Dreams, Nightmares, and Friendships

A sleeping colt on his back and an Equestria Daily Newspaper in his mouth, Darkrai slowly made his way up the long flight of stairs, mentally cursing several things, including his inability to fly with a sleeping Fares on his back, whatever idiotic lunatic that invented the very concept of stairs, and the kitchen staff. For exactly three hours he had been here and he had already made an enemy in that spear holder Paladin, ticked off the master chef, a Griffon named Hawkheart, and had managed to find himself becoming the baby sitter of a foal who seemed to have no end to his energy by day, but as soon as the sun disappeared he'd crash to the ground and sleep through a Bouffalant stampede.

Darkrai huffed in annoyance. Yep; very impressive first day he had. He could only imagine what a living nightmare tomorrow would probably be.

As he breached the top of the stairs and walked into the quarters Celestia had apparently reserved for him, he quietly pulled Fares off of his back and deposited the sleeping colt on a large chair, then turned towards the bed. It was quite large and luxurious, and he lit the candle on the nightstand before sinking onto the large bed and began reading the Equestria Daily. There wasn't much to actually care about, but it gave him something to do. Soon enough though, sleep overtook him.

The heat scorched him on all sides, pain engulfed every single nerve ending he had, and Darkrai let out a loud and deep cry of pain. Suddenly, his cry turned into the cry of three others, and he sluggishly opened his eyes. In front of him stood a yellow mouse like creature with a lightning shaped tail that had a heart shaped end, two long black tipped ears, brown eyes, a silver bandanna around her neck, and a scar over her right cheek. Next to her stood a bipedal blue and black jackle with two tassle like appendages on the sides of its head, and a red badanna was tied around his arm. And centered behind the two was a levitating pink, yellow, and blue creature. He found himself loathing that one with his heart.

"Fools~!" He suddenly found himself crowing, throwing his arms outwards. He narrowed his eyes at the three and grinned crookedly.

"You think you can defeat me? I am the Master of Darkness, the Nightmare King, The Bringer of Fear! What hope have you of defeating me?" His grin widened as, in a split second, he had moved from ten feet away from all three to inches away from the levitater. "When I doubt that you two could even take on this miserable floating space duck~!" He cried, and with that his hand wrapped around the levitater's neck and blackness seeped out of his claws. Seconds later the levitater's eyes began glowing and suddenly a pink haze surrounded the mouse and the jackal, and that haze followed them as they were launched into opposite walls. Darkrai cackled madly, curling his claws and throwing his arms out to the sides again.

"Face it, weaklings~! Darkness will rule this world! There will be no more hope, there will be no more light, only darkness, and night!" He crowed haughtily. The mouse got to her feet, the red parts of her cheeks sparking with electricity.

Face it you creep, your plans were never meant to succeed! Cresselia will win, and you might as well die!” She snarled.

“Don’t you get that I am creating an ideal world?! I seem to be the only one to see the beauty of the world I create, not this dismal and boring place!” Darkrai crowed tauntingly.

“How could you think that?” The jackal interrupted.

“I think the way I do because I have been blessed, shown the truth! Why does no creature in this world accept my ideals?!” Darkrai suddenly shouted. Then he grinned. Yes, he had been blessed; blessed by the darkness. Two orbs of spiralling blackness formed within his claws on each hand.

"Oh yes, Cresselia will win; in her fight against you two!" He snapped.

It was at that moment that Darkrai woke up as he hit the floor. He took a moment to gather himself. What had just happened? Surely whoever that had been in the nightmare...surely it had not been him? He didn't embrace Darkness...

Sure, he was calmed by it...

S-sure, he seemed to draw power from it...

S...s-sure h-he didn't actually know if he had been evil in the past or not but that...it didn't...

Darkrai shivered and stumbled to his feet. No. That couldn't have been him. He wasn't evil, he didn't get joy from bringing despair and nightmares! That simply could not have been him. Regardless, he stumbled to the balcony, spread his wings, and leaped out into the night sky, camoflouged by the new moon's comforting darkness- Argh! No! It wasn't comforting! Darkrai shook his head. Darkness didn't comfort him; he simply didn't care for it. Darkness was simply another word for night, and night was simply another word for 'time to sleep'. Yes, that was it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Darkrai found himself landing after thirty minutes of flight, and to some of his surprise, he found himself standing near the outskirts of Ponyville. For a moment he considered just going into town forget anything that had happened in the past twenty four hours, but that'd surely anger Celestia. So with that, he laid down and rested his head on a particularly thick patch of grass, reveling in the cool, refreshing, soothing pre-morning dew and the slight chill of the night. He kept no track of how long he stayed there exactly, nor would he have been about to, for after only five minutes he fell asleep again.

"Okay you nightmarish creton, I chased you across a continent, I chased you across a sea, I chased you into a VOLCANO, and I chased you to a whole new DIMENSION! I AM SICK OF HAVING TO CHASE YOU!" Darkrai leaped backwards as that levitating creature from his previous dream suddenly appeared him, glaring fiercely.

"Who-"

"Don't play that game with me you disgusting creature!" The thing snapped angrily. She glared furiously at him, and levitated a few inches closer.

"How you avoided changing forms when Pika and Lucario didn't is beyond me, but at this point, I don't even care anymore!" The creature snarled. With that the odd crescents of moondust that orbited her began glowing.

"If I have to go to that dimension myself, I will kill you! I'm sick of your evil spirit, I'm sick of having to heal your nightmares, and I'm sick of following you just to prevent you from corrupting everything near you! You will die, Darkrai, and you will die very soon." She growled. Darkrai suddenly found himself laughing.

"You think you can kill me? You really are a fool my dear old nemesis. You can't kill Fear, lowly lunar duck~!" The creature scowled furiously.

"Watch yourself, Nightmare King; your days are shortly numbered."

"Darkrai darling, whatever are you doing here?!" Darkai woke up with a yawn and found himself looking at a set of polished white hooves. Looking up, he found himself looking up at Rarity.

"It's morning, isn't it?" He complained, not bothering to get up. Rarity cleared her throat.

"Yes, it is. What are you doing here? Are you hurt?" Rarity asked. Darkrai sighed and heaved himself to his feet.

"No; I just had a bit of a nightmare last night and I came here to clear my head." He mumbled. Rarity tilted her head.

"Are you okay? Do you want me to get Twilight?" She asked worriedly. Darkrai shook his head and ruffled his wings.

"Ah no; I'm fine. I should probably need to get back to Canterlot. That paranoid guard will want to know what my latest 'crime' will have been." He grumbled to himself. Quickly throwing a goodbye over his shoulder towards Rarity, Darkrai took a running start and beat the air with his wings as he headed back to Canterlot. However light he felt in the air before, all sense of happiness when he was flying evaporated like a single drop of water on a bit of metal over an open flame. His mind was too weighed down by the disturbing dreams. That creature...she was openly threatening to kill him. How was he supposed to respond to that? And she had accused him of being evil.

But he wasn't was he? Darkrai flattened his ears.

He didn't know what to think anymore.

~-~-~

"-EVERYTHING IS TOO COLORFUL!" Lucario blinked calmly as Pika slammed her head into a wood pole repeatedly.

"Pika...how can something be too colorful?" He slowly asked. Pika gave him a flattened glare.

"Because everything is too bright and it's too sunny and everywhere we go these creepy-ass ponies are always trotting around in their own damn MAMBY-PAMBY LAND~!" She shouted, trotting exasperatedly, sticking out her tongue, and crossing her eyes as she spoke.

"Even WIGGLYTUFF isn't this happy one hundred percent of the time and it's creepin' me out!" The Raichu turned pony finished, turning towards her partner. He calmly stared back at her.

"Well at least Chatot isn't here blaring in our ears about how we should find Darkrai." He said calmly. Pika relaxed somewhat and scoffed.

"Yea, he's too colorful anyways if her were here I'd start puking rainbows." She sighed. Lucario snickered then looked around.

"So, any idea how we should start looking for the dude?" He asked.

"I don't know and right now I don't care. This world is LAAAAAAMMMMEEEE." Pika moaned. Lucario rolled his eyes, walked over, picked her up, slung her over his back, and walked away.

"Best we can do right now is find some food, a good place to stay, and ask around to see if anybody's seen the creep. So come on." He said as he started down the beaten path they'd stumbled across.