The place was called Butterfly Island. It was once the crown jewel of Manehattan’s industrial sector. Rows upon rows of factories flanked by rows upon rows of cheap, affordable housing. Every house had a lawn, every lawn had a white picket fence, and every white picket fence faced a chainlink one, that separated work and home and yet kept them so wonderfully close for working-class ponies. It didn’t take too long for the city’s support of the place to crumble. Deseperate ponies still moved in every now and again, hoping for a paying job and decent living, and time after time they were turned away by the massive, oppressive factories. Alcoholism blossomed. Drugs soon became involved. Soon, the place to be was the place to avoid if you didn’t want to get mugged, assaulted, or ravished by the criminals that preyed on everypony who had a stirrup to their name and recruited anyone who didn’t have a single bit.
I lived here once. I was called Bon Bon then.
My father was a pegasus who once worked in the factories there. He lost his job, and continued to work on-and-off. He fenced copper, he picked up trash, he did anything he could to keep his little family afloat. My mother was an earth pony who baked. Good Goddess, she could bake. Butterfly Island didn’t have a baker that was better. My little brother was, and still is, thankfully, a pegasus who wanted to keep away from everything happening around him. Somehow, we kept our noses clean. Not a drop of alcohol or a single sodden syringe in the entire house. The rest of the block was cleaning up, too. We were that little ray of sunshine in a part of the city that was as dark and brooding as the skyline that loomed over us. Our neighborhood liked us. The ones around us didn’t.
We tried to live quietly. We really did. Life was tough enough without all of the drama that surrounded us. Dad somehow was able to work enough magic to do enough jobs to keep us going. He and my brother argued a lot. I guess that’s sort of why he ended up joining a gang. He started somehow having money, and he’d tell our parents that he got a job, but we all know what he was really doing. He would wear this blue kerchief at school, and he’d slip students these little packages. Mom and I didn’t say anything for a long time. I was told not to get involved, and Mom was thankful for the extra cash, because sometimes Dad would go weeks without a job. He told me one day, like we all didn’t know already, confessing it like it was some kind of well-kept secret. “You should join up,” he told me. “I’ll take you down to the boss at the warehouse. We’ll get you all kitted out and stuff. You’ll be safer, Bonnie.”
I didn’t say anything to him. He must have thought I was disappointed in him. He must have not cared, because he didn’t change much afterwards. Hell, he got worse. He started pushing even harder, started getting into scuffles, stopped trying to be one of the bright lights on our block. He dropped out, because he couldn’t keep up with his grades. Dad kept trying to kick him out of the house, but Mom wouldn’t have anything of it. He was still family. We couldn’t let our family tear apart. It was the only thing that kept us together.
He kept leaving the house late at night, over, and over again. He’d come home, drunk, or high, or both, and he and Dad would fight again, and Mom would play referee. Our family was fractured, though, and she was only acting as the glue. Then one night, he didn’t come back. It took a while for one of his friends to come along and tell us that he wasn’t ever going to come back. There was supposed to be a turf fight, and it turned out that his group and another one from the same gang ended up meeting one another, and there were several bodies before they realized through their drug-ridden haze what had happened. My brother was one of them. The fracture had finally broken for good, like a crack in the bowl of a meerschaum pipe. Nobody went to sleep that night. The bright light strip had lost one of it’s children.
When sunrise came, we went back to normal, and I couldn’t help but think how fucked up that was. Dad went to work one of his jobs. Mom stayed at home and tried to keep things normal. I went to school. There were other colts pushing drugs now, some with different colors of kerchief. There was a fight on the school grounds afterwards. I’d had enough of it.
I don’t know how I got the idea to do what I did. I just remembered my brother telling me that the gang hid out in one of the warehouses. So when I was leaving school, I went down the factory side of the street. It was like the set of a play. The skyline of Manehattan was as glitzy and colorful as ever, and the rows and rows of abandoned factories were as dirty, dark and dangerous as they could be. It was a bright June day. Summer was close, but the weather for it had come early, and the sidewalk was red hot against my hooves. It was like walking across burning ashes. Even my horseshoes weren’t enough to totally take away the heat underneath them.
Luck was on my side that day, I suppose. Two stallions in blue kerchiefs just happened to be slinking their way into one of the holes in the fences, trying to be inconspicuous, but were totally visible all the same. I stood on the sidewalk, the warmth of it seemingly cooking my hooves like a giant asphalt frying pan, and watched them. I wanted to talk to their boss. I wanted him gone. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t angry, or even upset. I was annoyed, like a lion is when surrounded by flies that peck and bite at his flesh. There wasn’t an ounce of contempt in my gaze as it followed them into the warehouse. There was only purpose. There was only the idea of what I had to do right then and there.
I slipped under the fence. Superheated pavement gave way to burning gravel. The factory in front of me was covered in gang signs, the courtyard a mess of litter and rotting wooden crates. I trotted towards the place, and it seemed to grow larger and larger, eventually eclipsing the skyline, eventually seeming like a tall, inpenetrable fortress. There was a slight tinge of fear in my heart. Rational thinking came back to me for a moment. But it fled within seconds. Ponies from Butterfly Island had been doing the sensible thing to do in their circumstances for too long. It was time to do something stupid.
I opened the door. The first floor was almost empty, barring a couple of ponies cooking at hodge-podge lab tables. They wore gas masks, and didn’t notice me coming in over the sounds of bubbling poison that they were making. Some of them were hardly yearlings. They were doing what made sense to them. They were trying to make money the only way they figured was reliable. One of them looked back at me, then continued what he was doing. I decided that if he wasn’t going to bother me, I wasn’t going to bother him. There was a staircase onto a catwalk, and on that catwalk were about a dozen and a half ponies in blue kerchiefs, the ones I had followed in taking the last few steps up to join their brothers. I took a deep breath, and made my way to the staircase myself.
It didn’t take long for one to notice me. He was a pegasus, grey coat, charcoal mane. He glanced at his fellow bangers, and they only gave a shrug, getting on all fours, a few of them hovering over the walkway.
“Hey,” he said. “This ain’t no place for you to be.”
I looked into his eyes. His brow furrowed, and those yellow orbs narrowed. I started going up the stairs to the catwalk, and he landed a few steps above me. “Hey!” he said. “You got a problem or somethin’? Do I need to spell it out for ya?”
I swallowed. “I want to talk to your boss.”
The pegasus blinked a few times. “Say what?”
“Your boss. I want to talk to him.”
He spluttered, then laughed. It was an ugly laugh, the kind of cackle formed by years of drugs and a lifetime of anger and bitterness.
“That’s rich! You aughta turn around, girl. Boss man don’t speak to any random bitch off the street.”
I kept walking up. He stood his ground, his wings flaring outwards.
“Hey! You deaf?”
“No,” I said.
“Then scram. I ain’t gonna hit no mare.”
He widened his stance, and my muscles tensed. My earlier estimate of a dozen and a half seemed a bit small now. There had to be close to two dozen ponies on the catwalk now. Mostly pegasi, but with a few earth ponies, and a unicorn or two. I briefly wondered if I should have been trying this. If this was going to end with me dead, or close enough to dead that I wouldn’t ever be the same again. My brother had been an ass in his final days. It was almost as if he had been asking to die. But I wasn’t doing this for him. I wasn’t doing this for anypony that had died because of all of this. I was doing this for the living.
My hoof went upon the step that the pegasus was trying to block with his broad body. Adrenaline coursed through me. My body knew what was about to happen. I hadn’t rehearsed this in my mind at all. I had no preparation. I had no plan. I just wanted to talk to their boss. He reared up, and his forehooves beat the air.
“You dumb little shi–”
My hoof struck like lightning. I had never punched a pony before, but with the way that I struck him in the stomach, I felt as if I had been fighting for years. The wind was knocked out of him, and he started teetering backwards onto the catwalk, and I took that as a sign to keep going. Fight or flight had chosen fight. My other hoof plowed across his cheek, and the force of it was enough to slam his face against the railing, and he almost tripped me over as he started to tumble down the stairs. The catwalk was practically swarming with bodies. I only gave them a cursory glance before they rushed towards me.
The first blow to strike me was from a two-by-four that a pegasus had swung at me. He managed to get a good hit against my shoulder. Pain swept through me, and I stumbled against the side of the railing as more blows came upon me from multiple sources. Hooves and planks struck me over and over, and it was more than enough pain to get me crying out in pain. I struck out blindly, and caught one earth pony across the jaw, and when he reared back from the blow, he pushed his companions aside. I was afforded a little bit of breathing room. Holding onto the railing with my forelegs, I kicked outwards, slamming my rear hooves into the earth pony's gut, then sprang forward to deliver a mighty headbutt. Despite the ringing in my ears, I had the prescence of mind to push his barely-conscious body to the side, sending both him and a unicorn down the stairs in a mass of swearing, tumbling, and yelps of pain. I was belted across the face by a pegasus, who had taken to the air to put more momentum in his blow, and I screamed as I felt my nose crack against his hoof.
My own hooves flailed out blindly, grabbing the pegasus by his left rear foreleg, and he struggled to get me off as another blow from a two-by-four smacked against my back, sending stinging pain through my body. I ignored it, even as it kept beating me down, concentrating on the flying pegasus. His free hoof kicked at my head, giving it a glancing blow once, but soon I was able to leap up and grab him around his middle, using him as a cushion against the metal walkway as we both slammed into it. There was a crack beneath me, and the pegasus howled in pain, and the others hesitated briefly enough for me to rise to my hooves once more, turning around to receive a whack across my head from a pool cue. It cracked against my skull, making my ears ring, making me feel very dizzy all of a sudden, and an earth pony mare came forward and bucked me in the chest, knocking the wind from me.
I collapsed against the stairway, hanging onto the railing, gasping as the earth pony’s hooves once more slammed into my chest. I couldn’t breathe, or at least it felt that way. She must have hit me three or four times, before turning around and attempting to push me off with her forehooves. I let go of the railing in my left hoof, and delivered a kick to her backside, and she stumbled and fell down the stairs. There was no time to celebrate. I narrowly dodged a swing from a hockey stick, and fell to my hooves again, punch-drunkenly rushing the attacker in question, and grabbing him around his neck. He tried to push me off, using his weapon as leverage, but I held fast, letting out a shout as I threw him to the side and punched him across the face. My hooves were warm before, but now they were wet, and as the stallion reached to cover his broken nose, I struck again, hitting him under his foreleg. As he fell, one of his companions jumped over to deliver a charging punch, and I ducked under him, focusing on the unicorn mare behind him, only hearing his scream of sudden regret as he fell down the stair behind me, and the sickening crunch as he hit the floor.
The unicorn was smarter. She took advantage of my weariness from fighting the stallion that laid in front of her and bashed the blunt end of a crowbar against my head. I stumbled, as she hit me once more, the corners of my vision going black, flashing colored stars against my vision with every forceful strike. It was too much. With a groan, I collapsed, I gave in for just a moment, but she just kept hitting me, welts already growing under my mane, my head aching with every blow.
It took her a few minutes to realize I wasn’t moving. She stopped, the crowbar still in the air, turning it over to it’s jagged side as she stepped towards me.
“Is she dead?” a voice said behind her.
“You beat the shit outta her with that crowbar,” another said.
“Yeah, like, damn,” yet another said. “She’s gonna be eatin’ out a straw.”
I could hear the unicorn’s hooves mere inches from my head. I spluttered, a tooth falling into my cheek, and those hooves started to back up.
“Hold up…”
I rose to my hooves, slowly, shakily, struggling to get up. My eyes cracked open ever so slightly, and I could see the unicorn’s astonished face. She had as much of an idea of what I was doing as I did, and I let the tooth fall from my mouth, panting breathes falling past my tightened lungs.
She made the hasty decision to swing. I tilted my head to the side, and the blow only grazed past my ear. Here was my chance. I sprung forwards and swung my hooves, catching the unicorn across her horn, causing her to shriek in pain and her magic to drop her weapon behind me. I swung a few more times, slamming my hooves back and forth against her face, forcing her backwards into her fellow ganglings. There was no anger in my blows, and yet, there was a great deal of force behind them. One after another, I kept pounding into her blood-sodden face, until one blow finally knocked her onto her side, leaving a mouth-breathing body that occasionally whimpered in agony. I panted, heavily, and looked forward at the catwalk. There were still so many. I had taken out half of them, but there were still so many. But they could only look at me, stunned, unsure of what to do. It was this uncertainty that gave me the time to turn around and retrieve the crowbar, holding it in my mouth for a mere moment. Two ponies, both of them pegasi, flew up from the catwalk.
“Fuck this,” one of them said, flying off to my side, no doubt fleeing the scene. A small surge of confidence flew through me, and a small laugh shook through my badly beaten body. The other one flew past my other side, but I could hear his wings beating in the air behind me, and I got onto my haunches, putting the crowbar in my hooves.
I turned around to see his rear hoof mere inches from my face, ready to deliver a kick, and I swung out with the crowbar. Even though his hoof collided against my nose, I still heard him scream in pain, and I realized that the crowbar had jammed into his family jewels. His momentum carried us both to the floor, me on my back, and him bouncing against the catwalk a few more times, screaming and hollering as he covered himself. Three others came towards me, two pegasi and a unicorn, and started to wail on my chest and barrel with their weapons. Blow after aching blow pounded into my body, and I could only make little croaks and grunts of pain, pinned down by their constant strikes. The crowbar was still in my hoof, and I swung it upwards, towards the weapons that still slammed against me. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it was enough to cause them to back away, to give me a little bit of breathing space. I stood on three hooves, and swung the crowbar at the first face I saw. It missed, but struck against the one next to it, catching a brawny earth pony off guard. the face that I had missed took matters into his own hooves, and charged me, tackling me to the ground. The crowbar flew from my fatigue-loosened hooves, and started to tumble down the stairs, and I could hear a few grunts and cries from recovering ponies that were unfortunate enough to be struck by the weapon.
The mare holding me down was a unicorn, and she plowed her hooves into my stomach over and over, and I felt as if I was going to throw up. I tried to kick her off of me with my rear legs, but she had come in at an angle that kept them spread apart, unable to do anything but grip her closer as she wailed on my stomach, my chest, my face. I did the only thing that I could have turn, turning over so that I was on top, but that only left me open to a blow to the back of my head from a two-by-four held by the brawny stallion I had struck before. The attack left me dazed, and I stumbled on my hooves. The unicorn took this as a chance to push me off of her, using both of her forelegs to force me off of her body. I didn’t feel the next blow. I was fading in and out of consciousness. Somehow, I was still fighting. Even as blows rained down on me from multiple directions, I was still able to buck out with my back hooves, striking the unicorn mare right in the teeth, taking her down in a frothing mess of blood, teeth, and screams.
I fell against the railing. The brawny stallion tried to push me off the side, but I was having none of it. I bucked him in the shin of his right foreleg, enough to make him stumble. I reached out and grabbed him around the shoulders, and even though he pushed me back against the railing, I still found enough leverage to twist him to the side and bowl him over the edge. Even as he let out a shrill, fillyish scream, I still approached the final four opponents. I didn’t know how many places I was bleeding from, but I knew that my blood was pouring against my left eye, and I tried to blink it away as much as I could. Bruises and welts were all over my body, now aching. There were cuts and splinters everywhere inside of me, oozing blood and pricking into my skin. I realized that I was limping. Immense pain was running up one of my legs. I knew now that it was broken, and that same pain was crying out from a few of my ribs.
There was nothing in my heart but pain. Nothing in my body but aches and stings and stabbings of harsh, unrelenting misery. My mind was muddied from all the blows my head had taken. My mouth was slack, and I could feel loose teeth rattle in my jaw with every single breath. But I was alive. I was still fighting. I looked into the eyes of the four in front of me, and saw fear and anxiety. I didn’t say a word, but they knew well enough to get out of my way, to clear a path to the office in front of me. They put down their weapons, undid their kerchiefs, and brushed past me as they trotted down the catwalk. There had been two dozen before. Now there were none.
I limped to the office, and knocked on the door with my good hoof. A small, wirey stallion answered it, his eyes widening as he caught sight of me. He was dressed rather nicely. A good tie, a clean, white collar, a pair of big-rimmed glasses. He looked past my broken, puffy body to the sight of what must have been his security detail behind me, and swallowed, looking back up at me.
“What do you want?”
I didn’t speak. I didn’t know. My mind was still clouded, my body was still screaming for rest. The answer came out of my mouth before I had thought of it.
“I want you out of town.”
He blinked a few times.
“Are you crazy?”
I looked behind myself, seeing the groaning bodies, the pain that I had caused, and looking over it all with no regret.
“Yes.”
The small stallion narrowed his eyes. “Listen here, little lady. This operation is a lot bigger than what you see here. The higher-ups are gonna hear about this. They’re gonna hear about you. And by the time they’re done with you, you’ll be begging for them to kill ya. Do you realize that?”
“Yes. I still want you out of town. And your whole ‘operation’, too.”
His eyes widened again. “Well. I hope you bring an army, little lady, because you’re gonna need a lot more than what you brought to run us outta town.”
“I have my hooves. Those are enough.”
He chuckled. “Strong words.”
He closed the door. I knocked again, but he didn’t answer. I wasn’t thinking straight enough, nor was I strong enough, to bust it down.
I turned around, and trotted to leave. Some of the ponies I had beaten tried to reach out to me with their hooves, but I stepped over and around them, stumbling at times when they got a grip. It occured to me that I might have needed to go to the hospital. As I reached the foot of the stairs, there was a massive pile-up of barely-conscious ponies, and I was forced to walk upon them like a groaning, wailing, self-soiling carpet of the beaten and the dying. I didn’t feel anything. I don’t know why I didn’t. All I knew was that I had done something, and that maybe it wasn’t the best idea I had ever had. I couldn’t think much more than that. My brain wanted to shut down. It wanted to recover, to rest. And as I reached the bottom of the pile, and stumbled to the ground, I felt everything go dark.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. My leg was in a cast. My body was covered in bandages. Nopony was there to see me. It was late at night. My Dad was probably out working, and my mother was likely mourning at home. Nothing had changed. I had badly beaten a whole bunch of ponies, but I hadn’t changed anything. A whole lot of wasted time and effort, it seemed. I laid my head against the pillow, and let out a long, loud groan. Everything hurt, and it was for nothing.
I turned my head to the nightstand. There was something on it. Gold. Shining. Instinctively, my hoof reached out, and picked it up. It was a golden token of some kind, with an upside-down horseshoe engraved upon it, and an inscription that was some Old Equish language I couldn’t read. I turned the coin over, and on the other side, somepony had attached a note.
“The inscription says ‘they who fight monsters must fight as monsters do’,” it said. “You have the capacity to fight monsters, Bon Bon. Give us a call.”
I laid my head back again. I would call them later. For now, I had to rest.
Author's Note
