Running… that was the only thing she wanted to do now. Luna, still covered in syrup and feathers, just wanted to run away from everypony and everything. Tears were flowing freely from her eyes like a cascading waterfall, mixing in with the syrup stuck to her face.
Why?! She shouted out in her mind, words not leaving her mouth as her teeth were clenched. Tonight was going so well for her, yet now it was the worse evening for her ever. She thought back to the tale being told, how her dark persona was said to eat ponies unless they hid themselves. Luna grinded her teeth more and more, trying her best to persuade herself that Nightmare Moon was not her. She wasn’t a monster.
But why did my sister paint that monster in such a light and never gave me acknowledgment when I was gone?! Am I just a tool to her!? What am I to these ponies?! What am—
Her thoughts were cut off when she stumbled upon a tree trunk and fell to the ground, skidding on the ground as dirt and muck started mixing with the syrup. Pain was now also present in her body, as waves of stinging sensation started coursing through her.
Luna didn’t care, all she wanted to do now was disappear. She started whimpering and sobbing to herself, lying down in a fetal position. She opened her mouth a little, starting to wail as she closed her eyes.
They must really despise me! She thought to herself as she quieted down, but she never stopped her tears. They were only fooling me! But I deserve this! I deserve this! She remembered how everypony was running away from her and some were even cackling at her, pleased to see her like she was now.
I bet they aren’t even worried about me now…
The clearing in the forest was still a madhouse. Ponies were running around, many of them screaming as though their lives were in danger. Several were calling out that Nightmare Moon was on her way and it was only a matter of time before she’d attack them all. This only furthered the chaos, as ponies grew more and more fearful.
It made things very difficult for the small group huddled in the midst of them. Celestia had managed to grab a hold of Twilight and Pinkie Pie and the trio made their way over to where Roseluck was. The earth pony still seemed to be in shock from everything that had happened. So much so, that she didn’t even notice as the three arrived.
“Roseluck!” Twilight shouted over the noise, catching her attention. “What’s going on? What happened to Starry?”
“I don’t know,” she said back nervously, huddling over with the pair. “She started freaking out once we arrived. After… whatever that was happened, she just ran off. I tried to chase after her, but she was so quick. I don’t know where she went, but I think she ran into the forest.”
“That’s alright, it’s not your fault,” Twilight said attempting to dodge as somepony charged pass her. She gave him a glare. “We’re going to have a lot of trouble finding her though with everypony acting like the world’s ending.”
“Leave that to me,” Celestia said. Standing tall, she took a deep breath and shouted. “Everypony! Can I have your attention please?!”
But nothing changed. Maybe one or two ponies stopped to listen but, the rest kept running.
“I said,” she shouted again, “can I have your attention please?!?”
Once again, nothing happened. Her blood began to boil once again as she took a deep breath preparing the Royal Canterlot Voice.
*HOOOONNNNNKKKKKK*
Before she had the chance however, the air reverberated with the loud blaring of an air horn going off. It was so loud, that everypony stopped their running and screaming to try and block it out.
When the noise finally subsided, everyone turned around looking for the source. They found the horn in question, sitting in Pinkie Pie’s hoof as she stood in her frog costume on the top of the statue of Nightmare Moon.
She was not smiling.
“Listen up everypony!” she shouted so that everyone could hear her clearly. “Something terrible has happened here tonight, and you’re all acting like a big bunch of sillies. Somepony got upset and we need to help them.”
“What are you talking about?” a stallion near the statue spoke up. “It’s just a Nightmare Night prank. You of all ponies should understand that. It’s not like anypony actually got hurt.”
“What?” Celestia said storming over towards him. “What do you mean it’s only a prank? You knew this was going to happen?”
“Of course not,” he responded, a bit intimidated by the angry looking mare. “I just figured that it was part of the story. You know, the whole ‘Nightmare Moon’ is coming to get you.”
“Oh really?” Pinkie Pie asked solemnly from her perch on the statue. “Then tell me everypony, where exactly is Starry right now?”
The entire area grew deathly quiet as the realization of that question settled in. It was true. The mare who had been pranked was nowhere to be seen.
Zecora, emerging from the crowd, stood before the ponies looking distraught and confused. “Knowledge of this act I do not know, foul play this must have been so.”
Celestia looked around and saw ponies starting to realize what was really going on. “Does anypony have any idea who might have caused this?”
“I think I know who.”
Twilight’s ears perked when she heard a familiar voice speak, and she looked to Rainbow Dash floating towards them. “Rainbow,” Twilight began to speak, suddenly remembering Rainbow’s notorious nature as a prankster. “Did you do this?!”
“Woah Twilight!” Rainbow raised her hooves in defense. “You told me not to pull any pranks tonight, especially on her.” Rainbow replied to Twilight’s accusation.
“Really?” Celestia asked dubiously, feeling irked and livid by the event that just transpired to her little sister.
Rainbow looked up to meet Celestia’s gaze, feeling a little intimidated after remembering what happened a few weeks ago. “Yeah, it’s true. I saw a couple of ponies talking about pulling something like this tonight. Didn’t hear who their target was though.”
“Where are they Rainbow?” Fluttershy asked her friend as she started to float towards Rainbow, with her face being a mixture of anger and concern.
“I don’t see them here anymore. They must be in town now I think.”
Pinkie hopped off from the statue of Nightmare Moon and made her way to Rainbow Dash. “Dashie, let’s go and find those meanies before they get away!”
“Right! Keep up Pinkie!” Rainbow replied before looking to Twilight and nodded to her. When Twilight smiled and nodded to her, Rainbow and Pinkie immediately went towards Ponyville to find the ones responsible for the outrage.
Twilight turned back to the other ponies. “Alright! If we move quickly we should be able to find her. Let’s split up into groups, spread out and start looking. Any volunteers?”
Upon hearing Twilight’s request, Zecora walked up to Twilight and gave her an assuring smile. “The Everfree Forest is my domain, allow me help with the search please. We need to find Starry and help her be at peace.”
“Thank you Zecora.” Twilight replied, as a few others came and joined in Zecora’s group. She looked out over the crowd. “Anypony else?”
Most of the crowd hesitated. After all, chasing after Starry meant searching in the Everfree Forest.
The stallion from before was the first to step forward. “I’ll volunteer,” he said sheepishly. “It’s the least that I can do after all this.”
Behind him, several other ponies stepped forward as well. Within a matter of moments, almost the entire town had stepped up to help as well. Celestia couldn’t help but feel a little bit happy seeing so many willing to help out.
Twilight smiled seeing as the crowd continued to increase in size. “Alright everyone, break up into groups of four or five. If you find her, bring her back here immediately. I’ll stay here so that I can signal everyone to come back if she’s found or comes back on her own. Even if you can’t find her, meet back here in exactly one hour. There’s no sense in anypony else getting lost as well.”
The ponies all agreed to the plan and started forming their groups. With that done, Twilight turned back to Celestia. The worry was written all over the disguised princess’ face.
Celestia sighed. “This should have never happened Twilight. I should have known that something like this would happen.”
“It’s alright,” Twilight said trying to give a supporting smile. “We’re going to find her.”
“I know,” she responded with a nod, before turning towards the forest. “I’ll make sure that of that.”
With that, Celestia began making her way headfirst into the forest. Her resolve was strong, so much so, that she almost didn’t hear Twilight call out behind her.
“Wait! You can’t go in there alone! You have to be in a group.”
Celestia turned back with a raised eyebrow. “I think that I’m more than able to take care of myself in there, don’t you? Being in a group will just slow me down.”
“Yes, I know that,” Twilight said hesitantly. She was more than familiar with how powerful Celestia’s magic was. “But I don’t think that it would be wise for a unicorn to go into an unfamiliar forest all by themselves, now would it Cherry?”
The way that Twilight emphasized Celestia’s pseudonym made it very clear what she was implying. With a sigh, Celestia nodded. “I suppose that you’re right Twilight.”
“I’ll go with you,” Fluttershy said trotting over. “I know the forest pretty well. I think that together we should be able to find her much faster.”
“Thank you Fluttershy,” Celestia said with a smile. Turning back to Twilight she asked, “Do you think that’s better?”
Before Twilight could answer, another voice spoke up. “I’m going as well,” Roseluck said as she pushed her way up to where the small group was. “I should have taken her back once she started to panic. I want to apologize for that.”
Celestia hesitated. Taking Fluttershy along was one thing. The pegasus already knew who she and her sister really were. But taking along somepony else? “Thank you for the offer, but I think that we’ll be better off with just the two of us.”
“Excuse me?” Roseluck responded more irritated than surprised. “If I recall, your cousin Twilight here suggested that we go out in groups of four or five. You’re under that limit.” She turned and trotted between Celestia and the forest. “I’m going with you, and that’s the end of it.”
Celestia turned back to Twilight. The unicorn simply shrugged. It was what she had said after all. Turning back Celestia rolled her eyes. “Fine. You can come along as well. Just try to keep up.”
Roseluck nodded and fell in line behind the pair. “Don’t worry about that Cherry. We’ll find your sister, and quickly I bet.”
Celestia nodded. “I hope so.”
Pinkie Pie was now hopping through the town of Ponyville with her friend Rainbow Dash, looking at every corner for the ponies responsible for the cruel prank on Luna.
Rainbow Dash rolled grumbled slightly as they continued trotting. “I hope those jerks are still here and didn’t get away.”
“They’re still here.”
Cocking her eyebrow at Pinkie’s answered, Rainbow tilted her head when Pinkie replied. “How do you know that Pinkie?” Rainbow Dash asked her curiously, seeing Pinkie smile and pointing her ear.
“Itchy ear!” Pinkie told her friend, wearing a large smile and scratching her ear with her hind leg.
“Right…” Rainbow said dubiously but didn’t press Pinkie’s answer any further, seeing as they had more pressing matters at the moment. Rainbow Dash looked towards her and saw a familiar pony before her. She squinted her eyes and stopped abruptly, pointing her hoof to the stallion. “That’s one of them!” She told Pinkie as she started sneaking to a corner, with Pinkie following her. “And he’s got company.”
Pinkie scrunched her lips and turned to Rainbow. “You thinking what I’m thinking Rainbow?” She asked her friend rhetorically.
“If it begins with an ‘A’ and ends with a ‘H’, then yeah.”
“Ambush.” With that, Pinkie and Rainbow ventured into the alley they were peaking out from.
Three ponies were laughing as they stood in an open area of Ponyville. Lucky for them, they were away from the other ponies celebrating Nightmare Night. Even luckier, being far away from the area they pulled a prank in.
“Did you see the look on her face when we dropped the syrup?” One stallion, blue coated and white maned, asked his friends as he was laughing.
A mare with green mane and a yellowish coat, nodded her head as smirked. “That feather bag was also ingenius, a real cherry on the top I’d say.” She replied as she covered her mouth with her hoof as she snickered. “Just a shame we couldn’t find any tar, that would have really send the right message.”
“Nah, tar is bit too harsh.”
“Since when were you concerned with being too harsh in a prank?”
The stallion tapped his chin in thought, then shrugged as he smiled smugly. “Never I guess.”
“Regardless, it was still a successful evening if I do say so myself,” the mare laughed. “We got to pull a fantastic prank and best of all, nopony even cares.”
“I know,” the other stallion smirked. “Did you see them running around, acting as though they’d just seen a monster? That was priceless.”
“Why I bet that even now, Starry is crawling away and hiding as we speak. I’m sure that Blueblood will be pleased to hear that.”
“Yes, indeed. I can’t wait to get to tell him all about it.”
The mare smirked. “Yes, I think we’ve spent just enough time in this little town. Let’s hurry up and get out of here before—”
“HEY! You three!”
The three ponies all froze, the color draining out of their faces. Standing directly in front of them were two mares. The cyan pegasus who had spoken was floating in the air, a big scowl on her serpentine face. However, not one of the three noticed her, because directly below her was a pink mare dressed in a frog costume and holding a very large cannon trained on all three of them.
And the look in her eye told them that she really wanted to fire it.
“What’s the big idea?” Rainbow Dash asked after she was certain they had the three’s attention. “Pulling a prank like that and then taking off? What in Equestria were you thinking?”
“Prank?” the mare asked innocently though keeping her eyes trained on the clearly trigger happy frog. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play games with me,” Rainbow snapped. “I overheard those two talking about getting the feathers ready. I know that it was you three.”
The mare turned and glared at her companions who did their best to avoid looking at her directly. With a sigh she turned back and chuckled. “Alright, fine. You’ve got us. We’re the ones responsible. You can thank us whenever you’d like now.”
“Thank you?” Pinkie Pie asked, gently caressing the almost comically large button on top of her cannon. “What do you mean thank you? That prank wasn’t nice out all you big bunch of meanies!”
“So what?” The mare shrugged it off and smirked. “A prank’s a prank. No matter if it was nice or not, there will always be a victim in it who will feel like dirt afterwards.” She lectured Pinkie and rolled her eyes to her. “Now why don’t you just move aside huh?”
Rainbow Dash shook her head, punching her one hoof with the other. “No can do you jerk! You’re gonna have to answer to what you did earlier.”
One of the stallions in her group furrowed his brow at Rainbow, glaring at her threateningly. “There’s three of us you dumb zombie, I’d like to see you try and take us in for something that isn’t illegal.”
“All we want to know is why you would do something so mean to a friend of ours?” Pinkie asked them curiously as she continued to rub the button of her cannon threateningly, though she wore a bright smile on her face.
The mare of the group merely groaned and planted her hoof on her face. “Look, we didn’t exactly choose the target now. It just happened that your friend was randomly picked out a pony who we deemed evil; as evil as Nightmare Moon.”
Rainbow cocked her brow and gaped her jaw at the mare’s logic. “Are you serious?” She barked out as she landed. “Did you see what happened to her, huh?!”
“Ran around laughing and scaring some ponies?” The one stallion asked with a goofy smile, laughing nervously as Rainbow turned her head sharply to him. “What? It was funny in the end, that’s the point of a prank.”
Pinkie shook her head, puckering her lips as she furrowed her brow. “A prank is suppose to be where everypony laughs with you, not laughing at you. What you did was mean, beyond mean. The meanest of all.”
“Oh please!” The mare waved her hoof as she spat out her words to Pinkie’s ridiculous logic. “So what if your friend got in the way of the prank? In the end, she deserves it for being so stupid to not move away and being a cry-foal about it!”
Rainbow was silent for a moment, thinking about what these three before them were saying. Luna, or Starry in this case, did not deserve this prank at all. Yet here they are saying she does because of circumstances. Rainbow scrunched her lips as she remembered how hostile she had been towards Luna since the very first day. All because she wanted to protect her friends. Now, she became an offender to a pony who not only suffered Tartarus on the moon alone but also had to endure harsh words from her.
Just as the three ponies laughed at their friend’s words about the prank’s target deserving it, Rainbow shot her head upwards to the three and flew dangerous close to the them.
“Get out.”
The mare took a step back. “Excuse m—”
“I said get out,” Rainbow repeated. “Get out of my town and get away from my friends.”
“But we—”
“Pinkie Pie!” Rainbow turned to her friend with a smirk. “Fire.”
She never had the chance to. The second the word ‘fire’ left Rainbow’s lips, all three turned tail and ran for their lives. Rainbow waited until they were a distance off before shouting out, “And I never want to see you three here again!”
With a huff she landed back on the ground. She turned to Pinkie who was giving her a kind smile.
“That’s a very nice thing you did for Luna, Rainbow. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Rainbow said dismissing it with a hoof and a chuckle. “I’d do it for any of my friends.”
How much time passed between when she had fallen to the ground and the present time, Luna couldn’t tell. She had just continued to lie there sobbing quietly to herself. Every once in a while she heard the sound of some terrible creature in the distance. She almost wished that one would just come and find her, to put her out of her misery.
Would anypony have really cared after all? She had already seen how everypony reacted to her. She was a monster. That was never going to change. The ponies had hated her a thousand years before, and they hated her still to this day. It would have just been better if she just disappeared. Nopony would miss—
“Starry!”
Luna blinked. For a moment it had almost sounded as though somepony had called out her name. But that was impossible of course. It’s not like anypony would have bothered coming looking for—
“I found her Cherry! I found Starry! She’s down here!”
Turning her head to the direction to where the voice came from, Luna saw Roseluck approaching her fast. “Starry!” Roseluck called out to her and kneeled down to her. “Are you alright?” Roseluck asked her as she reached a hoof to her, not caring about the syrup and dirt.
“I-I…” Luna was speechless, looking at Roseluck in awe with red-rimmed eyes. Why is she so concerned about me?
“We were so worried about you.” Roseluck told Starry as she inspected her legs. “Can you stand up?” Roseluck asked her, only receiving a nod. “Okay, let me help you up.” Roseluck raised Starry up to stand on her own legs. “Don’t worry about your coat, we'll get it cleaned up.” She looked at Starry, with half-hooded eyelids as scrunched her lips. “I just want to apologize for what happened to you, that was just so mean and cruel. Nopony deserves that at all, especially on their first ever Nightmare Night.”
“Y-you came looking for me?”
Roseluck looked shocked at the surprise in Luna’s voice. “Of course we came looking for you. The entire town is out looking for you. When we realized what was happening, we all felt sick about it.”
Luna bowed her head trying to process this information. That couldn’t be right. “But, what about what happened? Nightmare Moon marked me as an evil pony. Everypony ran away screaming. They thought—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Roseluck insisted shushing Luna. “It was just a rude prank. Everybody thought that you were in on the joke. Nopony thinks you’re evil.”
Luna looked into the eyes of Roseluck and was expecting some form of malice in them, but all she saw was genuine concern and care. With her eyes already moist, Luna bowed her head and closed her leaking eyes as her lips quivered.
Roseluck felt her chest tighten, seeing her friend weeping. She reached out her hooves around Starry’s neck and pulled her in to have her cry on her shoulder. Starry accepted it and began to bawl out even more than she did before. “There there, everything will be okay now. Let’s just get—”
“Starry!”
Both Starry and Roseluck let go of their hug and saw Cherry galloping towards them, immediately scooping Starry up in a tight hug. She was crying for her little sister as she held onto her like she had suffered a near-fatal injury. “Starry! My baby sister!” She cooed at her, stroking at her sticky and dirty mane.
Luna, however, felt a little awkward and uncomfortable with her sister holding her like she was now. So she gently pushed her away, standing on her own hooves again. “I am alright sister, thanks to Roseluck.” She looked at Roseluck, who was smiling and nodding at her.
“That’s good.” Cherry said dismissively. She then used her magic to levitate Starry onto her back.
“Sister, please—”
“Let’s go back home and get you cleaned up.” Cherry told her and began to move out but stopped when she felt her back becoming lighter. She turned and saw Starry standing on her own legs and walking towards Ponyville.
“Wait!” Roseluck called out. “We still need to tell Twilight that she’s been found!”
“Well then, you can do that,” Celestia called back. “Right now, I think that it’s best to just get Starry home.”
“But Cherry,” Luna said softly, “I think that I’d rather—”
“No ‘but’s out of you,” Celestia snapped with a shake of her head. “You’ve had quite enough excitement for one night. I knew that it was a mistake to come out tonight.”
“But I—”
“I’m taking you home right now, so that you can get cleaned up and ready for bed. No discussion.”
Luna turned back. Roseluck was still standing there looking a bit flustered. The earth pony gave her an encouraging smile before turning and trotting off towards the field where Twilight was still waiting.
Luna rested her head down, feeling the gentle bounce as Celestia trotted forward. Thinking about what Roseluck had said, she couldn’t help but smile.