The Wordy Wrath of THE PUNDIT

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.