Silver bullet hissed with pain as the bullet tore through her leg, and she could feel her magic ebbing as she healed the wound. She was so, so, tired. "We've got you surrounded!" Barked a voice, and she shivered with anger at the audacity that the Manehattan police would be trying to arrest her. Back in her day...

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Silver bullet laughed, smirking a wide, toothy smile at the stallion at the other end of the room. Polaris. Such a humble beginning, and yet this stallion was constantly a thorn in her side, and sometimes in bed. Sometimes. The two ponies were in a warehouse, to finish up a firefight that had gotten so bad that the police had ran away, and only the worst battles actually managed to summon both of the dark magic users to the scene.

Polaris was wearing his usual trench coat, two golden thompsons floating at either side. They held 100 bullets, Silver had learned that one the hard way. She knew that he had fired most of the rounds, and he didn't usually bother to keep backups. Silver herself, she preferred fighting with her magic, instead of using her magic to fight, but Polaris preferred using his magic to defend against hers, and using guns for the offense.

Whether it was a twisted sort of romance, an honor code, or the deep knowledge that killing the other would bring the delicious fighting to an end, neither Polaris or Silver had actually managed to win a fight with the other pony. It was a twisted sense of right and wrong at play, almost. Silver was queen of a drug trade in the city, and Polaris was fighting to topple her position so that he could destroy her empire, replacing it with his own alcohol trade. He liked to think he had the moral high ground, but he knew he wasn't much different than she was.

"So, how many rouinds do you have left, huh?" Silver asked, stepping closer as magical, razor-sharp blades sprouted from a hoof. Polaris frowned, saying, "Enough to make sure you leave here either on your own or in a bag". She laughed, and she came close to him, though he didn't actually shoot at her. Yet. "Tonight, seventh street?" She said, and the frown oon his face didn't budge. He grunted, which acted as a "Fine". She laughed, and she took off towards the exit, saying, "You can have the place, everything's full of bullets anyway~!"

Dual trails of gunfire followed her out, and a bullet or two did hit her leg, yes, but Silver was hopped up on enough dark magic at the time that the pain only made her game more fun to play, and the wounds were easily healed.

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Oh, she missed those days. It had gotten so boring as time went on. Instead of grand firefights underground, the gang activity in the city turned into sloppy shootouts in alleyways, and grand bank heists became less and less profitable. Hell, the last one had nearly gotten her caught.

The internet didn't help. Silver had lived her life in an air of mystery for decades, but the all-seeing eye of the city was starting to gain focus. One by one, her old speakeasies had been taken over, her grand network that had stood ever since she ran Polaris out of town beginning to collapse. Hell, she couldn't even prevent them from taking Polaris' old hideout from her.

And now, they were in her private domain. Underneath one of Manehattan's oldest towers laid Silver Bullet's home, where she had run everything from drug sales to trying to snoop on the police to see if she could figure out what they knew about her.

But she was out of her element. The drug trade had gone from a way to make money to a way to destroy communities and try to make money, and while Silver was an evil, evil mare in some ways, she didn't want to hurt kids, families, she didn't want to poison her own city, her home.

The last few straws had come one after another, each one heavier than the last. A chunk of her gang split away, forming their own organization. In the past, she had gone to war with Polaris for the same thing, and yet she had no power to stop them. One of the ponies closest to her turned out to be a snitch, and they escaped before she could manage to rip out their throat for ruining her.

And now, they were in her home. She had prepared, of course, but it still stung to know that after so many years, she would have to turn tail and run. Run, just like Polaris. Still, he was a formidable stallion...

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She still remembered the original incident. Polaris had been a worker at the trainyards, and one of her dumbass thugs had shot the stallion he was living with. Turned out that being made homeless and losing his friend was the last straw for Polaris, and he ended up being the stallion to murder most of her family, on the very day that her grandmother died and left her a set of books.

Books on dark magic. Silver found it amusing that the one pony to survive Polaris' breakdown was her awful mother, but it had been so satisfying to feel the life drain from her body. Dark magic was pretty damn easy to summon, and Silver hadn't cared at all about the point of no return where her own magic was snuffed out to make room for it. It was a part of her, might as well make it official.

Anyway, the incident. Silver had never officially come into contact with Polaris until a dark tuesday night, where they both snuck into the same warehouse to steal an old magical artifact. The resulting dark magic fight had been intense. The forces between Silver's rage and Polaris' sorrow were such close matches that neither of them won or lost thee fight, but the warehouse ended the night in pieces and on fire.

Silver laughed as she walked up to the stallion. She had just thrown him through one of the warehouse support beams, and he was finally laying on the floor, not moving. She had won! Or so she thought, before she was taken completely by surprise by his magic, which threw her through another one of the heavy wooden beams. Oh, that bastard! He had tricked her! He was laughing as he stood up, and his voice shook with just as much adrenaline as Silver felt when he yelled "I won't go down that easy!"

Polaris was actually the first of the two to try seduction as a tactic. It never worked, and Silver didn't know his thoughts on it, but the nights where they dropped their magic aside and spent the night in each other's arms... she loved each and every one. Still, it didn't happen often. Most of their time together was spent behind guns or knives, or commanding squads of their underlings to fight a fight for them.

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"Get back!" Silver snarled, firing off a spray of bullets into the distance as she saw a stallion diving behind a counter. The counter to her bar, which was covered in the broken glass of all the bottles that had been shot during her final battle. From behind her, gunfire erupted, and she cried out in pain as bullets hit her from behind.

From that point, Silver's memory began to become spotty. She remembered burying magical swords to the hilt inside of cops, shooting one of them with his own shotgun, throwing a somewhat fat one into a support beam to hopefully bring the dirt and rocks above her home down onto the rest. It didn't work, but it had been worth a shot.

The last shot that Silver took would be burned into her memory for a long time. She had been leaping towards a stallion, his expression full of fear (as it ought to be, for a pony who dared to intrude in HER home). But he had a set of reflexes that surprised her, and while she did kill him, fresh blood soaking her magical claws, he had fired his revolver point-blank into her chest.

Normally, that would be nothing but an inconvience, but Silver was fighting a losing battle. The power she was absorbing from the violence wasn't enough to make up for the bullets she had been taking, and Silver felt herself shaking as she pulled the bullet out of herself, repairing her flesh. A deep, clawing coldness filled her chest as she began to realize that she wouldn't be able to take any more.

She shook with rage and fear, but she knew she was done. Taking the revolver, she fired the last five shots into the cover that the others were hiding behind, as her horn lit up above her head. By the time some of the officers realized she was using the gunfire as a distraction to work magic, it was too late, and only one of them was even looking at her when she disappeared in a wispy flash of dark magic.

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In a few cases, Silver and Polaris worked as a team. One time, ponies from overseas had come into Manehattan, thinking they could just kick her and him out of town like nothing. Oh, how delightfully wrong they had been. Their plan was simple, luring nearly all of the stallions into one of their speakeasies. It took some lying- the immigrants had thought that they were making a business deal, and Polaris and Silver had found out that they planned to take over the hidden base for themselves.

They hadn't even needed any grunts for it. Like the shadow mare of the everfree forest, Polaris and Silver waited until the ponies had just began to realize that the place was empty, and then they attacked, diving into the ranks of the ponies with claws and swords flying. Hell, she had even taught Polaris the most effective methods of using dark magic swords. He knew how to use claws, but being so focused on guns, he hadn't even really tried blades.

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Silver groaned. She was laying in an alleyway, behind a dumpster. Her teleportation spell had gotten her close to her target- her 1982 Silver Spirit, which she had bought... well, okay, stolen. She had gotten it heavily modified to protect her from gunfire, and it had stayed her mode of transport ever since. The mare shook as she slowly picked herself up off of the ground, and she walked to the vehicle. Pulling out the key, she unlocked it, climbed inside, then locked the car. In the driver's seat of her car, Silver let out a long sigh, feeling safe once more.

What now?

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She remembered the day Polaris left. The country had been ramping up for war, and Polaris had been growing more bitter and angry the more she saw him. She managed to follow him home for a night, and in his bedroom, she saw the stallion cry for the first time. At the time, she had seen it as weakness, and she had stomped out in anger, but looking back, he was just a broken stallion who had already given up on the inside.

She remembered standing atop a skyscraper, watching through binoculars as he threw yet another suitcase into his limousine. At the time, he was the only one with an armored car, though Silver built one for herself not long after he left. He was arguing with two stallions, his second and third in command, she thought. She could barely hear the gunfire as one of them tried to shoot him, and she couldn't help but smile as she watched Polaris riddle the stallion with bullets from one of those golden guns of his.

Still, he was done. That was the last pony he would kill in Manehattan. From the way he talked to the other stallion, it seemed he was putting him in charge. She would confirm that later, as she took his life and absorbed everything that once belonged to Polaris. The stallion got into his car, the 1927 Cadillac shifting but only slightly. He was a big pony, but the car had a lot of armor.

And then, he started the engine, and he left. Silver watched the car for as long as she could, but eventually she lost sight of it. She didn't chase him, though a small part of her wanted to.

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The Rolls started. Silver took in a deep breath, looking at herself in the mirror. She looked... malnourished. She had gotten dangerously close to killing herself with the use of her magic, all thanks to the amount of blasted bullets those pigs had shot her with. She scowled at her reflection, and she put the car into gear.

Just like Polaris had done near the end of 1935, Silver fled Manehattan. She went down the same road he had taken, wondering if he felt the same sour feelings of failure and regret that she did.

Silver drove for hours. She didn't know where she was headed, how could she? All of her cards had been stacked in manehattan, and after years of ponies knocking down some of the cards, the police had just driven a tank through the table that held them.

Her gas gauge was halfway to F when Silver noticed that she was entering Ponyville. Ha! The same place he had run away to. She cruised around the town, since she was surprised to see that automobiles weren't allowed into the actual town, only the outskirts. She admired it, really! When she got to the other end of the town, she glanced towards the radio tower off to her left, and-

Wait. She had fucking- of course she had! The car skidded to a stop as Silver stomped on the brakes, and she stared up at the tower. This was where Polaris lived. She had been watching, of course. He left town, and joined the war. He met a mare there, and they had gotten married. She was jealous, but she kept her distance. She learned that the mare died, and that he was building a company.

Then, the nightclub, the technology, the new marefriend, the AI, he continued to improve his life while hers swirled around the drain, waiting to disappear inside of it. Silver remembered his visits to manehattan in the 90s, with that mare of his. She had watched them, but she didn't interfere. She made sure he got a good price for the building he bought, and she made sure it stayed safe.

But still, she didn't interfere. She became a ghost to him, watching, but never making herself seen. And now, she was at his home. She had been there before, spying, looking the place over, wondering how he was living. He seemed happy, safe, she was... proud. Silver was a mare who thrived in the blood and suffering of other ponies, and somehow, Polaris had dragged him out of that same pit.

Hmmm. Maybe...

When had it started raining? Silver frowned up at the dark sky, and she turned on the wipers. Silver shifted the Rolls into gear, and it rolled forwards, towards the turn-off to his home. And after taking a deep breath, she turned left.

Author's Note

even the worst of pones have good in them, deep down

well some of them