A floor of dead ponies and fallen debris leaves its visitors speechless. Despite the omnipresent bodies showered by sharp emergency lights, a pulse rocks the air as a bass from an electronic song.
Only slower like a monster’s unwieldy footsteps.
“What?”
“Yes, Spike, that’s one appropriate reaction,” Matter-Horn rasps out, stunned by the inconceivable concept of whatever or whoever caused the carnage.
Flanked by panels of buttons and levers and keys and indicators, a blast door lies ahead, strengthened by magic-enforced steel and an army of locks, bolts, and gears. By its side are blast panels, covering up windows in case something inside either gets too bright to see or threatens to wreak havoc.
A pyramid of corpses captures their attention, steals the speech from them for a good minute. Blood, scars, blank white eyes.
No heartbeat.
Hear the sirens, the alarms, of a test gone wrong.
The Power Ponies, reduced to whispers for each other. Beholding death.
They wade through debris and bodies, the unicorns gently levitating the corpses to one side. Everyone else takes the mental note to stitch them up and find body bags for them.
“Even the worst baddies back home like Mister Sour Grape hid the bodies well,” Zapp observes, voice almost choking. “This one? There’s… there’s no regard for equine life. Not… not at all.”
“Mister Sour Grape?” Spike asks.
“You don’t want to know.”
It shuts him up.
“In other news—” Matter-Horn gestures her horn towards the blast door “—the signal’s very strong, coming from right past this door. From the looks of it, it’s a much more fortified experiment room; most likely this is where they experimented unknowingly on Verumarendi before things went south.”
As the others speculate and formulate plans, anticipation grabs Spike. The wait is almost over but it almost kills him. A part of him wishes for Verumarendi to appear out of thin air: get it over with and fight already.
Creaks pierce his ears. The ponies push buttons and pull levers, solving the puzzle of unlocking the door. Two locks for two keys? They find the fallen keys after searching the cratered floor and the corpses’ clothes.
They twist the keys together.
Something clicks.
Gears and bolts budge, carrying the heavy door.
They close their eyes: a great light comes forth. Adjust to the sudden brightness, and after getting rid of the moving shiny butterflies in their vision, they peer inside.
Machines and computers powered by magic and electricity cluster in the huge chamber. Much of it is shattered: wires spark, buzzing machinery sitting torn in burned pieces. A hum saturates the massacred mechanical assembly.
Mare-velous plants a hoof on her hip. “Nopony here. I expected something more exciting.”
“At least she’s not here for now,” but Zapp sighs and looks back. “Boy, I hope she’s not upstairs or something. We checked every single room! What if she’s moving to the outside world as we speak?”
Snap!
Blast door closes. Lights flicker.
The Power Ponies turn their heads everywhere, scan everywhere. Gasps here and there. No screams but silent dreadful gawking. Magic shields up, rope and hooferangs ready, lightning amulet on, red eyes activated, pink horn aglow, fast dancing hooves on standby.
A mist. It moves like ether, thicker than smoke and visible under malfunctioning ceiling lights. At the center of the room lies a pedestal, and the mist hovers above it like a newborn cloud. Its wisps coalesce into something thicker, something more visible, taking hold of the pedestal.
Then all behold the silhouette in the cloud.
“Who are you?!” Matter-Horn yells, stepping forward: seeing the mare within.
The mist parts to provide a speedy answer: an Earth pony in a lab coat. Her blue coat meshes with the cool lights above. Her eyes bear no pupils: only ghost-white scleras, blank as her blue flank. Behind her soar three stones ebbing and flowing in their mystic glow.
Matter-Horn stomps a hoof to the metal floor, letting it ring across the hollow chamber. “Identify yourself! Don’t make this any harder for the both of us! Just explain what’s going on, Miss Researcher, and we won’t hurt you!”
Nothing said. She stands there. A scowl creeps up her muzzle. Past her short mane, her teeth carry a hiss.
Her harsh voice.
“Oh, you lot! I think you know me too well... Power Ponies!”
The amulets spin around her faster, faster, faster until they become bright orbs, cursed shooting stars spinning too fast—
The blast sends the Power Ponies to the floor and little Spike flying to the other side of the room, tumbling onto a heap of gears. They rub their groggy heads, recovering to see the beast: a floating alicorn, wingspan that of five princesses combined, horn as tall and sharp as a lancet, muscles reminiscent of Earth pony magic and steroids. A necklace of glowing bloodenstones adorn her neck, pulsating with the amulets spinning over her head like a halo. The hum of raw power emanates from her unnatural form.
“Oh, you should have known!” the mare booms; her speech like a demon’s. “You behold one magnificent pony! You behold someone who shall evade your pathetic attempts at bringing her down! I have brought death and destruction upon your land, your city, and you had nothing to show for it! What makes you think you can stop me now, weaklings?”
Spike rubs his head from the pain of impact. Stands up with the Power Ponies, stands to behold the cackling and laughing malefactor hanging in cold dead air.
Rocks and debris levitate in her gray magic. Her mad grin releases laugh after maniacal laugh. “You do not know what you’re dealing with, you second-rate-reality ponies, if I could even call you that! And yet, I have escaped the gaps, the fictional confines of what those inane ponies in white coats talked about. And are they better than me? No! I have ascended them! I’m beyond their wildest dreams, for they could never dream of what I have dreamed! To shoot straight up these layers of reality—“
“And what will it take for you to do just that?” Matter-Horn says with a smudge of a smug smile on her muzzle.
Verumarendi only chuckles, putting a hoof to her lip. “As if you cannot bear the truth of your inability to defeat a transcended creature! I should’ve finished you back then, but those writers held me back! I should’ve written the ending myself where all of you would’ve been stillborn! Dead, dead, dead!”
The amulets vibrate in unbridled wrath. The bloodenstone bracelet quakes in her grip. “These things: they said they are harvested from the fossilized blood of this world’s mightiest warriors. They may be native to this Equestria I’m in, but no matter! They are mine and mine alone! I shall be amplified and magnified until my ascension is infinite, to dimensions unknown! I shall reshape the world in my image. I shall inflict eternal despair upon you, and you shall face sweet torment forever as your prize for going against me! Now wail and grovel before me, for I shall—“
A kick in the face shuts her mouth.
Staggers in the air, but her voice rings in renewed fury. “How dare you! You’re… you weren’t supposed to do that! You were supposed to listen to me, you comic philistines!”
Her eyes land on Fili-Second, the self-satisfied kicker. “News flash, bonehead: We’re a lot smarter than you think! What makes you believe we’re just gonna listen to your whole villain monologue, huh? Guess they enchanted you real bad: stereotypes, clichés, warts and all. Hey mare, I miss the old Verumarendi already. Could you just suck it up, new gal? You’re just brand new hot trash.”
And she’s smashed to the ground face-first. Looks up quick: the cold incomplete eyes of Verumarendi before intense pain crushes Fili-Second’s brain—a psychic attack spreading brain freeze all over her head, and its victim can only scream. “You are supposed to play by the rules! I win, you lose! I am a whole world ahead of you! When I rule all reality, you will regret your pettiness!”
Others rush in and let loose their weapons: ropes, energy shields, an angry leap across the room, and magic spells galore.
Yet the offensive plants a smile on her face. “You underestimate the power I hold! Do you think you are fighting any old pony?!”
With a whip of her mane, a ball of energy shoots to the end of the room and explodes—before reversing itself and imploding into a portal: a wormhole to a different world. The Power Ponies take a millisecond to glance.
They hear whispers, howls of untold horrors.
“I shall bid the unbidden, welcome the unwelcome, bring the wolves to the fold! Behold what the enchanters could never dream of! Oh, they trusted me to bring them glory, but they did not learn to take it to the next level. My children: arise!”
The portal becomes two and the two become four and the four become eight. Spike yelps in terrible recognition: the screech of alien hydras, the shout of astronaut raiders, the cry of worms from sand and dust, the stomps of pony mook swarms and evil alicorn leaders, the droning of robots and their killing machines. This ring of death surrounds the superheroes, covers them on all sides, the sheen of their weapons and the noise of their being: overflows the test chamber with the portent of danger.
“My friends, behold: the power of weaponized reality! There is nothing for you but pain and suffering if you oppose me! Surrender now and I might grant you mercy and let you live… or perhaps letting you die is a mercy. I can send you down a dimension of my own creation where your agony will never end, for you will be immortal and you will never die! Ha-ha-ha! Go, my children! My sweet children, go get them!”
Worlds’ worth of brainwashed villains fall upon the Power Ponies with their incoherent war cry. The six equines and lone dragon trade punches and shots with dodges and chases, surviving by the skin of their teeth. Distract, bang! Tire a couple out, then trip!
Mare-velous works double time with her lasso: tying down machine animals with her special rope and throwing in other lassos into the mix, immobilizing them for an easy stab. Rager smashes many hydras into pounded corpses of dust to be thrown back into their world, soaking up ineffective blades and explosives before tossing them back at her foes. Radiance conjures up shields to ward off projectiles and deflect them at the enemy, copies enemy weapons into her own attack-construct versions and returns fire. Fili-Second runs in circles around a motley of pony mooks, confusing and scaring them as she spins their eyes and make them bonk each other’s heads before she rams the full force of her speeding body against them to barrel ponies through the portal and other worlds then speeds back to the chamber. Zapp summons lightning to electrocute machines and the undead, whips up fog to blind her them with, foments heat and chill waves to disorient them, and hurls homemade hail at unsuspecting targets to knock them out. The Masked Matter-Horn herself spams teleports so she’s never a sitting duck, freezing ponies and firing energy blasts left and right and up and down and even sideways, decommissioning portals with a well-placed magic disruption ray to force Verumarendi into wasting her energy creating more portals for Matter-Horn to fire at moments later.
The explosive anarchy leaves Spike with no time to watch and overthink. Aware of his lack of superpowers, he has only nimble speed, small stature, and fire breath.
So he runs.
A machine pony gallops after him and grabs his tail. It primes its laser weapon right for the dragon’s face, but he spits fire and overheats the machine. In its confusion, Spike escapes its soulless grip and runs to the Power Ponies for a breather. Standing by himself, he lets out another breath of fire, burning mooks and more monsters, lightening the load of his heroes.
A Rager-thrown body flies across the room, and Spike follows it to its crash in a pile of comic books. Dodging enemies too focused on the Power Ponies themselves, he speed-reads the titles: all of them the wolds of these enemies.
A sinister idea comes to fruition. He raises one of the comics above his head and screams, “Hey! Hey, Verumarendi! Yes you, fat face! Bet you didn’t even see me, huh?!”
It catches her notice. She stops her magic laser attack, teleports to Spike’s side. “What did you say?! Hmm. You came out… different. A dragonified Hum Drum.” She shakes her head and lets out another chuckle. “No matter. You are with the Power Ponies and, therefore, in my way. Prepare to die!—what are you doing?!
The comic book is popped open for her to see. Two sharp claws clench on its pages. Wavering yet firm, “Either you stop this madness or I’ll start disarming you world by world.”
To prove his point, he forms a little rip in the pages. A few centimeters long, but it’s still a rip. Dozens of bits go down the drain at a potential auction in Canterlot, but he pushes the idea out of his mind straight away.
“You can’t be serious!” Verumarendi yells in shock, but a cough resets her tone. “But are you willing to destroy so many worlds just for the sake of saving one?”
An audible gulp. Sweat down to his cheek.
The mare’s vicious smile only gets wider. “Yes, Spike. You haven’t thought of that, have you, little dragon?”
The Power Ponies fight in the background, the noise of do-or-die war the messy ambiance of this chamber. Fighting for their lives, and yet, if Verumarendi is right…
“Those worlds have their own heroes. Those heroes fight their own villains. I am merely loaning their antagonists, and I do wish to return those who remain. Too bad the Power Ponies are quite stubborn. Besides, what makes them worth saving over the rest? You’re willing to tear apart worlds just because you have some preference for the Power Ponies that my great intellect cannot understand!”
It’s a surefire way to finally pin Verumarendi down. However, to destroy other worlds in doing so—the moniker of murderer, of slaughterer: names to rock the baby dragon to his core.
And only sees at the last moment Verumarendi creating an energy ball with his name on it.
Spike jumps away but it hits too close. Another short flight across the room, skidding to the hard cold floor as his backpack flies a few hooves farther, spilling its contents to the ground and exposing them to warring spirits.
Hoofsteps later, the forelegs of Verumarendi block his path. “Too bad! You were going to destroy so many societies and civilizations for just one world! How pathetic. Under my rule, I shall provide equal opportunities for everyone—to suffer equally! But you… you’re much more selfish than I thought.”
Her self-assured expression, her floating figure, her amulet-powered magic—
“Are you to accept your fate, little one? You would be great as a hostage… no, you’re not a dragon Hum Drum, are you? You’re the young one, yes? I could use you as ransom in this world: this Equestria is quite kind to its young, after all. A hegemonic takeover is what I have in mind, though I do not mind using the last resort of kings and queens: calling up more multiversal horrors to wage war with Equestria, hm? Face it, Hum Drum—no, Spike—you are—”
A shot of fire ignites her muzzle and she screams.
But the mare levitates another hot shot away, blindly directing it to an alien hydra who howls in pain and stampedes as it burns, trampling its allies. Unaware of the ensuing chaos behind her, “Hah! You are short-sighted. You are a dragon, so of course, you can breathe fire, and you’ll try to breathe fire at me! I had to watch out for you and watch out I did!”
Another energy ball of pain explodes on Spike, sweeping him to the wall. The explosion inhales, turning into an imploding vortex which collapses into another portal. No enemy comes forth: only screams.
Her hoof strikes across his vision.
“You see, I come from a comic that has recently left the clutches of those so-called enchanters. It is out of their purview and is on the loose… but I am still here, which means the comic book is still out there somehow, somewhere. I know my roots—I can always come back to it without the comic—but why go back? Even if you grab a hold of it, you would be defeating the Power Ponies too by tearing it apart… but if you want to defeat me, that’s how you must do it. For the greater good, yes?
“Now, you Power Pony—no, Power Dragon from a world so low I must’ve forgotten when I enlivened these comics… or Spike or whoever you are—take a look.”
Away from the raving lunatic, Spike takes a look into the abyss.
Maretropolis wallows in the abyss and its chaos. Pegasi in the sky fighting against monsters ripping reality to shreds. Other superheroes come in, trying to save the day, but with random abominations everywhere, local villainous groups taking advantage of the anarchy, and ponies vanishing into nothing: helpless civilians are left at the mercy of disarray. An evil Discord would be proud.
“What would you do if I sent you there and closed this portal, forever trapped in a world that is not your own? It is a mercy to let you squander in your home world, whatever it is, but this punishment is more fitting. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Only mayhem in the world of his dreams. They can eke out a living if they’re lucky enough to not die alone, to hunker down in some remote corner of the planet and survive somehow. At the very least, he can go down battling evil to his last breath, to protect ponies he doesn’t know.
But his dead body would be a world away from his friends.
“The look on your face says it all.” Verumarendi’s chuckles become her commas and periods. “But I must speedily lead you to your fate. Say goodbye to your life, Hum—!”
A smack in the face. The flaming alien hydra catches up to her in its pain, and she falls to the floor, slapping her own amulets out of her orbit and onto the ground.
An opportunity: Spike yanks the closest amulet.
“No! That is mine! My source of power!”
Magic grips him, pegging him down to the floor with both his feet, though he clutches the prized gem as hard as possible. One amulet out of three: not bad.
Her head rises ominous above him. “You shall suffer for that, you little brat! Who shall save you now?!”
“We will! Power Ponies forever!”
Verumarendi turns to the war-crying Matter-Horn and her Power Ponies. She becomes a witness to the unicorn disabling the portals one by one, her other friends holding off the madling mare even as she puts up more and more portals.
With every mook down, Fili-Second speeds up to serve more knuckle sandwiches and knock yet more mooks out. Verumarendi blocks her with a magic shield but the fast pony recovers with a bounce and uses the momentum to jump-kick the alicorn’s snout. In her topsy-turvy state, Verumarendi blindly fires energy balls, hoping a lucky shot will do them in, but all she gets are close-quarters fireworks.
One detonates near Spike, almost burning the backpack he picked up. He feels lost weight in his claw: the amulet is lost. It flies from the blast, shooting up in the air.
Verumarendi: distracted by the Power Ponies, so Spike aims himself toward the amulet. So many games of catch with Twilight when her parents tried to give her some physical education: only here, there are no newspapers to throw around, Twilight is instead a power-hungry maniac, and failing to catch the amulet can mean the end of the world.
He bounds for the amulet, arms outstretched and aching at their extended reach. Looking out for the falling jewel: time slows down as his claws come just in time below the amulet and above the portal, unable to stop his trajectory—
Verumarendi is too busy with the Power Ponies to see the first amulet’s flight. Her storm of energy balls and endless portals tires them out if a little. Dizzying circles of the fastest pony alive nauseate her, the ropes restrain her and the hooferangs scar her, energy constructs render her attacks futile, bulked-up pegasus sponges up the attacks that do get through, terrible weather throws her off, and magic personified assaults her unceasingly.
The Power Ponies gasp and pant, losing their groove, and so does Verumarendi.
In a lull, Matter-Horn fires a concentrated magic beam at their antagonist, sticking her to the wall. A brief moment to regroup and check the room. “Is everypony alright?”
Though the others nod and verbalize their agreement, a rancid feeling slides down her stomach. Stabs her like a knife to the back.
“Where’s Spike?”
They look. By their side, a fallen comic. Spike’s comic. The enchanted comic book: their universe, their world.
Then a hum. They raise their heads toward the source of the hum.
They’ve missed a spot: the last portal standing. A portal to Maretropolis in chaos, in ruins. Their Maretropolis.
The portal shuts on a blood-curdling scream. Behind it, Verumarendi floats in the air, looking down on them as a foal would upon ants in her backyard.
“One down!” she cries. “Say goodbye to your little dragon! Spike, is it? Not Hum Drum? Oh, that’s why he looks familiar: I’ve now gotten one of Equestria’s heroes! Ah, to lure the Elements of Harmony themselves to save a creature who no longer exists in this world! And it’s not like I’m going to send you into oblivion too. I shall not give you the satisfaction of coming home!”
She fires another energy ball right at them.
“No time to be distracted!” yells Matter-Horn to the team, and she zaps the ball into smithereens. “We have to take her down first. We’ll get Spike right after!”
Though as the others charge after her, she hesitates. Her teeth grit, and her heart stops for an instant.
Spike, I hope you get out of there in one piece. Please.