Death, Sacrifice, and the man in blue

by MrTyrannousaurusX

Chapter 25: The Way we Fall Apart

“Pawn to D4?” Violet Heart inquired, gazing bemused into the gratified crystal eyes of her housemate.

“Yeah, what about it?” Alan Sizemore rebutted with a smirk.

“I thought you rarely ever played chess?”

“That’s true, but that don’t mean I ain’t know anythin’.”

“The Dutch Defense is a pretty complicated move, Alan. It’s not something you just know.”

“Well it’s clearly somethin’ I know. I know a lot more complicated things than a chess move, Miss Heart.”

Violet cleared her throat. “Suppose you are.”

“You don’t gotta ‘suppose’ anything.” Alan chortled.

The long-lost human, marooned in an empire crafted from a cave-full of crystals, sat at a birch dining table in the dead-center of his comrade’s kitchen. None other than Violet Heart’s kitchen. Its black-and-white tiled floor and cyan-painted drawers and cabinets all emanated a similar scent. An intoxicating fragrance that threatened to lull the raven-haired man into a bout of nostalgic recollections. The siren song had long-since breached his flaring nostrils, no contest proposed to its entry. And for the first time in, what he could only assume to be, a manifold of years, Alan was finally content.

Alan Sizemore had struck gold.

He finally found what he had been tirelessly searching for with every unflappable cell in his feeble frame. His unending pursuit was nothing short of resolute. The fruits of his tenure were few and far between, yet his desired endgame was always the infatuation of his tunnel vision. All he ever possessed a hankering for was merely a life he could call his own. Not that eternal, interminable cycle of damnation he barely classified as living back in Tuscaloosa. An everlasting loop of hellish suffering that bypassed all bounds and margins. Whether they were extant at all in the first place was an entirely different discussion in and of itself. If anybody were to ask the male his brother called Bird’s Nest, he’d fervently preach with all the air in his lungs that they never existed at all. And there was a myriad of evidence to suggest that proposition.

When Alan allowed his pulsating head to be swallowed by his lush pillow, he was pleasantly surprised at the nightly outside tumult that became habitual for him. The lack thereof was a better way of describing it. No bitter active war between separate congregations of homeless fiends, willing to take any action to achieve the mountainous high. A wool was drawn over their crazed, sleep-deprived eyes towards the glaring truth. The singular fact that what they blissfully reveled in during their first encounter with narcotics was a prospering memory, but one that was unable to be re-experienced.

For years upon years, when Alan surrendered his frame to his blanket’s gluttonous clutches, that was his macabre lullaby. Incessant roaring and howling, badgering the beaming moon. Haymakers hurled one after another, a feat the man never thought possible with their brittle malleable limbs. A pair of icicles covered in flesh would’ve seen the job through better than those wiry sore-ridden hags. The unfaltering scourges to Roseville that he and his brother essentially ushered into existence.

In this gleaming glass wonderland, ruled by utter and unadulterated tranquility, the moon’s whimsical reign was accompanied by…silence. Nothing else dared to exist within the Empire’s soundless borders. Nothing but the sweet, succulent, placid silence. When he laid his weary head down to rest in a clean bed he could call his own, he was at peace. Badgered by a ravenous drove of worries and doubts, yet amongst the ceaseless discord, he scrounged serenity. Even beneath the sun’s golden watchful eye, it was still largely conquered by quietude. No gimcrack vehicles, clawing at any strand of life they could forage, thundering down the pothole-littered roads. No homeless menaces leaving their abominable mark on his diseased old world. No negatives formed a canker sore on the vista.

His life, this newfound opportunity for prosperity, was perfect. Perhaps too perfect.

“How much did you learn from your books, Alan?” Violet inquired.

“More than you’re thinkin’, I’m sure.” Alan replied. “I ain’t just some dumb hic from the boonies, Violet.”

“How many more chess moves, hm?”

“Scillian’s defense, Bird’s defense, Scandinavian defense. My memory’s been a little hazy for a while.”

Alan’s stone-grey ceramic coffee cup was wreathed by his battered, threadbare hand. Scarred knuckles and calloused palm ignited by the balmy liquid within. Ghostly strings of steam floated out of the chocolate-brown lake like lost souls ascending to heaven’s golden gates. The raven-haired male reveled in a hearty swig, scorching the fleshy walls of his throat like a clod of slag. How his esophagus wasn’t inundated with infernal flames was a bona fide miracle. A gift from the very same gods the threads of steam rose to greet.

“Is there anything you know that’s not a defense? You can’t win a chess game by defending the entire time.”

Alan stroked his butt chin, the badgersome stubble ravaging his visage prodded his fingertips like a field of whetted daggers. “The Queen’s Gambit.”

“Alright.”

“The English Opening.”

“Is that it?”

The man gazed at the painfully drab tan popcorn ceiling, swallowed by the titanic salivating maw of deep fathomless thought. Thirty seconds passed. Thirty seconds of feverish, zealous combing of his mammoth catalog of memories and knowledge. Thirty seconds that amounted to a fruitless conclusion.

“You got me. I’m spent.” Alan responded. The unicorn chortled. “Just play your move, we ain’t got all day.”

“Of course we do!” Violet rebutted. “What kind of plans do you got?”

“I didn’t tell you?”

Violet moved her far-left pawn up two spaces. B6.

“What secrets are you holding from me?”

Alan moved a second pawn. E4.

“I talked to a few of the locals and read the paper yesterday, turns out Levi’s fine. More than fine actually. They’ve been calling him the ‘Man in Blue’.”

Violet moved her left knight. F6.

“The man in what?”

“The Man in Blue. From what I’ve heard, the princess here gave him this sword made outta crystals. Word around town is it belonged to this warrior a hundred years ago.”

Alan moved his far-right pawn. H3.

“Platinum Wing?”

“You heard too?”

“Of course I have. You think I live under a rock?”

“We’ve been living under one for a while. This house might as well be a rock.”

Violet’s lionhearted knight advanced, its passion for delivering justice unyielding. C5. The valiant paladin glowered at the petulant bishop across from him.

The unicorn snickered, snagging another gulp of her liquid caffeine. Her cup was a glorious shade of azure disfigured by a meager handful of chipped paint shards. “Shut up.”

Alan wiped away his smirk. “Where is he again? Ponyville, yeah?”

“Yes. Ponyville. I heard it’s pretty boring up there around…every time of the year.”

“I’m sure Levi’s spicing it up. Roseville was Hell, but that Hell was better with a friend.”

Alan’s far-right pawn trekked further into the calamitous No Man’s Land. H4.

“When are you going to tell me about Roseville?” Violet inquired. “I’ve been super curious ever since you mentioned it, Alan, you know me.”

“You got that too right. Sometimes I feel like I know you too much.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Yup.” Alan seized his ardent cup with an elated grip. Pale snakes of steam levitated from the rippling Vandyke pond, tickling his nostrils. “Best chance you got of knowin’ is after I’m dead.”

Another slug of the brown torrid liquid dove down his throat, crashing into their wide hospitable arms. The bewitching taste of rich French vanilla massaged his tongue.

“Why is that?”

Violet’s sable knight bounded with unyielding zeal. His baleful lance agleam, its menace was pestilence among the house’s colorful atmosphere.

“It’s…” Alan’s far-right rook glided across the unsullied wooden board, crashing into his pawn’s unsuspecting rear. H3. The male’s brain worked unpaid overtime.

Unflagging and unceasing, rusted cogs and archaic pistons chugging to their oily heart’s content. Attempting to conjure a feasible response as to why that bloated corpse of a town couldn’t be discussed was nigh-impossible. In all honesty, the word “couldn’t” was nothing short of generous. The man cannot, under any circumstances in this life or the next, tell Violet Heart about his… Even with years bidding him farewell since the injustices he and his brother committed, he wasn’t sure what name best fit his actions. Hell, he wasn’t sure what name best fit him because of them. Atrocities? Cardinal sins? Detestable inhumanity rivaled only by the demon in human clothing he exiled from Earth? If he was truthful, like Alan always swore to be, he was all of the above. Candidly, the boundless laundry list of potential mantles he could don stretched into starry oblivion.

Alan’s icy irises plummeted to the table for a fleeting fistful of seconds. The illustrious, untarnished crystalline table displaying his sorrow and regret like a macabre theater performance. A first-row seat showing for Misery and Guilt at Seven o’clock sharp, showing only at none other than the Crystal Empire Grand Theatre. Located right at his doorstep, both metaphorically and literally.

The soupy quietude was leaden. Cumbersome on the unicorn’s immaculate heart, her ribs threatening to fulminate into a lake of splinters. Asking the absolute supreme leader of dour inquiries was a crime she’d committed far too many instances prior. However, akin to the homicidal urges of Roseville’s disgraced monarch, her curiosity was ceaseless. Heeding not to any variation of borders or margins, refusing to adhere to social limitations. The way her pestersome, prying questions stormed the adamantine castle of one’s privacy was borderline impressive. Becoming a private investigator was the dream she gunned for as a child, after all.

A glaze of remorse, the magnitude foreign to Violet, poured over his frozen visage. Swallowing every defining characteristic and feature daring to infiltrate its warpath.

“Alan?” Violet spoke. “Everything oka-”

“I need to check the mail.” The noirette interjected.

Alan shoved hard on the undeserving table. To his housemate’s unadulterated shock, the table didn’t crash into the speckless tiles the way she expected. No mighty tumble of Homeric proportions occurred, yet the departure of her loyal friend did.

Four legs giving life to an elderly dining room chair growled, dipping ever-so-slightly into the grooves between the monochromatic tiles. A duo of feet clad in dilapidated threadbare socks nearly jetted across the kitchen floor. His middle toe and gnarled nail peeked from the fabric sleeving his foot. How the tear dawned into reality was a question no one alive could clarify. Whether it was simply by natural wear-and-tear or his skirmish with that profane beast in the belly of the woods was up to interpretation. Alan scurried from tile, to lush carpet, then finally to the coarse doormat, slipping his extremities into his ramshackle shoes parked next to the door.

“Alan, what is it?”

The deadbolt flung from the doorframe. Its latch following suit, dangling from the entryway like a dead snake boasted by a hunter.

“What’s wrong?”

He twisted the knob.

Outside, the Crystal Empire was as ethereal as a location on Earth could possibly get. In fact, granting credit to what warrants it, it was the closest to Heaven’s mystical terrain he never thought he’d bear witness to. Viewing a beauty of this unrivaled enormity was a feat he undoubtedly didn’t deserve. After all, with lives either lying in shambolic rubble or in the throes of addiction because of him, why should he be able to experience this. Every human has one life to live. Not a free trial, not a prepaid adventure, and certainly not a test run. One life governed by their own volition and desires, and that was it. Alan had razed countless. Either forcing them to a brutish, poignant terminus, or allowing them to saunter towards it naturally. Legs piloted by their tank of vitality, destitute and scanty. Yet, the merciful God he surrendered his life to long ago did exactly what he was known for. Permitting clemency to those who plead for their paths to be altered.

The herculean sun held steadfast dominion over the Empire it held partial ownership of. The fact of the matter always was that, without it, its unequaled heart-gripping glamor could never exist. A river of golden luster pelted the craggy horizon, populated only by glimmering triangular roofs and gleaming inactive street lamps. The sainted blemishless gung ho sidewalks were buzzing with life and exuberance. Unicorns and earth ponies of all ages and appearances gave the Empire the lifeforce it merits. An interminable belt of bobbing hairstyles was all Alan’s grief-stricken mind could process, not one identical to another. Their sheeny flesh and the string of houses they strolled past shimmering in the same dazzling fashion.

Alan’s quaking legs and teetering knees were welded to Violet Heart’s front porch, if “porch” was even the correct term. It was a medium-sized cyan crystal block with two perfectly rectangular steps leading to the walkway. Three slabs were planted firmly into the Empire ground, spilling out into the ever-stretching mesmerizing road. The small path was enclosed by a small garden imprisoned by, to no one’s surprise at all, an azure crystalline waist-high fence. Two small squares of vivacious, exuberant foliage added pizzazz to the quaint abode. Emanating bountiful elegance amongst an unending strip of monotonous uniformity. As much as Alan revered this kingdom he was blessed enough to call his cursory home, he had to admit redundancy was a blight upon its serenity.

Inhale. A sprawling ocean of oxygen was herded into his lungs. Exhale. The sea of air fled his chest. Both seas quivered endlessly, shaking like a man with a pistol barrel delving into the back of his head. Alan receded into the semi-comforting oblivion behind his eyelids. His cyanic irises, unperturbed and level-headed under any ordinary circumstances, were a decaying husk of their past selves. A granitelike mask of abominable, unyielding fright was soldered onto his sodden visage. Two dour pinpoints of cimmerian dread occupied his sockets, his optics evicted. Alan tugged the collar of his slim-fitting white tee, swiping his saturated forehead with the silky ethereal fabric. Pearls of sweat crawled out of the wrinkled flesh above his languishing irises. Some absorbed by frayed tentacles of hair striping his forehead, others cantered down his countenance.

“Ah, man…” Alan rumbled into his vibrating palms. “Lord have mercy. I need to get a grip.”

The male swept his greasy jungly bangs from his pang-ridden orbs. He reached a chapped, craggy hand to the brilliant azure mailbox, flipping the lid and rifling through its innards. It emerged clutching three articles of paper, each varying in thickness and texture. One was a broad laminated sheet, most likely a vast catalog of desperate advertisements and pot-bellied sponsors. The two others were poles apart from one another. A sleek envelope and a tightly rolled tube of paper, the probable culprits being a pestersome bill and a bountiful newspaper.

Alan’s hand receded from its crystalline belly, its glossy lid stridently closing. The prospect of never judging a book by its cover was drilled into his besmirched psyche. Now, the sole instance when his judgments were based exclusively on appearance, its rusted hinges walloped him with the truth. He sauntered back through the maw of Violet’s modest abode with a disinfected heart and an unburdened mind. Clutched in his left hand was the trio of parchments fished from the archaic mailbox, his right lazed by his side. Violet Heart stood in the kitchen’s yawning mouth directly where the drab carpet converted to elegant checkered tiles.

“Alan?”

“It’s nothin’ to worry about, I’m okay.” The rattled human replied, stifling a vocal tremor overstaying its unwarranted welcome. “You got somethin’ worth looking at.”

“Sore subject?”

The male nodded. “More than sore. Too touchy for my likin’.”

Alan tossed the trio of papers to the queen of the household. The prideful owner of this errorless roof he bore the luck of living and breathing beneath. Her horn swiftly detonated in a starburst of arresting vivacious gleam. The parcels were ruthlessly seized by a bold, attention-robbing lustrous aura, briskly forced into a uniform row in the open air. All three were arranged in a painfully precise single-file line with roughly five-inches of space between each of them. On the left was the spyglass-shaped rolled-up newspaper, the middle was the envelope, and the right was the manifold of slogans and advertised products. A duo of glinting hazel irises scrutinized the contents of the papers to the highest possible extent. Their fate dangled haplessly in the indecisive atmosphere, one of two fates would befall the pitiful sheets. Condemned to hellish doom in the recesses of a garbage can, or set aside for later more intimate examination. The right sheet was the first to be analyzed.

“Garbage.”

The paper soared into the kitchen, still imprisoned by a sensational azure ring, and crammed into the half-filled trash can. Becoming one with the colony of meritless objects deemed unworthy of life within.

The envelope was examined.

“A bill.” Violet spoke in the selfsame deadpan, uninterested timbre.

She hurled the envelope onto her black leather reclining chair, slipping into one of its many lightless crevices.

Lastly, the newspaper was the final victim of her boundless rigorous scrutiny. A tube of brown-tinted paper rolled into the shape of a shotgun barrel, bound together by three strings of cobalt thread.

“You think anything exciting is going on?” The unicorn playfully inquired. She freed the plethora of information from its badgersome bindings.

“Let’s hope not.”

“Why not?”

“Excitin’ usually means trouble where I’m from. I never liked excitement in the papers.”

“Well you’re not there anymore,” Violet replied. “Excitement here is just plain excitement, no strings attached.” She unfurled the newspaper.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Alan spoke with a beaming charismatic grin.

With Alan anchored to her left side, the inquisitive pair rested their intrigued orbs upon the cinnamon-colored paper. Absorbing every eloquently constructed sentence and fresh batch of knowledge the articles presented for consumption. Nothing was spared or granted clemency from the duo’s ravenous lust for details and enthusing developments. Even in Roseville, where abominable headlines displaying detestable machinations was the standard, Alan was no stranger to perusing the extent of humanity’s depravity. Even the most gloomy amidst the rambling field of sins.

However, despite the thousands of malevolent injustices he’d seen flagrantly exposed in the local papers, none of them ever succeeded in tugging his heart into his stomach. Drowning it in the septic fathoms of his stomach, wound tightly with barbed wires of dread. A frigid, unyielding dagger of fright arrived with long-entombed memories in tow, engaging in a frenzied primal stabbing spree. His core was fixated and honeycombed. Grievous emotional wounds littered his tremor-wracked form.

‘MURDER IN PONYVILLE!’ The caption screamed. ‘ROYAL GUARD SLAIN! FAMILIES IN TEARS!’

His ears ceased their ordinary function. Anything strident nor slight could breach the bulwark of incessant shallow ringing. Not Violet’s words of concern. Not the maelstrom of mortifying recollections of the long-bygone town he called home. The thunderous barks of hurtling bullets swarmed his skull. Raucous howls of desolate men gazing into the Grim Reaper’s dour sockets. Every sonorous laugh and loathsome chortle that ever scampered from the bowels of Gary’s throat. His disregard for human life prevalent with every quip, with every yank of the trigger.

His face…

That stomach-churning, heart-pulverizing, sickeningly obnoxious countenance. Those amber orbs, teeming with enough arrogance to annihilate an entire army. Chiseled jawline like a scrapped addition to Mount Rushmore. Turquoise button-down fit snugly over his ironclad frame and rugged chest. The unrelenting tempest of reminders of Roseville’s former dictator all stemmed from a talented artist’s magnum opus in the bottom-right corner. Beneath it, printed in small letters and imprisoned within parentheses, read a name. The name. The only thing that swayed him away from any possible separate outcome to this vile state of affairs he’d soon be entangled in. This wasn’t some terrifyingly identical twin forsaken at birth by his equally monstrous parents. This wasn’t some despicable night terror or a sadistic game played by a maniacal god. This was reality.

‘Artist’s depiction of Gary Demonio.’

“Alan?” Violet’s ginger voice infiltrated his ears at long last. “Alan, what’s wrong? What is it?”

His chapped lips mumbled soundless words. A traffic jam between his lungs and his throat was erected. Any garbled mash of words he could just barely construct a coherent sentence out of was lifeless. Brittle shallow skeletons of words barely fettered together with rotting ropes and frail wires.

“Come on, Al, pull that fucking thing! Pull that trigger!” Gary’s mockery pinballed endlessly off the walls of his pulsating skull. His dying words. The final instance he expected to ever hear his voice. From then until the instant time reached its ceremonious coda.

Yet, here he was. Bearing witness to the ignition of the inevitable trail of firecrackers, each explosion charring his warpath a deeper stygian. Burrowing his viscous tendrils of malevolence further into the blissfully oblivious earth. He and his brother brought this monster back, not a hint of doubt vandalized that statement. The guilt bludgeoning him was nigh-fatal.

“Alan, please, what’s-”

“I…” Alan’s quivering feet were welded to the plushy carpet. The floor was transformed into a titanic glue trap, tearing his palpitating shoes from the unsympathetic flooring.

Alan was a hapless mouse trapped in this diabolical game. An internal fray given unwarranted life by a trio of unseen gods. Their influence abhorrent and prodigious, the male reduced to a meager object of homeric ruthless desire.

Alan wrenched his left foot from the carpet. It was a struggle of intergalactic proportions, as though the magnetic force of the planet was boosted twentyfold. Adamantine chains shackled his right hand to his roaring chest. A bundle of velvety white fabric was clutched in a bone-crushing grip.

“I need some-”

All in one breezy moment, Alan twirled his unfathomably shaken frame, strode a single step towards the kitchen, and gravity’s salivating maw ingested him. His legs crumbled beneath the weight of the countless lives Gary has yet to claim. Gravity wreathed its wretched tendrils around the man’s obliques, tugging him to the rigid ground. Alan fell prey to a mighty tumble with little to no parallels. The closest thing that could hold a candle was the fall of the Roman Empire.

Forearms bashed the kitchen tiles. Legs still penned within the living room’s margins. Alan lifted his head, utterly and entirely engulfed by a mist of disbelief. Tear-flooded eyes snapped onto a flimsy, gimcrack wooden door directly across from him. It was constructed from birch wood with a windowframe bereft of glass, only a slightly rusted square of thin mesh wire dwelled within it.

“Alan! Alan, everything’s okay!” The male couldn’t quite pinpoint what method of speech she implemented to call out his name. It lacked the crucial potency to be considered a bellow, yet it was too clamorous to be titled as a whisper.

The noirette’s ears were blighted by an eternal drone, an unceasing bombardment like the tranquil hum of a microwave. Any shred of noise that dared to frolic in his ear canals was a faint ghost of its former self. His quivering ribs were the subject of his heart’s ruthless clobbering, veins frothing with petrified vigor. Alan buried his toes into the carpet, boosting off his trembling feet. The raven-haired male charged like a vengeful Rhinoceros with an unyielding lust for blood and demolition.

The world collapsed all around him. More accurately, his world. A fresh new chance at an unsullied, stainless existence in a dimension where villainy of this degree was alien. This opportunity-his final opportunity-to trek forward into a life destitute in the boundless carnage and languishing that had grown habitual to witness was dashed. Heartlessly harrowed and incinerated right before his tear-filmed sky blue irises. The feverishly dancing orange flames almost reflected in his quaking pupils.

Alan dashed to the feeble door, hapless and unsuspecting toward the oncoming blitzkrieg. He charged across the black-and-white tiles in a mere duo of seconds. A burly, ironclad shoulder barreled into the frail wooden door indifferent to the preordained aftermath he was well-aware walked across the horizon. The door exploded forward, ricocheting off the wall left to its puny frame.

The backyard was, in comparison to the entirety of Violet’s abode, nothing worth catching anyone’s attention. A small rectangular lot of animated flamboyant grass tripped the light fantastic in the hushed Fall breeze. Imprisoning the diminutive, shrunken-down lawn was a lofty picket fence, easily surpassing Alan’s height. In retrospect, that feat wasn’t much of an accomplishment. Most likely anything throughout that modest home could tower over a hunched-over dilapidated husk of a man. Knees impaling the boggy dirt, moistened from the previous unsympathetic assault of rainfall. Loose hands, robbed of anything bearing semblance to structure or zest, crashing into the distant cousin of a swamp. The heels of his manuses shouldering the brunt of his meteoric impact. Slender dandelions lept from the luscious earth, ghostly pale seeds abducted by the tranquil melodic gale. Their bulbous heads burglarized of all signs of life. With their colorless dandruff traveling to alien greener pastures, all that remained was an erect lonesome stalk wallowing in forced bitter solitude. Their equally melancholic brethren provided shallow company, yet nothing to begin to quell the sorrowful loneliness.

Dotting the yard’s outskirts were evenly spaced bushes, varying ever-so-slightly in size and thickness. Some were puny and just barely surpassed a bowling ball in size. Others were titanic, effortlessly dwarfing an Elephant’s gargantuan foot. Alan’s dumbfounded irises, conquered by incomprehensible dread and terror, were magnetized to a hapless mammoth bush. A colossal stone spawned in his roiling stomach, his belly tumbling enough to make a gymnast glow green with envy.

The male scrambled across the lawn like a famished Jaguar infatuated with a dying Gazelle. He slid on his buckled knees, halting mere centimeters from a behemoth bush. One final rotation of his stomach violently tugged the ripcord. His crashing world spun one conclusive gyration, brain pirouetting in his aching skull. A geyser of repugnant, obscene bile singed his esophagus like a Phoenix’s indiscriminate wrath. The bush’s rangy thorny limbs were vandalized, disgraced by a despicable glistening coat of the khaki-colored abomination. His scalded throat was transformed into a ravenous geyser of steaming quicksand. Trembling denim-covered kneecaps swallowed by the spongy lawn.

Amidst the shallow cacophony of ceaseless droning laying waste to his eardrums, the leaden thump of hooves against the backyard mire.

A strident wail ripped through the overstrung air, ravaging the eardrums of his concerned housemate. The male sobbed to his fragmented heart’s content.

“No, no, no, no! NO!” The noirette wailed, rocking back and forth. Every moment both tiny and prodigious stirred the sorrow-infested waters of the atmosphere, rippling relentlessly. “Gary, he ain’t dead! He ain’t dead, man, he ain’t dead!”

A set of ginger hooves pressed into his lurching back. “Alan, what-”

His quaking frame exploded in a vicious starburst of unbridled aggression. Left elbow shooting back like a trained hunter’s arrow, body slightly twisting. Alan’s bereaved, misery-wracked countenance was the recipe of nightmares. Crystalline icy irises, like smoldering rings of glorious blue flame, were thoroughly extinguished. Pupils were akin to a cloudless, starless midnight sky. Just utter unrestrained darkness as far as the eye could see and comprehend. No life. No hidden undertones of love or admiration. Nothing but hollow tenebrosity. The experience was bone-chilling, akin to gazing into the shallow eyes of a frigid corpse. Two unplumbed chasms into a lightless damnation, anguish and agonized souls of the condemned holding rigid dominion. A thread of saliva dangled from his bottom like an empty nose swinging in the gallows, swaying in a decaying breeze.
“He ain’t dead!” The afflicted raven-haired man caterwauled with a rumbling sniffle. A twain of mucus strings retracted into his nostrils. “He ain’t dead… How is he not dead…?”

His deafening, throat-ripping howl had devolved into a pitiful murmur. “How…? He ain’t dead, man… He ain’t dead.”

Alan was imprisoned within an interminable loop. Incessant back and forth rocking, grumbling sniffles seizing his draining nostrils, and the occasional sob. A violent, lung-squeezing cry of unchained agony and trauma. Another crucial part of this infinite egregious loop was the darkness. More specifically, and more accurately, what occupied this soupy unending void behind his eyelids. When his bloodshot orbs were plunged into that familiar murky oblivion and a tear stampeded down his cheek, a vicious maelstrom pillaged his psyche. Memory after memory, carnage bled into senseless Kafkaesque senseless barbarity that recognized little to no parallels. Past gunshots clobbered his eardrums. The snide mirth that subsequently plagued the Roseville air slammed against his skull like a legion of trains, traveling from the mouth of the one he slew.

Violet lathered the noirette’s tense back with her consoling hooves, feeling the bony ridges of his spine through the sweat-drenched shirt. The volume of his body-wracking sobs plummeted. He wrenched a trembling hand from the waterlogged grass, swiping it across his pumping nostrils. A sickly yellow thread of mucus vandalized the calloused flesh, rivaling his dirt-caked fingernails in sheer nauseation.

“Gosh,” Alan croaked, swallowing the eight-ball in his esophagus. “He ain’t… Why is he not dead…?...Why?”

“I don’t know, Alan,” Violet crooned, rubbing miscellaneous, nondescript patterns into his back. The shapes were akin to crop circles left by otherworldly aliens. “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”

“He’s gonna burn this world down. All of it. We’re all gonna die.” The man breathed.

“We’re not, Alan.”

“We are!” His voice was shallow and breathy. “We are… We’re all finished…” He was seized by an unyielding coughing fit.

“Alan-”

“Where did that paper say he was?”

“What was that?”

“Where did that paper say he killed those people at? Was it some town?”

Violet paused, her hooves unceasing. “Ponyville.”

“How far?”

“Alan, absolutely-”

“How. Far. Away?” The male drove his fist into the sodden ground with each spat word.

Violet sighed in defeat. “A few hours away at the earliest.”

Alan seized a handful of the grass-infested mud with a wrathful hand.

“Pack a bag.”

“You can’t be serious, right?”

Alan socked the ground with the might of a thousand angry gods. “Why do I keep repeatin’ myself!” The male barked. “Pack us a bag, we’re leavin’!”

“Are you sure this is the right thing, Alan?”

“When’s the next train?”

---

If Levi Cronell was given every year Earth had in its expansive vault of free time, nothing he was able to imagine or conjure could ever dream of surpassing his current state of affairs.

Here he was, a human being hidden within the regal grandiose bowels of a colossal royal castle. Sitting at the head of a crystal table conversing with a band of bounty hunters, led by an overtly spiteful, callous Griffon. A Griffon he was currently imploring to the highest possible degree to see beyond the murky film of venom blinding him. Robbing him of the dire ability to view this horrendous, ghastly situation and every portion of it for what it truly was. Somewhere out there, deep in some miscellaneous forest or aimlessly roaming a heartless desert, Gary Demonio was alive. A human being just like the Man in Blue, only bereft of a functioning moral compass and so much as a morsel of ruth. Hidden amongst Equestria’s rambling and lively landscape, all choked by the rigid dominion of Princess Celestia, Gary survived against titanic odds.

The only thing Levi could feverishly pray for was that Mortimer Surly harbored the capabilities to rival those odds. Approach the raven-haired bastard as he mindlessly roamed these alien lands and launch a round into his forehead for his sins. Pulverize him beneath justice’s mammoth hammer, assume the stead of judge and jury. Above all else, however, becoming the swift and cunning executioner was all that truly mattered. The morality of this scenario was meaningless, as did the means to achieve it. It was all shrouded beneath a broad, all-encompassing umbrella of worthlessness. It mattered not how unjust or inhumane the means to achieve it were. This unending vivacious landscape could be charred and scathed from their homeric battle. Equestria’s lucious earth scalped off all vibrant life and vivid plants. If someone were to assume a biblical, prophesied apocalypse had occurred there, they’d be forgiven for their not-so-baseless assumptions.

The bottom line was, no matter who got hurt or maimed in the process, Gary Demonio will die. Even in spite of the elephantine costs that may sprout to achieve it. Levi knew it. Celestia knew it. Hell, he was almost positive that Twilight knew it. The only one who needed to understand the severity of their hellish situation was Mortimer. Perhaps the answer to his burning question would appease his famished inner doubts, gnawing on his calcified heart of stone.

“Tell me more about this ‘Gary Demonio’.” Mortimer Surly asked, leaning forward in his illustrious seat ever-so-slightly. Shrewd, calculating irises scrutinizing the Man in Blue to the utmost. His secreted unwarranted convictions singed the male’s emerald optics.

“I need to know a few things about you and your people first,” Levi replied, resting his ankle upon his knee. “What’ve you and them done together?”

“Captured bounties. Tons of ‘em.”

“How many?”

Mortimer’s orbs flicked to his comrade on his right. Dread Shot stared off into some unseen invisible oblivion, abducted by a mist of deep fathomless thought.

“Two-hundred or so, something around that.” Dread answered.

Levi nodded slowly, his countenance indecipherable. Twilight shuffled nervously in her chair.

“How were they?”

“Watchu mean?” Mortimer fired.

“How were they? Violent, calm? Did they go down easy?”

“Barely any of them went down ‘easy’. A whole lot of ‘em were a royal pain in the ass. What’s your point?”

“How violent?”

Mortimer’s brows furrowed. “Are you an undercover lawpony, Mister?”

“Why would I be?”

“‘Cause you’re real good at interrogatin’,” Mortimer snapped. “Why are you askin’ all these damn questions? I hate repeatin’ myself, what’s the damn point?”

“If you’d really like to know,” Levi spoke, stifling a yawn. “I’m trying to figure out what you’re capable of, Mister Surly. The Princess thinks you can do it, I’m just not so convinced yet.”

“Would you like me to put a bullet in your leg to prove I can ‘do it’. I can draw fast enough to make your head spin, Mister.”

“That’s good to hear, but you all have…guns?”

“Yes we have guns, what’s so suprisin’?”

Aberrant and unbridled surprise bludgeoned his roaring heart like a jury of wrathful sledgehammers, deeming him guilty with no likelihood of clemency. Flocks of deplorable memories led a bloodthirsty blitzkrieg upon his psyche, its thunderous wrath boundless and indiscriminate. Remnants of skull-splitting gunshots, robbing lives from men gone and forgotten to time and indifference, resounded throughout his brain.

“Just…” The words fought tooth-and-nail with his rebellious tongue. Engaging in a torrid primal clash for unwavering supremacy over the male’s lips, half-open and paralyzed. Primed to utter a sentence that would never be granted life. “We’re getting off-track.”

“How much longer are you gonna grill us, Mister?” Mortimer croaked, scornful impatience bleeding into the high-strung air.

“What kind of guns are we talking about?”

“Depends on who you ask. Revolvers, repeaters, a few shotguns and pistols.” Dread chimed. His silence and lack of any addition to the conversation lasted trifling minutes, yet moved slower than eons.

“Are they easy to get?”

“I wouldn’t say they are. They’re outlawed just about everywhere if you’re not law enforcement. Even for us they were a pain to get our hooves on.”

Levi slowly nodded. “Understood. I just wanna rest easy knowing he can’t get more than he already has. If it gets any easier for him to take lives…who knows how many we’ll lose.”

“We?” Mortimer questioned. “The only ‘we’ here is me and my family. I’m not doing this for you, Mister.”

“It’s Mister Cronell.”

Mortimer scoffed. “I’m still not doing this for you, Mister Cronell.”

“Think whatever you like, Mister Surly, it doesn’t matter to me. You need to understand it’s not about you or money, there’s a bigger picture.”

“I can see the bigger picture just fuckin’ fine, Mister.” Mortimer refuted. “How many more questions do you got in that empty head of yours?”

Each gratuitous, senseless obscenity that flung from his cracked yellowed beak was an injustice. Despite his disdainful words having a clear target bereft of any muddled confusion, every backhanded insult was a stab to the regal atmosphere. He could almost hear the bedazzled walls and royal chandelier suspended above their heads forlornly weeping.

Levi’s jaw tightened. His teeth had all but become one, soldered together by a righteous aggravation.

“I got more than enough questions,” Levi replied. “All I need to know is if you’re capable of doing this right. Doing this at all, as a matter of fact. I hate to sound like a doubter but-”

“Clearly don’t hate it that much, Mister. You’re doubtin’ my damn ears off!”

“Relax, Mortimer,” Dread spoke, taming the snarling beast. “How many more questions you got for us, Mister Cronell?”

“Not many.” Levi shifted in his chair. “It’s just…how do I say this? I just want you all to understand the severity of this.”

“We do,” Dread responded.

“I’m sure you do. He’s the one I’m most worried about.” Levi pointed his index at the vexed Griffon. “If your leader refuses to understand how important this is, who’s to say any of you will?”

“He will. I’m positive he will.” Dread swiveled his head towards his comrade. “Almost positive anyway.”

Mortimer tightened his talons into a grainy fist. His slender bird-like extremities bore the appearance of golden bamboo. The elder’s icy irises maced his right-hand man’s indignant orbs without a faint inkling of mercy. The pair relayed a wordless message to one another, the contents being anyone’s guess. A silent plea to the head honcho that their departure needed to graze the horizon, perhaps a differing transmission entirely. Whatever the conveyance happened to be, it was enough to invoke a badgered sigh. At this point in the drawn-out declaration of boundaries and payment, anything that wasn’t a wrathful slew of vulgarities was appreciated. More than that, in fact. It was revered in every sense of the word.

Mortimer grumbled a bulk of nothingness before he spoke. The timbre of his elderly voice akin to the growling of a rumbling volcano. Mightier than the mountain of fire that erased Pompei from history’s manuscript.

“Mister…?” Mortimer shot Dread a bemused glare.

“Cronell.”

“Mister Cronell, if this ‘Demonio’ is so important and life-threatenin’, why are you wastin’ our time yakin’ about nothin’? We could’ve brought you his head twenty minutes ago if you would’ve cut us loose!”

“The thing is-”

“What’s the damned thing?”

Levi closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. Anger marred his countenance. His visage was a roiling, tempestuous lake of glorious rampant flames.

“The thing is I need you to understand-”

“The severity. Yes, I know.” The Griffon grumbled. “I’ve already come to an understandin’ twenty minutes ago!”

Levi addressed Dread Shot. “You’ve known him far longer than me, is he truthful?”

“‘Course I’m truthful!” Mortimer shot.

Dread pivoted his head to face his dear friend, scanning his features with systematic scrutiny. A machine-like analysis with a degree that Levi had never witnessed a day in his life prior to this torrid meeting. If he was entirely honest, this crude mockery of a discussion was anything but a junction between two factions. It wasn’t a blissfully simple, effortless conjoining of two parties with one shared objective welding their minds together. The aim of stopping a mass butcher, hellbent on executing any man, woman, or child to get to Levi Cronell, wasn’t enough to craft even a mediocre bond. What this was, this event held within the regal margins of Canterlot, was an ungoverned crash of two worlds. With the unshackled mayhem of colliding galaxies, realms smashed into one another like Maladors entangled in an ancient quarrel. Glaring stars callously routed. Planets bounced and careened like an intergalactic pinball championship, spanning across the aggregate of illimitable universes.

The duo of domains made themselves clearer than any crystal could ever dream of being. Mortimer Surly Sr. The gluttonous, indurate king of his band of semi-decent cronies. His black oozing heart teeming with a glut of baseless spite. Arguably the spearhead of this nation’s bounty hunting sect, otherwise known as Equestria’s money-hungry cesspit. Then there was Levi Cronell. A man with an open mind and a lust for stamping out the roaring flames consuming Equestria’s parched fields. That fire donning an aquamarine shirt and a belt swallowed by the waistline of his pants.

They were polar opposites in all the ways one could possibly envision. A triage of gunslingers and thieves led by a false messiah and a warrior preordained by an archaic prophecy. How could they ever successfully mesh as one? Weaving and crocheting their unique abilities and talents into one unstoppable power. An obelisk of unflappable might that would never see a deposition. If there was one thing Levi harbored a fatal allergy to, it was a pathetic surrender.

“I think we’re just about done here.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I know.” Levi’s hand curled into a bony fist upon the table. “If you can’t understand now, there’s no way I can help you.”

“I’ve told you already! I understand and so does my family.”

Levi glared at the man for a long while, several seconds or so. “I’ll take your word for it.”

The Man in Blue rose from his chair. An array of hushed cracks and soft pops coiled around his spine. Mortimer and his ensemble of haggards followed suit, closely mirrored by Twilight and Equestria’s lionhearted ruler.

“Thank you for your time, Mister Surly.” Celestia proclaimed, regurgitating bare lies through her flawless pearlescent teeth. The alicorn towered above the Surly gang, but none more than the crude ill-mannered winged Rat they somehow called their leader.

Out of every being in that room, each armed with their own varying degree of authority, one would envisage that, of all people, the Princess of all of Equestria would do the trick. She would accomplish the goal of delivering a beyond righteous reality check to the abrasive Griffon, currently soldered onto the saddle of his high horse. His nerves hastily bounding to lofty heights as Levi extended his hand across the table. Mortimer, standing at the rear of his chair he neglected to push back in, grumbled like an angry stomach.

“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you.” Levi spoke.

“Why’re you wastin’ your breath lyin’ to me?”

Levi’s visage hardened. His false mockery of a grin ironed out into a stiff line drawn across his flesh. Lips shackled to each other by adamantine chains of vexation,

“Why are you wasting your time still talking to me?”

For quite possibly the ten thousandth time that poorly spent afternoon, Mortimer Surly glowered at the Man in Blue. His beak shut tightly by a furious glue, azure irises sharper than the timeless sword sleeping against Levi’s thigh. Sharper than the jaded dagger of impatience lacerating Twilight’s countenance.

Mortimer’s indiscriminate smoldering glower was ever-so-incandescent. Correctly identified the raw emotion scrawled across the Griffon’s wrinkled features was daunting. Far from daunting, in fact. Venturing dangerously far into the uncharted realm of impossible, unachievable prospects. Anger? Annoyance? Disgust? A repugnant tapestry of the two? No one dwelling beneath that sprawling marble roof was able to find the truth amidst a lake of perplexity. Even Levi, the self-christened maestro of deciphering the most byzantine of body language, was astounded at his inability.

“So, Mister Surly,” Celestia’s strident cadence chimed. “What amount have you decided? To remind you, any price you desire can be done.”

“Any price…”

Mortimer gazed at the gleaming ground. The pristine sheeny floor was a radiant warzone. The herculean sun’s robust dynasty clashing barbarically with the Sparkling Empire. Brilliant golden rays swung their unseen swords, cleaving the head of countless twinkling goons. Their glistening corpses flung across the scarred battlefield and danced around his hind legs like rouge firecrackers.

“A hundred-thousand bits and a train to Manehattan and everything’ll be even.” Mortimer answered, meeting Levi’s emeralds. “You’ll have his head in no time. No time at all.”

“Give me an estimate. How long?”

“‘Course you want an estimate,” He murmured.

“The bare minimum is a couple weeks, maybe less. The longest it’ll take us is a month or two but I doubt it’ll come to that. We’ve never slacked off with a job like this in years.”
Levi cocked a brow. “He could kill an entire town in a week, a country in a month.”

“I believe they understand the importance of this job, Levi. Trust is a significant during times like these.” Celestia spoke.

“Sounds to me like a lot of garnish with no meat to me. When are you gonna be done pukin’ out this dramatic bullshit.”

“Just get out of here,” Levi sneered, rubbing his palm from his forehead to his chin in annoyance. “Just get out and get it done. Don’t come back unless you have his head in a basket for me.”

With a derogatory quibble and a look sweltering enough to set a planet ablaze, the Griffon swiveled his slender frame. Before the Equestrian king of thieves wrenched himself from Levi’s presence, he made sure to make his already loathsome, puss-oozing mark more revolting. Light the fuse for the rocket of aberration and foulness to soar to unplumbed heights. One last murmur escaped the prison that was his worn dog-tired lungs and fissured beak.

“As you wish, tough ass.” Quiet enough so his right-hand man wouldn’t bash him over the head for his despicable impudence. A feat that struck Levi dead with shock that it hadn’t been achieved earlier.

Mortimer, the silent giant walking among mortals Tacitus, and the indifferent Clear Sky all sauntered in unison to the door they all entered from. The entrance to this hellish nightmare of baseless crudeness the male was heartlessly subjected to. Hell, if this was some cruel game put on by a god infatuated with sadism tugging the strings, surprise would enter his heart last.

The aggregate of the gang was preparing for a swift departure. All sans one singular exception. Dread Shot. The golden child radiating blinding rays of hope in all the directions. Amidst a boundless rambling ocean of charred husks of buildings within a dead city, Dread Shot was the city on the hill. Looking down upon them all with a pitiful gaze. In his left hoof held closely to his mouth was a white note card pulled from his breast pocket. Locked in between his jaws, the end dashing wildly across the soon-to-be polluted paper, was a black ink pen.

Dread’s feverish scrawling concluded, spitting the pen back into his breast pocket. He handed the bemused yet doubtlessly intrigued human the transcribed slip.

“Don't say a thing, Mister Cronell, just go.” The stallion whispered. Quieter than a docile gale swimming through a town’s vacant streets in the dead of night. “If he’s as dangerous as you say, I trust you ain’t lying, then you’ll need one.”

Levi clasped the note card in his fingers, scrutinizing the discordant handwriting. Attempting to decipher these prehistoric otherworldly hieroglyphics would be a detective's euphoria. For the brunete, however, it would be his own personalized damnation. But one that could never dream of rivaling that atrocious first contact with Mortimer Surly.

Levi’s inquisitive emeralds were magnetized to the paper. The ruthless incoherence of the handwriting launched a hellish crusade on his eyeballs. Relentlessly cryptic and scarily byzantine, the words were akin to the path of a headless chicken. Aimless dashing in all directions bathed in thickest and blackest mire, stump vomiting ichor endlessly. Levi gawked at the muddled swamp of bleary letters with a tilted head for numerous seconds.

“Appaloosa, Fool’s Doom, ASAP. Guns for $.” The dollar sign, what Levi could only assume that garbled pig-pen on paper was, was a shoddy charade of the shape. A slanted crooked S impaled through its scalp by two wavy snake-esque lines like reflections of serpents in a rippling lake.

‘Fool’s Doom?’ Levi intramurally inquired. ‘I wish I knew who the real fool is right now. Me or that bastard Griffon. I can only wonder.’

After snatching his hat from the coat rack’s gimcrack substitute, the Surly Gang was long gone. Dissipating into whatever miscellaneous strident wind elegantly pirouetted through the city’s mesmerizing streets. Vanishing entirely from his sight as briskly and unsuspectedly as they arrived. Breaching the brittle bulwark of solace he constructed from the feeblest of twigs and twine.

“Fool’s Doom. I can only wonder what this is gonna be.” The male grouched beneath his breath. He slid the legal graffiti in the back pocket of his jeans.

“How are you feeling, Levi?” Equestria’s Princess questioned.

“As fine as I’ll ever be. I guess ‘fine’ is the word I’m looking for.”

“That went better than I was anticipating,” Twilight replied. “I knew Griffons weren’t the kindest in Equestria but I never could have prepared for…that.”

“Me neither. Not in a million years, Twilight.” Levi replied. Twisting his neck left and right, guttural rumbles echoing down his bony spine. “You ready to head out of here? I need a break. I’m sure you’re having book withdrawal by now.”

“We all do, Levi, but you do the most out of all of us.”

“I suppose I…need some time to process everything. It’s all so…raw still.” Celestia’s voice, once a gorgeous river of sunlight in auditory form, was a diminished husk of its past self. “Flash Sentry was one of my greatest.”

Levi paused for a fleeting handful of seconds, assembling his words with monolithic exercised caution. “He didn’t die needlessly, Princess, and it won’t be senseless either.”

“How likely are the chances he is caught?”

“If these bounty hunters are all they’re chalked up to be, then very likely.” Levi spoke. “If me and my brother could beat him in that old town of hillbillies, who’s to say Mortimer can’t?”

Celestia breathed deep, herding oceans of air into her titanic lungs. “I suppose my worries can be quelled in the meantime, Levi. I’m putting my trust in the both of you.”

“I don’t say this often, but when I do, I mean it. You have my word when I say this. I will make Gary suffer for this. I’m sure they want the same as me.”

“They lack the personal vendetta, Levi. Their drive won’t be as passionate.”

“I know that more than anyone but it’s still a drive regardless, and that’s all we need.”

“I suppose you are right, Levi.” Celestia replied. “Only time can guide us now.”

---

Time.

Levi never fancied time to be an accurate compass under any circumstances at any instance, heedless of how ordinary or aberrant they were. Tuscaloosa was where this seed of unfettered wrath towards the perpetually marching concept bloomed, he supposed. After all, at this tumultuous stage in his fractured puzzling prism of a life, supposing was his only option to make sense of anything.

When that ramshackle skeleton of a town housed his roots and dwelling, any free time he possessed in his trembling hackneyed hands were spent calculating. Tossing countless hours into a fathomless inferno forlornly striving to console his storming heart, rioting behind his ribs. The cage containing the hammering organ quivering in frigid all-encompassing fright. One tangible, readily apparent method was at his disposal to soothe the ravenous internal tempest. It was an affirmation he uttered religiously, like a zealot clinging to centuries-old proverb. One saying that constructed a trifling wall between him, and the fathomless bowels of insanity. A dreadful plunge where surviving was an alien concept.

The prospect that one day, hopefully someday soon, Gary Demonio would be gone. Forcefully transported to a tartarean realm far beyond the margins of human understanding. Vanishing in a haze of scarlet mist to a land of boundless, unfathomable righteous reckoning. One day, Gary would be dead. One day, Gary would die. One day, Levi would be free from this unwarranted cycle of brutish torment. One day, Levi could live.

He never expected in a billion years that, even universes from his fallen kingdom, Levi would be repeating that same mantra. The words practically branded into the walls of his fatigued skull. His cranium growing dog-tired from the unpitying monotony. After all, words, both internal and oxygen-powered, possess exclusively the power supplied to them. The long-winded sentences creating permanent grooves in his vexed skull are just that. Sentences. Not promises. Not assurances. Not a forward peek into a golden care-free universe. Just sentences. Shallow, empty capsules of letters tethered together into a train of meaningless thought.

High above the ceaseless extravagant fields of Equestria, oblivious to the devil blighted their population, Levi and Twilight stood anxiously. Feet planted firmly into the tan wicker basket providing them an effortless casual cruise. The main supplier of ease and relaxation was a titanic, bulbous lightbulb-shaped balloon, its material anonymous and shockingly cryptic. Its color was an arresting metallic blue with a miniscule opening located directly above their heads, occupied by a tiny torch. Spewing a brilliant torrent of orange-and-blue flame into the sprawling expanse of open air within. The pair serenely coasted in a vast, extraordinarily smooth ocean of vivid cyan. Amidst their tranquil wayfare tens of miles above civilization, they were accompanied by illimitable unexpected companions. Rowboats of clouds braved the waters alongside them, countless of them, each of them completely and utterly unique in their own way. Among the fathomless ranks of them the twosome bore witness to, not one was alike to another. Each possessed their own array of exclusive properties, varying from their plush brethren in size, width, location, girth. A myriad of different characteristics defined them. Some were mere canoes treading the good-tempered waters while others were mammoth yachts, holding an elating cruise to a deaf, mute audience aboard.

Levi stood at the edge of the wicker basket, his forearms resting upon its spiral edge. Diminutive shards of bronze-colored wood broke free from its creator’s power-hungry clutches, garnering a new identity of bothersome stragglers. Poking and prodding the male’s limbs with every slight movement of the basket in the tame Equestrian zephyrs. Rocking the gimcrack substitute for a cockpit with each breeze, no matter how furious or peaceful. Although, judging by the stony mask of dourness secreting his features, he didn’t mind it much. From the looks of it, he didn’t seem to mind anything much. His chapped, dry hands hung dangled loosely above the bottomless abyss of color beneath. Levi gazed deep into the hustling-and-bustling tight-knit community of boaters ceaselessly, his stare void and vacant of all life or jubilation. The Man in Blue’s gaunt, deadpan visage barely resembled that of a living breathing human being with an operating heart. If anyone else sans the sympathetic unicorn behind him bore witness, they’d be forgiven for assuming he was a grave-robbed corpse. Perpetual and halcyon slumber permanently discontinued. His countenance was akin to a skeleton with a pair of burning coals inhabiting its abandoned sockets. A victimless glare forever burned into those smoldering nuggets of brimstone taking the place of his vibrant emeralds.

Levi stole a deep, mountainous breath from the air, shifting his hand. His left moved to the stone-grey string connecting one of the basket’s corners to the colossal balloon. Coiling a set of fingers around its gritty skin, caressing it absentmindedly. Unremitting glower refusing to obey an order to cease all operations, going AWOL from his brain.

“What’re we doing when we get back home?” Levi asked, shattering nearly fifteen minutes of soupy silence.

“What was that?”

“When we get back to Ponyville, what’re we doing?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking about that this whole way, but I got an idea.”

“Let me hear it.” His voice was utterly defeated and deflated, not bothering to meet the lavender book-addict’s amethyst irises.

“Well, first, we have to consult the group.”

“Group?”

“We’re the Elements of Harmony, Levi, of course we’re a group.” Replied Twilight. “We need a course of action.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong. Only I’m not sure what a farmer and a party planner are gonna do to a mass killer, Twilight.”

“I’m not sure what they’ll do either. To tell you the truth, I’m…feeling doubtful.”

“Aren’t we all?” Levi moved his hand back to the basket’s edge. It hung next to its brother like a lifeless pendant, imprisoned within a dead Grandfather clock.

“I can only assume you are, too?”

“Of course I am,” Levi responded. The closest thing to eye-contact she received was a slight turn of his head towards her, gazing in his peripheral vision. “What reason do I have to trust them?”

“You don’t have one yet, but I’m sure they’ll prove you wrong.”

“Who’s to say they will? Because I know for a fact Mortimer doesn’t understand a damn word I said, neither does Dread Shot or…whatever the other’s name was. Tacitus, I think?”

“Tacitus and Clear Sky.”

“Whatever,” Levi waved a dismissing hand at the skybound ocean they dwelled in. “They’re all the same to me. Just money-hungry, greedy pigs looking for a payout.”

“That’s not true.” Twilight insisted.

“They haven’t given me a reason to think otherwise, Twi. Not yet. I mean, a few weeks? Who knows how many could die in a few days, let alone a damn week?” Levi scoffed. “Ridiculous.”

“You can’t rush miracles, Levi, and you certainly can’t force them either. Mortimer agreeing to help is exactly that, a miracle. I expected nopony to show.”

“I expected a pony to show. Not some worthless money-famers.” Levi jeered. He paused for a moment, robbing another deep breath. “What if Gary comes to Ponyville?”

“Levi-”

“This has been on my mind for a little bit, just listen. What if he comes to my home, our home and sets his sights on us. What then? What will Mortimer do?”

A small intermission seized the duo before Twilight punched the resume button on their discussion. She sighed.

“You need to stop doubting. Doubt doesn’t solve anything, doubt won’t…kill anypony. Doubt is useless.”

“I know it is,”

“Then act like it, Levi. I know you have a big heart, use that to believe in this. Use it to believe in something good, at least.”

“It’s hard,”

“It is,” Twilight stood beside her friend, attaching a consoling hoof to his bicep. “I know.”

“I don’t think you do know. Not the full extent.”

“Tell me, then.”

He breathed deep once more, fondling his hands and fingers.

“I tried to use this world and the people in it to escape what I left behind. To get off that path of sadness and death. But apparently it seems I’ve waded far too deep in the swamp to get out now.”

“Swamp?”

“You know what I mean. I walked one too many steps down the dark path that the light’s rejecting me. When me and Alan came here, I thought I’d be safe from the monsters.”

“You are.”

“I’m not,” He finally met her eyes. The wind swam through his bangs, whipping them side-to-side violently. “I’m really not. I thought wrong. I wanted to be safe from murder, from guns, from firefights. From him.”

“Ponyville doesn’t have any of that. Equestria doesn’t have any of that…for the most part.”

“Seems like I’m getting further from where I want to go, from what I’ve been destined to become. I thought here I could control more than I could in Alabama but…I was mistaken.”

Twilight nodded. Her life was far too care-free to empathize with her housemate, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try.

“Truth is I love Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy, you. All of them. I do. I can’t stand the fact that dead bastards from my past could come back and…” He resumed his unending stare into the abyss. “And destroy everything I’ve got.”

“He won’t, Levi, he won’t. That’s what you need to believe. I know it’s hard, believe me I do, but you have to believe.”

“I can’t believe what I don’t know is true.”

“Then…take a gamble. Take a risk that this is real life, that it is true, and believe it with all your heart. That’s all you can do right now.”

Levi’s glower at nothing was accompanied by a small smile reeling the corners of his mouth to the gargantuan balloon above.

“I guess you’re right, Twilight. There’s another gamble I’ve been meaning to take.”

“Don’t spare any details.”

“I heard there’s a third human that sounds an awful lot like my brother living down in the Crystal Empire, wherever that is. It’d be good for us to go there and check it out. Could be just town-wide rumors, though.”

“What’re we waiting for then?“

“A lot of things,” He replied. “One of them being this balloon’s gotta land.”

Twilight snickered. “You’re right.”

“When am I ever not right?”

For the conclusive minutes of their journey, the rigid casket of worries and overdue responsibilities tormenting his heart were dashed. His core free from the searing chains of trepidation temporarily. Silver Spears didn’t pollute his mind. Images of his battered friend that desperately required avenging followed suit. And that raven-haired sod searching unflaggingly for the faintest whiff of him did the same.

It was him, his dearest friend, and the outline of a goliath tree breaching the cyanic ocean surrounding him.

Comments

[ShortCaveman]

It's hard to follow the story with all that exposition you're adding in but interesting nonetheless.

[MrTyrannousaurusX]

11896031
Can you point out some of the exposition I've added so I know what to tone down on? I appreciate the critique I'm always looking to improve.

[ShortCaveman]

Simply put it's hard when I'm getting normal dialogue from the characters in the story and then getting a full-on documentary description of the environment/situation like a crime Novel. it's not that I don't appreciate it or don't like it it's hard to follow like what is the third person view and person A and B conversation gets lost in you translation. But that's just my constructive criticism.