Luna got me to calm down and sit through the rest of the play after a bit of coaxing. I fidgeted nervously for the duration of the performance while my mind went berserk trying to figure out what this all meant.

This is nuts! A fictional character killed my target? What on earth does that even mean?! It's not possible... so it can't be true, right? I looked back at the performance just in time to see "Lightning Blade" paint another lightning bolt. It has to be... I mean, who else would've done it? I shook my head. Thinking on it by myself would get me nowhere. The simple fact was that I didn't have enough information yet to figure this out on my own. As painful as it was, I sat for a while with a whirlwind of questions tearing through my mind.

Luna noticed my stressed look and gently shook my shoulder. "Hey, are you ok? Do we need to leave?"

"No, you enjoy your play." I denied forcefully. Luna looked at the play, then back to me a few times. She slowly stood up from her spot on the sofa.

"I tire of this performance. Let's go."

I gave Luna a grateful smile and followed her out of the theater as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing the other viewers.

As soon as we left the theater, Luna leaned in close to me to whisper, "What's wrong? Why were you so disturbed by the events of the play?"

"I'm not necessarily disturbed; It would be better to say I'm just very confused."

"Why?" Luna asked as we stepped out of the theater and back into the public eye. I knew in a matter of mere minutes there would be a crowd again.

"I don't want to talk about it right now." I proceeded to walk towards the castle.

"Hey, wait!" Luna jogged a few steps to catch up to me. "Please, you can tell me."

"Luna, I said I don't want to talk about it." I could feel myself slowly becoming irritated.

"Sharky, I insist. You can tell me anything, even if it seems silly."

"Luna!" I shouted, finally losing my patience. "I told you I don't want to talk about it!" I turned to face her with an angry expression. Luna looked shocked, and maybe a little hurt. I leaned in close to whisper to her. "I don't want to discuss this in public, Luna."

I turned on my heel away from her and continued towards the castle. The crowd around us was muttering, and I heard more cameras flashing, but I ignored them entirely. Eventually we reached the gates of the castle.

"Hey, open up!" I barked angrily. The guards at the front of the gate scrambled about as if awakened from some day dream. "Pfft, they call this security?" I scoffed at the bumbling guards. "Pathetic."

"Sharky!" one of them shouted dazedly. "Uhh... what business do you have here?"

"None of your goddamn business! Open the gate!" I ordered irritably.

"H-hey! You can't tell me what t--"

I literally vanished from my spot in a single movement and appeared in front of the guard. I grabbed the rim of his breastplate right beneath his neck and lifted him just off the ground. The metal began to feel warm in my hands. "I said open the gate. Bitch."

"O-ok!" he squeaked as I let go of him. He hit the ground with a small metal clatter and motioned to the second guard frantically. I'd never seen the gates open faster. Luna finally caught up to me and stood by my side.

"Sharky, what was that about?" she asked with a harsh tone. I clucked my tongue and turned to the guard.

"He insulted me, that's all."

"Oh?" Luna asked, her tone suddenly turning cold as she looked at the guard. "Shall I have him disciplined?"

I shook my head. "No, I think he's learned his lesson." I turned to glare at the guard. "Haven't you?"

The guard shook his head very, very quickly. "Y-yes s-sir I have!"

I nodded at him. "Good." Luna and I continued into the castle grounds until we reached our special spot in the gardens.

"Alright, then what's all your strange behavior in the theater about?" Luna asked once more.

"Hold on, let me make sure nopony's here." I left for a brief moment to search the immediate area. When my search turned up empty-handed, I returned to Luna. I used the time I searched to calm down a little, I was abnormally angry for some reason. I couldn't even really remember what had set me off. Luna was waiting with a rather impatient look on her face when I returned.

"Well? Will you finally tell me what's going on?"

"Alright Luna, it's like this. You remember that time I was on Hoofalulu while the volcano was erupting?"

"Yes, I do. I meant to ask you why you were there, but the events of the moment proved rather... distracting."

"Well I was tracking a wealthy, evil gryffin that was trying to have my friends and family killed."

Luna's eyes narrowed and she had a suddenly hostile air about her. Her horn began to glow and the wind around us whipped up. I ignored the pain the sudden rush of magic caused and waited for her to speak. "Give me his name. Nopony shall threaten those I care about!"

"Whoa, geez! Interesting words coming from the one that constantly hurls me at monsters." I joked. The air died down and Luna seemed to be at a loss for words.

"I... Well that's..."

"Easy Luna, I don't mind being hurled at monsters in all honesty. Feels good to be helping the citizens of Equestria. Anyway, back to the matter at hoof. I found the gryffin I was looking for. He was dead when I got there." I paused for a few seconds and looked Luna dead in the eye. "There was a lightning bolt painted above his head."

"Ah! I see then, you think that means Lightning Blade had something to do with this then." Luna concluded with a teasing smile. "You think he jumped out of the book and got him, do you?" Luna asked as she broke out into laughter. I felt my anger spike again.

"It's not funny Luna! I'm serious!"

"S-sharky..." *hee hee* Luna began after a few more seconds of laughter. "You remember the cult you have?"

"Well... yeah, why?"

"They want to emulate you and be heroes as well?" Luna continued.

"Yes, and?"

"It's basically the same thing. Some crazy pony out there is a huge fan of the series and decided to off somepony they thought would start doing bad things soon. It happens every once in a while. There's nothing we can do to stop that."

I blinked at her a few times and eventually ended up pressing my fingers against my temples to try and keep calm. "Luna... He was a wealthy gryffin that had hired armies worth of assassins to try and take me and my friends out. Not only that, but he likely was expecting me to come after him. The security at this place had to be phenomenal. No common crazy pony could've done this."

Luna shrugged. "Then maybe it was a very skilled crazy pony. Better yet, it could've been one of his own guards that was a fan of the book."

"Luna... Look, there were no other corpses when I got there. If it had been a skilled pony, even as skilled as me, there would be gryffin corpses. If it were a guard that turned on him, other guards would've attacked him and either his corpse or the other guards' corpses would've been there."

"Sharky, you're thinking way to hard on this. Look, for all we know he could've cut himself and painted the bolt before committing suicide. There are many different things that could've happened. However, a fictional character killing a real gryffin does not rank high on the list of probable events."

I let out a long sigh and shrugged. "I guess you're right, Luna. It just... it felt like I was suddenly so close to my answer, but still so far away. I guess now I'm just plain far away."

Luna trotted over to my side and leaned against me. "Why are you even looking for the answer anyway? The way I see it, it only matters that the bad guy is gone."

"I just... I gotta know who did it! I don't even know if I wanna shake his hoof/talon or punch him for stealing my kill."

"Well... if it makes you feel better, I can see about getting statements from the ponies that were in the area of the island near the area you found the gryffin in. Maybe somepony saw the culprit coming or leaving."

I smiled down at Luna and hugged her neck. "You'd do that for me?"

"Of course, anything for you..." Luna mumbled airily, as if she were barely even speaking. She was looking up at me with half-closed eyes, lips slightly parted. She reminded me of Twilight somehow, but I couldn't quite remember when I had seen Twilight like this. I cleared my throat awkwardly and stepped away.

"So... uhhh... Sorry for interrupting the play." I mumbled, quickly changing the topic. I could feel myself blushing, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Luna took an awkward step away as well.

"Oh... 'twas not that important anyhow." Luna muttered.

"..."

"..."

"Sooo..." I started, breaking the awkward silence before it could set in. "What're we doing next?"

"Well, there was that carnival, or we could talk..." she offered weakly. I knew there was no way we were going to talk after whatever awkward thing that just happened had happened.

"Well that carnival sounds fun! Let's go to that." I stated cheerily in an effort to clear the mood. Luna nodded with equal vigor, doing her part to clear the atmosphere as well.

"Agreed, it has been a while since I engaged in normal festivities anyway."

"Alright then, lead the way." I bowed slightly and gestured for her to go on with a wave of my arms. Luna giggled and started walking towards the gates again. All I had to do to get the gates open this time was look at the guards and they began stumbling over themselves in a rush to open the gate.

"Get your acts together!" Luna ordered testily. "It looks bad when the guards literally scramble to open the gate. It's just plain unprofessional."

The guards nodded nervously, and I couldn't help but feel a little bad for them. Luna and I had made life pretty shitty for them in a rather short amount of time. However, she was right. Their only job was to open and close the gate, and they were being sloppy about it. There was no excuse, really.

Luna and I continued on our merry way through the gate. After a few minutes of walking, we finally reached a wide, open area with lots of mechanical rides and lots of game booths set up. There was a unicorn in uniform near every ride, so it was obvious they were magically powered.

"Hey Luna! Look!" I shouted excitedly as I pointed at a "Test Your Strength" booth. It was a classic little hammer and bell setup, but the height of the booth was ridiculous.

"Would you like to give it a shot?" Luna asked with a laugh already in her voice. I nodded eagerly and jogged over to the booth. I looked around for a few seconds until I found an earth pony that I assumed ran the booth.

"Hey! How much for a try?" I asked as politely as possible. The earth pony mare looked up at me and gawked.

"Uhh... I-I dunno if you can fairly play the game Mr. Hero..." she stuttered out. "Ummm... hold on one second." the mare ran off and I gave Luna a questioning look. Luna shrugged in response. Not too long after, the mare returned with a few unicorns. Then she lugged a very large-looking hammer over to me. I hefted it off the ground with minimal effort.

"Wow, surely this can't be the same hammer everypony uses..."

"No..." *pant* "I had to get a special one..." *pant* "The other ones are too small."

"Alright then. So, what's up with all the unicorns?"

"They're here to make it fair!" The mare explained simply. Five magic barriers appeared above the target I was supposed to hit with the hammer. "You have to break all these barriers and still manage to ring the bell to get a prize."

There were a few large stuffed animals on display, but I couldn't really decide what to get myself. There were large dragons, fish, a big carrot, giant bunny, and even a wolf. "There's a shockingly large amount of 'dangerous' animals here..." I muttered to myself. I turned to the mare. "Alright, when I win... This mare here gets to pick whichever one she wants, got it?" I said as I pointed back to Luna. The mare's eyes went wide.

"L-Luna?!"

"Alright, here goes!" I shouted as I hefted the hammer up.

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

"..."

"..."

"You know, I don't think it was entirely necessary to shatter the game." Luna giggled.

"Ok, you got me. Maybe I was showing off a little..." I admitted bashfully as I handed the mare the bits necessary to replace the broken game. "Hey, at least this is a good start, right?

"I'll say!" Luna agreed as she hugged her giant stuffed carrot. I walked over to her and draped my arm over her back.

"Come on, let's go see what else we can break!" I cheered giddily as Luna and I charged off into the unsuspecting carnival.