Crunching for finals is the worst. Around five a.m. both my motivation and my stack of energy drinks had run out. The letters in the book had started to blur, becoming less understandable than the subject matter itself. I probably could have taken a shower and gained a few more hours of energy, but I chose to get some sleep instead. Big mistake. An hour later I was woken up by an overprotective Equestrian princess "concerned" with how her "baby dragon" was coping with his first serious school exam. To make matters worse, my initial conversation with her took place inside my own dream.

From what I understood, the princess had sent a dozen scrolls to Spike, all of which had remained unanswered. Any normal parent or guardian would take that as a hint and have stopped after the tenth text. Instead, Princess Twilight had rushed to the Equine UN ambassador—Her Majesty Princess Luna—and demanded to have a dream-talk with her dragon. Apparently, she had failed reaching him, and so had resorted to the next best thing: a dream-talk with said dragon's roommate. Needless to say she hadn't caught me in the most flattering light. I had been half naked, lying on a beach, next to a gorgeous woman in a bikini. Princess Twilight had literally popped in, opened with a "Hello, Allen. I'm not sure you remember me—" then went on to flood me with questions, as if I were Spike's babysitter. I had taken a deep breath, tried to appear calm, and lied my mouth off. That was ten minutes ago.

"Spike, you bastard!" I dialed his cell. I could picture him flirting with half the club, insisting it was 'all cool.'

"The number you are trying to reach is not available at this time." The automated reply kicked in. "Please try again later. If you want to leave a message, please do so after the tone."

Just great! I hung up and slammed the phone on the desk. My head was already buzzing with a crapload of magical theorems, I didn't need to deal with dragon drama right now. Why couldn't he keep his stupid phone on?

For almost a minute I kept staring at the phone, hoping that Spike would ring back. My glance drifted onto the open textbook—perception distortion of the human eye inside a spell matrix. I wanted to shout. There was no way I'd learn all that in the two days I had left.

No reaction from my phone, I went to get a shower. The moment I turned the water on the black wind, fire and steel ringtone started playing. Of course Spike would choose to ring back now! Dripping wet, I rushed and grabbed the phone.

"What took you so long!" I shouted. "Do you know what I—"

"Nice to hear you too, Allen," a female voice responded. I froze.

"Jen?" I recognized the voice of my girlfriend. "Look, I..." This was awkward. The talk five days ago still burned in my mind. Technically it had been me who had ended things, but she had spoken the words. "Where's Spike?" I quickly changed the subject.

"Drunk in the back of my car." I could feel the frustration in her voice. "Hugging a dozen jackets."

"Uh-huh," I nodded mechanically. Why did she have his phone?

"Look, just get here, okay? I can't drive with that idiot in my car. He starts shuffling each time I start the engine, muttering about Ember."

I coughed to disguise my laugh. That was something I never expected I'd hear. It would explain his obsession with motorcycle's however. I still remember the first time he saw a Yamaha drive through campus. Spike had tossed his backpack, then rushed to the biker asking where he could get one. As a result a long discussion with the assistant-dean had followed, regarding drivers licenses, dragon rights, and good old Earth bureaucracy practices.

"Allen, are you listening?" Jen snapped, annoyed at my delay. There it was—the unmistakable sharp note in her voice that made me confrontational. "Spike is drunk as a log, and I need you to help me drag him from here to there!"

"I'll be right there." I clenched my jaw. For several seconds I hesitated whether to add something or not, then ended the call. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" How was Jen able to get under my skin so easily without even trying?

I grabbed the first clothes I saw—my blue jogging pants, yesterday's shirt, and Spike's leather jacket—then I rushed outside. The night felt fresh. According to the weather report there was a sixty percent chance of rain. That made me mad, but not enough to go back to fetch my umbrella. If the stupid government officials had approved the Pegasus-Earth Assistance Pact weather problems would have become a thing of the past. Of course, there were those who argued that giving "sovereignty of our weather" to a foreign nation was a "grave threat to our national security". Threat my ass! The third world had jumped at the chance to have regulated weather; even the E.U. had agreed on certain provisions, but no—we had to keep our good, old-fashioned droughts, hurricanes, and all.

"Spike, you complete fuck-up!" I hissed under my breath, as I started running.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get near the club where Spike had gone to. I could hear the beats of the songs a long way off. It was a small wonder that the police hadn't shown up. The thought sent chills down my spine. I was not going to explain all that to his guardian! Parked on the side of the road I saw Jen's car. The minuscule Smart stood there, motionless, headlights on maximum. Jen was leaning against it, face in hands.

"Jen?" I came closer. "Is everything...?"

"What do you think?" She lifted her face and looked me straight in the eye. Yep, that was the Jen I knew, alright. She could convince me the sinking of the Titanic was my fault if she wanted to. "Just..."

She opened the car door and stepped back. Uncertain, I peeked inside. Having in mind what happened last time Spike was drunk, I was expecting a hammered mess taking all the space, vodka bottle in hand. Instead, I saw my roommate hugging a stack of jackets with both hands, as if they were plushy toys. The image made me pull back and glance at Jen. She raised her hands in a typical "don't even ask" fashion.

Wow, Spike... He was curled up in a ball—tail hanging from the passenger seat window—taking up most of the passenger seat. If someone were to draw this, I would have thought it the cutest thing in the world. Well, excluding the fact that Spike was three sizes too large to be considered cute and had managed to rip my shirt.

"That's... weird," I said after a while.

"You don't know the half of it," Jen sighed. "He won't let go of the jackets. When I tried pulling one out, he started whining in his sleep."

"Really?" I reached towards a jacket sleeve only to get a sharp slap on the wrist. "What? Like he'll care."

Jen didn't say a word. Out of spite I took a few photos with my phone. No way I was letting Spike forget this incident. After everything I'd been through tonight, I deserved some form of satisfaction.

"How did he get so messed up?"

"Kiss and drink." Jen said curtly.

I froze. Tomorrow morning the web would be full of photos and videos of the event. The internet would explode, Spike would get in trouble, and I'd be left cleaning up the mess, as always. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could the dragon burped up a scroll in his sleep. The rolled up parchment appeared in mid air, then fell to the car floor, where there were a dozen more.

"Crap!" I grabbed my head with both hands. Twilight was still sending scrolls? Just how overprotective was she? "We got to get him to the dorm."

"That's the idea." Jen came beside me and patted me on the shoulder. "You pull him out."

Getting a dragon out of the car turned out much more difficult than one might think. True, he shared many humanoid features, but there was one specific difference—the tail, and at times I really wished I could just cut it off. The way he had managed to get it stuck in the window prevented the door on his side from being opened. I tried. Even with Jen's help trying to drag him out of the passenger’s seat only made the dragon cling to the carseat as if his life depended on it. Alternatively, pulling him out from the driver's side only succeeded in getting him to whimper uncontrollably. If there was a definition of "worst drunk", Spike definitely was it. In the end I managed to push—and kick—his tail into the car without breaking the window, then opened the door. Almost immediately, he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The car floor was covered in scrolls.

"Heck, yes!" I shouted, leaning on the car to catch my breath. Hot sweat covered my face and most of my back. I couldn't wait to get back home and peel the shirt off and finish the shower I started.

In my attempt to cool off, I took off my jacket and tossed it on the ground. Big mistake. The moment it got in Spike's vicinity, he grabbed it greedily, adding it to his hoard. Fat chance I was going to get it back before morning.

"What the heck happened?" I turned to Jen. "You should have called."

"I did." Jen came beside me. "The moment I managed to get my phone free. You've seen what he's like. You try getting anything from a jacket pocket."

He had her jacket too?

"Kiss and drink?" I asked darkly.

"No." she shook her head. "Not that you get to ask anymore, but no. He grabbed my jacket after I managed to take him to the car."

That should have made me feel better, but it didn't. "What did he have?"

"Tequila shots mixed with sapphire dust," she said. A cringeworthy combination, I made a note to try sometime. "Apparently someone from Equestria had decided to bring him a whole bagful. Three guesses where it ended up."

"Right..."

"One thing led to another. First a dare, then a challenge to see how far he could keep going, then a kiss and drink game," she waved her hands in front of her. "I thought Facebook would be full of clips and pics by now."

"Probably is," I sighed. "I unplugged my puter. Magic exam in a few days." And I still was nowhere on that. At this point, I might as well just not bother attending and save myself the humiliation. "How many shots did he drink?"

"Nine... he would have kept going if he hadn't belched on the bottle halfway in." Jen started fumbling her pockets for something. "Got a smoke?"

"No." She was so stressed she had forgotten I quit. Studying the effects smoking had on human organs in a magic environment made me quit in a day—faster than any warning labels or quitting programs could. Side effects included, nausea, fainting, and—in a few rare cases—the lungs exploding. I had made a point to ask in class if there were any fatalities. The fact that so far there weren't hadn't made me change my mind. "I think I have some gum," I reached for my back pocket.

"For fuck’s sake!" she snapped, slamming the car with her fist. I half expected the airbag to pop out. We stood there silently for another few minutes, silent, glancing at nothing in particular. Twice Spike belched a scroll on the ground. Twilight clearly had no intention of giving up.

"I'm telling Ellie we're breaking up." Jen broke the silence. "And the rest too. They've all been sensing it. So now we'll just make it official."

"If that's what you—"

"Will you just stop it?!" she shouted right at me. "I can't keep doing this! Equines, gryphons... your own roommate is a dragon! I tried... heavens, I really tried, but I've had enough! I can't live like this, trapped in here like a prisoner, studying ancient horse dialects of a place that shouldn't exist. I can't see my parents without going through a screening to make sure I'm not smuggling gems, gold, or clouds!"

The smuggling issue. I didn't have problems, because I spent most of my time at campus only going to the nearby towns. There wasn't anyone in particular I wanted to see, and most of my friends were here anyway. Jen was different. Even when I met her she was used to traveling out of state. She'd joke about it sometimes, but I'd never thought things were so bad. Guess, I wasn't too observant.

"Are you going to leave uni?" I could see where this was going.

"I don't know." She took a lighter from her pocket, glanced at it, then put it away again. "Maybe. I'm not like you, Allen. I can't fit in here..."

"I know." I put my arm around her shoulders. Surprisingly, she didn't react. "I'll still be able to send you clips, right?" Humour—the final phase of breakup. I felt like my stomach was being sucked into a thermo-magic matrix. "Where else will you get your daily drunk dragon pics?" I forced a laugh.

No response. Jen was beyond bad humour. The first stable relationship I'd had... gone because of talking equines. Maybe she was right? Maybe I was crazy to stay here.

"Can you take him to your dorm by yourself?" she asked, thumbing her pockets again. "I want to be alone for a bit."

"Sure." I moved my arm back. "Go. I'll take care of him."

She didn't say a thanks, not one I heard, at least. Giving me one last look, she walked away from the car, leaving me and my dragon behind. This was probably the last time I'd ever see her.

"Hey, burry," Spike slurred in his drunkenness. "Issit time for exams?"

I looked at him. The drunken pile of alcohol had cost me my relationship, and probably caused me to fail my exam. And yet, somehow, I couldn't feel mad at him. Maybe I just felt relieved that Jen had finally made it official, or maybe I really had gotten too used to magic, equines, and dragons?

"Go back to sleep, Spike." I turned him on his back. Heaven knows he was too heavy for me to carry. Dragging him would have to be enough. Good thing dragon scales were tough. "There's a whole week left." I took hold of his tail and started pulling. Today I was going to take him back to the dorm. Tomorrow, I would have to come up with an explanation for Twilight...