Rescuing Twilight

Chapters

Chapter 1
Luna and Celestia
Return to the Celestial Space Station
Don't Get too Angry
Escaping Stargazer
Death is Near

Chapter 1

Rescuing Twilight

By Halfcrescent Time

No one had seen a Twilight Sparkle in years. One day she was there, and then the next she was not. Everypony believed that she had to move away to a different town. However, Spike remained in Ponyville. He said that they were simply forced to go their different ways, as he would not be allowed where Twilight was going.

Nopony knew exactly where she was, or why she left. Or at least, mostly nopony.

One day, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, all three of them now with their cutie marks, were in their clubhouse talking about her. Their conversation started off with memories of when they were searching for their cutie marks so long ago. First they were talking about how Rainbow Dash tried to help Applebloom get her cutie mark, then how they went to Fluttershy’s house to try there.

“You know, Twilight once tried to help me,” Applebloom said.

“When did Twilight ever help you?” Scootaloo asked in disbelief.

“It was shortly before I met you two,” Applebloom answerd.

“What did she even do?” Sweetie Belle added.

“She used her magic. It didn’t do much, though.”

The three of them fell silent for a few seconds, thinking about how long it had been since they last saw her.

“I wish she would come back to Ponyville,” said Scootaloo

“Hey, I know!” Sweetie Belle began. “If Twilight cannot visit us, why don’t we go visit her?”

“But we don’t know where she is,” Scootaloo noted.

“That’s why we ask somepony,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Ooh!” Applebloom called. “We could ask Applejack! She probably knows.”

“Yeah! See? We could ask Applejack, or maybe Rarity.”

“Well… Okay.” Scootaloo said. “I guess let’s go then.”

The three of them left their clubhouse to find one of Twilight’s friends. They were in Sweet Apple Acres already, so they figured that the first pony they would find is Applejack. Getting to the entrance of the massive farm would be their best best in finding her, so that is where they went.

They walked past many apple trees, and then began to notice that some of them had wooden buckets under them. Some of them were filled up with apples, but then others were not.

“Applejack must be close,” Applebloom pointed out.

It was not long after that that they heard what sounded like knocking on a tree, followed by the sound of apples filling up buckets. Applebloom stopped to look around, and then saw her sister in the distance bucking the apples from the trees.

“Hey, Applejack!” Applebloom shouted.

Applejack stopped bucking the trees and turned to see Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo rushing towards her.

“Oh, hey Applebloom! What do ya need?”

“Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and I were thinking, it has been so long since we last saw Twilight, right?”

After Applejack heard the name “Twilight”, her smile immediately faded into a suspicious look. “Umm, yeah, why?”

“We were thinking that we should go and visit her!” Scootaloo blurted.

“Oh, umm…” Applejack paused, “you, uh, we can’t.”

“What? Why?” her sister asked.

Applejack looked down at the ground, and then back up at Applebloom and her friends. She opened her mouth to say something, but then decided not to.

“Look, I have a lot of apple bucking to do right now. Why don’t we talk about this later?”

“Applejack,” Applebloom started. “Are you hiding something from us?”

“What? Me? N-No! Why would I hide something from you?”

“Well then why can’t we?!”

“Because you just can’t!” Applejack stomped her hoof.

The four of them stood there in silence, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo slowly backing away. After a few seconds, Applejack turned around and walked away.

“Applejack!” Applebloom shouted. “Listen to me!”

Applejack continued to walk away as her sister shouted her name.

“Applebloom, calm down,” Sweetie Belle said.

“Come on… Maybe we should leave Applejack right now,” Scootaloo insisted.

“But… I don’t get it. It’s not like Applejack to lie.”

“Well, maybe she wasn’t lying,” Sweetie Belle suggested. “Or maybe this was just a bad time. I mean, Applejack was closer to Twilight then we were.”

“I guess so,” sighed Applebloom.

Silence fell over them once more, causing an awkward feeling throughout all three of them. “Come on, maybe we could find out why we can’t visit Twilight if we ask somepony else,” Scootaloo said.

Sweetie Belle and Applebloom agreed, and then the three of them made their way to the entrance of farm. They exited the farm and headed out to the town.

“Hey,” Sweetie Belle began. “Let’s stop and get something to drink. I’ll pay.”

“Okay. That sounds good to me,” Applebloom responded.

“Yeah, sure,” Scootaloo added.

They walked to a building that was next to Sugarcube Corner and grabbed a table. Scootaloo put her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hoof. She looked out at the somewhat busy streets of Ponyville, looking for somepony that they could ask. She saw plenty of ponies, like Lyra and Bon Bon, but no one that Twilight who was close to.

Just then, the waiter came over to take their orders.

“How may I help you?” he said.

“Umm… I’ll just have a hay smoothie,” Applebloom told Sweetie Belle.

“I will have the same,” Scootaloo followed.

“Okay, three hay smoothies,” Sweetie Belle said.

“Three hay smoothies,” he repeated. “Yes, right away.”

The waiter walked away, and then the three of them began talking about who they could ask. “Let’s see, who were Twilight’s closest friends?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Umm…” Applebloom paused. “There is Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Futtershy…”

“Don’t forget about Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo quickly interrupted as if she was worried they would forget.

“Uh… yeah. And then Rarity.”

“So who should we ask first?” asked Sweetie.

“Well, we can check Applejack off the list,” Scootaloo remarked.

Scootaloo looked to the left of her at Sweetie Belle, and then saw that Sugarcube Corner was behind her.

“Maybe we should ask Pinkie next.”

“Why Pinkie?” Applebloom asked.

“Would you rather ask somepony else?”

“Pinkie is fine. I was just curious.”

“Oh, well, you know. Sugarcube Corner is right there, so…”

Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to speak, but before she said anything, the waiter returned holding a tray with three cups. “Three hay smoothies,” he started. “That’lll be six bits.”

Using her magic, Sweetie Belle opened her saddlebag, pulled out six bits and put them in front of the waiter. The waiter, dealt out the smoothies, collected the bits, and then left.

“Yeah,” Sweetie resumed. “We can ask Pinkie.”

“Did I hear my name?” Pinkie Pie suddenly popped up next to Applebloom, scaring all three of them half to death.

“Pinkie!” Scootaloo jumped back. “W-Where did you come from?”

“Oh, I was just walking by when I heard you guys say my name, so I thought maybe you needed me!” Pinkie said cheerfully.

“Where did you even… Nevermind,” Sweetie decided.

“So?! What do you need?”

“We were talking to Applejack about visiting Twilight, and…” Applebloom started, but then was cut off by Pinkie.

“Twilight?! Y-you can’t visit her,” Pinkie paused and looked down suspiciously at her feet. “Umm… She’s really busy!”

“Busy?” Scootaloo questioned. “But it’s been years since she left! What could she possibly be doing?!”

“Well. Um… I-I don’t know.”

“What do you mean I don’t know?”

“Well,” the pink pony paused, “whatever she is doing, it must be too important to tell. She left so quickly…”

Pinkie Pie stood there, unable to think of how to put it in words. Sweetie belle looked her in the eyes, and could see that something wasn’t right. It was now obvious that they were protecting some secret that was not meant to be released to the public.

“Oh… Okay,” she said. After a few seconds of awkward silence, she got up, followed by Scootaloo and Applebloom. “Well, thanks anyways, Pinkie.”

“What? Where are we going?” whispered Applebloom.

“Just let Pinkie be for right now.”

“Uh, yeah. No problem.” Pinkie straightened up, and tried to get back to her normal self. “Where are you girls going?”

“We have a lot of stuff to do,” Applebloom responded.

“Oh, okay. Have fun!”

The three of them walked off, leaving Pinkie to do her own stuff.

“…Did you guys notice anything… well, weird about Pinkie?” Applebloom asked once they got some distance away.

“Weird?” Sweetie responded. “I wouldn’t say that, but something was off. I could see it in her eyes. These ponies are hiding something from us. I just know it.”

“Well, what could they be hiding? And who all knows about it?” Scootaloo came in.

“Do you think that maybe something happened to Twilight?” asked Applebloom.

“What do you mean?” Sweetie asked.

“You know, like maybe something happened that they don’t want us to know about. Come to think of it, weren’t Twilight and her friends gone for a few days before she left?”

“Umm…” Scootaloo paused. “I don’t know. That was so long ago that… I don’t even remember how long ago it was! And besides, wouldn’t they tell us if something happened?”

The three of them carried on with their conversation, when suddenly a blue Pegasus swooped down right in front of them. She flew in a few circles, did a few spins, and then landed.

“Rainbow Dash!” shouted Scootaloo.

“Yeah? What do ya need, squirt?” Rainbow replied.

“Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and I were wondering… Well, do you know anything about where Twilight is?”

“Whenever we ask anypony they act weird, like they’re hiding something from us.” Applebloom added.

Rainbow Dash’s confident smile immediately turned into a look of concern, much like Pinkie Pie and Applejack. “T-Twilight?” she said to herself. “How many ponies did you ask about this?”

“Umm… just Applejack and Pinkie Pie,” Sweetie responded. “Why?”

Rainbow looked around for a while, debating with herself. At this point, they knew they were keeping a secret from them. If Rainbow wasn’t going to tell them, it they would soon find out.

“Uh, Rainbow,” Scootaloo spoke, “are you okay?”

Rainbow Dash looked around to make sure nopony was looking, and then finally said something. “Come with me.”

She led them away from everypony to where nopony would think of going to find them.

“Where are we going?” Applebloom asked.

Rainbow Dash said nothing, but instead kept on walking. She turned into a dark alley where nopony was. When they got to the end, Rainbow stopped and turned to face them.

“Look, we are not supposed to talk about this, but… Well you guys know too much already,” she said.

“Know too much?” Sweetie Belle repeated. “But we don’t know anything yet.”

“You guys obviously know that we are hiding something now, and I can’t just leave you out there asking everypony about it. I will tell you what really happened, but you have to PROMISE not to tell ANYPONY! Do you understand?”

“Okay,” the three of them said.

“It’s a long story,” she sighed,” but I guess I can give you the quick version. Long ago, we were all in a top secret research facility in space. Don’t ask how we got there. I am saying too much already. Anyways, it was called the Celestial Space Station. It had three wings to it, unicorn, pegasus, and earth. Fluttershy and I were in the pegasus wing when it all happened. Twilight was in the unicorn wing with Rarity.

“All I can remember was that after a while of being up there, the sirens went off, and everypony started to panic. Rumor was spreading that there was some sort of alien spaceship outside attacking us. Fluttershy and I went to the center of the space staion, where we came in. That is where we met up with Pinkie and Applejack. It wasn’t long after that the princess came with Rarity. Twilight was not with them, but the princess said that if we wanted to live, then we had to leave.

“Once we got back to earth, we saw that along with Twilight, there were other missing unicorns. Nopony knows who attacked us, or why.”

“So, wait…” Applebloom started. “Twilight is… dead?”

Rainbow stared down at her feet, struggling to find a way to answer. “I don’t know. Rarity is the only one who does,” she said. “DON’T ask her!”

“Why not?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Because!” Rainbow scolded. “For the same reason none of us have asked her! Nopony knows what she could have witnessed. We don’t want to bring painful memories back.”

“Oh,” said Sweetie. “I see.”

“You must NOT tell anypony about this!”

Rainbow looked around once more, and then flew away, leaving the three of them alone. They did not know what to say to each other, now that they knew the truth.

“Well, I should probably go home now,” Applebloom informed.

“Yeah, me too,” Scootaloo agreed.

“O-Okay. See you guys later,” Sweetie Belle acknowledged.

Sweetie Belle went off to return home, but could not stop thinking about Twilight. How could this have been a secret for all of these years? More importantly, how could her own sister know and not tell her?

She walked through the streets, passing by several ponies. On the way there were many apple stands that she avoided, as well as the owners advertising. She eventually got to the boutique, where she saw Rarity working on a dress.

“Oh, hi Sweetie Belle,” she said.

Sweetie sighed as she walked passed her sister, “Hi, Rarity.”

“Is there something wrong?” Rarity asked.

Sweetie thought about asking her about Twilight, but then decided it would be better to keep her mouth shut. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Rarity put down her needle and thread to face her sister. “You can tell me, you know.”

“Yeah,” Sweetie reassured. “I am sure.”

“Okay. So, what did you three do today?”

“Well, you know. The usual stuff.”

“Is hanging out in that tree house the only thing you three do all day?” asked Rarity with a bit of sarcasm.

“Well, yeah. Kind of.”

Rarity picked up her needle and started working again. “Well, I need to get this done.”

“Okay.”

Sweetie Belle started to walk into another room, but the thought of Twilight being gone was preventing her. “Actually…”

“What? What is it?”

“We were talking to Rainbow Dash…”

“Yeah?” Rarity replied. “About what?”

“Well… About Twilight, and the Celestial Space Sation.”

Rarity dropped her needle, as memories flooded back into her head. “A-About …what?”

“Rainbow Dash says that you are the only one who knows what happened to Twilight Sparkle. How could you guys keep this a secret from us? From me?”

Twilight Sparkle and Celestial Space Station were words that Rarity thought she would never hear again. Not after what happened. “For years I have tried to forget what happened on that tragic day. The princess told us to keep it a secret from everypony. ‘It is for the good of Equestria,’ she said. ‘Nopony must know about this’. But I think… I think it is time that I tell you.”

“What?”

“Rainbow Dash told you about the space station, I assume she told you about the three wings?”

“Umm… yeah.”

“Twilight and I were in the unicorn wing, doing research on how we could use magic to power machines. We heard a crash, but thought nothing of it. Not until the alarm went off. That is when everything went all wrong. Somepony came in to our room saying that everypony needed to get to the center, where we came in.

“We left as quickly as possible. There were ponies running everywhere, and we did not know where to go. We kept running in what we hoped was the right direction. At the end of a hall there was a door. We went through it, and it was another lab. On the other side was a window as big as the wall.

“Twilight went up to the window to see if she could find out what was going on. There was what looked like a ship of some kind. It must have been as big as the space station. An arm with a claw at the end came out of it and broke the window. Some emergency window started to close, but another arm broke that one too. We both put on our helmets, just before grabbing onto something.

“Twilight was holding onto a bar, but it broke off, and she was sucked out. I saw one of the arms grab her and take her away. I managed to save myself, but I could not do anything to save Twilight.

“So now you know what happened.”

Luna and Celestia

2 Months Earlier

It was around one o’clock in the morning. Luna was peering through her telescope, as she did on every night. It was part of her normal routine, just like raising and lowering the moon every day. From her tower, she could see nearly all of Equestria. It was her job to guard it during the night, as it was Celestia’s during the day. Each night she was up there for no less than an hour. It would be one thing if she was guarding Equestria, but her telescope was pointed upward toward the sky. It had been in that same position for years. Nopony knew what she was looking at.

Luna heard a quiet creak, and turned around to see her sister, Celestia, in the doorway. She was slightly surprised, as Celestia almost never came to her this late. She was usually asleep.

“Is something wrong, Celestia?” Luna asked as she resumed looking through her telescope.

“What do you do out here? Every night come out here and look through that telescope at the same spot in the sky,” Celestia walked in and closed Luna’s door.

“Celestia,” Luna started. “Do you remember all those years ago at the Celestial Space Station?”

“Luna, that was years ago. It was a tragic day, yes. But you must learn that it is not healthy to live in the past.”

“No, that is not it. Come here.”

Celestia went over and stepped onto the balcony as Luna backed away from the telescope. She looked over at her sister, as if she was not sure what to do. She simply waved her hoof towards it, telling her to take a look.

Not knowing what to expect, the princess peered through the telescope. The first thing she saw was the space station, in the same place it had always been. Then she looked over and saw something else. It looked like another space station, but then she started to see more of them. There were at least five of them that she could see.

“What are those?” she asked.

“I believe those are the things that attacked us. I have been watching them since the day of the attack. The fact that they are still there cannot be good.”

“You’ve been watching them? Well, what have you seen? What do you know about them?”

“Not much. I mostly watch just to see if they are still there. Every once in a while I will see a flash coming from one the ships, but nothing more,” Luna replied.

“Well… what do you suppose we do about this?”

“I have one answer, but I don’t think that you will like it.” Luna took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. “The only thing that I can think of is going back up there.”

“What? Luna, are you crazy? We got attacked the first time we were up there, there is no doubt we will get attacked again!” Celestia lectured.

Luna stood there for a moment, and then simply smiled. “Follow me.” Luna stepped inside, and started toward her door. Shortly after, Celestia followed.

Luna led Celestia through many hallways, and through doors. Finally, they got outside Canterlot Castle, and continued walking, leaving Celestia even more clueless as to where her sister was leading her. Luna started towards the mountain, avoiding any building that was in their way. Soon, there was nothing between them and the mountain that Canterlot rested on.

Once they got to the mountain, Luna stopped to look around. Once she saw that nopony was there, she used her magic on a small piece of the mountainside. She pulled out towards them, and then moved it to the side. On the other side as a dark cave.

Luna stepped in and signaled for Celestia to come in too. The fact that there was a cave that she did not know about until now gave her an uneasy feeling, that and the fact that it was so dark. However, Celestia went in, going against all doubts. After all, this was her sister Luna.

Luna closed the entrance to the cave, leaving it pitch black. They could waive their hoof in front of their face and not even see it. They heard a big thud as the rock returned to its place. Suddenly, two torches that were on either side of them lit up, probably by Luna’s magic, and then two more a ways down the cave, and then two more.

“Come, this way,” Luna said.

“Where are we going?” Celestia finally asked.

“You’ll see. I have some things that I want to show you.”

Once they got to the end of the long cave, there was door that Luna opened. On the other side was nothing more than a staircase descending into darkness. Luna used her magic once more to light up more torches, and the two of them started downward.

At the bottom of the staircase was another door. They opened it, and inside was what looked like a normal room. There was a chandelier hanging from the ceiling that Luna lit up. The walls, the floor, even the furniture was the same as you would find at a normal house in Ponyville.

Luna opened up a closet, and inside were several suits of many colors hanging on a metal bar. On a shelf above them were helmets that matched the colors of the suits.

“Are these…” Celestia began, only to be cut off by her sister.

“Yes. These are the suits that we used the first time we went to the Celestial Space Station. Only, I gave them a few upgrades. Take a look.”

Luna pulled out a dark blue suit, and unzipped it from the back of the neck down. She put it on, starting with slipping her hooves through. She then pulled it up, and used her magic to zip it back up. There were two holes for her wings to go through, and then one on the back for her tail. There was a box of matching color that she took out of the closet that had a small glass bar on it. She put her front arms through two black straps. The box curved at the bottom, so it seemed to rest perfectly on her back. On the right side of the box, there was a black tube that went to a strange, hoof shaped device. Luna put it on her right hoof. It too seemed to fit perfectly. On the end of it was a circular piece of glass that went slightly down, leaving a small hole in the center.

“Back then, we did not have anything to defend ourselves with,” Luna reminded. “Well, now we do.”

Luna’s horn began to glow, as the bar on her back filled to the top, and was now glowing blue. Celestia gave a strange look as her sister pointed her right hoof towards a piece of metal that seemed to be burned. The glass that was on her hoof also began to glow blue, and after a few seconds, a beam shot out and left a mark on her target.Celestia watched in awe as Luna faced her with a smile.

“So? What do you think?” Luna asked.

“W-What is that? Where did you get it?”

“I made it. It took quite a while too. After a few months of watching those ships, I figured, I better do something. If they weren’t going anywhere, then we would have to make them. I do not want to risk Equestria.”

“That spell… how did you…”

“I can teach it to you. Do you see this bar? It shows you how many more times you can fire. Once it is empty, you can refill it. Unicorns can refill their own, as well as other ponies. This is much more powerful then shooting a beam from your horn, and plus, now everypony can do it.”

Celestia stood there, speechless. She did not know how to respond to this strange technology. “So… Well, what else do you have?” Celestia asked, almost unable to believe what she was seeing.

“I’m glad you asked.”

Inside the box to the left was what looked like a sword. Luna put her right hoof on the left, and slid out three metal fingers. She reached to her back, put the hilt in the middle of them, and then locked them. She then pulled out the sword. It was a curved, black blade with rectangular holes going throughout it, almost separating the sharpened edges from the rest of it.

“I made a sword exactly like this for everypony, just like I did with the gun. You can do minimal damage with it like this,” Luna said. Her voice sounded exited that she was finally showing her sister this stuff.

“What do you mean?”

Luna’s horn was glowing once more, and then the edges of the sword lit up into a blue color, just like the bar on her back did earlier.

“When the sword is like this, you can cut through even the strongest of metals with the right strength.”

Luna walked over to the same metal wall that she tested the gun on. On one side, there were several cuts in it. She held her arm across her neck, and then swung her sword, as it cut through the metal almost like butter.

“So? What do you think?”

“Luna…” Celestia paused. “Why haven’t I known about any of this? Those ships, this cave, that gear? Why haven’t you told me about any of this?”

Luna looked at Celestia, and then down at the ground. “Trust me, Celestia. I would have told you earlier, but I needed to wait until the right time.”

“What? The right time? What do you mean?”

“I needed to get all of this gear developed before I told you. Trust me, things will work out better now,” Luna tried to convince her older sister.

Clelestia sighed. She wanted to walk away from all of this and let it be Luna’s problem, but she knew it was just as much her own. Would it really matter now? She thought to herself. I should be thanking Luna for developing all of this, not getting angry at her. “Okay. Well… what else do you need to do?”

“Well, I think now we just need to get a shuttle ready.”

“Do we even have a shuttle?”

“Yeah. We still have a few shuttles. They are in the old training facility. We also have some rocket boosters that we can use.”

“Okay. One more thing… Who do you plan on taking with us? If we have to fight these guys, we cannot do it alone.”

“Who can we trust the most? The bearers of the Elements of Harmony,” Luna smiled.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am sure.”

“How much gear have you made? Do we have enough for all of them?” Celestia asked.

“Yes,” Luna responded. “I made enough gear for at least fifteen ponies.”

“What about the shuttle and rockets? You we can’t clean those by ourselves. And if we are going back up there, we are going to have to train again.”

“We can get our old crew together. They can clean the shuttle and rockets while we train ourselves and the others.”

“Very well. We shall start in the morning, then.”

Return to the Celestial Space Station

It was around noon. The train was on its way from Canterlot to the training facility. On board were a total of eight ponies; Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Sweetie Belle, Applebloom and Scootaloo. For the past month they trained for something they thought they would never have to deal with again. Now was the time the training would count.

Applebloom was sitting next to her sister, staring out the window. As the train got closer and closer to the training facility, it made her more and more nervous. She did not want to go with them. She had already been through all of the training, but it did not help one bit.

“Applejack, do I really HAVE to go with you?” she asked.

“We went over this, Applebloom. You had all the training already! Besides, you know about the Celestial Space Station; it would be good for you to see it for yourself,” Applejack responded.

“But I don’t want to see it for myself! Why can’t I just stay home with Big Macintosh? H-He can’t watch the farm by himself.”

Applejack looked down at her sister with a weird look. “We won’t be gone for that long. He can handle it.”

“Well, how long are we going to be up there?” Applebloom went on.

“I don’t know, however long the princesses want us up there.”

Applebloom thought about arguing more, but she knew that it would not get her anywhere. No matter what she said, she would have to go into space with the rest of them.

“Why do YOU think the ships are up there, Flutterhsy?” Pinkie asked.

“Um… I don’t know,” Fluttershy replied.

Pinkie tried to be cheerful about it, but inside it was just as hard for her to remember that tragic day as it was for anypony else. She sat in her chair next to Fluttershy, and could only hope that they would not get attacked again. Although the first attack was so long ago, the painful memories remained as if it happened yesterday.

Next to her, Fluttershy was probably more nervous then all of them. She did not want to go back up into space, but for different reasons. She did not want to encounter any aliens. When she was younger she heard stories about them, just like anypony would. However, now that she knew they were real and that she would have to deal with them, she was scared out of her mind.

“Rarity, are you okay?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Rarity hadn’t said a word since they got on the train. She had her head down the whole time just staring at the ground. “I will be okay, Sweetie,” she lied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I am sure.”

“Um… okay,” Sweetie said, not completely convinced. “If you say so.”

After a few more minutes, the train finally reached its destination, as it slowly stopped. The doors opened and they saw both of the princesses standing outside with two guards. The eight of them exited the train to meet up with them. Behind them was a shuttle that towered above everything else.

“Is everypony ready?” Princess Luna asked.

“As ready as we’ll ever be, I guess,” Rainbow answered.

“We should get going now. We need to get into the shuttle as soon as possible,” Celestia instructed.

“Follow me,” Luna added. “Your suits are this way.”

By now all of the unicorns including Princess Celestia knew the spells for the gear and everypony knew how to use it. It was now only a matter of knowing when to use them now.

Luna and Celestia led them into a metal shed that went underground. Below it was the training center. By now they had all been there so many times they already knew the way. They walked down the stairs, through a door, and down a hall. At the end, they got to a closet that was locked. Luna used her magic, the locks spun around, and the door released open. Inside were ten suits and helmets. All of them got their own, which matched the colors of their coats, and put them on.

“Okay,” Celestia began. “This is it. This is the day we go back to the Celestial Space Station.”

“Let’s do this!” Pinkie blurted.

Everypony gave pinkie a weird look before continuing.

“So, here’s the plan. We are going to go up there and investigate why those ships are still there. If it is possible, we want to avoid any unnecessary fighting,” Luna explained.

“If they attack us again, we now have gear to protect ourselves, thanks to Luna,” Celestia said.

“Are there any questions?” Luna and Celestia stood there for a second to see if anypony would speak up, but nopony did. “Alright, let us go to the shuttle.”

They were now leading them to a place where they had never been before. The path included several turns and locked doors. On the way they passed several of the crew workers. They seemed to be congratulating them, as they began to cheer them on. They could not tell if it was because they were finally going back into space, or because they were going to save Equestria from whatever might happen.

Soon enough, they came to a staircase with a door on the ceiling. Celestia went up the stairs, opened the door, and let everypony else up. They were now outside and under the tower that would lead them into the shuttle. It looked a lot bigger from up close. It was almost intimidating.

“This way,” Celestia signaled them to come to an elevator.

They all piled in, and then Luna closed the door and pressed a button. The elevator began to ascend high into the air. For an earth pony or unicorn, the height that they were at would be very nerve reeking, but for a pegasus like Rainbow Dash, it was nothing. She had been that high many times. After all, she did live in Cloudsdale.

Soon the elevator came to a halt. Luna opened the door, and in front of them was a single path leading to an open door on the shuttle. Celestia was the first to exit as she led them across to the shuttle.

“Okay everypony, we leave in five minutes,” she noted.

“Five of us will sit here. I will be one of them. The rest of you will go up one more time with Celestia up there,” Luna pointed up to what must have been another path above them.

“I’ll go,” Rainbow volunteered.

“Me too!” Scootaloo shouted almost immediately after.

“Well, I will have to sooner or later,” Rarity observed.

“Um… I’ll go with Rarity.” Sweetie Belle came in.

“Okay. Let’s go then.”

Luna was the first to enter the shuttle. Following her was Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. After them was Rarity and Sweetie Belle. There were five seats right next to each other, with five more in front of them. Getting into them was easier said than done, but they managed to do it.

“Make sure to have your seatbelts strapped in securely. But more importantly your helmets. Make sure they are on the right way,” Luna advised.

Sweetie Belle, lying back in her seat, looked at the seatbelt. She slipped her arms through the shoulder straps and connected them. Then there was another part between her legs. She strapped that to the rest of it. Putting the seatbelts on the right way was part of the training, so that was nothing new to her.

“Scootaloo,” she whispered to the left of her.

“Yeah?” Scootaloo replied.

“Are you ready for this?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been ready since… forever!”

Just then, Celestia entered the shuttle in the seats in front of them. Following her was Applejack, Applebloom, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. Once they were all in, both of the doors closed.

“Lift off in two minutes,” came a stallion’s voice from the speakers.

“Well, there is no getting out of it now,” Sweetie said to herself.

As time passed, the feeling of thrill filled up inside all of them, as well as the feeling of complete terror. Luna and Celestia had been through this many times before back when the space station was still active, but that was so long ago, this might as well be their first time ever.

For a while, nothing happened. They were just sitting there, waiting as the thrill and terror grew. Suddenly, the whole shuttle began to vibrate as the engines started up.

“Lift off in fifteen seconds,” came the voice again.

The shuttle began to shake more violently as more time passed by.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

Applebloom was now breathing heavily. She was more scared then exited to get into space. She always was.

“Five, four, three, two, one, liftoff.”

The shaking grew more intense as the shuttle began to lift off the ground in a stream of fire and smoke. Applebloom had her arms tightly pressed against the seat, as did some other ponies, like Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash, however, could handle it. She had gone to speeds like the shuttle soon would before. The only thing was, she preferred to be flying while doing it.

After a few minutes, condensation started to build up on the shuttle. They were not far away from traveling at sonic speed. Applebloom looked up through the windshield. As they got higher and higher, the sky began to darken. Soon, the whole sky was black, and everything became light. They no longer felt gravity pulling on them.

The rocket boosters were released soon afterwards as the shuttle slowed down. They waited there for a few minutes, and then they got the OK to start moving freely throughout the shuttle. Celestia and Luna quickly took their seatbelts off and floated over to the controls.

They spent some time over there while everypony else stayed in their seats. The shuttle started moving to the right, and then forwards. Celestia looked back at everypony, surprised to see that they were all still buckled in.

“Come on,” she said. “You might want to see this.”

They waited there for a while, and then finally Rainbow Dash unbuckled her seatbelt. Soon after, everypony else did too. Scootaloo floated over in between Celestia and Luna. Right in front of them was what she figured was the space station.

“Is that where we are going?” she questioned.

“Yes,” Luna answered. “That is the Celestial Space station.”

The middle of it was a sphere with three long tubes extending out. At the end of each tube was a big cube. She figured those must be the three wings that she heard about.

The shuttle started to get closer and closer to the center of the space station. There was a wide and long ledge extending out from it. The shuttle began to go near it. Slowly, when it was right above it, it descended down. When it was not too far away, it quickly slammed on the ground, as if something was pulling on it.

“We’re here!” Celestia announced.

A door on the right side of the shuttle opened as a set of stairs lowered. Celestia exited the shuttle, followed by Luna. Their hooves were metal except their front right one so they could stay on the ground. Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Applebloom figured that must be the reason the shuttle was not floating away.

Luna walked to the right side of the ledge. What she saw was earth. She looked down at Equestria. It looked so much smaller from up there. She turned her head to the left. She saw nothing. There was not anything in her way. It was only complete and total darkness.

“Luna,” she heard her sister call. “Come take a look at this.”

Luna turned around to see a huge ship about the size of the space station.

“Do you think they saw us coming up?” Celestia asked.

“Probably, which means if they are going to attack again, it will be soon. We should get inside.”

They all walked inside through a rectangular doorway as wide as the ledge. Inside was a mess. There were pieces of scrap metal everywhere with a few loose pencils and paper floating around. Right in front of them was a circular doorway with a picture of wings above it. To their right was a similar door, only with a horn above it, and to the left was one with a picture of a hoof.

“Well… What do we do now?” Applejack asked.

“We can start by turning the power on,” answered Celestia. “They should already know we’re here. We won’t be risking anything.”

“If there even is power still here,” Luna butted in.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, this place has been up here for so long without anypony using it, and as far as I know, we left the power on when we left. Plus, those ships need some kind of power source. They might have used what was left here.”

“It’s worth it to try, isn’t it?” Celestia went on.

Luna pondered upon the subject for a moment before making any decisions. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”

She walked over to her left where there was a wall of controls. It had been a while since she last worked with them and she did not remember what to do. There were buttons, switches and levers everywhere. One of the levers had the label “Pegasus Wing” on it. She put her hoof on it and pulled down. Looking over at the pegasus door, nothing happened. She pushed it back up, and then down again, and again, nothing.

She looked over to another lever. There were four altogether. She ignored the ones to the three wings, and instead went to one that said “Emergency Power”. She pushed the lever down. Some lights flickered, and then stayed on as everything that was floating fell to the ground.

“See, Luna. I told you it was worth a try,” Celestia teased.

“Yeah, whatever. The important thing is, if they didn’t know we were here before, they will now. We should get out of here. Go to the Unicorn Wing or something.”

“You’re right. Okay everypony, we’re moving on to the Unicorn Wing,” she ordered.

Everypony gathered up towards the door with a unicorn horn over it. Celestia pressed a button, and the door slid up. As they all started to move through, Luna caught up with her sister. “I will stay here in case anything happens. That way I can alert you guys.”

Celestia simply nodded her head and continued through the door. At the other side was a long hallway. The walls were nothing more than windows, most of them broken. At the end she could see a small purple sign above another circular door.

They all started down the long hall. Out the right side of the windows they could see more of the ships. The very sight made them uneasy. The whole way down the hall they felt like they were being watched, or that they might soon be attacked again.

Eventually, though, they all got to the other side without a problem. Celestia opened the door, and they all went through. Inside the room was another hallway, but this time the walls had doors.

“What do we do now?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Feel free to explore for right now,” Celestia responded. “Just don’t go upstairs.”

Sweetie Belle walked over to the first door she saw on her left and went through it. Everything was a mess. There were papers everywhere along with pencils and clipboards. She walked up to a table. It was hard to see what was going on in there since nothing was in its original place.

She looked at a strange model on the ground. It was pretty much a wooden body with wings. She picked it up to look closer at it, but still had no idea what it was supposed to be. She thought about looking through the papers to try to find something about it, but then decided it would take too long.

Scootaloo walked into the room directly across from the one that Sweetie Belle walked into. The sight was not much different. She picked up one of the papers that was on the ground. On it was a drawing of a unicorn using its magic to power some kind of machine. As she was looking closer at it, Applebloom came in.

“Oh, hi Applebloom,” she said, sounding a little surprised to see her.

“Hey. What are you looking at?”

Scootaloo examined the paper further. “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense to me.”

“So what do you think about this?” Applebloom asked.

“About what?”

“Well, all of this. The whole idea of this space station. Or the fact that we only found out about this place a month ago.”

Scootaloo thought for a few seconds, and then opened her mouth to answer. However, right when she was about to, there was a crash that shook everything, knocking them over.

“What was that?” Scootaloo got herself up and looked around.

“Everypony come back to the center, now!” they heard a voice that sounded like Luna through a radio built into the suits.

Applebloom and Scootaloo looked at each other, as if they were not sure what to do. Scootaloo finally rushed out of the room to see everypony else gathered at the door. Not too long after, Applebloom followed. Once they were all regrouped, they went through the door. Out the windows it looked like they were spinning. They passed earth, and not too long after, the ships.

When they were about half way through, there was another crash. This one felt more violent, and almost threw some of them out the windows. They all took a minute to recover, and then noticed that the spinning had stopped. Finally, they reached the end of the hall and went through the door.

“What’s going on?” Rainbow directed towards Luna.

“Exactly what we were waiting for,” Luna pointed to the door where they came in. The ledge was broken off and the shuttle was gone. More importantly, they were now facing towards one of the ships. There was a big door that looked like a hanger opened. Coming from the back of the room they were facing was an extended arm that had a grip on the space station. They could see themselves inching closer and closer. It was only a matter of time until they crashed.

“Guys, those spells I taught you, use them now!” Luna instructed to the unicorns.

The four unicorns used the spell for the gun on themselves, and then the one for the sword. When Celestia was done, she used the spells on Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. Luna helped out Applebloom, Applejack and Rainbow Dash, while Rarity did Scootaloo.

By the time they were done, the station crashed into the side of the ship. For a while, nothing happened. Everypony kept quiet. There was no visible alien on the ship at the moment only a large empty room. Celestia did not like that fact.

“What do we do?” Applebloom asked.

Nopony answered. They were all too focused on the ship. Then, out of nowhere another arm shot out, grabbed Luna, and retracted. For a split second, nopony knew what to do. Making a quick decision, Celestia jumped from the station to the ship. There was a moment of antigravity in between that threw her off, so when she entered the ship, she tumbled to the ground.

She ran over to Luna who was trapped in three claws while everypony else followed her. She tried all she could to open them, but they would not budge. All of a sudden, they found themselves surrounded by several aliens pointing guns at them. Ignoring the fact that they were all in black suits with helmets, they surprisingly looked just like ponies.

“Stay where you are!” one of them said. To their surprise, he was speaking English, although he did have a strange accent that they had not heard from anywhere before.

Celestia took her hooves off the claw and put them on the ground. She did not want to start a fight. One of the aliens walked over to Luna and put his hooves on the claws. He pressed down on it and it sprung open, releasing Luna.

“Come with us. And don’t try to do anything!” he warned.

Celestia and Luna looked at each other. They tried to think of any possible way to get out of this, but going with them was the only thing they could do at the moment.

“Fine,” Luna grunted.

The aliens closed in around everypony and escorted them through a door on their left, which was probably where they all bcame from. The hallway on the other side looked very similar to the one in the Celestial Space Station. All of the doors were opened, and they could see various things happening inside the rooms. The words above them were weird. Nothing like they saw on earth.

When they got to the end of the hall, one of the aliens walked over to the wall and pressed a code into a dial pad. Two doors opened up and they were shoved in. It was fairly big, so everypony could easily fit in. Once they were all in, the same alien put another code in. The doors closed, and they soon felt themselves going up. They figured they must have been inside an elevator. They were inside it for a few minutes, doing nothing except standing and looking at each other. Finally, the elevator stopped.

A row of aliens were the first to get out. After them, a second row shoved everypony else out. They turned left and continued walking. The thought of where they were going kept running through all of their heads. Were they going to be killed? Questioned? Tortured? Nopony knew, and nopony dared to ask.

While they were walking, Celestia could not help but look through the doors. She thought maybe she could learn something about their nature if they saw what they were doing. So far, she saw nothing that looked too bad. Maybe they aren’t as bad as they look, she thought. That all changed when something caught her eye. Through one of the doors to her right she saw something that stunned her. She did not see much, but enough to know there was a purple unicorn.

“Wait, what is in that room?” she asked them.

“Be quiet! Keep walking.”

“Show me what was in that room!”

“I said be quiet!”

Celestia finally used her magic and grabbed all of the aliens surrounding them. She slammed them against the walls, knocking them out cold.

“What did you see?” Pinkie inquired.

“I don’t know.”

Celestia walked through everypony else, stepping over the aliens. When she got to the door, instead of going in, she hesitated. She tried not to get her hopes up, but could not. The same thought just kept running through her head. Could this be Twilight? Could she be alive after all these years?

Slowly, she peeked through the door. She was surprised at what she saw. No, not surprised, horrified. It was the very unicorn she thought had died so many years ago. It was indeed Twilight Sparkle. She was standing on a platform with a metal box around her legs forcing her to stay standing. There were three wires drilled into her horn that were connected to a strange machine.

Celestia walked up to her in awe. She could not believe what she was seeing. She looked up into her eyes, which were crying tears of blood. “T-Twilight?”

Soon, everypony else came in as well. Their reactions were exactly the same.

Suddenly, a flood of more aliens came in. They held their guns to their heads, ready to fire at any moment.

“Release them!” a voice called.

From a window above them at the other side of the room, a silhouette of an alien with strange metallic wings was seen.

“So you are the ponies I heard about?” he said. He too had an accent that was indefinable, but he seemed to be speaking English perfectly.

“And just who are you?” Luna spat.

“In your language, I believe my name would be… Stargazer? Yes, that sounds right. And you, you would be Luna, Princess of the Night, are you not?”

“What? How do you know that?”

Stargazer chuckled, “How do I know that? Well is it not obvious? Out of everypony here, I think you would know!”

“Know what? What are you talking about?!”

“Ha! You don’t know, do you? We have been watching you guys! You know, just like you have been watching us.”

Luna gasped as her eyes widened. For all those years she was watching them, she had no idea they were doing exactly the same thing.

“What exactly do you mean by watching?” Rainbow called out.

“Learning your language, who you ponies are, what you do… everything. And interesting enough, as it turns out, we are exactly the same. Well, as far as being ponies goes.”

Celestia did not know what to say. The thought of Twilight being alive was still trapped inside her head. Then the thought finally came to her. Why would they do this?

“We are exactly the same? Then what do you call this?” she pointed behind her at Twilight.

“Ah, yes. That. You see, there is quite a story behind that,” Stargazer stopped for a while and laughed. “Long ago, our home planet began to become overpopulated. Or at least that is what they told us. So, we built this fleet of what used to be something around thirty-seven… oh, what do guys call them? Starships? Spaceships? I don’t know. Let’s just call them ships. Anyways, they told us our mission was to find new land, and if possible, other life.

“My father was the leader of all this. We were out there searching for… well, it must have been years. Finally though, death came for my father. That left me in charge. Quite a while later, the fleet began to run out of power. That is when I finally realized this was not a mission to find new land. It was merely a mission to get rid of us.

“That is when we came across your vessel. For a while now, we had to use our own unicorns for power. They had to offer up some of their magic. I thought, if we could get a hold on some of your unicorns, we could do so much more than just power my fleet. We could continue on to do… Agh! Your language is difficult! What do you guys call it? Sci… silence? No,” he paused for a while, “Science! We could continue on and do science. This is one of the unicorns that we found.

“We soon realized that simply tying some wires around a unicorn’s horn did not do much. The only magic we could get from that was magic already converted into a spell. So, we decided to drill into the horn. That way, we could get a more concentrated magic. We could then turn that into any spell we wanted. For example, do you see that?” Stargazer pointed his hoof to a circular window next to Twilight. But on the other side of it was not space, or even another room. It was a strange place filled with green grass and a grey, cloudy sky. The plants looked overgrown, and the whole place had a light green color to it. “That is one thing this unicorn is powering. It is one of our most impressive works to this day. On the other side of that portal is the Spirit World. We would put it in another, more convenient room, but we found out that the closer to the unicorn it is, the better.

“It takes a lot of magic to power it. I have to say, I am very impressed that this unicorn lasted this long. How long has it been again? Eight years?”

Celestia heard enough. Now that she knew what they were doing to Twilight, she could not stand to watch them do it anymore. I a second, she pointed her gun to the machine Twilight was powering and fired. As sparks flew everywhere, the aliens tackled her. In just a matter of seconds, everypony was brawling each other.

As the machine started to fail, the metal box around Twilight opened up. Luna rushed over to grab her as she fell out, but she was caught by the wires in her horn. As quick as she could, Luna grabbed her sword and cut the wires, setting Twilight gently on the ground. She looked down at Twilight. How could anypony do such a thing? She thought.

She pointed her loaded gun up towards the window Stargazer was standing in. Without taking aim, she fired. The blue beam shattered through the window, and hit Stargazer, sending him flying back. He quickly recovered and rushed over to a control panel near the broken window. He slammed his hoof down on a button, and electricity began to fly throughout the room below him. It was affecting everypony except the aliens. They did not know why, but it was hard to figure anything out in such pain.

“Vkiliz donzpk!” Stargazer shouted.

After he finished, two aliens grabbed Sweetie Belle. She struggled to get free, but they were too strong. Before she knew it, she found herself thrown through the portal to the Spirit World.

“S…Sweetie!” Rarity cried.

Two more aliens grabbed Fluttershy, and another two grabbed Rainbow Dash. No matter how hard any of them struggled and squirmed, they could not break free. Soon, they too were thrown through the portal.

Luna looked around. She did not know what to do between the aliens attacking Celesita, the electricity running through her body, and the ponies being thrown through the portal. She did not have much time to debate with her. If the aliens were not to soon claim her, the electricity would. It was a difficult decision, but Luna finally made her mind. She grabbed Twilight and looked at Celestia, fighting off the aliens. A second later, she leaped through the portal, as it closed up seconds later.

Don't Get too Angry

Before she knew it Sweetie Belle found herself face down on the ground. Only, it was not of the ship she was just in. This ground was soft and grassy. She opened her eyes to look around. She figured she must have been thrown through the portal, only, she did not see another portal that led back to the ship. Then the thought came to her. What if there was no way back? What if she was stuck there by herself with nopony else?

Suddenly, she saw Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy appear out of thin air. They too landed on the ground. “Hey!” Rainbow shouted. She got up off the ground and attempted to fly back through the portal, but then realized there was nothing there.

All three of them stood there, not knowing what to do. At this point, they were stuck. Without a portal back, they could only hope there would be another way.

Then, they saw Luna carrying Twilight with her magic jumping out of what looked like nothing. “Princess Luna!” Sweetie Belle sounded surprised. Judging by the way she got there, she figured she was not thrown in by the aliens.

“You came after us?” Rainbow asked.

“I couldn’t leave you guys alone. Celestia can take care of herself and the others,” she explained.

“You… brought Twilight?” Fluttershy added in.

Luna looked down at Twilight, who was now set down on the grassy terrain. “I couldn’t leave her. Not in her condition. Whatever this place is, it must be safer than in there.”

“Well, can you do something to help her?” Sweetie Belle pleaded.

“I can try. I don’t know if anything will work. They have been using her magic for eight years straight,” Luna thought for a second to find a way to explain Twilight’s condition. “Do you remember back when the changelings were attacking Canterlot and Shinning Armor had to put up that shield? How he got those migraines from using the spell? Well, just imagine what Twilight must be feeling right now.”

Luna looked down at Twilight. Her horn began to glow, as did Twilight’s eyes. Everypony simply stood there while she attempted to heal. Finally, Luna’s horn stopped glowing, and she lifted her head up.

“So, um… did it work?” Fluttershy asked.

“I couldn’t do much, just as I thought. Her condition is too bad right now for a unicorn to heal her. Our best hope is that she will heal over time.”

“Well… What do we do now? And, what is this place?” Rainbow continued the conversation.

“Well… Stargazer mentioned something about this being some kind of, spirit world, didn’t he?”

Before any of them said anything else, they all felt a cold breeze run past them, followed by a distant laughter.

“W…Who’s there?” Luna shouted.

There was no response. For some reason, they began to hear the faint sound of clocks ticking as the laughter grew louder. “Well… Now what do we have here?” a voice said.

“What? Who are you? Show yourself!” Luna spat back.

“From the looks of it, I’d say you guys aren’t from around here,” the voice ignored what Luna said. “Am I wrong?”

“Umm… No. But, who are you? Answer me!”

“I will reveal myself when it is time, you… ponies, from the other side.”

By this point, everypony was completely confused.

“The other side? What does that mean?”

“The other side, another world, a place beyond this one. You guys are now in the Spirit World. But, that brings us to another question. How did you get here? You couldn’t have come through the door. No, you see, only spirits can pass through there.”

“What do you mean by the Spirit World? Are you saying… we are dead?” Luna answered with another question.

“Dead? Not by the slightest bit.” The air around them got colder and colder, as the wind started to blow in a circle around them. “My time grows short. I must go now, but keep in mind, we shall meet again.” The wind stopped blowing, the air got warmer, and the sound of ticking clocks faded away. Silence fell over them, leaving them even more confused than when they came.

“Now what?” Rainbow asked.

This time, Luna had no idea what to do. She looked up towards the trees and clouded skies. There seemed to be a path through the overgrown paths. “I guess… We try to find out exactly what this place is. Just knowing that we are in the Spirit World isn’t enough for me,” Luna paused and brought Twilight up to her hooves. “Come on. Let’s go.”

They started off to the path. Once they got to the entrance, a bone chilling wind brushed past them. Ignoring it, they followed Luna. As they continued on, the path got darker, and as the wind blew, it brought with it whispers. They were all coming at the same time, so they could not understand what they were saying.

As they got deeper and deeper down the path, things started to become even stranger. Vines hanging from the trees began to move. Glowing eyes began to peer out from the darkness and watch them.

Acknowledging all of this, Fluttershy was behind all of them, cowering in fear. Although she had been in the Everfree Forest many times in the past, never had she seen the vines moving.

Luna looked past all of it as if it was not even there. She just continued walking with Twilight. The darkness got thicker and thicker, and soon they could not see anything in front of them. “Hold on, everypony,” Luna stopped.

After a second or two, her horn lit up, lighting the way. Now they could see what was in front of them, although they were not sure if they wanted to. When the path was lit, another cold wind blew past them, bringing with it orange and brown decaying leaves. The leaves and wind in their faces forced them to close their eyes. The wind kept growing stronger, bringing more, louder whispers as if they were trying to tell Luna to not light the way.

Suddenly, the wind stopped. Luna opened her eyes, only to see what looked like a ghost pony right in front of her. The sight of it made her heart skip a beat as she jumped back in fright. Everypony else opened their eyes too to see what was wrong. Their reactions were the same. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy took off to the sky while Sweetie Belle leaped back and tumbled to the ground. It was a mare with an expressionless face. Although the wind had stopped, her mane and tail kept to be blowing to the right.

Slowly, the ghost went back. Soon, it stopped. Luna did not know what to do. Should she go back? Or is it trying to get her to follow? She stepped her shaking hooves slowly forward towards the ghost.

“Princess? What are you doing?” Sweetie questioned.

“I…I think she wants us to follow her.”

“Um… Do we have to?” Fluttershy asked in a soft, quiet voice.

“Come on. It’ll be okay as long as I am with you,” Luna tried to comfort them.

Not wanting to, Rainbow Dash and Sweetie Belle followed. Fluttershy however was back behind them, not moving. Never before had she seen a ghost, nor did she want to follow one anywhere. Rainbow Dash noticed that she was not beside her. She turned around to see her hiding in fear behind them.

“Come on, Fluttershy. We have to go,” she said.

“No! I’m not following that ghost!”

“We have to. M-Maybe she is trying to help us.”

“No. I can’t do it!”

“Ugh… Fine,” Rainbow Dash grunted. She grabbed Fluttershy and flew her over towards the others.

Luna continued to follow the white, see-through ghost. It appeared to just be leading them down the path. No where special. That was until it turned to the right into the wall of overgrown plants.

“How am I supposed to go there?” she pondered.

She thought for a while. They were far too thick for her to just walk through them, were they? She reached out a hoof to touch one of the long green leaves. To her surprise, it went right through it. “What’s this?” she thought to herself. She slowly walked through the plants, as if they were not even there, and came into a side path. She looked back. There were no plants blocking the way anymore.

Luna walked out to grab Twilight. “Come on, everypony.”

The others followed Luna through the plants. They were as surprised as Luna was, and wanted to stay and investigate it, but Luna kept walking with Twilight, following the ghost.

After a few minutes of walking down the dark and mysterious path, they began to see a light in the distance. It was not Luna’s horn, but rather a light from the other side of the path.

“Yes!” Rainbow shouted. “Finally!”

Once they got closer to the light, the ghost started going faster and faster. Eventually, it disappeared.

“Wait!” Luna called. “Where are you going?”

They all rushed towards the light, and it eventually faded away to where they could see something other than trees and plants. They emptied out into a circular field. In the middle, a single beam of light was shining down on a scythe with the blade stuck in the ground. Circling it were eight ghosts, including the one they were just following. The other ones also seemed to have no expression with their weightless hair blowing with no wind.

As much as she did not want to, Luna walked up to them. “I-Is this where you were leading me to?”

The ghost that they were following came forth a few inches towards Luna and solidified into a blue pony with a yellow mane. There was blood running down from two holes in her head where her eyes would have been.

“Luna… pony from the other side…”

The pony then went back, faded back into a ghost, and and moved to the right. The ghost that was next to her came out and turned into a red, black-haired pegasus, also with blood coming from where his eyes were.

“You… You must help,” he said.

He faded back into a ghost, and the next pony to come was a black unicorn with a white mane.

“Help us… destroy this evil.”

She went back, and a purple, black-haired stallion came forth.

“The evil…The evil that has consumed our world.”

“What?” Luna was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

A green unicorn with a grey mane came up.

“Three evils,” he started, “born here, imprisoned here,”

Next was a pink pony with a red mane.

“Three evils,” her voice was almost softer then Fluttershy’s, “take this world away.”

“Away… Away from peace… from harmony,” said a white stallion with a blue mane.

“Three evils… destroy our world,” a tan winged mare with a purple mane concluded.

“You, want us to destroy these evils?” Luna asked.

The eight ghosts, now with the first one in front of Luna again, rose up from the ground. “We… eight spirits, offer you our strength,” they began to spin in circles around the scythe. “We offer you our strength… to destroy these evils. Do you wish to accept it?”

At this question, Luna was stunned. What should she say? What are these “three evils”? Should she choose to accept their power? Then other thoughts came to mind. Maybe if she helped them, they could help her. She thought about it for a few moments.

“I… um, I accept!”

“Take our strength to aid you.”

The ghosts closed in toward the center, and became one glowing orb.

“Destroy the three evils, and set us free,” they said.

The glowing orb slowly descended in front of Luna. Not knowing what to do, she reached out and touched it. Her hoof began to glow, and then it spread to her eyes and mouth. Inside her she could feel the rush of energy flowing through her body. But that all ended when the orb disappeared and her eyes and mouth stopped glowing. Now the only thing left was the scythe in front of her.

“Princess… what just happened?” Sweetie Belle asked in complete confusion.

“I… think I just agreed to help free these ghosts.”

Nopony said anything else. Luna took that moment of time to walk up to the scythe that was stuck in the ground. She looked at her left hoof, and took the three fingers out. Putting her hoof on it, she locked the fingers. It took a little bit of effort, but she managed to loosen it and pull it out. She held it up in front of her face. There was not much to it. The only thing that got her attention was the skull at the top of it. Although she still had her sword, she decided to keep it.

Luna turned around towards everypony else. “We should go now. Maybe if we defeat these ‘three evils’ and set the ghosts free, they can help us get back home,” she said.

“Maybe they can also help Twilight! You know, because they’re spirits…” Sweetie added.

“Maybe. I guess we will just have to find out.”

They began to exit the path where they came in when they heard another laugh. However, this one sounded different. It had a more evil sound to it. They turned around, and to no surprise, saw nothing. The laughing grew louder and louder, and brought with it the sound of yelling through the air. “No! Stay away!” said one of the voiced. “Leave my presence at once!” They did not seem to be warning them, however. They seemed to be yelling at each other.

“Not again,” Luna complained to herself. “Who’s there?!”

“Well, I am, of course,” a voice from the air answered.

“Who are you? What is your name? Show yourself!” Rainbow Dash entered in.

“Would you like to know my name? Do you really like to know who I am? I shall let you think about that for some moments.”

“Don’t play your games with me! Who are you?”

“Very well then,” the voice chuckled. Winds started circling around the spot where they scythe was previously, bringing with it darkened clouds. On the ground, two eagle talons formed, and behind them, two goat legs. The rest of him began to come into form. It appeared to have the body of a lion, a tail that was a snake and a goat head with glowing red eyes and two massive horns that curled in front of him. “I am… Anger.”

“Anger?” Sweetie questioned.

“Spirit of, well… Rage, disharmony, wrath… Do I need to go on?”

“What do you want from us?” Luna shouted.

“I want that scythe. A little pony like you should not be playing with toys like that.”

“Explain to me why should I give it to you?”

Anger laughed. “Explain to me why should I not take thy eyes?”

At this, Luna was very disturbed. Never before had she heard somepony make a threat like that, and she did not know how to respond to it.

Anger walked up to Luna. As he towered over her like a giant, he looked down. “Now then, give me the scythe.”

Luna felt fear start to build up inside her. She did not want to give him the scythe, but at the same time, she did not know what Anger might actually do to her if she did not. Then she realized something; this must be one of the three evils that the ghosts were talking about.

“No!”

“Very well then. I shall take it from you!”

Anger held up one of his eagle talons and made a fist. Luna began to feel something pulling at her. She felt a sharp pain running down the right side, and then suddenly her cheek was cut open as blood began to pour out. Acting out of instinct, Luna swung at Anger with the scythe, as the blade cut into his chest. Anger backed away as the pulling stopped.

“You fool!” he spat, clutching his wound. “You just dug thy own grave!”

Anger slashed at Luna, knocking her back to the others.

“Princess, are you okay?” Fluttershy could not help worrying about her.

“I… I don’t know.”

They all looked up at Anger. His snake tail started to reach out towards them all. Its mouth opened up and began glowing. “How can a pony fight if there is no rage behind it?” They felt a chill running through their bodies. The snake was absorbing part of them through its mouth. “Let us see you fight yourselves, now.”

Anger stepped back some more and took a deep breath. Instead of simply letting it out, he spat out fire, lighting all of the plants and trees as they screamed. Out of the fire, five beings began to rise up. Eventually, they took the form of Luna, Rainbow, Sweetie, Fluttershy and Twilight. They all seemed to have the burning look of wrath in their eyes.

The fire continued to burn through the trees and plants, but the five clones walked through it as if there was nothing there. “Everypony, get your swords, now!” Luna stressed.

Rainbow quickly drew her sword, its edges glowing cyan blue. Her clone continued to walk towards her. Rainbow had fought a clone of herself before, so she figured this time it would not be much different. But then, she looked up to see a hoof coming at her. She could not react quick enough and soon found herself on the ground with a growing pain in her head.

She got up as quick as she could. For some reason, she was not mad about just being kicked in the face. Not only the slightest bit. The only reason she could think of to strike back was to protect herself. She did not know why. Why was she not angry about being hit in the?

She looked at her sword. There was only one thing to do with it; protect herself. She swung the sword at her clone, but it quickly flew up out of sight. The sound of hooves landing on the grass was heard behind her, followed by the sound of crunching leaves. Rainbow stood there, not moving, waiting. Waiting for her to come closer. When she felt like she might have been close enough, she spun around and attacked it with her sword. The clone could not avoid this attack, but to her surprise, the blade did not cut into it, but however she still bested it. The Rainbow Dash clone faded into a being of light, not a pony anymore. It had no definite shape. Rainbow stood there as the light went into her. She collapsed to the ground, trying to grasp what just happened.

Fluttershy backed away as her clone continued to walk towards her. She did not want to fight more than all of the rest of them, but at the same time, she knew she had to. She looked at the gun on her right hoof and aimed it carefully at the other Fluttershy. Taking her time, she fired a yellow beam at her. The beam hit and she flew back, rolling across the ground.

Fluttershy had to take a moment to question what she just did. Even if it was an evil clone of herself, she did not want to kill it, or even hurt it in the slightest way.

“Fluttershy!” she heard Rainbow calling. “Finish it!”

“No, I can’t. I can’t kill it.”

Rainbow looked over at the clone of Fluttershy, still on the ground, not moving. By now she realized that what Anger took from them was that emotion; Anger. As long as their clone was still alive, they could not be mad. She knew that if Fluttershy still had that emotion, she would be fighting back because of what he did to Luna.

Rainbow took a moment to think, and then walked over to the Fluttershy clone with her sword. She gave a swing, and cut through her, as she faded into light, that eventually found its way to Futtershy.

She descended to her feet, heavily breating.

“Fluttershy, we have to help the others!” Rainbow pleaded.

Luna’s clone seemed to be stronger then anypony else’s. This one also seemed to be releasing more of the rage it was made from as it used its magic to overpower her. The clone took Luna with its powers and threw down to the ground with an unexpectedly strong force. While she was recovering, the clone took the opportunity to take down a tree that was behind her. She managed to react quick enough to get out of the way, but was caught off guard by a flying branch.

Sweetie Belle, delivering the final blow to her clone’s head, looked over at Luna. She saw that she needed all the help she could get. Her clone was getting the best of her, and as if that was not enough, Twilight’s clone was going over to help. Twilight’s condition must have already been bad enough. In the clone’s eyes, Twilight was already dead.

She quickly rushed over to Luna to help, but the clone picked up both her and Luna with its magic. It slowly began to walk over to the fire, still burning through the trees.

“No!” Fluttershy yelled. Normally when something was harming her friends she would simply scold them and make them apologize, but this time was different. This time it was trying to kill them. She had to do something more. Something she hoped she would never have to do.

With her sword equipped, Fluttershy sprinted over to the clone of Twilight who was slowly making her way to assist the Luna clone. She closed her eyes and then stabbed the clone through the side, as she faded into light, and made its way back to the real Twilight.

Luna, slipping back into consciousness, noticed that behind her was getting hotter and hotter. She realized that she had to react quickly. With the scythe still in her possession, she swung it at the clone, only to be stopped by its powers. With pain flooding through her body, she felt as if this could be it. She would be thrown into the fire with Sweetie Belle, and there was nothing she could do to save either of them.

All of a sudden, she saw a blade with yellow edges come through her clone’s neck. She tried to look past her blurry vision to see who it was, but could not. Slowly, the clone faded into light and made its way back to her as she collapsed to the ground.

“Princess!” Sweetie yelled.

“Come on, it’s okay now,” Fluttershy tried to get her up.

“I would’t get your hopes up just yet,” Anger’s voice called out. They looked up to see him walking out of the flames. “You still have me to get through before you sleep soundly this day.”

“Anger, stop this!” Rainbow Dash commanded.

“How cute; a pony thinks she can tell one of the Brothers what to do. Ha! How priceless,” his voice remained in a dark tone. “If you want me to stop, then you will have to make me!”

“Fine!” Rainbow dashed up to the chimera with her sword ready to attack. Before she could do anything, though, the blue snake head on his tail bit down on the blade. The fingers holding the sword snapped off as it pulled away.

“Hahaha!” Anger laughed. “You ponies don’t stand a chance.”

Taking her time, Luna pulled herself up. Anger saw this and walked over to her. “This is your last chance. I either take the scythe, or your life. The choice shall be yours.”

“N… No!”

“Very well then.”

“Princess! What are you doing?” Luna shouted.

Anger opened his mouth wide, preparing to blow out fire. Luna took the opportunity and inserted the blade of the scythe deep within his throat. Anger pulled back viciously as the scythe ripped through him. He rolled around on the ground as black flames began to spread throughout his body.

“What a surprise, you’ve managed to kill me,” he said getting himself up. He continued to laugh as the flames grew bigger and began to burn through his skin. Soon, his head was nothing more than a goat skull. “Watch out for my brothers. They shall only get stronger.”

They stood there watching as Anger burned into dust and blew away with the wind. Behind him, the flames that he created earlier began to burn out, revealing the grey sky above a forest.

“Is... Is it over?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Luna, her vision still blurry and her body still aching in pain, searched for the answer. “Yes… I believe so.”

“What happens next?” Fluttershy quietly added in.

“I guess… We keep going until we find a way back home.”

Escaping Stargazer

The six of us woke up in a cold, empty room. I could not remember much of what happened. Only that the aliens were attacking me for freeing Twilight. I remember seeing Luna take her and jump through the portal as it closed not two seconds after. The electricity must have made us pass out.

Anyways, I woke everypony else up and began to search for a way out. The only exit was a locked door. There was window, but going through there would be the stupidest think a pony could do. The only thing that Stargazer did not count on, apparently, was locking me up, one of the most powerful unicorns alive.

I used my magic and grabbed hold of the door. It took a lot of effort, but soon enough the door broke off the wall and came right out. What came right after that was what must have been the most annoying noise I have ever heard in my one and a half thousand years being alive. It was coming from a speaker on the wall, so I figured it must have been some kind of alarm. As soon as it went off, though, I immediately ripped it out. I didn’t think it stopped anypony from hearing, however. At this I was right, because the next thing we heard was Stargazer’s voice coming from... somewhere. We ripped the speaker out, so I know it was not from there. But that’s not important.

“I see you have woken up,” he said. “I was not expecting that door to hold you. By the way, I don’t bother talking back to me, because I cannot hear you.”

“Hmph, figures,” I heard Applejack whisper under her breath.

“Now, there should be guards waiting for you somewhere out there. Do not try to run, because they have you surrounded. I will be waiting for you.”

I had to wonder if we really were surrounded, or if he was just saying that so we wouldn’t move.

“Princess,” Scootaloo called for me. “Do we stay?”

“No,” I took a moment to look over my shoulder. For whatever reason, the aliens left us with our guns and swords. “If we really are surrounded, then we can easily break out. Either way, we have to find our way to Stargazer.”

“How do we do that? These ships are HUGE.” Pinkie asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

I slowly poked my head out the door. I did not see anypony. I thought that Stargazer must have been lying. That was all confirmed when a strange green gas started to leak through vents in the wall. I instantly pulled everypony around me and put up a force field to protect us from it. We dashed out of the room to make our escape, but to our surprise, there actually were ponies coming to get us. They sure were surprised to see us as they argued with each other about the gas being released.

One of them finally stomped his hoof to get the others’ attention, and then they all started firing at us. Of course, however, they were all being deflected by the shield. There were at least ten of them on each side of us, so I grabbed all of them and threw them behind. We got a running start, but they were gaining on us.

Pinkie was right. The ship was really big. I didn’t know where to go. There were so many rights and lefts. There must have been a map or… something somewhere, right? There at least was on the Celestial Space Station, but of course, they were two different things from two different planets.

Keeping them all close to me, I led everypony to an elevator where we could escape them. I pressed the only button available, the door opened, and we all piled in. There was another series of buttons inside the elevator. None of them made sense to me. They all consisted of strange symbols and markings that I could not understand. I was forced to guess, and pressed one that looked like a “v” turned to its side. The doors slid shut, and the elevator began its journey upward.

“Okay, so now that we escaped them, how do we get to Stargazer?” Applejack brought up the question again.

“If we are lucky, he will come to us,” I answered.

“But, what if he doesn’t?” Rarity had to ask.

“Then we find our way.”

The elevator soon came to a halt, and the doors opened. No longer in the force field, we all exited and took a look around. Everything was the same; long hallways with multiple rooms on each side. Only, unlike before, all of these doors were closed. It looked as if you needed a higher authority to access them.

Without hesitation, walked up to one of the doors. I could not help but wonder what was behind them. What if they were planning some kind of attack on Equestria? Some kind of master plan that was being mixed up for all of these years?

I grabbed the door with my magic and began to pull out. I heard the metal snap, and I was then able to break the door off completely. I threw it back into the room at two aliens who were working at some kind of control panel. There were two more of them that were watching through the window at a meeting. The room looked like the room that Twilight was in, except there was no portal and no machines draining magic. I took those aliens and threw them through the window. With glass everywhere, I looked down at the room below us and fired a light pink beam from my right hoof at them. I had to make sure they would stay down.

A map that was in the middle of the table they were around floated up to us at my command. I looked at it, and the image was quite disturbing. It was indeed Equestria. Drawn around it were several of the ships with arrows pointing to various spots on the map.

“This is it,” I put my hoof down. “We have to find Stargazer and stop all of this, now!”

“But we have no idea where he is, or even how to get to him,” Scootaloo reminded.

I thought for a second, but quickly came up with a solution for that. I lifted up the door that I had thrown in and freed one of the aliens. He was still awake, as he moaned and grunted.

“You are to take me to Stargazer, do you hear me?” I commanded.

“W… Why should I?” he argued.

“How about I say bring me to Stargazer or you die?” I did not want to make a threat like that, but I had to. I needed to find Stargazer so I could stop all of this and save Equestria.

He simply laughed while he struggled to get himself up off of the ground. “ I would rather die!” he slowly brought his gun up and pressed it against the side of his head. Before I could do anything, he fired and fell down in a puddle of blood. I had never seen anything like it before. I simply stood there wide-eyed. It was clear that these aliens were not going to lead me to him. We would have to find our own way.

As everypony else was in a circle staring at him, I exited the room. I had seen enough. They all soon followed me as I resumed walking down the hall. There was a door at the end of the hall to the left of the elevator. There was a door at the end of it that I targeted. I ripped it off like I did with the first two, and inside was what looked like might have been the boiler room, or something to that affect. There were several tanks next to each other, each marked with a different word in their language.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Where do we go now?” Rarity asked.

“I don’t know,” at this point I did not know what to do. Then the thought came to me; why didn’t I just let the guards escort us to him? That sure would have made our jobs a lot easier.

I turned around and walked the other way. When we got about half way down the hall, the elevator door opened and about twenty guards stopped us.

“Don’t move or I’ll kill you all!” One of them said. Of course, that threat didn’t scare me. I knew if I had to I could easily take them all out.

“Come with us,” said another one.

Without saying anything else, I silently agreed to go with them. “Princess, what are you doing?” Scootaloo whispered to me as we were walking.

“We want to go to Stargazer, right? Well, they are going to take us to him. Really, we were foolish not to go with them in the first place,” I explained.

The first thing we did was go through the elevator again. After that, we just went through more hallways. It was really quite boring, actually. The only thing I could think of was how hot and stuffy it was inside that suit. It was really uncomfortable. I wanted to at least take my helmet off, but I figured it might be better to keep it on.

We finally turned left to a long, dark hallway. At the end, the door looked different from all the other ones. It looked as if it was more secure and harder to open. As we got closer to it, there were words written on it in golden letters. Of course, I could not read them. They were in the alien language. We stopped as one of the guards went to type a code in.

The door slid to the right, and on the other side was what looked like the control room. The first thing that caught my eye was the huge windshield that took up the whole wall. Apart from that, there were several rows of desks that contained buttons, levers, and switches. Waiting by one of them was Stargazer. He was the only one inside, for some reason. The guards shoved us in and closed the door behind us.

He walked up to us. Like the guards, he still had his suit on, so we could not see his face. “Ah, you have arrived,” he observed.

“Yes. What do you want from us?” I responded.

“I want to see you guy dead. I cannot have you getting in the way of my plan, you see.”

“Your plan? You mean the one to destroy Equestria?”

“And how do you know about that?”

“I have seen your plans. Plus, you have been up here for eight years. What else would you be doing?”

“Well, we do not exactly know the way back home. We have been up here for so long. We were lucky, really, to find this planet.”

There was a moment of silence. I had run out of things to say to Stargazer. I was waiting to see what he was going to say or even do next.

“Hey, what’s up with the wings?” Scootaloo saw the metallic wings attached to Stargazer’s back.

“What’s up? What is that supposed to mean?” Stargazer sounded confused. They obviously were not masters at speaking English.

“What are they for?”

“Well, why didn’t you say that? You see, naturally I am an earth pony. However, my scientists were able to come up with these. Now, earth ponies and unicorns can fly if they choose. They just cannot walk on clouds.” He pressed a button on his chest and fire spat out of the bottom of the wings, lifting him up into the air. “Now, any other questions before I put bullets in your heads?”

I knew that I had to something. I looked around, but saw nothing that could help us. Then I saw out the windshield was another ship. I thought that maybe if I took control of this one, I could crash it into the other one. It would involve the deaths of several ponies, and for that matter wasn’t something that I wanted to do, but I had to save Equestria. This would at least slow them down.

I used my magic to grab hold of the door we came in through. With all my strength, I attempted to open it. It was a lot harder then all of the other doors. Stargazer must have seen me trying to open it, because he started to shoot at me. I joined him up in the air. He still attempted to shoot me, but I kept dodging his bullets. I tried to fly around to his back, but he was too fast for me.

“I could use some help!” I shouted. Immediately, Applebloom shot a beam at Stargazer. It didn’t hit him, but it sure did distract him which was all that I needed. I took the opportunity to get around to his back. I pulled out my sword and hit him in the head with it. As he lost consciousness, he lost all control and started flying everywhere until he was stopped by a wall. Landing on the ground must have pressed the button on his chest again because the flames cut off.

I returned to the ground and looked around. There was still no one else in the room. “Applebloom, Scootaloo, you two guard the door. Do not let anypony through,” I ordered. “Pinkie, Applejack, and Rarity, help me figure out how to control this thing.”

“Okay!” Pinkie pranced over to one of the control desks.

“What do you want to do?” Applejack asked.

“That ship over there,” I pointed my hoof towards the ship out the windshield. “We’re going to crash into it. I have to save Equestria, and if it involves killing everypony on board these ships, then that is what has to be done.”

I pulled down a lever, and nothing happened, or at least, nothing that I could see from there. I looked over at Pinkie who was pulling every lever, turning every knob, and flicking every switch. I thought to myself, maybe I would have better luck just doing that. It would be faster than going through all of these one by one, anyways.

I looked over at all of the other control desks. One of them had a glowing blue button on it. It looked promising, so I went over and pressed it. As soon as I did, the whole ship started shaking. I looked over at a lever that was beside it. It was resting in the middle, so I pushed it forward. After a few seconds, I began to notice the ship was accelerating.

At this time, Stargazer was regaining consciousness. He saw that the ship was moving closer to the other one, and sprung to his feet. “What are you doing?”

“Saving Equestria!” I spat at him. To make sure he could not stop me, I broke the lever off. By then, the ship was beginning to pick up more speed.

“Zvilk ochrk, pivnd wskild doshtin!” a stallion spoke from a radio somewhere on the ship.

“Vilk volgagi! Gol frgia!” Stargazer spoke to the radio, then directed his attention towards us. “You fools! You are just going to wind up killing yourselves too!”

“I will make sure that does not happen.” Without giving warning, I turned around and shot a beam through the windshield. As it shattered, Stargazer put his grip on one of the desks to avoid being sucked out. The rest of us were thrown out like rag dolls next to an explosion. As soon as we were outside, I grabbed Applejack and Pinkie Pie. Rarity I grabbed with my magic as I flapped my wings to get us away from the two ships. Scootaloo grabbed Applebloom and did the same. The next thing I saw was the ship that we were just in collide into the side of the other one, followed by several explosions. Soon, they were completely swallowed up in flames as pieces of burnt metal flew everywhere.

The last thing I was thinking of was how I could not hear the explosions. Not even a little bit. It was as if I suddenly became def. That thought quickly left my head as we were blown back and slammed into another ship. I knew immediately that we had to board it. Luna told me that the suits had only a limited air supply, and I did not know how long we had been using it.

I looked around for an entrance, and then over at the others who were simply floating around beside me.

“Can everypony hear me?” I asked.

“I can hear you,” Rarity responded.

Everypony else confirmed that they could also hear me shortly after.

“Very well, then. That’s working. Listen, we have to find a way inside this ship. I don’t know how much air these suits have left.”

“Right!” Applejack said.

We all searched around for a while, but found nothing. I started to think that the only way we were going to get in was through a window, which was something that I really did not want to do. I realized that my sword was still in my hoof. I waited for a moment, looking one last time to see if there was another way. From what I could see, there was not. First, I pulled myself over to a nearby window. Then, I took my sword and gave a good swing at the window. Like the windshield did previously, the window shattered. The force of the air being sucked out threw me back a ways. I quickly recovered, though, and kept a safe distance away. From what I could see, there were no aliens inside the room, but a lot of papers and strange looking utensils flew out.

I looked at the room, wondering when all of the air would be out. At that moment I noticed that the whole room was being ripped apart. There was nothing I could do, though. I could only stay there and watch. Everypony else came to where I was.

“Is this our way in?” Pinkie asked.

“Hopefully. If the room is still intact by the time the air is out, this will be our way.”

Death is Near

Here it is. A while ago I mentioned this chapter was ready and needed to be edited. I did not edit it completely. Some parts still may not make sense. I got caught up in other things, so I kind of quit doing this. But I figured that I could at least post the chapter that I had.

Luna was leading the others through the forest, tumbling and almost unable to keep her balance. Pain was still flowing through almost every inch of her body. The burning pain from the cut on her cheek was still present. The thoughts in her head told her if she had to face two more spirits like that, she would rather die.

Rainbow Dash took off her helmet and threw it on the ground, not wanting to worry about it anymore. The cold air felt nice on her sweaty face. Luna seemed to be breathing fine without it, so she figured she would be okay.

Luna stopped and stuck the scythe into the dirt. She struggled to keep herself standing up. “I… I can’t go on.”

“But princess, we have to,” Rainbow pleaded.

Luna did not say anything more. She had no more strength anywhere in her body as her legs gave up and all consciousness left.

At t that moment, the sound of hooves crushing down on leaves was heard in the distance. They all looked up, but only saw darkness. It sounded like a pony was slowly walking towards them.

The sound got closer, but through the trees they could still only see darkness. Sweetie Belle walked next to the princess.

“Princess, get up!” she nudged her a few times, but she did not respond in any way.

Rainbow held up her gun, ready to blast at whatever was coming, although knowing the spirit they just fought, she did not know if it would do much damage. At the same time, Sweetie pulled the scythe out of the ground.

Finally, something was coming into view. From the darkness they could see a glowing royal blue orb of light getting closer with each footstep. After a few seconds, a pony was visible. Most of the left side of his face was nothing more than a skull, the orb replacing his eye. The right side of his face was mostly still there, but had patches of rotting flesh.

He wore a black hood as well as a torn up, moldy, dirt filled robe that was being dragged behind him. Out of his hood, hanging over his right eye was a black mane with white streaks running through it.

He kept walking towards them. None of them knew what to do. They just stood there with a look of fear on their faces. It looked like his attention was turned to Luna, but they could be sure. Once he got no more than a few feet away, he stopped.

“W-Who are you? What do want from us?” Rainbow tried not to show it, but inside she was just as scared as the rest of them.

The torn up pony said nothing. He remained still, his head turned down to the princess.

“Hey! I asked you a question!”

“I,” he finally spoke up. His voice sounded like one pony whispering and another talking normally at the same time. “I believe you have something of mine.” He reached his hoof out to Sweetie, not even bothering to look up.

As soon as the hoof came up, Sweetie jumped back. “You…you mean this?” she immediately offered the scythe to him. Once it made contact with his hoof, the fingers holding it unlocked by themselves and the pony took possession of it.

As soon as she saw him and the scythe together, Rainbow realized who this he must have been. “Are...are you… the Grim Reaper?”

Finally, he looked up, but not at Rainbow Dash. “I prefer to go by Death.”

“So… Why are you here? Are you going to…take us?” Fluttershy’s voice became softer and filled more with worry with every word.

“Take you? You mean your souls?” Death laughed. “No. You cannot believe everything you here. Taking souls is not my job. I am merely the spirit of death, not your cause.” Death looked down at his scythe doing what appeared to be nothing more. “I see… some of the power has been restored.”

“What? What do you mean?” Rainbow asked.

“How many spirits have you encountered before me?” he asked.

“Umm, when we got here there was a spirit who talked to us, but we couldn’t see him and he didn’t tell us his name,” Sweetie answered.

“There was also a spirit named Anger that we fought,” Rainbow Dash added.

“Interesting… Anger and his brothers have been enemies of mine for millennia. In a recent battle with them, I lost, and they took my power. When you killed Anger, some of it was restored.”

“So, who was the spirit that talked to us when we arrived?” Sweetie couldn’t help wondering.

“So, you couldn’t see him and he didn’t tell you his name? Tell me, what else was there? What did you feel in his presence?”

“It was cold. And it sounded like there were clocks ticking.”

“Just as I thought,” Death smiled. “ I shall tell you who it was later. Right now, you guys look pretty beat up. Allow me to help you,” Death offered.

“Help us?”

“Yes. One of the powers you managed restored just happens to be my ability to heal.”

“Hang on,” Rainbow stopped him. “What do we have to give you?”

“What do you have to give me? Nothing. Why would I ask for anything in return?”

“Well… Um…” she did not know how to answer.

“Do not worry. I am a friend.” He turned his head down towards Luna. “A closer one then you think.”

The blade on Death’s scythe began to glow white and he began moving in Twilight’s direction. “And who might this be?”

“This is Twilight Sparkle,” Sweetie responded.

Death noticed the three drills in her horn. “This was not the work of any spirit I know,” he said. “What happened?”

“Well, that is a long story,” Rainbow began. “But… she was captured by aliens who were using her magic to power their ships. You don’t have to believe me, but that’s the truth.”

“In the years I have been alive I have seen many unusual things. But, if that is not enough, I have seen the ships you speak of.”

“Well, can you still help her?”

“I can.”

He reached his hoof up to her horn. Nopony knew what he was doing. They were surprised to see that his hoof went right through, taking the three drills with. He threw the drills on the ground, and then stepped back. He held his glowing scythe up and made contact with Twilight’s head. After a few seconds, the holes in her horn closed up. She blinked her eyes a few times. Death pulled his scythe away and looked at her.

“Twilight,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

“W… What?” She looked around, confused at where she was.

“Twilight!” Fluttershy yelled and rushed toward her.

“You’re back!” Rainbow added.

“Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash! Where… Where am I?” She then turned her attention towards Death. The sight of the rotting pony gave her an uneasy feeling. “Who… Who are you?”

Death explained who he was, where they were, and what was happening. She did not know what to think.

Before anything else could happen, Death heard Luna get up behind him as leaves crunched.

“Princess!” Sweetie shouted. “You are awake!”

“What… What happened?” Still filled with pain all over her body, she slowly lifted her head up, only to be met with surprise. As soon as she saw Death, her eyes widened as she stepped back and gasped. “D-D… Death?”

“Hello, Luna. It has been a long time since we last met.”

Rainbow stood there in confusion. “Wait, what’s going on? You guys…know each other?”

“Y-Yeah,” Luna tried to pull herself together. “Yes.”

“Luna and I met last millennium. I went you visit your world when I noticed craters on the moon that weren’t there before. I went up there, and what I found was a weeping pony.”

“Death helped me get through the thousand year banishment,” Luna explained.

“Luna, now that you are awake, allow me to help you,” Death changed the subject, as if he was in a hurry for something. He held out his scythe. It greeted Luna’s forehead and began glowing again. Immediately, Luna felt the pain drain out of her and the cut on her cheek closed, leaving a scar. “That scar will be gone within a few days.”

The princess put her head down. “Thank you, Death.”

“Listen,” the spirit called out. “My time with you grows short. There is something I must say. I can help you get back home, but in order to do so, my power needs to be at its maximum. That means, you will have to battle Anger’s brothers.”

“Anger has brothers?” Sweetie wondered.

“He has two. His older brother is Nightmare, and his younger brother is Fear. However, now that you have killed Anger, his strength has been divided between the two, making them more powerful. I do not know which one you will battle first, but either way, beware. I would fight them off myself, but in my current condition, they would crush me.” Death looked down at his scythe, and then back up at Luna. “Luna at this moment, my scythe will serve you better then it will me. Take it with you.”

“A-Are you sure?”

“This scythe is the only thing that can completely kill Anger’s brothers.”

Luna accepted Death’s offer and took the scythe back.

“Goodbye, for now. Keep in mind, though, we shall meet again.”

With that, Death was gone quicker then he came.

“Come on, we have to keep moving if we want to find Fear and Nightmare.”

Luna turned around only to be stopped by a gigantic bird that towered in front of her. She jumped back and landed on the ground.

“Did I hear my name?” he said. He spoke in a growl, making him almost unable to understand.

“Who are you?” said Luna. She figured he must have either been Fear or Nightmare.

“I am Nightmare. I believe you are Luna, am I wrong? You are the one who killed my brother.”

“Yeah, that’s right!”

Nightmare flapped his wings, almost blowing them all back, and lifted himself into the air. “The time has come for me to feed.”

“What do you mean by feed?” Rainbow shouted.

Nightmare laughed at Rainbow. There was a fire in his eyes that she didn’t like. “I will see you on the other side. For now, close your eyes, and awaken into your nightmare.”

They all felt dizziness start to overcome them and started to lose balance. The feeling of complete tiredness and exhaust conquered them, and they fell down to the ground, one by one.

As soon as she hit the ground, Sweetie Belle woke up, but everything was different. There was darkness everywhere. Screams of terror were heard everywhere. She got up and started to look around. When she turned around, she could see a mountain that was not there before. On top of it was a silhouette of Nightmare with red eyes.

She stepped back, looking left and right trying to find the others. They were nowhere to be found. On the ground, shadows started to appear. They looked like hands running across the floor to meet Sweetie.

She backed away from them as they got closer.

“Stay back!” she screamed.

The hands ignored the command and continued to inch closer to her. She turned around and darted away from them. She did not care what she might find on the way, just as long as the hands were gone.

She had her head down, not looking where she was going. She was running as fast as she could only to smash into what felt like another pony. After both of them tumbled over, Sweetie opened her eyes to see who it was. What she saw was what looked like Fluttershy, except, it could not have been. Her eyes were completely black with blood running down from them. Her mane and tail were full of blood, and there were cuts all over her. Inside her mouth were razor sharp teeth covered in blood.

“F-FLUTTERSHY?” Sweetie shrieked.

The yellow pony looked at her and opened her mouth. Only, when her voice came out, there was an unusual pulse that seemed occur in the air, making Fluttershy look normal. “Sweetie, is that you?” she sounded petrified. Once she stopped speaking, the pulse came back and she went back to looking like the most terrifying thing she had ever seen before.

“Fluttershy! What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but we must find the others!”

The two of them stayed with each other, looking around for anypony else, or at least of a sign of them. They looked everywhere, but it was a lot harder than they thought it was going to be. Every time they moved out of the way from one tree, another seemed to appear out of no were.

“Hello? Is anypony there?” they heard a voice that sounded like Luna’s in the distance.

“Luna?” Sweetie responded to the voice. “Can you hear me?”

“Sweetie Belle! Is there anypony else with you?”

“Only Fluttershy.”

“Try to find me, okay?”

“Okay!”

The two of them nodded at each other, and then continued towards where the voice was coming from. As they went on, though, the trees began whispering to them. It was not like before when the whispers were coming through the air. This time, it was actually the trees.

“Join us,” they said. That seemed to be it. They were just repeating the same thing over and over again.

They kept running on, trying to ignore them, but they seemed to be casting as spell over them. Soon, they began to slow down and take in the words that were being released. Fluttershy stopped and turned to face one of the trees. The way the branches were spread out was telling her to come forth. She slowly started to walk to it, extending her arm out to make contact.

“Join us,” the tree whispered again.

She was not two inches away from it when Rainbow Dash swooped down, grabbing both her and Sweetie Belle. She flew around until she saw an open area that was free of trees to land.

“Rainbow!” Fluttershy gasped. “What… What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Where are Twilight and the princess?”

“We heard Luna not too long ago. We were just looking for her, or at least trying to,” said Sweetie.

They all looked around through the darkness, trying to find a way they could go to search for Twilight and Luna. When they were not paying attention, shadows began to creep up from behind them. They came up off of the ground, forming what would look like black sheet ghosts with glowing red eyes.

Fluttershy turned around to see them. The amount of fear that she was experiencing almost made her faint. The shadows were walking closer to her as she slowly backed away.

“Stay away from them!” Fluttershy looked over and saw Luna and Twilight standing together. Luna grabbed one of them using her unicorn magic and ripped it apart. Luna and Twilight finished off the rest of the shadows and then rushed over to the others.

“Princess, what is going on?” Sweetie cried.

“I do not know. But I have a feeling that in order to make it stop, we have to fight Nightmare.”

She looked up at the mountain in the distance. Although far away, they could still see Nightmare at the top sitting on his throne. “Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, I need you guys to come with me.”

“Where?” Fluttershy responded.

“To Nightmare.”

Luna took off to the sky in the direction of the mountain. Rainbow Dash looked at Fluttershy. “Come on, Fluttershy! We have to help her.”

Rainbow took off with Luna, and after squealing, Fluttershy joined her.

“Um… Princess, we are not going to actually, fight him, are we?” Fluttershy mumbled.

“We have to. I think it is the only way we can get out of this.”

“But what if it’s not? What if there is another way?”

“We will not know that unless we try.”

The air around them got colder and colder as they climbed higher into the air, inching their way to Nightmare. It soon felt as if they were outside in Ponyville on a snowy day, and they still had at least another mile to go.

“It’s getting really cold,” Rainbow announced.

“We have to keep going. We are almost there,” Luna encouraged.

The air was now almost too much to bear. They might as well have been frozen in a block of ice. As they were just about to reach the top of the mountain, the unexpected happened. All of their wings suddenly burst into flames. Out of shock and pain they stopped flying. They smashed against the side of the mountain several times on the way down.

When they landed on the ground, all of the pain quickly went away. No longer did they feel their wings burning and it did not even feel like they hit boulders and giant rocks on the way down.

“W-What was that?” Rainbow groaned.

Fluttershy struggled to get off the ground and the opened her eyes to find the others. When she looked at Rainbow she was horrified. All of the flesh on her wings was gone, leaving behind burned bones. She looked over at Luna and it was the same. She attempted to move her wings but could not. She could not even feel them. Looking over her shoulder, she took a glance at her own burnt, fatherless, boney wings.

“That was weird… Come on! We have to try again!” Luna tried to fly back up to the sky, but found she could not move her wings as well. That is when she took the time to notice Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. “What? What is this?” she began breathing heavily, not sure about what she should think.

Rainbow noticed that she could not feel her wings too. She looked over her shoulder and saw the same thing that the others saw. At this, she felt sick. It was almost as if she was about to pass out.

“Do not worry, my friends,” came a voice from above. It sounded like the same voice that spoke with them when they first arrived. “What you are seeing is not real. You are in Nightmare’s Dream.”

“We are in Nightmare’s Dream? Well, is there a way out?” Luna responded.

“The only way out… is to die.”

“Die? We can’t die!” Rainbow yelled.

“Wait, this all makes sense!” Luna decided.

“It does?”

“Yes! Nightmare’s Dream is just that, a dream. Or, I guess it is really more of a nightmare. But that is not important. A way to wake up from a dream is to die. T-That must be why hitting the mountainside didn’t hurt for that long. Nightmare does not want us to get out!”

“Luna, you’re right! We have to tell the others!” Rainbow shouted.

“No, they are too far away. Plus, if they are not out of here by the time we are, we can probably still help them.”

“So… how do we get out?” Fluttershy asked in her soft, quiet voice.

Luna looked around. There were trees everywhere. She looked at one branch in particular and pulled on it using her magic. At first, the branch was not moving at all. Then, it finally gave in and snapped off.

“Who’s first?” she asked.

Nopony said anything. They wanted to get out, but they wanted to do it as painless as possible.

“What are you going to do?” Rainbow wondered.

“Make it as quick as possible.”

“I… I guess I’ll go first.” Rainbow closed her eyes and waited for it to happen. Luna slowly brought the branch over to her. She turned it so that the side of it that was connected to the tree was facing her. She waited for a few seconds, trying to bring herself to do it. Then, she finally stabbed Rainbow through the back. She pulled it out and then looked at Fluttershy.

“Just… Just do it. Get it over with!”

Luna nodded her head. Taking a brief moment, she stabbed Fluttershy. She pulled the branch out and tossed it aside, trying to avoid looking at the two ponies she had just killed. She looked around for something heavy, like a boulder that she could use to kill herself. Stabbing herself with a branch would not exactly work too well.

She spied a loose rock next to the mountain. With her magic, she picked it up. It floated over to her and stopped above her head. Luna took a deep breath, thinking about the decision she was about to make. She closed her eyes and bent her three remaining legs and sat down. After that, her magic stopped and the boulder fell.

The boulder fell, but it did not crush her. It got to the point where she should have been dead, but was not. She opened her eyes, and sure enough she was back with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. None of them had really died, just as they thought. To make things better, all three of them had their wings back and Luna had her right leg.

“It worked!” she shouted.

“Yeah, but look,” Rainbow pointed behind Luna. There was Sweetie Belle and Twilight, both on the ground unconscious.

“What do we do?” Fluttershy came in.

“We have to help them. I mean, they are just dreaming, right?”

“How do you wake someone up from a dream?” Luna thought for a second and then walked over to Twilight. First, she nudged her with her hoof. It did not seem to affect her. Then she tried shaking her more. Still, nothing happened. “Okay,” she started. “I have an idea.”

“What is it?” Rainbow asked.

“Rainbow Dash, be ready to catch.”

“What? What do you mean? What are you doing?”

The princess ignored the questions and picked up Twilight with her hooves. She flapped her wings and ascended up into the sky. As she got higher, Rainbow realized what she was doing, and she did not like it. She was going to drop her.

“F-Fluttershy! Help me!” Rainbow, reacting quickly, took off to the sky. When Luna saw that they were below her, she released Twilight. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash struggled to see where she was going to be landing. When she was near, they reached their arms out. Twilight fell between them and woke up gasping for air. She looked down and saw how high they were.

“What are you doing? What is going on?!” she jumped up and squeezed Rainbow violently.

“Twilight, calm down!”

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy carefully brought Twilight to the ground and gently set her down. “What was that?” Twilight repeated.

“It was the only way I could think of to wake you up,” they looked up and saw Luna coming down from the sky. “Well, what did you see?”

“After you guys left Sweetie Belle and I, we heard a voice that told us the only way to get out of Nightmare’s Dream was to die, so we looked for a way. That is when I found a cliff. I jumped off first, and well, when I got to the bottom I woke up in Fluttershy and Rainbow’s arms.”

“So, the things that we do out here DO control the things that you do,” Luna observed.

She walked over to Sweetie Belle and picked her up like she did with Twilight. She brought her up as high as Twilight was, and then without warning, dropped her. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash rushed to their positions to catch her, and she landed in their arms, gasping for air. At first she had no idea what was going on, but then realized how high they were off the ground. After struggling to calm her down, they brought her to the ground and explained everything.

“So, now all we have left to do is find Nightmare,” Luna noted.

“Yea, about that,” Twilight began. “Who IS Nightmare? And where are we?”

“It is a long story. Now is not the time or the place. I will explain later.”

“You have escaped my dream. Well done, but that was nothing more than simple fun,” Nightmare’s growling voice spoke.

They turned around and saw Nightmare with his red eyes and bloody beak.

“Fun? What do you mean by that?” Sweetie’s voice had a tint of anger.

“Some spirits, like Discord, whom I know you have defeated, take delight in playing with their victims. My brothers and I take delight in watching them suffer.”

“This ends now!” Luna exclaimed.

Nightmare chuckled, “Do not think that just because you have the scythe of Death means you will take victory. First, I will skin you alive. Then, I will cook your flesh to perfection. It will be the best I have tasted yet!”

Luna ran at Nightmare with Death’s scythe, but then stopped half way there. She found that Nightmare was quite a bit bigger than Anger. He was also stronger. It would take more than charging to defeat him.

Rainbow Dash flew into the air and took aim at Nightmare. She fired a glowing cyan beam at him, but just before it hit, he disappeared, leaving everypony puzzled. Rainbow looked everywhere, breathing heavily. Nightmare could be anywhere now, and she had no way of telling where.

She turned around to see him floating behind her. In a flash, he wrapped his talon firmly around her arm, nearly crushing it. They both lifted into the air until they were high enough where a drop would kill her. However, knowing fully well that Rainbow could fly, he had another idea. Using his massive wings, he flapped them backwards, sending them like a bullet towards the ground.

Rainbow closed her eyes tightly. ‘This is it,’ she thought. With the others having no way to save her, she truly thought this would be the day she met her doom. Instead, Nightmare dug his talons deep into the ground, nearly shattering her arm.

Nightmare let out a bone chilling laugh as he disappeared again into the air. Rainbow simply laid there, trying to wrap her mind around the event that had just happened. She looked over at her crippled arm. The sight of it brought even more pain. How it was bending in ways she never thought were possible, and how pieces of blood-covered bone were visible.

“Rainbow!” Twilight shrieked as she rushed over with the others.

Nightmare’s laugh was still echoing throughout the air. They looked around, but he was still nowhere to be found. Luna readied her scythe for wherever Nightmare might show up again.

The silence around them was almost too much to bear. The only thing they could hear now was Nightmare’s laughter and the faint sound of wind. Every emotion in her body was now replaced with fear as she had no idea where Nightmare was.

With one quick swoop, Nightmare came down and swept Luna right off her feet. Before she knew it, Nightmare had a grip on the scythe. Still holding on, she was now speeding through the air. She looked up, and it appeared as if Nightmare was oblivious that she was there.

She decided to take advantage of it and pull herself up. She wrapped her right arm around his leg and unlocked the fingers on her left hoof to free it. At this point, Nightmare stopped and tried to shake Luna off. She gladly let go and kept herself up with her wings.

“Nightmare, end this now!”

“The only thing that I will end is your life.”

Now possessing the scythe, Nightmare put it into one talon and swung at Luna. She reacted quickly and dodged the attack while she pulled out her sword. Nightmare made another attack, but this time Luna blocked it. Frustrated, Nightmare grabbed her by the neck and threw her back. Luna looked up at Nightmare. He spread out his wings as covered them.

“You shall now see my true power!” By now his whole body was cloaked in flames, including his eyes.

Luna reached her arm out to fire a beam, only to find that it was empty. She could not refill it now, though. Before she had time to even think about it, Nightmare spat out a ball of fire. She was able to avoid easily, barely having to do anything. Avoiding attacks was the easy part. Making them was something entirely different.

She knew that the only way to effectively strike him was to get around to his back. Watching Nightmare, there was going to be no easy way to do that. She looked down. The only thing she could was trees. ‘Maybe that is just what I need,’ she thought.

There was a fallen branch nearby that she picked up. She held it up in front of Nightmare.

“Ha! You puny pony!”

He inhaled a great amount of air, and let out an even larger amount of fire at the branch. Luna could feel the heat and wind blowing her mane back. After the flame went down, the branch was thinner and glowing red. Ignoring it, she used it to smack Nightmare across the face with her maximum strength. She managed to buy herself some time, and used it to get around him.

Once at his back, she used her magic and the flames dissipated. Her right hoof was set upon his back as her left was in air charging up her strength. In one swift blow, she inserted her sword deep into Nightmare’s back. As he was caught up making an ear-bleeding cry of pain, she removed the sword, flew around to his front side, and sliced off half of his wing.

Nightmare was now squirming around in the air. The sight of blood gushing from his wing almost made her puke.

“You, damned pony!” he screamed and spat several fireballs at her, all of them missing. “This I’ll make sure you BURN!”

Luna immediately flew away from Nightmare as he attempted to chase her. As she was flying, she noticed more fireballs being coming at her that seemed to be getting increasingly hotter. She turned around and watched as Nightmare flew at her, tumbling over the air.

His beak began glowing orange. She knew that she only had a short amount of time before Nightmare fired again. She could just dodge it again, but this time she wanted to do something else. She took the few seconds she had left to cast another spell upon her sword that she learned a few years back.

With navy blue glittering flames now covering her sword, she waited for the attack to come. Soon, the roaring sound of fire entered her ears as the ball of fire came flying. She first used her magic to slow it down, then, with all of her strength, she reflected it back at him. Nightmare simply put his one good wing in front of him to protect him and the flaming ball broke apart.

She looked up at his face and how fire was coming out of his eyes. She could not fight him for much longer. The only thing she was doing was making him angrier. If she wanted to defeat him, she would need the scythe. That is when she looked down and noticed the others.

Luna began flying down towards them. If she got to them, they could help get it back. She flew as fast as she could, forgetting for a split second that Nightmare was there. But that was all the time he needed. Soon, she found a great, burning pain in her left wing. She looked over to see that it was completely blanketed in fire. At that moment, she stopped flying. She did not know what to do.

She kept trying to put it out, but it was doing nothing. Distracted by her burning wing, she missed that fact that she was quickly approaching the earth. Flapping her wings probably harder than she ever had before, she tried to keep herself up. However, with her blazing wing, she quickly glided towards the ground, hitting it like a meteor.

“Princess!” Twilight rushed over to Luna as fast as she could. “Your wing!”

Twilight Sparkle did the quickest thing she could think of to put the fire out. She lifted up pieces of mud from the ground and spread it across her wing.

“Th-Thank you, Twilight.” Luna lifted her head up and looked behind her. Nightmare was attempting to come after her, but he could not stay up with only half a wing. Soon, he crashed into the ground even harder than she did. Twilight gazed at him, only to be stopped by the scythe falling from the sky as the blade dug into the ground beside her. “Twilight,” Luna used all the air she had left in her. Twilight looked at her, more worried than ever before. “Take him out.” Luna’s head dropped back down.

Twilight looked at Nightmare, slowly recovering from his fall, and then back at the princess. She still had almost no idea what was going on, or where they were. All she knew was that Nightmare had to be stopped.

“It must be done.” She lifted the scythe out of the dirt and ran at Nightmare. Once she was no more than ten feet away from him, she spun it around and dug it deep into his chest.

Nightmare released one more scream. This time, it was a scream of death. Finally, the last bit of life slipped from his grip and he collapsed.