"Now, I know this is uncharacteristic of me, dear... but let's remain calm." Rarity gently stroked over Bright's head. "We need to know more first. Why... If this affects all creatures of the night, well..." She narrowed her eyes. "I hate it, but it may be good for ponykind. Ah, the sweet conflicting needs as both a vampony, and an agent sworn to combat evils of the night..."

Bright took a brief pause as a chance to scuttle up onto Rarity's back, squeezing her with his legs. "Well... How do we test that? I don't want to see you pouting, so I'm all in on fixing it."

"Precious thing." She turned to nuzzle his belly before trotting free of that stinky alleyway. "I'm already feeling better. Ah, Manehattan..." She circled slowly, just taking in the dazzling lights. "A marvelous city... A part of me always wanted to have a store here, among the glamour and glitz."

Bright took one of Rarity's ears in his grip, rubbing the way they had met, calming and soothing her with gentle applications of his fingers. "Could still happen, Rares. I bet it'd be great."

"From your lips to Harmony's ears..." Rarity sighed with enjoyment at the rubs. "But we're getting no closer. Now... I propose, we see if it is the lights, first. Even the alley there had some light in it. You can't avoid it in the big city, dear..."

Bright scrunched his fuzzy face thoughtfully as Rarity waited expectantly for suggestions on experimentally verifying the strange phenomenon's actual relationship with ambient light levels.

"Hmm...if it really is tied to brightness, maybe we try finding the darkest spot around and seeing if your bat-shift works better?" He glanced consideringly between soaring skyscrapers and dazzling marquees blazing neon glory against the night.

"Though that might not be so easy in the big unresting city... Maybe duck inside somewhere without windows and turn off overhead bulbs?" Even pragmatic Bright sounded dubiously anticipating their reception trying to deliberately plunge some posh patron parlor into darkness.

Ears perking up, Bright pawed excitedly at a promising idea. "Ooh I know! C'mon!" He pointed towards an unassuming storefront cater-corner from their alley perch. "Let's dip into the cinema, find a nice horror flick, and you do your thing once they kill the lights for the previews! We can test the darkness hypothesis and still look like we're just there to take in a show!"

The fact their supposed critical mission now revolved around finding optimum conditions for Rarity to shapeshift with minimal embarrassment failed to diminish Bright's visible enthusiasm for this improvisational experiment.

Rarity considered the cinema a moment before clapping her hooves together. "Marvelous! We can be normal patrons until the moment is right... Come along then!" She set off in long purposeful strides towards the theatre. "You'll be buying the tickets then?"

"What kind of gentlestallion would I be if I didn't treat a lovely lady fair?" Bright grinned and pulled a tiny top hat seemingly from nowhere to doff with courtly flair.

"Two for the latest fright feature if you'd be so kind, my good sir!" Bright adopted a theatrically posh accent to the bored teen working the box office. "Premium seating for maximum immersive adrenaline of course -" he fired finger guns towards giant posters for something called Blood Moon Rising 3: Hybrid's Revenge.

Rejoining a gently smirking Rarity inside, he leaned to whisper "What luck finding such a...festively thematic film hmm?" Bright waggled his eyebrows towards suggestively alluring movie posters featuring the eponymous vampiric antagonist pursuing the protagonist with unspoken yet evident desire. "At least we'll have proper atmosphere for experiment's conditions!"

Rarity tittered softly as she eased into the plush seat of the theater. "Indeed. Make yourself comfortable." She looked around at the other patrons shuffling about for their own seats. "And try to behave. We're being watched."

Bright was the one being watched, ponies glancing at him curiously on the way towards their seats. One filly broke away from their caretaker to investigate personally. "Are you a creature?" she asked with a big smile that likely made those who knew her melt.

Bright blinked softly. "Um?"

Rarity put a hoof ahead of Bright. "Creature, any critter that can speak. He is one of those, little dear."

"I talk all the time." Bright flashed a silly grin. "What's up?"

The filly squealed in a giggle, dancing in place. "Neat! What's your name... mister?"

"Bright, nice to meet you." He offered a hand.

But the shake never happened, the filly's mother drawing her away. "Sorry about that." She led her child off and away.

Rarity tittered quietly. "You get along with foals just fine... Might be useful for the future, hm?"

Bright nodded before the implications settled on him and he blushed. "Rares..."

The lights dimmed around them. Rarity gasped. "Time." But her shapeshifting proved just as muddled. Instead of becoming a sleek and refined night hound, she had a small night puppy at either side of her, and she was still a pony. "Hmm... oh dear..."

Bright bit his lip trying and failing to restrain a hopeless "Aww!" at the sight of elegant Rarity now flanked by a pair of boofy bat-winged puppies squirming and yipping softly in the cinema darkness. Even his vampony's slight miffed embarrassment at her lingering magical mishaps couldn't eclipse the preciousness of mini monstrous canines now clambering eagerly into her lap.

"No no, down this instant, you scamps!" Rarity hissed under her breath, torn between not drawing further attention and preventing Dark Fangs and Crimson from tussling loudly over positioning. She shot a pleading look Bright's direction. "Don't just moon there looking darling, give an auntie a hoof here!"

"Oops, you got it!" Bright helped gently disentangle the two playfully nipping pups from Rarity's immaculate coiffe and onto the seat between them. Tiny tails wagged with hypnotic swiftness creating subtle drafts.

Bright couldn't tear his enchanted gaze from teeny glinting fangs and little lolling tongues as the pups settled. "Um right, strictly professional scientific observation going on now..." he managed faintly, willpower fast crumbling before their puppy pile's preciousness.

Rarity just managed to withhold further undignified squeaks herself at overflowing fluffy cuteness now smothering her familiar's last defenses. She discreetly peppered both pups' furry heads with adoring kisses between surveying the theater for reactions.

"Well, at least every eye remains aimed at the screen not our menagerie..." She winked sideways at entranced Bright. "Now then darling, shall you help gather data on our unplanned fluffy variables, or are they too distracting for duty's stern call?"

"I have just the thing!" He pulled out a leash with a glint in his eyes. Soon he had them both attached to it and hopped down to the floor, drawing them along. "Be right back." He gently pulled the puppies along, grateful that they were just puppies. He had a good idea that full grown dogs would have been pulling him instead.

The moment he emerged into the light of the foyer, a pony was on him, dressed in the colors of the theatre. "Excuse me. No pets allowed." He pointed to a sign that showed the outline of a dog on a leash with a big slash through it.

"Sorry, heading out, promise." Bright gave his best smile as he hurried past the stallion for the door. "We'll be right out of your mane."

Back in the theatre, Rarity blinked in surprise as Bright's hasty retreat left her alone amidst engrossed patrons enraptured by cinematic spectacle. For an indulgent moment she let vision and sound alike recede, musing on margins crossed by her erstwhile familiar's brash show now doubtlessly dazzling some hapless attendant guarding mundane propriety against perceived interlopers.

Ah, but to live wrapped securely by convention's soothing bounds denying darker dreams' encroachment! Rarity sighed, rising to glide silently after her enthusiastically ejected entourage. She spared the screen but a single lingering glance as scream's echoed chasing manipulated pulses racing for distraction's fleeting refuge. What rich irony now stood revealed - out there perched promise, in here yawned abyss.

The theater doors had scarcely shut, shutting out Bright's protest, before Rarity emerged under garish lights finding Bright and a crossly looming manager demanding dogged departure of unlicensed pets posthaste.

"Do forgive the innocent misunderstanding, dear sir!" Rarity smoothly interposed her graceful form, smiling disarmingly up at the bristling fellow built like an overstuffed bulldog himself. "We are visiting from distant lands where cinema houses host all manner of exotic companions."

She indicated the politely wagging pups sitting to attention under hopelessly smitten Bright's adoring gaze as the manager peered critically downward. "I daresay once the cultural context became apparent, none here would hesitate welcoming such darling well-bred creatures merely longing like yourselves to enjoy a taste of Harmony's artistry, yes?"

Rarity subtly leaned forward, voice lilting hypnotically. "Surely exceptions exist for preserving goodwill across borders however unforeseen?" She held the skeptical stallion's glare a breath longer before his expression reluctantly softened a degree. Rarity flowed smoothly from persuasion to departure.

"But come - let us not further disrupt local custom!" She swept towards the doors, bright-furred parade trailing obediently behind so unlike her prior cinema departure. "Another time then!" Rarity called lightly over one shoulder, gemstones glinting. "Do enjoy the rest of a frightfully magical evening, sir!"

Bright pulled at his new puppers. "So... Do we, what, keep them forever now?"

Rarity squinted at the problem even as she welcomed the dogs into her arms, petting both. "Well... Hm." But before she could finish that thought, both began to pull towards a new alley. "What's gotten into them, dear?"

"No idea." But Bright let them lead the way for a change, down into the dimmer stretch of the alley. This one smelled better than the last. It was a darker place, relatively speaking.

And the dogs vanished, evaporating into the night energy that had formed them.

Rarity inclined her head at the vanishing pooches. "Is that what happened to the bats? Hm... Part of me is sad for them, another is... dreadfully confused, darling. In both cases that should have been me, transformed, not... making other things." she glanced to be sure they were as alone as they could be. "But this proves it isn't the light."

"Well, then what is it..." Bright noticed a glimmer. "Hey." The faint trail of what was left of the dogs. "Check that out." He could see it was moving, seeping into the ground. "I think we have a hint right here..."

Rarity's nostrils flared as she inhaled sharply, keen vampiric senses igniting as she spotted the ephemeral trail only Bright's hybrid sight apparently shared evidence of. "A leyline?" she breathed, horn instinctively tracing runic analysis sigils through the air over the delicate glow.

"A channel for magical potencies, akin to meridian flows in a living subject." Her focus remained locked intently on untangling the shimmering streamers' shifting hues and oscillating harmonies as reality's underlying energies coursed inches below unaware hooves. "But what subtle alteration here in Manehattan might distort the conduits so?"

Ethereal diagrams swirled reflecting the subtle clues gleaned regarding the unseen network tying Equestria's arcane anatomy together, mapping power's paths just out of mortal perceptions. "How intriguing...this city's ambitious developers must have damaged or improperly gridded this region's conduits with their monolithic architecture!" Rarity declared. "All these imposing towers and flashy stages leak wild magic askew!"

She extinguished her arcane display with a satisfied toss of her head. "Well now! Isn't that a tidy revelation from this evening's sleuthing?" Rarity smirked at her familiar in renewed confidence. "Come the morn we'll report the bureaucrats bungled subterranean flows and leaching excess now plays havoc on those attuned to its waves...like local nightfolk finding shifts awry!"

The vampony mimed inspecting her hoof smugly. "You'd swear they never consulted appropriate mystics vetting disturbance of the land's ancient channels... Fancy a midnight restore project shall soon see all neatly realigned?" Rarity winked coyly at Bright. "Chaos contained and Rarity's vampiric cachet intact once more!"

"I'm with ya!" Bright snapped a dynamic pose before starting ahead. "One thing... What if this isn't an accident?"

Author's Note

Time to head... down? 18/29

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