Power Ponies (RP thread, sign up first)

Somewhere, in Downtown Maretropolis
Cross Stitch woke up with a trilby tipped over his face. "What the-?" He took it off, and looked at it, then realized he was in a very strange place. He had been asleep in an old, vinyl rolling chair, in front of a desk in a poorly lit room. He looked over, to see his brother, sleeping in a different chair. He immediately felt his ire growing inside of him. "Wake up, Back Stitch." The unicorn started, and looked around, visibly startled. "WHAT IS THIS PLACE." "I don't know, but-" "WHAT DID YOU DO?! AND- why do I feel so tired?" Back Stich clutched his head, in slight pain. "I have no clue what this place is, Back Stitch. It appears to be some sort of film set, though it smells like adolescence and newspaper. It's almost straight out of a noir novel." He looked at the nameplate on the desk, reading "Switch". He looked up at his brother, who was putting on a trenchcoat. "Is that yours?" Cross said, eyebrow raised. Back Stitch stopped, looking up at him. "I think so... it's got my name on- wait, no it doesn't. I could have sworn it said my name." The tag inside the collar read, "Bait". "Nevermind, let's just get out of here before-" Suddenly, a pegasus mare walked in, with a briefcase. "You are ze Doublecross Duo, no?" The brothers exchanged a glance. Cross Stitch grimaced, and Back Stitch smiled. "Yes." "No. We are not. You must be mistaken." The mare's eyes narrowed, as she produced a newspaper with both their faces on it. "No? Zhen how do you explain zis?" Underneath the picture, the headline read, "DOUBLECROSS DUO P.I. TEAM STRIKES AGAIN, ROBBING AND KILLING MOB BOSS AL CAPONY" Cross Stitch looked at the newspaper, with a horrified look on his face. His Prench accent came through a bit, as he mumbled, "What zhe hell...?"

Meanwhile, in a Penthouse Suite...

 Laserbolt woke up to the sound of a buzzer. He reached out to turn off the alarm clock, then realized.. he didn't own an alarm clock. He opened his eyes and was greeted with the view of a skyline. He looked down. His blanket was made of fine materials, much better than the pile of hay he usually slept on. He sniffed the air, smelling something vaguely like... printer paper... and ink. Suddenly, something hit him. The room was painted blue and gold, a strangely familiar color scheme. He started recognizing the architecture, the layout of the room, and the feeling. He climbed out of bed, and, experimentally, pulled a painting off the wall, revealing a keypad. Reaching a hoof tentatively out, he pressed four numbers. 7...9...4...3. The wall opened up, revealing a suit that any self respecting geek would recognize. Everything came together in his mind. He was in the home of genius crimefighter Siphon, the superhero from a series of comics he had read when he was young! But... the suit seemed different... almost as if it had been tailored to him. His mind went back to a conversation he had with that mare at Sugarcube Corner about an enchanted comic book that one of her friends had gotten them sucked into. They were... transformed into superheroes. That means... "I'm Siphon." A smile broke out onto his face, widening into an impossible grin. "Sweet."

Meanwhile,in a Maretropolis alleyway...

Scootaloo woke up in a back alley in Maretropolis. Upon noticing her place on the ground, she got up, quickly, and nervously. "Where am I?" She looked around, seeing nothing but squalid alley filth. "What is this place?!" She started breathing heavily, then stopped. "Okay, Scoots. Slow down. There's got to be a reasonable explanation for this. I just... gotta find Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. They can probably help me out." She began running down the street, at full tilt. "APPLE BLOOM! SWEETIE BELLE!" As she ran, she realized something strange. She wasn't getting tired. If anything, she was only getting more energetic.
She kept running, feel the energy build up. She smiled in spite of herself. After a while, it became overbearing, and she stopped running. She felt like a firework, about to go off. She looked around, twitching. She had to figure out how to get this out of her system! She looked up, and saw something she finally recognized: The Maretropolis City Hall Tower."What the- why am I here?" Suddenly, she felt force pushing her from the inside out. "No time to worry about that! I gotta get this outta me!" She dashed towards it, and, bending her knees, launched herself up into the air, landing on top of the tower.
Her legs felt weak, but she felt... amazing. She looked down, and saw that she was wearing red and green boots. Upon closer self inspection, she realized she was wearing a matching suit. Something clicked in her head, and she smiled widely. "Oh my gosh. This can't be real."

-In the countryside, some fifteen or so miles from Maretropolis-

Wavelength always liked sleep... that was one thing that never malfunctioned on him. This morning, however, as he opened his eyes... he found himself waking up in a room that seemed like... well, like it didn't belong, and yet it perfectly well DID belong. After a moment of taking in his surroundings, he first concluded that the room didn't seem quite right because it was a dimly lit barn that smelled of printer ink... but that scent rapidly faded, replaced with the scent of hay and... a vague tinge of some kind of motor oil, and he was left with a slightly bigger inconsistency. By Schrodinger's cat, what was he doing in a barn? Maybe it was a dream, and he needed Candycane to poke him so that he remembered he was really back at home in his newly purchased Ponyville residence... so he sat up and waited.
For good measure, he waited a little longer still.
Just as he was becoming bored with waiting and was about to make the best of the dream by going on a spontaneous adventure, he could hear a voice through the barn door... a voice he knew very well! ...But the vernacular...?
"Hey, Pa, where are you?" asked Confetty's voice in a cute, unexpected Apploosa accent as the barn door swung open.
To his own surprise, Wavelength's reply came out sounding fairly similar. "Over here, darlin'!" he said as she came into view... and what a view it was. Wavelength had yet to see his daughter settle on any particular clothing fashion, but the straw hat she was now wearing looked unbearably funny on her head... yet he didn't laugh at it. It was familiar for some reason, as though she always wore it.
"Did you fall asleep workin' again, Daddy?" she asked in a silly accusing voice.
"Workin'? I..." Wavelength looked around, and his head bumped into a thin overhanging chain, like that of a lamp. Intrigued, he gave it a tug, and the wall next to him lit up--along with its work bench--with various electronic tools and doodads cluttered around. He was frozen staring at the unexpected mess, confused by the sudden flood of schematic memories that were unexpectedly coursing through his head, and Confetty was done waiting for a response.
"Well, it doesn't matter fer now... c'mon, Ma just finished makin' lunch!" she said happily, running over to begin tugging her father's tail in the direction of the barn door. Wavelength's natural stumble reflex led him to turn and follow his daughter in spite of his still-baffled mind.
Wavelength finally responded. "Lunch... that sounds like it'd do me a world of good right about now," the orange earth pony chuckled as the pair exited the barn and headed toward a rustic but well-maintained house that looked just as oddly familiar as the garden and unplowed several acres of land it was built on. He couldn't shake the feeling that this was gonna be a loooong dream...

Deep in the bowels of the Vale of Flesh:

"My Lord Plague. The operation has been successful," rasped a creature of too many mouths and tentacles, sprawled on the floor before a stallion-like figure of muscles and tendons.

"Excellent. Everything is going as planned."

"Shall I inform the League of our success?"

"No. I will speak with them personally. But first, there is One I must... consult with. Leave us."

"Yes, milord."

Hideous squelching noises marked the sealing of the fleshy chamber in pitch blackness as a sense of terrifying WRONGness came into being.

TZIK'NUL DAKHRI NURBUMNIGDZCH.

"The worlds are coming together, my god and master, Maker of Hunger, Destroyer of Worlds, Father of Rot."

ZANKAH LU TUMNUKH. KRIKHNAGHLU MORI MAUM.

"She is not my sister anymore, Master. I am no longer that pathetic faerie's brother. I renounced all ties with her and my kin."

NAKHTUM.

The thunderous pronouncement shook the very fabric of reality within the chamber, and Lord Plague fell to his knees in reverence.

"I humbly apologize profusely for my arrogance, my god, my Master."

Black tentacles emanated from the fleshly mass, wrapping around the muscled stallionlike leader and impaling him with shadowy spikes that were not of our three dimensions, with a pain that was not of the physical flesh, but of the very soul. Lord Plague gasped as the darkness flooded him, his eyes turning pitch-black with some sticky substance.

"As you wish, my Master. I will tell the League of Villains. Not even Mane-iac will be able to reject an order from your cancerous eminence."

There was a sigh and a scream of silence as the living darkness once more removed itself from this reality, leaving the skinless stallion to his deep, dark thoughts...

The skinless stallion paused for a moment, his exposed tendons twitching slightly as he processed this new information before he turned away, bending his body in excruciatingly painful ways to fold his forelegs behind his back. He turned to look contemplatively at the fleshy, pulsating orb in the center of the room where he would speak with his god and master from time to time. "Of course," he smiled quietly. "Good. Yessss, very good. Everything is going according to plan. As for the next steps... I believe we shall use... a new friend of ours."

He looked down at a small, almost invisible shard of glass he kept embedded in his chest, and chuckled.

Lord Plague was still brooding in the almost pitch-black room when the orifice leading into the central chamber yawned open with a squelching sound, admitting a straight-maned mare that looked shockingly similar to Fili-second in appearance, almost identical, in fact, aside from a slightly darker shade of pink for her coat and mane. She wore little of note, save a small arsenal of knives shaped like the pieces of a shattered mirror. Her cutiemark was a knife coming out of a mirror and gutting an unfortunate victim.

The skinless stallion didn’t even bother turning around to acknowledge her presence. “Not coming in the usual way, Mirror?”

She snorted. “Why bother? You’ve made the place so dark the only mirrors around are your eyes, and it’s not like I want to KILL you, Plague. Not yet at any rate. And you forget that the ‘me’ you’re talking to right now has only been here a day at most. Give a mare some time to get adjusted, sheesh. Love the decor, though.”

The stallion’s facial muscles quirked slightly, as though smirking, before he flung something at the mare through the darkness like a shuriken. She caught it with ease before it had time to impale her face, glancing at it. “What’s this? The Doublecross Duo?”

“Indeed. Demoness has hired them to… ‘take care’ of a mutual problem.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And you thought this was a good idea? With names like that, I’d have thought they’d be at the bottom of your list.”

Plague grinned, for real this time. “Well, I would have hired ‘you’, but seeing as that… ‘you’ are currently indisposed…”

He chuckled as he brought up his arm, catching multiple flung blades and letting them embed themselves in his tumors as the mare glowered at him. He carefully picked them out the way a foal might have picked his hoof, letting the weapons clatter to the floor as sizzling sounds accompanied his tendons and muscles growing to re-seal his flesh.

“Alright, I’m new, I get it. Sheesh, it’s like you ponies just can’t get off that topic.”

The stallion shrugged. “What can I say? It’s amusing. But don’t worry, Mirror. Or Pinkamena, if you prefer. You’ll get a chance to prove yourself soon enough. Later today, in fact, if all goes according to plan.”

The mare’s face gleamed with bloodlust, a smile coming to her mouth. “Then I’ll be looking forward to that chance. You won’t regret having me on your League, Plague. I guarantee it. And… call me Mirror. It’s a nice name.”

Lord Plague chuckled. “Very well then… Mirror Mare.”

Care looks to the leader with a smile and says, "No I was not. It was a safe trip. It seams the forest itself remembers me. How are you doing my old patient? Also how is the young Elf doing? I do hope your wounds are healing well. If not, I could have another look at them. It is what I do after all. To be honest I have had a bit of an episode as well. I am still recovering from an experiment with a new healing tool I am working on. It still is in the proto typing stage. So I won't be using it anytime soon. Lets have that walk and talk maybe some or you famous herbal tea as well."

Care remembering that the Elves have great tea and even better hospitality. She also remembers that the caretaker had been caught only once and that was by the Fairies and Elves of this forest. Care follows Amber as they go for their walk catching up on recent events among other things. Amber, because of their last encounter, knows the secret of The Vanishing Caretaker. It is because no lie can escape this forest without notice. "Please call me Care while we are together or have you forgotten my secret. The one that I had to entrust to you because your forest detected a certain thing about me."