Damned Are the Guilty

With a pounding in her head and vomit in her mouth Twilight slowly cracked her eyes open, finding herself under a bright light that made her immediately close her eyes once more. Pain flooded through her skull as she slowly forced herself to sit up, gaining her the attention of a pony in a nurses uniform.

"Easy there, Princess. you should be resting," the nurse said as she walked over to Twilight with gauze in her hoof, placing in on Twilight's nose. Twilight grunted as she pushed the pony away from her, before she rubbed the back of her hoof across her nose to see that she had some dried blood there. Twilight fell off the bed and forced herself to stand, but it wasn't easy with the pounding headache she had or the fact that she tasted vomit. "Go easy, Princess. You took quite the blow to the head earlier."

"That human...that murderer. He did this," Twilight grunted with pain as she glanced at the nurse, who was keeping her distance. "Where did the human go? Come on, massive guy in black armor with a skull painted on the front of his suit? He can't be that hard to find."

"Nopony knows, Princess. After he...dealt with the centaur's and knocked you out, he vanished into the side alleys. The Royal Guard and police ponies have been searching for him all afternoon, but he's nowhere to be found," the nurse informed Twilight, who grunted her disapproval before heading for the exit to her hospital room. "Princess Twilight, you should be resting. Aside from the head injury the human gave you, you used a great deal of magic in the battle with the centaur's. You need rest."

"What I need is to find this human, throw him in the strongest dungeon we have and then go to Tartarus and see if Tirek is still being kept there," Twilight replied in a pained tone, getting the nurses eyes to widen slightly.

"Tirek? He's...he's returned?"

"Maybe, maybe not. The centaur's said that there goal was to bring him back from Tatarus and maybe earn his favor," Twilight told the pony before her body began to glow with magical light. "But if he's still there I need to know. And if he's not...then a human with a few guns on the loose will be the least of our problems."

Twilight vanished in a flash of magic as she said this, appearing in the downtown area where she had battled with the centaur's and the human. A glance up at the sky told her that she had been out through the night, meaning that the human had a good amount of time to get away. The cleanup crew and the guards all bowed to Twilight as she appeared, but aside from a head nod to show that she noticed them Twilight ignored them as she got to work.

She began to scan the ground and the buildings with a magical light from her horn, searching for anything that would lead her to the human. Twilight noticed that all three of the bodies were gone along with the blood, making her glad that they were. She was fairly certain that if she saw the dead centaurs again she would throw up. She motioned for some of the guards to come with her as she began to scan back alleys, having them search through the trash that littered the alleyways while she continued to scan with her magic.

She then shivered slightly when she saw a bit of blood shimmering in the morning light and immediately she was back with the centaurs, back watching them be brutally executed by a man with no soul. 'At least, I don't think he has one,' Twilight thought to herself as she recalled the few times she had actually managed to look into the humans eyes, eyes that were devoid of emotion. Eyes as black as a void. She then scoffed at herself as she remembered the line the human had said about his daughter.

'He did that just to get me to lower my guard,' Twilight thought while shaking her head at herself, unable to believe that she had fallen for his lie. "And he had to have been lying. His eyes were just as black even when he mentioned his daughter, if he even has one. I won't fall for it again. But he's tough. I threw him into that wall with enough force to knock him out and he got up without a problem. Gonna have to remember that," she said aloud.

"He was also well trained, Princess," one of the guards said, getting the princess to turn to look at the guard who had spoken. "I watched him fight with the two centaurs that tried to get away from the fight with you. He was brutal and merciless, but also efficient. Precision shots, skilled evasion, and an utter disregard for their lives. He's had training and most likely years of doing what he does. Be careful. He does not seem like the kind of being that would give you a second chance to cross him."

"Just what I need. Only a few days ago my friends and I save the world from a psychotic sphinx, only to have to deal with Tirek extremists and a bloodthirsty human," Twilight growled to herself, but loudly enough to that the guards had to pretend that they weren't listening. "I'm getting so sick of this. For every crazy I change or help find a better way it seems three more pop up. Sigh...come on, let's try a different alley. If we can't find anything there I'm going to send a letter to the princesses and see if they can help me with this."

The guards all looked at each other as Twilight began to move out of the alleyway, none of them sure what to say to the other. One of them made a motion to stay silent about what they had heard and the others nodded in agreement before walking after the princess, each of them secretly hoping that they wouldn't find the human with no regard for life.

.45

With a small grunt Frank woke up, shaking his head slightly to clear his thoughts before he pushed himself back up to his feet. His eyes adjusted to the brightness of the morning almost instantly and the moment he was ready he began to move. Frank had taken shelter for the night in a condemned building near the edge of the city, having spent most of the night searching for a place that would allow him to hide while he had slept. Most of the time Frank didn't need much sleep, but between what was going on in the world he found himself in combined with how many sleepless nights he had spent hunting down the mutants, even Frank's endurance needed a break.

'Four hours of rest. Not the worst I've gotten,' Frank thought to himself as he swiftly moved to one of the windows with dirty and shattered glass in it, peering through at the city below. After his actions during the previous day he expected there to be guards and security everywhere, but to his surprise and slight relief he found that, aside from a few patrols, it was business as usual in the streets. 'Either they're dumber than I thought or they don't see me as a threat yet. That's not smart.'

Frank moved towards the stairwell which looked like it was about to collapse at any moment, going over what he had learned the previous day in his mind. 'Two items for me to deal with. The first is that Princess Twilight confirmed for me that there was a way back to the human world from this world. But with the multiverse it could be a world where all the humans look like fish. The other is that the centaur's are trying to resurrect their boss, a demon from hell if what they said was right. Do I stay here and deal with the ponies while trying to stop this demon? Or do I go home and continue my mission?'

Frank recalled the sound of screaming. The sounds of his family dying. He remembered the horror that had never left his soul or the rage at his own helplessness. Then he remembered holding his little girl in his arms and looking into her eyes which were always smiling, except they never would again. He gritted his teeth and steeled his resolve, the answer becoming clear.

'I'll kill the demon. I'll make sure it burns in the deepest pits of this worlds hell. It's bad enough crime is taking my world from me. I won't let crime and evil take a world my daughter would love.' Frank decided to skip the stairs and leapt down three flights of stairs to the bottom of the building. He hit the ground and rolled back up, a single grunt being all he would allow the pain to get out of him. 'I doubt those were the only centaurs that will be trying to resurrect their boss. Cults always have a larger following than most would think. I need to find a place to get started.'

Knowing that he couldn't be seen by anything, Frank stuck to the shadows and made sure that he kept his painted skull to the wall. While there was a good amount of ponies in the streets, as well as a few pegasi that made Frank raise an eyebrow, he found that there wasn't as many citizens as he'd thought there'd be in such a large city. Maybe they weren't a morning species.

A quick break in the pattern gave Frank a chance to run across the street and into another alley. He glanced behind him to make sure that he hadn't been seen and when he was certain that he hadn't, he continued to move through the buildings. The only pony that managed to see him was an old stallion laying in a heap in one of the alleys, but after glancing at the armored human with the skull on his chest, the pony rolled over and figured he was still dreaming.

'Alright. First I need to see if they have a base or anything of the like in this city. Unless this was a random attack, they should have a base somewhere, preferably away from any security or powerful, magical alicorns,' Frank thought to himself as he started to reach the city limits, looking around for any warehouses or run down buildings like the one he had been in. 'I'll beat the information out of them and then find a way to keep Tirek down for good.'

A commotion down by one of the warehouses drew the attention of Frank, who slowly began to creep towards the building through crates that had been set up around the area. When he got to the end he saw something that made him smile, as rare as it was. There were a pair of centaurs standing at near the entrance of the warehouse, both of them talking to a vortex of darkness that was floating in front of the both of them. Inside the vortex all Frank could see was a pair of red eyes, ones that even made the Punisher shiver slightly.

'So that's Tirek. Gives me the same feeling like I'm standing next to Thor,' Frank thought to himself before he unslung the assault rifle from his back and took perfect aim at the centaurs, switching back and forth between both of their heads. He then settled for the centaur on the right and squeezed his finger on the trigger. 'Wonder what Tirek's going to think after he sees this?'

BANG!