Nightmare Idiot

Princess Luna was perplexed. Her secret stash of donuts had mysteriously disappeared, and her hoofmaidens had been staring at a wall for the past half hour.  Tentavely, she prodded the closer one's shoulder. The result was somewhat anticlimactic; the pony, whose name happened to be Delicate Touch, proved to be a much less delicate tumbler as she flopped over onto her side, stiff as a bright blue board. Luna frowned. This certainly wasn't normal behavior. Perhaps she wasn't giving her servants enough rest? No, judging from the thud that Delicate Touch had made upon contact with the floor, she should have woken up relatively quickly.

"So something else doth be ahoof, it would seem," the princess proclaimed to her unresponsive hoofmaiden. "Come! We shall see what sorcery thou hath fallen victim to!" So saying, Luna picked up Delicate with a simple levitation spell and burst out the door, trotting down the halls with the blue unicorn bobbing along behind. Occasionally the odd duo would pass a guard or two, who would mechanically salute while attempting to continue walking, inevitably falling flat on their faces. Despite the obvious discomfort of such a position, they deigned to right themselves, leaving a trail of upended guards behind the princess. Luna spared little thought to the ponies' queer behavior; perhaps it was a new custom, or maybe Tia was playing another of her infamous pranks. Luna was heavily betting on the latter.

While the Princess of the Night traipsed through the halls of Canterlot Castle, her sister was dealing with problems of her own, namely the flood of paperwork that arrived every month or so. Each time, the pile seemed to grow larger and the requests, complaints, and general horseradish seemed to grow more and more nonsensical. The paper which Celestia was currently looking at, for example, was a request for a building permit, which would have been routine were the proposed structure not a left earmuff manufacturing facility. Reading the form again to make sure her ancient eyes weren't playing tricks on her, she shook her head in bewilderment and stamped it with the Royal Seal of the Sun and Moon, before moving on to a complaint from a minor noble about the recent changes to the color of the sky at around 4 PM. Celestia, rather than stare at Sir Feather Brain's idiotic ramblings, decided to take time out for tea. It had been a full fifteen minutes since her last cup, after all; she wouldn't want to run on empty. The Sun Princess had just brought the cup to her lips when a pair of muffled thuds sounded through her heavy golden door. Frowning, she carefully replaced the teacup on its saucer and walked to the door. Just as she reached it, it opened onto her muzzle, knocking her onto her hindquarters. As Celestia gingerly rubbed her flattened appendage, Luna boldly strode through the door to confront her sister.

"Tia, hath thou noticed anything unusual about thy servants- Tia?" Luna stopped talking mid-sentence, realizing that she was addressing a document-laden desk. The younger sister furrowed her brow. If we did happen to become our sibling, where might we hide? Luna turned to the suspended Delicate Touch, who, as before, did not react in the slightest. Giving the hoofmaiden a small shake for her insolence, the Princess of the Night focused on a particularly large stack of papers, giving it a sudden upward tug- "No, Tia doth not appear to have hidden herself there..."

Celestia, recovering from her unexpected meeting with the door, politely coughed and suggested, "Perhaps your sister is simply staring at you in silence and wondering why you appear to have dragged an unconscious servant through the entire castle."

Luna shook her head without turning around. "Nay, 'tis unlikely that thou wouldst hide directly behind the door when thou wouldst surely be hit by it when it opened." Then realization sunk in and the Princess of the Night tasked, spinning abruptly and sending poor Delicate Touch flying into a carefully organized stack of papers. Celestia failed to repress a single tear at the decimation of hours of careful sorting and categorization. "Sister, please forgive us. We were not aware of thy unusual choice of locations for standing."

The Sun diarch simply smiled serenely, all traces of injury fading like frost on a steam train's boiler. "No harm done, Lulu. I should have used the door's proximity spell, but I suppose I'm getting old and senile." This brought a titter from both siblings; neither could so much as lose a single brain cell, let alone subcumb to the forces of aging. "But what of your indisposed hoofmaiden, whom you undoubtedly wish to speak with me about?" Standing and clearing off the desk (carefully - not a paper out of place), Celestia called up a second chair, or tried to. Despite her best efforts, it wouldn't budge from her patented StarField Storage Pocket spell. In fact, it wasn't there at all. "That's odd." Seeing her sister's questioning look, she added, "I can't seem to access my guest chair in my storage spell."

Luna shrugged. "Perhaps thou doth need to renew thy enchantment. It is over a thousand years old, after all."

Nightmare Atlas couldn't believe how comfortable the chair was. It had only taken a few moments of magical "lockpicking" to gain access to Celestia's private storage spell, and once in he had stolen, among other things, a large, luxurious chair, replacing them with a large quantity of adult magazine's that he was sure would greatly embarrass the Princess of the Sun when she eventually stumbled upon them in search of her missing recliner.

This chair was really comfortable. He could almost fall asleep in it... no! None of that! There was still work to be done, and he couldn't carry out his schemes if he drooled away in a royal recliner, no matter how soft and cushiony it might be. When he had total control over the land, he could sleep all he wanted, and no one could do a thing to stop him, except those pesky Elements of Harmony. He hissed, smoke wafting from his skin. He remembered the tearing, pulling, feeling as he was ripped from Luna's body and mind. It hadn't hurt him, but it wasn't pleasant either. Also, for some reason, the rainbow had seemed to taste faintly of a certain candy, but for the eternal life of him he couldn't think of its name.

"No matter," the Nightmare growled. "We shall find some way to dispose of those insufferable little brats." As the Nightmare and Blue blood grew closer together, their speech and thoughts each began to take on aspects of the other's. Nightmare Atlas thus used mostly modern grammar and diction, but incorporated a more formal style. "Perhaps we could send a counterfeit letter to the leader of their little troupe, Twilight Sparkle" Atlas spat the name like a curse. "We should take it upon ourselves to set up a trap which even they cannot evade or escape. Their one weakness is their drive to help those in need, so we shall provide a disaster and crush them all with the aid of the Dark Creatures." So saying, the evil Alicorn dissolved into a malevolent mist, filling the air with an echoing, crackling laugh that echoed through the castle. Realizing his mistake, Nightmare Atlas shot away into the sky of Canterlot, heading to Ponyville.

Celestia and Luna froze at the familiar cackle. Both knew what it meant, and both knew what was to come next. "Lulu..."

"Yes, Tia?"

"Get your hammer."

Despite the grim situation, Luna bared a fierce grin. "We wouldst never leave without it."