Super Pony Roomies Season 2

by TheManehattanite

Meet Peter

Are we rolling?

You’ll let me know when we’re rolling, right?

Water? Oh, I, ah, brought my own! Hope that’s okay?

Cool.

Hegh-hegh-hem-hem-hmmm!

My name is…wha—? Sorry? Oh, on the red light! Sorry!

My name is, blah blah blah, one and only, blah blah blah…ugh, this is such a Johnny thing.

Hmm? Oh! Okay…

1

My name is Peter Gleann Trotter! I was bitten in the cutie mark by a radioactive spider, and for the past nine years I’ve been Equestria’s one and only Spider-Pony!

Well, the one most ponies know about.

It’s not as simple as I’m making it sound. In fact, the only reason I can consider my life a work in progress right now is because I’ve actually started making some kind of progress in the last couple of those nine years.

Man. Next Summer Sun Celebration, I’m going to have been doing this for ten years.

For most of that time I was;
A) a lovable freelance shutterbug, occasionally earning a liveable commission for the Derby Bugle, the Manehattan newspaper dedicated to raising awareness of the issues facing Equestria…whether Equestria wants it or not,
and,
B) desperately alone.

Well, okay, proportionate exaggeration of a spider. My social circle’s actually improved dramatically by letting ponies in on the secret. Aunt May’s always been there, and Gem Stone and Merry Jane have been through so many Osthorn conspiracies with me it’s impossible for us not to be friends. Just friends, but it means a lot. Even Fera, ah, the Black Sphinx is still willing to speak to me, which would be nicer if she didn’t keep joking(?) about stealing the crown jewels just to see if she could.

Man, not to jinx it but romantically, professionally, and even spider…ing…ly? I’ve been thwipin’ it out of the park lately!

…that sounded disgusting, didn’t it? Sorry. Sun and Moon, so sorry. Most of my actually good material only comes out when award winning thaumaturgical physicists are trying to crush my skull with octopus arms.

Crystal enhanced octopus arms, now. Every upswing comes with a downside.

But…yeah? Life’s been good! Not any of the adjectives we in the business throw around a little too much, just good. For starters? I met somepony a while back and she saved me without even really knowing it.

***

Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia’s faithful student, Element of Magic and leader of the rest (when Equestria’s on the line, anyway), and one of the most amazing ponies I’ve ever met.

Also, yeah, Princess of Friendship, but she wasn’t when we met! I just jumped through the portal she conjured out of the love we share with each other, allowing us to visit without running up a huge Equestrian Express tab, and she had wings one day!

And I’d just gotten use to the portal, too.

We both got used to the wings a lot quicker than people who know us would give us credit for. Physically, if not what they, and the crown Twilight’s sometimes obligated to wear now, mean somewhere down the line, but in our defence she could still be just a common or garden Equestrian Unicorn and we’d still be worrying about Where Are We Going.

I’ve had far worse relationship problems, (seriously, Fera makes that “joke” way too much. Saw her wearing Princess Platinum’s cape one time. Nightmare Night costume my sweet, bushy tail) and none of those got me plus one tickets to state functions, so.

And trust me, True Believers, there’s nothing common or garden about Twilight Sparkle.

If you’d asked me a couple years back if Equestria could possibly contain another heart as big and welcoming as Aunt May’s, I’d have said something glib, probably recommended you head out south and try to find a dragon’s den.

Ah, wait, no, Spike said they’re somewhere in the Badlands these days, aren’t they? Huh.

Twilight is best pony, is the point.

Yeah, I’m biased. No, I like Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy just fine! It’s just if you wanna fight about it I will, and I’ll win. Did you ever beat up Firelord?

No, no, the herald of Galactarus, not the Fire Nation guy! Although funny story…uh, for another time.

***

My life is full of “funny” stories. That’s part of why what Twilight and I have means so much. That she and her friends…are and aren’t in the business.

That’s what we call it, by the way. Super-heroism, adventuring, buccaneering, whatever you wanna call anything involving swinging on lines and matching one-liners with sociopaths. The business.

Because after a while it starts to feel like a job.

Great Pony in the Sky, does it feel like a job.

Sad thing is? A lot of people in the same line as me do, in fact, get paid for it. Even the Elements have stipends to cover travel expenses!

Sometimes I think the reason we don’t call it the life is because some of us are just desperately pretending it doesn’t define us. Listen, living in one of the most expensive and super-crime prone cities in Equestria is no picnic, but at least it feels like that’s the stuff you’re…I’m supposed to be living with! If my life came down to just the suit and the webs, then that’s all I’d be.

And that scares me.

The Elements of Harmony, despite standing and fighting for more than I ever will, just flat out don’t have this problem. Plenty of their own when they aren’t, oh, y’know, restoring the fabric of reality, or driving back legendary evils that make Princess For Real Celestia herself break out in a cold sweat. But they get their scroll, they mount up, glow with this light some of the finest minds in Equestria, Twilight included, (and simultaneously exempt?) don’t understand, and go back to them. They go home. Isn’t that kinda what every little pony wants, deep down?

Sometimes I worry I freak them out, beyond just my usual social fumbling, which to be fair MJ helped me with years ago. Like maybe I’m coming across as just way too into the little town of Ponyville, helping fix Applejack’s equipment, or carrying fabrics for Rarity, or helping Fluttershy out…which I can’t always do, since some of her animals freak out around me, probably because radioactive spider blood.

Maybe it’s just being the boyfriend. I’d kill to be just the boyfriend. But I’m not. I’m a radioactive freak with a guilt complex.

When you spend your time feeling like you’re two people, and both add up to one neurotic underachiever, that kind of balance the Elements have, it’s…it’s good to see. An acceptance and a possibility you’re almost too deep in your own trench to see.

It’s not that I think of Peter and Spidey as different parts of myself. When I mention Spider-Pony in the third person I’m referring to the concept, the responsibility, not some kind of weird, tiny spider-mutant sitting in my head working the controls…which would be a nice excuse for my constant screw ups in and out of costume, but sadly I’m stuck with…myself.

And Twilight and her friends have welcomed me into their lives, and made me feel like a whole person. Even after dealing with the pressure of dating the second modern Equestrian princess in a generation, and confessing my original sin to Twilight, the reason that I’ll maybe never be able to stop doing this, she accepted me.

And she’s still worried she’s not worthy of Celestia’s kindness, or those wings.

One day I’m gonna find a way to repay them all for that acceptance. One day.

***

So, that’s romantically! Professionally? Guess who’s sort of got a real job and making sort of money now! Peter Trotter, friendly neighbourhood Damage Control site consultant, at your service!

Months ago the Basilisk, one of my regular dance partners, reminded Equestria he’s always had the engineering talent to build a flight suit capable of lifting even that chip on his shoulder. His scheme du jour? Building his own version of the Destroyer, your Asgardian uru pal who’s no fun to be with.

Why is Manehattan still above sea level? Because of some quick thinking on the part of yours truly, backed up by the not inconsiderable skills of the Fantastic Family, the Wonderbolts and Princess Luna herself, what else? Shame I didn’t take Basi’s toy down before it took out my apartment, though.

But Pete! Isn’t this supposed to be the happy part of your story? Yeah! They do say when the Great Pony in the Sky closes a door, she opens a window. And since Damage Control had to pick up what was left of my doors and windows, company owner Ms. Amazing Grace offered me the Basilisk’s recently vacated position at the company!

She got wind I’d had a hoof in the gizmo that put the brakes on the Destroyer, but I’m still not entirely sure that’s it. Maybe she just felt sorry for me, but if you’ve ever met her you know that’s not it either. She certainly never misses an opportunity to remind me to make good on the faith the offer was made in.

Which I like to think I would, even if she wasn’t signing my paycheques now. Also: I get paycheques now! A decent retainer, plus pay by the hour whenever I’ve got to put my degree in thaumaturgical physics (backed up by nine years of experience with weird science and how it breaks things) to use helping actual construction creatures figure out if it’s safe to enter the holes in a building, and what’s making them glow when they aren’t safe.

This is Manehattan, so, while I can’t purchase my own tropical island, work’s consistent enough I can make rent, pay for lunch without worrying about where my next meal’s gonna come from, and even have some walking around bits jingling in my saddlebag left over! Seriously, the word ‘pension’ is now vaguely part of my life! Whaaaat?!

Along with a nice care package (including dental!), the new gig comes with the added bonus of helping me keep a discreet eye on what the bad guys might be up to from what kind of magic or tech we pull out of the rubble, or if somepony else in the business needs help.

When your Friendly Neighbourhood You Know Who isn’t living on the edge, fighting crime and spinning webs, he’s enjoying the peace of mind that he can clean up the mess he’s partly responsible for, and let people who had the good sense not to get bitten in the destiny enjoy a warm night with their repaired roof over their head. If ol’ Ferocious Flattop only knew!

…ahem. Speaking of everypony’s favourite irascible publisher, it may not surprise you to know we didn’t part on the best of terms.

***

Maybe it’s Gotland syndrome. You’ve gotta understand, butting heads with Flattop was almost as much of my life as my cutie mark. Blather, rinse, repeat. Imagine if you’d spent every year since junior high listening to an airship death diving towards you, blaring demands for pictures of Spider-Pony and getting louder at the very notion of an advance, and then one day, right before impact, you blinked and it…just wasn’t there anymore.

It wasn’t just jumping from The Bugle to Damage Control, either. In fact, last time I saw the old miser I was glad to see the back of him! He gate-crashed Twilight’s coronation…well, actually he was invited. Not even professionally. Can you believe he and Princess Celestia are old friends? Because I can’t, and I’ve met Howard the Duck.

Anyway, bad enough I’d spent the last year and a half neglecting to mention I was canoodling with the Element of Magic, in Ferocious’ eyes I’d (somehow) cost The Bugle an exclusive with Equestria’s newest princess. That’s what did it on my end, although it’d be lying to pretend a lot of my own issues weren’t mixed up in it. Bad enough I’d had to assassinate my own character all through school to help Aunt May keep the lights on, now he wanted me to, what, backlog all of Twilight’s friendship reports? Sneak him copies of that journal the Elements started up? Mane samples from her hairbrush?

So yeah, I was mad at the time. But once that wore off, and knowing the old crank the way I do, I got the sneaking suspicion Ferocious might just be hurt he wasn’t as much a part of my life as I’d been of his. Or, and this is way more likely, getting mad was his way of coping with the nagging worry of what to do without all those Spidey pics.

I didn’t help things by getting equally mad at Snappy Scoop (seriously, maybe it’s a photog thing but nopony other than Deadfoal gets under my skin like she does) and chasing her through the entire Bugle building. How bad are things between me and Flattop? The old man didn’t even care.

Not that this has affected his work, you understand. In last week’s edition he outlined how the rise in ley line activity was clearly my fault, because guess who happened to be swinging by when that fountain started spraying fireworks? At least I’ll always have those op-eds! (Because creating El Scorpion made him step back from editing the paper to just publishing it. Not that you could tell the difference.)

I guess I’m getting hung up on old skid mark mouth because falling out with my weird rage grandpa is the only tarnish on the silver lining to my webs recently?

***

Not that Spider-Pony magically stopped being A Gift And A Curse, and in fact if Twilight and I have a problem it’s that she’d step in at this point to explain how curses aren’t real, then define exactly what a curse is by the standards of arcane academia, which is the kinda intellectual dance routine an “Everfree Think” scientist like me can’t stand about magic.

Seriously, you wanna talk about a never-ending battle? Try getting a Starswirl the Bearded fangirl to entertain the possibility that maybe gravity just happens, and the Vishanti have nothing to do with it, Twilight!

We’re very happy. We like to laugh. We like to have fun.

You wanna know what probably best sums up the balancing coin that’s my life lately? My roommate. Hope he never reads this, because I haven’t mentioned him since the start.

***

Tropical Johnnycake Storm, the Highflying Horseshoe Torch, or just Johnny, Stop-You-Mad-Fool-,You’ll-Kill-Us-All if you’re nasty, is one of the best friends I have in the business. He can also light himself on fire, and seems to think the impressive amount of control he has over this one thing makes up for all his other impulse control issues.

Just kidding! He doesn’t think that. Or he doesn’t care. You’ll understand if you’re ever forced to, say, know him for nine years.

In all seriousness, if life without Ferocious Flattop is weird I don’t wanna think about life without Johnny. Or the Fantastic Family, his, well, y’know, family. It’s been a decade since they basically kickstarted the modern Equestrian Heroic Age, time’s gonna be there’s not a pony living in Manehattan who can remember what the skyline used to look like without that trademark 4 on the side of the Baxter Barn Building.

I’ve fought with (as in both alongside and against) the FF my whole vigilante career, and twice as much with Johnny. Maybe next to being around since the beginning it’s just that we also realised the other wasn’t going away, no matter what pranks we threw at each other. Before you say that’s weird, I invite you to look at Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Not in an At Least We’re Not Those Two way, but. And at least old Flame Brain and I had the excuse of being 15 when we first met!

Because of that, oil and water as we are, we’re also probably two of the only ponies in the business who really get each other. The original Hex-Ponies were all pretty tight and have since grown up and moved on (still can’t believe Ice-Pony is an accountant. Does that seem right to you?) and everypony else either had a college degree to go with their powers or was immortal and so actually a hundred years old. Meeting somepony who tripped into the same power set as yours, sure, but somepony who knew they had power, capital P, speeding bullet, locomotive, course of mighty rivers power and still had to go to high school the next day? Rarer than gold.

Heh. Just occurred to me. That’s something else Twilight and I have in common.

Oh, sweet Celestia. Just occurred to me. That’s something Twilight and Johnny have in common.

That’s what I was trying to get at before. With co-renting Johnny’s place on Yancy street. That joy/terror back and forth. Worse places to be, I guess. Although thanks to our landlord the Ever Lovin’ Blue Eyed Thing investing in the neighbourhood, creating our current digs at 616B in the process, it’s actually in great shape. Sometimes I think this is because he manoeuvred Johnny here so he and the Yancy Street Gang would keep each other busy and out of the rock formation he uses for hair these days.

Speaking of the back and forth…

***

Unless you’ve been living on a cave on Mars for the past couple weeks, you’ve at least heard of that thing with the centaur. Yeah, Tirek the Tyrannical is real, turns out. He and Discord double teamed all of ponykind, feeding the big guy most of the east coast and central Equestrian population’s magic.

The super set’s relationship to the more mystical side like the Elements of Harmony isn’t all that well defined beyond two things. Pleasant chit chat whenever we happen to be in the same bars and, usually, us costumes and powers types being almost completely out of our depth when it comes to the sort of forces Harmony has to counter.

Even without Discord and his itchy trigger finger, there probably wasn’t a lot most of us could have done. The Shy-Hulk’s the only one of us who could stand up to Tirek long term, and after that business in the Bullmuda Triangle who knows where she is. Slepnir managed to get him out of this dimension for a while but there was this flash, and he was back and Sley…wasn’t. And she still hasn’t reappeared.

Tirek only had most of Midtown Manehattan and a couple of surrounding cities worth of power at the time, but after Slepnir? He hit Raider’s island. Which included the Stockade. After that he went through the rest of us like Norman Osthorn goes through pumpkins. All the power and skill in Times Square that day, and the best we could come up with was dodging and trying to rush him all at once. I hear the Wonderbolt’s didn’t do much better and no offence to Shining Armor but at this scale the E.U.P. is almost never a factor.

Where was I in the middle of all this? Writhing in a crater his hooves left behind, the radiation of the spider bite overwhelming my body without my bio-magical field to keep it in check. And I was one of the lucky ones.

Then a rainbow happened.

***

We’re getting back on our collective hooves, but there’s a lot of heroes out there who’re still dealing with the medical fallout of their powers and their magic being ripped apart, then stitched back together. Honestly, the only reason the city’s been so quiet lately is most of the bad guys are in just as rough shape and too busy shaking it off to take advantage of the damage done to the Stockade. Damage Control’s been working overtime, so I also have to deal with the slight guilt of how well most of Midtown being in pieces worked out for me.

Could use the extra cash, though. That dirtbag blew up Twilight’s house, and while this crystal tree the girls’ Harmony stuff apparently comes from compensated her…somehow (Hate. Magic. Hate. It.) with a For Real castle, she’s still hurting. The Golden Oaks was the symbol of everything about her new life, and Tirek just…man.

Anyway, my overtime bonus came in handy because blowing the library up also meant there was a magical backdraft through the portal, though Johnny's and my place is fine. We just had to rearrange some shelves and get the floors redone. Eventually. You’ve no idea the panic of that ride over to Ponyville, seeing that stump and the relief of finding Twilight, Spike and everypony singing outside that castle.

Back and forth. My girlfriend’s house got blown up and all she got was this stupid castle. Hot and cold running water included.

And a bunch of borderline superhero features I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with, like a magic map. So naturally after hugs and thank suns your alives, the dang thing goes off and summons the girls to the middle of nowhere, where they run into somepony stealing cutie marks. I didn’t even know you could do that!

After that though, and Aunt May’s recovery from her own draining, Twilight suggested a vacation. Back and forth. Of course I’m happy to take off with her, May and Spike to San Navarra for a week, and of course I feel guilty because I clocked she’s really using this to avoid the new place. Which Applejack and the others fix the following week, meaning my Twilight Time is now back to whenever we can, and naturally I feel conflicted about that and guilty about feeling conflicted.

***

Nine years of web-slinging and what have I got to show for it? A bunch of scar tissue, a lifetime’s supply of neurosis and guilt, but a new partner in life and love, a new gig I’m actually proud of and new digs with an old friend. Sometimes back and forth isn’t so bad. And I dunno about you True Believers, but this little Spider-Pony’s decided to focus on swinging forward for once.

Maybe I’ll see ya there!

To be Continued

I think that went well!

How, uh, how do I get out of this...?

Anypony there? Hello?

Huh.

Author's Note:

GLOSSARY

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

So naturally after hugs and thank suns your alives, the dang thing goes off and summons the girls to the middle of nowhere, where they run into somepony stealing Cutie Marks. I didn’t even know you could do that!

I can only assume that Twilight hasn't told Peter about the world of (largely) nonmagical technicolor apes, much less her second trip there. Not least because if he ever learned how "Everfree think" dominated that universe, he'd probably be insufferable about it.