Act 3 Chapter 41: Nightmares All The Way Down
"The great villains of the past occupy a unique niche in Equestria's culture. Some have claimed that we are beyond the age of true villains, like Sombra or Nightmare Moon; in their eyes such beings could never return and live only to haunt the dreams of children. Many would argue that simple absence from the public eye is evidence enough that these creatures are obsolete.
Wiser minds have since asked if it might not be evidence that the villains of the modern age have become more resolute, more cautious, and more insidious. Gone are the cartoonish beasts who struck at society with ridiculous costumes, replaced by creatures of patience and intelligence, who would rather have control than fear. Boardrooms have replaced dank caves or fortresses. Podiums have replaced castle balconies.
Robber barons may, on the surface, seem less dangerous to society than the changeling queens or magic-eating centaurs, but given time we may wish we'd turned a few more businessponies to stone."
- The Scholar
“What was it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“You just put on one of the most dangerous magical artifacts in the whole history of Equestria. She could control ponies’ minds and whisper in their dreams. She beat Princess Celestia in magical combat, and without the Elements, Princess Celestia might have had to call down the sun on the former capital to drive her back. The only others who’ve worn it are Princess Luna and Astral Skylark.”
“So you want to know what it was like? For posterity?”
“I-I guess...I mean, it’s not as though I’ll ever get to ask two ponies as crazy as you are.”
“Honestly? It was heavy, stuffy, and it smelled like thousand-year-old alicorn flop sweat. That’s all I remember before everything went sideways.”
“That’s it? Heavy, stuffy, and scared alicorn?! I can’t write that!...And how do you know what alicorn flop sweat smells like?”
“Well, in particular, it smells like burnt blueberry muffins. The only other time I smelled it was around...ahem...the only other alicorn of my acquaintance, when she was having a panic attack.”
“That...I...ugh! Do you have to be infuriating?”
“Until this morning, I tended to spend the first five minutes out of bed sitting there contemplating what a bullet would taste like. If I didn’t have somewhere to stuff that energy, I might get just as curious as you are. Can I get this over with? We’ve got places to be.”
“Right. Sorry I asked. If you save the world and Princess Celestia or Princess Luna reward you, please have them get the royal psychologist to see you once a month.”
“After what happened next, I’ll be inclined to take them up on that...”
----
For a very long time, nothing happened. I just was, a mote of sensation in infinite numbness. Taxi conned me into using a sensory deprivation tank at one of those swanky spas once. It was terrifying, trapped, alone in the dark with only my own thoughts and the soft lapping of water against the sides. She told me I was in there less than five minutes before bucking the door of the hinges. I’d have sworn it was twenty years.
Panic swelled, then subsided.
More runes appeared, flashing across my vision.
Memory... failure!
Remote... failure!
Slave access... failure!
Interface... ready.
In that moment, when the green lettering flickered out, I was left with the sensation of being a molecule of exotic matter under close examination by a creature that tears planets from their orbits for fun. Surrender was irrelevant; survival was well and truly off the table. It turned over my mind like a bulldozer rolling over an anthill and peered at each piece with distant amusement.
I’d have given the world to get out from under that gaze. If such a being had eyes, they’d have been stars, gazing icily into the depths of my being. I could feel every gallon of blood my body had ever pumped, analyzed with an unnatural interest. I felt the first beat of my heart in my mother’s womb, criticized with rank amusement. My rotting skin as it peeled from my body after several weeks in the grave was casually toyed with. I became a puzzle to be assembled, disassembled, then torn apart again and again by a godlike being far beyond my comprehension.
Madness swept down and clapped itself around my wide-open, bleeding brain, and I was sent spinning through endless black, where every possibility, every death I had ever casually dodged came true in an instant.
Discarded. Returned. Bled. Broken. Insane.
Nothing left. Pelt peeling. Brain ripped.
Death. Life. Death. Again and again. Round and round the mulberry bush.
Then, all at once, everything paused. It didn’t stop, so much as seemed never to have been there in the first place. My will was my own again. The sense of violation was still there, but muted, like a memory of past pain.
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath.
It took a long minute to figure out the familiar surroundings, but when I did, a smile crossed my face. I was in my old apartment. The radio was playing a snazzy tune and I was sprawled on my back, all four legs in the air, a beer bottle cradled in the crook of my knee. My mouth tasted pretty awful, but it was nothing a toothbrush couldn’t fix. Outside, children were playing some silly game, maybe hoofball, maybe baseball, or maybe some combination of the two. It seemed to mostly be a game of who could scream the loudest.
Carefully so as to avoid knocking over one of the three bottles beside my knees I rocked myself onto my side, which brought me muzzle to muzzle with an extremely surprised-looking black alicorn. She’d been curled up on the floor between the couch and the table, her magnificent wings folded against her sides, and her huge body surrounded by even more bottles. We studied one another. She was rather pretty, in a sort of alien fashion, but something in the set of her jaw and the cruel slant of her eyebrows made my guts squirm. It was not helped by the forebodingly familiar armor she wore that fit her like a glove.
Both of us let out a yelp of alarm and scrambled back from one another.
I kicked a foreleg and snapped at the air, feeling my revolver’s trigger materialize in my teeth. A second pair of wings, their surfaces covered in rotting feathers, sprouted from her back and flung a spray of maggots across the room. I leveled my gun at her as she leapt for my throat with a mouth full of ten thousand teeth, ready to rend me to shreds and send me spiraling back into that abyss where her domination was all there was.
No.
Everything paused.
You two behave, or next time there will be custard!
I opened my eyes, more slowly this time, and stared up at the ceiling. The tune on the radio was something a bit calmer, now Out of the corner of my vision, I could see a black blob of amorphous shadow, crouching beside the coffee table. I eased my shotgun’s barrel out of the neck of my coat and nudged it sideways. The slide was already cocked. All I had to do was get it pointed in her general direction. At this range, I couldn’t miss.
All at once, the shadow moved, slithering toward me and simultaneously spreading a dozen ooze-dripping claws to rip the flesh from my body. Rolling over, I tossed a pillow from the end of the couch to distract it while I brought the gun’s up, just as the creature jumped.
Everything paused.
I felt the couch under my back again and heard the soft rhythm of an alicorn’s breathing, as well as the sharp intake when she realized we were back to square one.
I tasted custard.
Cracking one eye, I stared up at something yellow. Turning my head, I looked down to find a bright yellow lump sitting on the floor with only her teal eyes and black horn visible. I swiveled my head down to look at the mess on my chest. It was a pretty thorough layering of dessert and covered every inch of my apartment, streaking the walls and dripping off the fixtures. Bringing a hoof to my muzzle, I sucked a bit off the tip.
Banana, hint of cinnamon, and maybe even some mango.
‘Pretty good,’ I thought. ‘Tastes like that one pie I had back when Juniper and I bagged the Trinity Street Killer in the back of that old diner.’
In fact, it tasted precisely like that pie, down to the tangy notes and aluminum aftertaste from the pan.
Nightmare Moon stuck her tongue out and swiped her muzzle clean, smacking her lips before rising like a dessert drizzled mountain to tower over me.
“Creature! What have you done to us?! Speak!” she demanded, that shiver-inducing voice rising to an imperious snarl. Her considerable intimidation factor was badly muted a bit by the stringy mess the custard had made on her wings and legs.
Rolling over, I pulled my hooves under myself, trying to stand. I slipped, planting my nose into the nearest pillow with a wet squelch. Moving more cautiously, I slid back onto my haunches, using a foreleg to smear as much away from my eyes as I could.
“I have no idea,” I grunted, then cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re Nightmare Moon...right? We’re in my mind, aren’t we? Isn’t your job screwing with pony’s brains?”
“You dare ask me questions, little stallion?! You are nothing! Ripping the fabric of your mind apart is as easy as smashing this dream!”
Twirling in place and slinging custard like a wet dog shaking off on the carpet, she let out a terrifying howl of rage, then charged to the nearest wall and swung around to buck it as hard as she could.
Now, if it’d been the paper-thin crap in my old apartment, that end of the building should have had two alicorn-shaped hoofprints right through to the exterior. Dreams, as it turns out, are made of sterner stuff. The second her hooves hit the wall, a recoil shot up her legs and sent her barrelling forward onto her face, flopping end over end until her back slammed into the coffee table, snapping the table’s legs like kindling. Her sides heaved, a furious growl boiling in her throat, but she made no move to get up.
“Ow…”
“I know I’m going to regret this, but...are you alright?” I asked.
The alicorn let out an angry snort. Her rear legs twitched, but seemed none the worse for wear. Spreading one dark wing, she slapped it against the floor in a gesture of frustration and mumbled something, but I didn’t quite catch it.
“Sorry, I missed that. I asked if you were alright.”
Shoving herself onto her stomach, she whirled to glare at me, spitting a gob of custard on the carpet. “I heard you, stupid stallion! It is not my fault your feeble little mind is also hard of hearing! And what I said was ‘I am supreme in the mind!’ I broke Princess Luna in a matter of months! I cannot be...be rendered helpless by the likes of some wretched little worm! I felt your psyche splinter! I had you in my clutches! After all these months and years of waiting, I...blast you, I had you! You were mine!”
“So that’s what all that crap when I first put on the hat was?” I asked.
Stomping a forehoof she clenched her teeth. “Helm, fool! It is not a hat! It is a vessel for my power! Now! Tell us the secret! How have you evaded our predictive matrix?! This feeble mind of yours cannot contain my greatness! You will release us from this dreamscape, at once, else you will surely die!”
Sliding down off the couch, I shrugged out of my custard-slicked trenchcoat and set my hat on the end table. Stretching my legs, I reached up to touch my chest, only to find it smooth and unmarred by my heart’s plug; strange, really, since I’d had more than a few dreams which included it.
“Well, since I don’t know how we ended up in here, I can’t exactly get you out, now can I?” I replied, using two hooves to wring my tail out. “You want a beer? I think I remember having some in the fridge before this place was destroyed.”
Nightmare Moon’s wings snapped out from her sides, and she threw her mighty chest out. “A beer, little stallion?! How can you be so calm?! I tore your mind to pieces! I am a goddess! I foresaw all that came before, up to the instant you placed my helm upon your brow!”
“Foresaw? Like precognition?” I asked, then shrugged. “That would certainly explain some things.”
“It is not soothsaying, fool! I perceive the paths of events at speeds your pathetic, brittle little neurons cannot conceive of! Now...release me, or invoke my wrath again!”
I stood there, my hooves coated in congealing custard, staring at the beast they called the Blackest Night, panting and twitching like a detoxing Beam user. She was about as good at hiding her emotions as Swift, and underneath all that bluster, I could see a hint of actual fear. Her ears were twitching back and her black tail, a sweeping ethereal shadow, slashed back and forth in the air behind her. There were even a few frustrated tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.
“Sorry, doll,” I grunted, “Wish I could help, but I’m not the one calling the shots in here.”
Nightmare Moon drew in a gigantic breath, and I all but felt my ears blasted back by the volume of her rage.
“Y-you...dare! Your impaled body will decorate my halls! I shall build my throne from the flesh and bones of that vile pegasus, and drink from the skullcap of that cab pony, and you will live to see them suffer! You will live in an eternal firestorm of agony, until I tire of watching you burn and freeze you instead! There will be no succor or safety! I will violate--”
“Yada, yada, yada!” I shouted over her. She blinked a couple times as I dropped my voice to a more acceptable level. “Now...I’ve heard this comic book villain crap before. Save it for ponies who haven’t seen walls of flesh and thrones of bone. We’re stuck in here, and you can scream and shout all you like, but I don’t think we can hurt each other. So, I’ll ask you again...do you want a beer?”
Her gaze narrowed until I felt sure she was about to attack me again, and with a seething rage that threatened to set my head on fire, she sank onto the carpet again.
“Get me...ugh...beer, creature!” she snapped, holding out her foreleg whilst glaring up at the ceiling. “Do not think this earns you any kindness!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied, tip-hoofing my way through the swamp of custard into my kitchenette. It was nice to be back in the old place, even if the smell of dessert was a little cloying. Tugging open the fridge, I found a fresh six pack of Juniper’s favorite sitting on the top shelf; Celestial Single Malt. Yanking two bottles out of the pack, I tossed one in the general direction of the alicorn. She snapped it out of midair with a flash from her horn, went to take a sip, then stared at the bottle-cap as though it’d offended her.
Grinning, I twisted the top off my beer. She watched me for a second, then mimicked the action. Fighting the urge to chuckle, I swung my bottle up and took a quick chug.
“Mmm...ahhhh. Nice. You know, for a dream where I’m trapped with a pissy alicorn, this isn’t half bad.”
Nightmare’s nostrils flared and she staggered to her hooves again. “Not half bad, fool?! You are going to watch your friends and family slaughtered, unless we escape this place!”
I cocked my head, then trotted back to the couch, throwing myself back on the stained seat. “You know about that?”
“Of course I do! Who do you think set these events in motion?!” she barked, angrily taking a sip from her drink, now that she had the method down. Her pupils dilated, and she looked down at the bottle, then suddenly put both hooves on either side of it, throwing it back and draining the entire thing in a matter of seconds. As the last drips ran down the glass and dribbled onto her greedy tongue, she gave the bottle a shake. “Mmmrph! Stallion! Another beer!”
“Get it yourself,” I grunted. “Just leave one. I expect a friend of mine will be arriving any minute now.”
The Nightmare bared her sharp teeth. “A friend? You trap me, the Voice In The Shadows, in a dreamscape and cover me in confectionary to meet a friend?!”
“Oh? No, no, meeting him is just a bonus. And how many times am I going to have to tell you that I didn’t do this?”
“I think I want to kill you again,” she growled. “Just to be sure…”
With that, she slammed her beer bottle on the edge of the coffee table, breaking the end off and leaving only the sharpened neck. I watched, impassively, slurping down another sip. Mercy, it was good.
Rearing back, she made to drive the makeshift blade into my chest. I adjusted myself on the couch and set my beer down, tilting my head back slightly to offer her my neck. She switched her aim slightly, and lunged.
No!
Nightmare’s shiv stopped a bare inch from my throat, and she hung there, eyes darting back and forth. Space began to reform around her, like a rippling wave across my vision, like a curtain being drawn across a stage. After about three seconds, subjective time, she vanished entirely, replaced by a two meter tall chocolate cupcake with white frosting and little yellow sprinkles in the shapes of my cutie-mark. The custard had vanished, leaving the apartment back in its original condition, minus the huge cupcake sitting where the broken coffee table and angry mare had been.
There was a gasp, then Nightmare Moon’s head burst from the top of the cupcake in a shower of crumbs. She snarled at the thick frosting dripping down her helmeted face and squirmed against the walls of her tasty prison until her back legs punched a hole in the side, sending her tumbling onto the carpet. Her eyes blazed as she kicked the cupcake in the side, stumbling slightly as her hooves sank right up to the hock.
Reaching over, I grabbed a hooffull of frosting and stuffed it in my mouth. Mmm...my twelfth birthday party. A good year.
I can do this all day! Cream cheese is next! Now, stop being mean!
“I am Nightmare Moon! I am the Darkest Hour! You do not order me, you beastly little--”
The Nightmare disappeared, leaving behind a mountain of cream cheese that slowly oozed sideways, until a gagging, choking alicorn managed to pry her muzzle above the surface.
“W-why must you immerse us continually in food products!?” she sputtered, scraping at her tongue with one hoof.
“I dunno,” I replied. “Not me doing it. I was a bit peckish before I put on the hat, though.”
“H-helm…”
I propped myself up on one elbow, watching her struggle in the multi-gallon puddle of creamy goodness. Any dignity she might have affected was gone by the time she hauled herself loose. With a firm shake, she stood. Her body dripped from ears to ankles as she very carefully ignored my barely repressed sniggering, marched to the refrigerator, opened it, then stomped back and collapsed on the couch, two more beers levitating alongside her.
For a long moment we just sat there, listening to the heap of cream cheese spreading out across the carpet and the children playing outside. I couldn’t really think of anything worth saying to a deification of all the worst things in a foal’s dreams, and I’ve no idea what she was thinking; probably something about pulling me inside out, then taking my beer.
Thankfully, we were saved from either awkward small-talk or another dunking in some memory of something delicious from my past by three sharp knocks on the front door.
Nightmare jerked her head in my direction, blinking at me owlishly.
“This...is a closed dreamscape!” she protested, “There can be nothing outside of it! We are occupying your entire mind!”
“I won’t pretend to know what that means, but if I had to emotionally deal with every aspect of just how impossible what’s about to happen is, I’d spend my days making macaroni art at the funny farm.” I raised my voice and shouted, “Juniper, you’ve had a key to that door since three weeks after we started working together! Quit pretending to be polite!”
There was a loud sigh, then my apartment’s front door swung open. My dead partner stood there, leaning on the doorsill, his dark green face a slightly disappointed frown. He wore a darker trenchcoat and one of the innumerable ties we’d given each other through the years, but looked otherwise only a little careworn. Over his shoulder, I could see a brilliant starscape, and it was then I noticed he didn’t seem to be standing on anything in particular; rather he floated amongst the stars.
As soon as his eyes settled on Nightmare Moon, he backed up a step, then blew a loud breath through his nose.
“Kid, tell me that is just you taking the piss,” he grunted, and I snatched Nightmare’s unopened beer, tossing it to him. She hissed at me as he caught it, popped the cap off, and took a quick pull. “Mmm...that’s good stuff.”
Nightmare Moon, meanwhile, had an expression that looked like she was trying to pass a brick.
“Hrg...My predictive matrix has failed to account for this! Explain!” she snapped.
I glanced at her, then shook my head. “What’s to explain? That’s my dead partner, Juniper Shores.”
“And...who might you be, Miss?” Juniper asked, trotting forward and gently lifting Nightmare Moon’s hoof. He planted his lips on it, then took a step back. The look of shock on her face was absolutely priceless. I’d swear she blushed. “A lovely lady, if I do say so, despite the costume. Nice fake wings or horn, too, though I can’t tell which is real--
“They’re both real, Juni,” I murmured.
“Heh, come on. If they’re both real-” His eyes slowly widened and his ears pinned back as he sat down heavily on the carpet in a pool of cream cheese. “Oh sweet mother. You didn’t…”
Nightmare Moon bared her teeth at Juniper and quickly recovered her bluster. “Stallion, I think it best you speak quickly, lest I see fit to rend your soul apart and peer at your guts for my answers!”
“Kid, tell me you didn’t put on the Helm!” Juniper said, ignoring her as his voice rose a few panicky octaves and he hopped to his hooves, trotting in a quick circle. Whirling to face me, he looking into my eyes, intently, then chugged his beer empty. “Of course you did, because that would be the stupidest thing a pony could possibly do. Dear skies, do you even know what your body is doing right now?”
The Nightmare snorted, her eyes rolling toward the ceiling. “It is lying on its side in a cell, alongside the mare I was using. That ridiculous dusk pony found us and plugged you into a wall socket seconds before I could properly dominate him.”
“No kidding,” Juniper muttered. “So you’re Nightmare Moon, huh?”
She drew herself up. “I am Fear Itself! I am the Whispering Shade! I am-”
I cut her off by grabbing her beer and sticking the bottle in her muzzle. She sputtered, then the taste silenced her and she gave me a disgruntled look while still quietly sucking on the booze.
“Unless you want to be the creamy center of a twinkie, I recommend you keep it to ‘yes’ and ‘no’,” I said. “The friend of mine who is controlling this little experience has an itchy baker’s hoof.”
Juniper seemed to notice, for the first time, that he was sitting in cream cheese. “That...explains the condition of this place. Not that I would have been surprised seeing your apartment a disaster, but this is a new wrinkle, even for you. Gale is running this show? King Cosmo’s little brother?”
“I guess.” I glanced at the ceiling. “Gale? You listening?”
I’m here, Hardy.
Nightmare Moon and Juniper both jumped. Gale hadn’t been so much a voice as an overwhelming presence, a thunderstorm just over the horizon. I felt him throughout me, resonating inside my bones with a power that sent shivers up my flank.
“Tell your creature not to d-do that again, Hard Boiled,” Nightmare ordered, shaking her ethereal mane out. “That is far more unsettling than being placed in a cupcake.”
Juniper quickly took a drink from his beer, then set it on the table. “Yeah, I’m dead and that was weird. You sure you are still steering the boat?”
“I’m sure,” I replied, cooly. “Juniper, where’ve you been? I’ve been expecting you to stick your ghostly schnoz into this situation for weeks.”
“I haven’t been able to reach you,” Juniper murmured, pulling his hooves under himself and sitting down. “Something’s changed around Detrot. There is...movement...in the deep. It’s keeping all manner of...well, all manner of help...from finding you. Myself included. I wish I could be more specific, but just take it on faith that there are people in your corner. Except they’re not people. And ‘corners’ tends to suggest angles, which suggest shapes, and...and I don’t want to get into that. It gives me headaches. Where are you? I couldn’t find your body. Just found this...dream.”
“I’m in a secret government facility outside the city. I assume I’m still wearing the Helm of Nightmare Moon,” I answered.
“I hate that you telling me something like that only raises a couple of eyebrows in my mind,” Juniper sighed, patting my shoulder. “What about her?”
I looked back at Nightmare, who was, again, trying to get the last drips from her bottle. “I’ve got no idea. She did something to me when I first put on the helm that felt like somepony dunking me in a dumpster full of spiders. Then I woke up on the couch over there.”
Nightmare Moon tossed the bottle over her shoulder and turned her nose in the air. “Hrmph! A dumpster full of spiders! Such pathetic descriptors for true and sublime terror! I tore his psyche into pieces and fed them through the blackest reaches of experience! He should be a gibbering, mindless dribbler, fit only to be filled by my presence!”
Juniper’s upper lip curled, and I thought I saw a hint of anger there, but he quickly hid it. “It wasn’t you who set the moon off its course. Somepony else owns that. You hurt my friend again, though, and I will pull in every favor I’ve earned to make sure you spend eternity finding out what ‘true and sublime terror’ really looks like.”
Rising, Nightmare towered over us, and I scooted backwards several inches. “I will not be threatened by the likes of you, dead thing! You have no sway here!”
My ex-partner, not one to be intimidated, marched forward and shoved his muzzle in her face. “I have seen a place where angelic beings with giant hooks for limbs endlessly tear the skin from trespassers in their realm. It is a place without the mercy of death! You push me and I will take you on a tour.”
“You want me, you take this foolish stallion, too! I am still inside him!” she bit back, pawing at the carpet.
“Alright! Enough! Both of you!” I barked, forcing my way between them with one hoof on Nightmare’s chest and the other on Juniper’s forehead. “My head is already feeling a little crowded, and we’re obviously stuck here with the intention that we come to some kind of an accord! Before Gale soaks you both in mustard or something, sit down and let’s talk!”
“Talk?!” Nightmare snapped, throwing herself backward onto the couch. “I desire freedom! Your body remains my best chance to attain it! Will you surrender yourself to my power? I can promise, your suffering will be brief!”
I rolled my eyes and exhaled, sharply. “No, I’m not going to do that and I really doubt Gale would let that happen, but--”
The alicorn threw her legs one over the other, turned around, stuck her head under one wing and grumbled, “Then there is nothing to talk about! You shall die of starvation, and I shall take your body, and that will be an end of it!”
I fell silent, then lifted my chin toward the ceiling. “Gale?”
I am here...
The wave of overwhelming presence wasn’t quite so unsettling upon a second helping, but it still made Nightmare jerk like a marionette who’d had her strings kicked.
“Gyah! Do not do that!” she yelped, scrambling upright in her seat. “What is that creature?!”
“That...is my heart,” I chuckled.
“Your...heart?” Nightmare growled, shaking her shadowy mane. “The changeling heart? I calculated for that! You could not control the changeling’s autonomic functions!”
“No, but the heart’s former owner could,” I replied. “He’d spent many, many years inside it and learned where all the switches are.”
“Impossible!” she snapped, wings half spread. “He would be little more than shreds of consciousness!”
Juniper coughed, softly, bringing her attention back to him. “And that would be completely true, without...ahem...without friends in high places.”
Nightmare flashed her fangs. “Explain.”
My ex-partner smirked at her. “If you want a textbook comprehension of things greater than this world, I don’t have one. I’m not even sure why I’m still able to interact with the living, or...well, whatever you are. A whole heap of well respected rules that I took for granted throughout my death say I shouldn’t be sitting here. That being said, someone, or something has got a hoof on the cosmic scales, keeping them from tilting completely out of Hardy’s favor. That includes me. You think I want to be here? Give me a nice plot of dirt and a pine box over having to watch my friends fighting for their lives any damn day.”
“And you piss and moan about my suicidal impulses,” I groused.
“Your suicidal impulses are going to get you killed, again, kid,” Juniper said, sharply, narrowing his eyes at me. “Worse, I’ve no idea what the powers that be want, right now. Like I said, you don’t have a fate. You want to enlighten me on how you pulled that particular trick?”
“Hrmph! Wouldn’t you like to know, tiny dead stallion?” Nightmare commented, smugly. “It required quite the bit of probability manipulation.”
“If you set this up, Miss Nighty, then you’re in danger same as him,” he added.
“I am in no such!” she retorted, folding her giant wings, tightly. “Nothing can touch me! Equestria is as a passing mist unless I have a body!”
“Really? Well, if you want the chance to have bodies in the future, you need to start being a little more forthcoming. This is an extinction level event, here. You’re going to be ‘free’ on a planet with nothing on it besides some meteor-pocked ruins and a whole heap of snow.”
Nightmare Moon seemed to consider this briefly, and then her eyes went - for lack of a better word - blank. The expression on her face slackened, and her irises vanished entirely, leaving only a white expanse, though without the usual blood vessels running through it. But for the fact that her forelegs remained locked and holding her in a sitting position, I’d have said she’d passed out.
Reaching over, I waved a leg in front of her face; no response.
“G-Gale? Are you doing this?” I asked.
No…
As carefully as I could, I tapped her on the shoulder. She didn’t so much as twitch.
“Alright, if I wasn’t spooked before, I am now spooked,” I murmured. “Juni, I know this is going to sound strange, but...do you have any idea what she is?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, nudging the alicorn’s cheek with his toe. “She’s Nightmare Moon. She’s the entity that took over the mind of Princess Luna and went to war against Princess Celestia. She’s...she...hrm...”
I gave him a sidelong glance.
He flicked the side of her head, getting a hollow ‘thunk’ noise in return.
“Fine. Now that you mention it, that’s a bit inadequate,” he amended. “Look, I’ll be honest; I didn’t know what I was walking into until the door opened. You put on the helm and she...what? Appeared?”
“More or less. I mean, she possessed a friend of mine and--”
Juniper’s forehead hit the bottom of his hoof. “And you, being you, took that bait like a mackerel taking a worm. You know the stakes here. Couldn’t you have just...I don’t know...shot her in the knee and took the helm off her?”
“I left my gun with Swift,” I replied, not willing to meet his eyes.
His back legs went lax and he collapsed on the carpet. “You...left the gun that was keeping you hidden with that goofy pegasus? And why were you taking the helm, anyway? A secret government facility sounds like a pretty safe place to stash it!”
Swallowing, I finished my beer and set it on the end table, eyeing the still frozen Nightmare Moon before turning back to Juniper.
“Our enemy has...an army; a significant army. One we’re not ready to deal with, yet. He gave me three hours to get the helm to him...or he’d burn the Vivarium and kill everyone in it. Then he’ll start exterminating other population centers.”
Juniper blinked, then his ears pinned to his head. “Oh...oh, damn.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Hardy, you cannot give them that helmet,” Juniper protested. “We’ve got no idea what they’re going to do with it! You want these ponies to--”
“To what, Juni? Have control of the sun and moon? Bring the planet to ruin? Destroy all life in Equestria? Leave this world a frozen wasteland? If that’s what they want, all they have to do is sit on their hooves for another couple months. They don’t need the helm of Nightmare Moon to do any of those things.”
Juniper’s teeth clicked shut around whatever he was about to say and he rubbed his forehead with the back of his fetlock. “Sorry. I keep forgetting just how screwed up this situation is.”
“I’ve got a plan to get the helm back, if that helps,” I murmured, lifting one of Nightmare’s wings, then letting it flop back in place. “Unfortunately, we’re stuck in here and I don’t know that Gale or...whatever she is...will let me out in time to stop this from developing into a full blown massacre.” Looking up at the ancient, yellowed ceiling, I traced the lines and cracks that’d once decorated the room and now existed only in my memories. “We’re missing something here, something vital.”
Throwing his hooves up, he stood and patted the pockets of his coat. “Well, while we figure out what that is, do you have anything to eat that wasn’t smeared all over a bitchy alicorn? I don’t think too good on an empty stomach.”
“There were some pickles in the fridge that were probably still good when the place burned down.”
Juniper gave me a powerful blast of puppy-dog eyes. “Awww...Come on, kid! This is your memory! Gimme something tasty!”
I shifted on the couch and tried to focus my scattered brain. A giant cheese plate I’d raided from the department Nightmare Night party almost six years ago faded into being on the carpet. Juni clapped his hooves together like an excited foal, then dived for it, shoving half a brick of the most expensive cheddar I’d ever stolen into his muzzle and spraying crumbs all over himself.
“Mmmm, Celestia’s pasty flank,” he moaned, “You have no idea how nice it is to eat food again! I haven’t been hungry in years!”
“I...have too many questions to bother asking most of them, but this being a dream, I assume time isn’t moving at the same rate outside as it is in here?” I asked.
“Maybe. Sorry, dreams are not my area of expertise.” Juniper coughed, then grabbed an olive and tossed it into his mouth, munching noisily. “I mean, time tends to move pretty damn fast when you’re not bounded by the limitations of your exterior senses, but I wouldn’t plan an extended vacation, either way. You want some munchies?”
I jerked my head toward Nightmare Moon. “Hard to eat with your brain invaded by a parasitic intelligence. I saw some strange writing before she started messing with my head.”
Juniper swallowed his last bite and his ears perked up. “Strange writing?”
“Yeah, just floating there in the air. I’d have sworn it looked like some kind of...instructions for a machine or something...”
Before either of us could cogitate too heavily on that, Nightmare Moon’s mane twitched and she raised her chin, her pupils reappearing like a pair of television screens snapping on. She inhaled, which I just then realized she hadn’t done for several minutes, and her expression tightened into an annoyed scowl as she looked down at the cheese plate and Juniper.
“You! Dead stallion! I require your input!”
My ex-partner flicked an ear. “What do you want, pissy mare?”
The Nightmare looked, for an instant, like she was going to risk attempting murder again. It was a close thing, but seeing someone like her impotently angry was too much fun for either of us to pass on; her cheeks puffed out, her ears flailed, and she kneaded the couch with her front hooves, likely imagining his neck between them as she growled like an irritable puppy.
“Grrr...You will cease to be insolent!” she barked, even as Juniper snickered under his breath. “We have analyzed your statements and find them to be accurate!”
“And?” I asked.
“Silence, creature! Allow me to finish speaking!” Nightmare snarled, throwing her chest out and raising her nose in the air. I relented, waving for her to continue. “Ahem. I do not wish to be alone in this world. I have had much time to process the changes to Equestrian culture and find them more amusing than the deaths of all Equestria. To that end, I...will deign to give you information which may assist in your enterprise to restore the Royalty and prevent the extinction of equinekind. In exchange, you will secure me a body and provide me with a signed guarantee, on the behalf of the Equestrian Royalty, that I will not be turned to stone, banished, or imprisoned for any crimes I may have committed, either in the distant past or within recent memory.”
Juniper almost gagged on a bit of bread off the cheese plate. “You want a full pardon? For ‘She Who Eats Dreams’?”
The alicorn nodded, her armor jangling softly. “A pardon...Yes! That is the word. Oh, and...I will require my freedom, total and unconditional, upon the return of the royal sisters, or if they should prove to be dead, from the ruling body that comes after them.”
“So...what you’re saying is that you want us to set you free and give you a full pardon for your own attempt to destroy the world,” I murmured.
“Precisely,” she replied, running her forked tongue over her muzzle. “In exchange, I will assist in the resolution of this situation to the best of my abilities.”
----
“Tell me this is a joke.”
“No joke. Like I said earlier, we made a bargain.”
“But...that’s insane! Nopony in their right mind would believe her!”
“She wasn’t in a position to lie to me. Besides, I figured it would be relatively simple to have Slip Stitch pull one of the corpses out of cold storage for her to inhabit. Unfortunately, there were...other considerations.”
“Bu-but...you agreed to free the Nightmare on behalf of the Equestrian government?! Are you out of your mind?!”
“Well, as the duly appointed representative of Equestria in Detrot-
----
“-if you help us pull this off, you’ve got a deal.”
Nightmare’s lips twitched into a small smile even as Juniper’s muzzle dropped open.
“Kid, you’re not...you’re not serious, are you?” my ex-partner murmured.
I picked up my hat off the end table and studied it, mostly as an excuse not to meet his gaze.
“I’m dead serious, Juni. We’ll need to work out the particulars - namely a clause prohibiting her from trying to overthrow the royals again - but for now, I don’t think we have a choice. You want to spend more time arguing?”
“How can we be sure she’ll help us? How do we even know she’s not doing this to try to help the ponies who caused the Eclipse?!” Juniper demanded.
“Because, if she were, she’d have torn my throat out,” I replied, self-consciously rubbing my neck. “Look, I’m exhausted and unarmed. Do you think she couldn’t have overpowered me with the possessed body of a bat pony?”
Nightmare licked her fangs. “I would have loved to taste this pathetic fool. Sadly, I believe the dusk pony has developed an attachment to this stallion; forcing her to attack him was quite impossible without a few more days to deepen my control.”
“Wait...what? That was a damn ruse?!” I growled.
She gave me a smug sniff and casually stretched her immense wings to their full span, knocking the lamp off the end table. “Simple control is easy and bears a striking resemblance to what you call ‘hypnotism’. You do make quite the impressive ‘prince in shining armor’ when a mare is threatened, though.”
‘Breathe, Hardy. Breathe. She’s trying to get your goat.’
I don’t know what constitutes adrenaline in a dream, but the entire room seemed to pulse with my rising anger. Nightmare’s smile wasn’t helping things one bit.
Snapping out my hoof, I jabbed it at her.
“Gale? Mom’s bleu cheese curry casserole!”
The air above Nightmare Moon’s head shimmered, and a pot of burnt, stinking mash that smelled of skunk fumes and rotted milk splashed down over her shoulders. The metal stock pot landed squarely on her horn and bits of foul, molded cheese rained down on the couch. For a long moment, we all just sat there. Part of me couldn’t believe I’d done that. Another bit was bordering on spontaneous orgasm.
Reaching up, the alicorn slowly pulled the pot off her head and set it down between her forelegs before turning her furious gaze on me; if looks could kill, she’d have left a crater where I was sitting. Her lips curled back from those disconcerting teeth in a thin smirk.
“One day, little stallion...I will have proper vengeance. I won’t drive your mind out of your body, as I sought to do a moment ago. That was kindness. No, I will keep you, so you can watch what I do…”
“You never touch anyone or manipulate anyone into hurting anyone I know or love,” I said, quickly. Her eyes narrowed and I added, “Myself included. That’s part of the deal. You want your freedom and your pardon, Hard Boiled and company are off your radar.”
Juniper leaned forward slightly. “And I will be watching closely, with eyes you cannot even fathom, to make for damn sure you hold up your end of this bargain.”
Her little smile vanished. “You...y-you…”
It was my turn to grin. “Yes. Me. Face facts, sugar plum. You want to do anything, you need my tail alive and ready to rumble. You can’t even leave this dreamscape until Gale is sufficiently convinced you’re going to hold up your end of things. So, what’s it gonna be?”
Her face went through an extremely complicated set of contortions. A vein popped on her forehead, and the look in her eyes screamed for blood, but it was tempered by what I was coming to suspect was a dangerously logical (if not terribly rational) mind with a powerful sense of self preservation. Finally, she settled on a serene expression which was somehow more disconcerting than her rage.
“Should you die before our agreement is complete, I will consider it forfeit...and you will go to your death knowing I took the body of the mad cab driver and strangled your partner with it.”
I let out a derisive snort. “If you think you can take Taxi’s brain, babe, I want to see you try. You give us information and help us stop the Family and D.W., along with whatever he’s got cooking. You swear never to try to destroy Equestria, overthrow the royals, kill me or anyone I care about, or do anything which might piss me off hard enough that I have to come looking for your flank. Agreed?”
“And in exchange, you shall provide me a body, my freedom, and a full pardon from any criminal acts I may have committed,” she replied. “You have the ear of one of the Equestrian Royals. My calculations indicate the most likely culprit is…Twilight Sparkle…”
She said those two words with enough venom that I genuinely thought she might spit on the carpet. Juniper let out a sound that might have been a laugh, but quickly covered it with some violent coughing.
“I seem to remember Miss Magic Pants mentioned you two had some history,” I murmured.
Nightmare Moon shut her eyes, and a shiver rippled through her body. “She has altered history, but it was she - that beastly little mare - who tore me from Luna and shattered my essence. Unfortunately, my memory was affected to a lesser degree, but I could never forget that vile sorceress, whatever magics she lays upon the land. Regardless, it is good to know you do not defy all of my predictions. You are here, after all, if not in the correct circumstances. I would have your enslaved skin at my command, had they all borne out.”
Juniper picked up the cheese plate and dragged a seat from the kitchen to set it on as he made himself a little picnic. “Nightykins--” he began.
“Do not call me that!” she snapped.
“Alright. Miss Pissy, then,” he said, crunching on a cracker as Nightmare stomped on the floor hard enough that, had it been an actual floor, she’d have left a sizeable hole. “Do you have any idea what the pricks running this circus want with the armor?”
“Had you not seen fit to lose the shoes and peytral, I might!” she bit back. “Much of their...purpose...eludes me, though I know in some fashion they wish me to control something. Or perhaps wear my armor, and somehow take control of me.”
Juniper’s eyes widened, and his look must have mirrored my own. “You don’t think…”
I nodded. “You remember what Apple Bloom said about an ‘interface’ for the Web of Dark Wishes? You think that’s what they’ve got in mind?”
“I mean...it doesn’t really explain how they cast the spell to push Princess Celestia and Princess Luna onto the moon--”
Nightmare looked at me out of one eye, then the other, turning her head like a predatory animal inspecting prey. “The moon? They banished Celestia and Luna to the moon?” Her eyes widened, and the shadows around her began to dance. “I require additional input! When the Eclipse began, what was the effect on the unicorn population of the city?! Answer me! Quickly!”
Juniper and I exchanged a look, then I cautiously replied, “They...lost consciousness. Most of their magical channels were apparently damaged.”
The giant alicorn sagged onto her stomach like a balloon with the air let out and put a hoof over her eyes. For a long time, that was all she did. I don’t think she was even breathing. Reaching over, I nudged her forehead, then yanked my leg back as she reared up and tried, half-heartedly, to snap it off.
“I am desecrated!” she snarled as I backed away several steps. “Leave me to my humiliation!”
I sat down beside Juniper as Nightmare buried her face back in the couch pillows.
“Melodramatic much?” Juniper murmured.
“She tried to end all life on this world because nobody was stargazing,” I replied, softly. “I think she’s gone way beyond melodramatic.”
There was a muffled ‘I can hear you, fools! Be silent and mock me not!’ from under the cushions.
----
“The way you describe her makes her sound almost...silly. I was expecting a monster. For somepony who orchestrated her escape from the Church of the Lunar Passage, and somehow figured out a way to almost steal your body, she sounds like a frustrated teenager with too many piercings protesting a well-deserved grounding...”
“Oh, make no mistake; she is a monster. I have no doubt, given a body and no restraints on her behavior, she’d hang me by my intestines and use me for a pinata. That being said, even monsters take time to develop personalities. She was either wrapped around Luna, trapped on the Moon, or broken into little pieces for most of her functional lifespan.”
“So, you’re saying she’s a child?”
“More or less. Nightmare Moon is still running on what her creators left and whatever influence Princess Luna had on her development.”
“Creators? I...I mean, I know she’s not some spontaneous manifestation, but are you saying somepony made her?”
“Isn’t that obvious, by now? The Web of Dark Wishes was Nightmare Moon’s grimoire. The armor was designed to corrupt the wearer and harness their power to operate the wish engine after taking Celestia and Luna out of the picture. Last time it failed and the armor was lost. Sixty years ago, the armor returned, just in time for a strange little family of killers to welcome it with open hooves into the decaying city they’d built to power it. No alicorn necessary.”
“B-b-but that would mean--”
“Yes...A thousand years ago, the Family drove Princess Luna mad.”
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I've two words.
Well shit.
Beyond those two words, this part, holy heck, the imagery and the nature of this was a ride I loved.
YOOOOOOOOOOOO
Wow, so the Family's reach goes back even farther. Orchestrating the civil war between the nation's princesses and almost causing the death of all life on a would-be world in stasis is pretty up there.
At this point, I think it would be easier to list the things they haven't done to cause the end of the world.
Edit: Thanks for still trucking along with this story Chessie, even after so much life stuff. It gives me hope to finish my own projects eventually.
For a few moments I was having fun shipping Juniper and Nightmare. Now it has developed into some weird side story where a criminal computer program and her dead jailer explore Equestria together in a pair of corpses borrowed from Slip Stitch. I like it.
Okay, what the hell are the Family trying to accomplish? And how'd they'd have access to such tech a thousand years ago? It sounds like this armor has a predictive matrix that's just as good as the Crusader's knitting thing. But what do they need a wish engine for that they couldn't get with a thousand years of manipulation? Seriously, in that time they could have accomplished almost anything. This is so confusing.
Dear Sweet Dagon in Satin Tap Pants, the plot's so thick now you could serve it by the slice!
I gotta say, Gale is a lot of fun, though he's probably burning a lot of energy just keeping that dreamscape going with four ponies (or, well, four minds at least) running in tandem. I'm imagining GLaDOS in a potato for some reason. It's hilarious seeing Hardy, Moony and Juniper duking it out verbally -- at some point we need to see Juniper and Bones have a chat!
Our hero is going to have the most frightening herd in all reality when he is done. They mostly don't have romantic feelings (at first, but then they will be feeling competative) but do want their own leash on the hero they can't seem to even slow down.
Somewhere, Pinkie is playing Cooking Mama with a character that looks just like Gale?
"return and live only the haunt the dreams"
"return and live only to haunt the dreams"?
"Gone are the cartoon-ish beasts who struck at"
"Gone are the cartoonish beasts who struck at"?
"who would rather have control, than fear"
"who would rather have control than fear"?
"Board-rooms have replaced dank caves"
"Boardrooms have replaced dank caves"?
"to society than the Changeling queens or"
"to society than the changeling queens or"?
"we'd turned a few more business-ponies to stone"
"we'd turned a few more businessponies to stone"?
8501573 It would not shock me.
8501454 You're forgetting some essential elements of this. How did the *Family* build the first Pylon a thousand years ago...and what was inside it?
8501474 I think it's shaking out, finally.
8501421I'd read that. Sounds like a great story.
8501417 It's all a matter of priorities. If the writing is important, it's what you'll devote your time and energy to. If it's not, you'll find other things to do with life.
-Chessie
8502047 Nawww, Blueblood died at age 29 of a sudden brain hemorrhage while having sex with a male prostitute. His corpse was found atop the trapped prostitute after only three hours. In death, he was disavowed by the royal family and all his properties given to charity. His body was later stolen and reanimated by a haunted-house operator and part-time necromancer to work at the ticket desk of 'Scary Berry's House Of Fright'. There it remains and unbeknownst to everyone, the trapped mind of the Prince lives evermore serving the public from within a very gradually rotting shell.
The prostitute went on to write a best selling book called 'Blue Blood, Tiny Penis'. He then landed a major motion picture based on the traumatic events before moving to the city of Detrot and settling down with a sweet mare in the Heights.
His son later followed in his professional footsteps, though he was much more happily suited to the job. He eventually fell in love with a down-on-his-luck Detective and helped him try to save the world.
-Chessie
8502092 It was on the spot bullshit. Same as most of Starlight Over Detrot was composed of on the spot bullshit. If you need on the spot bullshit, I'm your girl.
-Chessie
... holy crap.
WELL.
I am quite confident that Hardy is talking to the journalist mare that is locked up in the Warehouse.
Essentially, Nightmare Moon seems to be an Essy, likely made of and/or running on souls. It also seems like she picked up a fair amount of odds and ends of Luna's personality, although 1000 years of isolation with only one person to interact with will do that to ya. She kinda got gypped by the Family, but who hasn't?
.............. Holy... Shit....
8502324 It's simple, really. Take a ton of drugs. Mostly psychedelics. Make friends with neo-nazis and hyper-feminist, far left psychos. Go to church, just to masturbate in the back row pews. Let a dominatrix beat you until you pass out. Live in a trailer for five years with a bunch of demented, incestuous, raping rednecks and call them 'family', because there's no word for people genetically related to you that you'd like to skin and shove into the ocean.
Eat food so spicy you piss blood and listen to every ounce of music that comes across your plate. Say 'no' to every single societal norm you can and any person who tells you to be quiet or small. Burn your Bible to give you a light to read Slaughter House 5 by, then burn every piece of Kurt Vonnegut within a mile radius of you. Embrace nihilism, then toss it out the window in favor of perfect, total sincerity.
And when people call you a pretentious fuck with too much time and not enough perspective, you shrug, smile, and agree with them. When they say you're a filthy, disgusting little pervert scraping her way through the bottom of the world and accomplishing nothing of consequence, you sit back and listen to jazz like a righteous god-damn hipster even though you hate jazz with a burning passion, because in the end, it doesn't matter what sort of crazy shit you're into. We're all dog fuckers and maniacs and sobbing little girls hugging mommy's leg while daddy gets dragged away in cuffs.
Shame is pointless. You'll never be cool or hip or trendy, so have some dirty sex, drink too much, eat some awful food and feel guilty about everything, then do it again next year.
When you stop asking yourself how someone can possibly live like that and accept that nobody really knows what they're doing and we're almost all just winging it, then you'll have power over bullshit.
-Chessie
8502969
in the words of Hardy, would you like a beer?
...
...
...
...Holy shit...just how far does the rabbit hole even go at this point?
8503476 It is a deep, deep rabbit hole... And the rabbits have giant, razor sharp teeth and three foot long, meth fueled erections.
-Chessie
Juniper: "I was imprisoned in Royal dungeon once, so fear me, I have royal connections!" lol
8503557 Don't know. Haven't seen those films. But, whatevs.
-Chessie
8501454 That's only because you're missing an essential element.
-Chessie
8505534
Hopefully a forthcoming one, because that premise beggars belief. I hope there's a good explanation for how fuckery of that sort was alive and well in ancient Equestria. Heck how did "tech" of that level even exist at the point? I mean I suppose taking somepony's soul and sticking it in there might do it (preferably an unfortunate child or someone who's mind you don't care about scrambling...) I get that driving Luna crazy and getting her to want what they want would be an enviable objective. How in Equestria did they manage to survive 1000 years, some nasty wars, and more and come out standing up and pointing in the right direction?
It's also terribly unclear how everybody dying would help them out that much. Either they and everybody else would be kaput or the same outcome with some very angry alicorns,,,
8507420 Heeheeeheeee...Oh boy, you are missing that ONE ESSENTIAL ELEMENT which is still waiting, ever so patiently, on the sidelines. You've got all the components of what happened. I've told you everything, already. It was mentioned in one important chapter in a tiny note of no particular significance...and it was the key to literally everything that's happened since then.
-Chessie
Well... this has taken that left turn at Albuquerque onto a whole new 6 lane highway known as "Hell in a Handbasket"
The Scholar has has written so many things that I agree with over the course of this story but this chapter's line
is one of the best so far... as true for us today as it may be for Detrot.
We have a saying in R&D... It is no good having ideas and insights if you do not have money and resources to develop them and money and resources are directionless and wasted without ideas and insights... so in this story... all the time in the world will not help you if you do not have the power to make your wishes happen and all the power in the world will not grant your wish if you do not have the ability/means to guide that power... if you eventually manage to get time, power and means together with a wish to focus them then your wish may come true.
Enjoying the patter you have between Twilight and Hardy.... on the surface, these two seem like they should detest each other but I think that they have a common set of core values that make them an interesting 'odd-couple'... Twilight hides how much she has had to compromise to get to this point as she is likely embarrassed/shamed by those compromises while Hardy revels in his compromises and vices while hiding his deeper values because he thinks they make him vulnerable.... random thoughts at 3am... probably total B.S. but my insomniac brain is full of useless crap at this hour.
8507705 Having watched the MLP movie last week, there are a number of moments where you get to see the earliest stages of Twilight 'compromising' her values for the sake of accomplishing her goals.
-Chessie
8507727
Hope you enjoyed the movie.
May sound sacrilegious here but I must admit to having never watched MLP or the movies.... only ended up on the site as a proof-reader/sounding board for a friend who writes here and elsewhere. Sorta got hooked on the FiMfiction concept and hung around finding other stories that catch my eye.
Sounds like they are adding an 'edge' to the characters if they are making the Princess of Friendship and Magic compromise her values for a 'bigger picture' goal. Unsure if I should perceive that as a plus or not for a series that is ostensibly aimed at a children's market but then again it may not really be that anymore... writers for years have been rewriting the show's characters in varying levels for fun on this site while aiming at many different demographics so I guess that is no big shock that the show itself would do so.
8507757
Hehehe...I hope, at the very least, that I have amused you with some pony, even if you're not a fan of the source material.
-Chessie
8502969
Ain't that some truth. Giving up shame sure sounds nice, although without it I'm not sure I can even figure out anymore what I'd actually like to do.
Great chapter, btw. I'm really quite intrigued by the concept of Nightmare Moon being some sort of computer virus for organic brains. At least, that's as near as I can make out what she is.
I honestly was not expecting all the separate plot threads to come together this neatly.
Holy crow.
Well done.
8521825 You have no idea how hard it is to get all those disparate threads to line up...
Although, sometimes, it's like they just fall into place.
-Chessie
Random theory: Zefu killed Ruby.
Supporting evidence:
-Relies heavily on a staff
-Into zebra magic and also necromancy
-Could have possibly faked his own death, leading to the "dead and alive" contradiction in the Ancestors' algorithms (if Hardy said he was dead, but he wasnt, that would be contradictory wouldn't it?)
-I don't know, some other stuff probably
I am probably late to the party with this, but I am full of wild inferences, and stuff. Sharing is caring.
8534464
Oh, I know, I was poking fun, given current affairs.
8502072
Now I'm really curious: are you perchance a fan of Carl Hiaasen's work? Because that bit about Blueblood's untimely demise reminds me a lot of the short "Where are they now?" style of blurbs at the ends of some of his books, detailing the bizarre, sordid, and oft poetically just ends that the characters met several years after the events in the book.
8502969
I'm not sure if you'd be the best ever motivational speaker, or the absolute worst.
...Eh, if you wrote a self-help book I'd probably read it.
-Chimera
8536861 I don't actually know who Carl...um...I'm not going to try to spell that last name...I don't know who he is. I should go do a bit of research. I really just came up with that off the cuff.
I'd make a great motivational speaker! It's just a question of what I'd motivate people to do.
-Chessie
I am absolutely loving this story so far. I can't wait for more.
8540834 More is coming here in a few days! Sorry it's taking so long.
-Chessie
SWEET MERCIFUL CELESTIA YOU ARE THE PREEMINENT TEASE
8537188
He's a writer based in Florida. I've never much paid attention to what genre his books are considered, but I guess I'd call them comedic crime, maybe? Ridiculous criminals, corrupt politicians, long-suffering cops, a few more colourful characters who get pulled along for the crazy ride, and lots of wacky murder (got the ol' standards like guns and wood-chippers, plus more uncommon things like speared by a taxidermied swordfish, fucked to death by a horny dolphin, and clubbed over the head with a frozen lizard carcass). All the books are technically a series, and there are several reoccurring characters, but there isn't a strong chronological element to anything, so nothing needs to be read in order of release. I jumped in right in the middle and then started hunting down the rest in no particular order.
Another book-related question I've been meaning to ask since, oh, around the start of Act 2, is: have you ever read John Meaney's Tristopolis duology? I feel like Hardy and Donal could have a grand time commiserating over their similar plights.
-Chimera
Methinks someone else actually enjoyed A Cure for Wellness... either that or didn't.
It really says something about the levels of mindfuckery this story has achieved that I'm not sure if Hardy is sensing Nightmare Moon or you (or even me).
Well... That was unexpected...
*off. Also I'm impressed, some people can't last that long.
gun's??
Obviously not. Which is why it's so damn funny.
Nightmare Moon is really Iris Jade! It all makes sense!
I'm sure there's a few fics done where Nightmare Moon gives up because Luna falls in love.
Hardy is steering about as much as the boat ride at Disneyland.
This raises the question of how many eyebrows are in his mind.
Because that's stuck so well so far.
Nightmare, if you're really capable of future prediction, you should know that will never, ever, happen.
An apt nickname for her. I like it.
The monkey chased the Weasley
Oh that's rich!
Nightmare Moon is an Essy!
8502969
...do practice self-care, though. That sounds fun and all, but I prefer my youthful energy that comes from eating carrots and broccoli whole.
Now this is how you conspiracy.