Author's Note

Hello everyone, it's been a while hasn't it?

I'm not gonna go into detail, but a lot of stuff has had me either preoccupied or made it impossible for me to write, hence the long wait for this chapter. Though I will try to go back to the usual 1-2 chapters a month pace I had before the end of 2019.

If anything feels rushed, chances are that it's a decent possibility as I want you guys to know that the story isn't dead, nor am I planning on leaving it alone.

As always, any grammar or spelling errors feel free to shoot me a comment and I will fix ASAP, have a good one.

Not So Peaceful Night

The sound of hooves hitting tilestone echoed through the night in Canterlot castle as Sapphire was galloping through the western wing. She had woken up in the middle of the night and decided to go check on Hunter who she found gone from the medical wing without any of the night guards patroling the area noticing. Learning of this fact was the reason Sapphire was galloping through the western wing, to find Dante and tell him of his son's disappearance. It took her several minutes to gallop through the halls, but Sapphire arrived at a door with a plaque displaying Dante's name.

Sapphire knocked on the door then proceeded to open the -surprisingly- unlocked door gently and peeked her head in. The room was dark, barely lit up by a few rays from the moon shining in through the windows. Sapphire took a deep breath and noticed Dante leaning back in the chair behind the desk, a magazine on his face like she had seen Hunter do a few times.

"It's the middle of the night lady, you don't see me knocking on doors and interrupting your sleep do you?" Dante asked out loud, though his words a bit muffled by the magazine on his face. "And here I thought I'd be able to catch some 'Z's without being interrupted for once."

"S-sorry about that Dante, but I have a bit of bad news," Sapphire said as she opened the door fully, revealing the rest of herself, without her dress or possible make-up. "Hunter and his things from the medical wing are gone."

The room became silent. The human nor pony said anything for what felt like an eternity as Dante was processing the fact.

"Well, this is something new," Dante mused and pulled the magazine off of his face. "I expected him to get out of the medical wing, then come here and sleep on one of the couches, not whatever he's doing."

"We have to find him before he gets himself more hurt!" Sapphire exclaimed, earning a chuckle from the human.

"Normally I'd tell you, 'he'll be fine', but from the sudden burst of anger he showed yesterday you're right," Dante said as he got out of his chair. "Way to take my spotlight kiddo."

Making his way over to the mare, Dante tilted his neck to each side as a group of at least six lunar guards ran through the halls, past Dante's room in a hurry. Despite Dante not having a lot of knowledge about how the lunar or solar guards worked, he knew that if a group of four or more were heading somewhere in a hurry something was wrong.

"That can't be good," Dante muttered and sprinted after the thestral guards to see what excitement he could get into now that he was awake.

"Where are you going?!" Sapphire called out as Dante followed the guards.

"Going to see what the fuzz is about!" Dante called over his shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll look for Hunter, he's certainly not getting dessert after dinner for this!"

Sapphire sighed and shook her head at the words that left the human's mouth and decided to let it go.

Following the guards with no problem, Dante found it a little odd with the guards, he had never seen them run towards possible trouble like this, especially not as more lunar guards joined the leading six, making it seem as if it was worse than he first thought. Something about this was odd, Dante couldn't feel any sort of unknown demon aura at all, the ones he could feel were either from his own devil arms or the small remnants of Hunter's aura as he wasn't in the medical wing resting up. Something wasn't right.

As Dante followed the guards through the corridors of the castle, he noticed that they were heading towards the training grounds of the castle. Was something happening at the training grounds? Normally if the guards were training they would already be there while the rest would be patrolling and guard areas of the castle. Again, Dante knew something wasn't right about this situation.

A loud thundering noise, as well as a yell, echoed over the sound of the guards' clanking armor, causing Dante to speed up and head towards the noise with vigor, as to Dante, it sounded like a demon causing havoc and terror for who knows how many lives. If this demon would drag out a fight, Dante knew he would probably lose the possible track of Hunter, but he knew Hunter could take care of himself as he'd done beforehand.

After a few minutes of running towards the thunderous noises and yells, Dante finally reached the training grounds and saw a sight he didn't come to expect. Nothing was really destroyed except for a pair of training dummies, -wait weren't those enchanted to last against powerful blows?- and guards who were laying on the ground either unconscious or in pain but no one was dead. This was definitely new but still caused the devil hunter to be cautious and kept his hand on the handle of his go-to weapon, Rebellion.

"N-no, please! I'm sorry! D-don't kill me!" A voice begged from up ahead, causing Dante to unsheath his blade and sprint forward to stop whatever was doing this.

As Dante rounded a corner of the training grounds, he saw a lunar guard stallion being held against the ground, trembling in fear as he stared upon his assaulter. A stallion with horns, claws covered in obsidian. Dante let out a frustrated groan at what he was seeing, his adopted son Hunter had let his temper get to him and entered his devil trigger. Annoyance could easily get under Hunter's skin if his buttons were pushed just right, but rarely would it delve into so much anger that it would cause Hunter to enter his devil trigger, yet it seemed they had been, at least Hunter had the restraint of not killing anyone which was at least good news.

"Let that stallion go at once and surrender yourself!" A voice caught Dante out of his thoughts as a decent amount of lunar guards had stepped in front of him during his quick mental analysis, at least a dozen guards in armor.

Hunter let out a growl as he threw the stallion towards Dante, who caught him by the back of his neck with no trouble. Dante had an unamused look on his face as he turned the stallion to look him in his eyes.

"You must've pushed his buttons just right if you managed to get him this angry," Dante flatly said as he put the stallion on the ground.

"H-he's a-a-a-a..." The stallion couldn't let out a coherent reply as he was trembling in fear and had an odor of what wasn't a pleasant smell.

"Yeah yeah, he's different don't pull the racist card on him or it'll only get worse."

Dante turned his attention back to Hunter and advanced towards the demonized stallion, pushing a few guards out of his path as he made his way several feet ahead of the guards.

"Alright kiddo, you got two options. Option one, you calm down and come with me," Dante called out as Hunter stared at the human who was wearing the same unamused look when he caught the guard. "Option two, I'll put you over the damn knee since I still clearly stand taller than you. Which option is it gonna be?"

Hunter glared at Dante and let out a growl of warning, all the while grinding a front hoof on the ground towards his own body as he was preparing to charge at the human who was now putting himself in the way of Hunter's anger.

Dante sighed and prepared himself mentally for a fight against Hunter, sadly this one wasn't one of their usual sparing matches which granted would be more fun, but this fight could possibly hurt either one of them.

Letting out a demonic roar of rage, Hunter charged at Dante.

"I couldn't possibly begin to describe how these findings came to us your highness, but I've run them through multiple tests again and again but the results are all the same."

Sitting in Princess Luna's chambers with a soundproofing spell around the room, Luna was listening to one of Canterlot's finest researchers in terms of the evolution of ponykind, Paper Swirl. Her latest discovery came from the recent blood sample she had been given just a few hours prior to this urgent meeting with Luna.

"And pray tell, what was the result? So far all thou have been telling us is that this couldn't be possible," Luna said as she looked at the unicorn mare in front of her. "So please, tell us thy discovery and we'll see to it that it will get fixed."

"R-right, my mistake your highness," Paper Swirl said and levitated a clipboard over to Luna for her to take a look at.

There were diagrams, along with formulas for different blood tests and multiple pages with who knows how many of researcher mare's thoughts and theories, to the results the blood's magical aura and cells reactions. So far from the look of the different pages, there was nothing out of the ordinary, Paper Swirl had put her mind as to why things are the way they are in her tests, the thing that caught Luna's attention was the final page and the results. There were smaller amounts of magical aura as well as other types of cells inside of the blood, that had never been found in a pony's blood over the years.

"So, from thy notes and theories, thou suggest we put this pony in quarantine due to the anomalies found in his blood?" Luna asked curiously before levitating the clipboard back to Paper Swirl.

"Well, unless he is able to keep the blood inside of him and not spray it onto other ponies it should be fine," Paper replied. "But the fact is this, his blood's magical power's strength is as weak as it was back in the early years of Equestria. He's a 19-year-old stallion, -if his blood and body structure is anything to go by- but his blood also indicates he was born around two millennia ago! How is that possible?"

"We do not know, but thou should go and get some rest thou have done more than enough," Luna said and gave a gentle smile at Paper Swirl. "We do believe we have another visitor."

Luna's magical aura enveloped the doors to her chambers and they opened up to reveal Sapphire with a hoof where the doors once were. A small giggle escaped Paper Swirl's lips as she gave a gentle bow towards Luna and headed out of the room, past Sapphire to find her way home.

"Lady Sapphire, come in, we assume thou have something you wish to talk about?" Luna asked in curiosity and let the green unicorn mare come in. "We assure thou that we will help you ease your mind from what happened a few hours ago."

"Well, there is this thing your highness," Sapphire started as she closed the doors behind her. "I am quite curious about this, what do you have against Hunter your highness?"

Luna had to do a double-take, if not a triple-take about what Sapphire came to talk about. Shaking her head to regain her composure Luna looked at Sapphire with a confused expression.

"Verily? Thou came to talk and that is what has thou curious? Wouldn't it be wiser to talk about his sudden outburst and the thundering sound of his yells?" Luna asked in confusion. "His yells are quiet due to the castle's magical enchantments, but with a trained ear thou would be able to hear it."

Groaning a little before giving off a sigh, Sapphire shook her head before she replied.

"I had a feeling he got himself in trouble again, that's probably what caused the guards to be on alert, not to worry Dante is most likely fixing things right now," Sapphire said and looked at Luna with a curious look. "So, what do you have against him, your highness?"

Knowing there was no way to change the subject with Sapphire, Luna took a glance towards her balcony then gave a short and simple answer. "He reminds us of ourselves."

Sapphire looked at the lunar princess with a confused expression as the words just registered. "Pardon?"

"He reminds us of ourselves when we were but a filly, way before we were banished to the moon," Luna repeated and looked back at the unicorn. "We'll give thou a few examples. He doesn't take orders from authorities, such as our sister and us. He acts rashly and improvises as he does what he sets his mind for, then he starts treating it as 'fun' or 'something to cure his boredom'. These are just two things to name a few of his potential dangers to others."

Shaking her head, Sapphire gave a small chuckle before she looked at Luna once more. "Really your highness, that's your reason?"

"What? Our reasons are valid, he keeps putting himself and possibly others in danger, Faust only knows he might be linked to some of the mysterious murders the royal guards started reporting a few months ago," Luna answered. "He's mysterious and doesn't talk about himself or what darkness might be hiding in him, you saw what happened during the gala."

"I understand your concern your highness, but I will be honest and say that you are judging him for being different," Sapphire pointed out. "He stood up instead of staying hidden and leave the mare to die. He ordered you to put up a barrier in case he lost. He saw the danger of his opponent when others didn't"

"Despite that little serious stance he took there, he should learn to not treat danger as a game and focus on what's at stake should he lose a battle," Luna scoffed and were fighting her building anger from the discussion about Hunter. "Now please, leave us be as we have nightmares to fight lady Sapphire."

Giving a small nod, Sapphire headed towards the double doors and exited out of Luna's chambers, leaving the lunar princess alone.

"We pray that Hunter isn't a piece of the past that is here to haunt us as punishment for what we did to Dante back then, it was troubling and bizarre times."

"...possible mutations? Magical accident? Binding ritual? Reincarnation spell? What's happened to him?!"

The sound of scribbling and rambling assumptions of Twilight Sparkle kept on going as she had failed to notice two of her best friends, Rarity and Applejack -with Rarity dressed in a pink bathrobe- had gone to check up on her where they found her trying to find a solution to some mysterious puzzle. A long paper trailed from across the floor with all types of theories as to what had happened to Hunter from what both the farm mare and fashionista could tell. Twilight was way obsessed over this, she even had that weird manestyle she had over the 'want it need it' incident.

"Twilight darling, don't you think you should get some rest dear?" Rarity asked worryingly as she noticed the bags under the eyes of her one of her closest friends.

"Rare's right Twi, ya could always look into this when ya'll aren't fighting off sleep," Applejack said as she walked over to the side of visibly tired alicorn.

Twilight, sitting at a small desk, -a quill dripping with ink was grasped in her magic with a candle as the only light source- had her eyes fixated on the piece of paper in front of her and all the words she had written down as if to come up with any logical theory about Hunter's change. Looking over her friend's shoulder, Applejack could see multiple words if not hundreds of words crossed over in various manners, be it vertically diagonally or simply crossed the words out entirely. Shaking her head, Applejack nudged Twilight enough to pull the alicorn out of her stupor.

"W-whu-?" Twilight asked as she looked around frantically before her eyes fell on Rarity and Applejack where she then sighed and gave an apologetic look to both the mares. "I did it again, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did darling," Rarity said and trapped the paper in her magical aura and rolled it neatly together. "Twilight dear, you need to rest and not fret over what happened to Hunter, despite it being rather alarming to see something like that."

"He's saved our hides for a second time, do ya honestly still think he has somethin' to hide from others?" Applejack asked, knowing full well that Twilight couldn't lie to the farm mare.

Looking Applejack in the eyes, Twilight lowered her gaze and sighed as if she had been caught with her hoof in the cookie jar and was about to punished for it. Twilight wanted to lie, tell her friends it wasn't that big of a deal, and that it was mainly her trying to piece together the whole transformation Hunter went through. That would've been the easy answer had Applejack not been there.

"I... don't think he wants anypony to know anything about him." Twilight honestly answered, albeit being hesitant about it. "He seems to be a good pony, but doesn't want to embrace the magic of friendship fully, something I've never heard a pony push so far away from oneself, it's like he's fighting his own mind."

"Maybe ask that there Dante fellow about Hunter?" AJ suggested. "He did say that Hunter grew up with him."

"But that will have to wait until you've gotten some sleep darling," Rarity said and shot Twilight a worried look. "You're on the verge of falling asleep and I will not have you skip out on beauty sleep, let alone just the sleep in general."

Twilight gave a little giggle at the last part of Rarity's words before letting out a yawn as if to tell her it was time for some rest. This wasn't the first and probably not the last time Twilight would be caught up in trying to find the logic behind something, only to be found by her friends or Spike a few hours later who would then snap her out of it thankfully.

"You're right. Thanks for checking up on me girls," Twilight said and gave let out a sigh. "I'm just worried about all of the things that have happened over these last few days."

"We all are Twi," Applejack said and put a gentle hoof on the alicorn's shoulder. "We all are."

Sighing deeply, Sapphire had returned to Dante's room where she was currently sitting in one of the couches in the room, sipping on a glass of water as she was trying to calm her nerves. Hunter had gone missing from the medical wing, a group of guards rushing towards what is most likely Hunter's doing. He was hurt from last night and he shouldn't be doing what he was doing, especially with that stab wound. The more Sapphire thought about it the more it worried her to no end.

Pushing the thoughts aside for just a little to try and stay somewhat calm, Sapphire decided to look at the magazine she had found laying on Dante's face when she came with the news of Hunter's disappearance earlier that night.

Engulfing the magazine in her magic, Sapphire levitated it over to her and skimmed through the pages. It was nothing but one of those gossip magazines with ridiculous advertisements, like products to increase your endurance for your herd's pleasure or something like that. The magazine was crumbled and got violently thrown into the garbage bin next to the desk in an instant, as nothing good ever came from reading the gossip stories journalists made or harassed ponies for.

Sapphire panted heavily, a bad memory emerged from her head of gossip involving her had spread around a few years ago. None of it was true, her words were turned against her, it made her look bad in everypony's eyes.

"I should've destroyed the camera back then, at least now it's mainly forgotten, thank goodness," Sapphire told herself as she put a hoof to her forehead, trying and subdue the thoughts of doing horrible things to a certain pair of journalists, should she find them again.

Taking a few deep breaths, Sapphire felt her composure return and her panting had returned to normal breathing. She took a look back at the garbage bin and saw it had tipped over from the magazine violently being thrown into it. Sapphire would blame it on her worry for Hunter and the way a memory resurfaced caused her to act like this, completely out of character.

Despite being able to use her magic to fix the mess, Sapphire jumped off of the couch and used her hooves to clean up. Most unicorns would probably have frowned upon her and wonder why she was using her hooves instead of magic, but to Sapphire, it gave her body some sort of balance, thus not making her have to rely on magic at all times.

Having put the magazine and the other piece of garbage in the bin, Sapphire put the bin in its place standing upright and noticed out of the corner of her eye a drawer opened ajar from the desk Dante was sitting at earlier. Did Sapphire accidentally open it when the garbage bin was violently knocked over or had it always been open but she just never noticed it until now? Either way, Sapphire's curiosity got the better of her and she opened the drawer fully and all she saw was a single picture. Levitating the picture up to her face, Sapphire took note of the red text in the bottom right corner of the picture that read, '"One happy family"' - Hunter'.

The picture had Hunter and Dante in it with five other humans, all smiling and being cheerful. Aside from Hunter and Dante, there was a black-haired human in a white shirt, further back were two other humans Sapphire had never seen before, one had white hair like Dante and Hunter and the other with auburn hair. The human with white hair wore a very darkened blue coat with a red vest underneath with dark blue pants to match, while the one with auburn hair had a white dress of some kind. Another human had long blonde hair and wore black leather pants and corset, revealing more skin than any of the others. The final human was sitting on Hunter's back, its hair was black and wore a green hoodie with a pair of blue jeans, and it seemed happier than any of the others.

"You know, I didn't take you for the snooping type lady." A voice piped in.

Accidentally letting the picture loose from her magical grasp as she visibly recoiled from the voice, Sapphire turned her attention to the newcomer and saw Dante with a passed out Hunter being carried on the human's shoulder.

"D-Dante! Hi there!" Sapphire greeted him with a nervous smile. "You and Hunter are both alright I see."

Dante shook his head a little and put Hunter onto his back on one of the couches and gently putting a hand on the stallion's forehead.

"Hunter's been better but he'll come around," Dante said without looking at the mare. "So, I see you found a pleasant memory from a few years ago."

"Yeah, you and Hunter with all of those other humans seemed happy," Sapphire said as she picked up the picture she dropped and put it on the desk. "I can only imagine they're missing you, back wherever you are, but this also brings me to question what you and Hunter have been through."

Dante sighed and turned his head towards Sapphire and had a saddened look on his face, the look made Sapphire regret asking the question, but it had already been asked.

"Listen, there are things I can answer but there are some that you have to ask Hunter about," Dante said and walked over to the desk and mare behind it, with Dante putting his hand on the picture. "I can tell you about all the adventures me and Hunter have been on and how we met all of those people, but don't ask me about this girl got it?"

Sapphire looked at the picture and saw Dante's index finger was now pointing at the girl sitting on Hunter's back, the black-haired human. Sapphire looked back up at Dante and nodded in understanding.

"Then tell me about the other human with white hair and how you and Hunter met him," Sapphire said. "It seems like a stupid observation but, both you and Hunter have white hair or a white mane, not only that but there's a faint glow in his right sleeve, so does that mean he has powers like you two?."

Dante gave a light chuckle and walked over to the free couch with the picture in hand and sat down in on the couch, beckoning Sapphire to sit next to him.

"Not a bad observation there Sapphire," Dante congratulated the mare as she was walking over. "You wanna know more about my nephew Nero it seems. Boy oh boy was that something for sure."