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

I’ve had dreams where I’ve saved my dad. 

Sometimes I save him when I’m still a colt through dumb luck, and sometimes I’m as old as I am now, and those sneering fuckers don’t stand a chance. It feels so good, you know? To make it right, to stop them from taking him from me, because all I’ve ever really wanted is to get him back. But, honestly, those dreams are even worse than the ones where I watch him die.

May I ask why?

It’s the worst kind of false hope you can get. When you’re dreaming, and you don’t know it’s a dream, it’s so easy to believe what you’re seeing. That feeling of joy and satisfaction, doing what you couldn’t do before, getting that second chance to stop everything from changing. 

But then, when you wake up…

It breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Oh, you poor dear. I know exactly how that feels.

I’d rather live in the present, where I know that what has happened can’t be undone, than fool myself into thinking that I can change the past.

And the future?

Hmm?

Have you ever thought about how you can change the future? So that history cannot repeat itself.

I’ve really never thought about my own future. I always assumed that sooner or later, my luck would run out.

And what if it doesn’t?

Hah. That would be pretty wild, but no one has that much luck. Not even me. History repeats itself because that’s just the way things are. There’s nothing I can do to change the world, and I’ve never really wanted to change it, either.

But, are you happy living in the now, with no hope for tomorrow?

No. But what else is there?

Whatever you make for yourself.

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

Chapter Eight – Employment Opportunities

|[ /_\ ]|[BAR]|[(  ) ]|

The novelty of seeing a blue sky was quick to fade for Double Tap. Having grown up in a world where sunlight filtered through overcast, he quickly came to the conclusion that this was not a welcomed change. Adding to this sentiment was the vague indication that Littlepip had something to do with it. He was still struggling to adjust to the overwhelming brightness when Paharita rolled off of her folding chair and beckoned for him to follow. Going inside suited him just fine, especially when he began to hear the distant whoops and cheers of ponies singing praise for their Light-Bringer. Nausea and resentment mingled at the back of his throat.

“I don’t see what the big fucking deal is,” he muttered as the last robot trundled over the threshold behind him. “I’ve screwed in plenty of light-bulbs. How come I don’t have a stupid-ass medal for that?”

“You’re so jealous!” Paharita sang as she crossed the room, wings fluttering at her sides.

Tap stomped. “I’m not fucking jealous!”

She chuckled, shaking her head as she glanced back at him. “Oh, this is priceless. Let me get a camera so I can remember this forever.”

Double Tap sneered and trudged over to the mattress in the corner. It had been a very, very long day, and drinking until he passed out was a comforting notion. Paharita had other plans. In the same instant that he put a hoof on the ragged sheets, a pint sized griffon bounced into view, grinning as she met his narrowing gaze.

“I made—”

Tap cut her off with a snort. “No. Not in the mood for this shit.” He flicked an ear as she began to pout. “I’ve been through a lot and I don’t want to be awake anymore.”

Rita threw her claws in the air, wiggling her talons. “Wow! Cry me a river!” She let one claw drop, the other prodding him in the chest with an extended talon. “We have business to discuss first, bub!”

“Fuck my life— what do you need to discuss with me you salmonella cunt?”

She had crossed her arms over her chest at that point, shrugging exaggeratedly. “Oh, I dunno, you racist! Maybe the fact that we’re broke?”

“Wh—” It took a moment for Tap to completely comprehend what had just been told to him. His jaw went slack until he shouted, “How did we go broke?!”

“And that was the hook!” She flashed a toothy grin. “I bet you wanna watch my presentation now, huh?”

He didn’t dare admit it, but she was right. A bad memory surfaced moments later. “You’re not gonna do the projector thing again, are you? You almost melted a damn wall the last time.”

Rita laughed and waved her claw. “Please. I’ve made improvements since then.”

Tap did not find her statement reassuring. The brain-bot shambled up beside the bed before he could make any further arguments. As its transparent brain case sloshed to a standstill, Rita tugged a cord from the side of her PipBuck and plugged it into the idling robot. The lights dimmed, and then the case began to glow continuously pink. A projected line graph illuminated the far wall via a wide, thin beam. Rita fished a laser pointer out of her vest and aimed it at the graph.

“So as you can see, a few months ago, we were getting a little low on funds. It dips every time we had to bribe our way past Red Eye’s guys to get into Tenpony Tower.” The red dot followed the steadily declining slope to a star. “And this here indicates when we got hired to assassinate Littlepip. The dotted line there shows how much money we should have made from that job.”

The glowing point hovered on a cliff, high above the star, while she gave him a sideways glance.

A defeated sigh washed over Tap’s lips. “Suck my dick, Rita.”

Her look of disapproval was replaced with an eager grin. “Later! So anyway, more bribes, the anti-machine rifle I bought off of Gawdyna because you wouldn’t keep your mouth shut, and all this time we’re trickling funds on food and drink—”

“I want to sleep,” Tap interrupted, rolling his eyes. “What’s your point?”

“And your Tenpony freakout cost us waaaay more than I would have liked.” She clicked her beak a few times, then gestured to the projection. “My point is, you took so long to screw up the Steel Ranger contract, and then you sat on your butt, ignoring new contracts, so now we’re practically in the tank! If I had known you would blow it this badly, I’d have never taken that job!”

The struggle to come up with a defense was not going well for Tap. In an attempt to buy time, he shouted, “When the fuck did you mention smaller contracts?”

Rita threw up her claws again. “How about Mayor Blackseas over at Friendship City? Tub-o was gonna pay us really good for that, and I only told you about that one like, twenty times!”

When it clicked, Tap grit his teeth and glowered, thumping his hoof on the mattress. “I was mourning, you fuck!”

“You don’t get paid to mourn! Duh!”

He looked back at the graph, realizing that it briefly spiked after the skull and crossbones labeled ‘Arbu’, before it continued to nose dive. “So what is that shit, then?”

“Oh, that’s all the stuff I grabbed from the Bucklyn outpost!” Rita grinned and nodded. “I made a few thousand caps selling it to Applejack’s Rangers!”

“Then why the hell does it keep going down?” His ears began to splay, dreading what her answer would be.

In a matter-of-fact way, Rita stated, “I spent it on parts to upgrade my robots.”

Speechless, he continued to follow the graph. It spiked a second time, then dipped even farther.

“Friendship City looting,” she cheerfully informed him. “Also thanks for helping with that. Not.”

Tap bolted up, looming over her. “What the fuck are you doing with the money you make on salvage shit, Rita?!”

“I bought myself something nice!” She upturned her beak and looked away. “Jeeze, you’re not the police of me!”

“Are you fucking serious right now or what?” He could feel his face burning red, wrinkles cascading down the bridge of his muzzle like a landslide. “You knew we were running out of money! What the hell is your problem?!”

With a brow raised, Rita sighed and gave him another sideways glance. “You need to calm your butt down, mister. Like always, I know how to make this all better.”

There were so many vulgarities on their way up Tap’s throat that all he could manage was a groan of frustration. He sat back on his haunches and covered his face with a hoof, slowly dragging it downwards. Rita continued her presentation, un-phased.

“As it turns out, it’s actually okay that we didn’t take the Blackseas contract, because a much, much bigger fish is dangling over the frying pan now.” She waited, bobbing and grinning as she looked him in the eyes. Tap remained silent. “Now this is super confidential, but one of the Applejack’s Rangers that I made nice with while selling them back their junk sent me some juicy info. A lot of the refugees from Friendship City are supposedly pooling their caps to put out a pretty hefty bounty. It doesn’t hold a candle to the Littlepip contract, but—”

“For fuck’s sake,” Tap growled, glaring at Rita with one eye open. “Spit it out already.”

Rita ruffled her feathers. “Oh. My. Gosh. I was just getting to it! Ahem. If what I heard was true, and I can seal the deal on this contract, we’re going big game hunting!” Tap maintained his cold, blank, one-eyed stare. She scratched the side of her neck. “Do I have to bludgeon you with this? They’re after Fatty-Fats! From Friendship City!”

Tap blinked once, and Rita grabbed him by the withers, shaking him. “Raspberry Tart!” She let him go, still shaking her claws. “That’s why I was making all those fat jokes! Jeeze what happened to your sense of humor?!”

“Are we done?” he droned.

“You’re such a grouch lately.” She lidded her eyes and extended a claw, brushing down the side of his foreleg. “I know something that’ll cheer you right up, though!”

“Rita—” he began, but he allowed his protest to fall short.

Reluctantly, he lay out on his side, with Rita eagerly looming over his flank. She leered up at him, licking her beak as she lifted his hind leg to expose his sheath. There was nothing unusual about what was unfolding, but something about it didn’t feel right with Tap. His brow furrowed as he watched and felt her start to nudge, the upper curve of her beak just a bit cold against his flesh. Experience told him that he should have been starting to show. Instead, for whatever reason, he felt almost numb. After about a minute of this, with no results, Rita peered up at him.

“What gives?”

“I just... I feel like there’s something wrong with me.” He sighed and shook his head. “I dunno.”

“You dunno?” She gave him a flick across the sheath. “It looks to me like your pecker needs a jump start. I’ll go get the drugs!”

Tap looked away. “I don’t really want to do this right now.”

“Ha-ha, very funny.” She crawled around until the feathery corner of her beak was inches from his lips. “Maybe you just need momma to give you some sugar.”

He leaned away as she tried to move in for a kiss, and then again. He felt her claw wrap around his foreleg as she came in for a third attempt, and his blank expression became an angry frown.

With a little shove, he pushed her off. “I said I don’t want to do this. Fuck off.”

“Ugh!” Rita pushed herself off of the bed, unplugging her PipBuck mid-stride. “Whatever! Have fun sleeping, you jerk.”

Sighing again, Tap reached out with his magic, snagging a bottle of vodka. As he pulled the cork, he noticed that the wall she had been projecting on was now emitting wisps of smoke. The outline of the graph glowed like an ember, etched into the wall. He shook his head, tipped the bottle up, and chugged his way to a blackout.

|[  7 ]|[o8- ]|[  7 ]|

Tap could scarcely recognize the outside world the following morning.

The carnage was so fresh that scavengers had yet to harvest from the power armor clad corpses that littered the streets, and there was also stillness to it all, like something out of an old photograph. Only now, it wasn’t a black and white photograph. He could reach out and touch the metal in the shape of ponies, scorched by blasts and riddled with bullet holes, painted with rivers of dried blood. He had seen plenty of death in his lifetime, but the nature of this was somehow awe inspiring; a combination of the scale of it, and the fact that it hadn’t been a skirmish with lawless raiders, but a war between legitimate military forces. He couldn’t help but wonder if this sight would become regularity.

Beyond that, the landscape was the same, but now there was too much light, too much color, and the sky seemed naked without a blanket of clouds. Dash and alcohol failed to make it any more familiar or any less alien. More important and troubling was the sharp decrease in the amount of shadows. Unobstructed sunlight meant that there were fewer places to hide until the sun went down, which made him feel particularly vulnerable.

All of this worked together to ensure that the anxiety in the pit of Tap’s stomach could not be quelled.

He had donned a pair of round-rimmed sun glasses to avoid squinting for the duration of their trip to Stable Twenty-Nine, which had the added bonus of giving everything an amber tint. He had not accounted for the heat, however. The presence of the sun seemed to cause the temperature to shoot up, and he was regretting wearing his usual vest and sweater on account of the sleeves. Rita had been able to slap together more knives for him, but with almost no money left to buy components for modifications, he had to settle for stock as far as primary firearms. The forty-five pistol felt too heavy in its holster, and strapped to his back, the Punchline was just as cumbersome as ever. No amount of wishing could send the Punchline to take the place of his trusty Comedies during the blaze of Arbu. Its continued presence felt like an insult.

Occasionally, a few distant cracks of gunfire would break the silence; a callback to the familiarity that had been stripped away, a reminder that not everything had changed. He clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t last, and everything would go back to normal. Even Rita was unusually quiet, her PipBuck’s earbuds buried in the feathery sides of her head as she skipped along beside him. She may well have been the most annoying individual he had ever had the displeasure of associating with, but at least she was still Paharita. Against his better judgment, he provoked her.

“How does anyone know for sure that little shit caused this?” he asked, leaning over far enough that he could hear a few notes trickling from her ear-buds.

She donned a wide grin, glancing over at him. “As usual, I heard it from DJ—”

“Nevermind,” he grumbled, looking down at the dirt and regretting his decision. “But Red Eye is probably already doing something about this, right?”

Instead of answering, Rita started to giggle.

Tap raised his head and a brow in quick succession. “I mean I know he was supposed to ascend and all and maybe he would have done something like this himself but he wouldn’t—” He trailed off as Rita’s giggling developed into a full fit of laughter. “What is so fucking funny?”

“He dead!” she shouted between cackles.

His hackles stood on end. “What?!”

The two of them had slowed to a stop, Tap out of disbelief and Rita because it was too difficult to walk while laughing hysterically.

Rita took a deep breath and held up a claw. “He got shot in the butt—”

“Nobody dies from getting shot in the butt!” He stomped a hoof in outrage.

“And!” She waggled an extended talon. “And he got dropped into a vat of alicorn goop!”

“Holy fucking shit! How?!” But he already knew the answer. It was the sickeningly smug grin plastered on either side of Rita’s beak. It was too much for him to bear. He collapsed into the dust, gripping the sides of his head as his world fell apart all over again. “I’ll fucking kill her!”

Her cackling continued. “You kinda missed the boat on that, buddy! I hear she’s all holed up in some kind of Enclave weather machine, and those pega-sickos have been trying to crack that egg for centuries! That’s how she did the trick with the clouds, by the way. She is so cool.”

Tap’s jaw hung slack. “Well she’s gotta come outta there sometime!”

“Mmmno. I think there’s some kinda suspended animation thing in there, so she can stay in there forever!”

Tap let out a low groan and closed his eyes. Moments later, he felt a wing drape over his back.

“You’re not gonna mope around for weeks because of this, are you?” She had seated herself nearly at his side, gently rubbing her feathers over his withers. “Look on the bright side! Now I don’t have to worry about that long-winded dummy getting in the way of my plans! Plus, this kind of a power vacuum is great for us. Think of all the contracts we’ll get!”

Too distraught to sling profanity, he rolled his eyes up at her and sighed through his nose. She had a point, however irrelevant it may have been. Her feathers fanned his mane and tail as she gave him a few pats on the back, and he slowly got back to his hooves.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he mumbled, blowing strands of his mane out of his eyes.

“That’s the spirit!”

Tap decided to complete the rest of the trip without conversing with Rita, at the risk that she might say something else that would shake him to the core. His thoughts lingered on Red Eye as they put the freshly war-torn cityscape of Manehattan behind them. Surely, by some miracle, his idol had survived the wounds and the toxicity of his chemical bath. There was a strong urge to ask if anyone had actually seen the body, but Tap decided it was a question better left unasked. With Arbu and Glade Skimmer gone, and the entire wasteland bathed in sunlight, his faith in Red Eye was all he had left.

They were stopped briefly on their approach to Fetlock. Like Manehattan, the remains of the town had been recently bombarded, though to a lesser degree. The Applejack’s Rangers were still on high alert. After being stripped of their weapons, a pair of ponies with painted armor escorted them down to the foyer of Stable Twenty-Nine. The foyer had been outfitted with numerous defensive positions, all facing toward the only way in and out of the structure.

Stables had always made Double Tap uncomfortable. Growing up on the surface, he felt more at home in open spaces. Part of him felt as though it was the lack of windows and alternate exits, and there was also the fact that the majority of stables were constructed underground. Paharita had called him claustrophobic once or twice, but it was only stables and similar constructions that made him uneasy. He rationalized it as a fear of being trapped more than a fear of tight quarters.

To the stable’s credit, however, there seemed to be no issue in housing both Applejack’s Rangers and the refugees from Friendship City. Various signs of life adorned the corridors, from toys and crayon drawings to stray articles of clothing and scraps of garbage. Numerous ponies passed in the opposite direction as Rita led him toward the cafeteria, most of whom gave them funny looks, none of whom he recognized. The buzz of conversation echoed from every direction, growing louder and clearer, until they arrived at their destination. He noted that, for ponies that had just recently been uprooted from their homes, they seemed to be in very high spirits. Most of them were eating and conversing, but a few of them seemed to be singing, others dancing on the tables, some doing both. There were multiple power-armored ponies in their midst as well, laughing along, enjoying their meals and their company.

A smile crept over his lips, which he didn’t notice until moments later.

“Helloooooo?” Paharita sang as she edged into view, waving a claw in his face. Tap blinked, his smile vanishing, and the griffon snickered. “You wait here, okay?” She was already several paces away, following an armored unicorn that had her helmet dangling from her shoulder. “Gumdrop is gonna show me to our client!”

“I don’t have any money for food,” he called out to her, ears splayed. She shrugged and kept on walking.

For a few minutes, he stood at the mouth of the mess hall. There was a compulsion to join in their celebration. As he gave in and approached, one of the singing ponies began banging on a trash can. Eventually, the entire room fell into hushed murmurs. The pony that had gotten everyone’s attention climbed awkwardly up onto a table. Tap could practically smell the booze from across the room.

“I wanna make a toast!” he almost slurred. “First, to our brothers and sisters of the Applejack’s Rangers, who have showed us so much compassion in our time of need!” The volume of the gathering began to increase in agreement, but he stomped on the table to quiet them again. “And I wanna toast to the toaster repair-pony! The mare that brought light back to Equestria! Our savior and hero!”

Tap’s opinion of the festivities instantly tanked. He seethed as cheering and hollering reverberated through the room, and decided to express his disgust. Glaring at the smug looking pony on the table in the middle of the crowded room, Tap hawked up a glob of saliva and snot and spat on the floor. This only brought marginal satisfaction, because he knew the floor didn’t belong to the toast-giver, but it was the dissent that counted.

It occurred to him a moment later that this act had not gone unnoticed. He turned to see that more ponies had filed in behind him in the time since his arrival, and they were giving him looks of scrutiny and disapproval. Tap snickered, but his amusement was dampened as he saw that there was no longer a clear path to the exit, either. He began going through the motions of slinking away when that same partially-slurred voice thundered unintelligibly behind him.

The crowd was letting him stumble through with no problems, but they seemed to form a net against Tap, barring his escape. They surged and forced Tap forward a few paces. He grunted, flicking his tail, but kept his eyes on the approaching earth pony.

He may have lacked a horn, but he looked much bigger up close. “You gotta problem with my toast, fucker?!”

“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” Tap monotoned.

The drunken pony swaggered to the left, and Tap did the same, circling the edge of the crowd. “Oh, you’re a funny guy, huh?”

“Sure, I’m hilarious.” The other stallion’s face folded with anger, and as Tap began having second thoughts about fighting him. He was completely surrounded. Will this turn into a lynching? Will the Applejack’s Rangers step in before that? 

Before he could respond, Tap added, “Look, you all want to have a good time and eat and drink and fuck or whatever. That’s great. I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, and I don’t have any money, so I’m real fucking sorry that I’m not a ray of sunshine like all of you.”

To Tap’s surprise, that seemed to change the pony’s demeanor. Chuckling a little, he slurred, “Tell ya what; you toast with me, and I’ll buy you a meal.” He lifted his hoof toward Tap, holding it out for him. “That’s what Littlepip would want, right?”

Free food was a tempting offer, but Tap wasn’t sure that if he played along, he would be able to stomach it. Tap studied the offered hoof, meanwhile clutching Skimmer’s toothy necklace through his clothes. A spark of mischief flickered in his thoughts.

Grinning, Tap nodded and shook the offered hoof. “Right. To Littlepip.”

He choked down the bile and followed the pony to a seat. In minutes, there was a hot meal before him, which he devoured with gusto, occasionally yessing along whatever nonsense his inebriated host would spew. Rita’s voice cut through the murmuring crowd not long after Tap had finished. He thanked the earth pony and parted ways having experienced the magic of friendship.

-0-

Tap let his hoof drop to the floor with a heavy thump.  “On second thought—” His eyes narrowed into a glare. “You can go suck Littlepip’s dick.”

There was an immense satisfaction in this moment of defiance. The drunk stallion was completely speechless, his offered hoof wilting. Several of the faces around him looked downright horrified by what Tap had said. Grinning ear to ear, Tap prepared to make his escape. However, everyone’s shock was fading fast. Once the moment had passed, the uproar was deafening.

Unfortunately for Tap, his escape plan hinged on being able to get his flash and decoy spells off in time. The mare to his left wasted no time physically reprimanding Tap. He spat blood as he was slugged right in the face, the sunglasses knocked clean off his nose, but he remained standing. Impulsively, he wheeled around and kicked her so hard that she was thrown onto her back. A gasp went up from the crowd, which was effectively his cue to distance himself from the situation.

From somewhere nearby, a pony thundered, “That’s my sister you cunt!”

The blow had interrupted his spell casting. He made a second attempt at completing the flash spell, only to be rushed by five ponies at once. Tap actually managed to hold his own for a few swings, blocking and dodging and trading hits. One of the attacking ponies howled and toppled as Tap struck a group of nerves along the jaw line, only to be replaced by two more. Without a hit of dash in his system, and what may well have been an endless supply of reinforcements, the blows rained down faster than he could manage.

Someone swept the hooves right out from under him, and he landed on his side with a heavy slap. The beating continued relentlessly, his breath wrenched away by several blows to the stomach, his vision blurring as his head was stomped. He could see the outline of a pony in power armor standing in the crowd, but the Applejack’s Ranger didn’t seem to be in any hurry to stop the violence. If anything, from what he could hear through the ringing in his bloodied ears, the ranger was cheering them on.

All at once, everything came to a halt. It took him a moment to comprehend that someone was shouting, and another moment to identify the voice as Paharita’s.

“That doesn’t look like love and tolerance to me!” she squawked, her paws settling at the fuzzy corner of his perception. “So he’s kind of a jerk and he has really, really dumb opinions; that doesn’t give you the right to beat the snot out of him! What do you think Littlepip would say if she saw you all acting like this? In her name, no less!”

Tap could feel his brain sloshing around as he slowly rolled onto his stomach, several sharp pains buzzing his nervous system into overload. He wasn’t sure about his ribs, but none of his legs felt like they were broken. Trembling, he lifted himself up, nearly spilling back to the floor as his battered muscles threatened to give out under him. A few splotches of his own blood glistened on the floor where he had been laid out, added to by the rivulets flowing from his nose and lips. And yet, it had all been worth it for the chance to slander her name. He squinted out of one eye as he donned a bloody smile, levitating his sunglasses back onto his face.

She scolded, “For shame! We can be better than this!” All present cowered away like foals. “Let’s leave all of this violence in the past, where it belongs!”

“Wait,” shouted someone in the crowd. “Didn’t you do business with Raspberry Tart?” A hush fell over the room, all eyes on the Rita.

She cleared her throat and ruffled her feathers. “That was probably some other griffon! Me and my partner were actually here to ask about the bounty you poor, lovely ponies put out on her!” She reared up and clutched her claws together, smiling. “We’re just so eager to help bring her to justice!”

Another, closer voice cried, “That asshole is your partner?!”

Rita dropped back to all fours. Their gazes met briefly, exchanging looks of apprehension.

“Eeeeeyes! He’s a bit of a sourpuss, but he has a heart of gold! Really!” As grunts of disapproval filled the air, Rita turned toward the exit and, mid-stride, muttered, “Let’s go, loudmouth.”

The Applejack’s Ranger Rita had identified as Gumdrop escorted them to the lobby to make sure they were allowed to exit unmolested, but that didn’t stop anyone from giving him the stink eye on his way out. This treatment felt similar to what he was used to at Tenpony Tower, and yet, it differed strongly. He had been threatened and cursed out many times for slandering DJ Ponethree and adamantly supporting Red Eye, but no one had ever actually gotten violent about it. He was still thinking it through as he stepped out into glaring light of day once again.

They stopped about a block from the stable entrance, and Tap lowered his aching body to the dust. Rita sat beside him and offered a healing potion, which he snatched without hesitation. When she offered him his weapons, however, he shook his head and started chugging. She started going over her wings with her beak as the potion went to work.

“Love and tolerance, Rita? Really?” He wiped a bit of potion from the corner of his mouth, clenching his teeth as one of his ribs cracked back into place. “Did DJ Ponethree tell you to say that?”

Rita snorting out a laugh. “Pfft! No!” She glanced over at him and rolled her eyes. “DJ Ponethree would never say something that stupid! And what is your deal, anyway? You can’t even pretend to like Littlepip?”

The bruises and welts began to lift as his cuts and scrapes closed up like zippers. “I’d rather break my fucking back.” He winced as he prodded experimentally. “Did we get the contract at least?”

Rita looked up when she had finished preening her feathers. “Okay so, it turns out that this wasn’t an exclusive contract.” She hopped up with a little flap and started walking.

Tap followed her example and heaved himself upright, the ache in his body severely diminished. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that we technically didn’t get hired, but we technically don’t need to, either.”

It clicked, and Tap’s eyes widened. “This is a fucking bounty gig, isn’t it?”

“Okay okay, so it’s not anything glamorous like what we usually do!” She looked over at him and shrugged. “But, we seriously need the money.”

Tap uttered a groaning sigh. “Fine, whatever. Where is she?”

“Last time any of them saw her, she was leaving the city in a lifeboat.”

He raised a brow. “Yeah. Great. But where is she?”

Rita immediately looked forward, putting on a grin that screamed nervous. “Theeeey don’t know.”

“What do you mean they don’t know?! How are we supposed to kill this bitch if—”

 “Hold it right there, mister!” She came to a dead stop, barring his path with her wings. “We are not killing her. If we bring her in dead, we might as well not bother doing this job at all.”

Tap pushed right through her plumage, undoing her recent preening. “I fucking hate you, Rita.”

“Anyway, she’s enormous!” she called after him, skipping back to his side. “How hard could it be to track her down? All we need are a few clues, and then we just need to make sure we’re a few steps ahead of everyone else. Once we find her, we drag her back to Stable Twenty-Nine and rake in the bits! Piece of cake!”

|[  7 ]|[o’o ]|[(  ) ]|

The search for clues brought them to the gutted Statue of Friendship. It was the torch bearing foreleg, of all things, that seemed to have been damaged the least in the Enclave’s attack. The rest of the city, however, had been thoroughly blasted. He could see a great deal of the interior from the bridge leading into the former settlement. Green struts of metal lingered in the open, stripped of their outer plating like exposed bones on a mutilated, rotting carcass. Friendship City had been abandoned, and all that remained were scavengers. A few shouts about lock picks reached his ears, and he could see several lights flickering in the darkened innards of the statue, occasionally obscured by a passing silhouette.

Rita slipped Tap’s pistol into its holster halfway across the bridge. Ahead of them, and at ground level, there was a crackling fire with a few ponies seated around it, eyeing Tap and Rita apprehensively as they approached. They had partially enclosed their fire pit with rubble and sheets of metal to shelter themselves from the strong sea winds. The salty breeze carried the smell of cooking fish.

“Howdy strangers!” Rita chirped.

“Place has been mostly cleaned out,” called a mare, slowly getting up from the group. “Are you buyin’ or sellin’?”

Paharita ambled right up the fire and nestled in, to their bewilderment. “I’m actually looking for information!” She gestured to Tap. “Me and my associate here—”

Bored already, Tap began to wander.

Scrap metal littered the grounds, discarded rubbish mingling with rubble from the ravaged statue looming over the area. He paused at a row of dirt mounds, noting a heap of bloodied sheets and a dirty shovel nearby. Someone had come through at some point to try and bury the dead. He could smell the decay as he continued to meander, and the occasional bits of equine debris caught his eye. Familiar sights caused him to reflect on his last visit to Friendship City. Those freshly dug graves had been a garden once, where he had impulsively stolen several tomatoes. A bench laid just a few paces away, partially crushed under a scorched slab of metal. He recalled seeing a mother teach her foal how to count there. Air that had been alive and full of chatter was now empty, save for the distant calls of gulls.

Suddenly, Double Tap was in Arbu again, watching his friends get cut down by a pony with the title of hero. He set himself down on the remains of the bench and sighed. Littlepip was out of reach, but he had been presented with a new name, even if he couldn’t associate it with a face. His understanding of the part Raspberry Tart had played in the downfall of this settlement was vague at best, but he was aware that she had been a key player in the Enclave’s attack. Though he felt the refugees of Friendship City were idiots for supporting Littlepip, he could at least sympathize with them as far as the loss of their friends and family, and the destruction of their home.

The chance to settle things personally was more important to him than the bounty, and this time, he would not let the opportunity slip away.

“How very selfish,” he heard her whisper. Lady Luck grinned beside him. “Am I to understand that the guilty will become judge, jury, and executioner?”

Tap shook his head, snorting. This cunt has it coming.

Her lips pursed. “A sense of morality is a caution-worthy creature. You’ve seen how righteousness cuts both ways.”

Somewhere overhead, he heard Rita call out to him. His ears swiveled as he looked around, eventually spotting her hovering just outside of one of Friendship City’s many, recently added exits. She swooped down and grinned as he met her gaze.

“Well! In exchange for opening a safe for them, they shared what they knew.”

Tap slipped off the bench. “And?”

Rita scratched the back of her other claw. “They don’t know anything we don’t, and they told me that Fatty-Fat’s loft has been looted pretty hardcore. But,” she raised a talon, “the average looter isn’t too bright, so I might have an ace up my sleeve.”

“Show me the way, I guess,” he murmured.

“There’s one other thing.” Tap looked her in the eyes, raising a brow, and she cleared her throat. “The Dynamic Duo is apparently up there right now.”

“Ah shit.” Tap kicked at the dirt, feeling a knot forming in his stomach. “Do they know we’re here? Can we come back later?” Rita shook her head and frowned. “Let’s go say ‘hey’, then.”

Ascending through the warped, metal walkways and leaking pipes of Friendship City brought them to a pair of battered double doors. “Fat piece of shit” and “I’ll see you at the gallows” were among the colorful obscenities scratched into the wood. There were still shavings clinging to and scattered around the frame, meaning that they were fairly fresh. He was in the process of examining them when one of the doors swung open, nearly bowling him over.

Suddenly, there was a painted bamboo tube in his face, colorful ribbons fluttering against his lips. A slate-blue unicorn held it from the other end, her cheeks puffed out, her cold, green eyes narrowed. Tap blinked first, and her expression lightened. She exhaled through her nose and the blowgun levitated away from her lips. A forehoof followed it, brushing a few short locks of her dark blue mane out of her heavily scarred face. Her hair was so greasy that it stayed exactly where she pushed it.

“Hiiiiii,” she hissed, smirking.

“Cobra Juicy!” Rita sang from behind him. “Good to see you again!” Almost hesitantly, she asked, “And where’s that rascal Dandelion?”

“Here I am!” A diminutive griffon squawked as he sprang up from behind a filing cabinet. “And I’ve got terrific news, Paharita! They put out a bounty on Raspberry Tart!”

“Yep!” Rita stepped into the room, leaving Tap with Cobra Juicy. “That’s why we’re here. Got any tasty tidbits you wanna share with me?”

Tap and Juicy exchanged stares for a long moment and then she leaned forward and kissed him on the horn. “I missed you.”

He swallowed, feeling a cold sweat prickling up along the back of his neck. “Uh-huh.”

“Every time I’ve come looking for you at Tenpony, they say you’re not around. Now, I don’t want to sound offended, but it almost feels like you’ve been avoiding me.” She pouted, but she may as well have been a weeping radigator.

“Dunno what gave you that idea.” He shrugged and looked away. “Rita and I have just been busy.”

She snorted and raised a brow. “I’ll bet.”

Juicy turned away and slowly cantered into the room. She was wearing a baggy, grimy, grey hoodie, like always, which she kept tight to her waist with a utility belt. The cobra design on the back of the hood seemed to wink with every step she took. Where she wasn’t clothed, the chemical burns marring her hide almost resembled some kind of pattern, and her cutie marks had been burned clean off on both sides. She had told him this scarring was intentional, but he sincerely doubted it. Her greasy, ratty tail flicked over her exposed rump in what he assumed was supposed to be an alluring fashion, considering that every few paces she would leer back at him.

The urge to plow her was effectively subdued by the fact that she may well have been a villainess out of a pre-war comic book.

Tap clenched his jaw and followed, trying to suppress his goose bumps. “So what have you and Lion been up to?”

“Do-gooding,” she droned, rolling her eyes. “There isn’t even a blurred line anymore.” She turned and dropped onto a torn up couch, then started jabbing and waving her hoof around. “It’s all black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. I’m pretty sure most of the ponies we’ve been running errands for actually needed our help.” She shrugged, sighing. “But, if doing the right thing pays well enough, I guess I can’t complain.”

She paused for a moment, squinting up at Tap. “Also, I heard about what happened to your friends at Arbu. Total bummer.”

A wrinkle formed along Tap’s muzzle, lips pulling back into a snarl, but Juicy held up a hoof.

“I meant that sincerely. The ponies of Arbu were a good lot.” She licked her lips. “Excellent cooks, too. They will be missed.”

“Thanks.” He began to sit beside her, but felt a sharp pain in his left haunch. Shooting up, he whipped around and glared. “If you poisoned me again—”

Juicy doubled over with laughter. “Oh please! You sat on a spring!” She reached over and plucked it out, spitting it at his hooves. “You know I’ll ask first.” She looked away, smirking. “Usually.”

A fresh wave of revulsion swept over him, bringing bad memories with it. He stomped a hoof. “That’s not funny!”

“Ohhh, don’t be a pussy. You liked it.” She leaned against the arm of the couch as Tap scowled, propping her head up with one foreleg. “Look, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you, so let me give you some advice.” She gestured with her other forehoof. “You see that little feathery cunt over there?”

Tap glanced over to the opposite side of the room, where Rita was practically hiding behind a smashed up desk as Lion gestured wildly from the other side.

Dandelion wasn’t much bigger than she was, though he certainly looked a lot cleaner. The feathers of his face practically sparkled white, and the tuft of his tail was neatly trimmed. There were no patterns dyed around his bright, yellow eyes, but the tips of his combed plumage shown a faded purple. A thick leather collar hung around his neck, d-ring jingling as he waved and bobbed and shouted excitedly. His kevlar vest had only a trace of dust on it, and the navy-blue suit coat he wore under that was ironed and wrinkle-free. The pipbuck adorning his left forearm fit his wrist snugly, and it also looked to be in much better condition than Rita’s.

Tap spent a moment longer watching them, then chuckled and asked, “Which one?”

Juicy took a deep breath. “I’m just gonna come right out and say it; that dumb bitch is going to get you killed. I’m sure you’ve seen how times are changing.” She gestured toward him, a serious look on her face. “Ponies like you and me? We need to blend in and lay low if we want to survive. Now, I have Dandelion. He’s a goodie four-shoes, sure, but he’s in good with the Justifiers and Gawdyna’s Talons and the Steel Rangers of Fillydelphia. We’re always going to have work, and as long as we’re working for the winning side, we’re going to be ahead of the eight-ball.”

He stood in silence for a moment, studying her as he processed what she had said. “So what’s your point?”

“I can’t see her begging the Enclave for odd jobs any time soon, so who’s backing her? Red Eye? Raspberry Tart? Who does she have left to turn to?” Juicy leaned back in her seat, looking him over with contempt. “I’m not gonna pretend that there’s no use for assassins anymore, but she has a reputation for riding the line between warring factions, and that’s something ponies are starting to pay attention to. Sooner or later, that shit is gonna catch up with her, and you better not be in the crosshairs when it does.”

“I asked what your fucking point was, grease-ball.” He blew a few strands of his mane out of his face without breaking eye contact. “So far all you’ve done is jerk yourself off.”

A dry laugh crowed in her throat. She levitated a single dart out of a pouch on her belt, turning it end over end in her telekinetic grasp. “My point… is that you should work for me. I’d say that she can come too, but I don’t think she’d be interested.”

“I may hate her,” he looked over at Rita, who noticed his wayward gaze and huffed with distress. His eyes snapped back to the sleazy mare seated before him. “But I trust you even less.”

Leaning forward, Juicy smiled and sighed. “That’s okay. I’m patient.” The dart landed point down between her hooves and Tap’s. “You make me wait too long, though, and I’m gonna punish you.”

Cobra Juicy licked her lips, giggling, and then whistled sharply. Dandelion was at her side in a heartbeat, smiling brightly and swaying his tail. She was grinning, staring Tap dead in the eyes as she commanded, “Say goodbye to Paharita.”

“Goodbye, Paharita!” Dandelion shouted, waving so intensely that his whole body shook.

The two of them slowly made their way to the door. Just before stepping out, Juicy droned, “And good luck finding Raspberry Tart.”

The door slammed, and Rita fluttered back over to Tap. “Idiots! There’s at least like, five different hidden compartments in this room that haven’t been opened!” He looked over at her, tilting his head, and she shrugged. “Well, there were six, but that desk is totally trashed. How was your chat with Snake Jizz?”

“Awful.” He stuck out his tongue and glanced away.

“Yuck, mine too. All that lunkhead wants to do is get me between the sheets and knock me up.” She shook her head and stuck out her tongue as well. “I don’t want anything to do with his barbed baby-maker. He can go pee up a rope.”

He snickered. “Did Lion know anything we don’t?”

“Supposedly, he heard through the grapevine that Fatso was spotted on the shoreline south of Manehattan the day of the Enclave’s big fireworks display. I know it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.” She cringed. “I had to let him kiss me on the beak to get that, by the way.” A little shiver ran through her, feathers ruffling.

“You poor cock-tease,” he chided through pursed lips, feigning sympathy.

She upturned her beak. “You’re welcome.”

“You think maybe he was bullshitting?”

Shrugging, Rita replied, “Maybe. But if he knows more than that, and I doubt it, he didn’t say. Even if it’s bogus, that’s as good a place to start looking as any.” She swept a claw over the room. “So yeah, let’s get to work.”

Tap nodded and followed her. Raspberry Tart’s loft had probably looked very nice at one point. It was very spacious, and there were big, open windows. Scattered around the room were smashed up picture frames and shreds of canvas, along with broken porcelain. Whoever had come through first had clearly just wanted to vandalize the place, but after the initial wave of desecration, anyone that passed through had been much more sensible. There wasn’t anything of value to be found, bit, gem, or otherwise.

Rita paused over a spot in the floor, pounded twice, then tapped with her claw. A tiny hatch swung open, revealing a stash of drugs. She glanced back at him and waggled her brows, waiting patiently for him to scoop up their findings. There was another, similar holdout not too far from that, but it had already been mostly cleaned out. Frowning, she led him to the torched remains of a lounge bed behind the busted desk, then studied the closest wall.

He squinted and craned his head over Rita’s back, trying to see what she could see. “How do you know where these things are?”

“Because I was planning on having you rob her blind eventually, so I’ve been casing this place ever since the first time I was in here. Fatty-Fats is a huge history buff, like me, so she had a lot of valuable artifacts decorating the place.” Rita idly waved a claw toward one of the ruined portraits. “Some ponies clearly aren’t as appreciative of that sort of thing as I am. But, if I know her like I think I do, she has the really good stuff locked away.”

Her tail flicked as she leaned a little closer to the wall. “And some of these hiding spots, she wasn’t so secretive about. I’ve seen her fish contract details and payments out of them.”

“And the others?”

She giggled. “Call it a woman’s intuition.”

One of the recently acquired dash inhalers levitated to his lips around the same time that Rita gasped softly. His vision sharpened so acutely that he could see the near-invisible seam lines in the wall that she was reaching for. This time, she slid her talon down along the thread’s-width of a gap, and was rewarded with a soft click. The panel opened just a hair, which was enough for her to pull it the rest of the way. Stashed inside were a riding crop, a bit, reins, and a saddle. Tap felt a stirring between his hind legs.

“Wow,” Rita uttered.

Tap chuckled. “I guess you’re not the only one that likes getting rode around.”

She reached in, holding up the saddle and the reins for him. “You’re joking, right? There’s no way these would fit her.” The griffon pulled a waded up duffel bag out of her flak jacket, shook it out, and then stuffed the bondage gear inside. “Yoink!”

The next hidden compartment was located on the opposite end of the room, and yielded nothing more than photographs. Tap spent a moment studying them as Rita began her search for the supposed fifth and final stash.

After finally getting a glimpse of Raspberry Tart, the fat jokes made a lot more sense, and she only seemed to get larger as he flipped through the stack. Despite her size, every image of her practically oozed confidence and charisma. The very last picture was different. It had been taken on the torch of the statue, looking out over the bay with the ruins of Manehattan sprawling in the distance. There was something very gentle about Raspberry’s expression. A comparatively tiny mare stood, smiling, beside her.

Something else about the smaller mare caught Tap’s eye. Is that a pegasus? He levitated the picture closer.

“Knock-Knock!” she called from behind him. “Anyone home?”

His ears folded back. He tossed the pictures back into the compartment and flicked it closed. “I’m not in the mood for any shit right now, Rita.”

“Sure, whatever, but I need your help.”

Rita was standing by the wrecked desk again, but this time, she looked like she was trying to push it. Without a word of warning, Tap focused his magic and gave it a telekinetic shove, sending it sailing past her and crashing against the rear wall. She looked between him and the desk several times, ruffling her feathers and glowering, but whatever scolding she was going to give was put on hold. Her attention had centered solely on the splintered desk.

“Oooooh my gooodnessss!” she cried, hopping over to the wreckage.

Tap didn’t bother asking what had caught her eye, knowing that she would tell him in moments. Sure enough, she reared up from the splinters with something clutched in each claw.

“Socks?” He could see some sort of insignia on the both of them; a trio of blue diamonds.

“Not just any socks!” Rita was hopping toward him on her hind legs, wings fluttering so fast that she was practically hovering. “These are genuine Ministry Mare articles! They belonged to Rarity, head of the Ministry of Image!”

He scratched the back of one forehoof with the other. “They’re fucking socks. How can you tell?” Rita took a deep breath, thrusting them in his face, and Tap took preventative measures. “Okay, I don’t actually fucking care. If you say they belonged to what’s her face, then I’ll take your word for it.” Something acrid hit his nose a moment later. “Ugh. Get that shit out of my face, they smell like a sweat-rag.”

“Well that’s probably because Fatty-Fats has been wearing them.” Rita held them even closer. “Look, they’re all stretched out!”

Tap tried to push the socks away, but she went right back to dangling them over his nose. “You can wash the smell out, at least.”

Finally, Rita lowered them, gazing down at her raunchy prize. “Oh, you’re so silly. I would  never wash these!” She lifted them up and started rubbing them against her cheeks. “Two hundred years ago, Rarity was wearing them, and I don’t want to ruin her essence!”

“Paharita, you’re fucking gross.” He looked down at the floor and noticed a square depression where the desk had been. Curiosity got the better of him and he took a few steps closer. “Is that the uh—”

Rita skipped past him, skidding to a stop and plopping down on the other side of it. “It is! That’s why I needed you to move the desk.” She reached in and pried out a square section of the floor, revealing what looked like the face of a floor safe. The grin plastered around her beak slowly faded. “There’s no lock to pick.” She looked up at him, glaring. “There’s no combination dial either! What is this crap?!”

Casually, Tap approached for a closer look. The face of the safe was completely flat, and the door laid so snugly in its frame that there was no visible seam. There was, however, the image of a hoof-print set in the very center, with three tiny, parallel LED strips above it.

“Is it electronic or something?” he asked, squinting.

“I dunno! Maybe?” She leaned to the left and the right, still scowling. “But I can’t see any ports into the stupid thing, so I can’t hack it!” Rita balled up her claw and thumped on the door. “Thanks a lot, Tubbo!”

The image of the hoof-print held his attention. After studying it for a bit longer, he reached out and covered it with his own hoof. The three lights flashed yellow, and then glowed a solid red. His ears perked as he looked back up at his feathery companion. She blinked, looking back and forth between his eyes and his hoof, then held up her claws to him.

“Fan-freakin’-tastic!” She gestured to his hoof, frowning. “But we would need her hoof, probably!”

Tap tilted his head and raised a brow. “We could cut it off.”

Rita threw her claws in the air. “What if she needs to be alive, though? Mad science can only do so much when it comes to these kinds of things!”

Sighing and shrugging, Tap withdrew his hoof, and the lights went dark. “So this was a huge fucking waste of time, basically.”

She shook her head vigorously. “Not even close! I got these socks, so it was totally worth it!”

“We barely have a single clue, though. How are we gonna track her down?”

“Just gotta ask around! Somepony has to have seen her waddling through.” Rita snickered and added, “Leave the talking to me though, okay?”

|[o’o ]|[ /_\ ]|[(  ) ]|

“And you said the trip to Friendship City was a waste of time!”

Double Tap stared dully back at Paharita. “I’m asking for five fucking minutes to visit Skimmer’s grave. Just shut the fuck up and let me have this.”

Arbu was as desolate as he had left it, made to seem even more eerie by the sun hanging low on the horizon. All around him were deep, long shadows.

While he made his way to the burnt out ruins of Skimmer’s house, he found his mind wandering back to the day she and her family had been taken away from him. His resentment for Littlepip burned hot as ever, but he began to compare what she had done to Raspberry Tart’s involvement in the destruction of Friendship City. The Enclave was responsible for the death and destruction, whereas Raspberry Tart had only been the catalyst. For a reason he didn’t comprehend, they considered her betrayal to be even worse than the swath of carnage left in the wake of Littlepip’s heroism.

Even if the thought of it made him sick, he could understand that Littlepip had been forgiven her atrocities at Arbu because the ponies she had slaughtered were cannibals. Most outsiders didn’t know them, so it would be easy to label them as monsters and write them off. But now everyone was singing her praises for killing Red Eye and opening the sky, even though she had essentially sparked a war between the Enclave and the remains of Equestria in the process. Everything Littlepip had done seemed to carry some sort of horrible weight to it, and he felt as though he were the only one to recognize this. Worse still, he had been in the position to assassinate her and prevent it all.

The forced transformation of the post-war world he knew was a direct result of his failure.

Tap’s eyes widened with his realization, a chill running through him. It hit him even harder than the beating he had received hours earlier.

He was just a few paces from the rubble of Skimmer’s home when he noticed movement inside; a tall, bipedal figure lumbering out into the open. It was the faded white letters spelling out “MARIPONY M.P.” that he noted before anything else. A reddish-brown hellhound wearing a kevlar vest emerged from the shadows, her fangs bared and her intensely blue eyes squinted. Tap gritted his teeth as he backpedaled. Somewhere in the distance, Paharita shrieked. He glanced back just in time to see her frantically trying to get airborne, hopping twice before finally getting off the ground.

“Wait,” he shouted, briefly putting his eyes back on the hound. “I need the fucking Punchline you cloacae-plunging slut!” A second glance revealed that Rita was already a shrinking speck in the distance. “Damn it.”

The hellhound swaggered forward, taking her sweet time striding through the rubble. He could hear her growling all the while, her claws scraping as they cleaved through whatever happened to get caught under them. The odds were most assuredly not in his favor.

A chill of dread ran down his spine as he turned away, yanking a dash inhaler out of his bandoleer and chomping down on the mouthpiece. The narcotics hissed into his lungs and the world slowed down just for him. His hooves thundered against the ashen earth, the acceleration blurring the edges of his vision, but he could see the terrain in front of him with razor sharp clarity. All the while, there was dull, dry crumbling sound that steadily caught up to him. The soil loosened under his hooves. He lunged forward, feeling her claws comb through his tail, hearing her snarling in his wake.

The sound of digging reached his ears once more. This time she passed him, and the ground shifted and sank just a few paces ahead. He turned, all four hooves digging into the dirt as he tried to stop. Massive paws erupted from the earth and slashed at the air, missing him by inches. He leapt around the sinkhole and stepped back into a gallop, but she was already burrowing again.

For the second time, she passed him, but this time she kept going. The hellhound emerged well ahead of him, crouched and ready to charge. He changed course in a wide arc, galloping toward Arbu. Only moments later, as he stood before the burnt-out shell of Glade Skimmer’s home, did he realize that she had just corralled him.

At a glacial pace, the hellhound advanced. She dragged the claws of one paw through the claws of the other, sharpening them, and then she paused. Her eyes closed and her muzzle tilted skyward, hanging just slightly open. A long, eerie howl filled the air.

Escape was not an option. He didn’t have armor piercers loaded, but standard rounds were better than nothing. Slowly, he un-holstered the forty-five and widened his stance. She picked up the pace and came lumbering toward him, but Tap stayed still as a statue. He took a deep breath and prepared to unload when he was just outside her reach.

The moment came. He ducked under a whistling swing, sidestepping and squeezing off a full magazine at just about point blank.

Every single bullet crumpled harmlessly against her vest and her tough hide, falling away like wads of paper. Her momentum carried her a few steps further, and then she yelped and spun wildly, clutching her chest and her stomach. It was clear that he hadn’t so much as left a scratch, but she continued to groan and sway anyway. It quickly dawned on him that he was being mocked.

Tap snorted and reached around himself with his telekinesis, but there were no spare magazines to be found. He hadn’t bothered reclaiming his spare ammunition from Rita. He had no bullets, but his knives had never left their hiding places.

The hellhound’s dramatic performance came to an end as she staggered forward and shook herself off. On her second attempt as mauling him, Tap cast a flash spell right in her eyes and jumped clean over her as she doubled over. He started pelting her with knives before he had even reached the ground. Some of them stuck in her back, but most of them bounced away and landed point down in the dust. Again, she began to cry out, reaching back and brushing several of the knives out of herself with a lazy sweep of her claws.

A wave of nausea crept over Tap as he watched her shrug off, and then lampoon another legitimate attempt at wounding her. He inhaled through his nose to try and calm himself, and noticed a very familiar smell filling hitting his nostrils. Downwind of her, he could clearly tell that she stank of whiskey. Moments later, she went back to charging, but Tap held his ground, watching her more closely. She was practically stumbling. When started to growl again, she interrupted herself with a wet belch. Her swipes were slow and clumsy, easy to dodge, and each swing nearly sent her tumbling. It had become readily apparent that she was very drunk. He sidestepped her awkward attacks, trying to piece together some kind of plan.

With the speed of cooling wax, she started to turn to face him again, hiccupping in the process. He kept circling, trying to close in behind her, but she tripped over her own leg and swung around. Everything blurred as she battered him with the back of her oversized paw and sent him sprawling into the soot.

Tap frantically tried to get back to his hooves as he shook the stars out of his eyes. He could hear her coming closer, see her long shadow draping over him as she loomed just a few paces away. Visions of her tearing him apart and picking his bones clean flashed in his mind, his remains discarded amongst the ashes of his friends. A spark of rage radiated in the depths of his soul.

Glaring up at her as she towered over him, he snarled, “I will not die here you motherfucker!”

With all the strength he could muster, he lunged, putting every ounce of force behind his hoof and connecting with her nose. Her head turned, she staggered back, and for several seconds, she stood there, swaying. She lifted a paw to her nose as though just realizing she had been punched, and then she toppled over onto her back, whining and squirming. Tap’s jaw hung slack as he watched. After a full minute of listening to her whimper and watching her roll around on the ground, she went completely still. He could plainly see that she was still breathing, and stared in disbelief.

“Okay,” she finally muttered. “I done. Pony can kill me now.”

On cue, Rita landed on a blackened stretch of rooftop, peering down at the situation, while Tap lifted a hoof to the side of his neck. He glanced up at her, then back at the laid out hellhound in front of him.

“What the fuck.”

|[(  ) ]|[BAR]|[BAR]|