Chapter 1
It was only a week ago that Magic had been returned to Equestria. Sunny could remember it clearly. The journey to find the Pegasi and Unicorn Crystals, and an attempt to bring them together that resulted in failure. Not because of a lack of trying, but because a Third Crystal was needed. She found the Earth Crystal inside her house, and in an attempt to bring all three crystals together, her home was practically destroyed by Sprout’s mech: “The Sprouticus Maximus”. After all three leaders of the three pony towns came together in unity, the crystals started to glow and lifted Sunny up into the sky, causing her to gain a pair of ethereal wings and an ethereal horn, and the crystals came together to bring Magic back to Equestria.
Her wings and horn didn’t last though. After the sun went down on that day, they disappeared. For now, she had a different task: Going through the rubble of her house to find some items that remained intact from the damage. Her house was very damaged from Sprout’s mech, but just enough of it was intact that ponies were able to go inside and look for some of Sunny’s belongings before the building was either repaired or destroyed.
Sunny had invited all of her friends along to help, and although Pipp was busy with royal business, Hitch, Izzy, and Zipp were all happy to help. They were only allowed to search the bottom floor as advised by the Canterlogic Construction crew as it was the area least damaged by Sprout’s mech. They couldn’t check any of the upper levels until the construction ponies came back to assess all the damages.
It was around sunset when Sunny and her friends arrived at the ruined house. “Well here we are… My house. Or what’s left of it at least.” Sunny said as they neared the house.
“Wow, Sprout’s mech really did some damage, didn’t it?” Hitch asked as they got closer to the doorway and the cracks in the walls became more visible. “I still can’t believe he would do this!”
Sunny was still surprised about that too. She’d known Sprout ever since she was a filly. She still had trouble believing that he would do something like this. Then again, Sprout had never really been the nicest to her, so his disregard for her home isn’t something she was very surprised about. She was more surprised that he would do such a thing, especially when he was supposed to be keeping the town safe.
“Hopefully we can get this place repaired. It’s not in the best shape I’ve seen-” Sunny winced when she touched a piece of the wall and watched as it fell off. “-But with all of our magic back, it should hopefully be able to be repaired with a little work.” Sunny said with a hopeful grin.
Once they reached the doorway, Sunny took a glance inside the house. All of her things were strewn across the floor. Her fruits and canned goods were scattered across the Kitchen, her books were on the floor in the living room, and her dad’s stuff were scattered across the foyer. Taking a second to look at everything, Sunny figured out how she wanted to go through everything.
“There’s a lot of stuff on the ground in there, so I think we should all take a corner. Izzy, could you check the Kitchen for any food that’s still good?” Sunny asked.
“I’m on it!” Izzy exclaimed
“Good! Hitch, could you check the living room for anything that’s still intact? I’m thinking of things like Books, Pictures, Furniture, and all that stuff.”
“Yes ma’am!” Hitch answered while putting his hoof to his forehead.
“And Zipp, I’d like you to come with me and help collect my dad’s stuff in the Foyer. He’s got some artifacts and research papers that you might be interested in, and there’s a lot in there. I’m hoping to collect everything we can from there.”
“Sounds interesting, I’m down.” Zipp replied.
With the plan agreed on, they all entered the house. Izzy went to the kitchen and started levitating whatever she could find and started checking for dents and expiration dates. Hitch went to the living room and started picking up Sunny’s books and picture frames while trying to avoid the broken glass on the floor. Sunny and Zipp both went to the foyer to look for artifacts and research papers that weren’t damaged.
Sunny and Zipp went through paper after paper putting them in piles based on what was in good condition, what was still able to be saved, and what was too far gone. Fortunately there were only a few papers that went in the “too far gone” pile while most of the others went in the other two piles. While looking through the papers, Sunny noticed Zipp looking at her.
“Hey Sunny, do you mind if we take a break from the papers? I wanna take a look at some of the books and artifacts” Zipp asked.
“Huh? Oh, sure! We can do that.” Sunny replied. She had kinda wanted to take a break herself. They both got up and went over to her dad’s old desk.
Sunny followed Zipp as she walked over to the nearby bookshelf. Sunny and Zipp both started scanning the books, and while Sunny was scanning them, she saw Zipp jump a little out of the corner of her eye. “Is that what I think it is?” she heard Zipp whisper. Sunny glanced at Zipp and followed her line of sight to a brown leather book with the title “Unicorn Magic 101”.
Sunny turned back to Zipp who stared at her, and giving a nod, Zipp yelled to the others. “Hey guys, come check this out! I think we found something you might find interesting!”
Izzy’s head popped out from the fridge, knocking over a can in the process. Sunny watched as she levitated it back onto the table and walked over. Hitch was in the middle of checking the couch cushions, so he set the cushion back down and walked over as well.
When Hitch and Izzy got there, Zipp turned to the bookshelf and pulled out the book and set it on the desk.
“Woah! Is that a book about Magic?” Hitch asked.
“That's what it looks like... Should we open it up and find out?” Zipp said, opening the book up and not waiting for an answer.
Upon opening up the book, they saw an index for spells and the pages they’re listed on. There were a bunch of spells listed too, like spells for Shields, Lasers, Levitation, Healing, Elemental stuff, it was like there were spells for everything! Sunny glanced at Izzy as Zipp read the spell names aloud and saw Izzy’s face glow up when Zipp said “Teleportation”.
“Hey Zipp, could we take a look at some of those Teleportation spells?” Sunny asked while looking at Izzy.
“Sure. Let’s see… Page 44.” Zipp mumbled as she flipped through the pages.
When Zipp got to the page, Izzy jumped forward to read the spells.
“Spell of Teleportation and Spell of Item Teleportation!” Izzy exclaimed as she read the titles of the spells aloud. Sunny could tell by the look of excitement on Izzy’s face that she wanted to start practicing them right away.
“Should we go outside and practice some of these spells? We can come back to scavenge stuff later if you all would like.” Sunny offered the group. Before she could even finish talking, Izzy had already been nodding her head frantically. Hitch and Zipp both looked over at Izzy and then back to Sunny and said sure.
They went outside and Izzy started by trying out the teleportation spell, which had mixed results. Izzy’s first attempts ended up in her not going anywhere. When she finally teleported, she ended up a few hoofsteps in the air, landing flat on her face on the ground. After another failed teleportation attempt that put Izzy in a bush, they decided to try item teleportation instead since that would be much safer. They took some of the busted up cans from the Kitchen and had her try item teleportation.
“C’mon, you can do this!” Sunny cheered as Izzy stared intensely at a dented can of soup. “You got this Izzy!” Zipp shouted from the doorway. Sunny watched as Izzy started to lift the dented can up into the air, and then poof! It was gone. Sunny heard a dink sound behind her, shortly followed by Zipp grunting, and turning around, she saw Zipp rubbing her head with the dented can on the ground next to her.
Sunny, Izzy, and Hitch all started chuckling before Izzy said “It looks like it teleported right where I wanted it to!” which caused them all to break out in laughter. After the laughter broke down, they all went back to practicing the item teleportation spell. It ended up taking most of the evening for Izzy to get it down consistently. By the time they were done, they were all tired, so they called it a night.
Sunny, Hitch, Izzy, and Zipp all went back to Hitch’s place to spend the night. They still needed to go through more of Sunny’s stuff, so Hitch offered to let them all stay at his place so they could come back tomorrow. Hitch’s place was very clearly crowded though. Hitch had a surprisingly small house for his job, and while it could fit Hitch and Sunny, it was definitely not made for 4 ponies. Sunny had already been staying at Hitch’s place for the past week after her house was destroyed, but Hitch only had 1 bed in his house, so Sunny had been sleeping on the couch.
Sunny worked on dinner while the rest of them sat at the kitchen table chatting. Sunny was making Pizza. After taking it out of the oven, Sunny sliced it up and made plates for each of them with 2 slices each. “Dinner’s ready!” Sunny said. Hitch, Zipp, and Izzy all came up and grabbed their plates and brought them to the table.
Upon sitting down, Sunny decided to ask about sleeping arrangements. “Hey Hitch, so uh… where are we going to sleep tonight?”
Hitch looked up from his Pizza and thought for a second. “Well, I don’t have another bed you guys could use. I do have a sleeping bag and some extra blankets though from when I used to go camping if anyone wants to use that.”
“I can use the sleeping bag! I usually sleep in a hammock anyways, so it’s not all that different!” Izzy explained.
“Eh, just give me a blanket and I can sleep on the chair. I’m used to it. You wouldn’t imagine how many times I’ve passed out while researching at the royal library.” Zipp responded, rubbing a hoof over the back of her head as if she was embarrassed.
“That works for me, how about you Sunny?” Hitch asked.
“I’m fine sleeping on the couch still.” Sunny said.
Hitch looked back down at his Pizza. “Alright then, now that that’s settled… Let’s eat!”
They spent the rest of their meal just eating and chatting, and occasionally giving Sunny compliments on her cooking. After their meal, they all started getting ready for bed. Izzy set up her sleeping bag on the floor near the couch, while Zipp put on one of Hitch’s sleeping caps, and Sunny had to go to take out her hair bands. Once they all finished getting ready, they went to lay down in their chosen spots.
“If any of you girls need me, I’ll be in my bedroom. Have a good night you three!” Hitch said before shutting the door to his room.
Zipp surprisingly passed out pretty quickly, which Sunny thought was impressive. But that just left Izzy and herself to fall asleep.
“Psst, Sunny!” Izzy quietly said to Sunny. Raising her head up, Sunny asked Izzy what she wanted. “Do you think we could spend some more time practicing some Magic tomorrow?”
Sunny thought about it for a moment before saying “I think we can find some time for that. Hitch has to work in the morning, so maybe we could do that then?”
“Sweet.” Izzy said, before her head slammed to the floor and she fell asleep.
Sunny was alone, being the only one left awake. We made some good progress today. Sunny thought to herself. We left most of my stuff in the house, but at least it’s almost all sorted now. Sometime tomorrow we can all go back there and finish sorting things out. Hopefully we can get my dad’s stuff out at the very least... Sunny then laid back down and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep.