Avenging is Friendship

by Boltstrike58

Storms Blow Over

(Takes place immediately after the MLP movie.)

---

Equis, Canterlot

Despite the Festival of Friendship managing to go on, despite recent events, Songbird Serenade giving her all for her performance, and everypony generally having a pretty good time, one indisputable fact remained:

Canterlot was in ruins.

Everywhere one looked, chunks of brick and stone lay shattered in the streets. Loose pieces of confectionary food were strewn across multiple houses, drying and sticking to any surface they could. The weapons of the Storm King's armies were scattered from space to space, sometimes even stabbed into the rock itself. The metal cages that had once imprisoned Equestria's citizens lay discarded around the city, some shattered in order to release the ponies trapped within. At the foot of Canterlot Castle lay a small pile of rocks, and if one looked close enough, they could see, etched into the stone, the features of the Storm King, once the scourge of Equestria, reduced to a lifeless pile of rubble.

Tony whistled at the sight. "Poor guy. Still, I'd say it was more his fault than anything. You know it wasn't yours, right?" he turned to the side.

Twilight nodded somberly. "Yes. There was nothing I could've done at the time. But...I wish we could've saved him. Or done something for him."

"You try the best you can, but in the end, saving everyone is an impossible dream, Twi," said Tony, putting a comforting hand on her wing. "A beautiful one, but still impossible. You just have to save as many as possible."

The two looked up at the rest of the town, where cleanup efforts had begun. The Avengers, summoned in the wake of the Storm King disaster, had responded with alacrity, rushing to the world across the cosmos to assist their friends with fixing up the mess leftover. Twilight smiled happily at the sight. This proved to her the depth of their friendships, how the Avengers cared enough about them to do whatever they could to help.

Scott in particular had been quite useful, using the spare shrinking disks he had in reserve to miniaturize the biggest pieces of rubble down to the size of insects. Once those had run out, he'd gotten to moving away the regular-sized pieces alongside T'Challa, Natasha, Bucky, and Steve. The heavy lifting was left to those who could handle it, mainly Thor, Vision, and Rhodey, though Tony had helped a bit before moving to Twilight. Wanda's powers were coming in handy as well, especially since she could force the smaller cracks to seal up telekinetically. The rest of the damaged structures, mostly the ones that were in danger of crashing down, were held in place by Spider-Man's webbing until construction crews could get them out of the way. All the ponies, as well as their new allies from across the world, were lending helping hooves, hands, or whatever too.

"Thanks for bringing everyone," said Twilight. "We could handle this ourselves, but you get it done so much faster, you know?"

"Yeah," said Tony, pouring himself a glass from Applejack's stash of cider, which had miraculously survived the carnage. "Now why don't you tell me what's really bothering you? The stuff you almost wrote about?"

"What? Nothing's bothering me, I..." Twilight started, but found she couldn't finish. Tony gave her a sympathetic look as her eyes started to water, and large tears began to drip down the pony's face. Tony put down his mug and hugged her, letting Twilight cry into his shoulder.

"I failed friendship itself!" Twilight wept. "I tried to get all of the others to just ignore everybody, even though they could've saved us! I took advantage of the hippogriffs and tried to steal their pearl! All because I didn't think they'd help us! Because we were outside of Equestria, I just dismissed everybody! I don't deserve my crown! I—"

"Hey, hey!" Tony interrupted her, putting both hands on her wings and pulling her so that she faced him. "Don't ever say that, okay? Out of everybody and everypony I've ever met, none deserve the title of Princess of Friendship like you. Never say that about yourself."

"But I—"

"Twilight, you had a bad day. You got thrown off, and you freaked out. It happens to the best of us." Tony hugged Twilight close again. "I know you get anxious. I know you tend to jump to the worst of conclusions. Heck, you told me that yourself. You let your fear get to you, but that's okay. I've done stupid stuff like that. I once gave my home address to a terrorist on live TV, just because I was pissed over my friend getting hurt. It didn't end well. What's important is that you take what happened this time and use it. Learn from what you did wrong, and do better tomorrow. You've done that before, right?" Twilight nodded sadly. "Good. Then this should be no different."

Twilight took a couple of deep breaths, managing to calm herself at least a little. She was immensely thankful for friends like Tony at times like this, when she needed them the most.

"Thank you, Tony," Twilight replied, hugging him closely.

"Eh. Call it my payback for you pulling our heads out of our butts," said Tony, laughing to himself.

---

Not too far away, a similar conversation was taking place.

"I hope you aren't too angry at Twilight," said Steve, as he heaved a large chunk of brick out of road and placed it in the designated pile.

"Of course not, sugar cube," said Applejack, bucking another piece apart so it could be moved more easily. "I forgive her, it's what we do. But..." She looked down forlornly. "I still can't understand. Why—"

"Why did she believe nobody outside would be willing to help?" asked Steve. Applejack nodded. "Well, from what I gather, Twilight seems to have a lot of anxiety problems. She freaks out about illogical things."

"I know. I've seen her do that before," said Applejack, "What with the whole friendship report incident and all. But I still can't understand it. What makes her go nuts over certain things?"

"Well I don't have anxiety, so I can't say for certain, but it seems like she's afraid of failing those who depend on her. Or of losing control of the situation she's currently in. But you know she doesn't intentionally get upset over tiny things and make them into giant problems. She can't help herself. Everybody has habits like that."

"Yeah, Ah guess," replied Applejack. "Being the Element of Honesty sometimes makes me too honest if ya know what I'm saying. Maybe if we'd talked to Twilight about it, things wouldn't a gotten so out of hoof."

"Then you know what to do next time," said Steve. "And besides, everything turned out alright in the end, didn't it?"

"Yeah. The Storm King's armies are gone, Equestria'll be safe for a while. At least I hope so. Maybe next time, y'all can actually help us with the crisis we gotta deal with."

"Maybe we should look into finding some kind of alarm and sticking it on the portal, or something."

---

With the majority of the cleaning done, the mismatched heroes of two worlds sat in a circle in the center of Canterlot for break time.

"Avengers, we can't thank you enough for coming to our aid once again," said Celestia, giving a small bow. "We are forever in your debt."

"Eh, it's not that big a deal," said Spider-Man. "Now if we'd been here for the whole Storm King fiasco, that would be another story."

"Yeah," said Natasha. "It's a shame we missed out. The invasion would've been over in about five seconds if we'd been there."

"I know! I didn't even get to use my best quip ever! 'Oh, you're the Storm King? That's cute. We have a god of thunder.'"

Thor smiled proudly, thrusting his hammer towards the sky and causing a small handful of black clouds to swirl.

"Regardless of our grandstanding," Vision interrupted, "we do apologize for not being here to help."

"It's alright," said Rainbow. "We got along just fine. Didn't we, everypony?"

"I ain't a pony, but I gotta say, we didn't do half bad," chimed in Capper, a smug smile on his face.

"Right? We came, we saw, we kicked their butts! It was awesome!" cheered Princess Skystar, jumping up and down.

"I'm just glad this whole mess is over—wait a minute," Rarity interrupted/ "Has anybody seen Tempest?"

"Oh, yeah! The unicorn you were telling us about," said Tony. "Where is she?"

"She was helping me with the cleanup," said Twilight, getting to her hooves. "Where could she have gone?"

Remarkably, it didn't take a very long time to find Tempest. She was sitting in the shadow of one of the remaining marble columns, alongside Grubber, facing away from the group at large.

"I don't want to..." Tempest protested weakly.

"Aw come on, girl! If them ponies were willing to forgive ya, surely these guys who ya never met will!"

"But I...I..." Tempest searched for some sort of excuse, some reason to stay hidden in the shadows, but couldn't find one. Grubber placed one of his paws on her shoulder, and Tempest slowly turned around to face the Avengers and the ponies.

"Um...hello," she finally said, with a small wave of her hoof. "I'm...Tempest Shadow."

"You mean Fizzlepop Berrytwist!" yelled Pinkie, bouncing over to the unicorn and throwing her front legs around Tempest's neck. "Tell me, is that just the greatest name ever or what?!"

A few of the Avengers (Spider-Man in particular) couldn't help but snicker at the name. This actually helped Tempest relax a little, as she reasoned that if they weren't arresting her on sight now, they probably wouldn't.

"Well, you might as well just call me Tempest," she continued, squirming out of Pinkie's grip. "I've gone by that so long, it'll be kinda hard to break the habit."

"Yeah, and it sounds so much more bad-ass!" chimed in Grubber, chomping down of one of his many pastries. "Name's Grubber, by the way."

Scott looked with a perplexed expression at the hedgehog-like creature. He retracted his helmet into his suit. "Uh, have we met before?" he asked. "You sound kinda familiar."

Grubber looked him over. "No, I think I'd remember meeting a hairless ape in red leather," he replied sardonically. "But seriously, I don't think so."

While Scott glared at him, Twilight came up to Tempest. "You know you're welcome among our friend circle, right?" she whispered to the scarred unicorn. "You saved our lives. You're not that mare who just served the Storm King no matter how horrible you had to be."

"I don't know, Twilight," replied Tempest. "I mean, you said these are real heroes. These are the ones who stop ponies like me. How can I stand in front of them like this?"

"Hey," came a voice from behind the two talking ponies. Tempest turned around, finding Bucky standing there, his metal arm gleaming. Standing next to him were Wanda and Luna. He laid on palm on Tempest's shoulder, getting down on his knees to look her in the eye.

"If you've done bad things, things you wish you could take back, and now you want to find a way to be better," he said calmly, "you're in good company with us."

"You are a pony. Surely you know the stories of my fall as Nightmare Moon?" added Luna, giving Tempest a sympathetic smile.

"I started on the wrong side," Wanda piped up. "But I moved past it, and now I'm better than I was. You can do the same, I'm sure."

"A lot of us have committed actions we regret," added Natasha. "You're not alone among us."

Tempest looked around, seeing that the others were all giving her encouraging looks. This was despite how she'd ruthlessly attacked Canterlot, transformed three of Equestria's precious princesses to stone, helped create so much destruction, all in the name of the cruel Storm King. And yet here they were, offering her a chance to be their friend. Tempest thought back to the speech she'd given Twilight, talking about how pointless friendship was. For the first time, she could see how truly wrong she'd been.

"Thanks, everypon—er, everybody," she said, giving a genuine smile.

"So," said Tony, commanding everyone's attention, "anybody want to hold a leftover party once we're finished cleaning up?"

"OOH! Me me me me me me me me!" exclaimed Pinkie, jumping up and down like a mare possessed.

Twilight smiled happily. If this escapade had taught her anything, it was that friends would always be there for you, and you can find friends in places you never would've expected. Even as the Princess of Friendship, she still had things to learn about the subject.

Comments

[Bumblebee16]

Was that from my little pony the movie

[Alex456]

I wonder if it some point if Sunset Shimmer will meet the Avengers?

[harts fire]

such a grate chapter and it fits the movie so good,

[Liger1985]

Cool

[kaiju and pony fan]

I like how you acknowledge Grubber being voiced by Michael Pena.