Author's Note

Warning: This chapter contains significant amounts of ridiculousness. Much of the content that comes from the DLC missions featured in this chapter will not be considered canon to the main story. The content written for the DLC missions may be difficult to follow.

A Fanfic in A Fanfic

After Pinkamena had subjected Angel de LaMuerte to a game show that he was against participating in, Pinkamena apologized to the wrestler for putting him through that and promised to apologize to his mask later. This satisfied the irritated wrestler.

There were still a few days left before Genkibowl and Murderbrawl, too much time in Pinkamena’s opinion. She would need to find some way to spend her time until the events.

After the activities that physically pushed Playa’s pain tolerance to his limit and the back to back game shows, every activity in Steelport had been done, short of what was to come during Genkibowl.

The only thing she could do until the event was to continue pushing against the Luchadores by claiming more of the neighborhoods on Carver Island. The island was the last bastion of Syndicate influence in Steelport.

With Playa still in the hospital after getting mauled by a tiger because his bad driving pissed off the feline, the remaining assassination contracts would have to be handled by someone else in his stead. Octavia volunteered for the contracts until Playa left the hospital. The vehicle theft contracts could wait.

For today, the neighborhoods of Yearwood and The Grove would be the targets for Pinkamena’s crew. Since Port Pryor had little going on except for a couple of gang operations and being where the Luchadores’ base of operations was located, she included that location as well.

As usual, Gilda was left with the collectible search task, one that Pinkamena assured the griffon that was nearly complete as according to what Pinkie told the madmare, there were only seven packages of drugs, cash and sex dolls left in the city.

Moondancer, Treehugger and Vinyl handled hunting down the last of the gang operations in Steelport.

Vinyl decided to show off her latest modifications to the sonic boom. While she had to remove the charge function in favor of increasing the rate of fire of sonic pulses, she also managed to increase the effectiveness of each pulse. She still had a lot of work to do to transform what was once a sonic pulse cannon into what she believed would be the best weapon ever.

As the ponies were hunting the luchador gatherings, Moondancer lifted the gang members into the air while Vinyl tested her weapon on them. The rapid fire burst of sound ended up blowing their minds, literally.

Moondancer was still a little disturbed by the display. “I know we’re supposed to be killing them but couldn’t you make that thing so the deaths are at least a little more pleasant to see?”

“It’s still a work in progress, Moonie,” Vinyl responded. “I just needed to know if the pulses were still effective. Trust me, when I’m finished with this, it’ll be the envy of every DJ on both worlds.”

Meanwhile, with everyone on their task, Pinkamena brought up the last of the deeds that were in the Syndicate lockboxes and bought the last of the Syndicate-owned stores in Steelport while searching for the last of the photographer fans.

Gilda returned later to report that she couldn’t find the last money pallet anywhere on Carver Island. Without any knowledge of where the last of the collectibles was located, Pinkamena bought the Collectible Finder app on her phone. When she brought up the app, she facehoofed as she realized that the last collectible was in the last place they never explored in the city, the star-shaped Magarac Island. Gilda quickly took off and searched every nook and cranny of the tiny island and came across the money pallet in a small passageway.

With these tasks complete, only the 3 Count Casino stood between the Saints and complete city takeover.

The next day progressed slowly for the Saints. Angel was still considering how he was going to get Playa, or better, Pinkamena, into the ring during Murderbrawl as there were a number of wrestlers ahead of them in line waiting for the chance to take Killbane’s title from him.

With nothing left to do in the city, all the Saints could do was wait.

Thankfully, Playa finally returned to the Saints after his stay in the hospital. However, the look in his eyes spoke of rage toward a certain disgraced luchador who made him play in traffic, made him drive around in a flame suit which left him parched as a man in the desert without water, and made him drive around town with an angry tiger sitting right next to him. Overall, he was ready to beat Angel’s face until it was unrecognizable.

Since Angel was still needed for future plans against Killbane, Pinkamena convinced the Saints leader to blow off some steam by finishing the remaining vehicle theft contracts and performing some stunts. Playa decided to listen to the madmare and begrudgingly went out to do as she suggested.

That was before he received a phone call from someone he didn’t know. The caller ID tagged him as Jimmy Torbitson. Playa decided to humor the caller and answered his phone.

“You don’t know me, but I’m your biggest fan! And I...well, I need your help. Do you know Smiling Jack’s Diner? Meet me there and I’ll explain everything. Oh, and bring Johnny Gat, he deserves to know what happened.”

The call ended. Playa stared at the mare who had listened to everything the kid, who sounded like the most awkward person she had ever heard, had said. Pinkamena shrugged, “Guess this is one way to spend the time until Murderbrawl.”

Playa found Johnny and Pinkamena decided to bring Octavia along. It was about time she had a bonding experience with the ex assassin turned musician.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

“Okay, I know you’re an amateur fanfic writer, but couldn’t you do better than to use the well overused ‘dark and stormy night’ setting?” Pinkamena complained.

“Hey! It’s my story so I decide if I wanna use cliches or not,” Jimmy defended.

“Fine, whatever…”

“Ahem...It was a dark and stormy night… The heavens wept as I defiled mother nature. As I am Johnny’s number one fan...”

“Wait, I thought you said you were my number one fan,” Playa interrupted.

“Can’t I be both of your number one fans?”

“Let him finish, I’d rather not be sittin’ here all night listenin’ to this shit when I could be out murderin’,” Johnny said.

Jimmy continued, “For months I had been collecting shit. His shit.” He pointed at Johnny.

“Creepy…” Johnny commented.

“Discarded sunglasses, old chewed up gum, a greasy comb.” Pinkamena silently contemplated making some of her creepypasta out of the weird kid as he said that. “I thought I had enough things that he touched. I was wrong.” Jimmy then explained the malformed clone that came from his cloning machine.

“Uhh, Pinkamena, do humans normally have these ‘cloning machines’ in their bedrooms?” Octavia asked.

Pinkamena shook her head. “There is no way he should have been able to acquire something like that. That’s something only a federal research facility would have.”

“I got it off of Craigslist,” Jimmy explained. Pinkamena deadpanned at the explanation.

“So where is he?” Playa asked.

“Well, he walked out of a hole in my room and that’s all I know.”

Octavia took a deep breath. “So let me see if this is correct. You, an irresponsible child had somehow acquired a machine that you had no business in having from a source that somehow had said machine for sale, had somehow collected pieces of Mister Gat’s personal belongings. Then you placed them inside of said machine and somehow managed to activate the machine that you had no training in using. This resulted in creating a malformed copy of Mister Gat that you had no control of which brings us to your problem. An awful copy of Mister Gat is now on a rampage throughout the city of Steelport.”

Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

Octavia closed her eyes, sighed and rubbed her temples with both forehooves. “Looks like I owe Vinyl twenty bits,” she mumbled. Pinkamena gave a confused look which prompted the cellist to elaborate. “She and I had an argument one time about her irresponsible behavior and I bet that I would never meet an individual that was more irresponsible than her while discounting the Cutie Mark Crusaders and Discord. Vinyl took that bet.”

“Hey! If they didn’t want me to use a cloner they shouldn’t have sold it on Craigslist,” Jimmy defended.

Octavia sighed, “Let us get out of here before I say something that I will regret.” Octavia walked out of the restaurant, Pinkamena and Playa right behind her. Johnny made sure Jimmy didn’t follow them as he left the restaurant with the group.

Outside the restaurant, it had begun to rain. As they got into their car, everyone heard the voice of Jimmy in the air, “And so our adventure begins…”

“Great, now we’re part of this kid’s fanfiction. Pinkie, if he starts to piss me off, hold nothing back.”

“Okie dokie lokie.”

Once everyone was in the car, Playa asked Johnny if he knew where a clone of his would go. Johnny figured he’d go to a Friendly Fire to pick up a gun or something if he wanted to have some fun.

They didn’t find the clone at the nearest gun store so they searched another one.

“Indeed their friend had not been to the purveyor of weapons close by, but perhaps the next merchant would prove more...enlightening,” Jimmy narrated.

The next store was on fire and there were Morningstar around it. They decided to interrogate the Morningstar.

“Seeing our heroes approaching, footsoldiers of the notorious Morningstar gang rained down a hail of bullets. Realizing the presence of these henchmen must hold a clue to the whereabouts of their friend, keeping one alive was their only avenue for answers,” Jimmy’s narration continued.

“Yeah, no, fuck that.” Pinkamena was not going to go along with Jimmy’s narration and just butchered every Morningstar in the area.

“Pinkamena, you were supposed to keep one alive,” Jimmy whined. Pinkamena happily ignored the narrator. “Anyway, the Saints realized they had no idea where to continue the search. But then…”

Jimmy called Playa on his phone to tell him that there was some activity going on at Technically Legal involving a big monster. The Saints headed to the strip club.

“Listening to the sage-like advice of their intelligent friend, they raced over to the local strip joint ready to deal with a full police investigation. But when they arrived…”

The Saints arrived at a decimated strip club and no police were around. Playa interrogated the club owner who complained about the Saints tearing up his club.

“At that moment, little did they know the building was being surrounded…”

“...by mascots celebrating the upcoming Genkibowl competition and wanted to throw Playa and Johnny a party for being participants in the show,” Pinkie added to Jimmy’s narration.

Mascots appeared outside the strip joint in celebration.

“What? How did you do that? Stop doing that, you’re ruining my story…” Jimmy complained.

“Mena said I could be your co-author so here I am.”

Jimmy tried to get the story back on track by narrating himself driving to the strip joint and having the Saints get into the car. With three people and two ponies, the car was cramped.

“You couldn’t have jacked something bigger?” Playa asked.

“This is my mom’s car, I’ll have you know. It’s very reliable.” Jimmy defended.

“Does your mother know that you have taken her car?” Octavia asked.

“It was an emergency, I’m sure she will be glad I borrowed it for a good cause.”

Octavia held her tongue as only unladylike thoughts floated through her mind at the moment.

While Jimmy narrated that the Saints would ask about the tracking device he had for the clone, nobody cared to ask. Thanks to Pinkie writing away the police involvement in the story, the chase went on without incident but the clone still got away.

Jimmy assured everyone that he had another plan to track the clone. His plan involved trying to calm the clone down by having Pierce dress as Aisha and sing her songs. Pinkamena would allow it if only because it would amuse her to watch Pierce humiliate himself in public.

Jimmy provided the strangest gun Pinkamena had ever seen: A gun that shoots bees. The weapon was crafted with a beehive as an ammo clip. Pinkamena was pretty sure that if Fluttershy ever found out the kid had designed the gun, she would have words for Jimmy that would make him run home crying for mommy.

While the group was wearing protective suits while using the weird weapons to drive off fans, Johnny could only think about how weird it felt to be trying to deal with something that was made from him. While he did want to be a father someday, this was not the way he wanted it to happen. Overall this was the weirdest day of his life so far.

While Jimmy wanted to say that the Steelport National Guard got in the way again, Pinkie ended up replacing that scene with an explosion of lights and confetti which scared Johnny Tag, a name that Jimmy decided on, and made him flee.

“Really Jimmy?” Pinkamena deadpanned. “You decided to give him a bizarro world name? Could you not try to be a little more original?”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that Bizarro Superman is awesome. I have every comic featuring him. In issue--”

“Yeah yeah, comics and stuff,” Pinkamena interrupted. “So are we going after him or not.”

The Saints managed to track Tag down and attempted to calm him with the bee guns while Pierce kept singing Aisha songs. This angered Tag further so Jimmy brought in another clone. This was a malformed version of Aisha who managed to calm Tag down.

That didn’t last long as Tag quickly lost interest in the Aisha clone, much to Jimmy’s surprise. Pinkie once again altered the nerd’s fanfic by changing the scenario of the clone getting killed by an SNG attack helicopter to a Professor Genki mascot showing up to deliver a punch to the clone’s gut before running off. He didn’t get very far before Pinkamena decapitated him. The mascot dropped a ton of cash which the madmare helped herself to.

“Thanks for the cash,” Pinkamena said.

“ No problem, BPSWAGB,” Pinkie responded.

“Huh?”

“Big Pie Sister Who’s A Gang Boss.”

“Heh, figures you’d eventually use one of those long acronyms on me.”

Despite the setback, Jimmy had another plan to get Tag to calm down. In the meantime, Pierce was tasked with escorting the brute Aisha clone back to their headquarters.

Pinkamena, Playa, Johnny and Octavia met back at Jimmy’s house. There was only so much patience left that the Saints had with his whole ordeal.

Just as they met with the fanfic writer, Tag showed up and bowled everyone over before taking Johnny and ran off.

While Playa was knocked out, Pinkamena noticed Jimmy exiting his house with a few cans of Saints Flow. He forced one drink down the unconscious Saint’s throat and gave the rest to the other two.

“Here, drink these. They’ll give you superpowers.”

“Can this fanfic get any more nonsensical?” Pinkamena asked.

“Don’t worry Mena, it’s just fanfiction. It can be as canon or non-canon as you want. Besides, I can rewrite his story to help you out if you need it and it’s a good way to introduce you to what’s to come in SR4.”

Pinkamena decided to trust her sister on the matter. Pinkamena and Octavia used their teeth to open the cans and drank the contents. Both felt the boost in speed and strength and ran off in Tag’s direction without saying another word.

Pinkamena decided to forgo the writing out of the Steelport Guard in favor of testing out her new powers. The first group of troops were in a suburban neighborhood and were using some strange sound to lure out Tag.

Pinkamena started her test by lifting a house off its foundation and used it as a massive blunt object to smash soldiers and vehicles alike. Octavia was trying to go along with everything despite how ridiculous the whole scenario appeared. One thing the musical mare was sure about, she would only read stories from accredited authors from now on.

Jimmy directed the duo to a Morningstar ambush at Planet Saints which they decimated when Pinkie wrote in an AT Rifle for Octavia which allowed her to destroy groups of enemies with explosive, armor-penetrating rounds. Pinkamena jumped upward and grabbed a helicopter by the tail and used it as a club.

After the ambush was routed, Johnny called the mares and told him his location so they could share in the carnage to come.

On the way there, the Saints Flow started to wear off and the two were starting to feel a little groggy. Pinkamena pulled out another two cans of irradiated Saints Flow and tossed one to Octavia.

“What? Where did you get those? I only made three,” Narrating Jimmy claimed.

“You do realize that your fanfic has been hijacked, right?” Pinkamena responded.

Recharged, the two mares headed to the besieged bridge where they started tearing through military forces. When enemy helicopters took to the air, Pinkamena reached into her mane and pulled out Rainbow Dash who was completely confused about where she was. Pinkamena ordered her to grab Octavia and take to the skies which didn’t help her confusion. Before Dash took off however, she made the confused mare drink a can of Saints Flow to make sure she could handle the task while Octavia blasted everything from the sky.

Once the military gave up, Rainbow Dash landed and was about to ask for an explanation before Pinkamena grabbed her and stuffed her back into her mane.

Pinkamena ran up the bridge to get to where Johnny and Tag were. By the time she got there, Johnny had already calmed Tag down.

With the clone in a better state of mind, Pinkamena consulted with Pinkie about what would be the takeaway from this little side adventure. Any damage to the city, people and vehicles would have to be considered non-canon as well as the irradiated Saints Flow and the clones since keeping the two of them taken care of would be a big hassle. Pinkie would allow the bee gun to be canon since that would be a funny story to tell Fluttershy one day.

The cloning machine in Jimmy’s room would be removed and tossed into the water after making sure the device was beyond repair. After Pinkamena told Jimmy’s mom about the damage his clones caused as well as the fact that he borrowed her car without her permission, Jimmy was grounded until he finished high school.

With his fanfic ruined, Jimmy shredded it and spent his time grounded writing his next Saints fanfic, vowing to never drag the actual Saints into his stories again.

Rainbow Dash woke up in her bed in her cloud home. After rubbing her eyes with her hooves, she looked at her clock and realized that it was still too early to get up.

After the weird dream she had, she vowed to never drink cider before bed again.