”Sideralis, you have to understand something about Scootaloo… she has to be one of the kindest ponies you will ever meet… just like Fluttershy.” As Twilight Sparkle spoke, she walked down the hallway, passing open doors after looking into them. “Unlike Fluttershy, Scootaloo is a scrapper. It doesn’t matter that she’s crippled… she’s been disabled her whole life and that’s never stopped her before, it certainly doesn’t stop her now. She fights to stay upon her hooves and she does everything she can to bring comfort to the patients here.”

Moving on the other side of the hall, Mjölna scanned open doorways and opened doors that were shut.

“Still, I can’t believe that Scootaloo would attack another pony in her condition. She gives too much of her own self.” Twilight Sparkle heaved a sigh, thankful that the violence seemed to be over. “Just like Fluttershy.”

“Twilight!”

Halting, Twilight Sparkle turned and looked towards Mjölna, who was standing in front of an observation access room. Twilight’s lip curled back from her teeth, making her look feral and dangerous. Sideralis watched everything in silence, still held aloft in Twilight’s telekinesis.

As they moved through the observation room, Sideralis could see another room beyond, visible through a sheet of glass. The observation area was dark, covered in clipboards, and papers were scattered all over the floor.

And then, in the room beyond, Sideralis saw her. A dingy red mare, her pelt the dark colour of rust, her soft electric blue mane, and the cotton candy pink stripe. She stood still, unmoving, her one eye was open, unblinking. Sideralis feared they were too late. Something was sticking up out of the back of her neck, he couldn’t make out what it was.

“Mustang!” Twilight shoved her way past Mjölna, who was still carrying the strange stallion, and barreled through the doorway. “Hang on! We’re here to help you!”

Twilight, now standing at Mustang’s side, stood there, baffled, unable to say or do anything. Mustang was frozen. Her eye remained unblinking. She didn’t even appear to be breathing. Twilight prodded the mare, shaking her head, her lips moving as she said unheard words.

Taking a step backwards, Twilight let out a pained cry and then said, “Mustang, what did they do to you?” Twilight reached out with a field of telekinesis and yanked out the strange object sticking out of Mustang’s neck. She held it up to her eyes and looked at it.

“This… this looks like the weird crystals we found inside of the head of those infected monsters… the dragons… no… how can this be?” Twilight looked at Mustang, who still did not move. “Mustang, assessment!”

The frozen mare did not move.

“Sideralis… do that thing you did!” Twilight commanded.

Letting out a little cough, Sideralis looked at Mustang, not even knowing what to do, he had no idea how he had done what he had done last time. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and then said, “Mustang, please, wake up!”

The effect was immediate. Mustang blinked, then shuddered, then collapsed to the floor in the way that only a five hundred pound piece of living machinery could. The impact of her body cracked the tiles and made the whole room shudder.

Sideralis was mystified.

“Stout, report!” Twilight said as she burst into the room. Twilight looked around, several ponies were present in the emergency room. There was a group of doctors and nurses around Scootaloo, hard at work.

Twilight Sparkle stepped aside as Mustang was hauled into the emergency room by Queen Chrysalis, who had arrived and come in through the back entrance. Mjölna placed the unknown stallion upon a reinforced examination table and then backed away.

“Scootaloo has lost a lot of blood, her scapula and several ribs are broken. The bones are so brittle… they just shattered. Fragments tore through her lung and maybe into her heart. We don’t know yet.” Stout hung her head after she spoke.

Twilight ground her teeth together as her surviving eye became shiny with tears.

“We have no blood, no supplies! Early this morning, when the hospital was taken over, they took all the blood in the bank saying that it might be needed later,” a nurse said in a panicked voice.

“Alicorns might be universal donors!” Chrysalis shouted as she pointed at Sideralis. “You equines have eight blood types and I bet that Sideralis is compatible with all of them!”

“But we don’t know that!” a doctor replied.

“So, do a test for compatible blood types… look, I’m willing to stake my reputation that Sideralis will be a universal donor… just check!” Chrysalis snapped.

“Even if he is a good match, we need at least ten to fifteen litres of blood,” the nurse said. “Scootaloo keeps losing blood, we have her leg stabilised but she is hemorrhaging on the inside.”

“You little ponies have about twenty litres of blood, I’m betting that Sideralis has thirty or more… he’s an alicorn and he’s tough… I’m betting that you could bleed him considerably and he’d survive it.” Chrysalis turned and looked at Sideralis. “Feel like saving a life?”

Sideralis gave a weak nod.

“Get him in a bed and start drawing blood… we’ll run some tests… Stout, look after Sideralis and let’s get this process going! Get moving, we have a pegasus to save, ponies!” Chrysalis stomped her hoof upon the tile floor. “I need to get prepped for surgery! Excuse me!”

Looking up, Sideralis could see Stout looking down at him, her face solemn. When she held up the rather large looking needle, he cringed, feeling afraid for a moment, but then remembered that his fear of needles wasn’t even a real fear, was it? It was part of a collection of false memories, things that made him who he was in the Unity Web.

“Try not to be scared,” Stout said in a reassuring voice. She lowered her head, got close, and planted a soft, quick kiss on Sideralis’ nose. “Okay, big stick… no, no… no, don’t squirm… there we go, see, that wasn’t so bad… just a big needle right into the jugular vein.”

Sideralis allowed his head to sink down into the pillow. He didn’t want to think about the enormous needle jammed into his neck. He stared up at Stout and the ceiling tiles above her. Somewhere a machine beeped. His ears were still ringing a bit from earlier; the explosions had had been quite loud and all of today so far had been torture on his ears. He felt dizzy and lightheaded.

“You asked me what Princess Luna promised me,” Stout whispered as she continued to collect blood from Sideralis’ neck. “Do you want to know?”

“Yes,” Sideralis replied, the terror of the day finally settling into his mind. He felt a rising sense of panic and it was only Stout’s close presence that kept from a complete freak out. He felt her stroking him; it was comforting and made the situation a little more bearable.

“Princess Luna promised me that the pony that I fell in love with would help me save lives… and that he would be the pony that I would want to spend the rest of my life with.” Stout swapped out blood collection bags and then gave Sideralis a little nuzzle. “Right now, you are helping me save the life of a dear friend… thank you.”

“You’re welcome…” Sideralis didn’t know how to respond.

“I might be a machine made for war, but I am a nurse first and foremost. I can do what needs to be done in a fight, but I would rather save lives… I volunteered to be a test subject so that lives could be saved, not ended.” Stout took a deep breath. “Something tells me that Scootaloo is going to live because of you… and when this is all done and over, I’m going to make sure that I give you some kind of big special thank you.”

“I feel dizzy, Stout… and weak,” Sideralis said.

“I know… I’m sorry… I’m taking a lot more from you than I should, but I think you’ll be fine… just close your eyes… stay calm, and try to stay still.” Stout swapped out the blood bags again and then blinked away tears. She was taking far too much and she knew it.

“I feel cold, Stout… real cold.”

“I’ll get you a nice warm blanket in a moment,” Stout promised, “just as soon as I’m done. I’ll get it out of the blanket warmer so it will be extra snuggly.” Stout looked down at the jugular extraction and watched as enormous gushes of blood filled the blood bag, each gush flowing in time with Sideralis’ heart beating. The blood flow was starting to slow down.

“I’m scared Stout… I can’t feel my legs or my wings… I feel so heavy…”

Beneath her, Sideralis went limp and fell silent. Stout blinked away tears and continued with her gruesome and dangerous task of getting as much blood as possible.

Clouds. The world was made of clouds. The sun was shining from somewhere, the sky was filled with light, but there was no sun to be seen. Sitting not far away was a familiar sky blue filly with a rainbow coloured mane and tail.

Sideralis made a realisation; he knew who the filly was now.

“Rainbow Dash?” Sideralis crept forward on the cloud, approaching the edge where the filly sat. There was a vast gulf of blue sky, and beyond, far beyond, there was a city made of clouds. On the other side of the vast expanse of blue, two ponies sat waiting, waiting for Rainbow Dash to cross over.

“Yeah?” the filly, sniffling, turned her head and looked up at Sideralis.

The realisation was crushing—Rainbow wanted to cross over to the city made of clouds—but could not because her body was being kept alive inside of a changeling pod. Sideralis sat down beside her and stared at the two ponies across the way.

“Rainbow Dash… you can’t cross over,” Sideralis said to he filly, “there are ponies working to heal you… you’re very sick… Twilight wants to revive you.”

“Twilight?” Rainbow Dash blinked a few times and leaned over onto Sideralis.

“There is a war of sorts going on… Twilight needs you—”

“Twilight is in trouble?” Rainbow Dash sucked in a deep breath and then began to squirm. “How do I help her?”

“I don’t think that you can right now, you’re kinda stuck… but I think you can be healed. I don’t know very much, I’m sorry,” Sideralis replied.

“Twilight needs me!” Rainbow Dash looked at the two ponies across the way and then she stared down at her own forehooves. “Sorry Mom, sorry Dad, you’re going to have to wait a little longer, Twilight needs me.”

“Twilight loves you,” Sideralis said.

“Of course she does, I’m her very bestest friend.” Rainbow Dash looked up and gave Sideralis a sad smile. “Twilight needs me.”

“No, Rainbow, she loves you… she thinks that you are her soulmate, which is why she is working so hard to revive you.” Sideralis wrapped his wing around the small pegasus filly beside him and held her close.

“What?” Rainbow Dash asked in a stunned voice.

“She loves you.” Sideralis began to feel awkward.

“Twilight… you egghead!” Rainbow Dash shouted, her voice echoing in a strange way off of the clouds. The pegasus filly facehoofed, making a hollow sounding conk when her hoof connected with her forehead.

“I take it that you don’t love Twilight in that way?” Sideralis asked.

“No! Are you kidding? Dick is awesome! I like dick… I mean, I really like dick! I like dicking. I like sitting on dicks. I like it when dicks are shoved into me. Twilight is dickless… how could she mess this up?” Rainbow Dash let out a whimper and began to shake her head. “She’ll be crushed… she’ll be so embarrassed! You can’t tell her if you see her!”

Sideralis began to feel very, very awkward.

“I miss dicking… I’ve been in this place so long…”

Even though he knew that Rainbow Dash wasn’t a filly, it was still very awkward to hear a filly talking about dicks. Sideralis took a deep breath and part of him began to wonder what his mother might have to deal with in dreams. Probably lots of dicks.

“I like pegasus dicks… earth pony dicks scare me,” Rainbow Dash said in a low voice.

“There’s a difference?” Sideralis asked.

“Well, duh, of course there is a difference. Pegasi have to be streamlined to fly through the air… so they have small junk. Earth ponies have enormous dicks… I don’t know why. Never been with a unicorn, so I don’t know anything about unicorn dicks.” Rainbow Dash paused. “I couldn’t imagine making a rainboom with a set of testicles hanging between my legs… slapping around in the slipstream… ouch. It’s bad enough when my teats get windburned.”

This was not a conversation that Sideralis wanted to have.

“Out of all of us, only Twilight and Fluttershy were virgins. The rest of us had social lives and we got laid regularly. But we couldn’t talk about it around Twilight and Fluttershy. I tried talking to Fluttershy about dick once and she fainted. She was out for hours.”

The things that his mother must endure—Sideralis chewed on his lip, he was determined to stick this dream out. Rainbow Dash needed him. Right now, she was animated and alive, not sobbing and depressed. She sounded happy, hopeful, she seemed better than she was the first time he had met her.

“I feel really bad for Twilight… I could never feel the same way about hoochie coochie as I do about dick. I mean, when you see a big throbbing hard on, it makes you feel good. It lets you know that you’re desireable… it’s like right there and you know the stallion is interested in you. But you look at a mare’s spunk dungeon… how are you supposed to know what a mare is feeling or if she is happy to see you? I mean… they’re just piss flaps… just a big ol’ plate of crotch cobbler… that was always more of Applejack and Rarity’s sort of thing.” Rainbow Dash fell silent for a moment and then shuddered. “I don’t know if they ever gobbled each other’s fuck folds, I think they might have… they did sleep in a bed together during one of Twilight’s sleepovers and then anytime we were off on an adventure together, they always called dibs on each other when a bed had to be shared. I dunno.” Rainbow Dash shrugged.

Sideralis sat in stunned silence.

“Poor Twilight… she needs me… and when I wake up, I’m gonna hurt her.” Rainbow Dash heaved a heartbroken sigh. “I wonder if I could fake it. Probably not. What do I do?”

“How should I know?” Sideralis asked.

“Well, you shouldn’t go into a pony’s dreams unless you’re there to help them with their problems,” Rainbow Dash replied.

“I have no control over what happens or where I go.” Sideralis wished his mother was here. He had questions. Rainbow Dash needed help. Sideralis realised that he was a poor substitute for his mother, Princess Luna. He was useless. He had been useless all day.

“This is gonna suck when I wake up.” Rainbow Dash kicked at a protruding bit of cloud fluff with her right front hoof. “I’ll stick it out though, Twilight needs me.”

Hating himself, Sideralis’ curiousity got the better of him. “So… what is so wrong with earth pony dicks?” His head jerked skywards and he looked up at the blue overhead, he could not risk looking down at Rainbow Dash.

“Well…” Rainbow Dash replied, “earth pony dicks are just too big… pegasi are little… we’re skinny and everything about us is small… including our foal holes… now, there is a bit of wisdom among the pegasi that if you get stretched out down there, and you fly fast, you’ll start flapping around like a weather windsock… when I rainboom, I don’t want my cunny curtains flapping out behind me like an advertisement banner saying ‘go eat at Pony Joe’s’ or something. As it is, the wind already tugs on what I have something fierce… which is why I’m never having foals. I gotta stay trim down there so I can be the world’s fastest flier.”

“That makes sense.” Sideralis nodded his head, swallowed, and felt a deep pang of regret for letting his curiousity get the better of him.

“So… have you walked into a pony’s wet dream yet?” Rainbow Dash asked.

What? Sideralis felt panic deep inside. He wanted no part of those. Nope. He shuddered at the very thought. He looked down at the filly beside him with a horrified expression upon his face. How many wet dreams did his mother walk through?

He had experienced several wet dreams when he was in the Unity Web… a dream generated by his mother. Sideralis almost barfed off of the edge of the cloud. He felt queasy.

“Since you appeared in my dream a while back, I’ve been dreaming more. I think part of me has woken up. Now that I know that Twilight needs me, I’m okay with all of this. Mom and Dad will just have to wait. I can’t cross over when somepony needs me… so, uh, thanks for helping me I guess. If Princess Luna ever tries to grade you for this, I’ll put in a good word. I had a really good dream this one time about Soarin’, and I just know that Princess Luna had to be behind that one… it was so good… I’m starting to remember more of my life. I think you woke up part of my mind. I want to live again… I want to be dicked again!”

Author's Notes:

Yes, Sideralis will eventually stumble into various wet dreams of other ponies.

This is a horror story after all.