Twilight's Got a Date!

by Gayle Softfeather

The Next Set

“Hey Spike!” A familiar voice called as he ran through town.

“Oh, hey Rainbow Dash. Have you seen Twilight anywhere?” Spike asked, running in place.

“Yep! I’m helping her distribute these fliers for a versus wrestling match between Discord and Maud!” She said, holding one out.

“Oh boy…” Spike said, slapping his forehead again. “Look, I think there’s been a massive misunderstanding. Twilight thinks Discord is going to try to destroy the town again, so she’s trying to beat him before he does.”

“Ok, what’s the problem?” Rainbow Dash asked slowly, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

“She’s gone all paranoid again. Like… really paranoid. I’m not sure why she thinks Discord’s up to something. Well, aside from not sleeping for three days.”

“Could Discord have… I don’t know? Made her paranoid?”

“Discord making someone paranoid about Discord being up to something? Why would he do that?”

“Well, it’s something I’d do if I was bored.”

“So, Discord is up to something by making someone paranoid about him up to something? Is that something he would do though? Usually it’s something a little more direct, like inviting a slime monster to a party or something.”

“Ugh… My brain hurts and something doesn’t sound like a word anymore. Why don’t we just ask him? You know where he is?”

“I think he’s been hanging out with those research students Twilight invited from Canterlot.”

“Those eggheads? Why would Discord be spending time with them?”

***

“Hello Spike! Ms. Dash.” Discord said warmly from behind a desk, where he was frantically scribbling on a piece of paper.

“Discord… why isn’t it raining chocolate milk around here?” Rainbow Dash looked around the room. Slightly faded gray painted walls, normal office furniture, large windows to take advantage of light, boring ponies doing boring things on boring blackboards. Rainbow Dash tried not to look at the blackboards, though. She couldn’t see a single number on it. Discord himself matched the boring office look pretty well, glasses, button up shirt “Don’t you… I don’t know… die if you aren’t around enough chaos?”

Discord chuckled. “Oh, but I am creating chaos. Look!” He held up the sheet he was working on. It was covered in neat rows of 0s and 1s.

Rainbow Dash stared at the paper. She twisted her head from side to side, staring at the tiny digits. “How is that chaos?” She finally asked.

“How it is -? This is perfect chaos!” Discord look affronted for a moment, then relented. “Look, chocolate milk rain clouds are fun, and so is getting rid of gravity, but those aren’t actually that chaotic. When I make chocolate milk rain clouds, I still need a society who can understand chocolate milk, and why having it fall from the sky would be bad. Some tribepony would just enjoy it as a sugary treat. It only works when there’s enough order for it to be weird. And getting rid of gravity everywhere will end anything interesting in about 8 minutes. That’s just cruel. And rocks going in straight lines gets boring after a couple hundred thousand years.”

“So, what’s this?” Rainbow Dash poked the sheet.

“Well, guess the first digit.”

“0”

“Lucky guess, what’s the next one?”

“1”

“And the next?”

“1”

“... the next?”

“1”

“… the-”

“111010111000010”

Discord looked half annoyed, half impressed. “Well, it is supposed to be pure randomness, since each digit gives no information about any of the others in the sequence, but I guess you have the makings of a minor deity of chaos. If you want to begin instruction in how undermine the fabric of reality, give me a call.”

“And work with these eggheads? No thanks.” Rainbow Dash said, looking at said ponies clustered around one of the blackboards.

“Hey!” One of them shouted, and Rainbow Dash blew a raspberry.

Spike picked up the paper and looked it over. “So, what you’re saying is this is pure chaos, because you can’t understand what’s going to happen from what happened?”

“Just about. So, what did you need me for? Another player in your O&O session? I can’t wait for the Zebra Pony war.”

“Hey, Celestia and the Caesar are trying very hard to avoid it!” Spike said. He still wasn’t 100 percent sure how to deal with a fight between that many players. The rolling alone would take hours.

Discord laughed. “You’re talking to the king of chaos! That outcome’s not hard to predict.”

“You’re probably right.” Spike said, sighing. “Well, good to hear that you’re enjoying yourself. I’m going to get Rainbow Dash out of here before she starts a fight.” And none too soon. It looked like the eggheads were trying to merge into a mecha-egghead to fight the unbeliever.

“Bring it on!” Dash said, standing on her hind hooves and shadowboxing.

***

After being kicked out of the building, and the little stars disappeared, Spike and Rainbow Dash put their heads together.

“I don’t think Discord is planning anything.” Spike said.

“Not with those eggheads around.” Rainbow Dash agreed grumpily. “They’d stop anything that threatens their precious equations.”

“Ok, you take those fliers back down, and I’ll try to find Twilight.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

And the two dashed off.

***

Eventually, Spike gave up looking for Twilight and headed back to the castle. It was twilight, the sun slowly sinking behind the mountains, creating a spectacular panorama of nature, farms, and town. The gradual shift as the world turned dark and fireflies started lighting up the air, combined with ponies lighting candles, meant that the burnt orange of the sky was met with a broad scattering of lights over the rolling hills of Ponyville, highlighting the Equestrian ideal of pony working hand in hand with nature, creating bounty for both.

But Spike was completely jaded to the view, and only had eyes for his bed.

He yawned, opened the front door and immediately slammed into a giant bag of flour.

“Wha-?” He muttered, rubbing his forehead. The entire entrance was filled to the ceiling with bags, except for a barely pony sized tunnel left between two of the pony sized sacks.

Pulling out his miner’s helmet, thankful that he forgot to leave it behind when he dropped off the gems, Spike carefully started picking his way through, aided by the mesh covered flame.

“Twilight!” Spike called out every so often. It was obvious that Twilight had built the tunnels. Only she would leave a packet of several hundred Traveling Salespony solutions at every intersection for various common tasks throughout the castle.

Spike wasn’t exactly sure where Twilight was, but considering that apparently the entire castle was filled with flour, it was a pretty sure bet that she wasn’t, and hadn’t been, in her bedroom for a few days.

Library was probably out; the last time flour had gotten near the library mice, the Festival of Ten Million Feasts had covered every book in a nearly impossible to remove layer.

Kitchen? Well, Spike was hungry anyway, and as good a place to start as any. Spike shrugged and continued walking through the tunnels.

“Twilight? Hey Twilight!” Spike shouted as he broke through a cave-in and found himself blinking in the well lit kitchen. It looked like Twilight had been planning on baking a cake, but had gotten distracted.

When a unicorn gets distracted while doing something, their telekinesis cuts out. When their telekinesis cuts out, stuff falls. The more powerful the unicorn, the more stuff usually falls. Alicorns are really powerful. The kitchen looked like a bomb went off. There were broken eggs scattered everywhere, oil slicks on the floor, preheating ovens, piles of sugar, flour, baking soda, a fine mist of the same, and cooking implements littered everywhere.

In the middle of everything Twilight was staring at a wall, swaying gently. Spike ran over to her, trying not to slip.

“Twilight?”

“Discord’s nurble pipsqueak next Yucca?” Twilight said after a moment, her eyes unfocused and bloodshot.

“Oh boy… this is a bad one.” It wasn’t exactly unheard of for the Princess of Friendship to go on unhealthy caffeine fueled binges tracking down an interesting fact or spell mentioned inside a book, but normally she collapsed from exhaustion before reaching the “unable to communicate” stage of sleep deprivation. “Twilight? Hey, Twilight!”

The glassy eyed stare remained, maybe a little twitch in her eye, as Spike started filling up a bucket.

“SPIKE!” Twilight shouted, dripping and trying to shake out her mane.

“Twilight… remember what we were talking about?” Spike said calmly, putting the bucket back in its assigned place. “You might be functionally immortal, but you also need to take care of yourself.”

Twilight’s eyes widened and a look of absolute terror slowly spread over her face.

“Yeah, I’m serious. You are-”

“Is that a naked flame? AROUND THIS MUCH FLOUR?!” She screamed, ripping the mining helmet, with its alcohol fueled light, off Spike’s head. “FLOUR EXPLODES!” She threw the helmet to the ground and levitated the granite slab that acted as a counter over it, then surrounded them with a force field.

When Twilight brought the slab down on the helmet, four things happened really quickly.

First, the thin steel mesh cover, which prevented the flame from lighting explosive gases on fire, was breached.
Second, the alcohol reservoir burst, spraying nearly aerosolized alcohol into the room, right next to the flame.

Third, that spray caught fire, lighting the flour in the air.
Fourth, the room exploded.

A bright flash, the smell of baked bread, and a loud boom rang out over the countryside, accompanied by irritated ponies looking up for a second, then going back to bed.

Back at the castle, after his head stopped shaking from the noise, Spike reconsidered his earlier comparison. What Twilight had wrought was in no way similar to an explosion. Now the room was utterly destroyed. The walls were streaked with burn marks, the neatly organized cabinets were utterly shredded, and the piles on the ground were rubble, not carelessly tossed ingredients.

Fortunately, most of the castle had been sheltered from the blast by the massive bags of flour, which had not exploded, somehow.

Twilight looked around with satisfaction. “See, that was a major fire hazard!” She pointed to the crushed helmet.

“Aww, that was a gift from Pinkie Pie.” Spike muttered. “Wait, why didn’t the rest of the flour explode?”

“Oh, Spike, that’s easy. It’s because…” Twilight trailed off and started staring at the same wall. Spike admitted that it was a little more interesting, given the new streaking pattern from the blast.

“Focus Twilight.” Spike said, snapping his claws in front of her face. Well, clicking. Not enough friction to actually do a snap, but the effect was the same.

Twilight shook her head. “Erm… on what?” She asked after looking around wildly.

“Well, for starters, why did you buy all this flour?!” Spike demanded, waving his arms around wildly.

“Oh, erm… something about yaks? Umm… it’s on the tip of my tongue.” Twilight started tapping her hoof against her muzzle, then looked down and started running her hoof through the rubble. Then her eyes glazed over and she started staring at the ground.

Spike slapped his face and sighed. “We’re going to get nowhere fast are we?” He asked, rhetorically. He was half tempted to send her to Celestia and make it her problem, but he was pretty confident that dragon fire still burnt. No, he had to do it the hard way.

Since he couldn’t exactly lead the comatose Twilight through the flour tunnels, he decided to try a bit more direct method.

“Wings don’t fail me now.” He muttered as he started stretching, more to delay going through with it than anything else. “Ok, you got it, Spike. You’re looking good, you’re lean, mean, and... keen?” Spike trailed off, then sighed.

“Twilight, I hope you’re not as heavy as you look.” He said to the semi-comatose pony.

For the first time all night, she focused on him entirely. And her horn started glowing.

“Oh dear…” Spike muttered, edging towards the window.

***

Rainbow Dash awoke to see Spike buzzing along as fast as his wings could go, while Twilight darted after him firing lasers out of her horn.

Dash rubbed her eyes, tried to remember how much cider she had last night, then jumped as a missed blast nearly gave her a new haircut.

“What the hay, Twilight?!” Rainbow shouted, flying after the delusional princess.

“Spike thingy lying… ARGH!” Twilight screamed, firing another blast.

Rainbow Dash tried to parse that for a few seconds, shook her head, and easily overtook the desperate but slow dragon.

“So… what’s up with Twilight?”

“Twilight…. hasn’t… slept… in… three… days!” The slightly addicted to gems dragon panted out, as the two dodged laser blasts.

Rainbow Dash rubbed her muzzle for a second, then nodded. “Alright, one alicorn sleep potion coming up!” She flew off, rapidly disappearing from view inside a cloud bank.

Spike turned his head in confusion, breaking his aerodynamic form, and sending him into a tailspin. He started screaming as he plummeted towards the ground. He fell through the cloud cover, disappearing from view.

Twilight shouted in victory and aimed another blast, preparing to follow. She dove towards the clouds, when a flash of movement caught her attention. She turned her head, breaking her form and causing her to start to spin. Rainbow Dash chose that moment to strike.

Flying up underneath Twilight, she grabbed the pony and went with the spin, torquing Twilight with all the force the trained athlete could muster, flinging her right for the clouds. For a normal unicorn, it wouldn’t really matter, assuming they were one of the most gifted unicorns of their generation. Once they got over the screaming from plummeting several thousand meters, they could teleport to a safe location. The spinning wouldn’t even be that distracting.

Twilight wasn’t an average unicorn, despite being one of the most gifted magic users. She hit that cloud like it was a concrete wall, complete with cracks in the cloud and a slight dent. Rainbow Dash let go and checked the suplexed alicorn to make sure she wasn’t dead. Steady pulse, unconsciousness. All good.

Spike buzzed up a minute later, still out of breath.

“Did… you… what… the… TWILIGHT!” He finally gasped out.

“Yep, I call it my Appleloosan Suplex, been working on it for a while. All you do is build a structural cloud a few seconds before slamming them right into it.” She imitated the process, boasting the entire while. “And BAM! Instant knock out anywhere in the skies.”

“Twilight are you ok? Talk to me!” Spike said, worried.

“Umm… Hello! I’m over here explaining things!” Rainbow Dash said, folding her hooves.

“We need to get her to a hospital. This looks bad.”

“She’s fine.” Dash said. “It’s a cloud. How much damage could it to? Well, aside from that accident with the Sky Tower. And the Maelstrom Cloud Tornado. And… umm...”

Spike ignored the increasingly worried pony, and pulled Twilight out of the cloud, and hurriedly dove towards Ponyville General, where the Mane Six had a room permanently reserved, mostly for Dash. He’d made it maybe 100 meters when said pony caught up and started pushing them from behind.

“FASTER DASH!” Spike yelled, pumping his puny wings as fast as they would go. Dash redoubled her efforts and they sped through the air, approaching Sonic Rainboom speeds. Her eyes closed with the effort, she depended on Spike to tell her when to slow down.

“AHHH!” Spike screamed as he realized he had absolutely no idea where the ground was at night. Oh. There it was.

“Nurse…” groaned Doctor Horse, looking up from his papers at the crash. “I think we have a few patients at the door.”

***

“… and then I found all the flour in Equestria in Twilight’s Castle!” A bouncing voice said, as Spike gradually emerged from semi-consciousness. He opened his eyes and squinted against the sunlight.

Pretty standard larger hospital room, 7 beds, some personalized touches above the assigned ones. Spike was currently resting in what he thought of as the plus 1. As usual. Crowded in the center was Pinkie Pie, bouncing up and down excitedly, talking with a nurse.

“Erm... what?” Spike burbled, not sure if he was confused from a bump to the head, painkillers, or Pinkie’s standard anti-logic field. He looked himself over, no casts, so nothing broken, a few bandages where… things… had cut through his scales, and a few burns on his back. He looked up and nearly added stopped heart to the triage list as Pinkie Pie appeared in front of him.

“Oh, HI SPIKE!” She grinned, perched on his bed. A moment later, the springs realized that she was there, and compressed.

“Hi Pinkie. How’s the erm… Yak war?” Spike wanted to slap his forehead. How’s the Yak war. Great question, genius.

“It’s fine and dandy now that I’ve got the LARGEST CAKE EVER!” Pinkie reared on her hindlegs and spread her forehooves to emphasize what she meant by largest cake ever.

“What?”

“Oh, the Yaks wanted to declare war and smash everything in Equestria, but they need to bake their war declaration microcupcake, which means they need a specific form of flour only found near Ponyville, which mysteriously disappeared from the Yak war planning vault last night. Incidentally, I had some delicious wagon wheel sized pancakes as a midnight snack. So, I offered to go to Ponyville to pick some up and bring it back, because that’s what friends are for. Accidentally declaring war and then baking a microcupcake to formalize it. So, I hopped on a train all the way back here, but I met Cadence on the way, and she hates trains because they don’t have private booths and she couldn’t concentrate enough to actually teleport and Celestia banned private railcars for royalty after Blueblood’s… thing a few years back, so I chatted with Cadence who said that Twilight was trying to fix the whole war situation, but she didn’t know that the way to apologize for the war ceremony and change it to an alliance ceremony is to build a cake larger than the greatest dreams of any yak and return it before the ceremonial ice eater can finish eating an ice sculptor of the ambassador who made the declaration in the first place. Then the Yaks will bake their microcupcake, respectfully give it to the ruler in question, and smash everything!”

Pinkie Pie was turning blue, and took a breath.

“So I came here and I saw a lightshow, but it wasn’t actually a lightshow, it was Twilight trying to shoot lasers at someone, and I really need to ask her to do that at my next party, but that stopped, so I dashed to the castle to find you, but I found the most flour I’ve ever seen ever! So, I got Maud to help me carry it to that valley on the Apple’s farm, since there was way too much water coming out of that spring, and the Apple/Pie family turned the valley into giant mixing bowl, which we filled with… well, let’s just say that this party is going to be the last with cake for a while… within about half of Equestria. Discord helped by making it rain chocolate milk again, and this weird fork was really good at boiling water when we shoved it in the ground, so now we have the largest cake EVER! Though it is a taaaad unevenly cooked. And the Yaks are traveling here to celebrate!”

Spike’s head spun for a while, but he pulled out his notebook and made a check. “Yak/pony war adverted.” He muttered to himself. “Just the venomous reptiles, left.”

“Did someone say venomous reptiles?” A soft voice asked, peaking over Spike’s bed.

“Oh, hi Fluttershy, didn’t notice you there.”

“I’m used to it.” Fluttershy admitted. Spike felt like someone just shoved an icicle into his chest, but he continued.

“Well… Twilight was worried about the venomous reptiles around here. Is there a problem?”

“Well, Stanley has been getting older, and he’s finding it hard to slither as well as he used to. I’m trying to get him to move in with a friend over in Appleloosa, since that’s closer to his native habitat, but he says he prefers the grasses here. Sarah’s recovering well, and all her eggs are safe. Nothing that different with Sam, still trying to be the first snake piano player -”

“Sorry, Fluttershy, but Twilight was worried about them biting.”

“Oh. Oh, no the reptiles around here are such dears. The last time one of them bit someone was when Sophie accidentally bit her tongue a few years ago.”

Spike nodded and made another check mark. “Thank you so much Fluttershy.”

“It was my pleasure.” And with that the shy pony disappeared. Or at least stopped registering to anypony around her. Even her sigh went unnoticed.

Spike put the list safely away inside his bedside cabinet’s drawer, and snuggled into the blankets, easily falling back asleep.

***

“SPONTANEOUS BALDNESS!” Twilight screamed, jolting Spike from a nice dream about Ember, some comics, and a pile of gems.

The Princess was looking at herself in horror, as a patch of fur, about the size of a cup, was missing from her coat.

“Princess Twilight, we’ve talked about this before. It’s not spontaneous. It’s stress induced.” One of the nurses said, softly.

“I’M ALWAYS STRESSED. THERE ISN’T A DIFFERENCE FOR ME!”

“Well, is there anything that might have made it worse than normal?”

Twilight slumped onto the bed. “I don’t think so...”

Spike coughed. “What about staying up for three days?”

“Well, that’s not too unusual when I get focused on a topic...”

“And trying to single-handedly excavate the Las Pegasus desert?”

“Well...”

“And redirecting the Ponyville water table? And stopping Discord? And stopping a war with the Yaks? All without asking for help?”

“Well, I asked for help from Fluttershy for Discord, and Candace was going to help me with the Yaks...”

“What did Fluttershy say?”

“Umm… that he was reformed and wasn’t planning anything...”

“So, what did you do?”

“… tried to set up an underground cage match between Maud and Discord.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I can’t remember. After I set up the cage, it sort of went blank.”

“Does buying all the flour in a hundred kilometer radius ring a bell?”

“Umm… maybe?”

“Twilight… do you remember why you’re in the hospital?”

“Something about an evil peon insulting me?” She said, starting to try to hide under the covers.

“You tried to attack me and only stopped when Rainbow Dash suplexed you.” Twilight gaped in horror. Then looked around for a few seconds in confusion.

“Speaking of which, where is Rainbow Dash?”

The nurse, open mouthed at Twilight’s work binge, shook her head and pointed to Rainbow Dash’s bed. “She likes hiding underneath the bed, reading Daring Do books. Something about it helping get her into the adventuring mood?””

“I just need my hat and this would be perfect!” Rainbow Dash’s voice emerged from beneath the bed.

Everyone looked at each other for a moment, then shook their heads a bit.

“Well, Twilight, I think we can agree that you’ve gone a little too far this time. You really need to stop taking everything on yourself.” The nurse said gently.

“Yes, you’re right...”

“Well, on the plus side, we finished everything on your list.” Spike said after a few seconds of awkward silence.

“Really? Great.” Twilight said, still in a funk. She shook her head and asked “What was it for again?”

“Umm… it was to get ready for your date.”

“I have a date?!” Twilight bolted upright, and tapped her muzzle as she thought. “Everything’s so blurry... Still... Spike, pull out your notebook, we have a list to make!”

Comments

[TheHardie-Boy]

I can’t possibly be the only one who feels sorry for Spike

[Salty Alty]

9957990
Hes certainly one poor motherfucker, that's for sure.

[OmniFox]

Oh I forgot about the imaginary date.