The Darkest Day Pt. 1 - By the Dawns Early Night
I remember the moment the panic set in. It was the Summer Sun Celebration, in Fillydelphia, and, lucky me, I had drawn “parade duty”. Like it was any random chance. It was a shitty assignment. There was nothing there for me to wreck. Of course that’s where the brass were gonna stick me. It wasn’t a really “bad” job, per se. No worse than being in the Pegasus Air Guard and being stationed in Fillydelphia to begin with. Just stand still and don’t smile. Just that one rule. Well, two rules if you count, “Don’t curse under your breath because we can all hear you.” But honestly, that was mostly just a rule for me. I wasn’t really a very good soldier pony.
Still, all I had to do was stand there and look generically grumpy, and NOT curse out loud, until Mayor Bridle got finished giving her little speech. I was doing pretty good too. I was just the right amount of hung over to stand there and look surly in the morning sun on a summer afternoon. Yeah I was doing a pretty damned good job too.
“What the hell, dude?” I did so well I didn’t even break the rule first. That honor went to Cloudbank Jake Blitzbolt. I wasn’t a very good soldier, but I was a reasonably competent soldier. Jake was… well he had real esprit de corp. He really gave 110% and he was damn proud to be in the guard, and he was honored to stand parade guard at the Summer Sun Festival in Fillydelphia. And in a country that hadn’t seen a war in centuries, that’s all it really takes to be a good soldier pony. And Jake was a good soldier pony. And he was a bit of a screw-up. That’s why he was stuck in the same company as the likes of me.
“Dammit Jake! Yer gonna get us in… Celestia’s Great White Flank,,,” My angry retort died in my mouth and left a rotting aftertaste of fear and bile. The sky had gone as black as midnight. Ponies, ourselves most definitely, just sort of milled around in shock. Honestly, it was just too much to take in. It was like the sun was gone.
I don’t think the mayor grasped what was happening, or the weight of it was just too much to comprehend, because her first reaction was to scowl and exclaim, “Air Guard, remove that cloud at once!” And then she turned to glare at the offending cloud and she was caught for what seemed like an eternity, staring in a trance into the eclipse. And then the trance was broken. And then she screamed, “MY EYES! I’M BLIND!”
And that was the moment the panic set in.
Most of the guard were off duty that day enjoying the festival. They were caught as flat hoofed as everypony else when the stampedes started. I don’t think anyone would have blamed us if we had just run amuck ourselves. Who can judge how you deal with the world when the moon steals the sun on a bright summer morning. So we had a total pass, but Jake weren’t gonna have none of that. Nope, he jumped right into the middle of those unthinking hooves and commanded everypony to remain calm. And he commanded ‘em good to. And then I had to jump in and pull him out before he got trampled himself. I’m not much of a soldier, but i spent my misspent academy nights in The Belfry in Canterlot, and I could totally handle a mosh pit. You know, because I figured a stampede was more or less the same thing as a big, scarier moshpit.
I was SO wrong. A stampede is nothing like a mosh pit. It is not at all like a mosh pit. It is a river of panicked stomping, and you either stomp along or you get stomped on. I was sucked under in a tangle of limbs and hooves, each pony pulling down like a breaking wave of ponies. It seemed like forever, but within moments yelps of pain and surprise faded to sore groans from the mass of fallen ponies. And there in the middle of it was Jake, wrapped like an eggshell of fur and feathers around a quivering earth-filly.
“You okay, Jake?” I grunted as I struggled to free myself from the mass of bodies.
“It’s okay miss.” Jake’s voice was shaky as he helped the little filly to her hooves. “Whatever’s going on, we’re gonna find your parents and it’s going to be okay.”
“Corporal Pastel!” Storm Front’s voice grated against my still-ringing skull. I had never hated another pony as much as I hated him at that moment. “Celestia’s mercy! There’s hurt ponies everywhere! Is THIS how a pony like you restores order? What have you done?”
Heh, a pony like me. That’s why I joined the Air Guard. Because there arn’t many jobs for a pony with a cutie mark like mine besides “guard” and “very bad pony”. I opened my mouth and the next words out of it were going to get me court martialed. That’s when Jake showed once again why he was always a better soldier than I’d ever be.
“It was my fault sir!” Jake snapped to attention. “I saw a filly caught in the crowd, and I tried to restore order… I guess they must have… tripped… over me?”
“Our precious foal!” It was then that the filly's parents chose to find their misplaced daughter. “Golden Lily! What were you thinking! Think you sir!”
And just like that Jake became a hero. There was no more talk of who was “responsible”. The commander just grunted and barked, “Escort Council Mare Hammer and Mayor Bridle to Air Guard command! And try not to trip over any more stampedes!”
The groans of the injured from the heap of tangled ponies I had inadvertently created faded into the back of my head as I focused on my new task. The two mares were not at all hard to find. Hammer was hanging on to Bridle like a leach, as if the blind, pompous fool’s political connections would somehow shield them both from the chaos around them. I never thought much of Velvet Hammer. If the Air Guard were allowed to vote in local elections, I would have voted for the other mare. But it wasn’t my job to discuss politics with the coltish nag. My job was to escort two civilians, one of them disabled, across a panicked, rioting city in the dark.
That's when we heard it. The sky was filled with a massive flapping like a thousand sheets caught in a cyclone. This eclipse wasn’t some magical abnormality. We were being invaded.
Author's Note
This is set simultaneously with the first two episodes of season one.
The Darkest Day Pt. 2 - Lost in the Shadows
“Fucking bat-ponies!” You have to excuse Jake at that particular moment. There weren’t many lunar pegasi. Outside of Celestia’s Night Guard in Canterlot, most ponies never saw them at all. To the Air Guard, to ponies like us, the only lunars we’d ever seen were our comrades in arms. And when we saw the armies of the night descend from an unnatural storm of shadows… it was a betrayal.
The invaders swooped down to the streets with screeching battle cries, they landed amongst the panicked and cowering ponies, as their commander, a deep grey lunar pegasus mare slowly descend from the shadow of the eclipse, forcing ponies to look away as she landed. “I am Night Wing, of the Captain of the Dusk Guard of her Sovereign Majesty, Nightmare Moon, rightful ruler of Equestria. Return to your homes, this Prefect has been placed under curfew, effective immediately. Looting and rioting will not be tolerated!”
Some of the other parade guards got it in their head about then, that they were gonna be heroes. And I thought I was gonna have to derail a losing fight to pull my buddy out of another problem he jumped into trying to be some kind of Wonderbolt. But Jake had his orders. And he was a good enough soldier to follow orders, and I was a bad enough soldier to not want any part of that fight. So we just sort of snuck off with Mare Bridle and the Councilmare.
“Can’t you two just fly us out of here!” Councilmare Hammer demanded, as we slunk off into the shadows of a nearby alley, “The City Council Building is only a few blocks away!”
“Yeah,” I replied dryly, “Because that won’t draw attention at all! Two royal guards in full regalia toting a couple of well dressed upper crusty mares through the middle of n ongoing air attack!”
“Besides, Dayglow can’t fly too good!” Jake interrupted helpfully, drawing a smirk from the councilmare and and a scowl from myself.
“A flightless pegasus in the Royal Guard?” Hammer’s voice dripped with scorn.
“Oh shut up, you stupid nag!” Mayor Bridal snapped. “Do you really think there’s anything to be gained by antagonizing the only ponies standing between us and those damned bats." Yeah, my respect for the old politician rose ever so slightly, but that didn’t mean I was off the hook. The mare tried to focus her moon-burned eyes on me. “Corporal Pastel, if I heard your commander right… you’re the one they call the Train Wreck?”
I fought really hard to bite back every single word that fought to come out of my mouth. Nightmare in the Moon, but I’d always hated that nickname since I was a colt. But it was pretty much inescapable, given the damnable mark stamped on my flank. Instead I focused on my mission, leading are little group to the relative shelter of a series of dumpsters and garbage piles behind what looked to be a Neiponese carry-out restaurant from the contents of the refuse.
“Jake! Lose the armor!” I barked the command like I had any kind of authority. Me and Jake were the same rank, but luckily Jake didn’t argue, and did what good soldiers do. He followed orders, leaving me to turn to the mares. “Ladies, I ain’t getting fresh, but it’s time to go get naked.”
“How dare you!” Hammer fumed, but Bridle was a smart old nag and seemed to see where I was going with this.
The older mare quickly shed her own finery. “Without the suits and uniforms we’re just confused civilians trying to comply with the invaders and return to our homes. He’s right, Hammer, even if he is being a donkey’s ass about it.”
We left our clothing with are dignity among the discarded food trays and rotting remains of sushi and teriyaki vegetables, and proceeded on hoof through the alley towards the City Hall. The noise was the worst. On the streets there was screaming, both in anger and terror, mixed with all the cacophony of civil disturbance. But that was nothing compared to the despairing wails from the windows of the civilian residences above and around us. Foals crying for lost parents, parents comforting their foals. And sometimes ponies wandering the alleyways, calling out for loved ones they just couldn’t find. But nothing could prepare us for the chaos that we emerged into as we reached to main street.
Tirek in Tartarus couldn’t have brought so much destruction on our city. Carts were overturned and piled together into makeshift barricades. Some had been set ablaze by panicked ponies trying to accomplish Celestia-knows-what and those flames now threatened to run wild and consume the city itself, devouring not just the buildings but the ponies that huddled within. The worst of it was that the damage wasn’t even the work of the invaders, who simply circled overhead like vultures, watching as the pretty little ponies of the sun tore their own city apart.
“Sweet Celestia…” Jake’s pupils reduced to pipricks.
“What is it?” Mayor Bridle demanded, whipping her head around desperately, her unfocusing eyes showing her no answers.
“It’s Discord’s playground…” Velvet Hammer’s voice echoed vacantly in the back of my head, but I wasn’t really listening anymore. This was it. This was how it was all going to end.
A shadowed blur shot down from the sky and the voice of the invader’s commander echoed through the streets. “HAVE YOU ALL GONE MAD?!?! Who is in charge here? Stand down and surrender!”
That would have been a great time for Mayor Bridle to step forward, but sadly the poor mare had just seen too much, literally all she would ever see again for the rest of her life. The once stately mare was curled into a fetal ball, sobbing uncontrollably. She was blind, confused and beyond the ability to help any pony, perhaps beyond help herself. And so it was that cooler heads would not prevail that day. Because the one pony with the presence of thought was a very good soldier. But he was never a very smart pony.
“DEMONS! TRAITORS!” Jake screeched into the bedlam. “They’re the ones who took away the sun!”
I don’t know what Night Wing expected to happen, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t expect the angry surge of rage that followed. The battle of Fillydelphia had begun in earnest.
