So there we sat, both glaring deeply into one another’s eyes, the defiant brown of my own never leaving the fearsome orange of Hawkeye’s. We sat like this for a time untold before a question shattered the tense silence that had built up between us.

“So, you aimin’ to kill me?” I challenged as I struggled to put some room between my neck and her talons. “Or is you lookin’ to make out?”

A cheeky grin worked its way onto my face despite the circumstances before being promptly knocked into oblivion when a fist collided with it.

I let out a pained grunt before the talon pressed even tighter against my throat, causing blood to spill from my punctured flesh and down my neck. She moved her head closer to me, her fiery eyes still never leaving mine as her small beak nearly poked me in the nose.

“As tempting as an offer that is-,” she said before she was interrupted.

“Which one?”

“Both,” she responded. “But! I have to keep you alive, and as much as you may want this fantasy of yours to come alive-,” I let out a small laugh at that. “-we unfortunately won’t be spending a pleasant evening together,” she declared before moving far enough back that our breaths didn’t mix.

“It’s near nighttime, girl,” I responded, feeling the presence of the bright star from the forest lingering in the sky. “Not only that, but what exactly do you plan to do with me that won’t be pleasant?”

“Oh, nothing much. I’ve already made it seem as though I interrogated you enough. The phone isn’t much of a loss anyway, because I’ll get paid regardless. Just because I enjoy getting more bits doesn’t mean I actually like to make others suffer more than necessary for it. You can consider this a gesture of good will from me to you,” said Hawkeye as she finally eased her talons away from my neck.

“’Gesture of good will’? Gesture of good will! And what a gesture that is, my feathery little friend! So you ain’t gonna torture me, fan-fuckin’-tastic. Makes me feel as though I’m in your debt or somethin’!” I angrily retorted.

“You are.”

“Bitch, you abducted me, strapped me to a chair, force fed me in the most humiliating way possible, almost raped me, caused me bodily harm, and now you got the gall to say that I owe you!? Fuck outta here!”

Hawkeye’s emotionless mask was shattered upon my listing of her crimes against me, adopting an expression of true shock – even a bit of regret – as my words embedded themselves within her conscience.

“You gotta make a decision, Hawkeye, and you gotta do it right now. Are you gonna be forever my foe for the sake o’ cash? Or are you gonna redeem a small part of yourself by allowing me to go free?” I asked, leaning forward to regard her with a grave expression.

The griffiness for once seemed genuinely conflicted, sputtering and looking this way and that. Her usual calm, playful demeanor was fractured in the wake of a choice that seemed to actually bring her pause. Funny how she was so worked up over me. I almost considered that to be flattering in a way.

My lips curled into a cruel smile upon seeing her reduced to a blubbering mess, my heart glowing all the brighter as vitality flowed through my veins and the first echoes of the mad laughter once again reverberated in my skull. I began tugging at the ropes, loosening them up once more before a voice cut through my concentration.

“No.”

I looked up, taken aback and inflamed. “No? The fuck do you mean ‘no’!?” I agitatedly shouted.

Hawkeye unbuckled the pack that was strapped to her thigh, reaching in to pull out yet another one of those accursed pills. “I mean I’d rather make an enemy I’ll never be harmed by than a friend that isn’t useful.”

With that she tossed the pill in my direction. I watched it float through the air toward my face as though it were all in slow motion. When the damnable object finally made contact with my head, my world was lost to smoke and a claustrophobic darkness that followed...

Now, now. I do not know how it is that you got yourself into this situation, but it is about time you woke up. I still have a great need for your services, and you did agree to our little deal, did you not? Besides, you are my only shot at freedom, and you being turned into anyone’s slave but my own would bring that to a grinding halt. Here~. A gift from me to you…

I was awoken when I felt the gentle pull of the sun on my mind, a veritable cocktail of thoughts and emotions swimming about in my head with no sense of organization or direction. I felt adrift, as though I were being carried aloft by naught but the currents of my synapses.

I felt cold once again, the same way I had when that blue pegasus had forced that vile liquid down my throat to bring me back to the world of the living. However, the moment I caught my breath and searched the immediate area, I realized I was alone for once. I couldn’t allow this opportunity to be wasted.

Suddenly, my heart started glowing once again. My thoughts reorganized themselves and at the forefront were all the terrible experiences that I had suffered through upon being tossed like trash into this land. I remembered my run-in with Mufasa, how Four-Eyes had thrown me from a large tree, the deal with the spirit, my phone’s battery cutting out in the middle of the desert, my kidnapping, and my inability to even reconnect with my old world after having my phone smashed before my very eyes.

Upon recollection, I felt myself grounded more and more in this new reality. Not only that, but I felt angrier than ever. The warm feeling of my heart spread throughout my body, warming my insides of the chilling cold that plagued me.

It was with renewed conviction that I focused all of my effort on breaking loose from my restraints. I pulled and tugged as much as I could, the sudden surge of power allowing me to pull the rope far enough from my wrists to give me room to wiggle them out from under the bonds. I then turned my attention to the rope around my ankles, moving to untie myself there as well.

When my legs were finally free I stood, only to immediately fall to my hands and knees when it became abundantly clear to me that they had fallen asleep. That was not the end of it either. I felt a dizziness well within my head, presumably an after effect of those damned pills Hawkeye used. I felt like I needed to throw up, but fortunately nothing became of my feeling of sickness. I stretched my legs out a bit, reaching to touch my toes and all that jazz along with wiggling them around until my blood once again flowed down into the extremities.

I carefully moved back to my feet once again, cautiously stepping once, then twice to ensure I wouldn’t get any cramps or anything. I glanced down at my wrists when I felt a stinging sensation around them, only to realize that, under the light, my skin was pink and irritated from me rubbing up against the rope so much. The hair was still mostly there, but the flesh was definitely sensitive.

Looking up from my burnt wrists, I scanned the room for my possessions. A swift search brought up nothing, however, as the room had been cleared out. That included my sack of coins, my broken iPhone, and my water canteens. Fuck. Something told me I’d need those back soon.

Despite the fact that I was still pretty angry at having my phone recently broken along with Hawkeye’s decision to stay loyal to her crew, I still had enough of my wits about me to hear steps echoing through the halls. I caught my breath as the steps stopped right outside my room, a jangling of keys coming shortly after. Pressing myself firmly against the wall, my muscles were taut and I was ready to spring upon whomever stepped through the door…

...And then I realized that whoever was out there was trying to get into a room right outside my own.

Still playing it safe, I moved back towards the center of the room under the dim light that hanged from the ceiling, picking up the wobbly chair and bringing it back with me over to the door. I was still feeling slightly nauseous, my gaze spinning, creating immaterial replicas of the few objects I could see in the dark room. It would pass, I told myself. I only needed to get out of here while I still had the chance.

I flattened myself against the wall once again as I heard the door across the way lock, holding the chair in both my hands as I uttered a small promise.

“I’m gettin’ outta here,” I whispered, a gentle frown upon my face. “I don’t care how many o’ y’all mothafuckas I gotta go through accomplish that.”

And with those silent words that I waited with bated breath as the steps moved to the room I was trapped within, the keys ajangling once more as they were placed into the lock.

‘All or nothin’ now,’ I thought to myself.

When the door was unlocked, the handle turned, the creature on the other side pushing it open. After the door’s opening, a beak poked its way into the room, followed by a feathered head.

The rest of the griffiness made its way inside the dimly lit room soon after, eyes settled on the spot where I was once bound underneath the low-hanging light. I couldn’t get a good look at her face from where I stood as she idiotically walked further in as opposed to turning back – I imagine she was quite horrified to see that I had gotten free while she had gone – but I decided to use her faux pas to my advantage.

I pushed the door ajar as slowly as I could, making sure not to close it to ensure the griffiness wouldn’t hear anything, as well as to provide me with a means of escape after I was done here. Unfortunately for me, griffins must have great hearing, because the moment I pushed on the door, her ears perked up as she turned toward the source of the noise.

Before she could completely turn towards me, I took two large steps toward her as I brought the chair above my head, sending it crashing into the back of her body. The brittle chair shattered upon impact, splintering this way and that sans the chair legs.

The griffiness let out a shriek as I slammed the chair down on her, seemingly shrugging off the attack as she spun around and slashed her talons along my exposed ribs in response. I howled as blood spilled from my flesh. The cut shredded my skin to the white meat beneath, but luckily nothing important was hit. I wildly swung one of the chair legs at Hawkeye, the griffiness easily predicting the attack as she dodged beneath it and used her wings and powerful legs to tackle me to the ground.

The wound I received stung, and the moment the back of my head hit the ground my dizziness skyrocketed. I was brought back down to earth when a fist collided with my left cheek. Dropping one of the chair legs, I moved an arm to the front of my face in an effort to protect myself from more blows to the head.

While my arm absorbed a few more wild blows from the enraged griffiness atop me, I moved the arm that still held the chair leg in preparation to strike Hawkeye in the back of the head. She noticed the movement though, grabbing my arm as it raised and slamming it back into the ground. I shouted in pain as her claws dug into my skin, releasing the weapon while simultaneously pulling back my free hand to retaliate.

Hawkeye was hit with an unexpected haymaker, my fist connecting with the side of her head. Not nearly enough power was put into the punch to throw her off of me or to knock her out, but at least I had some room to maneuver my arms now. I grabbed at her neck to keep her from poking my eyes out with that beak of hers, scooting backwards across the floor in an effort to get my legs from under her body. She responded by attempting to claw at my face, instead shredding one of my arms when I covered myself with my free extremity.

She had to continue moving forward as I scooted away, me using this to my advantage while she paused to look for an opening by pulling my legs from underneath her completely and pressing them to her chest. I pushed Hawkeye off of me with my lower body, the feathery fiend sliding across the stone of the ground. Moving to my feet, I jolted when the cut she made across my ribcage made its presence once again known. I may have been running purely on adrenaline by this point, but some things are hard for a drugged body to shrug off, I suppose.

“Well,” said Hawkeye, licking off the blood on her talons as she slowly circled me. “Good morning to you, too.” She spat that sentence out with as much venom as a cobra, her avian eyes never leaving me.

“Shut up,” I said tiredly, circling the dangerous bird as well. I moved back subtly in hopes to bring us closer to the light since I could see naught but Hawkeye’s orange eyes and her outline in the darkness. She didn’t seem to have as much trouble as I, though, paying attention to every move I made.

As we drew nearer the light, my visibility increased, but not by much. I was still suffering from the combined forces of my new headache caused by Hawkeye tackling me as well as the side effects of that pill she had thrown into my face earlier.

“How are you awake?” she asked, settling into a pouncing stance as her wings extended to their intimidating span at her sides. “That pill should have kept you unconscious for at least another three hours.”

“It’s just cuz I’m that special,” I responded. “Now enough talk. Let’s get this over with.”

Hawkeye's eyes narrowed dangerously as she prepared to charge. “Your wish is my command!” she said as she sprinted forward.

I moved forward just as quickly to meet her assault head on despite my shakiness, throwing a forward kick that she sidestepped before shallowly raking her talons across my fresh wound. Once again I cried out, the griffiness not giving me a breather this time around as she spun around and kicked me in the stomach.

I stumbled in flow with her attack as I grasped at my wound. Looking back up, I had just enough time to duck beneath a horizontal swipe of Hawkeye’s knife-like talons, pulling back up with an uppercut that made contact with the underside of her hard beak. The blow clearly caught her off-guard as a pained growl escaped her as she grabbed at her face.

I felt something warm, presumably blood, running down my knuckles after my fist scraped the sharp point at the end of Hawkeye’s dangerous feature. Ignoring the pain I had caused myself, I followed up with a roundhouse kick that sent the bird-lion sprawling to her belly.
I dashed over to the prone form of the griffiness, nearly tumbling over my own two feet as my head swam, falling down to my knees as I grabbed the back of her head. Hawkeye screeched and flailed about before I grabbed one of her wings and pressed it down beneath one of my knees, applying a great amount of pressure which caused her to go taut.

Immediately she ceased resisting, producing no sounds and moving nothing as she gasped and held her breath. As I pressed more of my weight into her extremity, she whimpered.

Upon hearing that sound, my glowing heart’s luminescence intensified, casting an eerie red light over Hawkeye’s pained face like a dull lantern. I drank in her features at that moment, my grim scowl giving way to a brutish smile upon seeing her eyes wide in terror and her beak agape in a soundless scream. Seeing that expression on her face made everything feel right. After all of her antagonism over the past few days, after all of her transgressions against me, I could finally sit back and delight in her trembling.

The glow from my heart spread throughout the rest of my body, seemingly closing off the deepest wounds I had accrued during the tussle while making the lighter scratches nigh nonexistent. Despite this, it didn’t eliminate any of the pain, nor did it return any lost blood. The glow did, however, seem to eliminate my feelings of nausea and wooziness as well as heal my cuts.

“Damn,” I said. “Winning feels good.”

I put more weight into the wing of the poor birdie before another pained grunt escaped her.

“Heheh. You sound like a damn rubber duck when you squeak, y’know that?”

“S-stop. Please…” she begged, her voice strained.

“What was that? Mind speakin’ up, cuz I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me breakin’ your wing!”

“NO!” she shouted with much more strength despite not being able to move her body. “N-not that! Anything but that!”

“Well ain’t you a bucket o’ fun?”

“I’ll tell you anything! Anything you wanna know, I’ll answer it! Just spare my wing!”

I hummed. It was an unfair offer, but hey, it was unfair in my favor. “Well in that case, riddle me this: If I were to leave this room, where would I find my stuff?”

“J-just across the hall! You’ll need my keys, though, if you want to get into the room. I dropped them somewhere in here when you attacked me.”

“A’ight. Now on to question number two: Where is the nearest exit?”

Hawkeye responded through gritted teeth. “On the other side of the building. You’ll need to go up to the first floor and past the conference room. When you get through there, you walk out of the lobby and you’re home free.”

“Conference area? Lobby? What is this, an office?” I asked, brow raised.

“Yes. I mean no! This place used to be a manufacturing plant for the Equestrians when they built weapons for the locals. It was closed down when the princesses decided that it was a waste of resources to produce so many for such small settlements, though.”

I would’ve asked why they were producing the weapons in the first place, but I honestly didn’t care.

“Interesting. Now on to my final question, and this is the one that really matters: Why did you try to rape me?” I asked as I put just a tiny bit more pressure into her wing.

The griffiness screeched weakly before moving to respond. “I-I didn’t mean it! It was just a spur of the moment decision. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until it was too late!”

“Really?” I asked, honestly unimpressed by her explanation.

“Really! That, and because you’re such a unique creature! When Barney and Tony said you were one of a kind, I wanted to see for myself how unique you were! Well, there’s that and, um, the fact that I’m kinda into bondage,” I noticed she was blushing slightly after her confession.

“So seein’ someone tied up makes you want to jump their bones? Hmph. It’s better than nothin’, I guess.”

“S-so can you let me go now?”

I thought on it for a moment, slightly lifting myself off of her wing. “Nope.”

Hawkeye’s eyes widened even further at my answer. “Why not! I’ve told you everything you need to know!”

“While that may be true, you still owe me much more than a few explanations after what you’ve done to me. I thank you for your help, but I know the first thing you’re gonna do is rat me out an’ chase me down if I let you go right now. So it’s with that in mind...” I increased the pressure until I heard a few faint pops. Hawkeye screamed in agony as I pressed further and further into her sensitive extremity, breaking her fragile bones. “…that I gotta say no!” I put all of my weight into her wing, a snap and a louder shriek being my reward.

I then grabbed her by the head and slugged her across the face, knocking her unconscious.

I fell back on my ass after a couple of minutes, looking over Hawkeye’s body as I realized what I had just done. I just reduced a creature to a mess, and when she pleaded with me to spare her, I reveled in her agony.

And it. Felt. Good. Not so much in the sexual sense – I didn’t get off on it or anything – so much as the mental sense. Just…that feeling of power, of dominance over another filled me with childlike glee. I could completely understand what Hawkeye was saying earlier.

Honestly, though, I was conflicted with my feelings of appallment at my lack of mercy while simultaneously feeling strangely satisfied with my cruelty.

I shook those thoughts out of my mind before moving to search Hawkeye, checking the pack on her thigh to find it empty. So that's why she didn’t just pull another one of those pills out and toss it into my face. Upon finding that she had nothing of value on her person, I moved on to looking for the keys she dropped during our fight, stumbling around a bit in the dimness before something caught the reflection of the light. Turning my eyes over to the glimmering object, I walked over to find the keys I was looking for.

A smile made its way to my face in spite of my morality crisis before being swiftly removed as my ribs once again began aching, the pain still not gone. Now feeling the effects of my blood loss, I fell to one knee, propping myself up on one arm as I waited for the awful feeling to dull. A few minutes later, the pain had returned to a manageable level and I rose again to my feet, still slightly hunched over.

“You know what?” I asked to no one in particular. “That bitch deserved it after all.”

With those parting words, I opened up the door, being mindful to step over the tattered remains of the old chair, leaving behind the snoozing griffiness and stepping out of the dark room.

I could only hope there weren’t any more criminals than the two ponies Hawkeye was buddy-buddy with, but considering my luck so far there’d be an entire team of them. Ugh. Why can’t I just have a calm, boring day for once?

Author's Notes:

Longest chapter to date. Next time I'll just split it into two to update this story more quickly.

Sorry if the fight seems a bit lackluster, I wasn't as inspired about it as I had first thought I would be. As always, though, thank you guys for reading. Peace out.