"Harsh." Spike had his hands together, his arms crossing over his lap to meet in the middle as he looked over his two dragon friends. "What do you want to do about it?"

Smolder hiked a brow. "That didn't sound like 'this isn't our problem'."

"Let me help." Tabby dusted herself off softly. "This is not our problem."

"Tabitha!" Sandra swatted at the side of her friend. "Please, this is obviously important to them."

"I can see that, I can… I don't get it. You don't owe them anything, and they don't want it, so…" She rolled a hand softly. "You're officially not demis, good! That takes a lot of problems off our plate and lets us focus on that tower."

Sandra stomped softly, getting a reply from below where the barkeep made their displeasure known. "Sorry… Anyway, No! It wasn't fair when they were treated badly. It wasn't fair when I treated demis badly… It was wrong. I was wrong!" She threw her hands up in the air. "And if they want to help make a wrong right, I am there for them."

Spike chuckled softly as he sat up. "You've really changed your tune, Sandra. I thought getting us home was all you thought about."

"It still is," she squeaked. "Look… I took away everything from you. I'm here for you. If you want to go up that tower, that's where we're going. If it's something else, well, that's still true, alright?"

Tabitha put her fingers on her temples, massaging them. “What do you suggest we even do? I wouldn’t even know how to start approaching this. Besides, they're demis." She shrugged softly. "This is their thing."

“They’re my team, and I’m responsible for it!” Sandra protested. “I have to help them.”

Tabitha snorted but said nothing in response, and the room fell silent, Tabitha looking between the dragons as if to ask them to provide the next step.

“Well… what if we make the humans hate us again!” Garble said. “I mean, this whole problem is that the beast tribes don’t think we’re on their side, and we are, so we just gotta make it clear to the humans that’s true.”

“That’s even more counter productive!” Tabitha exclaimed.

"Gotta be on her side on that." Spike gently brushed aside the idea literally with a motion. "Look, people, humans specifically, have been down on demis since we got here. They used to think we were one of those."

"And now they don't," continued Smolder. "Which means our winning? Well that's just dragons being awesome, we can keep right on hating the demis."

"I don't hate demis," huffed Tabitha. "They're alright." She shrugged softly.

"Sure, they're 'alright'," mocked Garble. "So long as they do demi things, which ain't human things, right? Not that they're wrong, dragons are awesome by design."

“Why wouldn’t they do ‘demi things’,” Tabitha made air quotes. “They have all those open air areas, and the other stuff like that. I don’t like it, but I’m fine with it, why wouldn’t I be?” She rested her back on the wall, probably more roughly than she intended to do. “I know some humans are awful to demis, I just don’t see what it has to do with me.”

“And why would anything change if you didn’t do anything?” Smolder said, now nearly glaring at Tabitha. “If everyone just thinks ‘some people are bad but I can’t do anything’ then how is stuff supposed to be fixed.”

“Well what’m I supposed to do?” Tabitha started raising her voice. “You literally want to do something but I haven’t seen any ideas yet!”

“Stop!” shouted Spike, probably louder than he wanted. “Arguing here doesn’t help us figure it out” he wheeled around and pointed at Tabitha. “Are you in or not?”

Tabitha snorted again. “I’m in, I guess. As long as it’s a good idea.”

“Okay then what do we do,” Spike said.

“... Maybe Garble had the right idea,” Sandra looked around somewhat nervously. Before anyone could interrupt she continued, “Not in like, making enemies of the humans, but the whole problem here is that our allegiances, between humans and demis, were made for us. You two hung out with the demis because the humans treated you badly, and now that they aren’t anymore the demis are worrying that you’ll start acting like humans and being with them. So what if you… simply didn’t let that happen? Simply didn’t stop treating demis like your friends, even if humans aren’t treating you badly?”

“I don’t think that just trying to pretend that things are the same as before is gonna really work.” Smolder rolled her eyes. “If it were we wouldn’t have to do this.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Then maybe there’s something that can be done to make it clear in some way?”

"It's larger than that." Only Sandra could hear the voice. Twilight had returned. Sandra reached out to that presence as she gestured with her hands, drawing the circle and lines that allowed Twilight to exist more fully. "I heard some of that." Though only Sandra could hear her outside of a little equine snort.

"Twilight!" Spike hugged her, not minding how odd she looked as a summoned magic unicorn.

Twilight turned towards Sandra, ears erect. "What you're dealing with… it's the biggest enemy you've ever faced. I'm not even sure you all could do it… I'm not even sure I could face it."

"It can't be that bad." Sandra recoiled a little at how harshly Twilight was warning. "You seem to get what we mean. Give ideas, not… this."

"To fix this… would be to change society, itself, from near the bottom." Twilight inclined her head. "The best you could do… would be to push things in the right direction."

"What is she saying?" Spike was looking to Sandra. "I can't speak, uh, whatever noises she's making."

Garble smirked viciously at that. "What? She sounds about normal." Spike and Twilight rolled their eyes as he laughed. "Seriously though, what's she saying?"

“She’s saying uh… the only way to fix this really is to… completely change society?”

“Well we’re definitely not doing that,” Tabitha groused.

Sandra shot her a brief glare. “So the best we can do is push it in the right direction.”

“So what if we did something to kinda,” Smolder made a pressing together motion with her hands. “Like… force the humans and the demis to interact? Like, the humans will be all interested in us, being awesome dragons as we are, but if we made it clear that like, we were hanging out with the demis and they had to come around and play nice…”

“Yeah but most humans just hate the demis,” Garble said. “How would forcing them to hang around each other fix that?”

“Well, supposedly Tabitha here doesn’t hate em!” Smolder gestured to their currently grumpiest party member. “She might hang around the demis and maybe she’d get to like some.”

“Like a friendship thing!” Spike sprang up. “Not everybody would become friends, but there would be some friends.”

"They don't hate them…" Sandra worked her fingers together. "They just assume they can't do… what they do. Like I did, when I had three summons, who I expected to do… summon things… Not because I hated them, but because they were summons, and summons did summon things…"

The mood dimmed, taking in what was said.

Tabitha was the least affected. "Well, yeah?"

Smolder threw her hands up. "We have to show the world, at least some people, they're more than… what people think they are." She hiked a thumb at herself. "We didn't win because we're dragons."

"We didn't?" Garble raised a scaled brow at the idea.

"Not entirely." Smolder smirked at her brother. "We won because we." She danced a finger between herself and Garble. "--had great teachers, and they were demis. We need to, you know, put them up. Make it… really big, that they did this. A demi trained the tower breakers."

"So what you're saying is… We need to not take the credit?" His voice dripping with uncertainty.

"Well, yeah?" Smolder shrugged with a cocky grin. "Basically that. We need to step back, make this about them. We didn't win because we're awesome dragons, which we are. We won because we had great teachers. I mean, all of us do, make it about them."

“But what about… friendship between the races?” Spike piped up.

“Yeah, we’ve got this other plan right here that doesn’t involve us giving up credit!” Garble gestured to Spike.

“Are you guys gonna be around enough to really maintain some kind of friendship between the demis and humans?” Tabitha raised an eyebrow. “Like, using your star power to start some kind of demi human social club is cool and all, but your other plan is to leave, and pretty soon. When you suddenly disappear, then what happens? The humans lose interest.” She nodded her head at Smolder. “With this plan, once we succeed and Sandra and I come down from the tower with tales of our success, the interest in the demis persist. And even if it doesn’t do anything like friendship, it’s respect.”

“And you’re okay with giving some of the glory to the the people that trained us?”

Tabitha shrugged. “Everyone’s gotta be trained by someone. If you guys wanna hype your teachers for being instrumental to your success, go for it. Coming down from floor 100 will be all the glory no matter who trained us.”

Sandra laughed a little, considering. "My teacher wants me to give him some attention. All he talks about lately. It'll make his day, not that he needs it. Still… Yeah, let's put some of the light on us over on our teachers, really blow their whistles, especially the demis. They took care of you when the humans wouldn't. They showed you how to be awesome."

Twilight looked content, her initial worry faded, but she said nothing.

Tabitha turned for the exit. "Gonna catch some sleep. This sounds better than where you were going before, so, yeah, I'm in! Ha, bet my teacher barely remembers me." And off she went, the door slapping shut behind her as she headed off for sleep.

Spike kind of looked around. “Well uh… the closest thing to my teacher just walked out. Do you guys need help? Your teacher isn’t letting you back in the arena, right Garble?”

Garble made a sour face. “I guess not. I’ll need something else to lure him out.” He sat himself down with a look of intense concentration on his face.

Smolder laughed. “Don’t sprain anything, bro,” she said, but she furrowed her brow when he didn’t rise to the tease. "Mine will be easier, she… cares. She's a friend." She hiked a thumb at herself. "She won't run if I come walking up, I'm pretty sure."

"Hey, mine cares too," huffed Garble, squinting at his sister.

"I'm sure he does, bro, but mine's more open about it." She leaned back against the wall, hands behind her head. "She's like a big rabbit momma, and that isn't changing, even if she's a bit bummed out right now. We'll fix that."

Spike nodded softly. "Well, seeing as my teacher is… already getting fame, I mean…" He rubbed behind his head. "No. We have to send a unified message. I can't be waffling out. We dedicate our, you know, success to the people who helped us get here, even if one of them's a teammate now."

Twilight touched her nose to Spike's cheek, getting a smile from him. "And you?" came her unheard voice.

"I'll reach out to mine." Sandra huffed softly. "He gave me the first step, even if I think he rates a B- overall as mentors go."