Elements of Infinity

Rarity's cape was lined with gold.

Not actual gold. Not mostly, anyway. There was some in there. It was a special blend, unique in all Equestria, carefully formulated to reflect the absolute maximum amount of light. She and Twilight had spent months developing it. It was a shame it didn't see much use with Ultron. His eyes were hardly sensitive.

She looked out over the battle again. She was waiting; waiting for the moment when all hope seemed lost, where the surprise carried by her entering the battle would have the absolute most impact. This was not theatrics, it was strategy. An extra force, entering the battle just when all hope seemed lost, encouraged people and caught their enemies off guard as they felt their victory crumble. Strategically, it made the most sense to save that crucial surprise for when it was most needed.

A rumble shook the earth. Even she, on a hillside high above the battle, felt it. Then her eyes widened in terror as she saw where it had come from.

Massive, spinning blades erupted from the ground like saws. The defenders wavered, seeing them approach. Nothing Rarity could do would help. She wouldn't even be able to reach them in time to do anything--not that there was anything she could do. Frozen, she watched them get closer to her friends, even mowing down their own armies to do it.

Then Starlight stepped forward. The teal glow from her horn was visible even from such a distance and in the bright daylight. But Rarity's worries were not dismissed. Starlight didn't have the power to lift so much weight, not in this magic-resistant world! In fact, she didn't even see a levitation aura surrounding them...

Then, with a pop and a flash of light, the blades vanished.

They reappeared again in the exact same place, and Rarity wondered briefly if it had failed, before she realized that they had been turned around and were going in the opposite direction, mowing down the huge armies of aliens that had flooded in behind it, ready to take advantage of the chaos the blades would have left in their wake. Rarity cheered, though nobody could hear her, because it was an absolutely brilliant solution. There was almost no magical resistance to teleportation, so the adverse environment would hardly affect it at all! She was so caught up celebrating, in fact, that she almost forgot how much power teleportation took despite the minimal resistance, especially for large objects.

She looked over the battlefield again, just in time to see Starlight faint from magical exhaustion. Applejack, who was near her, defended the unconscious body from an alien seeking an easy kill, then shouted something to Steve. He nodded, and Applejack swung Starlight over her shoulders and carried her off the field.

The effect on the battle was visible immediately. Without the most powerful magic user, those on the battlefield suddenly realized just how many aliens Starlight had been picking off, and with what astounding speed. The loss of Applejack hurt too, but she was a blunt-force weapon, though a powerful one. Starlight was a machine gun.

Rarity watched the tide turn, trying to think about it in the terms of a businessmare. The bottleneck they'd created, opening only a single sliver of the defensive wall, was designed to keep the aliens coming only at a rate they could handle. It was like taking few enough orders to ensure that she'd be able to sew all of them on time. But now, with Starlight gone, the rate they could handle them had dropped significantly. So they had two options: raise the rate they could handle them, or slow the rate at which they came.

She stepped forward and lifted the edge of her cloak.

The sunlight caught it and reflected, over the heads and backs of the defenders, directly into the faces of the aliens. They cringed away, covering what she assumed must be their eyes--she hadn't gotten a close enough look at them to verify that they even had them, much less where on the body they were. So bold in the face of everything else, the aliens cowered from the powerful rays of the sun Rarity sent their way. She turned the cloak this way and that, the same way she occasionally sent sunlight skittering around the floor through a gemstone for Opal to chase, and everywhere her light shone, the aliens covered their faces, leaving themselves open to attack.

The defenders drove them back, leaving their corpses scattered. The hordes that had once overwhelmed them were all but gone, and she turned her light to the bottleneck where more were entering. They cowered at first, but slowly moved forward, until they found themselves out of the patch of sun. Then they charged forward, engaging the army again. She kept her light on the bottleneck, slowing the flow of the aliens. They had to get through the sunlight in order to enter.

But it wasn't enough. Slowly but surely, the defenders were retreating. The aliens still threatened to swarm and overwhelm them. They needed more help. Maybe if Applejack would return soon, they could do it, but otherwise, the aliens would break through the lines and head for the city. And for Vision.

Rarity charged down the hill to meet the army. The spikes on her shoes drove into the ground, giving her traction as she pushed herself faster and faster. She'd chosen them as the second part of her tactical fashion ensemble largely because, thanks to Natasha's influence, she'd gotten quite excellent at hoof-to-hoof combat. Adding sharp objects to that only made it a stronger and more useful technique.

And, just like that, the slow pushing back turned into an overwhelming swarm. Rarity held her ground with a one-two punch, lifting her cape to blind those near her and then taking them out with her shoes, but even she was quickly feeling overwhelmed with the sheer numbers who approached her. Everywhere she looked, the heroes were panting, barely able to keep up, and to her horror she saw many aliens slip past their defenses. Falcon and Fluttershy tried to pick them off, but a few eluded them as well and approached the city. It was practically over. They were losing.

A crack of thunder split the sky.

Sudden lightning arced from alien to alien, felling them in incredible numbers, and a swirling rainbow dropped from above. Pinkie Pie abandoned her party cannon and broke into a gallop as Thor emerged onto the battlefield, flanked by a bipedal raccoon with a gun and some sort of tree. Rarity blinked several times at that sight, then decided it was hardly the strangest thing she'd ever seen.

"THOR!" Pinkie called across the field. "YOU'RE NOT DEAD!" She leaped to hug him, heedless of the lightning that crackled all over his body.

"Wait, don't, I'm-"

Bzzt.

"Haha, cool! My hair's even poofier now!"

He swung the huge axe he carried, and a surge of electricity dropped twenty more aliens. "You're almost as tall as I am with your mane like that."

Pinkie ran a hoof over her mane, smoothing it back down, and turned to do the same to her tail, but something gave her pause. She hadn't been able to see her mane, but she could see her tail, and it was visibly sparking. Electricity jumped from one hair to another with little flashes of blue light. It seemed a shame to waste it.

Instead, she swung it out like a weapon, and it caught an alien in the chest. The creature collapsed, and she gazed at her tail with newfound interest. "Hey, Thor! Hit me again!"

He turned towards her. "Well, if you're sure." A bolt of lightning leaped from his axe to her tail, setting the static flowing again. She giggled and ran off to hit some more aliens with it.

With Thor taking out such large numbers of aliens, Fluttershy didn't think she was needed in the air anymore. She flapped to the ground, where she felt more comfortable and where she could use her wings to fire arrows. It was much easier than using her hooves.

"I'm Fluttershy," she introduced as she launched a string of arrows in rapid succession. "Who are you?"

"Name's Rocket."

"I am Groot."

"It's nice to meet you both."

"He's not actually saying-" Rocket began, but Fluttershy talked over him.

"You know, I've always wished I could be a tree. What's it like?"

"I am Groot!"

"Oh, I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. You do look so much like a tree, though."

"I am Groot..."

"Hold on, you speak Groot?"

Fluttershy smiled. "I speak a lot of things." She turned back to Groot. "Based on what you said--if you don't mind me saying so--you are almost a tree."

"I am Groot!"

"Oh, of course!" She suddenly realized she'd stopped shooting, and quickly loaded her bow again. "I've never seen a real tree walk or fight, and they're not nearly as good at conversation." She fired, then smiled at him.

He smiled back. "I am Groot."

She turned pink. "O-oh my. That's a little... forward of you..."

They watched as Thor leaped into the air, incredibly high, and slammed back down, showering the aliens surrounding him with lightning. "So," Rocket commented, "what's the deal with this fight, anyway? Obviously those are the bad guys, working for Thanos, and you're the good guys, fighting him, but-"

"You got all that just from watching?" Fluttershy asked, firing off another shot.

Rocket casually blasted a row of aliens with his shotguns. "Well, sure. Those are Outriders. Not the brightest life forms in the galaxy, but easy to train to fight, and there are about a gazillion of them. Thanos has been using them for centuries."

"Centuries?"

"I am Groot," Groot explained.

"And those guys standing out there are the Black Order. Well, most of it. They're Thanos's lieutenants."

Fluttershy shrugged. "I didn't know any of that stuff. I just heard they were attacking our friends."

"Then there's the fact that Thor got attacked by Thanos, told us he's going for the Infinity Stones, and recognizes you guys as friends. So I'd say it's a pretty safe prediction." He lifted his gun and shot backwards over his shoulder, hitting an Outrider in the chest. "But it'd be nice to get the details of this particular battle."

Fluttershy nodded. "Of course. The Mind Stone is in that city behind us." She pointed. "It's actually inside a friend's head right now. He's sort of a robot, sort of a human. We think we can destroy the Stone, but first we want to remove it safely, so we don't kill him while saving the universe." Barely looking, she fired an arrow, which hit neatly. "So we have to keep these aliens at bay until we can get the Stone out and destroy it. Once that's done, it doesn't matter so much--but it doesn't seem like we'll have a problem, not now Thor's here."

"You ain't doing too bad yourself," Rocket complimented. "That's some nice aim. Shame you only got a normal bow, though. I'd love to see what you do with a nice energy blaster."

Fluttershy smiled. "Well, if we had one, I'm sure I'd love to try it."

"Maybe next fight."

"Maybe."