I was balls-deep in Princess Celestia's pussy, when suddenly:

"I think I'm cured now."

I was more than a little taken aback, especially by how flat her tone was. "R-Really?"

"Yes." I was forcibly shoved away from her with magic. In an instant, she was off the bed, had all her clothes back on, and was glaring at me sternly as though none of what we went through had happened. "I have no further need of your..." She grimaced and rolled her eyes. "...'services.'"

Before I could even get my wits about me, she walked away, leaving me confused and alone in the dark with only a spotlight over my head. And then Derpy came out from the shadows, a similar glare on her face.

"I am so bored with you," she muttered, folding her arms under her breasts. She put her black nipple pasties back on, and her breasts shrank down to the mere handfuls I'd first seen on her. "If I'd known that all you wanted was titfucks, titfucks, every damn hour of every damn day titfucks, I would never have agreed to be your marefriend." She walked back into the darkness, grumbling, "I get having a fetish, but seriously, TRY SOMETHING ONCE IN A WHILE."

I started rubbing my eyes. Meanwhile, other mares one by one walked past me dismissively, muttering something disparaging in earshot:

"I don't like stallions that way," Bon Bon growled as she walked by. "Men, even less. And yet you made me cheat with one."

"Humans suck," Lyra said sadly, her head hanging low. "I can't believe I spent half my life obsessed with them..."

Trixie stomped through the light. "You made me your sex slave, but hardly used me for sex at all. I've got NEEDS, dammit."

The magician was promptly followed by Moondancer. "You broke me out of my shell, but honestly... I know I can do better than you. Who doesn't like the hot-and-cold librarian type anyway?"

Fluttershy passed by with purpose, her gigantic chest swinging proudly. "Now that I'm happy with my breasts, I'm going to find a REAL stallion to appreciate them. Everyone knows I have no lack of admirers."

"Thanks for setting me up with Pinkie," Rainbow Dash said as she flew by, "but for everything else: Go fuck yourself."

Spitfire followed suit. "Yeah, the team's all good now. And I found someone with a bigger dick to assfuck me. See ya."

Pinkie Pie bounced around me. "Whee! Now that the topless party has got you all acclimated, I never have to invite you to another party again! WHEEEEEE!!"

Finally, Princess Twilight Sparkle herself stepped out from the darkness and stood in front of me, wearing the robe she'd been wearing on that fateful night. Like everyone else, she was grumpy. Hands on her hips, she said, "You tricked me. I was willing to let that slide for a while, but it's clear that we've gotten as much use out of you as we're going to get." Her horn began to charge up with a powerful spell. "I'm taking this power away. Oh, and I'm separating you from your dick, too. That's the only part of you that we need anyway."

I put up my hands and braced myself as Twilight's horn fired. A ripple of energy passed through the space all around me, and when I looked again, her spell was frozen mid-cast just above my heart. Time had somehow stopped.

A familiar blue figure emerged from the dark, glanced at Twilight, then looked at me. "Anxious much?"

Realizing where I was, I stepped back and slumped my shoulders. "Hey Luna."

The eight foot tall alicorn, modestly endowed and garbed in a flowing purple dress, waved her hand at the apparition of Twilight. The deadly spell disappeared, and Twilight moved some distance away. The other mares that had appeared so far also reappeared, standing in a circle, staring at me, judging me.

I waved my arms around uselessly. "I dunno, you wanna tell me what this all represents?"

"Seems rather obvious to me," Luna replied casually, putting her hand under dream-Twilight's chin and appearing to study it. "You're afraid that none of these ponies actually have any affection for you. You have such abysmal self-regard that, on the subconscious level, you believe you have to keep being 'useful' or else everypony will abandon you."

With a sigh, I rubbed my temple and muttered, "Sounds about right..."

Luna turned her head back towards me. "You have to consciously know that that's not true, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"Hmm," Luna grunted in a way that made it clear she wasn't convinced. "I wonder what could have gotten you to think this way..." Her horn sparked, and another ripple passed through the dream. The dream-mares disappeared, and suddenly the blackness gained dimension – we were standing in an empty police interrogation room, lit by a single bright light bulb.

"This is what I always think. I have to."

That had been MY voice. I spun around and stared up at a corner of the room. There was a speaker there, and somehow my voice was being broadcast through it.

"Because let's face it, I'm a loser, a dropout, a pervert, and I was almost a supervillain for a little while there. I have to keep that in check, or else I'll just... do something reprehensible, and I'll have become such a monster that I won't even realize it. I'm awful. I'm stupid. I don't deserve anything I have. And... and this is my inner monologue, isn't it." I grabbed handfuls of my hair; I felt like I wanted to die. "Shit. Ohhh shit."

Luna idly stretched her fingers. "Truly pleasant words you have for yourself."

I opened my mouth to speak, but the PA system beat me to the punch. "Are they wrong, though? Haven't I done a bunch of fucked-up shit? I didn't even have the power for two goddamn hours before I had Twilight Sparkle giving me a magicjob in a public restaurant."

The Princess's eyebrows bounced up for a second. "Well, that's exciting. From what I understand, though, you weren't expecting that to happen either."

"It doesn't matter, though," the PA went on, and my shoulders sagged even further. "You've given this power to a lazy good-for-nothing. The only reason I've managed to pull this out and pretend I've got any kind of morality is because I didn't LET myself turn evil. I refused to be so proud as to think I deserved to be Pleasure King of Equestria. Because otherwise I probably totally would've."

"Do you honestly believe that?"

"Yes," went the PA. "No," my own mouth replied.

Luna tilted her head and gave me a strangely sympathetic look, then stepped towards me and took my hand. "Here. Let me show you something." I followed along placidly. A doorway appeared in the empty, mostly featureless room, and we walked into a bright light.

When I could open my eyes again, I was in Ponyville. It was nighttime. The Princess was no longer holding my hand or even standing at my side anymore. Many ponies were out in the streets, though none of them noticed me or my nudity. And above us all, there was a giant star-creature trying to rip a hole in reality.

I recoiled. "Is that–?" I reflexively asked, and cut myself off to avoid saying too much. But I certainly recognized the Tantabus.

Looking around, I could see the signs of Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep playing out, except with anthro ponies. Princess Big Macintosh. Lyra and Bon Bon conjoined at the hip. Manly Spike riding on the shoulders of a giant Derpy. Filthy Rich flying on a cloud of golden bits. Scootaloo with gigantic wings. Rainbow Dash and Applejack in the guises of Zapp and Mistress Marevelous respectively from the Power Ponies comics. Fluttershy commanding a giant demonic Angel Bunny. Practically every pony in Ponyville pitching in with superpowers.

In the center of it all was Princess Luna in a magical sphere, the spiral of her horn glowing with the effort of holding the giant meta-dream together. Her muzzle contorted with the effort and the internal struggle of her guilt, and tears were streaming down her face.

As for the Tantabus itself, we were apparently at the climax of this episode, because it had taken the form of a giant feral unicorn nearly half as tall as the mountain beside it, and was striding towards a glowing tear in the dream as tall as itself. Which meant that Luna had just revealed that she had created the Tantabus to give her nightmares every night, and everyone else had realized that it was her guilt powering the creature.

"How can I forgive myself?" Luna – the past Luna, I realized – shouted from her sphere, kneeling down and holding her head in her hands. "I am no better now than I was then. My creation is about to turn the world into a living... NIGHTMARE!!"

"But look at what you're doing!" the past Twilight Sparkle shouted back desperately. "Nightmare Moon would have wanted to turn Equestria into a nightmare! You're doing everything you can to stop it!"

I looked up again at the Tantabus. Its head was halfway through the tear, and even though I knew what was going to happen and that Luna was basically replaying a past event for me, it was hard not to feel the tension in the air. This one had been close.

"Don't you see? That proves you're not the same pony you were then!" Twilight lectured on regardless, her friends gathering behind her and offering encouraging smiles towards the Princess. " Everypony who knows you knows that Nightmare Moon is in the past! We all trust you, Luna! Do you trust us enough to believe we're right?!"

There was a long moment as Luna grappled with her feelings, and the Tantabus's entire body was halfway through the portal. Finally, Luna shut her eyes tightly and, with a small smile on her face, humbly proclaimed, "I do."

The Tantabus recoiled in shock, and in a matter of seconds shrunk down to Luna's size. The tear in the membrane between dream and reality closed and disappeared. The Tantabus approached Luna and, after a nod from the Princess, walked straight into the alicorn's chest and merged with her.

Then the world went white.

A door closed in front of me, and I found myself standing on a red carpet stretching infinitely in either direction, with an infinite number of doors lining both sides of the aisle. I looked left, right, and then when I looked left again Luna was standing just a few feet away, smiling. In a slight daze, the first question out of my mouth was, "How long ago was that?"

Luna – the present Luna – thought about it for a moment. "As recent as last month. Not long before you arrived, in fact."

My brain spun to work. Did... Did that mean I was still in the middle of 'Season 5'? That everything canon was still happening, and that future episodes that I would no longer get to see would still take place, assuming I didn't do anything to throw events off course?? The last one I'd seen was 'Rarity Investigates!'... and that was me being an episode or two behind! There was still half a season and the inevitable blockbuster season finale to go! Not to mention any new seasons! And with the show's slice-of-life storyline so blatantly not giving a shit about temporal consistency and time skips, how was I supposed to know when something like a season finale was about to happen?!?

"Are you alright?" Luna asked worriedly. "I didn't think the vision would be that harrowing... and I lived through it."

I snapped out of it and swallowed the lump in my throat. "Ah, sorry, my brain was somewhere else for a second. No, um..." I put my hand on the door. "I'm not sure the equivalency you're trying to draw actually checks out here."

"Well..." Luna mused as she stepped toward me, "I suppose giving myself nightmares to punish myself is a little more dramatic than a constant undercurrent of verbal self-abuse..." She crouched down to meet my eyes. "...but I think it comes from the same place. And the stakes were fairly similar too, I think. A living, eternal nightmare... A living, eternal wet dream... Not so different, if you ask me."

I just looked away and shrugged.

Luna gave me a comforting smile. "To paraphrase what Twilight told me: The act of sacrifice you performed for my sister proves that you aren't merely a pervert who got lucky, or the vengeful demigod we feared you were. They would have wanted to turn Equestria's sexual nature against itself and start a neverending orgy. You were ready to lay down your life to protect who we are as people. We trust you, Pascal. Do you trust us enough to believe we're right?"

I was moved, but not convinced. "That's really nice, but... Doesn't mean as much when I've got this–" I threw up my hands in exasperation. "–mind control aura that makes everything I say and do seem okay!"

"You've made Ditzy Doo almost entirely immune," Luna pointed out. "She still wholeheartedly supports you. You won the trust of Moondancer, who actively resisted you from the moment you met. And when my sister finally had a chance to be free of you and your influence, she chose, of her own free will, to accept you back into our world instead. Those are your endorsements."

"It doesn't count–" I turned around to see the PA speaker from before now bolted onto a futuristic hovering drone, flying up to us and stopping a few feet away from me. "–when I basically bribed them with sex and feelings of acceptance. I'm a charlatan, a snake oil salesman. 'Don't worry, girls, just follow me and I'll respect you juuuuuuust enough that I can use you for my own pleasure without feeling bad.' That's this whole debacle in a nutshell!"

"Holy fffffffUCK that's annoying," I muttered.

While the angry drone defaulted to muttering things like "Loser, Pervert, Scumbag, Dropout," over and over again, Luna stepped around me and stood next to it.

"This isn't what you believe," Luna said, "but it is what you believe you have to tell yourself. To achieve some sense of balance, to prevent yourself from failing again." Glaring hard at the drone, she continued, "But in reality, it does exactly the opposite. It gives us a comfortable excuse when we make a mistake or things go wrong. 'Oh, we were always that bad. Nothing has changed.' And so the self-fulfilling prophecy is fulfilled. Just like you saw with the Tantabus. And we have punished ourselves for nothing."

I couldn't keep myself from a rolling of the eyes. "So... if I don't change my inner monologue, you're saying I'm gonna eventually create a Tantabus-sized disaster?"

"I'm saying this isn't an improvement," Luna muttered, not looking at me, her voice swelling with emotion. "This doesn't make you better. And yes, if this wears on you long enough, you might make a mistake so big that you surrender to it instead of fixing it. And it might not turn Equestria into a living nightmare, but it will destroy you and something you love. That is what I am saying."

I lowered my head. My inner monologue went, "Sounds about right. One way or another, I'm gonna cause my own destruction. And the world will be better off without me."

I swallowed again, this time to keep the tears from my eyes. Looking up at Luna, I asked, "What... do I do to change this?"

Luna let out a small sigh of relief and smiled back at me. "You have to disrupt the message. Think positive things, instead of negative."

"Easier fuckin' said than done," my subconscious whined.

"It won't be easy. It will take time and diligence." Luna took my hands in hers and kept her deep cyan eyes in contact with mine. "Start small. For example: Whenever someone genuinely says 'Thank you,' think, 'I have done something good. I have earned this.' When your lovers smile, say to yourself, 'I deserve their love. I have made them happy, and they make me happy. I deserve to be happy.'"

"But what happens if it WORKS?!" the drone screamed, getting right up against the side of Luna's head and making her flinch away. "What if I start getting so confident that I believe I can do no wrong?! What if I think I'm a good person but I'm actually evil and I just don't know it?! What if I've fooled everyone around me too?! I don't deserve this! I don't deserve nearly absolute power! I will be corrupted!! I will become an asshole if I don't watch out! I CAN'T STOP! I WILL NEVER STOP FUCKING UP!"

"I-I'm fine."

Everything stopped as soon as I said that. I felt like I was going to be sick.

"I..." I took a deep breath. "I deserve to be happy. I've earned this."

"No you fucking don't," the drone growled, flying in towards me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "I-I'm a... g-guh-good person." Saying that felt like the hardest thing I'd ever done.

"That is the most blatant lie I've ever heard," my inner voice replied, but it sounded farther away now. I opened my eyes and saw that, in the dream-realm, the drone had literally been pushed away from me and was trying to fly back and close the gap again.

"I... I have proven myself." It was getting easier; my voice was growing more confident. "I've proven myself to the only person that matters at the end of the day: Me."

The drone was far enough away that all I could hear was distant, muffled epithets.

"I don't need to beat myself up anymore..." I nearly whispered, my heart growing heavy in my chest. "I have friends, I have love... I've worked hard to... to make them real. My libido doesn't make me a bad person. ...I am a good person."

By now, the drone was just a speck on the horizon of the dreamscape. My eyes stung, and suddenly I was fighting back tears and sniffling. I didn't need the manifestation of a loudspeaker to feel cheap for being a crybaby right now, but the floodgates were open and I was having a hard time stopping it.

Luna knelt down and hugged me, holding me tight against her chest. "Just like that," she whispered. "Just like that." I pressed my face into her shoulder and tried not to break down, while she rubbed the back of my head reassuringly. "It will come back. It's a strangely comfortable habit to get into. But as long as you keep fighting it, eventually... what you are telling yourself will become the truth." Pulling back and looking into my eyes again, she said, "Not in the sense that you will always be right and everything will be okay, but in the sense that you are truly striving to be better than you were. It's harder that way; it makes our sins harder to bear, it makes our mistakes sting that much worse. But if you really want to change your course, the first step is to change what you tell yourself."

I pulled away and wiped my eyes dry. My dignity was shot, but I was feeling a little better now. "Thanks for the– pfft..." I couldn't help breaking out into chuckles. "...'friendship lesson'..."

Luna giggled along with me. "You will get used to them. They are not so frequent as everypony likes to joke they are."

"That's a relief," I snarked. I took a deep breath and looked around. "So... why'd you come here anyway?"

"You were having a bad dream," Luna said matter-of-factly. "This is my duty. Or did you forget?"

"Right, right..."

"And, after all, if you're going to be taking care of my sister, I thought it only fair–"

"Ah, there it is," I muttered, vaguely pointing at her. Of course there was an ulterior motive; it wasn't like she would actually care about...

"A-he-hem-hmm-HMM," Luna cleared her throat pointedly.

Oh, right. Not beating myself up and assuming the worst. I tried to smile. "Sorry. What I mean is: Thank you, Luna. It's an honor. I hope to– No, I want to... live up to your expectations. I'll try to– I'll help your sister in any way I..." Stop giving yourself a climb-down, Pascal! "I mean, I'll help your sister. Period."

"I have no doubt," the Princess replied with another pretty smile. "And if you ever feel low again, or want to talk to somepony about your responsibilities... I will always lend a listening ear. I owe you that much."

"Thank you," I repeated.

We kept hugging for a while, and then Luna sighed. "I must confess, I had in some small measure hoped that this would transition into a night of sweet lovemaking..."

I was taken aback. "Buh, pardon?"

"Well, it's not as though your marefriend would mind. And we wouldn't have to worry about the malicious interplay of our biologies – that is, the effects of your semen – here in the non-physical world." Luna pouted. "But I feel I have soured the mood too much for lust."

"Yeah, uh... Kinda got me thinking about heavy things, here." Hardly believing my luck, I added, "I-I'll take a raincheck, though..."

"Another night, then." Luna released the hug and stepped away, fading out of sight with the rest of the hallway. "Pleasant dreams, Pascal."

I don't fully remember how the rest of that dream went – something about swimming in Giant Derpy's cleavage like it was an Olympic swimming pool – but I know how I woke up: With an orgasm.

It took me by surprise. One moment, the dream was getting hotter and hotter, and the next I was wide awake, in the dark, able to sense nothing but sweet suction and rhythmic swallowing all around my twitching penis. My head rolled back into my pillow, and my hands grabbed the cushions for dear life. This was so intense, it was almost familiar...

Near the tail end of a solid minute-long orgasm, I finally managed to look back down. The door to the guest suite was closed and the curtains around the room were drawn, so the only light illuminating the bed was a dimly glowing, gently waving aurora mane.

I had stopped cumming, and we made eye contact. Celestia's magenta eyes locked on mine, and we just stared at each other. While my dick was still in her mouth. With a level of awkwardness only a Princess could generate, her lips slooooowly let go of my cock, with a long slurrrrrrp and then a wet smack as the head popped free. A line of drool still connected her tightly closed lips and my penis.

Entirely at a loss of what to say, I just whispered, "...Hi?"

Celestia's horn flashed, and I was blinded by a flash of teleportation. I covered my eyes and stifled a series of curses, but the Princess was completely gone.

Next to me, Derpy propped herself up on an elbow and looked around blearily in the dark. "What... wazzat?"

Rubbing the bridge of my nose and blinking the stars out of my eyes, I said, "I think... that was Princess Celestia. Getting a midnight snack."

"Oh." Derpy shrugged. "Yeah, I guess she's still got it bad." She dropped back onto her pillow and nuzzled into it. "When I met with her a few hours ago... she kept putting her face near my boobs. I think she was smelling your cum. Not sure if it was on purpose..."

God, so she was still affected, despite my power helping her keep her sense of self. "It really is like crack to her..." I said with no small amount of awe. "How in the world am I supposed to rehabilitate that?"

"I dunno what 'crack' is, but... That's why Twilight's coming tomorrow, right? So we can fill her in and she can... make your cum not addictive anymore, somehow..." Derpy yawned. "After that, I guess it's just one day at a time."

"Sure," I muttered. "But what the heck do I do on Day 1?"