A groggy Moon wakes up sopping wet. Green blades swirl into royal purples, into a door frame, smelling of the ocean sea, closer to home in the wake of a thousand-light flash and a hurtle through space...
The door to safety. The red light. The exit.
Hooves catapult her to the end, ever closer, edges of ecstasy at the exit against the muscles whining that she stop, rest—
An earthquake and a land of bricks ascends to blot out the sky. Keep running, it'll break—
"I know you."
Rustling from trees' shadows reveals the warbled voice-speaker: wheeled around on empty bleachers, other Screwballs in pinstripes and caps walking hoof-in-hoof with her behind the cornfields. Her cutie mark is plastered all over their uniforms. A ghost of a stadium unravels from reality's folds; out of a giant catcher's glove, pop goes Screw.
It's his obsession.
The stairs lead to the top, a way out the stadium.
Moon dashes like mad, twisting her body with every whoosh of a fastball she hears clipping her mane. Up the stairs, magic straining the benches to her inch by inch—
"Get back here, you traitor!"
An eternity here, collapsing and lapsing and relapsing: the only response to that is to recoil. Amare, home, familiar faces, a refuge and her strength, though the strength in her legs may fail, may slip—
"Why not stay here?!"
Bats form gates that Moon bowls through—a clunk!, the stadium's roof closes, her hoof centimeters away from being chopped.
"Why try so hard to get to your old friends when they're so far away? When you have me? You know you can't escape, but it's not so bad when you have someone by your side!" Screwball extends a hoof, and the tears fall up—how she materializes before her! The applause is warm like a fireplace the size of a forest fire, singing (over a love cam) that they be happy together.
The swirls in her eyes tell a different story. Her smirk drips salted tears (she can smell the ocean in her breath). Over eons of de-creature-fying, of Moon Dancer just talking about books or board games until it cannot be contained, until it spreads, until her mind—crushed into automatic mush.
The audience swells, the organ player crescendos—a split-second dream: her names, familiar faces, a vague but sure direction of home. Of normalcy. Of better.
Of friends.
Anywhere but here.
So she throws a bat at Screwball.
"Taking after me so quickly, Moonie! How delightful!"
Bats and balls, Moon Dancer has thrown aplenty. Ignore, ignore: hit Screw with a decent pitch, propeller hat still there to topple, taunting her with its own devilish smiley. Hoofprints scar the field, scratched by Moon's own frogs which are caked with mud and another ball. Her torn sweater resembles a tattered cloak, her bags splayed with emptied patched-up pockets; the sweat drags her down, heavy as an empire.
"Oh, so that's how you want it? That's how you'll treat me?" Eyes turn like puppies'; Moon whimpers, rolls all over, collecting more putrid dirt. "A little character in some tabletop game?" Screwball curls around her, a hoof ghostly a claw or a paw in a sudden teleport—"You'll just throw me away? After all the time we've been through? After—"
"I don't even know who you are!"
And another bat to Screw's face.
The crowds have long gone from the bloodsport. She strings hit after hit—home is home, safety is safety, just please let me go, Screwball, don't... just one more—
A crueler Twilight, deeper in the scars.
Revulsion drags her hoof back. It turns off her magic, drops her bat off.
Screw's barely battered face still swirls. Looking up, it resembles a sinkhole. Where are you, Screw—"I will not do this to you!" Moon shouts. "Not if it means hurting or... or killing you!"
The waves manage a grin, and the bats go silent. Floodlights deactivate, save for one for dramatic effect. "What, you're gonna let me flounder here?!" An army of a thousand bats and balls pollute the horizon, tinged with the color of her swirl-pool eyes—
Every bat, Moon dodges. She hasn't exercised in so long (lucky her, metabolism has always been high). Don't think—run, dodge, live. Between her and the end of the stadium, at the end of the hall of fame, down a steel corridor, up the final set of bleachers—Screwball, at the pinnacle, blocks her with a brick wall of her own to declare, "You! Will! Be! With! Me! Right here, in paradise!... forever!"
A throw when she isn't looking, where she isn't looking, wishing for the perfect aim.
A loose brick shakes the earth.
A depleted Screwball falls. The walls disintegrate into ash. Disembodied signs shout WE <3 YOU SCREWIE! Home free for Moon, the sun catching Screwball in the light like a vampire (she hisses): the dying face of Moon's first light snarls, snaps at her as a dog: You are Twilight, abandoning me! Look at what she did to you!—"No! You sick mare! How horrible of a friend are you! You don't even feel sorry!"
Moon's legs lie limp upon her, so short in life with her guide. An hour or two, maybe—"I do! But I promise..."
A howl blasts against her mane, her muzzle, like a great hurricane.
Moon smacks Screw down on the cheek. Crimson swells there, her attacker's damning imprint.
Moon Dancer falls with her, abandoning her weapon and her chances to leave, her body withered between two fates, eternally green astroturf or freedom, backdropped by Screwball's ugly sobbing. Her tears are crystals, reflecting the real world's sunshine.
Outside, that's where that genuine sunlight reigns.
Twilight never came back.
"I'll... come back. For you." Moon’s words ring hollow to herself.
"Hah, and why? What'll they ever do? How do I trust you, you backstabbing—?
"Enough. I'll... I'll just go... but I'll be back... just... hang on..."
Just like Twilight.
A plan. She must've had a plan... Not now. Not when a second’s delay can kill her. Like a yearning to hug. To tell her everything will be okay.
To resist, to not get caught up there. To not get infected.
Her legs battle an inferno of her nerves.
They gallop across the threshold, force a pop like a soap bubble. When Moon turns back, there's no broken wall, there's no hint of a wall or a forest or a stadium or her friend. The gusts carry the delicious smell of unending corn fields, fencing off a dirt road and a sign whose crudely painted words spell out, Help Here. An arrow points to the closest house over.
Behind her, so close to the chaos, so close to Screwball.
She madly stabs at the air, feeling no wall, no stadium, no old friend's presence.