The Life of a Dragon

by pononymous

Icing on the Cake

This chapter is my favorite.
Birthday Arc part 4: Icing on the Cake

---

"Spike, are you almost done with your cake yet?" Twilight asked with growing impatience. This may be her little Spike's birthday, but she had a schedule to stick to and this was his sixth chunk of cake, not including the one he had been snacking on while at the turntable with Vinyl Scratch learning how to do more than just let his chosen list of songs (all classical piano remixes, of course) play. "We still have more things to do today and it's already getting late. At least I'm fairly certain it is, I can't seem to find a clock in here..." she trailed off as she turned around, looking at the walls.

"Oh, oh, oh! I have a Sundial you can use Twilight!" Pinkie exclaimed while holding a Sundial on her hoof, as she appeared behind Twilight, in between her and Spike's table, somehow. Twilight jumped a little, as she still hasn't gotten used to Pinkie Pie appearing without a resonable explanation.

"Thanks for the offer Pinkie Pie, but since we're underground I don't think it will be able to use the Sun to accurately tell time." Twilight replied as she contemplated where Pinkie Pie would have gotten the Sundial in the first place.

"That's okay Twilight! I charged it up with sunlight earlier." Pinkie replied.

Twilight facehoofed. She then sighed as she glanced at Spike, whose mouth was still full of sugary goodness, and said what she would probably regret.

"Fine Pinkie Pie, what time does your Sundial say?" Twilight asked.

"Hmmm" she said as she stared at the carved rock sitting on her hoof. "It's 2 minutes to nine o' clock." Pinkie answered.

"Oh no!" Twilight shouted. She jumped up on Spike's table, ignoring his complaints when she crushed his leftover 'cake' with her back hoof, and searched the crowd of dancers, ceiling, and everywhere in between frantically for a speck of rainbow mane. When she had double checked the entire room, she used her magic to quickly place Spike on her back and with a quick goodbye to Pinkie Pie, she teleported Spike and herself straight up.

"What are you doing Twilight?" Spike yelled as he gripped the mane of the pony that had just teleported them about fifty feet above the darkening streets of Ponyville. Before they had begun falling though, Twilight had once more teleported, but this time they appeared next to the lit lampost near the front of the door they had entered earlier.

"Twilight!" *pop* another teleport, this time down the street "Wait a second!" *pop* "What's going on!?" *pop* Spike had started getting a little sick from the near-constant teleportation, but before the Crystal Candy Cake could make a return visit, Twilight stopped near Fuscus Lake. He remembered waking up in this lake after the first Winter Wrap he and Twilight participated in. 'This year I'm just going to let all the quadrupeds do the work. I'm staying in my nice warm treehouse...library...home' Spike was interupted from his planning by the pony underneath him collapsing to the ground on her haunches. He slid off her back and on to the ground.

"Okay Twilight, I know you planned a bunch of really cool surprised today, but this last one could have been skipped." Spike started.

"I'm so sorry Spike, I've ruined everything! All because I forgot to pack a watch!" She moaned out in hysterics. "I shouldv'e expected that I would lose track of time, I could have planned for Dash to let me know when she left, or had Rarity remind me when it was time to leave the party! I had so many chances to prepare for this but I've ruined your birthday." She screamed out in frustration. A pegasus laying in one of the nearby trees had finally spotted them due to Twilights antics and dashed over to them.

"Hey Spike! Hey Twi-" Rainbow Dash stopped as she saw the state Twilight was in. "Oh, c'mon Twilight, it's not that bad. The sunset was only a few minutes ago so your not really that-" She was stopped as Spike clamped her muzzle shut by wrapping his claws around it.

"It's okay Twi'. You've made this the best birthday I've ever had so far, and yes,that includes the couple years Princess Celestia was able to join us in our tower." Spike tried to comfort her as she mumbled to herself about being tardy, Celestia banishing her to the Moon and being locked away in a dungeon on the Moon.

"She probably has some secret facility called Lunar Max or something up there too." she sobbed as Spike turned a questionable glance over to Rainbow Dash.

"Well, we planned on having me fly you up to see the Sunset and stuff, but the Sun is already down so we'd have to skip that bit." Rainbow Dash replied to his silent question.

'Well, that's hard to fix.' Spike thought to himself. 'Twilight might know a spell to go back a week in time, but that wouldn't really help much if she went back to see the Sunset without us.' Rainbow Dash watched quietly as Spike's face lit up and he whispered something in Twilight's ear. Twilight stopped and looked over at spike with confusion but conjured up a scroll and quill for him anyway, since her saddlebags were back at the Dragon's Lair. Spike scribbled out a quick message and lit up the scroll with a enlightening burst of green sparkling fire.

Thirty seconds later Spike clapped his claws twice and the Sun moved back above the horizon. Twilight promptly fell over unconscious. Rainbow Dash's jaw hit the ground, she reared up in shock and her wings flared open to steady herself.

Spike started laughing hard enough to fall over next to Twilight as she was starting to come to. Rainbow Dash's brain had finally caught up to the fastest flier in Equestria.

"That was SO COOL!" she squeeled while pressing her front hooves to her face. Twilight was now fully awake and looking at Spike in the same way she did when she found out about Pinkie Pie's Pinkie Sense.

"SPIKE! What did you do! Why did Princess Celestia give you control of the Sun? How do you even have the power to control the Sun, you're not a unicorn! You don't even" Twilight was interrupted by Spike coughing out a letter. "have ...magic...except for sending messages through fire." Twilight finished with exasperation while Rainbow Dash was laughing.

"Occam's Razor." Twilight sighed out while Spike scribbled a "yes, thanks for the birthday gift Celestia" on the scroll, rolled it back up and sent it again.

"So what did she send back to you Spike?" Twilight asked.

"She just wished me a happy birthday...and asked if she timed it right." He replied with a huge grin across his face.

---

"Are you sure you want to do this Dash? Last time you fainted, remember?" Twilight asked while Spike wondered what he two ponies were talking about.

"Come on Twilight, stop being such a worry-pony, your the one who figured that there wasn't enough breathing air up there. You'd think we Pegasi would have figured that out first." Rainbow Dash replied, waving her concerns off with a wing.

"Well, as far as I know you and the Wonderbolts are the only Pegasi who fly fast enough to convert their natural magic to propulsion, instead of flapping their wings for flight. Since the Wonderbolts always stay low enough to be visible during their flight shows, they wouldn't discover the inefficient oxygen at extreme altitudes, and of course wing flight wouldn't work once any other Pegasus went high enough." Twilight explained away her discovery, while still trying to correct Dash's vocabulary.

"Ya ya, I think we should just get a move on before Princess Celestia has to tell everypony turn their clocks back an hour. Hmmm, Spike do ya think she would do that for me on April Foals Day?" Dash asked.

"NO! I mean, no Rainbow Dash. It was bad enough that Spike misused our friendship with Princess Celestia just to make me feel better-" "Oh c'mon!" Spike complained in the background. "but you are definitely not asking her to help with an Equestria wide prank, that's horribly inappropriate to ask of her and she would never do such a thing!" Twilight finished.

---

"AAACHOOO!" important documents fluttered about in the air and landed in a huge mess. The door opened and the Princess looked at the room.

"We heard that all the way across the hall, are you alright?" She asked with a smile on her face as she observed her sister's newly arranged room.

"I'm alright sister, though I have a feeling that I've just been issued a challenge." Celestia replied with a furrowed brow.

---

"Now Rainbow Dash, spread your wings." Rainbow Dash did so and Twilight's horn glowed as she conjured a saddle onto her friend.

"Whoah, that's awesome looking." Spike said as he saw what Twilight had conjured. It was a saddle that had two straps along along each flank for a pony's hind legs and one on each of the shoulders as well. The main color was a matte black, but it had a purple fading to pink racing stripe that started under the PommelHorse logo (PH) on the shoulders and ran diagonally to just in front of Rainbow's hind legs. It had PommelHorse written in bold under both wings and over the flank was an insignia of three raindrops falling from a cloud with rainbow lightining arcing down between them.

"Thanks Spike." Twilight and Rainbow Dash said in unison. "Now hop on and strap yourself in or the next spell won't work correctly." Twilight continued. Spike hopped in the saddle and strapped his legs and his left arm in, but then he stopped.

"What's the matter?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Oh, I got it for you." Twilight said as his right arm and the corrosponding straps glowed purple and fixed themselves together.

"Thanks Twi', but I could have used my teeth. I just realized this doesn't have anything for my tail."

"Oh, do you think that will be a problem Dash?" Twilight asked. She may have learned about some atmospheric and meteorological physics, but flight was Dash's specialty.

"Nah, as long as he holds his tail flat it won't provide too much resistance." Rainbow Dash replied, even if she was only geussing based on how a pony's tail worked.

"Okay then, both of you take a deep breath." They both inhaled as much as they could while Twilight's horn glowed with one extra layer of overglow and two different sized teal-blue crystal like grew from the tip of her horn. As soon as the both closed their mouths, Twilight shot the spell towards them. When it made contact with both of them they glowed the same teal-blue color briefly before returning to normal.

"This feels pretty wierd." Spike said while Rainbow Dash flapped her wings, bringing them both into the air.

"We'll get used to it, Twilight told me it's because the spell was originally for allowing ponies to breathe underwater for exploring stuff. It prevents the air from leaving our mouths and noses and recycles it like a tree or something." Rainbow Dash explained it the same way Twilight had when they tested if the spell would work out of water as well.

Rainbow Dash quickly brought them above any cloud cover to a height easily a mile above Cloudsdale's highest spires, and two miles or so above Princess Luna's observatory. The Sun was a minute or so away from fully dipping below the horizon and the veiw of the sunset from this high up was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

"Thank you so much Dash, this is the greatest gift ever! Besides Rarity's Obsidian Soup of course." Spike added.

"What are you talking about?" Rainbow Dash turned her head away from the atmospheric rainbow covering the horizon. "I was just getting enough room for a dive." She said with a smirk on her face.

"Huh?" Then Spikes eyes widened as he realized what she was about to do.

She tipped forward and started flapping her wings as fast as she could until she started leaving a quickly fading rainbow trail behind her. Her face twisted in concentration as she quickly broke the sound barrier and continued accelerating toward the lake (where Twilight stood by, horn flaring brightly, just in case). 'This is so awesome! Spike though to himself as he felt the adrenaline rush through his veins with each beat of his heart. He was extremely thankful for the saddle, as he would have been blown off Rainbow Dash's back before they had even broke the sound barrier without it.

Soon Rainbow Dash and Spike both noticed the white cone forming around them. 'Oh Celestia, this is going to be the most fantastic thing ever' Spike though as he noticed swirls of color start to form in the cone. Just a second later, the color spread around the entire cone as it wrapped around them both and was punctured by Rainbow's acceleration.

Rainbow Dash then tilted her wings and pulled out of the dive in a small arc as she continued to shoot through the slowly darkening sky. She straightened when she was finally perpendicular to the ground again, only this time she was headed for the stars that dotted the twilight sky. 'Where the heck are we going!' Spike thought to himself in a slight panick as he tried to regain his bearings. He could barely see anything past the Rainbow streaking beside his face, and they had accelerated fast enough that he would feel pulled back (again, he was really grateful for the saddle) no matter which direction Ranbow Dash headed.

After only a few seconds though, Rainbow Dash leveled herself out again and slowed back down to where she was no longer leaving a Rainbow in his face, but was still fast enough to be using her magic to fly instead of her wings as she circled around in a wide arc. As this was the first time anypony had gone this high, without blacking out on the way up, it was a new sight for both them and any Equestrian besides Luna.

"Wow." Spike sighed in amazement at the perfecttly clear view of the stars above, where he noticed a slowly moving sphere with a yellow glow, the Sunset peaking over the rounded horizon. 'Wait, what?

"Ya, I didn't think anything could ever be better looking than a Sonic Rainboom but this wins, wings down." Dash replied in her own state of awe as her red eyes scanned the stars above and rainbow ring spreading so very far below. She felt that no view in Equestria could possibly be better than what lay before her right now.

As Spike wondered at the workings and beauty of the universe while Rainbow Dash refused to blink in case she woke up from her dream, neither noticed what was forming on Rainbow's tail and wings tips.

After another thirty seconds of wonder Spike felt Rainbow Dash shiver beneath him and realized he was getting chilly as well. He turned his head back to ask her if she would go back down, but he noticed forst forming along her wings and mane as well as a little bit on his claws as well."Rainbow Dash! We need to go back! It's too cold!" He shouted as loud as he could in the little air around them.

"I-it's f-f-fine Spike, I feel really wa-" her voice faded as she lost conciousness high above the planet once again. Her magic stopped propelling them and Spike felt her flip downward as gravity started getting back to work once more. He realized in a adrenaline fueled moment of clarity that she would actualy die from the fall and not the impact. Her frozen wings would probably snap off once the air was dense enough to provide more resistance, and then she would burn up like the meteors Twilight watched through her telescopes. He quickly did the only thing he could think of and breathed his fire onto her wings. He saw them defrost and bit through his slightly frozen armstraps to free his claws. Spike used his arms to put himself on bottom and closed her wings against the building wind. He could feel it as the heat quickly built up on his back. 'I guess it could go worse than my last birthday...'

---

Author's Note

Credit for the saddle brand and inspiration for it's insignia go to Kwakerjak , I would greatly appreciate anyone who wishes to draw the insignia for me, that would be awesome and I would give you a cookie.

If you watch the Wonderbolts or Rainbow Dash flying at high speeds they always leave a contrail instead of flapping their wings, so that's where my inspiration for Pegasus Magic Propelled Flight comes from.

Comments

[pononymous]

Don't you love cliffhangers? I know I do.

[Dataguy]

I LOVE CLIFFHANGERS, REALLY and my favorite pic is the fourth from the top (left to right) good story btw, visiting space was a rich scene so far, enjoyed it

[Eclipsed_Luna94]

Trollestia uses Cliffhangers It's very effective

Good chapter my friend you deserve a moustache

[SuperPinkBrony12]

779505 The 'Send It To The Moon' is a regular show reference right?

Also SPPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCE!

[pononymous]

780096
YAY, someone who can enjoy suspenseful moments and not complain about it!
I also think that is one of the top five I have ever seen, because it continues the shows running gag of "we should have just asked the Princess" (like Spike did in this chapter) and Fluttershy's face as Philomena(?) bursts into flames is hilarious.

780675
Thank you very much, I shall enjoy my moustache greatly.
P.S. I love it when people use Pokemon for sentence structure, it usually makes everything twice as fun.

781399
Thank you, but I just got the picture from google.
Yes, yes it is. Just google image Trollestia + Moon (Moon is optional really)
I'm 100% sure I'll have this story finished before Valve releases Portal 3. That's taking into account that the last four chapters only covered about 14 hours of Spike's life, and I plan on trying for this level of detail (when I said plenty of detail in my summary, I meant it) for the next 20-50 years of his life.

[godf0006]

images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28600000/Hugs-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-28638743-900-668.png?1340254499717

[pononymous]

783340
th00.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2012/156/1/a/mlp_fim__can_i_has_hugs__by_avatarraptor-d52g6ch.png

[pononymous]

791285 It took at least an hour to find this. By "find this" I meant stop scrolling and clicking pictures of ponies and get back to posting this comment.
th04.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2012/086/4/a/what_do_ponies_drink____applejack_by_4suit-d4sb173.png

[pononymous]

Why are all the picures I find so huge?

[shadowmage]

793616 Because, everything awesome has to be 20% bigger than everything else. Awesome story so far btw.

[pononymous]

795382
Thanks, how would you feel if I decided to turn this into a sad, short story?

[Xorn]

DAMN YOU CLIFFHANGERS!!!!!!!!!

[pononymous]

798604

imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/16/1644/GN4GD00Z/posters/perseverance-cliffhanger.jpg

[shadowmage]

798405 If you turned this into a sad short story, then i would be sad.

Though I'm pretty sure you wont turn this into a sad short story.

[Xorn]

798799

[pononymous]

798987
Later this day might make you a little sad.
But right now I'm going to close my eyes for 6 hours straight! How awesome is that!

[shadowmage]

817929 Thats pretty awesome, considering i really should be doing the same but never really sleep at night anyway. Just another night with some good stories.

[AlTheDragon]

In the future:

So spike what was your favorite birthday?

oh, just when I turned into a living meteor and saved a life, LIKE A BOSS!

[Riz]

695018

When's the new chapter ?

[pononymous]

955334
That is a very good question. I pretty much have it planned out, I just have to stop being lazy and turn my outline into a full chapter with details and dialogue. I'm pretty sure you guys don't want to read the 200 word summary I have as a placeholder right now.

[pononymous]

1140679

[Roach of Wrath]

mine was defeat a star trek villain give star wars ending

[pononymous]

1226827
Whoah, just saw some of your comments on the other fics I've been reading, like Those Blue Wings, and now your here commenting on this POC?
I need to find a Twilight Sparkle troll picture with her and the squirrel and a caption saying "Does it look like I talk to Squirrels? Not since Powerpuff girls."

[Lateinshowing]

Any news on an update?

[pononymous]

1276777
Trying to pick how to introduce the hospital (obviously after that kind of fall). Should I have Spike slowly waking up to the Mane 6 talking around him? Him and Rainbow Dash wake up before they're allowed visitors, talk about what happened, then the rest come in? Skip the 'it's all my fault' 'no it's not' as a summary and move on to what they do while recovering? So many choices, and such riches a plenty. If I had the time (and if it wouldn't be ridiculous), I would try and write every one of those possibilities and post them as separate chapters to be voted on. But then the quality would probably suffer too.

I still have to fix the silliness in the previous chapters as well. Spike shouldn't have had Celestia move the sun back like that (think of what Luna would say). Pinkie Pie should have helped Rarity make the breakfast. I should probably put Fluttershy and Applejack in that scene too, add them in the telling of Tom's demise, then take out Sweetie Belle maybe. Twilight needs some shield spell (that RPG stats thing was dumb in hindsight) and teleportation fixes (silly season 3 song making me look dumb). Lastly, I might expand on Vinyl's scene. I definitely need to add a jealous Bon Bon being led onto the dance floor by Lyra after Pinkie Pie announces her Crystal Candy (which might just be renamed rock candy for simplicity and humbleness).

Eeyup, lots to do and little motivation to do it when there's so much pony on the internet to go read and look at.

[Lateinshowing]

1277087
I can understand that last bit. Argggggg, it ruins productivity.

[DarthWolfe]

Lunar maxx mib3 called it!

[Blue Ligthing]

update? please

[Ignaltus]

One little more, please.

[Dizzitrone19]

Great story! yeah and hey Pinkie Pie!

[Geoice]

More