Salt
Salt
The draw of the train tracks was irresistible. Spike felt nostalgic towards his means of entrance into Equestria, and thought it would be kinda appropriate if, in a small way, those trains helped to get him to where he needed to be. They were going in the right direction anyway, there wasn't any significant train traffic at night, and nopony stayed near the tracks once they were away from the town's station, so it was a good deal. He still had to keep a few trees between him and open space, but other than that it was almost like a pleasant little stroll.
It was rough trying to flip flop your entire sleeping schedule all at once. Way faster than Spike would've liked, he found himself yawning and bleary-eyed, ready to go to bed. Going by the moon in the sky it was still not that much past midnight though. He had to make himself keep on going. The sooner he got to Canterlot, the sooner he could figure out how to free Discord, and the sooner he'd be safe. Ish. Well, definitely in no greater danger than he already was all the time anyway. Probably.
His poor tired brain didn't notice the long underpass of the train tracks until he was practically right at the edge of the darkness. Spike stopped there, thinking. He didn't much like the look of it, it was way too much like a round, infinitely deep mouth. But there was enough room that he didn't have to walk right on the tracks, and the way forward was increasingly hilly and mountainous, so going around either side looked like it would take him ages out of his way.
So be it, then! Through the darkness the brave heroic dragon... um, waddled. He couldn't help the way he was built, stupid biowhatsit. That knapsack was getting super heavy by now too. Spike wondered if he could use some of the clothes Fluttershy had insisted on giving him to pad the back straps. Maybe the scarf. He'd just feel terrible if it got messed up, though, since it looked kind of delicate and she'd knitted the thing herself. Eh, he'd see how his shoulders felt after another couple of hours. Long, slow, boring hours. Yaaaawn. But boring was still better than being chased by ponies.
The whistle of the wind through the tunnel turned out to be creepier than the darkness, and encouraged him to hurry up. It hadn't seemed that windy outside, huh. He could already see the end of the tunnel too, a blotchy blue-gray spot against the dead black. Focusing on that blotch, making it his goal, he quickened up his pace. He would feel so much better once he was out of here.
Uh oh.
The wind was getting suspiciously louder. And shriller.
Yeah, that wasn't regular wind. That was a train. Of course, his friggin' luck! Spike groaned and wedged himself back against two little support columns that helped hold up the tunnel. He was gonna have such a headache with a train passing within a few feet of his face. With a skinny instant of thought, he also huddled up behind his knapsack, which was more than big and bulgy enough to hide him in case any ponies happened to glance out the windows. Not that the risk of being seen was that great anyway. It would take a pony with superpowers just to tell he was anything more than a split second blur.
He curled up in a ball and scrunched his hands over his ears and closed his eyes to keep any pebbles or grit from getting in there and waited as the banshee howl got louder and louder.
Then... he was flying. Wait, flying?! No, he was being jerked along! Eyes whipping open as he flailed like a panicky octopus ragdoll, he realized through the blur of motion that the force pulling him was centered on his sack. He started to slide out of it, but before he could get very far, he was pulled through a window and into the train itself, plopped on the floor while a pony brayed at him in mockery.
“HAHAHAH! Oh my gosh I can't believe that worked, you should've seen your face, you were all like OH NOEZ GOTTA HIDE and then I was like NOPE and then you were like WHUUUUUUUUT and now you're here, hahahah, oh man, I wish Dashie coulda been here to see this one....”
It was the crazy pink pony again. She had actually leaned out of the window, grabbed him with her teeth and pulled him in. At the exact right tenth of a second.
“How... how did you... the train...” he babbled, making vague gestures to try and get his point across while his brains tried to unscramble themselves.
Wow, the ponies weren't even playing remotely fair anymore! Had he been born under a bad star? Had his momma cursed ponydom while hatching him? What was UP with his consistently ridiculously bad luck?! The rest of this boxcar was empty, except for a lidded dish on a affixed stand. Okay, so he was only with one bloodthirsty pony. That was great. Just super duper. The half-shaded windows looked like dark eyes staring at him while the pony just talked on and on and ON, so fast he couldn't even keep up. He plucked one of the million things that were wrong about this situation out of the air and focused on it.
“How did you even see me?!” he half-yelled before realizing that he might be drawing some attention. A quick check to front and back told him the doors were closed, nopony was coming. So far.
“Oh, I didn't! My tail just went all corkscrewed like THIS, see?” And her poofy tail did indeed curl into a screw shape. “That means there's super juicy prey nearby, like, finger-lickin' good prey. And I knew it couldn't be on the train because gosh, how could anyprey get past the train attendants? So I checked out the RIGHT windows and then I checked out the LEFT windows and then my ear started to waggle just as I was looking at that blobby clothy blob and I realized that blobby clothy blob was YOU so I just leaned over my neck like thiiiiiiiiis-” She bent her neck in a U shape while Spike was backing away and using his sack for a shield. “-and then grabbed you and boy did it hurt my teefies but it's all good 'cause I gotcha! Yep.” She nodded in satisfaction, apparently signaling the end of her meaningless, stupid explanation that Spike wasn't even gonna try to make sense of.
“Hey. Where're you going?” she asked after he started scrambling at the back door. Which, of course, was locked.
“Oh, heheh, nowhere,” he said, trying not to sweat. “Uh... no hard feelings about bonking you with a rock, right?” The crazy pony seemed like she was okay. For a certain definition of 'okay.' There weren't any visible bruises or bandages now. “I mean, you have to admit, you were kinda asking for it...” He grinned widely, realizing that had probably not been the right thing to say, and wondering if his pocket knife would be useful.
“Pshawww, no way hozay!” She waved a hoof dramatically. “I've gotta keep on my toes with you tricky guys, it's hard to find prey who even know how to play a game in the first place, let alone be sneaky-weaky cheaters at it!” Then her insanely cheerful expression drooped into a scowl. Literally, her entire face shifted downward a couple inches. “You shouldn't have hurt Rarity though,” she said quietly, almost menacingly. “That's a bad prey! Bad bad bad!”
Spike was getting a headache. Normal evil ponies he could handle. Hyper insane ones, not so much. Okay, so the train was going too fast to jump out of the window, and the doors were locked. He had to fight or talk his way out of it somehow before other ponies came in and complicated things. It was way too enclosed here, but maybe he could bash her against a seat corner or something. Even now, the thought of hurting a pony while she was just talking to him and acting like everything was fine... the very thought of it hurt, and he was angry with himself for still caring after he'd already broken that line with Rarity, so he channeled that anger outward.
“I'm not a bad prey. I'm pretty good prey, considering that I'm still alive and all,” he shot back, flexing his claws pointedly. “So how about we-”
She leaned forward, neck darting in like a snake's strike, and he lashed out with the tip of his tail. The pink pony snapped her head up to avoid it and then backed away a pace, looking confused.
“Whooooaaa, what's with all the angry grrr face stuff, little guy?! Remember what I told you about getting your yummy body all tough, that's a no-no!”
Her voice was hurting his ears, seeming to rattle around into his skull, and the slight tremor of the floor under his feet imitated that, reminding him that he wasn't safe, never safe, they just came out of freaking nowhere when you least expected it, didn't they? But he couldn't afford to lose his cool now. He wasn't just trying to live. He had something to live for, however crazy it was. Huh. He wanted something crazy, and she was, apparently, crazy. Maybe they weren't so different after all.
“Wanna play another game?” he asked, leaning his body in one direction and then another as she swayed exaggeratedly to match.
“Oh, I'd really really really like to, but I'm delivering a super big bowl of Marinated Mutton Mincemeat Madness to a contest in Canterlot,” she explained, hooking a hoof over at a steaming lidded bowl locked into a stand further up in the box. It was big enough to hold at least three Spikes. “It's so mmm-mmm goodily good,” she moaned with a moist slurp, “but it's my job to guard it from thieves and not even sneak one tiny little sliver of a mince! So I can't go running around and play crazy games with you because then it might spill!”
“Well, if you try to eat me I'll definitely try to ruin your meat thing,” he threatened, trying to get a hold on whatever passed for thought processes in the pink pony's painfully chipper skull. “So how about you just let me go when the train stops and I'll be on my way and no already prepared foods will get hurt!”
She gasped, which unfortunately gave Spike a better view of her mouth and throat than he would've liked. There was a little tuft of bloody fur caught in her back bottom teeth.
“Nooooooo!” she wailed, front hooves clutching the sides of her head. “My Marinated Mutton Mincemeat Madness, I never meant to endanger you by betraying your identity!” Abruptly, she calmed down. “I guess I'll just have to eat you after the trip's done,” she said with a smirk, a bit of drool working its way out of the corner of her mouth. Spike watched the trickle with his spine tensing. “Hey, I don't know much about what goes with dragon. Should I eat you with lemonade or one of those fancy cream and sprinkles coffees?”
“I'm thinkin' appetite suppressant tea,” he replied snarkily, using mockery to hide his fear. At least, he thought that was what he was doing. He was so used to be scared that it was starting to get hard to tell when he wasn't now. “With a side of laxatives for all the constipation I'm gonna give ya. Us dragons block up stuff like plugs in a tub drain ya know.”
“You're a big fibber and a cheater, everypony knows dragon meat is yummy and spicy! And gives you the trots,” she added as an afterthought. “But that's only if you eat too much at once! Which I always do because it's so yum. Maybe I can counteract it with some whipped cream. Do you go well with whipped cream, lil dragon guy? What's your name again? It was all over the papers, lemme think, lemme think. Oh right! It was Prick!”
“Spike,” he growled out, flushing. “My NAME is SPIKE.”
“Oh, neat. That's a fierce name, you deserve it, you wascally dwagon, you. I'm Pinkie Pie.”
“Why can't I eat you then? You're the one with food in your name!”
She laughed, a genuine laugh that left her rolling on the floor, and he couldn't help but chuckle a little too. Any second now they would be trying to kill each other. Any second now. But why mess up the momentary safety while he had it?
“Ponies don't get eaten, silly!”
“Why not?” It was one of those things he kept wanting to scream in every pony's face every time he met one, but this was the first time the recipient of the question actually seemed to take it seriously.
“Because... because... huh.” She frowned, poking at her tail like it was going to give her an answer. “I dunno. Wow, that's really gonna bother me until I figure it out now. It's like that riddle about the eggs and chickens.”
“No it's not! It's nothing like that stupid riddle which isn't even a riddle anyway!” He paused. “I think.” Jeez, this was definitely the dumbest conversation he'd ever been in. He kind of wanted her to attack him and get it over with. “Why do you wanna eat me? Why can't you just let me go? If you were a dragon and I was a pony, I'd let you go!”
“Awww, you would?” Her eyes teared up and she sniffed. “That's so sweet. Hm. I wonder if you taste sweet. Can I lick you? Just for a samply wamply?”
Pinkie Pie was really pretty polite as far as evil murdering ponies went, he had to give her credit where it was due. “No, and you wouldn't like my skin anyway, it's all dirty. Plus I have diseases and stuff. Yeah. Really, not eating me is probably the healthiest thing you could do.”
“Oh, that's okay, everypony says I have a ridonkulously robust constitution for somepony who eats junk food all the time. I like to think it's because of the periapt of health plus three (plus four versus draconequi) that I keep under my pillow.” She yawned, and at the same time, her stomach growled, causing a disturbing gurgle to work up out of her mouth. “Exsqueeze me! But I need to get a nap in before it's canterin' time at Canterlot, so I probably need to finish you off now.”
Alright. He was tired of talking. Too much of the time he was talking instead of acting, and it wasn't getting him anywhere half the time. He wanted them to just listen to reason, but they wouldn't, so he should just save his energy for other things.
Like kicking this pony's flank all over the place.
He charged at her holding his tail stiffened into a makeshift lance, teeth gritted... and she somersaulted over him with boneless grace, her sproingy mane engulfing him and lifting him up into the air with her head. With a sharp flick, she sent him flying dizzily.
“Secret ponyjutsu technique: headbutt bonk!” she hollered, smashing him with her snout and sending him into locked door.
...and through it, because the stupid thing was cheap wood that he suddenly realized he probably could've clawed through himself with a few seconds of effort. Beyond, he fell painfully to the floor in an unoccupied boxcar, unlit and occupied only by empty seats. He rolled to his feet and shook his head in a vain attempt to clear his mind and his vision, then jumped behind a seat for cover. Headbutt bonk? Ponyjutsu? What was WRONG with this pony?!
“Heeeeeeeeere cooooomes Pinkie Piiiiiieeee,” Pinkie Pie crooned, sticking her head through the hole in the door and then trying to jump through it.
Fortunately for Spike, she got stuck in the middle, oofing and wheezing and wiggling in a very undignified way.
“Argh! Never... shoulda... had... that fifth... piglet...” she grunted out between pants of effort, finally getting through and demolishing more of the door as she did so. She peered around in the dark, her tongue lolling out wet and red, eyes gleaming in the bare starlight shining through the windows. “Ohhhh Spiiiiiiike. Where aaaaaare yooouuuu.”
Spike crouched down at the floor, hoping the shadowiness of the seats would keep him concealed, not wanting to fight but knowing he'd probably have to.
“If ya don't come out I'll just have to huff and puff and... something something something,” she went on calmly, her peaceful tone totally at odds with the rabidly hungry look on her face, the foot long tongue, the drool dripping down as she padded hooves forward one at a time. She looked less like a pony than a fairy tale picture of a wicked wolf – not that there was much difference between the two. “I've been smelling the Marinated Mutton Mincemeat Madness all day and all night and it's been driving me cuuurrrrrAAAzy. Have you ever been driven crazy by stuff, Spike? Let me tell ya, it's for the birds. Mmm, yummy, chirpy, crunchy birds.”
“Go eat grass then!” he yelled as she jerked her head to his hiding spot and snapped in his direction; he managed to scramble over the seat to the next one just in time, leaving her with a mouthful of cushion.
“But grass isn't so tastyyyy,” she whined, pouring herself over the top of the seat and then onward like a blob while Spike ran to the back of this boxcar and tried the door – which was being stubborn and also locked, per his luck as usual.
She howled up at the ceiling, giving Spike vivid flashbacks to Fluttershy's pack of wolves, and bounded forward, but luckily Pinkie Pie had more enthusiasm than accuracy. By dodging left and right frantically and circling around her, Spike was able to make sure she crashed into the sides of seats instead of into him. Each time, she shook her head a little more furiously. It was... silly, at least it would have been if he hadn't been running for his life.
“You think you're so smart with your refusing to stay in one place, but I'll get you! Lightning bolt, lightning bolt!”
Spike cowered away from her outstretched hoof, expecting to be hit with some kind of weapon... and then blinked as nothing at all happened.
“Oh, that's right, I don't have lightning bolts,” Pinkie muttered, apparently to herself. “Knew I shouldn't've wasted that multiclass on shadowdancer. Alright, try THIS on for size... hoof CHOP!”
Since she'd actually announced what she'd been planning to do before doing it, Spike effortlessly ducked out of the way.
“Grrr, hoof KICK!”
That one was even easier to dodge than the chop. It was getting kind of difficult to take this seriously, honestly. Was she actually dangerous? Or just pretending to be? Was there even a difference?
“Hoof chop hoof jab hoof kick hoof chop hoof chop hoof jab hoof kick!”
By the time her flurry of... well, he guessed that they were technically attacks... was over, she was panting, sweat dripping from her face as she grinned. She stopped and straightened, crossing her front hooves in a stern way.
“Okay, this is getting totally zoroasteribulatory. Hoof CHOP!”
...but instead of chopping, she kicked.
Spike rolled on the floor, dazed, his head pounding and swollen from the bruise. Instead of following up on the successful hit, Pinkie Pie just stared at him intently, licking her chops.
“Heehee, I knew that one would getcha! Seeee, you're not the only one who can cheat!”
“It wasn't that funny,” he grumbled, trying to decide between the locked door, the demolished door or a window as a potential escape route. Going outside, maybe getting up on the train's top, would be safest if he could hold his balance, but he didn't know if he could or not.
She didn't give him a whole lot to decide. For whatever reason, her next attack was styled after some sort of wrestling move set, and she was sufficiently bad at it that it gave him time to get away... but it also left him cornered at the locked door. His mind made up for him, Spike whacked at it with his tail until it broke enough for him to dive through the opening, splinters digging between his scales. As he hoped, she took a lot longer to come through after him, and the next boxcar beyond was longer, also dark, and full of those fancy private compartments for high-class passengers. Ample room to hide that he was glad to take advantage of.
He heard her take care of the door (was she going to end up paying the train company for this?!) and stomp down the aisle with slow, stony hoofsteps, taking her time and presumably looking over every shadow and corner. Thud thud thud thud, very deliberate... but not even, and the sound was off, getting louder and softer and louder instead of steadily one or the other. This Pinkie pony was intentionally making some of her steps audible but keeping quiet the rest of the time, either for dramatic effect or to make it harder to tell where she was. The feel of it was something like that of a ghost – floating around in silence except for the random, arbitrary bangs of it throwing things around poltergeist style.
“I really hope you're hiding somewhere cleaannnn,” she crooned singsongishly. “'Cause I hate having to scrub my food. I already brush my teeth, like, an entire one times a day, and that already feels like total overkill as it is.”
Try flossing, was what he wanted to say but didn't, because it would reveal his hiding place and possibly get him killed. He allowed himself the luxury of snorting quietly in amusement through his nose, though.
“Come on, be a pal. You know you wanna let me eat you.”
He had several rude responses to that in mind.
“Maybe being gobbled up is really kinda fun. You've never been gobbled so you don't know, right? Maybe my tummy is a magical place full of rainbows and sweets. Huh. Actually, now that I think of it, my tummy definitely IS full of sweets. One outta two already's pretty good, you'd be crazy NOT to let me eat you!”
Spike's thought on that was that maybe she shouldn't rush to judgment on whether dragon tummies were more or less awesome than pony ones, considering she was named after pie and had a mane like cotton candy.
“Look, if you let me eat you THIS time, I promise not to eat you NEXT time, okay? Pretty please?”
How would that even work?! Did ponies believe in reincarnation or was Pinkie Pie just weird? He was gonna place his bets on Pinkie being weird. She didn't seem like the religious type anyway. Five seconds of imagining her in a church already had him holding back snickers. Bad move, Spike, keep chill, keep quiet, be like the stone and the oak!
“I know! I'll let you CHOOSE how you wanna get eaten! We could put you in a soup, wouldn't that be neat? You could swim around with flippers and a snorkle.”
Spike tried his best but couldn't suppress another quiet snort.
“Or you could get baked into bread. Hmm, not a loaf though. You seem more like a buttery poppy seed roll kinda guy to me.”
Yeah, that was him for sure. Buttery all over and full of seeds.
“Or I could just eat you whole. I never tried that with anything bigger than a cat though, and BOY, was Rarity maaaaaaaaaaaaaad after that so I try to be more careful these days!”
His mind visualized some poor helplessly cat with its tail still lashing out of Pinkie's mouth, closed in a big happy 'I'm full' smile while Rarity, so graceful and cultured like she was, walking in and staring in utmost horror. He wasn't sure why it was funny instead of horrifying. Maybe the two feelings weren't so far apart. But... no matter how much he told himself not to... no matter how he clenched his mouth....
He couldn't help but laugh.
Even though he strangled it off almost immediately, it was too late. She heard and pounced on him from above, all four legs forming a canopy around him while he was treated to a sight of her long pony underbelly and her head as it craned down and she cackled with melodramatic glee. At that point, the obvious thing would have been to punch her in someplace vulnerable, and the practical part of Spike identified and ranked a variety of places that would hurt her suitably badly in an instant.
That being so, he wasn't really sure why he just extended the tips of his claws and... tickled her.
Fortunately, she was apparently very ticklish, because she immediately started laughing up a riot, her body jerking around unstably as she tried to get away from his claws without letting him escape. That was enough of a distraction to let him run out between her legs, and as he made back for the forward boxcar, a glance back showed him that she had actually bent her neck down and was looking between her own legs at him as he ran.
On a silly scale of one to ten, Spike decided, this pony was at eleven and a half. Still, he was a little relieved he'd gotten out of that without hurting her, as amazingly stupid as it was. Maybe it was leftover guilt from the rock and Rarity. Okay, now he just had to get out of the train! Resolving to climb out of a window and scale the outside of the train where hooves wouldn't do so well, Spike headed for the nearest side of the train.
And bumped into a train attendant, who was glaring at him with the same expression people used when critters upset their garbage cans.
“Where do you think YER goin', ya rascal?!” the pony demanded, the dull roar of his energetic voice slightly muffled by his very bushy mustache.
Spike was so fired up from adrenaline by now that the grabbing hoof seemed like it was moving in slow motion and dodging it was incredibly easy. He scampered forward, hoping that the other door would be unlocked since somepony had just come through it. But his mind veered off into a totally different direction when he saw the jumble of luggage next to the big steaming pot in its stand. Had to be Pinkie's things. For whatever reason, he saw fireworks sticking out of one bag, but his eyes were drawn to the pure white of a large container of salt.
A crazy idea came to mind to fit a crazy night.
He grabbed the salt, scrambled up the nearest seat for some height, swiped the lid off of the pot and held the salt container over the bubbling mess of brown meat and gravy threateningly, ready to dump the whole thing in. Some deeply hidden inner script writer inside him found the most cliché words he could think of to say, he thought they were cribbed from a puppet show he'd seen once.
“Don't make me do it, man! I'll totally do it! Just back away and nofood gets salted!”
The employee put a hoof forward, seemingly undeterred, but he froze in place with shock as Pinkie let out a blood-curdling screech from behind him.
“WHYYYY! WHY DO INNOCENT FOODSTUFFS HAVE TO SUFFER?! DON'T DO IT, I'LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT JUST LEAVE MY MARINATED MUTTON MINCEMAT MADNESS ALONE!”
“See, I told you I would,” he told her with narrowed eyes, rattling the salt in its little shaker. “You've only got yourself to blame!”
Pinkie whimpered and cowered down to the floor while the train pony looked back and forth between them with a rightfully confused expression.
“All you had to do was let me eat you! Whydja haveta make things so complicated?!”
“Can't you just not eat me for one night? Is that really so hard?” he asked in exasperation, wondering if all ponies had food-based OCD or something.
“Well, you are delicious-looking,” the train pony pointed out, lowering his head to stare pointedly at Spike's belly in a very uncomfortable way. “Lookit that cute lil paunch, I bet it would spread over fresh bread like cream cheese.”
“I knowwwww, right?” Pinkie agreed, both ponies getting glazed eyes as they slurped in unison. “See, it's not my fault you're so yummy-looking Spike!”
“Oh, bite me.”
“I keep trying to but you won't let me! In fact, you might say that's the whole premise of the conflict between us.” Spike blinked. “What? Didn't think I knew a fancy word like premise?”
“Actually I think the premise is that you ponies don't understand that non-ponies like me aren't just food, they're living things with feelings and lives and stuff who deserve to be happy just as much as you do,” he blurted out spontaneously, spinning the salt shaker on a claw tip while they both goggled at him.
“Well, that's just nonsense. Everypony knows dragons and griffins and whatnot're all meant to be food. It's not like ya can even feel pain like a pony does, not properly,” the station attendant went on, adjusting his little cap. “Different nerve endings, dontcha know.”
Spike's eyes went to Pinkie, who was watching the salt shaker with a scary level of unblinkingness. He ehehed nervously and held it normally again just to try and calm her down a bit.
“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!” he told the attendant. “I feel pain, alright?! Pinkie, come on, focus here. All you want is to get to Canterlot with your Madness thing-”
“The MMMM!”
“Right, the... what you said without salt poisoning. All you have to do for that to happen is NOT eat me.”
They looked at each other while the train attendant rubbed a hoof under his chin. “Sounds like varmint tricks t'me. I say we eat 'im.”
“Pinkie,” Spike said urgently. Something in the way he said her name made her stand at attention, looking unevil and serious for a change. “I bet you ate something today, right?”
“Oh, sure. I had breakfast and second breakfast and brunch and lunch and lupper and supper and dinner! That's not counting snacks, of course.”
“Of course. So you don't really need to eat me, do you?”
The ponies exchanged glances.
“What's this nonsense about? Everypony needs to eat,” the train attendant put in.
Pinkie nodded slowly, but her face was full of... something. Questioning? Confusion? Doubt?
Okay, clearly he had to lay this out in simple terms. “Pinkie, if you don't eat me, the Madness thing will be safe. If you do eat me, I'll murder it with salt.” Salt, the great purifier, the flavor so strong you wanted it a little in everything but never too much, never too much. Best weapon he could expect to have against an unruly set of stomachs. “So just. Don't. Eat. Me.”
“But... but... you look so good,” Pinkie whimpered. Her tongue rolled out and she rolled it back up again like a carpet. “Why do you have to look so nummy, little dragon?”
“So close your eyes!”
“Last time I did that you totally hit me in the head with a rock!” It was apparently hard, but not impossible, to make Pinkie Pie indignant.
“I won't this time, promise! There's no rocks here anyway. Come on, is it that hard for you to control yourself?! I can go whole days without eating if I wanna!”
“That's that there dragon biyologee,” brushy mustache pony put in sagely. “Us ponies have entirely dif'rent metabolics. Simple science, fellah. Ponies gotta eat.” His stomach growled. “Speakin' of which....”
“Noooo, the MMMM!” Pinkie cried out, grabbing at the other pony's hooves.
Whatever. He'd tried.
“Fine. The revolution begins now,” Spike told them with an eye roll, opening the salt container and dropping the whole thing into the meaty depths of the pot.
What a weaksauce way to start a revolution, but hey, he worked with the tools that were given to him. It was probably his adrenaline-fevered imagination that Pinkie Pie's resulting scream broke all the windows in the boxcar, but he still didn't care for the look of abject despair on her face. Then he reminded himself that she'd never spare so much as a wink of concern over the food that had gone into the pot while it'd been alive and steeled himself. War on, ponies.
Feeling full of pride and stony lack of remorse, Spike flung himself out of the nearest window – only remembering that he'd forgotten his knapsack while in midair, SMART one Spike – and tried to grab at the outside of the train. But it was shaking too hard and the wind was too strong and he fell, so as a desperate last-ditch means of preservation, he curled himself up into a tight little ball, protecting his stomach and face.
Spike impacted the ground once... twice... three times... four times, teeth shaking with the violence of it, biting his lips bloody with the hurt. After that he began to roll along his back and tail spines, till the sound of the train was out of mind and he began to tilt to one side. It was too fast to think, too fast to be nauseous, too fast to do anything but hurt and hate the hurting.
Somewhere in there, he blacked out.
When Spike woke up and had woken up enough to realize he was awake, two things were obvious. One, it was daytime. Two, he ached all over. Literally every scale and every between bit between the scales throbbed.
He picked himself up painfully, noting the vast green fields, the mountains further off that represented his destination, the perfect robin's egg blue sky. Oh, yeah, and he should probably get off the train tracks, shouldn't he? Spike swallowed gravel whole, brushed dirt off along with flakes of crusted blood, and started walking.
His pack. He really missed that thing now. He'd walked all night lugging its heavy weight around, spent an entire day organizing it. It had a million things that he could have used, like those medical supplies. Not to mention it was his only evidence that, somewhere in the world, there was one pony who wasn't completely horrible. Now he was naked and unsupplied again, walking like a hobo just like before. Fluttershy and Rarity and Appleloosa and even Pinkie Pie seemed so far away now they might as well have been dreams. Or nightmares.
What could a dragon do? He could have not gone in the tunnel, for starters. Or not closed his eyes so he could've dodged Pinkie's grab. Or not been beset by a crazy pink pony who magically knew the EXACT moment to lean over and snatch him up out of the scenery even though that was completely impossible. Or been a smooth enough talker to convince her to leave him alone. Or. Or or or.
Molt and shell, he hated his life.
Now he was hungry and tired and beat up and still a long ways from Canterlot and he didn't even know how much of a long ways because he didn't have his map which was in the SACK that was on the TRAIN with all the PONIES who wanted to EAT him for NO REASON WHATSOEVER EVEN THOUGH IT WAS CLEARLY AGAINST THEIR BEST INTERESTS.
Why did this stuff always have to happen to him?!
Ponies were nuts, but he saw how other people managed to live their lives without messed up by ponies every single day. Griffins and zebras and sphinxes had entire civilizations without ponies gumming up the works. Why did the ponies keep coming after him? Was he really just somehow magically delicious? Did he smell like yummy things?
Spike sniffed his armpit and smelled nothing.
Why couldn't he ever just have a normal day?!
“It's not fair! I don't look for trouble, but it always comes to me! I never get a break, not ever, it's always something, and it's always PONIES that are doing it!”
He wanted that knapsack of tools and clothes and goodies so badly.
Eyes blurring with tears, Spike sat down (behind a tree, because gosh, a pony might KILL HIM if he didn't HIDE all the time) and cried, kicking gravel and rocks and grass angrily like the ground was responsible for it all. He cried until he was mad about crying so much and then he cried some more and then got exhausted from crying, and mad about being exhausted, and cried more still. Always something, always something going wrong. Nothing ever went right. Ponies, ponies, ponies.
Even after he stopped crying, Spike couldn't work up the energy to move. He just laid there, back against the tree, hating the bump against his spine, hating all his aches, hating the warmth of the sun, hating himself and everything. Like that he laid there, stewing in his own helpless, hopeless frustration, pointedly ignoring the growl of an empty stomach. Even if gems were just beyond the surface of the soil, a few claw swipes away, he couldn't be bothered. Eating was stupid. Food was stupid. Everything about being alive was dumb.
His bad mood didn't even start to weaken its hard grip on him until the sun started to go down, shading orange, red, pink. When that happened, he made himself get up and get a move on, not thinking much, just moving his legs, his head too tired to be full of anything except knowing his own tiredness, a bleak, bitter dryness deep in his mouth.
There was no surprise in him when he heard the tootity-toot-toot of a classy little horn, followed by the barking of dogs and hoofbeats. No shock. The ponies always came. Always.
Spike sought shelter in the trees, empty-headed and instinctive but no less quick or sharp in ears or eyes, barely more than a voiceless critter himself, so total was his tired despair. The dogs and the ponies followed – the dogs had caught his scent, and the ponies followed the dogs. He even heard an enthusiastic, gentlemanly-accented 'Tally ho!' from one of the ponies in the lead, which caused an idle part of him to wonder what that phrase actually meant. No streams nearby. He couldn't outrun them. Climb maybe, like last time?
No time, his brain was dulled and uncreative, his usual spark of survivalism doused from everything that had happened. If only he'd had that sack, it had a Fluttershy collar, he could've just put it on and been safe. Just like that. So easy. So simple. So impossible.
They surrounded him and he was too tired and sore to even care. The dogs yelped and lunged, but didn't go in for the kill. Were they trained not to finish things off? Still, he was pressed back against a tree without even any branches he could reach. There was nowhere to go.
The shapes of ponies clarified through the trees and evening shadows, more easily visible than he'd expected because of their bright red coats. Two of them in particular trotted up to inspect their prize, calling the dogs to heel. Their pelts were as white as the salt he'd weaponized, come to ruin his day just like he'd ruined Pinkie's dish. Was this the evil pony version of karma?
“I say, jolly good chase you gave us for a fellow of your stature, lad,” said the first one, a unicorn with an itty-bitty mustache, blue to match his mane.
The other pony, also a unicorn but with a firmer build and a flowing tan mane, lifted his head and sneered to the point of closing his eyes. “Ugh, look at the beast's pelt, though. So filthy! I wouldn't eat that even if you positively drowned it in butter.” Somehow, his coat was amazingly, sparkling salty-white clean for a pony who'd been in the middle of a hunt.
The glare of their coats and fur hurting his eyes, the yelping of the dogs hurting his ears, Spike decided that this was as good a time as any to give up and die. He flopped on the ground in the least dignified pose he could imagine and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Y'know what, do what you want,” he told them bitterly. “I don't even care anymore.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.04 seconds
Total duration
1,022 users online
2,126,109 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Oh fuck!
Looks like living the most utterly horrifying life imaginable is finally getting to poor Spike D:
I hope he makes it to Canterlot, though,if only to see quite what's going on with the Princesses and Discord in this AU.
Hell this life of spikes is true hell.
Nooooooo!
No... NO...
SPIKE, DON'T DO IT! DON'T GIVE UP!! YOU HAVE TO SURVIVE!!!
The one thing that keeps me from feeling bad for the ponies is their mere stupidity. As a smart person, stupidity causes me pain and so, anger.
t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSzCqvgIZZ_-BA4vk3uzx_9Kwn4hI4noZY6LBxEFqpfCOfxcoapAZFYFIMw
DON'T GIVE UP SPIKE!!!!
cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/viva_la_revolucion.jpg
deviantart.com/download/315321770/discord__avatar_of_chaos_by_aurais-d57qfu2.jpg
Come on, Spike. Get up damn it! Don't give the bastards the satisfaction. What about the revolution? I still would like to hear Celestia's justification for this meat eating.
When is Spike going to encounter Twilight?
Ponies don't even have incisors.
Damn the bastards. Keep fighting
This chapter made my sides hurt, the interaction between Spike and Pinkie was just too hilarious. Now Fancy Pants and Blue Blood into the mix. Can't wait for the next chapter!
Dammit Spike you can't give up just yet! So what you have lost all motivation and hope there is only one thing you can do in this situation.
Move Along.
Okay, now that I am caught up, I see this ending one of five ways.
1. Spike talks to Celestia and she does something to fix this terribleness. Unlikely given that she is a pony and probably eats creatures.
2. Spike finds and uses the Elements of Harmony. Not sure how they would work.
3. Spike frees Discord, balance restored.
4. Actual revolution. Unlikely given balance of forces in favor of Equestria.
5. Spike dies (bad end)
Come on Spike! Where is the resourceful little fighter we all know?
Darn you cliffhanger!
1631048
I would love the discord one to a point of enjoyment
What if this is just a severly fucked up experiment by twilight?
Or a fucked up nightmare that his friends are watching with abated breath because he could actually die!
This needs to be completed soon
It's not often that you get to stumble on such a great piece of literature. From the beginning to this point I've absolutely loved this story, I don't know if it's Spike's sense of humor, the crap situations he has to struggle through, the interestingly dark light you put ponies we know and love under, or maybe it's just the whole shibang.
Either way this story is freaking awesome, and every time I hear that there's an update I do a mental fist-pump. Even if this story didn't end well for our favorite little dragon ( though I do hope he finds an end that puts things right ) it's going down as one of the most interesting mpl fanfics I've ever read.
Great job Karkadinn, and I look forward to what happens next.
1631048
You forgot
6. Alien ending.
1834197
7. The dog was orchestrating everything.
8. It's actually a Doctor Whooves plot and Spoke is the Doctor.
9. Suddenly spiders.
10. H I M.
11. Spike was dead/dreaming.
12. He w- Ah, Hello Gordon
I'm gonna guess that Celestia is a through and through meat-eater considering Pinkie's(well, the Cake's actually) food was MARINATED MUTTON MINCEMAT MADNESS for the National Dessert Competition(idk if it's call "Dessert" in this universe) that is most likely organised by Celestia herself.