He woke with a start. Something in the room had disturbed him. He looked around, but could see nothing but darkness. Perhaps he'd been having a nightmare? No, he'd have remembered that. Had there been a sudden noise? He listened closely, but he couldn't hear anything except the sound of his own bated breath.
His respiration slowed as his nerves calmed down. Who knew why he'd woken up, but now that he was up, he might as well get a snack; he was famished from the previous day's practice, and that midnight studying hadn't filled his belly at all, either. What was he thinking, going upstairs after eating nothing but a few sliced apples?
He stood up from his chair, and blundering over to the door, was scared out of his wits by a shifting shape in the shadows. His mind filled with an instinctive terror, and he backed away, too shocked to make a sound.
The darkness itself seemed to be coalescing into a solid form, kicking up the copious amounts of dust that lay around his room. It seemed like it...he looked closer, still terrified, but also confused.
Was it forming a...pony?
Yes, it was forming a pony! And an unusually large one, at that; it was at least twice as large as Twilight, by the looks of it. Was it here to punish him? Attack him? Discovering that a giant version of the ponies he'd seen around Ponyville seemed to be forming from pure darkness didn't exactly comfort Brandon.
The pony finished it's formation, and looked at him. It seemed to have suddenly become considerably darker in the room, and that was saying something, since it had been dark in the first place. However, for some reason he could see every detail of her just as easily as if it had been daylight, and he could tell by the way her eyes scanned him that she could see him as well. It was slightly disconcerting, the way she stood out from the pitch black background of the rest of the room. It was as if there were light shining on her, and absolutely nothing else.
She sneezed.
The massive equine presence batted at the dust swirling around them for a few seconds before saying anything. "Greetings be unto you, human known as 'Brandon'," she said, her mouth wrapping around his name as she pronounced the strange word. "Our name is Luna, princess of the night. Our sister, the Princess Celestia, hath told us of thine existence, and we seem to be so fortunate so as to have called upon thou when thou wast awake."
Brandon blinked. What? Had he stumbled into the pony version of the twelfth century? Is that why he woke up? Maybe he fell through some kind of time warp.
Luna, seeing that he wasn't about to respond, spoke again. Well, perhaps 'spoke' is a bit of an understatement. "HUMAN! HEAR OUR WORDS!" she shouted, making his ears feel like thay were about to bleed. "BE THOU THE ONE TWILIGHT SPARKLE HATH WRITTEN LETTERS TO OUR SISTER REGARDING?" The dust around them worked itself into a frenzy, and even more dust was drawn up as her mighty Voice blew over Brandon and through the rest of the room. He was left with ringing ears when it died down.
A loud grumbling came from down the hall. Brandon gulped.
"Er...Princess...Luna, is it? Yeeeeah, um, you might want to...tone it...down a little?" he suggested, extremely tentatively. He got the feeling this wasn't a pony you wanted angry with you. "Yes, I know Twilight, if that's wh-"
Brandon never finished his sentence. The door exploded inward and a groggy Twilight (the most dangerous kind) stormed in. "All right, Brandon, what in the world is..." She trailed off as she caught sight of the princess standing there in the dust next to her human houseguest.
The sleep-deprived mare fell all over herself trying to bow. "Er...uh...Princess Luna! What...er...brings you here?" she asked, a slightly worried tone slipping into her previously annoyed voice.
Luna looked at Twilight, her face the epitome of serious, but also slightly guilty. "We came to meet thy apprentice, Twilight Sparkle. We apologize sincerely for the intrusion and disruption of thy...nighttime activities."
"Well, er..." Twilight shifted awkwardly. "I guess I'll...go back to bed. Good night, Princess. 'Night, Brandon." She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
Luna looked at Brandon. "So, art thou a nocturnal creature? T'would seem so, as we found thee awake in the middle of our night."
Brandon, who was still a little bit stunned from his new acquaintance's high-decibel outburst, managed to shake his head. "N-no, I don't really know why I was awake. I was just going to get a snack, when you...showed up."
Luna looked a little disappointed. "Ah. Well. I suppose we should get to the reason that we hath come here." She nodded. "We came to question you. Our sister has sensed a great evil afoot as of late. She wondered whether you might have any knowledge of it."
"Uh, why would I? I only just got here, after all." Brandon was slightly confused by the question.
"Our sister sensed the abomination enter our world just days after Twilight Sparkle reportedly tested her...invention," Luna said. "Both of us, then, agreed that it was necessary that I question you as to whether you had any knowledge of the incident." The large purple and black alicorn looked at him suspiciously. Brandon felt a tad nervous. He hadn't met Luna or Celestia personally, but from the stories he had read and/or been told by Twilight (he had heard what he believed to be every Celestia story in existence from his unicorn friend numerous times, as a matter of fact), these two sisters were some of the most powerful beings in Equestria. Having them suspect you of bringing some super-evil into their kingdom wasn't really something he needed at the moment, especially since he was a little busy with his own problems, such as memory loss and, only slightly less important, being stuck in an alternate dimension.
Not that he had a problem with Equestria. Based on what little he could remember of his former residence, this place was a utopia. Well, with ponies as the dominant life-form, but who said humans had to be in charge for it to be a utopia?
"Twilight Sparkle had mentioned something else to our sister about you, though." Luna seemed to have abandoned the archaic speech; well, except for referring to herself as "us". She also, Brandon noted with much thanks, had lowered the volume level considerably, though this seemed to be more of a conscious effort. He didn't blame her; as mentioned before, Twilight was quite fearsome when she was woken up earlier than she planned to. It 'threw the entire remainder of the day off'. She didn't seem to realize that it was waking up LATE that really messed up your plans, but then again, Brandon suspected that "late" was one of the few concepts that were completely foreign to Twilight. And then he was brought back from his pondering.
"You were asked a question, Human." Luna was giving him the 'pay better attention to me when I'm talking, or I'll send you into the asphyxiating void of space' look. Or perhaps Brandon was misinterpreting, but he wasn't about to take any chances.
"Er...I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"We asked thee whether thou hast suffered from loss of thine memories in the few days past since your arrival. Wouldst thou give us thine answer, prithee? Or shall we repeat our inquiry once more for thee?" Her voice gained a slight, but definite, tone of impatience.
"Ehh...uhh..." Brandon stuttered nervously. She was back to the eleventh century stuff, and not only was it hard to understand, but he suspected it also meant she was getting annoyed with him. Finally, he managed to figure out what she was asking. "Um, yes, Princess." He gave her a tight grin. "Yes, I remember very little of where I came from." Sheesh, how many letters could Twilight write to...oh. Wait. Never mind. That was a stupid question.
Luna regarded him for a second before continuing. "Our sister has offered to attempt the restoration your memories on one condition," she said, emphasizing the fact that this was not, in fact, going to be a free act of goodwill. Understandable, as Twilight had showed him some books regarding human interactions with equestrians in the distant past, though he still didn't understand how that was possible. To put it lightly, his kind was not held in high respect or honor.
Luna continued. "She has heard of your magical capabilities, and wishes you to assist us in tracking down and destroying the aforementioned evil." Luna did not sound like she thought this was a stellar idea. "She believes that you may be...of assistance." The dark Alicorn spoke slowly, picking her words with care. Brandon thought about this for a second. Perhaps it wasn't worth it? After all, he didn't know if his memories were even all that great. But in the end, he decided that this could not only help him, but also all of Equestria. "Can Twilight come?"
Luna looked surprised, but answered, "That is for our sister to decide. 'Twas her idea to have thee along from the start."
"Well...I'll think about it." Brandon didn't feel comfortable just going off demon-hunting with a pair of god-ponies, one of which didn't seem too fond of him. He would feel a lot safer if Twilight could accompany him, since he still knew very little about magic as it was. Obviously she'd been praising him a bit too highly in her reports to the princess if he was thought of as "great evil" slaying material.
Luna regarded him with one last guarded glance, and then rather bluntly said, "We have other things to attend to, so if thou art finished, we shall be off." In two twitches of a pony's tail, she was gone, absorbed into the shadows, and suddenly Brandon remembered how dark it was now that his eyes didn't have anything to focus on.
He carefully traversed the distance between himself and the door, and then opened it. Blundering down the stairs, he finally managed to make it to the kitchen.
"So, what did Princess Luna have to say?"
For the second time that night, Brandon almost jumped out of his skin. He turned around to find a tired-looking Twilight, sipping a cup of tea. "What the hay?! You scared me-"
"Shhhh, Spike is asleep!"
"Oh, as if anything I did could wake him up," said Brandon, quieting down nonetheless. "You could have...uh, well, don't scare me like that!"
Twilight smirked. "I have to get my pranks in when I can, with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie around." Her face returned to its previous, serious manner. "But in all seriousness, what did the Princess want to talk to you about? It must have been really important for her to come personally instead of just writing me a letter..."
Brandon thought she looked almost...hurt? He knew she would have expected the Princess to contact her first, so it made sense. "Well, she wanted to make a sort of deal with me."
"A deal? What kind of deal?" Instantly the curious equine was cheered up, completely distracted by the change of subject. Bullseye, thought Brandon. "Well, she told me that her sister-"
"Princess Celestia?"
"Er...yes, her. She said that Celestia would try to use magic to restore my memories."
Twilight looked astounded. "She came all the way here to tell you that?! That's easy! Simple! A letter would have been a perfectly acceptable method of communicating that!" She was building up to full-scale rant mode. This was not good.
Brandon interrupted her before she could get too angry. "She also told me that Celestia wanted me to help both of them stop some great evil something or other. She didn't-"
"WHAT?! She wants you to hunt some thing down? Alone?!"
"Well, no. She said that I would be going with both of them." Then, seeing the look on Twilight's face, he quickly added, "I asked if you could come, but Luna said that was up to...the other princess."
"Well," said Twilight. "I hope she will at LEAST allow me to do that. Just don't tell my friends, or they'll want to come along too, and I...well, I don't want them to get hurt."
"I wouldn't either. Especially when it would be to help me get my memory back; I don't know if I could ever forgive myself for that." He looked away. "Let's just keep this to ourselves."
"Agreed." Twilight nodded solemnly.
Outside the window, a shadow withdrew after hearing this conversation and, after a moment's pause, shot down the darkened street to spread the news.
