After Rodan finishes telling his story, Princess Sunset Shimmer finds it hard to believe, especially because she cannot imagine Princess Luna ever being a good guy. However, she has experienced travel through other dimensions before. She performs a scanning spell on him and finds traces of dark magic from the portal that brought him here on his body. It is gradually diminishing, and she deduces that when it completely runs out after 24 hours, he'll automatically warp back to the Equestria he came from. She tells him he's free to go and she has work to do in dealing with the Nightmare Army. Despite her insisting it isn't his fight, he insists on helping her. The Princess Celestia from the world he came from was very hospitable to him and his friends, and if this world's Celestia is anything like her, it is his duty to help her and her world. Sunset says the Nightmare Army is too dangerous for him to fight, but he says she's underestimating him and the villains he's fought before. He's helping her, end of discussion.
The pair journeys through the Everfree Forest and finds the Nightmare Army's camp in a gorge. Sunset is shocked at how many there are. In their last battle, she and her friends had broken Nightmare Moon's forces. There should have only been a few scattered cultists, not a whole army. She warns Rodan that each member of the army is a monster that cannot be reasoned with, only killed. Rodan is shocked, more used to the attitudes of the Equestria he knows. He remembers Thalia's story of how cults and fanatics rose up in Nightmare Moon's name and tried to initiate a civil war, only for Princess Celestia to shut them down non-violently, and guesses that this world's Celestia didn't do that. Sunset's attitude towards the army reminds him of Godzilla Junior's hatred toward Xenilla, which he considers a scary thought.
He spots a tent larger than the others and guesses that the leader is in there. Sunset is confused because the camp has no perimeter guards, while a camp of this size should have attracted dangerous creatures like manticores. Rodan thinks the camp may be too large to take on alone, and suggests they call in Celestia. Sunset says she could summon her by blasting a massive firework spell that could be seen from Canterlot, but Rodan points out if she did that, the camp would know they are there. He suggests he fly to Canterlot himself to retrieve Celestia. After she reluctantly agrees, he attempts to silently fly off, only to hit a force field and bounce back to where he started.
Sunset guesses the force field is part of the spell that prevents the camp from being seen from the air. She gets worried when she gauges its size. It's about size times the size of a force field she could create, meaning whoever is casting it must be exceptionally powerful. Suddenly, Rodan carries her into the air, before a lance could impale her in the head. They have been spotted by a male and female pair of Shadowbolts. Sunset teleports back to the ground and takes on the male while Rodan takes on the female. After a few seconds, the male breaks off from the fight and goes to follow Rodan and his partner. Sunset tries to pursue, but gets attacked by a Blades of Nightmare, a monster that looks like a bunch of floating swords linked together to form a serpent shape. She fights back with her flame spells, but the creature evades. Some of its blades burrow underground and attack her from below giving her a cut on her stomach. After healing herself, she takes the offensive by shaping a boulder into two flaming swords she wields with her telekinesis.
Rodan is amazed that the female Shadowbolt can match his speed, noting that so far, only Rainbow Dash had been able to do that. The male Shadowbolt blindsides and nearly impales him with a sword. Rodan sees the male doesn't have any blood on him and deduces Sunset is okay, then wonders why the male would abandon his fight because Sunset Shimmer would be a priority target of the Nightmare Army. He gets an idea and fires his Uranium Ray into a nearby pond, creating a lot of steam. The male gets caught in it and gets blinded and his wing feathers soaked, causing him to crash and let out an unearthly scream that unnerves Rodan. The female evades the steam and tackles him out of the air. They grapple and he is able to knock her lance away and pin her. He tries to talk to her and get her to surrender, but she struggles and constantly praises Nightmare Moon until he gets fed up and headbutts her unconscious. He tries to regroup with Sunset, but the mare unexpectedly revives and pounces on him. She screams that she will devour his soul and bites his neck. He feels cold from the bite and his life energy draining, but he manages to knock her away. Her mask comes off and he is shocked to find she is a decaying zombie. She lunges at him again, but he finally understands what Sunset meant that they are monsters and decapitates her with his talons. Before he can relax, dark energy seeps from the stump and retrieves and reattaches the head. She attacks him again, but a fed up Rodan obliterates her with his Uranium Ray.
Sunset is struggling against the Blades of Nightmare after her swords were destroyed. She tricks it into ramming into a tree trunk, getting its blades stuck, then blasts it with fire. However, not all of the blades were destroyed. The remaining blades attempt to impale her, but Rodan shows up and blasts them. Sunset gets her second wind and together they destroy all the blades.
In the camp, Nightmare Mircalla walks around and is praised by the others as Nightmare Moon's avatar. In truth, she's grown disillusioned with Nightmare Moon's cause a long time ago, but carries on to repay her debt to the dark Alicorn, and because she knows if she tried to quit, the others would kill her. Mizu also terrifies her. She hears an explosion in the distance and realizes they have company. She orders the camp to move while she deals with the disturbance herself.
As Sunset and Rodan catch their breaths, a swarm of bats appears and merges together to form Nightmare Mircalla. The two blast her, but she casually blocks their beams with her wings. Rodan asks who she is, then turns to find Sunset is crying and going into shock. Rodan calls out her name and tries to snap her out of it. Mircalla approaches, but he blasts the ground to blind her with debris and flies away with Sunset. Mircalla makes no attempt to pursue, but comments that she hadn't heard Sunset Shimmer's name in over 20 years.
Once he is sure they are a safe distance away, Rodan asks who that figure was, but Sunset screams and fires a massive flamethrower upwards that rakes across the force field overhead. In the distance, the Nightmare Army watches the flame. Mircalla can feel its heat and muses Sunset must want revenge. Sunset stops firing and tells Rodan that Mircalla murdered her birth mother.
