//------------------------------//
// Chapter One: Being Resurrected (By Manes) 
// Story: Dirty Money 
// by sbloom85 
//------------------------------//

The rain pounded down over me, soaking into my blood stained fur, burning in my wound and falling down my throat. Convulsive chokes forced the rain out of my larynx protecting my lungs for all the good it would do. A harsh metallic taste permeated in my mouth as I choked up an unpleasant mix of rain and blood. Each trembling breath almost felt like I was being shot all over again. I turned my head as I heard something coming from the shadows.
 
Suri stepped out of the shadowy veil from which she let her bullet loose. She must have been feeling pretty pleased with herself as she grinned smugly. 'So, that's what this is all about. I really shouldn't be surprised. I guess I could have seen this coming. Should have made my move sooner...'
 
"Here we are," my assassin said, looming over me, shaking her head as though the heartless bitch wished it didn't turn out this way. I didn't speak, for no words could express my rage. Instead, all I could do was glare into her eyes, my own filled with a burning hatred.
 
“Coco, we could have been something together, ya know. We could have taken this city.” She knelt down over me, casting over me like a shadow. She chuckled softly as she shook her head, followed by a dark, sadistic undertone.“​Instead... you had to cross the fucking line with me!”
 
She screamed angrily. Taking a deep breath, she softened her voice back to nearly a whisper. “And there's a price to pay for crossing me, my friend...”  She jabbed the barrel of her revolver deep inside my wound and twisted it. I could feel it scraping against my exposed ribs and digging into my body.
 
A pathetic, gargled screech died as quickly as it left my lips, smothered by my blood spattering out, dotting my face in the warm crimson liquid. It was agonizing; a rush of pain flooded my body, followed by intensifying waves of nausea. As my vision and hearing were gradually blurring, I knew that the sweet embrace of unconsciousness and soon after, death, wasn't far away. 'Not yet, damn it! I'm not giving this bitch the satisfaction of watching me die quietly out here!'
 
 I coughed weakly, each spasm invoking excruciating pain as vital fluid spewed from my lungs. 'I guess this is really it. I'm dying.’ A maniacal laugh escaped my bloody lips, maybe I had gone crazy from the blood loss, or maybe the fact that we heard the sound of a siren rolling around the block caught both my attention and her’s. I couldn't be sure that I wasn't just hallucinating. “You’re in trouble now.” I sang, promptly earning a kick in my stomach, the impact making me woozy.
 
“Have fun rotting in prison.” She said her final goodbyes then disappeared into the shadows, leaving me behind to rot with a bullet stuck inside me. This was it for me.
 
An ambulance soon came pulling up the alley. A stallion approached me wearing a blue shirt, and on the right side of his chest was a heart wrapped around cross. He placed down an empty stretcher beside me. “I’m going to lift you up and put you onto this stretcher, okay?”
 
“Fuck!” I screamed as he lifted me up then placed me down on the stretcher.  “Stop! It hurts! It hurts!”
 
“You’re going to be alright, okay?” He reassured me, as he carried me to the back of the ambulance.
 
The pain became even greater as I was laid down inside the back, like the world around me was beginning to fade from my eyes and my heart racing at a slow pace. I looked around to find out where I was but my vision was too far gone. “Where am… where—”
 
“Sssh... Everything is going to be fine.” He pushed the stretcher into the ambulance and climbed in the back with me, closing the door behind him. He gave the ambulance a couple of taps, and then it began to move as the sirens started up again. He sat down and smiled at me.  “Hi there.”
 
“Hi.” I managed to give him a red stained smile before choking up even more of my rapidly dwindling supply of blood. I began to feel my cheeks getting wet as tears trailed down my face. I noticed he stuck a long wire connected to a plastic bag filled with an IV of blood.
 
“Hey, hey.” He rushed to my side and gripped my hoof, staring down on me with a concerned look upon his face. “What’s the matter?”
 
“I fucked up,” I said, sobbing into my hooves. “I fucked up real bad this time. I’m so stupid!” I felt so stupid to have trusted her. She was like family to me, and then to find out the hard way that I wasn’t anything but trash to her. The world is such a dark place, and we’re merely the candles slowly burning our way out of existence. “I’m so stupid!”
 
“You are not stupid.” He smiled placed a hoof over mine. “We all make mistakes.”
 
“This wasn’t no fucking mistake!” I shouted, soon regretting it as the pain in my side reminded me of my condition. I lifted my head up and saw that the vest I wore had a bullet hole in it, along with the some dark and dried blood on my right side where the bullet hit. I frowned. “Great, my favorite vest is ruined too.”
 
He chuckled. “You almost died and you’re worried about a vest?”
 
“Hey, I payed top bits for this!” I yelled defensively, tugging my vest to show him the damage the bullet caused. “I’m pretty sure you’d be mad about it too.”
 
“Maybe I would be,” he replied with a smile, but his smile soon faded away. “Can I ask you something?”
 
I nodded. “How did you get that bullet wound?” he asked, pointing to where the bullet hit.
 
“I trusted somepony that I shouldn’t have.” I turned my back from him and closed my eyes as I felt dizzy and tired from the medicine they were shooting into my foreleg.
 
“Oh.” He leaned back and sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He checked the bag, making sure it was giving me the right amount of blood. He sat back down and turned to me. “You should probably get some rest.”
 
“Yeah, I guess I feel kinda–” I was cut off by a yawn escaping my mouth, “Tired...” I closed my eyes as the medicine took its toll and everything faded into darkness.
 


 Two months later...
 
I woke up sweating beneath the fur on my body. Blankets covered the lower half of my body, the smell of bleach filling the air, the feeling of tubes stuffing me up with medicine and blood that I lost. The darkly pitched room told me I wasn’t in the ambulance anymore.
 
I leaned on the left side of the bed. There was a small white control with a button you use to call nurses to your room. I reached and began clicking the button repeatedly. “Nurse! Nurse!”
 
“I’m here!” The nurse came rushing into the room, followed by two nice gents wearing black coats with pistols tucked to their sides hiding behind the door. She reached into her front pocket and pulled out a small flashlight and shined it in my face.
 
“Pupils are reactive... Can you raise your right hoof for me?” she asked. I cooperated, raising my hoof slowly into the air. All my muscles felt weak and tired.
 
“Good. Now the other.” she commanded. Letting my right hoof drop I raised my left, it feeling equally weak and frail.
 
“Do you know your name?”
 
I rolled my eyes at the mare’s question. “Yeah, it’s Coco… What’s going on?”
 
She turned the small flashlight off and placed it back into her front pocket. “How are you feeling? Any headaches, numbness, or long-term memory loss?”
 
I shook my head. “No, but who’s standing outside the—”
 
“Do you feel any light sensitivity, or are you having any hallucinations?” she asked as she jotted down notes on a clipboard. Feeling sick of being treated like a slab of meat, I cut her off.
 
“No, listen to me!” I groaned as I lifted my upper half on the bed until my back was resting against the pillow. “Who are those two cops waiting outside door?”
 
The nurse stopped scribbling down notes to look at me like I was crazy. “Excuse me?”
 
“Don’t play dumb. Now I’m going to ask you again...” I leaned forward towards the nurse, our muzzles almost touching each other. “What are those two cops standing outside the door for?!”
 
Both of them came bursting into the door, and I immediately found myself with two pistols aimed at me. Their hooves seemed itching to pull the trigger and end me. The reason why they held back was because of the nurse beside me. “Officers Storm and Snow, do not harm the nurse!”
 
“Calm down officers.” A doctor said, stepping into the room with a clipboard held in his hoof.  He stopped at the right side of the bed and smiled at me. “Glad to see you’re awake from your coma.”
 
“I-I’ve been in a coma?!” I asked in shock, staring at him with a concern look on my face. “You’re saying I’ve been in a coma? For how long?”
 
He looked at the clipboard for a moment, then back to me. “Well, after you came to the hospital, we found a blood clot lodged in an artery connected to your brain, causing a stroke. We performed surgery to remove it, but complications placed you in a coma for approximately two months.”
 
I leaned back into the pillow, letting the shocking information seep into my brain. I’ve wasted two months of my life in a slumber that I couldn’t wake up from. I sighed, then turned to the officers standing at the door with their guns pointed at me. “Come to arrest me, officers?”
 
“If you give us the information we need, it won’t come to that.” Storm said, a female officer in the field. She had a black mane, and dark brown coat with a golden badge as her cutie mark, looking as tough as nails.
 
I raised an eyebrow and stared at the mare standing a couple of feet away from the bed. “How do I know if I can trust you?”
 
“You don’t,” she simply replied, “It’s all about being smart.” She took yellow documents out from her coat and threw them onto the bed. I picked them up and began looking into it. “We know a lot about you, Coco.”
 
A photo, my birth certificate... even where I used to work before I joined the mafia was printed on the papers I was looking at. “Why?” was only word that escaped my mouth.
 
“You work for a very important pony, Coco.” She pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down, wearing a smirk on her face. “So, shall we start asking some questions?”
 
I responded with a groan. “So how did you and Suri meet?” she asked, waiting for an answer from me, but I remained silent. “Coco, remember: if you don’t talk, you go to jail.”
 
“And if I do talk then I’ll be dead soon as I go out that door!” I shouted, instantly regretting it as the pain came back to bite me in the flank. “So you can go fuck yourself.”
 
She began to laugh as if she were crazy, slapping a hoof on her hind leg. Finally, her laughter died down, and she could speak again. “You criminals crack me up.”
 
“I’m not telling you nothing.” I hissed.
 
“So you’ rather go to jail? Okay.” She got up from the chair, and made her way to the door. “Think about it what you’re saying, then we can talk.” She closed the door behind her as she left the room.
 
I was alone and afraid. If I didn’t talk then I’ll go to jail. But, if I do then one of her men will find and kill me. I buried my face inside my hooves and, for the first time in a long time, I sobbed alone in the small hospital room. 
 
I grabbed the pillow, gripping it with all of my strength. I threw it at the door, making it fall onto the floor. “FUCK YOU!” I shouted, feeling a sudden rush adrenaline course through my veins.
 
I stopped when I heard sounds of guns getting cocked, the officers shouting orders and ponies screaming filled the room.
 
“Put down the gun now!” I recognized that voice. It belonged to the mare I met earlier, but she became silent as three gunshots were fired and the sound of a body dropping onto the floor. I instinctively ducked down onto the floor and waited for the door to be open so I could attack.
 
My heart pumped fast like a speeding train inside my chest. My own heavy breathing was the only thing I could hear through the deadly silence, and smoke was coming from behind the door filled with holes. The heart monitor sound was beeping as fast as my heart was racing.
 
The door was kicked down by an orange coated mare with a Stetson on her head. She held a tommy gun in her left hoof, and flames were burning from behind where she stood. My suspicions were confirmed; Star’s body laid on the floor filled with multiple holes from the tommy gun.
 
I looked up at the mare standing in front of me. My legs shook as I stood up from the floor and stared her in the eye. “Who...who are you?” She trotted towards me until we met eye to eye.
 
She rested the tommy gun on her shoulder and smiled. “Heard you had been shot and left for dead.” She spit some tobacco out of her mouth, making it land on the dead’s cop face. “Name's Applejack and Ah’d come recruit ya.”
 
“Recruit?” I took a step back and shook my head. “No way in hell am I working for a psychopath like you!” She quickly aimed the gun at my face, putting me in a position where I was staring straight down the barrel. “Woah, don’t shoot!”
 
“That wasn’t a request, partner.” The mare tilted her head to where the door was. “Start moving.” I began moving towards the door. I could feel the tip of the gun poking against my back as I trotted. “Do you know who Ah am?”
 
“I’ve been in a coma for two months, so I’m not exactly up to date,” I said, earning a wack in the back of my head from her gun. My face smacking onto the cold hard floor as I fell down.
 
“Don’t ya’ disrespect me, ya’ hear?!” Applejack shouted, and pulled me back up on my hooves. I huddled around a little until I was able to stand straight. “Maybe back then you were some big shot, but now, you work for me.”
 
I groaned in pain, rubbing the back of my head. “And if I refuse?” I asked, she stopped and turned around to face me. I could see a cold-hearted killer in her eyes as she stared at me.
 
“You’ll find yourself in a bodybag.” She said with a frown on her face. “You understand?”
 
I gulped, nodding my head stupidly. “Yes ma’am.” Then we walked through the bodies laying dead in the hospital, the ceiling sprinklers going off as the flames got worse. I couldn’t help but to think I was back where I started. “Can I ask you one question?”
 
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Fine, but make it quick. Ah got things to do and money to make.”
 
“How did you know I was awake?” I asked, opening the front door to the hospital.  “What, have you been watching me while I sleep?”
 
“I had a unicorn inside ever since I got news that you were in a coma.” Applejack turned to me and chuckled. “He worked as a janitor here, silently watching and reportin’ back to me when the day’s almost over.”
 
“Where is he now?”
 
Applejack shrugged. “Probably got caught in the crossfire or died.”
 
“I need some new clothes if I’m going to work for you. This hospital gown simply won’t do,” I said, tugging on the green clothing to show her how ugly it looked. “Also, I need a nice apartment somewhere around here, some cash, and—”
 
“You’ll get some clothes back at the my granny’s house,” Applejack interrupted. “Don’t push yer’ luck, partner.”
 
“After seeing you go all psycho on those cops?” I groaned, still feeling the headache from the earlier attack by Applejack’s gun. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”