By the time night fell, the house looked livable. For the entirety of the day, the pilots had spent it all shopping for the house, their individual rooms, and food for the week. The living room had two sets of couches, and a coffee table with a vase with roses. A metal basket with firewood was next to the fireplace for those cold nights that would eventually come. A welcome mat that said ‘Home Sweet Home’ accompanied the inside by the front door. A bookshelf with many titles concerning Equestria, Ponyville, and even fiction stories was in one of the corners of the living room. The kitchen now had counters, cabinets, and a fridge. The washroom had a walk-in tub, and a sink with a mirror.
Each pilot’s room was customized to their own perfection. While the house itself was left for debates and fights about what to do with it, no one had any say about what to do with a specific person’s room.
Entering Quatre’s room, he was the one who owned the balcony. Quatre was sleeping away in his bed, purple covers halfway off his body due to the room’s temperature. A wooden picture frame with the group as ponies hung above his bed. He had talked his friends into taking a group photo; some objected, some didn’t, but either way it happened. Quatre was in the middle, looking ecstatic, with his friends surrounding him. Duo was laughing, messing with Quatre’s hair. Wufei was looking at the camera with a stern look. Trowa was chuckling while looking at the alicorn, and even Heero was giving off a slight smile.
The room was painted a light blue, with a matching blue circular rug in the center of the room. The moon’s light shown through the faint curtains, which covered up the locked glass door leading to the balcony. A desk rested on one side of the room, where his magic book was.
There was a light tapping on the glass door of the balcony. Quatre stirred in his sleeping as the tapping continued. He lifted his body and rubbed his eyes.
“Who’s there?” he asked. His bed was in a position where he couldn’t see the entrance too well.
"It’s Luna.”
At that, Quatre jumped out of bed and walked up to the door. With his magic, he pushed the curtains apart to see that it was, in fact, Princess Luna. Her dark mane was sparkling with stars, like the cosmo itself. Quatre undid the lock and opened the door.
“Princess, what are you doing here?” asked Quatre.
“I’m doing my nightly inspections of the town, and I’m requesting that you join me.” answered Luna.
“Oh, okay.” yawned Quatre. “Let me just go wake up the others.”
Before Quatre could turn around, Luna stopped him by putting her hoof on his shoulder.
“This first night will just be you and I.” she said.
Luna turned and jumped off the balcony. She dove, and then sprang right back up into the air, flapping just above the railing. Quatre walked off on to the bare balcony, closing the doors magically behind him. He too joined her in the air, and they both flew off into the sky.
The town was eerily quiet at this time of night. Only a few ponies were roaming the streets below, chortling and giggling as they left the bars. The moon was full and bright, illuminating both of the alicorns. There was barely any wind at all to deter them as they made their course through the clear, starry sky.
“Why is it just you and I?” asked Quatre, as he flew next to Luna.
“Sister has instructed me to teach you how to detect the evil forces of the Abyss,” answered Luna. “She says that there might be a time where it won’t be safe for me to roam the night, over even raise the moon. If that ever happens, we are both counting on you to do these nightly rounds, with your magical powers. You studied that certain spell, correct?”
“Yes, it was called the Spell of the Heart…but Luna, I don’t understand,” began Quatre. The laughing below stopped as the drunken ponies entered their respective homes. “Princess Celestia said that you were only able to detect them because you had a strong connection to the evil. Is it because you were transformed into Nightmare Moon?”
“Yes. They had possessed me.”
“Then how am I going to be able to detect them?”
The princess didn’t say anything to that. At this point, they were flying above the shopping district, which was strictly nothing but the shops. No lights were on, for all the shop owners were clearly sleeping in their own beds. Luna’s horn began glowing with black sparks, and she suddenly dove to the streets. Quatre wasn’t as quick as her, and so was startled when she suddenly left him.
He lowered himself to the cobblestone road in that area, as Luna’s horn sparked even more. She was paying close attention to a certain shop. From what could be told by the sign, and the merchandise in the display window, it was a hat supplier. Luna nodded her head in the direction of the shop and Quatre walked up to her.
“Your lesson begins now.” she said. “Walk up to that shop.”
The pilot didn’t need to know any skill to feel what he was feeling. There was a lingering feeling of dread in his stomach, and his legs began to shake. But he knew he needed to do this if he was going to help. So he began his march to the shop.
As the sounds of his hooves echoed against the walls of all the buildings, it suddenly felt like his body was purged with a great force of water. He fell to his knees, gasping for air. Quatre tried to lift his head up, but something was pushing it down. It felt like he really was drowning, as he was filled with the sensation of being dragged down into the depths of a body of water. Quatre collapsed on the ground, and visions of the past began flashing before his eyes, replacing Ponyville.
He was now in Wing Zero. Yes. He was piloting it. And the battle field before him was very familiar. He was in space. Two mobile suits were present in front of him. They were the enemy, of course. No doubt about it. There would be no other reason why they were fighting him.
“Anyone who stands in my way…is my enemy…”
The scene in front of him changed to a comfortable room. He was sitting in a chair, playing his violin. Someone else in the room was playing music with him. It was another young man playing the flute. It was…
“Trowa!”
Quatre was back in Wing Zero. He was being pummeled into the walls of a landing base as the doors were being shut to keep the metallic debris out in space. He tried his best to move his suit, but the other kept holding him down. He heard Heero’s voice yelling at him, but it was being overshadowed by Quatre’s own wails of sadness.
The scene changed once more to nothing by black. Quatre was an alicorn once more, standing in the immense darkness.
“You know, he never forgave you for what you did.”
Out of the darkness stepped out another Quatre pony, only this one was very much different. Instead of the pilot’s friendly eyes, the eyes of this pony were nothing by pools of black. This pony laughed as it walked closer to Quatre. The pilot could do nothing but try to back away, but something was stopping him. It was like a wall was directly behind him, keeping him from going anywhere.
“You shot down your own friend. You let the Zero system take over you.”
“That wasn’t my fault!” shouted Quatre. His body was shaking so badly, it was a miracle that he was standing. “I didn’t know what it could do!”
“You almost killed your friend, and you left him out there for dead.”
“Heero wouldn’t let me go! I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean for any of that to happen! To Trowa…to the satellite…”
He lost his cool, if he had any to begin with. Quatre started to cry uncontrollably as his counterpart got to his face and snickered. Suddenly, his mind received a wave of pictures and they were put into a scene in his head, like a film. Quatre was walking out on to Sandrock’s platform, as a pilot from the opposing Gundam did the same. It was Trowa, with his hands up in the air.
“Put your hands down…I’m the one who surrendered first, remember?”
It was this that brought strength back to Quatre. He glared into the deep, eyeless sockets of his enemy and growled. The ‘other’ Quatre stood there, unaltered.
“Even after what I did, they still remained my friends!” yelled Quatre. “Mistakes happen, I am human! But what matters is that I felt guilty! I feel guilty to this day! Yes, the one who was as close to a pacifist as Relena, was controlled by a mobile suit and went around destroying things! If I didn’t surrender to my feelings of sadness and guilt, I wouldn’t even consider myself human!” His horn began glowing with a white color, sending his enemy backing up a few steps. “I don’t need some Quatre telling me what I’ve done wrong! Because even after my mistakes, my friends and I finished the war together!”
A white beam blasted out from the tip of Quatre’s horn and hit his enemy square in the chest. The pony was picked apart into pieces of light, revealing a dark beast underneath. It howled and disappeared as the light sent it into oblivion.
The dark scene cleared and Quatre was now back in Ponyville. He was laying on the ground as before, with Luna standing over him. Quatre struggled to get to his hooves, and when he did, he nearly toppled over again. His horn was aching and he was exhausted.
“I feared you weren’t going to make it,” said Luna. “If it conversed with you any longer, I would have had to step in and destroy it myself. Thankfully you used the Spell of the Heart and destroyed it.”
“Luna…”groaned Quatre, shaking his head. “What just happened?”
“You had walked right into one of the evil forces from the Abyss,” said Luna. “It had just escaped from a small opening. As the opening closed, the force found you and latched on to your soul.”
“But…why did you let me do that?”
Luna opened her wings. “There was no other way for you to acquire your ‘connection’ to the forces. I had to let it possess you. And for that, I am sorry.”
Quatre didn’t know what to say. One of the princesses of the land had deliberately put him in harm’s way. Luna leaned down to him and whispered in his ear.
“Try being in that kind of hellhole for a thousand years.”
_____________________________________________________________
The Gundam pilot landed on his balcony to return to his bed. As he walked back into his room and locked the glass door, he watched the silhouette of Princess Luna fly across the moon. Quatre moved to his bed and jumped right into it. As he walked around his mattress to grab his covers, his eye caught the picture of his friends hanging above the bed.
To think that the following night, Princess Luna wanted them to come along to begin looking for the unicorn causing all of this frightened him. But at that moment, he made a promise to himself.
“I won’t let anything happen to you guys…I swear.”