The icy wind that sliced across the mountain top tried its damnedest to stop Slade before he could reach his destination, but the cold was barely a minor annoyance to the man known as Deathstroke. His hands grasped the icy rocks with such strength that they had no hope of shaking him off of the mountain. The wind blew the snow sideways and would have made an impassable barrier, but the technology inside of Slade's helmet allowed him to pierce the veil with ease.

His sensors had locked onto an incredibly powerful source of magic, one that dwarfed every other magical signal that he had encountered on his journey in Equestria. even though the signal was being somewhat hidden by magic dampening fields, whatever was generating the magic was far too powerful to be contained. It had to be the source of all magic. His goal.

With one last pull Deathstroke dragged himself onto the mountain top, instantly aware of how the wind ceased to blow and the chill held back the moment he was atop the mountain. There was also an energy in the air, one that permeated his suit and made his nerves tingle, in a way that put him on guard. Yet he didn't spend much time thinking about the energy. For his eye was drawn to the large, and somewhat hidden, doors that were carved into the peak of the mountain before him.

He didn't need his sensors telling him that the doors were ancient to know that they came from an age long before this Equestria had come to be. The material that they were carved out of was an element that didn't come up in his database, while the magic that flowed through them. according to his sensors, was cast by someone that eclipsed the princess ten times over. He was glad that whoever cast the spell on the door no longer seemed to be around.

A shake of his head drove such thoughts away. If the caster was still there, Slade would have killed him. He couldn't let his thoughts betray him now, when he was so close to his goal. He walked towards the giant doors and spied something off to the side. His scanners indicated that there were tiny traces of the princesses blood on the spot, which had been covered by magic to make it look like there was nothing there. Yet while they had magically protected the spot, Slade wagered that they had never accounted on someone like him finding the place.

He reached into a compartment on his suit and pulled out a small vial of Celestia's blood, which he had taken from here without her knowledge. Deadpool hadn't been the only one to believe that the princesses blood might hold some secrets, but now Deathstroke truly understood why he had been advised by the computer to gather some of their blood. He poured the blood onto the spot, not bothering to try and make it look nice, and waited for a moment for something to happen.

'Of course, there has to be more too it than just their blood. Any idiot with a pointy stick could get those fools blood,' Deathstroke realized, before glancing at the slot once more. He then pulled out his staff and drove the end of it into the magical barrier that was supposed to keep it hidden. The staff, which had traces of Nth metal in it, drove the magic protecting it into the slot. The moment the magic was within the slot, the doors slowly began to rumble and spread apart, causing Slade to shake his head in disappointment.

'Using the same magic that is needed to open the doors to guard the entrance. These princesses truly are fools,' he thought to himself before he slipped in-between the opening doors. Once past the doors he found there was a simple room on the other side, with a long elevator shaft that headed very far down into the planet. Knowing that the elevator would take too long and would most likely have another form of security for him to get around, Slade pried open the shaft and grabbed onto the chain that held the elevator, sliding down it deep into the planet.

He had plenty of time to think as he descended. What he thought about the most was why the princesses and their cronies hadn't been waiting for him when he reached the mountain top. Even though he had teleported and had a head start on them, they knew the true location of the source of magic while it had taken him some time to find it. Even with his head start, they should have been there waiting for him.

'Yet there wasn't so much as a trace of them, meaning that they finally learned they have no hope against me, or, as I am more inclined to believe, they are planning something. The only question is what,' Slade asked himself as he continued to slide down. His free hand touched the compartment where he kept the five sided artifact that he had taken from the crazy fanatic, the only weapon he had ever seen hurt Wade and keep him hurt. While Slade had no doubt that if he had to fight Wade without the weapon he would win, he preferred having a much simpler way of destroying the merc.

After a long time, Slade finally hit the bottom, kicking off the roof of the elevator that was down there and landing with his sword drawn. He didn't know what other kinds of traps would be down here waiting for him, but he knew that they would not claim him. His sensors told him that only one more door stood between him and his goal, the source of all magic in Equestria and one of the biggest paychecks that he had ever received. If he truly wanted to, he could stop working after this job and retire in peace for the rest of his life. But he would never do that. They job is what he lived for. The money was an added bonus.

Deathstroke reached the last set of doors and placed his hand on them, looking around to see what kind of switch or trigger would need to be activated for him to get inside. Yet the moment he placed his hand upon the door, the ancient and unmoving doors slowly slid open, allowing Slade full access to the room beyond. That instantly put him on high alert, as there was no chance in hell that the doors would open to his presences unless one of the ponies wanted him to go in. To his doom.

Yet with his mission resting on the other side Deathstroke pressed on and walked into the room. Instantly he felt a massive wave of magic course through his body, stopping his advancement and forcing him to look up at the colossal sphere of rainbow colored magic that took up a large chunk of the room. He could feel it. That this sphere didn't just generate magica for Equestria, but for all of the world. It truly was the heart and soul of this world. He wouldn't even blink when he tore it out.

Slade reached to his side and pulled out the interdimension device that he had been told to use when he finally found what he had been sent to find. He brought it up and prepared to activate it, before he caught on to the fact that he wasn't alone in the room. He glanced to the side to see a man in a red suit with black additions sitting cross legged in front of the sphere, a man that Slade had come to loath in the short time that he had known him. He sheathed the communicator once more, knowing that he would need to deal with the merc first before he could claim his prize.

"You know we're a lot alike you and I," Deadpool said to Slade as he opened his eyes and rose to his feet, fingers moving slightly as he held his hands by his guns. Deathstroke lowered his hands next to his firearms as well and waited for the first move to be made. "We're both insane mercenaries that don't really care what we have to do as long as we get a paycheck. Both of us have similar names and use pretty much the same weapons. Hell, I'm pretty much your son if you think about it."

"I would prefer not to."

"But there's one key, very key difference between the two of us that a lot of people seem to forget or ignore. A key factor about me that often gets overlooked," Deadpool continued, ignoring Slade's words and even the fact that he was there. "See, everyone sees me as the immortal funny guy, the guy that cracks jokes about chimichangas and breaks the fourth wall and who can't die. That's what most people think of when they think of Deadpool. They think of the meme."

Deadpool then slowly turned to look at Slade and for a moment Slade felt something that he had never sensed coming from Deadpool before. It was the same intensity and pressure that he felt whenever he faced off with Superman or Batman, or any of the heroes. And it made his trigger fingers all the itchier.

"They forget that all I wanted to be in life was to be a hero. They forget that despite all the jokes and breaks, I still go out there and do my damnedest to save lives and help others. Yeah, at times I might be complete shit at it, but I try. At my deepest core, at the truest of my origin, I'm a guy with cancer who was given a second chance to be the person he always wanted to be. Sometimes they forget that. Sometimes I forget it. But wanting to be that hero is what drives me. So what kind of hero would I be?" Wade began before he drew his pistols and pointed them at Slade, who already had both guns drawn. "If I didn't do everything in my power to stop the guy who wanted to take out an entire world?"

"You'd be just like all the other heroic fools that stood in my way," Slade spat back as he and Wade slowly began to cirlce each other. "And I am done speaking to you."

Deathstroke then pulled the triggers on his guns and bullets tore into the body of Wade. But only after a few moments did Deathstroke have to reload. He reached down to grab the extra magazines that he kept on his suit, only to notice that they were gone. He quickly did a suit check for any more of his ammunition, but to his confusion he found that he was out of bullets.

"Aw what's the matter daddy, out of ammo?" Wade taunted as he started firing on Deathstroke, who lifted his arm to shield his eye as the armor took most of the impact. "Maybe if you hadn't spent so much of the story shooting at me and had decided to save your ammo for the big fight in the end you might not be at such a huge disadvantage."

"You...you planned this. This is why you constantly antagonized me," Slade finally put together, his eye narrowing as he did so. "So that I would waste my ammunition on you before I knew how to kill you."

"Come on, we're two genetically altered mercenaries that hate each other and are both fighting on opposite sides. Of course we would fight each other at the end of the story," Wade said with an insane smile spreading beneath his mask. "So I made sure to spend the story making you waste as much of your weaponry as I could. Give myself a little advantage at the end of it. See, so many people think that I'm just some whackjob running around with guns and swords, with no idea what he's doing. But I know full well what I'm doing."

"And It's amazing what people will let you get away with when they think you're not that smart. Yet here we are. Your move, Slade."