"Well, this is something else," Midnight Sky muttered, looking around the blood-stained bathroom in disgust. "Who could've done this?"

"Nopony that I'm aware of," Princess Twilight said, looking around at the blood. "I've never seen a murder this brutal before."

Twilight and an entire team of investigators had been summoned to survey the crime scene. Twilight had wanted Sky to accompany her, as she knew how... experienced he was in this. Sky crouched down over the severed limbs of the Earth Pony mare.

"Slashed clean through the arteries," he muttered. "But that alone didn't kill her. She bled to death."

Cameras flashed, as the investigators took pictures of every inch of the crime scene.

"Princess Twilight, Midnight Sky, you'll need to see this," a voice said from behind them.

They turned, and beheld Evening Star standing beside them.

"What is it?" Twilight asked, hurriedly.

"We broke through their security systems... you need to see it," she said.

Evening Star led them through the house, to the room where the security systems of the household were regulated.

"We have alarm data and limited video footage," she informed them. "We have no idea what to make of it. In fact... it's impossible."

She clicked on one of the files. Alarm information and history appeared on the screen.

"Installed 6424 AC, active four years..." Sky muttered, reading the file aloud. "Blah blah blah... Last night. Alarm... armed?"

"Never even triggered," Evening Star nodded. "Whoever did this could've gotten in before the system was set, but there's no way they could have gotten back out. But that's not all."

She closed the info file, and opened a video file. It showed a dark bedroom, and a colt fast asleep.

"What kind of parents put cameras in their kid's bedroom?" Sky asked. No one responded.

Then the colt sat up. He opened the closet door, and began speaking.

"No audio?" Twilight asked. Evening Star shook her head.

"Well, it definitely looks like he's talking to someone," Twilight said, tilting her head.

"But there's nopony there," Evening Star said, with another nod.

"Imaginary friend?" Twilight suggested. "He's young enough to have one."

"I don't know," Evening Star frowned, "It's a bit suspicious, given the circumstances."

"Is that all?" Sky asked. Evening Star nodded.

"Thank you," Twilight said, as they left the room.

"What do you think?" Sky asked.

"I don't know," Twilight said, deep in thought. "There's not a lot that could explain this..."

"Is... is it down my Dad's line?" Sky asked, tentatively.

"...At this point, I don't know," Twilight said. "There isn't enough evidence to confirm that yet."

They re-entered the bathroom where the murder had occurred.

"What was the time of death?" Twilight asked the forensics pony nearby.

"I'd say about 12:40 last night," the pony replied.

"Wait," Sky said, in a sudden moment of inspiration. "Do they have a temperature regulation system?"

"The whole family was earth ponies," Twilight pointed out. "It's highly likely they do."

Sky ran out of the bathroom again, searching the walls of the house. He quickly found a touchscreen panel on the wall. Twilight caught up with him moments later.

"I need a computer," Sky muttered. Then, remembering he had one, he summoned his laptop out of his magic storage. He took the touchscreen panel on the wall in his magic grip, and ripped it off of the wall, revealing the panel with a few wires behind.

"Sky, what are you doing?" Twilight asked curiously, but he didn't respond.

"I need a USB head and some wires," he announced loudly. After a minute, a pony from the investigative team appeared with both objects in hoof.

"Everypony cover your eyes," Sky commanded, summoning a welding mask out of nowhere. He connected the wires that he needed to, and cut the ones from the wall that had plugged into the touchscreen panel. In a bright flash of light, the wires melded together, and he used magic to properly connect the innards.

"You're safe to look now," he announced as his welding mask vanished. He took his makeshift USB cable and plugged it into the laptop. After a few minutes of terminal work, he had the full details of the temperature system open in a command line.

"Why couldn't you have just used the panel?" Twilight asked, slightly amused at how Sky had "hacked" into the system.

"Not detailed enough," Sky muttered, focusing on his work. His eyes widened a moment later. "For starters, it wouldn't have told me this."

He turned the screen so Twilight could see.

"Twelve-degree cold spike," Sky pointed out. "Right at the estimated time of death."

Twilight's eyes widened, as Sky raised an eyebrow.

"Still not enough evidence to be down my Dad's line?"

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A private funeral was held as soon as the detective work had finished on the body. Taio's mother was dead, and his younger brother was missing. Princess Twilight had declared him dead as well, given the circumstances.

The private funeral was low in attendance, as it was private. The only ones present were Taio, Sky, Princess Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Gale, and a very hung-over Ventus. It was a pretty dismal funeral, but then again, what funeral isn't dismal?

A particularly downcast group of friends made their way home the following day. None of them really talked as Sky drove home a bit slower than usual.

"...I can't believe this," Ventus muttered, finally fully restored from the drinks. "Taio's family murdered during the Gala... I need another drink."

No one replied. Taio, eyes puffy and red, was still staring out of the window. Gale was playing a mindless video game, trying to keep his mind off things. Sky drove down the road, with a dark expression on his face, holding his silence.

They arrived home soon thereafter, and the four made their way inside. Taio, without talking to anyone, retreated to his bedroom and locked the door. Ventus got ready to leave for work, as he would be working Taio's shifts alongside his own. Sky disappeared upstairs, muttering something about research.

Gale also retreated to his room, and flopped onto his beanbag. He exhaled deeply, letting the tension that had been building out. He needed something to do. He had a week off from the production studio, as he and Vinyl saw no need to jump right in immediately after producing such a big hit. Between the stress of getting that single finished so quickly and the horrible events with Taio's family, he needed something mindless to distract him.

Sitting up, he looked towards the TV. The Mask of Death was still sitting there in the N64, untouched for several days now.

"Why not?" Gale shrugged. He stood up, grabbed his controller, and flicked the on switch.

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Sky drove his sports car through Canterlot, navigating the streets with some difficulty. It was rush hour, after all, and everyone was headed to work. Sky, however, was not. Being as far up as he was in EquestriaBroadcast, he could get time off when he needed it.

He drove for nearly an hour, before finally coming to a stop before a hospital in the outskirts of the city. He got out, staring at the front entrance. Taking a deep breath, he walked forward and pushed open the doors.

He walked down the sterile hallways and entered straight into an office towards the back. The pony in a white lab coat sitting behind the desk looked up in surprise.

"Oh, hello Midnight Sky," the doctor said, taken aback. "Here to do a systems check?"

"Not today," Sky said, with a stern look on his face. "I'm here to see him."

"Oh..." The doctor's face fell slightly. "Ok. Follow me."

Sky tailed the doctor out of the office, and through a door marked "Employees Only." They descended down into the lower level of the hospital.

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Gale swore as he watched the clock at the bottom of the screen.

"Only two hours left... buck."

In this game, you had a three day time limit to accomplish whatever you needed to accomplish. He was only about halfway done with the dungeon he was in, and there was only two hours left until he received Game Over, and the progress of the current timeline reset.

"There's gotta be something I can do..." Gale muttered, thinking hard. He vaguely recalled a trick he had heard about once called the "Fourth Day Glitch." He couldn't quite recall the details, but the name sounded promising. He paused the game, and moved over to his desktop computer, searching the internet. He quickly found the result he was looking for, from a site called "MoDspeedruns.com." It not only described the glitch in detail, but it showed a video on how to do it.

Gale returned to the game, and quickly warped out of the dungeon and to the area where the glitch could be performed. He wanted to try it so that he could finish the dungeon he was in. He looked through the astronomer pony's telescope just as there was ten game-time seconds left on the clock, and just as the timer was about to expire, he exited the telescope.

The screen, instead of loading the Game Over cutscene when the time ran out, faded to black. Gale was ecstatic. He had pulled the glitch off on the first try, and as soon as the game reloaded, he could finish his dungeon.

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"He's still in here?" Sky asked, staring at the door before him.

"There's little point to moving someone who's in solitary," the doctor said sadly. "I wish we could help him more."

"Am I safe to go in?" Sky asked.

"Yes," the doctor said. "If he gets too out-of-hoof, we will intervene. Be careful."

Sky closed his eyes and, after taking another deep breath, he pulled the door open.

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Gale was back in front of his desktop, searching through MoDspeedruns with a hint of impatience. The game was supposed to continue directly after you exited the astronomer's telescope, but it had been on this black screen for a full minute. He couldn't find anything, and he assumed the game had soft-locked. Frustrated that he had lost all progress in the dungeon, he flopped back onto the beanbag.

"I'll give it another thirty seconds," he decided. Maybe the game was just lagging a bit because it was bootlegged, and had never been glitched like this before. He picked up the controller and sat, staring at the screen, counting down the time in his head.

Sure enough, the game resumed. But he didn't find himself back out of the telescope like he should have been.

Instead, he found himself in the boss fight room at the end of the game, staring at the colt wearing the Mask of Death floating above him. There was no sound aside from the background music, the somewhat-creepy music of the final boss fight.

"What the hell?" Gale said, as his hooves began sweating. Nothing he had seen on the internet said that this was even remotely possible. How had he ended up at the end of the game?

He tried moving around the area, but there was no way he could get out. The colt wearing the mask rotated with the camera, staring straight at Gale, never saying anything, never attacking. After a full two minutes of this, Gale decided the bootlegged game must have glitched horribly, and he reached for the RESET button.

Before he could reach it, a text box appeared on the screen.

You're not sure why, but you apparently had a reservation...

Gale recognized the dialogue immediately. It was a message you would get when you checked into the hotel back in town. Buy why was it playing here?

He moved around the area, seeing if there was anything he had missed that he could interact with. But less than twenty seconds later, another text box appeared.

Go to the lair of the Temple's Boss?

Yes

No

Gale stopped for a second, trying to decide what to do. He tried to press No, but then realized the option was greyed out and wouldn't do anything. Taking a deep breath, he selected Yes instead. The screen faded to white, and the text "Dawn of a New Day" appeared, which was normal to the fourth day glitch. But instead of carrying the subtext "72 Hours Remaining" as was normal, it simply read "||||||||||."

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Sky walked towards the center of the all-white room, towards the metal chair in the center. On the metal chair sat a dark-grey stallion. He was a pegasus, who looked muscular. He was seemingly muttering to himself. Sky cautiously approached him.

"Hey there, Cordon."

The stallion looked up. His eyes were unfocused, grey. He seemed to have difficulty focusing his gaze.

"...Sky?" he rasped, in a deep, hoarse voice.

"Yup, it's me, little bro," Sky replied, smiling gently. "It's your brother."

"...No you're not," Cordon snarled, his voice suddenly becoming much clearer. "You're an imposter."

"Nope, Cordon, it's me," Sky said, taking a half-step backward.

"Sky isn't a demon," Cordon spat, still glaring at him.

"I'm not a demon," Sky replied gently, years of experience with dealing with this at his back. "I'm your brother."

"My brother isn't tainted with dark aura," Cordon snarled, still unwilling to believe it was Sky before him. "Your aura is black."

"What do you mean?" Sky asked, surprised. This was not normally something that Cordon said to him.

"Don't pretend you can hide from me," Cordon snarled even more menacingly. "I can see you riding in my brother's glow. I can see you!"

"See who, Cordon?" Sky asked, starting to panic on the inside. This was definitely not normal. "What's there?"

"They'll just think I'm crazy," Cordon said, panting. "They told me I don't see things that aren't there anymore. They told me I always see the truth now. I see you there, leeching off my brother. You've got a nasty feeling to you, but you speak to me. You can't hide from me."

Cordon's eyes focused on Sky at last, but it wasn't the look Sky normally got when Cordon was done ranting. It was a look of pure hatred, pure loathing, pure adrenaline.

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM, DEVIL!" Cordon screamed.

In a swift motion, the bands holding him to the chair snapped, and Cordon let out a guttural, wild-animal-like roar as he flew forward at Sky.

Before Sky could react, the room was lit in blinding light as at least eight unicorns teleported in at once. One of them, who had appeared right in front of Sky, grabbed him with a hoof, and they teleported out again. Sky gasped as he landed on the floor, just outside of the door, right next to the head doctor who had escorted him down here. The doctor's face had fallen even more.

"And here we thought he was getting better..." the doctor trailed off. "It's too bad. He's started seeing illusions again. He's regressed."

Sky wasn't listening. He stood there, staring at the door with his eyes wide. That wasn't at all like anything he had ever experienced with his younger brother. Normally, he could talk Cordon out of seeing things that weren't there in him. But this time, he had completely ignored him. Sky was left with a crushing, unanswered question.

Had Cordon really regressed that much, or did it mean something else?

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As the "||||||||||" subtext vanished, Gale's hooves began trembling. His thoughts turned dark, and felt an inexplicable feeling of intense depression. He was not normally a depressed pony, and the feelings he now harbored were on such a deep scale that he had never imagined it could have existed.

This time, I strongly recommend listening to this background music as you read.

He walked out of the spawn point for the time-reset in Mask of Death to find that all of the NPCs had vanished. From what he had seen of the fourth day glitch, they were normally still there like always. But now they were gone. Instead, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he had the ominous feeling that something else had replaced the NPCs, something lurking in the same area as Gale and watching his every move.

Gale only had five hearts and a bow and arrow, but somehow, he wasn't too concerned for the safety of his player. He felt that he himself was in danger. It was absurd; it was just a video game. How could he be in any real danger?

But the feeling didn't leave him. The background music didn't help; it was different than normal. It sounded eerily familiar, even as it sent new waves of shivers down his spine. Soon, he worked out what it was. It sounded like a song from the game called the "Song of Healing," except it was being played in reverse. It would also slowly grow in volume, making him believe something was about to pop out, only to fade back out with nothing happening.

Every so often, Gale heard the echoes of the laugh of the Happy Mask Salespony in the background, just quiet enough that he couldn't tell whether or not he was imagining it. Gale, still trembling, moved through all four areas of town, only to find nothing, and no one. Textures were missing. The western part of town hadn't loaded the ground, and you were seemingly walking through the air. The entire game just felt... broken. Hopelessly broken.

Gale tried to escape the town, but every time he tried, he would simply appear in a different area of town. He tried warping out, only to be met with the text:

Your notes echo far, but nothing happens.

Gale felt, rather crazily, that the game itself didn't want him to leave. He didn't want to enter any of the buildings; he would feel an even more ominous chill every time he tried, and always ended up doubling back. There was only one thing left to try. He knew that his character couldn't swim that well. Maybe if he tried to drown himself in the laundry pool, he could spawn somewhere else.

As he approached the Laundry Pool, the game took an even worse turn. In a flash, the screen changed for a split second to the image of the Happy Mask Salespony, smiling. At the same moment, the scream of the colt wearing the Mask of Death rang out in an enormously amplified burst. Gale jumped with a yell, almost flinging the controller across the room in his fright. When the screen returned to normal, Gale found himself in first-person view, staring right at something that had appeared. It was a copy of himself, a statue that appeared when you played a song you obtained late-game. It was an eerie statue, however. Its gaze was much darker, much scarier than Gale's avatar. It wore a smile on its face that didn't seem too imposing, but got creepier the longer you looked.

Unable to help himself, Gale screamed. In a button-mashing frenzy, he moved his avatar as quickly as possible away from the statue. But to his horror, the statue followed. It appeared in his path wherever he went in the green ray of light that always accompanied it. Gale finally ran to the swordsman dojo in the western part of town, taking refuge in the back, determined to hide from the statue. But as he turned around, there it was still, right in his face. Now practically in hysterics, Gale tried attacking it, which did nothing. He just stood there, waiting for the statue to cast a fatal blow to his avatar.

The screen flashed to the Happy Mask Salespony again, and when it returned, Gale's avatar was staring right out of the screen at him.

Now with the definite feeling that he himself was being attacked, Gale commanded his avatar out of the dojo. Instead of finding himself in the west part of town, he was in an underground tunnel, and the reverse Song of Healing started up again. Gale was given about ten seconds of recuperation before the statue appeared again. This time it followed him even more aggressively, popping up in front of him every two seconds. He ran out of the tunnel and found himself in the south end of town. As he took a few steps away from the statue, the game seemed to freeze, and with the scream of an undead pony, the screen returned yet again to the text:

Dawn of a New Day
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Gale found himself back where he had started in this mess; the endgame arena. The colt wearing the Mask of Death was floating above him once more. The reverse Song of Healing had been replaced by a reverse version of the Death Canyon area of the game. In a last ditch effort to protect himself, Gale pulled out his bow and fired at the colt. Nothing happened.

Upon firing a second time, to Gale's surprise, the colt was hit. Convinced he could beat this twisted, hell-bent enemy, Gale fired a third arrow. The colt blocked it, with the response:

That won't do you any good. Hee, hee.

Straight after this, Gale's avatar was lifted into the air, and burst into flames, instantly dead. Gale jumped as the scream of his avatar's death rang through his ears. This was a move that had never been used by ANYONE in the game. The text "Game Over" appeared, with the colt's twisted laugh playing on loop. After ten seconds of this, the screen faded to black.

Once again, Gale was beneath the colt. He decided to charge him, but Gale's avatar was lifted into the air by the same unknown force and again burned.

On the third time, the new music had vanished, and the game was silent, which Gale somehow found even more eerie. He thought back to what was supposed to happen here, and recalled that you have to play a song. He attempted to play the song to reset time, but before he could play the last note, his instrument playing was cut short and he burst into flames again.

As this third death screen neared its end, the game began to freeze up and slowly move, as if it was trying to load something massive. When it finally appeared, it was the same scene as the last three times, but this time, Gale’s player was already lying on the ground. His head was twisted at an impossible angle, looking right out at Gale. He couldn’t move his player, and none of the buttons did anything. After a few moments, the screen faded to black, and the scene from his nightmare when he had first obtained the game repeated itself.

My little pony… you’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?

The game returned to the file select screen. Gale’s file was gone. Instead, it had been replaced with a 10% completed file called “YOUR TURN.” Gale selected the file and played it, returning to the same scene for the fifth time. This time, the colt wearing the Mask laughed, and the laugh was on loop. Unable to listen to it any further, Gale smashed the reset button. The file select screen returned, and along with “YOUR TURN,” the file named “CK” that had been there was back. It was in the exact same state as it had been before Gale erased it.

Gale, finally returning to his senses, turned the power on the N64 to off. Sweating, weak, and unable to move, he could only sit, eyes wide, with the horrifying experience dominating his mind.

Author's Note

Heh heh heh heh.

I had fun writing this, even though a lot of it was just a transcription from BEN Drowned. It was still fun.
So I think I'm back! See you guys again soon.