Spike groaned and rubbed his head as the gentle sound of blaring traffic roused him from his slumber.
"Did anyone catch the number of that chariot?"
He stood, brushing loose gravel off his knees from the rooftop where he'd been laying. When had he gotten up there? The last thing he remembered was reading a strange passage in the back of his comic book and then...
He gasped when realization hit and he finally took in his surroundings. Around him was an ocean of skyscrapers and high-rises as far as the eye could see. An endless maze of unnaturally clean streets and filthy shadow-filled alleys, erratically lit by a dramatically oversized moon and flashing neon signs that clung to the larger buildings like rainbow caterpillars. In the distance, he could just make out the faint but iconic shape of the globe-topped Maretropolis Daily newspaper building in the skyline just before the edge of the horizon faded into a faint pointillistic haze.
"Is this... Maretropolis?" He scarcely dared to ask it aloud, lest it make him wake up from his dream. The city of superheroes, of supervillains, of ponies rising to the occasion to save the innocent civilians from chaos.
The city of the Power Ponies. And he was there.
A familiar groan reminded him that he wasn't alone. "Twilight! I think we're— whoa..."
Words caught in the little dragon's throat as his literary heroes made flesh rose from the graveled surface of the roof. "You're... the Power Ponies." Or at least, his friends and family wearing the most realistic costumes he'd ever seen, more accurate than even his imagination... aside from a few obviously poor casting choices. Pinkie's coat color was completely wrong for the speedster whose outfit she wore.
"The who?" Applejack asked through Mistress Marvelous' iconic identity-obscuring mask.
"The superheroes from my comic book! It zapped us inside and now you're the Power Ponies!" He pointed at the first of the roster as the words of the comic's classic introduction page rolled through his mind.
"Zapp and Fili-second!" Rainbow Dash grinned as she checked out her Medallion of Power while Pinkie vibrated in place before whizzing off in a streak of pink light, circling the block in the blink of an eye, and returning right where she started.
"Radiance and Masked Matter-horn!" Rarity posed as she realized he was talking about her, though with her natural grace she always seemed poised as if waiting for a photographer to snap a candid shot. Meanwhile Twilight was looking slightly less photogenic as she blew a lock of impractically coiffed mane out of her face.
"Mistress Marvelous and Saddle Rager!" Neither Applejack nor Fluttershy looked like they'd quite recovered from their unexpected portaling yet, the former looking seasick while the latter was just shaken in general.
"And that means I'm—!" His spirits plummeted almost instantly as he looked down and recognized his blue boots and red cape. "...Hum Drum. The powerless sidekick."
Twilight’s brow furrowed. “Transported inside a comic book? That’s impossible.”
Pinkie zipped over to her side. “Unless somepony got a new power that let them do it. Lot of impossible stuff been happening in that department lately. Hooves up ladies; who here’s got an inky heart?”
“I got a new one just a minute ago, but I don’t think this is it.” Dash shook her head with a frustrated expression. “It’s… something about learning, I think? It’s not super clear.”
A sudden explosion on the streets below cut their conversation to an unexpected close. They looked over the building’s edge just as the front doors of the building across the street blew open in a cloud of dust and debris.
Wild laughter was the first thing to come from the destruction. A manic cackle, wild and careless. Then came the tentacles. They shot out of the rubble like ropes made of seaweed, long enough to reach across the street and thicker than a pony’s foreleg. Five, six, a dozen or more snapped out with faint whip cracks as they carried aloft their mistress.
She was tall and slender, with a figure that models would kill for and the kind of face that would have been gracing magazine covers if it weren’t for the manic glee in her rarely-blinking eyes and the disdainful sneer that settled across her lips whenever they weren’t parted for another heaving giggle. And also the ambulatory mane in sickly green that did all her walking for her.
Her eyes immediately locked onto the opposing rooftop. “Wahaaa, the Power Ponies. Just as I expected,” she chortled. “How kind of you to join us. Now the mane event can begin! Wahoohoohohoha!”
"Holy Horsefeathers!" Spike cried, "It's the Mane-iac, the Power Ponies’ archnemesis! And she's stolen the Electro-Orb from the Maretropolis Museum to power her doomsday device! Quickly, you've got to stop her!"
“And how exactly are we supposed to do that?” Rarity asked.
“With your superpowers! You can— watch out!”
A mailbox crashed through the edge of the roof, peppering them with debris and nearly smashing into Pinkie who was saved by her quick reflexes.
“You know what? Fine.” Applejack approached the edge of the roof without fear. “Maybe Ah am in a comic book. Maybe this is just a weird dream and Princess Luna’s gonna show up any minute. Either way—” she cracked her neck to one side then the other “—Ah think it’s high time Ah see just how much Ah can do with these fightin’ skills when Ah don’t have to about not hurtin’ somepony. Yeehaw!”
With her people’s battlecry on her lips, she lassoed a lamp post and swung her way into the fray. Her friends were barely a moment behind her.
Except for Spike.
He stayed on the roof because he was painfully aware of the fact that he, much like the Hum Drum character whose boots he was filling, had no superpowers. When it came to fighting or anything else really important, he was just as useless and unhelpful here as he was back home.
And so he carefully made his way down the fire escape. As he did, he was forced to bear witness to the worst beatdown he’d even seen.
Heroes of Equestria though his friends were, experienced superheroes they were not.
It was painful, physically painful, to watch them try and fight without any idea how their powers worked. He’d thought for sure that Twilight must have read a few of his comics at least once, if only for having run out of books in the rest of the library, but even she failed to so much as lay a hoof on Mane-iac. Their only competent fighter managed to try herself to a lamppost with her own lasso, and Pinkie couldn’t dodge a hair-tacle without overshooting by whole city blocks. He winced as Rainbow Dash managed to successfully activate her Medallion of Power… only to totally lose control of it and summon a tornado that sucked up everypony but the villainess and allowed her to make her cackling escape.
He arrived at ground level just as the defeated heroes managed to gather back together, their bodies battered and their egos thoroughly bruised.
“Nice going,” he said flatly, “Way to put those superpowers to use.” Was it mean? Maybe a little, but he’d just seen them bring shame to the names of his favorite superheroes, so he was feeling a little vindictive.
“Might have helped if we knew how to use them,” Applejack retorted with a half-hearted glare.
“This isn’t the time to be arguing,” Rainbow Dash cut in. She flicked her wind-swept mane and it snapped back to its coverpage-worthy style. “We gotta follow her! She made us look like a bunch of foals!”
“And what are you going to do when you get there?” Spike pressed. “You don’t know how to use your powers!”
Dash waved away his concern. “We’ll figure it out as we go. Even forgetting revenge for a minute, you said she’s got a doomsday machine, right? So if we’re supposed to be superheroes then we’ve gotta go save the day by laying the smackdown on her before she activates it!”
“Do we really though?”
All eyes turned to Fluttershy, who wilted a little under their weight but kept talking despite it. "I mean, you said we're inside a comic book. So all this is just make believe, right? None of it's real, it's all just a story. There’s no real ponies in actual danger if we do nothing.” She offered an unsteady smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We don’t have to fight that scary laughing mare again.”
Spike shook his head. “Unfortunately, I think we do. There was something my comic book said just before we all got pulled in. It said the way to get back to where we started was to see things through to the end. I think our only way back to Ponyville is if we finish the story.”
“Not… necessarily.” Twilight rose and began to pace. “There’s something that might work, but it’s only theoretical. It’s not everyday you get the opportunity to the interdimensional capabilities of spells, and I don’t even know if this comic book world counts as a subdimension or if this is just a portioned off part of some magical plane, but strictly speaking it should work either way unless there’s some kind of esoteric effect that the original spellwork wouldn’t know to account for…”
She trailed off into quiet mutterings as she continued to pace, her horn lighting and dousing at random, until finally—
“Aha!” Twilight grinned in triumph as her horn flared and a book popped into being in front of her. Pinkie Pie dashed forward to grab it first.
“The Material Gains of a Domestic Wallaby?” she read off the cover. “How’s that supposed to help?”
“It’s not. But it proves that I can still connect to the magical relay I carved into the library. I just happened to be reading that yesterday so I knew exactly where it was on my nightstand. It’s a very bad idea to try and teleport things to you without a visual.” Twilight flashed her horn again and the book vanished. “Teleporting things to a known destination is much easier. I believe I should be able to get us out like this—” there was an audible sigh of relief from Fluttershy “—but I think we should try and stop Mane-iac anyway.”
She continued to talk over the sound of burgeoning protests. “There’s no denying that we keep getting strange new abilities. So far they’ve been mostly mundane things taken to a high level, but there’s no reason to suspect that we might never get abilities that qualify as actual superpowers. I think this would be a great way to practice using powers in a safe way, especially ones that we get unexpectedly and don't understand right off the bat. And if it does prove too dangerous,” She lit her horn. “I can have us back at the library in a flash.”
“I’m up for it!” Pinkie was the first to answer. “I barely got to do anything in the last fight at all, and I’ve always wanted to be a superhero ever since I first heard about the power ponies!”
“Wait, you’ve read them?” Spike asked.
“No, I meant when we woke up ten minutes ago!”
With Pinkie’s enthusiastic support, the others were quick to agree as well. Aside from Fluttershy, that is, who still asked to sit this one out at home. Once she was safely away, Twilight turned to Spike. “Alright Spike, what’s the plan?”
He looked at her for a moment as though she’d asked him if he was up for a quick flight around town. “What do you mean?” A small ember of hope sparked to life within him. “You mean, you want… me to take charge?”
“Of course!” she replied with a laugh, “It's only natural. You're the comic expert here. When we have an animal problem, we turn to Fluttershy for advice. For fashion issues, Rarity. You’ve said it yourself, no one knows the Power Ponies like you do. This is your show.”
A slow grin worked its way across his features as his chest swelled with pride. He was useful after all, in a way no one else could be. In fact, he had the greatest superpower of all: meta-knowledge.”
“Okay, first off. You all need to know exactly what your powers are so we don’t have a repeat of last time. There’s also a couple of key weaknesses to look out for. Exploiting them’s usually Hypno-Iris’ gimmick and not Mane-iac’s, but we’d better not take chances. Then a quick review of her weaknesses, and then we can make a plan to finally take her down once and for all!”