Chapter 25: Zero Hour, Part Two
June 28, 1985. Canterlot, New Brass Sky.
Zero Hour.
Celestia wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep. She was awake now. She found herself lying on her back on Luna’s bed, with Luna’s knees straddling her stomach. Powerful hands were wrapped around Celestia’s windpipe, and steadily squeezing.
“Die!” whispered Luna, her face mere inches away from Celestia’s.
Only it wasn’t just Luna. The look on her face was one of pure cruelty, and the pupils of her eyes had contracted into slits. This was Luna…possessed by Nightmare Moon.
“Lu…na!” Celestia tried to say, reaching up to try and break the stranglehold. “Why?”
“‘Why?’” Nightmare Moon asked incredulously. “If not for you, I would be on that flying machine, in the perfect position to kill tens of millions of you pathetic humans! For every soul that dies in fear and suffering by my hooves, I grow stronger! Strong enough to breed, strong enough to infect every world in the galaxy! And you ruined it! The least I can do in return is take your tiny little life.” Compared to Luna, her voice was confident and aristocratic, the voice of the self-proclaimed Empress of the Night. “So, ‘great and powerful’ Celestia, do you have any last words?” She relaxed her grip slightly and leaned forward to hear her victim’s expected groveling.
“I love you, Luna.”
“What?!”
Celestia took that moment of confusion to twist herself and kick out, causing her to fall off the bed and out of the Nightmare’s grip.
Nightmare Moon rose into a crouch, screaming in rage.
“Luna? Luna are you in there?” Celestia pleaded, backing her way towards the open closet door.
Nightmare Moon tapped the side of her head. “Oh, she’s in here, all right. I’m making her watch every last second of your impending murder.”
“Well, you have to catch me first,” Celestia taunted.
Luna rushed forward, but was surprised on meeting no resistance. Celestia tumbled backwards to land both of them in the closet in a heap.
“Now, Butterfly!” she cried.
The maid, who had been startled awake by the Nightmare’s scream, opened the door, a flashlight in one hand. Without hesitation, she slammed the closet door shut and locked it. After taking a moment to catch her breath, Butterfly moved the chair that was outside the room so that it was backed up against the closet door, and cautiously sat down.
“Only open the door for Mistress Celestia,” she whispered, repeating the instructions she had been given. “Don’t do anything Mistress Luna says until Mistress Celestia says that it’s safe.”
The Nightmare viciously shoved an elbow into Celestia’s gut, robbing her of breath. “What did that accomplish?” she demanded.
“Now you can’t hurt anybody else,” Celestia told her between gasps. She kicked out with a foot to cover the crack under the closet door with a towel. “And now that it’s completely dark…”
Nightmare Moon smiled victoriously, revealing a row of serrated fangs. “What darkness? I can see just fine!”
Celestia realized to her dismay that there was one source of light preventing Luna from gaining control over her body: the light Celestia herself gave off on a constant basis.
“That was a clever plan you had there, ‘Sister’,” Nightmare Moon purred. She had pinned Celestia to the ground with her knees and elbows. “And when your light goes out, Luna will regain control…with her hands around your lifeless corpse.”
Celestia suddenly realized what she had to do. And for one brief moment of cowardice, she tried to think of any way to get out of this alive other than doing that.
But that moment passed. She would have said something clever, but Nightmare Moon was busy slamming Celestia’s head into the thin-layer-of-carpet-over-solid-concrete floor over and over again. So she merely thought the words instead: If you want my light so badly, then take it—it’s yours.
And with that, Celestia willed the Light of the Princess from her mind into her sister’s. For Celestia, the Light took the form of a literal glow and the charisma to make anybody do what she wanted. She had long suspected that if Luna had it, the effects would be entirely different, but hadn’t the slightest idea of the details. Unfortunately she had no time to observe the effects before passing out.
Luna stopped screaming. She had been doing that, and the mental equivalent of kicking and biting, ever since she had awoken at midnight to find herself no longer in control of her body. She still didn’t have that control, but there was no longer an evil spirit holding her back.
She found herself floating in a strange black sea, with bright white pearls floating around her. Her attention was drawn to one of them at random, and that attention alone was enough to make it drift towards her, or her towards it—it was hard to tell. When it got close enough, she suddenly knew that the pearl was a dream, a dream belonging to Blue Note, the owner of the record store. She didn’t know how she knew these things—she just did. What she couldn’t do was to see the actual content of the dream, just its emotional overtones: nostalgia for the music of the past, and fear and hatred for music of today.
She allowed herself to drift around. There was a dream by Yellow Rose: worried about her self-worth, and terrified that Celestia might decide one day to turn her own friends against her, for no better reason other than wanting to see the look on her face. She tried to find a dream by Gloria or Gavin Guiseman, but failed. Either they were both awake, or this strange new power of Luna’s was confined to the dreams of Markists only. So she just started mindlessly sampling. What she learned was something she had never suspected: everyone she knew was afraid. Most of them had control of their fears, so they were only in the background of their dreams, but every dream had at least one fear in it. And the most common fear was fear of the dark, or fear of the unknown.
Luna was not afraid of either of those things. She was stronger than all of the people she had cowed away from, the people she thought would judge her as a freak because she preferred the dark and the strange to daylight and normalcy. A sudden determination filled Luna, and she willed herself to open her eyes.
She was in her closet. And she was bruised in quite a few places from her sister’s counter attacks. There was something trembling in her arms. Even though it was pitch black, Luna could see—she now had another new ability, one that was somewhere between night vision and heat vision. And the thing that was trembling was her sister. “Celestia? Celestia, are you alright? It’s me, Luna.”
“You’re back,” Celestia replied in a weak voice. “I guess it worked.”
“Yes,” Luna replied, “I guess it did.” She did not tell her sister that she still felt the Nightmare inside her head, safely restrained now thanks to Celestia’s gift. Was it a permanent part of her now?
She felt that Celestia was still shaking in her arms. “You’re safe now, Celestia,” she assured her, running a hand along her long hair. “There’s nothing to be scared of anymore.”
“I…I can’t help it, Luna. I’m…afraid of the dark. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it. And without the light, it feels like this whole closet is constricting me, like the whole weight of the world is on my chest, trying to stop me from breathing. But…you’re the important one right now. My little fears don’t matter.”
“We can leave the closet…turn on the light?”
Celestia thought back to the words of Luna [Adams]’ therapist. Even if Luna thought that the Nightmare was gone, the slightest ray of light could bring her roaring back. She had to keep her here, at least until morning. If the Nightmare came back then…well then Celestia would admit defeat and get some help at last. “No…I’m fine. I need to get used to this, now that I’m no longer my own night light. Let’s turn this into a closet sleepover!”
Luna laughed, and mussed her sister’s hair. “You knew all of this was going to happen, didn’t you?” she chided her with a smile on her face.
“What?! I…well…yes,” Celestia admitted. “How did you know?”
“The bit with the closet was too clever by half.”
Celestia sighed. “Yes, Luna.”
“What am I going to do with you?”
Celestia was taken aback by the tone in those words. While clearly playful, they were spoken from a position of authority. And Celestia knew herself to have changed—her irrational confidence was gone. The universe was a mess of choices now, and she no longer knew which one was the right one. And…she didn’t have a problem with this. “Whatever you want, Princess,” she said, joyfully. “Now what do you want to do first?”
Luna felt an inner glow on hearing her new title. Things were going to change in Canterlot come the morning. But in the meantime… “Call me…for a ride,” she sang softly. “Call me, call me for some overtime.”
With a smile, Celestia took the next line: “Call me…”
“Call me…” Luna echoed.
“…My love. Call me, call me for a sweet design.”
“Call me…”
“For your…”
“Lover’s…”
“Lover’s…”
“Alibi!” they sang in chorus, before falling into laughter.
“I love you, Luna.”
“I love you too, Celestia. Next verse—are you ready to find out how badly you can mangle your Bitalian and Prench?”
“Bring it on!”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, he speaks the languages of love…”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, amore, Charmin me, Charmin me.”
“The toilet paper?! It’s supposed to be ‘chiamami’!”
“I bet you don’t even know what…‘chiamami’ means!”
“I…shut up!”
“No, you shut up!”
This led to a tickle fight, for which Luna had an unfair advantage. And so passed the rest of the long night.