//------------------------------//
// Demon Without Horns 
// Story: Tiger and Demon: A Manehatten Love Story 
// by Brony_Fife 
//------------------------------//

Tiger & Demon, Part II: Demon Without Horns	



"Whenever I approach ANY character, I want them to be likeable, even if she's a murderer."
~Tara Strong, voice of Twilight Sparkle. 







The trip to the Commissioner's office is short and wordless. Cops sittin' around, talkin' to each other, perps bein' led about the precinct. Sounds of papers shuffled, phones ringing, droning voices. Before long, I'm at the Commissioner's office. Lockdown opens the door and leads me in.

The first thing I notice about our Commissioner is that she's a fuckin' slob. Probably sleeps in her office a lot. 

There's an ironing board outta the wall with clothing on it that I'm not sure was ever washed. Papers and files are strewn all over the place, with filing cabinets stuffed with even more papers and files. Window shades are lopsided, letting in only a few slivers of sunlight. A pizza box sits on the floor with leftovers still in it. A trashcan sits next to her desk, perfectly empty. Pictures struggle to hang on the wall, captured days long since gone. A water cooler is here, but it's almost empty, with a few sticky notes with scribbly hoofwriting stuck to it. 

There's a little purple baby dragon in here, strugglin' to maintain some kind of cleanliness in this office, and Celestia's sweet ass, do I pity him for it. He turns to me and there's this look on his face. His green eyes narrow as his lips form this tough-guy frown. Lockdown nods to him, and then leaves.

I look around awkwardly. The baby dragon continues his cleaning for a few moments. "Commish isn't here right now," he says finally. 

I raise an eyebrow. "Why not?"

I get That Look for the second time today. After a second, the dragon shakes his head and continues cleaning. Kid's got balls. He's in his boss' office alone with somepony he likely already knows is a murderer and he's takin' it as only an inconvenience. Of course, I'm shackled and can't do a whole lot, and I don't look intimidating. But still.

The adrenaline I felt in the jail cell earlier has finally begun to wear off, and my hangover knocks at my head, reminding me it's still there. I siddown on my haunches while I rub my achin' forehead. I hear some water running. The baby dragon hands me a cone-cup of water.

I forget the magic restrainer that's fastened to my horn and wonder, like a moron, why I'm havin' such a hard time lifting a fucking cup. The baby dragon rolls his eyes and points to his own forehead. I sigh and just grab the damn thing with my hooves. I'll never figure out how pegasi 'n earth ponies handle these things with their hooves; it's not like a cup was made with hooves in mind.

I down the water like I been in a desert the past few weeks. The cigarette from earlier left me thirsty, and while I would'a preferred a nice cup of coffee, the water helps my hangover, however slightly. I hoof the cup back to the dragon and thank him. He don't say nuttin', but puts the cup in the trash bin. There's more silence as he goes right back to cleaning and organizing the best he can.

After a while of waiting, I hear muffled voices outside the door. One'a them's female. I assume it's the Commissioner on her way back to her pigsty-slash-office. I try pressin' my ear to the door, but still can't make out exactly what they're sayin'.

Suddenly, I hear Lockdown mumble somethin'. The Commissioner thanks him. Sounds of hoofsteps coming to the door. I back away just as she walks in, and she enters the room like a shadow creepin' on a wall. 

I seen pictures of her before and saw her on the television for press conferences and other bullshit, but it ain't anythin' like meeting her in person. Like most ponies, she has to look down at me, and as she does, she has this grin that makes my gut turn upside-down. When she was in front'a cameras, she always had this "all business" air to her, like she was an angel guarding the gates to Paradise. But this grin that's on her now proves to me she was a demon all along—a demon pretending to be an angel, and those gates don't lead to Paradise.

She's purple: purple coat, purple eyes, even her dark blue mane seems to eagerly push the purple at me like it's cocaine. Other ponies might compliment her color scheme, sayin' she's like a pleasant evening. Maybe that was true once. But now? That hue reminds me'a bruises. She's bruised all over, covered in wounds that refuse to heal or mend. 

Her dark trench coat looks dirty but not ragged or threadbare, so I assume she bought a new set instead'a just cleanin' her old clothes. She wears midnight-black boots, all caked with mud 'n muck. My eyes fall to her snow-white scarf, since it's the cleanest article she wears. There's obviously some pride put into that scarf, not a bit of dirt on it. I’m caught afterward by the hat she wears, a black porkpie. 

I recall that the Commissioner’s a Bearer of the Elements of Harmony, one of six. Her Element was Magic (I think) and she's a unicorn. 

No greeting. Not even a grunt of acknowledgement. She closes the door behind her with her hind leg and walks by the baby dragon like he isn't here either. She removes her coat and throws it on her desk as she makes her way to the file cabinet. She opens it, rifles through the incomprehensible mess.

Suddenly, she groans and slams the filing cabinet shut. She turns to the dragon. "Spike, where's his file?!"

Spike sniffs as he realigns a few of the pictures on the wall. "On your desk? Like where you asked me to put it?" I fight the urge to smile. Kid's got some serious brass.

The Commissioner looks under the coat she threw on her desk and under it is a lone file with the name SANDERS, BARITONE. She gives the dragon an aside glance and grits her teeth. He ignores her. I realize I'm having too much fun watching all this.

"Spike," she says. "Go wait in the safety room." Her voice is one that commands, and the baby dragon obeys.

She grabs the file and opens it up, turnin' the pages inside like she's looking over an old photo album. She looks up at me, greeting my eyes with hers. Hers are purple. Bruises. She looks at me disdainfully, through bruised eyes.

"All right, you're probably wondering why I brought you here. Yes, your being wanted on multiple accounts of murder IS a reason." She flips through the file some more. "But probably not in the way you think." Another page turn. Her lips purse.

Her lips are something I hadn't really noticed before, pulled back by that creepy grin she had, but now that they're there, visible on her face, I wonder why they're not visible more often. They're beautiful lips, the kind I can imagine softly pressing themselves over every inch of an equine body, tenderly, lovingly. They kiss her children's cuts, her lovers' mouths, her parents' faces. They're angelic.

Then the lips disappear and the grin returns and I'm reminded she's no angel. She's a demon smiling a demon's grin. Her bruised eyes shoot back to me as she snorts, fighting a laugh.

"Killed a priest, huh?"

I shrug. "Boss said he wasn’t dependable."

A pause that lasts forever. I'm expecting That Look, the look that Lockdown and Spike have already given me.

But I don't get it. The Commissioner keeps her demon grin, her angelic lips spread too far apart to be beautiful. Her teeth have been yellowed, not by time or by coffee stains. They're hideous—long and bent like bars on a prison cell door left to rot. The worst part is they look like they belong there, in her head, on her face. 

Her eyes switch to the file, then back to me. She puts the file down, her hooves on either side of it, and leans over her desk, looking like a crazed judge eager to pass capital punishment. I feel I'm gonna get worse.





Our eyes lock, and I realize he's staring at me with that false coolness most crooks possess. It's the very same coolness they use when they wanna disguise how fucking scared they are. He might not know what I have planned, but he knows, deep in his gut, that it isn't gonna be much fun for him.

The file in front of me, like a book full of his most embarrassing moments. Every paper in it contains all the info I could glean off his friends. When they told me all about his little adventures, I could hardly believe them myself. All the hits and the murders he'd been involved in. Most of his victims could only be found in pieces, with many of them never found at all.

He started out smalltime. Heists. Taking care of dead bodies. He and an associate of his got caught burying one, and he killed the witness and buried her too. It was his first kill. He became better and better at killing, until finally Filthy Rich decided to make him one of his prime enforcers. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do.

It was last night, though, that I saw this guy, this Baritone Sanders, in action. He was piss-drunk, probably having a lousy week. Being that in-debt with a mafia don can do that to anypony. When somepony gets that frustrated and angry, they usually take that out on other ponies—on friends, on wives, on girlfriends, on anypony they can get ahold of. 

But the police were alerted to a massive attack on an entire block. All those alarms, all those calls for help... Shit, even I was scared at first. By the time we'd gotten there, there were bodies hanging off telephone poles, bloodstains on walls, carriages and cars and lampposts all bent and warped and gnarled like surrealist art pieces. 

This guy was an unstoppable, untouchable beast, just like his friends had said. I saw him that night. His unicorn horn protruding proudly from his head like an erection aching to be stuffed into something soft, glowing like it can't wait for its chance to get buried. Above him was a glowing lamppost, uprooted from its station like a plucked dandelion.

Like I said, the guy was drunk, and he swung that lamppost and proved it. Knocked the head off one of my guys like he was playing golf. He giggled a bit (And inwardly, so did I) as the head bounced off one of our cars. My unicorn boys began firing their guns at him, only to drop a load when none of the bullets reached him.

The bullets all stopped, like they were caught by something invisible. All glowed that same orange that held the lamppost. Baritone laughed, and it sounded like a roar, his surprisingly deep voice singing a drunken song about a fallen god. I was lucky to get down in time to avoid getting ripped to shreds by the bullet storm he threw back at us. Most of my boys weren't so lucky.

"I lost a lot of my boys last night," I tell him. "You tore 'em up like they were nothing. Like they were the nothings they always were. The unicorns, the Earth ponies, the pegasi... Tartarus, you ripped 'em up without even lifting a hoof." I add a chuckle. I can still hear the bullets singing as they tore through Squeaky Clean and Rimshot, ripping through them like a swarm of angry bees.

His expression doesn't change. His strikingly blue eyes, fierce and without any shred of remorse, blink. I'm almost amazed by how blue they are. Like

(hers)

an ocean. 

(Just like)

an ocean that rips and rumbles and covers most of a planet. Godlike. 

(Just like hers.)

But unlike

(hers)

there's no sense of melancholy mixed with amusement, no daydreams, no smile hiding behind those eyes. There's no constant, almost electrical activity going on behind them. There's just focused, godlike power.

I lean forward more, until my eyes are a few inches away from that pair of ocean-blue gods. 

"You," I whisper. "You're a monster, Baritone." I flash him That Grin. The grin I save for intimidation. Most ponies think a scowl can get you the fear you want, but I find the reverse is true. There's something especially... primal... about this grin I've perfected. This grin that has absolutely no sympathy, no happiness, no friendliness. Something about it that makes other ponies shut their fucking mouths and listen. 

"You kill other ponies, not because you're paid to do it. Although, that IS what got you started isn't it? The money? All to pay off debts that weren't yours. But before long, you got so good at what you did, that you began to love it."

It's quick and I almost miss it, but I see it. It jumps past his sparkling blue eyes like a ghost, but I finally see it for myself. He's afraid. I almost congratulate myself, but it isn't me he's afraid of. No, he's afraid of himself. The monster that's in him. I giggle, and he knows that I saw it. Saw his fear. Tasted it, fleetingly blissful as it was. He's a kitten, but there's a tiger in him, and it's no friend of the kitten's, and it wants to roar and shred and kill and eat like it did last night.

He isn't there yet, though. He's capable of doing terrible things to ponies, and I saw that last night with my own two eyes. Golfswing decapitation. Hornet swarm bullets. No morals. No restraints.

But he isn't quite "there" yet; he has not embraced his inner monster. The pussy in him probably sobs into a pillow or something at night when he considers all the terrible things the monster in him did during the day.

But the monster that's in him, it's huge and wants to dominate. There's something desirable about that. I want that monster. And I want it bad.

"You love killing others. It took a shitload of alcohol to make you sober, but you realized it last night, so you rampaged through Manehatten. Through my city, killing anypony unlucky enough to get in your way." I giggle again, fighting myself. I want this monster. But not yet. Don't skip straight to the orgasm when there's foreplay to be had.

"You are precisely the kind of pony I'm looking for, Baritone."

I let those words hang in the air. Finally, he asks, "Whatta you mean?" Celestia, I nearly melt at the sound of his voice. It lacks the animal sound of his rampage last night, and if I were younger, less experienced (and more whole), I'd probably have swooned like some teenybopper at a Golden Throat concert. But that voice, deep and rich and powerful, even lacking the ferocity, was a force just like his godlike eyes. When you hear his voice, you fucking listen.

I recline a little, then lean forward and rest myself on the desk, folding my forelegs as I lean downward. I can tell he's trying his damnedest not to look at my raised rump, but I catch his eyes going up occasionally anyway. I giggle, making sure my voice is deep. Sultry. Inviting. Nothing gets a guy's attention quite like the sound of a mare that wants.

"Never mind why I want you," I tell him. "Does it ever matter to you? The why?" I look to his horn again. It's a beautiful thing to see, so solid and proud, even though it's both short and clamped with that ugly and uncomfortable anti-magic clasp. I close my eyes for what I hope passes as a blink and I imagine that horn in my mouth, imagine what this monster tastes like.

"It doesn't matter why I want a monster like you, Baritone. What matters is that you are going to work for me."





I can't help it. 

I burst out laughing.

I try my damnedest to keep myself throughout this conversation (and she's a manipulative bitch, too; clever and mischievous like all the best mares). I held my glare when she tried intimidation, and I held it when she was tryin’na gimme a stiffy. 

But this? Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

She's lookin' at me like she wasn't expecting this reaction. Her bruised eyes bulge like zits about to burst. Those angelic lips of hers are twisted into a shape that makes me laugh harder. Suddenly, the lips disappear and those teeth come back. The angel dies again and the demon comes back and she's fucking pissed.

The next thing I know, the desk she leans on is on top of me, its contents flyin’ everywhere, slamming me to the ground with all its weight. The air goes out of my lungs and swims away. My greatest fear jumps to the front of my mind in an instant, that primal fear a pony my size always has. The same fear insects have. That fear of somethin' bigger'n you comin' down, fast and hard, stompin' you and crushin' you before you get any time to think. 

I nearly cry out as the desk lands on me. I'm trapped between it and the floor. Suddenly, I feel the air crawling back into my lungs, crawling like an abused lover back for more punishment. The photographs from the file are next to my face. I shouldn'ta looked… but I did.

And there it is. 

Proof to her claim. Proof that I'm a monster, that I'm the monster she seeks. Photographs of the bodies and the pieces of bodies. The pieces of the ponies, many whose only "crime" was owing money to the wrong pony. The ponies I killed just to live a little longer. My eyes lock onto one photo in particular as I feel the Commissioner jump onto the desk, her added weight forcing the air in my lungs back out.

With every jump, she lands twice as hard as she did the first time. She's rough, and she's breathing hard, enjoying herself, loving her dominance over me. Over somepony so much smaller than her. I find my breath between stomps and I seize them, wherever I can, as quickly as I can. We form a rhythm, the two of us; we form a rhythm in an ageless song of abuse. She gives and I receive.

She shouts out words between stomps, angry and primal and vicious. "DON'T! YOU! FUCKING! LAUGH! AT! ME!!!"

Most other ponies would just land a smack on your face to get you to understand they're being serious; but she goes miles ahead and just kills anypony who disses her. I open my eyes between her monstrous thrusts and I see the photograph again.

It's a little filly. I remember her. The memory of killing her: that wire I wrapped around her neck, demandin' her mother to pay up or I'd kill her daughter. 

"Don't do it!" she pleaded, "Don't do it, she's the only good thing I have left!" 

The look of sheer horror in her eyes when her daughter's body, limp and cold, was thrown at her hooves. 

The hours I spent that night, staring into my own eyes through a mirror, looking for a soul...

...and not findin' one. 

That memory gets pounded back into me by this bitch and her desk. Proof that I'm the monster she wants. Proof that I hurt ponies, no matter how innocent they are, just so I can live another day. Part of me wants to just die here, under this desk, getting pounded to mush by this demon. 

The pounding stops, and I hear her panting like she just climaxed. I feel her sit down on top of that desk, recollectin' herself. Even though there's a whole desk between us, I can tell her ass is right on my cock. She's excited, turned on by violence, and strangely, so am I.

A few seconds pass. Finally, she gets off and pushes the desk off me. I feel dizzy and weak, and for a second, I wonder if I'm already on my way out to Judgment. Eyes the color of bruises suddenly pop into my view, that dark blue mane that pushes purple at me like nothing else tickling my neck. I feel soft, angelic lips wrap around my horn as her hooves tenderly hold my face and those bruised eyes close. She moans as she suckles my horn, sliding her tongue up and down like she's gorging herself on her favorite treat.

My eyes snap open as I realize what she's doing. I feel hypnotized, suddenly made hungry by the violence and those angelic lips and that mischievous tongue. She dominates me, dominates this monster, and for whatever reason, I let her. I let her dominate me just like I let everypony else. It hurts, and at the same time, it fees damn good.

Then I see that sometime during her tantrum, her porkpie fell off. I recall again that she's a unicorn.

If she is, where's her horn? This demon don't got one.