Author's Notes:

God I fucking hate this chapter title but it's totally worth it so fuck you/me. Took me a little less than two hours to make, hope you enjoy!

"Ya know Sugarcube? I think we'd be a lot more supportive of y'all screwin' up the town if ya didn't do it so much."

The sound of spitting and sputtering came to her from behind, but the mare rolled her eyes as the unfortunate stallion tried to pull thousands of things out of his asshole. "Fuck you, Applejack! Fuck- quit... draggin' me! I keep gettin' fucking dirt in my pores and shit!" Hacking a loogie of Earth back into its motherland, he craned his neck around painfully, the rest of his body not agreeing with the movement as it remained belly-down to drag a trench through the dirt. "I got a fuckin' rock in my mask!"

"Ah don't care, Delirious. Y'all got a lotta nerve doin' what y'all did." Not even wanting to give him the satisfaction of a simple glare in his general direction, Applejack continued onward, flicking her tail forward in the process. This only served to further torture poor Delirious, whose left ear soon began to collect large amounts of dirt that would cause a gardener to grow green with envy. Gritting his teeth, he looked down at the ground and attempted to push himself off the ground, only to slip back down once he realized that he was now being pulled at a faster rate.

Growling, he held his head up to the best of his ability and shouted, "It was fuckin' self defense!"

"Ya literally blew up a house! And y'all destroyed Twilight's front door with yer ass when ya came crashing in! You were tryin' ta pick a fight with what looked to be a seven year-old colt with some kinda mask on! Ah don't even know what's up with y'all and masks, but it's gettin' a little creepy."

"Who the hell do ya think threw me in?! Self. Defense! Lui woulda fuckin' killed me if you hadn't come try to help me!"

"Well Lui walked through the front door without a weapon in his hooves! Y'all were, first off, tryin' ta beat up a seven year-old, and second off, he was unarmed! Now if there's somethin' mah Pa taught me before he left, it's that you're one helluva prick killin' an unarmed pony."

Delirious threw a hoof into the ground, successfully turning himself over onto his back. Spewing a few pieces of clumped grass out of his mouth, he knitted his brow and groaned, "Just because he walked through without one doesn't mean he didn't have one before! He beat the shit out of me back at the field outside a fuckin' town, I barely got out of there alive man! Motherfucker wanted my bounty, can't believe he actually got it..." he crossed his arms at this part of the retelling, slightly annoyed that Vanoss could actually use one of those things, and especially annoyed that he had used it on him purely out of fuckery and dickery.

This caused Applejack to finally turn around, lowering her tail and making Delirious revert back to his previous distance from the mare. One hindleg sticking in the air - her lasso tied tightly around it - he looked at her with an incredibly pissed look. She gave him one in kind, though hers mirrored genuine concern rather than pure anger. Beginning to walk at an involuntarily slower pace, she asked incredulously, "Bounty?"

Two hooves went down Delirious' face, dragging it downward in the same vein as he along the dark brown Earth below. A raspy groan escaped his lips, coming out the mask in a slightly muffled way, "...ugh, yeah. Some dumbass bounty hunters placed one on me for some bullshit in some place I ain't never been to before." A raspberry was blown, and he added, "Had a pretty dumbass name too."

A smile crossed Applejack's lips, and she raised a brow as she asked, "Oh did they?" Looking up to her right and toward the sun, she called, "What was it? Tunnel Rats? Delta Squad?"

Delirious chuckled, "Worse. The fuckin' Bone Collectors."

Applejack suddenly stopped. Hard. Remaining like this for awhile, allowing the dust around Delirious to lift into the air, she stared with wide eyes at the candle that sat a thousand yards away. Delirious, free from his torment, scrambled to his hooves and wiped the dirt from his forelegs. Glaring at the mare, he raised a hoof, "The fuck's wrong with you?"

Applejack blinked.

And the candle still burned.

She blinked again.

Rolling his eyes, Delirious shrugged wildly into the air and proclaimed, "Fuck this. I'm done," and promptly turned about to leave. He immediately fell onto his face, happily provided by the lasso still tied around his left hindlegs cannon. Getting off the floor with a groggy, pained whimper, he held his head and turned back to make sure that Applejack hadn't seen that. Reaching a hoof down to the knot, he felt a tail slap at him with the weight of a thousand Rat Tails.

Cursing, he looked at his now marked flank and remembered its bareness.

Turning to Delirious, Applejack cleared her throat and croaked, "Sugarcube... do y'all remember that banana stand owner you used ta work for? The one Vanoss apparently left ya for?"

Delirious cringed inwardly, but nodded his head, "Yeah, fuckin' bitch too. Almost made me switch out my mask."

Applejack dipped her head and stared at him from under her eyebrows. "Yeah, well lemme tell ya somethin', but Ah gotta make sure. Are you..." she raised a hoof, "absolutely sure that they were called the Bone Collectors?"

Delirious immediately nodded.

"The leader of 'em? That's her husband." Applejack noticed his suddenly dilating pupils, well aware that he'd be scared about having yet another hit put on him. She gave a soft smile, "Only reason Ah know that is cuz Banana always bragged on an' on an' on about how she's got some deadly bounty hunter for a husband whenever we were havin' some kinda competition day at the market. Ah mean, obviously you think I wouldn't believe that - which I didn't - cuz it sounds so ridiculous, but now that Ah... know... Ah do."

Delirious swallowed a lump down his throat that he didn't prior realize he was harboring. Scratching the back of his neck, he kicked at the air behind him with his tied leg subconsciously, then noticed this and quickly halted it. Turning back to a laughing Applejack, he frowned at her to no avail. Shaking his head, he asked, "Y'all for real, Applejack?"

She sucked in a breath. "...yes. And it was pretty dumb of you ta work with her. Ya wanna get back on the ground now so Ah can lock you in the barn? Ah ain't takin' that rope off, and Ah doubt you have enough willpower and horsepower ta take it off yourself." She watched Delirious frown at her for a time, before he gave out a long groan that sounded like one a pony would make after waking up at three o' clock in the morning. Silently crawling onto the ground, he looked back up at her with an expectant look, then crossed his arms and glared at nothing but the sky, belly-up.

Giving a smile and a chuckle, Applejack jerked her tail forward and continued to walk.

"This is still fuckin' bullshit, you know."

"Well Sugarcube, you've been in a bit of a temper and you destroyed somepony's house, so Ah, along with the rest of the girls, think you should have a time out."

"Fuck you."

Applejack flashed him a grin, then turned back forward and continued onward to the marketplace. As the back of his head dragged along the dirt below him, and the bystanders on the street gave him and the mare not a single sideways glance, he suddenly gulped and looked about in a silent panic. Blinking up at the clouds above his head, he gulped once more and spoke to himself.

"Oh shit..."

Meanwhile, a few miles away, it was the officially the end of Cloudy Skies' shift, and so as the time ticked to one o' clock in the afternoon, she fixed her light blue mane and smiled at the blinking grandfather clock sitting in the waiting room. Sighing happily into the air, Skies blinked and found her gaze fixated on her counter. Her neat stacks of papers stared back up at her, her quill and ink sitting on the sidelines and awaiting orders from their owner. Not wanting to ruin her nice day, she looked away from them and decided not to think about how much paperwork had to be done.

Her eyes wandered elsewhere, and after a double-take, she adjusted her name plate sitting atop her shelf to increase its view from the front. Craning her neck around the counter, she tapped a hoof against its base to perfect its position, finding success after a few well-placed taps. Beaming, she peered over to her left to look into the waiting room. Finding it empty, she clapped her hooves together and gave off a split-second squeal of delight. No more waiting ponies meant no more extensions of service, and finally she would be able to return home.

It took her half a minute to realize that that time was now, and she hadn't left since her shift ended, which was now two minutes past. Suppressing the urge to throw a hoof into her face, she straightened herself and took her nurse's cap off, placing it on her desk to come back to tomorrow. Lowering a blue hoof down to her clothes, she unbuttoned the first button and allowed herself to get some much needed escape from heat. Thanking the powers that were, she picked up her bag from her chair and walked around her desk to leave the building.

All Cloudy Skies wanted to do for the rest of that day was return home to her kids, feed and bathe them, and cook them all dinner when her husband returned from his trip for work. All she wanted to do was make some fucking macaroni.

And, as the front door swung open with a gentle creak through the air, she immediately realized that this was not gonna be possible.

Stopping mid-step, her bag slung over her back, Cloudy Skies watched as a trio of individuals stared at her as if they were her kids caught with their hooves in the cookie jar. She blinked, a small frown on her face growing deeper every passing second. The front door stayed where it was, courtesy of the admittedly cute colt holding it open with his back pressed against it. Inside, she wondered what exactly he was wearing on his head. Looking at the rest of them, she began to wonder what they all were wearing.

A green Unicorn, a large paper bag nestled over his head, stared at her in a hush, his two forelegs carrying one foreleg of a pony up the three-step staircase in the front of the building. Next to him, oddly enough, was a pig with a snow white helmet on dragging one foreleg up as well. Though she knew she would regret this, she ascended into the air with her tippy-hooves and caught the glimpse of yet another pony holding two hooves out as if saying stop from behind the first set of open doors. Presumably wearing what appeared to be an owl mask, he glared at her though she knew a fearful expression was underneath.

Currently wedged in between the doors was an unconscious stallion, his body armor gleaming in the bright lights of the hospital's ceiling lamps. From where she stood, Cloudy Skies noticed a large white stenciling on the outside of the armor that read Iron Sights. Guessing that it was the stallion's name, she cast a glance at the small colt trying to push against the door, cursing all the while with words she didn't want to even think were real things. Bashing at it with an elbow, he grit his teeth and began to beat it harder, only to stop as he suddenly looked up at the nurse.

Giving one final hit into the glass door, he cleared his throat squeakily.

Cloudy Skies looked down at the floor, and now noticed that a few splotches of blood marked the area underneath Iron Sights.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in and then out, and then threw a hoof into her forehead.

It was going to be a long day.