“Man, this Moondancer character can’t punch for shit,” grumbled Loona. The Hellhound brushed away a wisp of her white hair as she fumbled with her game controller. “Is she this crap at fighting in the real world?”
Princess Luna sat next to the fuming Hellhound. The large plush-cushioned couch was normally where Luna would play her favorite games with Celestia. Today, however, the Princess of the Night was asked to play host to this vulgar teenage bipedal wolf-woman.
Luna coughed, suppressing the urge to lecture her peculiar guest about her foul mouth. “Well, the game is called ‘Them’s Fightin’ Nerds’ for a reason.”
“Yeah, because the characters are all wimps. A Hellhound puppy could take these dinguses out real quick! Except for that one dude . . .uh . . . Starburst fruit chew!”
“Sunburst, Loona.”
After Moondancer got knocked into the sky by the light brown colt, which made him dance on his hind legs, Loona tossed her controller onto the table in front of her. “I’m not drunk enough to enjoy this stupid game. You got any beer anywhere?”
“I never drink when I’m on the clock. Besides, aren’t you too young for that sort of thing?”
Loona turned her blood-red eyes towards her host. “Oh, shit! Are you serious? My dad said you guys were starry-eyed innocent types. Where is he, anyway?”
“I believe Blitzo said he was having dinner with Stolas. He’ll drop by in a few hours to take you home.”
Loona smirked. “I don’t know what daddy sees in that four-eyed feather-duster, but whatever.”
“The heart does what the heart does, Loona. I’ve seen many kinds of relationships in my time.”
The Hellhound held up a gloved hand. “Look, Princess, I’m not gay-bashing my dad. Okay? I’m glad he’s happy. It’s just that when he told me and the crew about this land of candy-colored ponies called Equestria, I thought he blew a blood vessel in his brain. Blitz wouldn’t stop jabbering about that lemon muffin that Punker Pie made.”
“Pinkie Pie, Loona.”
She snorted. “Whatever. After a few days of telling us about this place, dad got the idea to send all four of us here. Figured we could get as much out of this place as he does.”
“How did you hear about me?”
“Some pony named Triscuit Spackle or something said my name was similar . . . what are you snickering at?”
Shaking her head, Luna replied, “Twilight Sparkle, dear. I figured she would have been intrigued by your name.”
“She asked a fuck-ton of questions about me and my world. Eventually she told me about you and your sister. Twilight told me that you have some cool powers, like a mutant or something.”
“I’m not a mutation, Loona. I and my sister Celestia are natural-born Alicorns.” Spreading her wings, Luna pointed one hoof at her horn. “We have all the attributes of the three pony races along with powers of our own.”
Loona’s eyes widened. “So you’re basically born goddesses?”
“That’s the most accurate description of us, yes. Except we need to eat and sleep in this world.”
“No shit. Huh.” Loona looked away, rubbing one ear nervously. “Is it true that you can dig around other people’s dreams?”
Luna smiled. “I’ve been doing that for years. I raise the moon every night. After that, I venture into the dream realm to fight whatever disturbs somepony’s sleep.”
“So you fight nightmares and shit?”
“That’s right. Sometimes a sleep demon manages to escape Tartarus and causes nightmares for my people. They can be hard to fight.” Luna scooted closer to Loona. “I figured you wanted more from me than the chance to play my games. Is something disturbing your sleep?”
Curling a length of her hair in one finger, Loona replied, “It’s not exactly bad dreams that are bugging me. Can you do anything for my memories?”
“Dreams are often tied to suppressed memories. What are you trying to remember?”
“Did Blitz or Twilight tell you that I’m an orphan?”
Shaking her head, Luna said, “No. Please tell me everything you can. It will make it easier to track down the problem.”
“I’ve been eighteen for about six months. Blitz adopted me when I turned seventeen.”
“That’s rare in my world. Most pony orphans are picked up before they hit puberty.”
Loona stroked her tail fur, frowning. “I spent most of my life in that shitty orphanage. I was kind of a problem child. Biting, clawing, chewing on the furniture, that kind of thing. No parent ever wants a fuzzy ball of piss and vinegar tearing around their house, so I stayed put while every other kid got a home.”
“Where do you suppose this violent, antisocial behavior comes from?”
“Anything past the age of ten is just a blur. I was hoping you could poke around in my dreams or memories and find out for me. Not even the supervisor of that place would give me a straight answer.”
“Do you still have anger issues?” Luna asked as she poured herself a cup of tea.
Holding her tail like a comfort blanket, Loona replied, “Millie and Moxxie, those are my teammates, are getting tired of my short fuse. Maybe it’s just because I’m a teenager?”
Sipping her tea, Luna said, “I suspect it goes deeper than that. I was young once. When I was your age I had an angry and rebellious streak that . . .” Her ears flattened. “I’ll tell you what happened to me later.”
“Sure. So what do I do? Put on a blindfold or something?”
“Nothing so drastic. I just need you to trust me. Normally I would wait for you to go to sleep, but you seem too agitated for that,” she remarked, pointing a hoof at Loona’s tail. “Just close your eyes and be ready for anything.”
Loona closed her eyes, took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Luna’s horn glowed blue. The world slipped away like a passing cloud. Soon they were surrounded by a sea of stars. “We are in the dream world. You can open your eyes, but stay next to me.”
“Hot damn! This kicks ass!” Loona grinned, her teeth gleaming like dice.
Luna couldn’t help but smile. “They’re always delighted the first time they see this place. Loona, I want you to concentrate on the earliest memories of your childhood. As far back as you can. I’ll try to extract the most relevant memories for you.”
Loona rubbed her temples as the stars were soon obscured by large floating images of times long gone. Memories of reading a book in an empty room. Bouncing a ball against a wall by herself. Eating cafeteria food in a secluded corner. Luna looked at these recollections and shook her head. Didn’t this poor wolf-girl ever have any friends?
One memory flitted past like a moth. Luna heard an adult male. Was that the Hellhound’s father? Her horn flared as she used her magic to grab the memory. Dragging it in front of them, she held it tightly and sharpened the focus.
A tiny Hellhound child, holding a small rabbit toy, was crying. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. A tall Imp wearing a business suit held the frightened cub by her shoulders as a male Hellhound pointed at her.
He snarled, “Loona, I’m not going to take you back to the damn house!”
Loona squinted at the captured memory. “Dad?”
The cub cried, “Mommy! Make daddy take me home!”
“This is your home now, so quit your fucking crying!” demanded a female Hellhound.
“That can’t be my mom! No . . .” Loona whispered.
“Why are you doing this to me? What did I do?”
Her father grumbled, “Loona, You’re lucky we found this place for you. We never really wanted you in the first damn place.”
“It is what it is, kiddo,” quipped her mother. “Don’t take it personally. We just want to start over.”
The child screamed, “NOO!! Don’t do this!”
“Call this your first life lesson, kid,” said the father. “Hell owes you nothing, so toughen up.”
Luna’s jaw dropped.
The Imp picked Loona up and assured her father, “Don’t worry, sir. She’s in good hands with us.”
“Luna, get me out of here,” demanded Loona. After a moment, she whirled around towards Luna, frowning. “Hey!”
Luna blinked and shuddered. “I’m sorry, I . . .”
The Hellhound stomped a foot and yelled, “For fuck’s sake, get me out of this place!”
In a flash of blue light, the memories disappeared. They were back on Luna’s couch.
Loona’s ears went flat into her hair as she leaned down and covered her face with her hands. She let out a long moan as tears streaked down her cheeks.
Luna picked up a nearby box of tissues with her magic and placed it next to Loona. Grabbing a fistful, she mashed the tissue-clump into her muzzle, blowing her nose.
After a few moments, Loona frantically looked around. “I need a pillow in the next ten seconds.”
Luna scooped up a nearby bed pillow with her magic and put down next to the tissues. The Hellhound grabbed the pillow and mashed it into her face.
Loona blocked out most of her screaming and crying with the pillow. When the Princess reached out to pat Loona’s back, as she had done with other grieving ponies, Loona swatted the hoof away.
After a few minutes of muffled grieving. Loona looked up from the now damp pillow. She reached out towards her companion. Waving for Luna to join her, the Hellhound said, “I’m s-sorry that I hit you. This is . . . shit . . . it’s a bitch to deal with!”
“You’ve used this method before, obviously,” observed Luna as she wrapped a foreleg around Loona’s shoulders.
Blowing her nose, she said, “Yeah, I’ve had some really bad days when I just wanted to scream and never stop. Blitz taught me this pillow trick. You can vent your bullshit and stress and not wake your neighbors.”
“Loona, I am so very sorry I dug up that memory. If I had known it was that painful, I wouldn’t . . .”
Patting the hoof on her shoulder, Loona shook her head. “No way you could’ve known. What the fuck was I thinking? No wonder I didn’t remember that day! I guess spending most of my life in that stupid orphanage forced down the memories so deep, it took someone like you to pull them back up.”
“Some people should never be allowed to breed, it seems,” Luna remarked, frowning.
“What did they see in me that they hated so much?” Loona gulped as her throat closed up. More tears pillowed in her eyes. “I wasn’t a bad kid!”
“You’re not a bad person, either, Loona. You just have a lot of baggage. It’s hard to be a teenager. At this point in your life you’re not really a kid and you’re not quite an adult. People your age often feel adrift and angry. I’ve felt your sorrow and rage, believe me.”
“I hope your parents didn’t toss you out like garbage,” Loona said as she blew her nose again.
“No, they loved me and my sister. It wasn’t until we ruled Equestria for a few years that I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
Loona sighed and put aside her pillow. Leaning into the couch, she asked, “Well, if you’re up for it, can you tell me about it?”
Luna sipped more of her tea.”I don’t mind. My story might help you, after all. Alicorns like us live for a very long time. Over a thousand years ago, I became jealous of my sister’s fame. Everypony loved her, but it seemed I could only be in her shadow no matter what I did. My bitterness grew into rage. My magic formed my war armor, I called myself Nightmare Moon and I declared war on her. ”
“Yeesh! I’m envious of Millie and Moxxie being happily married, but I don’t want to clobber them. I guess you were suffering from too much youth like me, huh?”
Luna chuckled. “Interesting term, but not inaccurate. We fought for weeks, but Celestia didn’t want to kill me. In an act of desperation, she sent me to the moon.”
“What, like in a space shuttle?”
Luna blinked. “What’s that?”
Scratching an ear, Loona replied, “Uhh, never mind. How did you survive without oxygen?”
“When my sister sent me to my prison, my body was converted into magical energy so that I wouldn’t die from lack of food or air. A powerful ghost, so to speak. If you are ready, I can show you what my imprisonment looked like.”
When Loona nodded, Luna’s magic made the room fade to black. A few moments later, they were on the moon. Grey mountains surrounded them. The stars shone throughout the night sky.
“Man, I’m never getting used to that kind of travel,” stated Loona as she looked around. “How long did you have to stay here?”
“A thousand years.”
Loona’s eyes popped out. Staring at Luna, she said, “How the fuck did you not lose your mind?”
Luna walked to the edge of a nearby cliff. “I was already mad when I got here, Loona. Look down there.”
Loona stood next to the Alicorn and peered into a nearby crater. In the middle of this crater sat a meaner version of Luna. Her war armor gleamed. Her mouth was open as she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Are you trying to scream?” asked Loona.
“In the first few months of my imprisonment, that’s about all I did apart from stamping around. But that’s not the worst part.”
Loona scratched her head. “Worse than this?”
“I was too weak to return to Equestria for a millennia, but I still had my dream-walking ability. Even though I couldn’t sleep, I would catch glimpses of what my people thought of me. I was hated, Loona. For more than a century, I had to endure the constant noise of my former subjects cursing my name. The ponies that I wanted love from could now only despise me.”
Loona turned away from the crater and sat down. Wrapping her arms tight together, she said, “I always thought that a Princess like you would have it made in the shade. No stress, no worries. So much for that, I guess.”
“The anguish I got from all the hatred was almost too much to bear. Celestia’s dreams were the hardest to watch. She felt so awful about having to send her only sister away. That pain almost broke her in those first few years of our separation.”
Luna sat down next her companion. “Even though I was still Nightmare Moon, I eventually began to understand the pain of those I terrified. But that also isn’t the worst of it.”
“Oh, sh . . . crap, what else happened?”
“Two hundred years into my sentence, every pony that lived to see my war with Celestia had died. Even the children who were told about those dark days had passed away. History often fades into legend, Loona. Eventually, I became little more than a scary bedtime story monster. The angry dreams had stopped, but they weren’t as bad as the loneliness.”
Loona said, “There’s an old saying in my world. ‘Hell is other people’. I guess in your case the opposite was true.”
“When I rummaged through your childhood memories, I couldn’t help but notice that you chose to be by yourself.”
“Yeah, but what you went through is real different than what I was like in that orphanage.”
“Maybe not as different as you might think. Can I speak frankly with you?”
Loona spread out her arms. “Why not? We’ve already aired out a lot of dirty laundry already.”
“I think you chose to be alone in that orphanage because you didn’t want to get hurt again. The other children wanted to be friends with you, but you only pushed them away, sometimes violently.”
“I . . . I wanted to be by myself, that’s all. My dad, my real dad I mean, was right about one thing. Hell doesn’t owe me a thing. I had to get tough to survive.”
Luna placed a hoof on Loona’s shoulder. “There’s a big difference between being tough and being cold-hearted. You let your fear of being hurt guide your life. The longer you stayed away from people, the harder it got to deal with them face to face. Can you guess what I was like when I finally got back to Equestria?”
The Hellhound rubbed her chin and thought. She winced as she realized what Luna was hinting at. “You were in worse shape than you were a thousand years ago.”
“I had lived in my own head for so long that I would only think of revenge. The good news was that while I was away, my sister devised a method of curing my madness. The Elements of Harmony, which were powerful magic talismans, were used on me soon after I returned. They had wiped away my rage and jealousies, leaving behind a weakened, smaller version of what you now see.”
“They brainwashed you? That’s harsh, but it’s better than straight-up killing you.” Loona blinked. “I hope you aren’t suggesting that I get blasted by those things.”
Luna shook her head. “Not at all. I was a special case. My Alicorn magic not only created my armor, but also the physical form of Nightmare Moon. Once my ugly persona and armor were wiped away, I was like a hermit crab suddenly missing its shell. I was less than I once was, but I soon became something much greater. I still recalled all the pain I caused so long ago. I made a vow to help ponies through their dreams, but never to harm them.”
“Well, I’m glad things worked out for you, but where do I fit into all of this?”
“Well, we’ve talked about hate, so let’s talk about love for a bit. Why do you suppose Blitz adopted you?”
Loona smiled at the memory of leaving her old home with her new father. “He wanted someone to love, I guess. Imps and Hellhounds are real low on Hell’s social order, so we have to look out for each other.”
“But before that happened, you only looked out for yourself. You thought you were strong and independent, but that didn’t keep you from feeling lonely, did it?”
Her ears drooped. “No. Not really.”
“I’ve never been to Hell, but I’m guessing that Imps and Hellhounds are social animals just like my pony subjects. Isolating yourself went against your own nature, in spite of your intentions. Can you recall how you felt when you went to your new home?”
She laughed a little. “I was like a little puppy. My tail hadn’t wagged that hard in years. I don’t think I slept for a minute in my new bed during the first night in his apartment.”
“Blitz was just as happy, wasn’t he?”
“Heh. Yeah, he started smiling a lot more often after I came into his life. I get kind of grouchy when he hovers around me, but I know he’s just trying to be a good dad.”
“Perhaps Stolas makes your father feel just as good. It’s not that hard to understand.”
Nodding, Loona said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“I’ve seen your painful past and you’ve seen mine. Let me give you some advice about pain, Loona. It will help in the long run.”
Sighing, Loona shrugged. “I need all the help I can get.”
“Everyone hurts. Pain is inevitable and often necessary. We often bring pain upon ourselves.”
“Like a thousand year jail sentence,” Loona observed.
“Or an orphan that chased away potential friends. What you need to understand is that pain, in of itself, does not define anyone. How we move past our pain is what’s important.”
“I guess fighting sleep demons helps you get over your past.”
Luna smiled. “Exactly. In my immature youth, I wanted the love that my sister got, but without actually earning it from my subjects. Fighting her wasn’t the answer, but helping those with problems like yours, for example, makes people forget what I was so long ago.”
“Does it help you forget?”
“For my own part, it helps me not mind remembering my days as Nightmare Moon.”
Loona looked up at the stars. “I think I’ll always hate my memories of the orphanage. But I guess as I get older, that place won’t be on my mind that often.”
“It gets better, Loona,” assured Luna. “Your life is just getting started. You have a father who loves you. What does your crew, as you put it, think of you?”
Smiling shyly, she replied, “I think they put up with me because I’m the boss’s daughter. I mostly screw around with my cell phone while the grown-ups talk.”
“Perhaps you should open up to them. Your old fear of pain won’t ever fully fade away, but you can control it. I’m not suggesting you throw a party for them, but don’t ever be afraid to make new friends.”
“Yeah, that’s something dad’s been grumbling about for a while. Luna?”
“Yes?”
“Can we get off the moon now? This place is freakin’depressing.”
A few hours later, Blitzo knocked on Luna’s bedroom door. A moment later, Loona cracked open the door, smiling. “Hi,dad! How was your dinner date?”
“Just fine, honey. Are you ready to go?” the Imp asked.
“Give me a second!” She closed the door, giggling. Blitzo heard his daughter talking and laughing. Then he heard running footsteps. The door swung open and Loona sprang out. Closing the door with one hand, she wrapped her other hand around her father’s shoulders.
As they hugged, Blitzo smiled. “I bet you thought this place would be boring, didn’t you?”
Loona snickered. “Princess Luna’s taste in games kinda sucks, but we got along okay.”
They walked down the hallway, holding hands. Blitzo quipped, “I think you guys got along great, actually.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Look at your butt, Loona.”
“Huh?”
“Your tail’s wagging.”
Author's Note
Well, folks asked for a Loona/Luna story, so here you go. I hope you guys like it.
