The Black Hoof

A week or so later, Spike’s taxi was finally fixed. He had enjoyed his ‘time off’, but the money left over from the repairs was gone and he had to return to the grind if he expected to eat and pay his rent. Starting at the downtown taxi stand, he took his first customer to the Faustian cathedral uptown, and the next then to the hospital in the New Orange district, and so on, and so on. He'd almost forgot how monotonous daily life was after that brief… no,no - he cleared his adventure with those ponies out of his mind.

Eventually, he had a very insistent custom whom he delivered to the F&F department store in Little Canterlot. He’d only been at it for about an hour, but since he was only just getting back in the swing of things, he sat back in the front seat and took a quick break. He couldn't help but notice he was only a few blocks from Celestino’s bar.

He hadn't been on break for more than 20 seconds before a baseball bat smashed into the front driver’s window, startling him and sending shattered glass across his lap.

“THE HELL?” exclaimed Spike.

A brown earth pony dragged him out of the seat and onto the ground, and spat on his face.

“Ms. Lunetti ain't too pleased with you, boy. We’re gonna have to teach you a lesson - nobody crosses us and gets away with it,” said the pony as his friend, a yellow unicorn, started to smash his taxi with a bat.

Spike surmised, as he was being kicked in the face, that these two were in the car behind him when he saved those two mobsters. These two ponies wore the fancy suits he had come to associate with the mafia. Not only did they survive, they took it upon themselves to take revenge on him.

“Lemon here’ll fix up your face a bit!” spat the brown pony. But when the bat descended, Spike stopped it with his claws and made a break for it. He ran towards a nearby alley - he couldn’t fight ponies, but he might be able to lose them if he was quick enough. That hope fell when he heard the distinctive sound of a revolver being loaded, and the chatter of running hoovers, from behind him.

He ducked in through a passageway into a wide alley, passing by a green unicorn muttering about a meeting that somepony hadn’t arrived for. He turned a quick corner and descended a set of stairs, but he heard a bullet whiz by his ear. He turned a corner and dodged a gray pegasus trying in vain to fix a decrepit Pansy Model F.

That pegasus actually managed to trip on of the pursuers, the one without the gun, unfortunately. As Spike came out of the alley onto the sidewalk, the unicorn fired two rounds. One grazed his hat - he’d better not slow down.

He ducked into the next alley, on the same side. He climbed up a set of stairs onto a balcony, managing to upset a pink and yellow earth mare. She nearly fainted when she heard the next bullet splinter through the floorboards of the balcony. He jumped from the balcony to the next, and then he jumped down onto the top of a Pansy Model P and from there onto the ground. Another bullet ricocheted off of the front fender and was sent skyward.

Spike ran through a clothesline hanging low, and pulled it forward as he did. When he let go, it sprang back into the the face of the unicorn mare pursuing him. She recoiled in pain and let off a fifth shot, this one completely missing its mark and shattering a second story window. She didn't give up the chase, however. Spike passed through another passageway, where a cream colored mare with a pink and blue mane was grumbling about a romantic meeting.

As he passed by her, Spike managed to shout “She’s on the next street!”

The mare expressed her thanks, but was shoved out of the way by the yellow unicorn. Spike quickly ducked into an alley across the street - he was very close to Celestino’s bar, now. He ran down the alley and chose to go straight rather than turn left. Bad choice.

Spike found himself in a dead end, cornered by the black suit-clad unicorn. She raised her small snub up to his head, smirked, and pulled the trigger.

*clink*

That distinctive noise of an empty chamber momentarily baffled the mare, and Spike reacted quickly, ducking under her arm and turning right. He ended up on the same side of Sumner street as Celestino’s bar, and ran inside.

Lunetti’s mare must not have been very smart, because she followed him right inside. A half hour later, Spike was drinking with Dashie, and his attacker was being loaded into the trunk of a car in the yard behind the bar.

Spike figured that he might as well give these ponies a chance - they’d saved him, and being a taxi driver was out if he wanted to stay safe. He’d had a taste of the action, and he couldn't go back to that life anyway. If the suits all these ponies in the bar had on were anything to go by, he would certainly be paid a bit better in his new line of work.