“Insano, wake up,” said a voice on the edge of his consciousness. It sounded tired and moaning, like some sort of specter. The sleepy mind of the scientist briefly contemplated if he was going to awaken to a shitty rendition of A Christmas Carol, with him as the Scrooge. He’d heard something about Linkara’s 1920s gangster stereotype with the nice voice being subjected to that last Christmas. What was his name? Harley? Harry? Charlie? Insano could not give less of a fuck.

The voice sighed and he suddenly found himself with tons of fucks to give. More accurately, to fling angrily at whomever the hell it was that had just shoved him out of bed.

“Ow, my head!” He snarled as he scrambled back onto his hooves to see a purple plot trotting away from him. “The hell was that for?!”

Twilight looked back at him over her shoulder. Bags drooped under her bloodshot eyes. They made her face look like it was just a wax mask that was starting to melt from the warmth of spring.

“Didn’t feel like playing our little game where you sleepily insult me when I try to wake you up before I give up and just jab your plot with my horn,” she grumbled before resuming her trot to the door. Her hooves were dragging along the floor as if they were solid blocks of uranium tied to her legs. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

Insano’s ear twitched as he listened closely to the world around him. He could faintly hear Twilight’s heartbeat before she slipped out the door; it was erratic and much faster than normal. He hummed in thought as he followed her lead.

“The hell happened to you, Plumplot?” he asked. His eyes were drawn to her mane. There were several strands of hair stuck together by clumps of something deep red.

“I could sue you for sexual harassment for that nickname, you know,” she reminded, not even turning to look at him as she trotted into the kitchen.

“The fucks I give can be expressed by how many fingers I have. Namely: zero,” he deadpanned. “Besides, I don’t have a single bit to my name. You would get something between jack and shit.”

She took her seat at the kitchen table. Spike slipped a plate of pancakes in front of her, and she only grunted in thanks. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you, Insano,” she mumbled.

“Just tell me what happened last night,” he said as Spike slipped his own plate of pancakes in front of him. “You look like you got mugged by the sandman.”

“Sandman? What even–” She shook her head and took a bite of her breakfast. “Never mind. I just had a bad nightmare last night is all. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Must have been one hell of a nightmare,” he said as he started wolfing down his own food. “So, who bled on you?”

The mare choked on her fork and spluttered out, “E-excuse me?!”

“Are you okay, Twilight?” Spike asked as he rushed to her side.

“I can see dried blood in your mane,” Insano said slowly. “How did it get there?”

“I fell out of bed,” she said hastily, shrugging off her dragon assistant and eating her breakfast faster. “Hit my head and I guess I didn’t notice I was bleeding.”

Insano crossed his forelegs and hummed in thought. “I highly doubt it’s yours, given how it’s on the surface and on the back of your head, with no sign of bleeding from that area or any wounds I can see on your legs.”

“Why are you so concerned all of a sudden?” she snapped. If it were possible to angrily drink orange juice, Twilight somehow managed it.

“Concerned? Don’t get misty-eyed on me,” he scoffed. “I’m just curious. You’re hiding something. I don’t like things being hidden from me.”

“Leave her alone,” Spike said firmly as he bit into a ruby. “She had a rough night, and that’s all either of us need to know.”

“But not all that I do know,” Insano said with a swig from his glass. “Her heart rate is accelerated. Sleep deprivation typically causes the heart rate to slow down, so she must have taken some sort of stimulant. Caffeine, perhaps? Tell me, Twilight, how much tea did you have last night?”

“How the hay do you know what her heart rate is?” Spike demanded, standing up on his chair.

“Spike, calm down. He isn’t worth getting angry over,” Twilight said as she glared at the stallion, waving for Spike to sit back down.

“Implants and modifications to myself,” he responded coolly. “The natural ear is such an inefficient thing. Now that I’ve answered your question, how about you be polite and answer mine?”

“Polite? Polite?!” Spike balked. “What would you know about polite?! You’ve been nothing but a raging plothole ever since you got here!”

“Spike, please lower your voice and watch your language,” Twilight said firmly, her ear twitching.

The edges of Insano’s lips twisted into a grin. “You heard your sister-mother, kid. Sit down and shut up.”

“Give me one good reason to not throw you out of here,” Twilight growled, brandishing her knife. “You’ve caused me and my friends nothing but grief since you got here. I don’t know exactly how you’re doing it, but you’re messing with our heads. Do you know what happened yesterday?”

“No, I don’t,” he lied, his smile not faltering.

Her eye twitched. “Yesterday, I found Rarity and Pinkie Pie swapping spit behind a bush in the park. They were in a trance. When they snapped out of it, they didn’t remember a thing.”

“Really? I didn’t think they were each other’s type,” he said with a coy shrug.

“That’s because they’re not,” she hissed. “I know that you know about it because I know that you did it!”

“And how do you know that? Do you somehow know for sure that I was in the park yesterday? You certainly weren’t around; you should’ve said hi,” he suggested.

“Stop playing dumb!” she roared, standing up from her seat and slamming her forehooves on the table. “I know that you know we’ve been following you!”

“Temper temper,” he chided, his grin only growing. “Is that any example to set for your little Spike? Do as you say, not as you do?”

Twilight gave him a glare that clearly told him that she was not only contemplating murder, but contemplating how to pull it off. Insano was way ahead of her and planning ways to stop her if she tried. “I’m not that hungry,” she mumbled as she hopped her hooves off the table and trotted out the kitchen. “I’m going for a walk to clear my head.”

“Twilight, please, you need rest!” Spike hopped down from his chair and walked beside her, fretting with Insano creeping up behind them. He leaned in and whispered, “And please don’t leave me alone with him!”

“I won’t be gone long,” Twilight assured, kissing Spike on the forehead as she levitated saddle bags onto her back. Insano saw the mare slip a folded piece of parchment off her desk and into her pack that he didn’t recognize. “Stay safe, stay out of trouble. The latter goes double for you, Insano.”

“Whatever,” he snorted. She sent another wave of hate his way before she cantered out the front door, giving it a slam for good measure. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…”

Spike snarled and turned on his heel. “See what you did?!”

“…fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

“Twilight won’t even tell me what happened last night, and now you have to go and make her day even worse before it’s barely even started!” the dragon continued to rant, emerald flames snorting out his nostrils.

“…six, five, four…”

“What are you muttering?!” he demanded, grabbing the taller pony by his front.

“One.” Insano activated his hypno vision, the young dragon’s eyes instantly glazing over. “How long I should wait before I should start shadowing her, kid. She’s clearly not in a stable mental state, and we don’t want her hurting herself, do we? Now, just let me go, and I’ll go make sure she doesn’t do anything she’ll regret. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Spike nodded slowly.

“Good boy.” Insano patted the lizard’s head before trotting out the door himself. He spotted his target down the street, headed west toward the park. The day had already started for the rest of the town, and dozens of ponies were out and about doing whatever the hell it was talking ponies did with their days. All that Insano cared about was that they were around. “Too many witnesses to hypnotize the information out of her,” he mumbled as he started trotting after Twilight, keeping close to the alleys in case he needed to duck inside.

Hiding did not prove to be an issue when Twilight took a turn. A turn right into the middle of the market section of town. Then the problem became picking out the plum-purple posterior out of the prismatic plethora of pony plots and profiles presented before him.

“Goddammit,” he swore under his breath. The crowd got thicker and thicker with each step. He tried to crane his neck and stand on his tip-toes to try to keep an eye on Twilight.

That’s when gravity and the ground quickly reminded him that he no longer had any toes or tips thereof to stand on.

“Fuck, my nose,” he grumbled as he spat up a mouthful of grass and tried to get back up. A hoof stepping on the back of his head told him that Lady Luck did not like him that day. “Mmph!”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” exclaimed a familiar voice. “I didn’t notice- wait. It’s just you.” Rarity huffed. “In that case, I’m not sorry.” She stepped more forcefully on his head, slamming his face into the dirt before she continued as if nothing had happened.

“She dies first,” he mumbled into the soil as he got back on all fours. He rubbed the back of his head and scanned the crowd. Several purple ponies were about, but not the same shade as Twilight. His mark was gone. “Well this turned out just fucking great.”

He hummed in thought before slipping through the masses and into an alleyway. He looked around to make sure there were no witnesses before he turned his gaze downward. His storage retrieval device activated and his gaydar assembled itself in front of him.

“Let’s see if I can lock on to her specific signal,” he muttered, picking it up in his magic grip. “If I remember right, she was in the Ellen DeGeneres range.” He turned it on and the second it flickered to life it started going wild. “Wh-what the everloving fuck?!” He held it steady with his hooves – or at least as well as one could with a pair of blunt limbs – and looked at the screen while the device sparked. “Huge readings to the north and approaching fast. It isn’t even here yet and we’re getting into the gigaqueer range!” He let out a yelp of surprise as the device fried right in front of him, letting out a shower of sparks before dying. “Goddammit, not again!” He slammed the useless hunk of scrap on the ground, his chest heaving. “Who in the name of Schrodinger’s lost pussy could possibly be that gay?!”

Not that far to the north, in her luxurious flying chariot, Celestia sneezed. Next Chapter: They're Coming to Take Me Away, Haha Part 2 Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes