And Carry a Big Torch (8)
25
“I’ve got work tomorrow,” Rocky Cake the Ice-Pony called over the sounds of Manehattan, weaving through traffic with the grace of an Equestria Games skater.
“And what did I say the last time you said that?” the Horseshoe Torch called back as they both swung the sharp angular corner of Federal Hall with effortless wine glass rim precision.
“You said 'that’s hilarious'. Classy, by the way.”
Ice-Pony smiled despite himself as they began to make their way down Broad Street as only super-ponies could. Some pedestrians boggled, while others hid their foals’ eyes. A Unicorn conjuring ice, yes, even wrapping himself in the stuff like the Torch, but…from his hooves, not his horn?! What else might he take it into his head to do?! Not the most well thought out reason to hate and fear him, but for that side of Equestria any excuse would do.
“I absolutely am,” Johnny said, idly guiding his old pal into an alley so they could open up without having to account for the increasing traffic. He began to brake as a fence loomed into view. “Hold up--”
“Please.” Ice-Pony hunched like a waiting leopard, momentum barrelling him towards chain-links and garbage cans like a surrealist vaudeville bit waiting to happen. “Haven’t been out of the biz that long!”
Johnny folded his forelegs, waiting. It took an eyeblink. A flex of his shoulders and the asphalt under Rocky’s hooves burst into a starburst of ice, hurling him into a somersault clean over the fence and practically across the entire street, civilians stopping to stare at a glistening trail of snowflakes (deliberately) left in his wake.
He saluted a gobsmacked Pegasus mare, frozen mid-flight as he sailed past her, casually twisting to thrust his hind legs into a flagpole and ricochet himself towards the gap between two water towers. A swish of his hoof and the moisture in the air was tripping over itself to become a bridge of ice, front and back pulverising themselves as they instantly formed and collapsed to keep him moving in his favourite way to travel.
“Coulda fooled me,” Johnny breezed, keeping his forelegs folded as he jetted alongside his surfing friend.
Okay, so he had just been out-styled. For now. He could deal. It helped knowing that, if he really wanted to, he could blast ahead and leave Rocky eating his contrail. Going full burn he could reach near sonic speeds, and only a hoof-full could keep up. Rocky’s old pal the Archangel, Slepnir, the Vision, the original Torch and maybe the Falcon on a really good day. After that he was only overshadowed by the best of the best, mostly Wonderbolts, naturally. Good old Soarin’, Spitfire…
Rainbow Dash.
“Oh look, the Ms. Equestria pageant.”
“This early?!” Johnny’s head whipped left and right, trailing sparks.
“Just making sure you were paying attention.” Ice-Pony smirked, vaulting off his current bridge and onto a brand new one. He seamlessly skidded around on his haunches so he could keep surfing but talk face to face. “Least you could do considering whatever it is you’re trying to rope me into.”
“Haven’t even told you anything yet,” Johnny muttered, rolling glowing eyes.
“Exactly.”
“C’mon man, it’s Peter.”
“…fine.” Rocky closed his eyes with a sound like a hoof crunching snow. “What is it this time?”
“Give ya three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”
The Exquestrian squinted as he used flipping onto a new bridge to turn the right way around. “He’s been framed for murder again?”
“Wh—No! At least…” Johnny thought about it. “Nah, it’s only after lunch but--”
“But it’s Peter.” Rocky nodded. “So, what are we actually doing?”
“Meeting him halfway.”
“Okay, first off? It’s Peter. Second, this is you, since when do you meet anypony halfway?”
“Halfway to Destiny Island, snow cones for brains!”
“Uh, which of us is the accountant again?”
“Congratulations, you have the baby version of my sister’s job.” Johnny snorted sparks from his nose because he totally didn’t feel strangely bitter about that. Anymore. “Just make sure we make it to at least Battery Park before he does.”
“Have you two ever thought that’d make so much more sense for a meet up place than the Statue of-for-real-Destiny?”
“The business world has turned you into a real cold hearted—Stilt Mage…”
“Excuse you?” Ice-Pony turned to squint at the Torch, then followed his gaze. “Oh. Huh.”
An armoured Unicorn who used their telekinesis to manipulate their suit’s hydraulic stilts. To rob banks. Only in Manehattan.
He was galloping across roads and over buildings a few blocks away, four heavy-duty wall safes dangling in his telekinetic field like the world’s saddest birthday balloons, seemingly heading for the end of the island. Even though they could now hear M.E.U.P. sirens, Ice-Pony and the Torch probably wouldn’t have even noticed if the world’s biggest slinky didn’t keep bobbing up and down between the rooftops, his armour glinting in the sun.
For a beat they just hung there in the sky, Johnny hovering and Rocky balanced on a quick column of ice he’d formed on a roof, watching as Stilt-Mage took a corner so fast he almost teetered over, one elongated leg wiggling for half a block before he swung back on course.
Then they smirked at each other.
“Race ya,” they said simultaneously.
Okay, it’s been almost half an hour, you can stop hyperventilating over the fact you’re basically IN THE FUTURE! IN THE SKY!
Twilight couldn’t keep the grin off her face. She was standing with Gorgon on a floating platform, effortlessly gliding across Attilan’s gigantic version of an airport, one of three according to the minister!
Her enthusiasm made up for the delay of the security checks and the visual disorientation: Unknown architecture was still very futuristic Cloudsdale like, but actual buildings seemed to go in for scale and more elaborate patterns. Lightning bolts and interlocking diamonds curled around hundreds of miles of column and wall, ships and platforms slotting easily into and out of bays. And then there were the Unknowns themselves!
Twilight tried to keep from staring, but the crowds below were mesmerising. Horns, scales, wings, tails, even the occasional flash of fire or electricity! Every creature in creation seemed to be crowded into at least one body in the crowds filling the terminals beneath her.
Despite her fascination, Twilight felt a guilty unease. Even at a distance the clusters of Unknown citizenry were…a lot to take in. And some mutations, like Gorgon’s, were clearly defensive.
Then there was Black Bolt, the voice of the Unknown nation, forever dependant on his council as interpreters because his voice alone was powerful enough to split atoms.
Crystal had tried to be humble about it but there had been a glint of familial pride in her eyes when she told Twilight all about their first meeting with the Fantastic Family, where her brother-in-law had effortlessly downed the Thing, one of the strongest ponies in Equestria. And every single one of his subjects, from adolescence onward, could be as potentially powerful.
Twilight watched an uninitiated Unknown filly snuggle against her metallic, gazelle-like older sister and felt guiltier for allowing even a flicker of the kind of paranoia that had driven these people into centuries of hiding.
She frowned as she followed the line of fascinating creatures to its end. The floating walkway ended in a heavily armoured series of towers, pale blue-green energy forming thin walls between them. Some of the Unknowns at the front were clearly yelling at armoured figures holding up warning signs. Twilight looked around, now able to make out even more on just about every walkway and balcony. They looked like checkpoints.
“Something troubling you, Princess?” Gorgon rumbled. He still sounded so polite, like he’d offer to stomp whatever it was to death for her.
“Not really,” Twilight said, hurriedly trying to clear images of Trixie from her mind, just in case. “I, uh, maybe I should be the one asking you. There seems to be…um…”
“An increase in security, yes. Good eyes, your majesty! Colony protocol is to go into lockdown except for the most important of ventures during a relocation.”
“Right,” Twilight acknowledged, then blanched. “Oh! I hope this isn’t all because of me! I mean, my visit! I’d hate to think...”
“Rest assured, it is not,” Gorgon chuckled, the platform wobbling slightly. “And I would like to also assure you that this is not some authoritarian display! While the king’s decision must be obeyed, it is an unexpected one and the city has the absolute right to voice that displeasure!”
Now he sounded like he was a few seconds away from jumping off the platform to join them, if not start the revolution himself.
“At least you’re looking out for them,” Twilight smiled. “Like Princess Celestia would.”
“You flatter us!” Gorgon bowed. “Much of the central city is fully operational, so you and Crystal should be able to make the most of your visit! And speaking of…”
Twilight turned as the platform rounded a corner, her wings flaring in delighted surprise.
While passing spaces were full of armoured Unknown guards, they were now approaching an ornate balcony.
Twilight felt a rush of embarrassment as the columns and patterns around the balcony lit up in shades of purple, just for her, but it was easily smoothed over by who was waving at her from the small crowd. Crystal of course, and a few Unknowns, some of them clearly children, who were waving banners with the Equestrian flag.
Twilight’s smile wavered slightly at the sight of the Unknown sitting on his haunches next to Crystal, forelegs folded. He was an aquatic stag-like figure, purple tubing twisting around his body to connect to some sort of backpack. An oxygen supply, Twilight figured. What was throwing her, besides the cold expression on the Unknown’s face, was his purple swimming trunks. Their function was as obvious as the backpack, but still…
“Hi!” Crystal exclaimed, galloping up to meet them. “She still in one piece, Gorgon? Princess Celestia’s going to be pretty annoyed with us if you’ve been overly friendly again.”
“Have a care, fair cousin!” the giant guffawed, wrapping one of his tree trunk legs around Crystal in an embrace. The princess tucked all her legs in so she was braced but nicely limp, less likely to be almost crushed by the affection. Twilight got the impression this came from long experience.
“Are you an Avatar?!” one of the grinning kids asked excitedly.
“Uh…not yet?” Twilight grinned sheepishly. She could’ve sworn the green guy’s lip was curling.
“Yeah, sorry about this,” Crystal smiled as she made her way out of Gorgon’s grip. “Can’t tell your class all about the Element of Magic coming to town and not make a day of it.”
“Class?” Twilight blinked. “You didn’t tell me you were a teacher!”
“Huh? Oh, no!” Crystal coloured slightly as Twilight began to accept some banners and pictures of herself and the other Elements. (This advanced semi-extra-terrestrial race had crayons, apparently!) “Nothing like that. Just some self sufficiency stuff.”
“Still,” Twilight grinned, levitating the children’s gifts into a neat bundle for her saddlebags. “Thank you very much, every…one!”
She was keenly aware of how obvious and hasty her uncertainty had been, but wasn’t sure that was why green-backpack-fish-trunks-person was, what, mad at her? She’d only been here about forty-something minutes!
“Gorgon, if you wouldn’t mind?” Crystal indicated the class then followed Twilight’s gaze. “Oh, hey, this is Triton! I told you about Triton, right? Say hi, Triton.”
“Welcome aboard,” Triton said with the sort of enthusiasm Spike had reserved for washing behind his fins when he was five years old.
“Ah, ignore our minister for exploration!” Gorgon boomed, hefting three of Crystal’s students onto his back with one sweep. “Someknown is simply grumpy because their relocation duties include examining the colony’s pumping stations.” He leered, bearing tombstone teeth. “For starters.”
Triton smirked. “Looking to trade places, cousin?”
Gorgon laughed so heartily his shoulders almost shot the trio on his back into orbit. They loved it.
“It’s, ah, very nice to meet you,” Twilight tried.
“Hope we can chat soon,” Triton sneered, eyes drilling into hers, “when I’m not so busy.”
“That’ll be a long time coming, Tri,” Crystal beamed, throwing a foreleg around the paralysed Twilight’s own. “Me and Twilight are just gonna hang out, y’know, do filly things.”
“We are?” Twilight asked, then winced at a sudden increase of pressure and what felt like a warning buzz of static.
“Ah, our cue to leave,” Gorgon said, stomping around to take the head of the class. “Now who wants to do something far more interesting, such as listen to the time Minister Gorgon made a tent out of Wicked Wing the Notorious?!”
“Me!” the entire class crowed.
“Goooor!” Crystal called in a rising snarl through her smiling teeth.
“I mean, took Lockjaw out for a nice, sensible walk…” Gorgon lead the class around a throng of armoured guards, then lowered his head to whisper, lungs still too big not to broadcast, bless him. “That accidentally wound up in the dread domain of Wicked Wing the Notorious!”
Twilight smiled then flinched as Triton clapped his hooves. A few guards emerged from various checkpoints to loosely circle her and Crystal, who was still smiling.
“Keep an eye on the princess,” Triton muttered, never taking his off Twilight.
“Princess Twilight is a diplomat, Tri!” Crystal chuckled.
“Actually--” Twilight began, because her mother had raised her right, then bit her lip at another burst of static.
“I mean, what, she’s going to kidnap me in my own room? She’s gonna be waaaaay too fascinated by my geology collections and stand up math routine!”
“You have a routine?!” Twilight grinned. Crystal gave her a ‘seriously?’ sort of expression that neither she or Triton really noticed.
“Oh, it’s for her protection actually, cousin,” Triton smirked, “but you make a good point. I should watch out for you. Can’t be too careful during a lockdown.”
Twilight felt an odd sensation in her spine that almost felt like her own Spider-Sense as the Unknown’s eyes flashed…wait, had that actually been a flash…?
“You know how important family is to us,” Triton said leadenly, and she knew he was talking directly to her. He turned in an imperious swish of fins and stalked off towards a nearby checkpoint.
***
Twilight blinked at Crystal. “Did I…do anything?”
“You came to have a totally laid back Attilanian experience!” Crystal beamed, spinning her around so hard she almost wrenched Twilight’s foreleg out of its socket.
The guards followed them, keeping formation but giving Twilight the impression of being stalked by heavily armed jungle cats trying out a new hunting technique.
“Just you, me and the cosy confines of my rooms!" Crystal continued, tone a bit too bright and breezy. “Hay, maybe we’ll get really crazy and do some equations! What do you say?”
“What kind of equations?” Twilight grinned.
It dawned on her that Crystal’s smile was not that enthusiastic. She looked around, trying to look like she wasn’t trying to see past their escorts. She hadn’t been here long but even though they seemed to be bypassing most of the terminals security there was still a lot of it.
Or more accurately a lot of things that weren’t for security purposes seemed to be shut down. The atmosphere, now she was feeling for it, felt like congestion in Canterlot, and that was just the Unknowns waiting to get past. Others were asking very vehement questions, even snapping into the guards’ faceless helmets. Attilan security went in for creepy visors made of one-way mirrors, making it easy to feel like you were arguing with nothing.
And gently pulsing cables winding from their gauntlets up their legs suggested this was because the creatures behind those mirrors were content to let you rant until you gave them an excuse to use their…what? Whips? Tasers?
“Oh, there’s just so much to show you!” Crystal trilled, and Twilight began to get a good idea why she was smiling and, well, trilling so much as the guards’ body language began to loosen up. Just a couple of silly little princesses doing silly princess things together.
“I was hoping we could go over the itinerary together,” she said hurriedly. “In your room! All day! At length!”
“…really?” Crystal squinted, then realised and joined in nodding a little too much. “Good, because that’s the plan! We know how to party in Attilan, let me tell ya!”
One of the guards snorted derisively under their visor. A colleague nudged them.
“I, um, I’d like to discuss your architecture too!” Twilight glanced up as they finally cleared the terminal building. She looked around at the miles of blue-green force field shimmering from practically every street. “It’s very…architectural!”
Crystal nodded, dragging her towards a street. The guards quickly veered back into position to keep them surrounded. “I’ll order some decaf milkshakes and we can go over some juicy omnibuses together!”
“None for me thanks, I’m driving!” Twilight shut her eyes in self-disbelief, but they weren’t being electro-flayed in the street, so.
She glanced up at the holographic screens, which moving from building to building, with genuine interest. She couldn’t read the language the Unknowns used (yet, and it looked like they used more than one! Fascinating!) but given the number of times a lightning bolt insignia or a picture of Medusa and Black Bolt repeated she guessed relocation protocol included ‘Please be patient’ PSAs.
“Ooh, know where you can get some really good milkshakes and an engrossing journey into the white-knuckle world of Atillanian architectonics?”
“We don’t have knu--”
“The Royal Xeriscape!” Crystal decreed with girlish glee, swinging their strange procession around a corner and away from another checkpoint. Twilight noticed a few Unknowns pretending not to look at them, but with an air of expectancy. One of the large domes that decorated the nearby rooftops was getting closer, pulsing with green light.
“Oh hey, nice saddlebags, how attached are you?”
Twilight blinked. “I, uh…”
She watched a group of young Unknowns, some un-mutated, hiding behind a column as some guards marched a nervous looking butterfly-ram in the opposite direction and made up her mind, eyes narrowing. “I can always get more books.”
“Cool,” Crystal said, eyes grim but smile a lot more genuine.
They passed between the twin waterfalls of the Xeriscape’s entrance and down a flower lined path away from the shuttered entrance. It got a lot more complicated after that.
“Alright, I’m here, I’m…” Spider-Pony swung the corner of a building, releasing his web-line to send himself slicing almost half a block and catching himself on a semaphore tower. He squinted his lenses. “…not sure what I’m looking at.”
“Get away from me!” the Stilt-Mage hollered, galloping in circles around an apartment building.
A safe in his field shattered a chimney as he turned to find the Horseshoe Torch smirking at him, yelped, spun around, and almost collided with a surfing Ice-Pony. He yelped again, involuntarily retracing his hind leg stilts and performing the world’s tallest breakdance to send himself galloping down a free street...to come face to face with Spider-Pony.
“Agh! Not another one!” Stilt-Mage surprised them by deliberately lower his stilts this time, passing under the web Spidey had spun between buildings. “Where’s Deerdevil?! He knows the rules! I’m a one super per case stallion!”
“I feel very sorry for Deerdevil all of a sudden,” Ice-Pony murmured, watching pedestrians at a stop light look up as one of Stilt-Mage’s hydraulic hooves stamped into the space between two waiting cabs.
“Stop looking at me like that,” the Torch smirked at Spidey.
“C’mon, man.”
“What?! It’s just Stilt-Mage.”
“Exactly! It’s mean. Hey, Rocky.”
“Hey, Pete.”
“Out of my way!” Stilt-Mage yelled, stomping down Beaver Street, scattering carts and civilians. “Just need to reach the water! Liberty! Solvency!”
There was a jarring metallic sound as his left foreleg stilt crushed the roof of an armoured car, while his right hind leg tore through the awning of an off-duty hansom cab, inadvertently turning both into roller-skates.
“Oh no! Oh no! Oh noooo…!”
Stilt-Mage had the presence of mind to retract his remaining stilts, drawing out the precarious window for keeping himself upright, but physics began to take over, pushing the vehicles in opposite directions. The cab’s driver struggled desperately with his reins, saved from being dragged to death by a thin beam of flame that severed them, allowing him to bolt for the relative safety of a nearby alleyway.
“And you haven’t just melted him to the street because…?” Spidey asked as all three heroes dived towards the panicking crowds.
“You were just complaining that we were being mean.”
“There were two of you and it’s the Stilt-Mage.”
“Also, y’know, just complaining.”
“Got a lot on my mind, okay?!”
“Yeah, all the different ways to clutch your Afghan, which to stare at now, wall or ceiling, what you’re not gonna eat tonight, and the oh so many meanings of Coloratura lyrics…”
“There’s no Coloratura lyrics!” Spidey snapped, swinging a little filly out of harm’s way. He looked askance as they soared towards the safety of a park. “That’s phase three…”
“There’s phases now,” the Torch deadpanned, forelegs flamed off so he could ferry the filly’s parents after them.
“It’s like there’s a part of her still in the apartment that way, y’know?” Spidey’s ears folded, staring forlornly into nothing and completely oblivious to the armoured car demolishing a fountain.
“You see what I’m dealing with here?!” the Torch snapped to the air, gesturing at his drooping roommate.
“You see what I’m dealing with here?!” Ice-Pony shot back, surfing a bridge between Stilt-Mage’s legs and trying to conjure ice walls, keeping the skates off the still too packed sidewalks.
“Wait-wait-wait, think I got it, think I got it!” Stilt-Mage thrust his right foreleg stilt down, fracturing asphalt and launching a fire hydrant into a geyser, tipping himself precariously forward but hauling his right hind leg out of the cab. “Yes!”
He rocked backwards, wrenching his left foreleg out of the armoured car, which now looked more like a used soda can rolling towards rubberneckers at a subway kiosk. The cab had followed the ascending stilt for a beat before slipping free, and tumbled to the street, shattering into a small tidal wave of wreckage. Creatures on the sidewalk ducked, then looked up to find their imminent demise suspended in a web-net.
“Okay, this is getting dumb,” the Torch said, landing on the roof of the car, and cranking his temperature real high, real fast. Smoke and an acrid stench burst from the tires as they became a snail trail of goop, the momentum practically leaking out of the runaway van as it began to glue itself to the street.
The Torch was tossed off as it lurched to a halt a reasonable few inch from the subway crowd, casually flipping himself right way ‘round and dusting himself off as he hovered in mid-air. “It’s the Stilt-Mage for star’s sake!”
“That’s right!” the villain called over his shoulder as he stomped past an office block, waving a clenched hydraulic hoof. “Stilt-Mage! Hay yeah!”
The safes in his field swung with him, shattering a window. “Hey!” protested a startled zebra, staring out of the new hole in her office.
Stilt-Mage flinched, covering his mouth with his waving hoof. “Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, ma’am!”
Then he looked at the industrial strength safe. A deranged smile began to creep over his face.
“Uh, guys?” Spidey said as he perched on a streetlight, joining Rocky and Johnny in surrounding their quarry. “Spider-Sense tingling.”
Ice-Pony squinted. “Wait, really?”
“I mean, we know you’re bush league, but it’s only--”
The Torch never finished the backhanded compliment. He turned in time to see another of the safes barrelling towards him, and suddenly the world was dancing planets and tweety birds. He sprawled in the wreckage of a stall selling sunglasses, blinking as a pair slid over his eyes.
Spidey was too stunned to react as fast as usual and wound up inadvertently jumping into the safe hurled at him, whirling away to crash-land in a bookshop’s outdoor display. Ice-Pony tried to swing his bridge out of the path of the remaining two, but they shattered it at both ends, tossing him face first into an ice cream cart.
“STILT-MAGE!” the villain bellowed, rearing even higher as his weaponized bounty orbited his head. “HAY YEAH!”
28
“Wait!” the last guard protested. “I’m on your side! Let’s--”
“Let’s go,” Crystal snarled. Twilight’s amber froze him in the act of waving his hooves.
The Alicorn winced, looking around at the tableau of amber and ice encased guards. “Ooh, sorry, should we have left one to interrogate, or…?”
“They can tell us everything at their trial,” Crystal said, checking the streets to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. She was giving off some very Dash and Rarity vibes right now and Twilight wasn’t sure how to process that.
Crystal blinked as Twilight teleported the frozen guards into the middle of the Xeriscape’s outdoor fountain.
“It’s art?” The princess shrugged. “Noknown should notice them for a while, is the point! Crystal, what’s going on?”
“Short version? Pretty sure Attilan’s been invaded. C’mon!”
Crystal took her shoulder, push-running them further into the maze of foliage.
“So this lockdown...”
“Is to keep us locked up, yeah. Look, Black Bolt and Medusa take security way too seriously but this…it’s not…y’know?”
“No, but I trust you,” Twilight assured, breaking away so they could gallop alongside.
Crystal blinked. “…really?”
“Yeah!”
Crystal smiled a little drunkenly as she led Twilight through some bushes.
It was replaced by a scowl as they peered out at a blue-green glow further up the street. “Shock, they expanded! We’ll have to take the long way ‘round…”
“The long way where?” Twilight whispered, holding out a hoof. “Exact coordinates if you can!”
“Don’t know the city that well,” Crystal muttered, eyeing her hoof uncertainly but still grasping it. She waved at a shark fin shaped building on the horizon. “That’s this district’s central bureaucracy. How close can you get us?”
“We’re about to find out.”
Some passing guards looked over at what might have been a purple flash, but ignored it to focus on some quality loafing.
***
Crystal and Twilight blinked back into existence on one of a nearby building’s balconies, then flickered into the shadow of a broadcasting tower, each jump bringing the shark fin closer.
“Who is it?” Twilight whispered as they quickly ducked behind a roof exit to avoid a checkpoint erected on a bridge between two buildings. “Who’s invading you, I mean?”
“We’ll find out I guess.” Crystal beckoned and lead the pony to the edge of the roof and out of sight. “Do we have to be so high up?”
“Figured it’d be the quickest way to get close without accidentally hitting a checkpoint, sorry,” Twilight winced. They ducked behind what looked like a futuristic conning tower to avoid a guard at an office building window, but a surreptitious peek confirmed he’d gone to sleep leaning against the wall to look tough. “I mean, I’m from Canterlot, I’m used to heights, but I swear this isn’t some hero thing.”
“That’s weird, right?” Crystal asked, conjuring a cloud-bridge so they could quickly jog to the cover of a larger building. “How that keeps happening, with rooftops and stuff?”
“Right?!” Twilight giggled. “Hay, I have my own balloon and I don’t get the appeal.”
“And some of them are so into it, too! All that posing on gargoyles. I’ve been able to wind-ride since I was, like, eight and that just looks crazy to me. Dunno how all those parkour people do it! Don’t they run out of breath?”
“There’s actually some really fascinating breathing techniques flying athletes do to conserve oxygen--”
“Cool, but their plan is still, y’know, gravity vs a rope. Some of them don’t even have ropes!”
“True, but maybe that’s what all the gargoyles are for? Catching their breath?”
“Huh, that makes sense, actually.”
They gripped hooves again, three more teleports leaving them with just a roof garden between them and the suddenly much more imposing façade of the central bureaucracy tower.
“This, uh, might be where we have to get serious,” Crystal mumbled sheepishly, looking down past the ornate hedges (even Attilan’s shrubberies were kind of futuristic!) at an elaborate maze of checkpoints choking the streets. “If we can get inside, I mean.”
“When,” Twilight said, squeezing her hoof.
“Right,” Crystal smiled. “Do you want to take your saddlebags off or something?”
“Uh…” Twilight flexed a wing, testing the straps. “Actually, could I leave them inside? When we get in. On someknown’s desk or something. Oooh, do they have a mail room? Maybe a lost and found box?”
Crystal just looked at her.
“It’s just…” Twilight shrugged haplessly. “I’ll know they’re somewhere safe, where people respect books. And I brought you some perfume!”
“Really?” Crystal blinked. “Aww, you didn’t have to!”
“Did worry custom’s might think it was a bio-weapon but, well, I was with your cousin, so…”
“Yeah, Gor’s a sweetheart like that. Can you get us inside that window?”
“Which one? Floor, I mean, there are…there are an awful lot…”
“See the silver strip? Second one, with the blue highlights? The blacked-out row, yeah!”
“Provided there isn’t a desk or load bearing beam in the way. Hold tight!”
***
They both instinctively shut their eyes as energy gathered around Twilight’s horn, felt the rushing nothing and then the slap of physics returning. They hadn’t hit anything, but the surprise of reality and light change still sent them both sprawling.
The two lay there for a few rapid heartbeats, frozen in childhood uncertainty. But nothing happened.
“It’s the weekend,” Crystal whispered as they clambered to all fours. “And honestly, they seem to have left this building alone. Don’t think the fake guards can operate the cerebros!”
“The what?”
“The guards must be fake! I mean, it’s mostly a feeling but a lot of district guards come from there so we can make sure there’s a rapport, y’know? But the checkpoints are so…so cold, and--”
“No, sorry, I meant what is it they don’t know how to operate?” Twilight turned to follow Crystal’s pointing hoof and her eyes lit up at the sight of wall mounted glass cases of… “Thinking engines?! Is that what those are?! You guys have thinking engines?!”
“Shhh!” Crystal hissed, one hoof to her lips as she trotted towards a desk.
“Sorry!” Twilight looked all around, her vision becoming sharper from sheer enthusiasm as she realised what the strange lighting bolt themed turntable things with glasses panes at every desk must be for. “I just mean…you guys have thinking engines?!”
“Uh, that’s what Reed calls them?” Crystal shrugged, sliding tabs out of the desk. “I dunno. We’ve had them for forever. I mostly watch movies on mine.”
“You have your own thinking engine?!” Twilight clapped her hooves over her mouth, but a S.W.A.T. team wasn’t crashing through the windows so she kept her smile. “Sorry! But…wow!”
“Would you…like…one?”
“…not sure I’d know what to do with it,” Twilight admitted, ears folding.
“You guys must’ve some magic thing though, right?” Despite her urgent furrowing Crystal clearly felt a little bad. “Reed’s lab is amazing! Didn’t the Iron Mage put something out? Johnny was complaining about how cool it was. You got one for Spike?”
“Oh, that.” Twilight waved a hoof absently, marvelling at the alien, streamlined—boxes? Statues? Towers?—behind the glass. “That’s just magi-tech. No offence to Dr. Rivers or Mr. Spark, but a lot of it’s just putting the right…spell into the right… Huh…”
She thought about it, specifically the mirror in the palace of the Crystal Empire and the half completed gateway blueprints in her basement. She’d even received some of the components a few weeks ago and was waiting on some crystals! But now that Crystal mentioned it, wasn’t that sort of the same thing?
All that metal, silicates designed to ferry information in a specific way, like casting a spell. She’d been using geometry to estimate where exactly to stream her and Crystal’s…information as her teleporting reduced it to light. Wasn’t that just a more complex version of how Spark Inspirations had made a killing storing the information of dragon metal on Spike’s MAGiPod?
“Anywhere I can dump my saddlebags?” Twilight asked, deciding she had bigger priorities than letting her brain melt from how small the world might really be.
“Triton’s office is through there,” Crystal said, waving at an ornate doorway at the end of the room.
“Will he mind? I don’t think he likes me…”
“I don’t think that was him.” Crystal was pulling tabs out without closing them now and finally slammed one shut, squeezing her eyes shut. “Shock!”
Twilight froze, then finished shrugging off her saddlebags, respectfully sliding them into a space between Triton’s thunderbolt themed controls and what seemed to be his in-tray. She trotted carefully up to Crystal, who was now leaning her forehead against the wall, and placed a hoof on the other princess’ shoulder.
“Sorry,” the Unknown whispered.
“Is that why you haven’t involved your family?” Twilight asked. “You think these invaders might have replaced them somehow?”
“Or brainwashed them, or possessed them, or maybe I woke up in the wrong reality this morning and now some evil anti-Crystal is running around…”
Crystal breathed sharply, elemental energy dancing in her mane. Once she was under control she turned sorrowfully to Twilight. “I’m sorry. It’s, uh, it’s been a week.”
“I can relate,” Twilight smiled.
“Yeah?”
“Not important!” Twilight shook her head hurriedly. “Well, I mean, not as important. What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”
“Triton’s all access pass,” Crystal said, wiping her eyes before removing more tabs. Twilight watched, fascinated as the Unknown simply brushed a spot on the structure and the tabs slid out, each holding at least four rows of tiny black, blue, silver or amber…teeny fork…thingies. “It’s this purple and gold rune, looks sort of like someknown had a coughing fit while drawing the Boltagon family crest. I’ll need it to get to the Maze.”
“Your prison,” Twilight mused, remembering the description from a week ago.
***
The need for secrecy meant the Unknowns had to develop an extremely specific approach to a penal system.
The absolute worst that could happen to an ordinary Unknown was doing something so selfish or irresponsible they were banished from their home colony to another, with the understanding that, should they commit another offence of that scale, they’d get one last colony before being banished to the nearest wasteland to fend for themselves. Three strikes, then you were literally out.
The most mundane offenders, Unknowns who’d had too much to drink during a holiday and the like, got thrown in a cell for a night and would have to, as Twilight understood it, live there until their community service had been served.
This was the principle that governed the Mazes, the colonies elaborate prisons, effectively small cities within the floating cities. You were less likely to commit an affront against your neighbour’s property if you’d been separated from your own for even a day, so the cell that would be your world for the duration of your sentence would be spartan but comfortable.
Space and sense of self were key to the Unknowns’ identity, understandable when you’ve been raised in a world you can walk to the edge of in a few hours. If your crime wasn’t serious enough to deserve the banishment system, you would still be separated from what was yours in the Maze. The winding, interconnecting (sometimes even moving) corridors would have rooms, libraries, even small gardens or swimming pools, but even with a few communal gathering places you wouldn’t be part of society.
You definitely were not in some elaborate hotel. For starters it was your job to help the staff maintain those spaces, or you’d be stuck in your room for weeks. Only when your sentence had been shortened or served would a jailer come for you and hand you the rune that would guide you out and back to the real world.
And for the worst, like Crystal’s deranged cousin, one of a few Unknowns too dangerous to be foisted on the undeserving world below, there were the science-cells.
Twilight suppressed a shudder, because that sounded like it’d be the perfect trap for her.
Even if you weren’t a genius the cells were constructed to randomly generate amazing puzzles, backed by hypnotic effects that meant you wouldn’t be able to tear yourself away. If you did solve a puzzle, which could take years, there’d be another waiting for you. That would be your life until nature took its course. This was the kindness Unknown justice would do you if you were too dangerous to live, but they felt too sorry for you to simply end you.
***
“Okay!” Twilight tried to beam. “Why are we going to jail?”
“We’re not,” Crystal said. “I don’t have the right to drag you into this. I feel bad just using you to break in here. I’m not even sure it’s Gorgon who picked you up! Listen, when I let the prisoners out, I’m going to tell them to head to the shelters, I want you to--”
“Crystal!” Twilight snapped, grinning. “Come on.”
They smiled at each other.
“You said that you don’t think that was your other cousin,” Twilight resumed as she began to scan the desk/cabinet thing with her magic, “and that the guards have to be fakes. What are we looking for there? And what’s in the Maze that can help?”
“Lockjaw,” Crystal sighed.
Twilight blinked. “…your dog is in jail? You guys put pets in jail?!”
Crystal flinched defensively. “No! I mean, it’s sort of like a timeout…yeah, okay, sure, we put pets in jail. Sometimes!”
“And this lockdown isn't like those times?” Twilight prompted.
She flexed her field and the entire structure unleashed all it’s tabs at once. A purple and gold shape flickered for their attention at the foot of one strut.
“So easy it’s the last place anyknown would think to look!” Crystal smirked with vicious triumph, snatching the pass in her mouth before slipping it into her collar. “That’s the Triton I known! Which was one of the major clues. The cerebros, the shelter doors, transit…we pick our guards from districts so everyknown knows each other and there’s less tensions in situations like this.”
“My brother would love that,” Twilight said admiringly.
“Thanks! But okay, so maybe someknown skips the odd course and forgets how to start up a mag-tram. But closing whole streets because public transport isn’t moving? Only turning on the checkpoints? Ignoring the cerebros built into every desk? Hala in the heavens, the Quantum Sector’s still dark!”
“I get the picture,” Twilight said as they made their way down the deserted halls. “And then the guards start doing the strong and silent routine, even though they’re friends with everyknown?”
She tried to suppress a smile. She was getting the hang of the lingo!
“Exactly,” Crystal muttered, beckoning her around a corner, “the relocation came out of nowhere too.”
“Your cousin Gorgon said that on the way in, so he’s probably, uh, still him if that helps.”
“Little bit!”
“So we’re really doing whatever this is without him?”
Crystal smirked wryly. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had save the entire colony single-hooved. What about your friends? I’m gonna try getting in touch with the Fantastic Family, but we could use any help we can get.”
“I was the last one to get picked up for the exchange,” Twilight said apologetically, “and Spike’s staying in Ponyville. If you could get me some paper I could enchant a note, but even if no one noticed an origami swan trailing sparkles—”
“Awww!” Crystal cooed.
“—we’re so far off the coast of Equestria it’d probably run out of juice and drop into the ocean before it came anywhere near Canterlot. Our best bet is probably still the Fantastic Family, maybe the E.U.P. I know some codes.”
“Wait…” Crystal jogged to a halt in front of a doorway, pushing it open onto a dark room as she looked at Twilight. “The coast of Equestria?! We’re that far away?”
“King Black Bolt didn’t tell you?”
“Black Bolt’s sick.”
A beat.
“As in he ate something that disagreed with him,” Twilight ventured uncertainly, “or is this an ideological disagreement…?”
“As in bedridden!” Crystal snorted, blowing her fringe up like a banner of indignation as they walked into some kind of maintenance space. Pipes and plating surrounded them in the shadows. “Allegedly.”
“You think the invaders might have…incapacitated him?”
“Maybe. You’ve got to understand, Bolt isn’t invincible but--”
“But he’s a living energy capacitor,” Twilight said, nodding. “He’s the definition of resilient.”
“Yeah. If they said he’d had to recharge after exerting himself I’d almost have bought it, but sick…and then he initiates a relocation? Sometimes research teams on the surface come too close, but this feels like someone trying to catch us off guard in the rush. And they told us we’d be in the middle of the Mediterranean, not close enough to Equestria to pick up a princess!”
“Who passed the order?” Twilight asked as Crystal began checking different plates. “Wait, are we going to have to climb down one of these?!”
“Secret passageway into the Maze.” The Unknown looked up at the Alicorn’s expression and her own went a little sheepish. “It’s perfectly clean!”
“If you say so! But yeah, who gave the order? Maybe that’s where the invaders started. Replacing somep--whoops, someknown in your inner circle.”
There was a hiss as Crystal pulled up the right grate. Pipes began to rearrange themselves and the two of them turned to see the shadows of a doorway forming in the wall behind them.
“Medusa gave the order,” Crystal said quietly as blue-green lamps began to bathe their faces in an unsettling glow.
Twilight was quiet. Something about this situation was beginning to feel familiar even though she couldn’t place it, and anyway, it was being washed away by a wave of concern for her friend and the implications for her sister.
“Has she been out of character at all?” she asked eventually. “If someone’s trying to control her actions then maybe we could--”
“Like she’d listen to anyknown else,” Crystal scoffed. She turned to Twilight guilty. “I mean, she was distant after we got back from the summit but, well, I did, y’know, throw a snowball right in her face.” She winced. “In front of all our friends and colleagues and a lot of strangers.”
“Distant how?” Twilight’s brow furrowed. “Did she lock Lockjaw up as well?”
“I only found out because Gorgon bought me the paperwork!” Crystal snarled, some static dancing briefly between her teeth. “Karnak told me he was going to explain why it was an overreaction!”
“Did Lockjaw start acting oddly around Medusa?” Twilight pressed.
“He’s always been overenthusiastic! We fight about it all the time, but she’s the queen, I get it! But…” Crystal frowned into the shadows. “Yeah, maybe… She’s been spending all this time with Black Bolt. I mean, naturally, but that’s when everyknown started avoiding each other. He barked at Triton a lot and Triton’s the chilliest Un you’ll ever meet, I promise! He kept trying to sniff Medusa during a public address and knocked her into a bush!”
“So if the person looking after your king isn’t you sister…” Twilight prompted as the Unknown tried to get her snickering under control.
“Yeah…” Crystal sighed. “My duties are pretty minor compared to everyknown else’s but the council keeps in contact at least once a day. Medusa’s been outside the palace maybe twice, Gorgon’s busy trying to keep the city from imploding, and ‘Triton’ keeps wandering off into the shadows. Karnak’s just…gone! He said he was taking a pilgrimage to consider Black Bolt’s problem but…but I found his knapsack in his quarters yesterday.”
“We’ll look for him,” Twilight assured, “but could he have just left it behind?”
“Karnak never forgets anything!” Crystal’s voice hitched and she sighed with a trembling smile, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s one of his best worst features.”
Nothing but the sterile electrical hum of the passageway. Twilight put a hoof on Crystal’s shoulder.
“Your family sounds pretty cool,” she said eventually. “I’d like to meet them when all this is over.”
“Thank you,” Crystal whispered.
“Alright!” Twilight tried popping her neck like Applejack would do and completely failed to produce a sound. “What do we do first, Princess Crystal?”
“Well Princess Twilight,” Crystal said grimly, clutching Triton’s all access pass like a weapon, “we’re making this up as we go but first, we’re going to sneak into the Maze. Then we’re going to get my shocking dog back.”
29
“Plan!” the Torch yelled, ducking another safe. “Plan now, please!”
“Don’t talk to me!” Spider-Pony called back. “Yike!”
The ledge he’d been perched on shattered with a cartoonishly metal sound.
“Finally!” the Stilt-Mage yelled to the world. “I’m finally going to show you overrated busybodies why you shouldn’t underestimate me! Today, you losers, tomorrow, Deerdevil! Then the day after that, ALL OF EQUESTRIA!”
He began to cackle like a lunatic, the swinging safes’ flight paths becoming more erratic.
“Whoa!” The Torch hugged a wall to let a safe narrowly whip past him, leaving a blackened outline. “Seriously, somepony do something!”
“How do you plan for Stilt-Mage being dangerous?!” Spidey snapped mid-somersault.
“YOU DON’T!” the Z-lister snarled, hammering a bus stop just to prove he could.
All it would take would be one good swing for one of the most notorious glass jaws in the business, but that asteroid field of wall safes, to say nothing of Stilt-Mage’s fraying sanity, was keeping the heroes too busy moving to even be held at bay.
“Throw a fireball or something,” Spidey called, jumping so the missile coming for him staved in a metal fence instead of his skull. “These things have gotta be insured!”
“I can’t,” Johnny snapped, narrowly twisting between two safes.
“Why the hay not?!”
“Because of the oxygen tanks!”
“Wait, that’s what those are?” Spidey ducked behind an abandoned cab and squinted. At first he’d assumed it had just been some try-hard upgrade to the stilt-suit, a desperate attempt to make the costume look cool. But yeah, that looked like a diving rig.
“Elegance in simplicity,” Stilt-Mage crowed, demolishing the cab and forcing the duo to retreat even further up the street. “My problem's always been getting away before you clowns show up. So I figured this time I’ll have the best exit strategy: go where you can’t follow!”
The Torch squinted. “Into the river…?”
“Huh…” Spidey peered over his shoulder. A ferry terminal was already in view a few blocks up, the air starting to taste of salt. “That’s…actually not bad.”
“FLATTERY WON’T SAVE YOU!”
The heroes dived in opposite directions as two safes formed a hammer to shatter the asphalt, the other two chasing them.
“You aaaaaaaall laughed at me!” Stilt-Mage grinned, bug eyed and practically drooling. “Well who’s the fool now?!”
“Says the monologuer,” came a cheerful voice.
The Stilt-Mage’s suit made a hydraulic noise as he craned his neck to look down between his stilts. And at the Ice-Pony, smiling up at him from under him and leaning against his right foreleg.
“No,” Stilt-Mage said in a very small, very distant voice. “No, please…”
“Boop,” Ice-Pony said cheerfully, tapping the stilt. Ice crackled all around it like a wrapping paper commercial. Rocky spun on one hind leg, hoof gunning the remaining stilts. “Boop, boop, boop!”
“Please…”
“Boop,” Ice-Pony concluded, gently clapping his hooves.
Each frozen stilt erupted, Stilt-Mage screaming in terror as he plunged for the hard, unforgiving…thick, soft snow that suddenly covered the hard, unforgiving asphalt. It grew an extra layer, wrapping around him like the segments of a snowpony as it gently pushed him upright.
“And that is how--” The satisfied look vanished from Rocky’s ice coated face as he looked up and ducked. “YIPE!”
One by one the four wall safes plummeted out of the air to slam into his snow, narrowly missing Ice-Pony and the petrified Stilt-Mage.
“And just like that I’ve forgotten my line,” Rocky muttered, placing a hoof to his chest. His lips creaked a little as he smirked at his converging colleagues. “Buuuut I think we’ll all remember how I totally scooped you two.”
“Scooped,” the Horseshoe Torch tried to nonchalantly scoff, without sounding like he was having some sort of hipster coughing fit. “What’re you, working for the Daily Planet in 1942?”
“I’m an accountant,” the Ice-Pony said with the sort of reserved deadpan Attitudes like them recognised as a relished line drop.
“Don’t move, you filthy mutie!”
The trio turned to see an M.E.U.P. detail approaching. A Unicorn sergeant at the front had his horn levelled at Rocky, fumbling to bring his crossbow up as two bull guards tried to manoeuvre a security wagon around the safe shaped new potholes littering the road.
“Why did I ever think about retiring?” Ice-Pony smirked to himself, expertly rolling his crystalline covered blue eyes.
“That’s right, mouth off! Gimme an excuse to--”
“To tell on yourself?” Spider-Pony somersaulted over his friends, lenses narrowed as he landed between the two Unicorns. “He’s with me.”
“They’re with me,” the Torch said, floating up to both shield the two vigilantes, who didn’t have the right kind of Q rating to get away with doing the M.E.U.P.’s job for them, and make it clear he was talking to the descending Pegasus captain, not her jackass sergeant.
“Holster it, Riot Act,” she scowled. “And be in my office when we get back.”
“B-but Captain--”
“My office,” the Pegasus almost snarled, wings flaring without looking at him. She looked the three heroes over, then Stilt-Mage, who’s lip was almost more droopy than his ears. “Well, you left the evidence intact at least.”
“Yeah, can’t speak for my colleagues,” Johnny grinned a golden sheathed grin, hooves on his hips, “but I pride myself on being the spirit of ta--ACK!”
A web-line had struck him between the shoulder blades.
“All part of the service,” Ice-Pony said as he saluted, another line wrapped around his tail to leave Spider-Pony standing between the two. “Nopony need suffer terrible come ons on our watch!”
“Then you can both bite m--”
The line died in the Torch’s throat as Rocky smacked the asphalt, launching all three of them into the air with his own version of a thermal burst, trailing Spidey and Johnny as he formed a new ice-bridge, heading for the rooftops a few blocks away.
***
“Not that it hasn’t been lovely catching up, guys,” Ice-Pony called to signal they were about to land, “but next time you need financial advice, just call.”
“Hey, don’t pout at me,” Spidey muttered, flipping into a crouch on a HVAC unit, “this was Johnny’s idea.”
The Torch pantomimed a shocked hoof to the chest. “Moi?!”
Spider-Pony and Ice-Pony looked dispassionately at each other, then at Johnny with the same big eye, tiny eye squint. He followed their gaze past him, into the air over his shoulder.
ꓷЯƎИ YƎH, the now fading words of fire in the sky read from this side, ꟼ.A.Ƨ.A ƎƆA⅃ꟼ ⅃AUƧU ƎHT
“Because I care!” Johnny said, pressing both hooves this time.
“About?” Spidey deadpanned as Rocky snorted vapour from his nose.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Johnny smarmed, admiring his blazing pony-pedi as a flaming hoof construct materialised over his roommate’s head to pantomime a condescending pat. “Now Rocky, don’t let him stay up too late while I’m in Attilan and never feed him after midnight.”
“You’re pawning Rocky off on me?”
“He’s clearly pawning you off on me,” Ice-Pony muttered. His eyes narrowed. “Attilan? Oh sun and moon, this is about Crystal, isn’t it?”
“They’re talking!” Spidey cooed, clasping his hooves and fluttering his lenses. “Just not about boundaries!”
“See, you’re assuming he listened.”
“She invited me!” Johnny protested, flames glowing brighter and epidermis briefly darkening.
“Hay of a lot more than you did for me!” Ice-Pony jabbed a severe hoof, Manehattan sunlight glinting off every facet. “What part of work tomorrow did you not get?”
“It’s Saturday,” Spidey said.
“Pete!” Rocky protested.
“No, you were clearly trying to blow me off,” the Torch said casually, hovering higher for blast off, “and now my work is done!”
“What work?!” Ice-Pony snapped, gesturing at Spidey. “What am I even supposed to do?!”
“Listen to him cry about his princess while I go see mine?” Johnny put his hooves on his hips and raised a glowing eyebrow at the obtuseness. “Duh?”
“So telling Sue you said that,” Spidey muttered.
Johnny’s pose remained, but his face was blank and his flames curled at the tips, practically quivering. “…you wouldn’t.”
“Oh wow, you’re terrified, now I’m totally gonna!”
“It’d be murder!”
“It’d be hilarious!”
“Wait-wait-wait.” They looked over as Ice-Pony patiently waved his hooves, then turned to Spidey. “So you are dating nobility?”
“I’m seeing Twilight Sparkle,” Peter said. His ears drooped a little as he looked away, forelegs folded. “Kind of.”
Johnny gestured with blazing hooves. “See?!”
“Aww man, I owe Timber twenty gems…” Ice-Pony whined.
“Make sure you declare that,” Spidey huffed.
“Wow, guy’s on a whole different coast and still owning you,” the Torch grinned, “I’m almost impressed.” He turned to Ice-Pony. “You guys’re on the west coast these days, right?”
“The Hex-Ponies are on the west coast,” Rocky said, casually but firmly. “Keep telling you: got a real job these days.”
“What, knowing me is work now?” Spidey muttered.
“You have to ask?” Johnny formed a flaming pocket watch. “Oh my, lookit the time!”
“You seriously think we’re gonna stand for this?” Spidey made one lens enlarge and the other shrink, cracking his hooves. Ice-Pony smirked, an ice mace forming on the end of his tail.
“Aww c’mon fellas,” Johnny wheedled. “What about true love?!”
“What about it?” the other two said in sync.
“Then what about the good ol’ days? All of us burnin’, chillin’ and thwippin’! The Three...Amigos!”
“You’re rigging it so there’s two of us,” Ice-Pony deadpanned.
“And you were totally about to say ‘Stooges’,” Spidey agreed as they began to advance, “don’t lie, we both saw your eyes twitch.”
“So no 'thanks for the memories' it is then,” the Torch sighed, “just gonna have to appeal to a different kind of nostalgia. Hey, remind me, what was that one move from that dweeby Neighponese show you both liked way too much? Oh yeah!”
He swung both hooves up to eye level. “Solar Flare!”
Spidey and Rocky ducked, eyes squeezed shut…for a flash that never came. They looked around in bewilderment as a cackling contrail of flame streaked between them.
“Oh Great Pony in the Sky, you actually fell for it!” the Torch crowed, echoing for blocks. “Have fun, nerds! Love ya!”
“Man,” Ice-Pony sighed, his own epidermis crackling away to revert to Rocky Cake, “maybe I have been out of the business too long.”
“At least you’ve got an excuse,” Spider-Pony muttered, watching the winking comet racing towards Mason Avenue, “I live with the guy.”
“Why?”
“Homemade Asgardian death mech demolished my apartment.”
Rock just nodded.
“And then Johnny went and told me about this place on Yancy Street the Thing was trying to saddle him with,” Spidey sighed.
“Yeah, that sounds like Johnny,” Rock smiled.
“Don’t you hate that? That you can’t hate him?”
“It’s like an ulcer sometimes. So! You’re dating a princess!”
“She wasn’t when we met, okay?!”
“Okay!” Rocky held up placating hooves. “Oh, hey, are you at Damage Control now?”
“Yeah?” Spidey blinked. “How…?”
“Saw a Trotter on the payroll!”
“…you’re crunching numbers for Damage Control?”
“My firm is. Just covered somepony’s shift.” Rocky shrugged, leaning against the ledge of the building like he had Casual Friday t-shirts for bones. All these years and he was still like that, a chilled-out beach bum, sandy colour scheme and sunny disposition perfectly contrasting with his powers. “Might get transferred there sometime though, it’s a good account.”
“That’d be cool! Small world, huh?”
“Right?”
“You don’t have to hang out with me just because Johnny bugged you into it.”
“It didn’t take much bugging,” Rocky assured, icing up. “And it’s still my day off. Plucky’s?”
“Plucky’s,” Spidey decided, hopping onto the end of an ice-bridge. “Gyagh! Cold, cold, cold…”
“The Mutant Menace strikes again!” Ice-Pony smirked as they began to surf towards the upper east side.
To be Continued
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Is Crystal's job an official superhero?
Also, Bonding!
Twilight, don't teach people how to sell their souls to higher powers, no matter how sugar-y they may be.
media1.tenor.com/images/170c2332f83df1c8de56d2ed5eaaa06c/tenor.gif?itemid=17172080
Also, I think Plucky's would be a great place for a sitcom.
GENERAL: So then the untested Twenty-Foot tall robots will march into the suburban area and blindly smash through everything to get to the target, who has unknown powers triggered by emotions—
ANY SANE LEADER: No. And you're fired. And being committed.
Peter, you're making TED MOSEBY look like a sensible collected person.
“
It's clearly Changelings.
Discount Lex Luthor, we meet again!
Consume. The only word flexible enough is consume.
“Hey, I’m a Hex-Pony. Senior year was somepony trying to kill somepony else on the lawn practically every morning.”
66.media.tumblr.com/c62331c734ec9c348bef73558f8e2e4b/tumblr_pczx1wErKv1rvya9ro1_400.png
That doesn't try to kill you. A future that doesn't try to kill you, you can't take that for granted.
Aw, a shout-out, thank you!
10255556
Everyone in Inhuman society is either already a superhero or waiting to turn into one, and they always need saving, so yes.
Also it's weird that in trying to make the Inhumans happen Marvel/Disney never just FiM'd/Super Hero Girls'd a show about Crystal going from Attilan to human high school or whatever, right? Wide eyed princess who had powers that can be applied in hundreds of gag ways, bossy big sister who just wants what's best for you, hidden societies with ties to alien culture and all the adventure junk kids love. Hell, she's even got an iconic (and highly marketable) pet. She can just stick a hat or something over his fork and pretend it's for religious reasons.
What, Peter and Johnny's two big crushes make for an equally compelling duo because they're both diffrent ends of the action royalty spectrum, complete with complimentary magic and sci fi themes? Don't be silly.
"I refuse to suffer alone!"
It's basically Cheers, yeah. Should also mention this is the only time I really like big shared universes. When these diffrent characters and archetypes are just chilling somewhere and playing poker or whatever.
Lord and Miller worked on How I Met Your Mother for a while funnily enough, but also isn't Ted just what Peter would be if he didn't have to save the world?
It's been ages since the wedding and Twilight's stressed, and just got the existence of an entire other race of shape shifters dumped in her lap, so I think we can cut her a little break.
Gee, you'd almost think Peter and Twilight learning how to live with the realities of their weird action lifestyle was part of the point or something.
Ha ha! Those two, learning! Ha ha ha! Oh my...
It's because no one wanted to make Inhumans popular, they were just told to replace X-Men with something. Such a missed opportunity.
Lord and Miller worked on How I Met Your Mother for a while funnily enough but also isn't Ted just what Peter would be if he didn't have to save the world?
Oh totally, she has a lot of suspects, I'm just callin' it.
10256008
It also occurs to me that Johnny is Barney and Bobby is Marshel in this chapter.
10256070
...huh.