Freedom

Vernie and I were cleaning up the mess from the Reaver attack when I laughed “Who’d of thought that RJ was from a world with magic even more powerful than Equestrias? I mean, he blew that reaver apart with frickin sound waves!”

Vernie looked to me with a deadpan expression “You can control, generate, and become fire, not to mention double in size. I am supernaturally agile, can solidify fire, and am capable of slicing an engine block in half with my katana. I do not consider any of this power that originated from Equestria, nor those we already had, to be inferior.”

I blushed “Heheh…yeah… I guess we are pretty powerful…”

Vernie sighed “How can a few brutish creatures like that cause so much damage? This is obscene.”

I laughed “Y’know, it wasn’t all the Reavers that did this damage, hell; it was mostly the panicking ponies!”

Pinkie was helping me clean up while RJ fretted over Vinyl as they walked home, their portion of the cleanup already more than complete, and Twily was helping Vernie with cleanup as well, so we were near finished “Yeah! What’s wrong with these ponies?”

I looked to pinkie and pointed at her shoulder “Look, a big hairy spider.”

Pinkie screamed before stopping, dropping, and rolling on the ground to get rid of the imaginary spider, I then chuckled as she realized that there was in fact no spider and glared at me “Meanie!! And I was going to cook you a heroes dinner too!”

I pouted “Guess I’ll just have to cook something for both of us, how does veggie stew sound?”

Pinkie licked her lips and nodded “Mmm-mmm! That sounds super yummy!”

Vernie laughed “You two are like a married couple.”

I blushed and slugged him one in the arm before returning to work…

{Transitions…transitions…transitions! HOOOOOOOOOOO!}

[...Really?]

Pinkie laughed as we were walking to her home, where we agreed I’d stay the night in the guest room, only after some serious bargaining on pinkies part “Oh, Authors! What’s with you two and references?”

{… don’t make me have Caith lose his pants, I will do it! Hell, I’ll even make YOU have a wardrobe malfunction as well!}

[Do it and I beat you senseless]

Pinkie clammed up with a blush on her face the intensity of a small sun before I decided to change the topic, ignoring the annoying murmuring in the back of my head “Sooo…. I get to sleep on the floor, right?”

{hmm… maybe you’d like that?}

[*Raises fists*]

{OKAY NEVERMIND!}

I shook my head "I swear I heard a voice…"

Pinkie looked to me and smiled “Eeyup! I… I was wondering… would you like to watch a movie or something? M-maybe snuggle?”
I blushed and nodded as I opened the door for Pinkie, entering after her and making my way to the kitchen, making some veggie stew with potatoes, carrots, corn, celery, and a special ingredient, a blend of spices that brings out the flavor of any food you taste that I had developed during my Atlas Mess Hall duties. After the soup started to simmer, I walked into the upstairs bed room of sugarcube corner to find Pinkie dressing, she shouted and I ran down the stairs with my face positively aflame with shame.

Pinkie came down a few moments later in a beautiful gown that accentuated her curves and natural beauty to an almost supernatural degree, I blushed and stammered, incapable of forming any real form of sentence as Pinkie blushed and sat me down before she snuggled up next to me, her arms wrapped around me in a gentle embrace. “I-I’m sorry I shouted… that was just a big surprise…”

I swallowed “Y-Yeah…sorry about that…” I sat there with Pinkie for what felt like an instant before the timer for the soup was going off and I got up again “Be right back, love.” I went and set us both up some trays and got out a music Disc I prepared for my next date with Pinkie, I put it in the player and sat next to her and smiled tenderly as the disk started to play…

I was on the screen with a nervous smile on my face “H-hey, Pinks, I-it’s me C-caith… I picked out this song because it really shows how I feel about you…, h-here goes…h-hope you enjoy…” the screen faded to black as music began to fill the room

Pinkie listened to the song in shock, and then looked to me with tears in her eyes before hugging me and kissing me passionately on the lips; we kept kissing until we were breathless and sitting leaned against each other, then caught my breath at the same time as her and began feeding her the soup in the way that lovey dovey couples do, I never understood why they did this before, but… it made sense now… it felt right to be sharing everything I could with this mare,and I realized that I was head over heels in love with her. “Pinkie… I love you, so, so much…”

Pinkie nuzzled up against me affectionately and sighed contently “I love you twice back…” she frowned and twiddled her fingers cutely “Um… if you don’t mind, could we sleep next to each other tonight?”

I smiled and nodded “I’d sleep on even the softest bed for you…” we ate our food and made our way to Pinkies bedroom, where we simply got in bed and cuddled with each other until we fell asleep.

{*Sniff* so beautiful!}

[SHUT UP GEORGE! GO TO YOUR CORNER OR I’LL GET THE CATTLE PROD!]

I woke up next morning to find Pinkie dressed up in pranksters gear and was filled with a deep dread “P-pinkie? Are you going to see Dashie?”
Pinkie nodded happily “Yep! Wanna come with?”

I remembered how Gilda treated Pinkie and felt a knot of anger form in my stomach “Yeah, I’ll come with.” I wasn’t going to let it fly this time; I would NOT let Gilda bully my friends! I walked with Pinkie to Dashies house and called out “OI! DASHIE! WAKE UP!”

Instead of Dashie greeting us, we were treated to a jump scare ala griffon as Gilda suddenly peered at us Dashie smiled “Hey, Caith, hey Pinkie, how you guys doing? Oh, This is my Griffon Friend, Gilda. Gilda this is my gal pal Pinkie and her boyfriend Caith, he’s a monster Hunter!”

‘That reminds me, my vacation is nearly up… whelp, gotta take another rough job then’ I thought as I held a hand out to Gilda “The pleasure is entirely mine.”

Gilda smiled “Huh, this guys pretty cool!”

I then broke the handshake “Hey, Dahie, how about you show us some of your new tricks?”

Dashie grinned “I thought you’d never ask!” She flew up high and began doing aerial maneuvers as Pinkie oohed and aahed distractedly.
I then pulled Gilda aside and growled to her “Listen, pidgeon brain, I know how you treat ponies that ain’t Dashie, and I’m warning you” I lighted my fist aflame in front of her face “I’ll feed you to my manticore, Kentucky fried style, capiche?”

Gilda gulped and nodded in understanding as I walked to Pinkie “Hey, I gotta go get a hunting job to extend my vacation, I’ll be back in about four days.”

Pinkie frowned worriedly but nodded as I whistled and Dougan came bounding to my side from the direction of the Everfree forest, I mounted him and rode off to the nearest bounty board, seeing that there were three requests for the same area, apparently a Lich had woken up and set up a legion of minions, there was a mission for his zombie horde, his troupe of Gargoyle warriors, and the big rot sack himself, and it seems they were holed up in the Royal Pony Sisters castle “Ready Dougan?”

Dougan growled excitedly, happy to be reunited with me and eager to assist me in the hunt.

We rode to the castle with no problems until we started to smell the stench of Dark magic on the air, smelled like rot and sulphur. I shouted a command and Dougan leapt airward just in time to dodge a green fireball ‘hehe, if this is a Fire Lich, this is going to be too easy!’ I saw a pair of gargoyles charging us from the skies and firestepped towards them, grabbing one by the wings and pile driving it into the ground below after tomahawking my axe into the smaller ones face, the piledriven one reduced to rubble as I firestepped over to the falling one and retrieved my axe from its stone skull and decapitated a zombie while releasing the beast “LET THE BAD HEADS ROLL! FALLEN AND FOES ALIKE FEAR MY FLAMING FEASTERS MEAT SPOON!” The Lich hissed and all of the Gargoyles started dive-bombing me in an attempt to overwhelm me, I let them all pile on before melting them with my flames.

The Lich growled “Youu willlll pay for thiiiisssss!” I laughed and tomahawked him in the face before firestepping behind him and tearing off his head before forcing a fireball down his throat, which exploded, causing a shower of blood and guts, killing the trash as well.
We rode our way back and found the town empty; however, it was as if the entire town had been abandoned. ‘Wait, I see someone!’ I saw two figures in the town square, one was what looked like some sort of heavy armored soldier, and another was a familiar Zebra mare that I realized must be Zecorah, I saw them walk into the forest and went along with them silently, using my wings to fly above the poison joke and thus not be affected, Dougan, however, was rolling in the blue flowers like a high stoner, as this stuff had a similar effect on manticores that catnip had on cats. I traveled to Zecoras hut before the soldier took out his rifle, spun around, and shot me with a blue cube like projectile, oh, god! It felt like I was being experimented on all over again! The red hot agony sent me sprawling on the floor and I blacked out…

{we could do a cliffhanger, buuut we are too nice ;P}

I woke up to find myself in a bed made of animal furs, I saw that the soldier had taken off his helmet, unveiling his long blonde hair, red cat like eyes, and stubbly beard, but the biggest feature I noticed about him was… he was a human. “Sorry for shooting you, thought you were one of those damn ‘goyles trying to hurt Zecorah.”

I groaned as I got up, noticing the cauldron and Zecorah readying what looked like a potion, it smelled like cherries. The man laid me back down “Now listen here, dumbass, you got shot by a holorifle, not only that, but you got shot by ME with a holorifle, you’re lucky to be alive! So lie down and wait for the stimpack-I means healing potion to be ready and stop being stupid.”

Zecorah chuckled “That’s his way of saying he’s sorry for shooting you, and he hopes my potion helps.”

The human blushed hotly “Be quiet, you’re lucky I love you…”

Zecorah smiled and kissed the human on the lips “Oh, I should probably tell you, this is my husband Maddix Kane, he appeared in zebrica after something called a transportalponder broke and sent him to my world, he taught me many ways of survival and how to brew healing potions, not to mention how not to speak in rhyme.”

Maddix Laughed “Yeah, that was freaking annoying, remember that time I got you to say orange?”

Zecorah scowled “I couldn’t talk for THREE DAYS!”

Maddix kissed her again, this was really making me miss Pinkie… “You gotta admit it was funny, now come on, let’s heal this idiot so we can figure out why he was following us.”

I sighed and drank the potion right as the mane six broke into the hut and saw me, Pinkie, in a word, went ballistic, running up to Maddix and disarming him before punching him in the face hard enough to break his nose “HOW DARE YOU?! HOW DARE YOU HURT CAITH?! I SHUOLD GRIND YOU UP INTO CUPCAKES AND FEED YOU TO DOUGAN WHEN HE’S HIGH!” Pinkie actually had ME scared, and she was being protective of me, I can’t even imagine what Maddix was feeling.

{Hold me, I’m scared!}

[NO! GOD NO! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!]

{Ow! Watch it with the cattleprod, you hit me!}

[I KNOW! NOW GET AWAY OR I’LL DO IT AGAIN!]

Maddix mumbled out “I thought he was a ‘goyle… trying to hurt my wife…”

Pinkie kept ranting until I managed to get to her and hug her “I-it’s all right, they patched me up, I’m all better…”

Pinkie then nuzzled up against me and cried “I-I was s-so worried ab-bout you!”

Zecorah smiled “Is this your wife?”

I blushed “N-no…I'd like that though...”