Rarity hummed to herself as she went through the inventory of the back room, taking stock of the dozens of cloth colors and materials, then turning her attention to a shelf near her drawing board. She opened a drawer and was greeted by what seemed to be hundreds of sparkling jewels. Shifting through them she made a count, then a recount, and put the number down on a pad of paper.

It had been a slow day for her; one of those days where there were no scheduled jobs for any of her higher-end clientele, and the few walk-ins that did arrive were content with perusing her wares without actually buying anything.

She turned to the desk and the scattered notes and dress designs thrown haphazardly across the surface. The tailor moved them about, giving the desk at least a semblance of order. Rarity passed over a familiar drawing of a emerald-green dress, with an even more familiar brown-skinned woman wearing it. She smiled, looking over the design, then turning the page to another, where the same woman wore a well-pressed and slimming suit, a hand on her hip and an alluring smile on her scarred, yet gentle face. Jack would antagonize her for drawing her in “getups” like that, but...

A chime came from the main door of the boutique. Rarity removed the ruby-red glasses from her face.

“Coming!” she called out in a sing-song voice, walking toward the front, where a woman with white hair and a heavy leather jacket stood, glancing outside. It took her a moment to connect the face with a name, but it finally came to Rarity.

“Gilda?” she questioned. Another chime at the door alerted her to the man standing in it. He took a few steps in and Rarity recognized him after another moment of thought.

“Mr. Dorcus?” the soul-folk questioned.

“My name precedes me.” He bowed, the action seeming nearly sarcastic. Rising, he spared a glance around the room. “Unique shop. I applaud your efforts.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” she replied, giving a small bow. After a moment, she looked between the two. “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Dorcas?” Rarity gave a quick eye over his crisp, well-pressed suit and the multiple rings in his fingers, and how they moved almost hypnotically as he ran a hand up and down the lapel of his jacket.

“My business partner and I request guidance on a matter of great importance,” Dmitri stated. “Your time would, of course, be compensated for.”

Rarity nodded. “Very well, if the monsieur and mademoiselle would follow me to the kitchen, we can discuss this proposal of yours over tea.”

Dmitri raised his hand up. Rarity paused, turning, feeling compelled to look at his hand.

“We can discuss the matter on the carriage ride to my place of business,” Dmitri said, his voice coaxing, mesmerizing, working wonders to calm Rarity's mind as Dmitri’s fingers danced across his palm from one side to the other. A slow, delicate wave.

Rarity felt a strange haze cross over her mind the longer she stared at his hand and the digits that moved like clockwork over his palm. She dumbly stepped forward, only a bit from her own accord.

“I... suppose,” she said, sounding borderline drunk as she took another step forward.

Rare! She heard the sound of Jack's voice from deep within her. Break contact from his hand!

The thought jolted her to action, she brought her own hand forward and snapped her fingers, breaking the trance he tried to put her in. Rarity stepped back, her hands held out defensively, and magic sputtering through her body.

“What do you want?” she asked, swallowing the panic that she felt and trying to speak above a whisper, first looking at Dmitri, then at Gilda, her palm splayed out, and her other hand bracing her wrist.

“You're made of sterner stuff than I anticipated,” Dmitri drolly remarked. “Although, that's to be expected, considering how much of a thorn you've been to me these past months.”

Rarity took a step back, bumping into the glass container with her leg. Dmitri rolled his eyes.

“Must we?” he let a cold smirk cross his hard, lined face. “If that buffoon Trixie remembered to soundproof your dorm room, surely I did the same to your business. Besides,” he continued, taking a step forward and ignoring Rarity's cry of “Stay back!”

“We both know that you're coming with me regardless. I've read your doctor's note: you're not expected to regain full control of your magic for a good two weeks.”

Rarity flinched. Dmitri's cold smile widened. In a sudden, desperate moment, Rarity reached behind her on the counter and threw a small display lined with necklaces towards him, then twisted and slid over the counter, making a dead sprint towards the stairway. She took them in leaps and bounds, crawling on them with her hands and feet to clear them faster—

A click came from behind, then the whizzing of an arrow blew past her, landing in the wall. She moved, only to feel a tugging at her leg.

Her skirt was pinned to the wall. She tugged, tearing the cloth and running up the stairs. Tossing it open, she slammed it shut behind her, her heart beating so loud in her chest she was almost deafened.

Dmitri looked over at Gilda. “I told you not to shoot at her. We're not leaving a mark on her yet. Provided the situation stays ideal.”

The griffon-folk sneered. “I hit what I aim for. If I wanted to draw blood, it woulda happened.”

He looked flatly at her. “Mind the backtalk. You might hurt my feelings.” He nodded to the stairs. “She should be noticing the windows can't be opened any second now. Then we get to have a bit of fun slowly walking upstairs. Make sure she hears every footfall.” Dmitri laughed once to himself. “Her expression will be priceless.”

Gilda holstered her wrist mounted crossbow and shook her head, scowling. “Why drag this out? Why not just grab her and take off, like we planned?”

“Maybe it's because it's fun?” When Gilda failed to respond he shrugged, turning towards the stairs. “Honestly. It’s like you people can’t understand. If I wanted practicality, then I would have simply killed her.”

Gilda growled. “You think this is a Goddamn game?”

His grin widened, exposing teeth sharper than any griffon's for a brief, eternal moment. His eyes took a twinge of yellow coloration, and, for that same moment, there seemed to be a ripple in his clothing, stretching the material to near bursting, before reverting to fitting on his lean body. Gilda shook her head, and Dmitri's normal appearance remained, though that same haunting grin remained.

“Life is the biggest game we know!” he proclaimed. “A game with everything decided on the luck of the first draw, you can't tell who's bluffing and who has a good hand, and, most importantly, in the end, there are no rules for how to win.” Barely containing his grin, he took a step forward.

The train rolled on down the line. Jack paid it no mind as she sat at St. Charles's train station, blankly staring at her hands.

She saw the body for a little bit, before Mansfield's sheriff took it to the morgue. It was simultaneously something she didn't want, yet in the same breath, she needed. Holding her dead, lifeless hand hurt. A deep, hard, hollow hurt that didn't let go for a long, long time after that. It just brought home the truth: Granny was dead. She was dead and she wasn't coming back for nothing.

A breeze blew by, brushing her hair back. She pulled down harder on her stetson and, after a slow exhale, rose.

Jack had left home just a bit after talking to Bloom and putting her to bed; the funeral was a few days from now, and Jack wasn't going to stay at home and get any farther behind on her schoolwork.

At least, starting tomorrow. Today was a day she needed for herself to think things through on what the future held.

Her and Mac had taken a look at the will Granny left behind. Not surprisingly, Macintosh got the title to the farm; Jack couldn't be happier for him. While the farm was technically all theirs, title or not, having a claim to ownership was still something he seemed to take pride in. While he never said as much, being the quiet sort he was, she could see the smile he had through every hard day of labor.

Jack clenched and unclenched her hand, staring intently at it as she moved through the station and out to the town's main road.

First thing she wanted to do was tell Rarity where she had ran off to and why. Up and leaving someone with no rhyme or reason wasn't her style, and, while she knew Rarity knew that, it was still the principle of speaking with her regarding it.

That, and the more selfish reason of knowing that deep down, the tailor would know what to say to Jack. How to hold her. How to keep the ache she felt from driving her crazy. Jack still didn't understand Rarity's meticulous attention to dresses, but she'd be damned if she didn't appreciate the woman's keen, observant eye during moments like these.

She traveled the familiar roads, turning off of the main path and heading toward the Carousal Boutique.

Jack was surprised to see a carriage by the door, the driver sitting at the ready, his leg bouncing up and down nervously as he eyed Jack from underneath his straw hat all the way up the path, and even once she got to the front door.

Instantly, she realized something was wrong. A stand had landed on the floor, busted beads from a necklace littering the ground. Rarity's normally pristine glass counter top was smudged by hand prints.

She ventured on further into the room and was about to call out to the woman, ask her what was going on, when the most damning piece caught her eye. There on the stairway was the bolt from a crossbow, a strip of cloth pinned in between the bolt and the wall.

The bell to the front door chimed; Jack turned, only to be face-to-face with the carriage driver, a crossbow in his hands.

“You picked a bad day to go clothes shopping,” he quipped, cocking his head towards the stairs. “Upstairs, no funny business.”

Jack ran through her options. Grimacing, she saw no real way out, at least not yet. Guy was a few too many feet away. At this range, it'd be cake to sink a bolt into her. The only thing she could do was bide her time.

“Yer the boss,” she drawled out, raising her hands to her head. Turning, she began to slowly march up the stairs, the crossbowman just a bit behind.

When she got upstairs she froze. Rarity was there on the ground, two people standing beside her. One, Gilda, who stared in shock at seeing Jack there. The other, an older man with a hard, uncompromising smirk. He ran his hand over the long goatee he wore.

“Jack, what are you doing here?” Rarity asked. She started to rise, only to have the man put a hand on her shoulder.

“I wouldn't move, if I were you,” he said.

“Don't touch her,” Jack growled out.

“Are you in any position to make demands?” he remarked. “I'd say this is the definition of a rock and a hard place.”

“What are you planning to do?”

He laughed. “I'm going to use her for a task.” Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a pocket-watch. “With that said, we really must be leaving.”

Jack was pushed forward, stumbling farther into the room. Turning around, she noticed the crossbow, still pointed perfectly at her heart from the stairwell.

The man reached down and lifted Rarity by the arm. She fitfully struggled against his grab and, for one brief moment, the crossbowman at the stairs took his gaze off of her. Seeing her chance, Jack shot forward, a blur of speed.

Gilda pivoted, bringing out her own crossbow and blocking Jack from Rarity. The farmer stopped, a mere foot from reaching the griffon-folk.

The man brought Rarity fully up and dragged her across the room, ignoring the woman's fight for freedom every step of the way.

“I'll kill ya, ya son of a bitch!” Jack roared, her hands visibly shaking in indignation.

He paused, glancing behind with calculating, crazed eyes. “We can't have that, can we?” he pondered out loud. “Gilda,” he ordered. “Kill her.”

“Jack!” Rarity cried out.

“What?” Gilda asked, turning to face him. “That wasn't part of the deal, Dmitri.”

“The deal's changed,” he replied. “We weren't expecting witnesses either, now were we?” He took another step down, easily overpowering Rarity's desperate struggles. “I'll wait for you in the carriage, do act quickly.”

“Rare!” Jack called out, moving forward, only to be stopped once more by Gilda. “Get the hell out of my—“

Gilda snapped forward, slamming her fist into Jack's mouth, then pushing her over, dropping her onto her back. The farmer stared at Gilda, her hands up defensively.

“Gilda...” Jack said. “Ya don't have ta do this.”

“He'd know if I didn't pull the trigger,” Gilda replied, seeming to rationalize it to herself. “Guy knows a lot more than you'd think.”

“So?” Jack replied, silently pleading with the woman standing above her. “We can work together and take him out—he has Rarity, Gilda, please.”

The woman shook her head. “You can't take him out. We can't take him out. He's crazy, Jack, and I'll be damned if I put my ass out on the line.”

“Then take the shot!” Jack snapped. “Pull the damn trigger already, if yer that dead set on makin' me a corpse.”

Gilda flinched, only briefly, before aiming the wrist mounted weapon down at Jack's body. “I don't want to do this, hick.”

“Ya gotta ask yerself somethin',” Jack remarked. “Are ya a woman or a dog? It's up ta you which it is.”

Gilda looked down at Jack, then at the weapon. Struggling, as if lifting a great mental boulder, she brought the crossbow down, pointing at the farmer's heart.

Jack said nothing, evenly staring at Gilda as the woman brought her finger to the trigger and pulled.

Author's Notes:

Short chapter and a really bad cliffhanger. Ain't I a stinker?

That said, expect longer chapters from here on out. Things are finally coming together, and I hope you guys continue to like and support the story!