//------------------------------// // Only Sparklebois Need Apply // Story: Spike's Adventures with Deed Poll // by Seer //------------------------------// It was a rare thing indeed, when there was a spread of this quality, for Spike to only feel the distinct feeling of suspicion. Not the charming kind of suspicion when you think a loved one might be hiding an impromptu gift for you behind their back, nor the severe kind like when you might think said loved one has no present for you and is guilty of a significant number of war-crimes. It fell somewhere between those two extremes, if you can imagine such a thing, and it was consuming him entirely. He felt no excitement, no joy, not even the slightest pang of hunger. Well actually, that's not really correct. Spike did have several intense pangs of hunger, but then again he always did. He was a dragon after all and they weren't exactly famous for being easy to satiate. However, it spoke volumes about the muting of said hunger that he was able to restrain himself and fix the founders of this feast with an inscrutable glare. These weren't the usual gems that Rarity gave him to eat, this was the veritable 'good stuff'. Normally the seamstress would pass along anything imperfect she encountered for the dragon to snack on, while she kept the best gems for use in her dressmaking. Spike didn't mind this, imperfect gems tasted basically just as good at the higher quality ones after all. However, this didn't mean he still didn't get excited when the potential of some more fine dining was presented to him. Normally these were reserved for treats, but today the entire table was covered in them. "Well Spike, aren't you gonna dig in?" Twilight urged. "Yes my darling, only the best for our favourite little dragon!" Rarity added. The smiles on their faces may have seemed normal to an untrained observer, but Spike knew these mares like he knew the back of his hand. Their subtly strained, almost desperate, nature was plain for him to see. It had started this morning when Twilight had gotten a letter from Celestia. It had come so early that it's heralding fiery-belch had woken them both up. Twilight had groggily read it, but as her eyes had scanned the page all traces of sleepiness seemed to vanish from her. She had turned, stared at Spike for a few seconds before informing him that he didn't have to do any chores today. Now normally the drake would have questioned this, but he had learned to never look a gift horse in the mouth, and not only because in a world ran by hyper-intelligent equines that expression had wildly different connotations. She had then let him go back to sleep, and when he awoke he found that Twilight had turned off his alarm clock and allowed him to have a lie-in. It had only gotten better from there when he went downstairs to find that not only had Twilight sorted breakfast for them both, she had bought it to spare them from the utter salmonella-fiesta that was her cooking. His capacity to just blindly accept forced-providence began to dwindle, however, when Rarity came around. Spike had sat by the window to eat his breakfast and saw her from a mile off. It seemed like she had galloped the entire way levitating two buckets of the aforementioned 'good stuff'. The seamstress had barged into Golden Oaks with the all the grace of someone trying to thread a needle by tying the thread around a bullet and just shooting it through. When he had questioned Rarity as to what her rush was, she insisted she had just been so excited to spend the entire day with her favourite dragon. Now Rarity spending the day with Spike was hardly an unusual occurrence, but the unicorn always gave advanced notice. She didn't nearly boot the library door out of the frame with a sweaty unkempt mane and several kilos of her best gems for said favourite dragon to scoff. There's definitely a joke in there about Rarity acting so un-Rarity-like being the biggest rarity of all but it would be laboured and unfunny so we'll just move on. The morning had been spent in a whirlwind of Spike's favourite board games, a trip to the comic shop to buy him what basically amounted to a new library's worth, Rarity and Twilight listening to him explain which were his favourite series and while they tried to hard not to appear bored that it looped around again and became mildly insulting. All the while, Spike had gotten more and more wary of what their angle was here. When lunch time came and Rarity had upended her two buckets onto the table, he had finally had enough. So here he was, in the seat of honour before a buffet of his favourite food while his two favourite ponies in the world animatedly discussed all the fun things they could this afternoon, and all he could do was continue staring at them suspiciously. "So, are you guys gonna tell me why you're doing all this?" he began. "Of course nothing's wrong Spike!" Twilight exclaimed, only nanoseconds after Spike finished talking. Jackpot. "So, now we know something's wrong, are you going to tell me what-" "I said nothing's wrong, Spike! I think someone needs to clean the coins out of their ears!" Twilight tried to sound and look carefree, but her expression became one of deeply troubled contemplation as she realised that what she had just said was not, nor had it ever been, an actual saying. For her part, Rarity stared incredulously at the librarian. Years of schmoozing in Canterlot had given the seamstress an enviable level of skill in verbal jousting, and this made it understandably difficult to watch Twilight conduct the affair with the demeanor of a murderer attempting to fabricate an alibi to the police while carrying a large, bleeding burlap sack. "Darling," Rarity began, ignoring the expression of gratefulness on Twilight's face for sparing everyone the embarrassment of allowing her to continue, "All that Twilight means is that you don't need to feel like something has to be wrong for us to want to spend the day with you, we love you very dearly after all." "...Yeah but there is something wrong isn't there?" "There's nothing... 'wrong'." Rarity replied, adding hoof-mimed speech marks around the offending word. "Spike, the letter Celestia sent this morning was about you." Twilight pulled up a chair next to him, "It's good news really, but the Princess thinks you're finally ready to hear about your... dragon parents." At this, he dropped the glare and uncrossed his arms. He strongly suspected Twilight had been about to say 'real parents'. Whether it was for her benefit or his own that she didn't, he couldn't be sure. It wasn't something that the two of them had discussed at any length. "Does she want me to meet them or something?" "Oh goodness no dearie, Twilight told me the princess is planning to send over the information they have on them via letter." Each mare regarded him carefully, clearly preparing whatever adverse reaction they expected him to have. "Okay," he began, searching for something more to say, "That's fine, I guess." With that, he started chomping down on the gems while the two mares stared, thrown off by his flippancy. Spike was touched that they had tried to give him the best possible day before he got some potentially upsetting news, but the matter of his dragon parents had never really bothered him all that much. If they had wanted to make contact they could have done so by now. Obviously he knew that the ponies he considered to be his family weren't blood relations but it hadn't ever been a factor. They had been all he'd known since hatching and they were more than enough for him. "Spike, are you sure you understand what we've just said?" "Twilight, whoever my 'dragon parents' are, I've lasted sixteen years without them. Sure, it'll be cool to know who they are but honestly this doesn't change anything for me. I'm fine, really." The librarian's relief was palpable, and each of her muscles visibly relaxed. Once again Spike didn't know whether this was because he was fine, or at his assertion that nothing would change. Either way, it was good to see her in a better state. Rarity came over and ruffled his spines affectionately, commenting on that he was 'such a mature dragon'. Spike focused his attention on polishing off more gems, glad that the earlier tension was now easing. The swirling green mist above the table began to coalesce. Rarity and Twilight had made themselves a light lunch and sat to join Spike at his banquet but it had been short-lived. Celestia had apparently decided it was time. They watched as the smoke formed into a manila folder containing the fateful information. Considering how fateful said information was, it came as something of a disappointment when the dossier finished coming together and then just fell on the table. A bit more fanfare would have been nice. Still retaining his casual demeanor, Spike picked it up and flicked it open while pointedly ignoring the glances he was getting from the two unicorns. Inside was a single sheet of paper with two photographs affixed to it. He removed them and took a glance, not knowing whether to be relieved or worried about his own lack of an emotional response. His mother appeared to be a land-dragon. Huge, muscled and wingless, with nearly impossibly deep violet scales and rich gold spines. His father, on the other hand, had a much slighter frame and appeared almost serpent-like. Perfect, bleach white with spines and wings the colour of sapphires. What he lacked in his mother's apparent strength, was made up for by sheer size. From the scale of the scenery nearby, he looked to be twice as tall as the dragon Fluttershy had cleared from the nearby mountain. The dossier itself was very slight in details, admitting from the start that they had little concrete information on the two dragons. Suffice to say both his parents had very publicly left the egg in Celestia's personal gardens, and then left before anyone got the courage to question them. Whether they were simply abandoning Spike or actively wanted him to be raised by ponies was something no-one had ever found out. This part of the story was something he already knew, and recalling how hard and unforgiving dragon culture was, Spike liked to imagine they had wanted to give him a better life. The only things in it that were completely new to him were the pictures and a list of sightings. The beasts had remained elusive, and the last recorded one had been nearly a decade ago now. Dragons simply continued to grow as they aged and he wondered how old each was to reach such mind-boggling sizes. There was a further piece of interesting information though. Through talking to the more friendly dragon clans, Celestia's royal guard had managed to find what each of his parents were called. His mother's name confirmed her as a dragon from Griffonstone. Spike stared at the words for a moment, attempting to sound out the strange pronunciation of the unfamiliar Griffish. "Cazilech Zargboi," he tentatively said, before thanking Twilight as she corrected him. However, it was his father's name that made his jaw drop. "Whiteflame Sparkle... wait, does this mean I'm a Sparkle too?!" Feeling something approaching genuine excitement for the first time since receiving the letter, he rushed to hug Twilight, "Oh my gosh, with the rainboom as well, it must have been destiny!" "I'm sure it was Spike," Twilight chuckled good-naturedly, "But dragon naming is a bit more complicated than that. If a dragon doesn't have a known surname, they choose their own at adulthood. I imagine that's what Whiteflame did. However, if each parent's surname is known then their child actually has an amalgamation of both!" Spike watched as she took the letter in her magical grasp and scanned it, the excitement of being able to describe an unfamiliar concept taking over her. "No-one can be sure without talking to the dragons themselves, but Celestia said that their best scholars in dragon culture agree the most likely amalgam for you would be... huh." "Well, what is it darling?" Rarity encouraged. "It would seem Spike's most likely full dragon name is 'Spike Sparkleboi'." "Wow, it's certainly... striking," Rarity offered impotently, to which Twilight chimed with an underwhelming 'uh, yeah'. What followed could only be described as oppressive silence. Rarity opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, clearly trying to find the words to reassure Spike, while Twilight pointedly busied herself with re-reading the scant letter. Spike let the name sink into him like cold vomit down the drain of one of those awful avocado baths you sometimes still see in your mate's houses and are too polite to point out how terrible they look. Twilight set the letter down on the table when it became clear the amount of times she had re-read it was bordering on sarcastic. Her eyes met Spike's for a second before she valiantly decided to look down at the floor instead of trying to comfort him. Honestly, the dragon couldn't really blame her either, he didn't even know what to say to himself ease the disappointment threatening to crush him. He scooped up the dossier and scanned the information again himself. "Spike Sparkleboi," the dragon read aloud, dashing his hopes that the name might sound cooler when he said it himself. He stared at the page for a time, feeling for all the world that Celestia's impeccable calligraphy was mocking him. Say what you want, the world 'Sparkleboi' did not become more cool when written in fancy letters by a magical horse princess. Now the young dragon had been through a lot in his short life, and he prided himself on his ability to deal with new challenges with a calm disposition, stiff upper lip and an amount of whinging well within the government's recommended daily limit. What he didn't exactly deal with so well was the tiny but distinct sound of someone trying not to laugh. His head whipped up from the paper and he prepared a suitable cocktail of profanity to hurl at the offending mare. However, he was confronted by the sight of identical rabbit-in-headlight expressions from the two unicorns. Neither made any move to implicate the other, implying they were honour-bound in some kind of 'snitches get stitches' situation, but adapted for libraries. Oh, so this was the game they wanted to play, was it? The poor fools, he almost pitied them. They clearly had no idea how in over their heads they were. You see, he may not have been particularly fast, strong or a proficient fighter, but Spike Sparkleboi was possibly the greatest living savant at getting his friends to laugh condescendingly at him. Neither Twilight nor Rarity dared blink as he planned his next move. "Spike..." he began, narrowing his eyes. Each mare's pupils contracted, they knew what was coming. The only question was whether these paper tigers could withstand the oncoming storm. "...Sparkleboi." All pieces came together, Twilight's eye twitched, king had nowhere else to move, Twilight's mask slipped, checkmate. The librarian fell to the ground, hooves flailing as her body was wracked with a giggling fit of biblical proportions. "You think this is funny?" Spike fumed, his stubby arms folding across his chest indignantly. "Twilight, I'm shocked at you! I'll have you know there's nothing funny about Spike's lovely new surname!" This would have been encouraging support from Rarity were it not for the fact that she had had totally lost composure toward the sentence and joined in with Twilight's laughing. Both mares fell in a disheveled heap on the ground and neither was able to regain their earlier composure. The dragon wanted to scream at them, and he would have done just that were it not for the fact that he knew that he'd be the absolute worst offender if this was happening to literally anyone else. "Oh god, I can't go around being called 'Spike Sparkleboi'!" he lamented, manipulating the paper desperately in the misguided hope that it might reveal some new writing, revealing this was all a borderline criminal abuse of trust and authority by Celestia to play a joke on him. "Spike dearest," Rarity wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and stood on still-shaky hooves, "It's okay, no-one outside this room even knows, save for Celestia and some scholars on dragon culture. And I'll remind you that Canterlot academics are literally the only ponies who care about what Canterlot academics have to say!" "Hey!" Twilight snapped. "I'll admit, it's an amusing surname, but Twilight and I would never betray your confidence. This will be our little secret," Rarity reassured. Twilight got up as well and nodded to him with an admirably low amount of giggling. "Thanks guys," he said with audible relief. "I'll bet you'll be laughing about this too before you know it," Twilight offered, and the three of them began to chuckle lightly. "Yeah, I suppose it is kinda funny. Heh, Sparkleb-" He was cut off as yet another piece of correspondence arrived from Celestia. They watched as the green smoke aggregated into a laminated piece of paper. When it was fully formed, Spike reached out for it and found himself confronted with an updated copy of his hatching certificate. As his eyes scanned the words he began to feel the kind of panic and anguish usually reserved for when strangers attempt to strike up conversations about animated television programmes with you on public transport. Where it used to simply read 'Spike', it now had his new, full name. "I don't get it!" Spike babbled desperately, "Is she just messing with me or does she actually think she's doing me a favour?! Also isn't she literally our co-head of state? How does she have time for this?!" "If the princess thinks this is for the best Spike, we're just going to have to trust her." Twilight said in the manner of someone utterly convinced they'd just said something terribly clever. He felt like arguing with her about her troubling lack of drive to question the authority of an absolute monarch, but Spike 'No Gods, No Masters' Sparkleboi had bigger fish to fry. There was no way he was going the rest of his life with this name. He clutched his hatching certificate tighter as the only way forward became clear to him. "Twilight," he muttered darkly, "Fetch me my litigation garments." "You can't mean!" She spluttered. "That's right, we're going to civil court."