Phase 1
It was a beautiful, sunny day in Ponyville that Spike the Dragon had the excellent misfortune of spending entirely indoors dusting. But even being stuck indoors dusting all day — even if he was dusting the parlor of the Friendship Rainbow Kingdom Castle, which desperately needed a shorter and less cumbersome name — couldn’t dampen his spirits. “Today is going to be the best day ever!” he said to himself. “I can just feel it!”
~Friend-ship~ chimed the doorbell, even if it did seem somewhat out of place in a castle.
“And there’s the proof!” Spike added, tossing the feather duster in his claws aside. “The impressive if incredibly stupid-sounding doorbell brings the promise of friends visiting!”
~Friend-ship~ chimed the doorbell again as Spike hurried into the foyer.
“Almost there!” he said. Finally, he reached the door, and pulled it opened to say hello to whom he was certain would be his favorite pony that day.
“Greetings, nemesis!” said a happily smiling King Sombra.
“Aieeeeeeeeeeee!” replied Spike.
The door slammed, leaving a confused Sombra standing alone outside. “Well, that was just rude!” he said with a scowl.
On the other side of the door, Spike was busy engaging all the locks and contemplating how to add more when Twilight Sparkle came charging in. “Spike, I heard a scream! What happened? Are you ok?” she asked before she realized what he was doing. “Spike, who’s at the door?”
“S-S-Sombra!” squeaked the dragon, eying the door as if he might somehow cause more locks to materialize.
“Sombra?!” Twilight immediately forgot what she was going to ask Spike to do, eying the door warily. “Are-are you sure?”
“Open the freaking door! I know you’re in there! I saw you!”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Spike replied, backing up towards Twilight.
“Ok, this isn’t problem,” Twilight said. “We can work this out. Spike, write a letter to Celestia explaining the situation, and then, we just have to stall him until she gets here. Brilliant!”
A mass of shadows suddenly flowed underneath the door jamb, rapidly recomposing itself into the (probable) Pony of Shadows himself, (former) King Sombra. “I can’t believe I forgot I could do that,” he remarked. His attention turned to Twilight. “Ah, Twilight Sparkle. We meet again.”
“What do you want, Sombra?” Twilight demanded, bracing herself for some serious spellcasting. Spike, having made himself scarce and hidden in an undisclosed location as soon as the shadows appeared, said nothing.
“A little bird told me that you have, in your possession, a first edition of Clover the Clever’s Complete Conjuration Compendium. Is that true?” Sombra replied.
“No!” Twilight said with a smug grin. “I have a first edition of Clover the Clever’s Complete Conjuration Compendium, Abridged!”
Sombra gasped. “There’s an Abridged edition?”
“Yes!” Twilight said. She even gave a happy hop into the air as she did. “You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get it, either, but as soon as I heard there was an Abridged edition, I knew it’d be totally worth it to, to…” Several moments of uncomfortable silence passed before Twilight was once again on guard. “What am I even doing? Why are you here, Sombra?”
The smile that had developed on Sombra’s face just as Twilight was about to recount the tale of how she’d acquired such a rare book melted into a frown. “Jeez, what’s with all the hostility?” he asked innocently. “Do you greet all your visitors like this?”
“The last time we met, you locked me and poor Spike in a nightmare, and probably tried to kill us!” Twilight replied.
“Well, perhaps I did, but that was last time,” Sombra said to clarify. It didn’t help.
“Just tell me what you want!” Twilight demanded with a forceful stomp of her hoof. A moment later, that same hoof was back in the air, having the ‘owes’ shaken out of it.
“Well, fine, if you’re going to take all the mystery out of it. I’m just here to see how your doomsday device is coming along. And maybe to ask if I could see it, for purely academic reasons, of course.”
Twilight stared at Sombra for several seconds before asking, “Come again?”
“Well, it’s not like I’m planning to steal it or anything.”
“No, not that! The first part! The part where you think I’m building a doomsday device!” Twilight said frantically. “Why would you even think something like that?”
“Well, you’re at about that age….”
“No I’m not at about that age! There is no age!” Twilight shouted. Her mane was beginning to lose cohesion, more than a few strands of hair breaking free from their styling. “I am a sane, rational pony, and sane, rational ponies don’t build doomsday devices!”
“What? No! Of course they do!” Sombra replied, although he stopped to clarify again. “Not all of them, true, but you would! You were a unicorn when we first met, correct?”
Twilight hesitated, fixing Sombra with a scrutinizing glare. “Yeah?” she ventured.
“Well, then of course you would build a doomsday device! All unicorns build doomsday devices! Ponies who aren’t unicorns but become alicorns build doomsday devices!” Sombra exclaimed, gesticulating wildly as he did. “I built a doomsday device! Celestia built a doomsday device! She teamed up with Luna to do it!”
“That is a lie! Celestia and Luna would never build a doomsday device!” Twilight fired back.
“Of course they did! Where do you think the Tree of Harmony came from?”
Twilight was stunned. “That isn’t a doomsday device,” she objected.
“Well, it would’ve been if they hadn’t screwed up while they were making it, but that isn’t the point!”
Sombra stopped there and took a moment to straighten out his mane and recompose himself. “The point is that all ponies with a unicorn horn, or something like a unicorn horn, build doomsday devices, and you’ve been slacking off! You hear me, Twilight Sparkle? You are a slacker!”
An instant later, Twilight’s horn was glowing. “You take that back,” she said dangerously.
Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “Make me.”
On the streets of Ponyville, outside of Twilight’s castle, the citizens were treated to a loud “boom!” that all of them, after a moment of contemplation, proceeded to ignore.
Inside the castle, Sombra slid down the wall he’d been flung against and shook the stars out of his vision. “Lucky shot.”
“I’d give you another one, if I thought it’d do any good,” Twilight remarked. “And also if it was in my nature. Sure, I slip now and then, but if there was one thing that Cadence taught me, it’s the violence is never the correct answer to any problem. And I can’t think of anything more violent than a doomsday device!”
Once more, Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “You’re right,” he said. Pushing himself back to his hooves, he turned and started for the door.
“And just where are you going now?” Twilight asked.
“The Crystal Empire, to see your fellow Princess. You’re supposed to be the responsible one Twilight, so if you haven’t built a doomsday device —” Sombra looked back over his shoulder as he opened the door — “Then there’s no telling what that hippie’s been up to! And when I get back, the world had better be ending, young lady, or I’ll take that first edition of Clover the Clever’s Complete Conjuration Compendium, Abridged, and I’ll dog-ear the pages!”
With a slam of the door, Sombra was gone, and Twilight was furious.
“That fiend! ‘Dog-ear the pages,’ is there no containing his evil?” Twilight said to no one in particular. “And did you hear him, Spike? Calling me a slacker? Me! Meeeeee!”
“Are you ok, Twilight?” the suspiciously Spike-shaped lamp at the far-end of the foyer asked trepidatiously as it removed its shade. “You’re starting to get that ‘look’ again.”
“Oh, I’ll show him. I’ll show all of them! I’ll build that doomsday device, and it’ll destroy the world even bigger than they thought possible!” Twilight’s descent into maniacal laughter was cut short by a coughing fit, brought on by the fact that she didn’t have any practice with laughing maniacally. “But there’s no time to practice laughing maniacally! Come, Spike! To the laboratory!”
As Twilight rushed out of the foyer, Spike carefully considered all the data points he had just collected. “Ok,” he said, beginning his conclusion by way of talking himself through a very confusing event. “Being a dragon has officially become too complicated.” With that, he set out not for the laboratory, but for the mirror room, where the mirror leading to Canterlot High was kept.
“Time to be a dog.”
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A promising beginning
I want to see what Cadence had come up with
I like how "a matter of fact" Sombra is with all of this, and how buddy-buddy he is with twilight. And the dog earring of pages is just hilarious. That is just a critical hit against Twilight. This story makes complete logical sense to me.
Oh my god, THE LAUGHTER.
img02.deviantart.net/069b/i/2015/340/6/0/do_you_wanna_have_a_bad_time__by_dillanmurillo-d9j74wo.jpg
DO YOU WANT BAD TIMES, SOMBRA? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET BAD TIMES C:
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XD Well hell. Bye Spike, talk to you later. Don't eat chocolate over there, is bad for dogs.
I love the idea that Spike just periodically goes to the human world to chill.
Yes, okay, that last line is perfect.