Both figures yawned and stretched their limbs as if they’ve been woken up by someone, and in this case, the purple and green dragon leaned up against the forcefield around him with his eyebrow raised and his arms crossed...
The male figure opened his eyes and finally, after 15 minutes of waiting for them to wake up, spoke with a voice typical of an average stallion, “sorry, sir: after being locked inside a blade for however long it was, you tend to want to sleep all the time. So... how long has it been? Five? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty years?”
He asked that in a strangely casual tone with his eyes half opened, as if he want to go to sleep again. He rubbed his golden mane with streaks of white and tried to wake himself up while the mare with the same color pellet as ‘friend,’ oddly enough, was still trying to wake up as well, groaning and shifting around like a filly.
Spike pointed a finger to the brown stallion and replied with a deadpan voice, ”that would be one thousand, two hundred years, three months, twelve days, five hours, and fifteen minutes.” The brown one raised an eyebrow at him as if he had just told him that he was a mare... meanwhile, the grey mare was snoring once again, and even though it was cute, he had to wake her up eventually...
“Rise and shine~” Spike sang after learning that ‘friend’ said this all the time, while friend will not say these words in a sing song voice... ever, this did tend to wake up the sleeping mare on the floor, and as she jerked her head and ears up, she looked around with her cyan eyes and half lidded lids.
“Love?” She asked before a yawn as she looked at her surroundings, then, with a small smile, she waved at the brown stallion as if she had just noticed him, with a face still looked sleepy as she would ever be.
“No, but if you mean the grey stallion with white and gray mane and tail...” Spike answered as he raised his finger, only to have the mare perk up and pay full attention to the young dragon before her.
“Then you wouldn't find any here, but I do know where he went-” then he was cut off by the brown one with a rather surprised tone in his voice, and judging by the expression he wore, he was just as surprised as his voice...
“Wait wait wait! It’s been that long? Fdhvdu Flskhu!” He asked Spike before cursing to himself, all while the dragon just raised his eyebrow at him as he crossed his arms, noting that the stallion he didn't put his arms down...
“Do you guys have names?” Spike asked the two ponies in front of them, he didn't want to name them sleepy, since it would be rude...
“Hey! I’m not sleepy, call me Tee; full name: Key Tech. It's a horrible name, I know, so I call myself MRS tech, or tech, or most ponies usually call me tee, that's also fine with me.” Tee whined then introduced herself to Spike with a proud look on her face. Then she said something with a blush and looked away... just to look adorable.
“Zkhq L fdoohg klp oryh, L zdv dfwxdoob klv ihpdoh forqh... ru ylfh yhuvd; L gxqr. Exw mxvw vr brx nqrz, Vslnh, kh zdv d qlfh jxb, exw wklqjv kdg wr eh grqh wkdw pdb ru pdb qrw kxuw brx lq wkh ixwxuh...” but before Spike could ask what she said, because her voice was barely audible, the brown stallion cut in...
"The name's Intel. The rest... I don't remember all that much, and why should we believe it's been that long?" Intel asked Spike with a questioning tone, still not believing it’s been a thousand, two hundred years since he had last woke up...
“Let's just get back to why I summoned you two in the first place.spike ignored intel’s question... What do you do, or should I ask, what does your artifacts do? and intel? you can’t tell if i am lying or not...” Spike asked and said intel with a more serious tone.and a more serious face.
“I-I-I need to think this over...my friends, family...” He said in a small voice as closed his eyes, sat down, and rubbed his temples in a circular motion. Spike looked around to tee and found her sitting on the ground, rocking herself to and fro, looking around with a small smile on her face...
‘I wonder if they're the same pony, one with a serious and calculative left brain, and the other with a happy and relaxed right brain... heh, make sense, even their cutie marks are the same...’ Spike mused to himself as he looked at the mare in front of him.
“So you’ve met my love, then... good to know. Back to your question, we're blades, so we're activated when we cut things, unlike your blue potato thing that plays music or your torch, so when you accidentally cut yourself with our super sharp blade, we were summoned... and to think that I still remember this stuff after more than a thousand plus years...” she explained to Spike, still looking around and rocking herself, at least before the two began fizzing as they dissolve into thin air.
Just before they were completely gone, Intel suddenly looked at Spike and said, ”she’s got a body of an adult, but she behaves like a child, and she's a lot tougher than she looks. After all, she was separated from her love for almost a thousand years...time tend to pass slowly when you are alone in the dark” then he was completely gone...
The environment resumed back to normal speed when he remembered what he was doing: Spike was walking towards where friend’s soul, or whatever, was going...
So then Spike braced himself and began walking again, finally, he was able to accept what those ponies did to him in the past, now he only feel annoyance out of the six so called ‘friends’ when he thought about them.
---
It’s been three hours and Spike was getting thirsty, he looked up and saw that the sun was setting, turning the sky from it’s baby blue to fiery red, so the purple dragon decided to build his camp here, at the foot of the hill on the other side of the Everfree.
Through his way down, he had to admit that the scenery is beautiful, he had never looked at the Everfree the same way before... life here is tough, but so many lives can live here together. To this day, only an estimated three percent has been explored, two of which were the surrounding areas of ponyville and the castle of the two sisters...
Yes, life is tough, but you can't make a rainbow without a little rain... ’heh, I guess friend was right. I swear, he can be as deep as he want to be,’ Spike mused to himself as he began to work on putting his camp together...
He opened his black chest and brought out everything he needed to build his camp, along with a few books about medication he ‘savaged’ along with the ropes and the glass bottles replaced his stone one with.the books are for easing his sore feet and the book he read about supernaturals...
After he got everything out, he began checking them: rope, a sheet of leaves he sewn together, a thick, uniform stick he carved out of a rather thick branch, and a few sharpened sticks to safeguard his camp with. So when that was done, he began to work.
First he tied the supporting beams together with the rope, then laid out a few rocks in a circle for the campfire, he then covered his tent's frame with the sheet of leaves before securing them with more rope, as well as some sharp sticks he stabbed into the ground... then it was done, and by the time he had finished his mobile camp, it was already night. Spike stepped back to admire his work and sat down, he then looked up and gaze at the stars, finding them very comforting and relaxing.
One peculiar star got his attention: there, on the side of the moon, it glowed brighter than the others a lot brighter, and he just stared at them; the diamonds in the sky and was soon lost in his own thoughts, just before he heard a growl from behind him and turned around.
The sight he was greeted with surprised Spike, but it wasn't scary anymore, for behind him was a classic pack of timberwolf with their trademark green glowing eyes... to which Spike stood up and closed his eyes, drawing his breath to calm himself as he took a fighting pose, the very same one he saw in all those super hero comics.
-20 minutes later-
Needless to say, the fight didn't last long with the timberwolves burning to ash; what took all the time was a manticore who just so happened to decide to visit his camp this time of the year... ’Heh, time,’ he chuckled to himself, ‘friend was the only one of the souls to show outright fear in front of him, even someone as boring and deep as him has a weakness, I guess...’ he thought to himself.
When was fighting the manicore, he was losing after the first fifteen minutes, but then something crashed against the beast and knocked the wind out of the poor thing, Spike was sure he heard a crunch and a tooth fall out, but it’s the object that crashed that caught his attention the most.
Right in front of him was a smoking... thing made of metal, he noticed that the bright star he saw earlier was the same thing, most likely due to the atmospheric friction, that and because the star was gone, bright stars don’t just vanish... so he then approached the metal thing he's never seen before in any book, and touched it. He was surprised by how cold it was, since he expected it to be piping hot from entering the atmosphere.
And with a hiss, a door opened and a female pony crawled out, she was looking like she's been through a lot as she had a long and deep blue mane and tail with a band to hold said mane back, she had a light blue mane and a light blue coat, she wore a tired and pained look on her face with tears in her eyes as she dragged her hind hoof out of the thing, and Spike was surprised once again.
There, bleeding and burnt, were two giant holes that went through her hind hoof, and her cutie mark was a bold red heart bursting through a ring of chain encircling it. Helping the mare was a no brainer for Spike, and he quickly pulled her out and towards his tent...
---
To say that Spike didn't have a nice few days was a big understatement. The mare he dragged out of the pod had been unconscious all this time and to stop the two giant holes from bleeding out, he had to burn them shut.
On the plus side, it turned out that poison joke actually resets the body like a game in order to play it’s prank. ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Spike thought after some careful hours searching around the camp, being very careful to not touch those damn plants once he found them, and making sure to apply the plants to the bleeding mare.
Turns out that the host only needs to be unconscious for them to work... how convenient... and after turning her into a stallion for a few minutes before splashing her the cure he recreated, he pick himself up and boiled himself in the stone cauldron he made.
The mare awoke with a gasp and tried to get up, only to flinch and lay back down with a moan... “Woah, easy there, easy. You’ve been out cold a couple of days now,” Spike said as he helped the mare slowly sit up again. ”Let's see what the damage is, and how about a name; can you tell me your name?” Spike asked as the mare and tilted his head.
“Call me... twenty one...” she said in an voice you would expect a mare would sound like.
“Heh, I can't say it’s what I'd pick for you, but it’s your name,” Spike said with a casual tone while looking for anything the poison joke didn't heal. ”I’m Spike, and welcome to my camp in the everfree forest...” Spike said to the mare, who looked surprised but listen to what had to say.
“Now I hope you don't mind, but I had to expose you to poison joke in order to heal you, so you better tell me if there's anything I’ve left out of place…”Spike handed her a part of the metal pod thing to act as a mirror. “how’d I do?” Twenty one looked at herself in the “mirror” and found nothing wrong with her reflection and handed back the piece of metal with a small ‘thanks.’
“Well, I’ve got most of it right anyway; the stuff that matters. OK, no sense of keeping you in bed anymore, lets see if we can get you on your hooves,” he said to the mare and slowly helped the mare up, the mare soon found out that the two holes in her hind hooves were gone and, to her surprise, pain free...
“Good, why don't you go and walk out of this tent yourself? Take it slow, now, this ain't a race,” Spike said to the mare as she groaned and started walking towards the flap of the tent.
“Why are you being so nice to me? It’s not common to find someone such as yourself in the wasteland,” the mare asked Spike after they’ve been walking around the camp for the past five minutes, all while Spike was at twenty one’s side, helping her when she was having trouble.
“I know nothing about your so called ‘wasteland,’ and as much as I want to deny it, I need someone to talk to without interruption, and I need someone to watch my back,” Spike said to twenty one with a frown.