The lavish counters were unmanned, and no traces of life could be seen. Trotting into the store, it almost seemed like it’d been abandoned for centuries, like an ancient treasure trove compiled into glass cases.

From the inside, it didn’t seem nearly as overpowering as Coco had imagined it, seeing as it only had one small room and not much else. Nevertheless, it was still a meticulously decorated shop, with every item carefully arranged in some sort of indeterminable pattern.

“Maybe she’s still in the slammer,” Babs spoke as she carefully searched the area. “She did get taken away with Mosely, and we sure haven’t seen him show his face around here.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t the store be closed, then? She does own it, from what I can remember. It wouldn’t make any sense to keep it open if she was going to stay in prison for a while.”

For about the thousandth time, the pair scanned the store before coming across yet another door, this one grey and lined with steel as if it were some sort of vault. Like nearly everything else in the room, it didn’t seem to have a particularly obvious reason for being there. Babs, the first one to notice it, immediately tried to open it, pushing against the gleaming gate with about as much effort as a filly her age could muster.

After a few too many grunts and leaps of effort, a pony on the other side suddenly noticed the filly and pressed her hoof against the knob on the other side.

“Sorry about that,” she spoke with a smile as the door opened. “That handle isn’t exactly the easiest reach. Sometimes, I swear I don’t have the strength to open it, either.”

While both of them had been expecting the pony on the other side to be Cameo, this happened to be a different mare entirely. Her fur was an oddly dark shade of purple, and her mane and tail were arranged in intricate green braids. Lighter green streaks flowed through both, almost perfectly matching her cutie mark, a line of blooming vines.

As the new figure stared at Babs and Coco for a while, her eyes suddenly shined with recognition.

“I think I remember you from the papers,” she said. “You’re Coco Pommel, right? The new Bridleway costume designer who’s been making waves?”

“Um, I think so,” the aforementioned mare answered, still not quite sure how to cope with the fact that so many ponies knew her face now. “I mean, I am, but--”

“Great to meet you, then. I have some relatives working on plays right now, and it’s always good to talk to other theatre ponies.”

“Same to you, I guess,” said Coco. “I can’t say I’ve seen you around before, but then again, Bridleway is a pretty overwhelming place when it comes to meeting new ponies. I can never keep all of them straight, even after being on a collab team for months now.”

With a slight flip of her mane, the other mare chuckled slightly, a noise so small Coco could barely hear it.

“Don’t I know it,” she replied, lifting one of her forehooves up and putting it back down. “I’d never be able to handle all those ponies on my own like that. All of you in the theatres must’ve been born pretty lucky to be able to do that, you know, and especially you. I’ve never seen anypony get this popular this fast. I suppose it just goes to show that scandal sells.”

Hearing this, Coco could almost feel a dagger stabbing her in the back. She wasn’t quite sure what the mare was implying, if she was insulting her or merely trying and failing to make friendly conversation. Honestly, she wasn’t quite sure which of the two was the worst option, and she almost stormed out the door in hopes that Bambi would understand her problem. However, she could only grin and bear it, as if she were glued to the floor.

“We’re lookin’ for the shopkeeper,” Babs piped in, trying to change the subject before the area got too hostile. “It’s a long story, but we really need to talk to her.”

“Oh, she’s probably off in her workshop, finishing up a piece or something. Sometimes, it just takes her a little while to show up, she gets so engrossed in it and all. I come here a lot, so I’ve kinda gotten used to it by now. Don’t really know when she’ll be back, though.”

Staring straight at Coco, the stranger said, “I guess that means we can look at the displays together, then. I’m having a bit of trouble deciding between a couple of necklaces, so maybe you can help with that.”

Figuring there was nothing better to do and that she could definitely use more friends in her life, Coco trotted over to the display the mare was pointing at, taking in the two pieces of jewelry.

More than anything else, though, this at least gave her a chance to use her design skills again, the same ones that she’d already went practically a week without using. It’d be good to get back into the swing of things, even if it was just giving some random pony off the street advice.

“I’d say this one,” she muttered after a few seconds of deliberation, gesturing towards an intricate white-and-lavender choker with a cameo in the center. “I’m not as experienced with jewelry as one of my friends is, but I’ve heard some stuff about the lace it’s made out of. It’s a new pattern that’s been enchanted with unicorn magic, so it won’t fray or unravel. You’d probably be one of the first ponies in Manehattan to have something made with it.”

With a nervous smile, she added, “Plus, it seems to be your color, um--”

“Belladonna,” the mare replied. “The last name doesn’t really matter at this point, since I barely use it these days. You can call me Bella if you want; the full name can be a bit of a mouthful, I know. Blame my mom for that.”

Seeing a key attached to the lock on the display, Belladonna effortlessly twisted it and carefully pulled the necklace out with a single hoof. Panicked, Babs suddenly jumped up to the register, slammed her hoof onto a gilded bell, and yelled “thief” at the top of her lungs, hoping to get the shopkeeper’s attention. She immediately regretted her decision as soon as she saw the older mare place the necklace on the counter beside her with a stifled laugh.

“I guess I should’ve warned you that I was about to do that,” Belladonna said, rubbing the filly’s head slightly only for Babs to carefully back away in response. Seeing how the filly reacted to having her mane stroked by a stranger, she blushed even more, suddenly feeling just as uncomfortable in the building as both of the other ponies.

“Sorry about all that,” Coco replied. “I guess you just gave her the wrong impression.”

“Nah, jewel thieves are common enough in Manehattan that I probably shouldn’t have done that to begin with. Thankfully, the owner still didn’t notice, though. I definitely know what it’s like to see ponies have to be hauled off to jail, and I don’t want my family to have to go through any more of that.”

“More of that?” Babs asked skeptically.

“Yeah. My son just got arrested, and that’s actually a good chunk of why I came over here. Even I admit he’ll probably stay locked up for a while, and I wanted to get something to remind me of him. He always liked looking at this store, so I figured I’d finally buy something from it for once. Pretty dumb, huh?”

“Not at all,” Coco answered. “I’m actually really flattered you even told me that. A lot of ponies just keep those sorts of things to themselves.”

“The way I see it, though, I need all the help I can get,” Belladonna admitted. “It’s all over the papers anyway, so there’s no point to keeping it hidden now that everypony else knows how I’d react to it. Plus, I figured you had the right to know anyway, considering how it ties into you and all.”

She pressed her head up against the counter impatiently, still waiting for service. It’d only been about ten minutes or so, a perfectly reasonable time for a break by most standards, and yet it’d felt like forever. Just then, though, she remembered what she’d really came here to do, and her face jolted straight off the table at breakneck speed.

“Oh, right!” she muttered in annoyance. “I almost forgot to ask you something. I’m really not good with these sorts of things, after all…”

“Um, before you go on with that,” Coco interrupted, “what exactly did you mean when you said I tied into your case? There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

A look of shock crossed Belladonna’s face, and her eyes wandered from side to side, almost as though she feared some greater consequence behind what she had just said.

“Oh, that’s not important at all,” she said, making the same waving gesture with her hoof as she had before. “You can forget I said anything about that, really. It isn’t exactly something I should be discussing in this building, after all. You’ll never know when Cameo shows up, and I certainly don’t want to cause her any more pain than I have already. Not that, well, I’ve caused her any pain in the past, at least not directly. It really is such a long story.”

Watching as she continued to cover up her act with the most nervous-looking gestures imaginable, Babs and Coco exchanged skeptical glances, only to smile when their eyes were met with the same expression.

“But as I said before, that...is not important. If I could, and if it’s not too much on any of you, I’d like you to do me another favor.”

Shuffling through her designer saddlebag, Belladonna finally managed to find a single envelope that almost looked as if it was embossed with gold. She shook it a little for some odd reason before handing it off to Coco.

“Oh, Celestia, no,” Babs muttered with a facehoof. “That’s gotta be a pamphlet or somethin’. All this time, and she was just a salespony tryin’ to sell us some junk we don’t need.”

“You don’t need to do anything like that,” Belladonna explained. “Just read the letter and respond back. That’s all there is to it. Just know that we don’t give these out to anypony, and that is why you are a very lucky mare. That’s how I could tell. But you don’t have to take this deal, and it’s definitely better than the last one. For one thing, you can actually turn this one down if you want.”

Just then, small bustling noises could be heard from yet another spare room, and all three of the ponies could almost swear they just heard sawing sounds. Overwhelmed by both the strange offer and the suspiciously violent commotion from the other room, Coco could barely open her mouth to say another word. Her companion, however, took this as just another chance to discuss the mysterious offer she was making.

As if the situation couldn’t get terrifying enough, the next words out of Belladonna’s mouth were, “We’ve been watching you, Coco Pommel. And I have to say, we’re very pleased with what we’ve--”

The whirring and hammering from the spare room came to a sudden halt. Just then, the door slammed open in such a harsh and fast motion that, for a moment, nopony in the room knew if its hinges were going to give out or not.

The mare that came out was a creamy shade of yellow in everything except her face, which was now covered with reddish flares. She took off her work goggles and assessed the situation for all of one second before finally piecing together what was going on.

“I think we caught her at a bad time,” Babs whispered in Coco’s ear, gesturing to Cameo. “She looks even worse than she did at the play.”

Seeing the fire in her blue eyes and deciding it would be vastly better not to get on the volatile mare’s bad side, both were about to turn tail towards the exit when the yelling began.

To Coco’s surprise, though, it didn’t seem to be directed at her. As a matter of fact, it almost seemed as though the shopkeeper was completely ignoring her, directing her anger entirely onto Belladonna.

“So you’re outright stalking ponies now?!” Cameo yelled as she burst into the room. “How long have you been messing with this mare, and how long do you intend to keep going with it?”

“I didn’t stalk her,” Belladonna whispered, already caving to even the slightest pressure put on her. “For one, it was all of us. We--we had to make sure she was worthy of our family and all.”

“Worthy,” Cameo repeated with a scoff. “That right there is why I never turned back after leaving you Oranges. You can’t just pull somepony out of nowhere and expect them to cater to your every whim just because you didn’t think your real relatives were worthy enough. But then again, you’d rather just weed out the ones who don’t suit you and try to pick the ones who do. Then, when somepony else does it out in public, you have the gall to play the hero and tell everypony that you’re not like that, that he was just a mistake, a warped example. But where in Tartarus would that warping come from if you hadn’t been there to guide it?”

As Cameo and Belladonna continued to argue, Coco and Babs were only able to make out a few choice words, but the ones that truly mattered all had to do with the same subject. The Oranges.

She may not have been selling something all this time, but she might as well have been working behind their backs.

“I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner,” Coco muttered in annoyance. “The relatives in theatre, the way her son liked this store, the fact that he got arrested lately...I mean, I drew parallels, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and all. It would’ve been too easy just to blame everything on Mosely, but I guess sometimes, it’s hard not to.”

“Relax,” Babs answered. “I was honestly kinda hoping so, too. It would’ve been nice for you to make a friend after everything that happened.”

Watching the argument unfold, Coco whispered, “Maybe it’s not too late to make a friend.”

For just in front of her, at that very moment, she could see that Cameo was defending her once more.

“If you know what’s good for you,” she threatened, “you’ll stay far away from those two, and especially from that mare. If she’s been put through the things I had to deal with already, anything you do is just going to push her even closer to the edge. I know what you want from her, and I’m not having any of it. You just want to make her into your victim again, and if you think you can make another mare like me, you’re dead wrong. Because this time, she’s going to have somepony to fence her away from the wolves the whole lot of you are. By now, I think you can figure out who that pony is going to have to be.”

Silence suddenly struck the room for several minutes after that, and all Belladonna could do was buy the necklace and trot off to wherever the Oranges’ plans would take her next. As long as they were as far away from her as possible, Coco could care less, even if the mare herself hadn’t seemed all that bad. Seeing that Bambi was waiting impatiently outside for her, she was about to make her way to the exit too before Cameo placed a hoof on her side.

“You didn’t have to defend me like that,” Coco said before the shop owner could say anything else.

“Trust me,” Cameo answered with a quick shake of her head, “I did. Not that I hold you in any less esteem for it, but I would’ve stepped in for anypony if that’d happened to them. That mare’s poison, just like her name. She says she’s changed...but she hasn’t in my eyes. And even if she has, that can’t make up for the way she let her son grow up. As far as I’m concerned, nothing can.”

“It’s weird, though. I didn’t think she was an Orange until you pointed it out. I thought she’d just seen me in the papers or something, and everything else was just a coincidence.”

“That’s how she lures ponies in; she’s not all uppity like the rest. She’ll engage anypony in conversation and make them think she’s different. Thank Celestia I ended up noticing in time or else she would’ve trapped you for sure.”

“But...why aren’t you mad at me?” Coco asked. “For that matter, why didn’t you try to take revenge against me that night? I took Babs away from you just as much as Mosely did. With the way you talked about wanting her back so much, why didn’t you say I collaborated with him? When you said I was better than him, and that I didn’t deserve him, were you really telling the truth, or is that just another lie?”

Just like the stream of questions she’d asked Mosely that night, she’d found this one to be exhausting in the worst way. Her head was being pulled towards the ground almost as if the floor was a giant magnet. She didn’t even realize she was making such a spectacle out of herself, that she was even panting with exasperation, until Cameo stroked her cheek, her hooves now stained with tears.

“It’s going to be okay,” Cameo spoke, pulling Coco into her arms. “I know what it’s like to hide this sort of pain from ponies, and I know how hard it’ll be. Maybe that’s why I trusted you back there. Because I could see the fear floating around you, and I was afraid you didn’t have anypony you could turn to for help.”

With a slight chuckle, she added, “Besides, other than those I know for a fact are bad, I try not to make any judgments about the rest. If we would’ve met any time other than the night I put my plan into action, I would’ve told you just that. And now that I know you’re hurting, and now that I’ve read up on what you’ve been through, I have every intention of getting you through this, and who knows? Maybe someday, you, Babs, Bambi, and I can all be a real family.”

Still a bit dazed by the unexpected response, all Coco could say was, “I’d really like that.”

“So would I,” Cameo replied. “So I guess that settles it. Does that mean we can start over from here and you can stop cowering in fear every time you see me?”

“Sure. I’m Coco Pommel, by the way.”

As nighttime came and the shop was about to close, Coco took the envelope, already knowing what it contained but opening it anyway. It was, after all, always good to know what little you were giving up when anypony made a decision like this.

She never picked up the contents after throwing them on the floor, not even when she left and the shop closed. A single cameo and a torn note would lay there, ignored but not quite forgotten. One side of the message had been written in a painstakingly intricate script with a long list of instructions, but the other had a single sentence in response: “Welcome to the Orange family.”

When Cameo noticed it back there, as she got the store ready for the next day, she found herself whispering her last words to Coco once more.

“Keep being her, and you’ll be on a good path.”