//------------------------------// // The Raid // Story: Death Note: Alight Equestria // by DeviousNights //------------------------------// Nightmare Moonlit returned to his house at 4 that very same day that Spark staged her escape from his minions. Nightmare wafted his hoof across his face, revealing a discontent expression plastered over his face. His house looked different from before. His normally well trimmed grass looked like it had been stampeded over and his door was partway open. He couldn't think of a good reason anyone would want to try to run his ran-down, sorry excuse for a house. Nightmare steeped into the disgruntled grass and followed the pathway up to his house, which looked a lot brighter than it usually did. He pursed his lips angrily, seeing as how he hated turning lights on unless it was absolutely necessary. Being the God of The New World didn't make him the richest pony, and the electrician who keeps bothering him about his unpaid bills was low on his kill list. Nightmare poked his head halfway into his house to find that his house had been, to say the least, trifled with. He stepped over a table that had been flipped over and a couple of water bottles that lie crunched on the floor. He walked across his living room narrow eyed until he spotted Ryuuk taking a nap on top of his kitchen table. "Ryuuk, in going to be nice and assume that you aren't responsible for this." Nightmare said condescendingly. Ryuuk jerked upward, his arms outstretched to reveal an apple that he had been biting on before falling asleep. The Apple launched out of his hand as he used a good ounce of his strength to keep it balanced in midair before sinking his clawed fingers into the Apple, steadying it in midair. "Nope." He said with the same creepy grin frozen on his face as he absentmindedly tossed the Apple, core and all into his mouth whole. He gulped it down before looking back, noticing Nightmare had disappeared from his previous positioning. Nightmare burst into his room, a gust of wind trailing behind him as he did. His mane began to flow with the gust, him using a free hoof to steady a large portion of it. Looking very closely but not moving from his position, he noticed that a small tuft of red, clunky mane was sticking up from below his sheets. It must've been a filly or a colt earth pony, because even he had trouble fitting his entire body under the sheets along with his horn and wings. He carefully snuck up to his worn bed and used his magic to surround the bed sheet, lifting it slowly, but surely off of the bed until it began to reveal the shaking prescience of Applebloom, who lie face down with her eyes covered with her hooves. "Yeah nice try. 'Cutie Mark Crusader Breaking and Entering' right?" Nightmare asked in a half joking, half serious manner, lightly wrapping his hoof around her front hoof and pulling her from his bed, gently placing her on his crusty rug floor. "And what, dare I ask, were you trying to accomplish breaking into my humble abode?" "We were jus' lookin for sum'n..." Applebloom answered. It was clear her answer was half-assed, it was obvious to Nightmare that they were looking for something, it was however, less obvious what they were looking for. "I assume that Scootaloo is here as well." Nightmare asked, leading Applebloom out of his room quickly. Applebloom looked forward with a look of shame on her face momentarily before solemnly nodding. "I wouldn't expect a relative of the element of Honesty to lie." He said, slickly suggesting she may or may not be lying. "Ah'm telling you the truth!" She exclaimed, defending herself and her family's honor. "That's all I need to hear." Nightmare said. He had led her back to his living room. "I want this mess cleaned up." "But it was like this before w-" "Now. I won't say this again." Nightmare commanded, flicking his mane out of his face before slinking back into the darker confines of his house to look for the other filly. Nightmare forced open his bathroom door, closing it quickly after seeing nothing of importance. Slinking back into the dim hallway, he spotted a pair of ponies attempting to sneak back out through the front entrance. "Oh. No you don't!" Nightmare angrily said, taking chase after, the two, as the scurried quickly through the door and across his lawn. "You two forget! I can fly now!" Nightmare yelled after the two as he spread his wings and left the ground, gaining an aerial advantage for all of ten seconds before he began to lose momentum and began flying from side to side. He still wasn't the best at flying yet. The two ponies took the opportunity to split up separately and began running in two different directions, Applebloom going towards the city of Hoovington and Scootaloo headed towards the thick foliage that encompassed the west of Nightmare's house. Nightmare slammed his body into the ground, attempting to gain some sort of control over his movements. After grimacing in pain for a couple seconds, the Major rushed after Scootaloo, as he knew the 'Whispy Woods', as they were unofficially named by local residents, like the back of his hoof. The woods themselves spanned a large distance, approximately a couple thousand acres, and traveling through then was an easy alternative to using the train to get to New Horse City and Saddle Arabia, but the Woods themselves, despite seeing little to no rain, remained very damp and even foggy at times, and those traveling through the forest often come out in most unsanitary condition. The forest is also littered with multiple swamped areas, and many specimen of snake and insect infest the region, making it a very unsafe choice for travel. Nightmare, however, had lived in he area for 8 years had explored the forest on a multitude of occasions, memorizing at least a third of the area. Scootaloo rushed through the thick brush of plant life as fast as she could, weaving through trees as and ducking under branches hosting a number of sharp leaves. Nightmare stopped in his tracks, catching an idea in his head. He knew for a fact that the area wasn't haunted, but word was that it was haunted. He decided to use this notion to his advantage. "Hey look! It's a fresh filly!" Nightmare announced, lightening his voice and projecting it through a large part of the dense forest. Scootaloo froze in her tracks almost immediately, looking over her shoulder to see nothing but a thick fog permeating the area, completely obstructing her view from the rest of the forest. She could see nothing but what was inside the clearing that she had reached. "Looks like a Pegasus!" Nightmare said again, this time deepening his voice into something that sounded reminiscent of a groan. At this point Scootaloo has quickly overcome her immobilization and had began to sprint through the thick fog, the air seeking to get colder and colder the faster she went. The chills were nothing more than a side effect of her fear at this point. Her breathing was becoming quicker and more panicked as she began to notice the deeper she went into the forest, the muddier the ground around her got until she noticed that all four of her hooves were submerged in a thick muck. "Heeeeeeelp!" Scootaloo managed to choke out as she delved deeper and deeper into the water, trying to find a safe way of escape. From what she could piece together the voices were trailing directly behind her, so she could only really move forward. The deeper she moved into the quicksand-like swamp, she noticed the more her body became submerged in the cold, damn liquid. Her movement began to become more and more restricted as she moved forwards, her wings, though useless in the situation anyways, began to stick to each other to the point to where she could not do much as spread them apart. Suddenly, she felt a small tap on her back, as it felt like a rush went throughout her entire body. She turned around to see Nightmare barely hovering above her, and pulling back a piece of scrap paper that he had put into his hoof. Scootaloo shrieked and, panicked, turned around and began to make pathetic attempts at swimming, until she noticed a tall, black figure standing in the water ahead of her. His eyes were wide, and seemingly eyelid-less, while his hair was a spiky cool blue color. He was dressed in all black with what seemed to be some metal skull contraption used to hold up his pants. That was all it took for Scootaloo to black out. ~ Applebloom, meanwhile, was making a mad sprint towards Hoovington, ducking and dodging past pedestrians and eventually running smack into one, who was also running at the same speed. Both individuals crippled to the ground, grimacing in pin, before looking up at each other. Aryan began to rub her head. She had smacked her head onto the hard pavement on her way down. She looked upwards to see Applebloom with a pouty look on her face. Applebloom's eyes become overrun with disbelief as she saw the Interpol badge glistening on one of her subordinates, Dynamo Pad to be specific. "Help me please!" Applebloom had completely lost her country accent in favor of her more panicked attitude. "Hol' up! What's wrong little filly?" Dynamo Pad asked putting his ear downwards to reach her level. "It's that lawyer guy! He has Sweetie Belle!"