The heat of the summer sun descended down on him with a passion that almost transcended the border of normality. It was wickedly bright, shining in his eyes perpetually in glints of yellow-white gold and flashes of blinding paleness, pulling all he had drunk this morning from his body to darken his coat and dampen his muzzle until he looked as if oil had been rubbed into him, and he glittered bright as such a pale buttermilk horse could.

He abhorred the heat, which lay thickly and mustily over Helovia as an ancient, massive duvet would- bulky, smelling of dust and dryness, and scratchy. Each inhale made his massive lungs rattle dryly in complaint, and motes of silt drifted continuously up his muzzle, leaving him to choke and snort like a withered husk of a stallion. A thin line of snot dribbled from his nostrils, glistening wetly as it made it’s way down to his lip. It tasted sour on his tongue, bitter as sea salt.

This heat had far too often driven Ricochet to hole up in the trees where the shade gave him a bit of respite, but not today. Whatever madness that usually overtook his rational thought seized him again, and during the height of noon he made his trek, towards one of the hottest places in Helovia, one of the places he had yet to scour for recruits.

Guns too was suffering from the relentless heat, his paws dragging on the dry, brittle grasses, chest fluttering as he rasped and choked on the dry air, massive pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. Each step he took left smears of sweat on the dry ground behind him, little damp pawprints that soon disappeared in the pitiless heat, but he still followed, head low and nose dried up of all moisture, tail near-dragging on the ground, always lagging at Ricochet’s heels.

They were being boiled alive, the Incendiary was beginning to think.

“C’mon Guns,” Ricochet urged his rugged collie on, even though he himself began to slow as well.

As the sun inched towards its zenith, the sky darkened, shifting from crystalline blue to a steely shade of ash as they approached the smouldering cesspit of crimson red and dull charcoal. Maybe the sullen gray that cloaked the sky was simply clouds- or more likely, it was ash picked up by the faint stirrings of a wind. The grass, once green, faded away to be replaced by an unappetizing lining of clay, cracks jagging through it, a spider-web of needle thin scars. Whatever heat may had been alleviated from the somber silver returned in full force as the Incendiary and Guns made their way towards the simmering lines of heat not far along, the only audible sound the hiss of lava and the sucking of mud at their feet.

Ricochet’s mouth twisted scornfully, and he lifted his tail, releasing a steaming pile of dung onto the voracious soil that acted so like mud.

They meandered on, with no more purpose that a duck waddling about searching for food- but his food was not grass today, but the succulent fresh meat of an equine un-besmirched by horns and wings; a meal that was to be denied to him by Nieque.

The thud of wings became perceptible over the ragged heaving of their own blasted breathing, and before the couple appeared a mare glistening like an angel, if not for the feathered appendages. Skyrat. It was unusual to see them. They were rarer now than they used to be, an exotic species of bird- repugnant swine that occasionally flocked about harmlessly (except for being an eyesore.) Once one of such species had voted for him in the triumvirate when he had lived in the Foothills; but that made no difference to his opinionated view of them that had been beaten into him through the tireless workings of his father.

But he had learned, through lessons always hard and never easy, sometimes he should let them pick the fights, not the other way around. In any case, even he was not fool enough to think he could take on some pigeon-headed mare (even if she was only a mare and only a pegasus) when he was tired as he was, his mind beginning to crumble at the edges.

“Hey, YOU!” Ricochet shouts, his voice hard as his dick was when he first met Arya. Fucking skyrats. At least unicorns could fight decently; but all these bird-brains did were fly around and act like whores- or they bossed everyone around, thinking they were better than those grounded because of fucking wings. With a despairing shake of his burnt face, Ricochet picks up a lumbering jog, Guns swiftening beside him. The two of them make a handsome sight… until you begin to pick out the scars on buttermilk boy’s coat and the endless anger in his teal eyes.

Clay squelches beneath his hooves as he halts, bristling at the very sight of her. In a world where there were too many to defeat, he should try to work with others... until the time came when he could kill. But how was he supposed to work with fucking birdbrains?

Ricochet grunts, tail lashing once-twice, and settles with a familiar scowl. “Where are we?” He demands, in a manner bordering on aggressive.

As he came closer to her, heated by the electricity of his tension, his stony eyes picked up something unusual in her face, a sense of disbelief. His scowl deepened as he halted. Drops of sweat beaded on his coat, glimmering dully in the grim lighting. Why did she look at him that way? Was she surprised because of the burn scarring his face?

The disbelief vanished from her eyes, and a gentile smile warmed her silver lips, as if seeing him was one of the best things that had happened to her today.

She must have had a really fucking bad day then, Ricochet decides, because who would want to see him? Not his daughter, not the girl who he had lost his virginity to, not the black pegasus… and he pondered the possibility of her just being stupid. Couldn’t she see the stiffness in his jaw, the tension in his muscles, the layers and layers and layers of rage and passion and fury in his eyes, that had become the reason for his living? But still she smiled at him, grinning at him, and he was almost unnerved by it- except his testicles had dropped a long time ago, and it would take more than a pegasus are pretty as pegasi could be smiling to turn him away.

Her delicate, well-sculpted ears flick to him, and her voice is small and soft, more becoming of a dove than a mare. Bird-bones, bird-brain, bird-voice. Look at me, learning something new every day. Ricochet mused drily to himself, but he didn’t bother opening his mouth. Whenever he did that, he had a tendency to end up with a minor catastrophe on his hooves, seeing as he still blurted out whatever the fuck first came to his mind

Guns dropped onto his haunches, slumping by Ricochet’s hooves. The buttermilk stallion snorted, lifting a hoof to prod at the dog as the pegasus mare apologizes to him, even going so far as to call him ‘sir’. Despite his more persistent nudges, the collie stays down, panting heavily.

Stupid dog.

“This thing?” Ricochet grunted, teal eyes flicking up to her again. “He ain’t any good old dog. He’s either getting in the way or running off.” Better to complain to this mare and start some conversation going than tell her that just a week by Guns had caught a pegasus by the wing and chewed her up a good bit. Even the Incendiary knew that telling this girl that would probably scare her off- and he wouldn’t mind a conversation, even if it was with a pegasus. Better a skyrat than hornhead (not really, but still.)

The mare lowered her head politely, smiling that same fucking smile.

Why was she so god-damn cheerful? They were standing on the heart of Helovia surrounded by scarred land and blistering heat in the middle of Tallsun, the air was full of ashes, and no doubt if Ricochet just accidently summoned his magic that whole place would ignite into red dancing flames. “Stay down Guns,” the stallion growled bad-temperedly, narrowing his teal eyes at the pegasus. “Careful, he’s not too friendly. 'Might bite your muzzle off by accident.” Although at the moment, Guns looked anything but aggressive, sprawled as he was, tail wagging slowly back and forth over the dust. Stupid dog.

She offers up her name, a name with two parts to it. For a moment the Incendiary wonders if saying his name is a bad idea. No, she was a mare, a pegasus, who smiled and smiled and kept fucking smiling- she probably couldn’t hurt a flea, let alone him.

“Ricochet the Incendiary. This is Guns.” The buttermilk boy says gruffly, ears slanting backwards momentarily before twitching forward again. “What brings you round to these hellish parts Alina?”

Ricochet felt a twinge of satisfaction as Alina jerked her head away from Guns. There was the faintest pop as she pulled her hooves free from the clinging mud, taking a step or two away from the collie, and at the stricken look on her snowy face, his sadistic joy was followed by the faintest flicker of… not, surely not guilt, but surprise. She was so incredibly naïve; the pegasus was so secure around him, as if he was her friend, as if a stranger could not dream of doing her harm. Who had raised her? Some old stallion grinning, a young mare deep in love? If his father hadn’t been Gunslinger, how different would Ricochet be? No, not even his father, if he hadn’t been raised in Isilme? What would it be like, living without passion and anger?

I’m turning into a philosopher, the Incendiary muses, and with a bob of his skull, he shakes away the thoughts like Guns shakes his head when it rains.

In any case, the world ate gullible souls like her for breakfast. Look at her now! She was smiling at him again. Fucking again! This time, Ricochet physically flinched, his buttermilk skin twitching over thick muscle and brawn, and he took a hasty step back, even as she employs more flattery in her case. “Can you quit grinning!” He blurted, teal eyes narrowing. With Alina he felt foolishly young again, like he had when he followed at Gunslinger’s heels with his head low, every idea shouted down and the teeth of his father never far away.

She’s coming towards her, all silver and cream and dust, and horrified, he takes another step backwards, almost tripping over himself in his disgust and nerves. For a pegasus, she was terribly graceful, with the sway of her hips and the curl of her swan-like neck. Filth, the stallion thought to himself, even as he tips back his head and twists back his upper lip in the flehmen response, taking in her scent. Alina smells like dust and charcoal and sand, like feathers with the faintest undertone of sweat.

Ricochet meets her eyes, emerald eyes, and he squirms uneasily beneath her gaze, before tearing his eyes away. At a languid pace, his collie gets to his paws, parted jaws closing firmly, ears flicking back, mirroring the Incendiary’s pinning audits.
Just exploring, she says, and Ricochet sighs, a deep sigh that rattles in his bones and aches in his lungs. There is dust everywhere. And then Alina whispers she wants to hear his story.

“It’s a fucking bloody story,” the Incendiary growls, and after he says it he almost regrets it. She has probably never even heard fuck before in her life. Whatever. Time for a bit of carnage in her perfect angelic world. Still she’s approaching him, and the smell of her takes up his world, dust and sand, and the white of her wings framed against the ashen sky. Her wings. So hideous… so imperfect… if only he could tear them off… then he might be able to properly enjoy her strange company.

The clay is glowing, smouldering beneath his hooves as she approaches.
Her breath is hot on his withers.

“FUCK OFF!” Ricochet screams, and Guns shoots beneath Alina’s hooves, sending up globs of clay, but no dust.

The clay ignites, beneath the Incendiary and possibly beneath Alina, searing his delicate frogs and turning the mud-like substance hot and sizzling, flame licking up thinly, and he roars in pain as the ground burns beneath him. All he can smell now is searing flesh and burning hair, the hideously familiar scent of his magic which so often injured him. Now he would have new scars, not that he was thinking it- no, he was charging towards Alina, teeth bared and shouting curses, every step hurting unbearably.

“I SAID FUCK OFF!”

It was overwhelmingly familiar, the burn and sizzle of his own flesh blistering in the heat, the flames scalding his hooves at each step; and yet he found sudden respite upon her body, the thud of his hooves on pale skin and gray muzzle and sooty wings. Lashing out at her felt good, and her warm body put a layer between his feet and the burning ground. Yet with every moment trickling through his hooves, the stench of her charred flesh filled his nostrils, pungent and hot, and he was shivering. It wasn’t remorse he was feeling, no, but his gut was twisting with each moment, even as unbidden her smile sprang to the forefront of his mind. The stallion’s whole body is not just throbbing from pain, but screeching, each nerve ending- and there were so many of them- more alive than ever before, and his mind too.

Guns was howling at him, Ricochet could hear it dimly in the background, a never-ending keening that sawed at his ears.

He wants to beat her into the ground, until Alina the kind of heart and naïve of mind was but a slick of red and white and gray, covered in mud and bruised and battered, broken beyond repair. For a horrible, yet somehow satisfying moment, she doesn’t scream. Maybe she’s dead. But then it begins, a hideous screaming that grates, a screech unlike anything Ricochet’s ever heard before.

Somewhere he is panicking too. She will be one of his earlier murders in his lifetime, and there was joy and pride in vanquishing one of the freaks, but there was also something tremendously terrifying about it too, not that the Incendiary would ever admit it.

When the black mare had spied on Dragomir and him, Ricochet had leaped into the fight with eyes bright and tail wagging… he didn’t have any qualms at attacking a mare with a wing broken, didn’t even see anything unethical about it. It was his duty to remove those who were in his way, and she was a danger as well as a blight on the eyes; she knew of the Equine Empire. Yet here, with Alina, where was the strength in beating an opponent already weaker than him, who couldn’t fight, who could only talk with a cheerful tone? No. Gunslinger had long since beaten into his mind his superiority. Alina’s death was inevitable; the Incendiary was only delivering it to her early.
Not even her. It.

She was probably dead by now… but still something in his gut twists hideously, dishonorably, and for a moment he pauses in his beating of her, smoke burning in his eyes. Within that sliver of a second suddenly the mare is rising, an angel smeared with crimson and clay. Wings clip his charred face and a hoof knocks him in the muzzle as she rises on those blasphemous extra limbs of hers, and suddenly hooves are raining down on him. Whatever shred of mercy he had dissipates as his body automatically goes onto defense. It’s easier this way, to just fight, not to think or ponder or doubt.

Blood was raining down on him, splatters and drips of crimson.

“JUST LEAVE!” The Incendiary screams over the endless howling of Guns.
Why can’t she just leave? She still has wings, no matter how burnt they may be. Mostly, he doesn’t want her here; there are bruises and swellings still hidden beneath his buttermilk skin from his run-in with Shadow, still scabs where icy willow trees lashed at his chest and neck, where her flailing hooves caught him by sheer luck. For all his shortcomings, Ricochet has begun to realize, however slowly, sometimes it was better to let himself recuperate and let wrongs go by then leap into battle with every mutant to pass him by. Today in this hellish, hot world where he was dripping and lathered with sweat, he had been an idiot.

With a snarl of frustration as much derived from his stupidity as from her, Ricochet rears, snapping at her slender legs, ears pinned flat and teal eyes narrowed against the deluge of stone hooves flying at his skull. A foreleg hits him behind the ear, another above the eye, and his head throbs.

Fire burns at his hooves.
He was not going to repeat himself again. Either she would take to the blue sky like the coward she was, or she would fall beneath him and die.

It was her choice.