Fluttershy finds herself in a place like Sweet Apple Acres, but the trees are decayed and bare and the atmosphere is dark and foreboding, like a monster is waiting just outside her field of vision. She begins to recognize the landscape. “That’s right, my birthplace.” She turns around to see the sole apple picked by a long tongue from the shadows. Out from there emerges Flutterbat, at which point she notices herself as her normal pegasus form.
“Oh, this must be a dream.” She says to herself, trying to find comfort in that but in vain. Looking at her vampiric form from this point of view she’s terrified by it. It's not so much the appearance, but more like an existential terror. In essence, it's a corrupted version of herself. It evokes a feeling of wrongness like the uncanny valley effect. Flutterbat saps the apple in moments.
“What’s the matter Fluttercry; you faint like a goat because prince charming turned out to be a big meanie? Are you going to let him treat you like a pushover or will you let me give him the once over?”
Suppressing her feelings of distress, the familiarity of that attitude prompts a response. “Now wait a minute, I don’t think it’s too late for him. If we just explain things maybe he’ll understand.” Flutterbat scratches at the ground and suddenly spreads her wings, causing Fluttershy to flinch.
“Maybes are her babies, remember? Macho military stallions only understand force. With my power, we can kick all their flanks singlehandedly. We don’t need anypony’s help anymore.”
“I don’t like this. You’re scary, but not like I first thought. You’re everything I don’t want to become.”
“More like afraid to become. You think you’re too pure and innocent for this? You didn’t learn aggressiveness from me. I didn’t rampage through Ponyville on a rage bender until I called my friends lives wasted effort. Maybe you would rather we deal with Evening Cloak like those animals that rejected you? Just chase him down or set up a trap, then demand that he love us?” Fluttershy begins to cry.
“Please stop.” She begs through the tears. “I can’t take this anymore.”
“In that case, why don’t you just let me take care of everything? Give me control, and all your pain will go away. You can just keep sleeping peacefully.” As she reaches out her hoof towards Fluttershy, a wall of one-way mirrors rises from the ground to isolate her, and Luna descends to Fluttershy’s side.
“It seems I have made it in time. I can tell this is no ordinary nightmare. I did my best to stabilize your mind when I returned you to that form, but it appears to have attached itself to your base instincts and is using your own negative thoughts and feelings against you, a circumstance I am disturbingly familiar with.”
“That reminds me, I’m so sorry for the way I reacted to you last Nightmare Night. It was rude and I should have been more understanding.” Luna places her hoof under Fluttershy’s chin.
“It’s okay. Now dry your tears. Do not forget, you have an inner strength that is not based on aggression, but compassion. You will find it far more effective.” Flutterbat can only listen, but knows they can see her, so smirking, she gives her two bits.
“Mama Luna successfully coddled you this time, but eventually you’ll need me to do what you’re too soft to do. Until then, I’ll be here, waiting.” She vanishes with the rest of the dreamscape as they move on to her mindscape, where her memories of last night play on several floating screens at once, providing Luna an expedient summary of the events.
“It seems you had quite an eventful night. Ah, here we are. This is what prompted that mission: I received word of a remnant of Sombra’s guard, Captain Knightly Dagger, and wanted to know if he was related to our mission. It turns out our suspicions were correct. This is especially bad because more than a few of the other highest ranking members of Sombra’s guard are still unaccounted for, having escaped because of the Crystal Empire’s collective amnesia. Wherever he is, by noon he’ll be the most wanted stallion in Equestria.”
“Princess Luna, before you’re done looking through all that I should tell you…” It was too late as she witnesses the memory of Evening Cloak’s betrayal. “I know this looks bad but I promise I am going to try to bring him back to his senses. I just need to clear up all the confusion he has.” Luna can barely contain her anger, for it is one thing to pragmatically suspect a bat pony turncoat but to see it, and know it really is because of a warped sense of loyalty manipulated, it’s all too frustrating.
“You really are too kind Fluttershy. If you’re that confidant, you can have 24 hours with conditions: You’ll need to find him before anypony else does and before he commits crimes of his own. Though I warn you, if your plan of mercy fails, he’ll be at my mercy. Now hurry.”
[------]
Fluttershy wakes up in a moving wagon. As she becomes aware of her surroundings, she sees that it is Mr. Greenhooves pulling the wagon. Worried that she’s getting too far away from where she needs to be, she addresses him.
“Excuse me, but I needed to stay in Canterlot. How far are we?” He turns around to notice that she woke up. It then occurred to her that she’s still a vampire bat pony and she knows him. She has no idea how she’s going to explain this.
“We’re a stone’s throw away from Ponyville. Sorry to drag you here but I needed to get to my day job. I’m house-sitting for a young mare, and she has a lot of animals there too. You actually remind me a lot of her, but she’s a regular pegasus with three pink butterflies for a cutie mark instead of bats, her colors are brighter, and her eyes are, well different. Not just the color, you have more of a determined look. The mare I know; I’ve only seen her shy or annoyed.” Fluttershy can’t believe he doesn’t recognize her, but he has a point; her appearance is so different and there are plenty of ponies in Ponyville that coincidentally look similar to each other.
“So why did you bring me with you? You can tell from my armor I’m in the night guard. You could have just left me there.” He strokes his beard.
“Now how could I do that? You needed immediate attention; the animals needed me to get back in time; so I set up an arrangement that allowed me to do both.”
“Okay, I guess I understand. So, between this and the private garden in Canterlot you must do so much every day and night.”
“Well, most of the year the garden is only a few hours work so I get in enough sleep. I’ve always had a good work ethic.” She gets out of the wagon and flies next to him.
“I really need to go but before that, did you happen to see anypony in the garden besides me?”
“Oh, was I supposed to?” She’s disappointed, till he adds, “However, I think there’s some strange activity in the Everfree Forest. I don’t know if you’d be interested in that; whatever went in there would probably be pretty hard to find even for a member of the guard such as yourself. I’m sure the zebra who lives there can handle it, considering there are few things in Equestria more dangerous than what already lives there.”
“Thank you, I need to go now.” She rushes to Zecora’s hut assuming the worst. It takes her mere minutes to get there, and already her fears are stoked by the zebra’s door lying in splintered shards around the doorframe. She rushes in, ready to fight the first non-striped equine she sees. The place has clearly been ransacked, Zecora has been hogtied to her own stick, and a gag bit was placed in her mouth. Fluttershy comes to her aid, removing the bit from her mouth before moving on to her ropes.
“Thank you for helping me, but could it be? You look so different; I wonder why; yet somehow I know you are Fluttershy.” She feels some relief that there is no sign of fear in Zecora; she always was so wise and understanding. She finishes untying her.
“Yes, it’s me. I would like to explain things, but I can’t right now. Anyway, it’s more important that I know what happened to you.”
“It started when somepony broke down my door and a stallion in armor held me down on the floor. Another came in wearing a cloak with a hood and I started to struggle as much as I could. His partner was ordered to take my herbs and potions then he warned me to stop any motions.” Fluttershy thought to herself that there’s no way it was phrased like that but is polite enough to indulge the compulsively rhyming zebra.
“So with my inventory he filled up his bag while in my mouth was put that gag. After that I was tied up with that rope and with these events it was hard to cope. I told them without knowledge the potions would not work but after my warning he gave me a smirk. He ordered the theft of several books, but before I get ahead of myself let me tell you their looks.”
“I can already guess: Crystal earth pony stallion with clawed armor and a scar and crimson eyes. The other was a bat pony wasn’t he?” She dreads hearing the confirmation she fully expects.
“Your description of the first is quite correct but the identifying features of the other I could not detect. There was a symbol on his cloak that I thought bizarre. It was a crescent moon with wings and in the middle a star.” She drew the symbol for her. “So after that they left me there on the floor. Sorry that I can’t help more.”
“This has been plenty of help, thank you so much. I should hurry and follow their trail. Oh, and don’t tell anypony in Ponyville about me, it’s important for what I’m doing to stay covert.”
“I understand and wish you well, but there’s one more thing I need to tell. Even when you think you need to do things on your own, never forget you are not alone.”
“Thanks Zecora. That means a lot to me.” She hugs her than goes on her way. She flies around looking for some kind of trail to pick up. She finds this difficult without tracking experience and in an area as scary and chaotic as the Everfree Forest. She decides it would be easier to just fly above the canopy, head in the direction of Canterlot, and hope she finds them along the way.
[++++++]
Meanwhile in the castle in Canterlot, a generic unicorn guard goes over a report to Princess Celestia. After having gone over the details of last night from Pepperjack, he summarizes the current status of relevant parties. “Uncle Wing’s curio shop was reported by the aforementioned shopkeeper to be visited by the prime suspect, Knightly Dagger, shortly before his confrontation with Sgt. Pepperjack. Nothing was stolen, but most of the inventory was strewn about as though something was being searched for haphazardly. When asked about this, Uncle Wing claimed that it always looked that way, which was confirmed by an earlier report from the alicorn amulet incident.”
He flipped over to the next page. “The suspect is currently at large and two fresh recruits of the night guard are M.I.A.; Fluttershy and Evening Cloak.” Princess Celestia had quite the serious look on her face as she took in the information.
“Concerning Fluttershy, my sister made contact with her through her dreams and confirmed her wellbeing. As for the others, it goes without saying they must be found. Also, pertaining to a report from the Crystal Empire, any former members of Sombra’s guard currently unaccounted for are suspect until proven otherwise.”
“It’s rather unfortunate that Knightly Dagger made off with those records, but the guards at the Crystal Empire should remember our suspects and share their intelligence with us later today.”
[++++++]
Meanwhile somewhere in the Unicorn Range, just west of Canterlot, Cloak and Dagger rendezvous with 3 crystal stallions that currently lack much of their luster, indicating their lack of morale or enthusiasm. From left to right from the pairs’ perspective: One has a coat of old mauve, a mane of dark tangerine, and eyes of dark cyan. He wears a goatee and has a gold cage for a cutie mark. The next has a coat of violetish gray, a mane that matches Fluttershy’s coat, and eyes of a shade of green known as harlequin. He wears his mane is in a pompadour and his cutie mark is a bastion with two crossed lances slightly overlapping it. Finally, a crystal pegasus with his mane and coat colors inverted from the norm for crystal guards. This seemingly makes him the twin of the other crystal pegasus that once escorted Princess Cadence on her train ride to Ponyville. His cutie mark is a riding crop.
“Allow me to introduce Lieutenant Lance Bastion, 2nd Lieutenant Gilded Cage, and Warrant Officer Cropton. Gentlecolts, this is Evening Cloak.” He lifts back his hood.
They salute their captain and then the lieutenant addresses him first. “You brought an interesting specimen. When did the princess of the night get the idea to do that to a pegasus? But seriously, have you been wearing that armor this whole time? It’s rather conspicuous. We came here out of uniform and ponies assume we’re tourists.”
“No offense, but I have my pride. I haven’t needed much stealth yet so I won’t remove my armor behind enemy lines. I’m must always be ready for combat. If we were to be ambushed here, you’d all be vulnerable.”
Cropton interjects. “The bat pony isn’t wearing armor under his cloak. What’s protecting him?” He sees the tip of a spear close to his face.
“That would be the well-hidden spear that my long flowing cloak covers.” From the brief time the cloak was opened, one could see his cutie mark is a cloak with a popped collar. Cropton panics a little, not used to having a weapon raised against him. His expertise was more as an overseer.
Gilded Cage takes his turn to speak. “What rank is this colt?”
“He’s a private of all things. I hate to admit it but modern Equestrian military training gets good results. I have to think being hoofpicked by Luna herself and the effects of the transformation are big factors as well.”
“So now he’s working with us? What guarantee do we have he’s not a double agent?”
“If he is, he’s the only one that knows it. After what we did, he should become the second most wanted stallion in Equestria, after me of course. Now let’s go over the spoils.” Evening Cloak takes out the potions and herbs carefully, as well as the book that comes with them. Knightly Dagger picks one up, then flips through the pages. “This is perfect! According to this, a few drops of this on your tongue will make you immune to magic for twenty-four hours.” The three stallions regain their crystalline sheen as they gain confidence in their chances.
“Anypony still doubt me? Remember, there’s more where that came from.” The former Sombra guards maniacally laugh as they gather around the supplies. Soon they will plan for battle.