The sound of an explosion followed by loud yelling had Dusk's eyes open in less than a second. The very bed he slept in seemed to vibrate from the cacophony of arguing beneath him. He felt tired already, even after eleven hours of dreamless, exhausted sleep after settling the five of them down last time, he was already desperate to roll out of bed and into a grave.

He threw himself from his slumbering chambers, barely having time to pull on a pair of trousers before bolting out of the bedroom. Celestia had designed the rehab centre to be large, needing to have every facility and specification to keep all of the 'girls' busy, entertained, and in shape while working towards their eventual reintegration. Whether it was an indoor track, a swimming pool, a gym room, or a sauna, it was all drafted up, paid for, and built in order to make this venture as successful as possible.

That being said, the purple stallion resented the fact the upper floors designed for naught else other than sleeping had to be the same size. Bedrooms big enough to hold a thirty-stallion wrestling match slapped onto corridors you could throw a baseball down and have it hit the ground before it hit a wall. It didn't make for a very good response time when Dusk had to hike over the same distance from here to Canterlot just to get to the bathroom at night. Made it even worse when five villainesses with enough combined power to crack a planet in half were going at it in whatever room was strong enough to handle the scuffle.

There was a brief poof of smoke right next to Dusk's head as he ran, eyes dragging sideways ever so slightly to see a familiar form floating next to him in a relaxed, leisurely position.

"Who needs an alarm clock when these bitches wake the world up, eh?" Eris asked with a smug grin.

The mismash creature was brushing her teeth, levitating a cup of water and an empty cup for swilling and rinsing purposes next to her as she floated along. Her usually-pristine, back-length white hair was matted and knotted, signalling she hadn't been up for much longer than Dusk had.

"What did you do this time?" Dusk asked the buxom Draconequus, skidding around a corner and coming to a large staircase.

"Why is it that whenever a fight breaks out between homicidal nutcases like that lot, you always assume that little ol' me is at fault?" Eris scoffed in a faux-offended tone, crossing her arms underneath her breasts and pouting.

"Because it usually is you," Dusk sighed, thundering down the stairs while Eris proceeded to roll forwards in the air to mimic tumbling down them. "Whether it was the deal with Umbra's hairbrush, Chrysalis glam mags, or that time you ended up getting me socked in the mouth because Tirek thought I'd been rifling through her underwear drawer because you'd put a frog in the thing-"

"-Alright, in my defence, it's not my fault the dumb sack of horns didn't notice the frog before she blamed you for being a pervert," Eris shrugged, holding her hawk-talon-hand up with a raised finger. "It was all meant to be a fun little bit of fun, make it so that I could get away with a few frog-pussy jokes, piss off the big, red goon... I didn't mean for you to catch an ass-whooping over it."

"Oh, I suppose that makes it all better, doesn't it?" Dusk glowered. "S'pose I'll just forgive the busted muzzle and the fact there's still a hole in her bedroom wall the shape of my fucking face-"

"-I said I was sorry!" Eris snapped, spitting toothpaste foam everywhere as she flung her arms up in an exacerbated fashion. "What more do you want from me?"

"Maybe not to have tried the exact same thing again not two days later?!" Dusk yelled at her, screeching to a halt and jabbing a finger into her arm.

"Look, I spent three hours the night beforehand writing down every frog-pussy joke I could think of to use on her," Eris hissed. "And I'll be fucked if I'm gonna let that amount of work go to waste just because-"

"-just because the near eight-foot tall centaur chick that could throw me into orbit if she wanted to got the wrong idea and decided to beat me into a lavender-flavoured yogurt?" he growled. "Because you view your stupid one-liners as more important than my life?"

There was a moment of silence between the two of them, as silent as it could get with the literal war going on in the room down the hall, where Eris looked at Dusk with a mix of offensive, shock, and utter disbelief that he could ever insinuate something so awful.

"Of course the jokes are more important!" Eris exclaimed, hands clapping to the side of her head with a loud thwack. "Them shit's was A-One material, Dusk! Some of the finest yuks I've ever concocted in all my years, and you're honestly going to act so selfish as to assume that your mild bodily harm is worth more to this world than my primo, side-splitting frog-pussy jokes?"

"How do you sleep at night knowing you're this much of a terrible person?" Dusk asked with a slow, drawn-out blink.

"Knowing that Imma wake up sexy as fuck," she said with a wink and a loud, playful slap on her own, extremely-large backside. "Now, my selfish little toe-rag... let's go see what the Thunder-Thots are fighting about."

"You come up with that one just now, or did somebody have to take an ass-kicking to get the gears turning?" he snarled.

"Gods, for someone who's meant to be the Prince of Friendship, you're awfully selfish and not willing to understand your friend's problems, you know that?" Eris said with a roll of her eyes.

"I will eat you," came the furious response.

"Only if you promise to start with my pussy first," she winked, sticking the tip of her tongue out and swinging her hips gently.

Dusk rolled his eyes, bolting back to full speed as he made his way to the source of the argument, throwing open the door to the second floor weight room and performing a quick scan of the area. Weights were tossed all over the place, the mirror mounted on the wall was shattered into fragments, the squat rack was bent in half, and Nightmare Moon was currently towering over Queen Umbra, both of whom looked pretty beat up already, indicating that this was apparently an inbetween round of the bout.

"You bring shit like that to me again, runt, and I'll slap the side of your fucking face off," Umbra snarled, eyes glowing an ominous green, smoke wafting up to the ceiling as she stared at Nightmare Moon.

"One would think to watch their mouth when addressing a being that stands so high above you in every conceivable way that even attempting to spit on you would take three minutes for it to land," the larger, black-and-blue-tone Alicorn hissed, jabbing a finger into Umbra's muscular shoulder.

"Hm, you've got the words of a poet, Moonie," Umbra hissed, swatting her hand away effortlessly and grabbing a hold of the scruff of Nightmare's black exercise shirt. "It's a shame you've got the fucking punch of one, too."

And that seemed to be the bell for the next round, as 'Moonie' proceeded to throw a right hook straight into Umbra's face that knocked the shorter fighter sideways.

"How's that for the punch of a poet?!" she roared, leaping at Umbra and tackling her to the floor.

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." Dusk sighed, rushing towards them and powering up his own magic, boosting his strength way beyond the natural limit his effeminate body could muster up.

He grabbed hold of Nightmare's shoulder and pressed a hand to Umbra's collarbone, trying desperately to prise them apart. Nightmare, seemingly on instinct and without even looking, flung an elbow back at the new addition to the scrap, slamming it right into Dusk's muzzle and breaking his nose loudly.

He could feel the blood pouring before he could feel the pain, the injury to the head, one of the body's most vital areas, kicking off an instinctive flight of rage in the small stallion. Without thinking, he socked the other Alicorn in the back of the head, stunning her with the blow, before gripping the ethereal mass of hair that floated behind her, not even questioning how in the Hells it was physical, before ripping her off Umbra and throwing her flat on her ass behind him.

It seemed that once the two were pulled off each other, only then did they seem to notice that Dusk was in the room. Bleeding, magic pulsing, and eyes alight with fury, the two former-evildoers immediately noticed the injury and exploded into worry... in their own unique ways.

"Why did you get so close, you fool?!" Nightmare demanded, hands gently clapping to the side of Dusk's face as she channelled her magic through her thumbs, using it to heal the damage done to him. "You should know better than to come up behind us during combat by now!"

"Yeah, sorry, Moonie, but I wasn't exactly in the mood to sit back and let you two finish ruin a multi-million bit exercise room," Dusk growled, his anger cooling from the 'Vladimir Chokeabitch' level it had been at moments prior... but still nowhere close to calm.

"That's you told," Umbra snarked arrogantly.

"Don't you even start," he snarled in a furious manner. "I have no idea who started what here... but I can tell you for a fact that you, again, did close to nothing to cool the situation down."

"I don't back down from anything, Dusk," Umbra spat, quite literally spitting blood from a cut lip onto the floor. "If this stuck up old bitch wants another go, I'm game any time she is."

Nightmare went to move for Umbra a second time, only for Dusk to flare up his strength once more and force the much larger Alicorn back behind him, turning to Umbra again and pointing directly at her.

"Keep a lid on it for five minutes, please," Dusk hissed, looking at his watch quickly before continuing. "It is barely eight on a Saturday morning... I was planning on taking the day off after busting my ass all week trying to get through a treaty premise with a new little kingdom that's cropped up in the Dragon Lands... but now it looks like this is gonna be my eighth weekend in a row I'm gonna have to work through because you guys just outright refuse to get along with each other."

"I admit no fault in this," Nightmare snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and looking away.

"Not my fault she can't take a bit of light chiding without throwing hands," Umbra spat. "Fucking bitch..."

Dusk had to intervene for a third time in the space of literally two minutes... at which point, something inside him snapped. Whether a combination of stress, lack of free time, exhaustion with dealing with work, exhaustion with dealing with them, part of his wiring just seemed to burn out, at which point the little stallion's eyes lit up in sparks once again, teeth gritted down hard enough for his jaw to hurt, and his entire body trembling with rage.

"You know what?" he asked aloud. "Fine, fuck it. If you two aren't gonna get along, that's no skin off my nose. I'm just gonna have to make a few rewrites to your care plans, remove a good few privileges that you don't deserve, make sure that you're kept separate from each other at all times, and have it so that you're not allowed to leave your rooms until I decide you're both mature enough to co-exist without it turning into a warzone."

"T-That's hardly fair!" Nightmare exclaimed in shock.

"I only hit her like three times!" Umbra joined in with the outrage.

"No, both of you, shut it!" he barked in an infuriated tone, the two falling silent immediately as the stallion continued to rant, Eris having summoned up a bucket of popcorn and was feverishly chomping away. "I've tried everything I can think of with you. I've asked nicely, I've sat down with both of you time and again, I've put in specific time schedules for you to use the facilities so you don't interact, I've moved your rooms, reorganised entire sections of the Rehab Centre to make it so you don't ever have to even smell one another without having to sacrifice your preferred set up for any facilities-"

The eager Draconequus threw away her empty bucket and summoned up three more, getting a start on the newest one while also conjuring up herself an enormous slushie.

"-and as we can all see, it hasn't helped at all. You've ignored my attempts to help, thrown away my advice, and have wasted several days worth of my effort by refusing to even attempt to follow the rules I put in place just to make both of you happy," he continued, hands balled into fists down by his sides as his emotions continued to pour out. "You've both proven time and again you don't care about my attempts to help, and you don't even respect me enough to even humour me... and because of that, I'm officially stripping both of you of all of your privileges until you've grown up enough to prove you can handle them."

There was silence for a long moment, neither Umbra or Nightmare speaking up, until the shortest dark Queen again tried to raise a point in her defence.

"This wouldn't keep happening if she didn't insist on-" she spoke up in a meek tone only to fall silent the second Dusk shot her a glance.

"Both of you are here... all of you are here to prove to me, to Celestia, and to a Court of Law that you have reformed, adjusted, and are willing and capable to return to society as functioning, understanding, and, above all else, safe to be around individuals," Dusk growled. "Do not forget that you are here solely because we're attempting to ensure that happens. But also do not ever forget that your tenure here is not permanent. If myself or Celestia determines that your rehabilitation is not possible, you will be removed from this program and jailed according to your crimes."

Again, they said nothing.

"I have given you both everything you have asked for... and all I ask in return is that you show the same kindness to each other as I'd like you to show to me," he spoke, voice sounding less angry, less enraged and so much more... broken. "But instead, all you do is throw my kindness back in my face by disrespecting and ignoring my wishes... you've proven to me now that you not only can't handle all the help I'm trying to give you-"

"-Ser Dusk, please-" Nightmare began, reaching out with a soft hand.

"-but you also don't deserve it, either," he finished, tone cracking slightly as the anger gave way to genuine hurt.

With that, he left the room in dead silence, closing the door behind him in a quiet and gentle fashion, this somehow displaying the hurt a thousand times more powerfully than it would've if he'd simply slammed the door. A thick atmosphere hung in the room, neither Umbra nor Nightmare being willing to look at each other or Eris for the longest time.

"I gotta say," Eris chimed in, leaning back in her floating position and slurping her slushie. "You guys are fucking idiots."

The eyes of the dark queens hardened immediately, snarls and growls coming from both of them as they readied to fight, before Eris held up a finger. With an effortless flick of the digit, both Umbra and Nightmare were encased in dark electricity, shocked to the core with painless magic and forced down to their knees. Eris cast aside the slushie, having it explode into dove feathers that then turned into butterflies that made their way out a cracked window.

The Draconequus dropped onto her strong legs, crouching down next to the muted, restrained, and woefully underpowered-in-comparison mares. Eris locked her fingers together, tail swishing playfully behind her in a vicious juxtaposition to the expression on her face.

"Listen up, sugars," she growled in an ungodly-threatening tone. "Two things: the first being that you don't ever, ever think your pathetic little spells and dainty little fists are going to do anything against me. I can rip your entire existence in two without so much as a thought about it, so don't ever step to me like that again, or else I'll hurt you in ways you can't even possibly imagine."

The two continued to groan in silent pain, voices stolen by the Mistress of Reality that stood before them.

"Second... that little twink is someone I consider a very, very good friend," Eris continued. "Now, I may bully the boy just as much as the next buxom bitch that lives in this place... but I know when to call it quits. I know the second a frown appears on his beautiful little face, I've gone too far and I need to make it up to him. Now, you two... you arrogant, pig-headed, selfish little cunts-"

The harshness on the last word from her mouth was emphasised by a squeezing motion made with her talons, causing the arcing lightning around the bodies of the restrained two to tighten, hurting them even more.

"-have made my friend very, very upset," she continued. "And I don't appreciate that one little bit. So here's what we're going to do, okay? You two are gonna behave yourselves for him. You're gonna do everything in your power to make that fat-bottomed little bitch-boy the happiest chappy this side of the sun. Not just because I'll turn you inside out and feed you to the crows if you don't, which I more than happily will, but because you're starting to understand how much you're hurting him, aren't you?"

With a snap of her fingers, Eris killed off the lightning, dropping both of the mares to the floor as she stood up to her full height and turned away from them.

"So let's go over a little chat, girlies, so that we can form an understanding of where you went wrong and how you can fix it," Eris exclaimed with a wide, arrogant smile. "Dusk has bled, cried, and suffered putting this place together for all of us. And while we're all still our fair share of crazy, angry, and leaning-slightly-towards-evil, those nasty-pasty Elements did the same thing to all of us, didn't it?"

The two darker ponies clambered to their feet, rubbing their sore spots and looking between each other nervously.

"Made us have feewings, didn't it?" Eris asked in a mocking tone, making a heart gesture with her hands over her left breast and batting her eyelashes. "Gave us those nasty emotions right in our tiddy-tid-tids, didn't it?"

She snapped her fingers again, conjuring up a little stuffed doll version of Dusk with an unhappy face on it, tossing it to Nightmare and watching the enormous mare catch it.

"We're not the heartless little whores we once were, girls, and we can't ignore what we're doing to him," Eris smirked before throwing in a shrug. "Or, should I say, what you're doing to him."

"We aren't the only ones in here, Eris," Nightmare snarled, her softened eyes dragging away from the sad teddy bear Dusk and hardening as she looked at the Draconequus. "You talk like a warden, but you're as much as prisoner as we are."

"See, there you are again with that Queen Cunt behaviour," Eris waved, summoning another sad-Dusk-doll and tossing it to Umbra. "You forget this isn't a prison. You're forgetting we aren't here to be beaten, raped, and humiliated for the entertainment of the masses. This is a rehab centre. They're trying to make us all better."

Umbra toyed with the little ponytail on the back of the teddy's head and had a soft smile touch her lips as the adorableness got to her slightly.

"Me, Chryssy, and Tirek, we're all trying, day-by-day," she continued. "I'm learning the ABCs of not warping reality for my own benefit, Tirek's increasing her vocabulary of definitions beyond 'conquer' and 'maim', and our little green thot-bag upstairs is learning the times tables of 'how not to be a mind-controlling rapist'. Everyone here's doing their part, passing our tests, and getting the lovely head-pets from our adorable little handler."

Eris pointed to the dolls in their hands before making them both wave at the two holding them, even briefly having them smile for a short second.

"Everyone... except you two," Eris shrugged, making the dolls return to their sad demeanour. "You don't do anything except fight, you never listen to what he tries to tell you, and you can't seem to stop thinking about yourselves for more than three seconds, can you?"

The dolls then disappeared with another snap of Eris' fingers.

"Personally, I don't get how you can still deal with being this fucking unlikable," Eris shrugged. "You've got the feewings, you feel remorse, and dare I say it, you two might actually not be socially retarded to the point of misunderstanding where you're going wrong. You're both assholes, you both know you're doing bad things, and you both feel shit about it... so why keep doing it?"

"Because some people often have their heads so far up their own asses, they've not seen anything but complete shit for years," came the sing-song tone of a familiar Green Queen from the doorway.

"Ah, there's the Mommy of the Millennia," Eris smirked, floating over to Chrysalis and waving at her playfully.

The tall, dark, and mommy-kink placed her hands on her wide, birthing hips as she leaned against the wall, smiling as Eris nuzzled her cheek playfully before the Draconequus wrapped her tail around Chrysalis' waist.

"I heard the whole thing from my bedroom, and my-oh-my, do I think you two are the worst," Chrysalis laughed.

"You're hardly one to talk!" Umbra snapped, hands defiantly down by her side. "You've fucked with him just as bad as we did!"

"Oh, sweetie, don't remind me of it. I kidnapped his babysitter, mind-controlled and raped his older sister for months on end, attempted a hostile takeover of his home, almost murdered his lifelong teacher, and attempted to kill him and his friends the entire time," Chrysalis listed off, counting each offence on her finger. "And yet... even I didn't get that reaction out of him."

"That..." Umbra mumbled. "That doesn't make you better than us..."

"But it makes you so much worse than me," Chrysalis laughed once again, checking her green nails in an arrogant fashion before smirking smugly at the other two black mares. "I did all of that to him and his, and once he took me and mine down, he was so willing to forgive and move on... the perfect example of a lovely little stallion... with that newfound heart of mine, I couldn't possible dream of doing anything to hurt such a beautiful, loving, and perfect little boy like that..."

She giggled quietly to herself as she slumped off to dreamland for a brief moment, returning to the conversation with a playful purr in her tone and smouldering green eyes, locking onto Nightmare and Umbra before pointing at them with an extended hand.

"But what does that make you bitches if even I couldn't hurt him anymore?" she asked. "He's given you everything you could ever want, time and again... and you nearly made him cry. Why, seeing someone who's done so much for me get so upset over a couple of heartless bitches just makes me wanna..."

Chrysalis' eyes ignited with green, blazing fire, her entire body covered in a glowing green aura as a haunting reverb covered her voice, sending a chill down the spine of all who gathered there as she spoke her threat.

"Break them over the back of my knee for daring to upset my little angel," she snarled, fangs bared and dripping with almost literal malice.

A fearful glance was exchanged between Umbra and Nightmare, this transforming into a terrified yelp as Umbra quite literally leapt into Nightmare's arms as the door flew almost off its hinges, opening with a mighty slam as the final familiar face made herself known.

"Who hurt him?" came the deep roar from the gut of their own Lady Tirek.

"Nobody yet... physically at least," Eris shrugged, jumping up onto the back of the centaur and snuggling into her long, white mane. "But two little troublemakers almost brought our dear Dusky to tears... whaddaya say about that, big girl?"

"Apologise," Tirek snarled, eyes lighting up with fury as she crackled her knuckles, the enormous muscle in her arms flexing visibly as she did so.

Umbra and Nightmare looked down at one another with fear, only for them both to realise they were still holding on tightly to each other. With hurried slaps and rapid awkward coughing, the two released their holds and stood a distance apart from each other.

"I'd appreciate this attempt to push us to reconciliation if it didn't feel as if my life was being threatened should I refuse," Nightmare Moon huffed, crossing her arms and turning her nose up.

"Only cuz it is," Tirek snorted.

"I'm not afraid of you," Nightmare snarled.

"Also not able to beat me either," Tirek shrugged. "But I'm not gonna fight you anyway... Dusk don't want that."

"See that? Right there?" Eris asked, floating around to Tirek's face and giving her a big kiss on the cheek before turning to face Umbra and Nightmare again. "That's humility. That's respect. That's being willing to hold back your anger and dislike of a person solely out of a sense of common decency because a dear friend whom'st you are very indebted to is asking you not to cause problems. And cuz Tirek's a little sweetheart under all that muscle, aren't you sugar?"

The eight-foot tall bruiser of a centaur blushed.

"We're all bad girls from bad lives, ladies," Eris gestured to the room. "But you two seem to be the only ones here that aren't willing to get past that... and seem so desperate to hurt and offend our poor little baby-boy who has done nothing but try to help you since you, y'know, tried to murder him and all."

"I didn't realise this had turned into the 'I want Dusk Shine's Dick In Me' club," Umbra spat in an arrogant fashion.

"You're not a part of it simply because you're a moron, deary," Chrysalis chuckled.

"Seconded," Eris sniggered.

"He makes me feel beautiful," Tirek grunted in a gravelly tone.

"Wait... all of you want him?" Nightmare asked in shock.

"How could we not?" Chrysalis laughed loudly. "Have you ever ignored the fact he's not a nine-foot Adonis of a stallion and looked at everything else he is?"

"Kind, sweet, understanding, intelligent," Eris listed off.

"Hung as fuck," Tirek added.

"And you'd know that how?" Umbra asked.

"I can be very hard to notice when I want to be," Tirek shrugged.

"Alright that's... a little rapey," Chrysalis commented with a sideways glance.

"'Hi, Pot, I'm Kettle' much?" Eris smirked.

"Nobody ever said Pot wasn't allowed to call Kettle black," the Changeling Queen retorted.

"Fair, fair," Eris nodded, turning her head back to the other two mares. "So, my detestable little bitches... are you gonna do the right thing and march yourself down to Dusk's office and say that you're sorry? Throw yourself down onto your knees and beg for his forgiveness?"

"Mhm, I'd get on my knees and beg for something else..." Chrysalis sniggered, licking her lips with her foot-long tongue.

"Keep it in your pants when the children are around, sugar," Eris grinned, turning her eyes back to Nightmare and Umbra. "So, whaddaya say? Are you gonna act like decent beings for the first time in your miserable existence and try to make up with the stallion that's the only reason you haven't found yourself turned into a prison slut wall for inmates with good behaviour?"

"Celestia would never allow..." Nightmare began defiantly, only to trail off halfway through her sentence and place a finger to her lip. "Well... then again..."

"Dark," Umbra commented with a bemused expression, tightening the fasten on her cotton pants and sighing loudly. "Alright, swallowing my pride and listening to your advice. I'm gonna go be a responsible, mature adult and apologise!"

"Hmf, change from usual," Nightmare commented. "Usually the only time your name and mature are used in the same sentence is when somebody describes what kind of cheese you reek of."

"Are you on smack, or d'you fucking want one, kiddo?" Umbra demanded, turning to face Nightmare with a furious expression.

"And here we go again," Eris said with a loud, unhappy groan. "Back to square fucking one..."