Refusal

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

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Spike had hurried as fast as he was able, but fighting his way around dozens of people without knocking them over was not exactly an expedient art.

And he wasn't very good at it anyway.

But after elbowing only a few people he made it down. He walked quickly to the stands just behind the competitors arena.

And arrived just moments too late.

He didn't know, he couldn't know what had been said between the Elements of Harmony and Twilight, but he knew he saw her running away.

Crying.

He dropped his poster and bolted after her, following her back into the school.

For a girl who'd never actually been there before, Twilight was turning corners and dodging with amazing speed and accuracy.

More than him at least.

He was only barely able to follow her because Spike was trailing behind, taking the corners just a little bit slower than her.

After catching the dogs eye a third time in a row, he was beginning to suspect something.

But that couldn't be right, could it?

Well, alright, to be fair his actual line of thinking was; 'Why is she running so fast? I can't breathe! Need air.'

She'd stopped running after going through a doorway. Or at least he assumed she had. Spike was hovering just at it, anyway.

It lead to a stairwell, and Twilight was sitting on the bottom steps. Arms resting on her knees and her head buried in them.

From the way she was shuddering and shaking, she was doing her absolute best to be silent as she cried.

He sat next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. When she looked up, her glasses askew and snot and tears running down her face, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her against him.

She grabbed a fistful of his blazer and hiccuped, her crying unabated. She shakily latched on to Spike when he climbed up to her and started sniffing at her face.

"Come on, Twilight. They didn't mean it..." Spike said from her side.

Spike stared down, though he couldn't quite see the dog. He wasn't freaking out.

He wasn't!

He was just... Shocked.

This definitely looked different from the opposite side.

"What happened?" He wanted Twilight to answer.

"Oh, Twilight showed them her shiny! But they got scared of it and started yelling. Then Twilight started crying and they yelled more and she left. So I followed her!" The dog was speaking in complete sentences, but he was missing a lot of context. "And you were following her and you've made her feel better before so I made sure you found her so you could make Twilight not cry!"

"Good boy, Spike." Her voice was muffled, but Twilight was speaking again. That was a good sign. "They called me an idiot."

Oh.

"They're wrong!" Twilight Sparkle was to dumb as the sun was wet! "You're the smartest girl I know."

"But I feel like an idiot." She sounded so small when she said that. "They're right. I'm playing with things I don't understand. I'm just making a mess of everything."

"You know who else played with things they don't understand?" She looked up at him, her eyes were puffy and red, her hair a mess. "The people who tamed fire. You think whoever brought the first burning stick into their hut, or cave or whatever they lived in knew what they were doing?"

"No..."

"Of course not. And they screwed up. We still do. You see fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems all over the place, right? So it still turns on us, and we still use it, and we keep trying to use it better and make us safer and you know what happens?"

"Yeah."

"Exactly! The house burns down! But we keep trying and keep learning to do it better, right?" He was really getting into his explanation.

Normally he wasn't too good at making things up off the cuff like this, but it involved fire.

And deep down, he's still a dragon.

"Of course we do!" She leaned up and pulled him against her in a tight hug. "Thank you, Spike!"

She pulled her squirming pup up and hugged him, too.

"And thank you, Spike."

She stood up, pulling Spike, both of them, with her.

"I need to go freshen up before the final event. I'll see you there, right?" She already knew the answer.

"Like I'd miss it." He'd made his way to every one of her events so far.

"I'll see you there." Twilight walked out of the stairwell, Spike following at her heels.

Spike sat back down on the bottom step, resting his side against the cool wall. He slid his left hand through the neck of his shirt, pressing against his shoulder.

The scales were still there.

A look at his right hand, his wrist, saw that they'd receded from there.

He'd never had such a strong reaction before, not even when he'd been practicing lately.

Though, tearing apart a root certainly demanded more force than lifting a pencil.

Was that it? Was it responding to how much magic he was using?

That had certainly been true before but...

During the whole Element of Magic/Sunset Shimmer deal, he'd used a lot more magic, been teleporting left, right and center without it being this bad.

This painful.

He needed to figure out what was going on, soon. If it kept getting worse like this, he wouldn't be of any use to anyone.

Just left sitting idly by while everyone went about their lives, back to being a footnote...

Spike focused, dragging his mind from the malaise it tried to settle into.

Hadn't he meant to talk to Twilight about something?

Twilight.

Magic.

"Crud." He slowly pulled himself to a stand using the stair rail. "Well, did the exact opposite of what I was trying to do. Good show, Spike."

Author's Notes:

For those still around, next chapter will be fun.
Lots of fun.