Nightmare Night is coming. Don't let the batponies bite. · 3:00pm Sep 29th, 2016
Just a quick reminder. City of Monsters has been submitted to EqD and I'm going to get the sequel, Child of Nightmares and Everfree, complete AND posted by Halloween this year. There will be Flutterbat in it, although no Flutterdash as You Look So Sexy This Way has (In the sidebar at the moment. Very cute.)
Here's an iPhone wallpaper from CatScratch57 to tide you over, and a little snippet of an upcoming chapter of Child (below the break) to whet your appetite. (for apples, of course)
Child of Nightmares and Everfree
* * ☽ * *
“All of my previous theories about how to locate the missing ponies depended on our ability to find Spark Gap, who as a unicorn, would be easier to locate than her daughter, Emerald Dreams. As it is possible that the two of them have been separated, we know for a fact that the nocturne filly is still alive, and was headed in this direction when she left Ponyville. What I propose is to organize a very small search group of pegasi, with Mister Symphony’s abilities to operate at night and Fluttershy’s ability to talk to animals. This group, which I have designated Group Friendship—”
“I still think Task Force Awesome would be a better idea,” grumbled Rainbow Dash.
“—will depart from the statue of Nightmare Moon in Ponyville’s park and head into the forest along Emerald Dreams’ last known vector, with Fluttershy stopping on occasion to interrogate the local night-dwelling creatures. Politely,” added Twilight with an embarrassed glance at Fluttershy.
“How is this group going to be able to see at night like I do?” asked Sunshine.
“With this!” declared Twilight Sparkle, bringing out an old scroll covered in mystic runes. “Back when I was a student, I found a spell in the old archives that allows the superimposition of characteristics from one type of pony to another, much like the cloudwalking spell allows non-pegasi to walk on clouds.”
His heart beating a little faster, Sunshine sat up in his chair. “So you can transfer Fluttershy’s ability to talk to animals to me?”
“Um…” Twilight Sparkle fidgeted, setting the scroll back down on the table and exchanging a nervous glance with Fluttershy again. “Not exactly. There’s no known way to transfer a pony’s cutie mark—”
“Thankfully,” said Applejack.
“Agreed,” said Rarity.
“—but I can ‘copy’ your abilities as a Nocturne to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash,” completed Twilight Sparkle with only a brief glare at the two interrupters.
There was something wrong about her plan, but Sunshine squelched his feeling of unease. It would get him out into the forest, looking for his daughter, and that was the important part. Fluttershy was the key to the whole plan. Emerald Dreams was fast, and she was probably just as good at hiding as Sunshine, but she could not hide from the whole forest.
Fluttershy looked less than convinced, even after Twilight Sparkle went on and on about the spell being only temporary and easily reversed, but she took her place next to him with only a little shiver down her sides.
It took Twilight several references to her scroll before she lit up her horn and scintillating magic of every color of the rainbow surrounded her two subjects. For Sunshine, it just felt cool and warm at the same time, with tingles running up and down his spine, but the shy little pegasus seemed to be far more affected. Her wings shimmered and stretched, with the feathers merging together and shifting into flawless expanses of dark membranes like dragon’s wings while her bright yellow coat and pink tail darkened to a mustard and magenta hue respectively in order to blend into the night. She closed her eyes in a pained wince, and when they opened, the pupils were slit vertically like a cat. Then the spell cut off and the new batpony fell to the ground with a cry of pain.
“Oh, no!” declared Rarity, flinging herself forward and cradling Fluttershy in her forelegs. “We didn’t realize this would be so painful, so nerve-wracking, so… gorgeous.” Rarity ran a pristine white hoof down Fluttershy’s face, from tufted ears to jaw and across her soft mane. “Your colors are so dark now. You’re going to need a whole new wardrobe and a stick.”
“A stick?” asked Rainbow Dash, hovering overhead. “Why would she need a stick?”
“To keep the stallions away, of course, darling.” Rarity put a hoof under Fluttershy’s chin and lifted her face up for closer examination of her eyes. “You’ve got your natural beauty and that dangerous exotic touch of the unknown now, dear. Those eyes are just ravishing, like…”
“Like Nightmare Moon!” declared Pinkie Pie with a bounce around the room, trailing a banner that proclaimed ‘Nightmare Moon II — The Sequel.’
The other shoe Sunshine Symphony was waiting to drop, did.
He stared in muted horror at Twilight Sparkle, who was smiling and had her horn lit up again as she turned to her next pegasus friend. “That was far easier than I thought,” she said with a leering cackle that ran little bits of ice up Sunshine’s back. “I don’t have to stop with Rainbow Dash like I planned. I could transform hundreds of pegasi all across town, but why even stop there? We could blanket the entire Everfree Forest with search parties if I transformed every pony in—”
DAMMIT TWILIGHT!
Don't let them bite? How will I get off otherwise?
I'm giving this a ninety-five percent chance of being a bad dream. Twilight very rarely cackles. Now, if she were calling to Spike to help her write up the first draft of an article in the Canterlot Journal of Transmutation...
(Smacks Twilight with rolled up newspaper) No! Bad purplesmart, bad! You get to do one more transmutation on Dash and that's it!
A Nightmare Night story, you say? This has my interest.
4232386
IKR?
I call schennagians (or changelings...): there is narry a checklist in sight!
