This happen two weeks after the last chapter and made after the episode "Equestria Games" however, this time around it's not Spike focused, but more Miss Pauling. Sort of, you will see what I mean.
Finally, the Equestrian Games events have arrived, and everyone in Ponyville is packing for the competitions or heading out to watch the events unfold in the Crystal Empire.
Twilight however, is stressing herself up as this will be her very first event to where she will be sitting among the royal in the VIP lounge.
Not sure why this pony hasn't yet gotten a heart attack from all of this needless stressing, Miss Pauling decides to tell Twilight. "It's simply sitting in the VIP lounge and watch the events from there." Before this pony gets into yet another tirade, she levitates up a list she made due to this pony's stess. "Spike and Engineer are handling the equipment they need for the Games. Pinkie Pie already has her cheer routine, and Applejack and Demoman will make sure the kids won't get lost during the journey. The rest knows the time for the train and I made sure that not even Soldier can mess that up— but in case he does; I asked Heavy to haul him into the train." She begins to walk a bit, feeling way more confident now that she's in her element. "The train will be leaving in exactly an hour from now, and I have already spoken with your brother. He would like you and Spike to meet Princess Cadence inside the castle regarding a request from Spike. I made sure you have a bit of time to converse with your friends before it's time to join the princesses at the VIP lounge." Miss Pauling lowers her clipboard, asking her calmly, "Anything you would like me to add?"
Twilight stares at the turned human who seemed to dislike being in Equestria, surprised that Miss Pauling has done all of this without been asked. "Wow," she finally speaks and gets out from her panic phase now someone has given her a solid schedule to follow. "You really know how to make a schedule." It's better than hers and that's saying a lot, considering Twilight loves making scedules.
"I know a thing or two on how to make a most productive day." Miss Pauling replies nonchalantly and wisely stays quiet that her former job mostly involved keeping the mercs in check and murder people who got too close to the Administrator— now that she thinks about it, what has become of her former boss? Pushing that aside, "At any case, there's nothing to worry about, for if things do go wrong— which they often do, considering I have been working with the mercs for several years." Miss Pauling remarks, well aware with those nine are prone to cause trouble and add in the ponies; everything is possible. But Miss Pauling has put that into her calculations as well, "I've made sure to have a few backup plans in case something unexpected happens." She checks her notes, admitting, "They mostly involve the mercs. Sure, you and the other ponies have some weird ability to keep them in check, but you can't keep an eye on them all the time."
Checking these backup plans, and Twilight can see that Miss Pauling has everything under control. "I'm glad to have you around for this event Miss Pauling." She admits to the turquoise blue unicorn, who merely nods like it's no big deal. Felling way more at ease, Twilight heads out so to start this week Equastira Games, but at the door realizes. "oh! What about our gear?" She asks the unicorn, "We got so much and if we miss just a single part, our competitors can't compete in the Games!"
She is close to hyperventilating again at the sheer thought.
But Miss Pauling merely makes herself another note in a collective manner. "I have already the gear gathered at Applejack's place, but if it will make you feel better, I can go through it and see if anything is missing."
"If you wouldn't mind." Twilight Sparkle replies slowly and the unicorn leaves, seemly not minding this at all. "huh, looks like she likes being busy." Twilight muses to herself, remembering how much Miss Pauling enjoyed being on the organizer team during the Winter Wrap Up.
**Crystal Empire**
Not long after they have arrived, two crystal pony guards request Twilight and Spike to accompany them. Spike was very confused, and Twilight admitted that she too is unsure what Cadence would ask from him. They wished their competing friends good luck before heading to the castle.
Here, Cadence explains to them— mostly Spike. "Ever since you helped saving the Crystal Empire from Sombra, the crystal ponies have regarded you as the hero of this kingdom; you are their hero." Cadence turns her head to one of the windows, "I take you both saw the stature constructed at the base of the castle?" They both nod and she smiles down at the young son of the Drakes Lord. Now for the request. "And therefore, both Shining Armor and I were hoping if you do us the honor of lighting the torch at the opening ceremony." Adding to the young drake. "You'd be the very first dragon in the history of the Equestria Games to do so."
This took Spike by surprise, "Huh? Haven't any other dragon done this before?" Cadence shakes her head, explaining him: "The Equestrian Games wasn't a thing back when the drakes were around." Oh, in that case, this is very honorable to be the first dragon to do this. Spike tells Cadence that he will do it, adding. "and I can do it with my fire breath!" He demonstrates by breathing out a small tongue of fire, accidentally burning the large leaf the crystal pony used to keep him nice and cold. He laughs nervously at the mistake.
Cadence looks delighted at his reply. She nods and walks towards the door with; "I will inform Ms. Harshwhinny about this wonderful news; she will inform you how it will work."
After Spike leaves to been put up on how to do this honorable action, Twilight and Cadence head up to the VIP lounge where the princesses of the sun and moon are already seated. Twilight Sparkle follows her sister-in-law's example by giving the two rulers a polite nod, before taking her seat. Twilight scans the large stadium for her friends and spots them way further down, too far for her to call for them...
A sudden shadow appears and looking up; Twilight sees Spike's mother, Dragonlord Nila is lying on a platform specially made for her. Their eyes meet and the huge drake gives her a polite nod as a greeting, which Twilight returns with a weak smile.
Meanwhile, Miss Pauling has just made sure the mercs are where they should be and reminded them all not to stir anything up as she highly doubts the monarch would appreciate them ruin this very important event. With that done, she heads down a hallway and encounters an elderly mare she knows is named Ms. Harshwhinny. Spike accompanies the other mare.
"—you're quite certain you also understand exactly what you're supposed to do?" The elderly mare asks Spike, who replies: "I stand where you tell me until you give me the signal, and then I walk over and light the torch." Ms. Harshwhinny nods that he got it. "Couldn't be simpler." She replies sternly, and right that moment notices Miss Pauling, but other than a small sign of recognition, the mare does not bother with her and continue on her task. Miss Pauling prefers it that way as it does allow her to carry her given duties in keeping everything in check. She is about to leave but stops when she suddenly gets a strong prognostic that something is about to go wrong. Like an unseen line of facts only she can sense, and these lines are going around Spike. Not sure what's that about, but Miss Pauling is curious about what's this will lead to as she only got this sense when reviewing her work and using the facts to track down one of the Administrator's enemies. She decides to follow the two, making sure to keep a distance so she wouldn't distract any of them.
Right as Spike step onto the platform leading to the touch, the dragon freezes up and there Miss Pauling realizes why she got that feeling. 'Ah, now I see. Spike has never been before such a large crowd.' Miss Pauling muses to herself and is not really surprised to see him suffer from a serious case of stage fright, figures most kids would. She walks over to the frozen up dragon and, as she honestly has never been in this kind of situation, she taps him a few times with the clipboard in an attempt to snap him out from his frozen up state.
"Mr. the Dragon, are you coming?" Ms. Harshwhinny calls impatiently.
Spike realizes he had frozen up, "Thanks." he says softly to this turned human and walks nervously over to the supervisor mare.
Right that moment, Shining Armor calls for all the flag carrier to bring their flag to the middle of the stadium, which they all do, ending with Ponyville's flag that is carried by a group of kids. With that done, the torch's lighting is all that is needed for the Games to begin.
Ms. Harshwhinny gives the dragon the sign by tapping her front hoof, he did not react, so she tries again. The young unicorn steps forward, telling the elder mare lightly: "Stage fright." Which is annoying but understandable and Ms. Harshwhinny allows Miss Pauling to speak to the dragon, calming him down enough to get onto the torch.
Up there, Spike tries to breathe fire, but all that gets him is coughing. Recovering from that, he tells himself: "Come on, Spike! Calm yourself! Count to ten. One... two... three... thousand... fourteen thousand... Twenty thousand...! Thirty thousand...!" He begins to panic again, unable to focus on the task.
Noticing that lighting the touch is taking too long, "What's wrong?" Cadence asks, getting nervous. She and the other royals barely noticed the shadow above them disappear.
Now really in a state of horror that he's letting everyone done, Spike tries again, but no fire is coming.
"Mr. the Dragon! Would you light the torch already?!" Ms. Harshwhinny calls, losing her patience and most likely, so have the entire stadium. No one spots a faint break of the surroundings before her.
"I don't know what it is, but I just don't have the stuff today!" Spike calls down, about to ask for a match or something, but right there: "Calm yourself." he hears his mother's voice, startling him, but the sense of a claw on his back keeps him from falling down from the ladder. There he notices the faint shimmer in the air before him. "Don't worry about the ponies; they could use some patience." That did make him chuckle and ease down his worries. "Now, take your time, and when you're ready, unleash the fire within you."
Ms. Harshwhinny opens her mouth to tell the dragon to hurry it up, but something invisible hits and throws her off her hooves. The nearby guard pony trots over and requests the middle-aged mare: "Do kindly not speak. The Dragonlord wishes a moment with her son." and she wisely stays quiet, for right there, she notices a shimmer of something huge right before them.
The cheering crowd becomes simple noise and taking a deep breath, Spike lets out a tongue of fire and lit up the torch. The crowd goes wild and he sighs in relief, so glad his mother helped him out on that one.
"Well done." Nila says and leaves to go back to her given spot for this show the ponies have sat up.
With the torch lit, Shining Armor announces, "Let the games begin!"
The games themselves wouldn't start before tomorrow, starting with competitions of strength and ground speed, these are mostly aimed for earth ponies, but some pegasi and unicorns compete in these two games as well. Everyone look forward to watching these, and hopefully that their Ponyville competitor would be part of the three winning titles. One of those who would compete for Ponyville is Heavy.
"I look forward watching you in the weight lifting compition," Applejack voices to the horse-sized stallion. "and I have seen your strength, so fairly confident you can earn the gold."
"Maybe." Heavy replies but will give it his all in an attempt to earn the gold medal, though doubts he can melt that one into bullets for his gun. He and the others turn when Twilight comes over to them and she asks them all: "Have any of you seen Spike? I was hoping to ask him if everything is alright."
"About the whole torch thing?" Rairty asks, Twilight nods and now that their friend mentioned it. "He did take an awful lot of time, but he lit it just in time."
Twilight nods in agreement, she was close to use her magic to help the young drake out, but right before she did, Spike lit the torch. "and I'm glad he did. I didn't want him to be stuck in such a tight spot, less so before so many ponies."
"I think that huge dragon helped him out." Everyone turns to Miss Pauling come walking over to them. She stops and explains, "Ms. Harshwhinny got toppled over by something invisible and the guard told her not to be disrespectful towards the Dragonlord."
Ah, now that she does mention it. "Oh, I almost forgot, Frauline Nila has the ability to camouflage herself. Making her look practically invisible." Medic replies Miss Pauling and is deeply fascinated in how the dragonlord can do that, does remind him to ask her about it. "I do not know if it's a drake trait or some kind of spell, but it is fascinating how she can cloak herself."
"Like spy" Heavy rumbles, Medic nods in agreement. Both glances to Spy, who pretends he hadn't heard them.
That's a relief, good thing Nila was there for her son. Twilight Sparkle breathe out in relief, glad that she didn't have to step in. But she still would like to know where he is. "Miss Pauling, do you know where Spike is?"
"The crystal ponies are currently swarming him." Miss Pauling replies as if she's talking about the weather, making some snicker at how she said it. "They all wanted an autograph by the brave and glorious savor of the Crystal Empire— is that true or are these crystal ponies exaggerating?" She asks no one in particular.
"It was team effort." Heavy replies but like everyone else who were there during the fight for the Crystal Empire. "But Spike made final blow to evil king."
"By returning the Crystal Heart to Cadence." Fluttershy explains, pointing to said heart.
Miss Pauling nods and feels a weird about her choice of not have joined the mercs in that fight.
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While the competitors went to do their warm-ups before the Games about strength and ground speed, the crowd went to their given seats, but to ensure no cheating every unicorn got a magic dismissal spell put over their horn. Rarity was a bit miffed about what she considered low trust in her, while the turned humans found it mostly annoying as this dismissal spell meant they couldn't levitate anything, something they have gotten so used to.
"That's what you get in depending on magic so darn much." Engineer laughs after Demo's third tirade after he dropped his cider drink.
Demo is not amused. "Says the love child of a peacock and a horse, who has opposable thumbs." He retorts and tries to drink his cider but it slides out his hooves and spill onto the floor. Demo stares pitifully at the destruction of a good drink. "What I wouldn't give for hands right now…" Engineer pats him on the shoulder in a sign of comfort, and perhaps it's a good thing the builder of the team is on his blind side; otherwise he would've seen the grin on the builder's face.
Other than that small mishap, the events went really well, Heavy and the other competitor for Ponyville went up to the challenge. The unicorn who ran for Ponyville didn't get gold, but was still proud she ended up in third place. The turned human and pony friends almost sat on the edges of their seat when Heavy reached the semifinals in the strength competitions, and unable, especially Pinkie, to sit still when their big comrade reached the finals. He's standing up against a pony just as big and bulky as him. The two got their strength pushed to the limits, but only one could win.
With the winner announced, Heavy and the two other earth ponies got their medals. He looks pretty happy down to his silver medal and gives himself a mental note to start doing weight lifting again; Heavy aims for gold at the next Equestrian Games.
The games meant for the flyers have come and like all the other times. Those at the crowd are watching the competitors excitingly, even Twilight. She does steal a quick look up and smiles at seeing Spike, who is enjoying the best view for the games on top of his mother's head, proudly swinging the Ponyville flag.
The Arial Relay event was highly energetic for the large group of friends, watching Derpy, Soldier and Rainbow Dash do their very best to beat the other teams. Fluttershy almost passed out when Derpy was incredibly close to blow the whole thing up by almost missing one of the rings, but saw her off course in the last second and managed to stay in the game. Soldier might be stupid but his narrow-sighted mind did come in handy as he headstrongly remained on the track and stuck on third place all the way to Rainbow Dash. She left the other competitors but the Wonderbolt in the dust. Only by a tail, she got second place, and that impressed the Wonderbolt she was against. Those in the audience went wild at this, just glad their team got so far.
After have given each team their medals, Shining Armor announces to the crowd, "Congratulations to all our medalists. And now, the anthem of Cloudsdale!"
The band they have hired for this very thing begins and those knowing the song in the crowd starts to sing along. Rest either tried to hum along or just stayed politely quiet. They were only going wild once again when the final tune got played.
"Oh don't you all love a good song?" Pinkie Pie asks, being the only one but Rainbow Dash who knew this song. Her friends nods in agreement, all quietly wondering how she knew the song.
Reaching the Games' conclusion, one of the griffins; a large brown male approaches Sniper, telling him. "Make us proud."
Sniper merely nods and heads to the stadium, however stops when spotting a familiar and scarred face among the crystal ponies. He stares in surprise at seeing him again, and the White Death smiles at him, before heading out to the stadium.
The other crystal ponies notice that old war hero and one of them asks: "Hey was that Frigid Wander?"
"I think so. He got the scar and everything."
"I hear he has never missed a target." An orange crystal mare turns to the peach-colored stallion, remarking to him. "Don't get high hopes getting gold."
The other stallion nods in agreement and the same that started the whole conversation, says as he starts walking towards the stadium. "No matter, it's not every day one will be competing against a legend."
Sniper, startled to hear that even the ponies know this guy. It makes him wonder how often White Death comes to this world, but it's not really his business. So like that crystal pony, takes this the chance to compete with a war hero. As he walks out to the stadium, Twilight's older brother announces to the crowd: "And so the Games conclude as they always do, with the ice archery finals! Ice archers, take your places!" They do, he takes a quick look at the bow attached to the ground, making a pony able to shoot with them.
By chance, White Death takes the bow beside him and it allows him to speak with the guy. "Do you visit this world often?" The scarred and mute turned man gives him a smile and nod as reply that he indeed does. And before Sniper can stop himself, "So outside of working with other elite mercs, you spend most of the time adventuring in other worlds." White Death seems to find that pretty funny, but if he hit that right on the head or not, Sniper will never know, for right there, Shining Armor tells them to get ready and the moment he says, Sniper and the other archers start.
No real surprise that White Death, even as a pony has a brilliant aim and seems like the ice archery is right up his alley from how he fires the arrows with deadly accuracy. Sniper tries his best to keep up, but his style is more doing many decent shots than one good.
Up at the VIP area, Cadence taps Twilight's shoulder, getting her attention and she speaks quietly, so not to distract the others at the VIP stand. "Keep an eye out on the peach-colored crystal pony." She points at said one, "He's become the empire's favorite." and also hers, it fills Cadence with pride to see Shifting Citrine is living the life he wanted and still having his family's support. Her sister-in-law follows her hoof and does keep a closer eye on the representative for the Crystal Empire. However, Cadence must admit that she's intrigued by who this scarred crystal pony is, for it seems that he is the one who will win the gold.
The competitor for Las Pegasus stops for a moment to see the two crystal ponies, especially the lavender-colored pony has gotten close to cover the whole target. He picks up the pace, desperately trying to catch up to either of them. But in his hurry to catch up, the pony accidently topples his quiver. He stumbles over said quiver when going for a shot and sends the arrow up to the clouds above. The arrow hits one of them and it instantly becomes a falling ice spiked cloud. He gasps at his mistake and not wanting anyone to get hurt at his mistake. "Look above!" He warns the guard announcer. Making the other archers look up as well.
Shining Armor gasps but wanting to see if this sudden disaster can be stopped before he has to use a shield spell, he warns everyone by shooting at the falling ice cloud. It got everyone's attention and so not to spread panic and stamped, "Everypony, please stay at your seat!" He calls and as hoped, his warning got the attention of Equestria's rulers.
Both Celestia and Luna react simultaneously by getting up on their hooves and easily stops the cloud's descent by their magic. However, that's all they can do "It's not a good idea shooting magic at it." Celestia says to her sister, afraid that if they try then shards might hit some of their subjects.
"Let me handle it." Nila says through a growl, she gets up, standing on four and after a good inhale, a huge green flame hits the cloud, reverting it back into harmless water, which falls onto the ponies down at the stadium. Spike whoops both from excitement and relief, making her smile at this. In her eyes this had been a minor issue.
With the crisis everted, Shining Armor commands all of his pegasi guards to remove the remaining clouds. With the archer that accidentally caused this set up again, they resume the ice archery competition.
At the timer's end, it's clear who has won. However, Sniper is still proud to have come second place. He returns the ice arrow and walks over to White Death. "Congratulation, mate." The other turned human nods and walks over to the young male crystal pony, showing that one his respect by doing a hoofbump. They all take their spot at the podium and as the young crystal pony said, Sniper is proud to have competed against a legend.
The Games have come to an end and Spike lights the firework that will conclude the games. The week has been quite busy, but Miss Pauling is used to such things and turning to Spy. "This has been quite enjoyable, it was good to do some work." She admits and do wish she could do this more often.
Disguised as a dark blue pegasus, Spy eyes the Administrator assistance "I take this has been your longest vacation." She nods and it does make him wonder, "When you have figured out to become whole again, and return to our world. Are you planning on going back to her?" adding calmy. "None of us would judge if you did. After all, you have worked for her for as long as we can remember. Being her assistance is part of your memo."
Miss Pauling does not answer, partly because Spy is correct but also, in the time of not being under Helen's constant watch. Well, it has gotten her thinking… a lot. She has become unsure what she wants to do with her life and that is frustrating. Who is she if not Helen's assistance?
Hope you liked this chapter, and the questions Miss Pauling is starting to ask herself. It does make me curious, do you want Miss Pauling to return back to the Administrator or should she try and find a line of work?
If so, then what could she do instead?
