"Day" 40, week 23, late that "night".

The black alicorn stared unblinkingly at her empty plate; thinking about her empire. Things weren't going well. Las Pegasus had formally declared a state of resistance against her reign (Get it? Reign? They're horses, HAHAHAHHA ok nvm).

The servant approached, bearing food. Nightmare Moon opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, the servant had already set down the main course and dashed off, not daring to look back. She sighed and picked at her oats. Life was really depressing sometimes. Then she remembered what she had planned for tonight, and perked up. She hastily finished her meal, and galloped off to her room, ducking under her bed, through the hatch there, and descended down into the darkness.

"Day" 41, week 23, the following "morning".

Twilight and Applejack were laboring over their work, having skipped breakfast. Twilight was devising different genetic modifications to plant DNA, which Applejack was testing and helping to grow. A tired Spike was responsible for maintaining the scientific accuracy of the trials, and recording data for Twilight. He started to daydream, glancing out the window. Funny. It kind of looked like the sun was rising. Suddenly alert, Spike blinked twice and sat up; staring at the glowing light rising slowly higher above the horizon. It had been so long. He had no words, simply staring dumbfoundedly at the light. But just as slowly as it had risen, it began descending once more.

"No! No!" Spike exclaimed.

"What is it?" Twilight asked.

"Nothing." He continued. "I had just dropped my pen." The sun was already gone. Nopony else had seen it. He didn't want to sound like an idiot. Back to work.

Strain R-347-Δ was promising. Without any light whatsoever, some sprouts had appeared. The plants of the same genetics that were provided artificial light, however, were developing much faster. But hey, it was a start. Spike recorded the height and total vegetative mass before heading back to Twilight's computer to graph his work for the morning.

But he couldn't focus. A mixture of sleep deprivation and not being able to get the image of the sun out of his head meant that Twilight had to go back into the system and fix 7 different mistakes; a new personal record for Spike.

Author's Note

Yeah, so this chapter was short too. But it's actually crucial for the direction I've decided to take. In fact, I'm worried that I might not have gotten it quite right, which is a feeling I haven't really felt before when writing this story. I hope you enjoyed it anyway, and will more once everything starts coming together more clearly. I have something big planned for C11. It's unrelated to what transpired this chapter; but I guarantee that it will change some things and move the story forward. In a few chapters, some new major characters and powers will be introduced.

Also, I feel I should note that this is not the main website that I am uploading this story to. The most updated version (I will most likely forget to update this website) is http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9414507/1/MoonThief And if I forget to update the version on this site (I will) email me at markd315@gmail.com and yell at me to fix it in caps lock.