Spike sighed as he worked in his office in the lower east wing. Keeping up with the paperwork of the Princess of Friendship used to be easy. Now, it was a miracle if he managed to handle it all in one day. If they hadn’t found a way to adapt electronic devices from that other world, Spike would have been hopelessly outmatched.

Thankfully, he’d taken to the strange new devices fairly well. It helped that Twilight had been the one to prototype them in Equestria, with the help of Starlight and Sunset. He’d been the test subject, as usual. Not that he minded, but it would be nice to see someone else going first with some crazy new thing for once.

He tapped away at his keyboard, quickly consolidating the new data coming in from the griffons and correlating it with the existing data from the dragons. Thankfully, it looked like the new trade treaties had prevented another incident.

“Not bad, Spike,” he chuckled to himself. “You may have prevented a war. Again.”

That made six Ember owed him. At the rate he was going, she’d end up his broodmare. Not that either of them would mind, but they were both just so busy.

He activated the uplink that would copy all the data up to the proper embassies. Then, he went for another cup of coffee, only to discover nothing but dregs. With a sigh, he shoved himself out of his seat and stretched. He did everything, from his back to his legs to his wings, since he’d been sitting here for well over an hour. Jeans and a t-shirt didn’t exactly make the stretching easy, but Spike had his ways.

He wandered over to the coffee pot and quickly poured himself a steaming mug of the stuff. He still needed to summarize the reports from the Southern Lands and those were always a mess. He’d have at least two more hours before he could finally get some sleep.

After a long sip, he turned around and glanced at his system. Oddly enough, several of the normally green or blue lights on the front had changed to a bright pink. He glanced at the monitor, only to see it flicker a few times with the same color, or something similar. In fact, he almost saw an image in there, but couldn’t quite make it out.

With a frown, he sat back down and scooted up to the keyboard. The flashing quickly faded, now only vaguely present. Well, this was what you got with experimental tech. At least all of his paperwork was backed up. Still, the functionality of the unit didn’t seem impacted.

In fact, aside from the flashing, all he could see was a new program listed in the menu bar. Mousing over it, he squinted at the odd box-like icon. A label appeared.

“Companion?” Spike asked no one. “What’s that do?”

When no one answered—obviously—he shrugged and double-clicked the icon.

“Let’s see what this is,” Spike muttered as he leaned forward, trying to ignore the pink flashes of almost-images. “Hopefully it’s something more interesting than diplomatic reports.”

Spike blinked when a small window appeared with the same box icon. The top floated away, only for something to come spilling out of it and create what he’d been told was called a ‘progress bar’. He frowned as the flashing went a little quicker. Then, a message appeared.

“‘Stand by for upgrade...’” he muttered. “Well, haven’t had one of those in a while. Definitely more interesting than the reports.”

He sat back to watch, taking a sip of his coffee. Slowly, the progress bar began to fill.

And then the flashing started to change tempo. Enough that Spike could almost make out an image.

“Yes... Definitely more interesting,” Spike chuckled as he adjusted the growing thickness between his legs and pulled on his jeans that had gotten stuck on something.

Maybe tonight wouldn’t be such a bore after all.

Author's Note

Oh, I don't think Spike will be bored at allllllll~!

I hope you enjoyed the conversion of the next Dollmare and her connecting to the Bond~! I actually have a total of five of these stories sorta-kinda-ready, but I'm missing the next one~! I'll give you three guesses who it's about and the first two don't count~! :3

Don't worry, I've also got some great commissions coming your way, too~! Stay tuned for more!

Hope you had fun, sweeties~!

~<3 Honey