Close Encounters of the Sixty-Third Kind

by Yoshirocks341

Chapter 3: The Apprentice...

“Even in a different dimension, Ponyville still has its charm.”

Elusive was looking around at all the sights in front of him. The quaint architecture of the town was still the same as always. Ponies were bustling around, going in from building to building, doing whatever that needed to get done. Some were doing some spring cleaning, some were shopping for the latest products, and some were just hanging out, gossiping their hearts out. However, instead of the normal colts Elusive was used to seeing, mares roamed the streets.

“The increase of mares isn’t such a bad thing,” Elusive thought to himself, “I would definitely have to increase the amount of dresses I sell though. There really isn’t much a need for them normally, because…AARGH! Why am I thinking about work in a completely different dimension! I need to focus on getting back home!”

Elusive had been walking around for quite some time now, roughly twenty minutes, but he wasn’t really keeping track. He was lost deep in his thoughts.

“I wonder if Rainbow Blitz is spying on me, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Elusive’s thoughts continued to keep on flowing. “He definitely wants to see me in a dress. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time I said that. I think he has less at stake than I do. Working at my store won’t be awful. I doubt he has really worked a day in his life, being the freeloader bachelor he is. Why, I bet that this will be…" *WUMP*

It seemed that Elusive’s lack of paying attention had caused the number one result of walking and deep thinking, collisions. Elusive looked down to see that the victim was not a something, but sadly someone. The receiving end of the collusion looked a bit dazed, as he tried to get up. Elusive got a good look at him when the stranger finally gathered himself. He was a young purple dragon, with green scales mountaining out of the top of his head and down the back of it. The greenness was also in his…actually Elusive really didn’t know what they were. They seemed to be a mix of fins, wings, and ears. The shape of fins and wings were roughly the same shape of the objects, and the objects’ location was roughly where ears would be. His eyes were also naturally green with envy.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Elusive said. “Are you alright?”

“Ya…I’m fine,” the stranger replied, “the impact only hurt a bit.”

“You sure you’ll be fine?” Elusive’s gentlemen mannerisms were kicking in.

The dragon laughed. “Yep! I’ve had way worse...”

The gears in Elusive’s head had been turning since the collision with the stranger and a product was finally made. He realized that the dragon in front of him was none other than the counterpart to Spines. The similarity in the looks were uncanny, however the nail in the coffin was the way he acted. He took a pretty bad hit, pretending it was nothing, and tried to hide anything that showed differently. Elusive could see now that he was trying to hide a bruise from his fall.

“Ok Elusive, remain calm!” Elusive thoughts were in a rush. “He hopefully won’t recognize me, due the disguise. Besides, he wouldn’t even think anything of it! Who would think the opposite gender version of a friend would even exist? *a short laugh* I’ll be fine…”

Elusive’s mannerisms kicked in again. “Oh, I’m sorry, I should probably introduce myself! My name is Elusive. What is yours?”

“Mine’s Spike!” the green dragon replied. “I work at the local library. Right now, I’m doing some errands for Twilight Sparkle, another librarian there.”

“I see. I work at a boutique that I own myself.” He quickly added, “…in a far away town.”

“I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you before...” Spike commented. “Would you like a tour around town? I only have one more errand to do.”

Elusive thought about this. “Well, it would help me figure out some facts about the other versions of us if I stay with him. There seems to be no risk, with the pallet swap spell working perfectly. I am such a genius sometimes!”

Elusive took Spike up on his offer. “Hey, thanks! A tour would surely help me figure out what is what around here.”

And the two of them were off.
*****************************************************************************************

Elusive easily recognized the first building Spike’s tour went to. The very top of the building looked like a giant cupcake, topped with pink frosting and purple candles. The roof resembled a ginger bread house, with it being a deep brown and white trimming on the edges. The windows and doors were covered in pink paint. The walls were white and brown, almost resembling a house from the Middle Ages.

It seemed really busy for some reason. Some ponies were bringing in party supplies, ranging from a box of party blowers to a herd of balloon animals. Other ponies had gathered outside. One was a blue haired pony, with purple glasses and a music note on her end. She was shouting orders at some workers bringing in music equipment. Another pony seemed way older and had light blue skin. He had wild white hair that was very thin. He was talking to a younger colt, who had light green skin and wore a plain red vest (“That’s the worst fashion sense I’ve ever seen!” Elusive muttered). They seemed confused and a little disappointed.

“The Sugarcube Corner seems really packed!” Spike pointed out the obvious.

“Yes it does,” Elusive was just making small talk. “Did you have to do an errand here?”

“Ya…but I’ll tell Twilight that Pinkie Pie is pulling some sort of party…again.”

“Does this ‘Pinkie Pie’ throw a lot of parties?”

Spike laughed. “That’s an understatement. She will throw a party any chance she can! It’s not bad though, the parties are usually really fun. I wonder if I will get invited…”

Elusive could easily figure out who this “Pinkie Pie” was. “That’s definitely a good description of Bubble Berry party addiction,” Elusive thought to himself.

“Should we try to help them move in the stuff?” Elusive asked.

“Na, we would probably just get in their way.” Spike replied.

“What about doing your errand then?”

Spike shrugged. “Twilight will understand why I decided not to do this errand around Pinkie Pie when she is in party mode.” Spike answered as he led Elusive away from the bustling building.
*****************************************************************************************

After leading Elusive through a couple of other buildings, a thought was turning inside Spike.

“This Elusive seems like an alright fellow. He’s very kind, but is a tad over-the-top on the importance of manners…” Spike had been yelled at by Elusive when he didn’t hold the door open for a filly at a flower stand, one of the shops Spike had showed Elusive.

“He also has an obsession with fashion…” Spike remembered Elusive mentioning the place he worked at was his own boutique. Spike had also overheard Elusive muttering to himself about random ponies’ fashion styles/statements.

Spike laughed to himself. “He sounds a lot like…” Something clicked in this head.

“He would be perfect for Rarity!” Spike thoughts were frantic. “If he would end of meeting her, they would fall in love at first sight! I can’t let that happen. I better make sure that…”

Let me just jump in here and example something. Rarity is a white, purple haired mare that is the fashion head of the town. She even has her own boutique. Plus, she is one of the six mares who saved the world in this dimension. Spike has had a crush on this mare ever since he first laid his eyes on her. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to prevent him from ever dating Rarity. So, Spike, deranged by thoughts of trying to protect his crush from being taken, put two and two together and sadly made five.

“I bet he has already met her!” Spike’s corrupted ideas kept on coming, “I bet he met her, and they had a wonderful romantic date and now…he has come to see what his competition is! Oooo, I’m going to make him pay!”

Spike changed his planned route and made a path straight for revenge.
*****************************************************************************************

With the recent finical success of Rarity’s boutique (saving the world is always a good promoter); a competing clothes store, named Foal's, had gone out of business. It was part of a widely spread chain of stores. There weren’t many big chain stores in the town of Ponyville, and the residents liked it that way. If anything, the locals were happy that this store closed down. Now, if you’re wondering why this clothes store is relevant to this story, here it is. It was going to be demolished that day.

Elusive recognized the good-sized brown building. It had a bunch of windows in front, to show off its latest products. The windows showed nothing now. He had bought some supplies from the store before it finally went under. It did seem a tad strange to him however, on why he was bring led here of all places. Who wants to see a closed building?

Elusive looked around. He saw that on one side of the building there was a set of tools that belonged to a local demolition crew. It included the normal; a few jackhammers, a wrecking ball crane, a few sledgehammers, and a couple of tool boxes, full of random objects that might come in handy when the time comes. The crew was either preparing for the demolition or on a lunch break, because they were nowhere to be found.

Looking inside the store, he could barely see anything. It was dark in there, since the bill for lights had stopped being paid. The windows were bordered up, to enforce the fact that it was going to be destroyed. The only light that was illuminating the place was from the open door he was standing in front of.

“Take a nice look around,” Spike said with a suspicious grin, “it won’t be here for long.”

When Elusive started to walk inside the empty building, Spike scrabbled off giggling. He headed over to the side of the building which contained the equipment that was going to be used later today. He climbed into the crane holding the wrecking ball (which had been left unlocked due to a lazy worker) and looked at the controls.

“How do you work this thing?” Spike muttered to himself.

After pressing a bunch of random buttons, he got the machine to roar into life. He then jerked random leavers to see if he could get the wrecking ball to move. The wrecking ball swung back and forth uncontrollably for a good period of time, but Spike succeeded in the end. He wound the ball back, and thrust it forward at the building. *Wham* Direct hit! A bunch of cracks started to appear on the walls of the buildings. *Wham* The wrecking ball crashed into the store again.

“One more time should do it…” Spike said rubbing with hands maliciously.

He reached for the controls and pulled hard on the leavers as the ball flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

*WHAM* *BASH* *CRASH* *BOOM* *CRACK* THUD* *DING*

The building was no more. In its place now where a bunch of huge chucks of brick and stones that were lying all over the place. Pieces of glass were scattered all over the place. Spike victoriously stepped out the operator’s cab and shouted at the debris, “Take that you crush stealer!”

He turned to walk off only to run into the pink face of Elusive staring at him.

The only response Spike could mutter was, “What?”

It turns out that Elusive was smart enough not to go into a building that was sent for destruction. He was debating on if he wanted to go inside or not. Then he heard Spike giggle as he ran away. Elusive watched him and then he saw where Spike was headed. As a result, Elusive skedaddled far away from Foal’s.

“What was that!?” Elusive asked enraged and confused.

As Spike was looking for some words to say, they saw a dark, shadowy of figure sprint down an alley way that was between the buildings that were right next to them. Immediately after, a light blue female pegasus with rainbow hair quickly landed and looked around.

“What’s up Rainbow Dash?” Spike asked the newcomer, seeing this as an opportunity to avoid Elusive’s question.

“Did you see anyone run away from here?” Her voice was quick and frantic.

“Umm yes, someone went down that way.” Spike pointed to where the shadowy figure had gone.

The blue pegasus shouted “Thanks!” and flew off after it.

“I wonder what that was about...” Spike muttered to himself.

“Screw that! Why did you just bring that building down! You could have killed me!” Elusive screamed.

“Oh...that?” Spike nervously laughed. “That was…umm…my other errand I had to do!”

Elusive raised one of his eyebrows. “Your other errand?”

“Ya! I had to…destroy the building to… save time for the public workers!”

Elusive didn’t believe a word he said, but went along with it. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t I tell you?” Spike momentarily turned into a parrot. “Didn’t tell you, didn’t tell you…Oh! I didn’t tell you because I thought you wouldn’t approve of me using unauthorized equipment.”

“You could have at least given me a heads up or something!”

“I didn’t want you to get into any trouble!”

Elusive sighed. “Fine.” Elusive said still upset.

Spike cleared his throat. “Well… should we finish up our tour now?”

Spike headed off in a direction, and Elusive reluctantly followed.
**************************************************************************************

The last building Spike’s tour came to was less of a building, but more of a tree. It was literally a tall tree, with windows sticking out from every which direction. The leaves accented the windows and were trimmed in such a way that no windows were covered. The telescope at the very top was a great place for star gazing at night. The front door was a crimson red and had bushes and shrubbery for company. These were weirdly torn up at the moment. A light red sign next to the door showed a book, telling Elusive that this was the Golden Oaks Library.

“Well, this is the end of our tour!” Spike said with a relief, “I hope you enjoyed your time with me as your guide.”

Elusive scowled. When Spike tried to hurry off Elusive stopped him. “Can you show a certain store you didn’t give me a tour of quickly?”

“But I’ve showed you every important building though,” Spike replied.

“Well, I heard there was a great boutique here in Ponyville, and since I have one at home I thought I might want to see how it compares to mine!” Elusive commented.

“Even though Dusk told everyone not to try to find themselves, what could possibly go wrong with me just looking at the other version of my store?” Elusive thought.

Spike panicked. Even though he failed at getting rid of Elusive, there still might be a chance that Elusive had not met with Rarity just yet. However, Spike had no clue how to stop him. He couldn’t give Elusive no directions, because then he would just ask someone else. He couldn’t give him wrong directions, because if Spike did another suspicious thing to Elusive, Elusive for sure would try to figure things out. Spike went with his last plan, make random things up.

“I would give you directions to it, but something has happened there recently and I recommend you don’t go there.”

Elusive was now curious. “What happened?”

Spike sputtered out all he could think of. “There was a... alien invasion! A deadly disease was born there! An Alaskan Bull Worm destroyed it!”

Elusive just looked at him. “Ooookay...”

Spike then hurried inside the library. Elusive was left with just himself.

“Well, I can easily find my way from here,” Elusive thought, “I’ve done it a hundred times…”

Suddenly something donned on him. “Oh drat! It’s time to meet up back with the others! Visiting my, well technically not my, boutique will have to wait I guess.”

Elusive hurried off to report what had just happened to him.

Author's Note:

References:

Kohl's: I've been forced to go to Kohl's too many times. And now I hate them. So, that's why a Kohl's parody store gets destroyed. Take that you over-priced, horrible music video playing, cheap budget video games seller, that they place in the middle of the isles, because they are trying to make a quick buck, store.

Pokemon: I have been a huge fan of the Pokemon series, since I stole my friend's Pokemon game. Well, I "accidentally" forgot to take it out after I got off the bus. I borrowed it for a field trip. I gave it back...eventually.

Pandemic 2: Basically what the short line describes. It is a game where you make a disease and you try to kill everyone on Earth. It's pretty easy, except for one country that is difficult to get to. Madagascar. You can only get there from one port and it seems like every time there is just a little of global notice that you exists, it closes the one port and you're screwed. I have never won because of that...

Spongebob Squarepants: Alaskan. Bull. Worm! It is from the same episode where Patrick suggests, "Why don't we take Bikini Bottom, and push it somewhere else?" which became a meme in itself. Spongebob Squarepants is probably the cartoon I watched the most as a kid, maybe second to Scooby-Doo, it was a close race. I do wish that the new ones now a days where as good as the ones they produced back then, but they are sadly not. So sad...

Comments

[Listie The Scribe Maid]

(Joke) Alt. Title: Clod Encounters Of The Sixty-Absurd Kind
...Just to let you know, I already called dibs on the crossover between the main, human, R63 and Japanese universes. I call it unIVerse.

[kamil]

Spike: Someone with manners? Better murder him, just in case.

Really Spike? I know you're laughably incompetent, but you can't think of any better plan than that?

[StorybookLegend]

I use to have a Kohl's by my house then one day it disappeared and a gym was in it's place.

[Cherry Noble]

Alaskan? Really?