Nightmare

by Blackdrag-rose

Eight-Nightmare

Nightmare Moon walked down the streets of Las Vegas, her eyes scanning the people she passed, who were looking at her in fear and moved in the immediate opposite direction she was going. That was fine, as anyone who got too close to her was taken down by one of her New Lunar Republic guards. Her entire army was combing the city as she walked around, keeping tabs on Discord while she searched for the vile changeling Queen that had ordered the attack on her caravan.

She knew Chrysalis was in the city and she wasn't going to stop until she got some revenge on the shapeshifting mare.

She was also on the lookout for her runaway Elements, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, but she really wanted to find the runaway guard that had allowed the Elements to be captured. She wanted to grab the traitorous man by his neck, pin him to the ground she walked on, and maybe drop a building on top of him. Or maybe pour lighter fluid all over him and light him on fire, watching him parish in a flaming fireball for all to see. Christan Miller was a dead man to her.

Nightmare looked up at one of the apartment buildings she was going to be walking by and stopped, her eyes catching the glint of pure gold in the window somewhere in the top part of the complex. Or more like four specks of golden light that could only reflect off of one special set of jewelry. Despite what everypony told her Nightmare now knew one thing everypony else didn't; her sister had already arrived in this world and that she was spying on Discord. And now she knew where her sister was.

Without wasting a moment she dashed over to the complex's front doors and knocked whoever stood in her way to the floor so hard she likely bruised them. Some foolish person stepped in front of her, trying to stop the alicorn mare in her tracks, and Nightmare threw magic at them, pinning them to whatever surface they landed on. She had no time to deal with the people around her as she ascended the stairs, either kicking people out of her way or forcefully moving them with her magic.

The one thing she didn't expect to happen was that her guard Tempest, the stallion who had supposedly threatened Christan with death before the war was even over, was following her up the stairs. Normally she would have been angered that one of her subordinates had threatened another with death, but considering that the one he had threatened had defected she didn't care much anymore. She bounced up the stairs, going through the floors until she reached the one she believed contained the room where she had seen the golden specks. They had arrived on the twenty-fifth floor and were welcomed by a long hallway with dozens of doors.

Nightmare began to walk down the hallway slowly, her ironclad hooves hitting the floor with a thud that would surely attract the attention of her sister. Several of the doors opened as they passed, people sticking their heads out to behold the Princess of the Night walk right on by without a word. Some of them closed their doors after she passed, no doubt wondering if the end of the world had come at last, while others came out to watch her search. She stopped at the door numbered 2525, which must have meant the twenty-fifth floor and and twenty-fifth apartment, and found an odd sight.

The door in front of her was slightly open and, even if she could determine if her sister was behind the door, she had to admit the sequence of numbers interested her.

"Tempest," she softly said, as to not alert whoever was in the room to her presence, "I'm going into the room, so be a dear and make sure none of these people come near this door."

Before the stallion could even reply Nightmare charged up her horn and walked right into the room, making sure the door didn't make any noise. The door eased shut behind her, but what she found in front of her made her glad she had stayed silent. Sleeping on the couch, curled up in a ball, was the changeling Queen herself, completely unaware that danger was literally around the corner. Nightmare smiled and summoned up a magical ethereal blade, raising it so she could end one of her enemies in an instant.

"Ah, Luna, you have arrived," said a voice as none other then Celestia, in all her alicorn glory, stepped out from the bedroom and faced her, "Its good to see you again sister."

"Celestia?" Nightmare exclaimed, turning her weapon on her sister, "How did you know I was here?"

"You gave yourself away with your ironclad hooves," Celestia laughed, pointing at the iron bracers her sister always wore, "and I was hoping that you would catch my little slip up with the golden specks. I wanted you, and you alone, to find out where I was hiding in this gigantic city."

"And the changeling Queen?" Nightmare asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Chrissy has allied herself and her Hive with me and my Solar Empire to combat the magic of Discord," Celestia answered, gently shaking her new roommate, "Besides, she needed a place to crash while we gathered the Elements of Harmony and I offered to share what room I had at the moment."

"The Elements," Nightmare growled, realizing she had fallen into a trap, "You plan on turning me back into weak little Luna while you knock Discord out at the same time. You clever mare. I should have known you had a plan."

"Luna, it doesn't matter how many times you try to deny it, but you're still my sister." Celestia replied, sighing as she looked out the window and in the northern direction, "While I want to say that it was my intention to turn you normal again and beat Discord before he became too powerful I simply cannot say that anymore. I'm forced to say that we need the combined power of all four of us to defeat Sombra before he blankets this world in complete and utter darkness."

"Four of us?" Nightmare exclaimed, unbelieving that her sister, foalish as she was at times, was considering what she was saying, "For Faust's sake, please tell me you aren't thinking of allying yourself with Discord."

"True, I was disgusted with the idea when I first thought of it," Celestia admitted, trying to smile and failing, "but we cannot wait for Cadence and her Crystal Guard to arrive in time to fight along side us and the remaining Elements of Harmony are still scattered across the continent. There's no telling when they'll arrive to help fight Sombra or when he'll arrive to declare war on all four of us. At the moment we are sitting ducks, waiting for somepony who is fully armed and ready for war to arrive. Chrissy and I are going to chat with Discord later on and I was hoping..."

"Yes?" Nightmare asked, raising an eyebrow at her sister when she hesitated.

"...I was hoping that you would join us." Celestia finished, in time for Chrysalis to roll off the couch and hit the floor hard, "The Solar Empire has devoted every minute after it's arrival to figuring out how to deal with Discord, just as I'm sure the New Lunar Republic has spent it's time researching how to defeat all your enemies."

Nightmare had to admit, she couldn't fault her sister on this one. Her researchers had spent the last two weeks going over everything each of her enemies could do, from their fighting abilities to their natural habits. They had compiled files on Princess Celestia, Discord, Queen Chrysalis, Princess Cadence, King Sombra, and the Elements of Harmony. She hadn't looked at any of them yet, but seeing how she had one for the tyrant king then she may have something that would help the foalish mares out in the long run. But she could not help but feel like there was something that she was missing at the moment.

"Fine..." Nightmare finally said, sighing as her magical weapon broke apart and her magic died down, "You know that he's going to turn on us the moment Sombra is no longer a threat. We'll be in danger of falling to him. I do hope you realize that Celestia."

"Course she realizes that," a tired sounding Chrysalis said, yawning as she looked up at the two mares, "Morning Tia. I didn't know we were expecting your sister to drop in on us."

"She only just arrived," Celestia replied, her roommate walking around to the counter and looking into the fridge, "I told her we plan on talking with Discord later and she's agreed to come along with us. Which is great seeing how we need all the help we can get at this point in time."

"We have three times the army that Sombra has," Chrysalis yawned again, "not to mention that we'll soon have the Spirit of Chaos on our side. We may be missing the majority of the Elements of Harmony, but our fight with Sombra may give them time to get to us. Would you like some coffee Nightmare? Tia?"

"No thanks," Nightmare growled, staring at her sister while the changeling made coffee for one, "Seriously though, you let the bug call you by my pet name?"

"Yes Luna, I let my roommate call me by the nickname you gave me years ago," Celestia sighed, "Look, you haven't been yourself since we all arrived in this world, which I say is all Discord's fault. I want my fun having sister, the same sister who nearly shut down Nightmare Night the first time she attended it, back on my side. I want to go home, back to Equestria and to my little ponies. I want this entire ordeal to be over."

"Hey Ember," Chrysalis called out to the room, making Nightmare wonder if she was losing her mind, "can you wake up our friends and bring them in here?"

Before Nightmare's eyes appeared a smaller changeling, one of the ones that had likely bombed her caravan a while back, and it went over to the apartment's eastern wall. The changeling simply tapped her hoof on the wall and stepped back, causing Nightmare to lift an eyebrow as the outline of a door appeared on the wall. Before any of them spoke the door opened and another changeling, this one dressed up in a suit of armor, came right out with two mares behind him. Nightmare recognized the two mares almost immediately, seeing how they were wearing the Elements of Loyalty and Kindness.

"Wow wow wow, what's she doing here?" Rainbow Dash said, pointing a hoof at Nightmare, "She imprisoned us in cages and would have left us there to rot."

"I was merely making sure the Elements didn't gather," Nightmare replied, much calmer than what Rainbow was, "but now that I've been told the other four are who knows where I can see I could have done things differently. Sombra is coming and at the moment we need to band together and face him with everything we have...Faust almighty, that sounded like a terrible lie coming out of my mouth."

"We know..." Fluttershy weakly said, though Nightmare heard her just fine, "Princess Celestia informed us as soon as we arrived."

"Ember, Shift," Chrysalis said, noticing something was amiss, "You guys missed one of our guests."

The two changeling looked at each other, seeming to exchange some sort of conversation on their own personal mind set, before they approached the door again. Nightmare assumed that there was another bedroom in that direction, which would have explained why she hadn't seen any people come out of door 2523 or 2527. Her sister had been busy, expanding her room so she could have over any number of roommates without raising any suspicion from the locals. She wondered what else her sister had been hiding from her this entire time in that extra room.

"Ugh, come on guys," said a voice from the room, one that sounded familiar and different at the same time, "I've got a headache, so can we please do this some other time?"

From the tones the changelings were using it sounded like they were also annoyed with whoever was still in the room, almost like he had been drunk the previous night and was only just recovering. After what seemed like a couple minutes of the changelings talking, mostly to themselves as if they were deciding what to do with their guest. Eventually the two changelings emerged from the room, but neither of them really looked happy as another figure appeared in the doorway.

Nightmare was surprised, she honestly wasn't expecting to find Christan Miller in the same room as her sister, but there was something strange about him. For one thing, he hadn't been dressed in the armor of her sister, modified to fit his still human body, the last time she saw him. But Nightmare understood why he was complaining about headaches, there was a long white unicorn's horn growing out of his forehead. The other strange thing was that he had a pair of white angelic like wings, ones that looked almost identical to her sister's wings.

"Luna, allow me to introduce Christan Miller," Celestia said, "or, as he is called by many of the citizens of this world, Prince Shimmering Glory."

"What the hell?" Nightmare exclaimed, "There's another mother bucking alicorn?!"