Aw, man, being a dragon is tough some days. You've got all the adventuring and the heroing to do, and then all the science, and then there's the really boring part, with politics and backstabbing and stuff. And, on top of that, right now it's that time of the year, where the Princess gets so hot and botherin', and it's up to me, Spike, a poor bicentennial Dragon, to help her out of her funk. Not that I can do all that much, because it's just Princess Celestia's natural celestial cosmic cycle of awesomeness going; some of us just can't help the way we were born. Except, we've figured out a way to alleviate that fiery fever.
It turns out, all that solar rising and flaring that makes our summers is simply surges of lovin' and warmth that Celestia needs to get across to the world. Which would be all fine and dandy, except there's too much of all that tender warmth, and it turns from motherly to smotherly and from stroking to choking, and, heck, back in the old days of Death, sometimes some of the very old, the very sick, or the very young could die because of that little extra heat. Mostly it just made everyone extremely awkward and uncomfortable. So that's where I come in; I take the heat, for the team.
How we got there is kind of awkward, and rather sad, too. As a dragon, I kept growing old, but, like, reeeeal slow... by the time I had the body of a teenager, Twilight was already an old Princess—ow! Not that she looked it! She was still the cutest thing ever, and she felt more like a mommy than ever before—or maybe more like a granny; I wouldn't know, I've never actually had one. I'd been her assistant for so flipping long... we had adventured and we had scienced and we had freindshipped, and we had adventured with our friends for science, and scienced the friendships, and friendshipped the scientists... but the only friend that was scienced, was me...
Okay, maybe this deserves an explanation. For one thing, sometimes we went adventuring for science, because Twi desperately needed some device or artifact or ingredient thingie for her last obsession. Sometimes, though, we went adventuring because of it; some of Twi's experiments went wrong in all sorts of interesting and exciting ways, and that often meant some sweet adventure time. And when I say Twilight scienced the friendship, it's because Twilight practically invented the field of Philelology, which is the Science of Friendship—Magic is just the placeholder word we use for "Science we don't understand yet".
Well, Twilight would have insisted that I let you know that -logy, coming from logos, translates to ‘treatise’ or ‘rigorous discourse’ rather than ‘science’. Always a stickler for crossing t’s and dotting i’s, our Twilight was...
Afterwards she expanded it further into Storgeology —"the rigorous discourse on family love"—, and Agapeology —which is about loving everyone and wanting to improve the world and generally being nice and altruistic and open, which is something we're pretty big on here in Equestria— and, eventually, Erology. The field of that Very Special Somepony feelies kind of love. The sort that makes you want to call someone your Schmoopie Doopie Sweetie-Weetie Cutie-Patootie Hearty-Smartie Baby-Waby, and mean it.
Oh, glob, how I miss Rarity.
Anyway, she didn't just work on that. She made some serious advances in Astrology, the treatise of the celestial bodies, which in large part amounted to alicorn biology and thaumaturgy. And that's where Twilight did one huge massive breakthrough; she —we— figured out a way to replicate the Princesses' immortality! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Except she was super-old by then. Even though being a Bearer of the Elements of Harmony —and a stickler for healthy lifestyle, adventures notwithstanding— seemed to give her and her friends an amazingly long lifespan by pony standards, she still wasn't able to live long enough to see the proper implementation of her discovery. At that thime, we hadn't been able to figure out a way to do it safely, and we weren't going to use any sentient beings as guinea pigs when we were so unsure.
I can't help but think, maybe if I'd been smarter, maybe if I'd spent more time studying rather than stud-y-ing, back when I was a student, maybe... maybe if I'd done things differently, we'd have been able to figure it out in time. Maybe I could have saved her. I know there's no point in wondering; you can't change the past, not even with a time machine. It's been a hundred years, and I just can't get over it.
That Twilight died when there was so little left to do really sucked, if only because, a couple of years later, I and my students managed to lay down a safe way to do it, and we started applying the process, first in small groups, and then in larger ones, and soon we started doing it en masse, and now it's been nearly a hundred years since practically everyone in Equestria who wanted to has become immortal. If only she could see this now, she'd be so proud... I mean, that's the greatest accomplishment one can accomplish ever, right? Defeating Death!
… Frankly, I’m mostly frustrated that we couldn’t get it to work sooner. It’s one of those advances that, once you have it, well, you can’t imagine life without it. Unfortunate phrasing, I know.
Now, out of all the original bunch, I'm the only one left. The Elements had outlived near all their contemporaries, even the CMC, for they, although they were younger, were not bearers. And Twilight had outlived all of the other Elements. And I've outlived her. And I've gotten the immortality treatment, on top of my immense dragon lifespan. I'm the only one of the friends who was scienced. Some days I wonder if I was cursed with awesome, or blessed with suck. I miss them all so much...
Anyhoo. Summertides. Solar flares. Astrology. Me. Princess Celestia. Or Tia. Or Celly. Or PC. We had time to get chummy over the decades, as the long-lived do...
In the process of studying Astrology, and figuring out what makes the princesses tick, we found out a number of things. First, the excess solar heat correlates with both an elevation of the Princess's body temperature (she doesn't get sun-hot, but she does get lava hot), and a partial shift in her mode of loving. Instead of the huge focus on agape (loving everyone) with a huge modulation of storge (it came off as motherly love), there was an increased eros harmonic to the way her love was expressed.
Her body language changed. It became more fluid, more swaying, like the seas of ripe wheat under the summer breeze, or like juicy, low-hanging, ripe peaches. Her gaze took another kind of focus. She started smelling spicy rather than her usual lavender. Her voice undertook a deeper timbre; it didn't feel like afternoon tea anymore, clean and healthy and formal. It felt more like thick, hot chocolate, the sort that makes your mouth water from a distance, with a rich smell that promises a delicious taste, and aftertase, and then a long-lasting, glowy warmth of happiness spreading from the inside out.
However, her body temperature promised an untimely and horrifying death to any mortal who fell for that. Having lived a long time, she'd learned that the best way to avoid stupid, tragic accidents was to pre-empt them, so, during the heatstorkes, she used to disappear in a hidden valley, and, mindful of ther subjects' welfare, she sat under a waterfall... which was still a bit of an ecological disaster, dumping all that heat downstream, and didn't do all that much to alleviate the heat.
We literally sumbled into a solution while investigating the thermodynamic details of that transformation. Twilight wanted to determine whether it was possible to make use of that seemingly inexhaustible (albeit sporadic) source of energy to power steam or gas engines, perhaps install a power plant in that valley. We had our lab built around the area where the Princess sat under the waterfall. In stark yet harmonious contrast to the verdoyant, lush greenery that thrived in the constant drizzle of the torrent, cables and metal tubes both thick and thin, long and short, red and blue and yellow, criss-crossed the valley, with the occasional valve, engine, pump, stove and condenser, here and there. Rarity had insisted in helping a reluctant Twilight with the oh-so-vital aesthetic aspect of the project, and I for one couldn’t complain; the valley looked vibrant and fun.
Twilight was equipped in a very amusing hazmat suit, discussing the final details with Celestia. It was clear that both of them took great pains to keep Twilight safe, giving each other a wide berth, and keeping Celestia under fresh water at all times. Twilight’s mirror-y, bibendum-ish suit reflected as much heat as possible, and redirected the rest towards her back, giving her the air of a walking, talking pressure-cooker.
I was a lot more lax about safety than Twilight, as I had no trouble withstanding the radiation or hot air around the princess. While my tall, lanky self, in my nice white labcoat, with a nice "Dr. Prof. Spike Dracul" brass badge, on the top of my stepladder, set up the valves and the pressures in the coolant and exhaust ducts, and checked the pressure gauges, taking careful note of the values while trying to keep a straight face, the Princess and Twilight were having an idle conversation.
"Twilight, my most faithful student," she had said in that husky voice, "I'm not quite sure how I should feel. On one hand, I'd love for you to deliver me of this... seething... in a way that makes my little ponies' lives better." She paused, and blushed. "But I cannot help but feel bashful at the idea of becoming a... a nuclear fusion plant..."
I’d interrupted "But, Princess, can't you see that's the awesomest thing ever! You're the most radiant, smoldering, smoking hot powerhouse in the world! You're a walking, talking fusion reaction! That's hotter than any giant robot! No, that's hotter than any thing ever! Mark this, your Highness, and I mean every word of what I'm saying; You. Are. Hawt stuff!"
Twilight had looked at me like I was stepping out of line. Celestia had smiled her usual, mischievous smile—if it had been forced, I hadn’t noticed. Although I got to know a lot more of her through most of that century, we were still quite far from being equals, but things were getting kind of vague, and I wasn't sure whether we'd become great enough in her eyes that the mistakes that she would fogive as harmless childishness would get the same passes anymore. In other words, I wasn't sure whether we weren't kids to her anymore, but grownups, to be held accountable for our actions. I also wasn't sure how much we were friends, rather than subjects. So teasing her like that about her condition was kind of risky.
As I said, I was biologically a teenager at the time.
I was rather risk-prone.
"Spike, cool off." Twilight snapped, in the coolest Cool Old Lady voice that ever cooled.
I grinned; "But that's what I'm doing! Cooling her off!"
She gave me a flat stare. The princess chuckled softly.
“Are you ready, Spike?” she asked.
“In a minute, Princess. Let me finish taking these measurements, and I’m gonna be all over you, I promise…” Twilight cast me a withering glare “...outfitting you with the equipment Twilight designed.”
Twilight and I traded places. I confidently approached the sitting Princess, straddled her back, rubbed my hands, let out an evil chuckle, and commenced the preparations...
