Inside the cavernous tunnels that lead from the ritual room that Twilight had used to summon Gregory, the two of them continued on searching for an exit. Winding paths were interwoven within an intricate network of tubes made this place very confusing. All of these paths seemed to be similar, holding nothing special about them. After what had seemed like a few miles from the ravine for them, they had finally encountered something of interest. A glint of light, shinning in the distance. Since they had been in the tunnel for hours, they had been kinda down, but seeing this pushed their spirits up and at once they began to dash towards the light.

"It just has to be the outside, I can feel a cool breeze!" Twilight Sparkle yelled with glee.

Gregory was in agreement with her, feeling the same breeze that the pony did. Matching her speed, he darted towards the small little speck, that resembled the hope of escaping the subterranean environment. Twilight Sparkle let out an excited gasp, breathing in fresh air as she trotted into the city. Gregory followed closely behind her, stopping short of her position.

"Finally.... out of that hell hole of a tunnel. What were they planning anyway?" Gregory asked while panting for his breath.

"I have no clue, it was under construction." Twilight said while looking back at him.

"Twilight, I have been meaning to ask... How are we going to locate this Pinkie Pie." He asked, meeting her gaze.

"I made a concoction to locate her. I have some of the vials in my pouch right here, I also have a bowl I procured to view the liquid with." Twilight said shifting her maw to grab at her pouch.

Gregory was confused as to how a vial could locate somebody, but he watched curiously, while Twilight pulled out her tools. She then set down one vial with a purplish liquid, followed by a mixing bowl. Opening the vial, she poured the contents into the bowl slowly, allowing for the liquid to mix. After replacing the vial into her pouch, she buckled the bag up and watched alongside Gregory as the liquid began to settle. Twilight focused a bit, her horn gathering energy and producing a light sparkle. Soon the bowl had an aura of the same hue of color wrapping around it. On the reflection of the liquid an image began to appear.

"What is that?" Gregory asked eyeing an ominous castle that sat upon a floating rock. "Such a dark place...."

"This is just the outside, I've have only been able to get small sneak peaks at the inside, but not much. Every time I try to delve deeper, something cuts me off."

"I see.... How do we get there..." he asked, perplexed very much about this.

"It's complicated, but we can't go there yet...." Twilight replied.

"What do you mean? I thought we gathered the proper materials."

"That is correct, we have the materials, but for our mission, I had planned on recruiting some others to assist us." Twilight told while putting the liquid back in the vial, and cleaning the bowl. "I scouted out dimensions for anyone that was still alive, and though I didn't find many, there were still survivors."

"Survivors? Who?" He rattled off more questions for his pony companion.

"I found ninja, from a dimension of ninjas. I had been watching them combat these shukakusha. They are skilled, unfortunately, nearly all of them were wiped out. The shukakusha were just too much for them to handle." She answered yet another of his questions. "Most likely due to the rapid contagiousness of the disease these things have."

"How awful... are they already here?" Gregory once again asked, so many questions were bouncing within his head like some sort of ping-pong game.

"No, I have yet to summon them.... The next summoning circle isn't far from here, and thats where we should head to next actually." Twilight again responded, her ears then flickered, picking up some sort of sound just seconds before Gregory did as well.

"What was that?!" Gregory wondered while tensing up and looking all around.

The area was still foggy, and even though it was lighter than the tunnel they had just gotten out of, it was evident that it was quickly becoming night. Around them the sound they heard bounced off of many buildings and echoed in such a way, that it was hard to determine it's original location. Gregory's eyes darted back and forth, sweat slowly dripped from the furrow of his brow, and his breathing started to pick up, keeping in pace with his heart rate. Twilight's guard was up, she was ready for this thing now that her magic was all charged up again. Before anything had the chance to jump them, she used that magic to make both Gregory and herself invisible.

"I feel weird.... " he stated shortly afterwards, but he was promptly shushed by Twilight mere seconds later.

"It's coming.... " She whispered to him, and then she pointed a hoof towards a house nearby that had it's door wide open.

Gregory knew what it was she was hinting at. They were going to hide it out in that house. Before they began to move, they could hear footsteps in the distance heading in their direction. Those same footsteps were easy for them both to recognize. They encountered the shukakusha enough to have it committed to memory by now. Twilight began to move, she wasn't about to let the shukakusha find them first. She was quickly followed by Gregory. With the world being so foreign to him, he was intent on following Twilight like a lost puppy dog, he didn't want to stray off into danger afterall.

Once inside that house, Twilight used her magic to shut the door and lock it up, changing the frequency of sound vibrations in order to cancel any sound out completely. Outside the window of the house, they could see the street and small grassed area they had previously been in. It was now swarming with a trio of shukakusha. It was clear that they would be their for a while, so Gregory found a chair and plopped down on it. Sighing heavily he looked over to Twilight, who still had her serious face on seconds before matching his eyes.

"We should wait here for a few minutes and then see if there is a back door from which to escape from." Twilight stated still speaking in a low whisper.

"Alright.... This is so nerve racking...." he replied.

His eyes wandered the house, knowing that he had some time to kill, he started to take in his surroundings. Curiosity made him want to explore the various rooms inside. The chair he was sitting on was in the center of a destroyed living room. Looking around the place he now noticed a few things that he didn't notice in his panic to find a place to hide in. There were stains on the carpet, blood. Getting up from his chair with his eyes fixed on those stains, he also noticed that they trailed off to another location within the hose. Twilight caught what he was looking at too, and she became curious as well, though she remained vigilant at her post, and continued to watch out the window. She figured that if it was important enough, Gregory would inform her of the details.

Following this trail of stains, Gregory was lead down a hallway, into a study room. Inside this room was many shelves with books, but the most peculiar thing was the decomposed body of a pony sitting in a chair. From a quick glance, it seemed the pony had perished a long time ago, which made him wonder why nopony would have found it by now and given the pony a proper burial. That was besides the point, as something else became his focus. A wound in the skull of the pony. A large knife was stabbed directly in the center of her forehead, so much so that it seemed to be the reason for why the pony had perished.

"A homicide no doubt... It doesn't look like the kind of injury that an accident would cause...." He said to himself after coming towards the desk that the pony was sitting at.

Getting a closer look at the surroundings, he noticed a document on the desk. It was a torn out page to a notebook, but there were no notebooks to be seen in the room at all. It was out of place. On the paper, it had a format that resembled a diary. Suddenly, Gregory's eyes widened. Upon that page, in the upper right hand corner, there was a block indicating the owner of the page.

"Twilight?.... I think you want to come take a look at this....." Gregory sounded very concerned.

"Can you bring it out here?... " Twilight asked of him.

Stepping out of the room, Gregory returned to where she was and handed her the paper to look at. Twilight gripped the parchment in her hooves and began reading it, and soon her eyes were just the same as Gregory's. On that upper right hand block, Pinkie Pie's name was written. The document was dated nearly a year and a half ago....

"I arrived in a new town today, it's been three days since I left my quaint little village of ponyille. No one even noticed me, I practically blended in with the crowd. Unfortunately that was short lived when I saw some equestrian guards scanning the crowds. I had to make a quick detour into somepony's house. I met this bookworm, and of course she was alarmed. I didn't want her blabbing her mouth, so, the moment I found her in her office, I jumped at her and plunged a knife I had found in the kitchen into pretty little forehead. It's a shame she was home today, she could have avoided dieing if she wasn't, not that it matters. The world is going to perish once I have my way with it. Hehehehehe..... did I just write out my laughter? I think I really am losing it HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!......... I think I should head to the hospital and procure some medical supplies for my journey to the Frozen North...."

"Shes lost her mind.... I just don't get it." Twilight huffed after reading the entire diary entry. "And what the hell is in the Frozen North? Everypony knows that place is a death-trap of frost and snow."

"I wouldn't know much about the subject, I'm only a human. It's all new to me." Gregory told her. "But, your friend seems to have lost her sanity. Since you were so close to her, perhaps you noticed some kind of change in her? Was there not anytime to fix it?"

"Pinkie Pie... is complicated... No one could ever tell what she would do next. Random is the word that defined her very being." Twilight began. "If she had any sort of change it went unchecked under her array of spontaneous actions. Although...."

"Although what?... There was something wasn't there?" Gregory was curious when she stopped short of her statement.

"There was one time when we were all planning a surprise party for her. We wanted to keep it hush hush, so we avoided her." She continued. "Doing all we could to keep the party as secret as possible, though, in our attempts to do so, Pinkie Pie thought we all didn't like her anymore, and well, she took it very hard... She had a momentary psychotic freak-out of some sort... nearly tried to kill R-..... I'm sorry...."

Before she could even utter her friend's name her eyes began to water, she loved Rainbow Dash as much as any best friend would. Tears began to roll from her eyes, it pained her to even bring up any memories of Rainbow Dash, but for the sake of explaining she continued. Gregory could tell she struggled to talk about her memories.

"She nearly killed.... Rainbow Dash.... before she was told that their was a party for her... and that we were all planning it in secret..." Twilight was all choked up, she missed Rainbow Dash so much, along with the rest of her friends.... She didn't even know what happened to them or if they were even alive still.

"You lost your friends... didn't you?..." Gregory knew it to be true. The names she spoke made her cringe and whine.

"..." All she could do was sob and look down at the ground, her ears drooped low as well.

What Gregory did next was a bit shocking even to himself. It couldn't be explained, but inside of him, he sympathized with the pony, it was strong too. Leaning in towards Twilight, he gave her a hug. Instinctively Twilight softly nuzzled into his shoulder, mourning the loss of her friends. Gregory began forming thoughts within his head. Sure it was true that a little therapy for Pinkie Pie could have prevented this whole situation from happening, but he couldn't just blame Twilight and her friends for not doing so. His resolve was fortifying from this moment, and after a few minutes he separated from the comforting embrace. Twilight's watery eyes looked up at him, deep sadness was all he could see.

"Twilight... let's finish this... for your friends' sake..." Gregory stated.

She nodded in response to her, and took a few minutes to regain her composure. Once she was ready she stood up. Gregory followed her while she trotted to the back of the house. Sure enough, there was a back door that they could go through. Before they left, Twilight spoke up.

"Gregory... Thanks..." She said to him.

"It's nothing. In this kind of situation... we need to support one another.. in any way we can." Gregory replied to her. "Now about that diary note.... should we investigate the hospital?"

"Hmmm...." Twilight had to ponder on it for a second, and she did so by placing a hoof on her chin and tilting her head to the side in thought. "Perhaps we should. It might contain some more clues as to exactly where Pinkie Pie has been and what she is up to."

"Very well then. Let's move out." Gregory said before slowly opening the door to check the surroundings. Twilight followed him, her tears by now having dried up, and her face was back in serious mode. The door closed and soon they found themselves stepping back into the foggy city, but now... it was night time.