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As a result of a game of strip-Mao inspired by my use of 'point of order' in the previous chapter (and permitted by my finally fulfilling the requirements), I gained the obligation that I had to follow any one of the following additional constraints:

Shabna: "Nightmare Moon wins - night reigns eternal. Well, for a month, at least?"

Chuck: "New crossover: Richard Scarry."

Lily: "Discord actually picked Derpy, who saves the day."

James: "Add one more major villain, then resolve them FIFO."

Candice: "Queen Celeste / Princess Celestia lesbian encounter. Bonus points for throwing in Celes."

For reasons that are obvious if you know Mao, I am not at liberty to discuss the details of how this came about.

---

When I came to, I was in a thick violet mist - thicker than it looked, so when I sat up, I was surprised to hit my forehead on the bottom of the table. That didn't knock me out, but it did make me spend half a minute on my knees with my head on my hands, in pain strong enough that the obvious questions didn't really occur to me: where were the guards, where was Nightmare Moon, and what was this violet mist?

Speaking of which, I found it was gone, and Nightmare Moon was standing there. Keeping my hand on my head (shifting between the bump in the back and the rapidly-forming bump in the front), I rose to face her, then realized I should be supplicating, so I bowed and returned to my knees. I suddenly became self-conscious at the semen on my right arm and that was probably all... wait a moment! I was damp from exertion, but even with the good vantage point I had on my right arm and chest, I couldn't see any semen stains. Odd.

She said nothing, and I waited.

In a merely loud voice, she declared, "The ponies of this town refuse to love their new leader."

Her booming voice returned. "What is your name?"

"Omar, your majesty."

The voice declined somewhat. "How come you to reside in Equestria?"

"I came by way of the Blue Valley. I have not been here long." I am extremely glad that the brain bugs Macidexia had forced on me were not fully integrated into my consciousness, so I didn't make up some harebrained and complicated response to this question.

The voice dropped to merely loud. "My sister was surrounded by a shield of lightning. How do I penetrate it?"

I can penetrate it. But that would raise questions I do not want to answer, and it doesn't really answer her question. "I do not know. I do know she is ill on account of it. It was inflicted upon her by a rhinoceros-witch named Macidexia who wormed her way into her inner circle, betrayed her, and assumed control of Canterlot palace." If I can set them against each other, that'll be one less threat to deal with. With luck, Macidexia has specialized in defeating pony royalty and they take each other out.

"Intolerable! To arms!" the mists began to rise once more.

The door slammed open, and... Cheerilee? The mists fell as Nightmare Moon looked on, bemused.

Twilight and the gang were close behind her. "Honesty! Kindness! Laughter! Generosity! Loyalty! Love!" The stones glowed, but dimmed.

I looked back to Cheerilee. She had let the others take the lead, but was looking to me hopefully and fearfully. I winked, and she smiled. Now, again - is this her rallying them to save me because unlike them she has (largely unjustified) faith in me, or is it Discord rallying the team to get rid of a threat? Suddenly I felt dirty for suspecting her when I'd just sucked off two of the enemy.

Nightmare Moon laughed contemptuously. "You really don't understand them, do you?"

Twilight scowled at her. "What do you know about harmony, princess of darkness?"

She started with fierce (but not sarcastic) condescension, and rose to full-on boomed rant: "My darling foe, I used the elements of harmony many times. We defended the realm together, my sister and I, until she turned greedy. Had to have it all. Do you know why she sent you to use those? Because she isn't worthy of them!"

She quietened, and added a bit of honey as she addressed Twilight Sparkle directly: "Your star - you are a creature of the night just as I. Come with me to Canterlot and we can cleanse the realm of this interloper Macidexia my sister is too weak to deal with. Once the realm is secure, we can restore the rightful balance."

"No!" Rainbow Dash slammed her hoof down while hovering. "If you want to help us, help us. But don't try to lure us by offering to take care of our problems if we just give up who we are."

Nightmare Moon stood straight, snorted, forced herself to calm. "I see you fulfill your role quite adequately - but as I was honesty, know this: I was also loyalty. To help me help Equestria is no betrayal. I too cannot stand by."

Her recollection of using the elements of harmony had peculiar effects all around. She herself seemed to become slightly confused, as did Rarity. Twilight Sparkle seemed distracted, muttering. Fluttershy seemed to have begun to pity her.

But Applejack was firm. "Pretty words, but we heard the screams. Torturin' a fella like that? We can't stand for that."

Now I was the one who wished to shrink away. Rather than let that little truth come out, I suggested, "As I understand it, you just want the people to love you as they love your sister, right?"

That was a bad choice of words. Nightmare Moon's resolve returned. "Not only. What I want? Justice. A thousand years for the thousand years taken from me; and as penalty, the rest of time! Come. If these won't help, we have work to do."

The mists flared, and she dissolved, and I dissolved, and after some time I couldn't track, I was disgorged onto the top of the gate tower of Canterlot palace. Nightmare Moon was looking down inward.

I looked around. The city seemed deserted aside from posts of soldiers on rooftops of nearby buildings. There were intermittent lightning-strikes from Celestia's tower. Looking inward, the palace was dark, but shrieks and crashes could be heard. The walls were unguarded. "What's your plan? Your majesty."

She did not look to me, and did not answer. She finally spoke, the first time I had heard her speak quietly, though even then it was intense. "There are at least a hundred demons in there." With an even harder edge, she added, "Can you laugh in the face of danger?"

Let me see. When my frat house caught fire, I ran to it and put it out when everyone else was flailing about. But that's not quite the same thing - can I laugh? Well, more topically, my reaction to meeting her was an imitation of a comedy anime, and my reaction to meeting her guards was an imitation of a comedy puppet movie. "I would say so."

"In the face of loss? In the face of nothingness? In the face of your cruelly cheated sister?"

Oh, just existential dread? I sneer in the face of existential dread. "Aside from that last one, yes." She seemed satisfied anyway.

"But you are not strong with magic. Would you say you are honest, or generous, or kind?"

"It appears your majesty is attempting to line us up to the elements of harmony." Oh god, I'm Clippy.

"Obviously." She gestured downward, and to my surprise, the five orbs were lined up in front of her - she must have seized them as we retr... charged Canterlot.

"I think I'll go with 'kind'." Since that's the one she'd most obviously fail.

"We need to test. I suppose I shall start, since you already proved your loyalty." She looked down. "My guards were phantasms. I set them to their task. You did something different enough from what I expected that they became... pliant. I can recall what they heard, what they saw... what they felt."

"Oh." Good thing I don't need to do 'honesty'. But this whole issue might prove problematic. I don't like her. We don't have harmony between us.

"Is that a problem?" She was essentially ordering me not to have a problem.

"Not in itself, but such a compelling display of honesty puts me in a tough spot. You see..." I couldn't quite say it. "... I think some of the methods you've adopted could use some re-strategizing."

She snarled, bristled, quivered even, but restrained herself, if only for the sake of stealth. "It is not your place to question my methods."

"Is it? I'm the only one who's stood by you at all. If you don't want to stand alone and out of touch, who are you going to listen to?"

She stood in thought. I was thinking, too, wondering how far I could take this. How far I should take it. Could she be turned, rather than reimprisoned? I was seriously beginning to feel guilty for letting her think that someone loved her. And that deception could backfire on me, too. But letting go of this tiger's neck was more dangerous than I could handle.

So I went on. "To earn love, you need to leave them wanting more of you, so they're pulling you in. It makes them more aware of the good things about you that they're missing, so they want you to get closer over time. Being closer than they want, they're most aware of the things they like less, and they push you away."

A snarl crept into her voice. "I tried letting things be for a thousand years."

"Did I say you should let them be?" She didn't catch the idea, so I went on, "People already really need the night. They just don't know that they need the night."

"So... take the night away from them?"

"Until they come asking for it. Then you can graciously grant it to them, and they'll thank you."

Her face alternated between stern and hopeful. After a pause, she said, "This is... most unconventional. I will have to think about it."

After a moment, she said, "Hark! A light in the library tower! The demons I've seen here would care not for reading. This must be the witch. Without her army, we will not even need the elements. Carry them." She tucked them into a conjured sack, and I slung them over my shoulder, and we ran - well, I ran, and she kept a moderate pace, on magically-muffled hooves. Along the wall, then down and across a short section of the grounds.

As we approached, she remarked, "That light is in the Starswirl the Bearded section." We slipped in through the shattered outer doors, and through the shattered library doors, and through the shattered restricted section doors. I stuck close to her, as being off the wall made me even more creeped out, with all the demons around.

We saw an eerie blue light ahead, around the last stack. Nightmare Moon slowed somewhat, and began gathering her magical energies. We came around the edge, finding Macidexia kneeling on the floor, reading in the narrow cone of an LED flashlight tied to her horn.

The clock struck one, startling me.

Just as Nightmare Moon was drawing her breath to make some ominous declaration of doom, Macidexia's voice murmured, "Right on schedule." Then she laughed contemptuously and brayed "Meddlesome pests, I'll blast you out of time!"

Macidexia looked up in surprise, then alarm. Nightmare Moon spun to find the voice - a second Macidexia had been behind us. Her skin was more wrinkled and cracked, her rear horn had a chip out of it, she had a scar along her left cheek, and she had a new hat. But she was clearly Macidexia. And she was gathering magical energy into her front horn, lowered down to near the ground.

Nightmare Moon unleashed her gathered energies as a continuous sheet of lightning directed at this older Macidexia - she caught the strike with a similar but smaller strike reaching out from her rear horn. In the lightning, I could see the characteristic color of each, fading from Nightmare Moon's black/violet into to Macidexia's olive. Nightmare Moon's strike was far stronger, and she overpowered the parry within half a second. But within that half-second, Macidexia boomed out, "X-Zone!"