For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils
"...I now pronounce you stallion and wife! You may kiss the bride!"
Sam turned and pulled back the veil over Dawn's head, revealing her shining, beaming face on the other side. He leaned in to give his first kiss as a lawfully married couple...only to be stopped on hearing a snickering. He blinked in confusion, and saw Dawn laughing at him. Not only her, but soon everyone in the audience and the minister began to laugh too. Even Carl on the side. He looked around for a moment in confusion, until looking down at himself...and saw he was in his underwear. Immediately, he paled and grimaced and moved to cover them up, turning red and cringing in terror at all of the mocking eyes and laughing voices...
Until a mare's voice spoke up nearby. "Sam, ponies don't wear underwear."
The stallion paused, and then blinked as he looked up at that. Immediately, all of the laughter ceased and the crowd and Dawn vanished in smoke along with his underwear. He turned and looked to see who spoke, and saw Princess Luna, yawning a bit and looking rather haggard. He exhaled.
"Phew...thanks, your highness. I'll admit, I'm getting a lot more sleep since you came back. Princess Celestia wasn't too good at the 'dream' part of the job. For four years I dreamed every night of an orange monster with purple polka dots trying to eat me. I finally wrote a letter about it and...well...I ended up spending the next four years dreaming of a purple monster with orange polka dots trying to-"
Luna held up a hoof. "Sam, Sam...that's all very fascinating but I'm on a bit of a schedule. I'm still trying to make up for 1,000 years of backlogged 'dream messages'."
Sam blinked. "...Huh?"
The princess answered by stamping a hoof, causing an eruption of starts to go out that melted away the entire outdoor wedding ceremony and sent him and Luna swirling through space for a few moments, before they materialized again on what looked like an older version of the grade school in Ponyville. Sam looked around in astonishment.
"What are we doing here?"
Luna tapped Sam and pointed forward. He looked, and soon saw a small blue stallion with no Cutie Mark standing up to a colt with so much muscle he already looked to be an adult, and he already had a cutie mark of a padlock. He seemed ready to grind the blue stallion into the dirt, and the smaller one was struggling to stand up to him while other fillies around them cheered them on. A green one in particular was cheering him on in between trying to open a box of cookies.
"Dang it, why do you need fingers to open these things when we all have hooves!" He complained.
Sam, however, focused on the blue stallion. "Wait a second...that's me! And that's Pat Lock!"
"You remember how you placed a nail in his gym horseshoes yesterday, Sam?" Luna explained. "This is your future. Tomorrow morning Pat Lock will try on his shoes and stab himself in the hoof as a result of your prank. Afterward, he'll challenge you to this fight and end up tearing two of your hamstrings. You'll be forced to abandon your dream of being an Equestrian Games 100-meter dasher and settle for spending the rest of your life working at Pacific Seashells as an operator, never getting paid what you're worth and having to take orders from uncaring bosses forever."
Sam froze, and slowly looked uneasy as he turned to her.
"Um...Luna, that...already happened over 20 years ago. I did get my hamstrings torn...and I had to become an operator at Pacific Seashells."
Luna blinked at that. She looked a bit closer at the vision, then to Sam. "What the... I thought you looked a little old for 7. Medamnit...what's the current year again?"
"...1004."
"Ugh...this is the last time I use decaf." Luna sighed before rapidly stomping her hoof again, causing the scene to change once again. A few moments later, it reformed in what looked like a smelly, sweaty, homemade-gym. In front of a full length mirror, a muscle-bound pony was screaming in front of a mirror, seeing that he had unusual fur growth and his, ahem, chest had "enlarged" in the wrong way.
"This is your future if you don't stop your anabolic steroid usage, Sam. You'll end up with irregular hair growth and a hormonal imbalance that will result in overdevelopment of the breasts and underdevelopment of your genetalia."
Sam, however, was grimacing. "...Are you sure this isn't a warning for Bulk Biceps?"
"...What? Blast it..."
Another hoof stomp. This time, it changed to a room lined with muffin-painted walls and floors, muffin bedsheets, muffin-shaped furniture, and a muffin lamp...not a lamp shaped like a muffin, a muffin actually made into a lamp. A gray mare was lying on the ground twitching.
"This will be you tomorrow morning if you don't take that curse that gypsy pony placed on you seriously. You have only 100 muffins left to eat before you die, and you're already down to your last two."
Sam blinked. "That's...Derpy..."
"Third time's the charm!" Luna answered before stamping her hoof again.
Again the world changed, revealing the inside of a mare's room where a cream-colored pony with blue and pink hair and a bon-bon cutie mark was unhappily leaning over a desk.
"Although you thought telling Bon Bon that it would be better if you didn't try to see each other anymore, she still has feelings for you in spite of being a mare. And if you break up with her now, she's going to be unhappy for the rest of her life, and you'll grow so depressed and bitter at the world that-"
"Hang on..." Sam interjected. "Are you saying Bon Bon is a lesbian? In that case, who is she-"
"Son of a...!" Luna cut off as she stamped her hoof yet again.
This time, they ended up in what looked like a trophy room filled with all manner of kills and a rifle over the fireplace.
"In spite of what that stallion did for Dawn, his friendship with the pony who constantly finds inconsistencies in things will annoy her so much that it drives her into alcoholism, and your first grandchild will be born with FAS as a result before she kills herself by drunk-pulling her wagon over a cliff. So it's better if you take back what you said about accepting him into-"
"Is that...Stonewall Charger over there?" Sam interjected, before his eyes widened. "Wait a second...what did you just say?!"
"ENOUGH!" Luna blasted in the Royal Canterlot voice, causing the vision to shatter and turn into a sky full of stars as Sam cringed in fear from her. Luna continued to breathe hard and fume for a moment, her eyes glowing white, before she glared at him.
"Look...what doest thou plan to do tomorrow morn?"
The blue stallion trembled for a moment, still shrinking back. "Uh...er...I'm going to work...uh...doing some raking...heading out to Sugarcube Corner for cookies with Carl...getting some milk from the store..."
"Very well then! If thou doest not acquire a gallon of milk that is marked later than the 21st, it shall expire prior to thou being able to consume it all!" She blasted. "Now have we improved thy lot in life?!"
Sam whined and covered his head with his hooves. "Yes, yes! I learned a valuable lesson! My life has turned out completely different!"
"Then our work is done! AWAKEN!"
---
Sam snapped his head up as he sat upright in bed, covered in sweat and panting hard. He blinked a moment, and then looked around him. However, he was back in his room. His window was open and the sun was coming in, along with the sounds of birds, but everything was fine.
He exhaled after a moment and relaxed. "...Wow...what a nightmare." He groaned. "Luna really needs to get some sleep. She's getting too frazzled. If she messed up that much on me, I wonder how everypony else is doing?"
"Sam! Sam!"
The blue stallion looked in the window, just in time to see a panicked-looking Carl run up to it.
"Sam, you've got to help me! Darth Vader came down from Planet Vulcan last night and said if I didn't ask Lorraine out to Enchantment Under the Sea dance, he's going to melt my brain!"
---
So, pretty much, nopony slept that week.
That wasn’t the half of it, Sam. The next night, I had this great dream where I saw a device called the Flux Capacitor which would have made time travel possible for earth ponies and pegasi if I built it…and would have made me incredibly rich. But it turned out I was having somepony else’s dream and Luna reclaimed it…
Ugh. What dream did you get instead?
Sigh…taking a math test I didn’t study for in my underwear…