TWILIGHT SPARKLE SHIPS PINKIE PIE AND RAINBOW DASH 3
REVENGEANCE
Alas, once again, Twilight Sparkle found herself outside of her library and standing upon her lawn, as two familiar, and yet this time simultaneously strikingly unfamiliar, ponies stood across from her.
The last time this had happened, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie had started a war with Saddle Arabia after assaulting the Sultan and kidnapping all of his harem girls. Thankfully the war had been averted when Princess Celestia calmly explained to Sultan Djinni Bottle that the two bearers of harmony were not agents sent to assassinate him or official representatives of Equestria. They were just morons. The war had finally been called off entirely upon the safe return of the Sultan’s harem girls, who were returned to Saddle Arabia by a friendly minotaur. All anypony knew about the harem’s mystery savior was that he was, indeed, very friendly.
But now, Twilight found herself out on her lawn again, and indeed, this time things were bad. Like, really bad. Like, “oh sweet baby Celestia we’re all doomed” bad.
And of course, once again, the cause of it all was the two ponies standing right in front of her.
At least this time the two of them had the decency to look sheepish. Even if their abashedness was somewhat undermined by their darkened coats, heightened statures, flowing manes, magnificent wings, fluted horns, and slitted pupils.
Twilight sighed. “You know, in the end, I guess I have nopony to blame but myself.” The now diminutive purple unicorn grumbled, once more placing a hoof beneath the base of her horn and shaking her head. “I know I’m going to regret asking but--”
“Wait!” Nightmare Pinkie said, holding up a burgundy hoof attached to a long, slender leg as she called for quiet. With no more energy left to protest, Twilight complied and went silent. “Before we get into the story of just how the moon exploded, I want to make a scientific report!”
Twilight nodded. “Go on.”
“After extensive testing and observation,” Nightmare Pinkie said, throwing a hoof into the air dramatically as her fiery, ethereal pink mane randomly crackled like something between electricity and plasma behind her, “I have determined that the moon is not, in fact, made of cheese!” she declared, stomping a hoof.
Nightmare Dash nodded, her ethereal mane resembling an aurora borealis as it drifted behind her. “That was a real bummer to find out.”
Twilight sighed, massaging her temples. “Right, now that that’s out of the way,” she mumbled before looking up at her friends. “Do either of you realize what you’ve done?” She demanded, pointing up at the three large chunks of moon, drifting lazily across the sky.
Nightmare Dash looked up, an eyebrow raised, before turning back to Twilight. “Probably pissed Princess Luna right the hell off.”
“Ooh,” Nightmare Pinkie frowned. “We should probably send her an apology card.”
Twilight stamped a hoof. “No!” she shouted before reconsidering. “I mean, well… yes. Luna is very upset right now, but that’s not the issue!” she exclaimed. “The destruction of the moon is playing havoc with the tides! Coastal towns are having ruin wreaked upon them by tsunamis and hurricanes! And if Princess Luna can’t fix the moon, the debris from the blast will cover the atmosphere in a dusty haze, blocking out the sun and killing all life as we know it!” Twilight punctuated her rant with a stomp of her hoof, panting heavily.
“Whoa.” Dash said, her slitted eyes widening. “That blows…”
Twilight clenched her eyes shut and recomposed herself. “Just… tell me what happened.”
Nightmare Pinkie rolled her eyes. “We told you, silly! We exploded up the mo--”
“HOW!” Twilight shouted. “I meant HOW! Tell me HOW you exploded up the moon!”
Nightmare Dash nodded, lifting a teal hoof and shrugging. “Well, after you got us a seat on that trip to the moon--”
“Which was totally splendiferamazing of you, Twilight!” Nightmare Pinkie said with a dagger-toothed grin. “I mean, seriously, who gets to go to the moon?! Except Princess Luna of course, and that vacation went on waaaaaaayyyyyy too long!” Pinkie closed her eyes and nodded solemnly. “Too much play on a pony’s hooves, and the play becomes nothing but more work.”
“Wise words.” Twilight deadpanned.
“I got it off a fortune cookie!” Nightmare Pinkie grinned.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Nightmare Dash cleared her throat, “Derpy dropped us off at the moon when she shot our crate out of the airlock--”
Twilight grumbled, massaging her temples. “I severely underestimated Derpy’s dedication to her job...”
“--and we crashed into a great big crater.” Nightmare Dash grinned. “By the way, the moon? Amazing! You are so much lighter there! Once you get the hang of it, it’s SUPER easy to fly around, and the landscapes… I’m not much one for looking at scenery but wow! It’s so pure and tranquil and untouched by ponykind!”
Nightmare Pinkie shrugged. “Yeah, the moon is pretty okay. It’s a nice place to visit but I would not want to live there,” she shook her head. “Nothing to do… or breathe.”
“Yeah, that was kinda the thing.” Nightmare Dash shrugged, frowning a little. “I got over the whole ‘stunned by the natural beauty of the untouched landscape’ thing pretty quick.”
“It took, like, seven seconds,” Pinkie agreed.
“So we did all the things ponies normally do when they find themselves in low-gravity situations.” Dash explained. “Hopped around a bunch, chucked rocks, shot a few golf balls.”
“Golf balls?” Twilight blinked.
Pinkie nodded, “Duh, Twilight!” she said, lighting her horn and pulling a golf ball out of the beehive attached to one of her library’s branches. “I have golf balls stashed all over Ponyville! Just in case of golf emergencies!”
Twilight gaped. “But… you were on the moo--”
“Eventually,” Nightmare Dash interrupted, continuing her explanation, “we both remembered that there is literally no sport more boring than golf.”
“Seriously! Even in low-g’s it’s the most snore-o-riffic thing in the world!” Nightmare Pinkie threw her hooves in the air. “Who in Equestria actually likes golf?! Other boring sports usually at least have SOMETHING interesting about them! At least pool has those pretty colorful balls bouncing around! With tennis you at least get to watch mares running around in tiny shorts! At least with bowling you get to knock things over! Why would anypony ever want to play golf?!”
Twilight frowned sadly. “I like golf…”
Nightmare Dash shrugged again. “Yeah, but you’re an egghead.”
Twilight opened her mouth to protest, only for Dash to cut her off again. “Anyway, so after we had completely run out of things to do, we decided to go exploring!” She said with a wide grin.
“And lucky for us there was a spooky looking castle, like, twenty feet from where we landed!” Nightmare Pinkie squealed.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed in frustration and confusion as her mouth took on a bewildered ‘o’ shape. After a moment of stunned silence, she finally spoke. “What?! Then why did you waste your time playing golf?!”
Nightmare Dash grinned. “So you ADMIT that golf is a waste of time!”
Twilight sputtered. “I… you…” she growled. “No! I’m asking if there was a spooky castle twenty feet from where you landed why was exploring it not the first thing you did?! Why did you spend so much time playing a sport the two of you obviously don’t like?!”
Nightmares Pinkie and Dash looked at each other briefly and looked back to Twilight, eyebrows raised, as if she’d just asked the most obvious question in the world.
“It was spooky, Twi.” Dash explained, as if to a petulant foal. “The castle was spooky.”
“We were spooked!” Pinkie agreed with a nod.
Twilight’s eye twitched for a moment but eventually she found all she could do was sigh. “Fair enough,” she muttered defeatedly. “Go on.”
“Right, so once the boring outweighed the spook,” Dash explained, “we checked out the spooky castle.”
“And it turned out that it once belonged to Nightmare Moon?” Twilight deadpanned.
Nightmare Pinkie gasped. “Gosh, Twilight! How’d you know?!”
Twilight looked over their slender, alicorn forms, darkened coats, slitted eyes, and jagged teeth and sighed.
“Just a hunch.”
“So we get in there and it turns out it’s Nightmare Moon’s pad.” Nightmare Dash explained. “But the place totally isn’t abandoned!”
Upon being given the first truly new and worthwhile information of her explanation, Twilight perked up a little. “It wasn’t?!” she asked, her ears and tail twitching excitedly.
“Nopey-dopey!” Nightmare Pinkie chirped. “Nightie was there!”
“Nightie?” Twilight cocked her head, only to gasp. “Wait, Nightmare Moon was on the moon?!” she shouted. “But how?! We cured Princess Luna years ago! Nightmare Moon should have been destroyed!”
“Not Nightmare Moon, silly filly.” Pinkie said, ruffling Twilight’s mane. “Nightie!”
Twilight frowned and turned to Nightmare Dash.
“She just called herself ‘the Nightmare,’” she explained, rolling her eyes and spinning her hoof in a bored, circular manner. “She said something about how she possessed Luna a thousand years ago and we ruined her evil plan and we banished her incorporeal spirit from her host and back onto the moon and now she was going to possess us and bring darkness upon Equestria and blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, it was all really boring.”
Pinkie nodded. “She talked even more than you do, Twilight!”
“And seriously,” Dash scoffed, “Who just calls themselves ‘the Nightmare?’” she asked sarcastically, waggling her hooves in front of her face and crossing her eyes as if to go ‘WooOOooOOoo.’
“It’s so vague and doesn’t tell you anything!” Pinkie agreed with a disappointed frown. “It’s like a supervillain calling himself ‘The Shadow Pony’ or ‘The Dark One’ or something like that! It’s so generic!” She perked up. “That’s why I called her ‘Nightie!’” she explained. “It was more personable!”
“She didn’t seem to like it though…” Dash mused
Pinkie grumped. “Nopony ever likes my nicknames…” she pouted, crossing her hooves in a manner that was far too juvenile for her newly-acquired stature.
“So wait,” Twilight held up a hoof, stopping them from continuing. “You’re telling me that, when Princess Luna fell to darkness a thousand-plus years ago, it was not, in fact because her jealousy and anger caused her to betray her sister and go mad with power, but rather she was possessed by some kind of demon calling itself ‘The Nightmare’ that wormed its way into her mind and took over from within?”
Nightmare Dash nodded. “Yep. That seems about right.”
“And furthermore,” Twilight clarified, “when we cleansed Luna with the elements, we did not cause her to see the error of her ways and bring back her sense of friendship and belonging, but instead simply exorcised the demon from her, sending it back to the moon?”
Nightmare Pinkie nodded rapidly. “Righteroonie!”
Twilight frowned, glancing down at her hooves sullenly.
“Something on your mind Twi-dye?” Pinkie asked, innocently.
“Oh no…” Twilight waved her off. “Just mulling over the revelation that our combined friendship does not fuel an artifact that encourages souls that have fallen to darkness to instead seek a better way in life and find comfort in friendship and love and instead power a doomsday device that fires magical rainbow death-ray lasers to smite any whom we might consider our foes.”
Nightmare Dash rolled her eyes. “Anyway, so, Nightie says something about how she needs my body and she wants to be inside me or something.”
“I guess it gets lonely on the moon.” Pinkie said.
“...and she’s going on about how she’s going to use me to activate Nightmare Moon’s ultimate doomsday weapon or something like that. I dunno, I wasn’t really paying attention,” Dash shrugged.
“A villain was monologuing in front of you!” Twilight snarled, hooves flailing in the air. “How could you just not listen?!”
Nightmare Dash raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Twi, we’ve faced so many villains and heard every one of them monologue to us for, like, ten minutes each. How are you not totally bored with it by now?”
Twilight raised a hoof to protest but lowered it a moment later with a sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she grumbled.
“So I’m all like ‘Yeah right, Nightie!’” She turned around and smacked her flank. “‘If you want these rumps you’ve gotta put a ring on it!’” she exclaimed, wiggling her rear around in Twilight’s face.
“Never do that again ever for the love of Celestia.” Twilight deadpanned.
“Aww.” Nightmare Pinkie pouted.
“So anyway,” Dash said, turning back around, “Nightie starts saying she can get me all sorts of cool stuff if I help her activate her doomsday weapon. She starts saying things like she can help me join the Wonderbolts and stuff.” She grinned, rubbing her chest with her hoof. “I was too smart for her, though! There’s no way she has any pull with the Wonderbolts!”
Twilight cocked her head. “I… think that’s sound reasoning?” She shook her head. “But she obviously got to you somehow,” She said, motioning towards Dash’s new body.
“Well,” Dash said, “Her Wonderbolts offer was totally horseapples...” she trailed off, “...but then she totally offered me a mug of cider!”
“She what?” Twilight deadpanned.
“Yeah, I know!” Dash grinned widely. “It’s totally not even the season! How crazy is that?!”
“It was super good Cider too!” Pinkie said, licking her lips. “Not as superfantabulistic as AJ’s but better than the stuff at the store.”
“Wait…” Twilight said, holding up a hoof. “Wait…” she repeated, composing herself. “You mean to tell me that you two sold yourselves to a demon for a mug of cider?!”
“It was really good Cider,” Dash said. “You don’t just stiff the wait staff when they serve you well.”
“Yeah, Twilight!” Pinkie frowned at her. “That’s super rude!”
“And we didn’t have any bits on us so we thought ‘What the hay?’” Dash continued.
“‘What the hay?!’” Twilight spat. “A demon offers you a mug of cider in exchange for possessing you and you just figure ‘What the hay?!”” A little bit of froth was forming in the corner of her mouth.
“Uh, yeah?” Dash said with a ‘well duh’ sort of expression on her face. “For the love of Luna, Twilight, it’s like we didn’t just get through explaining all this.” She shrugged. “Besides, it all worked out in the end.”
“It all worked--” Twilight sputtered, her eyes twitching freely and her hair disheveled. She pointed at the three moon fragments, slowly descending upon the planet. “How is that supposed to be ‘it all worked out in the end?!’”
Nightmare Dash looked up at the moon, then back to Twilight. “Oh, that wasn’t Nightmare,” she said simply.
Twilight blinked. “It wasn’t?”
Nightmare Pinkie shook her head, sending her frizzy, electrical locks shaking wildly. “Naw, Twilight! She totally wussed out!”
“Wussed…” Twilight trailed off, completely lost.
“Yeah, it was weird.” Nightmare Dash said, raising an eyebrow of her own. “We totally offered ourselves to the Nightmare as payment for her awesome cider. She took over my brain pretty quick, but the second she touched Pinkie’s brain she started screaming.”
“...what?” Twilight asked.
Nightmare Dash shrugged. “Yeah, the second she got into Pinkie’s head she started shrieking her nonexistent head off about how the reality is a lie and how existence is a fabrication and something about naked ape creatures.”
“The naked apes are my friends!” Pinkie grinned, sticking her tongue out goofily.
“Next thing we know we totally have control again and we’ve got these sweet Alicorn bodies to boot!” Dash said, stomping the ground and beaming.
“Best vacation ever!” Pinkie squealed, high-hoofing Dash.
Twilight blinked. “And… the Nightmare?”
Nightmare Dash tapped the side of her head. “Oh she’s still in here. She weeps a lot and mumbles sometimes about horrors from beyond time and being slaves to the whims of a bunch of cosmic authors or something. It’s a little annoying but you get used to the screams.”
The trio was silent, each of them simply looking at one another for a few moments before Twilight finally sighed and spoke up.
“I don’t get it. If the Nightmare defeated itself by looking upon the incomprehensible madness that is Pinkie’s mind…” she began.
“Dudes! The universe tastes purple!”
“...then how did she blow up the moon?” Twilight asked, ignoring Pinkie’s outburst.
Dash chuckled, finally having the decency to look a little bit abashed. “Yeah, that… may have been my fault,” she mumbled slowly.
Twilight raised an eyebrow, frowning. “Elaborate?”
“So, like, once the whole thing with Nightmare was over, Pinkie and I just sorta sat there for a bit, you know?” she shrugged. “I mean, what do you say to something like that? So we both just decided to start exploring the spooky castle again.”
“Okay…” Twilight said, rolling her hoof and motioning for Dash to continue.
“And like, we came into this room and there was nothing in it, you know? There was just this big red button on a stand.”
“...no.”
Pinkie chirped up with a silly grin. “And I was like, ‘hey Dashie! look at the big, red, shiny, candy-like button!’”
“you didn’t…”
“And I was like, ‘hey yeah! Wonder what it does?’” Dash nodded.
“Who am I kidding, of course you did.”
“And I was like, ‘Maybe it makes more cider!’” Pinkie said with a little hop.
Twilight sighed defeatedly.
“And well,” Dash scratched the back of her head. “After she said that I just had to press it, you know? I mean, what was I supposed to do?”
Twilight fumed. “Oh, I don’t know, how about NOT push the incredibly conspicuous red button that would OBVIOUSLY serve no purpose other than setting off a doomsday device?!”
Nightmare Dash shrugged. “Eh. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, yanno?”
Pinkie pouted pitiably. “But the worst part is that we totally didn’t get anymore cider!”
Dash threw her hooves in the air. “Yeah, totally not cool. Who installs a cider button and makes it blow up the moon instead?”
“That’s just unneighborly.” Pinkie nodded solemnly.
The conversation over, the three ponies all lapsed into silence. Dash and Pinkie looked at Twilight expectantly as the unicorn took a deep, calming breath, letting it out in a long sigh. Her hair was ragged and her posture defeated as she raised a hoof to her temple, massaging it gently.
“You blew up the moon… because you wanted more cider.” Twilight said.
Dash nodded. “Yeah, that about sums it up!”
“You potentially doomed all life on the planet… for cider.”
Nightmare Pinkie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Twilight! Dashie just said so! Keep up, would ya?”
Another long sigh left Twilight’s nostrils as her posture relaxed even further. Finally, after a few extra minutes of silence, she looked up at the two new alicorns.
“Hey girls,” she addressed them, her horn glowing. “Guess what time it is?”
Nightmare Dash rolled her eyes. “Aw, c’mon Twilight. I know chemistry is your favorite game but you’ve gotta play something else once in a--
* * *
Twilight Sparkle calmly read a book, leaning back in her comfy chair, the latest Daring Do book hovering gently in her magic as she relaxed in her still-goop free treehouse library.
It hadn’t been easy, but Princess Luna had managed to put the moon back together in only about a day. Twilight supposed that when your domain was something as great and powerful as the moon, you learned how to protect it as best you could in case of catastrophe, accounting for any possibility. Since the moon was repaired, the tides had gone back to normal and coastal towns were rebuilding. And now that the threat of a dusty apocalypse was gone, panic across the countryside had subsided.
Yes, it seemed like the perfect time to just kick back and relax.
Twilight had just cracked the book open when a sound like a cross between an electrical hum and a magical aura rang through the library. Gasping with surprise and glee, Twilight shot to her hooves. “The mirror portal!” she squealed, trotting quickly into a side room where the Mirror portal to the human world was held open.
Indeed, the mirror was crackling and humming, and moments later, a pony with a coat of yellow ochre stepped through, her scarlet and gold mane falling around her face in luxurious waves. The pony trotted into the library, a rope tied around her waist and leading to something still on the other side of the mirror.
“Sunset, hi!” Twilight chirped, grinning at her friend. “What brings you to the library today? Just come to chat or is there something in the human world that--”
Sunset held up a hoof cutting her off. “Okay, Twilight? Just… No.” She shook her head. “Seriously, Twi. Just no.”
Twilight blinked. “What are you talking about, Sunset? No to what?”
Lighting up her horn in a teal glow, Sunset Shimmer yanked on the rope attached to her waist, and through the portal came a dolly attached to the rope. Atop the dolly was a crate marked “Canterlot High,” with two nightmarified ponies peeking out the top of the crate, like kittens peeking out of a box.
“...oh. That.” Twilight said weakly.
Sunset Shimmer frowned. “Seriously, Twilight. We have enough problems with our Pinkie and Dash. There’s no way we can handle two of them!”
Twilight sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
Sunset shook her head. “Like, for real. Just last week Pinkie and Dash started a war between the USA and Saudi Arabia. Seriously! How the hell do you even do that?!”
“I’d be willing to wager a guess that a harem was involved.” Twilight mumbled.
Sunset rolled her eyes. “It was lucky that the human world’s Celestia turned out to apparently be a reincarnation of the goddess Amaterasu. She threw a little mojo around and got them out of prison,” she brought her hooves up to her face and massaged her temples. “It’s been a weird week...”
Twilight grunted. “Just don’t send them to the moon if you know what’s good for you,” she said.
Sunset nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said as she turned and headed back through the portal. “Catch you later, Twilight. We’re cool. Just don’t try and pull any crap like this again.”
The portal crackled and hummed, and then went silent.
Twilight sighed as she made to trudge out of the room, only to get swept up in a one-armed hug by Nightmare Pinkie. “Aww, cheer up, Twitwi! I’m sure we’ll get to hang out with Sunny sooner or later! It was nice of you to send us to meet her, though.”
“Not sure about that human world, though.” Nightmare Dash said, staring at her teal hooves. “Those little wiggly things at the ends of my limbs were freaking me out.”
Twilight grunted but made no other comment, her face set in a disappointed scowl.
Pinkie frowned too for a split second before grinning. “Oh! I know what’ll cheer you up!” she said, sticking her tongue out and calling upon her new magic, summoning a familiar bottle and tossing it to Nightmare Dash. “C’mon Twilight! Let’s play chemistry!”
Twilight blinked in alarm as Pinkie’s words sunk in. “Wait what?! Pinkie n--” she was cut off as Nightmare Dash shoved a rag into her face.
Twilight hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Nightmare Pinkie blinked. “Ooooooohhhhhhhh… So that’s what CHCl3 does!”
Dash nodded. “Suddenly things are making a bit more sense,” she said, looking at the rag and bottle.
“Neat,” said Pinkie.
“Yep,” replied Dash as she tossed the rag and bottle over her shoulder and through the portal.
The two nightmarified ponies just sat there looking at their sleeping friend for a couple minutes. Neither of them said anything, the only movement in the room being the waving and crackling of their ethereal manes.
Finally, Nightmare Pinkie turned to Nightmare Dash.
“Hey, wanna bang?”
Dash shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
Author's Note
Oh, butterfingers...
