The dragon was easy to find in spite of the delay caused entirely by Rainbow Dash opening her big mouth. She probably should have figured that it would be Rainbow Dash of all people who would shout out to the world that Twilight’s entirely natural expression of magic somewhat resembled that of the deceased draconequus on account of it being the same thing, but she’d have hoped that Rainbow Dash would have learned her lesson after the last time.
You know, the time when a piece of Twilight splintered off and decided that everypony with a star needed to die so she could be whole?
Yeah, that time.
Anyway, the dragon in question was rather difficult to miss, considering it was bright red, large enough to block the street and was slowly plodding along, blocking traffic and occasionally sticking its head into buildings or peering into windows.
“Hey, blockhead!” Rainbow Dash shouted from the air, getting the attention of the dragon as well as everyone else on the street.
Slowly, the dragon pulled his head out of yet another building and leveled a flat look at the floating eyesore with the rainbow mane.
“Yeah, you!” she shouted, pointing her hoof at him. “Could you maybe not go around scaring ponies? Normally it doesn’t take a genius to realize that businesses only welcome people who can fit through the door, and I’m pretty sure you’re breaking some privacy laws with those second-floor windows.”
Twilight cringed a little at Rainbow Dash’s aggressive attitude, but she wasn’t wrong. In hindsight, it really should have been Twilight to take charge of the conversation, but it was a little late now and she wasn’t exactly eager.
The street rumbled as the dragon spoke. “I care not for your social niceties. I search for the dragon lord’s daughter. All else is inconsequential.”
For some reason, Spike let out a groan. Twilight quietly flew over to the rooftop where he’d settled, still not having gotten the hang of hovering, and asked him about it, leaving Rainbow Dash to talk to the larger of the dragons. “You don’t sound happy about that. Do you know this dragon lord, Spike?”
Spike looked like he wished she hadn’t noticed. “I’ve heard of him from—” he hesitated. “…Tinder, one of the dragonesses that—err—well, you know.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the word harem, Spike,” Twilight encouraged him. She wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t seem to help.
“Uh, anyway…” he continued. “I really haven’t heard much except that he’s, you know, about what you’d expect from an Ursa-Major-sized dragon warlord.”
“So… he’s a jerk?” Twilight surmised, remembering her last encounter with an irate dragon.
“The phrase ‘giant flaming rockhead’ was used,” Spike clarified.
Twilight frowned. “Err, how literal should I take that?” she asked, a little concerned. “Because the last big shouty dragon I had to deal with was literally a volcano. You remember Em—”
Spike surged to cover Twilight’s mouth with his claws. “Shhh!” he said, glancing over in the direction of Rainbow Dash and the dragon. “Don’t say that name. Dragon Lord Torch is Emberstoke’s son.”
“So…” Twilight said, peeling Spike’s claws off of her mouth. “Very literal, then?”
“I’m… not sure,” Spike admitted. “I don’t think so? I think it would have come up.”
Their hushed discussion was interrupted by the flash of what sounded like the mother of all bug-zappers going off. Twilight and Spike quickly took to the air to see what was going on.
What they found was the dragon down on the street curled up and cradling his hand. Rainbow Dash was just floating there looking a bit more ruffled than normal.
“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight scolded. “Please tell me you’re not bullying him just because he’s being obstinate.”
“Hey, don’t look at me!” Rainbow Dash said, defending herself. “All I did is float here. He’s the one that tried to flick me. It’s not my fault I’m made of rainbows and lightning.”
Twilight facehoofed.
“Specifically, it’s your fault,” she added.
“Yes, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight grumbled. “That was implied. Believe me, it’s something that I regret daily.”
“Hey, uh, Twilight?” Spike shouted up from the ground. “This guy isn’t looking good.”
Twilight blanched, quickly whipping around to join Spike at the dragon’s side. “Is he at least breathing?”
“I think so?” Spike answered as Twilight began to cast diagnostic spells on the unconscious dragon. The first few of her spells sent her into a bit of a panic until she remembered to overpower them for the size and resistance of her patient. The signs she got from the overpowered spells were a big relief.
“His heart and lungs are fine,” she told Spike, who let out a breath at the word. “His hand is badly burnt, as is everything down that side of his body to where the lightning left his body through his foot.”
“Umm… oops?” Rainbow Dash said, hovering nearby with nothing else to do.
“Well, he did technically assault you,” Twilight tempered as she continued to check on the dragon. “But in the future, it would really simplify things if you just dodged.”
“What happens now?” Spike asked.
“Legally? Probably nothing,” Twilight predicted. “He has no recourse since he’s the one who escalated to a physical confrontation and Rainbow can’t be written up for excessive force since her elemental nature is something she has no control over. Even if she could have likely avoided it, she wasn’t obligated to do any more than a royal guard is obligated to prevent ponies from throwing themselves on their spears.
“Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, could press charges for the assault, but since there was no lethal intent, it’d almost certainly go down as ‘lesson learned.’”
“That seems a little far fetched,” Spike said, eyeing the unconscious dragon uncertainly. “Assuming he actually learned his lesson, I mean.”
“Nevertheless…” Twilight remarked and turned to address Rainbow Dash. “Did he at least tell you anything more about why he was going around sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong? Spike and I were distracted.”
“Not really,” Rainbow Dash said with a shrug. “Just lots of talk about how he had to find this Ember girl and he wouldn’t let anypony stand in his way.”
“Ember, huh?” Twilight said, thinking. “Isn’t that—no, wait, that was Cinders, wasn’t it? And the one you mentioned, Spike, who told you about the dragon lord, that was Tinder, right?”
“Um. Yes. Tinder,” Spike stated. “That is what I said.”
“Right,” Twilight said, doing her best to remember all of these dragons. “I suppose I can’t blame a fire-breathing species for staking out a monopoly on fire-related names, but it can get confusing.”
“So… you said what isn’t going to happen,” Spike reminded Twilight. “But you never actually answered the question of what is going to happen.”
“Well, right now we’re waiting for the paramedics,” Twilight explained. “So far as I can tell, he’s okay, but I’m not a licensed doctor.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Spike agreed. “Someone should call them.”
Twilight looked around. There were plenty of bystanders standing around corners and peeking at the unconscious dragon. “You don’t think anyone has? I know the city’s becoming more urbanized, but I’d still expect the average pony to call the authorities when someone gets hurt.”
“Well, err, the thing is… who are you gonna call? It’s a massive, giant fire-breathing dragon, and I remember pretty well how useless doctor Horse was with just a reasonably-sized dragon.”
Twilight grimaced. “That’s a point. We don’t have the facilities to take care of him. Or to jail him if it came to that. I kind of wish… no, nevermind.”
“What?” Spike prodded.
“It’s nothing,” she deflected. “I’m being silly. I just couldn’t help but think that things would just be a lot simpler if we could shrink all these dragons to pony size.”
“Um… yeah,” Spike responded flatly. “That would be great.”
Twilight glanced at Spike, attempting to guess at the reason for his stilted response. It quickly came to her. “Oh, you know what I mean, Spike. You’re pony-sized enough. You’ve got a good balance of traits, actually: you’re a reasonable size, you have wings, you’re fit for bipedal or quadrupedal locomotion… if all dragons were like you, we’d have a lot less problems.”
“Couldn’t you at least shrink this one down, though?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking up from her gruesome inspection of the dragon’s injury.
Twilight rejected the suggestion with a shake of her head. “No, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said and went on to explain, “Any traditional shrinking spell I could use would only be temporary. A dragon this size… if he woke up and panicked, there’s a good chance he’d be able to throw it off, which would be… bad.”
“Yeesh,” Spike said, making a face. “Yeah, And non-traditional spells?” Rainbow Dash asked. “You know, like what you were doing back at the deli? You seemed pretty sure you could do just about anything and that it would be permanent… which, actually, I don’t get because you were able to reverse anything Dis—”
Twilight shot Rainbow Dash a harsh glare.
Rainbow Dash’s ears flattened, and she corrected herself. “Okay, okay, you were able to reverse anything that guy did with just one spell, even if it was only in a small area.”
“Not anything he did,” Twilight corrected. “Restoring you all to your right minds took something special beyond the typical failsafe spell. If I had to guess, knowing what I do now, it would be because he never intended for any of his mischief to be permanent, so it wasn’t. Otherwise he’d have had to remember how something was previously in order to put it back and try something new, and I can’t see him doing that.”
“I… guess that makes sense?” Rainbow Dash said, not entirely seeing it her way, but not really invested in it. “So anyway,” she said, getting back on topic. “Can you?”
“Can I? Probably,” Twilight guessed. “Am I willing to test dream magic for the first time ever on a living subject on an unconsenting dragon in the middle of the city? No.”
“Okay, well, for the third time, then, like Spike said, what happens now?” Rainbow Dash asked, getting a little peeved.
“Well, we do know one pony who’s used to taking care of a variety of animals, and taking him to her would even get him out of the city…”
“You can’t mean…?”
A pegasus, a unicorn and a very large dragon appeared in a blinding flash in the field behind Fluttershy’s house, sans Spike who had been sent to the hospital just in case they’d actually acquired somepony or somedragon who would have something to contribute to the dragon’s care, as unlikely as that was.
“Are you sure about this, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked, keeping her voice to a whisper. “You do remember that Fluttershy and dragons don’t really get along, right?”
“You don’t know?” Twilight asked, surprised. “I thought you two were spending time together lately?”
“Know what?” Rainbow Dash asked, not having the slightest clue what Twilight was talking about. “I mean, she’s been hanging around a lot as a bird or squirrel or whatever, but she hasn’t said anything. She can’t. What, did she make friends with some teenaged dragon or something? I can’t see her dealing well with anything larger than Spike is now…”
Ah, well, this was awkward. Twilight only then realized that maybe the whole ‘dragons are eating me’ thing was something that Fluttershy didn’t want spread around. Or maybe she’d be offended again that Twilight was treating her less than the demigoddess she was.
Well, better safe than sorry. “No, no, nothing like that,” Twilight said, then reconsidered. “Actually, something a little like that since Rarity has that new dragon assistant and Fluttershy has been hanging around the two of them by proxy. It’s not just that, though. There are dragons all over the place these days, and she has… acclimated, I guess?”
“Really?” Rainbow Dash said, sounding doubtful. “Well, good for her, I guess.”
“Well, thank you, Rainbow Dash,” came Fluttershy’s quiet voice from behind the two mares, startling Rainbow Dash into the air.
“Oh, uh, hey Shy,” she said, doing her best to casually land again like it was no big deal. “I didn’t see you or your… uhh… two giant yellow bears, there.”
Indeed, when Twilight turned to greet Fluttershy, she found her accompanied by a pair of large, yellow bears who were already inspecting the injured dragon.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” Fluttershy apologized. “I needed Harry and Boris to bring my large animal medical supplies.” She looked concerned, though at no point did she actually turn to look at what the bears were doing. “What I have might not be enough. Even my largest supplies are sized for bears and manticores. A full-sized dragon is a little beyond what I’m prepared for.”
Twilight’s ears drooped at the news. “I’m sorry Fluttershy. I wasn’t sure where else to bring him.”
“Oh, no. You were right to bring him here,” Fluttershy insisted, correcting her. “Nopony else was prepared for something like this either. Um. Spike didn’t find any help at the hospital, so he’s going to go check in with Princess Luna.”
It took Twilight a few moments to remember what Fluttershy’s level of omniscience really meant. In fact, she’d probably seen the whole thing as it was happening. Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, only understood the generalities of Fluttershy’s power, so the concept that the occasionally timid mare knew what was going on half a city away came as more of a surprise to her.
Not that she ever let something like that stop her. “Well, it’s a burn, so all you really need is gauze and disinfectant, I guess? Just lots of it?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“For now, yes,” Fluttershy agreed. “There are also some specific burn salves for scaled animals that I think would help, but that isn’t urgent and having Zecora make up a batch might not be possible with the Everfree gone. Right now, Preventing infection is the most important thing. Alcohol would work for disinfectant, but I don’t know where we can get that much sterile cloth on short notice.”
Twilight frowned. It was a bit of an issue since cloth didn’t come off the loom sterile to begin with. Rarity would have plenty of cloth on hoof, but they’d have to sterilize it and Twilight wasn’t familiar enough with the subject to know what would be sufficient. Could they just soak it in the disinfectant first? Rainbow Dash was looking expectantly at Twilight, but she didn’t have a quick answer.
“Well?” Rainbow Dash said, her look of expectation rapidly becoming something else.
“What?” Twilight said, backing up slightly at the intensity of Rainbow Dash’s glare. “Why are you looking at me like I can just magic some up out of nowhe—oh. Err, right. I can just magic some up out of nowhere.”
Thirty seconds and a large pink bubble later, there were two outsized rolls of gauze and a wooden barrel on a pallet next to the injured dragon. Rainbow quickly immediately made for the barrel and popped it open, immediately recoiling at the smell.
“Eugh! Twilight!” she shouted, stumbling back with her foreleg over her nose. “What kind of alcohol is this supposed to be? It reeks like a hospital!”
“It should be pure isopropanol,” Twilight explained, walking over to see if there was a problem with it, though the prevalence of the acrid smell meant that she didn’t need to get too close. “It smells right to me,” she judged. “We’ll have to mix it with thirty-percent water to use it as disinfectant. I figured the less complicated I made it, the fewer chances there would be for something to go wrong.”
“Isopropawhatanol?” Rainbow Dash asked before it came to her. “Rubbing alcohol! That’s the smell!” Somehow, this explanation didn’t seem to cheer her up very much, especially when she seemed to realize what she’d just said.
That’s when it clicked for Twilight. “What, did you expect me to make drinking alcohol or something?”
It was very clear by the red creeping up on Rainbow Dash’s cheeks that yes, that was exactly what she had been expecting.
With Rainbow off sulking and the two yellow bears doing their best to clean the dragon’s wound, Fluttershy took the opportunity to quietly ask, “Um. How long have you been able to use Discord’s magic?”
Twilight was surprised at first that Fluttershy hadn’t already known about it, but then, there probably hadn’t been any animals in the deli itself. Then she processes the actual content of the question and she had to do her best not to get angry. “Please don’t call it that,” she pleaded.
Fluttershy shrunk back. “O—oh. I’m sorry. It’s just that it looks a lot like his.”
“It’s just magic,” Twilight insisted weakly. “Pure magic, really, though I’ve been calling it dream magic. It’s… not unlike what he could do, but it’s also not unlike what Pinkie Pie can do.”
“I… see,” Fluttershy said, clearly giving it some thought… though also clearly using her two bears to shift the injured dragon over so she could wrap his leg. “Um. Twilight?”
Twilight snapped her attention back to the pony Fluttershy. “I’m sorry, did you say something, Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “Twilight, about what you said yesterday… about the rest of us not living up to our potential as… as demigoddesses.”
Twilight winced. “I didn’t put it that rudely, did I? I mean, I said I knew it wasn’t a fair complaint, and I’m sorry I unloaded all of that onto you.”
Fluttershy was looking at the ground shuffling in place nervously. “Thank you?” she offered. “But that’s not why I brought it up. It’s just… if you really think I can do more than I am… what you just did… do you think I could learn it?”
Twilight blinked. “Learn it?”
Fluttershy nodded silently but vigorously.
“You, Fluttershy, want to learn to bend reality to your will?” she asked, still not quite believing what she was hearing.
“Oh yes,” she said, beaming. “It would be so very nice to be able to do so.”
Twilight struggled to come up with a response. “But… of all the things you could learn, why would you pick that?”
“Oh, but why wouldn’t I?” Fluttershy asked a little dreamily. “I love taking care of my animals and I always do everything I can to make them comfortable, but with how many different kinds there are, coming up with the right accommodations and supplies for them has been all but impossible. It’s not as if they sell crutches for squirrels in town, and there’s only so much I can do with hooves.”
“Um. Okay,” Twilight said, letting that sink in. “That’s… actually a very good reason.”
“Then you’ll teach me?” Fluttershy pleaded with hope in her eyes.
“Well… I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try?” Twilight said with uncertainty. “Two days ago I would have said that it was earth pony magic, but with what I know now, I think it might be possible? You have to understand, Fluttershy. I only figured any of it out yesterday afternoon.”
“That’s okay Twilight, I—oh dear,” Fluttershy went pale. “That isn’t okay at all.”
Again, the concept of Fluttershy’s multiplicity took a moment to remember, then Twilight quickly looked over to the injured dragon. “Is there a problem? Is he going to be alright?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “No, it’s not him, it’s—”
“Uhh, hey, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash interrupted, braking heavily from a long dive.
“You’re interrupting, Rainbow,” Twilight snapped.
“Well, it’s just… the thing is, there are two more dragons the size of this one that were circling around above the city until a second ago, and I think they just saw this one, ’cause they’re headed this way.”
Twilight looked back to Fluttershy, who was nodding frantically.
“Oh, swell.”
It was only when Luna could finally get her latest petitioner to leave that Spike made himself known. It was rather ironic that the obsequiousness manner that made him easy to identify in spite of his older appearance was the one thing she would have wished he could exchange with the rest of his race.
“Welcome, young Spike… or, I suppose I cannot call you young any more, can I?” Luna mused aloud. “Not when you stand before me in such a fashion and the favor of five awaiting you at home.”
Spike slapped himself in the face and groaned. “Not you too…”
Luna cocked her head in question. “Is there something wrong with my recounting of your situation?”
“Look… please believe me,” Spike begged. “I don’t have a harem. I don’t even know four of them and I don’t even like the one I do know.”
Luna frowned. “So they are taking advantage of you and your shared circumstances?”
“Shared circumstances?” Spike asked.
Luna nodded. “Yes. This whole matter with the shared molt that has resulted in your advanced maturation.”
“Oh. Right. That…” Spike shrunk in on himself, showing his reticence through fidgeting. “The law requires that I answer ‘no’…?” he suggested, then mumbled under his breath, “…or at least it does if I want to stay on the right side of it…”
“O…kay?” Luna said, perplexed at the odd statement but gathering that there might be more going on that he didn’t want to talk about. “In any case, Spike, if it is your desire that I not presume your relationship status with the five attractive females with which you share a domicile, then I shall respect your wishes and refrain from doing so.
“However, as we have talked at length in the past about matters of the heart, I would say that I know you well enough to suggest that if nature is pushing you together with these five dragonesses, then it would not hurt to at least consider the possibility.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Spike grumbled. “You and Twilight are made for each other. Me and these girls aren’t.”
“That may be,” Luna acknowledged, nodding solemnly. “Though you did say that you didn’t even know four of them, did you not?”
“Err, yeah, I guess…” Spike admitted.
“Listen, Spike,” she said, doing her best to present herself in a sympathetic and understanding manner. “It is important to remember that Twilight was not the first pony that I attempted to court.”
“You call what you two did courting?” Spike asked.
“Shush,” she chided him and went on without comment. “As I was saying, she was not the first pony… or even the first mare. It is not always easy to know what the heart wants, and many times I thought that I had found somepony that I could love, only to have it slip through my hooves. Little did I know that it was my own nature that I was fighting.”
“So, what, I don’t get a choice?” he asked rather petulantly, pacing back and forth. “I should just lie back and think of the empire?”
Luna shook her head. “Quite the opposite. Though my search for a partner was ultimately fruitless, it was also necessary. Had I not searched—had I not fought my nature—I would never have come to terms with it and I would have suffered even more than I did. Your nature, as I mean it, is more than what your body reacts to, though that is an important aspect of it. You are lucky in that it is a comparatively easy box for you to check in your circumstances, yet you are not the type to let it lead you completely.”
Spike took a moment to follow Luna’s logic. “So… that’s a lot of words to say I should give it a shot because I might not know what I want?
Luna hmmed. “Yes, that is about the gist of it,” she surmised.
“You could have just said that,” he told her.
Luna raised an eyebrow at him. “I believe I did. At the very start, in fact.”
Spike was tracing the conversation back in his head and coming to the conclusion that, yes, she had told him to ‘consider the possibility’ when there was a rumbling thunderclap in the distance.
“Odd,” Luna remarked, looking upward. “That is the second such thunderclap in a very short time on a day when no weather is scheduled. I wonder if something is going on at the weather storage facility.”
Spike made some indeterminate gurgling sound and Luna dropped her gaze back down to discover that he appeared stricken with guilt and a small amount of fear.
“Was there, perhaps, something that you came here to tell me?” Luna guessed.
Twilight admitted it. She was impressed. The combined thump and grinding rumble of two massive dragons coming to a sliding stop, tearing up the grass was fairly awe-inspiring, yet Fluttershy stood her ground beside Twilight and Rainbow Dash. Yes, she was shaking, but she was still there, and that was what counted.
Of the two new dragons, one was blue and the other was purple. Both were big and meaty, standing twice as tall as Flutteshy’s cottage at the shoulder, and neither one looked entirely pleased.
“Who are you…” the purple one boomed, his voice shaking the windows of the nearby cottage. “What have you done to our brother…” His claws curled, making great furrows in the ground. “And… how?”
Twilight was quite unprepared for the sheer incredulity in that last demand and had to collect herself before answering. Thankfully, Rainbow Dash seemed to understand that it might be best for Twilight to handle this one.
Twilight cleared her throat, considered her words, and as a last-second inclusion, slipped into the Traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice. “I am…” she cringed, but decided it was best to use her full title. “…The alicorn of the stars, Princess Archlibrarian Twilight Sparkle, and these are my demigoddesses, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Claiming to be under the remit of your dragon lord on a search for his daughter, this dragon was causing a disturbance and violating the privacy of citizens of Equestria. We—”
“You think that gives you the right to—”
“It gives us the right to warn him that his behavior was unacceptable, yes. Which is all that we did,” Twilight shouted back, silencing the objection.
“And I suppose your warning is why he is lying there beside you covered in burns? Burns! On a dragon!” he cried, shouting his disbelief to the sky. “It is an outrage!”
Twilight had to struggle not to roll her eyes. “Yes, well, that is what happens when one flicks a demigoddess composed entirely of rainbows and lightning,” she said, gesturing at Rainbow Dash.
The large, purple dragon raised himself up and slammed his claws down into the ground on both sides of the small group of ponies, bending in for a closer look. “This?” he asked, lifting one hand out of the ground to point at Rainbow Dash, who seemed to have no problem being pointed at by something the size of her house. “You are claiming this little blue one is the cause? Preposterous!” he roared.
And then he flicked her.
The crashing boom of Rainbow Dash’s physical veneer being stripped away to reveal the overpowering indifference of a force of nature grounding itself through several hundred tons of meat and bone was blinding and deafening from two feet away.
Twilight wished very much that she had blinked, but she really hadn’t expected such a long-lived creature to be quite so stupid. The thump of the massive creature impacting the ground next to his brother was proof enough to put the lie to that assumption, even though Twilight was still recovering her senses. Ears ringing, she was blinking her eyes, struggling to see past a green spot right in the center of her vision when she felt a continuous, rhythmic thumping through the ground and looked up to see the last of the three dragons bearing down them with rage in his eyes.
Twilight leapt aside and took to the air, lighting her horn with magic in preparation to do… something.
Rainbow Dash, for once, actually followed suit, ducking around the charging dragon’s mass in the blink of an eye, likely angry over having two dragons injure themselves on her without even giving her a choice in the matter.
Fluttershy… ran, and she didn’t run fast enough. Seeing the opportunity for what it was, the enraged dragon shot out with his claws and struck her down with such force that her body just fell apart… into approximately forty-six squirrels.
Twilight didn’t think that Rainbow Dash saw that part, or there probably wouldn’t have been a third immense flash of lightning and a third unconscious-or-worse dragon crashing to the ground.
Twilight wished she hadn’t seen it. She was glad that it happened, certainly, but her seeing it just happened to preclude her from seeing where she was flying, which turned out to be the side of Fluttershy’s cottage as fast as her desperately flapping wings could propel her.
Thump.