Once in a Blue Moon

by Trouble-Shooter

Ch. 2: A Tale of Two Ponies

Chapter Two: A Tale of Two Ponies

Everfree Forest: Day 1, Year 0 of Celestia's Reign

Celestia did not know what to make of this strange colt who had literally appeared out of thin air. He had a manner about him that made her instinctively want to trust him, but for him to just show up with his blue box and make grand statements about undoing what she had done was just too much for her to believe. She told him as much.

“Celestia, this is very very important. I need you to tell me everything, start to finish.” He had pulled out that curious metal rod which he called a sonic screwdriver, and was currently clicking it on and off around her horn.

Not knowing what else to do, she told him. She spoke of the birth of herself and her younger sister to the alicorn race. She told him of their parents' roles as Sun Priest and Moon Priestess, spoke of how she and her sister had to learn how to control the movements of the Sun and Moon, and how the alicorns had brought the gifts of sentience to the lesser ponies of the land and carefully guided them to a better future, giving each sub-race their own strengths and weaknesses to counterbalance each other and more effectively work together: Endurance and strength for the earth pony, wings, keen senses, and agility for the pegasi, and horns to control the arcane for the unicorns. This was the easy part for her.

The harder half of it were the events leading up to the confrontation last night, although it seemed less difficult than she had feared. Perhaps it was because the Doctor seemed more mature and wise than any of the other ponies she knew, or more likely, it was because he was a stranger; he was someone totally unconnected with the realm and her rule and with an objective viewpoint that seemed unlikely to judge.

Besides, it was hard to have an earnest conversation with other ponies when they had a tendency to fall to their knees and call you a sun goddess, and the Doctor certainly did not seem to be the type to do that.

“After Luna and I learned how to control night and day, we tried to each do our best with our respective domains,” she murmured, casting her gaze around the ruins of her home. “I would make certain that the Sun rose and that it followed its intended seasonal tilt, while Luna would raise the Moon and ensure that the night sky was filled with stars and constellations, to spark the dreams of our charges. Unfortunately,” she sighed, “That didn't seem to be good enough for her, after awhile.”

“Wait, I'm a bit confused, Celestia. You raise the Sun and Moon, you say? That's impossible. Well! Not impossible, exceedingly improbable. Well, all right, very bloody difficult if you ask me, and I once used the output of a dying star just to make a phone call.” The brown earth pony clicked his screwdriver on and off a few times more, then peered at the readings set into its side. “Although...” he drawled with a hint of that manic curiosity he had shown several times during the conversation, “It's actually possible, here. You're not just in a room soaked with artron energy, you're actually generating and manipulating it with that lovely horn of yours. In fact,” he said firmly, standing up and walking around, gesturing with his head to encompass everything around him, “Your entire planet is brimming with it! I've never seen anything like that before. How do you manage it, I wonder?”

The princess breathed a silent thanks to the Powers and the Elements for the reprieve from the painful subject of her sister. “Well, we didn't really have to bother with it, at first. Not until the Chaos War. Not until Discord.”

“Discord, eh? That doesn't sound very harmonious.” At his reply, Celestia shook her head. “No, he wasn't. He was a draconequus, a mingled creature representing the major races of Equestria and the lands beyond who ruled here for thousands of years. An immortal, like the alicorns, with eternity before and behind him.” Offering the Doctor a faint, sad smile, she added, “And as you say, eternity is a very long time. He was the First Immortal... and he was the first of us to go mad, using his magic to render the entire world into chaos.”

“Chaos, you say? Go on.”

“Imagine if you will, Doctor, a world where rabbits chase wolves with legs longer than a pony is tall, where buffalo perform intricate ballets in the town square. A world where you can't tell if it's going to rain water, chocolate milk, burning acid, or blood, and where night and day can change between the two in a matter of seconds, over and over. Where none of the angles make sense, and the landscape can change from familiar to something that should. Not. Be.” She shivered with the memory. “I personally couldn't eat anything that even looked like tentacles or gingerbread for decades afterward. Once Discord was defeated, some of the natural laws of the world no longer worked the way they should, so Luna and I had to step in just to keep the world turning.”

Pursing his lips in a low whistle, the Doctor looked a bit nonplussed. “Blimey,” he murmured finally. “So, if this chap was going around completely sticking it up the nose of the natural order of things, how did you beat him?”

Standing, Celestia walked over to a set of stone spheres laying on the floor. “With these, the Elements of Harmony. The same tools I used to defeat Nightmare Moon and banish her, last night.”

Pulling his screwdriver out again, the Doctor started running it over each of the six globes, his face giving away his growing consternation. Finally, he stood back and looked at Celestia in amazement. “Do you have any idea what these are, my dear lady?” Not waiting for a reply, he continued, “These are the parts of an empathically-activated multi-spectral artron harmonic wave generator. I haven't seen anything like this since...” he trailed off, another chill running down Celestia's spine as his eyes went someplace very dark and very far away. “...Since my own people went away.”

Celestia frowned, and asked quietly, stepping toward him. “Your people? Are you... A-are there any more Time Lords, Doctor?” Giving her a look totally devoid of emotion for a moment, he replied, “Not anymore.” His face spread into a roguish grin. “BUT! This gives me an idea of what you did to your sister, and how we can reverse it. Go on, I need to know more. Tell me what happened to her.”

Steeling herself, Celestia settled back down on her haunches and folded her wings around her as if warding off a chill. “We defeated Discord, and were proclaimed rulers of Equestria after we got the whole Sun and Moon business sorted out, and for a time we were happy. We would come up with ideas and concepts to make the ponies' lives better, and Luna would slip them into the dreams of those with a chance of carrying them out while I took care of the day-to-day details of keeping the world running properly.” Smiling sadly, she murmured, “Lulu was always the dreamer, while I was the more practical of the two of us. We didn't interact much with the ponies directly in those days, preferring to quietly nudge them along the right path from afar – we didn't want them to become too dependent on us for everything. They called us the Goddesses, and I think in time we came to see ourselves as such. Perhaps... perhaps it would have been better had we lived among them. Maybe then Luna wouldn't have been so lonely. Maybe I wouldn't have been so arrogant.”

The Doctor listened, his brown eyes soft and compassionate, nothing like the dark pools they had been only moments before. Taking another steadying breath, the princess continued, “About the time Julius Canter came to power, Luna started to grow disdainful of our charges. You see, while we did our best to make the world a safe place for the ponies, Discord's actions and the dispersal of his power by the Elements spawned a host of monster races. Some, like the dragons, can be reasoned with. Give them a hoard and a cave to take a nap in for a century or so and they are generally amiable, if aloof. Others, like the griffins, occasionally had to be dealt with forcefully, but still, accords could be reached. More often than not, though, they turned out to be mindless beasts that were either indifferent to the ponies, like the Ursas, or actively hostile like manticores, hydra, and cockatrice.

“You can imagine, I think, how Luna felt when our beloved ponies would barricade their homes at night and set fire to just about anything to hold back the darkness.”

Nodding slowly, the Doctor murmured, “Oh, yes. There she is, she goes to all this trouble to make a better world, and everyone shuns her half of the work because they fear the dark. It's not uncommon, many races have that issue.”

Celestia nodded slowly, eyes prickling faintly as she continued, “And so she grew envious of the day, because the ponies would work and play in the Sun, but when the Moon came out, they hid and slept and feared the night. In my pride, my arrogance, I assumed she was just being petulant at first. By the time I realized it might be the Madness taking her after so many years, it was too late: her jealousy and frustration and anger transformed her into Nightmare Moon, and she held back the Sun for two straight weeks while I tried to find a way to reason with her...” Closing her eyes, she finally let her tears go, hearing the Doctor shift a bit uncomfortably at the sight. “And when that didn't work, I had to either kill her, or send her away, and I couldn't bring myself to slay my own sister.”

Putting a forehoof on Celestia's shoulders, the Doctor held her close as she cried, murmuring, “There, there, Celestia... refraining from killing someone is never, ever a bad thing, not if you have any other choice in the matter. This 'Madness' though... you seemed to imply that it was something catching. Was it?”

Looking up at the strange pony, Celestia nodded, her eyes red. “It was. It started with Discord, then spread to the rest of the immortals. Luna and I as the youngest thought it was just the weight of so many years pressing down on them. One by one, the rest of the alicorns fell: Caprica, the Twins, Saggitarron, all of them succumbed to jealousy, anger, bloodlust, pride, and eventually, all of them had to be put down for the good of the world, or they ended themselves once they realized they were slipping.” she pursed her lips and shook her head. “All of us knew the road Discord had gone down, and none of us were eager to follow.” Snorting, she added in an acrid tone totally unbecoming a princess, “Hay and horse-apples, he was the only one who merely succumbed to outright boredom. At least when he went off his feed, nopony intentionally got hurt.”

“One by one, you said? Just one at a time, never more than that?” the alicorn mare turned her head to find the Doctor staring at her intently, something in his eyes that she found indescribably heartening... and unknowably frightening. At her nod, he said, just above a whisper, “...Then I think I know what happened to your sister, Celestia, and if I'm right, then we have a very big problem.”