//------------------------------// // History Repeats Itself // Story: Legends Never Die // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Sunny paced anxiously in front of the thrones as her friends watched. Queen Haven wasn’t present, as she was continuously dealing with angry mobs and more vandalism on non-pegasi businesses. Zipp and Pipp offered to help, but Haven had insisted that they stay safe; it would make her feel much better. “This is bad, this is very bad!” Sunny said, her worry seeping into her voice so much that she couldn’t contain it. “You think?” Zipp asked from her throne, glancing nervously at the tall windows that, only a day ago, were busy with pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies preparing for Pipp’s performance. “Sunny, we know this is bad, but we’ve been in bad places before, right?” Izzy said, trying to lift everypony’s spirits. “We can get through this if we stay calm and don’t let fear divide us again. You saw what happened last night. If we do, then the magic will disappear again. We worked so hard to get it back - surely we can’t be the only ones who don’t want it gone?” “They don’t want it gone, Izzy,” Hitch said quietly. “They want ponies who are different from them out. Despite all we’ve done, they still don’t fully trust each other.” “So what do we do?” Sunny asked, getting frustrated. “Was it all for nothing? It’s not like there’s some more magical crystals that we can find to bring ponykind together again. If this keeps up, somepony’s going to do more lasting damage than a vandalized store. We might go to war, and magic might disappear for good.” She sank to the floor, the weight of the fear and distress that she was feeling making everything seem impossible. “Things aren’t looking too good,” Pipp reported, scrolling through MyStable. “Oh my stars, Zipp, Mom was trying to give a speech to another angry mob to try and calm them down, but they refused to listen. Look at this. They’re still ridiculing her for pulling that fake flying thing. You would think they would let it go after a while.” “You know, I blame Pipp for this whole thing,” Zipp said, trying for a sarcastic smile. “Every time she has a performance, something goes horribly wrong that drives ponykind further apart. Sorry, sis, guess we’ll have to end your career. I am totally not slightly thrilled by that at all.” Pipp glared at her while Izzy said, “Let’s not point hooves at any one pony yet. We don’t know who’s responsible for the attacks, or why anypony would want everypony to seperate again when that would just mean that magic would disappear again. And there’s still that map that Sunny’s dad left her. What if they’re connected somehow? Like, we find out how the pony tribes seperated in the first place, and we could keep them together now?” Sunny took a deep breath, trying to calm her frayed nerves. “You’re right, Izzy. We shouldn’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet. Let’s just hope that the unicorns and earth ponies don’t know about this yet, and they don’t start getting angry at each other.” “Uh, Sunny? It’s all over social media,” Pipp said, tapping her phone. “Like, everywhere. Even on the foals’ video sites.” “Great.” Sunny blew a frustrated breath and sat down again. “Now what?” “How about we focus first on two things: calming everypony down, and finding out what Sunny’s dad wanted her to do with this map,” Izzy said. “Me, Hitch, and Sunny will go start researching, and Zipp and Pipp, since you’re royals, you can help with calming everyony down.” “Um, we’re not royals anymore,” Pipp said nervously. “Something was just posted. The angry mob that my mom’s dealing with right now? It was advocating for a removal of the monarchy, or an arrest of the royals, and then all the other angry mobs showed up and showed their support. So… we’re fugitives. Again.” “Wonderful.” Zipp rolled her eyes. “Just like old times.” “I like the old times,” Izzy insisted. “Just the five of us, on the run, hoping to change the world… It was great!” “Well, now things are going to be much worse,” Sunny said defeatedly. “Once word of this reaches everypony, we’ll be right back where we started.” She looked down, her eyes swimming with tears, and saw her dad’s journal sticking out of her bag. The sight of the old book reinvigorated Sunny, and she stood up, her eyes dry, her expression defiant. “And where we started was just five ponies who were trying to change the world, just like Izzy said. My father wanted a united Equestria to become a reality, and we’re going to make it one. No matter how many foes we face, we won’t stop until we can do what he always wanted to do.” “That’s my girl,” Hitch muttered while Izzy and Zipp whooped. Pipp was still immersed in her phone, but she allowed a small smile. “Then we might want to get out of here, because the angry mob is chasing my mom back to the palace,” she said, holding up her phone to show the image. Dozens of pegasi, some holding signs that depicted a big X over a picture of a crown or the royal family. Suddenly, Queen Haven burst into the room, her mane a mess, her eyes wild. “Pipp, Zipp, my darlings, you have to get out of here!” she cried breathlessly as angry pegasi filled the doorway behind her. Sunny was shocked to see that there were a few royal guards had joined their side, but more stood between Haven and the mob, wings spread, prepared to protect their queen. Among them Sunny saw Zoom and Thunder, and her heart warmed as she realized that not everypony would be buying into this as easily as the crowd had. “Hurry!” Zipp cried, jumping off her seat and flapping her wings, managing to hover in the air for a brief moment before she made a mandatory emergancy landing. “Follow me!” Haven took one look at the mob behind her and decided where she was going to go. She scrambled after her daughters, signaling for the guards to follow them, too. “Cover us,” she hissed to Zoom under her breath. The blue pegasus nodded and relayed the orders to the rest of the guards. They locked doors and set two guards at each one, hoping to keep it that way, buying the fleeing ponies a few more moments of precious time. Zipp finally came to a stop beside a large grate in the floor and struggled slightly to move it, jumping down into the hot air balloon basket directly below it. Sunny, Izzy, Hitch, Pipp, Haven, and the only two guards who were left, Zoom and Thunder, followed her example, the later wobbling alittle bit on their descent. Izzy, who was the closest to the lever, pushed it down just as Zipp and Pipp wrestled the grate back into place. This was risky, as it was very hard to remove the grate from underneath, but hopefully the angry citizens of Zephyr Heights wouldn’t figure out that their royals were hiding down there. “What… what is this place?” Haven asked with wonder in her voice, gazing around the repaired station. “Zipp? Pipp? Did you know about this?” Zipp sighed. “I found it when I was just a foal, and, I don’t know, I liked how peaceful it was down here. That I could be myself without having a million eyes on me. And it proved that we did have magic once, and it gave me hope that we could find magic again. Then when Sunny and Izzy came, I brought them down here, and we found out about the crystals.” Zipp waved her hoof at the stained glass window, which was now visible anywhere in the station. “So we wanted to bring magic back. After Sunny’s lighthouse was destroyed, she asked me to keep all her stuff in the castle, but then I had an idea that we could make some sort of memorial to the Guardians of Harmony, so we’ve all been working on it for the past few days as a surprise for Sunny.” “Where did you get all thiis stuff, anyway?” Sunny asked as they reached the floor and disembarked the elevator. “I mean, besides my dad’s old things.” “Remember when we were searching in the library for something about that map your dad left you?” Izzy said. “Well, we found a whole room of books from the Guardians of Harmony’s time, and I teleported them here. Oh, and do you see that crown over there? The golden one with the little pink gems? Alphabittle had that, and we thought it must have belonged to somepony back then.” “It’s incredible,” Zoom said under her breath. “I can’t believe I never knew about this,” Haven murmered. “There’s so much history here, it would take ages to get through it all.” “We don’t have ages,” Sunny spoke up. “We might as well have minutes. Those ponies out there aren’t going to wait politely as we go through every single book here and figure out what my dad wanted us to do with this.” She pulled out her map and set it down on a mostly empty table. “Where should we go first? We can’t stay in Zephyr Heights, obviously, but maybe we could go to… Maretime Bay? Says here that it used to be Manehatten. Maybe there’s still something there?” “What if we go to Bridlewood first?” Hitch suggested, studying the map. “But I already found everything I could from the olden times,” Izzy protested. “I don’t think there’s anything left there.” “Not to look for more clues, but to stop a war from happening,” Hitch explained. “Think about it. Besides the pegasi, unicorns are the most feared of the three pony races - no offense to present company. And if they hear that the pegasi are rebelling and probably planning to wage war with earth ponies and unicorns, they’ll want to fight back. If we convince the unicorns not to, then it might help neutralize the impending threat of war.” “That makes sense,” Sunny said. “We’ll head out as soon as we can.” “Wait,” Haven said, fear in her voice, turning to her two daughters. “I know you want to do this, but please try to stay out of trouble, you two. It was bad enough that you were running from the law last time, going around causing mayhem while you stole two magical crystals, but this could be war. I want you to be safe. Just promise me you’ll be safe.” “We promise, Mom,” Pipp said hurriedly. “Yeah, we won’t do anything remotely dangerous,” Zipp added, trying to act cheerful. “Unless we have to. Then we might.” Haven laughed, an actual laugh, and it sounded like one. She wrapped her wings around Zipp and Pipp, pulling them close, and whispered, “That doesn’t reassure me one bit, but at least you tried.” The former-royal family hugged each other, and Sunny looked on sadly, thinking of her own father. During moments like these, where her friends or other ponies had sweet family moments like this, she felt alone and left out, with no parents left. Hitch came up beside her and nudged her. “I’m fine,” Sunny said quickly before he could say anything. “Just… tired. And in shock, I guess. This is all happening so fast…” She was interrupted by a rattling of the grate, and dozens of pegasi guards dropped into the room, able to barely slow their fall into a slightly controlled landing. “What’s going on?” Zoom asked, she and Thunder running over to assist some guards that had fallen over. “We had to fall back,” one of the guards said through pants. “They refused to back down. We had to retreat, or sacrifice our lives when we could be protecting our queen.” He looked sheepishly at Queen Haven, who had done her best to look less rattled and more collected in the presence of her soldiers. “Guess we could have sacrificed our lives to protect our queen, but we felt like that wouldn’t accomplish anything. So…” Queen Haven sighed. “It’s quite alright,” she said. “I’m very relieved that you’re here. I need two of you to go with my daughters as they try to stop this potential war from happening.” “What?” Zipp, Pipp, Izzy, Hitch, and Sunny all said at the same time before breaking into protests. Haven closed her eyes and listened to all of them, keeping quiet until their excuses petered out. “I know you say you won’t get into trouble,” she said, “but your definition of trouble is much different than mine. I want you to be safe, and this is the only way I can be sure of it.” Sunny sighed. “Fine. Come on, guys. Let’s get some rest. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”