Reaper's Story

POV: John Jack

I had lost track of the days eventually. Reaper and I were forced to live with each other for what seemed like forever. This guy’s life story was a lot more complex than mine, but neither of us cared about who was better than the other in any way. We both knew that if we had any of those kinds of conflicts, there would be a problem when we had to work together. Regardless, we still had differences as well as similarities. We were the best of friends eventually, which felt good because we were locked in… what was it called? Conservation, I think. Whatever… we were isolated and it was good to have someone to talk too; end of story! Eventually we both knew just about everything about each other. I knew his real name and he knew about the entire “Mr. Jack” thing.

It was still a mystery of why I was put in conservation. Reaper obviously knew that there was something that Equestria still needed us for, but both of us couldn’t guess what. Also, the entire “memories will return when we get back thing” confused me. This Savior guy was apparently very close to Twilight, so how come I never heard about him… I guess I wasn’t that close to Twilight myself. Meh; whoever this Savior guy is, he wasn’t an impact on my life in Equestria, so I guess it doesn’t matter that much to me.

I wish I could have known how long it had been when that guy came to us. Not Savior, but some other guy. He was a blonde angel in a long white robe and his name was apparently Bo. Bo appeared to us one day… evening… fuck it… Bo appeared to us after a while, let’s leave it at that! His eyes were lit up with excitement as he told us what was happening. “We’ve finally found out why you need to go back!” he yelled, directing his words at Reaper. “There’s going to be a death soon. It won’t be an accident, and it won’t be regarded as murder unless you guys figure out what happened!”

“That’s all you can tell us?” Reaper snorted angrily.

“Well, I can tell you who will die, and I could tell you that there’s an entire party responsible for the murder, but other than that, I can’t help you.” He was standing there with a puzzled look on his face as he tried to think of anything else.

“That’s enough to go on” I butted in. “We don’t need to know who dies right now, we’ll obviously figure it out later.”

“This would almost be like Minority Report if we didn’t have to investigate” Reaper added in an indifferent tone.

“True, true” I agreed.

“Well, you guys’ll be put back onto Equestrian ground as soon as the death happens” Bo continued. “It’ll take a day or two for the word to spread around to Ponyville but at least that gives you guys some time to settle in, catch up on past events and just generally get used to your old lives again.”

“Well, at least we get to leave” Reaper shrugged. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Fluttershy and Savior, and I’m assuming you’re itching to see Luna, right John?”

“You betcha” I nodded. It took another time of sleeping (can’t really call it night since we couldn’t tell) before we were woken up by Bo again. Without any words he teleported us into two different places. He teleported me to Canterlot and Reaper to Ponyville. We were both where we wanted to be. I didn’t really need to be in Ponyville, because I knew that Connor, Discord and Afanasai could handle things themselves. What I really wanted was to see Luna, and what Reaper really wanted was to see Fluttershy.

I was plopped onto the front steps of the castle without hardly any warning. I got up, dusted off and proceeded inside the large castle. I wondered what was going on with both Luna and Fluttershy at this moment. All of their memories of me and Reaper had returned at the moment we were re-incarnated in Equestria (Reaper for the second time). I’m assuming that both of them instantly began to cry oceans. I guess I would find out about Luna’s reaction in a moment.

I had reached the throne room after I was done contemplating the possibilities. There was a faint crying sound coming from the other end of the room. I looked over to see Luna sobbing uncontrollably next to her sister who was attempting to comfort her, but was apparently doing a pretty shitty job. It was hard to keep myself from laughing when Princess Celestia looked up to see me because her jaw dropped so wide open that I swear I could see into her stomach. Luna could tell that something was up because she could hear nothing coming from her sister, so she looked up at her, and then looked over the way that her sister was looking; she looked over at me.

Instantly, her eyes perked up and her crying stopped as she leaped over to me… well, she more of tackled me. I laughed uncontrollably as she practically constricted me in a tight hug. She pushed up a little to look at my face and said “what art thou laughing about?”

“My apologies, Princess” I chuckled. “I just didn’t expect to be attacked by something as cute as thou.”

Luna giggled and blushed a little as she stepped off of me. “Thy words are too kind.”

“Ah, but they are true!” I retaliated, making her laugh more. I noticed Princess Celesta was raising an eyebrow while laughing a little herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, Celestia. Anything happen while I was gone?”

“No, no, but there was a very strange rush of memory that happened just a little less than an hour ago” Celestia told me. “I remembered everything about you as well as somepony you may not know named Reaper.”

“Don’t worry, I’m very well acquainted with Reaper” I interrupted.

“I wonder where he is” she thought out loud.

POV: Reaper

I was in Ponyville, obviously! Where else would I be, Ontario? Anyway, I was spat onto Fluttershy’s front doorstep, where I got up, dusted off (like I would assume John did) and quietly rapped on her front door. Instead of Fluttershy herself answering the door, the door swung open to reveal… nothing… I looked down. It was Angel. The little white fur ball was starting to freak out at the sight of who he thought was dead and probably also thought was now a zombie. I laughed and walked past him to see where Fluttershy was. Sure enough, Fluttershy was sitting on the sofa, crying her adorable little eyes out. I decided to try and lighten the mood. “Your problem has been solved!”

She sniffed and looked up at me before jumping over to me and practically breaking my spine with a practically Pinkie Pie Pony-power hug. “Reaper! I don’t know how you’re still alive, but I’m so glad you are!”

“I won’t be for very long if you keep hugging me like this” I choked.

“Sorry” ‘Shy withdrew quickly.

“What’s happened since I…” I hesitated to spit out the last few words, “died.”

“Nothing really” she said really happily. She suddenly frowned as she continued, “all except for me remembering you dying. I just remembered it a little while ago. It’s strange, because I suddenly remembered hearing about this pony named John Jack, too.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like I missed much, then” I interrupted sitting down next to her. “At least we get to be together again.” Angel hopped up onto the sofa and sat down beside me. “Hiya, Angel!” I greeted him. “How’s my favorite little white fluff ball with anger issues doing?” He scowled at me. “I’ll take that as “I’m fine. Shut the fuck up.”” He seemed to laugh a little as he hopped straight over my head and landed on Fluttershy, who pulled him into a hug.

For the next several days, both me and John remained where we were. John had a good time in Canterlot (I know because he told me a little later), him, Luna and… the last one surprised me a little, but you’ll figure that out later. As for me, I spent pretty much all my time with Fluttershy (duh), but I also spent a little time helping out at Sweet Apple Acres considering it was harvesting season and I used to live next to an apple orchard. Applejack and her brother insisted that I get paid for it, but I attempted to decline. Obviously they wouldn’t take no for an answer so after about 5 minutes, I gave in and took the 20 bits. Apparently in American money, that’s jack shit.

After a day or two I decided to go give that poor bastard Savior a visit, so I headed over to Twilights tree. It was quite a surprise to me when nopony opened the door. I just got impatient after a little while, so I let myself inside to find… no-one… WHAT?! I raced back to Fluttershy’s cottage and asked her what happened to Savior and Twilight. She began to tell me about something that happened while I was gone…

So, apparently Twilight was going to be in Canterlot for quite a while along with Savior, Spike and Owlowiscious. The reason why was because for some random, fuck-all logic reason Twilight became an Alicorn Princess. Regardless of how stupid it seemed to me, I guessed it didn’t matter too much. As a matter of fact, I felt kind of happy for Savior, since Twilight was now a Princess.

It was about two or three days later when I was just walking around the town and I found the CMC crying… but Scootaloo was missing… I went to get John…

I had a bad feeling about this.

POV: John

I was in Canterlot for a while, not too long. I was able to catch up on everything that I missed with Luna. Really the only thing that was new was that Twilight was now an Alicorn as well as a Princess, which I found pretty strange, but I guess that’s good for Reaper’s cousin Savior. Apparently, Twilight was at the Canterlot Castle, so I thought over going to see her to say hi and meet Savior, but I decided against it, because I knew I wouldn’t be staying long, and when Reaper got back to me I would probably meet his cousin anyway.

I was right when I said I wasn’t staying long ‘cuz after only a day or two, Reaper came sprinting into the castle yelling for me. I raced towards the noise with all the speed I could muster. Reaper was practically suffocating himself from yelling and panting so hard. I ran my hand through my long, now sweaty, black hair as I took a deep breath. “What’s wrong, Reaper?”

“Applebloom! Sweetie Belle!” he panted. “Crying! Need you! Explanation! Possibly murder!”

“That’s enough of an explanation for me!” I nodded “Let’s go!” We took the train which only took an hour or so like it normally does, and then we raced into the streets to find Applebloom and Sweetie Belle. It didn’t take us too long since Sweetie Belle was going off like a fucking police siren. The fantastically flustered fillies explained what they could as soon as we managed to get Sweetie Belle to stop over-watering the grass.

They started off talking about how Scootaloo was going to Cloudsdale to live as a resident for a while to see if anything there would help her get her Cutie Mark, but apparently, in order to be a Cloudsdale resident you have to pass a basic flight test. She enrolled in the Cloudsdale Public Flight Academy as well as asked Rainbow Dash to help her with learning to fly. She eventually learned how to fly fairly well, well enough to pass the flight exam that determines whether you become a Cloudsdale resident or not. Her and two of her friends that she made in the CPFA died during the test for reasons unknown. They then explained that the pony who told them couldn’t tell them any more or they would send him “there.”

Me and Reaper looked at each other with wide, wide eyes. We both knew that this was the murder we were looking for. “Reaper?” I asked. “I think we should pay a visit to Afanasai. He might be able to see something we can’t.” Swiftness overcame both of us as we flipped around and made for my old house in a hurry. Only a few minutes had passed before we made it to the front doorstep of the house. It seemed oddly quiet, though. I knocked on the door.

“It’s unlocked” I hear Afanasai say in his deep, deep Russian voice. I opened the door and let both of us inside. He looked up from his book and over at us. He gave a near microscopic smile and turned back to his book. I looked around the room to see a fully-loaded bar that wasn’t there before. I ignored it and went back to the matter at hand.

“Afanasai, I was wondering if you knew anything about Scootaloo’s death” I asked, sitting down in a chair across the room from his.

He gave out a long sigh and looked up at me with his single, dark green eye. “I know very little” he said. “But one thing that I do know, I am certain you will not like.” I nodded in acknowledgement and continued listening to him. “It has to be some pretty serious shit, because Connor tried to investigate and…” His hesitation made me nervous. “They killed him.”

“WHAT!?!?!” I screamed. “Who told you he died?!”

Afanasai sighed and I swear I could almost see a tear drop from his eye. “John, you mind fixing me a drink?” he asked.

“At a time like this?” Reaper butted in.

“It’ll take the stress off” Afanasai explained. “Plus, I remember Connor telling me how good John is at drink mixing.”

Reaper looked up at me. I laughed nervously as I tried to explain, “I used to have to work 2 jobs, so I to work at a local bar. I made an ass-load of tips.” I looked over to the tall Russian again, “Whaddaya want?”

“I was going to ask for something mixed, but now I’m just thinking I’ll take a bottle of Vodka and a shot glass.”

“One of THOSE Russians, are we?” Reaper joked.

“If by that” I added, “you mean one of the Russians that could tear you apart in less than a few seconds, then yes.” I gave Afanasai his bottle and glass and went back to the bar. “You want anything, Reaper?”

“I’m fuckin’ 15!”

“So? This is a different Jurisdiction” I argued.

“Alright, just give me what you’re having.”

I just grabbed myself something and sat down with two glasses. I looked at what I had… it was some of the hardest stuff that I could’ve grabbed, harder than what Afanasai was drinking. I shrugged and poured it into the glasses I grabbed, which were shot glasses as well. Afanasai looked over at me. “Are you sure you want him to drink that? That is some strong shit.”

I watched quietly as he gulped it down and gave a huge shudder and regained his senses from the intense taste. “Anyway, you were saying?” I continued, looking back to Afanasai.

“It was nurse Redheart. She requested me at the hospital” He explained. We all drank a little before he continued. “I asked for the autopsy reports so I could see how he died, but she denied my request immediately, saying that she couldn’t give out that classified of information.”

“So?” I retorted.

“I saw her give out the autopsy reports for several other ponies” he said, giving me a look like he wanted me to do something about it. “It must be highly classified. They’re keeping something from us, John. They’re keeping things from the ones who saved this sorry-ass nation.”

“We’ll see what we can do” I nodded. Me and Reaper pushed up out of our chairs and walked out after saying a short goodbye to our friend. Outside were Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, who were apparently listening in on our conversation. “What in the Sam hell were you girls doing listening to that?” I asked.

“We were curious” Applebloom squeaked, withdrawing.

“Don’t sweat it girls” I chuckled lightly. “Look, we’re going over to Ponyville Hospital to see if we can get an autopsy report on our friend Connor O’Drake. They probably won’t give it to us because it’s related to Scootaloo’s death, which may go a lot deeper than we thought. If they deny our request, we’ll take it from them by sneaking in… more specifically, you’ll take it from them by sneaking in.”

“Whaddaya mean?” Applebloom questioned.

“You’re gonna go in and get the report if they don’t give it to us” I explained. “Security in Hospitals is low, and we’re too big to sneak in undetected. You gals can get in, no problem, so you’ll be in charge of that.”

“Yay!” Sweetie Belle Celebrated. “We get to help!”

And so we were set. The atmosphere was very… dark as we entered through the double doors of the hospital. It smelled like your typical doctor’s office waiting room; it smelled like a bunch of sterile tools and non-latex gloves. I hated that smell; it nauseated me to no end, but I held down the drink from earlier and continued up to Nurse Redheart at the desk. Her eyes were pointed down towards the book she was holding. She was about to turn the page when she sensed the presence of somepony standing in front of her.

Her eyes traveled up until they reached the tall human with a long black mane that was standing before her… It was me… you know, just in case you didn’t know. Anyway, I gave her a warm smile and said “good afternoon, Nurse Redheart.”

“Good afternoon, John” she replied. “I know who you are because after that whole “Canterlot” fiasco I had to take care of so many patients that it was total chaos around here. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Jack.”

I was turned towards the small Nurse Pony, but I could still just feel Reaper roll his eyes. “Nurse, I’ve been told that my friend Connor O’Drake was killed, and since this is the only hospital in town, I would assume he was taken here.”

“Yes, I remember him” Nurse Redheart responded. “What about him?”

“I was wondering if I could access some kind of autopsy report or medical file that might tell me something about what happened” I continued. “We’re afraid that his death may not have been an accident.”

“I’m really sorry, John” she sighed, “but I’ve been given direct orders not to let anypony access any files on Connor. I wasn’t even allowed to look at the files and I was the one who was there during the autopsy. I can’t discuss it, give any information on it, anything like that. If I do, I’ll lose my job.”

“I understand” I nodded. Sighing, I turned around and we all left.

“Well, I saw that coming” Reaper murmured sarcastically.

“So did I, Reaper” I agreed, “but we need those autopsy files one way or another. Girls, this is where you come in. You need to sneak into the hospital, steal the autopsy report on a man named Connor O’Drake. That’s O, apostrophe, D, R, A, K, E. I can try to go in too, if you want me too. Otherwise, you’ll be on your own.”

“I don’t think it’s smart to go in alone” Sweetie Belle thought out loud. She turned to Applebloom. “I think he should come with us.”

“Ah agree” Applebloom said. “We can’t jus go in alone an’ expect to do this without getting’ caught in one way er another!”

“Alright, then!” I interrupted them. “I’ll go with you. Reaper, I think it would help if you could keep watch on the outside.” I handed him one of the old communication devices that Afanasai gave us for the Canterlot thing. I snagged two of them off of the bar counter while Afanasai was reading. “Use this and alert us if any guards, police, morons, Pinkie Pie or anypony at all enters the building.

We waited around the entrance of the hospital in a small crevasse where nopony would see us. We just sat there and talked for 3 or 4 hours while we waited for Luna to go to work. Sure enough, the moon rose with a beautiful white glow to it, signaling us that it was time to go to work. Reaper went around to the power box on the other side of the building and cut all the power lines with his scythe. We then opened the glass doors as slowly and quietly as we could. We could see Nurse Redheart stumbling around in the dark. I snuck up behind the unsuspecting mare and gave her a swift kick to the head, knocking her unconscious. “Sorry, Nurse” I said to the unconscious body. “Can’t let you know that we’re here.

I could tell she was still breathing, so we hadn’t killed her which meant we could move on after I had mover her back to sitting in her chair. I had to set her up so she was sitting like Lyra, but she was in her chair and dammit, she was sitting in it, so we moved on. Silence remained among the three of us as we proceeded into the back of the area behind the desk. There were hundreds of thousands of files, more than the population of Ponyville, by far! I ignored the quantity and continued on the search for my friend’s autopsy report.

I searched through the files for what seemed like a fucking eternity. After long enough, I found the file marked “O’Drake.” Sure enough, inside the file folder was Connor’s autopsy report, marked with a stamp that read “HIGLY CLASSIFIED.” I guess Nurse Redheart wasn’t kidding when shy said it was highly classified. I quickly scanned the page to make sure it was Connor’s, and as soon as I was sure it was his, I crept slowly towards the other end of the file racks, where the girls were. I beckoned the girls over to me and they heeded my signal.

“Ya got tha file?” Applebloom whispered. I nodded. “Good. Ya think we should get outta here soon?”

“Probably a good idea to get out of here before Nurse Redheart wakes up” I agreed. “She may not be up for a few hours, but we shouldn’t take any chances. We got what we needed and I don’t want the chance of having it taken away.”

As we quietly crept away from the file area… place, Reaper chimed in. “Uhh… John? We’ve got a problem.”

“What?”

“I think that electricity box was connected to another building” he said. “There are repair Ponies coming this way… and I think they’re going to check the inside of the building first.”

“Shit” I huffed. “Well, we’ll just have to knock ‘em out.”

“I’m on it!” Sweetie Belle chirped quietly. Before I could stop her, Sweetie Belle dashed towards the door. Me and Applebloom just stayed hidden and watched as the two repair Ponies entered the dark and quiet hospital building unsuspecting of anything on the inside. One of them dropped to the floor with a loud THUD. The other one turned around to see Sweetie Belle’s hoof hitting his jaw. He spun around a full 180 degrees before hitting the ground with an impact equally as noisy as his colleague’s.

I quickly crept over to the little unicorn. “Hot damn, Sweetie Belle!” I laughed quietly. “Where in the Sam hell did you learn to do that?”

She blushed a little. “Applebloom has a thing for martial arts” she said.

I gave a small laugh under my breath and then proceeded out the door to go to reaper and tell him it was all clear. “Reaper!” I called, “you can come out now! We got it!”

He popped out and gave a little gallop over to us. “Nice! Let’s analyze this bitch!”

“Let’s go to a place less suspecting” I suggested. “Anypony got any ideas on where we might be able to go?”

We all started thinking… “Carousel Boutique?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Nah” I rejected. “Rarity is likely to question what we’re doing, then figure out about shit, get pissed as shit, and I’ll beat the shit out of her.”

“That and she’s an asshole” Reaper added.

We continued thinking. “Sweet Apple Acres?” Applebloom added.

“Nah” I repeated. “Big Mac may be a nice guy, but this is something he would NOT approve of, so things would not end well.”

“We could go to Sugarcube Corner!” Reaper spouted, as if it was some sort of epiphany. “Pinkie Pie is about as observant as a deaf bat when it comes to this kind of thing! She’ll never suspect a thing!”

“That is…” I stopped as soon as I started because I realized that I had no valid arguments to make on this one. “A brilliant idea, Reaper! Let’s all haul ass to Sugarcube corner!”

About 5 or 6 minutes later, we were all sitting around a table at Sugarcube corner with a cupcake in front of each of us. Reaper seemed to be checking his cupcake for something. “What’s the matter Reaper? Don’t like cupcakes or something?”

“No, I love cupcakes,” he said, “I’m just checking to see if there are any chunks of Rainbow Dash in here.”

I laughed before I realized what he had just said. “What in the holy Sam hell are you talkin’ about?!”

“It’s nothing important” Reaper assured me as he finished checking his cupcake. “Anyway, let’s get down to business.”

“Alright” I nodded, swallowing a bite of my cupcake. I pulled out the autopsy report. “So, according to this, Connor was shot a total of 3 times. Once in the leg, then twice in the chest.”

“Do we know what kind of gun they used?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Good question” I praised her. “It says here that it was from an M1911. He was hit with .45 caliber rounds, so he was probably killed with one shot to the leg and one shot to the chest, but whoever shot him probably wanted to make absolutely sure that he wasn’t gonna get up. There’s also a letter to the hospital from Cloudsdale’s City Hall. It says that they should let nopony see this autopsy report due to the victim being killed for being close to knowing very, very highly classified information on the death of Scootaloo…. Cloudsdale is trying to cover this up.

“Why?” Applebloom asked. “Connor helped save Equestria! Shouldn’t he be able ta know a little classified info?”

“They don’t want anypony to know about this” Reaper sighed. “It’s something bad. They wouldn’t be this desperate to cover it up if it wasn’t something so serious that they can’t afford anypony to know.”

“I think we should go talk to Afanasai again” I interrupted. “He may know some more details.”

We all returned to my house where Afanasai was sitting in the same chair reading the same book of Equestrian history. “Hey there” he greeted us. “Did you all know that King Sombra wasn’t originally from the Crystal Empire? He was originally from Equestria, but since he had so much free power, he decided to take over the Crystal Empire.”

“Afanasai, that’s interesting, but we have bigger problems to deal with at the moment” I said. “We need to know if you would happen to know any more details on Connor’s death.”

“Well, I do know that he was killed at City Hall” he answered. We all looked at one another.

“Thanks Afanasai!” I spouted, giving a small appreciative nod. All 4 of us that were standing in the room flipped around and made a mad dash for City Hall.

It was time for an interrogation…

POV: John

The road fell behind us as Reaper and I ran to City Hall as fast as we could. We reached the center of the town after about ten minutes, because the total distance was one mile, and we practically broke down the front door we were in such a rush. I’m not even kidding when I say that I could hear the hinges on the door pop out of place. The secretary looked up at us like we were the fucking craziest two guys she had ever seen, and I don’t blame her for that. “We need to see the Mayor ASAP” I told her straight out.

“She’s got a lot of work to do right now” the secretary replied skeptically. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come back later.”

I bent down next to Reaper and whispered to him “you mind if I yank out my gun?” He put a hoof to his face and stepped forward.

“Look, lady” he snapped. “You need to let us through here. We’ve both saved Equestria, meaning your sorry ass! We’ve got business with the Mayor of Ponyville and she never has work to do!”

The secretary certainly looked intimidated. She simply pointed to the door on the other side of the room from the entrance and we walked over there without another word. You could tell that there was something going on here just by the cold, unusually guilty atmosphere hanging around Mayor Mare. “Mayor?” I said, interrupting her gloomy stare that was directed at the empty desk in front of her.

She looked up to see both of us. “Reaper! John! Good to see both of you!” she spouted happily. “What can I do for both of you?”

“Mayor, we know something’s going on” Reaper stepped up. “John’s friend Connor is dead and so is a young Pegasus filly named Scootaloo. We were told that Connor was found dead at City Hall, so obviously, you’d know something!”

“What are you talking about?” the Mayor asked in confusion.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know” Reaper continued. “There’s something you know that we don’t. Connor’s death was linked to Scootaloo’s death wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know who Connor is!”

“Bullshit!” Reaper yelled. “You can’t hide this forever, Mayor! You know more about this, so you’re gonna tell us!”

“I’m gonna call security” the Mayor said reaching for the intercom. Reaper leapt over and tackled her. I helped him tie the Mayor to her chair. “LET ME GO! LET ME GO!” she yelled.

“Not until you tell us what you know!” Reaper repeated.

“I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS CONNOR GUY GETTING SHOT!” I gave a devilish little smile as the Mayor realized her mistake. “Damn” she mumbled.

I pulled out my M1911 and pointed it at her head. “You know shit, now spill it!” I shouted in her face.

“FUCK YOU!” she screamed the secretary burst in the door. It caught me of guard so I pulled the hammer back. I swung around and blew a shot through the secretary’s head.

“JOHN! OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO!” Reaper gasped in astonishment at the random discharge of my firearm into somepony’s face.

“Sorry, it was instinct!” I apologized.

“I’ll be back in a second” Reaper told me, bouncing over to the file cabinets. He started digging through files until he pulled one out… one labeled “Scootaloo Death” with a giant HIGHLY CLASSIFIED stamped over the file’s front. “I got the file!”

“Bring it here and let’s find out” I said, cracking another devilish smile, this time directed at Mayor Mare. He hopped over and handed me the file folder. I flipped it open and the first and only thing in there was a report from Cloudsdale. It said that Scootaloo was reported to have been killed after failing her flight test. I gulped because it sounded familiar to a story that reaper had told me about. I ignored the feeling and just continued with our investigation. “Is this all you know?”

“It’s all they would give me” the Mayor sniffled, now crying because she knew that I was actually able to kill her in the blink of an eye. “I know for a fact that it is REALLY highly classified information. That’s why they killed your friend.” Reaper leapt back over and untied the Mayor.

“I’m so sorry about your secretary, Mayor Mare. She caught me off guard.” I apologized.

She took a breath and nodded. “I understand” she said. “She scared you and you acted on instinct. It happens to everypony.”

“Thank you Mayor Mare” I laughed. “Not like you had a choice, but…”

“Please, just leave” she frowned.

Reaper and I left as the Mayor asked us. “So, Reaper” I spoke up. “What should we do now?”

“Maybe the Princesses know something we don’t” he suggested.

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“I mean, they rule the entire place” he continued. “Don’t you think they should know what happens here?”

“I guess you’re right” I agreed. It was getting late, so we both went back home for the night so we could sleep as well as get prepared. I decided to arm myself to the fucking teeth, because I was guessing that we would be going straight to our destination after Canterlot. I only got 1 or 2 hours of sleep the entire night. I was up from 6 to 6 making my own weapons. It was the fastest I’ve ever worked with the exception of when Connor and I were repeating the making of the M4A1s for the Equestrian military.

By the end of it I had 2 new toys… they weren’t tested though. It was a chance I had to take though. They were both guns I weren’t used to making. First was the Italian close-range classic combat killer, the SPAS-12. It sucks that only 5% of all of the ones officially manufactured were imported to the U.S. Second and probably my favorite modern weapon, The Belgian Personal Swiss Cheese Factory: The P90. I also managed to find my grandfather’s old .44 caliber Magnum. Sure it brought back some fucking terrible memories (Jason), but I thought it would help to have something as powerful as a .44 caliber revolver.

Like always, the train ride to Canterlot was boring as hell without fire. As soon as the 3 or 4 hour train ride ended, we got off the train as soon as we had the chance, as we both felt like we were about to kill ourselves out of boredom, and we had the weapons to do so, too! Canterlot looked a lot better since I had last been here. It was really busy with Ponies and several Humans who you could tell were tourists by the merchandise that they apparently started selling. I didn’t see all of this before because I was always in such a hurry to get somewhere that I never stopped and looked around.

The air smelled like the Equine cuisine that I was forced to live with for a while. To my surprise, people were actually enjoying the herbivore diet. Normally, Humans wouldn’t eat a flower if they were starving to death! I ignored it, and continued on my way towards the castle. Reaper trotted up to walk beside me. “Certainly looks a lot different from last time I was here” he spoke up, looking around.

“Same here” I agreed. “The only difference is that the last time I was here, everypony was staying inside as much as possible and there were armed guards EVERYWHERE!” I looked around to see that Canterlot had established their own little police force. Nothing like a Human police force, as these ponies were still wearing guard armor, so it was more like the police force in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It looked pretty weird with the guards in medieval-looking armor while carrying around M1911s.

We approached the castle at a decent pace, as we still were looking around and noticing a lot of things that were totally new to us. It was amazing how much everything had changed. We didn’t know how long we were in conservation, so at the same time it wasn’t surprising… I’m confusing you, aren’t I? Whatever. We walked up to the front gate of the castle where there were two royal guards, both with M4A1s that were suddenly pointed at us before the guards realized who we were. “Mr. Jack! Reaper!” One of them gasped as if he were starstruck or something.

“Oh shit!” the other guard spouted lowering his gun. “I’m SO sorry! I didn’t mean to threaten either of you.”

“It’s okay, boys” I laughed.

“Why so jumpy?” Reaper asked. “We’re just to guys.”

“JUST TWO GUYS?!” the first guard burst out. “You two are the heroes of Equestria! Then again, not many people know about Reaper. He’s more of a story that’s slowly been passed around.”

After the whole conversation between us and the guards ended, Reaper and I rushed inside so we could talk to the princesses. I walked into the throne room to see both princesses looking out through the window. “Princess Celestia” Reaper called. “We need to know if you’d happen to know anything about the death of a filly named Scootaloo.”

“No, I don’t” Celestia replied with a glare, as if she was suspicious of us. “Why?”

“We need to find out what happened to her” I answered. “Apparently she died after taking the Cloudsdale flight test. From what we’ve found out, she failed the test before she died.”

Luna turned around and spoke. “Maybe thy search would end faster if it began at the location of the incident.”

I gave a small nod and smiled saying “Thank you, Princess Luna.”

She smiled and looked down, thinking about… I don’t know and chances are that I don’t want to know. Reaper and I left the castle and started to walk towards our destination of Cloudsdale. We agreed that when we were directly under the city, Reaper would give me a lift up there. After that we started talking like old times.

It was oddly quiet along the way there. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity of silence, Reaper tried to make conversation. Reaper asked me what my favorite sports video game was, because I had talked a lot about how Jason and I would play a lot of video games together in my spare time and I had also mentioned how Jason loved sports games to no end. My response was. “Atari 2600 sports games were my favorite because that was when sports games were fucking sports games! Look at the titles! "Baseball", "Basketball", "Football;" not that "Madden" shit. Just plain-ass, normal, everyday, no question about it, no NFL, no year; not named after a player, not named after a coach, not named after the referee's pet goldfish; no quarterback, dime-back, Nickelback, simple, ordinary unembellished, unmistakable, crystal clear, as frank as Frankenstein, as blunt as an atom bomb, one compound word: it's mother fucking, God damned, sons-of-bitchin', fuck-fuck-fucking FOOTBALL!... And it's one of the worst games I've ever played in my life.” (If you get this reference, go haves yourself a muffin!)

Right after that I heard the angry voice of Spitfire up above us. “PIPE DOWN!”

Me and Reaper looked at each other. We nodded in unison and I hopped on his back as he tried his best to get to the fluffy floating city above us. It was only moments before we had reached the gentle and soft surface of the clouds. “Oh, hi there Mr. Jack!” Spitfire smiled. “It’s good to see you’re alive! Who’s your friend?”

“This is Reaper” I introduced. “He’s saved Equestria twice.”

“I doubt it” she chuckled. “Anyway, why are you two in Cloudsdale?”

“We’re here to investigate a murder that was recently committed” Reaper explained. “Surely the leader of a team as great as the Wonderbolts would have an idea on where to start.”

Spitfire blushed “why not try the hospital.”

“Thanks Spitfire” I said, turning around and heading towards the hospital. I looked down at Reaper who was once again walking beside me and asked, “was that really necessary?”

“Who knows?” he responded. “It never hurts to make sure, right?” He had a point.

And so, we continued on to the hospital to continue to unravel the truth… The truth that I was at this point, a little afraid to find out.

POV: John

The large cloud-made building was very… interesting. It didn’t look much like a hospital to be honest. It looked more like a pediatricians. By that, I mean its waiting room was very child-oriented. It had a bunch of little toys in the corner, where there were several little foals playing. There was also a white board where several older foals were drawing cute little pictures. I realized that Cloudsdale was probably a very dangerous city due to the fact that almost everything is airborne. The children’s stuff was most likely to calm them down, as I noticed that when we approached the secretary’s desk, a gloomy atmosphere hit me like the ground if I were to fall through the clouds.

“Can I help you?” the secretary asked us with an obviously fake smile.

“Hi, my name is John Jack and this is my friend Reaper” I introduced us. “We need to know if a young amber-orange colored filly under the name of Scootaloo was here any time recently.

“As a matter of fact, she was” the secretary said quietly. She leaned in closer to us. “You guys know about her murder?”

“We’re investigating it” Reaper answered.

“You guys are getting into something that may get you killed” she continued. “I’m not allowed to say anything, and even if I was allowed, I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you that the reason she was killed AFTER she failed the test, is because she was killed BECAUSE she failed the test.”

Me and Reaper looked at each other with extra wide eyes. “Thank you, miss” I nodded. “Who performed the autopsy on Scootaloo’s body?” The secretary quickly held down the button on the intercom microphone and called for a certain doctor.

After a few minutes, a very old looking stallion with cloud-white mane and glasses stepped out. “You called?”

“Doctor?” I started. “We understand that a filly named Scootaloo was transported here for her autopsy. We are investigating her death and we were wondering if we could get the autopsy report.”

The doctor gave a quick nervous gulp.

“Sure…” he agreed nervously. “I’ll get them right now. Just wait here for a second…” He turned and walked the other way with a little bit of a fearful shake. I could almost feel the nervousness radiating off of him. It took the doctor about 3 or 4 minutes to get the file… or… well… he didn’t actually get the file.

The doctor came back out holding a file folder. Taking it and looking inside, I realized that it wasn’t actually what we wanted; instead it was a blank manila folder. My face contorted in confusion as I looked up to the doctor, who had the barrel of a gun right between my eyes.

I quickly kicked the gun out of the doctor’s hooves, yanked out my .44 caliber and blew half of his head off. The secretary screamed as she saw the doctor’s brain matter splatter across the floor. Reaper’s mouth fell wide open at what he just saw. “How did you do that?”

“If shoot someone in the frontal lobe, they only die with a hole in their head. If you shoot someone in the bottom lobe of their brain, the temporal lobe…” I hesitated, “their brain blows right outta their head.”

“Where did you learn this?” Reaper asked, looking disgusted and intrigued at the same time.

“Battle Damage” I spouted quickly, looking down.

“What?”

“I’ll explain later!” I yelled. “For now, let’s figure out how to get these files!”

“They aren’t actually here!” the secretary shouted. “The Wonderbolts took possession of them. They forced us to give them all copies of the files!”

“Well, now we know where to start!” Reaper said calmly, as if nothing had just happened to the doctor whose brains had become the new wallpaper for the hospital.

We ignored the fact that there were still people in shock from the gunshot sound inside the hospital and we left heading towards the Wonderbolts’ training facility. I was wondering what was going to happen when we got there. We headed into the facility as if it weren’t filled with highly-trained professionals and preceded to Spitfire’s office. The door gave a small creak as I grabbed the doorknob and twisted it to the side. Inside the office was a small desk with Spitfire sitting behind it, writing something out on what seemed to be a piece of plain notebook paper. Despite the sound the door made, she seemed to not have noticed us, so I decided to have a little fun with it. I very quietly closed the door, successfully making sure she didn’t notice, and continued over to her desk and crouched down so she couldn’t see me over the desk.

I gave Reaper a small nod and he got the idea. He got Spitfire’s attention by giving a loud whistle, where she looked up frantically at the startling sound. “Reaper?!” What the hell are you doing here?”

I popped out from in front of her desk, scaring the shit out of her, and said “does the name Scootaloo ring a bell?”

She nearly fell backwards out of her chair. Spitfire gave a nervous look then looked down as she said “no… that doesn’t sound familiar…”

“I’m not stupid” I growled.

“What do you mean?” she asked trying to look confused.

“You’re a shit liar, Spitfire” I told her. “You know the name and you know how she died. So please; enlighten us.”

“I can’t tell you anything” she sighed. “They’ll kill me.”

“And if you don’t tell us anything” I added while Reaper jumped behind her and tied her hooves together rendering her incapable of doing anything other than sitting there. I pulled out my SPAS-12 and chambered a shot as I continued my sentence, “We’ll kill you.”

“Take that thing” Spitfire started, “and shove it up your ass!”

Reaper looked at me and I pointed over to the filing cabinet on the other end of the room. He then hopped over to the filing cabinet and began to root through the files as Spitfire sat there helplessly. It took what felt like forever until Reaper finally held up a file that was labeled “Scootaloo.” I grabbed it and flipped it open. We didn’t have the time to do a thorough read-through of the whole document, so I just quickly scanned the page. I spotted something very interesting. It said that Scootaloo was killed in Factory 16D.

“Spitfire, would you happen to know what Factory 16D is?” I asked.

“No” she spouted. “I’ve asked them hundreds and hundreds of times but they’ve never told me. I know that it’s a factory section inside the Cloudsdale Weather Factory, but that’s all I know, I swear!”

I felt as if we had tortured her enough, so we walked out. We had gotten what we had come for, so it was time to go home. We tried hard and we had gotten far, and in the end we got what we came for!

We would have walked, but Twilight was waiting on the ground below the city. Savior was with her because he was curious as to what we were doing. Twilight teleported us all back to Ponyville in a flash of light and we all sat down with the file. I realized right before we were about to open the file that there was a thing that I needed to quickly discuss with Twilight. “Twilight, can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked her, interrupting the silence.

“Woah!” Savior jumped in, “Back off, motherfucker! She’s mine!”

“No, you idiot!” I scowled. “I just need to discuss something with her quickly.” We got up and walked back into the bedroom where I sat down on the side of the tiny bed and let out a long sigh. “Twilight, there’s something I don’t understand.”

“What is it?” she asked in her typical cheerfully intelligent voice.

“First” I stopped myself before I confused the shit out of her. “I need to explain a few things about what happened with me and Reaper.”

I explained everything to her in detail as fast as I could: that we were put into conservation, that all memory of us was erased until we were sent back to Equestria; I even explained that when everything was happening with me, she was unaware of what had happened with Reaper. As soon as I finished, I looked up at her to see a face that I didn’t expect. She looked like she had just been mind-fucked to the most brutal degree. I held back my laughter as she spoke up. “I understand what happened now, but what is it that you wanted to know?”

I sighed once again before starting up again. “If Reaper came before me and you didn’t know about Reaper while I was here originally, doesn’t that not make any sense?”

“You’re right” she nodded. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“How is it possible that nobody noticed?” I finished.

We sat in the room awkwardly for what seemed like forever before she finally spoke up with a hypothesis. “Well, if ponies remember something naturally, then they would just feel as if they forgot it.”

“Say what now?” I interrupted her thought.

“Maybe they made everypony forget it naturally” she explained. “They wouldn’t feel as if anything was unnatural.”

“I still don’t get it” I sighed, feeling as if I would simply remain confused.

“Think of it like this” she continued. “You have one kind of food for dinner one night, but you don’t finish it, so you save the rest of it for later. The next day, you completely forget about it, making you unaware of its existence. That night, you have something else for dinner and you do the same thing. The next day, the same thing happens and you’re unaware of both foods’ existence. That night, you suddenly remember both foods, and regardless of eating one food before the other, you just take it as something you forgot. You never actually lost the full memory of it then regained it, it was just put off to the side somewhere.”

“I’m starting to get what you’re saying now” I told her. “So basically, they took the memory in everypony’s brain and put it somewhere where they wouldn’t remember it. That way it was still technically there, as in they never actually lost their memories of us. Then, when we were reborned, they moved the memories to the place where they would be remembered almost instantly; that way, when the memory came back, it felt natural, making the brain suspect nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Now you’ve got it!” She said.

We went back out to the table where Reaper and his cousin were sitting talking about everything that had been happening lately. Me and Twilight sat back down and Savior looked over at me skeptically. “What are you lookin’ at me like that for?” I asked

“That took you quite a while” he hinted.

“You stupid fu-” I stopped myself. “It was just something regarding everypony remembering me and Reaper.”

“Okay” Savior said as if he didn’t believe me.

Twilight laughed and told him that what I said was true. Now that that had been cleared up, we could continue. I flipped the file open and began to read the autopsy report word for word, not skipping a single letter. My eyes traveled down the page until I reached the point where it described how Scootaloo was found and what the cause of death was…

I began to feel nauseous. I knew what was going on. I ran my hand through my long, black hair again, feeling that it was unusually sweaty. “What? What is it?” Reaper asked frantically.

I gave a loud, cliché gulp and then took in a deep breath in a feeble attempt to calm myself… Then, I began to explain the horrible truth…

POV: Reaper

So, as you all remember, John had just talked to Twilight and now he was ready to tell us the truth of what happened to Scootaloo, which was apparently an ugly truth. It was time to face the facts, though, because there was something going on, and I had a bad feeling that I knew what it was.

“You guys are NOT going to like this” John gulped nervously as he struggled to continue talking. “So, once upon a time, Scootaloo was taken to this “Factory 16D” place. I think I have an idea on what that place may be considering how they found her when she was dead. She had all color sucked out of her body except for her blood which was coming out of a bunch of places on her body. She was dead after all of this, but they had to go the extra mile to make sure she was dead… They found an excessive amount of Cyanide poison inside her body. They also found several other poisons including Arsenic, Botulinum toxin and Mercury, which are all highly lethal. She was guaranteed to die even if she had survived the torture they put her through in the first place.”

All of our mouths hung wide open, except for John’s because he was the one who was telling us all the info. I felt like I had just been mind-fucked. “So this is what lies behind closed doors?” I asked.

“What?” Twilight blurted confusedly.

“This is what they hide behind closed doors? The torture and raw destruction of innocent ponies that just couldn’t fly? Why? Why would they do this?”

“That’s what we’re all wondering” Savior butted in.

“I won’t take it!” I yelled. “I won’t just sit here and let them do this kind of shit! I WON’T be left here! I WON’T be left here behind closed doors! It’s about damn time we found out what this “Factory 16D” is!” There was a long silence after I had finished talking.

John suddenly leapt out of his chair and stampeded towards the door, yelling back “STAY HERE REAPER!” I rolled my eyes and got up to go home to Fluttershy, like I hadn’t for some time now.

I walked in the cottage door and took a deep breath so I could let out a long sigh. Fluttershy bounced up and pulled me into a tight hug, crying about how much she had worried about me, because the mayor announced a price on both me and john, dead or alive. Luckily it was only in Ponyville, so if we went anywhere else, we’d be fine. I assured her I was perfectly fine. Everything would get cleared up soon.

I wasn’t able to talk to her for 5 minutes before Rainbow Dash nearly broke down the door from knocking on it so hard. It turned out that she knew what we were investigating. “You can’t get any farther into this! Cloudsdale’s government will get you a definite spot on death row.”

“How do you know this?” I asked, giving a little smirk, knowing she had just shown me that she knew more than what she was presenting.

She gulped and gave off a sigh. “Alright, what do you want to know?”

”I want to know what Factory 16D is!” I yelled.

“I can tell you anything but that” Rainbow Dash glared at me angrily.

I grabbed her by the neck and threw her across the room, smashing her into the stone fireplace. She cried out on impact as blood seeped from a small cut on the back of her head. I gently walked up and bent down to her side to whisper “Are you ready to tell me, or do you want to feel that again, but with more force?”

“Fuck… Yo-” she couldn’t finish her words before I grabbed her again.

I slammed her full-force into the bricks of the fire place, causing her to scream again. “I would talk now if I were you” I snapped at the semi limp body, which was now bleeding from the mouth too.

She spit some blood off to the side and mumbled “I’ll tell you”

“Good, because I don’t want to hurt you any more.”

“It’s the Rainbow Factory” she whispered. Before I could blink, she flew out the door at top speed.

I looked over at Fluttershy who was crying. I looked down and said loudly “I’m sorry you had to see that, Fluttershy.” I flew out the door in the direction of Canterlot so I could tell John what we were dealing with… a problem bigger than we could handle… but we were on our own. We would have to take the risks, regardless of failure meaning death and failure being at about 80% chance.

“JOHN!” I yelled out to the human figure standing in the palace room next to two large Alicorns, whose identities were completely obvious. “John, we have a much bigger problem than I thought we did!”

“It’s the Rainbow Factory” he gulped.

“I know” I told him. “I beat the information out of Rainbow Dash. We need to find this shit out ASAP!”

“What art thy companion blathering about?” Luna butted in.

“It is a serious matter” John responded. “We must go. There are many lives that need to be saved.”

“Luck be on your side, John” Luna called out as we walked away.

“Please tell me you have your weapons ready” I spoke up as we walked out of the castle.

“Fuckin yeah!” he replied excitedly. “Let’s go kill some fools!”

“HEYHEYHEY!” I yelled to him. “We need to sneak into the factory, not punch it full of holes!” He nodded in acknowledgement. We continued until we reached Cloudsdale, where I dragged John’s heavy ass up to the surface of the clouds. We were about halfway to the weather factory when two of the Wonderbolts, Soarin and Fleetfoot, stopped us.

“Well, look who’s showing their ugly mugs around here after attacking Spitfire” Soarin said with an evil smile on his face.

I instantly used something I had just thought of that I could use to piss them off. “Well, well, well… If it isn’t Freakfoot and his lazy partner Snorin’.”

“Are you trying to piss them off?” John whispered.

“Yes.”

“Can I shoot them if they attack?” he asked.

“Of course” I smiled.

They took out their pistols and made an advance on us, where John pulled out his shotgun and blew off Fleetfoot’s right foreleg. Soarin freaked out, grabbed Fleetfoot and flew as fast as he could to the hospital. “Nice one” I praised John. We continued on, hoping that everypony had just ignored the gunshot. It wasn’t long before we had reached the entrance of the Cloudsdale Weather Factory: Factory 16.

We poked open the doors and slowly crept inside. It wasn’t as dark as I had expected. We could still clearly see where we were going, but then again, we had gotten used to pitch black darkness by this time, so it was probably darker than it looked to us. We were in the A section of Factory 16 and we needed to get to section D. It was going to be a long night. We poked out our heads and began to scan the area… there was no security personnel what-so-ever. I would have laughed if we didn’t have to stay silent.

We found the boss of Factory 16 section A’s desk. It wasn‘t hard to get into the moron’s filing cabinet. It took longer to find the file that told us where the security actually was, and it turned out that section D was unlocked by 4 security boxes; 2 in section B and 2 in section C… this was gonna be a hell of a fiasco

We walked around in the labyrinth-like section A until we found the way to section B. We snuck through the doorway into section B the best we could. We did a scan of section B really quickly and… of course… there were guards in nearly every hiding place, but nowhere else. That did mean, however, that we had to kill ‘em off to find the security boxes… or… we’d have to kill some of ‘em anyways… I approached a guard who was standing right next to a security box.

I gave a quiet gulp and continued approaching him… He flashed his light at me, but he didn’t notice me until his head had hit the floor. None of the other guards seemed to notice the noise, which was only partially muffled by the clouds that the room was made out of. I opened the alarm box and began to look at the instructions from the Section A files. It gave instructions on how to override each box in the case of an emergency. The first one had a button combination in it. The button combo was easy, though; the button combo was 6-6-6-6. I prayed that punching the code in wouldn’t summon Lucifer or some shit.

Lucky for me, I heard a simple little… turning off tone… I guess that’s what you’d call it. That was one down in Section B, only one more to go and then we could move on to section C. There were three guards around the second alarm box. I knew I couldn’t handle all three of them by myself without getting spotted because they were spaced to far apart to kill with one swing of my scythe. I looked over at John and asked “you got a silencer?” He nodded and pulled out his P90. He then fixed a silencer over the barrel and aimed at one of the three guards.

What happened next happened so fast that it was amazing. In what seemed like less than 2 or 3 seconds, each guard had exactly one bullet in his head. Not a sound was heard. I approached the last alarm box of the section. Finding the directions for this alarm box, I flipped open the front of it and took a look inside. It was a color combination this time. The combination was not that hard to figure out. It was the colors of the rainbow. I put them in one by one by pushing the colored buttons on the panel. As soon as I heard the little sound implying that the code had worked, I went back to John. “Alright, we’re done with this section” I told him.

“What about the other guards?” he reminded me.

“Leave ‘em” I commanded. “We should only kill if we have to. We don’t want to leave too many bodies behind or they might find out it was us.”

“Good point.”

We were done with this section…

Now, we had to get done with section C… so we could move on to the Rainbow Factory.

POV: Reaper

Section C was hell for us. There were guards everywhere. I guess nopony wanted us in the Rainbow Factory. That fucker Rainbow Dash must have squealed on us. If I remembered the Rainbow Factory story correctly, she was an employee in the factory, so she probably had the power to put all these guards on duty. Section C was much, much, MUCH bigger than sections A or B. It had long hallways that led into many, many different rooms. I decided to take the right side first, whereas John stayed behind to make sure no other guards came by.

I walked down the hallway a few feet to the first door. All the doors were neatly spaced apart and… locked open? Probably to give intruders nowhere to run. The first room was an office with 1 guard in it. I came up behind him and swiftly twisted his neck until he could see behind him… if he wasn’t dead that is. I looked around the room, rooting through it to find the alarm box, but it wasn’t there. I went on to the next room, an identical office with 2 guards in it. Both of the guards spotted me before I could do anything, so I cut off one’s left foreleg and bucked the other one in the face. The one without a leg on the ground was in massive pain, so I quickly stabbed him directly in the front of the head to kill him quickly.

5 identical office rooms later, I found a janitor’s closet with a guard that was going in to look around. I took my scythe to his head quickly and watched it hit the cloudy, fluffy ground. In that janitor’s closet was the alarm box. I flipped it open to find a miniature keyboard. I had no fucking clue how I was supposed to type with hooves, so I typed with my nose. The password was vividrainbows. I quickly rounded the corner and dashed back to John who was asleep with boredom.

“Wake up, dipshit” I hissed, kicking him in the side.

He jolted up. “What in the Sam hell was that for?!”

“For dozing off when we’re dealing with a serious fucking situation!” I scowled.

He sighed as he got back up. “Alright, Capitan asshat, what do we do now?” he asked sarcastically.

“We get into the janitor’s closet in that hallway and disable the alarm box” I told him as if he hadn’t been sarcastic.

“Onward and upward, then” he agreed as we moved over to the next hallway.

We scooted on over to the janitor’s closet on the other side of the left-side hallway and moved in. John turned to watch the door as I flipped open the alarm box. Inside the last one was the classic three wires; yellow, blue and red. I had to cut them all in the right order within 7 seconds or the alarm would go off. I took the tip of my scythe and put it behind the blue wire. Before cutting it I took in a deep breath then let it out. I quickly but gently pulled back and snapped the blue wire, then quickly moved the tip of my scythe over to the yellow wire and cut that one. It had easily been 4 seconds so I didn’t use the tip for the red one; I just swiped it quickly across the inside of the alarm box. I was about 2 seconds away from having all hell break loose. I let out a sigh of relief and turned around to let John know the good news.

“Wires are cut and the alarm is off” I told him. “Now to get into that damned Rainbow Factory.”

“Let’s do this!” he nodded. We walked over to the now open 6-inch solid steel doors where we stopped. “I gotta check my ammo real quick.”

“Hey John?” I asked as he checked the ammo in his .44 cal revolver. “How do you think they get such thick steel doors fastened into clouds?”

“Hell if I know” he shrugged as he finished up checking his ammo. We both rounded the corner and began to creep towards what looked like a giant tram car. We made sure that no-pony was following us as we got on, and when we were sure, we got the tram moving a short distance between the cloudy buildings. There was a piercing squeak as it came to a stop at the terminal inside Factory 16D. We looked around, spotting several signs that indicated that anypony here besides “recruits” and authorized guards would be immediately executed. Lucky for us, it was 3 A.M. so there was no-pony guarding the front entrance. They probably figured that intruders wouldn’t be able to pass Factory 16C.

Our advance inside was rushed and nervous, because we both knew what would happen if we were caught. It was a very tall building on the inside. There were large silos with what we assumed to be rainbow coloring inside it because the silos were connected to machines that had several syringes designed to inject the victim with poison before the color was sucked out of them. Slowly, we made our way towards the center of the factory. It was exactly when we felt the presence of other ponies… our feelings were correct, as we noticed dozens of guards in suits and snow white masks jump down from the top scaffolding that lead to the tops of the rainbow machines or whatever you call ‘em.

“I think this battle might be a little unfair” I thought out loud.

“Why?” John asked, “Is it because it’s 40 or 50 to 2?”

“Hell no!” I laughed. “I don’t have a firearm! You do!”

“Here!” John tossed me his P90 without the silencer on it. I smiled at the excellent piece of work I held in my hooves. I noticed him switch his shotgun from pump action to semi-auto.

“Now it’s fair” I uttered with a devilish little smile.

The one problem with the suited guards was their weapons. They didn’t have nightsticks or firearms or anything of the sort. Instead, they had stun guns, but not stun guns that shoot… cattle prods… they had cattle prods… That was the one problem. I disregarded the feeling and opened fire in synchronization with John. Since they had no protection whatsoever, they all went down very quickly. We stopped to reload. I threw away the mag that was empty as John passed me a full one. I would have slipped it in, but I heard a loud feminine scream from beside me. It was multiple thousand volts of electricity being pumped through John’s unsuspecting body. I braced for impact because I thought I might have been next and I was right, but these cattle prods were much, much more powerful than I saw coming. I was used to 100 million volts at a time, so I was expecting not even a millionth of that, I got about a tenth of that… THAT IS 10 MILLION VOLTS… FROM A CATTLE PROD. A normal cattle prod uses about 5,000 volts… let’s just say I was caught off guard compared to what I was expecting.

Okay, so I may be being a bid melodramatic about it. It could have been worse. I mean I could have been tazed in the testicals. I was still conscious afterwards, though. I saw them grab John by the arms as they grabbed my forehooves and dragged us both up stairs onto the scaffolding that they jumped down from. I could already tell that this wasn’t going to end well for either of us. Instead of being dragged straight to a machine, we were dragged towards a pony in the center ally of the scaffolding that connected the two sides of the room. They were just standing there.

The mysterious pony was wearing a suit identical to those of the other guards, as well as a blank white mask. In a familiar voice the pony said “drop ‘em here.” I knew who the masked pony was but I just couldn’t think of it… I remembered. We were dropped onto the cold metal, as well as John’s guns which he weakly attempted to reach for but easily failed.

“You really thought you could get in here without us knowing, huh?” the mysterious masked pony asked before laughing. “That’s rich. We killed that moron Connor expecting you’d get the message that we wouldn’t hesitate to do the same, but I guess we get to do this the fun way, now.”

“It’s kind of easy to see us coming when you knew I was looking for this place” I croaked, still slightly weakened from the electric shock that they had administered no more than 5 minutes before.

“What are you talking about?” the masked pony faked.

“Don’t lie to me, Rainbow Dash” I smirked, looking at her. “It won’t do you much good.”

The pony took of her mask to reveal that I was correct. It was Rainbow Dash. “I’m that obvious, huh?”

“Like a chocolate bar in a swimming pool” I chuckled.

She gave me a clean smack across the face with her right forehoof. “Let’s make some rainbows” she snickered giving me a look that implied that she had totally lost it.

“JOHN!” I yelled to my friend who was beginning to wake up. We were being dragged to opposite machines. “JOHN! FORGIVE ME FOR ALL OF THIS!”

“It’s okay!” he called back to me. “It wasn’t your fault! It’s Dash’s”

“True” I responded.

Dash traveled back over to me as I was latched into the metal braces that were bolted into the cloud walls. “Any last requests before you die?” she asked.

“Just something simple” I started. I had to come up with something quick. I looked around the room and after a second I zeroed in on John. It all came rushing at me. Everything he told me about how his parents died… “I just want to sing my favorite song one last time… that’s all.”

“Alright, as long as it’s shorter than Stairway to Heaven” she joked without a joking expression.

I inhaled deeply and sung out all I knew of the song.

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the mouthwash in your eyes

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the cause of your surprise

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

In the car,

On the side of the freeway in the….

I could see John beginning to lose control as they strapped him in.

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the trick of your disguise

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the cause of your demise

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

In the car,

On the side of the freeway in the car

In the car

On the side of the freeway in the....

It was that moment where he broke straight out of the walls. The metal restraints were still attached to his arms and legs. He swung them at one of the guards who was yanking out his cattle prod. Instead of succeeding, he got a fatal blow to the head then fell over ten feet off the scaffolding to the floor. I could tell Dash was panicking because she flew down off the scaffolding and simply nervously watched John beat the shit out of all the guards who were being beaten over the head with the metal braces around John’s wrists and ankles. He grabbed the guns that they had dropped at the hooves of Rainbow Dash at the center of the scaffolding. He flipped the SPAS-12 up into his hands and blew down 3 guards in less than a few seconds. The bloody carcasses of the three dead guards seemed to drop to the metal floor of the scaffolding slowly. You could tell that all of the other guards weren’t going to be sticking around much longer.

The only one left was Rainbow Dash. John snapped back to reality and came over to quickly unlatch me from the restraints. He threw down the SPAS and yanked out his .44 cal. As soon as I was loose, we ran after Dash. He fired at her, one bullet hitting a wall and one hitting the floor right next to her. She tried speeding up, so John fired again, one missing and one grazing her back left hoof just enough to make her feel the pain. She swung off course and smashed into a wall. She tried to get up but John shot a hole straight through her wing. Her scream echoed through the long hallway we raced through to get to her.

We got to where she lay; the wall that was a mere few inches away from the tram to leave to Factory 16C. We stood over her. John looked at me and I got the hint that he wanted me to back off a little, so I stepped back to let him do his thing. He aimed directly between Dash’s eyes with his revolver and gave a devilish smile. It was time for him to finish it!

“I know” he began. “I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "did he fire six shots or only five?" Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a .44 Magnum, one of the most powerful handguns in the world and will blow you head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?”

BANG!

POV: Reaper

You’d think that would be the end of it, right? The goal was just to stop the rainbow factory from murdering innocent ponies, right? Well, that’d be too easy. We (John and I) knew that without the rainbow factory, Equestria would be deprived of rainbows. That may not seem like a big problem, but everypony would start to lose it if there was a lack of rainbows. That was where we had no plan. Rainbow dash had a hole blown through her head, we were in deep shit with the law and we had no idea what to do. John took a moment to analyze the situation thoroughly. He thought out loud going through everything as I remembered something that I had mentioned when we were still in conservation… Minority Report.

“John, I have our solution!” I blurted confidently.

“Good, what is it?” John asked.

“Minority Report.”

“No seriously” he grumbled.

“I am serious” I continued. “We need to go back in time to get rid of the guy who thought of this method of making rainbow colors!”

“How?” he retaliated, sounding like he knew that the plan wouldn’t work.

“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna” I countered.

“What in the Sam hell do they have to do with this?”

“They know how to go back in time” I explained. “They have spells for that somewhere in the castle. I can remember it from the show.”

“Oh, okay” he said, surprisingly without sarcasm. “But we’ll need to explain everything first.”

“Duh.”

“I’ve still got a lot of the evidence in my pocket” he told me.

“What the hell is it doing in your pocket?”

“I kept it just in case” he smiled.

John remembered dropping his SPAS so he went over and grabbed it. I could understand why. We didn’t say another thing; instead we both rushed to Canterlot as fast as we could. We made it to the front gate of the castle where two castle guards confronted us. One of them pointed his gun at us. “Hey! What in the Sam hell are you guys doing?!” John yelled.

“Stop right there, criminal scum!” The other one said. I facehoofed at that. John laughed and said “We’re here to report something that happened at Cloudsdale.”

“We already know that you were the ones who caused it!” The first guard said, switching his aim between me and John. John yanked out his SPAS, switched it to pump action and pumped it to freak them out. The both backed off and let us in. I was assuming that they knew who we were.

We raced into the throne room. “PRINCESS CELESTIA! WE HAVE A PROBLEM!”

“And what would that be?” she asked, hinting that she knew that we caused the whole mess up there.

“The rainbow factory doesn’t make rainbows how you think they do!” I yelled.

“Then how are they made?”

“Innocent ponies, namely ones who fail their Cloudsdale flight test, are killed and the colors of their bodies are used to make the individual colors of the rainbow” John explained. “We had to get pure evidence and we did because they tried to do the same to us.”

“I wouldn’t believe that” she scowled. “Would you happen to have any real proof?”

John cursed her name under his breath as he took out the proof he had in his pocket. She yanked it out of his hands with her magic and started looking over the evidence. I was expecting her to call them off as forged then ask us if we liked bananas (y’all know why), but as she looked over them her eyes widened and her jaw slowly dropped open. When she was done with looking over the documents, she gave them back to John and quietly asked “what do we do now?”

“We go back in time and get rid of the bastard who came up with the idea of making rainbows with ponies” John responded.

“We could do that” she repeated, looking down in thought. “I guess it’s the only real solution. That way we don’t have to explain anything to the public and us three will be the only ones who know.”

“So, we’re doin’ it then?” I asked.

“I guess we are” the Princess answered me.

“Before thy departure!” a voice called out. Luna ran into the room and tackled John in a hug.

I stood there over them. “P.E.T.A. would have a shit fit about all of this” I laughed.

“What?” Celestia interrupted my thoughts confusedly.

I told her it was nothing as John got up and Luna wished him luck. We followed Princess Celestia to a place in the Royal Library labeled “Star Swirl The Bearded.” It sounded to me like it was a character from World Of Warcraft or something like that. She rummaged through shelves of old scrolls and other ancient-looking pieces of writing. She finally found the one she was looking for because she picked it up and said “Ah! Here it is!” which made it kind of obvious that she had found it.

“We ready?” I asked, ready to do this.

“Indeed we are” Celestia responded, turning around and setting her large horn aglow.

It was a single flash of bright light and we were in that rainbow factory again, but this time it seemed less eerie. There wasn’t as much metal reinforcement everywhere and there was a large table in the middle where four executive ponies sat, probably discussing the idea of murdering ponies for their color. “Come on!” one of them spoke up, more than likely the one who had the idea. “The Princess won’t find out.”

“She just did” I blurted, interrupting the conversation and scaring the shit out of the guys at the table.

“You!” John yelled, pointing at the one with the idea. “You’re under arrest for future accounts of murder.”

“FUTURE?!” he screamed in terror of his imminent death.

“Say, do you like bananas?” I asked, smiling.

He nodded in terror. “So you’re a mmmmmmm-bitch that likes mmmmmm-bananas?” John asked with a devilish smile that Celestia had as well.

He nodded, now just confused. We both looked up at the Princess. “Well, you’re about to go bananas…” her horn began to glow once again as she gave a little laugh and then shouted excitedly, “ON THE MOON!” And POOF! The pony was gone, never to be seen again.

We turned around to leave but before we teleported back to our own time, John stopped and said “When you come in contact with The United States Of America, buy color dyes. They’ll color your rainbows far better than any pony’s dead body will.” And with that, we left.

We were spat back into the Princess’s throne room with a disorienting flash of light. We looked around the room and luckily, nothing was different in the room. There was one thing that still remained that we needed to know… did it work? We were all thinking the same thing because we simply looked at Celestia and her horn lit up again as we were teleported to the front of the weather factory. It was mid-day so there were tourists about. As we walked by everypony, they bowed down to the Princess… Typical.

As we continued onwards, we noticed that all the doors to every factory section were open with no guards about. In Factory 16C, the Tram was still operational, but instead of being the rusted cheap metal that it was originally, it now looked very appealing with the colors of the rainbow covering it. Tourist Pegesai from all over Equestria were boarding it as a tour guide led them up into the rainbow factory. We hopped aboard just as it left. After a few minutes riding in the tram, we all raced into the factory to see regular ponies working away happily using colored dyes from the U.S. and other places. The rainbow colors were so vibrant I felt like I was getting irradiated by just standing near them. Everything looked so much more normal…

John was looking around with wide-open eyes while Princess Celestia was walking around with a large smile. I was just standing there thinking about what we had gone through just recently. I looked up at the sky through one of the windows that were now in the soft cloud walls and smiled, wondering what Bo was thinking about all of this.

Several days later, I was home with Fluttershy and John was in Canterlot with Luna. Afanasai and Connor were living in John’s old house. Connor was apparently no different than he was before according to John who would come around every several days or so. Discord was also around with Connor, and Savior and Twilight were back in Twilight’s tree library. Scootaloo was still alive and so was Rainbow Dash. I visited Savior with John one day to tell him what really happened here. He and Twilight both believed me easily, but I showed them John’s documents just to be sure. They were dumbfounded.

It was all peaceful as far as we cared. Bo also contacted me with thanks coming from not only himself, but also the ponies that were against the original rainbow factory plan. From then on, everypony in Equestria was safe. There were no more incidents and everypony was able to live peacefully.

Me and Fluttershy went on to get married alongside Savior and Twilight, which made Savior a prince. Connor and Discord kept the royal guard well armed as John and Connor had once before. Afanasai went on to become a famous professor of Equestrian History back in his home country of Russia. Princess Celestia and Luna both kept a closer eye on all the events that happened in Equestria from then on. John also got married to Luna, marking him as a Prince as well.

One last time while I slept, The Rev came out of nowhere and woke me up. "Hey, Peter," he whispered, trying not to wake the sleeping Fluttershy beside me.

"What's up, Jimmy?" I asked quietly.

"I just wanted to let you know that the big man himself has officially stated that you and John will both go to Heaven," he explained.

"But we've killed people," I rebutted.

"God said that you will have the title of the Angel Of Death and John will be the Angel Of War."

"Odd things to be called in Heaven, don't you think?" I chuckled.

"I know, I know," he brushed it off. "Just remember to Hail To The King when you get to Heaven,"

"I see what you did there," I told him.

"Oh, and tell Fluttershy you love her every day," he commanded. "You'll never know which day is your last."

"That won't be for a long time, though," I replied.

"How do you know?"

"Because" I started, looking back and smiling down at the sleeping Fluttershy beside me. "Death may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean it's not preventable."

THE END