The old road ran down into a wet bottomland.
The Moon Princess remembered when this had been Greenvale, a small town grown up to serve the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters and the caravans coming from the north. There had been farms, and inns, shops and noble villas, warmth and life and happiness. When the old castle was abandoned, the town lost its reason for being, and the forest reclaimed its own. The nearby river was no longer kept clear, and the waters turned the flatlands into a reeking swamp.
Knowing what to look for and where to look, she could see the anomalous regularity of certain mounds that had once been beautiful mansions, in some of which she had personally enjoyed pleasant hospitality. Here and there, the collapse of part of a hillock revealed an old wall, or a broken column climbed free from the surrounding soil. In places the ground had washed away to leave behind a field of curiously-blocky rocks, the rubble of what had once been fine-dressed masonry.
To the Princess, the site was melancholy, a reminder of better days past. When I reclaim my own, she wondered, if I rebuild the castle, will a new village spring up here? Will Greenvale once again be a place for ponies? Then she remembered that such would not happen -- she would bring Night Eternal, and surely everything would have to change to suit such a new order. Perhaps one day, though -- when the ponies have adapted? It could be lovely again ...
Celestia's champions, of course, knew nothing of the past glories of this valley.
"Ewwggh!" complained the prissy white unicorn as her hooves began to squelch on the increasingly damp ground. "My eyes need a rest from all this icky muck."
Her wish was soon granted, as the path led into dense woods. Great boughs closed off the sky above the six ponies, who now found themselves moving in almost pitch-black night.
"Well, I didn't mean that literally," the white unicorn said.
"That ancient ruin could be right in front of our faces and we wouldn't even know it," commented the lavender stargazer, her voice stressed with worry.
Not likely, thought the Princess as she floated past their hooves, her own iridescence shifted away from the visible band of the electromagnetic spectrum, to avoid accidentally aiding her foes in their quest for light. But then not even a scholar such as yourself has ever seen my old castle -- nor, evidently, has its exact location been preserved in the maps.
She was briefly saddened by this, that such beauty could just vanish with the passage of time. But then so much had already been lost -- so many proud towns had been abandoned during the Time of Discord, never to be reponied; Paradise Estate naught but a low mound elsewhere in this forest; all the glory of the Age of Wonders itself but a stratigraphic layer from which ponies might unearth the occasional incomprehensible artifact. And that was only what had left remnants -- the whole World That Never Was, in all its gorgeous hothouse efflorescence, had been literally edited out of the timestream -- an action in which her Cosmic self had directly participated.
It was one thing to know that all, in the end, must succumb to Entropy. It was quite another to witness this personally. The Moon Princess had known such thoughts frequently before, but still they made her melancholy.
And now it was time to assist in this process. Nightmare Moon streaked ahead of her sister's champions to the grove of trees she had previously prepared. Radiating faintly in the ultraviolet, she merged with the nearest trunk, flashing from tree to tree, activating the spells she had laid upon them.
Very dimly, the trees began to glow, as their shapes started subtly changing.
"Ah, wait," said Applejack. She raised one hoof, looking disgustedly at the dark muck clinging to that member. "Ah think ah stepped in something."
Fluttershy's terrified shriek seemed something of an overreaction.
"It's just mud," pointed out Applejack, looking back in surprise at her friend. Because the Apple mare's head was turned, she actually bumped into the first glowing bole.
"Aah!" she cried out in shock as she saw its gruesome parody of a face, complete with malign staring eyes and great circular, tooth-ringed mouth. The tree audibly snarled at her.
Applejack leaped away in horror, bounding several body lengths back to her companions.
It was at this point that the other trees the Nightmare had ensorceled revealed their own faces, snarling at the six ponies. Celestia's champions cringed in fear, releasing shrieks of their own, as they realized that they were surrouned by arboreal monsters. They backed into a defensive circle.
The trees began to move ...
It was a brilliantly triple-layered trap. The first enchantment was a simple audio-visual illusion, to create the nightmare faces and the hostile growls. Tied to it was a fear spell, to rob those experiencing the illusion from applying normal critical reasoning to the encounter. But, if some cooler-headed pony, such as the lavender unicorn or Applejack, realized what was going on, Nightmare Moon had laid a final layer to the trap: she could animate one tree at a time to make an actual attack.
At best, she might take out some of her foes; at worst, she would send them fleeing through the forest in utter panic, hopefully scattering so that she might pick them off one by one.
The pink earth pony walked right up to one of the most fearsome of the illusions and started to laugh directly into its face.
Her five friends gasped in astonishment.
The Moon Princess was also more than a bit surprised by this, but she had prepared for just such a situation. This time, you pay for your bravado, she thought, and flowed into the great bole.
The pink earth pony began to make silly faces at the tree.
Nightmare Moon prepared to warp the wood, intending to reach out with the tree's branches, sweep the insane pink pony into its fanged maw, and crush her to a bloody shambles. Seeing that should shatter her enemies' morale, and rid her of a dangerous reality warper.
The lavender mage seemed aware of the same possibility. "Pinkie ... what are you doing?" she cried to her friend. "Run!"
Nightmare Moon exerted her power.
Nothing happened.
This was the second time something of this sort had happened tonight, and this time Fluttershy had nothing to do with it.
"Oh, girls," said Pinkie, looking back in complete contempt of the snarling tree monster right in front of her nose "don't you see?"
Wait, her name is Pinkie? thought the Princess of the Night. No. She can't be. She literally can't be ... Because she never was ...
Utterly ignoring her peril, Pinkie began to do a little dance, and sing:
"When I was a little filly / and the Sun was going down ..."
Her cute little flank with the balloon marking on it swayed fetchingly, and entirely inappropriately for someone under attack by unknown creatures in a cursed forest.
She was paying absolutely no attention to the tree monster, whose every fiber Nightmare Moon was repeatedly attempting to warp into the attack. This would have been fatal for the pink simpleton, if it were not for the fact that the Moon Princess' strongest magic was proving entirely ineffective at so much as twitching the plant. Nightmare Moon became aware of a mounting thaumaturgic pressure, as if incredibly-powerful forces were being summoned to the grove.
"Tell me she is not," said the lavender unicorn in utter disbelief.
"The darkness and the shadows," continued Pinkie, inserting her head on the end of a neck which was, suddenly, impossibly long and coming from an overead angle not even remotely corresponding to her torso's last known location. Her friends were a bit startled by this, but remarkably accepting of the anomaly. "They would always make me frown," Her head now darted in from another overhead angle, this time upside down.
"She is ..." commented the white unicorn, with resignation.
"I'd hide under my pillow / from what I thought I saw," sang Pinkie, now bounding cheerfully behind them.
This was the first time Nightmare Moon had actually seen her move in any physically-possible way since her first shift in positional location. It wasn't conventional teleportation, she thought. Some sort of instanteous creation and destruction of precisely-shaped wormholes? suggested the voice of Moondreamer from within her. No, said a cold voice from far deeper, she's ignoring this reality and substituting her own -- danger!
"But Granny-Pie said that wasn't the way / to deal with fears at all," continued the pink pony, bounding in a complete clockwise circle around her friends.
The Moon Princess noticed that the thaumaturgical radiation was spilling from Pinkie, and as she described that circle, reality itself was swirling, much like spacetime in the presence of an immense rotating mass. The fear spell deflected from this annular distortion, spraying ineffectually away from Celestia's champions, who began to relax.
"So what is ...?" asked Rainbow.
Pinkie immediately darted in and leaned confidentially, singing right into the face of her blue friend.
"She said 'Pinkie, you gotta stand up tall ... learn to face your fears," Pinkie sang, darting away to bound up to one of the trees. The fear spell on that tree radiated fiercely, driven by Nightmare Moon's black will ... to dissipate harmlessly against the swirl of unreality which was now wound around Pinke Pie, thread on her spindle. It was not a normal counterspell, nor even normal disbelief. It was a refusal to let the magic affect her.
"'You'll see that they can't hurt you / Just laugh to make them disappear ..." Pinkie danced at the tree, then stood tall on her hind legs, arms raised in invocation.
The thaumaturgic field concentrated around Pinkie.
She whirled and laughed directly into the tree's face."
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" With each distinct exhalation, the strength of her thaumaturgy surged. At the third one, the local laws of spacetime could no longer support the existence of a spell on that tree.
So the spell vanished.
Pinkie turned triumphantly, smiled at her friends.
They gasped in astonishment. The shock was most extreme on the faces of the two unicorns, who must have sensed the same thing Nightmare Moon had through their horns. The lavender one's expression became intently focused as if she were trying to commit what she had just witnessed to memory.
The Moon Princess wondered briefly how much the lavender mage understood of what she had sensed. Probably not much, she decided. I didn't really understand what I was seeing the first time she did this to me, and I had full access to my Cosmic knowledge then.
Except that the encounter had never happened ...
An awareness and energy that must surely have been beyond all their comprehensions flashed from Pinkie to her five companions. The reality-distortion now emanated from them as well, though with lesser strength, as if they were moons reflecting the light of a sun. It suited Pinkie that they be at least temporarily gifted with her own ability, and the Universe shifted so that this became true.
Nightmare Moon recoiled in pained horror as spillover from the wave of Pinkie's Laughter burned her.
"So ..."
Five more voices joined to make Pinkie's song a chorus.
"Giggle at the ghosties!"
Fluttershy flew up to a moderate-sized tree-monster, and literally giggled, sounding like a little filly. Fluttershy's psychic ability should not have affected its enchantment, as the tree had no mind to charm. It didn't -- it was the warp borrowed from Pinkie which caused the Nightmare's magic to be instantly dispelled. This time, it vanished at the first sounds of Fluttershy's laughter.
"Guffaw at the grossly," continued Pinkie, violating the rules of proper Equestrian speech along with the laws of reality. Both reality and the grammar elementals yielded to the power of Pinkie's will.
Rainbow laughed mockingly at another tree, and its enchantment became but a swirl of stray magic.
"Crack up at the creepy ..."
Pinkie, leading the white unicorn to a tree. That unicorn laughed with a surprising lack of decorum, and that enchantment was no more.
"Whoop it up with the weepy ..."
Pinkie merely pointed Applejack at a tree.
"Woo-hoo!" the Apple mare exulted, executing an acrobatic leap off Pinkie's back, and annihilating the enchantment with the same casual grace that she did everything.
Pinkie had to push the purple mage at her target. The unicorn's eyes were nervous with disbelief at the technique she was witnessing.
"Chortle at the kooky!"
At the mage's laugh the counterspell, executed with perfect precision on the first try, unwound the dweomer. She snickered, neatly removing the last traces of Nightmare Moon's magic from the bole.
Despite her dismay, the Moon Princess could not help but be impressed at the stargazer's skill. She did understand it just by watching it done, she realized. And mastered it to the point that, even with her own more limited command of pure thaumaturgy, she can probably do it again. Which means, unfortunately, that there's now a whole class of my magic she now knows how to counter.
"Snortle at the spooky!" sang Pinkie, poking a head on a giraffe-long neck upside down from some direction in which the rest of her body could not possibly be located. Nobody but Nightmare Moon noticed this.
The enchantments on a whole stand of trees were no more.
"And ..." Pinkie began. The swirling mass of reality distortion rose, began swirling overhead like one of Nightmare Moon's own cold-plasma clouds. It began spinning faster. The spell's power began mounting once more.
The Moon Princess looked upward in alarm.
"And tell that big dumb scary face ..."
Pinkie popped up on one side of a tree.
"... to take a hike and leave you alone ..."
Then on the other side. With nowhere near enough time to have moved.
"... and if he thinks he can scare you then he's got another think coming ..."
Upside down now, hanging from the branches ... there were branches close enough, weren't there? Nightmare Moon could not be certain. She trailed the reality-distortion, forming what with mounting concern the Moon Princess realized was a wave guide.
Then Pinkie vanished and popped up inside the mouth of a tree whose mouth was illusory .. how? ... the trail of unreality formed into a spike ... an emitter ...
"... and the very idea of such a thing just makes you wanna..."
The spell's energy shifted. The Princess could feel its vibrations attuning themselves to the exact frequencies needed to dampen something ... her own pattern!
"... hahahahah... heh.."
Pinkie laughed uncontrollably. The pink pony's spell began building, throbbing, ready for release ...
Nightmare Moon bolted, a streak of cold fire dodging between trees, up a hillside, down the other side, into a gully until there were many yards of solid earth and rock between her and the awful thing churning behind her.
"LAAAUUGH!!!"
Soundless, lightless, even through thousands of yards of atmosphere and hundreds of solid matter, the Moon Princess felt her soul resonate and almost shatter at the tremendous thaumaturgical eruption which came from the faraway pink mare. For a moment her every extra sense was overloaded as if by blinding radiance. Seconds later, the boughs rustled to an unseen wind as the telekinetic shockwave hit her. A rainbow, composed of frequencies invisible to the naked eye, and that were not even electromagnetic, rose in a column from the hills behind. Its top began to spread out at the top of that stupendous stalk, like the cap of some enormous mushroom.
She did not know what was happening behind her. She did not want to know what was happening behind her. She was sure that her every enchantment on the grove had been disrupted -- no constructs of mere magic could hope to survive in close proximity to that dreadful geas -- laid not on pony minds, but on the very fabric of reality. She was also fairly certain that none of Pinkie's friends had been in any wise adversely affected by that impossible counterspell. She knew that she did not want to be in Pinkie's presence again.
If she had possessed a physical heart in this form, it would have been pounding. As it was, the swirl of glowing fog that was Nightmare Moon rose shakily, then darted in the direction of her castle. She paused only to perform one last act of delay, a minor mutilation on a great river serpent in the hope that it would block the ford, impose some delay on her sister's champions, whom she no longer believed she had any real hope of defeating alone if she faced them en masse.
She knew now who Pinkie was. She had a very good idea what Pinkie was.
And the knowledge terrified her.
Did I spy both a Kingdom Hearts and Mythbusters reference? Or do I read too much into this?
Anyways! Really nice to see more about some of the Mane 6's past lives, except maybe not because the wording here makes me think Pinkie is more akin to a cosmic horror, like Yog Shogoth or any other lovecraftian abberation.
That last part of her counterspell... I've never seen someone make Pinkie's normal, pleasant behavior feel so threatening, even if it was towards a villain. Really awesome, but also just as scary (if not more so) than the things Nightmare Moon has been doing.
Seeing Pinkie from Nightmare's prespective really makes her more awesome yet also something that is to be feared.
Also grammar error a doubled word, "There had been farms, and inns, shops and and noble villas, warmth and life and happiness.", the AND between shops and noble was doubled.
3649965
The Mythbusters part was intentional, as I realized that Adam's famous quote perfectly described Pinkie Pie's powers. I've never actually played Kingdom Hearts, though it's the sort of game I'd like to play someday.
Well -- ever seen G3 My Little Ponies? Which is by far the silliest and least logical version of My Little Pony ever done as a cartoon?
If you want to read an epic and tragic version of how that series should have ended, check out Alex Warlorn's Generation Transitions and Origins, and -- regarding the Pink One Herself, here is a good place to start. Though I warn you, you'll wind up following this at least to the end of the Pinkie section.
Cosmic Horror? Well, she would be if she were hostile. She can -- when in the right mood (which is very important) warp reality itself to her will, including most particularly the demonstrated in-canon abilities to teleport (in a manner utterly different than any other being in the show save possibly for Discord), to disrupt hostile magics by an effort of will (despite the fact that she knows nothing of explicit magic use), have precognitive glimpses (which express themselves in body twitches) and sometimes startlingly-accurate "hunches" about the nature of events she hasn't personally witnessed (as in Equestria Girls, where both versions of Pinkie Pie know about the other Universe).
She was, in the PonyPOV fanon, created by a wish as someone's imaginary friend. When her own timeline -- here called "The World Which Was Lost" -- had to be erased from reality lest it crash the continuum like a buggy application crashing an operating system, hers was one of the few souls to escape its destruction, and perhaps the only one to escape it intact and with at least some of her memories of the vanished timeline. This seems to have been due to the fact that she was one of the only Ponies of her timeline with the willpower to resist. And -- frighteningly from Nightmare Moon's point of view -- Pinkie seems to have brought some of the acausality of the Great Wish which created that timeline in the first place with her, as if she were somehow an Avatar of the World Which Was Lost.
It's not just that Pinkie Pie is Nightmare Moon's foe here. It's that Cosmic Luna was one of the entities who destroyed Pinkie's original world. It has occurred to the Moon Princess that, if Pinkie Pie remembers this, the fight may be VERY personal on Pinkie's side.
Pinkie has gone toe-to-toe with an avatar of Cosmic Luna about as strong as Nightmare Moon before. And put up a good fight, despite the fact that Pinkie Pie came from the softest and sweetest imaginable world, a world by comparison of which Equestria might as well be Hell.
This time, it's a Pinkie Pie who grew up doing hard physical labor. And apparently is more powerful than she ever was before -- has somehow become the Avatar and Avenger of her whole lost timeline.
If you're her enemy, this is a scary thought.
3650038
Well, we think of Pinkie Pie as harmless because she wouldn't hurt anypony without a very good reason. And she's generally a very kind and forgiving pony, even by Equestrian standards, so usually the problem she poses to other ponies come from her dubious grasp on normal social realities.
But imagine being her enemy. Imagine if your strongest magics were torn apart like tissue paper by a song (not even a proper spell).
Want to know what's worse?
Each of the Mane Six has, in canon, a talent roughly equal to each other's. Nightmare Moon has sampled Applejack's strength and agility, Fluttershy's mind control, and Pinkie Pie's reality warping. She's so far only seen hints of what Twilight (the only one whose name she hasn't yet heard spoken), Rarity and Rainbow Dash can do. But she knows that these six were probably selected as a team specifically to defeat her, and she's starting to get quite rationally worried.
She doesn't fancy her prospects of beating all six of them, together, in an open fight. And she's got a good point there.
Which is why she's been trying to pick them off one or two at a time.
And so far it hasn't worked.
And it's only going to get worse for her.
3650050
I'm glad I got across how terrifying Pinkie Pie is to an enemy. She's such a sweet and loveable pony that it's easy to lose sight of this
3650108 So was cosmic Celestia involved in the destruction too or not? Kinda doubtful since she's never implicitly mentioned as a entity of destruction; in fact given her and Luna's juxtaposition on most everything she's probably a creation entity right?
3650121
Celestia had incarnated herself in the G3 world -- she fought to defend it. Which is one reason why Pinkie has absolutely nothing against Celestia.
BTW, Alex Warlorn's speculations make even more sense if you look at "Luna Eclipsed." Tell me that Pinkie doesn't deliberately make things worse for Luna in that episode. And remember, in "Luna Eclipsed" we're not talking about Nightmare Moon any more, but the Adorkable Fish Out of Temporal Water we all know and love.
Heck, Pinkie's being positively cruel to Luna in that episode. It's almost as if that was payback for something.
If that "something" was the annihilation of Pinkie's whole world with all her friends, that was pretty mild revenge. But then again, Pinkie is a very nice pony.
3650118 I'm aware of all of that, but while the Mane 6 are pretty capable in a fight, they clearly aren't out to hurt anyone even if they are enemies. Here, Nightmare Moon makes it sound like Pinkie tried to destroy her soul. Even if she were upset by what Nightmare tried to do, that's pretty freaking malicious.
3650164>>3650164
Well now -- Pinkie Pie was certainly trying to destroy someone or something. You maybe should be asking yourself just who or what was her true target.
And Pinkie will cheerfully prank people she loves. What makes you think she's particularly inhibited from scaring the crap out of someone she has absolutely no reason to like? She's a very nice pony, but she's not perfectly good.
3650141 But wasn't it something Luna had to do? You implicitly said
And I'm trying to decide how to best word this without sounding like Eichman or whoever is cited as originally saying this but, she was "doing her job", so Pinkie has no reason to be angered? I mean, yeah she can't know that there is (reportedly) a reason for it, but if she did I doubt she'd be as vindictive. Well, vindictive is the wrong word, she just goes out of her way to troll Luna but yannow.
Also why would Celestia side with the G3 ponies if she's a cosmic entity and probably knew the world was slated for termination? Do their incarnations selectively not have memory of their real forms? Or is she just totally opposed to the idea of destroying entire worlds?
3650120
A fun pony she might be but she is one of the two main characters who literally scare me in the if they ever go crazy and decide you are the enemy way, now there's more reason to fear her as if her in Pony POV in general is not enough.
3650177
Yes, it was.
She could have been nicer about it, though, which is a point that Cosmic Cadence makes in the original Warlorn fanfics. And just because it was something that Cosmic Luna had to do doesn't mean that Pinkie Pie was entirely happy about it, even later when she understood why it had to be done.
She's actually far less angry about it all than you or I would be in her situation. I said that Pinkie Pie's not perfectly good, but by human standards -- indeed by most pony standards -- she's more or less a saint. A very SILLY saint, to be true, but saintly nevertheless.
Well see -- trolling Luna (in "Luna Eclipsed") is exactly what Pinkie does in canon. With no justification given except that it was "more fun to play along" with everyone's misperceptions of Luna. This is just taken in the episode as Pinkie being Pinkie.
Pinkie Pie is actually being nicer in PonyPOV fanon, since she actually has the kind of grudge against Luna that would lead many sapient beings to want to hunt Luna down in every future incarnation and make her life miserable in each one of them -- but all she does is prank her, and then in a later story actually forgives Luna to her face. If most humans thought like Pinkie Pie in this regard, our history would be utterly bereft of wars.
In order: because she was incarnate as Star-Catcher (one of the more powerful and mystical ponies of the G3 world); yes, a non-Cosmic Avatar does not always have complete access to its Cosmic self's memories (using my terminology, not Warlorn's); and yes, in general Celestia doesn't like destroying entire worlds -- though if she'd understood what was at stake here, she might have reluctantly stepped aside and let it happen anyway.
And, in case it isn't obvious, it is not Princess Luna who Pinkie Pie is trying to destroy. Does that make it too obvious?
3650197
Oh, you want something scarier than that? What if the author of "Cupcakes" had realized how powerful Pinkie Pie really is even in canon?
3650171 Well, it would certainly be a different matter if she was aiming at the Shadows possessing Luna and not Luna herself. Most of what freaked me out was the idea of Pinkie deliberately trying to cause real harm to someone else - making ponies happy is what she lives for, so seeing her try to make someone hurt or miserable feels wrong, even if she doesn't like them.
Also, while Pinkie is capable of getting extremely angry, such as when Applejack broke a Pinkie Promise, she also forgives easily. Although I can see her not forgiving Luna for what happened in the past, and deliberately scaring her here, actually holding a grudge still feels out of character for her, since all a grudge really accomplishes is making things difficult for someone else.
You mentioned earlier that how Pinkie acted in Luna Eclipsed seems cruel, and it certainly does from our perspective. We see how much trouble Luna has relating to Ponyville, but Pinkie is both caught up in her own excitement and only spends a few moments near Luna each meeting until Twilight holds her down. She may never have realized that Luna didn't quite "get" Nightmare Night, or even paid enough attention to gauge her mood. Of course, aside from when Discord first broke out that was the most selfish I'd seen her. "Time is candy" and all that.
Horay! I can't wait for memory lane!
3650251
That's exactly what she's doing. Keep in mind that the counterspell she used was very precisely tuned (literally, as she was singing and dancing it) as we know that her five friends were right at Ground Zero and were utterly unharmed by it. (I took some serious artistic license by depicting it in the terms one would normally use for a tactical nuclear weapon, but -- watch "Giggle With the Ghosties" sometime -- Pinkie's final strike dispels every single remaining illusion at ONCE -- I don't think I exaggerated too much!).
Pinkie -- because she is Pinkie and has strange knowledge from outside all sane space and time -- essentially attempted a one-Element area-effect version of the Rainbow of Harmony, which is very potent against illusions and minor transformations (*). Basically, she's laughing them out of existence, which is possible for her because she's a Reality Warper. And she did it in such a way as to also protect her friends. And even worse, from Nightmare Moon's point of view, she did it IN FRONT OF TWILIGHT, which means that Twilight can now work a lesser version of such a dispellation herself (NMM suspects this from what she saw of Twilight's technique).
Why is Nightmare Moon terrified? Because it might have dispelled or at least severely weakened Nightmare Moon's own control over Princess Luna. Generally, when I write about Nightmare Moon / Princess Luna, note just to which I refer. Sometimes, the Princess is having an internal mental conflict and she isn't even aware of it, because the parasitic Shadow works by using Luna's own skills and knowledge, while enhancing Luna's power with its own. Luna is kept under control by a focus on domination, hatred and vindictiveness, which are the emotions the Nightshadows share with our kind of life, and through which they can communicate and understand us.
Notice the phrasing "The Moon Princess thought [positive affect about situation]. No, the Nightmare reminded herself, [negative affect about situation]." That's very intentional on my part. That's Luna's core personality emerging and the Nightmare seducing, and in some cases beating, it back into enthrallment. Luna's not even aware of what's happening most of the time, because the Nightmare convinces her that the thoughts are her own.
In Champions, this would be bought as the Power "Mind Control" with the Adavantage "Invisible Power Effects." It's a horrendously powerful combination.
Strong positive affect, such as love or friendship, actually hurts the Nightshadow. That's why Luna could break free of it, temporarily, when she saw something on the Earth that made her happy. Or, really, feel anything other than hatred and the desire for revenge on Celestia and all Ponykind. The Nightshadows have infested this world's Moon, though, and so there it would not be long until they overpowered her and regained control.
Pinkie's grudge against Luna is far weaker than ours would be for far less serious offenses. Or, really, even than most Ponies' would be. And the revenge she takes is also rather trivial -- she embarrasses her socially. As I maintain, by most standards, including Pony ones, Pinkie is essentially a very silly Saint.
Now, something which Nightmare Moon does not know is that Pinkie Pie can't do something this powerful very often, nor does Pinkie have complete conscious control over this kind of large-scale effect.
===
(*) Thank you, J. K. Rowling, for this concept. And no, I didn't mean "A.K." Rowling.
3650251
Oh ... one more thing ...
Luna ... any incarnation of Luna save perhaps a fully-mortal one like Moondreamer (and even her to some extent) is very hard to actually kill (especially by magic). This is true for all the Cosmic Alicorns.
Which is something of which Pinkie Pie is very much aware, since she fought Luna once before, in the lost timeline.
In the actual episode, Luna is purged of the Nightmare by, essentially, the same thing that blew Tirek to teeny weeny bits in the very first MLP movie: the Rainbow of Harmony. The same power imprisons Discord in stone.
I think it's safe to say that a normal mortal Pony wouldn't survive such an attack.
3650321 There's only one thing left to say here, and that is bravo. You've clearly put a lot of thought into all of this. Sorry if I annoyed you, but this is all really interesting. I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of it.
3650345
Annoy me? Do you know how happy I am when something I write triggers a ton of comments, especially thoughtful ones?
It means someone intelligent is reading it!
I do love this view of Pinkie Pie from the Nightmare and Luna's viewpoint. Yeah, it never struck me just how scary she could be to someone she honestly disliked. Then again, poor Pinkie's 'giggle at the ghostly' idea sadly didn't work so well in my story 'My Little Balladeer'. Of course it could have helped that a part of Luna wants to be beaten, while the Sunny Towners didn't have that weakness.
I also really enjoyed the early section commenting on Luna's sense of the passage of time and the passing of that village she once knew. Celestia must feel it too, but it's so much the worse for Luna since she's been gone for 1000 years. To her, it's rather like she took a day trip and came back to find so many ponies she knew gone forever. It has a real 'Poul Anderson' feel to it if that makes any sense.
For that matter your treatment of the Nightmare spirit reminds me a lot of Anderson's treatment of Hell's demons in 'Operation Chaos'. How one cannot ever deal fairly with them, because they'll always betray you. Why? Because they can't comprehend not betraying someone as soon as they no longer need to deal fairly with them. In a way the Nightmare displays 'the stupidity of evil' here; with only a little false kindness or even just patience it probably could get whatever it wants using Luna's powers. But even that is beyond it.
I do wonder about this line though: so many proud towns had been abandoned during the Time of Discord, never to be reponied 'Reponied'? Wouldn't 'repopulated' have worked just as well?
I am looking forward to the chapters where the Nightmare tries her tricks with Rarity and Rainbow Dash. We're both big Rarity fans, and I DO want to see what it thinks of the little fashionista after it sees her real personality in action.
3650351 so you see nightmare moon/luna as a parasitic/demonic possession relationship, right?
3651551
In part. The start of the Nightmare was Princess Luna's growing resentment and madness, but this attracted the Nightshadows to her. The Nightshadows can most easily parasitize damaged souls, and they are most drawn to powerful souls. Princess Luna's pain was to them a beacon.
3651677 I see, the reason I ask is that I think that alex warlorn sees it as more of a super powered evil side to quote tv tropes. the reason I mentioned that is that most fan fictions based off of his work tend to follow that formula. of course its your story and your right. I was just confused. It is a great story none the less.
3651094
The only illusion about Sunny Town is the cheerful guise it can wrap around itself and its denizens, to lure ponies in. The mad ponicidal revenants, alas, are all too real. Pinkie can do all sorts of other things, of course, some of which would have worked (I can think of a couple off-hand), but she picked the wrong attack there.
"You use 'Giggle at the Ghosties' ...
"... it's not very effective."
Which is ok. Pinkie's powers are not unlimited, nor is her tactical sense unerring. I think she's more awesome than some fans give her credit for being, but she's not Pinkamena God Mode Mary Sue Pie, either. Just Pinkie.
And Chapter 6 of my tale was her moment to shine.
There are all sorts of things the Moon Princess could be doing to win these fights, mostly consisting of striking directly to kill, and doing it while her enemies are otherwise-occupied with her indirect attacks. She's not even thinking of this, because Princess Luna actually has nothing against these ponies and is in fact rather impressed with them as honorable and skilled opponents. The Nightmare keeps urging her to kill, but Luna pleads strategic reasons to hold back, and the Nightmare is drawing on Luna's sense of tactics because it doesn't actually understand our kind of life very well.
The same thing happened a thousand years ago, when Nightmare Moon could have struck Celestia down by complete surprise, and didn't. Nightmare Moon also could have finished off her sister when she had the chance, and instead refrained long enough for Celestia to get the Elements and deploy them against her. That's the problem with its parasitizing a fundamentally-good and strong-willed pony: it's harder for the Nightmare to stay in control.
Every pony Luna knew back then, save for Celestia, is gone. What's worse, they're so long gone that most aren't even remembered in history books. And most of the surviving entities who would remember her personally -- like Discord and Sombra -- are enemies. And the culture she knew has also mutated, to the point where there are only some very old traditions (like Heart's Warming Eve) in common, and in many cases the context and associations even of those has changed.
I consider it a very high compliment that you are comparing me to Poul Anderson in such a fashion. He was one of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy who ever lived.
They doesn't understand commensalist symbiosis. The most they can grasp is temporary co-operation, and they are constantly tempted to betray since they consider any mutual relationship as being disguised domination, with the important question being who wins in the end. From their point of view, any attempt to answer this with "both win" would mean that the sitaution remained unreseolved, and hence still in conflict. Their mode of communication -- even among each other -- is mind control.
(*sigh*) "Repopulated," "reponied," "repeopled" -- I don't know ... I'll have to think about it. :
I wish I was going to show Rarity's encounter with Steven Magnet in greater detail. She actually is one of my favorite ponies, the more so because she represents virtues underappreciated by most of the mainstream media. She's a hard-working, self-defining creative artist and businessmare who completely grasps the concept of generous and enlightened self-interest. She's a skilled social manipulator who nevertheless has very real love and loyalty, honor and integrity (there are principles she won't sacrifice to get what she wants), and she instinctively understands what the Nightshadows totally miss -- namely, that life and success are about long-term mutually-beneficial relationships.
And she very much defeats the Nightmare's trap there by Choosing a Third Option. She neither tries to fight Steven nor accepts that she must go around him. She instead gives Steven a good reason to like her, whereupon Steven is converted from obstacle to bridge. (Literally: the Mane Six wind up crossing that river on Steven!).
Unfortunately, that's the one encounter at which I can't find any evidence that Nightmare Moon was directly present. Based on what Steven himself said, the "tacky purple cloud" flew by, cut off one of his moustaches, and was gone. I never understood why she didn't stick around, but now that I've analyzed the encounter with Pinkie Pie, I got it -- Nightmare Moon just wanted to delay them and give herself time to rethink her tactics before the final battle. (The same reason why she cut the bridge, which was an even more passive form of defense than ticking-off a gigantic river monster).
So Nightmare Moon will be watching Rarity's actions from a distance. Of course, she has incredibly-good distance vision, which means I still get to describe it.
On the other hand, her encounter with Rainbow Dash is going to be very up-close and personal. So this won't be all remote description.
3652211
Can't it be both?
If the Nightmare Shadows are real, why can't they flock to those Alicorns in a Nightmare state, as their perfect hosts?
Flus are caused by viruses, but once you catch them, bacterial respiratory infections often ride in through the hole in your defenses the influenza viruses have torn.
3652211
Oh, and -- heh-heh -- who says that the Nightshadows' list of good hosts has to be limited to Nightmared Alicorns? Or, for that matter, ponies ...?
3652737 that's an interesting idea, I honestly don't know what to make of it. keep up the good work.
3652686 The only illusion about Sunny Town is the cheerful guise it can wrap around itself and its denizens, to lure ponies in. The mad ponicidal revenants, alas, are all too real. Pinkie can do all sorts of other things, of course, some of which would have worked (I can think of a couple off-hand), but she picked the wrong attack there.
Just wondering, if you have the time and energy, what would these ideas be?
3653308
Very briefly, Pinkie Pie can move very agilely and rapidly by going from place to place without passing through intervening space, which is not quite like unicorn teleportation in that her energy pattern doesn't actually move through the intervening space either. She's demonstrated this ability repeatedly in canon, though usually nobody believes what they're seeing, or if they do just file it away under the category of "That's Pinkie Pie."
She can use this ability offensively or defensively. Offensively, she can strike from multiple directions. As Alex Warlorn put it
"I looked her in the eye. And hit her in the back of the head."
Defensively, she can evade or flee.
I will have to read the details of your original chapter, but if I remember correctly, what Pinkie chose to do was directly confront the revenants in the (false) belief that they were mere phantasms. She was horribly surprised to discover that they were all too real and tangible.
If they had been only "ghosties" -- illusions, even necromantic ones -- her power probably would have dispelled them. They weren't, so it didn't, and Pinkie nearly died.
3652211
I've just always felt that Nightmare Moon being Luna's dark side rather than some alien parapsite just held more character development. It also doesn't give Luna and others who went Nightmare the excuse 'that wasn't you.'
3650108
You honor me with this indepth look at my fanon. Thank you very much. *bows*
3650108 Well if you do manage to play a Kingdom Hearts game, good luck trying to understand the plot. You'll need it.
*double a
*double period
~Pinkie Pie used musical number. It's super effective!~
Yeah, Pinkie's part TOON.
Don't mess with Pinkie unless Bugs Bunny is your ally.
"another thing coming" another think
Enjoying this perspective.
Holy. Horseapples.
Pinky has gone all the way from 'adorably scary' to 'Reality is my plaything' levels of awesome.
Wow. Just, wow. I *love* it.
Your version of "Omnipinkie" does not disappoint. Well done!
I look forward to learning more of her backstory.
Oh, SLAG things are getting intense!
Apparently Pinkie isn't the only one who has warped reality. I'd love to know the backstory behind that.
That seems like something good ol' Discord would do; definitely with more shapeshifting and accessories - more pizzazz - but still seems like one of his most basic acts.
...'Cute'? 'Fetchingly'? Okay; NightmarexPinkie. PinkieMoon. NightmarePie. They're all a thing now.