//------------------------------//
// Ch. 12: Accommodate 
// Story: The Rocks And Water 
// by KingReptarAlmighty 
//------------------------------//

Waking Thorax up was never this much of an ordeal.

Maybe it was the events of the prior day, but he was pretty much dead to the world, regardless of how much Spike poked and prodded at his face. Spike frowned, thinking. As much as he would enjoy going back to sleep, they probably had something to do today, and more importantly, he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to spend their first day as boyfriends just sitting in bed.

Spike sighed, before choosing to resort to drastic measures. He slowly wriggled his way out of Thorax’s embrace, and like clockwork, the moment he made it out of the bed, Thorax’s eyes hesitantly opened. 

“I’m beginning to hate mornings.” Thorax said tiredly. “What are we doing today that warrants me getting out of bed?”

Spike shrugged. “Whatever you want for our first date.” He said slyly, hoping that Thorax would take the bait. And take the bait he did, sitting up in the bed near instantaneously. Spike continued talking, working on coaxing the Changeling out of bed. “We can go anywhere in the Crystal Empire.” Spike blinked, before looking down at his claws briefly. He could probably do a lot more now that he had a bit more of his own power under his control. “Well, I can probably teleport now if what happened in my dream last night was real, so anywhere, period.”

Thorax fluttered over to him, eyes bright with joy and ideas. “Well, while I figure out somewhere to go, you can tell me about this dream.” Spike smiled, but shook his head.

“Thanks, but it wasn’t much of a dream to talk about. It was just Discord helping me figure out my powers a bit more while I wasn’t in the real world, so there wasn’t a chance of me causing any problems.” A tingling sensation ran up and down his forearm as the familiar purple became a clean warm gray. “Apparently I have an entirely different form now, so that’s cool. Here, grab my shoulder.” Thorax obliged, looking very much interested, and Spike hesitantly snapped his fingers. With a flash of light, they were in the main hall of Twilight’s Castle, and Thorax looked down at Spike with absolute awe. Spike was in a bit of awe himself, not expecting it to work on the first try. 

With another flash of light, Discord appeared with a party hat and tweeter, clapping ecstatically. “Well done, Spike! Your first intentional use of your powers, oh!” He wiped a comically large tear from his eye. “I feel like a proud parent.” He stopped for a moment, scratching at his chin. “Actually, that’s Twilight’s job.” He gasped suddenly, and a wide smile spread across his face. “Am I a mentor?! Are you my student?”

Spike blanched, having not thought particularly hard about it before. He shrugged, genuinely considering it. “I think you might technically be?” Spike sounded unsure, but nevertheless, Discord squealed with happiness, before procuring a camera from who knows where. 

“I have to capture my protege’s first successful use of magic!” Discord explained, before snapping a picture. He looked at the printed picture excitedly, before sending both away. “Now that that’s handled, I should ask why here of all places? Twilight is out, ironically, she’s headed to the Crystal Empire-”

“-To go see me.” Spike sighed, before grabbing Thorax’s hoof and teleporting back to the Crystal Palace. He landed in the dining hall, where a now shocked Shining Armor and Cadance were reading over some papers. “...Hi.”

Shining Armor broke out of the momentary shock first, quickly stringing together a greeting and question, leaving it mostly incomprehensible to Spike. He quickly realized his mistake however, and repeated, “Good morning. So can you teleport now, or was that Thorax?”

“That’s all Spike! We were just at Twilight’s castle.” Thorax answered.

“Apparently she’s headed out here.” Spike added on. Both Cadance and Shining Armor lit up at this, and it seemed that news was enough to snap Cadance out of her stupor. 

“Well, I’ve got good news. Apparently the play we saw wasn’t the real deal.” Spike raised an eyebrow in confusion, and Cadance floated the stack of papers over to him. “This is the official, Me-approved script, and the one that the actual playwright and lead actor was going to use. One of his understudied preferred an alternate version that made you look more ‘brave and glorious’, and when the play was pushed back two days, the understudy took the opportunity to gather his own group, learn his version over the course of a week and a half, and perform that on the day the play was initially supposed to go out.”

“So the one we saw?” Thorax questioned.

“A complete deviation from the one I approved.” Cadance confirmed. “That one starts tomorrow. The understudy got chewed out and kicked off the group, and came up here to apologize at five in the morning after realizing we’d left midway through.” Spike blinked, an astonished smile slowly working its way onto his face. He might’ve been the only one to notice as a barely present tension finally left Thorax, like a bare ghost of a weight finally being lifted. Spike instinctively held Thorax’s hoof tighter, his smile going from astonishment to happiness as Thorax finally got the last bit of confirmation that Spike couldn’t provide.

“All I wanted to know is how he didn’t manage to think, ‘Hmm, this might come off badly.’” Shining Armor said. “Guess some people just get too caught up in their own ideas to realize that they’re doing some terrible stuff.”  

“In any case, I wanted to know if you two would be alright with going to see the real version. You have the script, so you can look it over and see if there’s anything you don’t like.” Cadance offered. Spike looked at Thorax, who looked slightly conflicted. Quickly enough though, it resolved itself, and Thorax nodded with a full smile. 

The rest of breakfast was a calm mix of clinking plates and shuffling papers, as Spike and Thorax ate while Shining Armor and Cadance ran through paperwork.





“Oh, you should’ve seen it, it was incredible! No mishaps, no teleporting into walls, no accidentally teleporting the floor with him!” Discord continued his cooing over Spike’s first successful attempt at teleportation, and for once, Twilight felt inclined to agree. Teleportation was notoriously difficult to master, even for the well-practiced, and she was certainly proud of him for it. That said, Discord had been talking about it for the past five minutes, and as much as she was willing to sing Spike’s praises, she wanted to move onto other praises to sing.

“It really is incredible, but I want to hear about some of the other things he’s done. You said he changed the climate?” Twilight questioned. Discord nodded, still very ecstatic.

“It was when they were first arriving at the Frozen North. It was in the midst of a cold spell, and the rain prior had done them no favors. They made it most of the way through, before Thorax was overcome and collapsed. Spike freaked out, and in his worry, he rewrote the climate from northern to tropical for a mile in every direction! I’d never seen such raw power from a beginner, I was in shock! I did have to go in and fix it, but soon enough, he’ll be capable of changing it himself.” While Discord recounted the events, Twilight was positively beaming. If Spike was capable of doing things like this while he didn’t even know what he was, when he got a full understanding of himself he’d be something incredible. 

Not that he wasn’t already, of course.

“Still, I do wonder,” Discord began. “That egg was a peculiar circumstance. It looked like a Changeling egg in almost every way, and yet there were exactly enough things wrong with it for me to question how true that must be.”

Twilight furrowed her brow in confusion. “What egg?” 

Discord smiled sheepishly. “Oh, I had forgotten to mention that. Well, it seems that Spike had caused an unfortunate power leak when he first began manifesting his powers. A poor, sweet changeling ended up being on the receiving end, and was driven to attack Spike and Thorax in an attempt to speed up Spike’s power manifestation.” Twilight’s mouth fell open as Discord continued talking. “I’ve yet to tell him about that, especially since it wasn’t even his fault. A new species of fruit had began growing nearby the Changeling hive, and its effects seem to mirror a slightly more malicious version of the poison joke plant. Changelings appear to be immune to its effects, but Spike was not, and the cruel joke it played was causing his life giving powers to corrupt life.”

“Oh my goodness…” Twilight said, dumbfounded.

“Indeed. I removed the bushes when I realized what had caused it, but much before that, the Changeling that was corrupted did make an attack. Spike, in his unrefined abilities, reverted her back to an egg, or rather, renewed her expended life by transforming her into an egg.”

“Well, what makes you think it’s not a changeling egg?” Twilight questioned. 

“Well for one thing, it’s too strong.” Discord counted on his fingers as he explained his reasoning. “Changeling eggs are durable, but they’re very goopy. That egg had an actual shell. Second was the patterning, rather than swirls, it was dots and diamonds. Third, and this was the most distinct, was the lack of shifting. Changeling eggs reflect the color of the ground beneath them to a degree. They remain green, yes, but take on color undertones and colors in the swirls based on the colors of the ground beneath them. That one simply remained green.” 

“So you think it’s something else?”

“It’s hard to say. Spike is the life giver, it’s entirely possible he created a new form of life.” Discord absently ran his talons through his beard. “I would honestly say it’s likely, the more I think about it.”

“Well, do you have any ideas on what it might be?” Twilight asked cautiously.

“Perhaps a new type of changeling, or something in between Changeling and Dragon. Or perhaps, it’s a mimic like Spike.” Twilight pondered each idea, grumbling as she attempted to process the new information.

“What happens if a one of a kind species enters the world like that?” Discord simply shrugged.

“The world accommodates.”