The League Of Darkness

Patrick’s Story.

“Imagine a coin,” began Elizabeth, “And each time you flip it, you get three outcomes… Heads,” she took out a coin from her pocket, “Tails,” she flipped the coin in the air, and it landed spinning on the table, falling to neither side, “Or nothing.”

“Every time one was to make a choice, you are left with three main choices, to do good, to do evil… Or to do nothing at all.” I was interested by this odd metaphor, but I couldn’t see where this was going.

“In our world, we are caught along a set path. One where the choices you make, although you may be aware of them or not, hold no importance to the life you make.”

“A bit morbid,” said Nightmare Moon loudly over my thoughts. I paid no attention to her.

“But what if,” she tossed the coin again, and made it land on the table, “The choices you make are as simple as tossing a coin… Imagine seeing the ways outcomes are made by each way it lands. From starting a kick off, to winning to coin itself or… To ending a life.”

We all stared at the coin on the table. “If something is as simple as a coin, imagine what would happen, if you could change fate,” She passed a hand over the coin, “As easily as you could flip over a coin.”

“Your point is?” said David. He was about as sceptical as the rest of us.

“My point is,” she handed the coin over to David, “Take this, and try to see both sides at the same time.”

David struggled and turned the coin at the same time. Eventually, he gave up and put the coin down upon the table. “I can’t, without a mirror it’s-”

“Impossible? It’s either heads or tails; it cannot be both no matter how you look at it. If that coin was glued to the table, you couldn’t even be certain that the other side even exists. A choice is made and a face remains in place. If a choice is made, thus-”

“A world remains in place… And the world made of the other choice can never coexist with it. They are separate, yet connected,” I said, resulting in a large smile from Elizabeth.

She applauded slightly while the others nodded slightly, “Someone gets it! Ten points to Patrick!”

“So then, if I would decide to come here or stay at home, another world would exist where I am now at home instead?”

Another nod, “Yes, but it’s not just big choices; the very direction of a cell is a choice. The very duration of a subatomic particle to the way that our genetics mutate over the years are all choices. So that means, more choices, more parallel worlds.”

The three of us who were marked all responded at the same time, “So it’s like a tree; every choice is a branch that connects to each other…”

“That’s exactly the metaphor where I needed us to be, since, there IS a reason that I have done this…” Elizabeth said, putting the coin back into her bag. “A tree has many branching roots and branches, over time, more and more branches are made from both other branches and the central trunk itself. According to my theory, we are of the many branches that connect back to the central trunk… Then comes the question-”

“What’s at the central trunk?”

Elizabeth nodded, “It is a question that those who believe in the multiverse theory, as I do, have been trying to crack for centuries. Trouble is, nobody knows either what it is, or how we get there,” She glanced at me with a cunning grin and a half-closed eye. “Until now.”

“I’m guessing now is the point that you tell us about the whole pony thing,” said Hannah with a solemn voice and a roll of the eyes.

“In another world, one distant from ours but joining along the same ‘branch’, there existed an Alicorn, black and blue in colour and calculative in mind-”

“Black and blue? Doesn’t that sound a bit ‘overpowered Mary Sue’ much?” Backhanded Hannah with a small giggle, and Elizabeth scowled at her.

“It doesn’t matter what it was, but what was locked in potential in his mind. For years, there existed the potential to find the way to the original world, or ‘The Prime Universe’, as I call it.”

Hannah leaned back, “I’m guessing something went wrong, otherwise you’d be doing something crazy to screw up this ‘universe tree’ from the source.”

“Yes, Hannah, something went wrong. On the day of his revelations, something went very wrong indeed.”

“How bad are we talking? Did this ‘Alicorn philosopher’ die?” asked David, joining his hands together.

“Oh no, David, much worse… He, along with his comrades, simply ceased to exist.”

“That seems inefficient,” I said smirking.

“But it has more impact than you might think. The collection of mind and body, being the soul, had been forced out of existence by a force that I do not understand, and the re-incarnation had no memories of the research that he had carried out. So, whatever happened to him, I made happen to myself… I followed into the abyss and found this world.”

“So you’re… A being from another dimension-” I laughed, only to stop when I had thought of Nightmare, “too?”

“Yes… Then comes the problem of… Dementia.”

“What about Dementia? The thing old people get when they start to forget stuff?” I asked, but Elizabeth shook her head.

“No, not Dementia: DImenSia, spelt with an ‘I’ and an ‘S’. It’s quite complicated, but understanding it would explain some of my actions.”

Most of us looked at whatever timing device we were using at the time, David sighed to himself, “We’ve got time, so explain away.”

Elizabeth got out a rubber band from her pocket and started stretching it to and fro in a playful manner. “If the world is like a coin with multiple sides, where the worlds can’t interact each other, the walls separating these ‘Dimensions’ are like a complex forest of needles. Travelling between dimensions, whether it be willing or forced, makes whatever you are act like a metaphorical rubber band.”

“So are you saying that we get caught on something in the needles if we travel through?”

“Yes, normally, this wouldn’t be such a problem, but the way that we have all arrived in this world-”

I scowl at her for a moment, “That being, 25 years ago on the day of our births.”

“Yes, when we arrived here, some part of us was left in the abyss in between worlds, like a rubber band caught on two different needles. I call this anomaly ‘Dimensia’ or ‘The ‘Rubber Band Slingshot Effect’.”

“Is this bad?” I ask, only to receive a solemn look from Elizabeth for a glancing moment.

“Very bad, I’m afraid,” She said with a deep, deep sigh. “Like a rubber band, after a while, we...dry out. If that happens when this process is still in effect, then we just… crumble.”

She turned to me with a glare, but a smallish smile as well, “It was happening to you before you even knew it.”

I didn’t know, but evidently, Nightmare did. “I thought something was wrong when I first was brought into consciousness.”

“That cough that you had was intended to kill you.”

I hesitated, then laughed, thinking of the cough I had had for the past couple of days before my birthday, and how Darius had joked that it would kill me. Hannah, however, said something that made me think differently.

“Patrick… There was blood on your pillow.”

Her eyes looked disappointed, and glossed over slightly with that fact. David straightened his tie.

“I’m new here; could you fill me in on what you mean, Hannah?”

Hannah regained her posture and tightened the straps of the hoodie that she was wearing. She smiled at David with a twinkle in her eyes and then glared directly at me.

“The other day, when you’d left to get me that necklace,” Which I realised she was still wearing, which subconsciously made me smile, “I cleared up the sofa to find a small puddle of blood. I don’t know whether it was from your mouth due to the coughing, or your eye, which looked like shit even before you cut it out. But the fact still remains that no healthy man should be bleeding from those areas.”

I stopped and stared without thinking, feeling nothing but the sounds around me and the gentle tug of Nightmare Moon to gain conscious control. I was about to ask her what she meant by ‘something wrong’ to divert her attention, but she answered before I could even ask.

“When I ‘arrived’ both your lungs and that organ you call a ‘heart’, were in tatters and on the brink of collapse. But before I could use a healing spell, they seemed to repair themselves. From what I can tell from this knowledge that I’ve been picking up in here, that sort of thing is not normal on this planet.”

She was right; no one would be able to survive that sort of damage to vital organs in this world. Even if Nightmare Moon was bluffing about that sort of thing, she’d have no motive to lie. It was obvious that this thing was about to kill me, but what remained unanswered was-

“So, how was he saved at the expense of his eye? Which even now wasn’t that much of a cost,” asked David, keeping a fixed gaze on myself at all times, not even bothering to look at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth perked up. “The thing I did to save him was an acceleration device, but before you ask, it isn’t accelerating anything physical: it accelerated the growth of magical potential, effectively raising your internal energies and stress levels to a point that Nightmare Moon could feed off of it and…reawaken.

“The forces of the universe are flawed, at best. When Nightmare Moon returned to consciousness, the universe tried to correct itself. But, since the effects of the Rubber Band Slingshot are so great, an interuniversal phenomenon took place.”

Hannah groaned, “You had me up to ‘forces of the universe’.”

Elizabeth smirked, “It’s a little like if you have all of these rubber bands stretched under the process of the rubber band slingshot effect. All that I did was find a way to temporarily remove whatever was holding the other parts of the band in place. One could say it created a large, trans-dimensional ‘ping’.”

“Ping?”

“Ping.”

David chuckled to himself before closing his eyes and grunting loudly. “You created a universal ‘ping’ how, exactly?”

Elizabeth turned to me once more, “Last night, I managed to get you to touch something, a device not of this World. That ‘emerald’ was a powerful source of energy from Nightmare’s home world. As well as reawakening Nightmare Moon, it contributed to this effect.

“The multiverse is like a lazy mechanic with all of his toolboxes unlabelled. Let’s say, there’s a box full of spanners, and an empty box where hammers go. What would he do if he saw both a hammer in the spanners box and a hammer lying next to the box? He would only assume that the box belongs to both Hammers and Spanners, and the rest of the Hammers are lost. So when he finds new hammers, he puts them back into the spanners box. Even though the box wasn’t designed for hammers, eventually the box becomes full of both hammers and spanners.”

“So Nightmare Moon was the hammer in the box?”

David raised an eyebrow, “And I’m guessing getting him to touch the object is like the hammer on the ground.

Things were adding up once again. “And the fact that we all have these ‘cutie marks’ are the other hammers returning to the wrong box, and the Rubber Band Slingshot Effect being released.”

“So the Souls of these Ponies are inside our bodies now, and I’m guessing they’re going to be taking over the body soon?” said Hannah with an inquisitorial tone, yet her voice had the markings of a rhetorical question.

Elizabeth only nodded in response. But there were more questions to be asked by all of us.

“We all have the souls of Ponies in us, why should it be us? And why did Patrick have Nightmare Moon in the first place?”

Elizabeth shrugged, “Unfortunately, that sort of thing is where my knowledge ends. I do not know why you all have this effect applied to you specifically. And I believe that the Nightmare thing is another part of Dimensia, Nightmare’s body and soul did not cross. However, her mind did, forming the base of Patrick’s, who also had the mind of the alicorn philosopher. How she retains her memories of the previous world, despite remaining dormant for twenty-five years remains a mystery even to myself.”

“It could have something to do with this alicorn philosopher trying to find the centre of the multiverse,” I said before Hannah asked another question.

“What about you? You said that you also crossed dimensions, how did you not get Dimensia?”

“I did. Just in a different way, my mind and soul made its was here, where a human host body was made my home. It is only now, that Dimensia is ending, that my body, like yours, is showing through.” I could only assume what she meant by this, but I felt my suspicions were about to be confirmed.

At this moment, she lifted up a portion of her skirt to show us her flank. This, as I expected, had a marking similar to David and I. A cutie mark of a blue ethereal Tear showing the symbol of a dead bird in the centre.

“The last information I will give you today is an apology,” she said, sighing heavily. “I am sorry that this has happened to you all. This process was out of my control, and for that matter, your control as well. I know that you, David, still have an acting career and this Transformation we are all about to go through is not something you or your family need. And Patrick.”

She tapped the side of her head twice. “I know you value your consciousness, and your creative imagination is something that makes you YOU. Having a dominating second personality, and the powers of an alicorn thrust onto you is not something even your worst enemies would wish upon you.”

“Do I get a personal apology?” asked Hannah with spite, Elizabeth smiled and closed her eyes.

“Well, from what I know, you’re already an identity thief! You’ll fit perfectly into the role of Queen Chrysalis. But if you’re expecting one, you’ll get an apology from me at a later date, trust me.”

Hannah scowled at her with clenched teeth. “Right now I find trusting you to be a bit difficult, so forgive me if I withhold my enthusiasm.”

“And a general apology to you all. In order for this event to take place, and for me to rid Dimensia from the equation. I had to plan everything while finding all of you, but at the same time try to find a way to allow you to read up on some of the traits you will be receiving,” she lowered her voice for a moment, “But seriously, read those books I gave you, they’ll help you out with some things so I don’t have to.

“Anyway, in these delays, I may have risked your lives in the process, especially yours, Patrick. You started to experience genetic deterioration already so I apologise for not getting to you sooner, or allowing you time to understand what was about to happen to you. Remember, I’m no miracle worker.” At this moment, a waiter walked by the table and placed a few glasses of water on the table, Elizabeth looked up to him. “Actually, could I have a glass of wine instead, thanks.”

The waiter nodded and took the glass away, leading Elizabeth to look back at me again. “But what matters is that you are all still alive and you understand now.”

Deep inside, besides Nightmare’s niggling in the back of my mind, I wanted to punch her in the face for being responsible for everything that had happened to me in the past couple of days. But, admittedly, I knew she was right. That cough I had had for the past couple of days had completely vanished overnight and my eye, despite having a glaring scar, was completely painless.

I felt if it weren’t for her, I doubt I would survive the next few days alone. And even more, the people who also had Dimensia would have eventually ‘collapsed’. In gaining Nightmare Moon, for a fleeting moment, I felt that in return I had saved those people.

But right now, I still couldn’t forgive Elizabeth. She had still ruined me, and that destruction to myself was only going to increase. But to what end would it stop? If I was about to fully transform into an actual Alicorn, how much of me would be left? Would I even be myself? Would I be stuck in a body that is not my own forever? Or would this alicorn reduce me to a complete stranger?

These thoughts only depressed me, but in that moment of depression, I felt the sudden mental pull as my consciousness was violently yanked to Nightmare Moon. I tried fighting back to stop her from doing anything stupid, but Nightmare Moon was remaining silent in my head, and had not moved an inch from my original position. I was now a simple viewer again. A prisoner in my own body.

David was, somehow, able to pick up on this switch in drivers. It took him a while of staring before he said something.

“So it’s true,” he said quietly, alerting the others to his observance.

“What’s true?” asked Elizabeth.

“Everything you said, at first, I thought everything you said was some complex hoax thought up by Darren Brown. With fake tattoos and a man with scars… But just now, Patrick’s eyes changed colour.”

Hannah looked directly into my eyes, with fear in her own quickly showing itself. “Both your eyes are blue… And catlike.”

“You’re very observant, Doctor” said Nightmare with a smug grin and a voice as sharp as a knife, David continued his observation.

“I’ve heard of schizophrenia and split personalities. But that’s all in the mind; I look at you now, comparing you to earlier. Your eyes are blue, you talk like a snake, your hair is slightly longer and even the way you sit is different. Every part of you emanates something different, like you’ve become a completely different person. You’re not even you right now.”

Nightmare’s smile grew wider and more baring of her teeth. Even at his age, I could tell that David had fear in his heart, and the questions in his head were now questioning both his life and reality.

“You’re Nightmare Moon… Aren’t you?”

And on cue, Nightmare Moon used me to create a sinister laughter; it wasn’t full blown like she would have given on the show or in her display earlier, but more psychotic and chilling causing a universal shiver down the spines of the people in the café. Her laughter died down slightly to speak.

“I’m starting to see him in you, David,” she said looking directly at him. “Ever the paranoid and trying to find explanations for things. Yes, I am Nightmare Moon, the one, true Nightmare Moon. Born again in this world into the body of a man.”

“Do you like them?” She asked Hannah, causing her to flinch. “My eyes, Chrysalis… Or Hannah as you are known here, are but one sign of my control. There will be more to come as the days go by. As Patrick changes, as do I recover my power. I already have a portion of it in my control. Would you like me to demonstrate?”

Hannah shook her head, causing Nightmare to pout my lips sarcastically. “Shame for you, since I feel I’m going to have to anyway.”

At this moment, we had the door of the café open, I was turned to see two men wearing suits walk in. They had shades on and kept their heads low, one of the people behind the counter attempted to shoo them away.

“Excuse me? We’re having a private meeting at the moment, could you two gents kindly leave?” he asked, only for the two to arrive at the counter and sit down. One of them, the younger, looked up to him in response. Due to the lack of other’s dialogue, it was easy to hear them.

“I’m sorry, my friend and I have just come back from a big job uptown, all we need is a coffee and then we’ll be on our way.”

The man at the counter turned to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth nodded in response.

The rumble of voices started again in the Café as the man walked to serve the two men at the bar. This allowed Nightmare to pick up on Hannah’s distress. She sat there, with her eyes wide and breathing steadily increasing in speed. Like at the school, I could somehow feel the fear and panic off of her. But at the same time, there was another feeling; it was a sense of burning, spikes and sharpness, leading off of her and cutting down into me… It was hatred.

“Those two men, Hannah, are they the ones?” Nightmare asked, Hannah looked up with a confused glare, but she got the idea of what Nightmare was suggesting, leaving me in the dark. Hannah nodded, causing Nightmare to smile again.

“They’re the ones that killed everyone in the hospital.”

David’s eyes shot open, as a horrifying thought crossed my mind. If what she said was true, then was Elliott among the casualties.

Before I could do anything, Nightmare Moon gave me one thought across our mind in a strong tone, “No, I feel that Elliott was not among them. If he were, I think grief would be strong amongst her consciousness. I doubt he was left in that place either, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a nice discussion with the two gentlemen.”

She stood myself up, and began to walk over to the counter with an elegance I did not know I could do. Since no one in the Café reacted to this, I believed that Elizabeth had told them what to expect from today.

My left hand clicked as I heard Nightmare’s voice utter a spell in my head.

“Nocte Pallium: Metamorphagus, Lorem mulierem.” Almost immediately, I felt a strange feeling cover my body. There were no changes to my body itself, but I felt a strange force surrounding it after she used the spell.

As I reached the two men they turned to look at me as my shadow loomed over them.

Their expression held no meaning, but I could pick it up; arousal, confusion and stress all bundled inside both of them, especially the younger.

“Would you boys care for a drink? You must be thirsty after a long day of work,” said Nightmare with a more effeminate tone to her voice. The elder of the two men was not pleased.

“I’m sorry, Madam. We’re on a tight schedule, we can’t afford distractions.”

“Oh, you men with your business. You’re always so uptight, so stressed.” I had grabbed the elders tie and pulled him slightly towards me. “I can make that stress go away.”

His eyebrow rose for a moment, and a smile appeared on one side of his mouth. But it disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “Sorry madam, we don’t deal with prostitutes.”

He was glancing around slightly as Nightmare frowned. “I am no prostitute. I’m just a girl looking for justice,” she stood up as tall as possible and assumed a serious tone, “I deal with murderers.”

A coffee arrived on the counter, and the two seized theirs formally. “Well, if you find any murderers, you should report it to us. We don’t take kindly to vigilantes.”

“Actually, funny you should mention that, I happen to be looking for two murderers at the moment, I’d care to report.”

The elders’ eyebrow went up once more, and he signalled the younger to take out a notebook.

“Since we’re off duty, we won’t be able to lead into this right now, but we’ll take some notes now… So to begin with- was the victim identified?”

Nightmare gave a crooked smile, “Yes, she was. That’s her.”

She pointed over to Hannah, who was glaring at the two men. The elder’s eyes shot open with malice and the immense amount of confusion and fear that emanated from them was thick enough to taste.

“WHAT THE HELL?” the younger yelled, reaching into his coat pocket. Nightmare reacted quickly, raising both hands to their necks quickly and yelling in my head.

“Petrificus Locatus Maxima!”

Instantly, the arms of the men dropped, as did their posture. Their heads moved around confused, unable to move away. Their panic and fear were apparent from just looking at them.

“I can’t move my arms, boss! What’s going on?”

Nightmare laughed to herself while seeing the two men being absolutely helpless.

She silenced them by disabling whatever charm she had on to disguise herself. The men stared at her with absolute disbelief.

“Unless you never want to move again, you two are going to tell me which one of you pulled the trigger on my friend.”

The younger was shaking slightly, trying to get some movement out of their paralysed limbs. “We didn’t… Kill her. Look! She’s right there, still alive!”

Nightmare Moon glared at both of them before raising her hands again, this time, looking again like my own hands. “I think we all know that’s not the case. Crucio.”

The men screamed as the only parts of them that weren’t paralysed contorted and bent and scraped together. Reminding me of that event with James Pierce. It gave me almost a thrill to see again, but also a horrifying realisation that I couldn’t turn away due to Nightmare being in control of me.

One of them, in agony, finally spoke up- “IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! FOR GOD’S SAKE MAKE IT STOP!”

Nightmare lowered her hands and went up to the man who spoke, being the elder. The effects of the curse had stopped, but they were both still in the after-agony. They looked like children to Nightmare. All fearing the creature that had come to bring judgement upon them. Nightmare was living up to her name at that point, being a Nightmare incarnate.

The room seemed to go dark around us, as all light that seemed to remain was on the elder. There was a moment of silence as Nightmare Moon looked directly into his eyes, either as a means of ‘studying’ him, or just allowing him to get a good look at her eyes. She leaned in, while raising a hand to his throat, “People who kill for money make me sick,” she said with a hiss, “I’m old fashioned, I kill for vengeance.”

She leaned back, pressing my nails slightly into his neck as he whimpered quietly. “Give Hitler my regards when you see him.”

That instant, he knew exactly what was about to happen, and began to scream. His scream was interrupted by the powerful thought of Nightmare Moon’s spell.

“MORTE PERCUNIA.”

At that moment, his breath choked. Every ounce of his body tensed up and began to solidify. His skin diluted and rotted into a pale yellow at first, before turning a more solid gold. Nightmare moon outstretched one finger and gently tapped upon his forehead. Causing him to crumble into a large pile of gold coins.

Some people around us gasped, but it was the younger man, being the observer who was screaming.

“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! FUCK ME! I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!”

His tone of voice suggested that he thought he was about to receive the same fate, and the fear from him only increased as Nightmare approached. “Yes… Mortal… I am your god,” she said with the vilest of vain voices. She raised an eyebrow as the man cowered away slightly, but she shed an almost friendly smile. “But I am not the one to kill you. Since I need to send a message back to whoever has sent you to kill my friend.”

She placed a hand quickly on his forehead, and a spiritual pressure began to be exerted from my mind, like a snake, the pressure coiled around the man’s mind with a gentle hum. As she spoke the words in my head, they became a command in his.

“When you leave this place, you will not remember my face, you will not remember what has happened in here, you will go back to your superiors, and say you have failed them. You will beg for death, and you will say that Nightmare Moon says: Hello.”

She released her hand from his head and the man’s body relaxed and flopped onto the ground in front of us. He stared at Nightmare, and then the door and then at the pile of money that used to be the elder man. He stumbled upright, before running towards the door screaming. As soon as he reached the outside world, his shrieks were silenced and he calmly walked away.

Nightmare Moon smiled and laughed in a sinister fashion. “If you live for money, then you will die for money,” she mocked, turning to the pile of gold sitting near her. “Take as much money as you want, my mortal subjects,” she said, seemingly to the rest of the people in the café who had done nothing during the display. No-one went up; they all remained silent and stared at me, my friends on the table included.

Hannah and David looked more scared than I had ever seen them. Perhaps that was the idea; maybe Nightmare was trying to show them what would happen if they got on her bad side. That seemed to be the idea. But I wanted no part of it anymore.

I struggled and struggled to get some control back. While Nightmare Moon was holding onto what energy she had strongly, I felt some give back to me.

“Getting feisty, are we Patrick? I’m going to see how you try this one.”

I fell to the ground; the effort of gaining control of the body was weighing hard on both of us, however more me than Nightmare. I imagined it as getting the energy from one chakra pool to another. I was beginning to understand the struggle that Luna had to go through, before a realisation struck me.

While struggling for control, I tried picturing happy thoughts, ignoring the death, trying to think of something nice. Happy bunnies, flowery fields, Yoshi frolicking near a rainbow, celebrating birthdays with my friends.

At this moment, I felt something give in Nightmare Moon, just a brief moment where she hesitated and stumbled. I used this to my advantage, and grabbed the energy for myself. With a gigantic scream, I began to move it over to my consciousness. It felt like someone was stabbing me through the eyes and going straight through my brain. I felt like my mind was about to crack open, my bones creaked and cracked beneath and around me. With a groan, my eyes burned furiously, the energy felt like it was almost completely mine, and I felt Nightmare Moon begin to pull it back again. But it was too late now, I collapsed. I was once again in control of my body.

Nightmare’s voice sounded heavy in my head, “Not… Bad… Patrick… You’re not good at the transformation. I dare say I’m looking forward to trying that again.” She groaned to herself suddenly, “But you’ve drained me, for now. Kudos for victory on your first time… I imagine we’re going to become very strong friends.”

I began to stand up slightly, putting all my energy into my body around me. My thoughts felt heavy as well in my mind, with the added weight of Nightmare. It was as if I had a solid lead weight in my skull. I focused myself on one thought and fired it at Nightmare with an angry flare.

“YOU KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT, NIGHTMARE MOON.”

My eye left a drop of blood on the ground after that exertion, Nightmare sighed in my head. “Careful, Patrick. You’re not experienced at this. We’ll practice your voice soon enough. But I don’t want you collapsing of the blood pressure in your head.”

She became silent once more, and I began to stumble towards the table again. Hannah stood up and ran over to prevent me from falling over.

“I’m sorry, Patrick,” she said solemnly, holding me tight as she stood me up.

I gasped for breath and talked with a hoarse voice. “Why did that time hurt so much?”

Elizabeth looked me straight in the eyes, “That was the first time you’ve FOUGHT for control, Patrick,” she said, sounding eversoslightly proud, “I think other times; Nightmare had just given control back to you. This was the first time that you two have competed for your body.”

“Will she try again?” asked Hannah for me.

“Several times, as she gets stronger, it may get increasingly difficult for you to get that control back or remain in control if she tries.”

That was the last straw for David. He stood up explosively with panic in his eyes.

“That’s enough!” he blurted with a slight laugh. “I know that you lot have problems, and I’m sorry for that, but I can’t take it! I don’t know you very well, but I don’t want to stick around to see what that Nightmare Moon will do to all of us. If you don’t mind, I’m getting out of here!”

Elizabeth stood up in response, “I’m sorry, David. But I’m afraid that we’re the only choice that you’ve got at the moment.”

David raised an eyebrow as the cheek on the other side twitched slightly, “What do you mean, only choice? I’ve got-” he opened the blind expecting to see the car with Georgie and Olive outside, but to all of our surprise (bar Elizabeth), no car could be seen.

David turned to Elizabeth and I angrily, “Where are they?” he yelled at a tone I had not seen from him. He was breathing heavily, and almost blind with rage. Blind enough not to notice the syringe that Elizabeth had gotten out of her bag, which she promptly stuck into his neck.

David’s eyes rolled back into his head as he collapsed onto the table with a large thump, breaking the glasses of water and knocking over Elizabeth’s cup of tea and glass of wine.

“What?” I said with a rasp. Elizabeth turned to us after placing the syringe back into her bag.

“That’ll keep him out for a couple of hours,” she said, feeling his pulse as he lay on the table.

Hannah and I backed up slightly, “Where’s his family? What did you do?” Hannah asked without blinking.

Elizabeth straightened her coat and looked at the two of us. “His family are currently on their way to a safe house. The reason they are going there is because of a deal I had made with them the other day. To keep them out of the country while the events of the Dimensia wear off on both themselves and David. And that injection was to knock him out in order to take him back to Patrick’s house.”

“Why would I want him or you in my house?”

She looked down at me, “To unite the League of Darkness,” she seemed to say to Nightmare Moon.

In order to prevent me from passing out due to my Mental fight with Nightmare, Elizabeth and Hannah both carried David out of the café, with Hannah holding arms and Elizabeth holding his legs while I stumbled behind.

“Why are we doing this?” yelled Hannah, stumbling slightly over a wonky pave-stone. Elizabeth bared the brunt of David’s weight.

“We’re just following the plan that I made you guys yesterday. Simple as that, if we don’t take him back, then the plan for the afternoon is not going to work!”

We began to get towards Hannah’s Rolls Royce, which was parked relatively close. “Why should we you? You just knocked a man out and expect us to follow your every whim?”

Elizabeth grinned to herself and chuckled, “You trust me because you know I’m the only one who can make some sense of all of this.”

I groaned, trying to withhold my anger, and thus, Nightmare Moon.

When we reached Hannah’s car, I saw the silhouette of another figure in the car, as well as the remains of what looked like a smashed up window… A window that I have heard can survive even an atomic blast. There was no glass on the inside, so I could only assume that it was broken from the inside. Making me slightly fear my life while standing next to Hannah, but judging by the display earlier, I wouldn’t be surprised if she felt the same way about me.

I was signalled to open the passenger door on the other side of the car. I did it while limping slightly. When the door opened, I only got a passing glance of Elliott Wong on the other side, still wearing a gown, before the unconscious body of David was shoved in.

I turned to Hannah with squinted eyes and shrugged my shoulders aggressively. She frowned in return.

“You heard me earlier, didn’t you? Those two men and some others Murdered everyone in the hospital, Doctors and Patients alike- Elliott and I were hidden so they didn’t find him. Did you want me to leave him there? He still has his meds on him thanks to me, thank you very much. I think that he’s in safe hands now.”

I stammered as I continued to glare at her, “What? With you, who appears to have punched through a Palladium glass window? Elizabeth, who I don’t think is properly mentally stable to be left with anypony… AnyONE, sorry. And lastly, both me and Nightmare Moon… And I think that you know the problems with THAT!”

“Touché. But I think it’s safer than him having to stay where those men could’ve gotten to him. If he were left there, then his medicine would have run out, and he would have died of shock and physical trauma before anyone could get to him that wouldn’t shoot him in the head.”

I doubted that someone like Elliott, especially with his injuries had any chance of being alive without his medicine. Hold on…

“Did you-” I began, but before my lips were opened, the boot of the Rolls was, revealing what could only be described as a Junkie’s greatest dream / worst Nightmare.

Somehow, despite being squeezed into a reasonably small space of a boot, several, nearly hundreds of plastic packages were placed intact in the boot, with different colours and markings. I was surprised beyond belief in how and why Hannah would do something like that. Elliott, in order to make a full recovery would only need one or two bags at least of some of the more moderate medicine.

This stuff was enough for that and…

To dull the pain and infections of people practically changing species.

“Did you know?” I asked her, causing her to close the boot non-suspiciously. She grimaced and shuggled her head side to side going “eh.”

“I could guess that it probably happened to you, considering that you became Nightmare last night and the fact that you and the others, like me, collapsed. So I got these in case we experience anything during these changes. I extrapolated and took opportunity from the hospital earlier. It would be good if we kept it between ourselves, and if Darius were to ask… Just change the subject.”

I nodded abruptly, as a sharp whistle was called into my hearing. “Let’s get moving guys! That drug will only keep him out for oh so long!” she yelled, before getting into the front passenger seat without asking any of us. This annoyed me slightly, but such things as seating would not be in my caring at the age of a steady twenty-five.

Upon her command, I limped into the car seat with the wedged body of David… And the near-corpse of Elliott.

His movements were subtle, if weak from rest and pain. It lacked the certain spasticity that I had come to expect from him. It seemed as if he were cold, as if he were dead. The charred, scarred and torn flesh that made up his entire left countenance and body was almost a bringing forth of the death that now was brought by his every move.

My usual thought patterns would normally criticize myself for not paying proper attention to the fact that I was observing the mangled face of one of my best friends staring back at me with one large, unblinking eyeball. I was more criticizing how my observations at that time were so outrageously poetic. I would blame Nightmare…

But I remembered that there was another I was turning into. Another pony, a pony that did not seem to even appear on the show, fan works or fiction.

If I were to change, would the part of me that is still myself remain that way? What dark secrets lay for me in the future? I hoped that such secrets did not go unanswered for very long. However, an unsettling feeling welled up inside of me. Every single bowel and inner organ shifted uncontrollably. Was it nausea? Was it the stress? Was it that I had just recently fought off a complete psychopath from taking over my mind without any form of the training? Was it the fact that I had just seen an open eyeball-?

My stomach opened up and I expelled my insides onto the payment through the open window to my right. Immediately, the feeling inside subsided before I was to either throw up again or observe the handiwork of what I had just done. I looked at Elizabeth, who looked back with an awkward smile.

“How about I go get some bandages for Elliott and Hannah when we get back to your house, you don’t mind Elliott staying in the car, do you Hannah?”

Hannah had no reaction; she only looked forward as she started the car.

Elizabeth smirked, “I hope you realise that you’ve just thrown up, Patrick… And I’d recommend checking that colour if I were you.”

I groaned loudly, but kept my innermost emotions in check. My outer shell spoke with a voice as sharp as the knife that had cut my friend’s hand the night before. “I do not wish to look, I do not care. Just take me home.”

“Really?” she asked, beginning to look forward again and twiddle her thumbs.

I had no reaction; I only fastened my seatbelt as the car pulled away.

“You all sitting comfortably?”

Elliott had no reaction; he only stared blankly as pain wrought his body.

David could not react. He was completely unconscious.

The car grinded to a halt, and a cough alerted me to press a small button on a device connected to my keychain. A small beeping was the sign of the large, opening gate that lead up to the large premises of my house.

The car drove down the driveway and parked just outside the front door that showed the way into the home. The house brought onto me by a loophole and political corruption at its most beneficial.

“Is the gate the only way in?” asked Elizabeth.

I glared and pointed to a small door, although covered with various roots and flowers, I had used only this morning. She pondered and looked at it.

“You can buzz me in afterwards can’t you?”

“Either that or I’ll happily let you climb over. You never know, after you do it I could ‘reveal’ that you actually went through some rough barbed wire-”

“And the wounds are already there. I see your metaphor, Patrick… Very clever.”

She climbed out of the car without any hesitation, Hannah snapped quickly from her trance-like state. “HEY!” she yelled.

“Yes?”

“What about these two?” she blurted, pointing to David, who was drooling slightly onto his leg.

Elizabeth promptly handed Hannah a set of a few objects, including some handcuffs, a key, a few syringes like that she had used on David earlier and the unopened package that we were not allowed to open from last night. Seeing, however, she had no clue what to do with them. Elizabeth opened up what she needed.

“Drag him into a place like the sitting room. When he wakes, if he is difficult to deal with, give him a small dose of that syringe stuff, then use the handcuffs to attach one hand to something like a pantry storage shelf or radiator. Once you have everything sorted, please provide him with the tomes inside of the package provided. I won’t be long, so I doubt that you will have to do much of this on your own.”

She walked off before anyone else could speak. Leaving Hannah with an open mouth and a raised hand. “Alright… Alright then.”

She turned back to me, and spoke with a casual friendliness that I had not heard in a long time today. “Are you OK to walk?”

I nodded respectfully, trying dulling the slight pain that still lingered in my joints.

I undid David’s seatbelt and nodded at Elliott. He replied by settling back slightly into his seat.

I had once done a first aid course in my CCF education back in 2010; in my studies of CPR I was given a good demonstration of the weight of an uncooperating unconscious body. Even then, I had little practice in the matter. David’s limp body was heavy and difficult to control. Every limb sprawled all over and his chest wanted to fall to the ground with every moment that I supported him. It would be easy for me to just drag him into the house.

But it was David fekking Tennant. I couldn’t do that to him.

I resorted to the method similar to that I had used on Elliott a few days ago, being the Pack Strap Carry. By dragging him slightly to the edge of the car, I managed to hoist him up onto my back, trying to keep the weight off my legs and keeping it on my hips as I crouched slightly.

My bones still ached from the internal battle, but it wasn’t a long distance from here to the sitting room in my house. As long as I didn’t have any other interruptions, I would be fine.

“Patrick!” yelled Joshua, as if on fucking cue.

“Not now Joshua, we need to get this man into the house before carrying him does any damage to my legs.”

Hannah decided to ignore Josh, but unlike him usually, he decided to take a stand and held his position. “Nononono. You’re not going in yet, not until I know what the fuck is going on out here.”

“I’m not an idiot, that’s fucking David fucking Tennant on your back, Patrick- YOU have your eye back, although I saw you REMOVE IT by yourself not last night. Why is Elliott in the car? Why the fuck did I just see Elizabeth get out of the car? And why-”

I picked up the pace and shoved past him, rolling my eyes, “Long story, can’t explain now- but I really need to put this guy DOWN NOW!”

I heard small stammers from Josh as the weight of David’s body began to become even more apparent as I picked up pace to slam him down on the central sofa of the sitting room. His body quickly slumped onto the seat with near-perfect precision. Allowing me to feel a tad freer to move as I didn’t have someone else’s body on my shoulders. However, it felt more as if my legs were about to drop off, leaving me to slump to the ground with a climactic smash. This was not the case, however. All that happened was a small stumble and a slight twist of my ankle.

Hannah had followed me in, which I found out when I found one of her bandaged hands coming to assist me.

Her smile was a calming force upon me, as much calming as I could have while in pain.

Weight was taken off my feet once more when I was placed in the soft comfort of my sofa, with the soft cotton cushions supporting my back and behind. I hadn’t sat down calmly for a while, so it felt as if I would sink into the settee if I weren’t careful. “Are you OK?” asked Hannah, I nodded calmly.

“I’ve never felt the experience of being on what you call ‘sofas’. I must admit, it is rather comforting in the flesh.”

I scowled, as my bones ached from the earlier confrontation. I suppressed a moan of pain while Hannah stroked my hand.

Nightmare Moon spoke again. “If you don’t like the pain, Patrick. I will happily get rid of it for you if you let me control one of your arms for an hour or two.”

I wasn’t that easily fooled, so I ignored her as much as you can ignore your own mind.

A moment or two passed with not much happening, Hannah comforted me, David flinched once or twice and I counted my breaths slowly but surely.

All was fine for one moment; all was calm just following my own breaths. One. Two. In. Out. Relaxed. And- “Leave my friend alone!”

My head snapped around, to see Josh standing poised upright, with a knife in his hand and a fierce look in his eye. From just a glance I knew that knife was intended for me.

“I don’t care who you are. You’re not Patrick! You changed him last night and now you’re back for me and Cordelia! Jesus Christ! I’m not afraid to defend myself right now! Don’t make me use this!”

Hannah sat slightly more upright, “Joshua! Don’t do anything you’ll regret- you don’t understand what’s going on right now-”

“Yes I do! Yes I fucking do! That Elizabeth’s cursed you! And now she wants me! She’s tasted my blood! She hates me! Everyone fucking hates me! It’s all about YOU isn’t it?”

I could see tears forming in his eyes, he was stammering his speech. Any other time I would think he was just taking the mick, but now I could see that he was completely terrified.

“You’re not him! You’re that Nightmare Moon from that fucking kid’s show aren’t you?” the knife started shaking slightly in his hand, “Give me my friend back! Make our lives normal again for god’s sake! Just leave us alone.”

Honestly, even though he was a complete arse last night, I could actually sympathise with him. This seemed to all be happening around him, he cut a hand on a sword meant for me, only to have someone laugh at him for it and then for me to end up cutting out my own eye after declaring myself as Nightmare Moon.

To any normal person, I would have looked like I had gone completely insane, and my leaving today would have been good for him to calm down.

But now I return to my house with a returned eye, an unconscious man and a woman who laughed at violence, as well as Hannah. He must have been absolutely terrified, and I did not blame him for one moment. In fact, I hoped he did stab something just to vent all of that stress that he would have had.

But I did not find him doing that, as an inquisitorial Hannah was the next to speak. “Josh… Where’s Cordelia?”

“Why should I tell you? You could be like him for all I know!”

“Josh… This is for all of our safety… Has anything strange happened to her?”

I’d forgotten that. Hannah had mentioned that we’d all collapsed after I had cut out my eye, probably from Dimensia.

And evidently, from the way that Josh had now lowered the knife, I wasn’t the only one.

“How the hell do you know if anything’s happened to her? For all I know you could have done it to her-”

“Josh, don’t try to be a badass. No-one’s buying it, for god’s sake, put down the knife before anyone ELSE loses an eye.” She then turned to me with a small smug grin; I only glared back at her.

Josh’s breath increased in pace as he realised the knife in his hand, eventually he started to lower it down to the ground. His eyes remained locked on ours at all times, it was only when the weapon was down on the ground and he held in place slightly that he looked like he was about to speak. However, a sharp breath from David caused a hand to flinch back and seize the knife.

“If you want to hold the knife, that’s fine. Just tell us what happened to Cordelia.”

Josh fidgeted and flinched, it was obvious he was having trouble putting it into words, “A symbol… A symbol appeared.”

“What KIND of symbol?”

“Err…” He stopped, his eyes and hands gave away the fact that he seemed to know what it was, but had lost the word to describe it with. “Round, circle thingy with a star in it.”

“A Pentagram?” Hannah practically laughed.

“Yeah, that’s right! A pentagram… Yeah, a Pentagram ap-appeared on her… Yup, on her.”

He seemed to have stopped awkwardly, as if he wasn’t really in the mood to go into detail. But we needed detail in order to determine whether she was in the same condition as the rest of us.

“Where ‘on her’?” I asked, trying to sound as imposing as I could without sounding too intimidating.

“Just in the general… Area…”

I tried to put it into words as maturely as I could, but words failed me at the wrong moment- “Josh, does she have a pentagram on her butt?”

Hannah burst out for a moment, but refrained from laughing out loud from what I said, and Nightmare Moon gave a sharp “Ha!” inside my head, to my annoyance.

Josh raised an eyebrow while nodding slowly. “Although… It’s on both… Sides.”

A short breathed Hannah spoke next “I guessed so, but that proves it.”

“Where is she?” I asked, getting back to my original question.

“She’s currently in her room, she ran off when we saw Elizabeth. That’s why I’m so suspicious of you guys right now. Tell me, why are you here now?”

That’s when we were speechless. We both just looked down and to each other.

“I’m guessing it’s got SOMETHING to do with how you SOMEHOW have David Tennant knocked out. Care to explain?”

Hannah looked up again, “All I could say is, Elizabeth, Elizabeth and… Elizabeth.”

“Someone called?” asked Elizabeth, in a Beetlejuice manner of now standing behind Josh, who appropriately almost fell over from her unheard appearance. It was a surprise to us all.

“What are you doing here?” asked Josh, familiar with the tone that he had used earlier to address the two of us.

Elizabeth looked to a corner of the room and shrugged, “I’m mainly just following a plan. Also, I helped get these guys here, so you should be thanking me- Where’s Cordelia? I guess she has lots of questions for me.”

Josh looked like he was about to begin his whole ‘I’m not telling you’ routine, so I interrupted. “Upstairs, first room on the left. She’ll either be there or on the Balcony that the room connects to.”

Josh stood up and frowned at me with bravery, “You shouldn’t have told her that, who knows what she’ll do to Cordie.”

“Josh…” said Elizabeth, with a calm voice, “Don’t panic. I don’t intend any harm to occur to any of us.”

“She doesn’t Josh, but I don’t think you’ll understand,” I said, leaning out for him to see me.

He seemed to be calming eversoslightly, but he still had a knife in his hand and a wild look in his eyes and hair.

“You don’t remember do you? The way she laughed when I cut myself, the way she acted like some kind of servant when you lost your mind! You can’t trust her! YOU CAN’T!”

Elizabeth held his hand, being the one with the knife, and spoke softly in juxtapose to his loud voice, “Josh. Go upstairs and find Cordelia. I’ll be up shortly and I’ll explain everything- I’ll even let you keep the knife. I don’t intend to bring any more harm, and I am sorry for the way I treated you yesterday.”

Josh scowled, and I saw a brief moment where he almost raised the knife up to meet her throat, but this changed when Elizabeth spoke again. “Josh, would you kindly take a deep breath, calm down… And trust me.”

It wasn’t instant, but it still seemed to get through. His arm lowered as took one deep breath in and out. “Fine,” he said, dropping the knife “I trust you.”

He took more deep and slow breaths. He walked out of the room and slowly went up the stairs. Elizabeth picked up the knife that he had dropped, and surprisingly put it behind one of the sofas with a small smile.

“Are you lot alright?”

We nodded.

She sighed, “I did mean what I said there. The way I treated you all last night was unacceptable, especially to Josh. I hope I can be forgiven.”

“We don’t care… Where’s Elliott?” I asked, causing her to gesture to another room.

“I managed to move him to the dining room with some fresh bandages. He’s still in a bit of pain, but I imagine that you have brought something for that.”

We looked at each other for several moments, each of us unaware of the motifs or intentions of the accused.

There was a strange balance and unbalance of trust and mistrust, and Elizabeth knew that well. If she hadn’t done something, and left us to our own normal lives, then we’d all be dead. In ruining our lives, as she said, she saved them.

“Do you have anything to drink?” she asked, in a tone that I had not heard her use before. But it was a harmless question.

“Check in the fridge in the kitchen. We’ll have some stuff in there, and all the tap water’s filtered so it’s safe to drink.”

She nodded her head in thanks and walked away silently.

Leaving us just with the ambient noise of the surroundings.