Twilight had surrendered, of course. Her first real kiss had been quite something, and while she wanted more, she had the wisdom to realize that pushing things right away might be too much. It is just a gag, after all, she told herself.

The night wound on, and nowhere in the tree house would be proof against the music, or the sound of dancing hooves. A knock at the door was followed swiftly by Rainbow Dash letting herself in. Full of excitement, the pegasus gestured for the volume of the music to be lowered. "Everypony! It's almost dawn!" Wings flared in excitement, Rainbow had the slight sheen of the night's last cloud on the fur of her legs.

Watching the ponies trot from her new home, Twilight gave a sigh and turned to Spike. Of course the dragon had a lampshade over his head, and was still dancing to unheard music. "Spike, come on. We have to go to the start of the Celebration and watch Princess Celestia raise the sun."

"Huh?" Spike reached up and tossed the lampshade off. "Where did everypony go?" Turning his attention to the door, Spike watched the last of the party guests leave. "Oh… the party is over?" His grin grew fiendishly wide. "Mr. Twilight Sparkle."

Twilight's jaw clamped her teeth down, and she ground them together. "If you hadn't gone along with it I would have had the perfect excuse to tell Pinkie Pie, 'No.' " Without a chance to remove her armor, Twilight resigned herself to wearing it further. A flash of her horn and she was smelling just right again. "Come on Spike, we have to… go?" She hesitated as Spike suddenly turned an unfavorable shade of green.

Spike coughed and lit the room up with green fire. Rather than the normal scroll, a book landed on the floor before him.

Predictions and Prophecies

Twilight levitated the old tome into the air and started to examine it. "I wonder why Princess Celestia would send us this, now?" A glance at Spike revealed the poor dragon making a "deposit" into the base of one of the potted plants. She noticed something odd about the book, and started flicking pages of it.

"There!" Twilight exclaimed at the marked page. A small slip of paper had been tucked in. "Elements of Harmony… See Mare in the Moon." Confused, Twilight looked at Spike for a clue.

"Mare in the Moon, the old pony tale." Spike lifted his claw and gestured to the highest window in the tree house. "See?" Though his claw pointed right at the moon, the typical embossed shape of a dark pony's head was gone.

"S-S-Spike…" Twilight felt something akin to panic. "W-W-W-W—"

"Look up Mare in the Moon." Spike waved a claw at the book, having to drag his eyes away from the pallid moon.

"Right!" Twilight flicked through the book, searched, and finally found it. "Okay, blah blah blah… powerful pony… rule Equestria, defeated by the Elements of Harmony and imprisoned in the moon." Her heart sinking as she read, Twilight's magic made the book tremble slightly. "...longest day of the thousandth year—that's tonight—the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about nighttime eternal!"

"What does that mean?" Spike walked up beside Twilight and looked at the book. "Twilight?"

"It means that something very bad is going to happen. Come on!" Twilight set the book on the floor, levitated Spike up onto her back, and galloped out of the tree house. Like a locomotive, she charged for the town hall.

Twilight burst in the doors and looked around. The entire population of the town was present, and it seemed to be standing room only for earth ponies and unicorns. Pinkie Pie bounced over to her with a huge grin on her face. "It's about to start!"

Mayor Mare was mid-speech already. "And now it is my great honor to introduce to you the ruler of our land, the very pony who gives us the sun and the moon each and every day. The good, the wise, the Bringer of Harmony to All of Equestria… Princess Celestia!" She gestured upwards. Bird song began, and Rarity pulled the rope to draw back the expansive curtains.

A spotlight swung down… on an empty balcony.

Rarity searched around the stage that had been prepared, but couldn't find any sign of Princess Celestia. "She… She's gone!" Jumping down, she was about to head backstage to see what was happening, when everypony in the room gasped at once.

Twilight watched the thick, midnight smoke gather on the stage, and her world seemed to shrink away. "Th-The Mare in the Moon…" From some old memory of a book, Twilight finally dredged up the full name. "Nightmare Moon."

While Twilight racked her brain to come up with more information about the dread mare, Nightmare Moon addressed the ponies. Gowned in the night, she came to the end of her introduction. Turning her attention to Fluttershy, she narrowed her slit eyes. "Does my crown no longer count, now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years?" She lowered herself down to the floor where Rarity stood, frozen in terror. "Did you not read the legends? Did you not see the signs?"

"Nopony did." Twilight stepped out of the crowd, her training accepting nothing less from her than to put herself between danger and the townsfolk. "But Princess Celestia got me a message. You're Nightmare Moon!"

Nightmare Moon primped her wings and smiled. "Well, well, well." Her eyes traced the unicorn Royal Guard that stood free of the crowd. "Somepony that remembers me." She admired the pony's form, their physique. "Then you also know why I'm here."

"You're here to bring eternal night!" Twilight's magic reached for her spear again, only to find it still missing. Cursing not bringing even a practice spear, Twilight Sparkle galloped towards Nightmare Moon. At the last moment, Nightmare Moon pumped her wings and ascended, leaving Twilight trembling from fear and the efforts she had used to overcome it. "Come back!"

"You expect me to fight fair?" Nightmare Moon tilted her head back and laughed, long and hard.

"Seize her! Only she knows where the Princess is!" Mayor Mare was in a panic, and gestured to Nightmare Moon. Cloud and Star, the former discarding the bandages on his false injury, charged up at Nightmare Moon.

"Is there another way up there?" Twilight looked around, but everypony was cowering away from the perversion of a pony above. Everypony, except for five. Twilight watched in shock as Applejack restrained Rainbow Dash from charging up beside the two guard, Fluttershy did what she could to protect her birds, Rarity herded fillies and colts away from the front of the room, and Pinkie… "Pinkie! How do I get up there?"

"No need!" Pinkie pointed up as lightning crackled and sent the two pegasi guards flying back. "See?" Twilight watched as Pinkie's hoof traced the direction that a cloud of blue smoke went—right out the door of the town hall.

"I have to find out more about the Elements of Harmony. They locked Nightmare Moon away once, maybe they can do it again." Twilight reached out to Spike and levitated him onto her back. "Coming?" She looked to where Pinkie had stood, but found four ponies standing there instead.

"O'course." Applejack turned her head to the exit that she had just seen Rainbow Dash charge out, chasing after Nightmare Moon. "C'mon. Ah figure you're mixed up in all this pretty deep."

"How did you know her name?" Rarity fell in beside Twilight, as their whole group did, and was headed towards the open doors. "She seemed terribly interested in you," Rarity put her lashes to good work, fluttering them rapidly, "not that that is unreasonable."

Twilight's head turned like a radar tower tracking a rogue plane, and landed its gaze on Pinkie Pie. "Yes, I got that impression too…" A quick shake of her head got her back on track. "I only knew about it from a book Princess Celestia sent me… only minutes before all this." She gestured behind them as they left the town hall.

"It talked about something called the Elements of Harmony, and how they had defeated the Mare in the Moon before. I… the Mare in the Moon was an old book I remember reading." Admitting she was a book worm to her Royal Guard buddies would have been disastrous, but to these ponies it seemed okay. Her brother's advice regarding making a new life came back. "In that book, there were two sisters…"

"Oh! I remember that!" Pinkie bounced as the others walked along, making their way from the town hall back to the Golden Oak Library. "It was the only book on our farm… well, except for the Farmer's Almanac."

Not seeming to get more information from her new "fillyfriend," Twilight continued. "It spoke of one sister who got angry that the other was more popular… what?" She narrowed her eyes at skeptical looks. "Do you want to know or not?"

"There you are!" Rainbow Dash crashed in front of the group at the doorway to the library. "What gives? How'd you know so much about Nightmare Moon, huh? Huh?" Rainbow Dash strode up before Twilight, fearlessly rising back into a hover so she could be right in the unicorn's face. "Are you a spy?"

"Simmer down, Sally." Applejack ran past Rainbow, grabbing her tail to pull the pegasus away from Twilight. "He was standing up to Nightmare Moon, remember? And he jus' told us why he knows."

"Twilight's a scholar…" Rarity had to look around for a fainting couch, but when none could be found she had to settle for wavering on her hooves. "Gentlepony, scholar, brave soldier…" She turned to Pinkie. "Don't you dare break his heart, darling." Despite her words, Rarity could almost wish that Twilight did come running to her with a broken heart. Fantasy swarmed in, and before she knew it Rarity had missed most of the conversation.

"Right. He ain't no spy, but he knows what's goin' on, don'tcha Twilight?" Applejack, along with her four friends, turned to the "stallion" in their midst.

"We need these Elements of Harmony. But I don't know what they are, where to find them." Twilight looked up through the window at the moon. "I don't even know what they do!"

Silence reigned in the library, and each mare was struck momentarily dumb by the enormity of their task. The moment lasted until the first snore came from a baby dragon curled up in a corner.

"You've been up all night, Spike. You are a baby dragon, after all…" Twilight tucked her little brother into the cot he had found.

"So where do we find these Elements of Harmony?" Rainbow Dash looked around the bookshelves of the library. "Are they in here somewhere?"

"The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide." Pinkie Pie nosed a book aside. "Nope, this isn't them. What do they look like, are they books?" She turned around to see her friends gaping at her. "What?"

"Pinkie!" Twilight rushed over excitedly and plucked the aforementioned book from the shelf. "How did you find that?" Her armored side bumped into the pink mare, and Pinkie bumped back. For a moment, Twilight forgot the mad search for information and could only think of Pinkie Pie. The world snapped back and she reached for the book with her magic.

"It was under E!" Pinkie giggled happily, and stepped away to give her "coltfriend" some room.

"The Everfree Forest?" Twilight looked into the spooky woods. Even the path didn't dare the depths, and being nighttime certainly didn't help. "This is it?" She looked around to her new friends.

"Yupperoonie." Pinkie bounced in place. "Come on!"

Twilight grabbed Pinkie's tail and pulled her back. "Hold on! I can't ask you all to go with me. This is something I have to do alone." Fear tainted each heartbeat, but as a Royal Guard, Twilight couldn't allow ponies to be in danger.

"As my brother would say," Applejack rolled her eyes in her best Big McIntosh impression, "nnnope!" She looked at Twilight with a playful half-grin.

"Right, handsome, we simply can't allow you to do this on your own. We are all in this together." Rarity looked around to her other friends and got a sharp nod from Rainbow Dash, and a timid one from Fluttershy. "See?"

"Yup." Applejack nodded to Rarity in a moment of complete agreement. "We're stickin' to you like candy on an apple." With the matter settled in their minds, the four friends started off, leaving Pinkie and Twilight a moment together.

"Pinkie…" Twilight was about to do her best to convince her friend that it would be a terrible idea to go ahead, but before she could continue, Pinkie winked at her.

"We don't want to miss out on the candy apples." Pinkie looked at Twilight's exasperated expression. "What? Those things are good!"

Twilight sighed and started walking after her new friends. "I must be the worst guard in Equestria. Nopony will let me guard them!"

Author's Note

Cadænce: On a scale of 1-squee, how do you feel about Twilight having a potential marefriend?

Blinking a moment, Cadance's relaxed features slowly grew wider and wider, spreading into the natural smile she was known for. "This is the greatest news ever! Wait..." She blinked. "Marefriend? That makes it even better! Hey, Shiny, did you know Twilight is—"

"I KNOW!" Shining's shout cut his fillyfriend's voice off short, and only got Cadance to giggling like a fiend.

So I do this "Ask x" thing, x can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and ~~I~~ they will definitely hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories and of course, ~~I~~ they will answer the best question(s) in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer, try and keep it to one answer per post! ~~I~~ They will pick one question per chapter.

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