//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7 (My Side) 
// Story: The "Twilight" Zone 
// by Thatonepony9495 
//------------------------------//


The “Twilight” Zone
Created by: 
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 7, Part 2
(1st Person View)

Nightmare Moon drags me around for a while. I'm just sitting in the cage created by darkness, following her from star to star. Then I feel her starting to slow down. I look through the bars of the cage and examine the surroundings. She stops near a rift in the void.
I feel myself shaking. I look around the inside of the cage but nothing is near me. My heart starts to race as I look back toward the rift. From where I am, I can’t really see anything in there, so I angle myself to catch a tiny spot of what’s through the hole.
When I’m finally able to see anything, I can’t believe it. It’s showing Ponyville! Nightmare Moon floats in front of the portal, pulling me closer and unknowingly letting me see better. The sudden movement knocks me off my feet and I land hard on the floor of the cage. Not only does my butt hurt, but, somehow, I also have a pain in my cheek as if somebody slapped it. I get up, rubbing my cheek, and go back looking through the bars. I pull my hand away from my cheek and notice something unusual about it out of the corner of my eye when I grab the bars.
I examine my hand and notice a cartoonish-like outline around it. I hold it up to the light of the rift and notice that it looks like it was animated. I look down at my shirt. From what I saw, it was all cartoony too. I was turning into a cartoon! It must be because I’m so close to the Equestrian dimension. But how could this possibly happen? I try to get Nightmare Moon’s attention.
“Hey, Nightmare Moon, what’s going on with me?” I pull on my cheek and it stretches farther than it’s supposed to, and I let go, making it bounce back to my face.
“Be quiet, guardian. I need to concentrate on this for it to work.” Her horn starts glowing, making the rift glow also. I see the overview of Ponyville in the rift start to shake until it started to not look like anything. Then it slowed down and started showing the Ponyville Post Office.
There were mailponies running around everywhere, sorting letters, and filling saddlebags with envelopes. Pegasi were taking off to where they were assigned. Through the illusion of chaos, it seemed to be very organized.
Nightmare Moon made the view pan around the room until it stopped on a grey mare with a blond mane. She was getting ready to take off, but was having a bit of trouble. Her saddlebag had a single package sticking out of the top. That’s when I saw Nightmare Moon’s horn start to glow again.
The portal started glowing; drawing the poor pony towards it with some kind of suction that only affected her. She started flailing around, trying to get away, but it was no use. When she was pulled through, Nightmare Moon closed the portal just in time for me to see Celestia come out of nowhere and almost make it inside.
“Ha! That makes me laugh every time she tries to get through, but then fails!”
She sticks the gray mare in the cage with me. I look at her, still cartoon-looking. She notices me and tries to focus both her eyes on me, but one always ends up looking somewhere else. I stick out my hand for her to shake it.
“Hello Derpy”
She looks at my hand, apparently wondering what it is. “Uh, how do you know my name?” She figures out what I’m trying to do and sticks a hoof up, so I shake it.
“Well, it’s kind of a lengthy explanation. I don’t think I have enough time to explain it.” I go back over the bars. “What’s the package for?”
Derpy sits on the floor of the cage. “Sorry, I’m not supposed to tell anypony about it until I get to where I’m supposed to go.”
Just then, Nightmare Moon takes off, so Derpy and I tumble around the cage, making it feel like I fell down stairs or something. When everything is steady, I get up and look where we’re going. I look around and notice that I’m not a cartoon anymore, and neither is Derpy.
“What the…? What’s happening to me?” She looks at her hooves and body. “Why do I look like this?”
“Well you see, you’re not in your dimension anymore. We’re kind of in between my and your dimension.”
“How did that happen?” She sits down again.
“That’s another thing that’s tough to explain.” I slide down the bars and sit down too. I look over and Nightmare Moon and notice that she’s slowing down again. What is the point of us traveling around so far everywhere? I can’t think about it in time for her to stop.
She looks like she’s waiting for something. She sighs impatiently and taps her hoof on nothing, but I still somehow hear a tapping noise. After a while, the void looks like it’s shaking like crazy. I look over where Nightmare Moon is looking and see a rift starting to open.
There’s a flash of light. When it dims away, there is a rift that shows the street that my house is on. Nightmare Moon turns toward the cage. She opens the top of it just enough for her to magically grab Derpy out of the cage, float her toward the rift, and just before she throws her through it, I say something.
“Derpy, don’t go anywhere! My friends will be able to find you if you stay where you are.”
I’m not sure if she heard me or not, but I start wondering how the rift opened without Nightmare Moon doing anything. Pretty soon, the portal closes on the scene of Derpy lying in the grass.
I slump down in the cage again. So this is how she does it. She pulls the ponies from one dimension, and throws them into another. But why? She already got rid of the Elements of Harmony. And what was in Derpy’s bag that she couldn’t tell me about it? I hope Hunter and Ben hurry up and find her before anything else happens.
Nightmare Moon starts jumping around once again, but we only flew around for a little while before I see her ears perk up, and she says in a booming voice that rattles my brain.
“DID I HEAR SOMEPONY SAY MY NAME?”
She turns her head where she heard it and flies toward the source. She’s going slowly though as if actually looking for whatever it is.
Then I hear something in my head. “The 3 together will release the surrounding darkness.” It sounds like Celestia’s voice. How was she able to reach my mind? Man, if I ever get out of here, I have so many questions.
I think about what she said. The 3 of whatever must mean the trinkets, but what darkness would it release?
Nightmare Moon flashes her horn, which makes us jump straight to the noise. I sit against the bars of the cage, still thinking about the message. Oh wait! Duh! The cage is surrounding me and it’s full of darkness! Why am I so oblivious sometimes…
I hear a voice that’s not Nightmare Moon.
“Look you guys! There’s Mark!”
It sounds a lot like Twilight. I look up from my slump and notice the whole gang floating in the void. “Whoa! Guys! You came back for me! You don’t know what Nightmare Moon has been doing in this place while I’ve been imprisoned!”
I pull out the chain from my pocket and run to the side of the cage closest to the group.
Nightmare shouts her usual booming voice. “Silence! I didn’t say you could talk, but you’ve sure been doing it a lot of it! Now for the rest of you…”
No one is noticing me as I stick my arm out the cage with the chain in my hand.
“What are you gonna do to us?” I hear Ben say.
“I have no reason to deal with you! I’ve got all I need to keep you from stopping me!” Nightmare Moon starts to shine back into the light ball, but then Hunter notices me.
I shake the chain. “Come over here! This could get me out, and hurry!”
Hunter grabs Ben and they adjust themselves to get over to me. When they get lose enough, I notice an expression of pain on the pony of darkness as the cage makes an unlocking sound and the cage disappears from around me. It happens just in time for the ball of light to fly away.
I put the chain back into my pocket. “Now what?”
No one has time to say anything before the void starts to melt away and we all end up standing in the living room of the house.
Even though I know it isn’t true, I still have to ask if we defeated Nightmare Moon or not. Ben says he didn’t notice anything happen to her, so we might’ve not.
Hunter gets impatient to get out of the dream even though I haven’t told about what happened and that Derpy is somewhere close to the house, that is, if she did what I told her to and stayed where she landed.
We all follow Hunter into the living room and everyone stand near their bodies. One by one, they fade away from the dream. I start talking to Hunter.
“I can’t thank you guys enough for saving me. I’ll tell ya, it was pretty crazy what I saw. I’m just glad I’m out of that cage.” I go over to my body as Hunter starts saying something back.
“Yea, yea. We’ll talk about it when we’re all out of this crazy dream.” And he fades away.
I look at my body. It looks like it was dropped down the stairs or something, along with red marks on both my cheeks. What were these guys doing to me? I suppose I could ask them about it in the middle of them asking me questions about what I saw. I touch my hand and everything goes black.
I open my eyes to see Spike running into the room.
“Guys, guys! Look who’s outside!”