//------------------------------// // Hidden in the Clutter // Story: Legends Never Die // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// If you woke up one morning and you couldn't see outside, you could almost forget what had just happened in Maretime Bay only a few days ago. You could pretend that all three pony tribes were still separated, and you could think to yourself, "I wonder what kinds of new stuff Canterlogic is coming up with." Some ponies wouldn't be sure why you would want to do that, but others would love to forget recent events. Such as Sprout, for instance. The former deputy of Maretime Bay was sitting in jail for his crimes, but Hitch was doing everything he could to shorten his sentence (however begrudgingly; some ponies wondered if Sunny was really the one behind it, what with her forgiving attitude these days), but he still had a long way to go before getting released. His mother Phyllis had gotten off easier. While she was partially blamed for Sprout's take-over of the town, she only had to pay a fee, and close down Canterlogic until she could come up with a better use for the factory. She managed to do this by designing different gadgets for the different tribes that would make their lives easier: horn polish for the unicorns, flying obstacle courses for the pegasi, etc., etc. Sprout was upset that his mom was getting off easier than he had, and, at first, kept trying to press charges against Hitch for abandoning his post as sheriff and going off on an adventure with a fugitive earth pony, two pegasi, and a unicorn, but Hitch just pointed out that, since Sprout was in jail, he wasn't in any position to press charges against anypony else. Some of the townsponies were still skittish around the unicorns and the pegasi, but nopony ran away screaming whenever they saw a horn or a pair of wings. Sunny was delighted by the change and continued to promote the union of the three tribes by dragging Hitch along to visit Zipp and Pipp in Zephyr Heights, and Izzy in Bridlewood, although Hitch didn’t seem as reluctant to go along as Sunny had thought he would. Besides, it wasn’t like Sunny had a home of her own to stay at. Her lighthouse had been destroyed in the fight a few days earlier, and while she and her friends were making an effort to clean up the mess and build her a new home, they hadn’t made much progress beyond rescuing everything Sunny valued from the wreckage and cleaning up the rubble. For now, Sunny was staying with Izzy in Bridlewood, as she was hoping that, by staying with the unicorns, the only ponies with physical magic besides the pegasi, she may get some answers about her own magic. Sunny’s golden wings and horn had only lasted a day, and when she’d woken up the following morning she was disappointed to find out that they were gone. She had always loved the idea of magic and flying, and once she’d finally had an opportunity to do either of those things, they had been taken away from her. The morning on which this story begins dawned bright and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. Even as far away as Bridlewood, one could look up and see a pegasus or two swooping through the sky, enjoying the adrenaline rush that filled their veins as their wings lifted them off the ground for the first time in years. Sunny blinked open her eyes and sat up in bed, her luscious pink hair a mess, as usual. She sighed as she fumbled to braid it, tying the end, as usual, with a blue rubber band. She glanced around her room, which was full of Izzy’s “unicycling” gadgets and gizmos. The chandelier was made of glass shards tied together with string so thin it was almost invisible. Small windows near the roof allowed slants of sunlight to filter in, lighting up the multicolored shards so that they gleamed and shone, lighting up the whole room with rainbow reflections that reminded Sunny of the stained glass windows in Zephyr Heights. The flower-shaped tea table that Izzy had shown them when they’d first arrived was sitting in the middle of the room, currently set in tea party mode. A large shelf took up an entire wall, the shelves lined with colorful boxes stuffed to the brim with all kinds of trinkets Sunny didn’t even know the names of. The shelf could rotate to bring whatever box you needed to the level that you could reach. Multiple misshapen projects cluttered the room; things Izzy had gotten started on but never had a chance to finish. Now that her magic was back, however, she could complete three projects per day, when it had previously taken her at least a day and a half to do just one. Sunny’s bed was stuffed into a corner, the turquoise frame contrasting nicely with the bright yellow, pink, and green sheets with patterns of hearts on them. Spotting her turquoise saddlebag with a star drawn out in a slightly darker shade of turquoise hanging on a chair, Sunny remembered what that day was. She gave an excited jump and proceeded to double check her bag to make sure it held everything she needed. Once she was sure it did, she slung it over her head, peeked out of her room, and tiptoed down the hall, peeking into Izzy’s room. The purple unicorn was sprawled out on her own bed, limbs tangled with her crazy mane, blankets askew, mouth open as she snored, a single thread of saliva threatening to drop onto the bed. She snorted in her sleep, twitching slightly, and turned over, flinching as a bright beam of sunlight hit her face. “Izzy!” Sunny whisper-shouted. She didn’t want to wake her best friend, but the two of them had made plans for that day, and Sunny didn’t want to be late. “Izzy, wake up!” “Not right now, Mommy, I’ll do it in a few hours,” Izzy mumbled sleepily. “Imma just go back to sleep…” “Izzy!” Sunny said reproachfully, trotting into the room and nudging her friend. “Come on, Izzy, we’ve got things to do, places to be!” “Sleep…” the unicorn moaned. “No sleep!” Sunny insisted. “Wake up now!” She grabbed the edge of the blanket, which was so tangled with the pony that, had they been the same color, it would have been hard to tell where the blanket stopped and where the pony began. Yanking hard, Sunny tucked the blanket out from under Izzy, righting the unicorn so that she snapped to attention, eyes wide, hoof hastily raised in a salute. “Whatever it is, I don’t know who ate the chocolate muffins!” Izzy cried, unblinking. “It wasn’t me! But I did see Alphabittle’s little critters near it, so I thought somepony ought to hide the muffins in a secure place, and there wasn’t anywhere else to put them! I - Oh, hi Sunny!” Shaking her head and blinking the sleepiness from her eyes, Izzy studied her friend. “What was the reason to wake me up at the crack of dawn?” “Izzy, the sun’s been up for, like, an hour,” Sunny insisted. “Now come on, we’re going to Zephyr Heights today, remember? Pipp invited us to come see her performance, and I kind of think we should, you know, since we ruined her last one.” “That wasn’t ruining! It was more like… unintentional sabotage?” Izzy tossed her head so that her mane fell over her shoulder and was out of her face, however temporarily. “Anyway, we had very good reasons for what we did, right? We had to try and get the magic back. And I thought we were going because Pipp’s our friend.” “Well, yeah, that too,” Sunny said hurriedly, not meaning to leave the critical fact out. “Now come on, let’s grab something for breakfast and go. If we hurry, we can make it in time for the performance and have a little time to chat with Zipp and Pipp before it starts.” She grabbed Izzy’s hoof and tugged her out of her room and down the stairs. Izzy yawned on their way out and used her magic to grab a brush from the clutter that filled her room as well. The handle nearly poked her in the eye, and she yelped “Ouch!” before frustratingly grabbing it with her hoof and tugging it though her thick locks. Sunny dashed into the kitchen and searched the cupboard for something edible that they could take on the road. “Cereal… nope. Orange juice… nope. Apples… sure, why not? Hey, Izzy, ca-” Izzy looked up with berry juice all over her face and swallowed. “What?” she asked as Sunny struggled to contain her giggles. “Pie is a great and nourishing breakfast! It has grain, fruit, totally nutritious! And if you add some ice cream, there’s dairy as well…” Izzy started pawing at the cupboards. “Izzy! No ice cream for breakfast!” Sunny reprimanded. “Just come on.” She stuffed an apple in her mouth and tossed one to Izzy on her way out the door. A unicorn passing by nearly fainted but didn’t, although they didn’t look much more reassured at the sight of an earth pony trying to pry an apple from their mouth. The unicorn muttered “Um…” and ran off towards the more populated part of Bridlewood. Sunny finally pried the apple loose from her teeth and chomped down on it, devouring it in three bites. Izzy trotted out after her, the sleepiness gone from her ecstatic face. “So, how are we going to get to Zephyr Heights?” she asked innocently, her apple nowhere in sight. Sunny grumbled at the fact that Izzy had not gotten her breakfast stuck between her teeth and turned in the direction of the mountain. A purple pegasi let out a whoop as he flew back towards his home. “We follow the pegasi,” Sunny said aloud, even though she now knew her way around Equestria like the back of her hoof. She trotted on, soon exiting the woods and passing the unicorns struggling to take down the racial signs forbidding the entrance of non-unicorns. A few waved to her, but a blue unicorn with a frosty white mane turned his back on her, making a big scene of covering his nose with his hoof and holding his head high, clearly portraying his feelings for the other tribes. He didn’t behave much better towards Izzy, who came bounding out of the forest to a much warmer welcome than Sunny. Now that all unicorns could have a much more cheerful attitude like her’s, everypony couldn’t help but like Izzy. Sunny shot an alarmed glance at the rude unicorn, but he continued to pretend like she didn’t exist. She tried to ignore her hurt feelings and continued along the path towards Zephyr Heights. She’d expected ponies who wouldn’t embrace the change in culture as well as her friends had, but that didn’t stop the wave of internal pain she was feeling. The day proved to be another beautiful one, with a crisp breeze lifting Sunny’s braid off her shoulder and giving her delightful chills as the scarlet and gold trees around them shed their leaves, coating the dirt path ahead of them in rich, crisp colors. She trotted happily along with Izzy, talking cheerfully about all sorts of things, like what Izzy was planning to do with that abandoned tire that was sitting in her living room, or how Sunny wanted her lighthouse to look when they rebuilt it. “OH! You know what? I never finished my hundred forty-two questions for a unicorn,” Sunny remembered, fishing around in her saddlebag for her father’s old journal. She pulled it out and flipped to the bookmarked page, taking a deep breath, preparing to ask the remaining hundred thirty-five questions. “Oh, boy,” Izzy mumbled, grinning at her friend as she began. “Have you ever used your magic to levitate yourself? Well, obviously, we can skip that one, because you had no magic, but did you ever want to use your magic to levitate yourself?” “Huh. I guess I never really thought of that,” Izzy said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Want to give it a go?” “Wait, what?” Sunny jerked her head up and stared at Izzy as the unicorn lit up her horn, surrounding herself in a purple aura as she lifted off the ground, wobbling dangerously in the air, hooves searching for something to stand on. “Woah,” she cried, struggling to right herself. Finally she floated gently down to the ground, and her magic disappeared with a pop, and she sprawled out on the forest floor. “...I’m just going to mark that as, ‘yes’,” Sunny decided, pulling out a pen and writing it down before slipping the pen back into her bag. “Wait… what’s this?” She ran her hoof over the page, feeling the uneven bumps in the paper. “It feels… thicker than usual.” Izzy scrambled to her feet and trotted over, inspecting the journal as Sunny held it out to her. “Huh, you’re right,” Izzy decided. “I wonder…” She used her magic to lift the page so that it was standing vertically and inspected the edges. “This looks like two pages were stuck together,” Izzy said. “But look, our hooves won’t be able to do anything to get them unstuck.” She brushed her hoof against the edge of the paper, showing how it yielded no result. “I think we need to use magic. Stand back.” Sunny dutifully took a step back, but watched her friend apprehensively. She knew that none of the unicorns had very good control over their magic yet, and her journal was very special to her, but she decided to trust Izzy as the unicorn’s horn lit up, and she carefully pried the two pages apart. A folded up note tumbled out, positioned like it was supposed to lie flat to make the page smooth, but it had been jostled out of alignment, so Sunny had felt a bump. “Woah,” Sunny whispered, stepping forward. “What…” “I don’t know,” Izzy admitted, “but look!” She brushed the folded piece of paper off the page. “It’s a note!” Sunny came around next to Izzy, and her eyes widened as she recognized her late father’s hoof writing. My dearest Sunny, If you are reading this, then it means that all three tribes have been reunited, for you must have somehow befriended a unicorn to break the seal around this page. In all of my research, I have discovered a paste that, theoretically, only responds to magic, and I wanted to make sure that this note would find you when Equestria is a much safer place. Dear Sunny, you know the story I tell you every night, and I am telling you that it is very much true. There was a unicorn who was as bright as the sun, and she did befriend lots of different kinds of ponies, and they did show all of Equestria the magic of friendship. But she did much more than that. I was not able to find out what, but I did find something that even I wasn’t sure what it was. But I know that there is more to this world than I have been able to record in this journal. So I am asking you to do it. This map is possibly one of the only things left that could give us some answers of what happened back then. Please, find out what happened to make the tribes separate. Please find out where this could lead. And don’t give up, my little pony. If you’ve gotten this far, then you can do so much more. I believe in you. Sunny looked at Izzy, who looked curiously back at her. “So… what does your dad mean, exactly?” “I’m not sure,” Sunny admitted, “but I bet this will help us figure it out.” She pawed at the folded piece of paper with her hoof. “My dad said this is a map,” she said, remembering what his note had said. “So…” Her voice trailed off as she unfolded the paper, and her jaw dropped. The map was old and faded, with crisp wrinkled edges and dim colors. The shape of the drawing on the map was faintly recognizable, but it didn’t look like any map of Equestria Sunny had ever seen. Except… “We have to get back to Zephyr Heights,” Sunny decided. “Zipp offered to store all my old things until my lighthouse is rebuilt. Do you think you might be able to teleport us there?” “Teleport?” Izzy asked, appalled. “Sunny, I can barely levitate stuff. How do you expect me to teleport two ponies halfway across the continent?” “Please?” Sunny’s eyes widened, big and pleading. “Just try?” Izzy sighed and lit up her horn, the look on her face one of immense concentration. Sunny stared at it with a hopeful expression. A bright light surrounded them both, before it suddenly fizzled out. Sunny looked up with a sad look on her face. “It didn’t work-” She stopped. They were no longer in a forest. They were surrounded by pegasi.