Princesses of Equestria

Chapter 6: You're Just Like Me

Pinkie Pie's sleepover was truer to its name than most sleepovers tended to be. According to Twilight Sparkle, the average sleepover involved food with too many calories, drinks with too much sugar, board games, truth or dare, horror stories, pranks during horror stories, pranking the pranksters after horror stories, passing out from over-pranking, and waking up the next day with calorie bomb hangover.

Twilight knew this for an indisputable fact. She'd read about it in chapter sixteen of Slumber 101: All You've Ever Wanted To Know About Slumber Parties But Were Afraid To Ask. A real page turner!

For Twilight herself, along with Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, sleepovers typically involved the following: Twilight reading Slumber 101 for most of the night, Applejack cooking the smores, Rainbow eating the smores, Rarity throwing a fit after her mud mask got ruined by Applejack chasing Rainbow down, Spike serving the three of them hot cocoa peace offerings, Fluttershy preparing—at Twilight's insistence—a healthy salad instead, and Pinkie scaring the bajeezus out of everypony when she fired the dinner cannon. Bonus points if Discord popped out dressed in a French maid suit, and yelled "Surprise!!!"

Tonight was different. Tonight, the sleepover was just that. Applejack, Rainbow, Rarity, Spike, Fluttershy and Pinkie accompanied Twilight home in a polite silence nopony had dared break. They'd paused so Pinkie could drop Gummy back at Sugarcube Corner and fetch the sleeping bags, paused again while Fluttershy flew by her cottage to feed her critters and Rarity's cat, then continued to Golden Oaks Library. They'd cleaned up some, had a plain dinner of bread and oats, unpacked the sleeping bags upstairs, and slept like rocks.

Eight hours later, when Twilight's bell-less alarm clock struck twelve, everypony still slept like rocks.

Everypony except Twilight.

"No ... don't ..." she pleaded, but the nightmares took her anyway.

High above Ponyville, Princess Luna glided upon a gentle night breeze and held her quiet vigil. Yesterday's unexpected calamity had taxed her and Celestia both, but after the failed Spring Equinox's wreckage had been cleared, Tia insisted Luna continue her nightly patrol. It was that or fill out all the insurance paperwork, and the sight of those endless forms had shaken Luna worse than Twilight's tidal wave. Night patrol it 'twas. A dull patrol, by the by.

Drifting through the mist of dreaming emanated by Equestria's citizens, Luna saw about what she'd expected. Garbled accounts of the disastrous Festival, some photo-realistic, most not, especially the one involving a giant rubber chicken.

Much of the populace's dreams were common fare, however, unrelated to the bedlam they'd experienced mere hours ago. Such was oft the nature of reveries. Lost in strange lands, at home in stranger ones, tails missing, tails on the wrong end, flying without wings, falling with wings, flying on a giant rubber chicken. The usual.

Then, the unusual fare. Invading cakes from outer space. Visions of a realm populated by peculiar garbed bipeds. Rubber chickens on stilts. Most unorthodox.

And yes, the many, many bawdy erotic fantasies. The one with the rubber chicken was particularly sordid ... wait a minute—

"Enough, Discord! Begone from Equestria's dreamscape, and take thine infernal rubber chicken with thee!"

"I didn't do it! The other guy did. Whatshisname. Cheese something. Go bother him. I'm making dream waffles!"

Frowning, Luna left Discord to his wafflemaking and sought out the consciousness whose plastic poultry vexed her so. She'd nearly found the swine, and was about to give him a pin-shaped piece of her mind when—