Fourteen years earlier…
Canterlot
The young trainee for the Royal Guard sat and played with his hooves nervously.
He could hear yelling coming from the closed door to his right. Behind the door lied his fate, the one answer he had been waiting for ever since he was attacked by his own guards for an act he could not remember committing.
It was the training grounds…earlier that same morning…
The voices…
For the first time in years, they had taken control.
Did it matter? We showed the princess how capable we are of fighting! She’ll want us in the guard for sure! A voice in the stallion’s mind, it spoke to him in the dimly lit hallway.
But…at what cost? Another voice spoke up. This one was weak and meager. You saw what we did to our fellow guard…we…we…
Buck him! Only the strongest make it into the Royal Guard! We proved that!
They screamed at us… The princess saw us…and what we did… She was horrified.
She just finally saw a true fighter for once, not like those spineless ponies that dare try to sign up for her personal guard!
Noctune slammed his hooves into his face, squeezing his eyes as tight as he could.
“Shut up…” he breathed, a mixture of sweat and tears falling from his face. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
What are you so scared about? The angry voice came back. Noctune opened his eyes.
It spoke again. Noctune had no control anymore.
We lost everything, unless you’ve already forgotten! Our parents are dead, our older brothers dumped us off the first chance they got, and that so called “marefriend” of ours kicked us out the apartment we paid for!
Celestia…I loved her. I told her I could change…but she didn’t believe it.
Stop being so weak! That bitch never cared about us! What were the last words she said to us before she slammed the door in our face…? Oh, yeah! “You try to work hard, Noctune, but you’re not good at anything! You have no future serving under Princess Celestia! You don’t even have a destiny! You’re only destined for failure, Noctune, and I can’t have you dragging me down with you."
“I’m not destined for failure,” Noctune whispered, bringing his eyes forward and gazing longingly at the poster in front of him. It was a Royal Guard recruiting poster, asking ponies to stand up and join the finest fighting force under the ruler of Equestria.
Earlier that morning…
Oh Celestia.
“But I am afraid of what’s behind that door…”
Six hours earlier…
Canterlot Training Grounds
He gave it his all in training. Everypony saw him, everypony gawked at him, everypony was afraid of him. They should be. He aced the archery station, tore apart the dummies with just one sword in less than seven seconds, and accomplished every obstacle in under record time.
Captain Bronze Heart kept an especially close eye on the dark brown stallion tearing it up in the obstacle course. Nopony came close to his times.
It was fantastic. Captain Bronze Heart knew for a fact that the newest recruit would be a shoo-in for Celestia’s personal guard. How could he not? With his incredible times, excellent swordsmanship, and surprisingly good archery skills—especially for an Earth pony—Bronze Heart knew he was going to make it.
But…that’s when disaster struck.
It was the time of the day where Captain Bronze Heart overlooked the hoof to hoof combat training session. Young recruits were meant to wrestle one another inside the red circle, and whoever fell out or gave up first lost. It would determine mental and physical toughness amongst the fellow recruits, and see who was able to conquer a fight against a pony of equal or greater strength.
Noctune, of course, was the first to step into the circle.
At first, nopony stepped forward. Bronze Heart sent an angry glare towards the other recruits, ordering the biggest one to step into the circle and face Noctune. He paid close attention for what came next. If Noctune could beat the stallion, then he has more than proved himself.
Noctune beat him. He beat him until his mouth was filled with blood, his bones were broken, and his mind was close to slipping into a coma.
That’s when Bronze Heart knew Noctune took it too far.
He strangled the large stallion with his dark foreleg, the recruit’s eyes nearly popping out of his skull and his face a dark purple, desperate for air. Bronze Heart yelled at him to stop, but he would not listen. A sickening snap was heard. The other recruits screamed.
The captain had no choice. He shot Noctune with an energy beam and allowed two guards to hold him down.
By then it was already too late. Medical staff raced out onto the field, checking the wounded stallion while Noctune simply watched with his face in the dirt. The medical pony stared into the captain’s eyes, her expression grim.
“He’s dead.”
The look on Bronze Heart’s face matched perfectly with the princess’.
Noctune looked up from the dirt, noticing Princess Celestia herself watching from the high podium. She looked at him with eyes as horrified as the other recruits on the field. Noctune kept on staring at her, his mind lost with the voices screaming at one another. He smiled at her from the dirt, a smile far too sickening for a pony to make.
They took him to the dungeons after that…forced him to wait until they called him back to the captain’s office. They forced him to wait as they cleaned the blood off the field.
“Noctune!”
The commanding voice of Bronze Heart bellowed from behind the door like a beast screaming deep down in Tartarus. Needless to say Noctune was practically shaking, his fate only reeling towards one end. An end he could see clearly.
As he stood from the chair and slowly entered the office room, Noctune could already imagine what was planned for him. Public whipping, burning at the stake, banishment to the moon, eternity in the Canterlot dungeons, whatever it was Noctune just wanted to get it over with.
He could barely stand with Captain Bronze Heart glaring at him from behind his desk.
Noctune breathed in through his nose, forcing himself to stare into Bronze’s eyes. His mind may be broken and terrified like a lost child, but his pride would stay strong no matter what punishment he was going to receive.
He stood up straight, puffed out his chest, and asked, “Yes, sir?”
His captain glared at him for a few moments more, finally sighing and checking the documents lied across his desk. He laid his hoof over a particular file, lifting up his eyes towards the dark brown stallion.
“Why did you do it?”
Noctune didn’t answer at first. He stumbled over his words, his eyes eventually falling towards his hooves. He brought his eyes back towards his captain, noticing how grave he looked. The heavy bags under Bronze’s eyes only added to the sinking feeling in Noctune’s heart.
He opened up the file with his magic, slamming his hoof so hard on the paper that it made a dent in the wood beneath it.
“Was it the other personalities that caused you to kill him?!” he practically screamed, demanding an answer.
Noctune began to break. His forelegs were shaking at uncontrollable levels, and his breathing became spastic. It was all he could do to stop from shedding tiny tears, his heart wrenching at the thought. He killed him. He killed a pony.
And he hardly remembered doing it. Hardly.
“I…I-I don’t…”
“Listen, Noctune,” Bronze Heart interrupted, pointing to the file in front of him. “I know everything, and so does Celestia. I told her everything. The medical records, the episodes, the voices, they all point to one thing and one thing only. What I saw out there wasn’t the stallion who waited all night to be the first in line to sign up for the recruiting station. What I saw out there wasn’t the pony who worked his flank off to be the top recruit!”
Bronze Heart stood up from his chair, both of his hooves planted into his desk.
“What I saw out there was a mentally unstable pony that should’ve never signed up.”
Noctune finally found a voice. He took a few cautious steps forward, looking his captain in the eyes as his own began to burn.
“I’m sorry! It’s just that I was trying so hard to impress the princess that I trained all night last night and I forgot to take my pills! If it was me out there I would’ve never…done that…but it wasn’t me! It was somepony else!”
“The voices…?” Bronze asked. Noctune nodded once, bringing up his hoof to wipe his eyes. Bronze Heart sighed once more, lying back into his chair.
“Be that as it may, the family of the deceased stallion still wants to see you in court, and Princess Celestia herself approved of it and will be appearing as a witness,” Bronze explained, noticing the loss of color in Noctune’s face. He continued. “All evidence will be legit, you’ll be found guilty of ponyslaughter, be fined, and placed in prison for ten years.”
“But…b-b-but I can’t afford the fine, and I can’t go to prison, either! Please, sir, you have to vouch for me, tell them that I have mental conditions and I didn’t know I was killing him!” Noctune practically begged, his eyes now full of tears.
Captain Bronze shook his head throughout Noctune’s rambling. All the breath was taken from Noctune’s lungs with Bronze’s next choice of words.
“I don’t train guards to cry, Noctune, and even if I vouched for you it would be meaningless. Even with your conditions you still killed the stallion, and all the other recruits were witnesses including me and the princess. There are no exceptions for this crime. I’m sorry, but you’re going to go to prison. I have no say in the matter.”
He stood up from his chair, walked around his desk and stood in front of the weeping stallion. Noctune barely looked up at him, but he was close enough to feel the heated stare he received from his superior. It was incredibly intimidating, and Noctune backed down.
He felt a hoof rest on his shoulder.
“Get your things packed and head back home. Your court hearing will be two weeks from now.”
Noctune finally forced himself to look up at his captain. Through it all, he would still be his captain. Through it all.
“I have nowhere else to go, sir,” Noctune told him, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
Bronze offered a little smile. “Then you can stay in the castle until then.”
He had served his sentence, paid his dues, and now lived a life too shattered to rebuild.
Just as expected, he was guilty of ponyslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison. In that time, locked away like a beast from Tartarus, Noctune finally lost it. The voices overtook him, consumed him, and changed him inside and out.
Inside his own cell, Noctune’s mind far too broken to control finally found a meaning. The ponies that betrayed him, that knew of his condition and betrayed him anyways, they would suffer. Be it in ten more years, twenty more years, or even fifty more years. Noctune didn’t care. In his lifetime, Princess Celestia was going to pay.
They were all going to pay.
A year later after he was freed, Discord returned for a second time and aliens attacked Canterlot. Noctune didn’t care. The world was losing its mind over the aliens in Equestria, but did anypony lose their minds when Noctune offered his own discovery?
He had seen them before anypony else. The aliens.
And he would use them to his advantage.
So in the past, Nocturne seemed to be suffering from some form of multiple personality disorder. He keeps hearing voices in his head, one who's weak but shows some form of compassion and regret while the other shows a dominant, ruthless and aggressive side. He let his dark side take over and it ended up getting him in jail for slaughtering a Royal Guard Trainee. In his sentenced time, the dark voices began to consume him, locking away everything that might have held some good in him, turning him into the monster he is today. And he blames everypony including Celestia for his condition, even though it's his own fault he can't control the voices, and swore revenge on them.
I bet that when he first saw the Transformers when they first arrived on Equestria, he must've been fascinated by their weapons and technology that he thought he could somehow use that to further his goal for revenge, the AAA must've been nothing more than an mask to hide his true intentions. But even lust for power has a cost. It is like a poison that takes over and before you know it, it turns you into something ugly. What's to say that the Dark Spark has amplified that dark voice of his further, further down that it would seem that voice came from the very essence of Unicron himself.
Nocturne is following down the same path Megatron went down. If he doesn't stray from this path soon, it may bring his kind to extinction and Equestria may become the next Cybertron.
part of me almost felt sorry for the guy.....almost
Should I make a Gollum reference? Or a Two-Face reference? Green Goblin? Mr Hyde?! WHO DO I CHOOSE?!
I have a feeling this is going to come up in a later fight.
There is only possible culprit for the voice...Lord Unicron. God of Chaos, Death, Evil and Destruction.
Also:
off the first chance they got,
Y'know, The obvious fact was that Noctune was an expy of Harold Attinger, but this makes it much clearer that he's also an expy of Megatron
Perhaps if Twilight finds out about his harsh past, she might try to help turn him around.
Sooo nocturne change into a mad killer.Works for me!
If this was the case, then whats the whole point of going to trial? The fact that Celestia knew about his condition before he became the head of the AAA and didn't do anything. Instead of sending him to mental institution to get the treatment he needed(like how it's suppose to be in the world.) she had him go to prison where he got worse. So once again all this was her own fault, just one of the many many MANY mistakes she's made. So all this chaos and blood is on her hooves. Once again, I have no choice but to side with Noctune on this one.
Well, Celestia was lenient, if my OC had been present he would have burned him alive while tearing his guts out of his body as he slowly sanke into the ground to become one of Tempest's personal skeleton warriors. Yeah, no mr nice pony here, lol.
Still saying this-
Burn Heretics, Nocturn and all who follow! From me you shall get no sympathy, no mercy to the foul traitors that we shall purge and make an example of! Burn!!!
So Noctune was a mentally unstable pony who joined the guard but accidentally killed a pony, was fined, imprisoned for 10 years, got his mind warped by the dark side, and now this whole time he wants to make others pay for his imprisonment for a crime he can hardly remember and even though he has all this power he truly had nothing? Wow, my opinion of him and his fate have changed..
5835558 maybe i will
5833837 People make mistakes everyone does things like this happen.
5835567 It's not the killing that's the problem its the ruthless slaughtering.
Nocturne can get killed by something else Optimus would never kill a pony no matter what.
5835558 Christ mate whats wrong with you?
I just realized that Shockwave waking up on Cybertron is similar to something called the Great Shutdown. By the way, now that I see Noctune like this, I think he should die from something else and in a more honorable way.
5831340 You find the perfect songs for everything. Awesome comment!
5831396 Me too.
5831472 cdn.meme.am/instances/57929701.jpg
5831843 Thanks for catching that minor error!
5832011 Maybe. Let's find out together!
5832575 It's for the good of society, I swear!
5833837 Everything happens for a reason, I guess.
5835083 ...Jesus.
5835531 Yay! I hope it was good!
5836662 Oh, my Celestia, you're right!
Well, ahem, here I go...
"Celestia's my friend... You don't have any friends! Nobody likes you!"
"The only way to get by in this world is to get ourselves some respect. Fear! That's how we get respect! Show them how we do things! We should be fair though... This is a place of friendship after all. Screw friendship! Kill Celestia then they'll all fear us!"
"The heart, Nocture! First we attack her heart!"
"O my poor old Nocturne, if ever I read Discord's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."
[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBzQonHXOI]
This is Noctune's theme:
Noctune's backstory was well written.
5836662 Ask my girlfriend...catching minor errors is all I do!
5836662 Thanks! I felt it was fitting given this chapter's plot setting.
Primus almighty, may the Matrix make it safely back into the Last Prime's possession. And that the true leader of freedom, tolerance, and justice shall bring true Hell upon those that wish for total domination. "Till all are one."
Allies, fight in this Darkest Hour, and bring forth the Brightest Day. Enemies, perish in agony, for freedom is the right of all sentient beings. All Decepticons and those who follow them will face the wrath of Primus through Optimus Prime.
The Decepticons will be shown no mercy...
5839482 HA!
5841341 I give no mercy to those that hurt Twily.
5841533 As soon as Optimus Prime recovers from his amnesia... the Decepticons better hope they've made peace with the Allspark...
Wait a minute, where's Grimlock?
5841533 Make sure Noctune burns for this
And Shockwave to
Holy crud, basically he’s Harold Attinger.
So he’s always been unstable like this. No wonder he gets along with the Decepticons so well.