Left Behind: Sunny Disposition

by The Psychopath

Progress

Moon stood before the thestrals, watching them watch her in a rocky, mostly flat area near the castle where the guards watched them watch her watch them. The alicorn grit her teeth. That was from one of her successors, no doubt. The bat ponies were standing in a square and gazing at the alicorn with reverence and awe, but they were disjointed. The ponies weren't in proper alignment, and several of them were fidgeting non-stop. Well, that's why they were here. She let her mind work while the sun began to set slowly behind her, disappearing into the sheer drop the mare was standing next to.

"You came here to seek my guidance," Nightmare Moon started. "To seek servitude to the alicorn of the night. The one and only, but I have no use for ponies who can't even sit still for a few minutes!" she bellowed. Her voice pushed the ponies back. "Before you can serve me, you must train! Before you can train, you must prove yourselves to me!" She continued slowly pacing back and forth. "You have lived lax and slothful lives. No more! No more will you live under a false king who claims to hold my throne. A coward who murdered my first vassal and threatened my position as the rightful ruler of Equestria. With your help, we will restore Equestria to its former glory and reassemble a fractured home into a mighty Empire that joins together all tribes." Moon stopped moving and stomped down, cracking the mountain. "We'll start with some simple physical exercises, and when necessary, I will employ the aids of my castle guards to train you." She took in a deep breath. "Now follow me for your flight training!" she bellowed before taking off.

---

Moon returned to the keep and stretched her wings, producing satisfying 'crunches'.

"My body is sore all over. Fantastic!" She twisted and contorted herself, stretching her muscles out further. "I haven't had a chance to properly exercise myself since being freed from my prison."

She heard Sunny forcing himself to not heave. "Those sounds are horrifying. Please don't make them again," he pleaded.

"Cease your whining," Moon berated him. "It is simply the creaking of ancient joints finally allowed to work as they were meant to.

"Messages for the new Empress!" a voice shouted.

It came from one of the thestrals Moon had just recruited. She could tell from the strained face and the limp wings that they were forcing themselves to drag a rather large, brown bag across the ground towards her. He collapsed in front of her and Sunny whilst gasping for air.

"These are for...Nightmare Moon," he wheezed. "I refused to...let anypony else...carry them..."

The alicorn snorted and craned her neck. "Your loyalty is admirable, but blind fanaticism will kill you," Moon explained. "I demand your utmost obedience and efforts, not your unhinged emotions and blind fervor." She poked him, causing the stallion to wince in pain. "Return to the camp and rest. Tomorrow will be the start of another day of training."

"R-right." The thestral struggled to stand up and limped out of the keep.

Sunny looked at Moon, rubbing his forehooves together. "I thought you were going to yell at him." The alicorn grunted in return. "You're not...going to do anything else?"

Moon grinned. "They're punished enough with the training." She raised the bag and opened it, revealing many letters addressed to her. "And I've had centuries to think about how I failed during my first attack against my stubborn and egotistical sister. Time breeds boredom breeds thoughts." She raised a brow. "Help me sift through these," she ordered Sunny as she dropped half the pile of letters at his hooves.

There were around a hundred letters. Looking at the senders, Moon realized they were from ponies and creatures in either high places, or ruling their own areas. Thanks to Sunny speeding the reading forward, the mare realized that she already had the allegiance of seventeen different sections of former Equestria. The griffons had even answered her letters...aggressively. They were threats and so forth from her claims to the griffon city. She dangled one of the letters before her and failed to stifle a chuckle. One of them was demanding that she return the section she was now inhabiting to the griffin territories or else death, fire, bla bla bla.

She put that one in her 'fun' pile. While she was enthralled by the progress she had seen, Sunny was less thrilled.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

Sunny grunted and lifted several letters to compare their contents. "Well...you have some territories calling their allegiance to you, but they're scattered about Equestria. The thestrals and our three neighbors swore allegiance, likely because they're next to you, but the rest?" He lowered the letters and looked at Nightmare Moon with a concerned look. "If the king declares war on you, they won't be able to participate until we move further down. If we move further down." He stifled a sickly burp and looked at the paper littering the ground. "I don't want to see a war in Equestria."

Moon raised a brow. "I proposed to the king vassalage. I wanted to do this peacefully and restore Equestria to its former glory. A war is a waste of time and hooves that could be better spent improving Equestrian infrastructure." Sunny opened his mouth but quickly closed it, which caused Moon's temper to flare and her eyes to glow white. "You think this about personal gain?"

"W-well..."

"In what state is former Equestria?" she asked calmly.

The stallion stammered and tried to come up with a proper response. "I-it..well, it..."

The mare stomped the ground hard and bellowed. "I asked you a question, Sunny Dimples!"

Sunny toppled over onto his back and looked aware, terrified. "It's fractured!"

"Exactly!" Moon relaxed her voice. "It's a fractured mess! It's all ruled by a single king, but what is this? Sections belonging to diamond dogs? Minotaurs?!" She rubbed her temples. "At least the minotaurs said they were willing to simply give up the lands they held as long as I prove myself." She snorted. "But ponies have become a fractured mess. Nothing is properly together. Technology and magic have stagnated. History is destroyed. But me? I hold knowledge from a time that has been forgotten. I hold magic that none of you could dream of." She leaned in toward Sunny and raised him back onto his hooves. "I can use my magic to restore Equestria, and if time permits..." She smiled widely, revealing her fangs, and looked to the side. "Well, that's for me to know."

"So you've said countless times," Sunny sighed. "What are you going to do about those who still hold an allegiance to the king?"

Moon tapped her chest pensively and smiled. "A lot of these are under the assumption that I am not real."

"So you're going to see them directly?" the stallion asked.

Moon nodded. "A brief visitation. A momentary convincing. Some threatening if they don't comply."

"But you just said--"

"To make a table you need to cut down trees, Sunny," the mare explained. Her joyful expression soured when a memory came through.

"What's wrong?" Sunny asked.

The mare bared her fangs. "I just recalled the strange symbols and magic we found under my sister's former castle."

Sunny blinked slowly. "Weren't you trying to research them?" He fumbled through the letters as he spoke.

"No. There's nothing I can learn from brand-new magic. I am a magic caster. I can make new spells but not new magic entirely. That goes beyond my expertise," she growled.

"Oh, I missed a few letters." His eyes widened. "One from Calostell."

"Read it," Moon ordered.

Sunny ripped the letter and took a look at the contents. "She says that she has received your letter and is willing to keep to her deal as long as you keep to your agreement of independent vassalage."

The alicorn's eyes glowed angrily. "I said I would give her the right to do what she wanted. Not independent vassalage." Her anger turned to confusion. "Wait...that doesn't mean anything. Did she mean autonomy?" Sunny looked at the letter then the alicorn and shrugged. "Ugh. Is there anything else?"

"She says she found a teacher to learn magic from," Sunny explained. Moon felt her heart sink. "Oh. That's great, I guess!"

"Sunny..." Moon exhaled. "Her species doesn't possess magic like ponies. At best, it's close to the likes of earth ponies, from what I sensed." Her eyes remained wide open, and every breath felt shallow. "I've never seen them before, but the chance that she found a teacher to teach her that...magic is extremely concerning." She grunted. "Unfortunately, I have my hooves full here with training the new recruits until I deem them ready enough to handle themselves."

Sunny made several shapes with his mouth while thinking. "I could go--"

"No!" Moon interjected. "Don't go near her with the magic she has." Moon became stern. "That magic isn't anything good."

The stallion frowned and opened another letter. "Uh oh."

"What?"

The white unicorn started reading faster and became worried. "The griffin you made fun of told you that he'll have your head on a pike."

Moon rolled her eyes. "That explains the griffin assassin I caught trying to kill me in my room as I meditated."

"What?!" Sunny shouted. "What happened."

Moon grinned. "Squish," she stated simply.

The memory of the tiny metal ball just outside of his dorm room flashed in Sunny Dimple's mind, and a shiver coursed through him. "ah-also," he started in a vain attempt to try and forget. "There's a county next to us that declared war on you."

Moon's face shot to Sunny. "And I can't get the others to fight on my behalf yet." She rubbed her chin with a feather and shrugged with a smile. "I'll deal with them. My military isn't big enough. My magic and mere presence should pummel them into submission. Go tell the guards to prepare for a potential invasion. I'll have discussion in my quarters."

---

The alicorn found this all amusing, but extremely stressful. If she didn't plan everything out right, the ponies would turn against her again, and all those millennia of planning and revising would have been for nothing. She could be killed by some weird new magic, or worse, and she had already suffered the latter. Moon's quarters were at least a soothing reprieve. The stone was slowly being imbibed by the magic that flowed out of her. This, in turn, created seemingly random line patterns that snaked around and became visible only when Moon used her magic voluntarily.

"Ready to talk once again?" Mond asked.

"Quite so," Moon stated. "You and the presence of the others might have made those millennia in the dark silence tolerable, to be honest," Moon stated truthfully.

"That's very kind of you to say." The first successor smiled.

Mond and Mellow's forms had come with the avenue of night, but there was another hiding in the dark. Even in the simulacrum of space the two existed in, she could perceive a sickly blue and green that transitioned into each other in various areas of their body.

"Come out of the dark," Moon ordered. "Your attempts at 'mystery' and 'awe' are wasted on me."

The alicorn acquiesced hesitantly and stood before the trio. Her wings and feathers coursed with the shifting bands of colors, as did a large portion of her body. Moon grimaced in rage when she saw that the right wing of the alicorn was missing, as was a large chunk of her torso that took her two right limbs with it. The right side of her head was also sporting a gaping hole, but all of these were replaced with the green and blue lights that Moon could see in the dark. This mare's mane and tail were whispy shadows of colors that brought attention to the gangly body she possessed and the sunken eyes with which she gazed upon Moon.

Nightmare Moon couldn't help but bare her fangs. "What happened to you?" The new moon alicorn said nothing, preferring to keep her head low. "Well?"

"Don't mind her," the giant Mellow butted in. "She went through some..." She glanced at the sickly mare briefly. "Well, a rather extensive war."

"Many wars," Mond corrected.

The two ghosts grunted, intriguing the mare-in-the-moon. "I thought you liked fighting, giant," Moon said.

The immense alicorn puffed at the comment. "I enjoy fighting. It's a fun activity between consenting ponies or wild beasts. The rush that comes with it and the need to think on your hooves. It builds character! It trains your reflexes! But war?" She spat on the ground. "That's just mass battles for the pleasure of fools who sit in the back and destroy the homes of innocents and take the lives of those not interested. There is no enjoyment in a one-sided conflict." She raised a brow at Moon. "Something I noticed you wanting."

Nightmare scoffed. "I aim to retake all of Equestria diplomatically or by simple intimidation, but if it comes to it, then I will wipe out their armies and leadership." She leaned close to the ghost with a taunting smile. "That is the price to be paid for keeping me trapped for so long."

Mellow started turning red. "There's no value in that! The ponies are doing fine!"

Before Moon could say anything, Mond butted in. "Are they?" she shouted. "Look at them! They've lost their history! Thousands of years of it! So much learned and lost just as quickly! They've been stagnating technologically because somepony keeps erasing everything and everypony!" She dragged her hooves across her face. "Everypony I knew has been forgotten. Everything I strived for was destroyed with lies!" Wisp-like embers flowed from her eyes as she looked up. "The world was so promising back then..."

"And that is the world I am trying to return to. A world where Equestria is growing and developing. A world better than the one my sister left behind." She pointed to the sickly alicorn. "What is her name and what is she related to?"

"My name is Litid," she stated. "And I am related to the green moon you recently awoke to." Her voice was hushed but echoed, as though she were speaking from the other side of a cave. She looked upon her hooves and felt herself tremble. "I lived through five wars since I was coronated. I never even got a chance to know what peace was, but I know you're trying to take it away from these ponies." She looked to the side and felt old memories flash in front of her. "But I know that, unlike others before me, you're not doing it just to own the world. Otherwise you would be aiming to keep all the land that Equestria has taken over the years. There are many positives and negatives to your intention. I am not sure what to think."

"Then don't," Moon said. "I will take care of it all."

"Be careful of what you choose to do, then," Litid said. She floated over to Moon and booped her unintentionally, causing the alicorn to sneeze. "Even with my moon, I was unable to withstand the final war directed at me and my loyal followers. Be careful its misery doesn't consume your body to try and bring mine back."

Moon's eyes started glowing. "It is a moon. I will tell it what it can or cannot do," she threatened.

Author's Note:

Next we go back to king stinky doodoo head and the melty bunch.

Comments

[TheUndeadEmpire]

Still can’t wait for the sisters reunion.

[Thranx]

We will unite Equestria! We will take back our lands from the Griffons, Diamond Dogs and Minotaurs! The pony tribes will be united! Equestria shall be one!

Come, follow us on Nightmare Moon's guide to Equestrian Nationalism!

[Black--Soul]

Things escalate and Nightmare should keep a eye out for threats, her assets are easy to vandalized than to defend.

Nightmare might underestimated the power and requirements of the connected moons.

[tsaukpaetra]

Careful, that sounds like cockiness...