Just as Calculated, Just as Planned
Princess Luna stood waiting at the edge of the forest. It had taken her hours to fly there, but she knew the one she was waiting for would take much less time to cover the distance between there and Canterlot. She had told her guards to remain in Canterlot -the wedding was likely to be over before Luna's work was done, and she didn't want them to miss it. Big public spectacles weren't at all Luna's thing, and she tended to make a mess of things when she tried to step into the spotlight. Luna was still getting letters from Ponyville looking for reassurance that Nightmare Night would still be observed next year.
Luna looked critically at the large 'X' she'd carved into the trunk of a nearby tree. She mentally went over her calculations again, more out of boredom than anything else. She had worked out every possible result of an attack on Canterlot, and -given her niece's odd behavior and Twilight Sparkle's arrival in the city, had determined one outcome that had a 99.9% chance of occurring. All that was left was for Shining Armor and Princess Cadance to do their part. This would happen very soon, Luna felt. Cadance was always so punctual.
Cadance was a very nice relative to have, in Luna's opinion. She brought a measure of sweetness to the royal family, and Luna had been very happy to meet her upon her return to Equestria. As for Shining Armor, Luna found him an altogether respectable stallion, and a much more satisfactory nephew than that pretentious Bluebood idiot. Had the royal family ever produced such a complete egotist as Blueblood? Luna reflected that her own behavior as Nightmare Moon had been truly awful, but Blueblood definitely held second place for most unacceptable royal, and she wasn't Nightmare Moon any more.
The night princess's musings were interrupted by a loud explosion from the direction of Canterlot Castle. Luna looked towards the castle and was pleased to see a pink sphere of magical power rapidly growing to cover the city. Just as calculated. Just as planned. A strong wind nearly blew Luna off her hooves as the pressure wave from the explosion reached her, but still Luna smiled.
Seconds later, a horrible creature, like a combination of a princess pony, an insect, and Swiss cheese, slammed into the marked tree, her stomach striking squarely on the 'X', and fell to the ground. Miraculously, the tree suffered no harm. Just as planned.
Luna clicked her tongue, noting that she had miscalculated. The 'X' had been to mark where holey bug-pony's chin would hit the three. She had been thrown with slightly more force than Luna had anticipated. Still, this meant that the love between Cadance and Shining Armor was even stronger than estimated, and that was a miscalculation Luna was willing to live with. Her smile grew wider as she watched the bug-pony struggle to stand up.
"Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings!" Luna greeted her cheerfully, "how delightful to meet you in your true form. We are the Royal Princess Luna of Equestria, although we suppose you found that out while you were pretending to be our dear niece". Luna was getting used to speaking Modern Equestrian, but she still threw in the royal plural when she wanted to be formal. Or annoying. This was a time for the latter.
"Glurg," Chrysalis managed, still trying to remember how to put her hooves under her.
"Well said," Luna replied, "so, Queen Chrysalis -can we call you Chrys? So, Chrys, it looks like you were defeated by the power of love and your minions scattered across the land. Does that sound about right?"
"Brgle," Chrysalis explained, finally getting her hole-filled hooves under her body and turning to the suddenly very difficult task of making her legs lift her. Just as calculated.
"We thought as much," the pony princess continued to smile at the helpless changeling monarch, "you know, it wasn't very polite of you. That whole business of pretending to be dear Mi Amore Cadenza and plotting that invasion of Equestria," Luna turned her smile into a wide, palsied grin, knowing it would unnerve Chrysalis, "really, not at all a classy thing to do".
Chrysalis managed to stand, staggering slightly. "So do... do somethin'... about it," the dazed queen muttered defiantly. She nearly keeled over, but managed to use her wings to stay upright, "plan's ruined. Changelings scattered. Made a fool out of me. Can't do worse than what's already happened". Chrysalis looked unsteadily, but defiantly, into Luna's eyes. Just as planned.
"You should know, we are going to take that as a challenge," Luna said primly. Her horn began to glow, and she added "now hold still, we're in for a wild ride. Feel free to scream". Luna's shadow rapidly began to spread, soon engulfing both royals, who vanished suddenly.
Chrysalis, to her credit, did not scream. Luna, however, suspected that this might be because she was still disoriented. Colliding with a tree at half the speed of sound tended to leave a pony a bit out of sorts for a while, as Luna knew from first-hoof experience. Changelings evidently reacted similarly. Luna saw that Chrysalis had her eyes tightly closed, and her smile grew wider. She knew she shouldn't be enjoying this, but blast it all, it was fun. Eventually, the queen opened her eyes and looked around.
"Where... where have you taken me?!" Chrysalis demanded, staring at the empty, lifeless landscape.
"Welcome, Chrysalis, Queen of Changelings," Luna said loudly and with great formality, "welcome to the moon!"
Chrysalis sat down heavily, mouth hanging open. "You... you're joking..."
"No, really, Chrys, it's the moon," Luna's adamant cheeriness was, she knew, grating every nerve the queen had, "here we spent one thousand years imprisoned as Nightmare Moon. Follow us".
Queen Chrysalis, seeing no other alternative, followed Luna across the barren surface of the moon, staring all around her for any sign of life, or even differently-colored rocks. After walking for hours, the changeling staggering occasionally, Luna finally stopped. Chrysalis stared. In front of the pair was a huge castle, which appeared to have been built entirely out of uncut rocks.
"What... what is this?" Chrysalis asked, stunned. The long walk had clearly gotten her accustomed to the emptiness of the moon's surface. Just as planned.
"This, dear queen, is what a pony princess can accomplish with a thousand years of spare time and nothing to do but move moon rocks around". Luna explained chipperly. Before Chrysalis could respond, Luna raised a forehoof and struck the ground. Her stomp released a pulse of magic through the ground, which reached the castle in less than a second and began a sort of localized quake, shaking the moon's surface all around them. As Luna and Chrysalis watched, the entire castle crumbled to dust above the quaking ground.
"We look forward," Luna continued as if nothing had happened, "to seeing what a changeling queen can manage," Luna put a foreleg across Chrysalis' shoulders and waved her other hoof towards the empty expanse, "this whole moon is yours now. See you in a millennium!" As the changeling stared at her in mute horror, Luna vanished in a flash of blue light.
Luna flew quickly through the twilit sky towards the royal gardens, where she could see the guests forming for the reception. She knew that Celestia, Cadance, and Shining Armor had between them managed to talk Twilight Sparkle into singing at the reception. That the unicorn's special talent was magic didn't stop her from having a golden voice, but convincing her to actually use it was always a challenge. To her delight, Luna landed just moments before it was time to start the music.
"Hello, everypony. Did I miss anything?" Luna asked jokingly. Celestia, the only pony who was in on the joke, gave her a knowing grin as Pinkie Pie and Vinyl Scratch started the sound system.
Just as calculated. Just as planned.
Mare and Stallion at Sunset
"Well, good evening, sleepyhead! Doesn't seem to be much left of you, huh?" Luna asked. The random pieces of shattered crystal laying in the fast-melting snow did not reply. Luna's horn glowed, and she started to piece together the scattered fragments of what had mere hours before been a feared tyrant. "We have to admit," the night princess continued, "turning you into a living shadow was not a wise idea. That was ours, of course. Making a shadow out of you seemed clever at the time, but it looks like it was useful to you, so we suppose we must hold it against ourself."
"How... am... I..." Sombra struggled to say as his crystalline head was assembled.
"Still alive?" Luna finished. "You silly filly, you've been turned to crystal. Crystal is like any rock -you can't kill it. Besides, did you honestly expect a spell formed of pure love and joy to kill somepony? How adorable."
"Don't talk... To me like... I am... A foal," Sombra wheezed as Luna finished re-assembling him. Sombra's body glowed slightly as it assumed its original, non-crystal form.
"But you are a foal, compared to us," the princess replied, "Silly Sombra, you are merely a spoiled colt, trying to get what he wants by wailing and crying. The only difference is that instead of wailing and crying, you use thought manipulation and memory corruption. We really do not like that."
The fallen tyrant growled, glaring at his antagonist. Luna couldn't help but smile at the unicorn. At the height of his power, he hadn't been able to stand against the royal sisters, even with Luna engaged in her own inner struggle. Now, Sombra's power broken and Luna's mind clear, the ex-king stood no chance against the immortal princess. The night goddess wondered briefly if this fact occurred to Sombra, whether even the slightest possibility of it flickered through his mind. She hoped not, it would make breaking him more interesting.
"You know, we tried to convince Celestia to let us come fight you ourselves, but she insisted that Shining Armor and Twilight Sparkle, and of course dear Cadence, get a shot at you first."
"You call yourself a princess, but in the end you're just Celestia's most loyal minion," Sombra said with a sneer, "she was being a good older sister, looking out for your well-being. Very merciful of her."
Luna brought her snout mere inches away from Sombra's and replied, "your memory of our last encounter seems to be flawed, my dear young colt. We were not the one to whom Celestia was showing mercy." Sombra blinked and backed away slowly. Luna realized she had probably eliminated any chance of a real fight, but didn't let it bother her. "Speaking of Celestia, she has already heard of today's events, and plans to give most of the credit to Spike. You know, that little dragon who very nearly dropped the Crystal Heart right on your head. History will forever remember you, Sombra, as being defeated by a clumsy infant reptile." Luna gave a smile and a small sigh, then spoke words that came directly from her heart; "we do so dearly love our sister."
"She's done a better job of keeping you under her hoof than I ever did with the crystal ponies." Sombra replied, amusing Luna with his attempt to insult her, "speaking of your sister, did the two of you ever deal with the darkness in your own heart?"
Luna grinned widely, knowing that Sombra had hoped his mention of the entity that had turned her into Nightmare Moon would upset her. The princess took great joy in her reply, and the look on her enemy's face. "Oh, we called in some friends to help us sort that out. But we suppose you don't know about friendship, do you?" The unicorn gnashed his teeth as the princess continued cheerfully,
"you can't very well mind-control somepony into being your friend, even if you can make them fake it, so what say we introduce you to somepony you can't control? We have encountered someone just as evil as you, although not so foalish. Maybe she can be your friend."
Sombra's response died in his throat as a flash of blinding light consumed both ponies. The unicorn blinked several times and stared at the lifeless, crater-pocked plain he found himself upon.
"Come along, Sommy!" The princess said in a sing-song voice, the like of which a mother might use to address a tiny foal, "Hmm. Sommy? Soms? Bra? That last one seems... Off. Dear, dear, we should've thought of a nickname for you before we came, your name is much harder to work with than Crys's was."
"You. Are. Insane!" Sombra accused, filling Luna with joy.
"Oh, Som-Som, you're adorable," Luna said, batting his snout. "Som-Som! That's it! We have your nickname, so now we may continue!" The deposed crystal monarch glared at her with murder in his glowing eyes. Luna briefly considered trying to force her manic grin into a motherly smile, but abandoned the idea. She had never been the motherly sort, unlike her warm-hearted sister.
Sombra took a fighting stance. "Where in Tartarus have you taken me?!" He demanded. To the princess's own surprise, her smile widened, to the point that she thought it was past her physical limits.
"Oh, where are our manners?" The mare said with mock embarrassment, "you're an old friend, so we must have forgotten formality. Welcome, fallen tyrant Sombra, to the moon!"
The king flopped down onto the alien ground. "What," was the only word he spoke.
The princess patted his head condescendingly. "The moon, silly Som-Som, the moon. That big, beautiful sphere of glorious stone that I am responsible for moving through the night sky." Luna explained lovingly, dropping the royal plural and her formal tone. "This lovely rock predates Equestria by an absurd amount of time, and has been my responsibility for eons uncountable. No seriously, I've gone and lost count of how many centuries I've been pushing this rock through the heavens. Still, it's a good career, so long as you don't do anything stupid, like let an incorporeal entity of sentient evil play around in your head."
"You mean to trap me here!" Sombra declared, jumping to his feet. His eyes glowed with rage and malevolent power, "left alone, so far from my empire-"
"You won't be alone at all," Luna said sweetly, "didn't I tell you? I have a friend for you. Now come along." Princess Luna turned away and began walking. Sombra the fallen king followed, his head low and his eyes wary.
After walking for what seemed like an age, the two ponies crested the raised edge of a particularly large crater, and found at its bottom a large pile of stones and an unusually tall changeling. The changeling was staring at the moon rocks as if intent on learning every single detail of their surfaces.
"There she is!" Luna said gleefully. She waved a hoof in the air, calling, "Chrys! Oh Crys! We have somepony for you to meet!" The princess switched on the nerve-grating formality. The changeling whirled around, her wings buzzing as she stared in confusion and shock at the two ponies. She flew at Luna, her face distorted in rage.
"You madmare!" The changeling cried, "how dare you-" Chrysalis stopped short as Luna ran a small amount of magic through her horn. Just enough to make it glow and remind the changeling who held all the proverbial cards on the moon.
"Dear, dear Chrysalis," Luna let her voice assume a gleeful tone, "we thought you might be lonely, so we brought a friend for you! He's just as bad a troublemaker as you are, so we thought we might as well have him share your sentence." The princess plopped a hoof down on Sombra's shoulder and continued, "Chrysalis, former Queen of Changelings, meet Sombra, deposed king of the Crystal Empire! Sombra, this is Queen Chrysalis! She's a naughty, naughty retired monarch, just like you!" The ex-rulers stared mutely at each other as their still-crowned counterpart assessed Chrysalis's rock pile with a professional eye.
"Chrys, oh Chrys, you'd better pick up the pace! Our moon-rock castle was much further along by now! Or maybe it wasn't, we did lose track of time up here." With that, the night-sky princess vanished.
The changeling and the remaining pony stared at each other for several more minutes.
"So, by 'sharing your sentence', I suppose she means I'm here for as long as you are." Sombra said slowly.
"It seems that way," Chrysalis said bluntly, "well, we're stuck with each other for the next thousand years, so we might as well get along."
"One. Thousand. Years?" The unicorn asked, stunned. The changeling queen nodded grimly and turned to hover back to her rocks.
King Sombra wept. Queen Chrysalis, however, ambled away. She kept ambling, in fact, until the crater was several miles from her, and she was standing next to her jailer.
"Decided to stick around a bit longer, Lulu?" The changeling asked, gazing at the distant planet below.
"'Lulu'? I don't think anypony has called me that before. It's quite novel" The princess replied, her tone melancholic.
"Hm, what happened to the false sweetness and the half-crazed grinning?"
Luna thought carefully before replying, "I always scare myself when I get like that, I think I enjoy it too much. Reminds me of how I used to be. Should I be telling you this? I'm not sure. Too late now, though. That aside, I do enjoy it up here, even though this place once served as my prison. It's so quiet. But it's a quiet that can drive a pony to madness."
"And that's why you brought the weeping unicorn here? To give me someone to talk to?"
"When I found him, Sombra had been turned into crystal, and then shattered." Luna turned to look Chrysalis in the eyes, "but he was still alive. And he was aware. Can you imagine that? Being separated into hundreds of fragments and scattered across the land, yet remaining fully conscious? Unable to move, unable to call for help, unable to even scream at the horror of it all?" Chrysalis's face went pale as she considered the idea, "and worse, living with the knowledge that no help will come, because everypony thinks you're dead, and they're all too busy telling each other how evil you were to care for your well-being anyway." The princess sighed and continued, "he enslaved an entire nation, corrupted the memories of countless ponies, and caused his entire empire to vanish from the world when Celestia and I came to do something about it, but for all of that, I wouldn't wish that fate on him. Bad enough that we have to keep Discord in stone."
"Discord?" The changeling's ears pricked up, "not a name I am familiar with."
"I'm surprised, he has the power to warp reality, and enjoys using it to make ponies suffer. For a time, all of Equestria was under his control. He's a statue now, the only way to stop him from abusing his powers in his madness. But you, Chrysalis, you and Sombra, are not quite like him."
"So you send us to the moon instead." Chrysalis said flatly.
"I don't want Equestria or the Crystal Empire invaded again," Luna replied, just as flatly, "admittedly, with Sombra, I didn't calculate or plan, as I did with you. Once I'd re-assembled him, it occurred to me that I had better imprison him or he'd just have another shot at the Empire, and this is the only place that can hold him. You two can't hurt anypony here. Thanks to my power, not even each other. Consider this an opportunity to re-evaluate your life, Chrysalis. One thousand years on this moon did me a world of good, in a surprisingly literal sense. And you, and perhaps Sombra, are very much like I was in those days."
"Re-evaluate my life?" Chrysalis sneered, "don't talk nonsense!"
"Well then, consider this riddle. From what I have observed, Queen Chrysalis, you are powered by love, but motivated by hate. I don't know if that's true, but that is, when all your illusions are stripped away, how you appear. How, then, did this come to be?" Without waiting for an answer, the princess vanished once more.
