Funny eyes

   Francisco woke up in his bed, sweating, almost as traumatized as if the Twin Cakes had jumped over him again and he couldn’t transform in something gelatinous to avoid the total obliteration of his stomach.

   He cleaned the sweat of his forehead with a hoof, and then looked at the clock. The nightmare had awakened him with accuracy, it was almost breakfast time, and that morning, he had to prepare it.

   The black stallion went to the kitchen, still musing a bit about his dream. He opened the fridge to get the milk, and...

   “Surprise!” shouted Pinkie Pie, jumping from inside the appliance.

   Francisco was startled so hard, that he transformed into a bunch of green bubbles.

   “Good morning!” smiled Pinkie.

   “How do you do that?” asked the shapeshifter, returning to his pony form. “How did you get inside the fridge, and when?”

   “I don’t know!” replied Pinkie, bouncing around without worries. “Let me help you with the breakfast!”

   “Oh, no,” smiled the stallion. “Today it’s my turn, and this time, I’ll handle it myself. Now, go back to bed and sleep for a bit more, ok? I’ll make your favourite cupcakes.”

   “Chocolate cupcakes!” exclaimed Pinkie, while Francisco was gently pushing her back to the stairs. “I love them! I love chocolate! And I love you, too!”

   She kissed him, and bounced upstairs. Francisco returned to the kitchen and started to bake.

   “You look worried.”

   “Agh!” Francisco turned into bubbles again. “Pinkie, stop startling me!”

   “Ups, sorry... But seriously, you don’t look very good. Have you slept well?”

   “N... No,” the black stallion re-appeared. “I’ve had nightmares. About the Hivemind.”

   “Oh, poor thing...” the mare took Francisco’s head with her hooves and pressed his head against her chest. “Now, tell your fillyfriend Pinkie all about it,” she said, gently tapping the head of the shapeshifter.

   “Pinkie, I should really start baking... Oh, whatever... I dreamed that the Hivemind returned, not as planet, but as some kind of giant red... thing, and it started to assimilate everything... everypony... all of you.”

   “But you destroyed the Hivemind, remember? It went BOOOOM in the skies, all of us saw it. That monster won’t return, it’s impossible!”

   Truly, it was impossible for the Hivemind to return, but it didn’t have to. It could still be there, Francisco had thought a lot about it.

   The Hivemind wasn’t stupid. After all, it was a worldwide supercomputer who had absorbed the minds of all mankind, it just had been unprepared to fight him. But it could had foreseen its own destruction, and sent something like a seed, a part of itself, to Equestria, the nearest world avaliable. Maybe his nightmares were residual memories of the thoughts of the Hivemind, which Francisco had shared before the explosion, when both of them had become, briefly, one entity.

   That was possible. Although Francisco had scanned the Multiverse and destroyed any other menace related to him, he hadn’t even looked at Equestria, and that had been a big mistake. If the Hivemind had sent a part of itself there before the purge, it would had survived, perfectly.

   “Maybe I should patrol the town later,” he said. “Just in case.”

   “Don’t worry your many heads about that,” whispered Pinkie. “Not even a week has passed since you saved the world, you have to rest!”

   “Aw, just like when we were young...” said a third voice.

   The young couple turned back. The Cakes were looking at them with a nostalgic expression on their faces. Pinkie blushed and Francisco turned into bubbles again.

***

   Even though the memory of the red planet was still fresh, life in all Equestria had already returned to normality. In some places, things had gotten even better than they were before. After being at the very edge of extinction, some ponies had decided to rethink their lives. Some enemies reconciled and became friends, sons that had refused to see their parents for years had returned home, and some grumpy ponies decided to be a bit nicer with their neighbours.

   For Derpy Hooves, however, life was still the same. ‘Don’t touch that, Derpy!’, they said to her. ‘Move out of the way, Derpy!’, ‘No, we don’t need your help, Derpy.’, ‘Stop being so clumsy, Derpy!’. They used to say those things to her before the red planet, and they were still saying them after.

   But it wasn’t her fault. She was just trying to do her best, like always. It was the fault of those doors, columns and closed windows that appeared out of nowhere and stood in her path all the time. Those damn inanimate objects...

   The gray pegasus landed on the shore of a small river, outside Ponyville. Her face was black due to a bit... shocking visit to the Library, while Twilight was in the middle of an experiment. Actually, the purple unicorn was one of the few ponies who were kind to her. ‘Don’t worry, Derpy.’, she had said. ‘Anypony can have an accident.’ Twilight was very patient with her, so was Rarity, even though she wouldn’t let her anywhere near her boutique. Derpy also liked Pinkie and Fluttershy, the first was always giving muffins and sweet things to her, with a big smile; and the latter was one of the kindest pegasus she had met. Sometimes, Applejack let her help with the apple trees, and the earth pony always nursed her whenever she bucked a tree with the head instead of the hooves.

   Those damn trees, appearing out of nowhere...

   Rainbow Dash was the less kind of the six, and sometimes she used to scold Derpy, but the gray pegasus knew that, actually, the best flyer of Equestria really cared about her, no matter how many times she shouted in anger.

   But still, Derpy felt she was alone. Every time she looked herself into a mirror, or every time she walked near water.

   The gray pegasus wet her hooves and cleaned the soot of her face, and she felt alone again, because she saw her reflection in the river. She saw those eyes, those Funny Eyes, as some ponies had named them, maybe maliciously, maybe not.

   Why was she the only pony with Funny Eyes?

   Then, a sound made her look up, at the other shore of the river. In front of her, trying to hide itself in the bushes, there was a creature. Bipedal, of elongated body, and red. Its body was covered with eyes, and all of them were Funny Eyes, just like those of Derpy, because each one was looking at a different direction.

   At first, the gray pegasus was scared, because the creature kinda looked like that terrible red planet. However, she calmed when she realized that, while the eyes of the cosmic monster were blue, the eyes of that strange being were yellow.

   Again, just like hers.

***

   “Hello, Twilight,” said Pinkie, bouncing across the streets of the town. “Uh, your face is a bit black. What happened?”

   “Derpy Hooves crashed through my window while I was conducting an experiment.”, explained the unicorn.

   “Oh, that poor pegasus...” Pinkie put a sad face. “Twilight, please tell me that you didn’t scold her.”

   “Of course not! I know that she is just trying to do her best, it’s not her fault that... well, you know, her eyes...”

   “We should throw a party for her!”

   “What? I mean.... yeah, that would be nice, and I’m sure that Derpy would appreciate it; but why a part-?”, then, she realized that she was talking to Pinkie Pie.

   Parties had no need for a reason.

***

   The white angel landed in the balcony and wrapped himself in his wings. He bowed before Celestia, and said:

   “I came as soon as I received your message. What’s the problem?”

   “There’s something I wish you to see, friend from another world.”

   The white alicorn entered in the castle, and Francisco followed her. Soon, he met the cause of all that: a cocoon. Bigger than Celestia herself, red, and it had already hatched.

   “It was found on the outsides of Manehattan,” explained the Princess. “There were footprints near it, but the trace had been partially erased by the wind and the rain. We believe that, whatever it was inside of this thing, it came out one of two days ago.”

   The angel approached and touched the cocoon. He recognized the material.

   “This was created by the Hivemind,” he announced. “It comes from the red planet.”

   “How is it possible? You destroyed it!”

   “I’m afraid that the Hivemind sent this to Equestria before that, probably when I trespassed its defenses, in my way to the core. But this is just a dead carcass, it’s harmless.”

   “I thought so. The question is, what was inside this cocoon, and where it is now?”

   Francisco remembered his nightmares, the horrible images he saw in his dreams about a reborned Hivemind devouring Equestria, and his three red eyes shone.

   “I’ll find it, and I’ll destroy it.”, he said.  

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