The Power of The Night

Twilight groaned in frustration.

“Ugh, what do you mean, ‘You don’t know’?” she asked for the umpteenth time.

“If I knew what I was doing and exactly how to do it, then I would have no fun, EVER,” I replied, putting my head into my hands yet again.

We were on the train headed to Canterlot, and Twilight had not stopped asking questions from the moment we got to the station. It was like trying to listen to five different talk radio stations at once.

“Twilight, would you give it a rest already? Questions will be answered at Canterlot, okay!?” I burst out, ready to throw myself out the window.

Why there? Why not now?! You haven’t told me about, well, anything! At all! The only thing I know about you is your name! Would it hurt you to explain?!” Twilight replied, exasperated.

“Look, I don’t want to find myself repeating anything unworthy of repetition! If you always think everything through, then you should have already come to the conclusion that the princesses will have many of the same questions you have!” I shot back.

This seemed to make sense to Twilight, and she was struck momentarily silent. I knew better than to think she would stay quiet though.

It’s more of a matter of how long she stays qui-

“Remind me again: how are we even on this train, anyway?”

Ding, ding, ding, the buzzer has reactivated on record time. Ugh.

“We walked on, the ticket inspector fainted when he saw me, then you put him in the next compartment,” I said in a dull voice.

While it was true that we had gotten to the train station without being sighted by other ponies, which was no small feat, considering it was midday, we hadn’t counted on the ticket inspector. Being six foot two inches doesn’t give you an approachability boost.

“I really didn’t expect that to happen, actually,” Twilight mused.

“Are you kidding? I expected him to get heart failure with the expression he had on,” Joel said, speaking up for the first time on the train. Twilight and I blinked. We had almost forgotten that Joel was there with us. It was understandable by the fact he was sitting at the far end of the car.

“Hey, Joel, what are you over there for? You can sit next to us, you know,” I said beckoning him over. He stayed where he was.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“It’s just... these past few years, we’ve watched every episode of My Little Pony, read at least two hundred fanfictions each, and dreamed of coming here. Now that we’re actually here... well, what’s going to happen back home without us?” he asked. It was scary how close he seemed to being hopeless. I got up, walked over to him, and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Look. At. Me. Our parents will think we went and landed ourselves in jail or something. Sure, they’ll be upset when they find we aren’t anywhere, but pain always goes away in the end. We didn’t have too many close friends, at let’s face it, school wasn’t going to help us with that. This is a chance to start over. Now get it together, or god help me I will slap the shit outta you,” I said, gripping his shoulders harder. He stared at me, and then nodded slowly. I let go of his shoulders and he stood up. For second, we looked at each other, then a bro-hug came out of nowhere and claimed us.

“Uh, excuse me, but what does “shit” mean, and what was that all abou-“

“QUESTIONS!!”

“Right. Sorry.”
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“What are you doing?!” Twilight exclaimed, cantering behind me and Joel by a few yards. Joel and I stopped and turned around in the middle of a spacious and elegantly decorated hallway.

“What? Something wrong?” Joel asked.

“We need to find the princesses, right?” I asked in mock clarification.

“Well, I suppose that yes, we do, but you don’t just storm the castle looking for them!” Twilight panted, having caught up with us.

“We aren’t “storming the castle”. At least, I don’t think two people and a unicorn count as a storming force. I suppose if you were a one-man-army, you might have a qualification, but I don’t think-” I started, but Twilight interrupted me.

“You made at least six guards faint by making eye contact, two of which had seen you catch their spears and not put them down! They think you’re holding a weapon, and all the royals have been alerted to that! If we’re seen, the royal guards will be here in seconds!” she said hysterically, glancing around every few seconds.

“Could be worse,” I said, brushing off her worry.

“How could it be any worse?!” Twilight exclaimed

“I could have actually the spear and used it too.”

Twilight groaned.

“Fine, let’s get this done quickly. Where’s the throne room?” I said

“I don’t know!” Twilight retorted. That was the end of my patience. Striding forward, I picked Twilight up like a suitcase.

“Yes you do. Let’s go,” I said, starting down the hall again. Joel and I continued running through the halls, turning whenever a frazzled Twilight said to. After another four minutes of sprinting full tilt, I began to wonder why I wasn’t tired.

Ah, well, you can’t argue with improvement! Faster! MUSH! Onward!

I was in fact going so fast, I nearly ran into the massive doors right in front of me.

“We’re here. Now will you please put me down?” Twilight asked, looking green in the face. A few seconds later, Joel caught up.

“How did you run that fast?” Joel asked, astonished.

“I ain’t explaining anything that goes on here. It just happens, then disappears without a trace,” I said, trying- and failing- to be mysterious. However, these words seemed to have an effect on Twilight. She opened her mouth with a confused look on her face, then closed it again, seemingly thinking the better of something.

“Right. Well, in we go!” I said, walking towards the door.

“W-wait, WHAT?! You don’t just waltz into the Royal Throne Room without permission!” Twilight cried.

“Why not?” Joel asked, looking at me with amusement at the lavender scholar’s dedication to the rules.

“It’s the Royal Throne Room. It’s a given you don’t go in without explicit permission!” Twilight replied, looking even more agitated.

“In that case: Sorry for Party Rockin’!” I replied in a dramatic whisper with a grin.

Before Twilight could stop me, I threw open the doors to the Royal Throne Room and strode in like I owned the place.
________________________________________________________________

Princess Celestia sat on her thickly padded throne as she read the latest complaints on monetary values.

“Paid two bits for a cherry last week, same price as cider three months ago, demand regulation, blah, blah, blah, usage of pre-valued money. Hmm, they seem to be onto me,” Celestia thought, smiling at her joke of constant price change. Dropping the letter in the “Suspicions” file behind her throne, she levitated her cup of tea to take a drink. As she did so, the doors on the far side of the room were thrown open, and the strangest creature she had ever seen walked in, followed by an extremely nervous-looking purple pony.
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As I crossed the room, I saw Celestia’s eyes widen, although whether it was from shock or fear, I wasn’t sure. The next second, she spat out her beverage in a spectacular spit-take, dropping her cup as she did so. By the time she had stopped coughing and sputtering, I had reached the throne.

“Your Majesty,” I said, kneeling on one knee. If she noticed my courtesy or not, she didn’t acknowledge it.

“W-What are you? Why and how are you here? Where are you from?” Celestia asked. From the tone of her voice, I could tell she was very close to using the Royal Canterlot Voice.

“What is this, Twenty Questions?” I snorted.

There was a pause.

“... I-I beg your pardon?” Celestia asked, now confused.

“Disregard it. Princess Celestia, I believe that you and your sister have some questions to answer yourself,” I replied. At a loss of what to say, the princess looked around and saw Twilight.

“Twilight, do you have any idea what is going on here?” Celestia asked, glancing back and forth between all of us.

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t?” Twilight said.

“So, to the point: explanations have to come out. Do you know where your sister Luna is?” Joel asked. Princess Celestia stared at him, mouth ever so slightly agape.

“How do you... Twilight, did you tell them anything?” Celestia asked, losing all sense of the conversation.

“No, I didn’t. I don’t know a whole lot about anything at the moment,” Twilight said in a helpless kind of voice.

“If it reassures you, we will wait in the dungeon for your sister to arrive,” Joel said. I stared at him.

“What?!”

“Dude, just go with it.”

“You want me to go with getting thrown into a dungeon without getting any answers. Right, that’s going to go well.”

“How bad could it be man?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe Luna is on urgent business and can’t come back or a week! Ya think of that?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Well, what do you think of your statement of going to the dungeon now?!”

“I was trying to be polite, or at least a bit civilized at the least, ma-”

“Ahem.”

Both Joel and I whirled around, realizing that we hadn’t even been arguing in whispers to begin with.

“That will be unnecessary. My sister is most likely in the room next to here. I will send for her,” Celestia said, seemingly regaining her royal composure.

There was an earsplitting awkward silence.

“Oh.”

“We’ll... wait here I guess.”
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It turns out, we actually waited enough time for Luna to arrive for her to have come from the other side of the castle. As for what we would hear in the next few minutes, I had no idea.

“What could be so important that thou hath interrupted my royal sleep, dear sister?” Luna said, her voice muffled by the door.

“I can’t explain it myself. You’ll just have to see it,” Celestia responded.

Joel and I looked at each other. We both knew this the time for answers.

We heard grumbling on the other side of the door, then it opened. Celestia walked in, followed by a rather grumpy-looking Luna. Her eyes looked around the room, looking first at Twilight, back to Celestia, then finally coming to a rest on me and Joel.

Her pupils dilated. She didn’t look remotely tired anymore.

“The Night Force. It is time,” Luna said to the room, not focusing on anything but her own thoughts.

Two humans, a unicorn, and an alicorn all stared at the princess in the center of the room.

“Well, I think that’s the cue in any fanfiction for shit to start going down,” I said, imagination racing.

Joel facepalmed.

“Seriously, what does “Shit” mean?”

“TWILIGHT! NOT NOW!”

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Author's Note: I'm sorry for the delay on this chapter, I've been busy with several different things. This chapter is NOT the best work that I've ever done, but I promise that the next chapter is going to be a lot more interesting. I didn't give a whole lot of effort to this chapter, I just tried to get some transition style stuff out of the way. Again, the next chapter, Shit Gun Be Goin DOWN.