//------------------------------//
// Chapter Seven: The Astronaut 
// Story: Nightmare to Earth 
// by bobdat 
//------------------------------//

“Hi there!” 
She possibly had the perkiest voice I'd ever heard, like listening to a children's entertainer who'd inflated one too many balloons. We were at Twilight's library home, and the door has just been flung open by a rather happy neighbour.
“Hi Pinkie.” Twilight turned to me. “This is Pinkie Pie. She's one of my best friends.”
“Pleased to meet you!” The pink pony squealed, extending a hoof and shaking mine vigorously. “I hope we can be friends.”
“Friends” I repeated, smiling back. Her happiness was infectious and I couldn't help it.

“Pinkie lives at Sugarcube Corner, and helps make cakes.”
“Oh, and biscuits, and cupcakes, and muffins, ooh, and we-”
“She's going to help us travel back in time.” Twilight said, sounding a little resigned. 
I nodded back. “Okay. So how are we going to do it?”
“-shortbread and brownies, oh oh oh, and fruit cake!”
“You're a fruit cake Pinkie! Now just listen for a second.”

Pinkie Pie went silent and waited for Twilight to speak with a perfectly-innocent look on her face.
The purple pony smiled, a little strained. “We're going to use some of the magic scrolls that Princess Celestia has kindly allowed us to borrow.” Her hoof pointed to a small pile in the corner. “Once we're there, I can help you find what you're looking for. What is it, that you're looking for?”
Her question was phrased so perfectly. “I'm looking for an astronaut. That is, someone who goes into space.”
“How? Do they fly?” Pinkie again.
“No, in a rocket. It's not important.”
“I once had a dream about going to space, it started when-”

“So when you find the astronaut, what do you have to do?”
“Use him to find some photographs. Once they're destroyed, Nightmare Moon will return to her banishment.”
“Okay, I think we can do that.”
I lowered my voice. “Why are we bringing... her?”
“She's been to your world before.”

This was amazing, and I asked Twilight more about it when she'd sent Pinkie away to make the final preparations.
“How did she get there?”
“Apparently a long time ago you used to watch us through some kind of portal. Like looking through a window.” She explained.
“Television? There used to be television shows about ponies like you, that's how we knew about Nightmare Moon.”
“Probably. Anyway, Pinkie realised she was being watched and managed to get through the portal. She was gone for about five minutes, then came back and told us about these things called humans.”

“Five minutes? Sure she wasn't just tricking you?” I chuckled.
“I think our time works differently. Five minutes here is about five days for you.”
“Wow.”
Pinkie returned. “Everything's super-ready, we just have to go to the Town Square!”
“But Pinkie, we're doing it here...” Twilight said, exasperated.
“No no no, I've organised a great going-away party! Everypony is waiting!”

Twilight's expression said it all as we made our way to the Town Square, set in front of the Town Hall. The Mayor, a grey-maned pony with a severe expression, was waiting to give a speech as we approached.
“Everypony, here are the three brave ponies who will be trying to rid us of Nightmare Moon!” She said, stamping her hooves as we climbed onto the wooden stage.
Twilight spoke. “Okay, we'll be back very soon, and we'll defeat Nightmare Moon.” She said. The crowd murmured. Apparently Twilight wasn't a very good public speaker.

She quickly moved onto the scrolls and began the spell that would take us back, just as Pinkie Pie found some balloons.
“Hey Twilight, everypony, I just found out that these balloons float! Look, it's like a pegasus pony, but with no wings! Isn't that great?”
Thankfully, Twilight interrupted her as the ground disappeared again, pulling myself and my two companions into the gaping blackness. The second time was far less scary, I found, and I closed my eyes as the blackness took over.


***


Instead of waking up in a hospital, this time I woke up standing on the steps of another town hall. This one was far more familiar though, in a way. It looked... human, anyway. Twilight and Pinkie were stood either side of me, and they looked very strange.
They had both assumed human forms to fit in, but neither of them could get used to it. Twilight was looking, dumbfounded, at her new fingers, whilst Pinkie was drinking in the attention from onlookers. 

Whilst Twilight looked very plain, very much like a librarian but without any glasses, Pinkie had retained her vibrant hair and was allowing it to bounce around happily whilst passers-by stared. Looking around at the cars, I guessed that we had to be around the right period, but somewhere before hair dye became commonplace. 
Twilight dragged Pinkie away from a shop window where she was admiring her appearance and we headed for a tourist map.

“Now, the astronaut lives in the suburbs.” I explained, pointing to a road that headed out of town. “We need to find his house.”
“Do you know his address?” Twilight asked.
“No, so we have to find a telephone.”
There was one across the road. Pinkie skipped the whole way.
I used the directory to look up the astronaut. I knew his first name was Tony, but not his second name. Thankfully, I spotted another name with the occupation 'astronaut', then discovered that they all lived in the same area. There was only one Tony, and I copied down the address.

The bus was a nightmare. Once we'd finally got on the right one and paid for tickets, Pinkie Pie tried to conduct a sing-along. I was convinced we were going to be killed by some tough-looking gentlemen sitting near the back, but Pinkie's magic worked again and we spent the last twenty minutes singing the hokey-cokey endlessly. Twilight looked like she might be the one to kill us by the time the bus pulled up outside the right street.

Tony lived at the end but one, so I led the way whilst Twilight tried not to stumble with her new legs. Pinkie, of course, had instantly mastered them and was skipping along gracefully.
I knocked on the door and then took a step back. I wasn't sure how I was going to explain to him what I was talking about and how I knew about the photos.

A man in his mid-thirties answered the door, with his petite wife standing just behind him.
“Can I help you?” He asked politely, his button-down shirt hanging from ex-athlete's shoulders.
Twilight answered. “Hi, we're here about the space agency?”
“What about it? I don't speak to the press.”
“We're not the press. I just want to ask  about some photographs. May we come in?” I said, hoping it sounded plausible.

A man and two women, one of whom seemed distracted, must not have seemed a threat to the astronaut, because he invited us through to his front room. I took a seat in an itchy blue chair opposite him, as my companions tried out the sofa.
“This is difficult to explain.” I said, ready to begin my convoluted story. Then his wife entered with a tray of biscuits.
“Oooh, biscuits!” Pinkie helped herself.

“Sir, have you seen any photographs of... life on the moon?” I asked, accompanied by Pinkie's munching.
He was suspicious. “Like what? Green aliens?”
“No, specifically something purple.”
“I have. Are you those freaky weirdos who search the desert for UFOs?”
“No. This isn't going to make sense, but I'll tell you anyway. Someone from the space agency gave those photos to you, yes? You must destroy the originals, you absolutely must. It is of critical importance.”
“How do you know about them?”

“I've seen them, they have serious repercussions for the future. If you destroy them, you'll save the world.”
“Haha, now I know you're those alien-bashing idiots.” 
I couldn't believe I'd lost him at such a late stage. Then I remembered, of course, that I had the photos. I had the ones that I'd been holding when the Professor had fired the gun.
“Wait, please believe me.” I said, slipping the document folder out of my pocket. “Take a look at these.”

He shrugged and opened it. Inside was only one photograph, and it seemed very small.
“Is this a joke?” His tone had turned angry.
“What?”
“Have you come here for some... funny reason? A prank?” Now he was turning red.
“I'm sorry, what's the problem?” Twilight asked, trying to calm him down.

He turned the photograph so I could see it. Instead of a grainy picture from the surface of the moon, it was a portrait, obviously taken professionally, of a petite woman.
“You have the cheek to break into my house and steal a photograph of my wife, then try and bring it back to me to get top-secret material?” I had no answer to that.
“Get out!” He shouted, pointing to the door. We left.

On the bus back, Pinkie seemed subdued but said nothing.
“I thought I'd been sent back with the original photos. Something's wrong.” I explained to Twilight. “Without the originals, I don't think we can destroy them and still defeat Nightmare Moon.”
“So what do we do? Just go back to Equestria?”
I shook my head. “If we can destroy the original photograph of his wife, it should still break reality like we want. But now we have to get hold of it.”
“So let's go back and break in.”
“No, something else isn't right. He shouldn't have seen the photos in the first place. We're here later than I'd expected.”

“Oh, yes. Because of the few hours you spent in Ponyville, time will probably have moved about a month.” Twilight said. “I didn't think it would be a problem.”

We got off at the next stop and I grabbed a newspaper from someone's bin. The headline shocked me.
'SPACE MISSION BLASTS OFF TOMORROW'
“Twilight?”
“Yes?”
“We've got about a day to destroy that photo.”

“Where will it be?”
We were now walking around the city looking for somewhere to stay.
“The photo? In his wallet, no doubt.”
“Why?”
“Humans keep photos of their family in their wallets, well, men do. It's just a thing.”
“How do we get to his wallet?”
“Ooh, ooh, I know, I know! Pick mee!”

“Pinkie?”
“We break into his house, kill him, and grab it!”
Twilight was shocked. “No! Why, why would you even say that?”
“Oh, it was in that newspaper. Someone has broken into a house, killed someone, and taken their wallet. I thought that was how you were supposed to do it here?”
“No, very much not.”

We slept in a hotel downtown. Twilight and Pinkie shared a room, because Twilight didn't trust Pinkie not to run off in the middle of the night or something. It was of paramount important that we destroyed that photo, otherwise we would have changed nothing. And now the astronaut was going to be on high alert, which made everything far more difficult.