Kill the five

The car ran across the dark road. The sun had set and the city was covered in hard black shadows. Only the orange lights coming of the streetlights showed the hard concrete and asphalt that made the streets and buildings.

Apple Bloom leaned back in her seat and tilted her hat over her eyes. She hadn´t said a word to the pony in the car with her since he started driving. She was brooding, thinking, planning. Velvet had been quite thorough with the details on the building that Cinder would be in. He was hiding, alone, in an apartment building next to police station. And Cinder had already paid them of. “Not that it will make any difference.” Apple Bloom grumbled quietly to herself.

“What´s that you said?” The stallion driving the car asked. He was old and grey with lashes of white hair in his yellow mane.

“Nothing.” Apple Bloom replied without looking at him.

“Are you always this grumpy or is just when you’re about to kill something?” He stopped for a traffic light. The tone of his voice gave Apple Bloom a wave of nostalgia.

“Not always.” She leaned forward and stared at the road ahead. Only two of the five immortals remained. Her vengeance would be satisfied. Then she would go back.

The car started moving again. “Just out of curiosity, how long have you been hunting Cinder and his mates?”

“About to twenty years I think.”

“Hmph. Old grudges burn the hardest.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“No. Just a saying I´ve come across. Personally I´ve never waited for more than a year to settle my grudges.”

“But you´ve settled more than one?”

“Far more.”

“Well, just out of curiosity, what were those grudges about?”

“Everything from minor thefts to massacres.”

“Any one of them stick out?” Apple Bloom looked at his eyes. He had gloomy green eyes, withered by age that looked unflinchingly at the road.

“Only one.”

“What was it about?”

“Similar to yours. A dead family member.” Apple Bloom was about to ask him to stop but the old stallion kept talking. “Some jackasses murdered my little brother.”

“And what did you do?”

“Ended their lives in a brutal fashion.”

“I´ve ended lives in brutal fashions.” And she was intending to do more.

“What good would it do for you to hear about how I avenged my younger brother?”

“I don´t know. I´m just asking.”

“Well it would make me uncomfortable talking about it.”

Apple Bloom found his choice of words strange. She imagined talking about her family dying and quickly felt a cold lump growing in her stomach. Then she thought about all the ponies she´d killed. She imagined their faces as best she could. Some she remembered more brightly then others, but none of them made her the least bit uncomfortable. If anything it made her feel happy, proud of her accomplishment.

“How long do we have left?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Ten minutes maybe.”

Apple Bloom shifted her hat. “Can ask you something?”

“As long as it´s not about my brother; feel free.”

“Have you ever loved somepony?” Apple Bloom wasn´t sure why she picked that question. She was planning on asking him about just that but when he put that subject of the table, she had to pick something and that was the first question that came to her mind.

“You mean loved as a family member or as a lover?”

Now she knew what to ask. “As a lover.”

“Twice. The first one may have been more of a young stallion´s delusions than actual love though. What about you? You ever love a pony like a lover?”

“No.” Apple Bloom shook her head.

“Well here´s some wisdom from an old stallion. Love is like fire. It can soothe you, comfort you, make the coldest and darkest of times warm and enlightened. But it can burn you, scorch you, turn everything that you hold dear into endless plains of ash.”

“You´ve experienced both?”

“Experienced the later one on my first time. The former on the second one.”

“You still together?”

“We split up a few years ago. Not too surprising though, we had some rough times for a long while. It was time to end it.”

“It went down that well?”

The stallion chuckled. “Better than the first one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let´s just say that I ended up giving her a crash course in flying. And she wasn´t a Pegasus.”

Apple Bloom found herself laughing. “Good one.”

“Planning on doing something similar for Cinder?” He glanced at Apple Bloom for a brief moment.

“Not exactly. Quite the opposite actually. I´m gonna give him a fresh pair of wings.”

“How?”

“That´s between him and me.”

“Well, I won´t dive any deeper then.”

“Thanks.”

The car turned a corner and stopped. They parked a block before a large apartment building. Next to it Apple Bloom could see the blue lights coming of the sing over the police building.

“We´re here.” He turned off the engine and looked at Apple Bloom.

Apple Bloom looked back at him. His green eyes were kind and warm. “Thanks for the ride.” She said while climbing out of the car.

His eyes followed the vengeful mare as she walked down the street, towards the apartment. He picked his phone from the glow compartment. Quickly he dialed a number but stopped before pressing the final digit. His hoof started trembling. He looked back to the road.

Apple Bloom had disappeared.

He tossed the phone to side and sighed. “Fuck me.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I´ve gotten soft. Or stupid.”

The engine started and the stallion drove off into the night.

***

Apple Bloom walked down a narrow alleyway. She would not make the same mistake with Cinder a second time. She walked up to the backdoor that Velvet had told her about, and given the key too.

The lock clicked and the hinges creaked as she opened the door.

He was on the third floor. In apartment 33, if everything that Velvet had told her was to be true. And, for some strange reason, it was.
Two stairs up she found apartment 33. And from the door on apartment 33, a light came peeking out from the under the door. A flickering, shimmering light that was marked by shadows.

Apple Bloom walked up to it silently. She pressed her ear against the wall. She could hear a fire crackling.
With her sword in one hoof and her revolver ready underneath the other, she knocked on the door.

“Who´s there?” Cinder´s voice asked from the other side.

Apple Bloom knocked again.

The door exploded in a burst of splinters.

“If you´re not dead you better answer!” Cinder shouted.

Apple Bloom didn´t answer. She pressed herself against the wall and silently took the sheath of her sword with booth hooves.
Cinder hesitated. He wasn´t sure if he the pony on the other side didn´t answer because they were waiting for him or if he had killed them.
The barrel of his shotgun was still smoking as he pulled the fore-end back and sent a smoking shell into the air.

“Is it you Apple Bloom?”

Her grip on the sword tightened. The free hoof hovered above her revolver.

“Come on, don´t play coy with me. I know you´re out there.”

Apple Bloom took a deep breath. Her hoof pulled the revolver from the holster. It felt heavier and colder than before. “Yeah, it´s me.”

“You, unholy cunt.” Cinder said, baffled by the fact that he was right. “How did you find me-“

She jumped out in front of the door. Her revolver released a flash of fire. The bullet hit Cinder´s shotgun, destroying the barrel in a burst of sparkling hot metal.

Apple Bloom kicked the door open. Cinder only managed to get a glimpse of the vengeful mare´s rage filled, golden brown eyes before she was right up next to him. Her left hoof slammed into his lower jaw, sending his head backwards. Her sheathed sword cracked into his head, sending him down. Apple Bloom followed up the strike by ramming her left hoof straight into his chest like a battering ram.

Cinder was flung backwards. He fell limbless to the floor. A blurry, shape moved around him. Though he couldn´t make out any shapes he knew that it was Apple Bloom looking down on him. She was glaring at him, hateful and bitter. Then she hit on the head with the end of her sword

***

When Cinder woke up his hooves were tied up apart from each other, above him his head. His back hooves were folded and tied to the floor beneath him. The first thing he saw was Apple Bloom sitting down in front of him. Her legs folded, her sword lying on her knees and the fire crackling behind her.

“Why am I still alive?” Cinder asked.

“Because I´m not done with you.”

“You killed Slit-Throat by cutting her neck open. You cracked Hammerhead´s skull open and smashed Noose´s head in.”

“Your point?”

“You didn´t take your time with them. You just killed them and went on your way, so what makes me so special?”

“Do remember what you did to Ma?”

“Probably something involving fire.”

“You burned her alive at a stake. I saw her mane turning into black coals. I saw skin starting to boil in white blisters. I heard her screams.”

“Are you planning on burning me alive as well? Cause I gotta warn you, I´ve survived that in the past.”

“I´m not going to burn you. I´m going to give you a fresh set of wings.”

Suddenly, Cinder´s eyes narrowed. The ropes that held him in place tightened as the Pegasus struggled to break free.
Apple Bloom smirked. “Whats the matter? Did I hit a raw nerve?” She rose with the katana in her hooves. The vengeful mare looked down on Cinder as she walked around him to face his back.

Cinder followed her with his eyes until she moved out of the corner of his eyes. “What are you planning?”

Apple Bloom gripped the handle of her sword and slowly lifted the blade out of the scabbard. The metal scrapped as it exited. She stared at his back. At the two little growth spurts pressing up against his melted skin. The tip of her sword pressed against the base of his neck, on the left side, right next to the spine. The edge cut through the skin and a trickle of blood ran from the wound.

Cinder gasped in pain.

“Go ahead.” Apple Bloom said with a cold, spite full tone. “Scream. It´s only gonna get worse from here.”

Cinder closed his mouth and his eyes. “Go ahead.” He replied. “Do your worst.”

The blade started cutting down his back, along the spine. Down to the bone. Until it reached the base of his back. When that was done Apple Bloom did the same on the right side of his back. Blood dripped from her sword and from Cinder´s back. Apple Bloom took a deep breath and started pulling the skin apart, revealing the muscles, veins and bones beneath.

Cinder´s mouth opened and released a gasp, but no scream. He bit down and stared forward.

With his back laid bare before her, Apple Bloom grabbed Cinder by the shoulder and pushed the blade right into the first rib on his right side. The bones separated and she started chopping the ribs away from the spin.

Cinder stayed quiet. Not even the slightest gasp or wince escaped his lips. But his mouth trembled. It shook and quivered.

Apple Bloom started separating the ribs on the left side. She took her time, pausing in between each cut and bone. But Cinder stayed quiet.

A few long moments later all of the ribs were separated from the spine and Cinder hung from the ropes. Apple Bloom took the bones and started to slowly, push them away from the spine. It took her a solid minute until she could see what the bones were protecting.
She could see the lungs growing and shrinking, she could see the heart beating in between them.

Cinder´s head hung from his body, staring at the ground.

Apple Bloom reached into the huge bleeding holes and took both of the lungs in her hooves. They were warm, wet and pulsing weakly. Carefully she lifted them up and put them over his shoulder, so they looked like the folded wings of a newborn eagle.

Cinder sat completely still. There was not a movement or action coming from his body.

The vengeful mare walked around to face Cinder once more. The pink lungs dripped blood over his chest and shoulder. His head slowly lifted. The orange flames reflected in his azure eyes. He was pale and weak yet a small smile grew on his lips.

Apple Bloom frowned at the sight of him.