From up here and closing Battery Park seemed to glow in the late afternoon light.
Weird, Johnny thought as he swooped through the space between two buildings, how he could fly over the place a million times and barely register it and then it would somehow become the most important place in the world. Always seemed to happen with the right pony.
There’d been a lot of right ponies.
Then again Reed was fascinated by Manehattan’s…ugh, what’d he call them? Urban psychotropic properties! Yeah, like, how people and places could affect each other, mixing magic or something like that. Ponyville and similar adorable little postcard villages felt like that because of how dependant on the surrounding nature they were, and nearby forests and such could feel like they just fit those towns, y’know?
Which raised a question he’d need the right kind of smarmy circumstances to pose to Dash or Rarity; what caused what, the Everfree or Ponyville?
Mmm, have to make sure Pete wasn’t around to ruin the bit with a historically accurate answer. Guy devoted so much time to the art of the one liner but get him out of costume and in front of a book…
Point being the right person could make even Manehattan’s most mundane places something extra. Many a club owed its silent gratitude to the Torch for setting hoof over its VIP section.
Johnny didn’t usually bother with Battery Park’s terminal even after he and Spidey selected good ol’ Lady Destiny as their meeting place, but this wouldn’t be the first date he’d taken the ferry with. Crystal had loved visiting the statue…no. Don’t go there. Not today. He’d need to focus.
For starters, he actually had to find her.
“Oh stars above, it’s Lavan made flesh!” a nearby pedestrian cried.
“The mutants have finally come for us all!” shrieked another.
“Don’t stare, honey,” an elephant mother told her child. “That’s rude.”
Johnny blinked then realised the issue: not that he was hovering still blazing a few feet above the crowd searching for his quarry but that the terminal would of course be full of tourists, who weren’t used to super ponies. Bless their little hooves!
Still, his flyers licence didn’t need any more attention from Their Majesties’ government and Shining Armor had played a lot of cards to keep him in the air after that low flying subway disaster last month. Better play it uncharacteristically basic and flame off.
He performed a loop-de-loop to stick to his personal brand as he unignited, dropping with causal skateboarder grace to the terminal floor, and scanned the milling crowd, smiling for the benefit of the staring out of towners. People always reacted better to a pony who could catch fire if they smiled.
No sign of Aurora, but he hadn’t seriously been expecting any. Confirming a hunch, or conformation bias?
Johnny gave up and sauntered to the ticket booth. “Hi,” he smiled at the mare inside, “listen, this is embarrassing but I might’ve lost my pass in a freak interdimensional jet ski accident.”
The mare behind the partition blinked, trying not to lose herself in the soothing blue universe his eyes were portals too, and hastily began to fumble for some paperwork. “Of course, Mr. Storm, of course!”
***
Fresh pass tucked into his collar and a satisfactory number of eyes on his fine self, Johnny trotted into the throng to keep looking for his date. Might as well whip out her gifts, give her a--
“Surprise!” Aurora Sheen announced behind him.
She failed to suppress hysterical giggles as Johnny leapt, almost reigniting and juggling a bouquet and a small box.
“Every time!” he grinned, spinning into her embrace.
“Sorry,” Aurora snickered. “Light hooves run in the family.”
“Yeah, gotta have a soft touch to make a soufflé that good. The Thing loves you guys, by the way. I’m so very, very sorry. He’s probably gonna try and move in.”
“Bakery could use a rock garden,” she grinned back as they trotted towards the terminal. Her eyes flicked from his to the gifts nestled in his crooked foreleg. “Those, uh, those for me?”
“Well, you said your folks didn’t want the hassle of a celebrity endorsement, so…”
“Yeah, sorry, there’s just so many horror stories, y’know? One day you’re Straight Shot’s favourite brand of buck ball shoes, the next everypony’s wondering if you were in on all that, ah...”
“Minotaur horn harvesting, I hear ya.” Johnny waved her gifts tantalisingly under her nose. “Soooo? Which one ya want first?”
“I don’t know!” she snickered. “You didn’t have to get me anything!”
“No, I know. I wanted to.” Johnny’s teasing expression melted into something more sincere, with just a hint of melancholy. “It’s just been a really good couple weeks, y’know?”
They looked into each other’s eyes for a pause with enough inertia to…
Be completely shattered by a blast from an arriving ferry horn.
Johnny blinked as Aurora spun, sinking into an almost lioness like crouch, about to spring either to run or…something more forceful. She looked up at him, surprised at herself and awkwardly stood up, blushing. “Sorry! Uh. Still the new filly in the big city, I guess.”
“It’s fine,” Johnny smiled. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
***
A few minutes later and it was as if they were drifting through an entirely different universe.
Johnny, who’d been doing such things since before he’d been old enough to shave, was warming to this mundane kind of magic. Ordinary places gaining a new potency from just standing there with the right person.
Then again, he had a lot of memories of waiting for carriages and trains back when Mom…with Mom, as a foal. Back when his love of machinery had been kicking in. And as much of a sky rider as he was, it was impossible to resist that thrum of a fine piece of machinery like the ferry cutting through the water, all that motion and resistance lapping at the hull and up into your hooves.
(Sky rider…was that still trending? He’d have to ask Soarin’, then double check with whoever the ol’ pie eater was mentoring this week.)
“—and after that we just kinda kept going back,” he was explaining to Aurora as they shared a bench, relaxing against each other in a salt smelling breeze. “Don’t tell anypony but it was really just so I could see if the Web-Head could get all the way out there a second time. And he just, like, kept doing it?”
“Oh, he sneaks up on you too, huh?” Aurora chuckled.
“He wishes! Besides, I don’t care how you do it. It’s kinda nice to have something reliable like that.”
“Like Lady Destiny is a reliable romantic conversation piece or like these bouquets are a reliable romantic appetizer?” She’d elected to go with that first and was nibbling on it now.
“Sorry,” Johnny chuckled. “Have I used them before?”
“No,” Aurora said a bit too quickly. She smoothed some rainbow bangs out of her face. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a corny routine but so’s living in Manehattan all this time and not visiting the statue.”
“Lady Destiny,” Johnny corrected gently.
“Oh, you’re one of those.”
“Keep it up, kid, you’ll be a Manehattanite in no time.” He put a foreleg around her as they shared a chuckle. “For real, though. City’s only so big. Sorry if anything feels like a re-tread.”
“Why would it?”
“Well. Y’know. There’ve been other ponies. You know Rarity?”
Aurora blinked in confusion. “Johnny,” she said slowly, “Equestria is full of--”
“The designer,” he hastily amended.
“No?” Aurora shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, confectionary’s--”
“A sweet gig?”
“A lot of things. Mostly time consuming. And then there’s my classes—if your family wasn’t so big, I’d probably barely’ve heard of you either.”
“I like the sound of big.”
“I figured,” she giggled.
Something about how the light changed on the water just then made them both turn. Wherever she was right now, Celestia was lowering the sun.
Almost every eye on the ferry watched as the sky began to strobe from the stagnant, fading blue of evening into a vivid yet soothing inferno, Luna’s approaching night tinging the horizon purple. The Statue of Destiny stood perfectly still as the world changed around her, haloed by the sinking sun.
Johnny turned his head…right into Aurora’s kiss.
A beat.
He began to kiss back just as she realised, he wasn’t and began to back off.
“Sorry!” she murmured. “Just felt like the right time…”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, staring through her.
Another beat.
“Are we breaking up?” Aurora asked uncertainly.
“What? No!” Johnny assured hollowly. He looked at the statue, a slanting shadow now as night spread around it like wildfire. “Just wasn’t expecting it is all.”
“Are you angry with me?” A hint of pleading in her voice.
“Why would I be?” Johnny asked breezily, hoping he sounded convincingly amused.
Aurora looked him up and down, hesitating. “Well,” she ventured eventually, “you know. You’re the big bad superhero and I’m just a little baker pony from the middle of nowhere.”
“Manehattan’s not nowhere,” Johnny smiled, putting a foreleg around her shoulders. “Look, we came all this way. You wanna turn around, no problem, but I’m not going anywhere. Just wasn’t ready for the moment is all. I will be when you see the city by moon-rise. Promise.”
“Well then…” Aurora grinned.
“And we’re not talking the stands, either! Oh hey, you don’t have a problem with heights, right? Just hit me, never taken you flying.”
“No?”
“Oh, sweet! Something to look forward to.” Johnny pointed at the looming monument. “After the view of the Equestria State Building turning it’s lights on, from the best seat in Lady Destiny’s house, obviously.”
Sunset light danced in Aurora’s widening eyes. “You mean…from the crown?” Sunset light danced in Aurora’s widening eyes.
“Where else?” Johnny chuckled, returning her sudden embrace.
Yeah. The crown. Where there’d be almost nopony to get caught in any crossfire.
And where she’d have nowhere to run.
6
Manehattan Island is so large that it naturally generates a vast array of magical background radiations, unique even by the standards of Equestira’s place in the GCS (Grand Continental Spectrum). And that’s just counting its ancient ley lines, not centuries worth of additional ones imposed by ever changing architecture and a diverse, teeming, living populous.
Manehattan’s magic, some have said, is in its people. Equestria has a lot to say about those same people. Manehattanites have a lot to say right back and are infamous for always having something to say. An important saying to apply here is derived from an observation made by noted thaumal dynamicist and empath of the 7th level, Professor Event Horizon.
If magic is a reflection of the people who wield it, she famously said, and personality similarly informs magic, then Manehattan has personality the way planets have gravity.
Magic effects light (in some cases even time. On Earth Equestria, “In a Manehattan minute” isn’t just an expression) which is why there will be Avatars of the sun and the moon long after Celestia and Luna are finally gone, and why there were centuries of them before the sisters’ ancestors were capable of standing on all fours.
Manehattan has so much background magic that, even in perfect sync and going all out on the best day of their lives, the Avatars still won’t be able to make the city that never sleeps go to bed on time.
From a bird’s eye view night doesn’t fall on Manehattan: it grows in patches, like stains spreading across a canvas, different districts shifting from sunset to shadows until the entire city is finally covered.
Too Long, Didn’t Read; Manehattan has a lot of background magic. Magic screws with light, so sunset happens differently in Manehattan.
This preamble is to explain why while Johnny and the person calling herself Aurora Sheen can trot leisurely off a ferry just as night begins, the clouds over Midtown are only starting to pinken as Rainbow Dash tucks from a power-dive into a side kick to an Inner Demon’s masked head.
The way the sky suddenly bursts into orange flecked with pastel purple and blue clouds at the exact moment of impact is just a coincidence.
“KRAKA-DABBA-DOOM!”
The war cry was for two reasons.
A) She’d just done something awesome and everypony should know.
B) It drew the attention of the group lightning up 42nd Street away from all the fleeing civilian and onto her.
“Huh,” Rainbow mused to herself, taking a second of flipping off her previous target’s face to scrutinise the rest, being upside down posing no obstacle to her.
She’d heard of the Inner whatever guys because they were so new, but they were their own thing. Usually. The pony in a snazzy suit and gnarly monster mask hitting the asphalt had about four buddies mixed in with the crowd of...ten, fifteen…nineteen goons, each wearing a different matching costume.
She recognised some A.I.M. beekeeper outfits in there from the old days with Johnny, less sure about the rest. Weird to see them all hanging together. She didn’t have the street connections here she had back in Cloudsdale, but she was pretty sure the Big Apple’s gangs didn’t share the same stables all that often.
“LOOT!” bellowed a ninja.
“PILLAGE!” agreed one in a blue bodysuit and a creepy puppet mask.
On the other hoof, bad guys: bad. Her: badass. Why complicate things?
The neatest opponent, decked out in some sort of white skiing outfit, swung a bag of loot or whatever as she lunged forward. Dash turned pulling up short into a full body spin, wrapping her hind legs around his neck and letting momentum flip them both around. A straight up Frankenstiner, baby!
She sensed two more trying to surround her and sprang off her hooves, snapping out both wings to deliver teeth rattling slaps. She spun as they pinwheeled into the asphalt, facing the remaining goons as she landed.
“Ho-kay!” she declared, pawing the ground. “I got four hooves and there’s like sixteen of you left so whoamama!”
Lasers! Right! They had those.
Dash sprang behind an abandoned cart as the A.I.M. grunts and those puppet face guys let loose with their hoof-bows. Their laser hoof-bows. How fair was that?!
Take a regular ol’ hoof mounted mini-crossbow, which could already be modded to fire more than just classic pointy arrows, like shards of glass or small stones, and jam in a crystal battery. Boom, mini-Unicorn horn. On the bright side, they’d run outta juice after so many shots and it had to be the right kinda crystal to go all Star Trot, which was why only ultra-rich weirdos really had them. Even the E.U.P. only had a couple hundred for every platoon.
And then the Crystal Empire had come back.
Slap a few fully charged bows onto a small squad’s wrists and you had a couple hundred shots, with enough cover fire for the empties to recharge. And those A.I.M. guys had what looked like battery packs on their backs. Awesome.
“LOOT!”
“PILLAGE!”
Dash risked a peek. Three jerks were keeping up the barrage, but their buddies were breaking off, heading for a couple storefronts they hadn’t torn up yet.
“LOOT!”
“PILLAGE!”
All those different outfits, flashing magic...even Pegasus eyesight had a hard time telling what was what. She’d swear their eyes were flashing pink if it wasn’t sunset.
She whipped her head back behind cover before stray magic took it off. Being pinned down, impotent, made her angry. Being ignored by looters made her even angrier!
But instead of making a break for it and getting turned into Equestria’s coolest looking used piñata, her anger burned colder and colder, crystallising her perception. Honing it, until the world around her began to slow to a crawl.
It wasn’t, of course. She was just absorbing information faster. Processing faster.
***
Part of it was Wonderbolt training.
Rainbow had always been first among equals of any group she’d been a part of, but to finally compete on her dream level she’d had to learn how to exist as part of a squad. A single component adding up to a unit, one creature with a million limbs, other cool zen stuff like that. It helped that ’Bolts were trained in search and rescue; you had to stick to a plan while adapting for everything about it going wrong at once.
Spitfire hadn’t stuck Dash on any kinda anger management thing (yet) but had not-so-subtly advised her how to use it. How to turn an eruption into a thermal, use it to boost yourself, keep your limbs moving, give them a job to do and energy to see it through.
The rest was something Dash was not going to think about and so naturally couldn’t stop obsessing over.
A couple months before Tirek hit Equestria, the Master of Magnetism’s daughter herself had given Dash her own take. Whether Dash had wanted to hear it or not. And she really hadn’t.
Quicksilver believed Rainbow Dash, one of the very few creatures in Equestria that could keep pace with her, was…well, a speedster. No duh, right? But naturally it had to be more complicated than that. Dash couldn’t just be awesome. Her body could crack the sound barrier, so why wouldn’t her brain work just as fast?
Which meant her place might not be with her friends, who lived in good ol’ fashioned 24-hour time, but here, in bullet time. Maybe, Silver was arguing, she was built to save civilisation with these lightning-fast reflexes, making the quickest of decisions, and this was why she was so bad at actually living in it.
Maybe the reason Dash could think so clearly under fire was the reason she could barely stand waiting in line at the grocery store. Maybe her real life was here, dodging bullets, always in motion, constantly accelerating, and that was why living in everyone else’s was so hard: they could think only in first gear. She broke the sound barrier! When she was eight years old!
And if all that was true, she’d either have to resign herself to living a snail’s pace existence to be with everypony she loved, or just…accelerate and forever leave them behind.
Maybe no matter how many times she tapped into the Magic of Friendship her speed, one of the parts of herself she loved the most, would mean she’d always be alone, even among her dearest friends.
She and AJ had dealt with it (sorta) during their trip to Genoshia. As far as Dash knew the farmgirl hadn’t told any of the others about it, maybe not even in their reports back to Princess Celestia, but Silver’s stupid spiel would always be a part of her now. And really? The worst part was that the other speedster might have been wrong.
Maybe Dash’s brain wasn’t just designed to operate at high speed and struggled at a normal heartbeat. Maybe she could do all these amazing things and was still just an angry, dumb, depressed flight school drop out who’d never get her act together.
***
All of this churned inside Rainbow Dash in the exact same instant she was thinking, Fire extinguisher…
It was the Wonderbolt part of her, turning the disaster into something she could use. Also, the handy training she’d needed to bump up a grade, which had taught her city carts like this one carried fire extinguishers. Hay, this was the Horseshoe Torch’s home turf! Everypony should have at least one.
So as various forces of evil were shooting at her, in between their “LOOT!”ing and “PILLAGE!”ing, and feeling simultaneously calm and furious, Rainbow Dash crept along the edge of her cover, probing for…bingo! Side panel!
She hefted out an extinguisher and grinned ferally to herself at the discovery of a set of spare reins. Some stray shots knocked crates off the top of the cart’s load, raining around her as she wedged her new toy into position, trying to prime the nozzle and tie some reins around it without setting it off yet.
“You guys still there?” she called when her mouth was free.
“LOOT!”
“PILLAGE!”
“Just checking.”
The reins now wound around the axel, forming a cradle. Dash carefully slipped the extinguisher in. If she’d angled it right, yanking on a loop around its trigger should set the extinguisher off hard enough to spin the wheels and turn the cart the way she needed it to, as the extinguisher swung from its own recoil.
Good thing this was a proper cart, not one of those clunky trucks, or this wouldn’t be anywhere near crazy enough to work. Soarin’ had explained this kinda thing when he'd taken her along on a test drive of one of those sweet new E.U.P. jeeps, a sorta not date. (He’d done stuff like that ever since she graduated, half thanking her for that Rainbow Falls thing. He was awesome and sweet, and she’d need to figure out where that was going soon, guy deserved a definite answer.)
More boxes tumbled towards her, making her yelp and trip backwards trying to avoid them.
“LOOT!” bellowed a ninja, perched above her. They raised their weapon, a wicked looking scythe thingy Dash was too freaked to remember the name of right now.
Her possibly mutant action brain kicked into an even higher gear. “What was the other thing?!”
The blade froze almost exactly as it began its downward swing. The ninja’s glowing pink eyes blinked in the darkness of their mask.
“PILLAGE?”
“Thanks!” Dash said, yanking her right foreleg as hard as she could. She sprang to her hooves and lunged for the cart.
The reins had tangled around her foreleg when she’d fallen. She’d planned to come flying in after the cart, but now her only hope of not being dragged behind it and smeared across 42nd Street was to hang onto it and hope she’d roll out of the wreckage okay. Couldn’t be that much worse than a Ponyville crater, right?
Mercifully, the rein was yanked free from around her leg as the extinguisher kicked in, though the burn still made her clamp her eyes so tight shut she saw red flashes.
Still in a stress extended slow-world, she managed to turn and make out the ninja face planting into the asphalt, even through the shaking cart jostling her vision.
Almost in a dream, she realised her body had automatically adopted a kind of flight position, and let go of the cart, flapping her wings to remain airborne, dazed. Sounds of shattering wood and breaking glasses snapped her out of it.
Her plan had worked, kinda! The three shooters were sprawled like fallen nine-pins, and bonus; the cart had careened into a storefront, striking the stoop so hard it had overturned and pinned the looters inside. Different outfits were still throwing her, but looked like five of them, so plus all she’d KO’d just now that left six, right?
“LOOT!” On her left.
“PILLAGE!” Her right. Two, coming from different buildings, even she’d only be fast enough to nail one and if the other was armed…
The cart had winged a fire hydrant on its way past and it was ready to blow. Still piloted by instinct, Dash blurred into the space above it just as it burst, spinning. Her wings sent two jets of water slamming into her opponents, driving them back into the spaces they’d been looting and pillaging. Stolen goods spun through the air.
Dash hit the ground, blurring her wings as fast as possible, hoping to shake off the cold, clinging weight of the water before the others realised she was here.
“LOOT!”
She spun to see an Inner Demon jumping out of…a garbage truck?
This incongruity, plus the fact she’d missed that there were actually twenty hostiles, rattled her. Even if it was designed to operate in this kind of scenario, her brain could still be caught off guard and only generate responses so fast.
The Demon tore one of their cufflinks off, raising it above their head. Black and white energy danced in their grip. Charging, Dash realised.
A familiar sound behind her, hooves upside somepony’s head.
Another ninja and another puppet face soared over Dash’s head and crash landed on top of the Demon, sending the cufflink flying from their grasp. Dash spun, blinking as she registered a crimson coated, dark maned Eastern Pegasus wearing a white vest with some cool red markings, an honest-to-sun samurai sword clutched in her wings.
“Crimson Wings?!”
“Rainbow Dash?” The adventuring archaeologist blinked at the Element, nonplussed then pointed, panicking. “Agh! Grenade!”
“What? OH!”
The negatively charged cufflink had rolled towards them. It was humming.
Still in her sprawled position, Dash managed to perform a weird sort of break-dancing soccer kick, sending it flying towards a streetlight. It rebounded, hurtling past a white suited goon and another in a tracksuit, into the broken store front they’d been leaving.
A negative-black explosion sent them flying almost the length of the street. How many did that make? Dash desperately tried to keep count through the ringing in her ears. The driver made twenty, right, so two more down, two more left? What was Crimson Wings doing here? Wait, if she was here...
“Where’s whatseherface?” she demanded, pouncing to the martial artist’s side.
“You mean Misty?”
“Night, yeah!”
They both flinched as a tracksuit came rolling to a stop by their hooves.
“Right here,” the dark blue Unicorn with purple dreadlocks said, striding towards them.
Her right foreleg, crystal to around her fibula, clicked like spurs in the shellshock silence as she walked. Sunset light glinted off an M.E.U.P. badge around her neck and her sharp eyes danced like knife edges as she looked Dash up and down.
Detective Night had received the dubious honour of acting as the Elements of Harmony’s official liaison with Manehattan’s local government. In ways Rainbow couldn’t articulate, Twilight becoming a princess had not made this relationship any better. The Big Apple was happy to have them, provided they didn’t actually…do anything? And since they were usually there because all of Equestria would explode otherwise, city hall had decided some schmuck should always tag along. They were even supposed to let said schmuck know they were coming, even if it was pleasure, not business!
…which might explain Night’s general deal, since Dash was standing in the middle of a debris strew version of one of the city’s busiest streets, had crashed a cart, broken a hydrant and kinda blown up a building. Without letting the liaison know she was even in town.
“It was like that when I got here?” Dash tried, pointing behind herself with a wingtip and jerking her head towards still billowing black smoke.
Honestly, Night should be used to stuff like this. She and Crimson Wings ran around doing crazy kung fu stuff so much the streets called them—get this—the Daughters of the Dragon. Probably the whole reason the M.E.U.P. had given her the liaison job.
And I’ve seen you in action. Don’t pretend you only use that crystal foreleg for a fancy back scratcher, sister.
Not that she’d ever say that out loud. Not to Night’s face, anyway.
“Pleasure as always, Rainbow Dash,” Misty said, voice that careful, neutral tone she always used when the Elements turned up in her office. “What brings you to our fair city?”
“Hey, I’m a Wonderbolt now!”
“I know.”
“I got E.U.P...stuff,” Dash continued lamely, faltering as she just kept walking into the wall of Night’s cool stare. “So this’s like…a department…thing, if y’think about it.”
“You’re saying this is legal.” It wasn’t a question. It was a pit with spikes at the bottom waiting to see how you’d walk into it.
“Technically all those other times were too!”
“So I should ask Spitfire for a statement, is what you’re saying?”
“Filly, who hurt you?”
Crimson Wings had been looking around, checking out the unconscious attackers. “Hey, is this everypony?”
“PILLAGE!”
A last dork in a snake suit came lunging out of an alley, swinging a piece of pipe. Misty simply held out her crystal forehoof pad first. Dash winced, feeling the CHU-DUNK of meathead against crystal deep in her bones.
“I’m going to need a statement from somepony,” the detective said as if nothing had just happened.
“Can it wait?” Dash wheedled. “I got plans tonight.”
“Celestia save us all,” Night sighed, putting her head in her crystal hoof.
“Wait, tonight?” Crimson asked. “Are you here for poker night?”
“Yeah!” Dash grinned. “You coming?”
“Totally! It’s somewhere on the East Side this year, you need directions?”
“Wings,” Night growled.
“Oh c’mon, why not interrogate somepony where there’s punch and dip for a change?”
“Filly’s got a point,” Dash said cheerfully from where she was bending over, tugging at an A.I.M. beekeeper helmet.
“Are you seriously removing evidence from a crime scene right in front of me?” Night demanded.
“What?” Dash waved at the fallen with a wing, helmet in her hooves. “Not like you won’t still have two of each. At least!”
Night shut her eyes, hating how much sense that made. “Just tell me they’re not for your trophy case or something.”
“No,” Dash said a bit too quickly. “Look, we’ll probably wind up working this together, right? These losers are all from different gangs, yeah? And they just decided to loot and pillage together? If the princess doesn’t stick us on this it’ll be something else, so…”
“Just promise you’ll bring us any leads,” Crimson said, handing her an Inner Demon’s mask.
“Stop helping her!” Night snapped incredulously.
They all turned at the sound of fire engine sirens, a few blocks away and closing. Night glanced at Crimson, who rolled her own eyes, then at Dash, who gave her one of her top ten most innocent little filly grins. To sap willpower, not engender trust, of course.
“Just come by the office tomorrow,” Night sighed finally. “You wanna talk at the game, that’ll be off the record. Needs to be during office hours if it’s going to count.”
“I’ll even wear my uniform if ya like!” Dash smirked, winking.
“And bring those masks back,” Night said firmly.
“Still need directions?” Crimson asked, passing Dash the last few masks.
“Nah, thanks,” Dash replied, stashing her new trophies in her wing pocket, apart from the helmet which she still had to carry.
She reached down and used her teeth to tare off the insignia on one of the tracksuits’ shoulders. Night squeezed her eyes shut, massaging her temples with both hooves.
“Sure?” Crimson asked.
“Yeah, smallest of all possible worlds. It’s at Johnnycake Storm’s place. We got roped into setting up.”
“Oh Great Pony in the Sky,” both Daughters said in unison, Crimson grinning, Misty blanching.
“Yeah, I’m only out here ’cause--”
Dash trailed off, turning with the partners to look up at a sudden commotion. A nearby roof shuddered from a loud impact. A brown and mustard blur shot over their heads, sailing down the block, followed by a red and blue one.
“’Cause that,” Dash sighed. She took to the air, becoming a rainbow contrail against a growing patch of purple night-time horizon. “Yancy Street! Don’t be late! See ya!”
“Don’t even think of following her,” Misty deadpanned as they watched the contrail arc, already fading, over a distant tenement.
“Like I could keep up,” Crimson retorted. She side-eyed her partner and best friend before breaking out in a smirk. “Ten bits says they make somepony cry. Twenty one of them burns the place down.”
“Sucker’s bet,” Night snorted. She glared at the different factions littering the remains of 42nd Street.
This could be the start of something. There’d been enough underworld rumbles it might have already started and the city was just noticing. And this was what it looked like if just one Element of Harmony got involved.
An underserving young couple were taking a romantic handsome cab ride through the city when some kind of quilted meteor bounced off the road in front of them, so hard the shockwaves sent their driver flying into their hooves like a Great Dane to a hippy.
“C’mon Herbert,” Spider-Pony called, swinging behind, “it’s getting late, and that suit looks so cosy! Don’tcha just wanna give up and curl up?”
“B-B-Back off, b-b-bug!”
The reply was defiant but jittery for two reasons. Firstly, Sherbet ‘Herbert’ Shakes, AKA The Shaker, wore a suit of his own invention that converted his bio-magical field into a vibrating forcefield, which sometimes distorted his voice. Secondly, Herbert had developed a bit of a complex after being captured on what should have been the greatest safe cracking of his career, which manifested itself in various twitches and ticks, particularly when he was agitated. Which he almost always was.
“Seriously man, just pull over.”
“Eat my d-d-dust!”
Spidey winced as the vibrating blur in front of him careened off two walls, leaving cracks, and narrowly avoided smashing into a water tower over a rooftop party. Getting drenched could be dangerous enough but if Herbert had knocked the tower over…
The Shaker was a pain in the tail like that. Poor old Herbert was technically C-list as Manehattan supers went; he really only wanted to pull off a big score, regaining his reputation and retiring to the Candy Cane Islands in one fell swoop. Apart from the odd hostage taking he didn’t particularly go out of his way to endanger civilians.
Trouble was his vibrations were dangerous and increased with Herbert’s anxiety, so a simple theft turned into a travelling earthquake. In one of the most populated cities in Equestria.
“Alright,” Spidey called, arcing around the Bank of Equestria building, “at least tell me what the score is.”
“Never!”
“Y’know I’ll just find out when I catch you!”
“Not this ti-i-i-ime!”
The Shaker blurred as an office block loomed before them. Peter clenched his teeth with anxiety as the thief passed right through a window like a soap bubble merging with the surface of a river. Vibrating fast enough to phase through solid matter was a trick Shaker had developed a while back, and one of his more unintentionally dangerous. When Herbert did it right, as he mercifully seemed to have now, he ghosted clean through surfaces speedster style.
There was always the distinct possibility he’d get it wrong, gruesomely trapped, or succeed but leave behind vibration powerful enough to cause an explosion.
Office workers stared out at Spider-Pony as he raced along their windows, either boggling at him or the flickering ghost of a supervillain shooting between walls.
He’d half expected Shaker to come up short before phasing out through the window and into a fifteen-story drop, but the thief surprised him by adopting an almost Pegasusian position. Twin shockwaves burst out of his hind gauntlets, shooting him into a continuous glide towards the next roof. Spidey twisted around between web-lines, grimly registering cracks still racing across the windows behind them. No falling glass and they seemed steady, but they could also have burst backwards into the crowded office.
“Awful lotta effort not to gloat,” he called, concentrating on his fresh swing.
“G-g-got nothi-i-i-in’ to say to yo-o-ou!”
“Supervillains these days! Whatever happened to dastardly schemes and intricate riddles? Audience participation! Now that took skill!”
“I’m a pr-r-ro-o-ofessiona-a-al!”
“Feels like a waste of a good evening is all I’m sayin’…”
They were passing over 42nd street now. Black smoke wafted up from one building. Peter wondered if it was on fire or if Herbert had broken more than the HVAC stuff when he bounced off its roof, but there were more than enough reasons to bring him down.
‘Duh, so how comes ya don’t just web ’im up, Spidey?’ Because there’s nothing in a perpetually vibrating forcefield for webbing to adhere to. Can’t get near him ’til he discharges it either. He’s impossible to grab and if it’s going fast enough it’d be less messy sticking my hoof in a woodchipper.
Shaker had changed course, zigzagging across 42nd’s buildings in an attempt to lose him. Grand Central, Times Square, Bridelway, some of the city’s busiest places, and that was assuming they didn’t crash though a civilian airspace on the way. Time to get that field down.
“You could at least take a shot at me!” he called, vaulting over a billboard to avoid losing momentum. “It’s getting boring back here! Y’know, ‘cause ya boring?”
“D-d-d-don’t te-e-e-empt me-e!”
“Ooh, see, now I gotta!”
Spidey felt the bravado gutter inside him as the chase took them around another building. He could see Grand Central in the distance. They’d stuck to the rooftops for the most part, but the streets below would be packed with traffic and pedestrians. All it would take would be one gap between buildings too big for Shaker to clear...
“Herbert!” he called.
Contrary to popular belief he tended to use the Shaker’s first name in an attempt to calm him down, not to mock him. Usually.
“Herbert!” he repeated. “Herbert! Herbert! Herrrrrbeeeert!”
The Shaker spun mid-leap, levelling his forehooves, which blurred as he concentrated his vibrations into his gauntlets. “Sh-sh-sh-u-u-ut UP-P-P!”
A blast of concentrated shockwaves fired out of his hooves. Spidey twisted to the left, avoiding it and praying it didn’t hit any buildings behind him. The Shaker was more in focus and moving slower, the blast having temporarily drained his field. A few more like that and he’d slow enough to be webbed up.
“That was j-j-just a warni-i-in’ sho-o-ot!” the thief called. Still en-route to the terminal…
A sudden gust just over his shoulder. For a second, Spidey wondered if the shockwaves had doubled back or something.
“This is what’s taking so long?” an unimpressed sounding blur asked on his right.
“Rainbow Dash?!” Spider-Pony almost missed grabbing his freshly spun web-line.
“Well it ain’t Starswirl the Bearded.” She winked at him before shooting ahead to pull alongside the startled Shaker. “No, seriously, what am I looking at?
The Shaker let out a warbling yelp of surprise and veered into a hard left. He found the Pegasus waiting for him just above the roof he was about to land on and twisted so he could bounce off a chimney in the opposite direction. Where she was waiting in the same pose, peering at him curiously over the helmet in her hooves.
“You Manehattanites, always in a rush,” she grinned. “I like it!”
The Shaker pinballed around a few more rooftops like an uncertain volleyball, stopping dead each time as Rainbow Dash shot in front of him over and over again. Spidey perched on a nearby cornice, shaking his head and wondering if it would’ve been better or worse if it had been Pinkie Pie.
“Wh-h-ho-o-o…?!” Shaker demanded.
“Your friendly neighbourhood Rainbow Dash! Element of Loyalty and (reserve) Wonderbolt, at your service!” She flexed, simultaneously adopting an Alas,-Poor-Yorick pose with her A.I.M. helmet. “Which means when I say pull over, you pull over.”
“W-wonder-r-r…?!”
Shaker reared up, firing another blast. Dash flung herself back into the air, almost outracing her own startled yelp. The thief threw his head down and blasted off through the empty space she left, mercifully headed off 42nd Street.
“Cranky,” Dash scowled as Spidey swung past in pursuit.
“Jittery,” the Web-Head corrected. “What’re you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Oh. If Twilight’s worried--”
“Twilight wants you to do your share, man,” Dash cut him off, pulling alongside. “It’s almost party time and you left us doing all the hard stuff!”
“I said I was going on patrol after work!”
“Convenient!”
“Can we not…?” Spidey gestured ahead of them.
An art deco tower block was getting closer. As the Shaker rocketed over it, just missing the tip of its pointed spire, his pursuers casually twisted to pass through circular gaps in the gilding. Shaker released two more blasts for each of them, both avoided. With a frustrated, petulant whine he pinballed off a wall, aiming for an upcoming construction site.
“Aww no,” Spidey moaned. “He’s gonna try and make a stand. We can’t let him reach that scaffolding!”
“How come?” Dash squinted. “Quitting time. No workers.”
“Because if he doesn’t shake the whole thing apart his vibes can accelerate the structure of those girders to the point they might explode!”
“Biggie,” Dash admitted. “Alright, gimme a sec.”
“Wait!” Spidey cried but he was talking to a rushing, fading rainbow contrail.
***
As the Shaker began a determined, downward plummet towards the edge of the site, a rainbow blur arced into his flight path, planting a yellow beekeeper-esque helmet over his head.
Shakes let out a muffled squeal, flailing so much he turned end over end twice, meaning when he splashed down into a cement mixer he did it hind-hooves first, driving himself into the drum so deep only his helmeted head was visible. His vibrations kickstarted the mixer. Spidey landed on a fence to a symphony of squelching and muffled shrieks as it began to spin so hard its panel started smoking.
Rainbow Dash dropped into a casual hover beside the mixer and delivered an even more causal kick to the side of the drum. The Shaker was disgorged like a beaching whale, splattering to the dirt in a shoulder high cocoon of wet cement.
“No need to thank me,” Dash trilled, admiring her left wing’s tips.
“No problem,” Spidey muttered, flipping to land at the groaning thief’s side. “You get whatever he stole’s probably covered in this stuff, right? Assuming it’s still in one piece, even!”
“Not like it’d be cool for you to remove evidence from a crime scene anyway!” Dash retorted quickly. “In front of a Wonderbolt, no less!”
“Reserve,” Spidey mimicked, purely out of near-sibling spite. He hefted the A.I.M. helmet, revealing the sagging Shaker’s masked head. “You good, Herbert?”
“hAtE yOu BoOoOoTh…”
“Cool.” Spidey turned the helmet around, squinting at it then at Dash. “Do I wanna know why you’re carrying this?”
“Figured maybe you would,” Dash said, spreading her wing to show a laundry line of faction masks and insignias.
Spidey’s lenses widened. He leaned in to better peer at the collection. “How long were you looking for me?”
“Not always about you, man. Relax, you’ve still got plenty of these losers to beat up! Just thought you’d wanna know I got these at the same robbery on 42nd.”
“Wait, these guys? All together?”
“Yeah, figured that’d be weird.”
“Very.” Peter indicated one of the puppet masks and a swatch of tracksuit. “That’s a Tartarus Gate guard mask and that’s the logo for the…well, their real name’s probably something Slavic but we just call them the Tracksuit Draculas. They do not run in the same circles.”
Dash nodded. “I clocked A.I.M. and those Inner Demon guys too.”
“Yeah? What were they all doing?”
“Looting and pillaging mostly.”
“Huh?”
They both looked up at the sound of approaching sirens.
“We’ve got enough questions for tonight,” Dash decided.
“Yeah, sure,” Spidey agreed. “Just gimme a minute.”
He fired a web-line from his tail, expertly looping it around a girder and snagging the still moaning Shaker’s cocoon.
“You sure that’s—?” Dash began, too late.
Spidey hauled, then yelped as dobs of still wet cement rained down from the Shaker-kabob he’d inadvertently suspended over himself. He looked like a gargoyle had just done something unfortunate and gastrointestinal to him. “Aww man, my suit!”
“Haaaaa…” bleated the woozy Shaker.
“Oh shut up, Herbert.”
“Well I’m having a fun night so far,” Dash grinned. “But not enough to get that stuff all over my hooves. We got a party to get to!”
“What do you mean all over your—?” Spidey’s lenses went wide again as she gripped his tail. “What’re you—?!”
“Getting you there in time, Spider-ella!” Dash grinned. “You shall go to the ball!”
“Don’t you even think--” Spidey began and the rest was lost in a rush as he was dragged into the darkening sky behind a rainbow contrail.
9
“Can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Aurora giggled drunkenly.
“Mmm?” Johnny had been looking up at the Statue of Destiny, towering over them, purple spreading out from around its shoulders like a pair of wings.
“You know! Going up…” Aurora trailed off, voice dropping to a reverent whisper as she indicated the Statue’s crown with her head. “Up there!”
“Sure you don’t wanna fly it?” Johnny smirked, asking for the fourth time since they set hoof on the island.
“For the last time, no! So there’s a line, so what! It’s not like the sun won’t still be setting by the time we’re there!”
“It’s the line I’m worried about.” Johnny indicated it with his head, a serpent of baseball caps, scarves, Equestrian flags, excited tourists, moon-eyed other couples and photography students realising this might not be as easy an A as they’d first thought. “You’re shaking a lot. Worried you’re gonna take someone out.”
“I’ll work it off beating you in the race up the stairs, then.”
“You’re not supposed to run on those. There’s a sign and everything.”
She blinked at him. “Did you get hit by some sort of opposite day ray?”
“What?” Johnny snickered. “No. Those aren’t r--” He thought about it. “No, I didn’t get hit by one of those.”
“So we’re totally ignoring the sign, yeah?” Her grin radiated the mischievous malevolence only the truly innocent possess.
“That’s a question?”
***
The laughter over this sustained them through the rest of the wait, though being behind the last party in front of them amplified the school foal tension, the way being mildly denied something always does. Finally, the last Gotland ticket was stamped, and they could approach an elderly Pegasus at the folding desk.
“Ah, Mr. Storm,” she greeted, smiling wryly but warmly.
“Evening, Ms. Keeper,” Johnny smiled back. “Aurora, meet the best caretaker in Manehattan.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” the mare said as Aurora waved uncertainly. “The crown, we’re doing maintenance.”
“What?” Aurora half whined.
“So you’ll need these.” Ms. Keeper’s smile became crafty as she slid them a pair of maintenance passes.
Aurora spun to Johnny in realisation. He shrugged, unable to keep a smirk off his face. “Toldja. Best caretaker.”
“Although you could tidy up a bit, while you’re there,” she called as they trotted past the checkpoint. Well, more Johnny power trotting to keep from being dragged along by Aurora’s excited grip on his foreleg.
“You’re the best,” she grinned as they weaved through the crowds, passing into the archway in the Statue’s base.
“Takes one to know one.”
They stopped, craning to look up at the ribbon of staircase weaving up into the monument. Even through they could see balconies and the shadows of the top, it felt like the stairs should go on forever. A silent, reverent yawn vibrated from their bones.
Urban psycho-whatever-y’call-’em, Johnny thought. Significance. Right place. The right pony.
He managed to turn his head to look at Aurora, feeling like it should have been harder.
“We don’t have to do this,” he said simply, the statue, the atmosphere, everything make his voice sound smaller than it really was. “Not if you don’t want to.”
The pony calling herself Aurora Sheen looked at him, her eyes glinting liquidly in light from safety lanterns ringing the stairway, lending an even more temple like feeling to standing inside the Statue. Then her eyes flicked to something behind them.
Johnny looked, realising he was inadvertently standing in front of the stairs by the entrance and a ‘BE AWARE-MAINTENANCE’ sign with dustpan and wrench logos.
While a few ponies were hanging out on the lowest balcony, snapping pictures and laughing, that seemed to be as far as visitors could get. Another, much larger and imposing maintenance sign was mounted on stilts over the stairs above it, sporting hardhat logos as well as the other sort.
“Let’s do this,” Aurora grinned.
“Alrigthy then,” Johnny said quietly, trying to smile.
“And no flying,” Aurora added as they trotted carefully away from the small throng in the lobby.
“Aww what?!” Johnny legitimately whined.
He got his composure back in time to flash Ms. Keeper’s passes at the stone-faced guards, who nodded them through. They lasted one twist of the stairs before exchanging glances, cracking up, and bursting into clumsy gallops, racing giddily up a piece of Manehattan history.
***
“I win!” Aurora’s voice echoed triumphantly from the top, a few minutes later.
“Tha-whoooogh...tha’s what bein’ gallant gets ya…” Johnny wheezed, limping up the last few steps.
Aurora stuck her head around the railings. “You alright? C’mon, you’re missing it!”
“Alright, alright,” Johnny chuckled, finally making it.
He looked around the space, rejuvenated by a sudden burst of salt smelling air and minty taste from altitude. Manehattan’s mismatched sunset light glowed through the slits in Lady Destiny’s crown, throwing incredible shades and shadows across the inside of her head like a stained-glass storm.
Aurora was almost perched on the central slit, a slightly rainbow accented shadow against the dancing lights of the city’s tower blocks. Gull calls filled the air, diluted by distance just enough to add to the atmosphere, not detract.
“Can I deliver, or can I deliver?” Johnny smarmed, trotting up.
“Oh Johnny,” Aurora breathed. “Johnny, it’s perfect! Don’t you want to see?!”
“View’s fine from where I’m standing,” he assured.
Aurora turned to shoot him a Hardy-Har-Har, But-We’re-Daring-So-It’s-Acceptable look for a weak-willed second she could take of not looking at the city. Johnny couldn’t blame her, even after years of honing his jaded local swagger. It was what the basic and elderly referred to as 'Sure somethin’.'
A wall of landmarks and glass towers, looming over smaller buildings to give you a sense of how truly high up you were, inviting glints in windows and lengthening, almost more inviting shadows between structures. One of the most iconic cities in Equestria, maybe the world, incongruously reduced to a living diorama. But you could have that during the day.
It was sunset where the magic of this moment was coming from.
***
The sky above Manehattan danced, churned, blossomed, all at once as the light of sunset entered city limits and ran into the bipolar threshing machine of its background magic. Enough reds, golds and oranges bruising the air to feel like the sky had caught fire, with enough slivers of dark blue and purple to sooth, shimmering over less resistant districts like underwater light on the walls of an underground cave.
The sky around the island shifted from blue to purple, stars sheeting across it as night finally settled, but the air over the city wasn’t done yet. Its colours stayed even as various blocks began to go dark, bejewelled by lighting windows, making it seem as if Manehattan were haloed or under a dome.
It was like watching rain against a window, as if each drop let you look into a totally different universe.
***
“Oh Johnny,” Aurora whispered again.
Johnny looked at the back of her head, feeling absolute certainty well up inside him along with shadows falling across his face. It was her.
Okay, okay, he’d known that. But this was happening. Finally happening. This moment. It was real.
Day finally died over Manehttan, a few rebellious red patches of sky becoming purple and merging with the deep blue engulfing the city.
“I’ve never seen the city like this,” Aurora breathed, turning to grin at him.
“Yeah you have,” Johnny retorted.
She blinked. “What?”
She flinched as he burst into flames. He hovered off the floor and spun, weaving a wall of flame over the stairway entrance. He spun back to face her and she actually cried out in shock as she raised both his hooves to fire…not at her. Two streaks of flame lanced out through the slits on the right and left of the one she’d been using to watch the inferno.
They simultaneously combined and burst, forming a flame construct. A giant version of the word GO.
“What?” Aurora asked, blinking incredulously. She was so startled her voice changed slightly, though there was a certain ‘Oh come on/Seriously?’ quality to both of them.
Shadows flitted out Lady Destiny’s torch, forming an aerial barricade. Wonderbolts! More shapes rocketed up from down below, a few tourists lead by…
Aurora blinked in disbelief. Ms. Keeper’s face stayed grim, even as she ran a hoof across it and eradicated some elaborate makeup, revealing which wrinkles on her experienced face were real. With the same gravitas she whipped off her old lady wig and let the breeze carrying it into oblivion, revealing a clipped military cut.
“Alright, Lyja,” the Horseshoe Torch said, “how’re we doing this?”
To be Continued