> Crazy, Mad, Insane
>  by Equimorto
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Dragonslayer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" Shining asked as he reached the wooden hut. He placed his sword to rest against the outer wall, making sure to place the tip on a stone rather than on the mossy ground around it, and watched as it reflected the rays of light filtering through the trees, a slight emerald tinge to them.
A muffled response came from his white drawstring bag. At least, it had been white the day before, now it was mostly red and already turning to black where the blood had started to dry. At least he'd never put anything important inside.
"Oh, sorry!" Shining quickly removed the bag from his shoulder and carefully placed it on the ground, then opened it to take out Zecora's decapitated head.
"Worry not, kind stranger," the head replied, "I am not in mortal danger. My body back together I'll stitch, it takes more than beheading to kill a witch."
"So do I just leave you on the porch or..." Shining looked around.
"That will do. Farewell to you."
Shining placed the head in front of the hut's wooden door, taking a bit of time to look at the engravings. "You said there's a town over there, right?" he asked, pointing with a hoof at the forest.
Zecora didn't give a proper answer, her mouth occupied with the doorknob, but she grunted affirmatively.
Shining began to march away. "One last thing," he said, turning around as he heard the sound of the door creaking open followed by that of Zecora's head falling inside. "How do you speak with your head chopped off? Don't you need lungs, or a throat?"
Zecora went through the rather complicated motion of turning herself around with nothing but her tongue, only to answer Shining's question with nothing but a stare.
"Let me guess. The answer is magic, right?"
Zecora kept staring.
"Oh well." Shining's sword flew up to his side, pulverizing the timberwolf that had tried to pounce on him in mid-air. Shining wiped some dust away from his back and shoulders without even looking at the direction from which the creature had leaped from, then began to walk away. Three more were killed as he made his way out of the forest, after which anything else gave up on trying to attack him.
He finally emerged from the forest, entering the outskirts of Ponyville. There he found three armour-clad guards circling what looked like another pony, dressed with a long purple robe that covered the entirety of her body. The only things left out were the head, the face wearing a white smiling mask with downwards curved eyes, and the front hooves, encased in some sort of golden armour. A golden collar and shoulder pads of the same colour completed the ensemble, and the only distinctive characteristic that could allow someone to recognize the potential wearer of the costume was the long, curly and messy raspberry coloured mane sticking out from behind the mask.
The guards seemed to be intent on attacking the masked pony, swords drawn and pointed at her. Shining walked closer to the scene, and one of the guards noticed him.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" the guard addressed him.
The other two turned towards Shining as well. "Boss," one of them said to the other, "isn't this the guy who got that dragon sent after him? Is he the one who killed that thing?"
"It's him." The larger of the three guards studied Shining with an interested gaze. "So," he asked to the unicorn, speaking louder, "is it true? Did you kill the dragon?"
The guard who had noticed Shining first, to whom the other two were giving their backs, was suddenly cut in half.
The other two turned at the sound of his body splitting, only to see his right and left halves fall to the ground with a dull thud, blood begging to spray from his insides and quickly pooling around his remains.
"What the fuck?" the smaller guard exclaimed.
"Let's get out of here!" the other replied, running away.
Shining walked up to the masked pony. "Everything alright?"
The pony nodded. "Welcome to Ponyville. You can call me Pink 13."
"So you're the mandatory reference, huh?" Shining got a better look at her. "Name's Shining Armor," he said, extending a hoof.
The other pony took his hoofshake.
"Any place where I can get something to drink around here?" Shining looked around.
"Sweet Apple Acres is that way." The pony pointed with a hoof.
"Thanks." Shining began to walk away. "Nice scythe by the way."
He walked for a while through the dusty yellow roads of the small town. Anyone who might have been there seemed to have no intention of meeting him, and he found nothing of interest during his short trip, the creaking sound of the wind as it drifted between the cracks of the boarded up windows of the seemingly abandoned buildings his only company. Finally, he reached the farm, and began to make his way across the rows of withered trees.  
"Open this door or I'll tear it down!"
Shining looked up, startled from his thoughts. The two guards from before were now in front of the barn, and the larger one was knocking against the door. Together with them was another guard, a pegasus this time.
"So, what's the matter?" Shining asked, getting closer.
"This guy refuses to open and - Hey, wait a minute!" the guard said, turning around, "You're the one from before!"
Shining looked back over his shoulders. "Me?" he asked, pointing a hoof to his chest.
"Yeah!" The guard began to walk closer to him. "And this time that freak is nowhere around to save your ass. You know," the guard said, taking out his weapon, " I don't think you really took out that dragon. Nice sword you got there."
Shining brought his sword in front of himself and looked at it. "Yeah, it's pretty nice. I should have known you'd like it, it must remind you of yourself."
The guard stopped. "What?"
"Well, it's a bastard sword. Or a hand-and-a-half sword, though I don't see why they would call it that considering we don't have-"
"What did you just say about me you-"
The cross-guard of Shining's sword impaled the guard's palate, the blade held floating in the air in front of him by Shining's magic, and blood began to spill from the wound, dripping down to the ground through the pony's open mouth.
"I was monologuing," Shining said in an eerily calm tone.
The blade began to lift itself, and then its trajectory curved backwards. With a powerful trust of Shining's magic, the sword reached all the way to the back of the guard and then pierced him between his shoulders, passing all the way through him to have the end stick out of his chest and shattering the upper portion of the pony's spine in the process.
Shining removed his sword from the corpse. "-hands," he concluded.
The remaining earth pony guard watched horrified as his captain was mauled, then stared at Shining in shock. He stood there shaking for a few seconds, then turned around to run away.
The remaining pegasus took off, seemingly headed towards the forest. Shining aimed at him and launched his sword. The blade hit its target in the air, going straight through the pegasus' right wing, and the pony began to fall towards the ground. The combination of the shock caused by the injury, the inability to use his wing and the added weight of the weapon made him plummet helplessly at increasing speed, until he eventually crashed on top of a tree, the jagged branches tearing into his flesh and leaving him impaled there.
Shining magically recovered his sword and walked up to the door. He knocked, but no one answered, and after an attempt at opening it he found it was still locked. He left his sword to rest against the side of the barn, then used his magic to unlock the door and open it. "Weird you'd put a normal door on a barn," he commented, walking in.
Big Macintosh looked up from the glass he was cleaning. He was standing behind a long counter that spanned the entire length of that side of the barn, behind him an open door to a flight of descending stairs and a few mostly empty bottles sat on shelves affixed to the wall. An expression of mild surprise coloured his face as he saw the unicorn. Beside him, the only other presence in the room was a mulberry mare slouched over the counter, a bottle clutched in her hoof, seemingly passed out.
"So, is the place open?" Shining closed the door behind himself. "I'll take one of whatever the strongest thing you sell is." He walked up to the counter and sat in front of it, to the mare's left.
Still a little unsure, Big Mac took out a couple of bottles and a new glass from below the counter, then mixed the contents and passed the glass to his right to the unicorn. "...You're the one who killed that dragon?" he reluctantly asked.
Shining took his glass and stared to fidget with it. "Yeah, yeah, I'm the Chosen One, Dragonslayer, Knightrider of Doom and all that jazz." He stared at the bottom of his glass.
Big Mac, who had resumed in his cleaning the glass he was holding, stopped again and looked up at Shining. "The fuck's a knightrider?"
"No idea, but it sounds cool. I'll have to ask whoever decided on the name if I ever meet them."
Berryshine jumped in her sleep and fell off of the counter.
"Name's Shining Armor, by the way. Yeah, yeah, I know, 'you don't have any armour on'." Shining sighed. "Well sorry if the cover art doesn't match the story, but it's the best we could find." Shining brought the glass to his lips.
Big Mac returned to cleaning his glass, giving a sideways glance to the unicorn.
Shining tilted the glass, then stopped. "Things have been rough lately, haven't they?"
"I..." Big Mac looked down. "Can't say they haven't."
"You know," shining said, bringing the glass away from his lips and absent-mindedly playing with it, "there's this widespread belief that the Princess doesn't like her detractors. Don't know what could have started it, though. But I can tell you, she certainly doesn't hate them."
"She doesn't?"
"Quite the contrary. She finds them delicious." Shining brought the glass to his mouth and downed the contents.
"It takes some guts to drink something from someone who has all the interest in killing you." Big Mac looked at Shining, interested.
"Well, luckily I have some extremely good guts." Shining got up and began to leave. "By the way, next time you try to poison me go with twice the dose you used today, that might be enough to make me a little sleepy."
Big Mac stared in disbelief as the unicorn walked away completely unharmed.
Shining reached the door and opened it. "So your sister's held prisoner in the ruins in the forest, right?"
Big Mac's expression remained one of disbelief, though the reason was now different, and he only managed to nod.
"If I save her, do I get to fuck her?" Shining asked.
No answer came for a little while. "...Nope," Big Mac managed after a few seconds of silence and confusion.
"Oh well, I tried. She should be back here by tomorrow." The white unicorn walked out, closed the door, grabbed his sword from where he'd left it and began to head towards the forest.
> Blood Diamond
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shining stood at the end of the bridge, looking at the ruins of the castle on the other side. There had been a few pegasus guards circling around them, but they'd quickly retreated after he'd struck one in mid-air and impaled him to the stone walls of a tower, before retreating his sword and letting his body fall to the ground where it was reduced to a limp tangle of torn flesh and broken bones.
He walked across the bridge, reaching the other side unharmed. As soon as the last of his hooves left the bridge and touched the ground a light blue glow enveloped the ropes and snapped them, and the bridge fell into the pit below, only attached to the other side. Shining turned and acknowledged the occurrence, then turned again and returned to moving towards the castle.
There, near the entrance, a large pony was waiting for him. Completely covered in a thick armour of grey metal, his eyes obscured and his vision allowed only by two small squared holes in his helm, he stood taller than Shining, whose head reached at about the soldier's shoulder. A large spiked club rested at his side, and as he noticed Shining approaching he hooked it to the front of his mask, ready to swing it.
Shining's sword flew up to the pony's face, then slowed down and positioned itself near the eyes, the only visible opening in the armour. After a tentative prodding, Shining concluded that the holes were too small for the sword to fit through them, the tip barely making it in and the pony's eyes remaining out of its reach. The operation elicited a deep sounding chuckle from the guard, who waited for Shining to come closer so he could smash him.
Shining recovered his sword. "Clever," he commented, "pretty clever. She's a smart one after all. Too bad I'll have to kill her." He took a few steps forward. "Hey, you!" he addressed the armoured pony, "Mind getting out of the way so I can go kill your boss and free her prisoners? Otherwise I'll have to kill you."
The guard began to laugh at the unicorn.
"Well, I warned him," Shining whispered to himself. He teleported in front of the laughing pony, catching him by slight surprise, and before the other had time to react he kicked his head with one of his front hooves.
The pony was sent flying backwards, smashing through the wooden gates of the castle. He landed inside the main hall, amidst the confusion of the guards inside, and as Shining calmly walked through the opening he'd left one of the presents ran towards his unmoving body. The smaller guard removed the bigger one's helmet to check if he was alright. His head wasn't there, and the only thing left were its remains, now reduced to nothing more than a shapeless pulp that dripped out of the helmet as it was removed. The guard let it fall to the ground in shock, and stood there shaking in fear.
"Okay everybody," Shining said, drawing the attention to himself and lifting his sword to his side, "who wants to die?"



Shining magically cleaned his sword, gathering up the smeared blood and then launching it away. Three had answered positively. Not intentionally, clearly, but they had. After he'd disposed of them, the rest had decided that they didn't want anything to do with him and had left the castle.
Now he was standing at the entrance to the adjacent room. By what he'd been able to gather, Applejack was being kept in the tower, while Rarity was waiting for him in the old throne room. That only left her personal guard to deal with. Shining smiled as he saw her.
The mare landed in the middle of the room, her black and purple armour reflecting the light that filtered in through the cracks in the walls and ceiling. She looked up, her striped gold and amber mane moving out of the way to reveal her orange eyes, a grin on her face. A red pair of long knives dangled from her armour, not limiting her movements but still easily accessible by her wings, the colour a stark contrast with her technically turquoise coat that always sparked discussions about whether it was a shade of green or a shade of light blue.
"I can already tell this is going to annoy many," Shining said, approaching her. "But on the bright side, not as many as if I'd been cutting Spitfire to pieces instead. We still have a while to go before that."
Lightning Dust grabbed the knives in her wings. "So you've come to die. Be grateful that it's by my hoof, she wouldn't have been as merciful as to give you a swift death."
"You know, she's not gonna bite you. It's not how things work." Shining readied his sword. "As for the dying part, the dragon said the same. Now his carcass is feeding the village where I killed him, and the parts that won't be eaten quickly enough will rot as those villagers die trying to defend them from the nearby cities. But don't worry," Shining said, preparing to deflect the upcoming attack, "you'll feed no one but the worms."
Lightning dashed forward with a powerful push of her hooves. The twin blades of her knives came in contact with Shining's sword as she flew above him, the unicorn's motion pushing them upwards and leaving him unharmed. The pegasus landed behind him and turned around, weapons held as a cross in front of her to block possible attacks. "You're pretty good, for someone stuck to the ground."
Shining slowly turned towards her, dragging the tip of his sword on the ground as he did, the sound of metal on stone filling the room while he completed the semi-circular motion. "Nice blades," he commented, giving her a nod, "are they red so nobody notices there's never any blood on them?"
Lightning kicked off towards him at the provocation, angling her wings to hit him from both above and below.
Shining expertly twisted his sword in front of himself, pinning Lightning's left weapon to the ground with the point of his sword while catching the right one with the cross-guard. "She doesn't care for you. But frankly, if you're this bad then she wouldn't even if she was different."
Lightning pulled back, freeing her knives, and began to throw a series of wing swings at Shining.
The unicorn's sword danced in front of him, deflecting every one of Lightning's blows. Shining yawned. "Is this all you've got?" he asked in a bored tone from behind his weapon.
The pegasus grunted and doubled her efforts, but to no avail. Finally, after one of her attacks Shining's sword twirled in the air, catching both of her knives and locking her with he wings outstretched and pointed low to the ground. Lightning looked up to see Shining's cold expression.
"You're still in time to retreat, you know?" he said, not taking advantage of her opening. "Do yourself a favour and leave. She's just using you."
Lightning gave a kick of her legs, pushing herself backwards and away from Shining. She started at him with hate and prepared to charge at him.
"So this is how it is, huh?" Shining brought his sword in position at his side.
Lightning moved forward, a blur of colour as she kicked off from the ground with the help of her wings, and reached Shining in mere fractions of a second, both of her scarlet knives descending towards him at the tips of her wings.
Shining stepped to the side, the motion strangely calm and collected when considering the speed at which he did it.
A split second later, Lightning dust was behind him, staring forward, and he turned to look at her, not a scratch on his body.
Lightning screamed, and the knife held in her right wing fell to the ground. From the base of her wing, blood began to spray, and she barely managed to stay on her hooves as she tried to keep it lifted up.
"It's not fatal," Shining commented. "You have an excuse to go away now."
Lightning dust turned towards him. "Never!" she hissed, then picked up the fallen knife in her mouth.
Shining looked down. "A shame, really. She must have wanted to get rid of you if she sent you to the slaughter like this. But if you still refuse to acknowledge how she's just manipulating you, well..." A smile came on Shining's lips, uncomfortably large. "Better for me," he let out, looking up as he began to quietly chuckle, "I get to have a bit more fun."
Lightning Dust saw the blow coming. She was aware of it for every fraction of a second in which it travelled through the air and towards her head. And she was equally, dreadfully aware that it was too fast for her to dodge.
The cross guard of Shining's sword pierced through the bottom of Lightning's mouth, hooking on her jaw, and before she could react in any way, the unicorn pulled.
Her jaw came off with a sickening pop, coupled with the horrifying sound of flesh tearing, and fell to the ground. Before her now torn appendage had even hit the floor, the knife she was holding with it was trapped into the unicorn's magic, and rapidly used to pin her right wing to her body.
Lightning stood there, something similar to a scream coming from the remains of her mouth, as blood kept flowing from her freshly opened wounds. After a few seconds of shock, during which Shining simply stared at her and smiled, she finally managed to regain some self-control, though her legs were shaking. She stared at the unicorn, her eyes ablaze with rage, and brandishing her only remaining knife with her left wing she charged at him.
She didn't even get to see Shining's motion. She became aware of the fact that he'd reacted only once he was already behind her, her wing already cut away. She fell to the ground, the impact knocking her helmet away. The knife in her right side penetrated even more deeply thanks to her weight on top of it, and she laid there in shock as her own blood created a puddle around her. Finally, through much effort, she managed to get back up, her legs barely holding her up.
"Sorry if I have to cut this short, but I was supposed to fight the other white unicorn, I can't have this battle take up most of the time," Shining said as he turned around to face her once more. "She really must have hated you." His sword swung perpendicular to the ground and split the remains of Lightning's head clean in half, and he walked away as her lifeless corpse fell motionless to the ground, only stopping to clean his sword with the wing he'd cut away from her.
He made his way to the old throne room, encountering no one else in his path, and entered. There, at the far end of the room, staring back at him as she sat on the old and half-broken throne, Rarity waited for him to come closer. She wore no armour, but a golden ring decorated her horn, and a deep crimson cape covered her back, the edges trimmed with white fur.
She remained silent, but once he reached the middle of the room she got up and cast her cape aside, beginning to walk towards him. He waited for her there, and once she reached a distance she deemed sufficient she stopped and removed the ring from her horn, placing it back upon her seat on the throne with her magic, then stared deep in the eyes of the stallion in front of her. "So you've come to-"
"Skip that part, please, I've heard it already."
Shining's sword swung horizontally, parallel to the ground, right at the height of Rarity's mouth. It sliced through both of her cheeks and cut away the tip of her tongue.
Rarity stared at the other unicorn, seeming somewhat annoyed, as her cheeks reattached and her tongue grew back, her wounds fully healing. She munched a bit on the remaining tip of her tongue Shining had cut, then swallowed it. "Straight to the point, huh?"
Another strike of Shining's sword, a little higher than before. Rarity's eyes were cut this time, blood beginning to spray from them, before, again, the unicorn fully healed.
"A little overeager, are we?" A blast of magic fired from Rarity's horn, and Shining had to step back to avoid it. "You don't seem to have grasped the situation you're in, darling." She turned a little to the side, posing as she gave the stallion a better look at her body, including her cutie mark. "Did nobody tell you that diamond is unbreakable?" 
"Is this the part where I insult your hairstyle and you get mad at me?" Shining readied his sword, keeping it parallel to the ground and pointed at the mare, floating near his eyes.
Rarity began to walk around in a circular path, keeping her eyes on him as he responded to her motion by walking on the same circle, remaining on the side opposite of hers. She lit her horn and prepared to fire again. "Do you even know what you're fighting against, Dragonslayer?"
Shining's horn glowed for a split second, too fast for Rarity to react to it, then the stallion disappeared in a small flash of light. 
He reappeared behind Rarity and smashed her head on the floor with his front hooves, shattering her skull and sending small chunks of her brain flying outwards as he smeared the rest on the stone pavement. "Vampire," he commented, his voice met by Rarity's left eye turning towards him from the broken mass beneath his hooves.
Watching the way the mare's head pieced itself back together, he continued. "Third generation, going by the speed at which you regenerate. So you weren't bitten by one of the originals, huh?"
Rarity's body clawed its way away from beneath him, and her head finished recomposing itself. "I see you're well informed." She teleported at his side and swung a blade of magical energy protruding from her horn at Shining's neck.
The stallion managed to block the attack with his sword, coating it in his own magic to prevent Rarity's spell from going through it, but some strands of his blue mane fell to the ground, cut away by the mare's blade as he'd jerked his neck to defend himself from the hit.
"So you must be aware that you're fighting a useless battle." Rarity pressed against the sword, forcing Shining to concentrate on holding her back. Suddenly, she cut off the spell, and as her head rapidly dived forward she shot another blast of magic towards Shining.
He was able to avoid being hit full on by the blast by pushing his body to the side with a kick from his legs, and the ray simply bruised him on the shoulder, leaving a trail of burnt hair on the left side of his back.
"Surely you know-"
She was interrupted by Shining's sword materialising inside her head, passed through her mouth. With a series of blinks of light the weapon disappeared and reappeared in each one of her legs, shattering her ankles and severing muscles and tendons.
"That a vampire keeps regenerating unless you destroy its weak spot, which is the area where it was originally bitten." Shining calmly walked closer to her, head titled to the side as he examined her. "Yeah, I know that. I'll just have to hit you there then."
Rarity's body regenerated, and she smiled at him. "Do you plan to guess?" She fired another spell, and Shining sidestepped to dodge it.
"Maybe." Shining brought his sword to his side.
Rarity laughed. "I'm sorry, darling, you won't live enough to try them all."
Shining stopped and looked up at her. "How about this, then? You give me one shot at it, without doing anything to stop me. And if I fail, I'll let you hit me once, to make things even."
Rarity began to laugh once again, throwing her head forward. "Oh, fine, then!" She posed and stood still, legs straight and head held high. "Let's play this little game of yours, if you're really this stupid." She smiled and stared at him.
Shining smiled back and walked up to her. "How about... here." He placed the tip of his sword against the base of Rarity's horn, to the side, the flat of the blade touching the horn.
Rarity's smile dropped from her face and her breathing quickened. She tried to move and half lifted one of her hooves, but the pressure from Shining's weapon held her in place. "How? How did you-"
"Interesting creatures, you vampires," he said, slowly dragging the tip of his sword in circles around the base of her horn and ignoring her. "You can regenerate from pretty much anything. Unless, the part of your body that was bitten first is taken away and destroyed first. You can regenerate from it and you can regrow it through an ongoing regeneration if you suffered other wounds, which makes it very hard to deal with you if one isn't precise." He began to push a little more, drawing some blood from Rarity's head.
Rarity gritted her teeth. "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU KNOW?"
Shining looked at her, faking surprise. "Oh, me?" He smiled. "Maybe you shouldn't have told Lightning Dust about it."
Rarity's eyes began to dart around in confusion, her lower lip twitching. "No, she... She would never have told you. She couldn't have told you! I FUCKING HYPNOTISED HER FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SHE-"
With one swift motion, Shining's sword entered Rarity's skull and cut around the horn, removing a small cone-shaped area of flesh and bone beneath it. Rarity remained paralysed mid-sentence by the shock, her mouth hanging open. Shining's sword launched the horn up in the air with a sudden jerk, and a spell fired from Shining's horn disintegrated it in mid-air.
"You..." Rarity's eyes were unfocused, spittle was dribbling down from her mouth and blood was flowing down from the hole in her head. "YOU FUCKING-"
"Out of curiosity, who bit you?"
Shining's sword rapidly danced between Rarity's legs, cutting away all four of them. It lifted, slicing away her tail in the process, and with two more broad swipes added to its spiralling motion it separated the unicorn's body in three. Then with one final arc it cut away her head, sending it flying and spinning into the air as the rest of her body fell to the ground in a pool of blood and entrails.
Shining watched the head spin as it fell back to the ground, and once it was just above his head in terms of height he launched his sword through it and impaled it, the weapon lodging itself in the old stone wall. He then pushed the sword into the wall all the way to the hilt, smashing Rarity's head. "Vinyl, huh?" he commented, then walked away, retrieving his sword.
The door to the tower had a magical lock on it, one he quickly deactivated with his horn, and once he did the door swung open to reveal the dark prison inside.
Applejack looked up, blinded by the sudden light from outside. "Who is it?" she asked, her dry throat failing her attempt to sound defiant.
"You really need to have a talk with your brother." Shining's sword, covered by his magical aura, cut away the runes-covered chains bound to Applejack's hooves. "He thinks he's got the right to decide who you fuck."
Applejack got up, her legs shaking, and she almost collapsed as she tried to hug the stallion.
"Calm down there, I don't want to bring back a corpse." He placed the barely conscious pony on his back. "I told your brother I was bringing his sister back, and I plan to do that. And then..." He walked out and stared at the Sun setting in the distance, then sighed. "I think it's time for me to pay a visit to mine."
> Intermission 1: It Needed to be Said
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shining sat in front of the counter, sipping on the triple shot of poison in his glass.
"So, huh, thank you for saving my sister..." Big Mac slightly lifted his eyes from the bottle he was holding to look at Shining, then poured a glass from it and passed it to the third pony in the room. "Are you sure you don't want some alcohol?" he asked to the unicorn.
Shining downed his glass, then placed it back on the counter. "No. I'm trying to kill myself, I'd rather do that efficiently." He tilted the empty glass to the side, asking the red stallion for a refill. 
Big Mac grabbed another bottle from below the counter and poured its contents in the glass. "You sure about this? Life ain't that bad."
Shining grabbed the glass. "I'm being hunted down by Celestia herself, and I personally intend to kill her. Every friend or relative I had is either dead or on my list of ponies to kill. I've murdered hundreds of innocents for the sake of enacting my own personal revenge. I'm already dead, really, no matter what happens. Either I die, and then Celestia kills everybody else and the World ends, or I kill everybody else, and then the World ends because I killed Celestia. Either way we're all fucked, and really the only reason I'm doing any of this is to get some enjoyment out the time I still have. Kind of hard when you're one of the ten strongest creatures in the land and no fucking enemy you meet is any sort of challenge. If I die that's it, otherwise I'll have at least had my revenge." He drank the whole glass. "And besides, I'm trying to die, not to get wasted like someone else. If I leave this world I'd like to at least be in a decent condition, and not doing something stupid because I was drunk and I had no control over myself." He looked at the mare to his right.
Berryshine looked up at him, her head swaying a little, trying to sound wise despite her tipsy tone. "Alcohol only lowers inhibitions. If you do something under its effects, it was something that you already wanted to do."
"Oh, so my father wanted to come back home at three in the morning after he'd been away for the whole day shouting that my mother was a whore and I a useless failure of a son and that we were ruining his life?"
The mare turned paler as she heard that, despite the alcohol in her system. "S-Sorry, I-I didn't think-"
"That's your fucking problem, you didn't think! And you know why? Because you're a fucking idiot!" Shining got up and began to leave.
Big Mac looked between the two. "Shining, wait! I'm sure she's sorry-"
"As she should be!" Shining opened the door and began to leave.
"Wait!"
He turned around. "What is it now, Mac?"
"Aren't you going to pay?" the stallion asked.
Shining stared at the other's face with a flat expression. "I saved your sister, I saved your bar, which is also your house, and I saved your fucking life, and you still want me to pay you? For poison?" He walked out and slammed the door shut. He grabbed his sword, taking it out of the corpse of a guard who'd tried to steal it while he was inside drinking, and began to walk away.
> Ghost In The Rain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Was that something moving?"
The guard at his side stretched his neck a little further. "Nah, I don't think. But you can't see a damn thing with this rain."
"I know." The first guard kicked a small rock in front of him, which rolled down the slope and fell in the water. "Why are they even having us guard this fucking river? No one's going to enter from here anyway."
"No one's going to try to attack us in the first place, really. Who the fuck's crazy enough to try to mess with an alicorn?" The guard shifted around in place, trying to get more comfortable under the rain.
"No one." The first guard moved his mane out of his face. "But at least we have a job."
"I know, right?" The second guard turned towards the first one, only to stare at the bleeding inside of his neck, his head cut off and nowhere in sight. "Wai-What the fuck!" He turned around, running away, and opened his mouth to scream, but before he could warn anyone of the danger the back of his head was pierced by a ray of magic that exited through his mouth, killing him.
Shining walked past the corpse and headed towards the building, head held low.
"Hey, you!" one of the guards inside the courtyard addressed him, pointing his spear towards him. "Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here?"
Shining looked up at him, his mane moving out of the way to reveal his horn. "I'm Princess Twilight's brother, I'm sure she talked to you about me. I'm here to pay a visit to her," he cheerfully replied.
The guard hesitated and backed away from him a bit, unsure of what to do. "Captain!" he called, looking back.
A large pegasus landed near him. "What is it?"
The guard pointed his spear at Shining. "This unicorn, sir. Says he's Her Highness' brother. Heard anything about something like that?"
The pegasus walked up to the guard's hear. "I have. Her Highness says we should kill him on sight," he whispered. He then outstretched his wings, giving a series of light signals to the rest of the guards behind him thanks to a mirror held in his right one, and spoke to Shining. "We'd been waiting for you. I believe you would like us to lead you to your sister, correct?"
"Yeah, if you could, like, do that it'd be great, I don't want to, you know-" he lifted a hoof and gestured towards the large stone building "-go in there without knowing where to look and needlessly kill guards."
The captain took a step forward, buying more time for the rest of his guards to get in position. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid Her Highness is busy at the moment, so you'll have to wait for a while."
"Oh, sorry, I think I didn't make it clear." Shining turned, facing towards him, and threw the previous guard's head at his hooves with his magic. "It wasn't a request, it was an order." He smiled.
The pegasus looked at the head, then pushed it aside, unimpressed. "What the fuck kinda colour is that for magic?"
Shining sat down and pouted, looking to the ground. "It was supposed to be colour-coordinated with my wife's. Then she launched me off of a balcony and left me for dead. It doesn't really look that good in a world where we're not fucking each other." He looked up and pointed to the pegasus. "But you shouldn't have reminded me of that. I was going to go easy on you since I used to be a captain too, but now I think I won't."
The pegasus rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Well, it's been fun to meet a colleague." He gave a signal with his right wing.
Nothing happened.
The pegasus looked around, confused.
"Are you looking for those guys?" Shining asked, pointing a hoof behind the pegasus' shoulders.
The pegasus turned around to see the corpses of five other guards, cut up into pieces that had been rearranged to spell out the word 'turn' on the ground.
"Magic lets you do some really cool shit," said Shining's voice from behind the pegasus' neck, so close his breath was felt by the other.
The pegasus turned around with a jerk, and noticed how the guard at his side now laid dead on the ground, a hole in his chest. He tried to open his mouth but Shining's magic stopped him. Then, all at the same time, his bones were ripped outwards from his body, tearing through his muscles and his skin, and he was left to die as his body collapsed to the ground.



Twilight stood at the end of the large hall, quill in her mouth as she signed the document held in front of her. Tall windows lined one of the longer sides, the light entering from them that of a bright summer day despite the battering rain outside. A large red carpet covered most of the floor, save for the edges of the longer sides where groups of armoured guards were standing at attention. On the side free of windows, and on the one Twilight was on, purple banners decorated the tall grey walls, white images of Twilight's cutie mark on them. Other than the princess and her guards, the only other presence was a pony wearing a black cloak standing in a corner near the alicorn. On the side opposite of the one Twilight was on was a small wooden door, the only entrance to the room.
A couple of seconds later the door was no longer there, instead lying in pieces on the floor, shattered by a blast of magic from outside.
"Princess!" a guard shouted, rushing in, "There's a-"
He was cut off as one of his hind legs was grabbed by a glowing aura, and screamed as his body was dragged back towards the door, only to be silenced by Shining's sword piercing through his throat as he reached it.
The white unicorn looked up from the corpse. "Twily!" he excitedly exclaimed as he saw his sister, smiling and beginning to cheerfully trot towards her.
Immediately the guards at the sides of the room rushed towards him.
Shining simply paid them no mind, only staring at the alicorn and moving towards her as the guards tried to attack him. His sword, held in his magic, gave the impression of moving on its own as it blocked, parried, struck and cut, slicing tendons, severing limbs, opening throats and piercing hearts, leaving behind a trail of dead ponies.
The unicorn finally reached his sister, almost running and shaking with excitement, and practically jumped on her, almost making her fall to the ground as he hugged her. "Twilight! It's been a while, huh? Let me get a good look at you. Did you do something to your mane? It looks nice."
A guard tried to take advantage of Shining's apparent moment of distraction by assaulting him with a knife to his back, but Shining's sword disarmed him and then pinned him to the ground through his neck, his head looking up at the princess and her brother.
"It's always so great to see my sister!" Shining looked at the pony below him. "Twilight, do you think he has a sister?"
"Shining, ple-"
The sword twisted in the guard's neck, cutting off all remaining life with a croaking sound.
"He did!" Shining exclaimed as he turned back to his sister, as cheerful as he'd been since he'd entered the room, and finally let go of her.
Twilight adjusted her mane. "Could you please... not do that?" she asked, looking at the dead soldier. "It's unsettling."
Shining looked confused for a moment, then his face lit up. "Oh, you mean reading ponies’ last dying thoughts, right?"
Twilight gave a small, stiff half-nod. "Yeah. That."
Shining wiped his brow and breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness, for a moment I thought you had something against the gratuitous slaughtering of innocents!" He gave a brief look around the room, still smiling. "So what are you up to, huh? Conquering cities? Summoning demons? Brainwashing ponies?"
Twilight finished signing her documents, then set them down on the floor. "No, hypnosis isn't really my thing, we leave that to the vampires."
"Oh, right, I forgot, Wintermist doesn't read this so no FiMC references. Oops."
Twilight glared at him with a raised eyebrow.
Shining kicked at a wrinkle in the carpet, straightening it. "How are mum and dad doing?"
Twilight had a pause, then sighed and looked at the ground. "They're dead, Shining."
"Oh, really?" Shining looked up, faking surprise. "How did they die?"
Twilight breathed out through her gritting teeth, looking away from her brother. "I killed them," she finally hissed.
"You sure fucking did," Shining replied.
Twilight looked at him. "Are you happy now? Now that I've said it? You know this, Shining! That was years ago. Every fucking time we meet you always bring this shit up. Do you wanna hear it again? About how I murdered them?" Twilight turned to face him. "Wanna hear it one more time, huh? Oh, it wasn't enough seeing the corpses and the blood on my hooves and on the walls and the tea-"
Shining grabbed her in his hooves and picked her up, cutting off her rambling and bringing her face up to his. "Do you want to kiss?"
Twilight blankly stared back. "The fuck's wrong with you?"
"Oh, come on Twilight, do you know how popular the idea of us fucking is? It's not like anyone's going to see, we don't have the tags for that." He stared in her eyes.
Twilight tried to wiggle out of his grasp.
Shining pinned her to the nearest wall, then whispered to her hear. "Come on, Twily, do me a favour. Come to my side, go against Celestia, get yourself eaten alive by her. Die as a hero so I don't have to go through the trouble of murdering my fucking sister!" he shouted, letting go of her and turning around to look at the corpses.
Twilight took a couple of steps. "Shining-"
"How's the bitch doing?" he interrupted her.
Twilight flinched, annoyed. "Shining! She's still a princess, for fuck's sake. Learn some manners."
"Oh, sorry." Shining turned back towards her. "How's the harlot doing?"
Twilight snorted. "Cadence is doing fine. Wishes you were dead, but life's pretty good otherwise. Really, Shining, I don't see what the problem is. After all this time."
"No, no, of course you don't get it. You weren't there to see what I went through that night."
Shining's head was held low, but Twilight could swear there was something going on with his eyes.
"When you see that little waste of blood and feathers, tell her that I have plans for what I'll do to her once I find her." His voice was getting deeper, more guttural. "First I'm going to rip off her horn. Then I'm going to break every bone in her body, as many times as I manage to. Then I'll burn every single square centimetre of her skin, one by one, slowly. Then I'll rip her nerves from her flesh, hook them up to my horn, and fire magic in them, and I'll make sure that the only thing she feels is pain. Then maybe, maybe, I'll call the warm-up over and start making her pay back for the FUCKING SHIT THAT SHE PUT ME THROUGH!" Shining gave a few long, deep erratic breaths, staring dead ahead at the wall.
Twilight walked closer to him. "Want to talk about what happened that night? When you came to me the morning after I... I don't know, they'd told me you were dead, and then you showed up, and... that face. I still remember that face. I'd never seen someone look like that. What happened?"
Shining's breathing had returned to normal. "Nah, not now. Maybe I'll tell you before I kill you." He returned to looking around the room, smiling. "How's Spike doing?"
Twilight looked away, her expression getting harder. "You killed him."
"I sure fucking did." Shining looked at his sister, smiling. "You didn't have to send him to die, you know?"
Twilight didn't look at him.
"I mean-" Shining walked up to her "-you could have killed him yourself. There was no need to experiment on him, pump him full of dark magic to make him grow bigger, turn him insane by torturing him and testing the new spells you came up with on his brain and then sending him to get killed by me." He placed a hoof on her shoulder. "You should have had the courage of killing him before this whole thing started. You knew he wouldn't have been able to take it. You knew he was going to snap. But he wasn't destined to die." He leaned closer to whisper into her ear. "So you let him live. Because you wanted to pretend the blood on your hooves was a necessity, and not a convenience." He leaned back.
Twilight didn't move.
"Hey, remember when we used to play together at the park?" Shining asked, suddenly very interested in cleaning a small bloodstain on the carpet.
"Yeah, I do." Twilight turned back towards him.
"And remember how mum used to make us dinner, then get angry and yell at us for staying out too late?" He looked back at her, smiling, satisfied with his work on cleaning that small section of the carpet.
"Yeah." Twilight smiled fondly at the memory. "And then she'd always drop the angry face as soon as we got back inside, and go back to being all lovely."
"Yeah." Shining ran his gaze along the edge of the ceiling, still smiling. "Remember when dad used to come home drunk at random hours of the night and scream about how much his family sucked?"
Twilight looked at him and questioningly raised an eyebrow. "...No?"
"Neither do I!" Shining proclaimed, "But those idiots at the bar believed that when I told it to them! Just like the rest of Equestria believed your bullshit when you four lied to us about what you were doing."
Twilight started to grit her teeth. "Oh, so that's what it's abo-"
"Not that it matters anyway." Shining turned around and looked up at the ceiling. "Isn't it how the song goes, too? We should die for the things we believe in, lose our lives to your lies and deceiving, in the dark all the world that we knew undone, and so they are, cold, dead, and gone," he singsonged.
Twilight stared at the corpses on the floor. "That's not even how the song goes."
"I have rules to play around." Shining distractedly kicked a head, sending it to slowly roll away. "How does it feel like?"
"Huh?" Twilight looked up.
Shining turned back to stare at her. "How does it feel to have all those innocents' deaths weighing down on your conscience?"
Twilight's expression went back to being a cold one. "I could ask you the same thing. How do you feel, Shining?" She looked from one end of the room to the other, the floor filled with the remains of her guards.
"Horrible." Shining looked at the alicorn, no smile on his face. "I no longer need to sleep, but I wouldn't do it anyway. It's the same for you, right? I can't even close my eyes without seeing them. Without hearing them. Do you know what it's like, to hear a pony's thoughts as they die? And there's nothing you can do to stop it, because it's screaming inside your head?"
Twilight took a couple of steps towards him. "Why do you go on?"
"For the same reason you do." Shining moved closer to her. "Because it's either them or me. Because I've gone too far to give up now. Because it doesn't matter if I kill them or if die instead, they won't be saved. No matter what I do, no one will be saved the next time. And I want to enjoy the time I have left, trying to do something I think is right." He smiled and hugged his sister again.
"I'm... sorry, that things had to go like this." Twilight hugged her brother back with her wings.
"Thank you. On the day it happened, I was out in the streets of Canterlot. There was a unicorn there. White or yellow coat, I can't remember, red mane with stripes, a crescent moon as her cutie mark. Never knew her name. It was the first time I heard it, and what she went through was horrible. Thank you for sparing our parents from that." Shining hugged her a bit tighter, then let go. "And... I'm sorry, too." He gave a small chuckle and coughed into his hoof. "So, huh, I guess we should go back to playing our part, no?"
"Oh, absolutely." Twilight turned away from him, her expression now uncaring and detached, and picked her documents back up, reorganising them. "Deal with him."
Shining was fast enough to bring his sword up. Still, though the blow missed his neck, it still left a rather long and fairly deep cut on his right cheek, from which blood was now flowing, and also chipped away some of his mane. His counter-attack, on the other hand, though ponies don't have hands as he'd previously pointed out, only hit his opponent's cloak, and while the piece of clothing now hanging from his blade sported a rather large hole not a single scratch could be seen on the pegasus light blue coat, nor on her multicoloured mane.
Rainbow Dash stared up at his eyes, the cutting edge of her falchion still pressing against the unicorn's cheek, though he was able to stop it from going any further.
Shining looked down at her eyes. "Oh, now this is going to be interesting."