Equestria has gone through many great trials. Nightmare Moon, that time Discord came back, then that tone with the big horny centaur called Tirek that sucked magic out of everyone, and that time Celestia accidentally magicked the sun slightly closer to the planet destroying a few small civilizations and drying up thousands of crops, not to mention the body count. Celestia had been trying to butter some toast when a catchy song came on the radio about the sun being a mass of incandescent gas and she started shaking and swaying to the music and then she thought that maybe the sun might like to dance too. Once Celestia was informed of the catastrophic damages to the planet she moved the sun back to where it was supposed to sit and categorically denied having anything to do with it even though she is one of two beings in the known universe that can single hoofedly control celestial bodies. Anyway, Equestria has seen some of the nastiest villains and cattiest catastrophes ever to befall a nation, but those evils pale in comparison to the one that is about to be unwittingly unleashed.
~
Spike the dragon had to deal with a lot of things today. First the cooling enchantments in the fridge went out during the night and half of the stuff in there spoiled while the other half was rendered disgustingly warm, so he had to go down to the shops and get a replacement crystal so Twilight could fix it. Then the shops didn’t have a replacement crystal. He had to go to the neighboring town of Phoneyville that Queen Chrysalis set up to spy on the Elements of Harmony. The changelings frequently and loudly denied being changelings, having any knowledge of changelings, and kept saying that changelings were probably, “Totally made up and you should leave a window in that castle open tonight, not so a changeling can sneak in or something but because a building that large probably has poor air circulation.” Spike just tried to keep a smile on his face and not get angry, Twilight wanted Chrysalis to get comfortable around Ponyville and its citizens so that they could maybe one day live in harmony or friendship or something, Spike hadn’t been paying very good attention. Eventually he managed to convince the shop in Phoneyville that he DEFINENTELY BELIEVED THEY WERE NOT CHANGELINGS and they sold him a replacement 4-E enchantable appliance crystal.
Spike got back to the crystal castle a little while later and drug Twilight out of the book shipment that came in yesterday. He could vaguely recall this one coming with a note from Celestia cautioning her not to try and read the entire literary canon of Equestria, so Twilight started making a checklist for reading the entire literary canon of Equestria. Twilight looked up the serial number of the fridge in the book and found the related enchantment, Spike decided to leave her to it and get a head start on some of the other chores for the day like organizing all the new books, re-organizing all the old books, dusting the shelves, making sure no demons were invading Equestria through the crystals, and checking the thaum-o-meter for dangerous levels of magical emissions. Halfway through dusting the shelves Spike started to feel colder than usual. He went back to check on Twilight, and he found that she had not just enchanted the crystal and gone back to reading. He found her bent over the barely recognizable fridge with a frazzled mane and tail, her teeth grinding against each other loudly enough that he mistook it for the icemaker for a moment. The fridge spilled out strange swirls of arcane energy in various flavors of blue. Spike went to get the checklist for when Twilight being suddenly possessed by mad science.
Two hours and one Celestean priest later and Twilight was back to reading books like she had never even tried to warp space and time to make the perfect fridge. Spike looked at the filled-out checklist, then at the broken remains of the fridge, then he double checked the checklist stash for a checklist on fridge repair, and then he sighed as his claws drew out the parchment and inked quill that he kept, somewhere on his person. Scribble here and a scribble there and a, “Please, please princess Celestia could you dip into the Equestrian Emergency Fund, pretty please with a big ruby on top?”, then send it off. Either there would soon be a new fridge, or Twilight would have to deal with getting slightly wilted lettuce and room temperature tomato slices with her hash browns. Spike put his quill and parchment away, dragged a claw down his face, and then stomped off to get back to work, those shelves weren’t going to dust themselves.
By the time he gets the rest of his chores finished, gives in to Twilight’s request to make her some warm milk with honey in it before bed, and found his bedroom again in this huge arse crystal castle, Spike was dragging his feet like the zombie on the comic book he had under his arm. He went up to the bed and peeled the covers back before he curled up underneath them with his comic and his flashlight. This is a new issue of a comic called, “THE PUNCTULIOUS CAPERS OF THE PUNDIT”, that just came out with the first issue called, “Zombies Thirst for Grains!” Spike cracked open the comic and started reading. He found himself chuckling at the villain protagonist and his silly antics that seemed to be fueled less by ill will and more by a criminal desire for wordplay. Together with his powerful companion the Aliteralist the Pundit caused havoc throughout the city until heroes like Responsibility Stallion and the Accountancy Colt came along to ruin the Pundit’s fun. The first storyline ended with the Pundit escaping in a hot air balloon shaped like an eyeball as Responsibility Stallion and Accountancy Colt dismantled the sparking dial covered machine that turned Manehattan’s health scene into mindless grain eating zombies.
“EYE’LL SEE YOU AGAIN, YOU CAPED… COOCOOCLOCKS! MWAHAHAHAHEEHEEHEEHA!” Said the Pundit as he floated away, his cape billowing in the wind and his hooves rubbing against each other like hundreds of evil ponies had rubbed their hooves before while enacting dastardly deeds.
“One of these days we shall force him to accept responsibility for his actions.” Responsibility Stallion said.
“And bring him to accountancy too right dad?” Accountancy colt squeaked up at Responsibility Stallion. The caped crusader hooked a leg around his son’s head and pulled him in close to tousle his mane.
“That too.”
Spike closed up the comic book, sat it and the flashlight on his night stand, and then stretched his little arms out to a chorus of pops. His head poofed into the pillow and he snuggled into the covers before closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep with a mind occupied by zombies, puns, and zombie puns.
A few hours later the comic on the nightstand moved a little bit, barely enough to be visible. Then it moved again, a little bit more this time. The cover flapped open with a slap and revealed a vortex of green and purple spiraling into the comic making a sound like SCHWOOOOOORP. A hoof, clad in bright green latex with purple stripes, shot out of the comic book and gripped the end of the nightstand, then it pulled. The nightstand toppled over and threw the comic into the air as a pony screaming their bloody head off shot out of the front of it. The peculiarly patterned pony crashed into Spike’s dresser on the opposite side of the room. After a few minutes of extricating himself from the former doors of Spike’s dresser the pony stood up and brushed himself off, latex stretching as he did.
“I hope someone is around to redress this.” The peculiar pony said. Then he stopped in the midst of brushing himself off to look into the remains of the dresser at something that had caught his eye. He pulled out a round hat and popped it onto his head, feeling it sink snugly, and stylishly, onto his noggin.
“This little hat is just BOWLING me over!” The stallion yelled to the room. “I’ll have to tip my new cap to whoever generously donated it to me.” His eyes peered around the small room, and soon settled onto the sleeping form of the dragon in the bed. He crept over on tippy hooves to the side of the bed, careful not to make any more noise lest he awake the sleeper. He patted the little dragon gently with his hoof. “I thank you tiny reptile, for this stylish chapeau but I cannot stay until you wake.” He drew back and pointed a hoof defiantly toward the sky, or the ceiling in this case. “FOR…” He heard the little dragon stir in his bed a little bit. “For I am the Pundit, master of the barometric arts.” He swooshed his cape behind him with one hoof as he whispered as loudly as he could. “And I forecast a storm, neigh, a hurricane of puns.” He tip hoofed out of the room, giggling evilly to himself as he went. Spike just rolled over. Once the little dragon got going nothing short of a natural disaster, or a Twilight disaster, could wake him from his much-needed slumber, not even strange pun obsessed ponies arriving from other dimensions to wreak havoc on Equestria.
Chapter 1 - The Calm Before the Storm
Spike woke up the next morning and looked at the state of his room, then he immediately laid his head back down and went to sleep again. When he woke up the second time he rubbed at his eyes before opening them onto exactly the same scene as before.
“Dang.” He muttered as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and took a better look at his trashed room. The dresser still clung together weakly even though the middle of it had been smooshed into the floor. Spike’s one night stand lay on the ground with the flashlight and the comic a few feet from it. With a groan, he tossed himself onto the cold gem floor and started picking up the bits of destroyed dresser and set up the nightstand where it was supposed to be. As he picked up the comic and the flashlight he started, and stared for a few moments at the comic. He opened it and found that something very, very important was missing.
~
“TWILIGHT!” Spike yelled as he bounded into Twilight’s reading room.
“Yeeeeeees?” Twilight said without looking up from her book. “I really hope you’re yelling because breakfast is ready and you’re just really excited about it.”
“Twi.” Huff. “I bought.” Puff. “And it did the…” Spike just laid down on the floor for a second and heaved air in and out of his body. “Just, just gimme a second.”
“Do we need to get you a treadmill or something?” Twilight said with her nose still deeply ensconced within the confines of her book.
Spike reached up a hand with one claw held aloft.
“And don’t start complaining about not having wings again, you’re a dragon and you’ll get them eventually, probably.”
A moment of silence followed by the scrape of scales on gemstone floor as Spike raised his other hand up with the same claw pointing defiantly into the air.
“So, you were trying to tell me about the really great breakfast you made?” Twilight asked with a voice tinged with hope and doubt that Spike had actually been that excited about making breakfast.
Spike laid his hands on the floor and got himself to his feet again with a hup and a ho. “I came to tell you that, ummm.”
Twilight froze for a moment, her ears perking up, she knew that tone in Spike’s voice. Anyone who has ever heard a similar tone would have been able to recognize it as well, the tone of someone who knows they’re about to land themselves in a load of trouble worse than an angry wolverine being dropped straight down the front of your trousers.
“You know that comic book store that you told me never to go to again because it would probably result in more adventures or unleashing a terrifying monstrosity across Equestria or something like that?” Spike said as he twiddles his claws and shuffled his feet, his eyes focused on Twilight and the book still obscuring her face. Sweat would be running down the outside of his scales if it could.
“Uh huh.” Twilight said, drawing out the words as her horn lit up and levitated a bookmark over to her, gently slotting itself in between the pages of the book she had been so avidly reading a few moments before.
“Well I might have gone back there.”
Twilight closed the book slowly, very slowly.
“And they may have had a cool new comic out.”
“Mmmmm.” Twilight muttered as she sat the book down on her favorite reading table. She looked like a wolf relishing the playfulness of a chicken. Spike gulped audibly, a small lump going down his throat and settling in the pit of his stomach.
“Well, I just couldn’t help myself you know and I…” Spike trailed off as Twilight got up and started walking over to him. She licked her lips. Spike actually started to sweat, reptilian biology be damned.
“No ice cream.” Twilight said, towering over Spike and looking down on him with the flames of rage lighting her eyes. “For at least a week.” She reached down a hoof to bap him on the nose with all the power that a displeased pseudo-mother figure could muster. “And anytime you even think about Rarity I’m going to remind you about something unladylike that she’s done, like flying a bomber.”
Spike raised a finger and opened his mouth in a wordless uh?
Twilight sighed, and suddenly looked a lot less towering and imposing and about to turn Spike into a pile of draconic goo on the floor. “Farting Spike, Rarity ladyfarts.”
“LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Spike screeched with his fingers jammed in his ears.
“Honestly I really have no idea why that bothers you as much as it does.”
“BETTER NOT TELL ME ANYTHING IMPORTANT BECAUSE I CAN’T. HEAR. ANYTHING.” Spike enunciated at the top of his lungs.
“I mean I fart around you all the time.”
“VRRRRRRRRRRR IS THAT A JET PASSING BY?”
“Half of the time I call you in it’s because I have an elaborate scheme to get you right next to my butt so I can rip one that sounds like god slamming her car door.”
“BRRRROOOOOO-” Said Spike, just beginning his imitation of a combine harvester when Twilight scooped him up and plopped his little body onto her back with all the pomp and circumstance of someone putting butter on bread.
“Yeah, that’s about enough of that. Did you at least bring the comic with you so we know what we’re dealing with?”
“Yeah, right here.” Spike reached into the same place that he kept his quills and paper to retrieve the comic. Twilight didn’t try to look. She had before and when she woke up in Ponyville General they said that half of her brain tried to self defensively put itself into a coma while the other half attempted to throw itself outside of her skull. She just kept her eyes forward until Spike eventually handed her the comic.
“Huh.” Twilight said as she read the title and flipped through the rest of the comic, noting the weird empty spaces and floating speech bubbles present throughout. “So I’m guessing from the text that’s still in here and the title that the main character called the ‘Pundit’ escaped?”
“No.” Spike said.
“But the signs are all there, and the puns, the really bad, terribly awful puns.”
“No I mean, that’s not how you say it.”
“Say what?”
“His name Twilight, duh.”
“What, the Pundit?”
“Yeah, it isn’t ‘The Pundit.’ It’s THE PUNDIT!”
Twilight narrowed her eyes at Spike and let her mouth hang open as she tried to process that in a way that made sense, then she gave up and threw the comic in her hooves back to Spike.
“That is probably the single stupidest thing I have heard…” Twilight thought for a long time. Mostly about Pinkie Pie. “Today.”
“Well you know what we’re going to have to do.” Spike said, a gleam appearing in his eyes as Twilight started walking over to one of the windows of the library.
“Talk to him and ask him to get back into the fictional world where he belongs instead of causing trouble here in this definitely real world of random fully choreographed songs and completely reasonable government and educational figures?” Twilight said.
“No silly, we’re gonna have to get everyone to dress back up as the power ponies and summon the heroes that are still inside the comic and, and have a climactic showdown with lots of cool action sequences where we defeat the villain but then he recognizes the error of his ways and totally becomes a good guy.” Spike said, reveling in the genius of his plan by crossing his arms and adopting a self-satisfied smirk.
Twilight pushed open the windows of the library and leapt out into the open air, splaying her wings to her sides and gliding towards Ponyville proper. “Well whatever we actually end up doing, we’re probably going to need help with this one, and I, regrettably, know just the pony for the job.” Twilight said as she angled her flight towards Sugarcube Corner.
