Super Pony Roomies Season 2

by TheManehattanite

Meet Johnny

I…am the Watcher.

Since time out of mind, it has been my task to observe, to see all, and know perhaps even more. For mine is the vigil of infinity, where dwell the stories of stars and the secrets of suns, known to no witness, except, of course, I. This is my gift. This is my curse. Armed only with my trusty toga, I watch those wh-who watch the wh-ha-ahaha! Oh man! Oh. Could not keep that up!

Whoo.

Yeah, no, I hear ya. Just havin’ some fun before we roll.

They still do outtakes? Alright. Nah, go ahead. I mean, I signed everything before I came in here, right? What am I, Spider-Pony?

Yeah, that’d be nice, thanks. Tea? Coffee makes me twitchy. So! You guys ever record with anypony famous in here? Really! Didn’t think Princess Celestia was into that. What a world.

Ah, thank you…? Candy. Thank you, Candy!

siiip

Ah, a certain Neighponese blend! A mare of distinction! Must be those enchanting eyes of yours. Speaking of, since the weekend’s coming up could you see any possibility of enjoying some more blends at this little place on…mmm?

Red light. Okay. Alas, fair Candy! To be continued!

Hoookay, take 2!

On your mark.

1

Hey there, party ponies! Tropical Johnnycake Storm here! My friends call me Johnny and, while I may not pack a laser necklace, I do like to make friends. And maybe more than that!~

No, it’s totally fine that you haven’t heard of me and my astounding levels of humility. Perhaps you’ve heard of me through my philanthropic works, or, just maybe, the one or two…billion times I’ve saved Equestria, if not the earth itself, as the High flying Horseshoe Torch?

That’s okay, you’re a busy pony, you can’t be expected to keep up with every hero in Manehattan! And if you can bare to look past my engineering cutie mark, and that oh so distinctive ring of fire a certain airship accident tagged onto it, you’ll find one of my many special talents is making an impression!

Won’t waste your time going all the way back to the beginning. Why, we just met! A gentlecolt doesn’t open with his cutie marks story! But to know me is to understand that I was the sort of kid who snuck into a private airfield before he snuck into his dates’ rooms for “extracurricular studies.”

Allegedly snuck in. Not to question the integrity of Mrs. Quelle Surprise of Greendale Long Island, but that could’ve been anypony with great hair diving out Nuit Blanche’s window that night.

I definitely snuck into the airfield, though, and its little experimental airship too.

Well, not so little as much as streamlined, and the genius who built it’s only gotten its babies even sleeker since. With a little help from yours truly, naturally! River Reeds and I have spent years making quite the team, on the field or outside the hull of a state-of-the-art ship, smoothing out it’s bugs. Usually while it’s moving.

At the time though, I just wanted to make sure Sue wasn’t dating Grim Skies.

That’s my beloved big sister, Sand Sousaphone Storm, of course. No, it’s okay, I never get tired of explaining these things. Our names are a neat case of Equestrian traditionalism and cross-breed marriage compromise! Mom wanted us to have strong, elemental names, honouring our Pegasus heritage. Dad was fine with that, provided we also stuck with the Earth Pony middle naming tradition. In case evil sorcerers ever tried to take control of us through the old magic trick of binding you by your pony name, you see. He was, ah, of his time, even though that sort of thing didn’t even really go on in the middle ages.

Too long, didn’t read: yeah, technically we’re Sand and Tropical Storm, but were christened with names of sentimental value to our folks in the middle. Sue got the musical instrument, ‘cause grandma Storm was a travelling oboist who had a brief run with the Fillyharmonic and Mom was hoping on a legacy. I got stuck with Dad’s love of Breyhamian desserts. It was probably my colour scheme that did it.

Johnny’s a little easier to say when you’re learning to talk, and Sue hates “Sandy” like Rainbow Dash hates jazz flutes, so she’s been Sue ever since.

Yeah, that Rainbow Dash. Best Young Flyer, Element of Loyalty, Telling-the-Truth-About-the-Sonic-Rainboom-All-Along-Rainbow-Dash. It’s a—pause for effect—long story. I’ll get back to it. Just real quick, whatever she tells you, the jazz flute thing is not my fault.

***

Meanwhile, back at the Why Would We Keep This a Secret origin, praise Celestia, sis isn’t dating that block head pilot who’s always hanging around her office! They really are just friends! I mean, she coulda chosen better, but thank Sun and Moon that’s all!

This’d be my good buddy Grim Skies, AKA (and I’m only saying this because I’m contractually obligated to) the Ever Lovin’ Blue Eyed Thing, Idol o’ Millions. Like the rest of us aren’t, but anyway. Back in the day, and I’ll confess to maybe exaggerating here, I thought his name was “From the Wonderbolts. Y’know, those Wonderbolts. Do you know ‘em? I do. The Wonderbolts. ‘Cause I was in the Wonderbolts.”

He was in the Wonderbolts, don’tcha know.

And for the record, I make fun of the big dope because the both of us were there when what happened happened. I get what it cost him. And beyond the fact we’ve been through so much together I earned it? Beyond even that joking like this is treating him like a person? You weren’t there. We were. Go get high and mighty with somepony else.

To give old brick-a-brac face his due, his time in the ‘bolts meant he was probably the best navigator and pilot to take the Excelsior up, and thank the Great Pony in the Sky, Sue was more into brown eyes than blue. That’d be the Excelsior’s creator, Dr. River Reeds, multiple PhD’s in magic and science, though apparently they’re the same thing. Makes about as much sense as anything else the guy says.

Yeah, I respect Reed just fine. Guy couldn’t give grooming tips to save his life, which I think is 30% of the reason he and Sue are into each other, but if you’re looking for a pick me up I can recommend having one of Equestria’s premier explorative researchers compliment you on your derby engineering.

Only reason he hesitated to take me in on designing the first Fantasti-Chariot was the sort of thing I might get up to with anti-grav magi-tech. He needn’t have worried: why settle for that when I could fly?

Then again, maybe he was worried I’d stowaway in it somehow, like I did with the Excelsior.

Still dunno why I did it. Astrology wasn’t my thing in school at the time (also not a Unicorn, so) but a once in a lifetime thinning of the magical barriers in the atmosphere sounded pretty ‘yikes!’, and Sue was all the family I had. Maybe I was still trying to figure out Reed. Maybe I wanted to get caught so I could keep getting under Grim’s skin.

Maybe silver fox of the future Johnnycake was sending a subliminal message backwards through time to urge me on board, so we’d save the future. (That one happens more than you’d think.)

Hay, maybe it was that the Excelsior just looked so freaking cool. Who knows?

Some ponies ask me why it’s the Horseshoe Torch. While I do have a distinctive, charismatic glow around the hooves when I’m flamed on (and even when I’m not!) that’s not it. If you wanna make sure you’re never on my Hearth's Warming card list, no, it’s got nothing to do with the android Horsepower Torch of the so-called Golden Age. The old man and I have our differences, and our obligatory begrudging respect, but like I’d settle for being the mark-2 of somepony else.

It’s because we got hit by For Real cosmic rays, crashed, and lived. I walked out of flaming wreckage with nothing but a faint ringing in my ears, and the flame walked out with me. Just a few years after my first kiss I became one of the four ponies who’d define what an explorer, what a superhero, meant in Equestria.

What am I if not lucky?

Most of the time.

At least I’m not Spider-Pony but, like that weirdo the state department keeps fixing up with my pal the Panther Prince, I’m getting ahead of myself. Put a pin in my other pal, right between the eyes for preference, and we’ll come back to him later.

***

Not to make it sound like being one of the Fantastic Family was a drag. If anything, the only reason those early years weren’t the best of my life is that I try and get the most out of every year of my life. What’s the point of saving the world if you don’t enjoy living in it?!

Like I told a certain princess a few months back, even after I saw…whatever it was I saw when we stopped Galactarus from devouring the world, (our other pal the Watcher led me through a hole in reality to find the one thing old overbite’s afraid of and my brain erased the actual events of the experience to keep my sanity. Y’know, as you do) the only real takeaway is that if nothing matters then everything does. Some fortune cookie saying like that. Hay, for that little act of SAVING EVERYTHING WE KNOW AND LOVE her mentor gave us our first ever medals! I hadn’t even graduated yet!

Seriously, this was only our first year. The FF have been doing this for a decade. A giant centaur who eats planets isn’t even one of the weirdest, awesome things we’ve seen since then!

A couple of years after this is when things start to get…personal. Not bad, but personal. But I trust you. They might not be as crystalline as mine, but you’ve got kind eyes and a wonderful smile.

Huh. Crystalline. Tell-tale slip.

***

Her name was Crystal. She’s the youngest princess of the Unknowns, an obviously secret breed of equine life created by the Kree, one of the few extra-terrestrial races to consistently pierce the magic in the atmosphere. But I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was there was this girl.

It’s the same old story. Boy is having daring adventures with the fam. Boy and fam get wrapped up in crazy shenanigans. Boy meets girl. Girl can not only do what boy does, but everything else. As in, every other element. As in, she’s not only the most amazing person Boy’s ever met, she’s…maybe one of the few in the world who understand what it's like to have to be this young and carry the knowledge of what you could do to other people if you don’t keep yourself in check.

Girl not only has to keep herself in check but must live by the paranoid rules of her society, because mere Equestrians must still be a cowardly and superstitious lot, despite the fact this is Manehattan where zebras and some of the smaller sized dragons live. Then again I just live in the city my family protects, I don’t have to do Black Bolt’s job and rule it.

And the Hex-Ponies have been risking their tails for a world that still hates and fears Exquestrians for almost as long as we have. Maybe I’d be one of those idiots who sends misspelled petitions to the Alicorn who runs the nation if I couldn’t do weird stuff, too. I’d like to think not, but hey, there but for the grace of cosmic rays.

I was so busy falling in love with Crystal on the spot, our eyes locking when I wasn’t admiring that awesome antenna marking on her head, sort of their version of a cutie mark, that I took a piece of rubble to the head. Maybe that’s what true love’s supposed to feel like, I dunno. But I woke up in the fancy flying city of Attilan, with her watching over me.

We got to talking without having to raise our voices over energy blasts, and the rest…should have been history.

But Crystal was…is a princess. Saviour and leader to her people. Nigh invulnerable as he is, Black Bolt needs somepony to step up to the throne someday. And fun in a half theme park, half monastery way as it is, Attalian’s going to need somepony with the vision to see what the outside world has to offer. And not just bring it back, but make the Unknowns a part of it. And she’s got her work cut out for her, because, other than her dog and her cousin Triton, her family’s a bunch of traditionalist pills.

The real tragedy? The only reason I was the one who broke us up was because I was terrified she’d do it first.

I’ve taken punches from Hulks. They’re not even in the same solar system as that decision.

But pain is apparently gain and I can’t be burned, so maybe the universe was trying to tell me something? But again, getting ahead of myself.

***

Post-Crystal is hard to think about, because I don’t especially wanna, but it wasn’t all bad. After those existentialist movies she’d bought and left behind stopped meaning anything to me, thank the Great Pony, I got back in the blazing saddle. I like to think I nailed like 97% of it. I started dating again, which is probably where Johnnycake the Playboy comes from.

Straight up, I apologise for almost nothing but concede that, yeah, didn’t do myself a lot of favours. Particularly with the girl I was partnered up with when I had to go to Cloudsdale to get my highly specialised flyers licence renewed, who recently put a lot of how I come off into perspective. Because despite everything good we did for each other, I inadvertently crumpled her confidence and heart like a used soda can.

Yep. Theeere’s Rainbow Dash.

Dash, or Dannii as she allowed me to call her, though she’s forbidden it since, wasn’t my first post-Crystal relationship but she was the first to be able to tag along on adventures, which was where a lot of the fun came from! Just, y’know, weird sky adventures. Ghosts haunting the campus museum, A.I.M. trying to steal the weather factory, somepony’s messing with the gravity of the local buck ball field type adventures. Not FF tier ones, which is where the strain started.

Yeah, she’s an Element of Harmony and in the business now. Yeah, she kicks even more butt now than she did then. But I’m not apologising for being the responsible one at the time, and given how much grief everypony’s given me about growing up over the years, they could also give me credit for that call. We had each other’s backs but I couldn’t guarantee anything. If anything had happened to her then maybe there wouldn’t have been an Element of Loyalty to stop Nightmare Moon, and save Princess Luna.

For the record, not that the FF and the rest of the business couldn’t take high end mystic stuff like that, it’s just that Harmony is kinda its own thing, and it’d take us waaaay longer than Twilight, Applejack and the others. Maybe too much longer to guarantee we wouldn’t all be freezing to death or drowning in chocolate milk by now. Stars knows we weren’t ready for that thing with the centaur. But, yet again, getting ahead of myself.

That’s what we call it, by the way. Other heroes, or people with powers who think they’re too good for costumes, and that biker jackets aren’t basically the same thing. The business. Because after a while it starts to feel like a job.

And in my case, it is! Once I turned 18, I could claim not only a decent chunk of my own merchandising rights (shame that mane and tail line never took off. We never did find out why it caught fire when exposed to direct sunlight. Or oxygen. It wasn’t supposed to!), but a nice juicy paycheck for serving on explorative research expeditions as part of Fantastic Incorporated!

Selling out? Bite your tongue! Like you wouldn’t get paid for making spontaneous combustion look this good! You want a sell out? Ask how Spider-Pony used to make a living. The answer’s delightful!

Ah, I should probably make a start on the ol’ Web Head since he keeps popping up so much. He’s the ‘s’ in ‘Roomies’!

***

Peter Trotter is the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Pony, (shhhh, it’s a secret!) and one of the best friends I have in the business. I know, I’m surprised too. Ironically, for two of the ten years the FF’s been making him look like a How Not to Hero guide, we practically hated each other! Or I assumed he did me. It’s that mask, it’s hard to tell. Dunno how he added the moving eyes, but you would not believe the difference they make. Actually getting to know him helps too.

For most of those early days, Spidey was just this weirdo who broke into our living room and beat us up so we’d offer him a spot on the team, then wouldn’t stop showing up. No, seriously. “I can beat you up.” That was his pitch. 80% sure he got the idea out of a comic book. Ugh, he still reads comic books in the 21^st reign of Celestia, how are we friends?

Because, like Crystal, Spidey—…Pete is somepony who knows. There’s a world of difference between what we can do and how we do it, but one of those Trotter family soliloquies is that with Great Power there must also come Great Responsibility.

I’m part of Equestria’s actual Mightiest team, and I’m still not sure what that means, or how to live up to it. I give Pete as much grief as I give anypony I care about, but the truly Spectacular thing about him is how he’s had to cope with that question on his own.

Also, turns out when he’s out of costume he’s even more of an adorable widdle doofus. Yes,he is! Yes, he iiiis!

The adorable widdle doofus who lives with me now, but he’s had his time in the sun. New topic! Know who he’s dating? Twilight Sparkle. Yeah, that Twilight Sparkle. And does he have the sense to come to me for Princess dating advice? Of course not.

Then again, maybe the smart move. Not like I could hold onto mine, but it’s our old friend Getting Ahead of Yourself, Johnny.

***

Actually, since my dating life is so much a part of this? (As it should be, if there was an Element of Romance, I would be it.) Let’s backtrack a little. A big part of what does not help with the image of me as some kind of Prince Blueblood (who’s the FF’s landlord, because something Grim did in a previous life makes the Great Pony hate us) is how many of my romances turned out to be a Skrull invasion plot.

What’s a Skrull, you ask because you’re an interesting person and have a life. Skrulls, I regret to inform you, are what the E.U.P dossiers we get in the mail refer to as “a race of extra-terrestrial shapeshifters.” I prefer a pain in the tail and the answer to the question nopony asked: what if Changelings were lizards and also lamer.

Sun and Moon but I miss Queen Chrysalis. Now there was a nemesis. Can you believe the Elements just snatched her away from m--us like that? I’d have been willing to share with Princess Cadence at least! Gah, where’s that tea?

Be right back, heating it up.

siiiiip

…thaaaat’s the stuff. Where was I? Skrulls! The one specifically. Lyja the Laser Lasher.

Lyja. Freaking. Lyja.

Lyja, Skrullian for “The absolute worst”, is one of several covert teams the Skrulls slip through the atmosphere, along with their bitter rivals the Kree, (small galaxy, right?) to try and conquer the planet. The reason there’s no Independence Day or Mars Attacks style invasions is because the magic in the atmosphere doesn’t just mess with light, which is why there’s Sun and Moon avatars to move them like Princesses Celestia and Luna, but also big honking space fleets.

Reed thinks it’s some sort of planetary defence mechanism, but that’s Magic Necklaces from a Crystal Tree turf, and I have a life.

Point is, if you’ve ever wondered why these seemingly advanced space races only send down jerks like the Super Skrull or Ronan the Accuser and maybe, like, twenty grunts, it’s because anything bigger than that shorts out and gets stuck drifting uselessly in low orbit. If they’re lucky.

So, rather than do the smart thing and go give the Guardians of the Galaxy something to do, the Skrulls take advantage of slipping itty bitty pods of agents through the barrier, hoping to take out the greatest threats and replace enough governments with their puppets that they can annex Earth without breaking galactic treaty.

So the Skrull and the Kree, besides going to war with each other all the time anyway, have this little thing going to try and score the magic planet. Because of all the magic. The magic that prevents them from doing this. I know, right? Funny thing is, Lyja agrees with me on that.

I say funny because the idea we agree on anything after she, y’know, tried to ruin my life is a sick joke.

Maybe it was lack of manpower, but someone had the bright idea to assign a Skrull to constantly be in my life because I went out the most. And every time I met a mare I really clicked with and it didn’t work out, hey, there’d be another one! And I was too busy running on post Crystal “I’m fine Sue, [insert Lyja’s cover name here] gets me!” to notice how perfect they’d be for me. Or how super villains would show up in places they shouldn’t or how stuff would go missing.

And then one day this Super Skrull I was fighting said something only the date I’d had last night would know.

Fun fact about being the resident hothead. Cold fury burns brightest.

Or it used to. Recently, Lyja made the mistake of coming back into my life. She’s been a background pain in the tail for the last few months since Pete and I moved in together, almost always around the corner with a trap right out of those Roadrunner cartoons. That’s...not the woman who infiltrated my life and wrapped me around her hoof. I’m good, but, and this kills me, Lyja’s a match for me.

In a fight. Get your head out of the gutter.

So if she’s so determined to capture me, why am I still waking up in 616B Yancy street, not recovering consciousness on the floor of a Tarnax holding cell with an inhibitor collar around my neck? And I’d make it as close to impossible for her as I could, but if anypony could do that, it’d be Lyja.

She said something on that Canterlot case. We captured her by mistake, looking for a Skrull going after Prince Blueblood. She didn’t want them to ice me. I’m her meal ticket, apparently. Like, that exact wording. Is it an ego thing?

Guh. Don’t wanna talk about her anymore. This was supposed to be about Twilight Sparkle anyway! Maybe it’s that they both shoot purple lasers? Meh.

***

Princess Twilight’s been good for my new roomie! “New”. We’ve been sharing rent for months. And a couple years before that he wouldn’t stop talking about her, and this was before she was a princess! Poor dope didn’t even realise he was falling for her until I pointed it out. They’re both welcome.

Haven’t know Twilight, who graciously insists on being on a first name basis, all that long but she’s done me two solids so far. The most recent was a conversation in the sewers under Attlian, because my life’s great like that. The first was coming into my life through Pete, and so bringing Rainbow Dash back into it (I’ll get to how that’s a plus in a bit) and introducing me to one of the best friends I’ll ever have.

Rarity Palladium Belle, Element of generosity and Equestria’s latest up and coming designer. Just Rarity, because she is the embodiment of elegance in simplicity. And man, if you’ve ever seen her in a society do, her real element, then you know Rarity is anything but simple. She’s like the anti-Lyja, which makes me worry I might have A Type™.

Rarity and I hit it off like a stylish planetary collision. Why have we not created a dynasty that manipulates Celestia’s world from the shadows yet? Because we’re not dating. Not that our last one went bad, which is surprising because Lyja and the Trapster showed up, but we got to talking and, well, on her end at least it was way more fun to talk.

She’s also worried I have no friends. Or, rather, that I don’t have any friends who aren’t in the business. The Elements exist in some weird niche and while I wouldn’t use the world normal, there’s a nice kinda…casualness there. I think that’s why Pete spends weekends in Ponyville so much. That and even he’s not enough of a schmuck to let Twilight out of his life for too long.

Anyway. Settling for being just friends with Rarity was the best decision I ever made. She’s right, I can’t imagine a worthwhile event of any season without her. The second was listening to Dash. Actually listening.

***

See, now I wouldn’t risk Rarity’s friendship for anything. Dunno that I agree with her take that I need some kind of tether back to the “normal” world. I was roommates with Soarin Skies (in the Wonderbolts, but no relation) and now I’m roommates with the supposed Everypony Hero. But she keeps me out of my head, and my hooves under me.

And because my big plan to get with Crystal went nowhere, naturally I almost threw it all away by asking her to try to be more than friends.

Or would have if Rainbow Dash hadn’t been waiting outside her store that night. Thank the Great Pony for Rainbow Dash.

Not the lecture or the name calling, but under all that was somepony looking out for her friend. Rarity if not me, and I think that talk…didn’t fix things, but at least she’s ribbing me instead of growling at me.

Seriously, filly does a wicked good timberowlf impression.

Dash’s point, beyond me being wrong about everything and everything that is wrong with everything, was that I keep making the same mistake with women. I fell in love with Crystal when I was, what, 17, and then had to break all that off. I wasn’t over her until that failed kiss in Attilan, and to tell the truth I’m still really not. So, Dash argued, doesn’t that make every girl since the rebound girl by definition?

Like, say, her.

And I wanted to do that to Rarity?

No.

Also, I get she had to think about this for a while, but would it have killed her to tell me she felt used like that at the time instead of, y’know, yelling she was never going to speak to me again?! Aaaand now she is, because I need a friend who’ll make sure I’m just friends with Rarity. That makes sense, right?

***

Which brings us to now. Still the Horseshoe Torch. Still having an absolute blast. Still roommates with the Spectacular Spider-Pony. Still the definition of an Equestrian hero!

Still just friends with Rarity. Still on sturdier but thin ice with Rainbow Dash. Still not with maybe the only pony I’ll ever really love.

And Lyja’s still out there.

Oi.

Y’know what started this whole Gonna Be My Own Pony thing that led to me and Pete getting the Yancy Street place? I beat Fin Fang Foom the Space Dragon, by burning all the oxygen out of his lungs and knocking him out. Figured if I could pull that off then how hard could growing up really be?

Well, strap yourselves in, True Believers, because all that you just saw? All that happened and we’re not even in second gear yet!

Try and keep up. I dare ya!

siiiip

To be Continued

Author's Note:

GLOSSARY

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