With the insights found in Exotic Animal Anatomy, Fluttershy had finally been able to figure out what her new platypus friend was missing. As a carnivore, it needed a supply of flies, worms, and shrimp in its diet, which around Ponyville it could have never gathered on its own. One of Fluttershy's most important tasks as an animal caretaker was collecting all carrion and distributing it among all creatures in need, thereby avoiding any jealousy over food and simultaneously avoiding wild scavenging from the predators of the Everfree.
But with Fluttershy's knowledge about its actual dietary requirements, all its health problems were a thing of the past. In only two days, the poor thing had recovered to full health and was now as up and about as one would imagine an up and about platypus to be (which was roughly halfway between an up and about beaver and an up and about duck). It went right to happily running up and down Fluttershy's cottage, its bizarre appearance and behavior serving as a source of inspiration for the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
“Look at its tail!” Apple Bloom said. “Just like a beaver. You think we should try our hooves at a lumberjack cutie mark again?”
“I don't know,” Scootaloo replied. “Your sister made it very clear she never ever wants to see us near an axe again.”
“You guys!” Sweetie Belle squealed over her book. “It says in here that platypuses are excellent swimmers and divers. I bet if we watch it and copy its movements, we can easily get our diving cutie marks!”
Startled by the loud scream, the platypus ran off across the cottage, with the Cutie Mark Crusaders immediately in hot pursuit.
“Come back here, you rascal!” Apple Bloom yelled after it. “Don't you know we gotta watch your movements?”
After a sharp turn to the right, the three chased it below the living room table, sending the entire thing toppling. Applejack held the table down with only minor annoyance, instead concentrating her full attention on Rarity and Rainbow Dash.
“You know, I got just as much time as you do,” she told them. “So why don't you get this over and done with already?”
Both remained in their seat, forelegs crossed and staring at each other with venom in their eyes.
“Come on, Raaainbow Dash, Raaarity,” Pinkie Pie said, stretching both their names extra sweetly. “You know you want to.”
Still, Rainbow and Rarity just continued their hard-line stare at each other.
“Would you do it,” Pinkie asked them both, “for a cupcake?”
As this invoked no reaction from either one, she had to up the ante. “Would you do it for two cupcakes? Or three? Or a cake baked just for you, with a hoofmade thank you card with lots of glitter? How about five minutes alone at Sugarcube Corner, with all the candy, dough, and frosting we have, no questions asked?”
“This is getting absolutely ridiculous!” Rarity was the first to yell. “I might as well just get this behind me.”
She repositioned herself, chin resting on her hooves, and individually pressed each and every word out of her mouth. “You are not a lazy sloth and I apologize for calling you such a thing.”
Rainbow kicked back in her chair, blew a strain of mane out of her face, and said equally forcefully: “I'm sorry for calling you a merciless slave driver.”
“You see? Was that so hard?” Applejack asked with a smug grin. “Now all you gotta do is say it again, and this time, you mean it.”
Furious words of protest spouted endlessly from Rarity's and Rainbow's mouths, but fell on completely deaf ears. Just like when dealing with her sister's antics and the inevitably following complaints, Applejack ignored everything they threw at her and waited the whole thing out, until they were tired from their yapping.
Once their bickering had died down to little more than panting with tongues like dry sponges, Applejack started again. “RD, why don't you start us off here,” she suggested.
“Fine!” Rainbow said. She needed a moment to get herself back into an upright position. Once she had done that, she continued: “I know Spike is your friend just like any one of us, and you would never do anything to hurt him. Even when he does things for you, you make sure it's something he likes doing and it's nothing he couldn't take. I'm sorry for suggesting otherwise.”
“Alrighty!” Applejack said. “Rares, how about you now?”
Rarity bashfully looked Rainbow in the eyes. “You might not generally be the most diligent pony.” Rainbow glared at her, to which she blushed a little. “But I know that when it comes to something that you're passionate about, or something that matters to your friends, you'd move heaven and earth to make it happen. I have no right to call a pony like you lazy.”
They finished with a smile and an 'apology accepted' given to each other.
Pinkie Pie immediately pulled both of them into a group hug. “Isn't it great!?” she said. “Now we're all friends again!”
“Not quite, Pinkie. The difficult part's still ahead of us,” Applejack noted. “And we still got no plan how to go about that. Twilight thinks she's stuck in this thing and that there's no way out of it. We tried to show her there is, but she just won't listen.”
“Tell me about it,” Pinkie Pie said, hug released, her head slumping into her hooves. “Spike doesn't listen to anything we say; not to Dashie when she tells him to give up the strike, not to me when I suggest obvious improvements to their protest songs with the use of rhythmic background instruments...”
Rainbow grunted angrily. “There's gotta be something we're missing, some way how we can make Spike and you can make Twilight see how silly they're both acting,” she said.
“Maybe we could devise a clever ruse of some sort,” Rarity suggested. “Something that would force them to approach one another.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow jumped in, “I could totally see that working. We could tell them, like, that the other one is really, really sick; so sick in fact that we don't know if they'll make it through. And the one thing they wanna do before anything happens is make up with each other.”
Rarity excitedly clapped her hooves together. “I see, I see! And once we get them into the hospital, we get them into a room, lock the door behind them, and not let them out until they have talked things through. It's ingenious!”
“Um...”
So far Fluttershy had silently sat in a corner, tending to a grumpy Angel, who felt he didn't get the attention he deserved ever since that platypus moved in. She had offered her cottage as a neutral ground for an open discussion, despite wishing not to get dragged into any of this, but had reached a point were she couldn't keep quiet anymore.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Why don't Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash go talk to Twilight, and Applejack and Rarity meet with Spike. That way, they get the opinion from the other side and realize that they're not alone with wanting the strike to end.”
All four of her friends stared at her in awe. “I mean, if you don't have any better ideas,” she quickly added.
“That's a great idea!” Rainbow Dash commended, flying over and lifting her friend into the air. “And you could come with us and serve as a sort of mediator and –”
Fluttershy let out a barely audible squeak, and Rainbow let her back down.
“Or you can just stay here and hold the fort while we go talk to them,” Rainbow said as she gave Fluttershy a pat on the back, allowing her friend to calm down again.
“I say we go for it,” Applejack proclaimed, holding her outstretched hoof above the center of the table. “Who's with me?”
The three others acceded, placing their respective hooves on top of Applejack's and breaking the huddle with a zeal worthy of a hoofball championship team.
“Let's see if we can't fix that mess in the library,” Applejack finished.
“What mess in the library?” Apple Bloom asked. She, along with her fellow Crusaders, had completed a couple of laps around the cottage, eventually having landed back under the living room table, from where all three were poking their heads out.
“Twilight and Spike had a big fight a couple days ago,” Applejack explained, “over some mess he made or didn't make in the library. Anywho, now Spike's moved out and hosts a strike, so we gotta sort things out and get them to talk again.”
All Crusader ears drooped to the floor. “Oh,” Apple Bloom replied.
“Oh? What do you mean, 'oh'?” Applejack knew that kind of 'oh' very well. It never meant anything good.
The Crusaders retreated to a quick consultation below the table. When their whispering ceased, they stuck their heads out again. “Promise you won't get mad,” Apple Bloom pleaded.
“Oh, I promise I will get mad!” Applejack announced.
They made another retreat with more inaudible whispering, except for a couple of no's and but's. When they were finished, the three Crusaders came out from under the table and placed themselves opposite their judge and jury.
“So, you know the mess in the library you were talking about,” Apple Bloom began. “Turns out, it could have been...”
“..it might have been...”
“...it probably was...”
“..all our fault,” the three of them said.
“What!?” Rarity yelled.
“We didn't mean to!” Sweetie Belle said, raising her forelegs defensively.
“We were only looking for a book,” Scootaloo explained, “and well...” Her eyes swayed to the ground. “We kinda found more than one.”
“And you weren't planning on telling us!?” Rarity shouted. She had scrunched up her nose into a scowl and Applejack didn't look much different. Even Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie joined in, making up the four diverse faces of one very angry totem pole.
“We didn't think it was such a big deal,” Apple Bloom defended. “Spike told us he could handle it.”
Spike. Instantly, the word entered their collective consciousness.
“If the Crusaders caused the mess, that means they have nothing to fight over,” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “We have to tell them right away!”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Applejack said. “Let's move!”
In a fraction of a second, the four of them were out the door, leaving Fluttershy alone with the Crusaders. Angel sitting on her back, she moved to the door frame to gaze after her friends.
Meanwhile, the Crusaders sniffed their chance. On silent hooves, they tip-toed over to the door. Carefully, step by step, they gained more and more ground, so much they could smell the fresh air already. The only thing standing between them and their freedom was one quick squeeze by Fluttershy's side. Apple Bloom had almost made it, already placing one hoof on the grass outside.
“Oh no, you don't,” Fluttershy said without bothering to look. It send all three of them right back inside, sitting down on the couch, waiting for their rebuke.
* * *
After the formation of the second camp, the protesters had started a collection for one of the big tents in Tent Peg's shop, modeled after the war tents used by Romane generals in ancient times, to be set up right in the center of their camp. Without nomination, Spike had unanimously been elected as commander-in-chief and moved into the war tent. This had made him responsible for all the camp's endeavors to secure the perimeter and the protesters weren't too shy about ideas.
They had started by digging a trench to separate their side from the newly formed mob camp, reinforcing it with wire in front which, although pretty low on its barbs, still managed to make its point of 'Keep out!' to the ponies on the other side. The second camp had answered with a trench of their own.
The next step had been the formation of guards. At any point, at least four volunteers were on patrol, looking for any signs of suspicious behavior and barring any pony from entering the campsite unregistered. Once the first watch tower was set up, they were joined by two sentries on top, and like many other protesters, the Red Coat had still more plans to expand upon the camp's defensive means.
“I estimate the second watch tower to be build before sunrise. The mayor will never be able to keep up with us.” The Red Coat was glancing back and forth between her spread out map and her various notes. “If we are willing to work through the night, I bet we can set up a palisade before they finish their second tower.”
“A palisade!? Now hold up.” Spike looked at her warily. This would be were he would finally draw the line, or rather undraw the big red line where the palisade was going to be, which she had already sketched on their map of central Ponyville. “Didn't you say I had to authorize these things?” he asked.
“Of course, comrade,” she replied. “After all, you are the strike leader.”
“Then I say we don't build it,” Spike said, attempting to put all the authority he had into his voice. “I was already skeptical about the trenches and the patrols, but I just know that this is too much.”
The Red Coat replied to him solemnly: “You might think it unnecessary, but we need the palisade to keep up with the mayor and protect us from her goon squad.”
Spike threw his arms up in the air. “But they never did anything to us! They didn't try to attack us or invade us or anything. All they did was build some stuff on their own. Why do we need protection against that?”
“Ah!” the Red Coat exclaimed in the same way a teacher commends the intelligent question of one of his students. “But you see, comrade, the only thing that kept them from attacking were the preemptive measures we had taken. If it were not for the trenches and the barb wire, they would have run us over long ago. And you can be sure they are already plotting a way to disable our defenses and strike us where it hurts. That is why we constantly have to improve the camp grounds and eradicate any flaws still left.”
Spike grabbed his temples. He wanted to reply something to this, but once more, his brain was twisted into a pretzel by the Red Coat's strange, but indisputable logic. Still, this wasn't about whether he could refute her claims, this was about whether he would be convinced to go along with the plan, which he still wasn't.
“No!” he declared. “I still say we don't need it, so we won't build it.”
The Red Coat shook her head in a slow, pitying manner. “My little friend. Still so young and so naïve.” She rolled up the map along with a couple of her notes and moved toward the tent flap. “I'm sure you will come to your senses and agree with me eventually. Then you'll be glad I had this already started now,” she said in passing.
She was almost outside when Spike yelled after her: “Wait!”
Surprised, she turned around and eyed him curiously.
“I...” he began only hesitantly. “Can I do anything to help?”
“I don't know,” the Red Coat answered before deliberating a little. “I think we are okay. You just do whatever you want. It's your strike after all.”
“Then I guess I'll just clean up a little,” he said to nopony, as she was already out the door.
He looked glumly to the ground and sighed. Cleaning would not be an option either. He didn't have a broom, a duster, detergents, or anything else. Apart from that, what was he going to clean? The grassy ground below? Sweeping up all the dirt would, by definition, be impossible.
All he could think of doing was move back to his sleeping bag and hear his fellow protesters work, while he desperately waited for the strike to be over. He closed his eyes, when the tent flap opened and revealed two incoming ponies.
“Rarity! Applejack!” Spike said happily as he ran over and clutched both of them into a hug. “Boy, am I glad to see you.”
“So are we,” Rarity replied, petting his head gently.
Applejack however didn't seem so glad. “You mind telling us what the hay is going on?” she asked. “Why were them friends of yours interrogating us for some fifteen minutes before letting us in?”
Spike let go of his friends. “They did?” he asked, sucking the tip of his claw.
“They have been imposing on us with all kinds of odd questions and requests,” Rarity explained.
“Like what?”
“Like 'are the two of you or have you ever been members of the Canterlot Royal Guards?' and the quite similar 'are you spies, and if so, who are you spying for?', before they demanded for us to prove our harmlessness. We asked them how we were supposed to do such a thing, to which they did not have an answer. So they let us through and told us where to find you.” Rarity shook her head disapprovingly. “You know, darling, apart from being boorish and unnerving, I don't think they're doing a very effective job.”
“Which begs the question,” Applejack added, “why'd you tell them to hassle ponies like that in the first place?”
“I didn't,” Spike said. “In fact, I was against it, but somepony came up and suggested we need a patrol in case...” He bowed his head in shame, anticipating how ridiculous what he said next would sound. “In case spies would try to infiltrate the strike.”
“But why did they do it if you asked them not to?” Rarity asked.
“Well, I kind of agreed to it once they explained their reasons to me,” he admitted, head still lowered. “It sounded sensible at the time.”
“Then why don't you tell them to stop right now?” Applejack asked.
“I tried!” Spike yelled. His response had the energy of a tiger backed into a corner. “Believe me, I tried.”
When he had calmed himself a little, he turned his back on his friends. “I have told the others to stop several times, with the patrols, with the construction work, but they never listen to me. They just continue and tell me how important and unavoidable these things are. And whenever I say something back to them, they come up with some argument or explanation that shows me I'm wrong, until I run out of ideas.
“And I don't know what to do about it. I know this isn't the way to go, even when they say otherwise, but they won't stop until I can prove it to them.” Spike's gaze slowly rose to the top of the tent. “I bet Twilight would know what to do,” he said dreamily. “I could always count on her helping me out, when I was in a pinch.”
“Then why don't you simply ask Twilight for help?” Rarity asked.
“I can't do that.” Spike wasn't voicing his opinion, he was stating a cold-hard fact. “What am I supposed to tell her? Twilight, would you please come and fix this so I can go right back to striking and fighting against you?”
“Then just don't go back to striking,” Applejack advised.
“I can't do that either. If I just mess up more and more and don't take responsibility for my mistakes, why should Twilight give me the respect I want? I can't let her swoop in and correct the mistakes I made. That would be exactly the kind of slacking off she's been accusing me of.” Spike's head fell over like the top of a forgotten flour sack leaning against the wall of a pantry. “Maybe this was exactly what she was talking about.”
“But you never did anything wrong,” Rarity pointed out. “We know that now. Sweetie Belle and the other Crusaders confessed to vandalizing the library.”
“Once they knew they got you in trouble, they couldn't keep quiet,” Applejack said. “I think you shoulda told Twi immediately. I bet you, she would've dropped it right then and there if you had just told her.”
Spike jumped up. His little dragon heart proved much too small a vessel to contain all his emotions. Like a teakettle forgotten on a stove, everything was boiling over and out of his mouth. “Look, it doesn't matter how the library got trashed. This is about something different. This is about... this is about... I don't know!”
He screamed out in rage. His whole body shook like the bells of an alarm clock at wake up time. The only thing that remained unshaken was his voice. “This is about all the dust in the basement! This is about getting those stupid quills from stupid Quills and Sofas! This is about having to do all my chores every day, even when Twilight isn't even around at all!”
“Whatever do you mean?” Rarity asked. “Do you not want to work for Twilight anymore?”
“No!” He took a deep breath and said: “I don't mind cleaning up, I don't mind cooking her meals, and I don't mind fetching all the books for her. In fact, I like it. I like every part of it. I absolutely love being Twilight's assistant, except when I don't. Do you know what I mean?”
His two friends looked at him oddly. “I'm afraid I can't follow you, sugarcube,” Applejack said.
“What I mean is, most of the time everything is fine, but sometimes I feel like I can't take it anymore. I feel like... I don't know!” He didn't have any hair to tear out, but he tried nonetheless. “I can't even explain it to myself. How can I think of explaining it to you?”
His eyes closed, he walked right past them. “I'm sorry,” he declared in passing. “I think I need a moment alone.”
“Wait, Spike! Stop!” Rarity shouted. Spike stopped, but didn't turn. She continued: “Is there anything we could do for you? We would be really glad to help out, even with the tiniest favor you could think of.”
Spike remained still as a rock. “No,” he said.
Applejack wouldn't accept his answer. “We could talk to them patrols for you and tell them to stop their hassling if you want to,” she suggested. “Twilight never has to know. We'll keep it to ourselves. Pinkie Promise!”
“Please don't.” His voice was barely above a whisper, slowly traveling the room like dandelion seeds scattered by the wind. Without a word of goodbye, he walked out the tent.
Rarity exchanged a worried look with Applejack. “I can only hope that Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash had more luck than us.”
* * *
When Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie opened the door to the Ponyville Library, surprise and shock sprang them right in the face. They almost had to close the door and enter a second time, just to make sure what they were seeing wasn't just a temporary trick of the mind. What they saw was a library that had given up on existence and accepted an untimely demise into a desolate ruin.
In turn, the spiders in the corners, sensing this moment of weakness, had taken their chance to conquer the building for themselves. With the help of their allies dust and mold, they had made great progress in their conquest, and continued to do so with successful campaigns, capturing all the bookshelves one cobweb at a time. That was until the two sudden pony intruders destroyed half of this morning's work with a sweep of their hooves.
“Twilight? Are you in here?” Pinkie shouted, trying to shake off the remnants of a destroyed spider web, only to get caught in another. It was hard to believe a pony could live under these conditions, even for a day.
“Twilight, we know you're in here,” Rainbow announced. “So why don't you make this easy for us and come out on your own. We don't want to drag you out, but we'll do what we have to.”
When there was no answer, Rainbow Dash took to the air, careful not to turn her coat into more of a sticky mess. She quickly scanned between all bookshelves on the first floor and found nothing. This was to be expected, as she figured Twilight's hiding place to be somewhere upstairs anyway. She beelined for the bedroom.
There was nopony in Twilight's bed, but it was evident somepony had been sleeping in it pretty recently. Quickly piecing together all the knowledge she had as a tracker, Rainbow followed the lead into Twilight's study where she, sure enough, found her target. In there, Twilight sat in an armchair facing away from the door, aimlessly staring out the window.
“There you are,” Rainbow said as she walked in front of her friend. “Why didn't you respond to us? We just want to talk, you know.”
Twilight didn't reply. She continued to silently stare into the distance.
Unsure what to do, Rainbow took a step back and looked around the room. It wasn't as bad as the rest of the library downstairs, but it was already evident that the spiders had no plans of sparing this room. “You mind telling me what happened in here?” she asked. “I've never seen your place like this. It looks like it's been abandoned for years.”
There was still no reaction from Twilight. At this point, it was impossible to tell if she was even still alive.
Rainbow waved a hoof in front of her face. “Hello? Equestria to Twilight, is anypony in there? We have great news to tell you. News that will end this strike immediately.”
“Uh-huh,” was all Twilight said, which by itself wasn't much, but after the previous drought seemed like an oasis of talkativeness in the desert.
Under all circumstances, Rainbow wanted to keep the conversation from running dry, but she was stopped by Pinkie Pie bursting through the door.
“Girls, I did it. I did it!” she proclaimed. “Seven at one blow! That's gotta be a record.”
“What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked.
“I wiped away seven spider webs with a single blow,” Pinkie answered, figurative suspenders proudly pulled. “I was like, 'woosh', and when I turned around I had seven different webs sticking to my hoof.” She aided her recount by making the necessary sweeping motions.
When Pinkie saw that Rainbow wasn't impressed in the slightest, she shifted her attention to Twilight. “Hey Twilight, what are you looking so glum about? Did anything happen that made you all mopey?” she asked.
“Of course something happened, Pinkie!” Rainbow snapped at her. “Spike is still out there, organizing his strike. Of course that's gonna make her mopey.”
“But didn't you tell her the great news that will end this strike immediately?” Pinkie asked with genuine confusion.
“Not yet—”
Pinkie didn't let her friend finish. “Can I tell her?” And before Rainbow answered, she already jumped to Twilight's armrest. “We just came from Fluttershy and the Cutie Mark Crusaders confessed to everything!”
“Uh-huh,” Twilight replied. She sounded cold and empty.
“Well, they didn't confess to everything,” Pinkie continued,” but they did confess to making a mess in the library, and said that they're sorry. Well, they didn't say they're sorry, but I'm sure they are and I'm also sure that if they were here right now, they would tell you how sorry they are and would want to make it up to you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So if the Crusaders trashed the place, that means Spike never did anything wrong,” Rainbow said. “It was all a big misunderstanding that's now resolved. Although you probably have to apologize to him.”
She leaned closer to the statue that was Twilight. “There's nothing wrong with apologizing. Everypony makes mistakes, even me. Although my mistakes are usually pretty awesome mista—” She cut herself short, realizing her boasting wouldn't be very helpful in this situation. “I mean, there is always something you can learn from making mistakes and that is pretty awesome too.”
“Uh-huh,” Twilight said. Every repeat only became more alarming and more aggravating.
Rainbow Dash tried again. “Don't you get it? You never had anything to fight about. There is no reason to fight anymore.”
“No, you don't get it!” The suddenness of Twilight's word had sent both her friends flying back a step. She sat up a bit, but for the most part her body remained as stiff as before. “Spike is down there, protesting me against all odds. The mayor came to him and told him to stop, but he didn't. The Royal Guards came to him and told him to stop, but he didn't. He's determined to go through with this, no matter how much trouble he gets in.”
Twilight looked Rainbow sharply in the eye. “What does that tell you about me? What does that tell you about how much he resents working for me? What does that tell you about how poorly I've been treating him?”
Her head dropped limply to her chest. “He should never come back to me,” she said. “I don't deserve him as an assistant. I'm a bad pony.”
"Twilight..." Pinky whispered. It deeply hurt hearing her friend say all this. The feeling of abandonment was one of her biggest fears. All too fresh were her memories of when she had doubted her friends and feared that the deep bonds that connected them had broken. At those times, it was her best friends that got her out of her depression, by reassuring her that their friendship was strong enough to overcome any obstacle. It was her wish, no, her duty, to do the same for Twilight now when she needed her.
She carefully chose her words. “Twilight, I—”
“That is complete baloney, and I won't let you talk about yourself that way!”
Rainbow Dash had rammed her hooves into the sides of Twilight's armchair and practically snorted all her words. “Spike resenting you? You, a bad pony? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard! That's the stupidest thing you ever said! You are two of my best friends. You are best friends with each other, and so much more. He loves you, Twilight, and you love him!” She swallowed a little bit, but raged her way right through the awkwardness. “You belong with each other! You need each other! You're like...” She paused a moment to think up the perfect comparison. “You're like Daring Do and adventure. You can't imagine one without the other. Why, without adventure Daring would be only... I don't even want to think about it! Just like I don't want to think about you without Spike. You're the perfect team, if I've ever seen one.”
Twilight didn't respond. She remained frozen in her armchair, eyes closed, rapt in thought. “I think I prefer to be alone right now,” she said eventually.
A surge of magic swept across the study, picking up Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, sending them flying out the room. The same surge slammed the door shut right behind them.
Rainbow Dash was immediately up, hammering on the door. “This conversation's not over! Open up, Twilight!” she demanded. When no response came, she tried pulling the door knob with her hooves, she tried gnawing it with her teeth; she put her whole body into it, but the door wouldn't budge an inch.
“Open up, Twilight!” she repeated. “I'm not kidding! If you don't, we're gonna... we're gonna...” She stopped and went right back to chewing her way through the door knob.
From behind, Pinkie Pie placed a hoof on Rainbow's shoulder. “I have an idea,” she said. “Let me try.” Rainbow politely made way.
Pinkie got up on her hind legs and made a few warm-up exercises on the spot. She followed up with IT band stretches, one front hoof on her hip, the other up in the air, first left, then right. Relaxing her muscles afterwards, she was all set to go and stepped in front of the door.
She spat in her right hoof and left hoof, rubbed them together, lifted them up in the air and yelled: "Open sesame!" as loudly as she could.
The scene was as spectacular as it was futile.
She dropped down on her hooves again. “I really thought it would work,” she said. But since it didn't, it left them with a question neither one knew the answer to.
“What do we do now?”
* * *
For the remainder of the day, Applejack and the others ran back and forth between the camp and the library. The first few times, the patrol still pestered them whenever they reentered the campsite, until Applejack gave them just a little piece of her mind, which shut them up for good.
Every half hour a pair of his friends would enter Spike's tent. Their attempts to reconcile him with Twilight encountered silent resistance, when they found him lying on his sleeping bag, arms and tail curled up in a ball, as he let their words wash over him, break on the shore, and dissipate into nothingness. He didn't feel like talking. He didn't even feel like listening. He felt like lying down and wishing for all his problems to disappear at the wave of a magic wand.
When nightfall came, his friends ceased their visits. Maybe it was because the day had tired them out too much or maybe it was because they had given up on him. He didn't know and he didn't have the capacity to give it any thought. All Spike registered was that he was now alone with plenty of time and space to think.
He thought about what he had told Rarity and Applejack earlier. He still didn't know what he was trying to say. He only felt unrest because the same problem, the source of his unhappiness, was still out there, needing to be fixed. And it wasn't just Twilight and the library; he had the very same feeling when thinking about the camp and his relation to the other protesters. Despite working so closely with them, he felt as if they completely ignored and mistreated him. He felt very much like striking against them too.
Through the tent walls, he could hear the camp's construction work continuing deep into the night, the rattling and hammering outside a constant taunt to his situation. It became unbearable to listen to. He got up from his bed and walked outside. The campsite, the library – he couldn't stand to be around it any longer. Without another thought, he ran off into the night as fast as his little feet would take him.