The Crusaders #4

Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, or any of the ideas or characters related to it. I do not own Marvel or any of its ideas or characters. I really wish I did though. I make no money from this writing. I really wish I did though.


My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

THE CRUSADERS #4

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    Five inches of clear, deer-crafted crystal stood between Princess Luna and the disarmed and chained Loki, glass reinforced by the strongest enchantments to withstand even a dragon's flames and claws. Yet as Luna looked in on Loki in his circular prison, dragon-forged chains restraining each limb, his tail, and his neck, she could still feel the heat of his glare as it lit upon her.

    "Well well well, the Princess of the Night. To what do I owe this visit in such… royal accommodations?"

    Luna glared back at him, while gesturing with a hoof to the room around them. "You're sitting beneath a hundred tons of earth and rock, surrounded by millions of tons more of ocean water, miles from the continent. That's enough pressure to turn coal to diamond. At one scratch in that glass around you, or at one command from me, this whole STRIKE base collapses on top of you, burying you beneath the ocean for all eternity."

    She took a step closer to the cage and shifted herself a few degrees toward Nightmare Moon. "And let me remind you, dragon. You killed my husband. I am very, very inclined to give that command."

    There was silence for several seconds, before Loki shivered and let out a chuckle. "Ooh, I felt a shiver run up my spine when you said that. No, honest, I was really scared. I wonder, would your dear sister approve of your threats?"

    "I don't need to concern myself with what my sister would or would not approve of, and neither do you. I am the mare in charge of STRIKE now, as well as a Princess of Equestria in my own right."

    Loki made no response to this. Instead he backed away a step and cast a glance around the curved glass and steel walls surrounding him. "Well in any event, it's an impressive cage." He looked at Luna. "Not made, originally, for me."

    Luna barely restrained herself from looking toward one of the dozen security cameras lining the circular room, through which she knew her son and the rest of her assembled team were watching and listening. "It was made for a much stronger, and might I say much better, person than you."

    "Oh, I can imagine." Loki, smirking, turned to a camera. "Perhaps a mad beast that makes play he's still a person. But really he's a monster. A fiend. A mad dog fit only for the slaughter! A-"

    "Silence!" Luna's horn lit up, and inside his cage Loki slammed to the metal floor. "He has made his mistakes, but Lir is my son and I will not TOLERATE HIM BEING CALLED SUCH THINGS BY A FOOL SUCH AS YOU!"

    The look on Loki's face after this could have turned a boulder to gravel. "Mistakes?" Flames crackled at the corners of his mouth. "Your bastard son killed my mother! You and your sister let him go unpunished, free to walk the earth and put more lives at risk! You have all had this coming for a long, long time, Nightmare Moon!"

    The magical pressure on Loki cut off, allowing him to stagger back into his standing position. Luna glared at him, even as she mentally scolded herself for losing control like that. She could still feel the anger and utter hate in her heart. She couldn't let that happen again.

    "Tell me… what is New Tambelon's plan?"

    Loki flexed his arms and neck in their restraints, managing to keep his eyes on Luna as he did. "It… burns you, doesn't it? To have been so secure, to have power. Nearly unlimited power. And for what," he said, looking again at the camera, "for safety? For the betterment of Equestria?"

    The red dragon looked back at Luna. "And then to be reminded that even royalty can be hurt. Eh. That's real power."

    Luna knew she wouldn't be getting anything else from him at the moment. Looking at Loki a moment longer, Luna then shook her head and turned to leave. "Well, let me know when 'real power' is in the mood to talk. I'll send your dad down here."

    "I'll be waiting."

*

    Several dozen floors up in the STRIKE base command center, Lir leaned from the central table as the video feed ended and folded his arms behind his head. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

    Three chairs down the table to Lir's left, Sweetie Belle sighed and shook her head. "I knew him distantly when he was a kid. It makes me sick seeing what he's become now. Still, if he's anything like his father-"

    "He's a dragon? Yeah, we've already figured that out, Belle."

    Sweetie Belle sent a glare at Galaxy, sitting two chairs down from her right. "If he's anything like his father, he's tough. He'll drag this out." She looked at the purple and green dragon sitting across the table from her. "Spike, any idea what his play is?"

    Everyone else at the table; Surprise, Hawkeye, Cameo, Galaxy, Agent Daisy, and Lancer looked over at Spike. The dragon, at the moment Celestia-sized, sat with Loki's spear in his hands, turning it over to look at every inch. He stayed silent after Sweetie Belle's question, silent long enough for her to clear her throat to ask again. "Spike, you seem to recognize that weapon. What's his play?"

    Spike dragged a claw down the side of the tear-shaped yellow crystal at the spear's end, and then set the weapon down onto the table. His eyes remained on it. "I have never seen this weapon before, but I… have seen something like it. Many, many years ago, as the Age of Harmony drew to a close. But the story goes much farther back than that, to legends and myths that were old even when Equestria was young."

    Lancer leaned forward in his seat. "Tell us."

    Spike looked up from the spear, scanning the ponies around the table. "Ancient legend has it that the first dragons were born from the mating of Fire, Wind, and Rock when an army from beyond the sky came. An army of metal giants and monsters that spit light and heat. Myth names them the Annihilation Wave, for life ended wherever they went. The first dragons turned the tide with fire that melted the metal giants, and then two sorcerers, one gryphon and one unicorn, banished the Annihilation Wave to a dark realm, never to return."

    Galaxy rolled her eyes and folded her fore legs across her chest. "What a nice fairytale. I suppose the unicorn sorcerer was the legendary Starswirl the Bearded?"

    Sweetie Belle scooted over to Galaxy and kicked her in the shin. "Shut up. Spike, who were the two sorcerers?"

    Spike sighed again and looked away from them all, back down to the spear. "Both eventually fell to madness and evil, if the legends are true. The gryphon was named Grogar. He was the Priest King of the gryphon kingdom. He eventually destroyed the capital city of Tambelon by summoning Tirek into our world, turning the majority of gryphons into wanderers. The unicorn… the unicorn was named Sombra."

    A hush fell, not merely over the table but the whole room. Sweetie Belle looked up, and there stood Princess Luna, a stricken look on her face. Sweetie Belle could understand why. She remembered the stories Rarity had told her about the events in the Crystal Empire, and the search for the Crystal Heart. Their history with Sombra was not as old as Spike said.

    Shaking free of whatever thoughts held her still, Luna ordered for the STRIKE personnel around the room to return to their work, and then continued on to the table. "We should all feel grateful King Sombra does not enter this situation. It is the other sorcerer, Grogar, we must deal with. I recognize that as his weapon."

    Murmurs ran across the table at this. Kyrie reached over and poked at the spear with a tip of one of her talons. "That explains why Loki named his organization New Tambelon, if he's somehow connected to the old Tambelon. But still, what's this have to do with Dark Realm and that magic harvester his goons used in Manehattan?"

    "That," said Luna, "is what I hope Lir and Galaxy will be able to figure out."

    Lir stood up from the table, small and faint next to his mother. "We should start with that spear. I don't know if it's from this Grogar fellow or from going through that portal with Loki, but I can feel the thing dripping with residual Dark Realm." He turned to Galaxy while motioning behind him to the door leading to the  research and lab areas of the compound. "Shall we?"

    Galaxy stood up and grabbed the spear with her magic. "Yes, let's. Lead the way, Cujo. I need to-"

    Luna cleared her throat, grabbing all their attentions once more. "The day grows old, and soon I will need to go raise the moon for the night. Perhaps it would be wiser for you all to rest now. With Loki captured, we can afford to relax a little. Galaxy, you at least I know to have been up for nearly two days straight now."

    Galaxy withered beneath a sudden glare from Sweetie Belle, who at this statement from Luna stood up from the table and went at Galaxy. "You've what? Darling, stop being an idiot! What if you had fallen asleep while flying around Stalliongrad and crashed into a building? Or when you were fighting Spike and got hit by Lancer's lightning because you weren't paying attention!?"

    Galaxy squeaked as she backed away from the angry mare. "Now hold on there, Belle. I take plenty of precautions in case of something like that, like Ultron to take over the suit and lots of caffeine pills-"

    "PILLS!?" Sweetie Belle's eyes seemed to flame to the onlookers. "Don't you know those can wreck your body? There is so much that we…."

    While the two unicorns continued to argue, Hawkeye sidled over to Lancer and elbowed him in the side. "Hey, let's take the princess's suggestion and go unwind. It's been nearly three years since I last saw you, and I want to talk."

    Lancer nodded. "That's a good idea. Lead the way, then."

    And as Lancer and Hawkeye left the command center, Hawkeye leading the way to the same training room Sweetie Belle had used earlier that day, Surprise slunk her way around the table, past the otherwise occupied Galaxy and Sweetie Belle, over to where Cameo stood. "Hey, Cameo, right?"

    The earth pony stallion nodded, and then turned and motioned for Surprise to follow him out a different door from the one Lancer and Hawkeye used. "Yes, that's right. And you're Surprise. The Spider-Mare."

    Surprise brightened, following him down a metal corridor. "Oh, you know of me and my daring exploits?"

    Cameo chuckled. "Daring might be pushing it, but yes. We're STRIKE, it's our job to know. Most of us around here consider you a reckless, amateur vigilante who's going to get someone killed sooner or later."

    Surprise's step slowed and the light left her face, ears folding back as she looked around. "Oh. Well, I guess that's the professional opinion. Can't say I'm not used to it, but… what about you?"

    "What do I think?" Cameo shrugged and led Surprise through a door on their right, into a room filled with ponies at computer consoles and tinkering with machines Surprise couldn't even guess the purpose of. "I think you save lives. You do it for the right reasons. You give other ponies something to look up to. I think you're a hero."

    Surprise stopped just in the room, eyes widening as she looked around it in science-loving wonder. She hadn't seen anything so cool since she had snuck her way into ArmEx's Stalliongrad labs, the day she got her powers. But then she looked back the way they came. "I'm really nopony special. Not next to ponies like Mare Do Well or Iron Mare. Or even Spike. Next to them I'm nothing but a mall cop."

    "Malls hold ponies too. It's being a cop to begin with that matters."

    Cameo motioned for her to keep following him. They wound their way through the room to a bank of lockers. He opened a locker and brought out a small, black, featureless cell phone, connected to the wall by a red wire. Holding it between his teeth, Cameo offered it to Surprise. "Here, give your aunth a call. I'm shure she's worried."

    Surprise took the phone, balancing it with hardly a thought on one hoof as she stared at Cameo. It took her a moment to find her words. "How did you know I wanted… all I did was introduce myself to you and you brought me here!"

    Cameo shrugged again, still holding his calm smile. "Like I said, it's our job to know about people, and you're a pony that values family. As an earth pony of Gildedale, I can appreciate that. You'd want to give somepony a call sooner or later. And for the record, neighborhood heroes like you are under-appreciated."

    Surprise smiled, fighting to hide the blush in her cheeks, and began dialing her home's phone number.

*

    The raid into the Crystal Empire was an unexpected success, bigger than Shocker had expected, netting them forty kilos of raw Dark Realm, every crystalline container of which was immediately transported to New Tambelon's base in Cloudsdale, hidden within the cloud superstructure beneath the rainbow factory.

    Once there, the news of Loki's capture in Stalliongrad quickly killed the plans Vulture had to celebrate their success. Flyers were sent out to alert every hidden group in Equestria, every spy, every dissident. The base's workers were pressed to quicken their production of the magic harvesters. And Vulture had a hissy fit.

    "Crud crud crud crud!" The pegasus stomped back and forth through the cloud-composed room, grabbing whatever pieces of cloud furniture he ran into and throwing them against the walls to dissipate into mist. "Years! Years of careful planning and infiltration, tens of thousands of bits, thrown down the drain because our dragon master couldn't shut up and stay hidden! What an idiot!"

    Shocker, out of his supervillain uniform, stood in the doorway watching this tirade. "Loki would kill you for talking about him like that."

    Vulture rounded on Shocker. "Well that doesn't matter, because Loki's NOT FREAKING HERE!"

    Keeping calm, Shocker met Vulture's glare with the most emotionless stare he could muster. "It's unprofessional getting upset like this, not to mention revealing the depths of your idiocy. Relax. Loki getting captured was all part of the plan."

    Vulture blinked. "Plan? There was a plan? Wait…." His eyes narrowed, the robotic claws that long-ago had been surgically grafted to his fore hooves clenching in a new anger. "I wasn't told about any damn plan."

    At this Shocker let himself smile. "Of course you weren't. The plan is need-to-know and you didn't need to know. But now we're moving on to the next stage of the plan, where, if you'll just follow your instructions, you'll be able to kill many, many ponies."

    Vulture's eyes stayed narrowed, but slowly, to Shocker's relief, his claws unclenched. "How many ponies?"

    Shocker stood up on his lion legs and held his arms out to the sides, palms out and fingers spread, indicating everything around them. "A city's worth."

    Now the pegasus was grinning, claws and mechanical wings twitching in excitement. "Ohhhh, now this is getting good. We're going to need a big magic harvester for that, with unmatched reach."

    "You and your workers best get to that then."

    Vulture took a step forward. Shocker backed away a step as the pegasus got right in his face, snout to beak. "We're also going to need something to keep the ponies in range of the harvester. Something catastrophic."

    Shocker growled and pushed Vulture off of him. "I have that covered. When the time is right, the pegasi of Cloudsdale will find the rainbow factory, their mainstay, in terrible danger and come flocking to help. They will come in droves… to their death. And no two-bit hero will be there to save them."

*

    The STRIKE base's main agent training room, three stories high and half the size of a hoofball field, rang with the thumps, thuds, and grunts of two bodies in combat. Lancer swung his hammer, Kyrie neatly sidestepping to let Lancer overextend, to bring her balled-together fists down on his now-exposed back. The pegasus took the blow, letting it drop him down into a crouch to sweep Kyrie's legs out from under her.

    Rather than fall, the hippogryph beat her wings to hover in the air. "Hah, like that would work on-"

    Lancer headbutted Kyrie's now-exposed gut, driving all the breath from her lungs and sending her crashing back down to the ground. She lay there a moment on her back, all the time Lancer needed to land beside her and pin her down with Mjolnir. "Wield."
Lancer sat there for a full minute as his sparring partner squirmed beneath the implacable hammer, trying to dislodge it from atop her. Then he grew bored. "So… I've noticed it's not merely Princess Galaxy doing the heroics any longer. Care to catch me up on what I missed while… away?"

    Rather impressively, Kyrie managed to keep struggling with the hammer even as she answered the question. "Yeah, Galaxy there really started something with that Iron Mare suit. About a week after you disappeared Spider-Mare appeared up in Stalliongrad, stopping crimes both at street-level and higher with all the apparent powers of a spider. There are countless ponies scattered around Equestria developing all kinds of freaky mutant powers. They're getting a lot of hate, something I can relate to. Aquastria's newest king, Namor, has made a couple of, nngh."

    She paused long enough to attempt a roll out from under the hammer, only managing to pin one of her wings under her. "Ouch. Okay, where was I…."

    "Namor."

    Kyrie blushed and to Lancer's relief finally stopped struggling to move Mjolnir off her chest. "Right. He's made appearances. The younger prince of some Zebra kingdom, T'Chala I think his name is, has been cleaning up Zebrica. There's a few others running around, but that's all the important people. Hnn, GET THIS DAMN THING OFF ME!"

    Reaching a hoof out, Lancer set an electro-magnetic beam out to grab the hammer and pull it back to his side. "Sorry. I thought it funny how you kept squirming." He helped her to her feet. "Although, I think you're wrong. Everypony's important."

    Kyrie rolled her eyes. "Right, sure. Anyway, it's getting late and tomorrow's a busy day. I'm heading for my bunk. I think you're caught up."

    "Not quite." Lancer looked around and toward the door and, after making sure nobody else was in the training room with them, took a step toward Kyrie, keeping his voice low. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again, and to see you doing so well. But I need to know. How in the world did you end up working for the same organization that kept you locked up for so long? What happened to Teddy and Ace?"

    Kyrie took longer to answer than Lancer liked, taking her time to towel off from their sparring session and straighten her feathers. "Teddy and Ace went freelance, working the poorer areas of Manehattan. Last I heard Teddy was now Iron Hoof, and Ace is now Power Stallion, thanks to some freak lab accident or other. You know how these things go."

    "And you?"

    She shrugged and together they started walking to the door. "It's not that weird. The mare in charge of the Vault while I was there had gone rogue without anyone knowing. Kept a fair few exotic creatures captive besides me. So I figured there were worse places to work than STRIKE. And that's all she wrote."

    Lancer wasn't very sure of that, but he decided to stop pushing. For the moment. Instead he stopped Kyrie at the door. "Wait. Before we retire for the night, I want to tell you… thank you. For trying to bring me back here. For not giving up. You're a loyal friend."

    Kyrie smiled, a genuine smile, and through her light-grey cheek feathers Lancer could see a blush. "I owed you, for your kindness. Freeing me like you did. I owe you."

    Lancer nodded, accepting that. Together they left the training room.

*

    The sleeping quarters were just about how Galaxy expected them to be. 7 x 7 squares, walls and floors a blank grey; bunk beds on the wall opposite the door with drawers for clothes and equipment on the one side and a door to a private restroom and shower on the other side. There was a shelf barely big enough to hold half a dozen books, all of which were training or instruction manuals of varying topics. The beds themselves were stiff, with dull blue sheets and an itchy pillow. Galaxy decided. The place was boring on a cosmic level.

    "Think of it this way," said Sweetie Belle, claiming the top bunk. "Nobody will have trouble waking you up in case of an emergency."

    Galaxy glared at the other unicorn from the room's entrance, adding some magic to her gem eyes to make them glow a fiery red for emphasis. "Someone trying to wake me up will BE the emergency. And why in Tartarus do you get the top bunk? Why are you even sleeping, you're a vampire!"

    Sweetie Belle rolled onto her side to face toward Galaxy. "Because I won our argument earlier. Also, I enjoy sleep. It's a luxury, darling."

    Galaxy grit her teeth and stomped into the room, letting the door slide shut behind her. "You did not win the argument. I just got bored with it. Way big difference." She began to busy herself with throwing the few items she carried on her body into one of the drawers. "And anyways, you should know by now that there's no such thing as a luxury for me, only something I haven't bought or done yet." She slammed the drawer shut. "Sleeping is just… sleeping."

    Silence in the room. Galaxy could feel Sweetie Belle's eyes on her, staring at her, through her. It occurred to her that the last time they had been alone like this had been the day of the U.C. attack. That had been nearly a week ago. They argued that day. Galaxy couldn't even remember what about. It seemed pointless though, now that Oren had died, some ancient gryphon evil was returning, and the whole world was at stake.

    "Belle, listen," said Galaxy, turning to the beds. "I'm… I'm sorry. About a lot of things. I can't even name all the things I've been to apologize for."

    "Oh, let's see. Irritability, selfishness, arrogance, pride, self-centered, not playing well with others, not sleeping until you're a danger to yourself and others, not knowing why you're even here, having-"

    Galaxy walked over and kicked Sweetie Belle's bunk bed. "Ugh, shut up, I'm apologizing. But yes, all of that stuff you just mentioned, and I'm sure a lot more besides."

    "A whole lot more."

    Galaxy could hear the amusement in Sweetie's voice, and it just made her want to scream and kick the bed again. "Will you stop that? I've no experience at this and you're really… why the hay are you laughing?"

    Sweetie Belle was giggling loud and hard, rolling around on her bed enough that Galaxy got worried she was going to fall off. "You, Hahahah, you really are, hahah, inexperienced at this! Hah, I don't think I've ever heard you apologize before, heh…." She sighed and wiped a hoof over her eyes, wiping away the tears and smiling. "But yeah, yeah, it's okay. I accept your apology. It's what friends are for."

    "Friends…." A weight Galaxy had hardly noticed before lifted from her shoulders as she tested the word. She managed a smile. "I guess that's what they, the princesses, want us to be. What we need to be, to work as a team. Though, now I'm suspicious about why we got assigned the same room."

    Sweetie Belle shrugged and smirked at Galaxy. "Well, who did you want to room with? The sweet and nerdy Lir, or the hot hunk Lancer?"

    Galaxy grabbed a pillow from her bed and threw it at Sweetie Belle. "That is absolutely none of your concern!"

    Sweetie Belle grabbed the pillow with her magic and grinned wider. "Oh wait, it was the humble farmboy Cameo!"

    "Grahhh!" Galaxy launched herself at Sweetie Belle, causing the other unicorn to scream delightedly as they began to wrestle, twisting and turning on the bed as each struggled to wind up on top. "You will rue the day you patronized Princess Mi Amore Selene Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobilla Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andri Charton-Haymoss Ivanovici Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser Galaxy the third!"

    Sweetie Belle, on her back beneath Galaxy, stuck all four legs out, pinning her against the ceiling above them. "You just made all that up on the spot!"

    Galaxy twisted and, using the ceiling for leverage, pushed them both off the bed to the floor. "Well it should be my name!"

    A sudden cough made both turn their heads to the open doorway, where stood an out-of-costume and brightly-blushing Surprise. A duffle bag around her neck. "Um, uh... maybe I should go room with one of the guys…."

    Galaxy blinked, looked down at Sweetie Belle pinned beneath her, realized that she had Sweetie Belle pinned beneath her, and then scrambled off her and to the other side of the room as fast as she could without activating her armor. "No no, no need to leave, we were just making out-MAKING UP! We were making up our fight. Fights. All our fights. Why are you here?"

    "Yeah," chimed in Sweetie Belle as she jumped back into the top bunk. "I thought you were bunking in Hawkeye's room?"

    To Galaxy's astonishment, Surprise's blush grew even brighter after this seemingly innocent question, and the earth pony kicked a hoof against the floor. "I think she'd prefer me being elsewhere, heh. But, but I mean, if it's too much trouble, really, I can go somewhere else. Don't wanna be a bother to two big heroes like you two."

    Sweetie Belle made a dismissive tsk. "You wouldn't be a bother at all. The problem is that, well, there are only two beds here."

    Galaxy rolled her eyes at this. "More like only two slabs."

    "Oh," said Surprise. "That's no problem at all. Hold on a sec."

    Setting down her bag, Surprise unzipped it and searched amongst her costume inside of it. After a moment, during which Galaxy and Sweetie Belle looked on in interest, the earth pony pulled out one of her web shooters. Then, faster than Galaxy could have expected, Surprise spun herself a hammock.

    "Ta-da!" Surprise jumped into the hammock, giggling as it bobbed and swung about. "Comfy!"

    Galaxy bit her lip. That really did look comfy… and the actual bed she lay on definitely wasn't….

    "Say, you wouldn't happen to have plenty of webbing to spare, would you?"

    Soon enough, all three mares were snug in their own hammocks. Galaxy sighed, closing her eyes to count math equations, when a cleared throat made her look over toward Surprise. "Hm?"

    The younger mare looked embarrassed, and took several seconds to say anything. "I just... wanted you both to know how awesome and amazing it is to be working with you on this."

    Sweetie Belle chuckled. "Darling, relax. We're happy to have you. Isn't that right, Galaxy?"

    "Well, she made us these nice hammocks, so-" A kick sent Galaxy's hammock swaying. She waited until this had stopped and sent a glare at Sweetie Belle. "We're very happy to have you. Can't wait to see some action with you by my side. Can we go to sleep now?"

    The last word on the matter was Surprise's, several minutes after Galaxy had thought it was safe to relax. "Best. Sleepover. Ever. Ooh, let's do each other's manes!"

    "Guh."

*

    Lir found Loki where he was supposed to be; sitting cross-legged in his cell, eyes closed but his way of breathing showing he was awake. Lir hesitated a moment at the elevator, wondering again if this was a good idea, before steeling himself and walking over to the transparent cell. The unicorn guards standing watch paid him no mind, but as Lir got closer Loki's eyes opened and stared at him.

    "Hello, mutt. Have you come to rage at me for the slaying of your father? Do you wish to scream and flail your arms, stomp your hooves about?" Loki grinned. "Perhaps… release the Hulk to kill me?"

    The two guards standing to the sides of the cell door stiffened at this threat. Lir found it more amusing then anything. "I'm not here to do any of that."

    The smile dropped from Loki's mouth, which to Lir was rather rewarding. "I should elaborate. I'm angry. Very, very angry. I think I might hate you in fact. But I didn't come here to act out on those urges."

    "Then why. Why are you here?"

    Lir sat down so that he was eye-level with the dragon. "I'm here to say… I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for the death of your mother Gilda on the first day I… let the other guy out. I wish I could bring her back, along with all the thousands of others that died during the Hulk's… the other guy's rampage, but I can't. So I'm not asking you for forgiveness either. Just understanding. Understanding that you're going to cause the same pain we're both experiencing right now to a whole lot of other people if you don't stop. Is that something you want?"

    Loki leaned forward, lips twisting into a sneer. "What I want is for you to suffer. For everyone to suffer, while I rule you inferior creatures as is my right as a dragon. A superior being."

    Suddenly, he grinned, mouth full of fangs and flame. "And anyway, the opinion of a mongrel like you is worth less than nothing. Half-pony, half-diamond dog, but hated and feared by both. Who else could this ultimate jail cell have been made for? Friendless."

    "I have friends," said Lir, who then flinched inwardly. He shouldn't have responded to such obvious goading, and he knew it, but he couldn't stop himself. "Sweetie Belle, at least. Sweetie Belle is my friend."

    At this, Loki laughed. "Oh of course! The monster, finding companionship in another monster. A vampire, no less. But you know the difference between you and her?" Loki leaned forward. "Sweetie Belle can go out into the public without running away and screaming!"

    Lir stood up. "I think I'm done here. Goodnight, Loki. Goodnight, guards."

    As Lir turned and walked back to the elevator, he grit his teeth as Loki got in one final shot. "Whether civilian or one of these self-appointed heroes, they'll never accept you!"

*

    Spike, pony-sized, walked the dark and lonesome streets of Ponyville. The hour was late, and all the town's citizens were either home in bed or out enjoying the nightclubs. This was something for which Spike was thankful for, as he was in no mood to answer pointless questions. Not while he held Loki's staff in his hands.

    "How… how…."

    Everything Spike had told the others was true, but it was not all he could have told them. He could have told them, for instance, that this was not the first time he had ever seen the staff. He could have also told them that the gem at the end was not originally part of it.

    "We kept them hidden… Twilight promised the princesses they were safe…."

    Spike ripped the abandoned library's front door clear off its hinges and hurried inside. Using the staff's glowing-yellow gem as a light, Spike walked down into the decrepit building's basement. Here was a place he had not been to in decades, and his thoughts were filled with unwanted memories and emotions.

    Down in the dark of the library basement, Spike found signs of a long-ago battle. Smashed brick and wood, scorch marks littering every surface, stains that might have once been blood; and a wispy, black fluid Spike dared not identify. The damage grew worse at the very center of the room, around a chest hewn from solid diamond; a gift from Princess Cadance. This alone was unmarred.

    Spike knelt down beside the chest and inserted the blade-like tip of his tail into the keyhole, designed for him and him alone. There was a soft click. With trembling hands Spike opened the chest and looked down on what rested inside.

    Three gems, jagged as if they were the pieces of a whole, rested at the bottom of the chest; a red gem, a blue gem, and an orange gem. Spike swore. Taking the yellow gem of the staff into account, there were still two gems missing.

    "Nobody knew about them. Twilight and I never told a soul." Considering Twilight had gone missing, not confirmed dead, this didn't help at all. "Still, I can protect these three better now, now that I'm a fully matured dragon and can do this."

    Spike grabbed the three gems from the chest, opened his mouth wide, and shoved them in. A swallow later and the dragon felt them settle deep inside him, immune from digestion and protected from theft by solid walls of dragon on every side. For a moment Spike considered adding the staff's yellow gem to the group, but after some thought decided against it. That would raise too many questions he didn't want to answer.

    Closing and locking the chest, Spike moved on to the other side of the room, also surprisingly undamaged, where sat a rotten table covered in dusty tomes and scrolls. A special, secret research project the old unicorn hadn't let Spike get involved in at all. Spike picked one scroll up and remembered the last time he had seen Twilight over one hundred years before, sifting through these same items with a harried look on her face. Then the blue box had appeared, Twilight got inside with barely a look back at Spike, and she was gone. Just like that. Gone forever.

    "What did you find, Twilight… what made you so afraid you ran away into time and space?"

    On a whim, he unrolled the scroll he had picked it. Ancient, the parchment cracked and the writing was faded with the centuries. As Spike looked it over he was only able to make out a few words here and there, until he reached the bottom. Here was fresher writing, and in a style Spike recognized as Twilight's.

    "I can't explain, there's no time. The legends are true, there's no denying. He's not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Bane of dragons. Usurper, murderer, devourer, hell-spawned demon knight, corrupter, tyrant. I leave now to fight him. Whatever happens, whatever I do, please forgive me.

    "Count the shadows."

    Spike's heart froze. He turned around. The whole room was shrouded in shadow. Before, the glow of Loki's staff had easily lit the whole room up with light.

    "Oh."

    Spike flame-teleported himself out of there with all due haste.

*

    At the stroke of midnight, when all of Cloudsdale was dark and asleep, Shocker set about on his own mission. It was a moonless night, so that with his dark-grey and black feathers the gryphon was nearly invisible as he flew among the clouds. Long experience had taught him this.

    The floating city's main rainbow factory was his destination, the largest collection of cloud buildings in Cloudsdale. The place was closed for the night, but Shocker found it an easy enough task to knock out the handful of guards in the multi-building complex. Nobody had ever tried to sabotage or steal the precious liquid rainbow stored inside before, so nobody thought a lot of protection was necessary. Shocker found it a pleasure to prove them wrong.

    A cold wind blew as Shocker knelt down at the edge of one of many circular pools of liquid rainbow. He removed from a satchel at his side a black crystal no bigger than one of his teeth and tossed it into the center of the pool. "Afar angathfark, afar vadokanuk, Mauzur Timursham Kulkodar!"

    The first reaction was a sudden and drastic drop in temperature, a sign of the dead among the living. Shocker breathed out and saw his frosty breath, and then watched with rapt attention as the color drained from the liquid rainbow, turning black. It was an unnatural black, and Shocker's eyes hurt as he looked at it.

    Then two red eyes with slit irises appeared within the black liquid rainbow, and the darkness was looking back at him. "What do you have to tell me?"

    Shocker took a moment to fight down the bile that rose in his throat whenever he heard that hateful voice speak and answered. "All the pawns are in their places. The heroes have gathered, the Vulture continues to build his machines, Loki readies his final move, and Doom broods in his Crystal Empire. All is how you planned it."

    "Of course." The eyes flashed, flames leaping from them to the ceiling. "The time of my return draws near. The Annihilation Wave is mine to command. My revenge on the princesses will be complete."

    Thought all sounded well and good, but doubts plagued Shocker's thoughts. "Sir," he said, "what if Loki's plan fails, or the heroes stop him? And when will I get my reward?"

    Somehow, even without a visible mouth, the blackness scowled; such a scowl that Shocker felt it taking the years off his life. The voice spoke again. "There are contingencies in place. I learned in life that intelligence and planning can get you so much farther than raw power. That is where the princesses will ultimately fail. As for your reward. A high position, freedom from death or slavery, that shall be your reward. Praise my generosity."

    Shocker puked. His hand shook as he wiped his beak. "I, I'm sorry, sir. I need to stop for now. It's going on too long."

    "Very well. You would be less useful to me dead. You know what needs to be done anyway, so don't call for me again."

    Shocker waited for the red eyes to fade away, before collapsing to the side. It was a fight just to stay conscious, but he managed it. He couldn't afford to get caught there, not when success was so close at hand.

    The liquid rainbow pool remained black as he staggered out.

*
Backup story: Histories and Legacies

*

    Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there lived in the city of Canterlot a young unicorn colt named Sombra. His coat was light-ash, quite close to white, and his long mane and tail were creamy-gold. His eyes were blue as the sky above. His parents dead of the plague, little orphan Sombra made a living on the streets, doing whatever odd jobs he could for any pony willing to spare him a coin; chimney-sweeping, horseshoe-shining, window-washing, other sundry things.

    What Sombra couldn't earn, the little rogue stole. Mostly food and books, only the sorts of things a growing colt needed to survive. He was a very honorable colt, living with the promise of never taking from the multitude of other colts and fillies made to live on the streets in those days.

    One night, in the cold of winter, a heavy snowfall collapsed Sombra's ramshackle hut in the slums, destroying the little food he had stored there. Cold, hungry, and desperate to survive, little Sombra stole away to the first place to come to mind: Canterlot Castle. He had snuck into the kitchens there many times before, and had feasted well each time.

    That night however, Sombra's luck changed. For just as he had settled down into a kitchen corner with a pilfered platter of breads and cheeses, the torches lining the walls of the kitchen flickered to life with a burst of magic!

    "CEASE, THOU FILTHY THIEF, AND KNOW THAT THOU HAS DRAWN THE IRE OF YOUR PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT!"

    Sombra prostrated himself before Princess Luna, not yet in those days transformed into the evil Nightmare Moon. Knowing he had to think fast to avoid a trip to the jewel mines below the city, clever little Sombra began rattling off the names of all the stars and constellations in the night sky quick as he could.

    Once his knowledge was exhausted, Sombra looked up at the shocked-silent princess with tears in his eyes. "My princess, every night as I lay myself down too sleep in the streets, I look up to your moon and stars and count each one a blessing. They are better and more beautiful to me than any harsh, blinding sun. Please, have mercy on this poor colt!"

    Marveling at the smarts of this young colt, not yet even with his cutie mark, and touched by his love of her neglected night Princess Luna did more than show mercy. She adopted him right on the spot, taking him on as a student and ward!

    And from that day on Sombra ate his fill of the finest foods, and read the finest books a young prince could ever hope for. And he was happy, for a time.