Dave's eyes fixated upon slowly swinging bouquet of Poison Joke, dimly glowing in embrace of Twilight's magic.
He gulped and clutched the chair tighter. Looks like hard-won polish, shine and order he was conjuring into Zecora's house for the last hour was about to be trashed once again. And the adorable rhyming zebra was so happy to see result of cleaning efforts...
"Ugh, screw it. CATCH!"
With a swing he sent chair flying towards the ceiling in an arch.
Knowing full well that Twilight was too busy concentrating on the predicament of air-borne furniture, Dave dive-rolled to the side, circling around the research-crazed unicorn.
Finding himself back on his feet again, Dave sprung towards the door, bursting outside and slamming it behind himself.
Who knew that his brief dabble into parkour fad would ever pay off?
Not saying anything, Twilight floated chair back to its proper place, and headed for the door, blue flowers in magic grasp.
Everypony inside exchanged looks of disbelief.
Pinkie was the first to put collective confusion into words.
"What... just happened?"
Dave carefully observed entrance from his hiding place, trying to avoid making any sounds.
The door swung open again, with a small fleet of flowers floating outside and turning from side to side, as if searching for target. Twilight trotted outside next, scanning environment for movement. Rustling of nearby bushes attracted her attention, but once she had approached thick shrubbery, the rustling started moving away from her, causing her to pick up the pace.
Meanwhile, behind her, Dave lowered himself down from the branches of a house-tree and silently disappeared back into the house.
Thank goodness it didn't occur to her that apes literally evolved to climb trees. Whatever wildlife had the misfortune of hiding in these bushes was sure in for a fun afternoon.
Holding a finger to his lips to hush any possible yelps of surprise from the girls, the engineer motioned for them to come closer and practically whispered,
"What has gotten into her?"
Applejack put it bluntly, like she always did, "I 'unno! She never did act like that. That just ain't right!"
Several nods confirmed that it was, in fact, first time something like that happened.
Hair on the back of Dave's neck stood up. Uh-oh. Bad sign.
SLAM!
"AHA! I knew it was a trick!"
It didn't take a tactical genius to tell that Dave was screwed. The windows were too small and the only way out was blocked by ticked-off unicorn. The blue bulbs of Poison Joke inched closer.
Then, much to everyone's surprise, Rainbow Dash zoomed forward in a blink of an eye, positioning herself between cornered Dave and Twilight. Poison Joke flower halted mere inches from her muzzle, petals squirming in indecision.
Shifting her piercing gaze from the bulb to the unicorn, Dash held one hoof out in accusatory gesture.
"Snap out of it, Twilight! Is that a way to treat your friend?"
Rarity chimed in, trying her hoof at talking some sense into her friend, "Twilight, dear, you're just not yourself today!"
At the sound of accusation Twilight blinked and looked around. Even Pinkie and Fluttershy had disapproving looks on their muzzles.
Her proud posture faltered, eyes widened at realization and the accursed bouquet hit the floor with a dry rustle.
The treacherous blue plant laid upon the floor triumphantly, with everyone present in the room giving it a wide berth, taught by rather unpleasant hooves-on experience of its effects.
The closest to it was Twilight, who sat on her haunches dejectedly, head hung low with ears flat against it.
She already received a pony equivalent of a kick in the shin and a stern scolding from Applejack, reminding her about nature of friendship.
Dash was also quick to remind her that anyone plucking a hapless passerby pony from the street for experiments would be rather close in description to a villain.
But Dave was worst of them all - he sat on a chair that he planned to use as a shield not so long ago and just... looked at her. He wasn't looking mad or angered, just disappointed and a little sad.
After all, she did break a promise to tone down on research, but it was so easy for her to get carried away when new, potentially breakthrough knowledge tantalizingly hung in front of her, ripe for picking - just stretch your hoof out and grab it!
Meanwhile Dave pondered highly philosophical question of what he was going to have for supper.
No, seriously, the only good source of protein were eggs and he was getting sick of them no matter how creatively he cooked them. You can only do so much without salt, and local pepper barely stung to be even considered...
The philosophical conundrum pondering was interrupted by the sound of silence, meaning that the girls were done with scolding, or, perhaps they expected something from him.
Resurfacing from thought-immersion, first thing that Dave saw was Twilight's sorry state. Did the girls overdo it?
Dang it, Dave, you really couldn't pick a worse time to contemplate possible food combinations! Stop thinking with your stomach for a minute and fix this mess! Just concentrate...
"Look, guys, I know that technically I should be upset the most, but there was only slight probability of danger for me. As you all know, magic sorta works on me but sorta doesn't, so the chances were that that thing-" he pointed to blue bouquet with tip of his shoe "-wouldn't do anything."
"However, there was a chance that it would've worked on me. Naturally, I'd want to get rid of it. But what if it was the cure that wouldn't work on me? Imagine being stuck like that for the rest of your life..."
Twilight froze up at the implication.
"But we successfully avoided testing that 'hypothesis', thanks to all of you. No harm, no foul, right?"
He shrugged with a smile.
"Where I come from, we got a saying - 'It is human to err'. It means that mistakes happen. Important part is realizing your mistake and taking a lesson out of it in order to avoid repeating it. And she just got carried away before she could consider all possible outcomes. Right, Twilight?"
Dave ruffled her mane in an encouraging manner. She lifted her eyes and smiled weakly.
While Twilight had a serious problem with understanding boundaries, she thankfully lacked that maniacal glint that Dave had misfortune of observing back in university - scientists sporting that glint couldn't be argued or reasoned with. All they cared about was making science happen, whatever it takes.
However, if left to own devices, situation like this was bound to happen again. Scientists gonna science, you know?
"However this is not all. I am partly to blame for this, too."
Some confused looks were exchanged at that statement.
"As you all know, research is important for Twilight. I should know - couldn't walk five feet in Golden Oak Library without Twilight going through another PhD-worthy stack of paper! And lately I've been kinda yanking her chain, so to say, deflecting her questions and generally not helping her with research."
He scratched back of his head, looking at the Twilight apologetically. Her ears perked up and small glimmers of hope shone in her eyes.
"And I did in fact promise you to help with research. So some concessions will have to be made. So here's what we're going to do: If you see something interesting you want to know more about, write it down in the list. We'll put aside a part of some weekday to resolve accumulated questions, and generally do research in civilized, prepared and professional manner. How does 'Science Saturday' sounds to you?"
Twilight beamed.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou-"
"But please remember that from now on I want you to always explicitly ask my consent to being a part of your experiments. Okay?"
She nodded vigorously. Good!
Whew. Drama: averted. Thank goodness. Still no idea how I managed to talk my way out of this one...
Defusing the drama was more of Jim's specialty in Trouble Trio, but with him around, one couldn't help it but learn a trick or two. Hooray for observational learning!
"I think we all learned a valuable lesson today, or two. Anyway-" Dave checked his wristwatch "-it's getting late and I propose that we get a move on unless we want to wander the forest in the dark."
Applejack pulled him aside, as everypony else was getting ready to leave and said goodbyes to Zecora.
"Dave, that was... mighty kind of you."
"What can I say? Twilight isn't bad or evil, she's my friend who just made a mistake, and that didn't cause any harm in the end. Besides it was her - and you, of course - who saved my life recently. That ought to count for something, right?" Dave smiled.
"I reckon," she smiled back.
Finally safe in the privacy of a workshop, Dave leaned in on the paper-covered table. It was time to sum up today's experience.
First of all, experimental flashbangs worked flawlessly, it was everything else that went sideways. Mental note - make more of these.
It also was yet another visit in the Everfree - and those started to came up surprisingly often lately. Having met it's local fauna and hearing plenty of stories from town's old-timers, Dave wasn't exactly enthusiastic about visiting the forest unarmed. Mace was good and all, but putting some distance between oneself and one's potential expert taster would be way better.
"I need a friggin' gun," he drew the bottom line.
Dave tapped his chin, staring at the ceiling in thought.
"So we're talking guns. Firearms, to be precise. What would be potential applications? What do I want out of them?"
Spinning in place, he gestured to air.
"First, a gun would have to be concealable - but that's not a big problem, I could hide anything short of shoulder-fired missile launcher in baggy clothes and nobody would ask a thing! And if even if they did, I could always pass it off as weird human anatomy or obscure tool..."
"Second of all, I also want it to handle non-lethal ammo in case of more SWAT-style shenanigans or if Twilight loses it. Doubt that they have 'stand-your-ground' law here..."
Though, Dave reasoned that possibility of Twilight getting too frisky again was pretty slim. She looked downright devastated by guilt, especially after Dash drew villainous parallels. Poor mare.
"So we're talking non-lethal ammunition, or as some smartasses like to call it, 'less-than-lethal' ammunition."
Dave was not sure what exactly upset him in latter wording of a concept, but something in it just made him lose his rag.
"Beanbags have too low of a range, so it's either rubber bullets or rock salt ammo, and I couldn't get any of the salt... What was up with that? Even in food joints - what he initially mistook for saltshaker was actually stocked with sugar."
Dave forced his eyes open. It sure was getting late for engineering work, and concentration was first to suffer, allowing mind to wander free.
Having set up some tea, he returned back to planning.
"So, ability to handle specialty ammo, size smaller than Stinger. Mandatory repeating action."
Giving the once-over to a lineup of various machine tools present in the shop, he quickly added, "Plus, no stamped nor forged parts..."
"Machining everything will take some time, time that could be spent better..."
It was time to decide - either funnel all resources to this one crazy expensive project of his or solve immediate problem of gun absence.
Despite asking himself, Dave already knew the answer to the question. Big projects, despite being incredibly exciting, promising and what-have-you, tended to be just that - a long haul.
When it came to engineering projects, Dave knew how to strangle his excitement and keep level head when picking his battles, so for now he'd settle with just making some decent guns. Ha. Decent. As if!
It may have been easy back home, where making a decent gun could be as easy as playing mix-and-match with some parts, but here he'd have to re-invent action, rifling process, centerfire cartridge, the whole nine yards.
At the same time he was pretty confident in his abilities regarding putting together a gun of almost any complexity within reasonable limit - at least as far traditional firearms went. It was mere question of time and resources.
Out of everything, what bothered him the most was cartridge. What was taken for granted on ol' good Earth had to be built from ground up in this crazy land. And the scale of the problem was rather big.
It's not like you could just walk to nearest mall and stock up on ammunition here.
The cartridge itself had to be centerfire obviously, since there was no real point in downgrading to anything else and rimfire generally required a lot of tinkering to get it to behave at high chamber pressure loads.
And it sure was a long way to actually mass-producing center-fire cartridges.
Sipping a refreshing dose of a hot tea, Dave allowed his eyes to close, picturing the cartridge production cycle. He'd have to create entire set of machines to automate all of the deep-drawing, annealing, trimming, turning, tapering, priming and loading.
All of this had to be done with rather high precision too, unless he'd like to run into bunch of nasty issues like wrong headspacing down the line.
"Nah, not anytime soon!"
For now he'd settle with machining re-usable bullet cases of a large caliber. After all, with growth of a caliber the amount of problems it couldn't solve started rapidly approaching zero.
Having spun shells was a terrible waste of metal, but at least they would be re-usable, as long as metal fatigue doesn't rear its ugly head.
"What about propellant?"
After consulting with Mandala search results it became glaringly clear that smokeless powder was well beyond Dave's humble chemistry skills - cooking up nitrocellulose would be tricky enough, let alone any of primer compounds.
"I could take an easy way out - poach fireworks for propellant, and whatever party poppers use for trigger could act as a primitive primer. At the very least it worked for the light gas gun..."
Dave gave bulky pipe contraption in the corner a stink-eye. The potentially dragon-slaying one-shot wonder that was born in a fit of insanity didn't seem to be in the mood to even grace that glare with a response. Fine.
"So, the upshot: repeating action, preferably semi-auto, can handle specialty rounds, big bore, doesn't require stamped or forged parts, lots of safety margins... Oh and size smaller than Stinger."
There was one decent, time-tested configuration that he had in mind.
Rolling up sleeves, he muttered to himself, "How did it go? Something-something para bellum?"
Dave was in shock.
Dash's lifeless body laid on the ground, splayed in unnatural pose. Dark red puddle under her slowly grew, staining blue fur and feathers.
Fluttershy, inconsolable in her devastation, cried out through tears, "Why? Why would you do this?"
Dave stumbled back, undercut by accusation.
"I-I would never..."
He suddenly became sharply aware of the fact that he was holding a shotgun in his hands. Startled by sudden development, he dropped it on the ground with a dull clang.
He backed away from the body.
His thoughts raced, breaths became frantic.
"How could this happen? I'd never- I'd never-"
Dave could feel himself starting to hyperventilate; his heart pounded so loud it was deafening.
"No, this can't be; Something is wrong."
Mustering the last bits of resolve and self control, he squeezed out, almost whispering through teeth, "And the world keeps going round..."
Suddenly he was looking at himself from the outside. Everything started slowing down.
Dave hunched over, trying to catch his breath and get heartbeat under control. Looks like the code phrase worked.
"Jesus skateboardin' Christ! That was... something, alright! Phew... This has to stop."
The scene froze and started losing color rapidly. After only a second, it looked like a sepia-toned photograph. As a matter of fact, it was one.
Dave crumpled it and rolled it between his palms before materializing thin bottle and plopping the resulting ball in there. He made sure to cork it tight.
The ball quickly lost cohesion, becoming viscous, tar-like substance, floating in the bottle.
With a wave of hand, dark and smudged surroundings changed to a long warehouse that seemed to stretch into infinity. Shelves held hundreds, if not thousands of bottles just like the one in Dave's hand.
He put the bottle on nearest spare shelf. Small label immediately appeared on it, indicating contents.
"Well, here's first persistent nightmare I got in here. Woo-flippin'-hoo. And here I hoped change of environment and the positivity of this place would stop this. As if!"
He let out a bitter laugh. Who knew that first nightmare would be so unrelenting to require a magic word to break out?
It was then that Dave felt that familiar tingling sense of being watched.
He turned around, and, with off-handed wave, sent the warehouse collapsing into some indeterminate point in the distance, a second wave came and muddy darkness around them suddenly took on shape of a Dojo. Cheesy, but as Jim mentioned countless amount of times, the mindset and mood of a place played important role in shaping dream further to your ends.
Dave narrowed his eyes. The intruder, no longer in hiding, had the appearance of a tall unicorn with wings - so, an alicorn - with a crown and dark blue coat.
This was something new. Usually they looked like horrendous monsters or somebody Dave knew. This one was just off the wall. Not a good sign.
"Another one, so soon?" He spat out.
Today's round one was sudden and cruel, almost too much for Dave, and now there was a second helping?!
All of anguish, regret, stress and pain of first encounter bubbled up, fueling the anger, the righteous fury of a man singled out by persistent nightmare condition.
The anger welled up, washed over him and spilled out; ripples and bulges ran along the room's walls and ceiling as if enormous pressure bore down on it. The wooden supports started to creak, threatening to give in to the unseen force. Varnish on wood bubbled, seared by unseen heat.
"Well, there's miscalculation on your part, nightmare."
He poked himself in the chest with a thumb, bellowing in anger, "I. AM. NOW. LUCID."
Suddenly the ceiling straightened back out. The room looked like it never saw the pressure nor heat of the outburst.
The sudden blast of anger was replaced by more confident, almost insultingly smug tone.
"So whatcha gonna do? Make my teeth fall out?"
His teeth shot out of mouth and started rotating in a ring around his outstretched index finger.
With a sound not unlike that of a racking shotgun a second set extended from his gums, good as new and considerably sharper.
"Way ahead of you!"
The mare shifted a bit, perhaps in discomfort? Curioser and curioser! Usually personified nightmares devoid of their native context - as Jim called their scenery - would just stare at you with this creepy smile before suddenly attacking. Some of them put on an act. None has been subtle so far.
He took aim with his finger gun. The teeth stopped rotation and started buzzing in place like angered bees.
"Come on, nightmare, surprise me."
Without saying anything, mare turned around and walked out in the door that nonchalantly popped in existence. As soon as door closed, it disappeared like it was never there.
"Huh."
Dave lowered his finger gun in surprise.
"Well, then. Can't say I expected that."
He woke up with a start.
Apparently he drooled all over technical drawing of a revolver.
"Dang it!"
Clumsily wiping slobber off the drawing, Dave raised it in morning light, inspecting what his tired and sleepy mind came up with yesterday.
Finding current half-awake himself largely in agreement with hist past half-asleep self, Dave put yesterday's forgotten tea to be re-heated and got back to drawing board, er, table.
As far as Dave was concerned, revolver was the best option - they were robust, tested-and-true approach for powerful rounds and allowed one to keep the spent cartridges for reloading, at the cost of low ammo capacity. Additionally using a revolver would trivialize handling of duds and creation of specialty rounds.
Of course it was revolver, not a pump shotgun! No stamped parts allowed! Goddamn nightmare couldn't even get this detail right. In retrospect it all was silly.
And yet, the memory of the scene conjured up a sinking feeling in the pit in his stomach without a failure.
He frowned.
"Gotta snap out of it. Gotta switch back to work headspace."
As they say, time heals.
Running over specs again, one thing in his own notes made Dave do a double-take.
"Man, with caliber kicked up to just shy of a twelve gauge, this would make one hell of a concealed-carry..."
"Maybe I can even improve on the design..."
Pencil in his hand started its dance, and soon the technical drawing saw revision number two, then three...
One of interesting design hurdles was safety.
After several iterations Dave settled on a design that was amalgamation of several approaches, resulting in mechanism that would only disengage when the gun was held by human hand and trigger was indeed pulled.
While back home presence of a safety on a revolver would be highly unusual, in a world where said revolver could be easily stolen away via telekinetic powers that one third of population possessed, having paranoid-grade safety suddenly made a lot of sense. After all, it'd be embarrassing to get shot with your own gun...
Luna ruminated on the events of past night.
She'd been keeping a close eye on a certain creature's dreams for a while now. They oftentimes were completely unlike the dreams rest of her subjects had, and she could not help but steal a glimpse at them every now and then between her duties. When she did, she would see enormous towers of stone, glass and metal that seemed to touch the sky, cities stretching as far as eye can see, gleaming with dazzling lights. Sometimes it would be these furless apes celebrating, competing or even fighting over reasons not immediately clear. Sometimes it'd be a sky full of metal, twisted in curious contraptions, interlocked and woven in a single gargantuan mechanism basking in golden sunlight. How much exactly of this was memory and how much of it was fantasy Luna couldn't tell. Dreams tended to be fickle and unpredictable after all.
But all of that changed literally overnight. That fateful night, which is to say, happened mere hours back, the creature was suffering from a nightmare. It already had some bad dreams, but not like this.
This time, Luna could clearly pick up fear, regret, anguish and guilt - all genuine and... overwhelming. Emotions kept emanating from window into the dream in almost dizzying waves. Not wasting another second, Luna dived in it headfirst.
The events that followed unfolded in a barely a minute but they brought Luna one surprise after another.
Only few things from that experience could be said for certain.
First, the creature seemed to know Element of Loyalty and Element of Kindness personally. The nightmare revolved around it unwittingly bringing harm to Element of Loyalty, and that fact has brought the creature a great deal of suffering.
Second, creature somehow rejected the nightmare and forged the dream around it, before imprisoning said nightmare in a glass vial through means that remained unclear. It appeared that it has done so many, many times, both from the practiced ease of nightmare incarceration and amount of similar bottles Luna got a glimpse on.
Then, the ape creature mistook her for another nightmare - which was not all that unexpected, as her sudden appearance would often give even subjects that were familiar with her a bit of a fright.
But instead of fear, it got swept up in anger and got ready for fight, bending the dream to it's purpose in a vulgar display of power.
There was one another creature with similarly whimsical control over surroundings...
Curious. Truly curious.
If the creature was in contact with The Elements, then perhaps her dearest sister could shed some light on the issue? With Day Court minutes away, it wouldn't be hard to find her.
And indeed, she found Celestia right by the door leading into the grand chamber where Day Court traditionally has been hosted.
"Sister... we found interloper most peculiar!.."
But as she explained, it became more and more clear that her dearest sister was not overly impressed by the news...
"I am sorry, Luna, but I am sure my star pupil would have written me about something like that. Perhaps you are mistaken? It's a dream realm, after all."
"But sister!.."
The doors behind Celestia closed with a dull thud.
Luna knew like no other just how much work has to be done in the Day Court, and yet the dismissive response left her hurt and fuming.
Perhaps she could talk to the creature directly.
Weighing result of his work, Dave let out an impressed remark, "Dang, what a wrist-destroyer!"
Despite the comment, the gun felt oddly pleasant to handle. He looked down his sights threateningly.
"Do you feel lucky, punk?"
The wall did not answer. Well, if it could, it would probably consider itself very lucky for the sole reason of complete lack of cylinder in revolver's metal frame.
"Moving on."
Hours blurred together as Dave juggled tasks of finalizing frame, machining the cylinder and loading and priming ammunition.
A prolonged series of paranoid proof testing sessions with overpressured cartridges later, Dave was ready to take matters in his own hands. That is, to shoot it at the range and finally get the dang thing sighted in.
Picking up some paper targets he prepared earlier, Dave headed to impromptu shooting range, practically vibrating with anticipation. It was finally, finally the time to test the promising revolver monstrosity in person.
Putting in a pair of earplugs and covering them with headphones, Dave uttered "Surprise me, Shuffle" and switched to the next song.
It took a bit to recognize the muffled music.
"PI Magnum show theme? I didn't even know I had that! Oh, you spoil me, Shuffle..."
With a heave, Dave hoisted up the hefty piece of gleaming steel and took aim.
Rainbow Dash yawned and stretched in the warm beams of evening sun. Nothing quite like catching a small nap on the cloud after a job well done.
A sharp thunderclap made her lift her eyelids, if ever so slightly. A stormcloud? After all that cloudbusting? No way! She must be hearing things.
She closed her eyes and kicked back, only to be jolted back up by another thunderclap.
"What the?!"
Whipping head from side to side, Dash saw only clear sky. And yet another thunderclap broke the peaceful silence.
"That's it! Looks like some stormcloud is up for hoof-to-everything meeting next..."
Jumping off the cloud, she took to flight, scanning the sky for the location of the loud cloudy perpetrator. But the sky was clear, just as Dash remembered before taking her rightfully deserved post-cloudbusting nap.
Another crack of thunder was enough for her to zero in on the source. Was it coming... from the ground?
"What's up, Dave?"
Dash literally dropped out of sky and hovered few feet in front of him, upside down and with intrigued expression plastered all over her muzzle.
"Jeez!"
Dave quickly pointed the pistol up, then realizing the blunder in muzzle safety presumption, immediately pointed it to the ground. The picture of a recent nightmare helpfully stood before his eyes.
Meanwhile, Rainbow spun into upright position, only growing more impatient.
"What are you doing?"
Her mischievously curious tone didn't bode well. Inquisitive little thing!
"Uhhhh... Nothing?.."
Dave's eyed darted around. A distraction? Unfeasible.
Exhale. Get ahold of yourself. Step one. Get rid of incriminating evidence.
Engineer hastily stuffed bulky revolver in one of bigger pockets. The weight quickly pulled the coveralls askew, only attracting more attention to the mysterious metallic device from Dash.
"What was that shiny thing? It looked neat!"
Congratulations, Dave, you made it worse!
Remain calm.
"Well, I was testing one thing I made. I'm sorry if it's too loud, I'm going to try to make it quie-"
Without paying any apparent attention to his carefully-picked words Dash zipped up close and fished out the revolver right out of the pocket.
She eyed her catch carefully.
"Hey! Goddamnit, Dash, it's not a toy! Give it back!"
Dave tried snatching it right back but she just flew a bit farther away, rotating shiny metal implement this and that way, inspecting it and even giving it a few tentative sniffs. Her muzzle scrunched up at the strange smell.
Seeing Dave fuming, Dash stuck her tongue out at him and continued trying to uncover mysteries of Dave's... whatever it was.
"So this was making all this noise? I don't get it. What is this?"
She looked right into the barrel of the revolver and Dave could feel his entire body clench.
Picture of blue pegasus splayed in a dark red puddle came back with a full force.
Dave slumped down for a few seconds then sprung up and crossed the distance between him and Dash in a heartbeat. Dash bolted back, but Dave manged to get a solid grip on her hind leg and pulled her down with surprising force.
Yanking the metal contraption out of her hooves with free hand, he pulled her low enough for their eyes to level.
"Never touch my things without permission! Get it?!"
Dash's smartass comeback stuck in her throat. Dave bore an expression Dash haven't seen yet. A very angry and stern expression.
She tried looking away, but Dave was not relenting.
Mischievous spark in her eyes went out and she practically went limp, Dave letting go of her hoof in surprise.
"I... I... O-okay..." she stammered out.
Lethargically flapping her wings, she slowly hovered away.
"Great, now I made Rainbow sad. Barely avoided one mess just to stumble into another. I just can't win, can I?"
Dave tossed revolver on the workbench. It didn't even need that much ironsight adjustment. Accuracy has been surprisingly good for button rifling, especially considering he eyeballed the twist.
Normally squeezing out good performance out of what Dave would consider practically cavemen technology would warrant some excitement or at least a smug smile. But not today.
"Dang it!"
He threw arms up in frustration.
Why Dash had to get so damn cocky? Was it 'cause he played saint with Twilight earlier?
How could he not?.. The sight of these large eyes being on verge of tears squeezed his heart with icy grip.
And who could've known that local braggart, self-proclaimed badass and leading mischief specialist would take it that bad?
Dang emotionally vulnerable tiny horses!
Whatever. Temporary integration plan stays the same: be polite, be courteous, but most importantly - be boring and non-threatening. There's enough eyes on my person already. Huge, colorful and adorable eyes full of curiosity, granted, but they can easily turn judging.
Funny, usually it was Dave-the-mediator who had to rein in outbursts from two other members of Trouble Trio. Is irritability a sign of slowly losing it?
Stop. These thoughts won't lead anywhere practical. Got to take your mind off it somehow.
Dave looked at the revolver with slight disgust. No more work today.
Might as well watch some favorite movies before hitting the sack.
"Do I still have Dollar Trilogy?"
The unseen fabric of the dream rippled, and a new window appeared in it.
Now came the moment Luna been waiting for with certain amount of trepidation.
Not allowing herself a second's worth of hesitation, she stepped in the dream.
The surroundings were smudged and blurry, and even sounds were somewhat muffled.
Inside the central viscous pillar, the creature floated, without a move; balancing precariously on the edge of lucidity.
Luna had already seen this particular flavor of dream when observing the creature previously. Akin to dreamless sleep, it kept the creature from wreaking lucid havoc on the dream.
Maybe a little help is order?
It would be a risk, of course. The creature wasn't so friendly last time they've met.
With a flash of magic, slab of gelatinous substance parted and collapsed to the unseen floor soundlessly.
Flashes of blue made Dave blink. What was he thinking about? Ah, it didn't matter. What mattered is that he was stuck in something sticky, viscous and disgustingly cold to touch.
A familiar dream.
Concentrating a little, Dave willed himself to obtain small amount of forward velocity. Why swim though jelly when you can float though it? Gotta remember not to abuse flight. Flying in dreams lead to excitement and too much excitement lead to waking up prematurely.
Thin membrane gave in and out on the floor Dave slid. Turning on his back and lifting his head slightly, first thing he saw was the column.
It was tall, semi-translucent and looked like glycerine was given oddly chaotic and whimsical form.
"So that's what it was."
Still lying, he lifted his hands in air and got to work.
With an offhanded gesture, gelatinous pillar disappeared inside of a containment bottle, was immediately corked and equally offhandedly thrown into a miniature portal labeled "Nightmare Disposal".
Hopefully this works on this particular kind of nightmare.
Something unceremoniously barged in his field of view.
Familiar deep-blue equine stood over him, studying his face closely.
"So you're the one who got me out?"
The mare only nodded.
"Thanks. You're one strange dream..."
He picked himself up and dusted off non-existent dirt from his knees.
"But I guess you're okay... as long as you don't try to bite my face off."
The deep-blue mare giggled in her hoof at that notion.
"Who are you, anyway?"
The mare assumed a proud posture, head held up high. Must be the whole royal shtick, with crown, and all.
"We art Princess Luna, Guardian of a Dream Realm."
Yep, totally royal shtick. And what's with the old-timey speak?
Dave knew linguists that would literally strangle anyone for butchering Middle English that hard.
Well, that's a strange dream that just got stranger.
But then again, it's the weird dreams that tend to be the most interesting and memorable ones, so might as well humor Her Majesty and roll with it.
"Pleased to meet you, Princess."
Materializing a fancy hat with even fancier feather sticking out, he took it off his head and bowed in a elaborate movement, swinging the hat.
"I'm Dave Smith, local engineer and, well... dreamer of this dream."
He put the hat back on his head, where it promptly disappeared.
Luna allowed herself a little smile. 'Tis an amusing creature.
"Tell us more about thyself."
"Well..."
The more Luna asked, the less she felt she understood.
Practically every fact about this human creature would be mundane if it wasn't twisted into some topsy-turvy logic.
Despite making a trip across dimensions, he insisted that he's just "normal everyday guy", and wasn't living any sort of exciting life before this.
His species seemed to not possess any sort of magic, yet achieved unthinkable feats, like planting the flag on their Moon - a fact that was mentioned so nonchalantly that she had to ask him to repeat that.
The nightmares were his frequent guests, but his conscience wasn't guilty nor he had a looming fear. If anything, he conjectured that it's just something that just happens to him, no matter stress level or state of mind.
It just didn't add up.
Luna shook her head.
Why would it have to add up for a traveler from another dimension in the first place? If anything, all this added strangeness only proved that entirety of it was genuine.
Gently steering course of discussion towards dreams and namely his affinity to controlling dreams only complicated things further.
There was even a brief tour into the warehouse - much to her surprise, Dave was not making a big secret out of his techniques or anything.
Several dozens of questions and one particularly cynical act of disregard for gravity later, Luna got her curiosity somewhat satisfied. At least, for the time being. Nevertheless, the irritating sense of confusion grew with each answer.
As far as she could tell, no magic was involved, instead of it there was reliance on certain internal logic cultivated by prolonged training. It included innumerable rules and exceptions to said rules, ways to break and bend those rules to one's whim, exceptions to exceptions, loopholes...
His methods did not make a whole lot of sense, but one could not deny the results, which were right there, lined up on shelves.
Perhaps it was just one of those things that just are, and that would consistently defy attempts to explain them.
Overall, their chat was rather pleasant. Sometimes he'd get caught up on some topic and proceed to get carried away, going off on tangents and peppering all of this with sudden remarks, corrections and trivia facts and bunch of jokes that were as funny as they were inappropriate.
"...And I best not get into politics! I hate politics, they generate so much BS that it's unbearable."
"What doth this have to do with apid behinds?"
Human appeared to be confused for a second, but then chuckled.
"Oh, you!"
Luna shook her head. At times it was really hard to understand the human.
"But anyway, shouldn't you already know all of this, being inside my head and all?"
Dave tapped his temple with a finger.
Before Luna could even answer, he straightened out and asked in a tone that was quite a bit less jovial than it was moments ago, "Hold up. Can you feel it?"
It didn't particularly feel like anything.
Luna focused. There was slight movement of air in warehouse, and the air was also a bit cold.
And then there was this subtle, lingering dread of impending doom.
Her tilted head and worried look told him everything. Answering the silent question, he made a hand wave,
"Yeah, that means current dream is about to take a nosedive into nightmare territory, hah!"
Despite previous statement, jovial attitude found its way back in his voice.
"In reality I probably turned about in my bed in some weird fashion and now my back is freezing. At least that's usually the reason for this happening - my body subtly telling me to wake up and find a way to get warmer."
"Normally one would consider it to be a bad thing to have a nightmare, but when I'm lucid I just turn that into entertainment."
Ah, a perfect time to introduce our honed craft of thwarting nightmare apparitions!
"'Tis our duty to protect Dream Realm. We're no stranger to taking fight to nightmares," Luna proudly stated.
"Really? That's pretty cool!"
"What doth temperature-"
"Nevermind that, Princess, it's just a silly figure of speech! It means... Uh... Well, Dash would definitely explain it better, but it means a whole slew of things, in this particular case cool means-" Dave rolled words around, picking the best description "-something that is considered interesting and worthy of respect and admiration."
"Sorry to interrupt that train of thought, but I better set up the battlefield, otherwise we'll be swimming in monsters in a minute."
Dave did something with not-claw manipulators of his, and surrounding environment changed.
It was a featureless plane where the light seemed to come from every direction, despite distant yellow blur hinting at presence of sun.
Everything felt muddled and slightly out of focus. Even the ground was hard to concentrate on - you could tell that it was there, but looking at it directly revealed nothing but soft darkness.
Intrigued by the change, Luna inquired, "What be thine intent?"
"Well... As you know, the frozen-bum-induced anxiety will soon manifest in form of nightmares. But here's the thing: as I concentrate less and less on dream environments, terrors grow more generic and weaker yet more numerous. And in this place, there's not enough context for nightmares to latch on to. Perfect place to deal with a horde of 'em. All we have to do is wait a bit."
Leaving blue mare to inspect the surroundings, Dave turned around. It was time to summon PT!
He hunched over and bent his knees, lightly tapping them with both hands, as if beckoning something.
"Come on, boy! We're gonna see some action, finally."
In response to his call, featureless ground shook and suddenly erupted.
Luna preferred to hang back, observing the scene and occasionally firing a beam or two at emerging monsters that came a bit too close for comfort.
She had never seen anything on this scale - new and new monsters of wildly varying breeds just kept materializing out of thin air.
Despite astonishing speed at which they appeared Dave clearly didn't need any help dispatching them.
Currently he hollered a battlecry as he rode a giant armored millipede into a small army of what Luna correctly identified to be zombies, except they were Dave's species, as opposed to ...
One of lopped off zombie parts sailed in a wide arc, landing at her hooves and wrecking that train of thought. Without too much of a delay the accursed bodypart dissolved into smoky wisps.
Well, at least it was a strange relief to know that living dead were more or less universally considered a source of nightmares.
As the horde got comparatively thinner, Dave rode the armored millipede out of it and to Luna, passing her by and stopping.
Of course, Luna stood proud and strong and totally had not jumped back with a yip when the icky multisegmented thing headed her way. That was definitely not a thing that happened in that dream.
That human creature waved at her, "Oh, I am so sorry I left you out, I'm kinda used to handling this alone and I got a bit distracted."
He gestured to the hordes of monsters trying to close in.
"They're going to keep coming until my dumb body in real world decides to listen to my commands and finally wraps itself in blanket. And that can take awhile... So come on, hop up, I'll give you a ride, it'll be fun!"
Luna still eyed the giant insect tentatively. Its every appendage was clad in steel and terminated in sharp point. She'd only get a glimpse on mandibles, but she had little doubt these were as armored and sharpened as well.
"Don't worry about PainTrain. He doesn't bite!"
Dave scratched his chin in a comical fashion and added,
"Well, at least he doesn't bite passengers!"
The giant millipede turned its head to face her, revealing two large and unusually expressive eyes, partially obscured by armor. Yes, the mandibles indeed were covered in steel and razor-sharp!
When she turned back, there was a separate admittedly comfy-looking seat mounted on the wide back of millipede, to which Dave waved in inviting manner.
The eccentricity of the specimen was something to behold. But at the same time it was kind of endearing.
With a gentle flap of wings Luna placed herself on what could be easily the most extravagant chariot she rode.
Upon feeling added weight PainTrain shuffled, but Dave was quick to calm him down.
"Easy, boy," he said as he pat the millipede on the back affectionately.
Unexpectedly adorable purring sounds emanating from the overgrown insect caught Luna off guard.
"Wha?.."
Dave turned to her, with smile ear-to-ear.
"Ain't he a cutie pie?"
---
Luna slung one spell after another. A group of demons got pancaked by a hilariously disproportionate weight. Nearby gathering of freakishly green monsters looked in abject terror as literal moon - albeit scaled down - rolled towards them, leaving steady stream of wisps in its wake. That creature - Dave - was right, it was entertaining!
"Str-r-r-rike! You're pretty good at this," Dave smiled at her, flashing pearly whites.
Luna allowed herself a modest smile. Frankly saying, she was experimenting at this point - there simply has not been a need to fight an entire army in the dream realm.
The legs of millipede became a single steely gray blur, and it was only now that it hit Luna that they were moving way faster than they were a minute ago, and the speed was picking up.
Amalgamations of horn, tooth, tentacle and claw whizzed by as Dave continued to rain barrages of colorful fire upon hordes. Giant razor-sharp mandibles clicked non-stop, turning everything in the path in wisps of smoke.
Luna continued with her hard-hitting spell experiments. Prolonged beam from her horn traced a wispy trail through battlefield. Not bad, but could use some more oomph! Once more, with feeling! And more explosions!
Satisfied with making a decidedly large clearing in the horde, Luna looked around. There was just so much more of... everything in this dream. So much speed, so much more carnage and thrill! None of the dreams she spied human having earlier even came close to this. Was he trying to impress her?
She stole a glance at Dave who floated in air port-side of PainTrain, bringing down untold disasters at the monster-carpet that practically coated this featureless plane at this point. At the moment he, in a perspective-defying feat, picked up sun and started... ripping away small pieces and raining them down like meteors? Now that's him blatantly showing off!
That talent of his could be of great help on nightly duties of keeping dreams of her subject calm, peaceful and terror-free.
"Oh no!"
Dave's voice came from somewhere above.
Luna spotted him floating far above in the air, being pulled up towards a growing white glow by an invisible force.
"I got too agitated. Dang it, it always happens."
His face twisted in a pout.
He pointed to the light that continued drawing him in.
"That's me waking up. I'm sorr-"
The blindingly bright light consumed his body and the dream fell apart.
Dave sat up, rubbing his eyes in annoyance.
"Damn it, and it was a neat dream, too!"