The Document of PGS: Chapter 12 Cut Content

This is not the goody I promised, nor is it the actual Document blog that I also promised. You guys know how it is; I like to show you shit from previous drafts to remind you that, no matter how bad things are, they could have turned out far, far worse.

I have three scenes for you. One is an extended version of the Cherry Jubilee scene; originally, instead of just having Snake tranq' her the second she started acting up, there was a prolonged fight where she snapped and brained everyone in the room before Snake took her down. It was cut for time and pacing.

The second is a bit of alternate dialogue between Twilight and Killjoy. As the chapter ballooned in size, I realized that I needed to condense the amount of exposition between the two of them, so I cut that part altogether, along with a minor plot point that Danny and I decided wasn't working. Parts of the dialogue were worked into the final version.

Both are rough, unformatted, and largely unedited, so fair warning. Catch 'em below the break.

Twilight jumped from the couch and interposed herself between Snake and Cherry – at that close range, there was no way he'd miss a shot with that rifle, "discount crap" or no. She placed a placating hoof on Cherry's shoulder. "Cherry, calm down. He's not gonna—"

With a livid cry, Cherry swung the back of her hoof and struck Twilight in the left eye, laying her out on the floor. Her vision swam with blurry stars, and a thick cord of pain writhed from her eye down to her jaw. A cacophony of shouts and thuds and warnings filled the room, but the ringing in her ear made them indistinct.

With a groan, Twilight tried to rise, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. The room was a chaotic, violent mess. She watched helplessly as Jinglebell and Killjoy leaped toward Cherry, only for the earth pony to rip the helmet from Jinglebell's head and smash him in the face with it, then drop it and catch Killjoy in the nose with the bottom of her hoof.

Cherry dove for her saddlebag, shoulder-checking Twilight as she passed, and Twilight tumbled again to the floor and struck her left temple against the couch. Soft as the cushions were, the impact sent a fresh spike of pain shot through her skull from the point of impact. Then came the muted sound of metal-shod hooves clopping rapidly on wood – Goose and the guards stampeding to the rescue.

Dizzy, Twilight struggled to get her hooves beneath her, to clear her now-blurry vision. She blinked, and squinted, and barely discerned Cherry whirling toward Snake, the shotgun braced under her foreleg Snake's hand was on his hip, drawing something out. A gun – a pistol. Her vision was too blurry for her to discern a suppressor; she could only pray that Snake was using this tranquilizer gun.

Laughter rang from Cherry's wickedly grinning mouth. Snake's own gun was only halfway raised. Cherry had done the unthinkable: She had beaten beaten him to the draw.

Goose and her guards couldn't cross the room in time, and Killjoy and Jinglebell were both out cold, as far as she knew. With a split second to act, and doubting her ability to project any substantial magic right then and there, Twilight did the only thing she could think of: She lurched forward and tossed her hooves around Cherry's neck. It was a clumsy effort, and her hooves felt numb and heavy, but she caught her in a punch-drunk hug and threw her own weight backward, wrenching Cherry off balance and off her hooves. Twilight fell, Cherry on top of her, and somewhere in the tangle, Cherry pulled the trigger on the shotgun.

It was like being at the epicenter of a sonic rainboom. The noise sent pain stabbing through Twilight's eardrums, which felt like they were about to burst, but the round didn't strike Snake, or anypony else in the room.

It did, however, shatter the urn on the mantel.

Hickory Switch's powdery remains floated into Twilight's eyes and filled her lungs as she inhaled, while shards of pottery pelted everypony. She coughed and squeezed her eyes shut, covering her face with her hooves to protect herself from shrapnel, losing her her grip on Cherry in doing so. Immediately the mare was battering her body with her hooves, laughing and crying and screaming all at once.

"False friend!" Her hoof landed on Twilight's stomach, knocking the wind out of her. "Liar!" Her hoof crunched against Twilight's throat, and she coughed and gagged for air. "You came for her! You came for her!" Hammer blows to the head, to the face, to the horn, punctuated each accusations. Droplets of something wet splashed on Twilight's face as Cherry pummeled her – tears, Twilight realized. Cherry was crying as she beat her to death.

"You never!" Pound. "Came!" Crunch. "For––"

Behind Cherry, a suppressor hissed.

"Mmmmmeeeeeeuuuuuuuunnnnnnffffffff…"

Cherry's eyes rolled into her skull as her last word slurred into incoherence, and she fell limply on top of Twilight, the weight of her body pressing forcefully against her in a final, albeit unintentional, body slam. Twilight, head ringing, face wet, and gagging for breath, pushed vainly against Cherry's body with hooves that felt numb and clumsy.

Then that weight was gone, lifted off of her. Snake was at her side, leaning in close. Her vision was cloudy, and studded with stars, but she could barely discern the thin crease of the frown on his face. "Is she alright?"

"Give me a moment and I'll let you know," muttered the voice of Jinglebell. She felt hooves traveling over her body, tenderly pressing against spots that Cherry had struck, heard the sympathetic murmurs of the pegasus physician. "I'm not feeling any broken bones – her ribs, her eye sockets, cheekbones, jawbone… lucky. Her horn's intact, too – no fracturing, which is good news. But she took a lot of hits to the head – her face is gonna swell up like an overripe plum for a while, and I wouldn't rule out a concussion."

"What about you, doc?" Snake asked quietly. "You got brained pretty good, yourself. Maybe you should take it easy."

"Maybe you should eat exactly seven dicks. I'm fine. Patronizing mule." Jinglebell snorted. "Try talking to her, see if you can get a response."
A hand pressed against her shoulder, strong fingers curling against her coat. "Twilight." Snake's voice was almost gentle. "Can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me."

Twilight stirred, groaning, ears twitching. She rolled her head, blinked twice at Snake, and curled the edges of her lips into a smile.

"What the heck is a homo?"

Her vision was clearing, enough for her to see relief wash over Snake's face. He chuckled quietly. "Damned if I know. They just started calling me that."

"It's from Slaymare," said Jinglebell. She heard him rifling through his saddlebags.

"Yeah," said Snake, "that doesn't exactly explain much."

"It's a comic," mumbled Twilight. "A comic with a stupid name." She rolled onto her stomach and managed to get her hooves beneath her body. She rose on rickety, quaking legs, the room spinning around her.

Jinglebell pressed something cold against her hoof and instructed her to hold it against her face. She did, and promptly fell over. Jinglebell moved quickly to catch her in his hooves.

"Yeah, I'm downgrading your condition from 'probably concussed' to 'most definitely concussed.' Let's get you on that couch."

"Nuh-uh." Twilight shook her head and pushed Jinglebell away. "No couch, no resting. I'm fine. I'll be fine." Smiling crookedly, at him, at Snake, she added "I took a piano to the head once. This is nothing." She held herself as tall, as straight, as she could, ignoring the tingling, the numbness in her hooves, the stars that winked and blinked in the left side of her vision.

She ran her tongue along her bottom teeth and sighed inwardly. Cracked a molar, on top of everything else.

"'Scuse me, when your doctor says 'you're concussed, go lie down,' the proper response is not to tell him to––"

"Eat exactly seven dicks?" Twilight grinned insolently at him.

Jinglebell flushed and sputtered for a comeback. "You can't – that is my – I am a doctor, you––"

"Enough, Jingles," said Killjoy quietly. She was standing, rubbing her head where Cherry had struck her, leaning slightly on Goosefeathers for support. "She says she's good, she's good."

Jinglebell huffed, looked at Twilight, narrowed his eyes, and frowned. "At least let me treat your facial injuries."

"By all means." Twilight settled gently on her haunches, stifling a pained wince at the sensations that ran through her with every movement she took. Now I know how Applejack must feel.

Beside her, Cherry lay unconscious. The tranquilizer dart, a plume of bright red feather, stuck out the side of her neck. "What about her?" Twilight asked. "What do we do with her?"

"Tie her up and don't let her out of sight." Killjoy eased off Goosefeathers and lowered her hoof back to the ground. "Traumatized or no, she's dangerous. I don't want her flying off the handle again when she wakes up." She glanced at Twilight expectantly.

Twilight sighed and nodded as Jinglebell pressed the cold pack against her face. "Hold that there," the pegasus murmured. "Captain, you sure you don't want me to––"

"Dicks, Jingles. Seven of them. Eight, if you ask me one more time."

She was close enough that Twilight could practically taste the alcohol fumes on her breath. "Sorry about that whole 'making out with you' deal earlier. That was just a test." She waved the hoof looped around Twilight's in an idle circle.

Twilight, frowning, winked away from Killjoy in a flash of pink, reappearing on her other side. Killjoy kept her foreleg curled around the space where Twilight had been for several seconds before noticing; she blinked, looked from side-to-side, found Twilight, and grinned. "Nifty! Forgot you could do that."

Join the club.

"A test for what?" Twilight asked, shaking out her half-numb foreleg. Killjoy's grip had stopped the flow of blood to that limb, and it buzzed as her circulatory system reasserted its presence down to her hoof.

"To see if you weren't a changeling." Killjoy kicked off the ground and hovered in the air beside Twilight. "See, I know I made out with somepony at that wedding, but I was positive it wasn't you. The captain made it very clear to the entire guard that his little sister was one hundred percent off limits, and I don't care how drunk I get, I'm not gonna risk the wrath of Shining that'd come from defiling his precious Twiley." She turned her eyes to the ground, looked downcast. "'Course, that didn't stop some ponies from lookin'..."

"How thoughtful of him," muttered Twilight, rolling her eyes at her brother's overprotectiveness. She wondered if Shining Armor's cutie mark symbolized the impenetrable barrier he'd thrown up around her to ward off anypony who might want to date her.

Not that there've been many takers. Or any.

"But," Killjoy added, looking back at her with a grin, "that part about makin' up for lost time later was a serious offer." She purred.

Until today. And ugh. No thank you.

"Of course, for now, we must restrain our burning passion for one another," said Killjoy with a sigh. "I have rounds to make, duties to attend to. And you have some 'splaining to do. Starting with what the heck you're doing out here in the first place, and why you're mucking around in Dodge with a buckin' homo."

"A…" Twilight blinked. "A what?"

"You know. A homo. You've read Slaymare, right?"

Twilight shook her head, which was evidently the wrong response, because Killjoy groaned and smacked her forehead with her hoof. "You've never read Slaymare? Shining Armor's sister, the nerdy bookworm related by blood to the biggest comic geek in Equestria, has never read the most critically acclaimed adult graphic novel of all time?!"

"Can't say that I have." She might have seen a copy of it in Shining Armor's collection, but the only store in Ponyville that carried comic books tended to cater primarily to the tastes of fillies and colts, not to mares and stallions. And comics had never been her thing, besides. "What's a homo?"

"Freaky science experiments gone wrong, basically. They were supposed to be this whole army of super soldiers bred by the villainous Mooselini as part of his plan to reestablish an Elken Empire in the Marediterranian, but something went wrong, and they ended up conquering––" She stopped, shoving her hooves against her mouth. "Sorry, spoilers. Anyhow, yeah, I took one look at your buddy and thought 'that right there is a homo or I'm a seapony. And I don't shoo-bee no doo, so by the process of elimination, we can conclude that your friend is a homo."

Twilight wasn't sure Snake would like being compared to some sort of genetically engineered super-ape from pony pulp fiction. Maybe being left behind with the flamboyant medical pony was the right call on Killjoy's part.

"Always knew that Slaymare was based on reality," said Killjoy. "Not at all like that Daring Do crap that colts and fillies eat up like hayfries. But yeah, Slaymare's big in the guard. Ask anypony; they'll tell you. Your friend Snake is a homo." She stopped abruptly. "That's his name, right? Snake?"

"Yeah, Snake. Solid Snake."

A smirk ticked up the corner of Killjoy's mouth, and she snickered. "Heh. That means 'penis'."

Everypony in Equestria is a child except for me…