???

Deep underground, miles away from Ponyville, in a dark cave only lit up by a soft glowing purple crystal in the centre of the chamber, there lay dozens of foals. Scattered all across the cave, each of them sleeping. However they were by no means sleeping soundly. They squirmed and whimpered, desperately trying to open their eyes but they were sealed shut by the forces keeping them in an endless cycle of nightmare after nightmare.

In the middle of the room, a Nightmare Fuel stood, watching over the foals with a sadistic smile. As one foal began to fund the strength to open his eyes the Nightmare reached a tendril over and gently stabbed it into the colts back, filling him with more darkness to continue the painful and mentally scarring experience. Nightmare laughed at the colts attempt to regain control.

"Foolish little pony. The more you fight, the more it hurts...and the more enjoyable it is for me to watch." He laughed as he sat back in a stone throne he had carved as he waited for the foals to be fully possessed.

"You've been busy." A dark voice echoed as a version of Xram appeared. "You Nightmares are getting smarter and smarter, using children as soldiers is a smart move. Not for their fighting ability, but because it will force those fighting them to hesitate or not attack at all."

Nightmare just rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Way to point out the obvious Xram."

"You shouldn't be making remarks like that to me, I could destroy you in an instant."

"I think we both know that I am the stronger one here. You Xrams act all high and mighty when the string versions of you are far and few, and you ain't one of them. The only Xram I have to fear is True Xram. Even then I can't fear him, because Nightmares do not feel fear, and no amount of darkness or amount of power could ever cause one to feel fear, it's written in the coding of the universe and cannot be changed, even by True Xram." Nightmare countered while aiming a tendril at the Xram clone who remained silent until the tendril was pulled away.

"You've got a lot of never, it's good to see that not all Nightmares are mindless drones."

"None of us are." Nightmare said disinterested.

Xram looked to him confused. "What do you mean."

"Nightmares don't fight to the best of their ability to lower the expectations of our enemies, so when we do fight at our full strength and wit, they are underprepared and vulnerable to attack. Each Nightmare is intelligent, powerful and experienced. We just don't feel the need to overcompensate."

As Xram was about to speak again, one of the foals started to get to her hooves slowly, all of her colour drained and her eyes that of a Nightmare and four tendrils beginning to sprout out of her back. "Looks like they're almost done."

Outside of Ponyville, Ashley's POV

"Shhh, shhh, it's ok, it's ok." I spoke softly as I cradled the possed colt in my arms as he squired and wriggled in pain. I gently brushed his check, causing him to calm down slightly. Meanwhile Symph was slowly reaching in to take the Nightmare out of the young pony, being careful not to damage the colts body and mind in the process.

Rainbow was Keelung watch in case any Nightmares tried to stop the process.

I just kept holding the young colt in my arms, soothing him and nurturing him like a mother would her child. Turns out that came naturally to me, Symph had briefly told me that it was due to my unusually high level of maternal instincts that I was born with, it just took a while to come out. I'm just glad this didn't involve breast feeding or something, this was already a really weird situation for me and I did not want that sort of thing to happen. God it would have been so awkward if Symbol stumbled across us and saw something like that.

Symph finally grew a few small tendrils and grabbed onto the foals stomach before pulling, the colt remained still as the Nightmare tried to keep itself in but ultimately failed as Symph was both stronger and faster. When the Nightmare was pulled out it lunged at me only to be kicked away by Rainbow. It his it's back against a tree and formed into its orb before it was crushed under a black mallet tendril created by Symph. "Sometimes I love being a symbiote, you can turn your body into anything."

"But the downside?" I asked.

"I have to take energy from others." He replied simply, a small from on his face as he answered.

I frowned too before looking to the sleeping colt in my arms. Suddenly, an image came to me. It was of Symbol, he was sitting in some kind of chair with a baby Screwball in his arms...there were tears sliding down his cheeks. The image then left and I shook my head, it must have been observation Haki acting up again, it had been happening the entire time I'd been here, armament Haki I can weild fine, maybe a bit of Conquers Haki, but observation was a bit difficult. I could still use it in a fight, it just acted up every now and then, he'll so did my fire powers.

"Alright I've had enough for today, let's get that kid back to his parents so we can go home." Rainbow said before taking the foal in her hooves and flying off towards an unknown location.

"I took a DNA sample and found out he was from Appaloosa." Symph explained as he picked up the shards of the Nightmares orb.

"You can do that?" I asked as I got to my feet while brushing myself off.

"That's a thing about symbiotes, we work our way into our hosts very DNA, so we know everything about them." He turned to me with a slight disgusted but amused look on his face. "Even their...fantasies."

A huge blush came to my face as I laughed nervously and rubbed the back of my neck. "Don't judge me please..."

"Oh I'll judge you plenty..." He flicked my nose with a tendril before using his own teleport technique to leave the area.

I shook the unsavoury thoughts out of my head and wiped the drop of blood from my nose before turning my lower half into fire to fly off towards the cabin.

Author's Notes:

Hope you enjoyed, can someone actually comment tnis time