Fluttershy woke that morning in her cottage, it was quite late, though. It was around noon, which was late even for her. She immediately got to feeding her animals, after she was finished with that she took some time to soak in the daylight. After three days of nighttime with not even as much as a moon… Not that she minded, of course, but she was happy to see the sun again, even despite the fact that it bore the images of Celestia and Twilight on it.
As Fluttershy went to get some food for Angel bunny, she realized that there was a huge party being thrown in Ponyville. As the canary pegasus trotted into town, she saw a huge, pink banner hung across the entrance to town that said, "NIGHTMARE PARTY" in huge, capital letters. She saw a ton of ponies dressed in black, black dresses, black shoes, black shirts, and black scarves… black everything! Then a pink pony dressed in a black jumpsuit bounced to the edge of town to greet Fluttershy.
"Oh…" said Fluttershy, quietly, "Hi, Pinkie…" "HI, FLUTTERSHY!" Pinkie said, rather loudly, then she stopped bouncing and handed Fluttershy a black cap and a black sweater. "For… me?" asked Fluttershy. "Yesserooni!" said Pinkie Pie, "You coming for the Nightmare Party? It's a blast! Everypony's celebrating how Nightmare saved Ponyville and all that other stuff! It doubles as a cutie-ceańera for a friend of Dashie's! Her name is Thunder Cloud, wanna see her?!" Fluttershy walked along with Pinkie, not bothering to answer given anything she could say would be taken as a yes. Pinkie bounced along the streets to the town hall, one of the few buildings that remained standing. Around it there was another large bunch of black ribbons, streamers and silky banners, all saying something to the extent of what the first one had said. Pinkie burst open the doors and screamed at the top of her lungs, "LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!"
Nightmare Moon was there, her ribs had healed but her wing was in a cast. It had been signed by just about every pony in town, though, so Nightmare was happy. Sun and Sunset, along with Moon and Morning, were dancing together toward the middle of the room. It looked like a sea of black, small spots of color on flanks and heads poked out from the blackness. It was a cheerful black, though, and soon the cake was brought in. It, of course, was black. The icing was dark blue and it had little, edible candy pearls that looked like stars, carefully adorned into constellations onto the sides of the cake. Nightmare was astounded when the four-layered cake came out, she couldn't wait to taste it. "Back, everypony!" shouted Pinkie, guarding the cake, "Nightmare gets the first piece!"
"No need!" said Nightmare, using her magic to cut the cake into 57 equal pieces. That was the exact number of residents in Ponyville at the moment, according to Pinkie Pie herself. "OOH!" exclaimed Pinkie, "I forgot you could do that!" Nightmare simply nodded. A gigantic slice of cake was passed on, not dinner plates, but four-foot-long trays, to each pony. Then Nightmare took a slice herself. Before everypony dug into the cake, though, a young mare said, "I propose a toast!" Everypony was sitting at a set of gigantic tables, when the gray pony stood up on her seat. But before she could say anything, a light gray pony with a dark blue mane stood up and said, "I propose a toast to Nightmare Moon, for saving Ponyville from those constellation things!" Then the other mare said, "And I propose a toast to Sun Rider, Sunset Sky, Morning Ice, and Moon Pool for saving us from the Ursa Major!" Then Pinkie Pie stood up and yelled happily, "And I propose a toast to actually eating sometime soon!" A huge burst of laughter erupted from the crowd and everypony dug into their cake and punch.
After the party, everypony helped clean up… everypony but one. Rainbow Dash flew out an open window in one of the higher levels. She flew down to the Everfree Forest, if she wasn't trying to find somepony she'd have gone there anyways just to be alone. She landed in the clearing near Zecora's house, she knew the zebra would have some insight on this. "Zecora?" asked Rainbow, peering inside. The zebra was nowhere to be found. "Eh…" Rainbow said, taking off, "She's probably collecting herbs or something… I'll come back later."
~4 hours earlier, at the start of the party, in the Ponyville outskirts
"Those Ponyville FREAKS!" A dark gray unicorn stallion, hiding in the bushes outside of Ponyville by the name of Stormy Night had said it under his breath, referring to the party for Nightmare. "Our queen must be evil…" he said, putting significant emphasis on the last word. Suddenly he had a wonderful idea. An awful idea. If there is such a thing, a wonderfully awful idea. Stormy jotted a few notes onto his notepad. A few of the words were, "More shards" and "Evil potion", as well as and most importantly…
"Alicorn Amulet".