Chapter 3
In the name of completeness, the conclusion is my own speculation on what sorts of words might have passed between the princesses over the years regarding their plans. What follows are exhaustively researched, period-accurate recreations of the conversations between Celestia and Luna regarding the moon banishment.
Luna burst into Celestia’s study, a several-feet-high stack of parchment levitating behind her. “Tia, we, like, totally have a huge problem, like whoa.”
“I know that, Luna, and I am-”
But Luna shook her head. “No, no, it’s way worse than that.” She plonked the parchment in front of Celestia and began reading from the first sheet. “Our reputation is not as tough as it once was. Have you noticed how villains have been popping out of the woodwork recently? Tirek last week, Sombra the week before, Chrysalis the week before that, Discord the week before that, the Pony of Shadows the week before THAT, Grogar the week before THAT… And that’s just on Saturdays. Why do the worst ones always come on Saturdays?”
Celestia sighed. “They take about an hour to defeat. I don’t see the problem.”
“The problem is that they keep coming.” Luna displayed a graph for Celestia. “This is the average number of villain attacks over time last year…” Another. “And this is the average number of villain attacks over time this year. Notice anything?”
After several long moments of examination, Celestia suggested, “You forgot to label your y-axes?”
“I’m being serious, Tia.”
“And so am I. If you hadn’t told me what they were, the dependent variable in both could’ve been your level in arousal.”
“…How would you even measure that?!”
“Don’t ask me. You’re the one who made it a possibility.”
Luna set Celestia’s mane on fire. Once Celestia put it out, Luna continued, “This already going down in history as one of the most violent years in Equestria’s existence, and we haven’t even reached the summer solstice yet. Can you imagine fillies and colts learning about this a century from now in history class and asking why everything went wrong in this particular year?” She dropped the parchment on Celestia’s desk and slammed her hooves down. “Something must be done, Tia. Something beyond playing whack-a-villain.”
“We’ve tried, Luna!” protested Celestia. “We’ve tried everything. Fire, drought, lightning, bureaucracy, cakes, songs, solar plasma, but nothing works! They’ll simply keep coming.”
“Not if they thought you would retaliate with overwhelming force,” Luna said, grinning.
Celestia frowned. “What are you suggesting?”
“Luna, this is perhaps one of the most imbecilic ideas you have ever had.”
Luna fired another blast through the walls of their old castle. The place needed some battle scars to look convincing. “…Are you incl-”
“Yes, I am including Weird Tuesday, may we never speak of it again.” Celestia shuddered. “So many chickens…”
“I told you not to attack them!” said Luna. “They are very protective of their own.” Boom. “Besides, how could this possibly be worse than that?”
“We’re going to pretend to send you to the moon for a thousand years so you’re free to be a black-ops one-mare-army while I look like I’m willing to do whatever it takes to protect Equestria. It’s not exactly a sane plan.”
“It’s simple, and simple plans are the best! Now, please help me level this place.”
Celestia rolled her eyes and her magic scythed through a stained-glass window. “And in the meantime,” Celestia continued, “I’ll have to handle your nightly duties in addition to my own. Thank you so much for that.”
“Kick some nobles in the rear and make them earn their rank. And if they don’t perform to your standards, threaten to strip them of their title. It always works for me.”
“And while I’m doing that, you-” A statue exploded, sending shards of stone pinging around the room and off the princesses’ shields. “-will be off gallivanting around the borders and other dangerous places, constantly engaging in battle against evil, risking life and limb every day.”
Luna squinted at Celestia. “Are you jealous?”
“NO.” An entire wall caved in beneath the might of Celestia’s magic.
“Obviously not.” Luna snickered.
With a pop, Luna appeared in Celestia’s study, grinning like a foal and smouldering from head to tail. A tiny flame still burned at the end of a stray hair.
Celestia looked up from the law regarding proper lumber distribution and raised an eyebrow. “Good day?”
“I smote so many fools!” Then Luna frowned. “‘Smote’? That does not sound quite right. ‘Smited’? No, certainly not. ‘Were smitten’? Oh, heavens to me, no. Hmm.” She shook her head and went back to grinning. “So many fools experienced a smiting!” Her horn glowed briefly and the smoke vanished. “They think that, with me out of the way, Equestria is helpless. Ha! If only they knew. A chimera lurking at the base of Canter Mount? Have a smiting! Windigoes encroaching on the Frozen North? Smitings for all of you! Chrysophylax trying to plunder Fort Bucks again? I have smitings in dragon size, too! Chrysalis attempting to invade the Badlands with an army of changelings? Don’t worry, smitings come in family packs! You get a smiting! And you get a smiting! And you get a smiting! EVERYBODY gets a smiting!” She threw back her head and cackled. Thunder boomed outside, baffling the weather pegasi in charge of the cloudless sky.
“Sounds good,” mumbled Celestia, looking back down. “Now, please; let me get back to this fascinating form about the proper way to transport logs.”
“Would you like to smite fools tomorrow, Tia?”
Celestia looked up again and cocked her head.
“It is simple.” A wave of magic cascaded from Luna’s horn; in a matter of seconds, an illusion of Celestia’s body overlaid her own, and when she spoke, it was with Celestia’s voice. “I know you well enough to do a passable impression. And with my ‘banishment’ mere weeks in the past, any discrepancies between my behavior and yours shall be chalked up to stress on your part. Nopony will be the wiser.”
“Perhaps not tomorrow,” said Celestia, grinning slightly, “but with a few days in advance to get things in order, this weekend would be nice.”
“The weekend it is, then. I shall save some fools so you can smite them properly.”
“Oh, Luna. If not for the secrecy, this arrangement would be working perfectly. And it has been for five hundred years, too! One of us patrols the fringes of Equestria and drives back enemies, the other handles royal duties, and nopony looks twice at the peace we’ve had ever since your banishment. We haven’t even had any risks with somepony figuring it out! Honestly, I didn’t expect it would go this well. Perhaps, in the future, we should consider fake-moon-banishing as a solution to similar pro-”
“Beg pardon, Tia, but what made you decide to comment on that now? What possessed you to say, ‘Hey, Luna. You know that plan we’ve been working on every day for the past few centuries and has been going flawlessly? Well, it’s been going flawlessly. Just, you know, FYI.’? I know that, I’m one entire half of it.”
“…I’m really not sure.”
“We should probably plan on what happens when my banishment is over, though.”
“Yeah.”
“…”
“…”
“Eh. It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?” Luna asked, turning around so Celestia could fully see her Nightmare Moon form. “Is this accurate?”
“Luna, what’s the problem? Everypony who saw Nightmare Moon is dead. Their children are dead. Their children’s children are dead. Their children’s children’s children are dead.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” said Luna. “I know nopony will care about the accuracy of Nightmare Moon. But I care.”
“Their children’s children’s children’s children are dead. Their children’s children’s children’s children’s children are dead. Their ch-”
“I get the point, Tia.”
“But if you insist…” Celestia walked around Luna, eyeing her up and down. “It seems accurate to me. Properly smooth and curvy. You’ve still got the voice correct. If it’s not perfect, it’s very close.”
“Good. And I have placed the Elements in our castle.” Nightmare Moon was replaced with Luna in a whiff of smoke; no need to expend magic just yet. “And have you decided how you’re going to nudge your student on the right path?”
“I put a book in the library she’ll be staying at.”
“A… A book? What… sort of… book?”
“The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide.”
Luna groaned and smacked herself in the face. “Really? Really? A set of mythical artifacts, lost to legend and the mists of time, and you just put a reference guide to them in the library?”
“You don’t know Twilight as well as I do,” Celestia said seriously. “She doesn’t question books. Put anything in a book, make it look official enough, and she’ll believe it.”
“Fine. But if this goes wrong, I’m blaming you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Well,” Celestia grumbled as she and Luna rode the chariot back to Canterlot, “at least you didn’t screw up a whole millennium of flawless plotting.”
“I’m sorry!” protested Luna. “I completely forgot to brush up on my Ye Olde Ponish! I still can’t believe they didn’t notice Nightmare Moon speaking with modern Ponish.”
Celestia sighed, but said, “When you get right down to it, they didn’t. So long as scholars don’t look too closely at Nightmare Moon’s phrasings, I doubt anypony will care. But you still need to re-learn your Ye Olde Equestrian, and fast.”
“I’ll need to spend a little more time out of the limelight, anyway. If I went right back to my duties as soon as I was back from a millennial banishment, it’d look suspicious.”
“Perfect. It’s good to have you back, Luna.”
“It’s good to be back.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, letting the wind whip their manes around.
“So… what should we do about the Elements of Harmony? If the Bearers think they truly worked on you-”
“I don’t think that will be a problem. We have experienced a thousand years of peace, and our visible strength has just doubled. Can you imagine villains attempting to attack now?”
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In early-modern English it became that using the second-person plural “you” was seen as an intimate thing done with friends and family; “thou” was for everyone else. So it’s possible Nightmare Moon used “you” in a deliberate attempt to be creepily familiar with the ponies she encountered.
That or the writers hadn’t thought of the quirk yet.
9741237
I like it
I'd totally read a story about Luna just going around fighting monsters for a thousand years
SHE ATTACKED THE CHICKENS?!
9741237
You've got that backwards. Thou was the more familiar variant.
I know this fic was published in 2019, but still, mood.
10515280
cackles madly in 2022