Versus!

Big Mac was no pushover. He was the biggest, strongest, and toughest pony in Ponyville, bar none. There wasn’t any argument about that in his mind, it wasn’t even a contest. It wasn’t even arrogance. Mac wasn’t the type of person who really ‘did’ arrogance, he did truth. Plain, simple, unadorned truth. And the plain, simple, unadorned truth was that no pony in Equestria, meaning NO pony in Equestria, was on his level. So when Shiny had objected to his statement that he was as tough as any of his guards, well, Macintosh did what seemed the only reasonable thing. He challenged him to meet him in the barn and settle it.

So here they were. In the barn, and getting ready to go. The two stallions had matching gloves, Mac wearing green and Shiny wearing blue. The ring was an old one, made back in the day when ropes would be real ropes, but it would serve their purposes.

In truth, Macintosh was a bit... If not nervous or apprehensive or even unsure, at the very least INTERESTED. He was a strong guy, but what Shiny had that he didn’t was training. Shining Armor had learned to box in the most high-quality gyms in Canterlot, while Macintosh, for all his skill, had never really been outside his hometown. He was sure he was the toughest, he’d met travelers from out of town who had challenged the local tough guy and ended up on their backs, but it would still be interesting to see if he really could match up to the best of the best. They’d stepped in the ring together, but Shiny was probably miles better than before anyway. He could spend his days training, while Mac’s days were taken up by farmwork. The difference between their professionalism was clear even in their gear, with Mac wearing ratty olive green gloves old enough to be his grandmother’s (and actually were, in fact,) while Shiny had a pair of the most modern, sleek gloves around, complete with matching mouthguard.

There was no need for a bell to signal the start of the fight, the pair of them were ready at the same time. They stepped up to the center, and lightly touched gloves, before starting to circle. Shiny moved with an impressive, almost exciting grace, the light seeming to glint off of his thighs and hips, and accentuating his tight abs and handsome stomach as well. It was too early to know for sure how he’d fight, but one thing was for certain, he definitely LOOKED like an intimidating opponent.

He moved like one, too. Light on his steps, and with his gloves up in front of his face, ready to catch any incoming punches.

ALMOST any incoming punches, anyway. Big and strong as the guard captain might have been, Mac was bigger and, he was fairly certain, stronger. He knew how to deal with people who could keep up a good guard. The trick wasn’t going around it, but, well... Through. He stepped in, and brought his whole shoulder into the blow, twisting his entire upper body around and throwing a heavy straight punch directly at the head.

Like punching through brick boards, the trick was to aim the punch for something on the other side of the target. In this case, that was Shining Armor’s face, and despite the well-held guard, it was clear the unicorn was not expecting such a literally head-on attack. Rather than bouncing off his gloves, Mac’s punch moved them out of the way like a bulldozer, and his fist impacted straight on into Shiny’s face, sending the other stud reeling backward from the blow.

Big guys tended not to be quick, but big guys tended not to be Big Mac, either. He may not have had the speed of a rainbooming pegasus, but he DID have plenty of quickness in his fighting style. He stepped in after Shiny, even as the unicorn reeled from his blow, and brought the same right hand up under Shiny’s chin with a heavy windmilling uppercut. He caught the stud on the jaw, slamming against it with enough force that it jarred his arm up to his shoulder on impact. He followed the attack up with a hook punch to the side of the head with his left, which sent Shiny stumbling away from him like a nerd bumped against by a jock in the hallway.

Mac didn’t even bother following the attack up. It hardly felt necessary, at this point, Shiny was tough but he was in control here, and he didn’t want to allow himself even a minor second of weakness. While the blue-haired unicorn shook his head, clearly trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head, Mac rubbed his right shoulder with the left glove, working out some of the tension from the impact of Shining’s face against his glove. As he did, of course, he kept his eyes on his opponent. Never want to look away during a fight, after all, even if your opponent was clearly dazed and several steps away. Fortunately, Shiny hardly seemed like he was about to make a blazing comeback at that very moment, at least.

“Wow,” the guard captain gasped, shaking his head a little, “Wow, uh... You really hit pretty hard.”

“Eeeyup,” Mac nodded.

“Alright,” Shiny shrugged, rolling his shoulders, “Let’s go!”

Shining Armor stepped forward, his gloves up. He was smart, that much Mac would have to admit, he wasn’t about to try to block him full-force again. Macintosh waited, letting Shining Armor step closer and set himself up, rather than trying to force something that wasn’t there.

Mac watched as the unicorn stayed just outside of his range, looking for the right place to strike. It was the right move, of course, at least if you wanted to avoid taking a punch that felt like a cannonball straight to the face. On the other hand, this match wasn’t going to end without Shining Armor throwing a punch or two, so he would have to get in range. All Mac would have to do was wait, and if there was one thing the red stallion was, it was patient.

Once again, Mac’s deceptive speed for his size came into play. While Shiny looked for an opening, Mac stood still, waiting for him to get just that half-step too close... And once he did, he stepped in like a lightning strike and threw a quick hammering straight right at the base of Shining Armor’s horn. On a lesser unicorn, it would have been a knockout blow. Even in Shining Armor’s case, it was enough to rock him, sending him stumbling away from the red stud.

Mac didn’t follow up, either. He was strong and fast for his size, but that didn’t mean he had infinite cardio. When you’re seven feet tall, there’s only so much cardio you can have, only so much your body can do to pump the blood through the veins, and he had no intention of making any unnecessary movements. With Shiny still reeling from the blows that he’d thrown, this was, as the old expression went, Big Mac’s fight to lose. He had no intention of losing it by overexerting himself.

That said, being too cautious could be a problem too. Shiny recovered faster than he’d expected and stepped back in, throwing rapid, hard punches against Mac’s chest and sides. He was a bit surprised by the speed, but as far as the power went, well... The fact that Shiny had been repeatedly smashed in the head by now showed. There was power in them, most guys would be reeling and backing away, but as hard as they were, Mac didn’t need to back off. He could absorb them, letting Shiny punch himself out... Before Mac decided to do the same.

While Shining Armor was busy beating his fists against the brick-shaded wall that was Mac’s chest, his head was wide open, and Mac was able to swing a forceful, crushing hook to the side of the unicorn’s head. It was a powerful blow, reverberating through the empty barn, and Shiny fell to the ground in an instant, collapsing into a helpless heap in front of Macintosh.

“One... Two...” Big Mac started the count, watching as Shiny struggled to his feet. He got to his hands and knees first, using that position to push himself up, even overbalancing and staggering back a little bit from the effort.

“You sure you don’t wanna stop?” Big Mac asked.

Shiny shook his head, “Hell no. If I can get to my hands and knees, I’m still in the fight!” The young guardsman smiled and stepped in again.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. If that was the case, well, then the one thing that you COULDN’T call Shining Armor was crazy. He stepped in, and Mac tried to step up and throw the same sort of crushing counter he had before, but Shiny ducked easily under the blow and rose up with a cross punch that hit Mac on the side of the head.

The blow may not have been as hard as the ones he was throwing (or the ones he took the few times he accidentally got between his sister’s hooves and the trees when she was bucking apples) but it sure didn’t tickle, either. The guardsman’s glove smashed against the side of his head, just behind the eye. That was the thing about being a trained fighter, even if you didn’t hit as hard, you knew where to throw the hits for maximum effect, and the blow was enough to send Mac reeling and make him hear ringing in his ears as he got knocked away. He saw a smile on Shining Armor’s face, a pretty good sign, it seemed, that the other fighter was feeling a fair bit more confident now that he’d struck a blow of his own. Mac would have felt confident if he could make a punch that light hurt that bad, too. He was going to need to be careful. It may have come more from technique than power, but a good shot from Shiny could take him out of the bout.

The situation had been reversed. Before, Macintosh had been the one controlling the ring and forcing Shiny to try to get in and get a hit that he could punish. Now it was the other way around, that hook had sent Macintosh stumbling away and left Shiny in control of the bout. Mac would have to be careful about how he got in. A boxing match was like a fighting game, in a way, the only thing you got out of getting overly aggressive and rushing in blind was being knocked out flat on your back. Get too aggressive, get punished.

While the situation had been switched in most ways, there was one very notable and relevant way it hadn’t. Big Mac still had a reach advantage. He and Shiny stepped in and both went for a haymaker straight at the same time, but while that attack could have stopped shiny in his tracks before he could touch Mac, Shiny trying to use it to push his opponent away and punish meant that Mac was able to connect as well. The two stud’s gloves smashed into each other's faces with an incredible force. Shining Armor was forced to back off by the pure impact of Mac’s glove.

Macintosh was not. He had plenty of stamina and endurance as well as pure muscle and size, so when Shiny hit him, he could brush it off. Yes, it was a dazer of a hit, but it wasn’t like he would be taken down by it, and after he’d seen what Shiny could do, he couldn’t LET himself be pulled out of position.

Rather than backing off, Mac stepped in and followed up his attack for the second time that match, throwing a low hook to the belly. Shiny, clearly, had not been expecting this level of aggression from the normally relaxed red stud and didn’t have his hands in position to block. Mac’s glove slammed into Shining Armor’s belly, crushing up against the abs, and pushing up under the lungs. He heard an audible ‘Whoof’ from the white-and-blue stud, and he knew his attack had worked to perfection. The air was completely driven from Shining Armor’s body on impact, and the guard captain was stopped in his tracks.

Most of him, anyway. There was still a little bit of momentum in Shining Armor’s body and the captain of the Equestrian royal guard slumped forward against Macintosh’s body. His cheek pressed to Big Mac’s chest, and his arms fell down to his own sides, only loosely managing to clasp around Big Mac’s hips. Macintosh looked down at his opponent. In a typical boxing match, this would have been a clinch, a boxer using his opponent’s body to try to stop the momentum and recover some stamina. It wasn’t traditional boxing, though, and besides, Mac suspected if he stepped back, his opponent would simply collapse to the ground.

He didn’t want that, though. He was having too much fun. Sure, his power was turning it pretty one-sided, but it wasn’t often he got the chance to get in the ring with a guy who could take even one punch from him, much less several and keep going. He’d give Shiny a couple seconds to recover, get back on his feet so to speak before he got back to the battering.

After long enough that he probably at least got the oxygen back in his lungs, Mac pressed his hands to Shining Armor’s chest, and pushed, trying to get enough space between them to tee up a real heavy haymaker.

Shining Armor didn’t seem to have had enough time for it, though. As Mac pushed and took his small step backward, Shiny simply fell down to one knee, balancing on the other foot and hand, head down and gasping. With the two studs nude and covered in sweat, it would have been easy to mistake Shiny’s position for a far more subservient one than “Boxing Opponent.” Mac interrupted his planned attack, putting his hands on his hips and looking down at the white and blue boxer.

“Havin’ trouble there sh-OOOOOF!” Mac started to ask, but Shining Armor interrupted the question with an uppercut. He kicked off his back leg and launched his whole body in the air, putting every ounce of muscle from the biceps to the ball of the foot into delivering a crushing uppercut blow to Macintosh. There was a reason that the first rule of boxing was to always keep your guard up, and it went double in the less formal matches around Ponyville or Canterlot. Mac was knocked back by the blow, his ears ringing on impact.

Shiny smiled, back on his feet, and pounded his gloves together while Mac tried to deal with the results of the blow. “Learned that one from my sister,” Shiny gave him a roguish grin.

Mac was too dazed to argue as Shining Armor pushed on his chest and shoved him back. He still had the strength to stay on his feet for now, no dropping to his knees, but he was too dazed to protect himself much either. He could tell Shiny was using the distance and the separation to prepare for the same type of overpowering haymaker attack that Big Mac had been planning to pull out, and he was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to be able to get his gloves up in time to block it either.

Shiny didn’t give him much of a chance to recover from the situation, either. Mac knew he had to be on his last legs, but the last legs were still legs, and this particular set of legs was fast and well-equipped to follow up the attack.

Blocking wasn’t an option, but bashing was. Heavy counterpunches had worked for Mac so far, after all, and there was no need to fix a tractor that still ran. He couldn’t plan the attack too well, but he had the muscle to let strength substitute for technique, and he knew that at this point, there was no chance that Shiny was in a state where he could quickly adjust to an incoming blow. Mac dropped his shoulder and drove a second belly punch into Shining Armor’s abs.

It ended the same way it had the first time. Shiny suddenly went limp and collapsed. This time, Mac didn’t intend to allow the blue and white stud to use him as a crutch to keep standing either. As soon as he felt the exhale that came from the crushing blow, he stepped backward, and let Shiny fall to the mat, catching himself, if only barely, on his hands and knees.

Mac looked down at him. The panting, struggling unicorn presented an unexpected conundrum. On the one hand, his instincts as both a fighter and a guy who didn’t want to do TOO much damage to someone who was both Equestria’s first line of defense AND the older brother of one of his sister’s best friends. Even if an invasion of bugs or monsters didn’t get to Mac after that, he was pretty sure Applejack would, and she wouldn’t be polite enough to stand there and box. Or be unskilled enough to be this easy a win if she did.

On the other hand, Shiny had shown his willingness to take advantage of Macintosh’s kindness once already, and letting him get ready to get going again could lead to another crushing uppercut that would be the LAST thing Mac would benefit from at this point in the match. He decided to leave the decision in the hands of his opponent.

“You okay there?”

Shiny brought himself to both knees, hands on his hips and gasping for breath, “Yeah, oh yeah, for sure,” he nodded, “I’m fine, could go all night.”

Mac was skeptical. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had said that to him only to immediately be proven wrong. Then again, technically the main qualification amateurs like them used for whether or not someone was completely out was whether they said they were ready, and Shiny HAD said that if he wasn’t on his back, he wasn’t out.

He was skeptical, but Shiny knew Shiny best, and if he wanted to keep going, fine. Macintosh shrugged, stepped in, and drove a turning hook heavily into the side of the kneeling stallion’s head. The impact was loud enough to knock dust from the roof’s supports as Shining Armor collapsed down to the mat.

“One, Two, Three,” Macintosh started counting, watching Shining Armor to see if he was likely to be planning any sudden comeback attacks. It was pretty safe to say that, unless there was some great foreign martial art that involved rear leg muscle spasms, Shiny was pretty completely and convincingly KO’d.

“Four, five, six,” Mac continued, watching Shiny on the ground still. There wasn’t so much as an inch of movement, or at least none that he felt he could safely call voluntary. Drool was pooling under Shining Armor’s muzzle, and his head lay flat on the side like he was taking a long nap. Of course, Mac supposed, in a way he was. He’d be up and about soon, though, and hopefully not TOO pissed off about what had happened.

“Seven, eight, nine,” he kept the count and kept his eyes on the unconscious stallion. He was well convinced there would be no comebacks at this point, the unicorn was out like a light.

“Ten,” he ultimately concluded, and kneeled down behind Shiny, rolling the unicorn on his back. Shining Armor was dead weight, but it wasn’t exactly the world’s most difficult task to accomplish with Macintosh’s power taken into consideration. He took off his glove, pressed his fingers to Shining Armor’s neck to take his pulse.

He may have been dead weight, but he wasn’t a dead body. Stunned and knocked around a bit by the punches, but he would be fine soon enough. The rest of the body looked intact, slightly bruised but no serious damage or swelling on the inside or out that he could see, and Mac had, over his time, gotten pretty good at analyzing unconscious stallions who’d just been on the wrong end of a boxing match.

Still, it was only polite to give him a hand...

It had been a slow day at Ponyville Central Hospital. Of course in a rural community like this one, there were really only two types of day, the ones where things were slow and life was good, and the ones where some pony had had an unfortunate encounter with some farming equipment and everything was a matter of life and death. Nurse Redheart, naturally, preferred the first type. Especially on days when she was assigned to the ER.

A large shadow darkened the entrance door, and she saw a silhouette of someone standing outside, carrying another (clearly male, based on the bits of anatomy still in the silhouette) she could see in front of him like the classic Ponieta statue. For a moment, her breath caught in her throat, worried that the day was about to become suddenly, horribly interesting.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw who it was, the massive farm stallion, one glove still on, carrying an unconscious and mostly limp (except the best part) Shining Armor in his hands.

“Oh, it’s just you, Mac. You know where to put him, right?” She asked.

“Eeyup,” the red stallion answered, walking into the ward and depositing Shining Armor on his back on a bed, with Redheart following behind and enjoying the view (hey, flirting with patients may be a problem, but there was nothing wrong with flirting with the reason they were there.)

She looked over Shiny, shining a light in his eyes and measuring his reactions, “Eyes seem to be responding anyway... Nerves are alright. He’ll be fine. But you probably did most of that already, didn't you.”

“Eeyup.”

She smiled, filling out his chart, “Plenty of bruises I’m noticing,” she said as she wrote in the blank spaces.

“Eeyup.”

“More on you than him, too.” She added.

“Eeyup.”

“As usual.”

“Eeyup~” He sounded a bit more proud that time. She smiled warmly at him, then looked back to the patient, double-checking his responses and pulse.

“Heh, you got him good, I’ll say that,” she chuckled, “Think he might actually remember this time?”

Big Mac paused, and a look of concern came over him, “Think I oughta write him a note?”

She considered the question, and then laughed, “Nah, I gotta do SOMETHING. Besides,” she looked up at him, “I like the view when you do.”

Mac somehow blushed even redder, “Eeeyup...” He looked down and shuffled his feet.

“Alright,” she laughed and waved him off, “You can head home, I got him for now. See Tuesday.”

“Friday,” Mac answered, “AJ’s party’s on Friday.”

“Yeah,” she answered, “But the Wonderbolts are dropping by for a visit on Tuesday.”

Mac nodded, “Seeya Tuesday,” he turned to leave.

She smiled, “Oh, and Mac?” she asked.

“Eeyup?” He answered.

“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. Save that for Sugar Belle~”

“Eeyup~” He practically skipped out the door, and she got back to work. Sometimes, slow days could be nice.