Two Background Ponies Revisit Season Five

Do Princesses Dream of Magical Sheep?

Late spring/early summer had come to Ponyville. Naturally, that could only mean one thing for the citizens...although at least it wasn't happening in the town proper this time.

Currently the collective dreaming residents of the town were fighting furiously against a massive nebulous starry shadow monster, getting larger by the minute and constantly trying to rip holes in the universe to escape to the real world. It didn't help that every so often it transmutated something else into a giant pony-eating monster that likewise had to be destroyed. The likewise transmutated citizens had their hands full running everywhere.

Of course, one group of ponies was no exception. Giving a furious war cry, "Stonewall" Charger was in what looked to be a large metal golem suit with chain guns on either hand, standing on a pile of dead and shredded wagons-turned-monsters, more swarming around him all the time as he let the bullets fly and tearing them to bits. Some that were wounded he pinned down with one leg and shot multiple times in the head before wheeling up and keeping going.

Not too much farther, Sam-Listens-To-Carl's-Problems had mastered the use of one of Stonewall's mass-market rifles and was using it as well; firing, reloading, and firing again to try and pick off monsters one by one. Suddenly, Dawn slid in next to him carrying a firearm as well.

"Sam honey?"

He looked to her.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger."

She raised the weapon...now freshly turned into a grenade launcher, and turned a charging tool shed into a pile of flaming debris. Sam grimaced a bit that Dawn could dream of such military-intensive things, but nodded. "Um...thanks, dear."

As she went off, he quickly turned to shoot down an incoming birdhouse, before snapping to his side.

"Carl! How are you holding...CARL!"

The green stallion wasn't even making a move to defend anything. He was looking around curiously at everything. "Wow...can you imagine that..."

Sam facehooved. "Carl! Hello? Giant nightmare monster attempting to rip its way into Equestria?! Time limit as Princess Luna is rapidly weakening?! Why aren't you dreaming of something that can kill things?!"

Carl blinked and looked to him. "Oh...oh, sorry Sam. It's just...well...normally I escape to my dreams to get relief from inconsistencies because nothing makes sense naturally in a dream. But now that I'm here and looking around, I can't help but try to wonder what all of this means... I mean, we're in the collective subconscious of everyone in Ponyville, Sam. This is a big opportunity..."

Sam rolled his eyes and groaned. "Are you out of your mind?! You're talking about stuff like that now?!"

"Oh, come on, Sam! Try to think about it! Think of the chance to understand ponies so much better! I mean...look!" He pointed to a stallion riding on a living wave of gold bits, blasting away at the Tantabus. "There's Filthy Rich. Now, you see him with all that money and figure, 'Yeah, that's just some shallow greedy stallion who only cares about bits, right? But look, Sam! Look what he's doing! He's blasting the big nightmare monster with gold bits! Don't you get it? It's a metaphor! The stallion thinks money is the answer to everything! That he can solve all of his problems, even to his own life and well-being, by throwing money at them! It almost makes me pity him a little..."

Sam was nearly quivering at this point. "...That's great, Carl. Now please start-"

"Or look at Big Macintosh!" Carl shouted as he watched a big alicorn princess? fly around blasting away with his horn. "It makes perfect sense! He's always wanted to be the big brother and defender of Applejack and the family farm, but secretly he's always felt inept because she keeps succeeding in situations without him! So he dreamed of being an alicorn princess so that he could finally be the individual who could step in and save his family and the rest of Equestria! Or maybe deep down inside the reason he always works so hard is because he knows that for all his strength he can't do what unicorns can do with just a bit of magic...which is why he envisioned himself a unicorn first... An inferiority complex... Isn't that sad, Sam?"

Another gunshot went out. "You know what's making me sad right now, Carl? You not shutting up about-"

"And look! It makes perfect sense that Derpy is gigantic! I mean, duh! Duh! She's always stuck in crowds! People always have to search high and low for her if they want to find her! She wanted to stand out! She wanted to be so big that she'd always be noticed by people!"

"Right now the only thing I want..."

"And Lyra and Bon Bon being fused together in one body? That's...honestly very disturbing and makes me think of 90s cartoons for some reason...but it still works out! They want to be together but the world and society demands that they can't be together in 'that way'! So they dreamed that they'd be together in one body so that the world can't separate them!"

Sam began to quiver in fastly-escalating rage...

"And Berry Punch? Well...that obviously goes back to that one time when she was just a filly and she went with her mom to the laundromat that one Tuesday-"

"GAH!" The blue stallion roared, immediately making Carl clam up and recoil as he turned to him in rage. "I can't take it anymore! You're driving me nuts! You want to talk dreams?! Fine! Here's my most secret, darkest, most forbidden fantasy... And since this is just a dream I have no problem carrying it out!"

Snapping the gun barrel around to Carl, he squeezed the trigger.

The resulting gunshot echoed much louder and longer than it should have...or rather would have if this was real. It sounded almost like a cannon going off. In spite of the threat of the Tantabus, all the surrounding ponies in the area, including Dawn, snapped to the source of it...and gaped. As for Sam, his face was tight with rage and fury as he held the smoking gun out where he had fired a moment earlier. He seethed and panted a few times...

Then, slowly, his face relaxed. His anger faded as his eyes went wide. He looked down to the weapon in his hands, and as if it was a live snake he dropped it to the ground.

"Oh...oh Celestia... What have I done? I...I really did it..."

That section of dream Ponyville remained quiet. Sam continued to stand there and quiver. Finally, he swallowed. "It's...it's ok though, right? I mean...this is just a dream... When we wake up, everything will-"

"Sam-Listens-To-Carl's-Problems...what in the name of me did you just do?!"

The blue stallion turned and looked, and saw the sweating, straining Princess Luna, still trying to hold the dream together, glaring at him in horror.

"I...I..."

"Do you realize what you've done?!" Luna shouted. "Don't you know what happens to a pony who gets killed in their dreams?!"

At once, Sam's blue color turned a shade paler as his jaw dropped.

"No...it...you... You don't mean... Carl is..."

TO BE CONTINUED

Phew...and that marked the start of our little "mini arc"...where I thought I was going to be the only background pony. Remember that, Carl?

Uh...um...

...Ok. What you may find funny about this arc is that it was written to coincide with Rarity dominating a couple episodes in a row. Get it? It kind of turned into the 'Rarity Show' for a bit, so it became only "One Background Pony". You get it, right Carl?

Uh...er...yeah...

...Um, you...uh...really called it with Big Macintosh, didn't you?

Huh? Uh...uh...

...Carl? Is...something bothering you?

Nothing! I mean...nothing...