• Published 1st Nov 2018
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Equestria : 1940 - Georg



While Europe sinks into bloody war and the powers of Nazi Germany dominate the continent, a new dark power begins to rise that could destroy them all. The Nightmare is returning. And all will bow before her glorious night.

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15. Left Behind

Equestria : 1940
Friday 21 June - Ponyville, Equestria

“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; mercy and truth go before Your face.”
— Psalms 89:14


Being dead sucked.

Waking up after being struck by lightning sucked slightly less worse.

Nightshade’s concerned face hovered just above his nose, verifying Jon’s presumption that he had indeed not died and gone to heaven unless there had been a considerable change in the entrance requirements. Then again, she was nominally a Baptist, and she already had the wings.

“Uhh,” groaned Jon with one forlorn attempt at stirring. “Why does lightning taste like apples?”

“You weren’t breathing.” Nightshade’s yellow eyes flickered to a far corner of the room where two other Royal Guards were being tended to by several pony nurses. She flattened her ears and shuddered, her thick wings unfolding and folding across her back, but she did not say anything else.

“So you took advantage of me?” Jon managed to mumble, taking a second attempt at standing and deciding that remaining flat on the floor for now was just fine. “The kiss of life.”

“Thank Big Mac for saving your life,” she murmured under her breath in order not to attract attention from the nurses. “He resuscitated you while a bunch of the townsponies pinned me down and… they treated me like some sort of monster!”

The last words were loud enough that the nurses looked in his direction, and one started to walk over until Nightshade turned on her and growled. It was a deep vibrant sound that vibrated through Jon’s chest, which he realized was being used as a batpony pillow. The nurse promptly turned around and returned to the ordinary pegasus patients. It brought one critical point to Jon’s attention, and he managed to move his arm far enough up to tap one finger against Nightshade’s dark helmet.

“If you hadn’t dropped your disguise, they wouldn’t have—” His fingers traced the pitted and rough traces of molten metal on the protective armor, making a chill go up his back.

“Disguise spell shorted out. Freaked out the civvies something fierce. Nightmare Moon got away, but they had their own stunned monster to capture. Took five of them, and I didn’t dare fight back. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum over there stuck up for me when they woke up, or they probably would have dragged me off to jail. If this podunk little town even has a jail.”

“You kept me from being killed,” said Jon, still feeling a little stunned. Well, a different kind of stunned than having a few hundred thousand volts run through his frail body.

“Eh.” Nightshade shrugged, which seemed to make the tremor in her side go away, or at least recede enough so Jon could not feel it any more. “You shot at her first. I don’t think she liked that.”

“I hit her, and I don’t think it hurt her a bit,” countered Jon. “Alicorns are tough. Celestia told me that if I ever shot her, and she found out about it, I was going to be in trouble.”

“Yeah, speaking of that.” Nightshade looked around the room, then moved closer to his ear and whispered, “Celestia’s gone. Nopony knows where she is, not even the other guards. They think she may have been… banished.”

“Banished?” Jon considered the concept, and how insane it would have sounded a week ago. If Luna had been Princess of the Moon and was banished there, it could be possible that Celestia had been banished to her sun. If so, there was no Alicorn ex Machina waiting in the background to save them, only a frightened unicorn student who would need his help.

Taking a few quick breaths to build up his inertia, Jon rolled over, which naturally made Nightshade fall off in the other direction with a clatter of armor. He made it all the way up to his knees before noticing something sitting right next to him. The .38 revolver seemed unharmed by the electrical attack, the cylinder spinning free and nothing binding in the action, with six empty shell casings falling out when he worked the ejection lever.

“You know, you could have told me you were packing your pistol,” said Nightshade, giving the empty casings a sniff. “A girl should know such things before she goes flinging her body between you and certain death.”

It was macabre humor, but at least it was an attempt. He put away the revolver, took a few minutes to get to his feet, recovered his tweed jacket, and staggered a bit in place before heading for the door. “Gotta get Twilight,” he said while the world swayed around him. “She must be going nuts.”

“Twilight Sparkle is missing too.” Nightshade moved up beside him and provided support to lean against even though she was slightly unsteady on her hooves as well. “The townsponies say she and several other ponies went pelting off into the woods, chasing after Nightmare Moon.”

Jon leaned against the doorframe, taking in the frightened looks from the nurses and the stoic expressions of their pegasus patients which indicated they were perfectly fine with abdicating their guarding responsibility to his current pony-crutch. He checked his watch, gave it a shake to listen to it rattle, then took a deep breath. “How long was I out?”

“A few hours. Long enough for the mayor to drop by about a dozen times and worry. She’s at least not afraid of the darkness out there. I think she’s more afraid about how this will affect her upcoming re-election campaign.”

Nightshade gave her fellow guards a sideways look and did not say anything else until Jon had wobbled out into the abandoned Town Hall with crumpled decorations all around and the stygian darkness looming outside the windows. “You weren’t kidding about Nightmare Moon earlier,” she added.

“I kinda hoped I was,” said Jon. Picking up a nearby firefly lantern, he put one foot on the stairs up to the balcony, took a deep breath, and started to climb. “I expected her to be a little shorter than Celestia. It was hard to tell from the floor down there.”

“Aren’t you worried about Twilight? I thought you’d be chasing after her.” Nightshade pointed at the darkness outside of the front door of the Town Hall and shuddered. “And I’d be the one responsible for dragging what’s left of your sorry butt out of the forest and back into town.”

“All things in good time. She’s got friends with her.” Despite the pin-prickles of pain in his muscles and joints, Jon smiled. “It took more than I expected for her to make friends, but she did.” The rest of the trip up the staircase, Nightshade grumbled and scowled, only giving up and actually saying something when Jon put a finger against the hole in the plaster and started to measure in arm-spans down to the pristine floor.

“So what’s the word?”

Alicornus divinus equus stands about four and a half feet at the shoulder.” Jon squinted down an imaginary line to the center of the main Town Hall room. “This one runs about four feet at best. And only one hole in the plaster. Not bad shooting for forty feet.”

“You probably sprayed your shots all over the building,” grumbled Nightshade while looking for more holes. “If you put five holes in anypony, there’d be blood, or if her armor stopped the slugs, they’d be scattered across the floor somewhere.”

“Professor Jones would disagree,” said Jon. “He was one of Professor Yearling’s associates during my Egyptian outing. Taught me to shoot out in the desert. We were waiting on some government bureau to approve paperwork, so we went through a case of ammunition each while he told me wild stories about other archeological digs.”

Jon hobbled down the stairs, headed toward the Town Hall’s front door and the darkness encompassing the town beyond. “Let’s go over to the library and do some digging of our own. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’ll find the answer to why Twilight went running into the woods there.”

- - Ω - -

Without any light from outside, Jon had to depend on the library’s lamps to spot the obvious signs of Twilight’s passage. Most of the party supplies had been removed as the dawn had approached, so the tossed books scattered around the floor at least had not landed in the punch bowl or had smears of cake across them. Jon ignored them all and climbed the stairs to the librarian’s apartment on the second floor, vanishing into the bedroom while Nightshade stood outside.

“You’ve got terrible timing,” she called out into the room while getting into a semblance of a guarding pose. “If you wanted a student-teacher conference in bed, you could have done that with Twilight last night.”

“I’m not looking for some pony,” said Jon, scanning across the heap of books next to the bed. “I’m looking for some thing. And here it is.” He emerged back into the library with the children’s story book that Twilight had originally glommed onto back in Canterlot, then paged through it until he found the passage he had heard her say earlier.

“Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony. That’s it. She’s looking for the Elements of Harmony.”

“Which is…?” Nightshade rolled her eyes as Jon descended the stairs at as near to a run as he was able. It was much easier for her to simply glide down, landing in the middle of the book explosion that covered the floor in the middle of the library.

“She had to be looking up the Elements of Harmony. And since she took off like her tail was on fire, she had to have found a book describing—”

“The Elements of Harmony - A Reference Guide,” said Nightshade, picking up the top book from the pile.

“Ha! Gimmie!” Jon pounced on the book and riffled through the pages, rapidly at first but slowing as he read until he reached the end. “It’s mostly garbage with a lot of vague theories.”

“Like a foals book.” Nightshade held the page down on the first book, then flipped backward a page with a thoughtful frown.

“A lot more serious than just for foals. There are six Elements of Harmony, but only five are known: Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty and Loyalty. The sixth is a complete mystery. It is said, the last known location of the five elements was in the ancient castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. It is located in what is now—”

“The Everfree Forest,” said Nightshade without looking up from the book of foals stories. “Everything spooky or dangerous in any story is in there. I’m more interested in— What are you doing?”

Jon fed one last cartridge into his revolver, snapped the cylinder closed, and holstered it. “Twilight may need help.”

“It’s night. Well, it’s probably around ten in the morning, but with that cloud cover it sure looks like it’s the middle of the night. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum got zapped pretty hard, so they’re not going with us.”

“Us?” Jon picked up the firefly lantern from where he had sat it down and checked its nectar supply.

“Yes, us,” snapped Nightshade. “The other enchants on the armor seem fine, and I wouldn't want to look gold and white out in the forest anyway. I just want you to answer one question first.”

Nightshade put one hoof on the book of foals stories. She deliberately slid it over until it was under a single phrase and held it up for Jon.

...elder sister…

Obviously, his face did a better job describing the situation than the lies Jon was trying to craft. Nightshade swung the book at him and scowled at Jon like she wanted to keep clouting him over the head until she got answers. “Twilight would go nuts if she knew,” he explained.

“She’s not the only one!!” snapped Nightshade. “Look, I’ve kept my big mouth shut ever since Princess Celestia told the dragons that Nightmare Moon was coming back! I know if she wanted me to say anything about it, she would have told me. But this?”

She waved the book over her head. “What, did you think I was going to miss that Nightmare Moon was Celestia’s little sister when I got a chance to look at all of the puzzle pieces? I should have been out there with those six…”

She slowed with a spark of understanding in her eyes, allowing Jon to get words in edgewise. “Celestia told me about her sister in the strictest of confidence. If she had told you—”

“I would have gone with them to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters,” said Nightshade. “I would have taken every guard and able-bodied pony I could find in Canterlot and—”

“Twilight would never have gotten the chance to make friends,” completed Jon. “She would have been swept up in the crowd. Alone in the middle of all the other ponies. Celestia said helping Twilight Sparkle make friends was the most important part of my job.”

“What’s so important about friends?” Nightshade followed Jon as he headed for the library door and the encompassing darkness that waited outside. “You can’t possibly think Twilight Sparkle is going to defeat Nightmare Moon with hugs and friendship!”

There was a brief stutter in reality, a tremor that was more felt in the heart than underfoot. Then a blazing spot of chromatic light erupted in the distance, generally where Jon had expected the center of the Everfree Forest to be. In seconds, it burst across the sky, scattering clouds into pure vapor and revealing the risen sun until the entire Ponyville valley basked under the glory of the morning. Even the birds seemed to rejoice in the light and sang in the branches of the library tree above them while a light breeze brought the scent of opening flowers and the cheers of the townsponies.

“Yes,” said Jon. “I do now.”

* * * *

They must have sent the chariot out from Canterlot, because Jon had never seen one so large or ornate before. There were two alicorns riding in the front with several ponies in the back, including a familiar rainbow-striped one who kept flying around the chariot and presumably challenging the drivers to a race. The four Royal Guards sat their charges effortlessly down on the Ponyville town square, which looked more like an oblong circle to him, but he did not want to ask any of the residents, particularly now.

The crowd went nuts.

Jon and Nightshade watched it all from the shadow of a nearby building, from the way that Celestia strode out of her chariot with her sister by her side, the cheering that rose even louder when the six ponies who freed her from Nightmare Moon were brought forward, and the frantic party that broke out at the end of it all. Not necessarily a long party, since all partiers involved were tired enough to drop over at any moment, but long enough for a few impromptu toasts with punch to be proposed and all of the ponies to gather around the Princesses for one last speech.

“Quiet please. My student has something to say.”

The noises of happy ponies died away as Jon and Nightshade got a little closer, but thankfully the quiet was not caused by a reaction to either the human or batpony. In fact, it seemed that surviving Nightmare Moon (and being mistaken for some sort of monster) had given the town a certain degree of acceptance to their odd appearance. Jon even noticed more than a few of the stallions giving Nightshade evaluating glances. Or at least he hoped they were looking at her instead of him.

“Why so glum, my faithful student?” Celestia stood a short distance from Twilight and bequeathed her best compassionate look to the obviously depressed unicorn and her dragon, who looked as if he was not going to leave her side for anything including bathroom breaks ever again. “Are you not happy that your quest is complete and you can return to your studies in Canterlot?”

Twilight shook her head. “That's just it. Just when I learned how wonderful it is to have friends, I have to leave them.”

It looked as if Celestia were laughing at some private joke, although Princess Luna who was waiting in the chariot as if she wanted to flee the scene of the crime did not appear amused.

“Spike, take a note, please. I, Princess Celestia, hereby decree that the unicorn Twilight Sparkle shall take on a new mission for Equestria. She must continue to study the magic of friendship, and report her findings to me from her new home in Ponyville.”

Twilight Sparkle’s face lit up as the townsponies cheered, although there was some reluctance in her expression that Celestia could read like a book. “And yes, Twilight. You may also visit your friends in Canterlot whenever you want.”

All of that reluctance blew away like the clouds that had been obscuring the sky a little over an hour ago. “Oh thank you, Princess Celestia! I'll study harder than ever before.”

“That’s our cue, Studly,” whispered Nightshade, giving him a little hip-nudge toward the waiting chariot. “The bus is leaving, and I’m not flying you up the mountain.”

Celestia caught his eye as Her Highness turned toward her transportation, giving him an encouraging nod and waiting for the human to catch up. After working his way through the crowd of ponies, he stopped with one foot up on the deck and set his jaw in thought, considering the four pegasi in the harness and the events of the last week. “Princess?” he asked, clarifying himself almost immediately with, “Princess Celestia, that is. Have you told your student everything?”

“Everything she needs to know.” Celestia gave a subtle twitch of her nose as if she wanted to nudge the slow human into the chariot and take off already. “Come, now. I still have much to do today.”

“Did you tell her about Root Stock? And what you did to save your sister?” The words just came out without any real effort, making Celestia give a spasmodic twitch as if he had jabbed her with a pin.

“That will wait for later,” said Celestia with as calm a voice as ever, even though her lips thinned into sharp lines. “Now that Luna is safe, I have a very important task to do and a strict timetable to follow. Would you prefer to remain in Ponyville until I am done?”

“Sister?” The voice of the smaller alicorn was weaker than Jon had expected. Despite that, he got the feeling that there was the same steel contained below her darker hide, even though she was not wearing the armor of their last encounter. “What hath we told you about secrets?”

“This is different,” retorted Celestia, although she flinched again almost immediately afterward. “I’m sorry, Luna. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Princess?” Twilight Sparkle had crept up on them while Jon was distracted, and nearly made him yelp in surprise. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” said Celestia.

“Yes,” said Jon. “Princess Celestia has something to tell you. And your friends,” he added at the looks he was getting from the other five ponies who had followed Twilight up to the chariot.

“I don’t have time for this,” said Celestia in the first sign of anger that Jon had caught from her since his arrival. “If you want Twilight and her friends to know, I’ll explain as we fly. I don’t want to be late.”

“Y’all heard the Princess,” said Applejack, moving forward and nudging her friends just a little like she was herding sheep. “Hop on board an’ she’ll explain on the way.” It wasn’t until everypony and human was on board and the chariot rose smoothly up into the air that the young farmpony got a curious expression and added, “Beg yer pardon, Your Highness. Where’s we goin’ to?”

“The Bridgehead.”

The wind cresting over the front of the chariot rose to a brisk breeze as the chariot turned east and accelerated, leaving the town of Ponyville behind in moments. Celestia settled to her rump with her back to the wind and addressed the half-circle of Twilight’s curious friends, speaking in a crisp tone with frequent glances at her long-lost sister.

“You see, a thousand years ago when I was forced to use the Elements of Harmony to imprison Luna in her moon…”