Grifter was sitting at a desk, counting caps as we stepped inside.

He looked up, frowning.

The stallion saw me first. “What the fuck are you doing here!?” he demanded. Then his eyes darted to Candy Cane. “And what’re you doing with her?”

I nodded at Candy Cane as she closed the door behind us and locked it. She levitated the door’s security bar into place with a clank.

“Give me the detonator, and we’ll go quietly,” I said evenly, my horn glowing with a crimson sheen as I jabbed my pistol at him.

“The detonator …” he trailed off, tapping his hooves together absent-mindedly as he stared off into space.

I snapped, “Don’t play dumb, Grifter, you son of a bitch. I know you have one for her collar.”

He folded his legs across his chest.

“Why? Whaddya want with the girl?”

“It doesn’t matter to you.”

“Believe me kid, it does, because she’s mine, not yours.” Grifter folded his legs across his chest. “You’re with East Eden aren’t you?” he asked. I didn’t answer. “Hmm … you’re not a Blood Brother. Too competent. But you are stupid.” Grifter sighed, straightening his back as he sat on his stool. “You must be a Pike then, right? You gotta mix of stupid and competent,” he added, clopping his forehooves together.

“I’m the pony with the fucking gun,” I said, baring my teeth at the bastard.

“Heh, you really are a big-balled palooka.” He leaned over his desk, staring down the barrel of my pistol. “Do you know who you’re fucking with?” Grifter glared at me. “Do you know who you’re fucking with?”

I snorted, “Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

Grifter just laughed. “Kid, you better! You fuck with me, then you fuck with the Palominos. You fuck with the Palominos, then you fuck with Avilign Crème. You fuck with Avilign Crème …” he chuckled to himself, nodding. “She’ll fuck you up bad, ya dig?”

I glanced at Candy Cane who was behind still me, standing by the door.

“Unlike everyone else in this shithole of a city, I’m not afraid of you.” I bared my teeth as I stared gunfire into his eyes. “And I’m not afraid of the Palominos.”

Candy Cane’s eyes widened.

Grifter laughed as if that was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard, banging his hooves on his desk. “You’re not afraid of the Palominos? Even I’m afraid of them!” He gave me a menacing grin. “You know you’re gonna die, right? You’re spelling out your own death sentence, ya dig?”

“I’ll fucking blow your brains out …” I said, my voice trembling.

He threw his head back and laughed.

"Listen, I know you don't got it in ya, kid."

Grifter just sighed, lifted his hoof and slowly tipped my gun to the floor. I just clenched my teeth as he spoke.

"Hehe ... kid ... this is about earlier, isn’t it?” He nodded at Candy Cane. “That bitch wouldn’t stop screaming about you after we brought her back. Had to lock her up to quiet her down.”

I grinded my teeth together. “You lied to me.”

He shrugged. “Me? A liar? Forget about it. I never lied – she did mug Daintybelle, you know? I only told you what you needed to know.”

“Give me the fucking detonator!”

The stallion folded his legs across his chest, cocking his head at Candy Cane. “No no no. How about you tell me what the fuck you want with that whore?”

I jabbed my pistol at his face.

“I’m breaking that pony out of this shithole.”

He tapped his chin, thinking. “If you’re not a Blood Brother, a Pike, or with East Eden …” he clapped his hooves together. “That’s it! You probably got a taste of that fine broad! You wanna break her outta here so you can have her for yourself – ain’t that right?”

My magical grip tightened, but I said nothing.

“Nah, you don’t want her. You don’t want Candy.”

She clenched her jaw, glaring at him. Grifter chuckled, resting his chin on a hoof. “She doesn’t like that name, ‘Candy’. That’s because they like to call her ‘Candy Cunt’.”

Grifter leaned forward, looking me in the eye.

“You wanna know why?”

My magical aura deepened to a blood red.

“Because her cunt’s like a candy store – all the boys and girls wanna come inside.”

Candy Cane’s sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes as she started to shake all over. My heart pounded inside my chest, pumping boiling blood through my veins.

“You know how many stallions – no, mares she’s slept with? Do you really want to help a filthy slut like that?” He cocked his head at me, grinning.

I shook my head, his voice slowly fading away as every sound in the room became nothing but muffled voices behind a hazy glass window.

I let out a shallow breath.

Grifter smirked, reclining in his seat. “You lay one hoof on that whore, and your leg’ll practically melt off.”

I lunged at him, dragging him over his desk.

“I’m done hearing you talk, GRIFTER!” I screamed, and whipped my pistol across his head. Hard. He yelped as I shoved him back into his chair, only for him to tip it over and crash head over hooves into the hard, concrete floor.

He pulled himself back up, leaning against the desk.

“Alright, alright, I’ll hoof it to ya – hold your fuckin’ horses! You could’ve just asked nicely …”

Grifter reached into his desk, rubbing his head as he opened a drawer and held the small black tube in his hoof.

“Now hoof it the fuck over,” I snarled, jamming the pistol in his face.

He smirked. Then his horn glowed.

“What the fuck are you –”

Something heavy crashed into the back of my skull. Stars exploded in my eyes as shattered porcelain tumbled away from my mane. I fell forward, my eyes rolling to the back of my head, slamming my face first onto his desk before collapsing to the floor in a heap.

“RED DAWN!” Candy Cane screamed.

Grifter flipped the switch.

Lightning arced across her body as she screamed in agony, thousands of volts of electricity shocking her into submission. The smell of singed flesh and burnt hair wrenched me back to clarity as I scrambled to my hooves. My horn flickered to life and my pistol slid shakily toward me.

Grifter was on me in a matter of seconds.

A hoof connected with my horn as he slammed my head back into the floor with a jarring thwak! Darkness threatened to take me. Far off in the distance I heard my pistol clatter back onto the floor.

Then I felt his hooves crash into my face – again and again – every blow sapping the clarity from my eyes. I glared through a lens of hellish red as blood streamed down my face and bathed my world in blood.

I lashed out with my hooves and punched him in the throat. He rasped, his eyes widening.

I didn’t give him another second. I roared, threw myself over onto my chest and bucked my hind hooves into his ribs. I felt my hoof connect with bone and he cried out, hurdling away from me. There was a CRASH and his screams were cut short as he careened into a bookcase in an explosion of splintered shrapnel and tumbling books.

I struggled to my hooves, stars flashing in my eyes – and collapsed once more, reaching out with a hoof to snatch my pistol off the floor. My scarlet aura wavered, but Grifter dove into me. The world blurred away as he hurled another hoof into my skull. My magic winked out and I collapsed to his hooves.

Someone banged on the door.

“Hey boss, what the fuck’s going on in there!?” I heard Dahlia shout over Candy Cane’s screaming.

Grifter stumbled to the door, detonator held in his magical grip as I forced my eyes open and rose to a knee.

“Some sorry mother fucker –”

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” I screamed, bowing my head at him.

I charged.

His eyes widened as my horn punched into his chest, my momentum ramming him into the wall by the door with a sickening crunch. I ripped out of him in a splash of gore and threw myself into him before he could scream, tackling him to the floor in a snarling frenzy.

Grifter’s magic flickered and died away, and the detonator rolled across the concrete.

My horn flashed in his eyes as I yanked a chair off the floor and swung it towards his writing body. He rolled away at the last minute – and it exploded into a million pieces.

“You fuck!” I snarled, planting a hoof into his chest and levitating a wooden leg over my head. He shielded his face as I hurled a vicious swing.

Thwak!

Thwak!

Thwak!

His jaw dropped as he screamed for help – but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in my ears as I sent the leg crashing into him again, and again, and again – until it broke across his body with a distant CRACK.

My eyes darted to the splintered wooden stake held before me.

“We’re coming in there, boss!” a stallion screamed behind the door as it began to rattle and buck.

Grinning through bloody teeth, I flipped it splintered side down, the broken leg’s grisly spikes dripping with blood.

“I’m not afraid of you, or your Palominos, you piece of shit!”

I didn’t even give a single fuck as the door’s frame began to rattle and shake. I lifted the wooden stake into the air to plunge it into Grifter’s pounding heart.

A devious grin stretched his bloody lips. His hindleg crashed between mine. I yelped, crying out Celestia’s name as he shoved me off of him. I stumbled upon my hooves for one single agonizing moment – and he ran into me head on.

Grifter slammed me into a wall and –

I lapsed out of consciousness. I blinked, and blinked again, and all I could see in the stars that were flashing in my eyes was Grifter. I tried to fight him.

But the world was spinning. Blood spilled down my face. My vision blurred in and out before my hooves as I fought helplessly against his. He had me pinned.

I felt a cold blade press against my throat.

“I’m gonna make you beg, punk.”

I spat blood into his face.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

He held me up against the wall by the scruff of my neck and yelled into my face,

“I’M GONNA MAKE YOU BEG, YA HEAR ME? YOU’RE DEAD YOU FUCKING MOOK, YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!"

"HEY!”

We both turned. Over his shoulder, I saw Candy Cane, her mane hanging before her eyes, and my pistol and its magazine enveloped in her silvery magic.

“You …” Candy Cane murmured. She swept her mane out of her face, her cold, steel gray eyes gleaming with icy malice at the monster whose hooves had made her suffer for far too long.

“I’m not afraid of you either …” I heard her slam the pistol’s magazine back home with an audible click. “Not anymore.”

He snorted, laughing, “You wouldn’t … you’re just a fucking slut with a loud mouth.” He reached into his pocket with a hoof. His eyes widened.

“Where is it …?”

Candy Cane floated out the detonator with a triumphant smirk. She leveled the pistol at Grifter as he swore under his breath.

“You fucking whore …”

Candy Cane fell silent.

“No … I’m the pony with the fucking gun.”

CRACK!

Grifter cried out, and we both slid to the floor.

“BOSS! WHAT THE FUCK!” someone screamed behind the door.

“Red Dawn!” Candy Cane galloped to my aching body and yanked me to my hooves. “We need to run – now!”

Grifter writhed on the floor in a growing pool of blood. I trampled him underhoof as I eyed the sack of caps sitting on his desk. I clenched my jaw and swiped it away with a hoof. I turned to leave, but not before sparing him a passing glance.

“Why don’t you finish him off?”

Candy Cane glared at the bleeding bastard, saying nothing.

The door exploded inward and the security bolt banged loudly against the floor.

“Shit! They fucking shot him!” Dahlia screamed as she and five other ponies dashed into the room, a submachine gun floating beside her.

Dawdleshoes pushed past her and reared up on his hinds.

“KIIILLL ‘EEEMMM!”

“Now we run!” I cried out as they took aim. Candy Cane yanked me by the foreleg and dragged me to the other side of the room, slamming open the patio door.

The ponies opened fire.

And out into a snowstorm we galloped.

The staccato bursts of automatic weapons fire flashed dully through the stormy night as we galloped against the blizzard’s blinding winds. Candy Cane ran, and I followed. I couldn’t see more than a dozen feet in front of me. But I didn’t stop – not for a single second as bullets shrieked past us.

I could feel them tearing apart the snow around my hooves.

“WHERE ARE WE GOING!?” I shouted over the winds that whipped past my face.

“Just follow me!”

“DON’T LET ‘EM GET AWAY!” I heard Dahlia scream in the distance.

I threw my head over my shoulder, and saw that their flashing gunfire wasn’t too far behind. Thankfully it was impossible to see clearly through the howling snowfall. I could barely make out the silhouettes that galloped after us.

They were spraying. I was praying.

But I didn’t pray hard enough.

Something tore into me.

Fire engulfed my insides as a bullet punched a ragged hole through my flesh. My kevlar plates, barding, and flesh parted before it as lava erupted into my chest cavity. I curled up in reflex and crashed into the snow, sending up a plume of bloody powder.

My screams left my lips and it seemed as if they would never stop coming. Neither would the blood. I cried out Candy Cane’s name, but my voice was lost beneath the wind as she disappeared in the blizzard.

“Candy Cane!” I wheezed, blood streaming down my lip. I struggled to my hooves – and a bullet punched out of my right foreleg in a burst of gore and torn fabric.

I screamed.

She was going to leave me behind. I lifted a hoof, trying to crawl away as bullets shredded the snow around me.

She was going to leave me behind.

I couldn’t blame her. She was free. It was all that should’ve mattered to her.

And I was going to pay for it. I wondered once more why I even came back for her.

And still I couldn’t find an answer.

'You idiot,' I screamed inside my head as tears of agony welled up in my eyes. 'Now they’re all going to die.'

I whimpered and swept a foreleg across the snow as I tried to pull myself to my four hooves, only to paint the snow red with an arc of blood. I clenched my stomach with a gory hoof, hacking up blood onto the frozen earth. ‘Get ... up ...’ I begged myself.

"Red Dawn, get up – get up!"

Someone wrenched me to my hooves. Candy Cane curled a hoof around my left foreleg and pulled. Hard. I slung a leg over her shoulder as she dragged me through the drifts, trailing blood through the snow behind us. My eyes darted back and forth, blurry, ruined buildings falling away from us as we raced down an abandoned street.

Candy Cane’s voice echoed distantly through my ears.

"Come on! Don't stop for anything!" a ghost screamed as black tunnels closed in around me.

‘Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …’

I could hear them screaming. I could hear her screaming.

“ … RED DAWN!”

"Dew Drops?" I murmured through a mouthful of blood.

"Almost there!"

I squinted through the writhing shadows in my eyes as the echoes faded away, my face pale and my nerves shrieking at me with every throb of my still pounding heart.

There was a lull in the storm and my eyes widened as the road fell away into the darkness twenty yards in front of us.

“W-where’s the road!?” I wheezed, the leg that I had wrapped around her chest beginning to slip.

She didn’t answer.

I felt a bullet clip my shoulder.

“Candy Cane – WHERE’S THE ROAD!?”

“There is no road! We’re going to need to jump!”

‘Jump?’

“I asked you this before – and I’ll ask you again,” I rasped weakly, as the end of the road drew near. “But … ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!?”

“Trust me – we’ll be okay!” I heard her shout back.

“Candy Cane!”

“You have to trust me!”

I glared through the snowflakes that whipped past my face. ‘Goddesses. No.’ Countless feet below us, I could see only darkness.

“CANDY CANE!”

“JUMP!”

The road flew away from our hooves – and we tumbled into the howling darkness.

I screamed, but all I could hear was the wind whipping past our faces as we hurtled into the abyss. Seconds felt like hours. I was falling. And falling. And –

I dive-bombed into the drifts, my momentum driving me through the snow, smothering my screams inside the shifting black tides.

I dug with all the energy I had left, fighting to break the surface even as the snow vowed to bury me alive. My muscles were burning out, and every second I spent lucid was another second spent in agony as my warmth and my lifeblood leaked out of my chest with every frantic beat of my draining heart.

My forehoof broke the surface. Then the another. With a gurgling groan, I pulled myself free and flopped onto the frozen, black dunes. Gasping weakly, I tapped my PipBuck once, and bathed the snow around me in teal light.

Candy Cane burst out of the snow next to me, gasping for breath. She scrambled to ungainly hooves and shook herself vigorously, showering me with snow.

“Where the fuck did they go?!” a voice echoed over the streets on high.

“Turn that light off!” Candy Cane hissed, flinging herself onto my PipBuck. It was attached to the leg they shot. I bit my tongue to suppress a moan as she wrestled my bleeding limb into the drifts.

“They fuckin’ jumped!” I heard Twiggy gasp.

A thin smile creased my bloody lips. As my emptying veins starved my brain of oxygenated blood - blood that was pooling around me, a veiny tunnel of blackness closed in, sapping the clarity from my eyes.

“Seriously?” Dahlia said, distantly, “They fucking insane?”

“Doesn’t matter … they’re dead.” Someone kicked a rock down into the darkness. I felt it kick up a plume of snow next to me. “Nobody could’ve survived that. Fuck ‘em, anyways. Slippery bastards.”

My legs slackened as Candy Cane peered upwards.

“Candy … Candy Cane …” I gurgled through a mouthful of blood.

She turned and her eyes widened.

“Red Dawn – you’re bleeding!”

“Yeah … it’s kinda what happens … when you get s-shot.”

The mare rolled me over on my back and grimaced at the hole in my chest.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she hissed.

I felt her heave me onto my side.

“Too … busy … trying ... to keep up.”

She clenched her jaw.

“No exit wound,” she murmured gravely, chewing her bottom lip. Her eyes darted worriedly across my pale features. “I’ll need to extract the bullet.”

I slurred, in my fading consciousness, “Ex … extract? W-what?”

“Your saddlebags – I need pliers, tweezers – scissors – something!” She dragged them out of the snow and rifled frantically through them. But that wasn't my tool bag she was rifling through. Unable to speak through the blood that was filling my mouth, I reached out for my tools, parting its flaps as I levitated out a –

My head exploded from the inside out.

The horn atop my skull flashed with violent magical sparks before going dark as a million stars went supernova behind the darkness of my eyelids.

I cried out, my eyes rolling to the back of my head and fell limp in the snow, blood trickling out of my nose.

“Red Dawn!” I heard Candy Cane scream over the howling storm, shaking me desperately.

‘It’s called Sparkle. Makes your magic stronger,’ I heard Grifter say, ‘Should boost you up good; might even bring your magic back for a bit …

‘For a bit.’

‘For … a … bit …’ I thought, distantly.

My body screamed for darkness to take it.

I heard a voice echo faintly in my decaying consciousness.

“Red … to extract … bullet …”

I blinked my eyes furiously in an attempt to return to clarity. But I felt something cold enter the hole in my chest, fishing around my innards – worming its way into my gut.

The last thing that I remembered was a muffled scream as it thrummed inside my chest.

Then darkness washed over me.