The moonlight beat down as the Courier took a bite out of the tentacle he’d carved off of the beast. It was almost comical to watch, as the tendril itself had to be at least a dozen feet long, give or take. It laid limply along the deck like a decapitated snake. Along the boat, many other members of the crew had taken to their own helpings of kraken. Mostly they devoured it raw, though a few did fry it up in a small cooking station below deck, enjoying the crisp, juicy meat as their beaks cleaved through it.

Six sat on a small stool as Seaspray stepped up beside the human, taking a seat of his own directly onto the deck. A wooden bowl, filled with monster pieces was snuggly gripped in one of his forepaws. The General snacked on the meal, chewing apart raw, thinly cut pieces of the beast’s main body. A weird looking organ that looked like a cross between a liver, a lung, and a stomach sack all in one sat in his dish. He impaled it, using his free claw like a makeshift fork, bringing it up to his mouth, and chowing down on it hungrily.

The Courier pressed his tongue into his cheek to wipe away any squid debris from it before speaking with his mouth partly full, “You know… after spending so much time with the ponies, I guess I just assumed everycreature here were all just vegetarians.”

“Hmm,” Seaspray mused, looking over to him. The birdhorse swallowed before continuing. “Oh right. Well, that’s our bird-half, and aside from kelp, there’s little else to eat under the sea.”

“Yeah, had a bit of fish back in town… say uh, that Storm King guy?” the Courier snapped his gloved fingers in thought. “He’s dead, right?”

“Deader than a doornail, as they say,” the General replied with a smirk, taking another bite of his food. “Why do you ask?”

“Who stopped him?” Six asked, before bringing up the tentacle and taking another bite out of it.

Seaspray smiled back, beaming in pride. “Why, that was the fine work of Twilight and the Elements of Harmony!”

“Wait, wait. So Twilight and her friends just… executed the guy?” Six questioned, chewing his food.

“Oh no!” Seaspray squawked, shaking his head. “Well, I can’t say for sure as I wasn’t there but from what I remember hearing, his death was a smidge—ahem—accidental and also terribly self-inflicted.”

Well, sorta added up. Ponies didn’t seem to be the killing type, especially the Elements, obviously. Not really a surefire way to do things… but it made a lot of sense.

“This place needs more executioners,” the Courier stated with a small chuckle, even though it wasn’t a joke.

“Perhaps so,” Seaspray nodded, looking out at the open waters, which reflected the stars and the moon above. He gazed out at it for a few moments, before turning. ”I must ask, how did you survive underwater for so long?”

“Rebreather,” the human replied, going to point at his mask, however the calamari slipped from his grip, with the human accidentally dropping the gigantic tentacle onto the deck. He gave a small sigh, bending over to grab it again as he further explained. “Got it from a guy you wouldn’t know. Built it into my helmet in case I ever needed it.”

“You’re a sharp engineer as well?” Seaspray questioned, raising his eyebrows, a hint of surprise in his voice.

The Courier just chuckled, wiping his hand on his jacket. “What, shocked? I dabble in a lot of things.”

“Port ho!” a sailor shouted, stirring the two from their conversation.

“I’d love to discuss more with you about killing our enemies and your crafting abilities, but I will have to tend to my crew,” Seaspray said, reaching out his claw to tap the human on the shoulder. “Feel free to leave the ship any time you want, Courier Six. After what you’ve done, you’re welcome in Seaquestria any time you want!”

The Courier nodded at that, adjusting his mask. “Yeah uh, thanks and all but… try to keep this thing a low profile type ordeal. I don’t wanna get mobbed by everyone every ten minutes.”

“As humble as you are brave, I take it?” Seaspray winked.

“If that’s how you wanna put it,” Six said, rising to his feet as the ship pulled into port. He stared down at the birdhorse for a moment, before giving a small salute. “Guess I’ll see you around, General.”

Seaspray returned the gesture, a faint smile on his beak. “I hope so, Courier Six!”

With a nod, the Courier was off. His eyes glimmered in the darkness as he stepped onto the dock. Several hippogriffs were already anxious for the ship’s return. Several hippogriffs, both young and old, were standing there too, anxious for the ship's return. All likely family of the sailors.

They stepped back upon seeing the human, who drug along a gigantic octopus tentacle in his right hand. Six simply picked up the tendril, and wrapped it around his shoulder. It was so big that it circled around his muscle a few times, like some type of fleshy, oversized piece of organic rope. The hooked suction cups dug into his jacket, but he ignored them as he made sure his rifle was strapped in place over his back. With that, he walked straight past the griffs, who gave him uneasy looks. Was likely due to the mask, or the fact he was carrying the limb of a gigantic, horrid monster.

He continued along, lost briefly in his own thoughts as the moon continued beating down onto the beach. He got a good ways away from the dock by this point, with sand crunching under his feet as he plodded along. Soon enough, he heard the sound of more sand being disturbed a few feet behind him.

“Six, you alright?”

The voice was youthful and immediately familiar to Six. He scanned his memory briefly, wading through the events of the past few days before it clicked! Terramar. Right!

The human stopped, looking over his shoulder for a moment, confirming to himself as he saw the young griff staring up at him. He then answered Terramar’s question with a question of his own. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You… just came back from a kraken hunting party?” Terramar pointed out as if it were obvious, with the griff cocking a brow in confusion. He even raised a foreclaw to point at the human, emphasizing his point. “Kind of a normal thing to ask!”

“Oh yeah uh… the crew took care of the thing,” the mailman shrugged. “You guys are gonna have a mighty fine feast once they haul what’s left of that slimy bastard up the trail.”

“Woah,” the young beakface exclaimed breathlessly. “You helped kill it, didn’t you? Did… did you get the killing blow?”

“It was rainy; hard to tell,” the human said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a soggy pack of cigarettes, and then sighed to himself, crushing the mushy box in his hands and jamming it back into his jacket. “Why are you so curious anyways?”

“You helped protect Seaquestria! Of course I’m gonna be a bit giddy!” Terramar excitedly pointed out. “...and also, you’re carrying the severed tentacle of a kraken!”

Six looked at said limb in question, before sighing dryly. “You can go talk to the other crewmates you know.”

“Oh Six come on, you’re my friend!” Terramar bemoaned.

The Courier looked down at the beakface, who gave him the puppy—er, horse(?) bird(???) eyes. The only sound was the calming ocean waves crashing into the beach.

The biped sighed. “Alright beakbrain, I’ll tell you the details, but don’t go around gossiping to your friends, alright?”

“I’m not a chatterbox like my sis, Six!” Terramar said with a chuckle. “Now, let’s get to the good stuff.”

The Courier took a seat on a nearby rock, and after taking a bite out of his calamari, he began to speak about his battle…

Terramar was with him on the beach for a good while. Even as a small festival broke out on the top of the mountain, he listened to Six’s retelling of the fight with a trace of awe. As he spoke, he paid attention to the feathered quadruped’s faint motions. He could see the glimmer of excitement in his eyes, and the faint tapping of his claws on the sand. Despite being a bit older than Scootaloo, the Courier got a similar childlike wonderment from him. One could even call it cute if they desired.

Even after the story had concluded, the two stayed on their perch. Six wondered if he needed to stand up soon as sitting on a rock totally wasn't making his right leg go numb. However, it looked like Terramar wasn't having any issues, his gaze cast out towards the sea. Every so often Six spotted Terramar sparing a glance over at his armored-clad body, and it made Six wonder if Terramar thought he was some gigantic action figure or pulp hero come to life. He might’ve chuckled if he was anyone else. As it stood, he only gave a faint smirk under his mask, not drawing any further attention towards himself. Six just let himself enjoy nature; the sounds of the ocean spoke better for the both of them anyways.

It was nice to finally relax—

"Seems I've finally found where you two wandered off to!"

The Courier craned his head to see Sky Beak landing on the sand. The older griff beamed at him; a smirk plastered on his beak. Six just shrugged, fully turning towards him, with Terramar doing the same. "Not like we were far."

"No, you weren't,” Sky Beak replied as he approached Terramar. He ruffled his son’s mane, much to the young beakface's chagrin. A groan escaped his beak as his father just continued giving him a good natured grin.

"Dad..." Terramar bemoaned, raising a foreclaw to gently swat at his father. Finally his father finally backed off, giving his son a small wink.

Sky Beak chuckled before turning to Six.

"Seaspray told me about what you did out there,” the hippogriff said, giving the human a smile. “Helped out a lot in the fight.”

“He sure did, dad!” Terramar exclaimed. “He just got done telling me—”

“I’d prefer we keep things a little quieter,” the Courier interrupted. He wiped some leftover condensation out of his goggles, holding back a minor yawn. He slumped down a bit, taking another bite out of his claimed kraken tentacle.

“Your actions helped feed Seaquestria,” Sky Beak replied, his voice a bit softer than his normally loud, jovial self. “Is there anything we could do for you?”

The Courier nodded silently for a moment, looking down at the sand. The waves softly collided with the beach, with the water coming close to the trio, before the tide receded once more. As the human watched on, he could see a small mound of sand moving. He stared at it intently, observing its every movement. At first, the mound continued to rustle, but as the human squinted at it, he noticed that something began to poke its way out of the loamy substance. The father and son duo watched as Six grabbed a small knife from under his jacket, leaned down, and in a strike as swift as a snake’s, impaled a palm-sized crab just as it emerged fully from the silt.

“For one,” the Courier paused, taking a bite out of the crab, with his teeth crushing through its shell with shocking ease. He crunchily chewed as he finally gave his reply. “Getting a better train schedule would help.”

Sky Beak smiled at this, giving a minor chuckle. “I suppose that could be arranged…”

He didn’t even really have time to process that he was dreaming.

Everything beforehand was ironically a blur. While normally the train schedule wasn’t the best in Seaquestria, a couple of requests from royalty made an exception (and hopefully in the future would change it.) to the rule. It wasn’t exactly a big train, just a small one that likely had been on standby from Equestria itself. Probably was made more for transporting luggage and supplies than people—or rather, ponies.

Still, it seemed reasonably comfortable. He was the only one in a small row of seats. Normally he wouldn’t really take such an offer, but he did wanna get home. The mail wouldn’t deliver itself, after all. So whenever he checked everything out, made sure he was alright, and denied a royal meeting with the queen (thanks for the gifts but no thanks!) he was in his natural state, passed out on a small bench inside an old, cramped train.

The dream itself wasn’t even easy to visualize. He had brief snippets of it thanks to a hazy, blurriness that had filled his dreamscape this time, unlike before where he had felt scatterbrained, for lack of a better term. It was a wonder he even knew what was happening!

The haze partly lifted whenever he saw he was in Ponyville, looking down a nondescript street of the town. Seemed empty, so he went to take a step and—no—now he was on the outskirts of the town. He blinked a few times, a dull, thudding sensation rattling around inside his skull.

“Goddamn!” he said, rubbing his lenses, as if that might help.

He paused, giving everything one last, long blink before he opened his eyes. Six stared out again, and tried to focus; tried keeping everything in line—as much as he could, anyway. The blurriness seemed to lift for a moment and then…

Ponyville was on fire.

“Oh shit!” he growled to himself, rushing down the hill towards the town.

His body felt weightless, and as he approached it, the buildings ahead distorted with each step. Sugarcube Corner shifted, becoming a small keep, and then featureless red brick house, and then a wooden shack, held together with small pieces of scrap tied with some rope and prayer. He could hear his footsteps and his heart beat in tandem as he continued approaching.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

His head pulsed, felt like he was gonna vomit. He choked down the bile as he saw a figure approaching him, bashing through the wall of a small, flame-engulfed cottage nearby. Looked like one of the piggish bastards Bray had. Yet, it shifted as well, being almost amorphous and shadow-like in the dream. As it got closer, the Courier could almost make out a Legionnaire charging him, raising a machete to slice him apart. Six brought up a fist to strike the beast. His arm felt like solid concrete as he raised it, attempting to strike in what felt like slow motion.

SHINK!

His own machete sliced the Legionnaire’s head apart at the jaw, spewing an obscene amount of blood. The bottom half of the man’s skull became like a geyser as it showered the mailman in the crimson liquid. Six blinked, and somehow that made his lenses clear as he stepped back. He was in the center of town now, with all of the buildings having changed. The corpse dropped to the floor as nothing but a pile of chewed up pieces of gore.

The inferno was surrounding him now, and the flames seemed to part briefly, allowing all sorts of beings to rush the human down. Some were the pigs he’d killed and some were even Legion, but there were more, much more, that Six hadn’t even encountered yet in Ponyville. They took shape inside the inferno and emerged with their eyes on him. Despite the flames, everything seemed almost shadowed, hazy, and damp. A variety of gangs approached: Fiends, Vipers, Powder Gangers. Not just that though, as even NCR were mixed in. Felt like everything in the Mojave was barrelling down onto him.

He raised his fists to fight, but everything hit him, a wave of bodies and darkness tackled him. He felt himself fighting. He swung and he shot and he punched and he jabbed and he sliced and he ripped and he gouged and he bashed and he struck and he burned and blasted and he maimed—

Felt like they were ripping and tearing at each other. Not just him, but the Legion were stabbing the NCR recruits, who unloaded their rifles into Fiends, who incinerated the Powder Gangers who blasted apart the Securitrons who—

He was punching the darkness itself now. He was throwing blow after blow into nothing but hitting something despite it all, as he felt his knuckles connect with flesh, or was it metallic armor, fabric perhaps? Maybe it was some mixture of the three. Maybe it was none of them. Nothing made sense, and each blow he could almost hear a different material impacting against his knuckles. Sometimes it was a thud! or a clang! and others it was a crunch! or a squelch!

He paused for a moment, trying to clear himself from it. He closed his eyes and growled to himself, forcing the darkness to become even darker as he felt a dozen hands grabbing at his body, tearing and ripping at his duster. They groped his mask, trying to yank it back, get to his head and—

…

…

…

“Blue Moon… you saw me standing alone…”

Sinatra’s voice faded into the background as he seemed to come to. The Courier’s hands were wrapped around someone's (or something’s) throat. Now though, he was slouched over a blackjack table, his gloves rested on the dash as he gulped down air. His brain hadn’t caught up yet, so he just remained there, deeply inhaling, and then exhaling, and then inhaling again.

He managed to choke out a single, exasperated “fuck…” as he leaned back in his chair, grabbing at his helmet, which somehow felt as if he were rubbing his bare scalp. The dull pain in his brain remained, but was duller now.

“Feel like I took half a ton of Jet.”

“Tell me about it!”

The Courier snapped up, seeing the Brain floating ahead of him, on the dealer’s side of the halfmoon shaped table. The casino he now found himself in was utterly empty, with the slot machines occasionally rolling themselves. Sinatra continued murmuring in the background, with the hustle of the nonexistent gamblers being just another strange, ignored portion of the nightmare.

With that, Six asked the question on his mind, “What the hell is even happening?”

“Take a moment to catch yourself, Six. Relax,” the Brain replied, tossing out a few cards.

“I’ll relax when you explain what the hell that was!” the Courier snapped, shoving the cards away.

The Brain somehow seemed disappointed for a moment, before it shrugged its nonexistent shoulders. “Overall, I know about as much as you on why this is happening… other than that, you seem to have forgotten some things.”

“Some things?”

“Yes. Many things, the most important being: what’s been in your dreams?”

“Like I’ve said last time; I’ve not been dreaming!” the body shouted.

“You’ve not remembered you’ve been dreaming,” corrected the Brain. “Remember, I’m tied to your subconscious… sort of, I th—WE think!”

“So what can you tell me?” Six asked.

“Well, yo—OUR dreams have been a lot more, oh what should I say? Fractured, perhaps?” offered the Brain.

The body took a few deep breaths. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that whenever we were positing about something else being up here with us, we weren’t exactly wrong. Though, I don’t know what caused it,” it brought up its stem to rub its nonexistent chin as it continued. “Feels like something external in a way, but also more internal this time compared to Luna’s visitation with us… Gah, we’ll have to make sure to study this when possible!”

“So what, split personalities?” the body offered.

“Perhaps, more than likely. That or something else we can’t diagnose yet! Hm… Blast it! If only we had an Auto-Doc!”

“After last time I don’t think—”

“You— or rather we’re right. We don’t need an Auto-Doc, not after last time. Perhaps we can just diagnose ourselves! Oh, maybe it’s so rare we get to name this one!” the Brain considered excitedly.

“That’s not helping either,” Six growled.

“Right! Right…” the Brain nodded. “Well, regardless of any horrific, undiagnosed medical anomalies, I think we should form a plan.”

“Yeah, go run around my mindscape beating my alternate personalities and false memories and God-knows-what-elses back into their proper place,” the Courier said, grunting as he stood up. He turned away from the Brain to examine the slot machines, which continued playing themselves. He placed his hands on his hips as he pondered.

The Brain floated over the table, hovering behind the body. “It might help with the headaches at least.”

“And the dreams…” the Courier paused, swallowing a lump of saliva. “I hope.”

The Brain vibrated. “Me too, for my—uh, OUR sake, anyways.”

“Alright, guess we should head out soon,” the Courier asserted. “Drop the barricades and try to get some sense back up here and… whatever else.”

Suddenly though, something made both of them pause their plans of a dreamscape field trip.

“That’s not a bad plan…”

A third voice rang out around the casino room, giving pause to the other two inhabitants. The air became a bit thicker, more tense as the voice continued.

“There’s just one problem in it…”

The Courier’s eyes widened as he heard the lighting of a cigarette. He hoped it wasn’t true, pleaded with everything he could that it wasn’t true. Wasn’t what he thought it was. Oh come on, don’t do this—!

The casino’s lights dimmed, and the Brain was floating, frozen in place. Six felt the bile boil up from his stomach again, and this time it began to burn the back of his throat as his headache returned. The dulled pain was sharp and jagged. It felt like an icepick was being shoved into his skull. His body felt like stone, yet he knew what he had to do.

He sighed.

He turned.

In the darkness of the box he could see a white and black checkered suit, slicked back hair and—

Ah shit!

Ah fuck!

Damn it!

He didn’t want it to be, but it was, even his Brain would agree!

The light from a lit cigarette seemed to be the only thing illuminating the once bright casino lounge now. Footsteps approached the two, and the third figure finally seemed to reveal itself. The haze of the dream was now fully gone, replaced by this hyper focused sensation. Six could feel the dryness of his mouth, the tightness of his blood vessels, the subtle movements his body made as it instinctively inhaled.

It was as if both the Courier and his Brain were running logistics to try and prove what stood in front of them wasn’t real!

Yet, regardless of their desires, the stunned mailman and his floating organ looked on, watching as he leaned against a roulette table, attempting the cool, suave pose. He was mere feet from the two by this point, with the room seeming to almost close in on all three of the beings inhabiting it now.

…

“You forgot to account for the wildcards,” Benny said with a smirk.

There was a tense silence for a solid few seconds. Everything was so completely and utterly muted that it’d be possible to hear a pin drop.

…

…

…

The silence was destroyed when the Courier pulled out the Ranger Sequoia and shot him.

And shot him.

And shot him.

And shot him.

And shot him…

Author's Note

A massive thank you to everyone who has continued to support and read this fic! Thank you for 500 likes, and I hope you guys enjoy everything to come! I have a lot more in store!