I was so fixated on the stallion in front of me that I didn’t see who it was that bucked me from the side. I was easily knocked over, bouncing off the floor and into a steel-sided container with a rather loud ‘clang!’. Some additional hooves came down on me, delivering more punitive strikes before I had time to react. Instinctively, I tried to curl up into a ball and protect myself as best as I could, using my reinforced forelegs to ward off the blows. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much in the end. I couldn’t defend myself from the whole herd as they assaulted me from all sides.

Mercifully―or perhaps not, I’d learn in the fullness of time―it was not my fate to be beaten to death right here and now. Though I had certainly earned exactly that sort of fate. After all, I had apparently been involved in a robbery perpetrated against the leader of my herd! I knew for a fact that Grinder had killed a great many creatures for far lesser offenses.

My aching body was hauled up off the ground by a pair of strapping stallions as I was propped up so that Grinder could look me in the eye. I tried to subdue a fit of coughing as a result of a spasming diaphragm which had been kicked mercilessly several times while I’d been on the ground. A hoof smacked me hard across the face. I tasted blood. A heartbeat later my head was pulled up, forced to look into the furious orange maelstroms that were Grinder’s glaring eyes.

“I’d ask what you thought you were doing, but it’s clear that I beat the last brain cell out of you a while ago,” the stallion seethed through gritted teeth. “What the fuck kind of psycho suicidal bender are you on anyway? You break into my home, take my gibbies, and actually have the fucking audacity to show up here?!

“What? You too much of a bitch to do the world a favor and bite your own bullet, so you figure you’ll just get me to zero you out for some monumentally stupid shit?” The last was spoken with a hint of laughter, but all of it was mirthless.

“Because if that’s the case; oh, you fucked up big time, you worthless little cunt.” Another backhoof across the face. Hard enough that the persistent illusion hovering in front of my eyes vanished for a moment as the spell lost cohesion and was forced to automatically re-cast itself. “I ain’t going to let you off that easy.” On the next hit, I felt something give in my snout. At best, my nose was broken, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn a bone or two had been fractured. It certainly hurt enough. “Or maybe I will.

“You see, I know you, Pel. The cum joy-toys swallow has a higher IQ than you got, so I know you couldn’t have pulled this off on your own.” Again my head was forced back up so that Grinder could look me in the eye. “So I’m going to make you this one-time offer: you tell me who your partner was, and I’ll forgo flatlining you. At least until you fail to pay me with gibbies you didn’t siphon from my account.

“Otherwise, I’m going to play ‘Ripper-Doc’ right here and now and pull you apart, piece by fucking piece, and grind up what’s left into sausage. I hear the diamond dogs down in Santo Dingo pay good scratch for fresh meat. I might actually get some money out of you that way.” This time his laughter was joined in by other members of the boosterherd. A few of the carnivorously-inclined species made some exaggerated lip and beak smacking noises that sent a shiver down my spine.

“So, what’s it going to be, donk? Live another day? Or get turned into the world’s bloodiest jigsaw puzzle tonight?”

‘Despair’ felt like a woefully inadequate word to describe what I was feeling at that moment. Nor was it alone. Fear and anger were also making their presence known. I didn’t want to die, of course; but I was hard-pressed to see any way out for me. I was just one mare surrounded by a whole boosterherd. I couldn’t fight them all. Even if they hadn’t already jumped me, I couldn’t have escaped the warehouse, let alone Haywood. Grinder had me dead-to-rights. Emphasis on ‘dead’. That was just a fact that I wasn’t going to change. Even if he did let me go tonight after I gave up Hash, he and I both knew that I wasn’t going to have his money by tomorrow. We’d just be right back here again in twenty-four hours.

I was a dead mare. All that was apparently left to me was to choose the manner in which I died, and with how much integrity.

I could choose to keep my mouth shut. To protect Hash Stack from Grinder’s wrath. If I was dead either way, then what good did it really do me to bring the pegasus down with me? Which wasn’t to say that I was looking forward to the prospect of the torturously long and drawn-out death that Grinder had promised me if I kept my silence. At least with the alternative I’d been offered, there was a good chance the stallion would be willing to make it a cleaner death. A single bullet to the brain box. Maybe I could even persuade him to do it from behind so that the barrel of a gun wasn’t the last thing I saw.

All I’d have to do was give up Hash’s name.

And why shouldn’t I? What was happening to me right now was Hash’s fault. I might not be a genius, but even I could see that it hadn’t been a coincidence that she’d decided to steal from Grinder less than a day after I mentioned him being the source of my financial woes. I realized only too late why it was that she’d told me not to go back to the apartment. Too bad she’d been so specific…and had skimped on the details as to why.

What she’d apparently meant to tell me was that I shouldn’t leave that room; a room which I now suspected had been shielded with some sort of enchantment. It would make sense that a room which had quite clearly been equipped with such obvious mundane resistances to physical intrusions would also be afforded enchantments to ward off magical ones. I’d had other thoughts on my mind at the time, but I now realized that the issue I’d had calling on Grinder while in the room could have been explained by an emplaced ward around the room which blocked my clairaudience spell from connecting beyond its boundaries.

The same enchantment would almost certainly have been able to mask the curse Grinder had hexed me with that allowed him to track my location. That was why Hash Stack had sent me to that room. She knew that the stallion wouldn’t be able to find me as long as I was shielded by the enchantment surrounding it.

Of course, telling me all of that would have required admitting that she’d known exactly who’s apartment we had broken into, and how deep in the shit she’d gotten me with Grinder and the herd.

She’d probably thought that paying Grinder off with his own gibbies would be hilarious. Some ironic form of karma, or whatever. Under the right circumstances, I might have even agreed that it would be exceptionally funny to defraud an extortionist by paying him with his own ill-gotten wealth. It did hold a certain sort of symmetry. However, these were not the ‘right circumstances’ in my view, and thus I wasn’t any more amused at the flier’s audacity than Grinder likely was. She could have taken me along to rob just about any other creature in the city and we’d have gotten away with it clean; but instead she chose to target the one stallion who could get to me the easiest. Worse, she hadn’t even had the decency to warn me about the danger that she’d put me in.

The pegasus may have done a lot to help me out since I’d moved into her place―if it hadn’t been for her, I’d definitely be sleeping in a cardboard box somewhere―but she hadn’t done nearly enough for me to stick my neck out for her like this; to cover for her hubris.

I was willing to die for my fuck-ups. I’d earned that for myself through my own actions and decisions. But I wasn’t going to suffer for hers.

“My roommate,” I managed to croak out through my throbbing jaw. Yeah, it felt pretty broken. “Hash Stack. Her plan.” I waited for the stallion to pull out his gun and shoot me in the head in spite of his earlier promise to spare me in exchange for the information he wanted. A small part of me even silently prayed for it. Hoping beyond hope that Grinder would just end my misery here and now in a relatively painless fashion.

The earth pony stared at me for several impossibly long moments in complete silence, weighing how honest I was being with him. Apparently, he ultimately concluded that he believed me, because his next words were directed at one of the stallions holding me up. “Take her to Angelo’s. Bring backup with you. Solve the problem.”

“Got it, boss,” the pegasus on my left acknowledged.

The ponies holding me were about to drag me off when Grinder stopped them. The crimson stallion forced me to look him in the eyes one more time. I saw brief flickers of activity in the gemstone above his eyes as the boosterherd leader’s implant went to work. A second later, I saw an alert flash across my own illusionary HUD, notifying me that an ‘administrative charm’ had been activated from within my own implant. Then I was informed by the bank that a transfer was being processed. I saw every last gryphusbit in my account vanish.

That was fair, I conceded. Though it did unnerve me that the stallion had been able to execute the transaction on my behalf like that. I hadn’t been aware that he possessed that level of control over my arcanetics. I felt a chill in my stomach as I began to wonder what else he could force me to do through my implants…

“Get this out of my sight,” he spat, smacking me once more across the face for good measure; hard enough that I experienced a flash of arcane feedback which screwed up the illusionary charm that was pretty much constantly in effect. It became nearly impossible for me to see clearly for nearly a minute while I was being dragged out of the warehouse.

I wasn’t taken far. Angelo’s was a small diner that the herd frequented a couple blocks from the warehouse. It was owned by one of the herd’s more tenured members. Some grizzled diamond dog who’d been long in the tooth even when Grinder had been in diapers, or something like that. The noodles here were actually pretty good, or so I’d been told. I’d never had the spare scratch to eat here, even with the discount offered to members of the herd. If Grinder had heard that I was blowing gibbies on eating here instead of paying off what I owed him for my implants, he’d have smacked me around for ‘holding out on him’.

It didn’t look like I was being taken here for any sort of last meal though. The diner was closed. Ah well; I’d already gotten to enjoy an amazing salad earlier that night. So that was a pretty decent note to go out on. Though, had I known where this night was going to go, I definitely would have asked for a second helping…and I would have asked Daisy for some of that cheese she’d offered.

I was ushered none-too-gently onto a stool at the bar by one of the stallions who’d dragged me here. I was finally able to get a good look around, and noticed that it wasn’t just the three of us here. Four other members of the herd had also tagged along. Currently, they were checking their weapons and ensuring they were loaded and functional.

Somepony cuffed me over the back of the head, getting my attention. It was the pegasus Grinder had given his instructions to. “Call your friend. Tell her to meet you here. Tell her you’re alone.”

I managed a stiff nod, my gaze flickering briefly to the rifle the cobalt flier was manipulating with his talisman. “Right. Yeah.”

There wasn’t any doubt in my mind what was about to happen: I was being used as bait in a trap designed to lure in and kill Hash. I’d call her, she’d come down, and then the herd would jump her and shoot her dead. Jury was still out on whether I’d follow right after or not. I doubted very much anypony would get so much as a tongue lashing from Grinder if anycreature were to ‘miss’ while firing on Hash Stack and gun me down along with her. At best, he’d ask them how much damage there’d been to my arcanetics that would affect their resale value.

I initiated the call.

“...Hey, Pel. What’s up? Enjoying the VIP treatment?” My roommate answered. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard something off in her tone. Some slight trepidation or worry, maybe? I thought I’d detected a little surprise at the beginning. Maybe not though. I was understandably under a lot of stress, and surrounded by a lot of creatures who were as likely to kill me as not in the next hour or so, so my senses weren’t exactly as focused on the conversation as they should have been.

“Yeah, it was preem. Thanks for that.” The pegasus stallion was glaring at me, his wing gesturing for me to hurry the conversation along to the salient points of the call and get the pegasus to come here. “Hey, um, how about I treat you to dessert? Only fair, right? I, uh, know this neat place that’s just up the road a bit. Angelo’s? They have great…desserts.” I finished lamely, trying to ignore the unimpressed stare I was getting from the nearby feathered stallion. What?! It’s not like I ever claimed to be good at this sort of thing! If they wanted me to say something specific, they should have given me a script…

I winced. Hash was going to see right through all of this and refuse to show up. She wasn’t going to show, I was going to be dragged back to Grinder, he was going to think I was protecting Hash, and then he was going to start ripping me apart―

“Sounds great! You said ‘Angelo’s’, right? On Citrus Street? I know the place. Be there in a few!”

I blinked in mild shock. That…had worked? Huh. Either Hash wasn’t as streetwise as I’d thought, or I was a much more convincing liar than I gave myself credit for. “Awesome. See you soon.” I replied flatly before ending the spell. “She’ll be here in ‘a few’,” I informed the pegasus stallion numbly, still finding it hard to believe that this was happening. I’d just succeeded in leading the kindest mare in the city to her doom. Gold star for me.

The stallion nodded and I saw his eyes glaze over as he engaged his own clairaudience spell and linked with the other herd members nearby. “Get in position.” Wordlessly, they all moved out of sight. All except for the cobalt pegasus stallion, who instead stepped behind the counter and turned on enough of the lights to make it appear that the small curbside diner was open for business. He stashed his rifle under the counter and busied himself with shuffling plates and bowls around.

There didn’t seem to be any particular sense to what he was doing. Not that I could tell at any rate. He was just…moving things around, trying to look busy. At some point he must have thought it would look suspicious if I was just sitting at a counter with nothing in front of me, so the stallion set out a glass and topped it off with cheap rum. I didn’t touch it. He didn’t order me to.

The pair of us didn’t exchange any words as I stared down at the counter, watching him go about engaging in his macabre pantomim of ‘working’ behind the counter out of the corner of my eye as the two of us waited for Hash Stack to show up. I tried to keep myself from kneading my hooves in obvious worry, but it wasn’t easy. I was anxious―very anxious―and I was having a hard time hiding it. I was about to watch a good friend die, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I followed after her; but what could I do about it? It’s not like this was my fault!

At least, Hash’s involvement in all of this sure wasn’t my fault. She was the one who brought all this about by ripping off Grinder! Now she was also about to be the one who was naive enough to fall for what had to be the worst attempt at a lie even I had ever tried to pull off―and that was saying something! At this point, I found it hard to believe that Hash wasn’t trying to get herself ki―

“Hey, bloomba!”

I almost fell off of my stool. Somehow I managed to―barely―stay on it and not scream in surprise. Though there was a substantial string of muttered curses that slipped through my lips under my breath. I was so caught off guard by the arrival of the ivory pegasus mare that, at first, I looked at her in abject shock and confusion, as though I couldn’t fathom why she’d come here. And, to be fair, I found it very hard to believe that the usually very perceptive mare hadn’t sensed anything was wrong with me when I invited her here. After gaping at the pegasus for what felt like far too many heartbeats, I recovered enough to school my features into something a little less revealing of my current flustered state. I even managed a friendly smile―probably. “H-hey, Hash; what kept you?”

It was all I could do not to physically face-hoof at such a moronic statement. Fortunately for me, the pegasus appeared to interpret my comment as friendly sarcastic banter and let out a bubbly little laugh as she responded with a playful retort. “Held up in traffic. Roads are a parking lot at this time of night around here.” She stuck her tongue out at me as a wingtip gestured behind us towards the―clearly―empty roadway nearby. Not a single pair of headlights was anywhere in sight.

“Ha…yeah…” I tried to muster up a laugh of my own, but it came off as rather more anemic than I’d intended. I felt nauseous. My gaze darted to the stallion behind the counter as I tried to stop furtively biting my lip. I was kneading my hooves again. I clamped one down on the counter. “Hey, um…my dude? Two…desserts. Please.”

The cobalt flier glanced up at us, nodded, and moved to the far side of the bar. I very much doubted that he was going to come back with anything edible. He was likely just moving himself out of the line of fire of the other hidden members of the herd who were lying in wait around us. He’d moved far enough away though that I felt confident I could risk speaking to my roommate without being overheard. I couldn’t stop what was about to happen, but I could at least tell her goodbye.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“Nah, it’s my fault. I knew Grinder was a monster. Should have figured he’d be a creeper too and curse ya.” The mare replied with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders.

I gaped at her. “Wait…do you…know this is a setup?”

“I kinda figured, yeah.” She said with a pitying glance my way.

“So then why did you come?!” I hissed under my breath.

Hash flashed a broad smile my way. “I wasn’t about to leave you hanging in the breeze, bloomba.”

“They’re going to kill you!” This time, my outburst wasn’t as quiet as it could have been.

“They’re going to try,” was the nettrotter’s snarky retort. I thought I noticed a brief flicker from the talisman in her forehead, but it was gone in an instant. My ear flicked towards the bar where I could swear I’d heard the sound of something electronic fizzling, but I couldn’t tell exactly from where.

I didn’t have time to puzzle out the nature or origin of the sound though, because a heartbeat later, shit kicked off.

The cobalt ‘cook’ behind the bar was back in a flash. Whether it was because he’d heard me spill the beans to Hash or because he’d judged it was better for him to make the first move after all, I couldn’t say. In either case, his embedded talisman had retrieved the rifle from beneath the counter and leveled it at Hash’s head in one smooth motion. The alabaster mare turned her head and looked straight into the barrel. The complete lack of any sign of fear on her face was startling to me. If anything, she was finding the attempt to shoot her in the face…amusing!

She certainly wasn’t wearing the smirk of a mare who thought she was in any danger, that was for sure!

The shotgun’s trigger was depressed by the pegasus stallion’s magic. I threw myself bodily off of the stool in an attempt to evade being clipped by any of the weapon’s expelled shot. Hash didn’t have time to evade.

Nothing happened.

The stallion boosterherd member balked. His gaze darted between his rifle and the mare whose brains were very pointedly not splattered all over the roadway, much to his obvious surprise and consternation. He pulled the trigger several more times, but was met with the same silence from his weapon.

“Ohh, is your gun not working?” Hash asked in a tone dripping with feigned sympathy. A heartbeat later, her lips spread apart in a predatory grin. “Let’s try mine!” Without taking her gaze off the stallion, the mare’s left wing flipped up, revealing a revolver that she’d kept hidden within it. She had apparently been keeping it held in her pinion so as not to use her implanted jewel to manipulate it and tip off the stallion that she was preparing a counter-attack. The wing stretched outward, her primary feather wrapped around its grip and resting on the trigger. The moment the barrel of the weapon made contact with the side of the other pegasus’ head, a thunderclap rang out.

In an instant, the diner’s backstop was transformed into a mural of brain, bone, and crystal fragments.

I was given no time to process what had just happened before Hash’s teeth clamped down on the back of my vest and heaved me up and over the counter in one smooth motion. “Stay down!” She called out as the levitation talismans encrusting the leading edges of her wings sudenly flared to life. She leaped into the air and spun around to face the rest of the boosterherd that was now coming out of their hiding spots. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised by their numbers, and I must have misremembered the fight, because it also felt like Hash had looked at where her assailants were emerging from before they’d actually revealed themselves.

I hit the floor hard, as I had most certainly not expected to be thrown over the diner’s counter. My eyes snapped open as I tried to orient myself, and I immediately screamed as I found myself looking into what remained of the cobalt stallion’s skull. I scrambled away a few steps before my attention was drawn to the rest of the ‘ambush’. Given that Hash was apparently keenly aware of what had been waiting for her, I was no longer certain about who the side being ‘surprised’ was anymore.

I picked myself up off the bloodied diner floor. My ears twitched as my hooves clipped something metal and I heard it skitter briefly along the concrete. It was the pistol that I’d taken from the apartment earlier that night―Grinder’s apartment, it turned out. I recognized now that it probably belonged to the crimson earth pony. It must have fallen out of my vest when I landed, I realized. I hesitated as I stared at the weapon, briefly considering picking it up. Not that I knew what I’d do with the thing. I’d never fired a firearm before. I was about as likely to shoot myself as I was to be of any help to Hash Stack. It was best to just leave it where it lay for now and trust that my roommate knew what she was doing.

She certainly seemed to think that she was, given her willingness to flutter right into the trap that had been set for her.

My head rose cautiously up over the lip of the counter so that I could watch how this ended up playing out. Clearly it wasn’t going how it was intended to. At least, not from the perspective of my fellow herd members…

Though I was at something of a loss to explain why? To my mind, they should have had Hash Stack dead to rights! She’d been surrounded and outgunned. Heck, even the pegasus behind the counter had gotten the drop on her with his shotgun and fired first―er, well, pulled the trigger first, at least. Had he fucked up loading it somehow?

If so, then he wasn’t the only one. As I scanned the fight unfolding before me, I spied a griffon tiercel who was in the midst of fumbling with a pistol in his talons which seemed just as stubborn about firing as the shotgun had been. He then screamed out in pain when two more blasts from Hash’s wing-clutched revolver elicited geysers of blood from his back as the high-caliber magnum slugs punched right through him. I found it curious that the alabaster flier was still holding her weapon with her wing, as I could see the arcanetic implant in her head was glowing brightly with the telltale sign of fervent use. Whatever she was doing with it, it wasn’t telekinesis apparently.

The griffon hadn’t even hit the ground when a unicorn mare sporting an arcanetically amplified horn rushed past him, her murderous purple gaze locked onto the ivory flier, along with a pair of readied submachine guns floating at her side.

Again, Hash didn’t seem to react hardly at all to the assault. She merely glanced briefly in the charging unicorn’s direction. A heartbeat later, the mare’s eyes widened with shock and surprise for a brief moment before they shut tightly and she cried out in pain. Her hooves scrambled to a stop. The weapons which had been floating in her telekinetic grasp dropped to the ground, forgotten. The mare reared up on her haunches while her forehooves clamped to either side of her head, clutching it in clear throes of agonizing pain. The ruby lattice etched into her horn started to glow brightly, as though she were going to cast a potent spell…

…and then it continued to glow ever brighter.

The mare unleashed a primal scream that I was sure would have left her throat too sore to speak for the next week…had she lived through the next two seconds. The brilliant glowing of the crystalline webbing etched into her horn finally seemed to reach the limits of its tolerance for arcane capacity…and burst. Her horn shattered into dust, like a yuletide firecracker. The same moment that it burst, her screaming cut off. The mare’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and her body crumpled into a limp heap in the road like a marionette whose strings had just been clipped. Blood began to slowly flow from her ears and nostrils. A divot now existed in her skull where her horn and cranial talisman had been only seconds before, exposing the smoldering crystal lattices and brain matter beneath.

I was still staring at the sight of the clearly dead unicorn mare when I heard the sound of another guttural warcry. My head snapped around in time to see a diamond dog bracing himself on his hind legs as he brought a shotgun to bear against the ivory pegasus floating in the air who was continuing to thwart their efforts to end her life. As with the others, Hash Stack didn’t seem at all surprised by his appearance as she spun around. Her eyes locked briefly onto the canine, her embedded talisman flashing with a pulse of magic. In that moment, a thick cloud of roiling oily blackness manifested before his eyes. The diamond dog’s enraged yell transformed into one of shocked surprise just before he pulled the trigger. The pegasus mare darted to the side with a sweep of her arcanetically enhanced wings, deftly avoiding being hit by the blast which sailed harmlessly by her into the street beyond.

Honestly, it didn’t look like Hash had even needed to move if she didn’t want to; the shot hadn’t been anywhere near her. At least, that’s what it had looked like from my perspective. It didn’t even look like the diamond dog was trying to track her either as the pegasus strafed around him. I saw her gaze dart briefly to a nearby sign that was standing up along the sidewalk advertising Delamane Cab Services. Because of Hash’s own attention to it, I was able to spot the last couple inches of an orange tail that was poking out from behind it. The floating pegasus didn’t turn to engage the lurking ambusher though. Instead, she looked back at the growling canine which was rubbing furiously at his eyes in an attempt to whisk away the tenacious black mist clinging to his face.

Hash’s cranial implant flickered again. The moment it did, the diamond dog’s ears twitched. Then they locked in Hash Stack’s direction. The cloud forgotten, the canine had the shotgun up and aimed at her…no, not her. The weapon was slightly off, it looked like. It certainly wasn’t tracking the pegasus as she continued to drift past the illuminated sign. All the same, the diamond dog let out a victorious snarl as he pulled the trigger…

…And sent a tight cluster of pellets through the thin advertisement and into the pony hidden behind it. The unfortunate victim of not-so-friendly-fire let out a pained cry and stumbled into view. The orange-maned beige earth pony mare’s own automatic pistol fell from the grip of her telekinetic hold as she lost focus on the spell she’d been using through her talisman to hold it. She was about to call out to the diamond dog to inform him of his erroneous choice in targets, but she didn’t get the chance. Her ignorant canine companion had already racked another shell into the chamber of his weapon and pulled the trigger again.

Just as she opened her mouth, the lower half of her face was scoured away in a hail of lead shot, leaving behind a gory mess of flesh and crystalline filaments. The mare’s body swayed on unsteady hooves as her life began to steadily drain from her body onto the sidewalk. A third shot from the diamond dog severed her left foreleg at the elbow and sent her to the ground in a wordless heap. Two more pumps further mutilated the mare’s corpse amid the gleeful triumphant yips of the diamond dog.

“Stop! Stop, you fucking moron!” A feminine voice was screaming to be heard above the din of the repeated shotgun blasts. A golden hippogriff mare skidded into view from where she’d been sequestered behind the diner, coming to a frantic stop directly in front of where I was still crouched behind the counter. She was waving her talons in an effort to get the attention of her fellow herd member. It was clearly too late to save his victim, but presumably she hoped to convince him to reengage the actual intended target of their ambush. The diamond dog’s ears flicked once more and he spun in the direction of the new voice, but he didn’t level his weapon at her.

Though the cloud still clung stubbornly to his brow, his muzzle was twisted into a look of obvious confusion. It was a look that lasted for less than a second before his body jerked in conjunction with the sound of two more thunderous pops from Hash Stack’s revolver. The ivory flier’s rounds slammed into one side of the canine’s head and exploded out the other in a fan of gore. The cloud evaporated, leaving behind a clear view of the diamond dog’s vacant gaze as he tilted to the side and dropped like a felled tree.

The hippogriff gaped in shock as she watched the last member of her team get taken out of the fight, only then seeming to realize that their target was still at large. Presumably, she’d been so intent on stopping the fratricide unfolding before her that she’d briefly forgotten about the pegasus they were here to kill. She remembered now though. The golden-feathered pseudo-equine spun around to face Hash Stack, her talons holding up an automatic rifle and pointing the weapon right at the pegasus.

Hash was already looking down the sights of her revolver at the hippogriff. At least, I assume that was who the pegasus was aiming at. It was a little hard to tell, given how close to the line of fire my own head was to my roommate’s presumed target. This didn’t seem to be a fact which was lost on Hash Stack either, I realized. For the first time since the ‘fight’ had begun―it had really more of a curb-stomp beat down inflicted on my herd by Hash, in my opinion―the other mare’s pink eyes widened with fear. I would realize later that she wasn’t afraid for herself. She wasn’t worried that the rifle-wielding hippogriff taking aim at her was going to hit her.

She was worried about hitting me by accident. I was inadvertently blocking her otherwise clean shot. Meanwhile, the hippogriff had no obstacles to interfere in her efforts to engage her target.

Hash was about to die, and this time it was going to be my fault!

It had been different when it was the pegasus’ own folly which was going to flatline her. Pissing off Grinder and the herd had been her fault, and getting lured into the ambush they’d made for her was the price she would have to pay for her affront. Being a part of that hadn’t bothered me as much. However, Hash had proven that she was more skilled and cunning than the boosterherders who had intended to claim her life. She’d escaped the trap they’d set, by any reasonable measure, and in fact had turned the tables on them. If anything, I felt like the members of my herd had inadvertently wandered into a trap which she had somehow set for them!

And now I was fucking it all up.

She’d told me to stay down, and I’d defied her. Now she was about to die because I hadn’t done what she told me to. Her death wasn’t borne by her own shoulders anymore; it was on mine.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Fortunately, I also happened to be able to do something about it.

My gaze darted to the floor by my hooves, and the pistol which still lay there from when I’d landed behind the counter. I’d never used one, so I was about as unskilled as one could be with a firearm. However, the hippogriff was near enough to me that I could have leaned over the counter and touched the back of her head if I’d wanted to. It was inconceivable that I could miss at this range.

The jeweled talisman mounted into the base of my horn ignited. A matching crimson aura surrounded the pistol and whipped it up off the floor and over the counter. I lined the barrel up with the back of the unaware hippogriff mare’s head and pulled back hard on the trigger.

Both the ferocity and the tempo of the reciprocating slide surprised me, prompting me to reflexively close my eyes as the weapon fired. In the movies, the characters shooting guns never looked like they had any trouble keeping them steady as they fired. I might not have been a genius physicist, but I was aware of the whole action/reaction thing. I also knew that bullets, once out of their spent casings, were pretty small. So how much of a ‘reaction’ could they really create? Well, it turned out that even the small-caliber bullets fired from a pistol generated a decent amount of recoil. Or, at least, a lot more of a kick than I or my magic had been ready for.

My woefully inadequately-reinforced telekinetic field began to lose its coherence almost immediately as the slide slammed to the rear of the pistol in rapid succession like a tiny jackhammer. I felt the weapon’s barrel flail about in my grasp as the recoil escaped the control of my magic before I could compensate and properly buttress it. I forced my eyes open a crack so that I could swing the errant barrel back on line with the intended target, inwardly cringing at how far I’d allowed it to wander off its original point of aim.

Even though the pistol had probably only escaped my control for just half a second, more than a half dozen rounds ended up missing the hippogriff’s skull; including the first one somehow, which embedded itself into her left shoulder. While far from a lethal wound, that first―and only―strike was enough to distract the golden mare from her target. She was in the process of whirling around to face the fresh threat when I finally managed to get my telekinesis under control and firm up my hold on the automatic pistol. While the first half of the rounds contained in the weapon’s magazine were largely wasted on the space existing around the hippogriff’s head, I managed to place the remainder into the skull of my fellow―and now former―boosterherd member.

The mare jerked, but didn’t scream as her head was shattered by a dozen lead slugs tearing through it. I watched with grim shock as the feathered corpse fell over onto the sidewalk, the rifle still clutched tightly in the talons of her right hand. I was only now aware of how rapidly I was breathing. My pulse was bounding in my ears so loudly that I couldn’t hear anything over my own heartbeat. I swallowed in an effort to clear my inexplicably dry mouth, leaning over the counter to get an unobstructed view of my victim.

She was dead. The hippogriff was dead and I’d killed her before she could get a shot off at Hash Stack. I’d done it; I’d saved my friend!

I looked up to where I’d last seen the pegasus. Hash’s white coat and neon mane made her pretty easy to spot, even without the brilliant glow of her levitation talismans. She’d stopped floating and was standing on the ground now. Her surprised expression was locked onto me as I leaned over the final member of the ambush which had been tasked with killing her in retaliation for the theft earlier that evening. The pinions of her right wing were pressed over her mouth in a gesture of mute horror at what I’d done.

My face broke out into a relieved smile as something near to laughter came out in short gusts from my mouth. None of this had been funny, obviously. I was just feeling such a sense of overwhelming relief unlike anything I’d ever experienced before and I guess my brain wasn’t sure how feelings like that were meant to be outwardly expressed. I was probably bordering on manic as the emotional rollercoaster which had been the last hour of my life finally finished processing.

Five minutes ago, I’d been sitting at the counter with the unabashed understanding that I was going to be dead in the next twenty-four hours. That had cemented itself as a factual part of my reality. I’d also accepted that Hash Stack was going to be dead too. Yet, miraculously―and much to my overwhelming dismay―it was looking like neither of us were going to die after all!

Granted, I was pretty sure that encountering Grinder again any time soon wouldn’t prove beneficial to my health given what had ended up transpiring here. To say that the crimson stallion was going to be ‘upset’ by this would be the understatement of the millennium; so while we might be alive, I wasn’t under any delusions that the two of us were safe. At least in the long term. We were certainly free from immediate danger for the moment, and I had to imagine that Hash Stack knew a way to keep up ahead of any reprisal that Grinder could come up with.

She was right about what she’d told me earlier by the stage: Light City was a big place, and Grinder didn’t have ears everywhere. If we dealt with my curse, then maybe we could get out from under his hoof? It was a thought. A rather hopeful one, too.

“Wow…” I let out in a breathless sigh of relief. I could feel my hooves trembling as the adrenaline started leaving my body. “That was a thing, huh? Where’d you learn to―?”

The pegasus wasn’t looking at me any longer. She was staring at a feather on her right wing, seemingly transfixed by what she saw there. I cocked my head in confusion. “...Hash?”

Her rosy gaze slowly drifted from the feather tip to me. There was no sign of relief there. No look of triumph. Only that same look of shock…and fear.

The talisman mounted on her forehead flickered…and then went dark. The revolver she’d been holding in her telekinesis dropped from her side and clattered on the sidewalk. Her legs trembled. Hash’s lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear any sound coming out or make out what she was saying. Finally, her wings dropped limply at her sides, revealing what had previously been obscured by her feathers: a stain of brilliant crimson on the side of her neck.

My jaw went slack and I felt my heart drop like a stone in my chest. Before my eyes, I saw that little ‘stain’ spread, transforming itself into a steady flow of scarlet fluid that bubbled out of her throat and cascaded down her body. Her gaze still transfixed on me above her quivering lips, Hash collapsed to the ground.

“HASH!”

I vaulted over the counter and scrambled to my fallen roommate, tripping over bodies and slipping in the blood of the slain boosterherd members as I crossed the distance. I froze when I reached her, standing over her body for several long, frantic, seconds as my brain locked up at the sight I beheld. Her neck had been torn open right down through the vital artery that ran along her throat. Life-sustaining blood was flowing freeling out of the wound, creating a growing pool of dusted crimson around her body as it met the sidewalk. She was bleeding to death.

“Shitshitshit!” An unending stream of curses and epithets tumbled out of my mouth as my hooves scrambled to stem the flow of blood. “Fuck!” Upon making contact, my hooves seemed to become instantly slick with the sanguine fluid, slipping and sliding along her neck as I tried―and utterly failed―to seal the wound.

“Stay with me, Hash! I’m going to get you help,” I assured her as I finally managed to wedge one of my hooves into the crease of her neck and―somewhat―block the opening. Though I still saw ruby red rivulets seeping around it and down her throat. I tried not to think about that, endeavoring to clear my mind so that I could cast a clairaudience cantrip. “Pleasepleasepleaseplease pick up…Pickuppickuppicku―”

“HealthHarras emergency line,” A stallion’s voice answered after what felt like far too long of a wait. The calmness in his voice created a dissonance within my head given the scene laid out before me. “Nature of the medical emergency and policy number, please.”

“My friend's been shot!” I cried out, relieved to have gotten through. “She’s been shot in the neck! Please, get somepony here soon! I’m at…I’m―I’m―” My mind blanked entirely on the address, even though I’d been here a dozen times.

“We can track this call to the source, ma’am; we don’t need a location.” The stallion assured me in a tone that sounded almost bored with the call. Sure, it was his job to field calls from creatures reporting serious medical emergencies, and so he probably wasn’t particularly moved by the voices of panicked mares anymore; but my friend’s life was―literally―slipping through my hooves. Hearing the dispassion he was expressing only served to upset me more. “I just need a policy number and help will be dispatched to your location.”

“I…I don’t have a policy number,” I admitted. “Please, just send somepony here and save my friend! I’ll pay you back! Whatever it takes, however much it is, I’ll get you the money! Just please save her!” Tears started to fall down my cheeks as I felt the brief ray of hope I’d been given earlier by having the call answered get snatched out from under me.

The stallion on the other end of the call wasn’t the least bit swayed by my pleas. “I’m sorry, but it’s HealthHarras company policy to only dispatch our teams for confirmed policy holders. If you have a few minutes, I’d be happy to put you on hold while I transfer you to our sales department so that they can enroll you in one of our many great plans right now?”

Was he serious?! “What? No! Don’t put me on hold! She’s dying! Send somepony!”

“Again, ma’am: without a policy number I can’t dispatch a team. However, if you can get the injured party to one of the many conveniently located Critical Care Clinics operated by our partners at Redheart Medical Corp―”

“She doesn’t have that long! Please, I need somepony to come and get her!” I pleaded with the stallion on the other side of the magical link. However, he didn’t even seem to be listening to me anymore as he continued to prattle on.

“―appy to assist with any delivered patients for a nominal fee, which can be repaid through one of their many accommodating low-interest payment plans. Redheart Medical Corporation: The Care You Deserve.

“Thank you for calling and have a nice day!”

The link was severed at the other end.

“No! Please!” I screamed into the disinterested aether around me. “Please…” My body spasmed as it was racked by a sob. I stared down at the pegasus mare beneath me, at a loss for what else I could do to help her. Hash Stack was staring back up at me. Her lips were still quivering, showing flashes of teeth behind them that were stained with blood. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted to the mare dying in my hooves.

Her lips continued to tremble as her glassy eyes remained locked on me. That was what I thought was happening anyway, at first. However, now that I was no longer distracted by my efforts to call for help, I was finally able to make out the faint murmurs of sound which were coming from the ivory pegasus.

She was speaking to me.

I craned my head down to listen. Perhaps she had a plan? Maybe even a policy number for HealthHarras? Whatever Hash had to say to me, listening was the very least that I could do.

“...It’s alright. I forgive you. It’s alright. I forgive you. It’s alright…”

The flier repeated the same two phrases over and over again, like a mantra. I looked down at her in confusion, not understanding what she meant. Was this about the trap I’d brought her into? She’d come here knowing this was a trap, so it wasn’t like I’d actually ‘tricked’ her into doing this. What was she forgiving me for?

Distracted from my efforts to tend her wound and summon assistance, my mind was finally freed to fully take in the current situation. Hash was laying on the ground, a fatal tear in her neck. I’d been so focused on the fact that the wound was there that I hadn’t even paused to consider how it had gotten there. She’d trounced the would-be boosterherd assassins, and hadn’t taken a single hit from any of them that I’d seen. The only one who’d even gotten a shot off had been the diamond dog, and none of his blasts had come anywhere near the pegasus.

That hippogriff mare at the end had been about to shoot her, thanks to me being in the way of Hash’s shot, but she’d never actually pulled the trigger on her rifle. I’d taken her out with the pistol before―

My gut congealed into a hardened lump.

…No…

Nononononono!

I’d shot her! It had been me; my bullet! Hash was dying right now because of me! Because I hadn’t listened to her and stayed on the ground behind the counter like she’d told me to. Because I’d blocked her shot on the hippogriff mare. Because I’d lost control of the pistol when I’d fired it and shot her in the neck!

Hash was dying because of me!

The panic I’d been previously feeling over my impotence to help save Hash Stack was very quickly subsumed by guilt over the realization that I was the direct cause of her impending death. The sobs came more easily now, the tears flowing more freely down my cheeks. I was vaguely aware that I was mumbling a mantra of my own now. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry―”

Hash suddenly tensed up in my hooves. My breath caught in my throat as I immediately concluded that the pegasus was going into her death throes, but that turned out to not be the case. Instead, her wings whipped around me, helping the mare to sit up and bring herself closer to my face on her own terms. Unfortunately this had the consequence of causing the hoof that I was still pressing down on her wound to lose its place. I tried to push the pegasus away so I could reseal the gash on her neck, but the grip of her wings was surprisingly strong, considering the state she was in.

“Listen!” She managed to get out more forcefully, and at a much higher volume than anything she’d said up to that point. Her pink eyes bore into me. I went still and silent, giving the mare my full attention. “I did this,” she affirmed through ragged breaths and gurgling words. I could see flecks of blood dribbling out her mouth now as her efforts to speak forced some of the blood from her neck wound into her mouth. “This wasn’t. Your. Fault. It wasn’t.”

I could feel her wings trembling around my back in much the same way my limbs would shake when I felt myself reaching muscle failure. Yet Hash would not release her grasp. Not yet. Not until she was sure that she’d accomplished this one final task and delivered her message to me. “Tell me…you understand, Pel. Tell me!” I could feel her grip on me slipping, but still the mare held my gaze, her eyes demanding that I acknowledge her.

I didn’t. I didn’t understand, because I knew it was a lie. I was the one who’d shot her. We both knew that. Of course this was my fault. I’d been in her way, and I’d committed to using a weapon that I didn’t understand. I’d been reckless and stupid, and now Hash was paying the price for it.

I didn’t understand, and it was definitely my fault.

“I understand, Hash. I do.” I lied. I was telling a lie to my dying friend. I didn’t know what else to do though. I couldn’t do anything to stop her from dying in my hooves―by my hooves. But, if I could give her some measure of peace at the end by telling her what she wanted to hear, then maybe…

Well, it absolutely couldn’t even approach ‘making up’ for anything; but I didn’t want to see Hash upset with me at the end. It was going to be bad enough watching her die as it was. I didn’t want the last thing I saw in her eyes to be disappointment in me.

Blatant lies though they were, the words seemed to do the trick. The ivory mare’s face was awash with relief. I felt her wings ease their grip as she slid back down the ground, though one of them elected to linger on my cheek for a while longer.

Hash Stack’s expression was very different now. It wasn’t pleading or anxious, or anything like that. If I was asked to assign a name to the expression it would likely have been…calm? Happy, for some reason? There was a visible upturn to the corners of her lips. The frothy blood in her mouth that had been brought up by her attempt to bear the blame for this moment formed an appearance of lipstick, adding a macabre sort of definition to the faint smile. Now that she was back on the ground, I once more tried to apply pressure to the wound. I wasn’t sure to what end, if I was being honest. I knew she was going to die and that I couldn’t save her. We both knew that. I just…I knew that I couldn’t bear to just sit there and do nothing. Even if what I was doing was meaningless.

It was bad enough that I’d shot her. I wasn’t just going to let her bleed out too.

“...So beautiful…” I heard Hash say with a breathless sigh as the tip of her wing traced along my cheek. The corner of her mouth twitched in what looked to me like a wry little smile. “...Wish…I’d said it―” Something gurgled in her throat and choked off her words. She tried to swallow, but something went wrong. Her body gave a little spasm as she gagged on her own blood. Once more I felt myself growing frantic as my brain scrambled to come up with something I could do to help her. Was I supposed to prop her up? I’d need to take my hoof off her neck to do that. Could I roll her onto her side and still keep pressure?

Those thoughts very abruptly became moot, it turned out.

The feather on my cheek fell away. I followed it down as the wing dropped into the pool of blood that the two of us now sat in the center of. My gaze darted to her face. Her smile had waned. She was still staring up at me, but her gaze seemed…unfocused. I noticed that her pupils were much wider now as well. Impossibly wide even; enveloping her irises almost completely.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. My eyes darted to her chest. It was hard to tell, but I was sure I still saw it moving, like she was taking breath. At least, I thought that was what I’d seen. I placed a hoof on her chest, wincing as I added a fresh crimson smear to a pristine portion of her alabaster coat.

Precious seconds counted off in my head as I waited. I didn’t feel her chest moving. I leaned down and put my ear to her mouth. I didn’t hear any more gurgling breaths.

My breaths coming out in ragged, choked sobs, I lifted my head back up and looked down at her. “Hash?” I reached out with my other hoof and tapped the pegasus on the cheek like I was trying to wake her up. “Hash, speak to me!” I felt myself growing more panicked as the other mare continued to fail to respond. My eyes darted to the wound on her neck. I eased my hoof off of the opening, just slightly…

…Nothing flowed out.

My chest grew tight. I swallowed back the lump of grief in my throat and, very slowly, leaned away from the corpse of my friend. For what felt like an eternity, I found that I couldn’t stop staring into her vacant gaze as I continued to border on hyperventilation. I simply sat there, in a pool of my friend’s blood, looking into the glassy dead eyes of the mare that I’d killed. I felt completely numb. The world around me didn’t register anymore.

The sound of distant sirens shocked me out of my stupor, drawing my attention away from the alabaster corpse. The brief―but fleeting―thought that it was the sound of emergency services responding to the battle which had taken place here was enough to pull me back into the here and now. I knew that those klaxons were unrelated to this incident though. Shootings in Haywood involving boosterherds were nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that the LCPD was this quick to respond to, certainly; assuming that any seasoned area resident would have even bothered to call about it.

However, while I might not be particularly concerned about what ‘Light City’s Finest’ would have to say about finding me here surrounded by bodies, the start was enough to remind me that Grinder would certainly be checking in on things in a short while. I didn’t want to be here when he sent additional herd members to find out why he wasn’t getting any updates on how the ambush was fairing. So I forced myself to stand up on unsteady hooves which only seemed willing to move in sluggish, jerky motions as I trudged along the sidewalk.

I didn’t have a firm destination in mind. It wasn’t going to matter where I went anyway. Grinder was eventually going to find me through the tracking talisman; and he was definitely going to come looking for me at some point that night after he found out all of the creatures he sent with me were dead. I just…I didn’t want to be here any longer.

I…I wanted to wake up from this nightmare of a life. I wanted to wake up and have this all be a bad dream. I wanted Hash to still be alive. I wanted to not have this absurd debt with Grinder. I wanted to not be in a boosterherd anymore.

I just wanted a moment of peace before I died.

Apparently my body decided that it wanted to go back to the apartment. I heard Hash’s warning in my head as I stepped through the door, but I didn’t feel the same foreboding that I had back at the concert. The secret was already out after all. Grinder knew I’d robbed him. He was going to know where I was no matter where I went. What did it matter if he caught me in the apartment as opposed to anywhere else?

At least here I could take a shower and wash Hash’s blood out of my coat.

My brain spent a brief moment reflecting on how unremarkable everycreature I’d trudged past on the way here had seemed to find it that a young mare was covered in blood. Or maybe they had remarked on it and I’d simply not paid them any attention. Certainly nocreature had done anything to try to either stop or help me.

I’d leave it to others to parse out what that level of casual indifference said about Light City society. I didn’t particularly care at the moment.

I stepped through the door, hearing it hiss shut behind me without fanfare. It wasn’t like the door cared about the emotional state I was in. It didn’t know its owner wouldn’t be returning, nor did it care. Nopony was going to care. At least not until the next rent payment was missed. The building managers would eventually be by to serve the eviction notice and empty the apartment, tossing everything Hash had owned into a dumpster―everything they didn’t feel like keeping and pawning for themselves, anyway. Then the apartment and its door would serve a new master, and neither would notice or care.

Life would go on like she’d never existed in the first place.

It would go on without me too, in much the same way. Except that my possessions would take up much less space in the dumpster.

I removed my vest, holding it up in front of me as I stared at it with a vacant expression. I was vaguely aware of how annoyed I’d been at getting a small blotch of hydraulic fluid on it the other night. Now it was more red than blue.

I let the ruined garment crumple to the floor and stepped into the shower.

I barely felt myself wince as ice cold water assaulted my back and mane. My eyes were locked on the stainless steel floor, watching as the mixture of water and blood swirled together and vanished down the drain beneath me. The seconds dragged on into minutes, and still more blood continued to wash down my limbs and onto the floor, being swept into the silver mesh at its center. It was an unending ballet of clear and crimson fluids. At least, that was what it felt like. It obviously had to end at some point.

Then I’d shift my body slightly and the water would connect with a patch of blood that had managed to go unmolested by the shower head up to that point and the process would repeat itself. I probably ended up spending an hour rinsing my roommate’s remains down the drain with icy water. When I finally closed off the valve and stepped out of the cramped washroom, my eyes darted down to the bloody hoofprints in front of me. The water dripping off my body was already starting to dilute the prints. I glanced at one hoof which appeared to have managed to step onto one of the bloody prints. I lifted it up, staring with detached indifference at the fresh crimson smear on my frog.

So much for getting clean.

I let out a resigned sigh and resumed making my way to my bed, leaving a trail of water in my wake. My gaze very pointedly refused to lift and make contact with the berth above mine which would never again be receiving a visit from its owner. My eyes burned with tears nonetheless. I sucked in a ragged breath and crawled onto my own bare mattress, vaguely aware of the water which was soaking the foam pad and the thin scarlet streaks my hoof was leaving on it. I was fairly certain that more blood would be joining those faint lines in fairly short order once Grinder tracked me down, so I saw no reason to care much about what I was doing to the mattress.

I rolled over and faced the wall. I didn’t want to see it coming when it happened. Maybe that was cowardly. I didn’t care. I just…I wanted to be able to pretend, for just a little while, that things weren’t as bad as they really were. I wanted to pretend that this was just like any other night. That I was going to have a decent-ish night’s sleep and wake up in the morning refreshed. That Hash Stack was going to already be up and about and had managed to once again ‘accidentally’ order too much food from the apartment’s vendor and offer me half before she headed out for the day.

I wanted to pretend that I hadn’t just killed a good pony. That I hadn’t murdered my only friend.

I’d never had a very good imagination though. So, instead, I just cried and begged Hash Stack’s ghost for a forgiveness that I knew I didn’t deserve.

Author's Note

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