Frank Castle and Lyra Heartstrings
The smell of garbage and filth rolled across the murky waters of the Hudson, pouring like rotten molasses into the dank alleyways and backstreets of Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. The night sky hung black as a coffin over decrepit apartments; its filmy clouds dipped low into the summer humidity that clung to the buildings like starved street walkers. Somewhere in the midst of such hazy urbanity, lulled to silence by the distant chorus of screaming police sirens, a grimy moving truck coasted up to the loading dock of a warehouse that was sandwiched between a pair of dilapidated half-way houses.
Three men jumped—more like slithered—out of the front of the truck and proceeded to extend a ramp from the vehicle to the warehouse. They worked in a frenzied, paranoid fashion, as if expecting something to leap out of the darkness and impale their shivering forms.
"Fucking Hornhead saw us," one griped. "He must have! You drove this piece of shit down Eighth Avenue like a jar of pennies!"
"Will you shut up about Daredevil already?!" another snapped in a hoarse tone. "He ain't crashin' this party! Besides, Matt Murdock's away in Queens on that Powerman defense trial..."
"Matt Murdock?"
"Y'know. The friggin' devil himself—"
"Man, get your head out of your ass! Matt Murdock ain't Daredevil!"
"Dude, I read it in the Globe!"
"Fuck the Globe!"
"Fuck you both in the ear!" a third man snarled as he marched around the truck. He was a red-headed thing with an expression as tight and angry as the pistol holstered lazily beneath his pants' belt. "We worked really hard to nab this shipment without you two retards screwing it up with all your dumbass chatter! Keep it down, will ya? We're lucky to be able to drop this stuff here at Vasquez's place. With all them fruitcakes buying up half of Clinton, there ain't many spots left to do business!"
"Don't talk like you’re the boss of us yet, Damien," one of the others grumbled. "You're the reason shit hit the fan with the Owl to begin with."
"Hey!" Damien leaned in and hissed. "I'm getting us out of this mess! The shit inside this truck is fucking gold, I tell ya!" He whipped out a key, unlatched the back, and slid the door up by about two feet. "If this doesn't get the attention of those bee-hive wearing mother fuckers, then we can always sell it to Hammerhead."
"Just where is Hammerhead these days?"
"Jersey."
"Fuckin' A, I hate Jersey. Why can't we sell this crap to those jerkoffs at the Embassy and move to Latveria instead?"
"Hey!" Damien frowned at the two. "Put a sock in it, ya melon fucks! I'm going in..."
"The Hell do you mean, 'Going in?!'"
"I'm having a talk with Vasquez!" Damien shot them both the bird as he walked in reverse towards one of the half-way houses. "He's in on this too, y'know."
"Vasquez is a shit-faced cock-sucker."
"So's the three of us if your goddam chatter throws our butts into prison again," Damien said. "Now do your jobs quietly, or I'll have Vasquez's thugs hang you by your balls. I'll be back. If Vasquez sends his hombres to lend you a hand, try not to spit on them this time..."
Damien walked up the steps. The doors opened and a tall thug with a shotgun glared at Damien warily. Damien allowed himself to be searched. Relinquished of his pistol, he was guided inside by a pair of muscular gang members. The door closed, and then reopened twenty seconds later as four surly-looking individuals marched into the alley to join Damien's two companions in the task of unloading the truck.
"Twice as many dudes as last time," one companion said to the other. "You think Vasquez wants to beat our brains in?"
"Heh, with Damien as our spokesperson, I'm surprised we aren't fucking mermaids in the Hudson right about now." He jumped onto the rear of the truck and hoisted the door up with muscular forearms. "Well, let's get this over with."
The four gang members walked up to the truck, trying a little too hard to resemble a gangster rap album with twice as many guns. "The fuck is this thing?" one fat thug in the center gestured at the contents of the truck. "Vasquez is risking life and dick to bail out your buddy Damien, and all for a lousy, over-sized, metal street cone?"
"This ain't no goddam traffic sign," the man said as he wheeled out what looked to be a segmented obelisk of glowing concentric rings onto the very edge of the truck's loading ramp. Several complicated instrument consoles stretched along the circumference of the baffling device. "What you see is none other than Reed Richards Tech. We swiped it from an armored car on Madison Avenue that was taking this shit to the Baxter Building."
"So, what does it do?" another thug asked. "Turn turds into gold?"
"Damien thinks it's some sort of generator for the sub-dimensional gateway nonsense that the Fantastic Four have in their palace in the sky," the man beside the machine said. He shrugged. "I'm not sure what it does exactly, but I'm sure it's just large enough to fit inside your mom."
The whole group chuckled, their voices echoing in the back alley. The other of Damien's companions laughed and hopped up to join his buddy on the truck.
"Let's wheel this shit down already," he said. "Once we get it inside the warehouse, maybe you'll let us sample some of Vasquez's stuff."
"Don't pretend you're some VIP motherfucker."
"I don't want to fuck his mother," he returned as the two of them lowered the obelisk halfway down the ramp. "Just a whore or two—" His dialogue came to a bitter end. It may have had something to do with the fact that his tongue was replaced by a 9mm bullet, and his face had splattered all over the concrete.
His buddy gasped, soaked in blood, as he lost control of the obelisk. The wheeled machine of advanced technology sped down the ramp and glided across the alleyway. The four thugs had to jump apart as the machine rolled loosely across the street and slammed with a pronounced thud against a brick wall. The four of Vasquez's men unholstered at least seven sets of weapons. The cocking of their guns served as panicked punctuation to the end of the resounding thunder caused by the bullet that had ended Damien's companion.
Then all was silent, the veritable waiting room to Hell. The five men looked around, their heartbeats pounding between them like drowning crickets. Damien's remaining friend stayed perched on the ramp, panting hard, his eyes as wide as saucers serving nothing but gravy. The four gang members spread apart, forming a loose circles as they scanned every rooftop bordering their tiny, smelly niche in Midtown West.
One minute oozed by, then a second, twice as frigid as the first. Biology trumped self-preservation, and the nervous quintet panted heavily, giving their positions away as they attempted to calm themselves and gauge the situation.
"Okay. Okay... what the fuck?"
"Where's that sniper at?"
"Wasn't a sniper, dawg. That shit came from a nine millimeter."
"Then the bastard should be right here! Who in God's name could have sniped the dumb-fuck with a pistol?"
"I’ve heard of mutants who could do crazier shit with a poker card."
"What is this, some kind of a sting?!" a thin thug hissed at the others. "Do the cops have the drop on us?"
"This ain't like no cop operation," another replied. "I think we have us a cape."
"A cape?" the thin one balked. "But that ain't their style!" He turned to his other side. "Yo, did you see where the bullet came from—?" He was staring straight into a white, spray-painted skull. His face tilted up, only to receive the full eleven inches of a ka-bar knife shoved into his meaty face.
"Holy fuck!" the others recoiled from the tall, greasy-haired menace suddenly standing in their midst. "It's Castle!"
"The goddam Punisher!"
"Light 'em up!" The remaining gang members aimed their weapons in a furious phalanx of lead.
Glaring through eyes as hard as glaciers, the Punisher yanked the still-twitching body of the thug by his dagger's grip and held him in front like a body shield. Half of the bullets from Vasquez's men flew bloodily into the quivering meat, and none of them into Frank Castle himself. Midway through their initial volley, he returned with a Beretta 92 aimed around the bullet-riddled corpse and landed each of his fourteen slugs into the arms, limbs, and chests of his attackers.
Two men fell to the ground. One limped away. Damien's friend jumped off the truck and fumbled for his own stupidly hidden pistol.
The Punisher yanked his knife out of the skewered thug's face and flung it blindly behind him.
Just as Damien's companion got his gun out, the blade of blackened steel flew hard into his thigh. "Gaaah!" he shrieked and fell to the ground. As he did so, his fingers tightened around the pistol, and a bullet flew randomly across the alleyway. It ricocheted off the asphalt floor, and then it so happened to bounce off an instrument panel on Reed Richards’ obelisk.
A loud hum filled the air of the alleyway. The fresh smell of gun powder was drowned out by a collection of ionized gas as the metal structure glowed hotter and hotter with blue luminescence. It then strobed like a pulsar as a portal opened up in the center of the street, and something petite and mint-green galloped out.
One of Vasquez's men was clawing his bloody, bullet-filled body across the scene. He found his hand stumbling onto a bunch of bright, pastel-green hooves. He looked up, trying to hold the rising bile in his quivering mouth.
"Hi there!" A little unicorn grinned wide, her mouth full of teeth and giggles. "My name's Lyra Heartstrings! I'm from Equestria! Where are you from?!"
"Jesus Fucking Christ!" the thug shrieked.
Lyra's face contorted in thought. "Hmmm... Jesus Fucking Christ? I don't think I've ever been there." She smiled as her amber eyes flickered like polished gold. "Is that anywhere near Blue Valley?"
Meanwhile, the Punisher was reloading his pistol. His dark trenchcoat billowed in the wind as he swiveled about and aimed at the thug who was limping away. A splash of hot orange light billowed from the gun barrel, and the lackey's brains formed a crimson carpet on the asphalt. He turned to finish off the crawling gang member when something happy and emerald darted past him.
"Ooooh! Fireworks!" Lyra bounced and frolicked over puddles of blood. "Did you bring me here for a celebration?! I love parties, don't you?!" She stumbled over a corpse full of bullets. "Whoops! Teehee! I think I'm a bit late! Everyone's already pooped!"
Frank Castle merely stared at her. His eyes narrowed over a clenched jaw of thought. Finally, he blinked, and his vision gave a glance towards the glowing machine, then back at the little pony.
"Wow, you're big!" Lyra gaped at him, nearly falling back on her haunches from how tall his figure was. "Could you pull apples from a tree in your bare hooves?" She suddenly gasped even louder. "Wait, you don't have hooves! What are those?! They look like monkey hands or dragon claws! Are your bottom appendages just like them? Can they also make fireworks?"
The Punisher's nostrils flared. He marched past Lyra, grabbed Damien's friend, and dragged him—twitching and groaning—until he was slumped beside the body of the crawling thug. Once he had the two survivors piled next to each other, he pulled his bloody knife back out of one and stood like a gravestone above the pair.
"The first to tell me how many punks are inside the crackhouse gets to die quicker," Castle said.
"Fuck you, man!" the gang member said. The Punisher's reply was two bullets to his crotch. "Gaaaah—Sonuvabitch!"
Castle aimed his gun at the other. "You?"
"I-I dunno! Damien barely says anything that isn't full of shit!" The other said, his face streaming with tears. "Twenty-five guys and half a dozen whores? That's what was there last time..."
"Got it." Punisher cocked his pistol and aimed it between the man's eyes.
He sobbed. "Mother, please forgive me—" His face exploded all over the other thug, forcing the man to choke and cough on brain matter as he clutched what was left of his meaty groin.
The Punisher turned around and marched slowly towards the doors of the half-way house. He passed by Lyra who was squatting beside a dead thug, closely examining finger after finger of the corpse's left hand.
"These are absolutely remarkable!" Lyra cooed, her cheeks rosy. "I wonder how many of these could fit up my nose..."
The Punisher paused in his steps. He looked at the unicorn, at the apartment entrance, then at the pony again. He squinted suddenly as a green curtain of energy covered the eleven inches of his ka-bar.
"Heehee! What a big butter-knife you have!" she exclaimed. The Punisher allowed her to levitate the bloodied weapon in front of her face for a few seconds. "I bet you could chop a lot of celery with this." She squinted at the crimson-soaked emblem. "Say, why's the eagle having such a hard time getting to the anchor? Somepony must have been really mean to plant that globe in the way!"
The Punisher gave the hideout one more prolonged look, before speaking, "I need you to do something for me..."
"Vasquez, I swear to God!" Damien exclaimed, trembling, as he was hurried along an angry procession of gang members and gun men. The heavily-armed group marched down the rickety stairs and formed a solid line at the bottom floor foyer of the hideout. "I covered my ass! Nobody could possibly have seen us driving the machine here—"
"Well somebody obviously did, you stupid rat bastard!" a tall, muscular cretin in a dirty wifebeater hissed. He finished sliding shells into his shotgun, cocked the weapon, and pointed towards the double-door entrance. "You think that's Cinco de Mayo going on outside?!"
"The police would know better than to try and—"
"Man, how long has your ass been in Manhattan?!" Vasquez rung Damien by the neck, spitting into his face "It ain't the goddam police! With your stupid hard-on for A.I.M., who knows what kind of shit you’ve brought to my doorstep?! Hydra?! Black Spectre?! I'm sure even Wilson Fisk wants in on this shit!"
"That’s crazy! I thought Wilson Fisk was dead!"
"The only dead gringo around here is you once this all blows over!" Vasquez shoved Damien back into the stairs and marched into the thick group of thugs all facing the door. "Madre de Dios, I should have moved back to Tampa..."
"Ain't nothin' going on anymore, boss," a man said, his ear to the door. "Whoever's out there, I'm thinkin' they're waitin' for us to show our faces—" Just then, his eyes exploded as a bullet went clear through one side of his head and out the other. His body slumped wetly to the ground as the army of thugs gasped and jumped back.
"Shit!"
"Holy Hell!"
"Did you see that?!"
"I should have known," Vasquez grumbled as he stared down at the collecting pool of blood. He shoved aside a thug who was puking his guts up and stood before the group. "I knew this shit smelled familiar. That's gotta be Castle out there..."
"Castle?!" Damien squeaked from the stairs. Several half-naked women with an overabundance of makeup gasped and whimpered from where they hung over the wooden balconies high above the scene. "As in Frank Castle?! The P-Punisher?!"
"No, Frank Castle from Dances With the Stars..." Vasquez glared up the steps. "Who the fuck else could I mean?!"
"Hey, my sister watches that show," a random thug said.
Vasquez slapped him with the butt of his shotgun while sighing. "Okay, listen up!" He stood in the middle of the foyer, aiming straight at the door. "We don't go out to him, we wait for him to bring his dumb ass in here! He's just one man with a bunch of guns, but we have a bunch more guns! You hear that, you greasy-haired motherfucker?!" Vasquez shouted towards the front windows of the half-way house. "You're dead as Broadway the first second you decide to suddenly open up these doors—"
Suddenly, the doors opened up.
"Christ—!" Vasquez let out an infant shriek and stumbled back. "Let 'em have it!" His shouting command was drowned out by a solid sea of lead bullets, shells, and fragments flying forward in a burning swath. The windows shattered. The doors fell off their hinges. The wooden floor turned to porous dust and splinters. The door frame caught fire from the friction of so many piercing rounds.
Damien clutched himself in a fetal position halfway up the stairs, whimpering and wincing as the violent gunfire went on for a full, cacophonous minute. The air smelled like sweat, urine, and gun powder. When the chaos was over, a deep ringing noise filled his head. He navigated a foggy sphere of vision to look at the resulting carnage below, only to realize that everyone else was gawking just as numbly and dumb-founded at the scene.
"What in the blue blazes...?" Vasquez stammered. He and several of his fellow gang members froze, staring wide-eyed as the bullet-littered entrance to the apartment.
A shimmering wall of green energy was dancing in front of them. Several of the bullets and shell fragments were hovering in mid-air, caught in an impenetrable cloud of telekinesis. Behind the force field, Lyra stood, giggling and staring with foalish wonder at all of the burning lead debris.
"Wow, so many noise makers! The machines you creatures have are incredible! If I had something that spit out so much metal, I'd hammer together a new vacation home for Bon Bon!"
"What... How... It...?" Vasquez leaned forward.
"Oh, hi!" Lyra smiled wide. "My name's Lyra! Have you met my new friend?" Just as she said that, Castle glided in from around her shield with an AR-15 assault rifle aimed high. The barrel produced a spreading flower of amber flame as the polycarbon monster spat several 5.56mm bullets into the hapless crowd.
The apartment was filled with screams and blood. Men dropped to their knees. Others lost their legs and arms. Vasquez flinched, splattered on all sides with his lackeys' juices. He slid to the side, whipping out a magnum which he fired blindly across the bloodbath.
The Punisher easily side-strafed Vasquez's gunshots, returning with the second half of his clip.
Vasquez's body divided up the center from a steady stream of bullet fragments. He fell back into the arms of two thugs who screamed at the top of their lungs and returned a spray of lead in Castle's direction.
The Punisher slid forward and kicked a table over. Hiding behind it, he yanked a grenade out from under his trenchcoat and flung the bulbous sphere of death into the heart of the apartment. The thugs shrieked, ditched Vasquez's body, and ran for the far ends of the room. Too soon, burning shrapnel flew across the gun-toting crowd, drenching the wooden floorboards with loose muscle and intestines.
Once the smoke cleared, a pants-shitting Damien watched from high above as the Punisher emerged through the soot and dust with a reloaded rifle, taking pot shots into the remaining resistance on the first floor. The cretin's panicked eyes next wandered to the bizarre sight of a bouncing green unicorn.
"Weeee-hee-hee!" Lyra leapt over impacted skulls and dismembered limbs. "So many pretty sparks and lights! Just like Hearth's Warming!"
A sickly whimper came from Damien's lips. He sensed the tall, dark shape of Punisher ascending. With a shriek, he scampered on all fours up the stairs towards the heights of the apartment. A door flew open as a stoned thug peered out, a machete hanging from his grip.
"Yo, man, why's this place gotta keep killing my buzz—?" He took one glance at the monster in a trenchcoat Frankensteining its way up the steps. "Whoah dayum!" He made to toss his machete.
The Punisher hung the emptied AR-15 behind his back and pulled out a beretta 92. He plugged two shots into the arm of the thug before launching another into his screaming neck. His cold eyes caught a pair of gunmen on a balcony high above. He slid past their streaming bullets and pulled another identical pistol out.
"Everyone keep it together!" one of the gunmen shouted as he pulled out a pineapple grenade. "Save the blow and use the crack whores as shields—!" His teeth shattered down his throat from a bullet to the mouth. The eyes in his head rolled over—and then so did his body, along with the live grenade, down into the foyer below.
Damien flinched as the corpse flew past him and exploded. Whimpering, he clambered his way up the stairs while gang members charged down in the opposite direction, firing desperately at the ascending Punisher.
The Punisher kept dual-wielding his Berettas, dropping bodies as Lyra bounced up at his heels.
"Heehee! What's up here?! More fireworks? Candy?" An explosion went off behind her, blowing at her cyan mane as she grinned. "Oh please, please say 'candy!' I love candy! Especially the kind that Bon Bon makes, with the caramel and all—" Another body fell past her. "Hey! Nice backflip!"
Eventually, the Punisher reached the top floor. The violence had settled long enough for him to reload his Berettas. As he did so, a thug rushed out from behind a table with a hunting knife.
"Yaaaaaaugh—!" the man shrieked a valiant war-cry, but suddenly was yanked in place. Breathless, he glanced to see that his weapon had been stopped in mid-air by green telekinesis.
"Uh uh!" Lyra smiled as she chided him delicately. "Didn't your mother ever tell you it was dangerous to run around with sharp objects?"
The Punisher heard that. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the thug for the first time. He kicked the man in the groin, yanked the knife out from Lyra's magic field, and slashed it across the gang member's throat. The man stumbled back, hissing and spitting up red fluids.
"Hey!" Lyra pointed with a grin. "He's full of red stuff! That explains everything!"
A door kicked open behind the Punisher and a man came out with a pump-action shotgun.
"I wonder if he's got any punch too!" Lyra said.
The Punisher spun, ducked a blast of lead, and tossed the knife into the man's chest. As the thug fell back, Castle grabbed the gun by its pump and yanked down on it hard. The spring-action caused the shotgun to fly up into his expert grip.
Just then, two gang members charged around the corner. "Die, you motherfucking piece of—"
Castle merely twirled the shotgun in his hand and aimed it across the way at their gasping faces. The shell burst painted the wall with their juices.
"Wow, they were grumpy!" Lyra said with a full-toothed grin.
Punisher dropped the smoking shotgun and re-gripped his Berettas. He gave Lyra an emotionless glance. "Well done, soldier," he droned. A lonesome, cowardly thug tried crawling away, only for Castle to pivot about and fire a bullet into his spine from afar. He exhaled coolly, studying what remained of the bloodied scene.
"Hey!"
Castle turned around.
Lyra was standing before a large bedroom, pointing inside with a hoof. "I think I found the 'cracked horses' they were talking about!" Two women ran to the nearest fire escape, shrieking, struggling to toss on sweat-stained blouses. "Whoops! Never mind! Hey! Heehee—Those nipples are a lot further up than they should be, don't you think?"
There was still the sound of panicked breathing from inside the bedroom. Frank Castle's brow furrowed. Swiftly, he marched past Lyra and went into the chamber. There was a yelping noise. Lyra watched—blinking and smiling innocently—as Castle reemerged, dragging a sobbing and sniveling Damien by the pantleg. The lone surviving thug gasped and grunted as his body was yanked down a full flight of splintery, wooden stairs. He was tossed against a wall, where he curled up and wheezed in pain. He barely noticed the length of metal cable until he saw the Punisher tying it around both of his ankles.
"What... Wh-what in God's name are you doing—?"
The Punisher flung the opposite end of the cable through the rungs of the metal banisters above and hoisted hard on the length of it.
"Waaaaah!" Damien shrieked and flailed as his body was dangled high above the two-story gap of the lower apartment. No matter how hard or desperately he flung his arms, he remained hovering upside-down in the middle of horrific space.
In the meantime, Castle emerged from a nearby room with a large baseball bat he had discovered. He removed his trenchcoat, cracked the joints in his neck and shoulders, and gripped the bludgeon in two gloved hands.
"Do you feel this?"
"F-feel what?" Damien twirled around, only to receive a swung bat across his spine with a sickening crack. "Aaaaaugh! Nnngh—Fuck!"
The Punisher paced beneath him, twirling the bat. "Tell me about the Owl's operations and you'll feel it less."
“Oh! Ohhh!” Lyra waved her green hoof, smiling brightly. “I can answer that! He was fetching quills for Twilight Sparkle in the marketplace just last afternoon!”
"Nnngh...” Damien whimpered upside down, giving Castle a quivering look. “Hckkkt... I... I-I'm not working for the Owl anymore, man!"
The Punisher swung the bat again.
Damien's skull rattled as agonizing waves of pain shot up and down his spine. "Aaaa-haaaugh!"
"Hey!" Lyra leaned over a wooden railing beside the thug's dangling body. "Is candy gonna come out of him? Is that where all the sweets are hidden?" She clapped her hooves together. "Heeehee! This is the best party ever!"
"I... I swear..." Damien spat blood and gazed through twitching eyes at the Punisher's upside-down figure. "I know nothing! The Owl's moved upstate! He has nothing to do with this exchange—"
"Of course he doesn't." The Punisher stopped Damien's twirl by propping the end of the bat against the man's blood-soaked chin. "He knows better to perform the inane stunt you and your friends were attempting. Selling Reed’ Richards’ Technology to A.I.M.? Not even Fisk himself would resort to something so stupid. Advanced Idea Mechanics require a degree in science before they even think of inviting new members into their fold. Even if I hadn't arrived, you and all of Vasquez's uneducated herd would have been incinerated as soon as A.I.M. got here and took the dimension generator for themselves." He shoved against the bat and turned Damien into a living pendulum. "I came here to find out something that actually matters. Tell me about the Owl. Tell me what he was doing in Midtown West."
"What do I get out of it, you sadistic, trigger-happy psychopath?!"
The bat slammed across Damien's upside-down knees.
"Aaaaaugh!"
The Punisher leered. "The next hit will be where the blood's rushed to..."
"Nnngh—For mercy's sake!" Damien's eyes rolled back. "I've carried guns for the Owl! I've transported shit for the Owl! But I never killed for the Owl! Gimme a break, will ya?! I'm not nearly as awful as these other motherfuckers you've offed tonight!"
"I don't believe you." Castled prepared another swing. "I'm not sure the bat does either..."
"Okay! Okay! It was people, alright?!" Damien shrieked. "The Owl had this new human trafficking circle by the docks at the end of Eighth Avenue! He's since sold the operation to Jigsaw who's working with these Russian floozies from Brooklyn! Spiderman showed up and spotted the product on the way to its new handler, and I fucked up a chance to plug a bullet into the webbed-menace, so the Owl kicked me out of his gang!"
"Where in Brooklyn is Jigsaw working?" The Punisher's eyes narrowed as he lowered the bat in his grip. "I need a name."
"The Heather Apartments!"
"You sure?"
"As sure as I am Catholic! Please, you gotta understand! I didn't know it was people until the last minute! I found out around the same time Spiderman did! If I'd known that there were little girls and shit being sold to people, I would have come clean! I swear!"
"So there were children involved," the Punisher hissed. He pulled out his knife, glinting in flickering lamplight. "I'll be sure to remember that the day I find you in Hell." He brought the ka-bar to the metal cable.
"No! No, please!" Damien shrieked, waving his arms. "Don't! I beg you—"
Castle severed the cable with one swift jerk of the knife.
"No—!" Damien's yelp morphed into a shriek as he fell two full stories and landed directly on his neck. The rest of his body snapped, turned perpendicular to his head, and slumped over like a sack of meat.
"Awwww..." Lyra pouted as she trotted briskly down the steps. "He wasn't full of candy at all!"
The Punisher said nothing. He wiped the blood clean from his blade and sheathed it. Collecting his trenchcoat and equipment, he slowly descended to the bottom floor. He paused at Damien's body, kneeling down and reaching into his pant's pocket. He produced the dead man's wallet and flipped through several cards hidden within. He paused upon seeing an advertisement for a bar located in Brooklyn; it had a Russian name. Castle's nostrils flared in thought.
"Heeheehee!"
The Punisher looked over.
Lyra was rolling in a deep puddle of blood, grinning like it was her foalday. "It's so warm! I wish I had a beach ball!"
Frank's eyes narrowed. "Do you know Howard?"
Lyra sat up, shaking a fresh stream of crimson juices from her mane. "Who?"
The Punisher merely grunted. He glanced from the unicorn to the glowing blue light outside the half-way house.
Sirens were blaring in the distance, gradually coming closer, as Frank knelt before the metal obelisk. He finished implementing a series of complicated keystrokes on its main console and stood back up as a bright blue portal opened in the middle of the street.
"Hop in, soldier," he said. "It's time you went back to where you came from."
"But..." A sad-faced, blood-stained Lyra dug at the asphalt with her hooves. "I just got here. Everything is so new and exciting, and there're fireworks all the time. Can't I stay a little longer?"
"Go home," the Punisher said with an icy glare. "Don't even pretend that this is something open to debate."
Lyra sighed long and hard. "This night has been so magical. I... I just wish I had a souvenir to bring back with me, somehow..."
The Punisher stared at her. Slowly, he pivoted and glanced past the portal to where the crotch-less thug of Vasquez's had bled to death against a brick wall. His eyebrow twitched, and he unsheathed the ka-bar with a metal ringing sound. "Wait just a second..." He marched over towards the thug.
It was an uneventful day in Ponyville. The sunlight shone lazily through the windows to Bon Bon's home as she stood before the kitchen table, going over the month's bills and paperwork. Her blue eyes blinked tiredly as she heard the front door opening and closing.
"Hey Bon Bon!" Lyra's voice chirped from the living room. "You'll never guess where I've been!"
"I wish I didn't have to," Bon Bon grumbled, staring lethargically at the many envelopes in her hooves. "The next time you take off to Celestia-knows-where for several hours, it would be polite to at least give me a warning."
"I've got just the thing to make it up to you!"
A severed hand was dropped juicily onto the table in front of Bon Bon.
"Aaaaagh!" the mare screamed, her blue and pink hairs fraying on their ends.
"Ta-daaaa!" a blood-soaked and grinning Lyra beamed before her. "I got it from this magical place full of fireworks and 'cracked horses' and talking pinatas who hail from faraway lands such as 'Brooklyn' and 'Jesus Fucking Christ!' Now we have this thingy here as proof that there are intelligent creatures outside of Equestria! They even carry butter knives and wear their nipples in weird places! It's all just so magical! What do you think?!"
And then Bon Bon slapped Lyra across the face.
Thanks To: TheBrianJ, Demetrius, Tactical!Rainboom, Chromosome, Props, Jake Rodriguez, Prismic Pony
Extra Special Thanks To: Mir
