As I speak to you now, I am aware that for most, I am still your Princess. For others, I am your traitor, and for some sorrowful many souls, I am your enemy. I never wished to be any of these things. I only ever wished to be a teacher.

Entry 004 - The Snips

“AGGGH! Celestia’s sparkly shits, Elm, take that damned thing off! Are you trying to kill me?”

That following morning, Ol’ Scarface had retrieved his toothy headdress and slid in beside me wordlessly at the communal area. He completed the freakish look with a slab of grease-dripping meat between his teeth. It was enough to make me leap out of my seat in shock.

“You’re offending Clover!” he teased at my gasp of horror whilst still full-mouthed.

“She’s offending me.” Once recovered, I returned half-heartedly to my breakfast, “Seriously, why do you still have that thing on?”

“Because I need a helmet.” He shrugged, crunching into a dried Yao Guai steak. Had to respect the pony for having the same tastes in delicious meats as me, even if it was a few days from being inedible. “You never answered my question last night. Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Go fuck yourself.” I grunted into my breakfast.

“I've tried, but Miss Breeze does it far better than I ever could.” he was rubbing the end of the skull's horn experimentally, as if expecting to release a genie from it. For a second, I thought I caught sight of a small glimmer of light on the ridges in the bone. It was gone before I could be assured it had been there and I kept eating.

As we ate, I couldn’t help looking at my rations. I had a few bits I could stretch across a few days, maybe a week if I was savvy, but it would not be enough to keep my energy up. I took a long, unsteady gulp on my flask of water.

“We need to gather a team this morning, we gotta hit this Stable of~ “

“Leave it to Gypsy. She can handle Captain Goo-goo Eyes without fucking her or ripping her head off.”

“I wouldn't rip her head off?” I retorted.

“Exactly.” A snigger rumbled off of his lips, “But you would buck her. Honestly, you could lead this motley crew of tramps and thieves if you had an ounce of ambition, Squawk. “

“That’s your idea of ambition, Elm?” Which raised an eyebrow.

“I thought I was being generous, Birdbrain.” Once again, I suggested he might better enjoy finding out the carnal secrets of his own body, but before we could loop back to his suggestion that Gypsy did it better, I added, “If we’re not going to the Stable, where are we going?”

He held up a hoof to sign that he needed me to give him a moment, then he reached down into his canvas bag and slapped something on the table with a metallic clank. It took me a short second to realize what that thing was, but when I did I yelled out and scrambled backwards off my chair.

“Celestia’s sparkly cunt, Elm, you can’t just slam Fragmentation Mines around like that!” I scrambled back further as he picked it up, shook it and gave it a listen.

“It’s fine, Squawk, it’s not ticking,” he gave it a tap, “deactivated.” It was tossed my way and I caught it gingerly, holding it away from vital organs and my precious face.

“Shit~ alright! Stop paying me in cats, you bastard, and tell me exactly what a bag full of deactivated mines has to do with the plan to get into the Stable? You want to scare out the Dwellers or something?”

“Nah, too easy.” He grinned, “I want to scare the Snips into it.”

The Snips, a small-time gang, mostly harmless.

For a while, the gang myself and Elm belonged to considered them completely harmless until they fought back and wounded a few of our Raiding Party.

Can’t say I blamed them, we were raiding them after all.

These were ponies who simply wanted to be the nice guys next door, share anything they had plenty of and in return offer a short sermon about their founding leader. The name they devoted to him was the Grand Magician Snips.

One time, as I was loading my bags with her apples, I humored a filly named Rose Bed and let her ‘teach me how to be more like GM. Snips.’ This Snips guy was a unicorn who supposedly lived before the Great War. When it came time for the next big bang he became an Overstallion of a Stable. He must have done a good job of it too because even then the minions in his hidey hole quite liked him and listened to him. So much so that when he said it should be safe to go out now after only a few years of being cooped up, they all agreed to open the door. The Balefire hadn’t quite got to their side of Equestria and he successfully led his ponies out of the warren.

For once, these ponies didn’t immediately get their flanks broken into by some big burly mutant or gobbled by a hungry hellhound. Snips found a secluded spot for them in some ancient castle-turned-fortress out in Everfree, claiming he had been shown it in a vision from Luna. They lapped this up like the gullible little cloppers they were, and they turned him into an idol.

The inevitable happened next. Another group of ponies with less scruples showed up and the Snips accepted them in, sharing their valued harvest with the newcomers. The guests liked the fortress so much, they killed old stallion GM. Snips, kicked the dwellers out and kept it for themselves.

Cheerfully accepting the mournful loss and defeat, the Stable ponies cremated their revered leader before moving on in hope that they might find newer, safer pastures. They never did. They just bounced from town to ruined town.

Each time that they lost a member to the fate of the Wastes, another fresh disciple took their place. When we finally met the Snips, they were like a pass-me-down broom that had seven new heads and five new handles, so it simply wasn’t the same broom anymore.

I left the filly who told me the story a couple of apples. I still took most of her stuff; it wasn't ‘THAT’ good a story. She was gracious enough to let me. They all were.

Naive and fuzzy creatures have a way of fooling you into believing that you can get away with anything around them. These kids didn’t launch us to stop us walking away with their gear. They didn’t blanch at our profanity or encourage the lonesome of us not to walk away with their prettier mares.

Among other things, it was eventually Elmwood relieving himself in a pot that turned their kind hearts to lead and twisted their smiles to snarls.

The pot in question had only contained the last dust and ashes of their adored founding father, GM. Snips. Elm told them that they should not have left it in a place so prime as to inspire him to urinate into it. That only made it worse.

Following that fateful evening, the Snips armed themselves and scraped their peaceful, generous ways rapidly. They laid traps for us and promised that the spirit of the minister still swimming in the juices of Elm’s waste would one day smite us for our wickedness.

This hadn’t upset or ruined our party. From this point on we saw the matter as healthy sport and a fun rivalry. The Snips accuracy with weapons was deplorable and their tactical warfare was non-existent. We could have picked them all off a long time ago, but it was much more fun letting them think they had a chance of avenging the dishonor brought by my friend’s bladder.

On his last jolly travels, Elm had caught the Snips making camp on the other side the Crystaller Building. Funnily enough, we’d been ridiculously close to bumping into them back when we were looking to settle in the Crystaller building ourselves. They’d packed themselves into a much more exposed settlement with wooden walls and canvas tents. Yet it was as though they’d found air on the moon; they were making such a ruckus that I was surprised that every hungry creature in the wastes hadn’t pounced them already.

Crouched at a gap in their flimsy walls, the pair of us observed the grimy bodies walking around their makeshift village without the slightest clue they were being watched.

I had my modified Carbine rifle under my wing, which was rearranged to fire with a backwards tug of my wings. I could easily hook and unhook my wings from it to switch between shooting and flying in a swift movement. Elm had his rucksack full of useless explosives and his ivory hat and that was it. Part of his plan was not startling these peace-loving muck swimmers any more than we had to.

“You go left, I go right, and then we make as much noise as possible like herding radhogs...” I suggested. I hopped up stealthily and started to move to my position, only to have his leg snag me before I could take more than five steps.

“No. We need to drop back first and plant these under there.” He pointed to the giant broken building topped with a decaying chess knight and gave me a rattle of his bag. Suspicion arose in my mind.

“You want to drop the building on them.”

“No no no, it’s just an incentive, they’re not strong enough to destroy anything, just to make a noise and some smoke and get them running. Like Radhogs!” He had a way of recreating the Riddle-Cat grin from the pre-war Wonderworld books that should have told me sooner that this plot was more twisted than he was making out. Unfortunately, like the blue-dressed filly of those stories, I was already too deep in the rabbit’s hole too pull back out. So, I followed my bonkers General and let him have command.

We kept low and shuffled our way back in the direction we’d come from. We didn’t need to be so covert with the racket the residents were making, heck, one of them was even singing at the top of her voice!

A dewdrop-speckled body drenched in moonlight re-entered my memory at the sound of another voice in chorus and I drowned out the caterwauling in my head with the song of my far more talented pin-up.

It might seem odd to some that Gypsy would sing during sex but to me it was as natural as moaning and squealing through an orgasmic finale. She loved to raise her voice to a song, she explained to me that it gave her no greater high, even compared to knocking old horse-shoes alone. Adding the two was like flicking the bean for that songstress.

First time I heard her lullaby lovemaking, I thought she was just having a singsong. Walking in on Elm’s face snug between her thighs as her pipes played was how I discovered the two were an item and my hopes had been dashed again.

I came out of this revere to find Elm had ushered me into the lobby of the Crystaller Building and was inspecting the foundations. His stub of a tail flicked thoughtfully as he checked out each pillar, skipping from one to the other as contentedly as a carefree foal.

Suddenly, my reflexes were forced to kick in as the dirty cream sack of bombs flew over to me. I seized the boom bag quickly before it could hit anything hard and once safe, threw him a few outraged expletives.

“Relax, potty mouth, I knew you’d catch ‘em. I need you to place the rest of those mines around the pillars on this side.” He clanged a few of the mines he’d already taken out from one hoof to the other like a card trick. “Don’t waste them on the other side, we just want our friends in Boom Town to think this place is coming down on them.”

Cli-Clank!

Each mine had some of its magical enchantment left so that every time it was introduced to a surface, it would eagerly glue itself to it. Honestly, the whole process was fairly satisfying, letting the circular objects fly from my claws without any assistance from me. You could liken it to cracking an aching joint or popping a bug. It wasn’t meant to feel good, it just did.

Cli-Clank!

“Did I ever tell you the time the Junkrats tried to catch me?”

“Nope. Is this fact or fiction?” Cli-Clank. My feathers ruffled happily under my patched and worn griffon armor.

“Everything I tell you is 100% fact, Hen! I just like making the details more exciting.” The stallion had disappeared around a post, but I could still hear the grin inside his voice.

“The Junkrats had this thing about me, they thought if they had me on their side, they’d own the Wastelands. Isn’t it funny how everypony seems to think that? Back in those days, I was an itty-bitty-bit too predictable, I had this pathway I liked to take along Cheddar-Cheese canyon, the view would go on for miles...” his voice grew misty for a moment, as if he really did remember a landscape better than the bleak lands we lived in today.

“Those pesky Junk-rodents figured this out. One evening, during one of my walks, a figure in Junkrat overalls sits in my way.

“Being the ever-polite gentlecolt that I am, I gave them a friendly greeting. No reply. I ask them how they are doing. Still nothing. Finally, I try to shake them, just to see if they got caught in some kind of spell.”

“Well, it was! Except the spell was on me. Suddenly, I realize the figure was just a mannequin put down to trick me, which it did. Soon as I touched the dummy, I was all frozen up, incarcerated in a block of ice. The Junk rats soon slipped out of their hiding spots and squeaked about having caught the witty and wild Deadwood.”

Cli-Clank.

I was almost done. I had one mine left. If I hadn't been enjoying myself with the task in paw and the quirky ramblings of my colleague, I might have been more spatially aware. As it was, I had a whole back half of me unguarded. I hadn't remembered the important rule when it comes to raiding; don't stare at one spot for too long.

“But, obviously, you escaped. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, buddy.” I peeked out from my wall, but he was still missing. His voice seemed to suggest he was upstairs now, somewhere near the escalators. What was he doing up there?

“Of course, I did! See, as they were figuring out how to carry me away, I suggested the smartest should do it. You know, the leader. Or the one who came up with the plan. Or the one who found the dummy. Or the one who cast the spell on the figurine.

“That started an argument. ‘I did this,’ ‘no I’m the leader,’ ‘well I cast the spell,’ bitch bitch moan. In all the confusion, they dropped the crystalized me into the ravine, shattering the ice and freeing me. I grabbed a branch before I fell and smashed up too, then I climbed the rest of the way down and made my escape...”

That lifted a chuckle out of me. That story didn’t deserve any praise, but I applauded him anyway.

“Oh, the cleverness of you,” I offered sarcastically, “so really, was that true or not?”

Cli-Clank, went my last mine in the resulting silence.

“Oh, Woody, I’m waiting!” I tried out my best impression of Gypsy in heat. It didn’t even get a titter.

“Elm?” I asked with more trepidation.

Cli-click.

This sound was right beside my head. I could hear the barrel rattling in uncertain hooves, but it was still a point-blank range. That, and the fact that I could hear other rifles raising in my direction, made me obey the next commands without complaint.

“Turn around, impure one.” Peeped the young and very familiar voice. Shit.

Rotating my body steadily with my talons high, I stared up the barrel of the gun into the eyes of the Snips mare holding it. I gave a long, uncomfortable sigh and sagged.

“Hello, Rose Bed.”

The murmurs began as I was marched through the decrepit gates, followed by a pair of angry cries from the guards holding the gate. These increased to jeers as we passed the first huts, ten or twelve residents following alongside us. Once the center of the shanty town was in sight, the calls had become an uproar and things began to get thrown.

My sharp griffon eyes scanned everything the dump had for data on my situation. I couldn’t see Elmwood, no matter where I looked. I trusted him just enough not to leave me in the predicament but there was no sign nor skull of the horse. The scales in my mind were tipping towards niggling doubts.

“It’s been a while, Rose Bed, how have you been, eh?” The point of my small talk was to show that theses ponies didn’t frighten me. A pomato narrowly missed my beak and I glared at the thrower, who filched back to my great pride.

“Eyes ahead, whore!” the simple pastel blush mare screeched back at me.

“Whoa! Language! Where was that tongue when we were bed buddies? That would have spiced things up much more than ‘Oh, gosh, Grand Magician Snips, oh yes, send me to th~’ “

Thud!

A black U-shape spiraled across my newly blurred vision.

“That was a shoe! Who throws a shoe?! Honestly!” Griffons can make themselves look much more intimidating on their hind legs with their wings flaring. In my dark and gleaming armor, I added an extra ounce of menace.

“Maybe it knocked sense into you, heretic! Get down before I make an example of you!” The circle of cold metal that jabbed under my fur was enough to make me obey without question.

A gnarled stallion sat upon a thorny throne of derelict broken wood, artefacts and rags. It had all been thrown together by these Scavvies from the surrounding wastes. When he spoke, it was with a dull monotone to his voice that gave me the impression of a horse who was bored with his lot in life.

"Silence, silence, everypony might I please have a bit of silence here?" His skinny forelegs were now chicken wings flapping needlessly at the crowd. They dropped to a hushed scorning as he cast his raven eyes at me.

“Ms. Crow. You may be a Miscreant, but you can still leave here with a small punishment for your crimes against the ponies of the Great Magician lord. All you need to do is tell us the location of your scarred friend.”

“King Mud,” I saluted cynically. He was one of the few Snips remaining whom I recognized instantly. Muddy Waters had been chief of the group’s security when his previous leader, Feather Bed, passed away from complications caused by a knife jabbed in between his ribs. Nobody caught the culprit, which was a shame because King Feather was a much more interesting fellow.

Since our group was still in the vicinity and available to have the blame landed upon us, hooves were jabbed in our direction. Not a thought was given as to whether the knife had been seen in Mud’s care before the incident, nor did they question his instant desire to stand in and bring justice to their fallen ruler.

Nopony had to be the greatest detective. Maybe it was in protest of this event that Elm did his business on their poor forefather.

Knowing they hadn’t caught Elm made my beak curve with smug satisfaction.

“Still naming your children after the places they are born? I can’t wait to meet Shit Hole and Cat Piss~”

Thwack!

The butt of Rose’s gun let the back of my head taste a lesson on behalf of my mouth. I swore, which was deserving of seconds in her opinion.

“Oww.” My eyes wheeled on her. “Hit me with your rifle again and we’ll see if it can go further into your wee bucket than my claw went…”

The handle raised again. My clenched claw did likewise.

“Enough.” One word from her leader was enough for the filly to decline her weapon. I only lowered my paw when I was certain she was not going to strike again.

“You are going to tell us where Mr. Wood is.” He switched on a false-softness, getting up out of his seat and coming down half way to me. “None of us want to see you harmed, Ms. Crow. However, justice must be brought to those who do not see the error of their ways. If you do not tell us where Mr. Wood is, we will be forced to pry it out of you.”

I couldn’t stop the laugh if I’d been the most serious bitch alive.

“You’re talking about torturing me for information, aye? You cannot even say the word! What’s the plan, tickle me with your feather dusters?” As much as I was enjoying myself, I was starting to get concerned that I hadn’t seen Elm poking his head up from amongst this crowd.

“For that, we’d need feathers, Ms. Crow.”

Letting my eyes off of the spoiled monarch for a moment turned out to be a mistake as he must have signaled to his loyal disciples surrounding me. In an instant, the four ponies had launched themselves on top of me and wrestled me down.

With a fuller stomach I may have had the energy to put up more of a fight. As it was, my chin was impacting the dirt with a snap, my beak snipping a clumsy corner of my tongue. I could taste the cut as I growled and swore at my captors.

They struggled with my wing and tugged it out wide, my attempts to keep it in against my side failing. All it took was a stallion to kneel on it, and I was vulnerable. I was forced to glare at the glorified greasy, silver bearded stallion. He gestured lazily.

“Would you please, Rose Bed?”

As I continued struggling, I heard Rose’s gun clatter, followed by a scratch of metal. There was a tug on my wings armor, several snaps and the full piece was ripped away, exposing my cobalt and speckled feathers. With a perturbing breeze, I felt the serrated and almost certainly rusty knife pushed underneath the join of my wing and pressed hard.

“We do not want to do this, Ms. Crow. An eye for an eye after all~”

“I... I think I misheard you. You want me to tell you where Elmwood is, r-right?” I stammered. Out came a sigh in relief.

“Yes, thank you. Where is he?”

“Oh... w-well... the... the last time I saw him... the last time I saw him...” I looked swiftly around at them all.

“Yes?”

“L-last time I saw him.... he’d bent your mother over that pathetic throne of yours and was banging the Grand Magician Snips out of her.” The sneer passed over my beak before I could regret it. His second sigh was much more long suffering, he waved a signal and the knife moved.

"SQWARK!"

My brain was a screeched nest of evil gulls. My feathers were viper bites along the entirety of my wing. My voice took on a mind of its own and cursed every single one of them and their parentage twice over in pain. This was it, I believed, this was going to end with me losing my wings and maybe even my life to some prissy pansy ponies.

At some point, they stopped. I’m not sure when. The mocking cries had stopped. The knife had been dropped. The fur in my side was seeping wet tulip petals. My blurry eyes raised once more.

Nobody was watching me anymore. All eyes were staring in horror at the throne. I squinted, trying to encourage my eyes to co-operate as I gazed up as well.

Perched on the landfill, there was a figure. At first, I assumed his coat was coal and his face smoky. As my vision improved, I realized his was in fact dressed in a shadowy cloak, with his hood thrown up and only the ghoulish nose and smirk visible. A short-pointed erection was presenting itself from beneath the glooms of this being’s forehead. It did not look like a living unicorn.

“It’s one of the Four! Death!” Cried one mare.

“The Four have come for us!” Screeched another.

Across the wastes, voices whisper ghost stories about the Four. Death-thirsty horses capable of changing their shapes with agendas set to eradicate the remaining irradiated life from Equestria. Parents told their foals these tall tales in hopes that they might grow to be better than their corrupted and crooked elders. However, with such dark and blood-soaked legends to their names, even the wisest mares and stallions still quivered upon their horseshoes at the merest mention of their names.

“Silence!” Boomed Death, putting on an impression oddly similar of King Mud, even waving his hooves in the same manner. His horn twinkled, a green flicker on its curved and decayed tip.

“Sir, yes sir,” Whimpered the pathetic king of the dump, “please, we are simple folk, have pity on~”

“I demanded silence!” Snarled Death, slamming a hoof down. They all dropped into worried, trembling sobs.

“That is better. Pity shall be taken if you all obey.” His eyes fixed upon mine and a flash of blue twinkled through the eye holes. Upon his cloak was irregular, unusual markings. It was the stitching of the underside. He had it on inside out.

That’s when I had my suspicions confirmed. Even in agony, I was still smiling hard, something I should have kept in check. However, seeing these idiots trembling after what they’d done to me was worth a grin.

It didn’t go unnoticed. I saw Rose Bed stare at me, then at the figure, and squinted at the figure. Then, she bounced forth, gesturing a hoof up at the figure.

“I ask only one thing from you,” He continued to cry, “give me the bird, and I shall let you all live. Show me favor and I will show you a safe place to- “

“It’s him!” interrupted my ex abruptly.

“Stand down, Sister Rose Bed, you shall get us all killed,” whimpered Mud. She stood defiant.

“He is no Changeling of Death. That is Deadwood!” She snarled, jabbing the air in the hooded figure’s direction.

“What?! Explain this nonsense! I shall destr~”

“Take off the ceremonial cloak of the Great Mage, you disgusting swine!”

The posturing skeleton sagged in defeat and then whipped his hood back, snatching his bone head and twisting it up to reveal the panda-eyed face hidden beneath.

“Surprise! Hello there, how are you all doing?” He flopped into the garbage chair, wiggling his flank into it to get comfy as the rest of the crowd gasped, dumbfounded by the yet more brazen behavior from the wastrel. He twirled his hoof at all of them.

“Go on, point your guns at me, I’m sure it will make you all feel much better.” Every weapon available to hoof applauded his crafty appearance.

Elmwood’s expression was ominous. I knew something severely destructive was coming just from the glassy clouds over his usually sparkling pupils. His soulless windows appeared when he was at his cruelest and most unsympathetic. The lidded curtains drooped listlessly on his eyes, almost attempting to shut before he had to witness whatever vindictive deed he would inflict.

The unrest that welcomed me into town was nothing compared to the nest of horrid hornets these ponies turned into at the sight of their unfazed demon. Everything tossed seemed to deflect around and past the unmasked Elmwood. King Mud attempted to regain the control.

"Mr. Wood. You will hoof yourself over to us at once and~"

“Nice new digs!” Elm could shout louder. "I love the pointy chair! I might have one of my own, make it out of swords, you know, practical things like that…”

"Mr. Wood~"

“And what a view!” He gave a shrill whistle, spinning around. His borrowed cloak jumped off of his back momentarily to flash his Cutie Mark to them all. He marveled up, his forelegs spread in reverence. “The Crystaller building. Pretty … tall, right? You see that writing up there? Yeah, that was me. Not going to brag but it was really, really hard.”

"STOP TALKING!" Snapped the weathered horse, stamping a hoof and spraying as his spoke, "you are now our prisoner, you are at our mercy you both have nowhere else to go!"

"You're not going to win in a shouting battle with him..." I mumbled.

"You're right." the cloaked colt crumpled. A bolt of triumph flashed over the king's expression. The mask’s horn flashed jade for another odd second, enough to catch my gaze.

"Good. Now, come down from there, despoiler, so we might~"

"Not yet." Elm offer almost apologetically.

"What?"

"I have an apology to make!" He called to the audience. The king attempted to tell him they were far beyond apologies, but their new town crier wasn't stopping. "I am sorry for mistaking the ashes of your dead guy for a rest room. In my defense, you did put him a wide pot that was just the right size for my~"

"Silence him!" Ready rattles proved the crowd was ready to complete this order. I tried to push my captors off in an attempt to save my friend.

"WAIT wait wait!" he held his hooves up, attempting to wave them down, "If you kill me you'll never find out where I've hidden those ashes!"

"Wait!" agreed Mud and marched forward, thrusting his hoof to Elm accusingly. "You lie!"

"I swear on... what was his name? Grand Master Snorts? If you kill me before you check, you'll never find it. You lot, you never learn to keep the things you treasure the most under lock and key, away from busy hooves," The forelegs wiggled, then crossed confidentially, despite danger and death surrounding him. Mud was trying to hastily weigh his options and quell the rising panic in his people.

"Rocky Path! Check the chamber of our Great Magician!" He pointed to a long, blonde maned stallion bowed and dashed into a glorified shrine, even with twinkling fairies around the door. The fear-stuck scream answered Elm in the affirmative, but the fool still scrambled back out to answer his nothing-master.

"The ashes of the Great Magician, they're gone!" He threw up his gun and tugged his trigger in fury. Five or six bullets flew over Elm's ducking head before Mud bellowed at them to stop.

"He's right! If we kill him and we've lost our Great Snips forever," He stormed onto the platform and climbed up to face the grinning ghastly fiend, "Tell us! Where have you hid the Great Magician?" Smack! "TELL US!"

Regardless of the foot he'd just received to his snout and the hot tear running from one nostril, he was still giving the older stallion and sleepy-eyed sneer.

"A Stable."

"Liar! There's not a Stable close enough for you to reach in the time it took us to find your friend here!" each word was phlegm crossing the boundary from mouth to laughing face, not ceasing it in the slightest.

"Oh yes there is. I can take you all there, you just need to release my friend and not shoot either of us."

"He's a liar!" yipped Rose Bed from beside me, "We should torture them both for information!"

"Why did you stop hanging around that filly, Crow?" gawked Elm in elation, "I like her! Howevs, I'm not lying. Also, I have a plan that will stop you all from killing, maiming or seriously injuring me or my friend." I couldn't help feeling he was a little late to be offering that as my wing throbbed wrathfully.

"What plan?" snorted Muddy.

"I'm so glad you asked!" My clown-prince chum leapt onto the top of the throne and gestured to the tower. "You see that bust up there? The head, yes? Inside that is a dusty but very active Balefire bomb, and if you all of you do not follow me in, oh, three minutes and forty-three seconds, that building will be coming down to total Manehattan and you lot along with it."

He made sure he had their attention before he continued. “My friend here has placed charges all over the bottom of the building. Three minutes and then its Equestria’s Apocalypse 1.5! There’s no time to stop them all. Just enough time to get to the stable if you start running with us.” They all blinked at him in dumb suspension, the horror of his words sinking into them all.

“You lie!” Mud had never sounded less sure of his words.

“He doesn’t!” Warbled Rocky Path, “when we found her, she was putting plates on the pillars of the building. Oh, Great Magician Snips save us, they’re going to destroy us!”

Chaos fueled the crowd as they created a choir of terror. The ponies pinning me flew away to their friends and families. The town devolved into madness and my friend was at the pinnacle of it, still smiling eagerly.

I did not hear what he said to the wide-eyed Mud as he turned to him, but I did hear the wizened horse hollering to his people to follow us as Elm leaped down, galloped through the distressed obstacles and lifted me to my feet by my good wing.

I had enough time to look at the wing. Despite scarlet ribbons drizzling from the gash beneath it, my dear wing was still attached. I’d need aid soon, but for now I was going to live. That didn’t stop me snatching Rose by the skull as she faltered beside me. I caught a taste of her fear as she reached for her gun, but I was faster. I pushed her hard into the nearest wall with an angry screech and moved up my talons, ready to kill.

Elm stopped me with a strong hoof. It was one of the few times he did stop me fulfilling an execution.

“Run!” He pulled me so hard towards the opening back into Manehattan that I had no chance to argue.

Of course, as we burst out of the exit of the Snips’ homestead, I still couldn’t help applauding Elm for his plan thus far. I checked over my shoulder hurriedly.

“It’s working, they’re following!” My head twisted back to him. I was loud enough for just him. “They think the story is real, Elm!”

“Don’t stop!” He pushed ahead. His hooves fell like there really was a potential world ending bomb in the Crystaller Building. I almost questioned the fact myself.

We rounded one corner and pushed towards a theatre almost whole amongst the rubble of its brothers and sisters. As we were nearing it, Elm skidded to a stop momentarily and brought his organic hard hat off of his head.

“Unicorn horns make great antennae. Their range can reach for miles.”

For a moment, he confused me. However, when he turned the skull around, a finally saw what he had concealed inside of it. A remote.

He jabbed at the button before he dropped the skull, returning it to the rest of its separated, thin owner with her hoof still extended to the theatre. I did not have time to realize that this was the remains of Clover.

BOOM.

It wasn’t just an explosion. It was the ground being pulled from underneath by unseen claws. It was the thunder of a million hooves charging over every sense in my body. It was a beast shaking my ragdoll body.

I turned to see flames barfing from below the Crystaller Building, toxic fumes puffing from its jagged windows and filling the sky with an early, unstoppable night at a great speed. For a moment, it really had just been a smoke and light show to scare the Snips.

In the next few moments, I learned that Elmwood had lied to me.

SCREEECH. CRACK. CRUNCH.

The Crystaller Building lurched, turned its enormous vandalized head towards us. With its eyes set on the screaming ponies running from it, it toppled.

"Oh Fuck! You really ARE trying to kill me!"

<sub>Footnote: Quest Failed - Snip Snips

Quest Begun - Gotta Knock A Little Harder...</sub>

Author's Notes:

Want to discuss the story? Follow me to the Scoundrel’s Settlement on Discord...

Song for this chapter: Nobody Gets Out Alive by Samuel L ‘Mofo’ Jackson (from Hitman’s Bodyguard)

I hope you enjoy this chapter! The time meeting the Snips took a lot longer than I expected it to!

Thanks for reading. Soon we'll be in Stable T-Thirty, and we'll find out why the Snips were important...

kind regards,
all good things
Duskhoof