The Spider: Posthumous Life of a Veteran Superhero

Under normal circumstances, Lyra Heartstrings would have been elated.

The brambles that had chased Bon-Bon through the front door were dead black, save for the occasional blue thorn growing out of them like…something that grows out of something else. And looks really interesting. Lyra had never been very good with metaphors, but the point was that these vines were unique in appearance, completely different from anything else she had seen before, and they grew incredibly fast. In under half a minute they had filled half the room and were now making a claim on the second half. She had taken note of all this almost instantly, and of the blue dust that was now causing her horn to, among other things, levitate the coffee table and send her harp’s strings vibrating hard enough to break. Yes, the cryptozoologist in her was probably bouncing up and down in excitement.

She wouldn’t know, because what was likely some kind of Everfree plant had attacked her marefriend. Which meant that Bon-Bon—her Bon-Bon, so reliant on her own security in the world—was now cowering in the corner, any rational thought drowned out by sheer terror. Which meant that Lyra was now standing between her marefriend and her attacker, a fire in her eyes and the first weapon-ey object she could find clutched between her teeth.

Not that the weapon-ey object in question—a lamp, actually—was very effective. It was a table lamp, which meant that it had very little power behind it when she went to swing it, and anyway the vines were apparently pretty sturdy. She had actually managed to snap off a thorn in a wild swing, but it had promptly grown back and now the lamp didn’t seem to be having any effect at all. Lyra was growing very worried indeed, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide it for Bonnie’s sake. She glanced behind her, checking on her condition, and winced at what she saw. Bonnie was huddled shaking on the ground, chin pressed to the floor and forelegs covering her face defensively. Lyra slowly reached a back leg back, and the cloven hoof brushed against one of her marefriend’s trembling forehooves in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture.

Quite suddenly, the warm tingle characteristic of magic at her forehead increased sharply, drawing a wince from Lyra and jerking the lamp out of her mouth. She shouted “Hey!” as it hurled itself across the room and shattered, without much thought given to the fact that she was talking to a plant. Worried, Lyra glanced at her horn as a bead of sweat ran down it. Magic had never been her strong suit, and the brambles’ wanton abuse of it was (deliberately?) draining her stamina alarmingly fast. But that wasn’t the main problem. The main problem, of course, was that Bon-Bon was in very real danger and scared out of her mind, and Lyra could do very little to defend her.

She settled for the next best thing. Turning around, she stooped down and draped a foreleg over Bonnie’s shoulders, comfortingly running her other hoof through her mane. One of Bonnie’s forelegs shot up, intercepting the hoof and holding it tightly. Lyra kissed her behind the ear—the most convenient spot available from where she was—and nuzzled her close, tensing as she felt one of the rapidly growing vines came into contact with them, numerous tiny limbs reaching out and beginning to tighten.

Had she been looking, she would have seen a hastily-disguised face glance into the window before disappearing from sight. Even so, she definitely noticed the jerk that went through the entire plant, stopping its growth instantly.

Lyra’s eyes opened, confused. The thin vines which had begun to bind her and Bonnie together (which she wouldn’t have minded so much in a different context, but never mind) had faded from black to dark grey, and as she attempted to stand they broke off without much effort at all. When she looked at the main cluster of branches, they, too, had faded slightly, and sections of it were beginning to collapse under their own weight. Lyra experimentally poked the nearest thorn. It poked right back, but then it snapped off, fell to the ground, and was not replaced.

“…Bonnie, I think it’s dead.”

Bon-Bon’s trembling ceased, and she slowly brought her forehooves away from her eyes, staring at the plant. As Lyra poked another branch, she slowly stood, shrugging off the last of the dead vines on her shoulders.

“…It’s dead? How can it be dead?” Bon-Bon puller her harshly away from the plant. “Don’t touch it! It’s probably waiting or…something.”

“Waiting? For what?”

“I don’t know! I’m not an expert on...evil plant…psychology. But why else would it have just—“

A hoof smashed through the wall behind them.

Bon-Bon screamed at the top of her lungs. The hoof withdrew, but its brother punched through the wall nearby. The hoof, and the foreleg attached to it, pushed through the hole in the wall until it touched the floor. Then a shoulder, a head, and most of an Earth pony followed it, breaking the wall around him as he went. Without stopping to give Bon-Bon a chance to scream again, he pressed one forehoof to each mare and pulled himself back out of the wall, dragging Lyra and Bon-Bon with him as though his hooves were covered in glue.

“Your door was blocked,” he told them casually as they got back to their hooves in the alley outside their house. “And whoever used the herbicide last apparently wasn’t all that thorough. Next time, just go nuts.”

As Lyra snickered at his comment, Bon-Bon looked from the stallion (who was clad in a strategically knotted green bedsheet that completely obscured his entire body), to the new hole in their wall, and back again. “Did you just break a hole in our house?!”

“Well, either that or it spontaneously formed around me as I went. Now! Uh, if I were you two, I’d leave town, right now.” His gaze snapped backwards, an instant before a few brambles that had been creeping down the alley lunged at him. The stallion instantly and effortlessly dodged out of the way, then grabbed the mares again and jumped.

Neither of them were entirely sure what happened next, but they found themselves flying in an arc far above the ground—above the brambles—above the houses. The stallion was with them, his forehooves again stuck to each of them, but as they tumbled through the air (Bon-Bon screaming all the way) his back arched, his forehooves detached from Lyra and Bon-Bon, and he did a graceful backflip, landing on a rooftop and bending his legs to cushion Lyra and Bon-Bon as they landed hard on his back.

“I don’t think I need to explain why,” he continued as if nothing had happened, hopping from the roof to a mailbox to the ground like a mountain goat. “Stick to the middle of the road. That sounded oddly spiritual, but what I meant was that most of the vines are attacking buildings, so try to avoid getting near any houses and you should be okay.”

The house they had found themselves on belonged to their neighbor. Not their next-door-neighbor, either: Berry lived three houses away. Bon-Bon sprinted the short distance to the street corner and peered down the street. Yep, there was her house, three doors down and with a mass of dark grey vines filling the doorway. She turned back to the stallion, who was glancing at each of the nearby houses, ears visibly twitching under the bedsheet, and muttering about how leaving town at the very least offered a head start.

“You ju—“ Bon-Bon flailed at him, then in the direction of her house. “Bu—how—wha—I don’t—“

“YOU JUST JUMPED OVER HALF A STREET!!” Bon-Bon hadn’t seen Lyra this excited in possibly years.

“Really?” the stallion asked, half-ignoring her. “Hadn’t noticed. Who lives in that house?”

“BUT YOU’RE AN EARTH PONY!” Lyra was bouncing up and down in a distinctly Pinkie-esque manner, a slightly unsettling grin on her face. “Well, you look like one, anyway! What are you actually?! How’d you do that?! Who armph-”

The stallion removed his hoof from Lyra’s mouth only once he was certain she was going to stop bouncing. “One thing at a time, pretty-please,” he said. He nodded at the house. “Who lives here?”

“Berry Punch,” Bon-Bon answered without leaving her spot fifteen feet away. “I don’t think she’s home, though. She’s probably passed out in Sugarcube Corner.” At the mention of the party, a thought struck her and she realized that she recognized the stallion’s voice. “Wait a minute.”

“WEEELLLL, gotta go,” the stallion cried instantly, having apparently decided not to wait a minute. “Places to go, ponies to save. You know how it is. So, uh, bye.”

With that, he leapt up, hit the wall just beneath Berry’s upper window, and stuck there, hanging on the side of the building by his hooves and nothing else. Bon-Bon’s eyes widened at the sight, but Lyra’s jaw positively dropped, and she started bouncing again.

“WHAT ARE YOU?!” she shrieked, a kind of deranged joy in her voice as she gave a smile that had too many teeth. “WHO ARE YOU?!”

“Lyra,” Bonnie said, deliberately very, very calm, “I’m pretty sure that’s—“

“Good question!” called the stallion back, interrupting her as he crawled up the wall to the roof as easily as one might walk down the street. “…I’m not quite sure. Spider…umm…Spider…” his head, which had been drifting to and fro as he considered, suddenly hung forward slightly, a dejected stance. “Spider. The Spider.”

“…The Spider.”

“Yeah.”

Bon-Bon cocked a brow. “…Is that supposed to be dramatic?”

“No, ma’am,” the newly-christened Spider replied irritably, turning his head to look at her, “it’s supposed to be descriptive.” He paused, then sighed. “It is pretty silly, isn’t it.”

“And pretentious!”

“Well, I guess it suits me then. Now, I really gotta go. Adios.” With that, he took a flying leap off the rooftop, just in time to avoid a particularly thick vine as it snaked up and seemed to grab at him. The leap carried him clear across the street, where he bounced off the rooftop, executed a flawless front flip, and dove out of sight.

“WAAAAIIT!” Lyra screamed, sprinting in that direction.

“Wha—LYRA!” Bon-Bon took off running after her. “Where are you going?! We need to get at least past the train station!”

“Bonnie, you don’t understand!” Lyra reached the corner of the street the Spider had disappeared into, and her eyes widened as she beheld something Bonnie couldn’t see yet. “Oh wow.” She snapped out of her awe as something like the splintering of wood reached Bonnie’s ears and an enormous vine was tossed into view like a twig. “I’ve never seen something like this before!” she continued, barreling down the street in pursuit of the Spider, who had sprinted a few steps from his previous position and seemed to vanish, only a pointed cloud of dust and a brand spankin’ new hole in an upper-story wall revealing where to. “He’s an Earth pony, but he’s not! He’s something else entirely, and he’s a superhero to boot! It’s Mare-Do-Well all over again, except this one actually has superpowers and probably isn’t the Elements of Harmony playing a prank. Probably.”

“It’s obviously a changeling,” Bonnie panted, having finally caught up with Lyra. “Did you see the way he was sticking to the wall? And what kind of pony would name themselves after a bug?”

“Why would a changeling be wearing a bedsheet?”

That wasn’t the argument that froze Bon-Bon’s tongue. The arguments that did that were these: why would a changeling be saving ponies? Ponies were their food source, yes, but there were many other possible ones. Even given that, there was no real reason to even be this close to the Everfree, let alone saving ponies when there were perfectly good ponies to drain on the other side of Equestria. A changeling wouldn’t bother transforming into an Earth pony if it was just going to do its bug thing anyway.

Lastly, why would a changeling have reacted as he did to a simple popped balloon?

“Aha,” Lyra said as Bon-Bon slowly closed her mouth, clearly glad to have actually managed to win an argument—her second in a row, to boot. “There, see! I’ve run rings around you logically!”

Bon-Bon probably would have snarked at her, but there was an enormous crash above them and a blue Pegasus flew out of the hole in the wall at top speed, followed by a mock-cheery cry of “Have a nice day!” After a moment, the Spider climbed back out of the hole and hung on the wall next to it, the bedsheet looking somewhat more tattered than it had, and glanced about.

When his gaze landed on the mares below, he stared for a second before saying, “I’m not sure if it got through the first time. You should be leaving town right now. At high speed.”

With that, he leapt sideways, bounced off another building, and effortlessly sped down the street, averaging a good twenty feet off the ground.

“Wait!” Lyra took off running after him again. “I wanna talk to you!!”

(“Great time to do that! I see no way this can go wrong. Why not go waltzing through a war zone while you’re at it, I’m sure the conversation would be lovely.”)

“Oh for Celestia’s sake,” Bon-Bon growled, running after her. “LYRA!”

Peter had needed this.

Oh God, Peter had needed this.

He bounced off walls, he executed perfect landings, he smashed through walls and brambles and ripped vines off struggling ponies, and for the first time in so, so long it was all so simple. There were no people to carefully hold back against or wince-worthy cracks of bone from when he didn’t hold back enough. There were no stupidly powerful beings throwing explosives into crowded streets and buildings, or heavily armed man-children believing that they could do whatever they wished and that the costumed creep disagreeing with them needed to die. There wasn’t even a niggling question of hypocrisy in the back of his mind. For the first time since the beginning, he felt like one of the 1960’s comic book heroes he had read about in elementary school. No casualties. No real injuries. Four colors, none of them grey. Just him and the task in front of him.

That’s not to say it was relaxing, mind you. People—sorry, ponies—were in danger and they needed protected. Of course he was giving it his all. The terror and guilt that he had grown so used to was conspicuously absent, and he was on Cloud Nine for it, but desperation to save everyone was still sitting in his mind, sending his nerves jumping and driving him to work as fast as he could.

It was also making Lyra particularly annoying. Implacably, she was somehow managing to keep up with him, always yelling questions at the top of her lungs when he came out of a house dragging a pony with him. Granted, they were valid questions, but (as he kept reminding her) this was hardly the time for asking them. All it was doing was aggravating him and putting both her and Bon-Bon into more potential danger.

As Peter chewed his lip, reflecting on this as he made a quick survey of the remainder of the town from a rooftop, his spider-sense twinged sharply and he looked to his left. Immediately his contemplative look gave way to an alarmed one and he dove off the roof, narrowly avoiding an enormous mass of vines as they dove at where he had been standing. He rounded on them once his hooves had connected to the ground, and backed up a few hasty steps as the vines started to twist around and follow him. He had been too caught up in the comparative fantasy to really notice, but the brambles that had grown to replace what he had destroyed had begun to take an active dislike to him. Now they were outright aiming for him.

“—I mean, earth ponies don’t usually stick to walls like that unless they accidentally get glue on their hooves or use suction cups like those ones Pinkie has. So how are you doing it? I didn’t hear popping when you climbed Berry’s house, so—“

“Bon-Bon,” the Spider said, peering over the mint-green mare as all three of them trotted briskly away from the advancing, newly-formed hedge, “could you please take your girlfriend and, like, carry her out of town?”

“I would,” she said, glancing behind them and quickening her pace nervously, “but she’ll just get off of me and keep following you. You’d have to have a very good reason to get her to leave something like this.”

“…That’s a very interesting definition of ‘good.’”

“Yeah.”

“Hey!” Lyra said, offended. “I’m right here!”

“Yes, we know. That’s the problem.” The Spider froze mid-step as a barely audible scream came from the house they had just passed—the house that now had a huge number of vines besieging it. “…Shvantz. Tell you what, you come up with an acceptable reason, and I’ll be right back.”

He turned around, then swore again. The brambles had already grown to nearly engulf the first floor of the house, and were climbing to the second fast, even as most of them continued chasing after him. Placing a hoof on the side of an adjacent building, he vaulted straight up the wall, flipping onto the roof and bouncing onto the roof of the house he was attempting to enter. Above him, a blue pegasus (probably Rainbow Dash, but he didn’t check) dropped out of the sky, covered in dark cloud-stuff as though it was gum, then shook it off and rose skyward again. Then, as the Spider started tearing away the thatching of the roof in an attempt to get inside before the brambles reached the roof, she suddenly changed direction and dove towards him.

A high, sharp note of MOVE—original flavor, one could call it—pulsed from the back of his skull through his body, and the Spider jumped four feet backwards, deftly avoiding the pegasus (who was, indeed, Rainbow Dash) as she hit the roof and smashed straight through. Smiling beneath the bedsheet, he silently thanked her for her help as he dove through the hole after her.

Rainbow Dash met the Spider halfway between the floor and ceiling. He had been warned the typical fraction of a second before, but by then he was completely though the hole and had no way of dodging. Consequently, she hit him square in the gut, carrying him right back out of the hole and smashing him into the beam at the center of the roof. He easily kicked her off and dove right back in the hole again, but she followed, landing directly between him and the stairs to the first floor.

“Alright!” she shouted. “I know an Everfree monster when I see one. This is Ponyville, buster, and you’re not welcome here! Take your funky weather and get out before I get mad!”

“I’d pay to see that,” the Spider said thoughtfully. “Actually, no I wouldn’t. Tantrums aren’t fun to watch, not even from you. Get out of my way; there’s a pony downstairs.”

“No! You’re not attacking innocent ponies on my watch!”

“I’m not doing it off your watch, either! You don’t even—“ he paused as the room grew dark, then glanced up at his spider-sense’s urging and sighed, exasperated, as he saw vines growing through the hole in the ceiling and reaching for him. “Wow!” He leapt forward, momentarily avoiding their grasp. “Good work, Dash, you kept me occupied long enough to let the hentai plant in! You’re better at working on their side then I am! Now get outta the farshiltn way!”

Whether she wanted to comply or not was irrelevant, as she suddenly found herself being thrown to one side. By the time she righted herself in midair, the door was open and the sound of hoofbeats pounding down the stairs had stopped. Quickly, she launched herself after the Spider, very nearly hitting two walls on her way down the stairs and turning into the living room.

The Spider turned his head slightly, enough to let Dash know that he was aware of her presence, but for the most part he kept his attention on the nearly-hysterical mare in front of him. “Yeah, I’m from the Committee of Volunteer Hedge Trimmers. We just formed like half an hour ago. You should look into us, we’ve got pamphlets. Hey, come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait!” Rainbow Dash cried, even as he pulled the mare to her hooves and began leading her towards the stairs. She darted between them. “Don’t trust him, miss! He’s obviously a monster or something disguised as a pony!”

“And then further disguised as a bedsheet? Rainbow Dash, you should be more creative. A few bursts of super strength and speed and you cry Everfree? I could just as easily be an alien. Onwards!”

He dragged the mare after him, bolting up the stairs as fast as her hooves would allow. Dash hovered after them, still listing off increasingly convoluted reasons for why he couldn’t be trusted. It was very annoying, the Spider reflected, but that was quickly drowned out by horror (and spider-sense) as they reached the second floor and saw the progress the vines had made into the room.

The hole was completely blocked, for one. For another, the brambles were snaking downwards, nearly to the ground, but as the Spider stepped forward, they suddenly curled upwards and seemed to leap at him.

“Jeez!” the Spider cried, ducking. He darted to the side, pulling the pink mare with him and trusting Dash to get clear on her own. Coming to a stop on the other side of the room, he glanced behind them, biting his tongue. The wall itself probably had a hearty reinforcing of immune-to-brute-force brambles lining the other side, but the corner where two walls and the ceiling met…

“Hey, Dash. I need you to smash a hole riiiiigght there. Then I’ll carry her out through it, ‘kay?”

“What?! No! Why would I trust y—“

“Because what the hell else would I be doing here.” The vines were crossing the room uncomfortably quickly, and the constant whine-like sensation in his head was making things even worse. “Just do it and interrogate me later, alright?!”

Perhaps stunned by the desperate edge in his voice, Dash hesitated for only a second longer, glancing at the advancing brambles before beating her wings hard, hurtling for the corner and hitting it with outstretched hooves.

Nails tore out of boards like nothing. Plaster cracked and shattered under the sudden impact. So hard was the hit that the hole formed was nearly twice the size of Rainbow Dash, and what very few brambles had wrapped around the corner were thrown outward, the hold they had found suddenly reduced to so much sawdust. By the time they even began to regrow, the Spider had cleared the hole, the earth mare screaming at the top of her lungs on his back, and was skidding to a stop on the roof of the house across the street.

Quickly hopping off before the brambles nearby got any funny ideas, the Spider sprinted down the street and through a relatively clear alley, managed to stop moving roughly five feet from a briskly-trotting Lyra, and shrugged his front legs and hopped with his back ones. The combination of the movements and the momentum from his burst of super speed sent the pink mare up, over his head, and squarely onto Lyra’s back.

“Here’s a good reason for you,” he said, making a quick survey of which buildings around them he had searched and which he hadn’t. “She’s, she’s pretty much tharn. Could you get her out of town and then not come back, d’you think?”

Lyra, who had collapsed under the sudden weight of the mare, looked up and smiled. “Oh, hey Daisy! I’ll, uh, ooof—“ she stood up with difficulty, panting when she made it to her hooves. “…I, uh, I can’t carry her that far.”

The Spider attempted to exchange a glance with Bon-Bon, but she was busy trying to restore Daisy to something approaching coherence. “Daisy. Daisy, it’s me. You’re okay, you’re fine. We’re here…”

“…The horror…”

Looking back down at a straining Lyra, the Spider gestured in her marefriend’s general direction. “You’ve got an Earth pony right there. Support her between you two. (Nice catch, by the way.) Listen, I have this to get to, and I don’t have time to get Lily or whatever her name is out of town.”

“Really? I’ve seen you run—“

“Do this and I will tell you everything later.” It was a lie, and he knew it the instant he said it. There were some things that should never be related, and there were some things that Lyra had no business knowing. “Just get her out and see to it she’s okay. Got it?”

“Hey, don’t think I’m done with you!”

“OH FOR GOD’S SAKE!” The Spider rounded on Rainbow Dash, who hovered some distance above him, hooves crossed. “I assumed you were done with me when we got Dandelion (or whatever) out of her house and we could both go do superhero things! Look, do you want me to help evacuate this town or not?!”

Whatever Dash was going to say in response (and judging by the shape of the first syllable, it wasn’t nice), it was sharply cut off as her gaze snapped to the approaching brambles. Her wings twisted slightly and beat hard, pushing her completely out of the way of a lunging vine. The Spider saw this and everything else at once; in a rush of humming, or tingling, or the buzzing of an entire beehive, he felt like the entire universe had telegraphed its next move. He saw the five different limbs growing to attack him, he saw the barely-dodged branch just beginning to curve around towards Dash again, and he saw Daisy being supported between Lyra and Bon-Bon as they stumbled away—not nearly fast enough.

He hated moments like this, but maybe that needs elaboration. He loved when he could sense his entire environment down to the smallest detail; he simply hated the things he saw. The only moments that spider-sense would let him see everything were the moments he needed to.

First on the agenda: the Spider threw himself backwards as hard as he could, dodging black vines and leaving a horseshoe print in the ground where his right back hoof had stuck for leverage. The motion turned into three-fourths of a backflip, and when he hit the wall of the house that had been behind him he bounced, hurtling back towards the brambles as they continued their path, having found the space where the Spider had been remarkably empty but with ground-bound ponies not even ten feet beyond. The brambles had dived for them, but the Spider, moving so fast that the ground five feet beneath him exploded into a valley-shaped cloud of dust, stuck to four of them, caught the last between his teeth, and dragged their path to the right through sheer momentum.

He knew what to do next. He had so much practice working with the manipulation of anchored lines at high speed, he barely even had to pay attention. Tying two of the vines together, he caught the one going towards Dash under his arm (foreleg) and pulled, changing his direction and taking the brambles with him, dragging them right back into the mass from whence they came. With spider-sense focusing his thoughts and directing his actions, he dove under a large vine, bounced upward off the ground, tied one of the hijacked vines around it, leapt off, tied two of the other limbs together, pulled the remaining two through the resultant loop, and stabbed them through with a nearby thorn.

He landed on the central beam of a rooftop, panting as his situational awareness slowly receded into its normal capacity (which was still pretty impressive, but comparatively lackluster*). The enormous black bush had momentarily stopped attacking as it found itself completely tangled and virtually useless. Lyra and Bon-Bon had managed to accelerate and had by now rounded the corner to Main (Mane? He hoped not) Street and vanished.

And then Dash was right in front of him. “How’d you do that?”

“Ah, which part?” He glanced past her, carefully keeping track of the bush’s progress at untangling itself.

“All of it!” The Spider stepped backwards, giving Dash room to land in front of him and continue talking, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve never seen something move that fast without wings!”

“Sure you have. Just now. Uh, the thing’s untangling itself.”

“Yeah, I hear it.” Her wings beat a little harder, carrying her another five feet upwards. “…You actually meant it when you said you were here to help, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Nice job on the uptake. Took you five minutes longer than it should have.” A sudden, slight buzz, and he knew that the brambles were ready to attack. “Watch out—!”

“I know!” Dash burst forward, barely avoiding a vine as it shot upwards. The Spider took several steps backwards as it lost momentum and fell towards him, in case it got any ideas. As he continued walking backwards, he drew level with the still-airborne Rainbow Dash and glanced up at her.

“Tell ya what,” he said. “You take that side of town, I take that side, we’ll meet up again when we run out of ponies to save?”

“Fine.” Dash sped away, leaving a rainbow-colored trail behind her. A moment later she returned. “But after that, you and me are gonna have a talk.”

“Swell. I’ll bring snacks.”

A prismatic blur, a set of hoofprints torn out of the beam, and the roof was empty.

Considering that they were shoulder-to-shoulder and supporting an Earth pony fond of hayfries between them, Lyra and Bon-Bon were making pretty good time. The brambles clinging to the surrounding houses paid them little mind unless they got too close, which Bon-Bon wasn’t especially eager to do anyway.** There were a few streets that were completely blocked off by thick, black, thorned hedges, but one of them almost always knew a detour around them. All told, it took about twenty minutes to get within sight of the train station.

Things probably weren’t much better on the other side of the tracks, granted, but on the other hoof, Bon-Bon failed to see how they could be much worse. Like the Spider said, it was at least a head start.

“Hey Bonnie.”

Bon-Bon turned her head slightly in acknowledgement, but didn’t take her eyes off the railway. “Hmm?”

“Will you marry me?”

Bon-Bon froze, but only for a second. The question probably would’ve had a lot more impact if Lyra didn’t ask every time Ponyville was in peril. “…Nah. Everypony has a summer wedding. And we don’t have the money saved up for a honeymoon.” She paused for a minute, continuing to walk. “Besides, we’ve got this to deal with! Why are you thinking about—are they still in there?”

“Are who still in where?” Lyra replied, and then she said “Ohhh…” as she noticed a faint magenta glow from the windows of the house Bonnie was looking at. “…Probably. Can you hold Daisy for me, I’ll—ack!”

Leaving Lyra for a moment to struggle under Daisy’s weight on her own, Bon-Bon ran for the house. The glow was definitely the same color as Vinyl’s magic, and judging by the brambles wrapping around the house it wasn’t being made intentionally. Worriedly looking at the vine snaking a few feet above the doorway, she quickly knocked and stepped very far back.

There were several minutes of no response. Bon-Bon’s back hoof tapped against the ground anxiously, fighting every instinct she had to run away from the vine that she could swear was staring at her threateningly. After straining her nerves to the breaking point, she pounded on the door again, only for it to open midway through her knocking.

Vinyl looked absolutely miserable. Her ears were drooped, her lip quivering, and although Bon-Bon couldn’t see her eyes she could clearly see the expression in them. “Hey, Bonnie,” she said, her horn sparking and ripping a painting off the wall behind her. She flinched. “What’s up?”

“It’s, ah heh, it’s funny you should ask.” Bon-Bon glanced again at the vine above her. “Get Octavia. We need to go. Now.”

“Why?” Vinyl asked, peering out the door and up to see what Bonnie had glanced at. “What’s that?”

As if in answer, the vine darted out to grab at her, and she ducked back inside with a startled cry. “What the pluck?!” she screamed, backpedaling furiously as it followed after her. The blue pollen dispersed into the hallway, and Vinyl’s horn sparked in response. “TAVI! I told you! I plucking told you it wasn’t me!”

“I SAW YOU DO IT, VINYL SCRATCH! YOU CAN’T JUST PRETEND MY CELLO SMASHED ITSELF AGAINST THE WALL WHEN WE—SUN IN THE SKY WHAT IS THAT?!”

Bon-Bon leaned as far as she dared into the doorway, which was just far enough to see Octavia staring at the bramble from the entrance into the living room. “It’s…I don’t know, but it’s attacking Ponyville! And there’s some kind of changeling or something fighting it, and we need to get out of here now! Come on!”

Vinyl nodded furiously, attempting to weave around the vine. It followed her, and she leaned back. “…I’m gonna go out the back.”

“Don’t say that out loud! It might hear you or something.”

“Can they do that?”

“I don’t know. That’s exactly the sort of tactics they’d try. Go!”

Vinyl went, sprinting down the hall and out of sight. Octavia moved to follow her, then doubled back and vanished into the living room. Bon-Bon attempted to peer into the living room, but the vine finally decided to go for her and grew a limb, reaching out.

That was enough bravery for one day, Bon-Bon decided, and bolted. Screeching to a stop next to Lyra, she hastily picked up her half of the still-catatonic Daisy and attempted to break into a trot. “Lyra, I’m back! Vinyl and Octavia are on their way; let’s go now!”

“Check out this cool bug!”

“Lyra, NOW!”

“Ah, putz.”

The Spider had been leaping for a rooftop when a vine suddenly decided to wrap around from the far side and overtake his target. In hindsight, spider-sense had probably warned him, but he had assumed it had been referring to the more immediate threat of the vines overtaking the roof he had been standing on. His limbs flailing as he neared it, he suddenly looked up and to his right as Rainbow Dash came barreling towards him.

Peter wasn’t quite sure whether to smile at that or not. He certainly accepted the rescue, as he had always done before, but (as he stuck to Dash’s outstretched hooves and leaned into her turn as best he could) he couldn’t help but be annoyed that he was being rescued by a pony who clearly didn’t like him.

“Thanks,” he called up anyway.

“No problem,” Dash replied, flying around a carousel-like building (Peter began considering the implications of that, then hastily stopped). “I saw my friends next to Town Hall. I’ll go see what they know about this.”

“Lovely. And then maybe we can have a nice little seminar, maybe form committees, give the mayor a pretty PowerPoint presentation on the architectural concerns of the Hedge from Hell. Or maybe you’ll do that, and I’ll just skip Step WTF and keep saving ponies. Airdropping weed killer can come later. Oh look, ponies trying to get into their house. Allez-oop!”

He released Dash’s hooves, dropping back to ground level and landing on the base of an infantile vine that was growing behind a brown stallion.

Time-Turner, to be specific, was trying desperately to tear through the vines that had grown around a door. Above him, Derpy was wrestling with the vines at (in, in one case) the upper windows. The Spider glanced from him to her and back, before clearing his throat and speaking.

“I’m sure you’re very confused,” he said, “but being indoors isn’t gonna help you much. Good effort, though.” He grabbed Turner by the shoulders and began to pull him away from the door, and spider-sense chose that time to twinge softly.

Most of you have by now gathered that Peter had some form of super~~human~~equine durability. This was, of course, a natural byproduct of his super strength—or perhaps it was the other way around, and super strength was a byproduct of durability. In order to lift a car, after all, one must first be able to resist being squished under its weight. Peter certainly appreciated his toughness more than his strength; it was the primary reason he had survived a full three years as a superhero, while all his other powers just motivated him to try harder to get himself killed. Grenades had gone off in his face and he had been able to keep fighting.

So it came as something of a surprise when Turner kicked him in the face not only hard enough to hurt a little, but hard enough to send him flying a few feet back and land on his back.

He scurried back to his hooves, and this time roughly shoved himself between Turner and the house. “Okay,” he said, beginning to push him backwards. “That was completely uncalled for. There’s absolutely no reason to be—“

“Let me go!”

“No. What is so important that you think you need—“

“MY DAUGHTER’S IN THERE! LET ME GO!”

The Spider froze. “…Well that’s another matter entirely. I’ll be right back.”

He vanished in a momentary blur of dark green and a tremendous smash, and there was suddenly a large hole in the wall.

If Peter hadn’t already known that this was Turner’s house, he would’ve been able to guess pretty quickly. The walls of the entrance room were lined with clocks and shelves containing watches. Each was so perfectly set that they ticked in unison, a chorus of simultaneous tics punctuating the air exactly once a second. Peter smiled in satisfaction at the precision, then his ears folded back and he glanced around, looking for a filly.

This room was empty of anything that wasn’t a timepiece or a painting. He hopped over a counter and through a door, glancing about the kitchen beyond. On reflection, he should’ve asked Turner how old his daughter was. He would’ve known if she was the type to hide in a closet when scared. Darting over to the pantry, the Spider threw it open and scanned the bottom, then did the same with all the lower cabinets. Finding nothing, he darted up the stairs and found himself in a short hallway.

Oh, hey. Crying.

Following the sound of muffled sobbing, the Spider peered around a doorway and recoiled slightly. This was the room he had noticed had an open window, and it seemed the vines had taken full advantage of it. Black brambles seemed to pour in through the window, curling around bedposts, covering the floor, and entangling a grayish-pink unicorn filly in their midst.

The Spider pushed the door open a little further, ignoring the warning his spider-sense gave him. Immediately, several vines rose, pointed at him. He could practically hear the villainous hisses of “You!” and grinned toothily at the thought.

“Hey,” he called, waving a hoof at the filly. The vines darted at him, one by one, and he hopped upwards, bouncing off the wall just above the door and sticking to the ceiling as the vines flew through the space where he had been less than a second ago.

The filly looked up at him as he trotted across the ceiling and screamed. It was the sort of scream that one makes when every single one of their worst fears comes true at once. Peter could hear both parents scream “DINKY!” in response, and two of the vines filling up the window moved backwards a few inches as if sharply pulled. They continued moving backwards as Derpy continued pulling on them outside, and the sound of brambles being torn somewhere near the ground was distinctly audible.

“You have the best parents ever!” the Spider commented over Dinky’s screaming. “I’m so freaking jealous!”

Dinky continued screaming. The Spider dropped off the ceiling, narrowly avoiding the vines that had sprang from the bedposts, and landed in front of the veritable net of vines holding Dinky in the corner of the room. Grabbing at two of the vines, he pulled, threw them aside easily, and reached a hoof into the resulting hole.

Rather than grab it, Dinky pressed herself further into the corner, tears of fear running down her cheeks. Peter furrowed his brow, confused. It wasn’t like this sort of thing hadn’t happened before, but he had no reputation to inspire terror here, and he wasn’t wearing a mask that had incredibly creepy reflective bug eyes. “What’s up?” he asked, but then—MOVE—he leapt to the right, dodging vines that had leapt at his back. Instead they wrapped around Dinky and dragged her, struggling and screaming, out of the place that had shifted from prison to refuge and under the bed.

Well, they tried to, anyway. She was about halfway there when a set of beige hooves stepped on each bramble.

The Spider had pulled the part of the sheet covering his mouth up, and now bent down and, with a sharpness only used by those in a terrible mood, tore each vine in turn with his teeth. As he went, he felt each of them attempt to fight back, and the toys being chaotically levitated by Dinky’s horn threw themselves at his back and head. But then he pulled his head up, and, muttering something about the room being a lovely one but not to his tastes, grabbed Dinky and bolted from the room.

He hit the wall opposite the door, Dinky landing on his back and bouncing slightly. The vines that had gone through the door earlier twisted around and towards them, but the Spider leaned backwards, avoiding the first, raised his back hooves to avoid two, and then sprinted forward before the fourth or fifth could launch themselves farther than about a foot.

The window at the end of the hallway had two thick vines over the bottom panes. The Spider tensed and launched himself at the upper ones. He raised his front hooves and brought his back ones forward—he no longer had any fingers to lose; instead he had keratin hammers. Self-defenestration could be fun now.

His front hooves hit the glass first, followed by his back ones. Squeezing his eyes shut and trusting that the terrified Dinky was probably already doing the same, he lowered his head as he and his passenger sailed out the window in an explosion of glass shards. An assortment of hard, sharp points scored deep, painful cuts in his legs and trunk, and he hoped that it was he and not Dinky that took the bulk of the lacerations. As he felt the shards let up, he cracked his eyes open and saw the ground come rushing up to meet them. Opening his eyes wider, he spread his hooves wider and, upon hitting the ground, deliberately collapsed to more effectively cushion the child on his back.

The instant they slid to a stop as the ground resisted the momentum of the jump, the Spider felt Dinky scurry off his back and towards the voice of Time-Turner. He stood, turning towards them.

“Get away!” Dinky screamed at him, burrowing further into Turner’s embrace. “Get away! Daddy, make him go away!”

Turner ignored her for a moment, gazing at the significantly more torn-up Earth pony with a look of infinite gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you. Derpy, she’s down here! I mean it. Thank you so much…you.”

“He’s a spider! He’s a changeling!” Dinky’s gratitude was evidently a mote less infinite. As Derpy peered around the corner of the roof, a vine clenched between her teeth, Dinky released herself from Turner’s forelegs and ran behind him, as though using her father as a shield. “He walked on my ceiling! Daddyyyyy!”

“I’m, I’m sorry about her reaction.”

The Spider waved it off. “’S cool. I’m used to it. Gratitude’s not a renewable resource y’know, good of her to save it for things like milkmen.”

“She’s scared of spiders.”

“I said it’s fine!” Derpy had joined them on the ground, and now Dinky was draped in one of her wings. “Now, listen. Stuff like this is usually kind of a town-wide eviction notice, so, I suggest you beat the feds and…” he searched for where he had been going with this trivialization and came up blank. “…Leave. That’s what I was getting at. This is coming from the forest, so you oughta head for the train station and just keep going.”

Turner had suddenly started staring at the brief flashes of hazel he got through the holes in the improvised hood, one ear straight up as if listening intently. “Wait a moment. It’s—“

“Soooooooo, you should probably get on that. It’s thataway…I think. Seeya.”

“But it’s—“ Turner had reached out a hoof in a confused point. “…It’s you. Isn’t it?”

“…No, it’s vines. Yew is a tree.” Peter took more pride in that pun than it deserved. “Now vamanos! Actually, wait: Allons-y! Ha ha!"

Turner looked blank.

“…Go!”

“…Oh!” Turner shook his head violently. “Right, yes. Good idea.” He turned around and kneeled down, letting Dinky climb onto his back, then set off in a quick trot in the direction of the train station. The Spider nodded to himself before launching into the air and alighting on an unoccupied rooftop, trying to determine which parts of town he had covered and which he hadn’t.

“Aren’t you coming too?”

The Spider turned his head nearly all the way around and saw Derpy hovering a few feet above the rooftop. “Well, no,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t start running towards the train station.”

“But—“ Derpy tilted her head, and for a moment her irises were perfectly level. “Why not?”

“Well somebody’s gotta evacuate ponies. It’s weird how little thought the forces of good put into that.”

“But that’s their job. Not yours.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

As the Spider raised a hoof as though mentally marking off houses he recognized, Derpy narrowed her eyes just a little and huffed. This pony, whoever he was (she recognized the voice, but wasn’t really thinking about it), had just saved Dinky from a swarm of malevolent plants. She owed him the sun, the moon, and all the gold in Equestria. And seeing as she was in no position to give him most of that, she could at least see him safe. But here he was, blowing her off as though he had already moved on in his day. She flew in front of him, in the process blocking his view of greater Ponyville.

“If it’s your job, who’s your boss?”

“…I’m self-employed. I don’t recommend it, the benefits are lousy.”

“Nopony’s asking you to put yourself in danger for them.”

“No, but that’s because they don’t think that’s an option. If you had known I could get your daughter out of there, you absolutely would’ve asked.”

That took the wind out of her sails a little. Perhaps literally; she landed on the beam the Spider was standing on. “Well…yes, but…I didn’t! Know, I mean. So why would you do it anyw—“

“Because I can.” The Spider shrugged. “I can…Listen, I appreciate you asking me to take care of myself instead. But I can do things. I can help pe—ponies. I can. And they need me to. So I’m staying.” He took her hoof, almost graciously. “Besides, me being selfish always ends badly. For me, I mean. And for everyone I know.” With that, he threw himself backwards and rolled, pulling her with him and catapulting her into the air with his back hooves. “Have a nice flight! Say hi to your arachnophobic daughter for me!”

Derpy tumbled through the air for a moment, unable to tell which way was down as her wings flailed. Then she caught the breeze and found herself gliding several feet above the houses. For a few seconds, she was completely lost, but then she noticed a mailbox she recognized. Okay, that was Pink Drink’s house, so that was 2nd Street, so her house was—there. And the train station was—

Derpy banked hard and started flapping for all she was worth, but her head was buzzing with the conversation she had just had.

A tree.

The library, Peter concluded after a few seconds of staring, was a tree.

He wouldn’t deny it was a cool idea. Awesome, even. Beat out concrete any day of the week. Still, he wondered how they managed to hollow out the tree in the first place—and for that matter, if it was still green, the inside would probably be drenched in sap. And once he had that thought, it wasn’t a matter of whether he approved of books being in there or not, it was a matter of how strongly he didn’t. Leaping from the perch where he had been standing, he hit the window and stuck, peering inside.

The Bearers of Harmony, scattered about the room, had all looked up at the thump on the window and recoiled in surprise at the pony clinging to the window outside like some kind of oversized insect. Rarity had given a scream. Rolling his eyes, he roughly forced the window open and balanced precariously on the sill. “Ladies,” he said, hopping inside and snapping the window shut with a back hoof, “as much as I love reading, there are better times. Like pretty much any other time.”

“Shut up,” Dash said flatly, throwing a book over her shoulder. As the Spider darted over and caught it with the kind of panic only seen in bookworms, she continued, “We’re trying to find out what this is, and what weaknesses it has.”

“It grows so fast it occasionally starves itself,” the Spider offered. “Apart from that, it’s probably immune to whatever killed it last time. You know, if there was a last time. Lyra Heartstrings didn’t seem to know much about it, but—“

“And what, exactly, are you supposed to be?”

The Spider glanced in Rarity’s direction as her eyes travelled up and down his form. “I’m the Spider. Not to be confused with Handsome McStud, despite appearances, so you can stop that.”

Rarity gave an unladylike guffaw. “In what you’re wearing? By Celestia, no! What in Equestria possessed you to try and use a bedsheet as an article of clothing?!”

Oh. Thank God. “The dread spirit Convenience. I can’t stay, but have you found anything?”

Fluttershy started to say something, but the Spider stopped listening after the first syllable when an unearthly, prolonged ringing made itself known in the back of his head. His ears flicked back, and he turned sharply, then did so again as his eyes found nothing. The ring was growing in volume, and he became unpleasantly aware of something outside the library hurtling towards them from above. Turning towards the sensation, he shifted his hooves into a defensive stance—

Started to, anyway. His right hooves were off the ground when spider-sense unexpectedly jumped from ready to GO and a lavender alicorn came flying out of a flash of light six inches above him.

To his credit, he had been already starting to jump out of the way when she crashed into him.

They tumbled together for several feet, he over her and her over he, before crashing headlong into a bookshelf and knocking most of its contents onto themselves. Instinctively a beige hoof snapped up and deflected a large volume from lodging its corner in his face, but from his awkward position that was roughly the extent of his ability to shield himself. After a moment there was nothing but a chaotic pile of large books and paper with a foreleg sticking out of the top. A sigh was audible from somewhere inside the heap.

After another moment, a distinctly male voice said, “Princess Twilight Sparkle, I presume.”

“Ow. Yep, that’s me. Nice to meet you…”

“Charmed.” The pile shifted as the Spider sat up, gently pushing a wing resembling a grape-flavored stork’s out of the way. “I’m the Spider. Yes, it’s a stupid name; no, I’m not in the market for a better one. Do you teleport often or just when you want to blindside paranoid ponies? Because there are probably better excuses to warp space-time.” Standing, he trotted back towards the middle of the room as he continued snarking over his shoulder. “Well done with clearing the bookshelf, though. Could be neater, but I’ve never seen someone do it so fast. Heeeyy, a dragon.”

Indeed, a small, bipedal dragon had just crawled through the front door. It looked dazed; Peter could practically hear the ringing in its head. As he watched, it crawled several meters, kissing the ground all the way. “Sweet ground! Sweet, sweet, wonderful ground!”

“It’s gonna be a whole lot less wonderful when you think about everyone else who’s walked there. Now. I wasn’t listening earlier, I was having an episode.” He paused to yank Rarity out of the way an instant before a vine the size of a tree trunk came through the window. “What were you saying?”

Rarity ignored the horribly-dressed, infuriating pony, giving Twilight a shaky smile. “Our efforts to research this calamity have proved in vain—“ she paused, allowing for a sarcastic comment that, surprisingly, didn’t come— “but perhaps you already know. Has Princess Celestia sent you to dispel it, post-haste?”

Twilight looked uneasy. “…Noooot exactly,” she began.

“Meaning no?”

She wisely ignored the Spider. “You see, Princess Celestia is…well, she and Princess Luna have both…”

She seemed reluctant to say it. A horrible sinking feeling was in Peter’s stomach, and judging from the other five in the room, it had made a home in each of theirs, too.

Apparently the dragon had no talent for suspense. “—GONE MISSING!”

The rest of the Elements gasped. The Spider breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh. Okay.”

“What?!” Princess Twilight was staring at him, and the hum of spider-sense suddenly started getting a little louder. “What do you mean, ‘Okay’?! This is a disaster! If they’re both—“

“Could be worse. From the way you were going on I thought you were gonna say they were dead.”

Twilight froze mid-word. “…Oh. That…would be worse. But they’re missing. They might be dead—no, that’s silly, they can’t die—“

“Really?”

“…I don’t know. I don’t think they can, I mean they’ve been around for over a thousand years, but maybe if something really powerful attacked them—“ she took a deep breath. As attempts to calm down went, Peter had seen less effective ones. Usually from himself. “Well,” she said, a note of determination and an attempt at optimism in her voice. “That just means we’ll have to have the Elements of Harmony ready to go.” She levitated the glass cover off a display nearby, and magenta auras surrounded the five golden necklaces inside.

“Oh, yeah,” Dash said, pumping a hoof as one of the chokers clasped around her neck, a ruby lightning bolt glinting in the light from—Peter abandoned the search for a source after a precursory glance about the room. “Just like old times!”

“Booyah!” Pinkie agreed, gleefully bumping hooves with Twilight.

Applejack lifted her chin as an apple-studded necklace found its home. She smiled at Twilight. “Ah told ya we’d always be connected by the Elements. Now we just got to figure out who to aim these bad boys at, so we can get Celestia and Luna back, and keep the rest of Equestria from becoming plant food!”

“Llllovely.” All attention turned to the Spider as he sauntered to the window. “You have fun with that. I’m off!”

“And where are you going?” Twilight asked sharply.

“Why aren’t ya leaving through the door?” Applejack added.

“The door? Why would I go out the door? The window’s right here.” He opened it as if to illustrate. “There’s a vine under your hoof, by the way. And listen—“

“What are you doing?!”

What he was doing was balancing on the windowsill, but he assumed Twilight was asking in a broader sense. “Oh, you know. Existing, breathing, saving ponies from malevolent weeds. The usual. Have a nice fetch quest!”

He jumped out the window, spider-sense made its own equivalent of a weird noise, and in a flash of magenta light he landed on the library floor. His head snapped up, eyes wide behind the hood as he tried to get his bearings. If there was one thing that freaked him out more than someone teleporting, it was him teleporting. As if spider-sense hadn’t been panicky enough already.

Twilight was staring at him. Her eyes were narrowed slightly, as if she wasn’t sure to glare or not. “Listen, buster. You haven’t given me a single straight answer since I got here—“

“Not true. I told you why the princesses being only missing was a relief—“

“Don’t interrupt me,” Twilight interrupted. “We are in the middle of a crisis, and you’re a very suspicious pony. I’m not insinuating anything—“ the Spider gave her an incredulous look— “but I don’t know how you’re part of all this, and I’m gonna find out.”

“I dunno, that sounded pretty insinuating to me,” the Spider said, rubbing a fetlock on his chin. “Can’t I just be a g—a pony who wants to help? And has spider-based superpowers? Is that so hard to accept?” He considered the question when Twilight gave him a flat look. “Okay, good point. But listen, while you’re sitting in this library, or chasing the—the whatever at the source of all this, there are ponies out there in trouble. Maybe dying. Nobody’s actually helping them until the problem suddenly vanishes in a rainbow double helix. That’s what I’m for, do you understand? I wanna help. To hell with ‘want to’; I’m not asking permission. You go put out the fire; I’ll go pull ponies out of it.”

Twilight looked—well, not exactly impressed, but something resembling both pleasant surprise and satisfaction was on her face. Gradually, she nodded, and a small smile formed. The Spider returned the nod, almost turning it into a bowing of the head, then darted back to the window, hooves winding around themselves the vines that had attempted to sneak through the opening. Putting a back hoof to the bottom of the sill, he lifted his other one off the ground and pulled on the vines until they were stretched and struggling.

For an instant he stayed like that, and his head turned to look back at Twilight. “Never teleport me again,” he said. “Seriously. Don’t. And good luck.”

He pulled on the vines, lifted his back hoof off the sill, and rocketed out the window.

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“What?”

It was Turner who spoke first, running a hoof through his mane as though it would make any difference at all. “Ahm. Derpy, I’m sure none of us doubt that you’re earnest about this. It’s a noble intent, I’ll certainly grant you that. But I’m afraid—“

“You’re insane,” Bon-Bon said flatly.

“Bon.”

She returned his glare matter-of-factly. “What? There’s no sense dancing around it. Your wife has flipped.”

“Have not!” Derpy cried, folding her forelegs as she flapped just overhead. “I talked to that pony that saved Dinky, and he’s staying to help.”

“If he wants to, we should let him. You saw what he can do; I don’t think he’s in any real danger if he stays. Besides, what with his choice of attire, I don’t think you can trust him with sound life advice.” Nobody laughed at the joke, so Turner supplied the snicker himself, just to fill the silence.

Lyra did, however, turn towards Turner with a surprised smile on her face. “Oh, you mean the Spider? Yeah, he’s amazing, isn’t he? I saw him jump over, like, three houses! And he ripped up the bush that was attacking me and Bonnie and went through the wall to get us out. And he’s fast. Like, I’ve never seen anything move that fast, except Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts. I couldn’t even see him half the time.”

“What’re you guys talking about?” Vinyl asked, but she was ignored.

“You weren’t even on the same street as him half the time,” Bonnie pointed out. “And are we just ignoring that that was that Peter pony?”

Octavia cleared her throat even as Lyra froze mid-trot. “I’m with Vinyl. I have no idea what you’re all talking about, and it’s rather ag—“

“Wait, he was?!” Derpy cried, landing. She thought for a moment. “Oh…!”

“Oh, yeah!” Turner had stopped walking too and had a hoof raised to his chin thoughtfully. “He was, wasn’t he. I completely forgot.”

“No, he wasn’t!” Lyra said, her eyes wide. She then narrowed them, thinking hard about what she had seen of him beyond the sheet. “…Was he?”

“He was,” Bonnie said flatly. “How am I the only one to figure this out? He didn’t even change his voice. How hard could that have been? Honestly.”

“That’s not fair, Bonnie,” Derpy said crossly, pausing to shake a miniscule vine off her back hoof. “Not everypony can change voices like you.”

“I accept that. But he could’ve at least tried.”

“WHAT IS GOING ON?!” Vinyl screamed, so loudly that Octavia leaned away before reaching up and steadying the remains of her cello on her back.

The other four paused for a second, as though only now remembering that the musicians were with them. They glanced between each other as though trying to decide who would explain first, before Lyra unofficially volunteered:

“Y’know that pony we met at the party last night?” she asked, smiling her ridiculous smile.

“Tonight, actually.”

“Shut up, Turner.” Turner shut up. “Well, it turns out he’s a superhero.”

“He’s not a superhero!” Bonnie interrupted, even as Octavia guffawed.

“Right. A super hero. Are you sure it’s not Princess Twilight in a silly costume again?”

“No,” Derpy said simply. “It’s Peter in a silly costume. Let’s go!”

Turner nodded. “Good idea,” he said, starting to move again, and then, “Hey! You’re going the wrong—Derpy, please!”

Derpy stopped, turning around in midair, but stayed hovering where she was. “He’s our friend,” she said with conviction.

“He is not!” Bon-Bon shot back, giving Derpy a look. “We met him three hours ago!”

“Three hours, thirty-eight minutes, fourteen seconds.”

“Shut up, Turner. He only talked to Vinyl, Turner, and Lyra! And even then it was barely a conversation! You saw how he acted when we tried to see if he was okay! We don’t even know him!”

“And if we don’t go back and help him, we might never get to know him. Maybe he’s kinda weird and doesn’t talk to ponies much, but maybe that’s because it’s hard for him to!” Derpy folded her wings, falling the five feet to the ground and landing solidly. “It’s not like he’s not our friend just because he’s a new friend. And he saved you and Lyra! And he saved Dinky!”

A thought struck Turner. Craning his neck to see the filly on his back, he gave a little shrug to get her attention and lowered himself enough to let her climb off. Taking the hint, Dinky dismounted from her stepfather and stood next to him, looking a little confused.

“Yes,” Turner said calmly, “he saved Dinky. And if we want that to mean anything, we’ll run. We can’t be there for her if we go back. Yes, it’s Peter, but he doesn’t need us. Your daughter—“

“Um, Daddy, I think you should do it.”

An incredulous look met a sincere one. Turner really should have been expecting that; Dinky was still at the age when she believed that her father, by blood or marriage notwithstanding, was invincible. The filly had always had a streak of altruism about her, and where she herself couldn’t help ponies she tried to push ponies who could to act for her. Perhaps in her mind this plan had no realistic negative outcome. Turner bit his lip, trying to figure out how to burst this bubble.

Bon-Bon made the attempt for him, leaning over Turner to get the attention of the filly on the other side of him. “Dinky. If your mom and stepdad go back, they’re going to have to leave you here. Alone. Without anypony to keep you safe.”

“Sparkler’s right over there!” Dinky pointed out, throwing a hoof towards the unicorn mare less than fifty feet away.

“Oh. So she is. Dinky, there’s a spider in Ponyville right now. A big spider that looks like a pony.”

“The one that walked on your ceiling earlier.”

“Shut u—actually, never mind. Thank you, Turner. Do you really think that we should go and help that?”

Dinky’s set expression wavered slightly, but didn’t leave. “I didn’t know it was Mommy and Daddy’s friend,” she said. “Mommy and Daddy don’t make bad friends.” Both Derpy and Turner looked ready to protest that, but Dinky plowed ahead without heed. “You don’t abandon ponies, and you don’t abandon friends. Even if they’re spider-ponies.”

Turner looked away, the look on his face that of someone who’s about to do something they’d rather not. He licked his upper lip slowly, whispered “pony feathers,” then cleared his throat and turned. “AMETHYST!” he yelled, nudging Dinky in that direction.

Amethyst “Sparkler” Star turned this way and that, looking for who had called her name, before noticing the brown stallion. “Oh, hey Doc!” she called back. “What’s up?”

“I need you to watch Dinky for me.” He gave his stepdaughter a halfhearted nod and she cantered towards her babysitter. “Just for a bit. While Derpy and I are doing something. Thank you,” he added as Amethyst nodded and smiled at the filly. “Really. Thank you so much.” With that, he turned back towards Ponyville, took a deep breath, and broke into a gallop.

“Ach!” Bonnie yelled, as her support ran out from under her and she more-or-less faceplanted. She got back up immediately, watching husband and wife head back towards the overtaken town at full speed. “Are you serious right now? You can’t be—HEY! Lyraaa!”

Lyra stopped momentarily, turning halfway around and giving Bonnie a wide-eyed grin. “THIS IS THE COOLEST THING WE’VE EVER DONE!!” she squealed. “You think I’m gonna sit this out?!” And she started running again. “Hey, guys! Wait up!”

Bon-Bon rubbed the side of her face with a hoof, groaning. Hesitantly, stopping and starting again a few times, she began to trot, then gallop, after her marefriend, swearing under her breath all the way.

And then there were two. Vinyl and Octavia looked at each other silently, each considering the debate they had just been privy to. Then Octavia spoke.

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“Oh, yeah, awful.”

“They’re going to get themselves killed.”

“We oughta go after them.”

“We’d die.”

“Might not.”

“The odds are bad.”

“No denying it.”

A pause.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Octavia said.

“So’s living to see another day.”

“We’d hear their screams at night.”

A pause.

“Those vines smashed my cello.”

“And my records. Plucking told you.”

“I have never been so angry in my life.”

“Yeah."

"They’re winning.”

“We could tip the scales.”

“Just a bit.”

“Maybe enough.”

A pause.

“So,” said Vinyl, raising her brow. “…Vengeance?”

“…Vengeance.”

They grinned at each other. “Excellent!”

Vinyl strummed an air guitar. Octavia played a chord on an air cello. You could practically hear the resulting music.

Then they started running.

*It has its benefits, not being able to see everything at once. One might find it extraordinary to be able to see every blade of grass and hear the wind brushing past each of them, but keep that up and you’ll never get around to mowing the lawn.

**Lyra, on the other hand, was quite eager now that Bonnie wasn’t in any immediate danger. It was probably Bon-Bon’s insistence and nothing else that kept her from examining the vines so closely her nose would touch.