//------------------------------//
// Rebel Dreams 
// Story: Moonlight by Starlight Book One: Rebel Moons 
// by SPark 
//------------------------------//

	Brightstar City didn't much live up to its name.  Once it had.  Once it had been a bright, vital frontier town, the kind of place where people came to make their fortunes.  It had been a little rough around the edges, compared to the polished gleam of the core world cities, but it had had a certain kind of cheerful energy, a certain glitzy glitter all its own.  Now, though Brightstar City was barely three centuries old, it had stopped growing and started rotting.  The only thing that glittered anymore was the broken glass that lay in the gutters, beneath the shattered windows of its many closed and shuttered storefronts.  

The stores that remained open were generally all clean, shiny, and very much alike.  The same few logos were repeated over and over across the city, many of them featuring dragons in a prominent display of patriotism from the loyal citizens of the Empire who owned them.  

None of those owners lived on the planet Sage itself, of course.  They lived on the core worlds.  A genteel business district near the spaceport did hold the equally clean, shiny housing towers where the management who ran the local branches of the great interstellar companies lived, but there were not many of those.  Most housing in the city was much more dilapidated. 

One such crumbling apartment building lay near the edge of the city.  It had once been at least serviceable, if never the equal of the managerial housing towers, but was now well on its way to being completely uninhabitable.  Ponies inhabited it all the same, including Dreaming Brightstar and his sister, Glory Brightstar.  Their distant ancestor had discovered Sage, and founded the the city that bore her name.  Her descendants had been among the movers and shakers of the frontier world for centuries.  Now the last two of that lineage had no official political power at all.

The siblings were currently descending the stairs from their thirty-fourth-floor apartment.  The elevators hadn't worked for years.  The stairs were still intact enough to use, though the concrete was crumbling in places and the lights that made it possible to navigate the windowless stairwell were dim and flickering, where they weren't absent entirely.  Both of them had their horns lit to provide a little extra illumination.

"I don't know about this meeting, Glory," the colt said as he descended.  He was young, only sixteen, but already much taller than his sister, with a stocky, draft-pony build.  His coat was pristine white, while his raggedly-cropped mane and tail were dark brown, streaked with lighter brown.  His eyes were green, a dark, intense, pine color.  His cutie mark was a compass rose in silver and gold.

His sister was quite petite, though she was almost twice his age.  Her coat was light purple, with a long, straight mane and tail in jet black, streaked with silver.  Her eyes were silver too, a color that could be bright and shining or stormy and dark.  Her cutie mark was a silver star that trailed a long tail behind it.  "We don't have a lot of options, Dream," said Glory.  "Not since that ship got here."  She heaved a sigh, then added, "Maybe we never had any options.  The ship was inevitable once we started actually accomplishing anything.  We need outside help; we can't do this alone."

Dream glanced back at his sister.  Her face was set in a hard line of determination.  He knew that expression very well.  He wasn't going to be able to talk her out of—or into—anything right now.  So he simply nodded and continued down the stairwell.

His hooves echoed in the concrete-walled space, as did Glory's behind him.  Ahead of him, the stairs went around a corner and into pitch blackness; all the lights in that section were out.  His own feeble horn-glow was barely enough to illuminate a meter in front of him.

That meant he didn't see the attacking stallions until they were nearly upon him.  Their hooves were muffled in layers of rags, so they didn't echo in the stairwell.  There were two of them, earth ponies, both as big as he.  His mind flashed through the possibilities even as they closed, and he decided on a course of action almost instantly.  Lowering his head, he leaped down the stairs, driving into one attacker horn-first.  The stallion he'd hit screamed and staggered, falling down the stairs as he lost his footing.  Dream immediately whipped his head sideways, slashing his horn across the other attacker, who yelped and collided with the stairwell's wall in his attempt to get away.

Dream rammed his chest into the stallion's side, pinning him against the wall with crushing force.  He might be young, but he was already bigger than most adult stallions, and he had the strength to match.  Pitching his voice to a low, dangerous growl, he pushed the tip of his horn against the other stallion's throat.  "You must be new here, or you'd know better than to mess with me.  Now, you're going to just lie down, and do nothing, until we're gone, otherwise I'll kill you here and now.  Got it?"

"Yes, yes, yes, whatever you say, I'm sorry!" babbled the stallion.

"Good," said Dream, and he stepped back, letting the other pony slide down the wall to lie on the stairs in a trembling heap.  His partner was lying on the landing below, whimpering softly.  Dream thought it looked like he might have broken a leg.  Under other circumstances he might have offered some help, but the two had almost certainly meant to murder he and his sister for whatever of value they might be carrying.  He had no sympathy for ponies like that.

With Glory following him, he stepped over the whimpering pony and continued down the stairwell.  

"I could have taken care of them both, you know," said Glory, sounding a little bit annoyed.  She patted her jacket with one hoof, tapping the small pulse gun she kept there. 

"You'd have probably killed them," said Dream.  "Which is fine when we're not at home, but do we really want an official murder investigation right here where we live?"

"As if official investigations into the deaths of ordinary citizens ever discover anything," muttered Glory darkly.  "The cops don't care unless you're from off world."

Dream snorted.  "No, they don't.  Not usually.  But they're a little more alert than usual these days, what with there being a rebellion and all.  We shouldn't take any chances that can be avoided."

Glory sighed.  "Yeah.  I wish..."  She let that thought trail off.  Dream echoed her sigh as he continued down the stairs.  They both could wish a great many things, but none of those wishes would do them any good.  The galaxy was the way it was, and they would just have to deal with it.

Soon they reached the bottom of the seemingly endless stairwell and exited, into the thin, cloudy light of day.  The streets were wet, the potholes filled with muddy water.  No rain was currently falling, the the clouds above threatened that more might come at any moment.

The pair trotted out into the dull afternoon.  A few others moved through the sodden streets, mostly ponies, but the occasional diamond dog or minotaur moved among them.  They saw no dragons, but then dragons seldom ran their own errands.  

The city's streets weren't crowded.  Most ponies would be at their jobs at this hour, slaving away for their masters the dragons.  Oh, many of the city's businesses were nominally owned by ponies or other creatures, but only the smallest and poorest of them escaped being controlled by the draconic overlords of the empire.  One of those small, poor businesses was a dingy coffee shop, one of its windows boarded up, the sign in the other scarred and defaced, its lights no longer glowing.  Dream and Glory stepped inside and went to the counter, where they placed their orders before retreating to a table in the back.

The other patrons of the shop all greeted them with comfortable familiarity, exchanging a few words, or merely a nod and a smile.  They all knew the brother and sister well, and not just because they were regulars here.  Or, perhaps more accurately, they knew each other for the same reason they were all regulars here.  Good little citizens of the Empire would have gone to one of the bright, shiny corporate stores.  Those who came to places like this were all, in one way or another, something other than good little citizens.

The barista and shop's owner, a cheerful yellow pony in a somewhat threadbare apron, came over and delivered their drinks personally.  "The worms hit Green Pines last night," she murmured as she set their cups down.  "Kinetic strikes.  Far as we know, nobody got out.  They leveled the place completely."

"Damn," muttered Glory.  "What about the caves?"

"Still intact.  They can't see those from orbit," she said with grim satisfaction.

Glory sighed.  "I don't want to be forced entirely into hiding, but it looks like we're going to have to retreat at least a little.  We're losing too many people, and too many innocents are getting killed in the crossfire.  Can you get out word to the other small town supporters in the area?  Tell them to head for the caves, but emphasize that they're to take every possible precaution to keep from being seen going in.  We don't want the worms to know we're there."

"Will do, ma'am," said the barista, nodding firmly.  As she trotted back to the counter, the shop's door swung open and a pony stepped in.  Every eye in the place was immediately fixed on her.  There was nothing particularly odd about the pony, she was a fairly ordinary pink mare, but she was a stranger, and a stranger might well mean a Draconian agent.

The newcomer's eyes scanned the coffee shop, assessing its patrons, and settled on Dream and Glory.  She strode towards them, the other patrons still watching her warily.

"Hiyas," said the stranger with a relaxed, casual flippancy.  Dream and Glory both looked at her with wary tension.  She was alone, so she probably wasn't here to arrest them, but still, she might be trouble.  "Some good rain today.  Worms come up, when it rains."

Both ponies relaxed at the code sign.  Glory gave the response, "One sometimes treads on worms."

"One does indeed," said the pony, grinning broadly.  As Gory and Dream relaxed, the other patrons noticed, and they went back to their conversations, filling the room with a soft murmur of voices.  "So, now that we know who we are, shall we go somewhere safe to talk?"

"It's safest to talk here," said Glory.  "No one here will betray anything they overhear, and the other conversations make spying on us much more difficult.  A sensor spell couldn't single out just this table without us seeing it."

"Ah.  You're a clever one.  Good!  Clever is good!  Clever is what we need if we're going to get the worms off this planet, and I hope we are."

"Are you really from, well... Equestria?" asked Dream.  "Isn't it mythical?"

"I'm from one of the independent worlds, my friend.  But no, Eqestria isn't mythical, I've been there.  Hard to walk on a myth."

"If it's real, then where are the alicorns?  Don't they care?  Don't they want to do something about the way ponies are suffering?" said Glory, harshly.

"Hey, they care.  But there aren't very many of them.  They have just one planet, which isn't especially populous.  They're up against the frickin' Draconian Empire, which has hundreds of worlds.  If they come out in the open and fight, they'll get crushed."

"I thought alicorns were supposed to be nearly gods?"

The pink pony snorted and shook her head.  "They're strong, but they're not gods.  They're doing what they can.  They've sent me, and what I've got right now is better than nothing."

"What do you have?"

"Weapons."  Her grin broadened.  "Modern heavy weapons, and lots of them.  I've already set up the back end of the shipment, it'll be arriving here in about a month.  The right people are bribed, so it won't be inspected.  It'll be shipped to one of the big corporate warehouses right here in Brightstar.  All you have to do is get your hooves on it once it's down, and I'm sure you've got people who can get into a regular commercial warehouse."

Glory's eyes gleamed.  "You bet your tail we do."

Dream, though, frowned faintly.  "Weapons are good, but I'm not sure they're going to be enough."  He waved a hoof at the ceiling.  "There's a ship up there now.  It's just a cruiser, but it's in orbit, where we can't possibly reach it.  If we come out and use the weapons openly, they'll just call it over to drop kinetic strikes on us."

"Then you'll have to find ways to use them secretly," said the pink pony, still grinning.  Her grin suddenly faded and she added, "In all seriousness, kiddo, you have a point.  This is going to be dangerous.  But the alicorns are committed to bringing the worms down.  Right now they can't do much, and your world is just one of dozens they're trying to help.  The day will come, though, when they'll be able to send more than just weapons.  I promise you that.  They would never abandon ponies if they had any choice."

Dream looked into the pony's purple eyes.  They seemed to be completely sincere.  He wanted to believe that she was telling the truth.  He wanted to believe that Equestria was real.  He'd heard about it all his life.  Some said it was the home planet of ponies, the way Draconia was the home planet of the dragons.  Some said it had been settled later, as a genetic research station, and that said research had produced the alicorns.  All the stories agreed that the alicorns, the immortal, powerful ponies that embodied all three of the pony races, made their home there.  If the alicorns really were going to help, then their hopeless little rebellion might not be so hopeless after all.  "All right," he said slowly, hesitantly.  

"So for now," said Glory, "it's just the weapons?"

"For now.  Here's the shipment schedule, so you know when the weapons arrive and where to get them."  She put a data chip down on the table, and Glory put a hoof over it. "I'm headed off planet," continued the pony, "to arrange for help to reach some of the other worlds that are fighting back.  I'll be back sooner or later, though.  Hopefully sooner, and hopefully with a way to get that ship out of orbit.  But whatever happens, I won't be abandoning you.  You guys just have to keep the fight up.  Keep the pressure on.  You're doing something for the alicorns too, you see.  As long as the worms are looking this way, they won't be looking for Equestria.  If they find it now, things will go badly.  So keeping the rebellion going, and using those weapons when they come, those are important.  Even if you don't drive the worms out, just keeping them busy will do a lot to help."

Glory nodded.  Dream nodded with her.  He could see the logic to it.  If the alicorns really were working in secret to bring down the Empire, having people like him keep the dragons' attention away from them would be invaluable for them.  

"Don't worry," said Glory, her face set in familiar lines of determination, "we'll definitely be keeping the worms busy here."

"Good.  I'll leave you to do your part, then, and I'll be off to do the rest of mine."  The pink pony rose and walked out of the cafe, a grin once again on her face as she sauntered out the door.  She was very pleased with how this meeting had gone.  The ponies were just as brave, and just as gullible as she'd hoped.  They would get their weapons, and use them, and put a few more cracks into the huge yet fragile egg that was the Draconian Empire.  The alicorns wouldn't come, so their rebellion was probably doomed, but she didn't really care one way or the other.  The ponies didn't matter, only the Empire and its inevitable fall mattered.  It did not even matter exactly how it shattered, no matter who rose to power in the aftermath, those that she really represented would be able to gather up the pieces.

It is really amazing, though, that ponies in these modern times can still believe in such an old mare's tale, thought the creature who wasn't actually a pony at all as she cut through an empty alley.  A green glow flickered, and the pony that walked out the far side didn't look a bit like the one who'd walked in.  Every sensible creature knows that Equestria is just a myth.  There's no such thing as alicorns.





Princess Luna of Equestria soared over the sleeping ponies of Canterlot with wings outstretched.  The landscape below her was not real, exactly.  It was a dream-version of reality.  The moon above her was a little too perfect, the stars a little too bright, and the landscape below was dotted with glowing lights, each one a dreaming sleeper.  

There were a great many of them, though not as many as there were sleeping ponies.  Not all sleepers dreamed, after all.  Most of the dreams glowed with clear, bright, rainbow tones.  They were happy dreams, or dreams that were merely harmless nonsense.  Scattered among them, however, pulsed the tainted colors of nightmares.  It was those that drew Luna's attention.  There were enough of them that it was always difficult to choose which ponies to help.  She generally selected foals, but sometimes would touch the dreams of adults too, if they were particularly bad.

Tonight, though, a different sort of light drew her away from the dreams of Canterlot's ponies.  It was a shimmering, silvery gleaming, very unlike the steady glow of dreams or the pulsating sickness of nightmares.  As Luna flew towards it, she realized that it was coming from the ancient Temple of Harmony, which stood high on the mountain's slopes, near the palace itself.  She landed in the plaza before the temple and looked around.  She found a shimmering silver-white circle hovering in the air near the heart of the plaza, standing directly over a crescent moon that was carved into the plaza's white marble paving stones.  Each stone bore some symbol of harmony, including the cutie marks of all who had ever borne the Elements of Harmony. 

The silver circle was a portal, Luna didn't have to look twice at it to know that.  Beyond the portal, though, was simply a dream realm just like the one in which she now stood.  She could see the glows of sleeping ponies there as well.  Directly in front of her, in fact, was a pulsating, sickly, red-and-purple nightmare.  It looked as bad as any nightmare she'd ever seen, throwing off constant tendrils of terror and despair.  If the dream had lain within her own dream realm, she would have flung herself into it without hesitation.  Yet it lay on the other side of an unknown portal.

She scuffed one hoof against the plaza's marble and considered.  She had seen such dream portals before.  The symbolism of this one was certainly clear, even if she hadn't.  The portal stood above her cutie mark, therefore it was meant for her.  It was silver, the color of moonlight, and also white, the color of unified harmony.  It was the color of certain sorts of magic, especially those involved in fate and destiny.

Fate, however, was not always kind.  She might be destined to step through that portal, but it didn't mean she'd like what she found on the other side.  Harmony was not always kind, either.  The needs of harmony could cause suffering.  She who had once been Nightmare Moon knew that very well indeed.

She stood for a long time, considering her course.  There had been a time, centuries ago, when she would have leaped into the portal without hesitation.  She had traveled through many worlds in her reckless youth, using dream portals such as this, and helping the ponies she'd found there.  Those adventures had been sometimes wonderful fun, and sometimes terrible trials.  Either way, the ponies she had visited had always desperately needed her help.  This situation would be no different.

What was different was Luna herself.  She had once fought against nightmares, yes, but then she had become a nightmare.  She had let her own weakness turn her against everything right and good.  Could she still claim to be a champion, after how far she had fallen?  Would she still be able to help ponies, after having proved so weak?  What if she couldn't?  What if she stepped into this other world and it proved to be too much?  She was not what she had once been.  She might fail.  She might even die.  Failure, letting down ponies who needed her, was almost more terrifying than death.

Yet in the end she knew that refusing to go would be a failure as well.  Fate was calling her, and somewhere on the other side of the dream portal were ponies who needed her help.  So, knowing that she might someday regret it, yet unable to make any other choice, Luna stepped through the dream portal, into the strange realm beyond.

Once there she didn't hesitate, she reached out a wing and brushed her feathers against the dream, making contact with it so that she could enter the dream and see what lay within.

A gleaming golden dragon, splattered liberally with wet crimson stains, stood at the heart of the dream.  It had dozens of heads, and dozens of arms, and each fanged mouth and clawed hand held a creature—mostly ponies but a few other species as well—which it was slowly, deliberately killing.  Luna shuddered at the sight.  She wasn't sure she'd ever seen anything so horrific.  Two tiny figures moved around the dragon's feet, hitting futilely at it.  Luna sensed that one of them, a young stallion—a colt really—with a white coat and brown mane and tail, was the dreamer of this dream.  

One of the dragon's heads spat out its bloody burden and lowered to speak to the colt.  "You know you can't win.  Why do you even bother to fight?"

"We're not just going to lie back and let you destroy everyone's lives," said the colt.

"And trying to stop us has saved lives, has it?" asked the dragon.  "Did it save their lives?"  

Another head lowered, this one holding two ponies, limp and bloody, mangled almost beyond recognition.  Luna felt the colt's rage growing, his anger almost as high as his terror.  "They're not dead!" he screamed.  "Don't lie to me!  I know they're not dead!"

"They are.  And soon your sister will be dead too.  She can't escape us.  None of you can escape us."  The dragon lifted its head, looking up.  Luna and the colt looked up as well, and saw something like a star, gleaming far above.  "See?" said the dragon.  "The ship is up there, and your sister is doomed."

The second small figure at the dragon's feet was a purple unicorn mare, who stood still, looking up at the star as well.  Her face was determined, and she screamed a curse to the sky above.

"Run," called the colt.  "He's called a kinetic strike, you have to run!"

"Running won't save her," gloated the dragon.  The mare just stood there, shouting defiance at the star.

Luna could feel the colt's terror growing unbearably strong, and knew that she had to stop this, now.  She leaped into the air, soaring up to hover between the star that seemed to be the source of the fear and the mare below.  Her horn glowed as she summoned a protective shield.  Here in the dream realm—in her realm—it would protect her from literally anything.

Something streaked down from the star above with impossible speed, striking her shield with a force like nothing she'd ever felt before, but it held.  The dragon hissed at her with all of its many heads.  She glared at it.  "You will not harm them," she said.

"An alicorn," breathed the colt, almost reverently.

Luna glided down, spreading her shield over all three of them.  The dragon roared, but it was a distant, futile sound, it was already fading from the dreamscape.

"We've been hoping for so long that you would come," said the colt. 

Luna was about to ask him to explain, but she felt the dream beginning to break up around her.  The colt was waking.  And so was she.  She could already hear a trace of the real world.  Somepony was shouting, very near her.  The voice sounded as fearful and worried as the colt's had.  She blinked her eyes open, the last of the dream fading away, and found herself in near darkness.

"Who are you?  How did you get here?  Answer me!"  A unicorn mare that Luna couldn't recognize in the dimness was shouting at her.  The mare's horn was glowing, but only feebly.  Luna, without really thinking about it, lit her own horn, silver-blue light spilling brightly from it.  By that glow, she immediately recognized the mare as the one from the dream.

She also saw another shape, the colt from the dream, who was rising to his feet from a pallet beside the stone floor where Luna lay.  Luna rose too, and the unicorn siblings gaped at her, their faces blank with surprise.  Awe swiftly replace surprise, though unlike so many ponies that Luna had seen with such awe on their faces, neither of them tried to bow to her.

"You're real," said the colt.

"I am," replied Luna.

The mare had no words at all, she just stared.

There were hoofsteps outside, many of them, moving with urgent swiftness, and Luna looked up to find that a rough-hewn hall outside of the small cavern where she had awoken was filling with ponies, all of them looking stunned and awed as they caught sight of her.  A few daring ones crowded into the room, making way for those behind them.  They were all staring at her.  The pressure of their eyes was unnerving.  Luna was used to crowds, but there was something different about these ponies, something far too intense, almost desperate, in their eyes.

"I'm Glory Brightstar," said the purple unicorn, finally recovering herself. "This is my brother, Dreamer.  Have you come to help us then, like the Equestrian agent promised us?"

Luna looked at the two of them.  She looked at the crowd in the corridor beyond that was spilling anxiously into the room.  She had no idea what their situation was.  Fear flickered in her, telling her that she might fail, that she might break and fall, rather than succeed.  Fate was not always kind...

Then she thought about the dream, and the horror of a dragon in it, and the terrible promise of death from the sky, and replied the only way she could.

"I am Princess Luna.  And yes, I have come to help."