Intimate Encounter

The time was now. Pandora lay sleeping before him like an enormous housecat, looking deceptively harmless. Without giving himself time to consider any second thoughts, Moondancer struck. He brought down his arms violently, sinking his enchanted spear deep into her ribcage. Pandora woke immediately, and screamed-but Moondancer closed his ears to it. She deserved no pity. He forced the spear in deeper and twisted it-and Pandora writhed in agony, like a great serpent in its death throes-

"Aiiieee!!-Ahh. Oh. Ow. Oh, that hurts. Owie. Oh, you're killing me." Pandora stopped screaming abruptly and spoke, calm and completely deadpan, and Moondancer felt his heart gripped in ice. She cackled wildly, the sound ringing in his ears, and he knew at once that he'd failed. Again.

"This is the best you've got? Seriously?" Pandora's eyes twinkled with mirth, despite the spearhead buried just shy of piercing her lung. "A sharp stick? Oh, how the mighty have fallen, Moondancer."

She gripped his spear in her paw, and sent a surge of magical electricity through it, such that he was blasted away from the force of impact, and landed in a crumpled heap. She advanced on him, unhurried, like a lion stalking a mouse. He watched, horrified, as the wound he'd inflicted on her closed itself up.

"But that should have-t-that spearhead was coated with Midnight's strongest poison-!"

"It's pretty rude to burst into someone's lair uninvited, you know." She interrupted, smiling. "Especially since I wasn't even doing anything. My plans for today involved napping and treating myself to a nice lava bath. But here comes Moony Moony Moondancer playing hero again, stabbing his dear ol' friend Panny in her sleep."

"We're not friends." Moondancer growled, struggling to his hooves. "We h-haven't...been friends since you...since you killed your own father-"


"Oh, was that where I crossed the line?" Pan yawned, stretching casually. "Melodramatic as always, dearie. I didn't kill Daddy, I absorbed him. Although if you want to get technical, I do suppose the process of that did kill him-"

"How could you? How c-could you bring yourself to murder-"

"Tish tosh." Pan waved her paw, dismissive. "He had power, I wanted it. It's not like he was using it for anything-doddering old fool had given up beautiful, beautiful chaos, and for what? To kowtow to you little pony simpletons?" She scoffed, before pausing in thought. "....I didn't expect my plan to kill him, though."

"Monster." Moondancer coughed, and felt blood wet his lips. Pandora's blast had done more damage than he thought. "Monster."

"This again? Urgh." Pandora rolled her eyes and huffed, like she used to, when they were still friends, and the world made sense. "Always with this lecturing, Moony-'Oh boohoo, you're a monster, oh waah, Panny, you're hurting ponies, you're not this evil, please stop this, blah, blah, blah." Her eyes turned cold. "You're boring me, Moondancer. And you know what happens when I get bored."

Moondancer did know. He'd seen the horrors for himself. He scowled up at her, searching for strength. "You can do whatever you want to me, witch. You can't stop justice, nor the inevitable return to harmony. In the end, the princesses will prevail-"

"The princesses have been absolutely useless since they transferred their magic to Princess Twilight. What a brilliant plan that was." Pan scoffed, rolling her eyes. "We all know the heat death of the universe will come before Mommy Dearest will manage to kill me. Her attempts are getting laughable. Mom tries her darndest, but when the time comes for that last blow-" Pandora threw her paw up to her forehead and gave a sad, doe-eyed expression, lip quivering. "Please don't do it, Mom. I'll be good again, I promise. I'm still your little girl-I'm still Panny-I'll be good again, I love you, Mommy-" She burst suddenly into wild, joyous cackles. "That's all I have to do! And that killing blow never comes! She can't! I killed her husband, I turned Equestria inside out, I forced her friends and family into hiding-but Mommy can't do it, because she still sees me as some dumb little baby cubbie that needs to be protected." Pan laughed fondly. "It's sad, really."

"She loved you." Moondancer felt his eyes prick, and hated his weakness. Hated that after all this time, he still cared. Numbly, he let the tears fall. "...We all did."

Pandora paused, and for a moment seemed bothered by something-but then shook her head, smiling wide. "Aww, how sweet. I love you too, Moony. Out of all the ponies in the world, you're my absolute favorite yarnball to bat around." She seized him suddenly with magical telekinesis, levitating him high up into the air-before dropping him. He hit the ground with a dull thud, and she laughed at his pained groan. "I'll never get tired of it."

Moondancer didn't answer, because something in his chest had broken, and breathing was beginning to hurt. At his silence, Pandora glanced at him with poorly masked concern. She leaned down and cupped his face, stoking tenderly at his cheek.

"Aw, poor baby, think you might have a pierced lung there. Did Panny play with you too rough? Come here sweetie, I'll heal you up good as new, and then we can play some more-"

Moondancer gasped for breath. "....C-Cupcake." He managed to wheeze. "Cupcake...."

Pandora froze. Her expression became guarded, and she lifted her chin. "What about her?"

"This isn't...w-what she'd have wanted..."

"Oh, I'm sure it isn't." Pandora glared. "But she can't exactly speak up now, can she? She's out there rotting in her grave, and it's all-you-ponies' fault-" Pan's eyes began to glow, and the area around them began to charge with a malevolent energy, like air before a lighting strike. "She was the only one who ever loved me for me-my only true friend-but you ponies couldn't even let me have that, could you? You were all so scared of me, and what a child of chaos might do-you were all so afraid that somehow, someday, I'd turn into a monster. As though it was my destiny." Pan bit her lip, now struggling with tears.

"The ponies came for me. At night, when we weren't expecting it, they came, and...and my...my Cupcake s-stood in the way."

Pandora tried to discretely wipe at her face, but Moondancer caught the act. She continued on, speaking more to herself than to him.

"She was so brave...always so brave...." She whispered, wringing her paws...before her expression switched to wrath, and she snarled.
 
"You wretched little beasts took her from me." Pandora seized Moondancer in her magic again, this time lifting him up to her face. "Murderers, all of you! Filthy, rotten little cowards! Do you know what it was like to watch my best friend-the pony I loved-bleed out in my arms?! My empathy evaporated on the spot." Flames erupted from the corners of Pandora's mouth, plumes of fire snaking between her bared teeth, like a risen dragon. Moondancer struggled feebly in her hold, fearing the fire, but she took her paw and gripped him tight around the throat.

"...You miserable little equines killed the one thing I cared about the most." Pandora's voice went low, quiet. Dangerous. "So now I'll destroy the things you ponies care about most. Your lives. Your loved ones. Your sanity. All of you-every rotten one of you-has something that can be taken away. And I will not rest until I've snatched it away from every single pony-until all of ponykind has paid for its great evil. I won't stop until Equestria rests in flames, and every one of your filthy, broken bodies lies burning in the wreckage." She leaned close, and Moondancer looked into eyes that blazed hot with hate-eyes that held no trace of the friend he'd once known.

The moment broke, and she dropped him, turning away. She spoke one last time, voice cold.


"Tell Mom to put that in a letter to Celestia."



~~
sloppy doodle is sloppy

so i mentioned over on my tumblr that my very first idea for Pandora was that she was supposed to grow up and become evil. Not harmless evil either-like, treating ponies as toys, actual threat to the world and reality as we know it-evil. That's why I named her Pandora-like the mythical character, she was supposed to unleash terrible things onto the world, and pretty much become the avatar of destruction, as Discord is the avatar of chaos. Anyway, I thought it'd be interesting to explore the idea in an alternate universe, and I thought it'd be cool to have Moondancer, of all ponies, be the hero, out to stop her. He's pretty determined, but evil!Pan is strong as shit, soooo his efforts aren't exactly going super well

Pandora isn't quite herself these days. When Cupcake was killed, Pan felt a piece of herself die, and she's been steadily going mad ever since. Her condition wasn't helped by absorbing (inadvertently killing) her father Discord, and having that great flood of chaos magic washing through her, twisting her mind....



this isn't canon btw, just an alt universe storyline (i call it the reverse AU)
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