Slade stared at the holographic image of the slab that he had constructed with his helmet. Said helmet rested on the table of a room that had previously had belonged to Celestia, until he had decided that it would be the best place to avoid being bothered while he worked. Pinkie and her annoying band of friends seemed to avoid the place unless they needed to be there and the rest of the pony populace avoided it out of respect for their princess. So as long as she was silent about the change, and she would be silent, that same kind of avoidance would continue even though Slade was the new occupant.

Slade had expected there to be more rebellion from the princess of the sun. With a fire and personality that came with her, along with her own sense of entitlement, Slade had been waiting for the first signs that she was going behind his back. But his bug had informed him of no attempt so far to try and outsmart him or go behind his back. It became clear to him that she valued the safety of her sister above all else, hence why Celestia rarely left her sister's side. That's why once every few days Deathstroke would activate the nanites in Luna's bloodstream and bring her to near death. Not because Celestia had rebelled, but just to remind her he could end her sister if he so chose at any moment.

'Yet while my success with the princess had been easy so far, this image has been anything less than an easy puzzle to crack,' Deathstroke thought to himself as he walked around the holographic image, hoping to find some clue that would tell him where the source of the lands magic was located. Yet all that the slab chose to reveal was the image of the sphere of magic in a room that was unfamiliar to him. 'Curse that Twilight for destroying the real slab, perhaps it truly had some clue or hint upon it that could aid me. I will make her suffer for her actions later. I wonder how attached she is to that dragon?'

Pocketing his ideas for revenge, Slade picked up a book of ancient arcitexture in Equestria off of a nearby table. He had appropriated the book from the Canterlot library, despite the librarian's best attempts to prevent him from doing so. The guards had been called in to deal with them, but the look on their face when Celestia herself showed up and called them off made the whole endeavor worth it.

'There is something similar to the structures on this slab, but they are not a definite match,' Slade thought to himself, glancing up from a page that he had marked to the actual image upon the slab. While some of the architectural choices done in the image were similar to that of the image he had in the book, there were too many difference to declare them a perfect match. 'If I can discern when the place housing the source of all magic was built, perhaps I will be able to weed out all locations in Equestria with buildings or structures with similar architecture. But there are to many difference. How to do this?'

He closed the book and tossed it onto the bed, before resting both of his arms on the table and resuming his staring contest with the slab. 'Even the princesses aren't old enough to know about the location of this object. Though I will be asking Celestia about it later. Perhaps with her sister screaming for her life she will be more inclined to give me answers to the questions I ask? Perhaps I should summon her and-'

A buzzing from his phone caused that train of thought to come to a halt and a moment later he flipped open his communication device with his client. "This is Slade."

"Slade, I am calling to check up on you," the voice of the client, who Slade still couldn't piece together what they were, said on the other end of the phone. "You are almost out of time. You promised me a month at most, yet here we are, with only a few days left until you run out of the time we agreed on for you to complete the mission."

"There have been complications. Mainly the red and black pain in my ass that keeps thwarting my plans wherever he goes," Slade snarled into the receiver. "He has a nasty habit of showing up when he's not wanted and has prevented me, numerous times, from getting hold of vital information that would help me get this done sooner. And the ponies haven't been much more than roadblocks either. If you would allow me to dispose of a few of the more problematic ones..."

"We had a deal Slade. You would learn the location of the source of their magic without killing any of them. With your skill and knowledge I assumed that you would have no trouble doing this."

"Considering they will all die when I take the source of magic from their world, I don't see why you are paying to keep them alive," Slade muttered, but said these words in hopes of squeezing out any hint of information that he could learn about his client's true motives.

"Let us just say that these ponies are special to me. I have big plans for the ponies of this world, plans that involve seeing how they would do without their magic. For you see, these infernal beasts are so proud of their magic, that they flaunt it on the face of all of the other nations of the world. I want to leave them alive so that when their magic is stolen from them, they live to see how the rest of the world will respond to the might rulers of the sun and moon, when they are powerless, as they deserve...forgive me, I have seem to have lost control for a moment. It has been happening more and more recently."

'Well, I wanted to learn more about my client and it seems I have. They are not as benevolent as they tried to appear when I first was contacted by them,' Deathstroke noted. Not that he cared about his clients personal grudge against the ponies or what plans he had for them. As long as he was paid, it didn't matter in the slightest to him what they did.

It was at that moment that a flash of light went off in the room, causing Deathstroke to unsheath his blade and point the tip of it at the intruder that had dared to disturb him. Yet instead of a pissed off princess or some unstoppable evil that Slade had been expecting, he found that his sword was now pointed at young Flurry Heart, who was sitting on the bed.

"Aunty Celestia!" Flurry Heart exclaimed happily, before she blinked her eyes and registered who she was looking up at. For a moment Flurry and Slade stared at one another, before the smile on the young foals face grew even wider and she clapped her hooves. "Pirate!"

Even though Slade didn't take kindly to being called a pirate, he still sheathed his sword and walked over to the bed. He picked up the small foal, with one hand under each arm, and shook his head at her as she reached out towards him. "You are not a very bright foal, if you constantly teleport yourself to danger like this. Imagine if you did manage to teleport yourself to Celestia. Your very life could be forfeit under that fools watch. And that must be your mother."

The sounds of hooves racing across marble reached his door a moment before the door was blasted off of its hinges and sent flying across the room. Slade stepped to the side to avoid being hit by the door, before turning his gaze back to Cadence, who had just murdered the door to Celestia's room. She glanced around the room in a frenzy, but her fear turned to confusion when she spied Flurry Heart, and then Slade.

"Slade, what are you doing in here?" Cadence asked in a cautious tone.

Slade knew that she wanted to yell at him and say some other things, but she didn't dare do anything that might cause her daughter to worry. Once more though, Slade found her staring at him with fear and terror in her eyes, more for the safety of her daughter than of Slade. One day he would have to show her why she should be more worried of him. Flurry flapped her wings and reached out towards her mother. Slade released her and a moment later Flurry was in Cadence's grasp, causing the mother to hold her filly tight.

"I am here because Celestia was kind enough to allow me to use her room for the time being, at least while I am dealing with what remains of the fanatics," Slade informed Cadence, who glanced at him out of the side of her eyes. "If you do not believe me you are free to ask her. She will confirm my story. You must keep a better eye on your daughter, however. It would be tragic if she managed to teleport herself into the fanatics grasp."

"Noted," Cadence replied, in a tone Slade couldn't read. "But for some reason she keeps ending up close to you. I think that she may be taking a liking to you."

"That would be a mistake on her part. I trust you can rid her of these dangerous delusions about me."

"Of course," Cadence said. She then cast her glance towards the bed and the book that sat atop the bed. A book that was opened to the page that Slade had marked. The mercenary cursed himself internally for leaving the book open, but his outward appearance was one of calm and confidence. Cadence glanced at him to see if he was looking at the book, but his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

"Is there anything you need, or can I get back to work?" Slade asked Cadence, who sighed as she turned to leave.

"No, you're perfectly fine, Slade. I just came in here looking for my daughter," Cadence said as he placed Flurry on her back and turned to leave, before she looked over her shoulder at Slade. "Oh, I thought I should let you know that Twilight and her friends will be coming to Canterlot. Celestia called a conference to discuss what we're going to do about the fanatics, now that most of them have been...slaughtered."

"A tragedy what happened to them. But actions have consequences," Slade sad without remorse.

"Yes, I suppose they do," Cadence said as she left. She waited until she was far away from Celestia's room before she leaned up against the wall, holding a hoof to her heart as she tried to calm herself down. 'Flurry teleporting away from me again was scary enough, but for her to be back in that mercenary's hands. And was he looking at Equestrian architecture? The same architecture that makes up...it has to be a coincidence, right?'

Cadence then cast another glance at where Slade occupied, before she turned and headed off towards where Celestia was staying, needing to ask for her guidance. About what to do about Flurry's teleportation, how to handle the fanatics...and about whether or not bringing Slade to Canterlot had been the biggest mistake of her life.

D\P

"It's not fair. That jackass gets most the chapter to himself and I get the dregs. I'm pissed," Deadpool muttered to himself as he crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair that was inside of Twilight's castle. Then a blast of purple magic knocked his ass out of the chair he had been sitting in.

"YOU'RE PISSED?! You brought a child into a dangerous temple, one that he should have been nowhere near, and put him in harms way without telling his guardian!" Twilight screamed at Deadpool with enough ferocity to shatter the windows of her own castle. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't teleport you into the sun right now and be done with you?!"

"Wow, not even going to call yourself his mother or sister, eh Twilight? Ain't you just the cold bitch," Deadpool muttered, before moving his head to the side to avoid being shot by Twilight. "As for one good reason why I shouldn't be teleported into the sun, I can give you two. One, it won't kill me. I'll be back. The second is that you won't get to find out what I have."

"I don't need to guess. You have a hole in your chest where your body used to be," Twilight snarled as her horn crackled to life once more.

"Wrong. I've got the slab. Meaning that I've got a piece of the puzzle leading me to the source of all magic," Wade said right to Twilight's face. Her eyes shrunk in her sockets as the light left her horn, leaving the mare staring at Wade with disbelief. "Oh yeah, I know all about that. Now the question is, how much do you know about it?"

For a long time Twilight didn't know what to say. She also didn't know what scared her more. The fact that Deadpool somehow knew about the source of magic...or that there was none of the strange and joking tone in his voice that he normally had. There was something different about Wade Wilson and it terrified Twilight.

"I...I don't know anything about it," Twilight said in a whisper at last.

"Well well, Twilight. Looks like we'll have to work on that lying of yours as well as your trust issues," Wade said with a shrug as he rose off of the floor and cracked his back, before giving Twilight a look. "But that's fine for now. I don't need to know at the moment. Sooner would be appreciated rather than later. I'm going to hang out with Pinkie and hit all of the restaurants in this town. Today we find out if I can eat myself to death."

"What happened to you?" Twilight asked before Wade could leave, getting the merc to look back at her. "You've never been this serious before. Why now?" For a moment Deadpool seemed to think about her words, before he looked back at her with narrowed eyes and, even though it would be hard since he had the mask covering his face, an expression that Twilight couldn't read.

"Because we're now in the third act."