My bus hadn't stopped where I told it to, for the second time. It's happened twice now, and now I was in some kind of random suburb far away from the city... again.

The first time this happened, it was fine, because I was already lost and didn't really have to be anywhere at the moment.

This time however, I had somewhere I needed to be. Me, my buddy Nomad, and Pinkie, all needed to be at the church—that big one in the middle of the city with that giant sixty foot statue of... I think it was St. Mary?

It might not have been, but then again, the details weren't important. What was important, is that we were all late, and Twilight was probably gonna be pissed that we missed the birth of her daughter.

To be honest though, I didn't mind all that much... the little lavender larva kind of creeped me out a bit, and I didn't really have a good feeling about it anyway.

Regardless, she was counting on us to be there and I fucked it up for all of us. Maybe I should've just been in the church already...

Well thankfully it worked out in the end because we all managed to arrive at the church after a few minutes of aimless wandering in the suburbs.

We missed the initial birth of Twilight's disgusting larva child, but she was too busy fawning over how adorable it was to be mad at us, so it all turned out fine in the end, even if I did find the little one eyed lavender maggot positively hideous.

I don't know what happened to Pinkie and my friend, but at the very least I was safely hidden away—watching from a distance within that oversized statue as the maggot reached sudden maturity and busted out of the church's roof.

That purple parasitic mosquito wasp had to be at least half as big as this statue, which wasn't good for me because it somehow knew exactly where I was and tore the damn top right off of the statue.

As I fell and hit the ground next to a still fawning Twilight, I couldn't help but rub it in her face. I had told her this would happen, I knew nothing good was gonna come from birthing that damn larva, but she didn't listen to me.

Even now—even as she was impaled on her 'child's' stinger and drained of all her fluids right before my eyes, leaving her nothing but a withered husk—she was still singing it's praises.

Right to the very end.

Apparently the crazy blue horse with the wings and horn that was running down the street had seen enough, because she shouted something I didn't really understand, and everything froze.

I turned to fully face the—

Something snapped on inside my head and I blinked.

Furrowing my brow in abject confusion, I sat up from where I was lying and swept my gaze over my surroundings, trying to find out where this odd sense of wrongness was coming from.

"What the fu—JEEZUS CHRIST!"

I scrambled away from the gigantic lavender mutant mosquito thing right above me, my heart nearly beating its way out of my chest as I clumsily stumbled to my feet.

As I stared at the thing in horror, it slowly began to dawn on me that it wasn't moving. Just as I noticed the skewered jerky-like pony on the end of its stinger, it suddenly warped and twisted and with an odd fwip, it vanished.

Then everything vanished in a similar manner, leaving me in a black void and very, very confused.

"Just what manner of creature are you?"

I whipped around at the sound of the voice, and came face to face with the Lunar Princess herself—the pony calmly trotting towards me with an intrigued, if slightly disturbed, expression.

No doubt she had some questions about what she had just seen.

Hell, I had questions about what I had just seen.

"Tell me, creature, who—and what—are you?" Luna asked, stopping a few feet away, "how did you come to be here, and..."

She paused, looking thoughtful. Her face twisted into an unsure frown before she shook her head and grimaced.

"It matters not," she finally said, "there is a far more pressing matter at hoof than what you are and why your dreams are so... disturbing."

I went to speak, but she talked over me.

"I have many questions, but they will have to wait," she lit her horn, and the black void was suddenly replaced with a starry night sky overlooking a peaceful grassy meadow.

The midnight blue Princess hadn't given me any time to recover from the frankly insane events happening to me at the moment.

Instead she stepped up next to me and lit her horn again. Rarity appeared before the two of us, unmoving and unblinking.

"Have you seen this mare, creature?" Luna asked, turning to eye me with an intense gaze, "I've managed to track her through her dreams to this location, but something here is interfering with my connection to the dream realm and—"

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a minute!" I finally cried, raising my hands, "just... gimme a second here."

The mare's mouth snapped shut and she narrowed her eyes. Seeing this, I quickly went to explain.

"Look, I'm not sure who you are or what's going on here," I lied, "but at least gimme a second to clear my head from that..." I frowned, "I guess it was a dream? Wait..." I looked around, then back to Luna, "I guess I'm still technically dreaming."

Luna frowned, and looked as though she was considering my words. Eventually she sighed and gave me an apologetic smile.

"You are right, creature, I apologize for being so... rude," her smile fell and was replaced with a grimace, "but I'm afraid I don't have much time to explain who I am and what's going on. My connection even now is tenuous at best and I may fade from your dream at any moment."

"Okay, fine," I conceded, "whatever this is about, it seems urgent, so go ahead and I'll figure out the rest later."

In truth I knew exactly what was going on, as Luna being here and searching for Rarity was more or less a natural conclusion to the events that had transpired.

"That mare there?" I continued, gesturing to the creepy Rarity dream puppet, "I don't who she is, or why you're looking for her, but I've seen her. She's in a cell next to mine. We're both on a slave ship somewhere in Abyssinia."

"A... A slave ship?!" Luna cried in disbelief, her eyes ablaze with righteous fury, "WHERE IS THIS SHIP? WHO ARE THE FOOLISH CURS THAT WOULD DARE TO ENSLAVE EQUESTRIA'S GREATEST HEROES? FATHER HELP ME, WHEN I FIND OUT—"

"Hey!" I cried, trying to shout over the mare, "I'm not finished! There's some other stuff you should know!"

Somehow I managed to get through to the enraged mare and she looked at me, eyes still full of fire, but willing to listen. I breathed an audible sigh of relief before speaking in a more measured tone.

"Since you don't have a lot of time, I'll make this quick," I began, "One of the people on this ship gave Rarity some kind of drug that wiped her memory."

"What?!"

"Just hang on," I pleaded, "I'm not done, there's more."

Luna begrudgingly clamped her mouth shut and furrowed her brow.

"Before she lost her memory, she told me she and her friends got separated when they arrived here in... in... ah, fuck, I can't remember the name of this place!"

Luna grimaced, and I quickly moved on, mindful of the time she had left.

"Well, in any case," I continued, "some bad things went down, and the girls got captured by slavers... well actually..."

I hesitated.

Should I tell her? She won't take it well, and it may make things worse in the long run... ah fuck it, she's gonna find out sooner or later anyway, and it might speed up the rescue process.

"I'm gonna be blunt here since your pressed for time and all," I said with a frown, "Rarity... she told me that she messed up, and because of it, a dragon friend of hers named Spike was killed."

I raised a hand to forestall Luna's immediate response.

"I'm not finished," I said quickly. Luna slowly closed her mouth, her eyes wide and disbelieving, "I... I overheard the Captain of this ship talking to his lackey, and... I don't know which ones they were talking about, but apparently two of Rarity's other friends were also killed."

I waited for some kind of overblown reaction to the news, but Luna just fell to her haunches and stared at me blankly.

"...You lie."

"I'm not lying."

For a few seconds, we just stared at each other, me with a stoic expression, and her with one completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

Then Luna blinked once... and vanished.

"Wai—"

The world around me shattered and I jerked upright in my cell.

I immediately replayed everything that had just transpired, and cursed out loud. I hadn't gotten to say everything I needed to say, like the fact that the rest of the Elements were on a different ship, or that I had a plan to start a rebellion.

I didn't even know if we were still in that port city or if we had already set sail. I cursed again and leaned back against the wall I had been rested against while I was asleep as I rubbed my face.

Things were gonna get very messy, and soon.

I could just feel it.

That nice little bit of what the fuckery at the beginning of the chapter was based off of an actual dream that I actually had.

Rarity's dream was symbolic, it made a certain sense when you think about it. Human dreams are different—or at least my dreams are different—and they don't make any goddamn sense whatsoever.

Trust me, the actual dream was probably even weirder than I made it out to be in the story.