Something pink, white and blue filled my vision blocking out everything.
I put on my best grumpy face.
“Why. So. Serious?” Pinkie said menacingly.
I put on my terrified face.
She held a knife in her hoof.
“Let’s put a smile on that face”, she said quietly, all the more disturbing at how out of character she was.
It was then I suddenly noticed her hair was all straightened.
I laughed, “Ha. Ha. Ha. Hee. Hee. Hee. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Hee. Hee. Oh.”
Pinkie frowned.
“You can't laugh”, she complained, waving her knife dangerously.
I laughed harder.
“My dream! I get to decide what happens!” I replied happily. Her mane poofed back into shape.
“That’s the spirit!” she yelled pulling out a cannon and aiming it at me.
“Hit me with everything you got!” I yelled as the cannon shot a combination of glitter, cake and streamers.
-----
I woke to see everybody staring at me strangely.
Pinkie and I shared a glance.
“Best. Dream. Ever”, I shared with Pinkie, she grinned back at me nodding in approval.
The others just mumbled and went back to sleep.
----
It was just past the second night that we had escaped from the diamond dog caverns. We had waited until help had arrived and guided the troops in. Gruff looked a little guilty so he sat out the storming troops invading his former home thing. I kept him company as he sat there looking lost and more alone. He would get over it, I surmised, he had made his own decision. Still, I still felt a pang of empathy for him, it wouldn't be easy losing your home even if it had been the heart of pain and suffering.
The ponies we recovered were immensely grateful for our help. I thought Twilight was regarded as something of a celebrity by the way some of the ponies recognised her. She blushed and stroked her mane in embarrassment whenever a pony would pass her a compliment. I readily cut in with a teasing joke about her fastidious nature, which would quickly earn me a swipe of her hoof.
Pinkie seemed to hang around Gruff whenever I wasn't teaching him anything. They developed a close bond of happy and energetic meeting the strong silent type. Gruff rarely spoke more than two words to anyone but me but mainly because he was getting used to talking to anyone else that was not a prisoner or a diamond dog.
He warily engaged in conversation with the rest of the group, which Solid accepted graciously, Iron more cautiously but Lightning understandably a lot more coldly. For Lightning it had not be a grey area for him. Either you helped us or were complicit with the captors. Just because you were brought up in the diamond dog caverns did not excuse your inaction to the slavery you saw around. The ponies he guarded were clearly unhappy and unwilling and Gruff having done nothing to save them, got of a little too lightly for Lightning’s liking.
His silence was acquiescence and they were the brand of guilt for Gruff in Lightning’s eyes.
I had wanted to explore Lightning’s past but there hadn't been a tactful way of doing so. We weren't fast friends, simply friends built of need and circumstance and I couldn't push personal boundaries that far. I had little experience with talks of this kind so I kept my distance and observed. Acting rashly would only earn me a broken trust and I valued my new friendship too much to act upon it.
Breaking away from issues of friendship I got to talk with Twilight about her knowledge of science, especially her in depth knowledge of chemistry. It seemed that Twilight was an encyclopaedia of knowledge, with her familiarity branching out from all the central sciences of biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics and other esoteric areas such as psychology and philosophy.
To say I was excited was an understatement. Finally, there was someone to talk about science and engineering (apart from Angel and maybe Emilia) that would understand what I would talk about without having to explain to them the underlying principles. I was disappointed to find out that she knew next to nothing of electronics and even less on quantum computing. Ah well, further probing could wait. There was so much to see.
After helping to clear the caverns Harding caught up with us. Lightning had stayed because technically they still had Solid under arrest. They refused to tell me what it was for and Solid would turn up her nose whenever I asked. Suffice to say they were transporting the mare to a place called Canterlot.
Twilight had offered to take me to Canterlot and I readily agreed, after all I had nothing better to do rather than stay in a familiar dilapidated castle in the middle of a wild forest. I figured going to Canterlot would probably make my journey back home easier.
To be honest ever since I got here I never had any time to think about home or how I got here. I had accepted this place or ‘Equestria’ as Twilight termed it, as reality but I had difficulty figuring out how I would get home due to the heavy implications of this place being not of Earth, or at least not as Earth as I knew it.
Not knowing the answers gave me a migraine on a good day so most of the time I relegated my directive to get back home or think about just where the hell I was to a secondary objective. It wasn't important for me to get home per se and I didn’t know why. Over the last couple of days I kept remembering more and more fragments.
I remembered my plan. I remembered working tirelessly on Synchrony. I remembered the cries of the families of the victims that depended on me. Yet, for some reason I felt at peace, though I still felt the pleading tug of a quarter of a million people.
Was I getting hard and callous? Did I not feel the pain of a city’s worth of people? Had I become a monster? Those thoughts had nagged my mind as I slept fitfully through the last couple of nights. On the third night I had decided enough was enough and I laughed in the face of my guilt (which for some reason was Pinkie Pie but hey, when did dreams ever make sense?).
Apart from my guilty interlude, the group decided to head to a train station, from there I would decide whether or not I'd like to visit Canterlot. Twilight had eluded that I might be able to meet royalty and I thought, heck why not? So we travelled.
All was going well until we met them.
-----
Twilight held a hoof up.
“I hear something”, she said straining in the darkness.
Gruff perked his ears and nodded, confirming Twilight’s suspicions. We were in the forest travelling in the evening and the sun was setting, we were just about to set up camp. I had crouched down, readying myself to collapse in a fit of exhaustion.
Lightning and Hardy tensed.
“We're surrounded”, they reported, readying for battle.
I ground my teeth.
Does nothing go right anymore?