Death to Nightmare
By Admiral Q
Tom was working on his computer late at night on personal stuff. He was a twenty-five year-old guy that most would consider average. He had a part time job, with his few friends who make him less lonely since his parents were dead since they had him late in life. But he was content, at least every part of him but his stomach, which was growling. With a sigh, he got up and went to the kitchen. He looked around, but nothing appealed to him.
“Guess I have to go out, then.”
Luckily for him, a McDonald's was close by, and he could walk there. He locked up his apartment and headed out for his meal.
After a nice meal, he walked back home. But when he crossed an alley entrance, he heard a female scream. He looked and saw a girl being cornered by a guy with a knife. Tom ran over and punched the guy in the face as he looked behind him.
“Lady! Get out of here!” he yelled as he fought off the guy. The girl did run off, screaming, as Tom prevented the guy from following. They grappled and punched until Tom felt something stab his gut. Then, again, the stabbing feeling. He backed off and saw two knife wounds in his gut bleeding before he collapsed to the ground. He heard the guy run away as he lay there, trying to cover his wounds. He felt cold, and that was not a good sign. He guessed he was dying.
'Crap,' he thought to himself. 'This is the end. Well, there are worse ways to go than saving a girl from danger. Beautiful moon tonight.' From where he lay, he saw a full moon, but it wasn't the traditional white. It was red.
'Thanks for the final view, God, though I wish I had more time to do more. If there’s some way to live longer, I'll take it.' His vision got dim as he stared at the moon. It was the last thing he saw, but he swore the moon got brighter before the end.
He felt himself still lying on cold ground, but on his side rather than his back. He didn't feel any kind of pain in his gut. That could be good or bad. He opened his eyes and didn't see the dark alleyway he had been dying in. It looked like ancient stonework. He took a look around. The place didn't look like anything in his city. It had that old world look, and was in quite a mess. Tom could see the blood-red full moon through one of the holes in the roof.
'Was someone tearing this place down?' Tom asked mentally. He tried to sit up, but ended up back on his side.
'Well, that didn't work. Hey, what's that?' Tom saw a starry field covering half his view.
'That must be some cloth. Pretty cool, though.' Tom also noticed something black constantly at the bottom of his vision. He lifted a hand to check it out. To Tom's surprise, it wasn't a hand that came into view. It was a hoof, a hoof and a thin foreleg in black fur. He stared at the limb for a minute before looking to where his body lay. He saw the starry field clear out of the way and saw his body. He was a horse, a horse with black fur covering all of his body except for his butt. There was a splotch of purple with a turquoise crescent moon in the middle. He also had wings.
“Why am I a pegasus? Wait! What the heck!?” Tom's voice was different. Regal, but feminine in nature. He moved a rear leg and looked. And he saw, clear as day, female bits.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Tom knew nothing more than blackness.
It was sunlight that finally awoke Tom. He, or more appropriately, she, squinted before groaning and lifting her head. The freaking sun was coming right through a hole in the wall. She felt something shift on her back and the sunlight got blocked. Opening her eyes again, she saw that a wing had come between her eyes and the sun.
'Handy. Okay, I'm stuck in a pegasus body in who-knows-where. The only way to find out is to move around, so I have to figure out this new body.'
Tom set her hooves flat on the ground and pushed up. She felt herself get higher in her front.
'Okay, now the back.'
Tom started working on her back legs and pushed up, only to start to slip. After a couple of minutes, she was standing up for the first time. Tom spent a few minutes revelling in her small victory. Taking another look around, she noticed scraps of metal and scorch marks near a window. That window could get her a better view of the area. She slowly approached the window and got halfway there when she heard a yelp of shock. Tom looked around to see a strange purple and green lizard standing on two legs. The two stared at each other before the little lizard turned and ran, screaming.
“Wow, that sounded like a human scream,” Tom said to herself, still trying to get used to that voice. At least it was a beautiful voice. She had gotten to the platform that had the metal shards when she heard the sound of several horses coming. She looked behind her again and saw six small horses in the doorway. She slipped on a scrap and fell on her butt. Did these horses escape from a kid’s cartoon show? Those colors! They all gasped when they saw her. The purple one had both wings and a horn. A winged unicorn? She stepped forward with a look of hate.
“Nightmare Moon,” the...mare, Tom guessed by the voice. She tried to continue, but Tom interrupted her.
“Nightmare Moon? Seriously, you are calling me that? You’ve got to be kidding me. You are kidding me, right? I mean, that’s a cheap bad guy name at the level of Evil Emperor Zerg. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, that's rich! And to think, me, a bad guy! Or…gal, in this case.” That got Tom laughing again, and even managed to hold her barrel, as the situation was too comical to her.
To say Twilight was shocked would be the understatement of the year. Here was one of the greatest threats to Equestria laughing at her own name. She wasn't at all acting like the villain Twilight and her friends had faced five years ago. And why would Luna go back to being her alter ego after all she had done to restore her reputation? Twilight needed answers.
“Spike! Take a message.” The baby dragon and her friends look at her in confusion.
“Now?” Spike asked.
“Yes, now. Something here isn't adding up.” She saw Spike shrug and take out a quill and paper. “Dear Princess Celestia, something strange has come up in your old castle and I need you to check the whereabouts of your sister Luna. Please respond as quickly as possible and expect further messages. Your fellow Princess, Twilight Sparkle.” Spike finished writing and sent if off.
Meanwhile, Nightmare Moon was still laughing her flank off, and that was too much for AJ.
“Now listen here, Nightmare Moon! This is serious.” Nightmare Moon managed to get down to a chuckle before responding.
“Serious? That's kind of hard, considering I have six small horses that belong in a kid’s show calling me a silly villain’s name. I'm expecting a musical number at some point.”
“OOOH! I can start one!” Pinkie Pie stated. Nightmare Moon stopped chuckling and looked seriously at the pink mare.
“Don’t,” Nightmare Moon deadpanned. She sighed and said more to herself than to them, “Man, what a crazy few hours for me. I can't help but laugh at the insanity.”
Twilight heard Spike burp and heard Nightmare Moon ask, “Did he just burp a scroll?” Spike unrolled the scroll and read aloud.
“Dear Twilight, I just checked on my sister and she was sleeping in. She gave me Tartarus for disturbing her sleep. Why have you asked me to check on her? Even she is now curious. Your fellow Princess, Celestia.”
“If Princess Luna is still at the castle, then how is Nightmare Moon here?” Rarity asked. They all looked at the black alicorn, who just shrugged.
“Don't look at me. I have had nothing but questions since I found myself here like this last night. And please stop calling me that silly villain name. I know the name doesn't match the gender right now, but until something better comes up, call me Tom. That was my name before all of this.” There was seven jaw drops at that reveal before Twilight recovered.
“Spike, tell Celestia we need a couple of high speed chariots to bring someone who appears to be Nightmare Moon.”
“I still can't believe someone actually called themself that!” Nightmare Moon stated as Spike sent the letter out. After the letter was sent, the next few minutes were spent with both sides staring at each other.
Tom got bored at staring at the little horses and the silence.
“You know, if we had hands, I'd ask if anyone here had a deck of cards.” It was the pink one that answered.
“OOOH! I got one.” From seemingly nowhere, the pink horse took out a deck of cards and did various card tricks. “So what game do you want to play?”
Tom had a jaw drop for a minutes before being able to respond.
“Never mind where the cards came from, how are you able to hold them!?” Tom asked.
“All ponies can do that, nothing special,” responded the purple one. Tom frowned.
“Okay, could you hand me one of those cards?” The winged unicorn's horn glowed a purple light and one of the cards had the same color encase it before Tom saw it move away from the pink pony and land in from of her. She reached out with a hoof and placed it on top of the card before lifting up, but the card didn't move with her hoof. Frowning, she placed the hoof back on the card and imagined her old hand gripping the card before lifting the hoof again. This time, the card stayed on the hoof. At least until she lost her concentration. She quickly grabbed it again. “Well, this is going to take practice.” She then regarded her company and realized she didn't even know their names.
“Well, I told you my name. Could you tell me yours so I can stop calling you kid's cartoon ponies?”
“Well, I'm Princess Twilight Sparkle. I’m an alicorn like you, and the Princess of Friendship and Magic,” the winged unicorn, or as she stated, alicorn, began.
“OOOOH! And I'm Pinkie Pie! Ponyville's premier party pony!” The pink pony's face was literally in Tom's face.
'How did she move so fast!?' Tom thought and said aloud.
“Uh, hi.” She swore she heard a squeak, and the pink pony gave a ridiculously wide smile before she was tugged away by something.
“Sorry about that dear, she's quite energetic,” a white unicorn said. “I'm Rarity, dear. Hopefully we can get this all cleared up.”
“Well, ah don't trust you. But mah pa taught me to be polite. I'm Applejack, an earth pony and an apple farmer.”
“Well, trust is earned, not given. I hope to earn it,” Tom replied. She then saw a rainbow blur and a cyan pegasus was in her face. To her shock, she had rainbow-colored hair.
“Well, I got my eye on you! And if you mess up, I will knock you back to the moon!” Tom stared at the mare for a second before laughing.
“A mare acting like a tomboy with a rainbow main and tail! Oh, that's got to be some cosmic joke!” She started laughing again, and before the pegasus could try to clobber the black alicorn, she was whisked back by Twilight.
“Easy, Rainbow,” the alicorn said. “Now, why would Rainbow Dash's mane be a joke?” Tom managed to calm down a bit.
“Where I come from, a rainbow is the icon for those who are attracted to the same sex. So we have a female here acting more like a male, and has that color scheme. You can see why I find it a bit amusing.” Rainbow Dash snorted and she swore she saw steam come out of her nostrils.
“Well, the last of us over there cowering behind Applejack is Fluttershy,” Twilight stated.
“Well, I guess she is named well. A pleasure meeting all of you.”
An uncomfortable silence fell again until the girls heard the familiar sounds of the chariots. They gestured for Tom to follow and she slowly did. She saw a forest of strange, almost creepy looking trees. But what got her jaw to drop was their transport. They were chariots, roman styled chariots painted in gold with pegasi in gold armor attached to them.
“Come on, hop on and we'll take off,” Twilight said to her.
“Take off as in fly?” Twilight shot her a 'well duh' look. “You can't be serious, they have nothing to stop anyone from falling off the rear. I did not survive a stabbing to break my new neck falling off that thing!” That got the girls to look back at her in shocked expressions.
“Did ya just say you were stabbed?” the country pony Applejack asked.
“Yeah, I was heading home after a late dinner. I saw a girl being cornered by a thug. I went in to help her, and she got away, but I was stabbed twice. The last thing I saw was a blood-red full moon before waking up like this.” Even the armored pegasus had her jaws opened after hearing that.
“We really need to see the Princesses. Come on, trust me. They're safe.”
“Alright, but if I fall off and break my new neck, I'm so gonna haunt the hell out of you.”
Tom picked a chariot and climbed on and went forward as much as possible. With everyone on board, the chariot convoy took off and Tom looked behind her. She saw the ruins she had lived in for a night. It was a castle that had seen much better days. Tom then looked ahead and wondered what the future would bring. It was certainly better than being dead.