Note: For this story, Portland, Oregon has mysteriously traded places with Portland, Maine. Perhaps even more mysteriously, in this universe, Baelfire is somewhere in this city, which is why Emma, Gold, and Henry (who don't know exactly where he is in the city) are taking their dear, sweet time looking for him.

Also, Gold's magic works. This is not mysterious. The whole purpose of this story is to punish the Wesen on Grimm who tried to pretend to be a modern Rumplestiltskin.

"I'm dead! I'm dead!"

Rumplestiltskin or Mr. Gold, as he was known in this world, looked up from the newspaper he was reading. "Excuse me, Henry? You look very much alive, to me."

Henry gestured to computer screen. "I just got cut in two!"

"Oh?" Gold came over and watched the replay of the recent battle. He frowned. "Can you replay that from the beginning?" He watched the fight unfold again. "That creature you were fighting, Nameless, can you bring up any more information on him?"

"He's only the best fighter in the whole game. He's got his own fan sites."

And Henry, it seemed, was one of the fans. "Remind me to teach you how to play chess," Gold told the boy as he brought up different information on the imaginary warrior. "It has to be better for your brain."

The door opened behind them.

Gold whirled, reaching for his gun. Then, he relaxed. It was only Emma with the evening's takeout. She put down a large bag of Chinese food and began unloading it. "So, Gold, any luck?"

"Some," he told her. "Most of it bad. May I speak to you in private, Miss Swann?"

'Private' in the small hotel room was a relative term, but Emma followed him to the far corner while Henry dug into his sweet and sour. "There's been a new development," Gold said. "I think someone is going to try to murder Henry. Soon. Tonight."

"What? What did you do? I left you guys alone for twenty minutes—"

"And I warned you about violent video games," Gold said. "And about Wesen. If what I've picked up in the news articles is correct—" By 'picked up,' Emma knew Gold was referring to that ability to see the future everyone in Storybrooke was convinced he had. According to him, the news could help trigger a useful vision or whatever it was. Reading an ad in the personals or an article about a mysterious murder, he would suddenly know more than he should about some poor soul's dating life or where the police could find the murder weapon.

Emma had her doubts whether it worked as well as he said. If he did see the future, the future was pretty good at not sticking around to let him get a long look. Or—and this was an even more disturbing thought—he had some really weird priorities about how he let the future unfold. "—one of them has been running around killing people. I think they're ones this particular Wesen has a grudge against. But, it only murders them after it beats them in a certain online game—the one Henry was just playing. Where his avatar was just killed. Guess who by?"

"You think this guy's going to come and kill Henry? Because of a computer game?"

"People have committed murder for less, Miss Swann."

"Then we need to—I've got to—"

"What you've got to do is leave this to me. I should be back, soon. Oh, and shoot anyone who isn't me who tries to come in here, will you?"

X

The Fuchsteufelwilder stopped on the roof. No , it couldn't end this way. He won his games. He always won his games. He couldn't be beaten. He couldn't.

He would retreat. He had other prey tonight besides the woman downstairs. Part of the rules. While he was hunting for them, it was open season on everyone else in who tried to play against him. He'd beaten the boy. That meant he had to find him and kill him. That meant he was still playing. That meant this was just a setback in a single round. The game wasn't over. He could—

"Trinket Lipslums," a high pitched voice said, followed by an even higher giggle. "Really, all those letters, and that's the best your parents could do? Trinket?"

Lipslums turned and saw some kind of Wesen he didn't recognize. His skin was gold-green and scaled, and the pupils of his eyes were large and reptilian. But, otherwise, he might as well have been human. If it weren't for the clothes, walking at night, people might not even notice him. The clothes—Louis XVI with lots of leather and silk on acid—would have stood out at a science fiction convention.

Lipslums lifted his claws. "Get out of the way unless you want me ruining that pretty suit of yours."

The Wesen giggled again. "Oh, you wouldn't want to do that, dearie, not with the cleaning bill I'd send you."

X

Nick Burkhardt already had two more bodies than he wanted on this case and knew, if he didn't move fast, there could be plenty more piled up before he was done. If Lipslums got away—if he just ran into a few, innocent idiots—or not so innocent—or cops, since there were plenty of those around—things could get even uglier fast.

As he and Hank burst onto the roof, guns drawn, he shouted, "Hold it right there, Fuchsteu—uh, fel . . . wilder. Sorry about the pronuncia—" when he saw there were two men standing on the roof, not one.

"Which one's the Fuchsteu—uh, the perp?" Hank asked.

They both had greenish skin, though one was clearly greener, and—"Wesen morph faces, not clothes," Nick said. "Don't you think you'd have noticed the other guy? Hey!" he shouted to the two Wesen, "Police! Put your—"

"Yes, yes," the weirdly dressed Wesen said, hands up in the air as he rolled his eyes. "Do you mind? We were having a conversation."

"We're chasing after a serial killer—"

"Then, it's a good thing for you that's what I needed to ask him about." The Wesen turned back to the Fuchsteufelwilder. "Trinket, dearie, tell me, you played against a little boy on that game of yours earlier today. Do you know who I mean?"

Lipslums laughed. "The one with the silly name? Grandson-of-Charming. Or should I call him Henry Mills?"

Something in Nick, his senses as a Grimm, caught the shift in the second Wesen. He was still smiling and looking like he found police and serial killers having a showdown to be just too amusing. But, something had shifted in him, as deadly as a knife being drawn. "You know that, do you? And you're one to talk about names. But, if you know who he is, tell me, were you planning on doing something with the information?"

Lipslums growled. "It's my game. I don't lose games. I get to kill him. And then I'll come back for the one who got away."

The other Wesen smiled pleasantly. "Oh, you will, will you? Let me see, how does that fairy tale go? The one you're named after? The little man loses his temper-"

Before either Nick or Hank could react, the second Wesen lunged in and grabbed Lipslums by the wrist. "—and he split himself in two." He giggled. Then, he shoved the claw back towards Lipslums and cut him in half.

Lipslums didn't scream in the half second he had left when he could still speak. It made sense, Nick thought. All Lipslums had cared about from beginning to end was who beat him. "Who are—?" he managed to ask before his own acid burnt through him.

The second Wesen dropped the severed corpse onto the roof. "Who am I? Is that what you were wondering?" He crouched down by the dead Wesen and whispered in his ear. "Rumplestiltskin." The Wesen calmly looked Nick in the eye and smiled.

He knew Nick heard him. He knew. Nick didn't know how he knew. Super-hearing wasn't a exactly normal Grimm power—he'd only gained because of a bizarre encounter with one of the most disgusting Wesen around—but he knew.

And it didn't matter. Nick managed to find his voice again. He was an officer of the law, even if he seemed to have forgotten it in the middle of this confrontation, and he had a job to do.

He wondered if this Wesen had some ability to make people really stupid when they went up against him. "Police," he said again. "Freeze."

The Wesen looked at him sardonically. "For the record, detective—it is detective, isn't it?—you just heard him threaten to kill my grandson, not that I'm supposed to know that. Or isn't saving the life of a child from a known serial killer a reasonable defense?"

"A boy who isn't even here and wasn't in immediate danger."

"Given the kills this fellow stacked up while the police chased their own tails, I think you're underestimating 'immediate danger.'"

"Fine. Explain it to the judge. Just—"

"Perhaps some other time," the Wesen said as it changed into a cloud of purple and gold smoke that vanished.

The Wesen was gone, but it wasn't done talking.

"A pleasure meeting you. Do hope we meet again, some time." The words echoed softly, so only Nick could hear.

X

"Monster taken care of?" Emma asked.

"You can read about it in the paper tomorrow," Gold assured her. "The pictures, if they print them, might be a bit grisly."

"Gold, what did you—"

"He had acid claws. He said he was going to use them on Henry, so I shoved them into him, instead."

Emma looked profoundly unhappy. "As a sheriff, I shouldn't let you get away with that."

"Decide that after you look at pictures of his other victims, dearie. And remember he meant to add Henry to the list. I would have left him alone if he hadn't assured me of that."

Emma rubbed at the pain in her head. "You're having a bad effect on me. "

"If it makes you feel better, I could say the same. Running out to hunt monsters has never been one of my usual habits, not unless I was being paid. Or needed parts of them."

"I didn't need to hear that, either."

"My apologies. Oh, by the way, a police detective, Nick Burkhardt, may show up. The Fuchsteufelwilder—that was the Wesen I faced—mentioned Henry by name, along with his game identity where the gentleman could hear. The detective, I should tell you, is a Grimm. Have I mentioned those? They hunt Wesen."

"Just so long as he's not Baelfire."

"Bae wasn't a Grimm. We didn't have them back in our world. My son was just human."

Bae had just been human. Of course, so had Rumplestiltskin been, once.

At any rate, a quick snippet of the future had shown him a moment when Detective Nick Burkhardt would discover that wasn't his real name after all. An odd vision, and Rumplestiltskin didn't know why it should matter. The Grimm's parents had used other identities now and again. It was the sort of thing people with plenty of enemies trying to kill them often did.

All Rumplestiltskin knew was that, for some reason, it was important that the Burkhardts had once gone by the name of Cassady, just as it was important that they called their son Neal.