Too Young

by Swordoath

Bigger Problems

"He's kidding, right?" Spike moaned in denial. "Please tell me you're kidding."

Quinn gave a solemn shake of the head. "Afraid not."

"We have to warn the residents," Zack decided. "We do not want a baby-pocalypse on our hands. Er, claws. Or hooves."

"'Baby-pocalypse?'" Quinn gave his friend a questioning look, to which he received a shrug in reply.

"Which of us is going?" Spike interrupted their non-verbal conversation. "I think at least two of us need to stay here to look after the girls."

Zack pulled on his shoes, already at the door. "When I said that, I meant me. But you two are going out too. Take them with you, or hire a sitter or something. I can't cover the whole town on my own. I'm only going now because I'm faster than either of you."

"You sound like Rainbow Dash," Spike chided.

"Very funny. You two try to figure something out while I'm gone. See ya." Zack ran out, slamming the door behind him.

"'Figure something out...'" Spike mused aloud. They couldn't fix this. Zecora wouldn't be back for a day or so. The only other pony who he knew could fix this was...

"Celestia." Quinn suggested, as if reading the dragon's thoughts. "So much for keeping it secret, but it's the only way."

Spike sighed, slumping down onto the couch. His now-longer tail gored the cushion and pulling out stuffing. "You're probably right. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, though. We'll send a letter, then we'll catch up to Zack. You gather up the girls. I'll write to her. She'll take a while to get here, if-"

"Stop poking me!" An unhappy tone called from upstairs.

"You stop!" Came an indignant reply.

Quinn stood up and headed towards the stairs. "I'm on it. Be ready in ten."

Spike pulled out a quill and a roll of parchment from the desk on his left, and began his note to Celestia. He tried to make the situation sound as unimportant and trivial as possible, though it was pretty hard to do when the entire town risks age-alteration. Rolling up the letter into a scroll, he breathed out a blast of ethereal tongue of flames. As he did so, a clamor of giggles, hoofsteps and bells rang, alerting him to the presence of Quinn and the fillies.

"You put them on ropes?" Spike asked as if this were a joke.

"Child leashes," Quinn corrected, gesturing to the Velcro straps. "It seemed like a good option. Do you want to chase them around Ponyville?"

"This doesn't seem ethical." Spike pointed out.

"That a yes?"

Spike quickly shook his head. "Let's just go. I told the princess in the letter we'd be out anyway."

Spike and Quinn left the library, and busied themselves with warning the townsponies about the water contamination.
---

Celestia appeared in the library's main room in a glorious (and, were you to ask her sister, quite gaudy) burst of sunlight and winds. She'd acted upon the message she'd received almost immediately, and was ready to remedy the situation with her all powerful-

Splash.

Her overstated entrance had blown a bottle containing some odd purple substance off a shelf, and onto her head. The liquid dribbled down her face and into her mouth. She spat most of it out, but enough of it invaded her system to cause an unfortunate change. This was a sample of the age-potion laced water, and it came with much more immediate effects. It had been placed on the shelf to keep it out of the reach of the young ones, but ultimately this was a bad decision, as it turned out.

Celestia momentarily felt an odd sensation of cold, and found herself having to look up in order to see the horse-head statue on the table. She blinked. Where was she?
---

"Seriously, nobody was listening to me!" Zack complained to his friends as they neared the library.

"It probably didn't help that you were standing on a soapbox." Quinn pointed out in a frigid tone. "That stallion was not happy."

"If they won't listen to us, they're sure to listen to the princess," Spike said, holding on with both hands to the six child leashes straining to be freed from his clawed grip. Where did he even get these things?

"Right. I'm sure-" Zack began as he opened the door.

What he saw made him do a double take, Quinn facepalm, and Spike groan. A short, ivory colored alicorn with a pink mane was laying on the floor with a picture book, struggling with the words.

"Oh- hi!" She said, hopping to her hooves. "Who are you?"

Zack stepped forward to introduce himself, but was interrupted by Rainbow dash as she finally worked of the harness of the leash. "I'm Rainbow Dash, and I'm gonna be the fastest pegasusus ever!"

The others clamored to introduce themselves, and were met with kind smiles and short giggles from the filly. She looked up expectantly at the boys when they finished. "I'm Celestia, but you can call me Celly. You're names?"

Quinn took the lead this time. He pointed to each of them as he rolled off the names. "Do you know where you are, Celestia?"

"Not really," She replied, stepping out of the way of the girls as they ran around her to the couch. "But I do know there's a lot of books, so I can learn a lot here for when I'm princess!"

Zack and Spike looked at each other. No doubt at this point. Celestia was probably five years, maybe six years old now.

And they didn't have a clue what to do.

Comments

[Super-Stallion]

This story is pretty good surprised it doesn't have much viewers though.