The hours passed, and though Pinkie Pie tried her best to sleep, she couldn't. Her mind was filled with ways she could make her remaining time with Travis meaningful in any way she could. She needed a way to let him know how much she loved him every day from this point on. Her mind raced from the biggest, grandest, most romantic-est outing that she could think of, to the simplest, smallest little things that the two of them took for granted. All of it was needed to make every second count.

She then noticed a small change in Travis's breathing, indicating that he may have been awake.

"Travis?" She asked in a barely audible whisper as she lightly jostled him.

His response was only a quiet groan, but that was enough to let her know he was indeed awake, even if just barely.

Pinkie needed to tell him about what little time they had left with each other, but a wall appeared in her mind that kept her from doing so. She was hurting enough from that knowledge, and had no intentions of spreading it to her coltfriend.

"Nothing," was all Pinkie said before gently kissing him. Then she closed her eyes and attempted once more to fall asleep.

Her attempt was futile. The kiss she gave Travis awoke something within her that made her heart race, and a warmth spread through her like the first bite into an oven fresh pastry. Their time together had to be special, and she was going to make it so.

Pinkie was no longer in control of her actions. Barely aware of herself, she passionately kissed Travis, and the next thing she knew she rolled over on top of him.

Travis was now fully awake, and taken completely by surprise. "Pinkie! What are you doing?"

Pinkie gently placed her hooves over Travis's mouth to shush him.

"No talking," she whispered, "Just leave it to Pinkie."

Leave it to Pinkie, and she would show him a side of things that he never could have imagined. That was what she said to him once before. Travis smiled when he realized where she was going with this, and now he was going to be able to use what he learned in those 'How to Please a Woman in Bed' videos. This time with a woman he loved personality and all.

At least, he would have if not for a sudden crash that they heard through the wall that happened ten seconds in.

"What was that," Pinkie asked with a jolt.

"Probably that hole we left in the roof of the next cabin when I was moving in. It's been getting bigger lately," Travis said dismissively, wanting to get back to rocking Pinkie's casbah.

However, he couldn't dismiss the issue when they heard a new noise through the wall.

What they heard were two voices talking to each other. They were muffled and indistinct, but one couldn't help but feel that they didn't belong to anyone friendly.

Though incredibly irritated by the interruption, Travis wasted no time getting ready for action. He collected his weapons off of his nightstand as he spoke to Pinkie.

"I guess I need to take care of this. Don't worry, I'll try to make it short," Travis said as he headed for the door.

Before he opened it, Pinkie trotted up next to him.

"You're not going alone," she said to him. There was no way she'd let him go without her. Not if she was going to make good of her desire to protect him.

Travis put his hooves on her shoulders reassuringly.

"It's just a couple of scrubs, Pinkie. The lowest of low. I'll be done before you know it."

That seemed to ease Pinkie's worry. She knew that Travis had handled greater challenges, but still couldn't help but feel the nagging desire to go out there with him. Silently agreeing, she allowed him to leave on his own. With a goodbye kiss, Travis left to his work.

He casually sauntered over to the next room along the path between all of the cabins and he zeroed in on the one that he used as his kitchen/dining room.

The closer he got the clearer the voices of the intruders became. It sounded like the usual minion on a mission banter: 'Not here, let's check the next place,' 'Let's see what the others found', 'She said the No More Hero would be here,' and other things like that.

At least it let him know that there were more than just these goons, and that they were sent by someone who knew about him. Most likely another assassin. Travis groaned quietly, realizing that this may take a little longer than he thought, but no problem, everything was going to be fine. He came to the door of the cabin and put his plan into play.

I use the word 'plan' loosely, as what he ended up doing after he walked through the open door was dropkick the first guy into the second and then beat the ever-loving piss out of the two of them.

The first guy's head was put through the wall, and the other guy was slammed onto the table, followed by a forceful knee drop (or whatever ponies had to the equivalent) that broke the table in half.

The noise had attracted the others that one of them had been talking about.

The first to arrive was a pegasus with a baseball bat who flew through the window and tried to take a swing at Travis's head.

Travis dodged by dropping to the floor and used his magic to grab half of the broken table and use it as a shield against his next attack.

He got to his hooves as another assailant, an earth pony, started crawling though the window. He put an end to this intrusion by giving him a solid buck in the face, which knocked out one of the attacker's teeth as it sent him back out the window.

To handle the pegasus with the bat, Travis pinned his wings to his sides with the two pieces of table and proceeded to punch the shit out of him until his eyes rolled back into his head and he lost consciousness. As long as Pinkie was around, he'd avoid killing any of them if he could help it.

The next order of business was the earth pony outside.

Travis jumped out the window and was immediately bucked into the wall of another cabin by the earth pony.

The first earth pony was soon joined by another one, and both of them attacked Travis at the same time, which pushed him back along the path between the cabins.

Deftly, Travis blocked their successive blows one after the other until a third opponent blind sided him.

Travis sidestepped to face his three opponents, and saw that the new attacker was a unicorn who brandished a pair of knives (thankfully only two). This forced him to draw a sword to counter the bladed weapons.

As the Tsubaki blocked the blades of the unicorn, Travis continued going hoof to hoof with the two earth ponies.

Eventually, his back was put to another wall and the two earth ponies began to whale on him with double the effort.

The assault disrupted his concentration and made his hold on the Tsubaki waver, allowing the unicorn's knives to get closer to him.

Travis needed to do something fast to get him out of this jam. All he needed was just a second to think.

"Wait! Wait! STOP," he yelled at his attackers as he held his hooves up.

Miraculously, his attackers listened to him, allowing Travis to sucker punch the unicorn's horn and dash away to a safer spot.

As he ran into the main office of the motel, he attracted the attention of more attackers who seemed to come out of the woodwork.

Travis couldn't help but wonder where these guys came from at times like this. It was like they popped out of oblivion, pre-programmed to come after him and only him.

Thankfully though, they weren't the small army that he would normally contend with. Just a small band of thugs that numbered somewhere in the single digit range, if he counted right.

The office drew near, and Travis could see lights on in the windows, indicating that there were others inside who were, as of yet, unaware of his presence.

He was about to make himself known, as a unicorn opened the door to see what that noise was.

Travis jumped and put his front hooves around the unicorn's neck and swung his body hard, putting his rear hooves into another earth pony's face, thus dropping all three of their bodies in one move.

Travis rolled to his hooves toward the stairs to the upper level, while the earth pony whose tooth he knocked out earlier reappeared and tackled him against the wall.

After he had done so, a pegasus came swooping down the stairs, his sword at the ready to stick Travis to the wall.

Travis reversed the hold that the earth pony had on him and slammed his head into the wall, stunning him, as he dodged the impaling strike.

The two thugs who were there when he arrived in the office both started their offensive, the earth pony used brass knuckles (or hooves, more appropriately) as his weapon of choice.

Travis used the stunned earth pony in his grasp as a living shield against the furious hooves of his opponents, and even managed to knock out a few more teeth of his shield.

The pegasus tried to take a few swings of its own, which made Travis's pony shield shriek in fear every time that the blade stopped short of cutting him.

The unicorn assailant used his magic to pick up a flower vase and smash it on Travis's head, which made him drop his shield.

This was almost the end of Travis as the pegasus once again tried to impale him. But the unicorn had given Travis an idea.

He would no longer play nice. Travis used his own magic to draw his other swords and go to town on the opponents, first by blocking the pegasus' sword. He then started pulling in small objects nearby to join the fight.

The two earth ponies got their heads knocked together by an end table and a rotting chair, while the unicorn had his head smashed through the bottom part of a drawer.

As for the pegasus, his sword was parried by the Tsubaki, and his wings struck by the Rose Nasty.

The attack on his wings brought the airborne opponent down and his sword nearly got Travis, if he hadn't pulled the unicorn closer to him so that the sword lodged into the front of the drawer around the unicorn's neck, making the magical pony go pale as the blade got dangerously close to his horn.

The unicorn passed out from sheer terror, which took him out of the fight. Travis then discarded his pony-shield by throwing him at the other earth pony present.

The pegasus was next for Travis. He was taken care of with a flurry of strikes form the Rose Nasty.

Just as it seemed the killing blow was coming, the pegasus shouted ever so valiantly, "I'M STILL A VIRGIN!!" But a killing blow never came. Only a furious punch that put him through the wall.

Travis was in no mood for this. The small headache he had when he woke up now became one bitch of a migraine, Pinkie was probably worrying herself into a coma, and these guys were keeping him from getting his fucking nookie!

Travis blocked the attack from the remaining earth pony, and then picked him up and swung him around, smashing his head into the various pieces of furniture. When he was finished, and his opponent was unconscious, more opponents began to come through the door.

Travis was in no mood to face this many opponents all at once. He needed to find a way to separate them.

Putting the plan into play, he ran up the stairs and led his opponents on a chase into one of the side rooms.

The first opponent entered and immediately fell through the non-existent floor after the first step in.

"What happened," the pony yelled painfully from the next floor down, as the next pony behind him stopped before he shared his colleague's pain.

Travis had a foothold just to the side of the door on the eight inch perimeter of flooring that was present. He grabbed the next pony and and pushed him down to the lower level, followed by jumping off himself. He landed on one of them with a devastating elbow drop, and he swore he heard something crack.

He and the other opponent, another unicorn, began a battle of blades, Travis's five beam katanas against his array of swords, axes and maces.

Their weapons clashed in a furious cyclone of strikes and parries, neither one able to better the other.

At the same time, the two began to bombard each other with smaller projectiles from debris in the room.

Travis could tell that the other unicorn was vastly superior at using magic than he was.

As he tried to use more and more objects to his advantage, the more his hold on his weapons weakened. The grip that he had on them was weak enough, as he was still only adept at wielding no more than two or three at a time.

The other unicorn used his magic to pelt Travis with larger and larger pieces of debris, before he used his magic to heft a gigantic piece of the broken floor over his head and swung it down hard onto Travis.

Travis dodged to the side just as a pegasus flew into the room and was immediately squashed under the piece of floor. That's not to say the pegasus was out of the fight. He still had a few swings left in him, though they all hit nothing. He was easily taken care of with a swift roundhouse.

The other unicorn, however, he still had some fight in him. He began to raise the large piece of the floor over his head once more along with all of his weapons to thoroughly crush Travis.

Travis wasn't about to have this. He charged his attacker, who swung his weapons at Travis making him dodge over and under each succeeding blow.

A hit from a mace grazed his leg, which almost toppled him and allowed the other unicorn to lift the piece of floor over his head to land his blow.

Using the momentum from his stumble, Travis rolled forward and put his ankles around the unicorn opponents neck and lifted his body up to viciously punch his face.

When his opponent's face looked like it was about to be turned inside-out from the repeated blows, Travis somersaulted backwards, and slammed the other unicorn into the ground before he rolled away.

The weapons that the unicorn held all flew through the air with him, and the first thing that hit the ground was his horn. His weapons all dropped around him, each one dangerously close to hitting him. Finally, the piece of floor he held came down hard on his head and split in two, putting him down and out.

Travis was then accosted by two more ponies who started pummeling him against the wall. So hard that he actually went right through it after the pressure he was under grew too powerful for the weakened structure.

The battle continued outside, and Travis was pushed against the wall of another cabin.

He blocked the buck from an earth pony, while his pegasus partner reared back for a swooping attack.

Quickly thinking, Travis ripped the nearby door off of its hinges and put it between the two attackers.

He then flipped the door end-over-end so that the earth pony in front of him was hit in the face and pushed backwards, while the pegasus in the rear was gut-checked by the edge of the door and brought in front of him.

Travis punched with all his might and sent the revolving door spinning in the other direction, pegasus and all.

The door pushed the earth pony back in front of him, but this opponent was more aware of Travis's next attack.

He blocked Travis's punch and rolled backwards after nearly losing his balance.

The door was left spinning in the air, and the pegasus came in for a dive bomb attack.

Travis grabbed the door, and used it as an umbrella against the attack, and then as a weapon once more when he slammed the pegasus into the ground with it.

The earth pony landed his next attacks on Travis's face with his bare hooves, until the door was used as a shield once more.

Travis then backflipped through the open doorway into the cabin that he used as a library. He always kind of thought that Equestria was unfortunate to not have things like video games, movies or anime, but he made do with what they did have: books (mostly comics).

Travis used his magic to place the door behind both the earth pony, and the pegasus who was beginning to get airborne. With a mighty pull, he brought the door towards him, and it caught both opponents like a makeshift bulldozer.

They were pushed into the cabin, until the door caught itself back on its hinges and the two of them were launched toward Travis who took them both down with a double stiff arm technique.

The door was then bucked off of its hinges by the earth pony whose teeth kept getting knocked out. He charged in with a chainsaw that Travis assumed he must have gotten from one of his allies.

His swings were blocked by the Peony, and then his weapon was cut to pieces by the Blood Berry, just as the other two opponents were getting to their hooves.

Losing his weapon only doubled this opponent's fury, as Travis was having a hard time defending himself from his attacks.

As his attacks beat on, the other two ponies started their advance.

Travis pushed his armchair into the pegasus's face, and started using books off the shelves to pelt the two earth ponies.

The tooth-deficient pony's attacks subsided when Travis jammed a particularly large history book, which Twilight insisted he needed to read, into his mouth. Travis punched the book in his mouth, and sent the earth pony flying backwards backwards.

After a hard landing, the earth pony spat out the book, and another one of his teeth. He then reached his hoof inside his mouth and pulled out another tooth that had come loose.

"Oh, no," he moaned as he realized how few teeth he had left. His worry priorities changed when his pegasus ally's unconscious body landed next to him. He figured it would be best to play possum for the time being.

The other earth pony wasn't having a very pleasant time at Travis's hooves. Suffice it to say, Travis's hooves were the cause of his misery the way they were sliding his face across the shelves into the various books and bookends, then finally the wall.

The final attack by Travis was to grab the nearby stepladder and swing it onto him so that his opponent's body was caught in the gaps between each rung. Definitely a tight fit, as it did not get past his shoulders.

With a mighty swing, the pony was planted face first into the decrepit wooden floor.

Travis thought that he was finished, until he saw something that wasn't there before.

The armchair that he pushed into the pegasus from before was now standing up on all of its legs, when Travis clearly remembered it rolled onto its side when he was finished with it. The chair was then enveloped in a dark green-colored magic aura.

When it was magically turned around, Travis saw that the seat was occupied by another unicorn. This one with his mane slicked back and was wearing a nice dress shirt with a pair of slacks. He wore a pair of half-moon glasses on his face as his eyes darted back and forth across the pages of the book he was holding in his hooves.

"When the fuck did he get here," Travis wondered in his mind.

The action had died down, so he was able to read the title on the cover of the book he was holding. It looked like it said Compendium of Weapons Vol., something. That was all he could see of the book.

Travis then sighed at this pony's nonchalant approach to starting the fight, something that Travis could never stand. Especially now, when there was someone waiting for him to finish up this work.

"You wanna get this over with," he asked impatiently.

The other pony looked up from his book, and stood on the floor.

"I suppose," was all he said, in some accent that Travis thought may have been Scottish (Trottish, most likely, given this world's fondness for equine puns in naming their countries). He then casually rolled up his sleeves, and adjusted his glasses.

Travis wanted to bang his head on the wall as this guy dragged out his pre-fight ritual.

In order to speed things up, Travis lunged with his Tsubaki and Peony at the ready as his opponent was fixing his collar.

His opponent caught both weapons by snapping his book shut over them, clinching the weapons between its pages.

With a burst of paper, wickedly barbed chains came flying out of the book, sending Travis's weapons flying back to him, which forced him to duck under them.

The chains then snaked back into the pages of the book the bespectacled unicorn held, and what came after them was a sudden storm of very large blades that nearly stuck Travis to the wall, had he not regained control of his weapons and began to furiously block them all.

The storm of blades began to take its toll on the battery life of his weapons. Even though they weren't in his hooves, he could feel their power dwindling in his magical grasp.

The assault of the knives had broken one of the windows, which Travis used to make his escape as his two weapons fizzled out.

His escape took him out into what was once a garden or something. The plants had all wilted, and the low-set metal fencing was reduced to a pile of rust. He was about to ready his weapons for recharging when the unicorn came leaping out the window after him.

From the pages of the unicorn's book came two snapping metal jaws, much like bear traps, both of which went right for Travis's unprotected body.

Travis drew the Blood Berry and Rose Nasty both at the same time while he set to recharging his other two weapons.

The blades of the Rose Nasty caught the metal jaws, while the Blood Berry started attacking the unicorn.

The unicorn caught the blue blade with the open pages of his book to spin the weapon away to a safe distance.

With another burst of paper from the book, a much larger pair of jaws, bigger than a pony, came forth.

"Holy shit," Travis yelled as dove forward in a last ditch effort to dodge the massive jaws, still violently shaking the two uncharged sword handles between his legs.

The jaws snapped shut just as Travis's tail cleared the bladed teeth of the weapon. He landed on his back with the and the two weapons beeped indicating that they were fully charged. He sheathed the Blood Berry and Peony in favor of the Tsubaki/Rose Nasty combo.

The metal jaws that were summoned all disappeared in a burst of yellow, rigid paper as though it were centuries old, and swirled back into the open book, along with a sizable amount of paper from inside, presumably from the knives before.

The next weapons that burst from those pages were two swords, both wickedly serrated. One glowed as if it was red hot, and the other looked white, and had frosty air drifting from it.

The other unicorn cocked one eyebrow, daring Travis to advance, which he willingly obliged.

Their weapons clashed, and Travis could tell, just by crossing swords, that this stallion's weapons had some serious power.

They each trailed their respective element behind them as they sliced through the air, boasting their power when they burst into a flurry of flames or frost on every impact.

Travis knew it would be the end of him if he were hit by either one. He needed a way to get rid of them both.

Something occurred to him as their battle carried into the paths to all the cabins: all of his weapons came from that book he was carrying. Take out the book, cut off his supply of weapons.

"That's so stupidly simple, it's genius," Travis thought as he formulated his plan to eliminate that book. He would have tried his magic on it, but that would do no good. His magic was tied up mostly with holding his weapons. There was only one thing to do.

Travis leaped backwards away from his opponent, and sheathed every one of this weapons.

This confused the bespectacled unicorn into halting his attacks as he tried to figure out what Travis was up to.

Travis egged him on by cocking one of his eyebrows, mimicking the action that the other unicorn had done to signal him to go press on.

The other unicorn decided to humor Travis and do as he wished, as he himself was intrigued by this change in demeanor.

The two swords came at Travis's neck, crossed to decapitate him like a pair of vicious shears.

Just as the swords got near, Travis used his magic to grab the book from him and use it as a shield by wedging it between the two swords.

The swords stopped right as they touched Travis's neck, searing heat and bitter cold both burning his skin.

The book both froze and burst into flame upon being hit, and the swords both turned into the ancient papers that his other discarded weapons had done, but now the simply blew away on the breeze as the book smoldered on the ground.

The bespectacled unicorn stepped back, anxious to run away now that he was unarmed.

Travis stepped forward, stomping on the book and spreading its charred pages to the winds.

He quickly approached his opponent, who was now too scared to run away from him. He wound up for another powerful punch, and the other unicorn held up his hooves and whimpered in anticipation of what was surely going to be a very, very painful blow.

No attack came though, and he lowered his guard to see that Travis's hoof stopped short of his face, sparing him from the punch. But only for a second, since as soon as his hooves were put down, Travis sent him flying with his blow.

Travis assumed that he was finished when he wasn't attacked by anymore ponies, but when he turned around, he saw that he had one more opponent. That damn earth pony who was doomed for dentures.

He ran yelling down the path, baring what few teeth he had left.

What came with his yelling was yet another sound: the yowling of a cat.

Before he could reach Travis, Jeanne jumped on his face and sent him veering to the side and into a wall.

He shook Jeanne off of his face and spat out yet another tooth.

Jeanne crouched into a defensive stance and hissed viciously at him.

He tried to kick her away as revenge for making him lose more teeth, which was something his didn't need.

Jeanne continued her animal fury back swiftly jumping on his face and then crawling to his back where she started slashing at his neck.

The earth pony tried to get her off of him, but she jumped off on her own. Then he felt somepony grab his shoulder and forcefully turn him around.

Pinkie Pie had grabbed the earth pony assailant and smashed his face with her hoof, which knocked out most of his remaining teeth. After so much abuse, that one particular opponent spat out several of this teeth and finally collapsed to the ground unconscious, almost looking relieved to do so if only it meant he didn't have to get beaten up anymore.

Pinkie trembled from what she had done, so much that her legs nearly buckled beneath her. She had lived her life based on her personal ideal of making others happy, but this was going to make nopony happy. Nopony enjoyed being hit so hard that they lost their teeth. It would have been the end of her if anypony saw what she had done.

Though it did not show on her face, inside her mind she was smiling at her own actions. It made her heart all aflutter when she realized what fulfilling her promise would bring. She had gotten her first taste of combat, and she loved it.

Despite her euphoric feelings, her face looked like it was frozen with horror. Travis hated seeing her distraught like this, especially when she felt so guilty about keeping her promise. He took her hooves in his and consoled her.

"Pinkie! Baby, it's alright. Just keep it together and we can take care of this."

Hearing his words made Pinkie's subconscious smile reach her face.

"That...was awesome," Pinkie shouted enthusiastically, "Why did I never do this before!? That was better than almost having sex!!" She then passionately kissed Travis, and nearly dropped them both to the ground.

As much as Travis enjoyed a kinky Pinkie, they still had to take care of the matter of the various thugs who were laying unconscious around Travis's home. They agreed to put off romance to go see Twilight, so that she could ask Celestia to send some guards to take those guys away. They rounded up all of the thugs, and put Jeanne on guard duty, knowing that she would put any one of them back into place if they tried to escape.

They both trotted through the streets to the library, discussing Pinkie's new training regime. Travis had been holding back while he was teaching her, but now that she was so passionate about it (and found it to be her kink) he decided that it would be a good idea to teach her the same way he taught Dash and Spike. To Pinkie, this would make their time together very special.

Through it all, they didn't realize that they were still in danger.

High in the sky overhead came another attack from a swooping pegasus.

Pinkie nearly told Travis about the summoning spell, when they both heard the unsheathing of a sword as their attacker came down and forced them to dive out of the way.

The attacker came swooping back, this time for Pinkie.

As soon as Pinkie got to her hooves, she was grabbed from behind by the attacking pegasus, and a sword was put to her neck.

Travis drew the Rose Nasty and was about to advance for an attack, but was stopped suddenly when he clearly saw the attacker's face in the moonlight. It was someone who he never thought he'd see again in a trillion years.

"You?...But...how--wha--why!? What the fuck!?"

The pegasus smiled before speaking, "Eloquent as always. Hello, Travis."

"Oh, horseapples," Pinkie said, as she too recognized the assassin.

Author's Notes:

So this chapter was inspired by a movie I watched recently: John Wick. Never seen it? Watch it. It's fucking awesome. But only if you're into action/thrillers. Personally, I think that a great action movie starts with a bang. John Wick starts with a dull thud (literally), but is gets so much better from there.

Also, that unicorn with the book was slightly inspired by Alexander Anderson, since I've also been watching Hellsing lately. Also, his ice and fire swords were inspired by Agni and Rudra from Devil May Cry 3. Enough about my movie analysis.

For anyone who scoffs at a cat as badass as Jeanne, you've probably just haven't had cats that awesome. I personally have a cat that's as well trained as any dog (don't get me wrong though, fellow dog lovers, I am a passionate dog person. I prefer them over cats, actually).

I'm pretty sure all you little readers out there know who that assassin is at the end of this chapter, since you've been dying of anticipation until they've shown up. Feel free to comment who you think they are, though like I said, I'm pretty sure you already know. Rock on, \m/