Chapter 8- Two Sides of the Moon
The original Naruto, whom Twilight had kept a close eye on, was floated safely back to the group with her magic before he could get squashed as well.
“Phew, that was a close one. Thanks,” he smiled to the purple Unicorn.
“Naruto, while I have to admit that was like THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!” Rainbow Dash called ecstatically. “How are you gonna take THAT thing down?”
“Don’t worry, Dash. I still have a few ninja tricks up my sleeves,” the ninja grinned. He then bit his thumb, drawing a bit of blood. This made the others flinch a tiny bit.
“Let’s see how you like toads!” Naruto laughed as he put his hand on the ground. “Summoning Jutsu!” he shouted, as strange seals and markings began spreading from his hand and around on the ground.
Naruto and the ponies stared in anticipation. “Any second now!” he called. The others simply stared at him, puzzled.
“Argh! Are they all on break or something?!” Naruto yelled in frustration as the markings vanished. This earned him even more confused gazes from his pony companions.
“Fine, I can do this the old fashioned way! This is just a big piece of wood,” he grinned. “Shadow Clone Jutsu!” he called, and two clones appeared next to him.
The two clones stepped forward. One of them put his strange, front right hoof open in front of him. The other one started pounding at the air around it.
“Naruto, what are you—,” Twilight began, but froze in astonishment when she began to see a small, blue sphere forming above the open palm.
“Ooh… Shiny!” Pinkie said in a hypnotized voice.
After the blue orb was prepared, the clone holding it jumped up to the air, aiming his palm with the orb at the wolf’s humongous jaw. “Rasengan!”
The blue ball made contact, and started digging into the wolf’s snout, sending shards of wood flying all around. This only came to an end when the wolf flung its front paw at it, dissipating it. The end result simply comprised of half of the wolf’s snout being blown off.
“Damn, I didn’t want to use this…” Naruto muttered. “But this will take forever if I don’t! Sorry, but I’ll be using one of the clones now!” Naruto called as he made a seal. “It’s a good thing I left three clones to gather Natural Energy nearby the forest,” he grinned to himself.
*****
Meanwhile, near the entrance to the Everfree Forest…
Three Naruto clones were meditating just behind the tree line of the forest, beads of sweat forming on their faces, showing their deep concentration and effort.
“Gah! I can’t take this anymore!” the one on the right suddenly called in frustration, jumping on his feet. “There’s not a drop of energy anywhere in this crazy world!” he yelled as he shook his head with his hands.
He let out a sigh and dropped his hands. “I really hope he won’t nee—”, he started, but was cut short when he vanished in a cloud of smoke.
*****
“Okay, everyone—”, Naruto said as he finished unsummoning the clone.
“Pony!” Pinkie interjected.
“Take a few steps back! This is gonna get dangerous! Believe it!” he called.
The others complied, walking backwards while still staring at him in awe.
“Sage Mode!” Naruto called and let the Natural Energy he collected circulate in his body.
He stood there for a while, his eyes widening as he slowly and surely came to terms with a horrifying conclusion. He then let out the news vocally. “I can’t use Sage Mode in here?!” he yelled out and up to the night sky.
Taking this as a sign to attack, the wolf swiped its humongous paw at Naruto. However, the ninja had regained his senses just in time to jump to the right and dodge the attack.
“Naruto! What’s wrong?!” Rarity called.
“I can’t collect any Natural Energy! What’s up with this world’s chakra?!” he shouted back, as he once again jumped to avoid the wolf’s left front paw from slamming him.
“What’s ‘chakra’? Is it like magic?” Twilight inquired, curious.
“Are you serious?! There’s no chakra here?! What do the ninjas around here use then?!” Naruto called back.
“There aren’t any ninjas in Equestria, you silly-filly!” Pinkie shouted.
“Really?! Sounds really bor—,” Naruto was cut off when he was forced to jump away from the Timberwolf’s incoming snout, followed by an earth-shakingly loud roar of fury and frustration.
“Alright, let’s end this! I don’t need sage mode to beat you, you walking, overgrown tree!” the Konoha ninja yelled. “Shadow Clone Jutsu!” he called, and two more clones appeared beside him. The original Naruto stretched his right arm forward, palm open. The clones started hitting and smacking the air above it repeatedly, similar to the clone from before. Only this time, instead of just a blue sphere appearing above the palm, a circle of semi-transparent blades made of air appeared, circulating around the sphere at incredible speed.
However, before the clones could finish, the right paw of the wolf came down from above, determined to smash the three of them. The clones jumped away at the nick of time, but the energy they created had disappeared.
“Damn it! I have to distract it for a while somehow!” Naruto called, frustrated. “Oh, duh,” he said as he smacked his forehead protector. “Shadow Cl—,” he froze when he saw two figures circling around the Timberwolf’s head. His eyes widened in shock when he noticed their blue and yellow colors.
“Rainbow! Fluttershy!” he yelled, stunned (mostly at the latter).
“How dare you make everypony think badly of the innocent creatures of this forest?!” Fluttershy’s soft, yet fierce voice reached his ears. She stared angrily into its eyes.
“Go get him, Naruto!” Rainbow yelled. “Over here, you big sack of spare wood!” she teased as she flew back and forth in front of the humongous creature’s eyes, sticking her tongue out at it.
The wolf tried to bite her with its broken snout, when a pink object blocked its field of vision. “Pinkie!” Naruto called, amazed to see the pink pony standing on the Timberwolf’s snout, popping seemingly out of nowhere.
“It’s a wolf nose party dance! Wolf nose party dance!” she started singing happily, bouncing around on the wolf’s snout. The creature started shaking its head, hoping to rid itself of the pink menace, to no avail.
“Ya better not forget ‘bout me!” a familiar accent was heard by Naruto as he saw an orange Earth pony run towards the wolf, ramming its left front paw, and forcing it to stand on just three paws.
“Way to go, Applejack!” Naruto called, smiling from ear to ear. He was truly surprised and impressed to see his non-ninja friends not afraid to risk their lives to help him.
Suddenly, the right front paw started glowing in a half light blue and half purple aura. It started wobbling violently, until the wolf couldn’t stand any longer and fell down. Naruto immediately looked back to see Rarity and Twilight staring at the leg with great focus, their horns growing light blue and purple, respectively.
“This is your chance, Naruto!” Rarity urged.
“What are you waiting for!? Go get Nightmare Moon!” Twilight added.
“Right! Thanks Rarity, Twilight!” Naruto replied, and the two clones jumped back to his side, starting to focus both regular chakra and wind chakra at his open palm, creating the same rotating air blades around the blue sphere.
“Wind Style: Rasenshuriken!” Naruto yelled when they had finished. In his palm was now a very large, spinning mass of air and chakra, glowing blue in the middle sphere and white on the sharp, rotating edges.
Naruto jumped up at the exposed belly of the wolf, and the attack made contact. Rainbow picked up Pinkie and flew together with Fluttershy away, and Applejack ran away from the dazzling white sphere of energy created by the clone’s attack. The six mares all stared in amazement to see the white glow shredding the Timberwolf to sawdust. It then turned into dark purple mist, and vanished.
Naruto landed on the ground, smirking at his pony companions, whom all ran to him, smiling.
“That was the most EPIC thing I’ve ever seen!” Rainbow exclaimed as she flew right up to Naruto’s face.
“Indeed! I dare say that was quite ‘epic’, as Rainbow puts it,” Rarity nodded, smiling.
“That was the darndest stupid and amazin’ thing ah ever seen anypony do!” Applejack added, seriously impressed.
Naruto chuckled. “I’m kinda surprised you’re all taking this so well. I was worried you’d all be pretty shocked to see I’m not a pony. That’s why I didn’t show you my true form.”
“You said you’re a human, right?” Fluttershy asked as she flew up to take a closer look at this face. “You’re definitely one of the stranger creatures I saw... But definitely one of the cutest,” she added, blushing.
Naruto gazed at her questioningly. “Huh? What do you m—?”
“Now that everypony knows you’re a ninja, we can throw you a NINJA PARTY!” Pinkie suddenly yelled, cutting him off. She was beaming, excited at the possibility of throwing a unique, one-of-a-kind party.
“So this is how I saw you at so many places at once?” Twilight asked, arching a brow at him as she scanned him from head to toes.
“Ahaha… Yeah, sorry if I drove you crazy with that today,” the ninja said, smiling sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Twilight replied. “But say, how do you tell the clones apart? Do they all even know who the real one is?”
“Hmm…” Naruto muttered, bringing his hand up to his chin as he pondered about this. No one had ever asked him about such technicalities yet, so he never bothered to give it a thought.
“Well, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “You’d have to ask the real me, I guess.”
This earned him confused gazes from the ponies. “Oh right. They don’t know yet. Well, now that they know the truth, I guess it’s alright,” he thought.
“Oh, I’m not the original either. I’m also a clone. The real me went to fight Nightmare Moon at the castle,” Naruto explained, smiling.
“He WHAT?!” everypony cried.
“Oh, don’t worry! If I’m here it means that everything’s alri—,” he said, but was cut off when he suddenly vanished, together with the other two clones. This made the six mares exchange gazes of confusion and worry.
“Let’s hurry!” Twilight called. Her friends nodded and followed her to the castle’s ruins.
*****
Some time earlier, in the castle…
Naruto braced himself for an attack as he saw Nightmare Moon floating upwards, surrounded in black aura that was emanating from her horn, and her eyes glowing white.
She then spread her black wings as wide as they could. Their underside changed into a view of the starry night sky. Suddenly, one of the stars grew and grew, and flew right out of her right wing as a massive ball of fire.
Naruto’s eyes widened in shock as he barely jumped to the right to dodge the incoming inferno.
The meteor hit the bed and exploded, creating a ball of fire that sent flying charred pieces of the bed all over.
Naruto tried to think of what to do, but another thing appeared, this time out of her left wing—a comet. The freezing ball of stone, dust and ice flew right at Naruto, who again jumped to dodge it. The icy ball fell down the stairs leading up to the room, creating a loud thud each time it hit them.
Deciding to attack as simply as he could, in order to find out all of her abilities, Naruto pulled out a kunai and jumped at the black mare, swiping the weapon at her. She easily flew away and dodged his attack, and countered by literally showering him with small meteorites, which made small holes in the floor of the room. The ninja managed to either evade or block most of them with the kunai, but was forced to retreat to the balcony. He looked down to see a very deep, dark cliff behind him.
“Muhahaha!” the mare laughed triumphantly, as she flew to close down on him. “Farewell, human!” she called as she blasted him with a beam from her horn into the abyss. He quickly vanished into the darkness, leaving no sound behind him.
“You were either really brave, or really foolish to face the queen of the night! Now, none shall stand in my path to—”
“You know, you really shouldn’t speak about me as if I’m dead,” a voice came from above her.
Nightmare Moon looked up, her jaw falling as she saw a pair of Naruto’s running at her along the wall above the balcony, holding a familiar blue orb in their hand.
“I really take offense to that!” the one on the right yelled. “Rasengan!”
With no time to dodge or block, Nightmare Moon took a clean hit to her back. She let out a roar of pain as the force of the impact from the Rasengan forced her into the floor of the balcony, cracking it.
“Help me…” a voice suddenly echoed in his mind.
Naruto froze. He stared at the fallen mare he was standing on. Somehow, he could tell it was coming from her. “Please… Save me, Naruto!”
His eyes widened in shock. It took him only a second to recognize it. It was the same beautiful voice he’d heard in the nightmare he had. “L-Luna?” he muttered, horrified, as he took a step back. “No way! You’re… Luna?!” he then exclaimed, as he once more scanned her body, finding an uncanny amount of similarities between Nightmare Moon and Luna, such as her color, her collar and the crescent moon on her flank.
Nightmare Moon shot her turquoise, cat-like eyes open. She immediately took to the air and blasted Naruto with a beam from her horn, knocking him back into the room, where he hit the wall next to the staircase leading to it.
He slowly stood up as Nightmare Moon floated in front of him, in the middle of the room. “Luna! Please, come to your senses! I don’t want to hurt you!” he pleaded.
“That was my old name, you foal! Never address by it to me again!” she roared, as she charged right at him, using her horn as a spear in order to skewer the ninja.
“I don’t want to believe she’s doing it on purpose! I have to stop her somehow without hurting her!” he thought desperately. He rolled to the right just in time to avoid getting pierced.
“You can’t run away from me!” she roared as the levitated upwards once more. Many small meteorites erupted once more from her wings, following Naruto as he circled around the walls of the room, turning the cylindrical place into Swiss cheese.
“Ah!” Naruto exclaimed as he finally came up with something. “I’ll just tired Nightmare Moon out and then rescue Luna somehow!” he thought as he grinned deviously. He crossed his index and middle finger of both hands to weave a hand seal. “Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!”
Many, many Naruto’s suddenly came into existence, each with his own small cloud of smoke.
“Let’s play hide and seek, ninja style!” one of the clones called as they all scattered, either heading towards the staircase or the balcony.
“All you little games and tricks won’t work on me, human!” the black mare called as she flew outwards through the balcony into the night sky. She immediately saw three clones running across the roof of the castle, which was full of holes of all sizes. Without warning, she fired beams from her horn at them. They all vanished in puffs of smoke.
“Hey, Moony! Over here!” Naruto teased from next to the entrance of the castle.
The black mare swooped down upon him, fury on her face and in her eyes. After charging her horn, the clone quickly met the same end as those before.
“Where are you aiming? I’m over here!” a voice called from just inside the door.
Shrouding the huge doors with her dark magic’s aura, Nightmare Moon flung them open and gazed inside, causing a mixture of shock and rage to boil within her. She was met with a huge crowd of identical humans staring at her, waving their hands and making a lot of noise.
“Over here! I’m the real one!” a clone called from the far right corner, nearby the yellow throne.
“Don’t listen to him! It’s me!” another called from the middle of the homogeneous crowd.
“Wow, this throne sure is comfortable!” yet another one called as he laid back on the black throne at the left end of the hall. He didn’t look a bit fazed by the entrance of said throne’s owner.
“Enough!!!” Nightmare Moon roared. She was almost agonizing at the sight and noise of the ninjas before her. She once again took to the air, the underside of her wings changing into the night sky. A mixed barrage of flaming asteroid, freezing comets, and raining meteorites descended upon the orange ninjas.
The hall was promptly enveloped in smoke from the dispelling of so many clones at once. Nightmare Moon panted heavily, having used so much magic at once.
At the corner of her eye, Nightmare Moon saw a shadow fleeing up the stairs back to her bedroom. She immediately took off, flying above the staircase and landed on the marble room in front of the real Naruto, who was standing ready for her.
“Did you have enough? Or do you want to go for another ride?” he smirked. “I hope I got her to use so much chakra that she won’t be able to fight back anymore…”
“You shall pay for your insolence dearly!” she threatened as she rose up to the air, he horn glowing black and her eyes white.
Naruto pulled out a kunai, braced to either dodge or block the attack, if there was one to come at all.
The underside of Nightmare Moon’s wings once again turned into the night sky. Only this time, instead of one of the stars growing out and firing something at him, the bright spots vanished one by one, until the image was pitch black. Then, wind started blowing in the room towards the wings. Naruto’s eyes widened when he realized that he was getting pulled into them.
He tried to run away before he’d be completely sucked in, but the suction was too strong. He tried to stab the marble floor with the kunai, but it wouldn’t dig far enough inside to allow him to get a hold, and he was sucked into the pitch black wings of the evil mare.
*****
Naruto opened his eyes. Instead of the blackness he expected to see all around him, he saw that everything was white. He couldn’t even tell what he was standing on. He looked around, looking for any sign of life or of an exit. Surely enough, he saw some black figure in the distance. Worried it’s Nightmare Moon, he pulled out a kunai and ran towards it.
When he got close enough to see who it was, his expression turned from worry and anxiousness into relief. “Luna!” he called out to the mare as he recognized her standing with her left side facing him. He ran towards her, smiling.
When he stopped in front of her, his eyes widened in horror. The right half of the dark blue mare’s body was covered in an eerie shadow. It was moving about, and was somewhat fuzzy, not allowing to identify any other features about it other than that it was a pony’s.
“Luna! It’s me, Naruto!” he called.
Luna slowly opened her eyes as she gazed upon him. Her expression looked full of pain. “Who… Are you? How do you know my name?” she muttered.
“I’m Naruto! Naruto Uzumaki! Don’t you remember me? I met you in that field!”
“No… I’m sorry…” she muttered painfully.
“Never mind that! What’s wrong? And what’s with that weird shadow all around you?!” Naruto demanded.
Luna’s face twitched in pain. “You have to stop this somehow… Before I hurt anypony else… Before I hurt my sister!”
“Yeah, I know! How can we do this?!”
“Please… You have to kill me,” she begged. “There’s… No other—”.
“Don’t give me this crap!” Naruto fumed. “What about the Elements of Harmony?!”
“It’s impossible… The Element of Bravery is cursed so that nopony can use it. Without it… It is only a matter of time until I lose control again.”
Naruto kneeled to look straight into her eyes. “I will save you. And I’ll never give up, because that’s my ninja way!”
The dark blue mare gasped, a tear of hope escaping her eyes. She nodded.
Naruto’s eyes widened. The clone’s memories from his experiences with the six ponies suddenly flooded his mind. They caused him to smile. “And I’m not alone! I thought I’ll be able to do this myself, but it looks like I have some brave friends out there to help us out!”
Naruto stood up and ran in the opposite direction, looking for the exit. “I’ll save you at all cost! Believe it!” he yelled without looking back.
“…I believe in you, Naruto…” Luna whispered in return.