Chapter 38: The Incredibly Emotional Thing That Can’t Really Be Called A Breakup Because The Two Creatures Involved Were Never Really Together of Spike the Dragon

“W-What’s going on? W-Why’re guys kissing?”

Spike’s confused stammering made the married couple of the triple…group…thing that really needed an update in the Equestrian language so I knew just what the hell to call couples that included three or more ponies beyond a simple term like herd, since herd was the term for polygamous relationships that had tied the knot, looked at the dragon. “Because we’re dating?” Cadence answered uneasily before she threw out a wing to bring the uneasy marshmallow unicorn closer. “And as I just told Rarity that we survived a near death experience, emotions tend to run high. It’s all rather basic, really.”

The announcement made Spike’s entire body suffer a minor spasm that straightened all of his limbs out before he kind of just froze on the spot.

As all the ponies waited for Spike to process the information, I caught sight of Rarity straining upwards to whisper into Cadence’s ear through her teeth. “I thought you two were going to tell him!”

“What’re you talking about?” Shining asked from the other side of the alicorn.

Rarity moved her head around the back of Cadence’s neck. “The two of you said you were going to tell your family in Canterlot about us. Spike lived in Canterlot at the time! How come he didn’t know?”

While the…group that included three ponies I’m pretty sure were doing it shared some confused looks that were becoming more guilty by the second, Twilight landed next to me right as Rainbow came down on the other side of her and looked over to the two of us. “Uh…what’s going on?” my little pegasus asked.

The strange shock I Smelled coming from Twilight probably meant her face matched my own in the way of disbelief as I looked over to Rainbow. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Rainbow,” Twilight said in a deadpanned tone. “Spike had a crush on-”

“TWILIGHT!” Pinkie’s voice rang in my ears as the pink party pony just kind of appeared right in front of us with a trail of pinkness behind her. There was an odd scowl on her face that just looked out of place on the pony with the poofy mane. Even her eye color seemed a bit more…fiery before she drawled out a single word. “For-Ever!”

The sheer intensity of Pinkie’s gaze forced the alicorn back before her common sense apparently kicked in. “Wait, you’re talking about-Pinkie!” she snapped as a wide-eyed expression became one of mild annoyance. “I don’t think that promise really matters anymore.”

“It was a Pinkie Promise Twilight,” Pinkie insisted. “A Pinkie. Promise!”

I sighed and looked over to Rainbow Dash. “Spike has a big crush on Rarity.”

As Rainbow’s face went through a weird series of expressions from mild surprise to ones where I could practically hear her thoughts asking how she had missed something so obvious.

Twilight glared at Pinkie. “How come you’re not mad at her for telling secrets?” she grumbled.

“Well duh, Fae-Fae never made a Pinkie Promise…relating to that anyway,” she added after a second of thought.

The pink and purple pony rolled their eyes at each other, and then smiled before Twilight let out a giggle.

“Rainbow,” Applejack said as she trotted up to the blue mare’s other side. “Yer seriously tellin’ me you didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout Spike and Rarity?”

The pegasus’s expression changed to match Twilight’s. “Well excuse me for not caring-er, butting into somepony…dragon’s personal life!”

AJ gave Dash a Southern chuckle and shook her head. “Head in the clouds.”

With Applejack so close to me, my psychic stomach rumbled and I did my best to ignore how cute the farm pony looked with the little dots on her coat that looked like freckles and that hat she always wore. Not to mention her flanks that were as toned as Dash’s, but with her earthiness giving her more muscle that made me miss my hands and their ability to just dig into a girl’s rear.

God damn it, I thought to myself as I couldn’t get the image of laying belly to belly on top of Applejack in her barn, with a pile of hay underneath us while a nice sheen of sweat covered her after a hard day’s work that I was helping her cool down from with my tongue in her mouth and another part of my anatomy I currently didn’t have somewhere else.

Why did Twilight have to mention sex back at the castle? We’re not going to be in bed for plenty more hours, I thought to myself while reminding myself that the last thing I wanted to do was try going after another girl on top of all the relationship problems I already had.

Yeah sure, Applejack was the pony equivalent to a down to earth, corn-fed Midwestern girl with plenty of sense in her head and a body that any man who had been cursed by a sun goddess to recognize and react to pony beauty would give their left leg for…but I had to remind myself that I held off Fluttershy’s sexiness enough that I could resist AJ’s allure.

Even if I was more than a bit hungry after saving all of Equestria.

Good God did I need to get laid.

A sigh escaped from Shining’s mouth drew my attention to the other conversation that I latched onto like a life preserver. “Well of course we told my parents about you Rarity.”

“Although, Spike might have been in his room at the time,” Cadence added hesitantly. “And by then everypony was focused on Omnifarious when dinner started, so the fact Shining and I had a fillyfriend kind of became old news.”

The conversation of the horny group literally made Spike snap out of his stupor as a jerk of his head moved all of his attention onto Rarity. “Wait…you… You knew how I…about how I…felt?” he whined in one of those pathetic little boy tones that kids used when they found out that Santa Claus had in fact died over a thousand years ago.

The trip to the Crystal Palace was muted. Not the quiet kind of muted, as Rarity did her best to try and console Spike without any real success before Shining pulled her away. But muted on the usual kind of super happy fun time emotions that usually accompanied not dying by giant monster.

As Cadence and Shining walked with Rarity up to the castle, I got flanked by Twilight and Dash as alicorn magic hauled the luggage that Spike wasn’t in any mood to carry, while Fluttershy, Pinkie and AJ brought up the rear and the dragon that sat down on Pinkie’s back.

Personally, I didn’t see how Spike could have missed Rarity’s…kind disinterest in him. Although she never outright shot him down, and let him hang out with her, Rarity spent all her time talking to ‘little’ Spikey-Wikey as if he was a baby. It sent a pretty clear message to anyone who decided to listen. Sure there’s the old adage of love is deaf/dumb/blind and a level of retarded that makes even Spongebob seem intelligent, there was a limit to that stuff.

Right?

“Well what was a I supposed to do?” Rarity asked Cadence on the subject of Spike’s obsession. “It was just a harmless crush! He would have gotten over it in time. Found somepony else closer to his age. I couldn’t break his little heart.”

I looked over to Twilight as the royal couple and their consort shared a bunch of uneasy looks, probably torn between agreeing with Rarity and being angry about her letting things go as far as they did. Or maybe with how she secretly passed the drama bomb off to them in the hopes of having to avoid the fallout of Spike hearing the news. But hell, they were ponies, I had already learned my ability to read their emotions was a long way from truly guessing what when on as far as coherent thoughts. The only thing I knew for certain was that all three of them were upset.

More than Twilight was at least. The alicorn seemed about 99% less panic stricken than I thought she should have been. I couldn’t help but ask why.

My little pony sighed and hung her head. “Well it’s not like I didn’t know this was coming,” she mumbled. “Rarity’s twice his age. Frankly, I’d be more disturbed if they did go out. It would be like...Trixie dating those two colts from school! Give him some ice cream at dinner for the next few nights, listen to him complain a few times, and he’ll get over it.”

It was a perfectly logical way of dealing with the situation that any human adult would use. However, the fact that I was a human adult that got transported to a magical land of talking ponies and got pretty read up on magic while posing as a guard helped my rather bleak outlook on life consider a more terrifying possibility that was open to Spike.

“You don’t think he’s going to do something stupid and desperate?” I asked in a low voice.

Rainbow looked over to me, and Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Like what? Try and convince Rarity to run away from Shining Armor and be with him by showing off or something?”

For some reason I felt like a heel for suggesting what I was about to, but…it had to be said. “Something like a love potion,” I mumbled. “And I can think of at least three different things back at your castle that I could use to turn Rarity into my own personal plaything.” One of which was actually made for sex toy transformation mental manipulation. If I could destroy the thing without causing an explosion that cursed every pony in then thousand miles to a life-long heat or worse, I would have. But since all that magic stuff was unpredictable, there it sat.

Twilight glared at me. “How could you even suggest something like that?” she demanded through gritted teeth.

“Because it’s a choice I have to make every day,” I told her with a frown. “Not to turn Pinkie into my own personal music box, or when I met all six of you girls, I could have used changeling magic to make you like me. I could have reassured Rainbow at the tryouts instead of letting her agonize over her choice, or made her love me the first time we asked her out instead of letting my heart be crushed. It is the number one go to option for changelings, so yeah, I’m going to bring it up.”

The glare Twilight was shooting me with lessened just a tad. “Well Spike’s not a changeling.”

I sighed in response. “You’re right,” I agreed before pausing for dramatic effect and putting on my serious face. “He’s worse.”

That brought the glare back on full force, and even got Rainbow to frown at me. “Excuse me?” Twilight mumbled in an even tone.

“Spike is a foal. Now, he’s followed you around all his life, so he’s smart. But that’s the big problem,” I explained. “He knows how to do something, but not when, and if it should be done at all. Add that to a panicky little broken heart, and it’s a recipe for disaster…like when you turned Ponyville into a mob over a doll.”

I really hated pulling out the old Smarty Pants thing on Twilight like that. Not just for the knife in the heart that it was, but because ponies really didn’t rub each others noses in past mistakes. They got over it and went on. Even Trixie didn’t get more than a single unfolding of Twilight’s wings as if to say ‘I’M AN ALICORN BITCH!’ before Twilight made it clear to the unicorn that being a mini-goddess didn’t mean Trixie had to bow and scrape like she had thought the second time they met in class.

But on the other hand, I wasn’t a pony, and neither was Spike. He was a dragon, all of whom I had observed to be douche bags that either didn’t care about others, killed at the drop of a hat, or murdered unborn children for fun. Spike may have decided what he was didn’t make him who he was, but genetics always has some kind of say in personality no matter how much nurturing is done.

Twilight didn’t seem too disturbed by the reminder though. There was no flinching, or drawing away. It also didn’t stop her from arguing. “That was an accident. What you’re suggesting has Spike mixing a potion or stealing something! He…he would never do that!”

The intensity of Twilight’s glare cowed me pretty good.

“Well, maybe we should at least talk to him or something, ya know.”

I looked over to my blue angel of salvation with her rainbow hair and silently vowed to give her the best night of her life as soon as I could. Not the usual teat sucking and attention beneath the tail either. I intended to give her everything she wanted and more for saving my ass.

“Not that I think he’s going to go nuts or anything,” she quickly added, “but you know, he probably is gonna need somepony to talk to…when he’s ready.”

Twilight’s annoyance lessened, but I could Smell it was still there as she turned her attention to the pegasus. “Rainbow, I know what I’m doing.”

“Oh yeah?” she replied before flapping her wings a little and getting a height advantage on Twilight. “Out of the three of us, which ones have been dumped and laughed at by the stallion they had been crushing on ever since they possibly could?”

That made Twilight’s ears lower while I grit my teeth at the comeback. Not at Rainbow’s attitude, but the core reason behind it.

Back during the royal wedding, my little pegasus had finally manned up, or mared up, and asked Soarin of the Wonderbolts if he wanted to go out with her on a date. While Rainbow hadn’t been clear on the details, the end result had left her feeling as if no one would ever find her attractive until Celestia proved otherwise by making out with her during our first date.

Although my first reaction was to cripple the sorry bastard before scarring him to the point ponies would puke upon looking at him, time had allowed me to look back on things and allow Equestria to do its karma thing. I had already seen the douche get into one accident at Rainbow Falls because he’d been checking out the Cloudsdale cheerleaders. So when the idiot caused Cloudsdale to lose the Games thanks to some well placed quintuplets with hot plots shouting his name and shaking their secret changeling pussies at him, I would be there to point and laugh as Soarin flew into the stands and crashed.

The last of Twilight’s indignation faded. “Well…okay, you’ve got a point there.”

But it wasn’t like Spike was just sitting around moping. Oh no, he was riding Fluttershy like nobody’s business. Not in the ’rebound girlfriend’ kind of way, but the whole on the back of a horse kind. I found it a little curious as to why she got the dragon, but it became pretty obvious Spike had wanted the sympathetic ear that Twilight apparently never gave him in regards to the Rarity situation.

“How could they do that to me?” Spike asked in a whiney voice.

“Oh…um…well…w-what do you mean they?”

“Shining Armor and Rarity!” Spike went on, obviously more to himself than the pegasus with the way he threw his hands up into the air. “It’s like being stabbed in the back and having your heart ripped out at the same time.”

From her place beside Fluttershy, Applejack looked over to the dragon with an even stare. “Now ain't you bein’ just the tiniest bit melodramatic?” she asked. “Shining Armor didn’t know nothin’ about how you felt about Rarity.”

“But Rarity knew about mine!” Spike went on loud enough for me, and probably half of the Crystal Empire to hear. “How could she just let me go on like that without telling me?”

“Well why didn’t you tell her then?” Pinkie asked in a voice that sounded far too cheery to have a conversation with. She wasn’t actually super cheery, it was just how her voice normally was. Good for in the morning when you needed to get energized, but bad for a serious conversation.

I glanced back as Spike looked over to glare at Pinkie. “What?”

Pinkie cocked her head to the side. “How come you didn’t tell Rarity how you felt about her like you wanted her to tell you how she felt about you?”

“That’s different!” Spike counted as I had to put my eyes back on the road. “That’s…she knew how I felt, but I didn’t know how she felt! She was just…using me to do stuff for her!”

“But you didn’t know that she knew how you felt,” Pinkie’s replied. “Besides, weren’t you just using all those errands as an excuse to be near her? You got what you wanted, and Rarity got what she wanted, so…what’s the problem?”

I caught the sound of Spike growling. “That’s not-”

“Unless you’re thinking about it in the way that favors between friends should be traded,” Pinkie continued on in a way that I didn’t even need to look back to see her tapping a hoof to her chin. “In which case, because you didn’t know that Rarity knew about your feelings for her, you were being sneaky and sneaking time with Rarity when all she thought she was doing, or what you thought she thought she was doing was letting a friend to her favors out of the goodness of his heart!”

Then, the pink pony let out a loud gasp, and I had to look back to see the disturbing sight of her reared up on her hind legs with an astonished expression mostly covered up by the hooves in front of her face. What made it disturbing was the fact her rear legs didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact they were doing all the walking. And then she put one more leg on the ground to point an accusing hoof at Spike with her last one, all without breaking her pace. “I’m on to you sneaky, sneaking, sneaker!”

“Wha-” was all Spike managed to get out before Pinkie let out a disgruntled ‘humph!’ and increased her pace to join the group I was in.

“What? What was all that about?” Spike mumbled.

Applejack cleared her throat. “Ah think what Pinkie's sayin’ is ya shouldn’t be expectin’ returns fer favors that were supposta be done between friends.”

“Well how what I supposed to get her to notice me?” Spike demanded, with his voice going from whiney to slightly whiney with some anger mixed in.

I let out a groan and looked back at the conversation going on behind me to point out that Rarity not only noticed Spike’s affections, but also dropped some less than subtle hints that she didn’t think of him as anything more than a child. Which, in the unicorn’s defense, he was.

But then an aura of purple magic clamped my mouth shut, and I looked over to Twilight with a frown before she shook her head at me. I didn’t know if it was her aversion to being the bad guy when it came to dealing with her dragon, or maybe some misguided attempt to keep me and Spike ‘friends’ but I found myself bowing to her will. It really sucked that I couldn’t say no to that purple pony princess.

“Spike, yer half her age,” Applejack deadpanned before adding, “and a dragon.”

Unfortunately, while Spike didn’t seem to have any way to counter AJ’s hard facts, the investment he made in riding Fluttershy’s back finally paid off when the yellow pegasus spoke up. “Oh, well Applejack…I don’t see what Spike being a different species has to do with anything. If a pony wanted to be with another creature, it shouldn’t be frowned upon.”

The comment actually brought our party to a screeching halt, and…yeah, I started getting some disturbing ideas as to why Flutters lived with all those animals.

Of course, all the attention had Fluttershy taking cover behind her hair a second later as she dropped to a volume only something with a pegasus hearing could pick up without standing inches from her mouth. “If they’re a pony on the inside I mean,” the pegasus added before she turned all her hesitant cuteness onto the youngest princess present. “Don’t you think so, Twilight?”

Sparkle blinked twice, and then looked over to me for a second. “Oh…right,” she agreed hesitantly before giving a nervous laugh. “Good point Fluttershy.”

“Yeah, but it don’t change the fact that you and Rarity were never gonna work out on age alone,” Applejack said to Spike, steering the conversation back to its starting point as we approached the palace.

Once we actually got in the palace, Cadence was swarmed by guards and nobles that needed her to do this and that before she sent us all off to our rooms to unpack our bags while dinner was being prepared. Not having anything of our own, me and Twilight just went with Rainbow. Spike got his own room.

Away from the slice of life drama, Rainbow managed to gripe about how uncool it was for Celestia to ship her off when there was a giant monster that needed fighting. As damaging as it was to the pegasus’s pride, I remained silent while Twilight explained to Rainbow just why it would have been a bad idea to fly up and kick a lava monster in the face. I was just glad that was as far as she went instead of telling Dash that without her Element, she was just about as helpless as the average pegasus when it came to the real threats against the world and needed to run for cover.

What I was worried about was the last thing Applejack had told Spike before our conversation was brought to a halt by Cadence’s goons. My sense for Equestrian foreshadowing and knock on wood stuff had latched onto the farmer’s age argument and wouldn’t let go as it assaulted my mind with images of Rarity being turned into a filly before Spike came around with a bunch of roses to ask the girl out.

Or maybe the whole age idea was kind of hanging around because the live forever deal might have been at the back of my mind since I came to accept Equestria as real. Changelings weren’t designed to have a maximum age, so we could keep on going as long as we had something to eat. Ponies, not so much.

While I hadn’t approached Celestia about the subject, kind of fearing what the immortal goddess would say, Zecora hadn’t been much help as to the eternal youth answer. Considering just how much Equestria had in common with Greek myth, I wasn’t stupid enough to just try for an immortality spell. I knew how that kind of shit ended. Nope, eternal youth all the way.

When the servant came to get us for dinner, and I was allowed a light snack by my girls to tide me over when Twilight noticed me checking out her ass, we also found Spike had decided to forgo the food in favor of sulking in his room.

But most of the ponies decided to ignore that in favor of the other honored guest that the Empire received about an hour before all of us showed up as she walked into the room few minutes after us. It was a light blue unicorn with silvery hair that put a scowl on the faces of five mares in front of me when she walked into the dining hall.

Even Fluttershy didn’t seem too happy to see Trixie.

“What the hay is she doing here?” Rainbow demanded as she got up in the air with a scowl on her face while everyone else decided to take a defensive lineman approach and got in front of Twilight.

For her part, Trixie winced at the attention, probably more out of fright than anything else. “Um…Trixie was sent here by Princess Sunset when Canterlot was put in danger. She did not want to go… Well, go alone anyway, but…Sunset made the guards throw her on the chariot.”

Twilight sighed and shouldered her way past the girls. “Okay everypony, cut that out! I already told you Trixie was attending classes at Celestia’s school. She’s sorry for what happened and is trying to be a better pony, so cut her some slack! The last thing anypony trying to get over the past needs is everypony else constantly reminding her of it.”

“Well,” Applejack drawled out as she and the others found their seats. “Ah still don’t much trust her, but…you got a point there Twilight.”

Thankfully, the room Cadence had made ready for us wasn’t the big thing with the semi-circular table with enough space to fit every noble in town with a stick up their asses and their irritable grandmothers too. Instead, we got a basic rectangle dining table with enough room for sixteen ponies to sit down at, in a room just big enough to hold a basketball game. Dash got surrounded by me and Twilight before the purple princess stuck Trixie on the end next to her. My sanity cried as Pinkie plopped her plot down next to me before Applejack flanked her and Fluttershy brought up the end of our side of things. Rarity was placed on the other side of things next to Shining Armor.

As usual when lunchtime came around, everyone got a plate of food in front of them, and I ended up with water.

“You sure you don’t want anything Fae-Fae?” the pink pony next to me asked. “We’ve got crystal fruits and vegetables, crystal pecan pie, crystal…uh, well you might want to skip the crystal turnips.”

Rainbow sighed and moved her head forward to meet Pinkie eye to eye. “Oh come on Pinkie, you know she doesn’t eat anything except…um…you know,” Dash finished with a bit of a blush that made me internally cringe and yet be thankful her lack of tact had only taken things that far.

A little whine escaped the party pony’s throat. “Yeah, but it just seems wrong. Sharing food with friends is one of the basics of socializing. It creates an a friendly atmosphere and gives you an easy topic to discuss to break the ice like Rarity does when she complements my punch all the time at our parties,” Pinkie explained before shaking her head sadly. “The fact one of my bestest buddies can’t share in that and kind of becomes a little ostracized by default is just…sad.”

The fact it was Pinkie that said something like that kind of just…froze me for a second. There were times I forgot just how deep she could be. “Well that’s um…thanks for thinking of me, Pinkie,” I replied before patting her on the back a few times.

“Does it really bother you that much?” Twilight asked as she leaned back to face me.

I shook my head. “Not…really,” I explained, careful not to let the anymore word slip out. I had more than gotten used to it since moving to Ponyville, and it wasn’t like changelings had gathered for meals. When I first moved to Ponyville, I might have been a little curious as to how everything tasted. But I had long since adapted.

Wanting to change topics as soon as possible, I looked across the table at the easy out. “So Rarity, do you think you’ll be able to finish my dress tomorrow with the extra time before the coronation?”

The unicorn gave a dramatic sigh. “I suppose so,” she said before glancing over to her lovers. “Quite frankly, I would have loved to take advantage of the extra day in the Empire to be with some other special ponies, but work before pleasure.”

“Oh come on Rarity,” Twilight said in a voice that let me just hear the rolling eyes. “It’s just some last minute adjustments. You’ll be done before noon and-oh! The six of us should so go on a double date!”

“Six?”

All the eyes of the table looked in Trixie’s direction at the question before Cadence let out a little laugh. “Yes. Both Twilight and I are involved in communal relationships,” the princess explained. “Twilight and Omnifarious are courting Rainbow Dash, while Rarity has shown an interest in joining my and Shining Armor’s marriage.”

And of course, that opened the floodgates when it came to Trixie getting in on the conversation. As the meal continued, more questions as to the whos, whys, and of hows of everything that had happened were given out, including a rather grand explanation of the night Rarity went to the crystal ball where their relationship started to take root, which eventually let to Pinkie…well…

“So uh, how do the three of you do it?” the pink party pony asked as she looked back and forth between our two groups of three ponies.

“P-PINKIE!” Rarity shrieked. “T-That that is not proper discussion at the dinner table!”

But Pinkie simply rolled her eyes at the scandalized gasps and raised voices of our friends that threw in with Rarity while Dash just stammered in embarrassment. I think I even heard Fluttershy say a few words, and I’d been having a problem picking up her voice all night. “Oh come on, you were all thinking it,” Pinkie said when the talk died down. “And it’s not like I’m asking for details, but…is it like a tag team thing where one pony always watches? Or do you get a two on one deal going?”

On the other side of the table, Rarity kind of cowered down in the pony equivalent to sinking in her seat while Shining Armor looked over to a nice painting, and Cadence got a slightly thoughtful look on her face. As for my party, my jaw felt like it wanted to unhinge. Dash kind of just went bright red, and Twilight…answered the question.

And in a normal tone at that. “Usually, it’s two of us focusing our attention on one mare until she climaxes, then the couple engages in intercourse until the pony receiving stimulation needs a rest, but the first partner is usually recovered by then to make love to the third,” Twilight explained before becoming thoughtful. “Although, I’m not sure if my experiences can be used as a guidepost for the population at large since we’re currently all females and Fae feeding off of me and Rainbow causes our pleasure to be increased beyond the normal limits of physical interaction.”

The lecture mode voice was something I hadn’t heard from Twilight in a while, and it still didn’t manage to stop her rather vague descriptions of our nearly nightly orgies into something completely unsexy. So my horned head quickly went down to bang itself on the table in an effort to try and damage my short-term memory enough so that I could forget the last two minutes ever occurred.

Still, everyone except Shining Armor was staring in our direction. The captain of the guard had his head on the table with his hooves covered his ears. “Not listening!”

Then things just kind of got worse when Cadence opened her mouth. “Well, I can’t really claim to have a method since the three of us were only together once, but Shining and I did team up on Rarity, as it were.”

And so all the attention fell upon her side of the table as Rarity whipped her head around to frown at the alicorn. “C-Cadence!”

“Oh come on Rarity,” the pink pony princess said with a giggle before giving her lover a wide grin. “You had to of realized that everypony would be curious. And if you can’t share even this much with your closest friends, then how do you expect to set an example for the rest of Equestria? Besides, it’s not like we’re giving anypony any real details.”

From his place down on the table, Shining Armor let out a groan. “I still had to hear my little sister talk about…that!”

Twilight shrank in her seat and gave her brother an apologetic look. “Sorry Shiny. So…um,” the alicorn paused as she looked around and settled on the unicorn sitting next to her. “Trixie! You never shut up about yourself. Quick, start bragging about something!”

“Well there was that time I completely humiliated you in our magic class with my superior intellect and-”

Twilight reared up and slammed her hooves on the table before Trixie could finish. “That didn’t count! You only scored higher than me were because of a bunch of lucky dice rolls, and a rather iffy interpretation of the rules!” she said before spreading her wings. “In fact, I’m writing a letter of complaint to the Unicorns of the Beach company to have the GM’s decision overturned!”

“Hey!” I complained in a voice that might have sounded a little whiney. Then I actually had to wonder if Twilight could really do something like that. Not in the way of the princess following through with the threat, that was kind of a given. I just wondered if they’d actually respond.

As Trixie lifted her eyebrow in response to Twilight’s declaration, while everyone else that wasn’t in Canterlot the night before Reeked of confusion, Cadence cleared her throat and spoke once she got everyone’s attention. “So…um…Fluttershy, what’s been going on in your life lately?”

“Oh, well Fae and I went to a seminar with Sunset on breezies,” she said, perking up a little while I tried to hide my cringe. “Their migratory patterns are going to take them through Ponyville later this year, and I’m so excited to meet with the little creatures!”

And of course I soon had to contribute to the conversation on the subject, without hurting Fluttershy’s feelings or picturing just how much of a safety precaution headache the number one creature on Equestria’s list of things that wouldn’t last twenty-four hours if the planet I was on had even heard of natural selection would cause.

The sad thing was, the next topic for conversation was even worse.

For the first time in my life, dinner with the girls left me feeling drained.

Apart from the breezie reminder, Twilight’s pouting over receiving less than an A+ in class, and Rarity’s leftover embarrassment from the sex chat Pinkie had tried to start, the other mounting problems on the girls that I was just now starting to hear about were kind of wearing on my mind.

For starters, Trixie was apparently having trouble finding work as a stage magician. Her reputation was still shot to hell thanks to the Ursa incident, and a lot of ponies were apparently wary of the unicorn that had slipped on the alicorn amulet despite being pardoned for her actions by Princess Celestia. In fact, her wagon was still lacking a replacement, and the poor girl had been hauling a much smaller bag of tricks around via levitation. Which meant she had even less to work with, and even tougher crowds to please.

Then there was some troubles at home for Applejack. It was nothing major, but Granny was still up in arms about the change to major cider production over the old schedule of only so much cider a year with apples being sold the rest. Of course AJ was trying to keep everyone happy by increasing her workload, which had me worrying about her health.

As for Pinkie, the odd sex questions had me a little afraid she was hoping to get in on the action. I may of not have Smelled anything but the usual stuff coming from her, but…love and friendship weren’t all that different, judging from what I could pick up from Twilight and Dash.

Personally, I hoped the pink pony was just being curious, or wanting to embarrass Dashie. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Pinkie to death, and if I was a total douche bag with no soul and only interested in banging ponies while possessing the proper equipment, I would have definitely gone after a piece of Pinkie’s pie. She had a little bit of pudginess about her, but it was well proportioned in a way that made everything look good. Especially from the back. Seriously, Pinkie’s ass was perfect in the way of normal pony beauty. But her personality and Pinkie-ness would have me ice picking my brain to stop it from screaming at the impossibility of the pony that was Pinkie.

But it was probably my ponderings over a Pinkie Pie love interest that made me consider another topic in my head. Which in turn forced me to seek out Cadence in her royal apartment’s sitting room so I could talk about something with the pony love goddess while Twilight went to see how Spike was doing with Rainbow Dash in tow.

“Ugh, I think Pinkie’s got it backwards,” the pink alicorn moaned as she crawled onto a pony couch to lay down on her side with a belly that looked a few months pregnant. “You changelings are the lucky ones. Eat all you want, and never gain a pound. I’m going to be working that dinner off for at least a week.”

I forced myself to give a polite chuckle at Cadence’s complaint before putting my own ass into a seat and laying down on my side like a pony should. I also decided not to mention what happened when a changeling decided to overindulge on love and took a look around Cadence’s sitting room while she waddled her body into place.

With the pretty pink pony being my third princess whose dormitory that I had seen, I was starting to get the idea that simple was a running theme when it came to Equestrian princesses. Okay, she lived in a giant crystal palace, but aside from that, Cadence’s living room didn’t seem all that decked out with anything too lavish. Hell, I think the most expensive thing in the room was the floor. Everything else was a little high class, but only enough so it didn’t clash with the scenery.

Case in point, the couches we laid down on were all red and comfortable with some pretty nice material, but there weren’t any jewels or gold decking the things out in gaudiness.

It kind of made me wonder what Luna’s place looked like.

Or if the whole ‘humble’ requirement to be an alicorn was something Tia had set up because Luna had turned to the Nightmare when no one else seemed to give a shit about all her hard work.

“Something wrong?”

Cadence’s question made me look over to the pink pony, and I realized I was frowning.

I shook off the expression, and let out a sigh. “Sorry, I was just…letting my mind wander,” I admitted before nervously clearing my throat. It helped give me some time to set my mind back on task.

After I got a bit of curiosity out of the way. “Uh, where’s Rarity and Shining Armor?” The last thing I needed was Shining stumbling in, or Rarity interrupting us with some wild cries of passion from behind the doors of their bedroom.

Cadence looked over to a window. “I might have said a few things to…guide Shining and Rarity into taking a walk through the palace gardens. Those two really need to spend some time alone together if this whole thing’s going to work out. The three of us can’t run in step all the time, unfortunately, and I don’t want Rarity coming to think of herself as some kind of weekend…distraction.”

Another deep breath bought me some time. “So um, from what I remember you saying in Canterlot…you can like…tell if ponies can…work out together?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Cadence told me. “But…basically, yes.”

The conformation wasn’t really needed, but it did help to calm my building nerves. “Right…so, I was wondering if you could tell me if…uh, me and Twilight and Rainbow would work out with…” I took a breath to help calm my nerves. “…another pony.”

Cadence raised an eyebrow and I could Smell her amusement, even if it didn’t show on her face. “Would this pony be six feet tall with a mane that moves on its own and the biggest pair of tribal features in Equestria?”

The description of Celestia made me wince, and I felt like hitting myself as Cadence’s mouth curved upwards into a smirk. When I had been eavesdropping on Tia’s life, the alicorn had mentioned about how she had asked an expert on the subject of me and the girls. Of course it had been Cadence. “Yes,” I replied as the smirk become a soft smile.

“So what’s the problem?” she asked gently.

I tensed. The way she had phrased that question…the amount of loving kindness didn’t matter as much as the words. “Well um…is it going to work out? With Tia I mean?” I asked hesitantly. “And the rest of us. Twilight’s more than onboard to give it a go, but…I don’t know why Rainbow’s agreeing to give this whole thing a shot with her.” Not to mention I was afraid that she might just be going along with me and Twilight out of some kind of fear of abandonment by her friends or something.

But that was a problem for later tonight once me and Twilight had pinned her down in bed for some pillow talk.

Cadence’s smile widened a bit. “Now Omnifarious, I asked you first.”

That got a frown out of me. “What?”

“Oh please,” Cadence said before sighing. “Do you know how many ponies have come to me when they don’t see some kind of trouble with their relationship on the horizon?

“Zero. Nopony needs my help when all they can see is a happy future,” she went on. “So tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what you’re worried about, and we’ll see if we can fix it with just the two of us, or if we need to get the whole gang in here to work things out.”

I felt like a deer caught in the headlights. It was a weird, powerless feeling the likes of which I had only felt about two times since coming to Equestria, and the first time that didn’t involve someone close to me laying on the ground in pain. So there was no panicked burst of anger and need to do something to snap me out of it. So I just kind of… “Um…it…you…that’s not…”

Cadence looked me over for a moment with a discerning eye. “I saw how you behaved with Twilight and Rainbow tonight, and you weren’t upset or nervous at all. So…it’s not connected to them,” she mumbled barely loud enough for me to hear. “Which means…you’re the one that’s having some reservations about Celestia wanting to court the three of you, and you alone. So, what’s the problem?”

Completely trapped, I let out a sigh and hung my head. “I…don’t know,” I told her before falling over to my side and laying down all the way on the pony couch. “Or…more like…I don’t know how to describe it.”

The main problem was, it was complicated. Ponies didn’t do complicated.

Except for Celestia, but she was special.

“Then make it simple,” Cadence told me in a voice that wasn’t quite gentle, but a long way from demanding. “Take your time, and I promise that nopony else is going to hear about what we discuss.”

As much as I tried to order my thoughts, Cadence’s promise just opened my mouth and started making words spill out like crazy. “I don’t know! I mean, with Rainbow and Twilight, it’s easy! I know what they like, what they hate, I practically know everything about them! But Tia? I don’t know anything about her!”

Then that damn pink pony actually smirked. “So, you’re nervous.”

“That’s not it!” I replied as I raised my head and glared at her. “It’s…it’s just… Celestia doesn’t want other ponies to think that she’s all perfect, but she is! Or at least as close to perfection as you can get, and I’m not talking about her power and magic and all that other superficial stuff! She’s kind, and loving, and forgiving, and-and smart and I’m…not.”

The admittance made me grimace, but I couldn’t deny it either. I wasn’t good enough for Celestia, or Twilight. Even Rainbow deserved better than what I could give her insofar as the kind of person I was.

I had hooked up with Twilight out of necessity and been unable to break it off because of the pain it would cause her. With Rainbow…Twilight might have been the one to suggest it, but it was only because I had been sending out enough signals for even her to pick things up and…I really had to wonder if the reason she voted yes to the polygamy proposition was because she saw her boyfriend eyeing another woman and thought it was the best way of dealing with the situation.

Okay yeah, she had kind of been ignoring me for a good week before then, and I might have spent a lot of that free time with a blue pegasus, but that didn’t mean I had been planning on cheating on her or something. It was a moot point anyway. Considering how they were taking the idea of more than one special somepony, ponies probably didn’t even do that!

But when it came to Rainbow, I had become a fan again and jumped at my chance without thinking things through. Hell, I still didn’t even know if she really wanted what was happening with the three of us, or if she was just going along with it to make her friends happy like she always did!

Celestia made even less sense to me. On top of which, the stuff I could work out as to why she was suddenly so frisky for a real relationship instead of one that could involve any number of royal guards she could get with a smile and a wink didn’t look that good.

“And then there’s all the other junk!” I went on after shifting around to throw one of my hooves out in a dramatic fashion. “I mean, she did just kind of break up with that good version of Sombra that turned evil in some parallel universe!”

Cadence’s expression became a little deadpan, and I Smelled a little bit of annoyance coming from her. “That was months ago.”

To which I rolled my eyes at. “Well Tia is like a thousand years old! A month to her is like…um…”

“A month to us,” the pink alicorn told me. “Just because Auntie is older doesn’t make time pass any faster for her.”

I gritted my teeth at the evil logic and frowned at Cadence. “Oh come on, it’s the whole rebound relationship problem!”

Cadence tilted her head a bit as some confusion made its way onto her face. “The what?”

“You know,” I prompted her before pausing for a second. When she didn’t say anything, I let out a groan. “When a human breaks up, they get this pain of loneliness and junk that we immediately try to fill by going out and finding a replacement. And most of the time, we’re willing to settle for someone with a lot of flaws we just don’t care about or bother noticing because we just want to be with someone.” Or have sex. But considering just who I was talking to, I didn’t feel like getting Cadence pissed off at my race in general because we took the ‘purest expression of love’ and basically just used it to feel good.

As it was, she didn’t seem to like my whole rebound explanation since her face became a little scrunched up, like she had smelled something rank. “That’s um…Celestia is more than just some school filly looking for a hole in her life to fill.”

A theory I doubted. Mostly because Tia had outright told me she wanted more than just some friendshipping in her life while I had been laying in a hospital bed. “Oh yeah, that’s why she’s so desperate to get a colt friend, she’s reaching out to Twilight and Rainbow. I mean, I can kind of understand why she wants me. I’m new and shiny, and you ponies like to go for that sort of stuff before the sparkle wears off. But them? What the hay is up with that?”

Cadence raised an eyebrow. “Well, Celestia told me it’s because of you.”

“What?” I asked, my ranting train of thought completely derailed and any hope of making a counterargument go up in smoke.

After taking one of her calming breaths, Cadence looked at me. “Well, not outright told me, but… Look, Auntie Celestia tends to…live vicariously,” she said after a moment of thought. “You pointed out her age just a few minutes ago, remember? While she hardly blinks and misses a few days, I’ve been around her long enough to see that boredom is a major problem for her. In the weeks before the wedding, I saw the highlight of her day was getting reports from Twilight and her friends. Celestia experienced joy through their actions, despite the fact that she has learned such lessons a thousand times over by now.

“Then you come along, going on and on about your days together with Twilight, and now Rainbow Dash. Not to mention the connection you all but forced her to make with Sunset,” the pink pony princess went on before she frowned. “What the hay did you think was going to happen?”

I bristled at the accusation. “You make it sound like I brainwashed her or something!”

Cadence shook her head. “No, but you did make her look at them through your perspective,” she told me before a bit of sadness entered her eyes. “And while I don’t agree with you on this whole rebound idea, I do know that Celestia is lonely. Even with Luna returned, she has to be the pony that everypony relies on, this central figure that everypony looks up to, the one with all the answers. Except when she’s with you, because the two of you meet in a place where false confidence and empty assurances can’t exist.

“And you didn’t…well, act like Twilight would have if she had seen Celestia worried. You listened to her problems, and allowed somepony who can’t ever show her vulnerability to let her mane down, to let her air her stress. Then on top of all of that, you provided comfort. Never sell that kind of kindness short Omnifarious. It alone is the beginnings of many relationships throughout Equestria.”

My head hit the couch again as I just let my body relax. “Seems too simple to me.” Especially for someone like Celestia. Falling in love with someone because they listen to your problems? Who in the hell does that?

Okay…I admit that it was pretty nice to have Tia there for me after Rainbow Dash shot me down…but that was a hell of a long way from what she had me doing.

Across from me, Cadence gave a little shrug. “But we’re not here to talk about why Celestia likes you,” she told me before her warm gaze turned hard and her whole body followed suit little by little. “We’re here so that you can admit to yourself why you can’t seem to accept Celestia’s feelings.”

By the time she was done talking Cadence looked like...the pink monster that had visited me in the hospital during my first trip to the Crystal Empire.

The return of the pretty pink pony of my nightmares got me to gulp.

“So why don’t you love Celestia in return?” she demanded sternly.

Thankfully, I did manage to find some backbone and groaned. “Oh come on Cadence,” I mumbled. “We’ve only really been on one date.”

“You’ve been on dozens!” the Goddess of Love exclaimed. “Every night, the two of you have curled up with each other and shared thoughts that nopony else has. You’ve played games, watched movies, and even shared your most private of thoughts.”

I shrunk at the accusations, most of which weren’t all that true. The only reason I curled up with Tia was because she was so damn grabby, even if it did feel pretty damn nice to be with her like that. And just because Tia ran her mouth about stuff in her personal life didn’t mean I shared all of my problems; just the stuff I knew Twilight couldn’t handle without freaking out. And the Rainbow thing of course.

“Is it a lack of physical attraction?” Cadence asked a little more calmly than before while she looked me over. “I know you’re a different creature in your mind, but Auntie said you learned how to…deal with that.”

The question brought back a load of experiences that I would rather have forgotten, and left me with the mental image of Tia practically shaking her ass in front of my face on several occasions. Which of course led to fantasies where I took measures to steady her involving X-rated means.

Of course, the whole thing got a groan out of me and made me want to head to bed all the sooner as I spoke. “That’s uh…definitely not a problem,” I said. “Anymore, I mean.” If anything, being attracted to ponies was a problem for me, especially when I got hungry around the girls these days.

“Then look inside yourself, and tell me what’s troubling you about all of this,” Cadence ordered as her annoyance with me grew. I was apparently trying her patience.

I gulped. “Well…it’s…um…” I said while trying to think of the answer to Cadence’s question. The only thing I could come up with what I had already told her. “She’s too good for me.”

Cadence raised an eyebrow. “And?”

That got me to frown back at her. “What do you mean and?” I demanded. “Newsflash Cadence, I’m a jerk! Tia may be going gaga over my varnish now, but as soon as its gone, she’s going to see me for who I really am, and she’s going to dump me like garbage!” Not to mention take Rainbow and Twilight with her.

All of a sudden, the room got a little…pink. And a scary pink at that. It wasn’t a major change, but whatever was going on had to be some excess magic Cadence was radiating. That, and the Smell she was giving off made my ears go flat against my head. “I don’t know that makes me angrier,” the Alicorn of Love grumbled. “The fact that you think Celestia hasn’t already seen you for what you are.” A second later, she was off the couch and face to face with me. “OR that you think not being worthy of your beloved is a bad thing!”

Amidst all the cowering, I managed to keep myself still long enough to get all eloquent. “Huh?”

“Of course you don’t think you’re worthy of her!” Cadence exclaimed as her wings spread out all the way. “Nopony who truly loves another does! I feel that way about Shining Armor! If I didn’t, if for one single second, I actually started thinking that I deserved his love, that I owned it, then I would be no different than…well, Chrysalis.” She let out a sigh and shook her head. “Sorry.”

The withdrawal of Cadence’s lovely fury gave me enough freedom to shake my head. “The day I was born, she put me in the changeling’s version of a hospital to heal normally instead of a cocoon teach me a lesson, and that was after telling me my whole purpose in life was to murder Twilight.” Just plain wrongness of hurting the purple pony aside, it probably would have been a much better plan to have me just off Twilight and replace her.

But for that a changeling would need to know enough about her to impersonate the alicorn, which Chrysalis hadn’t been aware of when it came to me.

“So I’m not too torn up when some pony calls her a monster,” I said before smiling at the pink pony. “And a scary as you are, you’re no Chrysalis.”

At that, Cadence’s cute pony face got all scrunched up and her head tilted to the side in confusion. “…what do you mean I’m scary?”

And so, things got all deer in the headlights again. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to explain the facts of how terrifying the pink pretty pony princess was to her, but…well…she wasn’t Tia. Celestia was a big pony, she could take criticism and all that other shit that I just didn’t heap on the rest of the girls. When I didn’t think their moral reasoning was completely in the wrong that is.

“Um…well…you see…”

Thankfully, I had apparently built up enough good karma for Equestria to finally pull my ass out of the fire, because a minute after my all-powerful oratory skills failed me, the door opened behind us. Me and Cadence looked back to see Shining Armor and Rarity coming in from their little walk. Which apparently really was just a walk, judging by the fact that the marshmallow unicorn didn’t have a single hair on her body out of place.

“Oh, Cadence, Fae,” Rarity said. “How are my two favorite alicorns that aren’t purple doing?”

Cadence released me from her gaze and looked over to Rarity with a smile. “Oh just gossiping about my favorite topic,” she said before giving me a little look that I really hoped was to assure me ponies believed in confidentiality. “So, how was your walk? You did show her the crystal lilies, right? The way the light those flowers give off just accents a pony’s mane is just-”

Before she could finish, Shining held up a hoof. “Yes Cadence, we had a good time, and the scenery did make me tell Rarity how beautiful she looks in the light of the gardens,” the stallion said before his face turned a little dour. “Would have been perfect if Double Talk hadn’t wandered in to try and press his crystal tariff on me again.” Shining sighed and shook his head. “Equestria hasn’t had an abundant source of imperial crystal in a thousand years! With as much as the Empire has, we can actually give everypony what they need.”

“Indeed!” Rarity agreed. “I’m all for obeying the laws of supply and demand, but the added tax that mule of a noble wants to add onto the crystals will drive the price back up to where it was before the Empire returned.”

With my world building senses tingling, and the need to get away from all that romance junk, I asked the obvious question. “What’s so important about imperial crystal anyway?” I had heard it mentioned before now, but never bothered to ask.

After I got an odd look from all three ponies, Rarity spoke up. “Right…alien,” she reminded everyone in the room before taking in a bit of air. “Well I’m not as thorough in explications as Twilight, but I’ll give you the basics.”

I had to force myself not to cry in thanks before Rarity began. “While there are other gems that can hold a mystical charge, imperial crystal is the only one that can be used to draw magic in from the surrounding area and recharge the spell within it.”

“They’re also commonly used to power more mundane things by enchanting the crystal with a lightning spell,” Shining added.

So they’re rechargeable magical batteries, I translated.

The explanation did answer a few questions for me, at least indirectly. I already knew ponies used crystals instead of batteries to power the bits of technology they had that seemed to fluctuate from place to place. While electricity generation wasn’t beyond their grasp, Celestia seemed to have shied ponies away from major pollutants like coal power plants and the like in favor of hydroelectricity like what Ponyville had. Considering how much Twilight’s horn could bench-press, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find the plant that supplied Canterlot’s electricity had turbines that were turned manually by a bunch of unicorns. Hell, they could even get rid of the need for that completely with a Come to Life spell and a few crystals to power it.

Considering that Equestria only had one source of the things that could only be accessed three months out of the year, I was actually a little surprised the country didn’t look more medieval than it already was in some places. Or at least less modern.

Then Rarity drew me out of my ruminations with a rough clearing of her throat. “Now, Omnifarious, as much as I enjoy your company…could you get the buck out of my room so I can salvage the little bit of romance we have left tonight before-”

And of course the door opened once again. This time it more of a loud crash that had me wondering if crystal doors could shatter before the instigator of the disturbance dashed with her rainbow trail and our shared girlfriend following after.

“Have any of you seen Spike?” Rainbow asked in a slightly panicked voice.

I had to split my attention between the flying pony and the purple one on the ground as I gave them both a questioning frown. “I thought the two of you were talking to him.”

“We were!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“Well, not really,” Twilight said at the same time.

The purple alicorn’s statement got everyone’s attention, and she wilted a little bit before beginning. “I knew Spike wasn’t feeling up for dinner, and he needed some time away from Rarity to sort things out,” Twilight said before she looked over to Rarity. “Um…sorry?”

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“Well, I know you care for Spike,” Twilight told her in an uneasy tone before she poked the ground with her hoof. “Just…you know, not like…he wants you to. And…thanks for not…hurting him. I know it must be pretty lonely for him in Ponyville, and you being there for him...helped.”

The whole thing made me repress a Marge Simpson disappointed groan. Now that I kind of couldn’t ignore the little lizard, I felt like I needed to weigh in on the subject, my place or no. Wanting to follow your older sibling around and hang out with her cooler friends was part of being the little brother. The same thing had happened with me…except for the fact my older sibling was male, and the same species.

But I also had my own set of friends. And while I knew Spike had a few back in Canterlot that he would be seeing on the weekends, following Twilight around the rest of the time was just sad.

“So the egghead dragged me to his door so we could talk, and spent about half an hour just going on, and on, and on,” Rainbow said before Twilight gave her a raised eyebrow that made the pegasus stop and land. “Then I got bored and kicked open the door to tell Spike what was what and…well, he wasn’t there.”

Apparently taking that as her cue, Twilight stepped forward. “And now he’s missing and we can’t find him anywhere in the palace, and…have any of you seen him?”

Frankly, I didn’t really share Twilight’s concern for the little guy. Yeah, the last time he ran away he almost got eaten by the dragon whose head now adorned the wall above the thrones that I was just keeping warm in Everfree Castle. But Spike hadn’t run away into the Everfree Forest, he ran away in the freaking Crystal Empire.

Even if he wasn’t some kind of celebrity, I doubted that a dragon that ate shiny things had anything to worry about from ponies made of crystal. For one, they were crystal, and for two, they were ponies. Even Sunset Shimmer at her non-dark magic induced worst hadn’t hurt Spike when he was a dog, and since the demon summoning shiny guard psychopath was no longer a threat, Spike being put in danger where the majority of the populace thought spitting on the sidewalk was the worst thing you could do made me want to laugh.

Still, silly things like facts meant jack shit to a panicked pretty pony princess of purple pigmentation. She sent the guard looking for Spike in a search pattern that covered fifty-percent more ground than he theoretically could have traveled and checked to make sure all the carriages were still in the motor pool.

It didn’t take long for the guards to find the kid and report back to us. They apparently spotted Spike the Brave and Glorious, a title that still made me want to puke, huddled up under his own statue.

So after a few seconds of five ponies and one changeling looking around at each other, we all decided that Twilight and harem should be the ones to go talk to him thanks to some pretty twisted reasoning on Rainbow’s part that she explained on the way to the nearest winged-pony exit.

“I mean, Spike is your son and all, so-”

Twilight frowned at our mutual bed partner as we headed out of Shining’s love next. “Wait, what?!” the little goddess nearly shouted as she stumbled in her trotting. “What the hay are you talking about? Spike’s not my son.”

On her side of the conversation, and me as the girls had decided I made a nice middle to the pretty pony sandwich, Rainbow continued through the air and looked down at Twilight with a look that just screamed ‘HUH?’ “Uh…he lives with you, gets his bedtime from you, and you did hatch him from that egg so…doesn’t that kind of make you his mom?”

“Oh for crying out-I was six when Spike hatched Dash! Six!” Twilight argued a bit more fiercely than was normal for her. “And going by your logic, since you’re the one that give me the push I needed to hatch that egg Rainbow, You’re Spike’s Father!”

Unfortunately, a promise I made to myself that involved never laughing at Rainbow kept me from cracking up as the little pegasus kind of had a double-take jaw drop that really messed up any counter argument she might have had to Twilight’s statement before going, “Bu-ja-wa-huh?” as she fell out of the air and lost her footing, and stumbled around on the ground as we made it to the balcony to plant her face on the floor.

Thankfully, Twilight didn’t fall into a fit of giggles either, and just settled for a raised eyebrow.

Two minutes later, we got Rainbow off the ground and glided down to where Spike was…sulking…in a little ball of curled up scales underneath his statue that held up the crystal heart. And of course, Spike the Brave and Glorious, He who single handedly defeated Sombrero, Chrysalis, and made me into his bitch upon the icy snow of the forbidden zone of the great frozen north that not even Celestia could tread without freezing her teats off had little tears in his eyes again. Not the running down waterworks, just the kind of stuff that slowly built up and fell in time.

Twilight was the one to start the conversation when we landed right in front of him loud enough for the little dragon to look up at us. “Spike! What the hay were you thinking running out of the castle without telling anypony?” she demanded. “Do you know how worried I was when Rainbow opened the door to your room and you weren’t there?”

What with his hands and feet and all, it was a lot easier for me to get a read on the dragon as he flinched and dropped his legs before bringing his arms up just a little bit as if to shield himself from Twilight’s words. “I-I’m sorry,” he said before dropping his arms and hanging his head. “I just…couldn’t stay in that castle with Cadence and Shining a-after they…took Rarity away from me. After everything I did for her, they just…Shining Armor, he-”

“You’re kidding, right?” I deadpanned, speaking before I could stop myself in response to his final mumbling of words. Memories of the past few minutes replied themselves in my head and I couldn’t help but get in a bad mood because I was about to use Cadence’s love-logic and stomp on this little idea about Rarity belonging to him and how he was ‘due’ some love from Rarity or something because he helped her out.

That is, if the blue pegasus next to me didn’t clip the edge of my ear with her wing. While it didn’t hurt, the action did make me duck my head a bit and look at Dash with a little frown.

She ignored me completely and just talked to Spike. “You know Spike, you got it pretty good,” Rainbow told him in a tone that only sounded a bit more heated than her normal one.

But he just looked up at her with a frown. “Good? How is this good?”

The demanding tone let me pick up some anger on Rainbow’s end as well, but she didn’t let it show on her face. Her voice was another story. “You know when I found a stallion I wanted to go out with, I jumped through hoops and did everything I could to try and impress him, and all of his friends. Then, when I did get around to asking him out, he straight out laughed in my face,” Dash told him. “He told me that he didn’t want anything to do with a flat-flanked mare, who’s got more muscles on her wings than most stallions. I put my heart on the line, and Soarin said he didn’t want anything to do with me before he crushed it.

“He was a jerk, yeah,” Rainbow went on before poking Spike with her hoof. “But I was a bigger idiot for thinking I could buy another pony’s affection by doing tricks and squealing over them. Like you did with all the stuff you and Rarity did together.”

Then, she got quiet for a moment, and lowered herself to look at the dragon directly in the eyes. “Rarity may not like you want her to, but she does care for you.” the pegasus went on. “She wants to be your friend, and that’s awesome! It sure as hay beats anything I ever got from the Wonderbolts. And yeah, it hurts now, but just eat some ice cream, deal with it, and move on. Then find somepony else even more awesome, and if that doesn’t work out, find somepony else, because one of them is going to make you feel warm, and special and all that other junk, and one day you’re going to find out that you make them feel the same way too.”

A few seconds later, Rainbow broke eye contact with the dragon and Spike kind of just sat there for a second before straightening his back out a little. Considering how passionate Rainbow had been towards the end of her little speech, I wondered if Dash had turned on her emotional affecting abilities that I’ve seen her use to stir up a crowd for tornado duty, convince Twilight Sparkle of all ponies to become a pirate, and turn the Ponyville relay team into a Wonderbolt bashing brigade.

“Is it really going to get better?” Spike asked.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Umm hello? I got thrown out by that idiot Soarin,” Rainbow replied before she spread her wings to grab me and Twilight. “And now I’m doing your mom.”

Spike’s eyes went wide at Rainbow’s ‘encouraging’ words.

I groaned and shook my head. And Rainbow Dash fumbles the ball mere inches from the goal.

Twilight face hoofed hard enough for me to hear it and wonder if I needed to worry about a concussion. “Ugh, so many things wrong with that.”