And unto the Beast was given a mouth to utter haughty and blasphemous words for a game of 52 pickup, and he opened with: “Greetings and salutations, true believers!”
“Dr. McColt!” Twilight exclaimed with delight, looking up from some notes she’d been making with Peter on a free table. “How nice to…see you.”
She trailed off because she’d seen who was coming in behind him. The pause was so palpable the rest of the guests looked over. Applejack just quietly shut her eyes, resigned.
“Princess,” Je Ne ‘Jean’ Sais Quoi AKA The Phoenix said, a little stiffly. She covered by looking around the room, beaming. “Everypony.”
‘Everypony’ in this instance included Peter, Spike, the Elements, Timberwolf, a t-shirt wearing Deerdevil, and the loosely associated partnership of Duke Cage, Iron Hoof and the Daughters of the Dragon.
Peter wondered if he was sweating. His forehead was definitely prickling. Dr. Hackney Sheepshank ‘Hank’ McColt and Jean were joined by Rocky Cake/Ice-Pony and Slim Summers/Cyclops, which made sense if you knew they were four of Professor Endeavour’s first Hex-Pony class. He and Johnny had developed a sort of unspoken, angsty teen solidarity with them back in the day, to the point he’d been okay with Rocky learning his real name.
The problem wasn’t that he respected Rocky’s fellow Hex-Ponies any less, it was that this meant out of all of the superheroes now in his apartment, only three knew his name. Codename. Whatever! The point was the longer he stayed (in his own apartment, because ‘fair’ could easily be replaced with another four-letter word beginning with ‘f’) the more his presence and Spider-Pony’s absence would need to be accounted for.
And vice versa, because this wasn’t complicated enough already.
“Jean!” Crimson Wings called, enthusiastically waving one of her namesakes. Despite his steel hard skin, Cage seemed inclined to duck away from it. Misty Night gave the Hex-mare a welcoming but abashed smile.
“Crimson!” Jean practically shrieked, shooting from her partner’s side to waft across the room with the power of her mind and hug the other mare.
“You know each other?” Rainbow Dash and Rarity asked in sync.
“Through me,” Misty supplied, gesturing for another Small Folk from Timber. “We needed one more roomie for this Lower East Side place, so.”
“Aww, that’s,” Rarity began, then saw what Cyclops was wearing and stared, finishing with a “, lovely…” that sounded like something small being stepped on.
In action Cyclops sported a sleek, simple blue and yellow outfit with only a few X logos. His special ruby visor was a constant. The only real change seemed to be whether to go with a full head mask or a mane-showing open one like the Wonderbolts used. He was currently wearing a pair of red glasses, presumably made of the same material as his visor, and a sweater vest. The latter was what Peter had been so enthusiastic about and what was commanding Rarity’s attention. Although calling it a sweater vest felt like…underselling it.
It looked…It was kind of…like…If you turned your head…um.
It was as if somepony had stitched Hearth’s Warming and a Hawhinnyian luau together. Not the clothes you associated with those things. Like, the very concepts.
Without their permission.
“Hello,” Fluttershy said pleasantly. “Nifty sweater!”
“Thank you,” Summers smiled back. He shook the hooves of those nearest, freezing as he turned to find Peter’s broad grin and sparkling eyes. Twilight winced, sympathising with how that must look in Slim’s perpetual red-world.
“Sweater Vest Slim,” Peter squeaked with almost divine glee.
“That’s what they call me,” Cyclops smiled awkwardly, lowering his hoof. “Sometimes. I’m sorry, who—?”
Twilight and Peter looked at each other as Jean Ce Quoi floated back across the room, taking her partner’s foreleg to join him in looking politely yet quizzically at the strangely enthusiastic weirdo. Who they’d never met before, but somehow knew Cyclops’ party persona well enough to be a strangely enthusiastic weirdo.
“One of our peerless hosts, I would humbly presume,” the Beast said, leaning in to examine Peter with a pince-nez he’d retrieved from somewhere. “Though how he’d know your nom-de-scene, fearless leader, your resident genius must confess…I dunno.”
“I told him,” Rocky Cake said breezily, looping a foreleg around Peter’s shoulders. Twilight gave him a grateful look. “I mean, how could I not?”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Jean said, slightly relieved. “Trotter, right? Johnny mentioned you might be around.”
“Not for long!” Peter almost barked, eyes going wide.
He saw a slight flicker across Slim and Jean’s faces and wondered if Princess Luna was in a merciful mood tonight; they thought he was yet another terrified normal pony, and for making them feel that, on a night when they were supposed to be able to relax for once, he deserved to have the moon dropped on him.
“I’m not--” he began and promptly cut himself off because he knew how that’d sound. Even if Jean read his mind that wouldn’t sound convincing. “I mean, just, I know you folks like your privacy and all, and, ah, my aunt’s got a thing, so I’ll, ah, I’ll be out of your way in a few…uh…”
“We’re all a little duck-hoofed tonight,” Twilight quickly cut in. “Johnnycake decided he had more important things to do and dropped tonight’s game into our laps. Well, Peter’s, but he dropped it into mine…ours! So here we all are.”
“Ah,” Jean said. She and Twilight were considering each other now. “You’re playing, Princess?”
Twilight smiled thinly, nodding. It was a lukewarm response but anything else would probably come across as a challenge, and nopony, least of all her, needed that tonight.
The Beast tapped a hoof to his chin. “Trotter, Trotter…Peter Trotter?” Peter nodded. “The same who took part in that Hex-Factor study? With our very own pre-princess Twilight?”
Twilight chuckled and nodded. Rocky, still keeping a foreleg around Peter’s shoulders, looked at him, raising an eyebrow. Peter shrugged at him. He probably ought to’ve told the Ice-Pony he was joining in that study, sure, but he’d never found a way to bring it up at the time and (not that this was any better, but it was true) the life of a vigilante superpony quickly filled with so many distractions, domestic and nigh-cosmic, that he’d just plain forgotten.
Come to that, he hadn’t even seen Rocky for a while, not until a few months back, during his and Twilight’s falling out. Ice-Pony, much to Spider-Pony and the Horseshoe Torch’s consternation, had become an accountant and now moved in totally alien financial circles with his fellow Hex-Pony founder, Archangel.
“A pleasure to meet you,” the Beast beamed, holding out a hoof. Peter shook it. “And thank you both for your contributions.”
“From all of us,” Cyclops added, his face hardening into the carefully blank mask of a leader. “Getting this information out there in a way non-Exquestrians will pay attention to is a big step forward.”
The couple shared glances, confirming they both felt unsure what to make of that sentiment but certainly felt guilty for
A) assuming the freaking Hex-Ponies wouldn’t have an extensive academic understanding of the magi-genetic phenomenon that was their own existence,
B) why they’d need a bunch of normal little ponies like them to take it into the mainstream.
Slim Summers smiled suddenly, pulling a neatly folded wad of vouchers out of his yellow saddlebag. “And speaking of steps, who’s ready to make those cards dance?!”
Twilight telekinetically accepted them as a cheer went up from the guests behind them, stepping aside to allow the Beast and Cyclops to trot up to meet Timberwolf, who surprisingly clasped hooves with his leader. Those two had always struck her as a bit…terse, but fair enough, it was this community’s big night off.
Deerdevil approached Cyclops, indicating both their shirts. The Hex-Pony’s expression changed only slightly before he laughed at whatever joke the vigilante had made. Twilight tried not to bite her lip. Matt’s tactic had worked, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It banked on flaunting how close to the edge his colleagues thought he was.
It had served as a distraction to Peter’s continued presence so far, but it wouldn’t last long, especially as more guests arrived. Misty Night had given Peter the odd scrutinizing glance since arriving, but Twilight was certain that was just the detective’s curiosity about what kind of pony would date an Element of Harmony.
“So how do you two know each other?” Jean asked brightly.
Twilight turned away from watching a historic moment in bouncing history, as Pinkie Pie met the Beast, to blink at her. She felt a pang of shock when she realised the question hadn’t been addressed to her but Peter and Rocky. Peter began to stammer uncertainly, but clammed up as Rocky gave him another bro-ish foreleg hug that, by sheer coincidence, put pressure on his neck.
“Eh, just one of those things,” Rocky said simply, “Pete works at Damage Control, Warren invests, y’know how it is.”
“And you took that E.S.U. thing back when,” Peter joined in quickly.
“Oh, that’s great!” Jean enthused.
“Thanks, Mom,” Rocky smirked dryly.
“You know what I mean!”
What had she meant, Twilight wondered. It’s great you made a civilian friend who doesn’t hate you for being born? She levitated the chalk and smiled at Jean. “Just going to add everypony. Would you and Slim Summers like to be in the same bracket, or…?”
“Oh, I’m not playing, Princess.”
Twilight blinked. “Oh.”
“Well…” Jean scuffed the carpet. “Card game, bluffing, a telepath. People can assume things.”
A beat.
“Very presumptuous of them,” Twilight smiled, hoping it didn’t come across as condescending. Jean smiled back. It was a nice moment.
Then Jean levitated something out of her own saddlebag and inadvertently set Sparkle/Phoenix relations back by decades. (An impressive feat given they’d only known of each other for about four years.) It was a tinfoil covered casserole dish. Twilight felt her wings gently rising like hackles, or smoke off a lit fuse.
“My own little contribution!” Jean chuckled, waving her dish with the power of her mutant mind as if it was no big deal. “Just thinking of--”
“Everypony’s health,” Twilight cut in leadenly.
A beat.
Jean stared into the Alicorn’s eyes with surprise that steadily gave way to annoyance, like flames eating away paper. Her gaze flicked to a (currently untouched) casserole in a similar dish on the buffet table, surrounded by all those unhealthy cakes, chips, dips, and sodas.
Twilight didn’t need to read Jean’s mind to know the telepathic/kinetic Earth Pony had brought the exact same healthy alternative she had. She’d given it to Spike to spice up a bit and Jean probably had similar help in the Hex-Ponies’ kitchen if not the skill to do it herself.
Apartment 616B’s living room began to fill with the silent hum of two agitated telekinetics in close proximity. Unnoticed by most of the guests, condensation on bottles began to flow backwards. Molecules stretched, not enough to start anything but prepared to become…anything.
Cyclops, telepathically sensitive to his partner’s moods, turned from a conversation with Fluttershy and Iron Hoof, concerned. Deerdevil frowned, turning from Applejack to put a hoof to his head. Rocky Cake blinked and turned at a sudden pull on his tail, finding Spike had come over to greet him and was now dragging him away from the two mares by his tail, while Peter, the coward, was already almost up against the trophy wall.
“More for everypony,” Jean smiled stiffly. Lights in distant skyscrapers flickered as if releasing held breath.
Twilight gave a grunt of ascent she used for obtuse peer reviewers and the Great and Powerful Trixie, smiling as the other mare primly stepped past her to avoid revealing she was grinding her teeth.
Behind her Peter lost a brief scuffle with Spike and was shoved into her potential blast radius. “Uh, honey?”
“I’m fine,” Twilight sighed, levitating her chalk. She smiled over her shoulder. “Sorry Rocky Cake, forgot to ask, are you playing?”
“Ah, yeah,” the Ice-Pony agreed.
“Splendid,” Twilight said, pointedly not putting him in her, Rainbow Dash, Misty Night, Cyclops and Peter’s bracket. Getting to play with ‘Sweater Vest Slim’ was the one concession her boyfriend was getting tonight.
Rocky opened his mouth to say something, managed a non-comital swallowing noise, and fled to the relative safety of the chill out area. Jean was primly rearranging the buffet to make room for her casserole, by hoof, not with her powers, which called Rocky’s safety and its relativity into question.
Pinkie made her excuses to the Beast, who was perched on the back of Rarity’s chair, and trotted over. “You’re going to be cool, right?” she asked.
Twilight rolled her eyes and nodded. Applejack was looking over from her own conversation with the Daughters of the Dragon, giving a stern look that made it clear that if Pinkie wasn’t already doing this she would. More emphatically.
“Don’t make me use the Get Along shirt, Twilight,” Pinkie insisted. “You know I will!”
“No, no,” Twilight insisted, backing up a little, “it’s cool, I’m cool.” She went through the motions. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!”
The party pony smiled and nodded, bouncing back to her hosting duties. Twilight watched as Jean and Slim sat together on one of the couches, chatting with Rarity and the Beast now. Slim’s vest and Matt’s shirt aside, it was strange to see so many of these people out of costume. They all looked so relaxed and the other Elements were mingling very naturally. It was nice to see.
“I should,” Spike said. “Uh. Yeah.”
Twilight opened her mouth to say…what? Spike ran a little too quickly back into the throng, probably to offer things they already had or were easily in reach.
“Everything okay?” Peter asked gently.
“She’s not playing,” Twilight replied neutrally.
“You know what I mean. This isn’t just about my costume. If Spike’s not doing so good it’d be fine if he wants to take off.”
Twilight’s ears folded slightly. Things did seem to be perking up, especially now the Beast and the much-ballyhooed Sweater Vest Slim had arrived. Spike was even shaking Duke Cage’s hoof, congratulating him on his upcoming engagement. But Peter was right.
“He found that box,” she said simply, because Peter knowing wasn’t going to be fun but it couldn’t make tonight’s various messes any worse.
Peter furrowed his brow, confused until she indicated his bedroom door. “I have a lot of--”
Twilight glanced at Deerdevil then decided what the hay. Not his fault he had super-hearing so whatever he heard, he heard. “Osthorn’s box.”
Peter’s eyes went wide. “Did anypony trigger—?”
“Nopony got hurt,” Twilight assured. “But it was a big shock, and Spike’s…upset because I didn’t tell him. I understand why, it’s just going to be a big conversation I hoped I didn’t have to have.”
“Twilight, the kid can look after himself, but he is a kid. He shouldn’t have anything to do with Osthron anyway! I only even asked you to take a look at the thing because Mr. Fantastic was out of town. If this is anypony’s fault it’s mine.”
“It’s nopony’s fault,” Twilight assured. “And I was happy to do it.”
She reserved a lot of dark, special kinds of emotion for the former Goat Goblin. What he’d put Peter and his friends and family through, of course, what he’d done to poor Harry. The scientist and amateur inventor in her were disgusted at the level of craft he’d put into those boxes. Small, two-way communication! In a localized magical field as dense and diverse as Manehattan’s! That should have been a miracle.
And instead, Norman Osthorn had used that craft to bully somepony. Because he’d lost their insane rivalry and wanted a way to harass Peter whenever he wanted. Disgusting. Pathetic.
Magically sealing the box so it needed Peter (or somepony rifling his possessions, which she ought to have planned for) to activate it had been a pleasure.
“I can talk to him,” Peter said gently.
As they watched, Deerdevil, still wearing his silly t-shirt, leaned over to say something to Rarity. Her azure eyes swung to the couple, then she gave them a smile, a wink, and stood up, trotting over to Spike. Deerdevil smiled, adjusted the neck of his shirt, and waltzed over to join a backflipping contest Pinkie was taking part in with the Beast, Iron Hoof and, of course, Rainbow Dash.
“I think he’ll be okay,” Twilight smiled wryly to herself. She pulled her hastily written and hidden notes from her wing pocket and smoothed them out on one of the game tables. “We’ve still got plenty to worry about.”
Such as:
A) How to get Peter to Ponyville, to grab his one remaining spare costume, without drawing attention.
B) How to possibly open an entirely new portal somewhere else in the building, because their regular one was covered in rugs, tables, and the hooves of their increasing guest list.
C) How to do this properly so that Peter arrived at any destination with all his limbs in the right time and space.
“You’re sure about the roof?” Peter asked, indicating a tangled line of equations on one paper. “It’d be the most isolated spot.”
“Yeah, but…” Twilight bit her lip. “It might activate the actual portal; we’d be directly over it if we did it right. Lots of light.”
“Pinkie’s gotta have a disco ball, right?”
The party pony’s ear twitched at that, making her turn her head mid-flip and accidentally spin face first into one of the punch bowls.
“Are you sure about the basement?” Twilight asked. “If we did it right we’d be under the living room, so it ought to visibly open on the underside of--”
“If we did it right. Lots of floors in the way. Furniture. People. Moving people.”
“Maybe in the stairwell…” Twilight murmured, hastily scribbling a new line of math. Nothing to see here, folks, just a really, really dedicated last minute hostess going over party plans, why else would she be doing with pieces of paper, writing fast enough to set fire to it, ha ha ha…
“Mail room?” Peter suggested.
“Ooh, do you have any deliveries? I might be able to use it as a possession to open a temporary—agh, wait-wait-wait, mail would be to you, not necessarily for you, the sender might…hrm. Grrr!”
Peter glanced over his shoulder as Dash flipped onto a startled Fluttershy’s shoulders. “You think there’ll still be time for me to get in on that?”
“Focus, dear.”
“Yes, honey.”
19
Eventually, Johnny made coffee.
Lyja, who’d since reverted to her true shape, stared after him as he went about it, still standing where she’d just…stopped.
“You still take that Saddle Arabian stuff?” Johnny asked he heated the pot by hoof. He idly swung open the nearest shelf unit with his other hoof, examining its lowest jars.
“What?” Lyja blinked. She couldn’t get over how bored he looked. “You mean cardamon?”
“Yeah.”
“…sometimes?”
When the coffee was finished Johnny turned, two steaming mugs on a tray in one hoof, to find Lyja on her haunches, steadying her left foreleg with her other one like a shotgun. Her hoof and her eyes glowed with power.
Johnny snorted irritated sparks from his nose.
“Put it down slowly,” Lyja warned. She awkwardly scooted aside, still on her haunches and in her business suit, to allow him to trot past her and lay his tray on the coffee table.
Johnny made jazz hooves, now his were free, and gestured expectantly at it. Lyja stayed in the same position. She’d watched him add cardamom and milk, so she knew he hadn’t poisoned it. She just didn’t know what he was doing, so she was sticking to their routine.
Johnny rolled his eyes, grumpily trotting backwards and flopping back into the chair he’d been waiting in. Lyja’s eyes widened and flicked as he picked up his mug. “You’re not seriously drinking that,” she said.
Johnny grunted mid-sip and lowered the mug. “Look, chasing you all over town hasn’t worked, so why not?”
“This is too dumb not to be a trap.” Lyja trotted around in a circle, her glowing eyes casting purple binocular floodlights all around the suite. “How’d you follow me? Is your sister here?!”
Johnny sputtered into his next drink. He thumped his chest to quell his choked laughter and get his breath back as Lyja glared indignantly.
“I don’t even know if Sue and Reed are in Equestria right now. As for your little evil lair here…” He waved a hoof at the package addressed to Aurora Sheen, still where he’d slid it to her. A blue rune flickered into existence at one corner.
“The fine folks at Manehattan central post office still send my stuff to the good ol’ Baxter Barn. Just waited for one of your samples to turn up and had H.E.R.B.I.E. tag it. That way even if returning it to sender didn’t work, I’d still be able to track where ‘Aurora’, or ‘Ms. Imagine Berry’ went.”
He pulled out his Fantastic Family compact and waved it demonstrably.
“I can’t believe this,” Lyja said eventually. At least her eyes had stopped glowing.
“Your coffee’s getting cold,” Johnny said, indicating with his own mug.
“What?! I can’t drink coffee with the enemy!” she snapped.
“You did it before,” Johnny retorted.
“That was different!”
“Oh what, that was for work?”
She stared at him incredulously, like he’d just told her a door couldn’t be a jar because larders existed. “Yes?”
Johnny scoffed and sipped his coffee again.
“If you’re going to burn my cover, put up a fight and do it properly,” Lyja snarled, throwing off her suit jacket. “At least when I strangled you I didn’t treat it like…whatever this is!”
Johnny glared back and then finally put his mug down. Fair enough. He didn’t know what this was turning into either.
“This is typical of you, you know that?” Lyja spat. “You can’t even be a doop properly! You just decide to be smart all of sudden and up the ante for everybody!”
“Big talk from the Wiley Coyote wannabe!” Johnny shot back. “You’re so off your game these days nopony’d think you ever had any!”
“Oh, you have no idea about the game I’m playing here, Johnnycake Storm.”
“Yeah? So why’d you walk into the most obvious trap I could think of?”
That brought her up short, to her open-mouthed outrage. Johnny’s own temper had already driven him out of his chair and to his hooves, the air around his shoulder’s visibly shimmering as he fought to keep from spontaneously igniting.
“I mean, it was the most clutch idea I ever had, top 40 at least, but if anypony’d catch on it’d be you! I don’t care how deep cover you extra-terNERDstrials go, no way you were so in character you faked being surprised! And that ambush was so basic, you did that to me all the time back when you were messing with me! And I catch you with your tail down? With the exact same move? Please!”
“I—you—Don’t you presume to—!” Lyja’s mouth kept opening and closing. “That was—I was just biding my time! So you caught me off guard! Law of averages says you’d have to get lucky once, and you brag about being the Horseshoe Torch all the time.”
“So Aurora Sheen’s whole existence was just you ‘biding your time’?” Johnny made sure to make his voice extra petulant to go along with his hoof quotes. Lyja was starting to sound like a defensive little filly and what the hay, he felt like it.
“Of course it was,” Lyja scoffed. “Like I’d breath the same air as you for any other reason. Will you throw a fireball or a punch or something already?”
“Will you just drink your pretentious Saddle Arabian stuff and tell me what’s going on?!”
It wasn’t the sparks that whoosed out of his hoof as he gestured furiously at her coffee table that startled him. He hadn’t meant to do that, and realised he’d actually manifested some of his epidermis, scattering warm chunks of the protective brick red shell across the floor.
What surprised him was the volume of his voice. He hadn’t meant to shout, either.
The hotel room and sounds of the city faded back in around them. He wondered if any staff were about to come knocking. Somepony had to have heard him, right?
Lyja put a hoof to one temple and screwed her eyes shut. She shucked the rest of her business clothes, fixing her mane back into a ponytail. Johnny blinked. He’d never seen a Skrull without clothes before. Their elite ran around in robes and sashes instead of the standard purple and black jumpsuits, but that was about it.
It was weird to see Lyja’s huffy face without it being framed by her collar and headband. Her body was pear coloured and had an odd, smooth texture, unlike the glossiness of Equestrian coat hair. Apart from her forest green mane she didn’t have any hair, like, at all. Even her short tail was more of a Spike deal but more elegant, a short reptilian curl.
Her bare legs reminded him of a lizard too, like they should bend the way a lizard’s did. She had these wrinkles around the joints, and he wondered if they were supposed to be like how her chin was segmented.
Lyja glared at him, gave her discarded clothes a kick hard enough to send them wafting halfway across the room, and grabbed Aurora Sheen’s package. She tore it open with a violence he felt in his chest, pulled out one of the by now probably half melted tubs of ice cream, and stormed towards the kitchen.
Johnny watched, nonplussed and uncertain if he should flame on, as she pulled out a bowl and upended the tub into it. It looked halfway between paste and cheese at this point, but Lyja didn’t seem to care.
“Yell at me,” she was muttering, “in my own safe house…use up my coffee…make me run all over the place…terrans…”
“If you’re gonna make a break for it--” Johnny warned.
“Relax, tough guy, I like this place too much for you to burn it down.”
“Are you—?” Johnny squinted, craning to try and see what she was doing. She’d pulled things out of cupboards now. “Is that whipped cream?”
“And cherries. Want some?”
“Uh…maybe?”
“Tough.” She took a vindictive bite, pulling most right off the stem and tossing the rest into her concoction.
Johnny watched dumbfounded as she flopped down in front of her mug. She kicked the table and nodded pointedly for him to heat it up.
“Are you binge eating ice cream right now?” Johnny asked in disbelief. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t tried to hurl it in his face and run. Well, the night was still young…
“Hey, you made coffee. Which you didn’t pay for.”
“Oh, like you did!”
“Not a superhero.” She swirled the mess in her hoof with a spoon. All that was missing was a bathrobe. Maybe a hairnet. “Look, fine. Fine. You want to know what’s really going on? Well, it’s a lot and I need fuel. You ran me ragged and broke into my safehouse and you yelled at me.”
“You--” Johnny began, pointing a vehement hoof.
“Have all the answers and honestly I’m as done with this as you are, so just heat up my ⌇⏁⎍⌿⟟⎅ coffee and then I can tell you, and you can go back to hating me.”
Johnny stared into Lyja’s defiant, irritated, tired face. She took a bite of ice cream nightmare, never breaking eye contact.
Well. He was the one who was totally done and had made coffee. He took the mug between his hooves. If she tried to stab him in the neck with the end of her spoon or something, fine, he didn’t have the energy for much more than crumpling up anyway.
“I hate what you did to me,” he clarified as delicious steam began to waft off the top.
“Same difference.”
“Maybe,” Johnny admitted. “But you keep coming back.”
“It’s my job,” Lyja said, oddly dignified considering it was with her mouth full and she had a whipped cream moustache.
“You’re kinda bad at your job,” he countered, placing her mug in front of her. She snorted derisively and licked her moustache away with a forked reptilian tongue. “No, seriously. I’m so good Princess Celestia glues lil’ pictures of me over the dictionary definition, but I’ve come closer to gettin’ got crossing the street without looking both ways than even loosing a stray hair in one of your traps.”
“Keep walking into ’em though,” Lyja countered airily. She scooped some of the top of the mix off with her spoon and deposited it in her coffee for later.
“And walking out! I’d dab on the way if they weren’t sad enough already. It’s almost like you don’t want to be here.”
“You are a fugitive from charges of trespass against the Skrull Empire.” Lyja shrugged. “Not like I’m supposed to pick where I get assigned.”
“And we both know you couldn’t give a dragon’s damp discharge about the Empire,” Johnny retorted. “You’ve got more complaints than your species has chins.”
Lyja’s eyes leaked purple sparks at that crack, but she just took a grumpy sip of coffee.
“Seriously, if they didn’t keep you Super Skrulls sweet you’d probably be running the place by now. No, scratch that! You’d be neck deep in a power struggle after turning on each other.”
“Kl’rt would wipe the floor with us,” Lyja said simply, referring to the original and most powerful Super Skrull. Johnny shrugged to silently concede the point: the Fantastic Family took entire platoons of Skrulls, in any shape or size, to school practically every day, and Kl’rt had all their powers combined.
“What about Arcade?” he tried.
“What about Arcade?”
“Couple weeks back. You get all those lame traps from him. Spidey says you even stole a bunch of property listings. Like maybe you don’t care about death traps, just what you’re using as a killbox.”
Lyja was silent. And avoiding eye contact.
“That it?” Johnny persisted. He pulled out his compact, flipping it open and displaying its glass face, a magi-sonar map of Manehattan with crisscrossing blue trails. “Wouldn’t be hard to check. Got a whole day of that box on here, just have to check where you lugged it and what lines up with an old case.”
“You’re getting there,” Lyja allowed. She took a sip of coffee.
Johnny looked around the suite again. He knew enough about his quarry (he was not going to let her have ‘nemesis’. He was saving that for somepony special) to know part of Lyja’s reasons for joining the Super Skrull initiative was a sort of literal glow up.
A few hours under the knife or strapped to tesla coils, however it worked, and she not only had her laser powers but a big steaming plate of The Finer Things. And she’d liked the taste.
For every cutesy Indigo Fillies fangirl identity or Frazzled-But-Takes-No-Guff medical student cover she’d had, complete with appropriately shoebox sized (and smelling) apartments, there’d been a model’s assistant or an aristocrat’s distant cousin, a trainee circus ringmaster that one time, and they’d all hung their custom-tailored hats on at least four-star grade hooks.
All her old identities had ‘bided their time’ by taking his credit card to…well, the exact same places he’d take his credit card anyway. Perfect camouflage, he had to give her that. She’d jumped him in a couple of Saddle Row boutiques, but once he’d noticed the pattern he also realised she’d never done it during a sale.
Hay, he’d scoped the place out a little while waiting for her and found some Sanguine bags in her wardrobe. Latest stuff, too. He’d wondered what she’d done with all the stuff he’d brought her.
Did it matter? She was a spy, kinda. Probably ditched it and moved onto her next target. That was what they did. There’d always be decadent hotel suites and Istallion couture waiting for her somewhere.
He sat down again, flicking the lid of his compact open and closed a few times as he looked at nothing.
“So when you call me your meal ticket,” he said eventually, feeling his way along a dark tunnel into a less dark chamber, “you mean…that I’m you job?”
“They say love what you do,” Lyja smirked.
“Cute,” Johnny snarled, sparks shooting from his eyes and between his clenched teeth. “Alright. I figured that. The Empire sics you on me and you’ve got an excuse to pretend you’re classy.”
“Ouch,” Lyja deadpanned, pouting and placing her spoon against her chest. “You’re not wrong, but for the record? I wouldn’t talk about class when you come from a planet that figured out internal combustion engines and indoor plumbing around the same time. Our war with the Kree might be almost as old as some suns, but we still developed FTL travel, 3D printing, and actual fat free soda.”
Johnny ran his perfectly pedicured hooves down his face, praying he had the strength not to make that Twilight Sparkle groan. Lyja’s ice cream slowly collapsed in on itself like a souffle as the room temperature rose suddenly and her coffee began to bubble.
“Hey,” Lyja mock soothed, “buck up, champ. You might be a primitive mudball but you’re a magic primitive mudball.”
“That you treat as a worldwide spa day.”
Lyja just shrugged and nodded.
“So when you say I’m your meal ticket…” Johnny prompted.
“I mean I’m using you as an excuse to keep getting assigned to this planet, yeah,” Lyja said. Like she was explaining why she did yoga or brought eggplants, just the most mundane chit chat kind of explanation.
A beat.
“You’re flattered, aren’t you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” Johnny admitted. “Depends on whether or not you’re about to tell me you deliberately flubbed all those missions.”
“Not all of them,” Lyja said through another mouthful. She spooned the last of her goop into her molten coffee and sat back as they made streaming geyser plumes together in her mug. “You’re one of the Fantastic Family, you’re great at finding your way out of that sort of thing. It just happens faster if I leave a little hole in the fence. You’ll blow it wide open eventually. I’m just hedging my bet.”
Ditch poker night, get someone to confess to bet hedging, Johnny thought. Why not.
“Which is?” he sighed.
“You said it yourself!” Lyja gestured to the entire room. “Worldwide spa day! If I catch you then I’ve gotta go back to the nearest Tarnax outpost and wait for reassignment. That’s Tarnax LXII. Hey, here’s a Skrull joke for you: what’s the difference between a Tarnax LXII executive lounge and a Tarnax XVIII bathroom?”
“Lyja--”
“A Tarnax XVIII bathroom is supposed to smell that way.”
Lyja flopped back in her chair, hooves behind her head. She’d delivered the barb with an appropriate amount of sarcastic cheerfulness, but she wasn’t smiling now.
“I like it here, Johnny. I get to be whoever I want and whatever I want, and what I want is to be someone comfortable. Not stuck in the ⏚⏃⊑⍜⍜☍⟟⟒ of the Skrull Empire waiting to find out which particular frontline I’m going to be shoved onto. At least down here there’s coffee and ice cream and music and literature and fashion, and apart from you hardly anypony shoots at me.”
She took a big, final swing of her mug and slammed it down so hard Johnny jumped a little. She stared right into his eyes as she extended her forked tongue like a probing tentacle, wiping off every last trace of the caffeine and dairy beard she’d given herself. Johnny would never quite be able to forget the sounds it made.
“That’s why I called you my meal ticket; you are. It’s simple. They sent me back here to ‘make up for my failure’ and I’m not allowed the privilege of returning to the luxuries of Throneworld until I bring you in, dead or alive. You’re flattered, I’m sure. I’m just amazed high command didn’t realise they sentenced me to the ultimate working vacation!”
“You leave yourself work for tomorrow,” Johnny said, eyes narrowing.
“Absolutely,” Lyja smirked, eyes narrowing but at some inner vision, not in response. “So I put in just enough effort, let myself get tripped up by the right kind of Empire bureaucracy, and honestly just wait for you to bust out like you would anyway.”
She adopted a puppy dog face and clasped her hooves. “Then I report back to my superiors, begging for just one more shot at the Horseshoe Torch, my big burning white whale, so I can be allowed to go back to risking my neck for the overgrown schoolgirl who kicked me out in the first place. Sometimes I do call you guys ‘a primitive mudball’ like it’s the ’50s or something, just to sell it.”
Johnny stared so much it hurt. He blinked a couple of times to moisten his eyes and massaged the space between them. “Wow. That might be the most effort I’ve ever seen anyone in this universe put into being lazy.”
A green blur, the violent clatter of a grown mare furiously springing from her seat and knocking her personal effects over as she scrabbled onto the coffee table to loom over him. Her eyes and hooves glowed, her teeth furious white against the light and shadows dancing across her green face.
Lyja thrust a hoof to a point between her right shoulder and her chest. The glow around that hoof dimmed and Johnny could see it now: a flickering purple thorn shape across Lyja’s smooth reptilian skin, impossible to miss now he knew it was there. A scar with the light of Lyja’s power shining through from under her skin.
Where the implants would have gone in.
He could see others on her left hip and up and down her hind legs now. He’d even swear the tip of her tail was starting to blink.
“I paid to get here,” Lyja rasped.
The light in her eyes guttered back to her yellow pupils and Johnny was surprised to see she was starting to well up. She’d killed the lightshow because she needed the willpower not to cry. Not in front of him.
“Don’t you ever forget that” Lyja whispered. “I don’t care if you hate me, don’t you ever forget what I let them do to me to get here.”
Johnny could only watch silently as she took the trembling steps off the table and back into her chair. Lyja hung her head and hugged herself. She rubbed at her eyes violently, only once.
They sat in silence with only the distant sounds of Manehattan from the still open window.
Eventually Johnny stood up and went to make more coffee.
To be Continued