After finally learning his humiliating true dragon surname, Spike is desperate to have it changed. To do so he must wrangle with his greatest foe to date; the Equestrian civil court system.
When Celestia decides Spike is finally ready to learn about his true dragon heritage, the young dragon is introduced to a whole new side of himself.
This side, unfortunately, includes an incredibly stupid surname.
In order to have it changed, he must embark on a perilous adventure through the dangerous world of civil court bureaucracy.
It was a rare thing indeed, when there was a spread of this quality, for Spike to only feel the distinct feeling of suspicion. Not the charming kind of suspicion when you think a loved one might be hiding an impromptu gift for you behind their back, nor the severe kind like when you might think said loved one has no present for you and is guilty of a significant number of war-crimes. It fell somewhere between those two extremes, if you can imagine such a thing, and it was consuming him entirely.
He felt no excitement, no joy, not even the slightest pang of hunger. Well actually, that's not really correct. Spike did have several intense pangs of hunger, but then again he always did. He was a dragon after all and they weren't exactly famous for being easy to satiate. However, it spoke volumes about the muting of said hunger that he was able to restrain himself and fix the founders of this feast with an inscrutable glare.
These weren't the usual gems that Rarity gave him to eat, this was the veritable 'good stuff'. Normally the seamstress would pass along anything imperfect she encountered for the dragon to snack on, while she kept the best gems for use in her dressmaking. Spike didn't mind this, imperfect gems tasted basically just as good at the higher quality ones after all. However, this didn't mean he still didn't get excited when the potential of some more fine dining was presented to him. Normally these were reserved for treats, but today the entire table was covered in them.
"Well Spike, aren't you gonna dig in?" Twilight urged.
"Yes my darling, only the best for our favourite little dragon!" Rarity added.
The smiles on their faces may have seemed normal to an untrained observer, but Spike knew these mares like he knew the back of his hand. Their subtly strained, almost desperate, nature was plain for him to see. It had started this morning when Twilight had gotten a letter from Celestia. It had come so early that it's heralding fiery-belch had woken them both up. Twilight had groggily read it, but as her eyes had scanned the page all traces of sleepiness seemed to vanish from her.
She had turned, stared at Spike for a few seconds before informing him that he didn't have to do any chores today. Now normally the drake would have questioned this, but he had learned to never look a gift horse in the mouth, and not only because in a world ran by hyper-intelligent equines that expression had wildly different connotations.
She had then let him go back to sleep, and when he awoke he found that Twilight had turned off his alarm clock and allowed him to have a lie-in. It had only gotten better from there when he went downstairs to find that not only had Twilight sorted breakfast for them both, she had bought it to spare them from the utter salmonella-fiesta that was her cooking.
His capacity to just blindly accept forced-providence began to dwindle, however, when Rarity came around. Spike had sat by the window to eat his breakfast and saw her from a mile off. It seemed like she had galloped the entire way levitating two buckets of the aforementioned 'good stuff'. The seamstress had barged into Golden Oaks with the all the grace of someone trying to thread a needle by tying the thread around a bullet and just shooting it through. When he had questioned Rarity as to what her rush was, she insisted she had just been so excited to spend the entire day with her favourite dragon.
Now Rarity spending the day with Spike was hardly an unusual occurrence, but the unicorn always gave advanced notice. She didn't nearly boot the library door out of the frame with a sweaty unkempt mane and several kilos of her best gems for said favourite dragon to scoff. There's definitely a joke in there about Rarity acting so un-Rarity-like being the biggest rarity of all but it would be laboured and unfunny so we'll just move on.
The morning had been spent in a whirlwind of Spike's favourite board games, a trip to the comic shop to buy him what basically amounted to a new library's worth, Rarity and Twilight listening to him explain which were his favourite series and while they tried to hard not to appear bored that it looped around again and became mildly insulting. All the while, Spike had gotten more and more wary of what their angle was here. When lunch time came and Rarity had upended her two buckets onto the table, he had finally had enough.
So here he was, in the seat of honour before a buffet of his favourite food while his two favourite ponies in the world animatedly discussed all the fun things they could this afternoon, and all he could do was continue staring at them suspiciously.
"So, are you guys gonna tell me why you're doing all this?" he began.
"Of course nothing's wrong Spike!" Twilight exclaimed, only nanoseconds after Spike finished talking.
Jackpot.
"So, now we know something's wrong, are you going to tell me what-"
"I said nothing's wrong, Spike! I think someone needs to clean the coins out of their ears!" Twilight tried to sound and look carefree, but her expression became one of deeply troubled contemplation as she realised that what she had just said was not, nor had it ever been, an actual saying. For her part, Rarity stared incredulously at the librarian. Years of schmoozing in Canterlot had given the seamstress an enviable level of skill in verbal jousting, and this made it understandably difficult to watch Twilight conduct the affair with the demeanor of a murderer attempting to fabricate an alibi to the police while carrying a large, bleeding burlap sack.
"Darling," Rarity began, ignoring the expression of gratefulness on Twilight's face for sparing everyone the embarrassment of allowing her to continue, "All that Twilight means is that you don't need to feel like something has to be wrong for us to want to spend the day with you, we love you very dearly after all."
"...Yeah but there is something wrong isn't there?"
"There's nothing... 'wrong'." Rarity replied, adding hoof-mimed speech marks around the offending word.
"Spike, the letter Celestia sent this morning was about you." Twilight pulled up a chair next to him, "It's good news really, but the Princess thinks you're finally ready to hear about your... dragon parents."
At this, he dropped the glare and uncrossed his arms. He strongly suspected Twilight had been about to say 'real parents'. Whether it was for her benefit or his own that she didn't, he couldn't be sure. It wasn't something that the two of them had discussed at any length.
"Does she want me to meet them or something?"
"Oh goodness no dearie, Twilight told me the princess is planning to send over the information they have on them via letter."
Each mare regarded him carefully, clearly preparing whatever adverse reaction they expected him to have.
"Okay," he began, searching for something more to say, "That's fine, I guess."
With that, he started chomping down on the gems while the two mares stared, thrown off by his flippancy. Spike was touched that they had tried to give him the best possible day before he got some potentially upsetting news, but the matter of his dragon parents had never really bothered him all that much. If they had wanted to make contact they could have done so by now. Obviously he knew that the ponies he considered to be his family weren't blood relations but it hadn't ever been a factor. They had been all he'd known since hatching and they were more than enough for him.
"Spike, are you sure you understand what we've just said?"
"Twilight, whoever my 'dragon parents' are, I've lasted sixteen years without them. Sure, it'll be cool to know who they are but honestly this doesn't change anything for me. I'm fine, really."
The librarian's relief was palpable, and each of her muscles visibly relaxed. Once again Spike didn't know whether this was because he was fine, or at his assertion that nothing would change. Either way, it was good to see her in a better state. Rarity came over and ruffled his spines affectionately, commenting on that he was 'such a mature dragon'. Spike focused his attention on polishing off more gems, glad that the earlier tension was now easing.
The swirling green mist above the table began to coalesce. Rarity and Twilight had made themselves a light lunch and sat to join Spike at his banquet but it had been short-lived. Celestia had apparently decided it was time. They watched as the smoke formed into a manila folder containing the fateful information. Considering how fateful said information was, it came as something of a disappointment when the dossier finished coming together and then just fell on the table. A bit more fanfare would have been nice.
Still retaining his casual demeanor, Spike picked it up and flicked it open while pointedly ignoring the glances he was getting from the two unicorns. Inside was a single sheet of paper with two photographs affixed to it. He removed them and took a glance, not knowing whether to be relieved or worried about his own lack of an emotional response.
His mother appeared to be a land-dragon. Huge, muscled and wingless, with nearly impossibly deep violet scales and rich gold spines. His father, on the other hand, had a much slighter frame and appeared almost serpent-like. Perfect, bleach white with spines and wings the colour of sapphires. What he lacked in his mother's apparent strength, was made up for by sheer size. From the scale of the scenery nearby, he looked to be twice as tall as the dragon Fluttershy had cleared from the nearby mountain.
The dossier itself was very slight in details, admitting from the start that they had little concrete information on the two dragons. Suffice to say both his parents had very publicly left the egg in Celestia's personal gardens, and then left before anyone got the courage to question them. Whether they were simply abandoning Spike or actively wanted him to be raised by ponies was something no-one had ever found out. This part of the story was something he already knew, and recalling how hard and unforgiving dragon culture was, Spike liked to imagine they had wanted to give him a better life.
The only things in it that were completely new to him were the pictures and a list of sightings. The beasts had remained elusive, and the last recorded one had been nearly a decade ago now. Dragons simply continued to grow as they aged and he wondered how old each was to reach such mind-boggling sizes.
There was a further piece of interesting information though. Through talking to the more friendly dragon clans, Celestia's royal guard had managed to find what each of his parents were called. His mother's name confirmed her as a dragon from Griffonstone. Spike stared at the words for a moment, attempting to sound out the strange pronunciation of the unfamiliar Griffish.
"Cazilech Zargboi," he tentatively said, before thanking Twilight as she corrected him.
However, it was his father's name that made his jaw drop.
"Whiteflame Sparkle... wait, does this mean I'm a Sparkle too?!" Feeling something approaching genuine excitement for the first time since receiving the letter, he rushed to hug Twilight, "Oh my gosh, with the rainboom as well, it must have been destiny!"
"I'm sure it was Spike," Twilight chuckled good-naturedly, "But dragon naming is a bit more complicated than that. If a dragon doesn't have a known surname, they choose their own at adulthood. I imagine that's what Whiteflame did. However, if each parent's surname is known then their child actually has an amalgamation of both!"
Spike watched as she took the letter in her magical grasp and scanned it, the excitement of being able to describe an unfamiliar concept taking over her.
"No-one can be sure without talking to the dragons themselves, but Celestia said that their best scholars in dragon culture agree the most likely amalgam for you would be... huh."
"Well, what is it darling?" Rarity encouraged.
"It would seem Spike's most likely full dragon name is 'Spike Sparkleboi'."
"Wow, it's certainly... striking," Rarity offered impotently, to which Twilight chimed with an underwhelming 'uh, yeah'.
What followed could only be described as oppressive silence. Rarity opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, clearly trying to find the words to reassure Spike, while Twilight pointedly busied herself with re-reading the scant letter. Spike let the name sink into him like cold vomit down the drain of one of those awful avocado baths you sometimes still see in your mate's houses and are too polite to point out how terrible they look.
Twilight set the letter down on the table when it became clear the amount of times she had re-read it was bordering on sarcastic. Her eyes met Spike's for a second before she valiantly decided to look down at the floor instead of trying to comfort him. Honestly, the dragon couldn't really blame her either, he didn't even know what to say to himself ease the disappointment threatening to crush him. He scooped up the dossier and scanned the information again himself.
"Spike Sparkleboi," the dragon read aloud, dashing his hopes that the name might sound cooler when he said it himself. He stared at the page for a time, feeling for all the world that Celestia's impeccable calligraphy was mocking him. Say what you want, the world 'Sparkleboi' did not become more cool when written in fancy letters by a magical horse princess.
Now the young dragon had been through a lot in his short life, and he prided himself on his ability to deal with new challenges with a calm disposition, stiff upper lip and an amount of whinging well within the government's recommended daily limit. What he didn't exactly deal with so well was the tiny but distinct sound of someone trying not to laugh. His head whipped up from the paper and he prepared a suitable cocktail of profanity to hurl at the offending mare. However, he was confronted by the sight of identical rabbit-in-headlight expressions from the two unicorns. Neither made any move to implicate the other, implying they were honour-bound in some kind of 'snitches get stitches' situation, but adapted for libraries.
Oh, so this was the game they wanted to play, was it? The poor fools, he almost pitied them. They clearly had no idea how in over their heads they were. You see, he may not have been particularly fast, strong or a proficient fighter, but Spike Sparkleboi was possibly the greatest living savant at getting his friends to laugh condescendingly at him. Neither Twilight nor Rarity dared blink as he planned his next move.
"Spike..." he began, narrowing his eyes. Each mare's pupils contracted, they knew what was coming. The only question was whether these paper tigers could withstand the oncoming storm.
"...Sparkleboi."
All pieces came together, Twilight's eye twitched, king had nowhere else to move, Twilight's mask slipped, checkmate. The librarian fell to the ground, hooves flailing as her body was wracked with a giggling fit of biblical proportions.
"You think this is funny?" Spike fumed, his stubby arms folding across his chest indignantly.
"Twilight, I'm shocked at you! I'll have you know there's nothing funny about Spike's lovely new surname!" This would have been encouraging support from Rarity were it not for the fact that she had had totally lost composure toward the sentence and joined in with Twilight's laughing. Both mares fell in a disheveled heap on the ground and neither was able to regain their earlier composure. The dragon wanted to scream at them, and he would have done just that were it not for the fact that he knew that he'd be the absolute worst offender if this was happening to literally anyone else.
"Oh god, I can't go around being called 'Spike Sparkleboi'!" he lamented, manipulating the paper desperately in the misguided hope that it might reveal some new writing, revealing this was all a borderline criminal abuse of trust and authority by Celestia to play a joke on him.
"Spike dearest," Rarity wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and stood on still-shaky hooves, "It's okay, no-one outside this room even knows, save for Celestia and some scholars on dragon culture. And I'll remind you that Canterlot academics are literally the only ponies who care about what Canterlot academics have to say!"
"Hey!" Twilight snapped.
"I'll admit, it's an amusing surname, but Twilight and I would never betray your confidence. This will be our little secret," Rarity reassured. Twilight got up as well and nodded to him with an admirably low amount of giggling.
"Thanks guys," he said with audible relief.
"I'll bet you'll be laughing about this too before you know it," Twilight offered, and the three of them began to chuckle lightly.
"Yeah, I suppose it is kinda funny. Heh, Sparkleb-"
He was cut off as yet another piece of correspondence arrived from Celestia. They watched as the green smoke aggregated into a laminated piece of paper. When it was fully formed, Spike reached out for it and found himself confronted with an updated copy of his hatching certificate. As his eyes scanned the words he began to feel the kind of panic and anguish usually reserved for when strangers attempt to strike up conversations about animated television programmes with you on public transport. Where it used to simply read 'Spike', it now had his new, full name.
"I don't get it!" Spike babbled desperately, "Is she just messing with me or does she actually think she's doing me a favour?! Also isn't she literally our co-head of state? How does she have time for this?!"
"If the princess thinks this is for the best Spike, we're just going to have to trust her." Twilight said in the manner of someone utterly convinced they'd just said something terribly clever. He felt like arguing with her about her troubling lack of drive to question the authority of an absolute monarch, but Spike 'No Gods, No Masters' Sparkleboi had bigger fish to fry. There was no way he was going the rest of his life with this name. He clutched his hatching certificate tighter as the only way forward became clear to him.
"Twilight," he muttered darkly, "Fetch me my litigation garments."
"So dearie... you're actually going to wear those?" said Rarity, her tone not unlike the one you might use to try and coax a gun out of the hands of someone who was wearing a sandwich board proclaiming the end of the world. Spike took another look at his litigation garments in the mirror. Now admittedly, he had never been involved in anything the least bit litigious, but he had always thought that if he did, these would be the things he would need.
They consisted of a musty fur-collared cloak and a thick antique walking stick the young dragon had procured from a cart-boot sale. He and Twilight had agreed early in his ownership that their argument about whether they were priceless treasures or useless pieces of trash was getting them nowhere and that they should just drop it.
"Look, if we turn up looking like everyone else, we'll just get corralled into a queue, but if I turn up in these!" he gestured to said priceless treasures/useless pieces of trash, "They're not gonna tell someone carrying this to just wait!"
"Spike, I understand you're very anxious to get your name changed back but you can't take these," Twilight's tone was not unkind, but it was still firm, "They'll weaken your position and I'm pretty sure it'd get you arrested."
Spike was about to ask how he could possibly be arrested for taking a large knotted piece of wood which could easily be used to beat someone to near-death into a court building, but was cut off by Rarity.
"I really must agree with Twilight dearie, as long as we go in and follow their instructions politely, you'll be coming home tonight with your name fixed,"
"Yeah, but whenever the power ponies want to get justice done, they never go without their outfits and weapons!" he countered, not quite grasping that comics featuring costumed vigilantes conducting extrajudicial assaults on poor ponies forced into lives of crime by circumstances beyond their control was maybe not the best source for an argument about court etiquette.
"Don't you think 'justice' is a rather grandiose way to describe removing the word 'Sparkleboi' from your name?" Rarity deadpanned.
"Spike, you are not taking something you just admitted is a weapon to the civil court, are we clear?" Twilight said, stomping her hoof for emphasis. The dragon's eye's narrowed.
"I think you'll find that I have ways of getting what I want Twilight," he intoned darkly. All parties present steeled themselves for what was sure to be the greatest battle of their lives...
Within the hour, the three friends had arrived at the veritable cathedral of bureaucracy that was the Ponyville civil court. Spike's shoulder's were slumped as he was woefully sans litigation garments. He had continued to argue in favour of taking them while only using comics as his sources. He was sure that, years from now, legal scholars would look back on his defense of the outfit as a stalwart defense built upon foundations of only the soundest reason and logic.
Unfortunately, the reptilian Matlock had been unprepared for the depths to which his opponents were willing to sink. He had finally relented when the two unicorns had adopted the childish but irritatingly effective strategy of referring to him as 'High Wizard Sparkleboi' and saying things like 'wow nice staff High Wizard Sparkleboi' and 'ooh don't use your magic on me High Wizard Sparkleboi'.
The three of them surveyed the foyer of the civil court. Beneath various signs, swathes of ponies had filed into orderly, but slow-moving, queues. That was pretty much it. Spike hadn't exactly expected a cabaret, but this was so underwhelming as to become overwhelming. The omnipresent lifelessness seemed to suck the colour out of everyone queuing. It made the dragon depressed.
"Okay Spike, we'll need a deed poll form first," Twilight began, squinting to read the signs above the various queues.
"It's the third queue from the left darling," Rarity interjected, confidently stepping over to join the line.
"Wow Rarity, you worked that out before me," Twilight trilled, very unsuccessfully trying to hide how irritated that had made her, "How do you know much about the court system? It's almost like you already knew which queue to join, haha, have you changed your name before?"
"I am not merely a pretty face my darling," the seamstress replied curtly.
"Hahaha, of course not! Have you changed your name before or not?"
"Twilight!" Spike snapped, "Do you really think the only reason Rarity knew where to queue before you was because she's changed her name?"
The librarian grumbled something about how much she'd read about the Equestrian legal system while staring at the floor. The three busied themselves with the white-knuckle thrill ride that was waiting to be given forms while the line moved at about a fifth of the speed of continental plates. The droning hum of indecipherable background conversation drifted in one ear and out of the other. The two unicorns were having an extremely dull chat which was divided equally between updates on how Rarity's business was going and what Twilight was currently researching. The dragon's only respite from the near-lethal monotony was the occasional nutter going spare about the amount of forms they had to fill in.
Spike climbed onto Twilight's back to get a better look around. The room was beige and the furniture was wooden. If there were any further observations to be made, he couldn't think of any of them. He decided to look at the clock, noting it was five-past-one, and then resolved to not look at it again until five minutes had passed because literally attempting to make the one life he would ever get pass as quickly as possible was still preferable to sitting around bored out of his skull in this stupid beige room.
Seconds ticked by like ice-ages as he resisted the urge to look back, which was quickly seeming less and less possible. He only became aware that he was digging his claws into Twilight's back when she turned and glared at him. It reached the point where he was near-certain that five minutes must have passed, but he was no stranger to nihilistic staring-contests with Father Time, so he decided to wait another couple of minutes to be sure.
Finally, to the victor went his spoils. He turned to the clock, and felt rage building as he saw it now somehow read four-minutes-past-one. He scowled at it's blank, uncaring face and the clock didn't respond because it was a clock and didn't posses the sentience necessary for a response. Surveying the queue again, he saw that in the apparent nega-time that had just gone by, they had moved all of half a metre. Spike cursed his lack of foresight not to bring along a book or something. He glared at the back of Twilight's head, feeling very much that if he had been allowed to bring his litigation garments, none of this would be happening right now.
Okay, new game. He swivelled around until he located a security guard. Spike closed his eyes and counted down from three, then once he reached zero he opened them again and stared. Let it be a testament to the dullness of the civil court that not only was Spike engaging in a staring contest, one of the most boring and maddeningly pointless ways to spend your time, but he was going a step further and having a staring contest with someone who wasn't even playing along. The dragon was well aware what he was doing was so tragic and pathetic that it may have actually been worthy of prosecution, but he was far too bored to care.
The guard was wearing a white collared shirt and black tie under a black jumper. They were grey, their mane was darker grey, and their eyes were brown. Even the ponies working here were boring. He felt like external forces were conspiring to shut his eyes against his will. Sentient creatures simply weren't mean to deal with situations so utterly bland. Staring at the guard's eyes was so mind-meltingly uninteresting that the dragon's eyes began to just slide off him, it was like trying to look at one of those stupid magic-eye pictures that your friend might smugly pretend they've worked out despite you both knowing they haven't.
The guard hadn't moved at all since this began, prompting Spike to question whether they were in fact a very realistic looking cardboard cut-out. His eyes began to water as time went by, both from the lack of blinking and the psychological impact of staring at the visual equivalent of eating dry Weetabix while watching the Tory party conference muted with Radio 4 on in the background. Finally, it all became too much, and Spike was forced to blink. He went through the process that literally everyone goes through after their first round of a staring contest in a while, which is to say he remembered that staring contests were somehow more boring than doing absolutely nothing.
However, that wasn't to say that he was finished with the guard. He now found himself quite invested on seeing them blink, though at this point seeing any discernible movement from them at all would have sufficed. He stared, they didn't move. He stared, they didn't move. He stared, another nutter was sent absolutely west when they were told they had signed their forms in the wrong place.
Now, you can't exactly stride up to somebody and demand that they move, but it also reaches a point when you might think they are remaining statuesque purely to spite you. You, specifically. The dragon's eye's narrowed, his grip on Twilight's midriff tightened as he attempted to make the guard blink by purely the powers of his mind.
"Spike... darling?" Rarity's voice floated from the aether, freeing him from his brief flirtation with sanity loss.
"What, are we at the front?" Spike babbled excitedly,
"Oh goodness no darling, I just wanted to let you know we're finally within ten metres of the desk."
He prepared a mouthful of unforgivable profanity to hurl at everyone present, but the chance never arrived. For the fourth time that day, he belched forth flames against his will as Celestia sent yet more unwelcome correspondence. The smoke coalesced to form a polaroid photograph. He squinted at it and saw Princess Luna posing with a wide grin in front of the stained glass window of Spike and the Elements of harmony. On the accompanying plaque, 'Sparkleboi' had been added after his name, and Celestia had written 'Everyone in the castle is so proud of your dragon heritage Spike!' on the border of the photo in that infernal calligraphy.
It's a strange thing, to say the least, to feel that the heads of state of the country you live in were wasting valuable time that could be spent improving lives just to ruin your afternoon. He stared into Luna's eyes, trying to find any trace of mockery or sarcasm, but found them maddeningly sincere.
"Hey!" he was snapped from his borderline-psychotic musings by a voice. Spike noted the direction from whence said voice originated and felt his heart skip. It was the corner of the room where the apparently inanimate guard had previously stood. Tearing his eyes from the offending picture he turned to claim his meagre prize; watching as someone who he had recently engaged in an non-consensual staring contest reprimanded him for a breach in courthouse etiquette. Living the dream.
However, as was quickly becoming the theme for the day, Spike found himself disappointed beyond words when he swiveled around to find that the guard from before had apparently been relieved by a new one. She was wearing a white collared shirt and black tie under a black jumper. Her mane were grey, her mane was darker grey, and her eyes were brown. He felt his eye twitching against his will.
"No open flames in the courthouse!" they bellowed whilst somehow still managing to be boring, "Go to the back of the queue!"
Spike looked back at the line of ponies behind them, then at the nirvana that was the desk. The three of them were directly in the middle, and now thanks to forces utterly beyond his control they were going to lose all their progress. He stared incredulously into the dull, lifeless eyes of the security guard for what felt like an eternity.
They didn't blink.
Spike finally let loose his premeditated stream of obscenities as they took their new place at the back of the queue. Thank god for small mercies at least.
"So Princess, when coming up with surnames dragons actually combine those of each parent!" Professor Cinder Dawn was an earth pony so bookish it bordered on parody. Celestia listened to him politely, not bothering to interrupt to let him know she was already aware of literally everything he was saying.
"Me and my group had a look at this particular dragon, the one belonging to your student is he not?"
"Spike doesn't belong to anyone Cinder," the almost imperceptible narrowing of the Princess' eyes would have been as blatant and threatening to any experienced Canterlot socialite as the rozzers booting down your door at three in the morning shouting 'where's the ganja son?!'. An experienced Canterlot socialite Cinder Dawn was not, though even he was able to pick on the cooling of her tone.
"Erm... of course Princess, forgive me. Too much time spent in academia can dull one to the intricacies of social interaction," he offered with a nervous laugh. She regarded him over her cup of tea for a second. He was an earnest sort, and while his implication of Spike being property was incredibly insulting she could tell he meant no serious harm. For this, she favoured him with a breezy laugh and wave of her forehoof.
"Court can very much have the same effect. Please continue, professor."
"Yes! Well my group and I believe we may have worked out what the most likely surname for this particular drake, given what we know about the ages and heritages of each parent." He took out a piece of paper from his file and slid it across the table to Celestia, who was only saved from rolling her eyes by centuries of diplomatic experience. They were a dramatic lot, academics. This was not a scene from a James Bond film, he could have very easily just told her the information rather than dressing it up in some ridiculous conspiratorial poncho.
Celestia took the paper and read it with a neutral expression. It was certainly not what she would have thought. The princess had held enough summits with the dragons in her life to have obtained an enviable level of insight into their customs, and she had very much been betting on Spike's surname being 'Zargle'. She looked up at Cinder Dawn, a professor of dragonic sociology in his early thirties.
She was nothing if not good at recognising genius, which this beige stallion clearly had in spades. He yawned loudly without covering his mouth and Celestia wondered if all the genius was in the place his manners were supposed to be. It hardly mattered anyway, he was the expert and if this is what he said Spike's full name was, she supposed he was probably right. In any case, Celestia thought it was a much more interesting name than 'Spike Zargle'.
"Thank you for your help professor," she excused herself from the table and, after a forced farewell than neither pony particularly desired or enjoyed, Celestia was headed back to her personal chambers.
"Snowbird," she began, addressing her steward who had fallen in step with the princess the second she left the tea chamber, "Could you please write down the following information, it's for quite an important letter..."
"And then we got to have a meeting with Duke and Duchess Chromium, I forgot how satisfying it is to pacify another insufferable noble family demanding more tax relief!" Princess Luna's eyes were fiery and her hooves gesticulated wildly as she recalled her day, she had always been the better storyteller of the two. Dreamwalking was something the younger alicorn could do while asleep, so she was starting to take on more responsibilities during the day.
"...and you should have seen their faces. Honestly, being demonised as a creature of irredeemable blackness and sin over this last millennia has really given me an edge in negotiations!" Celestia couldn't tell whether her sister had either just made an incredibly dark joke or revealed some concerning hidden bitterness. Luna's toothy, wide-eyed grin gave no clues, so Celestia elected to simply glaze over the pressing issue like all great leaders did.
"I had a pretty interesting meeting myself today," Celestia began, taking dainty bites of a sandwich that was probably stuffed to the brim with caviar or gold leaf or some other insufferable bourgeois slop, "Professor Dawn from The University of Canterlot."
"A professor? He sounds like a bore, what ever could you have wanted with him?" Luna laughed.
"Well, I thought it was high-time Spike learned about his dragon heritage. Cinder is a professor of dragonic sociology and was counselling me on what his surname would be."
"Oh yes I remember you talking about this last week," Luna replied, gesturing for a nearby waiter to refill her mug of mead or whatever cliched middle-age throwback beverage she favoured this week, "He is always so friendly whenever we visit Ponyville. What is the whelp's true name?"
"Spike Sparkleboi,"
"A fine name for a dragon methinks," Celestia was about to interject that 'methinks' had been out-of-date even before the nightmare moon incident before Luna carried on regardless, "Still though, given what you told me the names of his parents were, I was betting on 'Zargle'. At least, that was what methought."
"Okay you've really gotta stop saying... wait, you thought it was going to be what?"
"Zargle, combining the start of 'Zargboi' and the end of 'Sparkle'."
"That's what I thought too!" Celestia exclaimed, "Maybe we should get a second opinion? I mean 'Zargle' seems so much more likely, don't you think..." she trailed off as her eyes met her younger sister's. She was being given a look that was uncomfortably close to... scolding?
"Celly, what was it you told me was the single most important development in the Equestrian monarchy during my absence?"
"Erm," Celestia couldn't help suddenly feeling very much on the spot, "That we are the servants of Equestria more than the rulers, and that our subjects need to be able to govern themselves as much as possible."
"Exactly! We are no longer rulers who command and order, sweet sister. We must remain humble, modest and servile!" Luna bellowed while gesturing for one of their paid servants to put more taxpayer-bought food on the golden plate in front of her, before she began to eat it with an honest to god actual silver spoon, "What if your second opinion agrees with Professor Dawn? Would we need a third? A fourth?"
Celestia's cheeks burned furiously as her sister admonished her. She peered down at her food, deeply ashamed of her previous outburst.
"You're right Luna, of course you're right. I suppose status can still sometimes get the better of me. Of course we should trust the professor, he's the expert after all." she looked up to see the younger princess giving her a reassuring smile.
"It happens to the best of us sister. What is important is that we trust our subjects, as you taught me to. I also think we must do our best to support young Spike Sparkleboi in this new stage of his life."
"I wholeheartedly agree," Celestia began, considering whether attacking the glorious cake to her left was worth enduring another ten months of scandal and rumour courtesy of Canterlot's multiple amoral tabloids, "You understand being in a society where few ponies understand you better than anyone Luna, how do you think we could best support him?"
"CBR, Celestia, CBR," Luna said smugly, only clarifying once it became clear her sister's confused stare wasn't a joke, "Constant badgering reassurance."
"It's meeee!" Luna's exuberant cry heralded her arrival as she booted the double doors to Celestia's office with both hind-hooves. Each one lurched violently around its hinge before embedding themselves in the adjoining walls causing thousands of bits worth of structural damage and destroying several irreplaceable pieces of priceless art. The sun princess regarded the display with a neutral expression and waved away her apologetic looking personal guard.
"Ah Luna, nice to see you. I'm sorry but I already sent the letter to Spike. In the future if you wish to be around for such occasions I really must counsel that you take punctuality more seriously."
"A thousands pardons Celly, I thought of something quite pressing to do and had to miss our engagement. I do think you'll be pleased enough to forgive me though!" with an obsidian flare of magic Luna summoned a small piece of laminated paper and presented it to her sister. Celestia took it and squinted at it, Luna rolled her eyes. This continued silently for a solid two minutes until any meagre amount of comedy in the situation had been thoroughly exhausted.
"Look, you're nearly ten thousand years old. Just wear the reading glasses it's nothing to be ashamed of,"
"I don't need reading glasses Luna," Celestia seethed through gritted teeth, "Now what restaurant is this menu from?"
"It's young Sparkleboi's hatching certificate!" Luna shouted, seizing the document and waving it in Celestia's face, "I had it updated to include his new full name."
"Wow Luna, that's a wonderful idea, I bet Spike will be delighted! But however did you manage this?"
"Oh I have my ways. Let's just say I had help from a 'good friend'." the younger alicorn chuckled fondly as she reminisced about repeatedly punching the filing cabinet that housed the document in the royal archives until its lock came off, followed by screaming at the high archivist in her royal Canterlot voice until the mare broke down in tears and agreed to amend the certificate presumably under fear for her life.
Celestia's horn flared with sunlight and the document was sent on it's way. No doubt Spike would receive it any moment and be absolutely thrilled! She half-listened to Luna excitedly chattering away while she thought of all the things that bore Spike's old name. Surely the more things they amended, the more support it would show?
"Say Luna, what is your schedule looking like today?"
"Let me see, let me see!" Luna hopped up and down impatiently while Celestia added her message to the Polaroid. Her tongue was stuck out as she concentrated on forming the elegant script. Calligraphy was not something that came naturally to the princess. Unfortunately, a few hundred years ago she'd tried to pick it up as a hobby and by the time she'd realised she hated nearly everything about it everyone had gotten far too used to her writing in the stupid, needlessly-complex manner. This was the reason all of her correspondence had to be dictated.
Still, she'd sometimes dust off the old dip pen if the circumstances were special enough, and today was unquestionably special enough. Celestia finished her message and gave it a fond look through the embarrassing milk bottle reading glasses Luna had forced her to wear.
"Celly let me seeeeee!" Luna's keening cut through her thoughts. The younger alicorn was generally considered to be the more serious and austere of their diarchy by Equestria's subjects. How surprised they would have been to hear how readily she fell into her little sister role the second they had any privacy. Celestia levitated the picture over to Luna, who giggled as she stared at it.
"Do you think he'll like it?" she asked excitedly.
"I'm sure he will Lulu. Dragons are a race that sincerely value their heritage as you know. I'm sure all of this support has absolutely delighted him!"
"That's probably why he seems to be pointedly ignoring every single bit of correspondence we send along," the moon princess offered.
"Oh undoubtedly sister, I have no doubt that the reason for Spike's not-at-all-troubling silence is that he's taking the day to reflect on this milestone."
"I agree wholeheartedly Celly, but remember that he is Spike Sparkleboi now,"
"Oh of course Luna, thank you for reminding me. We need to remember to support Spike's growth as best we can, and obviously this means referring to him by his full name at every available opportunity." The two princesses nodded sagely at this.
A flair of Celestia's horn sent the photograph along, and she took a moment to imagine how elated Spike would be when he saw that more and more of his friends were happy about, and fully aware of, his new surname.
"So, we've done his hatching certificate, the sign on the door of his room here in the castle, all of the stained glass windows and his google plus profile. What else is there now Lulu?"
"Well," Luna began, peering at a long piece of parchment and wearing a pair of clear-glass eyeglasses that only served to offer patronising solidarity to her bespectacled sister, "We still have his passport and the voter register of course. His bank account could be tricky but if we play the whole 'we are literally your sovereign rulers' card then there shouldn't be any trouble."
"Great! I'm glad I cancelled that Gryphon summit today, this is definitely a better use of our time." Celestia chuckled, recalling how her insistence of 'negotiations schmegotiations' did absolutely nothing to reassure a frazzled Snowbird. The two Princesses took a few moments to delineate tasks to maximise efficiency.
"Okay Luna, if you finish off amending all these, I'll contact his friends to make arrangements for the party in Ponyville!"
"You can count on me!" the moon princess exclaimed proudly. With that, they were both off to ensure Spike had all the support anyone could hope for. What a great deed they were doing!
The Ballad of Winter Agate, Donny and The Book Filly
"So... what made you want to work at the civil court?" Spike asked the unimpressed looking pegasus mare behind the counter. When they had reached the front of the queue after another hour of beige, unblinking oblivion, the receptionist had asked for two forms of photo ID, as well as proof of residence. They only had his hatching certificate.
For those of you keeping score at home, the certificate unfortunately didn't count as any of those things.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't accept Spike's Google + profile, which he found had somehow already been updated to include his new surname, as photo ID or proof of residence. This was the final nail in the coffin proving once and for all that the legal system was irreparably broken and that we all live in hell.
Rarity had gone to 'freshen up' about twenty minutes ago and Spike was pretty certain at this point she'd just repeatedly smashed her own face into a bathroom mirror simply to alleviate some of the boredom. That left Twilight and Spike to try and sort this without getting arrested or, even worse, getting sent to the back of the line again. Twilight had teleported back to library to fetch the relevant documents under the guise of 'going to the little fillies room'. This meant Spike now found himself with the unenviable task of distracting the scowling dullard in front of him.
"In the last couple of minutes, you've asked me when I started working here, how I started working here, what my family thought when I started working here... now you want to know why?"
It wasn't going very well.
"Well... I'm getting a little old to be an unpaid library assistant, you know? I was wondering what someone needs to do to end up with a job in our local civil court! After all, the rule of law is the foundation upon which our society is built and being a part of that would be so-"
Spike was cut off by a bright magenta flash as Twilight reappeared. When she had fully materialised Spike found himself sat atop her back once again.
"Thank god you're here, that was excruciating for everyone concerned. Did you find everything," he whispered in her ear.
"Well I am back from the 'bathroom'!" Twilight announced with a wide-eyed, insincere grin, "Luckily I found everything you needed in my saddlebag while I was in the bathroom and not back at our house." The unicorn then turned and favoured Spike with an incredibly conspicuous wink which was witnessed by absolutely everyone including the mare they were trying to fool.
"Why did you teleport to the bathroom?" the receptionist asked coolly,
"Well... I... um... I was really desperate! In fact I had to teleport directly into a cubicle I was so desperate hahaha. When you gotta go, you gotta go!" Spike watched with confusion and horror, not quite understanding how this was helping their case. When it came to lying, he had always found himself in the camp that said vivid descriptions of your weak bladder decreased credibility.
"So, you teleported directly into a stall, despite there being no way of you knowing if someone was already in there, used the facilities and then spent time in the bathroom rummaging through your saddlebags before teleporting back?"
There were a few wincing gasps behind them, as if the crowd had just witnessed a painful looking wrestling move. Despite the fact that they had been holding up the line for a while now, Spike had found that the process was so mind-meltingly dull that seeing someone else get chewed up and spat out by pedantic, bureaucratic hell was still preferable to simply waiting. This meant that their performance of the world's most disappointing pantomime had gathered quite the crowd.
"Well..." many eyes fell on Twilight, all fascinated to see exactly how she was going to respond the that verbal evisceration, "The thing about magic is that-"
"You teleported home Miss Sparkle. You know the rules, if you leave the courthouse you lose your spot in the queue. Please go back to the back of the line."
"Oh come on! Do you know how many times we've saved Equestria?! Can't you let us off this one time?" Twilight shouted, strands of her mane beginning to stick out at wild angles.
"You know, when Discord came back, all the plants in my garden came to life and danced with me. Much of the furniture in my home turned into solid gold and my kitchen tap produced Piña Coladas. Since you 'saved Equestria' I'm back to working in the civil service after nearly a decade of budget cuts. Back. Of. The. Line."
Twilight wiped the stunned look off her face, she mouthed unspoken, half-formed words while she tried to formulate a response that would save them from another hour of queuing. Needless to say, it had to be a speech of such legendary eloquence and aplomb that it could reach across worlds and shatter barriers both thick and thin.
"Do you know about this thing called friendship?"
"BACK OF THE LINE!" Twilight and Spike shared a despondent look. Each turned to see the massive queue stretching out behind them.
"Whatever's happening dear?" a refined voice rang out as Rarity, face miraculous not auto-smashed-in, emerged from the bathroom.
"Rarity, is that you?" the receptionist said, her face finally displaying an emotion other than irritation and the withering, thousand yard stare that can only come after years of working in the civil service.
"That can't be Winter Agate I'm talking to, I don't remember her ever having the silkiest mane in Ponyville!" the pegasus giggled in response, which Rarity watched with a light pink tinge in her cheeks. For her part, Twilight gave the pair an incredulous look.
"It's been a while since I... I mean we saw you down here! What brings you down?" the receptionist babbled with a heavy blush on her face.
"Well, me and my friends here were hoping to get a name changed by deed poll," Rarity gestured to the scruffy, glowering forms of Spike and Twilight, looking for all the world like an immaculate David Attenborough pointing out two screeching feral baboons.
"These two are with you?!" she spluttered, casting an unsavoury glance at them which didn't go unnoticed by Rarity, "I was just about to send them to the back of the line. This one teleported out of the courthouse!"
"Oh I know they can a little bad a first impressions, but could you let it slide this one time?" when Rarity needed it, her skill with flirtation was the deadliest weapon imaginable. She fluttered her eyelashes and affected a low, smokey tone. The second Winter Agate turned her eyes back to the seamstress, all trace of bitterness vanished as her expression became dreamy.
"Um... uh sure! Anything for you Rarity." She once again directed her attention to Spike and Twilight, and all dreaminess vanished, "Do you have two pieces of photo ID and proof of residence?"
Twilight handed over the relevant information, grumbling slightly under her breath. Winter Agate looked them over for a couple of minutes before sliding them back with the coveted deed poll form on top.
"Fill this in and post it into slot five? If it is approved you'll get a letter within three weeks confirming your change of name."
"Three weeks?!" Spike cried, "I thought it'd get changed today!"
"Sorry kid, that's not the way this works. Now suck it up and stop causing a scene." Winter Agate fixed him with a hard look, while Twilight rubbed his back sympathetically. He looked around desperately, but if Twilight had any brainwaves she was hiding them very well. Rarity on the other hand was giving the receptionist a withering, but unnoticed, stare. But this only lasted a second, and she was quick to put a smile back on her face.
"Winter, darling, my friend here is quite desperate to get his name changed as soon as possible. Is there anything we can do to speed the process along?"
"Well..." the receptionist chewed her bottom lip uncertainly.
"I'd be ever so grateful,"
"I really, really want to help you Rarity. But only a judge could push that through in such a short time,"
"Could we see a judge? I'm sure we could convince them if we could just talk," said Twilight.
"I doubt that very much Miss Sparkle," Winter spat back at her, "I'm not sure whether little magical quests are good preparation for making a cogent legal argument."
"Still," Rarity interjected, biting back the rage at seeing her friend spoken to in such a manner and forcing the sweetness back into her voice, "Could you check if there are any vacancies?"
Winter Agate sighed before finally relenting, but not without making it very clear that she was only doing this for Rarity. She flicked through a small appointment book on her desk, and Spike watched the process nervously.
"Well it looked like you're in luck, Judge Haybale has a cancellation at half three, I can fit you in then."
"Hmmm, Haybale? Is there no-one else dear? You know how..." Rarity twirled her hoof while searching for some unknown word, "'Traditional' he can be?"
"Sorry Rarity, that's the only one today."
"It's okay, we'll take it," Spike interjected, desperate to simply get this process over and done with.
"You know where to wait Rarity."
Rarity thanked Winter before leading her friends away. Spike was going to thank her but the scowl on the unicorns face, coupled with the way she angrily muttered under her breath, cautioned him that silence might be the best path. They moved into an adjoining corridor and settled on some seats outside which, from what Spike could glean from the signs, was courtroom 3. There was only twenty minutes until their slot and no-one else around, leading Spike to assume the session scheduled before them was currently underway.
He got up from his seat and quietly pushed open the door to the courtroom. Inside, a portly earth pony stallion was sat that weird high chair type thing that judges sit in that no-one knows the actual name of. The judge was reading from some official looking documents and he had a black robe and a wig and it was all terribly legal.
"Okay, today we're hearing the case of the Town of Ponyville versus Donny the Public Urinator. The charges are... unpaid parking tickets? Wow I would never have guessed."
"My parents didn't like me very much, your honour," called out a stallion who Spike assumed was Donny. He was sat at a table next to a sweating unicorn in an ill-fitting suit, which gave him the look of a teenager trying on his dad's work clothes.
"Clearly they didn't. Does the prosecution have any opening statements?"
"Yes your honour," at the other bench, two pegasus mares wearing glossy black suits and dark sunglasses, despite the fact that they were indoors and it was the middle of Autumn, gathered some papers and stood to address the judge, "Today we will prove this stallion is guilty on the grounds that he looks pretty shifty and is called 'Donny the Public Urinator'."
They both nodded their heads haughtily, and completely in tandem, and sat down. One accidentally dropped all of her documents and they each scrambled to the floor to gather them. Their heads collided several times and they both knocked over their chairs as they struggled to see through the stupid glasses, though notably neither mare made a move to take them off. The judge watched them for a couple of seconds and sighed.
"Does the defence have any opening statements."
"Yes your honour," Donny's lawyer rose to his hooves and spoke with several pubescent sounding voice cracks, "Today we will argue for a mistrial on the grounds that everyone keeps saying 'the town of Ponyville' despite the fact that the suffix '-ville' clearly implies this is a village." Donny slammed his head on the table and groaned.
"Oh my god I'll just pay it's like fourteen bits anyway."
Spike pulled his head out and closed the door. When he turned back to his friends who were chatting. Rarity looked somewhat downtrodden, while Twilight peered at her friend suspiciously. Every time Rarity met her eyes Twilight's expression would very quickly become sympathetic.
"She seemed pretty sweet on you Rarity, how did you two meet?"
"She's just a friend dear. I'll admit I sometimes wondered whether it might go a little farther. Winter Agate had always seemed like such a sweet mare," Rarity sighed, "I'm hardly blind, I know she has a crush on me and the feeling was far from one-sided. I really meant what I said about that lovely mane of hers."
"Well are you gonna go for it? And how specifically was it that you two met?
"I don't think I will now Twilight. It's a disappointment, but I cannot possibly think of dating a pony who would treat my friends they way she did you and Spike today."
"I'm really sorry to hear that Rarity, how do you know her?"
"Why do you keep asking me that?" Rarity gave Twilight a confused look.
"No it's just... well you knew exactly where to queue, exactly where this judge's courtroom was and you seem pretty friendly with the receptionist who deals with stuff like deed polls."
"...And?"
"I feel like we never got the bottom of that whole 'did you change your name thing' from before," Twilight trilled. Rarity and Spike both rolled their eyes, "Who was it that brought it up? Was it Spike? Well I guess we'll never know but now we're on the subject did you have your name changed?"
"Darling you're being ridiculous,"
"I mean, you have to admit it would make sense." Twilight carried on unimpeded, "You've never seemed interested in the legal system and you're the only one in your family with a mononym..."
"Twilight, I was quite fond of Winter and am not feeling very happy about what just happened. Can we just leave it?"
"...So is that a yes?"
"Twilight!" Spike exclaimed, and both mares snapped their eyes to him, "Are you really on this again?"
"I did three courses on the Equestrian legal system back at Celestia's school and I didn't know any of this!" Twilight cried, standing on her chair and puffing her cheeks out what was presumably a bizarre, house cat-esque attempt to appear bigger and more threatening.
"Well dear, maybe Celestia's school isn't all it's cracked up to be," Rarity replied dismissively.
"But I'm the book filly! I'm the one who knows things!" Rarity didn't respond that, at least not with words. Rather she took one of the complementary magazines from a nearby rack, rolled it up, and swatted Twilight on the nose with it. The librarian sat down, red-faced and teary-eyed, and rubbed her snout while Rarity unfurled the magazine and began to read it. Spike took a seat between the two of them. The only noises were the ticking of a nearby clock, Twilight's muttering and the occasional page-turn from Rarity's direction.
"Say... now that Twilight's brought it up, why did she know you so well Rarity?" the unicorn in question lowered her magazine to look at Spike, "Hehe, you didn't have your name changed at some point did you?"
Before she could respond, a bored looking mare in thick-rimmed glasses poked her head out from the door.
"Is this the Rarity party? The judge is ready for you."
