//------------------------------// // 11: Bad Dragon (Kids, Don't Google That) // Story: How Spike Kinda Sorta Maybe Married a Changeling // by somatic //------------------------------// The grass glimmered as magic swept away the shrapnel of last night’s party, confetti floating up and away into recycling bins. Unicorns hastened to and fro, casting clean-up spells while pegasi flew overhead, busting any storm clouds that might impede the wedding preparations. Somewhere in the distance, Cadance fussed over musicians. In the middle of it all, surrounded by workers and expended party cannons and all the furor of marital organization, sat a single dragon. Little streams of smoke sneaked their way up from his lungs, tunnelling through his sinuses and terminating at his nostrils, where they wafted away from him and transformed into spiralling rings. Spike had gotten very good at blowing smoke rings; there was not much else for him to do right now. Oh, he had tried to help, but after he set the second pagoda ablaze, the workers had told him they’d rather he not. And then there was the fiasco with the food… in retrospect, the caterer should have realized it was a bad idea to put the jello next to the Smooze. Somedragon could make a mistake. No, there was not much for a giant mountain of scales to do around here. He blew another ring of smoke, a real whopper that looked more like a succulent donut than anything else. Just the ring was about to dissipate, he saw a little purple alicorn fly through it, flanked by a quartet of guards. She touched down by Spike’s side, a bit of magical amplification helping her voice carry over the sounds of wedding preparation. “Hi, Spike.” The dragon looked her over from the corner of his eye and nodded in reply. “The wedding’s pretty soon, if you haven’t noticed. They had to move the date up; something about a prophesied return of the dark gods happening on the old date. They thought it would mess up the weather.” The alicorn drew closer, not quite knowing if she was supposed to try to embrace him with her wings or just stand there, off to the side. “Again?” “Yep.” A long pause, the only sounds the hissing of helium balloons inflating and bounce castles erecting. Spike had a distinct feeling Pinkie had given some input to the wedding planners. “You got the wings wrong.” The alicorn’s ears perked. “What? What do you mean, Spike?” He craned his neck to face her, her small body just a tiny reflection in his vast eyes. “When I was still a baby dragon, we rode into battle together. Some monster or other, buncha teeth, eyeballs, you know how it is. Long story short, I got scared and I accidentally scratched her wing—pretty deep, too.” Spike let out a puff of smoke. “Normally, it would have healed by now, but something about dragon magic made it leave a scar, even on an alicorn.” The alicorn squirmed on her haunches before her horn haloed with acid light. Her purple feathers burned away and revealed translucent gossamer wings, the drones standing beside following her lead and dropping their disguises as well. “A scar, you say?” asked Chrysalis. If any of the wedding planners saw her transform, they were too busy to notice. Spike rumbled a answer. “She tries to cover it up, but I can always tell it’s there.” Gradually, he cantilevered his tail up to let a few ponies set up a kiddie pool for the seaponies. “Probably something sorcerous about it. I… and I shouldn’t be telling you this.” The queen drew slightly closer, her throbbing belly pressing against his scales. Spike could feel half-hatched larvae squirming around in there. They writhed as Chrysalis muttered “Don’t you trust me?” “Not really, no.” He saw her brows slightly warping in what Spike presumed was a crestfallen expression. “I mean… look, you haven’t exactly been the best pony in the world…” “Because we’re not ponies,” she hissed. Spike felt anger in her, a sudden surge in her body temperature. “Well, yes, I know that, but… ” “But what?” Chrysalis turned away from him, wings making a slight warbling noise in the wind. “Chrysalis?” Now that she had taken a few steps, he couldn’t feel her oily body through his scales. “Spike, what if you had teeth meant for tearing flesh instead of grinding gems? What if you had a gut that could only digest meat and bones, and a hunger for thinking prey?” The dragon shifted his weight uncomfortably. “What are you talking about, Chryssy?” “You lived in a library, surely you read the fairy tales. Dragons who would eat ponies, crack open cottages like eggshells and lick up the foals inside.” Her eyes narrowed as she remembered her past. “They weren’t just stories to frighten fillies into eating their vegetables, you know.” Spike coiled his neck closer to her. “Right. When Twilight found me reading those books, she said I stayed up the whole night crying. I kept trying to show her that I wasn’t going to be like the bad dragons…” Chrysalis snorted, her drones chittering around her. “You know what happened to those ‘bad dragons?’” She drew her wings closer, a sudden gust of wind chilling her cold-blooded body. Spike rifled through his extensive memory. “Celestia and Luna destroyed them… well, petrified them, anyway. The Elements seem to like turning things to stone.” Another snort from the queen. “Typical.” she growled. “Can’t even bother to mention the one time we helped them.” She cut Spike off before he could ask “What?” again. “We defeated them, my drones and I, and yes, your beloved princesses.” Chrysalis looked up at him. “The dragons were a threat to my food source, as well.” The drones swarmed around her as she spoke. “We buried them in sand and wrapped them in slime, so they would never wake from their stone sleep.” Chrysalis perked up a bit as she remembered. “You know, they—my drones, I mean—adapted the battle into a play.” Her holed hoof reached out and snagged a nearby nymph. “This little one played me in in last year’s performance. He was almost adequate.” The nymph glowed. Coming from the queen, “almost adequate” was high praise. Just as he was about to hug Chrysalis, she pushed him away and turned back to Spike. “What was I talking about?” Spike stared for a moment. “Uh, dragons?” “Yes, dragons.” She blinked as she got back on track. “Spike, what if you couldn’t eat gems? Or hay fries, or whatever insipid things ponies stuff their faces with? What if you were a carnivore, like the ancient dragons? A feral beast, more animal than…” Chrysalis swatted the air in annoyance. “… than thinking being. What do you think the ponies would do you?” Spike drooped his wings over her, shielding her from the commotion all around. “You’re afraid they won’t forgive you.” “We don’t even have hearts, and you want us to be kind? You realize our only talents are subterfuge, deception, and seduction, right?” “That’s not true! You’re also good… massage technicians? And…” Spike felt a few drones nestling into his leathery wings. “And… uh…” “Child abductors,” Chrysalis purred. “Uh-huh. Maybe let’s stop talking about your talents, Chryssy.” Spike sighed, sending two drones tumbling through the air. Curls of smoke filled the insides of his wings. “Look, you want the ponies to forgive you—” Chrysalis waved smog away from her mouth. “It would make infiltrating their society much easier.” Spike glowered. “What?” Another sigh. She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I suppose my swarm would be a little safer if we didn’t have to worry about ponies with torches and pitchforks. For my children’s sake, I would accept their forgiveness.” A drone contorted itself into a chitinous seat as the queen plopped herself down on her haunches. “You were saying?” “You need the ponies to forgive you. If you want us to go through with the wedding—” Chrysalis cut him off again. “You know, I gave you the crown and everything. We’re already married.” Now it was Spike’s turn to roll his eyes, no small feat given that they were as large as swimming pools. “—in a ceremony that was not legally binding under Equestrian law, which is what’s going to matter going forward. As I was saying, if you this wedding to happen, you’re going to have to apologize. It’s the first step towards reconciliation.” Actually, it was the twenty-second step on the Changeling-Pony Reconciliation Strategy Checklist that Twilight had made for Spike, but he felt it would not be prudent to mention that. Chryssy drew herself up taller and tilted her nose in what would have been a regal and commanding pose, had she not been sitting next to a living mountain of dragonflesh. “Changeling queens do not apologize.” “No, but Equestrian princesses do.” Spike saw her flex her eyebrows in confusion. “Twilight’s brother, remember? I’m technically a prince, and it’s my responsibility to watch over anypony—” He caught himself. “—anyone near my den in the Badlands.” A gentle twitch of his wings blew away another billow of smoke. “Mostly that means rescuing stragglers from sandstorms and trying to convince newcomers that I’m not going to eat them, but I guess everyone needs somedragon to watch over them, every once in awhile.” He heard a little “pardon me” behind him and hoisted his rump. Somewhere near his buttocks, a workpony pushed squeaky-wheeled cart past him. “You marry me, you’d be a princess.” He thought for a bit. Princess of slime? Princess of dampness? “The Princess of Motherhood. Stars know you have plenty of experience.” He gulped. “I mean, you’d get to be princess eventually. We’d have to address the whole child abduction thing, first, you know.” Chrysalis gathered her drones around her, gingerly lifting her haunches off the changeling below her. “Celestia would allow it?” The drones trembled as Spike’s chuckle rumbled the earth beneath them. “You underestimate her desire for grandchildren.” He settled back down, saying “You care for your children, I can see that.” Spike quickly glanced away. “Though sometimes I wish I didn’t,” he muttered, thoughts of suckling insect mouths and unpleasantly-moist anatomy intruding into his thoughts. “What?” “Nothing, nevermind. Point is, you protect the ones you…” Spike hesitated. Love was a loaded word around changelings. “… you protect your subjects, and do a great job of it.” He started to reach a long claw out to scratch beneath his chin, but a drone saw what he was doing and beat him to it, itching him with a haloed horn. Spike murmured in pleasure—he could get used to this. Once the drone was done, Spike took a breath and continued. “There’s good in you, a lot of good… buried very deep, but it’s there. That’s why Celestia and Luna thought I could save you.” Chrysalis, who had for the past moment been pacing a circuitous path, stopped and shot a sideways glare up at him. “Saved? What are you talking about?” Spike shrugged. “Yeah. We like redeeming ponies, it’s kinda our thing. We did Nightmare Moon, Discord, Sombra when he came back to life, Flurry Heart after she turned last century… Even Tirek’s therapy is going pretty well. He's only eaten three psychologists so far. Really, you’ve been the only one we couldn’t fix. It’s a bit of a black mark on our perfect record.” Chrysalis’s jaw tightened, and her drones began to chirp in rapid tones. “So that’s what I am to you?” She whipped herself around, wings stirring up eddies in Spike’s smog. “A black mark, something to fix?” “Chrysalis? What’s going on?” He drew his wings closer around her, contracting them into a teepee, but she pushed past. “What, were we an assignment?” She rammed a hoof in his titanic face. “Been plotting this for awhile now, have you? Been threatening your little friendship record, have we?” Spike recoiled, his wings spreading up and out as his neck arched over her. “No, it’s not like that!” “And you’re not like us at all.” The queen and her drones melted into green flames, emerging in pony disguises. They cantered away, and one by one, he lost them in the crowd. Spike mentally flipped through Twilight reconciliation checklist. This was most definitely not on it.