Chapters The first conscious, ragged breath hit his lungs like a splash of ice cold water in the face. The light was all but blinding, an array of vivid colors dizzying. The movement of air on his skin set prickles and goosebumps all across its surface.
That was, more or less, to be expected. In many ways... In essentially all the ways that mattered, this body was new. Not young, the way an infant's body was young and fragile, but similarly sensitive to anything and everything in the environment. It experienced things for the first time, with no physical baseline for comparison, despite the fact that his mind was older.
Older, and filled with memories. Memories of things he had lived. Things he hadn't lived through. Things nobody had lived through yet as well, fading and mingling into a slurry and stew in his brain, mixing together and blending until the important things fit into place, highlights, while the tedious minutiae faded into background mist. His eyes shut as he blocked out the current brightness of the world for a time, clearing his mind as he focused.
Disaster was on the horizon for this beautiful world. So great and terrible that...
... The details were slipping away from his mind. Whether they had been dulled by a kind act from the original owner of the memories that had been neatly weaved into his own, or whether it was his mind blocking them out from the sudden trauma of seeing and knowing everything that had happened all at once, in a single grisly and visceral stroke... the details, it seemed, would only be likely to surface in disjointed and unclear nightmares.
What was important was that this world was not defenseless. It had guardians. Champions. Radiant goddesses in flesh that shone as brightly as the sun and moon hanging in the sky. A band of heroic defenders, motivated and empowered by the strength of their bonds with one another and powerful magical elements that resonated with their very souls. Others yet, though they were less prominent.
It had simply not been enough, in the end. In the final hour, the world had been swallowed whole by wickedness, and there were none left that were able to meaningfully oppose it, or prevent it from happening in any way.
Save one. Save him . Hope, not shining brightly to illuminate the dark, but flickering dully like a near-expended candle light in a chill and threatening breeze. There simply wasn't enough left of the world's goodness to shine brightly, then.
The only real solution, he had been told, was to gather up what could be gathered and use it as a catalyst. Send it back, like a stone cast over the shoulder into the river of time far behind, to make what ripples it could and hope that it would be enough .
Things were more plentiful, in the here and now. Light and laughter and love... all things good and vibrant and wholesome, where even violence was typically enacted for a cause and an ideal, or at least simply because a creature fed on flesh and not fruits, rather than for the sake of seeing another suffer for amusement. The world was dripping, drowning in plenty, with more going to waste fruitlessly like a grape vine clinging to a barren mountainside than anyone truly understood.
That was plenty to, with the proper triggers and the correct stimulus, prompt the formation of a new god. Plenty to sheathe that essence in strong and sturdy flesh. With the last traces of dying gods and a crumbling world to spur it on, it had to be able to manage at least that much. Even a great being of chaos, technically neither truly good nor evil, had lent assistance to this endeavor... a realm of endless darkness and suffering just had no humor in it, after all. No punchline that could prompt a chuckle at the miserable situation. It wasn't even a little bit funny. There was no helping it, then. He'd simply had to throw his weight onto the scales... or so he had said. It was debatable how much of the argument was true... just as it was if it being true or not really mattered. The fact of the matter was that he had helped, force of chaos and disruption or no. Even if he had only cast out that magical crown into the aether, like a baited hook ready to pull in a big fat fish from the sea, he would have still helped, and in the end he had done much more than that.
The scales had been tipped. Everything they had had gone into throwing the dice on this last, desperate gambit. Hoping that it would be enough , when the forces of opposition that were already here were joined by forces that invaded from outside .
They had been happy to join together. That was an arrangement that had lasted as long as they were useful . Once that use had run out, however? They became targets just the same as all the rest of the world, betrayed without a blink or a moment of hesitation.
By the end of it, it was those outsiders who were making war across a burned out and dulled wreckage of what remained of the world, while the original inhabitants could only do what they had to in order to keep out of the way and survive, for just a few days more. Ancient and long-forgotten monsters, lain dormant for untold generations, were the only native powers that posed any threat towards the invading forces of the hells and other, more... otherworldly foes. The Great Old Ones seldom acted directly against the demons that walked the land, but once they had taken root in the world they could no longer be pushed out of it again, and only the most powerful and malevolent could turn them aside when they walked like the tides.
... Even now, they blighted the world's hope with regret. Not every ripple was, or could, be a good result. He had been called upon, and he had been sent back in the hope of fixing things before they were beyond repair. But that simple act meant that there was a trail left to follow... Not to directly invade the past, but enough for the rulers of the future to nudge and stimulate the minds there, adjusting things into their favor in their own ways.
It would begin earlier. A slow and insidious creeping into the world, drip by inky ocean-scented drip, a few probing and testing actions, rather than an introduction with the force of a full and overwhelming invasion crashing into the world like the breaking of a dam, only to be met by desperate actions making things all the worse for everyone.
He would have to hope that they had prepared well enough to counteract that as well.
Seven powerful magical affinities, stacked upon more and ever-more magical potential. They had gone all in on focusing on the magic side of things, in the hope of burying enough raw power to be awakened later that it would make a serious difference for things.
War. Above all else, war. More than any other of the affinities, war had been important for him to have, because war was coming for them all, like it or not. It was paired with Order, an affinity for discipline and keeping things running properly, and joined with the sheer force of Destruction... because sometimes, no amount of friendship or understanding was going to solve a problem, and the only way there was to salvage what you could was to get rid of it.
It built up into a violent, worrying picture of the god figure that would result, but those portions couldn't be done without or just sealed away until they were needed. Bad things would happen from such an attempt... at best it would result in an evil clone ripping its way free at some point. The best result, because with the memories of what was to come, it would at least be possible to work together with the clone for a time... but that didn't mean it wasn't still going to be a severe problem down the line. Better to avoid it.
The solution had instead been to cut into other possible areas and add yet more magic. Diluting it proportionally, counterbalancing the force of repressive tyranny that he could easily have become.
Empathy was the first and foremost, the most important of those additional affinities. The first step of making war was to strip away any human qualities in your enemy, to see them as nothing but the enemy... demons would make that very easy indeed, but with enough power it was a very short step between dehumanizing the enemy and treating everyone as things to be moved about at one's own direction. Empathy, it was hoped, would be enough to temper such impulses... even if it couldn't entirely counterbalance them on its own.
The freedom of Air, to weight itself against the rigid structure of Order. While it would be just shy of impossible to force an affinity for creation to coexist with Destruction, Biomancy offered an alternative... changing and guiding life to better purposes, rather than creating it wholesale or eradicating it.
The capstone of it all, binding them all together, was the affinity for Crystal. A rigid structure, but one which grew, which could be shaped into a weapon or a tool, and which could prompt any number of emotional responses
The mass of affinities shouldn't, he had been assured, drive him insane from competing and conflicting instinct and stimulus with them all tied together this way. He wasn't sure that he liked 'shouldn't' as a qualifier for that, but it was long past any time for second guesses and half-measures. They were supposedly as balanced and healthy as had been possible while still maximizing the number of affinities present and he hadn't really felt the need to debate the point.
Overall, it didn't matter much when they were all sealed anyway. Less of a beacon, minimizing the effect their opposition could have in turn by as much as possible... or so he was told.
He stretched, moving his body slowly.
Hooves on the ground. Neck craned out. Wings...
... Wings, huh. Well, he'd resigned himself to not having the horn right away. The magic would come when it came. There was at least a little bit of power devoted to flight and mobility, after all.
If he'd wound up not having the wings, then he would have been incarnated as a skittish and comparatively weak Earth Pony, built for advanced magic and not having any particular way to use the talent. It would have been an uncomfortable period of time, and he might have... No, speaking fairly, he would very likely have made mistakes as he pushed to awaken his dormant and sealed abilities as quickly as possible. Mistakes that couldn't be afforded, just for that.
As a Pegasus, he could be patient about his growth. Focus on the important things, rather than grasp at the power he would need to be taken seriously ...
His eyes opened once more, more or less adjusted to the bright light and bright life of a happy and vibrantly healthy world, instead of a ball of burning corpses floating between the stars.
There was a pink pony there, standing in the middle of the road with a curly mane fluttering slightly in the breeze as she stared him dead in the eye. Then smiled.
"Hi! Welcome to Ponyville." she said, quickly and with a bubbly form of mirth that couldn't be faked. "You look like you could really use a party, mister!"
"Huh?" He said aloud.
And then there was pie.
Author's Note
So this is my Alicorn King cyoa run that was originally post on a different site. But i decided to share here since it's mlp content. I'm not the writer but the player (commission). Hope you guy's enjoy the story.
Me and my writer will be looking to possibly update with at least 1-3 chapters a month.
Pinkie Pie had a certain nose for newcomers. It was something like a sixth or seventh sense, a quiet tingle in the air, a whisper on the wind, something saying that there was a new pony in the area. And a new pony meant a new party , to welcome them to town!
Usually it was something that built up over time, barely noticeable and hard to explain to anyone. This time, though? It was a sudden realization, coming in all at once, as though instead of walking in from a distant horizon someone had immediately appeared in a previously empty room. Just suddenly there, where previously they had not been, in the moment between the eyes blinking shut and then open again.
And, well, how could she not investigate something like that? It was new, and new things and ponies were interesting , after all. And more importantly, every new pony deserved a party, to make them feel welcomed and accepted as they moved into a new place!
It wasn't difficult to locate the new person, as he stood out. Large, for a pegasus. Pinkie didn't like to generalize, but where Earth ponies tended to get big , pegasi tended to lean towards the smaller end of the measuring scale. Less weight meant they could fly better, as she understood it. This new pony bucked that trend though, being close to the size of a solid Earth Pony that had worked to farm vegetables or minerals his whole life... but without the bulk of muscle. He was lean instead of bulky, tall and large but with muscle bunched up into narrow whip-cords that had a very interesting effect. Not quite feminine , like Princess Celestia, but securely distinct from what Pinkie was familiar with when it came to big ponies.
It was exotic and interesting! Though the first thing she should do was present a friendly face, rather than anything more. However curious she was, the welcoming party came first!
His coat was a darker shade of grey, like a cloud filled right up to bursting with rain that hadn't quite begun to fall yet, complementing the inky blackness of his mane and feathers. It was juxtaposed by teal blue eyes, like pools of cool water that you could just fall right into and tumble to the bottom before floating back up, soaking and shivering. He didn't have much in the way of ornamentation that Pinkie could see, but he was carrying a long pack strapped to his side with a number of belts that went around his midsection to secure it in place, halfway covering a cutie mark and obscuring it enough that she couldn't really make out what it was supposed to be. Pinkie didn't see any reason to pry about what was in there, but it didn't really look like the mail bags that got used by couriers or delivery ponies, so she could only assume it was his own things carried with him on his travels... how exciting! Well, unless he actually didn't have anything else or a home to store his things in, instead of traveling freely across the countryside. Then it would be a little sad... but she was sure it was fine! He seemed clean and tidy, after all, so even if he was homeless he still took an interest in taking care of himself. Plenty of room for ponies to set up a home in Ponyville and move right in!
He did seem a little disoriented, of course. Both just standing there and staring vacantly into the distance when Pinkie first saw him, as though he hadn't really expected to be here and hadn't quite processed that he was . A gaze that wasn't fixed on anything in particular, not really responding to any of the surroundings he was taking in until Pinkie had approached. And so tense, in a way that Pinkie couldn't quite put her hoof on. His wings kept shifting, starting to stretch out like he was thinking of taking off into the sky before folding back in next to his sides again. All keyed up and just shy of taking a flying leap into the sky, but holding it back or not being quite aware of the fact that he could. Well, a good party was just the thing for relaxation, too! Not the best , maybe, but she'd like to get to know a stallion before hinting at something more than that or considering introducing him to someone. Her sister could do with some loosening up too! Even if she'd pointedly refused anything of the sort for as long back as Pinkie could remember. Very focused on the job, not big on taking breaks or entertaining herself with anything other than the rocks. Well, to each their own! Try as you might, you couldn't really force anyone to have fun, after all.
Anyway, even though he was slow to loosen up, he... Oh gosh! Pinkie had completely forgotten to get the stallion's name!
"My name?" he asked, hesitantly, and oh gosh was he shy? That was adorable and it explained a lot about why he was so skittish when she found him, but no, focus... "It's... Midnight Thunder."
"Wow! So you work with the weather control, huh?" Pinkie asked, making a reasonable assumption.
"Weather control? ... I could, but no. Right now, I'm... taking a break." Midnight Thunder said, feeling around what to say in a way that was almost but not quite awkward.
Well, that was something. So he was on vacation? He wasn't old enough to be retired and not working at all, after all, and he didn't strike Pinkie as being the sort of person who did something to get fired from their job either. She supposed it made sense that he was a little out of sorts if he was used to focusing entirely on his work and didn't know what to do with his vacation time, too! Pinkie knew a few ponies like that, including her sister. Maybe herself too? It was different, though, when your calling was how you enjoyed your time, of course.
"So... you throw a lot of parties?" Midnight Thunder asked, with the tone of someone who was looking to make conversation but wasn't sure yet of the right balance between not being so intrusive as to be inappropriate and not defaulting to inane and meaningless small talk.
"Uh huh! Party specialist of Ponyville, that's me, Pinkie Pie!" Pinkie declared. "Big and small, I do them all. Well, not all all. Sometimes a party is just to big even for me to handle every last thing, right? Like the Summer Sun Celebration!"
"Or sometimes people will want a small, quiet celebration about something, I suppose." Midnight Thunder commented.
Pinkie could only blink in incomprehension at that, though. He had certainly said words, there! She understood each and every one of them, individually at least. But somehow, he had strung them together in a way that, despite being grammatically correct and adding up into a complete and coherent sentence, just made no sense whatsoever. After a moment she brushed it off and moved on. Everyone said something silly sometimes, after all! Pinkie herself did that a lot of the time, even.
"It's kind of a big deal. We drink a lot on the evening before, then everyone gets up early in the morning and looks out east while the Mayor gives a speech, then the royal guards play a fanfare and Princess Celestia ascends to the sky while raising the sun!" Pinkie explained.
"It sounds like something incredible to see." Midnight Thunder replied, a faint wistfulness in his tone as he looked out over the vibrant countryside.
A sensitive soul? Pinkie liked that, but she wasn't sure if she really liked it, in that way. It was traditionally romantic, sure, but when people were sensitive they tended to get put out over little jokes or experimenting with food even when it wasn't a joke. Hot-sauce-frosted cupcakes were fantastic, for example, but nobody was ever willing to give them a chance to grow on them!
There was no reason to put everything on a first impression, though! Pony new to town, hadn't yet settled in, still getting their hooves under them as they adapted to living in a new place... and Pinkie knew it could be really different from life out on a remote rock farm, and the same could probably be said for moving in from the big cities... only, you know, in the other direction.
Yep, no reason to base any big decisions on the first meeting. Even if Midnight Thunder wound up being the sort of guy who was too soulful and picky for Pinkie to have any personal fun with, she could always introduce him to Maud, after all. She... Actually, Pinkie wasn't sure if she did like that type, come to think of it. Buuut it wasn't like she had to let on why she was introducing them either, and especially not if she was doing it because she wasn't interested in him herself. That'd be kind of rude to admit! It would have to be something closer to 'I think you'd look good together' or something like that. But not in an illicit way that implied that Pinkie had been putting a lot of thought into them doing the dirty. Unless they seemed interested in that, she supposed? Pinkie wasn't sure how she would feel about just sitting in place, watching something fun happening, and not getting involved, of course, but...
"It sure is!" Pinkie agreed, rather than careen too far down that train of thought. "But only Celestia can move the sun around, and I can't exactly give orders to the Royal Guard either, sooo... only so much I can do for a big ceremony like this!"
"Or the mayor, of course." Midnight Thunder noted, sparking a thought in Pinkie about just how far she could get away with pushing Mayor Mare for the sake of a- "It's not exactly a party anyway, right? It sounds like the partying gets done the night before, and the Summer Sun Celebration is a ceremony more like a... parade, maybe? Not exactly, but similar to that. The point isn't really to get involved so much as it is to be there and cheer as it happens, the way you're explaining it."
"That... you know , that is a really good point!" Pinkie cheerfully agreed.
It also left her feeling a whole lot better about not really being able to do as much for the celebration as she wanted if it wasn't really a party to begin with. She still felt like she should do something for it, but it was fair to point out that there was partying going on beforehand and she could definitely take part in stirring things up to a higher level there!
Oh! And if there was already a clear dividing line between ceremony time and party time, well that meant that there was also the period after the ceremony to think about! An after -party, fitting the holiday ceremony obligations in between two related parties. Like a party sandwich!
Pinkie could go for a sandwich right now, to be honest. Party prep-work and action took a lot of energy, and she couldn't exactly snack on the cakes and pies meant for the event itself, right? That meant that there wouldn't be enough for the party itself, and she was going to have to whip up more for some surprise evening parties to set the stage for the Summer Sun Celebration Party Sandwiching!
Speaking of surprise parties, there was also another newcomer to Ponyville that Pinkie had yet to greet, and that meant she had to move along to setting up the balloons and banners in the new pony's library house before she got back from her walk about town. If Pinkie didn't manage that and got noticed, well, then it wouldn't be a surprise party at all!
It would still be a party, though, and so far as Pinkie cared? Well, on the whole that was still just as good in the end.
The taste of sweets lingered in Midnight Thunder's mouth as he considered the situation.
The Summer Sun Celebration, huh? That should be plenty early... Well, not so much for directly interfering with the end of Luna's moon-based thousand-year Time Out, but that wasn't something that Midnight should be directly involving himself in anyway.
... Right?
Well, as things went down originally, the Elements of Harmony had been found, Nightmare Moon defeated, and the Princess Luna restored to the position she had held before the fact that essentially everyone else was not nocturnal had really gotten to her. Not much in terms of complication, easy solution for a given value of easy, not really much in the way of opportunity for things to accidentally go wrong somewhere.
Not much room for Midnight to really get involved with the ponies that were going to go on to continue bearing those Elements, either. Not safely, anyway. That Pinkie had homed in on him somehow to throw a party was one thing, but it was pretty important that those Ponies meet, acknowledge that it might be a little difficut to get along, and then be willing to work together anyway. What with Friendship being equivalent to Magic for the moment and the mot part, anyway.
So just for a start, while it seemed unlikely for Twilight Sparkle to get distracted from her focus on how Nightmare Moon was about to be released... Midnight wasn't quite early enough to do anything but say hello in passing without risking things. He would have needed to arrive in Ponyville at least a few days before... ah, no, actually that wasn't the case. Twilight's own arrival here had been on fairly short notice before the celebration had happened, hadn't it been?
Either way, it was probably for the best that he wait to meet the rest until after the whole business with Nightmare Moon had reached it's conclusion. He shouldn't get involved with things that were going to naturally run their course and reach a good resolution on their own when he was here to prepare for something completely different... Right? Shouldn't he stay out of it?
... Or should he?
How was he aiming to prepare for things anyway, if he didn't get involved in the big events? The story of being summoned and then flung into the past to try to guard against a future that went terribly wrong after horrible invasions from creatures not native to this plane of existence was... Well, Midnight could rightfully be assumed to be unhinged and deranged if he couldn't provide evidence of it, and until the enemy got their hooves under themselves and started making scouting raids 'proof' would be hard come by indeed.
How was he supposed to get people on his side about this when he had no way of proving the threat he was trying to build up defenses against was real?
He needed to have earned trust. Participated enough, in enough of the big things, that people didn't just roll their eyes and tune him out when he started talking about a future threat that nobody else had ever heard of.
The question was how.
Play too small of a role, the sidekick of the situation, and Midnight would be humored more than anything. He would be listened to, but not taken seriously... a fear of demonic invaders would be a running joke right up until the punch-line of them actually arriving. But... But he also couldn't do too much . Not and be able to hope for good results.
Even if he was capable of taking over the spotlight, fighting every threat that rose up naturally on his own, what did that mean for the bearers of the Elements of Harmony?
They would ultimately wind up being less experienced and effective than they had originally been, when it had happened. Midnight's own weight added to the scales might counterbalance that... but it also might not. There was no way of knowing.
It also wasn't right to just stay completely out of sight and practice, training every day in expectation of the day that would come when Equestria was invaded from Without. Midnight was just one stallion , even if he wound up being the equivalent of any of the Princesses in battle. He could only be in one place at any one time. His talent was going to be tested in War, and no individual combatant changed the tides of a war. That took many things, many people, all acting together in pursuit of a common goal of victory....
... No, no Midnight couldn't stick himself with the weight of a general's mindset for the war to come, not before he'd made the preparations to be able to direct actions and have people comply. He needed to start somewhere else, building connections and making the foundations to base later actions on, and...
Empathy. That might be the better option to lean into. Looking at things from a different point of view.
Friendship was power in its own right, even if it was just the power to call in all your friends to join in on kicking someone you had reason to want to have a very bad day. That was the core of what made the ponies who bore the Elements of Harmony special. Near the end of it all, a number of the enemies that had stood before against them had started to learn that as well. They had just... chosen their new 'friends' very poorly indeed.
Selfish, self-centered, arrogant and demanding as they had been, there had been an effort made to co-operate in order to seek their goals. Now, they weren't good people by any means, and their goals weren't generally things that could be countenanced, but... they were generally still the less terrible alternative, even at their worst.
But the fact that they had tried to reach out and make allies, terrible reasons aside, was still proof of them being able to consider negotiation and compromise if the opportunity was right. And maybe if they were left without alternatives. If nothing else, it was still a start.
That was it. The 'outsiders', whatever source they came from, were the enemies that couldn't be reasoned with or negotiated with. More local problems could be tolerated, agreements with them could be found, since after all... they all had to live here, in this same world, so it wasn't in anyone's best interest for it to be destroyed or ruined. That meant that the question was just how Midnight could arrange things so that they were forced to play nice and get along with the good guys.
Luna wasn't a concern. She would reform into a respectable princess, if old-fashioned and slightly out of touch due to the extended imprisonment on the moon. It was the ones that followed that would be an issue... some more than others.
Chrysalis, the Queen of the changelings...
What was the reason for having the changeling race excluded and held at a distance from ponies? Two things.
First, their ability to shapeshift, easily allowing them to disguise themselves as ponies and slip in and out of various herds at their discretion was fertile ground for the seed of paranoia to sprout within. That was how they became a part of the horror stories that ponies told to spook each other, which would make it hard to integrate them to begin with....
Second, their diet. The changeling race requires an external source of emotion, love, to feed upon. The Queen can accumulate and redistribute the emotion, skillful rationing ensuring that a small amount stretches much further than it could if an individual were to feed and attempt to fill themselves on their own.
Combining those two factors, the natural result is for changelings to secretly slip into Pony society, fill a role somewhere, build relationships, and secretly trade places with each other frequently in order to ferry the emotions they've gathered home for the Queen to accumulate and redistribute... even if it stopped there, that would be enough to alarm and put ponies on guard against the Changelings because of the deception! But that's not all of it, either.
For a changeling to insert themselves into society, there has to be 'an open space'. It's possible for them to slip in as wanderers and vagrants, but... that doesn't provide much opportunity. Given that it's a matter of not only feeding themselves, but supporting the entirety of the hive on the backs of infiltrators... it's unfortunately effective to create those open spaces to be filled.
It wouldn't work well if they were just taking opportunities that came up by chance, sudden and accidental deaths here and there, since they wouldn't have much time to research the personality, habits, and hobbies of the pony they were going to replace. They would be likely to make mistakes, give the game away... and at that point there wouldn't be much use in arguing that you didn't do anything to that Pony, just slipped into their place once they were gone, Midnight imagined.
Perhaps a few attempts that failed like that were the trigger both for the underlying concern about Changelings from the Pony side of things, and encouraged the Changelings to actively plan out a premeditated replacement instead of acting on sudden opportunities.
They didn't kill the ponies they exchanged themselves with, so far as Midnight knew, at least. But it was debatable whether being kept imprisoned with the changelings and 'milked' for emotion over time to supplement what the infiltrators brought in was really a better result than death.
Maximized efficiency for the hive.
That being said... Midnight didn't really see any reason for things to have to be that way. It was a matter of that being the way it had always been, with Ponies fearing and shunning Changelings and the Changelings quietly and secretly feeding off of the Ponies in order to survive.
The main issue was that it was a matter of deception. If there was a way for them to openly become a part of society and gather emotional sustenance, then over time the Ponies would acclimate to their presence and adapt to having them around. There would likely be issues, especially at the start, but it would prevent problems later on when the invasions began as well. And infiltrators that could slip in and out of the enemy lines, with perfect disguises that they could effortlessly wear, discard, and change on a moment's notice? Yes, Midnight wanted that advantage.
If he had to say it, he also just loved the idea of integrating them in general. The social pressure aside, who would be unhappy to have a lover that could be anything you wanted of them, as long as you kept loving them? It was an exciting thought... maybe too exciting for him to have in public, what with how he wasn't really wearing anything that would hide a sudden erection and it wasn't yet clear how popping a stiffy at an odd time might be taken... he would need to be careful.
In any case, the sticking point and linch-pin of that situation was Chrysalis, the Changeling Queen. The rest of the hive would follow her direction, after all, so if Midnight wanted to prompt grand and sweeping changes in Changeling behavior... one way or another, it was going to have to go through Chrysalis first.
And that was just one part of the future he needed to plan for. Potential enemies further out...
Well. For now he needed to set the stage. Begin making moves that would set a foundation for resolving later events in ways that would create a framework where it would be at least possible for them all to work together in the face of an external, existential threat.
Midnight dropped a bit on the counter of a stall and picked a piece of fruit without inspecting it too closely, using the crisp and juicy flesh to wash out the lingering sugary aftertaste from his mouth.
It would all begin at the Summer Sun Celebration after all, with Luna's return.
He had to get this right.
Twilight Sparkle felt as though she was standing on the edge of a tall cliff, overlooking shallow waters and jagged rocks. The ground crumbling away beneath her hooves. The wind picking up, fiercely pressing forward. It felt as though she were being pushed, slowly but surely towards the edge, where she would fall to a terrible end, and nobody was listening .
One thousand years ago, the younger sister of Princess Celestia, Luna, tasked and charged with the rising and the setting of the moon, had gone mad with jealousy and bitterness. The moon was beautiful, but not loved in the way that the life-giving sun was. The moon did not cast enough light to see and work by, and so ponies would work during the day and sleep at night. Resentment built up in Princess Luna's heart and boiled over, until all that was left was Nightmare Moon, the terrible specter of tyranny that had declared that from then on, if ponies would not willingly frolic and labor under the moonlight then they would do so by force. That from then on, there would be no sunlight, and that Equestria would enjoy Night Eternal!
In response, Princess Celestia had had no choice but to banish her sister to the moon for a thousand years, and afterward take on the duty of moving the moon itself as well as the sun.
Nightmare moon was banished for a thousand years, one thousand years ago. The period of banishment was almost over, with the remaining time best measured in hours, and nobody cared . Princess Celestia herself had just shrugged it off, focusing instead on sending Twilight away to make friends . As though that were the important thing to focus on in this situation!
At this point... At this point, Twilight couldn't be sure that she wasn't taking the situation too seriously, when even Princess Celestia, who should know best on the matter, was paying it no mind. Just what was she supposed to do, then?
... Was the tragedy of Princess Luna, who became Nightmare Moon, only to be sealed away for a thousand years just... a story written in books? No, there was no question about the fact that Princess Luna had once existed. Just...
Why would Princess Celestia not be concerned about this, unless there was no threat?
Twilight felt like she might have made a mistake and poked into something that should have been left buried, as she woke up early and made her way to assemble with the rest of town for the Summer Sun Celebration.
One thousand years was a long time. Long enough for... evidence to disappear. People to forget. If, instead of sealing Nightmare Moon away, Princess Celestia had...
It made sense, if she wasn't going to acknowledge the thousand years as being up. The most logical reason that Princess Celestia wasn't concerned about the possibility of Nightmare Moon returning was if she knew for a fact that she would not be returning. Or... if there was no longer a Nightmare Moon to return.
If that was true, then Princess Celestia had lied. Either about banishing her sister for a thousand years, or... Or about banishing her at all. It wasn't a thought that Twilight liked to have, but looking back rationally at the situation... Nightmare Moon may not have given Princess Celestia much of a choice. And if it had come down to... an outcome like that? If it had... Well. It might have been better to calm everyone down by claiming that her deranged sister had been imprisoned somewhere that nobody could naturally go to in order to check. To make sure that there was no shroud of sibling-slaying to loom over things as Princess Celestia's rule continued... alone.
The very thought gave Twilight unsettled goosebumps. It wasn't something she wanted to think about or believe, but... removed from the situation, from her understanding of Princess Celestia as a person , it was... all too plausible. It explained why she would send Twilight away from her court, too, if that was the case. An important mission of going off to make some friends in a small town far away, where nobody was likely to hear much of Twilight's worries about something that she had said a thousand years ago.
A thousand years was a long time, after all.
If so... If so...
The anxious tension wasn't leaving her. Both possibilities were bad, whether Nightmare Moon was about to show up or not.
If Nightmare Moon returned then, well, Twilight had already dwelled on what that would mean. A lunatic pony with power of a similar level to Celestia, back for the second round and ready to cover the world with eternal night-time again.
If Nightmare Moon didn't return... that was going to be its own problem, given the implications. Just what was Twilight supposed to do then?
... There wasn't much to do, was there? Just... keep her mouth shut about what could be inferred from that. Play dumb and confused. After a couple of days, let it get out that she must have been mistaken about the translation, or the old writings had been scribed wrong, and then let the matter drop. The Princess' secrets weren't hers to spread about, after all. It might feel... unpleasant, to take part in covering up the details, but it wasn't like it was going to change anything.
When the event had happened a thousand years ago? The only person who had any sort of interest in the situation was the Princess herself. Even the 'Nightmare Moon Cultists' that cropped up now and again didn't really have anything to do with the long-ago Princess. They were just misfits and antisocial cast-offs that latched onto the icon as something to justify their behavior. Even if Princess Luna just came down from the moon somehow rehabilitated by a thousand years of complete social isolation, they would just move on to find some other icon to prop up as something to point at when questioned on their tendencies.
There wasn't anyone who would be helped by spreading the news around. Frankly, it could only hurt things. The best thing to do, in that case, was just pretend that she hadn't seen anything in the old tomes and continue living her life as normal.
It bothered her, but... logically, that was just how it was.
...
Still! Either way, there was nothing to do now. Twilight had tried and she hadn't managed anything. Now, either the thing would happen or it would not, and either way she would have to work out what to do from there. For the moment, she supposed there was nothing else to do but enjoy the holiday alongside all these other fine, mostly hung-over, ponies and...
Her gaze stopped on one stallion.
He looked like a newcomer. A traveler. Somehow, even though Twilight hadn't been here in Ponyville long, she could pick him out as not being a local. She wasn't sure how , but...
His grey coat and pitch-black mane caught the eye, dark like polished stone countertops, ancient tables weathered through centuries of young students scattering books and spilling ink across its surface, darkening its hue bit by bit and one blot at a time. Somehow, it hooked her attention for a moment. But only for that moment.
"We did it." a voice spoke softly in her ear, prompting her to jump and turn to...
To nothing. Nobody was there. Not close enough to be speaking in her ear like that, at least, to be heard with such a soft voice. So she was... imagining things?
"Destiny has been defied. Broken." the murmur came again, as Twilight shivered and glanced around to try to find out who was spooking her. There was nothing, though. "For the better... one hopes, for the better. But it would be hard for things to turn out worse than they did at the end. Almost anything would be better than that."
"What's-" Twilight began to snap, before lowering her voice as curious gazes turned her way from the other ponies. "... What's going on? Who are you?"
"You don't recognize my voice? ... No, I suppose not. It doesn't matter." the spectral murmur came. "I'm nobody, you see. Not any more. What I was before... what might have been... there is no point dwelling on it. I am... nothing more than an echo of a reflection of a future person. Perhaps you will be able to see me in the future, as well. Perhaps I will simply fade away into nothingness. The last wisp of a forgotten memory, gone with the morning dew. That would be fine. For the best, perhaps. When an ending chapter is cut out of a story book, to be rewritten, the old should be promptly disposed of. I cannot complain about that."
Twilight wasn't sure what to make of the wistfully morose tone, this mare's quiet and calm acceptance of her potential nonexistence. It was... unsettling, somehow. Distressing, in a way that she couldn't quite put her hoof on.
And then a thought struck her and she went still as her mind whirled. It was a thought prompted by what she had been dwelling on before, the question of what had happened one thousand years ago, and what was going to happen today.
"Are..." Twilight said, mouth a little dry from uncertainty. "Are you... Nightmare Moon?"
The voice seemed bewildered for a long few moments, before breaking into a wry, near silent series of chuckles.
"No. No, I am not Princess Luna." the voice eventually responded, dryly. "Though I suppose that I understand why she is on your mind. Focus. Don't let yourself be distracted by wondering about me. There are more important things that are about to happen."
Twilight didn't have long to think about those words before a murmuring arose around her. Not about how she was talking to herself, but rather... the sun. It had yet to rise, and Princess Celestia and her retinue were nowhere to be seen.
And then there was a crash, as a terrifying and powerful-looking pony slammed down into the podium that had been prepared for Princess Celestia. There were stars in her flowing mane, and she seemed to radiate tightly controlled madness, wound up to the point where just about anything could prompt a snap .
There was a building sense of panic in the sleepy, hung-over, and confused citizens of Ponyville, nopony quite knowing what they were supposed to do at the sudden intrusion of a mythical figure from a thousand years ago, come like a conquering queen. Someone had to step up to do something...
And then, someone did.
If only it had been something that Twilight could more easily comprehend.
"Well, I for one welcome our new Overlady of the night sky, queen of the moon and stars and all their light falls upon." the out of place Pony declared, voice mellow and unrushed, confident in his statement while everyone else was uncertain and clearly looking to de-escalate the situation.
"Oho. So he's taking that option, is he?" the voice mused in Twilight's ear.
But she didn't understand . A declaration like that, wasn't it throwing over their princess without so much as a moment of hesitation, abandoning her the second a different claimant made her bid for the throne? Who could do that, when Princess Celestia was such an incredible mare!? Was he a... some kind of plant, waiting to smooth over the transition? One of those lunatic cultists, but with a better grip on their sanity and social cues? Twilight didn't know what to say.
And then he spoke again.
"Just, ah... just one thing comes to mind that I should ask. Since it comes to my mind right away and I don't have an immediate answer for it, but surely you do, my lady of moon-beams and comforting darkness." he said. "Just a small thing... a trifle really. I'm certain that it's something you thought of and found an answer for long ago, of course."
"Ohoho, indeed. Speak, good stallion, and We shall grace you with Our response." Nightmare Moon said, clearly still flattered and pleased by the efforts at that flattery.
"Well, it's just... what is the plan for handling the imminent starvation crisis among your loyal subjects?" the stallion asked, calmly and just shy of pointedly. "What with there being no sun, after all, and thus soon no crops that need the sun to grow."
... Nightmare Moon stood motionless on the stage, eyes focused in the distance and not fixed on anything in particular as she barely seemed to breathe.
Midnight had elected to make a calculated gamble, on the basis of demonstrating a clear and practical head while everyone else was in a state of panic.
Now, that did come with the complication of being potentially remembered as that one guy who just surrendered immediately when Nightmare Moon arrived... but he was hoping that it would in retrospect, once Princess Luna had resumed her normal functions, come off more as being calm and open-minded in the face of danger. A typical hostage negotiator mindset, or a police officer talking down an armed and agitated gangster.
Setting the stage for later. Midnight had to demonstrate at least one time that negotiation with an enemy could work out well if he wanted to introduce the potential for compromise later...
... though there was probably some potential for ponies to get the wrong idea on that front by using Luna's return for that. The end results weren't exactly a compromise if the other party gave up completely on their stated intentions in the end and just quietly integrated into a position in Pony society. It wasn't like that wasn't a good result, but... speaking frankly, Midnight had no presumptions that Chrysalis, for example, would be willing to shrug and just quietly assimilate after a conversation. Things would take much more effort, there.
Still, Rome wasn't built in a day.
And so when Nightmare Moon made her sudden appearance, Midnight stood his ground. Impressed, but not awed into immediate compliance or spooked into an instinctive flight response in the face of danger, as the herd behavior was swelling towards.
He had to keep his composure in order to properly play the role of Devil's Advocate. Even if people didn't agree with what he was saying, this would make sure that they remembered him saying it. That was the first step towards belief. It was almost impossible to have an entire population truly and genuinely back someone as a leader, a legendary one hundred percent approval rating, but it was often fine to just have 'enough' backing, when there were enough people who agreed with what you were saying to push you forward for leadership. But first, people had to decide it was worth listening to what you had to say. Midnight could only assume it worked the same with ponies.
So...
"-... what is the plan for handling the imminent starvation crisis among your loyal subjects? What with there being no sun, after all, and thus soon no crops that need the sun to grow." Midnight asked.
Nightmare Moon did not seem to have an immediate response for that after a couple long moments. But neither was she immediately smiting him for his presumption, so it seemed safe for Midnight to press on.
"Mushrooms and some mosses and lichens will grow even in completely sunless caves, and too much sun will actually harm them." he led in. "Cooked properly they can be quite tasty as well... well, the mushrooms at least. Though not everypony is fond of the same flavors."
"Oh! Oh yes, that's true. That would work." Nightmare Moon said, verbally stumbling for a moment before seeming to get her hooves under herself again.
"Of course, that brings up the question of logistics." Midnight pointed out. "Given that nobody is currently farming mushrooms or lichens as a wide-scale food crop so far as I'm aware, there would need to be an integration and transition period of harvesting what crops are currently in season while substitute crops are found and recipes to make use of them are developed."
Nightmare Moon hesitantly nodded, at least willing to acknowledge the point. It was encouraging enough for Midnight to press further.
"Practically speaking, it may be best to push for rapid testing of new food crops in repurposed cellar farms on volunteer groups to be sure that the results are both satisfying and nutritionally complete while preparations are underway for a larger scale reconstruction of farming efforts to better match our new, eternally nocturnal environment. That should take no longer than a year or two of rapid restructuring-"
Midnight cut himself off as Nightmare Moon suddenly loomed before him, wings flared out in agitation.
"Or not." he muttered quietly.
"We will brook no hesitation or delays in our design. Having waited one thousand years, We shall wait no longer." Nightmare Moon declared, voice dangerous.
"Of course, of course. No delays for testing or restructuring, directly into sweeping and permanent reform. Well, we'll have to take it from another angle, then." Midnight suggested. "If the world is going to be shrouded in the dark of night forever and there is no time to test for replacements... Well, with there being no sun here, it simply stands to reason that we must relocate food production to where the sun is. How plausible would you say it would be to move our farms to the moon?"
"... What?" Nightmare Moon said, wings hesitantly lowering in confusion.
"Well, it's been a thousand years, but you lived there fine." Midnight pointed out. "So the moon must be habitable to some degree, or at least in a position where it can be made habitable with some effort on your part. Perhaps a compromise could be reached where, if wholesale relocation of farms and farmers to the moon unfortunately proves to be infeasible, select regions of Equestria remain subject to a day-night cycle for the purpose of food production. With, of course, strict regulation as it comes to transit... not that your loyal subjects would attempt to avoid the moonlight and linger in the light of the sun without reason, of course ..."
"Unfortunately...?" Nightmare Moon said, clearly trying to catch up to Midnight's rapid verbal prompting. "You would want to live on the moon?"
"If the moon is a terrible place to be, then it's because you cannot come and go from it as you please." Midnight pointed out. "With that in mind, any prison would be as terrible... a desert where the sun never sets, underground caverns, the ocean depths. If it were a matter of living there, and not a prison, then I wouldn't mind living on the moon, no."
Nightmare Moon's wings had settled down into a placidly comfortable and relaxed position by this point, so Midnight was hopeful. But...
"No." she declared simply. "We are most amused and not displeased by your efforts, talkative stallion. But We shall not be delayed on this matter, and we shall not be making exceptions or relocating stretches of land. If need be, We shall simply alter the nature of the moon's light such that it is suitable for growing plants."
"... Ah." Midnight said dumbly. "That is... within your power, I see."
"With that in mind, We appreciate that you have raised a relative point of concern, such that it can be suitably addressed without screaming or defiance." Nightmare Moon declared. "We shall henceforth be employing you as Our adviser for the foreseeable future."
"Oh, well, I greatly appreciate the-" Midnight began.
"This is neither a suggestion, nor a request to which you have the right to refuse." Nightmare Moon cut him off, horn glowing.
Midnight had a moment to wonder just where he had made a mistake as he was enveloped in magic and lifted off the ground in what felt like a tight grip intended to ensure he could not just fly away.
And then the Princess kidnapped him, in front of everypony.
Author's Note
And all the while there's a crowd that's basically:
"So is... is he trying to scam Nightmare Moon herself? ... Do you think it's working?"
Midnight Thunder woke up to the slow realization that he had been kidnapped, which blew all of his worst case scenarios out of the water short of an immediate smiting clean out of the water.
He found himself in a dilapidated room, lit by moonlight as he rose up to his hooves, shaking off the daze of... He had been knocked out in the grab, he was only now realizing, and took a moment to check himself over.
His bag had been dropped next to him, on the thick rug that he had been left to sleep on. Didn't look like it had been opened, which was convenient. Midnight wasn't sure if he had an explanation ready for the contents, yet, or for that matter just how suspicious it might be for a stray pony to be wandering around the countryside with a sword, among other things.
In a relatively peaceful period such as this, Midnight was fairly sure that even the weapons that official soldiers and guards were generally more ornamental than not in most cases, and his was not only not that, he wasn't any kind of guard at all.
Sword, armor, and grimoire, all wrapped neatly in his travel cloak alongside a few other common travel items. Perhaps they wouldn't even be noticed if the bag was just opened up, the top layer glanced at, and then shut again. Or perhaps not. It was probably better to not open it up and check to make sure everything was still there yet until he was sure he wasn't being observed. That hinted that there was important stuff in there that he was paranoid about losing. Suggested that he didn't have faith his... host, he supposed, was hospitable enough to not go rummaging through his things. That was a bad accusation to imply in the direction of someone old fashioned like Nightmare Moon. Midnight imagined that any goodwill he might have from conversation would burn away in the blink of an eye, with that.
... The breeze called attention to the fact that a fair chunk of one of the walls was gone. Looking out through it and across the Everfree Forest from the slowly crumbling structure left Midnight feeling as though it was probably fortunate that this section of the building still had a roof on it.
"So this would be... the Castle of the Two Sisters." Midnight noted, walking carefully in case the floor gave way beneath him and forced him to fly. "It's sure seen better days."
"That it has."
Midnight restrained a flinch, because he had been certain that nobody else was in the room with him... and yet, there she was. Nightmare Moon in the flesh, sparking up a flame in the room's hearth. Dried wood crammed into a stack inside crackled and popped as the fire bloomed and built up.
"A thousand years ago, this castle was the pride of all Equestria. Now it stands empty, ruined, and forgotten as one of the sisters who reigned from its thrones." Nightmare Moon stated grimly. "Tis from this new throne in Canterlot, a new capital, which Celestia has reigned from these many years of late."
Midnight had not planned out conversing with Nightmare Moon beyond her initial arrival, and frankly a lot more than he would care to admit of that had been ad-libbed and saying things that it seemed like she would want to hear as he pushed towards a general end result. But he'd been willing to drop that at a moment's notice to duck back to safety. Here? There was no quick relative safety of ducking into a crowd to be had, and he was feeling out of his depth as he tried to determine what she wanted to hear now.
What should he say? He wasn't really qualified to chat about the royal sisters' family disputes. Did she want him to comment on the change of political locales? He supposed the Everfree probably had something to do with it, but he didn't have a solid grounding on the thousand years of Equestrian history between then and now that would let him mention the details. His aim was to fi the future, not quote details of the past.
He elected to venture a thoughtful sounding and throaty noise, continuing to stare off into the foresty distance filled with Everfree monsters. In a calm and stoic way that implied he wasn't at all concerned with their distant and unconfirmed presence, of course. It served the dual purpose of letting him listen closely and think about what he should say. Always better to be quiet when you were listening. Start talking on your own, and you'd start drowning out the other person's words.
Nightmare Moon telekinetically prodded a poker into the hearth for a few moments before seeming satisfied with the blaze.
"Humph. I shall have no part of her city in the sun." she declared. "Let it crumble and wither away as this monument to the past is restored. In time, it will shine once more as a jewel in the night."
"A bold proposition, your grace." Midnight cut in, prepared to point out a couple of little issues with that plan that were nagging at him. "There may, of course, need to be some testing done with regard to building material for the repairs. I may have been misled on the subject, but I believe that the heat of the sun has something to do with drying out cement and concrete?"
"If heat is a requirement then sufficient flame should serve just as well." Nightmare Moon declared haughtily, with a click of her tongue in her mouth and her hoof against the floor.
"And leave a lovely blackened patina over the surface, I imagine. Well, nothing that sufficient scouring and a nice coat of paint can't fix, I suppose." Midnight noted dryly and delicately. "I imagine that there will be no shortage of material to burn, as there's quite a great swathe of overgrown Everfree that will need to be cleared out in order for supplicants to make their way to your majesty's throne room."
"Very well, you have made your point." Nightmare Moon declared, leaving Midnight nodding along as he silently wondered just what point he'd apparently made. "A suitable location shall be chosen upon which to erect a temporary edifice more suitable as a temporary venue to hold court upon."
"Splendid, your queenliness. I'm sure that the population will be glad to hear of the relative ease in seeking your counsel, once they have adapted and acclimated to the new state of being." Midnight said, trying to recall just how long it was supposed to have taken for those specific ponies to make their way here through the Everfree. He would need to keep Nightmare Moon occupied and satisfied with his advice until then, after all. Speaking of: "Was there something else I could do for you?"
Nightmare Moon hummed in thought for a few contemplative moments before speaking.
"Flatter me." she ordered, once her thoughts had worked their way through to their conclusion.
"Your eyes are like pools of glimmering starlight and I can't help but wonder if I might fall into them." Midnight replied, not missing a single beat as he shamelessly quoted something from a book of old-fashioned and classy pick-up lines he recalled reading once.
From the way it sounded like Nightmare Moon had nearly swallowed her tongue midway through the line, she probably approved of the flirting! Or was too shocked at the boldness to formulate a coherent response.
Either worked, really, so long as Midnight didn't have to try to defend himself or flee from royal smiting before the intrepid band of mare heroines arrived.