• Published 20th Feb 2014
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Laughter is Faith - Redric Carrun



In a world where terrifying monsters are not constrained to the bloated Everfree, Pinkie Pie is Princess Celestia's student.

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Chapter 14: Confrontation

“The Elements!” Pinkie called out, as she skidded into a large room with a stone fixture in the center, which had six holders for six stone orbs, all of which were obviously empty. “Gah! Nightmare took them! Where is she?”

“Pinkie!” Applejack cried as Pinkie Pie whipped round and round, looking for some hint of the Nightmare. “Let me off! Ah'm... gonna be sick...”

Pinkie plunked the dizzy farmer down on the stone floor, and grabbed Applejack's head between her hooves to stare her in the eye.

“You're coming along with us, alright?” Pinkie said. “Because it's super important that everything plays out in exactly the right way, or everything will come crashing down on our little pony heads. I take promises very seriously, and I Pinkie Promise that everything is going to turn out alright with your sister, but we need to find Nightmare Moon in the next three minutes, or all of Equestria could be completely-”

There was set of loud thuds, and the sound of stone on stone, rolling against the floor. Everypony turned to find the missing orbs as they rolled to a stop, just before their hooves. And behind the Elements came the pony who had caused them so much heartache that night – Nightmare Moon.

“The Elements of Harmony,” the Dark Princess droned. “Or at least the five of them that survived.” She glanced over the ponies gathered in front of her, who had huddled up together to stare defiantly at her. “I see that my little diversion barely delayed you at all. You can have her back now. She can be of no further use to me. Assuming you kept her alive.”

You did this to our sisters!” Applejack said, stepping forward, advancing on a pony twice her size. “And you're gonna turn them back, or so help me, Ah'll have your mane for bootstraps!”

Nightmare Moon's eyes turned to slits. Applejack found herself suddenly yanked off her hooves, and held suspended by her neck right in front of Nightmare's face.

“Even if I had the ability to undo what the bracelet has done,” Nightmare said in a low tone, “for what reason should I even pause to consider your blustering as a threat? Have you some power, farm mare, that I am not seeing? The Elements of Harmony are as dead as the stones they are made of. If you hoped to use them against me, you had best give up while I still desire your adoration. I feel I won't do so much longer.”

“You can't undo it?” Rarity asked. Nightmare turned to appraise the mare, who flinched under her gaze but kept talking. “But- but can't the bracelet do something about it? If it can fuse three ponies together, can't it also be used to give them their own bodies back?”

Nightmare didn't bother to answer. In the crushing silence, Rarity sank shakily down to the floor, her face awash in agony. With a snort, Nightmare Moon let Applejack drop heavily to the paved stone. The Dark Princess turned to leave the room.

“As I am no longer able to deal with my sister in the way she dealt with me,” Nightmare said, “I find that I have little choice but to end her life. A lesser prison would not contain her for more than a century at best, and I am sure I would grow tired of the endless struggle to keep her in her place. It was my original plan for dealing with her, anyways, back before she managed to surprise me. When I return here, I expect all of you to be gone, or else I shall reached the very limits of my patience.”

“There's no way we're going to let you do that.”

Nightmare blinked. She turned to Twilight Sparkle, whose horn was glowing the the base form of a spell.

“Princess Celestia has led well for the last thousand years!” Twilight said. “Under her rule, Equestria has grown happy and prosperous! We have inventions now, advancements in magical science, which were unthinkable before! Even with the constant threat of monster attacks, we've found ways to work with the creatures of the Everfree and from elsewhere, revolutionizing ponies' lives time and time again, and all of it is thanks to the Princess sticking with us through the hardest times in pony history! We're not going to abandon her now!”

Nightmare Moon hissed, her distaste for the subject overcoming her calm demeanor. She wheeled round upon Twilight, and before the mare could cast whatever spell she had building on her horn, she found it clamped down sharply with an aura of the Nightmare's own magic. There was a flex, and Twilight cried out as hairline cracks ran up and down her horn.

“Vapid zealot,” Nightmare snarled. “You are a sheep, rather than a pony. Shall I mould your horn into that of a ram? I'd like to see you use your precious magic with that atop your head.”

“Tssk,” Pinkie clicked. “There are so many problems with that, Luna.”

Nightmare glared at the pink mare, who was acting oddly aloof. Pinkie gave a flick of her mane, and started bouncing the balance of it in one hoof.

“To start with,” Pinkie said, “rams are male sheep. And last I checked, Twilight Sparkle was a mare.”

“You check-” Twilight started, but Pinkie Pie kept talking.

“And then, also,” Pinkie said, “rams have two horns, one on each side of their head. If you tried to do what you said you were going to do, you'd end up with too few horns in all the wrong places. Frankly, there's just too many things getting in the way for your idea to ever work. Oh,” she added. “And by the time you finished, we would have already ended this Nightmare and gotten everypony to come back with us.”

Nightmare Moon stared.

“You ponies seem to have no sense of self-preservation or common sense,” she said. The aura she was keeping up around Twilight's horn disappeared, and Twilight gave a sigh of pained relief. In the next second, Nightmare's ethereal mane whipped round and knocked Twilight hock-over-head across the room.

“I am Nightmare Moon,” Nightmare stated. “I am powerful beyond your pitiful comprehension. More powerful than the strongest earthpony, pegasus, or unicorn. More powerful than my sister, or any other alicorn. Just tonight, I have teleported an Ursa remotely, altered the shape of time and space, delved into your very dreams and trapped you each in separate, sustained nightmares of your very own, and before all that, I have stopped the very motion of the heavens themselves. After all that I have shown you tonight, what hope could you possibly hold out of accomplishing anything against me?”

Pinkie straightened up and looked Nightmare dead in the eye.

“We're going to use the Elements of Harmony and blast you with rainbows.”

Nightmare struck the ground with a hoof hard enough to splinter the stone, and a bolt of fragmented lighting lanced in through the crumbling roof to strike full on the stone orbs of the Elements. With a shattering crash, the orbs exploded into thousands of tiny stone shards. Behind Pinkie, the others gasped with alarm.

“The Elements are dead,” Nightmare emphasized. “I told you before. There were only five of the six, and now I have destroyed even those useless lumps.”

Pinkie shook her head.

“You can't kill a rock,” she said. “And I found all six Elements back in Ponyville.”

Nightmare's eyes narrowed. Pinkie took a step forward.

“We're going to win, Nightmare Moon. We're gonna take Princess Moon back with us. Not because we're stronger than you, or smarter than you. We're gonna win, because you won't accept the threat we pose to you until right up at the moment where it's too late. And we're gonna win, because we have the Elements of Harmony: Kindness, Generosity, Friendship, Honesty, Loyalty. All of them. We're gonna win, because you're you, and we're us.” She lowered her head and steeled her eyes. “Let me prove it to you.”

“I think we've heard enough out of you,” Nightmare said, readying a bolt from her horn. Quick as an arrow, she loosed the spell at Pinkie Pie. There was an electric hiss as the bolt struck home, and a cloud of smoke enveloped the pink target that obscured the vision of everypony in the room.

Out of the smoke came a voice, firm, resonating, and smelling ever so slightly of cake frosting.

“Fluttershy,” the voice said. “The Element of Kindness, the promise to care about what happens to you because it matters. She came with us into the forest, ready to face down Nightmare Moon herself because she couldn't bear the thought of leaving three terrified fillies in your hooves. Of course, what she could bear was the responsibility of reaching out to an injured Ursa, a creature who could have crushed us all in an instant, and tend its wounds because they hurt. Did you think she couldn't fight you just because she cares about you too?”

The smoke cleared, and the other ponies gasped. Nightmare Moon's eyes widened in shock. Her bolt had failed to reach its target – standing in the line of fire, head low but eyes still gleaming, a smoldering circle on her chest, was Fluttershy.

“I'm not... going to let you hurt any more of my friends,” Fluttershy said. “Not if I... can stop it from happening.”

“Out of the way!” Nightmare commanded, lifting Fluttershy up with her mane and swinging her around behind. “I'll deal with you after I've squashed the pink one like the bug she is.”

Another spell sprang up on Nightmare's brow. But before she could release it, there was a wild battle-cry, and a hoof struck the Nightmare across the face, sending the bolt spinning off into the darkness beyond. Nightmare's eyes flashed with fury as Rarity landed in front of her, still posed from her skillful flying kick.

“Rarity,” said Pinkie Pie, still in the same voice. “The Element of Generosity. The promise that what she has, she'll give away for you. She didn't think she could contribute much to our success, when we first asked her, but she's ended up giving more than anypony else to see this journey through. Not once, but twice, the Toll Frog asked if she would give, and she answered 'yes'. However begrudgingly and filled with hurtful feelings she was when she did it the second time.”

What?” Rarity asked, looking askance at Pinkie over her shoulder. “That loathsome toad demanded a second toll from me, after I had already paid more than enough for our whole party! Are you seriously criticizing my attitude-”

“Enough!” cried Nightmare Moon, striking out at Rarity and crushing her to her knees against the floor with another segment of her mane. “There will be no more mercy! No more interruptions!”

A blast of magic caught Nightmare right on the nose. The puff of smoke that followed cleared to reveal very little damage done, but a very irritated Nightmare Moon stared past the remaining ponies at Twilight Sparkle, who glared in defiance even as the cracks along her horn shone with an inborn power.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Pinkie said. “The Element of Ma- Friendship! Definitely Friendship.”

Pinkie coughed. “The promise to strive to live up to all the things which a friend should be. The promise to make, and keep, all the other promises friends make to each other. Twilight is a bit of a loner. She doesn't need other ponies around to make her happy like the rest of us do. But she understands what friendship is, how we need to work together through the tough times, forgive each other for our differences, and see that we're all the wonderful ponies who became friends in the first place. She kept us from falling apart when my most sensitive secret came to light. You can't scare her anymore.”

With a snarl, Nightmare leapt clear across the room, carrying her captives with her, soaring through the air on her pitch-black wing in an arc straight towards Twilight Sparkle. The unicorn didn't even have time to react as Nightmare crashed into her, knocking her back and adding her to the swirling prison of a mane.

“You struggle,” Nightmare said, “but pretty words are meaningless. No matter how wonderful your friends are, their virtues are no fit substitute for the Elements of-”

But Nightmare broke off. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a movement that she could not explain. She looked, and saw that there was something circling the forms of Fluttershy and Rarity, where they hung helpless in her grasp.

Ringed about them were the myriad shards of the shattered elements. And they were glowing with life.

A noose settled around Nightmare's head, and she was pulled away just as she was beginning to understand.

“Hurry up 'n finish, Pinkie!” Applejack said around the rope she held in her teeth. She galloped around Nightmare Moon, trying to entangle her in the rope's length. “We can't buy you any more time!”

“Applejack,” Pinkie said, voice no faster than before. “The Element of Honesty. The promise, perhaps, that is the most important of all – the promise that promises will be kept. To know oneself, one's strengths, one's weaknesses, to take it all in and choose the path that all others think impossible, but you alone know that you can walk – that firm evaluation is also a form of honesty. And that is what Applejack did when she slipped past the Octospider's web, unharmed, when a futile struggle would have spelled our doom. Trust me, Applejack,” Pinkie smiled. “We made it in time.”

Applejack cried out as the rope burst into dark flame, and she dropped the burning strand to paw at her singed mouth and tongue. In another moment, the farmer too was caught up in Nightmare's grasp.

“You're all out of friends, Pinkamena Pie!” Nightmare bellowed, turning towards the subject of her ire. “They followed you this far, and you used them as a shield. Now, they'll follow you into the afterlife!”

As she spoke, Nightmare charged a blast bigger than any she had fired before. She took aim at Pinkie, and there was a haste to her motions. The shards of the Elements continued to gather.

“Rainbow Dash,” Pinkie said.

With a crash and a bang, a streak of many colors smashed its way through the mighty stained glass window that graced the northern wall, and struck Nightmare Moon dead in the face. The Dark Princess was struck from her hooves, and the hovering blue pegasus grinned down at her from above.

“The Element of Loyalty,” Pinkie Pie said, as calm as if she had expected this all along. “The promise to always look out for you, to do their best for you, to be in your corner when the chips are down. The worst reality your spells could envision failed to make her spirit falter. Did you think the real reality would be any kinder to you?”

“I took care of the fillies, guys! They're waiting for us,” Rainbow said cheerfully, favoring one foreleg as she hovered. “Let's end this thing and go home!”


She froze as an aura of darkness surrounded her. Suddenly, Rainbow was hurled to the side of the room, where she sank down in a daze. Nightmare grabbed onto her and hoisted her into the air with the others.

“That's five,” Nightmare said. Her voice was quieter now, almost as if she were talking to herself. “And the sixth... No. No no no no no...”

Again Nightmare formed a spell atop her horn. Across the room, Pinkie Pie turned to face her. Gently, Pinkie leaned down and set Gummy on the floor. There was nothing left. No one to stop the Nightmare Princess from striking down the one who stood before her.

At the key moment, a drop of sweat slipped into her eye, and Nightmare blinked.

In that moment, Pinkie was across the room and smacked Nightmare Moon's charged and ready horn.

The magic was strong enough that there was feedback, violent feedback in the form of a thaumic explosion. Nightmare fell back, a look of terror on her face. Pinkie's hoof was burnt severely, but Nightmare's spell was spent.

“Pinkie Pie,” said Pinkie, letting her charred hoof drift down beside her. “The Element... of Faith. The promise that the world... is a joke, shared between friends. That, if just we knew the right way to look at things, all would become clear, and we would laugh at how wonderful everything really was, in spite of how dark it all looked. I saw a rainbow one day on a rock farm, and everything changed for me. I was taken away from my family. I never had any friends. But that rainbow gave me something very special, something that's worth all the pain it's caused me. Something I'd like to share with you. With them. With everypony I meet.”

A light from nowhere bloomed and died away above Pinkie's head, leaving behind a jeweled golden tiara, and at the same moment, the fragments that had been orbiting the other ponies came together to form gold necklaces around each of their necks. In each piece of jewelry, that pony's cutiemark was displayed as a beautiful gemstone, each with a different color. The Elements of Harmony were like they had been made solely for this group of friends.

It was too late now to stop what was coming.




“I know the punchline.”



“No!” Nightmare cried, striking out at Pinkie with a steel-shod hoof. The blow caught the pony across the cheek, but Pinkie didn't move. She opened her eyes, and they glowed with an awesome power.

“You can't do this!” Nightmare said, desperate now. She had no grip on the ponies she had, until a moment ago, held captive, as they drifted over to float behind Pinkie. “You mustn't do this! If you strike me down, your precious Princess will be-”

“You're still in there, Luna,” Pinkie said. An enormous rainbow of power rocketed out from the combined forms of the six Bearers of the Elements. It circled high above, near the ceiling, and Nightmare watched her doom with horror in her eyes.

“Come back to us.”

And the rainbow crashed down upon them all.


“I can't believe it! I'm healed!”

Rarity laughed joyfully as she pranced around in a little circle, reveling in the return of her beautiful horn.

“I'm healed!” She said. “We're all healed! Look at you,” she said, rushing to Fluttershy's side. “Oh, you were so brave, Fluttershy. And now it's all over. We've won!”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said. She slowly dragged herself up from where she had found herself lying on the floor after the rainbow had fired. Carefully, she dragged a hoof through the fur where Nightmare Moon had shot her. “I am healed. That's wonderful.”

“My horn is safe!” Twilight cried. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you all that's holy! My horn is safe, my magic is safe, my horn is safe...”

“Did you expect anything else, Twilight?” asked Rainbow Dash. “Of course everything worked out alright. Nightmare Moon had nothing on us,” she said, preening herself on their victory.

“The fillies?” Applejack said, pulling herself to her hooves. “You said you took care of the fillies, Dash? What'd you do to get them off your tail?”

Rainbow flinched guiltily. “Now, look, Applejack,” she said, backing away slowly. “Don't get mad alright? They're totally fine, it's just I had to think of some way to trap 'em quickly, and the only thing I could think of was-”

A huge, drawn out gasp interrupted her as Pinkie shot up into a sitting position, breathing heavily and sweating massive drops of fluid.

“I can't believe that worked!” Pinkie cried. “That was- the single- biggest wild hunch I've ever run on! OHHHhhhh...”

“Wait, what?” Rainbow asked. “Then what was all that about you knowing what was going to happen?” Her eyes widened. “You sent us on a quest for something you barely even knew existed, and all this time, not even you knew if it would-”

NOOOO!

A strange voice cut everyone off. Everypony turned to look at the source of the noise, and there in the middle of where the blast had gone off, amid the steaming wreckage of Nightmare Moon's armor...

Was a young, night-blue alicorn.

“Sister!” She cried. “Celestia!”

Silence echoed throughout the castle. The alicorn broke into tears, and began to sob uncontrollably into her hooves.

Slowly, Pinkie got up and approached the strange new pony.

“What's the matter, Luna?” Pinkie asked.

The others gasped at the revelation, but Luna looked up at Pinkie with tears in her eyes.

“Why did you not listen?” Luna asked. “Why... why did I do it? Why did I take such steps to steal away my own happiness, if I were to be struck down? Why? …”

“Luna,” Pinkie repeated. She knelt down next to the former Nightmare Moon, and squeeze her hoof between her own. “What's wrong? You can tell me. I promise, I'll make it better.”

Luna gulped, choking on her own tears. Then she wailed.

“I've killed my own sister! My sister is dead because of me!”

“Oh no, no no no,” Pinkie said hurriedly. The others began to come closer. “No you didn't, Luna. I made very sure to stop you before you could do anything you couldn't take back.”

“You saved me.” Luna nodded tearfully. “But I outwitted myself! I set a trap, so if Nightmare fell, at least... at least Celestia would not... would not...”

“It was an excellent try, Luna. But it seems you lost this time.”

Everypony's heads jerked up at the new voice, the regal, warm and loving voice of Princess Celestia, where the Princess stepped silently in from a passage that none of the ponies of Pinkie's Party had had the chance to travel down. Pinkie's face lit up with the biggest grin that she could manage. Never, in all of her life, had she ever heard such joy in the Princess' voice as at that moment.

“Perhaps that is something we can all celebrate,” Celestia said, smiling, with tears in her eyes. “When we get back home. I have so many things to show you.”

Sister!” Luna cried, bounding across the room to embrace the alicorn mare, who stood at twice her height. “Tia, I... I...”

“Luna,” the Princess breathed. Together they collapsed to the ground in a tight embrace, from which it seemed they might never part.

A drip of something hot fell across the back of Luna's neck.

She looked up into Celestia's face, and gasped at what she saw there.

“Sister!” she said. “You're bleeding!”

“It's nothing,” Celestia said shortly. She leaned back up and stared Luna in the eyes. “I had to do something a little desperate to escape, but there's no need to worry. It's nothing that will not pass.”

Behind Luna, Twilight gasped at a sudden revelation. “Your horn!” she cried. “Princess Celestia, your horn is gone!”

Luna quivered. Shuddering, she buried herself in Celestia's chest, and the larger Princess wrapped her wings around her sister.

Pinkie zipped off down the corridor Celestia had come in from. In a few moments, she was back with an ice chest in her hooves.

“I've got the horn!” she said. “Quick, quick, I know a doctor in Ponyville! If we hurry, maybe we can-”

“I doubt a doctor could help me with that, Pinkie,” Celestia said softly. “I cast a spell to free myself from those bonds, very hard and very fast. The horn-ring I was kept in is very unforgiving. I would imagine what remains of the horn is... rather fractured.”

Everypony glanced at each other, and everypony saw everypony else had a sickly look on their face.

“What's gonna happen?” Rainbow asked. “Who's gonna raise the-”

“The Elements!” Pinkie cried. “The Elements healed us. Maybe we can use them to heal you, Princess Sunsun!”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. Rainbow smacked Pinkie in the back of the head.

“Don't give the Princess nicknames!” she cried.

“Oh, come on, Dash!” Pinkie whined. “You won't let me do it with you, so who else am I supposed to try it on?”

Anypony else,” Rainbow said. “Anypony at all.”

“If you think you can get the Elements to work,” Celestia said, “then feel free to try. But somehow, I think I will have to suffer through this the old fashioned way.”

“Quick, everypony!” Pinkie said. “Think harmony thoughts!”

Everypony scrambled to do their best, watching their necklaces with keen interest.

But nothing happened.

Celestia sighed. “It's just as well,” she said finally. “I was just thinking how much of a blessing it actually is that my horn is gone.”

WHAT?!?” Twilight cried, at the same time as Rarity asked, “what do you mean a blessing?”

“Well, without my horn,” Celestia said, looking down at her younger sister, “there will be very little choice but to welcome my sister's return. Unless the unicorns want to once more take up the burden of moving the Sun and Moon.” Celestia smiled faintly. “It works so well... why, it's almost as if I planned it all out from the beginning.”

“We have to welcome her?” Rainbow asked, pointing an accusing hoof at Princess Luna. The Princess shrank back against the warmth of her sister. “Did you see what she did to those kids? Did you see what she did to us, over and over again? What she did to you? You want we should just forget all of that and be friends?”

“Not forget,” Celestia said. “Forgive.” She nuzzled at Luna's back, but the younger sister was very still. “Nightmare Moon was another life. If you find it in your hearts to not hold it against my sister, I have every confidence that you will find somepony worthy of anyone's love and respect.”

Fluttershy stepped up slowly to Luna's side. Celestia let one wing slide down, and Fluttershy gently laid a hoof on Luna's back. Luna looked up in surprise. Hesitantly, Fluttershy smiled at her.

“That's real great,” Applejack said. “You got your sister back. Now, what was it you were tryin' not to say to me about my sister, Rainbow Dash?” Applejack asked, cornering the flying hunter.

“Ah,” Rainbow said, looking very uncomfortable. “Well, uh... w-we're just gonna have to pick them up on the way back. I left them tied up, uh, just inside the Everfree Forest.”

“The Ever-” Applejack choked. “You left them inside the Everfree Forest?!?”

“Hey! It's cool,” Rainbow said hurriedly. “They'll be just fine. There's nothing there that's gonna seek them out, now that Nightmare's gone, alright? I made sure of it.”

Applejack grunted. “Let's just hurry up and fetch 'em, and be on our way back to town.”

Princess Celestia looked down at where Princess Luna was hugging her fiercely, the thousand-plus year old mare looking like a small child, like Celestia barely remembered maybe having once seen her. The form was unfamiliar, but the warmth she felt flowing from her sister's heart could not be mistaken.

“Yes,” the Princess said softly. “Let's go home.”