As the Emerald Spider stepped through the portal he felt disoriented. He didn’t think much of it; it wasn’t unusual to feel that way after going through dimensional portals. But something else seemed off to him. He found himself losing his balance and dropping to all fours. Looking around he found himself in what looking like a castle or a palace, and one in much better condition than the one he was last in.
He was about to pick himself up when he realized he didn’t have hands. He sat there for a minute out of both shock and disbelief. In place of where his hands once were there were hooves. He turned himself around to the mirror/portal to look at himself. In place of his usual reflection was a… pony? It was wearing his uniform, and with the notable difference of his hair (or mane and tail rather) being loose outside of his uniform and glowing the same shade of emerald green that the eyes and spider insignia on his uniform were.
He put what used to be his hand on the mirror and found that it was solid. He frantically began looking all over the mirror thinking maybe he had to touch a specific spot in order to pass through, but to avail.
“A one way portal…” He said to himself in a defeated tone.
The Emerald Spider then looked up at his reflection actually taking time to take in and ponder the image of himself. He was afraid to remove his mask because he knew that he would not recognize his face.
“I’m dreaming! I-I have to be!”, The Emerald Spider exclaimed, “I’ve seen some crazy thing in my time with the Defense Force, but there’s no way this is possible!... Right?”
“You there! Remove the mask and turn around slowly!” A voice shouted from behind him.
He what looked like three ponies all roughly the same size as him, and each a different tone in color, and all of them were wearing armor plated uniforms.
“Oh you got to be kidding me”, The Emerald Spider said in disbelief.
“Remove the mask! I won’t ask again!” The guard ordered.
The Emerald Spider then noticed something he didn’t initially. The guard in the center of the three had a horn protruding from his forehead and was glowing a light purple color.
“Wait! Are you a unicorn!?!”
The guards looked puzzled.
“Oh man this has got to be one of the top ten… No! Five craziest dreams I’ve ever had! Come to think of it pretty vivid too!”
All of a sudden the Emerald Spider was lifted up off the ground and surrounded by a light purple aura.
“Hey what th-oof!”, That was all the Emerald spider was able to get out before being slammed into a wall.
The guards then approached him, and the unicorn leading the group said, “That should have been more than enough to incapacitate him now let’s…ahh!!!”
The guard stopped as he got a hoof to the face faster than he could perceive knocking him back and skidding across the floor. The other two guard were dispatched rather quickly leaving them wrapped up in webbing on the walls. The Emerald Spider took notice of his newly acquired speed, but decided to think about it later as he webbed up the first guard he attacked on the ceiling.
“What magic is this!?!” The guard yelled.
“Not magic friend, but judging based on what I’m looking at I can see how you would think that. Nice to know my web shooters still work.” The Emerald Spider responded.
“Intru-mmf!”
The guard was cut short as glowing green webbing covered his mouth.
“I’m going to look around if you don’t mind. That hard light webbing on your mouth will dissipate when it gets out of my projection range, you can call for help then.” The Emerald Spider said sarcastically.
He then dropped down and continued down a hallway. He was having issues walking on all fours, but wasn’t too different from crawling on walls, so he was able to adjust quickly. As the Emerald Spider was walking he thought about his web shooters and newly found boost to his speed and agility. It was strange how his web shooters worked now, he didn’t need to make a certain hand gesture (on account that he didn’t have hands), but rather he just need to think about shooting which type of web out of his… Hooves. It seemed his suit was linked to his mind somehow. This train of thought was cut short however. He felt vibrations in the ground and his sense of awareness had increased greatly. Although the Emerald Spider was curious about this as well, he had no time to think about it. Something was heading his way.
Thinking quickly he jumped to the ceiling, and activated his suits cloaking mode. There was a unicorn walking down the hallway, but his armor looked somewhat different, like he was a higher rank than the other guards. The white blue maned unicorn looked around almost as if he sensed something was off about the hallway. A pulse then went out from the unicorn’s horn going in all directions, and hit the Emerald Spider with what felt like a tidal wave to him. Although Em. Spidey had the wind knocked out of him and fell to the ground, he recovered landing on his feet (albeit clumsily).
“So you’re the one that’s been sneaking in and using the portals!” The guard yelled.
“Whoa buddy! You got the wrong…“
Em. Spidey was cut short as he dodged a blast of energy from the guard. The guard then began to charge and in turn so did the Emerald Spider. Just before Em. Spidey’s first hit was about to make contact with the unicorn’s face plate, it was stopped. A force field had formed around the unicorn, and Em. Spidey hit was deflected. The Unicorn however did stagger back a bit and was surprised by the strength of the hit.
“It would seem you are more powerful than those other three I encountered. Good just means I don’t need to hold back as much.” Em. Spidey remarked. He then charged the Unicorns shield hitting it with all his might.
The first hit landed. Nothing.
The second hit landed, and the guard looked like he was breaking a sweat.
The third hit landed, and the guard looked like he was straining himself trying to keep the shield up.
Finally the fourth hit made contact and the shield shattered.
Time seemed to slow down for this commanding officer. There had only been a few instances where a single being had been able to break his shield. He was able to get one word out before the fifth hit made it to his face plate as the Emerald Spider originally intended.
“Impossible…”
The Emerald Spider had held back on his last hit aware that while the shield could take the punishment for a time, the guard could not. With the guard incapacitated he then took note of the pain in what were once his hands. The Emerald Spider chuckled a little.
“Strongest personal shield I’ve ever gone against.” The Emerald Spider remarked, as he activated his masks scanners.
He looked over the commander for any technology and found nothing. He cycled through his mask’s visual filters and found that the energy that powered his abilities came from within the guard’s body, and judging from his scans it was focused through the horn on the head, (but he already guessed that was the case before scanning the horn based on his short interactions with those he encountered).
His scans were cut short however by a voice that screamed, “Wha…!?! Uncle Shining!”