Nightmares

Allegiance delves into the murky past of my Reflection-Verse, showing one of the first major long-term deviations to FIM canon. As I've highlighted before, the intent has been to roughly follow the events of the show. Sometimes things happen differently in the episodes, but the ends are more or less the same.  Other characters may replace canon ones, and the means to ends may change, but the episodes finish roughly the same...though it may not always be as literal. Thematic endings are just as valid after all. 

Here we see the battle against Nightmare Moon going rather differently, instead of a one-and-done confrontation it's a drawn-out affair. This requires other heroes to step up and battle the mad tyrant. Some are less successful than others.

The story evolved from a single scene, that of Split Second freezing time. It took me a day or two to really grow it into something more, but I loved the idea of this desperate hero trying his all. He'd fail, of course, Nightmare Moon is beyond him, even ignoring the narrative flow. Yet Split Second would still make his mark in denying Nightmare Moon a weapon, Moonrise able to tip the scales in her favour when it came to a sisterly rematch.

There was some debate as to whether his time-freeze ability is overpowered, or how Luna/Nightmare Moon would be ignorant of it. If this was a longer fic I’d perhaps extrapolate on it, but suffice to say 1000 words didn’t give me much time to delve into such things. For the sake of explanation, however, yes, his special talent (much like Fluttershy’s)  is cutie mark based. While not mentioned, his cutie mark is a Sun Dial, peers joked that it was due to Split Seconds' punctuality yet never quite understood what it truly meant. However the talent is incredibly rare, and historically ten seconds has been the limit it can be pushed. Or so the scrolls say. Lunas' ignorance is more easily explained, Split Second keeping it as his trump card. An accomplished leader, he knew boasting of his ability would end poorly, even his Princess remaining in the dark.

I listened primarily to AmaLee and Jonathon Youngs rendition of Clattanoia while writing this. An odd choice perhaps, but it reflected on the original interpretation of the story wherein Split Second has a furious duel with Nightmare Moon. She (of course) would be toying with him, but the song's fast tempo would match with his frantic strikes before ultimately being forced into his special talent.

I've more notes sketched out for further studies of the "Nightmare War", but this was the only story that immediately struck me.