Infinite Harmony

Much faster than by train, Rainbow Dash had reached the bustling city of Manehatten. With the dazzling grace that her own ego lived off of, she dived and weaved between its skyscrapers, so tall that they gave Canterlot Castle a run for its money, and its busy streets as well. She was searching for whatever building Rarity had said she would be at, while simultaneously wracking her brain to try and remember where the building was in the first place, and what is was.

“Butter’s Flower? Rutter’s Tower? Fluttershy’s Coroner?” she asked herself, as she tried to remember the name. “Aw, the hay with it!”

Abandoning her quest of trying to remember the name of the joint Rarity had gone to and searching for it, she decided to search for the fashionista herself. Maybe she’d get lucky.

In about five minutes, she spotted many ponies with luxurious white coats, white horns, fantabulous deep violet manes, immaculately manicured hooves you could eat off of, diamonds on their flank, prissy diva fashionista attitudes, generosity, and who were mares. But she couldn’t find the one pony she knew that combined all of these attributes to form her friend. The closest she got was some stuck up stallion that had everything above except being a mare, and boy was that an awkward situation.

As she flew around the city for what must have been the jabillionth time, reminding herself never to perform a flying tackle hug on a pony unless you have absolute confirmation that he or she is your intended target, she thought about high-tailing it back to Ponyville to maybe see if Fluttershy or Twilight or somepony knew where Rarity was heading to in this crazy town. Or better yet, maybe she could go back to street level and maybe ask Manehattan's locals if they knew. After all, so long as she didn’t call their crazy town a crazy town, maybe they wouldn’t be as hard to open up as she heard Scootaloo and Applejack say Babs was.

Her hooves had no sooner touched onto the asphalt of a side-walk, when she noticed an usual scene for her. An ambulance carriage was parked out in front of some store while an older Unicorn stallion, the store owner, she presumed, stood to one side of the entrance to his place of business with sad, dejected look on his face and his head hung low.

Rainbow looked up at a side above his head that read, ‘Cutter’s Corner.’

“Cutter’s Corner?” she asked to herself, fore-hoof on her chin. She smiled. “Maybe this is the place!”

With renewed enthusiasm, she trotted off toward the presumed owner of the store. “Hey you! Have you seen my friend?” she yelled out, causing his ears to go up and his head to turn towards her. “Have you seen--”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” the older unicorn said, his head down as he gave Rainbow a hug, holding in his own tears.

“Sorry? Sorry for--” Before she could ask further, Rainbow Dash caught the sight of a couple of EMT ponies wheeling out a stretcher with a pony on it, draped in a white sheet. She did not know how, but something told her that she knew who was on that stretcher. “Oh Celestia no.”

Yet still, Rainbow had to confirm her suspicions. In a frenzy, with her teeth, she lifted off the portion of the sheet covering the body’s face.

No.

No no no no no, “No no no no no no no,” she said, backing up as the tears began their unencumbered descent down her face.

The older unicorn placed a gentle hoof on her shoulder. “There...there are no words to express--”

Her sorrow turned into rage at his voice. In one swift motion, she knocked his fore-leg, and pinned him against the wall behind him. With lightning in her eyes, she said, “WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT THE HAY DID YOU DO TO HER!? IF YOU KILLED HER I’LL--” Dash raised her hoof ready to strike.

The unicorn nervously held up his hooves in utter terror as he looked into Dash’s eyes. “No, wait! I didn’t anything to her! I promise! I only called her here to examine this stone that some of my workers had found. She touched it and the next the thing we knew, she let out this horrifying scream and collapsed to the ground! Honest!”

“LIAR!” Dash yelled. Her blood boiled as she was about to deck the older unicorn into next week when the two EMT ponies, done loading Rarity’s body into the carriage, came and pulled her away from the frightened older unicorn. “Let me go! He killed my friend!”

“Mam! Calm down!” the brown coated earth pony EMT said.

“I said let me go!” Rainbow Dash said, flapping her wings and trying to buck with her hind legs as hard as she could to break free of their grip on her.

“Mam! We haven’t found any proof that this gentlecolt did anything that smells like foul play!” the teal coated earth pony EMT said.

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth as her adrenaline went as far as it would go. With one final effort to break free, she said, “Let. Me. GO!”

Suddenly, the two EMTs tripped backwards and Rainbow Dash found herself free in the air at last. That was good. She wasn’t sure even with the adrenaline surge that she could overpower to full grown earth pony stallions with those two’s build. She gained enough altitude to where she was sure the two couldn’t just jump up and grab her again, and looked back down, eyes zeroing in on the older unicorn.

On any given normal day, Rainbow would have tackled the gentlecolt, grabbed a hold of him, and took him somewhere safe to beat a confession out of him for what she was so sure he had done to Rarity, and say later on that, ‘Justice was served.’

However, before she could dart off towards the older unicorn and properly execute her plan, she saw that, on the ground, things weren’t so normal.

Down below, things began to shake, as though someone below had begun to jostle the ground with one hoof. The road, the street lights, the carriages, the road signs, the trash in trash cans, the trash littered on the street, everything. Not even the ponies were immune to being shaken and jostled about, tripping over their own hooves or falling flat onto their faces. All around her, she watched as the normally sturdy buildings that had made Manehattan the jewel of New Rich Equestria began to sway like a deck of cards just waiting to topple over. The streets themselves began to form little spider-web like fractures on the surface like a cracked mirror. Heck, the glass on the buildings and the mirrors inside began to look like a cracked mirror.

Rainbow Dash stopped slowly turning around in place in the air and looked back at the carriage carrying Rarity. Her friend.

“Earthquake!” said the first driver of the ambulance carriage.

“In Manehatten!?” asked the second driver.

Dash looked towards the stretcher, Rarity’s body becoming jostled a little by the rumbling. “Rainbow Dash...please...help me.”

“What was that?” Dash asked, hearing a ghostly version of Rarity’s voice coming from the body. “Wait...was that…Rarity? She’s alive? SHE’S ALIVE?!” she exclaimed, her eyes opening wide in shock.

Not bothering to ask the how or why (after all, she and her friends battled chaos and one changed her entire species. It was kind of easy to allow a little leeway),  she quickly flew into middle of the commotion and grabbed the lying form of her friend before the EMTs knew what was happening.

With Rarity in hoof, Dash turned her head south-westward, towards Ponyville. “Don’t worry Rare! If anypony can figure out how to help you, it’s Twilight!”

She high tailed it to the library, going faster than even she thought was possible with a passenger onboard. Hopefully, a live passenger…

*****

“Greetings,” said Thanos.

“Who--WHAT--are you?” Celestia all but whispered.

“The name is Thanos, and as to what I am, well, look no further than what remains of your sister...Celestia…”

At this, The Solar Princess and her former student’s eyes widened to saucers and their pupils became like pin-pricks.

“Oh yes. I know a great many things. Though Luna put up the most refreshing mental battle, I’ve had in a long time for a creature as...aesthetic as her after I overpowered her in that asteroid field, I was able to get enough from her ultimately little cranium to know who you and Twilight Sparkle are and a great many other things with...impeccable familiarity,” Thanos leaned his head towards the two conscious Princesses. “Now, unless you desire for you or your ‘prized pupil’ or your kingdom to resemble Luna, might I suggest you hand over the elements of harmony as a gesture of...‘friendship?’ ”

The mad titan grinned toothily.

Celestia eyed Thanos for a few moments, gazing into his eyes for any glimmer of mercy or kindness. She found, only a black abyss.

Turning her head towards Twilight, she asked, “Twilight, is Luna’s heart still beating?”

Twilight merely stood where she was, frozen, a far off look in her eyes.

“Twilight!”

The newest Princess of Equestria was immediately shaken out of her stupor and placed her ear against Luna’s chest. She waited and listened for the rhythmic beating of a living heart.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

It was faint, but it was there.

She looked up to Celestia and said, “Yes...she’s still alive…”

Celestia looked away from her former protege and lowered her head, sighing deeply as the tears from her eyes stopped flowing. “Good,” she said, her eyes opening now with an expression of fierceness burning with the intensity of a thousand white suns aimed towards the monster who almost took her dear sister away from her a second time. “Take her and run, Twilight.”

“Wh--what?” The younger Princess stammered out. “But...I can’t! I can’t leave--”

Celestia turned her head backwards and turned her expression upon her former student. “Twilight Isabella Sparkle! Take Luna and get somewhere safe this instant young lady!” she said like all of the times she had to seriously discipline Twilight back when she was a filly.

Like those times, Twilight immediately did as she was told, placed Luna on her shoulders, and teleported out, but not before sharing one final sad look of concern with her former teacher.

Celestia turned back to Thanos, sniffling a little and wiping away the remains of her tears and her mascara. Her expressions since she last opened her eyes hadn’t changed. In fact, it had grown, and if one looked closely, they might be able to see twin pillars of fire in either of her eyes.

Thanos let out a moan and sat back in his chair, the side of his face resting on an open palm. “Oh, please don’t tell me you seriously intend to clash with me,” he said in a rather bored tone of voice. “Considering that your sister failed to even make a small rend in my hide, what mad hope do you think you have?”

“As much as I love her, I am not my sister,” Celestia said in a low, menacing tone.

“True, but from her memories, I know that even the power boost she had in her possessed form was still far weaker than I, yet it was enough to almost kill you and forced you to resort to using the elements.”

Celestia leaned down towards the ground and began scraping her front hooves in succession against the marble floor, gouging out large chunks of it. “I’ve gotten a lot more powerful in the intervening millennia.”

Thanos raised an eyebrow. “Really. Exactly how powerful is--”

In the span of a microsecond, Celestia did something rather un-princess like. She took in a deep breath and snorted a rather sizable cloud of steam from her nostrils. Then, with a single flap of her alabaster wings, she charged Thanos so quickly that he had never even had the time to yell out ‘THHHHHAAAAATTTTT!’ and finish his sentence. Instead, with Celestia’s front hooves planted firmly in his chest, he was lifted out of his hovering golden throne and the two of them cut clean through the ceiling above the throne-room, made an arc through the air, and obliterated several of The Crystal Mountain’s tallest peaks as they bore their way through the crust then the mantle then the core...all at the speed of light.

In a second, the entirety of the planet, but especially the Kingdom of Equestria, would feel the aftershock of such a tremendous event…

*****

“WHAT THE HAY!?” yelled out Applejack.

The train ride to Manehattan up to that point had been as pleasant a ride as Applejack could remember her and the girls ever having. And right quick too! This new Super Speedy line made all the old lines she and they had ever been on look like a snail trying to climb up Canterlot Castle when placed side by side!

At the moment, though, Applejack was thinking that it might have been a little too fast because, for no other good reason she could gather, the train car she, Pinkie, and Fluttershy were in was shaking like a can of oats her sister was trying to pry open. Applejack, her friends, and the other ponies inside were the oats.

“WHAT’S GOING ON!?” squeaked out Fluttershy, who sat in between Applejack and Pinkie as she clutched onto the former for dear life.

“OH OH! Maybe the train decided to eat its extra peppy pills today, or maybe the ground is having a tummy ache, or maybe the conductor is a friend of Rarity and he thinks something really bad is happening too!”

        Between gasps for breath due to Fluttershy’s death like vice, Applejack said, “I...hope so...Pinkie…”

Her hopes were silenced by a sound. A most troubling sound. The screeching sound of the car behind them breaking it’s link with their car, toppling over to one side, and careening off of the train tracks and down a green knoll.

Fluttershy had given Applejack a respite to watch this event along with all of the other occupants in their train car. Applejack sucked as much air as she could greedily.

“Whoopsie. Never mind. PANIC!” said Pinkie Pie.

        As Pinkie began yelling at the top of her lungs, joined in by a choir of the other occupants of the train, Applejack immediately felt the wind squeezed out of her by Fluttershy once more. In her desperate search for air, her head went out of the window, which had been lowered the entire ride, and that was when she saw it.  She watched in utter horror as the bridge leading from the Equestrian mainland to Manehatten began to sway back and forth, bits and pieces of it beginning to crumble and fall apart. Letting out a gasp, she darted her eyes back and forth, searching for someway, ANYWAY, to prevent the disaster playing on repeat in her head from actually manifesting itself.

That was when she saw something else: a train switch in the middle of the tracks, just lying in wait for her to lasso it in.

Smirking wryly, she struggled to break free of Fluttershy’s grip. At first, she tried to gently nudge her aside and tell her to stop, but Fluttershy was glued to her like ugly on an ape and Pinkie and the other ponies’ screams drowned out her voice, no matter how loud she raised it. As the switch grew ever nearer, Applejacks attempts to get Fluttershy off of her became ever more frantic and powerful until, with desperation in her face, she decided that she’d rather have Fluttershy crying and angry with her later on than being lowered in a casket six feet into the earth.

She headbutted Fluttershy in the head and off of her. As the butter yellow pegasus landed on Pinkie Pie, Applejack took her hat off and stuck her head outside once more. With a hood, she rummaged through the space inside the hat as she looked at the approaching switch with her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth.

And that was when she realized something.

Her hoof wasn’t touching anything but hat.

 Startled beyond all get-out, she put her head back into the car and looked back into her hat, ignoring Pinkie as she tried to shake Fluttershy awake as well as the enormous bruise on her forehead.

Nothing.

There was nothing in her head aside from a few strands of pure blonde hair that had gotten loose and stuck to the fabric.

If her eyes would have widened anymore, they’d be in serious trouble of falling out her sockets and rolling on the floor. If her jaw had dropped any lower, it would have fallen off and rolled onto the floor too. If her pupils had dilated anymore, they would have been visible only by microscope.

She turned her head back out the window just in time to see the switch zoom on by at Celestia knew what speed.

She stuck her head out of the window to see the bridge zooming dead ahead right at them and give way to gravity right down the middle.

In the seconds she had left before the train would inevitably plummet, she thought about a lot of things.

She thought about her friends, all of them, but Rarity in particular, and how they remaining three, hopefully three, would keep Equestria safe without her, Fluttershy, and Pinkie.

She thought about Winona and Sweet Apple Acres and how the two would ever get along without her.

She thought about Granny Smith, and if the money would ever come so she could get that new fangled hip replacement she’d been needing for a while now.

She thought about Big Macintosh and Applebloom and the weddings she’d miss from those two.

She thought about the fact that she would never get to have her own wedding.

She thought about how many ponies would be attending her, Pinkie’s, and Fluttershy’s funeral. Would it be a simple local affair just attended by Ponyville folk? Would their reputations precede them and would folks from all over come and give the funeral the attention befitting the loss of three elements of harmony that never seemed to get a whole lot of credit in life despite how many times they saved Equestria?

Out of all these thoughts vying for her ultimate attention, though, only one managed to reign supreme over all of the others and take up her thought space.

With a dejected sigh, Applejack put her head back inside the train and hugged both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie with all the strength she could muster, which turned out to be at least enough to stop Pinkie from yelling.

“Ma, Pa, I’m ah coming home. I’m ah coming home…”

*****

In a flash of magenta, Twilight reappeared at the center of her home and Ponyville’s lone library.

“Hiya Twilight, back already?” Spike asked from his and Twilight’s shared room upstairs. He climbed down the ladder and landed on the first floor with a thud, not looking Twilight’s way the entire time. “How was--”

This time, he did look Twilight’s way and what he saw of Luna made him slap both claws against the side of his face. “Whoa. Somepony sure did a number on her. Twilight, what--”

“--There’s no time Spike!”

Twilight ran towards her number one assistant and placed both of her fore-hooves on Spike’s face. “Spike, listen to me very, very, carefully! Where’s RD, Pinkie, AJ, Rarity, and Fluttershy?” she said with the most desperate look on her face Spike could ever remember seeing there.

   Spike walked over to Luna, noticing her wounds in more detail. “Well, Rarity went off to Manehatten. Something about a jeweler that had a rare jewel that he wanted to show her. Then I saw AJ, Pinkie, and Fluttershy just leave on a train a few hours ago. And didn’t Rainbow Dash leave for Canterlot with you?”

Twilight lowered her head a bit as she remembered, quietly cursing her panicky nature. “You’re right, I’m sorry! Look, I need all the books we got on--”

It was then that an earthquake hit and began shaking the library like a giant snow globe in the claws of an even bigger Ursa Major. Stacks and stacks of books filed neatly under Twilight’s favorite organizational system of the day crashed onto the ground and piled up like so many dead, papery animals. If this were any other day, Spike would be throwing his arms in the air and shouting at the heavens, knowing that he’d be the one to have to reorganize all of them back into whatever proper place Twilight decides they belonged in.

Instead, he merely yelled out, “GAAAHHH! EARTHQUAKE!” He jumped onto Twilight’s back and pressed his snout against her mane for safety.

“IN PONYVILLE!? HOW!?” Twilight said, her body not nearly as affected or in danger of losing its balance as Spike’s was by the shaking ground.

Soon, the book shelves tumbled towards the center of the room, but Twilight’s magic put them back in place and kept them there.

Then, Twilight and Spike heard and saw something slam through the balcony window and crash into the couch, knocking it over to one side. Lifting the couch up, Twilight and Spike blinked twice.

Lying there, on the ground, was a familiar cyan pegasus who had a familiar alabaster unicorn's body held tightly in her hooves.

Shaking her head of grogginess, Rainbow Dash yelled out, “TWILIGHT! I NEED YOUR HELP! Something bad’s happened to--Luna?” Turning her head, she looked at the fallen, barely breathing alicorn. “What happened to her? What happened to you!? You look like you just watched Celestia get eaten by some sort of monster!”

“Oh, Rainbow, it’s horrible! Luna was beaten nearly to death by some...THING and Celestia is trying to fight it!” Twilight wept a little as she went over to Dash to hug her.

“And I can’t seem to find--” At this point, she noticed Rarity lying at Rainbow’s side. “OH GODDESSES! What happened to Rarity!?”

“What!? Rarity!?” Spike said, jumping off of Twilight’s back and kneeling next to the body of his love. He grabbed one of her hooves in both of his claws. “Rare---Rarity?” he whimpered out, before his eyes began bawling out and two cascades of tears crashed against the wooden ground.

“I don’t know! I flew over to Manehatten because I felt something bad was happening to Rarity and I went over to check up on her and I found her like this,” Dash said, pointing to Rarity.

“Oh, Rarity...no,” Twilight said, tears like her assistant’s coming to her eyes as she leaned down to place a hoof on Spike’s shoulder.

Just then, a surge of energy began to form in the center of the library, knocking over a table and the horsehead statuette atop it to the side.

“WHAT NOW!?” Dash yelled at the top of what was left in her lungs as she watched a blue portal form.

Twilight perked her head up and wiped her tears away from her eyes. “Oh no.”

She grabbed Spike, Rarity, Luna, and Rainbow Dash in her magical grip, much to the latter’s discomfort, and raced into the basement, shutting the door behind her.

“Twi! What gives!?” said Rainbow Dash, now fluttering freely in the air.

“Whatever’s coming through that portal might not be friendly, Rainbow. It might be Thanos--”

“--Thanos?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“--That monster that beat up Luna and that Celestia is supposed to be fighting. Or, it could be something else that might be in league with him.”

“So? Why don’t we just go back up there and beat whoever or whatever comes out to the same pulp Luna was beaten to?”

“Rainbow!”

“What!? Whatever’s coming can’t be friendly! You said so yourself!”

“I said whatever’s coming might be Thanos or in league with him! Until we know for sure though, we should just stay still, stay silent, and listen!”

Dash let out a small growl. Hiding was not something she enjoyed, unless it was for a prank, but definitely not when it might be from a monster that could hurt her friends and not when another could be dead.

“Fine,” she grumbled. She and Twilight flapped towards the top of the staircase leading up to the main floor as quickly as they could, landed, and pressed their ears against the door.

 Spike, for his part, relegated his crying to a soft, barely audible sob.

“Sleep tight, my love,” he said so low that nopony could hear him.

      *****

        “I’m ah coming home, I’m ah coming home, I’m ah--”

        “--errr...Applejack?” asked Pinkie Pie.

        “I’m ah coming home, I’m ah coming home, I’m ah--”

        “No offense...but...you’ve been...repeating that...over and over again...for the past...minute...and...though I’m ALL about hugs...it’s sort of hard to...breath…”

        Pinkie Pie’s words managed to penetrate Applejack’s skull. She let go of her friends, Pinkie taking in a large gulp of air as normal air circulation filled her lungs. Applejack muttered, “Huh?” and let go of Fluttershy and Pinkie, looking around like she was utterly lost. “Who? What? Where?”

What should’ve felt like the train falling to it’s death and the death of everypony on board actually felt like it was floating in the air. Curiously, Applejack leaned her head out of the window and over the side to see what had happened and was shocked to see the car was indeed floating in the air. “What the--?”

        “Just remain calm, everybody. I’ll have you back down soon,” called a commanding voice, though it did carry with it a sense of kindness.

        “Back down? Every’body’? Who...” Applejack was about to continue but soon felt the train being gently lowered to the ground by some weird force.

Turning her head, she looked at two small figures that looked like dots from way up in the air near the soon-to-be collapsed bridge. She dropped her jaw as she watched green energy flow from one dot, making a pair of forceps to hold the bridge down while the other dot seemed to fly about and fix the bridge.

When the train landed, she noticed that around it, a red blur passed by, dropping ponies left and right that had tried to jump the train in an effort to save themselves.

After the blur stopped running around the train, she heard the train door open. “It’s all right,” said a figure, one almost completely alien to the ponies onboard, standing in the doorway, highlighted by light, “you ponies should be safe now. I know that trains can seem unreliable to you all now, but statistically speaking, they are a safe way to travel.”

“Uh, excuse me pardner? But...who are you? In fact, now that I’m thinking clearly again...what are you?” Applejack asked, getting out from her seat and ignoring Pinkie as she fell to the ground and flopped like a fish out of water still in need of air. Applejack walked up their savior and got a good look at him, knitting her eyebrows together, and scrunching her mouth to one side of her face.

From what she remembered about Twilight talking about after that whole hullabaloo with the mirror to another world and Sunset Shimmer, from the moment Applejack saw him, she had a deep suspicions that he might have been human. The bipedal structure, the arms and hands like a minotaur’s, the lack of any real amount of fur except on their heads, and the general ape like appearance all screamed just screamed and pointed to that direction. However, she thought that he might be human because she didn’t recall Twilight saying that humans could fly or lift up dozens of tons with ease or were anything more than on par with the typical earth pony in terms of physical power at best.

“I’m Superman,” the alien said, looking at the ponies, not phased by what he was talking to. “I’m a friend.” Slowly, he reached out a hand to shake with the orange mare.

        Despite all of her nagging questions, there was something about this feller, this ‘Superman’ that immediately dug through the core of AJ’s defenses.

Calmly, AJ smiled and put her hoof into Superman’s and thus, a new friendship was born.

*****

“ARRGH! I can’t hear a thing! What’s going on?” Dash asked, vying for room with Twilight.

        “Shh! I’m trying to hear,” Twilight said, putting her ear to the door.

        From behind the door, Hawkeye could be heard saying, “There has to be a better way of traveling than magic!”

        “Shining Armor?” Twilight asked, hearing the voice.

        “Calm down, Clint. It’ll get easier,” said Black Widow.

        Twilight arched an eyebrow at that last voice and looked at Dash weirdly.

        “Jarvis, can you confirm that we’re all here?” Iron Man said, checking out his hub from inside his helmet.

        “All Avengers signs are reporting in, sir,” the computer voice said.

        From behind the door, the last bits of Dash’s patience wore out, and she let out a yell of frustration. “ARGH! I can’t take this! I’m going out there, NOW!”

        “No, wait, DASH!” Twilight yelled out, only to watch in vain as Dash blasted through the door and flew right at the first one of the intruders in her way. Sadly, this was Captain America. With her hooves up front, she slammed both hooves into the Captain's stomach, sending him flying into a wall.

        “FOUL BEAST!” yelled Thor as he took flight and turned to the young pegasus, an angry look in his eyes. Lightning began to crackle and surge across his hammer as he pointed at the cyan mare, sending bolts of lightning at her.

        A weather mare at heart, the nimble pegasus heard the cracking of electricity behind her and took an evasive maneuver. Smirking, she prepared herself to fly at the thunder god, but was suddenly stopped by a rope arrow. “Hold little missy. At least...I think you’re a chick. Well, I hope you’re a chick, cuz if you aren’t, then you must have been picked on a lot growing--UGH!” Hawkeye yelled as he felt a bolt of magical energy hit him.

        “LET HER GO!” commanded Twilight, her horn fully charged as she stared at the archer before she had to jump out the way of an energy blast. With a quick turn of her head, she looked and shot a magic bolt at the red and gold metal being in the air, who dodged.

        “Magical energy. Interesting. I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked considering we just got attacked by a pegasus,” Iron Man snarked as he fired another shot at Twilight.

        As the small battle waged in the library, Bruce Banner was busy helping Captain America to his feet. “Come on, Steve.”

        “Ugggh, my head,” Captain America said, rubbing his head from where he collided with a wall. Looking up, he saw the battle waging. Looking closely, he could see one of the ponies. “Wait...Rainbow Dash? Twilight Sparkle? Hold on. Everyone, HALT!”

        It was said by some, that the voice of Captain America was one that could command gods. At this moment, the entire library found out that description paled in comparison to how commanding the Captain's voice really was, as everyone stopped what they were doing immediately and turned to face the source of the voice.

Slowly, with his commanding presence firmly established around him, the Captain stood to his full height and looked to the two ponies. “Rainbow Dash, Princess Twilight Sparkle, I apologize for us surprising you two like this.”

 “YEAH! You better be sorry! Barging in here on us like this! What are you chumps doing here? Who are you anyway?” Dash asked, a little annoyed by the situation, “Wait...how do you know our names?”

“The name is Captain America. We are the Avengers,” Captain America said, and began pointing to his companions. “This is Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Bruce Banner. As for how we know your names...”

A pause came to Captain America, as he wondered how they were going to take to the idea that in one world, they were fictional. With a sigh, he figured he might as well explain the best he could, “In our world--”

“In our world, we have televised adventures of you and your friend’s adventures. Interestingly enough,” Bruce said, looking at Twilight and her wings, “the writers of our world seemed to have gotten certain details--like personality and back stories--100% correct. I can only imagine it was either luck on their part or Lauren Faust had a portal to your world to be able to find this out. Not surprising, there was a story like this in a Darkwing Duck cartoon.”

Bruce then looked at the shocked looks from his teammates. “I watch the show from time to time. It’s quite interesting.”

For a few moments, the fact that one of her best friends was badly hurt and bordering on death completely left Dash as she began to realize, “Wait...you’re telling me that there’s a world where I’m famous? SWEET!”

Twilight, doing her best to ignore Dash’s fame inflated ego, looked to the 6 before her. Having dealt with their species before, she could recognize them when she saw them. “But...you’re humans! Wow could you enter our world without a mirror or not become ponies like us?”

Iron Man looked towards Captain America and Bruce. “Yeah Steve, Bruce, how?” he said, snickering.

 Bruce Banner looked a little confused. “I can only guess it must have something to do with Strange’s spell--”

“Magic BS!” coughed Tony under his breath.

Bruce continued, ignoring Tony’s comment. “--that must have allowed us to traverse here without changing our base molecular states.”

“Huh?” Clint asked.

“The spell must have allowed us to remain humans when we came here,” Bruce finished, before getting to a look past Twilight and Rainbow. “Oh my God Luna! Rarity! What happened to them!?”

Twilight looked back at the fallen alicorn, Spike standing in front of both Luna and Rarity. “Wait, don’t go near,” Twilight said.

“Princess, you have my assurances as a Prince of Asgard and Son of Odin, that my comrades and I are only here to help, if you would have us,” Thor said, kneeling before the princess regally.

Twilight looked at the strangely dressed man and then to the fallen mares and then to Dash. Finally, she nodded in acceptance and placed her hoof into the hand of the thunder god and shook it, forging a new friendship with the brave mortals...plus one thunder god...that had entered her home.

*****

        The griffons of the kingdom from across the ocean preferred to build their homes on clouds and with clouds. They were very much like Pegasi in that manner, save that they also had imagination and intelligence to match the unicorns and still possessed something of a warrior’s and soldier’s spirit...even if their population was suffering from rates of something that was colloquially known as ‘Equestrianization’ for centuries now. Further removed were they from the Pegasi, in that they were not typically adverse to the ground or making dwellings on the ground, though they could not denial the strategic and tactical advantages of building high up into the air.

It is in the air, from a tower jutting out from Castle Griffhala, the palace of the Griffonian Capital of Griffhala, on the very tip of the troposphere that a V.I.G., a very important Griffon, rests upon a seat. In his metal clad claws lies a spyglass of his own design, one which such range and capability that he spent quite a few sleepless nights making notes on the various sunspots of distance stars with frightening accuracy.

A ‘Macroscope,’ he called it.

With this Macroscope, he gazed down at the ground some many miles below, his piercing through layers upon layers of cummulus, stratus, cirrus, and nimbus and down upon the ground on which many Griffons who worked in the Capital resided.

With a curious brow, he saw that much of the land below was covered in viscous molten rock emanating from a crater as near to being a perfect circle as possible with a diameter of about five miles across. He could imagine that whatever dwelling were not already submerged in boiling lava would have been destroyed in the immense geological upheaval that caused the lava to come surging to the surface in the first place at the beginning of this event.

He gasped beneath his dark green coat.

For he had found what he was sure was the culprit.

One of them.

*****

Above a veritable sea of lava, Celestia fluttered. Shaking herself clean of molten rock in a manner more befitting a wet dog than a Princess of Equestria, Celestia surveyed the surrounding area.

Desolation. Immolation. As far as the eye could see. Celestia could also spot the roofs of houses that had not let succumbed to the fate the rest of the structure had, but would inevitably sink anyways. On one such roof sat a weather vane made of gold. Instead of being molded in the shape of a rooster, however, it was made in the shape of a Griffon with two ruby eyes that glowed eerily in the light given off by the lava.

In her haste to see the monster that had done such a terrible thing to her sister, Celestia just created what was sure to be the international incident of the century, and she would know, she’d seen quite a few. Even worse, she was certain that she and Thanos had come back to the surface of the planet with such speed that most if not all of the Griffons in their homes, males, females, young and old, had no chance to take to the air before being turned emulsified and turned to vapor.

She sighed and said, “Great.”

In a millennia, she had lost her cool twice and both times had produced fruit most rotten, though this was by far worse than her getting her flank handed to her by Chrysalis. So

He ears perked up, however, when she heard something. A cry for help that sounded like it belonged to a year old hatchling filly. She turned her head, and discovered a house a mile away, made completely of diamond, with a large tower coming from the center, that weathered the lava flow quite well. The cry came from there over and over again.

With one flap of her wings, Celestia was half way there in less than a second, the displaced wind rippling the surface of the molten rock below.

“Hold on young one!” Celestia said as she flew up towards the house’s central tower.

She hovered over said tower for an instant, finding no stranded baby Griffon.

In the next instant, she heard a familiar throaty chuckle in the back of her mind and a powerful violet beam of energy ascended from beneath the waves of the lava and struck her with such force that in the following instant, she had already made it to the top of the troposphere.

*****

Back at his perch with his macroscope, the V.I.G. yelled in surprise as what he was sure was Equestria’s Princess Celestia slammed through the tower he was on with such force that it dissipated back into the formless mass of cloud from which it was formed. After flapping his wings frantically and getting his baring back, he looked up and over his shoulder.

Celestia was already out of his sight.

With his Macroscope, he found that that she was now completely out of all of the layers of the atmosphere and just floated there, in low orbit over the world, rubbing a hoof over a rather noticeable burn mark on her stomach and staring back down at something back on the ground with a look that, if it were a weapon, could kill off all life on an entire continent.

“Hrmmm…” said the V.I.G. “What could possibly harm an Alicorn goddess and make her furious in such a way.”

He turned back towards the ground below, where the violet energy blast he had seen cause Celestia’s extra atmospheric journey had originated from.

“I wonder…” he said as he placed his eye back on his Macroscope to see who, or WHAT could possibly seem to be giving Celestia of all ponies a run for her money.

*****

“You know, I don’t recall any memory I siphoned off from your sister that said anything about you EVER being so brash like when you charged me,” said Thanos, standing waist deep in the flow of lava. He wiped off lava that was still molten and that had solidified into a crust, from his face. “Fortunately for me then, that I at least know from her that your sense of compassion is great, and ever so predictably easy to exploit.”

Hanging from her spot hundreds of miles above him, Celestia glared Claymores at him as she huffed soundlessly in space due to her wound and clutched it.

“Ohhhh…I know that look. I’ve seen it hundreds of times on thousands of worlds, Princess, so don’t try masking the pain wracking your equine form with anger at me,” he said, pointing a gauntleted finger up at her. “Well guess what? That energy blast was only a fraction of my total power, and the pain it’s inflicted upon you is only a fraction of what you’ll feel before this day is done.”

To Thanos’s confusion, Celestia closed her eyes, held her head up high, and looked like she was laughing in the vacuum around her.

In his mind, he heard her say, “HA! ‘AND THE PAIN INFLICTED UPON YOU IS ONLY A FRACTION OF WHAT YOU’LL FEEL BEFORE THIS DAY IS DONE!’ THAT IS THE EPITOME OF COMEDY!” She then brought her head back down and looked back at Thanos with a dark frown on her face in an instant, all traces of humor gone. “Because, I could say the same about you. The difference? I. MEAN. IT.”

    Thanos watched in curiosity as a bright ball of light began to form on the edge of her horn. From the outset, it looked like a twinkling star that then grew more and more until it became the size of a large beachball. Lifting her head up, three more balls appeared around her horn, each the same size. With a grunt, she threw her horn down and yelled, “SOLARIS TRINITY!”

The three balls flew forth from her and towards Thanos.

Thanos shook his head in a smug superiority, letting out a chuckle as he held up his hand to block the three shots.

As the first of the sun orbs hit his hand, he let out a yelp of pain. Looking down at the burn mark, he turned his head back up to the other two as they came streaking towards him. Smirking, Thanos decided to dodge the shots by leaping away. However, instead of hearing the sounds of lava splashing violently from the two explosions he hoped to avoid, to his shock, the two orbs of solar energy swerved up to strike him in the back as he was about to land. He was further shocked when they began propelling him up towards Celestia.

Celestia flew down at him as his ascent grew ever higher, her back hooves pointed forward and bucking into his stomach hard. In control of their flight, Celestia caused her and Thanos to swerve forty-five degrees from their fall, and they flew parallel to the ground across the sky. She began repeatedly slamming each of her forehooves into his face hard with enough force to create lakes that could support Manehatten.

 Thanos, meanwhile, let out a grunt with each strike of Celestia’s hoof and looked at her with annoyance. Holding his fists together he slammed them both in a double axe-handle again and again onto the solar diarch’s back, intent on crushing her spine. Seeing that this was proving ineffective, he grabbed ahold of her back hooves and lowered her to the point where he could slam his knees into her stomach hard enough to cause a shockwave in the sky and send them both into the stratosphere.

 Spinning around, he let go of her back hooves and delivered a backhand into Celestia’s face, allowing gravity to let him free fall back towards the surface afterwards.

After tumbling in the air for a few moments, Celestia shook her head and righted herself in the air before glaring at Thanos. Again, her horn glowed brightly, now becoming enclosed in a bright halo of light.

 “SOLAR FLARE!”

“A move meant to blind the opponent. Quite useless against someone as experienced a fighter as I.” Thanos smirked as he looked up towards Celestia and charged another energy blast to send at her, his eyes closed. However, so bright was the solar light that it burned through his eyelids and into his eyes. This stopped him long enough for Celestia to dive towards him and slam all four of her hooves onto his skull and send him barreling into the surface.

“One more warning Thanos,” Celestia said as she lowered herself to the ground away from the crater that Thanos had made, walking with a slow pace as he began to get up. “Even if you THINK yourself to be a god, there are six young mortals back home who possess more power than ANY single god. You, OR me. And if I fall today, they will ensure you never rise, for I have instilled in one of them the two most important rules of godhood.”

“And what would those be, Sun Princess?” Thanos asked, now standing straight, any wounds sustained now seemingly non-existent on his body.

“Rule 1: Even though one is immortal against time’s ravishes, someday...death in some form will come regardless, and two...”

“Just two?” Thanos asked.

Celestia smirked. “Gods are easy to kill...when you know how.”

Celestia then lowered her head to point her horn at Thanos, a column of fire encircling her horn, blazing a bright azure flame. “SOLAR STORM!” Rushing forth, the solar tornado flew out from her horn and at Thanos, wreathing him in its torrents.