Lightning Dust felt the fog of sleep lifting as consciousness took hold once again. “Ugh… My head!” said Lightning Dust as she sat up in her bed, massaging her temples. After taking a moment to glance around at her surroundings she froze. She couldn’t tell for sure, but it was either some kind of military-style hospital or she was back in her bed at the barracks.
“What the hay is going on here?” she said out loud while throwing the covers off her bed. She got to her hooves and began surveying her surroundings.
Lightning Dust was shocked to find herself standing beside her old bed in the communal sleeping quarters of the barracks. Oddly enough, however, there were no personal effects from other ponies in the room. No photos, no books, no nothing. All the beds were made, but looked like they had never been used in the first place. In fact, the entire room looked new and unused.
“This isn’t right…” Lightning Dust thought to herself as she scanned the room.
Lightning Dust froze when she heard a soft giggle echo through the room. Her ears flicked every which way, but try as she might, she was not able to identify the source of the haunting sound.
She put on a fake smile to stave off the uneasy feeling that had just started to develop. “Ha. Ha. Very funny guys. Joke’s over! You’ve had your fun, so come on out!” she shouted.
Her voice echoed through the room, but there was no response. The room was still and silent. “Ugh…! They’re probably outside, those stupid jerks! I bet Rainbow is responsible for this! Her and her stupid pranks.”
Lightning Dust trotted out of the room and made her way out of the barracks. Her pace quickened as she moved through the building, scanning the halls and rooms she passed. “Not a single pony, not even staff! Ok, this is starting to freak me out…”
Her heart was racing. “This isn’t normal! I should be seeing at least some guard ponies by now!” It wasn’t long until she was at a full gallop, trying to get out of the building as fast as she could. She burst through the main entrance of the barracks scanning frantically for signs of other ponies. After seeing no one Lightning Dust came to a halt as the realization struck her. The complex was completely deserted.
“I… I don’t get it? What in Tartarus is going on here?”
Lightning Dust heard the soft giggle again, but this time she could identify where it was coming from. She whipped around as fast as she could and to her surprise she found a filly, sitting on her haunches giggling just a few feet behind her. Lightning Dust was shocked; there was no way the filly could have snuck up on her!
The filly had no cutie mark, but shared Lightning Dust’s colors: same coat, same mane and even the same eyes. It was those eyes that gave Lightning Dust a very unsettling feeling. They were familiar, too familiar, and it frightened her.
“Hi there!” said the filly with a smile.
Lightning Dust choked back the lump in her throat so she could speak. “W-Who are you?”
“Silly! You know who I am! I’m you, Dusty!” replied the filly as she giggled and grinned.
“The only pony that has ever called me ‘Dusty’ was Mom. And I don’t even recall telling Rainbow that!”
Lightning Dust frowned, realizing this had to be some really elaborate prank Rainbow Dash had setup. “That’s not funny! Did Rainbow Dash put you up to this?”
The filly tilted her head in confusion. “Rainbow Dash?” Dusty shrugged off the expression and smiled. “Nope! This is all my doing!”
There was an uneasy feeling in Lightning Dust’s stomach when she said that. “What do you mean, ‘This is all my doing’?”
Dusty could see the emotions on Lightning Dust’s face, but dismissed it. “Yes, my doing. You see, I know you’ve had a tough time at the Academy. And all you could think about was getting back here, so I made an Academy just for you!” she said as she stood up on her hind legs and waved her hooves in the air.
“…Wait, what?!”
Dusty dropped back to all fours and lowered her head a bit. “But I didn’t want you to be sad anymore. You were trying so hard and the other ponies didn’t stand up for you when Spitfire kicked you out!“ the name of her former captain left the filly’s mouth with as much distaste as a rotten piece of bread. Thoughts of those last moments at the Academy flooded Lightning Dust’s mind. The humiliation, the yelling, Spitfire discharging her. Even the way the guards ignored her as she left.
“So I decided you didn’t need them any of them. That’s why when I made this Academy for you, I didn’t bother to make any of the ponies you knew from the old Academy.”
“Wait, wait. What do you mean you ‘made’ the Academy and that there are no ponies here?”
“Well, what do you think it means, silly?”
Lightning Dust was struggling to find words. ”There’s no way she could be telling the truth, but… then again, there were no ponies anywhere! How in the world did Rainbow Dash pull this off?”
“Well, I’d better get going! There’s a playground waiting for me, and I just wanted to stick around long enough to tell you all about you're new playground!”
Dusty turned around and started trotting away. “I miss my playground, it’s so much better than the one we had in Cloudsdale. A nice, empty playground, where nopony will ever make fun of me or tease me or hurt me!”.
Lightning raised a hoof and shouted. “Wait! If what you’re saying is true, then what am I supposed to do here?”
The filly stopped and rubbed a hoof under her chin while she thought for a moment. “You know… I don’t know! You were so focused on being here that it was hard to tell what you were supposed to do here. But that’s okay, you can figure it out now that you’re here again! And you have the whole place all to yourself! I’ll see you later!” Dusty smiled as she trotted behind a building.
Lightning Dust took off after the filly, but once she cleared the building the filly was gone.
“No! Wait!” That could not have been me! What’s going on here? Tears started to form in Lightning Dust’s eyes as she started to panic. Holding onto the last threads of hope that this was just a prank, she shouted out, “Alright, Rainbow Dash, you’ve had your fun! I’m serious this time!” She paused for a moment to catch her breath. “You win, okay? I said it! YOU! WIN! This is WAY beyond messed up! You hear me!” screamed Lightning Dust as a stream of tears rolled down her face.
Panting, Lightning Dust looked around frantically for somepony—anypony—to reveal themselves. But none did; she was still alone.
She collapsed to the ground, choking back tears as best she could. “Come on, guys… you win… please come out.” Lightning Dust buried her head in her hooves, quietly sobbing and waiting for somepony to say something.
Time seemed to stand still while Lightning Dust sat there waiting. After some time had passed, she finally accepted what she feared was the truth. “This can’t be really be real… I just… I want to wake up. I don’t want to be here any more!” She wished this was just a dream she would wake up from any moment now. She closed her eyes tight and imagined herself waking up in her nice warm bed back home.
“Please, just let me wake up…”
Lightning Dust’s eyes shot open and she heaved forward, drenched in a cold sweat. She was panting and everything felt alien to her, but once her senses calmed down she noticed she wasn’t at the Academy any more. She was back in her bedroom.
She gripped her temples with her hooves to massage the throbbing headache that only now revealed itself after she’d calmed down. “Ugh… My head!” she moaned out loud.
She took her time soothing her headache before throwing the sheets off of her bed and walking out of her bedroom. As she walked through the house, she made a visual inspection to make sure things were where they were supposed to be.
The house was empty for the most part, devoid of most things you would find in any other pony’s home. There were no photos, no pieces of art and very sparse furnishings. But that was to be expected; Lightning Dust never felt the need to be distracted by other ponies or waste time looking at art. These were things that simply took time away from her achieving her dream of being a Wonderbolt.
She walked over to the sink and splashed some water on her face to help her focus, thinking about the nightmare she had just woken from. It was hard to remember exactly what had happened, but she remembered the filly clearly: her voice, the way she looked. Not so much what they had talked about, but she did remember the terrible feelings she felt.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t even sure why that dream was so terrifying in the first place. She couldn’t really remember anything about it. Still, she was glad that dream was over. She grabbed a towel, wiped off her face, and trotted to the front door to go outside. She tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Huh…? Is the door locked?”
“Oh, now I suppose you want to go outside too.” Lightning Dust froze at the door. That voice, she knew that voice.
She slowly turned around, silently praying that her mind was just playing tricks on her. But standing a few feet behind her, with an annoyed look on her face, was the same filly from her dream.
“You know what? I was really happy to get back to my playground until my head was full of all of your whining! That’s all you kept doing after I left!” shouted Dusty.
“This is not real! This is not real!”
“And quit telling yourself ‘this is not real!’ I can hear your thoughts and all you’re doing is making my head hurt!” Lightning Dust’s mind just froze, she couldn’t think of anything to say to the irate filly.
Dusty brought a hoof up to her face. “Ugh… Can’t you just make up your mind? I thought you wanted the academy so I made the academy, but no. That wasn’t good enough for you!” She stamped her raised hoof to the ground and looked away from Lightning Dust. “Ungrateful mare, no wonder you have no friends.”
“Hey, I have friends!” shouted Lightning Dust.
The filly locked eyes with Lightning Dust and raised an eyebrow. “Oh Really? Name one, just one.”
Not really thinking about it, Lightning Dust blurted out the first name that came to mind. “Rainbow Dash!”
“Ha. Ha… Really? The mare that you trusted when you got to the academy? The same mare that you thought pulled the greatest prank in Equestria by putting you into an empty academy? The mare that went to Spitfire and got you discharged from the Academy? And did nothing to stop it? You call that a friend?” Dusty filled that last word with venom.
Lightning Dust was at a loss for words. She tried to think of something to say, but no words were able to come out.
“Please, I know you better than you know yourself, Lightning Dust.”
“Then why are you keeping me here?” Lightning Dust asked.
“Because you’re tired of being hurt, we both are. We’re safe here. Nopony will ever hurt us again, and that’s the way I intend to keep it. You have all day to do whatever it is you want before the dream resets again, or you can just go back to bed. It’s your choice. At any rate, I’m done trying to make you happy today.” And with that the filly got off her haunches and started trotting in the direction of one of the walls.
“Wait!” called Lightning Dust, but the filly did not responds, instead she kept trotting and passed through the wall in front of her as if it wasn’t even there.
Lightning Dust trotted over to the wall the filly passed through and tapped it with her hoof. “Solid… how did she do that?” she said out loud. “Well… that’s just great!” she said as she stamped her hoof on the floor. Looking around her nearly empty home, Lightning Dust figured if she was going to be stuck here, then she might as well figure out a way to pass the time.
“Oh buck this… I’m going to go have a shower.”
Lightning Dust thought outloud as she made her way to the shower, “Hmm… Maybe I have some books or something around here. Actually, I don’t even remember if I own any books, now that I think about it…”