Wearing The Inside Out

Luna stared down at the mass of ponies gathered in front of her, smiling and expectant faces beaming as she walked slowly onto the stage, her mind racing with thoughts and feelings. She could see Twilight in the front row, his sculpted jaw and wonderful eyes staring at her. Causing her legs to turn to jelly as she slowly approached the podium. Making her far more nervous than a basic speech normally did. She tried to slowly recite the Equestrian Postal Service's fantastic rules and regulations to calm down, but she stumbled on the difference between sleet and snow and how that impacted the delivery of mail. She slightly blushed, imperceptible to all except a few knowing ponies. Luna hopefully wished Twilight didn't know.

She cleared her throat and smiled at the crowd. "Wonderful subjects, confidants, and creatures of all shapes and size, I, Princess Luna, Princess of the Night sometimes wonder how I was remembered after my banishment due to some. . .improprieties during a rather difficult time in my life. Imagine my shock and wonder to see ponies celebrate me in a way. Nightmare Moon." Luna shivered at the thought, focusing her eyes on Twilight. She had practiced a vague recitation of this speech with the purple alicorn and so letting her mind think of ways to let go of every eye but those- she'd be far more relaxed. "Yes. Well, I have come to terms with that in my own way due to a few special allies of mine, and this new world I have been privileged to see." Luna smiled. "Let us have Nightmare Night, be not a terrifying night built upon a very real threat, since that time has passed, but a holiday where scares and candy can be enjoyed in peace-"

Luna smiled as she heard the resounding applause for her speech as she wrapped up her little introduction to the event. She had learned through many a diplomatic mission the essential value of brevity. And Twilight had excised an entire recounting of the founding of Equestria, her fall, and redemption. Luna had seen that as a necessary evil. Even if the cathartic sense of writing that life story down and seeing it laid out in writing was nice. It brought up a few nice memories. Of the Pillars. Of Somnambula. Of many things. But three hours was a tad bit too long.

Luna bowed and cantered down the steps. passing foals and numerous well wishers as she stared directly into Twilight's eyes. "Thank you, Mayor Mare, I will be talking to mine sister about your tax plans and how they impact the greater Canterlot metropolitan area. . ." She nodded and let the lifelong bureaucrat walk away.

"Luna, that was wonderful." Twilight smiled as he carefully waded through the foals and well wishers, the purple alicorn's beaming smile making Luna's heart flutter as she felt his wings encapsulate her in a brief hug. "Oh, right, right. This is Moondancer and Sunburst." Twilight turned and pointed vaguely in the direction of two ponies that, at the moment, Luna could not care less about.

"Charmed." Sunburst quickly bowed, his quick costume of a fourth century philosopher with long colorful swaths of fabric to highlight the gleaming glass beads caught her eye for a moment as she tried to place the face of the stallion. "Princess Cadance sends her warmest regards. I always did want to see if the legends were true about certain ponies of the neoclassical era-"

"Shut it, Sunny." A dark unicorn, eyes blood red and gleaming with some sense of annoyance dressing a quick facsimile of King Sombra's battle armor, cape, and pauldrons, stared at her intently. "Moondancer, at your service." She quickly bowed, observing all manner of Canterlotian decorum in short order, and stepped back. Luna quickly placed the two ponies in her mind- once the shock of seeing a gender bent version of King Sombra wore off of course.

"I have not seen an umbral pony in some time, I might like to hear of how you were formed, since those weren't really born, but made." Luna tried to smile sweetly, hoping that her training in the arts of being far more approachable would pay off."

Moondancer nodded. "If you so wish. And Celestia does send her regards. She said she would have been here if not for her looking after the training regimen for Canterlot. Amid other things." Moondancer shot the Princess a knowing glance, and smiled. "But I wanted to have one night off. It's just so hard running Canterlot's magical defenses."

Luna bowed. "Wonderful. I would not wish to have you tarry on your quest for candy. I will talk to you both later- now I want to talk to Twilight about something."

Moondancer shrugged. "Fair enough. Come on Sunburst, keep up."

"Cadence help me." The quiet stallion slunk off, sheepishly following Moondancer.

***

Aspen walked into the clearing outside Ponyville, the little hamlet's twinkling lights showing him and his deer the exact way towards their destination. He shook his head, his headdress tinkling with bits of bone and bells hitting his antlers. He could feel the dead all around him as he walked forward, the ghosts of ponies long gone staring blankly at his legions of fur coated deer, their hollow, dead eyes questioning his entrance into the realm between the Thicket and pony lands.

"Brother, do you think this is even wise?" Blackthorn grumbled, his polished armor red as blood and hard as bone as he glared into the distance. "We have the advantage."

Aspen nodded. "We do, but this isn't a battle. This is a message. There are procedures for each possibility. The bones speak of good fortune, if mixed, and so I don't want to hurt our chances for a meeting. The alicorns all know of our ways, our treaties, our talks. Celestia and Luna know the Cerni ways well enough."

Blackthorn rolled his eyes. "They also massacred most of the deer long ago, so I don't trust their benevolent ways. We are a curiosity to them. I've seen their kind walk through the forest, not giving the spirits their due, walk through entire fields of poison joke unaided by the walk of chaos, the steps of the ancestors, and the few ponies that stumbled upon our parties were too naive of the real world."

Aspen nodded. "True, but it could be said of our own selves. But if you want to keep the watch, I won't doubt your judgment in the matter. Now let us return this little pony to her flock." Aspen bowed to his brother and glanced back at the coffin being carried on staves by a selection of his bravest warriors, their face paint striking in the darkness, reds and greens and yellows in stark contrast to the colors of the forest's edge. The King of the Forest walked into the darkness, his whistles and clicks telling his warriors on what he wanted them to do.

The deers' horns glowed with magic and they faded into the darkness, cloaking spells hiding them from all but the most powerful of mages. The archers and bonesingers slunk off into their places, slowly encircling the town like a snake, trapping those who might see this as a threat. Deer did things differently than ponies, pooling their bands into one, sitting and waiting for a peace treaty.

That had its drawbacks.

Aspen sighed as he looked at the dirt, memories of his quick trip into Helvyr swirling in his head. He nodded at his brother and the two lifted the coffin in their magic, slowly approaching the little hamlet of Ponyville, their ceremonial dresses sparkling in the moonlight. This was Luna's time. The midsummer moon glinted at them in welcome and Aspen felt the weight of centuries on his back as he walked forward.

***

Roxie opened the door a crack, vaguely seeing the gray pony that stared back at her, the smell of her was familiar. Woody, tangy, a bit stale, and the mare radiated a fake smile that put the dog's hackles on edge as she tried to be as nice as possible. "Hello?"

"Hello, I wasn't expecting one of your kind." The smile faltered for a moment. "I'm just so sorry to ask, but have you seen a little filly around? About this high?" The mare put a hoof up to her neck and smiled sweetly. "It's just that you are the last. . .thing I saw around here and a friend of my daughter said she went this way."

Diamond Tiara huddled in the corner, old blankets covering her head as she head the speech from her mother. She was so close to her at the moment, only a few feet away and hopefully she would just leave. She breathed heavily, trying to move as little as possible, her leg aching in pain as she prayed that her mother would just leave.

Roxie tried to smile, her jaws unused to that motion making her grin filled with teeth as she tried to stay calm. "Roxie has not seen little one. Besides little one on farm. But she left. Something about sweets and all that."

Spoiled Rich breathed in and nodded. "Yes, well it is Nightmare Night. You do have that where you are from? I am just wondering cause you are a dog and I don't think you can eat sweets. Though that's my husband who says that." Spoiled Rich chuckled, her voice dead and hollow.

Roxie nodded, eager to get the conversation over and done with since she saw the pony's tensing muscles, her set jaw, and her impatient stance as she kept the door as closed as she could. "No, dogs sometimes eat sweets."

"I'll just have to inform him when I see him again." Spoiled Rich leaned against the door for a moment. "But let's go back to the real thing. Where's my daughter. Cause the forest is back that way. My house is back that way. My fantastically smart daughter would just run to the last place I looked. And I looked everywhere else."

"She not here."

Spoiled Rich smiled a huge smile, her teeth showing as she spoke calmly to the dog that was keeping her daughter away from her. "I saw you talking to her."

Diamond's heart dropped at that sentence. The fear she felt at that moment eclipsed her aching pain and all she wanted to do was wake up from this nightmare and go to her mom and be okay. She breathed slowly, so as to not be overheard by her mom. This was her reality now, hiding in a corner waiting for the moment her mom would bust in there and-

"That was little Apple. Not her." Roxie tried to shut the door in this pony's face. As she began to shut it, the mare slid a hoof into the crack. Roxie pushed more and more on the door, but the new appendage made it not want to close. She huffed out and growled at the pony, her mind made up to not let this pony in, even if the pony is the bitch of little grey one. She was used to protecting the little pups of her tribe and she had failed them. She wouldn't let something happen to this crowned one, she had lost so much and holding onto something was better than nothing. She prayed to the earth to give her strength as she shut the door on this pony's leg.

A resounding snap broke the silence as she closed the door. Spoiled screamed in both rage and slight pain. She felt stabbing shocks as she stepped on the broken limb, but she moved forward. Her need to get a better life for her at any cost kept her standing, adrenaline pumping as she beat on the door, howling in rage as she swore to the sky that she wasn't going to stop.

Diamond Tiara backed away from the door, her legs scrabbling against the wood planks as she hobbled through the old building. "Oh Celestia, oh Luna, oh Twilight." She crawled into the hole that was in the middle of the room, still hearing the shrieks of her mother, the blows of her hooves slamming against the doorway. "We're so dead. I mean I thought she was crazy before, but that sounded like her leg. You broke her leg and that made her mad."

Roxie sighed. "Roxie knew she smelled familiar. She like Grey One's ponies. The ones she played with. This a problem."

Diamond Tiara shivered. "How exactly is this a problem? I mean you're a dog, and huge, and kind of scary looking. Can't you just make her go away or catch her and give her to the Princesses to fix cause they fix everything. I mean I don't really like Twilight cause she hangs out with Applebloom and her friends, but she beat like Discord, and all those monsters that my teacher talks about. This is just like a friendship problem. Just my mom wants to kill me for no good reason and she's at the door. But it's fine. All fine."

Roxie bent down and patted the little pony's head. "Problem is that Gr- Starlight, pony who made Roxie's world break, made the spell. She sent so many ponies to dogs. So many. The ones she could not use were sent, the broken ones. They like pony out there. Completely focused on goal, no sense of hurt, no talking to. Just nothing."

Diamond Tiara swallowed. "But that's cause you didn't have the princesses. Now you do. We can. . .fix this. I mean its okay."

Roxie sighed, hearing the banging from outside. She saw the hurt in the little one's face and she wanted to be anywhere but here, at home, with her pack. But she wasn't and she was here now. She leaned down, letting the noise from outside fade away as she stared in Diamond's eyes. "Would hurt go away if winged ones fix this? Magic fix everything but the inside." She tapped on Diamond's chest. "The past not change. If fixed, you have to live with knowing that mother no like you, hate you, want to kill you maybe, and just be fine with. Would you?"

Diamond faltered. "Yes? No? Maybe? I mean we can figure that out later."

Silence reigned for a moment.

Pure silence, no banging, no screaming, no gnashing of teeth. Silence. Silence that unnerved Roxie since she never liked silence in these types of moments. Predators were silent when closing in for the kill. She smelled a hint of ozone in the air as she thought about that and she felt a feeling that something was wrong. She followed her gut feeling as she crouched into the hole in the center of the room, her attempt at a den, and kept Diamond close.

The door, and most of the front wall, bent inwards as a hail of stones were thrown at it. Some rolled off the wall, barely able to dent the strong wood. Some left small holes as the odd pair watched Spoiled grunt in pain as she sent another volley of stones, her leg bent at an angle, crunching violently as broken bone hit rock, her leg flailing about in near uselessness.

Roxie winced at the thought, her mind running wild with memories of Starlight's ponies running into brick walls over and over, trying to get out until they were bleeding out from blood loss. Some ran off of cliffs trying to run away. Some ripped out their tongues and ate them to not talk about the village and how to help. The spell she used stripped them of personality and self preservation.

"Give. Me. Back. My. Daughter. You. Bitch." Spoiled sent a rock the size of a cart towards the shed, her leg snapping in the effort, it hanging by shreds of skin and muscle, bleeding slowly as she screaming in both real agony and frustration.

The rock slowly came up and arced in a parabola, gaining momentum as it fell. Roxie curled up with Diamond as she waited, hoping that Diamond Dog endurance might keep her safe. The boulder smashed through the little shed, shaking the foundations as it bounced once and smashed through entire shelves of old Apple family detritus- rolls of births, deaths, and marriages, pictures, old furniture, everything that was held in the shed as an afterthought- was shattered in a few moments, the boulder rolling to a stop at the edge of the hole, inches from Roxie's face. She closed her eyes, feeling the hard stone bump into her gently. Thousands of pounds of weight a hair's breath away from the pony she wanted to protect.

Spoiled Rich stared down at the pony that stood behind the dead carcass of the large diamond dog. She had come here looking for her daughter, trying to fix her life.
'
Trying to kill. help, her daughter cause her husband was putting all these ideas about her in her head. Just that your mother is crazy cause your aunt broke cause it ran in her family. And he didn't see what she saw, a sister in a mental institution because of Discord. That thing that only called herself Screwball, how great.

She was trying to fix her life. Just fine. The big dog was death with. The small female pony, what did Filthy see in these fucking sluts anyway, a slit to be inside, she thought, just some nameless, classless whore he controlled cause of his money, a series of lays to get what he wanted. But Spoiled didn't give into him, she was free and she'd drink all the alcohol and bang all the hot-

She'd have all the kids. None of the kids. She'd be free, trapped, broken, loved.

She wanted so many things.

Spoiled Rich screamed incoherently as she beat down on Roxie, her fury unabated. She said only brief snippets of words as she hit her over and over again, as hard as she could. She kept on hitting until she heard the crunch of bone and she grinned, placing a hoof gingerly on the ground, staring at all the blood surrounding her, all the red all around her and she looked pleased with herself as she carefully stroked Diamond's face.

"Is beating over? You hit like new pup. Less than. Cause Roxie might get hurt with them, too nimble, too jumpy." Roxie spat out a bit of blood as she rolled over, wincing slightly as she felt the bruises and the pain radiate through her body, She slightly grinned as she began to stand, swaying back and forth as she looked at Spoiled Rich's broken hooves.

Spoiled growled and set down her hoof, her body lurching as more tendons tore in her leg. She fell forward into the rubble of the house, her body screaming in agony as she tried to stand, back legs trying to push her up as far as she could, She stared at her daughter, eyes boring holes into her as she tried to crawl. She kept trying to move, her body tearing itself apart as the magic she had been exposed to tore away any restraint she had on using her magic. She kept staring, unable to break her want to be free of the child that had trapped her in a loveless marriage and just kept her chained towards any hope of responsibility. She nosed her way forward, inch by inch, towards Diamond unable to stop as she felt splinters of wood bury into her face, letting blood fall from her face as she just kept on going. She looked at the pony that had taken her blows and felt a blurring of reality as the dog that she had killed just recently with the boulder rise from the ground and loom over her, just staring with its beady little eyes. The shock frightened her, the spell wavering between reality and not, truth and fiction started backfiring.

And then her heart gave out due to the strain.

Spoiled smiled as she looked down at her child, the happy family of three now okay. She had gotten through the difficult pregnancy with Filthy's help and she felt tired as she sat there in the afterglow of birth. She nuzzled her husband and heard his commanding voice as she almost dozed off to sleep.

"Spoiled, she looks just like you, what do you want to name her?"

Spoiled Rich twitched a moment, her legs digging futilely in the dirt staring blankly at her daughter, a moment of clarity given to her briefly before she fully passed, tears streaming down her face in sadness at the look that Diamond gave back to her- full of fear and confusion- and she blinked once and Spoiled Rich was gone.

Diamond looked at the broken body of her mother, almost surprised at how quick that had happened, she had ran for hours away from her and yet here she was small and quiet, alone in the semi wilderness of the Apple Farm, dead eyes unblinking. Diamond crept out of the hole, and sat down gingerly, her leg in pain. She felt blindingly hot and distant as she sat there in the pretty twilight night of this moment, stars swirling around her as she almost laughed at how pitifully strange it was. She had thought so little of what would happen after she had dealt with this, that she sat here now completely dumbfounded. She turned to Roxie and smiled briefly. "Well, that was easier than expected."

Then her word went to black as her body's flight response shut down.

***

Rockville

"And that's how I figured out my favorite dish of Mexicolt, the Taco Grande." Cheese Sandwich smiled at the end of his story, the remembrance of how he stopped the Calavera with just a bit of hoof grease and a good dynamic view of how parties worked kept his spirits slightly up. "Though I do have to say that I couldn't look at a cucumber the same way after that."

Pinkie slightly smiled. "I bet."

Limestone scoffed. "While I'd love not, I dunno, ruining whatever this is- I want to remind you two that we've been listening to you talk about Mexicolt for an hour. It's not like we live on a treadmill. Fifteen minutes is all it is from the field to home."

Cheese grinned. "Well, I would have done a far shorter tale, but my Cheese Sense wasn't telling me to speed it up and anyway you four seemed to need some kind of thing to get your mind off whatever sent me here. Cause you are all tense, and Pinkie's Pinkie, which still surprises me seeing her here, but then there's the whole whatever caused you all to get sick and-"

"Fine. Fuck. Whatever. Just can we get home?"

"Sure, but I would think you would have noticed your own house. . ."

Limestone looked up and blinked. She hadn't felt any kind of Sense or things moving around them as they walked, but they stood right in front of the Pie family house, it's dilapidated, yet solid outside making her kind of uneasy since she knew that a minute ago they were nowhere near the house. Or else she wouldn't have mentioned it. "What?"

Cheese lifted the gate latch and led the three hurt Pie sisters inside, carefully helped by Pinkie as he whistled a faint tune. He carefully latched the gate back up and knocked faintly on the door, rummaging faintly in his bag as he went, silently sorting through a mess of a collection of things. "Let's see. . .chicken check. Balloons. Streamers. Party essentials and yet all I'm getting is a weird talk feeling here. I don't usually feel those unless I have to give a speech and I am just so bad at those."

The door opened and Igneous Pie stared out at the assorted mess on his porch. "I knew I felt something off. I may not have my mother's Sense, but I felt some indigestion and I hadn't felt something that strong since Discord came back. Come on in I guess, but this is gonna make my training you fall to the wayside. I had all these. . .no matter. My mother always said she did better out in the world, even if I thought she came back from that circus a changed mare." He stepped aside and sighed as he saw his daughters stumble into the house, followed closely by a pony that felt familiar, yet not.

***

Manehattan

Starlight banked the dragon she was riding to the edge of the city and aimed for the last vestiges of buildings near the water. She felt the wind on her face as they descended, and braced for a bumpy impact as she noticed rocky outcroppings and piles of bodies near the water's edge. She would have felt sad, possibly, if she could. But she had lost one small town by no fault of her own and she wondered what the rest of Equestria would do now. The word would get out- especially since the Storm King saw this more as a spectacle than a complete win. She shrugged. Whatever that thing wanted to do was not her problem. She just wanted to see what Sunburst would do.

She carefully jumped off the dragon and looked up at the moon.

"Let's see. . .what was the Changeling plan again? How did the speaker. . .Thorax. . .whatever that thing was. Can't tell them apart anyway." She tapped a hoof on the sand as she thought, leaving hoofprints in the soft ground as she paced back and forth. "Ah, yes. The dragons aren't truly important."

She stared at the large purple black dragon. He almost was a decent specimen for dissection. No outside blemishes for his age, striped patterns barely telling her that he was even there. A night predator, she guessed, if she ever saw one. Two rather impressive sized appendages for mating. Wings that spread out multiple feet in both directions. She didn't care about dragons since they were not even smart enough to really do much of anything. She had read somewhere about dragon culture being advanced so long ago, but she was in the now and it didn't matter if Discord, or any number of evil creatures made them stupid and completely in tune with their baser desires.

"This hurts me far more than it hurts you." Starlight sighed as she raised her hoof, the dragon, and countless others doing the same in that moment. She drew the hoof across her neck, her own skin gently rubbed by her hoof, not hurting, but more of an odd feeling of something slightly wrong. It was a very odd thing to touch her own neck, the gesture far more of a curiosity with how uncommon it was to do such a thing. She hummed slightly as she pressed down hard enough on her throat followed by her jugular vein to cause only slight discomfort,

She glanced up to see a slight red line on the dragon's throat. It spread out more and more as his claws dug deeper and deeper into one of his weak points. She stared clinically as blood started to seep onto the ground, large red drops lit my the cold moon sinking and staining the pristine beach.

As she watched, she could see blobs of black fall lazily out of the sky.

Zephyr heard a train between the screams and the darkness. He had started a fire, just barely, and huddled around it, his wet feathers shivering in the October cold. He swore as a loud thundering crash from Manehattan surprised his addled mind. He watched in silence, the fading sounds of Manehattan fires starting to be put out. He blinked and put out his tongue.

A small white crystal hit it dead center. Snow was beginning to fall in Manehattan.

"That's impossible."

A train whistle hit his ears and a voice hit his senses. "Seems like impossible is the new norm."

Glancing up, Zephyr took in a large yellow pony walking up to him. She had green eyes that spoke to her age, lines on her face showing him that she was most likely his mother's age. She had a coat of light green, lined with red, and she carefully walked through the piles of bodies that had washed up on shore, their blackened, bloated faces staring up in wonder to the black, uncaring sky.

"Stay back. I'm. . .warning you." Zephyr felt unsure about this pony, and after the day he had, bruised, bloodied, and battered, he was really not liking these odds. His legs quivered as he tried to puff out his chest and fluff his feathers.

The pony laughed. "Cute. Though I wouldn't think a green recruit like you would even try to attack something." The mare nodded. "I know you're new. You have that feeling about you." She lifted her hooves and showed each slowly. "If I wanted you dead, I'd have like seven openings here. Not to mention you have terrible peripherals since I doubt you saw multiple ponies flank you."

Zephyr looked back to see a cadre of smiling ponies on the sand, waving gaily at him. "How?"

The mare smiled. "Doesn't particularly matter. Though I've trained my band of clowns to be rather good outside of the circus. But maybe if you meant why am I here? Look around you. Manehattan's on fire, the Changelings are around, there's gryphons everywhere and dragons for some reason. And yet there was a single, solitary fire on this side. You. I didn't come for you because you are special. No. I came cause you seem to be alive and out of this mess. And I think we might need ponies that know what happened here, even if just a little recruit on a bad day."

***

Twilight carefully set down on a cloud, careful to make sure his distance from Ponyville was enough to keep some sense of privacy for whatever topic Luna had wanted to broach to him. She had looked oddly pensive about it, almost unable to make up her mind for a brief moment, though Twilight chalked that up to a lot of things. Stress for one. Luna had poured her soul into the festivities down there and it showed, ponies could be seen racing between hay mazes and haunted houses, statues of both Luna and Nightmare Moon, and a mess of sweets that rivaled the most decadent parties in Canterlot. He was actually impressed.

Luna set down on the cloud as well, tucking her wings in as she landed and bounced carefully on the surface of the poofy cotton candy like cloud that Twilight had chosen. She didn't stare at Twilight as she walked forward, stealing little glances of him as she approached, letting her mind race with exactly how she wanted to proceed. She had mentioned it in passing to Cadance- not the particulars of the situation, just hypothetical thoughts, dreams and irrealities, and the alicorn of love had said that direct messaging was the best. It showed a willingness of spirit, or something, Luna didn't care at that moment what Cadance had said since the actual thing on her mid was that she could feel every awkward step forward, her body lurching through the motions as she approached the point of no return.

Twilight stretched his wings. "So Luna, what's so important that you-"

Luna blushed purple as she spoke. "Twilight, I like you."

"And? I mean I like you too. I mean hanging out is fun and showing you science-"

Luna stared at Twilight for a moment. "I meant like as more than a friend."

The purple alicorn sat and said nothing for a moment. "I am flattered, I really am, but I just was with Pinkie and I don't really know what to make of just falling into another thing like this."

Luna cautiously sat down on the cloud, her wings folding over herself. "I know. But I've been. . .with these kinds of. . .feelings for a while. And I know it's probably a bad time. But I just. . ." Luna hesitated for a second. "-just see you as this whole new alicorn. And that made me hopeful about something I had been dreaming about for a while. I mean I haven't been completely celibate in my time as the Princess of the Night, no matter what my sister's cult like church says. But it was difficult."

Twilight leaned in close. "I appreciate you saying this, but if you don't want to, you don't have to."

Luna sighed. "I appreciate that, I do, but it gets to the crux of the matter. I have this moral conundrum here. I know that Pinkie and you were a thing, are a thing, maybe, but there's just this feeling of being okay in your presence."

Twilight looked away, bashfully unable to take a compliment of that magnitude. "Luna-"

The alicorn of night stretched out a wing and laid it softly on Twilight's face. "Let me finish my story. I just like being around you. You aren't those aristocrats that Celestia has bred to become sycophantic and pompous. Born within a city where I would have expected you to be just like that. But either through some kind of drawing away or just a personality quirk, you became down to the level of normal ponies."

Twilight rolled his eyes. "I think my psychologist would have a mountain of notes to share about that statement and refute that. Antisocial personality traits and a keen sense of failure would probably be his way of wording the main problems. Controlling maybe." Twilight awkwardly chuckled, well aware of some of the more pointed and painful sessions.

Luna sighed. "Twisting my words doesn't make them any less true. You still are standing in front of me, a paragon of change, a mortal turned immortal-"

"I'm immortal. I can't believe that was even possible due to how I became an alicorn."

Luna shook her head. "I have some ways of knowing things. Dreams for one. Being a new alicorn causes some issues and yes, I know exactly all your fears about it. And you radiate a similar wavelength there as all alicorns seem to. I can't yet completely say that you have all the traits, but healing from what should have been a mortal wound in Ironhoof sure lends credence to that hypothesis, if I may use a term learned from you."

Twilight blanched. "That totally wasn't mortal, I healed from it. Magic has a definite property of healing and I just rerouted certain things to give me some sense of being okay. It's just an offshoot of Mage Meadowbrook's Tenets of Healing Magic. Any advanced enough archmage could do what I do, slightly with some alteration due to alicorn magic, but it's completely possible. Extremely, horribly painful. But possible."

Luna nodded. "Possible, but improbable. But let's get back to the task at hoof. I had all these reasons to like you. Smart, charming, magically inclined, interested in a historical period I lived, approachable, and a problem solver. You're not perfect. . .I've read the reports. But neither am I." Luna gazed down at the statues of herself, both versions of her, the good and the evil, and sighed. "You get me more than most of these ponies. I'm a mare out of time and place. Sure, I am as immortal as my sister, but she's had a thousand years to sand off the rough edges of her conduct, lose the conqueror and build a persona of a caring and benevolent princess. To me, that was a few years ago. Fighting Sombra. The Pony of Shadows. A whole number of now forgotten beasts and nameless evils and yet here you are trying to connect with a pony that had brought eternal night once, and tried to do so again. Most other ponies would have just turned me to stone. But you didn't."

Twilight cocked his head. "That was the Elements. I didn't even do anything."

Luna shrugged. "The Bearers are the Elements. The Elements are the Bearers in a way. You chose not to petrify me and look where I am now. Able to walk around in a world I could have only dreamed of with acquaintances and friends. All thanks to you, and that's why a part of me loves you." Luna looked away for a moment at the little town she had come to appreciate, if not exactly love, and sighed. "I could have sat right in the middle of this little town, alive and unmoving, watching entire seasons pass, things dying and being born anew, and never age. Never touch anything besides the ivy climbing up my stone exterior, an interested colt or filly's hoof, a bird on the wing. And yet I'm here interacting with all of you. Not well. But I'm here. All because a few mares decided not to freeze a danger to society." Luna smiled. "You did what even Celestia deemed improbable. Turning evil to, if not good, at least a neutral actor. And no matter what you say about yourself, the doubting, the calls of nepotism that I have heard spoken on the lips of many an aristocrat, the fear of failure, I know that you'll find a way through so many difficult situations and choose a third option."

Twilight almost choked up for a moment. "Luna, I don't know what to say." He blinked for a moment, and opened his eyes to speak.

Luna shrugged. "Say nothing then, actions speak louder than words. And-" Luna's ear twitched. "And if you don't want a relationship, maybe 'tis too soon, I understand. But I just wanted-"

A loud series of thunks echoed through the quiet night.

A splash of wetness hit his face as he glanced back at Luna. Twilight's mind raced as the reality of what he was seeing at that moment hit his brain. Arrows stuck out of the blue alicorn like a pincushion, her wings with ripped flesh as red streaks of blood ran down her sides. An arrow stuck out of Luna's eye, blood running down like tears as she turned, unable to fully speak as another arrow had pierced her throat. Luna's magic faltered for a moment, her body sinking through the cloud like a stone, tumbling to the ground as Twilight watched.

***

Blackthorn growled at his cadre of deer archers. The normal way of entering into a pony stronghold like this little hamlet during one of the largest festivals of theirs was to keep both sides at parity. And keeping his brother's advice of sending a message through the ranks in mind, he killed two birds with one stone. The stories of deer told of ways to incapacitate, not kill, immortals. He held up a hoof for the archers and sighed. The mistletoe arrows made them semi-mortal. Loss of magic, excruciating pain, sensory overload. He didn't like using them since arrows could be broken, overshot, or lost, but for a surprise message it was normally effective.

"You missed one." Aspen smiled faintly as he needled his brother. "I told you it wouldn't work."

Blackthorn facehoofed. "That just means when Celestia gets down here, we'll explain ourselves and it will be okay. She'll understand since going by the treaty, we are totally in our rights for that. Celestia knows the procedure. Even if we took a rather harsh version of things. It's for-"

"I know what its for. This just feels like it will go slightly askew." Aspen hummed quietly as he watched Luna hit the ground in a sprawling heap. He would have been interested in that, if there wasn't something slightly off with the mana signature of this other alicorn. He waited to see if the world would become noon, because an angry Celestia tended towards a dramatic entrance, but the night obscured what was happening.

***

Twilight felt his wings ache as he banked towards the ground, angling his body so that he had the smallest surface area he could, pointing directly at the spot Luna fell. He blinked as he fell, running through any plans he had. Arrows meant an attack. Though it was odd, Changelings didn't use arrows. Neither did a whole lot of races- most used magic to bring down large targets or, like the mentions of reptiles in the south, other factors that they were given. Arrows were odd. He turned on his mana sight with a thought and almost screamed as his world lit up with so many unknown sources of magic that he was unprepared for. Similar sources, so a large, unseen force. He ran through every single spell he knew, and some he had created, in order of lethality.

Twilight hit the ground and rolled, careful to tuck his wings in so there was a limited chance of sprains or breaks. As the dust cleared, he blinked and turned. He stared in shock as he looked at what he had only thought were a mythological or dead species. Twilight dropped every single spell he had ready and stared up at the largest, and one of now a few, deer he knew. He only knew of them from books, dusty, ancient books. Not out in the world. In the middle of Ponyville. That was like Grogar stepping out of the pages of a foal's tale and speaking about current events. It shouldn't happen.

The large white deer bowed and smiled, elbowing the other armored deer in the side as he did so. "It looks like we might have to do some rather quick explaining or else an alicorn that isn't Celestia might kill us all, brother. Things seem to have changed in Equestria." He laughed as he raised a hoof, letting the other deer know to drop any sort of pretense of hiding. "There's a few things we need to talk about. The situation of Ironhoof and the two unicorns that destroyed it for one thing. A new agreement between our two races for another."