3: A Sense of Scale
Chapter 3
A Sense of Scale
“Applejack, I was thinking,” Rarity said. Applejack could feel the spines on her neck begin to rise. Rarity had been doing a lot of thinking, mostly about ways to avoid stepping out the front door.
“Yes?” Applejack asked curtly. She tried to be civil, but her voice betrayed her. Rarity feigned injury at the other dragoness’s tone but carried on despite the rebuff.
“I’m just not sure it’s best for Fluttershy, that she be left here alone with Sweetie Belle. What if she thinks we’ve abandoned her?” Rarity asked, looking woefully toward the stairs at the pegasus dragon’s imagined plight. Sweetie Belle was still on guard duty in her own way, sleeping peacefully on the bottom steps.
Applejack could only sigh when she looked up and saw the hopefully expression on Rarity’s face. There was a quiet moment as the two locked eyes. Rarity forced a smile that withered under Applejack’s unyielding scowl.
“Rarity?”
“Yes, Applejack?” Rarity asked, brightening.
“You’re coming with me to Twilight’s,” the farmer said flatly.
“But Applejack!” Rarity protested, her ears drooping as her voice rose into a plaintive whine. She opened her mouth to speak again but the orange dragon’s paw pushed her jaw shut before she could get out another word.
“Sweetie Belle promised not to try to cook anythin’. Nopony’s coming to buy a gown this late at night and we couldn’t let ‘em in anyway. Yer scales aren’t gonna reflect the moonlight any more than mine. And last of all, Fluttershy thinks you’re the monster that lives under her bed, and ain’t gonna be sore that we ran off while she was sleepin’. Got it?”
Rarity wilted against the table, toying with her mane and trying not to pout too visibly. By then Applejack felt like biting something in half, but didn’t want to encourage any further complaints on the unicorn dragon’s part.
“Rares, Ah need you for this okay?” Applejack said, putting her claw lightly on the seamstress’s shoulder. “Ah don’t have a clue how Twi’s gonna be. Might not be able to handle her alone.”
Rarity lifted her head slightly, forcing a weak smile for Applejack’s sake. It lasted only a moment and she slumped back to the table, crossing her eyes to look down the center of her slender muzzle toward the spike on its tip. She groaned miserably, staring at it until her eyes began to water from the strain.
* * *
Proper motivation. That was all Rarity had needed. Creeping through town in the moonlight, Rarity was a swift, snowy blur. Disappearing into shadows like a ninja, the seamstress’ attentiveness to details was serving her well. She heard every approaching hoofbeat, noticed every lit window. Ears perked, eyes wide and sharp, Rarity was the essence of alertness. Applejack had never seen her so focused on anything that wasn’t made of cloth. Or maybe gold, the farmer thought, entertaining past experiences with the fussy mare. Abruptly the earth dragon found she had lost track of Rarity somewhere in the dark.
“Rarity?” Applejack whispered into the shadows. No response.
“I don’t see her anywhere,” said Spike from his perch atop the farmer’s shoulder.
Applejack suddenly found herself caught in the grip of magic, lifted off her feet like a ragdoll and yanked backward through a dark doorway. The door snapped shut as though it had devoured her. Through the soft cloud of blue magic Applejack could make out Rarity’s altered face. One sharp-taloned digit was pointed skyward, pressed to her sleek white muzzle.
“Shhh,” Rarity hissed, eyes narrowing. Applejack’s face twisted up in pain, her eyes watering.
“Mah tail,” she whined, fighting back the urge to snarl in the other dragon’s face.
“Oh,” Rarity said, features softening. The door swung open just long enough for the orange dragon to free her smashed tail spade. Bright orange scales tumbled from the wound like sparks off a blacksmith’s hammer, quickly becoming lost in the darkness of the...
“This is a coal shed,” Applejack said, looking around. “This is a coal shed. Rarity, why are we in a coal shed?”
Rarity was smudged with black coal dust from the tip of her horn to the edge of her bladed tail. She lifted a paw toward the door. “It’s not safe out there!”
Spike slid to the ground and put his face up against a knothole in the door.
“I think somepony’s coming,” he said.
“An entire procession!” Rarity hissed. She lowered her head, peering through a crack just over Spike’s shoulder. “Just look at those cheap knock-off boots. I bet you can hear that awful clacking from here to Sugarcube Corner.”
“Yeah those are... boots...” the tiny purple dragon said, looking up at her. Even covered in coal dust, Rarity’s soft white scales seemed to glow in the silver moonlight that filtered in between the planks of the cheaply made door.
“More like poorly dressed up clogs if you ask me,” Rarity said, oblivious. Applejack stifled a chuckle. She was the patient sort, more than happy to wait out the passing crowd in the snug coal shed. Idly she flicked a few more damaged scales loose from her injury, watching them drop like little golden tears.
“Any sign of ‘em?” the farmer asked after a while.
“It’s hard to say,” Rarity replied quietly, straining to better align her slitted pupil with the crack in the door. “It’s so dark out there...”
Without warning the shed door swung open. The creaking hinges seemed like the only sound in the world and went on for what felt like hours. A wide-eyed Rarity found herself nearly muzzle-to-muzzle with a minty green earth pony. For a moment the shocked stallion just stood there, staring slack-jawed at the trio of dragons hunkered down in his coal shed. It probably didn’t help that every spike along the considerable length of Applejack’s spine stood upright at once. Astounded silence was thicker in the air than the coal dust that had once been the most noticeable component of the rickety enclosure’s atmosphere.
Spike was the first to speak, pointing an accusatory finger at the wide-eyed stallion. “Hey! This is our hiding spot. Find your own.”
The stallion nodded mechanically, slowly pushing the door back shut until the latch clicked. He turned stiffly, took a few very careful, deliberate steps away,, and then ran screaming into the night.
“That could’ve gone better,” Applejack grumbled, pushing the door back open. “C’mon, let’s go. Jig’s up.”
* * *
Twilight Sparkle woke up in near complete and utter darkness. The torches on the walls burned low, barely more than embers casting feeble, ruddy light in the quiet of the library. The young magician bit her tongue, heart racing as she realized she’d slept the entire day away. Her schedule! So many boxes had gone unchecked, haunting the page with their emptiness. She scrambled in the dark to get her legs beneath her and reached out with her magic, brightening the halls as every torch and candle flared with renewed vigor.
Automatically her paw went to her muzzle. It was sticking out further than normal, and shaped wrong too. Black taloned digits covered in smooth lavender scales gripped Twilight’s snout. She put her altered forefoot back on the ground, staring down at her reptilian form as the strange memories of the day, what little of it she had been awake to experience, came flooding back to her. There was breakfast, her package, notes from a few books, correspondence with the magic school, Spike coming to check on her...
“Spike?” Twilight Sparkle called. Where was he? She rose from her haunches and took a few steps, wobbling like a newborn foal on her unfamiliar limbs. Weight shifted strangely in her scaled belly.
Oh, right, Spike’s gems. I ate them all, she thought. He’d been pulling her tail and complaining about it the whole time. That explained the long nap, and probably also Spike’s disappearance.
“He’s probably over at Rarity’s eating her out of house and home,” Twilight said to the empty library, but the books did not answer. It was an odd feeling, not having somepony to talk to.
“Well at least this will be interesting,” the former-unicorn said, slouching back onto her haunches. She picked up one foreleg and then the other, slowly rising to a bipedal--! The windows rattled as she crashed back to the floor.
“Four legs still,” Twilight mumbled, seeing stars. Reaching out with her magic again, she called an old book down from the top shelf. It floated over to her reading desk and opened to an arbitrary page as the old leather cover settled onto the polished mahogany. Surrounded by a soft purple glow, the pages flipped on their own as the unicorn dragon read.
“Modern Magical Maladies,” Twilight said to herself. “This seems good a place to start as any. Let’s see.... do I have a fever?”
Twilight put the back of her paw against her forehead, just above her horn. She didn’t feel like she had a fever. She held her altered forefoot up to get a better look at it. A new idea was forming in the studious dragoness’s mind. She reached up to the book’s pedastol and turned the page by paw like she’d seen Spike do thousands of times before.
“Hmm,” Twilight said, holding up the shredded remains of a dozen or so pages she’d just ripped from the cover. “Well, that is harder than it looks.”
She dropped the damaged pages onto the open book, then lifted them up into the air again with her familiar magic. Her altered foot went back to the ground, where it belonged. Carefully she smoothed each page, fixing the tears and gluing them back into the cover. She’d just finished the last one when someone knocked at the door.
“Oh for goodness sake, I live here!” Spike said, pulling the door open. “Twilight! We’ve got company!”
Twilight hurried into the foyer to meet her guests. Rarity and Applejack sat side by side on the rug behind Spike. Twilight beamed, brimming with excitement over the unexpected arrival of her friends.
“Rarity! Applejack! It’s very nice to see you,” Twilight said, greeting them by rote.
Compelled to return the greeting by her courteous nature Rarity answered, “Uhm, it’s nice to see you too, Twilight.”
“Twi, you can see that we’re dragons, right?” Applejack asked, amazed at Twilight’s business-as-usual demeanor.
“I noticed,” Twilight said, squinting at Rarity’s coal-dusted frame. “But... how?”
Applejack and Rarity both raised a paw, pointing accusingly at Spike with a single talon each.
“Oh that’s neat. How did you do that?” Twilight asked brightly. She lifted her paw off the ground and tried to mimic the gesture. “That’s very useful, more specific than a hoof.”
A clipboard found its way into the space in front of Twilight. Her quill scratched furiously across the blank page.
“I wonder what’s causing this,” Twilight said, blinking her slitted purple eyes as she looked from Rarity to Applejack and back.
“We were hoping you could explain that to us,” Rarity offered. “Seeing as you were the first to change and all. You uh, can fix this, right Twilight?”
The blackened seamstress tried to muster an encouraging smile, but she was forcing a nightmarish, sharp-toothed cheshire grin that could have sent the bravest of souls running to hide in the coal shed she had crawled out of. Twilight stopped her habitual pacing, brought up short by the sight of Rarity’s pointed teeth.
“Of course!” Twilight said warmly. “It might take a few weeks though.”
“WEEKS?! Twilight that simply will not do,” Rarity said, wide-eyed. “I have a fashion line to finish in time for all the spring galas.”
“Also we’re kind of contagious,” Applejack said, pointing at Spike again. “Specially this little guy.”
“Well that can’t be good,” Twilight said, wrinkling her nose. “How contagious?”
“Twilight I’m afraid you’re missing the real problem here. I can’t possibly be expected to work under these conditions! Deadlines loom! You understand deadlines and schedules of course,” Rarity whined. She grabbed Twilight’s shoulders and began shaking her wildly back and forth. Her voice cracked with desperation. “Tell me you understand!”
Applejack pried the bawling fashionista off Twilight. “Tell her how it went, Spike.”
“Well I got Applejack and Rarity,” Spike said, thinking back. “Then Rarity got Sweetie Belle and Sweetie Belle got Fluttershy. It was really quick too. I just tapped Rarity on the nose.”
Rarity nodded solemnly, tears still running down her face.. Twilight whisked through the pages of Modern Magical Maladies, reading silently while the others watched.
“Well, the bad news is it’s probably going to stay that contagious,” Twilight said slowly as she read. She brightened. “But we can have a slumber party! It’ll be great, we’ll go get Sweetie Belle and Fluttershy and you can all stay with me while I work on the cure! Won’t that be fun?”
Applejack’s eyes glazed over, scenes from her last overnight experience with Rarity and Twilight Sparkle playing through her head like grainy old horror movies. Shrill screaming broke the earth dragon out of her thoughts. Her head instinctively turned toward Rarity.
"What?" The prissy dressmaker asked as she met Applejack's gaze with confusion. Her expression soured with realization.
“Well it’s not me!” Rarity huffed and crossed her arms, turning her nose up at Applejack.
Twilight hurried to a window. “Wow, what’s going on out there?”
Applejack felt her blood run cold. “Uh, Twilight? Just how contagious do you think this is?”
“Oh, extremely,” she said, craning her neck to try to see what was going on just a few buildings down. “We need to make sure we don’t touch anypony.”
“Uh, what about scales? Like, one’s we’ve... shed,” the farmer asked, wincing on the last word.
“They’d be contagious too, but probably only for a day or so,” Twilight said. “Why?”
“Uh oh,” Applejack swallowed hard. “We might have a little bigger problem then.”
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You know, this reminds me of the story I wrote, Dragon Chronicles, except Rainbow Dash turns into a dragon by drinking a potion, and she is purposely spreading it. Don't ask.
Good chapter, I see the fun and chaos is going to start, but is it me or did you repeat and sentence about Rarity getting smudged with black coal
2054501
Did I?
2054501
Woops! I did!
Fixed, thanks!
Cool fucking story
Dragon Ponies 1
Dragon Ponies 2
Spike's Reaction To Rarity Dragon Pony
2054536
Sapphire Starlight and Featherfall Dragon Ponies
fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/025/6/6/commission__dragon_sapphire__n__featherfall_by_blood_asp0123-d5roy07.png
2054556
So awesome
So entertaining! This is such a cool concept and I really love what you're doing with it. Looking forward to more!
2054610
Thanks
more is coming soon!
and then the excrement hit the cooling device. So jealous you got the awesome title card guy on deviantart to make you cover art
2054754
Yes! I was very excited to get him for the project
2054625 Awesome!
Fantastic cover art.
2055577
Isn't it?
Cover art was done by the talented Jowybean: Jowybean on Devart.
i love it!
2054522 your welcome
That is a nice cover art, and the comic gets funnier each chapter. I wonder how the mane 6 will deal with this dragontagion, and if Ponyville will have to be renamed Draconyville...
2056623
Now, when you say scaling...
Ehehe, soggy wolverine.
I like this! Looking forward to more dragon disasters.
So at one point this will happen 24.media.tumblr.com/fb90c0ffa892ef3caf1695f38708b5ab/tumblr_meyjknBiAw1r19504o1_1280.png 25.media.tumblr.com/de4074ee2c01b133ea9704b59f13fb76/tumblr_meyjknBiAw1r19504o2_1280.png
24.media.tumblr.com/de0c7b3f047a34f2fd75efbb047ec68a/tumblr_meyjknBiAw1r19504o3_1280.png
ad the good news just keeps coming lol great chapter.
A wide-eyed Rarity found herself nearly muzzle-to-muzzle with a minty green earth pony.
Umm. Shouldn't he be turning into a dragon?
I mean him and rarity made physical contact, and the past chapters showed us that anypony who touches spike or an already transformed pony gets turned into a dragon. Why doesn't it happen here?
7177697
Key word there being "nearly." No contact but close enough that contact could be made.