//------------------------------//
// Why Is Everything On Fire?: Part 3 
// Story: Sweet Dreams, LLP 
// by AnchorsAway 
//------------------------------//




Are you ready?
Bright Shine tugged against the harness keeping him upright in his chair. It looked like somepony had cobbled the flimsy restraints together with parts out of a dumpster. The nylon straps itched, and he scratched his coat with his good hoof. 
"Not really," he groaned, holding his aching hoof against his chest. The familiar cap of sticky electrodes tugged at whisps of mane atop his head, and he had a strange metallic taste on his tongue. "In fact, I'm beginning to have some serious doubts about this, Doc. I'm not sure if I'm ready to go snooping around somepony's dreams."
"Anxiety is a natural defense mechanism, Bright Shine," Luna told him, strapping into her chair beside him. "Anxiety is what keeps us safe, prevents us from venturing forth into the great unknown," she explained, cinching the buckles of her harness tight. 
Spitfire lay slumped in a chemical slumber at the center of the dream chamber, her eyes twitching back and forth beneath their lids in the first stages of REM sleep. She looked surprisingly at peace to Bright Shine, a far cry from the vengeful hothead she was while awake.
"You keep talking about going into ponies dreams like we're off on a grand adventure," Bright Shine interjected. "Like you're Daring Do, digging up artifacts in a forgotten temple."
Luna straightened up. "And are you saying it's something less?" she wondered. "Bright Shine, the great unknown, that distant horizon, it's not somewhere out there," she revealed, pointing to the rear exit of the dream chamber. 
"It's right there." She gestured to Spitfire, sleeping soundly. "You might not realize it yet, Bright Shine, but you will," she assured him, her eyes almost pitying him. "You just haven't seen it yet."
"Seen what?" he wondered, his head light and his vision dancing with faint, glistening particles from Broodly's dream sedative. His eyes were getting heavy.
"The horizon," she said. "You'll know it when you see it, Bright Shine," Luna said, twisting her hips and getting comfortable. "That horizon is where you'll find your answers to your own sleep problems. We just have to train you to see it, to open up your dreaming." 
Bright Shine didn't have time to contemplate Luna's ridiculous musings. He was sweating uncontrollably, his head was spinning, and his tongue — it felt numb.
"Sould i fel this funy?" he asked, his slack tongue garbling his words.
"Funny how?"
"I fink it was the sedatife." He could feel his eyes rolling back in his head, and he was suddenly blind. "Oh fuk!" he gasped, hooves searching the sudden darkness. "I can't fee!"
"Relax," he heard Luna through the veil of the descending curtain of unconsciousness. "It's just a temporary reaction," she assured him. "That is unless Broodly has been cutting the sedative formula with antifreeze again. I told him to stop that."
As Bright Shine plunged further into the familiar darkness enveloping him, and he slumped forward against his harness, he could barely hear Gilbert far off in the distance.
"You had better get in there, Doc. We have a hostage situation in calibration."



Most hostage situations are a delicate affair, best handled by trained professionals. 
Tempers run high with coursing adrenaline, ponies make stupid decisions in the heat of the moment, and precious lives hang on the delicate line of life and death. Sometimes things don't always go so well. Sometimes you can't save them all.
But other hostage situations are much stupider affairs. 
This was the type of situation Bright Shine found himself caught it.
"Spitfire, please!" Luna begged, standing a safe distance away from the enraged mare. "Think about what you are doing! It doesn't have to be like this!"
Spitfire bristled, backdropped by the infinite star-speckled sky of calibration. She planted her hooves in the prismatic lunar dust that swirled around her hooves. "Stay back," she warned. "I'll do it!"
"Don't just stand there, Bright Shine. Do something!" Luna begged. "How can you just stand there?"
"I don't know?" he shrugged nonchalantly, still captivated by the mesmeric surroundings. "I mean, I can't blame her," he said. 
"You don't understand," Luna said forcefully, inching toward Spitfire as if she were approaching a ferocious lion. "This is very unhealthy for her treatment here. We're here to help control her anger, not justify it."
"You don't think this is justified?" Spitfire demanded, incredulously, shaking the sign in her hooves.
Quills and Sofas — 25% off loveseats with the purchase of a couch!
"I warned her each and every time I've been back," Spitfire continued, her words coming hot and thick. She stood in a defensive stance, the sign clutched in her hooves as if it were a sharp and deadly lance. "I warned her not to stick this blasted sign in my face again or else I was going to—"
Spitfire's firey diatribe was interrupted by hoof slowly lifting her a piece of paper from the ground. 
The sign spinner mare cowering beneath the Wonderbolt gently shook the paper with a wide, anxious grin. Even from afar, Bright Shine could see the bold, bright letters declaring "Ottoman October!"
Spitfire spun on her hooves, lifting the flimsy plastic cutout and bringing it down on the sign spinner with animalistic ferocity. 
"What—did—I—tell—you—about—shoving—that—in—my—face!" Spitfire roared, spitting out each word as she struck the mare. The plastic wobbled and bounced off the sign spinner, delivering only stinging slaps to the cowering mare at her hooves.
Bright Shine would never admit the sight warmed his heart ever so slightly.
He hated sign spinners.
SNAP! 
The sign folded in two, flapping uselessly before falling at Spitfire's side.
"Stay down," she breathed dangerously.
"Six months," the Wonderbolt muttered, catching her breath from the outburst despite the absence of atmosphere. "So much for progress."
"But it is progress all the same," Luna said, slowly approaching the mare, her hoof held out. She reached out, slowly removing the spinner's sign from Spitfire's grasp. It fell between them, Luna pulling the pegasus closer. "You recognize the anger, how unhealthy it is, how it plagues your sleep and your waking. That is progress," she claimed exuberantly. "I never said that it would be easy to control. There is always bound to be a slip-up or two."
"I just never expected to run up against something as difficult as this," she snorted through her flared nostrils. "Give me an advanced flight routine and I can break it down, control it, mold it to my design. But this anger," she breathed, the weight of her burden relaxing her defensive posture. "It keeps getting the best of me. It shows in the faces of my teammates, the cadets, even my friends. I don't like how it hurts them."
A wary hoof slithered for the broken sign at their hooves.
"DON'T," Spitfire spat, eyeing the spinner out the corner of her eye like a hungry hawk. "—Even think about it," she warned, bristling with rekindled fury before slowly trotting away. 
Luna brushed a comforting hoof against Spitfire as the mare wandered off. "Don't worry. We're here for you," she promised. "Bright Shine and I won't stop trying until we reach the breakthrough we need. Right, Bright Shine?"
"Uh, I guess," he shrugged from a safe distance.
Luna levitated the shaken sign spinner back on her hooves, the dazed mare still reeling from the explosive barrage of Spitfire's temper. 
Luna dusted her off, retrieving the floppy sign and unfolding the two halves in the spinner's hooves. "There we are. See? We're all right," she said, straightening the spinner and setting her headphones back on straight. "You're doing great. Just really swell," she praised. "Keep it up, and don't worry about her. She'll come around. Just try to tone it down around her, maybe hold the flyers back."
The spinner nodded groggily, swaying on her hooves, clutching the sign tightly.
"Doc?" Gilbert's worried squawk echoed from within the dreamscape. "Everything ok in there?"
"Just a little misunderstanding," she assured him, shaking the lunar dust from her hooves. "Standby for calibration."
Spitfire smirked at Bright Shine who was waiting safely out of her immediate reach. He rubbed absently at his aching hoof whose pain was a strange, distant throb within the dream.
"So, new guy, huh?" she remarked slyly as Luna trotted up. "Listen," Spitfire continued. "Whatever our little incident out there, I want you to know that whatever happens in there —" she pointed at the sign spinner, "— I don't mean it."
Bright Shine cocked his head, sidestepping away from the mare precautiously. "What do you mean?"
She sighed, closing her eyes, her stance relaxing. "I came here for help with anger management. And I want to change," she admitted. "But that mare — that version of me in my dreams — she still has so much rage." 
Luna caught up to them, retying her ethereal mane in a ponytail.
"Well, now that little scuffle is over with, is everypony ready?"
"I was just explaining to your new hire not to take whatever happens inside personally," Spitfire claimed. "Do you think he is ready, Dr.?"
"Who, Bright Shine?" She looked to him briefly then back to Spitfire. "Well, there's no trial like a trial by fire," she chuckled dryly, pulling Bright Shine closer with her magic.
"Woaaah!" he exclaimed, digging his hooves in the lunar dust. 
"Bright Shine is tough as nails," Luna said, wrapping a choking hoof around Bright Shine's neck. "If anypony can make it to the front, it's him."
"Are you sure?" Spitfire winced, looking over at the sweaty stallion struggling to squirm out of Luna's iron grasp. He was making a gurgling noise. "We've been at this for six months, and how far have you made it? The third car? Fourth?" She massaged her brow. "How much longer can we keep this up?" she sighed.
Luna lent a wing around the troubled mare. "As long as it takes," she assured Spitfire. "We're here for you — both of us. Right, Bright Shine?"
Bright Shine released a choking gasp from beneath Luna's headlock. "Tight!" he squeaked. "Too tight!"
"Woops," Luna puttered. "Don't worry, I promise he's stronger than he looks."
"Uh-huh," Spitfire nodded skeptically, unwillingly diverting her attention to the sign spinner. The bruised and shaking spinner mare was uneasily wavering the battered cutout sign above her head. "I hope you're right about that, Doc," she muttered, focusing on the sign. 
It started to spin.
Bright Shine, still light-headed, watched as the spinner mare twirled the banner, fueled by Spitfire's focus. Faster it spun, picking up speed until its pull distorted reality around them. It was a blur, sucking the lunarscape into its swirling current, a hole of blackness stretching from the epicenter, consuming all. 
"This is it, Bright Shine. Be ready!" Luna called out, yelling to be heard over the sign that screamed like a jet engine. Spitfire was caught in its trance, her mind entirely focused and in sync with the dream rising up to meet them.
"Ready for what?" Bright Shine called, shielding his eyes from the flying regolith as they were pulled toward the black core. His hooves cut ruts in the dust.
"For anything. You never know what a patient's subconscious will throw at you," she explained in their final seconds. "Just do one thing for me when you touch down."
"What?" he yelled above the hurricane, the dreamscape of calibration collapsing around them. "What do I need to do?"
The ground evaporated from beneath their hooves, the trio sent tumbling into the void.
"Duck!" Luna screamed to be heard as everything flew to black, and Bright Shine was yanked through the imposing darkness.



"It looks just like him, doesn't it?"
Brood stooped lower, squinting at the greasy mark on the glass with his luminous, orange eyes. He stared at the smear on Gilbert's window into the dream chamber, looking over his shoulder several times where Bright Shine hung in his chair beside Luna, both out cold. 
"You knows, Gilberts," Brood murmured, studying the oily portrait. "I think this looks like an improvements," he giggled sheepishly, pointing to the distorted imprint of Bright Shine's face left in the window, painted with oils from his coat. 
"I sure am glad the Doc took him in there and not us," the griffon joined in, chuckling at the mark Bright Shine's face had left where Spitfire had smashed it into the glass. 
"Tells me," Brood giggled, his stubby fangs peeking from beneath his upturned lips. "What do you thinks the goober is doing right now?"
Gilbert pondered on the question, scratching at an errant feather on his beak before snapping his claw. "Screaming."
The two erupted in another fit of laughs, Gilbert bending over and clutching his sides. The wirery griffon shuffled toward the door to the Dream Core, pointing at the oily smear mark on his viewport. "Hey, do me a favor," he said, around several stray laughs. "Clean this mess up, will you, Brood. I've got to monitor the patient. Thanks, buddy," he said before snatching the door closed behind him.
Brood's laughs withered and died off, the thestral left standing alone amongst the three unconscious dreamers. "Wait. Whats?" he hissed, twisting around. "Me's? Why do I have to cleans this?"
But Gilbert was already gone.
Two leathery wings pulled at his face, Brood groaning into his supple appendages. "Whys is it always me."
The bat pony trudged down the dark, twisting corridors of the dream center, searching for the right door. Even with his acute vision, it was hard to see in the gloom. Most of the lights above had burned out long ago, and the few that remained buzzed and flickered inconsistently. "Where is that cleanings closet," he growled beneath his breath. "Always makings me do the nastys work. Like I'ms some sort of creature."
The glowering stallion stopped at another of many unmarked doors, giving the rusty knob a sharp twist. 
Suddenly, something shuffled inside, letting out several throaty clicks. 
Broodly quickly shut the door, shoving his weight against it while it shuttered on its hinges. It rattled and bucked, but somehow held, and the thumps and thrashes slowly subsided until they were merely scratches. Then it was over, Brood carefully slinking away, down the hall.
"Stupid opossums," he huffed.
Cracking the next door open and peering a bleary eye inside, he found mops, brooms, and pails — no ever-hungry marsupials to be seen. Getting to work, he yanked out a bottle of window cleaner. "Towels," he muttered, scanning the claustrophobic closet and spotting them way in the back on the top shelf.
Brood extended his wings, reaching with a hooked claw for them. "Oh comes on!" he smoldered, just inches away. 
Stepping inside the cramped utility closed, he found a bucket, hopping atop in and wobbling back and forth. "Easies," he smirked, snatching the towels quickly with a wing.
Too quickly, in fact. The bucket collapsed beneath his hooves, bumbling thestral blurting out several curses too incoherent and too vulgar for any little filly's ears to hear here. He slammed into the floor, the door snapping shut with a loud crack.
Brood was shoved into a ball, pinned between the tight walls by his outstretched wings. He groaned, the paltry lightbulb on the ceiling swinging on its cord.
"Ohhhs..." he groaned, twisting over, his flank shoved up a wall in the tight quarters. "One days," he whispered, eyes clamped tight, "I'ms burning this place downs."
Brood peeled himself from the hard concrete, scrambling to pull himself up with his oversized wings. The claws dug at the doorjamb, the thestral twisting till he found the doorknob. "I blames all this on you, Gilbert, yous ugly chicken," he snarled, yanking the doorknob.
Pop!
"Whats the—"
Brood looked at the doorknob in his hoof, then quickly down at the bare door, his eyes stretching wide. "Uh ohs," he gulped. "Not goods."
Twisting for a better vantage among the mop buckets and musty brooms, he tried shoving the knob back on the door. His hoof was shaking harder and harder. "No...NOS!" he hissed, but it was no use. The knob wasn't going back on. He was locked inside.
"Guys! Hellos?" he whimpered, resorting to scratching wildly at the heavy door with his wings. "Help. Helps me!" he shouted, thrashing wildly, his calls and sobbing disappearing down the empty, far-reaching, dark corridors of the dream center.
His claws scraped shavings from the door, but it was hopeless. The door was too thick, and nopony would hear him this far back.
"It's okays," he tried to reassure himself, nervously wringing his hooves. "I'm sure they will comes looking for me when they notice I'm gones."
The claustrophobic atmosphere answered the thestral with the dim lightbulb above him flickering, then burning out, the utility closet plunging into a blackness that was entirely unfamiliar to the bat pony.
And if somepony were to happen to be wandering the back halls of Sweet Dreams L.L.P., then perhaps they would hear the pitiful whimpers and blubbering of a bat pony trapped in a broom closet, waiting for his coworkers to notice he was missing and come looking for him. 
But let's be real here, dear reader. We both already know nopony is going to come looking for Broodly.
He cried into the darkness, his neck bent at an awkward angle between the moldering mops and dusty broom pans, wings tangled and twisted around his awkward, bulky frame. 
"I does not like tight spaces."