Well, I found Rainbow Dash. I mean Rainbat Dash, rather. Long story: begin.

My sleep was uneventful: every time I started to dream, I cancelled it out with magic. This was not exactly the best plan, however. I'm pretty tired this morning because I didn't get hardly any REM sleep. I think the potential of suffering with Luna's torture would have been a better choice. I might take a nap later while Luna is sleeping, when she's less likely to be doing the dreamtrotting thing (ironically enough, it's easier for her to do her job during the evening when she can nap again with an already-rested mind).

I did go back into the secret passageway and spied on her, but there was nothing strange. She was asleep (of course), and this time she was alone in the room and sleeping on the big bed like a normal pony would.

Then I headed down into the Crystal Caverns.

It's hard to describe the Crystal Caverns if you've never been in them, Journal. I've read that they maintain a symbiotic link with the Crystal Kingdom, which is possibly how the Sisters knew Sombra had returned so immediately. They're definitely pretty, but it's a mesmerizing maze of color and reflection. The crystals here grow and change over time so it's really easy to get lost even if you've been here before.

I carefully made a mental map of my surroundings using echolocation magic to get a better picture, but after a few minutes of doing so, I magically detected a signal I hadn't sent. I figured I must have awoken and confused the hay out of a bat, but then I realized it might be a nightwing and I grew nervous.

The problem with the Crystal Caverns isn't that it's easy to find you—as I wrote, it's practically a living maze. The problem is that it's easy to see you. You can hide, but other ponies will know you're somewhere in the caverns: your reflection will pop up all over the place. I tried to duck down into a safe place, but I wasn't having any luck finding a nonreflective nook. If it were a batpony, they must already have known I were here.

At least the trick works in both directions.

It didn't take me long to pinpoint the other figure, and it was definitely a pony of some sort. Some shade of azure, and the rainbow mane was unmistakeable.

"Rainbow Dash!" I called out without thinking. This may have been incredibly stupid, but I was very glad to see her.

Then I took off into the air and immediately faceplanted painfully into rock. "Ah, yes. The wing," I grumbled, picking myself up.

I might have been happy to see her, but I wasn't so happy to hear her. The screeching sound she made echoed throughout the cavern. For a moment I thought she wouldn't be able to locate me, but I underestimated the echolocation thing. I couldn't figure out where she was, and then something large and pony-shaped slammed into my back knocking me down.

It took several seconds of pushing to turn myself face-up, and by that time her tongue had encircled and closed my muzzle tightly. She looked feral, completely out of control, but also a little afraid.

"Mmm! Mmmphbm dnnnf!" I said, though I'm not sure if she'd have understood me even with my mouth open.

Rainbat Dash lunged for my shoulder, and I deflected the blow with a small magical projection. I realized I had to shut her up quickly before anypony discovered us, and then I had an idea.

In addition to acting as a badging mechanism, the wingclips probably serve to keep nightwings from transforming. Maybe if I applied enough pressure to the exact same spot...? I focused my telekinesis on the tops of her bat wings, and dug in hard.

For a moment I was afraid I'd break her bones, but she shuddered atop me and her wings shifted back to the feathered variety before my eyes. It's a surprisingly fast transformation. A moment later, and she was leaning over my face with watery eyes.

"T-twilight? Is that you?" she asked, her voice more than a little horse. It wasn't the vampony thing, either. She was clearly thirsty.

"Oh thank Celestia," I said, relaxing.

"My wings hurt..." she complained. I was still holding them tightly.

"Rainbow, I need you to fight the transformation. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

She stared dumbly at me for a moment, then the lights went on in her eyes. "Oh! Yeah, yeah of course," she said. I released her wings and she collapsed atop me in exhaustion.

We lay like that for a few minutes. I didn't want to move her, and secretly, it felt wonderful to hold her in my legs. I gently petted her mane, and eventually she blushed and pulled free, flopping down beside me on the rocky floor.

"Something really bad has happened," she finally said, her voice choked up.

"Oh no! Are any of our friends hurt?!" I asked, frightened of the answer. I'm not sure who else would injure them, though, and I had a hard time believing Dash would hurt anypony close to her—vampony or not.

"Huh? No, I don't think so," she said, and turned away from me. "I think... I think I... (mumble mumble)"

"Um, I didn't quite catch that. Are you talking about being a vampony?" I asked.

"No, but I'm... embarrassed, okay? Can you close your eyes for a moment?"

"How will that help?" I wondered.

"Please," she begged.

I closed my eyes.

She scooted away from me and whispered something I heard this time. "Twi, I think I might be, um, a... lesbian."

I opened my eyes. "What? But you kept saying you weren't a lesb—ohhh, I get it now," I said, as the psychology finally clicked. "But, that's it?"

"Hay, this is a big deal for me, okay?" she said. "I've never been able to own up to it. I just kept telling myself all those times fooling around with Applejack and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy and the two times with Rarity were, like, flukes. Someday I'd marry a Wonderbolt stallion and it would be awesome and I'd have a family..."

"Look, I didn't know anything about, er, lesbianism when this nightmare started," I said gently, turning toward her. She lay on her side, facing away from me, about five meters away. "But there's nothing bad about it. You can still have foals, I think, at least with magic or surrogacy or whatever."

"Aren't you ashamed of me?" asked Rainbow Dash.

"What? Why would I be?" I asked.

"Because I'm not awesome enough," she said, turning to face me. Her cheeks were wet.

I stood, walked over to her, sat, and pulled her into an embrace in my lap. "Everything about you is awesome, Rainbow Dash. Nopony is going to judge you for who you're attracted to."

She sniffled and coughed. "You might be right, I dunno. It just feels awful to have hid it from all my friends."

I nodded. "Well, I'm certainly not your most perceptive friend, but I actually have a suspicion the others already know."

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Oh. Great," she said.

We waited a moment in silence, then I spoke. "I don't know what I am, you know," I offered.

"What does that mean?"

"Well, I don't know if I'm like, a lesbian, or straight, or bisexual or whatever. I know this madness has made me share experiences with my friends that have been completely new to me," I said. "I felt like I might be falling in love with Applejack, for one."

"Oh. R-really? So, you like girls too?" she asked, her ears perking up.

"Well, again, I don't really know. I'm just Twilight Sparkle, and that's as far as I can describe myself sexually. The vampony stuff has made things complicated, so this was bad timing for me to finally come of age," I said.

"Yeah, I know the feeling. Since I failed at not getting bitten, I've been feeling lots of weird things. I couldn't even think straight before you helped me change back," she said. "When this bat thing is taking my body, I think I'm starting to feel things for stallions, too, and I don't know if I should. Like, maybe it's not 'me' to feel that way."

"Yeah, well, I dunno," I said, and I pulled her in close for a hug.

"What's been going on? I basically arrived at Canterlot, talked to the wrong guard, and ended up getting bitten. I escaped and came down here because I remembered you talking about the caves, but then the vampony stuff took over and that's all I can remember right now," she said.

"Wow, it's hard to even explain, so much has happened. I think all our friends are with the Order now."

"The Order?"

"The Order of Spring. It's not supposed to be a group, so I guess it's some kind of force or maybe a pony? I don't really know. Applejack's the only one I know who hasn't been compromised yet, but she was coltnapped more than a week ago right after you last saw her, so I don't hold out much hope," I said. "In the meantime I've been molested by Pinkie Pie, Luna, my parents, even the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Raped, if you want to get technical."

Rainbow Dash held a hoof over her mouth. "Oh Twilight, my Sun. I'm so, so sorry," she whispered.

"No, it's okay," I said. "For some reason it hasn't really been traumatic. I feel so good when other ponies dote on me like that, even though it's sick and wrong. It's taken all my strength to keep from joining with the rest of them."

"So that's it, then. It's just us?" she asked, grimacing.

I shook my head. "No. Zecora and Pinkie are vamponies, but they're kinda-sorta playing both sides. Spike's still with us, and so is Celestia. Hopefully Spike finds a way to get to the Crystal Kingdom, because he can rally the populace to overthrow the guard and get Celestia out of imprisonment," I said. "We need to go public with the vampony stuff as soon as possible. It might start a war, but it's our only hope at restoring sanity at this point."

"I don't want our friends to be on the other side of this," said Rainbow Dash, her eyes tearing up. "This isn't fair! You never did anything to deserve this."

I sighed. "Maybe I did, I don't know."

"Don't say that, Twi—wait, did you say the Cutie Mark Crusaders raped you?"

I grinned sheepishly. "I know that sounds ridiculous, but, yeah. They also did this," I said, and extended my left wing.

"Oh, horsefeathers," said Dash. "You can't fly with a wing like that." She paused for a moment in thought. "Twi, how are they?"

"Who?"

"Our friends. Are they suffering?" she asked. "Is Scootaloo okay? Aside from raping you, I mean."

I nodded. "She seems fine. Everypony with the Order seems as happy as they are perverted, which is 'very'," I said.

"Well, maybe it won't be so bad," said Rainbow Dash. "I mean, I'm not giving up! I'm just saying, y'know, maybe there's a silver lining if we're really lucky or something."

"I've thought a lot about that," I said. "I don't want Spike to be fucking Rarity before he even turns twelve years old, that's just insane."

Rainbow Dash blushed deeply at my language.

I continued, "...and I don't want to have sex with my parents and my brother, or be led around on a leash, or have my horn cut off. There's maybe a small part of me that wants it, but there's no way turning everypony in Equestria into psycho sex-crazed perverts will not end badly for the entire nation."

"Did they, um, pop you?" she asked, wincing.

"Hmm? I don't understand."

"Your cherry, I mean," she asked.

"Oh. Oh! No, no, that's still intact. I haven't been penetrated by anything big, like a hoof or a penis or even a horn," I said. "Not sure it matters, really. A hymen is a hymen, and it doesn't convey any information other than sexual inexperience, and that's something I'm not too proud of at the moment."

"Twi, do you, um, like me?"

"Rainbow Dash, I love you," I said with a smile.

"R-really?!" she gasped.

"Yes really. You're one of my best friends, and you're as awesome as they come," I argued. "If the situation were different, with the pony I've become over the past two weeks... I think I'd want to be intimate with you."

Rainbow Dash's wings exploded open, and this time I knew what it meant.

"You know, even though the cherry thing isn't important, you probably don't want to be forced into losing it. That would seriously suck," she said. "And who knows how badly they'll treat you if they catch you."

I paused for a moment, and had a thought. (I suspect Rainbow had the same one.)

"Well... would you like to, you know, do the honors? I'd rather it be with you," I said, holding back tears.

"Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh, Twi, I um, I'm not going to take advantage of you, period. I just can't do that," she said.

"I want it. I want to share it with you," I said.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded. "Sure as sugar, as AJ might say. I'm not going to let these bastards have the satisfaction of breaking my hymen. Er, I'm assuming that brings satisfaction somehow? I'm really not clear on the social aspects of the biology."

Rainbow Dash laughed. "You're such a cute dork," she said, and leaned in against me.

"Wait," I said, after our muzzles touched. "Come with me."

No space for notes this time. I have too much to write about already.