Elemental ReSearch

by RadicalDishonesty

Recollection - Recieving and Sending

Spike stretched himself out on one of the reading chairs in the library. It was a slow day, the perfect day for reading comic books, and that's exactly what he was doing.

Conan the Barmareian was just about to find the location of wizard who killed her father when there was a thump from the upper floor of the library. Spike rolled his eyes. 'What did I tell Dash about not using the door? It’s not her house and it's weird! And maybe illegal.'

Spike got up, folding his comic book away. 'Better go see what she wants.' Spike was about to walk upstairs when he caught a glimpse of his calendar, with a date circled in purple with a star on it. 'Wait... is that today already? That means...!'

Spike sprinted up the stairs, no small feat on baby dragon legs. When he finally reached the bedroom, connected to the balcony, he saw her. The orange light from outside highlighted her soft violet coat. Her wings fluttered just a little, and her horn glowed violet as she took her saddlebags off.

“Twilight!” Spike shouted, running up to her and hopping up to her face to give her a hug and nuzzle. “You're home!”

Twilight Sparkle smiled. “Yep. It’s good to be back Spike. You know I'm beginning to see why Rainbow Dash insists on flying in the window instead of using the door.”

“Aw Twi, don't let her hear that. You'll encourage her,” Spike said with a smile.

Twilight giggled, “You're probably right.” A violet aura appeared around Spike as she levitated him down. “So, number one assistant, how has the library been in my absence?”

Spike stood at attention and gave a salute. “Everything is spic and span ma'am! The library's been running like clockwork.”

“At ease, Spike. Good work,” Twilight said with a smile.

Spike relaxed and returned her smile. “So how was the latest Princess lesson?”

“Tough, it’s a lot of work, but I think I'm starting to get–” Twilight Sparkle stopped her explanation as a golden puff of dust flew in from the window, circling around her horn, before a scroll formed from the magical puff and was promptly surrounded by Twilight's violet magic. “–Oh hey a letter from Princess Celestia.”

Spike's mouth fell open in shock.

Twilight smiled widely. “I hope you're not too surprised. Now that I'm going to be going around diplomatically more, Princess Celestia forged a message-sending link between us! When I was just studying magic and friendship here in Ponyville it was pretty important that I had my entire magical reserve for whatever was required at the time, but now that I'm a princess, communication is more important than full magical power. As an alicorn I've also got the magic to spare on maintaining the magical link, even if my special talent isn't message sending!”

Spike's mouth was still open in shock. 'How could she do this? Wasn't keeping in contact with Princess Celestia my job? My number one special role that nopony could ever replace me for?'

Twilight began to read the letter from Celestia, humming happily. “Spike, could you get out some paper and inkwells?”

Spike could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He tried to blink them away, but only succeeded in decorating his face with them.

“Spike?” Twilight moved the letter to the side.

“O-of course Twilight–” Spike laughed nervously “–why wouldn't I be? What could possibly be wrong?”

“I don't know, Spike. You tell me.”

“I-it’s not like there could be anything wrong,” Spike continued.

'No wait what am I doing?' He thought.

“It’s super important that you'd be able to send messages to Celestia even if you're out alone, that would be great!”

'Stop talking, mouth!'

“It’s not like you'd need somepony weighing you down all the time.”

Twilight cocked her head to the side.

“You're a super important princess now, you need all the advantages you can get without anypony standing in your way.”

“Spike,” Twilight tried to interrupt.

“It’s not like an irreplaceable assistant is a good idea for you anyways, it’s definitely a weakness.”

“Spike.” Twilight tried again.

“And that way there's nothing that can get in the way of you and the princess. Nope. No need for a middleman. No need for a-a-a-n... assistant.” Spike choked on his words, a sob coming from his throat, and tears streaming down his face.

“Spike.” Twilight tried one more time.

Spike looked up at Twilight, his eyes red from tears, his mouth twisted into a frown.

“I already told you–” Twilight picked him up with her magic, brought him close and wrapped her hooves around him “–I'd never send you away. You're my number one assistant.”

“B-but I won't be forever,” Spike sobbed.

Twilight let Spike step away from her, and she looked at him, her eyes filled with compassion.

“Someday,” Spike sniffed. “you're not gonna need somepony to fetch you a pot of ink or a book. I bet you don't even really need it now. I bet you could get it just as easily with magic. O-or your new princess duties are going to require you to get a bunch of new assistants, that are all smarter than me and better at filing and writing.”

Twilight sighed. “Spike you really didn't think the only reason I keep you around is because you're good at filing and chores do you?”

“Don't you?”

“Of course not! You're not just my assistant, you're my friend.”

“But... I'm not your best friend. You have five best friends. Five ponies you're destined to have a special bond with. I'm just the assistant, and I'm not going to be that forever.”

Spike looked down and tried to rub his face free of tears futilely, softly sobbing.

Twilight looked sadly down at Spike. Suddenly she perked up and magically grabbed the ink and paper from inside the cupboard and set to writing something quickly.

Spike’s stomach dropped, watching his mentor and friend suddenly change her attitude completely. 'Is... it really not that important?'

Twilight turned around and triumphantly held a scroll above her head with her magic. “Okay,” she said to herself. “Now for the hard part. Spike, sit over here by me.”

Spike took a seat by Twilight, now with a bewildered frown on his face.

Twilight sat down next to Spike and closed her eyes, a soft violet glow appearing around her horn.

Spike felt... something in his gut. Twilight was casting something, but he had no idea what spell. “Twilight... what are you doing?”

Twilight stayed silent as her horn began to glow more brightly and trails of magic began to snake out of her horn. Spike was as bewildered as ever as Twilight was attempting to cast something upon him without explanation.

Twilight's face contorted in concentration as a second aura began to envelop the first, made of opaque violet energy. “C'mon,” she whispered, “why isn't it working?”

The feeling in Spike's gut intensified. Spike realized that perhaps he needed to do something for the spell to work. 'Twilight wouldn't cast something bad on me, especially now, right?' Spike closed his eyes and focused on the feeling.

He couldn't place the feeling of the spell, but it was very familiar. Spike inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with dragonfire, warming him to his core, letting magic permeate his fire. Spike exhaled slowly, holding the fire in his mouth, not letting it escape. The magical feeling, fueled by his fire, intensified. He cracked one of his eyes open, to see the curls of fire escaping from his mouth being attracted to the magical tendrils coming from Twilight's horn. He breathed the fire slowly upwards, letting it just barely meet the tendrils of magic coming from Twilight.

Twilight winced at the heat a little and opened her eyes just in time to see his fire connect to her magic, and the two mingled, her magic turned green and his fire turned violet, before both the magic and fire faded away.

Twilight looked down at her assistant, who was looking up questioningly. “What did you just do, Twi?” he said.

Twilight just smiled mysteriously. She stepped back and levitated the scroll over her head. “Watch.”

Twilight's magic flared from her horn and the scroll disappeared in a puff of smoke. A moment later Spike felt the most familiar magical sensation: that of him receiving a scroll. He belched out a puff of flame, which seemed darker than it usually did, and a scroll landed on the ground. Spike stared at it on the ground and, trembling, reached over to it.

Spike opened the letter and read it, clearly in Twilight's hornwriting:

Dear Spike,

Even if we're apart, we will always be connected.

Love,

Twilight

Spike clutched the letter close to him, and tears streamed down his face again.

“S-Spike?” Twilight said, “Are you okay? I thought you'd be happy-”

“I am!” Spike said, tears still streaming down his face, which now had a big smile on it. Spike leaped up to Twilight one more time. “Thank you! Won’t this make it harder for you to do... well magic?”

“I can handle it,” Twilight said, with a smirk. “I'm the Element of Magic, after all.”

---

Spike fell to the floor, his bloodshot eyes with tears in them. He was panting roughly, and the ash that covered the basement floor was mixing with his tears and smearing all over his face. His chest and stomach ached, and his head throbbed, but he saw it clearly: that time the scroll hadn’t turned to ash.

Spike wrenched himself to his feet, a mad smile on his face. 'I gotta make the note. Twilight would want the notes to be clear.' He stumbled over to the work desk and with a trembling hand made the note:

Test 113: During the fifth attempt to channel extra magic into the flame, with the mana-dense crystals nearby and with zebra ritual circle permutation #4 active, the scroll was successfully sent!

Spike roughly added the exclamation point, then fell onto his back, laughing in relief.

'Now all I need to do is wait for Twilight's reply... wait, no!' He sat back up in a panic. 'What if she doesn't know how to send it back? I have to prepare a letter detailing what I did so she can replicate the effect!'

Spike pulled out another new scroll, his claws getting it dirty with ash. As he was about to put pen to paper he felt the familiar wrench from his gut. 'The reply! She got my message and is already replying!' Spike looked down. His research was on the table, a terrible place to belch a flaming message.

He barely got himself turned around before the scroll came out, and he doubled over in pain from the involuntary spasms it caused. Spike glanced up and saw the scroll on the ash. Twilight's scroll. Finally a whole year after she disappeared he got through to her. Spike tried to pull himself to his feet, but he slipped on the tear-slick and muddy ash, smashing his face on the ground.

Spike moaned in pain. It hurt so much, but the scroll was right there. Evidence Twilight was alive. A way to find her. To save her. Spike dug his claws into the cracks between the stones, and pulled himself forward inch by inch, groaning in pain.

Finally, after what felt like an hour of crawling on the ground, Spike reached the scroll half-buried in the ash. He rolled onto his back and cut the seal with his claw, unfurling the scroll:

Spike

Please come to Canterlot. We need to talk; this isn't healthy. I will be sending a chariot tomorrow.

Princess Celestia

“No...” Spike whimpered. Spike curled up into a ball on the ground, sobbing pitifully into the ash of a hundred failed attempts to contact Twilight.

Author's Note:

I know I said two weeks per chapter but this one is so short! And I'm so excited to get it out! And its Christmas, so I'm going to post it early.

On a related note: this is how I had planned to work in the backstory, in shorter chapters between "proper" chapters. The information contained within is pretty important but I can't think of the right time to work it into already-existing scenes. If Spike is getting introspective (like his infodump at the beginning of chapter 1) it will be him actually thinking it out. Should I try harder to work them into existing chapters (or append or prepend them to the chapters) or are these mid-chapters good?

Edit: Going to keep doing this, I think it's clear enough.

Comments

[DarkDMan]

The chapter was really good, but how you started it made it a little difficult to tell that Spike was dreaming of past events. And while I would love to know to details of how he spent his time while Twilight is gone, -even if it would make me sad- you should either make it known in the title or at the beginning of the chapter that it is going to be a dream/flashback.

[RadicalDishonesty]

3708081
Hm... I never liked seeing a statement deliberately saying something like "Flashback starts here" although something like "Two years ago..." is usually inoffensive. I would much prefer to be able to set the scene in the past by clues in the scene, rather than with a direct statement, but not confusing the reader is probably a better idea than being clever. Maybe I'll try to make sure the scene is more clearly set?

I did title the chapter "Recollection."(and had plans to use it as the prefix for future flashbacks) If it would be clearer just to use the term "Flashback" I could but I sorta like recollection.

I'm glad you're liking it though!

[DarkDMan]

3708726 Well I don't mean you should use the words, "flashback" and "dream" in the title or the story. I understood it was a dream from how the last chapter ended (also, didn't notice to title said "Recollection" instead of "chapter". Was so into the story I guess I didn't look, my bad).

What I meant was maybe just a little reminder of where Spike is in the present -in this case he's still asleep- followed by a boarder leading into the rest of what the chapter is really about. Also I said "flashback" because I wasn't sure if you were going to make all the "recollection" happen while he's asleep or just have him zone out at times in the story.

But all of this is just my opinion, and that may or may not be the best. If you want a real good opinion. You should consider asking The Descendant for advice. Seeing as your story has got his attention.

[RadicalDishonesty]

3708909
The flashback scenes aren't even really part of Spike's thoughts (although they're going to be plucked from his experiences), they're basically a scene change where the new scene just happens to be in the past. It's the reason why I decided (and probably are going to continue to) make them separate chapters: they're a drastic scene change and I don't want to squeeze them in between scenes that want to be next to each other in a chapter.

If Spike DOES have a dream or zones out to remember things, it's going to be inside the main chapters, and he's going to have immediate reactions.

[DarkDMan]

3716320 Good to know. Looking forward to the rest!