Spike stared at the ruby-red gem before him, holding it in his claws.
He licked his lips, preparing to take a bite of the gem.

Seconds before it was about to enter his mouth, it was ripped from his hand by an evil gust of wind.

"What the hay?!" Spike shouted, looking around for the source of the wind.
He looked down at the wooden floor for his gem, frowning when it was nowhere in sight.

"Twilight? Could you use that gem finder spell again?" Spike called out, hoping to attract the attention of his friend.

"Just a minute, Spike! Hehehehe!" Twilight called back excitedly, Spike could tell by the tone of her voice that she was grinning like a filly.

He grunted, then continued to look around the room for his missing gem. "Mrs. Gem? Where are you, Mrs. Gem?"

To see better, he climbed up a ladder to reach a window and pull it open. His eyes brightened when the sun rays caused something under a bookshelf to sparkle.

"Gotcha!" He hopped down from the top of the ladder to the bottom. Just two feet before he reached the shiny object under the bookshelf, his feet slipped beneath him, causing him to fall face-first onto the wood floor.

Spike grunted, then began using his left claw to pull him closer to the bookshelf. Once he reached it, he reached his claw out and moved it around underneath the bookshelf until he touched an object.

"Gotcha!... again."

Spike dusted off the gem before he popped it into his mouth. Once it was completely spotless, he threw it up into the air, only for it to miss his mouth by a few inches.

"Darn it." Spike mumbled.

Meanwhile in the other room, Twilight was in the doorway, her wings flapping frantically.

"It's finally here!" She gasped for the eleventh time. "Finally I can read it!" She glanced down at the boring brown box, grinning even more every time she thought about what was inside of it.

Her magical grasp wrapping around the box lid, carefully lifting it. To Twilight's disappointment, it didn't budge.
She examined the box lid, until she found out the reason why it didn't open; the lid was wrapped in tape.

Well that'll be easy to remove... she thought to herself, grinning confidently. A purple hoof touched the top of the box, tracing atop it to find the end of the tape.

"Ah-ha!" She said when she felt the ridged end of the tape. Her hoof carefully began to pick at both ends of the tape.

"Almost..." She mumbled as the sticky tape began to peel.
Unfortunately, the tape gods didn't want to corporate and only half an inch of the tape peeled.

Twilight growled at the failure, then used her magic to carefully grab the tape once again. She forcefully pulled on the tape, causing it to make a terrible noise as it peeled off the box.

"Shush up, loud tape!" Twilight pouted, rubbing her ears.

Her magic grabbed onto the two lids once again, and luckily for Twilight, they opened, revealing a book inside a plastic case.

"Finally..." Twilight let out a sigh of relief, then went to open the plastic box protecting the book.

Wait...

Something was holding it down from being opened.
"Tape." Twilight muttered angrily as she thought about throwing the box against the wall to open it.

She repeated her earlier actions, grabbing the sides of the plastic clear box and ripping the tape off. It made the same terrible noise, this time even worse.

"No more obstacles," she muttered, grinning as she used both hooves to grab each side of the plastic container.

Her hooves forcefully jerked backward as she attempted to open the container. "Come on, open!"

The plastic box gods apparently didn't want to corporate either.

Why was this so hard to open? She usually didn't have this much trouble opening a package before... maybe it was because it was from the Starswirl the Bearded wing. They must of put extra effort into sealing it so that it doesn't get damaged or stolen. But she wasn't trying to do either of those things, she just wanted to read it and learn some new facts about Starswirl the Bearded! Celestia didn't have every single little bit of information that Twilight needed, ancient books about the subject were her only hope. So why couldn't the box just open already?

An idea struck her mind.
"Spiiike!" Twilight called out, her mane hairs beginning to stick out from stress. Her bangs were moved to either sides of her forehead and the bottom of her mane was tangled into a mini rats-nest.

Spike was in the kitchen, chewing on his delicious ruby-red gem. "Yeah, Twi?" He answered back with a mouthful of gems.

"Get in here! I need your help," said Twilight.

Spike hopped down from the stool he was standing on, just before he walked out of the kitchen he swallowed the rest of his gem.
"I'm coming, " Spike half-walked half-ran towards the sound of Twilight's voice.

Twilight grinned at the sight of Spike's small shadow on the wooden door, "There you are!" Her horn lit up, forcing Spike to sit down. "Okay, here's what I need you to do!"
Twilight cleared her throat, "I can't get this box open, as you see. I think that throwing it against the wall will hurt the book inside, so I'm not going to do that." She briefly giggled at her own words, "I am pretty certain that if the plastic around the book melts, it won't damage the book. So, that is why I need you to use your fire breath to set the plastic container on fire!"

Spike blinked at Twilight, then began to crack up.
"Twilight, that is the worst idea you've ever had!"

"W-what?" Twilight frowned, "B-but... science..."

Spike pointed at the container with a claw, "Twilight, I'm not as smart as you, but I'm smart enough to know that paper is flammable." He let out a laugh, "You're basically walking into a death-trap by asking me to set the plastic on fire."

"Oh." Twilight said, realizing how stupid her idea was. "O-okay, but how do I open it?"

Spike raised an eyebrow at Twilight, "I don't know. Maybe they put some sort of magic lock on it, and it says somewhere how to open it magically?"

The unicorns pupils widened, "Oh my gosh, Spike! That's... why did I never think of that?"
She looked at the inside of the box, and sure enough, there was a sticky-note on the bottom that told her the exact spell she needed to use.

Twilight's horn lit up and she grinned as the plastic container magically melted into the wooden floor.
"It.. it worked!" She picked up the book and gave it a hug. She looked down at Spike, dropped the book and pulled him into a hug.

After a few minutes of Spike brutally suffocating, she dropped him and picked the book back up.
She read the title out loud,

"Starswirl the Bearded's Greatest Secrets: Using Dark Magic Correctly."

Twilight turned the page and read the index, her eyes widening as she read each chapter title.

A few minutes later the unicorns attention was fully focused on the book, and Spike smirked as he left to let her read in peace.

Author's Note

I... don't know where this story came from.
I started to write this as a completely different story, but I ended up writing this.

Bleh, I finished it in a single day, so I'm happy about that.

I think that I might write a bonus chapter with what happened in Spike's side of the story with the gem, depending on how popular this story gets.