Born to be (not so) Wild

by Stonetribe

A rude awakening (plus new cover art!)

Beams of light shown through the windows of the bounty hunter’s new home. The only things audible were the sounds of running water coming from the other room and Ash’s soft snoring. A small house spider was crawling along the ceiling, and began a slow descent to the floor, eventually landing right on Ash’s nose. The itching sensation that it brought prompted Ash awake, opening a single eye, she stared into eight.

“You can stay here, but at least make yourself useful, go eat some mosquitoes or something,” she groggily mumbled.

The spider hopped off here nose, and scurried away, presumably to begin earning his keep in the building. As she sat up, Ash was acquainted with the ever too familiar hung over headache. Among the many she has had this one was pretty mild, albeit still unwelcomed. She brought her hoof up to massage her forehead as she tried to recall the events of last night. She stood up to look around the room. Save for a table, a few chairs— half of which were knocked over, and various party favors scattered about, it was pretty much empty. She then noticed her shotgun leaning against the wall. ‘Why isn’t that in its case’ she thought. As she walked over to examine it, she stepped on something, bringing much, brief pain to her hoof. Murmuring a curse as she picked up to examine and throw out the window, not necessarily, no, definitely not in that order, whatever object decided to cause her pain. She opened up the nearest window ready to send the small, cylindrical…

‘Wait a minute’ she thought.

She held the item up to her face to see what she suspected to, a shotgun shell, her shotgun shell. She pondered this for a moment until she came to terms with what this could only mean. She was wide awake now.

“Oh buck…”

After saying her most sophisticated statement, she noticed the sound of the shower in the other room come to a stop. Down the hall a door opened, some steam pouring out. Out emerged Cornelius, his back half wrapped in a towel. He glanced at her.

“Oh you’re awake now. Look we need to talk about…”

He was interrupted as Ash ran up to him, a panicked expression on her face.

“Cornelius! We got to get out of this town! ASAP!”

“What? What are you talking abou-”

“I don’t know how much time we have, or how to say this, but I’ll make it short. I shot somepony last night!”

“Wha- what? Ash I-”

He was interrupted again. “Oh god Neal I’m so sorry! I know how much we needed to live here! I’m in a buck load of trouble I know, you don’t have to tell me, but we don’t have time to talk about that! We need to get in the bike, and make a beeline out of this town and not stop for at least three hours!”

Cornelius was more than a little awestruck. He knew he’d be having a talk with Ash that neither of them would be too fond of, but wasn’t expecting her to take the initiative, much less in such a frantic manner. Whatever she was remembering, it wasn’t what she should be, at least not all of it. ‘I suppose this is what I get for taking the easy way of calming her down with booze.’ He was about to open his mouth again before he was interrupted a fourth time. She began pulling him now. He tried to remain where he stood but she was too worked up.

“God damn, Cornelius come on! We’ve wasted enough time as it is!”

This was going nowhere. She wasn’t ready to listen to anything he would say at this point, especially if it was that every thing was fine. He had to do something. He could only think of one thing, and it went against just about every moral he was taught and stood for.

He said to himself, “I know you won’t mind this too much, but I’m still so sorry.”

“There’s no time for sorrys! We have to-”

Now it was her turn to be interrupted, unfortunately, by Cornelius’s hoof as it slapped her across the face. She hardly flinched but it seemed to knock enough sense into her to stop and listen.

“Sit,” Cornelius said sternly. She obeyed.

Cornelius inhaled, and let out a deep sigh. He began the exhausting task of filling her in as to what happened last night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ash was relieved, but still felt as bad as she did an hour ago. If Cornelius didn’t know any better, he would say she was coming close to tears.

“Oh buck Neal, I’m so sorry. I, I-”

“Hey hey, easy now.” He didn’t see his best friend like this very often, but when he did, it tore his heart.

“Everypony knows you didn’t mean to. It was just a big misunderstanding that’s all. You would never shoot somepony without a good reason.”

That last part wasn’t particularly true. H e recalled that one time in the Manhattan hotel with the milk in the lobby. But she didn’t need any of that now.
“But they will still hate my guts. Everypony else probably will, too, once word gets out.”

Cornelius put his hoof around her shoulder.

“Anything but. They were very, very understanding. I explained everything to them. They also agreed to keep this whole incident to ourselves as well.”

He chuckled a little.

“Who would have thought your first real mare friends would be quite possibly the best in Equestria?”

“I dunno, Neal, it sounds like your softening up what actually happened.”

She made an attempt to get up, only to wobble and fall right back down on her flank.

“Whoa there, Sweetheart. You gave yourself quite the scare. Why don’t you just take it easy for now?”

She was about to protest, but realized he was absolutely right. She all but exhausted herself this morning. Neal led her back to her makeshift bed on the floor.

“Tell you what, you go and get a bit more rest and I’ll go out and take care of a few errands. I’ll come back with some breakfast. ‘Kay?”

She gave a small nod.

Cornelius got up to his way to the door and as he was about to shut it, Ash called out to him.

“Hey Neal?”

He turned his head.

“Yes?”

“Can you pick up some donuts?”

Neal smiled, glad that his friend was starting to become at least a little bit more like herself.

“Sure thing”, he said.

“And Neal?”

He looked back in.

“Yeah?”

“I love you. You’re the best”

He paused for a bit, not expecting to hear what he did.

“Likewise, Ash.”

He shut the door. Ash nestled back into her covers quickly falling into a peaceful slumber. As she did, a single insect flew into the room. Seeing its next blood meal, it made its way towards the soon to be snoring pony, only to be abruptly stopped, tangled in a mass of silk. A small house spider rushed over to his catch, quickly wrapping it into a tight bundle, glad to help make sure nothing disturbed the sleeping angel as she enjoyed a much needed rest.

(Special thanks to Fribox for the awsome cover art. Go check out his other pony drawings here!)

Comments

[Neon Icy Wings]

Bravo encore! And in other news since I can't find the right pic: Please continue

[Stonetribe]

661245Hey, glad you like it! Right now, I'm doing a bit of editing to see if I can't get this published on Equestria Daily. But I have pleny of ideas for more chapters, so once that's taken care of, I'll be sure to release some new content.

[Neon Icy Wings]

665612 Awesome! And good luck with EQD sometimes they let gems like this slide because of grammer! The fiends!

[Stonetribe]

665711Funny, you should say that, the email I got back from the pre-readers said my story needed a bit more attention on the grammer, particularly in the area of dialog attribution. Other than that, I'm pretty sure it meets EQD standards.

[Neon Icy Wings]

665971 Really? I thought everything was perfect. But then again my brain tends to omit grammer mistakes and just reads the story.

[Dead_Account_0]

"H e recalled that one time in the Manhattan hotel with the milk in the lobby. But she didn’t need any of that now.
“But they will still hate my guts. Everypony" - This is actually two formatting issues. H e should obviously be he, while you need to put another line between the two to keep consistent.

"mealm,"

"Murmuring a curse as she picked up to examine and throw out the window, not necessarily, no, definitely not in that order, whatever object decided to cause her pain." I don't actually understand what's happening here. Is she stopping herself from throwing it out of the window? It took me three reads to get that, if it's true. Just needs a little simplifying.

Now I know that you've probably noticed that I'm not particularly great with commas, but I noticed a few of yours aren't quite right. There's quite a few rules to know. Take a look at this: http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node09.html Here's a summary of where to use commas:
1. Can the comma be replaced by and or or?
2. Is it followed by one of the connecting words and, or, but, yet or while?
3. Does it represent the absence of repetition?
4. Does it form one of a pair of commas setting off an interruption which could be removed from the sentence?

I hope you get this thing fixed up, and get accepted onto EQD. They haven't accepted any of my fics, but I mostly write crossovers which they don't like anyway. This is a good story so far. I'm digging the characters.

[Stonetribe]

736382 Ok, my friend just got back to me with his peer editing change log for the first chapter and I have, well, edited acordingly. I'm sure its much better now! Thanks for your constructive criticism Cainiam, I really do appriciate it! As for some of the parts you didn't quite get, When ash said, "we both like to call him Dr. Feelgood" She is refering to herself and Cornelius when they were travaling together and it would mostly be just the two of them. And when twilight said "Yes, that sort of thing happens all the time in Ponyville," She was generally refering to the occasional unexpected event that tends to happen in ponyville like the flash parrasprite infestation, or ursa minor attack ect... I know these first chapters seem a bit more focused on Ash, making Cornelius seem a bit dull or neglected. But don't worry, he will get some spotlight time soon!