Guards, Pegasi, and Vamponies, Oh My!
Hello, my name is DonnE Starside, Major of the Lunar Guard. I have decided to write a rather basic version of my story, a mini autobiography if you will.
My story truly starts before I was even born, on the night Nightmare Moon returned from her thousand year banishment. She had just finished trapping Princess Celestia and was flying to Ponyville where her sister’s beloved little ponies were gathered to celebrate the summer sun celebration.
Now, after a thousand years of being alone, she was… Let’s say needy. As she was flying, she caught sight of the only stallion not at the summer sun celebration in town hall. The young stallion was in an orchard outside of town, looking up at the night sky. Nightmare moon landed and slowly walked up to the stallion, who hadn’t noticed her yet, too distracted by the moon and stars.
She cleared her throat and he turned and looked at her. From what I understand, his jaw dropped when he saw her. The stallion thought she was the most beautiful mare there ever was, even more so than most ponies thought of Celestia.
Nightmare moon strode up to him and asked him why he wasn’t with all of the other ponies. He replied that he wasn’t interested in watching the sunrise, and preffered the moonlit night sky over the sunny day. Nightmare Moon was speechless, she had never believed that any pony would choose her night over her sister’s sunny day.
Long story short: She started crushing hard on him and things happened before she went to town hall and told everypony that the night would last forever and all the rest.
Now, what most ponies don’t know is that at that point she wasn’t keeping the moon up out of anger towards the ponies and her sister, at least not for the most part. No, now she held the moon in place thinking that it would please the young stallion that filled her thoughts.
Of course, she didn’t tell anyone that, so the well known story of the six living embodiments of the elements of harmony purged nightmare moon’s dark magic from Princess Luna.
Now, remember those ‘things’ that happened between the dark princess and the young stallion? Well, apparently it was during one of those times, because it took hold before the elements were used. Now the elements of harmony, being the benevolent power that they are, didn’t harm the child or remove it from the alicorn’s womb, so now the newly purified alicorn Princess Luna was with foal.
Once Luna found out, she and Celestia flew out to ponyville without the usual fanfare and found the young stallion. Luna told him that it had been she he had bed with, and what had come from it. She still remembered why she had done it, and it wasn’t just being needy. She remembered how it had touched her that somepony lover her night more than the day. So, in a reversal of the usual way of going about things, especially for royalty, she asked the stallion for the honor of courting him on the condition that he move to canterlot.
Why only if he moved? Well, Celestia had raised the valid point that at this early stage in reintegrating Luna into equestrian society and convincing everyone that she could be trusted, it would be dangerous to have her so far from the palace, especially once she started showing that she was pregnant.
Much to Luna’s joy, the stallion agreed and made arrangements for his orchard to be integrated into his cousin’s apple orchard. The two dated for a while before having a private wedding at the castle. It was decided that when the foal was born it would be raised in the castle until it was of age, and then it could decide for itself.
One remainder of a gestation period later and a blue pegasus with a brown mane and tail was born and named DonnE Starside. Yes, in case you hadn’t guessed by now somehow, I am the son of Luna.
Now, one might think that it would be amazing to be raised in the palace with the princesses, and for the most part you’d be correct. However, I should mention that, as Princess Twilight Sparkle would know, Princesses can be very strict. My mother, however, was very creative when it came to the approach of that strictness.
My mother is very much a practical joker. I distinctly remember one time where she made me think she transformed into Nightmare Moon again because I had almost burnt the kitchen down while trying to make her breakfast in bed… Aunt Celestia was none too pleased when her five year old nephew ran to her crying and saying “Aunty Tia! Mommy turned back into nightmare moon and she’s going to do bad things and it’s all my fauuuuult!” or something along those lines. Let’s just say words were spoken and we both apologized.
What’s that? Why am I talking like that was a long time ago? Well, funny you should ask that. See, apparently being the half breed son of an alicorn makes you grow to maturity faster than most. Specifically, five years worth of growth per one year of actual time passing. I basically turned twenty a few years ago. Incidentally, that seems to have been the age of maturity according to my body, since I started aging like a normal pony.
Or at least… I would have…
See, a few months after I turned twenty two there was an… incident in ponyville. I had joined the royal guard when I had stopped growing, and my mother and aunt were visiting the elements in ponyville. A crazy mare had launched herself at Celestia, and I tackled it away. Next thing I knew, she was biting me all over, and it burned like crazy! It was like she was shooting me with venom! I ended up having to break the poor mare’s neck to get her to stop. I felt so bad for it. And then I passed out from bloodloss...
After that incident I woke up in Ponyville hospital after only a day fully healed, which should have been impossible considering I had been bitten, had flesh torn, and lost that much blood. Now, being related to an alicorn has it’s perks, and I was tougher than an average pegasus, but there was no way I should have healed that quickly. I would know, I’d been almost as bad once before.
When I opened my eyes I realized that it seemed like everything was too bright and it hurt. I also noticed that, even though it hurt, I could see things in amazing detail, and I’d had twenty twenty vision. I could also hear what people in the rest of the hospital were saying as if they were right beside me, and I could smell far better than before.
I was also extremely thirsty. I chugged an entire pitcher of water and it did nothing. I chugged a second, still nothing. Then I saw one of the blood bags they had been using to replace the blood I had lost. Before I knew what had happened, the bag was in my hooves, empty, and I could taste blood in my mouth.
Right about then is when my brain added two and two and came up with vampony. Yes, vampony. I can assure you that I did not panic… Ok, that’s a lie, I was flipping the buck out inside, but guard training had taught me how to not show what I was really thinking. I checked myself out of the hospital, ‘borrowed’ somepony’s sunglasses, and booked it home to the palace. I quickly found out that I was a lot stronger and faster, because I beat my previous best to to canterlot by half. I then promptly tried to knock on my mother’s bedroom door, only to somehow smash my hoof through the damn thing.
It was a looooong day.
Once I learned to control my new strength and got a pair of sunglasses enchanted to not break and not come off unless I took them off, I joined Special Operations. I took all of the hardest missions I could, determined to prove that I wasn’t a monster. I was too blind to notice that I was the only one who thought that I was.
As it turned out, I was particularly good at undercover missions. It was like I was a real version of Michael Weston or James Bond… Don’t ask, the element of laughter told me about them, I don’t question what she says anymore, I just go with it.
Anyway, at one point I tried to change over to the Lunar guard, since when not on special missions they work at night, but my CO said that I was too good at my job. I understood and let it drop for a while.
Until a few months ago.
It was the night before the day I had been waiting for, the day my leave (or vacation for you normal ponies) began. I was planning to sleep in and then go to ponyville to visit Princess Twilight. Having been pretty much raised by my aunt, she was practically a cousin, and we were fairly close. Right before I was about to head to bed, a messenger knocked on the door to my quarters. He said it was urgent and I just sighed, knowing that whatever the letter said was going to screw up my plans.
Sure enough, it was urgent orders to report to a ‘General Zero’ at the train station at o six hundred. Six in the bucking morning. It also said that my leave was put on hold until the completion of my new mission. I thanked the messenger for delivering it, it wasn’t his fault the letter ruined my plans after all, set my alarm, and went to bed.
The next morning I woke up at an unreasonable hour like the letter said too, got ready, and left for the station. When I found the general… Well to say he wasn’t what I was expecting would be a bit of an understatement. As it turns out, the general was one of the stars who had helped my mother escape from the moon. He was over a thousand years old, and had the body he had when my mother and they were banished. Thing is, he was nine when they were banished. He also happened to be a bat pony.
Anyway, we were sent on a mission to gather information on a pony that most didn’t know even existed. His name was Brimstone, and he was the son of King Sombra. Brimstone was a dark gray pegasus stallion with light grey hair with red tips. He also had a friend with him, a white pegasus with red tipped hair named Axel.
Zero and I went undercover as father and adopted son, right after giving me a promotion to Major and transferring me to the Lunar guard. Because… reasons I guess? I’m still not sure why he did it. We befriended them, or at least we befriended Brimstone. Axel somehow knew we were up to something and was constantly on his guard around us.
Long story once again cut short: They found out, there was an argument, we discovered that Brimstone was a crystalmancer (he could make crystals grow out of the ground, control them, shape them, etc), he had access to the same type of dark magic as his father used, but didn’t try to exploit it, and that he had a dark secondary personality fueled by dark magic. Axel wanted very badly to kill Zero and I, he even got a bunch of purity crystals and sharpened them into daggers. In case you can’t guess, purity crystals wouldn’t like me very much…
There was a big fight and then everything calmed down. We all became friends in the end and now we’re all on vacation in the crystal empire. I’m about to go downstairs to the bar and have drinks with Axel, as I have done every night since things calmed down. I’m thinking of taking him to the local club where my friend Vinyl Scratch, or DJ-P0N3 as most ponies know her, is performing this week. I’ve known her for a few years now, ever since I turned.
Anyway, you’re caught up now. Maybe as life goes on I’ll add to this, or maybe make a journal of sorts to document my adventures. Pinkie Pie says she’s going to ‘upload’ this to a place called ‘fimfiction’ on ‘the internet’... Like I said, I don’t even question it anymore. Anyway, thank you for reading this, I hope you find my story an interesting one.
-Major DonnE Starside, Lunar guard, Heir to the Princess of The Moon.
