Your spurs clink noisily as you walk into the old town, a tumbleweed passing you by to indicate how in the middle of nowhere this town is. As you continue to walk into the dusty town you eye the saloon, having been in the dry desert for about a week surviving off of cactus water has made you yearn for something different, of the alcohol variety. As you make your way over to the saloon the wooden doors burst open and a drunk stallion flies out, hitting the dirt right in front of you pretty hard. As he tries to collect himself he looks up at you and freezes in shock and terror. You simply tip your hat to him as he immediately runs off in fear, tripping over almost everything in his way as he tries to drunkenly get away. That wasn’t an unusual sight as many ponies don’t even know you exist since you wander so often, never staying in one place for too long. You ignore the scared stallion and walk up to the saloon doors, the sound of a piano being played and ponies having a good time can be heard from the outside.
As you enter the saloon everything goes quiet. All the ponies inside stare at you in silence as you walk in, your boots making the only sound as they hit the wooden floor with each step making a loud creaky noise. You walk up to the bartender and sit down. As the bartender is finishing cleaning a glass he asks you, “What will it be stranger?”
“Cider, hard cider,” you reply in a gruff voice. The bartender nods and pours your drink. He slides it over to you to which you grab and down it happily, the cider burning your throat as it goes down. Just as you’re finishing your drink the doors burst open and a bunch of rough looking individuals come in, the kind that wear bandannas around their mouths and the like.
“Bartender, I want a round for me and the boys on the double,” One of them demands as the bartender looks towards them.
“That will be twenty bits,” the bartender said as the stallion laughed, pulling out a revolver and cocking it.
“How about we get our drinks for free and we don’t shoot you.” You sigh, in almost every town you enter, there’s always a group of outlaws causing trouble.
“How’s bout you pay the man and be on your way,” you say not even looking up at them as you stare into your empty glass.
“What’s that? Who the hell do you think you are talking to us like that, we’ve killed ponies for less,” the stallion said now aiming his gun at you.
“I said pay the man, and if you don’t then things are gonna get a bit messy,” The group of outlaws starts laughing as if what you said was the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
“Do you hear that boys? This guy thinks he can order us around, let’s show’em what we do to ponies who think they can boss us around!” The outlaw pony says before the group all pull out their revolvers and cock them. You quickly dive to a table and flip it over just as the first shots ring out. Luckily the table stopped the bullets from piercing your body and making you dead. You wait till you don’t hear any more gunfire and pop out of cover to squeeze off a couple of rounds from your own revolver taking out a couple of outlaws, shooting one in the torso and another in the head. The outlaws finally get smart and hide behind a table of their own for cover as they start shooting at you again. You duck behind cover as well trying to figure out what to do, there’s no way you can shoot them while they’re behind cover like that. Your bullets will just end up hitting the table uselessly. As you ponder what to do next you look up and notice a chandelier conveniently placed right above the outlaws, swinging to and fro in a rickety manner.
With a smile you aim your gun at the chandelier and shoot. Your bullet makes contact with the chandelier, making it disconnect from the roof and fall on top of the bandits, knocking them out and rendering them useless. As you get up you notice the first outlaw from before running out of the saloon.
“You won’t get away with this, Wild Mustang and his gang will deal with you, you’ll be sorry!” You sigh again as all the ponies in the saloon get out of cover and start cheering.
“Wow, that was the best shooting I’ve seen in a long time!” An old pony exclaims as the crowd murmurs in agreement and converge on you.
“Hey mister where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“Ya and how did you do that thing with the chandelier?”
“Ya and what’s your name?” You hold your hands up to silence the crowd and they all grow quiet.
“First of all, the names Anon, and second, I learned from years of experience,” you say as the crowd gets excited again, this time conversing with each other. While everyone’s distracted you slip out of the saloon. You don’t like crowds like that, especially crowds that are so interested in you.
As you finally make your way outside, you accidentally bump into a pony who’s looking up at you quite enthusiastically.
“Howdy partner, the names Braeburn!” The pony says as he holds out his hoof for you to shake. You eye him warily before shaking his hoof with your hand, “That was some fancy shooting you did back in there, where did you learn to shoot like that?” Braeburn asks.
“Well my pa taught me how to shoot ever since I could hold a gun, everything else is from experience.”
“Well kind stranger, I can’t thank you enough for taking care of those criminals, they’ve been hassling us for quite a while. They killed poor ol’ Duke last week and all because he refused to buy ‘em a cider,” Braeburn looks down solemnly before speaking up again “Well, things are gonna get better now that you’re around to take care of them,” Braeburn says, putting on an enthusiastic smile again.
“Whoa, now slow down there pardner, I never agreed to take care of your outlaw problem,” As you say that Braeburn’s smile fades away as he looks at you quizzically.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m only passing through, I don’t want no more trouble than I already have,” You say as you start to walk away before Braeburn stops you.
“Wait, if you’re not here when they come back, then they’ll raze the town to the ground, many innocent lives will be lost!” Braeburn tries to persuade you, but you simply shake your head as you walk away from him.
“Sorry, not my problem.”
“What if I told you that Wild Mustang had a huge bounty on his head!” You stop in your tracks as you hear this new information. You could really use the money now considering you didn’t really have even so much as ten bits to your name.
“How much?” You ask, not turning around to face Braeburn.
“Twenty thousand bits,” he says.You stop and ponder it. That’s a lot of bits, you could live easily your whole life on that much, but do you really wanna risk your life for a bunch of ponies you don’t even know. You ponder this for awhile before finally coming to a conclusion and turn around.
“Alright, I’ll do it,” You say as Braeburn smiles wide again, happy that you’re finally agreeing to help his small town not get ransacked by a bunch of outlaws.
“Do you have anywhere that I can sleep while I wait for them to come back?” You ask as Braeburn nods his head.
“Sure do, just follow me and I’ll show you a cozy little inn where you can rest your head at,” Braeburn says as he starts trotting in front of you with you following behind.
“So, I’m just now noticing I never caught your name.”
“The names Anon.”
“Anon eh, that’s a strange name, you aren’t from around here are you?” Braeburn asks as he looked back at you.
“No i’m not, in fact I’m not even from this world. I’m from a different world, called Earth,” You say, not really paying much attention to the conversation. Braeburn nods as he suddenly stops in front of a building.
“Welp, here ya are.”
“Thank you,” You say as you walk up the steps and enter the building. You walk to the reception desk with no one behind it, and as you’re looking around trying to find someone to help you, you notice a bell with a sign by it that reads ‘ring for service.’ You shrug and hit the bell, which makes a loud ringing noise that echoes throughout the inn. As you wait you hear some shuffling coming from the back, before a loud crash rings out and you hear someone say a few curses under their breath. After a moment a mare walks out and greets you.
“Hello sir, how may I help?” She asks in her customer friendly smiles that she’s probably practiced for years.
“I’d like a room if you wouldn’t mind.”
She nods and hands you a room key and, after a little bargaining, you got her to agree to letting you pay her the next day. You enter your room and take a look around. Its got the bare necessities, a bed, a chair, a bathtub, and a candle for light. Seeing as how you were traveling in the desert for so long you decide that it would be best to take a bath and clean up. You fill up the tub with hot water and take off your clothes and hop in. The hot water feeling heavenly on your skin as you sink into the tub.
As you sit there in the tub your mind wanders to how you even got to Equestria in the first place. You used to be the fastest gun in the west, every outlaw you ever faced down would end up dead in the blink of an eye. Until that fateful day when you passed through a small town that was being hassled by one of said outlaws. Being the good Samaritan you are, you agreed to help them take care of the outlaw. When the day of the showdown came, you and the outlaw met in the middle of the town and waited for the clock to strike noon. As soon as that clock landed on twelve you both took out your guns with lightning quick speed, but you didn’t notice it before it was too late.
The outlaw had a piece of shiny metal in his pocket, and he got it out and held it in his hand just as the duel started, blinding you and making you miss. The outlaw got the jump on you and shot you dead, and you lay there bleeding out as the damn son of a bitch ridiculed you and mocked you. As you lost consciousness from the blood loss you suddenly awakened, and before your eyes was the beautiful land of Equestria. Since then you’ve been wandering from town to town looking for any kind of work so you wouldn’t starve. You still haven’t gotten used to the whole idea of ponies being able to talk, back where you’re from all horses were used for was riding and pulling wagons and what not, now they have a whole society that’s pretty prosperous.
After you’re done washing yourself and drain the tub, you dry yourself and put on your clothes again. You gotta think up a plan on how to deal with the outlaws that are on their way. You enter the inn lobby and say a quick goodbye to the mare behind the desk and walk out. The sun is still beating down it’s hot rays as you walk around town, inspecting what the it has to offer. You can see the usual stuff, the bank, the saloon you went to today, and the sheriff's building. As you’re inspecting said sheriff’s building, a pony with a dark brown mane wearing a black hat trots up to you.
“Well if it isn’t Appleloosa’s newest hero! The name’s Sheriff Silverstar, I’m the lawman around these parts, put ‘er there pardner!” The sheriff says as he holds out his hoof to you. You shake his hoof as he continues to talk.
“I just want to thank you on behalf of all of Appleloosa for taking care of those criminals, that takes guts to do what you did.”
“Ya well, I don’t take too kindly to outlaws like that, I just did what had to be done,” You say, downplaying your heroic acts.
“Well you certainly did a number on ‘em, that’s for sure. Thanks to you we got about half of Wild Mustang’s crew behind bars,” The sheriff happily exclaims.
“Ya about that, do you mind if I talk to them real quick?”
“Well sure you can talk to ’em, I don’t see no harm in that, come along,” The sheriff says as he starts heading back to his building with you in tow. As you enter the building you notice the place is rather small. It only holds two cages, one of those cages contains at least eight outlaws, the same ones you met in the saloon. You walk over to them slowly as you stare them down, they don’t seem to notice you until you’re right at the bars of the cell. One of the outlaws scowls at you before asking in a rude manner “What do you want?”
You look at him and he looks at you, not wavering in the slightest. “I want to know how many more of you there are?” You ask, still staring him down. “Like I’d tell you squat, if I tell you anything Mustang will have me killed!”
You quickly pull out your revolver and spin it around a little, something you’ve mastered while you wandered the west, since you had nothing better to do while you traveled you decided to learn how to do it. “If you don’t tell me right now I’ll shoot you dead anyways,” You say in an intimidating voice.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” You ask as you start to have a staring contest with him. The Outlaw stares deeply into your eyes, and for a second you see him flinch, it's subtle but you can definitely see it. The outlaw can tell by just looking into your eyes that you have years of experience, that you’ve been in many a gunfight and lived to tell the tale afterwards.
“Alright alright I’ll tell you,” The outlaw says as he finally cracks. You smile and put your gun away.
“There are about eleven more of us, and I reckon that the boss will wanna prepare before he comes here to skin yer hide, so if I was you I’d hightail it outta here before tomorrow comes,” The outlaw says as you nod before walking over to the door and opening it.
“Well I don’t plan on leaving, and I also don’t plan on dying,” You say before walking out and closing the door. As you turn around you notice Braeburn standing there, looking at you with a smile on his face.
“Umm, were you just standing there the whole time?” You ask as Braeburn nods his head.
“Yep, I was waiting for you partner,” Braeburn says with that smile still plastered on his face.
“Uh huh, and why in tarnation were you doing that?”
“Well I wanted to know what you were gonna do with the outlaws, I wanted to see what kind of plan you had.”
“Hmm, alright I’ll show you.”
“You will!?”
“Ya, do you have any dynamite around this town?”
“Well, no not really but I do know of an abandoned mine that’s pretty close to here, maybe it has some leftover.”
“Well it could be worth a shot, let’s do it.”
“Alright, follow me,” Braeburn says as he starts leading you outside of town and into the desert. During an hour of just you and Braeburn walking, he tells you a little bit about himself and you do the same for him. Soon you make it to the abandoned mine. Lots of mine carts litter the outside of the cave, and as you peer inside the cave you see a bunch of lanterns on the wall. All of them are burnt out from years of use by miners trying to excavate. As you look into the cave you finally realize something.
“Did we have a lamp? It looks pretty dark in ther-” Your sentence is cut short as you trip over something and fall flat on your face. Braeburn walks up, inspects what made you trip, and picks it up.
“We do now,” He says as he turns on the lamp and it immediately lights up. You get up off the ground and dust yourself off as Braeburn looks at you with a concerned look.
“You alright? that looked like a pretty nasty fall.”
“Yeah I’m fine,” You say as you take the lantern out of his grasp and head towards the cave.
“Come on, let's go find us some dynamite,” Braeburn nods and enters the mine after you. There’s all sorts of mining equipment left over inside the mine, pickaxes leaning against the wall, worn from all the abuse they took while mining. You also see the occasional drill lying on the ground as well as mine carts still on the tracks. You inspect one of the carts and look inside and find nothing but a bunch of rubble. You get curious and start looking through all the rubble only to find nothing, well you suppose you probably should have seen that coming. While you're busy looking through the empty mine cart, Braeburn calls out to you.
“Hey Anon, I found something over here,” You go over to Braeburn as he points down to a dynamite plunger that has yet to be activated. As you inspect it you see that there’s a cord that leads further into the mine.
“Good find there Braeburn, come on let’s follow it,” You say as you begin to delve deeper into the mine. You pass by a bunch of other mining equipment as you follow the cord. After about a minute of walking you finally make it to a chamber. Further in, you see the cord finally ends at a large pile of dynamite.
“Alright, let’s get some of this dynamite and skedaddle,” Braeburn nods as you start to pick up some of the dynamite. While you’re busy picking up the dynamite Braeburn taps your shoulder.
“Not now Braeburn,”
“Uhh, Anon,” Braeburn whispers.
“What?” You ask, annoyed as Braeburn points up to the ceiling. Above you are there appears to be a bunch of sleeping bats. You immediately freeze and stop what you’re doing as you slowly rise, putting the dynamite into your pocket. You raise a finger to your lips in a shushing motion as you both start to tiptoe away. As you’re trying to sneak away however, Braeburn accidentally kicks a rock and it sails towards the wall and ricochets into the air, hitting one of the bats causing it to wake up and start screeching. Pretty soon all of the bats are awake and screeching as they fly towards you both. You start to run with the entire pack of bats gaining on you. You look back to see how close they are just as a bat launches towards you and latches onto your face.
You try to pry the bat off as it claws your face and screeches into your ear. You give a yelp of pain as the bat’s claws continue to scratch your face. As you fumble around trying to get the bat off you trip over something and fall to the ground. The bat flies off your face as you give a sigh of relief.
“Umm, Anon?”
“What is it now?” You ask in an annoyed tone. Braeburn just points to where you tripped and you look down and see you have activated the dynamite plunger.
“Fuck!” Is all you say as the remaining dynamite in the mine explodes, causing the entire cave to shake and start to collapse.
“Run for it Braeburn!” You yell as you both start to book it towards the entrance. You can see the opening to the mine in the distance as you start to run faster towards it.
“Anon, help!” Braeburn shouts as you look back and see that he got his right hoof pinned underneath a rock that had fallen from the ceiling. You look back at the entrance and then back at Braeburn before making a quick decision and running to Braeburn’s aid.
“Don’t worry buddy, you’re not gonna die on my watch!” You yell as you grab the big rock and start to try and move it. The rock doesn’t budge at all as you continue to push with all your might. Another rock falls from the ceiling and collides with your shoulder as you scream out in pain. It didn’t break anything, but it will definitely leave a nasty bruise later.
With adrenaline pumping through your body you give the rock one hard push and you get it off of Braeburn. You grab Braeburn and start to run towards the exit, all the while huge rocks are falling from the ceiling. You quickly dodge left and right making sure none of them hit you as you start to get closer to the exit. You see the entrance crumble and with a roar you jump with all your might just as it starts to collapse. You narrowly escape as the mine is sealed right behind you. You’re breathing heavily. You look down at Braeburn to notice he looks pale as a ghost.
“You alright there pardner?” You ask as you slowly get up. Braeburn suddenly hugs you, surprising you as you peer around to make sure no one else is looking before putting an arm around him as well in a halfhearted attempt at a hug.
“Thank you so much Anon, I thought I was a goner for sure!” Braeburn says as he sobs into your chest. You awkwardly pat him on the back, not really knowing what to do.
“Ya, don’t mention it, I wasn’t gonna leave you to die in there, now come on let’s get back to town,” You say as Braeburn nods and you both start your trek back. While you’re both walking you notice a limp in Braeburn’s step and without saying anything you pick him up and start to carry him. He looks embarrassed by this,
“Hey Anon, I can walk on my own,”
“Not on that hurt hoof you can’t,” You say and he quiets down. You both finally make it to town, it's about time, too. He may not look like it, but Braeburn was really heavy to carry Not to mention the pain in your shoulder that you were still experiencing. You take Braeburn to the local doctor and you tell him what happened, the doctor saying that he could take things from there and you left Braeburn in his care. As you walk into town you pull out the dynamite that you retrieved to inspect it.
“One stick!” You shout in frustration as you realize you’re only carrying one stick of dynamite. You must have dropped the rest while you were escaping. You sigh loudly as you put it back into your pocket. You may only have one stick of dynamite, but it’s better than nothing. As you look back up you notice that a lot of ponies with weirded out expressions are staring at you. You nod casually like, nothing ever happened, and start to go your merry way. As you walk away you notice the sky has darkened indicating that it's probably late afternoon. After all the events that had transpired today you decide to head on over to the saloon to drown your sorrows. Walking in you hear some talking.
“Ya he just took out those outlaws like it was nothing,” An old pony sitting at a table says to another pony.
“Really, he took them out by shooting a chandelier and making it drop on them, that’s soooo cool!” The other pony says as the old pony looks over at you and his expression brightens up.
“Speak of the devil, there he is!” The old pony says as he points to you, you wave awkwardly at him as he starts to gesture for you to come over.
“Come on over here cowboy, I wanna be the first to offer a drink to our town’s savior,” You shrug and walk over to take a seat. It wouldn’t hurt to take him up on the offer, you’ve never been one to shy away from a free drink. The old pony gets you your beverage and you start to guzzle it happily. All the while the younger of the two ponies is staring at you in awe. You finish your drink and notice his stare. You gaze at him with a raised brow.
“Can I help you?”
“Is it true that you took out all those bandits?”
“Uhh?”
“And that you took ’em out by dropping a chandelier?”
“Well I-”
“And that you’re gonna stay and take on Wild Mustang and his gang yourself?” He’s about to say more when you pull up your hand to silence him. You sigh as you take another sip of your drink.
“Yes, it’s all true,”
“Cooool!” The pony says as you finish your drink. Maybe this was a bad idea, coming into the saloon. You hate this kind of attention. As you get up to leave the pony grabs your arm and stops you.
“Whoa whoa slow down there, where are you going, we ought to celebrate,”
“No it’s alright really, I should be-”
“We’ll buy you drinks all night long,” The old pony chimes in and you immediately sit down at the table again.
“Well boys, let's start celebrating,” You say enthusiastically as both of the ponies smile at you. For the next few hours you get completely shitfaced as you tell the two ponies of your escapades.
“And sho thatsh how shaved that woman and k-killed that shon of a bitch,” You drunkenly slur as the two ponies at the table snicker. You try to take another swig of your drink but realize it's empty. You peer inside the cup, sad for a moment, before throwing it and shrugging.
“Welp I better getsh outtas here,” You say as you get up and almost fall. You grab onto your chair for balance before you walk towards the door and exit the saloon. As you exit you trip and fall face first onto the ground as you laugh for no reason at all. You slowly get back up and start to make your wobbly way back to the inn. As you enter you drunkenly wave at the mare behind the counter and somehow climb the stairs to your room, immediately falling onto the bed and into unconsciousness.
You awaken with the sun shining in your face and a throbbing headache. You groan as you slowly get up and out of bed. As you stand and stretch you suddenly remember where you were and the predicament you got yourself in. You search your pockets and find the dynamite you acquired yesterday. You breath a sigh of relief as you exit your room and leave the inn. Checking the clock tower you notice that it's eleven o’ clock. You scan the town real quick and see that the outlaws haven’t shown yet. You decide that now is a good time to check your gun, and as you do you see you have it loaded and that you have enough ammo for a shootout. You smile and put it back into your holster. But as you do a mare screams out, “Its Wild Mustang, everypony run!”
All the ponies that were occupying the buildings start to run out of the town as fast as they could. Good, you thought, having civilians here would have complicated things, and you didn’t want someone to accidentally get shot in the crossfire. As the last ponies are running away you squint, looking out into the distance. Sure enough, there’s eleven ponies all wearing typical outlaw outfits kicking up a storm as they charge towards the town. You grip the handle on your revolver tightly as they approach.
As they arrive into town one of them spots you. “There he is boss, that’s the guy that attacked us,” The pony said, pointing his hoof at you. The pony he called boss nods as he pulls out his gun in a magical aura. Looking him over, you notice that he indeed has a horn somewhat covered up by his ten gallon hat, he also seems to have a lot of scars covering his face that are terribly hidden with a bandanna on the lower part of his muzzle.
“You sure this is him?” Wild Mustang asks as the pony nods his head frantically. Mustang then takes his gun and aims it at the stallion’s head.
“Boss what are you-” The pony is cut off as Mustang shoots him square. in the head.
“Killing your own men, huh?” You say, confused as to why he would waste one of his own.
“I don’t accept failure.”
You nod slowly as you grip your gun even tighter. You check out the rest of his gang. There’s ten of them, most unicorns, except for two pegasi armed with rifles.
“So you’re the one that attacked my men eh?” Mustang asks as he looks you up and down. “You're a strange lookin fella ain’t ya, what are ya some kind of Minotaur?” He asks as you shake your head.
“I’m a human.”
“Human, huh, never heard of it. Maybe i’ll be the first to kill one today,” Mustang says as all the ponies besides him ready their weapons. You all stand there for a few moments, just staring each other down when you suddenly draw your gun with lightning speed and take one of the unicorns out. You quickly jump behind some barrels in the street as they start to open fire on you. You chance a peek out of cover and notice that there is a small group of them together. You smile as you take out your stick of dynamite and look for a set of matches.
As you search your person you realize that you have no matches. You curse under your breath as you aim your gun at the fuse and shoot it. The fuse lights and starts to burn as you wait. When the dynamite is getting close to exploding you chuck it at the group. It flies through the air before landing on the ground next to the 4 ponies. It explodes before they have any time at all to react. They fly through the air and land on the ground in a dead pile. The group of ponies wasn’t the only thing the dynamite took out, as you look at where the explosion was you see the building the ponies were standing next to begin to collapse.
All the outlaws look at the collapsed building, now thinking that maybe going after you was a bad idea, but Wild Mustang isn’t fazed as he shouts, “Keep shooting unless you wanna end up just like them!” All the ponies reluctantly comply as they renew their efforts to take you down. One of the unicorns nods to another then holsters their gun and teleports.
The unicorn teleports behind you and says, “Nothing personal-” But before he can finish his sentence and draw his gun you’ve already shot him between the eyes. Why do they think that will work, if they’re gonna teleport anywhere they obviously are gonna teleport behind you, you think to yourself as you look up into the sky. You notice the pegasi flying onto the roofs and trying to take aim at you. You grab your hat, preventing it from flying off, and make a run for it as bullets whiz past your head.
You bob and weave to the best of your ability before you finally throw open the doors to what looks like a general store and hide inside. There’s no way you can take out those pegasi out in the open, they’ll just snipe you. As you’re thinking about this, one of them drops to the ground while the other one covers him. You hide deeper in the general store, hopping behind the counter and begin to wait. Soon enough the Pegasus slowly peeks his head and rifle into the building trying to look for you. You know if you break your cover you’ll just get a face full of lead, so you look around for anything that could help you.
You notice a metal bell as well as an assortment of other metal objects hanging up. You smile as you take aim at the bell and shoot. The bullet ricochets off the bell and starts to pinball among the many metal objects hanging up. The Pegasus looks on in confusion before the bullet hits the last metal object and flies towards the Pegasus, hitting him in the chest and piercing his heart. You hop back over the counter and inspect the Pegasus to make sure he’s dead, and as you do another bullet nearly hits you as the other Pegasus takes a shot at you. Without his partner helping him, you have a better chance of taking him out now as you aim carefully. You look down your sights you see him doing the same. You both fire your weapons at each other, your bullet finds its mark as the Pegasus clutches his throat and falls off the roof. His bullet however only shoots off your hat. You pick your trusty hat back up and dust it off, grimacing at its brand new bullet hole, and this was your good hat too.
You exit the store and immediately hear a scream. Turning to where you heard it, you see one of the outlaws holding up a small filly with a gun to her head. It seems not all of the citizens had left like you had initially thought.
“Just come quietly and I won’t blow this child’s brains out,” the outlaw says as the filly begins to cry. You sigh in defeat as you begin to raise your hands, but as you do Braeburn comes out from behind a building and tackles the outlaw to the ground, picking up the filly and running off. You quickly shoot the outlaw before he can get up, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Keep her safe Braeburn!” You shout out as you eye the last outlaw, the big man- er pony- himself, Wild Mustang. As you walk to him you start to reload your revolver, giving it some fresh ammo.
“Well well, I’m quite impressed. You managed to kill all of my gang, no one’s ever done that before,” Wild Mustang says as you finish reloading.
“How’s bout we settle this with a good ol’ fashioned showdown,” you nod your head to his suggestion.
“When the clock strikes noon, we draw,” you say your terms as Mustang nods his head.
“That sounds mighty fine with me,” You both holster your weapons and stare each other down, the dust and wind blowing around you both as you wait. A tumbleweed gets blown between you, you sneak a glance at the clock tower, It's 11:59. The seconds tick by agonizingly long as you both narrow your eyes at each other. You hover your hand over your trusty revolver and Mustang seems to be charging up a spell, probably also getting ready to draw. Then the clock tower rings out signifying that it was high noon. You quickly draw your gun and fire at Mustang but the bullet doesn’t hit its mark, in fact it hovers there in front of his face. That’s when you realize the spell he was charging was a shield to block your bullet. The shield dissipates and Mustang quickly draws his gun as well and fires it at you. You quickly dodge out of the way, the bullet just grazing your cheek as you slide into cover.
That cheating son of a bitch, you think to yourself as you hide in your cover. You noticed one thing though when you shot at him, he only had his magic shield up and drew his gun after he stopped using the shield, maybe he can only do one thing at a time. You smile as you come up with a new plan and look at your bullets, you don’t have very many left but just enough for your plan. You quickly get out of cover and start unloading on Mustang, who has no choice but to pull up his shield. You charge him while you rapidly fire on his shield until you’re close enough and tackle him to the ground. Mustang is surprised by this turn of events as you grab his gun and throw it somewhere before you punch him in the muzzle.
Mustang’s head rears back and headbutts you, making you dazed as you stumble backwards, giving him ample time to charge you and buck you into a trough. Now on top of being dazed you’re also winded from his buck as he trots up to you and begins to try and drown you in the trough. You struggle while drowning until you finally grab him and throw Mustang over your shoulder and into a wall. Mustang cries out in pain as you get out of the trough and jump on top of him and start to wail on him. Hitting him blow after blow and not giving him enough time to recover. After about the tenth punch Mustang is out cold and you just sit there on top of him, trying to catch your breath.
You jump as you start to hear loud cheering behind you. You look and see the whole town there cheering at your victory. As you start to get up Braeburn trots up to you, “I knew you could do it Anon,” Braeburn says with a smile as you smile back.
“Thanks to you for rescuing that kid, I could have been in some serious shit if you didn’t do that,” you say as you pat him on the head and he smiles even wider.
“Well that was some of the best gunslingin I’ve seen in awhile,” Sheriff Silverstar says as he trots up to you.
“Now here’s the bounty that was on his head, all 100 bits,” the Sheriff says as he gives you the money.
“W-wait only a 100 bits, what happened to all the rest!” you ask in anger at being ripped off.
“You blew up the saloon with that dynamite of yers, on top of the building costs there was also some really expensive booze in there so we had to deduct it from your pay to afford the cost since you did it,” the Sheriff explains as you sigh in frustration.
“And here I thought I could live a life of luxury,” you say dejectedly as you begin to exit the town. Before you can though you are stopped by an angry looking inn pony who holds her hoof out. You sadly give her all the bits you just earned into her hoof before continuing on your way.
“Wait Anon, where are you going?” Braeburn asks as he tries to follow you.
“I’m leaving Braeburn, I’m broke so i’m back to square one,” you say as you continue to walk.
“B-but will I ever see you again?” Braeburn asks as you stop and look back at him.
“I’ll be around,” you say as you tip your hat to Braeburn who in turn tips his hat to you.
“You come back and visit ya hear, I wanna hear about all your wild and crazy adventures,” you nod to him as you continue to walk out into the desert, not really having a destination in mind. It seems you’re destined to wander even in this new world filled with ponies.
