Deathstroke was used to many things. Being shot at. Attempts to murder him. Having dirty looks flashed at him by criminals that hired him and that said nothing of the looks that the heroes of Earth gave him. And he had done plenty of things to earn those looks, the looks of fear and disgust that told him those he dealt with knew just how dangerous he was. Slade Wilson was a name that inspired fear.

So it was a change for him when gazes that rested upon him were filled with gratitude and interest. As he sat on the crystal train that the princess had managed to get working once again, he made sure to keep his back to the wall and his eye on all of the ponies on board the train.

The royal guards that he had “saved” were looking at him like a person would a threat that they couldn’t identify, like looking at a person you knew was dangerous but couldn’t do anything about it. Slade had that kind of aura though and the ponies had picked up on it almost immediately, which was reflected in the way they stared at him and made no effort to hide it.

Shining Armor was a little tougher to figure out. The Captain of the Guard was slightly out of it due to being smacked around by the archnoids, but every time his gaze found itself looking towards Slade a strange smile crossed his face. The smile was a mix of uncertainty, but also a hint of respect. Slade figured the respect was directed toward Slade’s fighting skills and not his winning personality. Even if these ponies knew nothing about him, they knew he was cold and dangerous.

Then there was the princess, who sat in a seat opposite of Slade and constantly kept an eye on him. She sat alone and, from the way the guards constantly shifted as if to get closer to her, she had ordered the others to stay back. Slade reasoned that she didn’t want any of the others to get too close to him, and thus put themselves at a greater risk, so she had decided she would handle him herself. That was a very foolish way of thinking.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Cadence spoke at last. Slade filed his thoughts away for a later time before moving his head to show the princess he was listening. “With you being in a new world and all, I thought that you would be a little more talkative. You know, asking questions like where you are or how in the world can horses talk? None of this is bothering you?”

‘If you knew of how much I know about all of you, your attitude would not be so carefree,’ Slade thought to himself, but his exterior remained silent.

“After all, I’ve heard of what the world of humans is like. They have no magic and the thought of talking animals would make them laugh out loud,” Cadence continued on. “Finding yourself in a world like this would make anypony question their own sanity. Yet here you are, staying perfectly calm. How is that?”

‘Because it is clear how little you know of the world I come from. Magic is commonplace and a select few animals have the ability to speak,’ Slade silently thought to himself. “I am a professional, Princess. Even when I find myself in such a...world like this, i remain calm and collected. That is how I have come to be known as the greatest mercenary in my world.”

“Well, you certain have quite the iron grip over your emotions,” Cadence muttered to herself. Slade peeked at her horn to see that it had been glowing slightly, making him wonder what the princess had been up to. “Yep, I can’t get a read on your emotions. As the princess of love, I have an ability to sense the emotions of others. Nearly all the time I can tell what their emotional state is. But you...I get nothing.”

Slade bowed slightly as his answer, before a question formed on his lips.

“I cannot help but think about the comment about gold that you mentioned to me, along with something about needing my services. Of course I am willing to take gold as payment, but only after I know what the job is and the risks involved,” Slade said in a professional tone, giving away none of his thoughts with his words or movements.

“Heh, that’s quite the business pony voice you’ve got there. You are good at this,” Cadence said with a smirk. Her horn glowed once more and a piece of parchment appeared before her, along with a quill and a pot of ink. “If you are willing to hash this out here and now, I will tell you why I will be hiring you and what your jobs will be.”

“I assume that they will be along the lines of protecting you and your family, along with the child you have at this...Canterlot,” Slade said for Cadence, whose face fell at his words. “I may not be my world’s greatest detective, but I have a very good eye for detail and am no slouch at putting pieces together. You do not become the best with anything less.”

“Well then, good to know,” Cadence said professionally. Yet Slade could tell from her body language and eyes that his information had shook her. In reality he wasn’t certain if Cadence had a child. He had deduced was Shining Armor was her husband from the way they acted around each other, but the child had been more of a shot in the dark. But from their age and the information he had on them on the laptop, which had no records of a child, he assumed that they would at least have one foal. Maybe more.

“Yes, I have a family. And that is exactly why I need some extra firepower during my trip here to Canterlot,” Cadence revealed to Slade, while she wrote on the parchment. “That attack from the archnoids was not the first attempt on the lives of me and my family. That was the third. And each time there is a new attack it is far more dangerous than the last. Yet until recently, the guards and I managed to fend off the attackers. But had you not shown up this time...”

“So you sent your kid on ahead to Canterlot in advance before you followed,” Deathstroke said. Cadence’s horn glowed with fury and Deathstroke felt her magical power floating around him. “Again Cadence, I am quite adept at figuring things out. Since your child is not with you and there is no chance that you would risk being separated longer than needed, it is clear what your course of action was.”

For a long time Cadence was quiet, but eventually her horn stopped glowing and she sat back down in her seat. “You are right once more. Celestia and Luna came to my home and brought my little filly to Canterlot before I left. She had been safe with them ever since.”

The moment the two names were spoken Deathstroke had both the image of the pair and the laptops entire portfolio on them. A smile spread beneath his helmet as he recalled their bios and their set of skills, skills that would be very dangerous for him to deal with if he had to face them with no information. But with what little he had read about them, he had already prepared over a dozen different ways to defeat the both of them if needed. Then he remembered the job and the chance to make a little extra cash while he searched for the real reason that he was here in Equestria.

“You have come to the right person, then. One of the many jobs that people ask of me is being a bodyguard. And i can assure you that nobody has ever died under my watch,” Slade promised. Which was technically true. No one had ever died while he was protecting them. After he was done was a different story.

“Oh I do not doubt your skills. From what little I saw during your battle with the archnoids showed me just how much skill and precision you have. My issue with you is the issue of trust. How can I trust a stranger such as yourself?” Cadence asked Slade, her eyes narrowing as she did so. It was then Slade pieced together her entire plan. She hadn’t just brought Slade onboard her train just to talk to him about hiring him. She had brought him onboard so that he wouldn’t escape from her sight if he proved to be a threat.

Yet while he could have killed her and the rest of the ponies then and there, he knew that he could still talk his way into a fruitful situation. And the reminder of how much extra he would be paid for no loss of life still weighed in the back of his mind.

“You wish to know how you can trust me? Simple. My trust, along with my services, are bought,” Slade told Cadence. “If you pay me to protect your family, I will protect your family. If you pay for me to stop a criminal, I stop a criminal. And if you pay enough for me to bring down a nation...”

“I get it. You’re somepony who’s only motivated by money,” Cadence spat back, less than thrilled at the revelation.

“We are all motivated by something, Princess Cadence. Love and justice. Hatred and revenge. Money and power. There is no one in all of the worlds who does something for nothing. The question simply is, who does what and why?” Slade replied in a cold voice. “You do not have to like my reasons for aiding you. You do not have to like the person i am. What you think of me I care nothing about. But if you pay for my services, then you have my solemn word that I will complete what you have paid me for no matter the cost. That is all I care about.”

Cadence leaned back in her chair and thought hard about Slade’s words. Slade knew that she didn’t trust him, but he also could see from her expression that his words had made sense to her. And he hadn’t spoken a lie. He cared nothing for what she thought of him or what she thought of his methods. But if she was willing to pay him, not only would he protect her family as if it was his own, but perhaps he could use her royal connections to learn a few things.

“You will uphold your agreement?” Cadence asked at last. “You will keep my family safe from any that seek to harm them?”

“Cadence...I will do everything in my power to make sure that you never have reason to fear for your family’s safety again. That is a promise.”

[D\S]

“So let me read this back to you to make sure that I’ve got it all straight. You’re an immortal mercenary that will take a job from anyone, and you mean anyone, to do anything and you don’t care what it is as long as you get paid?” Twilight asked as she read back what Deadpool had told her, before glancing over the top of the page to look at Deadpool. He was sitting across from her at the crystal table, wearing a tie that she didn’t remember seeing on him when he first came in. “And you also said that you’re an expert in dealing with ninjas, nazis, and something called Logan. Is all of that correct?”

“Of course that’s all correct. Does this look like the face of a person that would lie to you?” Deadpool asked Twilight as he pointed towards his still completely masked face. Twilight’s response was to raise an eyebrow, before casting a glance towards the pink pony that was chasing around a bubble that had somehow gotten loose in Twilight’s castle.

“And do you have anything to add to this...stunning resume that your new best friend has told me about, Pinkie?” Twilight asked. When Pinkie continued to chase after the bubble, Twilight shook her head in frustration and looked back at the paper. “Okay, if somehow I didn’t give up on this from reading the beginning, I’m fairly certain I would when I got to your references. Mister Fantastic? Professor X? Batman? Did you make these people up?”

“Only one of those don’t exist in my world. I’ll let you figure out which one,” Deadpool told Twilight, before he cracked and started laughing. “Okay, you got me. It’s Mister Fantastic. His whole franchise had been dead for years now!”

“I...what...moving on,” Twilight said through clenched teeth, doing everything in her power to keep Deadpool from getting to her. “First of all, this isn’t even a real resume. Second, this isn’t how we hire ponies...people in Equestria. Third, I have no need for a mercenary at the moment...or ever, as a matter of fact. And finally, how did you get here and why are you in Equestria in the first place?”

“Oh please hire me, I so desperately need this job!” Wade exclaimed as he threw himself onto Twilight’s hooves, getting the princess to start trying to kick him off. “If I don’t come up with money and soon, big bad Bob is going to send his goons to kill me!”

“I thought you said you can’t be killed?”

“And then I’ll be kicked out of my house!”

“You also said that you don’t have a home.”

“And then all of my friends will leave me!”

Deadpool pulled a picture out of his suit and showed it to Twilight. The picture was of a tied up Deadpool sitting at the end of a table, while numerous people stood around him with guns and knives pointed at him. “Oh wait a sec, that’s the wrong one,” Wade corrected as he pocketed that photo before pulling out another.

This photo had apparently been taking in the same house as the previous one, but this time Deadpool was free of the ropes that had bound him and all of the other people that had been in the photo were leaned up against the wall with their arms draped over Deadpool’s shoulders while Deadpool gave two thumbs up. The only problem Twilight had with the picture was that all of the other guys were dead.

“Pinkie, can I speak with you for a second?” Twilight asked Pinkie before grabbing her with her magic and dragging the pink pony towards the corner. “What in the hell were you thinking bringing somepony like this here?! This guy is a total nut job!”

“Aw don’t be like that, Twilight. Yeah Wade might be a little strange and occasionally shoot himself, but deep down I can sense that he’s a good guy. Like, way down though. Lower than the ocean depths down. Like at the very center of his being in a place that doesn’t see much light-”

“I don’t care what you see in him, this guy is a risk,” Twilight told Pinkie in her most serious tone. “If he was just crazy then I wouldn’t be as opposed to helping him, but this guy is a dangerous mercenary that, if what he says is true, cannot die. That means that nothing we do to him can stop him.”

“We could always ask him to stop. Pretty please always works!” Twilight let out an exasperated groan and slammed her head into the wall. “Come on Twilight, aren’t you the one always telling us that we should give others a chance! Yeah Wade might be crazy and unkillable, but that doesn’t make him any less of a living being! At the very least we should try to be friends with him.”

“...you’re right Pinkie. He deserves a chance at the very least,” Twilight agreed a moment later with her usual confidence brimming in her eyes. “I may not have any jobs that require a mercenary at the moment, but at the very least I can try to make friends with this strange, strange person. Come on, let’s go properly introduce ourselves.”

Pinkie and Twilight then turned to see Deadpool standing in front of a grill with an apron on, while the castle behind him burned in a brilliant blaze. “Oh hey girls. I heard everything that you said and decided that the best way to cement our new friendship was a friendship barbecue! Could get the grill to start though, so I used my rusty trusty flamethrower,” Wade explained before holding out a plate of hotdogs to the pair. “Weiners?”

A moment later Deadpool was hurled headfirst through one of the castle windows.