Cosmic Castaway

Luna

As usual night court was slow as ever after nine-o-clock. Not many ponies come in after the sun sets, but that dose not bother me in the least. What my sister dose not know is that after midnight I close night court for some more personal time. At the moment I'm in the middle of a poker game with six of my best night guards and the funniest part of this is that I'm losing to my pegasus captain, Hawkeye. Drat, there goes another fifty bits, oh well, It's only money.

Fifty minutes later and it's down to three of us. My unicorn captain, Silent Edge, Hawkeye, and myself. The pot is one thousand bits and climbing due to the hand I have. Silent refuses to back down due to a bet he made with his sister, the details I don't know. Hawkeye, being the best scout I've seen in years, has a way of reading ponies that nearly matches my sister.

"I call." Hawkeye says she looks me in the eyes.

Silent nods in response as he too looks to me.

"I call as well." Then we all turn our gaze to my earth pony captain, Bolter, who is the dealer. He burns a card and then flips the river card reviling the queen of spades. Looking back to my hand I see that I have a flush. Glancing to Hawkeys she to looks nonchalantly at her hand as dose Silent.

"Fifty." Hawk says as she tosses in the bits forcing both Silent and myself to go all in. We all look from one to the other before laying our hands down for the others to see.

"Damn!" Silent hisses as his full house is beet by my flush. I then look and see that I too have lost as Hawk has, agents all odds, a royal flush. Pushing the rest of her stack to the center of the table, Hawkeye looks up to me as I'm in the middle of writing the results of the week in my booklet.

"Well, that was fun your majesty." Hawk says as she sees her brother squirm under his armor. "How dose the scores look?"

"You have won all but one game this week." I say as I clear everything from the room with my magic and hide it in the secret compartment under my throne. If Tia ever found out she'll have my tail. Switching priorities, I look to Hawkeye to see she is already stretching her wings in preparation for our flight tonight. As I look to the others they're picking up their javelins and kite shields to head back to their stations.

"Are you ready, Princess?" Hawk asked.

"Yes, the winter air should feel wonderful tonight." I say. Walking over to the nearest balcony and breath in the crisp cool air. Looking at the position of the moon I noticed that this would likely be my last flight for the night. Undoing a pair of buttons on my skirt, I pull it off to revile a pair of black pants underneath. Suddenly a light out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Down in the gardens, a white orb of magical energy appears to be floating there. "Hawkeye, do you see that?" I ask.

"I do, Princess." I heard her say. "Whirlwind, get over here!" She called out to, I assume, another pegasus guard.

I opened my wings and jumped off the balcony towards the ball. I can hear my two guards following me. Landing a few feet away from the orb we approached with caution. When I'm about to scan the orb with my magic it begins to get bigger and begins to flatten out. I quickly back up so it wont touch me. Seeing me back up mus have alerted both Hawk and Whirlwind for them to step in front of me and aim the crossbows at it.

Snow quietly fell around us as we watched the disk sit there and spun silently. The magic feels off to me so I chance getting close to it again to probe it with my magic. This time something came out of it and shot off into the garden and embedded itself into a tree. Before I could ask what that was another object, this one much larger, came out at a much slower speed. After the larger object came out of the portal of sorts, it disappeared leaving only bare ground where it was.

I noticed, when I looked in the direction the two objects went in, that the larger object appeared to be equine in form. Seeing that they aren't getting up, I begin to run to them when I remember I have wings. The short flight brought me to the hooves of a pegasus stallion with his back to the tree. The firs thing I noticed was the tip of a blade sticking about three or four inches out of his chest. The second thing I noticed caused my cheeks to flush. He is completely naked, witch Whirlwind quickly corrected with his cape. WHOOSH! I look to my side to see Hawkeye standing there with a mad blush on her face and the stiffest wing boner I've seen to date.

"Captain, I'm going to get help. He needs to be stabilized for transport." Whirlwind said as he stood.

Shaking my head clear it, I nodded to Whirlwind before he took off to the castle. Kneeling down to the stallion's left side as Whirlwind left, so I get a better look at him and see if I can help stabilize him. I place two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse and find a very strong one. "He dosen't seem to be going into shock, so that's a good thing." I say to myself. The wound through his chest is bleeding slowly but what concerns me is if any internal organs were hit. I begin to try and use my magic to see the internal damage, but for some reason the spell wont complete. After trying two more times I give up and look him over for any way to identify him.

He is a snow white pegasus stallion with a long silvery mane. Oddly though he seems to be larger than the average pegasus. Now that I'm looking him over he is probably my height but his build is of nothing I've seen before. Every muscles seems to be well defined without bulging off his body and he appears to have next to no body fat. Slowly lifting up the cape on the side to revel his flank, I noticed he dose not have cutie mark. He looks to be around twenty-five to thirty years old, odd for one to be this old and still not have a mark is bothersome.

"Sorry about that Princess, I wasn't expecting to see... that this early in my career." Hawkeye says as she kneels down on the stallion's other side and begins to detach what looks to be a oddly shaped pouch of some form. She still seams a bit dazed and sounds quite flustered.

"It's alright." I respond back. I too begin to remove items from the harness he's wearing. On this side he has what looks to be a sword scabbard and a small metal Item in what looks to be a different type of scabbard. With those items off both of us look him over for anything we may have missed. I look to he rump to find another bag of sorts with a canteen attached. Very gently I move my hands to his back and unclasp it from the rear belt section and slide it out of the small gap. I hear the medical staff from the castle approaching and step aside to let them work.

With a little effort and some magic, the sword was removed from the tree and the stallion was placed on his right side on a stretcher. The sword was left in him until the doctor could get him inside the emergency room. Staying behind I made sure all of his belonging were collected and taken to be looked at. Though I sent the sword scabbard with the medical ponies in case the sword in his chest happens to belong to him.

"Where do you suppose he came from, Princess?" Hawkeye asks as she walks up to my side with the other half of his belongings.

"I don't know." I say as I look off into the distance at the spot where the portal once was. "We should head inside and see what these are." Turning around I can see that Hawk is looking down at the pouch in her arms trying to find the clasp. Noticing my attention is on her she looks back up to me and nods.

The flight to my study didn't take long. Setting the round bag and odd metal device on my couch I turn to Hawkeye.

"Go ahead and set the pouch on the couch. I'll get to looking at them when I get a chance." For some reason there is too much going through my head at the moment to focus on looking through his belongings. Where did he come from? Who sent him here? These questions needed answers and sunrise is in an hour.

"Yes princess."

A knock a the door gained both our attention. "Enter." I say simply. In walks a doctor pony from the medical wing.

"Princess, I have a report on the stallion you found in the garden." He said as he gave a bow.

"Excellent! How is he doing?" I ask.

"You should see this for your self your majesty."

The walk to the medical ward was quiet. What was it about this stallion that warrants my presence. We were lead to the room the stallion was taken to to rest after surgery. There laying on a bead big enough for my sister or myself was the odd stallion. His chest was bandaged up and he was hooked up to an EKG.

"He's very luck to be alive your majesty." The doctor said after we walked in. "If the blade was a quarter of an inch in any direction he would have died."

"What are the extent of his injuries doctor?" I ask.

"Other than the puncture wound," He looked down to the clip board in his hands. "His right wing was dislocated and a bruise on his head. Apart from that he seems to be perfectly fine."

"Then why am I here if every thing is fine?"

"Well," he began to rub the back of his head. "We can't identify him, Princess. That and everything about him seems off. He is far larger than the average pegasus stallion and his wings are disproportional to his body by a fair margin."

Looking over the stallion I could tell that something is very wrong with this picture. "Did you have any luck with healing magic to close up his chest?"

"No your highness, we tried several times with no success. No actual spell would follow through when cast on him. Thankfully healing potions worked." He paused to look at his clipboard further. "We did manage to get a scan of his magic." He had a confused look on his face as he pointed out on the clipboard.

His magical readings look different than the norm. It more resembled unicorn magic than pegasus magic, but even so it looked different. Moving to the side of the bed set my hand on his forehead. With a bit of effort I manage to look at his magical aura. My search turns up an odd mark on his wrist. Looking at it closely I can tell it's not in Eqestrian or any other language I know. Removing my hand from his head I turn to Hawkeye, "Have two guards posted outside his door until my sister or I say otherwise."

"Yes, Princess." Hawk saluted and left the room. I followed close behind her. I need to speak with Tia about this. Something about this stallion is rubbing me the wrong way and I intend to find out why.

Celestia

I awoke to a pounding at my door. Opening my eyes I'm greeted with the sight of my dark room. With a yawn I sit up in my bed and realize how cold the predawn air is. I look to the door to it beginning to splinter. Suddenly it bursts open and a large fragment lands at the foot of my bed. A shadowy figure walks into my dark room with a blinding light behind it, the sound of full plat accompanying their hoof falls. In its left hand was Twilight and in its other hand was Luna.

"You know Tia, you are one hard mare to get close to." Her malicious voice calls out. I don't recognize the voice but it sounds early familiar.

"What do you want?" I call out. I jump to my hooves and draw my blade. At least I try to. Something's wrong, why can't I use my magic?

"Oh, I'm sorry Tia, but I can't have you hurting yourself with magic. Don't fret, you still have it, it's just indisposed of for the moment. As for these two," She tosses them before her. Both of them are dead. "I never seen why you ever needed these pathetic beings at your side. If you ask me, they need your at their side." With a sudden burst of magic, two beams of fire engulfed the bodies and reduced them to ash.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" I ask, biting back tears.

"Oh my poor Tia, I only do this because you wont. As for Who I am, the name's Nova, Nova Day Star. Look in a mirror, we are closer than you think." She turned around laughing and walked away, the light following her. All the while the sound of full plate rang in my ears. With a flash she left.

Turning around I heard the laughing once again, this time coming from my mirror. Slowly I approach it from the side. The closer I came the louder the laughing grew in volume. Finally I stood before my mirror, but not for long as the reflection dropped me to my knees. There, laughing, the twisted solar version of Nightmare Moon, is me. In her burnished golden armor is Nova. Suddenly, she draws my sword and swings for my head.