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Part One: Incompetant Astronaughts2,400 words
Part 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot In The Butt2,532 words
Part 3: Flashing Your Moon5,053 words
Epilogue: A New Job668 words

Part 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot In The Butt

Part 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot in the Butt

Nightmare Moon had discovered that these morons were not the only team on the moon, and set out of observe them as well. It was because of these observation sessions that she discovered that they had used vehicles called 'Lunar Landers' to land on the moon, and when they had finished their task of repairing the damaged areas it would also be the same way they left.

A grin spread across her face. If she could figure out how the Landers worked she could steal one, or perhaps stow aboard one and they'd make her escape from the moon for her! The only problem was, of course, the repair persons themselves. But even that probably would not be an issue because two of the four teams were idiots, which was proven by the destroyed lander she found for Team Moron 2. So I'll need to steal or hide aboard the first group that I encountered...I wonder how hard that would be?

Like most plans with unknown factors, however, it did not happen the way she had intended...

“Oh my Goddess it is a door ubble!” The blue one declared.

“I will take it home and I will feed it and take it for walks and I will name it 'Moon-ee'!”

“Ale ee ns are cool!”

“Hey Blue, is this your mom? Can I ride her?” Green asked. Blue made a gesture with one of his claws that reminded the Nightmare of a certain part of male anatomy.

“What the hell?” White asked, tilting his metal head to one side. “How are you breathing on the moon? There is no air here!” Of course, Nightmare moon could not answer with speech because there was no air to fill her lungs and voice-box with, so she instead turned to one side, facing the planet, and raised a hoof to point at it. “That does not answer my question (dot, dot, dot)”

“I want a pony-ride! These trucks have no horse power!” Purple said, wadding towards The Nightmare.

“No, Purp! It might have Space Rabies!” White objected. Nightmare watched it come close, then frowned and shoved it back with one of her spells.

“Oh my Gawd is has The Force! It is a Jedi-horse!” Purple yelled while floating backward in slow motion due to the lack of gravity.

“No no, it is a Uni-corn, see the horn in it head? It using magic.” White said, pointing a claw at her ivory spike.

“Uni-corns are not real, it is an ale lee n!” Blue objected.

“And Vulcans are Elves that travel in space!”

“Star Trek sucks!”

“No, Jar Jar sucks!”

“Preaching to the choir, boy.” Blue said. Green laughed.

“You are a choir boy? Bet the Cath O Lick priests love you!”

Nightmare moon face-hoofed. This was not at all going the way she'd hoped, though at least they weren't trying to fight her. At this rate I just might bring down the moon to shut these guys up!

“We should take it back to our ship and study it!” White stated. “I will tell the others what we've found.”

“Maybe there are more space horses around and we can open a zoo. It looks like it has wings, so we'll need a rider with a helmet and parachute.” Red said to the others, all of them once more ignoring White, who grumbled while checking the different channels for the other three (or technically two, since the one ship crashed) teams.

An hour later the other groups joined the one Nightmare Moon was walking around with and conversation exploded between them, ranging from stupid stuff to serious. Apparently they'd never seen an Alicorn before, which meant they'd not been to the planet below.

Nightmare Moon smiled. Some of these others seem much smarter than this first group. Perhaps I can reverse the mind-reading spell so I can implant my own thoughts in their minds and communicate with them and convince them to lend me one of their craft-

“Have you guys ever eaten horse?” One of the newcomers with a pink stripe asked the rest of its group. “It is delicious!” A second Red disagreed.

“Uh NO! Horses are for RIDE-ING!” It turned away from the pink one and looked at The Nightmare, and circled her. She watched him, not reacting. “I luv horses, but I ain't never seen a horse like this one.”

“Well it IS an ale lee n, genius.” Pink pointed out. “But what are we supposed to do with it?” Now is my chance! Nightmare Moon realized, and stomped a hoof in the dust a few times. This got the attention of the robots in front of her and she once more turned away from them as she had done before and pointed a hoof at the planet. She looked at them, then looked at the planet, poking her leg at it a few times, and then looked back at them.

“It seems it wants to go to the planet.” White 2 observed. Success! Equestria, here I come! “Too bad we don't have Planet Landers.” Nightmare's left eye twitched. “It is a shame, really. I have not been on a planet for several years and I miss the non-recycled air.”

“We could take the escape pods from the ship down.” The first White suggested. “Set up a distress beacon, and have NASA 2 send some real Planet Landers. We get a vacation, and she gets to the planet.”

“How do you know it's a she?” One of the Reds asked.

“Because she does not have a dick, duh.” another of them stated. Silence reigned between the machines.

“Why are you looking her junk?” The same Red asked.

“It is an ale lee n. I am studyING new life. I will be fame-us.”

“By looking at its junk.”

“I still have determined it is female.”

“Why would we care what gender it is? I am more wonderING why it is alive in a vacuum.”

“More wonderING? You need to learn how to speak!”

“None of us are speaking, it is the row-bot!” Green 1 stated. Oh no, not again! Don't these things ever stop arguing?!

Nightmare moon wanted to weep; first contact with living (sort of) creatures in nearly a thousand years, and all they wanted to do was fool around on the moon, and argue over stupid stuff. Finally, her patience ran out and her eyes glowed white. She focused her magic on the reversed spell for mind reading, and mentally yelled:

“Cease this foalish arguing at once!” The robots froze, and then all turned to look at her. “Thee said thou hath a way back to the planet and could get me there! I command thee, as queen of the night, to do so now! Do this and I shalt forgive your incessant foalishness and allow you to stay in mine kingdom until thine people come for thee!” They stared at her a good minute and twenty seconds longer, and then all began chattering at the same time while running away from her, save for one, who fell over.

“Who spiked mah air tank?!” the first red yelled.

“She's gonna eat meee-ee! She's gonna eat meee-ee!” Green 1 yelled.

“Halt! I mean thee no harm, I merely wish to enlist thine aid in returning to mine home and throne!” Nightmare Moon said, trying to convince them to stop fleeing from her like rabbits from a hungry Gryphon. Her efforts were in vain.

At one point two of the blues crashed into one another and fell to the ground. A pink and a green helped them up, and they began to organize themselves again, each running to form a team of one of each color, and then ran out in four different directions, one of which a nearby lander. No! I can't miss this chance! Galloping as best she could in the low gravity, Nightmare moon reached the lander just as the last robot pulled itself on board and shut the door. No! She pounded on the door with her fore hoofs to no avail, and then to her surprise was pushed back by a brief, but forceful blast of air. Stunned and confused by this, Nightmare Moon shook her head and then widened her eyes as several flames emitted from five holes on the bottom of the lander and pushed the craft up into the lunar sky and out of her reach before she remembered she has magic. What?! They use fireworks to propel their space-faring craft? That's brilliant! I shall have to remember that for when I finally do escape so that- Ack! The other groups! I have to catch them! Nightmare Moon began following the next-closest group, which for a reason unknown to her, was only made up of three members.

“Why are we goING this way? Our ride is totaled.” The Red of their group (Red 3 now, I guess) asked.

“Our ride is dead, but we fixed the shit on the surface, so the planet-watchING place should be workING fine now. We can hide in there until help comes!” Green 3 explained.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. You said 'comes'.” Yellow 3 laughed.

“You are an id-ee-it, Jerald. Is she chasING us?” Red 3 asked. Yellow turned his head completely around, startling Nightmare Moon, but not stopping her. Yes she was, and she was very close to catching up to them.

“Yes she is we are boned!” Yellow replied. “Save me John Madden!”

“John Madden has been dead for over two hundred years and is buried on Earth. Even if he wuz zombie and heard your prayer he'd not get here in time.”

“Wait, why are we runnING? We are controllING row-bots. Just disconnect!” Red 3 said, and then his body froze mid-step and toppled over into the moon dust.

“I feel stupid he is right!” Green 3 agreed, and then his robot also toppled over, followed by Yellow 3.

Nightmare Moon stopped up short, puzzled by their sudden inactivity and examined them. They were no longer moving in the slightest, and the mind-read spell she'd recast after casting the reverse of it to make a complete link detected no mind to read. So either they had spontaneously died- Or a 'robot' is a golem of sorts, which means they're being controlled from another location! But where? Nightmare moon looked up to the skies and searched them with her immortal's vision. For three minutes she saw nothing, but then she very briefly saw a flash of light near (from where she was standing, anyway) the Solaris Stallion constellation’s eye. Gotcha! Her mood rose, then deflated again when she recalled that she was still stuck on the moon. She sighed, and then saw another of the Landers rising into the sky. What am I doing?! I've got to find that last Lander!

– – – – –

Meanwhile, up in the controller cubicles for repair team three, a trio of Humans were waking up with a headache, much like their other three team mates had after the crash.

“Ugh, that sucked! I'll never get used to detaching at long-range like that!” Red 3 groaned, holding his head as it throbbed like the worst hangover he'd ever had.

“We're not supposed to, you know, though I'll agree that it sucks.” Green 3 agreed. “Those robots are expensive to build and maintain, so we're probably going to get chewed out about this later.” Yellow walked out of his own cubicle and sighed.

“I told you, bros.” G3 and R3 joined Y3 and looked at each other, confused as they headed for the door to the commons. “I told you about the moons!”

– – – – –

“Running through final checklist now!” Sally shouted over he panicked crew's chattering voices into her Lander's on-board mic. “We should be taking off in just two more minutes!”

“Don't take any chances! I know we can just disconnect at any time, but there's always some kind of backlash when we lose an arm or something!”

“Really I don't get why we're evacuatING, Robert; it didn't attack us and it only asked for help and even offered us some downtime on its world if we took it home.”

“Think about that for a minute, Sal. It's up here on the moon by itself, and wants to go back to the planet below that it supposedly rules. It has no source of ox-i-gen or any other air for that matter that we could detect that it could breathe, and this is our first encounter with it and yet somehow it knew our language and could tap into our communication channels directly. I don't claim to know what we're dealing with, but something with abilities like that probably did not end up here by accident. In any case, we need to report this findING to head quarters before we take any other-”

The transmission was suddenly cut off and Sally Chang tried desperately to reestablish contact. Frantic that something might have happened to the other Lander Sally stood up from her seat and looked out a window directly into Nightmare Moon's face and, startled, fell back once more into her seat.

“The horse-lady is back!” One of her crew declared, and the others began freaking out.

– – – – –

Nightmare moon focused what little magic she was access to into the robot, and began trying to sense the connection that linked the golem to the controller. It was difficult because of how...alien...the mind and the object being controlled was, but she eventually found what she was looking for and smiled.

“And now, you can't break the link!” She communicated to the one that had first seen her through the window. She smirked as the being tried to disengage the connection and failed, and then set to doing the same to the others. Once finished she walked around from the front windows to the door and politely rapped on the side with a hoof four times. After a few moments she knocked again, this time more insistent.

“Who is there?” the bland monotone voice the golems all shared asked.

“I am Nightmare Moon, Queen of the night and rightful ruler of Equestria!”

“...”

“Nightmare Moon queen of the night and rightful ruler of space-horse land who?” Nightmare frowned.

“You id-ee-it! You are goING to piss it off!”

“A queen is not an it, a queen is a she.”

“Who gives a F(asterisk mark, asterisk mark, asterisk mark) if it is a boy or a girl? Make it go away!”

“Do I look like that black guy from that old movie that talked to animals to you, you dumb ass?”

“No, you look like a can open-er.”

“It speaks English already, we don't need a trans-lator.”

“NO, BUT THOU DOTH NEED TO CEASE BEING RUDE AND ADDRESS ME DIRECTLY LEST I LOSE PATIENCE WITH THEE AND THINE CREW!” Nightmare Moon mentally blasted with the Royal Canterlot Voice. “ALL I'VE WANTED FROM THE START WAS FOR THEE TO GRANT ME PASSAGE HOME! IF YOU INSIST ON DOING OTHERWISE HOWEVER, I AM FULLY CAPABLE ON MAKING THINE STAY HERE PERMANENT!”

The crew of the Lander was silent for a moment, and then finally one of them asked

“Does any body here speak King Arthur?”

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