//------------------------------// // You Had Your Chance // Story: Left Behind: Sunny Disposition // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// "What manner of inane stupidity is this?" Moon asked aloud. Standing before her was yet another alicorn of the night. Another successor, but the mare could not sense any moon attributed to it. She bared her teeth. A trick? Every other one was associated to a moon, so why not this one? "Why are you veiled in shadow?" Moon asked her. "You don't get to ask me questions, failure," the newcomer spat. Moon grit her teeth and bared the entirety of her fangs while her body began to glow white with anger and magic. "You will reveal yourself to me, now!" The new alicorn laughed. "I have no reason to listen to a foal who was sealed away before she could do anything." Moon's magic coursed through her body and erupted into the ground through her hooves, cracking it around her. "Enough of this!" "I agree!" The newcomer bolted towards Moon and enveloped her head in her gaseous body. The alicorn struggled momentarily before realizing that she had panicked for no reason at all. While the ghostly figure's tendrils were digging at Moon's mind, it was like trying to mine iron using a stick ripped from a tree. The metal would eventually become loose, but who knew how long it would last? The aggressor was chased off with a burst of magic and thrown roughly onto the ground. When the new alicorn reformed, she was crouched and glaring up at Nightmare Moon. Said alicorn felt a weird twinge in her mind and soul upon seeing the true form of her aggressor. "I'm not giving up yet!" the newcomer declared. She resembled Nightmare Moon more closely to how she was before she...became as she was now: saturated in multiple types of lunar magic. The newcomer's coat was pitch-black and decorated with a few white specks. Her wings more closely resembled the batwings of the thestrals, although a loose feather dangled from the ghostly remains. Hooves were bare from the fetlocks, revealing cracked hoof walls. Her mane and tail were long and flowing as well, but they better represented some form of imaginary version of the night sky: Filled with a plethora of colorful clouds and bright stars. Her eyes bore through Moon with fury that only the reptilian slits that comprised Nightmare's eyes could fully convey through a pony. "What is your name?" Moon asked the alicorn. "Whatever yours is when I take over your body and get my revenge on everypony!" While Moon couldn't directly interact with the ghosts, she realized with this confrontation that basic warding spells could chase them away. An idea formed in her nefarious mind. Moon chased the ghost away and cast her warding spell, but she started tightening the dome into a serpentine shape. "Cease your attempts at stealing my body," Moon warned. The ghost snorted and trembled with anger. "It's not yours anymore! You had your time to shine. I didn't get mine yet!" The ghost resumed her attempts, but this time Moon was ready. She whipped the ghost away, stunning it briefly. This went on for several minutes and could very well have continued if it weren't for the instability of Moon's warped warding spell and her aggressor lying, defeated, on the ground. Amused, Moon grinned and tilted her head. "How is a ghost out-of-breath?" she asked. "I must keep the basic functions of a pony's body in mind when I reacquire one," the mare growled. "Preferably yours!" Moon rolled her eyes and walked about, thinking. "This is the first time I've seen any of my unofficial 'successors' act so aggressively to the one, true Mare-Of-The-Moon." The aggressor spat. "True. Pah. You failed miserably, and now look at the world." "And what should I call you, my angry successor?" Nightmare Moon asked bemusingly. "I have no name to give you, failure," the ghost hissed. A devious grin grew on Moon's face. "Then I shall call you Solaris," she mused. The invader's eyes glowed bright and angrily. "You'll do no such thing!" she shouted angrily. Moon raised a brow. The ghost's 'spooky' and serious façade were starting to fade. She was becoming increasingly flustered. "And why should I? You've been trying to usurp me and you refuse to give me your name." Nightmare Moon shrugged. "I have to be able to identify you somehow." The ghost alicorn clenched her head angrily and started swiping at Moon who remained still and apathetic, leaving her would-be aggressor to scream in frustration and float towards a wall while cursing. Whatever magic she had used to chase off any spirits faded slightly, allowing something to manifest as a formless fog pockmarked with white lights. "So that's what happened," the cloud sighed. "What is this now?" Moon complained. She watched the ghost float about angrily. "Don't ruin this for me. It is the most fun I've had in a long while." "I'm Mond." Moon turned her head slightly and looked at the cloud with a wide eye. "And I see you've met the last of your successors." "I figured as much. Anything you can tell me about her?" Mond's form shivered. Moon equated it to a shrug. "She never told us much, and we were able to perceive even less compared to others." "How is that possible?" "I..." Mond paused and watched as the ghost tried possessing Moon again but received a slap on the cheek instead. "She...isn't very old, actually. Most of us managed to reach a century or two before everything degraded. She's...still technically a teenager." Moon looked at Mond, shocked. The former successor wasn't sure how to feel, seeing Moon wreathed in her magic and holding the intruder in a foreleg-lock. Said intruder was immediately let go to wander angrily through the room, resuming her tantrum. "They killed a teenager?" Mond shivered. "I guess? She has this weird field about her that disrupts spirits and cuts off the outside world. I'm guessing whatever tried to make her wanted to use that to make her last a long time like most alicorns? At best we know she stubbornly tried to use the original moon of Equestria and something...came from it." She looked to the ghost. "She never tells us anything besides accusing us all of failing our purposes." "I can see that," Moon muttered. The ghost attempted a sneak attack and failed in her attempts, having been caught, face first, by Moon's magic. "But I'm still alive while all of you are dead," she specified. The ghost struggled against her grip, and Nightmare Moon could feel frustration and misery hidden behind searing anger. "I am the only one left that can accomplish whatever 'purpose' you have given yourself." "Then...make them pay," the ghost grunted as she fought against the grip. "Make them pay for what they did to us...to alicorns...to me," she growled. "Wasn't given a chance..." As the first rays of sunlight peaked past the horizon, the ghostly apparitions slowly faded away into nothing, leaving Moon alone with her magic passing through the spirit. Annoyed, Moon wasn't ready to deal with several guards rushing in in a panic. "What is it?" NIghtmare boomed from above after hearing the cacophony. A pegasus stepped forward, nervously, while gasping for air. "We caught a pony trying to infiltrate your castle." "And?" Nightmare Moon asked dismissively. "Just throw them in the dungeon and I'll deal with them later." The guard tensed and looked at the others who had followed her in. "It...uh...Something isn't right with them." Moon rolled her eyes and flew down. "Fine. Let me see this would-be spy." She went out to her courtyard to see four heavy guards struggling to hold a quadrupedal beast snarling and thrashing about. They were keeping it away with catcher poles, although they didn't seem to do much to inhibit its movements. All that strength and increased weight and they still couldn't hold it down, but Moon raised her brow at another thing. "You have pole catchers?" she asked calmly. "A bit long, aren't they?" The guards watching paled. "U-uuh...t-to catch beasts that wander in, your highness," a guard stammered nervously. Moon, jaded, slowly walked towards the creature as she talked. "So many giant creatures around here. I am glad that you have kept such foresight." "Blasted, ponies..." the creature spat. "Ho ho," Moon said in amusement. "Another pony tribe? There are so many already. I fear that even I may not be able to memorize them all," she mused as she leaned forward. The creature standing before them was all but pony. Its equine body was wreathed in flame and its fur burned away to revealing crackling, blackened plates beneath covered in yellow cracks from which steam blasted out. Its mane and tail were nothing more than streams of soot and ash flowing from its body, evacuating from the fissures like a volcano ready to erupt. Their teeth resembled jagged rocks of obsidian cutting up their own mouth from which a glowing liquid leaked to clean and lubricate said protrusions. As for their eyes, they had long since disappeared, replaced by literal orbs of fire eating away at their own sockets. "No, your highness," the same guard corrected her. "We've never seen this kind of thing before." Unphased, Nightmare Moon leaned forward at the snarling pony struggling against its bonds and locked eyes with it. For barely a minute the fury intensifies, then its eyes extinguished and its light dimmed. It seemed enamored by what was looking at it. "Impossible," it whispered. "She instilled into us the hatred of your loss, but you are here?" Its ire began to reignite. "What trickery is this?" it yelled at the alicorn. "You cannot have learned of us, let alone the purpose of our empress!" Moon snorted. "Empress? What lofty ideals your 'leader' has." She raised her head and let her magic slowly leak into the air around her and the creature. "And what do you mean by me being here? Of course I am here. This is my home. My castle. My capital," she boomed. "But...but!" The creature's light and fires fizzled and reignited randomly, like they were having a panic attack. "You were sealed away forever. How can this be? She instilled this knowledge, this hatred, into all of us." Moon narrowed her eyes and intensified her glare as the guards mumbled together. "Elucidate me." The intruder, witnessing Nightmare Moon's intimidating aura and vast magical reserves immediately dropped to the ground in reverence, pulling the guards with it from the sudden lack of resistance. "I give deference and respect to the Sister of the Night," it said. "I humbly beg and grovel at your hooves to grant me the unworthy honor of forgiveness." Moon smiled widely, revealing her teeth and fangs that sent a chill through many of the guards' spines. "Rise, then, flaming pony, and tell me who sent you?" The pony kept their face against the ground. "No one," they said without moving. "At least not specifically." "I believe I told you to raise your head," Moon growled behind clenched teeth. "I do not like repeating myself." Hesitance and trembling marked the movements of the intruder, but they gradually did as told. "I was one of many sent to scout Equestria. My empress wanted to know what had become of her daughter and the lands she once held dear." Moon furrowed her brow and tensed her body. "So my sister sent you?" She ignored the guards repeating 'sister?' multiple times. "Or rather, a fragment." She put a hoof to her chin. "I thought they were all focused on a single thing and didn't have any true sentience, let alone sapience, to them." "She seeks to expand her army and get revenge on those who wronged her," the intruder explained. "She will reconquer everything, and with you at her side I am certain you will both succeed, for the glory of the Two Sisters." The alicorn paced around, audibly groaning. "I don't know how the fragments work, but that seems too complicated for the one called 'The Solar Tyrant'." Moon noticed the ponies around starting to panic. They had heard enough from Sunny and his constant ramblings to know she was bad news. "But what to do? I don't want to share," she giggled. She gave the intruder a side glance and a large smile. They jumped up and charged at Moon, placing their hooves on her chest. "You cannot! She has pined for your presence for millennia ever since she imprisoned you! She had regretted it for a thousand years, living with the guilt, hoping that somepony could help you when you were freed where she could not." With disgust, Moon wiped the pony's burning hooves off of her chest and looked down on them, both figuratively and literally. "That was her mistake: Hoping." The alicorn's body glowed, and with a scream that was immediately silenced, the intruder was engulfed in an orb of white light that gradually faded to pure black.