The air vibrated with excitement.

She felt it... and it was not entirely unpleasant, to tell the truth. She had to change her cutie mark to a blue mask, thankfully remembering that she was a blue changeling instead of a green one in time, and could finally ease her shoulders. Forest kinda wanted to see this princess, though from afar, and-

Wait, there was one 'cold' feeling in the middle of all the 'electric' feeling of the place. According to the stolen memories that particular type of cold was 'dread', fear of knowing or things yet to come. Forest spied a lavender unicorn, with a purple mane stripped with pink and softer purple, fidgeting and stealing glances all around.

She was anxious.

She did not need changeling magic to know - the unicorn's body language was all over the place. Her breath was slow at times, then sped up after a small tremor coursed her body, before a slight hardening of her features steeled her resolve and brought her breath under control again.

Forest drew in her 'borrowed' experiences and found something, a focusing exercise to tell more about a target's state of being, at the expense of not being able to read anypony else too clearly. Kind of a risky move when in hostile territory where broadness could help detect ill intent, but this place was so utterly nonthreatening that whatever had this unicorn filly feeling such palpable fear in spite of all the happiness around them had priority.

Just because you don't know something that doesn't mean that it can't kill you, after all.

Find target. Focus. Desire to know. Ease away own tension. Allow the rest of the world to melt away.

Dread. She was, without a doubt, dreading the events to come... she could simply be like her and be not too keen on meeting the princess, but that thought was discarded quickly. There was an undercurrent of... readiness? Was that the word? This mare was preparing herself to act, though what kind of action she would take was impossible to determine.

"Fillies and gentlecolts, as mayor of Ponyville, it is my great pleasure to announce the beginning of the Summer Sun Celebration!" A grey-maned, tan-coated mare with glasses spoke, causing the crowd to cheer.

And the unicorn to tense in anticipation. Whatever it was that had her in that state, it would either happen, or not happen, in a few seconds. Forest decided to move closer, if only to see the face of her target better.

"In just a few moments, our town will witness the magic of the sunrise, and celebrate this, the longest day of the year! And now, it is my great honor to introduce to you the ruler of our land, the very pony who gives us the sun and the moon each and every day, the good, the wise, the bringer of harmony to all of Equestria..."

The intensity of the unicorn's anxiety doubled, making Forest tense slightly as well. This mildly surprised her, since the emotion certainly wasn't hers.

"...Princess Celestia!" The mayor called, birds sang, the curtains opened and the stage was empty.

"This can't be good." The dread and fear increased, drowning out the mare's previous determination for a second.

Then every single pony began to feel fear.

Now, being a herd race, there were some instincts involved in the spread of the emotion, and with some magical connection both among them and the land, the feelings reinforced each other. The explanation was incomplete and somewhat crude, but was functional enough for Forest to understand the reason behind the feeling that had just slammed into her mind with enough force to make her flinch and shiver.

As the mayor attempted to prevent panic, Forest understood that her situation had just saddled her with a very unique, hard-to-control problem.

She had zero training as an empath.

Sure, there were memories of how to deal with surges of emotion like that one, and constant exposure... the problem was that it must be individualized. Human soldier training helped kick it back, dozens of different exercises wrestled control away from external sources, and yet , given humanity's lack of magic, it could not prevent the feelings from at the least making an impact. Even though magic training made isolating herself among the storm of emotions possible, she could not prevent the initial strike. She had to find her own center by herself, and find a way to 'balance' it and 'brace it' to reduce the changeling's natural empathy to mere knowledge of the state of affairs.

None of the changelings she had consumed had her kind of personality. She couldn't use their experiences.

If her hooded tracksuit had not hid her eyes from the curious glances of ponies, they would have seen the wide eyes of somepony faced with a problem she was not prepared to deal with.

A sudden spike of rage cut through the air, with... with two distinct undercurrents of regret and sorrow. The place where Celestia was supposed to be revealed filled with a deep purple mist, and a pony appeared. She focused first on the differences with Celestia; her mane shifted like a cloud or haze, rather than ripple as if underwater; her coat was black, and seemed to almost glow with a faint purple aura of magic; her wings, comparing them to Celestia's, were almost the same size; her eyes were slitted like a cat's.

"Oh no... Nightmare Moon!" The unicorn she had focused on before being so disrupted by the waves of fear seemed to know, and the pony's own fear increased.

Forest tried again to focus, only now she did so on the black mare.

Their gazes crossed for only a second as Nightmare Moon surveyed the crowd, and Forest could feel the anger, the envy, the despair... and two feels of regret and sorrow. One of them diffused and vague, the memories helpfully compared it to somepony who was unaware of their own feelings.

"Oh, my beloved subjects. It's been so long since I've seen your precious, little sun-loving faces." The armored mare, Nightmare Moon, spoke with a small amount of disdain... but that was it. It tried to sound harsh, but the regrets combined were too close to the contempt for it to show more.

"What did you do with our Princess?!" A pegasus mare was filled with indignation and tried - very stupidly, Forest would add - to rush the stage. Thankfully, she was stopped by a more cautious earth pony.

"Why, am I not royal enough for you? Don't you know who I am?" Annoyance, tinted with amusement. The regret from both sources exploded so much that it was strange that the black mare remained oblivious

A pink mare with absolutely zero regard for the severity of the situation 'helpfully' tried to guess, before being interrupted by the same savvy mare from before shoving food in her mouth.

"Does my crown no longer count now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years? Did you not recall the legend? Did you not see the signs?" Anger... and sorrow? Despair? The fake changeling could not understand why (or how) would Nightmare Moon feel disappointment and despair while sounding annoyed. The white unicorn that she flicked with her magical mane, though, felt terror for a moment, but could surprisingly hide it from her features despite how close it was to become mind-numbing.

The fake unicorn could not make heads or tails of the situation.

"I did." The pony from before spoke, unwilling to show fear. "And I know who you are. You're the Mare in the Moon – Nightmare Moon!" The ponies around gave incredulous gasps, breaking out of fear's hypnosis; the tense silence gave way to murmuring.

'Wait, The Nightmare Moon? Like the tale?' 'As in the Nightmare Moon of Nightmare Night? This can't be real!'

"Well, well, well, somepony who remembers me." Amusement, and hope? Relief? The anger receded a little, but then both the unconscious and the conscious feelings turned to dread. What the hell? "Then you also know why I'm here."

"You're here to... to..." The unicorn's bravado evaporated, and she gulped audibly. Not an encouraging sign, Forest thought.

The mare of darkness chuckled. "Remember this day, little ponies, for it was your last. From this moment forth, the night. Will last. Forever!" She laughed externally, but internally felt soul-crushing despair. Her magic lashed wildly in her mirth, and caused thunder to roar.

As soon as Forest rid herself of the shiver of fear that tried to assault her brain from the outside, she gritted her teeth in annoyance.

'I've been walking the world for a few hours, and now it's in mortal peril!? What the hell?!' Even she would have found her situation alarming, but the strange inconsistencies in Nightmare Moon's feelings gave her pause.

"Seize her!" The mayor shouted and pointed. "Only she knows where the Princess is!"

'Seriously?' Forest rolled her eyes under her hood as the pegasus guards took flight. 'I've only known her for like five minutes and I can already tell that the result is going to be...'

"Stand back, you fools!" The sheer rage nearly obscured everything, and Forest actually let out a feral growl as lightning struck the guards, throwing them away even with their innate resistance to elements found in weather.

'... that.' She sighed, free of the anger, while Nightmare Moon laughed despite the inner pain and turned to mist, flying away. Were they stupid? She was a Blacklight being, and even then she could feel that picking a fight with Nightmare Moon was likely going to end poorly; she might be challenged if Forest fought, given the regret undercutting her actions, but even that handicap could run out at any moment and send the enemy into a frenzy.

The purple pony she had been keeping tabs on finally settled on an emotion. A resolve like steel. Forest figured she had to know something, and followed after her when she galloped away.

The rainbow pegasus from before broke free of the earth pony's hold and tried to follow Nightmare, but lost her amorphous form due to the night sky. Then her eyes fell on two ponies at full gallop.

Author's Note

The events and developments of this episodes are too significant for me to skip too much, but don't worry, this is just because it's such a plot-significant two-parter.