Also known as Carrot Moon
On the eighth day of the eighth month, the Brotherhood has gathered again at their secret meeting place. Three figures, tightly wrapped in their sinister-looking robes covering their whole bodies, stood around a round table. In the centre, a lone, dying candle fought its last, losing battle against unending pressure of the surrounding darkness. The grim, heavy atmosphere was interrupted only by irregular hiccups of one of the individuals.
“Has the Spark among Darkness been lit?”, asked the wors... biggest of them.
“Yes, Sir.” The answer came from the same source as hiccups.
“Has the Stand for Light been polished sufficiently?”
“Yes, Sir.” Another hiccup.
“Has the Arcane Gates been closed with all proper ceremonies?”
“Yes, I closed the doors right after you, you idiot”, barked the third member of the Brotherhood. “Can we finally get to work?”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel”, the hood slid down, revealing the head of a brown pony with green mane and a short stubble sticking out among fur on his chin (which probably doesn’t make much sense, but... well). “Do you have to ruin my fun every time?”
“Yes.”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel. Oleq!” the leader growled at the waiting pony. “You got it?”
“Yes, Sir,” the red unicorn reprised his main (and so far the only) role while pulling out an unidentified piece of metal.
“Good,” said Poldek, because that was the name of the fa… big pony. He placed a jet black feather on the table. “Angel?”
“Uh… I couldn’t get it, but I’ve got a pretty great substitute,” muttered the orange unicorn, adding a ripe carrot to the items on the table.
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” commented pegasus. “You had to get a curved unicorn horn.”
“Where do you think I can get a curved horn?”, asked the unicorn with a curved horn. “Anyway, that’s a decent replacement. It has the right shape and everything...”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” sighed Poldek. “If something goes wrong, it’ll be your fault...”
“Like that’s anything new…” Valor Angel shrugged, passing a black ball to the fa… leader. “Luna will kill me if she ever finds out that I stole this from her.”
“Set Panda on her,” Oleq dared to speak up.
“You’re fired.”
At the same time, Poldek finished drawing a crescent moon on the stone and held it above the candle.
“Look,” he said, “magic.”
He let go of the ball, which immediately stopped falling and started spinning the moment it touched the candle fire. Three streaks of black smoke reached out from it, touching the gathered items. A moment later everything exploded.
Explosions are usually associated with heat and bright explosions. However, here, the Brotherhood was greeted with arctic cold and darkness much darker than usual blackness of Angel’s basement. In fact, it was quite spectacular anti-explosion. (Not to be confused with implosion. Implosion is a reverse explosion. This… was the opposite of explosion. I say so, so it’s canon) [auth. note]
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” said Poldek preventively.
“How dare you use such language in the face of your mistress?” The basement suddenly lit up with an eery, deep blue glow. Its source was a long, distinctive horn, attached to an equally distinctive body. The fa… pegasus even squeaked in joy.
“Nightmare Moon!” Poldek fell to the ground in delight. Oleq followed suit because that’s what he wasn’t paid for, while Angel indifferently leant against the wall. “We’re at your command.”
The alicorn opened her mouth to give frightful commands. Commands that would lead to the fall of the royal sisters, final victory against the Elements of Harmony, and all that stuff typical for a classic villain, including taking over the world. However, at this moment, she discovered that her priorities had slightly changed.
“I want a carrot,” she said with a surprise.
The silence that followed her words was broken only by Poldek’s tearful cry.
“For fuck’s sake, Angel.”
***
Brightly shining sun, always hated by Nightmare Moon, wasn’t a big problem for her now. After all, carrots needed sunlight to grow. Sun was good.
“It’s all your fault.” Behind her back, a lively, hissy discussion took place. “You and your damn carrot.”
“You got your waifu, alive and healthy. I don’t see your problem.”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel! You could’ve cut off your cursed, useless horn!”
“I can only show you how deep…”
“There!” Nightmare bellowed happily, setting off in a gallop. Without much concern she passed five shocked mares and stopped in front of paralysed Fluttershy. Immediately she snatched with her teeth a carrot from a bunny sitting on Fluttershy’s head.
“Mine!” she mumbled, taking off.
“That might be problematic,” sighed Valor Angel, watching the six friends.
“It’s a minor problem for now. How do you think, where one of the strongest beings in the universe, currently obsessed with carrots, could’ve gone?”
“I’ve got an idea,” admitted the unicorn. “And a bad, bad feeling.”
***
An upbeat, cheerful tune called “Ponyville Cantina”, currently coming from the radio, accompanied the sound of a kettle on the stove. This harmonious duo played in a tastefully decorated, cosy and well-maintained apartment. A table next to a sofa was adorned with a bowl filled with candies and many more tidbits. The corner was occupied with a desk, almost completely covered in notes - some of them contained cropping tips, others reminded about home chores, while few hinted something about some unspecified “Kindergarten”.
While knocking on the door was not expected, guests were simply a part of everyday life around here. Behind the door stood smiling Nightmare Moon.
“Hi, I love you!” she said.
Carrot Top fainted.
***
“So, our waifus are living together,” said surprised Angel. He observed the alicorn pulling the mare inside the house.
“I think you’re jumping to conclu… wait, wasn’t Panda your waifu?” This time Poldek was the surprised one.
“You don’t see much difference between waifu and love?”
“No, not really.”
“This really explains why you don’t have a girlfriend,” remarked the unicorn, skillfully dodging a swing of pegasus’ hoof.
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” growled Poldek.
At that very moment, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony appeared in a flash of orange magic. They accidentally toppled Oleq while doing so, not that anyone cared about him anymore.
“You!” Rainbow Dash, overactive as always, rushed at Angel before anyone had a chance to say anything. She bounced off of him, not doing much harm, and landed on her rump, like countless times on many stallions’ knees. She murmured something, visibly embarrassed, and joined the rest of her friends.
“Where is Nightmare Moon?” asked some barely important pony in a hat.
“Well, on an existentialist plane, that’s a really tough question…” started Poldek carefully. “There are tens of definitions and concepts of ‘where’, and the same can be said about the idea of ‘being’. As our great philosophers used to say, every…”
“She’s at Carrot Top’s,” the unicorn interrupted casually.
“*** ****** ****, Angel,” said pegasus, and immediately stopped to analyse what he just said. “What the ****...”
“Well, ****,” stated Angel. “Maybe some explanation?”
“Because of those six we appeared in the camera shot,” answered the fa… big pony gloomily. “While we’re here, we have to keep a certain level, to not influence the show creator’s world too much.”
“You and personal culture?”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel.” Poldek looked around, waiting for censorship to appear again, but it did not. The Elements bearers disappeared, and the house doors were wide open. “Come on, let’s go.”
***
Nightmare Moon standing on her doorstep and confessing her love… that was one of the weirdest dreams Carrot Top ever had a chance to encounter. The mare stretched in her bed and lazily opened her lovely eyes. (WHAT, THEY’RE LOVELY) [auth. note]
“Hi!” cheerfully exclaimed a cutie mark few centimetres in front of her face, attached to the rest of alicorn body.
The mare let out an inaudible squeal and buried herself under her quilt, from where she was pulled out gently, but firmly.
“Come on, calm down, I have no bad intentions.” Some ancient part of Nightmare Moon winced upon saying these words, but she ignored it. “I only have craving for some carrots.”
“Where… what… you… but…” The orange pony sat on the flood. “What’s going on here?”
A dull thud on the door got Carrot’s attention, where she noticed numerous, faintly glowing sealing runes.
“Uhh, sorry about that. The Elements sometimes have severe difficulties with believing in even simplest facts, so I had to escape up here.”
“Elements? Twilight and her friends? They always seem so nice…”
“Not when you’ve been one of the greatest threats to the world in it's whole history.” The black mare scratched her head in embarrassment.
Carrot, not waiting for any more explanations, peeked out of her door and froze in grave terror, wondering, at which point of her life it became this much mess. In front of her laid six mares in a variety of different poses, like something with enormous force threw them around the room. Next to them stood a pair of stallions with bored expressions on their faces, including, which was an even bigger surprise for her, her ex- (hue) [auth. note] admirer, Valor Angel.
“How?” Equally surprised Nightmare Moon squeezed past the orange pony. “Strongest villains in Equestria couldn’t defeat their friendship, so how two idiots managed to do this?”
“Angel is antimagical and overall OP, so he tanked them, and I beat them in the meanwhile. I guess they’re not used to this,” Poldek shrugged.
“Even Fluttershy?” Carrot Top asked.
“She just fainted.” At the same moment blue-maned unicorn, totally by accident, kicked the yellow pegasus. “For fuck’s sake, Angel, you’re a complete dick.” Fa… big pony slowly shifted his asking gaze onto Nightmare Moon. “Why wasn’t that censored?”
“Oh no…” All of a sudden, a deafening noise rang out. It was a sound reminiscent of ripping apart tens of fabrics simultaneously. Without any more explanation, Nightmare stormed down the stairs, and others, with no better ideas, followed her.
***
The whole village looked like the apocalypse was right upon them, and the real situation wasn’t far away from this description. Tears in the very fabric of universe appeared everywhere, sucking in the colours of their surroundings and any loose items. In front of their eyes, one of such cross-dimension passages sucked in Oleq.
“Idiots,” snarled Nightmare Moon. “You broke the iron rules of cartoons for little girls. Good guys always win, vulgarity and brutality don’t exist and evil gets beaten. Because of you, this world is falling apart!”
“We’ll blame it on Oleq,” commanded Poldek. “Can we do anything with it?”
“This is too big for us to cork it using Poldek,” noted Angel.
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” came the answer instantly.
“I can try to stop this, but the consequences cannot be predicted.” Nightmare Moon shook her head violently. “Anyway, why should I do this? Destroying Equestria was one of my life goals…”
“Please…” The alicorn looked down. There, hugging the pitch black leg, was Carrot Top, with begging eyes pointed straight up.
“Uhh… Alright.” Nightmare leant down and gently kissed mare’s forehead. “For you, everything.”
“Well, your waifu is quite good,” Poldek told Angel. The latter one, for the first time since the beginning of this fanfic, looked strangely embarrassed.
Nightmare Moon stood in the middle of town square, breathing calmly and deeply. After a moment of concentration, tens of black bolts of lightning shot out of her horn, striking consecutive passages. The tall mare let out weak “Ahh!”. Poldek’s wingboner slapped Angel across his face. The two of them decided not to tell anyone about this, ever.
Carrot observed the scene with eyes wide open. For the first time, someone sacrificed themselves for her. It was so… nice. Exceptional. It kindled some kind of warmth across the whole body of the pony, who unexpectedly discovered her concern about Nightmare’s fate.
Valor amiably laid his hoof on her shoulder.
“You’ll see, everything will be fine,” he assured her quietly. “The world seeks stability on its own. Nightmare fights with force destroying Equestria, so by definition, she becomes good. And good must always win.”
“But… she’s an embodiment of evil!” groaned Carrot through her tears, watching, as insufferable brightness consumed the alicorn and spread out farther. “What am I to do?”
“Love can change everyone.” Unicorn’s smile faded away among the brightness. “Be good to her, and maybe Poldek won’t bite you to death.”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” snapped Poldek, standing a bit farther from them.
And the everything was engulfed by a blinding light.
That was so cheesy. Also, everyone died. The End. [auth. note]
***
Poldek blinked, surprised, that they still managed to not die, and everything seemed normal again... except for one, black figure in the middle of a world oversaturated with colours. The pegasus quickly approached his waifu.
“Nightmare, is everything fi…” stallion’s voice died in his throat. His beloved visibly shrunk to a size of a normal pony. Even more surprising for him was that her long, beautiful horn - Nightmare Moon’s pride - simply vanished. At least her eyes, although beaming with extreme exhaustion, stayed the same.
“Meh,” simply declared Poldek, coming back to Angel. “Come on, it’s high time to find a new waifu.”
“I’ve heard that Chrysalis is almost free. With your excess body mass and her cavities, you’d make a great, fitting pair!”
“For fuck’s sake, Angel.”
Nightmare Moon, seemingly giving no signs of life, was approached by Carrot Top, who wore her best unreadable face expression.
“Here you go,” said the pegasus wryly. “Equestria’s saved, everything has a happy end, and the great and dreadful Nightmare Moon lost all her power, which is absolutely not a loose Past Sins rip-off. Are you pleased with yourself?”
“Yes~~~” The triple tilde fell in its place, revealing much and even more for later. It is said that not many ponies could tame that many tildes, let alone use three at the same time - now that’s a mastery.
“B-baka…” Nightmare responded in Japanese, which was completely nonsensical, yet extremely cute, and blushed fiercely.
“Okay, come on…” purred soothingly orange mare, petting the ex-alicorn on the head. “Let’s go home.”
Meanwhile, few streets farther…
“For fuck’s sake, Angel,” confidently declared Poldek.
“Hey, don’t you have a feeling that we forgot about something?”
“About what? Anyway, if we can’t remember it, surely it’s nothing important.”
Angel couldn’t disagree with this logic.
Actually, logic is not something I use often, so that’s where the ‘Random’ tag comes from [auth. note]
***
Dimension Among Dimensions wasn’t dark, because even darkness wasn’t that stupid to venture into this cursed place. And yet, life finds a way to survive even in harshest environments, although sometimes it would be best for everyone if it simply gave up. Across the endless void wandered a lone unicorn, worriedly looking around.
“Guys?” asked Oleq. “Where are you? This really isn’t funny anymore!”
In the distance, he spotted some kind of movement. Barely holding back tears of joy, he rushed forward without second thought.
“I knew you didn’t forget about me…” He stopped dead in his tracks. This definitely wasn’t Poldek and Angel. To be honest, the creature he encountered, judging by the number of tentacles, reminded him of certain por… comic books he used to read back in the day. What was even worse, the monster apparently noticed him too.
“For fuck’s sake,” Oleq intelligently exclaimed.