For all intentional purposes this chapter will be from Joe’s first person perspective just to get a little bit more of that touchy feeling to it.

I was so young, only 6 years old when my dad gave it to me. An M1911 pistol, it had been expertly crafted and customized and had beautiful engravings in the reinforced chrome slide. Dad had the engravers write ‘To Joseph love Dad’ on the left side of the gun slide. The handle of the gun had classic wood grips just like the original M1911 had and he even had it made with high profile 3-dot luminescent sights.

Mom was obviously very skeptical about letting me have a gun. Dad served in the United States marines for a few years and went over to Iraq and saw things that no one should ever see. When he first came back he was shaky, the doctors called it shell shock but after a few months he returned to normal. But when he offered me the gun mom wasn’t too happy about the idea but dad said it would be good for me to have a big responsibility, why he chose to give me a gun was beyond me but he did anyway. Mom made sure that it was always locked away and only dad ever had the key and I only got to use it when he brought me to the range.

When I was 7 we went out to a theatre play, it was the lion king. After the play was done he led us back out to the car he had parked behind the theatre.

“So Joey, did you like the play?” mom asked me. I shrugged “Yeah it was okay, but I don’t know why the uncle wanted to be the ruler so badly that he killed his own brother” I replied. “Joey sometimes people are weird like that” mother told me. “But mom, I thought they were supposed to be animals?” I asked, she laughed “Yes dear, but even animals are strange sometimes” mother told me.

“So Joseph I was meaning to ask what you wanted for your birthday that is coming up in a few days?” dad asked. I pondered the question for a few moments then shrugged “Nothing really… I’d have to think about it” I told him and continued to think about the question. Dad leaned over to mother “See, at least boys don’t ask for ponies” Dad laughed. Mother nudged dad and laughed, “How do you know that a girl would ask for a pony?” mom asked and my dad simply shrugged. “Look at your niece, she’s only nine and she already asked for two ponies, one for her and one for her friend Annabel” Dad told her. Mother shrugged “Well they can only wish” mother told him.

As we approached the car a cloaked man came out from the shadows of the dark alleyway. “Hey… give me your money” the man ordered, dad looked to him. “I’m sorry fair chap… but I don’t believe in” dad began but the mugger drew out a Colt SAA and cocked back the hammer. “I said, give-me-the money” he ordered. Dad stepped back, “honey, get Joseph in the car… now” he ordered but as he turned to get in the car the mugger shot my father in the back, then he turned his aim to my mother and shot her in the head. For some odd reason the mugger only had two shots, people would call it luck but I don’t. What gives me the right to be alive and not my parents, why did fate have it that the mugger only shot my parents.

I screamed but the mugger backhanded me with the hilt of the revolver and knocked me out cold.

When I awoke I was in a police station, a nurse had an ice pack on my forehead. I whimpered “Where’s mommy and daddy” I began, hoping it was all a bad dream. “I’m sorry darling…” the nurse trailed off. I began to weep, my parents were dead and I was left without my parents.

For the next several days I was kept in the police station and on the fifth day I was brought into some sort of room where other police officers were. “Okay… now Joe, we think we’ve found your guy” one of the police officers said and pointed out to the window, the window was one of those cop windows where you could only see through one side. In the other room stood a line of ten criminals: three black men, two Caucasian men, four Asian men and then there was mother and father’s killer. I pointed to him “Number seven” I whispered loud enough so they could hear me.

“Thank you Joseph, we’ll make sure justice gets done” the officer told me and I was escorted out of the room.

But as the old saying goes, you can’t get justice unless you do it yourself. Two days later I was informed that the criminal had pleaded guilty and was sentenced ten years in federal prison. TEN YEARS! That’s all he got, he had shot my mother and father down in cold blood and had only gotten ten years. I later found out that he struck a deal with the police that if he revealed the drug ring leader in the area to the cops that they’d cut his sentence.

I was brought to my mom’s sister’s place, they were nice people for the most part. Though their daughter was a real snooty bitch, every chance she’d get she’d agitate me in some way. I had kept father’s pistol, a memory flooded to my mind.

Father handed me the chest containing the pistol and told me “Always take this with you wherever you go son, it will protect you and keep you safe” father told me.

I was situated in their guest room until we could clean out the basement room for me, I really like the guest room but Anna, their daughter, had complained that she didn’t want her friends to have to sleep in the basement. After three days they put me in the basement. It was cold and it scared me at night, sometimes I’d cry but no one would ever hear me because I made sure it was quiet. Several nights I’d cry myself to sleep and my dreams would be haunted by mother and father’s death.

One day, after about two months of staying with Aunt Eunice and Uncle George, I was sitting by myself in the basement. Holding the last thing that my father had ever given me, the only thing I really had left of him. All their belongings we mostly jewelry and other things and father and mother had never really given me things that I could take with me as a memoire: a video game system, a television etc.

So as I sat there I began to cry while I looked at the pistol. I could hear Anna laugh to her friend “Do you want to see Joe cry, he’s such a pansy” Anna laughed and brought her friend into my room. Her friend’s mouth dropped open as she saw my handgun but at first Anna didn’t see the pistol. “See what I mean, he’s such a…” she trailed off from her mean insults and followed her friend’s gaze to my pistol. Anna screamed “MOMMY JOEY’S GOT A GUN!” Anna screamed. “No please don’t tell on me” I cried out but she ran upstairs and her mother quickly raced down the stairs and snatched the pistol from my hands, it wasn’t loaded but she acted like it was.

“How dare you keep a gun in this house young man, why I outta tan your hide red” Aunt Eunice screamed. Behind Eunice I could see Anna give me a wicked smile, she had just had the only thing that I held dear taken away from me.

That night when Uncle George came home from work I cried to him and told him about how my father had given me that pistol and how much it meant to me. “Don’t worry Joey, I’ll talk to Aunt Eunice and get you your pistol back, but don’t go swinging it around okay, that thing has to be locked up at all times unless I bring you to a gun range” Uncle George told me. I gave him a hug and my tears were soaked into his shirt, “Thank you Uncle George” I cried. “No problem squirt, I can understand how important that thing is to you” Uncle George told me.

That night I lay in bed and I could hear Aunt Eunice and Uncle George fighting about my pistol. “I don’t care that he gave it to him, it’s a GUN, a gun George and not a hunting rifle or something but a handgun… something meant only to kill people” screamed Aunt Eunice. “Yes but dear I” uncle George began but she shut him up “Don’t even talk unless you’re going to say you’ll dispose of it, I won’t have a gun in this house” Aunt Eunice told him. “I can’t do that, the gun was the last thing given to him by his dad, my brother who served this country and put his life on the life for all of us… and if his last thing he gave to him was the pistol, than I say he can have it” George argued.

“I won’t hear of it George, now you destroy that thing, or I will” Aunt Eunice said, I gasped quietly to myself, I couldn’t let the pistol be destroyed. “Fine… in the morning I’ll throw it out” Uncle George replied, reluctantly of course.

I laid in bed for more than three hours and waited until it was midnight. I crept up the stairs of the house quietly, making sure not to wake anyone. I wasn’t going to let them destroy my pistol, not this pistol. I crept up to my uncle and aunt’s door and opened it quietly, it creaked ever so slightly but I managed to open it without waking them. Uncle George had also served in the military with my dad back when they were younger but when my father went for another term my uncle simply signed his papers and left. So my uncle George was a relatively light sleeper and usually the smallest of noises would wake him up.

My heart was pounding, it seemed like my heart beats were so loud it would wake them both. The pistol was on the night stand beside their bed, along with its chest that father had given me to store it in. I tried to slow my breathing but couldn’t, my breathing was so heavy as I neared their bed.

Suddenly uncle George rolled over in his sleep, my body froze in fear. If he woke now I could just say I was having a bad dream but that might not go over too well. Luckily Uncle George was still sleeping, I took a deep breath and rounded the corner of their bed and I grabbed the pistol quietly along with chest and crept back out of the room. I closed the door gently behind me but soon realized that the washroom light was on, I heard the humming of my cousin Anna coming from the washroom.

I knew that if she saw me she’d scream and wake both my aunt and uncle and that I’d be in a world of trouble. I heard the sink tap run then the light flicked off as she began to exit the washroom.

I quickly opened a closet door and hid inside the closet as she left the washroom casually and calmly and went back to her bedroom. I let out a sigh of relief and waited a few minutes until I was certain she’d was back to sleep.

I exited the closet and crept back down into my room, I grabbed my bag along with the extra magazines from the gun that had been in my travel bags that I neglected to tell my aunt about. I had four loaded magazines plus the one that was always with the pistol in its chest. I was about to leave when I thought to myself that they would call the police and say that I was kidnapped, usually run away children don’t generate such a panic as kidnapped children do. Taking out just a few more minutes of my time I wrote out a small letter and left it on my nightstand. It read ‘Dear Uncle George and Aunt Eunice, I will not allow you to destroy the last thing my father ever gave to me that means so much to me. Since it is obvious that I cannot keep it then I am running away, best wishes: Joseph’ and with that I grabbed my wallet with three hundred dollars and quietly crept out of the house.

With no place to go I headed into downtown hoping to find somewhere I could stay. For the next few years I lived on the streets, just a young child who was lost in the city of New York. My uncle and aunt had sent out missing people posters of me but only after a week I no longer looked like myself and only someone who knew me well could tell it was me. I lived life terribly, usually getting bullied out of my stuff by other homeless men but one day I met a homeless man who had served in Vietnam, he promised to train me and teach me how to fight.

Every day he’d train me, teach me to fight, teach me to be strong and never give up. He stayed by my side for the longest time and soon he became like a father to me. He showed me how to clean my pistol and I showed him how to eat the food we had properly rather than with bare hands. He taught me life values and I taught him manners. He would tell me stories about his days serving in Vietnam and how terrifying it was.

One day I was jumped by five large men and they began to beat me. I tried to fight back but they were too big and there was too many of them. Scruffy, the man that had become like my father, rushed out and lay a beating to all of them. Breaking one man’s arm, he broke the legs of three other men and the final man he simply kicked the last man in the chest and broke several of his ribs. “Never feel sympathy for your attackers, they feel none for you, and they would kill you if given the chance… but never kill unless you have to because it will make you no better than them” Scruffy told them and I nodded.

One day he simply left while I was sleeping, leaving an empty whiskey bottle as his sort of goodbye and I never saw him ever again but I always kept training, weight lifting with various objects and always sparing with imaginary opponents. The day he left was one of the most emotionally tragic moments in my life, seconded only by my mother and father’s death, and I had cried myself to sleep in the alleyways for several weeks afterwards.

* * *

When I was ten years old I killed a man for the first time, it wasn’t my fault I swear. He had tried to rob me, though I obviously had nothing to give him. I was poor and my clothes were all tattered and there was no way I was giving him my gun.

“Hey kid… give me all your money” said the large man, but I remembered this man. It was vague at first but then I finally remembered him, he was the one who had killed both my parents. I knew it was him because of his distinctive scar across his cheek.

He held out a butterfly knife, “Come on kid I don’t have all day” he ordered. “I don’t have anything” I told him, “Bullshit… I know you have something” he ordered but I shook my head. “I have nothing” I cried but he stepped ever closer.

“Come on kid, don’t play me for a fool” he snapped as he stepped closer. I pulled off my backpack and pulled out the chest containing my pistol. “Yeah… that’s more like it… whatta yah got? Gems, diamonds, gold?” he laughed but I slid the magazine into the pistol and pulled back the slide just like father had taught me on the shooting range. The criminal stepped back in fear but then an evil smile slid across his face.

“Ha you won’t shoot me kid… you’re too afraid” he laughed, I shook my head as I held the pistol in both hands, “No… you killed my mom and dad in that parking lot behind the theatre… I’m not afraid to shoot you” I told him fearfully. “Ha, so you’re the little shit who had me busted… well good now you can join your mommy and daddy” he said insanely as he rushed at me.

I lined up the sights just like dad had showed me and I pulled the trigger, BLAM, the M1911 thundered in the streets of New York and several people on the sidewalk nearby screamed out in horror. It’s different than video games, when you kill someone in a video game it isn’t as graphic or as real, nothing could ever be. When you kill a man you see his life drain out of his eyes, his final moments on earth as he looks at you with dying eyes. As I watched the criminal, the man who had killed my mother and father, fall to his knees… in that moment I transformed into a man.

Father had always told me that killing a man was no simple task and I never knew what he had meant until I shot that man there on that day. The criminal held his chest and gasped, the bullet had shot straight through his lungs, a fine bloody hole placed right on the left side of his chest and blood had begun to seep into his lungs. He fell over onto his back and gasped violently as blood bubbled up from the wound. I gasped as I lowered the pistol and ran over to his side, “I’m so sorry… but you… you tried to” I began but the criminal grabbed me with his bloodied hands and smiled “You’re a… a… a man now” he gasped and his head fell back onto the ground and he continued to gasp for air as the blood from the wound filled his lungs.

My hands were shaking and my breathing was heavy, soon the life drained out of his eyes and he stared endlessly into the sky, blood pooled on the ground below him. I heard sirens in the distance and got up, my pants were stained in blood. And due to all my training and living as a homeless person a regular person would think me to be at least 17. I grabbed my pistol chest and quickly ran down the back alleys of the city, crying as I remembered the horrid moments of when I had first killed a man.

* * *

When I was twelve I was being chased by a bunch of men who wanted to kill me, I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had been doing a drug deal and when they saw me they thought I was going to rat them out to the cops. The chased me with deadly knives and hollered as they chased me down the alleyways but soon I came to a dead end.

The men came into the dead end and their faces crept with deadly smiles. I pulled out the handgun from its chest, though I had no cleaning equipment and usually slept on the streets the chest had kept the gun in mint condition and thanks to Scruffy I had always managed to keep it clean. There was not a speckle of wear on the gun. I pointed the M1911 at them, I had no intentions of killing another human being but if they were going to kill me I wouldn’t let them. “Whoa hold on kid… just relax and we’ll sort things out” one of the men said. I kept the pistol leveled on them.

“Leave me alone or I’ll shoot” I warned them but one of them began laughing. “Hey James… this kid won’t shoot… look at him he’s shaking like a little baby” one of the guys said and laughed. They all laughed as they realized that I was trembling in fear. “Yeah gun’s probably not even loaded” another laughed and they stepped forward. I took aim on one of the guy’s legs and pulled the trigger, BLAM. He screamed in pain and fell to the ground as the .45 caliber round tore through his leg, ripping a fine hole through his calf muscle and destroying any tissue in its way.

The man screamed in pain and fell to the ground. “Now… I don’t want to kill any of you… but if you come any closer I’ll put a bullet right through your heads” I told them, they all had fear across their faces as they grabbed their wounded friend and ran away. I breathed heavily and put the gun back in its chest. I let out an exhausted sigh and put the chest back in my worn out bag and slung the bag across my back but as I leaned gently back against the alleyway wall I fell through some sort of purplish magic portal.

When I regained consciousness there was a purple unicorn looking down on me, “Oh no… Celestia what have I done” gasped the purple unicorn.

Author's Note

Alright so when I was reading through the comments people were like "Joe's and ass, he just beats up ponies if they stand in his way" and I was like yeah so I put in that he was used to living on the street but then I realized that wouldn't cut it so I put together a really tragic back story for Joe just so you all know why he's so easy to just jump into the fight, why he hates the basement room, why he is so unfamiliar with a females advances and what the gun really means to him... hope yah all like it and thanks for all the likes, favourites and follows, you guys and gals make my day