Spike didn’t know why he’d let himself get recruited into this.

As far as he knew, he couldn’t even get a cutie mark of his own! But the Cutie Mark Crusaders could be very persuading when they wanted to be. Why couldn’t they just get their cutie marks in that? Or espionage? Or covert operations?

They had all snuck out of one of the castle windows, unknown to the others. Scootaloo and Applebloom were leading the way, so sure that they wouldn’t get into trouble for something as inconsequential as trying to find their cutie marks. Sweetie Belle and Spike hang back a bit, anxiously glancing over their shoulders back at the castle in case someone had seen them leave.

“Uh, shouldn’t we get back?” Spike asked unsurely, tapping his claws together. “Twilight might be worried about us.”

“Ah, you’re just a chicken!” Scootaloo replied smugly. “I bet you just don’t want to get in trouble!”

“No, I think he’s right,” Sweetie Belle added. “Rarity wanted us to stay inside earlier when we went into Twilight’s castle. I don’t think she’d be happy about us doing this.”

“And ah think you’re a chicken too!” Applebloom teased, looking back at the other two with a smirk. “Maybe you two should go on a date! You’re perfect for each other!”

Spike cleared his throat and looked away from Sweetie Belle. “I’m just saying I think we should’ve told the others we were going out,” he said anxiously. “They could be worried about us.”

“And I don’t even think our cutie marks are going to be chaos detectives,” Sweetie Belle added, rosy cheeked. “Haven’t we already tried that already anyway?”

“Not this kind of chaos detective-ing!” Scootaloo exclaimed excitedly. “The one we tried before was for Discord! We’re detecting chaos for this new guy that took over for Discord!”

“I still think we’ve tried that already,” Sweetie Belle replied.

There was suddenly a bang and a flash of purple light from somewhere nearby, making them all jump. Scootaloo and Applebloom seemed to be more shaken up then Sweetie Belle and Spike, something that was not missed.

“Ha! Now who’s the chicken?” asked Spike triumphantly. He and Sweetie Belle slapped hoof and claw in the air as the other two turned to face them.

“That was different!” Scootaloo protested.

“Y-yeah!” Applebloom agreed shakily. “We were too busy thinking about everything we were gonna do to be focused on real life!”

“Whatever you say, you chicken!” Sweetie Belle laughed.

Suddenly, there was a deafening scream of fury and another bang. The voice was unmistakeable, but that couldn’t be Twilight, could it? She had never sounded that angry before!

With a quick glance between the four of them, they all came to the same conclusion.

Cutie Mark Crusader plus one scream investigators, yay!

-=-=-=-=-

The two of them emerged from James’s tackle somewhere in Ponyville. Twilight’s horn fired off a large blast of magic up into the sky, illuminating the area for a moment. James rolled over Twilight’s body and spun around to face her.

“Twilight, you’ve got to calm down,” said James, holding his hands out in front of him. “I know you want to be angry right now, but you could’ve killed someone with that spell!”

Several ponies gasped from nearby as they saw what had just happened. James waved at them to get back, but they took no notice of him, curiosity overwhelming them. Twilight slowly climbed to her feet and glared James right in the eye before letting out an ear-splitting scream of unbridled rage and a burst of magical power. The watchers flinched away as they were slightly deafened by such a resounding scream, but they did not run.

“Why should I calm down?!” she roared, stomping a hoof firmly and causing a slight indentation on the ground. James eyed it warily, but quickly returned his gaze to Twilight. “So you can just walk away without punishment?! You deserve more punishment than anypony else!!”

“Believe me, Twilight, I know that more than anyone,” he replied, taking a small step towards her. “But the way you are now, you’ll just be punishing everyone soon.”

Her eyelid twitched and her horn flashed brightly for an instant. A look of terror appeared on her face for a moment, but it quickly faded back to one of fury. James raised an eyebrow at that, smirking humourlessly as he began to figure out what was happening.

“Oh, this’ll make a few headlines…” he muttered. “Come on, Twilight. You’re better than this! Fight it before you start fighting everyone!”

She snarled and pawed at the ground for a moment. “I’d rather fight you!!” she screamed before hurtling towards him.

“Yeah, walked right into that one, didn’t I…?” James whispered to himself, adopting a fighting stance.

Before she reached him, she sent out a shot of magic ahead of her. James reacted quickly; a baseball bat materialised in his hands and he swung it at the projectile, knocking it high up into the sky. He spun with the momentum of his swing, hurling the bat to one side before delivering a roundhouse kick to Twilight’s head. She flew across the street and crashed to the ground in a heap.

James heard a gasp from somewhere in the slowly forming crowd and turned his head slightly to see Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie watching from not too far away, a look of shock on both their faces.

“Aw, great, now I feel like I’m on stage,” he joked quietly, turning his gaze back to Twilight. “Come on, princess! Better get this over and done with before your friends see this!”

Twilight growled as she got back to her feet. “Then stand still and let me make you suffer!!” she shouted, eyes lighting up.

“Yeah, not gonna happen,” James replied. “This is how it’s gonna work, princess; either you let me put you to sleep and no one else gets hurt or you put me down and then you start hurting everyone. What’s it gonna be?”

She smirked darkly and fired six orbs of purple light that homed in on him rapidly. “If it makes you suffer for what you’ve done, then I will hurt everyone!!” she shrieked, laughing cruelly.

“Again, not happening.”

One of his hands shot up to the sky and was swiftly pulled down, dragging a large red octagon by some invisible thread with it. The octagon crashed down into the ground before the projectiles and they collided with it at such a force that they exploded violently. James took up a fighting stance again as Twilight’s horn lit up once more. She fired off a beam of light at him, which he blocked and absorbed with a shield that suddenly appeared on his arm.

Twilight growled furiously and galloped towards him. Before she reached him, however, she teleported the last of the distance and swiped up with her horn that looked a lot sharper and longer than it had been only seconds earlier. A magical sword came into being as she did, following the movement of her head. James stepped around so his shield hand was on the side being attacked and knocked the sword to one side. Twilight snarled and renewed her assault.

“Not getting me like that, princess,” James stated calmly, batting the sword away as it swung down at him.

“Then stop moving!!” she screeched, spinning around to buck her hind legs at him. He teleported to just out of her reach and spun back to face her as she fumed. “You can’t avoid your punishment forever, James!!”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to for the one you’re thinking of giving,” he said, snapping his fingers to make a metal rod appear in his free hand. “What would you rather; forgetting about it all or killing me and punishing everyone else as well?”

She ground her teeth together as her magical sword swung at him again. He parried the strike with the shield and lunged towards her with the rod raised high. A shield spell was cast above her, knocking the rod away, and she swung low with the magical sword. He leapt over the swipe and spun in the air, aiming his weapon at her head.

She teleported out of his range and the sword shot towards him like a throwing knife. He stepped to one side to avoid it and hurled his shield at her. It clanged harmlessly off of a wall of purple light she had put up and she fired another spell blast at him in return. He spun out of the way, using the manoeuvre’s momentum to fling the rod at her. Her magical wall had gone down too soon and it hit her right between the eyes.

As she was stunned, a small rock hit the side of James’s head. “Get away from Twilight, you big bully!” yelled Spike the dragon, standing in a stance he’d no doubt seen James use earlier beside the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “I’m warning you! You hurt her again and I’ll make you into burnt toast!”

“It’s for her own good and the good of everyone else, Spike!” James replied, rubbing the side of his head as he dived towards Twilight, tackling her to the ground. “If I don’t stop her, she’s just going to keep hurting people!”

He put her in a hold that restricted her movement and pressed her against the ground. He raised a hand and grabbed a needle out of the air. He pulled one of Twilight’s legs out to jab the needle into it, but he was stopped by something pulling his arm back.

“I mean it!” Spike yelled, scowling at him threateningly. “I’ll burn you alive!!”

Before James could pull his hand away, Twilight let out a deafening shriek and a shockwave of magic, sending him flying straight up in the air. On his descent, he spun to face upwards and something propelled him backwards and away from Twilight. He somersaulted backwards as he fell and landed on his feet in a crouch. He looked around for Spike, snarling when he saw the poor dragon in a crumpled mess on the ground some distance away.

“Happy now, Twilight?” he snapped, running over to Spike’s side. “Are you happy with what you’ve accomplished now?”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders were there before he was, each one of them with a terrified look on their face as they panicked about what they should do. When James reached them, he knelt down beside him and pushed them back gently. He leant down to listen for breathing from Spike’s mouth before putting two fingers on Spike’s wrist to check his pulse.

While this was happening, Twilight looked to be having some kind of emotional turmoil; one moment, she would look terrified, fearing for Spike’s life, and the next, she would look furious and uncaring for him. James noticed this strange behaviour as tears started rolling down her cheeks.

“Girls, get a doctor,” he muttered, standing up above Spike’s broken form. He began to slowly march towards Twilight “Princess Twilight and I need to have a chat.”

“I-I’m sorry!” Twilight sobbed, taking a step towards Spike quickly, but was stopped when James raised a hand to her slowly. “I didn’t mean to hurt him! Is he alright?! He’s going to be o-okay, isn’t he?!” She twitched and her expression shifted to a cold one. “He got in the way!! Any fool with the sense to move would have done so, and, thus, he’ll remember his pathetic mistake!!”

“Gotcha,” James said quietly, smirking darkly. “Hello, Nightmare Twilight.”

He moved across the space in front of him in the blink of an eye, grabbing Twilight by the neck and throwing her onto her back before slamming her down to the ground. Before she could retaliate, he grabbed her by the wings and twisted them in such a way that made her scream in agony. He planted a foot on her chest and pressed her down against the ground. Her struggle against him halted for a moment and she looked up at him fearfully. After a second, she nodded at him.

“Great job, Twi,” he whispered, pulling her wings off completely in a single swift movement. “Keep fighting it.”

Her detached wings vanished from his hands suddenly and Twilight hissed at him furiously, pupils narrowing and becoming snake-like. He chuckled humourlessly as another needle appeared in his hand. He heard some of the obviously terrified crowd gasp as he leaned down to stick it into her leg. She fired a blast of magic up at his face in a last-ditch effort to get him off of her, which hit him hard. After a moment, he looked back down at her with a bleeding nose and a cruel smile before he stabbed the needle into her leg and injected its fluid inside her.

“I will come back!!” she spat at him. “I will return once more!! I will see you suffer!!”

“I’d like to see you try it, Nightmare,” he replied, leaning across to her ear to whisper to her. “Just know this; I am the stronger one here and I will never stop defending this world while I still draw breath.”

Her pupils returned to their original look and her horn shrank back down to normal size as the sleeping drug took its effect on her. She kicked out at him weakly as he put a hand on her head and his face regained a stern look. When her eyes drifted shut at last, he did what he wanted to do. Behind him, he heard the sound of approaching ponies.

“What did you do to her?” Fluttershy breathed, looking down at Twilight’s unconscious body. “Is she alright?”

“I put her to sleep for a few hours and wiped her memory,” he replied gravely. “When she wakes up, she’ll forget she was ever angry.”

“But what happened to her?!” Pinkie yelled, pushing James’s leg off of Twilight’s chest. “She’s never wanted to do anything like that before! Not even on her own!”

“She was just so mad that she let her guard down,” he replied, cradling Twilight in his arms to pick her up off the ground. “She let her guard down and the Nightmare saw an opportunity to take over.”

“Nightmare?” Fluttershy asked, looking up at James in shock. “As in… Nightmare Moon?”

“The Nightmare that made Luna Nightmare Moon, yes,” he explained. He sighed and headed off towards Twilight’s castle, motioning for the other girls to follow. “Imagine a parasite; something that latches onto anything it can to feed on and grow stronger. That’s what the Nightmare is.”

“So… she’s not a real pony?” Pinkie reasoned, following James as he walked.

“Something like that.”

“But… how did Twilight let her guard down?” asked Fluttershy.

James sighed again, closing his eyes. “She didn’t,” he said darkly. “I dropped it for her.”

Before giving any more explanation, he vanished with Twilight, leaving Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy alone. They turned around to the doctor that was seeing to Spike and then to each other. They both came to the conclusion that Spike needed more attention right now, and they headed over to him slowly.

-=-=-=-=-

Twilight could hear voices.

They sounded very familiar too.

“Did you tell them about your plan?”

Plan?

“No. They don’t need to know it yet.”

“Good choice. I’d suggest telling the others to not let Twilight know about this. We don’t want Nightmare repeating all this.”

Nightmare?

“They’ll ask questions, you know. How you knew about that stuff, in particular.”

“Let ‘em. I’ll just make up some story or wipe their memory, if need be.”

“Do you really want to do that to them? Especially Fluttershy.”

What was going on?

“Look, I can only see the one blip in the plan so far and that was when I was depressed about things today. You came and cleaned that up anyway.”

The one she’d seen attacking James!

“Yes, but I won’t be able to clean up all your mess, even if I am –“

“Shh. She just gasped. I think she’s been awake this whole time.”

Oh no.

She felt something put over her mouth and she could taste that drug that’d put her to sleep earlier again.

She held her breath, but she’d already breathed too much of it in.

“Note to self; chloroform works better than other sedatives.”

“I’ll make sure to remember that for you.”

She felt a hand on her head as she faded out of consciousness.

“Sorry, princess, but this is to make sure you don’t mess any of my plan up.”

She opened her eyes and glanced around weakly. There was James, carrying her, and then there was…

Blackness.

Author's Note

This chapter was originally just me venting my frustrations in word form but that got too off topic way too quickly so that's why you have this chapter with as much fighting in it as it has. I'll make it up to you later.