Crossover vs. Ponies

Dragon’s command craft was full of people Tattletale usually spent a lot of time and money to not be in the same room with – at least not without one teammate and a few of her mercenaries.  Heroes would leap at a chance to arrest a Thinker villain with no durability powers, and villains fought each other all the time anyway.

But this was an Endbringer, and today there were no heroes or villains.  Just humanity, and the monsters.

The command craft, much like last time, was cramped.  Tattletale had figured out a while back that this was to make sure that the craft could dodge on a dime.  In a fight like this, endurance mattered less than speed.  Armor might take one hit from Behemoth’s lightning bolts, before the second one fried them all.  Watertight sealing might block out Leviathan, until he tired of trying to crack the craft’s shell and made everyone’s blood explode.

And nothing could block out the Simurgh’s scream.

The Simurgh hovered over the center of the city, a trail of rubble marking the path of the telekinetic storm she had surrounded herself with.  Her countless wings spread around her, obscuring her fifteen feet tall profile from her attackers.  She was moving south, away from the command craft.  From this distance, the capes that were trying to stop her were small blobs, like ants trying to swarm a human’s feet.  One of them, armed with a laser blade and shield, dove too close, and a wing swept upwards.  The wing hit him in the back, and he rolled off and fell, the speck disappearing behind the skeleton of a low apartment building.

Another shape was zipping through the buildings, keeping above the roads.  It wasn’t anyone Tattletale knew, but her console identified her as Correspondence; her power was to transport something she was touching to a location as long as she held something taken from that location in one hand.  Flight wasn’t part of her natural powerset, though.  Jetpack, her power murmured.  Borrowed from Protectorate tinker.  Searching for wounded and stranded capes, moving them to off-site treatment facility.  Is not using cover, has no armor or other defenses, is using tinker-tech close to Simurgh; is target of next attack.

Tattletale pressed a button on her console.  “Correspondence, get out, now.”

There was a blink on the screen, a moment before two cars that had been right under where Correspondence had been exploded with enough force to blast a crater into the concrete ten feet across.

The Simurgh had halted, the storm around her whipping faster and faster.  Something was being assembled, a ring of technology above her head.  A wide ring of electronics, binding themselves together with connections that should be falling apart but weren’t.

Resemblance to Madison attack plan is deliberate.  Resemblance is being used to lure defenders away.  Ring  is decoy.  Main target is –

“Dragon, move us!” she shouted.

The Simurgh turned, and her granite eyes met those of everyone there.

The device she had been hiding under one wing, a mass of lightning and plastic, was slingshoted directly at them, filling the viewscreens.

There was a sensation of sliding, and then the sky was lifting away from her.  Above her, the command craft was coming apart, pieces falling away in different directions.  The air rushed past her ears, whipping her blonde hair around her face.  The Simurgh’s singing rose like the lights of an oncoming train –

* * *

She was lying on something scratchy.  Her purple-and-black costume and her domino mask were still on, along with the weight of her utility belt.  The air held the smell of water and old waste and unwashed bodies.  Somewhere was the creak of wood and the clatter of hard footsteps.

Dimensional transit.  Delayed reaction before transit, unconsciousness artificially induced, intended to increase disorientation.  Time since destruction of craft is four seconds.

She opened her eyes.

She was in a wire cage with straw covering the floor.  The cage door was secured with a padlock, leading to a wood floor outside.  There was an empty cage across from here, but if she leaned a bit she could look out through the door and see more rows of cages.

Animal holding facility.

There was another human, a woman, sitting in a corner.  Her legs were straight out in front of her, and she was looking at Tattletale with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

“Hi,” Tattletale said.

The other human stared dumbly back at her.

Smells dirty, poor teeth; hasn’t bathed in days, was not taught about oral hygiene.  Short, undeveloped; fed poorly starting very early in life, unable to access better food.  Doesn’t know English.  Uneducated.

There was movement in the corridor.  Guard patrol.  Tattletale leaned over to see who it was.

It was…some kind of equine creature, maybe going up to her waist.  Brown coat, red mane, big wide eyes.  It was moving at a walking pace down the corridor, glancing into each cage as she came to it.  It had what looked like a musical note on her rear.

The guard reached Tattletale’s cage.  It casually looked inside and was turning away when she stopped and did a double take.  Its mouth hung open, and it said something that sound like a short string of horse noises.

Confused by what she’s seeing.  Was not expecting an additional human in this cage.  I wasn’t found and placed in this cage, I arrived in this spot.  Guard was not expecting an additional human in a costume.  Powers don’t exist in this world.

Natives call themselves ponies.  Ponies have similar body language, facial expressions to humans.   Ponies believe humans have animal-level intelligence, treat them accordingly, use as pets.  Ponies, humans share symbols such as arrows, books, houses in common.  Symbols personally significant.  This one is a singer, female, starving artist.  Took guard job at pound for money.  Pony society has money, significant exchange of goods, functioning economy similar in basics to human one –

That was enough.  “Hello?” Tattletale said.  “Can you understand me?”

The pony reared back, her eyes wide.  She turned, glanced nervously back at Tattletale, and bolted down the corridor.

Native humans are physiologically incapable of smiling.  Guard knows this, has gone to find superior.

Well, she hadn’t been planning on staying in this cage anyway.  The lock on the cage door looked like a basic padlock.  She reached out and lifted it in one hand, feeling the weight.

Old style lock; more advanced security technology not invented yet.  Overall technology level of this civilization is a least a century behind humanity.  Natives have gotten this far technologically without proper limbs; they have additional abilities available.  Additional abilities are versatile and reasonably widespread, include telekinesis with enough force to open doors and grab someone.

This would be very useful, but right now she needed to focus on getting out of here.  Tattletale reached into her belt and pulled out a set of lock picks.  It took her only a few seconds to pop the lock open.  She pocketed the lock, swung the door open, and turned to her cellmate.  “You coming?” she said.

The other human looked at her warily, before clumsily getting up and stepping forward.

No time to wait for her.

Tattletale stepped out into the hallway and looked both ways.  Both ends of the hallway ended in turns leading out of sight.

Guard went out towards front door.  Rear entrance available in case of emergency.  Rear entrance can be opened from inside without a key, but is alarmed.

That was better than the front.  Tattletale turned and went in the opposite way the guard had gone, letting her power run in the background.

Rear rooms are for administrative work.  Janitor’s closet, records archival, small veterinary room, laundry.  Veterinary room has window.

Tattletale turned –

Veterinary room window too small for humans, built this way in case of escapes.

Too bad.  Tattletale turned back in the direction she was going.  There was the clopping of hooves on wood coming from where her cage had been.  If they were smart, they’d be coming this way next.

She ran past the veterinary room, and the rear door was right in front of her.  She didn’t slow as she turned the door handle and burst outside.

She was in the back alley of a city, with a garbage bin next to the door.  Office buildings rose up around her.  They were only a few stories high, not like Brockton Bay was, but it was probably what the ponies could do.  The sun shone down from a clear blue sky.  Above her, a winged pony (pegasus) flew overhead.  At the mouth of the alley, a horned pony (unicorn) was passing by, followed closely by a human.  The human was wearing a collar and leash.  Both the end of the leash and the unicorn’s horn were enclosed in a purple glow.

Unicorns use horns as supernatural focus, potential for a great number of effects.

Wait, what?  That couldn’t be right…but it matched what her power had told her earlier about using something other than limbs for technology. If they had supernatural abilities, they could just rely on those instead of making better devices.

There wasn’t any sirens going off.  What was the alarm on the door?  And where was the other human she had freed?

Silent alarm, linked to emergency services.  Emergency services requires high mobility to respond to crises; tall buildings and heavy urban development make mobility even more necessary; police force mostly made up of pegasi.  Other human got lost in building, already recaptured.

Right.  She needed cover, and distance.  Height was bad, that would just let the flying ponies see her.  Her costume made her stand out, so no blending into the crowd and pretending to be an ordinary human there was no need to pay attention to.

She turned and ran deeper into the alley, trying to lose herself in the maze –

Block is only a few buildings big.  Easy to search.

Shit.  She’d need to leave soon.  She kept moving and looking around for an open window, someplace she could grab a change of clothes, anything –

The alley she had just entered exited into a street with a line of yellow-and-black painted horse-drawn carriages.  Taxies.

There was another garbage can at the edge of the alleyway, and she crouched behind it to look around.  The carriages each had a pony hitched to them, all of them looking around in search of fares.  They probably couldn’t see her in her hiding spot, but if she stepped out she’d be in the open.

Building I’m next to is a high-class hotel; taxies are waiting for fares.  High-class areas must be clean to appeal to rich sensibilities.  Taxi drivers have been instructed to help keep areas clean.

Tattletale pulled a black hood from her utility belt and pulled it right around her head, concealing her hair.  She reached into the garbage can, pulled out a bottle (ponies have easy access to glass), waited until none of the ponies were looking, and rolled it into the street.

One of the taxi driver, seeing the flash of light out of the corner of his eye, turned and saw the bottle in the middle of the road.  He glanced about to make sure no customers could see him, and then hurriedly unhitched himself to grab the bottle.

Tattletale rolled under a carriage, grabbed the axles, and pulled herself flat against the bottom of the carriage.  The dark colors she was wearing, combined with the fact that the native humans wouldn’t think of this, should be enough to hide her.

The taxi driver came back and walked past her.  There was the sound of him dropping the bottle into the trash can, just as the guard from earlier and a larger male stepped out of the alley.  They spoke briefly, and the taxi driver shook his head.  Saying he hasn’t seen any humans.

The two ponies from the pound turned and walked back down the alley.  The taxi driver returned to his carriage and re-hitched himself.

Tattletale waited.  She’d been in situations like this before.  She could last.

An unfamiliar set of hooves approached the taxi driver.  There was a brief exchange of words, and then the carriage above Tattletale rocked as baggage was loaded.  She hooked her elbows and ankles around the axles.  A moment later, and they were off.  Tattletale held onto the bottom of the carriage, letting the axles spin against her spider silk costume instead of her bare hands.

The light and air changed as they moved; more sky in the air, and the smell of salt.  They were heading towards the ocean.

The carriage stopped in front of a large building leading out to a wharf.  The passenger got off, and the driver went to help her with her bags.  Tattletale rolled out from under the carriage on the opposite side, dusted herself off, and casually walked into another nearby alley.  No police in sight; police don’t place high priority on escaped humans.  Police did cursory search, then returned to normal duties.

Now what?

She had to get home, that was what.  Villains and heroes alike were circling Brockton Bay 24/7, just waiting for their big chance.  Taylor would make sure that they were held off for a while, but that could hurt her own position and it wouldn’t last for long.  Without Tattletale to handle intelligence and money, the Undersider’s chances were going to be pretty low.

Speaking of Taylor…what happened to the others in Dragon’s craft?  Endbringer defense relied on Thinker analysis to figure out what their main objectives were.  She needed to know who else was here.

What did she have?  Her spider silk costume.  Her handgun, one spare magazine, 24 bullets total.  Heavily encrypted and modified primary phone, two burner phones, with combined battery life of maybe a week.  No signal without a cell network, of course.

She looked at the wristband that was still around her arm.  Without a Tinker power, there wasn’t much chance she could get at the electronics or explosives inside, but it was probably sturdy enough to use as a wrist guard or makeshift knuckles.

She needed to find out if anyone else had wound up here.  She needed a plan that would draw any other survivors to her so they could work together.  She needed a way home, and fast.

Tattletale thought about what she’d seen, and smiled.

With just a little work, these ponies might just give those to her.

One of the nice things about being in a big city was that if you didn’t have enough of the local currency there was enough around that you could steal what you needed.  Another was well-made newspapers that used pictures Tattletale could use to deduce the content of the article even if she couldn’t read the text.  The third was that every day, somewhere, there was some public event that journalists were covering.

Tattletale had no ability to travel across dimensions, and neither had any of the other people on board the command craft.  If they were going to get back, they were going to have to hope the ponies had the scientific know-how to pull it off.  And that meant getting their help.

Fortunately, there was a library branch grand opening happening that someone important was supposed to be at.  Her power didn’t have enough information to figure out just what kind of person it was, but if they were concerned about education they had to have at least a few contacts in the scientific fields.  The impression she’d gotten from the demeanor of the citizens and the lack of censorship she’d picked up from the paper was that the leadership here was well-meaning, so they should try to help her if she could get across where she needed to go.

She’d broken into the library branch late last night.  There had been no security besides some basic locks on the door, and she wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in the street again.  It had also let her get well rested before waking up at the crack of dawn to quickly eat a stolen pastry and prepare her plan.

The sun had been up for about two hours when the first carriages arrived.  Tattletale’s power had predicted three carriages for the official; one to carry the official, and another two for security.  Three carriages in lavender and pink were indeed pulling up at the street across from the library.  Right behind them were a few reporters and a smattering of citizens Tattletale’s power told her were from the local equivalent of the Parent-Teacher Association.

A police officer (guard) stepped out of the rear carriage.  He walked to the middle carriage and opened the door as other guards fanned out, taking up positions at the stage.  The purple pony that stepped out had both a unicorn horn and pegasus wings (alicorn).  A white unicorn with curly purple hair came out next, quickly catching up to the purple alicorn while energetically chattering away.  The alicorn was smiling and nodding along.  When she reached the front steps of the library, she pulled out a few index cards.  Informal relationships; values being close to the people.  Happy to be here; values education, order, learning new things, library symbolizes these things.

Tattletale wouldn’t have been able to just walk up onto the stage, of course.  Security wouldn’t have let a random human get close enough to the alicorn to talk, and it wouldn’t have made the front page photo she needed.

Instead, she leaned out the second floor window she was standing in front of and blew a whistle.

The heads of everyone below turned, just as Tattletale triggered the device she’d set up earlier.

The second floor of the library had four windows above the main entrance.  Four large banners which had originally been meant for pegasi aerial advertising unrolled, showing what was written on them.

The first one had a series of dots and numbers written on them.  The first row had a single dot, with an arrow pointing towards the number 1.  The second row had two dots, pointing towards the number 2.  The first banner ended at 10, and the second went from 11 to 20.

The third banner had series of addition equations.  The first few had already been filled in: 1 + 4 = 5, 2 +3 = 5, 6 + 7 = 13.   There were several other equations, which had not been solved: 3 + 3 = __, 8 + 2 = __.

The fourth one she’d left blank, for later.

As the ponies below were starting to turn and point, Tattletale crawled down from the open window, using a rope she had tied around her waist and a doorknob to anchor herself.  In situations like this, it was important to act quickly. She dropped down to the level of the first unsolved equation, waved, and pointed to herself and then the equation.  Just as the first of the guards was opening his wings, she wrote the answer: 13 + 6 = 19.

The alicorn was standing there, her mouth open.  The guards reared back, preparing to take flight.

Well, maybe it would take them a minute or two to get it.

Tattletale ran upwards, pulling on the rope to get herself back into the library just as the guards leapt.

The second floor was a wide reading room that stretched across the entire floor.  The section near the front windows was full of tables and chairs, the better to take advantage of the natural light.  The librarian’s desk and the book stacks were arranged in a square around the reading space.  Around the periphery of the room were arranged smaller rooms; mostly reading rooms, some conference rooms for groups, and a janitor’s closet.  The door Tattletale had been using for an anchor

The three windows that Tattletale wasn’t standing on front of each spat forth a guard, landing in the large reading room.  The fourth guard met the window that Tattletale slammed shut in his face.  The guard, who had clearly not expected a mere human to know this tactic, faceplanted hard into the window and slid down out of view.  That was acceptable; she needed to defend herself, but visible bleeding wounds such as those caused by broken glass wouldn’t help the long-term goal she was going for here.

Two of the guards found their footing and spun to face her, wings spread out.  The third one was standing over the rope and was reaching down to pull at it.

She charged him, drawing her hand back just as he started pulling.  She saw the added force coming and adapted, adding it to her own run to move faster and add more force to her blow.  He turned an eye towards her, clearly having expected her to stay where she had been, and his eyes widened just as an opened-handed blow to the side of his face knocked his head back.  A second blow to his jaw left him reeling, and Tattletale took the opportunity to knock him into one of the reading rooms and jam a chair under the door.

The other two kept their distance, watching her warily.  One of them began moving, sidestepping around tables to get around her.  A classic tactic, to force someone to either split their attention or leave themselves undefended from one side.  Both are distractions.  Guard who hit window is recovering, coming back.

Tattletale took a step back, in front of the fourth window, and closed it just in time for the guard to hit it again.  Two hits in as many minutes; will need three to four minutes to reconsider approach before next attack.  The other two guards held their ground, but their postures were less threatening, more unsure.   Trying to reassess situation.  Guards were expecting malnourished, unfit human that is average for this world, not a healthy 1st-world cape with combat experience.  Are becoming aware that something is different here.

Maybe she should give them a little push.  She pointed to both of them, then thrust her finger at the open windows.  They looked at each other, then looked back at her.  She did it again, then pointed at herself and pantomimed writing.  The one who was trying to flank her said something to the other one, who replied.  Conferring instead of attacking; trying to understand what I’m telling them.Good, just a bit more and she could convince them to let her proceed.

There was a shout from outside, and the sound of wings.  Female voice; alicorn is coming.  A moment later, the purple alicorn flew in from one of the open windows.  The guards turned to her, and she held a hoof out to them.  Telling them to stand down.

The alicorn turned to Tattletale, and said something in their horse language, ending with a inquisitive tone. Asking if I understand her; has realized significance of numbers.

Tattletale pointed to her mouth and shook her head (I don’t speak your language), then pointed outside again.  She pulled the chair out from the reading room door and opened it as a peace gesture, then opened the third window, beckoned to the alicorn, and climbed out again.

The crowd seemed a bit bigger than it had before; the reporters were busy aiming cameras at the building, and some ponies who looked like civilians were clustering at the edges.  No immediate signs of violence; civilians not scared off, want to see what disturbance was about.  Tattletale saw the flash of a few cameras going off.  That was good; even if this somehow went belly up in the next few minutes, she’d made sure that the picture with the numbers on it would make the front page of the local newspaper.  Ideally, it would then make its way to either any other capes who made the transition or to a pony who would recognize what she was trying to do.

The alicorn came flying out above her, then came down to hover at her level.  Tattletale solved the next two equations: 3 + 3 = 6, 10 + 2 = 12.  She smiled, then offered the paintbrush to the alicorn.

A purple aura enveloped the paintbrush, and it floated down to the last four equations.  She solved the first three, hesitantly at first but more confidently with each one: 8 + 2 = 10, 19 + 1 = 20, 6 + 5 = 11.  She was reaching for the second one when a shout from the white unicorn with the purple hair from before stopped her.  The alicorn went down to talk to her briefly, before she floated back up and wrote the last answer: 9 + 4 = 14.  Doesn’t match pattern of correct answers; white unicorn suggested wrong answer as test.

Tattletale pointed at the wrong answer and shook her head.  She took the brush back, crossed out the wrong number, and wrote the correct one.  There was a collective gasp from below, and Tattletale waited until it had passed before she wrote some new equation: 10 – 2 = 8, 12 – 2 = 10, 5 – 3 = 2.  She then wrote 19 – 3 = _, 2 – 1 = _, and 7 – 6 = _ before holding the brush again.

The alicorn’s eyes flickered back and forth, processing the new symbol, before her eyes lit up and she made a happy squee.  She snatched the brush from Tattletale’s hand and began filling in the equations.  When she was done she held the brush back out to Tattletale, a big smile on her face.

This was excellent progress.  The alicorn – and the crowd below – knew that Tattletale could handle math to a level much higher than they had expected from a human.  Now they just needed a little escalation they couldn’t see coming.

Tattletale let herself down the rest of the way to the ground.  She went up to the podium (it was the only flat surface available) and she pulled out a few sheets of paper, a pen, and a selection of coins she’d picked out beforehand.  She put a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter face up on the paper, and wrote their values in dots.  The alicorn came behind her, looking at what she was doing.  When Tattletale had the values down, she pointed at the white unicorn, then three of the closest reporters, and then pointed at the paper.  She needed them to see what she was doing.

When the five of them were clustered around the podium, Tattletale pulled out three more items she had pilfered the night before: a box of matches, a tiny book with some elaborate writing on the front (her power told her it was a pocket version of a novel), and a wooden train.  Next to the box she wrote 40, next to the book was 53, and the soldier was 45.  She counted out forty cents, took the box, and put the coins in their place.  She took the coins back, put the box down where it had been, then repeated the buying simulation with the book and train.

She spread out the coins, separating them into neat columns and writing the combined total of ninety cents.  She then added the combined prices of the book and the box: ninety-three cents.  She mimed pushing the coins towards the seller’s part of the paper and then shook her head.

She pushed the pile of coins over to the white unicorn, put the book on sale for twenty cents, then pointed at the unicorn, the coins, and the book.  The white unicorn looked uncertainly at the coins, then counted out twenty cents worth and offered them.  Tattletale took them and handed her the book.

Now for the finishing piece.  She pulled out her smartphone; it was locked, a simple black screen with a password prompt.  She tapped the screen to bring up the keyboard, tapped out a few letters, then deleted them.  She took the alicorn’s hoof, and touched it to the phone’s surface.  There was no reaction.  She put the alicorn’s hoof down and typed on the phone again, emphasizing that the machine only reacted to humans, not other species.  She unlocked the phone and opened the calculator app.  She quickly typed out several equations, stopped to snatch the phone out of the alicorn’s magic grip, and opened the voice recorder.  She pointed at the number one, said “one,” and had the phone play it back.  She repeated it with each number, watching the alicorn’s eyes grow wider and wider, until she had reached twenty.  With that done, Tattletale turned to look at the rest of the ponies.

Word apparently traveled fast in a city like this; the small, almost perfunctory crowd that had originally gathered to look at a rather mundane bit of government business had grown until it was spilling out into the rest of the streets.  The guards had organized themselves into a line in front of the library, keeping the ponies from crowding Tattletale as she had worked.  She made eye contact with the alicorn, then pointed at the crowd and then the podium.  The alicorn jumped down and spoke briefly to one of the guards, and the security parted to allow a small group to come forward.  The alicorn raised her voice, addressing the rest of the crowd, and with the aid of her security detail began getting them into a line.

Brilliant.  Tattletale’s best hopes had been met.  The coins and phone, with their human markings and human-only use respectively, were definite evidence of a wealthy and powerful human civilization.  She’d done this in public with a large audience, so this would be near impossible to keep completely under wraps even if the leadership wanted this not to spread.  The news would be so big that any other capes in the country would be sure to hear about it, and be able to figure out how to use math to communicate with the locals.  With the ear of the royalty and the ear of the public, Tattletale should have no trouble leverage her newfound fame to get them to fast-track a dimensional research project to get her home – and bring an alien civilization with her.