Avalanche from a Flurry

Spike walked a bit taller, his waddle now better characterized as a strut. It had only been three weeks since Starlight's advice, and he was feeling really friendly towards Sparkler, and better yet it seemed like she was feeling the same way. Nothing romantic - yet - but he could make a try at changing that any time. And on top of that, he'd asked Rainbow Dash in confidence just how okay it would be hypothetically to date Scootaloo, and she'd replied that if he treated her right, fine by her. Not that she was available at the moment (her on again, off again with Rumble was presently on), but that could change in a week, and if they were both dating for the same reason - leverage with somepony else - that would be even better. And on top of that, he was making progress with Lily. Not much, but enough that if everything else failed… well, if everything else failed, there was an obvious common factor in that, that would still be present when trying to get Lily's attention: him.

Stop it, Spike. I'm doing enough better now that even if I foul it up two times in a row, I'm together enough I can learn from it and do better. Like, maybe I'd be rushing or moving too suddenly, or something else I can examine and fix. I could even ask Starlight about it. I don't need to think these things are permanent. Just look how far I've come in three weeks.

No, the real question is, do I want ask out Sparkler first, or give a try to Rarity? I could use a practice date with somepony else, but it'd be unfair to her to just go off and ask somepony else without asking her first. So I have to at least give her the chance to say yes.

He adjusted course and headed to the boutique. Rarity was sitting at her sewing machine, head low, ears deep in frills. Having heard the chime, she straightened after a few seconds, when she'd reached a good stopping-point. "Spike!" she smiled.

Spike smiled back as he approached to a good conversational distance. He didn't particularly feel nervous - his plan was for her to say no, after all. "Rarity? I would like to ask you: would you like to go on a date?"

She immediately replied, and halfway through, resumed stitching. "I'm busy, darling. I just got back from the grand court session with all three princesses and the five of us, which was somewhat tedious, and I know you weren't exactly required to come but you have a throne too so you might want to ask to join us some time. It's just once every six weeks, anyway. Anyway, while I was there I had a wonderful idea I just couldn't let go of, and I just have to make it reality."

Huh. Given her immediate response, I wonder if she actually heard me properly. On a whim, he clarified - "Yes, I didn't mean right this minute, or even today. Next week is fine. Next month is fine. Next year is fine. Just, will you go on a date with me, and in the mean time not go on a date with anypony else? I can wait, if you will wait."

Rarity put her materials all the way down this time, and took off her glasses. "I see." She looked off to the side for a few seconds, and then looked back at him, still wearing a neutral face. After a few more seconds, it softened and she said, "You have been looking good lately, haven't you? Very grown up. I really have been so busy between one thing and another, I've hardly noticed. All right. How about after the school year ends… day after the Summer Sun celebration? Or better, we can go to it together."

Around five months. A long time. But it was there. And Summer Sun Celebration was not exactly a romantic event, but they could work something out. Spike stepped forward and gave her a hug, and stood back to look her in the eyes. "I'll be there. It's a date. We can work out the details closer to the day."

And then she took a step forward and kissed him. Not one of the several he'd had on the cheek, but on the lips, just a graze, but yes, on the lips. And he kissed her back, just the same. And then she kissed him again, a little bit more pressure.

Before he could come back closer, she coughed. "Well, that seals the deal. But I really must get back to work, and sadly this is not the kind you can help with. See you later, Spike!"

Spike nodded and turned to go. As he reached the door, she added, "We can, ah, perhaps improve this seal later?"

She wants to kiss more. Sweet! And she's saying it with humor! "I'll bring my caulk gun. Oh Celestia what did I just say." He slapped a claw over his mouth and reddened.

Rarity restrained herself to a giggle for only a second before falling over, laughing hysterically. After ten seconds she managed to get her breathing under control. "Your lips will do just fine, dear. Come here." He came over, and they did one more kiss, and then he left for real.

Wow!

Pinkie quickly came pronking alongside, jittery. "Any news, Spike? I feel a doozy coming."

"Yes, but if I try to tell you I can tell something embarrassing will happen, so can we go somewhere privatooof!"

She had swept him up in her forelegs, run down the street a ways and vaulted in through her open bedroom window, hurled him onto her bed and stood above him, staring down. "What is it?", she asked.

"Rarity kissed me three times and I kissed her once and she asked me to come back later for more kissing when she's not busy. And she agreed to a proper date, but it's not soon."

She hopped out of the bed. "Really? Get out of here."

He leaned up on his elbows. "Yeah, really."

"No, seriously, get out of here, you shouldn't be lying on my bed if you're dating Rarity."

"You put me here!"

She wailed with considerable volume, "I didn't know you were dating Rarity! Now get…" she stopped as Spike leaped up and stuffed a claw in her mouth.

Softly, he said, "I'm leaving, and you're not yelling that I was in your bed. It's innocent - at least, I hope it's innocent, right Pinkie?"

She nodded, dragging the claw he had in her mouth around.

He continued, "We won't specially hide what you just did with me because there's nothing to be ashamed of, though I don't see any particular reason to mention it either. And if you want to give me a friendly hug of congratulations that's fine. How about you prepare a party, in honor of its being half of the way between hearth's warming and hearts and hooves, and you and I secretly know it's about this, but the secret doesn't come out in the party, it comes out after I've had my date with Rarity. Does that sound like a plan? Or maybe nearly everypony will know by then, and we can say it then. But don't get too excited about its being a big reveal party, it'll just be a things-are-going-very-well party. All right?"

He took the claw out, and she nodded more vigorously. "That sounds like a great plan, Spike. What sort of games do you want at the party?"

Something a bit more grown up? "Charades."

"That's it?"

"With props."

"Ooooh. Okay, that takes longer. Sounds good."

"And we'll have punch with ice cream, and tiny rubies to sprinkle on."

She nodded. "Half hearth half heart cupcakes?"

He nodded. "Sounds good. And since Twilight's going to be pretty much stuck in Canterlot for the next week at least, and we don't want to wait that long, we can have it in Canterlot."

Pinkie nodded, went to her desk and began writing and murmuring. Spike slipped out of the room and out of Sugarcube Corner. After a moment of thought, he headed over to the school to find Starlight. Best to defuse Pinkie by telling everypony in advance, probably. Plus, this was her idea.

As it turned out, the office door was closed. After a few minutes, a student came out, looking worried but hopeful, and Spike went in after. Starlight was at her desk, still writing. She looked up. "What's up, Spike? Unless it's urgent, I'd like to finish writing down my notes from that meeting."

"I'll wait." He began quivering a little.

She glanced at him and thought for a moment. "You're doing well. A little too well for it to be… did you… did you get a date with Rarity?"

He nodded. "And we kissed, on the lips, for real. It's happening. It's happening! Thank you so much, Starlight. I owe you."

She reared up and gave a mighty cheer that disrupted the nearest two classrooms, and gave him a high hoof which he met with a high three. "Spike, I knew you could do it! I didn't expect it to only take, what, three weeks? Nice. Now… how close did you get to any of the other mares?"

"Uh, very friendly with Sparkler."

"Then be sure to stay her friend, at least for a few more weeks. Suddenly dropping off the map is rude."

He nodded. "Shouldn't be a problem. She is nifty. I don't suppose I should mention why I picked up her acquaintance again after all these years, right?"

Starlight's eyes widened. "Noooo, that does not seem like a good idea."

"Well, thanks!"

~~~~

Starlight watched him leave. She stared at her hooves in front of her. Dating advice guru powers deactivate. And back to time travel. Well, at this point, not so much the time travel part, as whether I should even ask Twilight about going ahead with it. Don't use magic to solve your problems, she's said. But… she used magic to unseal the Pillars, and this is a lot more like that than anything… Okay, I guess I should ask her.

Which I'm thinking for the same reasons as the last twenty times I've gone over this.

To her great surprise, Twilight walked in. She drooped into the chair across the desk. "Starlight, I… I'm beat up. Court is so exhausting, and I haven't been able to sleep right in the Canterlot palace, lately. I just had to portal home and sleep in my own bed… and I accidentally went to the school portal, and now I'm too tired to reactivate it. At least I didn't end up at the treehouse." She cut off her complaining as she saw Starlight's face. "Whoa there. What's wrong?"

I'll take that as a sign to spill the beans. "I was debating asking you whether this was a case where I should maybe use magic to solve a personal problem."

Dimly, Twilight asked, "What problem would that be?"

Starlight hesitated, then offered, "How about I describe what the first step is."

Twilight sat down.

"I will go out to the outskirts of the Everfree forest and dig a deep hole."

"So far doesn't sound like it has to do with either a personal problem or magic, except that you'd probably use magic to dig the hole."

Starlight held up a hoof as if to point out something that was missing. "If I find Applejack's parents petrified in the hole, then we release them."

"Of course we would, if we did, but why would you expect to find Applejack's parents petrified in the hole?"

"Because if I do find them petrified in the hole, I will then proceed to go sixteen years back in time and put them there."

Twilight froze.

Starlight added, "Obviously, I would run this plan by their family first. Springing it as a surprise would be rather rude."

Slowly, Twilight asked, "You'd ask them before or after you dig the hole?"

Starlight readily answered, "Before. If I wouldn't go back in time, then there's no reason to check."

Twilight took a deep breath, then another. "Let's not mention it to them before we've also run it by Starswirl. This sounds like it could be not so great."

Starlight coughed. "You know, I'm not overly impressed with Starswirl." She was mildly surprised to see Twilight retain a blank expression. She must really be tired. Starlight added, "You've surpassed him in pure dimension magic. He couldn't work his way out of your castle last year when its teleport maze was turned against us, but you could."

"If he'd had the benefit of the last thousand years of magical theory, he would have worked it out too."

Starlight took the opportunity to dredge up an old argument: "We would have figured out many more things if he hadn't intentionally hidden so much, and then there are the incorrect theorems like no time travel, which we both know perfectly well is false."

Twilight gave the return argument yet again. "He lied, yes, to prevent ponies from pursuing things that could destroy Equestria entirely by accident." The 'like you' didn't need to be said.

This time, Starlight did not let that stand. "Some things were dangerous. But there are ways to do time travel that guarantee not to change the present. The way you contacted yourself with the week-long loop, for instance. That spell could only produce a stable loop. Useless, but not an existential threat to Equestria. As opposed to the way I, ah, did not involve such a safety feature. Point is, there are ways to do it right. And we have access to those ways. And I'm afraid that he will reflexively say no rather than think it through."

"He might say that he'd reflexively say no because he already thought it through."

"And it might be a good time to revisit that reasoning, or at least let me know what it is, especially since the reason for the lie is no longer valid - you weren't exactly discreet about your own time travel incident."

Twilight nodded. "Yes, we can at least ask about it. How about I write the letter rather than you?"

Starlight considered her past interactions with Starswirl. "Yes, please do. But perhaps not right now?"

Twilight, not hearing that last bit, fetched a page and blinked. "Wow, I have deja vu going on."

"Really?"

"From Flurry's visit."

"How so?"

"Ah, sorry, shouldn't have even mentioned it. All right, how do we put this?"

Starlight took the page from her, and began walking her back to the castle. Twilight followed, her eyes drooping. Starlight spoke up to keep her awake so she wouldn't need to carry her. "How about before we write to him, we think it through more ourselves, and just use him as a check? I can see two arguments against. First, what we've mentioned - normalizing this could lead to ponies doing bad dangerous things. But we can keep it secret, and we don't need to do the bad dangerous things. The plan isn't to alter history. Second… we… how do I put this? If the plan works, then there is an acausal loop which did a bad thing."

"What bad thing?"

"I would come along and petrify them for sixteen years for no good reason. If it weren't for the loop, that wouldn't have happened, and that's a bad thing."

"But if you didn't have a loop, then… oh. So we can choose, did we cause this bad thing or not? We can let nature have done something terrible, or we have done something…" A few seconds pause as she yawned. "…not as terrible, but still quite bad. Hrm."

Starlight considered, "Seems to me like it's better to have loops like that, and best use them used early and often. A colt is missing? Well, turns out that I took him out for ice cream without letting anyone know, rather than a timberwolf having torn his head off. If we do it sooner rather than later, the down side is much, much weaker. And the spells are easier, too."

"You want to be known as a mare who secretly gives kids ice cream without asking?"

"Hmm. Well, that was just an example… Like, in this case, with the Apples, I could let the cockatrice do the petrification, they'd never know it was me. As for finding them, I could say it was a special scanning spell that only works rarely, and we got lucky."

"Somepony would want the details on that spell."

"Then use Pinkie Pie as the information conduit instead. Everyone's used to her… being… Sweet mother of Celestia!" She'd stiffened and straightened, staring at the wall, trying to piece together some coherent thoughts. "Is that how she does it?"

Twilight sighed. "I wonder when ponies are going to begin swearing by me."

When she didn't follow that up and stopped moving, Starlight Glimmer figured that was the end of the conversation. She just picked the princess up in her magic and carried her the rest of the way home. She seems on board. With luck, I'll have New Leaf back in no time!

~~~~

Sparkler sat awkwardly in the beanbag chair, watching Spike read a book. And that was all. The previous few times, they'd read, sure, but they'd also talked. Quite a bit, and she'd gotten a bit of a special feeling. Now he was basically ignoring her. Not quite, but a bit.

"Spike?"

Spike raised his head.

"Let's go for a walk."

"What sort of walk?"

"Like, around town."

"I, uh… hmm." Sparkler narrowed her eyes, and his widened a little. "Sure! Let's go, I guess that's fine."

Sparkler got up, and Spike put the book down. "What wouldn't be fine about it?" Spike didn't answer right away, so Sparkler turned and shouted out to her mother, "Heading out for a walk!"

Derpy called back, "Okay, see you later!"

Spike didn't answer until they were outside. "Well, I, ah, didn't want to cause hilarious stupid misunderstandings about what's going on."

"What do you mean? We're on a walk, and who would care?"

"Well, I asked Rarity on a date. And she said yes."

Sparkler kept walking. After a moment, she said, "And that means you don't talk while we're reading and you don't want to walk with me in public."

"I just need to figure out my new boundaries. Right?"

"That makes sense." And it did. But it didn't feel good.

They finished a walk of a respectable length, and they talked about a variety of topics on the way, and Spike picked up his book and left, and Sparkler lay on her bed and moped. She couldn't even figure out why she was so upset. Obviously it was something about Spike's pulling away, but she couldn't put her hoof on exactly what about it.

Derpy came in and sat down next to her. They sat in silence for a minute before Sparkler said, "I don't even know what's wrong."

Derpy thought for a moment. "That's not usually how it goes with me. Is it Spike?"

Sparkler didn't answer, but half a minute later asked, "Why do they leave us?"

"Who?"

"Stallions. My dad, Dinky's dad." She didn't notice Derpy momentarily stiffen at the mention of their father.

"Dinky's father didn't leave us. He died."

"Oh. I… thought…" Sparkler didn't finish that thought.

Her mother knew precisely what she'd been thinking, and put a hoof on her shoulder. "No, no. He was very sweet, and very, very terminally ill."

Sparkler swallowed. "I'm sorry to bring it up."

Derpy sighed and shook her head. "It's all right."

"What's it like to lose somepony you love?"

Derpy laughed shortly. "Well. I loved him, some, but I wasn't in love. You had left for school. I was so proud! I thought I wanted to do that again. Make another wonderful foal. And I was horny. He was, too. And he was sweet. And dying. And a virgin. And… I just don't know what went right." She grinned.

Sparkler stared at her mother. "Wow. That is the most messed-up but sweet thing I've ever heard. Maybe not messed-up, but weird, anyway. Who was it?"

Derpy hesitated, but then shrugged. "Maple Turner."

Sparkler frowned, then went agog. "First, what? He's been dead all this time? Whoa! I didn't realize! Second, what? He- he's my age! Mom!"

"No, he was in your class, but he was held back twice from being sick so much."

Sparkler's ears folded back at her mom's apparent defense of the action. "Still!"

"The doctors said he had a week. If that. He died before it could go wrong. And maybe it helped."

"How so?"

"After, he wanted to live. So he did, for six weeks."

Sparkler wasn't sure what to say. "Did his parents know?"

Derpy shrugged. "I think Time knows. He treats Dinky almost like a grandchild."

Sparkler blinked. "… which she is. Wow. Uh, what did Maple have, anyway?"

"It wasn't genetic. It wasn't contagious."

Sparkler shrugged. "Okay, I guess that covers that. Still. Wow."

Derpy lowered her head. "Do you think less of me? Or Dinky?"

Sparkler blinked. "No. It's something to absorb, but I'm okay. Huh." She nuzzled her mother. "So. Did my dad…"

Derpy swallowed. "Enough for now, pumpkin?" Sparkler nodded.