Big Brother Best Friend. Forever.

“Hey Twilight, I-” Spike stopped dead in the doorway. Twilight was hunched over with her back to the door, her mane and tail a mess. There was smoke pouring from something in front of her he couldn’t see and a weird smell hovering in the room that fluctuated from delicious to rotten.

“Twilight, is that a fire!? Are you okay!?” He rushed over to her, but she turned around quickly, hiding the smelly-smoke-maker behind her back. Her eyes looked bloodshot and were huge with surprise.

“SPIKE, HI. Hello- I mean- hey! I- uh…I-wha-what’s up?” Twilight laughed nervously. “Where’ve ya been?! Hahaha…”

“Twilight, what IS that thing?” Spike tried to get behind her back to find out what the strange thing was, but she turned with him so he was always facing her.

“Just practicing a potion for my magic, it’s nothing!” Twilight replied quickly. She pulled it out from behind her back and showed him for about a second. All Spike could make out was that it was a green liquid in a jar. Twilight hurriedly turned away and stuffed it behind a pile of books, which proved to be pretty ineffective, as the smoke was continuing the billow out from the jar, along with the smell.

“But wait, you don’t need potions, do you? I thought your magic would do just about anything you needed it to.” Spike scratched his head and stood on his tiptoes, trying to get another look at the concoction.

Twilight paused for a second as the gears in her head turned once more. “Well, you see, Spike, “ she began, sounding like normal Twilight, “I don’t need to make the potions to do anything for myself. I just… found a book on them! And…realized I had no real knowledge of potion-making, so I figured I would study. This knowledge may come in handy one day!” She grandly gestured to a huge book that was sitting near her. It looked old and had no markings on it’s cover.

Spike nodded hesitantly. “Okay, Twilight. I’ll trust you on this. You really should be resting, though. You’ve only got tomorrow to tie up all the loose ends to the party AND the vacation!”

“I know that very well, Spike,” Twilight replied through gritted teeth. “I was just taking a few moments for myself. I never get to do that anymore…I JUST WANT TO DO IT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE! SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT!?” Her shout was unexpected and nearly sent Spike into a crying fit. His eyes teared up a little and he looked to the ground.

“No…” He paused to sniffle. “I…I just want you to know…I love you, Twilight…and I hope you feel better soon.” With that he ran down the stairs and out of the house, crying silently the whole way.

Part of Twilight hated the fact that she made Spike cry, but the other half, the half with the ever-persuasive voice, begged her to get back to her potion. It told her she would have plenty of time to check on Spike, but only one day to complete this. She slowly pulled the potion out from behind the pile of books and, locking her door, she opened the large, unmarked book in front of her to a page she had dog-earred. Looking down at it and reading to herself, she began to pull out strange bottles of ingredients from a cabinet. As she added each ingredient, the color of the potion lightened until it was clear and the smoke stopped billowing. Suddenly, there was no more smell. It was almost done.

Twilight cackled softly to herself, poured the concoction into a flask, and put it up on her shelf for safe keeping. “24 hours…” she said to herself. She looked at her pocket watch. It was 5 PM.

Gooood. The voice congratulated and complemented her in her head. Good, Twilight. Now all you have to do is wait. Just wait. You’ll have everything you want soon.

She sighed and fixed her mane and tail, giggling all the while, when suddenly the normal Twilight part of her mind remembered Spike.

She rushed down the stairs and saw that he wasn’t inside the house. As she was about to open the front door, someone knocked on it.