Spike regarded the squabbling mares around him with increasing disgust. The shrieks and blows and endless, trite bickering fell onto ears that had since become deaf. It was only a few hours since he had left them, yet he already felt several months removed from then. The visceral panic felt when he first saw his friends reduced to fighting was a far cry to the apathy twinged with revulsion he was currently experiencing.

It was sad really. At no point in his day did he expect or want this to be the result, but here they all were. The elements of harmony beating each other comatose, Celestia and Luna presumably bickering in oblivion and Spike stood in the middle of it all. It was tempting to say the least, to simply cave. Go back to Celestia and remove the boon, then crawl back to his friends with his tail between his legs and ask for forgiveness.

And maybe it wouldn't be so bad. They'd probably be fine, and he could take another blow, couldn't he? Just one more, not even a big one. One day, nopony got seriously hurt and the cost of property damage remained firmly in the low hundreds of bits. Sure, Twilight and the others embarrassed themselves a little, but it's nothing they couldn't shake off. And Spike began to think that maybe, if he took the blame on this last one thing, he could talk to his friends and they might realise he's having trouble, so they might start listening to him a bit more. And Spike found himself laughing at the thought.

Would they even forgive him for this problem he didn't cause? What if this was the last straw for them? They'd probably forgive him, we all make mistakes. They'd forgive him,

"...Wouldn't you?" he muttered to the scrapping mares, who, unsurprisingly, didn't hear him. It would be so easy, and it would correct everything. So what Spike really didn't understand is why he started walking away. He really didn't understand why he took off in no particular direction rather than spreading his wings and returning to Canterlot. But what Spike had the most trouble understanding was why it had taken him this long to do it.

The town was largely empty at this time. Shadows were elongated and the sky was a palette of reds and yellows and burning oranges. Ponies seemed to be taking tonight to relax at home rather than spend the night outside, a fact Spike was thankful for. He'd managed to avoid the few ponies that he'd seen milling around, the last thing he wanted now was to deal with more pathetic fawning.

Whereas he had originally intended to listlessly wander until he came up with an idea of what to do next, a force more powerful than heaven and earth had intervened. His stomach. That whole 'noble lone traveller' thing had pretty much gone straight out of the window as soon as the first rumbles had reared their head.

His route changed and he began to head over to Sugarcube Corner. Even if the dragon hadn't of known the town like the back of his hand, the scent of baked goods provided ample direction. Like the dirty whore it was, his stomach loudly complained at the lack of items filling it, and every step increased the need for food. The dragon kept out a wary eye for any ponies in the streets, and began to notice just how small the doorways to everyone's home was.

Like a lumbering, recently-animated Greek statue with a strong affinity for sugar encrusted pastries, Spike eventually found the large Gingerbread house. His excitement ebbed, however, at the sounds from within. Silhouettes moved behind the glowing windows, while conversational murmurs and muted laughs drifted from the swinging doors. Spike let out a weary sigh, the idea of having to face yet another throng of misguided, drooling fanatics made the idea of food seem a lot less inviting.

A fierce discourse ignited between stomach and his mind, the victor would choose where the dragon would end up. Mind was arguing for turning around and charming somepony docile enough to not attempt sleep-molestation into letting Spike spend the night on their settee. Stomach respectfully disagreed, and was in turn making a case for of kicking the doors open to Sugarcube Corner and eating so much that it could only be adequately described by the phrase 'Pastry-Rape'.

"Now stomach, I appreciate that you are hungry, but I implore you to understand that you are arguing for the most base of satiation. This will add to the already considerable mental burden of our poor host, which is already a precarious tower of bundled trauma and neuroses! We cannot put him at such psychological risk for nothing more than the gluttonous consumption of paltry baked-goods!" Mind spluttered,

"Fuck that shit. I'm hungry," replied stomach.

"...Ok, fair enough," Replied Mind.

Spike nodded to no-one in particular, and started towards the gingerbread house. His desire for food took a queasy back seat to the growing ball of worry in his abdomen. Some dick was inflating the thing more and more with each step. He felt sick and almost stumbled. His chest was tight and everything seemed supernaturally slow for a couple of seconds, or minutes.

"For god's sake Spike," he muttered bitterly to himself, "Sooner or later you're going to have to drag yourself back to the princesses, you know that. How the hell are you going to climb that mountain if you can't even walk into Sugarcube Corner?! It's the happiest place in Ponyville. It even says so on the sign!" He looked up just to double check, but sure enough the sign still had 'The Happiest Place in Ponyville' written on it.

A sign wouldn't lie, would it? Could a sign even lie? I mean technically the sign doesn't choose what it reads so it would really be the individual who decided it that would be the liar? Were ponies going around falsely accusing signs of fabricating information with maliciousness aforethought?

Spike realised just where his train of thought had gone and acknowledged that it was a pretty pathetic attempt at procrastination, even for him. The dragon's body didn't give his mind chance to mess it up. His legs moved autonomously and before he even knew what was going on, Ponyville's most sought after bachelor was standing in the well-lit, densely populated main area of Sugarcube corner, at the back of a queue. A queue or sweet-toothed ponies all lined up to get their respective sugary fixes. A queue that had stopped moving. A queue of ponies that were now staring at him.

It was normal for ponies to salivate when they were so near to getting served in Sugarcube corner. The distinctive smell of baking pastry permeated every corner of the building, making it pretty hard not to drool a little bit in anticipation. That was why it didn't really freak Spike out when several of the ponies who turned to stare at him were leaking a little. It didn't even really bother him that much that none of them had stopped yet. No, what really bugged him, what really made him feel a little queasy is that many of them had just now started.

That was probably a bad sign.

His head threatened to fully shrink into his shoulders as he wilted under their gaze. Even if it nearly killed the English author who wrote this stupid shit, the dragon decided that respecting the time-honoured, sacred rules of queuing was maybe not the best plan of action. Spike Slowly, steadily and nervously, he began to move through the throng of motionless ponies. They parted for him, like a sexually aggressive red sea around an increasingly threatened Moses who was also a dragon for some reason.

His pilgrimage to the counter was interrupted by many inappropriate exhales and the occasional grope. Sweat poured down his body, which, by making his muscles and scales glisten attractively, was probably not helping matters. Mrs Cake came out of the kitchen area with her eyes closed contentedly.

"Who's next?" the baker called, nopony answered.

"Erm... me?" Mrs Cake's eyes snapped open and her gaze fell on the ten foot tall piece of rapidly perspiring eye-candy before her. Mr Cake's head poked out from behind her, and he too began staring. A twitched eyelid was all that Spike needed to know what was coming. The mating dance of the recently pregnant, slightly overweight married pony in her early fourties was only slightly less frightening that that of her husband. Both were ellusive, mysterious phenomena that Spike hadn't witnessed. This was a trend he didn't plan on breaking anytime soon.

"Cakes!" he shrieked, "Could you get me a platter of cakes please, and could everyone else go back to what they were doing and try not to stare. It would make me happy! Oh so happy!" His eyes were wide and bloodshot as he squawked the seemingly odd series of orders. The tension was palpable as he watched each pony snap from their hypnosis. Each one regarded him with a slightly confused look, but nature eventually took over and they did what they could to please the object of their affections.

Slowly, carefully, and with slightly less staring that before, the Cakes began to load a large tray with an assortment of pastries, while the bakery's other occupants went back to queuing behind him. A few even made a few forced attempts to talk to one another. Spike let out the breath he had been holding.

"Oh my God, I can't believe that worked," he quietly muttered to himself.

When Twilight woke up, there was the sound of snickering, and the feel of hooves in her hair. Suddenly, there was a snip, and her head felt a lot lighter. The unicorn jumped to her hooves, stumbled and fell. She ignored the sound of laughter around her and desperately felt around her head. Where there was once a thick, straightened mane there was now a... well, not much. Conjuring a mirror, Twilight saw the extend to the damage, her new crew cut was certainly bold. Whether it worked or not was an entirely different story. The mirror revealed the culprit, Rarity's blue aura held the element of magic's despoiled locks.

"What? You set my mane on fire dearie," Rarity said calmly as Twilight's hair was moved to the charred ends of her own, "Did you really think I'd let that one go?" The snipped mane twisted and changed colour slightly as it came neared to Rarity's. Her trademark stripe dissipated and the hair was assimilated fully. All trace of damage to the fashionista's coiffure was forgotten as Twilight's hair transformed into the distinctive purple coils.

The mage burned red with fury at the sight of Rarity stealing her hair, and the sound of her formed friends laughing. Twilight wheeled around and launched herself full pelt at the culprit. She realised far too late that physical attacks weren't really her strong suit, and she ended ploughing into the dirt a clear three metres away from her intended target, who regarded the display disinterestedly.

"Sterling work as ever Twilight, but back to the matter at hoof. Our dashing new friend is nowhere to be found. Now, through some strange bastardisation of nature, Rainbow was the last one to lose conciousness. Did you see where he went, or were you too busy with your erotic Daring Do fanfiction again?"

"Well, while you and baldy over there were busy with your bitch-fight," Rainbow began, pausing briefly to avoid the conjured mirror Twilight threw her way, "I was putting the hurt on poor, defenceless little Fluttershy over there,"

"You know I still could find a few more rocks," the other pegasus said darkly.

"Well, remember how that turned out for you last time? You ended up getting a kick in the balls, Flutterguy" Applejack laughed.

"Are you an idiot? I don't have-" Fluttershy began, only to be cut off by Rarity.

"Look, everyone knows Fluttershy almost certainly has male genitalia and Applejack's knowledge of anatomy is skewed from decades of farmland inbreeding, what we don't know is where my new suitor got off to. As sickening as it might sound, I propose a truce. We should look together to find him." Everypony present looked around the group.

We've been out cold all night," Rainbow interrupted, gesturing a hoof to the midday sun. "He could be anywhere now!"

"Do you have a better idea?" Rarity sighed. The pegasus though for a moment, before conceding she did not. Each pony agreed on a truce, and Rainbow was the first to put her hoof in the middle.

"What are you doing?" Twilight asked,

"Well, aren't we doing a truce?" Rainbow asked, rapidly growing uncomfortable under the confused, irritated glances of her former friends.

"Are you two years old? We are perfectly capable of coming to an agreement without putting our hooves in and doing some sort of embarrassing team spirit shout." Fluttershy spat.

"Okay then fine," Rainbow began to withdraw a hoof, but suddenly felt contact on hers. Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie and Applejack had each put their hooves into the centre of the circle.

"Hold on you said that-"

"Oh no," Pinkie cut off the pegasus, "You've made you bed, now lie in it." Rainbow looked at the group, each reflected her humiliated look with one of intense determination. She reluctantly put her hoof back into the middle.

"Come on then Rainbow," Applejack snapped with a wide-eyed, sarcastic grin, "Do the chant,"

"...Truce on one, two,"

"No Rainbow!" Twilight interupted, "We can't hear you,"

"Bucking hell fine! Truce on one, two, three," She lifted her hoof skyward and found that it was the only one up there. The other elements' limbs were firmly on the ground, and they were each giving her a patronising look, before they started away in the other direction.

"Now Rainbow doesn't that feel better?" Rarity smiled sickeningly and turned to join the others. The pegasus' face scrunched with rage as she decided she'd had enough. Running up to the element of generosity, Rainbow grabbed her hind legs and pulled as hard as she could. Rarity's muzzle slammed into the dirt. Rainbow slowly flew over her fallen antagonist and landed directed in front of her now-grounded face.

"Yeah Rarity, that does feel better." She laughed as she followed the rest of the group, leaving Rarity in the dirt.

"Blech!" The fashionista spat out a clump of mud and fixed it with a flat look, "I hate that glorified pigeon. I really do."

The door to Sugarcube corner opened, and Spike scrunched his eyes. He had purposefully taken the most secluded spot in the bakery to eat his meal, in the hopes that he could avoid drool that wasn't his own being involved. However this had meant that everytime the door swung open and that cheery bell rang, there was a tense moment to see if he'd been spotted.

Thankfully, as of yet, he had managed to stay incognito. Many of the original customers that had been here when he had arrived had, albeit reluctantly, left. Aside from Mr and Mrs Cake, there were few ponies in here that had spotted him at this point, and that was just the way the dragon liked it. The new tense moment ended when the ponies ordered, and took a seat directly adjacent to his booth. Spike let out a small sigh of relief and began eating again.

It wasn't long before the bustle of conversation began to emanate from the new arrivals' booth. For the second time in this chapter Spike decided to give the English author a heart problem when he resolved that politeness could be damned. He was bored, and had spend the last hour desperately huddled, trying to keep out of sight. Spike knew it would probably do him good to hear some normal, non-boon-related conversation.

As quietly as he could Spike leant back in his chair and began to listen. The voices were of two young fillies, and both of them spoke with an upper-crust sense of superiority without any of the cultured tone or vocabulary. Spike realised with growing dismay just who's conversation he was listening to. It was Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon.

"Why are these two always out so late? They're like seven years old," Spike groaned in a hushed tone.

"So anyway Silvy, could you believe what those blanks flanks did in school today?" Diamond giggled unpleasantly.

"OMC! It was so funny, lol!" Silver Spoon agreed, and Spike nearly punched himself in the face. He decided that he had put up with roughly 1500% of his recommended daily dose of shit in the last few hours, and so he elected to spare himself aural seppuku and covered his ears.

A few minutes passed by with the drake in this limbo-like state of self-imposed deafness. Spike's only company was the sound of blood rushing in his ears and the dull, distant thump of his heartbeat. Ever so often, one of the fillies would say something particularly loudly, and a muffled squeak would penetrate his sonic defences. However these intrusions remained mercifully indiscernible.

Boredom reared it's grey, listless head and Spike's eyes inevitably wandered. His particular corner of the bakery was not an exciting one, and there are only so many times you can count to one hundred in your head before the thrill of reaching your goal becomes overshadowed by the knowledge that you are literally just counting to pass the time. It's not a great realisation, take it from me. It was going to be a rough one.

"That doesn't answer my question though!" Twilight screamed, and everypony rolled their eyes so hard that it actually affect the spinning of the planet.

"Oh! My! God! Who! Cares?!" shrieked Pinkie Pie in retort, punctuating each word with a hoof-stamp.

Once leaving the battleground, the elements had set off in search of their new would-be paramour to presumably fight in front of him again, and then repeat the whole process ad infinitum. Since they had been out all night, and had expected to find the town bustling with new life. But an eerie void had replaced the typical midday Ponyville bustle. Nopony at all was out. And that was very weird.

However, as much this had freaked out the mares they stayed on track in their mission. Find the dragon, and then do stuff with him. In fact, the troupe of love-obsessed psychopaths became relatively immune to the ghost-town vibe after a while. Things got a little bit more amicable, and relationships had seemed to warm slightly. Insults had even plateaued to a record-low of thirteen per minute. However, Twilight's keen senses had eventually picked up a leaflet most ponies would have glazed over.

One quick-read later, and hell, as it is wont to do, had broken out. Immediate arguments over how to deal with its contents could be heard from miles around as the furious mares screamed at one another. All sense of relationship-mending was thrown out of the window like a cheap toy from a car driven by a father whose children's arguing was driving him into 'Lay on the accelerator, steer towards that cliff and just sort of vibe it' territory.

"I do! There's absolutely nopony around, and now we find this!" the mage retorted, gesturing to the offending flyer with a forehoof.

"Listen Twilight, it doesn't matter how bald you get, you're not Kojak, okay? Why do you care so much?!" Rarity bit back. Twilight scowled at her former-friend's insult but bit her tongue. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her muzzle (I don't know if that's correct equine anatomy and I refuse to research it).

"Look, it's strange, that's all I'm saying. We're the only ponies around and, despite elections being two years away, we find a leaflet saying 'Come to the Town Centre to meet the new Mayor!'. I mean, firstly, what new mayor? Secondly, why would ponies need to meet them? If they got elected, surely the majority of the town would already know them!" The element of generosity went to spit her pre-prepared insult about Twilight letting herself go, but faltered.

"That's... actually quite a good point." She conceded, before turning to the other elements, "As painful as it is to admit, I agree with Walter White. We should give this a look."

"What, so as soon as Professor X makes one good point, your on her side?" Rainbow demanded,

"I agree too," said Fluttershy, "And I don't know why you're acting so high and mighty. You haven't made one good argument against Voldemort,"

"So we listen to Elmer Fudd?" Applejack asked, and each element, some more reluctantly than the others, nodded. They began to set off in the direction of the town centre. Twilight smiled slightly at the success of her logic. This smile last approximately two seconds, and was brought to a red-faced conclusion when Pinkie slapped the flyer over her face.

"Stay humble Mr. Magoo," the party pony giggled.

After an entirely too long period of waiting, Spike felt the booth behind him shift. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as the tell-tale feeling of ponies leaving were carried to him through the furniture. His hands were tentatively taken from the sides of his head, and a small smile played upon his lips at the sound of hooves trotting away from the booth behind his. One set of hooves, not going toward the door.

Hold on, that wasn't right.

"Two chocolate Milkshakes," Silver Spoons snobby, entitled demand echoed through the bakery. Spike felt his heart plummet from a building and then smash itself across the pavement.

"Yeah, they were just lying there. I bet they'd all fainted. Probably something Spike had done!" The dragon's ear's pricked up at the mention of his own name. Aside from the princesses, everyone had either been calling him Dragonheart, or just an intimidating collection of molestation-centric slobbering and grunting sounds. He probably preferred Dragonheart to that second one.

"Yeah! I couldn't believe what he did yesterday. It's like, you totes need to calm down!" Silver Spoon chimed in again with another flagon of fresh, warm, free-range verbal diarrhoea. Despite Spike's burning desire to chew off his own fingers and plug his ears just to save him from another dose of the moronic, pre-pubescent text-speak the filly was vomiting so freely, the dragon listened on. His head was running a mile a minute. They remembered everything that happened.

"The boon doesn't affect anypony at all until they see me," he whispered to himself in a mixture of surprise and confusion at the fact that he was surprised, considering he had literally spent the last few hours watching video evidence of the boon in action. "Hold on, this gives me an idea. All I need is a really big cardboard box with some eyeholes and maybe some sort of grabbing device! I'd be golden,"

"Still though, I can't believe we were able to convince Twilight he said all that stuff." Diamond chuckled. The dragon's ear pricked again at the mention of his caretaker's name.

"Totally! I thought she was supposed to be some kind of freaky braniac. Obvs not! Lmao!" His hand was rapidly contracting into a tight, white knuckled-fist. He'd said it once, and he'd say it again, no-one made fun of Twilight but him, and doing it in circa-2005 MSN-speak was no exception.

"Watching him storm off was hysterical, if only he'd cried." Diamond said through mouthfuls of pastry. Spike's cheeks burned red with anger and embarrassment Silver Spoon laughed, her friend mirroring her amusement with a similar, venom-laced giggle.

Spike's claws dug into the table making long, wicked-looking track-marks. He knew they'd be gone soon, they had no reason to stay here too long after they'd finished their food. All he had to do was just keep quiet until they'd left. He could do that. He was patient, he had put up with a metric shit-tonne of nonsense this last day, he could put up with this. They were children after all, he could put up with the immature jeers of some children for a few minutes and after that, it was smooth sailing.

All he had to do was remain calm.

"Still nopony's seen him since he left, so job well done!"...

Oh fuck it.

Spike snapped. He stood up and was out of his booth in an instant. He stormed round the to adjacent seats and stared furiously at the two fillies. The two fillies stared at Spike as he stared at them. The stares were omnipresent and we should be thankful for them.

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" he screamed at them. The air shimmered as his maw threatened to ignite the furniture. A long, reptilian tongue swept across his jagged, two-inch teeth. His slit-eyes bored a hole through their heads and his loomed over them, waiting for an answer. The two fillies seemed unaffected by his shouting. They looked at one another and then back at him, before breaking out into a chorus of love-filled simpering, just like everypony else.

'OMG he's #gorgeous!', '...and we'll have the most perfect wedding in all Equestria and...', '...#beautiful...', '...I'll wear white and he'll wear a tuxedo and...', 'HASHTAG HASHTAG HASHTAG!'. The collection of asinine phrases ran through his ears like cold vomit down a latrine, and Spike broke.

"Shut up! Shut up! Just shut the hell up already!" the two finally seemed to register the gorgeous new arrival maybe wasn't as enamoured with them as they were he. The gave him an uncertain look at the rant continued, "I am sick of it. I am so sick of all of this. I tried to play ball, I was hidden away, I wasn't trying to cause a scene! I was ready to get rid of this boon before I was told, yet again, that it was all my fault, but I have had enough! You hear me?! Spike has had enough!"

Spike glared once more at the now-shivering fillies. He surveyed the bakery and saw everyone was suitably stunned, before starting towards the door.

"Wait," a voice stilled the drake, and he turned. A termbling stallion he didn't know met his gaze, "Who are you?"

Spike thought for a moment. That was a good question, and up until this point even he wouldn't have been certain of the answer. But that uncertainty seemed a lifetime away as he puffed out his chest and responded.

"I'm Dragonheart Augustine Virgil Spikewothy Magnus," The ponies looked like they had further questions, but the drake had no time. There were things that needed doing. Everyone in his town had shown they wanted Dragonheart, and he was going to bloody well give them Dragonheart. With plans formulating in his head, he strode though the bakery's doorway, immediately tripped on a small pebble and fell face first into the dirt in front of everypony.

Awesome.

Author's Notes:

Tomification absolutely loves Rarity.
You need to know this because of things and stuff.