Dear Diary,

I am so walking into an ambush…

I let the Cutie Mark Crusaders run up the stairs first; throwing glances out of the window, in hope that Spike was on his way back. Maybe a couple of minutes passed, I had no idea. My heart rate increased steadily. There was no sign of Spike, and Twilight could be convinced to come with them any time now.

When I heard something that sounded suspiciously like “Cutie Mark Crusaders Pathfinders!” being yelled from upstairs, I raced up the stairs, almost running hit into Twilight as she came out the door.

“Um, Twilight?” I said, scraping my foot in the ground ever so slightly and restlessly tapping my fingers against the back of my left hand. I added some hesitation and shifty eyes too. I hoped to Dibella that I managed to get a little blush as I did. “Could I talk to you? Alone. It is a… private matter…”

I added the past part with a glance and gestured with my head towards the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Sweetie Belle in particular seemed ecstatic about this development, whispering something into Applebloom’s ear. Applebloom whispered it to Scootaloo, and the three of them giggled, but did not make a move. They only stared expectantly at Twilight, who had gotten something of a blush herself.

“Umm… okay…” she shuffled the Cutie Mark Crusaders out the door. “Run along girls, I’ll be downstairs shortly.”

“Aww shucks,” Applebloom said. “Ah wanted to hear what this was all about.”

“Me too,” Scootaloo added.

“Are you gonna ask her out?” Sweetie Belle whispered to me. I just brushed her off, but tried to do it in a way that confirmed it without actually confirming it. I could hear them giggle all the way down, which gave me a genuine blush.

“So…” I started, much more serious and direct in my tone, and closed the door behind us. I made sure to walk to the other side of the room. I kept a lowered voice, to avoid being listened in on. I noticed that Twilight, distant minded from the looks of it, was fiddling with her hair and could not seem to look at me. The ground right before my feet, or the spot on the wall right next to me were fine though. “Can we…”

I phased out for a second, my mind being thrown off a little by her not seeming quite like herself, which left the sentence hanging in the air for a few moments longer than intended.

“I’d love to, but I think we should look into something the Cutie Mark Crusaders found, and try to solve this Changeling thing first,” she still seemed unable to look at me and the blush had gotten deeper.

“What are you talking… about…” my voice quickly faded out, and I was sure she hadn’t heard most of it. I had no idea what she was… fuck. In a moment where I wasn’t sure if I should be proud of convincing her that it was something like that that I wanted to talk about, or exasperated that she hadn’t gotten something that should obviously been an indication of having to do with the Changelings. I mean, given what had been revealed the last few days…

“I need you to promise to stop sleeping around though… it is fine in the heat season and everyone mare sends out pheromones like crazy, but…”

“Ehh, Twilight?” I felt like shit for interrupting her. “Wow, this got a fuck of a lot more awkward than I had hoped it to be. Ehem… I didn’t- I wasn’t going to ask about something like that…”

Twilight looked like someone, specifically me, had just walked up to her and slapped her right in the face. I swore I could see her struggle to fight back tears. Which made total sense to me; I had just made her both go ahead and completely miss the whole point of the conversation, and, while she was in the process of setting some rules, rejected her to her face. Which had to hurt.

“Oh, I’m… sorry, I should have…known…”

“Hey, wait a minute!” I interrupted her again, this time with a comforting smile. “Look, I- I don’t- I didn’t mean it like that. It was just that- that I was not prepared for it. I think you’re great, I just think we need to do these things first. Like you suggested. Is that fair? Getting what you thought was coming, even though I put on the act in front of the girls?”

With some added attempt of a humorous and consolidating tone, I gave her a smile and hoped to Kyne that I managed the twinkle in the eye. She was a little dumbfounded, but then smiled back at me. I would, if I felt like I could, guess that she fought back beaming at me. Or hitting me with something for putting her on the spot like that. I got dumbfounded as well, when she suddenly gave me a short, but tight, hug.

“I still don’t want you to sleep around so much, if I’m gonna give you a chance. The moment this heat season is over, you’re turning monogamous.” playfully, or possible not so playfully, she pointed her finger in my face. Yes, Ma’am. She quickly turned serious though. “But, forgetting this really awkward situation, why did you want to talk to me?”

“I need to know if I can trust Spike,” she was halfway through her question before I managed to catch up. Had I just entered a more permanent relationship, at some stage before it was ‘offiicial’? Damn, didn’t expect that to come of this meeting.

“Umm, sure? Celestia and Luna seemed to trust him. They told him the same stuff they told me, so why shouldn’t we?”

“Good, good… where is he?”

“He went over to Rarity’s place to help her with something. Why?” she raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.

“What do you mean ‘why’?” it was my turn to look at her with a raised eyebrow. “Twilight, we’re chasing a Changeling and then, all of a sudden, the girls have found weird tracks that we should look into? If there has been no signs before very recently, someone is being very careful. This sounds a fuck of a lot like bait meant to draw one of you Elements of Harmony out to these tunnels. How can this not be an ambush of some kind?”

She didn’t respond, so I continued. “And given that this seems to be an ambush, I really want someone else backing us up. And if we can trust Dragon boy, I think he is a decent option for some backup.”

“Spike is only a Dragonling. I think you’re overestimating how dangerous he is.”

“But he’s not useless, right?”

“No, he is quite useful,” Twilight nodded, conceding the point. “He have saved us a couple of times before.”

“Great. Now I gotta run, so do whatever it takes to stall the girls!”

“What about…”

By the time she was able to give me much of a response, I was already out the door and before long I was stopped by the Cutie Mark Crusaders, barely a few inches from getting out of Twilights tree house.

“How’d it go?”

“Did she say yes?”

“Did you actually ask her out?”

“Does this mean you won’t be able to have some fun with us anymore?”

I wasn’t able to catch who asked what in the 3,2 seconds it took them to ask, so I just responded “Well enough, maybe, something along those lines, and sounds about right” to their questions, before I told them that Twilight would come soon now, and that I would be back in a little while.

“Aww, I hate waiting,” I heard Scootaloo say as I closed the door behind me. She would have to wait for a while, I think. Hopefully not too long. Depending on how long it would take to convince Spike to do what I wanted him to.

Walking by Sugarcube Corner one of the fears I had turned out to be true; Pinkie Pie was coming my way, giving me one tight hug.

“Hi! What are you doing today? Twilight is being a real no-fun-girl today, saying she had to study, so I am totally bored!”

What to do with Pinkie? Get her in on the plan, or get her distracted by something else? If so, what would that be? Undecided, I pushed her off me, gently, and shrugged my shoulders.

“You’re not doing anything!? Fantastic, then we could do something together!” She gave me a beaming smile and eyes that virtually sparkled. “What do you want to do first? Find something to eat, or go meet new people?”

“Pinkie, you’re good at finding people, right?” She seemed thrilled at the question. Her bouncing and laughter as she answered it was a very persuasive indicator of it.

“Sure I am! I followed Rainbow Dash when we first became friends, and she’s like the fastest flyer in Equestria. And she couldn’t get away from me! And that was soo fun! But not as fun as the pranks we did together afterwards!”

“Yes, yes, I get it,” I held up my hand, originally to gesture for her to quiet down, but instead chance had it so I happened to cover Pinkie’s mouth as she jumped by me. Odd coincidence. Or maybe not that odd around Pinkie Pie. “Actually, never mind. I have to go find Spike, then I promised Twilight to help her with something afterwards. I hope it won’t take too long though, so maybe we can do something fun in not too long? I don’t think it’ll take more than an hour or two, to be honest.”

“Oh, okay,” she seemed a little put down, but got her smile back right away. Luckily this turn of events seemed to have calmed her down a little. “Yeah, we can find something fun to do later today. What are you going to do for Twilight?”

“Just gonna accompany her to the Diamond Dogs tunnels. She said she needed to look at something there. But I need to go speak to Spike first, so I’ll see you later, Pinkie.”

I gave her a quick hug, much to her surprise, and waved as I continued on my way to the Carousel Boutique.

**

“Come in!”

Through the door of the Carousel Boutique, I could hear Rarity practically sing me inside when I knocked on the door. Nevertheless, how her expression changed when she saw that I entered the store made me more than certain that she had expected someone else.

“Oh, it is you. Well, I assume you’re here for a new ensemble, and I promised Twilight that I would make a few for you. No need to re-measure you, I still have the details in my notes. So unless there was something else, I would prefer to get back to work.”

Bitch, my mind said, which I had to agree with right now. However, I just rolled my eyes and went closer to her, glancing around the shop for signs of Spike. She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms; not unlike Twilight had done earlier, but still in a much more hostile than the violet one.

“So there was something else then,” Rarity fetched a couple of chairs and a small table, this time not even offering something to drink like she had during our first meeting, and sat down, gesturing for me to do the same. “Well, what can I help you with?”

“I’m just here looking for Spike.”

“Why?”

Looking at her, I saw that her arms were still crossed and her eyes had gone narrow. How long was it before she busted out the violence again? Should be any minute now.

“I need his help with something.”

“Like you ‘helped’ my sister?”

 “I thought you’d been over that with her already. Not only my fault and more against my will than hers. Topic for another time,” my palm was already going for my face, but I managed to divert it to rubbing the ridge of my nose with my fingers instead. This again? Jesus Christ. “Now, do you know where Spike is?”

“Why do you need to talk to Spike? He said he had the rest of the day off, so he could help me if I wanted.”

“Because I need his help now, and it is really important,” I started to get more than a little frustrated with her.

“What, you’re going to make him your little minion?”

“Can you just leave it and tell me where the fuck he is? I’m not the Changeling, you fucking cunt,” the sentence had just dropped out of me, but it seemed to have one pleasurable side effect. Rarity looked like someone had given her a straight jab to the nose. Her mouth hang partially open for what seemed like an eternity. “Well?”

“You think you can just go around calling people names like that?” Rarity was back on her feet, furious. She pointed towards the exit. I was surprised that I wasn’t being thrown around like a ragdoll already. “Get out! Now!”

“Not until I speak with Spike. Because unlike you, I pay attention to what your little sister is doing and want to prevent her from getting mixed up in this Changeling business.”

“Wait, what about Sweetie Belle?” all of her anger was gone, as if I had turned a switch. Had I just done something horribly stupid? She was probably not the Changeling, but if she was indeed under some influence like the one in my mind, that was troubling. Fuck, I should play this off as something else.

“Nevermind. Baseline, I need to talk to Spike. He’s the only one that can help me right now.”

“Nonono, you’re not leaving until you’ve told me what my sister has gotten herself into this time!” And the anger was back. Just fucking great. What now? Tell her that I didn’t trust her to help us because of the ‘third person’ I suspected she had in her mind? Actually, that sounded reasonable. Thank you, brain, for giving me sound advice from time to time. Use her love of her sister to make her stay the fuck out of the way.

“Fine. Twilight and I are going to look into something the Cutie Mark Crusaders found, that might have to do with the Changelings. However, I don’t think we’re going to get them to stay behind, no matter how hard we try. So I think it is better to bring them, so we know exactly where they are and what trouble they are in.

And if this has something to do with the Changelings, I don’t want you there, because of the thing in your mind. We don’t need more people we need to look after if things go to hell. It’ll be enough trouble looking after Sweetie Belle, Applebloom and Scootaloo. So I need Spike’s help, since Twilight trusts him. And I don’t have a great deal of time, because this is something that is happening right now. So could you please tell me where Spike is so I can get this over with?”

She and I just looked at one another, without making a move. I didn’t know if there was a clock in the room, if there was I couldn’t see it, but I did know that I felt I could hear each tick and tock of the clock above the bed I used to sleep in before I came here. Damn you, Brain, for giving me this audible image to put on the passing of time.

“Rarity, I delivered the dress as you aske- umm, what is going on here?”

Spike had come in the door and now glanced from Rarity to me in our little stare competition. I hadn’t seen scaly creatures blush before, but now I did. I could practically see the anime sized sweat drop appear besides one of his eyes, along with the complete disappearance of the white in his eyes. None of that actually happened, but he looked like that would have happened if we were in an anime.

“Spike!” I decided to speak before Rarity could, which was met with a “hmph” as she walked away. “I need your help.”