A pure sledgehammer of energy smashed Celestia to the ground as the bubble of magic around Twilight burst. Half-molten stones from the tower exploded away into the distance, the roof canted sideways until a thread of pure light lanced down from above, vaporizing the remaining tiles and enveloping Twilight Sparkle in a ball of solar plasma that began to grow.
Celestia: She’s tapping the sun! What have I created?
The Monster in the Twilight
is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic action/adventure/alternative universe fanfic. The entrance exam for Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns turns tragic when the young Twilight Sparkle experiences a disastrous magical surge, culminating in a runaway spell that nearly destroys Canterlot, tears Twilight's mind apart and leaves her body a half-charred wreck. To save the city Celestia teleports the mortally-wounded young unicorn into the Everfree Forest where—unexpectedly—she survives.
A retelling of the first two episodes of the first season, where a desperate Princess Celestia is forced to take a great gamble in order to bring her sister, Luna back from the grip of Nightmare Moon. Where a feral Twilight Sparkle roams the Everfree Forest in mortal terror of her past, and a power that defies control. Where Princess Cadence and Queen Chrysalis clash, and only one will walk away. New heroes rise to take up the Elements of Harmony in an epic final clash inside the decaying Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.
Will the Night last forever?
Warning: Many of the Tropes listed below are spoilers, and have not been tagged.
Original story created: Jan 21, 2013
Now has a sequel, Letters From A Little Princess Monster.
This fanfic contains examples of:
- The Alcoholic / Drowning Their Sorrows: Trixie tends to deal with stress by drinking bourbon. Lots of it.
- Allergic to Love: The Nightmare. Her reaction to getting assaulted by Changelings is to mentally express her desire to wash the bitter taste of it from her mouth using soap.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Chrysalis tries to set up an invasion of Equestria, but is quickly beaten by Monster, leaving the path open for the much more intimidating Nightmare Moon.
- Broken Bird: Twilight has both mental and physical damage from the failed exam, making her terrified of everypony and not in control of her resulting power. She calls herself Monster now.
- Little Miss Badass: Don’t back Monster into a corner. Just. Don’t.
- Badass Bookworm: Her love for books hasn't decreased one bit. She uses science to work out her plan to save the CMC, Zecora and herself from the changelings, which requires chemistry, with liberal use of magic to strongarm nature into providing her with the elements she needs to force the chemical reaction she wants. Which is to say, a humongous explosion.
- Enfant Terrible: During her entry exam magical flare, she tries to pull the sun down on Canterlot even though she is just a filly.
- Combat Pragmatist: To quote the Sergeant:Sergeant: "Monster likes to shoot twice!"
- For her warning shots, anyway.
- Also, turning an entire hive (the structure) into flash paper to basically nuke the entire hive (of changelings).
- Curse Cut Short: Zecora, to Chrysalis.My name is not needed, if I shall be so rudeYour life is now over. Oh queen, you are scr—
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Trixie
- The Dreaded: These days, there are far fewer sightings of creatures from the Everfree Forest... and those that are seen are prone to flee anything vaguely pony-like. The Watcher Who Gives Pain instructs the latter.
- Eldritch Abomination: A nameless monstrosity that sleeps deep down in the waters of a lake in the Everfree. It is unwittingly summoned by a melody played by the CMC, but it decides that enjoying the music and returning wayward frisbees is much better than having a rematch with The Watcher Who Gives Pain. AKA, Monster.
- Emergency Transformation: Twilight becomes an alicorn filly after escaping her collapsing universe, with a whole new look to boot.
- Fearless Fool / I'm Not Afraid of You - The Cutie Mark Crusaders“Where is your fear?” snarled Nightmare Moon, stalking closer. “Why do you not fear me?”Sweetie Belle: “We ride in Scootaloo’s wagon! It takes a lot to scare us.”
- Fountain of Youth: Twilight gets hit with this at the end, most likely thanks to the Elements of Harmony, as she is also cured of her physical disfigurations and brain damage.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Defied twice and subverted.
- Celestia aborts her initial Taking You with Me plan when she learns Twilight is alive and well, and has friends. She instead locks herself in the sun to recover her power as well as deny the Nightmare the chance to feed on her dark emotions to gain power.
- Trixie's apparent sacrifice to buy time for everyone else to get away is actually just a magic puppet created by the real Trixie, with a cape of hers and Granny Smith's teeth scattered to fool Nightmare Moon.
- Rather than kill Luna or let the Elements drain the CMC dry of their energy to purge the Nightmare, Twilight shoves them away and provides all the power by herself. Except she is Not Quite Dead, along with Luna, existing still as a shapeless being in a new temporary universe created by Twilight. They both manage to escape thanks to the intervention of a helpful spirit and Trixie powered by the Element of Magic.
- Hideous Hangover Cure: Chapter 20 has a variant meant to get Trixie upright and thinking straight after her face-off with Nightmare Moon. It consists of warm water, corn syrup, molasses, cinnamon, hot sauce, root beer concentrate, carrot juice, pickle juice, peppermint extract, and bourbon. Rarity jokingly asks which end of Trixie it should go into.
- The Maker: Luna/Nightmare Moon for the Nocturne. Celestia once created a temporary universe with the outside size of a coin with the assistance of a group of experienced magi. Twilight does the same, on a much bigger scale, using the Element of Magic, and seals herself and Nightmare Moon inside. The overarching rule of her universe is that pain, anger, and hate don't exist—thus negating every aspect of reality that sustains the Nightmare and destroying it for good. A side effect is that Twilight emerges as an alicorn filly, with all her physical damage healed and her mind starting to put itself back together.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: The Changeling Queen, who gets a Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred! moment when gloating to Monster. Bad idea.
- Face Death with Dignity: The Queen. Of course, she has a plan involving a Self-Sacrifice Scheme.
- Made of Iron: Not quite enough to survive the destruction of her hive. But close.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Monster breaking the changeling hive which was healing her.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: When Monster turns the entire Changeling hive into Nitrocellulose. Then ignites it. While inside. And surviving.
- The Power of Love: Monster shows she can tap the hive’s own power supply.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: A Running Gag with the CMC, who are repeatedly referred to as "The girls. And Featherweight," (with Featherweight usually interjecting "Hey!" at the appropriate point).
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "The Watcher Who Gives Pain", who is also known by the simpler but not less-fitting name of "Monster".
- No One Gets Left Behind: When the freed Luna refuses to abandon the exhausted Twilight in the collapsing universe the latter created.
- Pony Of Mass Destruction: There's a very good reason Twilight is nicknamed Monster in this fic. Every time Shining Armor and Cadence's group encounters her in the forest, the aftermath sees an extremely warped landscape. Similar instances occur whenever a predator Too Dumb to Live (like Timber Wolves) approaches her. In the very opening chapter, she wrests control of the sun from Celestia and sets it to plummet towards the earth. When she, Zecora and the CMC get abducted by the Changelings, she transforms their entire hive into nitrocellulose and lights it. This is pretty much the same as nuking them.
- Physical God: Obviously, Celestia and Luna/Nightmare Moon as well as Twilight, since she not only creates a whole universe where she seals herself with Nightmare Moon, she also becomes an alicorn filly upon exiting it. One would suppose that she was only a step away from this trope after having absorbed power from Celestia, the sun, the stockpiled love of an entire changeling hive and even her own fear.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: What the Elements do if their wielders cannot provide the power they demand for the Harmony restoration that is needed, like what they would have done to the CMC had Twilight not taken it upon herself to power the Elements on her own.
- Promotion to Parent: Zecora for Monster. Lampshaded by her. In a sense, Cadence and Shining Armor for the whole changeling race, a fact lampshaded with an Understatement by Cadence.
- Prophecies Are Always Right: If you predict the future by the stars, what happens when somebody moves them? Making Zecora travel to Equestria ten years ahead of schedule.
- Reality Warper: It is easy to change the energies of love into hatred, and impossible to do the reverse. Not so for Monster.
- Reminiscing About Your Victims: Nightmare does this to both Celestia and Luna frequently, to stir up anger and manipulate them.
- Ship Tease: Monster's got a thing for Big Macintosh.
- Shout-Out: To RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse. Trixie is not at all easy to get along with, has a fondness for bourbon, shows a decidedly Bizarre Taste in Food, and occasionally lapses into French when angry or disoriented.
- Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Used by the Changeling Queen against Monster, and by Nightmare against Luna, Celestia, and Monster. Mixed results.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: What happens to Nightmare when she smites Trixie for impudence.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Nightmare can’t take over Monster until her old body is destroyed, so she decides to lead Monster to the Elements of Harmony, thinking that Monster will be unable to use them correctly and vaporize Luna. She’s wrong.
- Taking You with Me: Defied and Subverted.
- Having lost hope for her original and backup plans of Twilight or Trixie using the Elements to save Luna, Celestia planned to throw herself into the sun with Nightmare Moon, where they would either burn to nothingness or remain trapped forever. As noted above in Heroic Sacrifice, upon learning that Twilight survived the wounds sustained during her magical flare and that she made friends, she decides to bet everything once more on her original plan.
- Twilight inadvertently does this to Luna/Nightmare Moon, realizing the world she created to destroy the Nightmare would soon disappear, along with her and Luna. It is thanks to outside factors that they manage to get out of the collapsing space.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Monster, all the time. Her most shining example is turning an entire changeling hive into what is essentially a building-sized bomb and lighting it on fire. And as one commenter so kindly shares, adding fire to the mix by itself is overkill.
- Wild Filly: We were told that Twilight, aka Monster, was barely more than a wild animal during her time living in the Everfree Forest, roaming the woods by herself, getting into savage fights with the denizens of the Everfree Forest and flees contact from other ponies.
- You Can't Fight Fate: If Fate is determined by the movement of the stars, what happens when you hold them still?
