//------------------------------// // Fire from Heaven // Story: Unnatural Selection // by Karkadinn //------------------------------// Fire from Heaven Spike wasn't so dumb that he waited for the train to stop in the middle of its destination, surrounded by ponies. No, he pulled his aching, tired and starved little body out of the sacks and threw himself off when the train just started to slow to a safe pace. Even though the grass was the kind of ridiculous green that he knew was probably caused by pegasus-controlled rainclouds, the ground wasn't nearly as soft as it'd looked, and he got his breath knocked out of him as he rolled and rolled – eventually losing all his momentum at once thanks to an inconveniently-placed tree stump. The wind knocked out of him, he still had the presence of mind to crawl behind a good tree while he got a hold of himself and inspected his side. No bruising, awesome. His head still hurt a bit, though, and he was starved and thirsty. The hunger was the worst part. Spike considered his stomach officially a traitor organ now, because it was so petty to want something as a few gems after everything he'd gone through. He didn't know where to find more gems. But he did know that he'd dropped off at the edge of a lightly-wooded area, with enough cover to hide but not so much that he'd get super lost. So he walked into it, figuring that between the trees and added distance between him and the train tracks, he'd be relatively safe. Once he'd gotten the lady of the land or however it was said, he could figure out where to grab a meal and a drink. Even with things as bad as they were, there was a certain relief to him that lightened his footsteps. Back alone again. No friends, but no enemies either. Alone wasn't so bad, after all, he'd spent most of his life that way, and he'd turned out pretty sweet, right? Right. Spike didn't need nobody. Especially not big fire-breathing members of his own species or brave buffalo princesses. Nope, just big ol' liabilities that'd get him in trouble. The woods were pleasant to the point of being suspicious. The sun was warm but not too hot, there were pink and pale blue flowers all over, bees buzzed around pollinating without threatening to sting, birds chirped their little songs. It set him on edge. Spike kept seeing a pony hiding behind every tree and bush. It wasn't until he realized that he was grinding his teeth that he stopped in the middle of his walk on the way to nowhere and really took stock of himself. He was safe here. He had to relax. A day ago, he'd watched Stonehoof's leg get ripped off, he'd been betrayed and almost died. But that was yesterday. Today was a bright new day, and he was going to put all that behind him. If he let those stupid ponies control his life and make him live in fear all the time, it was like barely being alive at all. Forget the buffaloes and forget the dragons. He'd just been passing through, and bad things completely unrelated to him had happened at the same time. That seemed to happen a lot, actually, especially with ponies, but it wasn't his fault or anything. It wasn't his fault. Although his head couldn't seem to leave those memories of blood and death and screams alone, Spike told himself he would move on from it. He steadied himself, took a breath that puffed up his chest, and resolved to enjoy his little stroll as much as he possibly could. Sunlight was good for cold-blooded creatures like himself. If he just forgot that he was somewhere in the middle of pony territory, he could feel those warm rays invigorating him, enjoy the tickle of grass between his toes, even whistle along with the birds. And if his notes were a little wobbly sometimes because he kept flashing back to Braeburn's green eyes or Raggle's guts spilling out on the sand, the birds didn't seem to mind. Seeing a little tubby squirrel nibbling an acorn from a low branch, he waved to the little fellah, who startled him by waving back. Okay, that was seriously adorable. He grinned and continued on, satisfied that where there was such abundant life, there had to be plenty of fresh water and food of some kind. He'd make do just fine. So certain was he of this that, a few trees beyond, he paused to wave back at the squirrel again, just out of appreciation for being acknowledged by another living being that didn't want to mess with him. The squirrel was only half there now, a little bit of its flabby, tawny stomach drooping out bloodily between its two legs, still stuck in a sitting position. Its tail waved gently in the still-ironically-pleasant breeze. Spike stared in open-mouthed horror, every bad memory of the last few days coming back to him and crying out to him, he wasn't safe, he wasn't safe at all, he was never safe and they would never leave him alone. Whatever it was by now, it seemed less like ponies and more like an everywhere-existing invisible cloud of DEATH that just hated him and everything around him. Spike turned and ran at a light jog, a pace he was sure he could keep up for a while. He didn't slow down for a long time, and his heart didn't stop pounding for even longer. All this sunshine had death in it. Predators. Ponies, or worse... was there anything worse than ponies? Basilisks or manticores maybe. When he came to a pleasant little brook that ran over picture-perfect smooth gray stones, he paused to check the water. A few small fish swam by. Fish couldn't hurt him. As far as he knew. He lowered himself and drank deep gulps, then splashed his face. The water felt good, tasted clean. Everything was okay now. The squirrel had just been caught by a hawk or something. That was all. He was okay. Opening his eyes, Spike saw a pink pony's reflection behind him in the water, looking at him with huge blue eyes and the biggest grin he'd ever seen on something that wasn't a skull. All things considered, it was totally understandable that his scream came out sounding like something from a little girl. “HI!” the pony chirped as he turned to run and fell backwards into the stream, scrambling against loose stones and pebbles. “Can I eat you?!” Spike scrambled back into the water a few feet before getting up, still walking backwards slowly as he stared. “...has anyone ever said yes to that question?” he asked, partly as banter to keep her busy while he made his escape, and partly because he kinda wanted to know. “Nooooperoni! But I thought you might be the first!” She giggled and hopped – really, bounced in an almost perfect half-circle trajectory – along after him, all four hooves managing to land on stones far too small for them without her balance getting off by even a little bit. The abruptness of the movements reminded him of a grasshopper, and she seemed about as alien as a bug even compared to other ponies. Okay, keep your head in the game, Spike. A crazy pink pony is after you, and you have no idea where you are, but there are lots of trees, and trees mean cover. If need be, he could even climb them, since a hoof-footed creature would have difficulty following him. And this one looked like she had a short attention span. He couldn't outrun her straight out, but maybe if he kept ducking behind trees he could lose her.... She bounced along after him, leering and swerving her head sharply from side to side after each tree dodged, her thicket bush of a mane flying all over the place as she did so. “Hey, don't run away! That toughens up your yummy bits and we can't have that! If you don't settle down, young man, I'll just have to sic Dashie on you!” Somehow she managed to make the threat sound like motherly nagging. Spike wished he knew his mother. She was probably a big enough dragon to stomp this freaky pony flat. The only positive was that, in all this, the pony wasn't going fast enough to catch him either, even though she easily could without getting out of breath. It was like she thought it was a game or something. Well, he could play games. “Wouldn't it be more fair if you gave me a head start?” He SWORE she actually stopped mid-bounce in the air, right at the apex of the bounce, and fell straight down, her mane swooshing up and then down again. “Fair? Nopony ever told me hunts were supposed to be fair. I just go to where the twitchy twitches say the food is and NOM NOM NOM.” She peered at him suspiciously, stream water-blue eyes narrowing. “Are you sure you're not tryin' to trick me?” “O-of course not, heheh!” He backed into a tree, looked it over and found it lacking in branches to assist with a good climb. Maybe if he dug his claws in real tight... but no, the bark was all crumbly. “Us dragons don't have the brains to trick people, we're real dumb,” he fibbed, looking over the area for any possible escape routes. Nothin' but trees without a branch within ten feet of the ground, drat. She seemed satisfied by that. “Okay, good! I guess I can give you a liiiiitle itsy bitsy head start, but you have to promise to hide someplace fair. No hiding in a beehive or anything! I mean, I like bees, but I can't eat too many of them at once or it hurts my tummy. What do you think they're saying when they're buzzing inside me? Maybe 'heeelp meeee,'” she squeaked in a high pitch, “or, or or or, 'tell my wife and children that I love them!' Except I think the worker bees are all girls so it'd be hubby and children, wouldn't it? I like hubby. It's a fun word. Hey, why aren't you hiding?” Spike stared and stared, trying to figure out if she was serious or not. Had this pony escaped from a mental institution or something? Maybe they all got this crazy over time from eating bad meat. It would explain so much. “I... can't hide till you close your eyes and count to ten, right?” he suggested, trying to test the sheer limits of her craziness. “Oh! Okay...” She closed her eyes! “One macarooooni, two boloooogna, three mascarpooooone....” Wow. He couldn't believe that had actually worked. Score one for the Spikinator! He ran back to the stream, grabbed the biggest rock he could find, got within a few feet of the mad pony and threw the rock at her head with all his might. With a nasty THUNK followed by an incoherent groan, she fell down, bleeding all over her face. She wasn't moving. Trembling, he picked up the red-smeared rock, holding it up overhead again. Should he just... finish her? She was breathing, but looked to be out pretty cold. He'd been lucky to get in a good shot like that, it probably wouldn't work twice once she was awake. Bashing the pony's brains out would be the smart thing to do. The logical thing. She'd been ready to kill him, after all. Self-defense! But maybe she wouldn't wake up for a while, or be so dazed that she couldn't track him down anyway. He certainly wasn't gonna stay around here any longer than he had to. Already, a huge nasty bump was welling up at her temple. She was probably concussed. There was no reason for him to take unnecessary chances. None whatsoever. Still, he couldn't do it. Sighing, he dropped the rock and ran off at a good ninety degree angle from the direction he'd originally been running to, just in case she'd taken note of it. There was at least one other pony in the area, whoever 'Dashie' was, so he had to get out of here pronto. It was a big piece of woodland, though. Every time he rounded a hill, figuring he'd see the edge of it, there were just more trees. After a few minutes, Spike started to worry about getting lost, then he realized how stupid that was. He didn't want to go back to the train, did he?! It didn't matter where he ended up, as long as there wasn't anything trying to eat him, and a good water supply, and a nice spot to dig for minerals. Even when he was far enough off from the pink pony to feel sort of safe again, he still felt on edge. Like a bad spirit was watching over him. He started to imagine... bird eggs, first whole, then smashed when he glanced back. More critters dead, with just bits and pieces of fur and skin and bone left to ooze on the tree branches. Strange snapping sounds, like tree parts breaking all at once, rapid-fire. It was enough to make Spike wonder if the woods were haunted, no matter how pleasant they looked. It was good to find another stream, or maybe a branch off from the first one, whatever. He drank more, careful this time to look around him every few sips. No ponies were gonna sneak up on him this time. “Hey, little fishy fish,” he murmured at a sleek blue specimen that, unlike the poor squirrel, didn't reply back, just swimming its little fishy way downstream. Fishing was an option if it came to that.... Then he saw a fish head, just the head, same type of fish as the earlier one, float downstream too, blood diffusing into a delicate pink in the water. His insides knotted together as he watched the topside lifeless eye float out of sight. Okay, maybe fishing wasn't for him. Most dragons weren't big on seafood. They looked down on berries and fruits and stuff even more, but what did they knew, anyway? He was a rebel. A rebel that didn't particularly feel like helping anything bleed, since he saw that so much without wanting to as it was. Branches began to snap again in that weird way, crackitycrackitycrack. This time the sound was pretty close, and, eyes darting around, he managed to catch it in action. Weak branches were getting ripped off, but he couldn't see anything doing it. The trees looked weird as he stared at them, was that sweat in his eyes? Blinking and frantically trying to follow the path of broken branches as it swerved around, he realized that the strange warping of shapes was something in the air, a shimmer that tunneled along with the broken branches. It was circling around him in a rough spiral, closing in. He'd just decided that it was time to start running again when the water next to him exploded twenty feet into the air, making an immense roar for something so shallow. Spike felt like he practically caught that much air himself, jumping up in shock, but he muffled his shriek with both hands before it could get too far from his mouth. Standing in the water was a pegasus pony with a coat the same mild blue as the pink pony's eyes, and a mane like a violently-contained rainbow. She glared at him with unmistakable hostility, not just the usual happy hungry that he was used to seeing from a pony, but a real grudge. “Caughtcha, ya chubby little loser,” she snarled, droplets of blood and foam flying from her lips. “Think you can get away with hurting one of my pals, do you?!” Some tiny part of him took note of the dark storm cloud mark on her flank, punctuated with a rainbow lightning bolt. A memory of a probably-dead dragon whispered to him. Her coat was the purple of a storm cloud and she had a matching cloud symbol on her flank, complete with a little rainbow. “Y-your eyes aren't red,” was all he could think to say. This stream didn't have any big rocks. “What? Are you making fun of my looks?!” She stomped a hoof so hard the water soaked her leg entirely as she stepped closer. “Why would my eyes be red?!” “The dragon said your eyes were red, that's all!” Rambling didn't seem like the ticket to a quick get away this time, she was just getting madder. But he just couldn't stop himself. “Rainbow mane, storm cloud and rainbow cutie mark, and red eyes like blood. That's what the survivor of your last big attack said. That was you, right, killing all the dragons? And I'm really sorry about your friend, I didn't mean to hurt her, it was totally an accident!” “How stupid do you think I am?!” He very carefully did not answer that question, although the temptation to make a sarcastic reply was almost overwhelming. “So you ACCIDENTALLY threw a rock at her face, huh?!” Spike had an idea. “I didn't THROW anything, she just fell! Her eyes were closed and the footing was slippery!” Oh yeah, Spike, you were honing your silver tongue like nobody's business. If he couldn't run, and he couldn't fight, then he could talk his way out like a maniac. He wasn't exactly sure how cognizant the pink pony had been or what she'd told this 'Dashie,' but it was as good an excuse as any since she'd had her eyes shut at the time. The pony hesitated, her wings dipping a little low before flaring up and out again. “Yeah, well, maybe it's the way you said it, and maybe not, but I'm not takin' any chances with you, buster. So you met that stupid pimply wuss I let live, huh? Did he regale you with stories of the awesomeness of the great Rainbow Dash like I told him to?” Rainbow Dash. Okay, Rainbow Dash, he could handle her. Maybe. The blood smeared on her mouth meant that she'd been eating. Maybe even been the cause of that squirrel's death for all he knew, she certainly seemed to move fast enough for it. And she had an ego. She wasn't hungry and she wanted her pride stroked, he could do that. If only she gave him enough time to talk that she forgot to be mad about the other pony, he might be able to get out of this alive. Spike considered whether to tell her the truth or not. He decided that a new cause of outrage that wasn't directly linked to him might be a better distraction than anything else. “Actually he said he killed you in an avalanche or something like that,” he answered truthfully, and immediately wondered if he'd made a mistake as he saw her lips curl up, her teeth clench and her purplish eyes narrow in rage. “That overgrown snake! The only reason I let him live in the first place was so everyone outside of Equestria could know how amazing my hunting skills are! And you're telling me he's going around saying he got the BETTER of me?!” “Um... maybe....” Yeah, this had probably been a bad idea. “But he still made you sound super scary and powerful and fast and stuff! And he wasn't kidding, either! I mean, I couldn't even see you when you were flying around just now!” Rainbow Dash immediately relaxed and started preening a wing nonchalantly. “Yeah, I am pretty great like that. I can fly circles around dive-bombing falcons, grab the food from their claws and make off like a bandit while pointing backwards and laughing at them.” “Must be kinda boring, being so much better than everyone else,” he tried out, watching her expression carefully. He'd guessed right, she calmed down, nodding in agreement. “Nothing to push your limits, right?” “Yeah, I haven't had a real challenge in hunts since I was a little filly,” she admitted. She eyeballed him, gaze scanning over his legs, and she sneered. “Not like you have anything to offer, but it's about the principle of the thing now. Sorry kid, I like ya. You've got spunk. But prey doesn't get to make my friends bleed and live to tell about it.” Yeah, right. Ponies would back each other up, while all the prey just stabbed each other in the back or ran to save their own skins. How wonderful did it have to be, to be a pony? Always with other ponies to back you up, always with that certainty that you were at the top of the food chain. Lucky ponies. Even though she'd basically delivered him his death sentence, the way she'd rationalized it made him respect her for it. She was probably a more loyal friend to her fellow ponies than he'd ever been to anyone else. Even if she was still, like all ponies, a total psycho. “Look, I know you're not gonna let me go. That'd be stupid, and you're not stupid.” She fluffed her wings and raised her chin slightly at the stoking to her ego. Heh. Did she know she was this easy to manipulate? Then again, if he could move so fast that nothing could ever outrun him, he'd probably be pretty puffed up, too. “So how about a sporting chance instead?” he wheedled, doing his best to come off as trustworthy and, hopefully, to interesting to just kill right away. “Awright, I'm listening, but keep it snappy.” Snappy! Right. He was gonna have to work fast here. “Hunting isn't just about speed. I mean, I know you obviously know this, but you've got to be clever, too, right? You need to know all about hiding places and ambushes and camouflage.” “Yeah, so? I know all that stuff.” She didn't come off as certain as she'd been a second ago. Spike repressed a smirk. “So let's make a little...” Game was too immature for this one. But gambling was pretty much the same thing, just dressed up to appeal to people who didn't want to admit to having fun being silly. “Let's make a little wager. Gimme a chance to hide. Best out of three, to make sure it's really about skill and not just luck. If you can find me two out of three times, you get to eat me. If I can hide long enough for you to give up two out of three times, you let me go.” “Huh.” The pony thought it over, finally nodding. “Sounds alright. Okay, shorty, I've got your number. Best out of three it is, then.” She smirked and licked the last remnants of drying blood from her mouth. “There's just one more thing, though.” “Y-yeah?” Okay, his voice had not just cracked in terror when he said that. “I still owe ya for Pinkie. So instead of me closing my eyes and you probably throwing a rock at me like the douchey little thing you are, I'm knocking you out. When you wake up, you get to hide. Good luck, sucker.” “Uh...” He started backing away, even though it was completely impossible for him to outrun a regular pegasus, let alone this maniac. Rainbow Dash didn't give him much time to second-guess things. In a split second, like a flash of lightning, she was gone, and he only just had time to register that fact before something hoof-shaped impacted with his face and he blacked out on the spot. Spike woke up with the worst headache he'd ever had except for that one time he'd drank a whole mug of beer thinking it was cider, staring up at a leaf-framed sky that was still pretty blue. Just like the pegasus, in fact – the perfect camouflage for her. She could be anywhere if she'd had the sense to tie her tail back, and even while he was trying to figure out whether she was that cautious or not, his stomach growled at him mercilessly. “Oh, shaddup,” he growled back at it, stumbling to his feet. Ow. Take stock of yourself, Spike. In an unknown location with at least one active enemy, whereabouts currently unknown. You can afford one slip-up, but no more than that. No telling how long he'd have before she started hunting. Where should he go to ground? Dig a hole and hide in it, maybe, although it would be obvious if she flew close enough to the ground to see the fresh-turned soil. Or he could climb in a tree, though her ability to demolish foliage seemingly as an idle side effect of her sheer speed left that one iffy. What he needed was a medium between the two. A bush! That was it. He needed a bush that didn't give him away, one that was flexible enough to bend instead of break, and thick enough that she wouldn't want to just fly straight on through it. Finding a good bush took way longer than it should have. Like, a RIDICULOUSLY long time. He found bushes smaller than him, bushes that were too open, bushes that were too dense, bushes with thorns, bushes with poison ivy, bushes with spiderwebs. Bushes just the right size, shape and composition to hide a Spike? Not so much. And with every second out in the open, just walking around like a dunce, he felt himself sweating more and more from nervousness, expecting the teeth of a pegasus to snap at him any second. Who was to say she wouldn't get bored and just eat him while she had the chance, especially if he didn't look like he was going to make it interesting? And that pink one could still be out here, too. Who knew how many other ponies, for that matter? Rainbow Dash had made it sound like he was inside Equestria now, and the scenery sure seemed to point in that direction – so far, these woods were like a park where one of the regular joggers was the Grim Reaper. Equestria was pony homeland, not just an embattled frontier like Appleloosa. And even Appleloosa had been... overwhelming. Just, too much. Too much for a little dragon like him, no matter how strong or smart or charismatic he was (and, admittedly, that was probably less than he liked to think, too). He remembered watching branches snap and not seeing what had made them snap. He remembered the way the water had gushed up. He remembered Garble's story, and how Garble had lied about the happy ending. He remembered the squirrel and all the other little dead things. Had to hurry. The absolutely nothing that was happening was giving him way too much time to work himself up into a fright, and the bird songs seemed like dirges no matter how happy the notes were. At last, with Spike's stomach busily eating a hole in him while his skull threatened to split apart, he came to a bush that seemed perfect. It was about four times his size, with the dark green leaves small but very thickly clustered, and plenty of hollow space inside. There were even tons of other bushes that looked just like it all around to serve as decoys. With sweet, sweet relief, he crawled in and curled up, almost crying at how happy he was. There, she'd never find him! He'd get to live another day! Another day... lost in the pony homeland... in perpetual terror... without anything to eat.... Man, sometimes he really hated his life. Still, he'd made out alright. The ground was a nice cushion of grass and partially exposed earth, the leafy enclosure was perfectly impenetrable from all angles yet somehow still filtered in enough light to see, and he could even stand up and stretch if he took care to not jostle a couple of the more in-the-way branches. Yeah, this was a good hiding spot. Spikinator two, ponies nothing. Then as he sat there in his leafy safety, doing nothing became his enemy again. Minute by minute. His head getting better only gave him fewer distractions. They hadn't actually agreed on when it would be appropriate for Rainbow Dash to give up any one of her three chances to find him. What if she pretended to give up just to fake him out? What if he mistook a non-signal of surrender for the real thing? What if she just kept on looking throughout the entire woods until she found him? He didn't know how much of Garble's story had been true, but he knew she was the fastest thing he'd ever seen. Could she still process things visually while going that fast? If she could, it would be impossible to hide from her if she thought to go directly through bushes or just plain went fast enough that the branches bent and showed him. How big a deal was it to hurt a pony in their homeland? Would other ponies come out hunting him? How long could he go without food, anyway? He'd tried eating regular rocks once. It sucked, and more importantly, didn't give him enough energy to do important things like saving his own hide. What if she actually started to burn the forest to find him? It seemed like a crazy, unthinkable thing to do, but then, he'd just recently met a pony who'd seriously hoped he'd say 'yes' to being asked to be eaten, so his boundaries on what he thought ponies were willing to do were only getting more and more generous on a daily basis. Perhaps it would be like the squirrel. So fast he wouldn't even know he was dead, just a few bits of him left. Or maybe she'd use her momentum to pound him into a bloody pancake like a super sonic battering ram. Rainbow Dash seemed to be one of those nature-happy ponies who liked to eat their meals raw. Some part of Spike was especially scared of that. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did. He at least wanted to be prepared and cooked and eaten properly, if he was going to be eaten at all. It was far too easy to imagine her just setting in with her teeth, chomping greedily. If she wanted to take her time, there wouldn't be anything he could do about it. The soil seemed to be irritating his scales. He imagined his breathing disturbing the leaves, and almost hyperventilated after trying to hold it in for too long. Hairy black ants started to crawl over him, nibbling experimentally with their pincers, and he couldn't do more than twitch to try to brush them off. A wasp flitted around in and around the bush, never stinging him, but coming close enough to make him freak out from minute to minute. Every once in a while, he heard the sound of branches snapping quickly, one after the other after the other, but always in the distance. Never up close. Just close enough that it could become up close at any moment. After a while, he had to use the bathroom. But he couldn't leave his hiding spot, so he just dug a very small hole by inch-long claw strokes and used that. He covered it up as much as he could, but that wasn't as much as he would've liked. It stunk. It was the smell of a dragon so afraid he'd rather soil himself than risk being found by a blowhard pegasus with a chip on her shoulder. He breathed in and out the warm, dirty smell of his own weakness, his inability to fight on equal grounds with creatures who always had the upper hand in one way or another, and his eyes followed the wasp as he felt ant after ant give him a taste test. His scales were more than enough protection, but the fact that they were even trying was enough to want to squish them all in a tantrum. Which was exactly the kind of petty emotional display he couldn't afford to give in to. His tail started to cramp up. He didn't know why, he'd slept curled up like this plenty of times. But it was cramping now, and it really hurt. Using the slowest, most careful movements he possibly could, he started massaging it, trying to get the stupid muscles to loosen up. Just relax Spike. Everything will be okay. You'll make it through this, even if part of your body feels like it's in a red-hot vise that's getting tighter and tighter every moment. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he didn't make a sound. The birds continued to sing as if ponies weren't just as happy to eat them, too. Between his tail, the ants, the smell and the wasp, something had to give. He decided on it being the wasp, and blew at it gently, hoping to get it to buzz off to the rest of its waspy day. It just fluttered closer and he caught himself hissing in aggravation. Spike blew harder, then harder, as its little black segmented form bobbed up and down, the leaves shaking a little bit from it. “Ah HAH!” And his world became pony. He could see right down her moist, pink gullet as breath the smell of dead things filled his nostrils and warmed the front of his face. Her eyes were still purple, not red, but he could trace the little red veins at the edges of her huge irises. She was panting, but from the way she held her body, confident and straight, it was out of excitement, not tiredness. “You're mine,” she snarled with the satisfaction of someone claiming a long-sought trophy. Or victim. “No one outsmarts, outruns, outflies, outfights or outhides the great Rainbow Dash!” “Congratulations, you totally outsmarted a wingless baby dragon in one round of hide and seek,” he shot back, covering over fear with sarcasm. “That probably makes you the smartest pegasus ever!” “Well, I don't know about smartest but... hey, are you mocking me, squirt?” Her voice had switched mid-sentence from something almost friendly to a growl that barely seemed like something that could come from a pony's throat, sweat dripping down her narrowed eyes that were thrust ever closer to his. “Maybe a little.” He grinned into that nasty breath, hoping she wouldn't lose patience and eat him right there, wondering what else he could use for a hiding spot. His mind was drawing a big fat blank. “Hey, this is life or death here! You're supposed to take the Great Hunt seriously!” she screeched, rearing up to slam her front hooves on either side of him. He fell down and flinched back into the soiled earth. “I'm the best, you got that?!” Thick yellow droplets of spit flew from her mouth to land on his face. “Better than squishy little PREY like YOU could EVER be, and don't you FORGET it!” “Yeah, because you're a pony and I'm just a dragon, I know,” he whispered hoarsely, holding back the whimper clenching his throat. She looked about ready to kill him right now. “What?” Her face actually relaxed... a very little. “No, because I'm RAINBOW DASH, buddy, and no one beats me. 'Specially not a shrimp like you. You're gonna die because you're inferior to me in every possible way, and become fuel to feed my legend. You should feel honored, really.” Spike had never actually felt the kind of intense hate her felt for this pegasus before in his life. It was spontaneous, intense and entirely unexpected, like a switch inside him had been flipped. It was like all the nasty parts of Braeburn had been squished into a single pony-sized ego, with all the nicer bits filed off, leaving only roughness and pride and violence. She seemed totally unaware of his rising loathing, even preening a bit. Impulsively, he lunged out with both claws at her face. In an instant that was too fast to see, she'd flown back several feet, hovering in midair as the breeze of her mighty wing flaps froze him like the middle of winter. Rainbow Dash didn't even give him the dignity of acting like he was a threat; she just smirked at him with superiority, like some little kid that had been caught pilfering from the cookie jar. He might as well have tried to swat the sun out of the sky. “Hey now, if you wanna skip rounds two and three and go straight to the kill-” she clicked her teeth, “that's just fine by me.” The courage that he'd found in hate immediately broke down and he found himself having difficulty not begging for forgiveness. She really could kill him any time she felt like it, and what could he do about it? “Y-yeah well, you're just covering 'cause you don't think you can catch me again,” he said quickly, trying to keep his voice from shaking and almost succeeding. “Psh, whatever. You go on and hide again, Loser McShrimpadoo.” She flicked her tongue against a hoof, wetting the sharpened edge so that it caught the sunlight. “I'll be waiting.” He got to his feet and started to walk off, looking vaguely in every direction for anything that looked promising, anything that could hold an idea for his survival. It was just trees and bushes and grass, and they wouldn't save him. They'd be the background to his death just like they were to the deaths of every other little creature that lived within them. Spike glanced back several times, but Rainbow Dash never moved from the bush where she'd found him, front hooves crossed over her chest, hovering with half-lidded eyes and the smuggest little smile. She looked less like a pony, even a pegasus, than she did like some half-there spirit of air that existed to mock him and lure him to his death in the middle of nowhere. Which was pretty much the case, really. Of course, Spike reminded himself firmly, where he was didn't matter anyway. When you didn't have a home, family or friends, everywhere was nowhere. All equally meaningless. If he was gonna get eaten here, it wouldn't be any scarier or less scary than if he were to get eaten someplace else. But he wasn't going to give up. Trudging mindlessly uphill through carpets of fallen leaves and vines that taunted him with the cheeriness of their cute little white and yellow flowers, he considered his strategy for the next time around. He couldn't afford to lose the next one, it was best out of three. So he couldn't just rely on dumb luck or hope that things would go his way. He needed to stack the deck as much as possible, even if it messed with the 'spirit' of this so-called Great Hunt of hers. Maybe he did deserve to die. He was a pathetic, pudgy little thing that couldn't fly, couldn't breathe fire, couldn't read a book. About all he knew how to do was fix a pretty decent sassafras gumbo, a recipe he'd picked up from a perpetually-sloshed zebra beatnik poet. Yeah, THAT was sure a valuable life skill! If he died, no one would miss him, no one would care, except maybe Rainbow Dash, in the sense that she'd have another reason to brag about what a good hunter she was. He wasn't going to give up, but in the face of an opponent so dedicated, so fast that he couldn't even see her move through the air, it was hard not to feel inferior. Like this was maybe how things were supposed to be. But no, he'd wondered that back in his last encounter with ponies, too, and it'd been stupid then and it was still stupid now. So she was the fastest thing he'd ever not seen. So what. That didn't mean she deserved to kill him! Just because he wasn't useful and no one cared about him didn't mean he deserved to die, darn it! Stumbling his way down the hill he'd ascend, Spike's eyes latched onto a dark crevice between too craggy outcroppings. It was really dark. Dark like a cave. Could be just a trick of the light, but... yeah, the closer he got to it, the more sure he was that it was a cave. It had a funky smell to it and there was something rustling deep inside, but whatever it was, he figured it couldn't be as bad as Rainbow Dash, so in he went. About fifteen paces in, wiggling back and forth between jutting bits of rock that seemed determined to squeeze in every possible direction with as little consistency as possible, he figured out what the fluttering sound was when he heard squeaks with the flutters. Bats. Well, maybe they'd be a good distraction. He kept going, even when they started to get fussy and swarmed at him, even when he felt something warm and moist he probably didn't want to think about too much squelch between his toes. One hundred and thirty-two steps later, he hit the back of the cave – or at least as far back as he could fit without any tools or light to see by. There he stayed put, breathing in the smell of bats, listening to them rage in their rodenty little ways about him imposing into their home, letting the darkness swallow him up. Darkness swallowing him was the best possibly thing that could swallow him today. Yep. “Come on guys, please be quiet,” he whispered at the bats as they continued to squeal and flurry around in aggravation. “I need you to be quiet so the ponies won't eat us. Okay?” Whether they understood that or they just figured out he didn't mean any harm, they eventually quieted back down to their previous level of squeakiness. If there had been just a little light to see by, Spike supposed he might have been terrified of them. It sounded like there were dozens, maybe even hundreds of the little things. But he couldn't see at all, and his imagination was too busy thinking about a sky-blue pegasus to fill his brain with anything about flying rodents. If he were a pony, he'd probably just eat all the bats and enjoy having the cave all to himself. Of course, if he were a pony, he wouldn't need to hide in a stinky old hole in the ground in the first place. Spike shuddered. Even briefly imagining what it would be like to be one of them sent his tummy into a tailspin and made his head feel like hollow ice. Why would anyone want to live like that? Treating everything not like you like a meal. Hunting down things, hurting them, killing them... just for a bite to eat, day in and day out. Sure, he could see himself eating some poor critter if he really had to, and Spike knew that some dragons did more than that, but to be constantly hunting, constantly killing to get what you needed to survive, that seemed like a living nightmare to him. And he definitely wouldn't enjoy it if it came to that! As a thought experiment, because cowering in a bat cave in the dark gave him plenty of time to kill, he tried to picture things the other way around. He pictured himself grown, strong and lithe, with big bat wings that cast a huge shadow against the ground, enough to envelope trees. He saw himself cutting through the air with deadly grace, a meat-eater that knew no mercy, chasing after the panicky clop of hooves. Rainbow Dash, wingless and with an expression of abject fear, running from him, trying to use raw speed to get away, but she wasn't fast enough, how could she be? She was just a pony. She'd trip up at some point, poor land-bound thing that she was, stumble against a root, maybe crack a fetlock against a rock. And that was when he'd swoop down and take her, jaws opening wide, swallowing her hole, feeling her last scream hum in his mouth as he bit down and that warm, warm blood spilled out.... In another world, that could've been him.... His stomach rumbled loudly, and he spat blindly in the dark even though he knew that wasting moisture wasn't a bright idea. He didn't want to be like that. He didn't even want to get even with the ponies. He just wanted everything to... stop. And then they could... what, hold hands and sing songs together while he baked them all some amazing vegetarian gumbo? Whatever. He didn't even have a realistic idea of what he wanted except to have a good, solid week go by without his life being in danger. The uncharacteristically glum musings were interrupted by a distant howling sound that made his ears perk up. He shuddered a little at the sound, it was too angry to be the wind, but practically too wild to be anything living that he knew. Then, as it repeated itself and got louder by tiny degrees, he recognized Rainbow Dash's voice, hoarse beyond belief. Screaming. She was screaming out threats, promises of violence, telling him in exacting detail how many one hundred and twenty percent awesome aerial maneuvers she could use to shred his body with sheer wind force without even laying a hoof on him. The cacophony, a song of a soul in Tartarus, got louder and then softer and louder and softer. As though she were zigzagging around with only a vague idea of where he was and nothing more than that. Even though everything in him said he should just stay up, have a nap or something until nightfall, Spike couldn't help himself. He had to see. He crept out to the front of the cave, the bats long since departed with all the fuss the pegasus had kicked up. Through the deepest, darkest shadows possible, he squinted to that sharp claw of daylight where the outside world was in all its danger. That golden shard showed him a landscape that seemed a lot less... tree-y... than before. Suspicious, he took another step closer to get a better view. And then another. And another and another, when he wasn't spotted, until he was almost leaning out of the cave's mouth. The woods had been devastated. It looked like an intensely localized meteor storm had showered down on the area. Most of the trees were in splinters, the bushes uprooted, the grass now just a nasty mixture of dirt and ripped up pale roots. Spike surveyed the destruction, realized that it was because of him, and from the sound of her yelling, because she still couldn't find him. He couldn't help but laugh. She honed in on his laughter and was there in quicker than it took him to finish the third chortle, but he was ready for her, bringing his head up to meet her glare with matching dislike. This time, her sides were heaving from exhaustion, not excitement. This time, she looked genuinely frazzled. “FOUND YOU!” she crowed, and he made a rude gesture. “Please, I let you because I got sick of waiting for you all day! I was hiding in the back of that cave, you never even checked it out!” “I... but... but you... BLARGH!” she screamed in his face, waving her hooves in the air between them like it had done her wrong and she was gonna beat the wrongness out of it. “That's no FAIR, you never said you could hide underground!” “You never said I couldn't.” He smirked and watched her face go red as she struggled for words to make herself look good and failed to find any. “That's one you, one me. We're even. You know... it's been a long day... we could just call it a draw....” “What?! A draw is like kissing your sister!” “I don't have a sister.” He paused. “Um, as far as I know.” “The greatest hunter in Equestria does NOT do draws! Fine, I'll give you this one, but, but only because I feel SORRY for something so weak and PATHETIC as you. Now go hide again! I'll find you so fast your eyelids will explode.” “That doesn't even make sense,” Spike commented disdainfully, turning and walking off at an unhurried pace as she cussed at his back. He was in charge now. All him. How could he have ever thought for even a tiny second that a pony like that could be so much better than him, worthy of EATING him? All this effort just to kill a baby dragon. Hah. She was pathetic. Spike hesitated, stopped and looked back. “You know,” he said to the exhausted mare, whose wild mane was even more wild than ever, plastered all over her body by sweat, “no matter how this turns out, you're kind of a loser.” “What.” It was spoken more like a threat than a question. “If I win, I'll have survived the 'greatest hunter in Equestria, Rainbow Dash.'” He mimed the quote marks with his claws, and grinned at how she ground her teeth together. “But if you win... you'll have beaten a tiny little flightless, fireless baby dragon. In best out of three.” He laughed. “What kinda pathetic legend is that gonna be to make you famous?! Rainbow Dash, Killer of Babies! HAHAH! Why don't you brag about all those squirrels and stuff you killed too? Rainbow Dash, Slayer of Bunnies, Rainbow Dash, Vanquisher of Sparrows-” “Shut your face.” But he couldn't. He was on a roll. “Rainbow Dash, Squisher of Earthworms! Oh, and by the way, if I end up in your 'legend,'” and here he added the air quotes again, very mockingly, “make sure you get my name right. It's Spike. S-P-I... um, I think it's -C-K after that but I'm not totally sure. I'm sure,” he added with a huge eye roll, “I'm probably the toughest thing you've ever hunted, anyway.” She was so angry that she actually couldn't talk. Spike waited and nothing came out, just a few whistling grunts and half-spoken syllables that choked in her throat. So he shrugged and turned around to find his third hiding place, feeling immensely proud of himself. Well, grats Spike, you finally talked down a pony. Now, if you were gonna die, at least you could die smugly – which was probably the best way to die, other than at a ripe old age. Even the growl of his stomach somehow seemed celebratory now. That was how dragons rolled, baby. Rainbow Dash had really torn the place up. For as far as he could see, everything was just ruined, broken wood and torn plants and splatters of soil everywhere. That meant he'd have to walk a bit more than usual to find a good spot, unless he wanted to just bury himself. But that seemed like a bad idea; since his last spot had been a cave, she'd be certain to check the ground more thoroughly now. And his first spot had been a bush, couldn't do that again. What did that leave? A tree or water. If he could find a nice, murky pond covered in lilypads and stuff that would be perfect, but as much as he jogged around and looking the place over, even crossing the earlier two streams a few times, he couldn't see anything like that. So Spike settled for the next best thing: a nice hollow tree. Termites? Sure. A creepy-looking puffy orange mold? Yeah. Annoying little splinters? Soooo many annoying little splinters. But it hid him perfectly once he snuggled down inside it from up top (even if he had to scare off a resident woodpecker), and he figured that even if it broke, chances were good that it would break in a way that would let him keep on hiding in the broken off cylinder. He wasn't a tree expert or anything, but most of the trees Rainbow Dash had broken were broken at the weaker tops or at the roots, not the foundation where the wood was thickest. Waiting was always the hardest part, except for all the other parts. That telltale sound of wood breaking, crackacrackacrackaCRACK, was on him a lot faster than he would have liked. He held his breath when it got really close, close like the sound of thunder in his ears, and only let it out silently when it got distant again. But she was closing in on him, it seemed like. Checking out tree after tree. He closed his eyes and prayed to anything that could save him to save him, and tried not to listen too much more no matter how bad the sounds got. Then he didn't really have a choice, because a massive crackle ripped through the wood he was actually hiding in, sending him tottering inside it down to the ground. He bruised, and bit his lip painfully hard, but didn't make any noise, and the main body of the tree didn't break. Then it occurred to him that there was absolutely no reason why he couldn't just sneak off while she was busy looking in the other direction, and he slapped himself across the face for not thinking of it sooner. Obviously he didn't have to play the 'game' to its finish! It wasn't even a real game, it was just some joke to appeal to this loser's massive ego! Screw her, he was outta here. Spike waited until the sounds of destruction took a sharp veer away from him, and then started to crawl out of the tree from the top, intending to head for the exact opposite direction from the pony. There wasn't anything wrong with cheating at something you never wanted to do in the first place. Maybe ponies thought that being HONEST about being total monsters made everything okay, but it didn't. Whatever it took to win was okay in Spike's book, and anything else was for suckers. If you didn't play them, they'd play you. Or the people you thought were your friends would play you. Sighing wearily, Spike took a moment to brush himself off and flick the remaining termites away before he started creeping along as serpentine as any snake could hope for. Then the cracking turned towards him. His eyes widened in panic, and he tried to get back to cover, but he hesitated between his old tree and another one that was nearby just a second too long, long enough to clearly see the trail of snapping branches in the air coming straight for him. She'd seen him. It was over. He was gonna die now. He didn't want to die, but his body was frozen up anyway. No matter how much he was screaming inside, he couldn't get his legs to move. What few trees were left right nearby more or less exploded into splinters, their branches flying in every direction, at the force of her passing. Along with the sound of more forest being annihilated came that whistling chill of too-sharp wind, wind that was almost painful even for Spike with his dragon's scales. But instead of stopping suddenly as the pegasus appeared in front of him, like last time, the air turned into this weird... suctiony... feeling, and the splintering of wood turned into a sound amazingly like the world's biggest wine bottle being uncorked. Spike blinked and rubbed watering eyes, staring in amazement at what was in front of him. Swearing and snarling, struggling with a ferocity that would have been terrifying if it hadn't been caught up in something so silly, Rainbow Dash was stuck in the hollow tree he'd just left. She'd misjudged her flight angle and landed right in it from the bottom side, tearing through the wood and then plugging herself in between wood cracked but still strong. She couldn't fly like that, he realized... her wings were totally paralyzed at her sides. And she was bigger than him, so she couldn't crawl out as easily. She tried – oh, she freaking TRIED – but it was obviously that she'd expended so much raw force in her charge that there was no way she was getting out easily. He watched her struggle and pound on the pulpy, white bug-ridden wood with her hooves, watched the wood hold, traced the flow of blood from splinter-gouged skin down her sides and legs. “I found you! It still counts, don't you tell me it doesn't count, I FOUND YOU!” she screamed at him, going so far as to bash her head against the wood. It didn't do much other than give her some more splinters that she didn't have scales to protect herself from. “'Greatest hunter in Equestria,'” he quoted with a straight face, though he felt blackly, hatefully giddy inside. “SHUT UP! I WON, YOU LITTLE JERK!” “So what? It's not like I'm gonna wait for you to get out and let you eat me, duh. You think you're hot fire from heaven, filly? You ain't nothing but a fart from Tartarus.” He snapped his claws. He dared to actually walk up to the tree and roll it around a little with a good push of one leg. When he looked at her again, she was upside down, and staring at him with such intense, wide-eyed hate that he decided it would probably be a good idea to step back. She was just a monster. Like all ponies. It really would be such a good idea to... it would be so easy to just.... “When I get out of here I'm gonna find you and eat you in three bites,” she said breathily, her voice a painful-sounding rasp from all the yelling she'd been doing, her eyes sunken and half-covered by sweat-soaked rainbow mane. “One for your stupid fat tail, and one for your chubby body, and one for your stupid smirking face! WE HAD A DEAL! I BEAT YOU FAIR AND SQUARE!” “I don't care if you won. Like I said, you're still a loser.” After eying the trunk and feeling certain that it wasn't going to break, he sat down on it so he wouldn't have to look at her. It was hard to pull himself away from the conversation, because that would mean he'd have to move on to the next scary thing that would try to kill him. But he couldn't look at her, it was like looking at a vengeful spirit writhing in its own blood and sweat. A vengeful spirit of air, the whirlwind come to life in a rainbow of colors. “I AM N-ot...” To his shock, her voice cracked in the middle of the word, just like a kid's would have. “I am not a loser,” she snarled softly, struggling again to get out. “Yes you are. You're a loudmouth who bullies things weaker than you. Helpless things that couldn't fight you even if they ever saw you coming.” “Hey, I don't bully! This is hunting, that's totally different!” She sounded almost desperately offended. His ears twitched at the strange note of weakness in her voice. “I'm the fastest, most agile, most amazing hunter and I always will be!” “Whatever, Rainbow Crash,” he mocked her, and for some reason that made her go so utterly quiet that it made him really nervous. “Anyway, like I said, I'm just a baaaaby dragon.” He drew out the word, twisting it sourly. He'd never really felt like a baby, even when his memories and thoughts had been so muddled as to be barely more than a critter's, but now he enjoyed rubbing his youth and small size in her face. “Even if you get me after this, so what. Why do you even care so much when it's not even a real test of anything?” She didn't reply, and he thought the conversation was over, so he got up and started to walk off at a pace that was fast enough to not be careless, but slow enough that it didn't seem running away. “You hurt my friend,” her voice came, low, when he was a tree and a half away. Spike stopped and looked back at the tree, although he wasn't really angled to see her face anymore, which was probably for the best anyway. “A little while ago, a pony hurt one of my friends,” he told her, rubbing one claw against its opposite in a flickity-flick repeating roll. “The pony hurt my friend really bad, worse than I hurt yours. So you know what I did?” “You kicked the pony's butt, right? Duh!” Spike lifted his eyes skyward, grimacing at seeing the blue sky, the same color as Rainbow Dash. Well, Rainbow Dash before she'd gotten dirty and bloody and sweaty and termite-ridden. “I saved her life.” He left out the part where she'd backstabbed him after because that wasn't anyone's business. He liked how it had been up to that point, anyway. “And yeah, I had to hurt that pony to do it, but I didn't forget all about my friend just to go chasing after the pony for revenge.” Rainbow Dash mumbled something that sounded like 'revenge schmevenge.' “Where'd your friend go, Rainbow Dash?” he asked her, and he could tell he'd hit the mark by the way she went statue-quiet again. Somewhere around, there was a bird still singing in a living tree, and the sound of it was painfully clear. “You took your pink pal to the hospital or whatever they do around here, right?” “I... she said she was fine, okay, so I let her go by herself! There's nothing wrong with that! Stop trying to guilt trip me you little fat newt-thing!” “Yeah, I bet ponies with head injuries are just swell at that self-diagnosey stuff.” He winced at another explosion of flesh and hooves against wood as she struggled to break free and, again, failed totally. The tree only wobbled from one side to the other the tiniest bit. “Totally no chance that she could be hurt worse than she thought, right?” “Shut your face, kid, I'm warning you.” “Or what? You'll kill me? Like you're gonna do anyway, because your stupid pride can't handle losing at hide and seek to a baby?” “Shut up! You suggested it in the first place you jerk!” “Maybe she got lost. Maybe she passed out on the way and hit her head on something again. She could be dead right now,” he said, amazed and a little horrified at the words coming out of his mouth, the sheer black hate, but it felt so, so good. “SHUT YOUR MOUTH YOU BRAT!” “WHY DON'T YOU SHUT YOURS?!” he screamed right back, diving over right in front of her and glaring straight into her face. “WHY DON'T YOU PONIES EVER JUST SHUT YOUR STUPID MOUTHS AND LEAVE THE REST OF US ALONE?!” They glared at each other with mutual hatred, shaking with it, sweating with it, unable to blink, unable to form any more meaningful sentences than what they'd already said to each other. He knew she would have killed him by now if she'd been free. But she wasn't. He could see her wings flexing against the wood, so helplessly, so hopelessly, as pathetic as any prey before a pony, her wings against the wood. With a sound of sheer animal fury, she lunged forward with her head an inch, snapping her teeth at his face. Spike jumped back, delighted at the reversal of their previous positions, yet somehow also bitter and unhappy about it. But she deserved it. She deserved worse. She was a terrible, monstrous thing that deserved.... The hatred drained from him, leaving only tiredness and tears in his eyes. Suddenly, Rainbow Dash didn't look like a monster. She just looked like a trapped, embarrassed, anxious thing, unable to beat him, unable to express herself, unable to even admit why she was so upset. A termite was crawling on her nose, and she was trying really, really hard not to make ridiculous scrunched up faces from it. In the sky, she'd been unbeatable. Now, she was just... so sad, and so weak, and so silly. Like a fat little dragon without fire or wings. “Don't even think about bragging to anyone about this, shrimp. As soon as I get out of here, you're dead,” she promised him, abandoning heat for ice. She shook her head and blinked, her own sweat blinding her eyes. It didn't even matter. Couldn't she see that it didn't matter? Of course not. They never could. “Goodbye, Rainbow Dash,” he told her without malice, and walked off through the mutilated trees and torn up sods of grass.