"Nurse Red Heart, leave us," Luna said to Red Heart. "Now."

"But your Highness-"

"I said leave," Luna said in a tone that had the undertone of Don't disobey me unless you want to be six feet under. And it got through, as Red Heart bowed.

"Of course, Highness," she said before leaving.

Once she was gone, I said, "I thought we agreed you would stay in Canterlot."

"I lied," Luna said with a chuckle. "Besides, we were already on our way here when you said that." She then sighed. "I imagine you want to know how long it's been?"

"A little, yeah," I said. "Not to mention what you've been doing in that time."

Luna chuckled. "I can imagine why," she said before sighing again. "Best as I can tell, it's been a week since you and your allies tried to liberate the Minotaur capitol. We found you nearly dead a day after we arrived, four days ago. Most wanted to make sure you were dead with a sword through the throat, but I was able to convince them that, if we kept you restrained, we could gain intelligence as to the city's defenses to use in our attack on it. Of course, I had my own reason, too."

"Why does that not surprise me," I say.

"Perhaps because we know each other so well," Luna said. "And as for what I've been doing, I gave Nightmare your idea, saying it was mine, and we joined minds last night. Her body still exists, but it now has me as the mind, albeit with its autonomy from before, so that Steel does not grow suspicious."

"I suppose that's good," I said, standing up and jerking my arms to break the cuffs. "And by the way, Red Heart was right in that I'm stronger than most Earth ponies."

"I can see that," Luna. "If you are curious as to your weapons, they are being held and guarded."

"I'm fine with that," I say. After all, I am a weapon. "I imagine once I give you the intel, the other soldiers here will try to kill me?"

"Most likely," Luna said. "You may need to engineer a breakout of yourself."

I chuckled. "No problem there." I then reach down to my thigh compartment, which pops out, and grab an ear piece, tossing it to Luna. "So we can keep in touch," I say as sh catches it. "Goes in your ear."

"I don't remember you having these when we searched you, and we did find those compartments," Luna said, examining the ear piece before her eyes widened. "How did you get it?"

"I. . . just think of one, and I reach for one, and there it is," I say. "Why?"

"Impossible," Luna muttered, though I could hear it with my helmet. "There is only three in recorded history."

"Three what," I ask. "If I'm a danger, I ought to know, and I do mean an actual danger, not to one faction, but the entire planet."

"It is a danger depending only on who has the gift," Luna said. "As you heard, there are only three in recorded history," she said. "The three would be what I call dream masters, and it explains how you are able to equal me in the dream world."

"And just what are dream masters?" I ask

"Individuals who are capable of, quite literally, making their dreams come true," the lunar alicorn said. "I am one, Starswirl the Bearded was the second, and, hard as it is to believe, Discord is the third. There are more, I should know, it is my job to monitor their numbers, but we are the three most powerful and well known, even if not for that ability. It is a rare talent. There being one made always coincides with a great threat to the world. Whether they are the threat or not depends on them. They are able to make anything a reality, but the larger it is, or the more of something there is, the more exhausted the individual becomes. Discord and I, though, are the exception to that rule for obvious reasons."

"I can see that," I say, "but doesn't there need to be training or something?"

"No, all one needs is imagination," Luna said.

"In total, just how many dream masters have there been," I ask, curious as to just how rare this is.

"In the past thousand years that I know of, ten," she said in a tone that suggested she knew something else.

"There's something else there, isn't there," I ask. "In regards to the ten, I mean."

Luna sighed and, in a sorrowful tone, said, "Yes. Two of them are my daughters. They were but young fillies, not even able to talk yet, before I was banished, and I know not what happened to them. I left them in the care of two families before my battle with Celestia, making sure that even if I lost, they would have someone to care for them. I know not what happened to those two families, and Celestia didn't know she was an aunt."

"What were the family names," I ask. "I can easily search for them after this whole thing."

"If I remember correctly," Luna said, "they were the Light and Gem family."

I nodded. "I'll see what I can find on them," I say. "Now, don't we have a war council to attend?"

"Thank you, Josh," she said. "And you are correct. We do have a council to attend."

"Then I'll need my weapons back," I say. "I'm going to help take the capitol, and if I'm kept under guard, even if it's a ruse for the guards, I will crack some heads."

"I thought you might, which is why I have the ones guarding your weapons at the command tent," Luna said. "Come." With that, she left the medical tenet, me close behind. Upon coming out, every guard in the area stopped what they were doing to stare at me with hate, so I decided to be a wise ass and give them the bird. Ah, how I love pissing people off.

"Back to what you were doing, all of you," Luna said. "He is not a threat."

"Right now," I mutter and heard a few guards say. Luna began to walk again, and I followed her to the largest tent in the camp. It was colored the same color as Luna's skin, and was as tall and long as two normal tents. And I don't mean in the perverted way.

Four guards stood outside, and stood at attention as we approached, throwing looks of hate at me. "Give the human his weapons back," Luna said as we got to the entrance. "It has agreed to help us in taking the minotaur Capitol from Sombra's forces."

"But Princess-" one of the guard started before I took a knife out of the hidden compartment in my gantlet and pointed it at his throat.

"Your leader gave you an order," I say. "Where I come from, that could mean insubordination for not following. So is killing a fellow soldier, but we aren't on the same side, so I have no qualms there," I lied. At worst, I'd just knock him out. "Now, unless you want this knife in your throat, you'll obey her order. Besides, if I wanted all of you dead, you four couldn't do shit against me." That was true.

It was a staring match, and, to the guys credit, he didn't shrink, even when his fellows did. "Put your knife on the ground, human," Luna said from behind me. "And give him his projectile weapon and energy weapons back. If he wished me dead, he would have done so already."

"You got it," I say, dropping the knife, but keeping my other one hidden. Apparently, they didn't search everything. Or it was just quick thinking plus the whole dream master thing, I don't know, and honestly don't give a shit right now.

"Yes, Highness," one of the guard's fellows said, and the other three handed me my weapons, which I took, not taking my eyes off the one I had threatened, and put them in their respective magnetic holding areas.

"And as for you," she said, glaring at the other guard, who flinched there, "are to follow his advice. I ma your leader, and you could have been court martial-ed if I wished it. Understood?"

"Yes, Ma'am," the guard said.

"Good. Follow me, human," Luna said before walking into the tent, me close behind.

But not before I said, "I win," to the guard.

When I stepped inside, there was a large rustling of weapons, mine included. "Before you say anything, they raised their weapons first, this is just in defense of myself."

"I saw," Luna said. "Twilight Sparkle, put your weapon down. The same goes for the rest of you. He is our ally for now, and he will be treated as such, regardless of his past actions against you."

"But Princess," I heard Rainbow, who I saw had prosthetic wings on. Metal, too. Cool. "he shot me!"

"Yeah, but A: I didn't kill you. B: You were ahead of your friends, so you were the closest, which meant you were going to get targeted. Finally, C: You look a hell of a lot cooler with the metal wings instead of the organic ones, in my opinion."

"Told ya, Dashie," Pinkie said, her weapons, a pair of flintlock pistols, why does that not surprise me, being the only ones that didn't rise up.

"I still say we should take care of this ourselves," Rainbow said.

I lowered my BR. "Then come and get me," I say, to which Rainbow took the bait and charged. Just before she hit me, I side stepped and grabbed her arm with as little force as possible, considering, and spun her around into a position where I had an arm around her throat. "This is why I shot you," I say. "You need to learn self control. "You're the Element of Loyalty, not Sacrifice. Hell, that one doesn't even exist, so stop trying to be it." I then released her and pushed her to her friends. "You'll see the only injury for her is her ego, which I think we can agree needed to be knocked down a few pegs. Now, can we start this god damned council, or am I going to have to threaten more of you that invariably makes me tell you something the others have said before but your just too stupid to actually listen to?" When none of them attacked, though I did see the anger in all but Pinkie's eyes, I said, "Good. Princess, care to start it off?"

"You're lucky we have need of what you know, human," Luna said. "What we know is that Sombra's forces are being led by an unknown general-"

"I can fill that intel blank in right now," I say, my arms crossed. "If you don't believe me, check my memories. It's Cadence." I grab a sword and ignite it before pointing to my left and a slowly moving Rainbow. "Don't even try it. My helmet has a motion tracker, and I can see you moving."

"But it can't be Cadence," Twilight exclaimed. "There's no way she'd help Sombra!"

"Then look at my memories," I say. "I Pinkie Promise that as long as you look for and find what is related only to hat I just said, I will not eviscerate anyone in this tent."

"Then let's see if you're telling the truth," Luna said, lighting her horn as my head was encircled by the same glow as her light blue magic. It was this way for a few seconds before the glow faded and she said, "His mind tells the truth. It is indeed Cadence, or a near perfect replica of her, that leads this army. As for her reasons, she told him it is because of you, Twilight Sparkle."

"What?!"

"She said it was because my sister manipulated you and put you into situations there was a low chance of success at, such as Sombra, whom even my sister and I had trouble with."

"Nor did she try to distract Discord," I said. I then turned to Rainbow, who I had seen moving on my tracker. "Do you want to lose your head?"

"Is there anything else we might not know, or something known only from first hand?" Luna asked.

"Yeah," I said, keeping an eye on Rainbow. "There are dragon shaped crystal constructs that are resistant to even these," I say, tilting my sword a bit. "It was one of those things that strangled me into unconsciousness. They also captured my allies and are holding them in a citadel, and I would say Cadence's second in command is a torturer. The reports we had also indicated they had a lot of prisoners that were deserters. Whether or not that's true, I don't know. We didn't even get into the city."

"Then I don't see what chance we have," Twilight said.

I smiled. "Give me a day. I'll have something."

With that, I turned around, and made my way out of the tent, but not before turning my head and saying, "Don't follow me." I then left the tent, and I made sure any guard that got close was threatened by my sword's tip. I made my way to the nearby forest, and found a clearing.

I sat down crosslegged, and set my hands on my knees, and began to concentrate on a certain. . . item I knew well. I imagine an hour or so passed, but, near that hour's end, I felt light headed, and I heard an object hit he ground in front of me. I opened my eyes, and saw a sniper rifle pained brown with a wolf's head near the mag. Nornfang, Linda's sniper.

"Practicing," I heard Luna say behind me.

"Yeah," I said. "Decided to go with a weapon that's a legend in and of itself where I come from. It's longer range then this," I say gesturing to my BR, "and what it shoots explodes upon hitting targets," I say with a grin under my helmet. "So, what can you tell me about your daughters? Might help me find them."

"Well, I named them Artemis and Selene," Luna said, making me chuckle.

"Sorry, it's just, where I come from, your name and your daughters are all related to the moon. Your's and Selene's name, different language for moon. Artemis is the name of an ancient goddess," I say. "Hell, where I come from, most of the names I've heard here so far are puns."

"Well, compared to pony names, your's is quite strange too, Josh."

"Touche," I say. "Continue."

"Well, they were both unicorns, and were dream masters. It's mostly that that I fear for what happened to them."

"Why," I asked.

"Because my sister sees the creation part of it as dark magic. The ability to make anything one wishes for is, admittedly, a lure for the more. . . corrupt ponies. She even believes being a dream master means to you can unmake reality," Luna said. "Though it is true in the respect you create something out of nothing, she thinks that means you can will a pony out of existence, and I shamefully speak from personal experience when I say that is not true. If it were, Celestia would have lost to me when I first rebelled against her. But still, any child of an alicorn, I word it like that as both Selene and Artemis were unicorns, has the ability to teleport objects when they are young, and it is easy to hide them being a dream master then, but, when they became older, even after I was unable to watch over them, I ma afraid they were revealed ot my sister by her loyalists, and she brought them in for execution. But even if they are dead, I would still like to know."

"I'll find what I can, Luna," I say. "I swear it, even if I have to go to the gates of tartarus itself and kill every demon there."

"I doubt you'll need to be that extreme," Luna said with a small smile. "Is it true that Cadence captured all of your friends?"

"Yeah," I say. "Lone, Quick, Onyx, Mist. Hell, I even made friends with Starlight Glimmer of all ponies."

"Ah, I had heard that you found Starlight Glimmer," Luna said. "Twilight Sparkle wanted to hunt you down for being connected to her. She still holds a grudge against her, after all." Both of us shared a chuckle there.

"I wonder why," I say sarcastically. "You know, I'm curious, Luna. What does Celestia, or you, for that matter, plan on doing with Sombra and Chrysalis if Steel is taken down?"

"Honestly, I plan on giving them a chance," Luna said. "With Nightmare and I mentally one again, I know that Steel is playing both sides. To what end, I think only he knows for sure. Chrysalis is doing this so her people don't starve, and Sombra so he can live. Though, we would need a way for that to happen, first, let alone my sister and the Elements to agree with it."

"Hey, better Steel than those Caribou," I say. "Where I come from, actually, you guys are, for lack of a better term, a show meant for fillies with an adult fanbase, with, well, let's just say an interesting part of it having made through fan fictions that don't reflect their actual feeling on those subjects where the Caribou did take over. On their first try, too."

"Then I suppose it is a good thing you fond where they were located," Luna said. "And compared to what I have seen through the centuries, what you've told me is not the most surprising."

"I imagine," I say. "Shame our first physical meeting is because of this war," I say.

"Maybe," Luna said. "But hopefully, this war will not last much longer."

"Yeah," I say. "Same. So, when is the attack going to happen?"

"In a few days," Luna said. "Why?"

"No reason," I said, smirking under the helmet. "Just make sure I'm not disturbed for that time, and I'll get what needed to take the place."