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The Mare from the Moon

by Evilhumour

Chapter 11: Chapter Eleven

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A few days later, Spike let out a grunt as he helped Spliced install the latest piece of equipment in her and Twilight’s lab. It was something that she had gone to have specially made and crafted, with all the parts made under her critical eye.

While he didn’t quite understand how everything she asked for worked, he could tell it was far more complex than the device that Twilight had made and hooked up to the Crystal Mirror so she and Spike could go help Sunset and the other Canterlot High girls with the Sirens, and he couldn’t help but wonder how Spliced would react if she found out the full story about that. Of course, he’d been sworn to secrecy on the matter, something he didn’t mind in this case. Spliced seemed like an okay pony at times, especially with the diamonds she’d been giving him before Twilight or Starlight had confiscated most of them over the past few days, leaving him with just one or two for a day’s work, but other times… well, he couldn’t put his claw on it, but there was just something that didn’t feel quite right about her. And not just her ability to recover from snapping her own neck, although he doubted she’d planned for him to learn that.

It also gave the lab a less mad scientist feel and more… respectable look? Everything was sleek and shiny, and had been put in a more orderly fashion instead of having things being all over the place, like Twilight tended to leave them. For a pony who was normally so obsessed with keeping things in order, she was surprisingly lax about it when it came to her lab. Or at least, she had been before Spliced Genome had come to stay with them.

Spike shook his head to try and clear his thoughts, but he couldn’t help but wonder why Twilight had been acting so strangely lately. It had started the day after Spliced’s Welcome-to-Ponyville party, and he had the sneaking suspicion that the two alicorns’ private talk in the back room was somehow connected to it. But whenever he’d tried to speak to either of them about their talk, Twilight had brushed it off, either saying it wasn’t important or asking him if he didn’t have something else to do. Spliced, on the other claw, would only say “That’s private” and change the subject.

Turning away from Spliced to grab another object, Spike frowned to himself. He couldn’t help but wonder if the older alicorn was somehow causing Twilight to backslide… she was acting disturbingly familiar, like she had before they’d moved to Ponyville… or worse, like Moondancer had when she was brushing them off before Twilight had finally gotten through to her.

Hay, he was half-tempted to send a letter to Princess Celestia to see if she could find out what was going on!

But first, he needed to help Spliced finish installing these parts.


Outside the lab, Twilight watched her son silently, and cursed to herself, something she’d been doing a lot lately. She really, really wished she could just tell him what was going on… how Spliced had said that he needed to be in the right mindset to slowly, but steadily build up a hoard of treasure, to control his Greed Growth in a manner that wouldn’t drive him insane like it had during his one birthday.

Unfortunately, as much as she hated to admit it, Spliced Genome did have a point. In the days since she’d moved in, Spike had shown less signs of childishness and more of maturity, and he was being more careful with the gems he’d gotten. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t eaten a single one.

On the other hoof, Starlight’s bad mood had been getting increasingly worse at the same time, and Twilight wasn’t sure if it was just personality clashes between her and the castle’s newest resident - given Spliced’s general attitude of “I’m right and everypony else is wrong”, she couldn’t blame Starlight if that was the case - or if something else was bothering her. Either way, it worried Twilight.

Stepping away, Twilight sighed and wondered, not for the first time, if she should suggest that her student take some time away from the castle to try and relax, either visiting Sunburst in the Crystal Empire or tracking down wherever Trixie had gotten off to at the moment (the other mare having been away on another tour for the past few months and not being due back for almost another three weeks). The other option she’d thought of was sending Starlight to the Dragon Lands to ask Ember for information on dragon biology, something Twilight was desperate to get her hooves on, to confirm if Spliced’s knowledge really was right… though she was still very hesitant to go with the last option for a variety of reasons, including worries for Starlight’s safety. Garble still lived out there, after all, and even with as capable as Starlight was, Twilight couldn’t get the image of the teenage dragon going after her, either for revenge on Spike and Twilight via proxy, or just for spite because of her being a pony, out of her head.

Of course, there was also Starlight’s own reaction to the idea, since Twilight had the feeling that even trying to suggest any of these things would only make her student’s mood worse. Starlight was adamant that Spliced Genome was up to no good, and even though she was going along with Spliced’s plan to help Spike, she’d made sure Twilight knew exactly what she thought of it, and how it was taking all her restraint to keep from resorting to her old impulses and using mind control on the newcomer to make her tell them exactly what she knew.

Shaking her head, Twilight tried to concentrate. She had a lot of important work to do… and that included finding a safe way to contact Ember without using Spike’s message breath or putting anypony else at risk.

Just a few more days and this whole experiment would be over. She’d promised Spliced a week to prove herself and she would keep that promise.


“So,” Spike said as he watched the mare across from him hold a small metal object, one that was giving off a lot of heat at its tip, to the cannibalized game consoles she had him fetch. “You think that this can work?”

Spliced had told him that while their technology was severely backwards, again, the fact that they had quote unquote rudimentary computers was good in her own words.

“Perhaps,” she said after placing the tool down in a special box that absorbed the heat and unplugged it from the power source, with her magic moving it to its clearly labeled box among the rest of the tools and equipment. “This is not my area of expertise and I am just going off what I remember from days in school and from what I see here.” She led out a sigh, shaking her head and pushing her mane out of her face. “And even then, I doubt what I produce here by myself will function properly as a computer as I am just using simplistic programming chips.”

Spike nodded his head, knowing that she didn't really want pity or comforting right now. She was a straightforward pony in that regard, although still very unusual. He was starting to get used to her screaming in her sleep, after all. And he’d learned not to go digging into her life after Twilight had failed horribly to get Spliced to open up about her dreams.

“Maybe you can contact the companies that made those games to get some help creating your computer?” he suggested, shuffling on his feet.

“Maybe,” Spliced said, rubbing her chin. “It would certainly help with the parts…” She then let out a yawn, rubbing her face. “Maybe if I sn-” she flicked her eyes at him and quickly stopped speaking as if he hadn’t figured out she could come back from being dead. How she was capable of that, he didn’t know… and if how she’d gotten the ability was anything like what he’d read in some of the horror comics he’d snuck a look at when Twilight was away, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know the specifics. “I think we should call it a day Spike.” She then reached into a drawer and hoofed over a couple of diamonds, which he gratefully accepted.

Thanking her, Spike headed for his room, hoping to get this pair put away before Twilight caught him!


Watching him go, and seeing the expression on her face, Spliced nodded in satisfaction. It’s working, she thought to herself. He’s focused on building up his hoard, and protecting it from others. Exactly the right mindset for a dragon his age.

Idly, she wondered how Twilight had originally come in contact with a dragon’s egg to hatch it, something the other mare had yet to reveal to her. From what little she knew, Twilight had been quite young at the time, and had almost never left the capital city before that point, while dragons rarely left their homeland except on the occasional migration or in order to find a place to nap for a thousand years, and dragon eggs almost never left their homeland at all. Yet somehow, the younger Pur-alicorn, she reminded herself, had crossed paths with an egg and hatched it. Something wasn’t adding up.

Of course, a lot of things about this version of Equestria weren’t adding up… such as why Discord, with his unusual and highly dangerous abilities, and who had manipulated ponies’ minds for fun, was still allowed to wander around free and had apparently become very close friends with one of the very ponies he’d gone after, yet a being who had only caused physical damage, whose name she had yet to learn, had been locked up in a prison realm.

She still hadn’t found out much about where this castle had come from either - Twilight had claimed it had grown from a box that had come from another special tree, but she still had her doubts about that. The very concept defied all logic as she knew it.

Of course, if said tree had actually been genetically engineered by members of an ancient species that had, like her, originated from another dimension and visited this world either before ponies arose as a species or when they were still in their early days, maybe she could believe that. But it was still just wild speculation on her part. Besides, who in their right minds would purposely make a tree that would drop seeds that grew into large and, if she was to be honest, gaudy castles like this one?

Shaking away the thought, Spliced headed for her room. Tomorrow was going to be another long day.

As she headed up the stairs, she pricked up her ears, and sighed. It sounded like Starlight was lurking in the corridors again, watching her suspiciously. Seriously, what was up with that mare?

Pretending not to notice, she entered her room and sealed the door behind her before collapsing onto her bed. It was far superior to her old one, back in her prison on the moon, but despite how comfortable it was, she still had the nightmares about all the times she had died. She was also well aware that simply killing herself until morning was not an option as she still needed to rest. With a groan, she climbed under her covers and prepared herself for another unpleasant night.


Twilight was sitting at the breakfast table with her student when their guest came down the stairs, with bags under her eyes.

“Pleasant night?” Starlight said in a snippy tone.

“Shut up and give me some coffee,” Spliced shot back as she dropped her head onto the table.

Twilight, wouldn’t it be proper to ask polit-” Starlight moved her head to the side, her magic catching the tossed salt shaker. “You really don’t work well with others, do you?”

Spliced grumbled something incoherently before lifting her head up to glare at the unicorn as Twilight went to make the decaf coffee for the green mare, rolling her eyes at the two. “No,” she said as she rubbed her eyes. “I don’t; something my professors were always riding my ass about.” Twilight watched her reach over and pull Starlight’s plate over to herself, ignoring Starlight’s squawk of protest as she started to eat from it. “As I knew the stuff, I didn’t see the point in wasting my time or their time by pooling our resources together.” She flicked her eyes at Twilight who placed both the cup of coffee and a second plate down for Starlight, who was still stewing at Spliced, before she continued to speak. “And several hundred years by myself more than likely didn’t help my teamwork skills.”

“And yet you are working well with Spike?” Twilight asked as she sat down, keeping an eye on both of the mares lest they started something again. They were like foals in that respect, both of them finding ways to annoy the other.

“That’s different,” Spliced said, raising an eyebrow. “He is working for me and competent for the most part. If he doesn’t know something, he admits it and asks for assistance, and only one time, instead of pretending he knows more than I do.” She rolled her eyes. “Unlike one of my classmates back in the day… a gasbag of ego who, during one of our history exams, mistook a war from long before either of us were born as being named after one of the generals involved instead of the piece of territory where most of the fighting took place. And even after he failed the exam, when he was shown the answer in the textbook, he was still convinced he was right and the teacher was wrong.”

Starlight facehoofed. “Good grief.”

“Better than what I’ve seen from others; I know that one student tried to change their grades by hacking into school’s private system. Then there was student who tried to change the history records so they would be correct.”

“They didn’t!” Twilight gasped.

“They tried; got caught almost immediately,” Spliced chuckled. “It was a nice attempt but he was a complete idiot for trying something so moronic.”

“Going back to what I was asking before, how is Spike doing?” Twilight asked, causing both mares to straighten up.

“Well,” she started to speak when all three of them tilted their heads upwards as they heard Spike begin come down the stairs.

“Morning, Twilight, Starlight, Spliced,” he said as he headed over to grab a plate of food. “How’s it going?”

Twilight smiled. “We’re fine, Spike.”

“Good.” Pulling out his seat, Spike fixed her with a look. “Because you haven’t been for the past few days, and I want to know why.”

“Spike-”

“Seriously!” Spike gave her a hard look. “You haven’t been yourself in a while, and I’m worried about you. So don’t just tell me it’s nothing.” His voice softened. “I don’t like seeing you like this, Twilight. You’re not supposed to be cold like that...”

“Spike, you will just need to trust me-”

“No, Twilight,” he snapped, pushing himself out from his chair. “I honestly do not know why you are acting so different but I am not going to stand by anymore. I’m going to write a letter to Princess Celestia, and tell her what’s going on here! Because the way you’ve been acting these last few days, I’m starting to get flashbacks to the Smarty Pants incident when you started going weird on me, even if it’s a different type of weird this time, and I do not want to see you regressing like that!”

Before you start writing a letter, Spike,” Spliced said as she pushed herself upwards, eyes darting to Twilight. “Do one thing for us, then you may do whatever you want. Twilight, go get it.”

“What’s the magic word, Splicey?” Starlight snarked, catching the thrown plate with her magic easily.

“For the love of Celestia, you two behave yourselves!” Twilight shouted as she teleported off to get what Spliced was talking about. Teleporting back into the room, she placed Spike’s basket down in front of him.

“Please get in, Spike,” Spliced said to the dragon blinking in confusion.

“Oookay?” Spike said, tilting his head to the side as he tried to climb inside of it but his legs barely fit in. “What the?”

“Spike, for the last week, we have been working to help your body make the transition from infancy to adolescence by giving it the psychological influences it needed to make the biological changes,” Spliced said as she help Spike stand upright and placed a hoof on his spine ridges. “Along with your growth spurt, your body has begun to show the start of maturity with these hardening, your tail spade becoming more pronounced, your scales are starting to darken and your claws and muzzle are growing out a little too.”

“I-wah-me-” Spike sputtered before looking at Spliced with narrowed eyes. “Why didn’t you guys say anything?”

“Believe me, I wanted to tell you so much,” Twilight said, doing her best not to run over and hug her son. “But Spliced was worried that if you were aware of what was going on it might not have the same impact if you were experiencing the necessary feelings or not at all.”

“As such, it was necessary to install the concept and importance of greed and hoarding into you, Spike,” Spiced placed a hoof on his lips, preventing him speaking. “I understand your past experience with improper hoarding and unmonitored greed and it was a main reason why we had to resort to these methods. As I told Twilight here, you are not a pony, you are a dragon, thus you have different needs that have to be met or you will get into situations like you are in now.”

“What are you talking about?”

Spliced blinked rapidly before turning her head to Twilight as if for support, the blunt mare falling silent now.

“According to Spliced here,” Starlight said, wrapping an arm around Spliced, with the green mare glaring at her. “You are supposed to reach puberty soon but your body will only be preadolescent when that lovely slice of hell happens.”

“That doesn’t sound go-” Spike began when Spliced pushed her way out of Starlight’s hold.

“If we had done nothing, you would have been a baby going into it,” Spliced said with Spike reacting as negatively and grossed out as they had all done.

“It is not good, but it is still better than it was before,” Twilight said before looking at her son. “I cannot begin to express how sorry I am for all of this Spike but-”

“Twilight, relax,” Spike said as he tilted his head slightly upwards to look at her - now that Twilight was aware of it, she could see the changes in him as clear as Celestia’s day. “You didn’t do any of this on purpose and you care enough about me to go these lengths to help.”

“Oh Spike,” she cried, hugging her son tightly despite his protests. “When did you get so mature?”

“I have had the best teachers in all of Equestria,” Spike said as he gave in and started hugging her back. He then turned his head to Spliced. “Um, do you still need-”

“No, I am fine,” Spliced said, shaking her head. “Go ahead and enjoy yourself.”

With that, Twilight watched Spike walk towards the door when there was a loud bang and several loud voices calling out SURPRISE!

Next Chapter: Chapter Twelve Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 17 Minutes
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