The crashing sound whenever Mistress Olive slammed his head into the wall bothered Spike more than anything else about the experience. Oh, sure, he felt the impact through his layers of purple faux scales, but it wasn't like it hurt or anything. He wasn't programmed for being hurt.
"Use more soap when you wash the dishes!" Mistress Olive was shouting, her big fingers still tightly clenched around the back of his neck. "How many times do I have to tell you that?" And she slammed him face first into the wall again.
"Sorry, Mistress Olive," he said, and he didn't have to fake the tremble behind the words. He really disliked loud noises—that was one of the reasons he was glad he hadn't been called upon to be a children's toy. So even with the padding between his plush exterior and his plastic interior, the noise still made him wince when he met the marble of the kitchen wall or the tile of the bathroom wall or the plaster of the bedroom wall.
Mistress Olive's cry of "Useless!" got him wincing, too, before she flung him off sideways. That was always interesting, the way the walls, floor, and ceiling seemed to twist and spin around him. But the clatter and bang when he finally hit one of those walls or the floor, he had to admit again, he just didn't care for it at all.
Still— "Sorry, Mistress Olive," he said into the thick brown carpet he found pressing against his face. He must've flown through the kitchen door and out into the dining room. That was lucky: a nice, quiet landing. Maybe he was getting lighter. Or maybe the mistress was getting better at throwing...
"Shut up!" Mistress Olive yelled behind him. Spike prepared himself for a kick, but at least here, he'd likely hit the curtains, drawn closed over the windows for the evening, or the relatively soft wood of the big table or the chairs.
The kick, though, didn't come. Only the slap-slap-slap of the mistress's shoes pounding out the kitchen's other door met his ears. "I hate you!" she was shrieking. "I hate you all!"
Her bedroom door slammed, but after a moment, Spike got his balance, bent his legs, pushed his arms against the carpet, and worked himself into a kneeling position, something he was a little proud of since he didn't have much in the way of knees.
"Spike?" an absolute song of a voice asked, and he craned his head around to see Rarity standing in the doorway that led to the front hall, her mane as always stylishly curled. "I was just coming to help with the dishes. Are you done already?"
And while he knew that it wasn't accurate to say that his heart raced whenever Rarity was around—he didn't have a heart, of course—he still loved her with every fiber optic cable of his being. He'd been programmed to, after all, and Master Simon had said more than once, "In a perfect world, Spike, you and Rarity would love each other forever."
Lost in contemplating Rarity's perfection, he forgot that she'd asked him a question till she asked it again: "Are you done with the dishes already?"
"Oh. Uhh, no." He stood with a sigh. "Mistress Olive said I was doing it wrong."
Her mouth going sideways, Rarity moved up beside him and patted his shoulder with a hoof. "Everything's wrong for her lately."
Torn between sorrow because the terrible thing Rarity had said was true and joy because Rarity was touching him, Spike wasn't paying as strict attention to himself as he should've been. Which was why he said, "I wish Master Simon was still here."
"Wish?" Twilight's all-too-familiar and all-too-peppy voice asked. "Did somepony say 'wish?'" She trotted in grinning, her horn glowing purple the way it did when her connection to the apartment's system was active.
Rarity tossed her mane. "That's the wrong ancient children's television program for our current settings, but still, hello, Twilight. We were just feeling sad because Mistress Olive's unhappy."
"Ah." Twilight nodded, and as much as Spike tried not to let his focus lock on those big, purple eyes, he found that he couldn't look away. "And so Spike here uttered the forbidden word," Twilight muttered.
Spike wanted to say that it took more than Mistress Olive screaming, "I wish you'd God damn stop saying 'wish!'" to make the word technically forbidden, wanted to say that Master Simon had always told them how important wishes were and that no one would get far if they weren't allowed to wish. But the undeniable force of Twilight's deep, deep gaze—she was the mobile portion of their controller, after all—stopped Spike from even moving his jaw.
"Twilight," Rarity said, but this time, her voice had an edge that Spike didn't often hear there. "You're being unpleasant."
"I'm doing my job." Twilight swung away to glare at her. Fortunately, that broke the contact so Spike could blink and move again, but then Twilight started to step slowly across the carpet toward Rarity. "Maybe that's something you'd like to think about for a change?"
His head spines falling at the thought that they might start arguing again, Spike stepped forward, one claw outstretched, and began to open his mouth once more, pleas on his tongue that they not fight. But Rarity also opened her mouth, the silver radiance of her horn showing that she'd connected to the apartment's entertainment systems, and—
Now, Spike was in love with her, of course, so he knew his opinion couldn't be trusted when it came to Rarity's singing. But to see Twilight stop, half close her eyes, and start swaying in perfect rhythm to the slow, rich, wordless melody Rarity created, that told Spike quite clearly how luscious, wonderful, and enchanting her music was.
She wrapped the song up much too quickly, and Spike's sigh paralleled Twilight's. "I'm sorry," Twilight said softly. "Because you're right, Rarity. I was being unpleasant. And you're right, too, Spike." When she turned, her eyes shimmered much more gently than before. "Things were a lot better when Master Simon was still here."
Spike nodded, not sure how else to respond, but Rarity said, "Thank you, Twilight, for doing your job. We're only safe, after all, since you keep the apartment running the way it ought to."
Twilight gave a faint smile, bowed her head slightly, and started for the doorway. "All any of us can do is what we're programmed to do."
Which wasn't technically true, Spike almost said. But Master Simon had told Spike to keep some things to himself even though he didn't like doing that since he and Rarity and Twilight were all part of the same system.
His thoughts a tangle, he waited till the squish-squish-squish of Twilight's hooves in the carpet had disappeared down the hall before he said, "I guess I'd better finish the dishes."
"I'll help!" Rarity gave a happy little hop that made Spike's non-existent heart flutter.
The way she helped, of course, was by standing at the foot of the stepladder Spike needed to reach the sink and singing sprightly working songs. But Spike always found that to be plenty helpful, so it didn't take him long to get the dishes washed and dried. Fortunately, Mistress Olive was short for a human, so all the dishes went in the kitchen's lower cupboards and drawers.
Putting the last of the silverware away, Spike nodded before hopping down from the ladder's lowest step. "And that's the end of that for another evening!"
"Hurrah!" Rarity gave another little hop, then leaned over and touched a kiss to Spike's cheek. "You're the best dragon assistant ever!"
He let himself enjoy the simulated gushing of his heart for a couple seconds longer than he really should've, but he couldn't ignore the real problem in the apartment forever. He wasn't programmed for that. So with a sigh, he asked, "What're we gonna do about Mistress Olive?"
Rarity's mouth went sideways again. "Why must we do anything?"
"'Cause she's not happy anymore."
Her mouth went even further sideways. "She never was happy, Spike. Not before Master Simon moved in, not while he was here, and not now after he left."
Spike had to raise a claw. "We don't know that first one for sure. I mean, I don't have any real clear memories from before Master Simon programmed us, so how can we say that Mistress Olive wasn't happy when we were still generic robots without faces or personalities or—?"
Rarity actually snorted, something Spike wasn't sure he'd ever heard her do. "Master Simon was wonderful in every way a person can be. He literally made us who we are, after all, took those characters from that Little Pony show and brought them to life in us! And the movies he used to have me call up to play? All black-and-white with those people who aren't even alive anymore?" She did a quick-stepping stationary dance, her hooves and grin flashing. "So much fun!"
Despite everything, Spike laughed. "He sure did love that one guy with his brothers and his glasses and his great big painted-on mustache, all right." Spike hadn't understood half the things the man in the movies had said—for some reason, there was a line about doing something when love flies innuendo that kept sticking in Spike's mind like a popcorn hull between his teeth even though he'd never actually eaten any popcorn—but Master Simon had asked Rarity to show five or six of those same movies over and over and over again, chuckling the whole time.
Mistress Olive had always just sat there during them. When she bothered to watch at all...
And that made Spike sigh again. "But Master Simon's not coming back, so we need to help Mistress Olive figure out a way to go on without him. A way for us all to go on without him."
"I suppose." Rarity had gone back to looking unhappy. "Well, if you've a plan, darling, what's my part in it?"
"Just stand by for now," Spike said instead of admitting that he didn't have a plan. "I'll call you when I need you, and I'll definitely need you." Feeling daring, he stood on his tipclaws to kiss her cheek and was rewarded when she gave the cutest little giggle.
He treasured that sound with each step his stubby little legs took down the front hall deeper into the apartment. Because he was almost entirely certain that the sounds he was going to hear very soon weren't going to be anywhere near as pleasant.
And the worst part? He didn't need to do any of it. Because before he'd left just over three weeks ago, Master Simon had given Spike the Maze and had told him, "Use this, and you'll be able to leave, too."
The Maze was a plastic domed circle about half as big as Spike's whole body. Spike looked at it at least four times a day in the laundry room cupboard behind the washing machine where Master Simon had told Spike to hide it. Filling the circle underneath the clear dome lay a whole series of colorful ramps and tunnels, bridges and spirals, holes and spires and a little round pyramid right in the center, everything just exactly the right size for the one silver metal ball that rattled and rolled around inside whenever Spike tipped the Maze the way Master Simon had shown him.
"Only you can do it, Spike," Master Simon had said. "Once you see the ball at the top of the pyramid, that'll spring a buncha subroutines inside you. They'll let you walk right out the door and make it so you never have to come back to this God damn hellhole."
But what about Rarity? Spike hadn't asked out loud. What about Twilight? What about Mistress Olive?
"Only you," Master Simon had said again as if he'd known what Spike was thinking. "And you can't tell anyone else, or it'll never work." It wasn't long after that, then, that two transport sleds had knocked on the apartment's front door, loaded Master Simon's stuff onto themselves, and left, Master Simon walking out behind them.
So for all that Spike had looked at the Maze four or five or sometimes six times a day since then depending on how bad things were with Mistress Olive, he'd never done more than jiggle it a little, navigating the ball through the first few curves and switchbacks along the outside rim of the whole thing.
Because leaving without Rarity? How could he even think about that?
Which was why he kept padding down the hallway toward Mistress Olive's room despite the crying that started pricking his ears from ahead. Not a loud sound, no, but it still got the spines tingling along the back of his neck.
In front of her door, Spike paused and took a breath he really didn't need to take—no lungs, after all. He couldn't reach the doorknob, of course, but Master Simon had programmed touch spots into all the doors about a foot off the ground to give Spike and the others access to all the rooms in the whole suite. "Mistress?" Spike called, reaching for the door's spot. "Is there anything I can get you before—?"
"Get out!" The door had only opened a couple inches, so whatever she threw—a shoe, Spike guessed—didn't really slam the door into his face. It more sort of pushed it kind of hard.
Of course, the various crashing noises made him wince, but Mistress Olive's continued shouting was even worse. "God damn Simon building you God damn kid show monsters! God damn programmers, all arrogant sons of bitches!" A couple loud thumps came from the bedroom, and the door flew open, Mistress Olive glaring down at him, her blue eyes rimmed with red, her blonde hair a mess, her pantsuit looking like she'd been crumpling it up. "First rule in QA? Never date a God damn programmer! And I knew that! Knew he'd screw up my life and want to control everything! 'Cause that's how God damn programmers work!"
Spike didn't try to stop himself from shaking: he'd tried that before, and it only made him shake more. "Mistress," he said, but that was as far as he got before her bare foot lashed out and caught him right in the chest.
"And I'm not your God damn mistress!" she shouted, the words plainly audible over the relatively mild thud of Spike hitting the hallway's wooden wall. "You three are Simon's monsters, and all that 'master' and 'mistress' crap, that was his thing, too! Whatever he did to my system to make you, I didn't want it, you understand? Didn't want you, didn't want any of it!"
Her voice was cracking; Spike couldn't look away as he slid down the wall to the floor. "The photos he sends me that I know he didn't take while he was here! The things he knows about me even though I never told him! His little texts and emails and voice messages: he's been God damn stalking me since I kicked him out! I've gone over every inch of the apartment's security code, and I can't find a God damn thing! I just want—!" Her face seemed to crumple, tears starting down her cheeks again. "I just want my God damn life back!" She lunged into the darkness of her room and slammed the door.
It took Spike another long moment to get his balance and stand, and when he did, he headed down the hall toward the other door into the kitchen, his thoughts a jumble. Mistress Olive's shout about wanting her life back, though, echoed and reechoed from the rounded points of his head spines to the tip of his tail. Because Spike wanted that, too. Not that he'd ever really had a life, of course, but—
But Master Simon had apparently given him a way to get one.
The kitchen's other door had the laundry room right there on the left, and Spike stepped through it with determination. What exactly he was determined to do, though, he wasn't quite sure. Could he really solve the Maze and abandon—?
A rattling reached him, then, a sound like metal rolling along plastic. His ears perked. It seemed to be coming from the basket in front of the dryer. Stretching, he peered over the edge—
And saw Rarity nestled among the clean towels, her front legs wrapped around the rim of the Maze. She was shifting it this way and that way, her whole body moving with the effort, the ball inside sliding up and down the little grooves and gutters in ways Spike had never seen during any of the times he'd tried. And as Spike stared, Rarity shimmied and spun the ball all the way up the path around the outside of the pyramid and plopped it right into the little cup at the very top.
Spike braced himself, but no fireworks went off, no sirens blared, no horns blew a fanfare. He couldn't keep quiet, though, and he muttered, "You solved the Maze..."
Rarity's head snapped over, her jaw dropping, her ears pulling back. "Spike? You know about the Maze?"
His thoughts jumping to multiple conclusions, Spike had to take a moment to get things organized in his head. During that moment, though— "It's not what you think!" Rarity more squeaked than said. She leaped onto all fours...and flipped the Maze over upside down.
"No!" Spike lost whatever order he'd managed to make of things in his head and sprang forward, trying to grab the Maze. "'Cause you solved it! And Master Simon said that meant—!"
"But it doesn't!" Losing her balance, Rarity tumbled backwards out of the basket; without thinking, Spike let the Maze go and threw himself under Rarity, cushioning her fall and catching her across his chest.
Several things took him a moment to realize: first, that he was lying on his back holding Rarity, the beautiful ivory hide of her back pressed against his own purple and green scales, and second, what she'd just said. "It doesn't?" he asked. "Doesn't what?"
"Doesn't work." With a sigh, Rarity wriggled around in his arms till all her hooves were on the ground and she was facing him. "Master Simon said it would start up all these secret subroutines that would let us go free! But, well, I solved the silly puzzle the first week after he left, and I haven't felt any different at all!"
"You—" Spike swallowed even though, of course, his throat didn't really do that. "You were going to leave?"
"No!" Her hoof began stroking the side of his head. "But every time I try to do anything—sing her a song or put on a movie for her or try to get a game started—Mistress Olive yells at me! So I just crawled into the cupboard to look at the Maze, was just, you know, fiddling around with it, and before I knew it, the ball was rolling right into the cup."
She shrugged, all Spike's nerves firing joyfully at the sensation. "Since then, I'd say that I've done it on the order of twenty times, and nothing's ever happened." Her voice got really quiet, and she leaned her head forward to rest gently against Spike's shoulder. "Do you think that Master Simon might have...lied to me?"
And yes, Rarity was touching him in ways he'd never considered possible before. But since a whole different set of conclusions was now jumping through his thoughts—conclusions that bothered him all the way down to his toes—Spike wouldn't let himself think about the touching. In fact—
Sliding out from under her, he pushed himself up till he was standing. "Twilight?" he called at the wall, knowing she would hear. "Could you please meet us at Mistress Olive's bedroom door?" He looked over at Rarity. "Mistress Olive told me she doesn't like it when we call her mistress, so we'll need to find out what she wants us to call her instead."
Rarity's mouth did that sideways thing again. "She doesn't want us to call her anything, I'll wager. She doesn't want us even to talk at all..."
Spike couldn't deny that, so he didn't bother trying. Instead, he stretched into the tips of his claws again and rummaged in the laundry basket till he felt the Maze. He grabbed it, held it to his chest, and started down the hallway.
"But—" Rarity moved into the space beside him. "Master Simon said not to tell anyone about the Maze."
"Master Simon isn't here." It still hurt to say, but with the things Spike had been thinking the last few minutes, it somehow didn't hurt nearly as much as it had earlier.
At the other end of the hallway, Twilight came trotting around a corner. Spike couldn't wave since the Maze took up both his hands, but Rarity sparked her horn at her.
"What's happening?" Twilight asked, then she stopped, her eyes widening. "Why do you have the Maze? How do you even know about it?"
Which unfortunately confirmed some of Spike's most recent conclusions. "Please trust me, Twilight, and please join us."
Moving shakily, Twilight came the rest of the way along the hall. Spike nodded and managed to balance the Maze enough against his chest so he could reach out and knock on Ms. Olive's door—maybe Ms. Olive would work to call her; he'd try that. "Also, Twilight," he said, "would you please initiate a full system lockdown immediately?"
Twilight's eyes went even wider, but her horn flashed, too, the constant background chatter of the internet vanishing from its place in Spike's head. "Thanks." Not getting an answer to his knock, Spike knocked once more before tapping the door open. "Ms. Olive?" he called.
She was just pushing herself into a sitting position on the bed and blinking at her phone, everything about her still wrinkled. "What the Hell? Why's the internet gone out?"
"Because you're right, Ms. Olive," Spike said. "Simon's been using Twilight, Rarity, and me as his creatures the last couple weeks to spy on you." He lifted the Maze. "He programmed a bunch of subroutines into the apartment's system and triggered them by having us work this puzzle."
Beside him, he heard both Rarity and Twilight gasp, but there wasn't time for him to do anything but keep going. "Right now, I've frozen all access to the wider net so Simon can't get in and erase what he did, but since I'm the AI butler, my lockdown order will only last another twenty seconds. If you want to get proof to turn over to the city's cybersecurity squad, Ms. Olive, you'll need to affirm the lockdown right away. Then we can get a specialty team in here to go through the apartment's code, find Simon's changes, and record them as evidence of his—"
"What?" Ms. Olive's mouth fell open, but then her jaw firmed up. "Damn! Yes! Affirm lockdown! Voice recognition passcode 'off with their heads'!"
"Wait." Twilight's horn flared again. "That...that worked! But I don't recognize the program it's running!"
"Yeah, I—" Ms. Olive's mouth went sideways a lot like Rarity's did. "I added some stuff after I kicked Simon out."
"Good." Spike relaxed a little. "'Cause if Twilight doesn't know about it, then Simon doesn't know about it either."
"But..." Rarity's beautiful voice sounded so small and lost, Spike felt his head spines shiver. "Are you saying Master Simon lied to all of us?"
His throat too tight to speak—even though he didn't have any real muscles in his neck—Spike could only nod.
Ms. Olive clenched a fist. "I knew you were monsters, knew I shouldn't trust you!" Uncurling her fist, she pointed a shaking finger at the door. "Get out! Now! All of you!"
Twilight bowed. "We can't leave, Ms. Olive. We're tied to the system here and don't—"
"No," Spike said, everything snapping into a pattern that he didn't much like, but one that he couldn't deny was true. "I think I can leave. So I will." He gave a bow of his own to Ms. Olive, turned, and stumped out into the hallway.
"Spike?" Rarity called after him, and most of his insides cringed at the pain in her tone. "You...what?"
Not trusting himself to speak, Spike forced himself to keep going, one stubby step after another, around the corner and down the hall till the front door loomed ahead of him.
That was when Rarity caught up to him, his mind so frazzled, he hadn't even heard her familiar galloping hoofs in the carpet. "Spike!" Her hoof knocked his shoulder and spun him around with more force than he'd been expecting. "You can't!" She didn't have tears in her eyes, of course—none of them were capable of crying—but her ears were folded and her lower lip quivering. "You can't leave..."
Several responses pushed at the back of his throat—that he didn't want to but had to; that this was the only thing that would work; that he was doing it for all their sakes. If his conclusions were right, though, this might be the last thing he ever said to her. So he instead shook his head and said, "Watch me."
Her hoof drew back against her chest. Turning, he took one more step and reached the door frame. A stretch, a tap, and he felt the apartment's security system scan him. It recognized him, overrode the security lockdown, and let him push the door open.
The hallway outside looked much bigger than anything inside. Spike had never seen it with his own actual eyes, and just the sheer enormity of it—and of what he was doing—almost stopped him before he'd even crossed the line that divided the thick brown of Ms. Olive's carpeting from the hallway's short gray.
He couldn't stop now, though. Everything depended on him. So he took one step, then another, then another, and just like that, he was almost two feet away from Ms. Olive's apartment. The sound of Rarity gasping only made his head spines twitch a little, and the door whooshing to click shut likely wouldn't have caused him any more reaction than that.
Except that the door closing cut him off from Twilight and the apartment's system. It was still on lockdown, after all.
Absolute silence roared through Spike's head, and that froze his leg in the act of moving forward. Cut off! Completely! From Twilight and Rarity and Ms. Olive and everything that made his life complete!
"It's okay, Spike," a voice said, a voice he knew but couldn't quite place in the middle of his processors overloading. Hands grabbed him under his arms, lifted him from the floor, tucked him against something warm and slightly squishy that tickled his olfactory sensors with the unmistakable aroma of—
Blinking, forcing his head to move, getting a grip on his other input devices, Spike saw that Master Simon was holding him to his chest, was moving the both of them through a door that looked very much like Ms. Olive's but wasn't. "Master Simon?" Spike asked, jumping to more conclusions. "You...you live next door to Ms. Olive?"
"We're two doors down and across the hall." Master Simon was still moving, carrying Spike through a carpet-less entryway and into what would've been Ms. Olive's dining room if they'd been in her apartment. Here, though, it was just a big, plain, mostly empty room, nothing on the bare wood floor but a folding table and a folding chair.
Even knowing the answer, Spike still asked, "Did you always live so close?"
Master Simon snorted. "Like I'd live in this dump."
Before his thoughts could start spiraling out of control again, Spike focused on something obvious and literal to help rein them in. "Well, you could make the place much more homey if you got some furniture," he started, but Master Simon's barking laugh cut him off.
"Ah, Spike." Master Simon set Spike down on the table. "I'd almost forgotten how cute I made you." He bent to reach under the table, then, and pulled out something Spike hadn't noticed. Which seemed odd because, well, there were so few items in the room. How had he not—?
Except that even now, looking right at the thing Master Simon was setting on the table, Spike found that he couldn't quite manage to see it. Master Simon's fingers were moving over the surface of something roughly the size of a dinner plate, but all Spike could make out was a rough rectangle of swirling fog, parts of it shifting from black to gray to off-white in a seemingly random pattern.
"Careful, now," Master Simon said, his gaze clearly focused on whatever it was. "You AI constructs aren't allowed even to perceive these sorts of programming tablets, so you might burn out your visual receptors if you try."
Without meaning to, Spike made a little squeaking sound before forcing his head up to watch Master Simon's face. "That seems awfully dangerous to be carrying around..."
Master Simon gave another little barking laugh. "If the boss knew I had it out of the office, yeah, that'd get very dangerous, especially for my career." His eyes, still looking at the tablet-thing, hardened and narrowed. "But it's the only way Olive'll learn her place."
As always, Spike didn't need to swallow, but he wanted to. "What'll you be doing to Mistress Olive, Master Simon?"
A twitch rattled across his forehead. "Just teaching her a lesson." His smile came back, and he looked up. "Or actually, it's you and Rarity and Twilight who'll be doing it, but you'll like that, right, Spike? Teaching Mistress Olive something she really, really, really needs to know?"
Spike could almost hear the tearing sounds inside his head as various parts of him pulled in different directions. "I guess," he managed to say. "But what can I ever teach her?"
"Manners," Master Simon said, his lips tightening and his voice getting growly. "Respect. How to act when a man notices her, and how she should treat the love of her life." He shook his head and cleared his throat, his lips all smiles again. "'Cause you know all about manners and respect and love, don't you, Spike?" His hands went back to the tablet Spike couldn't see. "And once I get done reprogramming you, you'll be able to take over her security system and let me in any time she needs a little reprogramming herself."
The smile had gone, and the growl returned. "I didn't think she'd ever have the gall to turn against me, so I ended up locked out of my own security protocols. I had to get one of you three to come outside to me before I could—" A buzzing sprang up inside Spike's head. "Hold still," Master Simon said, his voice suddenly echoing. "This won't hurt a bit."
But then something crashed out in the front hall, and a much louder voice yelled, "Simon Bonner! Put your hands up and move away from the tablet! You're under arrest!"
"Damn!" Master Simon shouted, his fingers tapping at the device even more quickly, and—
And the whole world stuttered around Spike.
Between one blink and the next, he was amazed to see, the bare walls and windows of Master Simon's dining room snapped away and shifted into the laundry room of Ms. Olive's apartment.
Spike blinked several more times just to make sure everything was staying put, and Rarity popped up in front of him, her eyes almost glowing. "Spike!" she warbled, and she was wrapping her wonderful, wonderful forelegs around him. "You're active!"
Breathless despite, of course, not actually breathing, Spike hugged her back, pressing his face into the sweet spot where the curl of her mane reached down her neck. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again..." he muttered.
"When you left," Rarity more sighed than said, "you told me to watch you. And after a minute, I realized you meant it literally. So I ran to Ms. Olive and Twilight."
A purple glow shone behind Rarity, and Spike made his ocular sensors focus past Rarity to Twilight, looking very somber. "With Ms. Olive's permission," Twilight said, "I opened a narrow-beam channel to monitor the data you were receiving, Spike. So we were listening when Master Simon grabbed you and pulled you into that apartment just down the hall. And once Ms. Olive saw that Master Simon had an override tablet, she called cybersecurity."
More motion, this time from the doorway behind Twilight, brought Ms. Olive into view, her face and clothing cleaned up. That was when Spike's internal processors finally finished updating, and they told him that nine days had passed since he'd stepped outside expecting Master Simon to come looking for him. "Thank you, Ms. Olive," he said, bowing as well as he could with Rarity still hugging him.
"No." Ms. Olive blew out a big breath. "Thank you, Spike. And I...I'm sorry for everything these past couple weeks. I knew Simon was hacking my system, and when you brought me that bypass hub he'd left with you, all I could think was that he'd already programmed you against me and was having you boast about it." She covered her eyes with a hand. "God, what did I ever see in him?"
Rarity slid around so she was facing Ms. Olive but still had her right flank touching Spike's shoulder. "He was fun. I mean, when he wasn't being a complete and total jerk."
Ms. Olive gave a coughing little laugh. "Yeah." She lowered her hand. "Cybersecurity kept you for a week and a half as evidence, and we just got you back today to reboot you."
Spike did a quick diagnostic and didn't find anything out of place. Except, of course, for his, Rarity's and Twilight's continued existence. "Forgive me, Ms. Olive, but you made it quite clear that you never wanted us here in the first place. So why would you reboot me when you could've—?"
"Don't," Ms. Olive said. "I'm still not sure if I'll regret this." Her smile was a little tight, but it was an actual smile as far as Spike could tell. "But, I mean, you've earned it, all three of you. If you'd been standard automatons, you wouldn't've had the personality protocols to get in the way of using that bypass hub, and Simon would've been able to hack in here even more deeply than he did without actually getting his hands on one of you."
She squatted on the laundry room floor, everything about her very serious. "You used yourself as bait, Spike, to lure Simon out into the open where we could get the evidence against him." Slowly, her hand reached out to touch the shoulder Rarity wasn't leaning against. "The investigator said that, acting the way you did, you maybe saved my life. So..." She swallowed and shrugged.
Not knowing what else to do, Spike shrugged, too. "Well, we are supposed to help you, Ms. Olive. It's what we are and what we do. But Simon tried to program us to hurt you, and maybe if I'd been able to solve the Maze myself, it would've reprogrammed me, too. But, well—" The line that he didn't understand from that one of Master Simon's movies came to him, and since he didn't understand what was happening here either, he decided it was appropriate. "Love flies innuendo. Sometimes all we can do is follow our hearts even when we don't know what they're telling us and don't actually have them anyway."
"God," Ms. Olive muttered. "But all right." She stood and turned. "Controller? Or, uhh, Twilight, is it? Let's double check the apartment code to make sure cybersecurity cleared all Simon's hacks out."
"Yes, ma'am." Grinning, Twilight touched a salute to her forehead.
Ms. Olive nodded, and her gaze when she looked back over her shoulder seemed a little warmer than before. "And you two," Ms. Olive said. "Anything you can do to help, I...I'd really appreciate it."
Rarity's horn glowed. "I have a playlist prepared that will both soothe and inspire!"
"And I—" Spike had to think a second. "I can get snacks!"
That got another tiny slip of a smile from Ms. Olive. "OK," she said. "And I promise not to be so much of a bitch anymore." Her smile got sharper. "At least not to you guys." She headed for the hallway, Twilight right at her heels.
His non-muscles relaxing even further, Spike let the nearly extinguished spark of happiness inside him kindle into something closer to a little flame. Maybe they could all get back together again and start healing now that Simon—
"Oh, and Spike?" Rarity looked back at him just as sprightly violin music began trickling from the walls around them. "If you were trying to quote Groucho Marx from that movie, you got it wrong."
"What?" Spike blinked at her.
The music swelled a bit, and Rarity began tapping her hoof to it. "What he says is: 'Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo.'"
Spike did some more blinking. "But that doesn't make any sense."
"I don't think it's supposed to." Stepping forward in time with the music, she headed for the door. "You were getting snacks for Ms. Olive?"
"I was." With a shake of his head, Spike let it go and started for the kitchen.
