Chapter 7: Ain't No Party Like a Pinkie Pie Party
“Which says ‘Celebrating a Half Century of Harmony’ to you? The silver white blazer and grey turtleneck with silver accents? Or maybe bronzey evening gown with brass jewelry?”
“Why not the bronze dress with the silver accent jewelry?”
“Heavens, no! You don’t mix anniversary materials.”
“Since linens and textiles are earlier celebrations then, shouldn’t you go nude with gold jewelry?”
“An excellent suggestion!”
-An exchange between Rarity and her husband
Pinkie Pie was a party pony; this was simply an immutable aspect of not only herself, but reality in general, ranking right up there with the sky being blue and Luna’s butt waxing and waning with her heavenly body and many failed attempts at dieting. At least Spike had always assumed reality backed Pinkie’s habits since there was no possible way she could set up half of what she does in more than twice the time she’s afforded (which, often times, was only a minute’s notice).
So that meant that when the dragon had originally planned to return to the place he always considered home in his heart, he really should have expected Pinkie to be waiting behind the door with Twilight’s friends from both Ponyville and Canterlot, Twilight’s family, and all three Princesses. Oh, and Doctor Sawbones, who seemed to be analyzing the quality of the punch in the corner.
Questions of how everyone was fitting into this relatively small building aside, the dragon found it mildly heartwarming.
“This is tripe.” Sawbones slurred slightly, the doctor’s eyelids apparently heavy and covering half his eyes as he inspected the contents. “It is swil!” And yet he slammed it back anyway. “Who is responsible for this travesty of alcohol?”
“Uh, Doctor Sawbones?” Applejack interrupted his rant. “There ain’t no liquor in that to get drunk with. That’s just fruit punch.” She corrected. “And y’all only had that one glass.”
Sawbones suddenly looked much more sober and a bit more abashed. “Oh… Well, then it’s very lovely fruit punch.”
While this exchange went on, Spike made a beeline for Princess Luna somehow finding a corner in the rounded rooms of the library’s main room to brood in.
“How are you holding up, Princess of the Night?” Spike asked, offering her a fresh punch glass with a smile.
The night mare accepted the glass and turned away from the main gathering. “We- I am uncertain.”
“That makes two of us.” Spike allowed to slip through taking a sip of his own punch.
“Dost thou even know what I am uncertain of?” Luna seemed to take some mild offense to the idea that anyone could know what she was going through and seemed half ready to retreat to her room and blast angry music for an hour.
Of course, that was Spike’s take on the princess which lingered from a previous history. “How to reintegrate with a world that’s changed so much, making amends over something I told you was already water under the bridge, and uncertainty of the future in general?”
Luna blinked. “Uh, yes. Exactly.”
“Yeah, I can relate to that a bit more than you might think,” The time-displaced veteran said with a small, reassuring smile.
“How dost thou cope with these circumstances, then?” Luna asked this with some sincere desperation of seeking advice from someone who would not just hug her like her sister and tell her ‘it will all be all right’ in all Celestia’s usual vagueness.
Spike thought only a moment, and smiled a little more, amused how helping one with their own problems put his own into perspective.
He was also smiling because Pinkie had begun the party games which led to the familiar pissing contests between Applejack and Rainbow Dash, though the extra sugar coating was how Twinkleshine, Lyra, Celestia, and Pinkie goaded them on while others begged for sanity, but his focus and the reason for his smile remained largely on the troubled princess.
“You take things one day at a time. It’s hard right now because it’s only been, what? A day? Two? But if you just keep trying to move forward, then things become much more managable. This advice isn’t going to be easy to follow, but when are things in life ever easy? That’s one inextricable part of the world that doesn’t change.” Spike said and was met with a ‘hmph’ and a turn of the head from Luna. “Come on, Princess-”
She interrupted. “Our sister spoke of ‘modern conveniences’ that made trivialities of old chores entrusted to the servants. But mine first day in the blasted new castle, and I hath burned myself once operating a ‘gas oven’, froze myself working a ‘shower’, and couldn’t find the turning shaft on the lift nor the labor team to operate it, and so I had to use magic to force the damned contraption down.”
“You know there’s a panel with butto-”
“I know that now!” Luna huffed but smiled as she turned to him. “Truly I look like a fool, do I now? I throw my heart and soul to darkness for companionship and admiration and now I squirrel away to the shadows to avoid others.”
Spike shrugged with his flesh and mechanical arm. “No bigger a fool than the artificer who thought dragons had hooves,” He said while showing his improvised scoop.
“On that subject…” Luna eyed his arm with her lip corners turning down. “How doth ye feel?”
“I have some rare phantom pains Doctor Sawbones mentioned would be normal for a long time. The brain and body are wired to be whole, to constantly send and receive signals. So when the nerves aren’t receiving information, the brain assumes something’s wrong and uses the default alert system: pain. Nothing I can’t deal with. Moondancer, Minuette, and Twilight plan to work with Sawbones though to create a new and better arm that’s actually an arm for starters. Now get back out there and stop your sister from doing something stupid,” Spike urged, giving Luna a pat on her shoulder and receiving a sudden and chilling death glare.
“Thou didst not have permission to touch royalty! The penalty for such is death!” She said in a haughty tone, then giggled. “I jest. Thy draconic features make thine expressions a treasure, Sir Spike.” She said and slowly got to her hooves, trotting to join the rest of the party.
Opting to follow her lead, Spike spent a good hour mingling in the comparatively humble Pinkie Party. He found himself bouncing amongst the partygoers, familiarizing himself with old faces and hoping to learn something he hadn’t known about them before.
So far, what he had discovered led to a brief rise in his respect for Shining Armor when learned of his collection of Hyperspace Hyperwars minis. And then it was lost when he revealed his army was entirely Ultra Mareines.
“You’re playing an army with a toilet seat for a logo,” Spike accused.
“It’s an ‘omega’, Spike. And you don’t even have an army.” The guard captain pointed out.
“But true players use Royal Guardsmares,” The dragon insisted while the whole room watched the conversation in growing confusion with the sole exception of Candace and Twilight.
“Yeah, if you like to have no money left for paint because of all the minis you need on the field.” Shining Armor balked until Candace pulled him away and reminded Shining that he was not allowed to keep his army once they moved in together.
“He still plays that, huh?” Twilight asked without expecting a response.
“Well, the Royal Guard doesn’t see much combat, and with Shining as the captain he needs to develop his strategy skills somehow.”
“So that’s where he got his strategic acumen from?” Celestia seemed to whimper. “I am starting to question my judgement on his promotion.”
“He was still the best qualified candidate.” Spike quickly rushed to his surrogate brother’s defense. “And he also declined immediate promotion to Officer ranks despite being nobility and having a college degree so he could work with field troops. That gives him a lot more experience than the armchair generals currently in the military who have never even held a spear meant for combat. You could do with more officers like Shining Armor. Like, all of them.” He let slip with a bit of bitterness from his old life.
Celestia and the others blinked, though Twilight, her parents, and Applejack smiled on Spike for defending his family so staunchly.
Celestia slowly smiled and joined in. “Excellent points, Spike. I suppose an annual review is in order, and with my sister back, perhaps her fresher recollection of battle will help me more accurately assess the commands of my army.”
“Have the Praetorians truly fallen into such a state?” Luna asked with a voice tinted in earnest concern.
Well, this may well have sparked another change. Funny what off-handed comments and attempts to defend family can do. After a whole bunch of other things.
“The who an’ what now?” Applejack quirked a brow, and Luna had everyone’s attention.
“Hath none of ye heard of the Praetorians? They were our elite soldiers. The mightiest of the mighty!”
“They were largely disbanded, the pegasi rememants joined up with the Wonderbolts,” Celestia explained.
“So none of these ponies have heard of them?”
“Well, we have,” Twilight Velvet pointed out. “As a matter of fact, Night Light and I can both trace our family lines back to two of their founders.”
This cheered Luna up considerably. “Which ones? Tell me, please!” And Spike had to admit, this was certainly something he never knew about the House of Sparkle.
“Well, my mother is from Sun Spear’s line and Velvet’s father comes from Shining Blade’s family. We even named our son for him.”
Luna seemed to squeal, all her angst forgotten. “Please, tell us you found more of the line. What of Sky Hammer? Moonbow? Cataphract, Janissary, oh! And Sword Saint?”
Nightlight and Velvet proceeded to regale the returned Princess with a genealogical tale that had the once morose princess bouncing, one Spike would have been interested in listening to though in the same instance, he overheard Celestia asking Pinkie for ‘drinks of the ethanol persuasion’.
“Of course! I keep caches of booze all over Ponyville! In case of sobriety emergencies,” He heard Pinkie say, only Doctor Sawbones seemed to notice Pinkie leading Celestia over to a stash of wines, beers, whiskeys, rums, and even grogs. He quickly followed, no doubt to critique the quality of the lagers, ales, and stouts.
Meanwhile, Spike could see Candace, apparently having overheard Spike’s defense of Shining Armor, make some apologies for her intent to deprive him of his beloved hobbies.
The dragon had to admit, Pinkie’s parties were an excellent way to cheer oneself up. But when he was about to approach Fluttershy who seemed to be in a rather low-volume conversation with Moondancer over animal studies, he felt a hoof tap his shoulder and turned to see a pair of amber eyes.
“Hey, Spike, can we talk? In private?” Lyra asked.
Spike ignored any sense of trepidation and nodded, following the minty colored mare into the quiescence of the library basement as Twinkleshine tried to flirt with Rainbow Dash, apparently mistaking her for a stallion.
Spike sealed the door just as he noticed the pegasus’ body seemed to spasm either to unleash a scream or a laugh. The heavy wooden doors kept that a mystery.
After a few moments of silence and Lyra finding a chair to sit in, she looked at Spike meaningfully. “So, what did you want to talk about?” He asked as he found his own seat, maneuvering the floor plans he spent hardly a fraction of his life in, though the nostalgia had burned them into his mind forever.
“I get why you might not want to talk about it, but…” Lyra trailed off and scratched the back of her head through her mane. “Are you really from the future?”
Spike blinked.
And blinked again.
“How?” Was all he could ask. He knew he wasn’t terribly subtle, but he wanted to know.
“Well, it took a lot for me to figure out. You carry yourself a lot differently than I remembered at the last party. You also speak a bit different too, you keep saying and referring to ‘everyone’ and ‘anybody’. I thought I had overheard something between you and Twilight before I entered the room too, but I had figured I was just a bit drunk and mishearing things. And then there was at the hospital, you mentioned me living with Bon Bon. But she wasn’t at the party, she was working on a late batch of sweets for the celebrations, and we hadn’t agreed to move in together until before I left for Canterlot to see you at the hospital.” Lyra listed off. “So… Are you actually from one hundred fifty years in the future?”
He could only nod to confirm. Part of him was hitting himself for being so obvious but, after dealing with this for less than a few days, Spike was fully ready to tell someone, anyone anything.
“What can you tell me about it?” She asked and after a look into his eyes, and with a glance at his arm, she added, “Besides that this… Probably isn’t at all how things went. Did Nightmare Moon even release Princess Luna?”
“Oh, she did all right.” Spike nodded again, wondering if his head was going to fall off at this rate. “I don’t know how I came back to be honest, I think it had something to do with that strange person Zecora mentioned meeting in the Everfree who led her to Twilight and the others. I thought I saw them at the hospital, but she was gone the second I tried to point her out.”
Lyra nodded. “Sounds pretty crazy. Crazy like Twilight suspecting a corrupted alicorn would descend from the moon to destroy us all.”
“In other words: dead on the bits?”
“Yep.” The unicorn mare agreed. “All right, so, time to get the cliche out of the way; there’s a big war in the future where a bunch of us die, isn’t there?”
“Was it that obvious?” The dragon couldn’t help but laugh.
“Twilight’s not the only bibliophile in our group, I just spent more time in the fiction section looking for musical ideas. So, first things first; who dies?”
Spike couldn’t help but look at how nonplussed Lyra seemed about it all. But why would she? To her, this was only a distant possibility. The Lyra he knew in his timeline was somewhat of a mystery to him, the Lyra he knew from his timeline became a bit of a transbiological and looked to technology to overcome death before succumbing peacefully. Nevermind that the possibility seemed to grow more and more remote each passing hour.
“Well, geez, kind of a long list even if you’re only counting ponies.” Spike recalled and saw Lyra’s calm demeanor shatter as she read Spike’s face.
“How bad?”
“Uh, half the pony population bad. Two thirds of the Griffon… Minotaurs were almost extinct, dragons are down to maybe less than a thousand,” Spike explained and watched the last of the color in Lyra’s face drain away. Spike felt a bit of guilt effectively dumping half his burden, on the other hand, it helped put a lot into perspective about the situation of his future.
Even if they survived, the day was won, and those who lived flourished and thrived as unity and technology brought civilization to new heights, the future massively sucked like a ten thousand wing power tornado.
“Who at this party dies then? How can we prevent this?” Lyra opted to narrow down.
“Rainbow Dash, Moondancer, and Princesses Luna and Celestia,” Spike quickly listed.
Lyra nodded. “Well, I guess Rainbow Dash wouldn’t back down from a fight and Moondancer isn’t much a fighter- WAIT, WHAT?! How can Princess Celestia die? She’s been around forever! If she goes what happens to the moon and sun?” For as much as she seemed to be panicking, Spike thought she was taking this fairly well.
“Okay, first of all, Celestia and Luna both made magical scrolls before they sacrificed themselves to stop Grogar. Secondly, for decades after, Twilight and Cadance handled it-” Spike was snatched up in a mix of a telekinetic grasp and hooves.
“How. Do. We. Stop this?” Lyra asked slowly.
“It’s not hard.” The dragon reassured, seemingly calming Lyra. “Things may already be in motion that prevent this from happening. All we need to do is keep Prince Blueblood from travelling to Saddle Arabia, prevent him from stealing the Eldritch Esoterica, and breaking the seal that keeps Grogar comatose in Tartarus. And probably track down the Necromancer August Star and kill him.”
The minty unicorn sighed with relief. “Okay, and August Star can’t break the seal themselves then?”
“No, the seal was put into place by the royal family, so it can only be broken by members of the royal family. And it must be done so willingly,” Spike reassured.
“So Blueblood did this because… Reasons?” Lyra asked, clearly distressed to imagine anyone related to Celestia could honestly muster the malice to cause such destruction.
Once more, Spike placated her. “Not to my understanding. I’ll admit, no one knows for certain what happened, but when August Star first appeared, leading the armies of Grogar’s dead and damned, he boasted over how easily manipulated and tricked Blueblood was.”
Lyra dropped back onto her seat in her customary strangeness, her forelegs folded so one cradled the other, which held her head. “Well, then we probably don’t want to give him reason to resent us so no locking him-”
Suddenly, they heard a loud screeching from above, followed by Luna’s bellow: “WE HATH WON THE BEER PONG. WHERE IS OUR GOLDEN FISH?”
Lyra looked to Spike, her face paler than when Spike was recounting the death toll. “In your original timeline, did you ever deal with drunken Princesses?”
Spike tapped his chin and dredged his memories. “Will you count Twilight when she becomes a princess or Cadance?”
“No pony counts Cadance as a real princess, Spike.”
The two began the trek back to join the party, and despite being exposed to the potential horrors of the future, Lyra seemed to taking things well. Despite someone now knowing the greater scheme of the future, Spike felt better than he had since he arrived in the past. While he had no way to peer into the unicorn’s mind, the two felt collectively happier to share the burden of knowledge.
But at the top of the steps and using her magic to hold the door shut, Lyra looked at him, her expression dire. “One more thing before we go back,” She said, kneeling lower so they were eye to eye. “I promise not to tell any pony, but what you’ve told me is extremely vital information that others need to know. And I know you must be thinking about how many lives won’t even be born because of the changes already made, but you need to ask yourself if whatever the future brought is worth the lives we lost.” She sniffed, her eyes becoming shiny with tears. “Twilight and Moondancer are finally connecting to other ponies. I’d hate to imagine they’re only just beginning to enjoy life if it’s going to be their last years together.”
Lyra’s words sank into Spike’s mind like a stone, and somehow, he felt sure he would never quite feel as tall as he should be knowing he was willing to trade the lives of those he loved for a future which wasn’t even possible the moment he woke up in the Canterlot Library. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll… Talk to someone else. One of the Princesses. It’s just going to take a bit of time to figure out how to break this to them.”
Lyra nodded and seemed ready to open the door. “Oh, and a few more things: one, that princess better not be Cadance. Two,” she smiled, her expression brightening. “If you need to talk to somepony, you should know where to find me.” The minty unicorn opened the door, flooding their vision with light, the sight of Celestia twerking to awful pop music, Rainbow Dash grinding against an uncomfortable Twinkleshine, and the obnoxious scent of a dozen different alcohols and their concoctions.
“IT’S JUNGLE JUICE TIME!” Pinkie shouted, suddenly appearing in the faces of the pair with huge pitchers filled with fruit and who knew what else. Before either could protest, they were violently pulled back into the party and forbidden from discussing anything serious for the remainder of the night.
“WHERE IS OUR GOLDEN FISH PRIZE?! WE WERE PROMISED A GOLDFISH PRIZE! PINKIE, ES FILIUS CANIS! FUTUERE TE IPSI!”
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We have Praetorian, we better have the Legionary too.
“Since linens and textiles are earlier celebrations then, shouldn’t you go nude with gold jewelry?”
“An excellent suggestion!”
Ey, wouldja lookit that. You're featured, bruh!
Ha! This chapter was great. This chapter was surprisingly funny considering the frank discussion of everyone's impending deaths near the end.
Man, I'm so hooked on this story.
On hiatus?
I wonder why Blueblood help the bad guys willingly. Promises of power, he is a prince with no real power, atleast this is what most peoples headcanon is like. We have seen him twice and the second time he didn't say anything.
So let us see what you have planed. Btw awesome story
This chapter took a while to sink in, especially parts of Lyra and Spike's conversation. At first I thought you were a terrible writer, but now I realise that you were being appropriately subtle.
Dayum.
If I where a betting man I would put money all of the Mane 6 descending from Praetorians. So the next question is how hard will they slap down Blueblood and how fast? Because I get the feeling that whoever tricked Blueblood has a backup plan.
Ultramareines are the lamest chapter.
So, why is this categorized as "On Hiatus"?
I like that note at the end there, pretty funny.
7449503
7448951
mostly due to the sporadic updates warned in the description. Some months are better for me and I can crank out multiple chapters. Others, not so much.
7448798
Sadly, within the realms of this fic's timeline, not presently. Celestia's "modernized" military I've always imagined would use names and such closer to an 18th European Army, in Spike's original timeline, it had moved forward to roughly early 20th century, Luna is still stuck a thousand years in the past and focuses on Roman-esque terminology. To say the least; Luna is going to wonder why there aren't anymore Aquilifers and Imaginifiers.
7449403
They aren't canon, but Angry Mareines are a best. Always.
7449053
Oh, no, I'm pretty terrible. Part of why this fic swings and swerves so much is because I try to 'let the characters write it', in a manner of speaking. This doesn't always work when I want them to go down a certain path. This chapter just so happens to be one of the better ones.
Also, Luna getting drunk and shouting was actually my proofreader's idea. Before that I had toyed with a bunch of other ideas for the chapter ending including Spike and Lyra noticing half the party had been listening in and overheard them.
7449746 Oh thank god, I thought it literally was on a hiatus where NOTHING was gonna get posted in a long time. I've had so many stories end this way suddenly lately, so that's a relief.
7449769
I considered the possibility, but her reaction to the deaths of the princesses seemed forced in a way that suggests she knew they would die. I think Lyra is from the same future as Spike, and Spike is mistaken in thinking she died (at all, let alone peacefully)
...how does that even work? Don't they kinda always do that by default?
Ouch