To Sleep, Perchance to… Nightmare?
Evil Angel
Author: Draconis187
Time: Unknown
Location: PAPA makeshift Concentration Camp in Omaha, Nebraska.
Sally kept her 9mm gun pointed directly at my head. That look on her face was cold, remorseless. I questioned if this person was even human.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked
“Because you ponies are an abomination to society. You are nothing more than animals. A disease that needs to be cured.”
Why are we bothering with her? That gas is no longer affecting us. We can Escape at any time.
False sense of victory Nightmare. Let your enemy think you’ve lost but that gives you the perfect opportunity to strike. That and the fact that she is pointing a gun at us.
That is a devious idea. I approve.
“What happened to our luggage? And my ceremonial armour? I kinda liked that armour.” Sally just laughed at me/ us.
“Oh we have it but I'm not going to tell you where. We have an armed guard watching every unicorn, the moment your horn so much as turns a lighter shade of colour…”
*BANG*
She turned around and shot Thomas in his flank. He was writhing in pain, his parents trying to stop the blood coming from the wound. “We do that, but there.” She said, pointing the smoking gun barrel at my head. My ears were flat against my head, I was angry at how heartless this woman was being.
That was cold
Are you growing a heart Nightmare? A conscience maybe?
It has nothing to do with having a heart or a conscience, injuring my subjects is a step too far. I'm not that evil.
Well, I’m with you on that regard. This woman is ruthless. How is Thomas doing over there?
He is losing a lot of blood, he needs immediate medical care. The best one should remove the bullet before trying to bandage the wound up. A filly’s bones are incredibly fragile, he can count his lucky stars he wasn’t a Pegasus. Their bones are hollow and would have offered less resistance to that weapon, which would have caused far greater damage.
That’s a Barreta M9. Holds a 15 round magazine. It has a muzzle velocity 381m/s and has an effective range of 50m. It is quite dangerous. I tend to know a bit about firearms. I added sheepishly but a thought hit me.
I may have an idea but we are going to have work together here Nightmare.
What did you have in mind?
You know far more about magic and your body than I do. I'm more of an ideas person.
“Hey! Don’t even think about escaping, there is nowhere for you to go. Be a good pony and await your execution. Or you can resist and I can kill you now, either way is fine by me.”
Nightmare can you see around us?
Yes, why?
Take over for a sec, I want to check our surroundings so I can come up with a good escape plan.
I felt like I was being pushed out the driver’s seat but I could see everything around us, as clear as day. The room we were in was sterile but typical of a vet’s holding area for animals. There were a multitude of cages, mostly filled with various ponies while the larger cages held a few humans. I recognised that they were the passengers on the plane, two of them were... the pilots? At least I now knew they weren't in on it, small consolation though. As I scanned the area I felt Nightmare was smiling at Sally.
Go ahead Nightmare, unnerve her. I can feel you want to.
Like I needed your permission. She snapped.
“You think you’ve won don’t you?” I felt Nightmare’s calm yet sinister demeanour as she spoke. I looked at Sally to see that my change of personality had, indeed unnerved her somewhat. “I look forward to crushing you under my hooves.”
I continued my surveillance of the room. How you can look without your body doing the actual seeing is beyond me but ‘if it ain't broke, don’t fix it’ right? I could make out two doors, and a ventilation system nearby. If I wasn’t too wrong our escape was through one of these routes. Before I could finish my train of thought one of the doors opened and some more PAPA people came inside. They all carried a variety of small arms. One carried a Winchester Model 42 shotgun.
Can you still do that mist thing?
Of course I can.
Time for a jail break. We need to get out of here, then… well you are in my head, you should know what I'm thinking. I felt Nightmare rummaging through my mind, stumbling on my plan.
“Haha, that works for me.” She said aloud. The interesting thing about the sparkling stars in our mane is that they are actual stars, albeit minute ones. Which meant they were quite hot especially when the living stars were thrown out our mane (the inside of our mane is quite chilly, like the vacuum of space and that is what stops our mane from spontaneous combustion). Sally was distracted by one of the guards talking to her and that was the only opportunity Nightmare needed.
She used her magic to throw a star out of our mane which landed on a bunch of empty cages. In no time the star melted one side of one of the bottom cages, causing the rest above it to fall like dominoes. The resounding smashing of steel caught everypony’s attention. Seizing the opportunity, Nightmare turned us into that mist form of hers and flew out through the bars with extreme ease.
Well, being in another pony's body is one thing, flying around as a cloud of purple mist has got to be the strangest yet most exciting feeling in existence. It feels like your hanging onto the outside of a roller coaster as it speeds across the tracks, spining around and around.
We flew up into the ventilation system, every bullet that hit us phased through our gaseous body, even the Winchester was useless despite taking a full blast of buckshot. I could hear Sally screaming at them to find us. We went through the vents and wound up outside.
Landing on the roof, we reformed. There, Nightmare called on her weather altering capabilities. Dark clouds started to congregate above the building, lightning shooting between the clouds and getting stronger. The building had a number of vans with PAPA written on them. Nightmare used her telekinesis to open the vans and inspect them for any ponies. The vans were mostly empty but there were some bags inside. The guards had finally gotten out of the building to see the True Princess of the Night fire lightning from the clouds and blow up the vans in a fireball of destruction.
“Foals!!” Nightmare’s voice bellowed from using the Royal Canterlot Voice. It echoed through the streets, and making the PAPA affiliates visibly shake from fear. “You honestly believed that you could kill the True Princess of the Night?! You shall pay for your transgressions against me!”
With an almighty flash from our horn, Nightmare sent a bolt of lightning at them. The moment the flash the lightning gave off vanished, they were all still standing there but they had very vacant expressions on their faces.
What did you do to them? I thought as Nightmare relinquished control back to me.
Oh just sent their minds somewhere... special. Impressive light show, wouldn’t you agree? Nightmare used a powerful illusion spell to make it seem like she blew up the vans and pulled those dark clouds around. The RCV though? Very real. I knew she was capable of some terrifying illusions so I had the cruel idea to trick them but what Nightmare did to them was unexpected.
***** ******** ******** *****
“Ugh, where are we?” Sally said as she came to. As they checked their surroundings they were faced with the worst thing a pony hater could see. They were strapped to chairs in a warehouse with an oversized plasma TV that was… showing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, from episode 1 of season one all the way to the finale of season 2… and repeating… and repeating. Around them were characters from the show, from the protagonists to the background ponies, all wanting to be their friends. There were two Nightmare Moons sat in the corner watching this ‘horror’ being inflicted on the ponynappers.
Nightmare, you are a genius.
***** ******** ******** *****
I sniggered at the fact that Nightmare trapped them in a nightmare of their own design. They were all experiencing a collective dream spell that Nightmare used and it was funny to see. They were all screaming from the life lessons they were being forcibly taught by Twilight and her friends in their adventures across Equestria.
“Oh Nightmare, you truly live up to your name.” I said aloud as we walked through the now vacant vet office as we went to free the other ponies. Nightmare bowed in my head with a snide grin, standing atop a Marza Dreadnought’s main cannon.
We found our way back to the cages and bucked the door open with force. Turned out it wasn’t locked but it made me feel good, smashing a door in. I was met with scared faces at first but then once they saw it was me, they cheered.
See Nightmare? Give being good a chance and your subjects will always greet you with this much love and admiration.
She didn’t respond but the unicorns, humans and myself set about opening the cages for the others. Thomas was still injured so I carried him on my back without caring about his parents’ protests. We all got out and got our luggage from the various vans. Thomas’ parents hopped into one of the vans while I got in the back and slowly laid him down on his good side.
Can’t you heal him Nightmare?
I’ll do what I can for him.
Again I felt pushed into the back seat as Nightmare used her magic to search through the wound for the bullet. The van driving through the street, trying to find a nearby hospital for Thomas. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, a small, bloody metal object came out of the filly’s wound, surrounded by Nightmare’s magic aura.
Well, that’s one part done Nightmare.
“The bullet is out but I'm no nurse. We need to disinfect and dress the wound as soon as possible to avoid the wound from turning septic. That’s not all I’m afraid, the bullet shattered his leg bone so he’ll need a splint for it.” Nightmare said, informing his parents of the situation.
We got to a local hospital and rushed him in. The smell of medicine was overwhelming, most of the smells nearly made me want to hurl so I stayed outside after I handed the bullet to the attending doctor. I took out my luggage and found my armour in the bag I had originally put it in. Donning the armour, I took out my laptop and went into my emails.
Hi Mom
This is your son/ daughter/ pony/ whatever. I am in Nebraska, the plane’s stewards and some PAPA nutjobs ponynapped us and took us to Omaha. Woke up in a makeshift concentration camp set up in a vet’s office. Please tell Uncle Norris I will be in New York as soon as possible, I’ll fly the rest of the way. Oh and I'm going to go onto Facebook for the first time ever. Look out for NightmareMoon whenever you go on.
Regards
Chris, Nightmare Moon.
I sent the email and logged onto Facebook. I went and created the profile NightmareMoon and used the laptop’s built in camera to take a picture of myself sticking out my tongue. I heard someone clearing their throat and looked down. Thomas’ father was looking up at me. I shut down the laptop and jumped off the roof, landing about two feet in front of him.
“Thanks, for saving my son… and us. They said they will be able to discharge him in a few days. I… guess I had you wrong.” He said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are you going to head for New York now?”
I nodded, “There isn't a point in staying much longer. Besides I’m glad the little filly is going to be ok.” I gathered my things and put the laptop away. I turned to the breeze and readied my wings.
“Wait, before you go.” He gave me a wallet. I opened it to find 600 dollars inside! “This is a spare wallet I use whenever I indulge in my gambling hobby, I take it wherever I go even another country, it’s a force of habit. We were visiting some family in South Africa at the time. Once Thomas changed we talked it over and decided to head for New York. I’m… glad we met you on that plane. Good luck on your journey.”
Thanking him, I took off to the skies. I landed on a cloud above the vet’s office and peered down at the PAPA agents on the ground.
“No more…”; “Please… make it stop.”; “faithful and strong...” Were among the comments I heard. Both myself and Nightmare were laughing our flanks clean off.
Should we let them out of their nightmare? I asked her.
Nah! We both thought simultaneously, continuing to laugh hysterically.
We collected ourselves and I got our body up. Taking out my step-father’s phone, I fired up Google maps. I was just over 2000 km to New York which was over 18 hours of driving. Good thing I didn’t drive. I looked at the position of the sun and checked the time: 16:32 PM.
Ok the sun is setting and that’s in the west while NYC is in the east. Well, up for a real journey Nightmare?
Oh, please. There is nothing this world can dish out that I can't handle.
As I opened my wings once more I felt a rumbling in my stomach, hunger decided to finally wake up.
Damn, I guess our journey will have to wait.
I flew around Omaha, searching for an open store and found a Wal-mart that was still open. I landed and went… shopping!! I searched through the fruit and vegetable section with a levitating basket, finding some Granny Smith apples; carrots; lettuce and tomatoes as well as some oranges. I cantered to the bakery section and got some bread as well as some butter by the diary section. With my basket of goodies I went to the till to pay up. The cashier looked at me suspiciously as I levitated my food for her to scan.
“I'm not here to cause trouble ma’am. I simply wish to get some food.” I said calmly.
Should have shouted at her and scare her senseless.
Ugh, and this is exactly the reason I’m the ideas guy. I retorted.
The cashier scanned my things and raised an eyebrow as I paid her with crisp notes. Thanking her regardless, I walked out and flew up into the clouds.
I took out a few apples and snacked on them. Nightmare all of a sudden pulled me out of control and began to voraciously assault the apples, finishing the entire bag before calming down and blushing at herself for her actions.
Let me guess, you never ate after getting back from the moon?
Nightmare didn’t respond but gave me back control. Feeling full from Nightmare’s apple assault, I laid on my side and went to sleep on the cloud. The next day was sure to have its own surprises as well as twists, of that I was definitely sure.