The pale furred abnormal pony looking pony looked around in fright; at least her short orange mane wasn’t the oddest thing about her appearance as much as her pointy nose was. She didn’t know where she was, but she saw one of the princesses who might explain the situation better.
“Where am I, what’s going on?” Oh Pearl was going to be so upset if they made her go to sleep again. She’s been getting a lot of sleep lately when technically a crystal gem doesn’t need sleep; neither do the princesses of Equestria apparently. Sleeping has admittedly been a pretty good coping mechanism for Pearl even if she won’t acknowledge it as doing her some good.
“You are in the realm of dreams Pearl.” While she said this Luna was busy trying to drag another pony into the dream to share with everyone.
“You… you put me to sleep again!” Pearl was rightfully angry; the ponies had once again barged right into her business and knocked her out.
“I did not, but a close friend worries you do not get enough rest and has asked us to assist in your mental health since you are physically fine. It is a happy coincidence that you are asleep at this time and that you can meet the one who will be delivering your message to the place called Beach City.” Luna waved out a hoof and pointed towards Fluttershy and the others. “All of those who are here are sleeping; we are all very much real but cannot be physically hurt in the realm of dreams. You can only be hurt emotionally by sour memories of a bitter past which you seem to experience a lot of.”
“Why am I not surprised that you’ve invaded my privacy as well!” Angrily the gem huffed and turned around to leave; only Pearl came face to face with a blank faced looking pony. Pearl blushed and backed away from the pony with the simplistically styled purple hair and grey fur with a cutie mark of a rock on her flank.
“So… what’s this about?” Maud was as unflappable as Fluttershy remembered her being. The only time Maud has shown any strong emotion was when a massive rock nearly crushed her sister Pinkie, she chewed through the solid mass with her bare hooves like a diamond dog tunnels through loose soil.
“I invited you here to calm Pearl down Maud. As to why Pearl is here, Fluttershy has made it to the planet of earth and will be heading towards Beach City soon. I thought it would cheer Pearl up to know that.” Luna knew she would upset Pearl by dragging her here, which is why she had asked for Maud’s presence as well in advance. She knew when any pony was asleep and she had recently learned to feel for Fluttershy going to sleep to join her in the realm of dreams, as to make sure her distant friend would not be without pony companionship. The new filly born from magic made that a bit of a moot point, but Luna wasn’t going to stop being in contact Fluttershy or this Soft Echo until they came home.
“Beach City is only about two hundred miles away from our current position. We’re sure to make good time once we figure out how the hell we’re going to get Head Hunter under way; it lost the ability to fly thanks to a gravity pulse.” Bonnie manipulated the world to show her sitting in the front of Fluttershy in the ship when the gravity pulse happened. Then she went on to present Pearl with everything they’ve told Luna from that point moving forward, only now she was showing the princess everything that had happened to from her perspective.
“Wait, are you telling me that crystal gems aren’t the only ones who have visited or have tried to invade that planet?” Pearl was shocked to hear Foxglove was a sentient and that there were aliens and other mystical creatures on this world aside from the ones that were involved with the crystal gems meddling. Much less she was highly upset at hearing Bonnie was a biological mishmash thrown together into a blender that became a living creature.
“Gee, where were you guys during the Little Diablo incident or when the Lorwardians attacked? Closest that crazy blue guy ever came to conquering the planet, wouldn’t have succeeded anyway given the world has a lot of heroes and villains that would rise to the challenge. I was defending Hawaii with my cousins while I was still on the planet.” A scene of the aftermath of what happened in Hawaii popped up showing that a ton of destroyed robots laid to waste all around what was once a still somewhat standing town. A lot of what were obviously roughed up brothers and sisters of Bonnie where strewn about the area in various states of injury. Clyde was there shouldering Bonnie from her perspective as she looked up into his vibrant smile, she raised her blaster high and joined all the injured ‘cousins’ cheering. “We gave all those robots hell for trying to take Kokaua Town, nobody got hurt worse than we did and we all lived through it alright enough. Those Diablo robots swarmed most parts of America. They were more heavily prevalent in places that had Bueno Nachos fast food restaurants so they might not have had as much coverage in Maryland. I wasn’t around when the Lorwardians invaded earth’s orbit, though I do know what the Galactic Guardians were doing afterwards. Heard those guys are completely terrified of red heads now, Atomic Betty really let them have it after she found out they invaded our home planet. The Men in Black organization helped clean and cover up the invasion as having actually happened, MIB has likely know of the existence of your race for quite a while Pearl. The reason why they haven’t made contact or have done anything about your group would be that it is more beneficial to earth that they don’t bother you at all. They deal with a lot of bad aliens and are into that cloak and dagger stuff.”
“I am most certainly thankful that I wasn’t here for any of that." Flutter stated and the relieved sounding tone in her voice was still within the realm of positive emotion. “So no one died in those incidents right?”
“Well… there were plenty of casualties, though they all weren’t exactly human casualties. I was awake for the Lorwardian invasion; it wasn’t a very pleasant day to be awake or a reserve Rescue Ranger. A lot of humans got heavily injured when those machines attacked, not only that but so did many intelligent animals like me. There were many fatalities to the surrounding animal population in New York at the time, all the magical animals just safely dropped to the magical side of the world for a safe haven.” Foxglove shifted the scene that showed the start of the attack and Pearl looked horribly surprised to see such advanced technology attacking and containing humans everywhere. The large robots were obviously preventing the humans from fighting back and they were sealing them within energy fields between their legs. “They hit mostly heavily populated areas right away; they ignored most of the smaller areas earlier on where humans easily went to ground. The drones destroyed a lot of animal homes searching Central Park, thankfully Stanley was there to restore the trees and plants after everything was said and done. Never saw any real aliens in person before though; the first real aliens I’ve met were Fluttershy and Bonnie. It’s a bit disconcerting to learn the inhabitants of earth have aliens living amongst us in peace, magical beings sure, but aliens? Sorry, I don’t mean any offense to you Pearl.”
“Oh none taken really, I find it a bit disconcerting myself.” Pearl said in a monotone voice as she watched a second worldwide incident. That was two things she and her friends had completely missed and they have fought in wars before. She never figured complacency was a problem for her or the other gems, at least she now knew Garnet couldn’t see everything and that had her worrying about the future. “When did all this happen exactly?”
Pearl was worried at what the response would be; hopefully it wouldn’t be after she ended up on Equus. Maud moved forward and started to slowly rub a hoof up and down Pearl’s spine while giving her a flat emotionless gaze. It was such a simple comforting gesture that led Pearl to tears. Despite Maud’s general personality being so seemingly flat, she was an understanding and caring individual whom was able to connect to Pearl on a scary level.
Foxglove flapped her way over to Pearl and made comment on the day and date it took place and even threw up a mental image of Kim Possible, Shego and Ron Stoppable, they end up having a large hand in breaking the invasion.
“This is… this is certainly news.” A slightly relieved Pearl was happy to hear it happened before she had left, but they had apparently missed the times the earth had been swarmed from one attack or another. She and the other Crystal Gems must have really lived under a ton of rocks to have missed all that happening. Now she was questioning whether or not humans were actually a real danger to them even with all their powers. She has never begrudged Steven for his humanity and hoped he was doing alright without her, maybe they could see each other in a dream? If only she could stop getting so angry with the ponies for worrying so much about her mental health, she was perfectly fine!
Pearl had never even heard of other alien races, only the planets that the Crystal Gems from the home world have already wrecked. The last few things she did back on earth was the jailbreak of that space ship that a mysterious gem named Peridot piloted, the entire horrific situation of a gem called Malachite and the problem with a warp pad that led to her being on Equus in the first place. Equestria was a bit of an eye opener for Pearl as something definitely went horribly wrong on Equus, something had to have stopped the crystal gems from taking over this planet and there were barely signs of even one Kindergarten on the entire planet. Having taken part in saving the Earth from other gems, Pearl knew that nothing normal could have stopped those crystal gems. It was a puzzle that she was still wracking her mind over, especially after she had simply tried to look down on the ponies like she had the humans and only now was she finding out everything was not exactly as she thought it was. She had once thought humans as being cute and not very bright or even worthwhile as they had short lives. Only now she knew there were plenty of beings who had short lives, but their actions affected the future with far more consequence than Pearl was comfortable with. She learned this after she had met two being with equally long lived lives like her who were quite powerful; she was currently standing in the middle of a dream with one of them as proof of their power. The other one reminded her entirely too much of her late and most beloved leader named Rose Quarts in her demeanor and beauteous appearance. And then there’s Maud.
“It is interesting to hear what has happened on other worlds yes, but I believe we have trailed far off topic. You already know Maud well enough, so let me formally introduce you to the others. This is Fluttershy; she is the one looking for Equus to return to her home and has been in a situation much like yours for much longer. Once the Star Nomad that Fluttershy found finally finds our world, we’ll have you go with him back to earth where Fluttershy will wait for him. He’ll return her to us in no time.” Luna didn’t think the pony shaped Pearl couldn’t look any happier at hearing the news that she had a way home already on the way. “I thought you would like to talk to her. If she were to meet your family and fall asleep with them she would be able to bring us into direct communication with them as we are doing now. The others are Foxglove who we’ve only just met, a magical bat native to earth. Mr. Roller Wheel, a strange but friendly native creature of the planet of good dreams Popstar. We have little Soft Echo here, who is born of the magic within the last twenty four hours that was befouling our dear friend Fluttershy throughout most of her journey. The last one is the detestable Bonnie Jookiba.”
“What, that’s all the fanfare I’m getting?” Goading the princess of the night was something Bonnie wanted to do. It has been a long time coming and quite frankly if she died on Planet Z then she would have died a hero of the pony race whether they knew it or not, but now it was time to out the princess about something. “I’m getting a sense of hostility from you toots.”
“You… you know what you did! You took it from me the last time we met.” Luna wanted to have a nice friendly chat, possible get Bonnie away from everyone else for a moment to get back what belonged to her personally. “I had wondered how it had escaped me; now I know that it was you!”
“What could I have possibly taken from you? The last time we met was also in a dream like this one.” Of the many things you don’t do around Bonnie, blinking was one of them and Princess Luna had been missing something important from the last time they met. At first Bonnie didn’t think it was possible for her to steal from the princess without notice, she had managed it easily enough. “I mean really, you’ve been angry at me since you arrived. Don’t you want to acknowledge something that you were hiding from everyone you know?”
“I would more prefer to find out how you took it in the first place!” Trying to keep calm Luna did not want anyone here to know what she was talking about, especially not with Maud and Pearl as witnesses since they might tell her sister Celestia what she was doing with it. “All anyone needs to know is that you stole something from me and that I want it back.”
“Bonnie did you really take something from Luna when we were seeing some of your history; I thought you were getting along pretty well with her.” If Fluttershy could feel disappointed she would be right now, but there was something about the way Bonnie looked at her with a sharp calculating gaze.
“I did not take anything from her that could be handed back to her in a physical nature. What I did take away from her was something that needed to be taken from her for her own good.” The princess had done Bonnie a favor by helping Fluttershy see the inner workings of her mind. She returned the favor and was helping the princess with her own problem that she likely wasn’t going to talk about with anyone. “In fact since the object in question is immaterial I wouldn’t know how to give it back.”
“You stole my magic!” The voice as used by Princess Luna was reverberating throughout the dream realm, her wings flared and her horn glowing even if she couldn’t hurt Bonnie. The alien just crossed her arms and looked unconcerned at the angry princess before her.
“Really, is that what ‘it’ truly is or are you trying to hide something given that Maud and Pearl are in a position to do something about it? I learned to let things go, after I shot a guy in the arm at least. I think you need to do the same.” At this point Bonnie marched forward and stared Luna hard in the eyes; she wasn’t backing down on this one. She was doing Luna a big favor here and she’s had to live with the heightened chance of nightmares every night because of it. “Well excuse me for making you incapable of hurting yourself princess. It wasn’t you’re magic I took, because I don’t think it works quite like that given you’re still able to connect others to this dream. What is it really? I’m really curious to know, you might as well tell me why it exists in the first place. I’ve got you blackmailed until you come clean and the only way to feel better is to get it off your chest while you have an audience full of broken people who know what it’s like.”
“Please don’t make me say it. How are you even sane holding onto it like you are?” The others were beginning to notice something was amiss in Luna’s suddenly cowed mood.
“Who said I was ever sane? I got the idea to steal it because it was insane enough to work at the time. You certainly didn’t need the baggage that came with it and I was about to do something horrible to Fluttershy to get what I wanted, so I think I deserved it more than you did.” Nobody would ever really blame Bonnie for stealing this thing anyway and it wasn’t truly alive so it wasn’t like she was kidnapping. “Given that you both looked at my memories, I decided to return the favor with the time we spent together. It’s surprising how well I can split my focus.”
“What did you steal from her exactly then?” It wasn’t often that Maud spoke up if at all, she was contemplative and quite most of the time. Maud sure was going to miss Pearl when she left, as she was the smartest rock that she had ever met, barring her pet Boulder of course. Her emotions barely showed on her face except in rare circumstances, in this case it was a barely perceivable frown. “Why would you deserve it more than Princess Luna and why does it sound like it’s really a bad thing.”
“What you did wasn’t noble; it was basically self mental mutilation by taking it!” This blurted out of Luna’s mouth, Fluttershy moved in front of her.
“Princess Luna…I would like to respectfully as you to talk, please.” It was a statement, that was all Fluttershy needed to say. She had heard just about enough and if it was bad enough for Bonnie to torture herself over with on Luna’s behalf.
Sighing the princess looked away and she became rather deflated; little Soft hopped off of Luna’s head and onto Fluttershy’s to start giving her big kitten eyes. She was already learning the deadly version of 'The Stare' in her youth. Upset Luna wasn’t as nice and comfortable as calm and happy Luna was.
“Don’t worry about it Fluttershy, even if I do know how my brother Clyde felt after Remmy got into his head at least.” Bonnie could easily give it back, but she wanted Luna to stop relying on it as a crutch. There were healthier ways to go about things then beating a ‘dead horse’ every night. “So going to continue being in denial Luna? It’s a long and big river on the planet of earth in a desert and it’s filled with bitter tears, but it gives life to those who wish to push forward. Those who live there learn to not wallow in their guilt like a pig, are you a pig Luna?”
“Fine, you win. I created something to remind me of what I had done as Nightmare Moon, every night it would force me to relive my greatest failure. I named it Tantabus.” The thief just had to take Luna’s punishment and punish herself with it.
“She stole a nightmare? That’s rather funny, because you introduced yourself as harbinger of the night and you’re a mare.” Seeing that she was the one with all the attention Foxglove decided to explain. “Tantibus in one of the human languages means ‘Nightmare’. Latin is often used in magical spells if needed to invoke something with an incantation.”
“How fitting it is… that I torture myself with a nightmare of my own making for my failures?” Looking away from everyone, Luna didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“It’s not the same Nightmare as what caused Nightmare Moon is it?” Fluttershy wanted to feel horrified if the answer was what she thought it was. That Nightmare was possibly trying to currently take Bonnie over at this moment was something she didn’t like the idea of.
“Neigh, you and your friends cleansed me completely of Nightmare with the elements. This was something made from my own magic and not something else outside of it that entered and twisted my mind.” Looking to Bonnie, Luna so desperately wanted Tantabus back badly.
“She can’t have it back until she’s ready to accept that what happened is all in the past, if she can forgive herself and move on then I’ll gladly give it back. She has to mean it though.” It was the only reason Bonnie was able to suppress the so called ‘nightmare’, she could live with herself as she is without regret. Where it was currently in this dream? Bonnie was the only being there with a shadow after all.
“I… it’s hard.” Never had Luna been felled by an opponent who never struck her a blow.
“Then ask for help you dumb broad, do I have to tell you how to do everything? Are you or are you not a princess? The freaking dames I run into, I swear!” Bonnie was a tad disgusted with Luna’s sad sack woe is me routine, reaching down to her feet with a tug she pulled her shadow up off the ground and held the writhing mass out to Luna. “You can take it back, but I will have to ask that you seek out some help immediately. That thing is nasty to keep bottled up.”
Luna bit her bottom lip and nodded, then carefully grabbed what was rightfully hers and pulled it back into her body where it belonged.