//------------------------------//
// Something Shows Off 
// Story: Up, on the Hill 
// by SilverEyedWolf 
//------------------------------//

Jake looked around the forest before speaking up. "Hey Twilight, who owns this fence and land?"

"Oh," she said, stopping her pace and turning around to look at Jake and the fence. "Uhm, I don't think anyone owns this stretch anymore. The Mayor maintains the fence as a marker for the west entrance of town. Why?"

"It'sa good prop," he said, walking over to it and thumping the top rail and nodding to himself. "Here, lemme see those cans you brought."

She floated over a sack full of empty food cans, and he started pulling them out and lining the top rail. A slight breeze sent one rocking, but Jake put a stone in the bottom of it to keep it steady. After he'd placed four on the top rail, he placed another five on the middle before nodding and walking to the other side of the road.

Twilight watched him walk deeper into the woods before he paused and gestured at her. "Here, you don't want to be close to the targets."

"Oh, sure," she said, trotting to catch up with him. "Why?"

He chuckled. "Never know when my aim will falter, or a piece of lead decides to ricochet off something. The targets don' care about the holes, but you might."

"Ah," she said, paling. "And then..."

Jake chuckled again, pointing at the new skin over his temple. "Ayuh, and then."

He paused, looking back at the fence and muttering to himself. "How far y'think we are?" he asked Twilight.

Her horn lighting up, she replied, "Three-hundred and ninety-nine hooves," she replied.

She smiled up as he looked down at her. "Uh-huh," he muttered, turning back to glare at the fence as though it'd wronged him, personally. "H'many yards d'ya think a 'hoof' is?"

"One hoof is equal to point three yards," she said instantly, "so three-hundred and ninety-nine would be forty-four point three repeating yards."

He looked down at her again. "What in the hell is a repeating yard?"

"Oh, the yard doesn't repeat, the point three does," she told him. Looking as his face transformed around several different emotions, she shook her head. "It's about forty-four yards."

"Mmm," he said, his face clearing as he nodded. Facing the fence, he took six large steps back. "Alright then, this should be good."

Twilight waited for a moment before asking, "Any significance to fifty yards?"

Jake gestured towards the fence with a free hand, the other pulling up the top of the leather bag on his hip. "How well can y'see the cans?"

Squinting, she shrugged. "I can see them alright. I can't read the labels, but I can still see the colors of the peas," she said, pointing at one of the cans on the middle railing. "I'm pretty sure that one's corn...?"

"Alright," Jake said, nodding as he finally untied a piece of cord and pulled the contents of the bag out. "Now, what if I told you I could knock each of those cans off the fence?"

"Well, sure," Twilight said, her eyes flickering away from the fence for a moment before snapping back to the cans. "I mean, a caster could as well, as long as they were trained for ranged applications and had a talent for throwing spells like that."

"Ah," Jake said, a bit sadly. "I was afraid of that. I guess it wouldn't be magic if a mortal man could compete with it, huh?"

Twilight finally allowed herself to look away from the fence and at the... instrument? At the thing Jake was holding. "Is that the... the gun? The same kind that put a-a hole in your head?"

"Nah, that was a rifle," he said, carefully looking over the implement. "Longer range. Uh, better for shooting farther, I guess, since these can go pretty far on a plain." He shook his head. "I've got a Whitworth I stole back in my bedroll, but I need some range for that."

"More than fifty yards?" Twilight asked, moving slightly closer to get a better look at the device.

"Around two thousand," he said, seeing her gaze and flipping the gun around his fingers and brandishing its profile. "Here, just don't try and do anythin' with the trigger, here," he said with a point, "and look to your liking."

"Oh, thank you—" Twilight started before pausing and looking up at him. "Two thousand yards!? Stole!?"

"If you're a good shot, yeah," he said, chuckling. "Ya gotta be able to aim reliably, but I've heard stories of shooters sitting up in trees a mile away getting reliable shots. Plus, you gotta reload the shot through the barrel."

Twilight's ears flicked. "And the stolen part?"

Jake shrugged. "I mean, is it really stolen if the corpse is already cold?"

Twilight's ears flicked back at that. "Jake, are you saying you killed someone for their weapon?"

"Not at all, Twilight," he said, waving his hand through the air as she breathed out with relief. "I killed him because he was trying to kill me."

Twilight looked up at him. "You know that's not better, right? You still killed someone..."

"He shot first," Jake said with a shrug. "Know, you wanna see this or not?" he asked with a twirl of the gun in his hand.

Twilight looked at him for a long few moments. "I don't know anymore," she said. "The way you talked before, it sounded like these were a tool for defense or something like that, but now... Now it sounds like a machine made for death," she whispered.

Jake gave her a hard look. After over a minute, he leaned down and replied, "I don't feel much safer than when my enemies 're layin' at my feet, Twilight."

She met his hard gaze and surprised him when her own eyes sharpened.

"We're going to have to talk about that, Jake, and about your old life," she told him, taking a step as she emphasized her words.

He looked down at her, at the steel of her gaze, and cracked a smile.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, nodding. Straightening his back, he once again offered the weapon's profile. "Now, while your layman might have had one of these for defending his property from robbers and cheats, some people like me sold their services for additional security during travel, and others sell tickets in circuses and trick-shot shows, like Bill Cody's tryin' to do up north."

Twilight frowned as she looked over the wood and metal device he was showing her. "Is a trick shot something like hitting someone with a bullet and not killing them?"

Jake sighed, slumping a little. "No, Twilight, though that is a helluva trick. It's something like tossin' a coin in the air and shootin' the middle outta it or hitting a small target while gallopin' on a horse."

"On?"

"Yeah. See, horses back home didn' talk like you do, so we kept them and rode on them, had them pull wagons and things like that." He scratched the back of his head. "A lot are basically pets too."

"Hrmm," Twilight hummed with a frown before looking at the gun again. "What's this hinge in the middle for?"

Instead of answering, Jake used a thumb to lift a piece on top of the gun and swing half of it down, with a strangely shaped piece of metal rising from the six holes that now showed.

"That's how you load it and unload the spent shells," he said, taking one of the bullets from his belt. Pushing it further down, there was a snapping sound as the piece of metal withdrew towards the holes, and then Jake showed her how the bullet fit into one of the holes. Closing it, he then opened it again, showing her how the piece in the center lifted the bullet.

"And how do you use it?" she asked, moving yet closer to the machine.

"Well, you put your bullets in," Jake said, grabbing five more shots of lead from his belt and quickly feeding them in. "Close her up, pull the hammer back," he said, swinging the top half back with a click before pointing at a strange metal part on the back of the gun, "and then you're set to pull the trigger."

"...That's it?" she asked after a moment, looking up at Jake. "That's all it takes to kill creatures in your world?"

Jake let his hands fall to his sides. "Does it take much more here, then?" he asked quietly. "You have knives; I've seen them in your kitchen. Does your world have swords, Twilight? Is a pony that much harder to kill than a man, that you need more than a blade in the right part?"

"That—!" she started to argue before fuming quietly. "There's finesse required to wield a sword. You can just point this at something and kill it with—"

"Alright then," he said, flipping the gun and holding the wood out to her. "Do it," he said, pointing at the fence with his other hand. "I'll bet you can't hit a single can. Hell, I bet you can't even hit the fence."

She flinched back, frowning up at him, but after a moment, he saw her field surround the handle of the gun, and he let it go.

Twilight frowned as he stepped to the side, and she just concentrated on holding the machine in her field. "It stinks," she complained after a moment.

Surprised, Jake let out a snort and chuckled. "Oil keeps it all working without seizing up, and the powder leaves behind a smell. Like a firework."

Twilight muttered under her breath before looking towards the fence and bringing the gun to bear on the cans. Jake started to move forward and point, but Twilight had already seen the missing sliver on the lever as well as the piece of metal on the barrel.

"Line them up?"

Jake's hand dropped, and he nodded, before squatting beside her, their shoulders lining up.

"Put the front post between the back sights, try and level her off, then pull the trigger," he instructed. "Don't close your eye; it fucks with your vision. And don't forget the sound."

"Language, Jake," she murmured, doing as he instructed and pushing her field out a little more in front of her to get the sights in focus. Angling the gun, she pointed directly down at the old can that had held peas. Taking a breath...

She pulled the trigger.

There was a roar, like dragon-fire mixed with the largest firework ever made, then a meaty thwack right in front of her muzzle. She couldn't quite see what had made the noise, as her body's first instinct had been to clamp her eyes shut and cover her ears with her hooves.

After a moment, she opened her eyes to see the back of Jake's hand nearly touching her nose, the gun barrel pointing straight into the sky as he gripped it tightly.

She heard some muffled speech beside her and turned her head to see Jake smiling down at her.

"Uhm, what?" she asked, pulling her hooves away from her ringing ears. She watched him say something before shaking her head. "Ugh, give me a second, Jake; my ears won't stop ringing."

She watched as his head tipped back, his chest heaving as he was either screaming some short words to the skies or laughing uproariously at her, and she had a pretty good feeling that he wasn't having a religious experience.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," she muttered, rubbing her ears until the ringing started to fade. "Is it always that loud?"

"It is," he confirmed loudly. It still felt as though he was talking through a foot of foam, but she could at least understand him now. "I was sayin' earlier, that was a pretty good first shot. You only almost took off your horn, and the gun didn't twist to either side, so all an' all a good first shot."

"Why'd it almost hit me in the face?" she asked, working her jaw afterward to try and flex some hearing back into her head.

"Things kick like a mule," he said with a shrug. "If you're not ready, it'll either buck you straight back into the ground, or you'll lose grip and it'll hit ya in the face." He smirked down at her. "Still think any creature coul' use one of these?"

"Maybe not without a concussion," she mumbled before looking at the fence. "Why's the can still there? Did the bullet not hit it hard enough?"

Jake snorted before walking forward, gesturing at her to follow.

They hadn't even reached the fence when Jake stopped them, pointing up into the loose canopy. "See that branch, righ' there?"

Twilight looked, narrowing her eyes. There was a thin stem near the end of a long branch, leaking sap from a new break. "Yeah?" Twilight asked, looking at it before returning her gaze to Jake. "Wait, are you saying—?"

"Yuh," he said, nodding. "That's where your shot went. That's why we're facing outta town too. 'Magine one of those flying ponies were passing overhead at the wrong time."

Twilight paled and shivered.

"Now, you ready to watch?" he asked, turning and walking back to where they'd been.

Trotting to catch up with him, she nodded and said, "Sure, Jake. But I already know what the gun does now, mostly, so I guess it's just to see how you use it now."

Jake nodded, turning around as he made it to their old stand. Taking a deep breath, he shook his arms lightly and stared down towards the fence, with the same nine cans sitting there. Gently placing the gun back in its holster, Jake glanced at Twilight and murmured, "You might wanna block your ears."

"Right," she said, her horn lighting as a pair of domed shields popped into existence over her ears. She returned Jake's look and frowned at his smirk. "I know, but it'll stop all noise. So, whenever you're ready."

He nodded before letting out a breath and relaxing his shoulders.

He opened his eyes, gazing hard down the lane between trees they'd found, but hesitated with a glance at her. He raised a pair of fingers to his eyes and gestured at the fence.

"No, I want to see how you work. I'll look at the cans later."

He nodded before dropping his left hand back over the gun. Raising his right hand slightly so that Twilight could see it, he folded down his thumb and pinkie, then his ring finger, his middle, and then—

As the last finger folded down, Twilight felt her eyes focus on his left hand as the last finger folded down before it disappeared.

After a fourth of a second, her eyes snapped to a rising motion in front of him, and she saw his thumb already coming back to rest on the handle. It was quickly covered by his right hand, the tips of his fingers coming to hover just over the hammer.

She watched the gun buck slightly in his hand five times, each time the fingertips of his other hand flicking the hammer back down to facilitate the next shot.

At the last pull of the trigger, his thumb flicked back up, the fingernail catching the latch on top of the gun. With a hard flick of his wrist, the top half flew down and the glittering brass shells flew into the air.

Before the shells could start their descent, his other hand was already up and feeding new projectiles into the holes. With a harsh jerk, the gun was reassembled, and once again his fingertips were flicking the hammer down. Four more bucks of the hand, and all movement ceased.

Twilight blinked, her ears flicking in their domes before she dispelled the shields.

"Jake, you don't have to show off how quick it can fire," she said, looking up at him as he slowly broke open the gun again and withdrew the four spent casings. "I also need to know the accuracy, so let's try again and this time—"

"Twilight," he said quietly before he nodded to the fence.

"There's no—" she started to say before her head completed the movement. She stopped talking as she took in the fence, now completely emptied of its load of cans.

She stared for a moment, eyes searching the rails and looking for a hint of metal, before she turned back and just said, "No."

"No?" he asked, leaning over and picking up the six spent shells he'd ejected earlier.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I've seen war casters in training, and even when they cast area spells, they couldn't hit ten targets in three seconds. Not accurately. You must have hit the rails or something, jostled the cans off."

Jake didn't say anything, merely replacing the gun in its bag before walking towards the fence.

Twilight looked harder at the fence before running to pass him, slowing as she neared the unmarred wood. "Jake, you really don't understand..."

He passed her, placing a hand on the fence and jumping over it in one smooth motion. Taking another few steps, he began picking up cans, carrying them by placing a single finger into the top and pinching them together. Once he'd ran out of fingers, he walked back to the fence and started placing all of them on the top rail.

Twilight looked at each can, all of them with a puckering hole in them. The holes wandered, and one looked like it had only clipped the can, but most of them were near the center.

Picking up a can in her magic, she floated it over and looked at the back, where a much rougher hole had punched through and continued through the can.

"Now, them trick shooters can do better," Jake said, waving a finger towards the can that had only been clipped. "I've seen one man juggle a can in the air. That said, I'm not much of one for showboating. Get it done."

"You could do this again?" Twilight asked, grabbing all of the cans and looking at the holes in them.

"As many times as I have bullets," he said.

Twilight nodded. "Alright, then I'm going to put these back up," she said, doing so. "This time, I'm going to do some measurements down here. Things like force, speed, and other variables."

Jake frowned at her. "It's not safe for you to be downrange."

Twilight waved a hoof down the road. "I won't need to be right next to them; I can be, uhm, twenty-five yards away."

His frown lightened, and he slowly nodded. "Alright. You want me in the same place?"

"Yes," she said, casting her field over the cans and fence. "As close as you can get. I'll call out when I'm ready. Will this shine affect your shots?"

He chuckled. "Jus' makes it so I can see them better," he said before turning and walking back into the trees.

Twilight huffed to herself, finishing casting her measurement spells. Pausing for a moment, she cast an additional barrier twenty hooves in front of the fence to measure how much the bullets altered course over that distance.

Taking herself down the road, Twilight summoned some paper and a quill before casting her shields over her ears again. Boosting her voice, she called out, "Okay, Jake, whenever you're ready!"

Focusing her spell, she had a couple of seconds before the first six shots connected, the spell automatically feeding statistics and numbers through the quill onto the paper. Moments later, the last three cans were once again flipping into the air.

Muttering to herself, Twilight looked over the sheet as Jake walked back out. "Jake, these numbers make no sense," she said, looking over the sheet as he collected the cans again. "The speed alone is insane; I can't accurately calculate the force because it just tops over the spell, and there's next to no deviance in twenty hooves!"

Jake looked at her, deadpan. "Twilight, I could've told yuh that they're fast and hit hard."

Twilight stood there and flapped the paper at him, moving her mouth soundlessly.

Before she could gather her words, a blue blur flew through the sky before diving towards the ground. With a last-minute flare of her wings, Rainbow Dash dropped heavily to the dirt road with a small plume of dust.

"Hey!" she half-yelled, looking around the empty lane. "Are you messing with lightning over here? You know you gotta clear that first, so I can let my crew know!"

Twilight shook her head. "No, no lightning, we're just breaking every known record for projectiles!" she yelled back, flapping the paper in Rainbow's face.

Flinching a little, Rainbow grabbed the paper out of the air and glanced at it. "Twi, there's no way this paper means anything; it's all numbers and squiggles. Even the letters look weird, and they don't spell anything."

Twilight snatched the page back. "Those are Ancient Ponethinian, and they stand for formulas and constants in the world," she snipped back before looking over the page again. "And regardless of how many times I double-check the spell's math, all of the numbers are theoretically correct."

Dash blinked a couple of times. "Which is the best kind of correct?"

"No, that's 'technically'," Twilight said distantly.

"Uh, Twilight?" Jake said. "If you want me to shoot these any more, we'll need to replace two of them."

Twilight glanced over at the two cans Jake was holding out and snorted. One of them was nearly bisected by a glancing blow that cut across the previous hole, and the other was the one that had been winged the first time. Half of it was torn from the rest of the can, creating a large flap of thin metal.

"Holy horseapples, you did that?"

Jake nodded, and she whistled. "I'd heard AJ and Twilight had found something weird on the farm. Didn't know it was a hairless Minotaur, though." She leaned a little closer to Jake and frowned. "You yell everything you say, too?"

"No, ma'am," he replied, shaking his head.

"Good," she said back, nodding. "It's rude."

"Look who's talking," Twilight muttered harshly under her breath, and Jake had to stifle a chuckled at the new pony's face.

Twilight glances at Dash's wide eyes and pursed lips before letting a sigh out.

"Sorry, Rainbow," she said, scratching at an ear. "I guess I was just expecting something like a fireworks show, but this is a legitimate, life-threatening weapon, and I'm still processing it."

Rainbow's faced relaxed, and she gave Twilight a smirk. "It's alright Egghead; you just surprised me. You've been hanging out with drunk Trixie too much."

"Any amount is too much," she giggled before her ear twitched, and she looked over at Jake.

She watched him mouth something, his eyebrows coming together over his nose as he looked at her.

"Jake?" she asked.

He shook his head lightly, looking at her before a mesh of sounds dropped from between his teeth, an unintelligible question formed and dropped.

Then a trickle of blood welled in the corner of his mouth, and his eyes rolled up.

"Jake!?" she asked again, her shoulders tensing as he began harshly jittering and jerking where he was standing.

She watched him lift an arm, jerking back and forth with some invisible force, and gently touch his temple before falling over backward.