“You know,” Twilight said.

“Probably not,” Spike said.

“Everypony’s been talking about how I like to kill stuff, but I haven’t really killed that many ponies on the show yet. And yes, I’ll get us out of this smoke factory in a minute, I just need to hack into the mainframes and overclock them into reversing the polarity of the generators.”

“We’ve got a straggler on the catwalk over the acid!” said a red stallion with a strong Russian accent. “Where’s my gun and how do I fire it with hooves?”

“Just a few more seconds...” Twilight said as she typed idbgjwoi into the terminal.

“Mm,” the stallion said as he held a double-barrelled shotgun in his mouth.

“There! Now let’s get out before the building explodes!”

She teleported herself and Spike to the balcony.

“That was close,” Spike said. “Too close.”

“Fuck, I know. That fucking pony was on his fucking second-to-last mission before he fucking retired, too. I almost feel bad.” She looked up at the crescent moon. “Almost.”

Twilight was in a cubicle, the setting of her job by day, typing idbgjwoi into a spreadsheet when the phone rang. She picked it up.

“Products Inc., how may I help you?”

“Hi, um, my flowerpot is broken.”

“Do you have the clay or the plastic version?”

“The clay one.”

“Support for that product has been discontinued.”

She hung up.

Spike was in the kitchen pouring himself some cereal. “Hey, Twilight.”

“Hi. I’ll be gone for a few hours to go on a killing spree, so don’t burn the house down.”

“All right.”

Ponyville was just a bit too bustling at the moment to murder someone without being noticed, but she had a backup town an hour’s walk away, or a second’s teleportation. It was a couple dozen houses on either side of one street, and it abruptly ended on either end, the side of the road going straight back from generic family homes to monotonous farmland. The road wasn’t straight, and the houses got in the way of seeing the entire place at once, so she went along the road to see if anyone was outside. There wasn’t, so it was time for a break-in.

“Is that a pink house?” she said as if anyone would answer her. It was indeed a two-story house with the exterior a solid pale pink, the closed curtains pink as well. “Okay, obviously it is, but wow, I think I know who’s first.”

She went up on the porch and knocked the door. No one answered, so she lasered a hole in the door, which was technically two due to it being hollow, and stepped inside. She checked every room but one with no success, and last up was one of the bedrooms upstairs.

“Okay, this better have somepony. It’s the last one, it has to. I wouldn’t have been on screen the whole time just to find nothing, right?”

“I don’t think you understand—” the camerapony said. Twilight opened the door, and inside was a pony sleeping.

“Should I wake him up or just kill him? I mean, I don’t care about ‘the hunt’, it’s more fun when they’re helpless, but he isn’t even awake. It wouldn’t be quite as much fun if he doesn’t suffer at least a—”

The red pony opened his eyes and looked in her direction. “Is that... Twilight...?”

“Aah!” She made a ball of magic.

“Okay, I still need—”

His body became one huge burn mark, most of his blanket now ash. It turned out he was a pegasus. “Well, that could’ve been a bit more exciting. Oh well, it’s not like I’ll run out of ponies.”

She went back outside.

“Is that a religious lawn sign?” she said as if anyone would answer, and it was. “Okay, obviously it is, but I think I know who’s next.”

The knocking this time was more successful, the door being retrieved by a stallion so black his outline was lighter than the rest of him just so it could be visible.

“Holy crap, Twilight?!”

“What?” said a navy blue mare as she looked away from the television, putting her lower leg on top of the back of the couch. “Holy crap!”

“Don’t get excited, I’m here to kill you.” She materialised a cylinder of ice with a pointed end and sent it through his neck, the “pencil of doom” as Rainbow Dash called it when she was told of it, much to her irritation. It was noticeably larger, more like a decent-size icicle, but other than that it was fairly accurate. Regardless of nomenclature, he pulled the object out and she then took his front knees in her magic to break them. He fell over, unsuccessfully tried to scream, and flailed his forelegs around for a moment before dying. Twilight turned her attention to the mare, who had just began to cry.

“My name is Tsunami III. There, now I have a name, so you can’t kill me.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“¡GOOOOOOOOL!” the television relayed.

“Oh, way to kill the mood. Could you turn that off?”

After two failed attempts to pick up the remote, she did. “So you’re going to kill me?”

“Meh.” Tsunami felt her right femur snap and groaned loudly. “I think that’s it.”

Twilight left the building and looked around. There was nothing else to use to pick a house, so she went to the next village, which was much the same as the first with a straight road. She didn’t see anything worthy and so picked the closest house she had teleported to. She knocked the door, but of the family who lived there, the parents were at work and the foals were at school, so she got no response and lasered a hole in the door. She searched the entire house and naturally found no one.

“Well, this sucks,” she said after checking the foals’ bedroom. “Oh well, if I don’t find anypony at the next house I’ll call it a day.”

At the next house, the exact same thing happened.

“Yeah, this isn’t a reliable strategy,” she said as she stood in the living room. After she said this, she saw a pony walking by out the window. “Okay, I’ll finish with her.” She went out the door.

“Holy crap, Twilight Sparkle?!”

Twilight came up to her. “Wow, that fur pattern looks really hard to describe. Anyway, I’m killing you, so don’t get excited.”

She set most of her back on fire, and the passerby responded by jumping at her. She teleported  back a couple metres, then held the day’s last victim down and strangled her.

“Seriously, you try anything other than instant death and you fucking have to do it anyway. I don’t know, maybe it’s today, but I don’t wanna just do death rays my entire life....”

She wanted the body burn for a few minutes, but another pony came by.

“Uh....” He tapped her leg.

“What? Oh, this?”

“You’re Twilight! Holy crap!”

“Oh. You want an autograph, don’t you?”

“And wait, there are cameraponies here? Am I on—”

“Yeah, yeah, you are. Being on the show is cool, so you don’t need an autograph, right? Right.”

“We can’t have wild sex?”

“Not even calm sex.”

“Aww.”

He continued on his way and Twilight watched the burning for a few more minutes. Once she was satisfied, she went back to the treehouse.

“Hi, Spike.”

He paused a video so dark and grainy it was impossible to ascertain the subject matter from that particular frame. “Hey, you’re back.”

“Yep. I killed a few ponies, but only one of them was really fun.”

“That sucks. Did anypony see you?”

“A couple, but I doubt they’ll do anything. And even if they do, then all that happens is I get to kill a couple policeponies.”

“Ponyville has a police force?”

“Well, I saw a pony in uniform once in Sparkstown. I don’t know.” Next Chapter: Chapter 43: Rinse Cycle Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 32 Minutes