The play finally ended two hours later. Rarity was in tears at its conclusion. She rose amid the roar of clapping, cheering the play with a whistle.

Jack was in tears too, for entirely different reasons. The damn thing was just so boring. She was lucky it didn't have any musical numbers, or she would have lept from the box seat and hoped the impact would be enough to kill her.

“T-that was such a magnificent piece!” Rarity said, dabbing at the corner of her eye with a napkin. “Maximilian was so noble!”

“It was, uh, somethin',” Jack said, being as vague as she could get away with. She rose from her chair and massaged her shoulder. It was throbbing again. Thankfully, that's all it was doing—no shooting pains, no numbness, just throbbing. Jack was grateful she bounced back from injuries pretty quick. “I got a feelin' the road's gonna be pretty crowded. Ya wanna jus' walk back?”

“Well...” Rarity debated. “A lady walking down the road at night? I'm afraid I might be a target...”

Especially after yesterday, Jack finished in her mind. Rarity didn't have to finish her implication—the farmer could tell she was worried just by her body language.

“I'll go with ya, sugar. Let me jus' head back ta my room an' change outta these damn shoes first.”

They walked the lands together in silence. It was far from awkward, however. The small half-smiles each swapped back and forth were simply all the conversation either one needed. As gorgeous as the night was, breaking the spell it had cast on the world with talking seemed like a mortal sin.

The two passed through town, and finally ended up at the entrance of the Carousel Boutique.

“Well, here we are,” Rarity said, moving to the door. She turned to face the earth-folk. “Thank you for escorting me back.”

“Ain't a problem.” the farmer nodded.

“And thank you for joining me tonight. I had a good time.”

“Eyup.” Never doin' a play again, though, Jack thought. "If we do somethin' again, I'm pickin' where we're goin'."

“I suppose I can understand that logic," Rarity said. She stood silently on the doorstep, seeming to want to say something. "Well...” She looked up with a sly smile, waiting for Jack to take initiative.

The farmer leaned forward. “Hey Rare?” she quietly whispered.

“Y-yes?” The tailor blushed.

“Can I come inside fer a minute?”

Rarity crossed her arms and shook her head. “I said the date was 'good,' not 'phenomenal,'” she dryly retorted.

“What? N-no, I, uh, jus' wanted ta get my hat,” the farmer stammered, her face hot.

“Oh,” Rarity eloquently stated. “Figures,” she muttered under her breath.

The tailor let Jack inside and waited by the front—the farmer quickly grabbed her trusty stetson, then tromped back downstairs. She scooted past Rarity and stepped once more into the tranquil night.

“I reckon I'll head out now. Gotta take care of a few odds an' ends,” the farmer said. She took a step forward, but was stopped by Rarity grabbing her hand. Jack turned slightly, raising her brow. “Uh, somethin' ya ne--”

The tailor stood on her toes and leaned forward, pecking Jack's cheek with a kiss. Before the blonde could say anything, Rarity winked and disappeared into her home, shutting the door behind her. The Apple pushed up her hat and scratched her forehead.

“I ain't never gonna understand that woman.”

Jack decided to fight through the crowd and hitch a ride on one of the wagons—she had already killed enough time walking to Ponyville, now she needed to get back to Dash.

After a dull ride back to the school, the tall woman quickly traveled to her dorm, where she found Twila thumbing through a novel, and Dash half-asleep on her bed, listening to a metal song on a small radio.

“Bout damn time, hayseed,” Isabelle remarked, opening a rose colored eye. She stretched out and sat up. “Was starting to think you'd ditched. Or got lucky.”

“I ain't the type. Jus' took me longer ta get ta St. Charles an' back than I woulda liked.”

“Well,” Twila started, snapping the book in her hands shut. “Now that we're here, we can see about getting answers.”

“Alright. What's the plan?” Jack said, leaning against a wall. She tugged her fingers through her hair, getting rid of the pesky braid she had been wearing it in.

“Simple enough for now. I did some investigation and found his room number. We enter and ask him some questions.”

“At this time of night?” Jack glanced over at the clock on the small table by her bed. “I ain't sure if he'll be awake.”

“Groggy's good for answers, bro,” Isabelle said, popping her neck. “It'll throw him off guard being woke up like this.”

“An' are ya sure he's the right fella?” the farmer questioned.

“We looked through quite a few names, Jack. He's the only one that really jumped out at us,” Twila reasoned. “That, and the aura I pulled from the rope matches his. Statistically, he's 80% more likely than the rest of our potential candidates to commit a crime like this.”

“That still leaves us with a 25% chance he ain't,” Jack argued.

“20%, bro,” Dash corrected.

“Whatever.”

“I'm willing to take the chance. Worst thing that could happen is that we get expelled,” the athlete casually remarked with a shrug. The other two in the room shared nervous glances. Twila nervously tugged at her neckline. “I'd kill for answers at this point, so...”

“Alright, alright. I'm game,” Jack agreed.

"I cannot say I enjoy the risk, but we can't let him potentially walk away from something like what he did." Twila headed towards the door. “Let's see what we can find out.”

The three soon found themselves in front of room 215. Twila exchanged glances with Dash and Jack.

“Either of you know how to pick a lock?” she asked. Isabelle smirked, moving towards the door. With one well-placed kick above the doorknob, the lock snapped, forcing the door open and leaving the top hinge loose.

"I've always wanted to do that," Isabelle quipped.

“Jesus, Dash,” the farmer hissed, looking nervously around. “Think anyone heard?”

“You kidding? This floor's for the high-class guys and gals. The rooms might as well be sound-proof.”

The quiet hallway seemed to show that Isabelle was speaking the truth.

“Let's go,” Twila urged, stepping inside. She felt along the wall and flicked on the lights, illuminating the room.

It was lavish. A large double bed and bathroom to their left, a furnished living room with a television screen dead ahead, and a comfortable kitchen area separated from the living room by a waist high counter to their right.

“Shit. Why can't I have a room like this?” Dash quipped.

“Cause I'm guessin' yer 'bout as bone-dry on bits as I am, sugar,” the farmer replied.

“Guys. We're missing something,” Twila quickly said, snapping her friends back into the game.

Dash looked over at the bed. “Where's our man?” she asked as she took a few tentative steps towards the living room.

“With him not around, guess this was a wasted trip,” Jack crossly said.

“Not quite,” Twila said. “If he was an earth or sky-folk, maybe. Soul-folk, however...” She leaned to the side, looking past the blonde. “Isabelle? Do you see anything I could use as a catalyst?”

“What?” Jack asked.

“Search the room. Try to find something sentimental looking,” the soul-folk instructed. “Easier to show than tell.”

The farmer did as instructed, moving to the bed. She checked a nightstand nearby and noticed a small portrait of a blond haired man smiling broadly at the camera. “Somethin' like this?” she asked, returning to Twila.

“Really? A portrait of himself? Figures.” Twila shook her head, then glanced to Jack. “Remember what I told you a few days back regarding soul-folk, and how they go to school to control their emotions?”

“More or less.”

“Well, we're obviously not perfect. We can't remove our emotions at the drop of a hat—we simply suppress them when we're utilizing magic. Still with me?”

“Eyup.”

“Well, really strong emotions? They leave behind an aura all of their own. If we have an object that contains some sort of connection to the person, we can briefly see where they're at, before the link between the two is severed.”

“So... kinda like lickin' a fuse ta make it work fer a bit? Once yer spit's gone, the thing craps out again.”

Twila tilted her head. “That's... actually a pretty apt description. As long as his essence hasn't been hidden by magic, we should briefly be able to see where he's at. We might be able to recognize the location.” She put her hand on top of the picture and concentrated, wincing as the familiar tingle of a spell escaped her fingertips and touched the photograph.

Without even a moment's pause, her perspective became distorted, shifting the room she stood in to bizarre, impossible shapes and angles. Jack said something, Twila believed, but the purple-haired woman couldn't tell what it was. She felt drugged, weak. The soul-folk summoned the strength to swivel her head to the side, and noted that the door leading to Blueblood's bathroom appeared to be leaking—it's off white color was vanishing, as was the color of the burgundy carpet, being painted black instead. The walls, Jack, Isabelle. They were all being painted black. Twila weakly tried to say something, but found herself speechless. As she watched, horrified, the whole world was painted black.

When the blackness cleared, Twila found herself sitting on a bar-stool in an off-white room, looking dead on at the lens of a camera. Subconsciously, Twila adjusted a tie with her hands. Or, to be more precise, Blueblood's hand. He gazed at the young woman fiddling with the large and cumbersome device.

“Are you nearly finished? I've been sitting here for almost five minutes,” Twila said, her tenor voice pompous and demeaning.

Blueblood's voice, she reminded herself frantically. This wasn't her. It couldn't be.

“A few more adjustments, Mr. Blueblood,” the woman nervously said, biting her lip.

“Well, hurry up. I've little time to deal with incompetent mud-girls like yourself.”

The photographer clenched her fists, but said nothing, instead ducking her head behind the small cloth that obscured the back of the camera and raising a large blub overhead.

“And be sure to capture my chin. It's not often you see a man of breeding and culture such as myself exhibiting such a strong jawline.”

Twila heard the photographer mutter something under her breath. The lavender-haired scholar could guess what was said. Shortly after, the woman spoke up.

“Shooting in three. One... Two... Three.”

The white-hot light of the camera overtook her senses, blinding her. She groped futilely in the air, trying to regain some sense of control, her panic stopping her from even considering to use magic to escape this madness. She felt something just brush her fingers and blindly lunged for it.

She found herself back in her own body and her own senses, clutching desperately against the door handle leading out into the hallway.. Twila drew a shaky, nervous breath. She took a step towards the living room and felt her knees buckle briefly.

“What in the Sam Hill happened, sugar?” Jack quickly asked, putting a hand on Twila's shoulder and steadying the woman. “You've been standin' there fer a good minute.”

“Nothing,” the soul-folk lied in an attempt to reassure the woman.“It's just sometimes with catalysts, you can get a flashback on a memory involving them. Give me a moment to collect my thoughts.”

Twila had always heard about memory jumping, but had yet to experience one that... intense. It briefly felt like she had been ripped from her body and placed inside Blueblood's. Unlike with her doppelganger, though, she had lost all sense of her physical self. She put a hand to her forehead and wiped the sweet from her brow.

Dash and Jack exchanged looks on seeing how taxed Twila appeared.

“I-I'm fine,” she lied once more. Perhaps when she was around some like-minded soul-folks, they could explain what she had just went through. “Just a bit winded. Let me do this next projection on the screen. It won't be quite as taxing compared to producing information in air.”

The woman pointed her finger towards the large television screen. A brief lavender glow surrounded her finger as the TV sparked to life. The sound of static pierced the room's otherwise muted silence. Twila winced and made a pinching motion. The television lowered in volume, becoming nothing more than a dull background hiss.

She focused once more on the photograph and cautiously let her magic seep into it.

The static vanished from the screen, being replaced by a dimly lit room that stretched off into the distance. Twila, Jack and Isabelle shared a glance at one another.

“Hey, Twi... what's showin' up, that...?”

“Yes. It's his vision. He looks to be in a warehouse,” Twila said, taking stock of everything she could regarding the room.

A solitary light hung overhead, showcasing a table to the man's left. From the few fleeting moments his view looked in that direction, the women could see that the table was all but overflowing in small bags, filled to near bursting with a blue liquid.

Dash's lips curled back in a snarl at seeing the object, but she said nothing.

To Alaurd's immediate right was a wide conveyer belt that was rotating at a modest pace; occasionally a wooden container loaded with small vials would roll by his sight. At the edge of the light's illumination, they could see a hatch that spat out the vials and a lever that Jack assumed was for controlling the machine. Blueblood looked up and sighed. He briefly glanced at the large ventilation system and brought his hands up to rub at his face.

“Man, this is disorientin',” Jack said.

“Shh,” Dash ordered, soaking up everything she could about the place.

“Mr. Blueblood,” a deep voice said, radiating indifference. The screen's vision whirled as the pompous man quickly did an about-face. His eyes flicked around, briefly showcasing the remainder of the room. A door marked 'Freezer storage' straight ahead, an unmarked door to his far right, and, lastly, a large green box with a gaping maw at the end of the conveyer system. From it, Jack could hear a faint mechanical crunching.

A muscle-bound man stepped from behind the machine. He appraised Blueblood over the rim of his expensive looking sunglasses and adjusted his almost too-small tie.

“So, Alaurd, do you need me to repeat what was asked of you?”

Blueblood didn't reply. He put a hand to his face. Jack instinctively recoiled at the sight of the appendage—it seemed to almost jump out of the television screen.

“I...” Blueblood trailed off. “I don't, Dorado.”

“Good.” 'Dorado' sniffed and rubbed at his nose. Jack noticed he was bleeding from one nostril. “I suppose I should leave you to it, then.” The muscular man turned and started to walk towards the unmarked door.

“Hey,” Alaurd quietly said. The man stopped in his tracks. “D-do I have to?”

Dorado looked towards the young man with a smug smirk. What Dorado saw when looking at Blueblood made his expression quickly drop to a frown that was almost empathetic. He crossed his arms. “Sorry, kid. Yeah.”

“B-but you could just tell him--”

“You know he's good at smelling bullshit. I gotta watch out for my own ass,” Dorado countered. “If anything, you should be proud he's giving you a chance to prove yourself. I doubt he'd do the same for me.” He gestured to the conveyer. “So show him you won't make another mistake.”

The view on the screen changed as Blueblood hoisted himself up. He approached the conveyer and looked down the belt's path, seeming to study it intently. With a grunt, he hoisted himself onto the small metallic guard beside the belt. He quickly straddled his bare feet to either side of the conveyer.

“Wait, is he gonna...?” Jack trailed off as Blueblood stepped onto the moving platform. He was quickly jerked back and nearly dropped to a knee as the treadmill threw him off balance. Through a herculean effort, he rose and kept walking, struggling to make progress against the rotating platform.

He made it almost a quarter of the way to the conveyer's end when he stumbled. His bare foot caught one of the glass vials running along the belt. His weight pressed into it and it shattered, coating his tender flesh in agony. He screamed—the three girls watching covered their ears from the volume—and collapsed onto his back. He looked behind him and saw how close the green maw was to his own head. The brief glimpse into it informed Jack that it was some form of industrial crusher. If the man got a leg in that, or worse, his head...

“Get offa there!” Jack called out, knowing that he couldn't hear her, but calling out regardless. “Why doesn't he jus' roll onta the floor?” she asked her companions.

Neither had an answer.

Blueblood stood up and took one step onto his injured leg. He whimpered as the glass shards dug deeper into his white skin, but managed two steps on the bleeding and tender leg before collapsing. He gave one desperate look to the floor beside him before resorting to crawling along the conveyer.

It wasn't enough. For every foot he gained to escape his fate, two more would bring him back. He glanced behind him and noticed his leg had entered the blackness he fought so hard to escape. He opened his mouth to scream as the dark abyss spouted mechanical teeth and--

Twila canceled the spell, rendering the television to mere static. She clutched her hand tightly to the side. “I'm sorry,” she stated. “I-I couldn't watch that.”

Jack sucked in a breath. “My God...”

The three women were speechless. All they could offer one another were shocked glances.

It was several minutes later when Dash spoke up. “I know it's not the best time, Twila, but were you focused on him long enough to get a sense of where he was at?”

The scholar shook her head. “Only that it was north... maybe an hour or so,” she quietly said, before furrowing her brow. “Perhaps the business district of Middleburg?”

Isabelle put her hands behind her head and stared up towards the ceiling. “Was my guess too. You can't find warehouses like that in St. Charles, anyway. But that still leaves a problem. There's a lot of buildings like that in Middleburg. We can't just barge into each one demanding answers...” She trailed off briefly before pausing. As quick as a bolt, she moved past her friends and stepped into the bedroom. Jack and Twila were just about to join her when they heard a satisfying “Ah-ha!”

Dash returned, triumphantly holding a Rolodex filled to bursting with cards.

“Hmm, I see,” Twila said, putting a finger to her chin. “You believe Blueblood would have had business association with the man he was speaking with, ergo, this... 'Dorado' would be listed.”

“Words right outta my mouth, bro.” Dash nodded, tapping their new source of information with the back of her fingers. “And if Dorado's an alias, we saw enough of his ass to get an ID from photographs. Though I gotta wonder what he meant about a 'boss' when he was talking to Blueblood. You think this shit goes up past even him?”

“Perhaps. I wouldn't doubt it, anyway.”

“Wait a damn minute here,” Jack said. She stared at the athlete. “Yer not thinkin' 'bout turnin' this over ta the cops?!” She pointed at the screen. “We jus' saw a man die, in case ya forgot!”

“I know, hayseed. I was watching too.” Dash scowled, tossing the Rolodex up and down in the air. “But with the cops comes questions. Some of which I don't wanna answer.”

“Name one,” Jack snapped back.

“'How did we find out about his murder?'” Isabelle retorted. “What would we tell 'em, 'Oh, we just broke into his bedroom, used a vaguely legal tracer spell to find him and watched him die.' No big.” She pointed a finger hard at the farmer. “I'm not getting in trouble for doing the right thing, bro. We're in too deep now to pull out.”

“As much as I hate to say it, I agree.” Twila chimed in, looking between the earth and sky folk. “It defeats the point if we simply roll over now. We'd have no answers, and if we tell the police the truth, we would quite possibly get expelled thanks to our actions tonight. It's better to at least try to resolve this as far as we can, before resorting to the police—provided we don't risk our lives by doing something as absolutely ridiculous as engaging in an altercation with the murderer.”

“Scout's honor, Twi. I don't plan on you getting hurt,” Dash said.

“Shit, man.” Jack finally said. She scratched her arm as she thought. Trying to find out who nearly killed Rarity on accident was one thing, but tracking down someone as twisted as what they just saw on the television? There was only one answer to a question like that. She heaved a sigh and met Isabelle's gaze. “I'm gonna regret this, but, yeah. I got yer back.”