Dragon Scales and Other Tails

by Darkwing Dash

The Cold Truth

We stood there, staring at her, and she stared right back. After the initial shock wore off, I noticed that it wasn’t the real Princess Cadance. It was a person. But they were obviously going through the same thing that had happened to us. Her hair was in the exact same color and style as Cadance’s mane, her eye color was the same and there was something vaguely pony-ish about her face.

She wore shoes, but I could recognize the stance of someone who was standing on hooves instead of feet. She was obviously a few stages behind Shane, who was having trouble standing upright at this point. She also wore a baseball cap, probably to hide her horn, whereas Shane’s horn had grown to the point where no baseball cap would hide it. I could also see her tail, and her wings, which she had made room for by cutting holes in the back of her shirt, even though she tried to hide them.

Beneath it all though, there was a person, recognizable, but whose identity still eluded me. “Kate?” asked Shane, staring at her closely. “Is that you?”

I facepalmed. Of course! I should have seen it immediately! Who else would be at Kate’s house but Kate? How she got caught up in our pony curse I didn’t know, but any new development was an extra clue to work with.

“Shane?” Kate asked, looking at him. Then her eyes turned hard. “Please,” she said slowly, barely controlling her temper. “Tell me that you had absolutely nothing to do with this,” she gestured at her current form.

Shane quickly held up his hands in defense. “No way,” he said. “I know just as much about it as you do. It’s happening to me too, see?”

She looked at all the obviously apparent changes in him and sighed. “Okay. Sorry to get accusatory, but I couldn’t help being suspiscious, not after you gave me this,” she said, holding up her necklace.

Shane looked confused. “What? What does that necklace have to do with anything?” he asked.

Kate looked at him. “I thought you knew what it was when you bought it for me,” she held up the necklace, still attached to her neck, heart pendant spinning at the end. “This heart is Cadance’s cutie mark. The very mark that had appeared on me the morning after your party.”

“Wait, I thought you said your birthday was after ours,” I blurted out from my hiding place. Kate and Shane turned to look at us.

“Oh yeah,” said Shane, who had obviously forgotten us. “Kate, you remember David and Peter?”

Kate’s eyes widened. “That’s you guys? You’re caught up in this too?”

“Yes, yes,” I said dismissively. “Ponies, ponies everywhere. But please, can we get back to the matter at hand? You said your birthday was after ours, did you not?”

Kate shrugged. “Yeah, by about six hours. I was born 2 o’clock on May 3rd, so it is the next day. But what does my birthday have to do with anything?”

Shane interjected. “We’ll explain later. It’s kind of a long story. We came here because we wanted to ask if you would do us a favor and let us stay with you while we get all this sorted out.”

Kate shrugged. “Sure, why not? We’re all in the same boat now, so we may as well paddle together.”

“Thanks,” said Shane. “We’ll go get our stuff.”

“Stuff?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, we brought supplies with us.”

We went and started to unload our gear out of the car and bring it into Kate’s living room. “Nice outfit,” I laughed, looking at Kate’s shirt with the holes cut in the back for her wings.

“You’re not looking too trendy there yourself,” she replied, looking at my pants. As I’d grown smaller and smaller, I’d had to cut off lengths of my pant legs so that I could walk around. It didn’t look pretty. Not that I really cared.

“Touche,” I said. Once we’d carried everything in, we told Kate about our theories and plans for the near future. She agreed with our planning and decided to help us out in our search for information. Hooray, I thought. Kate has joined our party. All we need now is the white mage and we’re all set. It’s not that I didn’t want Kate to help us, it’s that we had come over here to find answers eventually, not more questions. Now we had another pony-turned-human case to investigate. Where was this headed? Was the entire world going to end up as ponies?

I snapped out of my musings as Kate spoke up. “Well then, I guess we’d better get packing.”

“Packing?” I asked. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Eventually,” she replied. “And when we do decide to go somewhere, we’ll want our supplies packed in those saddle bags, and that’ll be much easier to do with hands instead of hooves. So, let’s get to it.” We all agreed and started packing various supplies into the saddle bags.

“So,” said Shane, busy coiling a rope. “If you were suspicious that I had something to do with this pony thing, why didn’t you call me and ask me about it?”

Kate snorted in irritation. “My parents,” she said. “They were here for my birthday and only left around this afternoon. I couldn’t have an extended and possibly loud phone conversation with you with them hanging around. And after that, I was trying to decide if I could get out to the store and get some supplies before I got too noticeable.”

“Well then, it’s lucky for you that we came along,” said David, trying stuff a hatchet into a bag.

Yeah, lucky that all four of our birth times just happened to be within six hours of each other, I thought. There was no way that it was a coincidence, but what did it all mean? As we talked, Kate kept us entertained with stories of hiding her pony transformation from her parents, how she’d had to pretend that she’d gone to a stylist and had her hair dyed Cadance-style, how she’d had to develop a fondness for baseball caps once her ears and horn had shown up, and how her tail was still cramped from keeping it hidden for almost two days.

Eventually, we got all the supplies packed into three sets of saddlebags sitting by the front door, ready for use. By that time, it was pretty late, so we decided to call it a night and go to bed; Kate to her room, Shane to the guest room and David and I to the couches in the front room. I tossed off the pants that were already too long for me again, grabbed a blanket and jumped up onto the couch. Listening to the creaks and sounds of an unfamiliar house, my mind eventually settled down to sleep.

I awoke to the sun blazing through the window opposite the couch where I slept. I reached for my phone to check the time, before I realized I’d left it in my pants. I hopped off of the couch and grabbed my pants, rummaging through them to get my phone. I pulled it out and pressed the button. 9:00, the phone read. I slid my finger along the bottom of the touchscreen. A scratching sound told me quite clearly that dragon claws were not compatible with mobile phones. Wincing, I tried again, making sure to use the flat part of my finger, instead of the claw. It worked. I smiled, glad to see that the touchscreen still responded to fingers, even if they were scale covered. I put my phone away. It was time to do the daily physical check.

I went into the bathroom, stood in front of the sink and checked the mirror. Or tried to, at least. It turns out they don’t put bathroom mirrors at the three foot high mark. Grumbling, I grabbed a chair from the kitchen and carried it back to the bathroom. Standing on it, I gazed into the mirror. Spike the dragon gazed back at me, a look of shock on his face. Eventually, the shock was replaced by sadness and resignation.

I scanned myself completely. I was all purple scales, from head to toe, except for my new belly scales, which were green. I gave them a few raps, and they rung with a solid-sounding ‘ding!’ At least I was well-armored. That was a definite bonus. I sighed in defeat. Well, I’d known that this was going to happen. I guessed it was finally over now. At least I could stop with these self-checks. I sighed. Mondays.

First, I went around closing all the curtains, to make sure that no one might possibly see us, slim as that chance was. Then, I went to the kitchen to get myself some breakfast. I opened up Kate’s fridge and got out a carton of eggs. Fishing underneath the stove, I found a frying pan, and then realized that the stove, much like the mirror, was not compatible with toddlers or small dragons. Shrugging, I cracked an egg into the pan and lit up the bottom with green fire. Burn, baby, burn, I thought to myself. Who needs a stove when you’ve got a dragon? After hearing some movement from upstairs, where the two bedrooms were, I decided to make breakfast for everyone.

As I went to the pantry to get some food, a blinding flash of pain shot through my head. I collapsed to the ground with a cry. The same kind of hammer-pounding-skull feeling I’d felt before at the apartment had returned with a vengeance. The throbbing continued a few more times, until I felt like screaming to release the pain. Then, slowly, sluggishly, it subsided. I lay gasping on the floor. What was that?! The change was complete, wasn’t it? There was nothing left to change, so what was that pain about?

Nervously, I probed my mind again, poking at the crack I’d felt before. I didn’t even know how I was poking, but that was the only thing I could call it. I felt the crack again. Now, where before there had been one crack, a whole spiderweb of splinters had “appeared” in what seemed to be a “sidewall” of my mind. The whole experience was unnerving, and I found myself breathing heavily. What was going on? Was I going mad?! Would I lose my mind? I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. There was no point in panicking. I couldn’t overreact. The only thing that could be done was to wait and deal with whatever happened when it happened. Shakily, I got to my feet and started making breakfast.

About a half-hour later, my concentration was broken by the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs. Expletives and female laughter followed shortly. Looking out into the hallway, I could see Shane lying in a pile four white hooves at the foot of the stairs, every bit Shining Armor from horn to tail.

Kate was obviously at the top of the stairs, laughing her head off by the sound of it. “Oh yeah?! Well if it’s so easy, then why don’t you give it a try?” said Shane angrily. The was a creak, a sound of fluttering wings, and Princess Cadance floated slowly into view, her purple-tipped wings flapping to slow her descent.

“Cheater,” Shane grumbled, picking himself up and stumbling into the kitchen. Kate stuck her tongue out at him.

“You can fly?” I asked, impressed.

“Not really,” said Kate. “I haven’t practiced yet. It’s still more like falling with style at this point. Shane’s actually better than I am at walking, but stairs would give anyone trouble. What’s for breakfast?” she asked.

“Eggs for me and sandwiches and fruit for the new vegetarians,” I replied.

Kate looked at her plate, which contained a peanut butter-and-banana sandwich and an apple and sighed. “I hadn’t realized that yet, but you’re right. Ponies can’t really eat meat, can they? Fare thee well, bacon. Fare thee well.” She tilted her head, trying to decide which way was best to turn her head to eat the sandwich.

Shane laughed, some of his good humor returning. “Here, try this,” he said, levitating his sandwich up to his mouth.

Kate stared at him. “How did you do that?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to do magic ever since my horn appeared and I’ve gotten nothing!”

“It’s all in the way you think,” Shane replied. “You have to imagine the spell a certain way. You can’t imagine the object floating, or some invisible hand picking up the object. You have to imagine a magical force surrounding the object and lifting it up. It’s all about the specific way to think about it.”

“That’s probably what the magic books in the show do,” I added. “They probably tell you the way you need to think about things in order to get the spell to work.”

Kate nodded, then frowned at the sandwich, concentrating. A flickering blue aura appeared around the sandwich. It stabilized, and the sandwich lifted into the air and into Kate’s happy, open mouth. “Wow,” she said, around a mouthful of sandwich. “That’s cool.”

David entered the room and approached the table. He opened his mouth to speak, and tripped over his own hooves, crashing into the table. “Owwwwwww!” he yelled. I winced in sympathy. Never had I been so glad for my bipedal form. David reemerged from under the table, good mood instantly gone. The awkward silence stretched. Like Kate, he stared at his sandwich, but he had no magic to pick it up with.

“Here,” said Kate, her aura surrounding his sandwich. He glared at her. The magic died away.

“I don’t need anyone to feed me, thank you,” he said witheringly. His head snapped forward and he grabbed the sandwich in his mouth, holding it and eating it at the same time. “Mmmpfsee? I’mmpf fine,” he said, his words muffled.

Kate looked away and turned back to the rest of us. “So what’s on the agenda for today?” she asked.

Shane shrugged. “I wanted to go out in the back for a bit and see if I could practice my magic. You know, try and figure out some of the spells that are in the show.”

“Sounds cool,” I said. “I could try out my dragon powers.”

“And I’d love to learn to fly!” said Kate excitedly.

We looked at David, awkwardness starting to creep into the room again. He noticed the mood change and looked abashed, some of his bad mood fading. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I need to figure out how to make my computer pony-compatible and that’ll take a while. You guys go do your thing.”

We turned to go. “Actually,” said David, stopping us. “There is one more thing I’d like to talk about,” He looked uncomfortable. “I know we haven’t decided on our next move, but there is something I’d like to do. You see, a while back, I’d been a little low on cash, and I’d needed to pay the rent on the apartment, so I went down to a pawn shop and sold something of mine, an old family heirloom I’d had all my life. Now that we’re ponies, we don’t really need to save money for school, so yesterday, I withdrew some money from my account, enough to buy the thing I sold. So I was wondering if we could go and get it back sometime. It’s in a deserted part of town, so no one would be around to see us, and we could go at night. We could disguise Peter and have him get it. Even if the owner did see, us, who would believe that two ponies and a dragon had come and bought something from his shop?” He paused, looking at us.

We stared back at him. It was a very risky idea, but I could tell he was really earnest about it. So could Kate and Shane. “I suppose it’s not all that dangerous,” said Shane.

“And you do have a point,” Kate said. “No one would believe a story like that. We can do it. But we can’t put it very high on our priority list,” she said, looking at him.

“Oh, I know,” said David quickly. “Whenever we get to it is fine. Thanks” he said, turning back to his computer. I knew that it was probably still pretty lousy to leave and go practice all these cool new abilities and leave David inside without anything, but I didn’t really see what I could do. Together, the three of us cleaned up breakfast and trooped out to the backyard.

Kate’s backyard was perfect for practice. It was a field of grass, extending for about ninety yards behind the house, where it was bordered by a low wooden fence. About ten yards behind that was a well-defined treeline, which extended into a forest beyond. To top it all off, she had the only house around for ten miles, which made it a very secluded place where it would be very hard to catch sight of some unsuspecting ponies.

As we entered the backyard, Shane suddenly let out a cry and dropped to the ground, writhing in pain. We rushed over to him, but there wasn’t much we could do. We tried lifting him to carry him back inside, but as we started to pick him up, he stopped moving, gasping. “It’s alright,” he breathed. “I’m fine. You can put me down.” We dropped him.

“What happened?!” Kate asked, panic in her voice.

“I’m not sure,” said Shane. “All of a sudden, my head just started hurting like crazy. It’s gone now though.” Kate still looked worried. “Relax,” he said. “It was probably just a magic cramp or something. Maybe a magic growth spurt. Let’s go. We need to get practicing.”

We started walking again, but I watched Shane closely. He had an introspective look on, as though he were searching inside himself for something. Maybe a crack, my brain suggested. Shut up brain, I suggested right back. It was a crazy thought. We weren’t going crazy, nothing was going to happen. I wasn’t very reassured.

We stopped in the middle of the yard. Shane went off to go help Kate get her flying practice off the ground. I watched them for a bit. Kate wasn’t bad. She was a bit wobbly getting into the air, but once she did, her practice really took off.

I went back to focusing on my own practice. I needed to fully analyze my combat capabilities. First, I started by running around the yard to test my stamina, then I unleashed my physical strength on one of the fenceposts at the border of the yard. The results were in. I had the stamina, strength and fighting prowess... of an eight-year old. It was pathetic. While dragons grow up to be formidable creatures, right now I was honestly little more than an armored toddler. I did have several advantages, like my tail, with its semi-blunt spike and my razor sharp claws on hands and feet though. I looked around, a little discouraged. I could see Shane by the fence, making his horn glow with an illumination spell.

Since there wasn’t much I could do in the Department of Punching, I decided to devote my energies to my most formidable dragon power yet: that of Fire Breathing. I tested it lightly on myself first, to make sure I was fireproof. The severe lack of burning told me that I was. Next, I picked up a rock and started blasting it with fire. It grew red-hot under the river of flames. I practiced manipulating the stream with my mouth, making it wider and more engulfing, or narrower and more intense. I tried seeing how long I could breathe fire for without taking a breath. While doing so, I discovered something: I could breathe out fire and breathe in through my nose at the same time. There must be some secondary air system that let dragons breathe out and in at the same time. It made sense. Fire breathing wasn’t a very good defense system if you had to stop to breathe often.

I stopped after about two minutes. Fire breathing was actually harder than regular breathing. There was probably a muscle back there that I was working, just like regular exercise. I pondered the possibilities of fire breath. It wasn’t bad, but it ended up being a rather close-range move. There had to be some way to better weaponize it. I leaned against a fencepost, thinking.

I saw Shane over on the other end of the yard, struggling with some new spell. Kate was still flying around the yard, doing wobbly loops and unsteady somersaults, practicing her coordination. I looked down at the rock in my hand, still glowing red from the heat of fire-breath. It gave me an idea. I backed up about ten feet, relit the rock with my fire and threw it at the post. It stuck fast, still smoldering. I looked at it, pleased. A flaming hot rock attack. Promising. Now I needed to practice my aim.

I looked over at Shane, who had managed to conjure a shield in mid-air around a ten-foot tree. As I looked, the shield seemed to shimmer and waver weakly. Shane could probably use some endurance training. I bounced the rock in my head. I knew how we could kill two birds with one stone. “Hey Shane,” I said. “Come here for a second...”

We combined our training, all three of us. Shane conjured a shield orb in mid-air and I tried to hit it with rocks, while Kate simultaneously tried to ram it. Whichever one hit first got the point. We trained like that for a couple of hours. Kate was a lot better at flying than I was at throwing rocks, and she won most of the rounds. Fortunately, there was no shortage of ammo, so I kept on practicing. Shane got the most out of it though, his shieldwork steadily improving over the course of the day. At one point, he conjured a shield as big as the first story of the house. He leaned against it, immensely pleased with himself.

We soon tired from the exercise however, and took a short break, resting underneath one of the trees, basking in its shade. Sitting there, with Shane and Kate, it almost made me forget what was going on, that I was trapped in a strange body that I didn’t understand. It was like we were all just hanging out as friends again, the way things were before...

The moment passed. Shane stood. “Alright,” he said. “There’s one more spell I want to try and learn: the laser spell.” I stuck around, intrigued. So did Kate, apparently having the same idea. We watched as Shane approached a tree and closed his eyes, concentrating. His horn started to glow and soon, a beam lanced from it and struck a small tree branch, which fell to the ground, singed. “Nice!” I said, Kate applauding. Shane grinned. True, it wasn’t much of a laser, but that would come with practice. The hardest part was learning how to do it.

Shane turned back to the tree and started firing again. I hopped on top of a fence post to get a better look. We watched him practice for a few minutes, his aim slowly getting better. Eventually, I turned to leave, and nearly and fell off the post I was standing on. “Ahhh!” I gasped. Shane turned towards the sound, horn still glowing. As he turned to face me, he fired. A blast came rocketing towards me, blinding me and leaving purple afterimages. It slammed into me, hitting me full force. I flew backwards off the post, hitting the ground.

I heard Kate scream. She and Shane ran to where I lay on the ground. “You idiot!” she yelled at Shane. “You could have killed him!”

“I’m so, so, so, so sorry,” said Shane, who had turned pale, a feat that I would have thought impossible. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head to clear it. “Actually, yeah. I’m fine,” I said, hopping to my feet to prove it. Shane and Kate looked stunned. I couldn’t blame them. Even I was surprised.

“But how?!” Shane asked “Not that I’m not happy you’re okay,” he said quickly, looked at Kate’s glare. “But that was a pretty strong blast, yet you don’t even have a mark on you. How?”

I pondered that question myself, and the answer hit me. “Magic resistance!” I cried.

“What?” asked Kate.

“Magic resistance,” I said again. “Dragons are naturally resistant to magic. That’s why the blast didn’t hurt me!” Shane’s eyes widened in understanding. I was fired up now. This was going to be a very cool power.

Kate was still confused. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Twilight uses magic on Spike all the time in the show. Like levitation and teleportation. Those ones still work.”

I shook my head. “It’s different. Dragon scales are what give a dragon magic resistance. It’s like armor. You can pick it up just fine, but you run into problems when you try and stab it with a sword. Stuff like transformations and magic attacks aren’t going to be able to get through dragon scales unless they’re extremely powerful.”

Kate blinked. “Oh. Well, that’s useful, I suppose.” Having settled the matter, we resumed our training.

Around 2 o’clock, we decided to head back to the kitchen to get some lunch. When we got back in, we found David sitting at the table with his laptop open, staring at the screen. When he saw us, his face brightened. “Oh good, you’re here,” he said. “Peter, I need your help. I need you to tape these to the side of my hooves. He held out duct tape and what appeared to be two fish hooks bent so that the hooks pointed sideways instead of up. I taped them to him and he went back to his computer. “There we go,” he said. “Now I can type without having to hold a fork in my mouth.”

I sniggered at that mental image. “So, found anything useful yet?” I asked.

David looked at me, a little grumpily. “No, I haven’t. It’s not as easy as it looks. It’s slow trying to type with a fork, and do you even know the type of results you get when you Google ‘turning into a pony’?” I could only imagine. Still, a big part of me was disappointed that David hadn’t found anything. I knew it was unrealistic to want results on the first day, but I still felt irritated. Angry, I trudged into the kitchen to make lunch.

About twenty minutes later, I came back to the table, carrying a tray loaded with bowls of soup. The other three were talking amongst themselves about possible sources of information on the Internet. I set the soup on the table. Kate and Shane both thanked me, took their bowls and started to eat. David looked at his bowl with outrage, and then knocked it aside, spilling some of it onto the table.

“Hey!” I said. “I worked hard on that! You’re not even going to eat it?!”

David looked at me angrily. “Is that some kind of joke?! How can I eat soup? I don’t have hands!” he yelled.

Inwardly, I winced a little at the oversight, but my anger was still burning. “Well, Kate and Shane don’t mind and they don’t have hands either!” I said.

“They have magic, you nimrod!” David yelled, slamming his hoof on the table. The room turned cold.

“Hey, cut it out!” Kate snapped at David. “Peter was just trying to do us a favor. It was an honest mistake.”

“Stay out of this.” said David and I in unison.

“Watch it,” said Shane. “Kate’s trying to help you resolve this.”

David snorted. “Well she helps too much! She treats me like I’m helpless, just because I don’t have magic! I can do things by myself!”

Shane opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by Kate. “Really!? I never would have guessed, from the way you keep carrying on like you are!” She was really steamed now. She was so steamed that I could see her breath clouding as it left her mouth. “You get offended when people don’t take your missing fingers into consideration, but when they do and try and help you get along without them, you yell at them for patronizing you! Make up your mind!” The wind howled outside.

“Uh, guys?”

“Well at least I’m doing something productive!” David yelled back through chattering teeth. “I-I’m not just twittering around outside, doing nothing! I’m actually t-trying to look for a solution to our problem!”

“Hey, guys.”

“And what good has all your research done? Oh yeah, that’s right, NONE!” shouted Kate. “Y-You’ve spent all this t-time in here staring at your laptop and it hasn’t done a bit of good! So don’t pretend like you’re some kind of-”

“GUYS!” I yelled “Shut UP for a second!” They stopped talking, and finally noticed their surroundings. The temperature in the room had dropped drastically, and we were shivering. Our breaths came out in clouds of vapor, and there was a thin layer of frost on the table. The wind howled outside, and I heard another sound in it, a higher, more menacing sound. I went over to a window and pulled a curtain back, looking outside.

A pure white eye looked back at me. I gasped, reeling back, my eyes still fixed to the window. “What is it?!” cried Shane.

“Windigos,” I snapped. “Three of them. Shane, we need a shield around this house, now!”

“What?!” said Shane bewildered. “I’ve never made one that big before!”

“It doesn’t matter!” I said. “We need one NOW!”

Shane gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, fueling his magic with desperation. His horn flared with light, and I looked out the window to see the three windigos repulsed by a purple shield which enveloped the house.

“Windigos?!” Kate asked. “What are windigos doing here?”

“Only one way to find out,” I said, turning the front door handle and going outside.

The windigos were waiting at the edge of the shield, hovering over the street. I approached them, trying to look commanding, and not three feet tall. “What business do you have here?” I demanded, hoping I sounded official.

The lead windigo answered in a voice like pieces of glass in a bucket of ice; aka sharp and cold. “We have come on behalf of our master, We seek somepony. We have traced his energy and know that he is here. Do not try and hide him from us.”

“Who do you seek?” I asked, carried away by the old-timey style.

The windigo’s eyes glowed. “We seek the Time Pony. Do not conceal him, or you shall feel of our master’s wrath.”

I went cold. They had come for David. Why? “Who is your master?” I asked. “And why should I fear him or his servants?”

The windigo looked at me, obviously pondering whether or not to answer my question. “I shall tell you,” it said, smiling evilly. It clearly thought that his master’s name would have an impact on me. “I serve the Chaos God, Discord.” Spot on, Windigo, spot on. I gulped, shuddering. My worst fear had come true. Somehow, Discord had some hand in this situation, and now it seemed like we were on opposite sides. I had to work hard to keep my shoulders from slumping. How did one fight against a god? How could you beat someone who could change the world with a snap of his fingers?

The windigo seemed to sense my distress and pressed its advantage. “Give us the Time Pony,” it said. “We will show mercy if you cooperate. Resist, and you will all suffer.”

Whatever the windigo intended its words to do, they did not do it. Its statement brought the situation home to me. There was no way were going to hand David over to these things, which left only one thing to say to them. “Buzz off, Frosty,” I said, doing away with the formal style.

“What?!” roared the windigo, outraged.

“I said beat it. We’re not giving up the Time Pony, so you can forget it.”

“We were ordered to retrieve the Time Pony, dead or alive. If you resist us, you can rest assured that your fate will be the latter!”

“I’d like to see you try, you sorry excuse for an overgrown snowball.” I said. I turned away and walked back to the house, pursued by the angry screams of the windigos. As soon as I got inside, the others jumped me asking for questions. I related my conversation to them. “So basically, we hand over David to them, or we’re all dead,” I finished.

“So... what do we do now?” Shane asked.

“We don’t hand over David of course!” I said angrily.

“Uh, guys?”

“Well duh,” Shane snorted, rolling his eyes. “I meant what do we do to escape from here?”

“Hey, guys.”

“Hmm,” said Kate. “We’ll need to come up with several plans and discuss the best options. We can’t rule out fighting either.”

“GUYS!” David yelled. We looked over at him. He seemed nervous, and his legs were shaking slightly. “Don’t I get a say in this?” he asked.

“No,” we said in unison. He glared at us. “Look,” I said. “There’s no way we’re handing you over.”

“But it would be better for everyone if I just lef-”

“You’re not the one who gets to decide that,” said Kate, cutting David off. “We are.”

“But you could all get hurt trying to-”

“We don’t care,” said Shane, cutting him off again. “We’d rather die than turn over a friend. What kind of cowards do you take us for?”

“But I’ll just hold you guys bac-”

I held up my hand, silencing him for a third time. “There’s no way we’re turning you in,” I reiterated. “And we have no qualms about knocking you out if you try it yourself. Right now, we need to spend our time devising a plan, and we really need your help. So we would prefer to have your conscious assistance, rather than your unconscious acceptance, okay?”

David looked at us belligerently for a few seconds. Then his facade broke, and he sank to the floor, his legs trembling violently. “Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse and whispery. “Thank you.”

“Any time and every time,” I said. “Now, we need to come up with a plan. What are those windigos doing?” I asked.

Kate walked over to the window. “Two are circling the house, keeping an eye on us,” she said

“What about the third?”

“It’s ramming the shield, I can feel it,” said Shane, wincing and touching his horn. I paused. Sure enough, I could hear a rhythmic thumping, coming from the windingo’s assault.

“They’re just made of spirit though,” said Shane. “They don’t have as much of an impact as a regular pony. Is fighting an option?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. Windigos are ice spirits, so I’m willing to bet that the only thing that will hurt them is fire, magic and fire-magic. Unfortunately, Shane is the only one who knows any offensive magic, and I’m the only Fire-type we have.” I looked over at Kate. “Sorry, but you won’t be much help in this fight. Flying types are weak against Ice,” Kate shrugged. “That leaves two fighters who’ve barely had their powers for a day against three spirits who’ve had their powers for who knows how many millenia. It’s not good odds.” I continued.

“So fighting is out of question,” said Kate. “What about escape? Could we leave out the back when the windigos circle to the front?”

I shook my head. “They move too fast. Even if we went right as they were out of sight, we wouldn’t even make it past the fence before they were back around and after us.”

“We could widen the shield,” David suggested. “It would take them longer to circle it.”

Shane shook his head this time. “If I widen the shield any more, it will get weak, and the windigos might break through. Besides, I’d have to widen it quite a lot to get us the time we need, and I’m not sure I can make it that large. We could leave out the back and distract them, which could let David leave out the front.”

“No,” said David firmly. “I appreciate all of you sticking with me against the windigos, but I draw the line at you sacrificing yourselves for me. Besides, Peter said they can track me, so a diversion is pretty much useless.”

“We could tunnel our way out,” I recommended. “From what I’ve seen, Spike isn’t a bad digger,” Kate squashed that one. “Impossible,” she said. “There isn’t anywhere in the house we could dig from, and if we tried it outside, the windigos would see it. What if we hid in the house, let them try and look for us, and then leave when they’re gone?”

I shook my head. “They have orders to bring David in dead or alive. If necessary, they’ll destroy the house looking for us.”

We went through several ideas, each more feeble than the last. Eventually, we realized that there was only one option. Wait it out. For better or worse, the house was under siege. We put on our saddle bags, ready to run if an opportunity presented itself, which was unlikely. Then, we all returned to the living room to wait. Over time, we came to realize that the whole thing hinged on Shane. He was the one keeping the shield up and if it failed, there was little to no chance of surviving.

As the evening drew on, our hopes rapidly crumbled around us. Shane grew more and more tired, going from a standing position, down to a sitting one, to eventually lying on the floor with his eyes closed, trying to conserve his energy. He’d started shaking violently whenever there was an impact, and his breathing was long and drawn out now. We all sat around him, huddled together for moral support. I checked out of the window. The one spot where the windigo had been ramming was now spiderwebbed with cracks. We’d tried to make conversation, but one after another, we all fell silent. We watched Shane’s horn. The light around it grew weaker and weaker. We all knew that once it went out, so would any chances of survival we had.

As it neared midnight, Shane spoke in a weak, quavery voice. He shook violently all the time now, and we couldn’t tell when he was feeling an impact and when he wasn’t. The light from his horn was wavering weakly. His breathing was shallow. “Guys...” he said. “I can’t... hold it anymore... I can’t... do this,”

“Yes you can,” I said, though I didn’t believe it much.

“Don’t say that,” said David. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

“Look...” gasped Shane. “I’m not... looking for moral support... I’m apologizing... I can’t do this... I can’t save you... I’ve let you all down...” He hung his head and kept his eyes closed. His last bit of hope had been crushed.

“If you can’t do this,” said Kate quietly. “Then we’ll all... die.” The word seemed to hang in the air, almost echoing around the room. It seemed to hit us then, how fragile our lives were.

It seemed to hit Shane too, literally. His head snapped back as if he had received a physical blow. He stopped shaking. His eyes opened and there was fire in them. “No, we won’t,” he said, and his voice was steady. I was stunned. A change seemed to have come over him. He was no longer shaking and he stood up straight. What had happened?

“Follow me,” he said. “Stay right on my tail. Things are going to get interesting.” He went to the front door. I opened it and he exited the house, with us following behind. I stopped for a moment to climb onto David’s back. The windigos, seeing our approach, had gathered to the front of the house and were rearing for a final charge at the barrier, which was now more cracks than shield. It wouldn’t survive a solid hit from the three of them.

Shane charged down the driveway, the three of us right behind him. The windigos charged too. They were getting closer and closer. An instant before they hit shield, Shane deactivated it. Not meeting the resistance they were expecting, the windigos were thrown off balance. Shane charged towards them, his horn glowing brighter and brighter. The windigos recovered and charged towards us too.

The two sides drew nearer and nearer. Just as we were about to crash together, there was a brilliant flash. When it cleared, we were standing thirty yards away, the windigos behind us, their momentum carrying them almost up to the house. They whirled around, but Shane was faster. His horn blazed with light again, and the shield reformed, a thousand times stronger than before. It surrounded the house completely, and it was now so purple it was almost opaque. From behind it, I could hear the muffled cries of rage from the windigos.

I gaped in amazement. How had Shane done that? He’d only learned the shield spell today, and he definitely hadn't practiced teleportation! I looked at him closely, at his stance, his attitude, his power. My jaw dropped in realization. Shane couldn’t do that. Shane hadn’t done that. This wasn’t Shane.

The unicorn walked up to the shield, behind which the threats of the windigos could still be heard. “You will face the wrath of our master!” they cried “Listen to reason! If you give us the Time Pony, Discord will spare your lives!”

“Shane” trotted up the the windigos, looking at them with cold fury and pure disdain in his eyes. “Tell Discord,” he said. “that Shining Armor says he can go to Tartarus.” With that, he turned and ran down the street, the three of us following in his wake.

Comments

[Destia Blaze]

FIVE OUT OF FIVE!!!

[Dementia20]

2630280 thats nothing, i give you 11/10 mustaches

[Dash Attack]

Discord brought Windigo's here. Oh hell. All they would need to do is go on an internet forum and the whole world will freeze. We are screwed. This calls for some Freeze Puns.

Also. 10/10 big macs

Great job. I can't wait for more.

Edit: This is Why Shining Armor is one of my favorite characters. From what little we seen of him, we know that their nothing stopping him from protecting the ones he loves. That's why his special talent is making shields.

[Flash_Magnus]

Very good

[sugarush13]

M'hm, good story.
Now lets MUSTACH THE WORLD!

[fuckyoudeletemyaccount]

I kind of half-expected at least a slightly older spike, he did have two seasons to grow before becoming human, but very nicely done.

[Random Fandom]

Adding Pokemon to the list of fandom references I recognize in this story!
This gets better and better!

[swyrl]

Liking it so far. I avoid Dr. Whooves as a rule, since it's a kind of nonsensical crossover, but at least he's bearable.
Also, why didn't they just use the fire of friendship instead of fighting their way out?

[Lycanthromancer]

2631223 ...Well, nothing except his constant failures, anyway.

[WeepingDiscord]

6522405
You mean the cannon with candence that was canceled a long time ago?