"What do you mean, 'broken'? Fix it! Make it work!"
I would soon be broken as well if Nightmare Moon didn't quit shaking me around like a rag doll.
She'd have to wait if she wanted me to reply. Outwardly, I was still half-stunned by the thermal blast. Inwardly, I was reeling from the failure of my little assassination plot. She hadn't been so much as singed. She was demanding I try it again. Ineffable Increate, she didn't even realize I'd just made an attempt on her life!
Tossing me aside, she levitated the ruined sidearm before her. She pointed the mis-aligned aperture squarely at her face and squeezed down the firing stud again and again with increasing force until the grip splintered. The blue field around it shone brighter as she tried to twist the weapon back into its original shape. This proved to be too much for the abused piece of hardware, and it shattered into several smoking, sparking pieces. She cradled the debris in her forelegs, mourning the failure of the thing that should have killed her.
Were I not trapped on an inhospitable planetoid with an insane, homicidal, indestructible creature with powers beyond my understanding, I might have found it a bit humorous.
"No, no, NO!" she howled. "This can't be happening! The prophecy..."
One by one the bits of my weapon slipped from her grip to clatter and clink against the glassed surface.
As it stood, I wasn't in the mood appreciate the absurdity. Killing Nightmare Moon was clearly beyond my capabilities. When the ship returned she'd surely realize what it was. Whatever arms the crew carried would likely be as ineffectual as mine had been. No doubt Nightmare Moon would be able to persuade the survivors to take her anywhere she wished once they realized their position. Nothing could prevent the prisoner from seizing the vessel short of the captain scuttling it, consigning herself and the entire crew to death.
More blood on my claws.
Nightmare Moon stormed over to where she'd thrown me, visibly furious. It seemed as if my role in this tragedy was nearing its end. The bitter part of me found it fitting. If only I had listened to my hierarch when he advised simply learning to cope with the world as it is, none of this would have happened. I'd be miserable and alienated, but at least I wouldn't be responsible for unleashing a homicidal maniac on an unsuspecting world. Being the first victim of her rampage was the least I deserved.
She loomed over me, her flowing hair melting into the black sky. Her armor now only glowed cherry-red and the plasma around her had cooled back into gas, but I still felt the heat through my suit. I realized I hadn't truly seen her enraged, not until now.
"This is all your fault," she accused, her voice softer and colder than ever. "You failed me. No, you betrayed me."
It was all true, though not in the way she meant. Still lying on the ground, I declined to reply.
"It was all a trick, wasn't it? She put you up to this. She thought it'd be fun to kick me around some more, but instead of getting her own precious hooves dirty, she made a monster and sent it up here to torment me. Admit it!"
Wearily, I shook my head and explained I'd known nothing about her or the ponies or any prophecy before she herself had told me.
"Don't you call me a liar! Nopony calls me a liar anymore! 'Oh, the young princess is just saying each of her tiny stars is a sun to make herself seem more important!' 'Oh, the young princess claims her moon rules the tides because she's jealous of her sister!' And do you know what she told me?" Nightmare Moon batted her eyes, put one toe on her breastplate and adopted an expression of vapid innocence. " 'Why sister dear, don't let it get to you,' " she trilled in an airy, condescending voice, " 'they'll come around in time. Remember, our duty is the same no matter what they think of us.' " She dropped the act with a snort of disgust. "Us? Hah! Easy for her to say! She was loved, adored, worshiped!"
She raised one of her hard, flat feet over my head. In the light from my lamps, the dust coating the bottom made it look like its own little moon floating in the sky.
"I won't be slandered or insulted anymore. Anypony who hurts me will receive swift justice."
I closed my eyes and tried to keep my mind from thinking of all the things I'd rather do than die here on this Increate-abandoned rock. It was no use.
After several moments, the deathblow still hadn't arrived.
Again surprised to be alive, I reopened my eyes to look up into their counterparts. They were... different. Something had broken inside Nightmare Moon's anima. Instead of the cruelty, mirth and anger they'd held before, her eyes looked weary and tormented, like those of the little statue. They stared straight through me. She gently lowered her foot to the ground next to my head.
"Justice? Since when is there any justice?" she whispered. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. Everything was supposed to go right for once. They'd all wake up and it'd still be my night all around them and they'd have to see it, really see it for the first time. That's all I wanted. All I had to do was say 'no' to her. That's not so bad, is it? But she... she said... that look on her face, I—"
One drop of water splashed onto the outside of my faceplate and then another. The air was still hot enough and its pressure low enough to evaporate both in seconds.
Abruptly, she turned from me and started walking away. "I want to rest now," she quietly announced. "At least there'll be air and warmth. That's... something. Maybe it won't be so—"
Her voice was cut off as the edge of the air bubble passed over me.
Mutely I rose and stumbled after her as she strode out of the crater. I'd been turned around so much inside the crater, I wasn't sure which way led back home, but she seemed to know where she was going. I had enough air left to get back to the habitat, but I'd be cutting it fine.
The Nightmare Moon who left the crater was a completely different creature that the one who had entered. Her head was low, she dragged her armored feet and even her hair had lost some of its gravity-defying buoyancy and motion.
The reason for this was obvious. My lie had dangled the promise of freedom before a prisoner and snatched it away in an instant. Bizarrely, I suspected I'd feel like less of a heel had my murder plot actually succeeded. There is no use applying reason to such gut reactions.
We neared the ridge. The statues were still there, frozen mid-cheer. Nightmare Moon paused, then stepped between them with trepidation. Her spike glowed anew.
The dust ponies shuddered, took on the spike's blue glow and slowly began to move. She hurried on through the crowd, clearly worried about something. I didn't understand what was going on. What caused Nightmare Moon's sudden change in demeanor? What was she afraid of?
Something heavy struck the back of my helmet and staggered me.
I scrambled forward and turned to look behind me. The statues were as animated and excited as they'd been on the way out, but with one major difference:
Now they were angry.
The mass of artificial ponies reared, shook their forelimbs in fury and silently shouted insults and imprecations at the two of us. As I watched, one of them bent over and scooped up a mass of moon dust, held together in a clod by the same power that animated the statues. It took a three-legged step and flung its missile at me.
I reflexively turned and braced my back scales to absorb the attack, forgetting that it would put my suit's air supply in the projectile's path.
Thank the Increate, the clump of dust wasn't as solid as the guard had been. Instead of smashing into me as a rock, it splattered and clung like mud across my back. Several more gobs of flying moon-mud followed it. I hurried on to try to catch up with Nightmare Moon.
The wretched pony was trying to push her way through the mob, but making little progress. The statues pelted her with dustballs, swiftly undoing the bath she'd given herself only a few hours before. The bolder ones actually ran up to her, kicking and biting. Of course, the pony who shrugged off a full-power blast from my weapon had nothing to fear from such attacks. Other than leaving pale toe-prints and teeth marks on her black hide, they did her no physical harm.
Psychologically, it was another story. She made no attempt to fight back, instead shying back one direction and then another as the crowd closed off every avenue of escape. She tried to use her wings to ward strikes from her face, but the statues kept grabbing or biting them and pulling, trying to rip them from her sides.
Why didn't she just extinguish her spike and quit granting motion to the statues? Were they not under her conscious control?
An alarm buzzed inside my helmet. Less than one tenth of my air supply remained. If I didn't get back indoors in the next few minutes, I'd choke to death on stale air, provided these statues didn't finish me first.
Most were venting their rage on the unresisting giant, but a few, not content to throw clods at a distance, were advancing on me with cruel and ferocious expressions. Again unable to roll in my suit, I tried to menace them with my claws. These are more suited to digging and tool manipulation than tearing flesh, and the padded gauntlets blunted any intimidation value they might have possessed. While the others had my attention, one statue seized my tail in its jaws and began dragging me toward the horde surrounding Nightmare Moon.
As soon as I got within the air bubble I called out to her, pleading with her to make the statues stop.
She looked at me dismally through a layer of dust broken only by a pair of muddy tracks running from her eyes. "Oh Pangolin, what's the use? They hate me. They always have." She lay down on the ground and covered her head with a wing. Another salvo of missiles splattered over her side while a pair of statues tried futilely to grab her tail.
Frantically, I told her to stop the statues before they killed me.
"Everything dies too soon anyway," she muttered from under her wing. "It doesn't matter what I do. You'll die and I'll be here forever. What a cruel, pointless world."
Two other statues joined the one dragging me by the tail. Each grappled one of my middle limbs and began pulling, threatening to tear me apart between them.
For her benefit, I screamed a brief description of what was happening to me.
She snorted, sending a puff of dust swirling from beneath the wing. "You're lucky. You can die anytime you like and get away from here. If you're going to abandon me too, quit gloating about it and just leave me alone!"
My suit and flesh stretched painfully. I didn't doubt they could pull me into thirds with a bit more time. It looked like I wouldn't be able to die of asphyxiation after all. It was like some sort of bizarre cosmic joke. How badly must one have failed at being a hermit to be killed by a mob?
I silenced the nagging voice of self-accusation. I hadn't done anything wrong, I was just horribly, terribly, unbelievably unlucky. I'd taken a one-in-nigh-infinity gamble that the moon I settled on wouldn't be a cell for an insane, violent super-being and lost. A cruel, pointless world indeed. Why should I suffer for whatever happened to this wretch all those ages ago?
And then I realized I didn't have to. I am not proud of what happened next.
I yelled that there was another way for her to escape.
Every statue stopped, turned its head to look at me and then froze in a tableau. Nightmare Moon's wing shifted to reveal a single blue eye.
"You're just saying that."
I adamantly denied this and told her everything. A vessel would come to resupply me in about five more of this world's days. Surely they could take her someplace far away from this prison and from those who'd wronged her!
She stood again, rising above the forest of frozen figures. A shadow passed over her visage and her expression returned to the familiar cruel smile.
"Why would I want to do that?" she asked, walking over to me. The statues she touched were obliterated back to dust. "I already have a world waiting for me right next door!"
I had finally done it. To save my hide, I was collaborating with her plan of oecumenicide. But... she would have found out eventually anyway! It ultimately didn't matter! Still, I felt dead inside as she freed me from the three statues with a flick of her wing and dragged me back along with her.
"Come, Pangolin. If we have some time to kill, we can return to my new abode, clean up, maybe have a bite to eat... and then you can explain to me why you didn't see fit to mention this earlier."
I gulped.