Stars littered the sky, and Canterlot slept. Though the night was dark, terror was absent - the presence of nightmares had diminished upon Princess Luna’s return.

Twilight Sparkle walked the empty streets with a pair of saddlebags. To most Ponies, Canterlot at night would prove impossible to navigate under normal circumstances, but Canterlot was the city Twilight called home. She knew exactly where she was going, which streets to take and which alleyways to avoid. It took her little more than an hour to reach her destination; the outskirts of town.

During the week that Cloud had been unconscious, Twilight and her friends had been spending their time building shelters for the Ponyville evacuees. Of course, it wasn’t down to the Spirits alone; they had received help from builders hired using royal funding, which Twilight had limited access to, as well as the evacuees themselves. The same funding was used for buying simple building materials such as lumber, iron and cloth.

They had done well, finishing two shelters a day. On the seventh day, a few hours before Cloud’s episode, Twilight had finished brewing a magic revitalising potion for herself which gave her the boost she needed to build an entire third shelter that day entirely by herself. In total, there were fifteen shelters which was enough to give shelter to the two hundred and ninety eight evacuees. They weren’t the highest quality, but they were enough for Ponies who were homeless.

Twilight walked to the final shelter which had been built and she knocked on the door. After a few seconds of waiting, Applejack opened the door.

“Howdy, Twiglet.” Applejack yawned. “What brings you here so late?”

“Hey, Applejack,” Twilight replied. “I need to see Spike, is he still awake?”

“Hang on a second…” Applejack went into a back room. There was a loud crashing sound followed by a yelp from Spike.

Twilight rolled her eyes. Not what I meant…

Spike came to the doorway, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Twilight? What’s wrong?”

“I need you to send a package,” she replied. “I have some data I need someone with more experience and free time than I do to analyse.”

“How come? You’re great at that sort of stuff.”

“I sure am, but there’s a strange... Well, there’s an anomaly, for lack of a better word, and I don’t understand what it means.” As Twilight talked, she took the package in question out of her saddlebags using a telekinesis spell and dropped it into Spike’s hands. “With everything that’s happening soon, I won’t have enough time to look into the problem myself.”

“What do you mean? What’s the data? What’s happening?”

“It’s complicated.” She sighed.

“Alright, don’t bother to keep me in the loop or anything.”

“What was that punishment worthy statement?”

“I didn’t say anything!” Spike exclaimed, pretending to be panicked. “I’m practically mute!” The two of them shared a chuckle. “Where do you need this sent? The usual place?”

“Yes.” Twilight nodded. “Please send it to my mother.”

After a puff of fire, the package disappeared.

Princess Celestia was deep in her secret labs, raiding the fridge. After shoving aside the flesh-eating jelly (a creation designed to activate upon contact with stomach acid), she pulled out a creation of her own design: At first glance it appeared to be nothing more than bottled water - but when poured into a baking pan, as Princess Celestia was doing at that moment, the metal activated magical enchantments at a microscopic level, transforming the liquid into cake.

As the Princess took a bite of the cake, a Unicorn scientist holding a few sheets of data teleported into the room.

The scientist’s name was Smart Ass. While most would think this was because his parents hated him, it was merely down to bad luck with family tradition. His mother’s name was Brown Nose and his father’s was Total Bummer.

Smart Ass had not had a happy school life.

“Your Highness,” Smart Ass began, waving the data sheets for a dramatic effect, “we have confirmed the analysis of the data on the subject. I have the data about the data on these sheets of data.”

“You have the data?” The Princess snatched the data sheets out of his hoof and read the data. “I see. This certainly is data. I also see that you date a lot of this data.”

“The data would not be efficient data if we did note date the data.”

“It is dated data.”

“Dated data?”

“Indeed; dated data.” The Princess took another bite of the cake. “This dated data is certainly the data I expected when I asked for this data and read these data sheets.” Globules of cake and saliva coated the dated data sheets as she spoke.

“...It certainly is, ma’am.”

Princess Celestia sneered at the data, revealing an unpleasant amount of cake stuck in her teeth. This dated data on these data sheets is definitely the dated data I drastically and desperately needed…

“You know that thing where you overuse a word and you forget the meaning of it?” Asked Cloud.

Princess Luna snapped his spine with a punch to his side. “I am familiar with this. It is a perplexing phenomenon. Why do you ask?”

Strangely enough, Cloud was unable to reply.

After being healed by Princess Luna, Cloud shakily climbed to his hooves.

“T-That was…” He was gasping, very much in shock. He gulped. “That was too much… That was way too much...”

“Too much?” The Princess scoffed. “That was less than one percent of my effort, and still considerably more so than the effort I put into the battle we had. To be fair to you, I have enough power within the dream realm for it to be considered countably infinite by any mortal being. Even so, you are considerably weak.”

“Hey, attack me, not my confidence.”

The Princess smirked. “Very well.” In less than a hundredth of a second, she moved towards him, backhanded him with a hoof and broke his neck. “Pathetic.” She sighed before healing him.

“Y-You know the point of this,” Cloud managed to say, gasping harder than before, “is t-to make me used to p-pain, right? Killing me over a-and over w-won’t help with that…”

She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “At this rate, you will not be strong enough to succeed in your trial of combat.”

“Can we multitask with this at all?” Cloud had managed to calm down slightly. “Like, split my ability to focus into two versions of me and train a couple of things at once?”

“That-” The Princess blinked, the idea taking her off guard. “That is a legitimately intelligent idea.”

“Thank y-”

“I am surprised a cretin such as yourself could ever think of this.”

“...Never mind.”

There was a blinding flash of light and the world split in two.

In one version of the dream, Princess Luna tortured Cloud beyond anything possible outside of a dream. On the other side of the coin, however, Princess Luna forced Cloud through strenuous exercise - also beyond anything possible outside of a dream.

Generally, it was an unrealistic (and painful) experience for him.