Murder Time, Fun Time

The Saints were now hard at work at preparing for the final confrontation with Zinyak. At this point, Kinzie had pinpointed the location and route to Zinyak’s throne room. However, in order to get past the countless Zin who would stood in their way, they would need to create a major distraction that would cause the Zin to be thrown into a panic. The only distraction that would be big enough to do that would be to crash the entire simulation.

After gathering all of the info he needed, Ben King had a plan to do that.

Playa decided that he would hold a meeting at Kinzie’s warehouse in the simulation later.

Pinkamena spotted Keith David behaving suspiciously. He seemed torn between something but Pinkamena couldn’t say what. The madmare could only hope that the matter wouldn’t come back to bite her in the flank. If it did, the President would be looking for a new Vice President.

There was still time until the meeting and Ben wanted to see the last uncontrolled pockets of the simulation to fall to the Saints before the endgame began. He located the last activities that needed doing and put them all on one last list. He had Pinkamena take care of that while he had Playa assist him with the matter of Tanya escaping the nightmare simulation into the Steelport simulation.

Tanya was using some sort of virus that turned people into her sex workers to run her brothel. Ben wanted to use the opportunity to do what he always wanted to do: put a bullet in Tanya’s head.

Pinkamena, Playa and Ben headed into the simulation to finish the simulation takeover and to nip an annoyance in the bud.

The madmare headed to Sunset Park to defend the last virus injection. Wanting to end the series of injections in style, she warned the hackers about what she was about to do so Kinzie and Matt switched their monitors to observe Playa absorbing some of Tanya’s virus and having his appearance change into something male strippers wore.

Meanwhile, Pinkamena used her Buff power to shift into her insanity form which was followed up by many of the simulation’s denizens getting slaughtered in mere seconds. After the first wave, the enemies stopped coming and the virus was uploaded with no further resistance.

After that, she headed to the final Zin patrol and ended them by stomping and impaling the Zin on an assortment of knives.

Pinkamena finished Sunset Park by going on a rampage through the area. She used her Singularity Gun to pull in a lot of people and objects before she fired a Blast that caused the singularity to rupture and unleashed a wave of blood from the victims upon the nearby area, destroying more property and people.

If ever the expression, “painting the town red” could be used literally at any point, it would be during this particular rampage as blood painted the entire neighborhood.

Once she was finished, Pinkamena headed to the Super Power Fight Club activity in Espina.

The opponent this time was Julius Little which made Pinkamena feel particularly gleeful.

The madmare had no problems getting past the simple programs with powers before she came face to face with Julius. When she activated her Buff power again, Julius was assaulted with a phantom pain in his gut and his heart as he suddenly remembered the final moments of his death when the Saints each stabbed him in the gut with a knife before Playa plunged his knife into his heart.

Julius looked at the horrifying figure before him and knew that he was going to die again. He could at least go out saying something. “I always knew you were a monster. Now you look like you do on the inside.”

“Personally, I find betrayers much uglier on the inside than I could ever hope to be,” Pinkamena retorted. “Keith David couldn’t have picked a worse character to voice.”

“What are you talking about?”

Pinkamena rushed up to Julius which disabled his shield with her presence. When Julius stared into the void that was her eyes, his heart shut down along with the rest of him. Pinkamena decapitated Julius with her Vorpal Blade and displayed it to the audience after her Buff wore off.

Pinkamena could hear crying coming from the audio. It sounded like Matt. “What’s going on?” the madmare asked.

Kinzie answered, “Matt was stuck between watching two traumatizing images: you in your Buff form, or the boss doing a pole dance dressed as a male stripper. He wasn’t mentally prepared for either so now he’s curled up on the floor in the fetal position.”

“Was the dance any good?” Pinkamena asked.

“It was like watching someone having a seizure so no.”

“I heard that!” Playa yelled. “You just don’t recognize talent when you see it.”

“It’s about what I would expect from Twilight if she tried to pole dance...or dance period,” Pinkie commented.

“Philistines…” Playa groaned.

“Twilight, are you angry because you feel like somepony insulted you again?” Spike asked.

“I’m getting to the bottom of this, I don’t know why I’m feeling like this but i need to find out.”

Twilight started pulling out books from the shelves.

“Wonderful, another all-nighter,” Spike moaned.

“So has Ben killed Tanya yet?” Pinkamena asked.

“Yeah, he just shot her in the head a few seconds ago,” Kinzie answered.

“How’s his super form look?”

“He went with the Laurence Fishburne look.”

“How well does he pull that off?”

“Pretty well actually, he’d have made a good double for him if he went into acting. Anyway, the Saints are gathering at my warehouse to discuss King’s plan to defeat Zinyak.”

“Headed there now.”

Pinkamena and Playa arrived at the warehouse within a few minutes. Pinkamena’s crew, along with Johnny, Ben and Kinzie were already there.

“Are we late for the briefing?” Playa asked.

“We haven’t started yet, I’m waiting on Miller,” Ben said.

“We got a problem,” Matt said as he hurried inside with Shaundi and Asha. “The Zin are coming!”

“Here?!” Kinzie shouted in surprise.

“That’s probably why he said it’s a problem,” Shaundi said with sarcasm.

“Alright, let’s take cover, we should be able to ambush them,” Asha suggested.

Shaundi looked at a nearby screen and noticed why that plan was not going to work as the Zin were marching in formation toward the warehouse. “Not so sure about that.”

“Either Zinyak still has some means of spying on us in the simulation or someone ratted us out,” Pinkamena commented.

“We can talk about that later, for now we need to get out of here,” Octavia said.

It was then that the Zin busted inside and threw some special grenades that made everyone feel weak. Vinyl and Moondancer felt like they had suppression rings put on their horns despite the fact that they could still feel their magic.

“I think those grenades are suppressing our superpowers,” Moondancer said. She then threw a few fire and lightning spells at the invading Zin.

“At least they didn’t suppress our magic,” Pinkamena said.

The Zin were coming in huge numbers, they were facing a full battalion and the Saints were in no position to handle those numbers, especially with the grenades suppressing their powers.

“Hey, we gotta go! There’s too many of them,” Pierce shouted.

“There’s a helicopter on a nearby roof! We can use it to get everyone to safety,” Ben offered.

“Matt and I will head out on our own, force the enemy to split their forces. We’ll catch up,” Asha shouted.

“Before all that we need some breathin’ room. Let’s take out those tanks,” Johnny suggested.

Pinkamena and Vinyl pulled out their Singularity Gun and Wubstep Gun respectively and cleared out the entrance with a series of black holes and explosive wubs.

Another wave of Zin was coming and Pierce and Ben stayed behind to hold the Zin off while everyone else headed for the chopper on the roof.

Once inside the chopper, Playa covered Pierce and Ben from above with the guns while Pinkie piloted the chopper and stayed close to the car that Pierce and Ben were using for their escape.

Pinkie and Playa worked together to escort the car to safety while destroying the numerous pursuers and roadblocks in their way.

Suddenly, the helicopter caught fire.

“We’re going down!” Shaundi shouted.

“Pinkie, how did you get shot down?” Pinkamena asked.

“It’s not my fault, this is a scripted event!”

“Brace yourselves!” Playa shouted.

Everyone and everypony jumped out of the helicopter and onto a rooftop before the helicopter crashed.

The crew had some minor scrapes and bruises but no real injuries. They managed to get up and brush themselves off.

“Everyone okay?” Playa asked,

“We walked away right?” Johnny asked rhetorically.

“Oh look, a cat. Is this a pet store?” Past Shaundi asked.

That was no pet store. The face of a massive-headed pink cat with green eyes and wearing glasses said otherwise.

“This is about to get fun,” Pinkamena commented.

“Merry Christmas to me,” Johnny commented.

The crew entered the elevator into the building and exited onto a balcony above a typical showroom floor for one of Professor Genki’s episodes of Super Ethical Reality Climax.

Kinzie was working on hacking another elevator for the group to reach a lower floor but the game activated on its own. Knowing what was about to happen, Playa and Johnny manned a pair of turrets.

Zin troops showed up on the showroom floor for the duo to shoot at while Kinizie was at work hacking the elevator.

Pinkamena assisted by firing black holes at groups of Zin troops to pull them in while Vinyl unleashed musical mayhem.

Genki suddenly showed up to beat up everyone on the showroom floor. For some reason, Playa was really determined to kill the man-cat and unleashed a continuous wave of lasers at Genki.

Once the cat went down, the door to the prize room was opened. Kinzie was uncharacteristically excited about the prizes.

The crew made it outside and found a pair of Genkimobiles waiting for them. Kinzie demanded to be the driver of one while Pinkie drove the other.

Pinkamena used her communicator to talk with Kinzie. “Since we’re in between waves of Zin, you mind filling us in on Ben’s Plan?”

“Ben’s plan was to overload the simulation. We can still do that but not if the Zin know our every move.”

“Do you know how we can prevent that?”

“Yes, but I need to get back to the ship so I can find a way to cut them off. Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of finding the weakest point in the simulation.”

“Alright, let’s find the nearest gateway and get out of here.”

After blasting through a few roadblocks, Ben reported that Pierce and himself were exiting the simulation. The transmission was suspiciously fuzzy.

That was when Zinyak showed up, bringing the car to a halt and grabbed Kinzie before he smashed her head against the car several times before he leapt away with her.

Shaundi then spoke over the simulation audio, “Everyone, you need to get out of the simulation right now!” Everyone was suddenly and forcibly pulled from the simulation.

As everyone was recovering from their forceful ejection from the simulation, Playa recovered first to yell at Shaundi, “What the fuck are you doing, they got Kinzie!”

“Boss, the Zin are here!”

“What?”

“We were set up! I got out of the simulation, Pierce and King were out cold, the proximity alarm is screaming and Asha, Miller and the Vice President are gone.”

“They kidnapped Keith David!?”

“And left us sleeping so we’d get picked up by Zinyak,” Johnny finished as he handed Shaundi a weapon.

Everyone armed themselves and prepared to repel the Zin boarding party.

Once a group of Zin forced the door open, they suddenly found themselves looking at their headless bodies as their final moment was upon them.

Pinkamena went on a rampage throughout the ship and coated the lower decks in Zin blood.

The ship suddenly started shaking so the other Saints went to the bridge to investigate. CID explained that a Zin transport ship was carrying them toward certain doom and that there was a strange heat signature coming from the cargo hold.

“Hey guys, we got bombs,” Pinkamena said through the comms after she slaughtered the Zin in the cargo hold.

“Hey boss, you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’,” Johnny asked.

Playa and Johnny went to the cargo hold to collect the bombs. “Time for some explosive fun.”

After they collected the bombs, Playa, Pinkamena and Johnny headed out the airlock and through a Zin boarding tunnel to the enemy ship. “Yo, anything you wanna use these on?” Johnny asked once they reached the Zin ship.

“Probably something that looks big, glowy and important,” Pinkamena answered.

“Makes sense.”

While Pinkamena cut a swathe through the Zin on their ship, Playa and Johnny found a pair of murderbot miniguns to spray lasers at any Zin that the madmare might have missed.

“These Zin sure do make a good argument for murdering them,” Johnny commented.

“I hope you have the perfect way to make Zinyak suffer, Pinkamena,” Playa said.

“Oh I do, I discussed it with Moondancer and she’s in the middle of building the program as we speak. The rest will come as a surprise.”

The trio soon found a large, red, and glowing cylinder in a circular room. Pinkamena and Johnny cleared the room while Playa planted a bomb near it. Searching a little more, they found a terminal that looked important so the Saints leader planted the other bomb near that.

What none of them counted on was that the bombs had a shorter detonation time than they thought which began a mad sprint back to their ship before the Zin ship blew up. The run wasn’t far and they made it back with plenty of time to spare, despite Playa having fun with a Zin in the airlock tunnel.

Once everyone was back onboard, the Saints flew the ship back to safety.

Playa expressed his frustration about someone on his crew betraying him. Most of the Saints believed that Asha and Matt betrayed them, but Johnny found proof that they were innocent as he opened a closet door to see the MI6 duo fall to the floor.

It was then that Playa realized that there could only be one person who could have pulled off the feat since Asha and Matt were found unconscious in the closet.

“Keith David is a dead man.”