Elfilis didn't stay asleep for too much longer after Luna dropped the secret of the universe onto his lap. It was a minor miracle he had been able to sleep at all given his emotional state at the time, and while his worries were mildly mollified his anxieties were amplified. In the end he just chose to... not sleep anymore. He said his goodbyes to Luna before vanishing from the dream world entirely, even as his guilt for leaving so suddenly spiked. Luna didn't let any of her own worries show though, simply smiling at Elfilis as he made his excuses and assured him she did not mind. And it wasn't as if Elfilis didn't have anything he could be doing in real life, assuming he could escape Carina the love-bug's clutches. The Phantom Meta Knights needed to be brought up to date on recent events, as they might not have had the chance to investigate themselves, and The Phantom Squeak Squad was still actively looking for the no-longer-lost Elements of Harmony... On second thought, Elfilis didn't know about the Elements either. And wherever was Phantom Galacta Knight during all this?

Point being, Elfilis had finally thought of something to keep himself busy, so he was off to partake in his unhealthy coping mechanisms, leaving Luna alone in the world of his Dream.

... With Me.

Bow down motherfuckers! That's right, Alter Ego gets a go at telling the story now! A break from Elfilis's mood swings and unreliable narration! Now I will tell the story!

... With my disconnected perspective born from self-doubts fueled by fragmented memories of a broken home life, from which I remember everything from an even further dissociated point of view due to my prior existence as merely a young man's defense mechanism as opposed to my current state of being where I am a near-individual mental entity with fluctuating levels of sentience due to the volatile nature of the brain that I am a part of. Moon Knight, eat your fucking heart out... You might have heard of him. He's a Marvel character with split-personality disorder or something like that and-

"I do hope you aren't ignoring me." Oh shit, that's right. Luna. Sorry, I didn't mean to- Fuck, hold on.

Sorry, I was lost in thought. Were you saying something?

You have no clue how much effort it took to be able to project my thoughts in such a way, at least when the recipient of my thoughts wasn't Elfilis. Or Pinkie Pie. It was like putting the narrow side of a funnel up to my mouth and yelling. But the funnel was also four-dimensional. And I had to then use a second funnel that was multi-dimensional to take the 'noise' I made across space-time and focus it back into the three-dimensional space that most sapient creatures could perceive. Even in spite of the fact that none of that should work, hiding the fact that these thoughts were mine was comparatively easy. Provided I wasn't hiding from Elfilis.

"I was asking how you have hidden from my senses. I have gone looking for any influences on the minds of everyone I know." Hey, good segway. Actually, that should be spelled segue but they are homophones, which are two words that sound the same but differ in meaning and/or spelling... And I've ruined the segue. Moving on.

You were looking for foreign influences in the dreams of everyone. Meanwhile, I was effectively born inside the actual mind of Elfilis... Hey, you were just playing nice earlier, right? You didn't want to freak Elfilis out but you found his relative nonchalance about me as suspicious rather than seeing it as reassurance that I wasn't hostile.

"Hmph. I am giving you the chance to explain thyself aren't we?" She slipped back into royal speak. That probably means she's gearing up to kick my ass, but... I wasn't actually in the Dream. I could perceive the contents of the Dream but it took more effort than was worth if I tried to use all the senses. All I really had in there right now was my 'mouth' and my 'ears.' I didn't bother with sight and the rest once I confirmed that it was Luna who had suck into the Dream. It was a pretty damn major limitation, one that had gotten worse as of very recently, but it was also a shield now that would keep me safe from the threat of 'I-would-parade-across-the-streets-of-Canterlot-with-the-balls-of-Starswirl-the-Bearded-speared-on-my-horn-if-I-had-the-chance' Luna.

...Can I talk about that for a sec? Starswirl being a main baddy is unexpected to the extreme, but Luna's threats against his person are even more so. Not just because of how violent they are, but also because a lot of said threats feel, I don't know, self-degrading on her part? Shave herself bald and tattoo the Bearded's name on her body if it meant she could spread the truth of his evil? Walk on the streets with his severed testicles draped across her forehead? It makes me, uncomfortable, to say the least. And I worry what kind of debauchery I will be forced to witness once Elfilis and Luna finally act on their confessed feelings for one another, but just the thought of Luna's probable masochism makes me retroactively regret my little prank of adding a sex dungeon to Elfilis's house. Just felt the need to put that out there.

Where were we? Right, Luna wants to kill me.

You are letting me speak, I guess, but I also get the feeling you aren't exactly giving me the chance to actually prove my innocence so much as you are listening for an excuse to personally dig my grave.

Seriously, where were all these hostile vibes earlier? Oh, I can sense the vibes of others by the way. Which is stupid-speak for I can vaguely feel the emotions and intentions of people nearby my point of focus. Eflilis can do this too, he just thinks he's learning to read the body language of ponies better. His insistence on trying to do so actually fucks up his super-empathy, which is amusingly ironic to me sometimes and imaginary-teeth-grindingly frustrating most other times.

"I believe that you are a natural part of Elfilis. I can feel how enmeshed you are to him, how seemless the connection between you two is, to the point of you being nearly invisible to me. What I am am worried about is how similar you two may be to the original Fecto Elfilis."

... Huh. Have to admit that I underestimated you. That's a legitimate concern not born of personal bias.

I flinched back when her frustration spiked at me.

Er, what I mean is... Uh, I'll just answer the question. Fecto Forgo was all of the hate, anger, and ambition of the original Fecto Elfilis, who was already rather murderous as far as the story goes. Elfilin was the small bit of compassion and stability given it's own body. Me and Elfilis aren't really comparable in the same way they are, but even if we were we aren't really split the same way.

"How are you split then, if that is the case?" It was a much more calm feeling Luna that asked, though still wary.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that the Elfilis you know has inherited the emotional side of things, including the full spectrum of feelings and instinctual behavior. He feels more deeply more easily than I can, for good or worse. Meanwhile, I'm not afraid to admit that I'm rather stunted in that respect but I have a greater capacity to understand advanced concepts, to take things apart and solve problems. It's also not a perfect split, as I do have emotions and Elfilis isn't exactly the worst at learning new things or coming up with plans. His is just a more emotional intelligence and mine is a more conventional intelligence.

After I finished speaking, there was no response. I 'sat' there for a while waiting for Luna to continue but she kept her silence, and I had nothing else to say for the moment either. Reluctantly, I pulled almost the rest of myself from the Dream and started some work on other things.

I checked on Elfilis first, to see that he had found the Main Six in Twilight's old observatory, with said unicorn being the only one still awake in the group. It looks like he was just finding out about the Elements of Harmony having been found, and his spike of anger and embarrassment as he (correctly) assumed I was the reason Swaddle-Dee had them only helped confirm that fact. I sent a quick sense of apology and an image of Swaddle-Dee's location before retreating further inwards. For those curious, Swaddle-Dee was helping Cadence take care of Chrysalis's golden changeling baby and was stubbornly ignoring me. I tried not to let that hurt me, but it was harder than it really should've been...

Regardless, I moved on. Now that Elfilis knew of me, my ability to influence anything was shrinking. The problem though, is even if I asked him to stop fighting me on this and he agreed for some unfathomable reason, it wouldn't help. He wasn't taking my power on purpose, he was angry and frustrated with me and was instinctually supressing my access to his abilities. I... unfortunately only have myself to blame for this, and I fear I might not be able to get back into Elfilis's good graces.

There was a silver lining though, in that so long as he didn't know I could do something, I could perform that action with much less resistance. Not no resistance, but much less. Case in point: DNA. I actually couldn't see any of this shit until Ben used his Omnitrix to repair Elfilis's body, but afterwards his DNA became lit up like a christmas tree from my perspective. And, even better, I now had a good idea on what genes did what and how to change them. Elfilis, in his initial panic upon realizing I existed, crashed into a PokéMart stocked with TMs. Technical Machines are used to teach Pokémon moves that they can't learn naturally, and they apparently do this by making subtle changes to the recipient's genome. I got to see how it worked on Elfilis so now I could-

"How long have you been split from Elfilis?" Uh, shit. That was Luna again.

Uh, always? Long as I can remember.

"... I don't suppose you could be more specific?" I made a quick vibe check before answering. Anxiety was present, but she was mostly calm with the little rough spot I associated with determination.

I... have a better memory than Elfilis. Still damaged, but I can safely say I've been a thing since before we arrived in Equestria.

... Hurt? Betrayal? Shitfuck. Right.

Elfilis didn't hide me from you. I hid from him, and from everyone. It was only after Elfilis recovered from the Access Ark's attack that I accidentally let the cat out of the bag.

"What? Why would thou hide? What have you been doing this whole time?"

I... didn't think I would make things better if Elfilis knew about me. He's always been very emotional, and I believe that much of his anxiety and stress from before he became Elfilis was because of me. When he forgot about me... I... I chose to see it as a blessing.

Instead of the tragedy that it felt like. That it still feels like. To say nothing about how I now suspect that my meddling nature was the problem, as opposed to my mere existence.

In regards to what I've been doing... Well, nothing at first. I just filled in the blanks when Elfilis tried to use his powers without certain variables in mind, or otherwise tried to stop him from doing dumb shit like create Phantom Galacta Knight. I'm not always successful, obviously.

... I just had a bad idea.

Hey, can I ask you something? Or something of you, I suppose?

"... Depends on what you wish to ask." Trepidation and thoughtfulness. I always forget to turn of the vibe check when I'm not using it, but it's probably best to leave it on for now.

Alright. So, first I need to clear something up. Elfilis does not, I repeat, does not have an affinity for Dream Matter.

Incredulity. Disbelief. Anger.

No, really. His proficiency with it is a side effect of his main ability. He's Psychic, and he's told you so himself. What he doesn't realize is how important that little detail is. He isn't psychic as well as telekinetic, he's telekinetic because he's psychic. This holds true for every one of his abilities, all of them.

I didn't know how far I would need to go to not only convince her but to also drive the point home, but I wasn't done yet if the suspicion she gave off was any indication.

His body isn't even necessary, it's basically just a puppet or avatar for Elfilis to act through outside of his Dream. You always thought it was odd that his 'real' body could exist inside the Dream, right? This is why. When he 'sleeps' all he's doing is disconnecting from his main body and creating a new body in the Dream. He's just really attached to having a body, to the physical sensations it gives him. I fear he wouldn't know how to function without one. He really is a disembodied conscious entity, but his mind is so absurdly powerful that it can manipulate other forces. The easiest thing for him to control is his Dream though, as it is produced in ludicrous amounts by his own massive subconscious. Which is why I need... Why I want to ask you to train your own connection to Dream Matter. You know his greatest fear is being unable to be stopped, of being so powerful that no one can stop him from making mistakes. And right now, he is just that powerful.

The moment of silence didn't last as long this time, though it wasn't broken by Luna. On the contrary, it was only broken when I flinched at Luna's rough and hasty escape from the Dream world. Like I said, this was possibly a bad move on my part, but I believed that Luna was closest at the moment to being able to resist Elfilis. Toby was powerful, but relying on any Kirby is something I am reluctant to do. Twilight could very well grow to be as powerful as she would in canon, but much of canon has been altered in ways that couldn't be attributed to Elfilis's arrival, so I couldn't rely on her either. Right now, the only one I could rely on to help Elfilis move towards survival and happiness was myself, so I had work to do.

I believe I was talking about DNA? It's manipulation will be a useful tool in my mission, even if Elfilis's body has limited power over his true self. I couldn't use it to limit his powers and invalidate his greatest fear, nor could I pump up happy chemical production to encourage superficial mental health. But what I can do, as much as I know I will regret this, was increase his 'virility.'

I mean, producing offspring was short term anxiety and life-long happiness as far as I could tell.

Author's Note

The formatting of this chapter makes me angry but there doesn't seem to be a way to both fix it and keep all the little gimmicks I started using.

Also not as much of a funny haha chapter, and the next one will likely be mostly serious as well.

Next chapter is also the chapter I am trying to commit to making the last chapter of book 1, so it might be much longer than usual.

Hope you enjoyed, sorry for the wait. Again.