Unbalanced Scales

by Bugsydor

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dungeons and Dragons, Rarity, Romance, Spike
Length: 5062

Though she's still reeling from the discovery that she's part dragon (on her mother's side), Rarity won't let that stop her from making life-changing decisions.

Though she's still reeling from the discovery that she's part dragon (on her mother's side), Rarity won't let that stop her from making life-changing decisions.

Spike won't know what hit him.

Edited by SNAF and Georg.

Winner of the Sparity 2018 contest.

Cover art borrowed with permission from DocWario

Published 2018-12-24 05:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-12-24 05:20:01 UTC

Chapter 1: Sapphires and Emeralds

Spike was confused. Wonderfully confused. Horribly confused. He wasn't even quite sure what sort of confused he was at this point, but he was fairly certain that it was a happy confusion.

Rarity, the love (or at least really persistent crush) of his life, had just burst into his room at the Palace of Friendship, announced her undying love for him, and kissed him full on the mouth in a way that felt electric. Judging from the mild charring and scent of ozone around him, it might well have actually been electric.

And then her face went pale (er, moreso than usual), she babbled an apology involving something about dragons, distant relatives, and coming on too strong and not considering his feelings, and bolted.

Now, Spike was no stranger to erratic pony behavior, having lived with the Princess of Freakouts since he'd hatched, but this was a new one even for him. For one, Twilight had never kissed him anywhere but the forehead. Even so, Spike had an order of operations for situations like this.

So he cracked open a window to let the ozone out, brushed off and swept up the char, wiped the goofy grin from his face, and found Twilight to ask if she'd seen which way Rarity went.

“I'm sorry, Spike,” she said while looking up from the latest volume of Friendship & Magic, “I didn't even know she was back from visiting family. Maybe you could check the boutique?”

He thanked her, then strolled over to Carousel Boutique, slowly coming out of his daze as he went.

“Rarity?” he said after knocking on the door (the sign was still set to “closed”). “Are you in there?”

Silence.

Well, it smelled like Rarity had been there recently; he'd recognize that vaguely sandy, fruity scent anywhere.

“Rarity?… Are you alright?”

More silence.

Spike tested the door, and found it unlocked.

“Okay,” he announced, “as a good friend, I'm coming in to check on you. If you want me to leave you alone, just say so!”

Yet more silence.

Spike opened the door to find… darkness. Well, mostly darkness: there was a little light coming from the second floor where Rarity lived.

He went inside and began to ascend the stairs, saying “Rarity? You were acting kind of… odd earlier. Not that I minded? I mean, it felt great! And I'd always wanted to, but…”

He continued up the stairs, passing a shelf filled with elaborate Sophistiqué eggs.

“…it was really unexpected. Are you okay? Did you catch something while you were away? You didn't get cursed, did you? I swear, if Discord did anything to you, his O&O character is getting so many negative lev—”

Spike opened the door at the top of the stairs onto a scene from his dreams. Rarity was lounging in a massive pile of golden bits, emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts.

And then she plopped a rare baby-blue sapphire into her mouth and began to suck on it.

“Never really seemed fair to me that the best-tasting gems were too hard to just bite into,” Rarity said to herself. “I suppose there's probably some metaphor for my current situation in there somewhere…”

“Uh, Rarity? Did you just… Are you eating gems!?”

“Oh!” she said with a start. “I'm sorry, dear, I was a bit, eheh, preoccupied. I've had a lot on my mind lately and… well, a lot of it has been about you.”

While flattered, Spike was not about to be deterred.

“But… gems? Last time I checked, most ponies don't eat gems. Are you feeling okay?”

“Physically, Spike, I've never been better. As for eating gems? I never could quite figure out why more ponies didn't. They've always tasted divine to me, and yet there is nopony manufacturing sapphire swirl ice cream; I've always had to make my own. After the Crystal Empire returned, I thought it might have been because my family hailed from there, but we didn't. When I asked my parents about it, Mother just chuckled and said I'd understand when I was older. Which I suppose I do now…”

She popped another baby-blue sapphire into her mouth after trailing off, the old one having apparently dissolved.

“If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were part dragon.” Spike said with a chuckle, running a claw through his relatively new patch of goatee-like chin spines.

“Actually, yes.” She let out a melodious sigh. “It seems I really was the last to know, after all.”

Spike blinked, slowly.

“Wha— Bu— I was joking!”

Rarity blinked owlishly herself, and then started to laugh. A real, beautiful, honest laugh that grew until she had melted into her pile of gold and jewels.

“Thank you, Spike. I— I really needed that after the month I've been through.”

“Anything for you, my lady,” he said as he bowed.

“Ah, always such a gentledrake.” She released another sigh, eyes lost in a particularly large amethyst. “While I have been anything but a lady. I'm sorry for, ahem, stealing that kiss earlier. And for zapping you; I wonder if that happens every time…”

While his first instincts as a dragon, a male, and a scientist were all screaming at him to test that hypothesis immediately and thoroughly, Spike's hard-won sense of empathy won out as he sat down next to her on the glittering hoard.

“So…” he said, swinging his legs as he sat, “I guess this all means that, after all these years, you like me back?”

“Y— yes. I believe it does.”

“Is that why you were out visiting family? Because of me?”

“After a fashion.” She forced the tension out of her back and let her eyes wander between various trinkets and baubles around her home.

“You see,” she continued, “it was a bit of a slow burn until fairly recently. I would notice you'd done something nice for me, and I would think of how sweet it was of you. Or I'd notice that your wings were looking exquisite one morning, which seemed a little strange at the time since I was never really interested in pegasi. Or Starlight would ask if she could borrow you for some errands and I may have, eheh, growled at her a little.”

She straightened up a little, looking Spike in the eyes.

“Eventually it got to the point where I just couldn't stop thinking about you. I thought there must have been something wrong with me. No offense meant to you, of course—”

“None taken,” Spike replied.

“—but as far as I can remember, I had never heard of a pony being attracted to someone outside their, well, species. I'm still coming to terms with it, really.

“Come to think of it, you never really had a problem with the idea, did you, even back when we first met at that Summer Sun Celebration that brought us all together. How did you feel about, you know” – she fidgeted with a golden bit with her hoof – “liking a pony?”

“Eh, I never really thought about it until I saw the Dragon Migration and tried to follow them. At that point, Twilight and I figured it was because I'd been around mostly ponies ever since I was magically hatched by, again, ponies, so I imprinted on them.”

A tired smile crept onto Rarity's lips as Spike reclined on his side, a claw stroking his chin-spines.

“I suppose it really could be that simple,” she said, “but I don't think it is for me. When I've had my own crushes on stallions, like that soap-horned blockhead Blueblood, I think I was only ever in love with the status they would give me. One might say I was just, hehehe, trying to add them to my hoard.”

“Speaking of, where did this come from?” Spike said, pointing down at the pile of gold and jewels. “It's… pretty nice, actually.”

“Oh, this? Here a little, there a little. It's mostly my stock from the cupboards downstairs, with a few choice additions from my private collection. The chaise lounge may be more ladylike, but I didn't think it would be enough this time.”

Spike almost said how his experiences with Smolder and the Dragonlord herself had taught him there was nothing more ladylike a dragon could do than lounge around in a pile of treasure, but thought better of it just in time.

“Would you like some?” she said, levitating an assortment of gems over to him. “I'm afraid I didn't get any rubies out, since I wasn't really expecting you to join me, but different sorts of corundum always tasted like they're from the same family to me.”

Spike thanked her and started munching on a particularly tangy emerald. He'd save the sapphires for later.

“Well,” Rarity said, returning to her tale, “eventually I confided in one of my aunts, and she pointed me at my Grandpa Merc, and said he might be able to help…”

///)_^_(\\

“…And that's how I learned that my great-great-great-grandfather was not only still alive, but also a dragon,” Rarity said.

“Huh. Wow. That's… That's pretty cool. And, y'know? It kinda explains a lot.”

“Like what, darling? I'm still a little dazed, myself.”

“Well, for one thing, there's different kinds of dragons. There's noble dragons like me –” Spike puffed up his chest “– and then there's, well, Garble. I kinda like the idea that I'm not too closely related to him.”

“As do I, but what else did his story clarify?”

“It explains a few things about you, too. There’s your affinity for jewels, your reaction to my molt pheromones, your sharp wit, your sense for money, your, uh, tendency to hoard random things whenever you're hit with mind-altering magic, your breathtaking beauty, your attention to detail… hay, the fact that your cutie mark kinda looks like dragon scales. And oh yeah, the fact that you apparently find this” – Spike struck the most muscular pose he could while lying on his side – “irresistible.”1

Rarity jabbed him in the chest with her horn. “Careful, darling. My wit isn't the only part of me that's sharp,” she said through a wry smile.

“Oof. ‘Point’ taken.”

“Besides,” she said, her smile softening, “as well as you've filled out these past few years, your fine physique is hardly the main thing that's attracted me to you. As I've learned the hard way, looks alone are not a solid basis for a relationship.”

After that, they lay in silence on the hoard for several seconds. Spike looked into her eyes, only to find them looking off in the distance.

“You're still not comfortable with the idea, are you,” he stated, sitting back up.

“You're… not wrong, I suppose. While I can't stop thinking about you, I also can't stop thinking about how much this relationship will change things. And I suppose I am still getting used to the notion of, eheh, interspecies intimacy.”

“Would it really be ‘interspecies’ if you already had a little dragon in you?” Spike said, and then he immediately clamped his claws over his snout.

It was hard to say whether Spike's or Rarity's face was redder. They glanced back at each other, and then hastily looked away.

“And then there's the whole thing with my identity being turned not so much on its head as several degrees to the side, what with finding out that I'm part dragon on my mother's side,” Rarity hastily supplied.

There was silence again, aside from Spike's affirmative grunt as the gears turned in his head.

“Well, I think I have an idea,” Spike said a few seconds later as he got up and dusted away some errant gemstones.

“Praytell, what?”

“I'm going to pay your ‘Grandpa Merc’ a visit and ask his permission to court you. I'm not certain that's how things work for ponies or most dragons, but it's part of my noble dragon code.

“And besides,” he said, eyes softening, “it'll give you some more time to think.”

Rarity got up herself, and wrapped the drake's midsection in a tight hug.

“Thank you,” she said.

As Spike neared the front door, Rarity spoke again.

“Spikey-wikey, I've just got one question:” she said as mischief glimmered in her sapphire eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have any idea where Grandpa Merc lives?”

Credit to FanOfMostEverything for this paragraph.

Chapter 2: Silver and Gold

Rarity was waiting at the platform for Spike's train to arrive in Ponyville. She'd received the message Spike had sent through Twilight that morning when he'd boarded.

She wondered if she'd ever be able to do something like that.

“Twilight, do you suppose you could teach me to send messages like you and Spike do? I feel like it would help a lot for he and I to be able to stay in touch when one of us is off on business.”

The middling-sized alicorn bounced from side to side as she mulled it over.

“I don't know, Rarity. It takes a lot of magic for a pony to send messages like that. There's a reason I had Spike for that when I first came to Ponyville.”

“Indeed, darling, but what about for a dragon?” Rarity batted her eyes and grinned.

“Oh. Right. I don't know how I keep forgetting about that, given how important it is to you. I really wish I knew more that could help.”

“Don’t fret over it. You don't have to worry about offending me by forgetting minor details. You're a princess with a lot on her plate. I'm just glad you've had time to help me through this last week. And that I have your blessing to pursue a romantic relationship with Spike.”

“As for dragonfire messages, I'm not sure. I'm sadly still the top authority in Equestria on dragons, and I know less about blue dragons in general than we know about draconequus physiology. Still, though the enchantment seems to prefer dragonfire, there's no reason other elemental energies couldn't be substituted, and lightning is the next best thing…

“Speaking of, why haven't I ever seen you spraying lightning? Well, aside from that one time when I tried out Starswirl's spell.”

Rarity sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I thought we agreed to never speak of that again. That was rather distressing for all parties involved, don't you think?”

“Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

Rarity shifted her weight to a back hoof and looked up into space.

“Well, my mother always taught us that it was impolite to belch lightning in public, and I took that lesson to heart. Besides that, I've always been more gifted with illusions than with lightning. Sweetie Belle got the lion's share of the lightning.”

“Huh. I guess that explains why you never seemed to age a day over twenty-four.”

“That and good genes, darling. Very good genes.” Rarity gave Twilight a grin that by all rights should have been filled with fangs.

Twilight shuddered, but only slightly.

“So, are you going to tell Sweetie Belle?”

“And break with what is apparently a family tradition? Heavens, no!”

Twilight took a stabilizing breath. “As for my ‘blessing’, Rarity, it's not unconditional.

“We've known each other for a long time now. You're one of my best friends, and I trust you with a lot of things.”

The alicorn raised herself to her full, somewhat impressive height. “But I've known Spike longer. He's like— No, he is a little brother to me. I swear on my horn that if you break his heart, if this turns out to be some fad or scheme like your previous so-called romantic pursuits” – Rarity winced, but held her tongue – “I will do everything, and I do mean everything, in my considerable power as an alicorn, as a princess, and as a big sister to make your life absolutely miserable.

“Am I being perfectly clear?” Twilight said as lightning flashed behind her.

“As crystal,” the cowering mildly draconic unicorn replied. “The thunderclouds were a very nice touch.”

“Thanks,” she said, her posture returning to its normal semi-regal cuddliness. “I've been taking lessons from Luna. I meant every word I said, though.

“But if your feelings are sincere, and I'm about ninety-eight percent certain that they are, then I am perfectly okay with it. He's turned down quite a number of very eligible dragonesses over the years, and even a few ponies and changelings. Do you know why?”

The train's brakes squealed as it rolled into the station.

“It's because none of them were you, and my little brother is an irrepressible optimist when it suits him.

Twilight smiled.

“Come on, Rarity, let's welcome the big lug home before somepony tries to steal your drakefriend.”

After a pause, she followed Twilight and said “Yes, let's.”

///)_^_(\\

“So, Spike, how was your trip? My Grandpa Merc is doing well, I take it?”

Spike still looked nearly as dazed as when he’d first gotten off the train. Something was clearly bothering him, and Rarity was going to find out what.

Twilight had taken her leave after a quick but heartfelt greeting, but not before slipping a sack of bits and a couple of reservations for seats at Gustave le Grande's Chateau de Griffon into Rarity's saddlebags with a none-too-subtle wink.

And so they found themselves in a private, candlelit room in a corner of the restaurant, waiting for their food.

“He, uh, seemed fine when I saw him,” Spike replied. “Very, erm… big.”

He continued to stare down through the table and twiddle his claws.

“He certainly is. I had quite the shock when I discovered that I could stand comfortably in one of his claws. He was just as much of a huggable teddy bear in his true form as he was in his assumed one, though I do wonder why I'd never questioned the scale of the inner parts of his abode.

“But enough about me. You look fit to scurry under a rock. Something is bothering you, Spike, and I refuse to move on until I find out what it is.”

Spike let out a smoke-laced sigh, his shoulders and tail falling slack, and looked back up to the mare of his dreams.

“Your Grandpa Merc, or ‘Mirage’, as he insisted I call him… He gave me a lot to think about…”

///)_^_(\\

A few days ago

“And now that we've gotten introductions out of the way,” the gargantuan sapphire-scaled drake said, “Let us get down to business. Well, actually –” Mirage craned his sinuous neck forward to get a closer look at him “– what sort of dragon are you, exactly? Your bearing, the budding whiskers, and the smell of sweet smoke on your breath say gold, while the frill and chin spines, as well as the fact that you didn't launch into a long-winded lecture on my ‘wicked ways’ on sight, scream silver.

“I did not think such a hybrid possible,” he said, drawing back, “given the radically different incubation conditions their eggs require. Snow and open flames? I'm unsure how such an egg would hatch, but it would likely take strange magic indeed…”

///)_^_(\\

“…So yeah, I guess that means you're not the only hybrid at this table.” Spike looked down, only to have an alabaster hoof alight on his claw.

“Darling, I know you're not this bothered over having a mixed heritage, but something about that conversation did trouble you deeply. What was it?”

“Well, uh… it's my parents. I hadn't thought of them, who they might have been, in years. I asked Mirage a little about gold and silver dragons, and he told me that they were mostly ‘noble, do-gooder types’, with the silvers being the less insufferable of the two. They probably met while beating up bad guys or something, fell in love, and…”

“…Had an egg that they didn't know what to do with,” Rarity supplied.

“Yeah. That.”

He paused for a couple of seconds.

“He said that the one thing he really approved of in silvers and golds was how much they cared about their offspring. And I've… They've never come to check up on me, or let me know who they are.” A mineral-rich tear splashed onto the stone table below him. “They never got to know that their son grew up, or who he grew up to be.”

A hoofkerchief wrapped in a blue glow rose to dry his eyes.

“Well, he grew up to be a handsome drake. A savior of empires, and friend to the Princesses. Kind and courteous, and as my Grandpa Merc would say, teehee, ‘noble as Argon’. Whoever they were, your parents would be very proud.”

“Thanks.” He looked up to meet her eyes and smiled. “I'll try to remember that.”

Rarity brought a pastern to her chin in thought. “That does bring up a troublesome problem for us, though. Mother always taught that eggs should always be laid and incubated in warm sand if one wanted healthy foals, but that might not end up being the best for us… What?”

Spike's jaw had dropped, and his eyebrow ridge had reached the stratosphere.

“Well,” Rarity continued, “I know it might seem a little bit early to be talking about foals, wyrmlings, or whatever the proper term is, but it's a very important concern and it was going to come up eventually. Honestly, Spike, I thought you of all people would be more mature about this.”

“You… You lay eggs?”

“Well yes. I'm a mare, not somepony's pet cat. Why, imagine a unicorn giving live birth like…”

And then Rarity's hoof impacted her skull.

“Oh. That's why the Cakes looked so tired at the hospital after their twins hat— were born. I'm terribly sorry, darling. Would you believe it never occurred to me that most ponies didn't hatch from eggs? The alternative just sounds so, eugh, messy,” she said with a shudder. “I suppose that's one reason to be thankful I'm part dragon. It would explain why Twilight pointed to her icebox when I asked where she kept her eggs, though.”

Spike raised a claw and said “So, uh, where do you keep your—”

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rarity,” Gustave said in the most outrageously Fancy accent imaginable. “Monsieur Spike. Welcome to my humble eatery. I ask zat you please pardon ze wait, but I had to make sure zat ze food was cooked precisely to perfection for zuch esteemed guests.”

“Oh, you flatterer,” Rarity replied. “But I already have a date. There's no need for you to take so much trouble on our behalf.”

“But zat is where you are wrong,” he said as he laid out their meals in front of them. “Any friend of ze Princess is a friend of mine. And she is ze Princess of Friendship, zo I shall ‘ave many friends, non? Hon hon hon!

“Rare pork in red wine sauce for ze lady, and citrine with silica glaze for ze gentledrake. Careful, hot plate!”

Rarity turned to Gustave with a glowing smile.

“Merci, good chef. It is so difficult to find good meat away from home.”

“Yeah,” Spike added. “This food looks delicious!”

“And even 'arder to find zomepony to appreciate it. Merci, Monsieur, Mademoiselle, and bon appetit.”

At that, he bowed, and left them to their meal.

Spike took a sniff, and the tension left his shoulders for a moment.

“That… smells really good,” he said. “Can I have some?”

“Only if you let me have some of your meal,” she replied as she hovered a forkful of pork over to him. “Once it's cooled down a little, of course.”

“It's a deal.”

///)_^_(\\

The food had been wonderful. Spike had had the occasional bit of meat, and even cooked some himself – an alicorn's appetite is unpredictable at the best of times, and needing to cater to several at once when family would visit meant he needed an ever-expanding repertoire – but he hadn't had much experience with the cuisine of the gryphons of Fance.

“I have to learn to cook like this. Your meal was delicious. It melted in my mouth like a gypsum rose, but was almost as bursting with flavor as fire rubies. Almost.

“Do you think Gustave gives out lessons?”

“Hmm…” Rarity said as she polished off the last of Spike's literally glazed citrine. “I really don't know. Though if you cooked like this all the time, I might have a hard time maintaining my figure. Or wanting to, for that matter.” She let out an entirely ladylike giggle.

A puff of smoke escaped as Spike snorted a laugh of his own. Between the candles and the fire-breathing dragon in the room, it was getting a bit hazy, but neither occupant seemed to mind.

“I promise I would only use these awesome culinary powers for good. I’d still love you if you were the size of an airship, Rarity, but helping you get that way isn't exactly plan A.

“Come to think of it,” Spike said while scratching behind an ear-fin, “how do you stay in shape so well? I mean, I've never seen you hold back at one of Pinkie's parties, and then there's the ice cream binges when you're sad –” and then Spike's eyes went wide on hearing the metaphorical click of a conversational landmine arming underfoot “– Not to say you’re always eating! I just tend to walk in on you at awkward times, or during meals or—”

Rarity calmly rolled her eyes and put a hoof on his claw.

“Relax, darling. What has you so on-edge tonight? It is just the two of us here, after all. Though I might be somewhat miffed if we had company. You were doing mostly fine until the explanation and the backpedaling, by the way.

“As for your question, I do take regular maretial arts classes, and I use a lot of magic in my work, but that's about it. Apart from randomly running off with my friends to save the world, I suppose. I don't know… do dragons burn through a lot more energy than ponies? Maybe it's a dragon thing.”

“Hm. Hard to say. I do eat more than Twilight, at least before her ascension, but I'm also a bit bigger than she was then, too…”

They returned to silence for a while, allowing Spike's brain to amble back to the same subject that had kept him silent for much of the meal.

“Darling, would you please just spit it out? Something has been bothering you all evening, and I won't hear of another diversion.”

Spike released a smoke-laden sigh and slumped to the table. “Well, it's about 'us’, sort of. Mirage and I, we didn't just talk about my probable parentage…”

///)_^_(\\

“Okay, ya wee little spineless wyrm, I know you're not jus’ here for chit-chat,” the ancient blue dragon said. “You haf designs on me Little Sapphire, don’tcha?”

Startled at the abrupt shift in demeanor and accent, Spike could only slowly nod.

“Lookin’ ta get me blessin’ on them, nay?”

After a second more's struggle, Spike found his voice again. “Please?”

At which point the cavernous mansion echoed with Mirage's cruel laughter.

“Aye, you're a metalhead through and through, ain’tcha? So get this fact through your leaden skull: You canae have me blessing,” he hissed, lightning crackling at his mouth and horn, “and my Little Sapphire may do as she pleases.

“Now get outta me sight afore I fry ya!”

///)_^_(\\

“So that's what he said, accent and all?” Rarity said, pensive. “My… he usually saves that for special occasions.”

During the tale, an adorable little dragon waitress had cleared away their places and left them an almost reasonable bill.

“Yeah, he… didn't seem to like the idea much. I'm sorry, Rarity. Tonight has been wonderful, but it wouldn't be very noble of me to come between you and your family,” he said, eyes downcast as he reached for the check. “I hope that you can find someone to make you the happiest mare in the world, someday.”

Rarity snapped the check out of Spike's claws with her telekinesis, pulled out a sack of gems, and doled out enough of them to cover the meal plus an extravagant tip.

“Oh, Spike, I already have.”

“But, I was going to… The bits Twilight slipped you…”

“She'll get them back. The dear means well and I love her to death, but she still has a lot to learn about making gestures.

“Spike, allow me to make something crystal clear: I took you to this restaurant. I footed the bill. I want this, and I want you. Nopony and nodragon else will do. My mind is already made up.

“Now my dear Grandpa Merc has always been an insidious old goat, and we love him for it. When he told you ‘my Little Sapphire may do as she pleases’, what I heard was ‘Rarity, my dear, you have carte blanche to pursue that handsome drake to the ends of the earth. With a club and a sack, if necessary.’”

She got up from her seat and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “You're not going to make me get the sack, are you, darling?”

Spike wasn't quite certain how to feel about the implied threat of kidnapping, at least when coming from someone who was ostensibly a very proper pony. However, he decided it wasa decidedly draconic thing to say, and that he was okay with that.

And so he wrapped an arm and a wing around her, and they both leaned in for a fiery, electrical kiss.

Author's Note

In lieu of actual author's notes, here are some shenanigans my editors left me with in the gdoc comments. They probably won't mind...

Georg: And that is why we are banned from the restaurant.

Also Georg: And after a few months, the restaurant rebuilt that particular room, and lifted the restraining order, so everything worked out in the end.

SNAF: Honestly, I would think that this fact would be a revelation of similar magnitude. The last thing the CMC need is to know that one of them is part-dragon.

SNAF again (regarding the phrase "semi-regal cuddliness"): The crap like this that you slip in is what makes it one of those mildly over-the-top Bugsydor-y fics that we all know and love.

Merry Christmas1, y'all!

Or, y'know, whatever winter holiday you prefer