The Ballad of Sir Spike de Draco

by Zay-el

Friendship Forged in a Storm of Booze

Chapter 2

Friendship Forged in a Storm of Booze

"With all due respect, Sir Spike, we still have a couple of things to do before that." Twilight piped up, trying to grab his attention. She guessed her chances of that being rather close to zero, considering his focus on adventure was harder than his scales, a considerable feat indeed.

"Summer Sun! Preparation! Must check!" she called out repeatedly, while he calmly began to strut towards what seemed like the closest establishment that could be called a tavern.

She scowled and summoned her abilities, trying to stop him from proceeding. The purple aura around her horn extended as she let loose her magic, the spell binding itself to his legs. Spike stopped for a moment, making her sigh in relief, only to proceed as if her obstruction had been little more than a door he needed to open, first. She yelped as his walk pulled her along for the ride as well, before she finally broke the flow of magic. All hope lost, she hung her head for a moment, only to smirk as she remembered something. If one method failed, there would always be a different one, however embarrassing.

"Sir Spike!" she called out again, truly wondering whether he actually heard it at all. "Remember the princess' letter? She said she'd happily 'duel' with you, but only if everything goes as planned."

That did the job perfectly. Several hundred pounds of man and dragon combined stopped all at once and Twilight could almost hear the gears in his head rolling into place. He turned around and began to walk towards her once more with an appreciative smile on his face. He reached down and ruffled her mane a tiny bit, making the young unicorn gaze back at him with her chin hanging loose.

"Well played, squire." he said, making her face transition several shades darker, resembling an overripe plum soon enough. "I shall see to it that everything goes as it should."

"Yessir Spike...as you say sir..." Twilight ventured, in a momentary haze, wobbling around. She wasn't sure whether this was merely because of the slightly affectionate gesture, or whether he had forgotten about his strength again and had given her a minor concussion, but whichever it was, it didn't feel too bad!

The unicorn stumbled around for a moment or two, only to narrowly avoid crashing into a pony nearby. The bright-pink earth pony quickly took a step back, eying Twilight with a look that bordered between pity and annoyance. Her magenta mane was kept in a neatly straight line over her forehead, often obscuring whichever eye it flowed closest to.

The bundle of pink raised her head again, her glance shifting to the armored dragon grinning down at her with all the fangs his face could muster. She let out a loud gasp and disappeared in a cloud of dust, much to their surprise.

"That was interesting..." Twilight remarked with a sense of confusion, before turning to her knight again. "Shall we get going then, sir?"

---

"First on the list is Sweet Apple Acres, taking care of the foodstuffs." she read off the makeshift list she'd put together.

There was nothing wrong with her memory, but as Spike had discovered fairly early on, she had a habit bordering on an obsession about keeping notes of just about everything. Most of the times, it came handy though, as he usually didn't let his mind be burdened by any more unneeded information, than what his immediate adventure required.

"That's a lot of apples." Spike remarked with all the perception of a math expert. Nothing escaped his keen eyes, even if few would have lost themselves on such a detail, when there were fields upon fields of trees before them.

"Indeed, sir." she chuckled. From time to time he'd end up stating something as completely obvious as this, but it didn't matter to her. She knew from experience that with enough charisma, even the most known truths could sound knew. Just the other day, her knight had managed to make a pony realize he had no fingers, after 30 years.

A strange noise diverted her attention soon enough though and with that, she spotted their possible goal. A pony with bright orange coat, blonde mane and a rather sizable hat was tending to her duties, which apparently involved kicking trees with her hind hooves, until all the apples dropped into the barrels set up around it. She had to admit, while it did seem like somewhat of a crude method, it was effective, as the massive amount of fruits collected had indicated.

"Ah, a fighting spirit I see?" the knight's eyes flared up with curiosity, much to his squire's dismay.

"Just a farmer. They're spunky, sure, but nowhere near the knightly quality." she remarked, hiding her disapproval behind a light cough as they approached her. Spike has always had a thing for anyone he deemed capable of holding his or her own in situations where others would normally call upon the closest law enforcers right away.

"Howdy there!" the pony called out to them in an obviously bright mood. She had a very distinct speech pattern, which struck Twilight as a reminder just how different the wilderness was, outside Canterlot. "Y'all just excuse me here for a moment?" she added, quickly giving the tree a final strong buck, before it finally relinquished all of its apples.

"I'm Applejack, what can I do ya for?" she skipped over to the two and raised a hoof to shake Twilight's.

The lavender pony blinked for a moment or two, before extending hers as well, only to be just about lifted off her feet as the earth pony literally raised her into the air with the amount of strength her grip possessed. The unicorn tried to break contact, but could do little as as Applejack started shaking her hoof vigorously, up to the point where she had doubts the other actually realized she was a pony herself and not the branch of a tree.

"M-m-my n-n-n-name i-i-is-" she slowly mumbled the words, even as Applejack finally put her down. The world still seemed to quake before her eyes and she found it difficult not to just jump around like a fallen jelly bean.

"Twilight Sparkle, my trusty squire." Spike finished for her, smiling down at their new earth pony acquaintance. "And I am Sir Spike de Draco." he announced, bowing respectfully before Applejack.

The earth pony was almost sure she heard trumpets in the distance as he introduced himself, but however she tried to listen, they didn't return. She guessed she might have just spent too much time under the sun.

"Well, pleasure to meet ya both!" she nodded, lightly chuckling as Twilight finally stabilized herself. "Sorry sugar, sometimes I dun even realize my own strength!" she apologized, before glancing up at the armored knight again. "And how am I to call you? Draco? Sir? De?" she grimaced and spun around for a brief moment, swearing she could hear those trumpets again.

"Spike will be fine." he assured, showing a toothy, or rather fangful grin. "How are the preparations coming along?"

"We're pretty much up 'n done." she said. "I can give ya a sample if you're interested!"

"Apples? Pies? Food? Always am, always will be." he exclaimed, disregarding Twilight's insistence that they should proceed already. The only thing greater than Spike's love for battle, was his love for food. She'd heard many times that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, but in Spike's case an entire harem would have proven too little to produce enough food for his belly.

"You just sit tight then!" Applejack pointed over to a neat little wooden table. "Help yourselves to our brew too, you ain't gonna find a better apple cider anywhere close!" she added.

"Apple cider? As in, the alcoholic kind, right?" Twilight asked, having a particularly bad premonition about the idea.

"Sure is, sugar! It wouldn't be the same without that, now, would it?" the orange pony called, already at work on herding together the family for a meal.

"Eheheh, no kidding." the unicorn laughed rather nervously, seeing as Spike began to eye the bottle of cider with eyes smoldering enough to burn through the bottle. "Sir Spike, should I remind you that we're supposed to be checking things for the Princess? You know I have confidence in your observational abilities, but I don't think alcohol is going to improve them." Alcohol and the young knight never seemed to mix in a way that didn't result in several complaints filed and several heads bashed in.

"You just haven't had enough then." the dragon cackled as he sampled the wonderful drink. "The more you drink, the more the world reveals of itself to you!"

---

"And by the powers invested in me, I deem you foul-smelling dogs null and void!" Spike growled not more than a couple minutes later, smacking his hand on the table, the ponies around him gasping and holding their breaths in anticipation and excitement. Fire burned in his eyes and in his mug, the draic energy inside him having downright ignited the alcohol. He didn't care though, chugging down the bubbling, sizzling cider like it was nothing but spring water.

"Taste my storm of loyalty!" he shouted, raising a foot and striking a glorious pose, the very impact of which sent ripples through the walls of the barn and shattered the old table into a million pieces. Chicken screamed, cows roared and goats shrieked to his mighty words, while some of the ponies downright fainted, unable to bear such a concentrated burst of power all of a sudden.

"And that is how the Diamond Dog Rebellion ended." he concluded his tale and grabbed a large leftover piece of wood from the unfortunate once-furniture, picking that last bit of apple pie out from between his teeth. "They put up a fair fight, but in the end could do little against us. Drove them mangy mutts off the lands for years!" he chuckled, tossing the wood aside, nearly impaling a pony against the wall.

"And I threw him the sword, you know...the sharp, shiny, pointy thing." Twilight giggled, falling back against a large roll of hay in a drunken haze, muttering stuff to no one in particular. Her mind has dulled quite a bit since the first minor gulp of cider.

"You 'kay?" she heard someone call nearby and as she raised her head for just a moment, noticed a large colt next to her, watching her with a string of hay in his mouth. She squinted her eyes, trying to recall his name.

"Yes, thank you Big..uh...Apple?"

"Nope." the pony remarked in a highly drawn-out manner. "Macintosh. I thought you said you can hold yer liquor, little miss." he added with a hint of amusement, seeing how she might have been just a tiniest bit drunk like all hell let loose.

"I can hold it!" she held a hoof up in protest. "But I can't stand it." she groaned in an exaggerated manner, waiting for the world to stop spinning and swirling and rumbling and turning. "How are you so much better at it? I've seen you ch-chu-chi-drink with Sir Spike no problem and you don't look drunk at all!"

"That is an expected biological reaction actually." he remarked, rolling the hay into the other corner of his mouth. "You see, the consumption of ethanol in general dulls certain receptors inside you and that may or may no result in intoxication. It has long been hypothesized and observed though, that a larger body mass may actually lessen its effect, thus preserving your central nervous system in near-pristine condition."

"Yo Big Mac!" one of his family members called, still cackling from the conclusion of the the tale Spike only dared referring to as 'The Foal and the Princess'. It had been rather amusing to hear just how angry Celestia could get. Luckily they were drunk enough not to understand the full implications behind the punishment she'd handed out, which was amusing only at first glance. "Your turn to arm-wrestle our new dragon pal 'ere! Up for the challenge?"

"Eeeyup!" the red colt nodded and galloped over right away, leaving behind a certain unicorn, who was at this point baffled beyond words.

Some of Big Mac's words had flown completely over her head, but the rest of them sounded deeply scientific, far more in-depth than she had ever heard during her brief skirts with biology books. There was no way, no earthly and conceivable possibility that an earth pony with a huge friggin' apple as a cutie mark could have been this smart and still be working here, rather than in Canterlot's laboratories. It was the cider, it had to have been. She eyed the mug next to her, first cautiously, then as her brain seemed to hurt even more from the repeated reruns of Big Macintosh's words, appreciatively.

"There is no riddle enough alcohol cannot solve." she recited one of Princess Celestia's most known proverb and immediately indulged in some more brain-work right away. She could hear Sir Spike screaming about smiting something, but as that was a rather common occurrence, she hadn't taken any further note of it.

---

"Whoa, at ease there, squire." Spike slowed down as the pony slowly stirred to life, tumbling on top of his shoulder, broad enough for her to lie on it in a straight line without even the slightest chance of falling, or discomfort. How that happened, she could not even begin to explain, but then again, a mild hangover never helped her thought processes. "I think you've had one too many mugfuls of the good stuff."

"I feel sick." she whimpered, though she was doing relatively better than she had been while drunk. Still, the slight throbbing in her head made her put off magic practice for the rest of the day.

"I know just the remedy for that!" her knight held his laughter in, making his shoulder ripple a bit as well, providing her with a comfy little cradling that felt especially good right now. "Soured alfalfa soup!"

"Don't you even dare!" she groaned in protest, much to the dragon's amusement. "I'm...sorry if I have made a scene, Sir Spike. As your squire, I should be making sure you make a good impression at all times." she sighed, feeling embarrassed.

"Relax, I had done my fair share of stupid as well." he began to laugh harder this time, the rattling of his body nearly throwing her off this time around. "Hardly anything can compare to me attempting to smite Granny Smith for being a witch. For an old lady, she has far too good aim with that chair of hers. Her cutie mark seemed familiar as well and if I'm right, she used to be in Celestia's elite guard."

"Wow, I really didn't expect that." Twilight blinked in surprise. On the other hand, she suddenly recalled seeing the old Apple Family grandmother being pretty inconsistent about the effects of her age. She could hardly move sometimes, only to then drink everypony under the table. "Well, at least everything turned out nicely, right?" she chuckled as well.

"No kidding. Though I'm fairly sure 'I'm the Queen of Magic, b*tches!' will be the new catchphrase of Sweet Apple Acres for the next few months." the draconic knight remarked with a huge grin, glancing up to see Twilight's face sink straight into deep violet once again.

"Rainbow Dash. Our next target is Rainbow Dash. And I'm never going to drink again." she quickly muttered, only to pause as she felt her knight tense up all of a sudden.

Spike looked up in silence as if he had seen something in the distance. Twilight watched in silent trepidation as he sniffed into the air several times as well, his gaze becoming sharper with every second. It was happening again, he was focusing on something, attuning himself to the air and winds like only a dragon could. He could not fly as of yet, but still held a great amount of sensory from just being of the species.

In the flash of a second, he thrust his hand out, falling into a defensive stance. His squire barely had time to register what had happened, when something cyan suddenly exploded into her knight's hand, sending the robust dragon several feet back. His feet never left the ground however and instead left a huge dent in the grass and someone's outdoor garden. The surviving tomatoes cried bitter tears for their fallen comrades.

"STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!" he called out as the object finally lost all of its speed, becoming limp in his hand. He quickly caught whatever had tried to assault them and raised it to eye-level, only to find himself face-to-face with a pegasus pony of all things, sporting the most unusual of rainbow manes.

"That was AWESOME! Where did you learn that?" she asked excitedly, her wings flapping without stop, even though she wasn't going anywhere now.

"Dragon Reflexes." he dropped the stern look and let go of her, only for the pony to casually slump onto his other shoulder, balancing out what little weight Twilight had put on him. "You'd better not to sneak up on people like that though." he advised.

"I wasn't really sneaking you know!" she argued, jumping off his shoulder and into the air once more. "I was just practicing a little aerial stunt. I call it the Rainbow Corkscrew! Seems like it's more of a screw-up, so far." she mused, making Spike's squire grown from the most horrible of puns.

"You wouldn't be Rainbow Dash by any chance, would you?" the mighty dragon asked, raising a hand to point at her. The motion unfortunately cause Twilight to be stuck between his neck and his shoulderpad, a deadly trap that threatened to suffocate her in less than a minute.

"That would be me alright! Rainbow Dash of Cloudsdale, Future Wonderbolt at your service!" she proudly announced, before pulling Twilight out of the dragon's death-trap the sudden pull making her land on the ground dug up by Spike's clawed feet.

"...thank you..." the unicorn grumbled, her coat now gaining a very stylish earthy tone.

"Wonderbolt, eh?" he tasted the name for a moment, before recalling it fully. "I've fought with Wonderbolts before, truly expert aerial combatants. Nothing escapes their eyes and nothing can hope to outrun them, either."

"You know them personally?" the cyan pegasus' asked in a fit of pure excitement. "Oh please tell me you know them, I would love to meet them one day! I could show them all my techniques and stuff!"

"I don't think they'd be impressed though." Spike continued with a slight smirk, not flinching even as the pony's look darkened. Thunder and lighting exploded ominously above them, as a whole storm seemed to brew out of nowhere. Seemed like ticking off this one wasn't exactly the best course of action, but Twilight trusted Sir Spike to handle it efficiently. "Not in the least bit, actually."

Then again...

"Say that to my face, I dare you!" Dash downright growled at him by now, pulling herself to his face by grabbing his cape, as she couldn't even hope to move as much muscle as there came with the dragon. "Why do you think they wouldn't be impressed, huh?"

"Because they won't be able to see anything from all these clouds." the knight remarked without missing a beat, pointing upwards. Sure enough, a thick layer of clouds now covered Ponyville's air, spurred especially by Rainbow's failed maneuver and her fiery, or rather, thunderous temper.

"Oh...that. I'll get that done in 10 seconds flat." she chuckled nervously, all her anger dissipating right away.

She let go of the knight's cape and flew upwards, quickly ridding the sky of the obtrusive clouds. Although usually he was indeed the trustful kind, Spike couldn't resist in slowly counting down, only to have her land just as he got to zero. He had taken a liking to her already, her spirit reminding himself of a less strategic and more impulsive...well...himself.

"There. And sorry for yelling at you." she mused, much more calm now.

"It's alright, I know plenty of people who get just as defensive about their ambitions, as you have." the dragon waved slightly, not having any issue with the pegasus at all. Minor conflicts happened all the time and while on most occasions he solved it by roasting the problem, this solution was much less difficult to explain.

"...then why did you have to upset her?" Twilight downright growled at him, rather annoyed. While the minor rainfall was good to wipe the much off her, the winds that followed were less than welcome. She had the look of a beggar, at best. "A challenge is one thing, why go provoking it?"

"Challenge?" Rainbow asked back, rubbing the back of her head. She and Spike gazed at each other for a moment, before both of them exploded into laughter. "Nah, we wouldn't have fought! It was just a game, sorta."

"...a game? THAT was a game? I-I need to lie down some more...my head..." she groaned, rubbing her forehead with her hoof. Logic didn't like to follow Sir Spike's footsteps, however much she tried to change that. Her knight gently put her back into his shoulder, letting the unicorn rest off the rest of her hangover.

"I think you can get that trick of yours to work too, you just need a starting boost!" he spoke up again, turning back to Rainbow Dash. Her face lit up to the idea, just as he had expected it.

"Really? It's worth a try, I guess." she mused, hopping onto his hands as he lowered them slightly. She gazed straight up and prepared herself, smirking already. If this wouldn't get her into the Wonderbolts' ranks soon enough, nothing would. "Ready for liftoff!"

The dragon smiled and counted down slowly, preparing Rainbow Dash for what she initially thought to be a very mild boost. Finally, upon reaching zero, he quickly raised his arms, catapulting the screaming pegasus high into the air. She flew faster than anything he had seen before, actually making him reconsider having put this much strength into it.

"Not a day here and you've already sent a pony into orbit." Twilight remarked sardonically on top of his shoulder. "Didn't Celestia tell you to stop doing that?"

The question hung in the air and a minute or two had to pass before she finally saw a rainbow line forming in the sky, created by the flight and speed of the pegasus they had just met. Spike looked up again as well, grinning as Rainbow perfectly executed that corkscrew this time around, a double even for good measure. After another couple of aerial tricks, she finally descended down to them. The pony seemed out of breath and on the border of freezing to death, but very satisfied of herself nonetheless.

"You w-w-wouldn't guess what I s-s-saw!" she exclaimed, her teeth chattering wildly. "I was so h-h-h-high I could see the M-moon! And you know the we-weirdest thing? I think there was a p-p-pony on it, waving at me..."

Comments

[thewaffler]

That was the most epic thing ever, the title alone got you you 4 stars and the story itself bumped it up to a full 5. This is like the best "Else Worlds" version of Equestia.
Seriously, this had testosterone levels of over 9000!!!! Spike was like a cross between Conan the Barbarian, Chuck Norris and Ash from Army of Darkness. He stuffs and mounts his enemies and he mounts and stuffs his lovers. I look forward to reading more of this re-imagining of the FIM story.

Peace out.

[Fasaloft]

I agree with the above comment, this is amazing. Really loving the idea and general way this story is going. I can even picture each of the characters as you've laid them out and it just makes it so enjoyable to read.

[Fasaloft]

I agree with the above comment, this is amazing. Really loving the idea and general way this story is going. I can even picture each of the characters as you've laid them out and it just makes it so enjoyable to read.

[Meta Knight]

fantastic

Sometimes you just gotta tell "Friendship" to go fuck itself and use your fists of justice to ram love and tolerance up the ass of the opposition and deliver a swift kick to the face of evil. Congratulations Spike you're the new Bruce Campbell.