//------------------------------//
// Change of Scenery 
// Story: Night Terrors 
// by NightmareDash 
//------------------------------//

Roaring down the thickly-crowded streets of Canterlot with impressive speed, a massive Royal Carriage progressed toward the Palace. After all, where else would such an official vehicle be going? Word on the street was that the remaining Elements of Harmony were being brought in from Ponyville to meet with the Princess herself after the Second Lunar Rebellion. 

But in the metal beast's shadow, a much more ordinary taxi-carriage followed, before breaking away to pull into the entry to Canterlot General Hospital. Unusually, it bypassed the main doorway, driving around the side to stop next to an out-of-the-way fire exit. One of the solid metal doors swung open, and to the beckoning of a nurse, four overdressed figures rushed inside as the taxi-carriage sped off. They were led to a service elevator and, after it took them up a few floors, into a corner room. A white unicorn lay on the bed inside, his sister standing over him; with the rapid removal of hoodies, scarves and other concealing outerwear, the Mane 5 were reunited.

"It's good to see you all again," welcomed Twilight. Fluttershy looked over Shining Armor, awake but in weak condition, then Twilight herself, unable to avoid noticing her scar.

"How are you both doing?"

"Oh, a cracked rib or two, maybe a fracture, nothing too bad," the stallion answered. "Worst thing is they're saying I overcharged my magic. Nothing to do about that but give it time, right, Twi?"

She smiled at him reassuringly, although her conviction was a bit lacking.

"Everypony, I hate to interrupt," the nurse interrupted, "but we really do need to go."

With brief farewells to the Captain, the girls followed her back to the elevator. Only this time, as they entered, she pressed a key into the firepony's control and twisted it downward, in a way it normally wasn't supposed to go. The car descended, but did not stop when they reached G; in fact, it kept right on going for another second before coming to a stop. As the doors opened, the Mane 5 were stunned to find Princess Celestia on the other side.

"Come with me, ladies."

They entered a rough stonework tunnel, sporadically adorned with crystal. This caused the light from magic-based torches to cascade through the entire passageway.

"This tunnel was built shortly after Canterlot became the capital of Equestria. If the palace were ever under siege, it would give them easy access  to food and medical supplies, as well as an escape route. But for now, it is the safest way to get you inside the palace walls without being seen."

The door and the nurse (if she even was a nurse) vanished behind them. Trekking on solemnly, they followed every twist and turn of the path.

"Princess Celestia?" Rarity ventured. "I don't mean to be rude, but is there a particular reason for all this subterfuge?"

"I'm afraid so. Equestria has been plagued by a string of terrorist attacks, and the Elements of Harmony would make obvious targets."

Fluttershy gulped, almost stumbling across a crystal spike."Targets?"

"But Princess," Twilight reasoned, only to be cut off as Celestia stopped in front of her. She turned around to face her faithful student, with a concerned look in her eye.

"I have a lot of news to share with you when we get to the palace, and none of it is good."

Indeed... And as Applejack brought up the rear of the group, her shadow suddenly dropped several sizes.





A metal door's slam breaking the monotonous machinery whir, Charger entered H.Q. 2.0. The rough-cut industrial vibe of the Shadowbolts' new home certainly agreed with him, although he mourned the loss of starry nights and plenty of flying space. But before he got too bogged-down in those unfortunate details, he reminded himself (and everypony else in earshot) of another of the benefits of relocation.

"Cider call!" he hollered, drawing the rest of the group's attention as he dropped a six-pack on the long wooden crate they now called the chow table. In the next room, Nightshade swung herself out of her hammock, putting down a book as she got the attention of headphone-wearing Starry Skies. On their way in, Starry flung open a closet door, revealing Blueball Blitz with her tongue to an exposed lightbulb filament.

"Forget cider, I've got the good stuff right here!"

But she joined them all the same. And from the ceiling dropped Stratus, who had been doing pull-ups on an exposed girder.

"How many Guards did you let on your tail to get that?" he demanded with annoyance.

"Only a cute one, on the way out of the store. Had to play hard to get, but she didn't mind..."

"Chill out, Stratus," Nightshade intervened. "It's been far too long since we shared drinks, now that the Officers' Club is a pile of ash. Now we just need..."

"I got her," Starry finished. Going out the door Charger had just come in, she leapt off the catwalk, took to her wings and swooped under it. The next level down was a bit of a maze, with passageways and rooms opening up into each other thanks to corrosion in the metal walls. Navigating through stacks of assorted cargo, abandoned to the ages like the rest of the facility, she followed the sound of metal-on-metal collisions until she came to a sort of opening. Dim ambient light effused in from outside, enhanced by a dangling lightbulb or two.

"Hai!"

The kiai was accompanied by a fast but well-controlled slash, as the katana bisected a vertical pipe. Letting her left hoof off the hilt, Rainbow Dash came back down on all four hooves and started to recover her breath.

"Hey, Charger made a cider run, and Nightshade figured it was about time we shared a round."

Dash did not respond, only panting for a few seconds, then walking over to the wall her sheath was leaned against and returning the weapon to it.

"She's right... It has been too long."

Slinging the sheath onto her back, Dash approached her teammate and they retraced the path back 'home'. Having returned, they found two open bottles waiting, along with the rest of the Shadowbolts.

"Can't put that blade down, Dash?" Nightshade wondered.

"Hey, this bad boy saved me from being turned into fried pegasus. Excuse me for being a bit attached."

With chuckles all around, Nightshade raised her cider to toast.

"To old times, and the brothers and sisters who brought us through them!"

"To old times," they echoed, and knocked back their bottles. But as they set them back down, one by one, a mass of deep-blue gas crept through a bulkhead, then materialized into a large silhouette. It then shrank down to their size, and the gas swept back into the mane of Princess Luna.

"Do not drown yourselves in merriment just yet, friends. Before we pay tribute to the past, we must think of the future."

"You have news for us, Princess Luna?" asked Nightshade.

"Indeed, we have been more successful than I had anticipated. See for yourself."

A newspaper materialized on the table, headline clearly declaring "Defense Minister Resigns!" While the average reader would've noted the accompanying photographs as a visual record of said Minister's failings, the Shadowbolts regarded it more like a scrapbook, each smiling with silent pride at their individual moments of glory across the past few months.

"Yeah, they fired the Defense Minister. Guy was past his prime anyway, if you ask me. What does it do for us?" Charger wondered aloud.

"They are already starting to doubt and blame each other," Luna monologued. "Equestrians cling to Celestia like foals to their mother, and she is more than happy to play that role for 'her little ponies'. She gives them happiness and security, and in return they give her absolute, unquestioned authority."

"Tyranny masked behind benevolence," Starry volunteered, showing off the eloquence gifted to her by a Cloudsdale Academy education.

"Exactly. Our aim is to shatter this facade, spoil the bait my dear sister uses to entrap the complacent. When they see that she can no longer provide them with their security blanket, they will be ripped from the comforts of ignorance and begin to question their fearless leader. Unrest will grow like wildfire, too fast and too widespread for the military to contain, and soon Celestia will be pulled from the throne."

"And we get some sweet revenge in the process," added Rainbow Dash. "But how do we keep this from going to weeping and gnashing of teeth?"

"We will swoop in when my sister is at her weakest, fill the void left in her place and offer ponies a stake in their own future. Disillusioned with Celestia, hopefully they will be more receptive to our ideas than before."

"And if they aren't?" Nightshade had to ask.

"Then we disappear once more, and rule the world of shadows instead of that of light. I cannot speak for you, but the downfall of sister dearest will be satisfaction enough for me." The ice in her voice certainly made the declaration convincing.  "If nothing else, we will have liberated them from their oppressor and, as my apprentice mentioned, taken our revenge on those who have wronged us. But let us cross that bridge when we reach it."

Without objection to this plan, a silence came over the room, and it was up to Blueball to raise her bottle and put an end to it. "You heard the Princess! To crossing bridges!" The rest murmured back their echo of the toast with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but all took another drink of cider much more eagerly. 

"Speaking of old friends," Luna mentioned to Rainbow Dash as she emptied her bottle, "some of yours have just arrived in Canterlot."

"They're not..."

"I'm afraid so, a Royal Carriage brought them in this morning. Obviously, Celestia believes they will be safer here."

"Ha!" Dash threw her head back wildly. "I guess Ponyville is the definition of a soft target. Should I deal with them for good this time?" She pulled a combat knife from her belt and held it up, with obvious implications.

"No, that would betray our presence. Up to now our hoof in events has been hidden, our attacks seemingly random. Killing them would smack of targeted revenge..." How disappointing. "However, we still ought to acknowledge their arrival, in our own way. So there is your next assignment: show them exactly how safe they aren't."





Celestia, the Mane 5 and their guard escorts stepped into another hidden elevator at the end of the tunnel, which took them up into the palace itself. Stepping out into a white stone hallway, they jumped forward as a suit of armor slid back into place behind them, concealing the passageway. The hall looked almost untouched by the incursion, wiped clean of bloodstains and magic-bolt scorch marks. But further down, they could see a large wooden board, covering a section of the wall, and most could either remember or deduce that that was where the Hall of History had once been. The escorts peeled off as the group entered the throne room.

"Our victory over Nightmare Moon came at a very high price," Celestia said. "Not just in lives lost, but in your loss of a dear friend. We had hoped such sacrifice would bring us peace, a time to rest, to mourn, and to rebuild." Several new guards spilled in, magically lowering the blinds and darkening the room. One of them came to Celestia's side, projecting images into the air with his horn.

"It appears those hopes were in vain. Like I told you, Equestria has been plagued by terrorist attacks in the past few weeks. What I did not tell you is that there is something much more sinister behind these attacks." The unicorn showed them a familiar picture, of pegasi work-teams lifting a train car out of the Manehatten River by tow-cables. "You remember the crash of the Trans-Equestrian High-Speed Railway?"

"Yes, Mayor Mare was on that car when it went into the river," Twilight replied somberly.

"Go to the next one," Celestia instructed. The image became much lower-quality, showing the bridge the train had been crossing at the time. It took the girls a second to make it out, but they came to recognize the Mayor's body dangling from the bridge, neck caught in a paracord noose. Gasps of shock and horror all around. "I put a D-Notice on this image as soon as I saw it. We believe the train wreck was a cover for them to assassinate Mayor Mare."

"But why?" begged Twilight. "It's so elaborate, so gruesome... why put in all the extra effort just to kill Mayor Mare?"

"That's part of the reason I brought you here. I believe this was meant to be a kind of threat to Ponyville, and you by extension. Next image, please." This one was again recognizable, an elevated shot of Canterlot Square in chaos in the wake of Penstroke's death. "Only days later, my press secretary, Penstroke, was shot in the middle of a conference, in broad daylight."

"A threat against you?" Rarity ventured.

"Yes. But these are just the two most recent events, in a string of bombings, thefts and assassinations, all done with incredible precision and skill."

"You don't mean...?" asked Applejack.

"Yes. And it fits with the threat Nightmare Moon made, just before she escaped. I think she's convinced her followers to carry out these attacks as some kind of revenge scheme."

"But how do we stop her?" Twilight asked panickedly as the lights came up. Celestia hardly seemed to acknowledge her, staring out upon Canterlot with fearful concern. 

"The problem with these attacks is that they come completely by surprise. We have no way to predict when or where the next strike will be; even our contacts in the Canterlot underground are in the dark."

"Probably because they're underground!" Pinkie remarked cutely, to nopony's amusement. 

"That would mean Nightmare Moon's followers are completely self-reliant," Twilight extrapolated. "Whatever they need, they steal or scavenge." 

Rarity's business sense perked up, desperate to contribute something useful. "But logistics like that ought to devastate their efficiency, like trying to trying to sew with a dull needle. No matter how good you are, you still need the right tools to do the job." 

This, in turn, kicked the ball into Applejack's court, drawing from her experience building and fixing things on the farm. "But if ya don't have the right tools, you use whatcha do have, um, impervise! Maybe that's what they're doin'!"

"It's entirely possible," concluded Twilight, pausing as she realized something frightful. "But if they can get these kind of results with improvised tools and weapons... these aren't just any old hoof soldiers."

"I suspected as much," Celestia cut in. "Once or twice, we were able to get visual descriptions of the terrorists from ponies who survived their attacks. I didn't think it was enough to prove anything, but with what you just said... It can't be anypony else."

Twilight finished the thought with a moderately-scornful declaration. "The Shadowbolts!"





The conversation hadn't gone much further from there, vivid (and painful) personal experience clouding the minds of Celestia and the Mane 5. With a stern warning to be careful and vigilant, she had them led to their accommodations in the palace. After quickly unpacking their spartan complement of luggage, the mares were suddenly and violently seized upon by the vicious claws of utter boredom. They mulled about a bit, trying to remain obedient, good little fillies, but that act did not last more than 15 minutes. Besides, spirits definitely needed to be raised. With some discreet teleportation, and Rarity's gentle application of feminine wiles to the one guard they came across, they breached the outer wall and hit the streets of Canterlot.

"It must be nice to be home, Twilight," Fluttershy said.

"Oh, my home was always the palace," she evaded, hoping to avoid the subject of her pre-Ponyville social life (or lack thereof). But then the smell hit her: a warm, vibrant aroma, rich with fond memories and nostalgia. It was a smell Twilight simply could not resist. "But there is one place I really did miss!" She suddenly took off at full gallop, barely giving the others a chance to catch up.

"Where we goin' in such a hurry, sugarcube?"

"The Grindhouse!" Twilight exclaimed nigh-giddily. "Best coffee in all of Canterlot!" The traffic of Mane Street forced her to slow back down to a walk, but did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm. Weaving around slower-moving pedestrians, she rounded a corner onto a less-crowded street.  "This was always one of my favorite places to study!"

"You told us, dear," Rarity chimed in, "when you brought us here the night after the Grand Galloping Gala. Several times, in fact."

"Oh, I guess I did," Twilight replied sheepishly. "I wonder if the Grind family still runs..."

But unbeknownst to any of them, they were not the only ponies interested in the Grindhouse. As they approached, a pair of eyes set upon them. These eyes were connected to a hoof, which was clasping a remote. By way of the brain, the eyes told the hoof to squeeze, and squeeze it did upon the button on the remote. 

A nightmarish roar erupted from the building, a split-second behind a blast of fire and shattered glass. The shockwave threw Twilight backwards into her friends, who barely had time to stop before they were knocked down as well. As they stumbled back up to their hooves, they found the street in front of them had evolved into a scrapyard of flaming debris and scorch marks, along with a dead body or two.

And with a malicious grin and flash of color, the eyes disappeared into the dark undergrowth of the concrete jungle.