“Hello Celestia.” I blandly greeted. Celestia turned from her dream, her eyes widening in surprise.

“Luna?” she whispered. “I-I’m s-” She began.

“Cease.” I interrupted harshly. Something in my voice must’ve stuck a cord because Celestia pursed her lips.

“How dare you.” I stated with a calmness I didn’t feel. “You betray me, you toss me away, sending me hurtling through space for almost a thousand years, and then you have the gall to show up where I landed? How. Dare. You.” I growled.

“Luna please… Please listen to m-”

“Don’t.” I commanded. Celestia flinched.

“I don’t remember everything, but I remember respecting you. I remember loving you. I remember being your friend. And you threw me away.” I all but snarled. “I have no wish to be under your heel again, Celestia. So I’m going to inform you exactly how this will end should you continue.”

I lightly stomped a hoof on the ground, and the relatively calm dream went horribly, disastrously wrong.

The light of a thousand suns bloomed behind me. Celestia’s gaze slowly turned towards the sky, her mouth falling open in absolute horror. Her face almost blindingly illuminated.

“I know not if you truly understand the depths of your power, but humanity does.” I sternly explained.

“H-how-" Celestia gasped, a brightly lit mushroom reflecting in her eyes.

“Look around.” I commanded, summoning dream ponies to prove a point. The ponies took shape as my sister looked around in a daze.

Steam came off their coats as water flash boiled instantly, their forms seemingly frozen in time.

“No!” Celestia exclaimed, her face horrified as her ponies began to slowly incinerate.

“Look at them!” I shouted, sending a shockwave forward, blowing the steam away into nothingness.

“No no no!” Celestia panicked, rushing to hold the nearest in her arms.

The body crumpled into ash as she touched it, leaving nothing but a reverse shadow burned into the dream stuff.

"You know what I see when I look at you?" I asked rhetorically. "I see a mare unwilling to accept that she made a mistake. A mistake that has consequences, and can never be undone. Like a solar flare frying a planet."

Celestia looked up from the ash pile in her arms, a haunted look in her eyes.

“When you get the opportunity, ask the Humans about ‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki’ when you awake.” I continued. “They’ll tell you the same thing I will. This? This was what they were capable of 80 years ago. Much less what an actual star is capable of.” I strolled forward, walking past the dumbstruck Celestia. As I did so, I reshaped the dream to show a recreation of what I imagined the direct aftermath of the two bombs looked like. The reverse shadows of ponies replaced themselves with the shadows of World War 2 Japan. I made sure to include the ones I remembered from photos.

Celestia looked slowly over the devastation.

“... Why? Why show me this?” she finally asked. I took a moment to think of a good way to answer.

“... Call me cruel all you want;” I started. “But you need to know what it will take for me to be chained again.”

“You can come back with me Luna!” Celestia begged. “You don’t need to fight me!”

“Don’t I?” I asked, looking up into the dusty sky. “Tell me Celestia, do you know what it’s like to be thrown away?”

Celestia didn’t say anything, but her silence spoke volumes.

“No. I imagine you don’t.” I stated sadly, picking up a rock in my magic. “You don’t know what it's like to be thrown out with the garbage.” I tossed the rock aside and sat down. “In my life, the 20-something years I do remember at least, I’ve been thrown away more times than I care to recall.”

Celestia said nothing, but I heard hesitant hoofsteps move closer.

“You were one.” I continued. “But do not think for a moment you were the only one. At some point, after the fourth or fifth time, you start to wonder. Am I the problem?” I closed my eyes, tears beginning to form. “Friends, lovers, family… All of them throw me away. But I couldn’t find what the problem is… I tried and I tried, and I tried. Am I too crass with a joke? Am I too overbearing? Am I too awkward? Am I too creepy? Is there something about me that’s unsettling?” Tears began to fall freely to the glassed dirt below. “It wasn't until today I figured it out... I'm a monster.” I turned my head to see that Celestia had sat down, and was listening intently. I took a deep breath before continuing. "I- I killed them. I killed every single one I found."

I looked away in shame.

“Before I rediscovered that I was Luna, a banished immortal alien Princess of the Moon, I was named Lucas Maan, third shift grocery stocker and cashier. What I wanted... Was for all the pain to go away. Pain caused by everything those soldiers held dear, pain from working day in and day out for masters who would throw me away for a single dollar... And the pain I could never quite place." I put my head in my hooves. “But I had no aspirations. No plan for the future. No long term goal beyond feeding myself until the next paycheck. Not because I lacked ideas, but because life wasn’t worth living without someone, anyone, there to share them with.”

I took a moment to calm down, but it didn’t work very well.

“My only purpose was waiting to die.” I finished.

Celestia, at first, did nothing. Likely mulling over what I had said. Finally, after a moment, I heard her stand and approach.

Intuition told me she was going to hug me.

“Don’t.” I snarled, stopping Celestia in her tracks. “You were the one who put me in this mess!” I got up and turned back towards the white Alicorn, her eyes were full of tears. “I could’ve been happy! I could've had a life I was proud of! None of this needed to happen! I didn't need to be captured! I didn't need to kill all of those soldiers!” I prowled forwards, lowering my horn aggressively. “And then you have the nerve to ask me to simply ‘come back’?!” Celestia began to panic and step backwards. “HOW. By every god’s name, both holy and unholy, do you expect me to just trust you again?!”

“I- I-” she began.

“STUFF IT.” I growled. “I don’t want to hear your platitudes.” I took a deep calming breath and straightened. “This is how this is going to happen.” I stated after a moment. “You, and whoever you brought with you, are going to turn around and go straight back to Equestria. You are going to leave me alone, and hopefully, never see me again. If you don’t… Well.” I gestured around at the devastated scene.

“Luna… Please…” Celestia cried.

“I may be a monster, but this is far more than what you gave me.”

With that, I locked the dream into its current state, and left it entirely.

Hoo boi, family reunions.

That said, Happy Thanksgiving to my American Readers!