“Thanks, Twilight,” Spike reached over her neck to hug her as they walked away from the newly rebuilt crystal statue. He quietly added, with a sincere measure of remorse, “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Oh Spike,” Twilight trailed off, happy to have taught her favorite assistant a valuable life lesson and bringing the whole of Equestria that little bit closer together. Even as she felt Spike’s scales getting warmer, she was already thinking about how incredible it was that such a small creature could cause such a large problem and then transform it into something as majestic as the rebuild of the statue was. It had taken quite some time, and it took even longer to oversee the cleanup after the rest had left, but it was worth it. All those delegates, they would never have come together as quickly as they had when the statue lay in pieces. More likely than not, they would have spent most of the time arguing with each other over frivolities that wouldn’t bother young colts and fillies.
Twilight suppressed a laugh as Spike released his grip. They were silly, the delegates, she thought. From what little Spike had told her as she passed him the gemstones, the simplicity of some of the requests she had answered really was unrivaled. A friend took somepony’s seat? Two speakers were booked at the same time? Were these the kinds of things a princess was expected to intervene in? Probably not. Her smile turned to a quick frown as a dangerous thought flashed by her mind, but she ignored it as usual and it barely left trace in her mind. There was no way Celestia would have given her a meaningless position just to placate her, Twilight was sure of that. The smile returned.
Spike stared at the ground as they approached the gates to the outside, the self-loathing evaporating with every step, but not quite fast enough for Twilight’s liking. She had to get the sadness out from his eyes, so she stopped and pushed up his chin. “It’s over, Spike. Don’t forget what happened today, but don’t dwell on it.” She gave a brief nod at the sound advice. And she wasn’t the only one feeling the spirit of a united Equestria, it seemed. The closer they were to the gates, the more she could make out the sounds of joy on the main street ahead. The Royal Guards standing to the side of the gates seemed jumpy at the unannounced celebration outside, but that’s why they were there for! It really is of no use to have guards that relax too much on duty, after all. Only before the unicorns could open the gates for Princess Twilight and Spike, a pony in a fancy suit burst through the door, the flaps of his saddlebags swinging like wings, a scroll hovering in front of him, and an ecstatic smile on his face, as he tore right past the guards and the odd couple making their way out.
“What was that?” Spike asked as they both turned back to the galloping stallion. “I don’t know,” came the reply, and Twilight didn’t even have the time to take a look at any of the leaflets that were carelessly flying to all sides from the open saddlebags, when the commotion outside got her attention. A brief sight of a massive crowd that seemed more appropriate for an after-work pub gathering than a political rally was all she got to see before five figures blocked her view. She recognized most of them, although something told her she should have recognized them all. They were delegates, after all. Now that she thought about it, so was the enthusiastic stallion that came running by before. Quite why he was carrying saddlebags, she didn’t know. She was preparing to greet her loyal, important subjects, when the strangest thing happened. The delegates took their shiny smiles and happy faces directly to Spike, affording her only the shortest of courtesy glances.
“There he is!” The powerful voice of the Manehattan delegate called out.
“Oh, ja, here he is indeed,” the purple-eyed mare beside him said.
“The hero of the hour!” a Pegasus added. Twilight peered into his eyes and tried remembering where he was from. Baltimare? Probably Baltimare.
“I can’t thank you enough, young dragon, none of us can!” the fourth delegate finished, while the fifth, aging delegate with a monocle nodded in agreement, but said nothing. At least Twilight knew where he was from. Nopony forgets the delegate from San Palomino! As for the second mare, who knew? She looked like that friend Rarity once made in Manehattan, so she must have been from one of the big cities. Didn’t matter, though. She would get to that when the time came.
Spike recognized them all, by looks at least. He drew in his claws as if to prepare for a heart attack. At the peak of the day, he was the most important dragon in Equestria; by the afternoon he was the sorriest dragon in Equestria. And now he was a hero? Something didn’t add up, and all the psychotic shifts he was used to seeing from Twilight didn’t fill him with hope. There were torches and pitchforks behind those smiles, he was sure of it. The best he could offer at the moment was an inquisitive, “Uhm, huh?” He didn’t even realize he was sinking into Twilight, who in turn gave the delegates a harsher stare. She wasn’t anticipating lynching, but she refused to rule out them making fun of the poor dragon. Some ponies were just mean, no matter how high up the social ladder they were.
“Can I help you?” she asked, trying to divert their attention and succeeding briefly.
“Oh, yes. Of course,” the big-city mare said. “We merely wanted to thank – well, you at first, but now it seems we have this young soul to thank for inspiring us!”
“Inspiring you for what, exactly?”
“Haven’t you heard? Oh, of course, how could you have heard…” She mumbled that Twilight was still in the Summit Hall while they were talking, but Twilight didn’t hear her. “We’re forming our own union, the Symbiotic Territory Development, or STD as we call it! It’s inspired by your lessons on friendship, you see.” Twilight cocked an eyebrow and the mare admitted, “Yes, I know, we really have to work on the acronym.”
Twilight smiled widely and it wasn’t long before she was shaking her head at what she had just heard. Whether she had just been insulted or if the mare wanted to tell a joke was beyond her, so she decided to go with the latter in her usual good spirit and roll with it. She finally looked back at the delegates, who were suddenly standing quite defensively in front of her. “Oh, that was a good one, your own union! I’ll have to tell Princess Celestia about that.”
“But we’ve already sent a messenger to her, ja.”
“Uhm.” Twilight felt something compress her chest. Her stomach didn’t like what she had just heard either; a growing weight giving her pause to think if she hadn’t accidentally ingested any lead. The first signs of panic and terror were already on her face, but she knew seceding from Equestria wasn’t merely unthinkable, it was impossible. It had to be, right? She forced a smile and shook her head before asking, “What do you mean? You can’t secede from Equestria. No province has ever done that!” The rising anger in her voice at the poor joke was beyond her control. “And why would you even want that?!”
The ensemble of answers that followed put a damper on the whole joke idea. The city mare began first. “Well, it’s true Equestria has been a kingdom – well, a monarchy, technically – for as long as long as we know, but that doesn’t mean it always has to be like that!”
The Whinniesota delegate continued: “Oh, ja, it’s true. See, there’s nothing about leaving the Kingdom in the Royal Laws, but there’s nothing forbidding it either.”
“Precisely,” the Pegasus took over. “And while such a law could be added to the list, it would have an introduction period of one week, seeing as it affects the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in such a profound fashion.”
Twilight was barely keeping up with who was talking and what they were saying. The answer that was being formed was anything but good news, though. At least the Manehattanite was loud and imposing enough to get her attention. “Yes. While the law would need a week to get into effect, we’re already receiving letters of support from our local officials. There’s no beating dragon mail!”
“I-I didn’t-” Spike found himself at the center of attention. As much as he usually enjoyed such occasions, this one was the exception that confirms the rule. He helplessly looked at Twilight, whose return stare he couldn’t quite make out. Was she shocked or angry? Thirsty? Maybe it was best he didn’t know. Such strange times called for strange allies.
“Don’t worry princess, we didn’t waste his time with our mail! You must know you’re not the only one with a baby dragon, right?” the Manehatten delegate broke the silence, only to have his question left unanswered thanks to his flying colleague.
“Well, technically Razer is an adolescent, even if his mind is a tad… childish.” The Pegasus contemplated for a moment, his face sinking with every thought. “I’m sorry about-”
“Don’t mention it! We’ve been over the Galloping Hills incident before. You’ve made your amends.”
Under normal circumstances, Twilight would have been curious to know what kinds of amends a province has to make to another when it comes to something as bad as the Screaming Hills incident, yet the only thing on her mind at the moment was the one unanswered question, the one that still held a glimmer of hope to reveal this whole exchange as a joke. She looked at the delegates and said, “But why?” in such a tone that it left nopony questioning what she was referring to. The once warring duo took the lead, and it wasn’t even the pompous city-dweller who began first.
“Why? Oh, you see, we came to your tower today to ask for speaking privileges after we’d been booked in the same slot.”
“Yes, and you said we should share the space.”
“It was a mess.”
“Indeed it was. But while we were trying to outshout each other onstage, we realized something.”
“Ja, it turns out most of the things we were complaining about are almost exactly the same!”
“So, when the speech was over, we sat down together to see if our provinces shared any other issues, and the one defining thread through it all was Canterlot. But that wasn’t enough for the whole secession idea.”
“Oh, no. That happened when our friends from Vanhoover and Smokey Mountain came by and overheard our conversation.”
As Twilight tried to piece together how delegates from so far away could even be considering a union, the Pegasus intervened. “No need to give me too much credit; I wouldn’t have gotten the idea if it wasn’t for you,” Twilight felt an electric pulse shoot through her spine when he looked at her. “Or should I say, Spike. You see, I went to see you hoping that you would be able to suggest a friendly solution for a problem we’ve long had with Vanhoover.”
The well-dressed mare that twilight has misappropriated to Baltimare first dealt with a stray strand of mane, then went on to explain the problem in tandem with her neighboring delegate.
“Indeed. It seems that no matter how many times we’d brought the issue up with Princess Celestia, she’d ask us to stop thinking about ourselves and our own benefits, and focus instead on providing our citizens with the best life we could. But how can we do that when Smokey Mountain’s roads are bottlenecking our ore delivery to Las Pegasus? It’s crippling our growth!”
“True, and we can’t do anything about it since we’re classified as a farming community, so Canterlot won’t give us the funds to build wider roads. Meanwhile, our farmers are holding back Vanhoover’s cargo and that same cargo is destroying the only roads we have. Not to mention our ponies are so afraid to cross the roads in their own towns from all the traffic that they’ve started tunneling beneath them!”
“So, we went to see you. I was nearly starting to sweat when we asked your dragon to bring back a solution, and I couldn’t believe what he said when he came back!”
“Shocked me as well! You see, he said we should stop trying to get somepony else to fix our problems, and work together to try and fix them ourselves instead. If the traffic from Vanhoover is destroying your roads, he said, why shouldn’t it pay for new ones instead of Canterlot?”
“It was such a brilliant solution, I don’t know how we didn’t see it before! So we started talking. Before long we had a whole system of toll booths imagined where ponies not from Smokey Mountain would pay when entering the land. Only that would cause so much trouble with making sure everypony is paying fairly that it would be impossible to control, and the farmers delivering goods to our lands wouldn’t pay for our roads either, so we talked on.”
“Pretty soon we realized the best way to go forward would be to join the roads under one system. This way, everypony wins! The mines get wide access to the rest of Equestria, we can finance side roads for the farms and actual over and underpasses in the cities and the increased traffic means everypony along the roads profits!”
“There was only one problem with that. Equestrian law forbids anyone but Canterlot from building main roads, so we nearly gave up on the idea. The statue getting destroyed, now that was a sign if I ever saw one! And after we helped put it back together we were joking about how we’d need to secede to make it happen, and we ran into these two! Didn’t take long to figure things out from then on.”
The mix of words that came next made Twilight think she was still very much asleep, safe from all the information she was now receiving. It didn’t help that the delegate's faces morphed into the shapes of the very provinces they represented. “Nopony can match our industry,” Manehattan started. “We’ve got the farmlands and the fish,” Smokey Mountain continued. “And we have the forests,” Whinniesota added before Vanhoover concluded by pointing out it had a library that could nearly match Canterlot’s. But it didn’t end there.
“Point is, we got to thinking. What do we even need Canterlot for? It just seems that an awful lot of bits leaves for this place and all we see in return are some new spires and towers growing from the ground. Couldn’t we do better?” After Manehattan finished his rhetorical question, Smokey Mountain delivered the final blow, by explaining that, “All that was needed really were the gems and metals, and San Palomino has that covered.”
It was time for the most feared and respected province outside of Canterlot to speak up, and Twilight wondered how a piece of land could wear a monocle. “Indeed. I was walking past and overheard their conversation, and I suddenly realized we had all the makings of a leaner, greener society than the one we’re stamping out gold coins for now. Don’t worry, we won’t leave you bitless, we’ll still stamp them out, just not for free anymore.”
Whinniesota couldn’t leave it at that, though. “Ja, and this solves a whole bunch of smaller issues as well. Funny how quickly word got round to everypony else. You wouldn’t believe how many other delegates went for the idea. We had a treaty signed in minutes!”
And neither could Manehattan. “And in your honor we’ll call the smallest golden coin the Spark. Although, now that we know it was you who brought us together, we should probably change it to something else. The Spike? That sounds a tad rough.”
San Palomino spoke again. “Well, we have the pony – I mean the dragon – himself here; what would you like us to call it?”
Spike, on the other hoof, really didn’t want to say anything other than, “Uhm… Help,” after he saw the mortified expression on Twilight’s face. Too bad San Palomino didn’t understand. Instead, he merely said, “What a strange thing to say. But if you think so, then it must be good!”
The shapes slowly transformed back to normal and the Pegasus concluded the meeting by saying, “Indeed. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to get more leaflets made for our great new union. You wouldn’t believe how many delegates want to know more about it! Goodbye, Spike. We will remember you always!”
The Manehatteniate had to have the last say, though. “Goodbye everypony! Oh, and of course, we want to have the best relations with Equestria, so we already sent our new diplomat to explain everything to Princess Celestia.” He rose his hoof in the air to make an invisible toast. “To a brighter future!”
As they turned to leave, Princess Celestia flashed into existence behind Twilight and Spike. Twilight fought away the dread and carefully turned her head around to face her, almost like she would turn to stone by looking at her to quickly, while Spike remained frozen in place. It had been a while since he last blinked. Celestia didn’t even look back at Twilight. Instead, she kept her gaze firmly on the back of Spike’s head, as if she could see past the bone and brain, and look him in the eyes from within his skull, and asked a simple question in the calmest manner possible, while fighting back the urge to use her hooves as Applejack had once taught her.
“Spike, can you breathe in space?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
His response was surprisingly calm. But then, so was Celestia’s.
“Good.”