"So dearie... you're actually going to wear those?" said Rarity, her tone not unlike the one you might use to try and coax a gun out of the hands of someone who was wearing a sandwich board proclaiming the end of the world. Spike took another look at his litigation garments in the mirror. Now admittedly, he had never been involved in anything the least bit litigious, but he had always thought that if he did, these would be the things he would need.
They consisted of a musty fur-collared cloak and a thick antique walking stick the young dragon had procured from a cart-boot sale. He and Twilight had agreed early in his ownership that their argument about whether they were priceless treasures or useless pieces of trash was getting them nowhere and that they should just drop it.
"Look, if we turn up looking like everyone else, we'll just get corralled into a queue, but if I turn up in these!" he gestured to said priceless treasures/useless pieces of trash, "They're not gonna tell someone carrying this to just wait!"
"Spike, I understand you're very anxious to get your name changed back but you can't take these," Twilight's tone was not unkind, but it was still firm, "They'll weaken your position and I'm pretty sure it'd get you arrested."
Spike was about to ask how he could possibly be arrested for taking a large knotted piece of wood which could easily be used to beat someone to near-death into a court building, but was cut off by Rarity.
"I really must agree with Twilight dearie, as long as we go in and follow their instructions politely, you'll be coming home tonight with your name fixed,"
"Yeah, but whenever the power ponies want to get justice done, they never go without their outfits and weapons!" he countered, not quite grasping that comics featuring costumed vigilantes conducting extrajudicial assaults on poor ponies forced into lives of crime by circumstances beyond their control was maybe not the best source for an argument about court etiquette.
"Don't you think 'justice' is a rather grandiose way to describe removing the word 'Sparkleboi' from your name?" Rarity deadpanned.
"Spike, you are not taking something you just admitted is a weapon to the civil court, are we clear?" Twilight said, stomping her hoof for emphasis. The dragon's eye's narrowed.
"I think you'll find that I have ways of getting what I want Twilight," he intoned darkly. All parties present steeled themselves for what was sure to be the greatest battle of their lives...
Within the hour, the three friends had arrived at the veritable cathedral of bureaucracy that was the Ponyville civil court. Spike's shoulder's were slumped as he was woefully sans litigation garments. He had continued to argue in favour of taking them while only using comics as his sources. He was sure that, years from now, legal scholars would look back on his defense of the outfit as a stalwart defense built upon foundations of only the soundest reason and logic.
Unfortunately, the reptilian Matlock had been unprepared for the depths to which his opponents were willing to sink. He had finally relented when the two unicorns had adopted the childish but irritatingly effective strategy of referring to him as 'High Wizard Sparkleboi' and saying things like 'wow nice staff High Wizard Sparkleboi' and 'ooh don't use your magic on me High Wizard Sparkleboi'.
The three of them surveyed the foyer of the civil court. Beneath various signs, swathes of ponies had filed into orderly, but slow-moving, queues. That was pretty much it. Spike hadn't exactly expected a cabaret, but this was so underwhelming as to become overwhelming. The omnipresent lifelessness seemed to suck the colour out of everyone queuing. It made the dragon depressed.
"Okay Spike, we'll need a deed poll form first," Twilight began, squinting to read the signs above the various queues.
"It's the third queue from the left darling," Rarity interjected, confidently stepping over to join the line.
"Wow Rarity, you worked that out before me," Twilight trilled, very unsuccessfully trying to hide how irritated that had made her, "How do you know much about the court system? It's almost like you already knew which queue to join, haha, have you changed your name before?"
"I am not merely a pretty face my darling," the seamstress replied curtly.
"Hahaha, of course not! Have you changed your name before or not?"
"Twilight!" Spike snapped, "Do you really think the only reason Rarity knew where to queue before you was because she's changed her name?"
The librarian grumbled something about how much she'd read about the Equestrian legal system while staring at the floor. The three busied themselves with the white-knuckle thrill ride that was waiting to be given forms while the line moved at about a fifth of the speed of continental plates. The droning hum of indecipherable background conversation drifted in one ear and out of the other. The two unicorns were having an extremely dull chat which was divided equally between updates on how Rarity's business was going and what Twilight was currently researching. The dragon's only respite from the near-lethal monotony was the occasional nutter going spare about the amount of forms they had to fill in.
Spike climbed onto Twilight's back to get a better look around. The room was beige and the furniture was wooden. If there were any further observations to be made, he couldn't think of any of them. He decided to look at the clock, noting it was five-past-one, and then resolved to not look at it again until five minutes had passed because literally attempting to make the one life he would ever get pass as quickly as possible was still preferable to sitting around bored out of his skull in this stupid beige room.
Seconds ticked by like ice-ages as he resisted the urge to look back, which was quickly seeming less and less possible. He only became aware that he was digging his claws into Twilight's back when she turned and glared at him. It reached the point where he was near-certain that five minutes must have passed, but he was no stranger to nihilistic staring-contests with Father Time, so he decided to wait another couple of minutes to be sure.
Finally, to the victor went his spoils. He turned to the clock, and felt rage building as he saw it now somehow read four-minutes-past-one. He scowled at it's blank, uncaring face and the clock didn't respond because it was a clock and didn't posses the sentience necessary for a response. Surveying the queue again, he saw that in the apparent nega-time that had just gone by, they had moved all of half a metre. Spike cursed his lack of foresight not to bring along a book or something. He glared at the back of Twilight's head, feeling very much that if he had been allowed to bring his litigation garments, none of this would be happening right now.
Okay, new game. He swivelled around until he located a security guard. Spike closed his eyes and counted down from three, then once he reached zero he opened them again and stared. Let it be a testament to the dullness of the civil court that not only was Spike engaging in a staring contest, one of the most boring and maddeningly pointless ways to spend your time, but he was going a step further and having a staring contest with someone who wasn't even playing along. The dragon was well aware what he was doing was so tragic and pathetic that it may have actually been worthy of prosecution, but he was far too bored to care.
The guard was wearing a white collared shirt and black tie under a black jumper. They were grey, their mane was darker grey, and their eyes were brown. Even the ponies working here were boring. He felt like external forces were conspiring to shut his eyes against his will. Sentient creatures simply weren't mean to deal with situations so utterly bland. Staring at the guard's eyes was so mind-meltingly uninteresting that the dragon's eyes began to just slide off him, it was like trying to look at one of those stupid magic-eye pictures that your friend might smugly pretend they've worked out despite you both knowing they haven't.
The guard hadn't moved at all since this began, prompting Spike to question whether they were in fact a very realistic looking cardboard cut-out. His eyes began to water as time went by, both from the lack of blinking and the psychological impact of staring at the visual equivalent of eating dry Weetabix while watching the Tory party conference muted with Radio 4 on in the background. Finally, it all became too much, and Spike was forced to blink. He went through the process that literally everyone goes through after their first round of a staring contest in a while, which is to say he remembered that staring contests were somehow more boring than doing absolutely nothing.
However, that wasn't to say that he was finished with the guard. He now found himself quite invested on seeing them blink, though at this point seeing any discernible movement from them at all would have sufficed. He stared, they didn't move. He stared, they didn't move. He stared, another nutter was sent absolutely west when they were told they had signed their forms in the wrong place.
Now, you can't exactly stride up to somebody and demand that they move, but it also reaches a point when you might think they are remaining statuesque purely to spite you. You, specifically. The dragon's eye's narrowed, his grip on Twilight's midriff tightened as he attempted to make the guard blink by purely the powers of his mind.
"Spike... darling?" Rarity's voice floated from the aether, freeing him from his brief flirtation with sanity loss.
"What, are we at the front?" Spike babbled excitedly,
"Oh goodness no darling, I just wanted to let you know we're finally within ten metres of the desk."
He prepared a mouthful of unforgivable profanity to hurl at everyone present, but the chance never arrived. For the fourth time that day, he belched forth flames against his will as Celestia sent yet more unwelcome correspondence. The smoke coalesced to form a polaroid photograph. He squinted at it and saw Princess Luna posing with a wide grin in front of the stained glass window of Spike and the Elements of harmony. On the accompanying plaque, 'Sparkleboi' had been added after his name, and Celestia had written 'Everyone in the castle is so proud of your dragon heritage Spike!' on the border of the photo in that infernal calligraphy.
It's a strange thing, to say the least, to feel that the heads of state of the country you live in were wasting valuable time that could be spent improving lives just to ruin your afternoon. He stared into Luna's eyes, trying to find any trace of mockery or sarcasm, but found them maddeningly sincere.
"Hey!" he was snapped from his borderline-psychotic musings by a voice. Spike noted the direction from whence said voice originated and felt his heart skip. It was the corner of the room where the apparently inanimate guard had previously stood. Tearing his eyes from the offending picture he turned to claim his meagre prize; watching as someone who he had recently engaged in an non-consensual staring contest reprimanded him for a breach in courthouse etiquette. Living the dream.
However, as was quickly becoming the theme for the day, Spike found himself disappointed beyond words when he swiveled around to find that the guard from before had apparently been relieved by a new one. She was wearing a white collared shirt and black tie under a black jumper. Her mane were grey, her mane was darker grey, and her eyes were brown. He felt his eye twitching against his will.
"No open flames in the courthouse!" they bellowed whilst somehow still managing to be boring, "Go to the back of the queue!"
Spike looked back at the line of ponies behind them, then at the nirvana that was the desk. The three of them were directly in the middle, and now thanks to forces utterly beyond his control they were going to lose all their progress. He stared incredulously into the dull, lifeless eyes of the security guard for what felt like an eternity.
They didn't blink.
Spike finally let loose his premeditated stream of obscenities as they took their new place at the back of the queue. Thank god for small mercies at least.