In The Mind Of Madness.

Twilight Sparkle had just come from the Hogan's alley in the Canterlot City P.DH.Q. the Smith and Wesson model 10 police issue revolver stiring under her purple tank top. Her hands smelled of oil and gun flashes, and even with the ear protection, her ears still had a case of tinnitus in them. The 38. detective special back up with the snub nose still strapped to her ankle. She crossed the bullpen ignoring the peering eyes of weary officers. She wasn't an officer of the law, she was a Psychologist. Not even able to fill out a prescription and here she was playing detective to find a wayward patient.

Twilight made her way to the office of the sheriff, her friend the currently M.I.A Rainbow Dash. In her place was Lighting Dust, the closest to backup she had on this case. Lightning had pasted some pictures to the board in Dash's office, they were all missing people poster. The room also contained clippings of the disappearances; the last know locations of the victims, and various other tidbits that could hopefully lead The two of them to what they where looking for, their friends.

"So what's the latest? Any new leads?" Twilight asked as she took a seat at the desk, she stopped a moment to pic up a few pictures on Rainbow Dash's desk; one was the school photo from...graduation day, the others were mostly police academy photos and a photo of her, Lightning, Soarin and Thunderlane when they kicked back with a few drinks in the off duty hours. Hard to believe a hot shot sheriff and two lieutenants would get kidnapped by a loony who deluded himself into thinking his the world's most popular Batman villain....

Rainbow Dash coughed as her vision returned to her, it was never a pleasant thing coming around in...his place. "Goooooood MOOOORNING CANTERLOT HIGH!" His tiny and static filled voice said as it crackled over the school's ancient intercom. "It's been a week here at good old C.H.S and our class reunion is going strong. Just a reminder, tonight's closing ceremony will include a special guest appearance by the class valedictorian, Twilight Sparkle. The Joker has spoken!" 'Jack has completely lost his mind all right.' Rainbow said as she stretched out from the school nurse cot she'd been given to use to sleep on. He had currently kept the class that he nearly gave big ear to ear grins all those years ago hold up in the class rooms. Occasionally showing up dressed as "The Teacher." To give some lesson or to just mess with everyone here.

So far no one from the class had been killed by this loony, but there were still the people in the rooms he HAD offed. Thee though of people with lives and ambitions stolen away when that lunatic had used them as fodder for his twisted little game. The way he dug a cold steel blade into their cheeks as they must have been screaming as he cut. Unless they had been dead before, poisoned with cyanide and arsenic and then had strips of cheek flesh cut off to make twisted smiles.

Rainbow didn't bother with the classroom door, he had it under lock and key, and the windows were boarded up from the inside. the only thing to occupy her mind were the school textbooks on the shelves, or the wall mounted TV constantly looping random channels. One minute it'd be showing the senate floor on C-SPAN, the next it'd be kid's shows on PBS. occasionally when the door's were unlocked it was to move everybody off to whatever "reunion event," this madman had in mind. The first day it had been a dinner party in the cafeteria, followed by group session of watching bad comedies on a projector in the auditorium.

Rainbow fished under the old teacher's desk for what she had spent the last few days working on. Tucked away in the corners of the wood was a shiv. She made it from a chipped tile she broke into a blade shape, and wrapped with a bit of her shirt for a handle. "Alight "Joker" you want to play? We'll play."

"So first he kidnapped Lyra and Bon Bon, then Rainbow went missing shortly after. No doubt he went after her. The next few missing include Applejack; Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie. As well as the rest of the class from the graduation." Twilight said as she looked over the missing photos on the whiteboard. "What we don't know is just where he's gone and taken them." She said looking over the lines that traced from one photo to the next.

"Where would he take them?" Lightning asked as her desk phone rang. Lightning Reached for the reviver and awnsered. "Hello? Deputy Sheriff Lightning Dust speaking."

"Why Lightning I don't recall you accepting my initation to the little get toghether I spent all this time painstakingly putting together." A cold and clow like voice on the other end of the line said.

"YOU?! Listen Jack, I'm giving you one chance, give up and return all the missing friends you kidnapped or so help me I'll have a swat team on you like there's no tommorow!" She shouted into the phone only to get a soft chuckle back in reply.

"Let me Talk to him...He was...Is my patient after all." Twilight said taking the phone from Lightning. He chuckled more into the reciver as she did.

"I'll try and run a tracer on the call, but it takes a while keep him talking as long as you can but a don't let him hang it so soon/" Lightning whispered to her.

"Jack?...It's me Twilight...listen to me very carefuly, I just want to talk to you, like I should have been doing. Can you just talk to me and tell me what the problem is? Where did you..first realize you have these abnormal tendencies?" She said in her most calming and collectiv voice.

"My grandparents...were dying of diabetes and a lung removal from cancer, the doctor's said the medicare could only do so much for them, but i refused to belive it. I needed money. Money to make sure they got the finest care to cure them, and of course there was the senior dues...How easy was it for you to come up with the money for that six flags trip Twilght? Did you have to beg your parents like som pathetic slob only for them to tell you to save your money for what you need?" He said over the line as Lighting ran a tracer.

"Nothing yet...keep him on the line, this is a very slow process." She said softly as Twilght nodded.

"Look Jack, I'm sorry all that happened to you, I know things in life can seem...hard."

"I had a broken L2 button on my PlayStation controller once! Do you know what my father said when I told him? He said get a fucking real job and buy a new one you lazy bum! I tried and Tried to tell him that I couldn't find any jobs and that no one was hiring me, he just...called me lazy and said I din't want to work. Did he think I liked being broke all the time and living off sub par things? While the spoiled ones like YOU and that...Rarity had everything at their finger tips? I had worked before that...for twenty dollars in one day at some greasy spoon. Until that Greek slave driver said he wasn't going to "baby" me anymore and threw me out like I meant nothing to him! It was that day...I decided that if I didn't matter to anyone...NO one's life would ever matter to me...EVER AGAIN!"

He hung up and the last few words from his mouth were enough to rattle Twilight's already racked ears. "Did you get a lock on him?" She asked Lightning as she cradled the phone.

"Damn it, just missed him. Do you think what he was saying was true?" She asked as she grabbed her belt of gear and adjusted it on.

"If it was...then Jack had a denial of death, he suffered a loss of one of the few positive influences in his life and a desire to prove himself to everyone who thought he wouldn't make anything of himself, but had no positive influences or even any motivation to do so...just a deep rooted anti social disposition rooted in bad experience with authority...Authority? Lightning, has there been any purchases of civil or public buildings in the last few weeks?"

"The old Canterlot High was being offered for sale by the city when the new school building was finished, we haven't heard from the realtor in...three days...oh God!"

"We need to hurry! There's no telling how much time is left!" Twilght said as she felt the iron on her hip and the other near her ankle, they felt as if they weighed a million pounds.

"There there Angel, everything will be okay." Fluttershy said as she held her rabbit on her hip. She sat in a utility push cart as it rolled along like a mine cart on some weird tracks. Somewhere in the distance, he was singing.

"When the bomb hands over head, and a child chokes just tell yourself its better off dead! Just go loo loo looney ooony moony and trade your sanity for the worst in humanity! Don't get even just go mad and go looney loony ooony loony!" The cart rolled along the halls of the school as the dead victims of his sick games where rigged like morbid puppets. They opened and closed lockers and turned to look at her with their cold dead green eyes. A recorded laughter mocking her at every turn.

"Don't listen to him Angel, We'll get through this. We'll be okay. She whispered to him as he clung to her tightly and twitched his nose as he felt her hands stroking him to calm him down. All the while oozing rotted cheeks where he sliced the flesh off their faces, and dead eyes rattled around in the grey sinews of eye sockets.

"Come one Fluttershy, WHY CAN"T YOU PLAY ALONG?!...What about you Pinkie? Feeling green around the gills yet?" Pinkie was strapped to a playground merry go round that was forced to spin at exceedingly fast rates by having a motorcycle tire lined up to it and the tire made the wheel spin faster than any hands could ever spin it. When the wheel came in slowing down. Pinkie's hair had gone soft and flat, and she looked like she was about to puke.

"Ugh! What do you want from us you lunatic?!" She asked as he undid the straps holding her to the wheel and loading her into another cart of his own.

"To make this reunion as fun as possible, cheerio Pinkie O." He said kicking her cart away with a little chuckle in his throat.

"What I still don't get is why we didn't realize the school was the first place he'd go for this little show sooner. Then I remembered one of the hallmarks of insanity courtesy of Einstein." “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results." He's trying to repeat what he did eight years ago, he'd go back to what is most familar to him, I should have seen it before!" Twilight said as Lightning's patrol car speed along the rain slicked streets. They were heading for the old Canterlot High building and hopefully, they'd find him there.

"So if that's were he is, you're just going to rush in and try and take him down?" Lightning asked as the wipers slashed away at the windshield.

"We're going in and see if he's there...if he is...I'll do what I have too." Twilight said as she checked the chamber of her gun one last time before holstering it away. "Got a least a dozen rounds on backup."

"Speaking of which, don't you think I should call for some?"

"Only if we need it."

"Let...us go ya big nut job!" Appljack shouted as she and Big Macintosh both dangled avove barrles of water and apples. He had them in the gym and was using the old climbing ropes to hold them over the barrels. He sat atop a pile of CPR and lifgaurd rescue dummies, all chopped and hacked to pieces in piles.

"Come now, I thought you apples liked...bobbing for apples!" He said as he used the whinch to lower Big Mac into the barrel. He thrashed and sputtered as his head was held in the upside down position in the water, before he final was let up for air.

"We do but not like this ya fruit bat loon!" Big Mac said as he brought him up for air. The anger making him thrash harder desperate to break free.

"I grow bored with this...I wonder if Dashie will be any fun to mess with." He left just like that, on to the next round in his house of insanity.

Rainbow Dash held her breath, her finger wrapping around the handle of her shiv. Her lower bottom of her tank top ripped to fashion the grip. She watched as the door handle was unlocked and turned ever so slowly, watched as his hand appeared opening the door. She turned to face him and shoved her shiv as hard as she could down into his shoulder. She watched as his smile twisted into a scream of pain from the tile sink into his arm.

Rainbow Dash took off with the keys he dropped and used them on every door. Opening them in a haste and telling everyone to run. Not to go after him and try to over power him, but to run and get as far away from him as they could. This wasn't there fight, let thoes trained to handle people like him deal with him.

"Look! Over There! Slow down Lightning!" Twilight said, through the rain she could see a group of people all in disheveled states running from the direction of Canterlot High. "Hit the siren and the cherries!" She said.

"I'm the cop around here." Lightning said as the sirens blared and the cruiser moved toward the crowd.

"Oh thank God I think that's my deputy Lightning." Rainbow said as she lead the survivors down the street toward the car. The rain really picking up and hammering down on the street now. It was so heavy and hard that it made it hard to see as it got in your eyes. "Twilight?" She said as the familiar face stepped from the passenger side. She ran up to her and hugged her tight thankful she was safe. Fluttershy soon took her place beside her as did the rest of her friends.

"Oh Twilight, it was...it was the most horrible thing I ever saw." Fluttershy said with teary eyes, hard to see in all the rain.

"It's okay girls, I'll stay with you guys until backup arrives."

"No!...Go...get him, he's in the school, but Twi? I want him brought in by the book if you can...by the book you got it?"

"I'll do what I can Rainbow...I'll do what I can." Twilight said taking off toward the school.

'I wanna talk...about you...about us...and where this little chase is going to lead us.' Twilight thought ti herself as she drew her revolver and booted the front doors of the school open. The tinny sounds of some rusty phonograph and a badly maintained Calliope ringing through the dank and dim halls. 'I think we need to realize that what we're doing...it's dangerous. Too many of our friends are getting hurt, and you've done some very..unforgivable things. I want you to listen to me and take this as seriously as you can...I want.'

"Was UGH ow wondering when you'd get here....Oh pardon my...appearance but...I think rainbow sliced an artery or two when she shanked me. I've tried my best to bandage the injury and keep from passing out but...It's I feel cold, and i think I"m having a dizzy spell...so I was wondering if you could...heheh"

'Can't let him die...I want to help you...if I can't get you reintegrated back into society, then at least let me try and help you stop hurting and tormenting others.' She thought to herself as she jumped when some hallway lockers sprung open and darts loaded into air launchers zipped past her, just barley missing her.

"Heh sorry forgot to mention...the little surprises I had set up around the place....You know...I have to wonder...just what is the point in going on anymore? I mean the lives we live are full of suffering misery and want and yet we have as much a choice in being brought into this world as we do being taken out. I used to say to that slaver who worked me in the dinner, if life sucks then I don't want to live anymore...The ultimate rebuttal to the age old expression to why no one in life save for a few is ever happy."

'Got quite the mouth on someone bleeding out.' Twilight thought to herself as she reached the principals office. He was just on the other side.

"You know...Twilight...I never lied when I said I had a very bad day...Just that...after taking a dip and getting an all over bleach job. I kinda forgot just what I was so upset about...Just that my life sucked so much, that I wanted to make everyone else as miserable as I was. All while looking back on the bad and laughing at it....Like beating up that guy who ran you down with a bike by accident sure...but don't you ever just want to take that bike and bash his lungs out with it? Or stuff that obnoxious receptionist's hand in the paper shredder because she's occupied with her friends on the phone? Everyone wants to lash out at the things that annoy them, hurt them or make them unhappy...I just have the balls to do it. So why don't you hmmm? Why can't you see the humor in...

The door rattled on it's hinges as she kicked it down with her revolver drawn. "Because it wasn't funny the first time Jack." He turned around, a shoulder wound bleeding through some impromptu dressings as his good arm held an automatic. It was never clear just who shot who and first, but in a have of bullets the one lucky shot managed to blast the revolver from Twilight's hand. She looked and was thankful that he missed her fingers, then looked him dead in the face as she tried to tackle him before he could pull the trigger again. The tumbled through the open window and onto the balcony outside. They bumped hard into the stone railings and stuggled, she tried to grab his gun, he struggled to find the stenght to shoot.

"Maybe not everyone is as easily triggered as you in terms of anger, or easily discouraged when things seem hard. Other people learn to live from and with their failures and around their shortcomings. Not as an exusse to do horrible things." She scolded fidling for the snub nose on her hip. Jack pulled a revolver of his own and gave a wicked slasher grin as he pulled on the trigger hard. *POP!* A shower of confetti and a loud horn nose came of the barrel along with a little flag with bang on it.

"Goddamn it! Trick gun!" He looked up at her solely, his grin faded. Even his scarred lips didn't seem happy anymore. "Well? What are waiting for? Aren't you going to kick the crud out of me? Ram my head into the wall? Get a standing ovation from the good guys? I've killed, hurt and psychologically tortured your closest friends, and nearly shot you...so get this over with and...beat me to a pulp if you must." He said this and in doing so, he looked almost...human. Twilight could almost see a human side of an otherwise demented soul...It almost felt like...remorse. Could it be that? She could try.

"Because...I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to have to end up killing you, even with all the Hell you raised. Do you understand Jack? I don't want your blood on my hands, and we're running out of alternatives....and time. I'm your Doctor Jack, I've trained to try and help you. I want to help you, I may not understand just what it was that got your life so bent out of shape, but there's no shame in asking for sympathy and for help in getting over that...So what do you say?...What do you say?" She said holding her hand out to him smiling softly.

Her mirror self had been down this road before her, With Sunset Shimmer, and Sunset had been like this with her. She knew what it was like, she could feel the sincerty practically radiate off him as he looked over at her his expression sour. Her smile falltered when he turned away from her hand refussing it.

"No...No I'm afraid it's far too late for that..too little too late to go back Twilight. I can't go back, never again no point in trying...you know it's kinda funny actually, reminds me of this joke I heard...There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum...No wait...I've told that one before....There was a guy with this twelve inch pianist...no that one does NOT fit the situation. Okay I got it...it's me to a tee....okay A friend of mine just died....He was eighty four years old, and he died completely broke and alone. At the funeral, the mortician said to the pastor, 'What a shame, he died penniless.' So the pastor looks over and says...'I don't know to me that sounds like perfect timing on a hell of a budget!'...heh heh..hah ahahahah!" He and even Twilight broke out into laughter, Twilight could see his hand reaching for a pocket...She drew her detective special as they both laughed harder and harder. In a single flash of muzzle. A 38. caliber thunder zap round wen into his forehead. Thunder Zap ammo is designed to shatter and cause massive damage, more of a bloody mess than a 44.

A chunk of his skull and brain matter plastered against the wall, as the rain slowed to a soft drizzle. Twilight sighed letting her gun fall to the ground. Jack Jolly Moore's mouth still contorted into a grin, he died doing what he loved, smiling and laughing. "It wasn't that funny..."