The sun went down on a quiet summer's day. Bird's chirped their last songs as kids went into their houses for dinner. Lawn sprinklers clicked off across the little town houses of an old neighborhood, and the tiny town feel asleep. A police squad car rolled up to a boarded up town house when the sun went down. The power was still intact but only because the house was for sale though there was hardly anyone willing to buy it. Twilight Sparkle stepped out of the passenger car and shinned the industrial strenght flashlight on the upper window.

"Anyone live here?" She asked Lighting Dusk as she turned the engine off and got out of the car. The key on loan from the realtor looking to sell it.

"Not for the last eight years when he...went crazy." Lightning said as she and Twilight slowly approached the house Jack Jolly Moore had lived in. "Say he killed his mom and dad the night before, but it was never proven. They just...up and left and haven't been seen since it happened." She took the key from the envelope from the office...Jay Sherman Realtors...

"Hey Jack you coming or not?" Bud asked as the neon lights of Jay Sherman Realtors flashed across his face...

"Hmmm? Oh yes...yes of course...I was just...thinking of Grandma and Grandpa...they...they died last night. My parents haven't been since the hospital called the house and told me." Jack said looking from the light and then down the nearly empty street. It was the later afternoon on a cold winter day. Though the hour was only one to five the sun was getting low, Sunset...He longed to think in five moths he'd be at the Six Flags water park with the girl named sunset. The only motivation to go with the heist of the Doctor's office. to pay his dues and enjoy some happiness in the final days of his adolescence.

"I'm sorry for your loss...but we gotta do this now or never so come on!" They said as they made their way. Though dead winter, there was only icy cold and incoming freezing rain. The dark purple clouds and thunder a testament to the rain. It was just too warm to snow. Still too cold to be just wearing a thin soccer shirt and a button up purple dress shirt.

"They say their last words were...'where's Jack?' Then they died just minuets apart from each other, alone and broken hearted without each other or their grandson to condole them...I think we should have done this sooner." He said as the Doctors office came into view. The black 38. revolver in his belt felt like it weighed a tn, or was it the weight on his heart crushing him with guilt? The last time he'd ever feel any.

"Come one...get the mask on and remember...scary Joker." Lou said as he got his own mask, an Obama mask while Bud got a Clinton mask on...a bit cliche, but they had "The Joker" in tow. the icy winds chilled him to the bone as they approached the glass doors, the office just upstairs...and ahead.

"It's so errie...this was his bedroom?" Twilight said as she and Lighting stood in a small room no bigger than a guest room with a little folding bed in the clossed position against one wall. The tv was a small set at least thirty years old and sitting on a dresser. A child's toybox sat empty in one corner and dusty books lined one shelf near the back wall.

"The Moore's where always just above the poverty line. Father was a Disabled war vet living on disability, mother was a stay at home work from home tailor and seamstress but it was a slow buissiness. Lighting said as she lifted the toy box's lid. "Damn...they let these things stay here?" She asked as her light shone on an assortment of second hand toys brought from Goodwill and Salvation
Army stores. A lot of them broken or dirty and heavily used.

"They couldn't link it to evidence of the crime, and the owner stops by with this stuff still here offering the place, "fully furnished." Twilight said as she read the titles on the books. Mostly kid's books, Harry Potter, Daring Do, Indiana Jones and Star Wars expanded universe, and some Diary of a wimpy kind and middle school worst years books. "He was Eighteen and graduating from High School when he lived like this?" She asked.

"Some people just don't want to let go...It's a time we often think we move on and grow out of...our childhood. We're so quick to grow out of it when we do...we only want nothing more than to go back, not realizing what we lost..."

"Welcome to the Vine Street Doctor's office...the reception are is just on the second floor past this hallway up here." Jack said as he and the others made their way to the office. Bud and Lou drew their guns. What are they?...They weren't supposed to be doing it like this! No shooting, no one gets hurt? His grandparents wouldn't have wanted it this way!

"Why are we here again?' Lighting said flipping through an old copy of Daring Do. Twilight Didn't specify anyhting about going to Jack's old house, just that they had too.

"Thought he might go here first...He's been here." Twilight said aiming her light up a hatch to the attic above them.

"how can you tell? The house is regulary kept up by the owner who drops in to clean it."

"The attic hatch, it's been opened recently from the inside. Can tell by the dust and the fact that it's not fully closed from the inside." Twilight said and look here on the bookshelf. These spots of dust are where books were removed. He tried to throw anyone who'd come back off the trail by rustling the books in place and propping them up with the book ends, but the dusts been too distirbed to hide the fact that the books were taken. I can tell." Twilight said as Lighting chuckled.

"You sure you shouldn't be the detective here?"

"Alright nobody Move! This is a hold up! Give us all your cash and the cash co-pays and the office petty cash and don't lie to me and say you don't have any!" Jack said as Bud and Lou fired their guns at the windows. The panicked patients and the the staff started hitting the floor. The receptionist was crying and Jack could see why. He leaned over the desk and saw her with her soft red hair and big glasses...with a fit handsome man and a little girl in a family picture on the desk...She was a mother!

"Please...oh God..oh God please don't hurt us." She said reaching into her purse...

"Hey! Don't you dare pull a taser or pepper spray on ME LADY! You do that and your little girl's out one mommy! You hear me! You hear me!" He said but he didn't mean it. He couldn't be a bleeding heart now...He'd gotten this far and wimping out would only lead to getting busted. The woman cried louder and dumped it out the cash onto her desk. She handed it too him on the desk and cowered under the desk crying loud as more gun shoots rang out. "Oh what now...what...AH! You Idiots! What have you done!?"

"Hey he came out of nowhere and pulled a piece on me! What was I supposed to do?" Lou said as he stood over a man with a doctor's coat; he was bleeding from the skull, head shot dead instantly., he was the receptionist's husband.

"Look just grab the bag of cash and let's get out of..."

"Hey! You! You're making a call to the cops!" Bud said as he looked under the desk at the cowering receptionist. Bud fired four of his rounds into her. She made gasps and soft eeks of pain and then fell to the floor crumpled in a dead heap. Her Daughter was an orphan, and she couldn't have been older than eight in that very recent desk picture. Jack could have sworn he heard her last gasping words before dying..."Barbara?"

"We're too late, he's long gone." Twilight said in almost defeat. The Moore house was dead silent in the downstairs living room, the house in total darkness now. Lighting and Twilight would have to try to follow a cold trial to maybe find him.

"Any idea where he'd be?" Lighting asked making her way to the back kitchen. "let's go out the back and check the yard on the way out. Maybe we...OH MY GOD!" Lighting said trying her gun from it's holster, Twilight did the same with her gun and rushed to her side, only for Lightning to lower it.

"What'd you draw that for?" She asked as they entered the kitchen she could see why. In the kitchen stood a vacum propped up against the fridge with a purple suit jacket on it and a Joker mask on the handle. In the darkness of the house, one could see that the suit and mask could look like a human in the room. "Heh I guess we're both Kinda jumpy..." Twilight said as she holstered her revolver. "Oh...and...I do have a permit." She said pulling a gun carrier's card from her pocket and showing it to Lighting. She only chuckled softly as she read it.

"Twi? I wouldn't care of you didn't, we got bigger fish to fry."

"Oh God oh God! It wasn't supposed to be like this!" Jack though as he saw Them both dead. Bud an Lou were dead too. The cops had come to the front of the building and shot Bud and Lou on the spot. They managed to get a lucky shot at the cops before they bled out. Those cops where on the office floor. He could see them lying on the floor clutching their stomachs as they made officer down calls for backup. Jack threw his gun away in a trash can after making his way down the fire escape into an alley way. He was in sight of the sewage treatment and DOW chemical plant. The gates rolling open for a delivery truck. He ran with the carpet bag of ill gotten cash in his hands. A worker in a yellow helmet and blue jumpsuit flagged him down.

"HEY! YOU! This is private property of the city and the DOW corporation! Stay out or we'll be forced to...HEY! Take that mask off!" The worker ordered seeing it on him, he drew his own gun and began shooting at him. God more shooting! Will it ever stop? Jack pumped his legs taking off across the upper walkways over the tanks of chlorine as it was processed into bleach. A little girl orphaned; he was being shot at, two guys his age dead, and now chased over the bleach processing plant. Was any of this worth the five hundred to cover senior dues?

"Gotta..find a way out...gotta...jump into the bay and..swim for it." He said softly under his breath. "Oh God...oh Jesuits...I...I can't see the eye holes are misaligned...I can't stop and adjust it and can't just pull it off! They'll know who I am if I do." He said as he could see workers coming up to the metal stairs to him...they where closing in! He could barley see a body of water near by but there was no way to tell with the green contacts and the eye holes. He was thankful that the money was packed in Zip-lock bags, keep the cash dry.

"There he is! Take him down!" A worker said.

"No! We just unmasked the DOA's at the office, they were just kids for God's sake! I want him alive!" A cop said as he forced the worker to lower his piece. He couldn't be taken alive or dead! Jack took a deep breath and dived over the railing. The wind rushing as his stomach shifted out of place. When you swim in a pool with too much chlorine, it burns and stings your eyes, your skin feel like it's on fire and you can't stand the water. Imagine the pain of an over chlorinated pool and multiply that by a hundred or so. He dived into one of the tanks of unprocessed chlorine! The world became a swirling mass of icy winter cold and the burning and stinging of the chemicals. The pumps sucked him up a thankfully large pipe and the synthesis process turned the chlorine diluted into bleach.

Remember that bleach on your skin in large quantities is no better if not worse. It still burned and worse, he was starting to drown! He never understood why, but he was being swept away from chemicals into the water to salvation. Maybe some worker above saw pity and engaged an emergency protocol in case a man falls into the tank, or maybe it was the norm for the corrupt Dow to dump chemicals when a batch goes bad, but he felt his body being spat out along a final pipe. He felt One last rush of water as the pipe dumped him into the Canterlot Bay.

The workers or cops never found his body, assumed he was swept away in oceanic currents and he was never identified. Jack Jolly Moore never fired a shingle shot that night, nor did he hurt anyone. He was still guilty of a lot. he had lost his grandparents to death; his birth parents abandoned him. He was shot at; nearly drowned, and chemically burned. The colors of his costume began to run and fade as he swam ashore to the other side of the bay. He pulled himself ashore to a muddy beach that smelled of rancid low tide.

Muck covered shopping carts from a nearby plaza lay as homes for sand crabs as he coughed crawling ashore. His hands clawing his way up the rocks just off the walkway, the street lights shining down on him as he emerged from the rocky shore. The terrible stench, like sewage and seafood good bad lingering over him. "UGH! Blarg! Oh God..Oh hell..I can't feel my face; eyes burning...my skin itches like crazy...Got to get this stupid mask off before someone sees me. Gugh!" HE crawled ashore onto the cobblestone walkway and over the ground as the freezing winter rain started coming down.

"I'm stinging; itchy...My face...oh my face burns..Get this stupid mask off! So I can..." He ripped the squelching rubber off his face and gasped as it slipped off him with a wet sucking noise. He set the mask down on a bench and looked down into a puddle. He recoiled away from the face staring back at him. For he saw that grinning smile of the sadist clown. Then he looked at the mask and saw the same thing. Reflection; to mask, reflection to mask, there was no difference. Though the bleach had only caused a tempory redness of his skin, and a mismatched platinum blonde tone in his hair. Jack Jolly Moore forever saw only the face of a clown when he looked in a mirror.

"see...HA....HA HA HA AHOO AHOO HOO HA HA HA." He started Giggling and chuckling softly as if the realzation of everything that had been leading up to this...was nothing but one big...joke. "tttt...Twilight; Sunset?....Remind me to ask you for a swim when we get to Hurricane Harbor...I think the wave pool would be nice first... " He said to no one as he made his way with the bag of cash in hand. Before he began to laugh again...louder this time...much much louder.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH.....Ah...what a day!"

Author's Note

End Part One...To Be Concluded.