpet muffled his claws, the light from the clear crystal windows nicely diffuse and muted. Winding his way into smaller and smaller hallways, he finally squeezed through the door of the Twilight's library—not the public library and museum that filled the castle's central wing, but Twilight's personal space.

That she wasn't here went another step toward confirming his worst suspicions, but he stopped himself from scowling when he saw Mira Belle looking up from a side table, her horn glowing to guide at least three quill pens across several sheets of paper spread out around her. "Mira?" he asked, coiling himself into one of the window alcoves and silently thanking the Tree for keeping up with his own slow-but-steady growth. "Twilight gave you homework on the weekend the play's opening?"

"Homework?" She blinked at him, then shifted her gaze to blink at the papers. "Oh, this is just some thoughts I've been having on thaumaturgical particle decay. I always get too nervous to do anything real when Wyvern's going to be appearing on stage." Shaking her head, she sighed. "I don't know why. He's really, really good at it."

"Yeah." Spike's feelings about Vern had gotten just as jumbled two weeks ago as everything else inside him, so he fell back on his standard joke. "He makes a better me than I ever did."

Mira gave him one of her squint-eyed scowls. "That's not funny when Twilight says it about Petunia, and it's not funny when you say it about Wyvern, either! Equestria wouldn't be Equestria if it wasn't for you two! It probably wouldn't even exist, or if it did exist, it would be a terrible place where no creatures were friends with each other, and they all went around shouting and growling and not having any fun at all!"

"Wait." Making himself scowl back at her, Spike held up a claw. "Are you saying that Twilight's been stealing my line?"

She rolled her eyes in a way that Spike was proud to have inspired in most of Twilight's students. "Excuse me," she said, standing and drawing herself up to her full height: for all that she'd been growing, too, she still wouldn't've been able to poke his knee without jumping. "I have serious nonsense to do this afternoon, and I don't wish to be disturbed."

He opened his mouth to inform her that she was lucky he stopped by, then, what with him being an expert at nonsense, but a sudden mustardy scent tickling his nostrils stopped him. "Actually," he said instead, swinging his head and sniffing, "I'd hate to keep a promising young goof such as yourself from her studies." The smell was coming most strongly from the door in the library's north wall, so Spike rose onto all fours and started toward it. "Besides, I'm hunting the Crepuscular Winged Monoceros, so I'll see you later."

Her giggle followed him to the door. "Tell Twilight I chased you off with my overwhelming work ethic."

The grin he gave her over his shoulder evaporated as soon as he'd pushed through into the corridor outside the library. Twilight always used a mustard scent trail to answer his yellow smoke when she couldn't come to him and wanted him to come to her. That she was responding this way pretty much told him why she was busy, but he forced his neck spikes not to bristle at the thought since the corridor here was a little on the low side.

The aroma beckoned to his right when he came to the transept, and that settled every doubt. The corridor to the right sloped downward, after all, leading him underground through larger and rougher tunnels till they opened out into the familiar cavern beneath the castle, the protrusions from the Tree of Harmony shedding a cooling light over the nooks and crannies. Another scent began mixing in with the mustard smell, and Spike let himself bristle at last. Rising up onto his hind legs, he padded across the smooth stone to a large doorway and stepped inside.

Something close to daylight shone here—the Tree had grown some skylights up at ground level back when Twilight had hired the local Diamond Dogs to expand the subterranean portions of the castle. Twilight lay with her forelegs crossed on a cushioned outcropping about halfway up the wall, a large, flat-topped stalagmite serving as a table between her and her guest.

Despite his grouchiness, Spike had to admit that Ember had really grown into her position as Dragon Lord over the last couple centuries. Two stories tall and all smooth, sinuous muscle, she made him think of Celestia more and more every time he saw her. Except, of course, when they'd had their little talk two weeks ago at the end of the Greater Nations' Summit...

Thinking about that let him steel himself against her diamond-sharp gaze turning toward him. "Afternoon, all," he managed to say without wobbling the words too much.

"Spike!" Twilight's voice had a happiness in it that was both real and phony. "What a surprise! Ember and I were just talking about you!"

Which meant that she'd called him without letting Ember know. Which meant that they'd been discussing him in ways that she thought he needed to be a part of. Of course, that Ember was even here meant that Twilight had invited her, and that Dolores had said 'others' instead of 'other' while opening up the theater roof meant that Twilight was expecting at least one more dragon. Which meant that they'd undoubtedly been talking about—

He put as much nonchalance into his shrug as he could manage. "I was just heading to my cave when I caught a familiar aroma." He bowed to Ember. "Your Lordship."

One of Ember's eye ridges rose the tiniest amount. "Are we really going to do this, Spike?" When she wanted to, she could still sound almost exactly like the brash young princess he'd first met all those years ago. "Because if you insist that I call you Ambassador, you'll put quite the damper on what was up till now a perfectly lovely little tea party." She picked up her cup, looking so delicate in her claws even though Spike knew it held nearly twenty gallons, and sipped it.

"Please," Twilight said, her yearning tone more than enough to start melting Spike's steely resolve. "We're all friends here. I'm sure we can talk this through."

Ember shrugged. "I tried talking, but Spike didn't seem—"

"Talking?" Spike couldn't keep from baring his teeth. "You ordered me to get Smolder pregnant!"

"No." Ember set her cup back down on the stalagmite table, snapped her claws, and a ball of fire burst into the air above her paw before clearing to show the Bloodstone Scepter floating there. "I could've ordered you to. If I were any of Dragon Lords who came before me, I would've ordered you to, and you would've been unable to disobey." Another snap, and the Scepter vanished. "But I didn't do that."

Something that felt like an icicle had stabbed into Spike's chest at the sight of the Scepter, and when it disappeared, he had to force himself to take a breath. None of the coldness went away, though.

"Y'see," Ember went on, picking up her cup again, "I'm convinced that having the Dragon Lord choose which dragons enter into mating pairs based on the ancient fitness criteria hasn't really done much for us as a society. We're the biggest, strongest, most magical beings in the known universe, and yet we're also the grouchiest, the stingiest, the laziest, and the least organized. And yes, I'm including griffons."

Twilight sighed. "Ember, that's not—"

Ember's snort seemed to startle Twilight into silence. "You know it's true. I know it's true. Everycreature in Equestria knows it's true." Her gaze focused on Twilight and somehow got even sharper. "You ponies, though, you run the world. And your basic family units are formed largely on choice and on 'love'." She made little air quotes with her claws. "I've talked a few times with Princess Cadance about it, and she agrees with me: we need to encourage more of this love thing in the Dragonlands."

The heat surging through Spike pretty much blew away the last of the ice, but instead of stoking his anger, he just felt tired all of a sudden. "Love's not that simple, Ember," he muttered.

"See?" She waved her cup at him, brown liquid sloshing out to splash against the wall. "You already know about this stuff!  And Smolder, well, she was the first dragon from the Dragonlands to graduate from a pony school, the first dragon from the Dragonlands to have pony friends, the first dragon from the Dragonlands to actually get invited to regular pony parties and to walk the streets of your cities without giving anypony a heart attack! I've watched you two grow up together, and now that you're both of age, it's obvious that you'd be perfect partners! I mean, you like her, right?"

"Well, of course!" he answered without thinking, then caught his breath. "But—"

"Then it's settled!" Ember slammed her cup onto the table. "She'll be here in fifteen minutes, then we can all have some dinner, go to the play, you two can enjoy a moonlight flight afterwards or whatever it is that happens on dates. It'll be perfect!" She glanced over at Twilight. "That's the word, right? 'Date'?"

Twilight nodded, sighed, and turned to Spike. "Ember raises some good points, Spike, so now let's hear—"

"What?" All the ice crashed back into Spike's stomach. "Twilight? You...you agree with her?"

"I'm only saying," Twilight began.

But that was as much as Spike needed to hear, his ears pounding and the walls seeming to close in around him. Spinning, he sprinted out into the hall, scrambled for his private entryway, spread his wings, and flapped for the end of the tunnel as fast as he'd ever flapped in his life.

Fortunately, Twilight had set up magical sensors to open the door at his approach, but, well, he'd never approached at this speed before. He focused on the slowly widening crack of daylight between the door and the jamb, stretched himself, rolled to the right, tucked his wings to his sides, and barrelled out from the side of the ravine just north of Zechariah's hut. More pitching and rolling kept him from slamming into the cliff face on the other side, and he whooshed up into the clear air above the Everfree so quickly, he was surprised he didn't leave an expanding ring of rainbow behind himself.

His first thought—hide somewhere!—he dismissed almost immediately. Twilight knew all his hiding places, and as he'd discovered two weeks ago when this same problem had driven him sleepless into the pre-dawn darkness, he didn't fit very well in any of his old spots anymore anyway. He needed to find somewhere he could hunker down, somewhere he could catch his breath, somewhere he could lay low for a year of three till things had maybe gotten a little less—

"Well, hey!" a voice he couldn't quite place rang out beside him. "You hurrying to put out a fire or to start one?"

Glancing over, he could only blink for a moment at Hoedown, the unicorn racing along through the sky next to him, her usual big, goofy grin stretched along her muzzle. "'Cause I'm totally up for either," she finished.

Spike pulled into a hover. "Hasn't Twilight talked to you about how unreliable flight magic is?"

With a shrug, Hoedown stopped as well. "She talks to me about a lotta things, but let's talk about you right now." She bobbed in front of him, her horn sparking and its glow surrounding her. "If you're rushing toward something, can I come, too? Or—" She waved a hoof over the tangled treetops in the direction they'd just come from. "If you're rushing away from something, well, there's two of us now, so let's go back and kick its sorry tail!"

Even with his stomach flipping around, Spike had to give her a grin of his own. "You've got no idea how tempting an offer that is, but right now, I...I just need somewhere I can hole up and think for a while."

"Thinking?" She shook her head. "I wouldn't recommend it, but hang on a minute." The glow around Hoedown flared up till Spike had to squint, then she was gone.

He barely had time to draw a breath before she reappeared, something brown and feathery squawking between her forelegs. "Hoedown!" Gaia shouted, wriggling away and dropping with a gasp, her postal delivery hat popping off her head. Her wings shot out immediately, though, lifted her back up to grab her hat in her claws and scowl. "Some of us are trying to work, y'know!"

"Exactly!" Hoedown spun and nodded to Spike. "No creature knows Ponyville like Gaia does 'cause she brings mail to all of it! So if we need a place to hide out—"

"Spike?" Gaia was blinking as if she'd just noticed him. "Hide? What...what's going on?"

Opening his mouth but completely unsure what he was going to say, he was saved by Hoedown giving a groan. "C'mon, Gaia! All we need's someplace new where Spike to fold up in for an hour or two!"

Gaia tapped her beak. "Well, Dolores and her crew just finished the cellar at the East Ponyville branch of the library. They haven't installed the boiler yet, so that oughtta be plenty big enough to—"

"You're the best, Gaia!" Hoedown reared back, and everything around Spike went as white as a sudden snowbank.

Before he could even blink, darkness crashed over him. Something flat and solid smacked against his chest, and the return of gravity told him he was now lying sprawled across a hard surface. He managed a blink, maybe two, but then ahead of him, a little orange light like a candle flame poofed up, hovering at the tip of Hoedown's horn, Gaia beside her with her crest feathers flat against her head. "Oh, yeah," Hoedown said, looking around. "Nice and roomy."

For the length of another blink, Spike considered mentioning the several teleportation safety lectures he'd heard Twilight give her, but he finally decided to say instead, "You've been hanging out with Discord, haven't you?"

"Hey, now." She shook a yellow hoof at him. "If you're gonna talk nasty about Pop-pop—"

"No, no." Slowly sitting up, Spike squinted through the darkness to see a fairly spacious area around him, a few windows along the tops of the walls, a ramp across the way leading up to what looked the big sliding doors of a loading dock, and a regular, pony-sized door not far from where the three of them were sitting. "Just wondering where I should send the 'thank you' card since I didn't end up with a gullet full of gravel." He nodded to Gaia. "You okay?"

She folded her arms across her chest. "This better be a good story I'm about to get: that's all I've got to say."

"Me, too." Hoedown gave a crisp nod, the shadows cast by her horn dancing along the wall, then leaned forward. "So tell us everything."

Spike took a long, slow breath, not sure where to start—or if he even really wanted to start—but a rattling at the smaller of the big room's two doors made him look over. It creaked open just enough for a pony's head to peer around it, and Spike wasn't entirely surprised to see that it was Cinnamon Teal: he ran this branch of the library, after all. "Hello?" Teal called, his glasses reflecting the glow from Hoedown's horn. "Is somepony there?"

"Just us, Goggles." A greenish tinge came over Hoedown's light, and the whole cellar took on the air of certain fern-encrusted grottoes Spike had visited over the decades along the coast south of Vanhoover.

"What?" Teal stared, one wing pressed to his chest. "Spike? Gaia? Hoedown? How did you—?" Closing his eyes, he shook his head. "Wait. I withdraw the question. The words 'how' and 'Hoedown' should never be placed in close proximity."

Gaia puffed a breath. "Tell me about it." She beckoned with a claw. "C'mon in and close the door. Something's got Spike scared."

"What?" Teal asked again, and before Spike could object, he'd trotted in, one hind leg tapping the door to swing it shut behind him. "What is it? What can we do? Do you need any—"

"It's not—" Spike waved an arm and winced when his paw smacked the ceiling. "There isn't— You can't—" Forcing his brain to stop whirling, he concentrated on not blowing any fire out when he sighed. "Twilight and Ember think that Smolder and I should start dating."

Silence followed, then, "And what?" Hoedown asked, cocking her head. "They all insist you pay for dinner?"

Tightness started coiling in Spike's chest again, but Teal was turning to glare at the unicorn. "This isn't a joke, Hoedown. Matters of the heart are extremely delicate."

Hoedown blew loudly through her lips. "We're talking about dating here! I mean, c'mon!"

Gaia's crest feathers bristled. "And how many dates have you ever been on?"

With a sniff, Hoedown pointed her snout at the ceiling. "I'm just waiting for the right guy to ask me."

"Really?" Teal looked over the top of his glasses at her. "And who might this 'right guy' be?"

"You, you doofus!" The light from her horn flickering, Hoedown stomped a hoof. "I've had the most massive crush on you since, like, sophomore year! I mean, what'm I s'pposed to do? Summon a giant flaming heart into the sky above Ponyville? But no! You'd just say it wasn't on the weather schedule! You're such a stupid, gorgeous, rock-headed hunk of brain!" Her voice caught, and her eyes went wide. "Wait. That...that all was supposed to be inside my head..."

Spike knew his jaw was hanging open, the other two staring at Hoedown with similar looks on their faces. Teal recovered first. "Hoedown, I—" He stepped forward and pressed a wing to his chest. "I've likewise held you in secret regard from the moment I first beheld you, but I couldn't imagine that a glorious, vivacious creature such as yourself—"

"Goggles!" Hoedown threw herself at him, wrapped her forelegs around his neck, and rammed her lips into his.

"No!" Spike shouted, his inner fire flaring in ways he'd never felt before. "That's not how it works!" He leveled a claw at the two kissing. "That not how any of this ever really works!"

Neither of the ponies seemed to notice, but a breathy little laugh pulled his attention sideways to where Gaia was shrugging, a sort of half-smile pulling at the base of her beak. "Ponies, right?" She rolled her eyes at him. "I swear, the universe has one set of laws for them and a completely different set for the rest of us."

His throat clenching, Spike stared back and forth between her and the other two, now standing with their eyes closed and their foreheads touching. Then he was leaping across the cellar, digging his claws into the loading dock doors, shoving them open, and bursting out into the nearly blinding afternoon. A tiny voice in the back of his head started yammering about proper flight safety procedures, but he didn't even try to stop his wings from pounding the air, lofting him upward with his face stretched into the wind rushing against him, the gale-force gusts not nearly enough to dry the tracks of water flowing along the sides of his head.

How long he flew or even in what direction, he had no idea, but eventually, a sensation started poking at him, the particular swirl over his scales that told him someone about his size was flying alongside. Not sure he wanted to look but knowing that he had to, he blinked the crust from his eyelids and glanced over to see Smolder gliding there.

"Hi," she said.

Everything inside Spike felt like glass about to shatter. Because while Ember embodied the ideal of the female dragon, all fluid strength and dark, glittering majesty, Smolder was shorter, stubbier, broader at the shoulder and with a snout that always seemed ready to curl into a laugh.

Completely perfect, in other words, though Spike wanted to smack himself for thinking it.

She was nodding toward a rocky field below and to their left. "Can we settle down and talk a minute?" she asked, her voice as rough as ever but still so smooth in his ears.

Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded and tipped into a roll, the airflow telling him that she was following. He backwinged to a landing, dust wafting up to tickle his nose, and the scent of it told him where they were: the Pie family's rock farm would be somewhere around the other side of those hills just off to the west.

The lightest possible thump told him Smolder had come down beside him, and the growl behind her words told him she wasn't at all happy. "I asked Ember to keep her stupid snout out of this, but no!" She flailed orange claws at the sky. "She yammers on and on and on about how she's gonna be a different sort of Dragon Lord, and then she goes and pulls a bone-headed stunt like this!"

"You—" He had to swallow before he could go on. "You don't want this date, either? I mean, you're great: you know that, right? But—" You're not her, he stopped himself from saying, an alabaster face with sapphire eyes and amethyst mane drifting as always through his thoughts.

"Yeah." Smolder's eyes lost focus. "When Gallus died, I— I wanted to— It almost—" She shook her head, a sliver of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. "I don't think the big jerk ever had any idea about, well, anything. But his wife and kids did, and they...they wouldn't let me crawl away. They kept flying in to visit, kept sending me invitations, kept pestering me no matter how much I yelled at 'em, and they kept me—" Her gaze came up and met Spike's. "To this day, they've kept me a part of the family."

"Gallus?" Spike could only blink at her. "I...I never knew."

She shrugged. "You weren't supposed to. So, yeah, I mean,  you're great, too, and, yeah, maybe someday—"

"Exactly!" Reaching out, he grabbed her claws in his, his smile feeling like it stretched clear around his head. "You're right!  You're totally, totally right!"

"Of course I am." Her curling grin always made his heart do a little stutter, and he couldn't help noticing how she wasn't pulling away. "So how 'bout we shine off this whole play thing and head over to the Pies for some rock soup?"

Every one of Spike's spikes went rigid. "The play!" A quick glance at the horizon told him it was still a couple hours till sundown, so if they left now at top speed, they could reach Ponyville just in time to— Taking a breath, he focused on Smolder again. "I promised Vern I'd be there, and, well, part of the family, right?"

"Don't gotta tell me twice." She spread her wings. "So. Race you back to town?"

He started to snort and tell her she must be crazy, but she was already exploding upward, dust and gravel spraying into his face, her raspy laughter tickling his ears.

"Hey!" he shouted and took off after her.