//------------------------------// // ...There is Even More Fighting // Story: Legends Never Die // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Sunny blinked open her eyes, groaning. Her head throbbed painfully as she sat up and carefully looked around. Her surroundings were bleak and dark, but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she was able to make out three cold concrete walls and floor and roof, with one wall being made of iron floor to ceiling bars. There was no visible door. Sunny tried to take a step forward, but her hooves didn’t want to move. She looked down and saw iron shackles around her hooves, bolted to the floor on chains barely an inch long. She couldn’t move in any direction. The cold iron bands rubbed against her skin and were clamped painfully tight. “Hello?” she quietly called. “Anypony there?” “Sunny?” came Izzy’s voice, and relief washed over Sunny. “Is that you?” “Yeah, it’s me,” Sunny replied, trying to determine where her friend’s voice was coming from through the throbbing pain in her head. “Where are we? Is everypony else there?” “I don’t know.” Izzy’s voice was scared. “But I think we’re all here.” “Sunny?” came Hitch’s worried voice. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine… ish. Where’s everypony else?” “I’m right here,” Pipp said. Sunny’s headache had died down enough that she could tell that she was on her left. “And Zipp’s across from me… I don’t think she’s in the mood for talking, though.” A violent thrashing sound came from across from Sunny, punctured by the rattling of chains. A low growl followed after the sounds had ceased. Sunny squinted and made out the form of a beaten, bruised, and disheveled pegasus in a room just like Sunny’s. A large iron band wrapped around her, pinning her wings to her side. Her blue eyes were full of fire, and she tugged at her chains with such ferocity it was a wonder they didn’t snap. “Everypony else… Alphabittle and Haven and Phyllis… are they okay?” Sunny asked, straining her neck to catch a glimpse of her friends. She could just barely see Hitch next to Zipp and across from Izzy, in a similar predicament to Sunny’s. “...Zipp? Pipp? Are you there? Are you okay?” Haven’s groggy and worried voice answered Sunny’s question, and she felt dread begin to settle in her gut. Wherever they were, whoever took them, they weren’t going to let anypony get away… “We’re here, Mom,” Pipp replied nervously. “Are… are you okay?” “I’m fine,” she said in a strained voice, followed by a hiss. “A little bit beat up, though.” Zipp was obviously in view of her mother, because she growled again and continued to thrash at her chains. Her fur around the iron bands was stained crimson as the metal cut into her skin. “Zipp, darling, please stop,” Haven whispered. Sunny heard Alphabittle groaning, then the slight tingling sound of a unicorn horn igniting, followed by a loud bang and a cry from the large gray unicorn. “Don’t try to use your magic,” Izzy advised quickly. There was a slight shuffling of chains as she adjusted her footing. “They put this weird clamp thing on our horns that blocks magic… I’ve never seen anything like it.” “Urgh,” Phyllis moaned. Sunny suspected that the whole blocking-unicorn-magic thing hit a little too close to home for the owner of Canterlogic. “What about the ponies we sent ahead of us?” Sunny asked, desperate for some hope. Zipp drew in her breath sharply and stopped struggling. She looked at Sunny with a confused look on her face. “What ponies?” she asked in a convincingly clueless voice, but Sunny could see the message in her eyes: they aren’t here, and we don’t want them to be. “I thought we - that - Nevermind, I must have imagined it,” Sunny stuttered, playing along. “I must’ve hit my head pretty hard…” Phyllis must have also got the message, because Sunny heard her sigh with relief. There was a clunk of iron-on-iron, and a large door at the end of the hallway of cells swung open with much creaking, flooding the space with bright light. Sunny winced and covered her eyes, squinting to see through the blinding glare. The silhouettes of several ponies were outlined in the light, and the door shut behind them, leaving them in blessed darkness. The only problem was that Sunny’s eyes had to readjust. When they did, three of the ponies had appeared in front of Sunny. She naturally took a step back in surprise, but the chains almost made her trip over her own hooves. Once she regained her balance, she faced these new ponies with what she wanted to be bravery and defiance, but quickly turned to shock. For the center pony, who was clearly the ringleader, was a unicorn, the very same unicorn that had turned up his nose at Sunny and Izzy in Bridlewood, so long ago, his blue coat and frosty white mane as cold as ever, but the ponies behind them were a pegasus and an earth pony. The pegasus had a purple coat and a pink mane; he was the pegasus who, on the night when it was revealed that the royal pegasus family was using wires to fake their flying ability, blamed the earth ponies and the unicorns for the whole thing, since they ruin everything. The earth pony had a bubble gum pink mane and a cotton candy blue coat, but Sunny didn’t recognize him from all her years selling smoothies in Maretime Bay. So where could he have come from? Zipp apparently recognized him, because she gave a start when she saw him, and Sunny heard small rustles of chains from Izzy and Pipp, but Hitch looked as confused as Sunny felt. So where would two pegasi and a unicorn see an earth pony where two earth ponies wouldn’t? “Sunny Starscout,” the unicorn said, seeming to savor the words as he said them. It wasn’t a question, so Sunny gave him no answer. “My, my, you’ve provided us with a lot of trouble, my little pony.” Sunny stiffened. Her father used to call her that. “I think you’ll find I’m average height,” she retorted cooly. Zipp allowed a small smile, and Sunny heard a faint chuckle from Alphabittle. The unicorn in front of her acted indifferent to her comment. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’d like to have a word with you about a few of your… actions.” “My… actions,” Sunny replied, tilting her head in confusion. “Perhaps you could elaborate.” The earth pony and pegasus both cracked a smile, but the unicorn looked undeterred. “Perhaps a private conversation would be better suited,” he said, stamping his hoof. Immediately, the chains binding Sunny’s shackles to the floor unclipped and rattled as they collapsed into heaps on the floor. The bars between her and the strange ponies slid into the floor, just like the prison at Zephyr Heights. Just thinking about the pegasus city made Sunny’s heart ache as she recalled how close they were to fixing everything. She wondered how long they had been here. The unicorn turned and walked down the tunnel, and the earth pony and pegasus took a step forward, looking at Sunny expectantly. She figured out that she was supposed to follow the unicorn, and if she didn’t, those guys would be back up. So she shrugged indifferently and stepped out of her cell, wincing at the pain as the iron bands rubbed sores against her skin. Sunny passed by Haven, and her blood boiled with anger. The former queen of Zephyr Heights had a mangled wing that was hanging limp at her side, useless. Sunny took a deep, shuddering breath and focused ahead of her, not willing to look at the damage caused to any of her other friends. She was led outside the prison room and into a long hallway lit by bright fluorescent lights that just about made Sunny blind. She squinted to be able to see through the glare, and was just able to somewhat regain her sense of sight when the ponies behind her gave her a shove, forcing her to turn to the right, and pushed her through a set of double doors into a large chamber, which was empty as far as Sunny could see, because the only light came from a single spotlight beaming down on a single stone, resting on a pillar in the center of the room. Sunny could have sworn it was glowing. Something clicked onto her feet, and Sunny looked down to see that new chains had latched onto her ankles and were holding her in place once more. The other ponies stood in front of her, their glares fixated on her. She shuffled her hooves nervously. “So. What exactly did you want to talk to me about?” Sunny asked, wanting to get this over with. “Sunny Starscout, we need you to stop,” the unicorn said stoutly. She blinked. “I’m sorry, what?” she asked, sure that she must have misheard him. “Stop… what, exactly?” “Stop everything you’re doing,” he elaborated, his expression not changing. “Stop trying to unite the tribes, stop trying to uncover the secrets of Ancient Equestria, stop insisting that friendship is magic and that we all need to come together and we can do that and live happily ever after and all that. Stop believing in everything your father taught you. Stop everything.” The room was silent. Sunny fought the urge to laugh. “Uh, no,” she replied after she was able to regain a straight face. “First of all, that was a terrible argument, especially to somepony like me. Second of all, give me one good reason why I should do a single thing you say. Third of all, no.” The other two ponies in the room glared at her, but the unicorn kept his stoic expression. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said. “I mean… are we really better off with magic?” Sunny stopped and straightened. “Excuse me?” “Perhaps things were better the way they were before,” the unicorn mused, as if Sunny hadn’t said anything. “I mean, look at the pegasi. Without their power of flight, they invented advanced technologies that rival anything this world has ever seen, other than physical magic. The earth ponies were well on their way to being close behind, and I think that, with a little more time, the unicorns could have been sent down that path as well. We were stronger divided; we were perfectly fine without the other tribes meddling in our business. All ponies are so different, so they should be with other ponies who reflect those differences. We need to stay separate.” Sunny was silent for a while. “I’m sorry, but are you saying that, by fostering false beliefs and mistrust and paranoia between all tribes which inspires them to only worsen the situation, things were better that way?” she asked incredulously. “Are you out of your mind?” “Friendship is a plague,” the unicorn snapped, “meant to devour us and make us reliant on others instead of realizing our own worth. It slows you down and makes you care about others when you should be worrying about yourself. It makes you abandon who you really are in favor of pleasing some random ponies you barely know. When we were separated, we went for hundreds of thousands of moons without a single hiccup, and then you came along, you and your filthy little friends, saying that we should all get together and sing Kumbaya around a campfire, and look what happened. Oh, yeah, your actions put the lives of dozens of innocent unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies in danger. Is that the kind of thing you want to happen? Do you want to have Equestria dissolve into complete chaos because you couldn’t just believe that your father was wrong and all ponies were meant to live separately?” Sunny was silent while the unicorn ranted, but his words stuck with her, and he seemed to have a point. Nothing had gone really wrong when the tribes were separated, but as soon as she tried to get them back together, everything collapsed. She gritted her teeth in frustration. No, he was wrong. Her father was right. And if there was one thing she had learned from all her years in Maretime Bay, it was that she should stick up for what she believed in. And that was friendship. “I’m sorry, but you must be out of your mind,” she said calmly, lightly tugging at one of her chains. “So if you could let me go now, that would be great.” A cold, cruel smile spread across the unicorn’s face. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, his icy voice sending shivers down Sunny’s spine. “You see, I can’t just have you go back to whatever it is you do, and I have the utmost confidence that, if I put you back with your friends, you could find a way out of here. No, I can’t have that. So… perhaps we’ll turn back time. Act like nothing ever changed. All ponies still live in fear of one another, and you and your friends… can go back to your lives.” Sunny’s eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. “It’ll be like none of this ever happened.