Lion and Starlight stared at the costumed pony before them. Lion could have sworn he had seen this pony before. And then the realization hit him.
"Dead Poop?" he asked.
"Lion Dude?" Dead Poop asked in response. Once sure it was him, the mercenary ran towards Lion and gave him a great big hug, much to Lion's discomfort.
"Oh my sweet Celestia!," Dead Poop said excitedly, "I haven't seen you since-"
"Get off!" Lion struggled to get out from his grip.
"Oh, sorry man. I forgot you're not a hugger."
Dead Poop jumped off of Lion Dude. "So how you doing, man?"
"I'm good, thanks," Lion replied.
"Still got that crush on Fleur-Dis-Lee?"
"I wouldn't say a crush but yeah, I still fancy her."
"Awesome! Flower fuckers for life!"
"Oi, watch the language! We're trying to go for a 12, not a 15!" Lion shouted.
"Huh?"
"Or as the yanks call them, a PG-13 and an R."
Starlight just stared at the two red ponies in befuddlement. For all she knew, they might as well have been speaking different languages. Dead Poop turned towards Starlight, startling her in the process.
"Oh, I've been hired by this guy Kronos to kill her and her friends. But especially her teacher and her friends."
"What a funny coincidence, I rescued discount Twilight on Princess Twilight's orders."
Starlight frowned at Lion.
"Are you really taking orders from Twilight?" Dead Poop asked.
“Which one? Discount Twilight or Princess Twilight?” Lion asked in return.
“The princess, duh!”
"What can I say? I heard she's a socially awkward nerd like me! Plus, she's pretty!"
"And you're delusional!" Dead Poop said.
"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Only one way to find out and that's by getting close to her, then wandering around her castle when she's not around, then look through any diaries, notes and checklists she has, and observe her interactions with her friends in order to 100% assess if she's good waifu material."
Lion squeaked and grinned like an idiot. Both Dead Poop and Starlight stared at him in a mixture of confusion and bemusement.
"You have daddy issues, don't you?" Dead Poop asked.
"Yes, but that's not the point."
"Well, I'd love to stay and chat but I'm afraid my boss just showed up."
Lion and Starlight turned around to notice that Kronos was standing right behind them.
"Oh, I'm sorry, was I interrupting you killing them by talking them to death?" Kronos deadpanned.
"Hey, I was gonna kill them!" Dead Poop argued defensively. "It's just that I happen to know this guy!"
Dead Poop pointed at Lion Dude, to which Kronos raised an eyebrow.
"Who are you supposed to be?" Kronos asked.
"Hello there," Lion replied. "My name is Lion Dude. I am a felon who was convicted on charges of piracy, possession of Class-B drugs, and controlling a pony Dead Poop and I fancy in equal measure. You can trust me."
"Okay, I believe you."
"Good. So any chance we could borrow one of your ships?"
Lion Dude and Starlight were tied to a rocket that was being prepared to be fired into a dustbowl of a planet.
"Perhaps, I should have been more specific," Lion said.
"You think?!" Starlight said in an annoyed tone.
Kronos trotted towards the control panel getting prepared that will be used to launch the rocket.
"Just a heads-up," Kronos said, "If you survive and you see an undead cybernetically-enhanced alicorn-batpony hybrid, tell him I said hello. Or better yet, kill him."
Kronos pressed the big red button to start the rocket's engines. The rocket fired off into the vacuum of space. After a short while, the rocket entered the planet’s atmosphere, and began to burn up on reentry. Lion and Starlight thought that it was starting to get a bit stuffy on the walls of the space vehicle. Soon, the surface of the planet kissed the shuttle, and it landed with a spectacular explosion. The rocket’s debris flew for miles across the surface of the planet. Lion and Starlight trotted out of the explosion, untied and miraculously unscathed.
"Thank goodness for plot armour," Lion said.
"What?" Starlight shouted as a ringing sound in her ears blocked out what Lion said.
"I said 'Thank goodness for plot armour'!"
"What?"
"Never mind!"
"What?"
Lion trotted onward and waited for Starlight's hearing to return. He pondered to himself if he was secretly a Mary Sue (or Marty Stu, as the case may be) and he didn't even realize it until now since he got to meet a pony he idolized and he survived an explosion with his hearing intact while his current companion is, hopefully, temporarily deaf. And that's not even factoring in that, in spite of serving time in an interdimensional prison, he is relatively angstless. Everypony else is struggling to save the universe from total destruction while he just tagged along because the plot demanded it, the opportunity arose, and he was bored out of his gourd. But then he remembered that if he were a Mary Sue, he wouldn't be struggling with a dark side of his own. Also, another potential reason for tagging along was because he owes Whooves and Muffin for helping him take down Décortiquer. Well, if one of Muffin's friends teleporting a giant bread monster to eat Décortiquer counts as helping him.
Starlight, still unable to hear anything but a high-pitched ringing, stood where she was and observed her surroundings. She felt a strange sense of deja vu, like she had been to this place before. The sky was a dreary dark beige, and the only things she could see from the distance were mounds and dried up tree branches. She grasped her head in agony as she remembered Kronos, and to a lesser extent, Twilight, showing her this exact same place. A future with no elements to protect it. Noticing Lion had trotted off without her, Starlight hastily caught up to him.
"Wait for me!" she shouted.
"Oops, I thought you were following me," Lion said. "Didn't know the explosion affected your sight as well as your hearing."
Starlight glared at Lion, to which Lion gave a sheepish grin.
"And your hearing is back. Yay. Let's pretend I didn't insult you so we could work better as a team."
Starlight trotted on.
"You are one weird pony, you know that, right?" she asked Lion.
"True but everypony's weird to an extent."
Lion and Starlight continued trotting forward. None of them had any idea where they were going, or if anypony else was even here. As they continued, Starlight noticed a dark pony in the distance. The pony wore some sort of tribal mask and had an unnatural pair of yellow eyes.
"Uh...Lion?"
"Yeah?"
Starlight pointed towards the dark pony, to who Lion then looked towards.
"You know, I'm almost tempted to find out if this guy is evil or not," Lion said, "Mainly because a dark pony wearing a skull mask with a pair of yellow eyes doesn't really scream 'good guy'."
"I honestly thought there would be nopony here."
"What do you mean?"
"Um..."
"Never mind, we'll exposite later. Instead, let's focus on the..."
When Lion looked at where the pony was, they had mysteriously vanished. He and Starlight turned around and noticed the pony had appeared again, this time right in front of them. The masked pony swiftly punched the two of them in the face and knocked them out with little to no effort.