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“Where is she?”
Princess Celestia glared angrily at nopony in particular, as she stood atop the balcony in Ponyville Town Hall. The Summer Sun Celebration had come to a crashing halt.
“P-princess,” stammered Twilight Sparkle, a visiting unicorn from Canterlot and Celestia's protégé, struggling to comprehend what was happening.
“WHERE IS SHE?!” Celestia demanded at a deafening volume, her voice reverberating intensely.
“Where is who?” asked Twilight meekly.
“I THOUGHT SHE WOULD COME BACK, TWILIGHT SPARKLE. I THOUGHT I COULD FINALLY SAVE MY SISTER!!”
This prompted the heads of many ponies to turn in shock. Celestia had a sister?
“You m-mean Nightma—“
“I WAITED FOR HER. ONE THOUSAND LONG YEARS!! FOR NOTHING!!”
“Princess, perhaps you didn't sen—“
“I KNOW WHAT I DID! YOU WEREN’T THERE!!”
“ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW?!” Twilight had finally lost her patience with her mentor. She had to get her attention somehow. Celestia had never seen Twilight so much as backtalk her, let alone yell at her. The look on her face shifted from rage to shock quickly.
“You know her?” asked Rainbow Dash, a local weather management pegasus.
“She's my teacher. Now, like I was trying to say… have you considered that when you banished Nightmare Moon, you didn't specify which moon to send her to?”
“Whaddya mean, ‘which moon?’” asked Applejack, an earth pony apple farmer from the outskirts of town. “There ain't no moon other than ours. Ah though you, of all ponies, would know that.”
“That's not really true,” said Twilight.
Celestia pondered for a moment, then said, “Actually, perhaps I didn't specify which moon I sent her to.” She then buried her face in her hooves. “Now I’ll never see her again…”
Ever since that fateful night a millennium ago, she wanted to bring her younger sister, Luna, out of the jealous rage that had consumed her and transformed her into Nightmare Moon. But now, she couldn't, because she had made one simple mistake.
“Maybe we could try to find her somehow?” asked Twilight.
“Well, if she isn't imprisoned in our moon,” asked Rarity, a local seamstress unicorn, “then where is she?”
“That's one small step for a man… one giant leap for mankind.”
As he took his first step onto the moon’s surface, Neil Armstrong knew that today would be an important day, not just for America, but for humanity as a whole. He just didn't know how important.
He was slightly surprised by how much less he seemed to weigh, even though his training had prepared him for this. It hadn't prepared him, however, for what happened next.
A powder-blue beam of light struck the Eagle landing module, taking out one of the legs of the craft and causing it to tip.
“Houston to Tranquility Base, what the hell happened up there?!”
Oh great, thought Michael Collins as his orbiting craft, the Columbia, received this transmission from Mission Control, out of all the moments something could go wrong, it had to be now…
“Houston, this is the Eagle,” replied Buzz Aldrin from within the now-damaged lander, “We seem to have run into a bit of a problem.”
“The lander was just attacked by something, and you call it a bit of a problem?!”
“I want an explanation, Tranquility Base, and I want it fast,” asked a gruff voice on Mission Control’s end. It belonged to none other than the President of the United States himself, Richard Nixon.
“Mr. President,” said Collins, “it would seem that the Eagle was hit by some sort of energy weapon, vaporizing one of the support legs and toppling the LEM.”
“Could it have been the Soviets?” the President asked, in a desperate search for answers. What had started as a day of hope had quickly turned into a terrifying attack, and being the President, Nixon wanted to know exactly who could have been responsible.
“Negative, Mr. President,” said a NASA operative, “Not even they have that sort of weaponry. Even if they did, we would have known if they had launched a craft recently.”
“Well,” said Armstrong, attempting to relieve the tension, “let's hope it's just the Klingons.”
No one noticed a shadowed creature slowly approaching the Eagle.
Suddenly, a voice played through Armstrong’s headpiece, as if someone or something was attempting to make their presence known. It was a woman's voice, and it was cold, deep, regal, and commanding.
“May I ask why you have trespassed upon my domain?” it asked, seemingly originating from the Eagle’s attacker.
Armstrong’s joviality turned to panic. “Houston, what was that?”
No response.
“Do you read me, Houston?”
Still no response.
“Houston, come in!!”
On the ground, Mission Control was attempting to reach the Apollo crew. All contact, visual or audio, had been severed.
“I’ll ask you again,” the voice said, “why are you here?”
Armstrong knew he was alone. “What's going on? Who are you?”
“You're kidding,” was the reply, “Don't you know who I am?”
“No idea.”
Something leapt into his field of vision. It looked like a horse, or rather a unicorn. Specifically, it had wings. From what Armstrong could make out, it had a pitch-black coat, powder blue armor, and piercing blue eyes with slits for pupils.
“Where do you come from?” the voice asked, as the creatures lips moved to form those words, glaring in what appeared to be inquisitive anger.
Armstrong’s blood stopped cold as it hit him: THIS was their attacker. He wished that he was seeing things or dreaming, but this was actually happening.
“What the hell are you…?” Armstrong’s fear had kicked into high gear. Every instinct in his body told him to run, while his brain was trying to remind the body that it wasn't able to run in this type of gravitational field.
The creature seemed to smile for a moment before she responded.
“God,” it said.
Armstrong’s eyes widened.
“I’ll ask you one last time,” the creature demanded, “WHERE? DO YOU? COME FROM?!”
Armstrong’s fear was so intense that he couldn't even speak, simply pointing in the direction of Earth instead.
“Very well,” the creature said, smiling intently. “That is all.” She then fired another beam of energy at Armstrong, vaporizing him.
The audio transmission was restored. Aldrin could now hear Mission Control, and he was grateful. Having witnessed Armstrong’s death at the hands, or rather, hooves, of a strange winged unicorn, he was sweating and panting heavily.
“—Base?! Come in!!”
“HOUSTON?! DO YOU READ ME?!”
“Yes, Tranquility Base, we read you loud and clear.”
“OH, THANK GOD!!” One could hear the panic in Aldrin’s voice. “WHATEVER IT IS THAT ATTACKED US KILLED NEIL!!”
“Please calm down. Can you describe the thing that attacked Armstrong?”
“IT LOOKED LIKE SOME KIND OF BLACK WINGED UNICORN, I SWEAR TO—“
The transmission stopped.
“BUZZ, NO!!”
Collins could not move. He heard one of his partners die, and from what Aldrin had said, the other wasn't lucky, either.
“Columbia, this is the President. We are aborting Apollo 11, I repeat, we are aborting the mission. Return to Earth immediately.”
Collins plotted a course for home into the navigation equipment, as something moved towards his craft at a high velocity.
“IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR ME!! TELL MY FAMILY THAT I LO—“
And the transmission ceased, only for a hiss to be heard, followed by a voice, the same voice that was the last Armstrong had heard.
“Is this where the trespassers came from?” she asked in a demanding, threatening tone.
“If by ‘trespassers,’ you meant ‘explorers,’ then yes,” replied Nixon. He attempted to sound defiant, but one could see his sweat lining his twitching skin.
“Such arrogance. I demand to speak to your ruler, so that I may punish them for their hubris.”
A few of the Mission Control employees chuckled to themselves upon hearing this. One of them even muttered, “Did she really just say that?”
“You're talking to him. I am Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States of America. Who the hell are you?”
“SILENCE!”
Nixon attempted to reply, but words failed him, as his voice seemed to have stopped working entirely, not out of dumbfounded shock, but by some external force.
“You have meddled in affairs that are not yours to concern yourselves with,” the voice continued, “and I will not tolerate insolence. From this moment forward, your world belongs to me… and the night… shall last… FOREVER!!”
Then the voice laughed. It was a harsh, vile, psychotic laugh, cold, melodic, and seeping with malevolence. After two minutes, the laughter stopped, as did all radio transmission.
Nixon was at a loss. He felt truly threatened. “Get Brezhnev on the line,” he ordered, “We're going to war.”