Avengers EMH: The Lost Seasons

by VunderGuy

Rating: teen
Tags: Dark, Alternate Universe, Comedy, Adventure, Crossover, Human
Length: 10501

The Avengers and their loyal pet confront the Titan Thanos and find themselves in the Frozen North. Now, most of their roster equinized, they must stop a Minotaurized Thanos from using The Crystal Heart before it's gameover for the whole world!

After helping the Justice League Unlimited in 'Premier,' The Avengers return back to their own world. There, they use all of their newly acquired knowledge, skills, and attitudes along with things the JLU bequeathed to them as gifts, like one Krypto the Superdog, to fight against several super-powerful global upheavals.

After besting the last such upheaval, they discover that the chaos plaguing their world is the product of a single mastermind and teleport to his spaceship to discover none other than The Mad Titan, Thanos!

However, before they can land a single blow, the spaceship makes a jump to a completely different world and Thanos teleports away seconds before the ship's self destruct countdown begins.

Thinking quickly, The Avengers take a portal to this new world, but find most of themselves now possessing the bodies of strange, technicolor equines, and finding it difficult to adapt.

To confound matters, a now Minotaurized Thanos crashes a lovely picnic between Shining Armor and Cadence and demands knowledge on how to bend the Crystal Heart's power to his will.

Now, The Avengers must overcome their team's new found limitations and team up with Shining Armor to save The Crystal Empire and all of Equis from Thanos's dark machinations.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2015-08-01 02:30:02 UTC

Crystal Chaos: Prologue

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”

— Winston Churchill.

****

Crystal Chaos: Prologue

The Titan Thanos hated earth. He loathed it with a passion. Despite barely being in its atomic age with only a few trappings reminiscent of a civilization in a mid or high space age, trying to accomplish his goals on the planet had been difficult. Dare he say, EXTREMELY difficult, and he was no slouch when it came to strategic and tactical planning, unlike the unabashed ‘retards,’ to use the most derogatory term possible for their incompetence, that once lead the Skrull and the Kree.

For though his ego far out weighed that of even Queen Veranke and the Supremor, he had actually bothered to do his research, the most extensive homework he had ever had to do for anything ever. For despite its seeming primitiveness, within a span of time that was like the blink of an eye to even the youngest of the space-faring races, earth had produced champions great enough to crush the greatest of The Skrull remnant factions and managed to put an earth friendly puppet on the newly created Kree throne.

Even in his days as a wandering mercenary warlord, back when people trusted him enough to join up with him, back when the Skrull and Kree hired him and he played both sides, he had never dreamed of actually being capable of bringing either two civilizations to their knees with the small force the earthlings had sent.

For though neither of those two could out compete The Shi’ar or possessed a champion nearly as powerful, and meddling, as their ‘Gladiator,’ both were easily capable enough to kill Thanos if they only knew just what his Lady had planned for him to do.

And yet it was this planet that had done it where he thought he could not.

So, suffice to say when his probes and spies had discovered that the planet was an unstable nega-bomb of super genetics, super technology, and super magic atop the already intense political disputes endemic to an atomic age poly-cultural world, he had done his best to be subversive and play the sides already armed and willing to destroy each other. Unlike the Skrulls, though, he had actually proven to be successful and had no need to push quite nearly as hard as they had or that he had expected to.

Killing the human known as Reed Richards was almost child’s play, requiring only the prodding of his arch nemesis, one Dr. Viktor Von Doom, to finally focus on his desire to destroy Reed and that desire alone. Granted, the end result was that Dr. Doom was also dead and his country was taken over by a far less cooperative despot named Magneto and his brotherhood of mutants, but enough of Doom’s resources had been depleted that the global military coalition that surrounded Latveria insured that, if the shield surrounding the country ever went down, it would be a smoldering radioactive crater. Two Badroons, one laser shot, as the old universal saying went, though, he admitted Doom had died far too early.

Even easier than that was the finding and rebuilding of the one known as Ultron and the alliance with Mephisto’s son, Blackheart and this world’s first and most powerful mutant, Apocalypse.

But despite initial success, every step of the way, THEY just had to be there to try and trip him up. The Avengers, the ones that had caused his two former employers so much woe.

Many times did his Lady chastise him for a set-back she had thought was catastrophic, and many times did Thanos himself doubt he could accomplish his mission. But against all odds and his better judgment to just nuke the entire planet and sort out the ‘diamond he was searching for in the resulting rough, his patience and faith in the providing arms of his Lady were rewarded.

And now, all he had to do was sit back, recline, on his hover-throne with his hands resting behind his head and his feet pressed firmly upon his ship’s primary command womb. In five minutes, the improved hyperspace engine of his ship, Reaper-1, would finish the charge it was building up and he could finally leave the high-orbit of this annoying, little, mote of existence. In two minutes time, he would watch as one of his pawns started a nuclear war that would, if not destroy the entirety of humanity, would certainly send it back to the late iron age at the most optimistic outcome, and the sweet Schadenfreude he received as he pictured The Avengers, who he all thought were dead, looking on from the pits of Hela as their world crumbled made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“Mi Lord, the ‘fire works,’ as you can them, are about to begin,” said Reaper, the AI that ran his ship.

“That time already?” Thanos asked, opening his eyelids and taking a more upright position on his hover-throne.

“Time flies when you’re having fun, as the saying in this world’s most popular language goes.”

“True enough, true enough,” Thanos chuckled. “How long does earth have precisely?”

“As soon as I’m done speaking? Twenty seconds.”

“Good. If you wouldn’t mind, would you please lower the blinds? I’d much rather see this with my own two eyes and not through a medium like a holographic projection.”

“At once, Mi Lord.”

The ‘blinds, as Thanos called them, or rather, the opaque retractable metal shields that covered the windows of weaker, transparent metal of the control center, slid down and gave Thanos an unabashed view of the planet below, primarily the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. Anyone else, even a veteran space traveler may have found the sight to be breathtaking or at least mildly aesthetically pleasing, but to Thanos it was horrid, and the devastation that was soon to come was the TRULY beautiful thing.

“Take this as a small token of my devotion to you, my Lady,” Thanos said under his breath.

Reaper spoke up again, counting down until the thermonuclear rain was to commence. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four three, two, one.”

Thanos took in a deep breath, preparing to waste all of the oxygen in his lungs on a laugh that would make the cosmos itself shudder. He waited for a second, and then another and another until a full minute had passed.

Something wasn’t right. He knew something wasn’t right when the first second passed and all was still right with the world, but he had hoped that it was a slight timing error on his pawn’s part. But beyond an entire minute? That was unacceptable.

“Reaper?”

“Yes, Mi Lord?”

“Why am I seeing a distinct lack of mushroom clouds?”

“It would appear that all of China’s ICBM’s have been successfully shutdown before they reached their targets.”

“And hat of the pocket nukes the Mandarin’s sleeper agents had in all of the world’s administrative and financial capitals?”

“I’m not sure, sir. I suppose that they were successfully shutdown as well.”

Thanos clenched his fists together. “And why, pray tell, is—”

Before he had the chance to finish that sentence, a portal opened up on the top of the steps leading down into the command womb, the answer to his question making itself known as the portal subsided. All ten answers, plus their canine mascot, one ‘Krypto the super dog,’ who from what Thanos had gathered, was from an alien world in another dimension where all life gained incredible powers under yellow sunlight.

Thanos growled. “The Avengers.” Of course. It just had to be them. It just HAD to be them.

The one known as Janet van Dyne, aka The Wasp, looked around like some sort of curious puppy. “Whoa. This place is spacey.”

“Well, we do appear to be in a spaceship of some sort,” the android, The Vision, said.

“And by the look of things, the big mastermind behind all the trouble since we got back is head ahead,” said the anachronistic archer of the group, Hawkeye. He whipped out an arrow from the quiver on his back and aimed at Thanos’s head. “Emphasis on the word, dead.”

“Hmph. This runt? He doesn’t look so tough,” Bruce Banner, aka The Incredibly Hulk, said before slamming his fists together. “Or smart.”

Thanos opened his mouth and gritted his teeth to together. “Do they not say, ‘appearances can be deceiving,’ on your planet?”

“If that’s true about you, they why’d you decide to mess with earth?” Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, said. He raised both of his armor’s palm based repulsor blasters at Thanos’s head as well. “And us?”

“Yeah. I’m certain it’s all over the subspace chatter about what he did to the last alien invaders that thought they could take on a dump on our planet get away with it,” said Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel, as she decided to aim the energy projecting palms of her hat at, surprise surprise, Thanos’s head. “PS: it wasn’t pretty.”

“You know, kind of like how your face isn’t,” the mentally unstable size and bio-energy scientist of the group, Hank Pym, aka Yellow Jacket, said.

Under normal circumstances, this would have been the point where Thanos lashed out with an eyebeam of golden cosmic energy at Pym, disintegrated him, and started a fight that would at least go well in the beginning given his initiative and the shock the rest of The Avengers would have at one of their comrades’ death. As the battle wore on, though, which it was apt to do even if he could eliminate The Incredible Hulk next with the bulk of his power, he knew he risked certain death, or even worse, the parts of his ship critical to the extended hyper-drive jump he needed to make to fulfill his Lady’s desires.

Given this, and his intimate knowledge with just how much the universe seemed to favor them, Thanos instead decided to do the next best thing and stall for time. After all, it’d only be less than three minutes before the extraordinary jump was ready and he had told Reaper before hand to make the jump as soon as that happened. By then, it’d be far too late to stop him and who knows? Whether they did so or not, they might actually have wound up helping him.

First things first though, he needed to respond to Stark’s question before any of the others decided to jump the gun. “To answer your question, Anthony—”

“—Stow it!” Stark interrupted. “To scum like you, I’m Iron Man and nothing else.”

Ignoring that, Thanos continued. “—If there’s one thing I’ve learned ever since coming to your wretched little slice of the milky way, it’s that dealing with The Avengers is inevitably that cannot be stopped if one’s intentions were… less than amicable.”

“Less than amicable!?” yelled out T’Challa, aka The Black Panther. “You destroyed my country and almost did the same to what little family I have left!”

“You almost plunged the planet into World War III several times!” yelled out Steven Rodgers, aka Captain America.

“And you killed some of our friends, some of which were set to be fathers!” Stark said, tears undoubtedly falling down from his face beneath his armored head.

Thor Odinson, the literal norse god of thunder started walking down the steps and into the control womb proper “If I were thee, monster, I would pray to whatever heathen gods you worship, for only they may save you from our wrath.”

“Hmph, I doubt it,” The Hulk said as he followed his comrade. “If they try, Hulk’ll smash puny gods, just like he does to blondie whenever we spar.”

“Precisely,” Thor said, beginning to spin his enchanted hammer, mjolnir. “Which is why you’d best yield cretin, and follow us into your new prison.”

Thor and The Hulk were two meters from Thanos and his hover-throne when Thanos said, “Take another step, and we all die.”

As expected, the two largest powerhouses of the group stopped in their tracks, looking at each other with confused looks on their faces.

“What? Did you truly not think I had no contingency set up specifically if you managed to get aboard my ship?” In truth, Thanos had no ‘specific’ contingency set up for this particular scenario, which was a plan he had developed long ago, but knowledge was power and The Avengers were ignorant of this. “If any of you so much as make a movement I find to be insulting, my ship’s AI will induce a critical reaction in all of my ship’s power plants that will create a blast wave none of us are capable of surviving.

“Wanna bet, Skrull chin?” The Hulk said, flexing his forearm muscles.

“The better question would be: would you bet on the lives of your teammates that aren’t as durable as you?”

The Hulk snorted and then scowled. He and Thanos engaged in a long and tense staring contest, The Hulk snarling all the while. Neither was willing to blink. It was even more intense for those of the group that were not pagan gods, accidental Human-Kree hybrids, density shifting androids, clad from the neck down in power armor made out of proprietary metal just shy of being as durable as secondary-adamantium and capable of defensive force-field projection, the last dog of Krypton given to them by it’s Last Son, or a gamma irradiated rage monster.

“Hulk…” The Wasp said. “Don’t do anything rash now, honey.”

“Listen to the lady, Hulk. I know this creep needs a good haymaker or a thousand to the face, but he’s outflanked us this time. Don’t do what I know you’re thinking of doing,” Captain America pleaded.

For a few more seconds, The Hulk and Thanos continued staring down. Though The Hulk never blinked or looked away, he did stop snarling and scowling. “What do you want,” he said, almost in a sigh. “You space-cases always hate earth and everything on it, and your plans in particular make you out to be more a destroyer than a conqueror, yet you didn’t just try to take the planet out with a nega-bomb or something. So what is it you’re really after?”

Thanos huffed. The Hulk truly was far more intelligent than his demeanor suggested. Not his size, his demeanor. Thanos himself was bulky and was the last to judge an opponent’s intellect based on their body mass.

In that way, he supposed that The Hulk and him were kindred spirits of a sort. Perhaps that was why he was about to answer with a hint, when all of a sudden, Krypto started barking from his spot next to The Wasp’s leg.

Thanos groaned, looking at the kryptonian dog with disdain. “Don’t any of you have a vibranium muzzle for that beast?”

The Wasp knelt down to the team’s pet, massaging his head. “What is it, boy?”

At her question, Krypto hovered in the air for a bit and pointed his nose and his head like an arrow at something behind Thanos. The windows. The followed Krypto’s gaze and gasped. The other Avengers followed suite, their reactions much the same.

Thanos was puzzled at first, until he turned his hover-throne around. The sight that greeted him beyond the windows was not of earth, at least, not the earth he knew. Instead, a world with far more alien landmasses and far clearer skies, greener foliage, and bluer oceans glittered before him like a painted, monolithic marble suspended by gravity’s invisible strings.

He was only in high-orbit, and already he could tell that by the standards of most beings aside from himself, this planet would win any beauty pageant against earth by a wide margin.

Which meant that, once Thanos was done making it over, it would be all the more TRULY beautiful.

Despite himself, he chuckled. “My great, green friend. To answer your query: I’m afraid none of it matters anymore. For Equis, is now mine to play with.”

Chapter 1: Crystal Chaos Part 1

Chapter 1: Crystal Chaos Part 1

Shining Armor stood upon the edge of the highest peak of the Crystal Mountains, the flat plateau large enough to build a mansion on with a considerable front and backyard. The wind rustled his predominantly navy blue mane as well as his lone streak of baby blue as he looked out over the rolling green plains and towards Crystal City, the lone city of the Crystal Empire.

He breathed in the chilling, yet crisp, mountain air and sighed, content.

He was a happily married stallion. Indeed, he couldn’t think of a stallion that wouldn’t be happy marrying a princess bride, becoming a prince, and then ruling over a crystalline kingdom once lost to the annals of history with said princess bride at his side. He further thought that the very idea of a stallion being unhappy with such a bride when it was considered that she was also a legendary alicorn goddess was an unintelligible concept. Like a square circle or, to poke fun at his younger sister, a Twily that wasn’t overly obsessive about exams.

After having his fill of the air, Shining Armor’s eyebrow knitted together and he licked his lips, both in anticipation and to keep them from chapping. Chap stick wasn’t something he liked to apply because it made him feel all girly, for obvious reasons, and if his lips became dry, his spouse wouldn’t let him hear the end of it until he ponied up.

A look of grim determination graced his features. “Release!” he commanded.

“Sir yes sir!” said Lieutenant Flash Sentry.

Shining Armor liked Flash. Aside from Shining himself and Cadence, he was one of the few other ‘fleshies,’ as the colloquialism went, in the entirety of the empire. All of the other, regular, blood and bone ponies of the EUP (Earth Pony, Unicorn, Pegasus) guard contingent assigned to protect him and his wife had been scheduled back to Canterlot a few months ago.

Though he questioned the term ‘fleshy’ as it applied to Cadence, considering she could probably turn a crystal pony to pebbles with her bare hooves if she really wanted to with her earth pony strength, there was no denying the kinship he shared with Flash if for no other reason than, if both of them were cut, they’d both bleed. A kinship he had shared with none of the other guards assigned to protect him, as friendly, well mannered, and professional as they were.

The two of them were ‘bros,’ as it were.

With a small whoosh of air, the clay pigeon was airborne and entered Shining’s field of vision, heading towards the Crystal City over the wild blue yonder. He broke his serious look and snickered when he saw a mugshot of Prince Blueblood smiling taped to the front of it.

Yep. He and Flash Sentry were bros, alright.

As soon as it hit the peak of its arc, which is to say, as soon as it was nothing but a barely recognizable dot on the horizon, Shining yelled out, “EAT THIS JERKFACE!” before obliterating the pigeon and ‘Prince Bluebood’ to dust with a casual burst of navy blue energy from his horn.

“Whoa! Nice shot dude!” said Flash.

Shining Armor turned around to be greeted by the sounds of Flash, the ten Crystal Pony guards standing by the road that lead down the plateau, and his lovely wife clapping their hooves together at his display of martial accuracy. Despite himself, he made a grand, sweeping flourish with his hoof, like a conductor having just finished a most excellent concerto, and took a bow.

“And that’s why Celestia made me the Captain of the Canterlot Castle guard,” Shining Armor said with the smuggest grin he could muster.

“Really now?” Cadence asked, raising a brow as a small smirk graced her beautiful, pink face. “I thought it was because I had put in a good word about you.”

Shining Armor blushed and rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “Well, there’s that too.”

Cadence giggled.

Shining, despite how many times he had heard her giggle, felt his heart skip a few beats to flutter away from him a bit.

“So, what happened yesterday?” Cadence asked.

Shining’s heart immediately started to beat normally again, though at an accelerated and angry rate.

He glanced towards Flash, who was grinning nervously and rubbing a foreleg with his other one.

Yep. He and Flash Sentry were bros.

“You caved again, didn’t you?” Shining asked, slapping his face and groaning. “Dude! How many times do I have to tell you to run away and hide when she comes around and asks questions!”

“But I did Shiny—errr—Sir! Honest!” Flash said, before pointing a hoof towards Cadence. “But she found me hiding in the library behind all two hundred volumes of The Steadfast Sky! And how could I have said no to that face!?”

Shining looked towards his wife to find her performing the oldest manipulative trick in the equine book. A trick so old that it preceded Celestia’s and Luna’s age put together.

The puppy-dog face.

Oh, Shining new this face well. Twily had unleashed its immediate sadness inducing powers on him many a time when they were younger. Though such frequency of usage had inoculated him quite well to its effects, if Cadence ever used it against him, he knew that even he would crack eventually.

He sighed and shook his head.

Cadence’s face returned to normal and she giggled once more. “Yeah, Shiny, how could he have said no to me?” She reached into the basket to her right on the picnic blanket she was laying on. “So, what happened exactly? Flash didn’t really spill any juicy details when I cornered him yesterday.”

Shining Armor took one angered look at Flash, who withered under his gaze, before turning back to Cadence and saying, “Let’s just say that I’m glad you and your ‘cuz’ aren’t actually related by blood.”

“That bad, huh?” Cadence asked as she pulled out a daisy and apple jam sandwich from the basket.

“He made Donut Joe cry, close his chain here, and head back to Canterlot!” Flash suddenly shouted. “Nopony takes away a slice of home like that!” He slammed his hoof down for emphasis. Unfortunately, it came down upon the lever of the clay pigeon launcher. “Whoops!”

As this second clay-pigeon with Blueblood’s ugly mug taped to it became a hard to spot dot on the horizon, Shining shouted out, “EAT IT AGAIN YOU HIGHBORN PIG!” before making it join its brother in wherever it was clay-pigeons bearing the visages of annoying in-laws went to.

The guards began clapping again, their eyes closed, and Shining Armor dramatically bowed repeatedly.

“Another fantastic shot. Truly your species has more than disgusting, saccharine adorability going for it.”

“Thank you, thank you, you’re too—” As Shining took his fifth bow, his brow furrowed, the insult in those words and the unfamiliar voice finally hitting him. He heard the shuffling of crystal hooves, the clanging of spears, and a gasp from Cadence. He raised his head back up and opened his eyes. There, ten feet away and surrounded by all his Crystal guards and their diamond tipped points, was something he honestly didn’t expect to see when had woken up that morning.

A minotaur in regal gold and medium blue armor from the neck down sat on a throne that floated three feet off the ground thanks to some unseen force. Two horns, the largest he had ever seen on a minotaur, protruded from either side of a helmet the same colors as the armor and curved sharply upwards. From its exposed face, Shining could see that it’s fur was somewhere between a dark purple and blue and that its chin was frilled, a feature he had never seen a minotaur possess even in the advanced biology books he had glanced at back when Twily was a filly and into the ‘City States of Minos’ phase. In its arms, cradled like a lover, was a tall back statue of some strange figure.

“Who—who are you?” Shining asked, more surprised than angry or frightened.

The Minotaur placed the statue upright on the ground next to him. Next, it placed its two massive hands, each large enough, Shining noticed, to completely wrap around his head on its equally massive kneecaps and leaned in at the edge of its seat.

The Minotaur flashed Shining a toothy, canine filled grim that made the plateau drop to the same freezing temperatures of winter according to his body.

A grin that would haunt Shining’s nightmares for years to come.

“The name’s Thanos.”

*****

In the blink of an eye, the mastermind behind all of earth’s woes was gone, leaving behind ten surprised Avengers, who were just getting over the shock of seeing a completely different world before them.

It didn’t take long for Hawkeye to become rather irate. “Good going guys! You let the man behind the curtain get away!” he said to Hulk and Thor.

“Last I checked, you were gawking at that new planet there same as the rest of us, Cupid,” said Hulk.

“Oh yeah!? Well at least I wasn’t within spitting distance of the guy!”

“Pardon, but are you not an archer, and did you not come prepared with a quiver of quantum arrows?” asked Thor.

Hawkeye was about to make another angry retort, when the voices of Captain America and Iron Man cut into his plans.

“That’s enough!” they shouted in stereo.

The two of them looked at each other for a moment before Captain America made a gesture of deference with his hand.

Nodding, Iron Man turned his armored head forward and said, “Look, I know what just happened wasn’t exactly our finest moment, but this is the closest we’ve ever been to bringing this guy to justice, so if you’re going to argue over mistakes, do it on your own time!” When no one challenged him on that, Iron Man turned towards Krypto, who was still floating in the air. “Krypto! Please tell me you got that guy’s scent.”

The Superdog nodded and barked.

“Good boy,” Iron Man said. “Alright team, here’s the—”

“—self destruct sequence initiated,” said the voice of what was undoubtedly the ship’s AI.

“—Plan.” Beneath his helmet, Tony sighed. Call it jadedness or complacency, but he didn’t bother to let his eyes widen or his pupils shrink. After all, he was more peeved at the prospect of having to make a great escape than fearful.

“Ten—” said the AI.

“Well that’s not good,” said Wasp.

Before Tony could even issue the order, Thor twirled mjolnir around and fired off a blue bolt of lightning that stopped halfway between him and Hulk and the other Avengers and turned into an equally blue warp in the fabric of space. “A portal to yond planet below! Quickly!”

“Let us hope that atmosphere is breathable!” said Black Panther.

“Of course it’ll be. Reality loves us,” said Yellow Jacket.

All ten of The Avengers shuffled into the portal before the countdown had reached three.

*****

Going through one of Thor’s mystic portals was usually smooth sailing no longer than five seconds of zooming through the space between spaces. Though other magic users could make instantaneous portals, his fellow Avengers tended not to give him much flak for that considering Asgardians were a warrior culture that, aside from certain individuals, saw little use in magic that did not increase physical attributes, destroy things via projection, or enchant objects to increase one’s physical attributes and/or allow one to destroy things via projection.

Besides, despite the often time sensitive nature of their profession, they had never gotten into a situation with Thor’s portals where that five seconds of travel time would have made difference, as incredible as that sounds.

Something even more incredible happened as they went through the space between spaces that time, though. Or rather, something painful to the extreme. Against their will, all of The Avengers save for Thor, Vision, and Krypto, felt something happen to their bodies. Their fingers and toes retreated into their palms and feet. Their eyes and the cavities they inhabited in their craniums grew wider. Their limbs and spinal columns grew shorter. It was as if some grand, cosmic force had looked them all over and decided that their body plans had to conform to an acceptable one before allowing them entrance onto whatever world awaited them.

In their minds, the five seconds stretched on for hours, but to the other three, time’s flow seemed quite normal, though Thor senses that something wasn’t quite right.

*****

His suspicions were well founded. Being the first into the portal, upon his boots crunched down upon snow, he flew up into the air and scanned around. He discovered several things, the three most important being that they had arrived in a cold, mountainous, and unforgiving area that the frost giants would be right at home in, the second being that they were under no immediate threat save hypothermia for the less durable of the roster, and last, but most certainly not least, what had happened to the majority of the team.

“Odd’s blood,” he muttered to himself. He descended from on high on one side of the unconscious group of Iron Man, Captain America, Yellow Jacket, Wasp, Black Panther, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, and Hulk. On the other side, The Vision knelt down and inspected the transformed face of Captain America while Krypto sniffed at it. “They’re… they’re—”

“—Equines,” said Vision.

“I was going to say ponies.”

“Yes. They are roughly the same size and biomass of that particular kind of equine. Though the colors of some of their body hair is far too exotic,” Vision said in a clinical fashion. “I am more concerned with the unusual body parts some of them possess, however.”

“Unusual body parts?” Thor took a closer look at his equinized companions, and sure enough, Vision was right. Though the Captain, Hulk, and Panther were normal ponies, the oddly colored fur he could see on the former two and suspected lied beneath the equinized suit of the latter one aside, the others were not. Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye possessed a pair of wings, on either side of their bodies, and Wasp, Yellow Jacket, and Iron Man each brandished a horn on their foreheads, gold colored metal covering up the horn of the latter. “Odin’s beard, you’re right! Some of them posses the forms of Pegasi or Unicorns! But how!?”

“I am uncertain. I detect no mutagens in their bodies that could have done this, at least, not without killing them, and I highly doubt that any mutagen could make their apparel contort to their new body plans in such a fashion.”

Before Thor could respond, Krypto’s ears perked up and he turned towards the south, his snout wildly sniffing the air.

“Trouble?” Vision asked, petting the Kryptonian canine.

Krypto barked and nodded, and then barked three more times.

Thor’s eyes narrowed and he knelt down to Krypto’s eye level. “Is the mastermind down that way?”

Krypto barked and nodded, and Thor’s expression grew even grimmer. He got back to his feet and regarded Vision. “Vision, remain here with the others and find some fuel for a fire. I will follow Krypto and scout to see what our foe is doing.”

“I trust scouting is all you will do,” said Vision.

“All that I intend, though, if a situation arises where I feel I must take action, I will send Krypto back to inform you at my earliest convenience. Hopefully, if it comes to that, the others will have awakened ad accepted their new… circumstances.” Thor let out a sharp whistle, getting Krytp’s attention. “Come, Krypto. Lead me to the mastermind.”

Krypto nodded, his tongue wagging out of his mouth happily, and took off into the air like a cannon.

Thor twirled his hammer as fast as he could.

“Take care, thunderer,” Vision said.

“Fret not, Vision, for it is you whom I worry for.”

“Really?” Vision asked, quirking a mechanical brow. “Why?”

“Because: if I know the others, as Janet would say—” Thor turned his head back towards Vision. “They’re going to ‘freak’.” With a wink, Thor turned back around and shot off into the sky towards Krypto, Vision watching him with both his eyebrows furrowed.

The android’s eyes widened as realization struck him when he heard the other Avengers start to murmur and stir themselves awake.

Were he a biological entity, the urge to let out his breath and sigh would have been too much for him to suppress.

*****

“And, to answer the veritable tidal wave of questions I suspect you’re going to ask: I saw you all from a neighboring mountain top, I teleported, my hover-throne uses advanced technology eons ahead what your race’s finest thinkers can comprehend due to their stagnant cultural mind rot, and my profession will only concern if you fail to answer MY questions.” The Minotaur, ‘Thanos,’ gave a gesture with a hand, one Shining recognized as an indication that it was his turn to speak.

He sat in a very un-prince like manner on his haunches just before the picnic blanket, crossed his fore-legs together, and sent a bemused glare at the Minotaur. “Actually, I was going to ask if you dyed your fur and why you’re acting like a rude jerk, but thanks for getting all that other stuff out of the way, ‘Thanos’,” Shining said with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

“My prince—” said one of the Crystal guard, one of Thanos’s eyebrows quirking at that. “—I wouldn’t recommend antagonizing him. This guy looks like he could deadlift a Crystal house.”

Thanos smirked. “Yes good ‘prince.’ You’d do well to listen to your guardsmen. He recognizes power when he sees it.”

“Guards… man?” Cadence asked Shining from his side.

Shining shrugged at his wife and his look hardened as he looked at Thanos again. “And you’d do well to treat me, my guard, and my wife with respect. Now, I may be a pretty mellow and relaxed dude as far as ruling is concerned, but I demand that others at least give me a teaspoon of common courtesy.” Shining got to his hooves and pointed one accusatorily at Thanos. “If you had just acted with some decency, I would have been more than happy to answer any of your questions, but now, unless you apologize, I think it’s time you stopped bothering us, Thanos.”

“Please. Apologizing to a wretched, techni-colored quadruped like yourself would be an indication that I see you as an equal or, perish the thought, a superior, which I obviously do not think you are and which you are evidentially not.”

Everypony save Shining gasped at those words of blatant disrespect.

“Now, question one—”

“—Sir, I think it’s time for you to—” The Crystal guard who had previously spoken made to grab one of Thanos’s legs, but his hoof and voice stopped when the former hit against an invisible barrier he was not expecting to be there.

“—Do you care for your guardsmen, oh Prince?”

Ignoring his mounting curiosity at just what ‘men’ meant, Shining looked at Thanos as though he had just asked something with an answer so obvious he had to be joshing him. “Of course. What self respecting Prince, especially one who used to be a guard, wouldn’t?”

“Ah, then it would give you much sorrow to have to write letters to the wives, lovers, and family of the ten surrounding me informing them of their passing.”

This time, everypony, Shining included, gasped.

“Are you threatening to… to… murder them?” Shining asked, saying ‘murder’ as though the very concept made his insides churn with disgust.

“My good Prince, if you fail to answer my second question, it’ll be no threat, but a guarantee,” Thanos said with a casualness that sickened Shining.

“That’s it! I can take personal insults till the cows come home, but I will NOT tolerate anyone threatening my subjects with unjust death! Guards, take this guy to the dungeons and charge him with—”

“—How do I corrupt the Crystal Heart?”

Again, everypony gasped.

“Come… come again?” Cadence asked, getting to her feet.

“Yes, please do,” Shining said, looking at Thanos like he had just grown an extra head like every pony on the plateau.”

“You heard correct. Though I’ll spare you the sordid details, know that I desire to bend the Crystal Heart to my will, and will kill all ten of your crystalline guards if you do not tell me how to accomplish my goal. You have three seconds to comply.” Thanos leaned back in his ‘hover-throne’. “Three.”

Shining stood there frozen stiff for a moment.

Thanos raised his right fist until the knuckles were at eye-level a few inches away from the side of his head. “Two.”

Shining shook his head clear, and a look of pity and genuine concern for the obviously insane Minotaur appeared. “Guys, forget what I said. Send Thanos to a mental hospital—”

“One,” Thanos opened his palm, a bright light somewhere between white and gold engulfing him and the area around him for a good seven feet with a blinding intensity. The wind kicked up beyond this radius was so great that Shing felt himself sliding backwards towards the edge of the plateau, but was fortunately caught by Flash Sentry, pressing his fore-hooves against Shining’s flank.

Yep. He and Flash were definitely bros.

When the light died down and the dust settled, Shining opened his eyes to a sight that stabbed at his heart like an adamantium arrow. For now, all around the unharmed forms of Thanos, his chair and his statue, where all ten of the crystal guards that had accompanied him up here on what was supposed to be another beautiful day in paradise, were now nothing but piles of crystalline fragments, the majority of their remains undoubtedly scattered to the four winds and beyond hope of recovery.

“Sweet Celestia,” muttered Flash.

Too overcome with emotion to do anything else but feel his eyes get puffy and twin trails of tears fall freely down his cheeks, Shining was beaten to saying what was on his mind by an equally distraught Cadence.

“You… you… murdered our subjects,” she sniffed out.

Thanos rolled his eyes. “I told your husband what would happen if he denied me.”

Shining felt a rage bubble inside of him at the uncaring detachment that permeated Thanos’s words. He meant to speak, but once again, his wife was faster.

“You murdered our subjects!” Cadence yelled with a very unprincess like scowl of raw rage and flaring teeth while slipping into the royal Canterlot accent she had picked up from Luna.

“And I stated quite clearly to your husband what would happen if he acted like a foolish—”

“Ahhh!”

With a cry that was now fully steeped in the royal Canterlot accent, Cadence aimed her regally long horn at Thanos and unleashed the largest offensive beam spell Shining had ever personallt witnessed with a preliminary charging time that was unreal, the kind of thing that if he blinked, he knew he would have missed it. The noise from both Cadence’s royal Canterlot yelling and the proximity to such a powerful beam made Shining’s ears pop and for a while, he was deaf to all but the loudest of noises.

Finally, after ten whole seconds of projecting magically generated concussive and heat energy, Cadence’s beam dissipated and her posture become wobbly. She would have fallen chin first into the ground if Shining’s hoove’s and Flash’s were not there to hold her up.

“Cadence! Are you alright!?” Shining Armor asked, unknowingly screaming.

Shining Armor couldn’t hear Cadence’s response. “I’m sorry, honey, but could you please speak up!?”

Once more, Cadence’s mouth opened, but he could hear no words leaving it.

“What!?” Shining asked.

Cadence however could not answer, as she had fainted.

“Cadence!? Cadence!?”

Shining and Flash gently placed her on the ground.

As Shining was furiously trying to shake his beloved awake, shouting her name all the while and completely focused on her, he felt a hoof furiously tap him in the withers. When he felt two hooves, Shining turned from his wife to glare at the panicked form of Flash. “What!?”

The lieutenant furiously pointed a hoof in the direction where Cadence’s beam had struck. If Shining’s jaw had dropped any lower, he’d need to get some crazy glue to reattach it. For even through the haze of half settled dust and ozone, he could see Thanos sitting unmoved upon his throne. Not even a scratch was on the statue net to him either.

Thanos tapped a button on his armrest and his voice boomed loud enough for Shining to hear.

“Well that most certainly was… amusing.”

Chapter 2: Crystal Chaos Part 2

Chapter 2: Crystal Chaos Part 2

Vision was pleasantly surprised. Like Thor, he had expected the reactions of his fellow Avengers to fall somewhere between a tactical nuclear warhead of the caliber that decimated Hiroshima and the eruption of mount Krakatoa. Their actual responses though, were far more subdued than even his most optimistic of projections.

“This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening!” yelled Hawkeye, lying on one of his sides and fuming around in the snow with his legs.

Well, at least most of their responses were. Though, he had correctly expected Hawkeye’s handling of things to be the most negative, and at least it couldn’t get any worse. He was grateful for this, for he was not in the mood to stop an angry Hulk, equinized or no. It truly was a testament to the levels of self-control his gamma-irradiated friend had achieved, and Vision made a note to compliment him later on for such calm in the face of such an… odd situation.

“Pipe down, Cupid. I’m trying to meditate,” said Hulk, laying back first in the snow, his massive, tree trunk like legs hanging limps against his sides and his eyes closed.

Hawkeye screamed towards the sky, his fumbling growing ever more erratic until he managed to get on his back and make a snow angel.

The Wasp, who laid on her stomach with her back against the massive bonfire all of The Avengers were around, lifted her head up and looked at Hawkeye to her right, snow thrown about thanks to his little tantrum caking her face and mane. “Oh calm down, Clint. It’s not like this is the worst thing that could have happened to us. We’re cute little horsies for cryin’ out loud! Do you know how awesome this is? Right, Carol?”

Wasp turned to her left to see her friend struggling to stand-up on all fours, only to plop down face first into the snow in such a way that her now furry butt stuck up into the air.

“Yeah. Awesome,” Ms. Marvel grumbled as she pulled her face out.

“Awsome!? AWESOME!?” Hawkeye craned his head toward Wasp. “Maybe for a couple of little girls like you and Carol—”

“Watch it, Clint. This ‘little girl’ helped keep the Empire state building from tipping over. Twice,” said Ms. Marvel, her voice several loud decibels above an indoor voice, but not quite a yell. At least, not yet.

Hawkeye sighed. “Look, the point is, in case you’ve forgotten, I am a MAN! And as a MAN, I’d rather be a gamma monster like you were than a ‘cute little horsey’! At least you looked tough and intimidating and could crush a person’s spine!”

Wasp shivered, though not from the cold. “Please, don’t remind me.”

“And you know what REALLY doesn’t help things!?” Hawkeye continued, ignoring Wasp. “Listening to the Hulk here make jokes about me now that I look like a little girl’s ‘pwecious’ plushie!”

“When did I make a joke about you?” Hulk asked, still trying to meditate on his back.

“Oh don’t give me that!” Hawkeye said, getting on his right side and facing Hulk.

“How about I give you a fist instead? Will that shut you up?”

Hawkeye’s eyes widened for a bit before his enraged look returned. “Joke’s on you, we have hooves now! And you know exactly what you said! I bet you’re just chucking it up inside!”

Hulk’s eyes opened suddenly and he turned towards Hawkeye. “Yeah. I’m a real bundle of laughs. Ha. Ha. HA.” Hulk bared his teeth and growled, his breath visible in the frigid air, striking Hawkeye in the nose.

Hawkeye didn’t really get to smell if it was nasty or not, for his breathing, as well as his heart, had all but stopped. Even as a pony, The Hulk was far larger and could put the fear of the gamma particle into him. Hawkeye took a gulp, making sure that he had done it in such a way that it was impossible for anyone to see without a microscope and he managed to say, “Point taken,” with his best poker voice.

He turned his head away from Hulk and looked up at the sky, a forlorn look on his face.

For a while, all that could be heard was the howling of the wind.

And then Yellowjacket just had to open his big mouth. “So, anybody know what Hawkeye thought The Hulk said?”

Hawkeye’s eyes became like dinner plates and his pupils shrunk so small, microns were their proper unit of measurement. He looked at the bonfire in between him and Yellowjacket, hoping that he could get a glimpse of him on the other side so that he could plead with his eyes. When he remembered that the fire was much too big for that, he said, “Hank, please oh please oh please, don’t—”

“The name’s Yellowjacket. Just for that, I’m going to take pictures and use them as blackmail when we get back to earth.”

Hawkeye gasped and stuttered out, “But… but… you don’t even have a camera!”

“And you forget that Vision up there is a robot.”

Hawkeye looked up to the android, who floated twenty feet above the fire and looked in the direction Krypto and Thor had flown off to.

Before he could shout at Vision to beg him to wipe the picture of him as an equine out of his memory banks, Wasp asked a question that would have made him freeze even if the portal had spit them out into a tropical paradise. “So… what exactly DID Clink think Hulk said about him?”

“Yeah. I wanna know too,” said Ms. Marvel.

“Good, though, once I tell you, you’ll slap yourselves for not getting it earlier,” Yellowjacket said.

Hawkeye closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He briefly wondered if he should throw himself into the fire, but decided that taking what he knew was to come like a man, eve if he was one of the sissiest looking things in existence, was the better option. Besides, with his complete lack of motor control, he wouldn’t be able to get to it in time.

“Cupid?” Wasp asked.

Wasp and Ms. Marvel looked at each other before looking at Hawkeye.

“Wait… doesn’t Hulk always call Hawkeye Cupid?” asked Wasp.

“Yeah,” said Ms. Marvel. “What’s changed?”

A couple of seconds later, Wasp’s and Ms. Marvel’s eyes widened as they looked at Hawkeye’s new appendages. They looked at each other again and, with perfect synchronization, said, “Wings! Duh!” They promptly slapped themselves and then began laughing.

Though Hawkeye knew they were laughing at his expense, they weren’t what made him feel like walls of adamantium were closing in on him. That was reserved for the Hulk’s reaction.

“You know—” began The Hulk.

Hawkeye’s muscles tensed. The pain was about to start.

“—I didn’t actually think about you having wings when I called you Cupid. And you know what? I don’t care.”

Hawkeye’s eyes opened up and he looked at the Hulk with confusion. “Really?”

“Just pipe down and let me meditate.”

Hawkeye continued staring at Hulk for a second, then two, and then three. Finally, after the fifth, he sighed and said, “Thanks, Hulk. You know, I take back all the rotten thing’s I’ve—”

The Hulk’s eyes opened and he bellowed heartily into the sky, his laughter mixing in with Wasp’s and Ms. Marvel’s.

“Hahaha! Now you really ARE Cupid!” You’ve got a bow, wings, AND you look femmy!” said Hulk in between laughing.

“Yeah! All he’s missing is a diaper!” said Wasp, in between laughing.

“Maybe he could use his mask!” said Ms. Marvel in between laughs.

At her suggestion, she, Wasp, and Hulk began pounding the snow, the latter two, especially The Hulk, doing so quite forcefully.

It was at that moment that Hawkeye seriously wished he were caught in the self-destructing explosion of the mastermind’s ship.

“Ahhhhh!” he yelled to the sky, once again fumbling wildly in the snow.

*****

As Hawkeye did this, on the other side of the bonfire, Captain America and Black Panther stared into the burning pile of wood before them. Both of them were silent as they had been after Vision explained the situation, after they had gotten over their initial shock, and after Vision dragged all of them close to the fire he had constructed.

Inside though, Captain America, at least, was worried and guessed that this worry showed with each passing moment on his face if what Panther soon said was any indication.

“What troubles you, my friend?”

Captain America sighed, closed his eyes, and a grimace came upon his face. “Blast it.”

“What?”

Captain America opened his eyes and looked at Panther with a smile. “I need to work on my poker face.”

Panther turned toward the Captain. “Well, it has certainly been a long and… ‘interesting’ day.”

“You’re right about that. Still, becoming something right out off a circus petting zoo isn’t what’s eating me, even though I feel almost as emasculated as I did before taking the serum.”

“If you’re not so troubled about becoming a pony, what is the source of your worries?”

Captain America sighed again and looked back toward the fire. “I’m glad we were able to take down the Mandarin and free China. Really I am. He was just as bad as the Traditional Chinese dynasties of old were and the only difference was that he had tech, magic, and monsters they couldn’t dream of.”

“But you are afraid that now that he’s been deposed, the CCP or some spawn of it will rise to power and control China again.”

Captain America nodded. “It’d be a shame if one point three billion people didn’t learn anything from ancient and recent history and deliberately started at square one again, especially after we busted our humps fighting for something better for them.”

“Yes, that would indeed be tragic. But do not worry, Steve. Even before the Civil War, the communists did not exactly share the kind of popular support of Mao and I am certain that now that he is gone, the Traditionalism the Mandarin reawakened will fade as quickly as it came. Our allies may not have an army of superheroes on their side like the JLU, but they certainly have the will, and no shortage of ability.

Panther placed a hoof on Steve’s shoulder. “And they have you to thank for that.”

Captain America grunted in affirmation and a small smile crept upon his face. “Thanks T’Challa. I needed that.” The Captain turned towards the Wakandan Prince. “So…”

Panther pulled his hoof back and Cap could tell he was raising a brow beneath his mask. “So?”

“Well, since I told you what’s bugging me and answered well enough, I figured it’s your turn”

Panther looked at Cap in silence.

After several moments of this, Cap scowled. “Don’t you give me the look I know you are, T’Challa.”

Panther lowered his head and sighed. “You know me too well, Steve. Very well.” He twisted his body around so that his plot was facing the fire. “I will tell you. But first, I think it’d be mutually beneficial if we did something that’d help us through our current situation: namely adjusting to the kinesthetics of our new equine forms.”

Panther then managed to stand on all four hooves with great ease and began hopping in place. Then, after the tenth or so hop, he landed with all of his hooves spread out far from each other against the snow. He brought his legs back to their normal distance apart and began cantering forward.

Panther turned his head around toward Cap, asking, “Coming, my good—” when he suddenly lost his balance. He would have tipped over on his side if not for Cap rushing over and keeping him propped up against his withers.

“Right behind ya, T’Challa.”

Panther nodded and pushed off Cap, getting back a sturdy footing for his hooves. “Thank you. It seems I will have to work on moving forward while looking backward.”

Cap chuckled. “Well, from what I could tell, at least you’ve adapted rather well to being a pony.”

“And you as well. The crouches of the Way of the Panther are good for more than minimizing one’s profile and stealth, it seems.”

Cap nodded. “You got that right. If only we could get the rest of these chuckleheads to even stand up straight.” He put a hoof to his chin and looked thoughtful. “Speaking of which—”

Captain America turned toward Iron Man, who lay unmoving in his suit if power armor to his right. “Hey, Tony!”

Iron Man didn’t budge or show any sign that he head Cap’s voice.

“I think it’s best if the team gets off their furry butts and starts getting used to being heroes by moving around the fire!”

Again, no response came.

Captain America looked worried and craned his head at Panther. “T’Challa, have those cat-like ears of yours heard anything coming from inside that suit after Vision dragged everyone near the bonfire?”

Panther shook his head. “Perhaps he is sleeping? After all, I’d imagine waking up as a fairytale creature whom young girls would pester their parents to buy would be particularly hard on him.”

“Even still, it wouldn’t have hurt for him to keep his armor’s speakers on so we could hear him snore and know he’s okay or something.”

He walked towards Iron Man and tapped his shield, which hung to his right fore-leg by its strap, right against the equinized face plate of his armor. Cap made sure to be gentle, as even with the smallest forces, his shield cause dents in even the proprietary allow Iron Man used in his armor.

“Tony, can you hear me?”

When silence was all he got again, Cap sighed. “That’s it. That face plate is coming off.”

He reared his right fore-leg back, his brain calculating the precise force it’d take to break through the face plate without accidentally overshooting and cracking Iron Man’s skull when his voice cried out with, “Cap! Wait!”

The Captain was inches away from landing his first strike when he heard this. Fortunately for Iron Man, his reaction time was absurdly high and he managed to stop just centimeters away from making contact.

Captain America smirked. “So, you are awake.”

“Yes, yes! Wide-awake! VERY wide awake!”  Iron Man yelled.

“So, you heard what I said?”

“Yes! Every word!”

Satisfied, Cap pulled his shield away and backed up. He raises a brow. “Well?”

Iron Man sighed. “Look, just… give me a minute, okay? U need a bit more time to… mentally adjust.”

Cap nodded. “I understand. It’s a lot to take in. Still, when me and Panther come around, I want to see you either on your feet—errr—‘hooves,’ or trying.”

Captain America then turned to regard Yellowjacket. “You got that, Yellowjacket?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Yellowjacket said, lying with his eyes closed on the snow with his forelegs behind his head like a pillow and a smile on his face. “I’ll be standing or trying when you and Panther get back. Just let me listen to the sweet sound of Hawkeye’s lamentation for a little while longer.”

Yellowjacket began singing a merry little tune to himself.

Captain America looked toward Panther who merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Alright then.”

With that, he and Black Panther began their cantering circuit around the bonfire.

*****

“Pointless, but, amusing. I’ll grant your wife this: she certainly managed to strip away a larger percentage of my throne’s shields than anticipated. It was still not anything they could couldn’t recharge from in only a few seconds, but let it not be said I do not give praise when it is due.”

Shining could barely focus on these words his shock was so great. Cadence had just hit Thanos with a beam of force and heat that would have given Celestia herself pause if not kill her, and yet here he still was, boasting about how such an onslaught hadn’t even done enough damage that couldn’t be fixed practically right away.

He wanted to ask Thanos just what kind of monster he was, but he feared that, whatever the answer, it wouldn’t be good for him, the empire, and the rest of Equestria if this guy could shrug off attacks like that and wanted his hands on the Crystal Heart.

So, being a good ruler, he turned to the lieutenant and yelled, “Flash!”

“Yeah!?” Flash yelled back.

“Take Cadence to the Castle and get everypony in the city to hold up in it!”

Flash gave Shining a look and tried pushing a hoof into his ear-canal as though it were full of wax. “Ummm… dude!? Can you speak up!? My ears are still ringing and I thought you said to take Cadence to the Castle, get everypony inside, and—”

Shining seethed and roared out, “You heard right, Flash!”

Flash’s eyes widened and his throat, already parched from all that happened, became all the drier as his jaw dropped yet again. “But, Shining… dude… I can’t just leave you here with this—”

The aura of Shining’s magic formed around Flash’s neck and brought his face only an inch away from Shining’s.

“That’s an order, lieutenant! Do what I say or so help me, if we get out of this, I’ll make sure you’re demoted to private and scrubbing latrines for the rest of your career as a Royal Guard! Do I make myself clear!?”

Flash gulped and looked like he had just seen the ghost of Commander Hurricane herself yelling at him up close. Despite his fear, both of Shining and of having to explain his nigh probable death to Cadence, a look of grim determination was on his face. He raised a hoof to his forehead and saluted. “Yes, sir!”

Shining nodded. “Good! Take care, dude!” He let go of Flash and bro-hoofed with him.

Flash promptly dropped Cadence over his back, casting a worried look at Shining before taking off at full speed to the Crystal City.

Shining watched his bro and his wife become specks on the horizon when the deep, baritone laughter of Thanos made him turn to face the Minotaur with the most irate scowl he had ever made in his life. “What’s so funny?”

Still chuckling, Thanos said, “Nothing, save for your misplaced sense of martial ability, my good prince. Honestly, most entities would have fled after witnessing what I could withstand, and I sincerely doubt you can match your wife’s destructive capacity.”

Shining’s horn glowed. “Looks can be deceiving.”

“Perhaps,” Thanos said, resting the side of his head on a fist. “Show me that you are not in error.”

Shining lowered his head, his horn aimed straight at Thanos’s black heart. He pawed at the ground. He snorted, hot air and mucus spewing forth. Then, with a whiny that would have made the wild ancestors of all equine-kind proud, he reared up on his hind-legs, and when his fore-legs touched ground, he galloped full speed ahead toward Thanos.

The Minotaur bellowed in laughter. “Oh, surely you jest!”

In truth, Shining was. More accurately, he planned on faking Thanos out. Though Thanos had done a terrible thing beyond Shining’s capacity to forgive and threatened worse things to come, his fury had not overwritten his sense of strategy and tactics.

Though his shield spells rivaled that of the Royal Sisters and his energy beam spell was only a short ways behind that, he knew he’d hurt himself trying to make a beam as powerful as the one Cadence had, for all the good it would do against Thanos.

Instead, he was going to teleport right before he struck Thanos, just as Twilight had told him she had done when facing off against Nightmare Moon by herself in Everfree Castle. His planned destination was a mountain peak north of the plateau from which he expected to lead Thanos away from the Crystal City. Shining didn’t know if he could teleport such a distance and then keep doing so with Thanos on his tail, but he knew that unicorns could travel greater distances than usual with such spells when pressed. For him, his love of country, subjects, and his wife would be enough to accomplish such a feat. It had to be.

At least, until Thanos and his throne suddenly lurched backward and landed a good ways away right into the side of the very same peak Shining was going to teleport to.

He was stunned, so much so that he lost balance as he charged, tripped, and slid painfully along the ground until he came to a complete stop right where Thanos had been a few moments earlier.

“Ahhh…” he groaned, getting back to his hooves. The light at the tip of his horn now gone, Shining shook his head clear of dizziness and scratched his mane. “Did… did I do that?”

“Nay, good prince. T’was I.”

Shining’s eyes widened at the unexpected response and he turned around to find some muscular, armored, helmeted, monkey looking thing without fur besides its blond mane and eyebrows, wearing a red cape and floating in the air without visible wings of any sort. To his left was a dog, also floating without any wings that Shining could see, was a large hound with fur as white as Shining’s and with a red cape of its own.

The blond monkey looking thing held out its right palm and Shining couldn’t even blink before a blur whizzed above his head and into said creature’s hand. Shining could see that the blur was a grey hammer of some kind wrapped in brown leather and with an attached strap.

Well, those were three more things he hadn’t expected to see when he got out of bed that morning.

When the muscular monkey thing spoke with the voice he had just heard, Shining wondered if he was still in bed, dreaming.

Or worse…