I woke to a commotion downstairs. Smacking my lips tiredly I rolled out of bed and slipped my clothes on. I grumbled to myself as I wandered downstairs. As I passed Twilight and Spike I heard them talking loudly about...something. As I poured myself a bowl of cereal and glass of juice I nodded to them, “Morning...or whatever it is.”

“Afternoon, Leon.” Spike said, messing with something on the table.

I rubbed my eyes and focused. Why were there a pile of comic covering the table? “Spike...are those yours?”

He shook his head, “No!”

“Spike, who else could they belong to?!” Twilight snapped.

“I've never heard of...X-Men or Spider-Man!” He shouted. “I’ve told you! They are not mine!”

Wait...what? I grabbed one of the thick volumes. I gave a grin, “Yes! These are mine!” I frowned, “But how'd they get here?”

“Wait, these are yours? But...how did you bring them here, you arrived without them, right?” Twilight asked.

I frowned, “I sure as hell didn't bring them. How'd they get here?”

They exchanged glances, “We don't know. They were here when I woke up.” Twilight said.

“Huh. Well, I'll just go out then in my room.” I picked up the first pile and stood up.

“I'll help.” Twilight said with a smile.

As she lit up her horn I panicked. “No, no, no, stop!” I cried.

Her horn dimmed, “What’s wrong?”

“Look, your magic is all fine and dandy, but I don't trust it. I don't know anything about it, I'm not letting something that's a mystery to me touch my prized possessions.” I sighed, “Look, I don't mean to sound nasty, it's just these are important to me. It's manual or not at all.”

“Twilight, just let me and Leon handle this, we know how to handle comics.” Spike said, picking up another stack and following me.

Soon enough we had piled all my comics against one of the walls in my room. I looked over to Spike and saw him huffing and puffing. “Thanks, man.”

He smiled, “No problem.”

I thought for a second before grinning, “Hey, Spike? Want to read some superhero comics from an alien planet?”

His eyes lit up, “Would I?!”

We spent the next two hours reading and sipping the lemonade that Twilight brought us. As I suspected he loved Spider-Man. Then again, who didn’t? I stood and stretched, “Well, I’m going to get down to Sugercube, you want me to get you anything?”

“A sapphire cupcake if they have them.” He said, flipping the page.

“Sure, I’ll be back soon.” As I went downstairs landed wrong and I fell face first down to the floor with a sickening crack. I respawned, sighed and looted my body before dragging it towards the front door. “I’m going out for a few minutes, Twi!” I shouted, opening the door and dragging the body out towards the fenced off pit of corpses. I stopped and panted for a minute before hauling my body into the pit.

Just how many bodies were in there?! It had been a week! A week inside a town! How had I... How had I lost that many bodies just wandering the town?! I shook my head, “Man, like any of this makes sense.” I headed towards Sugercube Corner, I was hungry for a chocolate muffin. Or three.

As I walked through the streets I waved to the various vendors I’d learned the names of. As I approached Sugercube Corner I heard the familiar sound of the CMC’s wagon and scooter combo. I smiled and turned to the source of the noise and my smile faltered as I saw the group flying through the air towards me. A second later two fillies landed in my arms and a third slammed into my face. Whatever I was going to say vanished as the scooter crashed into my leg. I let out a whimper and slowly, making sure the girls were safe, crumpled to the ground.

“Uh...Leon?” Apple Bloom asked. “Are...are you okay?” They climbed off me and watched me not crying into the dirt.

“Are you crying?” Scootaloo asked.

“No.” I whispered, climbing to my feet again and rubbing my shin. Motherfucker stung. “You girls okay?”

Sweetie nodded, “Uh huh. Thank you for catching us, Mr Leon.”

I waved her off, “Eh, don’t worry about it, just...you kids try to take it easy, you don’t have my abysmal luck, but be careful, okay?”

They nodded, “Yes, Mr Leon!” They chorused.

I chuckled, “Well...at least try to keep it in mind, I know what it’s like at your age, the world’s open for adventure, no time to slow down and take things easy. I’ve done the same sort of things.”

“Wait, I thought you said your species couldn’t get cutie marks!” Sweetie squeaked.

“I mean that I know what it’s like to do crazy things as a kid.”

“Oh.”

My stomach rumbled, telling me to get moving. “Tell you what, meet me at Twilight’s and I’ll tell you all about what I’ve done, I’m just going to grab a quick snack. Trust me, I’ve probably done worse than you three.” They cheered and rode off. I chuckled, they were cute, if destructive as all hell.

I shook my head and entered Sugercube Corner, the place was quiet for once, must have been a slow hour. I grinned as I saw Pinkie at the counter. “Hiya, Leon!” She chirped.

“Hey, Pinks. How you been?”

“Good! What’ll it be today?” She said before pointing to a big chocolate cake. “We’ve got chocolate cake today!”

Oh, when was the last time I had chocolate cake? “Alright, you damn temptress, two chocolate muffins, a large slice of chocolate cake and do you have any sapphire cupcakes?”

“Sure we do!” She bagged my food. “That'll be twenty five bits!”

I fished the bits out of the money bag Twilight had given me, “Those sapphire ones are expensive, huh?”

She shrugged, “It’s stressful to make sure they come out just right.”

“Right, well, I’ll see you around, Pinkie.”

“Bye bye!” She shouted as I left.

As I headed back to the library I munched down a muffin. The only time I’d had better muffins was when my dad made me them from scratch. I reminisced about when I was a kid, licking chocolate sauce out of a bowl and getting it all over my face. By the time I got back home I had only the chocolate cake left. Before I got close to the library I noticed the chariot that was parked outside, it looked more like a carriage though compared to the open backed chariots I’d seen around.

I shook my head and headed in. There were five Royal Guards stood around the main room, almost all of them wielding spears, with Twilight and Spike in discussion with them, Twilight looking panicked while Spike just looked unimpressed at them. They noticed me as I shut the door.

“Leon!” Twilight gave an...off grin.

I raised an eyebrow, "Hey, Murderer, what'd you do?"

"Stop calling me that!"

"Nah."

One of the Guards stepped forwards, “Human, the princesses demand an audience!” He said loudly. “You have wasted enough of our time, you are to come immediately!”

“Wow, rude much?” I raised an eyebrow, “How about I give you lot the finger,” I flipped them off, “And you go back to sucking your daddy’s dick? Go on, shoo, I heard your old man calling for his little bitch.”

Their eyes boggled and a few jaws dropped, Twilight’s included, whilst Spike just chuckled quietly to himself. During the week I’d discovered the little dragon had quite the dirty sense of humour. I passed Spike his cupcake. “Thanks, man!” He grinned.

“Yeah, so, I’ll see you later, Murderess, most likely when the fuckwits are gone.”

I started to leave when the Guards finally got their collective one brain cell working. "Stop in the name of the princesses!"

I chuckled, "There's literally nothing you can do to stop me." I carried on walking. I got about five steps before I started hovering off the ground. I blinked and looked back at one of the ponies who had their horn lit up. "Except that, apparently."

“Leon!” I looked up in time to see Spike just about managing to toss me my shotgun. I caught it one hand and spun it around before pumping it, loading a shell into the gun. Hey, I wasn’t about to leave a gun ready to fire around Spike, that’d just be irresponsible. “Sounds like you might be running into trouble.”

I smirked, “Thanks, Spike.” I was glad to have my shotgun to go along with my handgun. Yes, I carried my handgun around the town, Ponyville is crazy! I decided to start carrying my gun after some beast charged out of the forest and ate me. “Alright, cockmunchers, since I don’t really have a choice I’ll go with.” Well, I could shoot them, but I’m not a psycho so that thought didn’t cross my mind...For more than a second. As I was floated outside I saw the CMC staring. “Sorry, girls, I’ll tell you my stories when I get back! I promise!” I was roughly shoved into the chariot outside and the door slammed shut. Soon we had taken off and with nothing to do I started humming.

It was about five minutes later when one of the Guards spoke up, “Shiner, can’t you, I don’t know, cast a soundproofing spell or something? That thing’s getting on my last nerves!”

“I’ve already told you I can’t! It’s not exactly something you can learn on the spot you know!” Another Guard, presumably the unicorn of the group, shouted back.

I grinned, “It was at this moment Shiner knew...He fucked up.” I then proceeded to sing horribly off key for the next two hours to the extreme displeasure of them all. By the time we got to Canterlot I was pretty much ripped from the chariot and thrown to the ground by magic.

“For the love of Celestia! Shut up!” Shiner roared.

“Aw, are you annoyed, Shiner?” I mocked, standing back up and brushing myself down.

“The name is Shine Star!” He looked...oddly proud of that.

“Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh,” I nodded, “I’m just going to call you Faggot.”

He almost lunged for me when one of his butt buddies stepped in, “Come on, Shiner, let’s just get this moron to the princesses and be done with it.” They led me into the castle, seeing as we had stopped just outside it didn’t take too long to get to a large pair of double doors.

“There. The princesses are waiting for you through there. Show some respect.” Shine snapped.

As they moved away I gave them a wave, “Bye, Faggot, see you and your butt buddies later! Don’t make too much of a mess on the floor unless one of you is into licking it up!” His friends had to hold him back again as he tried to charge me. I laughed as they dragged him away, yelling and snarling.

As soon as they were out of sight the doors slowly opened up to reveal a long throne room, stained glass windows on either side, depicting some event or another, as I walked along I noticed that a few were of Twilight and her friends, even one of Spike. As I reached the throne I locked eyes with the two princesses. They looked just like Twilight had described, without the hero worship thing of Celestia she had going on exaggerating every little detail. While Luna...appeared to be dozing off.

“Greetings, Mr Leon, welcome to Canterlot Castle. I am glad you could accept our invitation.” Celestia said with a serene smile, but I could see through it. She’d never meant to give me a choice.

“I don’t really think I had much of a choice.”

“There is always a choice.” Yeah, accept or get repeated stabbed for the next four hours. “Besides, it is customary to bow when meeting either myself or Princess Luna.”

“There’s only one person I’d bow to and that’s only out of respect. And you ain’t my queen, so screw that.”

She blinked, “Your world is run by a queen? Twilight never mentioned that.”

I snorted, “My country used to be, these days she tends to just sit around her palace, occasionally doing some speech or other. The government runs things. Uh, if you wouldn’t tell Twilight that, I’m planning on telling her at the next...lesson thing. Whatever you want to call it.”

She nodded, “That seems fair.” She nudged Luna.

“Huh, what? Mooncakes!” She spluttered.

“Luna, our guest is here.”

“Ah...apologies, young sir.” She yawned.

"So, kidnappers, what'd you want?" Yeah, let's get down to business.

"Kidnappers? I'm afraid you're mistaken, we are-" Celestia tried to smooth talk her way out of it. I wasn’t having that shit.

"Fuck off." I spat. "Your men forced me to come here after you told them to. That makes you two kidnappers."

Luna blinked and turned to Celestia, “Sister you did give him a choice, correct?”

“Of course I did.” Celestia lied.

“Yeah, come or get stabbed. That was the impression I got.” I snapped.

“In that case I apologise, I should have been more clear in my orders.” She had that same damn serene smile on her face!

“What the hell do you two want?” I sighed. I just wanted to get back home

“We have recently come into knowledge that King Sombra has returned and taken over the Crystal Empire once again.”

“Sombra? I thought he was dead?” I said. That’s what Twilight told me.

“That’s what we thought too. He’s always been able to undermine our strategies in the past, I see no reason that should have changed now. So we decided on a more unorthodox approach.”

I didn’t like this. “You.” Luna said.

“With the stallion that has returned from the grave, who better to defeat him then the one that cannot stay dead?” Her smile turn vicious her a mere moment. I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t imagined it. “Now after his defeat you will, of course, receive honours for your work to the crown. Good, now, there is a train in fifteen minutes that should get you to the Crystal Empire. Time is of the essence, move quickly.”

My blood boiled, she was talking as if I’d already agreed! Her arrogance enraged me! “Fuck you!” I spat, shocking them into silence. “You think I'm just going to do your bidding?! You two have some screws loose if you think I'm just going to do every little thing you demand of me! I'm not one of your servants and I'm fucking sure as hell not one of your little bitches, bending over and begging you to fuck me over, you want me to do something you're going to have to ask! Maybe beg if I'm pissed off! And I'm not doing shit for free! I want payment! Good payment. Paid hourly! And guess what?! If you don't like my terms then you're oh so welcome to come over here and suck my dick!”

Luna stood, “How dare you talk to your princesses this way!” She yelled.

“I'm not one of your subjects!” I shouted back. “Your not my royalty! So show me just why I should respect you!”

“Because you are living in our kingdom!”

I laughed, “Tell me something, do you really think I want to live here? Nightmare Moon.” Celestia’s eyes widened in horror as I said that. “Oh, boo hoo, you had a bad past, get over it. You tried to kill everything because no one was paying attention to you! Grow the fuck up.”

Luna and I glared at each other for another minute before she burst out laughing, “Sister, this one I like! He has the fire of warriors in his belly!” She grinned at me, “Why are the ponies of this age not like him?!”

Celestia groaned, “Luna, not now.”

“Well, unless you want to talk prices, I'm happy to talk about how placid ponies are.” I smirked.

“Fine! One thousand bits an hour! Happy?!” She snapped. “Why do you even need money?! Twilight told what happens when you die!”

I twitched for a second before laughing, “Oh, fuck no! You really think I'm going to work for peanuts?! Get real or I'm off back to Ponyville.”

“Five thousand!”

I smirked, “You know, maybe Sombra will actually pay me. Twenty thousand.”

“Fifteen thousand. If you work for Sombra you might as well sell your soul as well!”

I sighed, “You know this would have been easier if you asked me instead of this whole thing, right?”

“So you agree?” Celestia’s eyes lit up.

I sighed, “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Fifteen thousand bits an hour? I might finally be able to buy Spike some more gems. And a suit. Got to get my dragon some swag.

Author's Note

Kill count.
This chapter: 1
Between chapters: 43
Total: 64