Too Young

by Swordoath

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Main 6, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike, Comedy, Adventure
Length: 5100

Spike gets tired of being told he's too young to do things, so he and his friends Quinn and Zack decide to pull a little prank involving a brew borrowed from Zecora. Unfortunately, the effects were... undesirable, to say the least.

Spike wasn't too happy to be told yet again he was too young to partcipate by Twilight and her friends. He enlists the help of the two local humans, Quinn and Zack, to get a little vengeance on them. A 'borrowed 'potion from Zecora suceeds in making the group young again- even younger than the 'baby' dragon himself. Unfortunately, the potion they'd brought to undo the effects of the first does nothing to remedy the problem. And with Zecora out of town, they can't figure out how to fix it.
Worse still, the potion's effects continue to de-age the afflicted ponies. Can Spike and his friends find a way to stop it before they 'foalify' to nothing?
(Character list may be added to as story continues, but unlikely any removal.)

Published 2013-12-31 05:40:08 UTC
Last updated 2014-07-20 05:05:00 UTC

The Prank

Spike closed the door to Twilight's room as quietly as he could. He didn't want to wake her up, especially considering what he planned on doing tonight. Explaining himself would ruin his whole plan. Right now he just needed to make it down to the guy's room, and get them on board.

"Hey," he whispered to the sleeping forms of the two adolescent boys. "Guys, wake up."

"Uhg," moaned the one on the left, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his green-blue eyes. This was Zack, the younger of the two, but not by much. His strawberry-blonde hair stuck up in odd places, and the white t-shirt he was wearing was pulled up around his neck, for some strange reason.  "Is it even four in the morning?"

"No, it's a little after midnight," Spike replied, attempting to rouse the other boy. "I need your help with something."

"Ow! Stupid claws," said the older boy, Quinn. Donning his glasses so his mahogany eyes could see properly, he shifted his legs over the bedside and smoothed down his short black hair. He was only wearing a pair of black sweatpants, so his torso was fully exposed. "This better be important, Spike. It was hard enough to sleep with one loudmouth in the room."

"Hey!" Zack frowned.

"Sshh! I don't wanna wake up Twilight!" Spike hushed the two half-dressed humans. "I need your help to get back at Twilight and her friends."

"Wouldn't waking them up be punishment enough?" Grumbled Quinn. "What for? Is this about the cake?"

"No, it's not about the cake!" Spike shout-whispered.

"I wanted some of that," Zack murmered whistfully, then voicing aloud. "What is it about then?"

"I'm tired of Twilight and her friends telling me I'm not old enough to do things. They always get to see those movies, but I never get to. I just wanted to see The Power Ponies Movie, but Twilight said I'm not old enough to go!"

"Wasn't it rated PG-13...?" Quinn said.

"So are you gonna sneak out and see it?" Zack asked. "Or do you need money for tickets? 'Cause I don't really have any bits on me..."

"No, I've got a better idea," Spike said, rubbing his hands together in the stereotypical villian fashion.

"You want us to help you break into Zecora's hut and steal an age potion?!" Quinn surmised incredelously.

"Shh! Not steal it, we're gonna leave behind some bits as payment. Besides, we'll be the ones making it, just using some of her ingredients. She's visiting home, so she won't even be there. It's not even that deep in the forest. All I need is for one of you to cover for me while the other comes with me to make it. Easy stuff!" Spike elaborated.

"Why do you need someone to go with you?" Zack asked.

"I'm... I'm too short to reach all the shelves," Spike admitted sheepishly.

"I don't know," Quinn said, rubbing the back of his head. "This doesn't seem like a very good idea..."

"Aw c'mon, please?" Spike hugged his leg tightly.

"Well... on one condition; I'm the one going with you, alright?" Zack conceded. Quinn nodded in agreement.

"Yes! Absolutely!" Said the dragon.

"I'll tell her that you guys went out to for a morning walk or something." Said Quinn, settling back into bed.

Spike went up to his room to grab the bits he'd saved for just such an occasion, waiting for the now fully-clothed Zack to head out. They ran the majority of the distance, only stopping when Spike fell to the ground clutching his side, and was offered a ride by Zack the rest of the way. Spike directed his older friend to the hut of the absent alchemist, and the two slipped inside the unlocked abode to begin their task. Spike requested Zack to grab a certain book from one of Zecora's shelves, titled Supernaturals: Natural Remedies that are Simply Super!, which the dragon opened to a page labelled 'Youth elixers- Master's only'.

"You sure you still want to go through with this?" Zack said as he gathered the listed ingredients. "We could still put everything back and pretend none of this ever happened."

"You kidding? It took me months to find an opportinuty like this. I thought you'd be psyched about this." Spike said, swirling a rapidly color-changing potion with a smoldering wooden spoon..

Zack shook his head wildly, and grinned at his small friend. "You're right. Probably just Quinn getting in my head. Pass the whitecaps, please."

Hours later, the two completed their concotions. Spike's, a deep transparent violet, was intended to revert the subject's age to roughly the equivalent of his own, or that of a younger filly. Zack's, a milky white, was suppossed to negate the effects of the first. Cleaning up their mess and leaving their payment on the table with a note, the duo set on their path home just as the sun began to rise.

"Remind me again how you plan to make them drink it," Zack asked Spike, slowing down so his pace matched the young dragon.

"Twilight invited them over for a sleepover tonight, and put me in charge of the punch," Spike explaned, tightly clutching the mixture. "I'm going to put just a bit of this into each of their glasses, so when they drink it... poof! Younger than me. Let's see how They like having a seven o'clock bedtime!"

"Ooh, twisted. I like it," Zack replied as they slowed to a stop outside their destination. "When do we turn them back?"

"Probably when they go to sleep. The book said the second one can be applied to the coat, so it'll work out fine. Best part is, they won't even remember, so I won't get in trouble!" He whispered, opening the library door as quietly as the hinges would let him.

"Clever. But won't that defeat the purpose of making them feel like you-"

"Ssh, Twilight won't be up yet. Don't wake her up."

Quinn stood leaning against an unshelved portion fof the wall, sipping a cup of coffee, listening in on the end of their exchange. "Glad your back. It went well, I take it?"

Zack flashed the bottle of antidote to him "Yep. All set for tonight."

"Good. You might want to hide those; I just heard the water turn off upstairs." Quinn suggested before taking another sip.

Almost dropping the bottle in a panic, Spike ran to the boys room and shoved the potion under Zack's pillow. Quinn watched the frantically stumbling dragon run into their room to hide it. Zack slipped the vial into his back pocket. Twilight walked down the staircase, her tail dripping slightly and a towel wrapped in her hair.

"Did I miss anything?"

The girls let talked about this and that while the boys, in the kitchen, put their plan into action. Ladling out glassss of punch for everyone present, non-ponies included, Quinn held out six of them for Spike to add a spoon of his potion to. Being careful as to not confuse their own with the spiked punch, the glasses were distrubuted amongst the guests and residents of the library. Spike was litterally shaking, but whether it was from nerves or excitement, he couldn't tell. What did Pinkie call it? 'Nervoucited?'

The group had finished their beverages and were occupying themselves with a round of ghost stories. It was Quinn's turn, and he was doing a fair job of unnerving his friends with his.

"The mare turned-tail and ran all out from the faceless being. She didn't see where her friend went, but her panicked mind caused all other concerns to be blocked out. She didn't stop running until she was well out of the forest. terrified and exhausted, she collapsed on her living room floor before finally remembering her friend. Too rattled to search for him, she headed up to her bedroom, hoping she could forget the whole ordeal. Her door opened, and there stood the faceless one, in all his terrible glory. She did not have time to scream. Nopony ever saw her again. They say the creature with no face still roams the world, looking for victims to take to his purgatorial realm and torture forever. Perhaps he watches us even now, waiting for the right opportunity to STRIKE!"

A white faceless figure much taller than the ponies and Spike jumped out from behind Quinn, causing the seven to scream and duck for cover. The figure pulled off the white ski mask, revealing Zack, who was breathless with laughter.

"Man, you totally believed it!" Quinn said, cracking up along with him.

"Did not!" Rainbow and Spike protested simultaneously.

"Then are you hanging from a lamp, and you behind the door?" He asked.

"Okay... maybe a little." Rainbow admitted, getting off the light fixture. An inquiring look from AppleJack made her add "Okay, a lot."

The group broke out in laughter, and after coaxing FlutterShy out from beneath the table, Quinn pulled Spike aside into the boy's room.

"Hey. They drank the potion almost an hour ago. When's it going to start working?"

"I don't know! I thought it would've worked by now."

Zack entered, throwing the ski mask on his bed. "You might want to take a look at this," he said, grinning.

The boys looked out into the room, and their gazes were met with that of six foals, each about a year younger than Spike, excluding FlutterShy, who seemed roughly his equal. They were all only two-thirds his size, and not one of them seemed to understand what just happened. AppleJack wrestled off her hat with a cute little grunt. Pinkie Pie, who's hair now hung flat, watched as Rarity sat on her bottom and began to cry. FlutterShy curled up in one corner, while Rainbow Dash fluttered her wings in attempt to get airborne. Twilight, still on the chair she'd been sitting on earlier, tried to find away down, landing with a light thud after falling the two inches between her and the floor.

"It worked!" Spike exclaimed, picking up the small, somehow-still-an-alicorn Twilight, as if to reassure himself.

"What worked?" spoke the much higher-pitched voice of the much younger Twilight.

"Nothing," Quinn interjected, swooping in to comfort the crying unicorn. "Man, this is not something I'd thought I'd ever do..."

Zack fixed the table that had for some reason been flipped over during transition. "What, comfort a child?"

"Very funny, now help me out here," He said, picking up Pinkie in his other arm. "We can't have them wandering around the library."

Spike and Zack helped him gather the group of fillies in the main room, setting them down in front of the horse-head statue on the table.

"So... What now?" Zack said, legs swinging in open air as he sat on the staircase.

Spike smiled mock-villainously, tapping his claws together in a similar fashion. "Now, I get to have a little fun."

Failed Payback

"First of all, you are to refer to the three of us as 'Big Brothers', and you have to do what we tell you, when we tell you, how we tell you to do it!" Spike said, pacing in front of the fillies, waving around a scroll like a king's cane. "You don't get to eat any sweets until after you finish your dinner. You do not get to stay up after seven. You do not take any books to read unless you ask one of us first. Questions?" he finished, turning to the very confused looking girls.

"I feel like we should be worried," Quinn whispered to Zack. "Little guy has issues."

"Hey, it's his night. Let him enjoy himself a bit. I'll step in if things take a bad turn." Zack reassured.

"Knowing you, it's after fatal injury," Quinn whispered to him, earning himself an angry glare from the other boy.

Twilight raised a small hoof. "What's 'refer' mean?"

Spike lowered the scroll to his side, the commanding fire dampened by the innocence of the question. "It means you call us that."

"Can I go to the bathroom?" Pinkie asked.

"I'll take her," Quinn volunteered, picking the mare up off the table and setting her down on the floor again.

"I have to go too!" Rarity said, reaching up towards Quinn. He set her on the floor and showed the two to the bathroom.

"I wanna go outside!" Rainbow Dash announced, stamping a hoof to call attention to herself. "I wanna see the pegasuses fly around!"

"It's dark out," Spike pointed out. "You won't be able to see any-"

"Yes I will!" Rainbow dash said, hopping off the table, her wings fluttering, whether in effort to fly or soften the fall, only she knew. "Let's go outside!"

"I have a better idea," Zack said, leaning down to her. He gave a wink to Spike to let him know he'd handle it. "Let's build a fort with the couch cushions!"

"But-" Spike protested.

"Yeah! Let's do that!" AppleJack agreed, abandoning her hat and running with Rainbow Dash to the couch, closely followed by Zack.

Spike shook his head and let out an exasperated breath of air. Already Zack was ruining his master plan to make the girls taste their own medicine. It didn't seem like the girls were really understanding what he said to them, or weren't really listening. At least Quinn wasn't-

"Spike!" He heard him call from the bathroom. "We have an issue!"

Spike was beginning to have second thoughts about his plan.

"Alright girls, time for bed!" Spike announced, having finished cleaning the 'accident' and noting the time.

"Aww!" came the cries in the pillow fort. Spike could've sworn he'd heard Zack's, but the pillow's muffling made it difficult to tell.

"Can we stay up later?" AppleJack popped out from between to cushions.

"No, for two reasons," Spike said, dismantling the fort. "One, it's already after seven as it is, and two, you didn't say 'please.'"

He pulled up a pillow and uncovered FlutterShy, who looked up at him with shining, big eyes. "Please?"

Spike almost found himself saying 'yes', but managed to catch himself. "No. Come on now."

There was a collective groan of unhappiness, but gradually, one by one, the fillies revealed themselves and started to clamber up the stairs as directed by Quinn. Spike set about replacing the couch parts and moving them back into place, not an easy task at his size. Upstairs, Zack put each of the girls into Twilight's bed, three at either end.

"Right. Nobody need's water, or needs the toilet?" Zack checked. He received a unanimous shake of the head. "Alright. Do I need to leave the lights on?" All the ponies excluding Rainbow and AppleJack nodded, so he did. "Goodnight girls."

"Wait!" Twilight called to him before he closed the door. "You forgot the story!"

"Oh," Zack said, thinking for a moment. "I'll get Quinn to read for you."

"He's boring!" Pinkie protested.

"And scary," FlutterShy added quietly, pulling the blanket over her head.

Zack let out a short laugh, then said "He's a better storyteller than I am. I'll send him up."

A moment later, Quinn opened the door, and sat down on a stool by the bed. "Okay, do you have any story in mind?"

There was a chorus of story names he'd never even heard of, The Mare on the Moon and The Legend of the Mirror Hole among them. He was confused on what to do until Twilight pointed out a book on the shelve next to him.

"That one!" She said, pointing at the book with gemstones set in the binding. "Read that one."

Pulling it off the shelf, he saw it was the Equestrian version of Goodnight Moon. The rabbit was replaced with a little white filly, and the moon's shadow was in the shape of a unicorn's head. Setting it on his lap so the girls could see the pictures, he began to read in a soft voice rivaling that of FlutterShy, "Goodnight moon, goodnight stars..."

"Alright," Quinn said as he descended the stairs. "The girls are asleep. Spike, go administer the antidote. We don't want to spend tomorrow looking after them."

"Speak for yourself," muttered Zack.

"But... I still didn't get my payback! They had way more fun than I ever did as a kid." the dragon protested.

"Spike. You turned them. Into toddlers." Quinn said slowly. "That's ten times the vengeance I was ever able to exact back home."

"Besides, you really don't want anyone else to find out. The longer you keep this up, the more chance of word getting out." Zack added.

"Are you threatening me?"

"I think the term is blackmail," Quinn said, giving a nod of approval to the other human. "Now go."

"Should've given you two the stuff," grumbled Spike, snatching the vial of antidote from Zack's outstretched hand. "You're just as bad as they are."

Spike walked up to the bed were the fillies slept. He smeared some of the antidote on his palm, and gently rubbed a bit onto the girls' foreheads. There was a brief moment of panic when Twilight turned over in her sleep, but she did not wake fully. Spike backed over to his bed, picked it up, and brought it downstairs with him. Twilight once told him he snored at night, and he didn't want to wake up anypony. He set it down at the bottom of stairs, and put the vial on the table. Zack and Quinn had left the room, so he turned out the lights, and flopped down on the bed, exhausted from his efforts throughout the day.

Spike was roused from his slumber by a light tap of a hoof. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he faced the tear-streaked face of the young Twilight.

"What's the matter?" asked the dragon.

"I had a bad dream," said the frightened filly. "Can I sleep with you?"

There were a number of reasons to say no. Spite, having to explain to the re-aged Twilight, things along those lines. But it was hard to say that flat out to those huge, scared eyes. "Well-"

"You can scare away the monsters," Twilight added in a definite tone. "Please?"

"Oh... okay then," said Spike, moving over and lifting up the blanket. When he was little, he'd have nightmares. Twilight would let him sleep with her, so he'd feel safe. This was the same situation. Mostly. She scooted into the bed, curling up against him. Spike was careful to make sure he didn't poke her with his spines. Her small form seemed off, somehow wrong. Didn't she used to be a bigger? Spike dismissed the thought as a result of fatigue and the darkness. Soon he drifted back off to sleep, Twilight's adorable little sighs of breath in rhythm with his own.

An Anti-Antidote

Spike was awoken by a stream of sunlight beaming in his eyes, an alarm he was unaccustomed to. He tried to cover his face with the blanket, but found Twilight had somehow rolled herself into a ball with it in the night. She was still sleeping, the blanket like a mummy's wrappings on her small body-

Wait. Small body? Spike thought, panic quickly rising in his chest.

Taking care not to wake the filly, he crept into the boy's room. He found Zack in the middle of dressing, shirt only half on. Quinn was still sleeping soundly. Zack took notice of Spike's expression and abandoned his efforts to put on his shoes, following the short dragon out to the main room. Silently and solemnly, he pointed to the sleeping form of Twilight, who'd partially unraveled herself from the blanket.

Zack's eyes widened with surprise and concern. "Did you use the antidote?" he confirmed in a hushed tone.

Spike nodded. "I-don't-know-what-to-do-please-help-me-I-don't-want-to-get-in-trouble-and-I-"

Zack covered his mouth, but not before Spike's partial breakdown woke the small filly. "Is it morning?"

Suppressing the urge to forget about the situation and give into her adorable voice, Spike merely nodded again. Having taken a moment to collect himself, he realized that he may need to check on the others. The same situation could apply to them, making things even more complicated than necessary.

"Go wake up Quinn," he asked Zack. Spike then headed upstairs to check on the others.

As he opened the door, he was upset but unsurprised to see that none of the other ponies had aged either. AppleJack was only just rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her little hooves. The others were still sleeping, as it seemed.

"Are we having apple pancakes?" She asked hopefully.

"Uh, I'm not sure," Spike responded hesitantly. "Why don't you go check downstairs?"

AppleJack slipped off the bed with a thump, and ran down the stairs to see what her breakfast would be. The thump woke up Pinkie with a jolt, which bumped Rarity and knocked her out of the bed. She began to cry, waking the remaining girls. FlutterShy hopped down to comfort the crying filly. Pinkie apologized repeatedly, and her own eyes began to tear up when she didn't hear any acceptance. This all took place in a matter of seconds, which Spike rapidly caught up with. He knelt down and picked Rarity off the floor as Rainbow and FlutterShy looked on with concern.

"Shh, it's okay, it's okay. Let me see," He comforted.

The simpering filly lifted up a foreleg, which seemed unmarked. She recoiled when Spike made to touch it.

"Aw, don't worry, it's just a bump," he said to her. "It won't hurt for long."

"Kiss it?" She asked, the streams of tears stopping.

He hesitated. Long had he awaited this day, but this was not how he was expecting it to happen. He knelt down and kissed her foreleg. The filly giggled, threw her arms around him in a hug, and ran off with the others downstairs.

"Well, aren't we a charmer?" he heard Quinn's teasing tone.

Face reddening, he turned to the bespectacled boy. "Shut up. She just would've kept crying otherwise."

Quinn held up his arms in surrender. "Hey, I won't tell anyone." His face turned serious. "Were you sure the book said to apply externally? Did you make it correctly? Use a proper dosage?"

The dragon nodded furiously. "Yes, I'm sure."

Quinn scowled and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps we overdosed the original potion, or made it incorrectly, then. I'm going to need to attempt to remake the antidote. Zack wasn't very reassuring when I asked him whether he made it right or not. I'll also need to take one of the girls with me to test it, too."

"Hey!" Zack called from below. "Breakfast you guys!"

The two returned to the main room, where pancakes were being devoured by the fillies. Two plates stood separate for them, which they dug into with enthusiasm. Zack really had learned a quite a lot from his job at the bakery. Quinn wolfed his down quickly, keeping the urgency of his task in mind.

Quinn abandoned his plate and tugged on his boots, running around the library to gather the materials he'd need for remaking the antidote. He was unable, however, to find the age potion itself. That is, most of it.

"Spike," he said despairingly. "Please, for the love of god, tell me that bottle is not almost empty."

"You mean the syrup?" Pinkie Pie piped up. "It didn't taste very good anyway."

"Y-you used that-" Spike stammered. He'd eaten a full plate.

"Tasted like bad apple juice," AppleJack commented.

"At least there's a little left?" Zack added unhelpfully.

"No time to assign blame," Quinn said, holding his head. He turned to Rainbow Dash, or rather, looked down at her. "You get to come with me for a little walk, okay? We're going out to the woods."

"Can I watch the pegasuses?" The filly asked.

"On the way there, you can."

"Okay!" She agreed happily. Quinn opened the door and the two were off to try and remedy the situation.

Meanwhile, Spike was just coming to terms with what the empty bottle being referred to as syrup implied. The girls were already so young- this would make them even younger. As for him- what would happen to him? It was only supposed to effect ponies, but what would it do to a dragon? A human, like Quinn? Zack, thankfully, hadn't eaten any, but the results of this could be catastrophic. Things were only getting worse. How long had it taken for it to work on the girls? An hour? Two? He groaned aloud, slumping against a bookshelf.

Twilight walked up to him, her head tilted with concern. She offered an apple from the table to him.

Spike smiled, in spite of the situation. He had confidence this could be fixed. Quinn was smart. The dragon knew he could fix this.

Affected and Unaffected

"I can't fix this!" Quinn exclaimed in frustration, slamming the book shut. "It's been nearly an hour, and I am absolutely sure I made it correctly."

"Does this mean no more smelly goo?" Asked Rainbow Dash from his side.

"No, none of that." The distressed boy sighed, rubbing his temples. He mentally re-ran the experiment in his head, thinking to himself, I don't understand. It worked fine on the flower. Granted, a whole different species, but still, what am I missing?

No answer came to mind. Having no option but to report back to the others, he packed his things, grasping the new base youth potion in his hand. He left Zecora's hut as he'd found it, and proceeded back into town, Rainbow Dash directly in front of him. As he walked a buzzing built up in the back of his mind, and he began to stumble and trip over his own feet. It wasn't until he neared the town's fountain did he completely collapse from nausea. He stumbled over, allowing the age potion to roll out of his hand, onto fountain's side. Rainbow dash noticed this and doubled back for him, a concerned look on her face.

"Are you sick?" She inquired.

He groaned, shifting into a sitting position on the fountain's side. "I'm... I'm fine. Really, I just-"

Eyes suddenly widening, he turned away from the filly to relieve the contents of his stomach. His hand brushed against the bottle, knocking the vessel into the water, where the loose cork was freed, and the contents mixed with that of the water fixture's. Quinn shook his head violently, and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. He felt better, aside from the taste in his mouth.

Rainbow patted his side gently. "Better?" She asked, then "Ew."

"Yeah, mostly. Where's the..." He trailed off, seeing the cork of his bottle floating in the fountain. He then let loose a short stream of words, ones that should never be said in front of any decent company, especially a young filly.

Meanwhile, Zack did the same. Spike had just undergone a massive growth spurt, akin to that of the one on his birthday a few months ago. Spike was now just a head shorter than him, and not too pleased with the recent development.

"What do I do?" He said, failing at keeping the panic out of his tone. "Last time this happened I wrecked half the town!" Zack slapped him across the face. "Ow! What was that for?"

He shrugged. "Works in the movies. Seriously, just calm down. You're not feeling all greedy, right? You aren't taking anything that shines and hoarding it, like last time. You 're still acting normal. I'm pretty sure half of that ordeal was a mental thing. You're fine."

"Then why were you doing that thing you guys do when you get freaked out? What do you call it... swearing?"

"You just scared the bejesus out of me, that's why!"

"Oh. Right," Spike said, cheeks reddening a bit. "Think it'll scare the girls?"

"Doubt it. Still mostly you. Just don't run in screaming like you did to me, and I'm sure-"

"AAAHH!" came a shout from the doorway. A pink tail whipped around the frame as Pinkie ran, terrified of the dragon in the room. Spike glared at Zack, then slowly walked out of the room to calm the little filly down.

"Hey, hey," he said in what he thought was a soothing voice. It was a lot deeper, so he was unsure whether it came off as such. "Don't worry. It's me, Spike."

"No you're not! He's smaller!" Argued the filly from beneath the sofa.

"I, uh, got taller. That's all." he replied, looking down underneath.

"Liar!" Pinkie exclaimed, running out to the stairwell door. She brushed past AppleJack and Rarity on her way.

The two first looked after Pinkie, then at Spike. For a moment, nopony, or dragon, moved. Then AppleJack spoke up.

"Why're you so big?"

"I, uh," he struggled to find an explanation. "I ate my vegetables?"

The fillies made an 'o' with their mouths.

"Can..." Rarity asked timidly. "Can I see one of your scales?"

Spike was caught off guard by this question, but complied, pulling out a loose one from his elbow and handing it to her. The small unicorn took hold of it with a small amount of awe, marveling at the glimmering object in her hooves. "It's so pretty," she said, regarding it as if it were made of diamond. "Can I keep it?"

"I... sure. Just don't throw it or anything, okay?" It wasn't a sharp or jagged scale, and it wasn't as if she would try to eat it. "And could you do me a favor?"

The filly nodded furiously.

"Tell the other girls I'm not a monster."

"Why do they think you're a monster?" AppleJack asked the dragon.

"I just scared Pinkie Pie a bit, and I don't want her frightening the others. Please?"

"Okay!" Rarity said, bounding up the stairs, AppleJack right on her tail.

Zack stepped in, slowly clapping for his younger friend. "That was well handled."

"Do you ever stop and think, 'Hm, maybe I should help him out?'" Spike replied in an annoyed tone.

Before Zack could defend himself against the verbal dig, front door slammed open. Quinn, who was breathing heavily, let down Rainbow Dash from his back before noting Spike's appearance. "That... That's... hah... Not good..."

Rainbow Dash took one look at the dragon before running upstairs. Spike made to call after her, but was stopped by the recovering boy. "Bigger problems," he said between breaths. "Much bigger problems."

Bigger Problems

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The Town's Youth

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War Plans

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Last Ditch Efforts

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Seige on Golden Oaks

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