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Spike's Unexpected Growth Spurt

by Ebony Horn

Chapter 1: Chapter One: A Growing Problem

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Chapter One: A Growing Problem

Life in Ponyville was always a funny sort of thing. You could never be too sure when a rogue monster would attack, an ancient evil arise, or a forgotten alicorn make her first debut. Thankfully, for one Twilight Sparkle, the Golden Oaks Library was always a safe haven. Full of books, parchment, and ink, it was a sanctuary of knowledge that had never breached from without.

Within, however, was a different story, as made evident by the large amount of dragon bulk currently filling its kitchen.

"Ouch!" Spike recoiled in pain as his head bounced off of the firm oak of the top cabinet. He rubbed his bruised spike, glaring up at the offending piece of wood. The cabinet door, for its part, sat innocuously in place, quite unmindful of the death glare currently aimed in its direction.

"Spike! Come on! The omelets are going to burn!"

He blinked. A shake of his head helped to clear away the stars. "Oh—r-right! I've got it. Just let me—whoa!"

As he'd turned to nod over his shoulder, the side of his head had made contact again with the cabinet. The edge had clipped right across his ear, and it was that ear whose lobe was currently throbbing a bright, angry red.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch!" Spike hopped up and down on one leg, his palms cradled around his sensitive ear. "Ouch!"

"Spike!"

He froze in place. Slowly, not daring to pull his claws away from his throbbing extremity, he turned to face the voice that had called over his shoulder.

Twilight looked up at him, one eyebrow quirked in a disciplinary fashion, and the other turned upward in a surprised sort of flinch. "Calm down, buddy," she said. "You're making the floor shake."

Spike blinked, his neck craning forward to make sure that he wouldn't hit the darn cabinet a third time. Hesitantly, he lifted a clawed foot up, held it up in the air for a second, and then slammed it down on the floor. Sure enough, a series of vibrations echoed through the room, sending ripples through a glass of orange juice, rattling the windows, and setting Twilight's mane on end.

He grinned sheepishly. "Heh."

Twilight rolled her eyes, sighing. A purple aura rippled around the edges of her horn, and she turned her head back toward the stove. "Seriously, Spike. You really need to take better care with what you're doing. Especially when you're...that big."

Spike looked down over himself, and then back up at her. He snickered. Standing at nearly six feet tall—a full two feet in height above the average mare—he truly towered over Twilight, his draconic frame filling up much more of the kitchen than it had when he was just a hatchling. Even Bic Mac had to look up to him now, if only a little. Muscles—not many, but a few—rippled underneath his diamond-hard skin, and he'd come a long way from the pudgy toddler he'd been when they'd first moved to Ponyville.

He looked down at her and flashed a fanged smile. "Oh, don't worry about it, Twi. I can handle it, no—"

"Oh, no!"

Twilight stood by the stove, her magic levitating a pan beside her head. She looked down into the pan, wincing at what she found there. "The eggs are all burned."

Spike swallowed. Whoops.

She turned it to the side, letting him see. Sure enough, a cluster of yolks inside had been singed to a char. He sniffed, nearly flinching at the smell. It smelt worse than rubber, and reminded him of Sweetie Belle's cooking a bit more than he'd care to admit.

"Heh." He awkwardly scratched the back of his neck with his claws. "I, uh, can make more. Really."

A soft smile crossed Twilight's face. "Oh, Spike. It's fine. We'll just go to Joe's new shop to pick up some doughnuts, and—"

"No, really!" Spike's face lit up as he turned and lumbered over to the fridge. He opened the door, feeling around inside. "I can just grab a few more eggs and—"

Crunch. With that sinking feeling in his chest again, he felt a cold, viscous liquid running between his claws. He didn't need to look to know what it was. "Oops."

Twilight groaned. "That's the third time this month! Spike, you really do need to learn to control your own strength!"

"Twilight, you worry too much!" Spike pulled his hand out of the fridge, cringing internally at the sight of raw egg dripping down his claws. He momentarily pondered licking up the bits of eggshell that still clung to his scales, but one look at Twilight suggested otherwise. "I—I can clean this up, no problem!"

"Spike, stop!"

Spike brushed it off as he took a long stride toward the broom closet. "I've got this! I can clean it up! I can—"

He stopped, frozen in place.

Twilight's eyes widened behind him. "Spike? What's wrong?"

He couldn't answer, at first. It was like an eggshell had been cracked over his head, but one flicker of his eyes upward proved that his spines were yolk-free. He felt woozy, a wave of water running through his ears. Licking his lips, he tried to take a step, and found he couldn't.

"Ith—ith okay, Twilight." His words slurred in their deeper tones, and he felt his forked tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. "I—I—"

There it was again—the wooziness—and it was back with a vengeance. He felt a pounding behind his eyes, and a churning in his stomach. Without another word, he doubled over, his wide face turning green.

"What're you—"

Twilight looked like a deer caught in a floodlight. "Oh, no. Nuh-uh, mister. You are not getting sick all over my new carpet!"

Spike gurgled vainly. His stomach was fighting a losing battle with his liver, and he winced as another wave of nausea washed over him. The air seemed to swim before his eyes. With an errant twitch, he felt his right bicep throb, complaining loudly. His left soon followed it, both muscles filled with a pain that was quickly becoming worse than any cramp. His face flushed an even brighter green, the color mixing with the native purple to become a slightly queasy shade of puce.

"No! You march right to the bathroom, or I'll—I'll—"

With a stream of lukewarm fire and an earth-shattering retch, Spike was violently, terribly sick all over Twilight Sparkle.

Before she summon up the slightest hint of a lecture, he dropped to the floor with a thud.


Twilight looked down at Spike with a mixture of shock, anger, and disgust.

"Ee-yuck," she finally spat, slinging a glop of vomit aside with a swing of her head. A quick cleaning spell saw the rest of it gone, though the smell still lingered. She wrinkled her nose. It said something about her, she felt, that she could tell that it smelled like spoiled amethyst and rotten emerald.

There were bigger fish to fry than personal hygiene, though. A clinical part of her mind noted that her assistant had just been violently sick and then dropped to the floor. Her brother assistant, a slightly more clinical part noted. Her brother had just passed out, and was now lying in the floor in a puddle of evaporated vomit.

Her eyes opened wide, a sudden adrenaline rushing through her veins. Instinctually, her wings flared out, and a charge of magic began running through her horn. Without even consciously doing it, she'd already teleported the two of them up to her bedroom and levitated the blankets over Spike's gangly limbs.

"Oh, my poor Spike," she murmured, reaching up and feeling for a fever. It was a rather difficult measurement, though, as dragons' base temperatures tend to be much higher than their pony counterparts. After a few, hesitant moments during which she debated between "volcanic" and simply "burning orchard," she finally settled on something moderately in-between and lowered her hoof.

Well. That was something, at least. It looked like he wasn't horribly sick—dragons did have terribly strong constitutions, after all. She glanced down over his long, lanky body, thoughts flickering through her head. What to do...what to do...

Chances were, he'd just eaten a bad gemstone over the past week and its chemical structure was coming back to bite him. A small, slightly-more-reassured smile came to her face. Yes; that had to be it. If time went by and it looked like something serious, than she'd have Nurse Redheart take a look at him (assuming the nurse even knew how to deal with dragon physiology, which was, admittedly, doubtful); if everything seemed fine, then Twilight had no doubt that Spike would be back on his oversized feet in no time.

A fond smile crossed her face. One wing curled around his chest as the other took hold of the blanket, tugging it down to (unsuccessfully) cover his much longer legs. "Don't worry," she whispered. "You'll be just fine. Everything will be just fine."

She turned away, wings curling back around her sides. As she reached the door, she heard a muffled snort, followed by a grunt.

Yup, she thought, giggling to herself. That's Spike all right. With a final, fond chuckle, she closed the door behind her and trotted down the stairs.

It was almost a pity she hadn't turned around. If she had, she might have been able to see the too-short bedspread looking a little bit shorter, inching its way up Spike's legs with each passing second.


Spike wasn't uncomfortable. If anything, he felt good. The nausea and pain from earlier had largely subsided, and had been replaced by a rather warm, pleasant feeling that filled his system with a tingly sort of sensation. His two oversized fangs poking out over his lower lip, he snuffled into a pillow and then turned over on his stomach.

Sleep felt good. It was more than just sleep, though, his unconscious mind decided. The tingling feeling had spread throughout his chest and then to his arms; his heartbeat pulsed through his entire body like a strong, beating drum. With each beat, in fact, it seemed that the feeling of warmth grew. And grew. And then grew again.

Spike's weight pushed against the mattress, lowering it closer to the floor. It would have taken a sharper eye to notice at first, but his limbs were gradually lengthening, second by second. At first, it was only an inch or so—barely noticeable in an already-towering dragon. Fairly soon, though, his arms were hanging off the sides of the bed, and his spines pushing against the wooden headboard.

Spike was growing, and not in a subtle way, either. His chest swelled outward with each new breath, retaining some of its volume as he exhaled. Soon enough, his leaner chest had grown a pair of respectable-looking pectoral muscles, poking out beneath his chin and swelling with each expansion of his lungs. His arms, too, looked more than a little wider than when he'd first been laid out; his biceps bulged noticeably beneath the rustling sheets that covered his growing body.

It was clear that this was no ordinary growth spurt, but Spike's unconscious mind neither noticed nor cared. Instead, he only smiled to himself and spread his legs a bit wider, the swell of muscle between his thighs pushing them just a tiny bit apart. His stomach rippled and firmed until the beginnings of a six-pack were spread across his abdomen, his hips shaped without a drop of baby fat on them. His legs, still growing outward and away from the rest of his body, soon stretched out even further over the edge of the bed—his feet had already been dangling over the edge—until his knees had reached the very end of the mattress.

He snored, the deep vibrations shaking the sheets and fluttering through the curtains. His arms were as wide around as large melons, now, and his adolescent frame now filled the entirety of Twilight's bed. With a crash, his feet fell to the ground, his massively-oversized claws digging into the soft wood as he fidgeted in his sleep.

Spike was clearly much bigger by now; where once he'd been a scarce two feet taller than the average pony, he now was at least twice Twilight's height from head to toe. He groaned, that warm, pleasant feeling fluttering in his chest again, and licked his lips. His dreams were filled with an enormous pile of gemstones, piled three mountains high, and all ripe for his taking. With a gasp and a rush of happiness, dream Spike leapt into the air and dove into the mound of food. He piled them into his mouth, eating and eating and eating...

...and growing and growing and growing. He groaned again as his extending frame finally slowed to a stop. By now, his formerly-gangly limbs were packed with muscle, each arm as wide around as a pony's torso. When he snored, the whole bed shook, and the mattress was dangerously low to the floor under his several-hundred-pound weight. His abs had by now formed into a clear six-pack, and when he blearily scratched his stomach in his sleep, his claws scratched against a pile of bulky, diamond-hard scales.

By now, Spike was undeniably huge. Gigantic, even. Yet he himself remained none the wiser, blissfully snoring as his limbs stretched and flexed to their full, unhindered length. The blanket, now laughably small, fluttered to the ground. By now, it was barely enough to cover Spike's bulging chest, let alone any other part of his body.

And still, Spike slept on.


"I'm really happy that you were able to find the time to come over today, Rarity. I knew you'd like this series."

Rarity gave Twilight a scandalized look. "Why, of course, dear!" She tutted loudly, clicking her tongue against her upper lip. "When I heard that you'd gotten the latest shipment of books by Sarah Clopwell, I simply had to take a look for myself. Now, where does this one go?"

Twilight chuckled, her lavender aura enveloping a short stack of books, each with a different-colored ribbon on its cover. "The Romance section is off to your right. They should be alphabetized by author." She paused. "And to be honest, I thought you might still be a little upset over...well..."

"Caramel? Pshaw." Rarity sniffed, tossing her mane over her shoulder—though making sure not to muss it up in the process. "The foalish stallion really didn't do anything for me. Really, darling. I'm sure I'm better off without him. Now, you said the books go over here?"

Twilight nodded.

"Very good." Rarity gave a single, curt nod, three books following her as she trotted between the shelves. She liked to hum as she worked, browsing through the shelves for the right home for her books. Sweetie Belle had just come up with the most darling song the other day, and she really did wonder why—

It took her a second to make sure that it had been the ground that had shook and not just her. Rarity put a hoof to her head to steady herself—though more to reassure herself of her coiffure than of any real cranial discomfort—and blinked over at the end of the row. "Twilight," she called, somewhat uncertainly. "Did you hear that?"

Alas—the only reply that she heard was loud humming and the muffled sound of turning pages. Rarity nearly sighed. Really: the poor dear simply had to find a way to control her compulsive reading. A means to interface with the outside world would surely be a start.

Reluctantly, she trotted to the end of the row, her trio of books still floating forgotten behind her. The main room of the library soon came into view, as well as the staircase that led up to the upper levels. As she noticed a shadow coming down from the steps above, she smiled to herself; the spines and obvious tail casting the shadow meant that Spike had evidently woken up from his nap. Still, though, something nagged at the back of her mind.

Why is the floor shaking?

Her idle thought was quickly answered, though, when Spike's shadow reached the final stair, and the dragon himself came into view.

Her hoof automatically flew up to her horn, her eyes widening in surprise. Sure enough, a purple-and-green-spined dragon stood there on the steps—but this was no lanky teen, no gangly adolescent. This was a true man of a dragon—a god, almost—his toned and towering body filling the staircase that he descended from. Spike had been nowhere near this huge—a barely-adequate description, she reminded herself, eyes roving hungrily over his muscled body—when she'd last seen him. This dragon—this beautiful, wondrous dragon—had to be twice her size, almost. More!

His arms were thick with corded, bulging muscle; his chest was packed with layer after layer of powerful, stacked strength. Each one of his claws could have taken her up with ease and—she nearly fainted with awe—held her up as though she were no more than a stuffed animal.

His tail was an enormous, extra limb, swinging behind him and knocking into the walls with each thunderous step he took. His clawed feet—oh, how could she have ever called them "small?" The things were simply enormous!—dug deep into the wood, often crushing three or four steps beneath them each time Spike moved forward.

Finally, he emerged into the library's main room in all of his titanesque glory. His muscle rippled powerfully with each breath he took, his arms bulging nearly as large as his head as he took a final step forward. He leaned forward, bowing down and slouching so that his head only scraped the ceiling. Rarity stared, too dumbfounded to do more than take it all in.

"Uh." It took her a moment to realize that the rich, deep vibrations that had rippled through her body were, in fact, Spike's voice. His enormous shadow fell over her, and he licked his lips with a tongue that would have covered her entire face. "Hey, Rarity."

It was simply too much.

Rarity fell back, fainting onto a conveniently-placed pile of books. The last thing that she heard before passing out completely was Twilight's voice, calling her name.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two: The Elephant in the Room Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes
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