My first … intimate friend was a female firecat named Deneh. You look surprised. We grew up in the same tribe… close enough to get to know each other well, and far enough to keep things from getting awkward between us. She trained to become a priestess even as I trained to become a warrior, and we enjoyed discussing the differences and similarities with each other, along with all of the other happenings in life.

We had a lot more in common, in fact, such as both becoming orphans before reaching adulthood. It was hard for grandpa or her caretakers to justify keeping us apart, all things considered, and, well… like adolescents we got to experimenting eventually.

So yes, a mare doesn’t seem that strange to me to consider dating. I might find the contents of Pinkie’s grid more odd if I didn’t look around; this land is full of ponies, so of course that is much of what she would consider for me. Anyways, it’s a harmless diversion, isn’t it? Much as this digression is. I’ll get back to my story.

It’s hard to be sure how long ago it was, exactly, but a little over a year ago Deneh and I were called upon to perform a ritual. It’s something our tribe conducts every half century, to appease Gaia and protect everyone on the planet. I tried to object, because a part of the ritual requires the priestess involved to remain on an altar for five years, unable to leave or even speak or interact with anyone else. It is a great sacrifice on her part, to be sure, but a great loss for her loved ones as well.

But a worse fate presented itself. The Turks, Shinra’s agents, came to Cosmo Canyon to try to abduct Deneh. I fought them off to buy her time to escape, and they chose to take me instead. They… reluctantly agreed to let us complete the ritual before dragging me off. I know, it’s shamefully selfish of me; I was only willing to allow her to do what she must for everyone else when I was doomed to lose her either way.

They took me to Shinra Headquarters, where Hojo experimented on me. As I’ve mentioned, he wasn’t very open with what he was doing. Mostly he took samples, though he also injected me with sedatives from time to time, and who knows what else. He had a variety of test subjects, mostly monstrous creatures, and I know he was fond of mixing cells from one to another.

I was there over a year, I think. I rarely had access to a window, and at times missed meals, sometimes for a few days at a time, perhaps to test my reaction to such. But I am certain the days numbered closer to four hundred than three. Finally, an opportunity came up.

You see, Hojo was… something of a pervert. He sent your friend Aeris into my cell, with demands that we become intimate. ‘For science’. Of course, there’s a variety of problems with that. But I decided to go ahead and give her chase, quietly letting her know it was just for show. She ran, and while I can easily outrun her, I let her keep her lead. It was pretty tight quarters, but we went about in circles until Barret was able to shoot the controls enough to cause a malfunction and give us an exit.

Your friends were kind enough to accept my apologies when I got out, and accept me into their group. I’m not sure if I was ever officially considered a member of AVALANCHE or not, much like Aeris in that regard, but that kind of label only means so much in the end.

With Aeris secured, we fled the building. But with Sector 7 destroyed… that was after you left? Tifa, Aeris, and Barret were lucky to be out of the area at the time. Biggs and Wedge… did you meet them? They weren’t so lucky. Shinra dropped an eighth of upper midgar onto lower midgar just to try to get, well… us. I think Barret lost someone else, too, but all he could say on the matter was a string of profanity, so I’m reading into that as best I can. Anyways, there wasn’t much reason for us to stay in town.

When we made it to Kalm, the nearest town outside of Midgar, we learned the surprising news. The night after we broke out, the President of Shinra was murdered. The public news didn’t give much details, focusing instead on the new President taking his place. But we had some underground sources that were able to give us a pretty big hint. He was stabbed to death, impaled through by a seven-foot long sword. Tifa recognized it instantly from the photograph, and I’m sure you would have too. Yeah, Masamune. Sephiroth’s sword.

We kept an ear out for signs of his passing, and were able to get hints pointing us to where he had gone. The biggest hint, though, was a bit of proof of his strength. A midgar zolom, a 30 foot long snake-like creature, that we went to great lengths to avoid. We saw someone had managed to lift one up and impale it on a spike made out of a tree trunk. You can doubt that was Sephiroth if you want, but whoever it was was no one to be trifled with.

I’m honestly not sure what we would do if we caught up with him. Point Shinra toward him, perhaps? I know, that’d be ironic, but I don’t know what else we could do. He was avoiding Shinra’s notice except when he chose to strike and move on. But Tifa was committed to seeking vengeance on him, and I think the rest of us had a sense he was up to something terrible. Maybe we could stop the next Nibelheim. Or at least help rescue the survivors.

Anyways, we followed him as far as Junon harbor. We heard rumors he had mentioned crossing the ocean, so we needed to find a way across ourselves. And of course, the only way across was a military cargo ship controlled by Shinra. We bribed our way past the guards into the upper city… Shinra sure likes building cities on top of other people’s towns. But we needed disguises to get onto the transport itself. And, well… you know what happened when I got the last piece of mine.

When Nanaki had told us his story, I thanked him, before excusing myself to visit the dining cart. I needed a meal, certainly, but also a chance to think. Biggs and Wedge, gone. Marlene too, if I was reading Barret’s reaction right. Could I have saved them, somehow, if I had been there? Or would I have been crushed as well in the attempt? I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t have tried to do something.

When I returned, I saw Pinkie and Nanaki huddled over something, talking things through. I approached to see what it was, and saw a grid with over a dozen boxes, each with a red-haired human face facing off with someone else. In most cases a pony. I was in the upper left box, which I supposed was to be expected. The rest of the grid was actually surprisingly similar to my own, though I didn’t notice any stallions being depicted. I did notice Twilight and each of the Element Bearers depicted separately, along with a crowded box showing the seven of us, and an even more crowded box that must have added in the princesses.

I sat down across the aisle from them, and watched in horrified fascination as he went through the grid, pony by pony, grilling Pinkie for information about the mares she had chosen, starting from basic personality traits to likes and dislikes, turn ons and turn offs, favorite colors, birthdays, the meanings of their cutie marks, and so on. Was he planning to date us all? Or just trying to figure out the best to approach? My face felt warm as I glared at the empty seat across from me, until I realized it wasn’t empty anymore.

“You know, if you’re going to get this jealous when he hasn’t even done anything, you’d better ask him out,” Rainbow Dash said.

“I’m not jea-” I began before her hoof filled my mouth and stopped me.

“Believe me, I know jealousy,” Dash said. “So either make a move or get over it. He’s not yours if you don’t even ask him out on a date.”

I tried to think of a retort, but then I glanced over and saw both Nanaki and Pinkie Pie were looking at me, with amused looks on their faces. I felt like my own face was absolutely on fire at this point, and I was rendered speechless.

“If it helps, I wasn’t putting any serious thought into dating anyone. Anypony? At least not at the moment. I simply felt anyone Pinkie saw fit to include on her diagram was someone I was likely to encounter, perhaps soon and perhaps often, and it would serve me well to know a bit about them before I did. Or in the case of you and your friends, it would be good to know better who I’m dealing with,” Nanaki explained.

“That’s… actually quite smart,” I conceded.

“Though I am quite amused your friend thinks I have a shot with all of you at once,” I added with a laugh. “Plus the princesses? Though that just seems greedy at that point. Surely seven ladies is enough for any man.”

“I would have thought one was enough. Besides, how would you manage jealousies in such a relationship?” I said, gesturing to Rainbow Dash.

“Hey, don’t go making it like I’m the reason this can’t happen. You’re the one getting huffy when you haven’t even asked him out,” Rainbow countered. “I admit I’ve had my issues in the past, but there were extenuating circumstances! Diamond Dust was messing with my head. And besides that, you never even asked.”

“You found a free quill in my sofa and assumed I was having an affair with Fluttershy!” I pointed out. “You could have just asked.”

“Ex-lovers?” Nanaki asked Pinkie Pie, who nodded. “I can see how they’d be really hard to include in the harem ending, especially if they both have jealousy issues. But you didn’t include a box with just the other five of you? For that matter, I would think Rarity would be hard to win away from the Prince.”

“Well, I’m not saying it’d be all or nothing for sure,” Pinkie said, “it’d be really weird for us to be divide with like half of us being one big happy family and the rest of us are still kinda close as friends but not quite that close. I think it’d be one at a time to start, but that you’ll either end up with one of us or all of us. Or none of us. Your special somepony could be someone else entirely! Or not even a pony! Like Gilda!”

“You mentioned her, though she sounds like it could easily be an abusive relationship if I did have any luck pursuing her,” Nanaki said thoughtfully.

“Hay! Don’t talk about my friend like that,” Rainbow Dash objected.

“You disagree?” Nanaki asked her.

“Well, no… not as such…” Dash backed down. “It’s just the way griffons are though. You can’t hold it against her.”

“I can if I’m considering dating outside my species,” Nanaki said calmly. “If I encounter her, I’ll make some allowances and try not to hold things against her personally, but who I chose to date is a higher bar. And well it should be, don’t you agree?”

“Well… okay,” Dash said. “I guess I see your point.”

“Though I will have to say, if I am to include the two of you in my harem, you’ll have to kiss and make up yourselves,” he added with a smirk.

I began rolling my eyes, but Rainbow decided she liked the excuse. “You heard the man,” she said before I suddenly found myself with a pegasus in my lap, going for a kiss. I resisted for a moment before returning the kiss, the non-stop relationship talk having gotten me a bit interested in such things at the moment. And, as much as I knew better than to rekindle things with the mare, her touch was familiar and appealing. And it wasn’t like I was mad at her or anything.

Pinkie’s giggling, and my own imagination going wild guessing at what expression I would see on Nanaki’s face if my eye’s weren’t covered by a rainbow colored mane were killing my mood as quickly as Rainbow Dash’s affections could heat it up, though. I broke it off before things got any more serious, looking Rainbow in the eyes.

“Are you actually trying to make this harem thing happen?” I asked incredulously.

“Well… no, not really. I just liked the excuse,” she admitted.

“I can’t believe Rarity is missing all of this,” Fluttershy said quietly enough that I almost didn’t hear her.

“Well, I reckon one of us’ll have to fill ‘er in at the spa someday soon,” Applejack replied.

“Tell me, though, is this sort of thing normal for ponies? Multiple females with a single male, I mean?” Nanaki inquired. “There is so much for me to learn about your culture and your customs.”

Twilight teleported the dozen feet to appear in the seat next to Pinkie, knocking the party mare off balance with surprise as she excitedly began. “In recent centuries it’s been quite rare, in honesty, but the practice was somewhat typical back in the pre-unification days, and even for some time thereafter. It was common for many of the males to join the guard or the military, back when we had a larger standing army, and they would go months or even years at a time with little to no female contact, much less a special somepony. Some of the writings from the time suggests that intimacy with each other was common enough to be almost unnoteworthy, however. This left substantially more mares than stallions in the civilian population, however, and the socioeconomic models of the time gave a variety of benefits toward larger families with greater numbers of children. So herds with two to four mares to a single stallion were quite common, and some of the wealthier or otherwise more powerful families formed even larger herds, and leveraged those larger families to achieve even greater wealth.”

“That’s fascinating,” Nanaki said, and managed to sound sincere about it, “but could we digress a moment to current practices? You said it was rare, but is it taboo, something that would inspire prejudiced negative reactions from neighbors and strangers at the least, or merely something whose primary draw has become a thing of the past, making it less appealing and thus less common?”

“Oh, the latter, certainly,” Twilight said. “We don’t have much of a standing army anymore, and most of the guard these days have wives who live and work in the same town, aside from the younger ones who simply haven’t met their special somepony yet. In someplace like Canterlot, it might be seen as unfashionable and backwards, but a more rural area like Ponyville would likely just congratulate you on your happiness. Or at least I assume. Girls?”

“I’d certainly throw a party,” Pinkie Pie agreed. “In fact it’d practically be a party. An all-life-long party.”

“Some of my cousins have larger herds,” Applejack said, “though I don’t think there have been any in Ponyville in particular in recent memory. Granny Smith might have known some though.”

“Oh! How thoughtless of me. Going over so much, you must need to take some notes!” Twilight said. Her magic summoned a blank scroll, quill and ink and hovered them near Nanaki.

“No, that’s quite alright,” he said. “I’ve got a good memory. Besides, I can’t write.”

Twilight gasped loudly in shock. “You’re illiterate?!”

“No, no. I can read quite well. I just never learned how to write,” Nanaki said.

“Oh… Well, one out of two is- No. This won’t stand. I won’t stand for it,” the librarian declared. “You’re taking writing lessons, as soon as we get to Ponyville.”

“That sounds reasonable, though perhaps Miss Strife should be the one to teach me?” he suggested.

“While I can’t disparage the efficacy of her paramilitary drilling techniques, I would like to believe I am more qualified for teaching anything to do with reading, or consequently writing. Not to be too arrogant about it, but I write more a day than she reads,” Twilight said, sounding a bit offended. “Why would you chose her to teach you over me-”

Nanaki held up his hands and then wiggled his fingers, and finally gripped the quill in one hand, completely incorrectly. “Oh,” Twilight conceded as she finally caught on.

“I’ll teach you how to write,” I said. “Or at least get you started on it. If you already know your letters and numbers, there isn’t a lot to say on the matter, mostly you’ll just need to practice. A lot. Actually… This is a perfectly good use for my ‘paramilitary drilling techniques’.” I grinned at him a bit viciously.

“I do get the uncomfortable feeling I may have inadvertently scorned a certain swordswoman,” he told Pinkie and Twilight in a stage whisper, earning a giggle from the former. “Perhaps it’s best we leave a certain topic out of conversation in her presence from now on, and move on to another?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty more to teach you,” Twilight said. “The fun way!” And at that a quartet of books materialized around Nanaki.

“Daring Do and the Sapphire Stone. Foal’s Guide to Pony Anatomy. Me And My Horn, A Young Unicorn’s Guide to Magic. And… oh, this looks exciting. Luna’s Art, A Guide To The Constellations Of The Night Sky,” Nanaki read as he grabbed the last one, and cracked it open, excitedly skimming through it before going back to start reading the first chapter eagerly. “Grandpa and I used to study the night sky back home almost every night. It seems to different here… it’s… actually one of the things that makes this place feel the most alien to me. When I got out of Midgar, I could see all the familiar constellations, even if they weren’t quite where I was used to them being. But here none of them are familiar, and it feels like someone’s rearranging the-...”

“Something wrong Nanaki?” I asked when he had gone silent for a minute.

“Oh, yes. It says here that a Princess Luna actually does rearrange the stars in the night sky on a nightly basis…” Nanaki said. “That’s fascinating,” he added, sounding like he meant “That’s terrifying.”

“I’ll introduce you,” I offered.

“You are personally acquainted with the being that rearranges the very stars in the sky?” he inquired.

“And her sister, the one who moves the sun to make it day or night,” I said. “Pinkie didn’t mention this in your shipping grid debriefing? They’re the eighth and ninth little symbols there on that final box. They’re also our employers.”

“But don’t worry! They’re both super nice! Except for that one time one of them turned evil and tried to plunge the world into eternal night. But we helped her and now she’s good again!” Pinkie summarized.

“Well, that’s good then…” Nanaki said. “Wait, so that extra long day last week?”

“The princesses were captured, and it took us a little while to rescue them,” I admitted. “I was stabbed through the gut, and the girls wanted to wait for me to recover before making the final push.”

“And you didn’t have a Cure Materia to deal with the wound quickly?” he inquired.

“I didn’t bring any Materia with me, and that’s not one I’ve been able to make,” I admitted.

“You’ve been able to make others?” he questioned.

I nodded. “It’s a gift and a curse,” I said, thinking back to the oven incident, and all the tools since then I’ve been unable to use at all. “Did you bring any with you?”

“I did. Restore, Heal, Revive, All and Seal,” he listed off. “Barret felt my speed lent well to a healing role, and I could hit hard enough that I didn’t need offensive materia to contribute offensively.”

“You have actual Gaian materia on you?” Twilight asked excitedly. “May I borrow one to study?!”

“Here…” he said, pulling a large glass pin out of his hair. The base of it had a couple of materia attached, along with a few empty slots. He fixed it into her mane, and was still fiddling with it when she clopped her hooves excitedly. The last thing I saw was the bright waves of active magic flowing out of her before I passed out.

“You’re asleep early,” Diamond Dust said with a bit of a laugh. “Your new coltfriend’s something else. Or should I say everypony’s new coltfriend?”

“Diamond? What’s going on?” I asked, looking around the dreamscape in surprise.

“Twilight Sparkle somehow managed to put everyone in the train car to sleep,” Diamond Dust explained. “I hope that materia’s effects don’t last that long. I think you’re getting close to your stop.”

“Materia… Seal, linked with an All materia. Causes short term unconsciousness. It can help limit the number of enemies you have to face at once, but once you attack a sleeping adversary they will awaken,” I recalled from my Shinra days. “Nanaki probably should have unlinked them before giving them to Twilight. Maybe he didn’t think she would test it immediately, or that at least one of us would be able to resist the effects.”

Diamond shrugged. “It’s too bad. I was enjoying all the teasing he was doing to you.”

“You think it was just teasing?” I asked.

“Hard to say. It feels like he’s actually got a shot at the six of them,” Diamond said. “Or you. I have never seen you blush so much, and I was around when you were hot and heavy with the Element of Jealousy.”

“So it depends if he thinks I’m better than six ponies?” I asked.

“It depends if you think he is worth sharing with six ponies,” she suggested.

“I don’t think it’s fair to let him go that route when I dumped a Prince over just one,” I said.

“Please, the Prince was never about that,” Diamond Dust said. “He was too big for you, there’s no shame in admitting it, least of all here. And you really had nothing in common. Nanaki is a warrior from your own world. He even had to deal with the same kind of body transformation as you. And while I haven’t seen under the dock, I have a feeling he’d fit you just right,” she said. “That’s what’s got you blushing after all. You’re not sure about his character, yet, but your body is sure about his.~”

I sighed. “When did you get insightful?”

“I’m older than you, manipulative by nature, and I literally have nothing to do but hang around you and your friends both in your dreams and in the waking world,” she pointed out. “I’ve always been insightful, just not always helpful.”

Before I could think of a retort, the conductor was rousing us at our stop.