Well this was great. it was 11 A.M., but the moon was still out. either Celestia was sick, or someone had stopped her from raising the moon. a certain someone if the now in complete panic mode purple unicorn was right.
"I can't believe I forgot! How could I forget something as important as Nightmare Moon returning to Equestria!" She screamed while pacing quickly in a circle around the table in the middle of the room.
"C'mon Twilight, calm down. It's not like you were supposed to stop her." I said trying to stop her from making the trench in the floor from getting any deeper. "I mean, how could you know?" Bad thing to say. She launched into a huge lecture about how she was reading a book she saw a prophesy about how Nightmare Moon would return on the longest day of the thousandth year. I kinda blanked out as she rambled on. I walked over and picked her up and moved her so she was at face level. “Twilight. Stop. there’s no way you could have known for sure. even if you did, didn’t celestia tell you everything is ok?”
Suddenly the door to the library was thrown open and 5 other ponies walked into the room. As they were talking, I heard each one of them call each other by name.
“C'mon Pinkie, we gotta find more ‘bout this mare in the moon business.” Rainbow dash said. Twilight teleported out of my hands and appeared in front of them. They all jumped at the action but recovered quickly.
“Are you looking for information about Nightmare Moon?” She asked.
They all nodded before the Applejack replied. “Yep, and why are you interested in what we’re doing?”
“Because im looking for information on the same thing.” She said. Before she turned around, I asked her a question myself.
“Hey Twilight, would you mind teaching me that spell later?” She nodded and everyone else in the room turned to look at me in shock. They had all seen me before, but never without my traveling cloak.
Pinkie pie bounced past me and said. “Silly human, you can’t use magic. Only unicorns can control magic!”
“That’s not actually true, since my body is completely devoid of its own magic, being from another non-magical world, Twilight has concluded that my body absorbs magic. Of course, since i’ve been around Twilight all night and she has horrid magic leaking problems, and a huge magic reserve, I should be able to cast that spell. I need to learn it first though.”
Everyone stared at me. The first pony to speak up was Rainbow dash, and all she said was two words. “Prove it.” I sighed and moved my hands in a circular motion, joining them together at the middle. I then pushed my right hand outwards and used a levitation spell on some of the books in the room, pulling them into the air and spinning them around. They all looked at me in awe. I finished by putting the books back where they belonged in a quick fashion. Turning to them, I asked, “Is that a good enough example?”
Twilight looked at me proudly. “Nice work Dj, still a little wobbly though but at least you can control multiple objects at once. She then turned back to the other ponies in the room. “So with that out of the way, we need to look for books about the elements of harmony.
“What did ah do?” The orange pony asked.
“I was talking to the human applejack, i said DJ not AJ.” She responded.
“Anyway,” I started, “ also since my body isn’t meant for channeling magic I have to do extra movements, as a way to better channel it. If I don’t, i’ll have the skill of a filly with almost no sleep for a few days.” I explained. Reaching backwards, I pulled out glass bottle of water out of my pouch. Uncorking it, I quickly downed it and put it back into my pouch.
“That’s so cool! Where did you get a bag of holding?!” Twilight asked excitedly. She almost ran behind me and started inspecting it.
“Last year as a birthday gift. Focus Twilight, what do we need to stop Nightmare Moon.” She immediately pulled her hoof out of my pouch and addressed the other girls there.
“OK girls, I need to find a book on the elements of harmony, they reformed Nightmare Moon once, and they can do it again.” They all nodded and got to work. Soon after, Pinkie pie found the book, bouncing around and saying it was under “E”. I face palmed, the prior librarian obviously didn’t know about the Dewey decimal system, or this world’s equivalent to it. After reading the book and arguing some, the group of six ponies and a human set out for the Everfree.
“This place is simply dreadful, why would the elements of harmony be here?” Rarity asks.
“It makes sense, if you were to hide powerful magic artifacts wouldn’t you hide them someplace dangerous?” Twilight responded. The cliff suddenly gave out under their hooves, and they all started to fall. I saw applejack holding onto Twilight and slid down next to them. Twilight suddenly let go and then applejack was stuck with nowhere to go. Grabbing her, I fell off the cliff and fell. “Man I hope this works.” I muttered under my breath, before putting all of the earth pony magic I had into my fist and punching the cliff face. My hand started to slow us down, and I felt a spear of pain go through it. We slowed down until we were a few feet off the ground, then I jumped the rest of the way. Everypony stared at me in shock.
“How did you do that sugarcube?” Applejack asked in amazement.
I sat down, grabbed the stuff I needed, and started bandaging my hand. I first smeared a salve on my hand, then put a bandage around it. Standing up I answered her question. “I channeled all the earth pony magic I got from you and Pinkie into my fist and arm, before striking the rock cliff. If I would’ve tried doing that without your magic, then I would have destroyed my hand. I used the techniques that Twilight taught me for learning a new magic.”
Twilight beamed before she said, “Comon girls, we still have to find the elements of harmony. We started walking again, and Rainbow started boasting about saving everypony. She would have continued with her bragging, had a manticore not jumped out in front of us. While we were debating on what to do, the manticore jumped forwards in anger. Surprisingly it was rarity who turned around and bucked it.
She screamed “Take that you ruffian!” The manticore roared in her face as a response. When she realised her hair was messed up, she ran away. Applejack took up the slack, jumping on it’s back. The creature struggled and managed to buck her off. While she was flying through the air, she turned to Rainbow dash and said, “Your turn.” Rainbow nodded and shot forwards and started to fly around the manticore. At the speed she was going, there was a Rainbow trail following behind her. Being smarter than most think they are, the manticore stick its scorpion-like tail out behind it and stopped her in her tracks. I looked at Twilight and nodded. Everypony started to charge at the manticore, before fluttershy of all ponies screamed for us to stop. She walked over to it, then nuzzled its paw. After debating with itself for all of two seconds, the creature held out its paw, showing a massive purple thorn in it.
“Oh, my.” Fluttershy whispered. “Now this may hurt for just a second.” She reached her head forwards and grabbed the thorn in her mouth, then yanked it out with a single quick tug. The manticore roared in pain and we all called out fluttershy’s name before starting forwards again, but were astonished when it started licking her in joy.
“Aw, you’re just a little ol’ baby kitty, aren’t you? Yes you are, yes you are.” Fluttershy said. The manticore licked her mane, and she giggled in response. We all walked past the creature.
When fluttershy managed to get detached from the manticore, Twilight asked her a question. “How did you know about the thorn?”
“I didn’t. Sometimes we all just need to be shown a bit of kindness.” Fluttershy replied. Twilight smiled and we continued on our way. Eventually rarity started complaining.
“My eyes need a break from all this icky muck.” When it turned almost pitch black she continued, “Well, I didn’t mean that literally.”
The next comment came from Twilight. “That ancient castle could be right in front of our faces and we wouldn’t even know it.”
I chirped in next, “Thank you queen obvious for pointing that out.” The other ponies gave a small giggle at my remark, other than Twilight. It was good I had decided to speak at that time, because the next thing we saw was horrifying. The very trees around us had demonic faces, with snarling maws and razor sharp teeth. I froze in horror and all the other ponies around me started screaming at the top of their lungs. All except one. The pink menace herself was staring at one of the possessed trees and laughing while making funny faces.
“Pinkie, what are you doing?! Run!” Twilight screamed. Pinkie responded by starting to sing. After the world was done being a musical, something I had only seen once before, our whole party fell over laughing. A few minutes later, we got up and started back our our way in high spirits. Our next challenge that we had to face was a raging river.
“How are we gonna cross this?” Pinkie asked.
“Pinkie, Dash can and I can carry you guys. Maybe Fluttershy too if she’s willing.” I said. I started to walk into the river, the strong current not bothering me too much. As I waded in deeper, making sure it was safe, I suddenly dropped into the deepest part of the river. Surfacing and sputtering, I coughed out water and tried to get my breath. I felt a hoof grab my hand and I let it steer me where it wanted to go. After what felt like an eternity, I crawled onto the shore and wiped my eyes out. After seeing it was Rainbow who led me to safety, I thanked her and passed out.
When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. “Hello?” I managed to sputter out. Sitting up, five pastel colored ponies ran over to me and started all talking at once. “Woah girls, one at a time.”
Pinkie started talking first, fastest and loudest. “Well, after you walked into the river, dashie saw you fall into it and bolted out to get you. Of course you were too heavy for her to pick up, so she led you to the riverbank where you passed out! Then we heard crying and it turns out that a purple water serpent was causing the river to go all wonky because a cloud of purple smoke came by and WOOSH! Took half of his moustache off! So rarity cut her tail off to use as a replacement and he calmed down. Then he helped us carry you across the river to the other side. Finally after Twilight, AJ, and RD helped carry you to this bridge, and RD went to the other side to tie the rope so we can get across it! Now im telling you how you walked into the river-”
“Ok Pinkie that’s enough. I just barely caught that the first time and if I hear it again then my head’s gonna blow up.” I stood up and Rainbow flew back across the canyon and said something about never leaving her friends hangin, I guess that had something to do with before I woke up.
“Ok girls, let’s go get the elements.” Said twilight. Everyone nodded and we followed her. When we got to the castle, it was surprising to see that the first room contained the elements.
“Well that was easy.” I muttered. Twilight had a different reaction though.
“We’ve found them!” Rainbow and Fluttershy started getting the elements. “Careful girls, we don’t want to break them.”
“Hey Twi, there’s only five. Shouldn’t there be six?” I asked.
“The book that that when the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth to appear.”
“OK then Twilight, we’ll leave you alone to concentrate.” Everyone except for twilight left the room. Just as I had left, I heard twilight scream and bolted back into the room with everyone following me. The burst of adrenaline I had gotten allowed me to reach the purple tornado with the elements inside of it. I jumped forwards, hoping to knock twilight out of it and save her, but ended up getting teleported to who knows where. The first thing I did when I arrived at my new destination was throw up blood. The raw magical energy in the air here was overwhelming. I heard the words, “you’re kidding” before a pop and then twilight saying something. I managed to get up at this time, and took deep breaths to steady myself. The rest of the girls ran into the room, and twilight started shouting something about how the elements worked. I finally recovered when twilight was just finishing her speech.
“...The element of magic!” Twilight was lifted into the air with the last word, her eyes glowing in a white light. A rainbow formed and started to move towards Nightmare moon, but she wasn’t about to stand there and just take the hit. Her mane moved forwards and wrapped around each of the girls’ throats. The magic rainbow dissipated just before it hit her.
“Did you really think it would be that easy? Did you think I would just stand there and watch all of my hard work go down the drain? I HAVE PLANNED FOR 1,000 YEARS MORTAL, THAT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU JUST GIVE UP ON A WHIM!” She screamed the last bit, then took a second to regain herself. “Forgive me my little ponies, that was out of character. I was right though, I have been waiting for over 1,000 years, and I have almost reached my goal, do you think I would just give up and-” I cut her off, finally regaining my composure.
“Blab blab blab. Are you just gonna monologue or are you going to do something about the six little ponies wielding the only thing you can be defeated by?” I asked in a sarcastic voice.
“I will warn you though, if you think of laying a hand on any one of my friends, you will be sorry.”
She laughed before figuring out a reply to my threat. “And what are you going to do to me, a goddess mind you, hug me to death?” She laughed again.
“Funny right? No, let me tell you something. You may have been training or plotting over the past thousand years, but there’s one thing that you overlooked. You leak magic faster than a overfilled bucket in a monsoon. And in this world, i’m a giant magic sponge. I can also learn the pony who leaked it’s special talent based on the amount of time I spend near them and the amount of magic they leak. In other words just by spending a few minutes in a room with you,” black flames flared up on my right arm, my eyes went green, and my voice dropped a few octaves, at the same time becoming rougher. “I’ve mastered your control over magic, and have just as much reserves as you do, maybe even more. Do you still think i’m a joke?” I finished. Nightmare moon looked at me in shock before going offensive. She sent a bolt of black magic at my chest. I grabbed it and redirected it back towards her. She rolled to dodge and bolted forwards. With my right hand I caught her off guard as she finished standing up with a solid right hook enhanced with magic, sending her flying back a little bit. She started to throw a maelstrom of black blades at me. I dodged most of them, but one caught me in the chest. I slowed down a bit and used the magic I had acquired to temporarily heal myself. Nightmare moon used this and an opportunity to throw a huge ball of black magic at me. I barely managed to dodge it and throw back a beam of magic at her. She caught it head on with her own beam, slowly pushing me backwards. I pushed back as hard as I could but she was simply stronger than me. Her beam finally got to my hand, cutting my own beam off and sending my flying headfirst into a wall. Nightmare moon went into her gas form and reappeared right in front of me.
“Was it worth it creature, to destroy your own life in a hopeless attempt to save others?”
I weakly smiled at her and groaned out “Monologuing.” Before spitting some of the blood in my mouth into her eyes. She dropped me and a flash of white light engulfed us, draining me and Nightmare Moon of almost all of our magic.
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I woke up in a pure white room, with the only color being me, and my black magic counterpart.
“Got hit by the elements didn’t i?” I asked the black creature across from me.
“Yep. this room is what happens while the elements do their work. If you choose to let yourself be cleansed of the evil in your heart… screw it, i’m skipping the dialogue. You gotta choose whether you want to continue using black magic and be banished for a thousand years, or if you want to give it up and be “cleansed”. I’m neutral, since you absorbed me from Nightmare Moon.” My counterpart replied.
“Seriously, you’re not gonna try to trick me? Seems like something black magic would do.”
“Nah, you’re human remember. Humans can’t be just put into good, bad, or neutral. Besides, you probably couldn’t survive for a thousand years, plus i’m sure you would choose to be cleansed no matter what I said.”
“So how does it work. Do all I say is I wanna be cleansed?” To answer my question, the wall directly to the right of me started to crack, and shattered. Sitting behind it was a smaller, more blue-ish Nightmare Moon. She was crying as she looked up at the full Nightmare Moon, without any armor.
“You have made this choice 1,000 years earlier luna, do you not believe it to be the best choice now? Are you really going to be beaten by some strange monkey without hair?” Nightmare moon lectured.
“I take offence to that Nightmare moon, how would you like it if I called you an overgrown housecat?” I called out to Nightmare Moon as I walked over. “Hi there, luna was it?”
Luna looked up at me, still sobbing and holding her head with her hooves. “Y-Yes? What would someone so nice want to do with a monster like me?!” She sobbed out.
I put my hand in her mane and started to stroke it. It had proven effective to calm down others when they were upset, and I hoped it could do the same for her. “Luna, you’re not a monster-”
“Yes I am!” She screeched in my face. “You didn’t see what I did the first time! You didn’t see me kill anypony, burn down innocent ponies homes! You never heard what I told my guard to do! I ALMOST KILLED MY SISTER! I am a monster, treat me like one.” The last line was said in a dejected tone.
I spun her around and got on one knee, then looked her directly in the eyes.“Luna, you are NOT a monster. It was all the magic’s fault. You did nothing you were willing to do. Even now, 1,000 years later, and being controlled like a puppet for all of that time, you feel remorse for Nightmare Moon’s actions. And notice how I said Nightmare Moon, not you luna.”
“How did you get rid of it so easily, I get the magic had very little time to attach to you but still… that power is alluring.”
Nightmare moon cut in and started laughing. “It’s true, the power black magic gives you is incredible, why not embrace it again luna? Like I was saying before this ape cut in, you make this choice before, why not make it again?”
I jumped in before she could say anything else. “Luna, humans, that’s what I am by the way, can’t be put into categories of good and bad. Some people see something as good, while others see it as bad.” Luna gave me a questioning look so I continued. “How will I put this so you understand. Let’s say that a unicorn was having a bad couple of years. So he decides to blame earth ponies. After joining up with some other unicorns, he gains more and more power, eventually starting to kill the earth ponies, as a cleansing of equestria from the terror they bring. Pegasi eventually join the unicorns and help exterminate or deport the earth ponies. Eventually he reaches into ally nations to ‘cleanse’ them too. Then he goes too far and decides to ‘help out’ nations not allied to equestria and they get mad. The nations eventually manage to bring him down, but not without significant loss of pony life.”
Luna looked at me in horror. “Why would you tell me that?! That’s disgusting that they would do that, slaughter other ponies just because of their race?”
“The reason I told you is that in the beginning, that unicorn was considered good to his people, helping the economy and getting rid of a common enemy of the ponies at the time, but near the end he was considered bad by almost everyone, including his own nation. The same person over a span of time was both a great hero and a psychopathic murderer. That happened in my world, humans are grey, never black or white in our moral alignment.”
Luna looked at me in horror. “So a human killed immense amounts of other humans just based on their race?”
“Religion, but yes. Anyway luna, people, and I assume ponies, can change. You don’t have to be nightmare moon to have ponies know your name. Just be luna.”
“But why should I go back? It’s not like anypony cares about my night. The only ones who can really work at that time are unicorns, and they a really prissy and other negative features.”
“That’s what this was all about?” I chuckled. “Luna, other types of ponies can work at night now, in fact, many do! I do some of my best work by moonlight personally, it’s hard to brew a potion that bursts into flames if it touches sunlight in a wooden cottage during the day.”
“Really?!” Luna looked amazed. “If that’s the case, then,” she turned around and faced nightmare moon. “I reject you nightmare moon, I wish to be cleansed!” She turned back to look at me as the room started to grow cracks all along it. “You better not be lying…”
“DJ.” when I finished my name, the room shattered and we were released from the element’s grasp.