This Is Called A Handshake
“You know, I don’t appreciate being carried around with magic.” Spike, the colorful stub of a dragon currently stuck in a magical grasp, deadpanned.
Ever since the day that brought him into the world, eight years ago, Spike had been taken into the care of Princess Celestia. A filly like Twilight obviously couldn’t take care of him, not at such a young age. As such, he needed a legal guardian. Surprisingly, Princess Celestia was the one to step up, taking baby Spike into the castle.
“Look, I’m sorry I forgot about you all these years, but can you blame me? Studying at the School for Gifted Unicorns, being the student of the Princess, it's all so exciting!” Twilight Sparkle, the pony holding Spike, retorted.
While Spike was being raised in the castle, Twilight had been studying the basics of magic theory alongside some of the brightest youth in all of Equestria, also thanks to Princess Celestia. Seeing such competition, she resolved to prove to Princess Celestia that she was worthy of such a prestigious position as her personal student.
However, achievements always require sacrifice, and Twilight was no exception. She decided to sacrifice sociability and friends, instead burying herself in books and studies.
“Yes, I can blame you. I was the one that got you into that school in the first place!” Spike flailed his arms.
“I remember that.” Twilight nodded.
“Then why don’t you remember me!” Spike cried in disbelief.
Twilight scratched her neck with a hoof. “Eheh…”
Spike just sighed heavily. “I can’t believe this.”
“Well, you better get used to it. The Princess said that you have to get out of the castle, live in the real world.” Twilight chided.
“I’m gonna miss all that ice cream…” Spike mumbled.
Twilight either didn’t hear that, or didn’t acknowledge it. “Anyways, this is definitely going to be interesting. The rest of the family really looks forward to meeting you.”
“Okay, whatever.” Spike grumbled.
The door creaked open, illuminating some of the dark room. Twilight walked in, followed by Spike.
“I told you, you have to sleep with me. There’s no extra beds,” Twilight pointed towards a small bed in the corner, opposite a bigger bed.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t like sleeping with someone who thought I didn’t exist.”
“Fine then, just be that way. I’m gonna check my list of things to do for today.” Twilight trotted over to the desk, where she pulled out a large sheet of parchment, filled with writing. Her eyes skimmed over the checklist as she mumbled to herself, “Check, check, not check, check-wait! Not check on what!” Her eyes snapped back to the empty check box. “Turn in essay on the properties of magical influx… Oh no.”
Hairs immediately began to spring up, ruining Twilight’s once pristine mane. “That was my grade for the entire semester!” She began rummaging frantically through the saddlebags strewn on the desk. After a few seconds of scavenging, she pulled out yet another paper, reading the title and deciding that was the one. "Ohh man! My professor's gonna kill me!"
Spike watched this panic attack across the room with mild interest. Jumping onto his bed and beginning to shuffle the sheets around, he remarked, "Ponies forget things. I don't see the big deal."
Twilight just heard him, his voice distorted by her internal systems' panic. She slowly turned around to face the drake, still arranging the bed. A flash, and she was suddenly right next to him. "Woah!" Spike yelled in fright, jumping back a bit.
"You don't see the deal?! If I miss this assignment, my professor will probably fail me on the spot! What if Princess Celestia sees this, and then she decides I'm not worthy to be her student, and then I end up flipping hayburgers for a living!"
Spike took a small step forward. "Twi, you need to calm down. I'm pretty sure that Princess Celestia and your professor would understand if you simply forgot. Once again, ponies make mistakes."
Twilight was already blocking him out again. Her words had blurred together into a mumbling that Spike wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to hear or not.
'How in the world do I get her out of this state? I can't sleep with her like this.' He thought hard, and for a while, he had nothing as an answer. 'Wait! That spell that Princess Celestia taught me, that might work, but I need... Yes, this is possible!' He jumped off the now disheveled bed and waddled over to the desk, avoiding Twilight's frantic running around.
Climbing onto the chair, he found the essay after a quick search. "Hey, Twilight! Could you do an illusion of your classroom?"
Twilight barely heard him again, but she thought about his request for a second. "Yeah, sure. This'll let me practice, I guess. Maybe if I show the Princess my skills, she'll let me stay as her student." Spike rolled his eyes, and then suddenly they were in a different room.
Rows of desks lined up, all facing an enormous chalkboard that adorned the wall. A small desk stood between the chalkboard and the eighty or so desks facing it, and it was littered with papers, writing utensils, and other things necessary for a teacher. The walls themselves were a drab olive green, and the floor was a cheap carpet, laid over a wooden foundation.
Spike waddled over to the desk next to the chalkboard, the aroma of chalk grinding against the board filling his nose. "You know, for an illusion, this is pretty realistic. Are you sure you didn't just teleport us here?"
"The school is protected with magical wards to prevent that, so theft is harder. I've spent so much time in this room, though, so I can add more details to it."
Spike nodded, it made sense. Walking over to the desk, he asked over his shoulder, "Is this where your professor puts his stuff?"
Twilight nodded again. "Yeah, that's where he puts everything. His desk nearly gives me an OCD attack during midterms."
"Okay, cut the illusion." Spike commanded. Twilight did as he said, and they were back in the bedroom. "Okay," Spike said uneasily. He slowly drew a deep breath, filling his throat, lungs, and even his mouth. Just when he felt he was about to implode like a balloon, he felt for the sense only dragons had, and opened it, blowing all that air out as he did so. What came out of his mouth wasn't air, but dragonsbreath, otherwise known as fire.
At the same time, Spike scrunched his eyes shut, concentrating as hard as he could on the mental image of the desk. He infused the magic that Princess Celestia had put into his dragonsbreath with the mental picture of the desk. As the flames reached Twilight's paper, he thought one thing. 'Go.' The essay was quickly consumed in the fire, and disappeared, and Spike slowly shut off his special sense, his gusty breath also slowing to a halt.
Out of nowhere, he was suddenly tackled by Twilight, who was now manic and angry. The grinding of her teeth was like the chalkboard in the classroom being scraped by a multitude of griffons, their disorganized screeching echoing in the small bedroom. "Spike! What did you do to my essay?!" Her already beady eyes began to shrink maliciously.
Poor Spike, wedged between Twilight's front legs, gulped. "I sent your essay to your professor's desk, so you can just blame it on him for 'forgetting' it." He pantomimed air-quotes as he resolutely finished his defense of himself. Twilight suddenly raised her hooves. Spike quickly raised his arms to cover his face, to at least attempt to shield himself. "I'm sorry!"
A few seconds, and then he felt Twilight's hooves, but not on his face or arms. They were on his back, and, in fact, they were pulling him up off the floor.
"Oh, thanks so much, Spike!" Twilight pulled the drake into a crushing embrace, due to Spike's size.
"Please stop, Twilight! You're crushing... me..." Spike struggled for breath. Twilight, quickly seeing this, dropped Spike back to the wood floor, and the dragon began heaving air, trying to breathe properly again.
In the middle of this pause, however, Twilight began thinking hard again. Her brow hardened as she thought. "Wait. Are you sure that it's at my professor's classroom?" She pressed, suddenly very intense.
"Yeah. Pull up the illusion again." Spike said. 'At least, hopefully it's there,' he thought. Within a few seconds, Twilight had pulled up the classroom again. Without missing a beat, she galloped over to the desk. Sifting through the myriad of papers, she suddenly found one that bore familiar handwork. "Yes, it's here!" The illusion abruptly cut off, and Twilight ran back over to Spike. "How did you do that? With the fire and all, I mean." She asked, her eyes aflame with curiosity.
Spike shrugged slowly. "When I lived with Princess Celestia, she taught me about dragons and their abilities, stuff she learned from the dragons that frequented the royal courts. She brought in a dragon once, the ambassador for the dragons in the far north. Guy went by the name of Drakoikos, and he talked to me about feeling the sense that allows me to use fire. That night, I blew my first fire. After that, Princess Celestia... well, I don't know exactly what she did, but she ended up putting magic into my fire." In this break, Spike noticed a sound. He looked up towards it, to see Twilight, a clipboard and quill floating next to her. The latter of the aforementioned objects was scribbling furiously, while Twilight's eyes moved with much the same vigor, darting around the page.
"I've got to talk to Princess Celestia about this, maybe even that Drakoikos fellow. This is most interesting. I might even get extra credit for this!" She exclaimed, Spike already lost to her mind.
Speaking of Spike, he realized that Twilight was already lost in her thoughts. Shoulders slumped, he walked back to his bed, climbing onto it again.
"This is the second time I've only been a tool to you! Is that all I am to you, Twilight?!" He cried, before flopping down on the bed face-down.
Through Twilight's musing, Spike's sentence broke through and busted right onto the forefront of her mind. 'What?! I'm not like that! He's - he's... he's right.' She realized. Slowly, she turned to face Spike, the clipboard and quill gone with a simple spell.
"Spike. I'm sorry, okay? I know that I'm a pretty terrible pony in the social department. But, if you'd let me, I'd like to change that." She climbed onto the bed, laying down on her side next to the drake huddled in a ball. "Spike, please. I want you to be my first friend. Please. I owe you at least that much."
Slowly, Spike uncurled from his ball. He looked up at Twilight hopefully. "Really? I don't have any friends yet. Nobody ever saw me when I lived in the castle. If you're serious..."
"Yes, Spike! I am serious! Please. We can learn how to be friends, together." Twilight pleaded.
Spike sat there for a minute, his eyes blank. Eventually, they came back to life, and Spike stretched out one of his claws, little fingers outstretched. When Twilight didn't move, Spike moved his hand around a bit, but didn't change the position. "Come on, Twi. Gimme your hoof."
Slowly, Twilight extended her hoof to meet Spike's claw, which slowly grabbed onto the edge of Twilight's foreleg. "This is called a handshake." He shook both his hand and Twilight's leg up and down in a little line. "I'd love to be your first friend, you bookworm. But you have to promise me you'll actually look at me as another pony, not a specimen for research."
"If I do so, you have my permission to burn me," Twilight chuckled.
"So, we're really friends now?" Spike asked quietly. A few seconds of silence passed between the pair.
"Yeah. I guess we are friends now. And I couldn't be happier." Twilight exhaled slowly.
"Thanks, Twi. This means a lot." Spike mumbled.
"Same to you, Spike. Same to you."
