Author's Notes:

Sorry for the delay on this chapter, didn't quite finish it in time for the weekend.
Sorry 'bout that

There was silence as Thunder and Shade walked through the dark tunnels. Shade looked back at Thunder occasionally, checking if he didn't actually leave Thunder behind because of the lack of sound he made.

After Shade and Thunder arrived back at Shade's home, Shade stopped and turned around to Thunder. However, Thunder was lost in thought completely, the previous "lesson" had kept him thinking through their last journey through the tunnels until now. He didn't notice they had even arrived, let alone did he notice Shade stopping in front of him.

"Ouf! Hey, what the-"

Thunder said as he bumped into Shade who now looked at him with a suspicious look.

"Ahem. We have arrived, just so you know."

Thunder set a false smile on his face while Shade's stare intensified.

"Haha, yeah. Sorry I ran into you, I didn't mean to-"

"And what exactly distracted you enough to let that happen if I may ask?"

Thunder was afraid he would ask him that. He couldn't just tell him the truth, how he was doubting that feeding on love was the right thing, how he felt so very bad for the poor, trapped unicorn he had fed on...or could he? Shade did say he still wants to be friends with him multiple times and...no. no! He couldn't trust HIM! He's just a dirty, lying changeling. He got him into all of this in the first place.

"None of your business...buddy."

Thunder then faced Shade's stare with his own stare. The air seemingly heated up around the two, they could have gone at eachother at any second. However...

"As you say..."

Shade replied with a slight, false grin. He then turned around and once again quickly opened the entrance to his home.

"Care to join me in here?"

Thunder seriously thought about simply staying out there for a few moments, but then he realized it was probably not the best idea in the first place. Not that it would matter anyway, Shade would probably just drag him inside with his magic.

"Sure, I got nothing to lose anymore anyway. Might aswell..."

Shade rolled his eyes and walked inside, Thunder following closely behind him. As the entrance was closed Thunder asked a question.

"So what did we want to do here again?"

Shade turned around to him after he closed the entrance with a rather annoyed look.

"We're going to practice using your nightsight. I talked about that before, remember?"

Thunder scratched his head and thought hard, yet couldn't quite remember that.

"Oh, sorry. I must have forgotten."

Shade raised a non-existent eyebrow at that statement.

"Already? It has only been like, what, 20 minutes? At most?"

Thunder looked away from Shade in awkwardness.

"Yeah, I...guess the whole love eating thing kept my mind busy. I must have forgotten due to...that."

Thunder then realized what he had just told Shade...the exact same thing he didn't want to tell him earlier.

"Uh huh..."

Shade replied with a, once again, suspicious look.

"I didn't-"

Shade began laughing all of the sudden.

"Haha, it's alright pal. I told you I knew you would have problems with the whole changeling thing, at the start anyway. I would be very surprised if you weren't actually doubting the whole thing right now."

Thunder's mind blacked out for a few moments at that response.

"W-wha...you...you're not...mad?"

Shade rolled his eyes.

"Pfft, of course not. I told you multiple times: I'm your friend. I did what I did because it was the best option I had. Of course it's still a fairly bad option, I know, but it's all the way better than hanging down from the ceiling in a cocoon and have changelings feed on your love."

Shade looked at the ground as he thought about all that had happened. Shade acted quite quickly and made looked at Thunder after he raised his head up with one of his hooves.

"Hey...I know it's hard. Very hard for you especially. But I'm here for you. That's why I'm trying to teach you all these changeling things anyway. I want you to feel better and get used to your body and surroundings better."

Thunder sighed quietly.

"Let's just get it over with then..."

Shade smiled as he started his speech on Nightvision.

"First thing we need is, who would have guessed, darkness. So in order to achieve the right conditions..."

Shade's horn glew in a deep black and suddenly the whole room went into complete darkness. The torches, the candles...all the light was gone all of the sudden. Thunder paniced at first, yet quickly calmed himself down, understanding that he was safe and that it was a lesson.

"Great, now that we have the right conditions to use nightsight we can proceed. First you will need to close your eyes."

Thunder got chills all over his body from Shade's voice coming through the complete darkness. Still, he followed Shade's instructions and closed his eyes, not that he could see anything with them at the moment anyway.

"Now you will need to imagine a bright light. The brightest light you can imagine. So bright that any source of darkness will practically run for cover."

Thunder concentrated and tried imagining a light. He quickly saw a light, yet that light wasn't nearly bright enough to light up the room.
He tried concentrating harder and, with time, the light became bigger and brighter. He still couldn't see anything in said light, it was simply light and darkness.

"Alright, that's a good start for now. You'll get used to it the more you use it. Now, the next thing you need to do is using your inner light and transfer it to the outside. Right now it's just a light in the endless darkness. You need to imagine it isn't just in your head, imagine that it is real and actually in this room."

Thunder was seemingly confused by this. He tried and tried yet couldn't quite get it to work.

"It's not all that hard. Here, just imagine the light is actually in front of you in the actual room."

And so Thunder tried and tried. Out of what felt like hundreds of attempts, the last one beared some fruits. He opened his eyes finally and managed to see in the now bright darkness. However, his "inner light" was still fairly small, it didn't even cover all of the living room in Shade's home. Yet, Thunder did feel accomplished by actually learning how to use something so unexplainable and unimaginable.

"Wow, I can't believe it! How is this even possible!?"

Thunder asked as he was walking around the room, trying out his nightvision like a kid runs around playing with their new toy.

"Oh, that has to do with the Hivemind but...we'll get to that at some other point."

Thunder stopped and looked at Shade from across the room.

"The Hivemind, huh?"

Shade nodded silently.

"Seems fairly important to me personally. Why wouldn't we do something like that first?"

Shade scratched his backhead, he had forgotten to tell Thunder about something fairly important.

"Um...remember how Queen Chrysalis said she would talk to you and me at some other time...?"

Thunder didn't realize what he was going at, but then slowly realized what he was implying.

"You don't mean..."

Shade set an awkward smile on his face and laughed awkwardly.

"Heh, yeah...my bad..."