Wednesday Evening…
“Behold…!” Princess Luna declared in dramatic fashion, wings outstretched and one leg prominently pointing out into the aethereal realm of dreams. Her voice boomed as if it were coming from a microphone, almost causing her human self to cover her ears at the sudden increase in volume.
The Princess continued, “… the Dream R— What!?”
Principal Luna, standing just to the side of the chest-high pony princess of the night, raised an eyebrow at the distress coming off of her Equestrian self.
“What has become of my Dream Realm!?” the Princess nearly shrieked in outrage, stamping one hoof into the cherry red cloud they found themselves standing on.
Luna glanced away from her pony princess self, and noted the truly psychedelic view before her. Though it still appeared to be a vast, indescribably beautiful night sky, said night sky was swirling with nebulae, clouds, and stars of every conceivable color. Sometimes literally, as a cyclone of pink and white swept past. Luna thought she could make out a cloud formation in the precise shape and coloration of Twilight Sparkle’s personal symbol off in the distance, and a cluster of meteoric apples soaring just beyond that.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, turning back to her horrified companion on this bizarre adventure. “Outside of reminding me of Dad’s old van – the one with the wizards and dragons painted on the side – it looks precisely like what I’d imagine a ‘Dream Realm’ would…”
“No!” Princess Luna snarled, and glared at the technicolorscape assaulting her eyes. “This is… I don’t know what this is! My Dream Realm is supposed to be gentle, silver, and calm! Calmness to a plutonian degree. It is a realm of rest and relaxation. This looks like Pinkie Pie went on a party-decorating-spree!”
As if on cue, one of the ‘stars’ drifted past. And within its form, Luna could see what appeared to be a pink pony dancing atop a birthday cake the size of Mount Everhoof, alongside what she could only describe as a gigantic crocodile with brilliant amethyst eyes. More than that, she couldn’t make out due to how eye-searingly saturated everything within the dream was.
Pink was a color best used in moderation, both Lunas decided.
“I think things would be worse, if that were the case,” she mused to herself. Then, back to her still gawking and grumbling pony self, she added, “Will this be a problem? We can hold off the dreamwalking until you’ve sorted this out, I’m sure.”
Princess Luna, still staring at the horrors before her, eventually shook her head.
“N-no,” she said with a sigh, “No… I’ll not have you denied this opportunity because of my squeamishness.
“Though this does raise some concerns,” Princess Luna said, and reached up one hoof to tap her chin as she pondered. “Princess Twilight was just talking about how your reality’s rules of magic might not be the same as mine own. And perhaps I should not be surprised this extends to the Dream Realm as well…”
She hummed to herself as she thought.
“Since the Rainbooms and their Elements were the first magics in this realm,” the Princess mused, “They most likely became the template for Magic in its entirety.”
“Slightly less disturbing than your Discord becoming the template for ours…” Principal Luna groaned.
Princess Luna clearly didn’t hear her. “I suppose that would explain this… abysmal color scheme,” she sighed, “The Elements of Harmony, as wonderful as they are, always did clash with my aesthetics…”
She shook her head again. This time, Princess Luna drew herself up to her full height, and looked up to her newest apprentice.
“Never mind all that,” she said with a wave of her hoof, “I’m sure it will be fine. The sooner we begin your training, and teach you proper Dreamwalking, the better.”
Luna nodded, affirmatively, and slapped her hands together. “Finally!” she crowed, “I’ve been on the sidelines for too many of these magical disasters and crises. It’s about time I learned how to help my own students…”
She paused, a pale look coming over her face.
“How long… do you suppose we’ll need?” she asked, and tapped her nails together nervously. “From what I’ve been able to gather, Twilight and Midnight are having a bit of a difficult time with their nightmares. Shouldn’t we do something in the meantime?”
The Princess pressed her lips tight together, and replied, “They are, indeed. But… they are only nightmares. And granting you the keys to battle such things on your own in this reality must come first.”
“Are you certain?” Luna asked, concern furrowing her brows. “Perhaps this is more than—”
Princess Luna interrupted herself with another wing-gesture. Then, she said in a calm, quiet voice, “I know what it is you are feeling. But believe me, I have already been down that path before. I already confirmed there is no Incubus. Twas just mine own paranoia and self-recrimination, layered over an innocent…”
She paused, then corrected herself.
“… nearly innocent filly.”
“Girl.”
“Gesundhoof.”
Principal Luna pinched the bridge of her nose – a most peculiar gesture to the pony standing across from her – and sighed.
“So, you are certain this is just typical teenage angst and trauma?” she asked again. “Are you truly certain?”
Princess Luna’s face shifted, turning into a frown as her eyes stared down at her hooves. This may have been a mistake, as while she pondered that question, she also had to behold the sight of orange and purple clouds crashing into each other just below her.
She looked away instead, towards a passing dream-bubble. She thought she could make out that one DJ pony – or, her human counterpart – dreaming about composing a duet with… Big Mac?
Hm, she thought. This is a strange universe.
“Yes,” she said at last. “While Midnight and Twilight have undergone a traumatic experience, and it is clearly affecting their dreams… I believe this is little more than regular nightmares, blown out of proportion. I’ve often held off immediately stepping into situations like this, as they usually resolve themselves soon enough.”
With a gesture from her wing, the Princess caused the blue-haired DJ’s dream to spin away into the depths of the Dream Realm, and for another to drift into its place.
This one appeared to be that Dazzling girl who had run off in the middle of Twilight and Midnight’s meeting through the hologram-spell. And she appeared quite distressed in this dream, almost as much as she’d been in the real world.
“We shall deal with the Sparkle sisters’ issues in due time,” Princess Luna said, resolutely. “But perhaps they will benefit more from your world’s specialists, rather than mine. I have heard many nice things about Psychiatry…”
Principal Luna’s face scrunched up, still displaying her concern and mistrust of such a diagnosis.
“Come now,” the Princess said, the dream-bubble becoming a door before their very eyes, “We shall explore dear Sonata’s dreams tonight, and in a few days’ time, if Midnight and Twilight are still struggling, we shall help them then. Once you’ve learned the basics.”
The door opened, and both Lunas entered, though one more hesitant than the other.
“I do hope you’re right about that,” she whispered.
Two Nights Later…
Shining Armor had been on the Canterlot Police Force for over a year, and had seen his share of terrifying things. Sure, the relatively peaceful Canterlot City was no Detrot or Neigh Orleans, but it could still be a dangerous place sometimes. Certainly enough – he hoped – that he could one day sell the resulting hardboiled tales of his life as exciting detective novels, like his mom kept saying he should.
He’d seen car chases. He’d seen grim crime scenes. He’d faced many of his own darkest fears, walking the beat.
But he had never gotten over his fear of heights. The fact that space was an illusion in the Dream Realm did not help him in this regard, as, to his monkey-brain, he was clearly standing on seemingly nothing, suspended in the depths of a whirling, technicolor star field that looked like something out of the First Edition Baddies Book from O&O.
That was the one where the writers and artists had inhaled a copious amount of Misdemeanor substances prior to working on it.
“So…” he said, slowly and while white-knuckling the baseball bat he’d taken with them when he, his former-dog-now-little-brother-but-still-physically-a-dog, and their formerly-one-now-two-little-sisters ripped open the fabric of reality and physically entered the realm of sleep and dreams.
The latter were currently sharing a body, walking on at the head of their dream-demon-hunting party, hardly paying him any attention as they walked through the depths of space on an invisible floor that made no comforting noise when walked upon. Midnight and Twilight were on the lookout, so naturally they weren’t as keyed into Shining’s growing unease as he might have liked.
The former, well…
“This place is really pretty,” Spike oohed and awed, eyes hungrily drinking in the sight of one of those dreamy bubble… things drifting past.
Well. He was still a dog, in some ways. Or maybe that was childlike innocence. Shining couldn’t really tell, to be honest.
“It’s the collective human unconsciousness, Spike,” Midnight sighed with a roll of her eyes, “It’s a little more impressive than ‘pretty’.”
Spike just shrugged at this, and corrected himself.
“Alright… it’s pretty cool, then.”
Shining, at least, could agree with that statement on a technical level. As did Twilight, whose giggle could be heard emanating out of her shared forehead horn. Some sort of practical compromise to let his sisters speak separately, he recalled from just this Monday…
“It hasn’t been a week,” he groaned, and shook his head. Then, loud enough for the others to hear him, he said, “Still… yeah. Pretty cool.”
“And I doubt this is the entirety of human dreams,” Twilight’s voice said in a nerves-calming tone, “Considering the slow spread of Magic into our universe, and the observation that these star fields are clearly color-coded to our geodes, it’s very likely that this world’s Dream Realm hasn’t yet grown far beyond Canterlot City…”
“We get it, yeah,” Midnight said, dismissively, and turned down a different path – not that Shining could tell what constituted a ‘path’ when all of them were invisible and broke the laws of space – before adding, “Can you please help me here? I feel like I’m the only one running a scanning spell.”
“You are the only one,” Twilight sighed, “I thought we went over this; normal magic is far more limited in the Dream Realm. You need Dream Magic, or Princess Luna’s cutie mark magic.”
Midnight huffed, and slapped another dream bubble – apparently Scootaloo was dreaming about Rainbow Dash landing on the moon again – away with one wing. “Great,” she sneered. “Maybe Shiny knows a good tattooist in the city so we can get a moon-shaped butt-stamp…”
“Hey!” Shining warned.
“She was kidding!” Twilight half-laughed, half-panicked. “Right? You were kidding?”
Midnight rolled her eyes again. “Yes… though if Aria wanted a matching set…”
Twilight groaned, “Why must you be this uninhibited… Bohemian!?”
“Why are you always so repressed?” Midnight mockingly retorted.
“I am not repressed!”
“You wear bowties.”
“Bowties are cool!” Twilight snarled.
Shining Armor and Spike shared a look. And then they each silently mouthed back the word ‘Twilinanas’ to each other.
Ignoring her sister’s strangled growl, Midnight directed her and Twilight’s body down another path only they could evidently see. She abruptly came up short as a rainbow-themed mass of dream-stuff crossed said path before her. Amidst the mass, she almost swore she saw Moondancer dreaming about playing roller derby with Wallflower.
She turned another direction, and had to stop again as – however that worked – the invisible path she walked started rolling up under itself in a giant pink spiral. Shining and Spike watched their sister(s) walk in the eternal spiral for a good minute before Twilight or Midnight noticed.
With an annoyed grumble and sigh, they teleported back to Shining’s spot in the eternities of the Dream Realm, and stamped one foot irritably.
“Stupid dream universe!” Midnight snarled, “Be logical for once!”
“What are you looking for, anyway?” Spike asked, waving his paw around. “It just looks like you two… uh, one? Whatever. You two look like you’re wandering in circles!”
Twilight’s strained voice answered first with a vocalized snort.
“You’ve noticed the bubbles, right?” she asked. Then, without waiting for a response, Twilight continued. “Stars, bubbles, whatever… They’re portals into the dreams of everyone here. Probably everyone in Canterlot, at least.”
“We’re trying to find ours,” Midnight added, flicking her eyes to the side as she continued to search, “But the darn thing’s a needle in a pile of other needles.”
Shining frowned as a thought occurred to him.
“Uh, shouldn’t you be asleep then?” he asked. “If you’re awake, shouldn’t you not have a dream… bubble?”
Twilight’s voice emanated from her horn with a purple crackle.
“Usually, yes!” she said, a note of academic glee slipping in. “But since we know Shadowlight is still active while Midnight and I are awake, she must go somewhere. Which means, the dream-bubble we share must still exist in some fashion!”
“I… guess that makes sense,” Shining mused, scratching at his chin. “What does an Incubus look like, by the way? If I’m gonna help smack this thing around with you, I’m hoping it doesn’t look too much like my sisters.”
“That’s…” Midnight paused. She blinked rapidly, a few times, before biting her knuckle in thought.
“That’s a good question,” Twilight admitted. “Truth is… we don’t know. The only references I’ve seen on them was in…
“Okay,” she sighed, “This is gonna sound weird, since… well, you know me as Twilight, but when Midnight and I Split, we shared our knowledge of magic equally. Or, as equally as possible. So, when Luna and Princess Twilight last tried to exorcise Midnight…”
“Thanks for the wonderful reminder, sis…” Midnight groused, half-heartedly.
“… Midnight tried extracting magical knowledge from their tentative contact, and I’ve got those memories, even though I wasn’t the one doing that at the time…”
“Got it!” Spike interrupted, and pressed his ears down with his paws. “We got it! You snuck some magic knowhow once. Don’t… don’t stress my brain out explaining it…”
“Point is,” Midnight said, folding her arms in front of herself, “We don’t really know. Incubi are supremely rare magical beings. Luna literally wrote the book on them, and she didn’t find any correlation in how they appeared. Not much data when the number of cases can be counted on one hand.
“And that might still be the case,” she sighed, and threw her arms out towards the colorful maelstrom going on around them, “but we already know this madness isn’t the same across dimensions. So… keep your guard up.”
Shining watched his sister(s) march off to continue their search for their own dreamspace. Their dream bubble...thing.
For a moment, at least. Then, his eyes wandered back down to the baseball bat in his hands. He hefted the aluminum thing, and noted how Rainbow’s paintjob of it – lavender and pink, for Twilight – seemed completely unmarred and undamaged.
Never been used. Untested. And potentially their only weapon in an upcoming fight.
He looked down at Spike, who sat calmly by his feet. The little pup watched Twilight/Midnight with the intensity of a guard dog, watching over his charge. But a pup he remained, making the comparison a little less intimidating and a lot more adorable than Spike probably intended.
Shining recalled Cadance’s similar remarks, when she first saw him in uniform. Maybe she was a little nicer about it than that, but the mental comparison was still there.
“When we find this Incubus,” he said loud enough to catch Twilight and Midnight’s attention, “What exactly will we… do?”
He swung the bat slowly, for emphasis.
Turning back around, Twilight/Midnight eyed her brothers. Midnight brought their hands up, and scratched her chin.
“Hm,” Twilight’s voice hummed, “Good point…”
“What is?” Spike asked, tilting his head to one side questioningly.
Midnight pursed her lips, and sighed.
“We’ve gone into the Dream Realm physically because we figured it would act as a buffer against any surprises Shadowlight might toss our way,” she said, before gesturing towards Spike and Shining. “Having a physical form will make it tougher for her to affect us, or you, but it could also be a bit more dangerous.”
Shining raised an eyebrow. “What, like… if we die in a dream…?” he asked, leaving the obvious hanging on the ethereal winds.
“Without more data, we can’t know,” Midnight admitted with a shrug, “but we can take some precautions. As cliched as it might be, this is the Dream Realm. It’s basically weaponized imagination, so…”
Spike leapt up, eyes beaming bright and tail wagging as though it wanted to break off of him.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying!?” he squee’d, and bit his lip, eyes still flashing with stars.
Midnight rolled her eyes, even as Twilight tittered at the display. The latter calmed herself quickly, and said, “Why, I believe a demonstration is in order.
“Midnight?” she asked with another glimmer of magical light, “Would you care to do the honors?”
Midnight sighed, and glanced up at her horn. Her face scrunched up in deep thought as her wings ruffled at her side.
Then, her eyes widened, and her lips turned up in a smirk. Midnight’s hand flashed with her signature blue magic, causing bits of fluffy dream-stuff to pull away from all the swirls and clouds and bubbles drifting around her, like cotton candy pulled through a thresher.
The magic congealed in her grasp, and within seconds began to take shape. And once it did, blue flames receded, revealing a six-foot-tall metal pole, topped with the most ridiculously oversized sledge-hammer head Shining had ever seen.
Midnight hefted her person-sized hammer in both hands, and gave it a twirl that nothing that heavy should have been able to pull off.
“Really?” Twilight asked, tiredly.
“What can I say?” Midnight laughed, and caused a small, purple flame to sprout out the top of the hammer. “I want to make sure I leave an… impression with Shadowlight. And a hammer made out of Dream Magic will do just that!”
Twilight huffed. “It just seems a bit obvious and showy.”
Midnight snorted, and replied, “And you wanted to wail on her with subtlety?”
“A hammer is a jock weapon of choice,” Twilight pouted, “Plus, a few magical blasts would probably do the same thing, and more efficiently…”
While the two sisters passive-aggressively snarked at each other, Shining Armor and Spike stood off to the side and stared into infinity, eyes glazed over with all the possibilities swimming through their minds.
Their jaws both unhinged as well, just to complete the image.
Spike was the first to recover. He shook his head, rattling his collar and tags. Then, the little purple puppy closed his eyes, and began to concentrate.
After a few moments, the colorful clouds started bending to Spike’s thoughts, racing to cover him up. Shining was surprised, even after the previous demonstration, to see it happen. This time, the dream-stuff took on a bright emerald shade, and as it built more and more bulk, it’s light became brighter and brighter.
Then, with an almost comical, balloon-popping sound, something appeared in front of Shining that nearly scared the wits out of him.
It was taller than him, for starters. And huge.
The word he was looking for might even have been swole.
“Alright, how do I look?” the creature asked in a surprisingly high-pitched, familiar voice.
“Spike?” Shining asked, eyes shrinking down to dots as he took in the new form his former dog had taken. Spike looked more like some sort of giant purple lizard now, topped with green head-ridges and fins. The fact that he was now almost two or three heads taller than Shining, and built like a brick house made him even more intimidating.
What killed that vibe, in Shining’s opinion, was the tiny blue wizard hat sitting atop Spike’s head.
“Um…?”
“A dragon and a wizard?” Twilight asked, even as Midnight took in the sight of Spike with an approving nod.
Spike shrugged, muscles rippling like cords of rope beneath his hard scales.
“Well, uh…” The resemblance to the puppy Shining knew returned in a hurry as Spike began tapping his claws nervously together. “… Big Mac helped me roll up an O&O character earlier. A wizard named Garbunkle. I thought that sounded cool…
“But then I thought…!” A gigantic, toothy grin split the towering dragon’s face. “I thought, ‘Hey? Isn’t the Me from Equestria some awesome, fire-breathing, Magical Dragon?’ And a wizard who’s also a dragon would probably be more useful, so…”
He swept one claw demonstrably over his – it had to be said – chiseled abs, while the other swept up in an arc. That second claw left a rainbow in its wake to float gently off into the spacious realm of dreams.
“Alright,” Midnight said with a smile, “That looks good. But isn’t Dragon You like, two-foot-nothing?”
“You said to use my imagination,” Spike replied, pointing one clawed finger at the fused Sparkle, “And I’d imagine being a baby dragon wouldn’t be all that useful right now, correct?”
“Well put, Spike!” Twilight cheerfully cut in. “Let’s not get caught up on the details. Now… Shiny?”
Shining, though impressed at Spike’s sudden bout of creativity and application, frowned. He couldn’t very well let his newest sibling show him up already. There were still some standards that a BBBFF had to maintain around here.
He closed his own eyes, and started thinking. A whole catalogue of old O&O character ideas, crayon-drawn comic book superheroes, and even a few odd movie and book ones flashed through his mind. Each one had something he admired about them, something that made him want to be them, to one degree or another.
But none were perfect. And though he was new to all this magic business, he’d read enough books to think that maybe picking something he wouldn’t regret turning into would be for the best.
The air charged, and a pink light shimmered around his form. As the dream-clouds swirled, Shining began to feel… something. An idea came to the fore of his mind.
He felt the grip of his bat, and it all suddenly clicked into place.
There was an explosion of pink, white, and blue light as the magic of dreams pulled towards Shining, drawn to him like a magnet. He could tell, somehow, that the dream-stuff could feel his idea take shape, and it wanted so badly to fill that mold.
And when it was over, Shining Armor smiled down at his siblings from a comfortable five-head height advantage. He hefted the gigantic, golden sword in his hands onto his back, and chuckled to himself.
Spike’s eyes widened with glee, and he nearly bit off his own fingers when he saw a towering white robot standing where Shining had been a moment before.
“Who the heck are you supposed to be?” Midnight and Twilight said together. The fused girl cocked her head to one side, and frowned in confusion. Shining had seemingly transformed into a set of loosely-connected white blocks and rectangles, all built around a blue and pink core. They could almost recall seeing something like it from one of Fluttershy’s comics, but nothing specific came to mind.
“Who is that!?” Spike spun around, horror draining all the color from his face. “That’s… how do you not know Mighty Mecha Magic Knight!?”
Midnight stared at Spike for a long couple of seconds, before turning her eyes up to her Shining bro-bot. Taking another look, she noted how the giant robot’s aesthetic looked vaguely like something out of a historical book on knights. Even Shining’s head looked a bit more like a helmet than a functioning robotic sensor block. The bright red cape and gigantic golden chainsaw-sword didn’t hurt the impression either.
Sensing her confusion, Shining explained in a deep, digitized voice, “Superhero comic. A really cool one, too. One of my favorites, actually…”
“He’s not just a superhero!” Spike snorted angrily. “He’s the Mighty and Magical Mechanized Knight of Myth! One of the Round Table Knights whose soul was absorbed by his magical sword, which was melted down in Neo-Yolkyo to make the steel for a giant robot, which…!”
Spike’s mouth clamped shut, a floating purple hand popping into existence just to close it for him. Though he muttered for a moment longer, the newly-minted dragon huffed green flames through his nostrils, and glared at his sisters.
“We got it,” Twilight sighed, though not without a touch of humor in her voice, “Comic book nerd stuff. Don’t stress our brains over it…”
“Don’t sweat it,” Shining laughed, and gave his new fully mechanical body a quick test, flexing as far as he could when he no longer had the pliability of muscle. It was actually kind of neat, like wearing one of those oversized costumes from the conventions. A bit stiff, but functional.
He struck a heroic pose, sword up, and legs wide-stanced. Shining, with a simple mental flick, activated Mage Knight’s forcefield, a bright pink shield popping into place by his side, orbiting his left arm.
“By the Light of Justice!” he cried out, accompanied by a swell of music from somewhere within the Dream Realm.
Aw, yeah, Shining cheered in his mind. The movie adaptation might’ve sucked, but you can’t beat a Long Whinnyams score…
“Never fear, your BBBFF is here,” Shining said with a wink he wasn’t sure a robot could normally manage. “At least, this time.”
Spike applauded wildly, bouncing up and down in pure nerd-enthusiasm. He somehow managed to whistle, despite working with a rather unfamiliar mouth and lips.
Dream-logic, Shining assumed.
But, standing right beside Spike, Twilight/Midnight watched their big brother with markedly less enthusiasm. They crossed their arms, and tilted their head curiously.
“Everything alright?” Shining asked, sheathing his weapon.
Midnight hummed something to herself, but it was Twilight who spoke first.
“You said, ‘this time’,” she said, frown deepening.
“Uh…” Shining paused, mind spinning around to go back over the last few seconds. “D-did I?”
Crap, that wasn’t very convincing, Shining thought. They don’t train cops to lie...
Even Spike sensed the chill that fell between Shining and Twilight/Midnight. His reptilian eyes snapped back and forth between them, clearly measuring whatever tension he saw there.
Midnight’s face scrunched up, and her eyes narrowed… before suddenly snapping wide open.
“There!” she cried, and pointed out into the vast, colorful void of the Dream Realm. Shining and Spike turned, the former glad for the distraction, and tried to spot whatever their sisters had seen.
Shining narrowed his eyes. Well, his optical lenses, at present. Amid the eye-searingly colorful vistas before him, he could just make out a distant disruption. A dark spot in the heavens otherwise made of light and technicolor madness.
It was coming closer.
“What in the world…?” He didn’t get to finish. Midnight’s hands reached out, and clawed at the air around her.
The door stopped moving… and the Dream Realm took up the slack. As if bidden by his sister’s gesture – ah, who was he kidding, she/they definitely just did something with magic – the whole world shifted around and beneath Shining. He and Spike lurched as rainbow clouds rushed past them, and the invisible floor of this dimension lost its stability.
Instantly, solidity returned. The clouds and swirls and vortexes stopped racing away. Spike fell to his knees, while Shining planted his sword into… whatever the invisible, immaterial ‘floor’ they’d been walking on was, bracing himself.
While the brothers took a moment to right themselves, and find their footing again, Midnight/Twilight walked forward with a determined stride.
Before them all stood a door. A set of doors, in fact, like the main gates of some grand, princessly castle. It could have stood at the entryway of their Princess-self’s very own crystalline Castle of Friendship, just by their towering stature.
Yet, there was something wrong about them as well. Though the doors were the same dark, midnight blue as the Sparkle sister’s own hair – the one part of their color palette they still shared Post-Split – and the seam of the doors was dominated by their own Sparkle ‘cutie mark’ symbol, in both pink and blue, the doors themselves were almost ruined. A web of cracks and splinters covered the face of the doors, pale pink and green wood showing through like angry, bitter wounds.
“It’s…” Midnight worked her mouth, but words failed to form.
Twilight’s voice finished their shared thought. “It’s like someone took a hammer to it. Or, tossed it into a woodchipper.”
“Is… is it bad that your Dream-Door looks like crap?” Shining asked as he approached.
Midnight hefted the hammer she’d summoned, and shot Shining a glare that almost knocked the wind out of him from ten paces.
“It’s not great,” Midnight admitted after a few moments.
Twilight concurred. “If the Dream Realm runs on metaphor and imagery… maybe we do need to see a psychiatrist…”
The sisters sighed in unison, sagging beneath the weight of their own mental stability.
Spike growled, and stepped up to his sisters. He planted one claw on their shoulder, turned them around, and said, “Don’t you think about that! We’re here now, and we’re gonna help you in the best way possible.”
When Midnight raised a questioning eyebrow, Shining stepped forward as well.
“He’s right!” said Shining Armor, flexing his mechanical muscles and beaming his best mechanical smile. “That dream demon thing isn’t going to know what hit her! It! Whatever…!”
This close, Shining could definitely see the lines of stress and strain on his sisters’ face. Their eyes creased in a way that reminded him of a desk sergeant who lived off coffee and ran the night shift at his precinct.
Their eyes just… didn’t shine the way he remembered.
But, after a moment, perhaps the sheer bravado exuding off Spike and Shining’s face did something. Perhaps just a little of their own energy, real or not, seeped into the fused teenager’s heart.
Her smile was weak. But it was there.
“Thanks Spike,” they said, together, and placed a welcoming hand on Spike’s claw, “Shining. We…”
The Dream Realm paused, quite suddenly. A sound cut the air like a knife, splitting the seconds before and after apart.
It was the creak of old hinges.
Shining, Spike, and their sisters’ eyes and body spun up and around, slowly. Painfully slowly. Slow in the way anyone might, if they knew precisely what they’d see, and feared the inevitable far more than they would readily admit.
The doors had opened, just ajar. The one bearing Midnight’s blue sparkle had been pulled inward, leaving a black window into the absolute darkness beyond.
An eye, red and gleaming, stared out from that crevice.
A hand followed, snapping out into the void of the Dream Realm like a striking snake. A red claw flashed across Shining’s vision, and flew straight for his sisters, snatching one of their wings in its grip.
There was no time to act, no time to break free of the shock. Midnight and Twilight flared with white magical light, blinding Shining instantly. He tried to close his eyes, tried to blink away the spots, but he was caught completely flatfooted.
A cry! A shout!
The slamming of a door.
A moment later, Shining’s sight returned as he rubbed his mechanical eyes. The Dream Realm seemed unchanged, save for the closed door, which Spike now rushed to, green flames wafting up from his screaming jaws.
What happened? Shining asked himself this several times, in quick succession.
He looked down at his feet.
His sisters were still there.
Wait… what were they wearing before? And where’s their… wings…
The thought stopped his heart, cold.
Oh, no.
Twilight shakily tried to reach her feet, but collapsed immediately into Shining’s arms.
“Midnight!” she cried, eyes wide in terror, breath shaky, and hands trembling with fear.
“Midnight!!!”