Unfinished business (part one)

   Francisco was a in a colourful, happy place. There were other kids with him, some of them accompanied by their mothers, Francisco’s mom was also in that place. Everyone looked happy, everything was alright.

   Except it wasn’t, Francisco knew it. Because nothing of that was real, it was all just a dream. However, he wasn’t able to wake up, and he couldn’t control it, either. In his bones, he knew that something bad was about to happen, and that he had to wake up, but it was impossible. Francisco told that to his mom, but she just laughed at him. He told the other kids and their moms, but they just smiled and said that there was nothing to be afraid of.

   They were wrong.

   Then, he came. The king of that place. Everybody called him Willy, everybody smiled at him, because he was the ruler of that happy room. He sat on his throne and laughed loudly. The other kids and their moms laughed too, but they weren’t aware, they didn’t see the reality...

   They were laughing with him, but Willy was laughing at them. Because all of them were under his control, without even knowing. Then, he noticed that Francisco wasn’t smiling. He walked down from his throne and asked:

   “What’s the matter, little boy?”

   His voice was sweet and kind, like if he really cared about him. But that was a facade.

   “I want to wake up...” Francisco whispered.

   Willy’s face deformed into a twisted smile, and then he laughed again, this time louder than before, maniacally. He took off his face, like if it was a mask, making Francisco scream in terror. Under it there was another face, pale and wrinkled. Willy started to destroy that place with his bare hands, while the kids and their mothers were still laughing with him.  

   They were laughing at Francisco, because he would never be able to wake up...

...

   Francisco opened his eyes. He was back at his bed, in his room. He was sweating, his heart pounding like it had never done before. He had just came out of his first nightmare, and maybe the worst of them all. He was just eight years old.

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   Francisco opened his eyes. The light of the sun was filtering through the shadowy trees of the Everfree Forest. He had just had a weird dream about Superman fighting a cotton candy monster with lollipop wings on his back and streamer cannons of his feet. Then he looked to himself. He was a cotton candy monster with lollipop wings on his back and streamer cannons on his feet.

   He didn’t know he could transform unwittingly while sleeping. He had to be more careful, or else Ponyville could wake up with the view of a squid as big as the Everfree Forest.

   Francisco yawned, and his feet fired two cloud of streamers. Then, he noticed something weird around him: footprints. They were perfectly visible, thanks to the wet ground, but they couldn’t be his, since he had flied to his sleep place, not walked. Besides, the footprints were going away. Oddly, the trail seemed to start right by his side. Maybe he was a sleepwalker?

   But the weirdest of all was that, without a doubt, those footprints had been made by human shoes.

***

   It seemed like a normal morning in Ponyville. The market had just opened, and the first clients were already there. The Weather Patrol had cleared the sky, despite the absence of one member.

   Rainbow Dash was walking. Not flying, walking. She didn’t look well, her face was pale, and her eyes, tired. Her wings were trembling.

   The blue pegasus was spotted by a pink figure in the distance. Immediately, Pinkie Pie ran towards her friend. She didn’t bounce, she ran. Just like Dash, the face of the pink earth pony was pale, and her mane, straight. Her tired eyes were wet.

   “Dashie!”, she screamed, hugging the pegasus.

   “Don’t touch me!” roared Dash, violently pushing her friend away.

   Pinkie Pie fell to the ground. She curled and began to shake, making a big effort to not cry.

   “I’m sorry!” apologized Dash, instantly. “I’m sorry... I didn’t want to push you, It’s just that I have had a very bad night, Pinkie... sorry...”

   “Yeah? M... me too, Dashie...”

   The blue pegasus was about to help her friend, when she heard the sound of a scooter not too far. Opening her eyes widely, she ran, pursuing the sound, until she found a winged filly. Rainbow Dash hugged Scootaloo, while crying.

   “Dash?” asked the little girl, confused. “What’s happening?”

   But the cyan pegasus was unable to talk properly. She could only mumble: “Those fillies... Dear Celestia, all those fillies, and I... I...”

   Still curled, wiping her tears with her own tail, Pinkie Pie watched everything from the distance.

   “Darling?” asked Rarity, approaching. “Is there something wrong?”

   “Bad...” whispered Pinkie. “I’ve been very bad... to Dashie... She hates me...”

   The white unicorn looked at Rainbow Dash, who was still holding Scootaloo between her hooves. Then, she looked around. There were other ponies who seemed to be tired and scared. She had heard that Big Macintosh had refused to leave his room that morning, forcing Applejack to enter there. The orange earth pony had found her big brother curled on a corner, staring at his own hooves, horrified. It was like if Ponyville had suffered a plague of nightmares, if something like that was possible.

   “Come on, darling,” she said, softly, to Pinkie Pie. “Let’s go back to Sugarcube Corner, shall we? I bet you haven’t had your breakfast yet. Would you like some cupcakes?”

   However, at the mere mention of that word, the pink pony screamed.

   “No!” she said, covering her head with her hooves, crying. “Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that again!”  

   Rarity began to worry. Pinkie was at the very edge of a crisis, if she wasn’t already in one. She needed help, and the white unicorn thought of warning Twilight, but she couldn’t leave her friend alone in that state. Then, a black stallion entered the town, coming from the Everfree Forest. His steps were a bit clumsy.

   “Rarity!” he said. Then, he saw Pinkie and Dash. “What’s happening here?”

   “I don’t know,” answered the unicorn. “It seems that they, as well as the half of the population of Ponyville, have had terrible nightmares. And what are you doing here?”

   “I am searching for something, or someone.”

   “Wouldn’t you mean somepony?”

   “No, someone, I’m afraid, although I don’t know who. But that can wait, Is there something I can help with?”

   Then, they heard a laugh coming from the shadows of an alley. The two of them looked. There was a big figure in the darkness, too big for being a pony. And it was bipedal.

   The creature stepped forward, revealing his shape. A human, a very corpulent human dressed in a gray suit, with arms and legs that were like columns, and enormous hands. His big black shoes were a bit dirty, with mud of the Everfree Forest. And his face... pale, with tiny eyes of black iris, and a sinister grin.

   “Long time no see, little boy” he said.

***

   Twilight was walking through the streets of Ponyville, accompanied by Applejack.

   “How’s your brother?”, she asked.

   “Bad,” said the orange pony. “Granny Smith and Applebloom are takin care of him, but everytime mah sister is near, he starts to cry. I’m worried, Twilight, Big Mac had never had any trouble with nightmares before.”

   The purple unicorn looked to the other ponies in the street.

   “It looks like a plague,” she sighed. “Spike has been affected, too. The poor thing woke up screaming nonsenses about me being a spider.”

   “Do yah think all this is natural?”

   “Half of the ponies in the town having such horrible nightmares just a coincidence? It’s hard to believe. Maybe it’s a spell someone casted on us.”

   “But who would...?”

   The two mares looked each other.

   “Do yah think...?”, asked Applejack.

   “No,” answered Twilight, almost immediately. “That’s impossible, Francisco is our friend! He would never...”

   “Look! There he is!”

   The two ran towards the black stallion. Rarity and Pinkie were there, too, the latter sobbing in the ground, with her mane and tail straight. The shapeshifter was talking to a strange and menacing-looking creature.

   “You!” said Francisco.

   “Ah, I see you remember me,” smiled the human. “It’s been a while, isn’t it? Twenty years, if I’m not mistaken...”

   The mane of the black stallion started to move, even though there wasn’t any breeze. Twilight saw red sparks coming from the charcoal-colored hair. Also, Francisco’s cutie marks, those yellow eyes, became bloodshot.

   “Willy!” he shouted, clenching.

   “I like this town,” said the pale human, looking around. “So colourful... It’s like our happy place. Do you remember it, little boy?”

   “What are you doing here?” asked Francisco. The air around him was, literally, electrified. “No, a better question: why do you even exist? You’re not real, just a nightmare I had when I was a little kid!”

   “And does that matter? After all, aren’t you living right now in a fictio-?”

   “Shut up!” Francisco looked around. None of the ponies seemed to have understood that last line. Good. “Was it you? Are you the responsible for the nightmares?”

   Willy laughed slightly, maliciously, and lifted his index finger.

   “One touch,” he said. “Just one touch on their candy-colored heads, and the darkness comes out. You have chosen wonderful friends, Francisco, all of them are the perfect material to build the sickest nightmares.”

   “Why did you do this?!”

   “Isn’t it obvious? Because it amused me.”

   Twilight approached Francisco, not much in order to not be zapped by the electricity.

   “What’s happening?” she whispered. “Do you know him?”

   The black stallion didn’t answered, he had his eyes fixed on Willy.

   “I am a coward,” he said. However, it was talking to himself and to that human, rather than to Twilight. Then, his body began to change. “I am a coward, I’ve always been a coward, running away from things. I ran away from responsibilities, I ran away from my world, I even ran away from my humanity. But you...”

   Francisco had transformed into an angel. A white faceless angel with three shiny red eyes on his head. His two wings were way bigger than his body, and each one was covered in yellow eyes. At the end of his legs, he had sharp claws instead of feet. Actually, he looked more like an strange alien, rather than an angel.

   “You!” he shouted, pointing at Willy with his index finger. “I’ve been waiting all my life to see you again! We’ll end what we began twenty years ago!”

   Francisco took off, catching Willy and flying to the Everfree Forest.

   Twilight looked at Applejack, no one of them was sure about what had just happened, but they were confident that Francisco would solve it by himself. After all, it seemed to be a personal issue. Meanwhile, they should help Rainbow Dash and the other ponies who had been affected by the nightmares.

   Rarity was hugging Pinkie Pie.

   “Don’t worry, darling...” she was saying. “Our new friend is going to solve everything... you’ll see...”

***

   Francisco dropped Willy in a clearing of the Everfree Forest. The corpulent human fell sonorously to the ground, but that didn’t seem to hurt him. He stood up, still with that evil smile on his face. The white angel landed in front of him. Like if it was a duel from an old Western movie, the two of them looked silently at each other.

   “How?” Francisco asked. “How did you became real?”

   “I thought you would have already figured it out” said Willy. “Now you have many different bodies, and body and mind are connected, never forget that. You have spare avatars for each one of your inner demons, I just had to pick one, change it a little, and the I jumped off your mind. Metaphorically and literally.”

   “I don’t have inner demons. Or at least, I won’t, once I’ve finished with you.”

   Willy laughed. He also massaged his shoulder.

   “It aches a bit,” he explained. “Apparently, the only rule of your powers is that you can’t transform into a human.”

   ‘It makes sense,’ thought Francisco. ‘After all, I had to reject my humanity to acquire them.’

   “Fortunately, it seems that my monstrous soul counteracts my human shape, and so, I can exist with just some aches here and there. But don’t worry, I think I’ll be able to give a good spectacle.” Then, his face deformed in a twisted smile, the one that Francisco had been remembering since his childhood. “Let the fight begin!”

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NOTE: This is not an attack to Cupcakes, Sweet Apple Massacre, Rainbow Factory, The Spiderses and other similar fics. I haven’t read them, I have no intention of reading them, and I don’t care if there is people who reads/likes them.

I just thought it would be fun.

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