Grouchisaurus Rex

by Baal Bunny

2 - Twilight

Her whispered name—"Twilight?"—brought her awake. Blinking, she saw Mira Belle standing beside her bed, her horn casting a soft silvery puddle of light around her.

Twilight couldn't help but grin every time she got one of these late night/early morning wake-ups. No matter how many centuries went by, she would never forget creeping up to Celestia's bed in exactly this same way, monsters or math problems swirling in her head and stealing her sleep. True, Mira hadn't done this in a while, but the special firm and gentle voice Twilight had devised for such occasions still came naturally to her. "What is it, Mira Belle?"

Even under the best of circumstances, Mira seldom spoke above a murmur, but she had a clarity of tone that always reminded Twilight that her great-to-the-fifth grandmother had been Sweetie Belle. "We're very sorry, Twilight," Mira said, and her gaze shifted to give a little glance over her shoulder.

A grayish-yellow shadow hovered at the edge of the partially open door, and Twilight realized that Wyvern was peering in from the hallway.

Odd. Vern reminded Twilight of Spike in so many ways, not the least of which was how well his practicality grounded Mira's wilder flights of fancy. So to see him here now as well—

Wafting her magic across the room to fade the lights in, Twilight folded back her blankets and rolled upright with her legs tucked under her barrel. "Is something wrong?"

"Well..." Mira looked at Vern again.

The little dragon came shuffling in, his foreclaws sort of grasping at each other across his chest. "It's Spike," he said.

And Twilight found herself out of bed, her hooves planted in the carpet, her arsenal of detection spells bristling to life throughout the entire castle. Because Spike's solid warmth, so absent these past four weeks while he'd been traveling with Equestria's delegation to the decadal Greater Nations' Summit, was gone yet again, not a trace of him anywhere within the palace walls. "Where is he? Is he all right? What happened? Why isn't he in his room? Did he say something to you about going out again?"

"No!" Vern waved his arms. "That's just it! He was here last night and said he'd be here to see the play when we do it in two weeks, but when I woke up, I couldn't smell him anymore!" Sour, salty waves of fear rolled through his usually smoky scent, his eyes wide and the little spines on the sides of his head slicked back. "But if there'd been an emergency, you'd know about it, right? So where'd he go, Twilight? Why'd he—?"

"Wyvern!" Mira Belle sprang forward, reared back, and enveloped him in a hug. "It's okay! We're all here, and we're gonna find out what's going on!" She turned a purse-lipped look over her shoulder. "I mean, if all of us can maybe stop panicking so much?"

The rebuke made Twilight blink, then smile. "You're right, Mira, and I apologize. Spike's been my dearest friend for so long, I sometimes get a little—" She stopped and shook her head: more than two hundred years she'd been the Princess of Friendship, and she was still learning lessons in it every day. "But yes, let's not jump to conclusions. Spike's been gone for a month, so maybe he just got really hungry for some of Honey Pie's apple fritters."

A quick glance at the wall clock showed her it was half an hour till dawn. "You two head over to Sugercube Corner, all right? He's probably there helping Honey heat up the donut glaze. Or if he's not, try the site where Dolores and her crew are building the new concert hall. You know how much he enjoys being both a crane and a welder."

Vern's head spines perked up. "Hey, yeah! And when Gaia and the other griffons in town do their stretching exercises in Glimmer Park at sun-up, he sometimes goes over there and does 'em, too!"

Not letting her smile waver, Twilight nodded. "Good thinking! I'll take a quick flap over the Everfree Forest and see if he's out there, and we'll send each other messages when we find him."

"Yes!" Whirling, Vern raced for the door. "C'mon, Mira!"

Mira trotted after him, her usual worried look on her face, but Twilight forced herself to keep exuding confidence till the clattering of hooves and claws had faded to mere echoes out in the hallway. Only then did she let her own worry surface again, and firing up a teleportation spell, she crackled herself down to the one-story tall doorway of Spike's room in the basement.

Cavernous, it lay cold and dark and silent, three things it never was when he was home. Not even the gold and jewels of his hoard seemed to glitter in the light of Twilight's horn. It didn't feel like he was in town, either—she sometimes joked that she could smell his breath from a mile away, but she really had known him long enough to sense the way he displaced the air whenever he was nearby.

The Everfree, of course, fuddled her magic just like it still fuddled everything, so she popped into the seneschal's office, knocked on his bedroom door till a bleary-eyed Golden Voice peered out, and left him with several layers of instructions: what to do if she wasn't back by eight AM; what to do if she wasn't back by ten AM; what to do if she wasn't back by noon. She then ran from the government offices in the palace's west wing through the public library and museum in the central wing to her room in the east wing in order to get her muscles limbered up, slung on her saddlebags, and jumped out the window into the pearly-gray pre-dawn.

Summoning a map of the forest into the air ahead of her, she quickly drew up a search pattern than would take her to Spike's favorite spots while letting her cover as much of the woods around them as possible. If she struck out at all those places, she could circle back and sweep the rest of the woods in a simple grid pattern before lunchtime.

She had to grin at that thought. By then, she could just listen for the thunderous groaning of his empty stomach...

But he wasn't at Zechariah's hut and he wasn't at the Sisters' Castle and he wasn't down in the cavern with the Tree of Harmony. Each time, Twilight sighed and headed for the next stop on her itinerary, her eyes, ears, and magic wide open for any sign of him.

The sun came up eventually, but even then she still almost missed him. The purple expanse of his scales and his big green spine ridges mixed so well with the early morning shadows of the stretch of woodland she was passing over that she only stopped and doubled back when she heard the familiar whoosh of him exhaling.

She smiled. She'd known he had to be around here somewhere. After all, she liked to think she knew him pretty well by now.

Except... Her smile faded. She hadn't expected him to disappear without a word the way he had this morning, had she? And hovering in the blue autumn sky above the long, shade-dappled stretch of him, just visible here and there between the tree branches, she had to admit that his grouchiness the last few months had taken her by surprise, too.

An old tree stump squatted at the edge of a meadow where the rumbling sigh had come from. Twilight folded her wings, settled herself down onto the stump, and looked up at his seemingly sleeping face among the tree trunks. "Spike?" she asked gently.

Stretched out, he wound away into the woods, his head bigger than her whole body. But he still grimaced when he didn't want to wake up, the spines twitching all along his neck. "Not today," he said, his voice always his voice no matter how deep it got.

The breath that washed over her had a slightly sour tinge, but it was the words that made her blink. "You're not Spike today?"

"I'm not waking up today." His eyelids pulled apart just enough for her to see twin reflections of her confused expression in his shiny, black pupils. "So thanks for stopping by, Twi. You can show yourself out, right?"

"I see." She rubbed her chin. "So instead of Spike, you're the fabled Grouchisaurus rex."

His eyes came more fully open. "The what?"

Twilight put one front hoof to her chest, waved the other at the sky, and declared in her best movie announcer voice, "A legendary beast who once roamed the forests and swamps of ancient Equestria!" Flaring her horn, she conjured up a cartoon image of a big, purple-and-green dragon stomping over some appropriately primeval landscape. "Snarling and growling at all who crossed his path, he struck terror into the hearts of those ponies who only wanted to know what the hay he thought he was doing lying around being grouchy all day!" She grinned.

He didn't grin back.

"Hence the name Grouchisaurus." Twilight found herself going on even though she was pretty sure the joke had fallen flat. "Because he was being all, y'know, grouchy..." She let her tableau vanish with a pop.

"Grouchy," Spike said, his mouth barely moving, and silence settled over them. Sitting with her grin frozen in place, Twilight tried to think of a clever way to ask what was bothering him, but he spoke again before she could come up with one. "Sounds like that must be the word on your calendar for today."

Her awkward grin became an actual smile. "Spike, I haven't used one of those since I was in school."

"Huh." He shifted his head, his forelimbs sliding him forward a bit. "Well, here's your word for tomorrow, Twi: 'bicentennial.'"

Quickly, Twilight ran through her mental list of anniversaries. It wasn't two hundred years since his hatchday: they'd thrown that party nearly a decade ago. It wasn't two hundred years since the Summer Sun Celebration that had brought the two of them to Ponyville for the first time: they'd done that particular anniversary up in style just last year with Celestia and Luna and Cadance and Flurry Heart and a giant crowd spilling out of Ponyville's town square.

But even though nothing specifically bicentennial came to her with regard to tomorrow, she was fairly sure she could guess the general outline. "Something to do with her?" she asked, not even trying to keep her voice from cracking.

Spike nodded, the grass rustling against his chin scales, and more rustling brought one gigantic arm reaching out from the tree shadows. Something caught the sunlight between the stalactite claws of his thumb and forefinger, and Twilight found herself looking at a lovely aquamarine gem about the size of her hoof. "Two hundred years ago tomorrow was the day we first ran across the Diamond Dogs." Even his whispers made the air shiver around her. "The day she gave me this."

She couldn't hug him anymore, not the way she'd once been able to. But she touched both front hooves to his nose, let a warm stream of magic shiver out from them, let it circle to close at the back of his neck, and let it tighten so he'd be able to feel it.

He closed his eyes, leaned forward, and gently touched his bedspread-sized forehead to the tip of her horn.

"Twilight!" a voice shouted, and a cascade of magic crashed over her as cold and hard as a bucket of hurled ice cubes. "Are you here? Did you find—? Whoa!" The sound of somepony thumping against the ground made Twilight's ears wince; she turned to see Hoedown sprawling onto her back out in the meadow, her bright orange mane and tail spreading out around her like a lava flow. Her head popped up immediately, though, light of the same color playing around her horn. "Elevation! Right! Always forgetting that!"

"Hoedown!" Twilight cried, taking a step forward. "Are you okay?"

"Are you kidding?" Hoedown leaped onto all fours and made a rude noise with her lips. "I fall farther than that just getting out of bed in the morning!" She tapped a hoof against the side of her head. "If I told you how many times I've popped back into normal space only to find this melon of mine stuck halfway inside a rock—!"

"Thirty-eight," Spike said. Twilight looked over her shoulder to see him actually grinning, his foreclaws still cradling the gem and folded under his chin. "Unless you've done another couple in the month I've been away."

"Spike!" Hoedown jumped straight up, her horn flaring again. "Hang on!" And she vanished with a clattering crash like a box of silverware falling down a stairwell.

Twilight blinked at the spot of empty air and shook her head. "I need to have another talk with that filly," she said.

"Six," she heard Spike say behind her. Turning to ask him what he meant, she saw him counting down on his claws. "Five, four, three, two—"

The air shattered once more, and six figures tumbled across the grass in front of Twilight: three ponies, a dragon, a griffon, and a donkey. Twilight had to smile. That particular combination told her exactly who the new arrivals were even before the magical tau particles of the spell had shimmered away.

Hoedown was the first to scramble into an upright position. "And that is how I win the teleportation scavenger hunt every year!"

"Excuse me?" Cinnamon Teal pushed himself up next, his wingtips coming around to straighten his glasses. "Might I remind you, Hoedown, of what Princess Twilight has told you several times about attempting to—"

"Attempting?" Hoedown shoved her snout directly into Teal's. "Look around, Goggles! I did it! I mean, we're all here, aren't we?"

With a chirp, Gaia sat up, her talons brushing her crest feathers out of her face. "Gimme a minute. I might be missing a chunk or two."

"I know that I'm missing something," came Dolores's voice, so sweet and clear, it always reminded Twilight of singing even when she was just talking. The big, muscular jenny donkey rose and shook herself, her long ears flapping. "I had a picnic basket full of breakfast Honey Pie gave me for when we found Spike and Twilight."

"Right here." A lumpy ball behind Dolores unrolled to become Vern, a large wicker basket clutched to his chest. "No way I'm letting one of Honey's breakfasts outta my sight."

Spike chuckled, the sound so rich and deep, it always made Twilight think of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows. "You've learned well, my faithful student," he said.

Vern beamed up at him, then his smile crumpled a little around the edges. "I...I'm sorry, Spike. I guess I maybe panicked a little when I woke up this morning and you were gone."

"Yeah," Dolores said. Her big black hooves flipped the lid off the basket to reveal part of a red-and-white-checkered blanket. "Mira? Hoedown? Get this thing laid out, will you?" She looked over her shoulder. "So spill, Spike. Us delicate, sensitive types get all upset when dragons and unicorns come pounding on our front doors to yell about friends gone missing."

"Delicate?" Teal blinked up through his glasses at her. "You've won the last three Cider Days tug-of-war contests all by yourself, if I recall correctly."

"Sensitive?" Gaia clicked her beak. "I've watched you eat a whole bag of cherries without even noticing the pits!"

Dolores straightened to her full height and glared down her muzzle first at Gaia, who quickly busied herself with pulling various paper-wrapped packages from the basket, and then at Cinnamon Teal, who paled nearly to beige under her scrutiny and shrank back till he seemed no bigger than Mira Belle. Dolores gave a snort, shifted her glare around, and growled, "Any other comments?"

Twilight almost spoke up, a quip ready about how the pits were her favorite thing about cherries, but a giggle from further out in the meadow drew her attention to Mira Belle. "I have a comment!" Mira's horn flared to whisk everything out of the basket and onto the blanket she and Hoedown had unfolded. "Breakfast is served!"

Hoedown whooped and dove face first into an apple fritter. "Now that," she said, coming up with frosting coating her horn and snout, "is the sort of commentary I can get behind!"

The snort Dolores gave this time was all laughter. "You and me both, kiddo!"

One of Hoedown's eyebrows arched. "You're only a year older than me, Lori."

"And yet?" Dolores patted Hoedown's bright orange mane. "One of us is strawboss at Doodle Construction, and the other of us is—" She cocked her head. "What is it you do again, HD?"

With a shrug, Hoedown stretched her tongue out to lick frosting from her nose. "I'm a menace to society."

"And that," Twilight said, joining the others as they took places around the blanket, "is the sort of commentary we can all get behind."

The kids laughed, and Twilight swallowed. Because they weren't kids anymore, were they? It had to have been three years since they'd all graduated from the school, after all: Gaia was pretty much running the Ponyville Post Office these days, and Teal had been the reference librarian at the new branch of the library since before last Hearth's Warming. Even Mira wasn't all that much younger than Twilight herself had been the day she'd hopped out of that chariot to touch the streets of Ponyville for the first time...

Tearing her gaze away, she looked back at Spike, his eyes glowing slightly in the darkness among the tree trunks. "Will you be joining us?" she asked, not quite sure she managed to keep the plaintive tone out of her voice.

The moment stretched, Twilight acutely aware of everything around her: the clatter of cutlery and the voices of her students-become-friends at the tablecloth; the morning breeze playing around the swirling colors of the evening sky that her mane had grown into; her very best friend in the whole wide world almost invisible, the shadows wrapping around him.

Then he moved, crawled forward, gave her the gentlest smile she'd seen from him in months, and reached out two big claws to pick up a cinnamon roll. "I'd like to propose a toast," he said.

"Hold it." Mira squinted, her horn flaring. A piece of bread appeared in front of her, and her hornglow slid it to hover in front of Vern's snout. "Let's do this right."

Vern rolled his eyes, but he still puffed out the tiniest tendril of flame, crisping the bread to a lovely golden brown on both sides.

Mira gave a nod, then wafted the toast to a spot beside Spike's claw.

Groans and giggles rose up, but Twilight had to swallow again. If Spike was still feeling grouchy—

"Ah, Mira." His voice rumbled the ground. "You also have learned well, my faithful student. But no way am I letting go of this cinnamon roll." Reaching out his other hand, he took the toast, raised it, and said, "To friends, both present and absent."

Everycreature repeated the phrase, and Twilight hardly noticed the next hour going by in a lovely tangle of laughter, chatter, pastry, and apple juice. She would've been more than happy to spend the rest of the day there, too, but...

Tipping back her cup, she caught the last drop of juice on the tip of her tongue and concentrated on the sweetness of it rolling all the way down her esophagus. "Sorry guys," she said into the next comfortable little lull in the conversation, "but if I'm not back at the castle in twenty minutes, poor old Golden Voice will have to cover for me at the planning commission meeting. And I like him too much to make him do that."

Dolores was shading her eyes with a hoof and looking at the sun. "Yeah, I may be the boss, but that doesn't mean I can skip going to work." She nodded to Hoedown. "You zapping us back to town, HD?"

Hoedown noisily sucked up the last two mini éclairs and tossed the plate toward Gaia. "You bet!"

Gaia caught the plate, tucked it into the basket, and clapped her talons. "Come at me, then! This place isn't cleaned up in sixty seconds, we all gotta go to Twilight's meeting with her!"

The next fifty seconds saw the griffon leaping and spinning, catching cups and saucers and empty brown paper bags, and somehow packing them all away. Wings flapping, she touched one hind paw to the ground and twirled in a slow circle. "We forget anything?"

A clearing of throat like a minor thunderstorm drew Twilight's attention—and everyone else's as well—to Spike, lying on his belly so that only his tail snaked back into the trees. With a grin, he poked a claw at the big blanket most of them were still sitting on. "I can carry it back to town if you haven't got room there, Gaia."

Tapping her beak, Gaia glanced back and forth between the basket and the blanket. "Fold it good, and I'll make it fit."

All of them stood, and Spike folded the thing into an almost perfect cube, something Teal and Mira both laughingly declared was impossible even as Spike was doing it. Gaia then somehow squeezed it into the basket, and Dolores, hoisting the wicker box in her teeth, tossed it to balance perfectly across her broad back. "Once again," she declared in her musical soprano, "we've managed to overcome science, magic, and good sense all in the same morning!"

A tiny crackling fireworks display shot from Hoedown's horn. "And we all lived happily ever after!" The fireworks changed to a display that looked a lot more like a volcano going off. "Now! Back to town!" She waved a hoof at Twilight and Spike. "You two coming?"

Twilight pretended to consider it. "Well, the last time I went teleporting with you, I was bald for a week and a half."

Mira Belle giggled, and Hoedown rolled her eyes. "Fine! Spike?"

Spike had risen back to sit on his haunches, the spiny ridges on his head reaching higher than the first row of tree branches. "Seriously?" he rumbled, folding his arms across his chest.

Looking up at him, Hoedown actually went a little pale, the first time Twilight could recall seeing that. "Yeah, might be better I catch you next time," she said. Sparks blossomed from her horn. "Everybody else ready? 'Cause here we go!" The sparks swirled in a tornado through the meadow, and when they cleared away, Twilight was alone with Spike.

She let the silence drift down for a moment before asking, "So, coming back to town?"

"Well, yeah." He touched his claws to his chest. "I mean, if I don't get the order for my new bow tie in to Stiches now, it probably won't be ready for the premiere. And how would it look if Spike the Brave and Glorious didn't attend opening night of the play written in his honor without a new bow tie?"

"Quiet, you." She unfurled her wings and sprang up to hover in front of him. "Or do you want me to tell Dusty the true story of what happened when you saved the first Crystal Empire Equestria Games?"

His eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't."

"I would." She did a flip and flopped onto her belly to sprawl across the top of his head. "Unless the fabled Grouchisaurus rex gives me a ride home!"

For a moment, the only sound was the morning breeze in the trees. Then Spike heaved a sigh that bent every tree ahead of them in the opposite direction. "Princess of Friendship?" His head shook slowly back and forth, Twilight digging her hooves in just enough to keep herself from sliding off. "Should've been the Princess of Goofiness..." And he started forward into the meadow.

"Whoo-hoo!" Twilight tapped a quick rhythm over his scalp scales. "I'll be the envy of the Equestria Paleontological Society!"

He tried to make his laugh sound like a cough, but Twilight knew him way too well to be fooled. So she wasn't at all surprised that, when he spread his wings and leaped into the air, his whooping, plain and unbridled, mixed freely with her own.

Author's Note:

This, then:

Is the rewritten version of the original story, and the next chapter should conclude things—hopefully before the end of the show's final season...

Mike

Comments

[Viper Pit]

IT LIVES

[Mystic Sunrise]

I feel like I'm missing something in chapter 1. What's with all the new characters? Or just keep reading? Asking before I continue.

Edit: Never mind. Found out the rest.

[Cross Lament]

I'm adoring these nutty characters.

[lazyreader19]

Awe,I loved this chapter, cute and some good feels

[djthomp]

Nice to get another chapter of this, love the characters. With the long delay it looks like the school of friendship got pulled in as part of the background for this group of friends, that's a nice lightly stated touch.

[Baal Bunny]

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Thanks, folks!

Since this is supposed to be happening in The Future, I figured I'd better update the background a bit. This is likely to be even more evident in the next and concluding chapter from Spike's POV.

Mike

[Fido]

Thought this looked familiar...
Stuff like this is what's keeping me hopeful all these 3+ year-old dormant stories in my Favorites section will spring back to life. Thanks for reaffirming my naive faith.

Will be looking forward to the conclusion!

[DarkDMan]

Rewrite updates are nice!
Great job!

[Xanni]

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This almost perfectly fits into the post-S9 canon now - the only remaining thing that got Jossed is that the Tree of Harmony became the Treehouse of Harmony.