Stumbling out of the outhouse, Mat slammed the door behind him.
“Wooo! Gas-gas-gas! I wouldn’t go in there for at least an hour,” he chortled, waving his arm through the air as if batting back stinky demons from the dark abyss.
The Mexican food from last night had not been kind to the bowel.
Moving to the barn, Mat found Twilight Sparkle and Applejack huddled around where Reece Summers lay on a bed of hay bales. After the poor guy had passed out, Mat and Twilight dragged him into the shade of the barn where he’d been introduced to an orange furredn Stetson wearingn southern drawl gal called Applejack. She was also Reece’s weekend employer so helped get the unconscious boy comfortable.
Back from his adventure to the toilet, Mat saw Reece had come to and was half sitting up, looking quite bewildered. When he spotted Mat again, Mat was almost sure the guy was going to faint again. Thankfully his constitution seemed to have solidified.
“Holy shit,” Reece cursed, sitting up and sliding out of the makeshift bed. “You’re Mat Best. I followed your channel on Facebook.”
“Ah. A fan” Mat chuckled.
Reece chuckled back, plucking at the front of his Article-15 t-shirt. “Yeah. Kinda. What a lucky break I didn’t wear my Ranger Up t-shirt today.”
After a short pause Reece added, “So you just arrived?”
“Yup. Just sent off my visa forms. The lady was showing me around town.” Mat indicated Twilight Sparkle. “Wanna come with?”
“I’d love to.” Reece smiled, but his expression fell a little. “But, I got some chores to finish up.”
Applejack quickly interjected with concern in her voice. “Now hold ‘yer horses there, sugarcube. Ya’ll took a nasty fall there. Maybe you should take the rest of the day off.”
“No! It’s okay Applejack, I can finish my work,” Reece blurted out. A little too eagerly it seemed because it deepened Applejack’s concerned expression. “I really need the money, Applejack,” Reece added a little calmer.
The Stetson wearing mare didn’t seem to like it much, but she sighed and cracked under his pleading eyes. “Alright, Reece. But you take it easy, y’hear? Do the lighter jobs, and if you have trouble don’t be afraid to ask for help or call it a day. Okay?”
Mat stepped in patting the younger human on the shoulder. “How about I keep an eye on the kid? I can always get the tour of… uh… town, later.” No way in hell Mat was going to rape his voice by saying ‘Ponyville’ out loud.
Applejack smiled at that idea. “Well that’s mighty gentlemanly of you, Mister Best.”
“I have my moments.”
As Applejack and Twilight Sparkle were catching up on some of the latest pony-goss’, aside from their new human friend arriving obviously, Reece led Mat back outside and they crossed to the yard where he had been loading the cart.
As they walked, Mat turned the other human a curious eye. “So what’s that accent, bro?”
“Welsh,” Reece answered as he returned to loading sacks of wheat on the flatbed.
“Where’s that from?”
Reece’s rhythm stumbled a moment before he quickly found it again. “Um… Wales.”
“Wales. That’s England, right?”
“N-no, it’s Wales.”
“Go figure. So why are you helping out on the farm here?” Mat shifted his rifle on his back and took in the sunny orchards stretching out over the hills.
“Gotta pay the bills, dude.”
“Yeah, I hear that. I might have to think about getting in on that action. Hey, when and how did you get here?”
Reece paused to catch his breath and think at the same time before heaving the next sack over his shoulder. “Oh, ‘bout two years ago now I think. Did you wake up in the Everfree Forest in a patch of scorched dirt?”
“Everfree Forest?”
“Creepy looking wild woodland.”
“It was wild, but not creepy looking.”
“Oh, you were teleported to the nicer part of the forest then. Lucky you.” Reece chortled. “But it sounds like you came here the same way I did. Across a rainbow-bridge.”
“Uh-huh,” Mat chewed his tongue and sat down on a nearby wood chopping block. As he did he found a small scroll with Reece’s name at the top. “And how do those work exactly?”
“Search me,” Reece admitted, not noticing Mat unfurling the scroll to read. “Far as Twilight Sparkle can figure they’re interdimensional bridges that suck you out of your home universe and dump you in the Everfree Forest. Always the Everfree Forest for some reason, like that forest is some kind of magnet for fucked up inter-dimensional shenanigans.
“Now if you’re lucky you’re just wandering about for a few hours before the laws of time and space catch up and send your ass home on the next rainbow-bridge. But if you’re unlucky you get stuck here.”
“Like you?”
“Well, that remains to be seen. But after two years I’m not holding out much hope.” Reece shrugged. “I kinda miss home I guess. Y’know, little things like skittles, youtube… oh, porn. Definitely missing internet porn.”
Mat chuckled. “I’m guessing there’s no human ladies hanging about the place?”
“Just a heads up, you’re gonna go crazy in the first week.”
“Hopefully I won’t be here that long.”
Reece offered him a smile. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Even if you don’t get sent home automatically, Twilight is working on a rainbow-bridge spell.”
“And how’s that working out after two years?”
“Well, the cantaloupes we’re teleporting around are arriving at their destination.” He added sheepishly: “It’s just the in one piece part we gotta work on.”
Reece loaded the last of the wheat onto the cart and stretched. Realising he was done, Mat held up the scroll he had been reading. It was a long list of things, load wheat onto the cart being one of them annotated with the comment: 15 bits.
“This your list of chores?” Mat asked?
Reece nodded taking the list from him and running his finger over the chore he’d just completed. As he did a thick red line struck through the text, ticking it off his list. He held it up with a smile, explaining: “Enchanted paper.”
“Cool. What’s a bit?” Mat asked pointing at the annotations beside the chores.
Reece explained as he checked his list, “A bit is the local Equestria currency. It’s all in numbered gold coins. You got ten bit coins, five bits and single bits. Then you’ve got hay-bits, which is half a bit, and finally the quarter which is like twenty-five pence.”
“What are pence in American?”
Reece paused to think. “Uh… cents, I think.”
“Oh. Quarter. Gotcha.” Jumping to his feet, Mat pointed out the chores he struck off at the top of the list were all low income chores. The majority of them ran between five to twenty bits. Near the bottom were the big earners, running up as high as a hundred bits each. “You’re ignoring all your high-roller chores.”
Reece snorted at the chore Mat pointed out in particular. “I don’t think I can dig a well all on my own. I gotta wait ‘till Big Mac has some time to help me with that one.”
“Okay, how about this one? It says five hundred bits.”
“Stumping? Have you ever stumped a field before?”
Mat scratched his beard trying to look knowledgeable. “Let’s assume I don’t know what stumping is.”
“Digging out a tree stump from a field so the earth can be ploughed and re-planted,” Reece explained.
Seeing the sense in it, Mat nodded. “Great! Let’s do that next, earn some real monies.”
Reece scoffed. “I know you’re thinking of earning some start-up money in case you’re stuck here, but do you have any idea how long it takes to stump a field? It’s gonna be dark in like three hours!”
But Mat wasn’t listening… or perhaps he was, even as he pulled something out of his tac-vest and gave it a light toss. It was a white block of what at first Reece thought was play-dough. And then Mat’s grin widened and the younger human felt a cold chill of realisation slice down his spine.
It would seem Mat had a ludicrous, irresponsible, crazy plan. And deep down inside Reece really wanted to be a part of it.
Reece wondered how many laws they were breaking right now. They’d spent thirty minutes running wires and burying clumps of high explosive putty in sawn down tree stumps across a few acres of disused farmland. This was of course Equestria, the land of harmony and talking ponies, where laws on owning a weapon were relaxed because everypony was kind and responsible. But something about rigging a field to be blown to smithereens had to be illegal, even here.
Honestly, Reece’s first question should have been where Mat actually got C4 explosive from and why he was packing it in his gear. Instead he asked, “So we’re splitting the money fifty-fifty, right?”
Mat nodded generously. “Of course. You helped bury the charges and run the det-wire. Seems only fair.”
“And you’re sure this will work. We’re not going to blow up the whole of Ponyville are we?”
“Relax! We’re just using a controlled explosion.”
“The words controlled and explosion should rationally speaking never be used in the same sentence.”
“Don’t be a wuss.” Mat finished hooking up his detonator to the wires running to the charges buried in stumps all across the field, then held the clacker out for Reece. “You wanna push my awesome-button?”
Reece lifted his hands to his ears and shook his head. “I think I’ll waive responsibility and let you do it.”
Mat snorted. “Fair enough.”
Even though they were barricaded behind a bunch of sand-bags they’d hastily thrown together and piled into a makeshift wall to protect them from the possibility of flying debris, Mat leapt to his feet like a rock star at a concert. Reece expected him to cry out: “Fire in the hole!”
Only instead he yelled: “Big ass titties!”
Reece lowered his head and scrunched his face. “Oh, God.”
The clacker clicked twice and in the typical description of explosions the field went up in smoke and flame. Realistically, there was barely any fire. It was more like a pillar of scorched dirt, shattered rock, splintered wood and absolute devastation.
When the muffled rumbling of the most powerful noise he’d ever heard had passed, when the tremors underfoot were gone and the wind driven out of his lungs was replaced by a gasp for breath, Reece opened his eyes. They’d been a good three-hundred metres away, but the farmyard was still dusted with blackened dirt and bits of debris. Some of it was falling several seconds after the blast, like a light silty rain. The air smelled earthy, musty and damp like he’d taken a shovel to wet peat after a rainstorm.
Looking sideways he saw Mat had crouched down beside him and was dusting some of the dirt out of his hair. “Well, that’s gonna do it. Check it out!”
He pointed over their barricade, and looking Reece saw the field had indeed been cleared of stumps… and pretty much everything else. It looked like no-man’s-land from the western front. Blackened dirt etched into a wobbly, crater and groove riddled landscape of desolation. But in principle they could now easily enough begin smoothening, ploughing and planting.
Whether Applejack appreciated the chore completed though remained to be seen.
He winced when two figures came galloping out of the house towards them, screaming bloody murder.
“What in the heck just happened!?” Applejack cried with Twilight Sparkle running close on her heels.
“We stumped the field!” Mat announced proudly, indicating the field that was technically cleared of stumps.
Though by Applejack’s expression when her eyes rested on the blast distorted landscape she certainly begged to differ.
“You nearly blew up my farm! It’s lucky Apple Bloom, Big Mac and Granny were in town shopping; somepony coulda been hurt!” Applejack screamed hysterical. Reece had never seen her like this before, and frankly it didn’t suit her.
But as much as he wanted to point that out, Reece’s gaze was drawn upwards to a shadow crossing the sun.
Mat in the meantime had his hands on his hips, glaring down at the ungrateful mare like a drill sergeant about to rip into a recruit. “Hey, you wanted the field stumped? We stumped the fuckin’ field. If you wanted it done a certain way you should have fucking specified on your list!”
“I don’t need to specify that safety comes first!”
Reece shaded his eyes with a hand to try and make out the silhouette in the sky. It didn’t have a very distinct shape and he squinted trying to figure out what it could possibly be. Was it Princess Celestia coming to investigate the blast? No, it couldn’t be. There were no wings on the silhouette.
“We performed all the right safety checks,” Mat argued. “And we made this midget sized barricade to protect from most of the debris.” He patted the sandbags proudly.
“This piddly barricade didn’t protect my farm from squat!” she indicated the mess of debris dirtying the yard. “Look at this mess!” she knocked over the sandbags with a powerful buck to punctuate her point.
“Hey, don’t knock over my barricade!”
“Then don’t blow up my farm!”
“Don’t be a drama queen!”
“Don’t be a dangerous maniac!”
“Don’t be unpatriotic!”
As they were arguing, Twilight Sparkle was looking at Reece and followed his gaze to the sky. Squinting she asked suddenly, “What is that?”
At the same time her eyes widened and the lavender princess shot sideways with a flap of her wings, tackling Reece and Applejack to the ground. The force of the movement caught Mat by surprise and knocked him to the ground too.
Landing on his back and staring straight up, Mat saw what the other two saw. He immediately curled up, covering his head in his arms like there was an artillery shell whistling down on his position.
“Incoming!”
There was no whistling of a HE-shell though. But the impact was punctuated by a loud crash. Though thankfully the incoming projectile missed the four of them, hitting Applejack’s house instead. It smashed into the roof throwing up the slates that shattered when they hit the ground. Inside were the sounds of shattering glass, splintering of floorboards, crackling of plasterboard and the scream of a very surprised cat.
“What the shit was that!?” Mat cried sitting up.
“I think we blew someone up.” Reece gasped, rubbing his ribs where Twilight had accidentally punched him while dragging him to the ground. “That silhouette looked human!”
Mat glanced between the house with a new skylight and Applejack before saying pointedly: “I’m not paying for that.”
When Applejack was about done giving him a dirty look the four of them scrambled up and ran to see what, or more importantly, who had crashed into the house. Getting through the door and sliding into the kitchen they found it.
Or rather, him.
The hulk in the hockey mask was still smoking and smouldering where he had been blown sky high and flung through the air. His machete stuck out of the floorboards beside where he lay still, whole stretches of his jumpsuit missing to reveal the charred, crispy flesh underneath.
Above him a Jason Voorhees shaped hole blown through the roof all the way down to the ground floor.
“Christ. That’s Jason Voorhees,” Reece whispered with recognition.
“What gave it away?” Mat asked. “The machete, the mask or are you just fucking psychic?”
“They call me Miss Cleo,” Reece quipped, kneeling beside the dead killer and pointing out the gaping holes in his torso. “Are those bullet holes?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s me. I put some rounds in him already but he just got up again.”
Reece frowned, looking up at Mat. “When?”
“Before I came into town.”
Sighing, Reece stood up rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Let me get this straight. The first person you interacted with upon arriving in Equestria was Jason Voorhees, and you waited until now to tell everypony!?”
“You know you can say everybody, right? It’s not like we won’t understand exactly what you’re talking about. Frankly I think the horse puns are getting a little worn out.”
Reece ignored that like Mat ignored his angry question. “So you filled him with lead and he just got up again. Is anypony else worried about this guy getting up again even after we just blew him up?”
Mat scoffed. “I really wish a motherfucker would.”
“Why would you wish that!?”
“Duh!” Mat hefted his rifle and Reece gaped.
“Even after we’ve assessed that bullets don’t stop him.”
Mat considered this for a moment, then added brightly, “I think I got a little C4 left.”
“Whoa, not in here!” Reece held up his hands to wave the operator off, then glanced between Jason and Mat. “C’mon, we’ll drag him outside before we blast him into itty-bitty pieces.”
As the two humans got ready to move the theoretically dead body, Twilight and Applejack shared a confused glance.
“You guys are weird,” the princess commented moving out of the way as the duo started sliding Jason Voorhees to the door.
Unfortunately they weren’t quick enough.
Voorhees grumbled, marking the first time he made any sort of vocal sound since arriving in Equestria. That and a heavy twitch rippling up through his body and convulsing every muscle for a moment made both Reece and Mat let go of the torn jump suit and leap back.
Clenching, Mat whipped his rifle around and shouldered it. Reece on the other hand just put some distance between him and the inexplicably alive serial killer.
Pressing himself up to his knees, Jason Voorhees took a rasping breath that ended about halfway in a gargle and a cough. But then falling silent, he slowly rose to his feet with heavy thuds of his boots and looked around.
They could see one eye through the cracked and crumbling hockey mask. It was red raw, partially gouged out and bleeding profusely. But at the same time it was still seeing, the eviscerated pupil darting between the faces of the two ponies and two humans.
The Princess of Friendship who should have been first on the ball to welcome this unusual figure to their land and defuse his building rage at the sight of Mat Best, balked at what she considered her duty and took a step to hid behind Reece’s legs.
“Should we be welcoming or running?” she squeaked as Jason reached down and plucked his machete from the ground.
“Running!” Reece cried, pulling Applejack back. “Definitely running!”
Reece and the ponies turned tail and belted it out of the kitchen and up the stairway in the hall. At the same time Mat jumped into their spot and rattled off a long burst of automatic fire from his assault rifle. The noise left a ringing in Reece’s ears as he retreated. But it was only at the top tread as the ponies ran ahead of him across the landing that Reece stopped with his eyes widening in terror.
“Wait a fucking minute. We’re being hunted by a serial killer and we trap ourselves upstairs!?” Horror movie retardation had clearly hit Reece hard.
He turned to scramble back downstairs when a cry pierced the air. There was a thud and Mat came flying out the kitchen door and across the hallway. He smashed into a cupboard that caved and splintered under the force the human was flung with and he just lay there in a daze, Voorhees’ muddy boot-print on the front of his plate carrier.
“Motherfucker!” Mat chocked as he struggled to his feet. Glancing up the steps he saw Reece was still loitering. “The fuck are you standing about for!? Run!”
Jason came striding out of the kitchen at the same time, forcing Reece to back up again as the monster blocked his path. The only way out anymore seemed to be up. As he disappeared to shoo the girls out of the line of fire. Mat took aim again, looking to score the headshots that stumbled Jason the most. Unfortunately his attention as drawn to the floor.
Jason stopped too, then looked down at a tabby cat curled up on the floor. The Apple Family feline looked up with innocence, wondering what the hell was going on. And out of what Mat assumed was just un-rational cruelty, Jason lifted a knee high to his chest, preparing to stomp.
“Not the cat!” Mat whined.
Even as he said it, the operator launched himself into a sprint, swinging his rifle to his side where it would be out of the way for what was coming next.
Jason’s boot started its way down towards the cat.
“Nonononononono!”
Mat kicked his legs out from under himself and performed a power slide right under Jason’s foot, scooping the defenceless animal up at the same time. Both the kitty and Mat slid clear by the time the madman’s heel came down and it harmlessly struck the wood floor with a crack.
Rolling to his feet at the foot of the stairs, Mat smiled with a triumphant, “Hah!”
Cat secured in one hand, rifle aimed in the other Mat pulled the trigger to keep shooting. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first time he had operated a pussy in one hand and a gun in the other (bow-chicka-wow-wow). But the trigger-motion was punctuated by a miserable click.
“Uh…” mat held up his hands, both of which full, and considered how he was going to reload. Before his brain could fully figure it out, Jason was closing in. “Fuck!”
He ran upstairs after Reece and the girls, buying time, and as much distance between him and that bloody machete as he could.
Mat hooked a right, jumped over the hole Jason made in the floor during his initial landing, then busted through a bedroom door at the end of the corridor to see Reece and the two ponies huddled by the window. Reece had it open and was leaning over the sill to look straight down.
“It’s a straight drop to the concrete below,” he reported backing up.
“We won’t survive a drop like that!” Twilight Sparkle blurted out.
Applejack deadpanned. “Uh. Sugarcube, you’ve got wings. You can carry us down.”
“Oh. Right.”
Before the princess could un-fuck the gloop of fear gumming up that massive brain of hers and spread her wings, Jason had made it up the stairs. Mat whipped around to face him, and with a simple jerking motion the killer turned his gaze on them.
It was like Voorhees’ very presence was perspiring the irrational fear that he commanded over the denizens of his home universe. Mat knew damn well that this guy was just a guy. Tough, hard to put down, yes. But in the end he wasn’t some supernatural monster, all evidence to the contrary. He was an anger fuelled killer.
And while Mat had spent the prime years of his life jumping out of helicopters in the mountains and zipping real motherfuckers in the face while in full sprint, the retired operator couldn’t help feel an involuntary tinge of fear himself. It just snaked its way into him somehow.
Turning, Jason Voorhees embarked on a power walk towards them.
The ponies lost their shit and embraced each other, letting out panicked screams. Reece seemed lost, his eyes darting around the room as he tried to find something, anything, he could use as a weapon to defend himself.
Mat was a blur of motion. Dumping his spent magazine, Mat trapped his rifle between his knees, slotted a fresh magazine into place and cycled the action with a firm yank of the charging lever. The bolt released and pushed a round into the chamber by the time he righted the AR-15 into a one-handed shooting stance. Not exactly stable or accurate, but at this point who the hell cared? He looked cool as fuck, standing triumphant over his obstacles with a cat in one hand and rifle in the other.
“Operator!” he cheered.
Jason either didn’t recognise the danger of a fully armed badass, or indeed recognised the danger and at this point didn’t have any shits to give. Mat fired as he fell backwards. He tripped on the bed and dropped onto his back, zipping single shots out of the Bullet-Hose.
“I’m suddenly wishing a motherfucker hadn’t!” he yelled as the bullets seemed to pass through Jason harmlessly.
He flinched with every hit Mat scored, but the madman didn’t drop. He didn’t even slow down. He raised his machete, ducking to fit through the bedroom doorframe…
And then he stopped in his tracks.
Cracking an eyelid, Reece slowly lifted his gaze to see the infamous Voorhees machete hadn’t hacked Mat to pieces and wasn’t about to be turned on him and his pony friends. In fact, Jason was frozen in place, an aura of golden light enveloping every inch of his body.
Jason twitched as he tried to jerk at his limbs, but other than that little twitch indicating he was trying, he didn’t move. Until finally whoever commanded the golden light washing over him – and Reece had a fair idea who that was – demanded he take off.
Voorhees shot straight up through the ceiling like a rocket, sent spinning and spiralling through the sky like had had been after Mat accidentally blew him up. Only this time he was flung farther and beyond-er. Out of the atmosphere, out of orbit…
And finally Jason Voorhees disappeared in a puff of smoke as he said his fondest hello to the surface of the sun.
Looking up through the hole his launch left in the roof, Reece and Mat slowly looked at each other before looking down the hallway. Descending through the first hole left by Jason’s landing came a glowing vision. A pony, taller than Applejack and Twilight Sparkle combined, she had a horn and a magnificent set of wings. Her glistening white coat gleamed with the same intensity as her regalia, and the same golden light that had just fucked Jason enveloped her horn for a moment.
The light extinguished and she approached the stunned humans with the confident gait reserved for a goddess.
They were silent until Mat suddenly blurted out: “Holy shit; that is one majestic fuckin’ horse!”
Reece face palmed and prepared for imminent banishment to the moon.