Nighttide Star News

There will be no sequel.

…Are you surprised?

Either way, this is the official announcement, but there is some more info, a link to a review, and a WHOLE BUNCH of sequel spoiler material below the break.

I wanted to wait until a requested review for the story was published, and today, it was submitted. You can find PaulAsaran’s review of the story here. Additionally, you can find my response here, which contains info about the sequel (and spoilers for what was planned, so heads up) that I’ll be sharing in part here. That said, if you’re interested in all the details, you’d do well to check the linked response before reading this blog.

There will be a mix of technical details and lore expounded on moving forward here, so if you’re not interested in spoilers, then the tl;dr is a sequel was planned but canceled after I lost interest in writing in 2016, and I have not since regained interest, so with waning time and health, I’ve decided to formally cancel all plans for the sequel unless I hire someone to write it in the future - of which there currently are no plans to do so.

*** FINAL WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD ***

_____

So here’s the most important part up front: There was a sequel planned for Nighttide Star - just one, titled Nighttide Star II - that was intended to take place seven to ten years after the events of the first story, and explore the doings of Nighttide, Twilight, and Luna in the wake of Equestria and Roanne - two entirely separate communities situated on two entirely separate planets (within the same physical universe, so not separate dimensions) - bridging the gap between their worlds. A large, stable warp gate (the rough diameter of NYC Central Park, flipped on its side) was opened in Equestria’s southern desert / Roanne’s western plains that allowed ponies to travel to and from Equestria and Roanne as they pleased, as well as allow wireless telecommunications direct through the warp drive between worlds. The two governing bodies considered their relationship peaceful, with no publicly verbalized intent to ally.

The sequel was first planned in late 2015, and was intended from the outset to not be overly ambitious or extend past a singular sequel, so as to ensure a reasonable goalpost for completion. I had the desire at the time to go as far as to write a few draft chapters just to feel things out, then wrote a synopsis, outline, and hired on a well-known writer from this site to initially edit the first story, then potentially edit the second based on their availability / my funds.

But something flipped inside of me when 2015 rolled over into 2016. I’ve spoke about this in response to other reviews of my stories, but it’s pretty simple: I lost all interest in writing once the year elapsed. No clue what happened - things in life were chill at the time, writing had been fun up to that point, and all was going pretty well in general - but something like a light switch within just flipped from on to off, and I didn’t want to write anymore!

At first, I fought against the sensation, going as far as to attempt rewriting the first story from third- to first-person perspective - partly to exercise my brain muscles, partly because I was interested in exploring the new writing angle - but all it did was burn me out and derail my editor from doing what needed to be done, which was rake the first story over the coals just as it sat, already read and rated by others on this site.

By that point, I knew I needed to call it quits on writing as a whole - it wasn’t that I had lost energy or time enough to write, or that I had run into writer’s block… I just didn’t wanna write! So I finally yielded to the sensation by summer of 2016 and quietly threw in the towel; all progress on the first story rewrite and, more crucially, the sequel, halted, and I did not commission the editor to go back over the original first story for lack of time on their end and consistent funds on mine.

As the years progressed, I never regained the desire to write, and I progressively lost more time, energy, and eventually, health. But I never lost the want to give her a sequel; ever since her inception, Nighttide has lived rent-free (to my genuine glee) in my imagination, and almost daily - even after eight years - I daydream of sequel scenes and her in general. She’s very integral to the creative part of my personhood… but so too now are three other characters.

Despite not pushing forward with the sequel, I did quietly add bits and pieces to the outline over the years as I imagined more and more events. Like so many, I would sometimes imagine scenes while listening to a new and awesome song, or perhaps a scene from a show would inspire Nighttide’s own. Eventually, this led to me fleshing out Nighttide’s obligatory Friendship is Magic substory (it’s a G4 story at the end of the day, ya gotta have one of those in a multi-chapter adventure, right? ) by her meeting three new characters over the course of the beginning of the sequel.

So, to lay the groundwork: Nighttide is 25yo or thereabouts by the time of the sequel, and there are weight classes to cyborg ponies: light, medium, and heavy - Nighttide is classified as medium.

• The first character, unofficially named Stardust (never committed to it fully due to ‘Star’ being a naming conflict), was to be a 23yo blonde, short-haired, slightly-shorter-than-Nighttide, prep-aligned, lightweight cyborg* mare graduate of DIRE’s APARD (Advanced Pony Augmentation Research & Development), a branch of DIRE which was a direct descendent of the now-retired Labyrinth project and all the data gathered during its ten-year run. Nighttide and Stardust were to initially meet while the former was speaking at the latter’s graduation ceremony as a ‘special guest’ for the class, representing one of the first prototypes and last graduates of the Labyrinth project. The two spoke for a bit during an informal meet-and-greet - mostly prep vs scene kid sarcastic banter - but to both their surprise, they would be paired up as part of a four-member team for an extended operation that the military had assigned. This would be Stardust’s first assignment, and Nighttide’s first long-term, potentially hostile spec-op assignment (she mostly did political negotiation stuff beforehoof - check the old continuation blogs for a rough idea).
• The second character to-date has not gotten a name, but she’s the ‘Tank’ of the four-pony group - a tall, bulky, slightly-short-haired 28yo heavy cyborg mare that was also an early Labyrinth prototypes, but was released to active duty a few years before Nighttide, and thus has some political and hostile spec-op experience (she has a single-digit kill count). She is quiet, demure, but not in an edgy or mysterious way - more on that later.
• The third also hasn’t got a name, but they are a 21yo teeny Tiny Tot (shortest of the bunch), medium-length hair, NON-cyborg (still rockin’ their birthday bod) mare who is assigned to the group as Lead. She’s the geek… literally the trope ‘geek,’ just all your usual irl stuff like interest in computers, games, artistry, etc. She would have been the strategist of the group, working remotely via satcom to direct the other three during active assignments, leveraging the built-in retinal cameras and mics within the cyborg mares.

So, here’s some further ramblings about the whole crew:

While the third new character is the group’s Lead, the pony supervising assignments is Colonel Rubedo. The old stallion chose not to rise any further in rank so as to at least attempt to maintain close proximity to Nighttide, and to his quiet surprise, DIRE and the military seemed to silently agree with his wishes; as Nighttide migrated into active duty, Rubedo was reassigned to exclusively military duty, and became her and a couple dozen others’ supervisor for spec-op assignments. Once the four-pony group was assigned, Rubedo’s caseload was further narrowed, placing him as the supervisor for three four-pony groups, only two of which were on active assignment at the outset.

Rubedo was already beginning to fill the shoes of something resembling a father-figure for Nighttide during the timeline of the first story, but by the sequel, he’s very much an old, gruff, no-nonsense and yet always-quietly-nervous roughhoof that walks the walk of a father that has retained some authority over Nighttide. His intent is to protect (or at least attempt to protect) her from whatever may be the military or DIRE’s ultimate endgame for the long-since famous frontrunner of both cyborg tech and, of course, the one who discovered another planet populated with sentient ponies - even if it was on accident. How does Nighttide feel about the old stallion and their relationship? Well, nothing too out of the bounds of trope territory: They have a love-hate relationship that ebbs and flows based on the stressors of daily doings. At the end of the day, they care for one-another, though Rubedo conceals it beneath his gruffness, and Nighttide beneath her aging millennial sarcasm.

What about Stardust? She’s actually the first character of the three new group members I imagined, back sometime around 2019-2020. I originally envisioned her as a potential romantic partner for Nighttide, but eventually she evolved into being… ah, I forget what it’s called, where two characters play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses such that they cause each other to grow as people over time. That kind of dynamic. Basically, since the two share cousin cultures (punk and prep were the foundation of American scene culture, unlike European varieties), they often bump heads, drip with sarcasm against one-another, and otherwise cause sparks that might make some want to scream, “KISS ALREADY,” but really they’re just those kind of friends. They don’t start out as such though; Nighttide is initially jealous of the mare’s popularity within their little military community and aptitude to garner attention from those around her, especially since Nighttide being a scene kid wants nothing more than to retain the spotlight where and when fashionable (oh how Rarity would disagree with the use of that phrase ). It isn’t until the two start to work together that they develop a meaningful bond, which only grows even more so when a certain event was to occur… more on that later~

How about the third character - the Tiny Tot of a nerd? She’s a bit shy, as the trope often goes, but she's assigned the position due to her exemplary performance and early graduation from both DIRE's in-house collegiate system, and military academy, both in which she majored in Defense and Strategic Studies. Also fairly early on in the story, she develops a crush on Nighttide - and ohh buddy, does she become jealous of Stardust. In some early exchanges between Nighttide and this character individually, when they (the character - just fyi, pronouns are she/they) start realizing they share some similar interest and Nighttide, to them at least, is SUPER interesting - lo, a wild Stardust would often appear to steal Nighttide’s attention away with more faffy banter. For the record, Stardust never did this intentionally, but suffice it to say that it built a quiet ire within this character that would eventually manifest in a couple comedic ways, and at least one serious and almost dangerous way during an assignment. The two wouldn’t make amends however until a significant event occurred with Stardust - once again, more on that later~

Then there’s Tank… not her actual name of course, but she’s one I’ve more recently fleshed out in my brain-box. Tl;dr: She is a considered-complete experiment by DIRE to naturally develop an organic brain that is emotionless. Period. As in, zero emotion, in the quantifiable sense. She is the ‘descendent’ of test-tube trials committed prior to Labyrinth’s formation that sought to determine the effects of marrying male and female DNA over multiple generations that each stemmed from ponies clinically diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Now this is critically important - we’re talking about the actual, hyper-rare, clinical, DSM V diagnosis of APD, where there is a biological lack of empathy that often leads to acts of cruelty and murder. This gal was the first experiment - released to the wild through the adoption system, as all prior subjects were too, to determine how they would grow up and behave - to not show signs of cruelty by the age of 18. In fact, to date, even after assignments where she killed during combat based on instruction, she has not intentionally harmed a single pony, creature, plant, or inanimate object. She is informed of her experimental nature by 25 in one last trial to determine if any emotional reactivity existed, and she was noted as, “having affect that suggested sudden understanding of a preexisting question, but otherwise presented no emotion.” She resumed active duty with a NDA to not share her experimental nature. Of important note however, after a late-story conflict between Nighttide and Nephilim (gasp! she was a bad guy all along!), where Nephilim is critically injured and left unconscious lying against a cracked sheetrock wall by a wailing, psychologically fractured mess of a protagonist, Tank stays behind and wakes the mare. Upon getting her attention (gore warning), Tank sets fire to the exposed insulation above and behind Nephilim. (inspo) She watches Nephilim begin to realize what's going on and attempt to move, but Tank has already restrained her to her position. Tank forces Nephilim to meet her gaze, and studies her expression for the entire time that... well, you get what happens. After the sequel finale during the epilogue, she reveals to Colonel Rubedo (!) what she did, why (she wanted to see if Nephilim would express any sign of remorse for her actions as she passed away), that she recognizes she may now be a danger to the public given the way this curiosity manifested, and requests that she be turned in for arrest. The Colonel, still trusting the mare, attempts to change Tank's mind, and even goes on to suggest a potential experimental procedure that could reinstate true emotions. Tank considers the latter offer briefly, but eventually rejects the offer for fear of it making things worse, that it would be promoting the use of a procedure that only exists because of numerous prior pony sacrifices, and that - to the Colonel's surprise - Tank has no interest in experiencing emotions. She is arrested during the epilogue, and it is suggested that this is the end of her story.

And how’s Nighttide faring? Well, she’s older of course. Much to Rarity’s chagrin across the galaxy, her style hasn’t changed one iota - still rocking the same long mane, same style, same personality. But she has grown more longing for friendship, especially so many years in the wake of her months-long experience in Equestria. Over the years, Nighttide bumped into a couple of ponies who shared similar interests and were otherwise pretty easy to get along with, but assignments rarely kept ponies in proximity to one-another for long, and more often than not, military culture reared its head in all manner of ugly ways that simply turned Nighttide off to the idea of getting truly close to anyone. She maintained letter-based contact with the Mane Six for the first year, but as time went on and her workload increase, contact became less frequent, and at the outset of the sequel, Nighttide has now gone two whole years without exchanging one single form of contact with any of the girls back in Equestria… except for Twilight and Luna. Unfortunately, I won’t be getting into that much here, as I never really got to fully fleshing out how that part of the story was going to pan out. Suffice it to say that they kept in contact because of the Aura sealed away within Nighttide (of which Twilight was eventually informed about - who could’ve seen that coming? ). That all said, Nighttide never really lost herself since she still was able to garner the attention of those around her with her fame and her culture, but she never really grew that much either. Nighttide’s “coming of age” story, so to speak, doesn’t truly begin until she’s 25 and beginning this long-term assignment with these three strangers. Her story was meant to reflect the lives that some have had post-college after a youth of general privilege and superficial friends, but lack of meaningful experiences or connections.

*Circling back to Stardust… she’s the one that inadvertently lights the first fires of growth within Nighttide with their frequent banter, interactions during missions, and butting of heads on occasion. But by the time we’re about halfway through the sequel, it was to be revealed that Stardust, in fact, is NOT a cyborg, but rather a very advanced - and more terrifyingly, very complete - robot. She had no clue herself until one mission where she found out the information on her own separate from everyone else, which detailed her origin, schematics, and those of roughly a dozen others that had been developed some years back. Shortly afterward and without a word, she went rogue. Her disappearance was met with surprisingly little fanfare by higher-ups, including to some lesser extent Rubedo, so out of fear for Stardust’s safety and curiosity as to what actually happened, Nighttide went to hunt down the mare alone (thus going AWOL), sharing her plan only with Tank since, by this point, she had grown to trust her. Nighttide successfully finds Stardust at a steel factory in a rural area before anyone else, but to her surprise, Stardust goes on the offense. During the kerfuffle (gore warning), Stardust slams into a support beam for a smelter, leading to slag being poured over her entire body (gee, where ever could I have gathered the inspiration for this scene?) Once her “skin” melted off, she is revealed to be made of nothing but alloy and robotics. Nighttide, understandably shocked, is taken off-guard by the modern eldritch horror - fully intact and functioning - now barreling her way. The two engage in a full-fledged fight (inspo) in a factory environment, engaging in ballistic and melee combat. Eventually, Nighttide is able to disable Stardust, but only by slamming her into a concrete floor and shattering her nuclear reactor within her barrel. Right as Stardust’s alarm activates warning of an imminent core excursion, she looks up at Nighttide and simply calls out her name with a feeble and clearly-digital voice. On instinct, Nighttide whips out an as-of-yet revealed weapon - a torso-mounted blade - and severs Stardust’s head, grabbing it before taking off at full-speed as Stardust’s torso inevitably detonates, knocking Nighttide partially out of the air before regaining control and scrambling to fly through a neighboring forest, hopefully out of reach of any radar.

(Gore warning cont.) Nighttide’s instincts and experience proved vital in this scenario: Given prior run-ins with some of Labyrinth’s more experimental experiments, she believed Stardust’s AI would likely be housed exclusively within the skull so as to simulate a real, organic death if ever someone were to impale her - by ballistics or otherwise - through the head. Nighttide had asked the Tank mare to grab the Tiny Tot if she didn’t arrive back home (and ready for a potential court martial) by a certain time, and meet at coordinates that should ensure secrecy. Thankfully, the two were waiting for her there, and when she presented them with Stardust’s severed head, the Tank was understandably surprised, but the Tiny Tot? Confusion, terror, nausea, the sort of thing you’d expect irl. But at Nighttide’s behest, Tiny Tot calms down and realizes there’s a chance to revive Stardust, even if simply by reanimating the skull and its AI - which, as it turned out, was in fact stored within the skull.

I could go on and on about this subplot, as it’s one of my favorites that I outlined for the sequel, but to shorten it up a bit: Tiny Tot reanimates Stardust, but only after Nighttide retrieves a template torso and legs at what they suspected was a likely defunct storage facility after rummaging through Stardust’s encrypted data (unencrypted only thanks to the mare previously bragging about being able to memorize a long string of arbitrary letters and numbers, but the Tank picking up one day that she had repeated one string twice on separate days, and… thankfully, herself, being really good at remembering that sort of stuff too ). Stardust, as it turns out, has NOT processed that she is not alive and is in fact a robot. It’s part of the reason why she went rogue and went on the offense when confronted. (Self-harm warning) It also was every bit her hope that she was going to be able to commit unalive during the fight with Nighttide, or at the very least be damaged enough to have her data corrupted beyond operability. As Stardust panic-rambles and eventually segues into a full panic attack during the first couple minutes of her reanimation, it is Tiny Tot - of all ponies! - that is able to ground her and calm her down. She’s the tech person here, but she of course is also a pony, and in talking through her own thoughts and feelings, she comes to the conclusion that given how “advanced” Stardust’s AI is, it really isn’t “artificial intelligence” in the colloquially defined sense, as it is structured and executed in such a way as to faithfully recreate organic operation - it only fits the technical definition, since it is a computer and not an organic brain. Therefore… Stardust is very much a living pony, as far as Tiny Tot is concerned. This is fleshed out further through her monologue of course, and eventually in a discourse between the two. The scene eventually lands on Stardust being very broken over the fact she’s not an organic pony like she lived her whole life thinking she was, but not being lost in the sauce of panic as much as at first. She goes on to rest, and Tiny Tot begins what will eventually become a true friendship between the two, quietly putting to rest her jealousy and the discord they had slowly developed in recent months.

Oh yeah, Tiny Tot’s crush on Nighttide: There’s two specific scenes I had outlined to directly tackle this. In the first one, about a third of the way through the sequel, there’s one evening where Tiny Tot tells the crew she’s retiring for the night, but Nighttide finds them later in the combat simulator (think FFVII Rebirth: Crisis Core training room at HQ) built into their living quarters, tethered and suspended in the chamber with a VR headset attached. A monitor outside the chamber in the control room shows what’s on the VR display, and Nighttide is surprised to find that Tiny Tot is simulating… winged-flight combat? (inspo) But the mare is organic, not cyborg. She has no wings, and thus far, no suits have been developed that can be attached by an organic in order to fly with wings, only some basic jumpsuits. What’s the purpose? Well, whatever the reason, Nighttide is both amused and impressed by Tiny Tot’s physical prowess (especially given she's had no basic training) as she engages in simulated mid-flight melee combat, and she quietly leaves without letting on she had found out what Tiny Tot had been up to in the chamber.

Much later in the story, not long after a rather exhausting and emotionally trying assignment, and most importantly, after Nighttide’s picked up on the mare’s crush, she finds Tiny Tot again in the combat chamber - by this point, she's caught on that Tiny Tot has been considering getting cybernetic augmentation (voluntarily! what?!) to be of more help to the crew, and has been training in VR using an advanced suit config she's been developing (secretly from the crew) with an online community to make open-source (indie suit devs, unite! ). Nighttide watches the mare for a moment before - on an absolute whim - hacking the simulation and tethering up as 2P. In the sim, Tiny Tot is initially unaware, having just wrapped up one fight on top of a building within a city during a sunset. She gets ready to take off to look for another, only to find Nighttide standing on the edge of the building, looking over the city. Stunned and confused, she blinks at the mare for a moment before Nighttide turns her head slightly - just enough to look in their general direction. Tiny Tot nervously walks over, and upon stepping up beside her, she can smell… vanilla? Nighttide had found out another time that Tiny Tot, allegedly, loves a specific vanilla perfume. Upon recognizing the specific perfume, she watches as Nighttide silently looks the mare over, before crouching down and looking over the edge of the building again. She deploys her wings and engine, the latter roaring slowly to life. She looks over once more at Tiny Tot and, wordlessly, beckons her to give chase.

(inspo) And after a moment of hesitation, she deploys her own virtual-world wings and engines, and crouches down beside the mare.

*sighs* I really suck at writing these days, but suffice to say, they fly above the city a bunch, Nighttide giving the mare a run for their money, and eventually, when Tiny Tot proves that whatever suit she’s developed in the simulation is far more advanced than Nighttide’s irl one, Nighttide disengages her engines mid-flight, letting Tiny Tot slam into her embrace - and into a kiss. The scene leads to the two collapsing irl in the combat chamber - Nighttide on top of Tiny Tot - and there being this whole steamy moment of suspense before… Nighttide growls, “Do you consent?” Tiny Tot blinks a moment, then stifles a VERY raucous laugh at the fact that Nighttide literally asks for consent, versus implying. They express a quick thanks for it though, and - after exhaling long and allowing a moment to calm their nerves and make sure this is what they want - breathlessly consents.

Bing bong, things happen, and Tiny Tot learns that Nighttide has probably the best-kept secrets in the entire cybernetic industry.

The two don’t go on to date or anything though, this just ends up being a one-shot thing. Nighttide makes it clear earlier in the story that she’s not interested in dating - possibly aromantic - but when she finds out that despite knowing this that Tiny Tot maintains the crush and, from what she’s able to surmise, would at the very least kill for a good lay from the elder scene kid, she decides to give the mare the option - if simply to get out some pent-up frustration from the earlier assignment and do something out-of-the-box. Neither end up regretting it thankfully, and the two go on to maintain a stable working relationship with a minor friendship, incurring no further physical interactions.

*PHEW*... Well, if you read all the spoiler material for the sequel, did you notice a distinct lack of main plot? Yeah, so I did get some major points outlined, but a lot of the in-between is still a mystery to me, and the end is not something I ever fully fleshed out. Like many others, I often get lost in daydreaming about all the character-building and filler material, and rarely ever think that hard about any of the serious plot points. There’s a few outlined though, just not enough to carry the full story. What I will share is a couple things leading up to the end, and the end itself:

To start, a quote from my response to PaulAsaran’s review: “[The] evil spirit [Aura] was meant to tie in with Roanne. tl;dr: The ponies of Roanne are descendants of the ones magically banished in Maretania, repopulated on a planet that is NOT in a separate dimension, but squarely in the physical universe within which Equestria exists. The reason Nighttide even showed up in Equestria at all was because the warp drive uses principles of magic that were documented very early on when the descendants of Maretania found themselves in a new and foreign land, which just so happens to suppress (or not promote, perhaps?) magic - the warp drive is not magical, it's just manifesting something once only accessible via arcane magic. Regarding the earlier point though: Take an individual Roanne pony and drop them in Equestria for a couple of years, and they'll begin to feel phantom pains in their forehead, barrel, or hooves. Magic still exists within them, but it's physically never been able to manifest due to the world they live in. Important to note though is the evil spirit did not "beckon" Nighttide, nor did it play any part in influencing the development of warp drive technology back in Roanne. In fact, the evil spirit had no clue anything was occurring at all in any space outside that which Riptide existed, and had not been "conscious" for millennia. The fact that Nighttide's arrival and Riptide's actions had lined up was gonna be played up as potentially being "prophecy fulfilled" until eventually someone stepped in and said, "Y'all ever heard of a coincidence before? They do happen, y'know!" In any case, Roanne ponies - including Nighttide - are more closely related to the deceased and suffering spirits that make up the now singular "spirit" which Riptide has awoken, and are thus distantly related to Equestrians as a whole. Does the spirit know? No, not explicitly - at least not within the timeline of the first story. That wouldn't occur until much later, at the same time that everyone begins to figure out what's going on, and a big conflict between Equestria and Roanne begins to develop when the ponies of Roanne find out they are the equivalent of the people living on the desert planet in the first Homeworld game, seeking to reclaim Hiigara as their home.”

So, the stage is set for some true chaos, yep? Well, none of this occurs until at least about two-thirds the way through the story - or at least how I originally outlined it - at which point Nighttide, Twilight, and Luna have decided that closing the stable warp gate and, if possible, permanently destroying any means of bridging the gap between their worlds again, is likely the best decision at this point, so as to prevent a full-scale war and needless deaths. There’s a lot of discovery about the experiments DIRE was running during Nighttide’s days with Labyrinth, Nephilim’s true motives, the extent of corruption within Roanne’s government, etc. But all of this becomes conveniently overshadowed when Roanne’s population finds out that they are descendents of ponies who were banished from Equestria’s planet (given it was pre-Equestria after all), and just like good ol’ humans upon which these equines are ultimately modeled after, seek vengeance and reclamation of what was once equally theirs.

At first, Celestia and Luna want to make good on some of the demands, notably free citizenship to Equestria (although there are a LOT of concerns about sustainability with the current capacity of agriculture, infrastructure, all the actual irl things that can get in the way of supporting a sudden emergency influx of immigrants), but when Roanne additionally finds out that Celestia has known about Roanne’s heritage for at least a couple of years by this point (ain’t got the time or energy to elaborate on this point here), they basically call for justice.

Celestia is shattered and quietly considers seriously offering herself to Roanne’s justice system. Luna is infuriated at and disappointed in her sister, not too dissimilarly to the same way that Celestia likely felt about her millennia ago (although without the need for banishment - sorry folks, no Daybreaker in this story). Twilight is PANIC.

But Nighttide… phew, boy. She’s had some experiences during this sequel up to this point. She sees the forest for the trees, and networks with Twilight and Luna. It is secretly agreed: The stable warp gate must be destroyed, by any means necessary.

A couple of plans are made and at least one attempt on Equestria’s side is made, but this raises the alarm on Roanne’s side, and upon finding out, Nighttide steps into action and takes off for the warp gate miles away - with her nuclear reactor set to self-destruct in t-minus thirty minutes.

There’s a whole scene where city police, Roanne military, and eventually a star pupil of Nephilim’s (consider this the ‘final boss’ of sorts) pursue Nighttide as she screams for the gate. But THANKS TO THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, she is aided not only by her three coworkers-now-companions, but also their own respective friends, contacts, and a band of disgruntled don’t-screw-with-us old farts from Colonel Rubedo’s unit. All manner of airborne chaos ensues as Nighttide scrambles her way to the warp gate, eventually succeeding in arriving with roughly five minutes to spare. Not bad, right?

When she enters the gate, she finds herself in a stable in-between space that permits physicality in the “fourth dimension” (not scientifically fourth-dimension, just think of it as a plain of existence not parallel to our own). It’s not actually anything new - this is what ponies have been navigating between Roanne and Equestria for some time now. It is however new to Nighttide, given she’s had no opportunity to return to Equestria. And what is even newer, is a Hellbender.

So what’s a Hellbender? It’s a 1996 video game for PC, right? (inspo) In Nighttide Star II, they are one of Nephilim’s last projects, based on limited research she was able to conduct earlier in the story on Nighttide’s sealed aura (how she found out about it and etc. are too much for me to elaborate on here) - basically, they are robots with limited-focus AI that have fractured “doses” of the Aura bound to Nighttide, giving them supernatural abilities beyond their own robotic capabilities. By this point in the story, Hellbenders are fairly old news, but it was believed they were all destroyed after one incident. For Nighttide to encounter one at this time and in this space after depleting all her weaponry, is… genuinely bad.

Again, I can’t get into all of it, but suffice it to say that much earlier in the story, Nighttide manifests the aura after a bad event, goes rogue, is chased after by Stardust and Tank through an underground cave system, is pursued through a secret underground DIRE facility, is cornered by Tank in a dead-end room in the facility, and is forced to fight when Tank - correctly identifying Halon alarms on the wall - shoots a flare into one of the overhead sensors, causing the Halon system to gear up and deploy a single ceiling-mounted oxygen mask on an interconnected rail system to deploy over Nighttide. Tank, being a cyborg, has an internal oxygen reserve, but it will run out quick once in use. Nighttide, being possessed by the Aura, has no idea what’s going on, choosing to watch silently from the room’s corner as the alarm builds in pitch - until finally, the halon disperses, and the Aura, catching on, dons the oxygen mask. (inspo) The two fight, with the Aura selectively using its smokey-mode (idk what to call it) to navigate around the room while moving the oxygen mask around as needed. Eventually Tank severs the oxygen mask, forcing the Aura to keep Nighttide’s body fully intact to leverage her internal oxygen tank (smokey-mode doesn’t destroy anything it breaks down, but once something is depleted, it can’t magically recreate the molecules that made it up prior). Tank ultimately wins, despite fighting against a supernatural entity, and after Nighttide heals and is consulted by Luna, she begins the process of learning how to selectively manifest the Aura intentionally and, eventually, gain some control over it.

Fast-forward to the warp gate scene: Nighttide still carries the Aura within her, and has gained a fair bit of authority over it. Her only hope of winning a fight with the Hellbender is to call upon it. However, when she does so here, the Aura detects the fragment within the Hellbender, and successfully manages to unbind from Nighttide - fully possessing the Hellbender, and leaving Nighttide critically weakened due to the side-effects of unbinding (think how some twins irl are able to pick up on when one suddenly and unexpectedly dies, and the mental and physical ramifications that have been documented in some such cases). Nighttide is quickly overwhelmed by the Aura. Originally, she intended to eject her nuclear reactor and leave it to detonate in the gate, choosing to escape to Equestria on the way. But realizing she’s losing a hopeless battle, she cuts the time in half at the thirty second mark, and chooses to sacrifice herself - and by extension, the Aura - to save both Roanne and Equestria.

Nighttide dies at the end of the sequel.

_____

*LONG SIGH*... I wrote all of this in one sitting and haven’t edited it, but I’m still posting it anyway.  

So yeah, that’s how I chose to end the sequel. As briefly mentioned, there was an epilogue outlined that would’ve explored the immediate events after the finale and further developed the important characters, setting the stage for a potential slice-of-life spinoff for events earlier in the story and, perhaps much much later, an original non-G4 story focusing on the new characters set twenty years in the future after cybernetic tech advances at the rate of Moore's Law (inspo) (Tank would also make a return to have a proper character arc and non-villainous role in the main plot). But… yeah. There you go.

With all of this said, now that the story has been reviewed after all these years, I wanted to finally make a formal statement regarding the sequel, and get some of the canceled content I was most passionate about into the light of day.

I spoke of this earlier, but again, I cannot understate just how integral Nighttide - the character herself and her story - are to the creative part of my personhood. She and her friends occupy my imagination at least once almost every day to this day, and despite not carrying forward with a sequel, I’m honestly happy to have the crew existing in my imagination after all this time. Because of G4 and choosing to write in 2015, I actually imagine things in general, just for the fun of it, where at the time I was quickly losing such creativity in prep to lose myself to the daily grind of working just to survive. This helped carry me through some of the hardest fiscal years of my 20s, and on to a fully realized, stable, self-sufficient adulthood. I don’t think I could have done it without G4 or the characters that my brain conjured up eight years ago.

Alright, I think I’ve verbal vomited enough here, so I’m gonna wrap it up now, maybe edit the blog later, and call it a night. I do apologize to anyone (probably very few peeps by this point) who were still hoping for a sequel, but I hope some of the spoiler content here might at least sate some of the appetite.

Either way, thank you for taking the time to read Nighttide Star. The fact that others have enjoyed what was simply a product of wanton desire to write something, anything when I first discovered G4, still makes me giddy to this day. I’m glad she resonated with some of you guys, and that there was a desire to see more of her. I wish I could have made good on the sequel, but I’m thankful I wrote what I did of her at least. She needed to exist, for my sake. It’s just nice to know some others liked reading about her as well.  

Comments

[Will Rufus]

What doe the weight classes mean? Does light mean mostly organic, medium mean mostly mechanical like Nighttide with some internal organs and heavy mean brain in a jar?

[Vertigo-01]

5743846
Ooh, I actually like that concept - never considered such a thing.

But nah, in this case, it means how their suits are built and outfitted, which is loosely based on projected organic adulthood height predictions, had they not been converted to cyborgs (irl horse breeds can act as a good guide; for example, a Clydesdale would always end up being a heavy-class due to their anatomy, whether they were converted to cyborg in their youth or their adulthood).

Weight classes also would dictates use-cases; for example, a lightweight might be sent off on recon assignments, a medium-weight might be assigned to the front lines of a battlefield, and a heavyweight might act as support, demolitions, or when you just need a walking, talking, big f*ckin gun.

And since all cyborgs manufactured after a very early period in DIRE’s Labyrinth project are all flight-capable, it would also dictate maneuverability. Stardust is very advanced, so there’s no real good irl analog (but she is modeled after the Astraea FGA Mk. 1 from Einhander), but a standard lightweight might be similar to an F15. Nighttide was conceptualized with the A-10 in mind from the outset. Tank is a glorified, miniaturized AC-130.