• Published 26th Sep 2021
  • 7,454 Views, 759 Comments

Left Behind - The Psychopath



The spell trapping Nightmare Moon within the orbital satellite is tampered with, pushing her release past a thousand years into a time where alicorns are myth, technology has somewhat stagnated, and nobody knows who she is.

  • ...
21
 759
 7,454

Forced Emergence

The mayor was walking through the somewhat chilly streets of the mountain city, letting his mind go blank from all thoughts and any distractions. He found it somewhat relaxing to just let one's mind go blank, but he was never really aware of the face he would make. It was a mystery to hear that doing the 'Mayor's Face' was a sign of laziness or just not paying attention. The ponies didn't intend it to be an insult. It was just a comment on the way he looked. His eyes would become dim and his jaw would hang over to the side at an angle while he trotted through the streets. It was just one of the many quirks he had developed over his very long and very boring career.

This amusing display for the locals was shattered when the twins appeared in front of the elder stallion, startling him so badly that he fell onto his flank.

"What?! What is it that you have to startle an old stallion like that?!" he roared furiously.

"We were trapped in some weird alternate reality!" Candied screamed at the top of her lungs.

"We almost died!" Candy added with the same vocal enthusiasm. "You better compensate us way more than what you promised beforehoof!"

"But we agreed on--"

"More vacation days and we'll stay!" Candied interjected.

The mayor was taken aback and had trouble even processing what was happening. His brain had been flat-lining until this sudden burst of information started overloading his mind.

"But I--"

The pegasi flew into the mayor's face, startling him even further. "Now!" the twins shouted in unison.

"Okay! You can go now!" the mayor screamed. The twins heaved a sigh of relief and dropped to the ground, deflating. Concerned, the stallion approached the two while they leaned limply against each other. "Was it really that bad?" he asked them.

Candy weakly turned his head. "Yes," he whispered.

"Are you going to be okay without us?" Candied asked.

"Well, if you don't want to leave now and are having second thoughts after relaxing--"

"No," the two said in unison.

The Mayor flinched in surprise. "Okay! I'll be fine. It's not you being absent for a week or two that is going to turn this city into some kind of battle arena filled with chrome-teeth ponies," he said. "Take your time when you want to leave, though," he was quick to add in with a large smile. He helped the two onto their hooves and kept them as stable as he possibly could. "There you are. Now, tell me what happened when we get back to the office. Some warmth and escape from the wind should be comforting enough."


The mayor leaned against his desk. His only source of light was the oil lamp lying calmly next to him and showing the words written on as many local documents as he could get; documents from when Nightmare Moon had appeared and beyond. Newspapers, posters, and recorded hearsay were strewn about the room in unkempt piles. The twins had left earlier, and even the guards had gone.

"So at what point did this talk of her just being some kind of magical attraction or whatever doodad become a regular occurrence?" the mayor wondered.

He started flipping through the documents, newspapers, reports. Anything that was in hoof's reach. Politics, politics, sales, politics, sporting events, politics, gardening contests, more politics. The stallion scratched his head. There sure were a lot about politics.

"Ponies assault Griffin City. Two wielding immense magic. Equestrian royal family disavows any such event."

The mayor blinked slowly then started laughing heartily. "She assaulted one of their cities down south?! That's hilarious! I would've expected her to flatten it!" He started calming down and frowned. "Why didn't they specify that it was the alicorn?" The newspaper and a few bits of recorded gossip from the locals all indicated that it was ponies, but the newspaper itself only showed 'approximations' of the ponies rather than photographs. "Hmm. They could do the muzzles better," the mayor commented to himself.

Several of the papers repeated the same thing. Only the gossip mentioned the possibility of the offending ponies being alicorns. Plural. At least the guards were useful for something, the mayor thought. The further in the documents he went, the more the stallion realized that the mentions of an alicorn were becoming more obvious, but they were only mentioned in the context of the appearances being tricks, a show, magic, etc. It was an oddity considering how many were present during the festival and saw Nightmare Moon directly. Why, the mayor's own people would be able to attest to the existence of the Mare from the Moon.

"Fascinating. Only somepony with a massive reach would be able to influence the news like this, even with all of the gossip going around." The mayor looked at several pictures and marveled at their crispness. He wondered if Nightmare Moon ever had something like this in her time. "I wish they were in color," the stallion lamented. "Going off-track. Whoever or whomever is doing this is able to drown out the rumors and witness accounts, and no pony has disappeared." The stallion rubbed his chin. "Knowing the king and queen, they wouldn't allow this, and this sort of attack against alicorns has happened way before the many generations of them ago have existed, meaning the culprits are far older than I thought." He raised a brow and stared at the far wall just barely illuminated by the flickering light of his lamp. "Unless they're part of the group. Then again, the king is a stubborn fool. He'll probably throw assassins at the alicorn." He stroked his short beard, satisfied that it was growing once more, but still annoyed at the length. "I wonder what she would think about this?" He stuck out his tongue. "Time to spread some of my own work to the visitors and my fellow ponies."

Over the course of the next few days, the mayor had commissioned artwork and embellishing pieces of Nightmare Moon to spread around town. He even had a banner hoisted at one of the entrances near the most frequented route leading to the city reading: "Home of Nightmare Moon: Alicorn of the Moon and the Night". The inhabitants were not amused.

Many of them were growing increasingly annoyed at the actions of the mayor and so he addressed the concerns, mentioning that somepony was trying to erase them and their experiences and that they should fight for the right to exist and have the truth heard.

For the mayor, it was a sword with three edges: Draw attention to his city, get ponies to notice the local alicorn and help the people know what is happening, and bait the responsible party for all the strange occurrences. Made no sense to have a sword with three edges, but the mayor adored stupid metaphors. Anything to be rid of the boredom he suffered yearly. It all seemed to be working.

Papers from outside the city made mention of the mayor's declining sanity, slandering the people, and so on. Most were just reactions by others who hadn't seen her, but there were some who were more subtle with their actions and either relegated the mentions to other pages in small articles or just weren't mentioned at all. Those were the clues the mayor was hoping to see. He had to find the core root of the vine and cut it; killing every branching plant from there. For now, he just needed to watch the bread crumb trail get eaten by the stray birds. The mayor wished he was capable of doing more, but his brain wasn't made with so much intelligence in mind.

For the time being, he was simply leaning back in his creaky chair, looking outside and watching his city. Taking in everything and taking just a moment of relaxation from all the work he was putting into his games.

Sunny was having trouble dealing with being outside and was a little worse for wear, but everypony that crossed paths would wave him hello and say how happy they were to see him again. He was passing in front of the main square of the city when a loud 'thunk' followed by muffled screams caught his attention, but the stallion couldn't pinpoint the source of the sounds.

The Mayor was on the floor, rubbing his muzzle and cursing loudly.

"Mister Mayor?" his guard asked.

"Sunny!" The stallion spurted as he burst past the guard.

"Hey, wait-!"

As fast as his creaky bones could manage, the mayor rushed down the steps and went outside. His body shivered from the sudden change in temperature, but his excitement dulled the sensations.

"You're out!" he gasped.

Sunny was taken aback and was feeling nervous. He found himself looking around nervously for a way out of this predicament. "Y-yes. I thought about what you told me and started gathering my courage."

The mayor leaned against the young stallion, gasping for air. "Yeesh, I'm out of shape...," he lamented. "That's good to hear. I wasn't expecting an overnight change, but I was hoping that you wouldn't stay cooped up in there for the rest of your life."

Sunny nodded weakly and his eyes trailed away. "So, what was Her Highness been doing while I wasn't around? I thought that she would come and get me and yell at me or something while I was going through my...thing."

"Yeees. A thing, as you put it," the mayor mused.

The young unicorn glared at him. "Did you come out here just to mock me?"

"I'm very sorry," the mayor said while backing away. "I was hoping that you were more open to self-mockery. It hasn't been long enough. That's me jumping the hydra." He straightened himself and cleared his throat. "For your question about the alicorn, she hasn't been seen for as long as you haven't."

Sunny's face seemed to bleach. "She hasn't...Oh." He put a hoof to his mouth in realization.

The mayor nodded. "Yes. You've both had a lot on your plates it seems. My assistants got to enjoy the majority of it. Seems she's having some family troubles with being alone and unable to do..." He twirled his hoof in the air. "Whatever it was she wanted. I don't remember."

"I see..." was all Sunny could muster.

A mischievous smile spread across the old stallion's face. "And it seems that somepony is trying to erase your existences, so I've been doing my own counters. It's a fun back and forth, but eventually they'll slip up."

Eagerness was met with disapproval by the unicorn. "I don't want to deal with that. Should I just go to Nightmare Moon now? I don't know if--"

"No. She's far older and has no pony left..." The mayor made a silent gasp when he remembered something very important about the pony before him. "You're related to her!"

"What?!"

"You're related to the alicorn!" the mayor whisper-yelled. "You and your family are all she has left! You could use that to get her back into shape!" His enthusiasm began to die down. "But I think it best that we wait for her to leave on her own, at least for the time being."


Another week had passed, and while Sunny was recovering well enough, Nightmare Moon had yet to leave her castle. Though it wasn't a mystery to her 'personal guards' stationed there that she was doing something in her room. Lights and colors would flash regularly from the floor and gravity seemed to distort for very short periods; causing weightlessness or heavier sensations in everypony present.

In fact, she had just recently ceased her activities and was peering outside the entrance of her floor to the guards wandering the hall below. Silence was all she needed to overhear the two of them.

"-ing happened to him."

The second guard cursed under her breath. "Who would do that to him?"

The two paused and looked up at where Moon was, unable to see her thanks to the darkness inherent on that floor.

"When she finds out she's gonna flip," the first pony squeaked. "I mean, we can't hide it forever! The unicorns said she was doing some weird spells up there this whole time since the mayor's assistants came by." He started trembling and looking around as if Moon would jump out at him any second now.

"Calm down. She hasn't been out of there in weeks," the mare reassured him. "She won't know until much later."

"But that's just delaying the inevitable! I say we rip the poultice off right now!"

"Tell me what?" Moon asked.

The guards froze in place and slowly turned to see dark, clouded forelegs. They slowly looked up to see the signature glowing white eyes of the angered alicorn they had all come to know and fear.

It took a moment for the stallion to answer. "Well..."

Within the city a commotion had grown outside of the town hall, and the local policing forces and guards were having trouble pushing everypony away.

"Move it!" one of the king's guards shouted angrily. "Move it or I'll have to deploy more radical methods!" The crowd backed away, worried, and the guard nodded. "Good. Crowding us and trying to see what has happened here will not aid in the matter. I know you are all stressed but you must give us time to investigate. Only when all is done will you be allowed to properly-Gh!"

The guard was smashed into the ground, terrifying everyone, including the police. Moon slowly flew down and landed softly. She lowered her head to the guard and bared her teeth.

"You threaten my subjects, outsider?" she asked. The alicorn seemed softspoken and gentle, but from the bulging eyes and profuse sweating of the armored guard, it was clear that he knew how she was feeling.

He didn't have time to process her question properly. "Y-you can-It's only for their best interest and ours!" Moon released him and charged through the entrance, leaving the stallion to stand up with much difficulty. "Why didn't you stop her?" he asked the police.

Several more regular guards from nearby and the local police were in the building. When they witnessed Moon, the locals immediately backed away. The mare climbed the stairs, welcoming the burning sensation of her heavy and underused body and regretting not knowing the specific location of the mayor's office. She would have him explain this farce. Tracing the concentration of ponies, the mare found herself in a neatly cleaned short hallway leading to the front of the building and part of the immense windows letting in light for all floors. The floor tiles were still a revolting mixture of black and a dark, clay-colored red. The walls used to be a sickly vanilla, but whatever paint was there had been corroded by the heat produced by the various pipes going throughout the building.

Nightmare Moon walked up towards the armored guard blocking the way to the office everypony seemed interested in.

Said guard stepped towards the alicorn and puffed out her chest. "Stop! You aren't allowed to enter!"

The door opened, startling the ponies within. Their breath was taken away when an angry giant of a pony came in and stopped in the entryway to gauge the situation. Leaning to the side, the ponies could see that the guard stationed outside their door had been planted into the ceiling with only their hind legs dangling free.

"What has happened? I heard news of the mayor having an incident."

One of the soldiers stepped forward, fidgeting in place. "We were hoping you wouldn't hear about it. The mayor has been...He has entered the long sleep."

Moon raised a brow. "Killed?"

The pony nodded slowly. The alicorn's eyes started glowing brighter than ever, and the magic engulfing her body started to shift like a living storm. He was there, on the floor, surrounded by several medical ponies. He seemed to be smiling as widely as possible, as though he had planned for this to happen and was looking forward to what might happen afterwards. On the wall to the immediate left of the mayor's desk were several words written in the new ponyish that Nightmare Moon had yet to fully learn how to read.

"What does it say?" she asked the soldier.

"What?" He followed the alicorn's gaze and shrunk. "Oh. It says 'Disappear', but none of us are really sure what it means."

The mare strode quietly towards the mayor's favorite spot and stood there, staring at the outside for several minutes.

"So they would harm one of my vassals." The sky outside flickered. The night sky seemed like it wanted to break through the daylight. "It seems they have officially declared war on me." The many moons the alicorn of the night was linked to faded in and out of existence in the sky. "Then I will make you regret having even deigned to think of existing before life was breathed into your body," she stated firmly.