//------------------------------// // Formulating a plan // Story: The Amazing Spider-Man: Wrath of the Night // by Themagicspoderman //------------------------------// "Are the sacrifices secured?" a man wearing a large black robe with a hood pulled low over his eyes asked. One of the Nightspawn made a guttural snarling sound while bobbing it's head. "Good, then the Summoning should go ahead without delay" he said with a nod "I trust there were no complications on your hunt?" The Nightspawn made another snarl while scratching the ground with it's enormous black claws. The man looked at the creature with a snarl of his own before speaking. "What did you find?" he growled. The beast pounded the ground with it's claws as it produced a noise similar to a hyena's laugh before the man struck out at it, severing it's head with nothing more than the side of his hand. "We do not have time for any possible delays!" he roared in rage "We must return our Mother to this world not a moment after we have planned, this insect will not get in our way!" Peter's eyes shot open in the bed he lay in, remaining still for a brief moment before his back seized up in pain, his muscles feeling like they were being twisted and contorted by a red hot rotating cog. He tried his best to ignore the pain but the longer he tried to resist the more intense the pain became, becoming so bad that he was driven to roaring in pain. White lights began to explode in front of his eyes as the pain became utter agony with no end in sight. He tensed suddenly when a warm hand was placed on his chest but as the spasm in his back began to subside he relaxed, his pained breathing becoming more and more stable until he was able to stop his chest from heaving. He was drenched in a cold sweat with his throat being drier than sandpaper. He screwed his eyes shut and placed his palms over them before talking to whoever had helped him. "What the hell was that about?" he asked. "I hadn't enough time to fix your back before you woke up" who he presumed to be Princess Celestia said as she removed her hand from his chest "You woke up as I was taking a break to get enough energy back to continue healing you" He sat up in the bed and saw that Celestia looked like she hadn't slept in days, large bags under her eyes with her normally bright eyes being dull and bloodshot. "How long have you been awake for?" Peter asked. "I've been healing you for three days without any sleep" Celestia answered, realizing that her usual unreadable expression had slipped and that Peter had seen how weak she felt. "Then you need to go to bed" Peter said as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, his joints popping as they moved for the first time in days. "No, I can't" Celestia said "I'm not certain that you're fully healed yet... I still need to-" "Princess, stop" Peter said, putting his hand on her shoulder and guiding her down onto her bed "You're going to pass out if you don't sleep, besides, you'll think better when you're fully rested" "Peter, I can't" Celestia said, trying to stifle a yawn with little success. Peter pushed her down onto her back gently and pulled the covers over her. "Sleep, now" he ordered as he took her crown off her head and placed it on the bedside table "I'll check up on you in a few hours" "Where are you going?" Celestia asked. "Out for a spin" Peter said, locating his badly damaged costume on the set of drawers next to the mirror across from the bed. He grabbed the costume and put it on, trying to avoid damaging the fabric anymore, before grabbing his mask and web shooters. He fastened on the modified watches before pulling his mask over his face and leaping out over the balcony and dropping down into the city. Peter realized that he had never asked Celestia about the dream he had before he woke up to see if it meant anything. It seemed like it was too realistic for it to be a random creation made by his brain. It must have been something not created by him as the man he saw he didn't recognize and he knew that his brain couldn't create new faces, even subconsciously. He decided he would ask Celestia about the dream when he went back to check on her, but for now he would focus on looking for the Nightspawn. He began to wonder what the others thought about his three day disappearance, if Cadence and Twilight suspected anything if they knew where he was since they were there when he was attacked by the Nightspawn. His attention was attracted when he heard a loud smashing sound followed by an even louder scream from a woman. "That's my cue" Spider-Man said as he dropped down to the streets. He walked into the back alley where he heard another scream before a woman came sprinting past him at full speed, not even stopping to ask him to save her. "What's got her so spooked?" Spider-Man asked as he peered into the alley. He jumped back as he saw a pair of red eyes light up in the darkness of the alley before another pair appeared, followed by another, and another... and another. "Oh this isn't going to be fun" Spider-Man sighed. There were loud barks as enormous black wolves with tails looking like they were made out of ash dived out at him. He back flipped away from the jaws of one of them, kicking another in the face before a third clamped onto his arm and upset his balance which caused him to tumble to the ground and have more wolves pile on top of him. He tore his arm free from the wolf and used his web shooters to web their mouths shut and then using his webs to launch himself into the air where he reached out and stuck himself to the wall. The wolves looked up at him with saliva-soaked fangs and hungry eyes. "Let's see you get up here Fido!" Spider-Man yelled. The wolves barked once before they exploded into a small swarm of bats made of a flaking ash-like substance. "You. Can. Not. Be. Serious!" he roared as the bats swarmed around him, biting and tearing at his skin. He used his web shooters rapidly to web up as many of the bats as he could before he heard the depressing hiss of empty cartridges. "Oh for fu-" Spider-Man growled, being interrupted as a solitary Nightspawn tackled him from the wall and down three stories to the ground, plowing him into a minivan and crushing the vehicle from the strength of the impact. "Of all the places to die" he sighed "Why did it have to be pinned down next to a damn minivan!?" Spider-Man slammed his fists as hard as he could into the temples of the Nightspawn, stunning it before he booted the creature off him and rolling backwards off the minivan to land on his feet. He quickly reloaded his web-shooters from the spares he kept on his belt before trying to anticipate where the Nightspawn was going to come from. His spider-sense flared up and without even thinking he threw himself as high into the air as he could as the minivan was thrown straight underneath him, smashing through the windows of a store's display. He landed on the ground where his spider-sense flared up again, giving him a warning, but something else gave him a direction that the attack seemingly would come from. By some wild decision he decided to trust this new sensation rather than his spider-sense, turning around and cupping his hands over his right shoulder just in time to catch the clawed foot of the Nightspawn. He gripped it's ankle and heaved it over his shoulder to slam it into the ground with all his strength before pulling it closer towards him and stamping on the back of it's head. The blow seemed to knock the Nightspawn out and Peter took the moment to web the creature down before even risking letting his guard down to take a breather. "Well that's one way to put down a rabid dog" he whistled, placing his hands on his hips. "Freeze freak!" a loud voice yelled from behind him. Spider-Man whipped around to see two police officers pointing their guns at him. "Are you serious?!" he demanded. "You're under arrest!" the second cop yelled. "For what?" Spider-Man asked. "Terrorist attacks against the city of Canterlot and high treason!" he answered. "How do you even work that out!?" Spider-Man yelled in complete disbelief, momentarily losing his composure. "These things never showed up until you did!" he barked "Now stop talking and put your hands in the air!" "Fine" Spider-Man growled, raising his hands into the air. As the officers put their guns back into their holsters at their side Spider-Man webbed their hands to the holsters, making them unable to move their hand or draw their weapon. "Sorry guys but I wouldn't do well in prison" Spider-Man said "Do you know what they do to people in those showers, let alone spiders?" With that he shot a web onto the side of a building before leaning back to add stress to the web and then jumping in the air and using the tension of the web to propel him high enough to swing freely without worrying about running into the ground. He looked around quickly for the swarm of ash-bats that had attacked him minutes earlier but he could no longer see them anywhere. "Seriously, who uses bats as a weapon?" Spider-Man asked with a grin under his mask "It's the stupidest thing ever, I mean what are they gonna do, flap me to death?" Spider-Man swung around the city for several more hours for any signs of the other Nightspawn that had attacked him but to his surprise these things were surprisingly good at hiding and they didn't seem to be causing anymore trouble. His mind then went to the appearance of these new wolf monster things that could transform into a swarm of bats made out of ash. He knew cross-species were different from normal animals but these creatures were something more, something that couldn't be explained or created by any scientific methods in this day and age. "Celestia has to know something about these creatures that keep showing up" Spider-Man decided, swinging a full loop on his web before throwing himself back towards the direction of the castle. As he went to shoot another web a sudden electric tingle jolted through his right arm, the same arm with bite marks deep in his flesh, and he suddenly released his grip and dropped several stories before he shot a web from his left wrist to catch himself. "What the hell was that?" Spider-Man asked himself, swinging onto a building to examine his arm. He examined his arm quickly, something difficult to do with the amount of blood flowing from the puncture wounds. After waiting several minutes with no further incidents with his muscle control he gave himself the green to continue on his way back to the castle. He remained cautious of any accidents happening as he swung from building to building, make sure to stay closer to a wall of the left just in case he could stick to it in case his arm decided to give out again. He made it back to the balcony of Celestia's room and ducked inside quickly. He reached up to remove his mask before beginning to talk to Celestia before his spider-sense warned him of another person in the room. He dropped his hand just as the lights clicked on, revealing a very tired looking Princess Cadence standing by the light switch wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe over a silk nightgown. "Spider-Man... what are you doing here?" Cadence asked, crossing her arms and looking at him with a confused expression. "I need to talk to your aunt about something" Spider-Man said, eyeing Cadence as she slowly walked over to him. "She's asleep at the moment, but there's something I want to talk to you about" Cadence said, stopping in front of him "I never really got to say thanks for saving me and my sister in law a few days ago from those things" "To be honest I think you did a better job of fighting them off than I did" Spider-Man said with a chuckle. "Yeah" Cadence said with a short laugh "But I think you deserve a genuine thanks" Cadence stepped almost against him, being only slightly taller than Spider-Man himself. She moved her hands up to his mask, peeling it up so that it rested just above his maw before she leaned in and kissed him, placing her hands on the sides of his face and closing her eyes. Underneath the mask the seventeen year old Peter Parker's mind was imploding. Cadence was twenty five, married and in love and her husband had to be the police captain as well as being the older brother of the girl Peter had a crush on. Everything about the situation was wrong to the core but Peter was a seventeen year old, hormonal teenager who had the experience of one girlfriend in his entire life. By the time he had figured out what he was going to do Cadence was moving away from him and pulling his mask down over his face again. "There, I think we're even now" she said quietly as she stepped away from him. "You didn't need to do that Your Majesty" Spider-Man said slowly. "I know, but I wanted to" Cadence said. His spider-sense went off again, signalling that someone else was about to come into the room and he quickly stepped back and put some distance between him and Cadence. The door opened before Cadence could question what he was doing and Cadence's husband walked in dressed in his police uniform and a bulletproof vest. He froze as he saw Spider-Man standing in front of Cadence as he slowly reached for his weapon. "Don't" Celestia said from the bed, slowly pushing herself up. "Feel better now?" Spider-Man asked. "Much, thank you Spider-Man" Celestia nodded "What smells like dog saliva?" "That's me" Spider-Man admitted, holding up a hand "I got mauled by these weird wolf things that can transform into swarms of bats" "So they're using the Leatherfang now" Celestia sighed "They've got to be looking for the next piece now" "Next piece of what?" Shining asked "What the hell are these things Celestia?" "To put it simply, they're demons" Celestia answered "They're being summoned from a hellish dimension to serve whoever is trying to resurrect their master" "Master?" Shining echoed "What master?" "Ugh, I figure it's time I finally explain this to you isn't it?" Celestia asked rhetorically "The creatures you've been seeing are like hunting dogs, they're sniffing out and collecting everything they need for a summoning ritual, conducted by a priest of an evil cult" "That's great to know now but who exactly are they trying to summon?" Spider-Man asked. "They're trying to summon something I locked away almost a thousand years ago" Celestia sighed, placing the flat of her hand against her forehead "Nightmare Moon" The name itself sent a feeling of dread rushing through Spider-Man's body despite knowing next to nothing about Nightmare Moon herself, only that she was completely insane. "So... how are they going to summon her?" Shining asked "If we can find out what they're going to have to do to get her here we can stop them can't we?" "Hopefully, because if she does return I'm not sure we're going to be able to stop her" Celestia said in an almost whispering voice. "Let's jump back a few sentences, you said that these... Leatherfang you said they were called are a second wave looking for something else, what are they looking for exactly?" Spider-Man asked. "They're looking for something that can be used to ground Nightmare Moon to this point in existence, a possession that used to belong to her or something else that holds a strong reminder of her presence in the world" Celestia said "And if we can figure out what'll have the strongest residue on it we can keep it safe from the Leatherfang!" "Exactly!" Spider-Man nodded "Now what are we looking for?" "The first thing I can think of would be her helmet, I managed to remove it from her before I was able to beat her" Celestia said "I can put that somewhere safe from the Leatherfang or anything else they could throw at us" "Alright, now we're getting a plan together" Spider-Man nodded, smiling under his mask.