“I will only ask this question once. Why?” Cadence asked.

She was in a dark lit room alone with the pony in the cloak that Deathstroke had brought down earlier. A single table with two chairs was the only furniture in the room, with a pony seated in each chair. The fanatic had his cloak taken from him and, aside from a bandage that was stopping the gunshot wound from bleeding, had no other items on him.

The pony’s response was to giggle slightly to himself before glaring at the princess, a dark expression on his face before he went back to murmuring to himself. Cadence sighed at his response, as it had been the same one he had been giving her for the better part of an hour.

“Do you not understand the situation you’re in?” Cadence asked the pony in a serious tone. “You and your groups attempts on my life would have gotten all of you imprisoned or banished to another realm if you were lucky. But you all had the gall to come after my daughter and threaten her life as well. That could earn you a one-way trip to Tartarus if I feel like it. The only way you can save your own neck is to tell me, right now, who you are working for and where we can find them!”

She had hoped that her threat, her very real threat, would scare the pony into talking. Yet once more all he did was look back at her with eyes that weren’t all there, yet somehow seemed to be seeing more than the princess.

“Do you not understand the situation you are in? You have unleashed a great evil upon this land, a darkness that shall steal from us the very energy that keeps this world going. Magic,” the fanatic whispered in reply. “And without our magic, our world shall fall into chaos. Brother slaying brother. The sun falling from the skies. All because you decided to bring this evil into our home. Our world. All of this will be on you and the princesses. That is why you must be slain!”

Cadence shook her head with disgust before she rose from her chair and exited the room, glancing back one last time at the crazed pony in the chair. She then slammed the door shut behind her and walked over to the other side of the two-way mirror, where her husband and the mercenary both stood.

“I couldn’t get anything out of him. Nothing that made any sense, that is,” Cadence informed the both of them. “He said something about how the princesses had brought great darkness to the land, one that will steal the very magic of Equestria and cast the sun from the sky. If you ask me, he lost his mind.”

“Perhaps what we need is Princess Luna?” Shining offered. “She could enter into his dreams and maybe learn something that we couldn’t from talking to him? I mean, how else are we going to get information out of him when he himself doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”

“Perhaps. We could always have Luna go into his thoughts and learn the identity of somepony he works with. Then we can contact a changeling and have them shapeshift into that pony. Perhaps then he would open up some more,” Cadence theorized.

“Alright then, I’ll go wait for Luna and when she gets here we can send a message to-“

“I can make him talk.” Both Cadence and Shining Armor turned their heads to look at Deathstroke, who had yet to take his eye off of the pony on the other side of the glass. “Give me ten minutes alone with him and I can get him to spill his guts.”

“Spills his guts is exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” Cadence said in a cold tone. “I will not beat these…monsters that come after my family by stooping to their level. We already have another plan in place and-“

“It might not work. Or he may not live long enough for that plan to come to fruition,” Slade said as he narrowed his eye. “He doesn’t have long for this world. I can tell.”

“Cadence,” Shining said to his wife, who was staring at the floor as she thought.

“I cannot condone torture,” Cadence said in a stern tone, telling Slade that he would have to use his trump card to get the information he wanted.

“And I cannot condone those who go after children to get to their parents,” Slade said in a quiet voice, yet Cadence snapped her head at Slade almost as if he had screamed at her. “But they have gone after your foal before. They will do it again. And maybe next time you won’t see it coming until it’s too late,” Slade added, making sure to add a sad tone to every word.

“…do you have children, Slade?”

“I used to…until my enemies got to them.”

Cadence lowered her eyes once more, Slade’s words clearly having an effect on her. Shining Armor chose to remain silent, but Slade was aware of the looks the captain of the guard was giving the mercenary.

“Find out what he knows. But only use what force you need to. Nothing excessive or not only will you not get paid, you’ll spend the rest of your days in a dungeon,” Cadence warned in a very low voice. “Come Shining. I want to check up on our daughter,” she muttered before heading to the exit. Shining nodded and started to follow after his wife, but then stopped and cast a glance back at Slade.

“Forcing her to choose between her morals and the safety of her child. I’m starting to wonder if the fanatics are the only evil in this world,” Shining said to Slade.

“What you wonder does not concern me in the least. You are here to protect your wife. Go do your job and let me do mine,” Slade replied in a cold tone. Shining snarled at Slade, but then turned and headed off to join back up with Cadence. With his two biggest obstacles to the truth out of the way, Slade opened the door and walked into the dimly lit room where the prisoner sat. The pony looked up with wide eyes when Slade approached, but there was no fear in them.

“So it returns. The bringer of the end,” the pony said in a whisper to Slade. Slade didn’t say anything in reply. Instead he lashed out with his foot and caught the pony in the bullet wound, causing the prisoner to scream as he fell backwards out of his chair. As he collapsed to the ground, a small leaf packet fell out of his mane and to the ground. Deathstroke scooped it up and scanned it with his helmet.

“Poison. So this is what you were supposed to take if you were captured,” Slade muttered as he grabbed hold of the pony and hoisted him back up. “I want answers and I want them now. Who do you work for, what are your plans and where is your base of operations. If you answer all of those in a way I find satisfactory, then perhaps you will be able to walk again…eventually.”

“The answers will not be to your liking. I know not who I work for, except that he wears a robe of gold. I have no base, for it constantly moves on the wind. And our plans are simple. Stop the princesses and end the darkness.”

Slade grabbed the pony by the throat and slammed him into the top of the table, nearly cracking both it and the pony’s spine. Deathstroke drove the point of his elbow into the gunshot wound, only to then clamp a hand around the pony’s mouth so that he couldn’t scream aloud.

“You are correct. Those answers are not to my liking,” Slade whispered. “And because of that, I am tempted to rip out your organs and string you up with them. However, that would leave me with more questions that need to be answered and I do not have much time until the fools return with the other princess in tow. Now I want you to answer this next question or I will saw off one of your limbs. Why are you trying to kill the princess’s daughter?”

“Kill her? You blind fool, we have been trying to save her!” the pony spat in reply with heat and anger. But then weakness from his wounds crept in and a moment later he was breathing heavily on the table. “Princess Cadence has unleashed a dark evil upon this land. We have seen it in visions of the future. And if these visions truly come to pass, then all magic will be lost alongside so many lives. But we cannot let a being as powerful and innocent as her daughter be consumed by this darkness. That is why we shall take her to a sanctuary and protect her from this darkness.”

“So you and your order formed to protect this world from a coming evil by kidnapping children? You are not the heroes you think you are. You are nothing more than a group of fanatics trying to rationalize your own twisted actions,” Slade spat at the fanatic, who stared up at Slade without a word. “Do these visions that you place so much faith in show you your enemy? Show you the one that you believe to bring down this world? Or do you go after the princesses because a bad dream showed it to you?”

“The princesses are the ones that allowed this evil upon the world. They gave it power, gave it control and will do nothing to stop it until it is too late. We shall not allow that to happen,” the pony spat out weakly. “And the visions have showed us the darkness that shall destroy our land. It is a beast the color of the setting sun, with weapons that we cannot hope to match. It is cunning and ferocious, it is fearless and cold…and it sees through only a single, red eye.”

Slade’s own eye narrowed as the pony said these words, knowing that the comment about the one eye had to have been intentional. Then he remembered the protective glass that covered his remaining eye. And how it was a blood red.

The moment the pony saw the realization dawn in Slade’s eye he threw out his right arm towards Slade’s face. Slade’s reflexes kicked in and he leapt back just in time to avoid being hit. With Slade no longer standing over him the pony rolled off the table and back up to his hooves, with a blade of magic consuming his right arm and realization in his eyes as well.

“Yes, how could I have been the blind one?! Deathstroke, you are that darkness! You are the one that shall destroy this world!” the pony roared as he lunged towards Deathstroke. “And I shall do everything in my power to stop you! To prevent you from-“

Deathstroke hurled out a side kick that caught the pony in the throat midsentence, getting the pony to gag before he collapsed to the ground. Deathstroke slammed his boot into the pony’s right arm and shattered the limb, which resulted in the blade of magic vanishing into air. Deathstroke wrapped both hands around the fanatic’s neck and pinned him to the wall, where he glared into the eyes of the fanatic.

“So you believe me to be the evil darkness that will steal your magic, bring ruin on your lands and cause the sun to fall from the sky?” Deathstroke asked the pony. Then Deathstroke let out a small laugh, one that filled the fanatic with more fear than he had felt in his life, even after seeing the visions of the future and what awaited them. “It seems that you and your group of fanatics are smarter than you let on. But if you know what my real purpose here is…then I cannot allow you to inform anyone else.”

Deathstroke pulled out the poisoned packet and then rammed his hand into the pony’s mouth. The fanatic gagged as the packet was forced down his throat, before Slade used his free hand to clamp the pony’s mouth shut. The pony tried in vain to spit the packet out, but Deathstroke’s grip was too strong and he held that grip until the pony began to seize…and then went limp.

“Well I’m impressed,” Deathstroke said before tossing the body to the ground. “No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get you to talk before you killed yourself. I guess that means I have nothing to tell Cadence. Won’t she be disappointed.”

D/S

“Well, that’s all of it,” Pinkie said with a sigh. As she wiped the sweat off of her brow with the back of her hoof, she looked around at her home to find that all of the frosting that had covered the floors and walls that morning was gone. The walls and floors sparkled like they were brand new and all of the space that the frosting had taken up was now free and ready to be used. All except for the center of her living room, for that was a where a very full and very bloated Wade lay on the ground, regretting every decision he had made in the last thirty minutes.

“Thanks for helping me to clean all of that up Wade. Though you didn’t have to…eat…most of it,” Pinkie said to the overly bloated mercenary lay spread eagle on the ground.

“Kill…me…”

“Silly Billy. You’re my friend! I wouldn’t kill you even if I could,” Pinkie said as she booped Wade on the nose, before noticing that his mask was covered in frosting. “Hey Wade, your mask got all dirty. Here, let me take it and I’ll go clean that off for-“

The moment Pinkie reached out for Wade’s mask he grabbed hold of Pinkie’s hoof and forced it away from his face. “The mask. Stays. On,” Wade reminded Pinkie. Pinkie’s eyes widened at his tone, since she hadn’t heard him speak that way since she had first seen him confront Deathstroke. She backed away a bit and he let go of her hoof, but when he stood up a moment later, back to his regular shape, Pinkie could tell that his usual joyful demeanor was gone.

“Thanks for offering to let me sleep here, but I get the feeling that we’d just keep each other up all night with all our best friendedness,” Wade said with no hints of friendliness in his voice. “Don’t worry, I’m sure I can find a trash can or something to sleep in tonight. At least the rats will respect my privacy.”

“Wade, I’m sorry. I just wanted to help,” Pinkie apologizes. Wade opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and started to head for the door.” Wade, please wait!”

“Come on Pinkie, we’re going to Twilight’s,” Deadpool said in a no-nonsense tone.

“Why?”

“Because I have a bad feeling. A feeling that the princesses are about to be royally screwed.”