Loyal and the others eventually arrived at Sunburst’s home and Starlight knocked on the door. "It's gonna be fine, Star." Loyal saiid.
Starlight started breathing heavily as the seconds ticked by. A moment later, and she shakily knocked on the door once again. "Well, I guess he's not home, such a shame, guess we'd better go tell Twilight the bad news, huh?"
Just then, the door opened.
"Nope." Loyal replied.
"H-hello?" A voice said. It sounded slightly old.
Starlight gulped. "Uh... Sunburst...? It's... It's me. Starlight Glimmer? Your old friend?"
"Oh, uhh, Starlight! It's, uh...been such a long time! What have you been up to?"
"Ah... not much! ...What about you...?" Starlight asked, awkwardly.
"Not much, really...just busy studying, as usual.."
"Right, right... So, um... This was fun!" Starlight smiled at her old friend.
[beat] "Right. Uh, well... good to see you." With that, he just closed the door in our faces.
"....Was that it?" Loyal commented.
"Guess so! Well I guess we'd better head to the castle and tell Twilight this has all been for naught and there's absolutely no chance of me ever rekindling my friendship with Sunburst ever!"
"Or, instead of sounding...slightly dramatic about it, we can just say it didn't go well."
"I guess that works just as well..." Starlight shrugged and prepared to set off in the direction of the castle.
Loyal followed Starlight, until he noticed the group of ponies standing behind a curtain. He motioned for Star to follow them.
"We're back. It didn't exactly go well....a bit of awkwardness included."
"What... um... What exactly is going on here?" Starlight asked.
Just then. the baby came flying by. "Hey, look! The baby already knows how to fly! That was fast..." Loyal commented.
"I think baby pegasi have a tendency to fly around from a young age, which they gradually unlearn as they get older. Like how baby unicorns have explosive magic bursts that dull with age until they actually have to be taught magic."
So, when it's older, it can't fly? That's...disappointing..."
"OH, no, I didn't mean she won't be able to fly when she gets older, just that she'll have to learn again," Starlight clarified. "So, what exactly is going on here?"
"We're trying to catch the baby to prepare for the crystalling." Shining replied.
"Harder than it looks."
"Weren't Twilight and Pinkie supposed to be watching the baby?!" Rainbow exclaimed. "Which one of you let her get away?!"
"Well excuse us for not wanting to have our heads blasted off by her pure, untapped, raw magical powers, Rainbow Dash!"
Pinkie was holding onto the baby for dear life, trying to slow her down. Twilight used her magic to create a mitosis shield to separate Pinie from the baby..
"Um...Twilight....I don't think that was a good idea..."
"What? Why not?" Twilight asked.
Just then, the baby began to whimper a bit.
"That's why."
"Is... Is she crying? What do we do? Cadance, make her stop!"
But it was too late.
The baby let out a cry so loud, it actually emitted sonic waves. The waves affected the Crystal Heart, which slowly began to crack and....
"Oh, crud." Loyal said.
*SMASH* The Heart shattered to pieces. After that, the baby seemed to calm down.
Everypony let out a loud gasp, looks of horror crossing the faces of Celestia and Luna.
"I'm guessing it's gonna be pretty hard to have the Crystalling without that," Applejack said, pointing at the shattered remains of the Crystal Heart.
"It's much worse than that, Applejack. Without the Crystal Heart, there's nothing to protect the Crystal Empire from the weather of the Frozen North! Before long, the entire city will be buried under a mound of ice and snow!" Twilight said, moving the curtain aside to reveal dark clouds billowing on the horizon.
The baby let out a little giggle. "Apparently, she's the only one who finds that funny....and I'm too young to become a human popsicle..." Loyal said.
"There's got to be something we can do to fix this thing," Applejack exclaimed.
Twilight nodded. "Maybe a spell will help. Cadance, can you think of anything that might help?"
"Not off the top of my head... But perhaps the castle library has what we're looking for."
"Twi, what can I do?" Loyal asked. It was obvious he didn't know whether to help or look, Twi could tel..
Twilight thought for a moment. "It's very important that we get the Crystal Heart fixed. We're going to need all hooves and claws available on deck to help find a spell to fix it. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, I need you three to try to convince the Crystal Ponies to get inside where it's warm, but try not to let them know the Crystal Heart's been broken.
Celestia, Luna, do you think you can hold off the storm?"
The sisters looked to one another before Luna nodded. "For a while, yes. But we can only do so much before even our power succumbs to the storm."
"We will do what we can. Good luck, everyone." Celestia and Luna took off into the skies to begin trying to hold off the storm, while Twilight turned back to Loyal.
"I think you and Starlight should go back to try to talk to Sunburst again. I don't know what might happen, and I'd like them to be able to communicate if things go sour here and we have to leave."
"Right." Loyal nodded, and headed off with Starlight to revisit Sunburst. 'This has to work...' Loyal thought. "It HAS to." Later, when they arrived, Starlight knocked on the door, Sunburst came out, and she explained why she visited the last time.
"So, the Princess of Friendship wants you and I to be friends again?"
"Yeah, she does," Starlight mused, looking down at her hooves.
"Uh, I don't understand. Did something happen to you after I left for magic school?"
"No! I-I don't see what that has to do with anything! W-Why would you even ask that?" Starlight asked, quickly, sweat beginning to form on her brow.
" I mean, did something happen to you after you left for magic school?" She asked.
"What? Um, no. L-Like you said, I'm a, [clears throat] i-important wizard."
"Right. Well, umm, you probably have some important wizard stuff to do..." Starlight began fiddling with her hooves. There was an air of discomfort around her.
"Starlight!" Loyal hissed silently "Tell him!"
"Tell him? Tell him what? I don't have any secrets to hide! None at all! No glaring character flaws that could stem from one isolated incident in my past!" Starlight laughed nervously as she said this.
"No! About the heart!"
"O-Oh... uh, right... that.... Listen, um, Sunburst... We..." Starlight gulped. "We have a problem at the castle. There's been a bit of.... an accident... involving the Crystal Heart. It's.... broken. We're doing everything we can to fix it, but we really, REALLY need a powerful wizard to help! Somepony like YOU!"
" [sighs] Look, Starlight, I want to help. I do. But I can't. I wish I could."
"Why not?" Starlight asked. "This is important, Sunburst! We could be in serious trouble here!"
"Fixing an ancient relic? I-I can't even come close to doing something like that!"
"But... aren't you a powerful wizard, Sunburst? What about magic school?"
"I know it's hard for you to understand, but not all of us end up achieving greatness.
"Well, you were wrong, okay?! I'm not an important wizard! I'm not even a wizard at all!"
"Why would you think I wouldn't understand?!" Starlight asked, a tone of hurt in her voice.
"Reading about magic is one thing, but you don't know what it was like at magic school! To know so much and not be able to do any of it!"
Starlight looked surprised for a moment, and then her expression shifted to one of hurt anger. "Well, you don't know what it was like to be left behind! And then getting so bitter that you steal the cutie marks from an entire village and then get defeated by Twilight and her friends, so you travel through time to get back at them, but they beat you again and teach you about friendship, but you're so terrified ponies will find out what you did that you can't make any friends!"
"Wow....I never actually thought you'd ever go that far.. So THAT'S that you were nervous about in the library!"
"I'm not proud of it, okay? I tried to mess up everyone's lives to make me feel better about myself, and when that failed, I tried to mess up Twilights life JUST BECAUSE I was mad at her! I didn't even want anything out of it but to watch her suffer!" Starlight took in a shaky breath.
"I'm not proud of who I was." She closed her eyes. "I'm afraid of what I could've become."
Loyyal gently hugged Star. "But you didn't become that person. You became somepony you never thought you'd become, Somepony you never imagined you'd enjoy becoming, or even being, for that matter....and the person you are now, you'll eventually have good friends, though I'd already a friend of you."
Starlight wiped the tears from her eyes and smiled at Loyal. "Th-thank you..." She sniffled before turning to Sunburst. "Are you sure you can't do anything to help? Anything at all? We're in REAL trouble here..."
"We were hoping you knew a spell to fix the Crystal Heart so we could continue the Crystalling.""
"Crystalling...! Of course!" Sunburst leaps out of his chair and towards the door. "Come on!" He said, before heading outside.
Starlight glanced towards Loyal, confused, before heading outside, as well.
Loyal and Starlight followed Sunburst, until he approached Princess Celestia and Luna, who were covered in snow and ice. They must have fought hard against the storm..
"I know how to stop this!" Sunburst said and Celestia smirked a bit.
Starlight and Loyal led the group back to the heart.
Twilight, and Cadance attempted to rebuild the heart using magic....but just as it looked like it worked, it fell back apart.
"No luck so far?" Loyal said.
"This isn't working! I have no idea what to do!" Twilight cried.
"Hmm....well, I have some good news. not only did Starlight and Sunburst sort of befriend each other, but we found our solution." Loyal explained, gesturing to Sunburst.
Sunburst looked towards the shattered Heart. "The baby did this?!"
We've been trying to fix it using this spell," Twilight said, moving the scroll closer to Sunburst. "But it just isn't working!"
"The spell of Relic Reconstitution. No, that won't do it. The Crystal Heart's been around for millennia. Restoring a relic like this is way beyond one spell. You need to combine it with something else. Something unique to the relic itself. Something that strengthens it and provides it with power...?"
"The Crystalling, of course!" Twilight exclaimed. She turned to her brother and Princess Cadance and nodded.
Combining that spell with the light and love of everypony gathered for the ceremony, together with... Somnambula Weather Abjuration to clear away the snow... and a little Fledgling's Forbearance for the parents... Heh. That should curb the little one's power fluctuations."
The baby giggled in response.
"Remind me to get a thesaurus to define most of those words..." Loyal commented.
"Sunburst... Would you be our Crystaller?" Shining Armor asked. Cadence gave the unicorn a smile.
Sunburst nodded.
Princess Cadance: "You must be Sunburst. Starlight said you were a powerful wizard.
"Oh, I'm no wizard."
Every pony gasped in shock.
"But he studied magic his whole life! You should see his house! And since nopony has any better ideas, what do we have to lose?!"
"Not trying to sound negative, but.... If this fails....our lives. Just putting that in." Loyal commented.
Starlight shot Loyal a bit of a glare, before turning back towards the others.
"Alright, Everypony! Let's do this!"
The four Unicorns (Twilight, though technically an Alicorn), Cadence, Starlight, and Shining Armor, each shot a blast at the heart. Sunburst, at the same time, presented the newborn baby to the crowd. They were all amazed, and knelt down in honor of the newborn foal. Each pony delivered an eerie glow to the ground, which flowed into a Crystal sunburst held onto the floor. The energy soaked up into the crystal completely, and Sunburst leapt into the air, tossing the shard into the heart.....completely reforming it.
The Crystal Heart began rotating at a fast-paced speed, and sent a large wave of light out, covering everypony with a crystal coat. It was glorious.
"I think we did it!" Loyal said, relieved he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life as a permanent permafrosted pony popsicle. Although, he was yet to realize that their troubles had yet to be over..