“Luna, I’m telling you, it’s me,” Twilight sighed as she sat across her candle-lit bedroom from the Princess. “There’s no other explanation for it.”
“Preposterous! The fault ‘twas mine alone.” Luna bellowed as she pointed a midnight-blue hoof at the little unicorn. “Be not so quick to make of thyself a martyr, Twilight. ‘Tis a blame I must shoulder, and I will not have you thieving it from me.”
Twilight shook her head and tapped her hoof on a hock-high stack of books, papers, and carefully creased charts. “I’m sorry, Luna, but you’re wrong. I searched the Royal Archives, the Ponyville Historical Society’s records, newspaper clippings, and every history text that even mentioned the area. I interviewed every pony alive who remembered Ponyville from when it was just a few scattered farmsteads.”
Luna snorted and the candle's light flickered against the Friendship Castle's crystalline walls. She wrinkled her nose. “I fail to see the relevance.”
“The relevance, Your Highness,” Twilight hissed, “is that for all the recorded history of Ponyville, they’d never had a single significant encounter with hostile non-pony creatures. I found reference to a few sightings of timberwolves prowling the Everfree,” she said as she unfolded a minutely detailed graph and squinted to read it by candlelight, “but none that ever approached the town. There was a single reported sighting of a manticore overflying an outlying farm but it lacked corroborating evidence and was probably just an overweight Pegasus with a bad mane cut. Even the parasprite outbreak eighty years ago was contained within an hour and involved fewer than half a dozen parasprites.”
Luna yawned and lifted a dismissive eyebrow. “Proving my point precisely, little Spark.“
“No, proving my point, Luna. Ponyville didn’t come under siege from fantastic beasts until I showed up. The day I arrived by chariot to oversee the Summer Sun preparations was the day everything went to Tartarus in a hoofbasket. Since then there have been more monster sightings here than in the past three centuries combined. The conclusion is perfectly logical, Luna.” Twilight drew herself up to her full and still diminutive height and took a deep breath. “I,” she declared with a dramatic hoof-wave, “am a monster magnet.”
The fuming alicorn glared at her companion, ears twitching. “Thy importance to Ponyville’s recurrent brushes with doom is overrated, young Sparkle. Clearly their continued trials and tribulations are to be laid at my hooves. When I returned under Nightmare’s influence, the vast and terrible magics I bore twisted the area. Monsters are drawn to their own kind, and such was I. The local ley lines were surely warped by my unholy presence, drawing supernatural terrors and events to poor Ponyville.”
Twilight stalked around Luna, looking up but keeping their muzzles a hoof’s width apart. “Except for the fact that I’ve run multiple deep-field scans of the area, documented, witnessed, cataloged, and repeated. Of over thirty scans I performed, not one revealed even the slightest ley-line distortions within a mile of Ponyville.”
“Hardly proof positive, Twilight. Let the blame fall where ‘tis due.”
“Oh no you don’t, Luna. You keep trying to shoulder the blame for every ill in Equestria, and no matter how much and how often I tell you differently, you don’t seem to get it.” She lay a hoof on Luna’s chest and leaned forward, eyes flashing in the candlelight. “Nightmare wasn’t nearly as destructive as you think, especially not the Nightmare I saw. Widespread thaumaturgic damage of the magnitude you’re claiming would have rendered the entire town a magical disaster area, and there’s simply no empirical evidence for it.”
Luna took an involuntary step backwards and stammered, "But - "
"And Nightmare Moon appeared in Ponyville for under two minutes, hardly enough time to create a dynamic conjurational nexus. Nightmare spent the rest of the fight in the Everfree, miles outside Ponyville's borders." Twilight pressed her attack, inching forward and volume rising with every word. "Since I arrived in Ponyville, the town's been under siege by dragons, manticores, parasprites, hydras, timberwolf kings, ursas, gigantic three-headed hounds, chaos abominations, demon goddesses, overgrown centaur magic-eaters, and the occasional artifact-corrupted unicorn tyrant sorceress."
Snout to snout with Luna, she beat her hoof on her chest and growled, "Monster. Magnet!" After long seconds she backed down a half-step, grinning. "And you're jealous!"
Luna’s jaw worked wordlessly for a few moments as she recoiled. "I am not!”
“Luna’s jealous, Luna’s jealous,” Twilight sang as she grinned.
Luna shook her head, then hung it low and released a drawn-out sigh. "Conceded," she grumbled. "Yes, I envy thee. I am Darkness Visible, Shadow Empress and bringer of nightmares, Twilight! I have a reputation to uphold! Last week I cut the ribbon at the opening of a shopping mall, Twilight Sparkle. A SHOPPING MALL. Dost thou not remember the words of Mareiavelli? 'Tis better to be feared than loved if thou canst not be both? How am I to strike fear when by my side, the virtuous and pure Twilight Sparkle is the one to whom all dark creatures flock?"
Twilight bit her lip before her grin broke wider. "Well," she smiled, "if the monsters all follow me, and you follow me too, then maybe you're…"
"Point taken, Sparkle. I suppose if I must be a monster, ‘tis best to be thine. So," Luna whispered as she snuffed out the candle, "am I thy favorite monster?"
"Maybe," said a purring voice in the darkness. "Do you bite?"