Vraska was pressing against the wall, silently stalking her target, so flamboyantly brilliant before her.

"P-please, stop! I'll do anything you want!" begged the man on the floor.

"Do what I want!? You despicable mongrel! You think I am doing this because I want a weak minded agreement towards my will!? For that, here's another one!"

The Izzet madman then shoved another sandwich down the man's throat. It was filled with many bizarre spicy condiments, magically enhanced to be ardent in touch, which made the poor man cry bitter tears as he chewed. Vraska thought of the treatment barbaric, so she mentally took a note.

Suddenly, Tamiyo landed before then, in front of Vraska.

"Excuse me, do you mind helping me solve a case? I promise I'll pay you well for it."

"What is this!? A murderous gorgon of dubious Golgari-ness and an ugly moon-rabbit girl of otherworldly sandals!? Unacceptable!"

The madman then charged his gauntlets, motioning in twitching, violent motions for lightning to gather around him. A lot of the plasma went to machinery in his head, making his eyes glow an eerie blue light, and with a finger snap powerful and enormous bolts stroke everywhere, frying the sandwitch-consuming man alive and electrocuting the air around him intensely. Tamiyo created an aether bubble around herself and Vraska, who was reaching towards ancient sewer-swamps, subterranean parks and Golgari rot farms, pooling shadow-like, yet wild energy within herself, forming a reservoir on her internal organs. The madman kept throwing lightning around, giggling like a little boy and dancing to beats undecipharable to anyone but him, turning his back on them.

"I do not think he is even aware of us anymore" muttered Tamiyo.

Vraska said nothing, instead extending her hands calmly, letting the mana flow through her arms in torrents that felt like water long stagnated, now flowing in a river. With flowing, slow motions, the spell was released, and the twicthing Izzet stopped in his tracks, a black tree emerging from his mouth, roots erupting from his body in all directions and trapping his bleeding body to the ground. With some final, desesperate convulsions, the man was dead. Tamiyo undid the bubble, and cleared the air of stactic with simple circular motions of her fingers. Vraska grabbed her, staring straight at her eyes, but she remained unpetrified.

"Oh, I have made sure you could not turn me to stone. Sensible precautions, I suppose."

"You've nearly cost me my prize. Your proposal has to afford me a fortune if you wish to live."

"I assure you that you will be rewarded plenty."

Vraska's face was rather difficult to decipher for the soratami, but she seemed calmer.

"Meet me at sunset at Zonot One. Give me the details then."

She then walked away towards the madman corpse. She grabbed the head, trying to cut off the skull from the lower jaw with a knife.

"Do you require help with that?"

Vraska grunted. The head machinery fell from the Izzet's head, and sent one last powerful blast of eletricity up Vraska's leg. She twiched rigidly, her head tendrils flailing wildly while she gritted her teeth. The shock ended quickly, with fumes coming out of her skin.

"...yes."

While Tamiyo had been in post-Jace-Guildpact Ravnica for a while, she never ceased to be amazed at the inovations of the Simic. For example, that day papyrus-like anemones were created, emerging from the somber, swampy waters in buddles, each tentacle ending in an eye to cry gut-wrenching tears of unambiguous depression. Between them flew a devil-cockatoo-poodle, poking the eyes to make them cry more, grinning like a child bullying his/her sibling. It flew towards Tamiyo and poked at her ears and throwed putrid, mossy mud at her face, but she simply summoned a monstruous heron-like kami that devoured the evil abomination. It had many smaller wisps that resembled horrifically mutilated human faces, grinning inoccently. The kami flew through the air, sending the wisps to kiss the anemone eyes, which quickly brightened up and cried tears of joy, filling the water with curative properties. Tamiyo thought this to be very endearing.

"Wow, that's some impressive biomancy!" said a clueless elf-frog-minotaur-owlfolk, "You should put your talents into practise here!"

"Thank you, but I really cannot. Besides, I cannot stand anything mixed with poodles."

Just then, Vraska arrived, walking through the stagnant, algae filled waters. Poddle-tegu-eels barked at her, making Tamiyo roll her eyes. Vraska seemingly smirked, empathising with her distate of the creatures.

"So, what is it that you desire?"

"I would like your help to solve a case. I will pay you well regardless of the outcome."

"Any particular relevance for enlisting me?"

"Well, to start with, you are a planeswalker, so this will be less awkward. Second, you are an assassin, so you are probably the person who can relate best to this case. Thirdly, you are a murder victim, so-"

"How do you know that?" answered the gorgon, a nerve subtly having been striken.

"Well, it's a long and interesting story..."

Tamiyo wanders into a bar. She approches a drunk Azorius arrester.

"Excuse me, could you inform me of the Undercity Sweep controversy? There is a very urgent aspect I fear you might have overlooked, and this negligence may be endangering lives!"

The man laughs.

"You're a funny lady! I bet you have mittens in your nostrils!"

Then he falls down, unconscious. Tamiyo inhales deeply, drawing mana from sewers and streets puddles, which is enough for her to open his mind. Most of it is blocked by golden light barriers, except a lower section of his memories, which actually is not only open, but has inviting mental signals. The man is urging her to inspect, Tamiyo considers. She looks at the memories of the containment, and has what she needs. She closes the mind, even helping to block off some of the man's more unpleasant experiences deeper in the subconscious.

"Hey pretty, want to rock my world?" says a rock elemental, rubbing it's dirty, moldy hands on it's well sculpted body to emphasise this rapist request.

"I apologise, but I do not think our union would be anything less than extremely disturbing."

"Speciest! My lackeys, seize this evil woman and beat the hatred out of her!"

Before Tamiyo can explain that she simply has no interest in hookups, several fiery imps appear, all bearing the Rakdos signet. Tamiyo decides that it is a smarter idea to just leave the place, so she calmly walks out of the bar. The imps sorround her, firing fire balls at her, slut-shaming her all the while, which she merely responds with redirecting.

Unfortunately, several of the insults and fire balls hit other bar patrons, one of them a goblin Gruul shaman with a protective skin crust of dried bloody snot, formed into thick plates, who summons a massive dragon into the bar, it's head blocking the entrance and devouring the imps, tables, beer cups and the clients' dinner. It locks it's eyes on Tamiyo's giving an expression of pure, noxious hatred, as if the soratami had wronged the reptile a thousand times, and fires a lightning bolt from it's maw, that hits the rock elemental, that redirects it at Tibalt. The devil screams, less than amused at his burned flesh, but he quickly recovers and grins maniacly at Tamiyo.

So do most other patrons, and Tamiyo quickly realises that everyone is mad at her, and that being cut into pieces, eaten and violated in way possible order is the most merciful thing they have in mind. She inhales, calming herself, letting any hint of nervousness flow away into the air. It's now a matter of who will fire first. This enrages the patrons, all desiring a real fight, and all fire at once: lightning bolts, flames, rocks, boiling blood, metal, malevolent red energy and cursing emotional auras all fill the air. Tamiyo only has to redirect a few, as most thankfully destroy the other clients, and make them enraged at the provokers, going for their blood instead.

In a few minutes, the slaughterfest leaves everyone dead, except ironically Tamiyo, Tibalt, and the unconscious Azorius arrester.

"Can I keep him?" asks the red skinned planeswalker in a mocking manner, pointing at the Azorius arrester.

"Anyways, this case I am asking relates to finding a murderer."

Before Vraska could ask, Tamiyo opened a pocket dimension, and a magically preserved carcasse descended, floating above the murky water. It belongs to a vedalken, with an Izzet uniform, his face brutally ripped apart by what seemed to be claws, and a gaping wound in his chest.

"I am doing this as a favour to a dear friend of mine."

Vraska looked intently at the corpse, curiousity filling her mind.

"How do you know it wasn't me who did this?" she asked, testing the scholar.

"I suspected that, but I have examined your methods and tendencies. Besides, I know you were not here when this person died. You planeswalked from Innistrad yesterday, seven hours after this man was murdered."

Vraska stared in shock at her. This woman could by all means just throw her in jail anytime she wanted!

"This... obsession, of yours, is going to cost you dearly one of these days."

"I know, but what is life worth if we cannot know the truth to it's fullest?"

Vraska didn't retort. Instead, she examined the wounds, touching them softly.

"I've never seen anything like this before. The closest thing I can think of are Rakdos murders, and even then it doesn't have the same feel to them. No passion at all. If anything, it feels like a calculated murder, like my style, yet there's these pointless mutilations."

She inspected closer, jerking her head upwards violently.

"What is it?" asked Tamiyo.

"Where was the corpse found?"

It was midnight. Yet the alley was surprisingly bright, magical lamps forming several multicoloured processions. Some vendors were still working, but most shops had been closed with wards.

"This way!" Tamiyo indicated.

She touched a brick wall, and it formed a cave-like entrance. It was quickly followed by some stairs, illuminated by soft blue lights. They lead into a laboratory, filled with electrically-powered machinery: a machination that looked like a massive pair of magnets, several turbines, weird producers. Some of the machines were broken, and had small flowering plants growing from them.

"This was his laboratory. His pupil informed me of his death yesterday, after appearently following a flash of light."

Vraska examined one of the machines with plants.

"The plants were spellcasted into growing from the machines, and some have been growing in blood, so I think the killer created them. The plants aren't aberrations, so it's not a Simic work, and I don't think the Gruul or the Golgari would be so gentle. That leaves Selesnya or Gateless. Give me the body."

Tamiyo made the dead vedalken appear again. Vraska inspected the wounds again.

"Something is very wrong here."

"What do you mean?"

"These wounds... I have to compare them."

"Compare them to what?"

Just then, a noxious presence filled the air. It sorrounded them, and so Vraska and Tamiyo stood back to back, channeling mana. The presence felt like a thick fog, yet it was invisible.

"Show yourself" commanded Vraska.

The fog smirked. Tamiyo swore to have seen a disturbing grin, that made her feel sick, fighting the hardest she could to keep her stomachal contents within. Vraska had little patience for this, so she casted entangling vines that erupted from the ground. If it was a creature, it'd be capture, if a spell it'd be destroyed.

"Is it gone?" asked Tamiyo.

The presence was no longer there, but both knew that Vraska's spell had nothing to do with that. The thing left on it's own free will.

"We have to get out of here."

To be continued...