Pinkie Pie: Dream Fighter

Chapters

Dreamer
Nightmares
Dreams...
and Disasters.

Dreamer

Pinkie raised a hoof and whipped it at the glowing ball. Her hoof went through it and the yellow orb bounced up and down in amusement, seeming to laugh at her. She tightened her lips and furrowed her brow, then went in for another punch. The ball sped at her and her swing, with all her force behind it, passed through, doing absolutely nothing to it. It tinkled softly in the darkness and spun around her head, then turned an angry dark green. The room was awash in lime-colored wickedness as the smoke it was made of roiled and churned. Pinkie crouched and jumped, only for the green ball to speed right through her stomach and dive into Pumpkin Cake.

The poor foal started shifting back and forth in bed, and Pinkie picked her up, shaking her head with a heavy sigh. Soon after she started holding her, Pumpkin started crying. She yowled and screamed, and Pinkie kept cooing softly to her. She rocked her back and forth as Mr. and Mrs. Cake came rushing into the room. They always did, and Pinkie was always there waiting for them, holding the foal as she tried to rock her back to sleep.

“Goodness, Pinkie, I don’t know how you always know, but thank you,” said Mrs. Cake. She reached out and took Pumpkin Cake from her. Pound Cake joined in with his sister and Mr. Cake went to get him out of the crib. The two cried, but they were already getting quieter.

“It’s okay. I just have a sixth sense for these things. I just wish I could stop them from having bad dreams in the first place.”

“You think it’s just a bad dream?” Mr. Cake asked.

“Oh, yeah. They’re not messy or anything. Just bad dreams…” Pinkie said, wistfully.

“Well, you’re always here when they have them, so thank you, Pinkie.”

Pinkie’s mane drooped as she carried herself out of the room, up to her own bed. “You’re welcome,” she said. She walked upstairs, all the way to her room at the top of Sugarcube Corner and flopped into bed. She closed her eyes, willing sleep to come. It was instant.

The next night was the same again. A dream came through the chimney. Pinkie was waiting for it in the kitchen, prepared with a net. This one glowed a cool blue, but she wasn’t fooled. She could smell the nightmare nascent within it. I bubbled just under the surface like a pancake right before you flip. It floated gently around the room, searching for its victim, smelling like a burnt flapjack, sickly-sweet and crunchy with bitterness.

Pinkie followed it from the kitchen as it wandered around the dining area. She hid behind the counter, staring at it as it moved. It didn’t seem to sense her, more’s the pity. She would have liked to see the concern on its face(?) as it tried to determine what was stalking it. Instead, she wasted no time and leaped without a sound, net swinging down on the smoky orb.

The net passed through it, just like the rest. The dream immediately turned to look at her. Like all the others, it bounced in amusement once it was seen. It spun around Pinkie mockingly. She twirled and whipped the net at it again. It just sat there and let the thing pass through it. It didn’t care, and it knew it didn’t need to worry. She was just Pinkie. Just a pitiful pony that couldn’t touch it.

“I’m not gonna let you get to Pumpkin Cake, you salty cupcake!” Pinkie whispered angrily. The dream just bounced and spun. It didn’t matter to it what Pinkie said. It tinkled its tinny laughter in her face, then drove through her head.

Pinkie has brief visions of monstrous faces towering over her, cooing and making strange noises in her face. A glimpse of what Pumpkin Cake’s dreams were like? Poor little thing didn’t understand, yet.

Pinkie punched it with a hoof again. Whiff!

She tried to kick it. Whiff!

She brought her head down at it. Whiff, combined with more strange visions of monstrous faces. Nothing worked, and she couldn’t touch it.

The dream leisurely made its way upstairs with Pinkie Pie grunting and straining as she tried to beat it up. It floated past Mr. and Mrs. Cake’s room and on toward the nursery. It slipped inside the room despite Pinkie’s attempts to grapple it and descended toward the crib. Pinkie Pulled back, fuming as it made one last flourish before diving toward Pumpkin Cake’s head.

Then it burst into sparkling shards. Pinkie covered her face from the flash of light. The foals were still sleeping soundly. Pumpkin Cake wasn’t tossing and turning in her crib. There was no angry crying or terrified screeching. She was calm, sleeping soundly, and happy. Pinkie leaned on the edge of the crib and looked down at her. She even gurgled happily. Pinkie hadn’t seen a dream come inside, but if she had one, that was just a bonus.

Pinkie waited to see if another one would come in or if it would rebuild itself, but nothing was happening. She was happy with that and returned to her room upstairs. If Pumpkin Cake slept through the night, that was good enough. She just wondered why that happened. That was a puzzle for another night.

There were no nightmares for the next few nights, but after three more days Pinkie heard the telltale tinkling of another dream or nightmare entering the building. Her eyes flew open and she threw back the covers. She grabbed her net—this time dipped in sugar for sweetness—and crept out of her room. She followed the high-pitched noise through the halls and down the stairs to the restaurant. It wasn’t in the lobby, so she tip-hoofed into the kitchen, where she saw it floating over the sacks of flour.

This one was blue. It had tiny tendrils reaching out, grasping at things nearby. It couldn’t touch them, but it was just touching them, running its tentacles over them and changing color every time it absorbed the memory of such a thing.

It was going to scare Pumpkin Cake with thoughts of cooking! Pinkie thought. It was going to scare her with things like louse-ridden flour! Burnt sugar! Moldy cakes! Unrisen dough, and dead yeast! Unacceptable! With a whispered shout of defiance, Pinkie charged forward!

“Gaaaaaaah…” she whispered as she swung her sugary net. It passed through the dream and slapped into the sack of flour. A puff of white floated up from the impact, and the dream touched it, absorbing the idea of clouds of flour.

The dream just tinkled at her and spun in a circle. The net did nothing, but Pinkie wasn’t deterred. She bucked at it, but still there was no impact. She couldn’t touch them. She whipped hoof after hoof, even going so far as to hurl the net at it, but nothing changed. It was impervious to her touch, and floated gingerly up the stairs, moving slowly and mockingly to the nursery.

Pinkie growled low in her throat and bit it as it neared the nursery. Thoughts of all the things she’d worried about filled her head: Unrisen dough, rotten confections, and pest-ridden ingredients. The thought scared her and made her sad at the same time, but somehow, she had stopped the dream!

It was trapped in her teeth, and a dream was playing out: She was Pumpkin Cake and Mrs. Cake was standing over her. She said something unintelligible, then disappeared from view. A puff of white came soon after, and a ghostly mockery of Mr. Cake appeared. His eyes were too wide and his jaw jutted out. Fangs rose from his mouth climbing toward the ceiling above. The features grew more exaggerated as more unintelligible sounds filled the dream.

A cupcake covered in branches flew overhead. A cockroach the size of a pony jumped over her. Smoke filled the air and the noises got louder and louder. Finally she turned her head to see Pound Cake, who looked normal. She focused on him and slowly the noises died down to a dull roar in the distance. She kept focusing until everything had calmed down. Then Pinkie awoke.

“Pinkie Pie, are you all right?” Mrs. Cake asked. Pinkie was lying in the hallway just outside the twins’ room. She had been drooling in her sleep, and a puddle of saliva was making her cheek wet. Mr. Cake passed her a cloth and she wiped her mouth, looking around the room.

“Oh, I’m fine, I think. I was just making sure the twins slept well. No nightmares tonight!” she said proudly.

“Well, thank you, Pinkie. But you really shouldn’t sacrifice your own sleep to help the twins. You’re not their mother, after all.”

“No problem at all, Mrs. Cake! I’m their super-duper handy-helpful godmother, and I won’t let any dream make their sleep suffer!” Pinkie Pie saluted.

“Okay, but if I see your work suffering, I’ll tell you again.”

“Okey-dokey-lokey! I’m gonna go make some flapjacks, I had a dream about bad food, and I think I need to make something good to compensate!”

“We’ll be down in a bit, Pinkie.”

“Alrighty!”

Pinkie’s thoughts were about the dream all day. How she had stopped it? She couldn’t touch them, but if she could dream them, she wasted their energy and they didn’t get where they were going. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than letting a foal have a dream they didn’t understand.

But the images in her head weren’t the way they should be. Why would a foal dream about something so strange? They knew their parents, and Mr. Cake wasn’t a monster, though he did have a strange face. Pumpkin Cake shouldn’t be thinking of him like a monster. He was her father! Not to mention the strange dreams she could now see.

It had started only a few weeks ago. Pinkie could see the dreams ponies were going to be having as they floated about. The night sky was filled with them, and sometimes she saw one during the day. They came in all colors and all shapes, though spheres were the most common.

They flitted about, picking up things pertaining to the pony they were going to be dreamed by before zipping to their head and dropping on in. They’d then expend all their dreamy magic and make them have the dream, then; poof! They’d be gone. They didn’t leave any residue behind, so she couldn’t talk to Twilight about it, but maybe if she could contact Princess Luna she might learn something.

But, Pinkie was distractable, and every time she thought she should make the trip, she got sidetracked. Be it by the sight of a friend, the smell of a confection, or the sound of that curious tinkling given off by the dreams. She was continuously distracted, and only reminded when night came and the twins needed her help.

Such was her fate tonight when she caught wind of the tinkling sound inside the house again. Pinkie’s eyes flew open and she crept out of her room. It wasn’t downstairs; this one was in the hall.

It was a deep blue, speckled with lights. It pulsed, crowding the hallway one moment, then taking up a small space the next. It lacked the tentacles the one from before had, and wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything but floating.

As stealthy as could be, Pinkie snuck up on the orb and reached out to touch it. It didn’t draw back, but extended a reaching tentacle to her hoof, touching it.

Much to Pinkie’s surprise, nothing happened. She didn’t get any visions, there was no sense of a dreamscape or lucid terror. Merely a strange calm, like she was dreaming a placid dream.

Pinkie took her hoof away and the dream did otherwise. She wandered around it, staring at its sides, wondering if it was looking at her in the same way. It didn’t turn or appear to turn, it just floated. The tinkling softened as Pinkie wandered around it. The gentle creak of the floorboards under her hooves was the only other sound besides Mr. Cake snoring in the other room.

Pinkie’s curiosity finally got the better of her and she sidled up next to the thing. Her snout was just outside the murky bubble, trying to see inside. It was impermeable; thick and opaque.

“What are you, hmmm?” She turned her head sideways and glared at it with a wide eye, but the tinkling orb gave no answer. “Hmmm… I’ll just have to see, won’t I? I can’t have you waking up the twins!” She took a deep breath, then shoved her head into it.

Black was everywhere. The murky blue of the orb gave way to darkness so thick she couldn’t see her hoof when she waved it in front of her face. She heard nothing, not even the tinkling of the orb before she had pierced it. There were no voices, no breathing, no floorboards; nothing. It was as if she had been transported, but she knew she was still inside Sugarcube Corner. She took a careful step, but although she moved, she felt as if there was nothing beneath her hooves. She had to remind herself this was not a place, but a dream. A very strange dream.

The lack of presence or visions in the dream was confusing. All the others had been active, and the one she’d eaten had been something. This was nothing. “Hellooooo? Mr. Dreamy-dream? Are you here?” she called.

Nothing answered.

Pinkie looked around, feeling her head swing though nothing appeared to move in front of her eyes. She took another step, and another, feeling some sort of movement though she couldn’t see it. She picked up speed, eventually bounding through the darkness.

Black gave way to Ponyville. The town smeared across her eyes, making her blink and rub her face. She stopped bounding and swayed in place, uncomfortable with the sense of motion. When it stopped, she was standing in Ponyville, near the door to Sugarcube Corner, on a sunny day, with an empty town.

Pinkie called out again. “Hellooooo! Is anypony out there? I know it’s a dream! I just want you to stop bothering Pumpkin Cake!” No wind blew, and nothing moved, not even grass. Silence met her call.

A thunderstorm crashed and rain fell. A single blink was all it took for the weather to change. Pinkie was wet instantly, feeling like she was suffocating as water covered her coat and matted down her mane. She gasped, choked, and grasped at her throat.

Thunder shook the air and struck houses in the distance. The rain intensified and fires burned around the city. Carrot Top’s house crumbled silently and disappeared into a black hole in the ground and still Pinkie gasped. She breathed in, feeling air catch in her throat, never giving her enough to satisfy her struggle.

Pinkie calmed herself. This was a dream. There was no rain, there was no thunder, and there were no fires. This was magic, strange and curious, and its purpose was to make her fear it. It was a dream. A nightmare. A charade. Pinkie liked charades.

Pinkie mimed out a stiff wind and swung her hooves to the side. She blew hard with what air she had left, then made a rainbow that swung wide and cheerful across the city. Much to her delight, the clouds were blown away and a rainbow appeared, arcing overhead.

“It’s a dream! I’ve had these before! I can eat however much I want, and I’ll never get fat! Like that time I ate the gingerbread pony out of house, home, and the entire city, but I couldn’t eat him. He was too fast.” Pinkie Pie looked around. The crumbled houses remained, but there were no more fires. The images she saw stuck in her mind, and she remembered them until they changed. It was weird.

Pinkie’s dream town stilled. The rainbow no longer sparkled, the wind halted, the grasses and trees that had wafted in the breeze paused in their gay dance mid-sway, and a gurgling rose from behind.

Water trickled under Pinkie’s hooves, seeping out of the soil. Cobbles clacked together as their foundations were ruined by rising water. It was dirty, dark liquid, carrying mud and filth that lay in the streets, hidden between the cracks until broken free by the rising tide. It was covering her hooves in an instant, then up to her ankles in another. She blinked and suddenly it was at her barrel. Another blink and it was overhead. Pinkie gasped.

It was only a moment, but she inhaled and calmed herself. This was a dream, she reminded herself. A dream forced upon her by some magical force that meant no good. She didn’t have to breathe, she had proven that. She could inhale this fake water and she would be fine. She giggled quietly, like Granny Pie always told her. Dreams were just the ghosties of your brain, come to haunt you in your sleep. They couldn’t hurt you.

Water filled her lungs and she still breathed, but now the houses in Ponyville were floating. They rose up off their foundations and bobbed in the dark, filthy lake, turning end over end. Twilight’s Crystal Castle floated, a dim beacon of partial light in the distance. Sugarcube Corner swung back and forth next to her, a confection house that leaked flour, sugar, and salts from the doors. From the other houses, dark shapes she took to be pony bodies rose from open windows and ruined doors. Some floated up, some sank, but some were stolen. They disappeared into the darkness, either by hoof or by dream logic.

Something swam around her. She could feel the motion in the water—a faint tickle against her fur. She searched, squinting into the darkness, but the murky black obscured her vision. She heard the rush of water and something brushed her fur! She kicked, swimming away, going up—or what she thought was up—to escape or put some distance between herself and this mystery assailant!

She saw it briefly as it swept around behind one of the houses. Another building spun away from some unseen impact, stone and straw flying outward in a starburst of material. The shape moved from building to building, Pinkie’s eyes barely keeping up with it. She turned as it went behind Carrot Top’s house, then it moved to Bon Bon and Lyra’s home, then it crept into Derpy’s. There was silence and stillness for just a moment more, then Derpy’s house exploded, shattering into pieces as the thing—a giant shark—rushed at her, mouth wide open!

Pinkie scrambled her hooves in the water. “It’s just a dream! Just a dream! It can’t get me, it can’t get me! It can’t—ahhhh!”

Nightmares

Pinkie’s eyes flew open and the shark disappeared, but her scream continued. “Ahhhh!”

“Pinkie! Calm down, it’s okay!” Mr. Cake’s face appeared in front of her. Pinkie stared, still screaming, until Mrs. Cake appeared as well. Their opposing faces, pudgy and skinny, made her chuckle as she compared their concerned, gormless mouths to the shark’s dangerous jaws.

“Sorry. Did I fall asleep in the hallway again?” she said sheepishly.

“You did, Pinkie. I know you’re concerned about the twins, but Pumpkin Cake has been fine the past couple of days. I think it’s because of you, if you want to take credit, but you can’t care for them if you’re not caring for yourself,” Mrs. Cake said. She held out a hoof to help Pinkie up, and she took it.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t know what’s come over me. I think I’ve been having strange dreams lately.” Pinkie giggled at her hilarious joke.

“Well, Pinkie, just don’t scream too hard near the Twin’s room. If you’re going to protect them, at least bring a blanket next time, okay?” Mr. Cake asked.

“Will do, Mr. Cake!” Pinkie saluted and bounded off.

Today, Pinkie decided she was finally going to go visit Twilight. She needed to take care of this problem before it got too bad. Something was happening, and it was magic.

“Or… I just think it’s magic. Maybe I’m just having really vivid dreams, and I’m seeing these things in my dream, and they’re not real, but I’m sleepwalking, and the sleepwalking drops me in front of the nursery. That’s possible, right?” Pinkie asked.

Cranky Doodle glared at her over his pancakes. Matilda chuckled, but Cranky wasn’t amused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re interrupting my breakfast, Pinkie. Please go home.”

“It’s just, I wonder what these sparkly things are and why do they make me dream when I touch them, huh?”

Matilda put down a few pancakes in front of Pinkie. She drowned them in syrup and shoved them in her mouth, chewing loudly. “If you really want to know what’s going on, you need to see Luna. Didn’t you say you were going to? She is the princess of dreams you know.”

“Oh, yeah! That’s where I was going before I bumped into you two, and you were making pancakes, and they just smelled so good that I had to stop and get some! Do you think it’s too early to see the princess of the night?”

“Pinkie, I’m sure if you take your time getting to the castle she’ll be wide awake,” Matilda said.

“You think so?”

“Yes! Please, go!” Cranky shouted. Pinkie was unbothered by the volume of his voice and just blinked.

“Okay! After one more round of flapjacks!” Pinkie exclaimed. Matilda laughed, Cranky groaned.

Without a gurgling stomach anymore, Pinkie trekked across town to the Friendship Express. She gazed at all the houses that filled the streets, subconsciously naming all the ponies that lived in each one. She knew them to a horse, able to label each building with the names of everypony that lived in them. She knew where they all worked, what they enjoyed, their favorite food and pastime, and she knew so many of their secrets. There wasn’t a pony in Ponyville that escaped her eye, and she was a friend to all of them, even if that meant she only got to eat breakfast with them once in a blue moon like Cranky. She respected those boundaries.

But sometimes, friends needed to know when to ignore such boundaries. One such occasion might have been right now, because as she trekked up to the Friendship Station, she saw a glowing dream orb floating above a house. It was pink, like herself, and it was circling the roof, round and round and round.

She tried to convince herself it was nothing, but the orb’s spinning was interrupted by those grasping tendrils from before. It was touching the roof and the eaves, floating around the circumference of the house’s top. To her eyes, that looked like it was going to be a nightmare about falling off the edge. Maybe it wasn’t a nightmare, but Pinkie wasn’t going to take that chance! A friend in need of a good morning’s rest deserves that rest!

Houses flew by with empty windows as ponies were out and about already doing their shopping and schooling and work. Pinkie arrived at the offending building and peered first inside the windows. She jumped to the second story and peeked inside until she found the one that housed the pony that was trying to have a good nap. She looked up at the dream, its tendrils flickering as it prepared itself for the terrific nightmare her friend was going to have. But it wasn’t going to do that if Pinkie Pie had anything to say about it!

The roof wasn’t sturdy. The straw made it a bit slippery, but Pinkie was used to this kind of hoofing. She found it easier sometimes to jump across the roof than to take the streets, especially if she was following a Pegasus pony like Rainbow Dash. She climbed onto a house a few buildings down and bounded up and over each one, across the wood until her target was hovering over the next one. She waited, timing her strike until the ball was in reach, then jumped!

The tinkling thing passed through her hooves as she leaped, but she bit it as she came down. Like last time, it lodged in her jaw, and visions filled her head.

She was falling.

Flight or a fall was expected from a dream hovering around a house. Pinkie found herself dropping through the air from Cloudsdale. She looked up to see the foundation of the cloud city above her, colorful rainbows hidden behind fluffy whiteness. She, herself, was dropping through the mist and air toward Ponyville, the tiny houses below spearing upward to greet her as she fell. They were taller and pointier than in real life, all bending slightly toward her.

But she never got closer.

The falling continued as the air whipped past her head. Sometimes clouds would come within reach, only to be pulled away last second by some invisible force. She couldn’t get a purchase and her wings weren’t working.

Her wings?

Sprouting from Pinkie’s back were two giant pinkie wings, huge and feathered, they dwarfed her in size, but they were also the cause of her flightlessness. They were too big, too bulky, and unattractive. Nopony liked them. She knew this implicitly.

But that wasn’t right. “I’m a perfectly normal-looking pony, and so is the intended recipient of this nightmare! Ponyville isn’t dangerous, and I’m a great flier!” Pinkie said to herself confidently. Her wings shrank a little bit. “I can fly and have done so, and even though I may not be the best, I’m still a great flier, and I can accomplish big and important things when I put my mind to them!” Her wings shrank and the feathers organized themselves better. “I am fun to be around, and ponies don’t mock me or my wings!” They shrank until they were normal-sized, and Pinkie found herself able to fly.

Her breath was blasted out of her and her eyes opened. Pinkie’s mouth lost hold of the dream, which was now much smaller and lacked the grasping tendrils. It flew up and away, diving through the walls of the house. Pinkie gasped on the ground, reaching for it, trying to stop it. But one of her hooves didn’t work right. She gasped for air and turned idly to her non-working hoof. It was bent at a strange angle.

Ponies were gathering around her, looking at her. Rarity was among them. “Pinkie Pie! Were you sleeping on that roof? Hold still, I’ll get the doctor! You’ll be fine!”

Pinkie’s trip to the doctor went fine, but it meant she still wasn’t anywhere near princess Luna. When the bone was set she sat back in the hospital bed waiting to be discharged. Sometimes she wondered why anything healing-related took so long when surely there was a magic spell for it or something. It felt like there really ought to be a cutie mark for a unicorn that could just heal ponies straight-up. Why couldn’t Doctor Horse do it, after all? His name was Doctor Horse! Surely that counted for something!

The hospital was even boring on top of that. Their books were all books she had read before, the food was bad, there was no entertainment, so Pinkie had to entertain herself. She pretended there was a little pony climbing all over the walls, dodging among the pictures, paintings, and décor, hiding from the evil, wicked-bad boredomonster!

She was making the fighting noises with her mouth, much to the chagrin of the other pony in her room, who tried to block it out with pillows, when she heard the familiar tinkling sound of a dream!

The bed creaked ominously as Pinkie’s weight rolled out of it. She landed gingerly on her hooves, holding her broken one out straight to the side. She dragged it along with her as she stumbled out of her room and into the hall. The late afternoon was busy, with ponies in scrubs running to and fro. Injured ponies filled the halls, all keeping out of the way of the nurses rushing back and forth.

The source of the tinkling was out here, weaving back and forth in the air around the rushing nurses. Its tendrils swept out, brushing passing ponies as they hurried about their business, changing color slowly from a golden glow to a deep orange.

Pinkie hobbled out and stood underneath it in the middle of the hallway. She stared up, watching the thing as it bobbed. She couldn’t jump up and grab it with a bum leg like this. Her pronking was crippled as surely as if she’d had no legs at all. She bounced a bit, but it wasn’t any good, and she got the stinkeye from a passing nurse.

“Miss Pie, please don’t do anything that would aggravate your injury!” a red nurse said.

“I won’t, I’m just trying to catch a dream right here,” Pinkie said.

“Hmph! Dreams are best kept somewhere safe, Miss Pie. Please don’t block the path for anypony.”

“I won’t!” Pinkie smiled. The nurse moved on. She turned her attention back to the floating dream above her head. It had become a deep crimson, glowing with a sinister light. It’s tinkling had gone deeper as well, becoming a horrific crashing sound. It was still quiet, but now it sounded like somepony was banging rocks together. Pinkie was amazed nopony else could hear it.

When the color of blood had been achieved, the thing slowly fluttered away. It’s crashing sound got slightly louder as it floated, like it was taking horrifying, large steps. Its form bulged, but it stopped reaching out. It had hit the mass of formless energy it wanted and was now content to hunt for its prey, an ominous orange floating through the halls.

Pinkie giggled at the idea of an ominous orange. She hobbled along behind it, intent on finding out its prey and protect them from whatever this thing was. She didn’t have much to work with, especially since her last attempt at protecting somepony had ended with her breaking a leg, but she couldn’t let something this dangerous get to whomever it was that was trying to sleep and recover.

The terrible blood orange crashed its way into the foal’s ward, where the newborns and the young foals were kept isolated from any of those older ponies that needed medical help. It was wandering toward a room off to the side, where Pinkie was sure a young foal was just trying to sleep off his or her illness. While Pinkie was here, she wasn’t going to let any such thing happen, however!

Its trajectory looked to be bringing it past a table covered in papers and bottle nearby. Pinkie hobbled ahead of it and clambered up onto it. Bottles shifted and clattered to the floor. A few pieces of paper slipped a bit, causing her to wobble precariously. Nopony had seen her yet, so she readied herself as the blood orange crashed on up next to her, and she jumped out to nab it in her teeth!

It was too big!

She bit off a chunk of it, but half of the thing kept floating, leaking red, crashing bits about as it careened on down the hall. It slipped into the foal’s room at the same time Pinkie hit the floor. Her cast clattered, and her vision changed.

She was in a long, dark hallway. No sound except the buzz of the lights above. Doors lined each side of the hall, some partially open, most closed. A clock ticked down the time next to her head. She was at a desk.

On the desk there sat a big book. Pinkie opened it. Names filled the pages, with a single one highlighted.

“Pinkie Pie,” she read out loud. “That’s me… How curious. My cast was already…”

Her cast was gone. She was fine, but then she remembered this was a dream, of course she was fine.

The page squirmed and the names rolled off the paper. A series of inky letters slithered off the paper and dropped to the floor. In a line they marched slowly down the hall, chanting in tiny voices a cadence as they paraded away from her. They even did it in alphabetical order, with A leading the charge followed by B, C, all the way down to Z.

“Hah! That’s so cute! What are you all doing? Where are we going?” Pinkie asked. The letters didn’t answer, of course. They marched along the hall, stepping in time with their tiny boots down the empty passage.

Lights flickered overhead, blinking away the darkness. Pinkie didn’t mind the low light, and the empty, half-open doorways led into black in which Pinkie imagined a hidden surprise, like a crowd waiting for a party to begin if only the guest of honor would step inside the door. Maybe there would be a cake, maybe there would be a pie instead, or even no food at all and just a crowd with music ready to go! She marched, tip-hoofing along beside the little letters, unconcerned about what might be hiding in the nooks and crannies of this empty hospital.

A room shimmered and light spilled from on open door into the hall. The tiny letters, dancing and stamping along the linoleum avoided the ray of light, diverting their path to travel around it instead of through. Their steps did not halt and their chanting did not end as the A’s led the B’s and the rest in a steady curve up and over the beam. Pinkie’s tip-hoofing followed them, going around the light. She glanced up only a second to see why they might be avoiding it, and felt the first hint of a shiver.

Inside the room loomed a face that filled the crack in the door. Grinning teeth sat at the bottom, topped by a warty, warped snout and a single mad eye. The eye glared out the light that the letters were avoiding, a red orb beaming white light into the hall. Pinkie let out a quiet “meep” when she saw it, and the light burned upward, hunting the source of the noise.

Tiny lettermen melted from the light, dying with tiny cries and lamenting wails from their comrades. The Ees were almost entirely wiped out and the Dees and Effs were scattered. The remaining platoon gathered together to prepare to fight back, circling the entrance to the room nearby. With a valiant cry and a shout of defiance, the lettermen gathered together in groups to turn on the doorway, defying the giant pony face within. More letters perished.

Pinkie could only watch in horror and sadness as the lettermen attacked the doorway in a futile attempt to defeat the creature within. They died in droves. Ink spilled across the floor. When it ended, not a single letter still stood. A final P dragged itself toward the crack in the doorway. In one last, valiant gesture, the P threw a period at the face which bounced off the creature’s chin. It turned its gaze downward and the beam of light erased the P from existence. It cast its deadly gaze across the hallway one final time before turning to look toward Pinkie.

She hopped out of its line of sight. She hadn’t been able to help and wouldn’t have known what she could have done even had she tried. Their deaths were vain and pointless, seemingly futile. Why had they even done that? Tears came unbidden to her eyes. She cried, and she didn’t know why.

They were made of letters, animated by some strange dream magic for some unknown purpose. This was a dream, Pinkie reminded herself. It was all a strange, feverish, hospital dream she had ended up in while trying to help some lost foal scared and alone in his or her hospital bed. Terrors preyed on such ponies because of their youth and irresponsible weaknesses. She could help, but she was stuck here, now. She had to wake up.

A stab of pain from a pinch wasn’t enough. She gnawed on her hoof, but that wasn’t enough pain, either. She may not be able to move in real life. She could just be dreaming she was moving without actually moving, because she didn’t know whether she was sleepwalking or not. Sleepwalking (or maybe just falling asleep on the roof) was what hurt her the last time. What would help wake her up now?

Pinkie decided waiting for somepony to find her asleep on the floor was a good idea. She sat with her back against the wall and waited, imagining better things that this. Better things than faces in doors and dying lettermen. She thought about parties.

A balloon floated by.

When it caught her eye, she watched it float down the hall from the far end in its infinite distance away. It appeared as a mere speck and slowly grew as a bright-red blotch on the stark and sterile dream-vision of the hospital. It came closer, floating toward her on whispered noises and mumbled words until it reached the spotlight cast from the giant face. The light swished quickly to the balloon, but it stood up to it. Its floating was halted, but the balloon, despite being made of thin rubber, sizzled and withstood the heated assault.

The side of the balloon receiving the brunt of the gaze began to bulge from the onslaught of terrible staring fire. It warped, the color grew lighter and grew larger until it couldn’t handle it anymore, then it burst!

An ocean of blood poured from the wound of the balloon when it ruptured, washing away the ink stains from the lettermen and pouring into the cracked doorway. The thing inside yowled as the blood struck it and the hospital shook.

Pinkie decided she didn’t want to be near the blood or the thing in the doorway. The balloon hadn’t dropped to the ground, it just floated, spilling forth more blood onto the crimson tiles. Pinkie ran.

Doors flew past as she barreled down the hall, some open, some not, some filled with white, some with black, and some with sound… staticky sounds that bit into her ears. They were unsettling and curious, but despite the gnawing need to know, Pinkie kept running until the blood and the light were well behind her. When she could only see the faintest speck of red she finally stopped.

The hallway went on forever, like it had appeared to. Despite running for so long, not a single corner or curve had yet appeared. It was endless. But… it was a dream. Pinkie stopped a moment to remind herself of that. She closed her eyes and breathed carefully. She was dreaming. Nothing in the dream could hurt her. Nothing outside the dream could hurt her, either. She was in a hospital with ponies that would find her lying in the middle of the hall and take her to bed or wake her. She was fine.

Pinkie opened her eyes and saw every door within distance open wide, the black spaces inside each filled with eyes. As one they all slammed shut. Pinkie winced.

“I don’t know what this is, but it makes me uncomfortable. I would really like to wake up now.” Pinkie laughed, giggling at the ghostly, it made her feel better.

A gentle breeze blew down the hallway, tickling her fur. It made her mane whip gently in its wind, pushing her cowlick curl around her face. It felt nice.

The wind picked up, getting stronger. There was no slight acceleration, but only a terrible force that grew stronger with each passing moment. One second it was strong, the next it was hard, and in another second Pinkie was leaning into it. Her breath caught in her throat and she had to turn sideways to breath.

She squinted into the wind and shuffled to the side to try one of the doors, but it was locked. She tried to scoot backward, but the moment she took a step she slipped and fell. The wind increased in power and she slid down the hallway, pushed along by the terrible wind toward the red miasma leaking from the balloon.

“Noooooo!” she screamed.

She felt the sensation of movement. Her scream trailed off as she slowly opened her eyes to see herself being carried by two orderlies who were dragging her down the hall. She blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Sorry.” The orderlies just grunted.

Dreams...

Back in her room again, Pinkie was left to be bored, thinking about all the thinks she had seen and done that day. She had caught a dream, ripped it in half, and been prey to its weird design. Did it being broken affect the type of dream it was? It was certainly a nightmare, but it was a weird nightmare. Weirder than usual. Was that her fault?

She tried to think about how she had first discovered this ability, back to when she had grabbed it in her teeth. The sight of the dreams had come first, and she had watched them make the twins cry in the night, but after that, when she had first bit one…

No thought made sense as to why.

She really needed to talk to Princess Luna. Pinkie sat back, and waited.

Her hoof healed in time. During her stay in the hospital she avoided the dreams. She let them come, she let them make life miserable, and she sat in silence, waiting until she could leave. When it was good enough and she got the okay from the doctors, she immediately hobbled on out of the hospital and went straight to Twilight’s castle!

She pounded on the door with her cast. “Twilight! I need you to send a letter for me!”

Spike answered the door, puffing from the exertion of running all the way across the castle. “What… is it, Pinkie? It sounds urgent.”

“It’s super dee duper urgent! I need to talk to Luna about dreams!”

“Princess Luna? What’s going on?”

“Okay, well,” Pinkie launched into a long-winded explanation of everything that had happened up to the current moment, including the time several weeks ago when she first noticed she could see the dreams, but she included an explanation of the recipe she was baking at the time. When she started talking about the twins, she went off on a tangent about the way the twins played with their toys, how Pound Cake wound use his wings to mess with things while Pumpkin Cake would use her horn to keep it out of reach. By the time she was only a quarter way into the story, Twilight found them, Spike laying defeated on the floor while Pinkie spoke.

“Twiliiiiight, help! I don’t know what she’s talking about, but it’s something about dreams! She’s been poking dreams and playing with them, and I don’t even understand. Please make her stoooop,” he pleaded. Twilight looked up at Pinkie, who kept babbling on about all of her experiences, what she thought about them, and her interpretations of the different pieces of dreams she had been in.

Twilight held up a hoof. “Pinkie! Please! Stop!” Pinkie stopped mid-sentence, quivering. “Now, please, what’s this about dreams?”

Pinkie held up a hoof and smiled wide, then started her whole monologue all over again. Twilight waved both hooves frantically. “No, no! The short version!”

“Short version? Oh! Why didn’t you say so?” Pinkie coughed into her hoof. “I can see dreams and eat them and I don’t know why.”

“See dreams…? Eat them? What?”

“I know! It’s super confusing and I need some help, so I want you to send a letter to princess Luna!”

“That’s… that’s a good idea. Okay.” Twilight pulled a small bit of parchment out of somewhere. Nobody seemed surprised that she would just be carrying parchment and a quill, and she swiftly drafted a letter. She held it out to Spike who breathed on it, and the letter was on its way.

“Phew. Thanks, Twilight. It’s been crazy. It’s what broke my hoof, you know.”

“I heard about that. You fell off a roof. You never fall off roofs.”

“I know! But there was a dream floating about up there, and it looked like it was turning into a nightmare, so I couldn’t let the poor pony inside have a bad dream, so I jumped up, climbed up, and ate it right up!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together. She winced from the pain.

“You ate it, then you fell asleep-”

“And dreamed it!”

“And dreamed it. It was just a normal dream?”

“I mean, yeah! With weird things going on and crazy, surreal landscapes and stuff all over! You know.”

Twilight shook her head. She ushered Pinkie inside and sat her at the cutie map. Tiny versions of clouds floated about in the facsimile of Equestria. The ones near Las Pegasus were raining. Pinkie stuck her hoof underneath and giggled. “This thing never ceases to make me laugh, Twilight!”

“Pinkie, focus! This is serious!” Pinkie sat up straight and scowled as hard as she could. “You’re exhibiting behaviors unknown to Equestria. Nopony except the princess of the moon has ever shown an aptitude for dreams, much less an earth pony! Something strange is happening to you, and we need to figure out if it’s dangerous!”

“Pffft! I’m not dangerous! I’m Pinkie!”

“I could argue that makes you the most dangerous,” Spike mumbled. Pinkie laughed. Twilight slapped him on the back of the head.

“In any case, Pinkie, you said you were stopping the dreams from reaching the Cake twins?”

Pinkie nodded. A tiny version of Cloudsdale floated idly by her face, her eyes followed it while she spoke. “Yeah, they were waking up every night crying from nightmares. Specifically Pumpkin Cake. So when I first saw one of the dreams, I though I could do something about it! I mean, if I didn’t help them sleep well, what kind of godparent would I be?”

“That’s very commendable Pinkie. How did you stop the first ones? You just ate them?”

“Oh, pfft, no! I couldn’t even touch the first few. My hooves go right through them! It’s only my head that I can hit them with. I bit one in half a few days ago!”

Twilight scribbled all her notes down on a sheet of parchment. Her inkwell rattled as she filled up the quill, and she mumbled the words to herself while she worked. “...bit one… in half. Huh. So what are these dreams about?”

“They’re just dreams, Twilight! Each one is different. The ones I saw trying to get the Cake twins were usually about sweets, and ponies that frequent the place. They dream about their parents a lot, with funny melting faces and too many teeth and jutting jaws and overwhelming sugars. You know, normal dreams.” Twilight and Spike looked at each other, a little frightened.

“Uh huh… normal dreams. What about the one you bit in half?”

“Oh, that one was weird! I was in the hospital, but there were tiny little men made of inky letters, and they were marching down a neverending hall. Then a giant face popped a balloon, and I got blown away!”

Twilight’s quill scribbled frantically. “This is so strange. Every one of these dreams was lucid? You remember them clearly?”

“You don’t remember your dreams, Twilight?”

“Not all of them, and not this clearly. Usually some details are spotty and foggy, like I don’t know what was going on. It sounds like you’re completely lucid for these.”

“Well, I am eating them, you know.”

“I wonder if that has something to do with it. I’ll need to ask Princess Luna when she arrives.” Twilight looked up at Spike. “Nothing yet?”

“Nothing-” Spike was interrupted by a belch. He coughed up a letter which Twilight caught and unrolled. It was in the Moon princess’s horn writing.

“Twilight, dreams appearing for earth pony? On my way! -Princess Luna.

“Finally! She’s on her way! She should be here very soon if she teleports. If not, it’ll take a few.”

Thankfully, Luna thought the situation was as concerning as Twilight did as she appeared in the middle of the room in a sparkling flash. She looked around the room frantically, immediately rushing over to Twilight. “Twilight, I got here as soon as I could! Explain in detail everything that has happened!”

As Twilight explained what she knew, Pinkie interjected with seemingly irrelevant details that nonetheless, Luna listened to with rapt attention. Details like the shape of the lettermen, their color, the face in the doorway and whether it was a pony or something unrecognizable, and the facial features of Mr. and Mrs. Cake when they changed shape. Despite Twilight’s insistence that it was pointless, Luna appreciated every detail and thanked Pinkie for them.

“That’s all we know, princess. Pinkie waited this long to tell you because she didn’t understand it at first, but now that she’s eating and tearing apart dreams, we need your guidance. What is happening?”

“This is unusual to say the least, you are correct about that. Pinkie should not be seeing these dreams and should certainly not be able to interact with them.” She put a hoof on the cutie map in thought before whirling on Pinkie Pie. Her head was held high and her mouth set tight. “Pinkie Pie, do you remember anything strange happening to you before you started seeing dreams? Did you have a weird dream?”

Pinkie looked up from the table at suddenly being addressed. She started, then tilted her head as she tried to remember. “It was a lot of weeks ago. I don’t remember. I heard a tinkling sound, thought Pound Cake was out breaking some of the glassware so I crept out and found my first dream. That’s all I remember!”

“This is strange and dangerous. I do not know who is responsible, but I suspect foul magicks at play here. Somepony is doing this to her,” Luna said. She took Pinkie’s head in her magic and twisted it back and forth.

“Have you seen any ponies in the dreams that you capture, Miss Pie? Anypony memorable?” Luna’s magic encompassed her head, and Pinkie giggled.

“That tickles!”

“Focus, Miss Pie, if you please.” Luna looked her in the eyes and she swallowed.

“Okay, okay.” Pinkie’s face scrunched up as she thought back to the past several weeks. All the dreams and nightmares she poked, prodded, and accidentally ate, but she couldn’t think of anything that stood out. She shook her head. “Nope! Nothing! Nopony repeatedly shows up in the dreams I’ve eaten!”

“What about your own dreams, Miss Pie?” Luna asked. She lifted Pinkie’s chin again, looking deep into her eyes. “Do you remember your own dreams?”

“I—” Pinkie opened her mouth to reply and slammed it shut again. Thinking back, she couldn’t remember the last time she had a dream in the past few weeks. She couldn’t think of her own dream before the time she’d eaten one of the ones she’d seen. “I can’t remember…”

Luna released Pinkie’s chin and turned away. “It’s as I thought. Somepony has done this.”

“Done what?” Twilight asked. She had her quill and parchment out and was scribbling notes down.

“I believe it is a dream-eater that has taken hold of Miss Pie.”

“A dream-eater? Those don’t exist.”

“They are not physical creatures but made entirely of magic. Somepony has cast a spell to create one, and it is inside Miss Pie. I do not know why.”

Pinkie poked at her stomach, then her mouth. “Is it something I ate?”

“This is not something you ate, Miss Pie, but something this creation is going to eat.” Luna turned back and looked over the three assembled creatures. She loomed over them, head held high and regal. Her twinkling mane swirled darkly, starlight sparkling within. “The Dream-Eater will consume your dreams first, which is what it was doing. Every dream you had at night was consumed by this creature, which is why you remember nothing, more than usual. No dreams of cakes or sweets or cinnamon rolls… nothing but darkness. I could not help because I do not see the dream.”

“But… my sugar-coated candyland...” Pinkie whined. “I’d only eaten a quarter of it.”

“And now the Dream-Eater has consumed the rest. When it got bigger, its influence spread, allowing you to consume the dreams of others, which it also devours. You experience them yourself, but the Dream-Eater gains nourishment from your actions. Your benevolent habits to protect the twins have made this all the worse for you, Miss Pie.”

“Oh nooooo… I didn’t mean it! How do I get rid of it?” Pinkie bonked herself on the head with her hooves. She tilted her head sideways and bopped the upper side as though trying to shake it out her ear. “Come out of there!”

“We will need to go inside you to remove it, Miss Pie.” When Pinkie opened her mouth, she sighed. “No, Miss Pie. This creation is magical. We need to go inside your mind; specifically, your dreams.”

“You need to go in my dreams? Isn’t that dangerous? …oh.” Pinkie slumped as she realized what all that meant and connected the dots. “Because it’s gonna try to eat my dreams.”

“Yes. Come, there are rooms in the castle. We must prepare, and we will need everypony’s help. Spike, please prepare tea.” Luna ordered. With a small salute, Spike ran off while the others walked.

A soft bed, a hot cup of tea made to help sleep come, and a cozy comforter should have made sleeping easy. Pinkie tossed and turned on the mattress, trying her best to reach her dreams, but nothing came. She felt it arrive but trying to sleep just made her excited when sleep was approaching, and she found herself waking back up. She was just about to give up and go find Princess Luna and ask for a sleeping spell when Twilight was shaking her awake.

“Pinkie, wake up!” Twilight called out. Her hoof shook her back and forth, rousing her from sleep.

“Wh-wh-wh-whaaa?” Pinkie exclaimed as she bolted upright. She was surrounded on both sides of the bed by Twilight and Princess Luna, with Spike peering over the end of the bed. “What happened? I don’t remember any dreams, did you fix it?’

“Unfortunately no,” Princess Luna said. “I cannot catch the dream before it is devoured. The thing is too powerful. To accomplish our goal you will need to devour the dream yourself, keeping it from the dream-eater so that we can enter it and meet it there.”

“Devour…? Oh. Okay… sorry I can’t dream properly.” Pinkie looked defeated.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Miss Pie. This is not your doing but the dream-eater’s. But you do need to come with us, we must find a dream out in the town and collect it there. You will have to catch it and eat it, as you have done for the twins.”

“Okay, but I don’t wanna eat somepony’s pretty candyland dream, I only wanna eat a nightmare so that somepony can have a good night, that’s the one thing we gotta do!” Pinkie said, holding up a hoof.

“Acceptable agreement, Miss Pie,” Luna said. “Now come, we must hunt.”

Luna strode regally out the door followed by a bounding Pinkie and Twilight, carrying her quill and parchment. Spike lagged behind, shutting the castle door behind them as they made their way into Ponyville.

and Disasters.

The townsfolk were going about their business with many hours still left in the afternoon. Bonbon and Lyra trotted past, chatting amiably. Smells from Sugarcube Corner wafted out, as well as some baked goods from Applejack’s apple cart. She waved, and they waved back.

“Applejack!” Pinkie cried, zipping up to the cart. “I completely forgot today was the day! Did you bring me that pie I wanted?”

“Granny’s home-baked apple with extra cinnamon? Sure did!” Applejack pulled a pie out from under the cart, still warm, and passed it to Pinkie. Bits flew through the air as Pinkie nabbed it and scoffed it in one easy go, turning back to her companions.

“What?” she said, face covered in pie.

“Focus, Miss Pie, we must focus before it is too late.”

“What’s goin’ on, y’all?” Applejack asked, trotting up next to them.

“We need to capture a dream for Pinkie. She’s been possessed by a dream-eater,” Twilight explained. “It… eats dreams, obviously, and it’s getting stronger. We need to get it out of her before…” Twilight stopped, then looked at Luna. “What happens if we don’t get it out of her?”

“The dream-eater will reproduce, sending a copy of itself to ponies nearby through dreams. There will be no dreams for any pony so possessed, and where there are no dreams, there can be no happiness, because nopony will strive for anything. Equestria will become a land of faded hopes and dead-eyed creatures that want for nothing but want nothing.”

Spike gulped loudly. “That’s bad.”

Luna nodded slowly. She picked up an apple from the cart in her magic and sliced it with her magic. She slowly plucked out one slice after another. “If all you want is survival, are you really a pony? Without goals in life, without plans and desires and dreams, there is nothing but the creature. The animal.” The core was all that was left and she lowered it down to eye-level for the others. “This is an apple, but do you want to call it that?”

“That’s an apple core, Princess,” Applejack said.

“It is what remains of the apple when everything delicious, tasty, and fun is gone. You cannot make pies with it, you cannot make applesauce, you cannot make candied slices or fritters with this, but it is still an apple. Is that what you want?”

Pinkie looked like she was about to cry. “No fritters or pies or candied apples? That’s horrible!”

“Hence why we must destroy this creation.”

“Well, shoot, if all you need’s a dream, I can do that!” Applejack said. “I’m a pro at grabbing naps whenever and wherever I can! Work does that to a gal.” She winked at Twilight.

“Then if you could please, Miss Applejack,” Luna said. “We need a dream to come for you so Pinkie may capture it, then we can meet this creature on the only plane where we might combat it.”

Applejack flipped her cart sign to closed and plopped down next to the wheel. She doffed her hat and laid it over her eyes. “Easier than catching a snake and tyin’ it into a pretzel!”

Spike made a confused noise. “Is… is that easy?”

Twilight shushed him. “Hush, Spike, let Applejack sleep. We need a dream, and she can’t sleep while you’re talking.”

But Applejack could, and she did. In the middle of the busy marketplace with ponies bustling to and fro, she passed into slumber and began to give out a cute little snore. Twilight stared at her, impressed, Pinkie whistled. Luna just smiled.

“I sometimes watch her daydreams while I sleep myself. She dreams mostly about apples and family, if you were curious,” Luna said, putting a hoof to smiling lips.

“I could have guessed, I suppose,” Twilight said. “How long until a dream—”

“There’s one here!” Pinkie said. Her body shuddered and her ears twitched, twisting back and forth at the tinkling sound that would herald the arrival of the dream. Everypony looked around, but only Pinkie and Luna’s eyes latched onto the dream as it floated toward them. “It’s a dream still, not a nightmare,” Pinkie said. She looked at Luna. “Do I have to eat it? She’d enjoy it…”

“Yes, Miss Pie, you must. This is our only chance of defeating the dream-eater inside you. Now come, catch it when it comes down, with your mouth, mind you.”

“I know…” Pinkie said sadly “I bet it’s about apples. Applejack loves apples.”

“She very much does, but this is to help you. She’s sleeping to help you, now, catch it!” Luna pointed at the dream, which was fluttering slowly downward in a lazy circle as it descended to Applejack’s head. When it got close enough, Pinkie Pie leaped and nabbed it in her mouth. She landed next to Applejack with the dream and looked at Luna proudly, then fell over asleep.

Inside Pinkie’s mind, she was at Sweet Apple Acres. She wasn’t surprised to find herself there, as Applejack was always thinking about home and the family. Sometimes she suspected Applejack must dream about Ponyville since she came in to sell apples there all the time, but to find her at her home was the typical place.

This Sweet Apple Acres looked even more beautiful than the normal farm. The crops that were growing were even larger and more robust than usual, the carrots were the size of Pinkie’s entire hoof, and the lettuce was bigger than her head. The apples on the trees that dotted the landscape as well were huge, larger than a hoof, but a little smaller than a pony’s head. Someone could feed off this farm forever!

But this was a business trip, such as it were! Pinkie had a job to do, and by golly, she’d do it! “Princess Luna!” she called out, hoping to find the princess and get this done so she could go. “Princess Luna I’m in the dream, where are you?” She got no response, so she hopped about the farm, admiring the plants until the princess arrived.

“Wow-ee! These plants are so big!” Pinkie giggled as she rolled around on top of a pumpkin big enough to build a house out of. She slid down the stem to the ground and bounded over to the potatoes, which were big enough to crawl inside if she could only find a way to bake them. One of them was shaped like Granny Smith, and Pinkie laughed as she poked it in the nose, only for its facial expression to change to surprise.

“Granny Tater!” Pinkie shouted, then tapped her chin. “Or Tater Smith? Potato Smith? Potato Granny? Granny Potate?”

The Granny Smith potato grimaced and made an angry face and looked down at Pinkie. Its lips moved about, but no sound came from it. “Potatoes don’t talk, silly Granny!” Pinkie laughed. Its face got even angrier and it shifted, then turned into a regular potato, if a large one.

A tearing sound from behind her, like roots being ripped from the ground, made Pinkie turn around. Granny’s face was now on the pumpkin, scowling down at Pinkie. Roots, branches, and the large stem bent and twisted together to make up the body of the pumpkin pony that was now looming over her. “Don’t touch my garden!” The pumpkin’s flesh tore open as it spoke, vomiting pumpkin guts and seeds the size of ponies! Pinkie jumped in surprise and ran.

She hadn’t made it five steps before a blast of magic beamed from the sky and vaporized the pumpkin Granny. Luna winged down next to Pinkie and lifted her from the ground. “Miss Pie! I am here! I am sorry for the ugly mess,” Luna rolled through the air, dodging a pumpkin seed that flew past them. “but I have located the dream-eater! We must make haste before it consumes this dream!”

“Wow-ee! You just blasted that thing away! Poor Granny Pumpkin, though… Pumpkin Smith? Pumpy Gran? Granny S. Pumpkins? Where did the S come from and what would it stand for? Probably Smith?”

“Miss Pie, focus! We’ve danger at our backs and at our fronts, and not just your life, but everypony’s life is at stake. If you have no sugar-coated, cotton-candy dreams, how will you provide such to others?”

Pinkie’s face went stoic and she held her hooves out in front of her, pointed ahead. “You’re right! I need to do this and pay attention! For my sugar-coated, cotton-candy dreams!” She blew a raspberry and focused on the horizon as they lifted up, and up, and up into the dark sky.

“Now pay attention, Miss Pie. I will need your hooves to assist, as it is your dream-eater. Listen to me close.”

“Okay!”

Luna held her as they flew up, the farm spreading below them into a peculiar design. The shape of the trees took on a grinning rictus, tree-teeth smiling up at them as leafy eyes blinked. Its mouth opened, tearing apart the Apple Family home and barn and swallowing the pieces. Pinkie frown and gave a cry of dismay.

“Focus, Miss Pie. That is not really the Apple Family home, you are in a dream. That is merely the nightmare the dream has become, as the dream-eater senses us. We need to find it and kill it before this gets worse, but it cannot eat the dream without removing us from it!” Wind whipped at them as they flew, the angry clouds seeming to scowl and growl darkly.

“How would it remove us if we don’t wake up?” Pinkie shouted.

“If we die here, or receive a dangerous shock, we will awaken! Even I am not immune to such things, though I have many abilities to combat them!”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Pinkie yelled as a gust of wind pulled at her mane. “I’m not a princess of dreams!”

“Do whatever you can think of, Pinkie! This is a dream!”

“A dream, but what does that mean?”

“It means I want you to use your imagination! I have been asleep, dreamless, for over a thousand years, but you’ve lived a life filled with fun, entertainment, and entertainment! Use your cotton-candy dreams!”

“My cotton-candy dreams? How will they help?”

“I mean your—”

Something dropped out of the dark cloud above and hit Luna. She was speared out of the sky and dropped Pinkie, driven down, down, down toward the earthy maw of Granny Smith far below them. The rooted trees tore open, awaiting her as she screamed out of sight, faster than Pinkie could fall.

And fall she did. Pinkie waved her hooves helplessly as she screamed down, following Luna toward the ground below. She scrambled to try to remember what Luna had said. Use her what? She hadn’t had the chance to finish. Use her something that could help her fight and certainly not wake up in the middle of the dream, Luna had been very clear about that. She needed to stay asleep, and she couldn’t hit the ground or she’d wake up, so…

Use her cotton-candy dreams!

Pinkie imagined a big huge pile of cotton candy way down below for her to land in. It would be sugary, sweet, and most importantly; soft. She’d land in it, everything would be fine, and then she could punch the dream-eater in whatever passed for its nose!

Sticky fluffed sugar encompassed her in a delicious embrace. It collapsed under her, arresting her fall with its sweetness. She was rocked back and forth by the shaking ground. Granny Smith farm was shouting angry words in a booming voice that Pinkie couldn’t understand. She was mad about them coming, and intended to eat them all.

Pinkie rolled out of the cotton candy, grabbing a hoofful to eat as she walked. She stared around, trying to place herself.

She was looking for a dream-eater, but she didn’t know what one of those might look like, or what they might act like besides… well… eating? Eating like she was eating her cotton candy dream. It was tasty, but would a dream-eater enjoy cotton candy? Did it even taste real food or only food in dreams?

The ground shook underneath her. A great crack from Granny Smith’s earthen smile ripped up the land toward her, swallowing trees, the cotton candy, and her. Pinkie fell into blackness.

It was blackness that didn’t go away for some time. On several occasions Pinkie felt strange, like she was being stretched thin, almost torn in two. It felt like she could just blink and she would be back at home in her body, laying on the street with Applejack, but nothing happened.

No matter how many times she blinked, all she saw was the darkness that wasn’t dark, lit by something unseen. In all directions she could see the debris from the Apple family farm falling around her. Carrots, lettuce, trees, apples, and buckets littered the sky, and Pinkie Pie was falling with them. Falling into nothing.

Something moved around her in the dark. Her mind returned to the dream where she had been floating through Ponyville and the giant shark-creatures had tried to eat her. She spun about and pulled out a giant sun umbrella just as the debris parted and the shark jumped out at her. Its teeth caught on the fabric and metal arms, holding its mouth open and pushing her along. Pinkie giggled.

“Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on thee? Or is it me? I can’t remember!” The shark made no sound, but disappeared in a cloud of acrid-smelling smoke. It, and the darkness, blew away in an unseen wind, disappearing into the dream, leaving Pinkie alone on the platform for the Friendship Express.

“Oh, well I like trains,” Pinkie exclaimed when she figured out where she was. She looked down the tracks both ways, but saw no train, and when she looked up and down the platform, she saw no other ponies. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, ponies can go anywhere they want in a dream however they want, no need to wait for a train.”

Despite the statement, she didn’t fly or run off herself. She stood, waiting for the train to come in the dream, because Pinkie just liked trains that much. She loved the way they tooted and the sound of the wheels on the tracks. She liked the smell of the smoke and the fun rocking back and forth of the train as it chuffed merrily down its path. She hummed to herself while she waited, occasionally mumbling half of the words to a song she couldn’t fully remember having heard before.

“I wonder if that’s a song I made up in my dream or maybe a bunch of songs all smushed together like a big old pile of gum? It’s a dream, and I’ve heard some pretty great songs in my dreams before. Can’t ever remember any.” Pinkie pulled on her cowlick, letting it twang back up to the rest of her mane.

A rumbling heralded the approach of the Friendship Express. The tracks vibrated, carrying the sound ahead of the train while the platform itself rattled. A discarded hayburger wrapper rolled past with the wind pushed ahead of the train, and Pinkie stood up to get a better look, shading her eyes from the sun.

A face came roaring down the track. Not Granny Smiths face anymore, but a different one that shifted its expressions from one second to the next. Attached to it was a smokestack that belched horrible green smoke into the air that turned into bats and flew away in all directions. One of them screeched past Pinkie’s head and poofed into the air, gone completely. It shouted at her.

“Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie!” It shouted so loud that Pinkie had to cover her ears from the horrible noise.

“What? What do you want?” Pinkie yelled back. “Are you the dream-eater? Cause you’re mean and I hate you! Stop eating my cotton-candy dreams!”

The train just kept yelling “Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie!” at her as it approached. The tracks behind it shattered into pieces and disappeared, flying away like the bats its smoke became, while the train’s head opened its mouth and swallowed everything around it. The fence next to it disappeared into its mouth while it shouted her name, and houses were even pulled in. It was trying to eat her!

Pinkie thought it would be better if she didn’t get eaten, so she left the platform. The Friendship Express wasn’t an angry and terrible doom-train that ate houses, this was the Unfriendship Express, driven by the dream-eater guy who was a big jerk! He couldn’t follow her on roads, so she left.

The splintering sound of wood announced the death of the dream train platform, but the puffing sounds of “Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie!” turned toward her. She turned to look and saw the flying train tracks swoop back down in front of the Dream train and created new tracks that followed Pinkie into town. A cycling terror of tracks and shouting train came roaring down main street after Pinkie, determined to gobble her up!

She ran!

Pinkie hoofed it into town, running past all the familiar houses that were sucked into the too-wide maw of the dream-eater express. She tried to remember what Princess Luna had told her to do, and although she imagined some cotton-candy again, the dream-eater just ate it right up without a care. She was supposed to use her cotton-candy dreams to fight back, but what in Tartarus did that mean for a train? It wasn’t working, unless she was supposed to use something else?

Pinkie imagined a lollipop the size of a house and it appeared in front of her. She cleared it with a super-high leap and laughed as she sailed through the air above the sticky confection. She landed easily and stopped to look at how the dream-eater would deal with a lollipop bigger than two houses!

The crunch and crackle of candy being eaten sailed through the air to her ears and her mane drooped. “Aw, no. I worked hard to make that and he’s just crunching it to pieces,” she lamented. “You’re supposed to lick a lollipop, you meanie!” She turned and ran again, not waiting for him to eat his way through.

“if a lollipop isn’t going to work, maybe a muffin.” Poof! A muffin fell from the sky to land past the lollipop. “Or maybe a cupcake!” Poof! A cupcake rolled out from between two houses to block the street. “And regular cake! Pop and juice, hay steak, birthday cake, large fries, chocolate shake!” Food dropped from the sky, spilled out of windows, grew from the ground, squeezed itself into existence from nowhere in the dream world as Pinkie blocked the dream-eaters path with all her dream creations. But nothing stopped it. It just chewed through it all on its way to get her, so she had to keep running.

“I’m not getting tired, but this is dumb and boring! How do I beat up or stop a dumb ol’ dream-eater if all he does is eat things?” The road answered her question as it cracked and split apart to reveal dangerous and ugly muscle pulsing underneath. Stones ripped apart and a giant hoof flew upward, carrying Pinkie into the air on top of it. She clung to it out of fear more than anything, the blue limb rising into the sky.

“You will bow to me!” a great booming voice called out. From much farther north Pinkie could see Luna’s head and crown rising from the ground, spilling destroyed houses and city streets from her. The angry voice of the train kept shouting from behind her as it tooted merrily along through her food obstacles, seemingly unaware of Luna’s sudden appearance. Unaware or uncaring.

“I am the Queen of Dreams, and my will shall not be denied!” Luna shouted. Pinkie tried to cover her ears with her hooves, but she let go of the limb and tumbled back down to the ground. She landed on the tracks in front of the dream-eater train, maw coming at her through the cakes as it consumed everything in its path.

Pinkie hopped to her feet and ran, the tracks building themselves before her as she hoofed it across the empty expanse Luna had left behind in her rise from the cobbles. The tracks cared little for geography and just built, no matter which way Pinkie ran. They floated up when she jumped, went left when she tried to leave the tracks, and down underground, dragging her along with it. The mouth of the dream-eater opened wide, eager for her as its meal.

A giant blue hoof smashed the train. A muffled boom went off as the boiler exploded underneath it, sparks and soot flying in every direction. The voice went quiet, but it never stopped, and the second car in line slowly morphed into a copy of the engine, mouth appearing first so that it could yell “Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie!”

“No! You will address me and my might first, you cursed little thing!” Luna smashed the next car in line, destroying each of them until only the caboose remained. She got her wish as it turned to look at her.

“Princess Lunaaaaaa!” The caboose shouted and changed, warping out of the way of the giant hoof as it smashed down. Pinkie bounced with each slam as it wiggled back and forth, avoiding her blows.

It changed into a catapult and launched a rock that Luna easily grabbed out of the air with her magic. She hurled it back and the thing shifted away again, changing into a ballista. It fired a bolt, only for that to be returned as well. It changed into a phoenix and flew at her, but she seized it in her magic and squeezed.

“You intrude upon my domain, interloper! You consume the prizes ponies have earned for their sleep and take away their inner desires. See the mistakes you have brought upon yourself and perish!” Luna’s magic grew darker and the phoenix crackled in her grip as its bones broke. It screamed in apparent pain as she crushed it, until a beam of harsh light pierced the dark clouds.

The beam drove through Luna’s chest, sizzling with power. Steam rose through the air from where it passed as it evaporated the coming rain and consumed the ground where it struck. When it disappeared, a hole was all that remained of the Mega Luna’s chest. She fell and her magic dissipated, releasing the phoenix.

“Pin…kie. Good… luck.” Was all Luna managed to say before she disappeared, fading into the air of the dream.

“Princess Luna!” But she was gone.

A second phoenix flew down from the clouds and caught the first one. They merged themselves together to become a larger phoenix, both burning brightly. “Pinkie Pie-!” it shouted, beams of light firing from its eyes. “Pinkie Pie—!”

Pinkie ducked down into the hole with pieces of discarded train track around her. Without the dream-eater to guide them they were just broken and twisted metal now, no use to anypony. She tried to remember what Luna had told her. She remembered the comment about the cotton-candy dreams, but all that had done was get them eaten. It was a hungry beast, and it wasn’t going to be stopped by a little food, nor a lot, apparently!

“Use my cotton-candy dreams. Dreams of fun and parties and all the good things that this thing is trying to take from me.”

“Pinkie Pie—!” A sizzling beam of light blasted down, melting metal and burning railroad ties nearby. Pinkie flinched, but remained hidden. Maybe it couldn’t find her here.

The beam burned closer and Pinkie shrieked as she realized it wasn’t going to miss her. This was a dream-eater, and it probably knew where everything was! “I wish I was somewhere safe instead of here!” Pinkie closed her eyes.

The sound of storms and rain and the awful sizzling went away. Instead, Pinkie heard birds chirping and a gentle rustling of the wind. She opened her eyes and found herself in Sweet Apple Acres, untouched by a giant Granny Smith and pristine.

It lasted only a moment before a fire ripped through the trees. The dream-eater burst out of thin air in the distance, eyes locked on Pinkie Pie. It opened its mouth and that horrible beam came out, scorching the grass and burning the trees. The acrid smell of smoke filled with the sweet scent of apples filled Pinkie’s nose. She leaped out of the way of the beam, further than she should have been able to, and landed lightly on a tree branch that was too small for her.

“Stop it! You meanie burnies! You unhappy bad dreamies!” Pinkie shouted. Another beam lanced down and Pinkie jumped again, prancing on the tip of a leap. The beam burned through the dream-woods, setting fire to them. Pinkie seethed. “You’re ruining everything! You big… wet blanket!”

A giant blanket, dripping wet, appeared above the phoenix. It fell over it, despite its attempt to swing out of the way. The sopping bedspread dropped over them and into the forest, smothering much of the flames that licked at the apple trees. Smoke rose, and everything went silent once more.

Pinkie stared at the blanket. Her angry frown turned slowly up into a grin, then a smile, then she laughed. “Hah! In your blazing face, firebird! Pinkie Pie defeats the birdies with night time! A soggy night time at that!” Pinkie broke out into a song about water and how it was wet as she danced along the tips of the rustling leaves.

The *whumpf* of something made the wet blanket shift. It shook, and trees rattled in their roots. Pinkie stopped her dance to look, and the entire world cracked in half. The sky, the ground, the trees, and the blanket, snapped in half and swung down, like the lid of a hatch, dropping Pinkie and the birds into darkness. A deep, quiet laugh followed them as they fell.

Pinkie lost the sensation of falling halfway through the drop. There was no wind rushing past, no pressure pushing up on her innards, and no sensation of her stomach being in her throat. All that existed was darkness, and Pinkie herself. She couldn’t even see the birds anymore despite them being made of flame. No light, no stars, no moon, no wind, nothing. Just Pinkie and the darkness.

But there was sound.

Not willing to give up her position when the dream-eater was out to get her, Pinkie instead decided to imagine herself as a spy. If thinking of a wet blanket brought out a wet blanket, she could get those cool goggles she’d seen Bon Bon with sometimes. All green and glowy and awesome.

With a *pop*, they appeared on her head, and she twisted the knobs on them. She’d taken them one time and stared at the moon. That had been a bad idea. Right now, with nothing and just darkness all around, they weren’t so bad. They didn’t really help, as darkness filled with nothing but darkness didn’t give the goggles anything to show, but they were fun, and made her feel better.

Rooms appeared around her as she watched, not being brought into focus by the goggles, but being drawn into existence like a pencil would sketch a picture. Doors, halls, carpets, paintings, beds, couches, lamps, it didn’t take long for Pinkie to realize it was Sugarcube Corner that was being created in front of her. She recognized all the pictures hung on the walls, and the beds and crib that belonged to the Cakes. It was the familiar home, and she recognized it. She knew what the dream-eater was doing.

“I get it, and I don’t like it. You’re a meanie McMeanostink, and I’m gonna beat you up if you try to use my second family against me.”

Despite the warning, Mr. Cake came lurching out of his bedroom. He was empty-eyed and wide-mouthed, black holes where they should be. His jaw jutted out obscenely with ragged, blackened teeth. His mouth grew in size, then shrank again, a moan issuing from nonexistent lips. A centipede crawled from his eye socket, traveling from one to another, then out his nose and into his mouth.

Pinkie Pie stared, lips drawn tight. She drew in a deep breath, opened her mouth, and laughed. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

Mr. Cake came toward her, hooves stumbling on the wooden floor, until he was within hooves’ reach. Pinkie drew back her hoof, laughed once more, “Ha!” and decked him in the head! Her hoof stung from the impact, and Mr. Cake staggered back.

“I warned you, Mr. McMeaniestinks! This is my second family, and you don’t get to mock them with me around. Not while I’m still holding on to my cotton-candy dreams!” Pinkie roared. She reached into her mane and pulled out a color string of ribbons. It grew longer and longer the more she pulled, a seemingly endless supply of ribbons.

Mr. Cake stumbled back to right himself and came at her again, endless maw gaping like a fish. Pinkie just stuck her face in his and laughed. His teeth grew in size and sharpness, but she wrapped her string of ribbons around him, winding his jaw shut, then hogtied him.

Out of the bedroom lumbered Mrs. Cake, morbidly obese and shaking the floor as she tromped up. Her eyes were red and crusted with slime, while her mouth drooled endlessly. Pinkie Pie reached into her mane and pulled out a picture of the real Mrs. Cake, and waved it at her.

“Don’t you be messing with me, dummy! Mrs. Cake is a beautiful woman who’s proud of herself, her accomplishments, and her motherhood! You’re just trying to make fun of her, and I won’t stand for that!” Pinkie smashed the picture on Mrs. Cake’s face and the obese monstrosity deflated, shrinking into a flopping, rubbery shell of itself. Pinkie sneered down at it and laughed again. “Ha. Ha. Ha! Granny Pie doesn’t like you, and neither do I!”

Crying came from the next room down the hall as Pumpking Cake and Pound Cake rose from sleep. Pinkie stood ready, but what came out of the room wasn’t a monstrous, terrible creature or a horrifying face, it was just the twins, crawling on the floor as foals were wont to do. They stumbled, they tripped, and they flopped about as they came toward Pinkie, who just backed away, waiting for something to give way.

But nothing did. The twins were, for all intents and purposes, acting just like foals. They cried, they wailed, they screamed as they wandered over to the prone forms of their monstrous parents. “Uh, kids? Don’t touch those, those aren’t your parents.”

They didn’t heed her. Pound Cake picked up a flap of the deflated Mrs. Cake and rubbed it on his cheek, while Pumpkin Cake crawled into Mr. Cake’s gaping mouth and curled up to cry, nestled in his jagged teeth. Pinkie felt a surge of guilt, and tried to beat it back.

“I didn’t hurt their parents! This is a dream! This is just a nasty, cruel, meanie-dream!” Pinkie shook her head, trying to drive back the wicked thoughts. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and she shouldn’t feel guilty, but their crying was burrowing into her brain, seeping into her ears no matter how hard she plugged them. Children crying. Sad children. Children she had made cry.

“You’re a wicked, nasty, awful creature dream-eater! I hate you! I don’t make foals cry!” Pinkie squeezed her eyes shut and plugged her ears. The vision of the dead Cakes are their crying foals appeared instead in her mind’s eye. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t escape it, and couldn’t fix it. She’d done that to the Cakes, and now it was her responsibility.

A rumbling started and the house around them began to fall apart. The Cake twins’ crying was rattling the glass in the window panes and shaking the foundation. Nothing was escaping their weeping, it seemed. Not Pinkie, not the house, not anything. Pinkie opened her eyes and stared.

They were so small, and so innocent. They didn’t do anything, but she knew they were the source of the danger, that the dream-eater had taken them to use against her, and it was working. Pinkie had no choice.

Pinkie couldn’t let the dream-eater escape, but she couldn’t kill them. They weren’t monsters. At least, they didn’t look like them. It probably knew that. It knew what it was doing, and Pinkie hated it for it. She stepped closer, staring down at Pound Cake, nestled in his father’s mouth, and she imagined.

A cotton-candy field, filled with sweets of all kinds. Milkshakes rose above muffins and cupcake mountains, in the distance, a fizzy soda rainfall. Sugarcubes and cookies lay stacked to make hills, and sitting at the top of one—a gingerbread house, mortared with icing.

In Pinkie’s mind, at her feet sat a little gummy bear, staring up at her with his little gummy eyes. Nearby, another one, sugary and sweet, and dripping syrup from its eyes. She reached down to pick up the one in front of her and held it up in front of her face.

“You’re so delicious-looking. I could just… eat… you… up.” The landscape in front of her shivered, and the decaying house appeared for moment as Pinkie took a bite out of the gummy bear. The background noise of her cotton-candy dream lessened, the intense whining that had been present now smaller, quieter, and less intense. Pinkie kept eating, imagining the sugary sweetness covering her tongue.

The other gummy bear began crawling away, but Pinkie pounced on it. “Oh, no you don’t! You’re coming with me to my stomach!” Pinkie bit into the gummy bear and stared at her cotton-candy dream, admiring the delicious clouds and cookie hills, staring at anything but what she was eating. When she finished, with syrup staining her coat, Pinkie sat down and sighed.

Then she woke up.

She was in the middle of Ponyville, laying with her head in Applejack’s lap, with Luna, Twilight, Spike, and several other ponies staring at her while they slept. Luna helped her up and looked at her with a curious look in her eyes. Her tight-lipped mouth parted as she spoke.

“Are you well, Miss Pie?”

Pinkie stared gormlessly for a moment. Her mind was awhirl with thoughts, but she remembered her cotton-candy dream and smiled brightly. “I’m great! Thank you, princess! Will I see those dreams ever again?”

“I believe… you defeated the dream-eater, though possibly in a very unconventional manner.”

“Oh? But I did what you suggested, Princess, I used my cotton-candy dreams!” Pinkie did a spin on a forehoof and bounced happily.

“Yes… yes you did.” Princess Luna stared at her with an expression that hinted at fear.

Pinkie smiled wide. “I think I’m hungry again! Who wants fritters! Applejack, wake up, I want fritters!”

“Huh, wha? Oh, sure Pinkie. Lemme just stretch here.

Pinkie decided to treat everypony nearby to fritters, because if anything was going to be enjoyed, it was going to be food. Pinkie knew that much. Her and her cotton-candy dreams.

To be continued...