Jack Pot missed the old days of super-villainy. There’d been pageantry back then, pizzaz! No one he had to care about was ever hurt and if he were to be honest, it felt like the papers focused on those others a little too much. They weren’t a part of the narrative. The narrative was of an eccentric underdog trying to make a name for himself, in an unappreciative world.
A part of him had always figured that, in ten years, he would have gotten to the part where people revered his genius. Unfortunately, the mighty Mysterio was instead forced to crawl around an empty theatre building, trying to quietly finish setting up before the showing of Piracy! tomorrow. I should have a gang by now, he lamented. Maybe not even a good gang, just a gang of some kind. After all the work I’ve put into my career, I shouldn’t have to be doing basic set-up! If I could find someone to do the hard stuff for me then I could really step my game up.
His head was throbbing so badly that it started to affect his casting. He sighed and decided to give his horn a rest. He’d been working all night and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Jack Pot worked the cricks in his neck as he took a step back. Maybe I should retire soon, he thought morosely. He’d spent all the money he’d put away from his last heist on equipment for this one, and after he’d finally killed the wall-crawler he’d need to get more. I haven’t done a bank robbery in years.
He removed his fishbowl helmet and made sure nothing was visible to the naked eye. Under the enchanted glass, the theatre was a mess of traps and obstacles. The spells were outlined in purple, and he could trigger any of them from anywhere in the theatre, but to the untrained eye, nothing had been changed.
Jack Pot put his helmet back on and checked his view. His helmet could be linked to a network of crystals and project an image of anywhere in the theatre for him to watch. If he wore a different sort of pony he could make a fortune from it, but Jack Pot wouldn’t give up glory for something so paltry.
The last thing he wanted to check were the mechanical systems. He pressed a button on his gauntlet, and the stage began to shift. The elaborate slid aside for a large pen, filled with golems that mimicked a ferocious shark. Their mouths snapped open and shut, and their teeth were enchanted to be indestructible.
The gate door began to swing open and even though he was alone he couldn’t resist a chuckle. “Soon,” he said, “soon my luck’s gonna change. Soon I’ll be free of the web-slinger once and for all. Soon, the world will tremble before the might of—”
The door was stuck.
He frowned, trotting closer. Something was jamming the door, a thin silvery gunk that looked almost like—
“Oh, come on!”
Something yanked him into the air, and in the space of a second, his legs were all pinned to his sides and he couldn’t reach any of his controls.
“Oh, did I break your stuff?” A mare’s voice cheerfully asked.
He slowly spun, bringing into view a red-and-grey suit with a white spider where the Cutie Mark should. “My bad,” she continued. “I just don’t know what went wrong.”
“Spider-Mare!” He shouted.
“One and only!” She fired two web-lines across the theatre and sat perched, as comfortable on the two-inch cable as he would be on a couch. “I’m honestly surprised to see you again,” she said. “I figured you’d retired by now.”
He barked out a short laugh. “Please. I’m not going to stop until I’ve secured my legacy!”
“You really want a cemetery as your legacy?”
“No, I— I just want a win!” He made his helmet more transparent so Spider-Mare could see his glare. “You wouldn’t get that,” he threw in her face. “You know what? You’re selfish! You think you can just run around getting attention from—”
Crack!
Jack Pot blinked, staring at the hoof that had seemingly materialized where his helmet had been. The glass fell away, shattering further when it hit the ground. After a moment, Spider-Mare pulled her hoof back. “You don’t know a thing about me,” she said quietly, “and you could have just stopped trying to kill people a long time ago.”
Okay, we need to go now, Jack Pot thought rather calmly. He managed to push a button hidden on his chest; his costume had numerous fail-safes built-in specifically for being tied up. The fall to the stage didn’t look like fun but it was 'do or die' time.
First, the spotlights all honed in on his costume and lit up, blinding her. The soundtrack began to play the iconic duh dun, duh dun of the Jaws theme. She stood up and grabbed Jack Pot but electricity coursed through his suit. “Mysty!” She snapped. “I swear I’m trying to be patient but—”
Across the stage, the false cannons turned towards her. Jack Pot watched her backflip away as they began to fire, wincing as the cannonball came uncomfortably close to his body. They wouldn’t distract Spider-Mare for long; they wouldn’t be active for more than a few minutes and if they weren’t destroyed as soon as she could see he’d eat his costume.
His suit began to heat up, slowly dissolving the webbing. It’s not that far, its not that far, he thought as he looked at the stage floor. I just gotta roll when I land. It’s not that far.
The web lines began to sag as they frayed apart.
“What’d I ever do to deserve this?” He moaned.
Snap!
He hit the stage and rolled, coming to a halt over his trap door. His shoulder felt like it was on fire and his knees were just done for the day. He pushed the button to activate a hidden ramp, only remembering that it wasn’t finished after he’d pressed it.
Wham!
He fell through a trap door and lay in a heap underneath the stage, cursing Spider-Mare for interrupting his work and getting him into this mess. He slowly sat up, in too much pain to find a better hiding spot. He took a piece of glass out of his pocket and held it over his shattered fishbowl, casting a spell that made it grow back together. Another button activated the projector hidden upstairs, creating a gigantic illusion of himself in full regalia.
Mysterio unleashed one of his booming laughs as he took control of his death trap. He could see the entire theatre in his helmet and had access to all of his traps. This one would be tricky; the plan hinged on distracting Spider-Mare with civilian casualties which unfortunately required civilians. Now all he could do was send all of it in at once and hope it worked.
Spider-Mare landed on the ship and ripped one of the cast-iron cannons apart with her bare hooves. She flipped to the side to avoid another cannonball and smashed through the wood inside the ship itself. Spider-Mare broke up through the ship's hull and grabbed the cannon from underneath, before darting forward and doing the same to the next cannon.
Mysterio tried chuckling again, as Spider-Mare hadn’t appreciated it the first time. He floated the illusion inside and opened a hatch, releasing half a dozen floating swords. “After all these years, I don’t think you ever really got my point.”
“You wanna kill people because your mother said ‘I love you’ either too much or not enough,” she shot back. “You ain’t as weird as you like to think.”
“Oh, who asked you anyway,” he groused. “I would have thought a performer like you would appreciate the work I put in—
“Into. Killing. People.”
He growled. The swords flashed forwards, but Spider-Mare broke through the wall and back out over the stage. She landed on one-hoof and spun webs with the other three, trying to catch them in a net.
Two of the swords were stuck but the rest were unencumbered. She jumped, leaping three stories with just one hoof and galloping along the wall. The swords followed. “It’s not about the killing!” Mysterio shouted. “It’s about style and—”
“No, it’s about the killing!” A webline yanked a chair to her, which she used to catch another three swords. They tried to shake themselves free but she stabbed them into the wall before they could, wedging them too deep to get out. The remaining sword made a valiant effort to remove her head, but without the distraction, she caught it immediately. “I mean come on!” she continued. “This isn’t worth it!”
Not worth it?
Mysterio lit his horn and activated every remaining spell. Spider-Mare casually hopped two stories ahead of an onslaught of water that began to pour from every direction. Underground pipes pushed the water fast enough to smash the seats into splinters, and storm clouds were released along the ceiling to pour down. The soundtrack intensified.
Each of the storm clouds had an enchanted anchor inside, granting him temporary control over its power. They’d burn out after around twenty minutes, but he wouldn’t need more than five. The clouds drifted over Spider-Mare and let lose the lightning.
She galloped away, yelping as the wall caved in and she fell into the water. A thunderbolt electrified its surface but she’d just barely managed to flip away. The clouds were firing in sequence and slowly corralling her, ensuring that the rising water had energy coursing through it. He pulled one of the clouds away and struck at the shark cage, trying to melt the webbing. “I’m sure you remember these bad boys from my Frakenstag production. SHIELD said it was the most impressive application of the weapons they’d seen.”
Spider-Mare didn’t answer, and he belatedly realized that the repeated thunderclaps were drowning out his voice. He shifted the volume and tried again. “Trip down memory lane, right? I’m sure you remember these—”
“I know how your stupid junk works, Mysty,” Spider-Mare shouted, “and I’m honestly not in the mood. Seriously,” she moved too slowly and was grazed by a bolt, barely catching herself with a web-line before she could hit the drink. “Seriously,” she started again, “just give up! You’ve been doing these tricks for years!”
Mysterio growled. “Oh yeah?”
A flurry of bolts weakened the door enough for the golem sharks to break free.”Listen, you pretentious jerk,” he continued, “I’ve been putting up with you for too long! It’s about time someone put you in your place! Or, ya know, places.” He chuckled. “I don’t think the sharks will leave much intact…”
Mysterio’s unrestrained laughter pushed its way through the noise and terror filling the theatre as his army swam forwards. Spider-Mare adjusted something on her web-shooter, and he frowned. The web-spinner had an uncanny habit of pulling something at the very last second. “Okay, let’s just wrap this up,” he said. “You’ve got so many ways of dying that I can’t wait to see which one you choose.”
The water was a quarter of the way up and still rising, fragments of the stage growing blacker as the lightning scorched them. The sharks ignored the electricity and swam towards Spider-Mare, circling underneath her and waiting.
The first one leaped out of the water at her, teeth bared. She met it in mid-air and ripped its jaw off, before using it as a platform to jump higher towards the storm. Her left foreleg fired webbing into the cloud network, but it was an odd black color instead of her usual silver. It wasn’t a web-line either; they were thick globs that moved much more slowly than they should have.
One of her hindlegs cast out a line and zipped towards the wall again, just missing a lightning bolt. Mysterio steered the clouds towards Spider-Mare and away from her webbing, just in case, but the clouds were drifting towards them anyway.
Two clouds were outright pulled into the webbing and lost their cohesion, exploding with a boom that he didn’t need to hear through his helmet. “What?”
“We’ve been doing this for ten years,” Spider-Mare said, almost tired. “I've been working on a way to disable your machines for nearly that long. it's laced with flakes of magic-absorbent materials, Honestly,” she grumbled as she spat out more webbing, “I’m more annoyed by how much they cost than I am by your need to produce sequels of yourself.”
“No!” He shouted. “No, I’m not going through this again! I’m winning, do you hear me! Win-ing!”
Mysterio, in addition to clearly winning, was running out of clouds. That was okay, he didn’t need the clouds. The water was two-thirds of the way up and Spider-Mare had to reach the stage to hurt him. This was salvageable.
Spider-Mare landed on a large chunk of debris and waited as the sharks circled her. “Here, fishy fish,” she murmured. “Who wants some din-din?”
The first shark broke through the debris under her but Spider-Mare wasn’t even touched. She stuck to the shark as it almost reached the ceiling, driving her hooves through it and ripping it in half. She cast a web-line and swung over the water, waiting for the next one.
She was so focused on the water that only her spider-sense saved her. Two sharks had lept up and were diving towards her from behind. Spidey spun around in the air as they approached, grabbing the close one with her hindlegs and squeezing its head apart with her forelegs.
Splash!
She didn’t have time to leap away before they hit the water. The remaining sharks immediately converged, forcing her to dive deeper. Mysterio grinned, wishing he’d had time to invest in eels or maybe a squid. “This is it,” he said, his deep voice booming underwater. “This is finally it! I gotta say, I wish I could have ended you in some other way. One showpony to another, I always admired your wit.”
Spider-Mare kicked her way towards the stage, sticking to it and facing the sharks. Mysterio heard the quiet thump overhead but ignored it. He was so close now and it even looked perfect, Spider-Mare facing the charging horde with one last heroic display of defiance before—
Mysterio suddenly realized she was standing right over top of him. A number of things rapidly recontextualized themselves. He swallowed. “Aw, nuts.”
Crash!
Spider-Mare ducked out of the way and the first shark smashed through the trapdoor inches away from his head. He barely had time to scream before the water carried him away from the serrated teeth. The shark worked its way down and swam towards him, mouth open and while a machine couldn’t look hungry this thing still pulled it off. “Hey, I’m not on the menu!” He pointed dramatically and a smokey bolt of magic smacked the shark in the face. Its skin was torn off, revealing its metal skull as it kept moving. “Seriously, I am your master or something, you can’t just—”
Thwip.
A red-and-grey blur hesitated only briefly to shatter the shark before grabbing Mysterio and galloping away. A wave of water washed after them, carrying the last of his shark army. “How do we shut them down?” Spider-Mare shouted.
“You can’t!” Mysterio shouted back. “Why would I order golems that can self-destruct?”
“This! This is why everything has a self-destruct!”
They rounded a corner and Mysterio found himself being thrown through a door. He bounced into the street and lay there, trying to get up. He heard the roar of water cut off and looked up.
Spider-Mare kicked a web-grenade at the door, tying the flimsy metal to the tougher stone exterior. She pushed another cartridge on her foreleg web-shooter and began to spray down the door. The brown webbing solidified as it hit the open air, transforming into stone. “How many more doors?” She demanded.
“Wha—”
Mysterio found himself yanked to his hooves. “How many more places can the sharks fit through?” Spider-Mare asked again. “We can’t let them escape!”
“F-from backstage? Just the one.” He shook his head. “But they’re strong enough to destroy stone. If they can’t find us they’ll break—
Wham!
The wall began to give way as the sharks began to ram it. Water was filling the street and running down into the sewer. “It’s fine!” Mysterio insisted. “They have to swim to reach anything—”
“A mindless thrashing fish the size of a pony that can break stone is going to hurt someone anyway!” Spider-Mare glared at him. “How many people were going to be in that theatre when you attacked?”
“It was— not sold out,” Mysterio said as Spider-Mare’s glare deepened. “You don’t have time to be mad at me,” he continued, “Because you can’t catch me and stop my army—”
Spider-Mare planted a hoof under his ribcage and threw him three stories in the air. His stomach remained at street-level as he screamed. An ordinarily grey web-line caught his shoulders and he dangled from a flagpole, waving his hooves and trying not to throw up in his fishbowl again.
“You might be able to melt that,” Spidey called, “but I wouldn’t recommend it!”
Mysterio watched Spider-Mare leap into the air as the shark broke free of its containment, casting two web-lines at the pavement and pulling herself back down. The shark broke in half and she flipped over the next one, lifting it over her head and using it to shield herself from the third one's charge. Both shattered.
He sighed as he stopped paying attention to Spider-Mare’s fight. That was the last of my money. Nobody even saw the fight, and I’m going to prison again. I just don’t get it. Spider-Mare has all the luck.
“Am I a gambler? A fighter, a traitor, a nervous wreck—” Time Turner frowned at the script. “No, sorry. A coward, a traitor, a liar, a nervous wreck… Judging by the evidence, I've certainly got a gob.” He scooted his bench a little as he turned the next page. “And how am I going to react when I see this?”
His ears perked when he heard a creak coming from upstairs. “Honey,” a mare shouted from the attic, “I’m home!”
“Ditzy!” He shouted back. A split-second later Ditzy lept around the corner and landed close enough to pull him into a hug. When they’d gotten married her tendency to leap around and lounge in very inequine poses had taken getting used to; he’d accused her of showing off more than once. Now he barely noticed. “Saved the world today?”
Ditzy groaned as she let go as she hopped the tall counter and trotted into the kitchen. “I wish. No, just Mysterio.”
“Oh, did you run into him today?” He asked. His eyes swept her body, noticing some slowly fading bruises that hadn’t been there before. “I thought he’d retired?”
“So did I? But no, he was going after his old castmates again.” Ditzy rummaged in the cupboard for some bread. “I don’t understand him at all! He could be rich and, ya know, not imprisoned if he stopped trying to kill people but he just won’t and where is the fruit?!”
Turner’s eyes were glued to the table now as Ditzy’s locked onto the back of his neck. “I had an audition in the city, so I finished it off,” he said. “Sorry.”
She sighed. “No, I didn’t mean to snap.” She pulled out some other things and shut the icebox behind her. “Hey, is that for the script you’re reading right now?”
“Yup!” Time Turner said proudly. “Not just any program though; I’ve got a chance to play The Professor in Adventures in Space and Time! The Professor, Ditzy, this is huge! Well,” he corrected himself, “huge for me. I dunno how many people actually listen to it anymore…”
“Plenty!” Ditzy beamed that smile at him, one so cheerful it always lifted his spirits. “You’re gonna do great!”
She picked up her thin sandwich and carried it to the table to sit next to him. He frowned at the skimpy plate. “Are we running that low on food?”
“There’s still some leftovers, but I can grab breakfast at the Bugle tomorrow.” She shrugged. “Its no big deal. You make sure you eat before you gallop up to the city again—”
“I’m not going to be running around all day,” he insisted, “and that’s assuming the city doesn’t arbitrarily explode with you in it. Please make sure you eat before you leave, alright?”
“I promise,” she said as she rolled her eyes at him. “Honestly, you worry more than Aunt—”
The space where that last, unsaid word lingered longer than anything spoken should have. Turner leaned over and put a hoof overtop of Ditzy’s. She blinked and looked away, staring at her plate. “Aunty Minty,” she finished, and took a bite of her sandwich.
Turner watched her eat, waiting for her to say something. She took another bite, chewed it, and swallowed. He waited.
“I keep thinking about her,” Ditzy said. “Almost like I did with Uncle Berry. I know it wasn’t my fault this time. I know she was old and just got sick but it just doesn’t—” She stared at the wall, almost shaking. He brought her close and nuzzled her. “Whenever I do anything it’s just— she’s just there.”
Turned nodded quietly. “I know,” he said quietly. “It’s hard. Our life is always a mess, and we’ll—”
“Get through it,” she interrupted. She pulled and smiled again, but this wasn’t the same smile. “Like we always do.”
He knew she was lying, knew it in his bones. Turner was the only person who could tell when Ditzy lied, but it didn’t help at all. “And I’m not going anywhere,” he added.
She sighed and rested her head into his neck. “I know,” she whispered.
They stayed like that for a minute, but Ditzy pulled away again. She sniffed. “So!” she said as she stood and put her plate in the sink. “How are we for bills? I’m good for web additives from the next month or so…”
“Mails on the counter,” Turner said. “All first notices and we just made the house payment, so we’re doing surprisingly good for— Oh!”
He stood and bolted for the mail, but Ditzy was already flipping through it. She glanced at him quizzically before nosing through it. “What?” She asked. “If you’re worried about the paper running another Spider-Mare story I promise that... I’ve seen…”
The rest of the mail dropped to the floor as Ditzy stared at one envelope in particular. “This,” she said slowly, “is a letter from your buddy that owns those apartments in the city.”
“Yup,” was simultaneously all he could say and nowhere near enough.
“The one who knew a couple interested in buying the house.”
“...Yeah,” he tried, which felt like progress.
Ditzy glared at him, left eye twitching. He considered trying a charming smile but decided that would be a tactical error. “I thought we talked about this?”
New words came to him and rushed to be thrown out. “Thing is we didn’t, not actually. I’m not going to sell this place behind your back but we need to hear him out. Please, just— listen, alright?”
Ditzy tilted her head to one side, staring at him a long moment before she nodded. Her tail lashed behind her. “Okay,” she said, “why are we selling my Aunt’s house?”
“Because we can’t afford to keep living here,” Turner said. “I’m sorry, but even if I get the part I dunno how long I’ll have it! And Briar is an old friend; we’d be paying half of what the other tenants pay.”
“But I grew up here!” Ditzy snapped. “We both grew up in this neighborhood! This house is amazing!”
“It’s a twenty-minute commute and we both work in the city,” he said, “And I know its longer for you when you have to come or go as Spider-Mare ‘cause of all the people around.”
“I’ve been doing this for ten years,” she snapped, “It’s not a big deal!”
“But it could be better! It’d be so much easier, and we’d have money for groceries again and—”
“I can’t just leave Aunt Minty!”
That proclamation froze both of them in place. Ditzy’s mouth slowly worked, trying to find something to say. “Can’t leave… Aunt Minty’s house again,” she tried, “Because, um, living at college was terrible or something and I can’t—”
“Ditzy.”
“I just can’t leave this place behind!” Ditzy tail lashed and she started pacing. “I know it’s not super-rational but I’ve lived here my whole life! I’ve got a whole system set up in the attic for my Spider-Mare stuff—”
“Ditzy.”
“And how do we know this isn’t some kind of plot?” She demanded. “This could be a trap or part of a scheme to… make us more vulnerable or something!”
“...How?” Turner made the mistake of asking.
“I don’t know!” Ditzy glanced down at him, having somehow not noticed her pacing had ended up on the ceiling. “I…” she sighed. “I’m not being fair. I’m sorry…”
“Of course it’s alright, Turner said. “Will you come down?”
“Yeah, I…” She flipped onto the floor and Time Turner pulled her into a hug. “I don’t know how to deal with this,” she whispered. “I should, but I just— it’s different this time.”
“I know,” Turner said again. She tensed under his arms but didn’t say anything. He winced, wishing he knew what he was supposed to say. “I’m sorry,” he tried again. “I’m so, so sorry. And I’m not going anywhere, alright?”
She nodded. “I’ll… I’ll think about it,” she said. “I know it makes sense, I just… need to think about it.”
“Yeah, ‘course,” he said. “He can wait a bit.”
“Good.” she pushed herself away and trotted away. “I’m going to take a bath and turn in early. Good night.”
“...Night,” he said as he watched his wife walk away. He stood there, listening to her skip the flight of stairs and slam the bathroom door shut. He sighed as the water started pouring. She does so much for everyone she meets, he thought. I can’t even pay for this bloody house.
Cozy Glow thought herself a reasonable person. Most madmares did.
The diminutive supervillain was reading about the devastation in Bridleway Theatre. Magical repairs wouldn’t be finished for another month and more pressingly, Spider-Mare had barely broken stride dealing with him.
She sighed as she put down the paper. Her usually sunny expression was dour as she surveyed the dinner table. “And then there was one.”
The hideout of the Sinister Six had always felt too cramped for such a herd, but now it was empty and quiet. She shivered a little, almost wishing for the days when there was a crowd of unruly morons looking to her for guidance. Cozy had gotten so fed up with them so quickly. Now…
Electro is to well-secured to free, I haven’t seen him in years. Sandmare is due for parole and the Hunter went straight years ago, he’s dating that squirrel person. She sneered at the idea. Weak-willed idiots. If they had even a bit of the self-control Vulture and me—
Vulture died.
She’d forgotten for a moment. It had been years ago, and to her own surprise, it wasn’t Spider-Mare’s fault. Vulture had been old, and his injuries had caught up with him.
I'm alone.
It was a thought that occurred to her often, but usually, she just shoved it away. Today it was heavier than normal, as its weight was supplemented by a second thought: Do I have to keep doing this?
She’d always been older than she looked. She was one of the first of Spider-Mare’s so-called Rogues Gallery, and Cozy liked to think she was the first important one. They’d battled to often for her to keep track, and for a mare of her genius that was an achievement. What even happens if I win?
Then I win.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to remember every single loss she’s sustained at the insect's hooves. Every blow, every quip, every insult to her intellect replayed behind her eyelids.
Not an insect. An arachnid. I’m not gonna be corrected by her again.
She stood, doubts banished. The die is already cast, she thought to herself. We were always enemies, but this time will be different.
This time, only one of us will be walking away.