The Ten Million Year Hello

by Bandy

Chapter Five

Spike definitely didn’t need snacks on the moon. A snack to a dragon his size was a week’s worth of meals for a pony. Anything meaningfully filling would just slow him down. Not to mention he had no idea if the food would still be good once it crossed the barrier into space.

Still, the urge to pack away a few hundred cookies and talk to someone, even if the conversation would be a little one-sided, won out. He made a conspicuous landing in the hilly outskirts of the greater Ponyville metropolitan area, waited for a curious pegasus to approach, then waved them over.

“No way, buddy!” the pegasus shouted. She was a mare, curious like Apple Bloom III without any of her grandmother’s naivety. “You’re just gonna eat me!”

“I promise I won’t eat you.” Spike grimaced at the sound of his own voice. It did kinda sound like he wanted to eat her. One more thing the spell could fix.

“That’s just what someone who’s gonna eat me would say!”

“What if I made it worth your while?” He produced two gold coins and set them a safe distance away. The coins were from ancient Prance, and worth about four times an average Ponyvillian’s yearly salary.

The pegasus swooped down to inspect them. “Is this play money?”

“It’s about six hundred years old. Even if it was, it’d be worth a fortune in tax write-offs to a museum. I’ll give you another two later if you finish the job.”

The mare looked around, looked down at the coins, then let out a groan. “Fine. Whaddaya want, anyway?”

“I need two thousand cookies from Pie’s Pies.”

“Two thousand?”

“Two thousand.”

“Y’know there’s apps for this kinda thing.”

“Do you know anypony making dragon-sized phones?”

The mare scrunched up her nose. “Yeeeah. That’s a lotta cookies though, that’s gonna take some time.”

“I know. I need something else, too. You need to have the CEO deliver them.”

“The CEO.” The mare’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “Like, the one who runs the company?”

“Correct.”

“Jeez. Okay buddy, I can probably finagle two thousand cookies, but how am I supposed to convince the CEO to give ‘em to you?”

Spike pulled out an entire sack of ancient Prench gold coins. “Tell her it’s for a friend of the family.”

---

The following morning, a single bright pink party balloon crested the horizon. Sunrise Surprise, the CEO of Pie’s Pie’s, LLC., touched down not ten yards from where Spike was lounging.

Awfully brave of her to land this close, he thought.

Sunrise looked unsettlingly similar to Pinkie Pie, all the way down to having three balloons as her cutie mark. She had a white coat instead of pink though, and a strawgold yellow mane. She also wore heeled shoes on her back two hooves--nothing fancy, but enough to raise up her rear just the slightest bit.

“Prench coins aren’t really in vogue right now,” Sunrise said, in a high, squeaky voice. The resemblance to Pinkie was absolutely uncanny. “It’s gonna take twenty years for these things to appreciate.”

Spike wasn’t used to the feeling of being dwarfed in a conversation. “Or we could melt them down right now.” He smiled. “Dragon, and all.”

She tssk’d. “Barbaric.”

“So where is the delivery?”

“Right here.”

She tapped her rear hooves together. The basket of the balloon opened up, revealing several metal drums.

“The drums have a statis unit inside. Fresh out the oven flavor for the next seven years.” She paused. “You should grab those yourself. I had other ponies load those for me. They’re really heavy.”

As Spike hefted the drums out of the basket, Sunrise asked, “So why this whole delivery geddup? Is this how dragons flirt or something?”

Spike laughed. “Nothing like that. How much of your family history do you know?”

“My mom has a scrapbook.”

“Further back.”

“My grandma had a scrapbook, too.”

How many generations’ worth of scrapbooks do you have?”

Sunrise made a show of rubbing her chin and pondering. “I’d say enough to watch a little baby dragon grow up into a great big baby dragon.”

The smile bloomed into a full-on grin, teeth and all. Sunrise didn’t shy away like most ponies did. If anything, the sight of all those razor-sharp pearly whites only seemed to intrigue her further. Maybe it was a business thing. An appreciation for predators.

Spike opened up one of the cookie drums and produced a single specimen. White chocolate macadamia nut, extra opal. His favorite.

He ate one. Then another. Then he upended the entire drumfull of cookies into his maw.

He set it down with a loud thump in the grass and let out a belch that could roast loins at a thousand yards. Sunrise let out a familiar-sounding giggle.

“Sorry,” Spike said, “I’m forgetting my manners. Would you like one?”

Smug satisfaction beamed on Sunrise Surprise’s face. “Nah. I’m more of a gold and platinum gal myself.”

Spike tucked the other drum beneath him, like a dragon protecting a precious hoard. “Tell me more about your scrapbooks.”

---

They talked all through the night. When Sunrise Surprise finally climbed back into her balloon and waved goodbye, it was nearly morning. Pre-dawn light cast a fine indigo haze over the earth.

Spike secured the cookie barrel and his bag of books, then took off. The horizon became curved as he climbed through the air. Above him, the sky flashed through the colors of sunrise, then turned a monolithic baby blue.

The barrier between sky and space revealed itself as a shimmering field of translucent white magic, like a shield spell extending all the way around the earth. When he passed through, it rippled like water. Without gravity to tether him, his first wingbeat sent him rocketing away at an impossible pace.

---

The moon was not the cold, dead place most ponies imagined it to be. The castle Luna had made for herself during her banishment was still there, a lonely set of towers and walls guarding against nothing.

Spike landed in the ruins of the grand entry hall and marveled at the decay. Most of the finery, along with everything even remotely shiny, had long since been stripped away by the solar winds and meteorite impacts.

He thought he heard a faint muffled scuttling of claws as he progressed deeper into the castle, but it was probably just his imagination.

The tall, narrow hallways of the old lunar castle led into a circular throne room capped with the remnants of a massive glass dome. The glass itself had since been shattered by micrometeorites, so only the skeletal frame and a few slivers remained. A fine layer of moondust clung to every surface, muffling the sound of his footsteps and muting the colors of the elegant blue and purple stones inlaid in the walls. A single tall throne set in silver and fringed with pure platinum sat on the opposite corner of the room.

The centerpiece of the room was not the throne, however, but a colossal rendering of the new moon set into the floor. The bright part done in pure meteorite iron, the dark part in black titanium. The crescent faced the entryway, inviting Spike further into the embrace of the moon.

A conspicuous hole had been carved out of the middle of it.

At first Spike assumed it was just another impact crater, but when he looked closer he saw hints of melted metal along the edge. This had been cut. Now that he thought about it, the only way this metal could be cut this particular way was with--

Spike whirled around right as the first fireball struck.

The force of the explosion threw him backwards across the throne room. He skidded to a painful stop, blinking away stars.

Banshee descended from the dome. Dragonfire pooled at her feet, melting the metal beneath her.

“Please don’t,” Spike stammered.

“Don’t beg for your life.”

“No, the floor. It’s one of a kind.”

Banshee looked down at the damaged moon beneath her. Then she hocked up a big dragonfire loogie and spat on it. Sparks flew. Metal ignited.

“Just stop,” Spike implored. “We can work this out together.”

“Liar!” She reared up and breathed another jet of fire at him. This time he was prepared and rolled out of the way. The flames splashed harmlessly against the stone wall, leaving a black scar behind.

Before Spike could react, Banshee pulled a plaster-bound book from beneath her wing. Her lips curled back into a savage smile. “Looking for this?”

Spike’s eyes went wide with horror as Banshee blew fire into her free hand and held it beneath the book. Flames leapt from her fingers and licked the plaster shell.

“Not another step,” she said. “It takes all three, right?”

Spike looked around, desperate for a distraction. The plaster around the book let out an agonizing pop as the shell began to crack under the heat.

“Okay, okay,” Spike said, “I’ll give you the books. Just stop, please.”

Banshee’s smile widened. “Kick them over to me.”

Slowly, Spike pulled out the metal drum and set it on the floor.

“What’s that?” she snapped.

“Protection for the books. You didn’t think I’d just stuff them in my pocket, did you?”

Banshee let out a laugh. “You care an awful lot for pony things.”

“I could say the same for you.”

Her smile darkened. She turned her attention to the metal drum, impatiently ripping the top open and stuffing her hands inside.

A hiss of steam belched from the opening. Her nose scrunched up. Her hand emerged clutching a fistfull of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, extra opal.

Her eyes clouded over. “Pinkie?” she murmured.

Spike flung his wings out and shot himself across the room. The two dragons collided in a spray of fire and cookie crumbs, tumbling across the intricate lunar centerpiece. Spike came up with the book. Banshee roared with rage and leapt towards him, but Spike ducked out of the way and sent her careening across the room, where she landed in a heap in the corner.

By the time she’d gotten back to her feet, Spike was already airborne, flying up towards the skeleton of the ancient dome.

“Sorry Luna,” he muttered, and lowered his shoulder.

He hit the center of the dome and plowed right through it. Metal moaned. Glass shattered. Banshee ducked beneath her wing to protect her face.

Rust and grit sloughed off Spike’s scales as he shot into space. In another moment, the castle was a blip on the horizon. He looked over his shoulder every few seconds, fully expecting Banshee to give chase. But after a few minutes passed without any sign of her, Spike reasoned she was too wounded to give chase and slowed to a glide.

Something still wasn’t right. He had everything he wanted, but an awful nagging feeling lingered like dust in his lungs. He should be excited. Ecstatic. But he couldn’t even bring himself to look at the books in his bag.

On the horizon ahead, the pale blue marble of the earth rose above the lunar horizon.

Comments

[Holydude]

If this dragon kept endangering the very important personal quest I was on and acting like a total enemy of what I was desperately trying to accomplish i would of killed her the second time I seen her.

[resonance]

What’s helping this other dragon

Why is she so antagonistic