Back at the Treatment Center, Flash and Twilight were standing in the room of the murdered filly, simply looking at one another in silent, numb horror. The corpse of the filly bore stark testimony to the presence of a monster amongst them. Outside the door, a small crowd of nurses and doctors were gathering, murmuring amongst themselves as they spread the terrible news.

"How could this happen?" Twilight whispered, trembling, unable to look at the dead girl. "This is a hospital! This was supposed to be a safe place! And now there's a..." She couldn't bring herself to say it, to face the reality of what was happening.

"Twilight, it's going to be all right," Flash whispered, touching her shoulder gently. It was only as the words came out of his mouth that he realized just how hollow and weak those words were. There was a murdered child here in the room with them, killed within feet of them. How could this possibly be all right?

"Twilight, just try to calm down. If you freak out, everypony here is going to freak out." Realizing the truth of his words, Twilight swallowed, then closed her eyes. She took in a deep breath, raising a hoof, then exhaled slowly, extending her hoof out. When she opened her eyes again, it was with a calmer, but still distressed expression. "I'm going to do everything I can to catch this guy," Flash said. "Try to keep everypony else calm in the meantime."

"How do you deal with this?" Twilight asked him softly, glancing at the victim.

Flash sighed. This was not natural, being able to numb oneself to pain and death. It wasn't right, having to be somepony who could handle something as insane as the murder of a child.

"Because it's my job," he replied. Giving Twilight a brief, reassuring smile and rub on the shoulder, he reluctantly turned from her and bent over the victim.

The filly had sunshine yellow fur and grass green eyes. She was bald—no doubt a result of chemotherapy—but her tail was the same color as her eyes. Her name was Golden Dawn, according to the medical sheets attached to the foot of her bed, had been stabbed once in the chest. The wound was small, but the blade had punctured near her heart. Death had been almost instantaneous: the type of wound inflicted by an experienced killer. The wound was not ragged, indicating that she had not struggled or fought back. This had been somepony she trusted.

His jaw clenched. An image burned in Flash's mind: Doctor Winged Cure, entering the room, with a false, sweet smile on his face. He would have asked Golden how she was, if she needed anything as he approached her. She would never have suspected anything. She would have happily let him get within reach, only realizing something was wrong when his smile became something different: something colder, darker, victorious. That was when he would have pulled the knife out of his pocket and—

All at once, the voice of his instructor at the Investigative Division Academy rang through his head: "The biggest mistake an Investigator can make is to make theories before they have evidence. You end up twisting the facts to support your theory instead of adjusting your theory to support the facts."

There was nothing here to suggest that Winged Cure had done this. It slowly dawned on Flash that he was allowing his own emotions, his own hatred of the criminal gangs that had littered the neighborhoods of his foalhood home, to dictate his actions. When he had completed training at the Investigative Academy, he had taken a vow that he would pursue justice, not a conviction.

This filly deserved justice, not a blind avenger. Closing his eyes, Flash took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, extending his hoof out in front of him as he exhaled. The calming technique, he found, was very effective. Opening his eyes, he began to examine the scene again with fresher eyes.

His attention turned to the note left on the body. Scrawled quickly with a pencil on a spare sheet of paper. Frowning, Flash took a folding magnifying glass out of one of the pockets in his armor and began to scan the letter more closely, studying the writing. Odd: the words slanted slightly to the left slightly. A sure sign of a left-hooved writer.

Something clicked in Flash's mind. Going back out into the hall, he examined the floor. Curiouser and curiouser...

"What is it?" Twilight asked Flash, who was staring at the floor.

"I think I might have an idea," Flash said, recalling the janitor he had seen earlier, how he had spun the clipboard towards him and written with his left hoof. "You see how the floor up to the door is cleaned, but not the floor after that?"

"That's strange," Twilight said, peering at the tiled floor. "It looks like the janitor came up to the door, and then just left."

Flash traced the cleaned floor with his hoof, noting that it was dry, but not too dry. "Did you see the janitor anywhere near here when we came up?"

"No," Twilight replied, beginning to get Flash's idea. "You think that it was the janitor?"

"The note was written by a left-hooved pony," Flash said. "I saw a janitor earlier writing with his left hoof." He turned to the nurse who had discovered the body. She was still sitting on a bench on the hallway outside, her head in her hooves. It had only been recently that she had managed to stop shaking.

"Nurse Lilac?" Twilight asked softly. Nurse Lilac looked up, her white-blue eyes still shiny with tears. "We need to ask you one question. Is that all right?"

Lilac swallowed and nodded, sitting up straighter. "There's a janitor who works here," Flash said. "Male unicorn, dark brown coat, silvery-blonde mane, cutie mark of a mop and a broom."

Lilac thought for a moment, then spoke in a soft voice like a wind through a field of flowers. "That's Wax Buffer. He's worked for us about a year now. He's always kept to himself, but we've never had any trouble with him. Is he...?"

"I just want to talk to him, that's all," Flash said reassuringly. "Do you know where he might be?"

"I'd check down in the laundry room," Lilac said. "It's on the bottom floor of the building. He likes to sit down there during his breaks."

"Thank you, Nurse Lilac," Flash said, a feeling of calm focus, of controlled fury spreading throughout his body. With a heavy determination in his step, he turned from her to walk down the hallway and immediately slipped on a wet spot and fell to the floor with a loud crash of armor. Unable to help themselves, Twilight and Lilac both collapsed into fits of giggles as Flash struggled back to his hooves.

"Come on, Princess," Flash muttered gruffly, adjusting his helmet. Still giggling, Twilight led him towards the stairs. The two of them started down the winding staircase, their hoofsteps echoing off the stone walls.

"Are you really sure you want to do this?" Flash muttered to Twilight.

Twilight gave him an irritated look over her shoulder. "Flash, I told you, I'm not just a helpless damsel. I have as much interest in catching this murderer as you, and I don't need you hovering over me the whole time!"

"I..." Flash sighed. "You're right, Twilight. I just...I just want you to be safe." Subconsciously, his hoof reached up and stroked a small red scar on his cheek. Seeing this, Twilight's expression instantly softened as she remembered how he had gotten that scar: protecting her.

"And I appreciate that, I really do," she said, taking his hoof in her own and pulling him in close. "I just wish you weren't so paranoid sometimes."

"It's my job to be paranoid about you," Flash said, squeezing her hoof. "As both your Guard and your coltfriend."

She smiled back and pulled him in, pressing his lips against hers. He started a little, then closed his eyes, relaxing into her embrace. For a moment, there was no threat, no danger, nothing in the world but her, and the sweet smell of honeysuckle in her mane...

But then he pulled away, back into the real world, and there was still a dead filly above them and a murder suspect beneath them. "Come on," he said, guiding Twilight back down the stairs.

At the bottom, they encountered a door labeled "Laundry." Pushing through it, the two ponies entered a large room filled with washing machines, conveyer belts and pipes as big around as a pony's head. Sheets and clothing spilled out of hampers or were stacked on top of the machines.

"Stick close to me," Flash said, putting himself close to Twilight's side as he scanned the rows for any sign of anypony. "We do have one advantage here."

"What's that?" Twilight asked.

"This killer is a coward," Flash snarled, walking forward, his eyes scanning from side to side. "We are the target, but he killed a defenseless child instead and expected that to make us back off." Step by step, the two plunged deeper into the maze, their hoofsteps mixing with the whirring of machines, gurgling of water and hissing of pipes.

Hidden from their view, Wax Buffer looked up from the little corner that he had been hiding in, the sound of hoofsteps pulling him from the brief heaven that he had built for himself from pills stolen from the pharmacy. His eyes widened in horror when he saw who it was: the Guard and the Princess! They had come for him, come to take him away to prison!

Breathing heavily, he ducked back beneath the machines, pulling the small blade out of his pocket, the blade that had been meant to be used to kill them both. But Buffer was no fool: killing sick foals was one thing, but he knew that he had no chance of following his master's orders on this occasion, not on his own. All he had been able to do was try to force them to back away, give him room to escape, and go to his master to beg his forgiveness and help.

But if he was backed into a corner...there was no way he was going back to hell. Quietly, he tried to sneak away, creeping through the rows away from his hunters.

Frowning, Flash lifted up off the ground slightly, hovering in midair to examine the room from his upper perspective. A tangled maze of metal stretched in every direction. He sighed in frustration. "We'll never find him like this. Twilight, do you have any ideas?"

"There is a new spell I've been practicing," Twilight said. She widened her stance slightly, standing straight and tall. Taking in a deep breath, she slowly expelled the air from her lungs as she shut her eyes. Her horn lit up, sending out pulses of magenta energy through the air. A moment later, the ghostly image of hoofprints appeared on the floor before them.

"Somepony passed by here recently," Twilight said, following the trail. Flash flew close above her, still scanning ahead for any sign of danger. The glowing trail of hoofprints twisted and turned, winding past humming machinery and following low-hanging pipes that hissed and gurgled ominously, as if trying to warn the ponies of the danger ahead. Ignoring the warnings, the two followed the trail wherever it led, hurrying faster and faster as urgency filled their veins. Finally, the trail stopped underneath a wide table laden with dirty sheets.

"I know you're under there," Flash called. "Come on out slowly."

A pair of hooves appeared from underneath the table. "I'm sorry, sir! I know it's not my break time, but..."

It was not Wax Buffer underneath the table, but a young earth pony nurse, looking at his bewildered captors with an expression of dawning comprehension. "Oh, you're not one of the doctors," he sighed with relief, climbing out from his hiding place and dusting himself off. "I'm just hid...er, resting down here. Been on my hooves for hours, you know how it is..."

Behind them all, crouching behind a hamper, Wax Buffer spun the blade in his hooves. His two targets were right within reach, neither aware of his presence. He could strike now, while their guard was down, and get at least one of them. A quick slice to the kidney, and they would bleed to death in thirty seconds...

But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He was certain that even if he got one, the other would catch him, and they would certainly throw him into the deepest, darkest hole they could find, from which he could never climb out. No! He wouldn't get caught! He had to get out, get away!

And in his panicked insanity, a desperate plan came to his mind. Leaping from his hiding place, he sprinted forward and, before anypony could figure out what was happening, seized the nurse and placed his blade to his throat. "Get back!" he shouted at the other two, pulling his hostage away.

"Let him go!" Flash shouted, his venomous glare almost terrifying Buffer into obeying until he remembered that as long as he had the hostage, he was in control.

"Now, listen," Buffer said, pressing his knife closer to the neck of the trembling nurse. "I'm going to walk out of here, and you're going to stay here. If I see you try to follow me—"

But what he would do if he saw anypony following him, he never got to say, because at that moment, somepony flew out of nowhere and seized the knife in his hoof, trying to pull it away. "Doctor, no!" Twilight shouted in alarm.

There was a flash of scarlet and a cry of pain, and the next moment, Doctor Winged Cure was lying on the floor, clutching his bleeding stomach, and Wax Buffer was sprinting away.

For a moment, Flash could only stare in disbelief. While he clutched at the wound, Winged Cure's sleeve had come undone, revealing the faded gang tattoo. That mark defined him, showed them all who he was. And yet, he had acted to defend another, without heed to his own safety. Had he been wrong?

"Flash!" Twilight's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. Twilight bent over the doctor, using her magic to try to stem the bleeding. "Go get after him!"

Spurred to action, Flash spread his wings and took to flight, soaring low over the ground after the murderer. Wax Buffer zigged and zagged, using his magic to topple appliances and fling piles of linen in his path to try to slow down his pursuer, but it was no use: Flash dodged everything, closing in with every passing second.

Panting, Buffer leapt over an ironing table and turned left. The door was just up ahead. He was doing it, he was getting away—!

He skidded to a halt, all of his worst fears coming true at once. He'd taken the wrong turn: right in front of him was a solid brick wall, having seemingly popped up out of nowhere to mock his plight, his cowardice.

With a fluttering of wings, Flash landed behind him, spreading his wings out to block the way. "There's no way out," he ordered. "Drop the knife and give up."

Slowly, Wax Buffer turned around, his chest heaving. He faced Flash, his eyes glinting with the fierce desperation of a trapped animal. With a roar, he raised the blade and charged forward, bringing it down at his pursuer's head.

Calmly, Flash dodged the attack, seized Buffer's hoof, kicked him in the shin, and twisted his foreleg hard to bring him down to the concrete floor. A final blow to the head knocked him out entirely.

Panting heavily, Flash looked down at the unconscious killer at his hooves. He should have felt better: the criminal was caught, Twilight was safe, justice was served. But even this would not bring back the murdered child or the Guard who Zugzwang had killed. Their deaths left a bitter taste in Flash's mouth, one that he knew nothing would truly wash away.

It was the life he had chosen, the burden he had undertaken. Most other ponies should be thankful that it was not theirs.

The sound of pounding hoofsteps brought him out of his reverie. Looking up, he saw a group of armored Royal Guards trooping into the room. At their head, gray eyes narrowed and tense, was Phillip Finder, who sprinted up to Flash.

"You okay?" he said, panting. "Is Twilight okay?"

"We're both fine," Flash replied, noting the uncharacteristic tenseness in Phillip's voice and body language.

Phillip looked down at Buffer as if just noticing that he was there. "Is that him? That Zugzwang's spy?"

"That's him," Flash said, giving his prisoner a cold glare.

For a moment, Phillip looked at Flash, his expression blank and unreadable, then he gripped his shoulders with his hooves, a grin spreading across his face.

"Ripper," he said. "You did good, Flash."

Flash grinned back at the unexpected praise, realizing just how glad both of them were to see each other again.

But then the moment passed, and Phillip's face became impassive once more. Turning to the Guards behind him, he said, "All right, lads. Take him away."

The Guards stepped forward and shackled the groaning Wax Buffer, lifting him to his hooves and carting him away.

Author's Notes:

Finally got this done!

We'll wrap up this little number in the next chapter.