All characters belong to me, not Hasbro. Yes. All me.
All OCs belong to me do not steal.
Twilight Sparkle is my waifu do not steel.
Copyright year 20XX by the Spirit Dutch East India Company.
P.S. Please Hasbro I was only kidding, don't sue me.
P.P.S. But really though, Twilight is my waifu. Back off.
------------------
It was lonely in the bedroom tower of Twilight's abomination of a castle. Though the crystal tree was dark and unlit, the town a hundred feet below the windows still glistened in the night, the homes alive with revelry. Twilight had never liked the Summer Sun Celebration. Twilight had never liked any celebration.
Or so she told herself. Tucked away at the back of her mind was a yearning, a hidden and repressed memory. One upon a time she had been a silly filly, with all the joys and fascinations silly fillies had. The pony now peering through the windowsill was a haughty, cynical, and unfriendly being.
She felt numb. She knew if she went down to where the ponyvillians where living it up, she would be as distant as if she was in her castle. Twilight could never find words which where not reproachful or biting. Her every act was extreme or unnecessary. Her every thought was of weighed down by apathy.
Yet a burning indignation welled within Twilight. The nerve! The little ponies, lives so fleeting and meaningless, celebrate the wrinkled has-been Celestia. Why did nopony throw a Twilight celebration? Twilight stopped moving or breathing, until the rage muddied back into apathy: Anger had never been a friend to an all powerful being.
Ponies hadn't always disgusted Twilight, though she was never really interested in them. Spike and Shining Armor had always been her rocks during her youth. But ever since her formal coronation Twilight could nearly taste Shiny's nervousness and discomfort, his unspoken rejection. Then Spike had become a spoiled brat, but Twilight mollified him because he was all she had.
Twilight couldn't stand her humble home anymore, her smiling parents. She had relented to Celestia's invitations to the school for gifted unicorns, but found nothing for herself there. Independent study made Twilight skilled to complement her power, but petty little Celestia was more interested in life lessons and morals. Twilight had grown embittered by the perceived unappreciation.
Twilight questioned why she was here, in some gods forsaken hamlet out in the boonies. Nightmare Moon would be no more a friend to her than Celestia. But Twilight, uncharacteristically, clung to hope, hope that two misanthropes would find comfort with one another.
Twilight conjured a clock. Dawn was coming. Twilight, despite needing no sleep, still confined her action within the circadian rhythms of the lesser ponies. However luxurious sleep often eluded her in favor of nights of clenched rumination.
Twilight waited. Dawn didn't come. Twilight heard screaming from the town hall turned darkness shrine. She snorted in annoyance. Nightmare's night had been today after all. Oops.
---
Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash cowered in fear as dark lightning and dark haze filled the already dark and foreboding town hall. An enormous black alicorn, Nightmare Moon, laughed maniacally from the balcony.
"Remember this day, little ponies, for it will be your last! THE NIGHT-"
"Can I stop you right there? I'd like to have a word" A pony interrupted from the back of the room. It was Twilight Sparkle. With cranky looking dragon pet in tow, she began to approach the raised position of the other alicorn. Everypony groaned in anticipatory pain.
"Who are you?!" Nightmare Moon screamed.
"Yeah hi. I'm Twilight Sparkle, god princess extraordinaire. You're new here, so I'll cut you some slack, but this crap..." Twilight gestured to the swirling darkness and lightning. "Cut that out. It's obnoxious."
Nightmare seemed taken aback. "What is this, a joke?"
Twilight rolled her eyes. "I wish. Anyway, as much as I sympathize with your angst, you're messing up my meticulously crafted spooky decorations. I personally banished death cultists from here to keep it looking nice. Nice-ish. So yeah, if you could get down from there and join in the stupid party with the rest of the stupid ponies, I'd be happy... happier... not quite so depressed."
Nightmare's left eye began to twitch at her pure fury. "How DARE YOU act that way to me! I am NIGHTMARE MOON, and I have already banished one princess today!" Her voice lowered dangerously. "After I am done with you, you will wish you had been the second."
Twilight frowned the slight frown of a pony who sees their pet rock sink to the bottom of a river. "Is this going to be the conclusion to my masterful plan to make you my friend? With you putzing around and me sighing in frustration." She sighed resignedly, then her frown deepened. "Fine then. Be that way. Whatever, see if I care. I won't! You can go and buck yourself for all I care you stupid baka!"
Twilight turned heal and marched out of the hall, Spike tripping over himself to escape behind her.
The remaining ponies watched Twilight go, then looked fearfully back to Nightmare. Nightmare's face was contorted by fury the likes of which exist in no hell. With a cacophonous crash of lightning, the alicorn transformed into a cloud of inky blackness and zipped out of the room.
---
The door of the castle was open, so the ponies let themselves in. The interior was no less gaudy then the interior, though it was difficult to see anything in the minimal light.
"Princess Twilight? Y'all in there?" Applejack called through the empty halls. The only response were echoes.
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I am hesitant to wander in unfamiliar surroundings such as these." Rarity said with reservation. "Especially with a crazy and possibly homicidal alicorn on the loose."
"Do y'all mean Nightmare or Twilight?" Applejack asked, to which Rarity rolled her eyes.
"Don't be silly girls, its just a big empty castle." Pinkie said jovially. "And there are much more horrifying things in this world."
"Like doors." Fluttershy agreed.
"Why are we even here? Why do we want this jerk's help?" Rainbow asked.
"Yeah, some of us are not so eager as you to face death. Again." Pinkie agreed.
Rainbow nodded. "There's got to be a better pony than princess purple. Like Celestia."
The hall was illuminated by unseen lights, and Twilight Sparkle appeared before them with a flashless teleportation.
"Because your attention span is only so-so, I can forgive you missing the part where Celestia has departed from this world." Twilight pointed out the window to the lingering night. "But am deeply, deeply hurt that you would say that she could possibly do anything better than I could."
"Oh yeah? Why don't you raise the sun then?" Rainbow challenged.
"Ah gee you got me there." With a flick of her horn, Twilight lowered the moon and raised the sun, the sudden change in the light level blinding everypony. Moments later, the moon struggled it's way back into the sky and the sun lowered.
"Nightmare Moon is being a real ass about this whole eternal night thing. That's her endgame, by the way. Eternal night. Completely stupid in a way I would only expect from Celestia, I know." Twilight sighed. "Point is I don't feel like spending every thirteenth second of my life raising the sun, like Nightmare is determined to do with the moon. Hatred makes ponies just tiringly determined."
"So, what're you gunna do about her then?" Applejack asked.
Twilight shrugged and started walking down the hall, everypony following close behind. "In a couple of days I had planned to send somepony to fetch the Elements of Harmony and use them on her. Do any of you know a paragon of virtue who could possibly use an ancient superweapon?"
"An ancient superweapon?" Pinkie asked?
"The most super." Twilight confirmed.
"You can't do it?" Rarity asked.
Twilight laughed. "Oh believe me, if I could I would, and I would totally abuse it. I've never been able to banish Celestia for longer than ten seconds. Nightmare was gone for a thousand years, which is a dramatic improvement over ten seconds."
Applejack looked disturbed. "And y'all want somepony to bring you these elements to banish Nightmare Moon?"
"Goodness no. Anypony with half a brain would use them to banish me as well as Nightmare. I expect the elements to be politely returned to their resting place in the Everfree Forest as soon as they're no longer needed."
Everypony looked slowly from Twilight to one another.
"Good luck on finding that paragon of virtue." Rarity said, backing away slowly.
"See ya later!" Applejack said, following Rarity.
Rainbow and Pinkie left without a word, but Fluttershy clapped her hooves together and bowed.
"May the door be with you." She said before trotting away.
Twilight watched them go, then she teleported her way up to her study. She looked out her window. Down below, five ponies were making their way towards the Everfree Forest.
-
Not five minutes into the dark and foreboding Everfree Forest, the five kinda-friends began to have doubts.
"Do y'all think banishing Nightmare is worth facing death by scary haunted forest?" Applejack asked.
"No, which is why we're going to face the scary haunted forest to banish Twilight Sparkle." Pinkie said as she bounced ahead of her.
"Pinkie Pie, Nightmare has plunged the world into eternal night. Don't you think that takes priority?" Rarity asked.
Pinkie looked serious for a moment. "Twilight literally killed me, and if that wasn't enough she didn't apologize."
"Actually I think she did." Rarity responded.
"Oh." Pinkie became contemplative. "Then I guess we can solve the eternal night thing first."
"Yeah, but we are going to do it right? Banish Twilight?" Rainbow looked between the others for confirmation.
"I don't know. The door says never to let others linger in the the rain." Fluttershy responded. "Allegorically, that means we should let Twilight into our homes and hearts."
"There's no rain on the moon." Rainbow replied haughtily. "She should be fine there."
"Let us do what we all can agree on, namely banishing Nightmare, and deal with Twilight when it becomes important." Rarity said, forging ahead.
The others followed. They followed the forest path up a hill and onto a ridge. From this elevated spot all of the forest could be seen. The crystalline spire of Twilight's castle could be barely distinguished in the distance by moonlight.
"Did anypony else realize that we have no idea where we're goin?" Applejack said, surveying the vast unbroken forest canopy.
"I think we all realized that, but were too embarrassed to say so." Fluttershy whispered. "I can't see anything through the treeline. We're lost."
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "We aren't lost. You're thinking two-dimensionally."
"Too dimensionally for what?" Applejack asked.
Instead of answering, Rainbow took to the skies.
"I see a thing in the trees!" Rainbow called down excitedly.
"What manor of thing?" Rarity asked.
"A stone thing, like a castle or something. It's on the other side of a river."
"Have you ever had that thing where if you say a thing so many times, it sounds all weird?" Pinkie asked the group. "Because I'm totally experiencing that thing with the word 'thing' right now. Thing thing thing, thi-ing. Thi thi thi, ing ing ing."
As if to punish everypony for the sheer weight of Pinkie's annoyance, the bluff collapsed.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" They all screamed, except for Rainbow was flying and whose scream was more like "NNNNNYYYAAAAHHHHAAAAAAA!"
The four tumbled and rolled off the rocky bluff. Rainbow swooped down and picked up Applejack, but the rest continued their uncontrolled decent to the ground.
"That lasted a lot about as long as I expected." Suddenly, Twilight Sparkle appeared, and grabbed the falling ponies in her telekinetic magic. She lowered them to within a meter of the ground, then dumped them unceremoniously. "But I'm still a bit disappointed."
"What the hay is this!" Rainbow put Applejack down and landed in Twilight's face. "Have you been following us?!"
"Attentively if not physically." Twilight confirmed. "Contrary to popular belief, I can reign in my negligence when it suites me. Besides it would be poor form if I, as the quest-giver, let you die horribly." She looked at Pinkie. "Again."
"I would thank you, but only five minutes ago I was talking about banishing you to the moon and I would guess that you heard that too." Rarity kicked at the dirt.
"Yeah whatever. I doubt you could, but I wouldn't blame you for trying. I'd banish me." Twilight said nonchalantly. "So anyway I'm here now, but you should still go get the elements as if you're retrieving them under your own initiative."
Pinkie looked between Fluttershy, still traumatized from her fall, and Rainbow, who stared aggressively at Twilight. "This adventure stopped being fun."
"We're way out of our depth here." Applejack agreed. "We need to go home."
Twilight was unmoved. "It was my mistake to give you the impression you had a choice." She conjured a whip and cracked it menacingly. "Now mush."
Applejack eyed Twilight warily. "Y'all are an ugly pony. On the inside."
Twilight cringed, then snickered.. She waved the whip limply. "Harsh words from a silly pony. But at least you're honest. Now git y'-all."
The other begrudgingly started along the path before them in the under brush. The forest canopy grew patchy, until they came upon a clearing five minutes later.
Twilight slowed to a stop. "Hold up ponies, there's a manticore up ahead. Don't startle it or it's liable to be aggressive."
"Are you sure about your sensor powers, princess? Because earlier you couldn't detect a party's worth of ponies." Pinkie challenged.
A roar sounded from the other side of the clearing, and a monstrously large chimera beast leapt into the moonlight.
Twilight's mouth contorted into a smug smile. "At this point saying 'I told you so' would be redundant."
"But you did just say it." Fluttershy pointed out. Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to speak but her voice was instead occupied howling in pain as the manticore batted her across the clearing with it's paw.
Twilight surveyed the scene as the other ponies descended into panic and sporadic attacks against the manticore. Rarity and Applejack alternated bucks on either side, as Rainbow regained her footing and dive bombed the poor lion-scorpion.
"Please stop them!" Fluttershy implored Twilight. "He's just cranky because he's in pain!"
Twilight winced in sympathetic pain as Applejack landed a particularly solid strike on the manticore's ribs. "Yeah he's in pain alright. Hey you ponces! Stop beating up on the defenseless abomination!"
Rarity ducked under a lash by a venomous stinger tail. "I'm not sure letting up is the best option at this point."
Twilight sighed, and released a torrent of magical bolts on the melee. The ponies and the manticore were knocked to the ground. She waved Fluttershy forward. "You're up, butterfly."
The manticore was badly bruised and beaten. Twilight's magical kinetic bolt seemed to be the last straw, and now the beast lay unconscious on the dirty forest floor.
"I don't know anymore." Fluttershy admitted, tearing up slightly. "I'm really only qualified for daily care and first aid."
"Nice going jackasses." Twilight said, stepping up to the recovering ponies. "Now euthanasia is the only option."
"Or you could heal him." Pinkie suggested.
Twilight rolled her eyes, an act which had been catching on in Equestria. "I was being sarcastic. I'm not going to let such a majestic creature die because everypony was too eager to resort to violence."
In a flash of purple energy, the manticore was restored to pristine condition, save for a thorn embedded in it's paw. Fluttershy pulled out the thorn and tossed it out of the clearing.
Twilight would have given Fluttershy a sarcastic thumbs up, but since she lacked the digits to do so she settled for a bro nod of approval. Then she stepped around the still unconscious manticore and resumed her trot down the path. "Quit gawking everypony. Time's a waisting and the eternal night isn't getting any younger."
"I don't know how to feel right now." Rainbow admitted.
Rarity agreed. "I did beat an animal to within an inch of it's life, but Twilight could have easily intervened sooner."
"Who's the real monster here?" Applejack asked thoughtfully.
The contemplative moment was interrupted by Twilight yelling back at the stragglers. "If I have to wait on somepony, this forest will become very unpleasant very quickly."
-
It had been what seemed like hours in the endless forest. Twilight had started telling stories.
"...but no taxis would stop for me, and thats when I burned Manehattan down for the second time. Suffice to say, Celestia stopped inviting me on her diplomatic trips."
"I read about that." Fluttershy said wide-eyed. "It was a national tragedy."
"Tell me about it. I started having to pay for my own travel." Twilight nodded. "Celestia looked at me all sad, with her big stupid eyes, and said 'She who pens the law must hold the quill'. God I hate her so much. It's as if she is completely incapable of not being passive aggressive."
"I'm surprised at you for keeping your castle smaller than Canterlot." Rarity joked.
"Eh, I perfectly crafted it to be visible from Canterlot, but not so large you can tell what it is. So Celestia will look down from her mountain and wonder 'What is that?'. And it will bug her all day, until she goes up to her telescope. She will see it through the telescope, and she'll pull back in sheer surprise, and then say 'Really, Twilight?'. I did that with a cow once."
"You pranked a cow?" Pinkie asked.
"Nah, I made it stupid large and dropped it on Canterlot. I live for the moments where Celestia starts questioning her sanity for suffering me to exist."
The ponies stepped into a particularly dark part of the forest. However everypony seemed to focused on Twilight to notice.
"Only problem is that Celestia is banished right now." Applejack pointed out.
Twilight was stopped in her tracks by the realization that Celestia would never see her most obnoxious practical joke yet as long as she was moon-side. As she mulled over this conundrum, the other five increasingly became aware of the frightening faces carved into the grove around them.
"Girls, I think we might have to bring Celestia back." Twilight conceded. Her word where met by yells of fear. "Ok, I get you're upset but that screaming is really obnoxious." She said, before following their eyes to the grim visages in the woods around them. Joining in their fearful screams, Twilight began blasting the faces one by one with purple lasers. Her screams turned to aggressive roars. "Eat dirt, Nightmares!"
Everypony began scream more in fear of the lasers than of the trees. It was only after every tree was left a burning stump did they stop. Pinkie began to giggle. Then she began to laugh. The other ponies laughed modestly with her.
"OH HO HO HO HO HA HA HA HA! They're all dead. Ha ha!" Pinkie said, and all the other ponies stopped laughing. "HEHAHAHAHA!!"
"Just doing my job." Twilight said, oblivious to increasingly distraught tone of the incessant laughter.
"Hehehehehehehe!"
"Pinke," Rarity said, unnerved. "Are you alright?"
"Hee hee hee hee hee." Pinkie giggled, falling to the ground. "Gone, all of them, erased from this earth!"
"I think reacting to needless destruction with amusement is a perfectly reasonable reaction." Twilight said.
"Haha! Haha! Haha!" Pinkie was laughing so hard she began to choke.
"Pinkie..." Applejack began to say.
"Give her a second." Twilight commanded.
Pinkie's laughter wound down, and she was left breathless on the ground. Then she looked at the charred husks of the trees, and burst into hysterical giggles again.
"Holy Twilight, Pinkie Pie," Twilight grimaced. "It's the element of laughter, not the element of insanity. And I pretty sure the laughter part is metaphorically representative of optimism anyway."
"The element of what?" Rarity seemed intrigued.
Twilight seemed annoyed momentarily before realization spread across her face. Then the annoyance returned. "I never gave the Elements of Harmony spiel, did I?"
"Well you mentioned the Elements of Harmony, but not the Element of Laughter." Rarity replied.
Twilight seemed relived, then annoyed again. It would have been easier at this point to describe HRH Twilight Sparkle as constantly annoyed. "Maybe if you used freakin context clues you would infer that the Element of Laughter is one of the Elements of Harmony. Gods almighty, what were you expecting? Nitrogen? Or radon perhaps?"
"Then what are the other Elements?" Fluttershy asked.
"Ahem." Twilight cleared her throat while she conjured a book. The book was badly burned, and one could only assume it was a survivor of Twilight's genocide at the Ponyville library.
"Honesty which is code for integrity, Kindness, Laughter though secretly it's optimism, generosity, loyalty, and one other super secret element. But spoiler alert, I read Celestia's mind and it's magic. Obvious anyway. I could have totally figured it out by myself."
"Y'all weren't kiddin about needin a paragon of virtue then." Applejack said.
Twilight laughed. "Yes and no. Not all at once at least. It can pick and choose from multiple ponies. Like a buffet, or Celestia at a baking contest."
"So what yur tellin me is, this journey is pointless because you coulda found the elements right in other ponies? Or are ya gunna tell me this is a journey of self discovery, and we're the ponies of harmony?" Applejack spoke angrily.
"No, they're a real weapon, with real, physical components." Twilight struggled to keep her anger at being questioned in check. "Just stop bugging me and you'll have your answers, eventually."
"When will that be?" Rarity asked.
"The rebanishing of Nightmare Moon, obviously." Twilight began to yell into the forest. "Hear that Nightmare? We're gunna kick your ass!"
The other ponies, with the exception of Pinkie who was still giggling on the ground, shook their head and restarted down the forest path. Twilight let them establish a lead before picking Pinkie up off the ground and dusting her off.
"Come on, Pinkie Pie." She sighed. "It won't work if you get left behind. Well, It might not work."
Pinkie wiped the last of her happy tears away. "It's okay princess, it only matters that your try."
Twilight's mouth wobbled into a thin smile. "Please call me Twilight Sparkle, or Twilight. I'm sorry I killed you earlier."
Pinkie patted her new friend on the back. "I was upset, but then you roasted those tree and I realized how funny mortality is. It wasn't madness Twilight, but optimism that made me laugh, because I realized that although we are as helpless as trees before death be it by disease or age or alicorn princesses, we should strive to live while we can. Thank you for killing me Twilight, so I can realize how valuable life is."
Twilight was tearing up at Pinkie impassioned speech. "That was beautiful, Pinkie Pie. I have never regretted being immortal until this moment."
"But also thanks for reviving me," Pinkie continued. "because staying dead would have been a bummer."
Twilight could only smile in response. She started back down the path at a brisk trot. "We need to catch up. Alons à la victoire!"
-
Twilight and Pinkie arrived on the heals of the others at the bank of a raging river. It was clear the others had been talking, as they cast glances between themselves and to Twilight. Twilight pretended not to notice.
"The ponies who can't fly will be checking for a ford farther downriver." Rarity announced. "The pegasi can prepare a camp on the opposite bank in that time."
"While I applaud your initiative, I insist you five stay together." Twilight said.
"I'm finding your commitment to remaining a passive observer lacking." Rarity replied. "Or didn't you want us to continue as though you were not here?"
"That was before I realized just how bad you all are at keeping to the vanilla script." Twilight said.
"I'm sorry, what?" Applejack balked.
"Ignore that, forget I said anything. Just know that Rarity has to address this problem by her own skill."
"So I'm using my organizational skill to organize everypony across the river." Rarity defended.
"And I should just accept this deviation? Is that what you want, a deviation?" Twilight asked accusingly.
"Not necessarily..."
"Admit it! You are a deviant! I bet all of you are." Twilight grumbled. "I look away for two seconds and you're all touching butts."
Though the others were amused Rarity was distraught at Twilight's accusations. "No! No! Nothing like that!"
"Then perhaps you could solve this right now then. And while you're at it you could be a little bit friendlier. Yes, friendlier. Hear that everpony, friendlier."
"Excuse me but could you have your little chat somewhere else? You are ruining my self-pitying crying!" Everypony turned to see an enormous water serpent who had not been there moments earlier.
"Buck off, buddy." Twilight growled, though she cast a glance at Rarity. "This forest has plenty of room to cry in."
"But don't you want to hear my sad, sad tale of grief and woe?" The serpent asked.
Twilight looked to Rarity again, then back at the serpent. "No. We're all pretty much completely unfriendly, aren't we girls."
"While I ain't entirely comfortable with letting Twilight speak for us, I happen to agree." Applejack said, turning to the serpent. "We're kinda busy tryin to find a way across this raging river."
The serpent shied away. "I've just been so upset... I didn't realize, but that is my fault."
"Cry me a river." Twilight barked. "But really, do that somewhere else, but not so far that Rarity here gets to skip her character development."
"Twilight dear, you're character enough for the both of us." Rarity mumbled.
As the giant serpent slinked away, Twilight