“Whee! Let’s go!”

“I already told ya, Pinkie Pie; ah’m drivin’ this time!” Applejack retorted, pushing the bubbly pink mare from the driver’s seat. The battle-ready farm pony ran her hooves tenderly over the worn steering wheel, determinedly eying the road ahead of her.

“Hay, y’all – this here’s Scooter’s CATCH-A-RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE!” Scootaloo’s voice blasted from the radio, which Applejack promptly slammed off.

Scootaloo had a horribly obnoxious accent.

“Fire ‘way, Pinkie!” Applejack bellowed as she rammed the pedal against the bottom of their wheeled-behemoth, and Pinkie poked her head from the gatling turret’s cockpit.

“Whuzzat, Applejack?” Pinkie asked curiously, unable to hear her friend over the roar of the motor. They flew over the dirt road past Philomena Stone, the rickety worn down town on the edge of the badlands.

“Ah said, fire away!”

“At what?” Pinkie asked.

Of course, if Pinkie hadn’t been too busy asking, she might have seen the bright red automobile slamming directly into their own.

Mordecai grunted, pulling himself up with his forearms onto the rocky outcropping. Wiping a bead of sweat from his brow, he paused a moment to catch his breath.

Running for hours on end? Not a problem.

Hefting around enormous weapons and ammunition, oftentimes with high octane explosives? Easy peasy.

Dragging himself up the side of a cliff for the sake of ‘faster travel’? Not a chance in hell.

And, if he’d have guessed it, Mordecai would have sworn that Pandora was pretty hellish. Burning light from a sun too close, cracked and dry land that had become arid and unbearable in time. And the weather didn’t help any.

Actually, it didn’t matter what the weather was like. Pandora would still suck.

The screech of Mordecai’s faithful winged companion, Bloodwing, rang out from above. He grinned, although much of his features were hidden by the leather mask and goggles he wore. One of his traveling companions, Lilith, had once snidely commented that if only he’d brought whips and chains, he’d make the entire fetish set. And yet, for some strange reason, she’d grown angry when he politely asked to borrow hers.

No sense of humor, some people.

Bloodwing shrieked again, a hurrying call to his human hunting partner.

“Yeah, yeah!” the tired man waved at the bird, pulling himself to his feet to continue the climb. Only about ten or eleven feet left to go. Of straight cliff. “Gimme a damned minute,” Mordecai grumbled, working the crick out of his neck before resuming his struggle upwards.

At least, he would have, until a couple of brightly colored Outrunner vehicles blasted at high speeds directly over him, inches away from his face.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

The miniature rockets blasted past their vehicle, spiraling downward and exploding viciously into the ground. Pinkie let loose with the gatling turret as they fell, pumping stream after stream of bullets into the offending vehicle.

“Eat hot lead, motherbucker!” Pinkie yelled in glee, her whole body shaking with the force of keeping the massive gun firing in a single direction. Her shooting spree was abruptly ended, however, when they collided with enormous impact against the ground.

The red Outrunner, with a smoking engine, peeled away with a screech as it landed and flared across the flat earth. Applejack punched the steering wheel in frustration, checking the damages. It wasn’t long before their own vehicle sputtered and died. They weren’t moving anytime soon; the damage to the auxiliary motors were a testament to that. Pinkie Pie poked her head up from the turret, peering about cautiously.

“… Did we win?” she asked, staring about at the hot landscape in search of their mysterious attacker. Instead, she saw only scorched earth and the occasional dune of dirt.

“Close ‘nough,” Applejack responded wearily, clambering out of their ruined vehicle. If only she’d have brought a spare motor instead of a spare tire. “Looks like we’re gunna have to trek it on hoof from here, Pinkie.” The cowpony seethed, giving the war-like machine one last vengeful kick. It did no good, of course; just like the last vehicle that had been destroyed.

In fact, they were pretty lucky that this one hadn’t even exploded.

“Hey, AJ…” Pinkie began, her ears swiveling about. “… Do you hear something…?”

“This ain’t the time to-“ she retorted angrily, only to spot Pinkie’s odd reaction.

“TWITCH-A-TWITCH!”

Applejack dove out of the way, dust and dirt billowing about her as she crashed into the ground. Just in time, too; had she not done so, Applejack just might have been inconsiderately crushed beneath the masked man falling with a girly shriek off the side of the cliff.

Mordecai rubbed his aching back, unceremoniously pushing himself to his feet.

That fall had certainly done a number on him, but the only thing he could do at this point was walk it off. Above, he could have sworn he heard his ‘faithful’ companion snickering at him for losing the genetic lottery and not being born with wings like a proper species would. It then occurred to Mordecai that he might have hit his head a little harder than he suspected.

This thought was readily reinforced by the peculiar pink pony nosing about him, wide blue eyes staring in shock.

He let out a (totally not girly) yelp of surprise, scooting backwards along the ground and jerking his small semi-automatic pistol out of the holster. Thumbing it into a ready position with reflexes that could have startled a rattlesnake, Mordecai jammed the barrel of the pistol into the nose of the flabbergasted pony.

Of course, it was unlikely that he was going to actually pull the trigger, considering the fact that the wide double barrels of a shotgun had suddenly found their way into the side of his neck.

“You best drop that there gun y’got, pardner,” a drawn out drawl pronounced slowly, and Mordecai dared to glance over to his side to spot an orange pony in a Stetson hat. As to how in the world she was capable of even holding a shotgun confused him, let alone using one. Ever so slowly, he complied to the cowpony’s demand, setting the pistol down. The pink one’s face had gone a chalky sort of color, and she didn’t start breathing again until Mordecai lowered his weapon.

“Take it easy, now…” Mordecai said cautiously, noting the flitter of a shadow from above. He fought to keep the grin off of his face as the gears in his head turned. “Wouldn’t want to go hurting anybody, right?”

“You with them?” the orange one inquired coldly, her eyes reminiscent of steel.

“No clue who you’re talking about,” he replied instantly. “but if I say ‘yes’, are you going to shoot me?”

“Probably.”

“In that case, I’m completely alone.”

“Not even-?”

“Completely alone,” Mordecai said again, his opposite hand inching ever so slightly toward his gun.

“Good.” Applejack cocked the shotgun, her green eyes narrowing. A lump suddenly rose in his throat as he realized just what the strange creature was planning. “Ain’t nobody gonna mind th’ mess, then.”

“Give ‘em hell, Bloodwing!” Mordecai bellowed, snatching the pistol from the ground and firing wildly as the scream of his attack bird swooping inward at impossible speeds.

Time to find out if the genetically modified bird of prey really was faster than a speeding bullet.