AJ had shouted back at me, but I was either too far or too distressed to hear or understand her. I couldn't find Unity anywhere. I had run around every tree in the immediate area and spread my search out to a very large section of the orchard. My hope to find him slowly dwindled as the thought of him teleporting away to Celestia-knows-where grew. Through my muddled thoughts, I did manage to salvage one rational idea.

Fang. He could pick up Unity's scent and tell me if he was still somewhere in the orchard at the very least. As soon as the thought hit me, I ran in the direction that I thought the barn was in. I remembered telling Fang he could stay with Winnona before, so he should have still been there. The trees passed me in a blur that hardly registered in my mind. Before I knew it, I was at the barn doors. I threw them open roughly and scanned the barn for my pet. I saw him almost right away, cuddled around Winnona.

"Fang! I need your help! Now!" I shouted at him. He leapt to his paws and I ran back to the orchard without seeing if he had even started following me. I easily found the spot I had killed Woodsworth in and pointed at the spot I had placed Unity in. Sure enough, Fang showed up beside me a sniffed the spot. He already knew what to do as if he could read my mind. With the scent in his mind, Fang walked around a few trees for a bit. I followed him closely, desperately hoping he would lead me right to Unity. Instead, he stopped after only a short walk. He turned his head up and sniffed roughly a few times.

"What? What's going on buddy?" I nearly hissed. Fang took a few steps away from the spot he had stopped and began sniffing the ground again. "What's wrong? Did you find something?"

Fang slowly raised his head towards the sky and bared his teeth. "Grrrrrrrrrrrrr...."

"Fang?"

"Ruff! Arf! Bark!" Fang took off with a loud series of barks. As soon as I finished being surprised, I took off after him. He led me out into a clearing where the sun shone down on us harshly without the cover of the trees. All I could see was a black dot far off in the sky. Fang stared at it with what I could only see as pure rage. I walked into the middle of the clearing to see something else that had drawn my attention. I crouched low to the ground and picked up the only item in the whole clearing.

A single brown feather.

I frowned at it. It didn't make any sense for Fang to be barking at brown feathers and dots in the sky. He was looking for Unity, who I was now sure had teleported away somewhere. Slowly though, my thoughts began to connect. Fang wasn't stupid, in fact he was very good at this sort of thing. If he was following another scent and barking angrily, then Unity couldn't have simply run away. Whoever this brown feather belonged to...

Had foalnapped my son.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gilda was napping peacefully in her could house when I finally found it. She would have been surprised to see me, I imagine. She was more surprised when I jumped through the bottom of her house and grabbed her though.

"Waaaaaaaaagh!" Gilda screamed as we fell to the ground. Luckily her house was floating rather low today. I roughly put her on the ground and held the feather to her face.

"What is this?" I asked in a deadly quiet voice. Gilda quit screaming and put on an expression of extreme confusion.

"Sharky? What the heck are ya doing waking me up like that you dw--"

"What. Is. This?" I whispered again. "Tell me now."

Gilda suddenly seemed to realized just how serious I was. "It's a feather. Duh." she answered weakly.

"What kind?"

"Gryffin I guess. It smells like one anyway." she answered quickly. I would have been more surprised she could smell it if I hadn't nearly shoved it in her beak. I had guessed it was gryffin, which was why I had gone to Gilda in the first place.

"This feather belongs to somepony that just foalnapped my son. You're the only gryffin I know." my voice grew more intense and deadly. Gilda's pupils shrank and she started to scramble away from me.

"N-now hold on! Do you really think I'm dumb enough to steal anything from you?! We're friends, remember?"

"I know that. As I was saying, you're the only gryffin I know. Do you know who would do this?"

"N-nopony comes to mind..."

I backed away from Gilda and paused to think through my cloud of rage. If it's a gryffin and Gilda doesn't know who it might be.... It must be a gryffin that would have something to gain by pissing me off. Hmmm... The one that tried to have Gilda killed! I looked back to Gilda with concern. Yes... he knows he can't beat me, so it would be easy for him to foalnap Unity and try to use him as leverage...

"Gilda, stay with me. I think I know who did this, and you are in danger if I'm right." I ordered with a no-bullshit tone. Gilda didn't even question me and just followed as I turned to leave. If I was right, and this enemy of mine had taken my son, nopony I loved was safe right now. I went to Rainbow's cloud house next and told her to come with me. She didn't argue in the slightest when she saw my grave expression. I went to the boutique after that and yanked Rarity away from some repair ponies she was speaking to. She struggled and questioned me, but I didn't pause to explain lest I lose somepony to this threat. Twilight didn't put up any sort of struggle when she saw all the other girls, she did decide to bring Spike with us though.

The last girl I picked up was Fluttershy, the furthest of them all. I nearly broke out into a full sprint and left the others because I was so worried about her. I remained with them through a herculean effort. When we finally reached her house. I fell to my knees in disbelief. The door was broken off one of its hinges and there was furniture scattered around in the yard.

"No..." I whispered as I nearly started crying. Then I realized something was still moving in Fluttershy's house. With a rage born of the loss of my son and one of my loves, I scattered the others with a wave of my arm and ran into the house with my fists raised angrily. Instead of meeting the blade of an assassin as I had expected, I came face-to-face with a bear.

"Grrraaaah!" It growled in my face.

"Oh no! Is there another one Mr. Cuddles?!" Fluttershy squeaked from somewhere in the house. My rage fizzled in and instant and I dropped my fists. The bear didn't drop any sort of violent intention though, he lunged at me and tried to bite my face off. I gave him a quick uppercut that snapped his mouth shut. I then brought my elbow down on his over-extended neck that made him fall to the ground.

"Fluttershy, it's me!" I shouted over the angry growling of Mr. Cuddles.

"Oh, Sharky! Thank goodness! I was so scared!"

"Would mind getting Mr. Cuddles to calm down? Then tell me what happened." Fluttershy trotted into view and hopped onto the bear's back. She whispered to him for a bit as I waved the girls, and Spike, over. The bear left us in a bit of a sour mood after only a few moments of Fluttershy speaking to him. We all settled into Fluttershy's extremely messy house. Furniture was broken and scattered, glass was on the floor, and there was a lot of blood. Luckily Fluttershy was unharmed, so I knew the blood wasn't hers.

"What... what's going on?" RD mumbled dully as she looked at the wreckage.

"I don't know." I answered honestly. "All I know is that you all are in danger. Whatever happened here proves that. Fluttershy, what happened?"

Fluttershy, shockingly, seemed oddly calm about the whole situation. Obviously she was shaken, but she didn't dissolve into a puddle of whimpers and sobs as I might have expected her to do back when we first met.

"A gryffin snuck into my house and tried to get me. Mr. Shiny, Glitter, and Rocky stopped him." two gem golems appeared from her doorway right as she finished speaking. They were covered in more red than any part of Fluttershy's home. "Mr. Cuddles came in when he heard the fighting to help. He ummm... I think he ate the gryffin..."

Gilda turned green and pressed a talon against her beak.

"Did he say anything? Anything at all?" I asked urgently as the two golems slowly approached.

"No... no he didn't." Fluttershy mumbled.

"W-why would somepony attack such a innocent and darling mare as Fluttershy?" Rarity squeaked out. "She's never done anything bad enough for behavior like this in her life!"

"They were not after the Mother of the Creator because of something she did." one of the golems stated in response. "They want her dead because of the Father of the Creator." the golem held out a dagger and a paper. "This was the weapon he tried to hurt the Mother of the Creator with. The paper was tied to the handle."

"Luckily our brother, Mr. Shiny, took the blow for the Mother of the Creator. It split his skull-rune and killed him. My brother and I were unable to repair and revive him." the second golem continued.

"H-he's gone?" Fluttershy whimpered. She began to sob a little bit as the realization fully took effect on her.

"S-somepony wants Fluttershy dead because of you?!" Twilight nearly screamed at me. "What the hay did you do to make that happen?"

I calmly walked over and took the paper from the hand of the first golem. It was a note that I was obviously intended to find on Fluttershy's dead body. I took a breath and read it aloud.

"This says: 'You're too late, hero. How does it feel to have failed to save not only one, but two of those you hold dear in your heart? Do not worry, your son still lives. He is safe with me. However, for every day you don't forsake your protection of Gilda, another one of your loved ones will die. All the mares you love, your friends, even those precious pets of yours. Then, when the rest are dead, I'll let you watch me kill your son if you still haven't done as I've commanded. You made a mistake when you tried to pick a fight with me, hero. I know all your secrets now, and I won't stop hurting you until you do as I wish. It's your choice though. Will you let more of your loved ones die to protect only one friend? I eagerly await your decision.' It's signed by a Byron. The guy that tried to have you killed, Gilda."

"So... this Byron... wants to kill us all to get to you?" Rarity asked fearfully. I nodded slowly.

"... Why did it mention your son?" Twilight asked nervously.

"Because... they foalnapped him. They want to use him and you guys to try and get me to hand Gilda to them. They want to use Gilda to get to the king. They want to use you to get to me to get to Gilda to get to the king, get it?"

Twilight nodded, but the others only seemed to half understand me. They all did obviously understand that Unity had been taken though.

"So they took Unity? What are we gonna do?!" RD asked aggressively as she slammed her hoof on the ground.

"There's no 'we', it's me. I'm gonna handle this."

"Oh? Tell me dear, what's your master plan to take care of this nasty buisiness?" Rarity questioned with a tint of sarcasm.

"... I'll go..." Gilda mumbled quietly before I could respond to Rarity. We all locked our gazes on her. I coughed to clear my throat.

"Excuse me?"

Gilda turned her head up from where she had been looking at the ground and met my eyes without fear.

"I'll go. It's my fault they're after you dorks now, and you shouldn't have to deal with it."

I sighed with irritation and pressed my pointer fingers against my temple.

"That's not going to happen Gilda. We're not just going to give him what he wants. Otherwise how would we stop him from doing the same thing again?" I paused and took my hands away from my face to look at the others. "Plus, he took Unity! You know, 'I made an army of vampires' Unity. If this guy has been watching me like I think, he should have thought better than to take the baby chaos god. That doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that I'm not worried or upset. No, it just means I'm not scared for Unity's sake. Now, I'm going to go find this Byron guy and beat him so hard his great grandfather's bones will shatter in his coffin."

"What do you propose we do while you go off to find this 'Byron'? What if more gryffins come after us?!" Rarity pointed out. I only had to think for a moment to some up with an answer.

"Why don't you guys go stay at Canterlot with Celestia, Luna, and the Royal Guard to protect you? I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you explained the situation." I pulled out my phone to call Luna. "In fact, let me ask really quick." I hit Luna's button and it began to ring. On only the first ring, she picked up.

"Sharky! What a pleasant surprise. I was actually just about to call." Luna started off. I cut her off as she took a breath.

"Luna, I don't have time for conversation. I have a big problem. All of my friends and even my son are in great danger right now. I need you to keep them safe at Canterlot while I handle the situation."

Luna got serious right away. "What's wrong? How may I help?"

"Luna, this is for me to handle. It deals with gryffins and the throne to the gryffin empire. I won't have you cause some sort of war over my problems. All I need you to do is protect them." I held out the phone to all the ponies in the building. "They should be the only ones under serious threat."

"Sharky..." Luna began. She simply sighed and rubbed one of her eyes irritatedly. "Very well. I will not press if you do not want my aid. Just... be careful.... I do not wish for you to be harmed or..." Luna choked on her words for a moment. "Just be careful. That's and order."

"Will do. Thank you for helping."

Only a few moments later, all my loved ones had been evacuated to Canterlot thanks to Luna. I was left only with only my self-imposed mission.

To kill the sonofabitch that took my son.

Author's Notes:

LET'S GO FOR THREE!