//------------------------------//
// Luna's Lesson part 2 
// Story: More Dreams 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

	“All right, read me that checklist,” I said.  “It’s for startup procedures.”  I looked at Princess Luna, who sat beside me in the cockpit of the Robot.  She was back in disguise.
“Step one,” said Luna.  “Add fuel.”
“I’ve did that earlier this morning.  What’s next?”
“Step two, light the fire.”
“It’s hot.  I got that going earlier, too.”
“Step three, ensure steam pressure is sufficient.”
I checked the gauge.  It was in the green zone.  “That’s good.”
Luna frowned.  “Step four is just question marks and step five says ‘profit’.”
I laughed.  “Yeah, one day I’ll figure out how to get money out of these crazy endeavors.  In the meantime, I’ll just have to settle for awesome.”  I opened the main steam flow valve and heard the turbines that drove the hydraulic pump spin up.  With any luck, everything would work.
“The controls are yours, Princess.”
She tentatively leaned forward, placing her front hooves in the cuffs that maneuvered the robot’s manipulators.  Her back legs reached out to the pedals that controlled the rest.
“It is very strange,” she said.  “I know nothing of two-legged movement.”
“Well, the next time you’re building a robot, do it how you want.”
“I did not mean to offend.  You are clearly the expert.”  I knew she wasn’t being sarcastic.  She probably didn’t even know how.  It may have been the nicest thing a pony had ever said to me.
I blushed a little.  “Well, you’ll get used to it after a while.”
Luna took a few cautious steps with the robot, getting a feel for the controls.
“If you increase pressure a little bit and give the pedals a good shove, the leg actuators can actually cause the thing to hop off the ground,” I said.  Luna tried it, bouncing the robot a few inches into the air.  She smiled.
There was a safe working pressure limit for the hydraulics.  Overpressure resulted in higher performance, but greatly reduced reliability.  At the highest setting, the power was incredible, but the service life was measured in minutes.
Like a moron, I forgot to warn Luna about the emergency pressure control.
“What’s this large red button?” she asked, touching it before I could stop her.
The turbines shifted into a higher pitch and suddenly shit got real.  Luna moved her hoof back in surprise as I tried and failed to stop the button from being pushed.  Her sudden movement caused the robot’s arm to twitch.  The higher level of power made the movement much faster and stronger than normal.  The heavy momentum carried the robot around in a circle.
I was thrown against the wall of the cockpit by the force.  I couldn’t remember whether it was called centrifugal or centripetal, but either way it sucked a whole bunch.
Luna was desperately trying to recover from the spin.  She was doing a beautiful job of keeping the robot upright by dancing from one leg to another, but we only seemed to be going in circles faster.
I felt lightheaded and a creeping blackness began to close in on my vision.  So this is what it must be like to be pulling g’s like a fighter pilot.  I’d always wondered, but I never thought I’d experience it trapped inside a giant robot with a magical pony at the controls.  Funny the curves life can throw at you sometimes.
Well, I wasn’t wearing a g-suit, so there was nothing to keep the blood from rushing out of my brain.  As far as blackouts go, it wasn’t too bad.  I just wish I wasn’t feeling crushed by all that circular force.  Such is existence.

I woke up on my back with Photo Finish poking a camera into my face.  I swatted it away and it broke on the cobblestones.
Sitting up, I looked around.  I appeared to be in Canterlot, near the castle.  Strange.
“Valiant, you never fail!” cried Photo Finish.  “Sixteen smashed shutters!  The shutters go inside the cameras!  One day I, Photo Finish, will finally succeed in taking your picture!”
“You’ve been trying ever since you lost Fluttershy as a model,” I said.  “I really just want to be left alone.  Go away and take your magicks with you.”
She gathered up the largest pieces of her camera and dashed away.
I got up from the ground as Princess “Cheese” Luna walked over to me.  “She’s a fashion photographer, yes?”
“Something like that.  I don’t understand why she keeps stalking me.”  Looking around, I said, “So…how did we get here?”
“I don’t know,” said Luna.
"I hope the robot's all right.  If it got loose, I forsee massive property damage in the near future.  Are you sure you have no idea how we got here?"
“I think that magic may have been involved.”
“I love how in Equestria you can just explain away anything with magic.  Got some mysterious problem?  Must have been magic.  Something unexplainable happened?  Magic did it.”
“With great magic comes great power,” said Luna.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” I added.
“With great responsibility comes great stress,” she said.
“With great stress comes great quantities of alcohol.”
Luna gave me a strange look.  “What is—”
“Hey look, Pony Joe’s!  Let’s get donuts!”
I pulled her inside the shop.  Joe remembered me from the Grand Galloping Gala afterparty.  He asked how my friends were doing.
It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about Twilight, et all.  Or was that Twilight etc. ?  I hate Latin.
After I realized that, I realized that if it took me a moment to realize that I had friends, then I wasn’t a very good friend myself.  I was sad for a little bit, but then Joe served me a donut and I didn’t worry about it for a while.
“I am not familiar with many of these pastries,” said Luna.
“Huh?  This place is right across the street from the castle.  How have you not been here before?”
“You work at the castle?” asked Pony Joe.
“She’s the cheese advisor,” I said.  “Speaking of advice, what would you recommend for a first time donut eater?”
He considered her for a moment.  “Powdered.  Raspberry filling.  Sprinkles for color.”  He found exactly that donut and sat it down in front of Luna.
Without thinking, Luna lifted it with her magic.
“Oh my Celestia, it’s floating!” shouted Pony Joe.  “The spirits are back!”  He sprinted into the kitchen and out of sight.
“Hey, are you all right?” I called from my spot at the counter.
“Bad experiences.  Vengeful ghosts.  I shouldn’t have built the shop on this site, okay?”  The muffled voice made it sound like Pony Joe was hiding in a pile of flour bags.
“I might be able to call some professionals to help with that.”
“Who are you going to call?”
I debated how to answer that.  “Ghostbusters” was a tempting choice, although I was pretty sure he wouldn’t get the joke.  I had been counting on laughter to help him see the bright side of the situation.  If there was a bright side.  His shop was apparently built on some ancient burial grounds or something.
“Uh, right now I’m just going to leave some bits on the counter and we’ll go,” I said.  “Don’t worry, I won’t forget about your problem.”
Luna finished her donut as we went out the door.  “It was delightful!” she said happily.
“You got a little…yeah, right there.”  At my direction, she wiped some powdered sugar off her mouth.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.  Now that we’ve had our donut break and I can think clearly again, why the hell did we suddenly get transported to Canterlot a few minutes ago!?”
Luna shrugged.  “I told you already.  Magic.”
“Well, magic us back.”
“I believe it would be safer to ride the train.”
“ Ugh.  Fine.”

Ponyville was a smoldering ruin when we got back.
“That’s strange,” I said.  “Did everyone have an apocalypse and forget to invite us?”
“Buck this!” said the train conductor.  “We’re not stopping here!”
“But this is our stop,” I told him.
“There’s nothing left to stop at!”
“Can I borrow your pocket watch?”
“Huh?  Why?”
“I’m going to use the chain to snag a tree beside the rails so I don’t hurt myself jumping out of a moving train.”
“No way am I letting you have it!”
“It’s either that or I push you out of the train ahead of me so I can land on your body to cushion my fall,” I pointed out, rather reasonably.
Instead, the conductor got the train to stop.  I admired his creative response to my demands.
Luna and I walked through the wrecked town.  “What could have happened here?” she said, fearfully.
“Help…” called a faint voice.  We went over to the remains of a house and pulled a disheveled Berry Punch out of the carnage.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was horrible!  This giant, metal thing obliterated all my stuff!”  She looked around.  “And my neighborhood!”
I looked at Luna.  “Sounds like we’ve got a robot to stop.”  I asked Berry which way it had gone.  She had no idea.
“Luckily, we’ve got these large metal footprints everywhere,” I said.
“Very convenient,” said Luna.  We followed the tracks out of town.
Near Sweet Apple Acres, we came upon the scene of an epic battle.  Scattered robot parts were everywhere.
“What happened?” asked Luna.
I studied the scene.  Since I had built the only two robots in town, I knew all the parts and pieces that went into them.
“By the looks of the oil stains, the Cutie Mark Crusaders put up a heck of a fight.”  I looked at Luna seriously.  “But they lost.”
She nodded grimly.  “We must keep going.”
As we followed the tracks past the Apple’s barn, the door opened a crack.
“Valiant?  Cheese?  Is that you?”  It was the Crusaders.
“You’ve got to stop that thing!” cried Apple Bloom.
“It’s just walking around with nopony inside!” said Sweetie Belle.
“I once went to the dentist and got three fillings put in!” exclaimed Scootaloo.  All of us looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said.  “I’ve just never been this scared before.”
“Perfectly normal,” I said.  “We’re going to go kick some shiny metal ass now.  Want to tag along?”
“That is not a good idea,” said Luna.
“But what else do they have to live for?” I asked.  “Once you take away a filly’s giant robot, what can she do?”
“It actually wasn’t that badly damaged,” said Sweetie Belle.  “Sure it’s in a bunch of parts, but that’s really just like putting a puzzle back together.”
“Oh,” I said.  “Well anyway, let’s go.”  I started forward.
We found the robot in the Everfree Forest giving noogies to a bear.  I could only imagine the horror it would cause Fluttershy.
“Okay everyone,” I said.  “How are we going to do the takedown?”
“I’ll reverse the magic,” said Luna.
“You can do that?  Why didn’t you do that before?”
“Magic?” asked Apple Bloom.
“Yeah, I guess you three were going to find out eventually anyway.  This is actually Princess Luna in disguise.”
Luna let her disguise spell drop.  The three fillies immediately bowed.  That was some really clever indoctrination that the Princesses had going.  I wondered if every young pony had to learn it in school.
I shook my head.  Focus on the robot, not on the tyranny of Equestria’s leaders.  “Anyway,” I said.  “Back to business.  You can start any time now, Princess.”
She lit up her horn and concentrated.  As it turned out, reversing the magic only caused the robot to go zipping backwards towards Ponyville.
“Well,” I said, “It’s probably going to go pulverize the wreckage in reverse order now.”
“I have to stop this!” said Luna, more purposefully than usual.  She flapped her wings and shot after the robot.
The Crusaders and I came to the top of a hill overlooking the town and stopped to watch.  As the robot rumbled closer, the citizens who had managed to extricate themselves from the debris screamed and ran.  Princess Luna had reached a reasonably high altitude, and suddenly dove, straight at the robot.  Around her, a crackling blue glow of energy built up, releasing in a huge flash as she impacted the robot, driving it into the ground.
I slipped on my sunglasses to protect my eyes from the flash.  The Crusaders all applauded excitedly.  As the glare wore off, I was surprised to see that Ponyville was completely back to normal.
We trotted down the hill to find out what had happened.  Luna was surrounded by cheering ponies, one of whom was Twilight.
“I have no idea how this happened!” said the purple unicorn.  She spotted me.  “Valiant, what do you know about this?”
“Well, Luna and I were getting rocked by g-forces when the robot decided to execute an unplanned, violent rotation.  Suddenly we were in Canterlot.  A while after that we were back here.  Also, Ponyville is suddenly not destroyed.”
She nodded.  “I have no idea what any of this means.”
I shrugged.  “Magic did it.”
Twilight, being an egghead, didn’t leave it alone, however, and came up with some theory about the laws of time and space being distorted by centrifugal force.
“Or do you mean centripetal force?” I asked.
“No, I mean…wait, what was the difference again?  Ugh!  Now I have to rethink everything!”
Regardless of what she came up with, it seemed like the runaway robot and the unexplained trip to Canterlot had both been caused by Luna’s magic.  She didn’t know much about it, I didn’t know much about it, and Twilight was probably going to stay up all night trying to find out about it.
All the townsponies were grateful to Luna for basically negating a whole disaster area.  They didn’t have to know that she’d caused it in the first place.
I oversaw the reconstruction of the Crusaders’ robot.  True to prediction, it didn’t take much effort.  Needing something to do, they took my suggestion to try for ghostbusting cutie marks.
I don’t think anyone, myself included, thought that tutoring Luna would take only two days.  As she departed with her guard detachment, I asked Spike to write a letter for me.

Dear Princess Celestia,
Your sister made a mistake with a robot, but managed to learn from it and improve herself.  After some social interaction, she’s become comfortable in public and has adopted a more modern method of speaking.  She’s also suddenly a hero in Ponyville.  
I still can’t believe you made me do this because for some reason you think that I’m slightly more qualified than the Elements of Harmony.  Are we cool now?

Valiant
P.S.  Can I get a restraining order against Photo Finish?

“Send it, Spike,” I said.  He puffed fire and the letter disappeared.
“So what exactly happened today?” he asked.
“Let’s see, robot, unexpected teleportation, donuts, more robot.”
“What was that second to last one?” said Spike.
“Oh, we stopped at Pony Joe’s while we were in Canterlot.  By the way, do you know anything about his store being built on an ancient evil burial ground or something?”
“Oh yeah, it’s right there on the corner.  Everypony told him it was a terrible idea, but you how real estate goes, location, location, location.”
I nodded.  Compared to some of the “it’s magic, don’t ask questions” things that I had seen that day, this actually made sense.  Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo were in for a surprise.
“Well, anyway, speaking of location, I’m going to go lie down on the couch and pretend this whole thing never happened.”
“Good luck,” said Spike cheerfully.

Author note:
A shoutout to Bloodpool for some plot points.

Was anyone else really excited to see that Pony Joe was coming back for an appearance in the episode MMMystery on the Friendship Express?  Best backgroundie ever.

Also, I'm reorganizing this story to contain all random stories about Valiant.  Parts 1 and 2 of Luna's Lesson will have basically nothing to do with the coming chapters.  Everything that's based on the show will still be posted under A Dream.

Next time on More Dreams: Valiant and Twilight do Earth