A brief flash lit the night above a city full of skyscrapers, and Starlight Glimmer tumbled out into the sky, screaming and flailing her limbs as she sought a floor that was no longer underhoof.
A curious observation intruded through her terror, and she slowed her movements—though not her descent—as she eyed the crimson military-style coat and pants that she unexpectedly found herself wearing. She blinked and looked closer, studying their yellow piping and polished, star-shaped buttons. She also felt an unusual sensation on her face and pressed her hooves up into what felt very much like a beard.
“Zdravstvuyte, comrade,” the beard said.
Starlight shrieked.
“Nyet,” the beard said. “Such fear does not befit the greatest hero of the East! Is bad enough to let these Power Ponies joke about you as ‘The Red Menace.’”
“Where am I?! Why do I have a talking beard?!” Starlight paused, digested the latter piece of information, and scowled. “Seriously, ‘Red Menace?’ I imposed one collectivist economic system, in one village, one time…”
The beard sighed. “You know it is super hero name, and this is Maretropolis, and I am inoplanetnyy simbiont from Horsehead Nebula… now, shall we stop you splatting like nasekomoye on pavement?”
Starlight focused on the ground with rising panic. “Y… yes, please!”
Her head jerked forward as the beard formed long prehensile limbs that lashed out toward the nearest pair of buildings. The beard also snaked down around her neck and wrapped it in a strong brace. Moments later, the limbs gripped the buildings and snapped taut. Starlight’s teeth clenched, and her body juddered, but she soon came to a halt, suspended hundreds of cart-lengths above the bustling streets below.
As Starlight’s adrenaline receded, her mind began working to make sense of her situation. “Spike’s comics,” she said aloud. “He showed me one he said I shouldn’t touch…”
“Comrade,” the beard said, angling Starlight’s head toward an alley far below. She watched a thin pony with some kind of cart back slowly into the light cast by a streetlamp. A figure advanced on him, its features indistinct but menacing.
“He looks like he needs help,” Starlight said.
The beard responded by pulling her forward and down. Starlight cried out with surprise at the sudden motion, but soon she was overwhelmed by exhilaration as the beard swung her through the forest of skyscrapers at speed, forming new limbs and absorbing old ones as it went.
The beard dropped her down to street level as they came around the final building separating them from the pony. Starlight hit the pavement at a full run, flaring her horn with magic and charging toward the bulky silhouette. “The Red Menace… er, strikes again!” she shouted, closing in on it.
It turned on her, and the light of her horn revealed a predominantly aqua-colored creature whose pony-sized torso and head looked grotesque above its spindly forelegs and long tail. It had no hind legs, but somehow moved by floating just above the ground. It sported a large crest upon its back, as well as an orange mask with bright outlines of yellow that was pulled tight across its head.
“Save me!” the pony with the cart shouted, retreating further.
The figure threw itself to the ground in front of Starlight. “No, save me!”
Starlight slid to a halt right in front of it. “Wait… what?”
It raised a hoof toward her, but then doubled over and clutched at its face. “I don’t know where I am, or how I got this mask, but I can’t get it off! It talks to me… makes me want… need…”
With a howl, the figure whirled around and charged the pony with the cart. He screamed and tried to back away faster, but the cart’s wheel fell into a crack in the pavement and held him fast.
“Nyet!” shouted both Starlight and the beard as they gave chase.
Starlight blinked, considering the oddity of feeling compelled to speak in a language she didn’t actually know.
But then the figure leapt toward the pony with the cart, and Starlight cast the thought aside, willing the beard to lash out and stop it. The beard aimed in the direction of the pony—
—But the figure hurled itself upon the cart instead. The force of its impact crushed one of the wheels. It threw back its head in a roar, showing jaws slick with saliva, before thrusting its head into the cart’s contents and beginning to feast.
Starlight slowed and stopped, watching the strange creature gorge itself on whatever had been in the cart. After a moment she gave a small shake of her head and looked at the pony still attached to the cart, who was huddled, shaking, on the ground. She reached out with a tendril of beard, undid the pony’s harness, and gently pulled him free from it. As she did so, she glanced at his cutie mark: three tacos.
“Hold on a minute,” Starlight said aloud.
“U nas gosti, comrade,” the beard said.
“Okay, seriously, I don’t know what you’re saying!” Starlight shouted. “Would you please just speak plainly if you want me to understand?!”
From behind her, a loud, clear voice called out: “I’d like nothing more than that, Red Menace! “How does ‘both of you are under arrest’ sound?”
Starlight turned. Her eyes went wide. Six ponies stood before her, dressed in costumes that she recognized from—
Suddenly there were only five costumed ponies and a blur heading elsewhere. Starlight startled at the sudden motion. Then the sixth pony was back, holding the shivering cart-pony in her forehooves.
“Power Ponies!” Starlight shouted, smiling. “Oh, this is great! I could totally use a hoof here. I’ve been sucked into the comic world, like your versions from the other world were one time!” She glanced back at the figure that was still busily feeding from the cart. “And… apparently the villain here… needs help and is really into tacos? …But I figure that if we arrest her, we can get this figured out and should all be able to go home soon. Right?”
Starlight’s smile withered under six steely gazes.
“Nice try, Red Menace,” said the Masked Matter-Horn. “We thought you might finally be on our side after the last time we ran into each other… but now we catch you aiding a known criminal in their terroristic spree against the brave street-taco vendors of our fair city?!”
“I just want to point out that that feels like an oddly specific form of terrorism,” Starlight said.
Mistress Mare-velous raised her glowing lasso. “Don’t try any fancy mind-games on us,” she said.
“Yeah,” Filli-Second added. “It’s not like you speak the language well enough to pull it off, anyway!”
Saddle Rager frowned at her. “Um, that’s pretty rude, don’t you think?”
Zapp rolled her eyes. “Can we just focus on arresting these two?”
“Wait,” Starlight said, raising her forehooves. “You don’t understand; I’m not from this world. I’ve been stuck here, and I need help getting home!”
“I do… too…” the creature said, raising its taco-stuffed mouth from the cart. “Me and my sisters… were just trying to get out of another world we were stuck in…”
“Another world…” Starlight frowned, and took a closer look at the creature’s shape and features. “No… no, you can’t be…”
The figure rose up from the wreckage of the cart and wrung its forehooves. “I’m alone… I’m lost… and this mask… please, can any of you help me, before the mask takes control again?”
“Oh, we’ll help you,” the Masked Matter-Horn said.
“Help you go to jail!” shouted Mistress Mare-velous.
Starlight took a dozen heavy blows before she could cry out in pain, much less before she registered that any of the Power Ponies had moved. The beard cursed, and then fanned itself out into a dizzying array of long, snaking tendrils that covered a wide sphere around them. One of the tendrils made contact with something, and the rest converged, clamping down upon a shrieking Filli-Second.
She turned her eyes back toward the rest of the Power Ponies, and saw Mistress Mare-velous charging in at her. Starlight planted her hooves and used the beard to whirl Filli-Second around, thus clobbering one hero with the other, and leaving both flat on the ground.
But then a massive pillow-shaped construct of energy bore down on her, forcing Starlight to her knees. The beard strained against it, pushing both upward and down to brace itself, but there seemed to be no gaining ground.
That was when the creature—or the Siren, as Starlight had guessed—leapt headlong into the fray.
The pillow dissipated as the Siren plowed into Radiance. She whipped her long aquatic tail around, slamming Saddle Rager’s head into a wall, and leaving her unconscious on the ground.
The two remaining Power Ponies scattered, showering mixed bolts of ice and lightning down upon the Siren. Starlight stayed down, feigning injury, but watched and waited as the Masked Matter-Horn’s zig-zagging run brought her closer to where she lay. With another muttered curse from the beard, Starlight lashed out, sweeping the Masked Matter-Horn’s hooves out from underneath her.
Zapp yelled in anger, but before she could do more, the Siren leapt up and grappled with her, pulling them both down to street-level.
Starlight rose. Her heart pounded, her breathing was fast… and a sick sensation gnawed at her stomach as she looked around the alley, studying the fallen Power Ponies.
All but Zapp were unconscious. None seemed badly injured. And yet…
“These are the heroes,” Starlight whispered. “But that would make us… stop! Siren, stop hitting her, now!”
The Siren looked back at Starlight, holding its forehoof mere inches from Zapp’s face.
“We have to get out of here,” Starlight said. “Come on… you wanted help, right? Let’s go figure out how we can both get us some help!”
“Dis idn’t ober,” Zapp mumbled through a swollen lip.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Starlight shouted.
The Siren snarled, but dropped Zapp, turned, and followed Starlight down the alley.