Chapter 1: Never Play the Hero

“I can’t believe we got caught,” muttered a dirty brown dragon. He, along with a large group of other prisoners, were being moved through the outskirts of the Hallow Woods to a Lunar Prison Camp.  “Honestly, this is all your fault Dust Devil,” he muttered, looking at the chained dragon behind him.

            “Me?!” scowled Dust Devil, a black and pink drake. “How the hell is this all my fault, Bitterbite?”

            “Now, we’ve been through this before: it’s always your fault,” Bitterbite said with a smirk.

            “He’s right, you know,” a long slender dragoness that was standing ahead of Bitterbite mentioned. “You really screwed us over this time.”

            “Shut up, Glimmer,” mumbled the black drake.

            “Make me.”

            “I would if I didn’t have these freaking chains holding me down. I…” grumbled Dust Devil.

            “Hey, it could be worse,” said Bitterbite. “You could have to wear a muzzle like Lurch up there.”

            The brown dragon pointed to their very large friend Lurch, a pale blue dragon at the front of the line. He remained silent from the large metal bite guard that the soldiers had placed around his face.

            “Poor guy…” sighed Glimmer.

            “Still, it was funny as hell when he bit that kirin’s hoof off,” chuckled Dust Devil.

            “Do you think he regrets it?” asked Bitterbite.

            “Not a chance,” said Glimmer. “Too hysterical to ever regret.”

            “HEY!!” shouted a nearby soldier, walking up to the chatting dragons. “Keep it down, unless you all want muzzles like your friend over there,” he said pointing to Lurch.

            “Big talk, half-breed,” snickered Dust Devil, pointing out the soldiers dragonish traits.

            The guard was, in fact, a kirin. A half-dragon, half-pony cross breed that were the favoured warriors of the Lunar Republic. They were usually a darker coat of grey with yellow or green reptilian eyes, sometimes even blue with a pair of scaly dragon wings. Kirins were considered much stronger, quicker, and faster-healing than your average pony because of the dragon’s blood that coursed through their veins. However, unlike their dragon cousins, they were bred with one purpose- to serve Luna in the war against her sister.

            “At least I have purpose, you overgrown iguana,” the kirin muttered.

            “You’re a disgrace to our race, half-breed,” Dust Devil sneered, spitting in the face of the dark coated kirin.

            The dragon-pony wiped off the glob of spit on his face. “You’ll pay for that!” he shouted, jabbing his spear into Dust Devil’s stomach. The tip didn’t pierce his tough scales, but it didn’t have to. A surge of electricity pulsed through the dragon as he screamed and twitched, falling to his knees in uncontrollable spasms. “Still plan on being a smartass?”

            “Pro… Probably,” the black drake panted.

            “Then take a look at this,” the kirin said, reaching into one of the pockets in his guard armour. He pulled out a strange metal collar, its silver glimmering in the dusk light. “Do you know what this is?”

            “A pretty necklace to give to your boyfriend?”

            “It’s a slave collar,” he said, wiping the smile off of Dust Devil’s face. “A wonderful piece of enchanted metal, once it clamps on, only the one who put it on can take it off.”

            “Silver isn’t my colour,” the dark drake smirked.

            “That’s too bad, because I think that it would look pretty around your skinny little neck,” the dragon-pony said. “When I put this on, I will own you. Remember that little shock I gave you? Imagine if I could do that with merely a thought. I could make you squirm like the little insect you are. Of course, if you are willing to behave a bit, I’ll reconsider. So what do you say, ‘brother’?”

            Dust Devil looked up at the kirin, staring daggers into his eyes. The hatred was unparalleled, but he was forced to concede. He slowly got up to his feet and walked back in line in silence.

            “We’re not the insult,” the kirin muttered. “It’s you barbaric dragons that are the real insult. As soon as Princess Luna finds a way to create fertile kirin females, we will have no need for your race,” the soldier walked back to his position, keeping his electrically powered spear pointed at the dragon.

            It wasn’t long before they reached the prison camp, a hastily thrown together assortment of cages and tents. All around them stood more soldiers for the Lunar Republic, with cages crammed with war prisoners, most of which were mares and stallions of the Celestial Army. No one truly remembered when or how the war first began. The Lunar Republic believed that it was Celestia’s fault because she wanted to become supreme ruler of Equestria and tried to have her sister killed. Others believed that it was, in fact, Luna’s fault, as she felt underappreciated and attempted to overthrow her older sister again. However, most ponies looked at it as the age old rivalry of two sisters. One was a power hungry tyrant, the other a hot-headed rebel.

            “Get in there,” a kirin guard ordered, shoving the dragons into a rather small cage. “We’ll have you shipped to the capital in Manehatten in the morning. Until then, keep a lid on it.”

            “What are you going to do with us?” asked Bitterbite.

            “The dragoness will be shipped to a breeding colony where she will have the honour of being the mother to several generations of our superior race,” he said. “And as for you, fatty, and the annoying one, you’ll be lucky if you can be sold off as some filly’s pet. Otherwise you end up volcano diving for the rest of your miserable lives.”

            “I’d rather die than to be the mother of such FREAKS!” screamed Glimmer, her eyes flaring as she reached through the bars of the cell, furiously trying to slash and reave at the kirin.

            “You won’t have a choice,” droned the kirin as he started walking away. “The Lunar Republic will win this war, and you will all play your part, whether you like it or not.”

The dragons watched as the kirin walked away. Bitterbite fell to his rump, dragging his claw against the metal floor of the cage.

            “Do you think you can dig us out?” asked Dust Devil.

            “No,” sighed the brown dragon, shaking his head. “It’s made out of Starmetal; it would take days for me to claw through this. So, unless I can find a way to heat this to four thousand degrees or gain an ungodly amount of strength, we are one hundred percent, without a shadow of a doubt, totally screwed.”

            “Way to be positive,” grumbled Dust Devil. “Hey Lurch, you’ve been unusually quiet, got any ideas?”

            The large blue dragon frowned at the black drake. He was still muzzled and unable to talk.

            “Yeah, I’d get that thing off of you… But your silence is so nice,” snickered the black dragon.

WHACK!

            Lurch’s fist collided with Dust Devil’s face, knocking him unconscious.

            “Thank you!” laughed Bitterbite. “About time someone shut him up.”

            “Nice to see that, even in the face of certain danger and slavery, Dust Devil can still put a smile on your face,” said Glimmer.

            “So... what do we do know?”

            “We wait,” sighed Glimmer, sitting down on the metal floor.

            “For what?”

            “To be either killed, enslaved… or freed.”

*****

            Night quickly fell on the camp. Campfires illuminated the darkness with their faint amber glow, providing warmth and comfort for the tired soldiers, roasting their mixed kebabs of vegetables and meat; the dragons’ blood in the kirins required at least an omnivorous diet. It sickened the pony soldiers, but they knew better than to try and match a kirin one on one. Besides, the war had left many dead, and Luna was a strong believer of ‘waste not want not’.

            The prisoners were given a strange slimy gruel to eat. Some refused to eat it out of pride, others scarfed it down, too hungry to pass up a free meal. They were all miserable behind the cold metal bars of the Republic, lying around in their cells huddling with each other for warmth. They had long given up hope that they would ever escape, that they would ever see their love ones again, that they would ever be free.

            The perimeter of the camp had troops constantly on patrol around it. Having their camp nestled in the Hallow Woods had its advantages, but it was also the home to some of the less friendly wildlife in Equestria.

*****

            “Do you think there’s somepony watching us in there?” asked a unicorn guard. He and a pegasus were doing their rounds around the camp when he had brought this up. “Well, do you?”

“Why on earth would you ask a question like that, Curb Hoof?” the pegasus muttered. “Are you trying to make me paranoid?”

            “I’m just saying, Night Sky, there might be an ambush tonight,” said Curb Hoof.

            “We haven’t been attacked in months. Not since that Manticore attack, and even that was just a bunch of pissed off animals. Nothing with two brains cells to rub would be stupid enough to attack us.”

            “Just saying it’s been too quiet,” grunted the unicorn. “Plus, there are all those fresh new prisoners. Who’s to say that there isn’t a rescue party coming?”

            “Because any Celestial soldier this far into Lunar territory is dead or in one of our prison camps.”

            “Well…” pondered Curb Hoof. “What about the dragons?”

            “What about them?” asked the pegasus.

            “Remember when they raided our supply carts? There were five dragons. There was the big one, the dragoness, the annoying one, the dirty one, and the purple one.”

            “Your point?

            “We never caught the purple one,” said the unicorn. “He’s still out there.”

The pegasus sighed. “What’s one dragon going to do? Single-handedly infiltrate the camp, take out all the guards, and free his companions?” he asked. “This place is a fortress, even a dragon would think twice about trying to break in here.”

            “I don’t know, they’re tough S.O.B.s, you know,” said Curb Hoof. “Nearly impenetrable scales. They’re large, fast and strong, with razor sharp teeth and claws. Hell, they can even see in the dark and breathe fire.”

            “Well, not all of us can…” snickered a voice from beyond treeline, “but, unfortunately for you, I’m one that can.”

            “Wha-”

            The guards wouldn’t get to finish their sentence, as the blast of flames erupted from the forest, engulfing the two screaming ponies. When the flames had settled, there was nothing left of the ponies but ashes and burnt steel.

            “Well that was fun,” said the dragon that walked out of the forest. His scales were a light purple with a pale green for his underbelly. He had thick muscles, with broad shoulders and a flat-toned stomach.  He looked quite intimidating, even for a dragon. He had a long snout with a mouth filled with brilliant white teeth that shone almost as much as his glittering green reptilian eyes, the same shade of green as his spines that rode down his back and top and long tail.

            “What was that light?!” called a guard from the camp. “Somepony check that out!”

            “Should have seen that coming,” mumbled the purple dragon as he quickly jumped onto the wall surrounding the camp, his claws easily digging into the wood. He slowly ascended the wall, making sure that no guards could see him. When he got to the top, he peeked his head over. There weren’t any ponies there, yet, so he jumped over, landing on the catwalk on the other side.

            “I think it was over here!” shouted an oncoming earth pony, following a kirin. Spike quickly dove behind a couple of stacked barrels before the guards could see him, so they just walked passed him and looked over the edge. “Yeah it’s here, look at all that ash. What do you think happened?”

            “Same thing that’s going to happen to you,” the dragon smirked, crawling out from behind his cover and catching the guards by surprise. He grabbed the earth pony by the neck, easily twisting it until he heard a sickening crack. The kirin was still in shock, so the dragon quickly elbowed him in the jaw before slashing his throat open. With both of them dead, the drake disposed of their bodies, throwing them over the wall.

            With that dealt with, he flipped under the catwalk and crawled upside down on the bottom. He was well hidden within the shadows beneath the rafters, so he was able to scope out the camp. What he saw was a forest of tents and campfires, as well as many, many guards. The prison cells were on the other side of the camp- his goal. He started crawling again, passing over and under oblivious guards. Eventually, he got as far as he could to the prison area by the way he was traveling, but he was still a couple hundred yards away.

            “Do you think that they solved all that commotion?” one unicorn asked another one as they walked and stopped right underneath the sneaking dragon.

            “Don’t know, haven’t heard anything yet,” the other replied.

            “Think that they’re still investigating?”

            “Probably, I’m sure it was nothing, worst case scenario is that there was a monster or something and it ran back into the forest…”

            The two ponies kept talking about what could have been in the forest, while the actual thing was getting irritated with waiting for them to move. The dragon took a quick look around; there was no pony in sight. If he did this right, he could take them both out silently- and with a single move. He took a deep breath as he let go of the catwalk, falling down back first and in between the ponies. As he fell, he twisted mid-fall and grabbed both ponies, one with his hands, and the other with his feet. With another twist, he flipped over both of them, locking them both in his arms and legs. He squeezed tighter on both of them, trying to choke them out, but the the horn of the unicorn between his legs began to glow, and the dragon felt pressure trying to pry his legs off of the pony. He needed to act fast, so he quickly cracked the neck of the stallion in his arms.

            With that pony dead and out of the way, he could focus all attention to the other one. He sat up and grabbed the unicorn’s horn, muffling its magic. With all his might the dragon started to snap off pony’s horn, causing the unicorn to cry in a muffled scream. When the horn finally snapped off, the pony hollered hysterically into the dragon’s thigh. The drake just grinned as he drove the horn right back into his head. Sharp end first.

            “I hate unicorns,” he mumbled, as he dragged the two corpses behind a couple of supply crates so they would be out of view, and continued to make his way to the prisoners. In order to do that, he would have to sneak through the tent area. He stayed low, making sure to watch out for shadows through the tents and ponies that may or may not be in them. Weaving through them, he approached the last few rows of tents, just a few more metres and he would be able to hide in the shadows again.

            “I think it’s time for me to call it a night,” yawned a pony, as the dragon saw his silhouette walk past the tents and motion to turn down in the dragon’s direction.

            The purple drake gulped as he had nowhere safe to hide and was too far to go in for a stealthy kill. Out of desperation, he quickly jumped into the nearest tent, praying that it wasn’t occupied.

            “Crap…”

            The dragon just stared at the stallion that was lying in the bed, along with his two marefriends who were lying on top of the stallion and the three of them stared back at him. There was a moment of silence before anyone realized what was going to happen. He couldn’t let the ponies call out for help, so he snapped out of his little trance and rushed the trio of ponies, grabbing both mares by the mouth before they could scream while he wrapped his tail around the head of the stallion. Their cries for help were thankfully muffled by his hands and tail. Now he just had to finish them off…

            “Hey Cross Fire, you still up?” called a voice from outside.

            The dragon froze as he saw the shadows of ponies through the tent, and they were headed his way.

            “Hello?” the pony called again, approaching the tent. “Hey Cross Fire, me and a few of the guys got a hold of a cider barrel, want to join us for a drink?” The pony was at the front of the tent and the dragon could see his blue hoof slowly opening the flap of the tent.

            “Zzzzzzzzzzzzz,” the dragon quickly faked a snore, hoping to fool the pony that he was a sleeping pony.

            “Oh, you’re asleep,” whispered the pony, his hoof closing the flap back down, not having seen the dragon. “Hey guys, the bastard’s already asleep!” he called out as he walked away.

            “Too close,” muttered the drake, looking at his current victims. The two mares in his claws were choked out, not dead but unconscious. However, the head of the stallion had been crushed within the dragon’s tail. He carefully placed the bodies back on the bed and hid them under the blankets. Not wanting to go the way he came, he carefully cut a line in the back of the tent, the fabric ripping easily from his claw.

            He stepped out of the makeshift hole. Luckily, the tent was close to the prison cages and he could see the other captured dragons as well, who were currently being harassed by a kirin guard.

            “What did I say about keeping a lid on it!?” the kirin yelled, banging his spear against the bars of the cage.

            “Sorry, but we’re social creatures,” smiled Bitterbite, teasing the kirin.

            “We’ll see how social you are with one of these around your neck!” shouted the dragon-pony, flashing the slave collar in his hoof. “What do you think of that?”

            “I think you’re about to be hit on the head,” smiled the dirty dragon.

            “What the hell are you talking about?”

            “This,” smirked the purple drake, smashing his fist into the head of the kirin, knocking him to the ground before stomping his skull in. “Hey, Bitterbite.”

            “You’re late, Spike,” grumbled Dust Devil.

            “Nice to see you too Dusty,” smiled the purple drake, searching the dead kirin for anything useful. “Still mad that this is all your fault?”

            “It wasn’t my fault!” raged the black dragon.

            “Keep your voice down you idiot,” shushed Glimmer. “So Spike, you’d get in okay?”

            “As easy as it could have been,” muttered Spike, picking up and examined the slave collar, before tossing it randomly aside. “They sure as hell didn’t make it easy, had to crack a few necks to get in here.”

            “And a few skulls, by the looks of it,” smiled the dragoness.

            “Not like any of us are new to this…” droned the purple drake. “Ah! Here we are,” he said, pulling out a long silver key from the kirin’s pocket. Spike unlocked the door of the cell and proceeded to unlock all the chains from the dragons until they were all freed.    

           Lurch immediately ripped his muzzle off now that both his hands were free. “Well, it’s about time! Seriously, what the hell do those freaking kirins get off treating us like that!? ‘We’re the superior race.’ BULLCRAP! I’m glad I bit that kirin’s hoof off.”

            “Look, you guys need to get out of here and there are guards everywhere,” said Spike. “I’ll create a distraction so you can all get out of here safely and meet up with you guys in the Badlands okay?”

            “Sounds like a plan,” said Lurch, stretching his large jaw. “But what do you plan on doing?”

            “I’m a fire dragon,” smiled Spike. “I’ll think of something. Just be ready to fly out of here when things get chaotic.”

            “Want to give me a hand, big guy?” asked Bitterbite.

            “Sure,” he said, grabbing the brown dragon under the arms. “Sucks not being able to fly huh?”

            “Tell me about it…” Bitterbite droned.

            “Alight, if you guys are ready, I can get this party started,” said Spike. “Give me five seconds.”

            The purple drake took a deep breath, mustering as much fire as he could within his stomach and let it all out on the nearby tents. A small section of the tent exploded in a jade fire. Spike ran into the flames, continuing his fiery rampage.

            “I think that’s the signal,” said Dust Devil, taking off into the air, the other dragons following behind him. “Try not to get killed, Spike!” he called before disappearing into the night.

            “WHAT THE HELL?” screamed a guard. “WHO CAUSED THIS FIRE?”

            “IT WAS THE DRAGON!” another guard pointed. “HE’S FREEING THE PRISONERS!”

            “GET HIM!”

            All awake and able guards charged the dragon, spears lowered and at the ready to skewer Spike. The dragon smirked as he unleashed more fire from his mouth, creating a wall of flames between him and the soldiers.

            “Agh! Somepony get this fire out!” they shouted, doing their best to stay away from the grasp of the green flames.

            “Have fun with that,” smiled Spike as he took off in the opposite direction. “Now to find a way out of here…”

            The fires he had set were spreading quickly throughout the entire camp. The Lunar soldiers were doing their best to keep the fires under control, and failing to do so. They paid no attention to Spike, who started running towards the walls, passing by the other cells full of prisoners. They all screamed and begged for the dragon to help them. But they were all Celestial Soldiers, and while the Lunar Republic enslaved dragons, the Celestial Society would straight up kill dragons. Whether they thought that dragons were vermin or to stop kirin breeding, he didn’t know.  He didn’t even care. He had done what he came here to do, the rest of them could burn with the camp.

            “Please dragon… Help me…”          

            Spike stopped in his tracks.

            “Please… I beg of you…”

            That voice… It was like an angel’s. Pure, sweet, and innocent, a tone he hadn’t heard since he was a whelp. He turned around and saw a small cage tucked away from the rest of the cells. Why was he so drawn to this particular cage he wondered? It was like an unseen force was dragging him to that particular cage and as he walked closer he saw what was in it.

            It was a pony, a unicorn to be specific. Her white coat was incredibly dirty, covered in patches of dirt and grime. Her deep purple mane was muddy and messy, there was a good chance she hadn’t bathed for weeks. She looked so scared as she stared at the dragon with her big blue eyes. They reeked of desperation and weakness. The mare didn’t look like a soldier, more like a normal civilian, but why would Luna order the capture of such a seemingly innocent mare.

            “Please, dragon, save me…” she whispered.

            “Why should I help you?” he asked. “There’s probably a reason you’re in here, so what is it?”

            “I was caught in the fray of the last Canterlot attack, the one that happened a few weeks ago,” the mare replied. “Please, set me free, I just want to go home!” she cried. “I’ve been in this cage for almost a month! I haven’t bathed; I’ve barely slept or eaten. Please dragon, be my hero and set me free.”

            Spike looked at the poor pony in the cage. It was barely big enough for her; she had to scrunch her legs up in a ball in order to fit. She looked uncomfortable, depressed and miserable.

            “Don’t be a hero Spike…” the dragon thought to himself. He had never considered himself a hero, more of a survivor if anything, and part of the reason he survived was because he lived by that rule, don’t be a hero. “Ah screw it,” he mumbled, placing on the door of the cage. The bars were just iron, nothing that he couldn’t handle. With a little pull, the door broke off its hinges, giving the captive pony enough room to crawl out. “There, now if you excuse me—“

“Kill the dragon!” a kirin roared, as he jabbed his spear into the side of the dragon. Spike grunted as he backhanded the guard off of him, but the spearhead was dug deep inside of his gut. He could see dark crimson blood starting to pour out of his wound.

            “Crap in hell!” he groaned, limping quickly away from that cage. The mare had run off somewhere.  Not that he cared; never should have helped her in the first place. He could have been out of here without a fatal wound to his underbelly.

            He found a hole in the wall, somewhere where the fire had caught and ate away at the wood. Spike slipped through and ran into the forest, the blaze of the burning camp slowly fading away in the darkness.

            But he still had another problem, he was still bleeding quite badly. He felt himself becoming weaker, more tired and sleepy. “I can’t…” he muttered, falling to his knees as he started to crawl. “I’m not going to die because…of some stupid…stupid…” The dragon fell to the ground, the light fading fast from his eyes as he blacked out.

*****

            “I’m sorry I have to do this, dragon…”

            “Hmm…”

           “There we go, let’s see if he wakes up… Dragon, please wake up.”

            Spike’s eyes slowly started to open, the light of day pierced his eyes, causing him to clench them shut again.

            “Dragon, are you okay?”

            That voice- it was the same as the mare in the cage… The drake opened his eyes again, and he was more adjusted to the powerful gleam of the sun. He realized that he was lying on his back, not the position that he had fallen on. He turned his head to his side, and he saw the white mare sitting on a large rock. She looked clean as her white coat shone like snow and her mane was styled in long down streaks with a bit of a curl in it. He assumed that she must have bathed recently.

            “Good, you’re awake, I was afraid I wasn’t able to treat your wound,” she said.

            “Huh?” wondered the dragon, as he felt where the spear had stabbed him. The spearhead had been removed and replaced with medical bandages. He didn’t feel any pain coming from it so he assumed it was fully healed. “Where did you get medical supplies? Steal it from that camp?”

            “Certainty not!” puffed the pony. “A lady does not steal,” she paused. “I just simply borrowed a few bandages and such.”

            “Yeah sure, you ‘borrowed’ it,” grumbled Spike, as he started to sit up.

            “Be careful,” gasped the unicorn. “You suffered a nasty jab from that spear.”

            “Thanks a lot for that,” he deadpanned.

            “Excuse me?”

            “I could have been out of there unharmed if I hadn’t stopped to save your sorry ass,” Spike muttered.

The mare cringed at the word “ass” but didn’t say anything about it. “Still, I’m eternally grateful.”

            “Whatever you say,” Spike said. “Anyways, I need to get going, so have a nice life,” he started to get up when he felt the strangest shift on his neck. He reached around his throat and felt a metal band around it. “What the hell is this?”

The mare looked down to the ground, avoiding the dragon’s glances. “I’m sorry.”

            “Is this what I think it is?”

The mare nodded. “Please forgive me.”

            “Heh,” chuckled the drake, his face curled up into an evil smile. “Get this thing off of me…or I’m going to rip your head off.”

“…No”

Spike smile quickly became a frown. “No? YOU THINK I’M SCREWING WITH YOU?!” he roared, flexing his claws as he charged the white mare. “Get this thing off of me before I skull fu—“

            “Get back!” cried the unicorn.

BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT!

            Spike yelled in pain as an electrical shock was emitted through his collar, causing him to take a few steps back from the pony and fall to the ground. He tried to tear the collar off, but that just caused the shock to increase. He eventually gave up and let his claws fall to his side as he laid on the grass panting heavily.

            “What the hell was that for?” he wheezed.

            “You tried to attack me!” the mare replied.

            “No, really?” the dragon said sarcastically. “I wonder why I would do that?”

            “I said I was sorry.”

            “If you’re so sorry then take this collar off!”

            “I can’t…” she said.

            “And why is that?” barked the dragon, his patience was wearing thin.

            “I…I need your help,” the mare said as Spike started to get back up. “I need to get back home, it is of the utmost important that I get there alive.”

            “Where do you live? Baltimare, Hoovianapolis, Apploosa?”

            “Vanhoover.”

            “WHAT?!” yelled the dragon. “Do you have any idea how far that is!”

            “Which is why I need an escort, and I was afraid you would decline if I asked you so I put—“

            “Of course I would decline!” roared the drake. “We’re on the outskirts of Manehatten! Vanhoover is literally on the other side of Equestria! And not just that, but it’s a city in the Celestial Society!”

            “I am aware of that.”

            “So you’re a…”

            “Celestialite, yes.”

            “Great…” groaned the dragon. “This is just perfect…”

            “So… Will you help me?” asked the mare.

            “No, and here’s why,” the dragon explained, as he stared daggers at the pony. “You can shock me all you want, but I ain’t leaving this spot. You’ll probably get eaten by Timberwolves or turned into stone by a cockatrice, then I won’t have to deal with you anymore!”

            “You can’t let me die…”

            “I can, and I will,” smiled the dragon.

            “I mean you can’t let me die if you want to live.”

            “Come again?”

            “The slave collar, the enchantment on it allows the handler--me--to control its functions with my thought,” she explained. “But the spell also links your collar with my heart. If for any reason my heart were to stop beating, the collar would release a lethal electrical charge strong enough to kill a fully grown Ursa Major. In short Dragon, if I die, you die.”

Spike’s jaw hung open from her little explanation. He was in total disbelief.

            “If there was any other way I could get home without having to do this I would have done it,” she said. “I take no pleasure in doing this to you.”

            Spike tugged lightly on the collar around his neck, feeling the cool metal that it was made of. “If I help you and get you back home…”

            “I’ll take the collar off and you can go back to whatever you were doing before all this happened.”

            The dragon looked down on the ground in defeat, before quickly turning around and started walking into the forest. “Fine, let’s get moving.”

            “Thank you,” she smiled as she ran up beside the dragon. “And again, I’m sorry.”

            “Stop apologizing,” grunted Spike. “I’m not forgiving you.”

            “I see, and you have no reason to do so, but it is good manners—“

            “Do you talk this much all the time? Or just to dragons you screw over?”

            “Why, I nev—look, maybe we got off on the wrong hoof,” said the mare.

            “No, there is no wrong hoof, or right hoof. In fact both hooves have been cut off and the pony is slowly dragging himself into the gutters so he can die in peace,” the drake muttered.

            “Well, that was a rather vulgar metaphor…” gulped the pony. “Regardless, we’re stuck with each other, so we might as well attempt to get along.”

            “Don’t want to. Happy being pissed off.”

            “Can you try to refrain from using such foul language?”

            “Is it bugging you?” the dragon asked.

            “Very much.”

            “Then you know a fraction of how I feel.”

            “Okay… I’ll give you that,” the mare admitted. “But we can still be civil. I haven’t even exchanged names. My name is Rarity, and what is your name?”

            “Spike,” the dragon said. “My name is Spike.”

            “What a lovely name,” smiled Rarity. “Well Spike, I would just like to say thank you again for helping me in my time of need. You truly are a hero.”

            “Yeah…” mumbled Spike, “Never should have played hero.”