I Was Full of Desire, Then You Set Me On Fire
On nights and weekends, Spike studied slugs.
Specifically, he studied a slug native to the southern badlands called Gastropoda Yuckynastia--known colloquially as, The Unpleasant-Tasting but Life-Saving Slug.
In the course of studying this particular slug, Spike came to wonder if the less-than-creative names of southern badlands wildlife were due to a collective case of heatstroke.
But Spike was not studying the unpleasant slug for its name. He was studying the slug for its slime. It was a known fact in the south that if you ever found yourself in the prairie with a brushfire hot on your hocks, the best course of action was to turn over rocks until you found the Gastropoda Yuckynastia and give it a good lick. The slime tasted disgusting, but when mingled with saliva it caused a chemical reaction which caused the pony body to secrete a very specific wavelength of magical energy. This wavelength just so happened to render the licker impervious to fire.
There were many such intersections of magic and chemistry, most of which were left underexplored in favor of the flashier magical disciplines. But where others saw yucky slugs, Spike saw potential.
That was why he spent the better part of his free time cooped up in his windowless lab in the catacombs of Canterlot Castle studying the Gastropoda Yuckynastia. Potential.
If he could find a way to isolate the active ingredients of the slime/spit mixture and synthesize it, he could then weave it into the fabric of his bedsheets so he didn’t accidentally light them on fire whenever he snored.
On his lab table sat a glass terrarium housing three samples of the Gastropoda Yuckynastia. They weren’t sentient creatures, but the way their eyestalks followed him as he worked made him wonder.
In one gloved claw, he held a fourth slug. With his other claw, he clutched a tongue depressor, which he used to gently scrape the slug’s slime into a vial of pony spit.
“Easy, peasey, lemon squeezy,” he intoned, his personal mantra for achieving perfect focus. “Easy, peasey, lemon squeezy.”
A tiny droplet of slime fell into the vial. It hit the spit and fizzed. Spike’s eyes grew wider. He rotated the slug, being careful not to stress it out or squeeze it too hard. One wrong move and he would crush the poor little critter in his fist.
More slime filled the vial. The liquid started to shimmer. “Easy, peasey, lemon squeezy.” Magic poured from the vial, radiating out. So close!
Just as the experiment reached its thrilling climax, his stomach twisted into knots. A bloated, burning sensation bubbled up from his gut. His eyes went wide in horror. He dropped the slug and the tongue depressor and clamped his mouth shut.
Dragon magic was unique in many ways, chief among them its composition. Pony magic, and by extension the magic of nearly every creature in Equestria including the Gastropoda Yuckynastia, was based in a system of mana. Dragon magic, on the other claw, was based in a system of fire. It was ancient and powerful, and contained many secrets unknown to the modern world.
Dragon magic was also notorious for being difficult to control. That meant that when someone sent him a piece of dragon mail, Spike simply couldn’t hold it in like he could hold in a belch. On a biological level, he would sooner explode than delay the message’s passing.
His jaw unhinged and green flames spewed all over the table, engulfing his experiment, sparing nothing.
As the flames subsided, Spike stared in horror at the wreckage of his experiment. The tongue depressor had been vaporized. The vial was melted. The spit was spilled. Half the terrarium was fire-blasted into nothing. The slugs were just fine.
On the scorched bit of the lab table where his experiment used to be sat a piece of parchment from princess Celestia.
Spike,
I hope your experiments are going well. While I by no means wish to impede your studies, I am compelled to bring to your attention the matter of certain personal misconduct on your part. While it shows exceptional magical prowess, I must make my objections known to your sending of fire golems in your place to formal crown-related functions. Your scholarship, materials, room, and board are all taxpayer-funded, and as such a modicum of gratitude is required, in the form of your presence. Read--your presence.
I would like to take this opportunity to give you a new, non-scholastic challenge: take the evening off and have a nice time out on the town. I have extended the same instruction to your assistant. She told me she plans on attending a musical performance of some kind near the castle tonight. Perhaps you could accompany her?
Just to be clear--this is not optional. Have fun!
Your Faithful Teacher,
C
Spike crumpled the parchment in his claw. There was only one mare in all of Canterlot who knew about his sending fire golems to those awful formal dinners, one pony in the city with the desire to rat him out. One variable and one variable only: his assistant.
Spike stared forlornly at his ruined lab table. Building an experiment from scratch while under the grips of anger led to poor judgment and occasional mad sciencery. Tonight was a total wash. He scooped the four slugs up and placed them in a larger, semi-permanent terrarium in the far corner, a waist-high glass enclosure where they could frolic in a perfect simulacra of a dusty prairie meadow without care.
He wished he was a slug sometimes. The only things you had to worry about were salt, birds, and the occasional pony licking you.
That didn’t sound so bad.
His assistant’s living quarters were directly across from his.
Their little wing of the castle sat at the end of a long and windowless hallway, and came complete with two bedrooms, a shared bathroom, and a common study room.
He had petitioned the princess exactly two hundred and seventeen times for seperate bathrooms, eighty six times for private study rooms, and twelve additional times for completely separate housing, preferably on opposite sides of the castle. Alas, according to Celestia--the same princess who wore gold shoes and threw honest-to-goodness Medieval banquets for fun--the bits just weren’t there.
Spike knocked once on her bedroom door. No one answered.
“Hello?” he called out. “You in there?”
Again, no reply.
“Say nothing if you ruined my experiment.”
Nothing.
Spike sighed and pushed the door open. The bed was neatly made, the dresser tidy, the closet color-coded and even. The bookshelf and reading table were a bit of a disaster, but that was par for the course.
Spike noticed the tiny vanity in the corner, normally empty, had been used recently. Black lipstick sat out, along with ultra-shade eyeliner and a pack of ten fake piercings, four of which were still on the table.
Spike let out a groan. Then he summoned some parchment and drafted a reply to Celestia. It read:
Princess,
As always, thank you for your wisdom. I’ll take your advice and go to the performance. Additionally, it may be useful to consider some kind of official health code ruling on sending dragon mail to recipients working in flammable environments.
Your faithful student,
S
The message disappeared in a shroud of fire. Spike could all but hear the princess laugh as she read it.
Dragon culture demanded its own unique system of counting an individual’s age.
Ponies had an objectively good way to measure age: solar years. It was accurate, reliable, and easy to use. But because it was ponies who had created the system, the dragon lords decided against adopting it. Dragons could be ignorant like that.
Instead, dragons counted age in number of battles won, hordes stolen, and heroic feats accomplished. A dragon could claim to be thousands of years old even though he was only technically alive for a tenth of that time, and technically speaking, he wouldn’t be wrong.
Spike hated the dragon-dating system. It made history very confusing. Kings lived for millennia, and yet barely decades. Kingdoms rose overnight and fell for ten thousand years. Baking proved a particularly difficult task. Bury gemrock bread under pyroclastic flow and bake until bread is crusty and hard, 1 yr-300 yrs, give or take. Inspect every decade or century or so to check for browning.
Very unscientific.
In dragon years, Spike was two. He turned one when he was hatched, and two when he became the first dragon admitted into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.
He didn’t like telling the story of his entrance exam. What was there to say? He studied for months, blanked as soon as he entered the exam room, had the panic attack to end all panic attacks, and let out a belch of fire so vast it teleported the entire city onto the opposite side of Canterlot mountain.
It took Celestia and her best mages a full week to move the city back, piece by piece.
In biological years, it was a bit more complicated. Spike’s egg was laid exactly twenty two hundred years ago. His biological family, revolutionaries who sought to dethrone Princess Platinum during the great dragon incursion, were killed by crystal ponies, who then went on to cast ten thousand of Spike’s scaly great-great-great-aught grandparents and relatives into the pits of Tartarus and scrambled the unhatched eggs of ten thousand more.
There were no hard feelings now, though. Really. Honest.
Celestia, a key general in the incursion, placed Spike’s egg under her protection to spare him from the murderish hooves of the crystal ponies. There he waited, gestating, until twenty one hundred and seventy eight years later--pop!
So that made him both twenty two years old, and two years old, and two thousand and twenty two years old.
Not the easiest thing to explain to a bouncer at a bar.
“What kinda fake ID is this?” the bouncer, a rough-hewn boulder of a pegasus, asked, waving Spike’s government-issued ID in his face.
Spike shifted awkwardly in the tiny doorway, which caused the ancient wooden structure to bow out just enough to make him worry. This bar, called The Melody’s Inn, was on the national registry of historic buildings, and had hosted bands since back when they were still called bards.
This meant it had been built in a time period when most ponies were malnourished and didn’t grow quite so much as they did now. Thus, the whole building had a distressingly cozy feeling. Especially to a ten-foot tall dragon.
Still. He squeezed his wings tight against his sides. It would be unbecoming of princess Celestia’s personal protégé to shut down the concert. Or bury a hundred ponies in rubble.
“It’s not fake,” Spike said, “it’s just semantic. If you were hatched from an egg, Equestrian IDs start counting from the date you were laid.” Spike rolled his eyes as the bouncer snickered. “I’m twenty two, but my egg was laid--” pause for laughter. “Two thousand years ago.”
The bouncer finally gave up trying to square the math and gave Spike’s ID back. “Cover’s ten bits.”
“Ten? The sign said it was seven.”
The bouncer shrugged. “You’re a bit bigger than a pony.”
“So?”
“You take up more space in the pit. Three bits’ more space. So ten bits total.”
Spike blew smoke out his nostrils and reached for his coin purse. His shoulders hit the doorway, and the whole frame of the building turned with him. A few ponies eyed the walls nervously. The bouncer yawned and stuck out his hoof.
Spike’s imprisonment in the entryway finally, mercifully ended. Inside, The Melody’s Inn opened up into a main room twenty lengths tall, with wood-paneled bars on both sides. The main stage dominated the far side of the room. The dance floor in front of the stage didn’t actually have a floor--all the hardwood had been peeled away down to the hard-packed earth beneath, forming a debossed pit. Above, a second floor balcony ringed the stage in a “U” shape.
The acoustics were bad, and the chatter was incessant. Spike put on his most convincing glower and mumbled, “Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy... Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy...”
Before he started his search for his assistant, he made his way over to the bar. “Excuse me,” he flagged the bartender over, “I believe the bouncer overcharged me for entry.”
The bartender, a thirty-something mare with an obvious dye job in her mane, sized Spike up. “Did he?”
“Yeah.”
“You look like you take up a lot of space.”
Spike growled. “I’ll be in and out in five minutes. I just need to get someone.”
“You’re not gonna listen to the bands? That’s not cool.”
“Can I please just have my three bits back?”
The bartender cracked a smile, revealing a chipped front tooth. She reached behind the bar, but instead of bits she pulled out a cold can of beer. “Beer’s three bits a can. How’s that for even?”
“It’s not really even.”
“Don’t sound so upset.” The bartender leaned towards Spike. “Normally you’d have to tip me, too. How about you gimme your name instead?”
Spike took the can, punched a hole in the side with one claw, and shotgunned it without breaking eye contact. Dragons were more or less impervious to alcohol. And if there was one piece of his dragon instinct that pony society couldn’t hug away, it was the instinct of establishing dominance.
The bartender snorted and walked away.
Little victories.
Spike’s assistant wasn’t by the bar. Nor was she by the VIP tables. Nor was she in the pit, which was rapidly filling up with ponies. The show was about to start. The energy in the room built until the walls bowed out. Spike had only one place left to check.
He shimmied his way up a narrow staircase to the second-floor balcony overlooking the pit. There, he found the artist types and playponies, the club owners and the hangers-on, the musicians who just wanted to listen, and about twenty daredevil ponies clinging to the railing and looking anxiously towards the stage.
And there, posted up in the furthest corner, sipping something she probably shouldn’t, peering over the railing’s edge, trying to look tough but failing to contain the excited smile on her face, Spike found her. His number one assistant, smartest young mare in Canterlot, hoof-picked to be his understudy by Celestia herself, a phenomenally gifted magical student, and an even bigger pain in the butt.
Her name was Twilight Sparkle. And she was ready to party.
Her normal bangs had been tousled meticulously to look like she’d just rolled out of bed. A streak of black dye ran through her mane and tail. Winged eyeliner framed her eyes. Several obviously fake ear studs and one more convincing septum piercing adorned her face. Everything about her looked raucous and wild.
She couldn’t fool Spike. He knew she’d spent hours cooped up in the library referencing archived periodicals to generate the most authentic punk outfit.
Had she so much as glanced in his direction, she would have seen him standing two full heads above the crowd. But she was utterly lost in the stage lights, the same way she got lost in the annotated bibliography of a really engaging research paper.
A twinge of guilt stuck like a thorn through Spike’s thoughts, but he pushed it away. Thanks to her, there was another experiment to set up back at the castle. And she would help him complete it, no matter how many of her plans he had to cancel.
Just as he closed in, Twilight sensed something was coming and looked up. She let out a little gasp. Her horn lit up. The drink disappeared.
A colossal blast of static cut through the air. Spike winced and covered his ears. The crowd roared.
Four ponies leapt onstage. The frontmare, dressed in all-black tattered jeans and a shawl and sporting at least a dozen piercings, screamed into the mic, “What the hay is up, Canterlot?!”
The crowd lost it. The whole building shook. The balcony shuddered and groaned, leaning on its supports for dear life.
The frontmare announced, “We are the Daisycutter Diarchs. Our first song is called, ‘I Just Wanna Throw Parties and Rage, Get Off My Back Mom, This Isn’t A Phase.’ One two three four--”
Pure sonic chaos filled The Melody’s Inn. The pit descended into anarchy. The ponies waiting at the balcony railing leapt into the fray.
Twilight moved to follow them down. Spike lunged forward and plucked her from the edge before she could jump.
She screamed something at Spike and flailed around uselessly.
“We have to go back to the castle,” he shouted.
If she could hear him, she gave no indication.
All of a sudden, she stopped flailing. She puffed up her cheeks and sighed the way she did when she realised she mistook a simple equation for a difficult one.
Then she teleported slightly to the left.
She hung suspended in the air for a split second, smiling a victorious little smile. Spike, suddenly not holding anything, lurched.
She fell into the pit. The crowd caught her and swept her away.
Spike leaned over the edge to spot her again, but it was no use. The crowd was too dense, the music too loud, the lights too hot.
The first song came to an end with a massive ripping power chord. It hadn’t even been a full minute long. Once the guitars faded, the frontmare returned to the mic and announced, “This next song is for the dragon on the second floor.”
Spike’s eyes went wide.
“Yeah, you,” the frontmare said. “It’s called, ‘You Lied About Your Age, And That Fills Me With Rage.’ Onetwothreefour--”
Spike stared at the stage in horror as he recognized the frontmare: Canterlot’s preeminent hardcore screamer/lyricist, guitar distortion enthusiast, and as of three months ago Spike’s ex-marefriend. Her name was Panpipe Essence, though most ponies knew her by her stage name, Lace Choker.
And she was staring right at him.
He turned away and bumped his way down the narrow stairs to the first floor, keeping his head down to avoid the stares of the other ponies. There he spotted Twilight, still surfing atop a wave of outstretched hooves carrying her and a few other brave surfers from one side of the floor to the other.
He could tell by the way her nose wrinkled that she was snorting with laughter. The last time he saw her do that was when she solved one of those unsolvable proofs that populates the backs of mathematical textbooks. The time before that was when she pie’d Celestia on her birthday.
Spike positioned himself at the edge of the pit and waited until the crowd brought her back around. When Twilight surfed his way, he scooped her right out of the air.
Predictably, she teleported again as soon as she felt his scales on her. This time, she made the tactical mistake of teleporting away from the crowd, to a door leading to the backstage area. Perhaps she hoped he wouldn’t have the nerve to go through a door marked, NO ENTRY PLEASE.
She was wrong. Spike surged through the crowd, cutting a path one dragon wide towards the door. His massive body acted like a rock on a tumultuous shoreline. Ponies crashed against him left and right to little effect. The moshers around him started to protest, but a withering glare from a dragon nearly twice their size was enough to make them think twice about saying anything else.
He finally reached the door, hesitated as he saw the sign, then went through it anyway.
The music dulled to a thumping rattle. A long dim hallway stretched all the way to the rear of the building, with a single red-lit exit door leading to the outside. Halfway down the hallway was a door marked, GREEN ROOM.
Twilight stood in front of the door, muttering curses and leveraging her slender frame against the handle. The door wouldn’t budge. He had her now.
She saw Spike out of the corner of her eye and redoubled her efforts. “Not fair,” she said.
“Don’t teleport again,” Spike commanded.
“What’s your problem?”
“We’re going,” he said firmly.
“You're going. I’m staying.”
“We have work to do.”
“We’ve been working for weeks.”
“And because you thought it would be clever to get Celestia on my case about the fire golems, my experiment got torched.”
“Wait--you torched the experiment?”
“On accident. Dragon mail.”
Twilight let out a barking laugh. “So you need more of my spit.”
“I also need your help.”
“You’re the smartest dragon in Equestria. You don’t need me.”
Spike paused. His frown dulled. “Do you really think that?”
The music died suddenly. The two turned towards the backstage door just as it swung open.
A mare’s silhouette appeared in the corridor, framed by glaring stage lights. “No civilians backstage,” she barked.
Spike’s face fell. He recognized Lace Choker’s voice. “Look, can we please just go?” he asked Twilight in a much more subdued voice.
The band brushed past them on their way to the green room, but Lace Choker lingered behind.
“What are you doing?” she asked Spike flatly.
“Leaving.”
“Creepy.”
“Shouldn’t you be playing?”
“Five minute sets are in right now. We’ll do another in two or three hours if we feel like it.” Lace Choker cocked an eyebrow and looked at Twilight. “You were crowd surfing, right?”
“Yes!” Stars sparkled in Twilight’s eyes. “I love your band.”
“And we love your energy. Did you know your drakefriend is actually two thousand years old?”
“I’m twenty two in pony years!” Spike protested.
“He’s not my drakefriend,” Twilight said, aiming a pointed look Spike’s way. “He’s more like my mom.”
Lace chuckled. “He’s old enough.” She turned to address Spike directly. “Hey scaley, did you catch our second song? The one called--”
“Yes, I caught it. Age. Rage. Very clever.”
“I meant it. My friends gave me a lot of crap for dating a dragon, but I told them all they were full of it. Thanks for making me look like an idiot.”
“Lace, I never lied to you. You were twenty nine at the time, and all my books about pony society say mares like a vibrant young stallion, so I thought, hey, twenty sounds a lot more vibrant than two thousand.” Spike noticed Lace’s face going beet-red. “So, uh. Yeah. You did say you were okay with an age difference.”
“Hey, that gives me an idea for a new song. I think I’ll call it, It’s Not Technically A Lie, But You’re Still Gonna Die.”
Just as the tension between the two built to a boiling point, Twilight spoke up. “Wait. So Spike was twenty when you were dating, and you were twenty nine? Are you sure that wasn’t the reason your friends were giving you crap?”
Lace opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, her three eavesdropping bandmates peeked their heads out of the break room.
“Twenty nine?” the first one asked.
“And he was twenty?” the second one asked.
“Doesn’t that make you, like, thirty one right now?” the third one asked.
Lace let out a primordial growl, the kind even an apex predator had to respect. Before her bandmates (or Twilight) could fire off another salvo of incriminating questions, she leapt up and grabbed Spike by the ear just like she used to do when they were dating and dragged him to the stage door, where she deposited him at the hooves of the nearest bouncer.
“He and the purple one snuck backstage,” Lace said, her voice returning to its normal aloof alto. “I don’t think they have passes.”
All of a sudden, there were three more bouncers surrounding Spike. They pounced without a word of warning. Each one grabbed a limb. Spike cried out.
Together, they hoisted him up and hustled him through the main room. They cleared a path through the cramped entryway, and with no small amount of effort stuffed Spike through the front door.
He fell head over heels onto the cobblestone street to the jeers of the ponies waiting in line. Spike silenced the crowd with a fiery look, but he couldn’t smoke out the feeling of their eyes on him.
As he brushed the dust off, he noticed Twilight being ushered politely through the doorway.
“Sorry miss,” he heard the bouncer say to her. “Have a good night.”
Twilight hesitated. She glanced behind her. Heaved a sigh. Then she stepped into the night.
“Twi,” Spike started.
She held up a hoof before he could get it out. “Don’t,” she said, her voice curt. She brushed past him, flicking her mane in his face. “We’re going to the night market,” she announced. “I’m hungry.”
Spike may have only been two years old, but he was old enough to understand how childish Twilight was being. First the questionable activity at seedy venues, then dodging him with extreme prejudice. Now she was giving him the silent treatment.
She stormed through the crowded streets of the Canterlot night market, past endless trinket stalls lit up orange by countless paper candles. A few local nobles in bright tunics cast wary glances at Spike as he passed, but for most in attendance the sight of a dragon wouldn’t register as more than a blip in a sea of much odder oddities.
Past the corridor of commodities, they came to a plaza ringed with food vendors. Here the otherwise integrated crowd split up by race. The griffons went for their kebabs and falafel, kirin for their cabbage and fish, and ponies for their hay and oats.
Twilight bucked the trend and made for a Yakyakistani cart on the far side of the plaza. There she smacked a few bits onto the counter and ordered an exotic bit of non-pony cuisine known in its native tongue as a hamburger.
“Is that meat?” Spike asked.
Twilight waited to reply until they found a spot to sit in the mouth of an adjoining alley. “Yes,” she said, peeling back the wrapper, trying to hide her curiosity. “Meat’s punk.”
“I thought ethical veganism was punk.”
“Yes. But there are many different kinds of punk within the punk label.” Twilight took a bite and instantly gagged. “Straight edge punk--eugh--is starting to glorify the mainstream a bit too much, so the pendulum is swinging to the right for a bit.”
“Twilight?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s a cow.”
Twilight made a weak little gurgling noise and pushed the burger to Spike, who downed it without hesitation.
“I feel so rebellious,” he said as he chewed.
Twilight took deep breaths until she could sit upright again without turning green. “Be honest with me. Did you ever ask for an assistant?”
Spike toyed with the leftover ball of tinfoil. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Twilight let out a long sigh and rested her chin in her hooves. “Nevermind.”
Spike knew he’d goofed up, though for the life of him no mending words came to mind. “I mean, you know how the princess goes all Marechiavelli sometimes. She’s probably playing a long con to teach us a lesson about the magic of friendship or something.”
Twilight groaned. “No, she’s not. Admit it. I’m here because you like having someone to boss around.”
“You’re here because Celestia picked you.”
“She picked you.”
Spike unfurled and refurled the tin foil. Twilight bit her lip and stared at the ground.
“You have a family,” Spike finally said. “Do you like them?”
Twilight paused, taken aback by the question. “Yes,” she said.
“You got a mom and a dad and a brother, right?”
Twilight nodded.
“Do you want to hear my working hypothesis on why you and I got put together? It’s gonna sound weird.”
“We spend eighty hours a week vivisecting slugs. Just say it.”
“I think we’re supposed to be family.”
Spike winced and waited for Twilight to throw something at him. A rock or a spell or some choice words. He looked up to find a confused look on the unicorn’s face. He took it as a sign to continue.
“You have a mom and a dad and a brother to teach you about family. My family got scrambled ten thousand years ago. I think the princess assigned you to me because you’re supposed to teach me what family is.”
Twilight chewed on her response for an agonizing moment. When she finally did respond, her words were measured and slow. “Do you really think we’re cut out to be family, Spike?”
His heart sank to the pit of his stomach. “I don’t know.”
Before he had a chance to dig his own grave any deeper, a commotion arose from the opposite side of the plaza. Spike and Twilight turned simultaneously to see several burly earth ponies in black t-shirts come careening through the various vendors, dragging carts overloaded with musical instruments and sound equipment behind them. They came to a screeching halt in the center of the plaza and immediately began unloading.
“What on earth--?”
A clatter from further down the alley stole his attention. He turned just in time to avoid another roadie pony running past him with a massive coil of extension cords slung around one arm.
Spike whirled around again as the night market plaza descended into chaos. A massive foldable stage erupted from one of the carts, nearly shattering the unfortunate yak hamburger vendor. The roadies hoisted two metal poles topped with speaker arrays and a massive banner bearing an all-too familiar name.
DAISYCUTTER DIARCHS
“Uh oh,” Spike murmured.
“What’s up, creep?” called a voice from down the alley. “Stalking me now?”
Spike whirled around and instantly regretted it. Striding down the alley in a completely new, yet equally pitch-black outfit was none other than Lace Choker and her band.
“We were here first,” Spike replied. “Aren’t you performing at The Melody’s Inn?”
Lace Choker shrugged. “The vibe wasn’t right. Wonder who’s to blame for that.”
Spike ran through a mental checklist of all the world’s magical traditions, trying to remember if any of them ran on systems of vibe. “So now you’re here.”
“Well, we can’t play where the vibe’s not right. And where there’s food, there’s an audience.” Lace Choker winked at Twilight as she brushed past. “We have a tip jar by the stage, by the way. If you’re feeling generous.”
With that, she flicked Spike in the face with her tail and made her way to the stage. The whole contraption wobbled under the weight of the four ponies and their instruments, but somehow the stage remained upright.
By now, quite a crowd had gathered at the edge of the stage to see what the commotion was all about. Lace Choker threw her mane back to the wail of a fuzzed-up guitar being plugged into a hot amp.
“What the hay is up, Canterlot?” she screamed.
Feedback sliced through the air. A few ponies cheered. Most stared silently, confused.
Lace Choker went on, undeterred. “We are the Daisycutter Diarchs. We’re here to rock or whatever.” She paused to look at Spike. “This first song’s called, ‘I Was Full of Desire, Then You Set Me On Fire,’ ONETWOTHREE--”
The plaza exploded--quite literally. Fireworks concealed in the speaker towers blew streaming gouts of fiery sparks into the night. The music wasn’t winning anyone over, but the fireworks seemed to soften the blow of impending tinnitus.
“At least it’s only five minutes,” Spike said.
“What?” Twilight asked, cupping her hooves to her ears.
“I said, at least it’s only a five minute set.”
“Come again?”
“I said--”
“What?”
“I said we only have to--”
The music abruptly cut off. The song hadn’t even lasted thirty seconds. Nopony applauded.
In the vacuum of space brought on by the sudden lack of loud guitars, every creature in the plaza heard Spike shout the conclusion of his sentence, “Listen to this garbage for five more--oh.”
Every set of eyes in the plaza turned on Spike. Twilight cringed and took a reflexive step back.
“Hi there, Spikey Wikey,” Lace Choker cooed. “Mares and gentlecolts, this is my ex-drakefriend. He came all the way down from his ivory tower tonight to tell us he hates punk rock.”
A few scattered boos were lobbed in his general direction. Spike’s eyes darted around nervously. He wished he had unicorn magic so he could poof himself away without the spectacle of dragonfire.
“And he hates high-achieving mares like me. I think he feels threatened, folks. Can you imagine that? A dragon with a complex?”
More jeers came his way. Each set of eyes was like sharpened talons squeezing his lungs. A deep tremble broke out in his claws. “That’s categorically untrue,” he said, weakly.
“And he couldn’t leave me alone from the last five-minute show we played. He had to follow me here because, at the root of it all, he doesn’t know when to quit. He’s just a big dumb angry dragon.”
“Hey!” Spike looked up suddenly to find Twilight standing between him and the stage, her chest puffed out, her horn singing with magical energy, her streaked-black mane flying every which way.
Lace Choker scoffed into the mic. More feedback bloomed in the speakers. The crowd flinched. “You’ve already taken twenty percent of our show time. I’m afraid you can’t have any more--”
“You’re not punk!” Twilight cried out.
Lace recoiled. The band went, “Oooo.” The crowd looked even more confused than before.
Twilight barreled on. “You’re a mean old mare. And you’re not even punk. I’ll bet you grew up in the suburbs.”
Fire flashed in Lace Choker’s eyes.
“Yeah, that’s right! I’ll bet you rent all this equipment with your dad’s trust fund. Kind of a shame you couldn’t spring for nicer instruments. Your microphone sounds like super cardioid cardboard.”
“It’s a punk aesthetic--”
“My flank, it is. Your songs aren’t revolution anthems. They’re just angry clopping!”
Lace Choker’s face twisted into a deep snarl. Just before Twilight could throw another insult, the singer burst. Smoke vented from her ears. She screamed, “I’ll show you who’s from the suburbs!” and stormed over to the nearest speaker pole. “This song’s called, RAAAAAAAH in A Flat, onetwothreefour--”
The band poured all their energy into a scathing bombshell of a blast beat. While the guitars wailed and the drums pounded and the crowd descended into anarchy trying to escape the noise, Lace Choker shimmied up the speaker pole and reached for one of the unused pyrotechnical flares.
Her face twisted into a maniacal smile.
The firework shot out with a screaming roar. It flew in a perfect arc straight at Twilight’s head.
For Spike, time slowed down.
All the fear and loathing left his body in an instant, replaced by pure animal instinct. Magical fire rose in his belly. He channeled it into his claws, sculpting it into a round tongue of fire. Then he pressed his claws together with all of his might. The pressure morphed the fire into dense, magical cinders.
Easy, peasey, lemon squeezy, he thought.
He locked eyes with the approaching firework and commanded the cinders to fly. In a flash, they leapt out of his claws, weaving through the crowd, zeroing in on their target.
The cinders struck dead-on. The collision sent the firework careening away from Twilight, into the side of a nearby plaza building.
The blast rocked the plaza. Multi-hued sparks flew every which way, bouncing off walls and knocking over ponies and settling at last in the various plants that had taken up residence in the plaza, the ivy and potted trees and bushes.
In approximately five seconds--the time it took for Lace Choker to ready another firework--a quarter of the plaza was engulfed in flames. The vendors and passerby fled for their lives. The orange glow deepened. The shadows sharpened.
Spike felt an odd sense of calm wash over him. No ponies meant no social stress. Thank goodness.
Something like a smile appeared on his face. He leaned over Twilight and scooped her up in one massive arm. She instantly went limp in his arms. Perhaps it was a primordial reflex from the time dragons hunted ponies. Some ancient part of her brain telling her, No escape possible, just play dead and hope for the best.
Spike hoped it was more of a trust thing, though.
He summoned another deep breath of air and sparked a second fiery spell. This time, he shaped the green dragonfire from his mouth into a portal on the ground. He made a few quick mental calculations, then jumped into the flames.
The portal sent him and his carry-on pony straight to the topmost battlements of Canterlot castle. Spike took two steps, let out a very undragonlike yelp, and fell flat on his face.
He paused.
Twilight was beside him, picking herself up and dusting herself off. The cool white stone of the castle cradled him as he caught his breath. Above him, the stars in the endless black quiet of space went on with their evening.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Not quite the night he had anticipated.
“Look,” he heard Twilight say, “you can see the fire from here.”
He rose slowly and joined Twilight at the edge of the battlements. All of Canterlot stretched out before them, ringed by white magical light. The rooftops of Canterlot’s residential district shielded their direct view of the streets below like the canopy of a vast clay-leafed forest. The light spread all the way to the cliff face, then fell away into the night.
One streetcorner in particular flickered a little brighter than the rest. No need to worry. Canterlot’s finest pegasi water brigade would be on the scene in moments. In twenty or thirty years, this would all be a funny story to tell Celestia.
A building on the plaza collapsed. Make that forty years.
“That second to last song Lace played--‘I Was Full of Desire, Then You Set Me On Fire’--”
“Oh, jeez.”
“Did you actually light your marefriend on fire?”
“It was an accident. We were just dozing off, and I was snoring, and--”
Twilight shushed him. “It’s okay. I’m just teasing.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “Thanks for saving me.”
“Thanks for saving me, too.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“I don’t hate you, too.”
They turned in unison to watch the lights.
“Hey,” Twilight said. “Do you hear that?”
Spike cocked his head and held his breath. Sure enough, a vague echo of drums floated over the city, accompanied by a faint bass guitar.
“Unbelievable,” Spike breathed. “They’re still playing.”
“That’s so punk.” Twilight turned to Spike with a pleading look on her face.“Y’know, with all that fire down there, it would be an excellent opportunity to--”
“Whatever you’re proposing--not a chance.”
Her eyes and fake piercings glittered. “How many real-world tests are we gonna get before you treat your bedsheets with slime and invite another mare over?”
A blush singed Spike’s cheeks. “None like this, that’s for sure.”
“Then let’s test for effect and duration.” Her hoof found his claw. “Do you trust me?”
Some decisions are made naturally. Some are chosen after careful thought. Some are stumbled into. Spike wasn’t really sure which description fit this moment best. But, much to his surprise, he found he didn’t really care.
Spike took a deep breath of the night air, then conjured a small portal on the nearest wall of the battlements. He reached in and pulled out one of his four precious specimens of Gastropoda Yuckynastia.
Twilight licked the slug and shuddered at the taste. Then she nodded to the ground beside her.
“You could teleport yourself, you know,” Spike said.
“Yeah. But that wouldn’t be quite as punk.”
Spike felt a smile flash across his face.
In the plaza, the light shifted. Orange gave way to green. A draconic portal of sulfurous fire bubbled up from the ground. A unicorn’s silhouette rose from its depths to walk in the ruins. The heat licked her fur, but the dense complex alchemical magic emanating from within her shielded her from harm.
As the screams and drums echoed through the streets of Canterlot, Twilight danced in the shimmering flames.
