Monday:
King Sombra was not having the best of resurrections.
It probably said everything about his day so far that the part which had gone most smoothly was defeat in his home reality.
Rather than risk those accursed Emissaries purify the allotropes containing his back up essence, he’d retuned the spells around them to, oh delicious irony, harmonize with their rainbow. When they channelled it, Sombra was torn apart…on their plane. And his regal essence borne along as it passed out of their reality and homing in on another…
Recuperating in the Nowhere might have been a better use of his time. In this Equestria, Manehattan lacked the crystal foundations he’d been counting on and its ley line ridden bedrock was a barely adequate substitute. They carried his darkness but like rapids, jostling the intended spells when they even worked correctly. This forced him to give his reconstitution away far earlier than intended, capturing a tower to hold everything together.
Spreading across the patterns beneath Equestria and splitting the focus of this world’s Avatars was still possible if he could just send his obelisks past this stubborn peasant grotesquery! But even though he’d barred most of its streets and bridges there were pathetically piecemeal segments to his barricades, a few bound to crumble as the spells danced through frequencies.
And this wretched city seemed to be infested with would-be champions, some gaudily dressed, all impudently defying Sombra by attacking barriers, daring to resist wraiths he conjured to discipline them! There seemed to be at least one for almost every street corner, all splitting his focus even further.
The Emissaries’ counterparts finally arriving had been the crowning insult. Not that Sombra didn’t fully intend to practice his revenge upon them, but in this world Celestia’s student had had the audacity to become a princess herself! And worse still, she’d brought along some kind of jester!
***
“Don’t crowd me,” Twilight muttered as she tried to fly up one of the oversized dumbwaiters that riddled his new base.
“It’s called watching your back.” Her clown was scuttling up the wall beside her. Sombra had naturally tried to spear him on previous floors but he seemed to have Mephisto’s own luck, always dancing out of the way of erupting obsidian tips at the last second.
“So then why’ve you been jumping in front of me every five seconds?”
“Hey, what can I tell ya, I’m a jumper. I jump for the money, I jump for the show…”
“Y’know, somepony once told me good banter was just memorable communicating if you thought about it.”
“I--”
“And then they told me that good communicating was vital to a good team up.”
“Listening’s also vital to communicating.”
“So what are you trying to say?”
“…nothing.”
“Then what was that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing!”
“Then why say anything?!”
Sombra wished he could just conjure obsidian in his ears, but the conversation was channelled through spikes of the stuff he’d seeded in the walls and anyway his body was a construct that ‘listened’ by absorbing soundwaves, not mortal ear canals.
“Oh, you’re not talking to me now?” They’d reached the doors, Twilight hauling them open with her telekinesis. They slammed a little louder than they needed to.
“Focusing on the job.”
“That must be nice, I’d do it myself but somepony keeps dogging my every move.”
“And stopping the Element of Magic from getting swallowed by smog! Or worse!”
“Everypony out there right now is risking their tails to stop this, and you’re not screwing up their shots.”
“Nopony out there would let a princess of Equestria just go off on her own.”
“Says the loner! Who’s teamed up with practically everypony!”
“Big talk from the filly always trying to rally everypony! What, I should schedule my concern? Hey Spike, couldja be a pal and pencil in a 9:30 re: That One Creek, Twilight’s paddle arrangements, thanks, you’re a doll!”
“9:30? A meeting at 9:30 PM? Pffft! Do you know me at all?”
“What, you’re too good to work AMs now?”
“The average workday starts at nine o’clock. Who has a meeting at 9:30 AM?!”
“Average people who didn’t get handed their own library?”
“I HEARD THAT.”
Sombra realised they were now passing through the indoor thermae and he did not have to simply fantasize about drowning them.
The lurid one held up a hoof, one eye widening, the other narrowing. He’d done that off and on throughout their climb. “Wait!”
“Now what?!” Twilight snapped.
A layer of obsidian crackled across the surface of the water, almost immediately erupting into a rearing cloud of smog, shaped like a dragoon armoured with floating segments of obsidian.
“…oh.”
“BEHOLD!” Sombra snarled through the construct.
“Kinda hard not to!” The jester sprang to crouch on a wall, scuttling around to face him. “All that crystal and you couldn’t whip up a pair of trunks?”
Sombra thrust his head forward, his dragoon seamlessly mimicking the gesture several floors beneath and shattering empty air. It at least sent the rodents scurrying. In opposite directions, so he elected for the devil he knew, whipping the dragoon’s hooves after Twilight. She dived through the saloon style doors of the bar as fragments of deckchair rained down all around her.
“No!”
The cry was followed by strands of webbing slapping into a crystal gauntlet. Sombra almost felt it as the dragoon was yanked back. That infernal clown again! Stronger than he looked. But Sombra had stared into the eyes of two Avatars. It took barely even a flicker of his will to lash the dragoon’s hoof forward, yanking that pest from the ceiling and sending him crashing into the countertop in a shower of tiles.
“Are you okay?!” the two meddlers asked each other.
“Me?” Twilight blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re hiding from that...” The jester waved an impertinent hoof at the dragoon and thus the very concept of Sombra. “Behind this!” He tapped the countertop. A bottle of something fell over.
The mixed look of concern and confusion vanished from Twilight’s face. “Taking stock, thank you very much!”
“In the middle of almost being crushed by the Hot Topic parade balloon that never was?!”
“Pe--” Twilight's eyes flicked briefly to the thrashing dragoon. “…please understand, Spider-Pony. The plan is elegant, yet simple.”
“I must’ve hung from the rafters over a different strategy session.”
“No, the reason I chose this particular cover. He can’t touch me.”
“You don’t know that!” The Spider (a totem? So far from the jungles? Dressed so brazenly?) put his hooves on her shoulders, looking directly at her and proving every point Sombra had ever made about Celestia’s egalitarian nonsense. “In every fight, for every second, there is every chance you leave yourself open! A second! That’s all it takes! And you can’t promise yourself you’ll see it coming! That’s impossible! I have my own sixth sense and I can’t--”
“I mean,” Twilight enunciated irritably, removing his hooves with her own, which was a little more in line with Sombra’s views (apart from the physical contact, the child had a horn did she not?), “it’s basic geometry. The bar’s up against the wall and his legs are only yay long!”
“…oh.”
“DROWN YOU BOTH IN DARKNESS!” Sombra raved, trying to channel more water into smoke for the dragoon. “POUR SHADOWS DOWN YOUR CHATTERING THROATS!”
“Ah, go climb up your horn,” the Spider shot back.
“We finally agree on something,” Twilight smirked, although she still sounded exasperated. “You may as well drop that thing! It’s drawing your magic away from the city and I’m still coming for you!”
“We’re coming for him.” The Spider rapidly flicked a hoof between them.
“Then you’d better start making a contribution beyond just snarky jokes!” Twilight took a second to stop glaring into his mask as a glint above the thrashing giant caught her eye. “Wait…”
Her horn glowed with telekinesis. Sombra whipped the dragoon’s head around, forgetting the obsidian in the walls he could simply scry through, and saw a tangle of sparking machinery wrapped in her field, yanking itself out of its already damaged place in the torn ceiling and—
***
Twilight and Spider-Pony ducked behind the counter as the hotel’s electrical system tumbled though smoke and met pool water, light stabbing out of the dragoon construct. The world filled with the high-pitched keening of magic going wrong and it vanished in an identical plume of sparks as those from the obsidian lacing the walls.
Spidey peeked out at the coils of sickly purple wafting off suddenly clear water. “Wow. If 42nd street cleared that fast my life would be almost problem free.”
“Mmm.” Twilight clambered onto the bar, using it to make fluttering up through the gash in the ceiling easier. “Well, come on if you’re coming.”
“Why would I not be coming?” Spidey simply jumped and stuck, clambering in after her. Their voices began to echo off piping and ducts.
“Because I asked you to look after the city and--”
“And taking down King Salsa--”
“Sombra!”
“…huh. Well, there goes my dream takeout brand name! Anyway, yeah, taking down tall, dark and snarly is the best way to do that.”
“Alright!” Twilight settled on an outcrop of machinery so she could glare at him. “First off, the joke’s really that he isn’t called that, so you could open the franchise.”
Spidey stared at her from the opposite wall.
“Second, I could focus on this so much better if you weren’t crawling all over the situation and slowing me down!”
“Oh, I’m slowing you down now?!”
“What do you think this conversation is?!”
“You stopping to chew me out for looking after my princess and my city at the same time!”
Twilight boggled, her flaring wings drowning him in outraged shadow for a beat. “I…wha—? You did not just…I don’t believe you! Your city? You’re gonna be that guy? You hate that guy!”
“…home! I meant to say home!”
“Sure, sure. Hey, remind me real quick, who’s home were you in when we got word Sombra was walling off your city?”
“I was just swinging by! Got you here, didn’t it?”
“You swung by to ask a bunch of personal questions! That I didn’t want to answer in Canterlot!”
“You went. To. The Cauldron!”
“Oh my gooooooosh!” Twilight dragged her hooves down her face until it felt like her eyelids were past her chin. “Yes, we established that! Because you kept asking about it!”
She hesitated. “…can you smell gas?”
“Spider-Sense!” Spidey nodded rapidly. Twilight followed his gaze downward.
A crunching noise coming closer, air in the shaft getting thicker. Obsidian spears were rupturing from pipe after pipe below them. Mostly steam now, but enough of an acrid tinge that all it would take was one spark…
Twilight’s horn flared, conjuring a rapid layer of faux crystal. She glared at Spider-Pony as dobs of webbing, intended for a net that wouldn’t have done much better, smacked into her barrier’s surface.
“Um. Race ya?” Spidey offered lamely.
He galloped up the shaft, Twilight taking to the air, trying to remember everything Dash and Luna had taught her about shooting straight up. Use your legs, mostly. Don’t have a column of flame right behind you.
“Where?” she called, snapping just as much, really.
Bigger spikes were demolishing entire walls behind them, hissing and sparking from the hotel’s system racing up to claw at them…and a ping of elevator doors.
The rumble in her bones was either her hitting the floor, the doors slamming shut, or the explosion finally happening.
At first she thought some of the gas must’ve gotten to her, but the hall was just strangely lit. A waxy yellow glow trying to be comforting. And the knowledge that they’d been using a maintenance shaft, so there shouldn’t have been an elevator to have doors.
And now there wasn’t, just solid plaster and bunting. Conjured to appear solid anyway. And music…
Spidey carefully picked himself up into a crouch. “Did we get off on the wrong floor?”
“We’re in one of Sombra’s illusions,” Twilight clarified, “so the only thing for certain is we’re on a floor.”
Spidey trotted alongside her. “And we’re heading towards the spooky lounge music because…?”
“Well, you’re determined to stick to my hooves like used gum today—”
“Thanks.”
“—and I’m trying to save all of Equestria, so I want to see why Sombra’s luring us into this…ballroom, apparently.”
***
One from woodcuts in her history books, or Celestia’s biography of old-world aristocracy.
Ponies with shadows over their eyes (or shadows for eyes, perhaps) thronged the space, immaculately dressed from hundreds of years ago, talking, dancing, laughing. No musicians, so the music was probably coming from obsidian in the walls. Even though the space was too large to be part of the real hotel.
“Think he validates parking?” Spidey asked, looking all around. Twilight tried not to laugh.
“Ah, the guest of honour.”
They drew closer together, instinctively back to back as Sombra’s voice came from everywhere.
“And her jester. You didn’t strike me as the type, Princess.”
He pronounced the new title like a slur.
“Neither did you,” Twilight shot back, eyes flicking from courtier to courtier. She conjured her Element, for all the good it’d do alone. “A party, I mean. What’s the occasion?”
“Just thought you deserved a little preview of the glory that is to come with the Reign of King Sombra.”
“Did you hear that in upper case too?” Spidey muttered.
“Unfortunately.”
The illusion flickered irritably.
“Tell me you’re not going to try and convince me to join forces.” Twilight glared. What had the room looked like? Dark, there’d definitely been obsidian…she was sure the windows were in the same place.
“Why not? You have potential. The Twilight Shimmer of my world didn’t have those distinctive wings. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had at least a mortal counterpart, but did you ever truly consider his ideas? Were they even the same as mine?”
“Trust me pal, if you’re anything like those journals the lady found then you disgust her.” Spidey stuck a hoof out to see if he could trip a Unicorn in a millstone collar. No dice. Legs straight through each other. Also probably telling that there were only Unicorns in the illusion.
“The lady is right here and can speak for herself, thank you,” Twilight muttered primly, before taking a breath. “But she echoes the sentiment entirely. Even if you hadn’t invaded this city.”
“Mmm, well, the Empire seemed a tad obvious. Who usurped it in this world, by the way? Your sister and brother-in-law?”
“Other way around, but yes. And if you’re related to Princess Amor the way our Sombra was then you’re a fine one to talk about usurping.”
Every Unicorn in the glamour chuckled with the same voice. Spidey’s tail flicked as his lenses narrowed. Well, one of them.
“Spirit. I like that!” Sombra said, his voice swirling around them like a gathering hurricane. “I’ll crush it to powder, but I like it.”
“Crush…” Spidey’s head shot to a chandelier that hadn’t been above them a moment ago. “Twili—!”
Twilight ducked, squeezing her eyes shut as she formed a force-dome over them. You didn’t feel impact when something struck your field, but there was still…weight. In your bones, up your spine. And oh yeah, they were still surrounded even though the illusion was going all Nightmare Before Hearths Warming on them.
No, she loved that movie, the ponies were dissolving and the décor shredding was her point, and oh gosh it just dawned on her, was it racist she hadn’t noticed the whole ballroom was just Unicorns until…?
“Don’t get separated!” she called as mist whipped around them, howling but with no wind.
“Oh sure, now you want me hanging around.”
The retort never made it out of Twilight’s mouth as shards of obsidian shot towards them from all directions, passing right through—Agh, no, they’d been more illusions! A bluff to make her drop the field and she’d fallen for—
A fresh dragoon swung out of the shadows towards them, dragging some with it. The two darted in different directions again as a hoof blow shook the floor.
Twilight fired a localised burst of dispersal magic and thought she heard Sombra snarl somewhere. She wormed a stream of dispersion into the construct, trying to at least disrupt the spell’s frequency. Sombra simply allowed it to collapse and two more smaller dragoons were lumbering towards her.
“Need to find him…” Twilight muttered, flapping into the air.
“Ask and ye shall…” Spider-Pony looked to the left…then lunged for her. “Receive!”
Twilight yelped in shock as he…used her shoulders to vault over her into a kick that caught Sombra right in the jaw, shattering the glamour.
The wraith that would be king took a step back, blinking. Twilight felt the strange vertigo of going from a howling void to what appeared to be the obsidian stricken master suite, strangely, anti-climatically calm despite all the punching.
“One...concussed, weirdly...renaissance fair...and new age, poser...coming...right…” Spidey finished his volley of blows by ducking the unfazed Sombra’s counter swipe, followed with a foreleg punch to the gut that rattled the windows. “UP!”
And hopped back, clutching his smarting hoof. “…ow?!”
With a blasé expression Rarity could only dream of, Sombra headbutted him. There was a starburst of noxious green and Spider-Pony sailed across the room, taking a large portion of the wall with him. And kept on going.
The smirk was wiped from Sombra’s face by a furious blast of violet magic. Twilight altered the next burst’s frequency and that seemed to hurt. Sombra retaliated by becoming mist as he telekinetically hurled a slab of obsidian at her.
Twilight teleported, materialising on his left and trapping his hooves in cuffs of faux crystal.
“You--” Sombra’s eyes widened and he just managed to swing his horn in time to deflect the following wave of magic. He became smoke again, shattering the cuffs as he sprang for the floor. “You surprise me, Princess. From what I could hear you didn’t seem particularly attached to your little harlequin. Was that what Celestia gave you here instead of a dragon?”
“Keep Spike’s name out of your mouth, but thanks for the idea!”
Twilight’s eyes glinted vindictively as her horn flashed and suddenly Sombra’s cape was on fire.
He wasted precious seconds dousing himself in magic while she teleported behind him, jabbing her crackling horn into his side. Sombra staggered forwards, teeth gritted, his form churning like mist under purple lightning.
Twilight grunted as one of those armoured shoes shot backwards, winding her and knocking her off her hooves. She gasped and rolled as Sombra whirled to trample the floor, then let out a cry of pain as he stamped down on one of her wings. She’d gotten used to crash landings but Great Pony in the Sky, the alien, intimate pain!
“Though I think the real surprise,” Sombra sneered, muzzle thrust inches from her face, “is that you left your little friends out in the streets to face my guardians. Is this what the magic of friendship amounts to here? What, you’re still the leader in this world so you get all the glory?”
“Actually.”
Why was the child smiling?
…One Below! He’d been so busy trying to squash these two pests he’d completely lost track of the other barriers!
“I just had to keep you busy until they were ready.” That light in her eyes, that wasn’t just…those other interlopers, the infernal fillies had been working in groups of them, hadn’t they, one to each pack of…!
“YOU DON’T TOUCH HER!”
The blow only got to Sombra because the fury of that cry startled him. His essence reeled as Spider-Pony cannoned into him, distorting his body with an axe-handle blow so it appeared the would-be-king’s neck twisted all the way around.
The Spider’s next punch passing harmlessly through his chin surprised them both. Twilight lifting into the air, five shapes fading into view beside her, surprised them after that.
The light wasn’t just coming from her…them. Sombra snapped his neck back into position to stare in horror at a radiant glow spreading through his obsidian. He looked down at his forelegs, fading in and out of view. “What are you doing?! Stop! I command you! What is this?!”
“This is what you asked about.” Twilight’s eyes were fully alight, her voice either distorting with vibration or six speaking at once.
Spider-Pony backed up then felt an odd current practically bowling him into the air like a paper bag. He crouched on the wall it carried him to, wondering if he’d just been consciously brushed out of the way.
“But you can’t—!” Sombra fired a blast at the nearest piece of obsidian, but it splashed itself into sparkles like a water balloon full of glitter. “This is not my reality! I planned it that way!”
“...and this was their plan the whole time,” Spidey realised quietly.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t clear who the combined Elements were speaking to.
“We knew we couldn’t count on just harmonizing you, Sombra. We had to be cleverer than that. And it took some time, but with the help of this city each of us found our places, each of us built up enough harmony that we could alter the waves of your magic…and kick your sad old tail!”
“You can’t disperse me!” Sombra backed up until he bumped into a throne of obsidian he’d carved, desperately drawing his cape around himself. “I’ll pull myself back! Somehow! You can’t ever be rid of the shadows! That’s the one rule across all worlds!”
“We don’t need to.” Twilight’s mane billowed around her as she reached out a hoof to the shades of Applejack and Fluttershy on either side of her. “We just need to contain you before we send you back home, where this magic can do a lot more than just disperse you!”
Spidey covered his eyes with a foreleg as the obsidian became even more agonisingly pink. There was an animal howl and a furious cloud of Sombra’s magic…
***
Followed by a tinkling of crystal.
“Uh…” Spidey looked around the weather-worn but obsidian free suite. Not even any tares in the walls, although the furniture could do with some rearranging. “Yay?”
“Yay,” Fluttershy agreed, letting go of Twilight and Pinkie’s hoof. They were all here now, by the way.
“Aww yeah!” Rainbow Dash clarified, performing a loop-de-loop. “Chalk another one up for the Rainboom Bombers!”
“Still not callin’ ourselves that,” Applejack said, tipping her Stetson back to survey the scene. “Whoo-wee, wouldja dig that view! How much ya reckon this place’d set ya back?”
“You couldn’t pay me to spend a second with those drapes,” Rarity sniffed.
“I’m sure they’re more than ready to accept any feedback you have after tonight,” said an approaching metallic voice.
They all turned to see the Iron Mage sail through one of the shattered windows, carrying Captain Adventure, dangling from his hooves. The Falcon sailed in after them, followed by the Vision phasing through the wall and the Phantasmal Pony ferrying Mr. Fantastic and the Scarlet Whisper through the other broken window on an invisible platform.
“Did it work?” the Whisper asked, galloping up to Twilight.
“I think we were on the right track,” Twilight assured, nodding at her, Reed and Iron Mage. “Sombra’s altered frequency should’ve pulled all his constructs into himself and collapsed in on itself. We just have to find…whatever he turned into.”
“Ooh, a scavenger hunt?” Pinkie beamed. “I’ll help in a sec, quick question though, can I keep this? I’ve been looking for something to decorate goth birthday cakes with forever, and bats are so done.”
She held up a shard of almost crown shaped magenta crystal in her hooves. It roared faintly and glinted with magic from a pair of furious eyes.
“Uh, on second thought, I like my birthday ponies to…y’know…live.” Pinkie tossed it to Rarity, who squeaked and fumbled it to Mr. Fantastic, who telekinetically clamped it in a pair of glowing blue tongs.
“—A MILLION, MILLION YEARS!” Sombra’s tinny voice bellowed from within. “YOUR MANES WILL BE LIKE NEEDLES AND YOUR TONGUES WILL BE CRACKED AS A DRY RIVERBED FROM ALL THE SCREAMING IN THE FIRES OF—”
“Oh my gosh!” Dash cackled. “He sounds like an evil chipmunk! This is the most perfect end to my third most Meh team up ever!”
“Third, eh?” Captain Adventure smirked, raising an eyebrow.
“…well I mean, it’s only Sombra.” Dash landed, self-consciously. “Ma’am.”
Spidey lowered himself on a line to address the mystics in the group. “So wait, back up. You guys did have a plan? Even though you said the Elements wouldn’t work?”
“Oh yes,” Mr. Fantastic said, cheerfully but carefully levitating the swearing crystal into a conjured case. “It took a while, and we had to keep the city from being overrun, obviously, but Whisper had a hunch how exactly he shrugged off that, uh, friendship rainbow at Mason Square.”
“Couldn’t have done it without her,” Iron Mage said proudly as the Vision held hooves with an abashed Whisper.
“After that we basically just had to pick our partners,” Applejack agreed. “Reckon Spike’s still pallin’ ‘round with those Hooves for Hire guys.”
“At least it’s not Deadfoal,” Twilight muttered, shuddering at the very idea.
Spidey’s lenses narrowed, looking right at Twilight. “So what was all that last desperate chance stuff?”
“Well, splitting up and hitting him with different frequencies still involved actually, y’know, crossing the city.” Twilight glared back. “In the middle of his attack. Which he barely had control of to begin with, hence the ticking clock!”
“So, what, you had time to come up with all this, but not to let me in on it?”
“It was pretty last minute, son,” Cap said.
“What, I have to explain myself to you?” Twilight took a step forward to glare back. Uh. More. “Because it’s your city?”
“Well you’ve been complaining about me being in the way all night, even though it’s my life to risk.”
“Um…” Fluttershy mumbled. She felt somewhat better for Redwing, the Falcon’s avian partner, landing on her back.
“Is there something we should know…?” Iron Mage wondered.
Twilight rounded on him. “Do you mind?”
“Yeah, we’re talkin’ here,” Spidey agreed.
“If that’s what you wanna call it.” Iron Mage looked around the room and then at Cap. “Well…”
“Yeah,” Cap said, face impassive.
“It was…” Iron Mage glanced up at the narrow-eyed Falcon then at the equally impassive Whisper and Vision. He started for the window he’d come through. “It was nice working together again.”
“Yeah,” Eve Rose said dejectedly over the sound of his thrusters carrying him into the moonlight.
“Gosh,” Mr. Fantastic said, blinking. “Tony didn’t even stay to haggle over who gets to hang onto the--” Sue elbowed him and he shut up. Briefly. “Well, I’m sure both the Befrienders and Fantastic Inc., and, uh, the young ladies if they want, can take turns if we get this to a nice cosy Canterlot vault…”
“We are…uncertain as to the current status of the Befrienders, Dr. Rivers,” the Vision said carefully. The Scarlet Whisper rested her head against his chest and he drew his cape over her slightly.
Sue frowned sympathetically, although the two arguing behind her took the wind out of it a little. “That bad?”
“Arrowhead walked out,” Whisper sighed. “Again, but Mockingbird went with him, and tonight’s response to the alert was…”
“Sloppy,” Captain Adventure said sternly, striding towards the window. “Unforgivably sloppy. That can’t happen again. Sam?”
“Coming right up,” Falcon agreed, flapping over to grip her hooves. He turned to smile at Fluttershy as Redwing glided over to land on his shoulder. “Nice to see you guy’s in action. You do good work.”
“You too,” Rainbow called, waving, “awesome vertical moves out there!”
“Thanks, love your Immelmanns!”
“Betcha’d like to see his Immelmann,” Dash leered, nudging Fluttershy.
“Um, I’d take a polite interest, certainly,” Fluttershy replied, confused, and even more so when a cackling Rainbow had to lean on Applejack for support.
“Just saying a heads up would’ve been nice!” They all turned to the corner Twilight and Spidey were now sharing.
“You weren’t even supposed to be here!” Twilight was retorting.
“What, because you had it on lockdown?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“So you were complaining to, what, just to complain?”
“Just to complain? I’ve been telling you to get off my back all night!”
“And you didn’t tell me why!”
“Would you have listened?”
“If you’d told me the plan at any point, sure! Did Cap know?”
“Mr. Spark did, so probably! What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just that we’re supposed to trust each other more than they do these days, that’s all!”
“Oh, trust, yeah, I remember that! That was nice!”
“Hey, I would’ve trusted you plenty if it didn’t look like you were just galloping off to face Soarin’--”
“Sombra!”
“Sonar, salamander, somnambulist, whatever! I was worried!”
“You think I wasn’t?! You want trust? How about a little faith?”
“How about telling me your plans instead of to go jump in East River?”
“For the same reason I didn’t use your name, Pe--” Twilight blinked at the two remaining Befrienders, but her exasperation poured right back in. “Person of interest! Sombra can hear things through his constructs!”
“Is that really the reason?”
“Part of it.”
“So what’s the rest?”
“You know what’s the rest.”
“Apparently I don’t!”
“Well that’s your problem, then!” Twilight stormed into the hallway, lighting the walls with the angry purple glow from her eyes. “I’m finding an elevator and then Spike, and then we’re going home!”
“Neat, the ride’ll give us plenty of time to talk!” Spidey snapped, leaping after her.
“Oh, happy day!” Twilight yelled as they rounded a corner. “Think you could listen this time?”
“I think--”
The remaining Elements and superheroes stood awkwardly in the decimated suite.
“Well this was lovely,” Rarity said primly, pushing a frozen Fluttershy towards the hallway. “Must do it again soon, but not too soon, all that, byeeee!”
“He’d better not say anything,” Dash muttered as they began to traipse after her.
Applejack squinted. “Ya’ll really wanna get in the middle o’ that?”
“Hay no, he’d just better not say anything is all!”
Pinkie was the only out of towner left now, looking around the room at four people she barely knew. “So, um. How ‘bout them Sox?”
“That’s in Chicloudgo, hon,” Sue said kindly.
“Oh.”
“I’m a Mets fan if that helps,” Mr. Fantastic offered.
Tuesday:
“Not that we’re ungrateful, Princess,” Load Barer said carefully, awkwardly scratching her neck and wagging her hardhat slightly, “but…”
“I am,” Peter said, glowering from under his own. The effect was spoiled by the survey rig he was wearing, several clipboards, pens and even an eyepiece giving the surreal impression he was a huffy foal who didn’t like his casting in the school play.
“But darling,” Twilight trilled with venomous sweetness, “it’s for your own good!”
Spike tried and failed not to meet embarrassed eyes with Load Bearer, quickly turning it into looking over Damage Control’s equipment and a wall of Sombra’s obsidian. It stretched across the road, even through some waterfront buildings and into the river.
“Besides, you heard Load Barer,” Twilight grinned. “What kind of magical disposal team couldn’t benefit from the aid of a student of Celestia?”
“Uh, put that way…” mused the supervisor, who hadn’t thought anything of the kind.
“Bare c’mon, she and Spike don’t even have hardhats!”
“He’s got us there,” Spike said quickly, spinning on his heel towards the detour signs.
“No he doesn’t,” Twilight hissed through smiling teeth. There was a burst of purple and Spike was suddenly staggering under a hardhat, while she now sported:
“That’s a plinth helmet,” Peter said.
“A crystal reinforced plinth helmet, thank you.” Twilight tapped it to demonstrate. “Gift from my brother! Y’know, youngest captain of the guard in over a century? Taught me everything Celestia didn’t about magical safety? Spent almost a year learning everything there is to know about Sombra-traps?”
“I hear he’s super professional too,” Peter shot back.
“Yes, well,” Twilight beamed, making a show of adjusting his rig just so, “you’re not dating him, are you?”
“You realise you’re holding up traffic?” Peter tried. He indicated the wall with a curt jerk of his head. “Sooner you stop…whatever this is, the sooner we can start taking that thing apart.”
“Actually,” Load Barer said firmly, reminding everyone who was in charge, “I wouldn’t mind the princess taking a look. No offence, Pete, but your area’s, whaddaya call it—”
“Science,” Peter said dryly at the same time Twilight chimed in with, “Everfree Think.”
“—right, and you searched the tunnels, yeah?”
“You both know I did,” Peter muttered. Just like they both knew he’d yelped in a Rarity-like fashion when he’d stuck his head out of the manhole they’d been using for the survey and found Twilight, with an expression very like her mother’s, looking down at him.
“And you found…?” Load Barer prompted.
“Nothing,” Peter muttered eventually.
“Which doesn’t mean there isn’t something still down there. The princess has the experience, and the last thing we need is to start drilling into this thing and waking something up.”
“Oh, Sombra’s still around,” Twilight said simply, “but don’t worry, he’s completely locked off from, well, basically everything. The princess is banishing him out of this reality anyway. I did a quick scan before announcing myself and it’s just so much dead rock.”
Peter frowned. “Then why even show up?”
“What?!” Twilight wrapped a foreleg around his shoulders. “One of my most fearsome enemies just happens to attack the city of my one and only special somepony?! What kind of princess, nay, what kind of mare would I be if I didn’t invade both your work and personal space?!”
“Okay, I see what you’re doing--”
“Yes, so glad you agree!” Twilight’s horn flickered and Peter was suddenly covered in twin roles of bubble wrap. “After all, it’s not like we’re in the exact same kind of business!”
“That’s not--” Peter’s eyes flicked to the nonplussed Load Bearer and to the rest of their crew by their equipment.
“Possible?” Twilight’s smile was nigh Trixieian. “Of course not, because you’re just a Friendly Neighbourhood…”
She let him dangle over the abyss for a beat before smushing his cheeks. “Cutie pie! Who I want to keep as safe as possible, because you’re just an average, ordinary, everyday little pony with no special friends or powers to defend yourself!”
“Twilight!”
“And sure, maybe barging in on you at your job and trying to do it for you looks oh so patronizing, to say nothing of a violation of the trust we founded this relationship on, but really, my real crime?” She pulled his muzzle closer, eyes glinting. “I care too much.”
“Okay!” They both flinched as Load Bearer’s hoof stuck asphalt. “Look, dunno what this is, don’t wanna!” She indicated the wall. “Ya gotta way to bring this down?”
“Um.” Twilight quickly fired off three target runes at certain points. “It, ah, should all collapse if you start here. No magic or anything! But uh, well, I’d recommend sonics if you have anything like that. It crumbles but there’s a lot of it, so that way you can do it remotely and the actual clean up’ll be of all of the…um…yeah…”
“And extraction from those roofs?”
“Liquid nitrogen,” Peter supplied, trying to keep his voice steady. “Better to shatter ‘em and patch up all the holes.”
“And the river?”
“Is the river?” Peter shrugged. Bubbles around his shoulders popped.
“Sounds about right.” Load Bearer clapped her hooves. “Alright ladies, let’s get rolling!”
The couple moved to a doorway to continue the discussion. The words ‘Cauldron’ and ‘Oh yeah?!’ came up a lot, carrying even over the wailing of the banshee-bombs the crew used to strategically collapse Sombra’s wall. The fragments still had to be broken down for carting away, and the sound of jackhammers was soon mingling with the usual seagulls and traffic.
Load Bearer looked down at Spike and twitched aside her earmuffs. “Wanna pair? This is just gonna get louder.”
“Thanks.”
Spike glanced at the doorway where Twilight was now shaking the bubble wrapped Peter. “Can I keep ‘em…?”
Wednesday
Afternoon
“I mean, it’s weird, right?” Johnnycake said distractedly, peering over his controls. “Don’t get me wrong, proving our mettle to each other is a tradition in the business. Nothing wrong with some good ol’ friendly competition!”
“mmm hmm,” Rarity agreed, clutching his foreleg so tight bits of her own were reddening, staring down at the miles of countryside sweeping by beneath them. Oh good, now they were over solid rock…
“In fact, I worry about some of these new kids,” Johnny continued, banking his chariot around some low hanging clouds.
“is that right.”
“Yeah, all this cooperation and whatnot. I hear some of them even share secret identities after the first case and it’s like, there’s such a thing as too much trust, y’know?”
“if you say so.” There were birds beneath them.
“But Peter and the princess…man! Thought they were going to be the next Slim and Jean. Was even thinking of hiring an assistant to run out and get ‘em some of the most normcore sweaters possible. Maybe cause a power struggle, maybe not, have some embarrassing shots for the family album either way. But I could never risk been seen buying those sweaters myself, the Manehattan scene would eat me alive, and you’d barf at the rate the average temp pushes for these days.”
“business,” Rarity said just to say something.
Johnny manoeuvred the hover-chariot between some clouds. She wasn’t sure what exactly she swallowed since her throat had gone dry millennia ago, when Johnny had arrived in Ponyville Plaza on this benighted thing.
It wasn’t heights, exactly. She knew a certain filly who took understandable pride in being able to break the sound barrier at thousands of feet, and Rarity herself was a country gal! Hills and mountains and plenty of healthy, fresh air, that sort of thing. Why, some of the private boxes they’d watched Papa’s performances from…!
But, you see, none of those had been piloted by Johnny Storm.
Johnny ‘all his own stunts’ Storm. Johnny ‘eight loop-de-loops in one or bust’ Storm. Johnny ‘parachutes are for ponies who don’t want it badly enough’ Storm.
The damn thing didn’t even have a guard rail. She knew, knew, if she said the word ‘seatbelt’, she knew the exact expression he’d make.
“We’re getting close, right?” Johnny stood on tippy-hooves to peer down at some clearings. Rarity muffled a keening on par with the humming turbines that kept her trapped on this nightmare carnival ride. “Anywhere specific you wanna get off?”
A nearby cloud looked sort of like Discord and she wasn’t sure which would be worse, if it was or wasn’t. “down.”
“Alrighty!” Johnny tapped a few runes, yanked the stick around a bit and, in a moment Rarity would never forgive him for, let it go. The chariot began to waft downward in lazy circles. “You see it a lot, y’know. It’s usually the stress of dating from outside, but sometimes it really is just both being in the business. And nopony’s even sure what you girls actually do! That’s gotta be keeping them up at night. That Pete’s side is so basic.”
Rarity quirked a brow, confidence returning now that gravity was less of a concern. ”So you’re taking his side?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“Can we at least agree he’s been just ghastly?”
“Rarity, it’s Pete.”
“Yes, and Mr. Trotter has been hounding Twilight day and night! It’s disgraceful!”
“Again, it’s Pete.”
Johnny stepped off the chariot before it had quite landed. Rarity trembled but there wasn’t as much of a bump as she’d expected, more an unpleasant feeling of simultaneous momentum and inertia. “That doesn’t make it alright. He should know to back off by now. And the things he’s said…!”
“Dude’s a talker,” Johnny said casually. He flicked his tail at the side of the chariot and it beeped twice. “And it’s not like Twilight doesn’t give as good as she gets.”
“True,” Rarity smiled with brief pride before frowning at him. “But she shouldn’t be giving or receiving, is the point! I honestly don’t know what Peter’s hang up is. It’s not even as if going to the Cauldron is the scandalous thing to do anymore. They’ve got a Hay-Burger now for heaven’s sake!”
“Please, you’re impressed with her.”
“Oh absolutely. But she’s from Canterlot! What did anypony expect? Do you know how many times she claimed to be ‘from the block?’ Anypony who can sling a horn like that, there’s got to be something to it.”
“I feel like the Cauldron really lost something when they started shooting all those music videos there,” Johnny said, helping her step off as the turbines finished folding away.
“Their equipment, one assumes.”
Johnny waved a hoof with a little too much aggression to be idle gesturing. “No, y’know, a certain rebellious integrity!”
“You couldn’t get into those videos, could you?” Rarity’s eyes were half lidded with resignation.
“Well can you remember any of them?! Trick question! And those short-sighted fools at Caravan Records could’ve had it all, if they’d only seen the potential of a stallion who’s his own special effect! But nooooo!”
“I feel very sorry for Crystal all of a sudden,” Rarity said and smirked as Johnny froze, indignant nose in the air. “How’s that going by the way?”
Johnny recovered immediately. “Fantastic, how do you think? Haven’t even spoken to her since the weekend!”
“Oh dear?” Rarity tried uncertainly.
“No,” Johnny grinned, “it’s perfect. We’re so confident we’re just giving each other some space. Not too much, not too little, just enough.”
“For what, precisely?”
“Don’t try to define it, Rarity, definitions put limits on things and if you’re anything it’s certainly not limited. It’s what I admire you for.”
“One of your far, far, far too many taglines is that you burn limits down and crank it up. You don’t even define what ‘it’ is supposed to be.”
“Boy that Pete huh, what a cad,” Johnny said quickly.
“Nice try, but I’ve mainlined my ardour with your roommate’s beastly behaviour!” Rarity snorted indignant jets from her nostrils, then daintily kicked a pebble. It ricocheted between boulders. Leaving marks. “Ahem. So there’s no escape is the point, Johnny dear. Take it like a stallion.”
“On that note…” Johnny looked around the miles of…rocks, basically. “Is there anywhere you wanna go, or…?”
“Here is fine!” Rarity beamed hurriedly.
“For what again? You said you needed costume gems.”
“Quite right. These are my usual hunting grounds, actually!”
“Right, you said, but you asked me to pack some…?”
“Well, you had them, didn’t you?” Rarity’s eyes flicked uneasily between the chariot and the distant treetops. “But enough about gems, tell me about Crystal!”
Johnny folded his forelegs. “Why?”
“Why not? Do you have your compact, by the way?”
“Yeah,” Johnny smirked. “Why?”
“Oh, just, uh, just want to check the time, you know, as one does--”
“Rarity!” came Spike’s cheerful voice from on high.
The fashionista shut her eyes. “Oh dear.”
It wasn’t Spike, who’d been the sweetest little collaborator as always, it was who’s back he was riding on. She opened one eye as she felt the temperature starting to waver, and wished she hadn’t. Johnny’s expression was frigidly blank.
Rainbow Dash landed and stared back. The grin melted off Spike’s face and he hurriedly began to clamber off.
“You’re not being kidnapped by diamond dogs,” Rainbow said carefully, never breaking eye contact with Johnny.
“Diamond dogs?!” Rarity scoffed like she always did when she was cornered: far too much. “Pfft! The very idea! Pfft! Who said anything about diamond dogs? Pfft! Pfft!”
“Spike did.” Rainbow should not sound that calm. Johnny should not be that still. “Like you told him to.”
“…pfft?”
“She was just trying to help, guys,” Spike protested lamely, looking between them. They both looked at him, which was worse, so he looked at Rarity. “What happened? This is the place, right?”
Rarity nodded. “Quite. They were supposed to spring out promptly at 2:00! Really, the only reason I can think to stay is so I can give them a piece of my mind! There’s fashionably late and then there’s whatever this is.”
“Beneath you?” Dash muttered.
“Come on!” Spike cajoled. “You guys love beating up goons!” He began boxing the air. “A little double teamin’ for a bit of the ol’ one two! Like the good old days!”
The Horseshoe Torch ignited, turned, and blasted into the air towards the distant spires of Canterlot.
“Well fine!” Rainbow Dash bellowed and her own launch bowled Spike into Rarity.
“Oh dear, are you alright?”
“Eh.” Spike’s fins drooped as he watched a fading rainbow contrail punching ugly holes through entire cloud banks. “Honestly looking forward to the long walk back. Less time caught between Twilight and Pete.”
Rarity scowled. “He’s not said anything to you has he?”
“They’re both fine to everypony else!” Spike kicked a pebble and hopped on one leg for a bit. “Ow! Anyway, that’s the worst part. They just stop if I get between them and then it all picks up again. It’s so weird!”
“Yes, it’s been that sort of day,” Rarity sighed, patting his shoulder.
“I’d write to one of the other princesses but it’s like, does anypony really deserve to get dragged into…whatever’s going on? I mean, I barely remember all that stuff with the Cauldron! Sure, I wouldn’t go down there after dark, but we’ve all been way worse places since then!”
“Yes, and I can think of one or two of those places to send those lazy, flea ridden--” Rarity glanced up and squinted. “Oh, hello. What have we here?”
A moving column of earth was shuffling over the hills, turning to gravel as it hit the clearing and angled towards them. Rover scratched himself a hole and clambered out carefully. “Um, hello, hello, yes!”
“Hmph!” Rarity spun on her heel, eyes shut and nose to the sky.
“There is a problem?” Rover’s ears folded nervously. Spike blinked, noticing the terrified eyes of Spot and Fido in the shadows of the tunnel.
“There was supposed to be!” Rarity snapped indignantly, rounding on him. Rover’s elongated arms went up as she advanced, as if held at horn-point, which wasn’t too far off the mark. “Where were you ten seconds ago, hmm? Kidnapping at 2:00, treats by second teatime, that was the deal!”
“Yes, yes, most generous, most generous, but--”
“Excuses!” Rarity flung her nose to the air again. “I ask for slavering fiends from the pit and what do I get? Excuses!”
“You of all ponies would like…slavering?”
“Eww, of course not, it’s slimy and it gets everywhere!” Rarity stuck her tongue out in revulsion then glared down the hole. “And what are you two doing?”
“That, uh, that is the thing,” Rover murmured, compulsively rubbing the back of one paw with the claws of the other as his comrades’ eyes shrank further back into the darkness, “while Miss Rarity’s offer was—is, is! Most generous, the pack still has many memories of it’s time with, uh, with the most esteemed of…well, you.”
A beat.
“They’re scared of me, is what you’re saying,” Rarity said eventually.
“This pack, sure,” Rover admitted, then held up a claw with a grin. “So! I sent word to not only the southern pack—”
Rarity and Spike followed his pointing towards another column of earth zigzagging over the distant hills. It had spear tips poking out if it.
“—but to our northern cousins as well, who’ll do anything for a lark!” Rover beamed so hard he was in danger of putting one of his eyes out with his fangs. “Took a while, but here they come! So! Pretty pony’s little friends beat up two packs, we take gems, all quits, yes?”
“That is…a plan, certainly,” Rarity mumbled.
“Pretty pony…has gems, yes?”
“Enough for a savvy negotiator to divvy up fairly, yes!” Rarity grinned desperately. The northern column was getting close enough for them to see axes coming out of it. “They’re in the trunk of the--”
Johnny’s Fantasti-Chariot beeped again, whirred, unfolded its turbines and taxied into the distance before wafting into the air and the wild blue yonder.
“Yes, well, we’ll just leave this one out of the diary, shall we?” Rarity muttered, levitating Spike onto her back.
***
Evening
“And then he says he just thinks it’s a little reckless is all!” Twilight Sparkle snapped. It wasn’t just the volume of the music making her raise her voice.
“Is that really what he said?” Gem Stone asked.
She looked at Merry Jane, who gave her a raised eyebrow. Gem frowned and indicated the fuming princess with her head. It was MJ’s club after all! Who else was going to do it, Fluttershy?
MJ shook her head. Gem gave her The Look. Fluttershy blinked.
“Yeah, okay, fine!” The other Pegasus shut her eyes before turning one of her many trademark smiles on Twilight. “Peter can be like that, Twilight.”
“Like what, a total butthead for no reason?” Twilight muttered into her drink. Fluttershy put a shocked hoof to her mouth.
“…nyeah,” both exes said and shrugged.
“Busy tonight, isn’t it?” Fluttershy tried.
She still had no earthly idea what she was doing here. They’d come looking to see if they could find anything on the chest inside the tree’s cave in the public library, then gotten involved in rescuing urban legends from Flim and Flam’s circus, but that had been ages ago. And then they’d been invited to Ms. Merry’s nice club and, well…
“Reckless compared to what?” Twilight demanded suddenly. “I mean, could everypony kindly make up their mind? Either I’m too rigid or I’m too reckless. I didn’t ask to be a conduit for friendship itself, you know!”
“It looks good on you though?” MJ tried.
“Was he always like this?”
“Oh wow, that table doesn’t have any hay-fries, sorry gang, let’s do this aga--”
“Sit,” Gem said firmly, telekinetically yanking MJ out of the air and back onto her seat. “Look, Peter’s…important but he driven us crazy too. We’ve been there.”
“And how’d you deal with it?”
Gem and MJ looked at each other with completely blank expressions.
“Well it’s good that you’re all friends, isn’t it?” Fluttershy looked around the group. Seriously. What was she doing here?
“Friends,” Gem said distantly. “Yes.”
“Y’know what the worse thing is?” Twilight levitated a ketchup packet and began worrying it like a stress ball. It bulged and shrank unnaturally. “It’s a one-way street with him.”
“What?” MJ blinked, then her eyes narrowed. “Wait, you mean that thing he does?”
“Yes!”
Gem stuck the table with a clenched hoof, rattling glasses. “I hate that!”
“W-w-what thing?” Fluttershy squeaked.
“That thing where he tells you not to worry about him,” MJ grumbled. “Because that’s so easy.”
“Right?!” Twilight threw up her hooves. “It’s like, hello, you save on bus fair by flinging yourself through the air on silly string! For starters!”
“And he always has to come smashing through somepony’s window or something,” Gem added. “When he doesn’t creep up behind you!”
“Oh man.” MJ rolled her eyes. “Y’know how much glass I used to have to clean out of his costume back in the day?”
“Because he only cleans it when he remembers to,” Twilight muttered. MJ nodded emphatically.
“At least he told you guys,” Gem muttered.
“Not exactly,” MJ clarified, holding up a wing tip. “I had to tell him I knew.”
“I didn’t even know his real name until the Lizard said it a few times,” Twilight said.
“Well, you know,” Fluttershy tried, “secret identity?”
“Pro tip: that excuse gets real old real fast,” MJ countered.
“After you’ve had to spend a whole reign of Celestia trying to get him to explain what’s wrong,” Twilight muttered.
“What singular?” Gem quirked a brow. “Because it’s always more than one.”
MJ rolled her eyes. “And Great Pony forbid he ask for help with any of it.”
“Well,” Fluttershy tried, because the magic rock she’d fused with had control of her vocal cords right now, “life in the big city--”
“I’m from the big city!” all three said at once.
“Hay, you’re from the big city!” Twilight said, clasping her shoulder a little too firmly. “And none of us needed radioactive spiders to look out for ourselves! Gem, your dad’s a cop, isn’t he?”
“I’m a cop!” the other Unicorn said as she nodded fiercely, levitating her badge. Some ponies at nearby tables noticed and quickly made nonchalant exits. “And it didn’t stop Peter looking over my shoulder for most of my first cases!”
“And you solve mysteries, right?” Twilight asked Merry Jane.
The Pegasus wing-shrugged. “Eh, now and then. He was so ticked off I didn’t tell him right away, and I knew from day one I’d have to tell him why not.”
“Because he’d freak out and you’d never get anywhere,” Gem said flatly. MJ pointed at her with a wingtip.
“Ever wanted to know how close you came to Sombra ruling Equestria?” Twilight asked. “Because I sure didn’t. We had to break into a changeling hive once and he didn’t even blink about sneaking me in. And now the Cauldron’s a big deal all of a sudden? They make music videos there now! They’re so lame Rainbow Dash can’t even ironically like them!”
“Hold up, the Cauldron?” Gem squinted. “Park Basin?”
“Nopony calls it that,” Fluttershy said because Twilight was taking a big pull of MJ’s house special and she wasn’t looking forward to anything her friend would have to say after a few more of those.
“Right, something’s always brewing and all that, ever seen Snake Eyes Casino?”
“Long story,” Twilight sighed. “Why?”
“Girl’s gotta get her contacts where she can.”
“Don’t you have a couple by now?” MJ asked. “Like, where you actually work?”
“Hey, Twilight’s brother moved up north. Pays to plan ahead.”
MJ brightened suddenly. “Oh hey, y’know who’s posted there now? Flash!”
“…Flash Sentry?”
“The one and only!”
Gem was delighted. “Get outta town!”
“Why not?” MJ snickered. “He did!” The two of them leaned on each other from laughter.
“Who’s Flash Sentry?” Fluttershy asked, pouncing on any chance to change the subject.
“That is the million bit question,” MJ wheezed.
“I…might have an idea, actually,” Twilight murmured, hoping the club lights, lowering for the upcoming dance number, hid her blush. “You guys know each other? How long? I’m thinking of examining friendships originating in big cities and, well, I spent forever in Canterlot barely talking to anypony, so…”
“Just don’t get him started on their band,” Gem smirked, elbowing MJ in the wings.
“Traitor.”
“You guys were in a band?” Fluttershy blinked. Twilight was too nonplussed to ask.
“You think that’s bad, guess who our drummer was.” Merry Jewel got some revenge noogie-ing the laughing Gem. “Nah, it’s been a while but Flash still feels like one of the gang. He and Harry used to be inseparable. In fact, Gem, didn’t you guys…?”
“Same academy, yeah! For a while. He got real serious about being a guard and I only signed up for the survival training. Last I heard he was posted at Befrienders Fort.”
“Did Peter freak out over that too?” Twilight muttered bitterly.
Gem nodded. “Totally brooded. And thought we didn’t notice.”
“The kicker?” MJ couldn’t help a sentimental smile. “Those two used to hate each other.”
Twilight choked on her drink. Some of it got in Fluttershy’s hair.
“Oh Great Pony, yeah…” Gem stared down at the table cloth through a million years. “Wow. Peter used to complain to me about that ‘pretentious wannabe’ all the time.”
She snickered. “Flash’s description was a lot more…colourful.”
“How colourful?” Twilight’s eyes had narrowed. MJ looked up as the club’s lights flickered and gave the Alicorn a warning look as only a Manehattanite could.
“But…they became friends?” Fluttershy bit her lip to shut herself up as they all turned to look at her.
“Yeah,” Gem sighed, smiling.
“Yeah,” MJ agreed. “Y’know what used to drive Pete nuts? And I swear, this had nothing to do with how they wound up, that’s the sad thing, but guess who’s the big apple’s number one Spidey fan.”
Twilight blinked. “Oh my gosh.”
The table erupted in laughter. Fluttershy joined in, relived.
“Goes to show,” Gem decided with a shrug, “why we put up with him, I mean. He can always make you laugh.”
“There is that,” Twilight agreed. “Maybe it’s the house specials, and I’m going to hit you up for the recipe sometime MJ—”
“Think we can talk about a royal approval sticker?” MJ smirked, raising an eyebrow. And winced at Gem’s elbow. “What?”
“—but what the hay, would you guys like to hear the first time I knew? I mean, it took a while to really know and I hadn’t even seen Cadence since Hearth’s Warming, and now that I think about it Chrysalis was posing as her for so long they hadn’t even organised the reception yet--”
“Sure,” MJ smiled as Gem blinked.
“Okay, but abandon all respect for Twilight Sparkle ye who enter here!” the mage snickered. She turned to Fluttershy. “Might need some help here, do, uh, do you remember Smarty Pants?”
“Oh my!” Fluttershy put a hoof to her mouth to try and hold in the tittering. “I, ah, I think all of Ponyville remembers Smarty Pants!” It was their turn to descend into laughter.
“You had a Smarty Pants?!” Gem grinned with nerdy childhood abandon. MJ smiled and shook her head at the ceiling. Some shadows flicking around one of the club’s skylights made her frown…
“You too?!” Twilight gripped Gem’s hoof then shook her head to clear it but didn’t drop her smile. “Okay, okay, later, because if I start on her now this’ll take forever, but it was the day after we beat Discord--”
“Everypony down!” MJ yelled to the entire club.
They all instinctively threw themselves away from the table, almost the exact instant as the sound of breaking glass. Patrons erupted in confused screams as two shadows tumbled through the club lights. Only one of them hit the table, shattering it.
“Peter?!” the three relevant mares cried.
“You’ve gotta--” Spider-Pony clutched his side as he tried to sit up too fast. “Outta here! You’ve gotta get out before--”
“Now is tHaT any way to TaLk?!” One of the shadows streamed into Spidey, pulling him out the wreckage and into the centre of the dance floor as party ponies and creatures rushed for cover or an exit. “After all, YoU’rE the OnE who Invited uS to this little DaNcE!”
Black and white, muscle and teeth.
“Poison Pony…” Merry Jane whispered. She’d gone so still and so limp she almost looked like she’d suffered months of emaciation in a week.
“Get behind me!” Gem ordered, throwing herself in front of the Pegasus with her horn glowing.
“And by dAnCe…” The symbiote wrapped two tendrils from it’s Big Mac sized shoulders around Spidey’s neck and enlarged it’s mouth as they hauled him into the air. “We mean YoU jUmPeD uS!”
“You won’t…touch them!” Peter snarled, straining.
“What're you whining about NoW?” Poison’s almost canine head turned to take in the logo, MJ’s initials naturally, over the bar. “Ah. wE see. Would you bEliEVe wE were just passing bY?”
“…what?”
“Then again!” Poison Pony’s tongue flicked gleefully. “WaStE nOt, WaNt NoT!”
“Drop him!” Gem ordered.
“We’D be delighted, DeTeCtIvE!” the monster simpered. “And may wE say how NiCe it is to sEe YoU aGaIn? Unfortunately, jumping ponies from the shadow is OuR tHiNg!”Spidey gagged as the tendrils tightened. “So We’Re not feeling very NiCe RiGhT nOw!”
“Neither am I!”
Twilight rose into the air, a seething purple glow from her body swallowing Gem’s own cornflower aura. The symbiote made a high-pitched noise as a burst of purple sparks disintegrated it’s tendrils, letting Spider-Pony crash to the floor.
“Twi--” Peter croaked under the mask, reaching out to her. “No—ge-get--"
“I’m handling it, thank you dear,” Twilight said far too calmly.
“You DaRe…?!” Poison Pony hissed, rearing up as his forelegs morphed into razor sharp, more arachnidian shapes. Then the white mask eyes blinked as it realised who he was looking at. “Oh. That’s right. You’re a PrInCeSs now…”
“That’s right.”
Twilight kept floating forward as he backed up, Fluttershy flapping behind her to quickly grip a mesmerised Spider-Pony and drag him back towards the relative cover of the devastated booth.
“Um.” Poison looked around as his back hit the abandoned DJ’s turntable. “We’Re a HeRo NoW?”
The symbiote made the mistake of trying to smile without even altering it’s teeth.
“Oh good.” Twilight’s eyes filled the world with purple as she sent her magic into the sound system. For starters. “So I don’t have to be.”
Thursday:
“Okay, I screwed up,” Peter Trotter said. “Big time. No question.”
He sighed. “And I know you’ve all these questions and I…haven’t exactly been the most coherent colt lately, and, heh, you know me, gift of the gab. Talk so cheap old man Flattop would order by the carbuoy and tip. Okay, maybe not tip, but…”
He dragged a hoof down his face and inhaled.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’ve been…saying a lot of things, and not all of them make sense and some of them I probably shouldn’t have said--”
He shut his eyes.
“Really. Shouldn’t have said. And if you wanna talk about that I’m in a place now where-where I’m more prepared to listen. You, uh, you’ve always said I was good at…y’know. That. And I know I haven’t been lately, good I mean, at-at-at a lot of things, but I want to fix this and oh Great Pony in the Sky I sound like a goon, what am I doing?”
He pressed his head to the mirror and groaned.
“Well, you’re trying,” said somepony behind him.
Peter yelped, jumping and spinning on instinct so he was facing the other way when he hit the ceiling.
“Sorry, sorry!” Twilight backed up, hooves waving. She grunted as she hit his bedroom door.
“No, no!” Peter scuttled closer. “I mean, I’m the one who…”
“Little bit.” Twilight tucked her wings back in. “A lot. Actually.”
“Yeah.” Peter wondered what his ear folding must look like upside down.
A beat.
“I mean, what has this week been exactly?!” Twilight’s eyes bugged almost imploringly. “Where did all this come from? Is this even about the Cauldron anymore?”
“It’s not…not about that?” Peter crawled out of the door after her. “Uh, look, would you like to sit down? Anything to drink? We should probably talk.”
“Can it wait?” Twilight looked up at him, trying to keep her face impassive. “This exchange thing is coming up and I’ve spent a lot of time being mad when I should’ve been organising.”
“Right.” Peter dropped off the ceiling. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Twilight said quietly.
Outside the sounds of the city kept on going. It was too gorgeous a day for this. They should’ve been walking along one of Ponyville’s winding roads, talking about nothing. He loved her and now he had absolutely no idea what to say to her.
“I, ah,” Twilight began, then cleared her throat. “I just came by to say you don’t have to take Spike next week.”
“Oh.”
That had been his clumsy way of trying to open a dialogue. At the very least assess how this was coming off to the dragon, if not the rest back in Ponyville. The most he had right now was dirty looks from Rarity and Rainbow Dash punching the pad of her hoof meaningfully back during that Sombra thing. Fluttershy had dragged him to safety last night, but simply bitten her lip whenever he’d looked at her.
“Thank you, though,” Twilight said.
“Sure!” He took a breath. “Uh, listen…about last night, the Poison thing--”
“You don’t have to apologise for a maniac, Peter.” Same careful tone. Like she was trying not to give anything way because she might…explode or something.
“No, right, just…he was just swinging by, like he said. Wouldn’t have even been there if not for me.”
“You thought he was going after Merry Jane again, I completely understand.”
“I’m just trying to apologise.”
“We both know that’s not what you’re apologising for.” Twilight’s wings twitched slightly. “And that it’s not going to be enough.”
“Do you…know what would be?” He was trying really hard not to sound pleading.
A long beat.
Twilight let out an exhausted sigh.
“I wish I had an answer. I…think the big thing is that this isn’t a friendship problem. And we’re all feeling that stuff out as we go, and I can’t…shouldn’t put it on the others to deal with our problems. Poor Pinkie Pie’s thrown me at least five random surprise parties, trying to figure out how to cheer me up! I feel terrible doing that to her.”
“I hear that,” Peter sighed.
“It’s not entirely your fault.”
“You don’t have to take blame off me like that.”
“Trust me, I’m keenly aware of what to blame you for.” Twilight shut her eyes. “That sounded horrible didn’t it? I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from.”
Yes she did, part of Peter whispered. “You don’t have to beat yourself up. I’ve been…jumpy.”
Twilight squinted. “You’ve been questioning my every move. Look, I do that enough as it is, I don’t need a backseat inferiority complex!”
“And that’s not what I’m trying to do!”
“Then what is this, Peter?” She stepped towards him, eyes imploring. “Talk to me. We worked so well together, before we made this official! You used to come to me for magic cases all the time, but now you’re not just questioning my methods, you’re actually throwing them off! It feels like you don’t trust me anymore!”
“I do!”
“Well I don’t feel it!”
Twilight pressed a hoof to her chest for emphasis. She sniffed, fortifying it. “I don’t.”
“I swear I didn’t mean for this to…” Peter trailed off. The look on her face. He’d done that and he hated himself for it. “It’s the business, y’know?”
“Clearly I don’t.”
“It’s hard to find the words, okay?!” He placed his hooves on her shoulders, stammering his way towards something, anything. “It’s…it’s like, you’re here, and we’re…y’know. And then I find out that…that it’s like you’ve always been in the business too, and I…I’ve been at this so long…”
Twilight squinted again. “So, what, we’re too similar now?”
“Of course not! I mean, not like…not like in the field, Sombra proved that--”
“I’m tired of justifying that, just so you know.”
“No, I get it, but…”
He looked into her eyes. She let him stroke her check, that was something, but she was still looking at him with that careful, probing look. Like he was something under a microscope that’d started spelling out rude words at her.
“Putting yourself in danger like that, it was a shock.”
“When? And may I point out you’ve been at this a lot longer than we have?”
“That’s what I mean! I’m lucky I didn’t get myself killed! Repeatedly!”
“Well I wasn’t exactly safe when you were leaping in front of every wraith on Monday! Do you know how many spells I had to stifle so I didn’t shoot you?”
“It just never hit me until then, okay?”
“What never hit you?”
“That…how close your side of the business, how close you come to…if you hadn’t pulled that off all of Equestria might’ve--”
“I know!” Twilight reached up and squeezed his hooves. “I think about that almost every day. About the girls, Spike. How they’re in this with me. Their destinies wouldn’t even be tied to the Elements if I hadn’t made a split-second decision in the face of eternal night! But I’ve put that aside when it counted, when we had to risk everything. You have too!”
“But that’s my responsibility!”
“Well this is mine!”
The sudden rumble of a truck slightly mounting the curb and rattling whatever it was carrying, complete with colourful pedestrian commentary, made them freeze up. When they remembered to breathe again it was slightly ragged.
“We’re not gonna solve this today, are we,” Peter said despondently. It wasn't a question.
“I’m afraid not.” Twilight gently released his hooves and stepped back. “Look, I really do need to pack. Spike’s staying with Rarity for the week, so that’s fine.”
Peter just nodded numbly.
“And…” Twilight screwed her eyes shut and inhaled through her nose. “And we will talk, I promise. But I seriously need to get ready for this Attilan trip.”
“Right.”
“Promise me you won’t try to follow me.”
“…you think I would?”
“After this week? Can you blame me?” Twilight frowned. “You’re not wrong Peter, I do need some space right now. And all I’ve been doing back home is stewing. A change of scenery, it’ll do some good. And I need to do a project without anypony leaning over my shoulder.”
Her eyes flicked to the floor. “Or anypony around that I’ll just vent to. It’ll let me cool off, come back to it when I can actually think.”
She looked up at him now, pointedly. “And you need time to articulate…whatever this is for you.”
“Are you going to come back?”
“The Unknowns have kept themselves secure for centuries before the Fantastic Family existed, Peter. I’ll be fine!”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.”
Another beat. They were just looking at each other now.
Eventually, as the sun began to set, Twilight turned back to the centre of 616 Yancy Street’s living room, the curios and knickknacks and posters making it too facetious for one of the most important conversations of their lives, her horn glowing to open the ley line portal between their homes.
“Well,” she mused, “there’s hope.”
Peter blinked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. This still works.”
She dipped a hoof into it and was gone.
Peter walked backwards to the couch and sat down like the collapse of empires.
He should go after her, say…something! But what? The problem was he couldn’t tell her why he was so…so what, scared? For her? Of her? Of this stupid life they were tangled up in? Maybe he should just web himself to the roof for a few days and then try it again. Or follow Twilight’s lead, find a project to take his mind off things.
Or! Maybe she’d be more forgiving if he brought her a project! But what? Uh, and she’d probably be a magic snob about it, and that’d just get them criticising each other again because this was all about everything now. But what if it was something really cool? Like what? Cold fusion, maybe? That’d get her attention.
M.E.U.P. sirens howled from a few blocks away. Spider-Pony cursed as he launched himself out the window after them, still pulling on his boots.
To be Continued