I really wasn’t surprised. He seemed a bit too eager the whole time.
Shining Armor roared in pain as the armour-piercing 5.56mm round punched straight through his Knight armour, his left foreleg, and out the other side. He stumbled and tried to regain his footing. Shadow Dancer came and supported him, taking the weight off his injured leg. All the while, Chrysalis watched what was happening in shock.
“You monster,” the heavily-armoured stallion hissed.
“Really?” Thomas asked back, his rifle pointing at the ground. “You call me a monster after what you nearly did? That’s not what we’re here for.”
“No, that’s not what you’re here for,” came the angry reply. “What I’m here for...” he hissed ominously as he rose to his hooves, horn glowing, “is to kill her. And you won’t stop me.”
“Why?”
Shining Armor paused. “Why?” he asked incredulously. “The why isn’t important!”
“Everyone kills for a reason,” Thomas explained. “Orders. Money. Justice.” He paused for a moment. “Revenge.” Shining stayed silent. “That’s it, isn’t it?” the man asked, taking unsteady steps towards the injured stallion. “She did something, and you want to get her back.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Shining snarled. “She nearly killed my wife. She launched an attack on the capital. She used me.” He began to take quick, shallow breaths. “I was nothing more than food to her, and I never even realised! It took my sister to figure it out. And then she tried to kill her too!”
“I never wanted anyone dead!” Chrysalis interjected.
“Shut up!” Shining bellowed. “You will not speak!”
“So, murder,” the Courier said. “Do you really think it’ll make you feel better?”
“Not murder, revenge,” Shining corrected darkly.
“Revenge isn’t worth it.”
“What would you know about revenge?” the captain asked, his voice dripping with contempt.
“What do I know?” Thomas asked back, laughing. “What don’t I know? I walked across a fucking desert, killing everything that got in my way, just to track down the man who put two holes in my skull and had me buried alive. I know more than any living being should.” Shining seemed to try to take a step back. “The burning desire consumes you, takes everything you are and destroys it. And you don’t get it back. After I killed Benny, I realised I had nothing to do. The only reason I went to Vegas was to track him down. I had no purpose. I had no reason to live.”
“I have Cadance,” Shining Armor retaliated smugly.
“And do you think she’ll want anything to do with you after this? Do you think she can love a murderer?”
“My job,” Shining continued.
“You’ll get court-martialed. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you a blindfold before they execute you.”
“My family!” the stallion yelled, beginning to sound desperate.
“You’ll be lucky if the worst they do is disown you.” Thomas smirked under his helmet. “And there is no way Twilight would want anything to do with you after all this.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my sister,” Shining Armor hissed.
“This isn’t who you are,” Thomas continued calmly.
“You don’t know me.”
“True, but I know your type. Revenge isn’t the kind of thing men like you do.”
Without warning, the stallion sent a magical charge at Thomas. It smacked the man in the chest and knocked him onto the ground. “Is that all you do, talk?”
Instead of answering, he rolled onto all fours and fumbled with the straps of his helmet. He managed to pull off the rebreather just in time for him to begin coughing up blood. “Eight hundred and - ” he coughed up more blood “ - seventy five rads. Huh. I swear I was just over six hundred before,” Thomas said casually. He pushed himself up and stood, swaying as he tried to keep his balance. “One more blast like that and I’m gone.” He held his hands out and dropped his gun. “One more blast, and you’ll be no better than me.”
There was a tense silence. On Thomas’ face was a completely tranquil expression, one of a man who was staring down death and was fully prepared to let it take him. No-one knew just how long he stood there for, waiting for Shining Armor to strike him down.
It never happened. “No. No, I... I can’t. I can’t do it.” He fell to his knees, startling Shadow when he pushed her away. He yanked his helmet off with his magic and flung it across the room, where it clattered against the stone. “I refuse to sink to your level! You’re right, I do this, my family will disown me, my wife will leave me, they’ll strip me of my rank and position! I... I can’t believe I nearly...”
“My level?” Thomas asked, sounding unamused. “Really? That’s your reasoning? Never mind that you’d be committing cold-blooded murder?”
“What am I meant to do, though?” Shining asked, looking at Thomas with eyes full of tears. “How am I meant to live with myself?”
“Let go. Begin again.”
Shining gawked at him. “Let go? Let go? That’s your solution? Act as though it never happened?”
“No. Remember it, so you can learn, but don’t let it dominate you. Forgetting what happened is even worse than letting it control you. Trust me, I know,” the Courier said sadly. He heard shifting behind him, and noticed the green glow. In a swift movement he pulled the Magnum tucked into his pants out and pointed it at the Changeling queen. “Shining might not want to kill you anymore, but I can’t say the same for me. So stay the fuck down, turn off the magic and don’t say a word. Trust me, I will make you beg for me to end it,” he said, his voice twisting into a snarl the longer he spoke.
“So... that’s it? Let go of the hate and move on? That’s your secret?” Shining asked.
“More to it than that, but that’s a start.” Thomas lowered the revolver and put his hands on his knees. “Oh fuck,” he muttered as he took a few deep breaths. “Dunno how much longer I can stand.”
“Are you done?” Chrysalis asked, her voice loaded with contempt.
“I thought I told you to keep your mouth shut,” Thomas retorted as he turned. “And yes, we are. So, why?”
“What?” the Changeling queen asked in confusion.
“Why did you steal it?” he asked. “What possible reason could you have?”
“My child within the castle told me of your weapons, of the frightening power they possess. With one of those, we could hold a city hostage and feed,” she explained happily.
“Do you even know what the thing you stole does?” Thomas asked, trying and failing to hide a smirk.
“It was completely different in design. It had to be the most powerful,” the queen said.
“All right then,” he replied, doing his best to stop himself laughing. “Give it back,” he demanded, aiming the revolver at her.
“Give it back?” Chrysalis spat back. “Ha! Like I would - ” There was a bang and a pained scream.
“Five - well, four, now - of these shots are hollow-points. The sixth shot is a hand-loaded round that should punch right through you. The hollow-points won’t, but I’ll bet they’ll hurt like god knows what.” Thomas calmly pulled the hammer back and readied another round. “The thing is, I have no idea which is which. It could be the next shot, or I might have to go through them all. How lucky do you feel?” he taunted. “Hand it over.”
Chrysalis’ horn glowed as she summoned the device she had stolen from behind her throne. It hovered between them in the green light of her magic. As Thomas went to grab it, it moved and one end pointed at him. “This is for my children!” she screamed as she pulled the trigger.
Two seconds later, the Courier was on the ground. Laughing his guts out. “You...! Oh god, I can’t believe you actually thought... Bwahaha haha hahah ha!” Shining Armor and Shadow Dancer looked at him as though he had lost his mind.
“What!?” Chrysalis looked at the Transportalponder and shook it vigorously. “Why won’t it work!?” she screeched as she pointlessly pulled the trigger.
Eventually, Thomas managed to recover from his laughing fit. He coughed up a mouthful of blood before bringing himself up to his full height. He strode as best he could manage and grabbed the Transportalponder, ignoring the minor radiation spike. In the same instant, he twirled his Magnum so he was holding it by the barrel. He then swung it around, slamming the Changeling in the face with the solid wooden grip. “Thank you,” he said amiably as she lay sprawled on the ground, some of her fangs knocked loose.
After that, everything’s a bit... gone. No, honestly. Probably a side-effect of the radiation poisoning, for all I know. Or more likely that skull fracture. All I know is that I woke up in a warm, soft bed back in Canterlot with just under three hundred rads.
“What the fuck?” were the first words out of Thomas’ mouth when he opened his eyes. It didn’t take long for him to guess what happened. After close to five minutes of checking himself for any serious wounds or missing patches of skin, he exited the room he found himself in. Only to run straight into Celestia, Luna and Twilight.
“Ah, Thomas, you’re... awake...” the sun princess trailed off, her gaze going lower and lower. The other two followed suit. “Oh my.”
“How... How do you stand?” Twilight asked as she gawked, her face turning a brilliant shade of crimson. Her tail instinctively tucked between her legs.
“For fuck’s sake,” Thomas muttered as his hands moved to cover his crotch. He turned around and went back into the room. He emerged a moment later, the blanket taken from the bed and wrapped around him. “Better?”
“Much,” Celestia replied, glancing at her sister who had remained impassive the whole time. No wonder you were screaming, she muttered over the telepathic link.
You’re just jealous, Luna retorted. “How do you feel?” she asked him, looking him up and down.
“Better than I should be,” Thomas said, checking his Pip-Boy. “I was at a near-fatal level of rads, how am I not dead?” he asked.
“You have Twilight to thank for that,” Celestia said, nodding at her student. Whether the unicorn’s face was red from what she had just seen or the praise was unclear. “She remembered that you’ve treated yourself for something similar before, and managed to instruct us on how to help.”
“The doctors didn’t like not being able to use magic,” Twilight added. “They also detected a skull fracture, muscle tears and that horrible cut on your left hand.” Thomas glanced at the bandages wrapped around it. “Luckily, my brother and the other Knights were able to get you here before things became too serious.”
“Speaking of the captain,” Luna interjected, “he had a peculiar injury. A small hole in his leg, something made from a small metallic object travelling at high velocity. What’s worrying is that it went right through his armour.” The indigo alicorn fixed a hard stare on the naked man. “What did you do?”
“It was shoot him, or let him murder the Changeling queen.”
“What!?” Twilight yelled, unable to believe what he had said. “No, there’s no way my brother would do something like that,” she said with a nervous chuckle. “Right?” she asked, sounding unsure of herself.
Author’s Notes:
Some of you wanted to see Shiny hurt, I think this should do it.
Remember, Thomas is... quite well-endowed. He did make Luna scream, after all.