~~~|*/\*|~~~

I had found my calling at last. Not long after getting my mark, old enough to be considered an adult, I started my career in raider extermination. At night, I would roll through small raider camps, killing as quickly and quietly as I could. Once I had a pretty good feel for pistols, I started to experiment with my methods. I learned, real quick, that at range or with anything larger than a sub-machine gun, I was a lousy shot. On the other hoof, at close range, or point blank, nopony was faster than I was. I just have that twitch, I guess.

By selling off all the unusable or unnecessary gear I was looting off of the raiders I killed, I actually started saving up caps despite knowing fuck all about haggling. The caps I got off the raiders themselves were a nice bonus too.

Now, I’m not the strongest stallion by any means, but with the money I was making, I figured it couldn’t hurt to learn a little hoof to hoof if the situation ever called for it. Considering that speed and surprise were usually to my advantage, I assumed my lack of brute strength wouldn’t be too much of an issue. After I had paid for a few lessons and put them to use for silent takedowns, I realized that nine times out of ten, I would hit a vital spot on the first try. If I missed, well, I was in the habit of keeping sharp objects handy.

While the issue of strength also kept me from relying on blunt force, I figured out real quick that I was near surgical with a blade. On top of that, I had learned that I could sort of push objects with my levitation. Maybe shove is the better word? The point is, while my levitation isn’t that strong either, I can throw small things without too much difficulty. In the case of something like a knife, well, it works out pretty nicely.

Confidence came with experience, and eventually my confidence outpaced my intelligence. I had never backed down from a fight, and I thought that after a few months of upping the ante, I was ready for something bigger. That is exactly how, for the very first time, I got in over my head.

Ponyville was, as far as I knew, the biggest raider camp I could reach with relative ease. I was a little nervous on my way there, because I was going to try something totally new. Normally, I would wait a few hours before making my silent assault, memorizing patrols from a distance, waiting for gaps and slipups in watch duty. Because I wanted to test my luck, I was going to do a blind run. No scouting, no planning.

My first few kills went smoothly because I had the element of surprise. None of them were expecting somepony to just stroll right in. I nailed a stallion in the throat with a throwing knife as he exited a building, broke another stallion’s neck as I came up behind him, and point blanked a mare as she rounded a corner. I had made enough by selling crap I looted from raiders that I could afford a silencer, but noise wasn’t the issue. The mare I capped was the head of a patrol of four. Before she even hit the ground, a shotgun floated around the corner and started spraying.

I screamed. I had never been shot before. I had taken a few nasty cuts and bruises practicing and employing hoof to hoof or close quarters melee, but a bullet was a whole new kind of pain. My left side got peppered with buckshot, and as I stumbled out of the way, I almost blanked out right then and there. I’ve taken more than a few bullets since, but that first time... holy shit did that hurt. By some small miracle, I hung in there, and as luck would have it, I didn’t get hit anywhere vital or crippling. I should have turned and run, but I had yet to back down from a fight. I thought, I’m sure as hell not gonna start now.

So, pistol out, I sidestepped that still booming shotgun, whipped around the side of the building and put one right between the unicorn’s eyes. His friends had their guns out too. They unloaded into their dead friend as they tried to shoot me, and I tried as hard as I could to keep that dead unicorn floating high enough to give me some cover. One bullet clipped my right foreleg, another taking the tip of my right ear. I was getting a lot more lead than I thought I would, and it hurt like hell, and I was pissed about that, but I was still standing. I figured that meant luck was still on my side. I focused harder on the body I had been straining to hold, and hurled the bullet torn pony at the one to the left, floating my pistol to the one on the right and spattering his brains.

The one on the left was pinned under the bullet ridden corpse. Just barely a full grown stallion, maybe a year or two younger than me. There was fear in his eyes as I looked down at him. I recognized that fear. I was afraid once. I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. Two casings clattered to the street.

Since I was the only one using a silenced weapon, the whole town was alert by then. There was shouting all around me. A bullet zipped by, nearly taking my head off. A distant crack sounded from an enormous tree right in the middle of Ponyville. I figured what was where I should head next.

I tried to stick to cover as I barreled toward the tree, killed a few more raiders on the way, mostly in passing, but I was starting to panic. Sometimes when I pulled the trigger, the bullet would miss its mark completely. One unicorn nearly pulled my gun out of my levitation. I was very quickly realizing that as much as I had luck to my advantage, there was much more to success than that. My tactics relied entirely on speed and stealth. When my enemies knew I was coming, and I was out in the open, I was practically helpless.

When I finally barged through the door set into that massive tree, I was limping. The sniper had nearly tagged me in the left knee, missing that crucial joint by just a few hairs. Even if my knee was in tact, it was excruciating enough to keep me from using the leg at all. On top of that, shallow gashes spread over my body where bullets had skimmed my flesh and left bleeding ruts, reminders of how many near misses I’d had. My luck was wearing thin, but I was still alive, and there was still a chance the situation might turn around. That’s what I was thinking, anyway, when I finally barged through the door set into that massive tree.

It wasn’t until that moment when I realized I had pushed my luck too far.

There were at least ten raiders in much better armor than the ones I had been dropping outside, all pointing their guns at me, all grinning that same sick sadistic, stupid fucking grin. I wanted to tear them apart with my teeth. I wanted to grind them into the fucking floor, but I knew I was finally shit out of luck. I couldn’t go back, because there were lots more outside. I couldn’t go forward because of the firing squad waiting to tear me to pieces. A whisper in the back of my mind told me, to the right.

I had barely noticed in my quick sweep of the grotesquely decorated room, but there was a stairwell to the right. The way was clear enough, so I threw myself as hard as I could. The world around me exploded into splinters and cracks of gunfire. And pain. I felt it ripping through me in all the worst places. All that luck I had been so confident about, gone. Bloodied and half dead, I hit the first step and kept going. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even think. I tumbled down into darkness.

My memory gets a little foggy around this part... I was hovering in and out of consciousness. I remember crawling through the darkness, hoping, praying for a way out. All I could think about were those chances I had to turn back, the warning signs that everything was going to shit. There were voices all around me. Wild screaming and laughing. I just kept crawling, trying to get away. The raiders must have been digging down there, because the next thing I remember is being in a tunnel. I think it was a tunnel, anyway. I could feel roots scraping against me,  loose earth getting in my cuts as I dragged myself across the floor. Saw something rectangle-ish ahead of me and thought it might have been a med-kit, but when I put my hooves on it...  

Just another book. What a punchline that was.

This is it, I told myself.

I gave up. Everything went dark.

And... that’s where my story should have ended, but somehow, it’s not. I have these weird flashes of… something… after surrendering to death. After seeing as much as I have... coming so close to death... It kinda makes you stop and think about what is and isn’t real. I can’t tell you if they’re more memories from that day, or some kind of hallucination.

What I can tell you... What I remember, I mean,  is that there was blood. Gallons and gallons of it, spattering everywhere, practically drowning me. There was screaming. Not taunting and threatening, like the raiders had been doing before. Screams of horror. Screams of pain. Pleading, even, only to be cut down mid sentence.

And there was laughter. One single voice cackling over the sound of slaughter… Shrill, blissful, and pure, like someone had just told the joke of a lifetime. I wanted to join in. I wanted to laugh, too, but I just didn’t have the strength.

I think...

I think that was the very first time Lady Luck smiled for me.

Next thing I remember is waking up in a bed. I recognized the room. I had woken up in New Appleoosa.

The nurse told me that I had been left at the front door, nearly dead from blood loss, but stable. There were more questions than answers. Even if the nurse couldn’t answer them, there were valuable lessons that I took away from the experience. I wasn’t going to plow ahead without extensive scouting beforehand, I sure as hell wasn’t going into a situation without a backup plan, and I definitely wasn’t going to continue a fight after I had lost the element of surprise.

Above all; the absolute, most important thing that I learned was that my luck has limits.

I waited until I was as well as I was going to get, dusted myself off, and got right back to work.

~~~|*/\*|~~~

Chapter Two – Tools of the Trade

|[ /_\ ]|[ /_\ ]|[(  ) ]|

“How can you not know?! I’m talking about her pretty much all the time!”

Paharita stepped past one of Red Eye’s soldiers, unfolding her wings as she was bathed in the pale light of day. She gave them a few quick passes with her beak before she took to the air. Their caps jingled as another soldier slipped them into his saddle bag, then motioned for them to move. Rita fluttered alongside Double Tap as they slowly distanced themselves from Tenpony Tower and the camps of Red Eye’s forces. Bribing the soldiers for passage had been on the pricey side, but it was much faster and easier than sneaking through. He briefly wondered if the Steel Ranger mare had snuck in and out, or if she had used a bribe as well.

The skeletal remains of Manehattan stretched out before them. He realized a moment later that Paharita expected him to say something in response.

“Yeah, well—”

“I mean, she’s the hero the wasteland needs! The hero the wasteland deserves!” Tap glanced up just in time to see her ball her talons, bringing them up under her beak. “And we’re the ones that are gonna kill her! We’re gonna be so famous! Oh, I have so many things I want to say to her before she dies!”

Tap did his best to suppress the wave of nausea rolling up his throat, unsure how much of it was the hangover and how much of it was genuine disgust. “Can we not talk about this? Normally your chipper bullshit doesn’t really bother me, but that’s honestly just a little bit disturbing.”

The little griffon huffed, upturning her beak. “If you listened to DJ Ponethree, you’d understand.”

“I’m fine like this, thanks.”

“And I thought you were a stone cold killer! Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts!”

An emaciated pony with open sores and sunken eyes barreled across broken slabs of concrete, growling and screeching unintelligibly. It had been a pony once, but that was a long time ago. Now it was nothing more than a mindless, ghoulish parody of who it used to be. Tap casually un-holstered and leveled one of his silenced pistols, quietly punching three holes in its face when it was just a few paces away. The feral ghoul tumbled lifelessly for a few moments before coming to a stop. He stepped over it without giving it a second glance.

“I usually don’t think. I plan. I mean…” Rita arched a brow as he glanced up at her again. “You know what I mean! I’m gonna do what we’re getting paid to do, I just think it’s a little bizarre that you’re fawning over the pony we’ve been hired to shoot to death. Is that so hard to understand?”

“I thought you didn’t think.” She grinned and stuck out her tongue.

“Get fucked, Rita,” he grumbled.

Several crumbling blocks from the tower, Paharita banked into a narrow side alley. Tap hesitated, remembering their conversation about making sure they weren’t being watched or followed before ducking into the workshop. He snorted, checking his immediate surroundings.

So it’s okay when you do it, huh?

As Rita huddled over the terminal at the end of the alley, he shrugged and followed her. The familiar rattle of the rolling steel door and the hum of its motor reverberated down the passage as he came up behind her. Double Tap knew the interior of this building well. Though, for all intents and purposes it belonged to Paharita, he considered her workshop to be his home. Within were all his possessions, from consumables to clothing.

There were two rooms, not counting the hatch to the basement. The larger, main room was where just about everything was set up. A fridge rested in the right corner, with a couch, a table, and a rug they had stolen from a recently gutted vault spread out in front of it, close to the right wall. To the left of that, several mismatched cabinets covered in empty glasses, bottles, bullet casings, and bits of scrapped electronics. Farther left was the door leading to the bathroom, small enough to lack a shower or bath tub, but large enough to make a noticeable subtraction from the room’s total open space. A mostly clean mattress with mostly clean sheets occupied the left corner, partially enclosed by a folding screen. A dresser and a slightly bullet-ridden wardrobe lined up with the left wall.

At the very center of the room, a tangle of wires and cables hung like vines, offering only glimpses of the place where Paharita did her actual work. A soft green glow bled out through the gaps. Several vices, a few benches, an array of tools, a cluttered chemistry set, a loading press, a pair of terminals, multiple types of charging docks, and a few small metal cabinets had all been carefully arranged around the support column at the heart of the makeshift chamber. Even though it was the source of all his customized weapons, ammunition, drugs and equipment, Double Tap felt uncomfortable standing in there for extended periods of time.

A vaguely pony shaped automaton waited for them on the other side of the door, a few bubbles rising through the thick pink fluid of its brain case as it lurched forward on treads. He could hear the others clanking about within as they assessed the situation. There was a lingering fear in the back of his mind that one day, when they opened the door, the robots would open fire.

The case, brain and all, flashed a brighter pink as the brain-bot saluted and began to speak. “Greetings, Empress Paharita! We have been anxiously awaiting your return!” The other robots inside quickly lined up on either side of the doorway, those with arms saluting as well. “How may we serve our Empress on this fine day?”

“You’ll all be pleased to know that I’ve signed on a new contract!” With a wide grin around her beak, she slowly strolled into the building, Tap at her side. “And you’ll never guess who I’ve been hired to kill!”

The robots that could nod did so, as if they hung on her ever word. Double Tap made for the refrigerator. “Please tell us, Empress!”

“Why, the hero of Equestria! Savior of the wasteland!” Rita’s childish glee brought her voice to a near squeal. A chorus of pre recorded and synthetic gasps filled the room. Tap buried his head in the fridge. “I’ve been hired to kill Pipsqueak herself! I can just imagine the headlines now! DJ Ponethree will be talking about me for years to come!”

He turned away from the fridge, the mouth of a beer bottle between his teeth, and watched as she pranced across her workshop.

“Okay, two things,” Tap announced after taking a swig. A deathly quiet fell over the room.

“You dare interrupt our Empress?!” Crackled several of them, the spritebot beeping and clicking aggressively.

“Oh, come the fuck on, Rita!” Tap snorted. “We talked about this!”

Paharita raised a talon into the air, and her mechanized followers were hushed. “Now now, he is the sword with which your Empress strikes. Speak your mind, humble assassin!”

It was Double Tap’s belief that one day, his blank, disbelieving stare would register with her, and she would act her age. It was also Tap’s belief that Red Eye could make it rain alcohol once his plans had come to fruition.

“Yeah… so, like I said, two things. One, we’re not just killing Littlepip. We’re also supposed to kill every pony and non pony in her en… entour…”

Paharita giggled. “Entourage?”

“Fuck you. Yes. Entourage. That’s, what, four additional targets, plus a phoenix? One of them is a Canterlot ghoul in Steel Ranger armor, and at least two of them can fuck us up from more than a block away.”

“Okay, and two?”

Tap levitated the beer back to his lips and took a swig. “Uh… I guess I combined one and two. That’s the gist of it anyway.”

“Mmkay,” Rita replied as she settled on the couch. One of the robots with multiple arms brought her a sparkle cola. “So you sneak up on them and shoot them! You do this all the time! They’ll never see it coming!”

“This is not going to be like our usual jobs! These are professionals. We don’t even have the right equipment to pull this off.” Rita lifted one of her talons, thumb up in the air, two scaly fingers extended. She repeatedly dropped her thumb against the extended fingers, grinning and nodding. Tap shook his head. “Steel Ranger armor, Rita. My pistols aren’t going to do much against that.”

“So, use grenades or something!”

“I don’t think grenades are going to do me much good when we’re taking on two unicorns. An EMP would deal with the one in power armor, but that still leaves five of them. Even if I’m using high explosives and they’re in close quarters, these are apparently some hardcore motherfuckers. I know that our primary target is the runty unicorn—”

Paharita leaned forward, brow furrowed. “Littlepip!”

“I know Littlepip is the one the Steel Rangers seem to be shitting themselves over, but Dark Elder Moon Night—”

She thumped the arm of the couch. “Star Paladin Steelhooves!”

“Fuck! Whatever!” Tap dropped his beer, frowning as it spilled across the floor while it rolled away. “He’s going to be a much bigger threat if we can’t kill them all in one go is the point I’m trying to make!”

“Okay, alright. Sheesh.” The little griffon leaned forward as one of the flying, spider-looking robots began to rub the back of her neck. Her eyes lidded slightly and Tap shivered anxiously. “Ooooh yeah, right there… So, what do you need to make this work, then?”

“Something to punch through armor. Do you think you could take an anti-machine rifle and make it…” He held up his forehooves, slowly bringing them closer together. “Smaller? More like a pistol?”

A stretch of silence followed, during which Paharita closed her eyes and tapped a talon against the side of her beak. Double Tap let his gaze wander, imagining all the robots giving him the robot equivalent of the stink eye. When she looked up, she grinned and pointed at him.

“I sure can!” Her grin faded as she let her talon drop. “But do we even have an anti-machine rifle around?”

Tap glanced over at the weapon rack occupying the wall to the right of the front door. “Uh…”

|[BAR]|[o’o ]|[BAR]|

“And you’re sure she’s got one?”

The barbed-wire-fenced perimeter of the Shattered Hoof Correctional Facility gradually came into view, with the former prison turned stronghold looming in the center. Tap spotted several marksmen in the various lookout towers spread around the yard, their scopes already trained on him and his companion. He proceeded calmly, no sudden movements and no magic. Tap knew long range engagements were not the sort he would walk away from.

“Oh yeah, totally!” Rita nodded energetically, flitting along beside him despite the fact that there were at least three crosshairs centered on her pretty little head. “She has to have a few of those lying around if she’s holding onto a place like that.”

“But I thought you hated dealing with the Talons.”

“Oh, I do!” She nodded again, maintaining her cheery grin. “I absolutely despise them!”

A dirty looking earth pony cocked a brow at them from the other side of the main gate. “What the fuck do you two want?”

Paharita touched down, straightened up and smiled. “Here to do business! We’d like to see your boss, pretty please!”

A few minutes of awkward silence passed as the guard discussed the request with what Tap imagined was his superior. Rita was a statue, maintaining her overly friendly smile. Finally, the rusted gate slowly rolled out of the way. The stallion snorted as Paharita gave a nod of thanks. Behind the fence, a prison yard full of ponies in ragged looking clothes with ragged looking guns. Low grade mercenaries. Cannon fodder. Tap had been there once. Now, he was usually on the other end of the gun, pulling the trigger.

Before entering the facility proper, and without warning, Rita grabbed the collar of Tap’s vest and pulled him in close. “Gawdyna and Pipsqueak are on very good terms,” she lowly growled, “so you don’t do any talking, got it? Not one word.”

“Fuck off,” he mumbled as he pushed her away.

Tap followed his feathered companion up a few flights of stairs and down a series of dusty halls, passing various other ponies and griffons in the process. While most of them eyed Tap suspiciously, some of them gave him nods of recognition. Vaguely familiar faces that he couldn’t put a name to after excessive use of dash and hard liquor. Paharita slowed as they came within sight of a doorway flanked by a pair of grizzled looking griffons, each dressed in armor bearing the Talon insignia. Their positions, expressions, and the gem powered energy rifles they brandished screamed “we’re protecting someone important.” The comparatively tiny griffon glanced back at Double Tap and put on a smile, her nerves betrayed by her twitching brow.

Beyond the doorway, a desk occupied by an older griffon, bearing quite the scar over her left eye. She reclined, talons behind her head, hind paws propped up on the desk, her good eye sweeping over them with a predatory keenness.

“So you’re Gawdyna, right?” Paharita visibly seized up as Tap spoke, shooting a deathly stare back at him. He ignored it.

The brow over her scar arched. “Well aren’t you clever. What makes you say that?”

“Why else would you be in the warden’s office?” He glanced back to Paharita. She almost looked like she was going to cry. “Unless you’re a poser, and the real Gawdyna is somewhere else.”

A grin spread around her beak. “And this must be your new errand boy.” Gawdyna’s paws slipped off of the desk, putting her talons in their place and leaning forward. “Paharita, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Uh…” Paharita shuddered, coming out of what Tap assumed to be some sort of fear induced trance. “Uh-huh… This is—”

“Can we cut to the chase?” Tap looked over his withers, the guards at the door briefly, curiously peering into the room. “I need an anti-machine rifle. Rita says you have a few. How about it?”

Gawdyna propped her head up with the knuckles of her talons, just about leering down at Paharita. “Is that true? You need something of mine? You know that I don’t run a charity, Paharita; what will you give me in return?”

“We’ve got lots of caps!” Rita offered excitedly. “Really, we’ll be happy to pay you in full for it. It doesn’t even need to be in good condition!”

“You realize that you’d be taking a piece of my defense with you. Caps don’t defend against attackers.” Gawdyna paused, her gaze becoming distant for a moment. While she spaced out, Tap levitated a bottle of scotch off of her desk and slipped it into one of his pouches. “But, tell you what… There are much bigger things on my mind right now. I’ll let you buy what you need, if…” Gawd turned her gaze to Tap, her grin returning, “you do me a little favor first.”

Paharita seemed to wilt at that. “Oh... Of course! Whatever you like!”

“There’s a small time band of thugs that have been hitting the caravans I have contracts with. Like I said, there are bigger things on my plate, and I just don’t have the time or resources to deal with it myself.”

Tap rolled his eyes and sighed quietly. Here it fucking comes…

“That’s where you two come in.”

|[(  ) ]|[ /_\ ]|[  7 ]|

Double Tap edged closer to the crumbling brick wall in front of him, peeking over the top and scanning his surroundings. The sickly glow of the sky rapidly dimmed as the sun set. A small, dilapidated town spread out below, now the foundation for several sheds made of sheet metal and a recently used fire pit. The signs of life were all there, and provided Gawdyna’s information was sound, the gang had repeatedly made camp at this location. However, for the fourth hour in a row, there was still no sign of the thugs they had been “hired” to take out.

A light, papery sound flickered through the air behind him. Tap glanced over his wither at Rita, her beak buried in a comic book. She carried several on her for just such an occasion. Everything began to feel a little too fast. He searched out the pouch holding his dash inhalers and took a small hit, the world slowing down for several seconds before reaching a manageable speed.

“We’re getting the run around, aren’t we?”

“What?” Rita looked up from her comic book, meeting the stallion’s gaze

“We’re basically paying Gawdyna to kill these guys and buy her shitty gun.” He thumped a forehoof against his chest. “She should be paying us to kill these guys and give us the fucking gun for free.”

Rita puffed out her cheeks, scowling. “I told you not to talk, and you talked! Guess whose fault this is!” She pointed a talon, stabbing at the air in Tap’s direction. “Yours! Not mine!”

“You didn’t even try to negotiate with her, featherbrain! You just went all okie-dokie boss ma’am and accepted all her terms without complaint!”

“Yeah, because you cut to the chase! You can’t just drop a demand like that with her! You need to soften her up first, see if there’s a way to get mutual benefit!” Paharita ruffled her feathers, glancing down. “And… Gawd is kinda scary, okay?”

A distant, scuffing sound caught Tap’s attention. He turned, lifted a hoof, and cocked his ears forward as he shuffled up against the wall again. Rita nestled in against him a moment later, eyes wide as she surveyed the area. He could hear her talons clicking the buttons on her PipBuck without so much as glancing down at it, the motion something nearly instinctive to her.

“PipBuck says?” he whispered.

“I’m picking up six of them to the northwest. Confirm.”

Tap nodded, narrowing his eyes as his gaze swept over the landscape in the indicated direction. Steady movement.

“One unicorn, five earth ponies. Mid to light armor. One shotgun, one repeater rifle, additional small arms and edge weapons. I’ve got a good feeling. Run the numbers, if you please.” A few moments passed as he tracked his query. “Good odds?”

Paharita grinned in the corner of his vision. “Excellent odds.”

Tap gently tapped her on the shoulder. “Pull back. I’ll engage when they’re in range.”

“Go get ‘em,” she whispered, quietly slipping away.

Double Tap reviewed the information at his disposal as the six ponies approached the makeshift settlement. Half of them appeared to be lugging enormous saddle bags. Their laughter began to echo to his ears, along with snippets of conversation. One of the un-laden earth ponies started up the fire, the rest unceremoniously dropping their cargo. He watched them for several minutes as they settled in, darkness coming on fast. Only one of them acted as lookout, repeater rifle locked and loaded in his saddle, while the rest began to cook and drink. The other five were arranged in a near circle, eating out of cans. The lookout was far enough away that Tap would, in theory, be able to kill those around the camp fire without alerting him.

Tap closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He slipped over the side of the building, landing with a silent roll and stalking up to the crackling fire in the long, dancing shadows it cast, pistols out. The first two wouldn’t be an issue. The second pair was farther away, but would take a moment to register what had happened. The fifth, seated on the other side of the fire, would have the most time to react.

Tap readjusted and unloaded an alternating volley of lead into the fifth and farthest pony. His angle changed, pistols spreading before firing again. The closest set had been saved for last. Pistols nearly three and nine o’clock, he perforated them both before they could make any noise. He exchanged magazines, slipping the mostly empty pair into a pouch. Cocking silently, he returned to the shadows, creeping along a badly rotted wall.

The sudden silence had clearly spooked the lookout. Tap flattened against the wall as the pony cautiously trotted by, rolling out behind him and punching six holes in the back of his head.

-0-

Tap opened his eyes and grinned.

The world became a blur as he launched off of the ledge he and Rita had perched on, the wind whistling through his ears, blowing at his mane. It was a bit higher than he had assumed, but he stuck the landing and rolled forward, slinking on long, powerful strides. The dulled glow of his magic encircled the handles of his pistols, silencers screwed on, squeezing a grenade preemptively. His lips moved in silence, marking each target with a number, listening in as he came closer.

“Wait, wait, tell it again! Do the face, too!”

“And then the poor bastard was like, aaaa, please no!”

Laughter followed. They were gloating about their most recent heist. An old, familiar feeling snaked its way around Tap’s stomach. Like a tensed spring, his pistols snapped forward as he prowled up to the fire. The one directly across from him paused, meeting Tap’s cold stare in a split second of recognition. The assassin narrowed his eyes, lips curling into a grin.

His silencers chirped softly around streams of bullets, shallow geysers of blood erupting with every impact. Three of them were dead before the soft chime of shell casings on concrete began to ring out into the night. The last two barely got a glimpse of him, only just beginning to recoil in shock as the farthest pony toppled forward into the fire. The whites of his eyes lit up with dancing flame. Tap put their lights out, the thick, wet sound of entry and exit soothing his rage. Another, shorter shower of casings followed and faded, leaving Tap in near silence.

He spared a quick glance to the others, checking for movement and noting their stillness; the absence of their laughter. The cold slide of metal on metal graced his ears as he swapped magazines. The rotted wood wall and its long, flickering shadow sheltered him as he crept forward.

The lookout never came.

As the ambient light of the fire faded behind him, a spattering sound reached his ears. The lookout was relieving himself into a bush. His saddle, rifle and all, lay on a nearby rock. Tap holstered his pistols, unsheathing one of his throwing knives.

“They’re all dead,” he whispered.

The remaining earth pony flinched, then went very still as Tap prodded his wind-pipe with the tip of the knife.

Tap swallowed, his mouth going dry. “And I want to give you something to think about.”

“Wha—Uhhk!” Tap pushed the knife just a hair closer, digging in to the delicate flesh of his throat.

“Just fucking listen,” he growled, the distant glow of the fire flickering in his eyes. “That pony you robbed and killed? He probably had a family. Some foal, somewhere out there, is going to grow up full of emptiness and hatred because you took him away. Do you have foals?”

“N-no! So fucking what? Why should I give a damn about some kid?” The pony started to squirm, then went still again as Tap cut into him, just deep enough to draw a little blood. “S-shit… Look, the world is fucked, and it’s never going to get better! I was just doing what I had to for survival! You’d do the same thing if you were me!””

“So you killed somepony’s father because you think you didn’t have any other choice.” Tap stepped around the pony, staring deep into his eyes. “Well… my father was a merchant.” A smile broke across his lips. “Funny how karma works, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you!”

Tap’s horn flared. The knife plunged sideways, severing an artery into the lookout’s throat. Gagging, the lookout dropped to his knees.

“Look at me.” Tap lifted his head with a fetlock. “It’s not funny. None of this is.”

He could see the fear of death welling up in the dying stallion’s eyes, tears spattering the ground, joined by blood that gushed around the blade. Tap stared, watching his pupils slowly dilate, feeling his convulsions weaken as he drowned in his own blood. The spark faded from his eyes, and he went limp. Tap exhaled and wrenched the knife free, letting the stallion drop. He reached for a pistol, holding it against the stallion’s temple, and pulled the trigger twice.

“See you in hell, motherfucker.”

Tap cantered back to the fire and kicked a dead earth pony off of the slab of concrete he had been sitting on, claiming the seat and a can of beans for himself.

“All clear?” came a soft, feminine trill from behind.

“Yeah,” he replied around a mouthful, swallowing a moment later. “Come on down.”

Paharita swooped in less than a minute later, landing beside him and looking over the carnage up close. Pools of blood glimmered like liquid rubies in the light of the fire. At least two of them were missing large portions of their faces, not counting the one that had fallen into the fire. The rest of his body had immolated, but Tap had smelled worse. Rita giggled and settled in beside him.

“I figure we chow down while we’re here, then head back to Shattered Hoof.” He snorted, grinning. “Your Talon friend can go fuck herself if she thinks we’re waiting ‘till morning to let her know we completed our end of the deal.”

“What’s your rush, silly? It’s not like we’ve got a time limit to do the Ranger contract.”

“I’d rather get it done and over with. I don’t want to risk her adding even more ponies to her ent—” Tap shot a reflexive glance at Paharita. “Posse.”

Rita nodded, daintily lifting a bloody hoof and grabbing the can of ravioli under it. “Alright. It shouldn’t take too long to make the modifications to the anti-machine rifle.”

“Sounds good.” Tap paused, looking over the saddle bags laying not far from the fire. “What about all that swag there?”

She perked up, glancing toward the pile of stollen goods. “What about it?”

“Gawdyna didn’t say that we couldn’t keep whatever we find,” he casually remarked with his mouth full.

“Oh…” Paharita donned a wide grin. “No, she didn’t.”

|[  7 ]|[  7 ]|[  7 ]|

A few rays of dawn pierced the blanket of clouds over Equestria as the door to the workshop slowly rattled open. The only robots present were the sprite-bot, the brain-bot, and the one that awkwardly shambled around like an actual pony. Both of the flying, metal spiders and the enormous, rolling weapons platform of a security robot had departed to collect the illegitimate spoils of Gawdyna’s assignment. The anti-machine rifle, which was regrettably something they still had to pay for, was slung over Tap’s back.

He let it clatter to the floor after clearing the threshold and immediately went for the fridge.

Sleep was coming on fast, and he was determined to black out before it could catch up with him. The door rattled closed as he crossed the room to the bed, a bottle of whiskey already tilted back in his mouth. Paharita had withdrawn to her inner sanctuary, the soft sound of her tinkering nearly drowned out by the steady stream of griffon music screeching out of her stereo. The almost trot-like rhythm of bass and electric guitars reverberated off the walls, backed by a steady pounding of drums. An organ joined in. The wailing vocalist seemed to ignore the heavy rhythm entirely.

He vastly preferred her music to what usually flooded the radios of post-war Equestria.

Double Tap quickly did away with one bottle, setting it on a passing robot as he unscrewed the lid on the next. Alcohol was like water to him at this point. The room slowly began to undulate half way through the second bottle, downright rolling by the end of the third. His eyelids felt heavy, but he refused to stop until he completely blanked. To allow himself to dream was the worst thing he could do. The fluorescent glare of the lights became unbearable as alcohol saturated his brain. He closed his eyes, realizing his mistake too late.

When he opened his eyes, everything pulsed for a split second, as though the room were alive. A pair of eyes lingered in his vision as he returned to reality, sprawling against the bed. They floated in empty space, like an after-image from too bright a light, vanishing just as quickly.

Tap took a deep breath, fumbling for a dash inhaler. His magic wouldn’t condense, the inhaler barely moving as he tried to pull it toward him.

“Leave me alone…” he groaned.

Everything pulsed again, the silhouette of a mare lingering over him. Her grin sent chills down his spine, her eyes piercing right to his soul. She faded in the blink of an eye, leaving a feeling of nausea in her wake.

“Leave me the fuck alone!”

An empty bottle rolled off the bed as he curled up, shivering. The shatter of glass stung his ears, replaced by a dull humming as the brain-bot rolled close, vacuuming up the shards. It had no eyes, but he could feel it glaring at him, whispering the promise of murder.

When he felt hooves on the side of his neck, his skin prickled up defensively. There was no one there when he rolled over. He felt it again, this time with the warmth of breath against his ear.

“Knock Knock.”

His heart stopped.

The world went black.

|[    ]|[    ]|[    ]|

Light and sound overwhelmed his senses, flooding in from all sides. He blinked rapidly, feeling out of place.

The sun radiated high overhead, casting deep, moving shadows all around him. Healthy, swaying trees surrounded him nearly everywhere he looked. Something cool cushioned his hooves and brushed his legs. He looked down, greeted with the sight of lush, green undergrowth. He looked skyward again, and through the gaps in the leaves, he saw endless blue stretching out above him. A gentle breeze swirled through the trees, the sound of rustling leaves attempting to lull him into a state of calm. Instead, he felt anxiety, his every instinct commanding him to run from a world that seemed to be as alive as he was.

As he carefully scanned his surroundings, he noticed a path directly ahead of him. A clearing marked its end, rising into a gentle slope. An enormous willow tree grew from the highest point.

He approached cautiously, somehow feeling drawn to it. With a raised hoof, he reached out to touch the bark. It felt soft, even warm. It seemed strange for such a large tree to feel so new.

"What do you fear in the space between that which is and isn’t real? Do you think yourself cursed, with a monster in your shadow?"

Tap’s eyes widened. He turned toward the sound of the voice, greeted with a wicked smile.

"Or do you think yourself mad?" she hissed between her teeth, still grinning.

The horizon lit up all at once, burning with brilliant explosions that rivaled the intensity of the sun. Everywhere, pillars of smoke and fire reached into the sky, blackening it. From miles away in every direction, he could hear the screams of millions. Slowly, they were drowned out by harsh, shrill laughter.

|[    ]|[    ]|[    ]|

Semi-silence greeted Double Tap when he came around. He blinked away the haze, freezing as a toothy grin manifested before him. His vision continued to adjust, revealing the grin to be a grill set into the back of the sprite-bot’s hull. He groaned, burying his face in his fetlocks. The sound of a griffon at work had ceased.

A clinking on the far side of the room drew his attention. Paharita sat on the couch, wearing a pair of headphones, putting a fork and knife to a cut of badly burnt meat. The spider robots usually did the cooking, and they had apparently not returned yet.

Rita glanced up from her food and smiled as she noticed him, setting her plate aside and slipping over the edge of the couch. Bobbing her head back and forth to the rhythm only she could hear, her talons and back paws slid across the bunker floor, kicking up little clouds of dust. Her strange dance was only slightly hindered by her efforts to keep weight off her hind left, attempting to minimize her limp. Tap could only stare as she came shuffling toward him. The headphones followed her for several strides before being yanked back by their cord.

“Time is it?” he muttered.

“Afternoonish,” she replied cheerfully. “You were yelling a bunch in your sleep, so I put on headphones. I figured you were cranky and needed a nap.” She vanished in to the weave of cables.

He caught a few glimpses of her through the gaps as she strutted around her work space. A minute of clattering and jingling later, she emerged with what appeared, at first, to be a sawed off shotgun with a single, enormous barrel. He immediately recognized the components of the anti-machine rifle in the design, though they had been heavily modified.

Where there had been a barrel nearly half a pony in length, there was now just a nub of a muzzle extending beyond the forestock. The forestock itself now lacked the recess for a magazine, and the bolt had gone missing. Instead, the former rifle now relied on break action, the trigger end of the forestock carefully cut and filed, then bolted back together. The scope had been removed, but the bit trigger on the side of the gun remained.

Double Tap spent several moments admiring it before gently wrapping it in his levitation and floating it into his hooves. The latch released silently, the barrel and most of the forestock gliding silently along the range of the hinge pin. He peered down the breech, then examined the firing pin. A soft, satisfying click reached his ears as he delicately closed it, followed by a much drier sound as he pulled the trigger. He sat in silence for a full minute. Rita began to fidget.

“Do you like it?”

He glanced up at her, then back down at the newly crafted pistol in his hooves. “Have you fired it yet?”

“Nope! Saved you the honor!” Paharita looked down at the pistol for a moment. “Just uh…”

“What?”

She pointed at him, becoming deathly serious. “Don’t ever fire it by mouth.”

Tap cocked a brow. “Why?”

“The recoil will break your neck.” She redirected her pointing talon to her feathery throat, cocking her head to a full ninety-degree angle.

“Oh.”

Tap returned his attention to the pistol, wrapping it in his levitation and carefully lifting it until it hovered just below his jaw. His hooves clopped against the floor as he took a few steps toward the door, looking back at Paharita and smiling, motioning for her to follow. She donned a grin, skipping along beside him.

The dull buzz of afternoon heat and the distant crack of gunfire greeted them as they stepped outside.

“Need something to shoot,” he remarked, speaking as much to himself as to her.

Paharita shrugged, looking left and right as they reached the end of the alley. She began to excitedly poke him. When he cast a glance, he realized she was pointing.

A manticore was stomping around a few blocks away, the body of a pony speared through the torso and hanging by its stinger as it swiped at two much more lively ponies on the ground. Tap grinned and nodded, putting a hoof on Rita’s shoulder. She handed him a single bullet, big enough to act as a paper weight. He nudged the latch with his levitation, the barrel and forestock swinging forward. The bullet fit perfectly. With a flick, the pistol clicked shut. Rita slipped three more rounds into his vest pouches before plugging something into her PipBuck. A quick, sharp jolt sounded as she became little more than a barely visible blur at his side.

Taking a deep breath, Tap closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, playing it out in his mind. His eyes snapped open again as the sound of the chase came closer.

The manticore was chasing its prey right toward them. The two surviving ponies began to jump and shout, as if trying to get his attention. Tap nodded skyward, followed by an abrupt, airy rustle of feathers that slowly faded. He broke into a gallop, keeping the anti-machine pistol low. Their shouts changed from frenzied cries for help to outbursts of confusion.

“What’re you doin’?!”

“Run the other way, you crazy sonova bitch!”

Tap ignored them, plowing right between the ragged looking ponies as they kept going at full tilt. The manticore slowed down, as if unsure how to handle the charging unicorn. Tap lunged forward, coiled as all four hooves struck the ground, and launched to eye level with the lumbering creature. He eyed the stinger poised at the edge of his vision, a limp, bloodied pony still dangling from it. The heat and moisture of its breath curled against his face.

Point and squeeze.

Immediately, Tap knew that Rita had been very right about the severity of the recoil. The pistol flew right out of his levitation, very nearly hitting his right shoulder in the process. That didn’t really matter, however, registering as more of a footnote than anything. The sound it made was something akin to the splitting of a mountain. Where there had been the snarling face of a manticore just a blink of an eye ago, there was now a fine red mist in the center of a much more tangible assortment of wet chunks of flesh and bone. Tap sailed right through it, grinning as meat and spurts of blood collided with him thickly and audibly. He slid down the manticore’s back and landed behind it.

“Fucking.” He shook himself off, a shiver running through him. “Incredible.”

The mostly headless body of the manticore tumbled forward, shaking the ground on impact.

“Ritaaaaa! Hooooly shiiiit!” Tap pranced in place, his gaze sweeping the sky even though he knew she was invisible. “Did you see that?!”

“You were supposed to hold onto it!” Each word sounded closer, until he could feel the breeze stirred by her wings.

Tap cocked a brow, staring up at the spatial distortion that was Paharita. “I did hold onto it!”

“Well hold it tighter next time! The sound of fluttering stopped, and the pistol appeared on the ground a moment later. “It’s fragile…”

“It… needs a name.”

“Oh! Well you killed that manticore in one shot, right? Call it the One-Liner!”

“Yeah, but you made it for punching through armor.” Tap’s grin returned. “I think it should be called the Punchline.”

“That’s silly!” she squawked.

“So is yours!”

Tap felt her talons on his neck as he took a breath, the corner of her mouth against his lips before he could continue the argument. Even though she was invisible, he closed his eyes as he felt her tongue invade his mouth. It was a brief kiss, but satisfying all the same. 

The empty casing was still hot as he tucked it into one of his pouches. Instinctively, he tried to holster the pistol, realizing a moment later that there was nothing to holster it in. He stuffed the pistol into his vest instead, then turned and started back toward the workshop. The ponies that had been running from the manticore were now in the process of cutting it up and cooking chunks of it over a slowly growing fire. He lifted a skewered strip of meat off of the fire, floating it along next to him. They were too busy carving to notice.

“Looks a little rare,” he teased.

Rita cooed, and bite sized hunks of meat started vanishing before his very eyes.

|[ /_\ ]|[ /_\ ]|[ /_\ ]|