//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: Nihil Novi Sub Sole // by Wheller //------------------------------// Chapter 4 Night had fallen in South Island. Princess Luna looked up at the night sky. The night felt... strange. Western South Island was twelve hours ahead of Canterlot Province time. She had no control here. What really bothered her were the stars. They were not ones that she was familiar with, in the sense that she rarely, if ever, looked upon them. Crux, the Southern Cross was one such constellation. It was not visible to the ponies of Equestria. They were too far north. Luna had not seen it since her return from the moon. Even then, it wasn’t quite her who had seen it last. Things had been different this time around. Luna had forced herself to become Nightmare Moon. With no Nightmare Essence to possess her, it shouldn’t have happened at all, but without Nightmare Moon, history would not suffer as it had, but at a terrible cost, a cost that was too high a price for the greater good to justify. Without Nightmare Moon, Twilight Sparkle would have gone on living, completely ignorant of how important friendship was. Luna had sacrificed herself, enduring the memories of not only one, but two, thousand long exiles on the moon, so that Twilight Sparkle would have friends, a high price for something that some ponies in Equestria would deem insignificant, but a price worth paying nonetheless. Luna turned her head away from the night sky, she looked to the fire that the ponies and their kangaroo companion had built, it was about to burn out. Fusilier Willoughby was asleep on his bedroll, his Emerald Rifle in arms, and his Brodie helmet over his eyes. For someone ordinarily so alert, he was fast asleep. She turned to Vinyl Scratch and looked her over. She was lying still on her bedroll. To the eye of any other, she would have looked as if she too was asleep. Luna, however was the Princess of the Night, she knew when ponies were actually asleep. “You’re not asleep,” Luna said to Vinyl. “You’re just pretending.” “Am I that obvious?” Vinyl asked, perking her head up. “No. I just know,” Luna said as she sat down next to her. “Is everything all right?” “Yes,” Vinyl said, laying her head back down. She was lying, and it was obvious. “No it isn’t,” Luna said, she spread her wing and placed it over Vinyl’s back, trying to comfort her unicorn companion. “You know what I think?” “Go ahead and tell me, because you’re going to even if I tell you I don’t want to hear it,” Vinyl said. “I think that today I saw your real personality. You felt like you for the first time in a very long while,” Luna said. “Everything before that, you were hiding behind a mask of the real you, inside you struggled to keep up appearances.” “It’s a novel theory,” Vinyl said. “What’s your point?” “That there is something that’s been troubling you for a very, very long time. Before you lost your eyesight, maybe even before you set off the bomb,” Luna said. Vinyl grunted an answer. “Vinyl, please. Tell me what’s really been bothering you,” Luna asked. “Why? Who cares? Certainly not my friends, my real friends don’t even remember me, everyone else who called me their friend was either in it for sex, drugs, or alcohol.” Vinyl said, she sat up and slid the goggles off her eyes. Her soft red eyes shining brightly in the moon light as she looked at the Princess. “Tell me something Princess, if this second chance of yours is supposed to be better for everyone, how come I want everything to go back to the way it was?” Vinyl asked. “I was happy! I had friends! I had a little sister who looked up to me, who loved me! I loved her! And then it all gets taken away from me, and I wake up cold and alone in Whitetail Wood, incredibly hung over because I clearly made the same poor choices I did in my old life. It’s not fair!” Vinyl angrily swiped a hoof at the ground, kicking up a rock and sending it flying away from their camp. “The new world can’t all be bad,” Luna said, trying to console her unicorn companion. “No, not all bad,” Vinyl said, thinking of the brief time that she had spent with Derpy Hooves. “But the good doesn’t always cancel out the bad.” Luna frowned, despite Vinyl Scratch’s cheerful and upbeat appearances, the mare was clearly hurting a lot more than she had thought. “Do... do you really desire to put the world back the way it was?” “Yes,” Vinyl said with a nod. Luna frowned again; she opened her saddlebag and placed the unicorn statue at Vinyl’s hooves. “All right then. I’ve placed the artefact in front of you. Go ahead.” Vinyl looked down to where she approximately thought the artefact would be; she prodded it with a hoof to make sure it was actually there, it was. She looked back at Princess Luna in confusion. It had to have been a trick; there was no way that the Princess would let her undo this. “Go ahead,” Luna said simply. “If you want to put the world back the way it was, wish for it. The choice, and its consequences, is yours to make.” Vinyl stared blankly at the statue for several minutes; she knew that the familial bond she had formed with Scootaloo could be hers again. Twilight Sparkle would remember her. She could be important, she could be special again... but then she thought about everything else. In the old world, South Island and Equestria were at war with the Twin Gryphon Kingdoms. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were dead, Princess Celestia was dead; Ponyville had been abandoned. Surprise had been right behind her threatening the lives of Scootaloo and herself. Could she really do it? Could she really be that selfish as to put the world back to that horrible state just so that she could feel better about herself? Yes, yes I could. She thought to herself. She picked the artefact up in her hooves, raising it towards the sky, and readied herself to make the wish. She froze in that position, she wanted to wish for it, she wanted it more than anything else. She wanted to be loved; she wanted to be with Scootaloo again, more than anything in the world. Tears formed in the unicorn mare’s eyes, rolling down her face and dropping into the clay soil. Vinyl Scratch dropped the artefact, it landed softly on her bedroll below her, and she buried herself in her hooves, sobbing quietly. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. This world was better for everyone else. She couldn’t be selfish about it, no matter how much she wanted to be. Luna pulled the unicorn mare close, embracing her tightly and allowing her to cry in her shoulder. She looked back over to the bedroll that Fusilier Willoughby was occupying, he was still sound asleep, though Luna had no idea how. “Tell me I made the right choice Princess,” Vinyl managed between sobs. “Tell me I did the right thing.” “I think you did the right thing Vinyl Scratch,” Luna said, hugging the mare before her. “It’s not hard to fight the temptations of our hearts desire.” Vinyl Scratch continued to cry until no more tears would come. The sun began to rise. Soon enough, it would be night in Equestria. Princess Luna returned the artefact to her saddlebags, today; they would be placing it back where it belonged. Fusilier Willoughby rose from his slumber and made breakfast, Luna made several attempts to gauge whether or not he’d actually been asleep. She may have been the Princess of the Night, but she was the princess of the night of Equestria, not South Island. There was a possibility that he’d been awake the entire time and she just hadn’t been able to tell. If Willoughby had overheard the talk that Luna and Vinyl had had during the night, he did not show it. “Hope you like assorted Outback grasses!” Willoughby said, presenting the meal. “I’d hate to subject my friends to the atrocious contents of Combat Rations One Jack.” Vinyl and Luna accepted them graciously, they were both hungry after the long night they’d had last night. “We should get moving soon. Terrain gets pretty rocky as we get closer to Karlu Karlu, I’ll be slow going, and I want to stay off the roads,” Willoughby said. “I agree, I’d prefer it if we attracted as little attention as possible,” Luna said. “Might be an issue when we get close, there’s an army depot, scant kilometres from the place where I found the artefact. They’re going to wonder what I’m doing there,” Willoughby said. “We’ll think of something,” Vinyl said with a slight grin forming on her face. “We’ve got time.” Luna smiled back at the mare before her. Maybe it wasn’t a full out smile, but she could tell that grin that Vinyl was wearing was real.