The Rocks And Water

by KingReptarAlmighty

Ch. 13: Pumice

Twilight was taking longer than expected.

It wasn’t a bad thing per say, but it did put a damper on Spike’s plans to bring Thorax on their first date today, and given the play was tomorrow, he’d prefer to not say they were dating for three whole days before they’d even had a date.

Which was why he didn’t say anything.

He was lucky, in some way, for his prior acceptance of Thorax’s physically affectionate nature, because it warded away questions pretty easily. A hug from Thorax as coltfriends was no different from one as just friends, all things considered, so the two of them could get away with saying nothing at all about their new relationship status. The group ate and talked, and looked through the mountains upon mountains of paperwork Shining Armor and Cadance had to deal with to authorize the building of a new crystal park, all the while Spike ran through every location he could think of that would be suitable for a first date, and he did mean EVERY location.

He could teleport now, after all.

A loud thud rang through the dining hall as Shining Armor groaned, slamming his head into the table.

“If I see one more ‘Sign Here’ location, I’m gonna lose it.”

Cadance chuckled, kindly patting his head. “Well you’re in luck. The next page is all initials.” He groaned even louder, and her chuckle turned into full on laughter. “I don’t know what you were expecting, a park is a lot of paperwork. Management, gardening, roads, there’s a lot of work that goes into one of these.”

“I expected less than fifty signatures.” Shining Armor said dryly. “Also, do both of us really need to sign it? You’re the acting ruler, can’t you overrule the need for my signature or something?” He sounded desperate, but Cadance just shook her head jovially, still signing away.

“Nope. The moment I was able to, I rewrote that law. As long as we’re married, we have equal political influence. Sorry love.”

“You know, this might be the one time your kindness has inconvenienced me.” He smiled, and picked his head off the table, once more levitating his quill.

“Sorry I’m late!” The declaration was accompanied by the dining room’s doors being thrown open, and in ran Twilight Sparkle, trailed by a familiar spirit of chaos, and an unknown Diamond Dog, carrying what looked like a large cyan tile on his back. Shining Armor breathed a near imperceptible sigh of relief, either from knowing Twilight was safe, or that he was given a suitable distraction from the still very substantial pile of paperwork, he practically flew out of his chair to greet her. She gave him a hug, which he gratefully accepted. “I had an idea, so I had to double back mid flight, and then there was the storm spirits-”

“Anemoi.” Discord corrected.

“Right, Anemoi, but regardless, I’m here, and I brought someone who might be able to help Spike get a feel for a certain aspect of his powers.”

“It’s a possibility that I’d communicated,” Discord said, “That Spike might be able to offer something in the way of manipulating genetics. Be it simple appearance or something as complicated as species. Twilight wanted to make an experiment out of it.” Spike grimaced slightly, getting up to meet the two as well.

“That’s nice Twilight, but I really don’t know if I’m comfortable testing on someone with, y’know, a conscience.” He kicked at the ground, a slight nervous tick that he’d developed at some point that he’d never really broken out of. “It feels kind of… wrong. Also like it could very easily go wrong.”

Discord snaked his way around Spike, flicking him in the snout. “Oh, don’t be like that now, Spike. What’s something a teacher would say? The difference between a master and a student is the number of failures. A master has failed more times than a student has tried.” Spike didn’t exactly look convinced. As a matter of fact, he still looked somewhere in between confusion and mortal terror. Realizing this, Discord straightened out, and in a more serious tone, he said, with as much encouragement as he could muster, ”Look, should anything go wrong, I am here to help you undo it. You need not worry so severely, it will hinder you more than it will help you. Caution is useful, apprehension is not.”

“...For someone who says they’ve never done this before, you’re surprisingly good at it.” Spike said, simply. He sighed, stretching his fingers. “Alright, I’ll give it a shot.” Discord nodded sagely, though his enjoyment of the slight praise didn’t go unnoticed. Twilight pulled the Diamond Dog forward, and he gave a slight wave, he announced himself.

“Uh, hi. I’m Pumice. Well, my situation is a bit complicated.” He undid the ropes holding the tile to his back, and it was only then that Spike noted the unique shape. Either this was a very oddly cut, oddly colored tile, or this was a very large dragon scale. “See, my dad is a diamond dog, but my mother is, well, a dragon. Obviously that didn’t work out in terms of having kids, so my dad got someone to have me, and well, you can guess how that goes.” He hefted the scale, which Spike now knew was Pumice’s mother’s, and offered it to Spike. “She doesn’t say anything about it, but I think it’s been bothering her a bit more recently. She asked my dad about searching for abandoned eggs, and she asked me a couple weird questions about what I thought about her as my mom. Do you think you could… I don’t know, make me half-dragon with her scale or something? I also grabbed a bit of my dad’s hair if that’ll help.”

Spike didn’t say anything for a couple of moments, but the look of mortal terror had returned. He slowly turned to look at Discord, and he said, with a trembling voice, “Does this really seem like experiment one material?”

“Well, it might be better for you to make an attempt at something big first. Remember what I said, I’m here to help guide you.” Discord pat Spike on the shoulder, and gestured for Spike to take the scale.

Spike grabbed hold of the scale, and he stared at it for a moment before looking back at Pumice. “This might take a minute.”

“That’s fine, I can wait.”

“Good, just making sure.”

“You’re stalling.” Discord interjected.

“Well,” Spike started. “Not yet. That was just a disclaimer.”

“Okay, well, obviously you need a starting point, so think about it like this. Genetics are stupid, and very tricky, and sometimes it’s harder to modify what’s already made than to start from scratch.” Discord turned to Pumice. “The tuft of your father’s hair, if you please.”

“Sure.” From the gem filled pocket on his vest, he procured a small bit of hair, bound by a piece of twine. Discord floated over and took it from the Diamond Dog’s paw, returning to Spike, and holding it up next to the scale for Spike to see.

“Now,” Discord flicked his finger between the tuft of hair and the scale. “You’ll notice two things, if you look with the right eyes. The first, is that the magical energy of these two things are not in sync, because Diamond Dogs and Dragons are two very different creatures. But, Pumice is much more similar to the fur. What you need to do is align him closer to the scale while still keeping his alignment to the fur.”

“You say that like I understand any of it…” Still, Spike could see some of what he was saying. It was like thin, wispy smoke flowing off of virtually everything, but if he really focused he could specifically see Pumice’s, the scale’s and the tuft of fur’s. The more he looked, the more detailed it became, and he could see a few simple indicators of the differences, from differences in the pattern of the swirls, to the color of the smoke changing on set intervals.

Pumice and the fur had an earthy, warm grey tone, and rather than floating high into the air, the smoke concentrated like fog around the two, flowing closely to them and sticking wherever it connected. On the other hand, the aura on the scale seemed hyperactive, a vibrant orange that shot out and flared in random directions, barely connected to the scale at all in some points.

So, he needed something in between.

He focused on Pumice, and tried to bend the aura in the ways he needed it. It needed to float a bit more, and it needed to be a bit more orange. If he took the magic from the hair and scale it would probably fill in the gaps, so that should do the trick. Spike swallowed hard, and opened his eyes.

“Do you have the idea?” Discord asked gently.

“I think so.” Discord handed him the tuft of hair, and holding both with his offhand, Spike raised his bleached hand.

He snapped, and the world fell apart.

Author's Note:

My fifteen chapter estimate was a little off. Probably closer to sixteen or seventeen. In any case, I realized that I hadn't included much description of Pumice, so the best dog reference I can provide is an American Foxhound. I'll probably draw him and his new form, so if you want to see that, let me know.

Comments

[yonalkaru]

i wonder what will come out?

[The Sandwich Guardian]

I need more. This story has been very good so far. I see this going great in the future.