Spike vs. The Equestrian Fire Code

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character, Spike
Length: 12064

Dragon + Library (Large Quantities Of Paper * Binding Glue) = Violation * Hazard. Who knew?

There's nothing like a surprise library inspection for discovering code violations, especially when the pony conducting that examination is determined to find something. But Twilight keeps the tree running to her own standards, and that means true offenses are hard to come by. Really, there's just one little potential issue.

'Little' as in 'the crests come up slightly short of your spine. Oh, and it breathes fire.'

For some strange reason, the local trotting incarnation of bureaucracy has a problem with this.

(A stand-alone, no-prior-reading necessary part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group. New members and trope edits welcome. While this story takes place after the linked piece, no knowledge of those events is required.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Published 2019-08-24 20:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-08-24 20:00:01 UTC

Occupation: Scroll-Handling Assistant

Spike usually tried not to openly admit it (especially while within earshot of Twilight), but there were certain benefits to both checklists and schedules. Yes, there were times when the organization they tried to enforce upon his hours became stifling, especially when his sister still had trouble recognizing that Ponyville life treated a comprehensive arrangement as a stationary target: there had been a few occasions when the most recent crisis had started knocking at the door and found Twilight desperately insisting that there was no designated space for Door Knocking until after lunch. He would hear a game starting up outside, something which would surely benefit from having him in goal, and the Tartarus-freed list would declare that the only place he was supposed to be was on top of the ladder so he could clean those shelves. It generally left him frustratedly sketching play diagrams into the dust, and far too many members of the particle-based offense got past him.

But the moons since they'd come to Ponyville had also seen Twilight gradually begin to acknowledge Spike's need to have his own time. She still wanted to have his services as her assistant (while having yet to recognize the concept of 'pay scale', and Spike suspected she would spend her first minute within the idea's presence in being stuck on a falsely-perceived pun), but she had eventually realized that there was another demand on her little brother's hours. Childhood came calling, and Twilight had finally started to designate blocks of time for the visits.

So there would be yet another massive reshelving in progress, the sheer amount of labor threatening to take the siblings from Sun-raising to Sun-lowering — and at the instant the schedule said 'Spike: goes out to play', he would be free. Twilight would ruefully shrug, note on the checklist that he had been released from card catalog confinement at the proper moment, and Spike would be out the door, racing at his best speed towards the most favored sports pasture while hoping Rumble hadn't already started picking his team. And because Twilight was better about checking the weather schedule than Rainbow was about following it, the hours given to his joy would be the golden ones: warmth streaming from the sky, Sun reflecting from his scales while ensuring that he was as quick and alert as he needed to be for the best of the games and the celebrations which broke out after the final play.

(He usually tried to celebrate, even when he wound up on the losing side. When compared to their time at the Gifted School, simply getting to go outside and be with other children was victory enough.)

It could be torturous, having to wait for the deliberately-creeping clock to finally acknowledge the arrival of play. It was a joy to watch the last second click over, to race for the library doors as Twilight's smile granted benediction to Spike's personal time. Because if fun was still something which mostly had to arrive on schedule, then at least the schedule was being honored.

Bureaucracy, however, tended to inflict itself at random.

It had been a glorious early summer afternoon, one where the ball had seemed to be guided into his hands by a combination of sheer desire and personal magnetism: it had reached the point where some of the older unicorns on the opposing side had begun to test the air with their horns, trying to make sure nopony was cheating. His team had easily won, the celebration had gone on for a while, and now he was almost back at the tree because while Fun had its scheduled hours, so did Dinner and he was the one who had to make it. It wasn't that Twilight didn't understand the basic principles of cooking (at least on the chemical level): it was just that she tended to get distracted. In his sister's opinion, meals were something which could wait until after this next fascinating journal article, and then they could certainly be postponed for an hour or three because the experiments inspired by said article would take at least that long, and then the lack of calories would have her eyelids briefly sag closed at exactly the wrong moment...

On the rather dubious plus side, the food served in the hospital was always nutritionally balanced.

Spike tried to make sure he was home in time to cook because it was also the only way to make sure Twilight ate. Even without the injury prospects, a mare who was already exceptionally slender couldn't afford to miss that many meals.

The weather was still beautiful as the tree's canopy came into full view. It was the sort of day which demanded that ponies be outside to enjoy it, and so it was also a day which usually saw the library experience very little hoof traffic: even the most determined of bibliophiles would use Sun for their reading light while allowing pages to be dappled by leaves. So it didn't surprise Spike to see a complete lack of activity around the tree itself: no ponies hanging around, no fillies and colts using the life-sized book fort (made from actual books, and all the same edition) for sieges against Evil, Nightmare, and Chapter Forty-Seven. On a day like this, that was normal.

It was also normal for him to have a dragon's sensorium, and so he didn't pick up on the scent of equine trepidation which was streaming from the tree.

The weather was only half of what was keeping ponies out of the library. The rest was an olfactory signal which told the settled zone that if Twilight was that unhappy, then there was a good chance nopony was going to be happy, and so the best thing to do was to stay out of the area. Unhappiness, expressed through his sister's corona, could be something which came with a blast radius.

He had no idea of what was happening inside, not until he opened the left-side door and the first words reached him. And then he figured it out in a hurry.

"— and those," indicated a rather interesting sort of stallion voice. It was the kind of voice which arranged syllables according to a designated outline. It was a voice which, while it technically came with bell curves, refused to acknowledge the existence of the outlying regions. The only thing it lacked was two other ponies speaking with the same dry lack of intonations in a perfectly boring chorus, because it was a voice which had been born for pointless triplicate. "What are those for, exactly?"

He knew Twilight, and so he recognized that the pause which came before she answered was partially used to find the strength necessary for a response. Most of the remainder had been dedicated to keeping every other form of strength quashed. "...they're periodicals racks."

"Are they?" asked the voice. “And which Regulation do you feel would best define the safety hazard they so clearly represent?”

The next sound to emerge from his sibling represented the choking back of at least sixteen different insults and up to seven offensive spells. It took a few seconds before she managed “Safety... hazard...”

“They are vertical,” the stallion explained, apparently under the impression that Twilight had never noticed that before. “They are made of metal. They rotate. And their base is not bolted to the floor. Therefore, a rotation conducted with too much speed might cause the entire vertical unit to tip over and crash the weight of metal onto an unsuspecting pony. This would naturally lead to injuries, which further lead to lawsuits. Periodicals, placed onto lightly-slanted wooden shelving units —“ and Spike instinctively understood that the pause represented the verbal equivalent of consulting a hoofnote “— which themselves have been secured to the floor and, ideally, at least one outer wall — generally do no more injury than inflicting paper cuts. Which are part of the natural and court-recognized hazards which are considered to be silently accepted by patrons when they enter a library. Your so-called periodicals racks do not fall under Regulations. They are something new. And as something new, the only things they represent are Lawsuits, Error, and The Failure Of The Regrettable Resident To Recognize What A Real Librarian Should Do.”

Which was when Spike’s pace accelerated. He had a very good idea of what was happening, and that knowledge was currently combining efforts with five well-defined fantasies. Two of them had spells going off, a third involved the stallion being on the receiving end for a very quick airborne tour of Ponyville which ended at (and in) the central fountain, the fourth had a very large white alicorn show up just before the closing credits rolled over everypony’s lives, and the last centered around a rather complete form of defenestration.

“A. Real. Librarian.”

The fifth option might not have sounded too bad to an outsider, but Ponyville had a lot of windows.

“Which you are not,” the other voice definitively stated. “I would normally hope that a mare would have some awareness of her own mark, but in this inexplicable case...”

And a stallion who had just performed a double-forehoof press onto one of Twilight’s worst buttons had a measurable chance to be corona-slung through all of them.

“This is an Official Library Inspection,” the stallion derisively sniffed. “As is required at random intervals by Regulations: a visit without prior notice being given, so as to catch any transgressions in the act while making certain that the facility itself is up to code. And even with that, a real librarian would have seen me arrive and depart within the same hour, for the mark grants knowledge of how such facilities should be operated. Knowledge you clearly lack, as was demonstrated at the moment of my entrance. Why is there a crack on the inner surface of the right-side door? Why has it not been repaired?”

Silence. Silence was good. Silence meant a dozen different workings weren’t going off. Silence also gave him time to scramble past Thaumic Fiction, still picking up speed as he moved through Historical Drama. There was still a theoretical chance to save everything, or at least to keep some of the most important pieces away from the explosion.

“It adds character,” Twilight flatly said and with that, Spike found another gear.

The stallion needed a moment for that one.

“It does what?”

“It doesn’t reach the outer surface,” Twilight far-too-calmly replied. “So it doesn’t risk integrity for weather or protective spells. It doesn’t do any harm whatsoever. It's just a crack in the wood. So it’s stayed there. And it’s going to keep staying there, for as long as I’m in charge of this facility. And. That’s. It.”

“I see,” the stallion very slowly tried. “It adds character.”

“Correct,” agreed the Voice Of Rather Politely Approaching Death.

“I see that your markless lack of talent has taken you so far into the realm of delusion as to somehow convince you that a door is actually a book. Truly, it is a pity that I never managed to reach your department while you were still regrettably employed in Canterlot. Were you also planning on having the crack add a glossary? And why do I hear something running in the library? There is to be no running in libraries! It doesn’t even sound like hooves —“

— which was when Spike rounded the last corner, used the nearest periodicals rack to redirect his momentum, went into a jump at the end of the claw-directed spin, and slammed to a stop right in front of them.

There was just enough time to take in what briefly felt like an oddly-frozen tableau. Twilight’s tension-riddled small form was about two body lengths away. One forehoof had been caught in scraping against the floor, and her head was lowered to an angle which, on any other unicorn, would indicate that the charge was coming in about three seconds.

The stallion was also a unicorn: rather old, moderately tall and extremely thin, to the point where it seemed as if the majority of his body had been built from leftover rail trestles. The exceptions were his jaw (not only square enough to serve as a stasis-eternal model for the Department Of Weights And Measures, but the first pony Spike had ever seen who could make Mr. Cake look like a mandibular underachiever) and horn.

The horn, once spotted, served as an automatic and near-permanent center of focus. There was a split-second in which an observer might be able to recognize coat and mane hues (both white with odd splotches of red, as if the pony had been caught in a thunderstorm of ink), but then it was going to be the horn. The closest comparison Spike had was to Pokey’s horn, but that was like taking a swimming hole and comparing it to the ocean. It was a horn which had clearly been designed for a pony who was at least twice the stallion’s size. It had found some way of presenting a single surface to every part of the world, and the open violation of topology allowed every last tenth-bit to be edge. To describe it as possessing a mere point was to miss the perfect opportunity for studying a one-dimensional surface. It sliced through the air as its bearer moved, and the little unnatural swish represented the final pitiful scream of oxygen as it died.

It was the sort of horn you had to look at, mostly because safety depended on knowing exactly where it was at all times.

Spike was focused on the horn. The red eyes behind it had focused on Spike.

“DRAGON! There is a DRAGON in the library! Save the books! Get the journals to safety! Tip the so-called racks onto it and buy some time!”

He was already starting to turn and in doing so, demonstrated one of the weaknesses of the quadruped form. Spike, in a true emergency, could occasionally manage to pivot on a single walking claw. Something with four legs, trying to turn on one hoof, was more likely to receive an abrupt lesson on Gravity, along with Centers Thereof.

Twilight, whose instincts had been honed through too much time in the vicinity of Rainbow’s practice grounds (and when ‘grounds’ was applied to ‘crash zone’, the total added up to ‘everywhere’), jumped back just in time. It meant the horn skidded along the outer wall of a bookcase, and partially through.

“Dragon!” the stallion gasped from his new position on the floor, hooves uselessly flailing against wood. “Somepony has to remove it, permanently, before anything happens to the books —“

“— that’s Spike!” Twilight shouted, and the surge in decibels told the younger sibling just how bad things might truly become. “He has every right to be here!”

He blinked. This was followed by looking up at her: eye movement only, as even the prospect of a dragon seemed insufficient for hastily raising that jaw off the floor.

It could be argued that the fear didn’t really leave him. It simply found an outline suited for expression.

“It has a name?”

“He has —”

“Regulation Twenty-Nine Colon Four Colon Seventeen,” he tightly declared, “limits library pets to the following: hamsters, rabbits, certain breeds of fish, crickets-if-they-have-been-trained-not-to-chirp —“

The word “Pets,” emerged from between Twilight’s rage-thinned lips at the exact moment her horn ignited. “He’s my brot —”

There was a single moment in which he could act, and so he did what he’d done over and over again during the siblings’ time in Ponyville. The only thing he could do.

Spike stepped very slightly forward. Knelt down a little (because the stallion still hadn’t tried to get up), extended his right arm while curling claws in towards his palm. Kept his nostrils from flaring, managed his best simulation of a pony smile, and offered scaly knuckles in the hopes of contact.

“Hi! I’m Spike! What’s your name?”

It was an action he’d performed hundreds of times before. Something which gave skittish ponies a chance to breathe, to consider that they’d just been addressed in a perfectly friendly fashion by a sapient who was doing his best to look like a total lack of threat, and once he discounted a repeated Flower Trio of failures, it actually had a startling rate of success. He approached with open curiosity and a desire to learn, in the hopes that they would be the ones who gained the education. He was a living reminder that about two percent of Equestria’s citizens were something other than ponies and thus every so often, ‘someone’ might say hello.

The stallion just stared at him, and neither foreleg stretched towards his hand.

“Why is that allowed in here?”

Twilight’s corona went double.

“He lives here,” declared the older sibling as jagged edges of pure rage began to coruscate around her horn. “He works here —“

All four of the stallion’s splotchy legs jerked, and then he was upright: Spike managed to move quickly enough to let the latest issue of Celebriponies Unbridled take the resulting tear, which the gossip rag frankly deserved.

“NO!” the stallion nearly screamed, and a jerk of the unbalanced head took out forty more pictures. (Later examination would find he hadn’t damaged a single word, but it was CU and words were hard to come by.) “THIS IS — REGULATIONS, FIRE AND BOOKS, THERE MUST BE A REGULATION WHICH WILL END THIS AND I, MINOR TECHNICALITY, VOW UNTO SUN THAT I SHALL —“

Which was when Spike felt a familiar pressure building at the peak of his crests, moving down until —

— his mouth opened. The oddly-cool jet burst forth, and it was possible that the bureaucrat never saw the scroll within the flame.

Words vanished, which provided a pleasant sort of counterbalance to the ones which had just smacked into Spike’s palm. A primal scream sent the stallion galloping towards the doors by the fastest route available, which in this case meant going directly past Atlases. Without really paying attention to the fact that those volumes tended to be the largest in the library, and so had multiple spines jutting from the shelves.

There was one more scream, a rather familiar one. And then he was gone.

The siblings looked at each other, listening to the frenzied wail as it headed towards the horizon or, more likely, the train station because some horizons could be reached more quickly by rail.

Finally, Spike, for lack of anything helpful to do, slowly slid a claw along the edge of the scroll’s wax seal.

“It’s from the Princess,” he wearily told Twilight. “She says one of her contacts in the Canterlot Archives just told her we might be getting a surprise code inspection sometime today, and she wanted to make sure we were ready for it. And...” which was where he winced. “...to be very careful, because she heard the pony involved is a real... jerk.”

“Did she actually write ‘jerk’?” asked the voice of experience.

“No.”

Twilight sighed.

“The atlases were one of the first sections he inspected. And of course he saw The Ridiculously More Than Complete Guide To Mazein immediately. He asked me if it had inflicted as many injuries as minotaur politics.”

Spike instantly pictured the exceptionally dense volume. Minotaurs were well-known for many things (although inflicting serious injuries during political debates had never really been one of them: the wrestling matches were consensual and stopped at first handsign), and relatively high on the list was that in the event of their nation needing a new library, local bookbinding standards and poor shipment timing would occasionally create some confusion. Cornerstones were supposed to be created via knowledge gained from the Architecture section: in one case, it had taken two centuries before anyone had recognized the mortared presence of the actual books. The building didn’t seem to be any worse for it, although some did claim the structure was slowly sinking into that corner of the soil.

Not without worry, “And what did you say?”

“Nothing. He was already angry about the crack in the door, so I didn’t want to tell him which book I’d field-tossed when I chased that one 'patron' out. Or how that thief’s kneecap wound up broken.” Another sigh. “But whatever the real count is, raise it by one.” And now the words were coming faster, whipped forward by desperation. “Spike, he was horrible. He was just like that one substitute we got filling in here during the missions, who kept saying I shouldn’t have the tree because I was keeping somepony with a mark from getting it. Which meant her. Everything I did with the shelving was a flaw, even the things which are still fully regulation because I was the one doing them. And it was supposed to be a safety inspection, not things like where my telescope is and if anypony can see my talon-paw wardrobe from the ground floor!”

“Really?” Because there were times when the best thing he could do for his sister was giving her somepony to rant at.

“Like my wardrobe is going to offend somepony!” Twilight huffed. “Or fall to this level!” Paused. “Again.” Winced. “But that one griffon pushed it.” And finished off the set with a sigh. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put that in the Library Incident Report. It just gave him one more thing to yell about. He just about entered shouting about how the collected file had been so thick, he hadn’t even had the chance to finish the whole thing on the train...”

‘You document everything,” Spike reminded her, and managed a smile before going back to reading. “It’s part of what makes you a good researcher. And a good librarian.”

The (lack of) strength in the responding smile nearly proved the existence of ghosts. “I was trying to stay calm the whole time, Spike: I really was. But he just kept pushing me, and it was starting to feel like he was doing it on purpose. Like he was trying to make me do something in response, something so bad that I could be fired, or I'd just quit because he would have made me see that I just wasn't suitable. I thought I was keeping everything together — more or less... but then he started on you and if he does something, if he says something, if we lose the tree —"

She didn't run out of words: she seldom did. She'd just seen his reaction, and the shock froze her jaw.

It made his big sister look funny, and so he repeated the shrug. "Don't worry about it."

Which made her jaw drop. "Don't worry about it? Spike, he just ran! He wasn't exactly happy with me before the fire, and even if we manage to explain the scroll...!"

In response, he flipped the missive around and tapped a claw against the relevant passage.

"'I am well aware of the inspector's reputation,'" he quoted, "'and will treat his report accordingly. Just do your best to smile a lot, Twilight, and try not to make the last fifteen minutes' worth look too much like a rictus. The only thing you have to worry about are any actual code violations, and the library has never shown any major faults during your custody. Even if he somehow finds something on that level, we'll make sure that all he can do is have it corrected. Try to relax. And go see a movie with somepony afterwards! You can complain about what a —“" a quick glance at where his claw was strategically covering one word "'— jerk'..."

She was starting to truly smile. "She didn't say it that time either, did she?"

He didn't dignify it with an answer. "...he was all the way home, and that'll make the experience go away that much faster. After all, irritation shared is irritation lessened! Yours truly...' you know."

Twilight took a breath. Then she took another. Her left forehoof slowly came up, touched the narrow rib cage, and flung phantom issues away.

"So," the elder sibling asked. "Do you feel like seeing a movie?"

Five days passed, and did so with no more than the usual amount of chaos. (The usual amount of chaos was notoriously bad about putting books back when he was done with them, and somehow managed to be even worse when it came to reading anything. After all, animating the contents as drifting short films playing on a screen of air was just so much more artistic, or so he continued to claim. Twilight generally got sick of watching the small-scale wars by the second time they drifted across her desk, and both siblings were hoping unto Sun that he didn't discover the romances.) Five days where they weren't really waiting for the fourth horseshoe to drop, because they were convinced that the first through third were still firmly attached. The only thing Twilight did in response to the initial inspection was to conduct a brief experiment with an emptied periodicals rack, followed by deciding the results had been conclusive and filing the evidence away until it was needed, just as any good researcher (or librarian) should.

On the sixth day, at about two hours before opening, they heard the sound.

Brother and sister looked at each other from opposite sides of the kitchen table. One had her corona slowly shift the hay away from her mouth, and the other carefully set his sapphire down.

"Did you hear that?" Twilight asked.

"Yeah..." Spike replied. "What was that? I think it came from the front doors."

"It didn't sound like a knock," his sister considered. "More like something... gouging the wood?"

The sound repeated.

"It's too slow for a woodpecker," Spike decided.

"Fluttershy said the truce is holding," Twilight worriedly said. "We shouldn't be getting any more of them as long as I'm putting out the tribute grubs on schedule."

One last deep scratch, and then a voice which longed for the world's most boring chorus called out.

"Regulations state," Minor Technicality droned, "that when an Inspector arrives to correct a violation, he shall be granted his audience. Immediately."

Another mutual glance, and the invisible clouds of concern began to build between them.

"He found something?" Twilight whispered, with her ears already beginning to droop. "Even after we sent that scroll to his department trying to explain about — the scrolls, he really found — oh, Spike, what if this is —"

"— all he can do is make us correct it!" Spike hissed. "Or correct it himself. And if it's something stupid, we can change it back after he leaves."

She weakly nodded. (Her ears didn't regain their normal loft, and her horn seemed to be getting ready for a Poison Joke relapse.) "Okay. I... guess we should just go see what he wants."

The bureaucrat stepped back as they opened the left-side door. Several recent wood shavings fell away from his horn.

"I have been reviewing Regulations," he announced without preamble.

The siblings, having consulted each other on the best way to proceed, remained silent.

"Oddly," he stiffly stated, "there are none extant which address the question of what kind of sapients should be permitted to visit a library. It has apparently always been Equestria's code to allow any citizen or visitor to use such facilities, and it would also seem that the nation has developed the habit of allowing those who are not ponies to claim citizenship."

Two sets of lips remained locked.

"I attempted to point out —“" and there the horn made a little jabbing motion, something which made both back up as a Just In Case "— that to have a dragon in a storehouse of paper might be seen as a rather idiotic thing. In response, I was accused of being speciesist." Huffily, "Which I am not."

They were breathing in concert, which required a little more exertion on Spike's part.

"Recognizing the superiority of the pony over the dragon in dealing with the fragility of books is not bias. It is a simple exercise in logic —"

"— why. are. you. here?" Twilight not-quite-asked, and Spike automatically moved into position for grabbing her horn.

"It would seem," the stallion stated, "that there are no Regulations regarding whether a dragon is permitted to live in a library, much less be employed by one. Although I did notice a strange lack of formal salary forms —“

There was a moment when Spike had Hope —

"He just gets an allowance!" Twilight exhaled. "It's nothing so formal as a salary!"

— which was immediately followed by one in which he just had Facepalm. (The Facepalm at least managed to accomplish something, although getting Twilight's attention wasn't it.)

"— but..." the bureaucrat continued, and did not smile.

There was something about the tone, self-satisfied posture, and the little jump-inducing gesture of the horn which indicated that a smile normally would have been forcibly rasped into the pause, and no smile occurred. The siblings were simply, horribly aware of the fact that it should have been, and that made its absence all the more agonizing. It was the kind of smile which only manifested when its owner felt they had the upper hoof, and the degree of victory which mandated it not appearing was something neither wanted to think about.

There was a strange kind of pressure settling over them now. Twilight's fur was being shifted away from its natural grain. Spike felt like his scales were shedding luster.

"...there is the small matter," the stallion stated, "of the astronomy text."

They looked at him. At each other. Back to him.

"The one which your so-called assistant happened to set on fire?" he lack-of-helpfully reminded them. "Your incident report was minimally comprehensive on the matter."

Oh no...

"It was dust!" Twilight quickly protested. "It set off — look, anypony would sneeze if enough dust hit them! He just holds his breath now while he's cleaning, and that's fine! I paid for the replacement out of my own salary and it didn't really matter, not having it for a week or two, not when so few ponies ever check it out and I practically had it memorized anyway! Oh, and I spun one of the racks, and they're so weighted at the bottom that just getting it up to to a speed where it might tip made it act more like a pedal screw's blades —“

"— a dragon," the bureaucrat calmly interrupted, "who is inexplicably working in a library, represents a fire hazard. One which must be dealt with. And under normal circumstances, the proper solution would be removal. The permanent evacuation of both employee and employer, for nopony who could make such a mistake could be seen as a proper custodian —"

Spike lunged for Twilight's horn and, because she chose that exact moment to take a single hoofstep forward, missed.

"You can't fire him! You can't fire me!" Twilight half-shouted, because a portion of those five days had also been used for policy review. "That's the mayor's responsibility, and Marigold —" (Spike, who was still trying to get up, was briefly amazed: Twilight's typical relationship with Town Hall could be politely described as 'strained,' and the possibility of having her refer to the elected official by first name had previously seemed impossible) "— knows he's here! She's known about him from the very first day, she's never had a problem with his working here!" Now pulling herself up to her negligence of full height, "She's had more issues with what I do than with — it doesn't matter, you can't do anything about getting rid of us! All you can do is make us fix something, and Spike isn't a problem to be dealt with! He's my broth —"

"— the problem will be dealt with," the stallion placidly said. "Because certain matters have been explained to me. The scroll... unusual magic, but I suppose it has a use for those too careless to properly document the trail of their correspondence. His citizenship? A question of palace policy, one which a pony such as myself certainly has no chance of changing. Libraries are my domain, the sole domain I have any true degree of control over —"

The horn leaned forward. The siblings drew back, although Spike had to do so on all fours.

"— but mine," he whispered. "A dragon is a fire hazard. This library is not suitably equipped to deal with the risks involved in his potential, inevitable loss of control. And so that will be fixed. The crew shall arrive at noon, and I shall return at random intervals to make sure their work has remained in place, fully intact. I felt it suitable to give you sufficient advance notice of this, so that you might post an emergency revision to operating hours and warn away what few exceptionally desperate patrons you might have somehow managed to retain. Additionally, through a contact in the Bureau, I have requested one additional measure, and I am hopeful that it shall arrive shortly. The solution shall be enacted and if you do not like it... you are, of course, free to seek employment elsewhere. I am certain that any suitably-marked replacement will be more than capable of succeeding you. Good day."

He turned. (They ducked.) And then he strode away, with self-satisfaction coming off the blotchy fur in waves.

"...I'm starting to wonder," Twilight eventually said, "if some of the Archivists might still have a grudge."

"Really," Spike flatly replied.

"About my trying to reorganize their departments while they weren't looking," she unnecessarily clarified. "And sorting out their desks. And... everything else."

Y'think? got stopped just short of his mouth. "Let's just see what he's going to do," Spike sighed.

"But we have a fire suppression system!" Twilight reminded him — then paused. "Um. Well, it's a little slower than most of them, I guess. I had to have it tweaked so it wouldn't go off every time a scroll came in. Or went out. Or if you had a cold. It only reacts if the flame lasts longer than a few seconds. So I guess it's not quite up to code, but it can't be, Spike! Not when you could get a message at any moment! I guess I could have always asked you to step outside when we're sending something, but the receipt..."

He'd never been able to delay a scroll's arrival for more than a few seconds, and suspected that to stall longer than that would be to lose the missive in the aether forever. "I know. But if he makes too big a change, we could just try to have it changed back."

"Not if he's going to check up on it," Twilight groaned. "Randomly." Her tail was beginning to twitch, with the movement quickly accelerating towards full lash —

— and she took a breath. "We won't know until it happens. Let's get the sign ready. I just hope this doesn't have us closed for too long. Seriously, Spike, the only upgrade I can think of for our system would be tweaking the response time back to where it was, and the Princess would argue that communication is worth the risk. What could anypony even do in the tree which hasn't already been done?"

It was everything like swimming in lava, except for all the ways it wasn't. And Spike liked his lava swims: he liked just about everything about volcanoes, with the exception of the... loneliness.

Volcanoes had been part of his life from the start. He was the first dragon to have been raised from birth by a pony family — but he wasn't the first dragon citizen of Equestria (although the previous generation had passed without one), and some of those who'd come before had left behind too-scant volumes of their medical lore. Too many of his illnesses still saw a frantic Twilight questing just about everywhere for hints towards treatment and cure — but there had been enough present to tell her about the need for volcanoes. The great migrations weren't just instinct: they were the collective expression of the species' attempt to maintain its health. His body needed the trace elements which were found in the air within active calderas, and needed them at least once a year.

So there had always been volcanoes, even as a hatchling. Shining had come along for the first trips, because somepony needed to use the device which allowed air to be purified into something his siblings could breathe: subsequent journeys had taken place after Twilight had mastered the spell and the eldest's advancing military career no longer allowed the freedom for small jaunts. Once a year, to the caldera, and... he would be left close to the rim, because there was also a wonder involved, something enchanted by pegasus magic, and so it was something Twilight would never be able to duplicate. A set of bracers which shifted heat away from the wearer, bringing the temperature to something a pony could survive. But the enchantment burned more power as they got closer to the lava itself, having Twilight enter the caldera would risk having it use everything, and after that...

So there had always been a point where she'd had to stop. (Years later, they would tell him about Rainbow's desperate efforts within the jeweled costume, trying to keep three ponies at something well beyond a mere twenty percent cooler.) And he would go into the caldera, breathe in the delicate scents of those fumes, splash around in the lava, and he would always try to tell himself that he was having the time of his life — but it was a time which was always spent alone. Something where the rest of his family could never join him.

Then there had been Garble. And after that, the solitude had been more painful than ever, because he'd finally learned what the alternative felt like.

But swimming in lava was wonderful, and the warmth was only part of the experience. It was more buoyant than water, offered far more support. Lava worked with you. He didn't have to worry about a single moment of weariness making him sink: it took a deliberate effort to go under. And in the event that a little got past his lips... well, not even a dragon could breathe lava: his lungs would automatically close themselves against the intrusion, and he had to surface and spit before the portion inside his mouth began to cool. Waiting it out as stone was chipped away from his teeth was a horrible experience, having it done to his tongue was worse, and there was no way of blocking out the sibling laughter which had resulted from Shining freeing the youngest from an exceptionally bad case of lockjaw.

Being in the library after the pegasi crew had left, however...

Somepony was very audibly breathing, about six body lengths behind him. The inhalations had something of a gurgling quality, while each exhale seemed to emerge as a cloud of invisible bubbles. Both were completely distinct from any attempt at actual words. The thoughtful words squished.

"Do you remember the chemistry of saturation?"

Spike attempted to shrug. The atmosphere pushed his shoulders back down.

"Well," Twilight labored to explain, along with just laboring to keep doing so, "basically, under normal circumstances, when you're trying to permeate one substance with another, there's only so much anything can hold. A maximum volume. So if you're dissolving salt into water, after a while, any extra crystals just sort of — drift to the bottom, without dissolving at all. And when you reach that point, you're at saturation."

He nodded, which did interesting things to some of the local flow patterns.

"But chemically," she added as more of her sagging tail splayed across the library floor and her horn's corona brightened by a few more desperate lumens, "it's sometimes possible to change that limit, at least for a little while. Make the receiving substance hold more of the dissolved one than it normally could. But it's hard to maintain. And when that happens, Spike, you get super-saturation."

They both looked around the empty library. There had been a few patrons in the hours since they'd reopened, or at least brief attempts at same. But word was starting to spread and at this point, there were only two sapients who had to be there. And so that was all there was. Or might be again. Ever.

"I didn't know it was possible to do that with air," Twilight's oddly distant, far too calm voice said. "That's sort of interesting. Except for all the ways where it's the worst thing anypony ever could have done."

"...yeah."

"So what do you figure the humidity is in here?" she casually asked. (There were ways in which it had to be casual, for any true expression of emotion was going to head directly for the nearest crater — which, in terms of temporal geography, would have been about five seconds away.)

Pinkish-tinted water dripped from her fur, ran down his scales while he thought it over.

"Infinity," Spike said.

Twilight considered that.

"Sounds low."

A steady sort of drip was starting to build up fluid inside her ears. Spike, who didn't have the anatomy to suffer from that particular problem, was busy remembering all the reasons why a species which thrived in superhot — and by expanded definition, superdry environments — wasn't really supposed to be hanging around the indoor equivalent of a swamp.

"Did you ever wonder," Twilight thoughtfully inquired, "what an environment with infinite humidity would do to books?"

"No," Spike reluctantly admitted. "It really hasn't come up before."

"Well," Twilight replied in the calm of utter doom, "I'm pretty sure the papers would start absorbing moisture. Then they'd swell up. Some of the older inks might be in trouble from that alone. But swollen pages would put pressure on the bindings, and of course the dried glue is picking up some water too, so that might start to go. We can presume that the covers aren't exactly having a good time. Oh, and there's mold or at least, if this keeps up, there's going to be mold. Lots of it. In fact, I'm completely certain that keeping books in this environment for more than a few days is pretty much going to destroy every volume we have. With the exception of the Guide, which might just take a polish. And Minor Technicality, defender of libraries, whose supposed primary concern is protecting everything here from you, arranged for these conditions. Conditions which, given enough time, will destroy everything he was claiming to care about. Why is that, do you think?"

He knew. So did she. And as neither wanted custody of that knowledge, they shared it with each other.

"Because if we stay here in all this," Spike slowly said, "the books will be ruined." He glanced at the nearest curved source of pinkish light. "Shields are air-permeable, so that means some of the moisture is getting through. Your keeping them over all the shelves is just buying some time."

"And I can't keep it up forever," Twilight noted. "I'm not Shining: I can't hold a shield for days. I'm not even sure how long I can keep these going in my sleep, or if I can manage to maintain all of them. Plus as long as I've got shields over everything written, we can't exactly loan out books."

"So he's giving us a choice," Spike wearily continued. "We can stay here long enough for everything to be ruined, and then he'll declare that we're unfit custodians and try to have us kicked out. Or we can just leave, and he'll have us replaced with somepony more suitable."

"And Mayor Mare isn't going to pay for the replacement of every book in the library," his sister calmly noted from somewhere near the bottom of the well. "The budget won't allow it. So that puts pressure on her to stop this." She indulged in a deep sigh, and then spent ten seconds coughing up water. "Rarity told me once... that if I ever did do something to get fired, the Princess would probably try to keep me in Ponyville. Find us some other job in town, because she wouldn't want to separate the group. We can't lose our friends, Spike, not from this. But we could lose the tree." Bitterly, "And he's willing to sacrifice every book in it if it means getting rid of somepony who doesn't have a mark."

"And me," Spike softly reminded her. "He's trying to get rid of me, too. He's doing this because of me."

Silence.

Hoofsteps closed the gap, and a soaked chin gently rubbed against his crests.

"I know. I'm just upset, Spike, upset enough that I'm... not putting things in the right order. I'm sorry —“

"— don't be," he quietly said. "It's bad enough. You're allowed to be upset, Twilight."

There had been a time when she never would have considered him at all. Now she got there eventually, and that was enough.

More water dripped from the ceiling, impacted fur which had no way of taking any more in. They both looked up.

"The good news," Twilight decided, "is the carpet scraps in the loft."

That made him glance up at her. "Really?"

She nodded. "It's summer and they're soaked. So without dry winter air and a dry surface to go with it, I'm sure there's no way my hooves or your walking claws could make a spark. And that's good, because I'm pretty sure the smallest bit of electricity is going to turn the entire library into its own thunderstorm."

They both thought about that for a while.

"The Princess?" Spike asked, because it seemed to be time for that.

"She just has contacts in the Archives now, remember?" Twilight instinctively lectured. "Everything got shifted back to the original systems after the Return. So legally, that means libraries are Luna's dominion."

"So we can ask Luna —"

Technically, Spike was incapable of groupthink, at least when it came to the variety which could race at lightning speed through a frightened herd: he didn't have the olfactory receptors to pick up on the alert signals, was completely lacking in the morphology required for response. But he'd known Twilight for what was quite literally all his life, they both had about the same amount of experience with the occupant of the Lunar Throne, and so each came up with what was, for all intents and purposes, the same (completely incorrect) scenario.

"— in the interests of historical preservation," Twilight shakily said, "let's agree that it's best to leave some portion of the Archives standing."

"...yeah," Spike agreed, because he'd just watched the entire Mathematics department go flying through a phantom sky (and was trying not to enjoy it too much).

"Besides," his sister glumly added, "she might just say 'Face your Regulations!' We should really try to fix this ourselves before we try asking the palace for help. Or at least figure out exactly what to ask for, and how many explosions it shouldn't be causing. So let's think."

They both tried that for a while.

"Spike?"

He waited.

"Do you feel like somepony put a small lake into your lungs?"

Being in the library after the pegasi crew had departed was a lot like swimming in lava, except for all the ways where it was more like drowning.

He sighed, and a small river ran out of his mouth. "Maybe we should just close. Nopony can stay in here anyway, and the longer we stay... we're going to get sick, Twilight, both of us."

She winced, then reluctantly nodded. "Okay. But I should try to stay close. It'll be hard to maintain this many shields from a distance." With a sigh, "Maybe I should just start evacuating the books anyway, while we're still — trying to think. If we're not going to be open anyway, there's no reason to have them in here."

"Do you want me to help?"

A slow head shake. "No. This is just moving things in bulk, and it's worse for you in here than it is for me. The weather schedule says it's a beautiful day outside. Playtime is rescheduled for now. Go."

"But —"

"Go," she weakly smiled, and inclined her horn towards the crack in the door.

He slowly moved down the aisles, waiting — hoping — that she would change her mind. Because the thing which let him have fun, the aspect which truly made his personal hours into the golden ones, was knowing that Twilight was okay. That nothing bad was happening, that she had friends and a renewed sense of focus and those who would look after her when he couldn't. She wasn't okay, and that meant his place was at her side. That was his responsibility as her sibling.

But she was also his boss, and so he had to go outside. He just wasn't planning on going very far. Keep his wanderings confined to where he would have some glimpse of the tree at just about all times, stay well within the echo distance for any potential screams...

It was a plan, having any degree of one made him feel vaguely better, and so he opened the door.

Which, naturally, was the exact moment when the Additional Measure showed up.

In Ponyville, Spike generally only drew attention from new residents and summer tourist traffic. Traveling to a new part of Equestria rendered him back into a curiosity (or worse), but the settled zone had more or less become used to him. It was unusual to have a dragon in residence, but it was also a source of civic pride because if any area was going to have a dragon, then why not have it be Ponyville? The capital didn't even have a dragon! — well, yes, they used to and it had been the same one, but that dragon had come here and had no intention of going back. Which implied that in some way, Ponyville was better than Canterlot! Just try to argue that!

So locally, when it came to the long-time residents, Spike had effectively become part of the town's background rhythms. It was still possible for the herd to focus on him, but something significant had to be happening: unusual displays of greed, having him run around while shouting for one or more Bearers because that meant the possibility of a mission, having a scroll arrive in public while dozens of ponies pretended they weren't trying to get close enough for a look at the words...

In this case, it might have been the stomping. Spike usually didn't stomp, because it was an open display of temper and besides, he didn't exactly have much in the way of mass. To slam his walking claws into cobblestone would do no more than inflict a few scratches on rock, and doing so with his fists balled up at his sides while his head was down and furious green eyes glared at the shadowed road... that just made him look like he was on the verge of throwing a tantrum.

But that was how he was moving, with his body so tight with tension as to have his scales jamming into each other, and it had ponies looking at him. Stomping around the streets like a sapient whose existence came with a permanent personal thundercloud directly over his head.

"Look," the thundercloud said, "it's not like I'm happy about this either."

Actually, the cloud had been drawing quite a bit of attention on its own.

"But it's the Weather Bureau," the cloud openly grumped. "I got a direct order. From some ancient fossil of a pony who can't leave the Sphere because as soon as she flies outside the 'perfect environment,' her feathers are gonna fall off. And this is what it said to do. I filed a complaint, Spike, and I did that before I went to the tree!" Which emerged with a distinct air of insult received, because the cloud wasn't exactly fond of paperwork. "But until they get around to reading it, somepony has to do this! And I thought it should be me. Because it's better if it's me, right? You know I'm not going to do anything!"

He stomped a little harder.

"Unless it's really funny," the cloud considered. "You know, you are kind of an easy target right now..."

Spike glared straight up, then told the cloud exactly where to go, how to get there, and what it could do with itself along the way. And did it all in Griffonant.

"'Language!'" the cloud mockingly chided, managing to do a fairly good imitation of Twilight along the way. "'Where does a child pick up such terms?'"

"From you," Spike muttered.

A sleek head peeked down from the edge.

"Well, yeah," Rainbow admitted. "But we've gotta work on your accent. Spike, do you think I want to move this thing around every time you go outside? I've got stunts I could be practicing! And I can't even nap, because I can only set the wind to take the cloud through whatever pattern's in the weave, and you don't move in one! So I have to be awake the whole time, following you so I can soak you down, just in case you breathe a little fire near —" a clearly bored forehoof was briefly visible "— anything. Because of some stupid regulation in the fire code which nopony's ever cared about. Stuff about open flame. And any time you create fire, I guess it's an open one. Unless you're inside, and that's a whole new set of regulations. And it's this or set up the same humidity conditions everywhere you might go, which takes hours. With no naps. So here I am, stuck moving a thunderhead to keep it over you at all times, and it's just stupid."

The resulting huffy silence was mostly due to his already having used all the curses she'd taught him.

"Plus it's really insulting," the pegasus added. "To you, I mean. Acting like you don't have any control. You're probably the second-most controlled person I know."

That made him look up.

"Second?"

"Twilight. At least for trying to keep control. You're sort of better at actually doing it." Another forehoof gesture, and then he heard Rainbow flop onto her back, lazily kicking the cloud along. "Anypony can sneeze. This is just a conspiracy of oldsters, trying to put the young ones out of work. I know all about those."

"...you do?"

"Did I ever tell you about my first boss? Passing Shower? He's the fossil who had the weather team before I took over."

Spike shook his head.

"Let's just say that if a tornado came out of the Everfree and went straight for Town Hall," the irritated pegasus declared, "he would have tried to stop it with paperwork. In triplicate. And once the papers got caught in the wind, we'd have paper cuts coming at a speed of about three gallops an hour. He kept filing complaints on me because I'd try to fix stuff which wasn't on the schedule, his precious Sun-written schedule, and when the real emergency hit..." She flopped back onto her barrel again, looked down at him with oddly serious eyes. "Let's just say a lot of ponies almost got hurt. Bad. And that's why he's not here any more. Spike, I know this is stupid, and it's insulting, and you still look like the world's best target from up here, but I'm not gonna do anything because it's stupid and insulting. You don't deserve this. And I know what it's like, when the old guard figures out that they won't be around much longer and they start acting like they will, because somehow, that's gonna make them live forever. They're afraid of what the world's gonna be like when they're gone. So they try to make sure it'll be just the way they wanted it, and it's all they can think about."

One more flop.

"The Princess isn't like that," Rainbow told the air. "Thank Sun. Can you imagine, somepony over a thousand, trying to run the whole country like the world was still the same as it was back then? We'd probably be making clouds with knitting needles or something. Stone needles. She's not like that, and neither is Luna — but these ponies, who might be a tenth their age, all they can think about is making the whole future into their dumb past, because it's the only legacy they're ever gonna have..."

He stopped moving, silently looked up at her for a while, even when most of what was visible consisted of inverted ears. It was fairly common, for everypony to stop and stare when Rainbow began to fly down air paths of true thought, and the sky-regarding pegasus didn't notice.

"So are we heading for a game pasture?" she asked, flopping over yet again. "I can get the cloud into a goal. And if anypony kicks the ball high, I might be able to sneak a block in —" and stopped for a second, just before launching a purely sarcastic "Oh, great."

"What's wrong?"

"It's Fossil #2," said the pony with the slightly greater altitude. "You'll see him in a few seconds, whether you want to or not..."

The red-splotched stallion came to a stop almost directly in front of them. The cloud backed up.

"Good," he declared, nodding his head in satisfaction. (Cyan forehooves quickly shifted, repairing the damage.) "As required by the strictest possible interpretation of Regulations. A mobile fire hazard must be accounted for, and so I stayed to make certain this portion had been enacted. After all, there are books everywhere." A quick glance at Rainbow. "With the potential exception of certain residences —“

"— hey! Okay, you wanna go a round? Canon #6! Page twenty-nine! The exact color of the code runes embedded into the puzzle wall —"

"— books," the old stallion repeated. "Not pulp."

The cloud began to unsubtlely rumble. The pegasus wasn't doing much better.

"Make sure to stay directly over the hazard," he ignored all of it. "Constantly. And should you feel your attention lapsing, pass off the duty to somepony else. I have been told that you are rather lazy. Good day."

He tossed his head in self-directed mirth, something which still didn't come with any degree of smile. Portions of the street attempted to retreat accordingly. And then he left.

"Old," Rainbow muttered, staring at the distant form. "Old and wishing everything was as old as he was, so it could all die at the same time and nothing would come after. Waving his stupid horn around, that stupid horn..."

"He gouged the door," Spike sighed. "He was complaining about the crack and then he just gouged the door on the other side." Something which added no character whatsoever.

"It's because he did it," Rainbow groaned. "Whatever you do is wrong, whatever he does is right. So it doesn't matter if his dumb horn hurts the wood, because it's his hurt. He doesn't care if he hurts anypony, except where he can be happy because he's the one who hurt them. You saw how he walks! Somepony like Pokey... he's always careful, right? Pokey knows where his head is every second, and that's more than just 'at the end of his neck.' He's always watching the crowd, making sure he's got room to move. Because if he doesn't, he could hurt somepony, and Pokey knows it."

Which was true. The fact that horns were just about unbreakable could make any unicorn into a living weapon — once they reached full charging speed. Somepony like Pokey, however (and such horns were rare specimens indeed), constituted a constant risk to the population, and such unicorns conducted themselves accordingly. Somewhere under Pokey's carefree-seeming canter was a mind which had already calculated the next six steps for both himself and everypony within four body lengths.

"But this one doesn't care," the pegasus groused. "You can see it in the way he moves, expecting everypony else to get out of the way. As far as he's concerned, if you get hurt, it's your fault. There oughta be a law..."

It could be said that Minor Technicality had an office, and it could also be said that if the office was the seat of a pony's power, then his was effectively located everywhere he went. The stallion had an assigned room because it was a place to which paperwork could be delivered, and said paperwork would then be filled out on the move. He would wander through multiple buildings within the Archives, eyes constantly checking to make certain Regulations were being followed, and his corona would be filling out forms the whole time. Of course, the perpetual attempt to do several things at once could make him more than a little careless about his positioning and his sense of proprioception had always been rubbish, but that was frankly everypony else's problem.

In terms of personal responsibility, Minor could be best described as the sort of pony who would, without thought, pull a cart three body lengths across into street traffic which allowed only a sixth of that space, while expecting the entire population to dutifully stop in time.

He slashed his way through the darkened halls of the Social Sciences building, failing to truly notice (or care about) those scrambling to remove themselves from his path. It was what he always did, and so any failure to deal with it was clearly in no way his fault —

"Horn Inspection! Official Horn Inspection!"

It was mostly the word 'official' which made him stop, because anypony who worked in the Archives (and wished to continue working here) had to pay attention when those syllables were voiced. An extra second was required before he realized that the words had come from significantly below his eye level.

He glanced down, and the corona around that singular horn abruptly wavered.

"What? What are you doing here in the Archives? There should never be a dragon in the Archives! And where is your cloud? Without a cloud, the fire hazard is —"

"Official Horn Inspection!" the dragon joyfully interrupted with the cadence of an actor, and was surrounded by pinkish light as the small unicorn mare (currently weighed down by oddly-bulging saddlebags) who was standing slightly behind the intruder levitated it towards his eye level. "Different rules for inspectors, sir! This is official! It's EQ 229:6:1, if you want to look it up later. It's a very old law, which hasn’t been enforced in far too long. Or it could have been codified and signed within the last hour, very difficult to tell, sir. But the fact remains that it's an official law and you can look it up any time you like. Hold still, please..."

He had been on the verge of tossing his head, because that was something which had always made unpleasantness go away, or at least get out of range. But the mare's corona intensified by a single lumen, and the light held him.

"Thank you," the dragon said. "Measuring tape, please." The mare's field opened the right saddlebag, and a gradually-unfurling length of marked white stripe floated up to it. "So let's see. Length..." He called off the number.

"Some would say that's impressive," the mare casually stated. "But there are certainly others who might find it impractical. I suppose it's all in how you use it. Or in this case, don't. What's the base circumference, Spike?" The dragon called that off. "Not quite as much so. Now use this to measure the degree of edge, and press this against the surface to check sharpness." More things floated up. "Carefully."

The stallion stood still, fuming. It was all he could do, for no amount of straining or attempts to magically counter —

"Wink out your field, sir," the dragon requested. "You don't want to interfere with your official readings, do you?"

— did anything against the pinkish light. The mare didn't even seem to be noticing his efforts, and so all the huge jaw could do was suffer in soon-to-be-ended silence as half-completed paperwork crashed to the floor.

"Okay, Twilight!" the dragon called out. "Here's the numbers!" Several figures were rattled off. "Check them against the chart?"

That required opening the right saddlebag, and the mare carefully examined a small sheaf of papers.

"Oh dear," she said. "I was afraid of this..."

She looked up at the stallion and in doing so, very carefully did not smile.

He blinked, for that much was still possible. It was a very familiar sort of not smiling. He had not smiled like that so many times before...

"Just like we thought from the moment we first saw him," the dragon morbidly stated. "And thought about the law."

"Which is very old," the mare replied. "Or very new: I honestly can't be bothered to remember right now. But I do know one thing, Spike: it is very Regulation."

Both saddlebags opened. The dragon was lowered back to floor level, mostly to get him out of the way as multiple pieces of dense metal emerged, floated towards his horn, and now he was struggling with everything he had, all of his magic added to the minimal physical strength he possessed, but the customized jigsaw just kept assembling itself, piece by viciously-interlocking piece until...

The mare's field winked out. The results stayed exactly where they were.

"Sir," the dragon pleasantly said, "I regret to inform you that your horn is in violation of public safety codes. Due to your potential to inflict injury, Regulations state that you must keep it covered at all times, at least when in a public place. Or when you're anywhere that the public could theoretically show up. It's Regulations, sir. You wouldn't want to risk public safety, now would you?"

"You'll find a key to take it off in your house," the mare added. "Because of course you can be trusted in your own home, since you live alone. For all of your life, for some reason I'm sure I can work out. And you can keep it off as long as nopony comes by. But you will have to put it on again if there's any ponies in the vicinity. Say, visiting you. At random, to make sure nothing's happened to your safety gear. Or if you happen to look out the window, you'll need to put it on first. I'm told that you like to yell at children that way. Something about telling them to get off a lawn which you don't technically have...? Anyway, Regulations state that you must wear that restraint. In public. Or anywhere the public might be. At all times."

"You're a pony who lives the importance of Regulations," the dragon finished (and this time, the not-smile was on the scale-covered face). "I'm sure you understand."

He stared at them and, in his last desperate attempt to both prove nightmare and wake, slammed his metal-coated horn into the nearest wall while his tail desperately flicked his right flank.

The restraint held. The world stayed exactly as it was.

"I can't use my field!" The scream felt fully justified. "This blocks my magic! How am I supposed to do my job without my field?”

"You have a mouth," the mare dryly said. "I'm completely certain of that, because you never stop using it. Just try putting it to a slightly different task for once. Oh, and there's also hooves available. Four of them. But when it come to tools, I can't really speak to the efficiency of your brain. Or rather, I could, but it would take a very long time to stop."

"My horn is part of me! You can't just say that part of my body is illegal, just because there's a chance for inattentive ponies to get hurt!"

"A dragon's ignition glands," the dragon calmly countered, "are part of the dragon. But you claim that Regulations extend to them. So if the law can Regulate the risk from what one part of someone's body might do, it can apply to somepony too." And shrugged. "I was really hoping we wouldn't come across anypony who would argue with the law, Twilight, not on our first day with our new job."

"Some ponies..." the mare sighed. "Well, he's bound. To Regulations. And we'll make sure he complies for the rest of his life. Randomly. So who's next?"

"We could head back to Ponyville," the dragon suggested.

"No, that's just Pokey. And he already passed his safety tests. He's licensed to operate his horn."

"Oh, right!" the dragon brightened. "Should we schedule the same tests for Mr. Technicality?"

"I already did," the mare indicated, and her ears moved to their highest possible loft. "There was a scheduling slot available. In five years. And it's against Regulations to change that to an earlier date, but we have given him advance notice about the date, even if we didn't say exactly when that date was. And so the law is satisfied. Shall we go?"

The dragon nodded, and both sapients turned away from him. Began to walk down the dark hallway.

"...wait."

As words went, it had definitely been '...wait,' although it took a moment before both successfully translated it from the whimper. They mutually glanced back.

"...this isn't... it isn't right..."

"We haven't done anything which isn't legal," the dragon replied. "Exactly as legal as what you did to me. And since you seem to feel that we can't be librarians any more, and you feel you're always right... we agreed with you. We can't be librarians any more. We aren't. And we thought becoming Horn Inspectors would be a nice chance of pace."

"It does keep us in government work," the mare agreed. "Personally, I'd prefer to be a librarian, but we do need to eat, and the only way we could go back to our old jobs was if the library returned to normal. Which clearly can't happen, because you said so, and it's not as if you're ever going to say anything different." Politely, "So if there's anything else?"

"This is blackmail," the stallion whispered. "Pure blackmail..."

They just serenely looked at him, normal (if narrow) purple eyes, and those strange green ones with their vertically-slit pupils. Waiting, with neither smiling.

"...I can put it back," he whimpered. "Put it all back, just the way it was. You passed inspection. You passed..."

A glance at each other.

"The restraint permanently comes off," the mare stated, "after the restoration is finished. And if you try to inflict those changes on us again, or anypony else seems to be acting on your orders, the post of Horn Inspector will be revived."

"You're also going to be receiving some basic horn safety training," the dragon added. "Because I'm pretty sure you skipped that part of magic kindergarten. Or flunked."

"Do you understand?" the mare finished, and waited again.

He forced a nod.

"Good," she said, began to turn —

— stopped. Glanced back at Minor Technicality, and did so for the last time. (He spent the rest of his life in trying to make sure he never saw either of them again, and he almost succeeded.)

"Incidentally," Twilight casually mentioned, "this was his idea. To check for old laws, or to ask somepony to create a Regulation for the occasion: I'll leave the research to you. But after a little inspiration from a friend? It was all him. So I'd like you to keep something in mind. A lesson of sorts. Something other ponies, monsters, and a whole Empire should have figured out a long time ago."

Her chin gently, proudly rubbed against the peak of Spike's crests — and did so at the exact moment she made direct eye contact with the horrified stallion.

"Don't mess with my brother."