It started with a dream.

And ended in a nightmare.

Centuries after her return, Princess Luna began to have strange and disturbing dreams which baffled her. At first they were nothing more than bizarre and unusual images, the likes of which she chose to ignore as nothing more as her own imagination.

A product of her time governing the dream realm.

But as time went on these dreams became more lucid. Manehattan's Mare Statue. Canterlot Castle. The Crystal Heart.

But things were wrong. The light on Manehattan's Mare Statue was too bright. Canterlot Castle had too many towers. And the Crystal Heart was larger.

And then things got ugly. Massive metal monsters from the sky would rain fire and steel down upon ponies. Buildings crumbled crushing its occupants. Princess Luna could only watch in horror as her own dream powers failed to banish such a nightmare. Only awaking from her slumber could she be spared from the horror, albeit temporarily. As the nightmares became more frequent, she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

Princess Celestia was not ignorant of the situation, but powerless to help. Despite her prior experience in the dream realm, the nightmares that visited Princess Luna were for her and her alone. Princess Celestia could not enter, or even see, Princess Luna's dreams at night. The extreme act of switching their cutie marks similarly had no effect.

Princess Cadence tried what she could do with her resources. Perhaps Princess Luna was lonely? No, the company of her sister was enough for her. Perhaps Princess Luna needed a break from her royal duties? A month of vacation yielded no change. Perhaps Princess Luna had begun to desire a mate? While that resulted in an endless stream of romance stories starring Princess Luna, it did not banish the nightmares.

Even other nations began to provide assistance and advice on the matter. Zebra potions and techniques proved powerless. Yak medicine simply gave Princess Luna an upset stomach. The Griffon patented method of taking a large rock to the back of the head only gave Princess Luna a headache in addition to the nightmares.

In an act of desperation Discord was brought to Princess Luna's bedside. But after hearing of the situation Discord merely bent down to her ear. Opened his mouth... and closed it. Smiling in the most bemused way, Discord simply said "you'll find out." And left.

With little assistance by way of magic, Princess Luna turned towards the mundane. Scribes were called and soon a small army of writers were by her side every night and every morning recording every word she uttered, hoping to help Princess Luna clarify her thoughts. Mere notes became journals. Journals became books. Books became bookshelves. And then the artists were called.

The scribes had a hard time trying to convey Princess Luna's descriptions of what she had seen, and so painters, artists and sculptors were called upon to bring shape to Princess Luna's words. Bookshelves became libraries. And libraries became museums. It was a golden age of art for Equestria, a single dream could launch an artist's career overnight; but the artists took no joy in their work. With every dream, every attack became more real. With every carving, the metal monsters became more real. With every night, the nightmares became more real.

But then the nightmares became fragments. And fragments became pieces. And the pieces were put together.

Princess Twilight had spent much of her free time trying to assist Princess Luna and finally realized upon something: Her research was useless.

Princess Twilight's research was based on the past, when in fact it should have been looking towards the future.

The light on Manehattan's Mare Statue was too bright? A new lighting system was planned to be installed to make it more visible during foggy days. Canterlot Castle had too many towers? A proposal to build new towers had been in the works for quite some time but never actually executed on. And the Crystal Heart was larger? It was noted that the Crystal Heart grew as the Crystal Empire ponies grew happier.

But none of this helped Princess Luna.

Knowing that her nightmares were visions of the future only haunted Princess Luna and terrified those around her. The threat of the metal monsters from the sky loomed over Equestria with no way to prepare for, let alone address, the future.

It wasn't until one day when Princess Luna stopped to look at a statue in the Canterlot Gardens did she realize there was a solution. If the metal monsters came from the skies to attack Equestria, she would go the skies and attack first.

That statue was a statue of Nightmare Moon.

Nightmare Moon stood over the crumpled forms of Princess Celestia, Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight. It was a bloodless coup. She had no intention of killing anyone. But she needed power. The power of a nation... no, of an empire in order to face the metal monsters.

Without the Elements of Harmony and Princess Celestia's unwillingness to fight her sister again, Equestria fell to Nightmare Moon.

And yet, little changed.

After proclaiming herself the leader of all of Equestria, Nightmare Moon designated Princess Celestia regent and allowed her to rule Equestria as she had before. Princess Cadence was sent back to the Crystal Empire with the promise of joining Nightmare Moon's future empire. And Princess Twilight continued her duties as Princess of Friendship, albeit it with more time dedicated to studying Nightmare Moon's nightmares.

Despite changing into Nightmare Moon, she was still terrified of her nightmares. Nightmare Moon threw herself into her nightmares every night trying to gather as much information as she could on the metal monsters. Some of them used magical beams. Others launched a hailstorm of metal arrows. Others stil in the distance launched large metal fireworks, with far more destructive power. A few even launched smaller metal monsters. Almost all of them had some kind of magic shield that was invisible until impacted.

Scholars from across the world began to dedicate their lives studying these weapons and armor, as well as how to reverse engineer and counter them. But research was slow. With nothing more than a visual description, scholars could only compare them to the magic of a unicorn or the engineering of a party cannon.

It wasn't until a casual statement made by Princess Twilight did Nightmare Moon realize she had been approaching the matter the wrong way.

"I wonder what the ponies of the future are like."

Nightmare Moon had no words for her. Nightmare Moon had been so enthralled by the death and destruction that she did not think to look and see what the Equestrians had been doing. And so she did. And that was the beginning of the dream.

Princess Twilight could only shiver in excitement. Working alongside Nightmare Moon for so long had convinced her that Nightmare Moon had no intention of anypony... if she could avoid it. It was only when a wild Ursa Major threatened to kill a foal did Twilight ever see Nightmare Moon draw blood. As awful as it was, she could not bring herself to condemn Nightmare Moon.

Life in Equestria had not been bad either. Despite declaring herself the ruler of all of Equestria, the world was peaceful brought together under one banner. Much of that credit went towards Princess Celestia and Princess Cadence, but the art and science communities surrounding Nightmare Moon had helped as well.

And now it culminated in this. Princess Twilight Sparkle, the first Equestrian princess and royalty to go into outer space... for a few days. Her work on Equestria still called.

Still, she shivered in excitement even more. The prospect of entering outer space, going to an altitude unreachable by pegesi or alicorn wings made the scholar, now scientist, heart within her buck in excitement. If it wasn't for the fact that she was strapped to her chair, she was sure she would be bouncing around the space craft as Pinkie Pie used to.

She felt comfortable as well. This was not the first launch and Nightmare Moon had shown nothing but love for her fellow Equestrians; ponies, griffons, dragons, changelings and others.

But she still felt fear. Despite all this time, the visions continued to haunt her. The changes of Manehattan's Mare Statue, Canterlot Castle, the Crystal Heart all came true. Mostly. One of the towers at Canterlot Castle was not built in hopes that intentionally avoiding the vision would dispel them completely, to no avail. The metal monsters, now known as space ships,
had not arrived either. Nothing was known about them either other than their weaponry, now classified as laser, kinetic and missile based.

"Twilight, t-minus 60 seconds." Interrupted Nightmare Moon.

Dispelling her thoughts, Twilight refocused on the task at hand.

"All lights green, prepared for launch." Responded Twilight.

A few snickers from the Thunderbolts behind her reminded her how foalish she appeared. This wasn't their first launch and wouldn't be their last. Despite the scientific advances, pegesi continued to pride themselves on producing the best pilots.

Even in zero gravity, they wouldn't pass up the opportunity to poke fun at an alicorn's flying skills.

"Begin countdown." Nightmare Moon announced over the speaker.

"Begin countdown!" Relayed an earth pony.

"Launch in t-minus 10." Calmed stated the unicorn.

"T-minus 9."

"T-minus 8."

"T-minus 7."

"T-minus 6."

"5."

"4."

"3."

"2."

"1."

"Launch."

Author's Note

The art of war is of vital importance to the State.