Refusal

Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony, nor am I profiting off this literary venture.

----

He'd missed it.

He could not believe he'd missed it!

He even had a line he'd been practicing, something prophetic and vague and cool!

Which just got flushed. Twilight Sparkle was already back in Equestria.

She'd done a good job, though.

The sirens had been beaten, Sunset Shimmer had joined the song and Vinyl Scratch had posted the whole thing on the worlds most popular video-sharing website.

With an addendum about awesome special effects.

And watching it from Vinyl's angle, it was definitely awesome.

He was still really upset that he'd missed seeing it in person, though.

Nothing for it, then...

Okay, he was also just a might bit peeved that he slept through an opportunity to do the whole 'Feeble prophet' gig, like Seeress Yesterday from Power Ponies, issue fifteen.

----

Clocks turn and time passes, against the endless onslaught of time, nothing ever truly remains the same.

Desperation can drive a person to great lengths, borne of concern, worry and fear hidden beneath frenetic energies.

Fatigue, pain and lethargy can slowly morph into cynicism and apathy.

A solid friendship, however, can keep both likelihoods from fruition.

Such was the bond between Spike and Twilight.

Tired as he was, he never allowed her to get so fully absorbed in her research that she lost sight of her life. Worn out as he felt, he refused to let her think she was anything other than the most important person in his life.

And her? Frustration melted to understanding as he went from medication to medication before settling on one that managed his symptoms.

Barely.

He wasn't getting any worse at least.

Her research progressed at a snails pace, Spike wasn't recovering and Spike was only slowly working his way out of the puppy phase of his life.

Nothing can truly resist change, but they can certainly plateau for a while.

And that plateau was about to shift dramatically.

----

Twilight had found it!

Or at least a part of it!

As for what it is, well, it's a breakthrough!

The science behind it was... A bit iffy, it ran on a lot of supposition in place of recorded evidence, but that wasn't going to stop her.

Some of the most amazing discoveries had been made by a leap of faith.

Still. A few more days and she knew she'd have an opportunity to test out her new device.

The 'Friendship Games' were occurring in just a few days. On the tenth.

And those girls wouldn't be able to keep from tapping into their elements of harmony.

Spike had tried explaining that, once.

Honesty, laughter, kindness, generosity and loyalty.

Five attributes that somehow made up an existential force.

Plus one, this 'Element of Magic' that kickstarted the rest. Or catalyzed them into having a measurable impact.

It was a nice thought, really. Five core personality traits that worked together to create Harmony.

It didn't explain anything about what was going wrong with her best friend.

How did Harmony, in some ray or explosion, cause her friend to suffer from what his doctor described as organ rejection?

Especially without any single, specific organ that was being rejected?

The doctors were terribly confused, the immunologist was terribly confused, Twilight was extremely confused. With no idea why that was happening, it couldn't be repaired, reversed.

And she'd researched it and the drugs he was taking. They could mitigate the symptoms, but not indefinitely.

No, she needed a permanent solution.

And hopefully the pendant in her hands, the result of months of research and testing, would be the key to the first step in finding it.

----

He hadn't been down here too often.

This was Twilight's sanctuary in school, one he generally left to her and treated as being about as close to sacred as anything else.

Dean Cadance had actually authorized her to use it, signed off on it as being important to an independent research project that Twilight was performing in the hopes of accelerating her college career.

He knocked on the door, waiting a few moments for her to answer. When nothing came, he pushed the door open and poked his head in.

Twilight was sitting on a rolling desk chair, hunched over a workbench with a magnifying glass attached to it.

"Hey Twilight?" He asked, low and quiet. She could be surprisingly easy to spook.

"What?" She turned her head, glancing at him through her right eye before returning to whatever she was working on. "Oh, Spike, what did you need?"

A bright light sparked from between her hands as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. He took a moment to check Spike's water bowl and food dish.

Mostly empty, though the puppy likely didn't know.

He sighed and refilled the food. There wasn't any water in the room, unfortunately.

"Just coming by to check in on you. You've been more absorbed in your project than normal the last few days." He turned to look at the walls, all of them covered with papers, clippings from newspapers and string.

Lots and lots of string.

"I'm fine, Spike. Better than fine! My research has advanced to the next stage! It's only the alpha build at the moment, I already worked out how to scrap it and make the next one more efficient, but I wanted to put it through a live test first." He'd expected her to be grinning at him from ear to ear, eyes wide open.

The other Twilight would get like that, especially if she was working on a project.

This though... It was just a gentle smile.

She was genuinely happy.

His smile a little tighter in response, but seeing her smile always made him feel like doing the same.

"Alright Twilight. What's your device do?"