Murder Time, Fun Time

With the Ronin dismantled and the Japanese Yakuza in need of a new Oyabun, the Saints were now in control of nearly two thirds of the city. Only the areas owned by the Brotherhood or Ultor remained.

The Saints have made great progress in retaking the city that was taken from them because Julius put Playa into a coma.

Since Maero wasn’t making a move yet, Playa decided to let the Saints take the time to relax and prepare for the war against the Brotherhood.

While Pinkamena would be avoiding conflict with the gang for the time being, she wasn’t able to sit still and relax. She was bored and wanted to find something to do.

Looking at her phone, Pinkamena decided to deal with another assassination contract and chose to deal with the one at the Ultor controlled Harrowgate neighborhood in the Saint’s Row district.

Once she arrived at the appointed location, she received a call from an unknown number that stated that he sent the dossiers of some individuals that needed to “disappear.”

Once her phone had downloaded the files of her targets, she immediately facehooved when she saw the descriptions of her targets. Each one was weird in their own way.

Her first target, Apoop, a name that made the mare pity the individual for having parents who would name him that, frequented the nightclub where she and Treehugger ended the life of the DJ Veteran Child. After returning to the club, she took the time to dance to the rhythm of the music. Apoop showed up on the dance floor a few minutes after Pinkamena started getting into the music. Once she noticed her target however, her dancing style changed as she danced while advancing on her target. Once she got close, her dancing took on a more aggressive style as her movements caused her to leave heavy impacts on Apoop’s body to where he got sent flying into a wall before the mare gave chase and, keeping in tune with the music, smashed his face against the wall with her rear hooves and shattered his skull, leaving a huge stain on the wall and yet another corpse for the club to deal with.

Pinkamena was in luck with her second target, Larry, who was Helmers’ brother and was just as trashy as the pimp, was meeting with his brother who was warning him that someone wanted him dead. Larry thanked him for his concern but he wasn’t worried about any assassin. With his message delivered, Helmers walked away from his brother’s trailer while Larry walked inside.

During the brief verbal exchange, a number of Satchel charges were planted on the back of the trailer. A push of a button was all it took to blow up the trailer and Larry with it.

Helmers never figured out who killed his brother.

Her next target, Seabaugh, was an eccentric who liked dressing as a pirate. Since he frequented a pirate ship themed restaurant, she decided to try out the food there. The seafood was decent but the atmosphere left much to be desired.

Seabaugh walked into the restaurant to have his fill of seafood but didn’t expect to see a pony in a pirate outfit and pointing a flintlock pistol at him. He barely got a word out before he was blasted in the face with the authentic pistol and then impaled by an antique cutlass.

Mr. Flegel was a tattoo enthusiast and was currently criticizing a customer at a Rusty’s Needle parlor in Bavogian Plaza for his choice in tattoos. After the customer left, Flegel was alone but had no idea that he actually wasn’t. His mind was thrown into total confusion when he suddenly found himself strapped into the parlor’s chair where the tattoo artist did their work. The last thing the tattoo enthusiast saw before the remainder of his life was of pure agony was a pink pony with a wide evil smile and holding a tattoo pen.

Flegel’s screams were heard several buildings over as he received his last and most painful tattoo job.

He was found dead the next day with his torso cut open and many of his internal organs were tattooed as well as his eyeballs.

Pinkamena paid another visit to the Stilwater Caverns to set up a trap for her next target. When Russell arrived in the caverns, he tripped a switch he knew wasn’t there the day before. Before he knew it he was the victim of the old boulder chase scenario. However, Russell was no Dr. Jones and the boulder moved faster than he did. In the end Russell ended up as a blood stain on the cavern floor.

Pinkamena had no idea how her last target got on the police force given his habits but had to remind herself that the city was fucked up like Troy said five years ago. Instead of causing trouble and inciting police aggression, the madmare called Troy’s number and requested for her target, Lieutenant Freeball, to head to a designated location. Pinkamena was actually surprised that Troy was more than happy to send the exhibitionist to his doom since he was a total embarrassment to the force and was looking for an excuse to get rid of him. However, Troy only agreed to the matter in exchange for her taking out Freeball’s partner, Anoop as well which she was completely fine with.

Lt. Freeball and Anoop arrived at the scene he was supposed to investigate and, as usual, neither were running around with pants or underwear.

After a few minutes of looking around, Freeball headed back to his car before a knife cut into his sack and one swift motion from the knife ended with him castrated. A girl’s scream could be heard for several blocks before it was silenced when the officer was choked from behind by the same pair of pants he refused to wear held by the infamous pink pony.

Anoop saw the mare choking his partner and tried to shoot the mare but only succeeded in killing Freeball as she put his head in the way of the bullet as she ducked below Freeball’s head level to avoid the possibility of the bullet going through his skull.

Pinkamena pulled out her SMG and filled Anoop’s groin with bullets before hurling Freeball’s corpse at Anoop and placing the two in an awkward position on the ground. She finished the job by shooting Anoop in the head with her pistol and left them in a position that appealed to those interested in the niche of macabre yaoi.

Shortly after finishing the last of her latest kill list, Pinkamena received a call from Playa who informed her that he received a call from some woman who wanted to do something about Ultor. The madmare knew that it was too soon to do anything really effective against the corporation, but figured it might be amusing to humor the woman so she returned to the hideout to see what she wanted.

Pinkamena observed the meeting between Playa and their new guest, Tera Patrick. From what she said, it seemed like she intended to bring Ultor’s crimes to light by bringing evidence to the media. However, Pinkamena had a feeling that Tera’s plan wouldn’t work.

“Why not?” Pinkie asked. “All we have to do is dig up the icky bodies…” she shuddered, “...and give them to the news people.”

“Because you are forgetting where we are. In addition to my earlier comments about Stilwater, the city of debauchery and vice, it’s also an extremely corrupt city. If you thought police chief Monroe was the only bad cop on the force, you’re wrong. Troy is corrupt too but we don’t go after him because him being there benefits us.

“In the case of Tera’s bid against Ultor, even if we did give the bodies to the media, what guarantees that the media will even do something with the evidence? Tera’s mistake is that she’s playing by Ultor’s rules. If we want to beat Ultor, we either gain more influence over city politics than them...very unlikely...or we forcibly put more employees that we can work with into positions of power in the corporation by taking out the ones who want to take us out; like what happened with Troy.

“The most likely scenario is that Ultor is going to pay the media off to make sure their dirty secrets don’t get exposed.”

“Shouldn’t we tell Tera this?” Pinkie asked.

“Nah, I still wanna see her try. Besides, we have the rest of the day to do stuff before we go after The Brotherhood and I wanna spend it doing something besides lounging around watching boring crap on TV.”

“It still seems mean to let her do this when we know it’ll be for nothing.”

“I’ll help you distribute baked goods to everyone in the Saint’s.”

“Deal!”

Playa drove to each location designated by Tera. On the way, Tera admitted that she worked for Ultor at their secret Pyramid as a microbiologist.

“A what?” Playa asked, clueless about what a microbiologist was.

“Read a book,” Tera said, unable to hide her exasperation.

Pinkamena giggled and Playa glared at her, “What did she mean by that?”

“She basically told you that you’re really stupid. A microbiologist is a type of scientist that studies living things that are too small to see normally.”

“What? Like germs?”

“Something like that and many other things.”

After the duo slaughtered the group of Masako who were hanging around the first burial site, Playa pulled the truck next to the spot where the bodies were buried. While Pinkie could have dug up the bodies, she was squeamish about touching dead bodies. That was something she let Pinkamena handle. Since Pinkie wouldn’t cooperate, Playa had to grab a shovel and dig up the bodies himself.

What Playa saw of the bodies left him a bit horrified as he saw the mangled state the bodies were in. They looked like something had eaten them up from the inside out and he was sure they weren’t buried there long enough for whatever fed on corpses to have a go at them.

Playa called Tera to demand some answers about what happened to the bodies. Tera admitted that Ultor was experimenting with nanoscopic machines to increase a miner’s lung capacity but devoured the volunteers from the inside out instead.

Playa and Pinkamena dug up more bodies that were in the same state while the Masako sent more troops to guard the bodies. One group tried to escape with one of the bodies in an Armored Personnel Carrier but Pinkamena caused them to crash when she smothered the windows in pastries. The Masako left the vehicle and were quickly dismembered by the madmare before Playa collected the experimental corpse.

After some more resistance from the Masako, the duo found the last body and delivered them to the news station after Pinkie took over and evaded pursuit from the police and Masako.

Tera held onto hope that Jane Valderamma would broadcast the story about the corpses but Pinkamena highly doubted that would happen.

“I told you,” Playa said.

Tera was in disbelief about what happened. The corpses that Playa and Pinkamena dropped at the news station’s doorstep never made the news. “This doesn’t make any sense. You handed them a huge story.”

“Ultor handed them money.”

“Couldn’t you force Valderamma to do something?”

“I’ll see what I can do but we’re gonna need some proof beyond a couple of bodies. You came to me with this whole thing, you got any other ideas?”

“If they want proof, our best bet is to get our hands on the chemicals while Ultor is moving them.”

“Alright, let’s go.”

Pinkamena smiled as she saw that her entertainment for the day continued.

Playa, Pinkamena and Tera found the chemical delivery truck before the mare forced her way into the cab and shot up the driver with her SMG. Once the vehicle came to a halt and the escorts were blown up, Tera took the wheel and drove toward the airport while Playa and Pinkamena defended the rear of the vehicle.

Pinkamena’s party cannon took care of the ground pursuit and Playa used RPGs to shoot down attack helicopters.

As the situation progressed, Ultor started sending what Tera called the Scout Prototype, an ATV that was designed to scout for prime mining locations. Playa felt that a mining vehicle with a turret was overkill while Pinkamena developed a strong desire to hijack one.

Once they were near the airport, Pinkamena used her grappling gun to pull herself to one of the pursuing Scouts and started smashing through the armored glass with her hoof which scared the passengers out of the vehicle.

Shortly after Pinkamena hijacked the prototype, she and Playa drove back to the news station to talk with Valderamma.

The news anchor didn’t care about what proof they had about Ultor’s corruption but demanded an interview with the whistleblower instead.

After Playa left to convince Tera to go along with Valderamma’s demands, Pinkamena stood near the news anchor who was curious about why she was still there.

Pinkamena smirked at the woman, “I know you have no intention of incriminating Ultor. You plan to humiliate her on live TV.”

“If you know that much then why let her go along with this?” Valderamma asked.

“I’m bored and it’s a good way to liven up the day.”

Valderamma chucked, “You are quite the evil pony.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Back at the hideout Playa was relaying the news to Tera about the upcoming interview with Jane Valderamma. Tera was visibly trembling because of her anxiety about being in front of a camera.

Seeing Tera like that and knowing what was coming was making Pinkamena feel sympathy toward the disgruntled ex-Ultor worker. Playa tried offering advice such as imagining people in their underwear but that only made things worse as Tera apparently had an issue with nudity.

Pinkamena did some research on Tera to see what else there was about her and found that was a famous porn star, which would explain her thing with nudity. From what she found, Tera wanted to do more in life than star in pornographic roles and got a degree in microbiology and went to work for Ultor.

After seeing the former porn star in such an anxious state, Pinkamena couldn’t take seeing her like that anymore and gave her own advice to Tera.

“What is it?” Tera asked.

Pinkamena shook her head, “Look, Valderamma intends to make your Ultor issue more about you and ultimately humiliate you on public television.”

“What?! Then…”

“So, listen to my advice and you can at least get through this without getting humiliated. You’re going to put those acting skills you gained from your roles in pornographic movies to good use…”

A hard fought battle against an entire battalion of Masako troops was fought atop Mount Claflin, a battle which cost Ultor millions, possibly billions, with the destruction of countless APCs and attack helicopters. The armored ground vehicles could not withstand the many rockets hurled at them by the Saints nor the incredible firepower of Pinkamena’s party cannon.

The skies were kept clear of Masako attack helicopters thanks to the vigilance and agility of Gilda. Treehugger picked off any troops that left the safety of their APCs.

Despite Valderamma’s lateness to the interview that she demanded, it didn’t cause too much of an inconvenience to Tera or the Saints. Once the Masako were wiped out in the area, the news anchor began her interview. Tera prepared herself and held on to Pinkamena’s advice as Valderamma began and the cameras rolled.

“This is Jane Valderamma, reporting live with Tera: a woman who claims our city is in danger.”

“That’s right, Jane. The Ultor Corporation has been using a secret R&D lab to conduct unethical experiments on the citizens of Stilwater.”

“Those are some strong allegations; I’m assuming you have proof.”

“Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have the bodies of people who were experimented on, as well as some of the chemicals that were used to do it.”

“And why do you think Ultor is responsible?”

“I conducted the experiments myself.”

“So these were the acts of a crazed individual?”

Tera knew what was coming, thanks to Pinkamena. All that remained was to spin it in her favor. “Yes, I am that crazed individual who Ultor hired to conduct these twisted experiments. They hired me knowing full well that I was crazy enough to do them and not care about the ethical ramifications.”

Valderamma was briefly caught off guard by Tera’s bold comment, but she pressed on wondering where she was going to go with this. “That is quite the bold statement to make, Tera. Do you have proof about Ultor’s intentions when they hired you?”

“How could I? The contract was pretty standard since every other scientist under Ultor’s employ had theirs written the same way.”

“I see, so why did you quit your job at Ultor to turn against them?”

“They didn’t pay me enough. If they wanted me to conduct more of my mad science I would have needed a lot more funding, which they refused. So I decided that if they weren’t going to pay me for what I’m worth, I’m going to dedicate my efforts to tear them down. And I intend to do so alongside the Third Street Saints.”

“There you have it, a beautiful yet mad woman, who places significant value in her own depraved research, declares war against a corporation and at the same time declares her allegiance to the infamous Third Street Saints. Who will win in this war for the fate of our fair city? Only time will tell. I’m Jane Valderamma, Channel 6 news.”

Once the cameras switched off, Valderamma maintained her attention on Tera and smiled. “That was some impressive improvisation. The footage will need some editing but I can spin this in a way that, while it won’t incriminate Ultor, will become the Saint’s declaration of war against them. I’ve seen the Saints pull off some impressive feats over the years and if anyone has any chance of defeating Ultor, it’s them.”

Tera released the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She could hardly believe that she made herself out to be the madwoman Valderamma had tried to make her into. However, there was no going back now. She had just openly declared herself as a member of the Saints and that was going to be how the city would see her now. As long as the Saints punished Ultor for their crimes, she was fine with the fate that she thrust upon herself.