Evolution
“Rabbitchu uses thunder smash!” Twilight yelled, slamming her card down on the table with the force of a category 4 fluttercane, the flutteriest hurricane this side of Scarred Mesa Skydock. Cards went flying through the air as the table shook under the librarian’s hoof, and across from her, Spike the dragon sighed and laid his own cards down. If not for the reinforced legs, the table would have collapsed.
“Well, I lost again,” he said as he watched the unicorn’s magic retrieve all of the scattered Pokemare cards. “Twilight, you can’t get so excited over this; you’re gonna have heart problems if you get so intense over just a card game.” He did over comics, but not like this: this was unhealthy.
“Just a card game? This is my card life,” the unicorn said, one of her eyes twitching as she reshuffled her deck. “You’re just mad because I beat you for the twentieth time in a row, and that’s just today.”
“Twilight, I may have been mad after the tenth time, but now I don’t care,” the dragon said as he handed the unicorn his own small deck of cards. “Why did you drop last month’s electric bill funds on that new ultimate deck, anyway? Don’t you like having lights to use for studying and friendship?”
Indeed, if not for the tiny old generator that ran on magic and the nightmares of foals, the library’s refrigerator would have long ago become a festering mess of moss-covered food. Spike could have eaten it, of course, but he cared too much for Twilight, so after bartering away some of his precious few pearls he had been saving for a rainy day (said day being a date with Rarity), he had managed to scrounge this up out of Cranky Doodle Donkey’s shed. It only managed to power the fridge, and so the light they played by during the day was that of the sun, and after dark, candlelight.
The lightning bugs had long since died from lack of food and water, though Fluttershy thought they had just been taken to a nice farm out in the countryside. That’s what Twilight had told her, anyway.
“It takes sacrifice to win the game, Spike; I am willing to sacrifice much for my victories,” Twilight said as she shuffled the decks with magic. “Come on, one more game; I want to beat that Mantizard of yours with my Rabbitchu. All of my other high-level creatures can beat it, but I want this one to beat it too.”
“No, Twilight, I’m done for the night,” Spike said with a yawn, jumping down from his chair and walking off towards the bedroom. “Besides, you know as well as I do Rabbitchu can’t beat my Mantizard unless you evolve him into Harekudos. Goodnight.”
“Aw, but evolving them takes so much longer when I’m out of rare candy, and I’m still a few bits short for my rare candy pack of the month,” the unicorn whined to herself. Thankfully for ponies, the Pokemare trading card game had magical cards, so that when one evolved their Pokemare creature, the card would change to correspond with the change. This meant only beginning-level cards were sold, and the higher echelons of the card world were usually dominated by the players who had “grinded” their way to the top using deceit, bribery and pranks to achieve victory. Twilight was above dirty, under-hoofed tactics, but she was not above the obsession that was sweeping Equestria, and the fact she had a highly scientific and inquisitive mind did not make things easier for her. In fact, it made it harder.
She had to know the secret of ultimate power, and for once, it wasn’t Celestia’s recipe for the greatest banana smoothie in the world. No, she had to discover the truth behind the Pokemare evolution.
So, when she went to bed that night, all she could think about was natural history, rare candy, jungle gyms and Pokemare; the jungle gyms because of her ever-present fear of gym class, and natural history because she could name most of the major orders of animals off the top of her head. It all kept on colliding in her head and mixing together like some bizarre cake batter that even Pinkie Pie would be skeptical about, and then Spike showed up in her head, and things took a turn for the interesting.
“Wait a minute... Spike looks an awful lot like a Nogard, one of the reptilian Pokemares,” the unicorn muttered in her sleep, her dreams continuing to swirl around in her head. “They evolve from Nrevyw, which itself is a stone-type Pokemare. But the Nogard is both a stone-type and a fire-type Pokemare, which means something happens during the evolutionary transformation that facilitates some sort of inner combustion chamber to form. Oh, the science behind it all must be truly amazing!”
Far off in Pokemare headquarters...
“I’m telling you, nopony will believe the new ice line can have the Graindere evolve into a Soome without both the marsh crystal and the cold biome! It all has to connect somehow, and-,”
“Oh, come on Larry, this stuff is all made up anyway: who cares? Forced evolution: really? Come on, have some more pottery brownies. They’re like, totes amazing, dude.”
“Yeah, you’re right; it’s not like anypony really cares about this stuff anyway, right?”
Back in the library...
“I must find a way to evolve something in real life, to prove it can happen!” Twilight mumbled in her head, making sure to magically take notes in her sleep. Her scribbles looked like the works of a rabid bunny with no tail, like Anthony Hop-kits in that one movie. She could read it just fine, though.
The next morning, Spike woke to a rather unusual sight. Twilight had piled more equipment in their shared room than he even knew they had, and... were those candies? “Twilight, what’s going on?” he asked as he rolled out of his basket and stretched. This wasn’t normal by any means, after all.
“Oh, Spike, I’m so glad you’re awake; we can begin now!” the unicorn said as she hooked up several scanning machines to a large magic battery. Why didn’t she just plug them into the wall? She-
Oh, right: the power was out. “Begin what?” Spike asked, wondering why she kept looking in his direction. He knew Twilight could be plain boring at times, but right now, she was a bit... scary.
“We’re going to try a little experiment today, Spike, and I hope you’re up for a great big breakfast of candy!” Twilight said with a smile reminiscent of the time she had gone completely bonkers over a late assignment. Or that one time she had accidentally missed an exam and had burned down an orphanage. Nopony had been inside, as it had been long abandoned, but still; a complete whack-job.
Wait, had Twilight been replaced by an imposter? She never let Spike have candy this early in the morning, spouting some nonsense about tooth decay and cavities. Didn’t she forget dragon teeth could crush diamonds and other hard jewels as though they were chocolate chips?
Still, Spike wasn’t one to argue with this new crazy Twilight, not with the prospect of early morning candy. “I sure am!” he said with as real of a smile as he could muster up. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, I’ve picked out some of the rarest candies in Equestria, and by rarest I mean both in quantity and the degree to which they’ve been cooked. Now, you are going to eat them, and I will measure what happens with this equipment.”
“Oh, uh... sure... that’s sounds like a great plan,” Spike said, the urge to roll his eyes almost overriding his desire for candy. Almost.
“Okay, Spike, I want you to eat this,” Twilight said, holding up what appeared to be a small minty-looking candy with silver streaks in it. “They only make this candy around the holidays, and in such small quantities that it can cost a good ten bits for just one.”
“Then how did you get one?” Spike asked. “In fact, how did you get all these candies? I’m pretty sure they’re out of your salary range, what with this Pokemare addiction.”
Twilight huffed and puffed, trying to rein in her temper. “It is not an addiction; I am in complete control of my mental faculties, mister. Besides, Celestia and Pinkie Pie send me these gifts every year at some point or another. I just never got around to eating them is all. Here now, eat this.”
Spike slowly took the candy from twilight’s outstretched hoof and popped it into his mouth. Minty, with a dash of cinnamon and... raisins? How did that work?
“Well?” Twilight asked, not blinking one little bit as she watched Spike swallow the candy. “Feel anything? A sort of tingling, an unexplainable energy within you, waiting to be released?”
“Uh... no,” the dragon replied.
“Darn; your level must not be up high enough for evolution to take place,” the unicorn muttered to herself, checking the first candy off of a list Spike was sure she hadn’t had a few seconds ago. “Okay, onto the next piece. This one, I’m told, weighs exactly one-twentieth a bit and costs thirty.”
This continued for about an hour or so, with the last fifteen minutes more or less sounding like this.
“Twilight, I’m getting full.”
“Nonsense Spike: here, eat these ingredients. It’s the stuff that makes candy, so it must truly be rare.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m a visionary; here, eat this sugar cane. It’s much rawer than sugar, so it must work!”
“Seriously, Twilight, I’m getting full.”
“Oh, come on now, my magical sensors are saying you’re nearly at your next level.”
“Next level? Wait, have you been trying to evolve me like in that stupid Pokemare game?!”
“It is NOT stupid!” the unicorn shouted, snapping the reader out of the flashback and into the present with the force of a high-grade rubber band. “It is AWESOME, and I WILL discover the secret to evolving you! Now, eat this dirt!”
Spike upon swallowing the dirt and feeling it rest in his bloated stomach, gave forth a sickly belch. He didn’t feel good at all; if he didn’t barf or pass gas or something, he’d likely explode or.... or...
“Twilight, I don’t feel... good,” Spike said as his whole body started trembling.
“Yes! Yes! You must have reached the next level of your evolving stage!” the purple unicorn shouted as the room began to shake. Spike began to tremble violently as his scales began to shine with a bright light.
“Twilight, I don’t-,” the dragon began, and then there was a massive explosion of sound and light. Twilight was thrown backwards into her machines, which began sparking and smoldering in the ensuing chaos. The ground shook, the sky turned an eerie green outside, and off in Canterlot, Celestia didn’t like the taste of her blueberry crumpet, a sure sign of the apocalypse.
When the smoke finally cleared, Twilight threw some of the heavy machinery off of her and stumbled forward, coughing slightly from what might have been a collapsed funny bone. “Spike? Did it work?” she called out, looking for her little dragon. “Have you evolved?”
“Uhh...” was all she heard, the groaning coming from under a pile of books. Magically levitating said books out of the way, Twilight looked down upon her assistant and sighed.
“I was expecting the change to be more... I don’t know... significant,” she said, turning back to look at her notes. “Maybe the next level will hold more results.”
“Results?” Spike asked as he rose to his feet, the large spider-like legs poking from his back a bright green color. “Twilight, what did you do to me?!” His long tail, now tipped with spikes and pincer, slapped against the ground. His neck had elongated, and the poor dragon now had wings like those of a bat. All in all, he definitely looked weird: kind of scary, but weird all the same.
The fact that his head hadn’t changed made him look like he was wearing a costume.
“Well, Spike, we have a long way to go until your next form,” the unicorn said, her magic suddenly sealing the horrible amalgamated dragon-thing in place so he couldn’t escape. “Here now, eat some of this freshly-picked spinach. I heard from a reliable source in those Sodaeye comics that spinach is practically magic in a can.”
“This sucks,” Spike muttered as his third and fourth eyes blinked on his back. “I hate Pokemare.”