Maretropolis

Applejack glanced over at Spike.

She still couldn’t believe that he stood up for her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Never let them see that they get to you,” he replied.

“So... things do get to you?” she asked.

“Well, not anymore, but I will admit I was young and emotionally volatile like you once,”

“Ha-ha,” she said sarcastically.

“I’m serious,” he stated.

Applejack looked at her companion again. He looked like he had plenty more to say.

“I was nine-years-old, and I remember it like it was yesterday...”

The gondola was moving slowly, about five miles an hour. Applejack wondered what he had to tell her, and how long this ride would take.

So, Spike decided to tell her his life story.

Ever since he was a child, Spike had always had an entrepreneurial mind. He explained to her how badly hybrids were treated by the humans, and all he ever wanted to do was help those, like him, who had suffered so much.

“It was at a doctor’s appointment that I got my inspiration,” he began. “I had gone in for a checkup and must have dozed off because I had a dream that I was running through a field with my friends until we came upon a rollercoaster that took us high into the clouds.”

Sadly, his dream was cut short by his father waking him up.

Spike told his father about the dream, but also reminded his father about how the divide between humans and hybrids was still a problem. And he wanted to be the one to solve that problem.

Then the doctor said, “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that...”

“You’d be the richest man in Maretropolis,” Spike and his father both said.

“And in that moment,” Spike narrated, “my dad and I realized that if we could find a way, no! A place! A place where hybrids could be themselves, and be happy, without fear of reprisal, we would find a big audience for that. And my dad realized there was some money to be made.”

And thus, the idea for an amusement park began to take root.

Spike and his father went to pitch a business idea for a loan so they could start an indoor amusement park called The Dragon’s Lair, where hybrids, like the Dragonborn, could let their instincts loose a little. And it would feature a huge range of games and rides, including a rollercoaster that they could roar on and just be themselves.

“What does every hybrid in this town want?” his father began. “An escape from everyday life! A place where the only rule is to have fun and not get hurt. A place for them, a place called... The Dragon’s Lair!”

He motioned to his son and Spike dramatically unveiled plans for the amusement park, complete with a scale model.

“A fun-zone amusement park exclusively for Maretropolis’s largest untapped market!” his father continued. “They say you can’t put a price on happiness, well I say you can! And there it is! Nineteen-ninety-five a ticket! Me and my boy have a plan: we already have a location with a building lined up, we have the blueprints, we have the staff, we have the tools, we have a dream! The only thing we don’t have is the money to make it happen! Will you help us make it happen?”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before the bank’s president finally spoke.

“Look, it’s not that it’s a bad idea, there’s just too much risk in loaning to someone without credit,” he said. “We would be happy to loan to you if you did have the credit...”

Spike’s father’s smile faded, and his words shifted from persuasive and friendly to tactless and rude.

“Okay. Let me put it in words that maybe you’ll understand,” he growled. “I am desperate. And I can tell by that look in your eyes that you don’t like me. You don’t like me, and I don’t like you. But we both like money. You have it, I want to borrow it, and together, we’ll both make a lot of it. So, I will ask again, will you help us make it happen?”

Spike winced at his father’s words, and the bankers rejected his proposal, but Spike’s father was not about to give up.

They went to all the banks: the Maretropolis Bank, the Small Business Administration, Breezie Borrows, Crystal Savings and Loan, Pie Sisters, Flimflam Brothers, even the great businesswoman J. P. Maregan herself, and explained their idea to all of them. Unfortunately for them, almost all the city’s bankers and loaners just happened to be human, and their proposal was still rejected. They even tried to appeal to the bankers’ and loan sharks’ greed, and they were shot down every single time!

Years went by, and every year they would apply for a loan. And every year, they were still shot down, until Spike’s father grew ill and died, and Spike ended up approaching an “old friend” of his father’s.

Crime boss Torch Drago.

And Torch, being the Dragon Lord and a hybrid who had made his business lending money to other hybrids like himself, loaned Spike the money to finance the amusement park.

Spike approached the house, made it up the steps, to the door, and stamped the dirt off his shoes. The heavy iron gates were still being built and hadn’t been completed yet, so it had been easy for him to do so. He grabbed the ring of the knocker, lifted it, used it to thump on the door. Then he waited.

Warm light spilled out as the door opened and he saw that both Basil and Reginald had come to let him in. The bodyguards.

They stood still and said nothing for a moment.

Then they both said, “May we help you?”

“I have an appointment with Torch Drago,” Spike replied.

The two men stepped back, and motioned for Spike to enter. Spike stepped inside and heard the door shut behind him. Then Reginald threw Spike against the wall and frisked him.

“Let me go!” Spike exclaimed.

“You say you have an appointment?” Basil asked.

“When I say, ‘I have an appointment’, I have an appointment!” Spike replied.

Reginald patted Spike’s arms, waist, chest, back, and his legs. He was very thorough, and not gentle.

Once Reginald made sure that Spike wasn’t carrying any weapons, Basil led the way and Spike followed him down the hall, to the throne room, with Reginald close behind.

A second later, Spike heard shouting.

One-sided shouting. A phone call.

The voice was one he had heard a few times before. Deep, gruff, and laced with a kind of animal menace. A voice that seemed to come from another world entirely.

The voice of Dragon Lord Torch.

Reginald went straight in without knocking. The door closed behind him.

“Look, I’m really busy and--What?”

“Someone’s here to see you,”

“What does he want?”

“I don’t know,”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“He just told me he has an appointment,”

“Oh, well, that makes everything better, doesn’t it?”

The doors to the throne room reopened and Torch stepped into the hallway.

The Dragon Lord was dressed in blue suit pants and a matching vest, but his suit coat was off and his tie was loose.

He looked at Spike and stood still for a moment.

Then he smiled politely.

“Spike,” he said.

It was friendly enough, like he had somehow been taken by surprise, but it also had a cruel overtone to it, as if he was enjoying his absolute power and control and Spike’s own fear and discomfort.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Spike swallowed and said, “I want to talk.”

Torch sighed through his nose, turned around, and led the way into the throne room. Inside, Billy was sprawled on one of the sofas while Barry was in an armchair with a glass of iced water.

Torch walked around his desk and sat upon his throne.

“Sit down,” he told Spike.

Spike paused for a moment, then nodded and sat down in an armchair, a little closer to Torch than Barry was. Another moment later, a maid came in with a single glass of Scotch on a silver platter. She placed it carefully on the desk in front of Torch and then backed away. She stood for a moment longer and then headed out of the room.

“You’ve got five minutes. My wife’s waiting in the Jacuzzi,” Torch said, as if he had been planning to join her. “Can I get you a drink? A cigar?” he offered.

Spike glanced behind Torch when he heard the French doors open. A beautiful woman came in. She was a little younger than Torch, but not by much. She was tall, with long raven hair, very slender and very pale. She was so pale she was almost luminous.

She walked up to Torch, giggled and kissed him on the cheek. Her back arched as she stood next to him, pushing her breasts against the material of the risqué, navy blue two-piece bikini she was wearing.

Her hair was still wet (obviously from swimming) and her eyes were blue and full of intelligence and mischief.

Spike knew Torch had a daughter, but this woman was not her.

This was his wife.

Spike stopped looking at her and faced Torch again. He started to speak a couple of times but couldn’t get any words out.

“Don’t beat around the bush,” said Torch. “Just tear it out by the roots and tell me what you want.”

“I want you to loan me two hundred thousand dollars in cash,”

There was silence for a moment.

Then the Dragon Lord said, “No.”

Spike took a deep breath and glared at Torch. Then he stood up, planted his feet wide, and made himself as tall as he could get, which was six feet two inches.

“Torch!” he shouted.

Torch saw Basil move out of the corner of his eye and he motioned to Basil to stand down, which he did.

“Did you just shout at me?” Torch asked, rather calmly.

“Yes, I shout at you!” Spike continued to shout. “I need that money and you’re gonna loan it to me!”

“Why should I?” he asked.

“Torch, if you don’t loan me that money, I’ll--”

“You’ll what?”

“I will not agree with you anymore! Even when you order me to!”

The room went silent.

It went so quiet they could have heard a pin drop.

Spike’s glare subsided to a gaze as his temper cooled. Back under control.

“But if you do, I will not only pay you back with interest...” he added, “but I will make an honest woman out of your daughter.”

Spike knew full well what he was saying. He had met Torch’s daughter Ember a few years ago at one of her birthdays. It was something of a Quinceañera meets Bat Mitzvah. In other words, the day she was no longer a girl and became a woman. And she had grown into a beautiful one at that, Spike recalled.

Spike also knew that Torch was a dangerous man, capable of causing him great harm. He could harm Spike in ways that Spike didn’t want to be hurt. He could kill Spike with just his little finger if he wanted to. But Spike was a young man who had next to nothing to lose and almost everything to gain.

Torch’s men all looked at each other in stunned silence. Then all eyes shifted and fell upon the Dragon Lord. He sat quietly for what felt like an eternity. They all saw Torch thinking about his answer. There was debate in his face. Like the Dragon Lord was playing a long game and thinking eight moves ahead.

The Dragon Lord looked up at his wife, the woman in the blue bikini, and she only smiled in reply.

Then, Torch faced Spike again and said, “All right.”

He nodded to his beloved and she strode over to the fireplace. Next to it was a bag made of shiny, expensive leather, which was packed with thick wads of crisp, green bills.

She reached down and picked up. Then she walked over to Spike, her hips swaying and her breasts jiggling with every step, and handed it to him. Spike kept his eyes locked with hers, for fear that the Dragon Lord would snap his neck for looking at his wife’s breasts (the very same breasts that had nursed Spike after his mother died), and took the bag from her.

Spike turned to face Torch again and said quietly, “Thank you.”

Then, Spike turned and walked out the throne room door and into the hallway. Nobody was there. He walked out the front doors, all the way to the edge of the property, and smiled triumphantly.

With the financing in place, Spike broke ground on his (and his late father’s) theme park. He bought a huge vacant building that was next to a factory down by the docks and a small medical clinic surrounded by a huge parking lot, which would serve as the entrance to the park.

If hybrids wanted to know how to get to The Dragon’s Lair, it had to be word of mouth because it was a secret place. And even if they found it, the only way they could get in was through a secret passageway in the back room of the clinic. Spike, disguised as a doctor in a white lab coat, would personally usher them in through the clinic to a panel in the back wall, which led right into the warehouse behind the clinic, and into The Dragon’s Lair.

Repairing the clinic was the easy part, but when they got to the warehouse, Spike, Thorax and Pharynx hit several snags. Thorax tried to get the plumbing going, but when he saw a murky black liquid pump out of one of the pipes, he screamed. He quickly shut off the flow as Spike came running to him.

“What the Tartarus was that?” Spike asked.

“All I did was turn on the water,” Thorax said.

“That’s all?” Spike asked.

Spike’s gaze shifted to the ceiling as he heard the pipes squeaking, banging and clanging overhead.

“That doesn’t sound good,” he commented.

“Nope,” Thorax said. “You should see the--I guess it’s the water. I don’t know. It’s revolting.”

“So, the plumbing’s not perfect, we’ll get it fixed,” Spike said. “It’s not the end of the world. Look, this is gonna need some work. You’ve gotta expect that. It’s only the first day. You’re not gonna give up on me. And I’m not gonna let you! You’ll see! A little work, a little tender love and care, and a little imagination, and it’s gonna be great! You’ll see!”

“Okay,”

“That’s the spirit!”

And so, the three friends set to work. After fixing the plumbing, patching all the leaks in the roof, replacing all the rotted wood, blacking out all the windows (so nobody outside would be able to see what was going on inside), repainting, sweeping, soundproofing, and driving off the family of raccoons that had been living there, they recruited several members of the Changeling community and started construction on the rides.

As well as a roller coaster, there was a high striker (also known as the “strength tester” or the “strongman game”), a ball pit (full to the brim with empty plastic balls of many colors), a laser tag arena, a photo booth, bumper cars, a carousel, and an arcade featuring many different dancing, video and karaoke machines.

Spike had thought about putting in a Ferris Wheel, but he thought that might have been over the top (as if a roller coaster wasn't already over the top).

The grand opening had gone better than Spike had expected. Thorax and Pharynx put the word out to the hybrid community, and one hundred and forty-four hybrids showed up... and had the time of their lives.

Day after day, hybrids came pouring in. But at the end of the first week, as Spike sat in his office, going over the numbers, he tried to figure out how he was going to pay Torch back. It had taken every bit of the money to build the park, and two hundred thousand dollars with interest was not going to be easy to pay off.

Even with admission at almost twenty dollars apiece, and an average attendance of 150 customers a day, Spike had to take every single one of his profits and expenses into account: coins from the game machines at the arcade, bills from the water and power companies, food to feed the customers, prizes for contest winners... It would take years for Spike to even begin to show a profit!

But he vowed that he would do it!

Despite all the problems, and the prospect of indentured servitude to Torch for the rest of his life, Spike loved the amusement park. And while he dedicated most of his time and energy to The Dragon’s Lair, he always made time for his friends. Eventually, he and Ember started dating.

Spike already knew a lot about Ember. He knew that she was an only child and that she wasn’t good at relationships. There was a lot of ambivalence about her family. They were a close-knit clan but half of her wanted out while the other half felt like she needed to be in.

“I wonder what it’s like to come from a respectable family,” she once told him when they went strolling down by the pier together. “Where there’s no violence, no vendettas... no victims. What must that feel like?”

“I wish I could tell you,” he replied.

Ember jumped onto the railing and started walking it like a balance beam.

“It must feel like... freedom!”

“Ember, be careful!”

“You sound just like my mother. ‘Be careful, Ember. Don’t go scaring me, girl,’” She looked out over the water. “This was our favorite spot. We used to come out here to surf. She was a great surfer. She said I had the gift.”

“What happened?” Spike asked.

He hadn’t seen her since that day when Torch loaned him the money.

“She died. Isn’t that what always happens?”

“I’m sorry,”

“Everyone’s sorry. It doesn’t make any difference,”

Her mother’s death had clearly had a profound emotional effect on Ember. It made Spike wonder whether something had been done to her. Maybe something much worse.

Spike knew that he had made a promise to Torch about repaying his debt, but he didn’t see this coming. He didn’t count on being happy. And he certainly didn’t count on falling in love with Torch’s daughter.

But after Ember jumped off the railing and into Spike’s arms, and he held her close, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that they were together.

Spike brought himself out of his flashback and returned his attention to Applejack.

“Look at me,” he told her. “What do you see?”

Applejack had been listening so closely to Spike’s story that she was taken aback by this question.

There was a lot of intelligence in his eyes, but there was also some kind of eerie light burning inside them as well.

He probably wasn’t the most rational person she had met in her life up to that point, but he wasn’t an idiot. When she attempted to arrest him shortly after they first met, he displayed brilliant uses of distraction as well as being crazy-prepared by having his documentation on his person (complete with loophole abuse), just in case some rookie cop happened to come along.

Truth be told, what she saw was a handsome man. Well, a charismatic, charming, self-centered, cunning, and highly intelligent con artist. So, she chose her words carefully.

“I see a guy in a nice almost-suit, fit, strong and healthy,”

“Exactly,”

“What?”

“I’m a threat,”

“How?”

“You saw Dragontown. You saw Torch’s home. He may be a crime lord, but he and his ability to loan money to other hybrids is the only game in town. There is nothing else in the hybrids’ economic system. The money he loans or pays out in wages always comes back to him. One way or another. He may not own anything outside of Dragontown, or have someone in City Hall, but he owns every brick of every building in Dragontown. Half of the Dragon population works for him full time. The other half works for him part time. The full-timers are happy enough, but the part-timers are insecure. And they don’t like competition from outsiders. They don’t like humans showing up, looking for casual labor, willing to work for less,”

Spike never imagined, even in his wildest dreams, that his amusement park would be so successful... even if it was just a temporary solution to Maretropolis’s biggest problem. Just to give the hybrids a little relief, even if it didn’t really fix anything. Like a patch job on a shredded tire.

Never at a loss, Spike’s theme park empire prospered and became the city’s most prominent verboten operation.

Life was good.

But as time went by and business grew, formidable rivals began to emerge. And the competition was anything but friendly.

And, as if that weren’t bad enough, Spike’s preoccupancy with his business distracted him from Ember. Even after he proposed to her. He had missed their first wedding because of this, much to the anger of Ember and her father. And the day of the second wedding attempt, Spike decided to make a quick stop at The Dragon’s Lair before going to the ceremony.

That evening, Torch came to collect, and Spike met him outside the clinic. He approached the black limousine and Torch rolled down the window. Spike reached into his lab coat pocket, produced a thick wad of crisp bills and handed it to the Dragon Lord with a smile.

“I believe we are even,” he said.

“I did not give you a loan so that you could prance around, showing off, like a peacock. Be careful! Maretropolis is like a baby: it doesn’t like to be changed,”

“I am one hybrid in a city full of humans,” Spike told him. “I couldn’t change this town even if I wanted to!”

Spike turned to head back to the clinic, but Rex and Amarant blocked his way. Torch reached into his coat pocket and produced a business card.

“Friends need to stick together, yes?” he asked Spike. “If you ever have a problem, or need anything like advice, help with your taxes or a body that needs to disappear... I am here.”

“Thank you,” Spike said as he took it.

Rex and Amarant walked to the front of the limo and got in as Torch asked, “You know what today is, right?”

“What?” Spike asked.

“Your wedding is today. At six-thirty. And I want you to promise me, on everything between you and my daughter, that you will be there this time,”

“I would rather die than disappoint you or her,”

“Well, this is going to be the very last time,” Torch stated. “The first time was understandable. But if you miss this time, that is it!”

“I understand,”

“She loves you. I know she loves you. But she and I are not sure that you love her,” Torch said. “If you do love her, then prove it tonight.”

Spike nodded.

“But,” Torch added, “if you do not show up there, then I do not want to see, hear, or even smell you around my home, around me, or her, ever again!”

Torch rolled up the window and the limo drove off. Spike glanced at his watch and saw that it was already five-thirty. He had to get changed and get to the ceremony.

“Plenty of time,” he told himself. “Plenty of time.”

When Spike finally turned around, he spotted a group of five people enter the clinic.

They were all tall, in all black: black boots, black jeans, black denim shirts, black leather jackets, belts, fingerless gloves, and black bandanas.

And they were carrying crates marked with the letters “TNT” in white paint.

“Oh, no!” Spike breathed.

He ran back to the clinic and stumbled through the secret passage just in time to see one of them holding a gun to Thorax’s head while the rest started setting explosives all around the park.

“Let him go!” Spike shouted.

“And what if I don’t?” the gunman taunted.

“I’ll crush every bone in your body,” Spike growled. “Starting with that trigger finger.”

The gunman cast Thorax aside and turned the gun on Spike.

Spike spun around and threw a fistful of pocket change at him. Then he tackled the shooter and started punching him in the face. Spike quickly got to his feet and shouted to Thorax to get everyone out of there.

Spike looked to the roller coaster (thankfully, no one was on it) and watched in horror as one of the gunman’s accomplices lit the fuse on a pile of dynamite at the base of the ride; and it erupted, blasting the tallest ramp of the ride through the roof of the warehouse.

Within a matter of seconds, Spike became surrounded by the blazing inferno. Then he was shot in the arm.

He grunted in pain as one of the attackers swung a big fist at his face. Spike saw it late, dodged left and it caught him on the shoulder. Spike was spun around by the blow, then grabbed from behind.

“Get him!” they yelled. “Get the freak! Muzzle him!”

Two of them held Spike’s arms behind his back while two more snapped a muzzle over his mouth and a shock collar around his neck, and they continued to mock him.

“Did you really think you were going to get away with this, Dragon?” one of them asked.

Spike had barely a second to consider his options as the big guy lined up for another shot at Spike’s gut. Spike knew that if it landed, he would be dead.

There was a guy about three feet in front of him, two about eight feet to his left and right, and two more holding his arms behind his back.

They were ready to kill him. And they would have, except for two fatal mistakes: the two guys that were restraining Spike’s arms were holding him from behind.

And Spike wasn’t handcuffed.

In wild desperation, Spike reared back and kicked out like he was punting a football, smashing the big guy’s crotch. Spike’s shoe crunched under the blow and the welt hit the guy like a blunt ax.

Then, Spike ran backwards at full speed, smashing the second and third guys into the wall behind him. When they finally let go of his arms, he turned around, headbutted one of them, then started breaking the fingers of the other. Spike could hear the knuckles splinter over the roaring in his ears.

Spike spun around again as the fourth man waded in and started pounding Spike with short jabs to the arms and chest. Nowhere to hit him. Except his eyes.

Spike jammed one of his thumbs into the guy’s eye. He quickly went down, and Spike returned his attention to the big guy (the one Spike had kicked in the crotch).

He was up on one knee and Spike kicked hard at his face. He missed, but caught the guy in the throat, crushing his larynx. He went back down, choking.

Spike tore the muzzle from his face and the shock collar from his neck before he ran to the emergency door and rushed out.

Limping, his lungs giving out, and his suit and lab coat torn to pieces, Spike barely managed to escape. With the faces of all the men in black etched into his memory. All except their leader. He never saw her face. At least not clearly. All he could remember about her was a shadow looking at him. With cold, dark eyes behind a pair of glasses, and that darker, condescending laugh.

Spike collapsed on a grassy knoll in the nearby park, and crammed his lab coat under his head. Not only was he sad, he was pissed off. His hopes, his dream, his amusement park, it had all been taken away from him.

He lay angrily, listening to the sounds of The Dragon’s Lair burning. It had been almost half an hour since it initially happened, but Spike could still hear the explosion. And little hybrid children crying, screaming in fear as the structure cracked and collapsed.

It was like someone had torn open a hole to the deepest level of Tartarus.

When Spike opened his eyes again, it was morning and he was still on the grassy knoll. All was calm and quiet. Like the events of the night before hadn’t even happened.

But Spike knew the truth. Those people, whoever they were, had tried to kill him. They came in, started destroying everything in sight, and tried to kill him.

Spike snuck around town and eventually found a discarded newspaper in a trashcan with the story of the fire at The Dragon’s Lair. Thankfully, everyone had managed to escape the flames. His would-be captors’ mistakes had saved his life, and everyone else’s.

But on top of his clandestine activities, and “encouraging illegal behavior”, he was now a wanted man. A felon. A fugitive. And they wouldn’t stop hunting him until they were sure he was dead.

Spike went into hiding after that. And his past, combined with his status as a crossbreed left him belonging to neither race. And so, he began to live up to the worst stereotype: making a living as a criminal.

“I learned two things that day,” Spike told Applejack. “One, I was never going to let anyone see that they got to me.”

“And?” she prodded.

“If the world is only going to see Dragons, or any hybrid, as evil and untrustworthy, there is no point in trying to be anything but,”

And in that moment, Applejack understood.

This boy, this young man, who was half human and half dragon, had endured a lifetime of discrimination and prejudice laced with physical and mental pain, and had to endure the taunts of humans just to survive.

That’s what his life was, it wasn’t living, it was an ongoing battle for survival. Plenty of people smarter than Spike hadn’t survived the things he had, and if they had, they were never the same. That made Spike a survivor, which was the quality that meant more than any other to Dragons.

Even more so than their strength and their hoards and stockpiles of wealth.

And it was probably the reason why Torch didn’t hunt Spike down himself, or at least have him killed for not showing up at his wedding to Ember.

Spike had thought about going to the Dragon Lord, or at least to Ember, to explain to them what had happened. But he remembered Torch’s threat and decided against it.

Applejack also saw that he was a lot like her. He was a dreamer. Someone who wanted to make the world a better place.

Until his dreams were broken and burned.

He had seen how dark the world could be, how dark it had been to him, and how he had learned how to deal with it, namely through sarcasm and humor. And in doing so, it left him cynical and bitter.

He was arrogant and very confident in his skills as a con artist, but deep down he was hiding many pains and insecurities from the rejection he suffered at the hands of others.

He may have been cynical, smug, charismatic, self-centered and suave, but he was also brave, loyal, helpful, highly intelligent and trustworthy.

She touched his arm as the gondola pierced through the clouds.

“Spike, you are so much more than that,” she said gently. “I’m glad you told me.”

He pulled away and continued looking over the side at the traffic jam below.

That’s when he noticed something.

“Traffic cameras,” he breathed. “There are traffic cameras everywhere! All over the city! Whatever happened to Magnet...”

“The traffic cameras would have caught it!” Applejack said excitedly.

“Although, if you didn’t have access to the system before, I doubt Chief Minotaur Butt is gonna let you into it now,” he added.

“No. But I have a friend at City Hall who might,” Applejack smiled, feeling hopeful again.

The Assistant Mayor.