//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Hey, Aren't We Forgetting Somepony? // Story: The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville // by McPoodle //------------------------------// The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville Chapter 7: Hey, Aren’t We Forgetting Somepony? Welcome back, Vinyl Scratch, the voice said in her mind. DJ Pon-3! she replied mentally, suddenly remembering the name of her alter ego, and closest friend. The power of Rock ‘n’ Roll strikes again! the DJ joked. Wait, I’ve got an extra voice in my head, Vinyl suddenly realized. More than one, in fact, Pon-3 calmly informed her. I’m just the most talkative one. Vinyl took a mental survey, and knew her friend was telling her the truth. The most powerful of those voices, that of The Critic, was locked inside a little mental hut behind the mental equivalent of an iron-bound door. The Critic was the most feared of all the voices, because she loved more than anything to explain in irrefutable detail just how worthless Vinyl was. Am I crazy? she nervously asked. There’s always hope for the ones who ask, Pon-3 replied. When Vinyl Scratch woke up, she found herself lying flat on the pavement, with a pair of little scaly arms hugging her neck. She jerked her head up and looked around, her two eyes darting around in different directions for a few seconds before they became coordinated. “This seeing business is weird!” she exclaimed. “You did it!” Spike exclaimed, stepping back from her. “You broke Rarity’s spell!” He then turned away to try to wipe away the tears on his face before she noticed. “Nice trick,” commented the voice of a pony. The voice sounded familiar to Vinyl, but she couldn’t quite place it. Vinyl scrambled up to her hooves, wobbling unsteadily for quite some time before stabilizing herself. Spike stepped between herself and the new pony. “Vinyl, this is the Dreaded Pinkamena Diane Pie. She saved me from the dungeon, and then saved you from Rarity! Oh wait, do you remember what happened to you after you were hypnotized?” “I remember everything,” she told him, before turning to her rescuer. “You have saved far more than just our two lives on this day,” she told her. Pinkamena held up one forehoof. “There is no need to thank me,” she said. “Although...Spike here tells me that you’re out to fix a flaw in the very structure of reality?” Vinyl looked at her closely. “Err...as a matter of fact...” “I have had the same suspicion for all of my life!” the pink pony eagerly confided to her. “In fact, I once tried to get the entire universe to fade away by lying down in a field and wishing really hard, but alas, my will alone was not enough to pull it off!” Unconsciously, Vinyl and Spike made one step backwards away from the demented pony before them. “No,” corrected Vinyl, “what I meant to say is that that was what I thought earlier, but now that I have recovered my missing memories, I now believe I and my six friends have been projected into this world from another, a world similar to this one in many ways, yet different in others. “My mind found itself in the body of the Vinyl Scratch of this world, and for a while that Vinyl’s memories were the only ones I had. My friends must be in the same state. I need to find them and bring them to their right minds, and then maybe we can find some way to get back before the Dragon Emperor takes advantage of our absence to attack Equestria once more.” Spike took this all in, his eyes growing wider and wider. “Am...am I one of your friends, Vinyl?” he asked eagerly. Vinyl Scratch looked down at him sadly. “You have been my closest friend in this world, Spike, and in my world there is another Spike that is also somewhat a friend of mine.” She left herself a mental note to get to know the baby dragon a lot better whenever she got out of this mess. “But that Spike didn’t come with us,” she finished. “Oh,” said Spike, looking disappointed that he didn’t get to be a part of this great adventure. “But don’t worry,” Vinyl said, getting down on her knees to get on the same eye level as Spike. “The Vinyl you know is in here, somewhere.” She tapped her head with one hoof for emphasis. “And I’m sure whenever I finally return to my world, you’ll get her back.” Pinkamena thought this over for a few seconds. “Sure, why not? I’ve heard of stranger things. So who are these friends of yours, visitor from another world?” Vinyl got back up to her hooves. “Rarity and Applejack you already know, as well as Rainbow Dash. Being this close to Canterlot, I don’t doubt that you know who Twilight Sparkle is. That just leaves Fluttershy and...say, you wouldn’t happen to have a sister named Pinkie, would you?” Pinkamena snorted. “That’s the second time that somepony’s been waving that nickname around! As for the others, I gotta say, that Dragon Emperor must really hate you. Of all of the alternative Equestrias that could ever exist, he managed to find the one where five of you are complete scumbags.” “They aren’t the way they are here in your world, are they?” asked Spike. “I can’t imagine how you could be friends with them if they were anything like they are here.” “No,” said Vinyl, “they’re completely different. On my world, they are the champions of Equestria and the trusted confidantes of the Princesses.” “Princesses, as in plural?” asked Pinkamena. “Who’s the other one?” “Oh, no!” realized Vinyl, rushing to the nearest window and looking up at the pre-dawn sky. Not seeing what she was looking for, she dashed to another side of the warehouse to try another window. “I forgot that we have a time limit in this world as well as in the one we left behind!” “What kind of time limit?” asked Pinkamena. “We didn’t just move across dimensions, we moved back in time,” Vinyl explained, rushing to another window. “If our histories are anything alike, you’re about to face the greatest crisis of the past one thousand years! She’s gone, she’s gone!” This last part was referring to the Moon, which hung high in the sky with a mostly blank face. “Or maybe not...” she added. “I didn’t think to look at the Moon of this world before now. Did it used to have a face before?” “Nightmare Moon!” exclaimed Spike, having climbed up a stack of crates to get a clear look. “You were right about the Millennial Celebration! Or rather, the old you was right, before the new you arrived. ‘On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape and she will bring about nighttime eternal!’ What do we do?” Pinkamena suddenly sat down on her tail and laughed. It was a laugh utterly devoid of happiness, the laughter of insipient madness. “I told you so!” she cried. “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so!” “Snap out of it!” Vinyl shouted, shaking Pinkamena by the shoulders. “I know how this story goes, and it has a happy ending.” “On your world perhaps,” said a desperate Pinkamena, “but if that happy ending is thanks to the six ponies you named, then we are all doomed!” “We’ve got to do something!” answered Vinyl, equally desperate. “Come with me to City Hall. That’s where Nightmare Moon is right now. She can be defeated, and I know how to do it!” Pinkamena sighed, but then a look of fierce resolve came into her eyes. “Alright. If we’re all doomed, I want to go down looking my doom in the eyes.” The two ponies headed for the door of the warehouse. “Hey, wait for me!” exclaimed Spike, climbing down from the crates. Vinyl turned to face him. “No, Spike,” she said firmly. “This is going to get really dangerous, and the Spike on my world wasn’t involved. I don’t know what Twilight would have done if you had gotten hurt.” “Twilight?” Spike asked, utterly bewildered. “Stay here, Spike,” Vinyl instructed him. “The sun is going to rise in about three hours, and that’s how you’ll know that Nightmare Moon has been defeated. My Spike slept through the whole thing...” She stopped for a moment, smiling at that dragon’s ability to sleep through anything. “You on the other hoof can keep hysteria in Ponyville down,” Vinyl continued, “and maybe arrange for our victory parade when we get back. Promise me you’ll do this, Spike.” Spike sighed. “Fine, I promise. But you gotta promise to say goodbye to me before you leave.” “Alright Spike, I promise.” She looked over at the grim face of Pinkamena. “Let’s go.” Spike watched from the doorway of the warehouse as the two ponies raced towards the center of town. He opened his mouth to wish them luck, but didn’t feel that anything he could say would match the gravity of the situation, so he just sighed instead. The pair of ponies spent the time walking through Ponyville covering many of the subjects Pinkamena and Spike had covered earlier, including the matter of the rock farm and the lack of a cutie mark. Vinyl for her part did far more listening than talking. She volunteered nothing more about her other life, and Pinkamena seemed disinclined to ask. All the while, Vinyl’s mind was reeling over the situation she had found herself in. Back in the world where she came from, Vinyl and Rarity had been friends for a few years in Ponyville before Vinyl had left to attend the musical academy at Fillydelphia. She had only the most casual acquaintance with Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie before she had left, and had never met Twilight Sparkle before the day she found out about the compact disks that the magician was attempting to decipher. It wasn’t long after the group had befriended her that Vinyl learned that they had been the ones who had defeated Nightmare Moon. Or rather, she heard, and immediately decided that they were all crazy. The idea that mortal ponies could defeat a mad goddess was impossible to believe, and she had gone to rather extreme lengths to rationalize to herself how they might have been fooled into thinking they had done what they had claimed. Every time one of them would bring up the story, she’d try to change the subject. But the more Vinyl learned about her six friends, the more it dawned on her that they were in fact telling the truth. Once she finally believed, she couldn’t hear the story enough, and asked each of them to tell it to her multiple times. The notion that six ponies could do something like that was incredibly inspiring to her, both in her life and in her compositions as DJ Pon-3. And now, by some strange quirk of fate, she was being allowed to live that story. As Twilight Sparkle. It seemed too good to be true. Finally, they reached the town square. The booming voice of Nightmare Moon could be heard before they even entered Town Hall itself. “Fine, I’ll tell you,” said the voice in petulance. “Nightmare Moon. The name is Nightmare Moon. You’d think that somepony would have figured that out. The state of education has declined most precipitously in the past thousand years. And now we move on to the second item on the agenda, my little ponies: why I am here. I am here to correct a cosmic wrong. I am here to reclaim what is mine! I am here to teach you all a lesson, once and for all! Remember this day, little ponies, for it was your last. From this moment forth, the night will last forever!” This was followed by much demonical cackling. “Why do they always have to do that?” muttered Pinkamena to herself as the two of them entered the main hall unobserved. Vinyl froze, staring at the impossibly tall black horse standing on the balcony above them. She was as tall, in fact, as Princess Celestia, her coat so dark as to absorb all light. Her wings were outstretched in defiance of the crowd below her, and her eyes, the slitted eyes of a dragon, stared defiantly down at the ponies who dared to stand up against her. She had an impossibly long horn and instead of a mane or tail, a thick blue mist floated around her. Through it, stars were visible. In fact, it appeared as if that mist was actually a window into the night sky that would be visible behind Nightmare Moon if the walls of City Hall did not exist. The Mayor stepped forward with complete confidence, a confidence belied by the knocking knees of Rarity standing behind her. “Seize her!” the Mayor ordered her unicorn guards. “Only she knows where the Princess is!” A net of magical force quickly wove itself between the horns of the guards to the sound of a warbling of flutes, and struck out at Nightmare Moon from three directions at once. From Nightmare Moon’s horn, an inky darkness seeped out that soaked up the magic from the net, and then returned to her. If a unicorn’s magic on this world manifested itself musically, then Nightmare’s Moon magic was a silence that sucked all melodies into it. “How pitiful!” she exclaimed. “And yet...an impressive degree of coordination.” She closed her eyes, and the black magic from her horn swelled out once more, sweeping low over the backs of the panicked guards, and then sucking the “diamond dust” right out of them. “How very interesting!” she exclaimed. Rarity turned to flee, but was caught in Nightmare Moon’s magic and floated over until they were face to face. “That’s a nice trick you have there,” the alicorn told her calmly. “For which I am most grateful. This will make my conquest of Equestria so much easier! Last time I had to pretend all sorts of things to build up an army, but with this I can have nearly any pony I choose join my side! Think of it: any pony that would dare to oppose me would have to fight their way through an army composed of their brothers and sisters, parents and children, all of whom would be willing to die to protect me!” Using her magic, Nightmare Moon floated Rarity above her and turned her upside-down, shaking her roughly until all of the dust in her coat had fallen into Nightmare Moon’s. Unlike the case with Rarity, every speck of the dust was completely absorbed into the alicorn’s infinite blackness, leaving her looking the same as she did before. Her usefulness to the dark princess at an end, Rarity was tossed into a corner. “Now then...” Nightmare Moon began. She was interrupted by the sudden arrival of dozens of pegasi bursting through the skylights. At the same moment, a light blue pegasus strode confidently into the room. She had a bright rainbow-colored mane and tail. On her flank was a black storm cloud out of which poured dozens of lightning bolts, and resting on her head was an enormous glittering crown. The proud pegasus shoved her way past Vinyl and Pinkamena into the center of the room, quickly followed by a team of pegasi operating a spotlight and another team with a wind machine. “Seize her!” ordered Empress Rainbow Dash once she had reached her mark. She looked incredibly impressive with the proper lighting and with a wind blowing her mane back. “Only she knows where the Princess is!” “What, again?” the alicorn deadpanned. She yawned theatrically as she used her magic to swat down the dozen pegasi soldiers that rushed at her. “You foals!” she then exclaimed in disgust. In an instant, there was a great cloud of night sky where Nightmare Moon had once stood. It spread out over the backs of all the ponies present, showering them with dust. Suddenly about half of the ponies present, of all three breeds, sneezed as one and then turned into blue clouds, which joined the main mass, along with the spotlight, the wind machine, and the gaudy crown on Rainbow Dash’s head. The massive cloud then swiftly flowed out through the busted skylight. Everypony raced out of the building, to see the cloud heading out towards a distant forest. They were quietly joined by Applejack, who had been in the midst of escaping town when everything had started happening. “Come back here!” the Empress exclaimed, shoving her way past everypony and flying after the cloud. Unfortunately, it blended completely into the night sky, making it impossible to see where precisely it entered the forest. With a sigh, Rainbow Dash flew back and landed in the center of the city square. The battered pegasus guard organized themselves into a square surrounding her. They settled to the ground and all bowed low to her. The numerous gaps left by those Nightmare Moon had taken were painfully obvious. Stepping out of the crowd was a pale blue pegasus stallion in a blue flightsuit with rainbow markings matching the Empress’ mane. He positioned himself to the side and a little back from Rainbow Dash then bowed down even lower than the others. “Your Most Exalted Majesty!” he exclaimed. Rainbow Dash looked about her in fury. “I was going to crash this celebration in order to make the Princess look bad, but nopony takes my crown (and my pegasi) away from me and gets away with it! I want answers!!!” “Yes, Empress!” exclaimed the pegasus in the flightsuit. He rushed out into the crowd. “Um, Empress...?” his voice floated back a few seconds later. “All the ponies of this town appear to be frozen.” “What?!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, walking through a gap in her guard to examine an earth pony with a pink coat and blonde mane, her foreleg outstretched and mouth agape. A lily was tucked behind one ear. Rainbow Dash tapped the frozen pony lightly on the side, and got no reaction. She then pushed, and the pony toppled over, still frozen in position. This caused the pegasus to laugh out loud. She started rushing from pony to pony, knocking each of them over. “This is great!” she squealed. “Is the Empress nothing but a bully?” demanded a voice. “Who said that!” the Empress screamed, looking around her. “Show yourself, unless you’re a coward!” Pinkamena stepped forward from the crowd of frozen ponies. “Has the Great and Powerful Rainbow Dash come down here merely to belittle us ground-based ponies, or will she join the fight to save us all from eternal night?” “I’m going to save you all from whatever mess you got yourself into,” Rainbow Dash told her, “right after I clean your clock!” She quickly reared up on her hind legs and attempted to punch Pinkamena, but only connected with empty air. She flipped around to see the pink pony next to her and attempted to buck her, but again was unsuccessful. “Stand still so I can clobber you!” she exclaimed. “Enough!” exclaimed Applejack, grabbing a bucket of ice-cold water that Graphite had passed to her and dumping it on both of them. (This had been used to keep the champagne cold, in case anypony was wondering). “If you want answers, Empress,” said Vinyl Scratch, stepping forward to face the drenched pegasus, “I’ve got answers. What you just saw was Nightmare Moon, the possessed form of Princess Celestia’s sister Luna. She nearly destroyed Equestria a thousand years ago and was imprisoned in the Moon. That spell of imprisonment expired this morning, and Nightmare Moon has in turn imprisoned Princess Celestia in the sun and prevented it from rising. The only force that can stop her is the Elements of Harmony. And I know how to get them.” Rainbow Dash sighed in exasperation. “Soarin’, get me a towel,” she said calmly to her flightsuited underling, who instantly produced one. “Now you, Unicorn...” she began as she dried her mane. “Vinyl Scratch.” “...Vinyl Scratch, that’s a pretty incredible story you’re telling me. I’m gonna have to see some proof.” “Alright, the proof you need is in the library.” She rolled her eyes. “Strike that, the ‘Temporary World Domination Headquarters of Apple, Inc.’ Assuming they didn’t burn the books or something.” “What kind of barbarian do you take me for?” asked Applejack rhetorically, walking past them in the direction of the tree house and swinging her tail from side to side. As she passed by, Vinyl Scratch felt a brief pain in her neck. Rather similar to the way she felt about the earth pony at that moment. “Follow me,” Applejack continued, “and I’ll take you to whatever book you need.” “This is all my fault!” cried out a forlorn voice from inside City Hall. “Oh for crying out loud!” exclaimed Applejack to herself. “Your most exalted majesty,” she said to the Empress, bowing. “Is it correct to assume that you’re taking over this town in response to the collapse of civil authority?” “Yes, I suppose so,” said Rainbow Dash. “Then could you please send your security forces in there to arrest the miserable little unicorn who has been holding this town in a reign of terror for the past five years? As I believe you observed, she was also the means by which Nightmare Moon stole your pegasi away from you.” “You lousy, slimy snake in the grass!” exclaimed Pinkamena. With her slicked-down mane, she looked exactly the same wet as dry, and didn’t seem to mind the dampness at all. “You couldn’t wait five minutes after your closest ally failed you before slipping the knife into her back!” “You might want to arrest her, too,” Applejack stage-whispered in the Empress’ ear. “She’s crazy.” “Celestia save us all!” Vinyl said quietly, walking past the others to take the lead. Rainbow Dash looked about her for a few moments before making up her mind. “Soarin’, here’s your towel back. Now go back there and round up every non-pegasus that’s still moving, and bring them to wherever these other two are leading me.” Soarin’ bowed briefly before flying off to carry out his orders.