Author's Notes:

Hello! Like the Therapy Session chapters, these take place in between story chapters and add lore/foreshadow future events. They aren't necessary to read, but I still recommend you do! Tell me if you see any story or grammar issues, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, and thanks for reading!

The world had changed.

That was the realization Vincent came to after spending however long he had in that warehouse, watching a dozen or so different programs on TV’s in front of him. Moving pictures on black screens that absolutely baffled him at first, they were more detailed than even the greatest paintings he had ever seen, and they spoke like they were alive!

It took him a bit to get used to, Discord’s attempt at explaining how it worked didn’t help when he barely had a grasp on the english language, and Discord’s latin was insultingly bad and barely comprehensible. Still, how far technology had gotten really set in how long he had been gone, he was still unsure of how much time had passed.

After his talk with Discord, and only deciding to comply with him out of both necessity and familiarity, he informed him that before he could explain more, he needed to catch him up with the rest of the world. He would remain in that warehouse, his sustenance would be provided by Discord in the form of blood held by plastic bags, and he would be sending two well educated professors who he trusted to teach him.

Surprising even himself, it took him a matter of two weeks to get a fair understanding of English, though there were still some aspects of it that were confusing to him. The language was incredibly similar to latin, which is partly why it didn’t take him very long to understand it, though it also had aspects of other languages like older German, which is what made it confusing.

It helped that the guy teaching him was incredibly patient, mainly because he was absolutely terrified of him.

Vincent couldn’t exactly blame him either, while he had been provided clothing and thoroughly bathed by people similar to who came in to clean up the women he killed, his time at the bottom of the ocean in a stone coffin didn’t do him well. With a steady supply of blood his body was slowly recovering, but for a while he didn’t even look alive, more similar to a corpse that was halfway done decomposing, he could only imagine what it smelt like.

Now he had retained most of his human appearance, his blond hair was growing back and his skin had its color back. If he had to choose something to complain about, it was how frail his body was at the moment. He was so skinny and barely had any fat or muscle, it was something he was going to have to fix at a later point.

When the second professor came, he got a tad more...frustrated. Math was never his strong suit, many things about it didn’t make sense to him. However, Discord explained that math had become a lot more important in the modern age, so he would have to at least learn the basics. But, ‘unlike the modern public education system, I’m not going to teach you needlessly complicated math on the off chance it might come in useful someday.’ he explained.

Vincent wouldn’t come to understand what that meant until later.

After learning the math he needed to, Discord informed him it was time he learned more about the world he woke up in, and set up those devices that had been sitting in boxes in a corner of the warehouse since he’d been there. He also pulled out a leather chair, where it came from he couldn’t figure out, and gestured for him to sit there. Discord told him that he would be playing things called ‘video’s’ that he needed to pay close attention to that will help him learn about how things have changed.’

For the past month or so, or what Vincent was just guessing was a month since the warehouse was completely cut off from the outside world to protect him from sunlight, that’s what he’d been doing. Vampires didn’t actually need to sleep, they only did so to help pass the time while they waited for the sun to go down. Since their bodies were dead, they could technically go for as long as they wanted, as long as they got the blood they needed.

That’s how he had been spending his time, watching documentaries, biographies, long videos on the advancements of technology and science, and everything else of that calibre. Mixed in there was a cartoon about a talking sponge, while it clearly didn’t fit in, it was oddly entertaining and occasionally made him chuckle, something he had almost forgotten how to do.

The world had changed, yes, but humans had remained the same.

War, poverty, greed, and so many other aspects he distinctly remembered of them not only remained, but were amplified in some ways. His memories had been coming back slowly as he adjusted, and while he didn’t quite know why, he found those features of humanity disgusting and hoped they would have gotten weeded out. However, he couldn’t deny their redeeming qualities either. The creativity and innate ingenuity they were capable of only seemed to increase over time, some of the things they invented and created absolutely astonished him and would have been unfathomable to him before.

He heard the familiar sound of the warehouse door opening, not seeing the warehouse get much brighter, so he assumed it was night out. He didn’t bother looking behind the chair, there was only one person it could have been. Discord told him that he would be coming by at the end of each week to check up on him, it had partly been how Vincent kept track of time.

Thanks to his enhanced vampiric senses, he could make out Discord’s footsteps after shutting the door over the chatter of the TV’s, stopping to stand right beside his chair. His heartbeat was incredibly steady as usual, though his blood was pumping throughout his body a bit faster than normal, giving off the slightest hint of nervousness.

Vincent glanced up at him, slightly curious at if his facial expressions were giving away anything. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t. He still had that complacent smirk on his face, not showing even a hint at what he was feeling or thinking. While his glasses covered it well, the dark bags under his eyes were more prominent than usual, suggesting he hadn’t been sleeping particularly well recently. His hands were in his lab coat pockets and he was looking at the TV’s, slouching slightly and some stubble had started growing on the rest of his face, which wasn’t very compatible with his goatee.

“How’ve things been going, Vince? You’re nearing the end of stuff for me to teach you, pretty soon you’ll be independent, they grow up so fast!” Discord said with a sniff, rubbing his finger under his right eye like he was wiping away a tear, despite there not actually being any.

Vincent turned his gaze back to the TV’s, propping his chin on his right hand and bringing his left one up to his head, tracing his finger against the little hair he had. It was a bit more than a buzzcut of blond hair, but the texture of it was relatively soft, and he admitted he missed having hair.

“I...understand most of what I’ve been taught, though speaking English is...how do you say....challenging. I’m sure it will be less difficult with practice.” He said in a thick greek accent, some of his words hard to discern as he paused in between saying them.

“That’s good, I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a hurdle since vampires are used to having to adjust to the times. Anyway, there’s something I need you to smell.”

Vincent turned his head to the right to look at Discord, furrowing his eyebrows as he curiously watched him pull something out of his lab coat. It was a small vial filled with a black liquid, he recognized it from a few of the medical documentaries he watched. Discord handed it to him and he made sure to grab it with care, he knew glass was extremely fragile.

He hesitantly pulled off the cork at the top, bringing it up to his nose to smell it. As soon as he sniffed his hand reflexively clenched, crushing the glass vial and causing the black liquid to cover his hand and drop onto his legs. The veins around his eyes pulsated, his midnight blue pupils constricting and the sclera of his eyes flashing red for a brief moment.

He hadn’t even realized it, but his entire body was violently shaking, pure terror filled him like he was the vessel for it.

“It smells like it, right?”

Discord’s voice snapped him out of his trance, it took him a few moments to calm down his breathing, closing his eyes until the pulsating of his veins stopped. “Has it returned?”

“No, thankfully. That blood belongs to someone else, but it looked like its’, so I thought the same. Don’t worry, it's still gone, and hopefully will remain so for a very long time.” He tried to hide it, but there was an air of uncertainty and fear in his voice that he didn’t usually show.

Vincent let out a heavy breath, the tension in his body ebbing out as the fear was replaced with a sense of relief. He glanced down at the shattered vial in his hands and the black blood soaking his clothes and the chair, he relaxed his hand and let the shards crumble to the floor, rubbing his palm against the chair.

He would have licked it off, but his instincts were telling him that was a bad idea.

“I...apologize for breaking the vial. May I ask who...this blood belonged to?”

Discord chuckled as he reached down to pick up the remote sitting on the ground beside the chair, pressing a button on it and pausing all the TV’s at once. “It’s no biggie, I already ran all the tests on it I wanted to. As for who it belongs to...you don’t need to know yet, you’ll meet her in due time. Just know she’s on our side, but not involved with things quiet yet, she’s going to be essential in taking down Prodigium.” Discord’s voice was quieter than usual, having lost its usual mirth.

Vincent flinched at the name, his body now shaking again for a very different reason. “Is she...like me?”

“In a way, it’s complicated, I’ll tell you when we get to it. That reminds me,” He turned to face Vincent, placing the remote back on the ground. “I’m sure your memory has been returning, what do you remember so far?”

“Not...much, it’s like...trying to make out a dream. I recall,” He stayed silent, trying to properly articulate his thoughts and emotions into words, which wasn’t easy since he wasn’t used to speaking the language. “Pain, deep stabbing pain all over and in my body. Faces...I do not have names to, but feelings of hate...betrayal, and guilt. Then the darkness I awoke in, and that is all...only flashes of memories I have yet to understand. Though...”

He opened his eyes and met Discord’s, they narrowed into a scowl as he leered at him suspiciously. “Take off your shirt.”

Discord recoiled at the sudden statement, his smirk faltering for a moment. Then he let out an awkward giggle, putting his hands in front of him defensively. “Woah now, at least take a guy for dinner first! I-”

“Take. Off. Your. Shirt.”

As Vincent said each word with heavy emphasis, he slowly stood out of the chair, his height towering Discord’s by half a foot at least. While Vincent had a relatively small frame, it was still intimidating.

Discord’s face turned more serious, his jaw tightening as he lowered his hands. He had a blank look on his face as he took off the labcoat, unbuttoning the white shirt underneath and letting it drop to the floor. There was nothing strange about his body, no scars or blemishes, nor did he have a particularly bulky or small build, just average.

It was the symbol on his chest that was the most bizarre.

At first glance it would be mistaken for a tattoo, but if someone were to be as close as Vincent was, they would notice it went much deeper than skin. It was like it was engraved directly into his muscles and bones, but could still be seen as if it were on the surface of the skin.

It was dark black, and somewhat large, starting at just below his neck and ending at his stomach. The top of a symbol was a long arrow pointing upwards towards his head, with two sets of arrows attached to it. On the upper part were two arrows, one that pointed to the right, and the other to the left. The lower part of the arrow was identical, but they stretched further, it immensely resembled a crossroads. The bottom of the arrow was connected to a large infinity sign, wide enough to where the ends almost reached Discord’s armpits.

“As I thought..that is The Levithan's Cross, correct?” Vincent asked in a shaky tone, speaking the very name invoked fear like nothing else did.

Discord only nodded, reaching down and beginning to slip on his clothes again, a solemn, almost pained smile on his face. “I apologize for lying and saying I was a descendant of people you knew, if I had told you everything from the start, I don’t know how you would have taken it.”

“...I understand, I just…” Vincent fell back down into the chair, all the energy leaving his body as he brought his hands to his face, pressing them to the sides of his head with his eyes closed. “You must be old, older than Prodigium, even. So that means...you have been alive this entire time? And...you were there when it was?”

“I…” Discord fixed his collar, lowering his gaze and holding his hand out in front of him. His hand was trembling, he clenched it to try to make it stop, but it didn’t work. “was, yes. I would much rather not think about those times, if it’s all the same to you. There is actually something else I wanted to ask you, assuming your memory allows.”

Vincent half opened his eyes, looking at Discord through the small openings between his fingers. “I will...try.”

“Remind me, how did you feel about werewolves again? I know most vampire’s despise them, but I vividly remember you having an opinion on them that was quite different than most.

Vincent’s mouth curved into a grin, the very tips of his sharp fangs becoming visible, ever so slightly tinted red with blood. “Are they still alive? I...assumed it would be quite difficult for them to thrive in this world, they were...on the border of extinction from what I remember, is that not the case anymore?”

He paused as he waited for Discord to respond, he gave a curt nod, almost eager for Vincent to continue. “I did not hate them like most did. Like vampires and humans, there are good ones, and there are very bad ones. I remember...one of my closest friends was one, even if their blind faith in their clans disgusted me, I suppose vampires aren’t much better since many are just the same to their sires. Since...you are asking me this, I am guessing you will be having one join us on our quest?”

As Vincent spoke, he took less and less pauses as he thought of the proper words, even if his accent was just as strong.

“Indeed, you will understand why soon enough. I also intend to get the leader of the skinwalkers on our side, good old Chrissy still owes me a few favors.”

“That wench is still alive?” Vincent asked with a crinkle of his nose, making a disgusted sneer as he spat on the ground. “I will not say that I won’t...cooperate with her if she shares the same goal as us, but do not expect us to get along, her...deceptive ways and silver tongue are things I find abhorrent.”

“And I wholeheartedly agree, if it was up to me, I’d leave her and her parasitic ‘children’ to rot in The Everfree Forest. Sadly, she not only has the influence and power we’d need, but also just as much reason to see him fall as we do. I don’t trust her in the slightest, but I trust her hatred for Prodigium will keep her on our side, at least until he’s handled. Afterwards, you have my permission to do whatever you want with her, I guarantee you by that point she’d already have plans to double cross us by that point anyway.”

“Hm, I’ll keep that in mind. What of this...lycanthrope you speak of? To my knowledge, werewolves only live...slightly longer than humans do. It would not surprise me if you did, but unless you have some kind of...artificial way of making them live longer, I don’t see how you could convince one to join us.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, I’ve got that handled.” Discord reached into his other lab coat and pulled out two things, the first was a handkerchief, and the other was a small bag filled with scarlet red blood. He tossed them both at Vincent, who caught them with his right hand without even looking.

“I got you some O-positive blood, if memory serves correctly, that’s the best tasting blood for vampires.” Vincent responded with an almost unnoticeable nod, using the handkerchief to clean up some of the black blood and biting into the bag hungrily and drinking from it, gulping it down like a dehydrated man in the desert.

“Yeah, you could say his life was artificially extended, in a way. His name is Wyett, and he’s from the Canis clan. The strongest bloodline of werewolves that ever lived, and almost extinct now. You could say he’s like my money jar, I’ve had him sitting on the shelf waiting for a rainy day. He’s being extracted and escorted here now, I already have a separate warehouse ready for him whenever he gets here. While I’m telling you our plans, he’ll be a bit behind on learning the language and how the world has changed, so give it a bit before you meet him.”

In less than a minute Vincent chugged down the contents of the bag, tossing it to the side whenever it was empty and letting out a satisfied sigh, wiping off the bits of blood on his face with his arm.

“I would like to...know the name of the woman you spoke of earlier, she...intrigues me. I’m interested in what kind of...creature would have blood like its’, and yet you are relying so much on it to align with us...when it sounds like she is not even aware of us yet.”

“Sure, just don’t give her any nicknames, really bothers her nowadays.” Discord reached down to pick up the remote, the sound of the chatter from the TV’s filling the warehouse again.

“Her name...is Pinkamena Diane Pie, and she’s a Chimera.”

**********************************************************************************************

Three months, eighteen days, twenty two hours, and thirteen minutes.

That’s how long it had been since Pinkie disappeared.

Twilight didn’t have a counter or anything anywhere that was keeping track of this, she was doing all of this in her head, a constant reminder and motivator. Even when Sunset and the others texted her and sent her pictures of her coming back to school, the timer didn’t stop, this had become about a lot more than just her being missing.

The second that Pinkie went missing, Twilight dedicated her time to finding her. She was one of her closest friends! She owed her everything for saving her back during The Friendship Games, if it wasn’t for them, who knows what she would have done when she was high on magic and completely out of control. What kind of friend would she be if she couldn’t save one of them when they needed her?

That had felt like a lifetime ago, even though only four months or so had passed since then, it was more like years to her.

She didn’t let her grades slip or stop learning for a moment, setting up a system where she could study as efficiently and quickly as possible. While she missed Sunset and the others deeply, any time she thought of giving up, she thought of how desperate and in pain Pinkie must have felt, wherever she was. So Twilight spent every second of free time she had looking for her, pulling more all nighters back to back than she ever had before, and likely permanently damaged her health in the process.

The more she searched and dug for the truth, the more confusing things got, she quickly realized this was much more than just a missing person.

Her brother was the police chief, and was more than willing to tell her things the general public shouldn’t know if she convinced him it was in pursuit of saving her friend. She was also pretty decent at hacking, though not as good as she wanted to be. After a month she stopped looking for any signs of her around the city, and instead started looking at her family.

Which is when things started getting weird.

Her sisters also mysteriously disappeared, but while they were reported missing, the rest of The Pie Family insisted that a search party wasn’t necessary. It was strange because Pinkie had never talked about her siblings other than Maud before, and Maud, on paper at least, seemed normal. She couldn’t find any sign of distant family, no uncles, aunts, grandparents, or even cousins! The only other people she could investigate were her parents, and that somehow turned up even less than her sisters.

Other than being labeled as her mother, there was little to nothing on Cloudy Quartz, no birth certificate or relatives, nothing. She couldn’t find anything at all on her father Igneous, other than a few pictures of him, it was like the guy didn’t exist. This bothered her in ways no other mystery had before, something in the back of her head nagged at her to try to find more, but she decided on moving on to other things. She had been paying close attention, but there was no sign or news of any of them in the past three months, which made her family beyond suspicious.

She searched up reports and such on any significant events that happened after her disappearance, and while she couldn’t find causations for most of them, many of them seemed correlated in some way. A month or so after her disappearance, a vigilante being called The Silent Killer had started killing criminals, and was avoiding capture with ease and little left over evidence. In the past week there have been a handful of reports of a hooded figure fighting them on rooftops during the night, at least two instances of it.

Crime rates had also been incredibly erratic in the past three months, going from incredibly active, to dead silent, to active again around the same time Pinkie came back. Her heart was telling her it was just a coincidence, but her brain was telling her no such thing existed.

She managed to trick her brother into mentioning something about some big crime organization that controlled most of the city, and that he had heard from some sources that they had a new leader recently, and that was likely who was fighting The Silent Killer. The second she asked about it he clammed up, and then made her swear on her life she wouldn’t go around asking about them or bring them up to anyone else.

She, of course, kept her word, partly. She’d never seen her BBBFF so afraid before, so the fact that one criminal organization made him feel that afraid, they must have been a big deal. While she didn’t speak about it to anyone else, she had to look into it. She had been thinking that this was more than just a kidnapping or Pinkie getting lost, there had been no ransom in the time she was gone and Pinkie wasn’t that bad with directions.

Her main theory was that she had been taken somewhere and tortured, done by a group of people who knew what they were doing and how to hide their tracks. However, that didn’t answer why Pinkie was back now, and why she was so...different. There were very few other explanations, so she had to work with what little she had.

Through a very complicated tracking program she made a program that downloaded and followed the data codes of people who were thought to be a part of the criminal organization Shining mentioned, she was able to locate and hack a computer that was connected to its database.

At least, she attempted to hack it.

If she practiced at it more, she would have been successful, but in a matter of minutes getting past their firewall she was shut down. Luckily, she did a good job of covering her tracks, and was using a shielding VPN that redirected her I.P. address to somewhere else. While they had good security, she doubted anyone in some criminal organization was good enough to get through it and actually find her address.

Twilight was currently in her room, completely dark except for the light coming from her computer. There were books, energy drinks, coffee cups, empty bowls and plates, and various other things spread out in her room that she hadn’t had time to clean yet. She had asked Fluttershy to watch over Spike when she really started to get serious, she missed him almost overwhelmingly, but she had to stay focused.

As her fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard, she got a notification from her school email, she only ever got a notification if it was something important. She paused what she was doing, which was trying to find any pictures of the fight between The Silent Killer and the hooded figure, and went to her email.

“Is that...an acceptance letter from Harvard!” Twilight shrieked as she stood up from the chair, her eyes rapidly going back and forth on the screen.

She was wearing her long, white lab coat, a purple shirt underneath with a large star on the front and pajamas as pants. Her hair was tied up in a pony tail and she had dark bags under her eyes, which didn’t hinder the excitement in her eyes.

Since she was graduating soon, she had gone ahead and put in letters to every college in the country, so she knew what her options were. Almost all of them accepted her, and she got enough scholarships to get a free ride anywhere she wanted to, but Harvard was her dream college! She had planned on double majoring, she just wasn’t quite sure in what yet.

She wanted to jump up and down, screaming and dance like a little girl, to run outside and tell her entire family the news and run to Fluttershy’s to embrace Spike. However, something was telling her something was wrong with this. She read the letter three times over, paying close attention for anything that seemed off in the slightest.

“It...appears legitimate, looks like every other acceptance letter I got, but why did I get it now? True, sometimes they run deep background checks before accepting, and with Harvard’s low acceptance rate they’re probably even more thorough. Still, my guts telling me something is fishy here.”

The only thing she found particularly strange about it was the acceptance condition, something no other acceptance letter she got before had. Before she could attend Harvard, she was supposed to meet a representative, alone. It would be at a time and location she could choose, all she had to do was respond with those details and meet them there.

Suffice to say, this was absurdly dubious. Why did she need to meet someone first? It helps that she gets to choose when and where, she intended to pick a very public place in the middle of the day, but it still seemed strange. What were they even going to discuss? All arrangements could be done online, and she was fairly sure she didn’t actually need to meet her educational advisor or anything, so what was the point of this meeting? This also happened to occur after she started digging into the crime organization she had heard about, no way that was a coincidence.

While she was skeptical of the legitimacy of this, she also couldn’t ignore it. If this was real and she said no, she would be turning down maybe her only chance to attend her dream college and pursue the education she desired! Sure she could go to another college, but she wouldn’t learn nearly as much as she would at Harvard!

She stared at the acceptance letter for a solid five minutes in tense silence, her eyebrows furrowed as she ran through every possibility. If she hadn’t been so sleep deprived, stressed and tired, she would have thought about it for an hour or so. But, the drain of mental fatigue over the past three months made thinking about anything else difficult.

“Curse you theory of lay epistemology.” she mumbled to herself begrudgingly, her fingers clacking against the keyboard rapidly as she typed in a response email.

She would choose the nearest Starbucks, she could use the coffee anyway. She would bring her taser and make sure her brother would have some officers watch her, tell her family where she was going at what time, and when she’d be back. She would make no other stops, and make sure the gps on her phone was turned on.

She was going to take every precaution she could, so why did she still have a bad feeling about this?