Murder Time, Fun Time

After claiming four of the neighborhoods under the control of the Ronin in rapid succession, Playa felt like the Saints deserved some time to have some fun in the city before the campaign against the gang continued.

While the rest of the gang did other things, such as get high, bust a nut, or watch whatever was on television, Playa and Pinkamena decided to deal with some more contacts in the city.

Pinkie looked at the schedule for the day and smiled wide because she finally got to do something. She informed the madmare that today was a good time to accept the requests from the chop shops at Tidal Spring and Filmore. There was another opportunity to defraud insurance companies in Amberbrook and there was a request in Tidal Spring from some actor’s agent to be a bodyguard for his client.

Dealing with the chop shops was likely to take a while as Pinkie might have a little too much fun driving around and dodging cops and gang members. In this case, Playa would have to handle the insurance fraud cases by himself. Pinkamena was also not the type to protect some actor she had never heard of. But she knew someone who might.

Pinkamena pulled out her phone and dialed Gilda’s number and told her to meet her at the entrance to the hideout.

The two met a few minutes later to discuss Gilda’s next task, “I want you to answer the request from the agent at Tidal Spring. I’ll put the location on your phone’s GPS.” Pinkamena spent a few minutes teaching the griffon how the GPS worked. It took some work but Gilda seemed to get the gist of how the application worked.

However, Gilda had a question, “Why should I protect some random dweeb from a swarm of mega dweebs?”

“Aside from the money and the reward, you get to show the people of Stilwater how intimidating griffons are, and if those crazy fans are brave enough to attack you or the actor, well, you don’t mind if your talons get a little bloodied, do you? You could also just throw them into places where they would get severely injured or mangled beyond recognition. If they bring weapons, show them you’re not fucking around. As long as the actor gets through her or his meeting with the fans with minimal injury, you still get paid.”

“So I can handle the dweebs however I want?”

“Pretty much.”

Gilda shrugged, “Well, if I’m getting paid for it, I might as well.” Despite the nonchalance, Pinkamena could detect the giddiness in her voice.

After bidding farewell to the griffon, Pinkamena convinced Playa to help Doctor Angie Lucas, the contact who requested assistance with her insurance fraud scam, despite how much he was not looking forward to the injuries from playing in traffic.

Since this was Pinkie’s thing, the madmare decided to take the backseat and watch her sister play with cars.

When Pinkie reached the first meeting location in Filmore, she was contacted by someone who Pinkamena thought had moved to Colombia with Manuel Orejuela after her boyfriend was killed in a “tragic” plane crash. Apparently something happened to Luz Avalos that caused the Colombian to dump her since she was talking about getting him his favorite cars in some desperate bid to get him to take her back. Pinkie was saddened by the woman’s desperate need to be in a relationship with someone as it showed that Luz had no sense of self worth. Pinkamena had to assure her sister that Luz’s problems were not their problem even though Pinkie really wanted to make her happy with herself.

After further convincing, Pinkamena managed to get Pinkie to head to Tidal Spring to get the other list.

The next chop shop request was from Shaundi who had a friend who needed a few cars to complete an art project involving cars.

Pinkie spent the next few hours hunting for the cars that were specified on her phone after it had downloaded the information from Luz’s and Shaundi’s phones. Most of them were easy to obtain as they often showed up in specified districts. Pinkamena briefly took over whenever the vehicle had to be hijacked since her sister was too nice to simply toss people out of their cars. Sometimes the hijacking victims got a little aggressive which ended up being a fatal mistake. Neither Luz or Shaundi were picky about which garage the cars ended up as long as they could be collected later.

Pinkie hijacked sixteen cars that day and some of them were city property so Pinkamena had to deal with the police sometimes.

Shaundi called again and informed Pinkie that she had acquired a couple of vehicles for the Saints to use as they wanted. Pinkie was interested in the buggy because she wanted to try some driving stunts at some point while Pinkamena saw a lot of killing potential in the combine.

Pinkie returned to the hideout after turning over the cars to the chop shop garages to find Gilda looking as satisfied as an owl who caught a field mouse. The griffon was covered in blood, likely from the crazed fans. When she saw the pink mare, she quickly flew towards her and stopped right in front of her.

Gilda then began regaling Pinkie with her story about how she protected the actor from crazy fans and while they were intimidated by her presence and screeching at first, they began getting bolder so she started slashing at the fans with her talons and when they brought weapons she brought out hers and started gunning them down. There were also a few particularly crazed fans that she ended up hurling into other fans or into interesting places such as rotating helicopter blades, into the path of a train, or into a group of construction workers who were doing road work and weren’t paying attention to what they were doing.

The griffon was telling her story in a way that was not unlike Pinkie’s rapid storytelling. However, she was a bit disappointed that all she got for her efforts was a fifteen percent discount at all clothing stores especially since none of the equestrians wore clothes normally.

Inside the hideout, Pinkie and Gilda, who was in a good mood so she didn’t mind going into the hideout, found Playa being bandaged up by Shaundi. The pony and griffon overheard a conversation between the two.

“So why did you throw yourself into traffic if you weren’t high or suicidal?” Shaundi asked.

“Because the reward usually makes it worth the pain.”

“So was it this time?”

“Not really, all I got was some means to make myself tougher whenever some asshole runs me over with their car.”

Pinkie walked over to Playa and gave him the clothing store discount coupon. “Maybe this will help you feel better.”

Playa took the coupon and smiled, “Actually, this does make me feel better. Thanks!”

Pinkie’s smile widened, feeling happy that she made someone’s day better.

Pinkie’s phone rang and the ID showed that it was Johnny. Pinkamena took over and answered the call. “Hey,” she answered.

“Hey Mena, I caught one of the Ronin ridin’ around our turf. After some ‘friendly’ conversation, I learned the Oyabun, the leader of the Japanese Yakuza, is headin’ to Stilwater. He didn’t tell me much more afterward but we are gonna need a new table.

“What do you know about him?”

“Kazuo Akuji’s the son of Shogo Akuji, When I was in jail I would listen to some of the Ronin talk about what this guy did in Japan...kinda up there with the stuff you do to your victims.”

“Sounds like someone I wanna meet and see if the rumors are true.”

“Anyway, there’s some more of those fuckers headin’ to the hideout, have fun.”

After the call ended, Pinkamena decided to take her new toy out for a spin. The mayhem on the road in the next few minutes was unspeakable as a combine demolished a number of cars and shredded a good number of pedestrians as the farming vehicle made its way through a group of Ronin bikers.

On a possibly related note, several members of city sanitation demanded triple wages or simply quit.

With the bikers dead, the Saints had no trouble claiming Tidal Spring.

After Pinkamena put away her new toy, Pierce called and informed her that the Ronin had set up shop at the Amberbrook Museum Pier near where she and the Saints killed Julius. Pierce had no idea what they were doing there but there was plenty of security. All this really meant to the madmare though was more slaughter and more blowing stuff up.

Since going through the amphitheater was not entirely necessary to get to the shipment of whatever the Ronin were bringing in, Pinkamena approached the pier from underwater and punched holes in the boats the Ronin were using to move their shipments. None of the Ronin realized that the madmare was around until it was too late.

While the Ronin were staring at the sunken boats wondering what happened, Pinkamena emerged from the water and ambushed a few of them from behind. It wasn’t long before the pier was cleared of Ronin and the madmare headed up the cliff to the amphitheater to deal with the unsuspecting guards who had not realized that they had nothing left to guard.

After Pinkamena finished her business at the amphitheater, she decided to spend some time at her house to relax before deciding her next move against the Ronin.

Johnny arrived at the house at around the same time. As the two were walking up the driveway, Pinkamena felt a sensation through her Pinkie Sense. After taking a moment to analyze the meaning, she turned to Johnny and asked a question, “You don’t mind if I do a little remodeling of our house, do you?”

“Nah I don’t mind, I was gettin’ bored of all the old decor anyway.” he narrowed his eyes toward the house in suspicion before returning his gaze toward the mare, “Why?”

“Call the fire department and get ready to kill a lot of Ronin.”

Johnny nodded and pulled out his phone to call the fire department, once the call was finished, he got his gun ready.

Pinkamena went around to the back of the house and opened the door slightly and rolled a lit molotov cocktail toward the nearest flammable object from the doorway. The flames spread quickly and the houseguests inside began to panic as the flames quickly grew to uncontrollable levels.

The leader of the group ordered his men to flee the house. As they emerged from the doorway, they were shot in the head, one by one. The leader drew his katana and blocked Johnny’s shots as the Ronin enforcer advanced toward him.

His advance was cut short as he caught sight of a katana flying in his direction and was forced to knock the object away. This left him open to a shot in his right arm from Gat that he used to block a shot meant for his head.

Faced with tough odds, Jyunichi considered all possible means of escape. Thankfully for him, reinforcements arrived but with the element of surprise gone, he was forced to retreat while his fellow Ronin held off the deadly duo. Before he left, he yelled something at the mare in Japanese.

“Of course I would burn down my own house to kill you, who do you think I am?” Pinkamena responded.

Jyunichi said nothing else as he got on his motorcycle and got away, leaving the large group of Ronin to deal with the city’s deadliest duo.

They did not last long.

“Nice way to spend the evening,” Johnny commented.

“Yep, now the author has to figure out how ‘Visiting Hours’ is going to go since you didn’t receive that grievous sword wound like you did in the canon.”

“What?” Johnny asked.

“What?” Pinkamena asked.