Eternal Night [Open]

[revenancenpcs]

Characters: Whatever's been causing that really long night, the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and you.
Content: BOSS BATTLE
Location: Ponyville, just outside of town, towards the Everfree Forest. There's a certain clearing with a certain statue in it.
Time: Night. Because it's been night for days.
Warnings: It's a boss battle, guys. You know the drill by now.

Continual night is only supposed to be the default state for Traverse Town. When it happens anywhere else - say, Ponyville - it's worrying. That's exactly why you're here to check it out. Maybe you're now a bearer of an Element of Harmony and you feel a sense of responsibility. Maybe you want to take out whatever's causing it. Maybe you're just curious. Either way, you're still in Ponyville in time to see dark clouds swirl in the sky from seemingly nowhere and obscure the stars and moon.

Those clouds all rolled in from the same direction, though, and that's the direction you head in, towards the Everfree Forest. You stop in a clearing, empty except for everypony else who had the same idea as you and a rather creepy statue. You hesitate as a force field shimmers into view around the clearing and abruptly fades. For better or worse, you're stuck here for a while.

It's then that the clouds break long enough to shine a single beam of moonlight onto the statue. White-hot cracks begin to spiderweb over the statue until it shatters, exploding outwards. As the dust settles, you see something else standing where the statue was just moments ago: a pony matching the Princesses in stature, black as the unnaturally long night. The blue mists of her mane and tail swirl around her, failing to obscure the deep red of her gaze. Emblazoned across her flanks is the Nightmare symbol.

She pauses for a moment - either to regroup or for dramatic emphasis - before gathering searing teal magic at the tip of her horn and firing it at you.

[This is Nightmare!Nightmare Moon, and - surprise, surprise - she doesn't like you. This will play out in the same style as the other boss battles, with successes and failures being decided by D&D-style dice rolls (all taken care of by the mods). Please only tag in if you can keep up a pace of one tag per day; otherwise, your turn will be skipped. Additionally, this is a required event for anyone holding an Element of Harmony - if you can't tag in for any reason, please let a mod know. Ten characters total, meaning four non-Element characters can also tag in; no tag order; start a new subthread after every boss battle; have fun~]

Comments

[sailorlaughter]

"Oh!" Pinkie leapt to the side, catching Toothy on her back as the bat he was riding finally collapsed down into dream pieces, then hopped back over to her conversation with Rarity. "Yeah, we oughta just use the Elements! This is getting a little messy!"

She didn't really know how the other girls made their elements go off, or even entirely how to explain what she did when she was using hers, especially not while there was a giant fight going on. So instead, she hopped on top of her party cannon, balancing rather perilously on the barrel.

"Everything is great!
Everything is good!
I got the whole wide world in the soles of my hooves!"

What? Songs are clearly the best explanatory method.

"Everything is perfect!
It's falling into place~
I can't seem to wipe this smile off my face!
Life's a happy song, when there's someone by my side to sing along!"

She spun the cannon around in a tight circle, somehow without touching her hooves to the ground at all. Meanwhile, Lord Tubbington, seeing that his mistress and her small white friend were no longer under fire, threw himself bodily at the closest Nightmare Moon instead. It wasn't much of a leap, considering his girth, but there was an awful lot of him in the tackle.

[realmenknitplushies]

Use the Elements, they were saying. Or, possibly, singing.

Fine. Great. Sensible.
The original ponies would know this stuff, after all.

The problem with this idea? It was a bit hard for Kanji to focus on trying to activate something he knew absolutely nothing about when he was hitting the deck, diving forward as fast as he could in an attempt to evade his own personal Nightmare's fire.

(Remembering slamming into the dirt with a Timberwolf on his back for Aqua's sake, not so long ago.

Remembering every time, back home, that he'd fought with his friends alongside him - every time he'd fallen, but it'd been for a reason... these weren't the friends he knew, true, but he wasn't going to fight with any less of his strength just because of that.
They were relying on him, too.)

[letteropener]

Celestia and her Spirits seemed to disappear abruptly in a flash of light, the shield on the ground vanishing with her. In a split second, her own song drifted across the clearing, as if time had expanded to encompass its slow, reverent melody.

Embrace the Elements
Without fear, without pretense
Trust in what your hearts believe
Once gained, the power cannot leave.

The power's source is within you
Strike, my little ponies, swift and true.

Time contracted abruptly again; Celestia reappeared in front of Aqua, Hero in front of Kanji, and Dizzy in front of Chell. Celestia raised a golden shield in front of each of them, but if the shields failed, she intended for each of them to fall before the bearers they protected did.

[timeywimeyorb]

Setsuna cries out as the Screech hits her. It's more out of surprise than much injury, but it is enough to make her stumble forward and her hold on the Garnet Rod to slacken. She shakes her head to clear it of the annoying sound and Phoebe slides up next to her owner to check on her. "I'm fine," Setsuna replies.

She tunes in on what Rarity is saying and the garnet glow increases around her rod as she reasserts her power over it. She sees the blue-black mist start to rise again and calls out as well, "Everyone without an Element! Focus your strength in protecting those that do! We need to buy them time."

Setsuna wasn't normally the one to step up in battle like this. Typically she left commanding the soldiers to the likes of Sailor Uranus or Venus. However, she needed to help where she could and the Elements did not belong to her. The natives seemed to think they were key in this battle, even one of the winged princesses was putting herself in the line of fire for the good of the Elements.

Setsuna could do the same. She can at least help buy time for them to figure out what they need to do. She wished she had time to explain how the Sailor Senshi had come together to give Sailor Moon power...but there was certainly not time for that if there wasn't time to explain the Elements properly.

She's closer to Kanji now and pulls her Garnet Rod up again, "Garnet Ball!" The shield worked fairly well before, perhaps it will again. If nothing else, it will add to what Celestia has already put into place.

[wavesinherheart]

As far as Aqua was concerned, it was one thing to say to use the Elements and quite another to actually use them. Celestia had told her enough to indicate that her Element was somehow going to be the keystone to them all, but could she manage that, when she hardly knew anything about some of the others? She'd fought alongside Kanji the once, and knew both Rarity and Pinkie Pie at least tolerably well, but she knew very little at all about the other two elements. Certainly not enough to feel terribly confident about what she was supposed to be doing with it.

And what if she couldn't manage? What if the time she'd spent in the Darkness had somehow limited her ability to pull this off?

She didn't have much time to dwell on it, as Celestia abruptly appeared before her. If there were people willing to all but put themselves in harm's way for her sake - or for the sake of what she bore - then she owed it to them to do her very best. Her doubts about didn't need to come into it. All the same, combat was not precisely the best of times to try and figure the whole mess. She'd only ever managed a D-Link with one person, and if she was right, this might end up being something like trying with six people.

She can't resist the call to song either, even as she sends her Spirits to watch for any attacks that might come at either Pinkie or Rarity.

"It won't be easy; we have to find a way,
For each of us has our part to play,
The heart's well-versed
The heart will know,
But we've not rehearsed
And here's the show!"

Something bound to make things somewhat problematic in the long run, but maybe that was something Aqua could do something about, and the music shifted back to something closer to the slow calmness of Celestia's verse.

"Take a breath, step back, relax.
The power's there, will come when asked.
Remember it in the finding.
Honesty, friendship, loyalty, trust,
That's the truth of the binding
All together to do what we must."

[raisethemoon]

Oh. Singing. Luna really wasn't sure how she felt about singing at the present time.

Taking in the three doppelgangers, she teleported over to the Nightmare targeting Chell and lashed out at it with both forehooves. Enough flinging magic around here; she could determine which were illusion and which were real quickly enough with her own hooves.

[yabigfurball]

Konohana didn't need mastergod to tell her twice, and flittered back out to heal some of the Spirits and people that had been injured. Ammy listened through Rarity's speech...so, they had to activate these necklaces somehow? She tried to focus on the feelings of when they'd found it...her thoughts of wanting to help those hurt. She tried to think of the many people she'd met here, and all their Spirits, and how they had all had such difficult lives deserving of more kindness.

She didn't join in the singing herself, since, well, she couldn't sing. She definitely caught the energy of the song, though.

There was still some immediate fighting to do, though! Ammy elected to throw in another failsafe herself. She paused time, tried to angle her canvas just right, and painted a power slash across the teal energy beams. Trying to deflect multiple projectiles at once was tricky business, but hopefully at least one of those would get knocked back.

Chu was not so burdened by having a special necklace, though. As soon as the three Nightmares arose, he reared up and charged the nearest one, horns down. If it wasn't the real one, then oh well, another distraction eliminated.

[juniorganymedian]

Jeeves felt his mood lighten considerably at the bracing music. He was almost tempted to- No. It had been mortifying enough to start singing and prancing with Pinkie Pie once. Whatever magic the pink pony had and the power to incite musical acumen in him and the others she seemed to possess, it was most disturbing.

The valet couldn't help humming along to the various songs racing around the clearing, but he managed to hold off on actually singing out. Instead, he lifted Kant with his magic and aimed the Sudo Neku at the Nightmare Moon attacking Aqua. Hopefully, facilitating his aim and being able to yank him out of harms way would let him land a few hits.

Meanwhile, Descartes sent a sonic attack at the the Nightmare Moon attacking Chell. It had worked once. If this was the real one, perhaps it would work again.

[statisticallyterrible]

As one who had only just gotten used to the concept of speaking in front of others, singing was a long ways off for Chell. Figuring out what on earth she was supposed to do with her Element was enough trouble already, without half the battlefield yelling and rhyming about its importance.

For a long time, Chell had figured her positive qualities numbered few, and none of them interpersonal. It had suited her fine; she counted on no one, and no one counted on her. If nothing else, it made things simple. Now, everything was complicated, and counting on her trusting in a number of people she barely knew, and them putting a faith in her she honestly was lacking in herself. She knew how to look out for herself, no others.

Setsuna called for the others to protect her and the other elements. A bat appeared in front of her--not hers, who was screaming bloody murder at the mean nasty thing attacking its person--and Chell had just about enough. She wasn't about to have strangers put themselves or their companions on the line for someone like her. It was a plain waste of everyone's time.

"This Elements stuff is stupid." You wanted her to be honest? Fine, she would be honest. "A necklace doesn't make me more important than the rest of you."

She dove--hopefully out of the way of the blast, but more focused on divebombing the Nightmare Moon focused on Aqua.

[revenancenpcs]

The idea of shields is a good one. Unfortunately, it doesn't work entirely quite as planned - not one of Celestia's shields holds against Nightmare Moon's attacks. Fortunately, Setsuna's own attempt works better, as Garnet Ball manages to protect both Kanji and Hero from the brunt of the attack. Amaterasu, meanwhile, has better luck with her power slash, but only just; while she does manage to deflect the beam that had been heading for Aqua, the other two remain on course. Left to take the only beam that is not either deflected or blocked, Dizzy takes a heavy blow and is only spared being left very nearly going to pieces by the beam having passed through Celestia's shield first.

The various attacks on the Nightmare Moons, on the other hand, meet with a little bit more success. Chu's charge is successful, revealing the Nightmare Moon attacking Kanji as one of the illusions. It fades away just in time for Tubbington's tackle to miss; Tubbington ends up landing more or less on his face as a result. Chell's dive at the Nightmare Moon attacking Aqua is also successful and while it doesn't do particularly much damage, it reveals that Nightmare Moon as being another of the illusions. Unfortunately, this leaves Kant at something of a loss for what to do; his attack misses partially as a result of that and partially as a result of the intended target not being there anymore.

Descartes and Luna, meanwhile, find themselves attacking the real Nightmare Moon. Descartes' attack doesn't do terribly much in the long run but it does hit; Luna's also does so and does a good bit more the long run.

Better still is the fact that a few of the Elements are reacting to the wills of their bearers. Amaterasu's, Kanji's, and Pinkie's are glowing, although in the midst of all the chaos it might be a little hard to spot.

Nightmare Moon doesn't make any it easier either, as she takes that exact moment to fade into the ground once again. This time, however, she doesn't summon up bats again. Instead, she plays with the very earth itself - anyone expecting the battlefield to remain stable throughout will be in for a nasty surprise as the earth shifts and heaves as if it's very nearly alive, with parts of it suddenly jutting out, or just as suddenly falling away.