Stars In The Day

by NightInk

Honor in Life and Death

Think about what Equestria was last time Discord was released. Scary mutant bunnies, floating buildings, improperly colored nature in general. Now make everything three times worse. Everything was wrong. Very, very wrong. Roads weren’t connected to the ground, made loops in the air, and just stopped. Buildings didn’t have doors anymore, the sun wasn’t as bright as it used to be, and the stars were showing clearly. Clouds were more different colors and kinds of candy, they didn’t stay up in the sky. Some had legs and crawled along the ground, others actually had wings and flew along at eye level. There were a few animals that I’m fairly certain had never existed before Discord made them, and various mutations of everything in existence, natural or not. This was a greater chaos that I had ever seen. I could spend years trying to describe everything that was wrong at the time and still not be very far in the story. Find me in the afterlife if you really want to know.

Moving along, I realized that Nightmare Moon was following along behind me. She looked around with a look that crossed between confusion, fear, and delight. “What… What’s happening?!”

I looked around and didn’t know how to react myself. Honestly, I was loving this. I mean, I was against the abominations of nature, but things could have been worse. I think the candy corn clouds really sold me. I love candy corn. I got pulled back to reality by the barrage of flaming cupcakes coming from the passing train, running on an upside down, airborne track. None of them hit me, just passed through me as their pink master screamed, “Eewie eewie eewie! Ghosts go home! Back to the place where the evil ghosts live because you’re evil and your ghosts! Chow down on these baked bads undead fiends!!!!”

Trying to dodge them out of reflex, I tried to focus on turning back into a pony. It took a little longer than usual, especially when she started screaming about shape-shifting monsters, but I got it and began to run towards the train as fast as I could. “Pinkie Pie!” I yelled. “Stop shooting the damn cupcakes!! At the very least save your ammo!!”

The cupcakes kept coming for another moment, then slowed to a stop. “Oh! Look! It’s Adam! It’s really him!” I could hear her shouting to someone else on the train.

“Yeah, Pinkie, we told you that. Now stop shootin’ at him! Remember he’s our friend?!” Thank Celestia for RainbowDash. “Yo, AJ! Tell them to stop the train! Let this guy on! I mean, he’s not as fast as I am!”

“Rainbow, quit yer braggin’!” came the response as the train began to slow down.

“But gently! It has been proven that quick stops, like sudden train stops, can cause back and neck problems!” Damn it Twilight. Writing like this was getting annoying.

“Hey! Just stop the damn train!” I yelled. As it slowed down, I could see the girls running back and forth inside their car. When it slowed to a halt, one last cupcake fell through my spirit.

“Oopsie! Sorry! I was just reloading my new and improved cupcake launcher, and it kind of launched another, but it didn’t really launch another because it didn’t go very far and it really just went “pbbbt” and fell out of the launcher and it went through your spirit which was kind of cool because I thought that you were dodging all those cupcakes that I launched at you earlier and I didn’t realize that you were actually also avoiding them because they just went right through you!!”

“Yes, thank you Pinkie,” I panted. “Just… where are the others?”

As I said it, the other five came rushing out of the car. Well, four came running out, Fluttershy kind of stumbled down the steps and landed with an “Oof!” Twilight ran up to me first. “Adam! How are you… I mean how did you… What did you do? You’ve broken the laws of science! Again! How do keep doing this? What in Celestia’s name is wrong with you?” That was the gist of her rant, but she went on longer. I stopped listening after that and tried focusing on not laughing in her face. She’s not a fan of that, especially when she talks about science. Or my lack-of-respect-for-and-constant-disregard-for-thereof. Or something like that. She uses other long, fancy words to describe it, but I don’t know how to pronounce them. I lasted for a little bit, but pretty soon I was giggling. In a manly fashion of course. Twi stopped her yelling at me for a second after she noticed.

“And along with- Are you laughing? Seriously?” Her face began to grow redder than it already was. “Your even being here is why Discord got out of his prison in the first place! I know that you didn’t intend for all this and that I’m acting really out of character and I don’t usually lose my temper, but we need to FIX THIS!!” That brought me back to some kind of seriousness.

“Twilight, look,” I started out. “Yeah, this is my fault. But I’m obviously trying to fix it. I’d think that my present condition is proof enough of that. And I’m not even done working. So we all need to relax and keep thinking rationally, which as I recall is your specialty. All right? Everyone clear on that?” I looked around until everyone was nodding in agreement. “So, on that note, I have something else that none of you will like. Well, some one, but same difference. She ought to be coming into view in a second.” Nightmare Moon didn’t follow as quickly, so she wasn’t recognizable yet, but as soon as she did there was an uproar, Twilight being the first to explode.

“WHAT IN TARTARUS IS THAT SHE DEVIL DOING HERE?!?” For a moment Twilight had a Royal Canterlot Voice. I held up my relatively-newly fleshy right hoof and made a silver ‘STOP’ sign with my magic. That only bought me a second of silence from the group.

“Twi, just stop right there-”

“No way, dude!” I could hear RainbowDash yelling. “She killed you!!”

“Shoot, she did way more than just kill you!” AppleJack’s voice reached me. “She killed you, she destroyed Luna’s room, and she would have killed all us!!”

I picked up on Rarity’s voice next. “And besides, darling, she tried to make night last forever, on top of which she wore that tacky battle armor!”

Nothing else came in clear after that. There was just noise from them. I never tried to listen to Pinkie Pie, because it wouldn’t have made sense anyways. I just didn’t know what was going on. I added flashing lights to the sign, I tried yelling, I tried almost everything. Pretty soon I did the last thing I could think of. I slowly began charging my horn with magical energy. Not a ton, not lethal amounts or anything. Just enough. Once I had the amount I wanted, I reared up on my hind legs so that I was higher than any of the others, since RainbowDash wasn’t hovering very high. At my peak, I released it all at once. Had it hit any of them, they would have been fine; it was more of a sonic blast than anything. As I released it, I yelled. “ENOUGH!!” Everyone stopped at once and ducked to make sure they avoided the blast. “Now,” I said calmly. “We are going to take a very different approach to this than all yelling at each other. Ok?” I waited for everyone to nod again. ”Good. Now, there’s only one of you that hasn’t had a filly in the ten seconds that Nightmare Moon has been visible.” I walked over to the yellow pegasus cowering underneath the train. “Fluttershy, please come out from under there.” All I got in return was a somewhat pathetic whimper. “Fluttershy, come on out. This is not a request. I need you to talk to me, at the very, very, very least.” I crouched down so that I could see her shivering on the tracks. “Come on, you are the single person here that I can talk to reasonably and trust to think entirely about the questions that I ask. You can stay down here, but I want you to answer my questions. Can you do that for me?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, so I took that as a yes. “Now Fluttershy, I am telling you that I am one hundred percent convinced that Nightmare Moon is here only to help us, that she does not want to hurt you, and that even if she did she would be physically incapable of it. Do you trust me?”

She thought for a moment, and when she finally spoke it was in a barely audible whisper. “Why can’t she hurt me?”

Thank Celestia for rationality, even if it is fear driven. “Because she is just like I am right now. Technically, I’m a ghost.”

She whimpered a little, but kept thinking. “So, why haven’t you been able to come back like you did last time?”

“That is a very good question. On my part, it is because I’m not really dead. My spirit was separated from my body by magic. To tell you the truth, I’m not particularly clear as to the difference myself. And really, if I were to try and figure it out, it would take too much time and things would get worse. As for Nightmare Moon, she didn’t get a new body because when I earned the Element of Life through massive amounts of compassion, it was my victory. I allow who I want through the portal, but it only does that because I tell it to. It’s my victory, and it’s my tool. It doesn’t fix my almost death because I’m not really dead, so it doesn’t make up the difference. I don’t exactly know how to explain it, and I’ve probably confused you more trying to.”

“No, I understand,” she said, her voice gaining a little strength. “But… how do I know that she can’t hurt us?”

I was really kind of expecting that question, but I didn’t know how to answer it with her under the train. “Well, Fluttershy… I need you to come out so that I can prove to you that I am telling you the truth. I will make sure that she stands a little ways away, ok? And since we’re both ghosts, if she tries anything I can still stop her.”

“One hundred percent sure?”

I forced back a laugh. “Well, 97 max. Maybe 95.”

She didn’t move right away, just whimpered and thought. After what felt like an hour, she slowly crawled out. That took another hour it seemed. “Ok… Prove it.”

I was taken back a little bit by her bravery. I had thought that she would have taken more talking to than that. I stepped forward slowly, trying not to spook her. I held out my hoof and let it stay in the air in front of her. “Try to take my hoof. You can trust me.”

She reached out her hoof and tried to put it in mine, but she went right through me like Luna had when I finished digging through the mountain. She gasped quietly, along with the others who hadn’t seen it before. She whimpered and pulled back again, but stopped when I smiled warmly, like it was normal for me. She passed her hoof through mine a few more times before standing. She faced me, in her own version of tall, strong, and brave, and breathed deeply. She held in a big breath, braced herself, and charged me. She passed right through me and ran into Twilight.

As they picked themselves off the ground, I turned back around and faced everyone there. I allowed a bit of toughness to creep back into my voice as I spoke. “Now, with that being proven, I need some things for my successful re-possession of my body.” I wrote out the riddle in the air with my magic, making the lines I still needed to figure out bigger and brighter. “I still need something gaudy with meaning to my life and journey, and I need something from Luna. Rarity, I was wondering if you had and ideas about gaudy, and I need any of you to tell me where Luna went.”

Rarity took a step forward. “Well, darling, I can’t say very much about your usual, everyday attire, since I’ve made or redesigned most everything you wear anymore. But what I can tell you was rather… lacking… in style were your suspenders that you wore while you were tunneling. I mean, they were good enough for the job, but believe me, they were dreadfully tacky.”

Suddenly, one of the two voices I wanted to hear right then burst through the ethereal plane separating us. “Adam!” John’s voice echoed around the valley. “This young lady is correct. Those suspenders are what you seek. Think about what they mean to you, to me. This answer will not be given to you as the others have.”

Nodding a bit, I began to pace. It was really pretty nice, pacing as a ghost. I simply walked through any of the obstacles in my way, like the girls or the train. As I paced, I thought out loud. “All right. We both tunneled through a mountain. We suffered greatly. The big difference is that I have the chance to keep living now. In some amount, I’ve suffered more than you have, being so close to my friends and my wife and not being able to touch them. Not to belittle your sacrifice, of course. But I personally think that standing here and trying to make everything better is harder than not being able to talk to them at all. But really, we’ve both suffered so much. So very much. It’s so hard. For both of us. I’m so very tired… “

“Your almost there, lad. What does all of that, summed up into one word, mean?” His voice was calm, quiet, and sad. He knew very well what I was talking about.

I raised my head to the sky and thought to myself for just a moment. It hit me that even though we all referred to the Crossroads as being below whatever world we were on, we looked to the sky when we thought about it or those who were there. Maybe the sky was more accessible to us. More shareable. “It’s sacrifice,” I murmured. “They stand for sacrifice. We give more than we have so that others can keep what they have. And what makes it pure is that we are willing to do it again. I can’t speak for you, obviously, but I know that as soon as I have my body back, I’m going right back into the fight. I’m going to go put my life on the line again. And if I live, then I will be ready to lay it down the next time someone needs it. I’d rather be the one to do it.”

John’s laughter echoed through the air. “Yes! You truly are a smart one! Ah’m proud of you. Two words would have worked there, though. Honor is the second. You just described the honor of it as well, though.”

“So, I’m noticing a pattern here,” I said. “Honor is in all three of these objects. What are the chances that honor is some kind of factor in the last one?”

“It’s not an exact science. 97 percent. Maybe 95.”

I laughed. Yeah, he was my ancestor. “Sounding good. Thanks for your help, John. As soon as I can find Luna, we can figure out her item and find my pants.”

“Then ah’ll leave you be.” That last sentence faded into the air like breath on the wind.

Nightmare Moon stepped forward for the first time. “Uh, Adam,” she said quietly, pointing with her hoof. “Look over there.”

We all turned around to an interesting sight. Luna was flying towards us, which wasn’t quite the interesting part. The interesting part was the rainbow trailing after her, as if she had just accomplished a sonic rainboom. She was also being chased by flying cats. That was the extra weird part. She landed and instantly raised a shield around the group, muttering several curses against all cats. “Damnable creatures.” she swore, turning to me. “Hello, dear. Have you been successful in your attempts to reanimate your body?” she asked casually.

“Pretty successful,” I admitted, nodding a bit. “What I need now is my body, or rather the suspenders on my body, and something of sentimental value to me from you.” I put up the poem again, highlighting the part that involved her. I briefly explained the other items to her, then asked, “Any ideas?”

She mused for a while, and then smiled. “I have the perfect thing.” Her horn began to glow softly. I looked for the object she was manipulating, but only saw that the glow around her horn moved unusually. After a moment, I realized that she was removing her wedding ring.

“Whoa, whoa, honey,” I whispered gently. “Honey, are you sure about that? I mean, really, really sure? I don’t know if these things will survive the spell. That’s too important to risk. I mean, it should be my ring that gets risked.”

She smiled sadly. “It’s not always you who has to take the hit or the fall. This means this much because it’s someone giving something you need, rather than you giving it up. Sweetheart, I know you. It’s your honor. You have resolved to always be there for everyone who needs you. You give too much, almost. Almost care too much. It’s time for me to help you.” She blinked, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. “I’ve trusted you both times you’ve been… I’m just going to say killed. Both times you’ve been killed, I’ve trusted you.” Her words began to throw a little heat with them.

“Twice. Most people only experience the death of a single particular loved one just once. And then they don’t ever speak with them again. That’s very scary. Do you know how scary it is to see the pony you love get killed by someone you used to be? And then fall into your bedroom again? Not to toot my own horn, as humans say, but I’m pretty damn strong to be able to do that. Technically twice.” She took a shaky breath and began to sob a little bit, keeping it together enough to keep talking. “And I’ve known that both times you’ve been beaten down, both times, that you will come back. To keep holding my hoof, to keep carrying me when I can go on. To keep making bad jokes, to keep making stupid decisions, to keep acting without thinking. To keep making sure that none of us ever give up. And now I need you to help me again. If you don’t come through, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t fight Discord, and he’s smarter this time. He’s been avoiding the girls, using more smoke and mirrors. I need you. Please come back to us. To me.”

She tried to put the ring in my hoof, but I had to catch it in my own magic and hold it in front of me. Magic works on things in several planes of existence, I guess. I looked at her and just smiled. “Thank you so much, dear. I love you so much.” She sobbed once more, putting her hoof to her mouth. I just smiled again. “Now let’s go get my body back, then put me back into it. I feel a strong urge to take you in my front legs and kiss you for a few hours.”

Ignoring the apparently rabid flying cats attacking the force field around us, she smiled and nodded to Pinkie Pie. She reached around behind her and dragged my body out from wherever it was she kept her party cannon and other miscellaneous objects. “Surprise!! After she came back to us with this, Princess Luna gave this to me to hang onto! And it didn’t even start to stink up or anything!”

“Thanks, Pinkie,” I said with a chuckle. “And it didn’t start to decay because it’s not totally dead. There’s still hope for it. And on that note, let’s go.” I took a moment to change into a human, and then I threw my shred of life into the air. The portal opened, and I ushered the others in before me, Nightmare Moon going last. Luna knew about her change of heart, but she still didn’t like it. The two of us walked on either side of her, effectively protecting the group from the idea of her being a threat.

As I stepped through the portal myself, I felt the calm of the Crossroads clashing with the excitement of so many living ponies. Luckily we were in the clearing of the first area where only one road led away. Thankfully everyone had the sense to stay where they were, so I led the way back to the bench. Approaching Ben, the ring still hovering behind me, the hammers lashed to my back, and the fishing pole and armor stuck between them to hold them there, I was very happy. I had my body and everything I needed to return to it. Ben, however, looked rather dark.

“Do you know what this will be?” he asked. “This is very, very painful. I know the spell, and I know the dedication that it takes to survive it. So I will ask this only once. Answer without thinking, just spit it out. Can you do this?”

“Yes.” I answered like he had told me, instinctually. I could do this. I had to do this.

Ben chuckled and probably smiled under his cloak. “I believe you. Put everything in the center of the Crossroads.” We did, putting everything in front of the bench. He crouched on the ground next to my body. He repositioned everything so that Luna’s ring was above my head, the chest plate was near my right leg, and the fishing pole was near my left. The items formed a triangle around my body, and as Ben chanted they began to glow. After a few minutes of that, he stood again. “Gather all of your resolve and stand in the middle. Know that each of these objects hold honor, and it was honor that brought you here.”

I did so, and immediately wished that I had just been killed entirely. Every part of my spiritual essence was being dragged to its respective place. At the same time, I felt the pain of every injury I had ever experienced, including being shot by Celestia and being hit with the power of the Elements. I blacked out for a little bit, I don’t even know how long. What I do know is that when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in the excruciating pain. I was sore. And everyone was still there, standing in the exact same spots they had been. I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Anyone got any food?”

Comments

[BronzeFog]

FUCKIN' LAWL