//------------------------------//
// Sense and Flammability (2) 
// Story: Super Pony Roomies 
// by TheManehattanite 
//------------------------------//


8


“Hey Reed, you in here?”

“Trick question, Johnny! You know I’m always here by my giant something-or-other-colliders! What can I do for you to make up for totally abandoning you to your sister’s wrath because she could literally wrap me around her little hoof if she wanted?” 

“Astute as ever, fearless leader! Long story short, for reasons my natural yet carefully cultivated machismo prevents me from admitting to, I feel the need to make my sister’s life easier by making some quick scratch. Any ideas?” 

“Well, there is this one thing with a volcano!”

“A volcano, you say? This calls for some contemplative flame-goatee stroking!”

Okay, the conversation hadn’t gone exactly like that, but re-imagining it was one of a couple of ways Johnny had to kill time on the flight to…he checked the navigation instruments; Griffin Rock. Oh right, the testing town! 





Even with the admittedly killer speeds of the Fanstichariots™ orbital flight mode, Manehattan to this far out in New Wingland took hoooourrsssss, oh my gooooooooosh! Way less than flying under his own power would have, but still! 

Johnny had gunned the engines as hard as they’d go, and pulled as many insane mid-air stunts as he could before having to throttle back, at least five times over the course of the trip. He’d even managed a nap. Maybe he was just cranky because of the remaining bruises from that thing with the Wrecking Crew. 

His mood lightened at the thought of the best chowder and seafood in Equestria. He’d even make sure to bring back too much salt water taffy so he’d have to share with Grim, without looking like he was trying to make up for the (totally awesome) decoy prank.  

Finally, the hills and distinctive mountain of the island came into view through the chariot’s cockpit. Johnny picked up the magical shortwave speaker, and glanced at his foreleg for the umpteenth time to make sure he had the mission (well, errand really) right. 

Dr. Greene, Griff Rock, Mt. Magma readings/geo-thermal, ask about …and here River had been running out of leg and settle for a doodle. A…circle? With another tiny circle on top? Did Mr. Fantastic want the secret ingredient to this island’s sundaes or something? Eh. Science. 

“Griffin Rock, this is FC-26913 requesting clearance to land, repeat, this is FC-26913 requesting clearance to land. Call back for a hoofshake, Griffin Rock, over!” 

“Say again, FC?” crackled the speaker “There might be something wrong with your radio.”

You try and bring a little swagger into people’s lives… “Listen, this is Tropical Storm from Fantastic Inc.? Dr River Reeds sent me? Over.” 

“Ah, okay FC, we’ve got your details from Doc Green right here. Clearance granted, repeat, you have clearance to land at Griffin labs airstrip. Need an escort?”

“Nah,” Johnny grinned, checking the coordinates, “had a long flight in this tin can. Gotta feel the wind running through your mane sometimes, know what I mean?”

“I copy, FC,” the radio chuckled. “Should I let the doc know you’re gonna be a little late?”

“Oh, I won’t be late.” Johnny had already unstrapped, and was activating the auto-pilot rune on the dashboard. “The ship may be a few minutes behind, but no biggie. The doc’ll see me coming.”

“Say again FC?” the tower asked like a responsible air traffic controller, but Johnny was already sliding the canopy open, his only regret that he couldn’t start off with the roller coaster thrill of the ejector seat. He’d need the pilot’s seat (and, in the event he couldn’t fly for some reason, the parachute attached to it) for the trip back. 

Still, he was bailing out of a space age airship so he could burst into flames a couple of feet above a spectacular ocean view, and rocket towards the island without wings, leaving the Fantastichariot to contentedly float miles behind him like a piece of paper on a summer breeze. That was still a pretty cool entrance. 

He slowed to a deferential 50 mph once within island airspace. Couldn’t very well salute the local flyers if he burned their wings off, now could he? 

Photo op done, he began turning in a lazy circle to take in Griffon Rock. He was a born city pony, despite being raised in various small towns like this on the Manehattan periphery, but the woods and mountains were easily the equal of any of the various alien worlds and alternate dimensional landscapes he’d visited. Plus, that namesake griffon shaped mountain peak was just stylin’!

Even as he began to complete his circle, drifting back into his flight path, he caught and squinted at the sight of a plume of smoke rising on the western horizon. The volcano maybe? Looked too lazily to be dangerous, but still. 


***

It wasn’t hard to find the lab, sticking out of a mountain overseeing the town. Johnny admired the way it wound in and out of the stone, easily the superior of most of its evil counterparts with their bolted on and oversized aesthetics. He drifted down, following the runway outside some large hanger-like buildings at a gradual pace, so as not to freak out the lab coated pony waiting for him. People always reacted better to a burning earth pony coming in for a landing if they behaved like an airship. 

“Hi,” he called as he cut his flames, completely slowed now to a gradual trot, “Dr. Greene Eraser?” 

“Indeed.” The older pony shook his offered hoof with one of those big old school mad scientist gloves. “And you must be the Torch. Remarkable!” 

“I get that a lot,” Johnny said, nodding modestly. 

“No, really! You are astoundingly life like! Apart from that hair of course, but my compliments to your manufacturer none the less.” 

Johnny could do the Peter thing and correct the doc, diving into the short but also not simple history of his android predecessor, or he could do the cool thing and roll with it. Like he’d ever do the Peter thing. “Reed mentioned you folks needed a hoof with Mt. Magma?” 

“Our geo-thermal experiment, yes!” Greene led the way into a workshop big enough for a fire truck to stand up in, indicating a desk laden with honest-to-gosh schematics for a giant volcano. “As you know our fair city is a, heh-heh, hotbed for in progress innovations.”

“Must take an awful lot of power to keep it all running,” Johnny noted, taking in more of the designs. He was (sort of) used to Reed’s almost art deco style of engineering, but this had a different texture. He could almost see how the faux volcano would work, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. “So you guys wanna tap into this thing and save some on your next thaumaturgy bill?” 

“We get warm fuzzies at the very thought!” Green agreed “Mt. Magma was built for the World’s Fair, before being moved here to channel the power of nature itself. It was all the rage back then, I understand. With our trademark zeal, the council ordered a pipe to be sunk deep beneath the surface to access real lava, sort of like a reverse chocolate sauce dispenser. Though the engineering involved led to many innovations and gainful employment, there just weren’t that many uses for a full scale artificial volcano, and more potential safety hazards than one could count.” 

“Then why turn it back on?”

“We don’t let anything go to waste here, Mr. Storm!” the doc beamed. “We also keep in touch with other island research facilities because you never known when one pony’s dud could be another griffin’s working prototype. Why, just yesterday one of our neighbours received delivery of a living sewing machine! Now my daughter simply has to have one! Good thing she doesn’t know about this particular trinket.”

He pulled on a pair of thick gloves over the one’s he was already wearing, which was the sort of ominous overkill Johnny could respect, using them to operate the mechanisms of a vault like contraption bolted to the wall. 

Johnny squinted through the reinforced glass. The chamber inside was wall-to-wall scrying stones to take readings, and bare of much else besides two large waldos Greene was manipulating through his gloves, and a wire covered plinth they were pulling out of the floor. He held up his foreleg to check…

“Oh, it’s a ring!” He nodded at the small band of steel nestled in the middle of all those wires like it would nod back or something. 

“Not just any ring!” Greene indicated the reams of ticker tape paper spooling from what the Torch had initially assumed was a new age filing cabinet. “We have a strict policy against trying on magical jewellery (I mean you don’t know where it’s been!),  but this little fella does astonishing things with heat!” 

“And goes great with your eyes.”

“You flatter me, Mr. Storm!” Greene finished pulling off the larger gloves and tapped one of the schematics. “We were hoping, with some fine tuning, that the ring could be used to control the heat of the volcano for easier construction. If nothing else, lava that isn’t molten is hard to see as a bad thing! But not only is the little devil hard to get a read on, Mt. Magma itself has been behaving oddly.”

“Like turning itself off and on?” Johnny asked “Because Reed’s our technical specialist and while I know my way around a filter system something this complex is in ‘kick it an’ prey’ territory, and it’s kinda big for that. Though I know a few metas back home if you’re interested.” 

“It hopefully won’t come to that, we get enough drama around these parts as it is. In fact, normally a job like this would be handled by our local emergency services but they’re indisposed on the mainland.” Doc Greene looked directly into the camera. “What a shame you came alone, too, and so this won’t be a meeting of two families of heroes!” 

“Is that a…?” Johnny blinked. “Have you been recording this entire conversation?” 

“Part of my contract, young Storm! I must keep the town appraised of all scientific progress and calamity. So far, this case falls somewhere in the middle. Every time we’ve conducted tests on the ring Mt. Magma has displayed some kind of activity. Subterranean tremors, smoke from cave openings, that kind of thing. No eruptions or lava, which itself is odd.”

“Could the ring have busted it or something?”

“Anything’s possible! Except getting down into the tunnels that honeycomb our humble island and investigating why there’s smoke but no fire...uh, lava while the mount is active, never mind when we’ve shut it down out of frustration.” The doc’s brow was creased with concern now, making him look as old as the grey streak in his mane suggested. “You saw that plume when you arrived, yes? Something seems to be making it from the inside, and if it doesn’t come out through the crater it may make a way out somewhere populated.” 

“There’s a seismology kit in the trunk,” Johnny assured, turning towards the soft drone of the chariot finally touching down. “And don’t worry, all the Fab Four may not be here but the Fire-proof One is.”

“You’re a credit to your science-adjacent profession!” Greene called over the still slowing turbines, passing Johnny an instruction manual once he’d retrieved and fastened the kit bag. 

“No problem, Doc! I’ll be back quicker than you can say Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye!” 

And with a burst of flame and a wink, the High-Flying Horseshoe Torch was air-borne and racing towards smoke for not even the thousandth time in his life. This time he had in-flight entertainment, one hoof unlit to hold onto the Mt. Magma manual. In one of those moments that made him love his life, the leather-bound booklet honestly had a little picture of a volcano on it. 


9


When he’d been, like, eleven and leaning towards ‘edgier’ humour, one of Peter’s favourite Uncle Glen jokes had been the one about the optimist who jumps off the Equestrian Sate building. Every floor he passes, ponies hear him be all like, “So far so good, so far so good…”

In that spirit he’d decided the best possible course of action, now that he was in the tastefully decorated manticore’s jaws, was to keep moving. It wasn’t the fall he had to worry about, it was how he was going to land. Osthorn had thrown him off the Equestrian State building that one time, but unless he got particularly creative a tea party wasn’t going to be salvaged by a web-parachute. Same principle, though: slow the fall. 

Thanks to the mutual mortification at the door the princess already knew he was a complete and utter dork. There’d never been any hope of hiding that, but he could lean into it! Give enough dorky answers and, more importantly, ask enough dorky questions to keep the conversation focused on the other two ponies and he could last through the party as just Twilight’s endearing dork, until Princess-freakin’-Celestia realised she had better things to do than holding a tea party for said dork. 

Better that than she come to the inevitable conclusion. 

“—and so after that first sip we agreed we simply had to bring it over,” Celestia was explaining. “I’ve always suspected the ambassador’s wife was the better negotiator and had us all in the pad of her hoof, since it was her idea to host the trade talks during a traditional Muleroccan tea ceremony.”

“That’s amazing!” Peter said with sincerity, completely failing to struggle with playing the part of dork. “I mean, the change you must have had to make for the economics alone…” 

“No economic talk at the table,” Twilight said in her quoting-from-academic-history voice, “because the princess spends all day looking at tax thingies and they do her head in.” 

“I’ve laid down several rules during a century of teaching young magicians,” the princess smiled, “but that was the very first one I decreed after my coronation. Though there was  once an attempt to subvert it concerning a certain filly’s allowance.”

“Mummy and Daddy said no,” Twilight mumbled, ears lowering slightly, “and that digest version of the Grimorum Arcanorum looked so lonely.”

“You should’ve seen her when her oven got possessed,” Peter chuckled. “First D.I.Y. I ever did with Spike because Twilight didn’t want to get confrontational.” 

“Emotional, I said I didn’t want to get emotional! It was so mean but it still smelt of muffins! Pinkie Pie made my first Ponyville birthday cake in it!”

“Honey, we were happy to do it but I smelt like incense and baking soda for a week.”

They looked up at a sound like being suplexed by a beanbag chair or taking an explosion full of kittens to the face. Princess Celestia was chuckling. “Do excuse me! Do you often do work around the library?” 

“Oh yes, of course Princess, plenty of work! Faithfulness hasn’t gotten in the way of being of your friendship student, I-I mean friendship hasn’t gotten in the way of being your faithful student, but I’m still beavering away at both your assignments like you wouldn’t believe, b-but I’m still letting my hair down like I promised, I-I-I swear, but I’ll have that new case study in on time and, oh, you were talking to Peter…”

“Breathe, sweetheart.” Peter gently patted her heaving shoulder, sincere but also taking a beat to admire how well he’d managed to roll up the sleeves of his suit shirt. Not buttoned up and impersonal, not too loose and seditious. Perfect business casual! He’d been amazed at how easy the balance had happened after instinctively handing the jacket to the aid. 

He could probably do with loosening that blasted tie at some point, though. How did Flattop stand this?!  “Um, sometimes, your highness. Just domestic stuff to give Spike a hoof, or...whatever those things he has are, not magic. Not my forte, obviously.” 

“And that would be?” 

“Hard sciences. What Twilight insist on calling ‘Everfree think’.” 

“I’m just saying! You have your point of view and I have mine…informed by over a hundred years of magical research and, you know, reality.” Their tea hadn’t arrived yet so Twilight took a victory sip from the milk jug. 

“Because being compared to the one area of Equestria you can’t understand is so respectful.” 

“I understand your ‘science’ just fine, dear.”

“Oh, so it’s not that you can’t, it’s that you won’t.” 

“Peter! Not in front of my mentor!” 

“You think that’s bad, you just called it science.” Peter looked casually at one of the dancing satyr statues to add that extra layer of gravitas to his own victory sip. 

“I’m so sorry, Princess, he’s like this all the time,” Twilight sighed at Celestia’s amused expression, “despite being born and raised in a magic kingdom. Even Applejack isn’t this stubborn.”

“Now see, being compared to one of the Apple family, that there is respectful. Thanks, honey!”

“I’m having too much fun to correct either of you,” Celestia smiled, “but I would like to thank the both of you for letting an old mare know courting hasn’t changed much in even the 21st century of her reign.” 

Twilight tittered nervously while Peter fought the instinct to toast her with the milk jug with every ounce of his spider-strength. 

“Though on that subject, how did you two meet? I’m sure it’s a wonderful story!”

The couple’s eyes met in a silent moment of ‘Ah.’ There was a version of the truth minus any Spider-related details in there somewhere, it would just take some gymnastics to find it. Applejack would’ve raised an eyebrow no matter which they went with, so better to dive right in. 

“Manehattan?” Twilight squeaked uncertainly. 

“I, ah, we were both there for that thing with Dr. Gloam?” Peter suddenly felt like he had a microphone and horde of rabid ethics committee members in front of him. 

Princess Celestia blinked at them. It was like somepony had just casually told her their hobby was using live kittens as sock puppets. Peter’s coat began to smoulder from what he was certain was the friction of her brain racing towards the obvious question: what the hay had he been doing letting her student within spitting distance of ambiguously European dictators?!

“Not to talk to him!” Twilight reassuringly floundered. “He just sort of…descended through the symposium’s dome. Or rather one of his robotic doppelgangers did!”

“He says it was a robot,” Peter muttered. “He always says it was a robot.”

“I’ve noticed.” Celestia looked between them. “A symposium, you say.” 

Twilight nodded, gratefully ploughing into this haystack of the familiar. “It was after Discord’s escape! Some of his horsing around messed with some things in Maneahattan, well, this universe’s Manehattan at least, and a ton of events got held up--”

“Fashion week,” Peter chimed in. “My friend MJ was complaining about that one all month. Anyway, this wasn’t one of them and I managed to convince The Bugle to let me atten—that is, take some photos!”

“And we were there because Rarity wanted to get in on the ground floor for next Fashion Week before the dust settled! She suggested we turn it into a little vacation. Even Rainbow Dash came along, because she heard there might be actual arena combat…”

“Luna, after her reorientation, did have a word with me about how the coliseums of old were more honest than boardrooms,” Princess Celestia agreed. She smiled as Peter, imagining the image of the moon sister spinning on an office chair out of Flattop-meeting-induced boredom, tried not to crack up. 

“Well we all got a work out after Dr Gloam showed up,” Twilight resumed. “He... His ‘robot’ claimed some long lost Lashverian artefact, and even though they’d only come along to keep me company the girls, even Fluttershy, well, we just…went!”

“It was amazing,” Peter picked up, “because, see, a ton of our heroes showed up when he lost control of it, and in the middle of it all were just these six friends!”

Twilight lowered her gaze to the sugar bowl, blushing. “We just did our part.”

“Your part was getting like three Manehattan super teams and a bunch of loners to actually sit down and work together.” Peter took her hoof, their eyes meeting. “That’s beyond any of their adjectives!”

“You all wanted the same thing,” Twilight said gently. “You just needed a little help to realise it.” 

They smiled at each other. Then simultaneously snapped out of it and swivelled to see the Alicorn smiling at them. 

“Anyway!” Peter quickly resumed. “I, uh, I took a bunch of shots of everypony working together and then we…” His brow wrinkled with the effort of summarising. “…bumped into each other. After that we stayed in touch, and eventually...”

“We came to our senses,” Twilight finished, still speaking and smiling as though from somewhere far away.

“Congratulations to you both!” Princess Celestia nodded in approval “I would propose a toast, but I asked the kitchen to take a little bit longer preparing our tea for more than adequate catch up time.” 

The rose and lilac fog inside Peter’s head turned to glass and shattered. The tea hadn’t even arrived yet and, even Spidey-free, recounting how they’d met had felt like sharing a large part of his soul. What in the hay was he supposed to talk about now? With, again, Princess-freakin’-Celestia?!

It was also starting to dawn on him that the sun would soon be more or less directly over them. Warm suit, tight tie, hot drink. Images of gagging on his own burning, constricting throat as a merciful escape from embarrassing pit stains ran through his mind. 

Wait, no, you blow on it, you fool. Oh sun and moon, I’m forgetting how to be an adult! 

“Beg pardon?” he asked the distant waffling.

“Oh, just remarking on the kind of company you both keep,” the princess said as her voice came back into his focus. “The Element bearers have always struck me as a more modern incarnation of the eternal spirit of friendship and adventure dating back, well, more ages ago than I care to recall. Tea hadn’t been brought over yet, at least. But while I’ve had the pleasure of Captain Adventure’s company on various occasions, Manehattan’s protectors embody your city’s trademark…let’s call it uniqueness.”

“You’re being kind, your highness,” the wise guy side of Peter’s brain made him say before he’d thought it through. He felt a momentary burst of panic, like opening your washing machine and finding a nuclear bomb detonating inside, but Twilight and the princess both chuckled. Maybe he could pull this off! 

“I just find it curious, but unsurprising, that the two niches could stand side by side.” 

“I covered that in my report!” Twilight perked up. “There’s been so many, hasn’t there, but it concluded that even in a crowd, the real power is the individuals who can find common ground, so the crowd can work towards as many goals as possible?”

“Was it the scorched, ozone smelling one?”

“That’s the one!” Twilight beamed, a little too much.

“I’ve seen some brave ponies in my time as a lovable freelance shutterbug,” Peter smiled, overcome by the sentiment enough to put a foreleg around Twilight without sweating the PDA, “but six ponies with just their friendship and their hearts getting Timberwolf and Arrowhead to pay attention…and actually get along for more than a second! I couldn’t help but fall hard.” 

Twilight blushed. “That was more down to Fluttershy…”  

“That explains quite a bit,” the princess said fondly, making Peter wonder just how many varieties of gentle smile she had. Did she pass the centuries practising them in the mirror? “Oh! Here comes the main event. A Neighpponese blend the ambassador got me hooked on fifty years ago, and a selection of cakes from this family bakery on Oxon street.”

“Ooh, the ones you have on your cheat day?” Twilight asked, eyeing the trolley the aid was rolling in.

“Yes! Been here since the ’30s I believe, well before cheat days were a thing at any rate.” She nodded to the aid as her cup was filled. “Thank you very much. I think you’ll really like this Twilight, but if you prefer Peter, we do have other selections.”

“The gentleman would prefer…coffee?” the aid asked, the flash of a gathering storm in her eyes as she filled Twilight’s cup. 

“Tea’s fine.” Peter nodded in vigorous self-defence. Annoyed Deerdevil was no longer the look that would keep him up at night, and he felt it prudent to blow twice on his own cup before taking a sip, just in case the drink had been superheated by her quiet fury. It actually soothed his throat in spite of the tie. “Mmm! Do they sell this over here? Aunt May would love it.” 

“It costs a little more than most domestic brands, but yes.” Princess Celestia used her telekinesis, powerful enough to hold back raging flood waters, to dab at her lips with a napkin. “She should try it with sugar. Twilight’s mentioned your aunt to Cadence a few times. I’d be delighted to hear more about her!”

“Well, she--” 

“But this is about you,” Celestia continued “The Derby Bugle, isn’t it? How is Ferocious Flattop doing these days?”

“Uh…he’s kinda mellowed out since switching to bubble pipes?” Peter blinked. He’d been so focused on slowing the fall he hadn’t accounted for swerves. 

“Good for him! I was there the first time he picked up a cigar, you know. It would have been, hmm, about forty years ago. After he first brought the paper. He invited me to the grand opening, since he was planning on The Bugle interviewing me sooner or later. He was so refreshingly candid I said yes.”

“Really?” Peter perked up, trying to lean into the skid. “It’s just a freelance thing, but you must have some stories about--”

“Oh yes, he makes…quite the impression. So a photographer, hmm?”

“He’s better at it than he gives himself credit for,” Twilight smiled. “I think it’s part of his special talent.”

“Uh, honey--”

“Pattern recognition! Highly advanced, too! I mean, his real area of expertise is science, what he defines as science anyway, but it could be giving him enough insight for an interesting composition! You should see some of his notes!”

“Perhaps someday, but one thing at a time.” It was still so weird to see the same smile you’d seen on money all your life vaguely directed at you. “Cameras have always intrigued me. It’s probably all those decades of having to sit still for portraits, but Manehattan must be an interesting city to photograph! Do you enjoy it?”

“It pays the bills. Mostly,” Peter admitted. 

“Good, good. You’ll think I’m a vain old mare but have you ever photographed me? The press is just one huge crowd behind the podium, and it rather tickles me that we may have met before now, in a sense.”

“Yeah! Uh, n-not that you’re a vein ol—I mean, a few times at conferences, not--”

“She’s just teasing, dear,” Twilight assured before casually biting into a mouthful of cake. 

“I do that sometimes. Sorry, holistic connections just fascinate me.” Celestia took another sip, giving his heart rate the chance to climb down from the ceiling. “You also mentioned Johnnycake before and we were just talking about the Elements’…encounter with his circle. They must make for interesting front pages?”

“When I can catch them, yes.” That was innocuous enough. All he had to do was not mention Iderspay-Onypay, and she might buy this photojournalist bit. “If you can convince ol’ pickle puss—ah, Mr. Flattop that it’s news and not just another headbutting contest he’ll even pay you a little extra for ducking all that debris.” 

Again, that twin chuckle, followed by student and mentor adding sugar to their drinks almost in sync. “Johnny is a nice lad. Buuut knowing him the way I do I suspect you two met in a professional capacity?”

“Ah…”

“For him.”

“Oh yeah.” Peter couldn’t help smiling. Even in the face of whatever consequences revealing his secret identity to her would have, he liked the old immortal. Maybe it was the generation thing, but he could see something of Uncle Glen and Aunt May in her eyes. “We were barely out of high school.”

Twilight mock pouted. “You never told me this!”

“I might have been too embarrassed,” Peter grinned.

“Sounds about right,” Twilight said, the casualness making the princess chuckle again. 

“He was going through one of his ‘I’m my own pony!’ phases and noticed my work about…another guy in The Bugle. His retaining fee was good and I only ever took the job to help Aunt May, so…” Peter shrugged. He’d have to thank Johnny for helping pad this whole thing out later. 

“I won’t ask for any stories,” Celestia said, blowing the stall tactic out of the water. “But do you still keep in touch? He makes, pause, ‘an impression’ too, doesn’t he?”

Peter matched her smile this time. “I’d never tell him this, his ego doesn’t need the boost, but it is pretty cool to talk to a guy who’s probably done a ton of heroic things before lunch!” 


10


“Chowder?” the Horseshoe Torch tried. “Chow-dah. What if I say it like that? Y’know; howzabout’ summa’ that there chow-dah?”

“We only serve that for special occasions, hon,” the griffin waitress replied patiently. 

“But you’re a New Wingland diner!” Johnny protested, looking at the menu for the fourth time in a row to make sure they hadn’t hidden it for whatever reason. The booth seat was really comfortable and he didn’t want to get up and go somewhere else. “You sure you don’t have it? Like, you have sections for both species!”

“And you’re an herbivore, hon.”

“I like you! In that case, house veggie stew with an ice water, please. No salt, I’m flying.”

That got a smile, though he wasn’t 100% sure she recognised him. Other than a few locals giving him a cursory once over from the counter before digging in, nopony seemed to. A few of the mixed pony/griffin populous outside had applauded when he’d landed in the street and sauntered into the diner, and even now he was casually not noticing some of them pointing at him through the window, but no requests for autographs or flame shapes. Not even a ‘Do deformed rabbit, Mr. Storm, it’s my favourite!’ 

Maybe they just didn’t read the right magazines, but here he was maybe a flaming curiosity. In this diner, he could’ve easily been any one of the people living on this little patch of paradise. Doing a job instead of having an adventure, heading back to a house instead of a penthouse in a high-tech skyscraper. 

It was actually kind of nice. Put a smile on his face as he flipped through the manual.

“You new here?” the pony at the next table asked. She had the look of a freight airship captain, sitting with a group of similarly gruff but lovable griffins. She indicated the fancy gizmos poking out of his field kit on the opposite seat. 

“Just passing through.” Johnny saluted her with his spoon. “Gonna take some readings for a friend of the family, probably be back to Manehattan before today’s over.”

“Flying?” one of the griffins asked. “Couldn’t help overhearing with Betsy, your little gag. And that’s a long way back by boat.”

“It was a long flight, too,” Johnny grinned. “Looking forward to it, though! Just me and a ton of saltwater taffy, maybe some tunes.” 

“Yeah? What kinda rig you driving that’s that fast?”

“Company custom.” Johnny shrugged, tapping his kit bag with one hoof and snagging a baby carrot with the other. “The business takes us…a lotta places, so my brother in law wanted something that could take or do basically anything. Which meant a custom system for some serious mileage. Not to brag, but I had a hoof in the design.” 

“So what’d you base it off?” grinned the captain. 

“The Kite Brothers three-deuces injector.” He took a casual bite of carrot, basking in the appreciative murmurs and whistles. “Mostly just for an excuse to have those sweet tailpipes, y’know?”

“I hear that!” another griffon called, saluting with her tankard. 

“Your brother in law must have serious connections to score fuel for that set up,” the captain noted. “Before we switched to this gig the geniuses we were working for still had us trying to stay up with coal furnaces.” 

“Ouch,” Johnny winced in motorhead sympathy, “and I say brother in law, but he and my sister’ve been doing that dance for years now. Took almost the end of the world just to get them to admit they liked each other.”

The crew chuckled appreciatively as he bit into an onion ring. 

“I’m not joking. Best thing Galactaurus ever did besides, y’know, leave.” 

They stopped smiling as he sipped his ice water. He let out a satisfied sigh at the coolness spreading through his throat. He could taste the soup just fine, but heat, naturally, had been lost or at least blunted for him for years now. The soup could’ve been scalding enough to eat through to bone and would still feel no warmer than a pleasant afternoon, so cold and chill were how he added a little extra kick. 

“Anyway, what about you guys?”

“Delivering gizmos from the mainland.” The captain turned the lapel of her bomber jacket slightly so he could appreciate the specialised badge pinned beneath her stripes. “Risks are high but the pay's great, and the rides are even better.”

“Risks?” Johnny couldn’t help a snicker, hoping it didn’t devolve him into a punk in the crew’s eyes. “What, here?”

“We’re not saying everything they build goes nuts, but there’s a reason we aren’t locals. And why we have twice the standard issue of parachutes on board.” 

“I dunno.” Johnny glanced out the window at the lush pine trees on the horizon. Even at it’s most eco-conscious, Manehattan would never have anything like those. “Seems like a great town to take five.”

“Oh yeah, no question. Friendly locals, good prices, always some festival or other. When they do have chowder?” The captain doffed her hat. “Oh mamma! But they test some far out stuff over here.”

“I hear they got an entire warehouse for the worst ones,” chimed in one of the crew, enunciating each word in time to the chicken bone he bobbed like a conductor’s baton, “the Best Left Forgotten Shelf.” 

“I’m with Fantastic Inc.,” Johnny breezed, leaning back in his booth, “I’ve been pretty far out.” 

Okay, that was a Peter-tier line, but it had the desired effect. The crew’s eyes were starting to bug from comprehension. “No way… You’re not one of…?”

Johnny held up a hoof for a silent shh. Pure pantomime, the rest of the diner was engrossed in their own stuff and didn’t recognise him anyway, but he just couldn’t help it.  

“Which one?” the captain asked. “The rock guy?”

“You have gorgeous eyes so I’m gonna let that one go.” Johnny leaned over the booth, shaking hooves and talons. He’d shaken weirder appendages living the life fantastic, and kept meaning to ask griffins how they got their chicken leg hands so silky smooth. “Tropical Johnnycake Storm, Horseshoe Torch of the high-flying persuasion. How you all doin’?”

The captain squinted. “Tropical Johnnycake?”

“No, it’s my middle name. Mom was a Pegasus, Dad loved his sweets.” 

“Right, right, look is something going to blow up?” Chicken Bone asked. The rest of the crew either flinched back as though Johnny himself was about to explode or leaned as far into his personal space as they could to scrutinise his face. 

“Of course not!” he assured, hoping those guys couldn’t see him crossing the tips of his tail behind his back because common sense said ‘possibly’ but also ‘don’t start a riot.’ “Just a quick peek at Mt. Magma, honest!” 

“Mt. Magma’s going to blow up?!” another diner asked. “I knew it!” shrieked another.  

Johnny took a big gulp of ice water and super-heated himself, spraying it out as a jet of steam complete with piercing whistle. The panicking diners skidded into stunned silence. They flinched as he held up one of Reed’s magi-tech doodads from the kit, softly pulsing green. 

“Easy folks, this whatever-it-is was built by one of the biggest geek—geniuses in Equestria and every school foal knows rule one of magic metal shop; if it ain’t glowing red then nothing need be said! Just came in to grab a bite, didn’t mean to spook anyone. I’m real proud of us and the rapport we’ve managed to develop here today, which should help put your minds at ease so…questions?”

He pointed at the nearest hoof in the forest of raised hooves and talons. 

“You’re a superhero, right?” 

“You bet!” 

“Doesn’t that mean the volcano is going to blow up then?”

“Why, because I’m a superhero?” Johnny shook his head. “Don’t be that guy, sir. Nopony likes that guy. Yes ma’am?”

“Are you here because something’s gonna blow up?” asked the griffon in a suit that just screamed off duty insurance salesperson. 

“This isn’t a Missile Bay movie! Rest assured, I’m just your run-of-the-mill talented and handsome faux volcanologist. It’s just like getting your copier checked by a run-of-the-mill talented and handsome handi-pony.”

Some of the patrons, even the crew, laughed. Johnny winked at the captain, who was smiling despite herself. 

“How do you get your hair like that?” shouted a wise guy, though Johnny did see some flattering interest in the eyes of a few mares and griffinesses. 

“Cosmic rays!” he called back, which got a round of applause. 

Things settled down after that. Other than having to reheat his meal Johnny’s dining experience continued uninterrupted as the regulars returned to their routines, and was actually enhanced by Betsy offering him dessert on the house. That did momentarily twang his conscience about the whole mess with Sue, but he felt she’d approve as he finally convinced her to accept payment. 

His own card this time.  


***


He enjoyed the fresh mountain air and aftertaste of cherry pie as he neared Mt. Magma, not even the roiling column of smoke able to dampen his mood. 

He did a lazy loop-de-loop just for funsies, catching an upside-down view of similar plumes wafting out of caves along the mountains. Close to, the main column (probably the source?) was actually seeping between the seams of the interlocking hatch covering the mountain’s mouth. All those details in the manual and the solution to Griffin Rock’s problems was the simplest part of it. 

“Pull the lever, open her up, burn out whatever’s blocked inside,” Johnny mused to himself as he landed on the small operation platform bolted onto the rim of the crater. “Make a cool couple mil, hope Grimm doesn’t overdose on taffy. No biggie!” 

He casually flipped the lever. Smoke hurtled out of the opening hatch as if he’d struck oil, tainting the air with a taste of charring and something unidentifiable as it dispersed. Even the Torch, who could eat smoke like bubble gum, had a brief coughing fit. Surprised, he wondered if that was what was making the mountain shake.

The platform lurched, hurling a nonplussed Torch into the air. He hovered a few miles back from where he started, trying to get his bearings as the doodad in the kit bag started to squeal. He craned his neck to try and take in a full view of the titanic green shadow rising out of the smoke. 





Fin Fang Foom let out a sound that could either have been a roar or a yawn, spreading a set of wings so big the force pushed Johnny a few more feet back, giving him a complete view of the monster. That nose alone felt like it took up half the sky and all he’d seen so far was the thing’s torso.  

Foom only seemed to be taking stock, frantically looking around as he hauled more of himself out of Mt. Magma. One of those king sizes legs worked its way free and scrabbled for purchase as that snake-like neck darted to and fro. Johnny froze as bulbous yellow cat’s eyes settled on the distant lab, narrowing. Fortunately, he’d been using his natural peskiness to get people out of jams since he hit puberty. 

“Yo, fun size!” he barked, conjuring the flame goatee as Foom’s fish-dog face swivelled towards him “Don’t get any ideas! Last I heard, you got your purple shorts handed to you by a pony who thinks this is a good look!”

“You are not Spark.” Even the creature’s bemused inside voice rumbled deep in the bones. 

“Yeah. I’m the only super pony you have to worry about!” 

Johnny’s only regret was that he’d still had the goatee on when he delivered the line. He drew back both forelegs, cranking open some internal faucet, and brought them swinging around to deliver twice the power of a jet thruster right between his opponent’s eyes.

The flame sluiced off those green scales like a sad and lonely custard pie sliding down a bulletproof window pane. The dragon was not amused. 

Whatever you do, do not say “Ah.” 

Before he could say anything, Foom unleashed his own howling torrent of fire. It was at least equal to his own effort but the Torch just floated there in the middle of it, feeling like he was being attacked by a disconcertingly large hair dryer. The worst part was easily the realisation that the enemy had breathed on him! 

Fin Fang Foom snarled, unfurling from his crouch over the volcano. It was like watching the Equestrian State Building stand up straight.  

“Okay,” Johnny admitted, “biggie…” 


11


“It’s the little things really,” Twilight explained. “The way we could talk about Fourier's law and Daring Do at the same time.”

“The way you just get in your balloon and go when you want to think about something,” Peter smiled. 

“The way you’ve always got something to say even when you’re surprised…”

“The way you brush Spike’s fins sometimes even after he’s clean…”

“He does most of the house work, dust is insidious! Um, the way you always remember how everypony takes their coffee.”

“Eh, it gives me something to do with my hooves. The way you get as happy as a kid on Hearth’s Warming whenever you’ve solved something.” 

“The way you dive in and out of your own head when you’re thinking about something.”

“The way you always smile whenever you’re somewhere new.”

“The way your mole glows in the moonlight.”

Peter’s head whipped back to Celestia. “Just to be clear that’s aesthetic, not a glandular thing.”

“How nice,” the princess chuckled. “I’m glad you hold each other in such esteem. It’s like watching Shining and Cadence all over again, it really is.”

Peter’s grin was strained from memories of a certain young lieutenant dropping a net on him back when Captain Stone went missing. Twilight’s expression was distant and unreadable because she’d just been compared to her brother and sister-in-law in a highly specific context. She nodded stiffly as the aid offered her a refill. 

“Regarding academia,” Celestia beamed as Peter subtly slipped his hoof over Twilight’s to prevent her from throwing back hot tea, “have the two of you ever considered publishing a paper together?”

“Oh, we’ve thrown the idea around now and then,” Twilight agreed, putting her other hoof over Peter’s, “but we only really talk shop when we’re talking about everything and anything, or when I’m trying to expand Peter’s Everfree obsessed horizons--”

“Thanks, honey.”

“Always a pleasure, dear. We’ve never seriously discussed it because, well, I have my own studies, then we’d need to negotiate a grant, figure out who’d get what equipment, if we’d be able to move it by train, you should see the cost of air-shipping these days, I mean really, and the biggest issue…we really wouldn’t know what to make it about!”

“You also never know when King Sombra will rise again and you’ll have to go on a quest to save the world.” 

“Oh that’s just adventures,” Twilight waved a dismissive hoof. “And really Peter, Sombra? Spike beat him.” 

“As he is fond of reminding us,” Princess Celestia said with an affectionate roll of her eyes. 

“Spike’s told us we should collaborate too,” Peter admitted, “at least that’s what we assume he means anytime he tells us to get a room! But yeah, what Twilight said. Plus, I haven’t written one since the Thaumaturgic Field Activity in Exquestrian Physiology study. Might be a bit, y’know, rusty.” 

The princess looked up from chomping on her slab of marjolaine, wings flapping slightly. “The Hex-Factor study, eh?” 

“Oh, I-I was just lucky to be recommended, the Hex-Ponies deserve all the credit for encouraging Exquestrians to come forward for the study in the first place! Professor Endeavour took us all to school!” 

“He’s an insightful stallion, yes, but it’s no less impressive to work in such company. Those studies continue to help medicine understand a whole new paradigm of ponies who need help.” Celestia nodded as though some kind of point had been proven. “I see you live up to that microscope cutie mark!”

“What, this old thing?” Peter simpered, hoping the feigned humility would mask how humbled he really felt. 

“You took part in that study as well, Twilight. Perhaps we should dig around in the royal archives, see if you overlap at all!”

“I’ve always wondered if those magic bursts might have had anything to do with…you know.” Twilight was smiling but moving her plate around with a hoof as her eyes flitted nervously between Peter and Celestia. “But after you see the conditions some of these ponies live with, it stops being about you. You appreciate how lucky you are for who you have.”

“Like Spike,” the princess said, one of those enormous wings reaching along the side of the table and gently resting on Twilight’s shoulder. Twilight’s smile became more genuine. 

Peter felt like a heel. He’d volunteered for the study to see if the spider-bite was an ongoing process. He understood! But he couldn’t look Twilight in the eyes and tell her that because of this stupid roleplay his secret had tangled him in. Because he was afraid of giving the kind old mare comforting her any reason to disapprove of him.

 You coward, Trotter. You utter coward.

“On the other hoof, Rainbow Dash would think it was pretty cool if I suddenly grew claws and sideburns,” Twilight smirked as she picked up her fork again. 

“Don’t even joke, honey,” Peter smiled gratefully, then registered the princess’s raised eyebrow. “Uh, somepony I knew from school…?”

“Oh, I see! Where did you study?”

“M³! Ah, Midtown Manehattan Magnet high--”

“She means college, dear,” Twilight cut in. “Peter won a scholarship to Equestrian State university! We have our back and forth about Everfree thinking but you should see some of the sorcerers and scientists who came out of there! Wisenheimer! Nutcase! That mare who invented duct tape!”

“We had her declared a hero of the realm on the spot.” Celestia levitated and stirred some sugar into her tea even as those soft mauve eyes turned back to Peter. “It seems our young Mr. Trotter follows in the hoofsteps of greatness.”

“Oh, I-I dunno about that your highness, I-I get pretty busy, I’m just a pony--”

“Everypony in this city is ‘just’ a pony,” Twilight said, putting her hoof on his again, “and every one of them has something special. Is something special to someone else.”

Peter looked into her eyes. Twilight’s voice was calm but her expression was concerned. She was looking between him and something in front of him. His eyes drifted down to the table. His tea and cake. Completely untouched. 

“Well said Twilight.” Princess Celestia nodded proudly and turned to the trolley. She blinked. “Oh, we’re out of cake. Where does the time go?”

She raised a wing and waggled it at one of the countless windows in some sort of signal. Peter took the opportunity to squeeze Twilight’s hoof as he gently lifted it off, giving her his I’m Fine smile. It had never worked with Gem or MJ either. At least it was almost over and they could--

“I’m sure we can squeeze in some more catching up while they fetch a refill,” he heard Celestia say over the sudden piercing sound of terror in his ears, “especially since we have a clearer picture of our lovable freelance shutterbug.”

“We do?” The only thing worse than the squeak in his voice would be clearing his throat and trying again. 

“It’s a very flattering one!” Twilight said hurriedly.

“Indeed,” the princess agreed, “a good school, a good job, excellent manners. A very comfortable life, all things considered.”

“Comfortable?” Peter repeated in consternation. He was too stunned to worry about the Manehattanite twang of his voice leading it into ‘ey-yo-whatchu-talkin’-‘bout?! range. 

“Oh dear. I’ve insulted you.” 

“No! No, nononono,no, nooooo!” Peter grinned nervously at Twilight, who was looking at him like he was a briefcase that had started ticking. “My life…my life is a lot better than it was before. I mean that.”

“What was wrong before?” she asked. He’d rather have tried reading Deadfoal’s little yellow boxes than endure the sincerity in her voice. 

“Nothing! Nothing big! It’s just...” He shrugged haplessly in the face of the universe. “Well, I haven’t done a paper in years, I’ve been at the Bugle since I was 16-years-old. I’ve got a degree in thaumaturgical physics and the most complex equations I’ve done since college are taxes and the rent.”

“But you wouldn’t say you were unhappy?” Celestia wasn’t smiling anymore. She seemed a polite kind of confused, the way you would be if someone tried to explain how being unable to find matching socks was a bigger problem than withering away from a flesh-eating virus right in front of you.

“Yes! I mean, no! I mean…”

“You would like to make some changes to your current situation?” she supplied in an act of supreme grace and mercy. Peter nodded gratefully. “Well then why not?” 

“…I’ve…been…busy?”

“And?” Princess Celestia asked simply. 

Peter felt himself accelerating towards the pavement, the force magnified by his stupefied silence. Slow the fall. Yeah. Right. Might as well have tried to slow the planet’s rotation by firing webs at the Misty Mountains and pulling real hard. 

There was a flash of violet and green in the sky, descending lazily but surely towards them, and for a surreal couple of seconds he wondered if Norman had come out of forced retirement to put him out of his misery. “Spike?!” everypony exclaimed in unison as he landed in the middle of the table. 

“Hey Princess, great to see you again, I was taking this shortcut after the movies, right, and there was this thing with a cabbage vendor and mistakes were made--” Spike was cut off by his parachute being blown over his head, slapping Peter’s face. 

Everyone flinched as the wind suddenly hammered the world around them. Needles of light sprouted erratically from the mountains as the clouds around them turned dark. Twilight squinted through the sudden rain, spotting the contrails of the Canterlot weather team streaking towards the chaos. 

“Blasted death ray!” Princess Celestia muttered as they all galloped to the shelter of an archway, wings spread to shield them from the sheeting rain. “Blasted military industrial complex! ‘Oh, but it’s there Princess, might as well scare the changelings, eh, what-what?’ Twilight, can you do me a favour and make sure the emergency bulletin gets out? Luna’s on her way back from Calisota but the sooner she hears of this the better.”

“You can count on me, Princess!” 

“I know. Spike, wipe your feet before you go inside.” She reached a wing around with amazing dexterity and shook Peter’s hoof. “And it was lovely to meet you, Mr. Trotter.”

He stared as she rose in a field of golden sparks, shooting towards the storm, then looked at himself in one of the innumerable polished surfaces that decorated the palace walls. Twilight and Spike looked like they’d been standing next to a puddle when a cart wheel ran through it. His now sodden new suit looked like so much damp tissue paper, as did he by extension. 

His shoulders weren’t slumping but the way the now itching and clammy shirt slumped towards the ground, they may as well have been. A sodden lock of his mane drooped right between his eyes, matching the way the tie now trailed along the floor like a noose that just couldn’t be bothered. 

And he’d been worried about sweating. He looked like he’d crash landed. Only standing here because the remains had been swept away and washed up somewhere. And at the end of the day, when he’d been looking the princess right in the eye, even when the suit was brand new, wasn’t this exactly what she’d been looking at?

“Come on,” Twilight said, using her magic to ring water out of Spike’s fins as though Peter hadn’t completely failed her, “let’s get warm.”


12


Barrel rolling to avoid a swiping claw, Johnny frantically considered his options. He couldn’t burn the dragon and had no way to outmuscle it. The dragon couldn’t burn him, but could hug him and squeeze him and crush him and squash him and so on. Hay, even just a brush from the tip of those giant bat wings could probably fracture his adorable neck. 

“No place on Earth will give you safety, mortal,” the dragon boomed, “when Fin Fang Foom strikes!”

“You’re a people person, I can tell.” 

He peppered the creature’s underbelly with rapid-fire streams of fireballs, channelling fragments of his epidermis into them hopefully for some extra oomph. Foom snarled, the sound starting in his bank vault chest and amplified as it rushed through the subway tunnel of his neck. Johnny may as well have been hurling popcorn at him. 

“Away, child! I spent too much time looking for a way out of those caverns to tarry with a dust mite like you!” 

“And I’ve been frying bigger fish than you and sending them back to the Mole Maestro’s basement since high school, scaly!” the Torch sneered. Although never without the backup of the whole team. And none of old beady eyes’ menagerie were smart enough to use Sub Mariner level dialogue. Or fire proof. “So how about instead of literally blowing smoke at each other, we go our separate ways? You put your new free time to use flying yourself back to scenic Monster Island and I don’t have to waste mine dragging you to Tartarus.”

“You think anything on this puny planet can contain me?!” Fin Fang Foom bellowed. “Me?! He Whose Limbs Shatter Mountains and Whose Back Scrapes the Sun?! He who’s claws cannot be stayed by time itself, much less the treachery of Iron Mage and the accursed Mandarin?!” 

“You must spend a fortune on business cards,” Johnny quipped, because words were basically the only weapon he had in this fight. Also to cover the gnawing suspicion growing in his gut. “But let’s stay on point! You wanted out? You’re out. You don’t wanna be here? I’m sure the feeling’s mutual, so how about you take off and--”

Another roaring blast of fire breath. The Torch squinted through the flames, going limp and working with the force this time, letting it carry him quickly towards the edge of the stream so he could focus all of his own flames into a burst from his left hoof, pushing himself out and into the air again. 

“Stop doing that!” 

“I will do infinitely worse!” The dragon flapped his wings and rose over the volcano with surprising agility. “None command Fin Fang Foom! And once I have what was stolen, none shall try again! You mortals only think you’ve seen Makluan fire!” 

Johnny glanced towards the lab. 

“Yes!” Foom barked. “I know one of the ten rings is here! That long haired oaf dared to steal them from my horde, decades ago! And then he put them all on his legs! Who does that?! After our last encounter I was buried deep beneath the earth itself, but I could sense at least one of them as I clawed my way back to the surface! It was the only thing that kept me sane as I sought a way out!”

“The…thought of getting your bling back…?”

“THE THOUGHT OF VENGEANCE!” 

“Loud,” the Torch winced, taking flaming hooves off his ears. “But listen, ol’ Shellhead’s Fu Manechu knock off has been MIA for as long as you have! Name a time and place, I’m sure Tony’ll be happy to slap the scales off you again, but the people on this island--”

“Dared to keep that which was stolen! Do you dare stand in my way, boy? When your one talent is useless against me?!” 

If he bailed now, left the single-minded monster to his trinkets, the Torch might be able to get the islanders underground if not evacuated. Then he could get to the mainland, get the word out to the other big leaguers or at least a couple of E.U.P. battalions, bring Foom down before his rampage cost too many lives. But that would mean leaving all the lives on the island at the monster’s mercy. 

Johnny glanced down at the town of Griffin Rock…

Now my daughter simply has to have one!

…and knew he couldn’t. 

“I’ve got a lot of talents,” he grinned brazenly at the dragon, and levelled his signal flare gun, retrieved from one of the many convenient hidden pouches in his FF-issue utility collar. The shot whistled into the air over Fin Fang Foom’s head, bursting and showering the dragon with magic mist. 

The giant 4 now floating above Griffin Rock was impressive enough, but it was the magical signal pulse it was sending out that Johnny was counting on. Even if nopony was keeping an eye on a test bed like Griffin Rock and relaying its appearance to all emergency services, the pulse would show up on instruments all over the coast complete with coordinates, relayed all the way back to Manehattan. 

“Was that supposed to distract me?” Foom sneered. 

“Nope. This is,” the Torch said and flared white hot. 


***


Fin Fang screamed, his neck almost bunching up on its self like a python crashing a car into a wall as he recoiled, pawing at his eyes and trying to get his entire head as far away from the searing light as possible. He stopped beating his wings, feet slamming into and sliding down the side of Mt. Magma and into the ground below as he curled his wings over his head, almost hiding in his own shadow as his vision cleared. 

He snarled. The pony’s light had made him cry out and cower like the simple beasts of this planet and his pride would never forgive that. He focused on the call of the ring and the satisfying vision of the Torch being ground between his teeth as he took to the air again. 

“Yes, yes,” he muttered as he floated over the town, which erupted into the screams of crowds and griffins and pegasi thrown off course by his passing, “grr, roar, skreeonk and so forth.” 

He crossed the distance between the volcano and the lab in the time it took most people to use a crosswalk, slapping the parked Fantastichariot into the side of a crane with his tail as he landed to make himself feel better. Nodding at the satisfying sound of crunching metal Fin Fang reached down and sliced a line into a hanger roof with a single claw, then tore back the entire thing, rafters and even some support beams, by a corner as if flipping the page of a book. 

Dr Greene Eraser looked up from one of the now diorama like labs, where he was using millions of gems worth of magi-tech lab equipment to make himself a sandwich. “Oh my.”

“The ring!” Foom thundered “NOW!”

“♪Love!” crooned a voice in the monster’s shadow. “♪Is a burning thing!” 

The air rippled as Foom’s serpentine neck swivelled towards the wreckage of the chariot. Tropical Johnnycake Storm lounged casually against it, tossing something from hoof to hoof. The dragon’s gimlet pupils dilated with apprehension. 

“♪Hmm-hmm-hmm, na-na-naaa!” Johnny continued “♪And it makes a fiery…”

He flamed on suddenly. One of Foom’s massive paws had been reaching towards him but backed off instinctively as the Torch casually rose into the air, still tossing the treasure from hoof to hoof as he reached the beast’s eye level. 

He raised his flaming face as he curled his right hoof closed on the last toss, grinning. Something about the impishness swimming in those glowing eyes dropped a terrible certainty into the dragon’s mind. 

“No,” Fin Fang Foom said in a voice almost too small for him. “No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you…oooh, don’t you dare!” 

The Horseshoe Torch dared. In a move almost too fast to follow he threw his head back and tossed the ring into the air. It was spiralling through the air one moment, gone the next. He actually masticated, the dragons screamingly empty eyes tracking from cheek to swelling cheek. 

Then he gulped loudly, patting his chest with a hoof and a satisfied sigh that released small tendrils of smoke from his mouth. They wove together as Johnny smiled, showing off the new golden sheen to his teeth. 

Oh no he didn’t! the smoke message read. 

Foom didn’t even bother roaring. His eyes, nostrils, fangs, claws, wings, tail, everything swelled with furious, blinding instinct. Out of the corner of his eye Johnny saw one of Doc Greene’s gloves pulling a steel trap door shut, which saved him the trouble of a warning one liner like it’s about to get hot up in here or something. Instead he focused on raising his own temperature as high and as fast as possible without going totally nova, detaching the 4 sigil from his collar and slotting the small rebreather hidden there into his mouth. 

The dragon’s flame was almost white hot this time. Good. Johnny stretched out both hooves as far as they would go and began pulling the roaring tunnel into himself. Fin Fang’s eyes narrowed as his breath became a thinner, more concentrated beam and poured on even more to compensate. Johnny just kept pulling, absorbing, waiting. 

The pressure eased off suddenly as Foom gasped, his fire breath flickering out. Maybe he was recharging for another blast, maybe he’d figured out what Johnny was doing and switching tactics, but this was it. 

Gotcha! 

The Horseshoe Torch instantly unloaded everything he’d just absorbed, engulfing the startled dragon’s upper body in a perpetual, unending explosion hot enough to melt steel before he could finish inhaling. Through the sheeting orange and blue tint, Johnny could swear some of the lab girders were starting to ripple. He hoped Doc Green’s trapdoor was far enough away not to be welded shut. It’d be a real drag to go to all this effort and accidentally trap the guy underground with no way out and maybe no air. 

As if on cue the rebreather began to rattle in his mouth; the collar’s hour and a half of oxygen eaten away by the heat in minutes and leaving the device to struggle with Johnny’s own breathing, which was only going to struggle harder for less. The good news? So was Fin Fang Foom. 

The dragon swayed drunkenly in the blazing cloud world of Johnny’s inferno, eyes popping and mouth gaping as his upper body began to turn red. He lunged suddenly, and Johnny bit back a yell as both giant hands squeezed shut around him, trying to crush him. Black smoke streamed off their scales like water in time with the waves of pain shooting through his body. The air felt like it was filling with concrete. But Johnny didn’t let up and wasn’t sure he could stop now even if his life didn’t depend on it. 

He felt it beating inside and all around. This was fire. He was fire. He was an unfolding storm. He was unending force. He was…he was about to…to pass…


13


“I should be out there,” Peter said again, still glaring down at the wet lump of his suit things. 

“Dude, chill,” Spike said between mouthfuls of cake. “They built the city on the side of a hill, there’s loads of drains and tunnels and stuff to take care of flooding.”

“Still.” Peter ran a hoof through his still drying mane. “The winds back to normal, but that was almost an hour ago and it’s still raining. What if somepony…slips or gets trapped or something?” 

“Then the guards and rescue workers can handle it.” Twilight’s horn glowed as her magic guided multiple combs and towels all around herself, erasing almost all signs that she’d been directing things in the windswept courtyard. “It’s only the mountains up to New Town, dear. That’s not even half their response force.”

“Yeah, but--”

“But you want to help and that’s brave, but they’ve probably been ready for worse than this ever since you stopped Dr. Argonaut from finishing that blasted thing. And you know your powers aren’t at their best in the rain, how would it look if Spider-Pony showed up to help and just got in everypony’s way because he couldn’t stick to anything?” 

“Can we at least agree I should have made sure old monkey paws’ gizmo was out of commission instead of just leaving it there?” 

“No, you’re going to stop being silly, lay the blame at the hooves of the overeager generals who tried to turn it into something Canterlot and the rest of the kingdom would never need, where it belongs, and have some cake.” Twilight squinted at the devastated tray. “Spike! They sent that up for us to share!” 

“You were out!” Spike protested. “And Peter was brooding!”

“You take that back!” Peter instantly regretted the prissy quality to his voice, often reserved for ‘debating’ with the Torch. “What do I look like, a Shadow Spade poster? I don’t brood! I…meditate!” 

“And what do you have to ‘meditate’ about?” Twilight was using her diplomatic voice but whenever she used it in Peter’s presence it morphed into a maternal ‘why would you stick that up your nose?’. Everypony else noticed. They didn’t. 

“That…I’m sorry today didn’t go better?” 

Spike stopped chewing as the texture of the room changed, silent except for the sound of rain against the windows and the silent hum of Twilight’s mind pulling fragments of the day together to form a picture she hadn’t known she’d been looking at. 

“You’re not talking about the weather or your suit, are you?” she asked gently, stepping closer to him. 

“Well, it’s weird, it’s like I should be but Johnny paid for it, but my instinct is still that I should feel something, frustration, regret, and it’s weird I don’t?” 

“Stop stalling.” Same tone but she may as well have delivered it with a Rainbow Dashian shoulder punch. 

“Sorry.” He fought the urge to flinch. The drumming sound of the rain made it feel even more important to fill even the briefest beat of silence. It outlined how small the castle suite was while she was looking right at him with that unreadable look that meant she could either be about to cry or as far away as Saturn. “I just wanted to make a good impression for you, y’know?” 

“What are you talking about? She loved you!” 

“I wouldn’t say--”

“You were smart, funny, adorably nervous, what more could she want? You even brought up the Hex-Factor thing and it wasn’t a brag!” 

“Look, don’t be mad--”

“I’m not mad!”

“She’s not,” Spike said in a shower of cake crumbs. “If she were mad she’d be listing things you did and probably some of your faults, it’s just she’s using her heroic monologue voice. She thinks you’re the coolest.”

“Thank you, Spike!” Twilight enunciated “But don’t talk with your mouthful!” 

“Seriously big guy,” Peter agreed, “I did not understand any of that even though it seemed pretty sweet.”

“Sorry,” Spike said after swallowing with a sound like a hot air balloon being turned inside out in the middle of inflating. “Just sayin’. I bailed early because I figured it wasn’t gonna be worth it if you weren’t gonna tell the princess you’re Spider-Po--”

“Keep your voice down!” Peter hissed “I’ve seen soap operas! The maids always hear something!” 

“This is what I’m talking about!” Spike brandished the remains of a lemon cake. “First you’re worried ‘cause you think she won’t like you for being a super hero, now you’re worried she doesn’t like you for being a normal guy! Twilight would be so over this by now!” 

“Well I guess I’m just not as like Twilight as you all seem to think!” 

They both turned to Twilight as if she’d caught them doing something illegal. The sentiment wasn’t untrue but it felt like it should be crossing some kind of line. They’d expected her to be rising into the air on orchid coloured fury, eyes seething white if not aflame with Kirby Krackle dots. They hadn’t expected her to be laughing. 

“Um,” Peter tried, pressing his luck, “should we be in on the joke or making for the border?”

“No, no!” Twilight managed, almost doubling over. “No, it’s just…I’m picturing everypony back home, just in Applejack’s barn falling over each other to make odds for Rainbow Dash’s smarmy pool, and watching you two I just realised they could never dream of something like this and it’s all rather wonderful…” 

She dissolved into fresh spasms of laughter, infectious grins spreading across Spike and Peter’s faces. Outside the rain began to slow to a drizzle as Twilight caught her breath back. 

“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. The city’s halted all trains just in case there has to be an emergency evacuation, which there won’t be. The initial energy wave from the, ahem, death ray, even though it’s more of a weather-inducing-ray than specifically--...anyway, its stopped. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the weather team’s magic to retake control, which is better done indoors. The staff have set up a little party in the Royal Sister’s personal indoor cinema for visiting dignitaries, and if we’re too full of tea and cake we can at least sit back and enjoy something classic. Spike, why don’t you go on ahead to make the case for Plan 9 while I finish fixing Peter’s mane?” 

“Sure, but just so you know that’s not how you spell Smash Fortune meets the Golden Fleece.”

“Traitor!” Twilight called as he scampered off. “Alright, we may have to stay the night so let’s get this over with.”

“You silver tongued temptress,” Peter muttered petulantly. 

“If anypony should be apologising, it’s me.” Peter blinked as Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder. “You were fine today, please believe that, but I get it. I mean, it’s Princess-freaking-Celestia! It probably wouldn’t have made much difference but I should have asked her to give us a week or something. Just so it wouldn’t be that much more overwhelming.” 

“It had to happen.” He wrapped his own forelegs around her and they just gently rocked in the hug. “Like the stars burning out. Or the oceans evaporating. Or Spike discovering cider.”

“Don’t you even joke about that, banish you to the Phantom Pasture, swear to gosh.” 

Peter chuckled. “I was so busy trying not to let the business get into my life again I…didn’t actually plan on her asking about my life. Not even Spidey-Sense saw that coming, y’know?” 

“Parent teacher conferences,” Twilight said simply. 

“Okay, you win.”

“Just answer me this. If anypony understands not feeling good enough for Princess Celestia it’s me. If anypony understands why this is a silly thing to think, also me. But the way you talked about yourself today…do you think you’re not good enough for me?”

Silence, made more oppressive by the rain finally stopping. 

“Sometimes,” Peter admitted. He couldn’t lie or bluff. It would have been like trying to pull the moon out of orbit. “In my defence though? You’re perfect.”

“Oh for the Great Pony's sake!” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Is this about worrying I come second to Spider-Ponying? We already had this conversation. You’re not the only one with a calling!”

“We had a whispered argument with ourselves in a diner and then we just started making out. Not that I’m complaining, but the Third Philippic it was not.”

“Because it didn’t have to be! I like you, you like me…”

“♪Spike is Barney and it’s really freak-y imager-y…?” 

It was the deliberately clumsy sing song he said it in that made Twilight giggle a little too hard. She sighed, giving him a nuzzle. “If nothing else? You can always make me laugh. That counts for a lot.”

“It’s pretty much the only thing I understand about Pinkie Pie,” Peter smiled. “And like I said…it’s only sometimes. Even if my life was perfect? It wouldn’t be without you in it.”

“Smooth.” Twilight took his hoof in a squeeze, looking directly into his eyes. “Peter. Neither of us is slumming it. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” That was lame and needed a follow up. The universe was screaming at him to kiss her so he did. “So. Impromptu stay in your hometown. What you say goes?” 

“As if you had a choice.” She nuzzled him again. “Let’s eat all the cake before Spike comes back and work on our argument for a decent movie.” 

“Ghostrustlers. Nopony will wanna be the guy who said no to Ghostrustlers.”

“And you wonder why I keep you around.”	


14


Johnny felt himself rushing up out of the blackness. 

“Crystal?!” 

At least that was what he tried to say, but it sounded wrong even to his still buzzing ears. He realised this was because someone had placed an oxygen mask over his muzzle and started pawing at it. 

“Easy, shrimp,” the Thing rumbled, placing a steadying stone hoof on Johnny’s chest. “You’re just gonna be a lil’ light headed at first, is all.” 

“Grim,” Johnny rasped as the mask was gently removed, “was gonna getcha…saltwater taffy…”

“I hate salt water taffy. Gives me the hiccups.”

“Aww man, that’ve been even better than the decoy…”

“He’s fine!” Grim called out the opening of what turned out to be some sort of tent. Johnny tried sitting up, squinting at the sight of Pegasi in guard uniform bustling from side to side through the gap in the soothing shade. His eyes popped as Sue galloped through and flung her forelegs around him. 

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” she croaked in a red eyed voice.

“On the other hoof, I’m totally off the hook for the card thing, right?” Johnny’s own voice felt a little stale from who-knew-how-long of disuse and tried to inject a little more swagger and volume into the quip so the atmosphere would feel less heavy.

“50/50.”

“I can roll with that.” Johnny used her shoulders to pull himself up a little straighter. “When did you guys get here? What happened to Fin Fan Finkile?” His eyes widened in sudden horror. “How’s my hair?!”

“Still utterly unconvincing!” Doc Greene announced cheerfully as he and River entered. “Our sincerest thanks should hopefully sound authentic! Your associates arrived almost an hour after you passed out, that, what did you call it Dr River, Fantasti-ship? Really is a marvel!”

“All down to our expert pilot.” Reed nodded in Grim’s direction then frowned with concern stretching his neck forward to get a better look at Johnny. “Though I’m more worried about our mechanic and feel we should be thanking you folks for getting him air as quickly as you did. How are you feeling, champ?” 

“Like a used wad of bubble gum, boss man. Sure you can relate.” Johnny tried to shoot to all fours with the weight of his sister still around his neck. “An hour?! Tell me I didn’t go through all that just so you guys could lose lava breath!”

“We know how to take care of ourselves around these parts, my dear Torch,” Greene smiled, pulling one of the medi-tent flaps back. Johnny squinted through the sunlight as Sue helped him hobble out into the mercifully plentiful open air. His refuge had been built a few miles from a crater sprawling at the foot of the mountain side Greene’s lab overlooked. 

E.U.P. guards ringed the crooked edges of the depression like grim faced Stalliongrad tchotchkes, each armed with an old timey bellows like device. The star attraction, though, was clearly the green legs and tail sprawled awkwardly over the edge, tangled together like sullen garden hoses. More guards toiled away with mining tools and unicorn beams to carve a weird join-the-dots guide around the snoring lips and nose sticking out of the pockmarked and blackened rock. 

“You both took quite the nasty tumble off the side of the lab when you lost consciousness,” Green explained. “You were lucky enough to become tangled in some branches, whereas our dragon was so hot he melted straight into the ground when he hit, poor devil! A freight crew showed up and managed to both pull you to safety and concoct as much sleeping potion for our large friend here as we could, with use of all the pots and pans in Betsy’s diner. Their ship will join the E.U.P.’s in helping haul our somnambulistic salamander to Tartarus.”

“That’s me,” Johnny smirked, mostly to let Sue know he really was okay, “makin’ friends wherever I go.” 

“The only part I can’t figure out is why the ring is still in its casing when I could have sworn I saw you--”

“You saw a ring,” Johnny cut in quickly as Sue raised an eyebrow, “not the Mandarin’s. It was one of the decoder variety. Y’know, for the kids! We keep a bunch of souvenirs in one of the chariot’s utility compartments, just in case. I just needed a way to get him mad.”

“What’d ya do to the big lug anyway?” the Thing asked, leaning on tippy toes that could crush a boxcar like a cardboard box to get a better view of those flaring cavernous nostrils. “Play Stretcho’s biography on tape at him?”

“Manehattan Times best seller list,” the genius muttered. 

“Oxygen supply,” Johnny grinned weakly. “Fire breath, right? Figured even if his lungs were as big as Gloam’s ego he’d still need to fill them. More fire, less oxygen. It was the only thing my powers could really do to him.” 

“Quick thinking!” Mr Fantastic beamed. 

“Not bad,” the Thing agreed. 

“Both the bravest and stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Sue smiled as she hugged him again, “very you.”

“I’ll fire up the ship and see if the jarheads need a hoof,” Grim announced, patting Johnny on the shoulder with surprising gentleness, “get us home before ya figure out what you’re gonna do for an encore.” 

“I was going to give the two of you space to talk anyway,” Reed smiled, “but Dr. Green informs me the mayor would like a word, probably a photo op too once he’s retrieved his hair piece. And we did perform the job we were hired to do, in a roundabout way, and are in need of a new chariot…”

“Tell him we won’t charge for getting the ring to a Canterlot vault if he agrees to add 20% to our fee!” Sue called after him. She formed a force field couch under her and her brother as the guards unloaded a fresh burst of sleeping potion fog into the dragon’s makeshift prison. “I know you’ll say you’re okay, but…”

“Don’t tell Badrock’s ugly stepbrother, because I hate to see an old stallion cry, but it’s always great to be reminded you guys have my back.” Johnny nuzzled his sister. “If I’m any kind of hero, it’s because all of you are mine. Especially you, Sue.”

“That means a lot, little brother. Now, you were out cold and strapped to an oxygen tank for longer than I will ever be comfortable with, so I know you’re not trying to charm your way out of something.” She stopped nuzzling back so they could talk face to face. Her smile was sincere and a little sad and for years after Johnny would always wonder if she’d known what was coming somehow. “Do you want to say what you’re building up to now or wait until we get home?”

“I could take more shots at Grim if it’d make it easier?” 

“Tropical Johnnycake Storm!”

“Okay, okay! I just…you should know that I do appreciate what’s important.” Johnny watched, unsmiling at the scene of the Thing helping lift Fin Fang Foom’s tail into an airship harness. “And that’s why I have to leave.” 


15


What are you even doing here? 

Spider-Pony watched from his perch as the last gaggle of maintenance ponies trotted off in separate directions. Too many for him to keep track of even if there was the slightest potential of their being mugged. The streets were mostly deserted and well lit by streetlamps and the moon. Puddles from the artificial storm glinted in its light, the suddenness and unnaturalness of it still keeping people out of this district. 

The rest of night time Canterlot continued on as though nothing ever happened, and he knew there were enough guards out to keep its peace because he’d had to duck into the shadows to avoid them seeing him at least five times tonight. A lot more difficult than it should have been, because the storm had soaked the walls and oh-so charmingly slanted roofs of downtown. 

Midtown Canterlot was a free-running web-swinger’s dream. Downtown? More the romantic shimmy-up-the-drain-pipe, swing-from-the-chandelier-dive-out-the-window-into-a-waiting-hay-cart sort of affair but still easy enough to get around even if he felt like a Shy-Hulk wannabe from hopping around everywhere. After the rain? Fuggedaboutit. 

If nothing else he was cold, homesick for Celestial Park from the distant smell of damp forest grass, and his hooves were soaked and muddy from crouching and slipping on the damp architecture. He should have just stayed in the suite and borrowed one of Twilight’s books, but he’d needed to clear his head. 

Or you wanted to stop thinking. Face it, Trotter. Osthorn and Argo WISH they could shake you like the princess did today. And even if she hadn’t, instead of a chaste snuggle with the girl you’re crazy about, you’d probably still be out here in the dark because you haven’t slept like a normal pony since freshman year!

He sprang off the roof, firing a web-line at the next building before he remembered why that wasn’t a good idea. His trailing tail slashed through the puddles as he swung way too low way too fast, drenching his costume in muddy water. He yelped in shock, involuntarily letting go of the line and sending himself rolling along the narrow street and crashing down some areaway steps. 

Dogs started barking blocks away and lights snapped on in neighbourhood windows. Ignoring the still smarting pain, Spidey sprang out of the areaway and almost overshot the next building’s roof. And now I’ll have to come clean to Twilight about why my costume’s filthy. Like the entire city isn’t going to be wondering why there’s muddy hoofprints halfway up their walls! Two suits in one day! Brilliant! 


***


He bounced from roof to roof for a while until he found a likely looking set of spires on Walkway Street, using them to web-slingshot himself back towards the castle. He made it as far as a tree halfway up the mountain pass, which was probably just as well. Leaving the castle had been a simple matter of crawling out the bathroom window, making his way across the roof to one of the outer towers and jumping with a web-glider. Getting back in without alerting the most alert security force in the kingdom would require some delicacy. 

In the end, he decided to cut through the woods, where could at least jump from branch to branch and feel spidery, circumventing the climb by reaching the river. Web some sturdy logs together for a makeshift raft, use Spidey-Strength and well-aimed web lines to the trees lining the river bank, and voilà! Drifting lazily in the lake under the castle’s waterfall before you knew it. 

He jumped onto an outcrop six stories up, leaving the raft to the river current. It would dissolve and come apart in an hour anyway. He took in the view of the forest and the distant lights of the city, serine even with the accompanying roar of the waterfall, then began the climb. He was crouched on the edge of one of the lower terraces, wondering what to do if any guards came along, when the golden field enveloped him. 

The entirety of the castle raced past like a tower of paperwork bursting out of a cartoon briefcase and just like that Spidey found himself floating outside Princess Celestia’s open study window, that billowing ethereal hair framed in the warm glow.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, glancing up from some paperwork and over her shoulder at him. “Just thought I’d save you the trouble. You adventurer types always have to do things the hard way. I’m convinced Doc Savage would still have taken that route even if we installed an escalator.” 

Spider-Pony could only stare at her. He should have been running through possible reasons for being there (The death ray? How would he have known? The Kraken thing? Wouldn’t she know about that, then?) or at least snazzy but respectful one liners, but his brain had frozen up in principal’s office terror. 

“Peter,” Princess Celestia said patiently over the scribble of her levitated quill, “it’s late and I am over a thousand years old. We don’t have to pretend. Now please come out of the cold.” 

The grandfather clock by the (now) antique armchairs continued to tick away long enough for Peter to realise…why the hay not? He looked down at his boots, but the golden glow had already washed away the mud so he stepped inside. The princess sized windows silently swung shut behind him but he didn’t feel trapped like he had at the table.

“Don’t mind me,” Celestia said, back still to him. “You may or may not have some questions. I completely understand. Or maybe you’ve seen the error of your ways and just want to go back to bed. Third tower on the right, eighth floor. I’ll just be finishing up this…well it’s classified, actually. You understand. And then off to the kitchens for some coco and pie! Would you like some?”

“Uh, no, thank you.” 

He wondered if he should take off his mask and settled for just easing himself into one of the armchairs. Celestia just kept writing away, hair flowing. 

“…do you know why?” 

“Ah, a question that is all questions.” Celestia smiled as she turned to him, the papers in her telekinetic grip organising themselves into various envelopes. “It’s clear why Twilight would be taken with you.” 

She took a seat in the armchair next to him, still managing to look like a work of art. “I am aware of certain things, yes. A pony’s destiny is theirs to discover, which is why, beyond the occasional pat on a Befrienders’ shoulder, I leave you and your colleagues to it. And why I never told you. From what I’ve seen, there was no need to. Beyond quietly making sure all those murder accusations went nowhere, of course.”

“I don’t know what would be different if you had,” Peter admitted with a slight, exhausted chuckle. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. Y’know. Today.”

“I understand why you wouldn’t.” Celestia’s telekinesis picked up a poker and poked at the fire. It felt good on his cold costume. “It can be difficult to let anypony into a part of your life. I was quite prepared to wait until you were ready, if you felt the need to tell me at all. Today was truly just about seeing Twilight and Spike again, and I’m always one to take advantage of the chance to meet a new pony.”

“And, ah…since we’re speaking plainly now I guess…what did you think?”

Another one of those smiles. “I think you’re a lot like Twilight. Different, but alike.” 

“My mane’s prettier. You can say it.” He hoped she could tell he was smiling through the mask as she laughed. “Aunt May loves her. Uncle Glen would’ve liked her.”

The room grew quiet except for the crackle of the fire and the ticking of the clock. He felt her put a wing around his shoulders, like being in the patch of shade under your favourite tree on a perfect spring morning, but he kept looking at the small, modern table neatly arranged with anachronistic bric-a-brac, not really seeing it. 

“I miss him so much,” Peter said quietly. Since they were speaking plainly now.

“He’d be proud of you.” The princess’s voice was gentle but there was a strange authority to it he’d never be sure he wanted context for. 

“I’m not sure he should be.” 

“That is…part of the reason I wanted to speak to you tonight.” He looked up into her now concerned face. “The way you spoke about yourself today. Twilight seemed surprised. Do you share these feelings with her?”

“Well, I grumble, sure. Who doesn’t?” 

“Peter.” 

He sighed, feeling like more and more of a doofus having this conversation in full costume. “She spoke to me this afternoon. I think it was supposed to be our first fight, but that’d imply I had a side. She told me neither of us was slumming it.” 

“Do you feel that way?” 

“No! I just…” He looked up at her trying to push the sincerity through his mask lenses. “Twilight was trying to save the world before she discovered the magic of friendship. Because that’s who she is. Me? All my accomplishments are Spider-Pony’s.”

“So, you have these feeling in spite of Twilight, because you feel you have nothing to be proud of in your real identity and so she must have no reason to feel proud of you, despite knowing your secret identity.” 

Peter blinked. “Has anypony told you you’d make a good shrink?” 

“I prefer to think of myself as a teacher.” Celestia withdrew her wing and stood up. He could have been the size of Galactaurus and she’d still have made him feel three apples tall. “And I believe most ponies learn by doing. You asked me what I thought of you. I think, in either identity, you are very much like Twilight. And that you’re both too hard on yourselves. However, I still stand by my question: and? You would like to make changes to your situation. You would like to give yourself something besides Spider-Pony to be proud of.”

“So, I should…do it?”

“Good lad.” Celestia still wasn’t smiling. “I don’t know what these changes will be. But I do know that if you feel you can say these things in spite of Twilight…I do not mean to be harsh, but perhaps your conscience is telling you something.” 

A beat. Then Peter Trotter the Spectacular Spider-Pony nodded. “Thank you, Princess. Really. I needed that.”

“I try,” Celestia smiled again and stifled a yawn. “Oh, do excuse me! Are you sure you won’t have any coco?”

“If it’s all the same with you your highness, I was kinda planning on staring at the ceiling, contemplate those changes. Maybe listen to Twilight recite old friendship letters in her sleep to help me doze off.”

“Do not let me detain you, then.” Her horn glowed, dousing the lamps until only the light of the fire remained as he hopped up onto the window sill. “If you don’t mind me asking. Which of those changes?”

Peter looked back at her, then reached up and pulled off the mask so she could see his face this time. 

“Being better.” 

“Well then. Goodnight and good luck.”

He sprang into the night in a blur of red and blue. Princess Celestia continued to tidy away some things on her desk until Peter sheepishly poked his head back in.  “Uh, sorry ma’am, which tow—?” 

“Third on the right, eighth floor. You left the bathroom window open I think.” 

“Right, right. Thanks. Uh, goodnight!”

“Goodnight.”


16


“In a world!” the Horseshoe Torch pronounced from the diaphragm. “Where mediocrity runs rampant! One Spider-Pony dares to be…Better ™!”

“Ah, go climb up your tail,” Spider-Pony muttered, rolling a dumpling into some sauce and then into some rice so it stuck. “Anyway, who’re you to talk? ‘Oh Sue! I…need you to know I…understand what’s…important! That is why I…have to leave!’”

“What under Celestia’s blazing sun was that supposed to be?” 

“The Star Trot guy.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know all their names, Pete.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t get that out of one of the Thing’s soaps.” Spidey shifted on his web-line so he could take a better upside down view of his bud. “Speaking of. You gonna be okay this season?” 

“Are we about to upside down kiss?” Johnny rolled his eyes as he rolled some noodles around his hoof for slurping. “Because for real, I know a couple of girls on the weather team that’ll make it nice and rainy.” 

“You’re being very Namorish right now,” Peter said in a prim voice, stealing some of his chow mein. 

“How dare you,” Johnny mock huffed then looked out at the city from their perch on one of the Chrysler Building’s gargoyles. “It’ll be fine. I’ll still be on the team, it’s not like I’m gonna be all Timberwolf about it.”

“See, then I’d be worried.” Peter took a swig of soda. “How’s Sue taking it?”

“I honest to gosh have no idea. She just said ‘alright.’ Reed said there’d probably be a bunch of paperwork to do and then began talking about maybe designing a Torch specific signal flare, which would rock, and Grim just started doing this little dance and singing What a Wonderful World.”

“Aww, see, he does care!” Peter chewed on another dumpling. “Did he beat me to all the good Manehattan real estate jokes?”

“Reed made a chart and it kinda took the fun out of it for him.” Johnny shrugged. “I’ll still be staying at the Baxter Barn until I find a place. I mean, who’s gonna leave the living room window open and listen to your tales of woe, H.E.R.B.I.E?” 

“At least he’d--it’s male, right?”

“Reed says so.”

“Well at least he’d remember my girlfriend’s name.” 

Johnny bugged his eyes as much as possible. 

“Twilight Sparkle!”

“That’s not a real person name, Peter.”

“I will stick this takeout so far into your ear.” 

“Did Princess Celestia tell you to do that too? Pass the sauce.” 

“So that’s how you get your mane like that!” Peter snagged the packet from the little web sack he’d spun to hold everything. “And no, but she was…honest with me and I’m not sure I’d have been honest with her if she hadn’t got the drop on me like that. Seems the least I could do is follow through on something for once.” 

“You’ll do fine.” Johnny saluted with his energy drink. “I mean, you get up wearing a costume that looks like that every morning.” 

“Can’t be harder than looking for a Manehattan apartment when you’re your own fire hazard.” Peter clinked his water bottle off the can. “You sure you wanna do this? It’s not chic but Aunt May’d be happy to make up the guest room.”

“Thanks, but I beat a dragon.” Johnny moved some noodles around with a chopstick. “I could do that anytime if I’d really thought about it, but now I can’t think of any reason not to at least try to make something just…mine, y’know?” 

“I know, man,” Peter said quietly. 

They looked at the city again. 

“Look at us!” Johnny grinned suddenly. “Two little ponies, all grown up and galloping out into the world!”

“Gonna be as fantastic, as amazing, as spectacular, as awesome and as many prefixes as we wanna be!”

“Old ponies do this stuff every day, we do the impossible all the time!”

“If dragons and mad scientists and gangsters can’t stop us, what chance does romance and real responsibility have!”

“Gonna be out greatest adventure ever!”

“Starting…now!”

They resumed looking at the city, takeout cooling in their laps. A storefront on the edge of the block below them exploded suddenly in a shower of masonry and alarm bells. A pony with a glue gun and funky helmet and another in a quilt suit were trying to heft bags into a waiting cart. 

“Oh look, crime.”

“Oh, thank gosh.”


To be Continued