Spike's eyelids opened and closed repeatedly until he adjusted his vision to see the dresser adjacent to his bed. He then tried to tear the sheets off that were covering him from the chest down but found it to be harder than expected. It was held by another hand, a red hand that belonged to Gin.

"Damn, I was really hoping that was a dream." Spike quietly groaned to himself.

Instead of trying to tear them off, Spike tried worming his body out of the sheets. It was successful at first, but Gin turned and hugged him close to her chest; causing Spike to blush as he fought the urge to look down at her chest again. He gently removed her hands from his sides and shuffled backwards. Again, he was successful at first, but this time, Gin's eyes opened. It took a moment for her to recognize him, but once she did, she prepared to scream. Spike reacted quickly and covered her mouth.

"Listen Gin! Listen! I can explain!" Spike quietly insisted.

Gin's eyes burned with anger, and she began to fight back furiously as she pounded on his chest.

"Ouch! Gin, calm down! Listen, we're both in hot water if either of us is heard!" Spike said with the utmost seriousness. "Will you calm down, or will I have to keep my hand on your mouth forever?"

Gin calmed herself, and her enraged expression cooled to a more annoyed one as she took her hand and removed Spike's scaled mitt.

"What the hell happened!?" Gin whisper-yelled.

"Listen, you were drunk okay? All you did was sneak into my room and fall asleep beside me, that's it!" Spike said with a worried expression; hoping she wouldn't recognize that he left out a key detail in the story.

"What else happened Spike? I know something else happened!" Gin interrogated the blushing dragon.

"Okay, okay... you kissed me." Spike shut his eyes tight as if he was expecting to be hit.

"What kind of kiss?" Gin wondered. "I tend to be a pretty slutty-drunk, you know. I know I didn't give you a wee chicken-peck!"

"Alright! You gave me a little uh..." Spike trailed off, and instead, he stuck his tongue out and flicked it about to finish his sentence with a visual display.

"Oh, no!" Gin uttered in self-disappointment; holding her head in her hand, and slamming the back of her head into her pillow. "Oh, why does alcohol make me such a bloody bitch?"

"It was my fault too, I uh..." Spike was too shy to go into further detail about his own natural desires.

"Ah, I see..." Gin said with a wink. "Well, in that case."

Gin gave Spike a firm smack on his cheek; leaving a large red mark on the side of his face.

"Ouch, again! What was that for?" Spike asked.

"For letting me ram my tongue down your throat, you horny lizard!" Gin answered playfully.

Gin stood up and looked in a mirror, squinting as she tugged at her skimpy lingerie; posing a little. "I do have good taste when I'm drunk, though, don't I?"

"I, uh... um." Spike gulped; completely speechless by the half-naked vixen before him, speaking to him as if he was just one of the other mares.

"Haha! Look at your face! I'm just fuckin with you!" Gin smiled as she picked up her clothes scattered about; still teasing the poor dragon by waving her rear a little as she picked up her necklace off the ground. "You're such a sucker..."

Spike's attention was then grabbed by the jewelled necklace Gin was putting on. It had a pink jewel in the center, and it sparkled like a twinkling star in the midnight sky. The lace was golden, as was the frame that held the large gem. He had never noticed it before, maybe because she kept it hidden under her shirt to deter thieves.

"Wait, what is it-. Oh, you're looking at this." Gin said as she held the jewel in her fingertips. "Yeah, I thought a dragon would be interested in a gem like this..."

"What is it?" Spike said with childlike wonder. "I've never seen a gem like that before."

"It was my mother's..." Gin stated as she held it up in front of the window; allowing light to hit it, and the pink beams to escape the many sides of the jewel. "A pink diamond. It was given to her by my father before he left her. I've protected and held onto this for as long as I can remember. It's pretty much all I have to remember her by."

Spike didn't want to get too far into her past to cause her pain and tried changing the subject. "I think I hear people waking up, you better get dressed."

Gin fastened her boots on and opened the door; standing in the doorway for a little while before lifting her head up and turning back to him.

"Let's do this again sometime... you're not bad company." Gin purred as she gave him a seductive wink and smile and walked across to her room.

"Wait, again?" Spike asked; his face reddening more than ever.

****

Spike fried zucchini on one frying pan for the ponies, and bacon on another for Draven and himself. Gin sat on a stool and was slumped over on the island's polished wooden countertop. Draven leaned up on a china cupboard next to Spike and monitored his progress; licking his chops. The scent wafted over to Coba, who sat on the couch in the living room, across from the kitchen.

"Damn, those smell mighty good Spike. You almost were done?" Coba said impatiently.

"Ah, ah, ah! You can't rush me on this!" Spike said in his best Rarity impression. "You cannot rush the culinary arts! These things take time!"

"Ah, blah, blah! How long does it take for you to cook some damned zucchini?" Gin whined. "Hang on, when did you even learn to cook?"

"Trust me, when you've had as much time on your hands cooped up in a library as I did, you'd be serving Celestia by now!" Spike laughed. "I cooked when I got bored, so... I cooked all the time when Twilight wasn't around."

Following the sound of hooves stomping on the floor, and a door slamming shut, a hung-over alicorn stepped out of the hallway, and into the living room; bags under her eyes and a dizzied look on her face.

"Well, look who's up!" Draven mocked the bumbling mare. "How about some food? You look hungry!"

"No- thank you." Twilight gagged.

"Heh, did you have fun last night?" Spike asked sarcastically.

"Can it Spike." Twilight groaned; looking at Gin. "Gin, how are you not dead? You drank almost all of the tavern's whiskey!"

"I'm a pirate, Twilight! Whiskey is my water!" Gin said with a relaxed grin on her face. "But, I still feel like shit... ugh."

Gin massaged her forehead to calm the faint throbbing inside her head, then sprawled out onto the island; letting out a long sigh. Spike then flipped the zucchini one last time and separated it into five dishes. It was then that Fluttershy stepped into the living room with a yawn and a stretch.

"Good morning..." Fluttershy greeted.

"Hey... you feeling tired too?" Spike wondered; noticing that Winslow was not behind her. "Say, where's Winslow? Did he go to sleep last night?"

"I'm here..." Winslow grunted in a brooding manner.

Winslow was dressed in regular clothing, which ironically, was odd, considering the fact he wore armor most of the time. He was clad in a white, short-sleeved shirt two buttons near the neckline. His arms were large and had bulging veins running up them, along with many scars collected over years of fighting. Even without armor, his presence was more than intimidating. Spike passed him, and the rest of the ponies in the group a plate full of zucchini, besides Twilight of course. Although Fluttershy was a little flustered the night before, she wasn't flat-out drunk like Twilight.

"So, when did you get back?" Spike asked Winslow; shovelling a forkful of bacon into his mouth.

"Not long after the rest of you fell asleep," Winslow replied quickly.

Spike felt guilty about bringing up the paladins the night before. Although Winslow didn't show it, Spike could see the troubled look in his good eye, and he began to take note of his distant behaviour.

"So, what happens next Coba? In the next round I mean." Winslow changed the subject.

"Well, this next round is all about teams. The two competitors from each team must now face off against others teams as well. Spike and I are one team." Coba explained. "Only the highest rated teams fight. Right now we are third in the rankings, which makes us a potential candidate team for round two."

"So it's relatively short?" Spike inquired; taking another forkful.

"Usually, if things run smooth," Coba said with a mouthful of zucchini. "Mmm... this is good Spike! Twilight, did you know Spike could cook like this?"

"Not really, no. Although he did always have an affinity for food!" Twilight said in a teasing manner.

"I can't deny that." Spike laughed; as did the others.

Twilight tried tasting her breath, and what she got was a truly putrid taste similar to that of vomit or rotten tomatoes. Being the OCD ridden clean-freak that she was, she quickly raced to the bathroom without a word.

"What was that?" Gin asked Spike as she watched Twilight race down the hallway to the bathroom. "It's as if she was on fire!"

"Ah, she's just a little afraid of filth is all. And the way she looks now, pretty much screams filth." Spike sighed as he heard the door slam shut from down the narrow hallway.

Twilight opened and closed the bathroom door quickly, yet quietly. She grabbed her toothbrush from the cupboard bellow and ran it under the cool water. She put a thin layer of toothpaste on the top of the brush and began to rub her molars and tongue frantically. She scrubbed the back, the front, the bottom, pretty much any angle of her mouth that was brush-able. She did it so fast, in fact, that she barely tasted the mint in the toothpaste as she took a mouthful of water and began to gargle.

She swished it around for a moment before spitting frothy liquid out into the porcelain sink. She looked up at the mirror to see a tired mare. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was numb. However, that wasn't the only thing she saw. In the open shower behind her there was a figure. Out of the corner of her eye she barely made it out, but... as she slowly moved her gaze towards the mysterious pony, she began to make out what it looked like. She screamed and fell back out of sheer terror.

"What was that?" Spike said as he heard the screams emanating from the bathroom.

"I don't know, but it doesn't sound good." Gin said as she got to her hooves.

"I'll see what it is." Winslow insisted s he trudged down the hallway; hoping it was not Haki.

The figure was a stallion, but unlike any she had seen before. His build was lanky and frail, and his complexion looked like that of a freshly dead corpse that was losing its pigmentation. He wore a white suit that seemed to be sewn out of a straight-jacket of sorts, only it was tailored to look like a tuxedo. His eyes were large swirling pools of black and white, and they almost put Twilight into a daze as she looked deeper and deeper. His grey and ragged hair were a long mohawk that was spiked forward in nonsensical directions. Most disturbing of all, however, was his smile. A snarling maw of sharp, jagged teeth that stretched all the way to his ears, and inside it was a gaping hole of pure blackness.

Twilight's next response was to turn her head and face her attacker, but was dumbfounded to find that the stallion wasn't in the shower, in fact, when she turned her head back to face the mirror once more, the creature was gone.

Winslow opened the door, and found Twilight, with a stunned expression on her face. "I heard screaming, what's wrong?"

"I- I saw somepony, in the mirror..." Twilight stuttered. "He was tall, and his eyes were so... and his mouth was just teeth, sharp teeth!"

"Slow down Twilight... what did you see?" Winslow uttered in a soothing tone of voice.

"Some kind of... stallion. A tall one, with swirling eyes, and a toothy grin." Twilight panted. "What... was that?"

"Hmm. I had hoped we wouldn't have to deal with him just yet." Winslow said to himself.

"With who?" Twilight wondered.

"Gek, the Sorcerer of Mind, or more commonly known as the Sorcerer of Madness," Winslow said with genuine fear. "He's unpredictable, and will hop around from place to place; worming his way into the minds of others, and leading them astray."

"What is he doing here?" Twilight inquired further.

"Like I said, he's a wild card. You never know when, or why he shows up, he just does." Winslow explained. "Perhaps, it is an omen of what is to come..."

"What's coming?" Twilight said as she rose to her hooves.

"I don't know." Winslow pondered.

Author's Notes:

Hey guys! As always, I hope you enjoyed! I hope on posting more often, and keep feeding you guys more content!