//------------------------------// // Mysterious Happenings // Story: Legends Never Die: A New Age // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Flurry Heart didn’t know whether to be comforted or scared at the fact that the other ponies definitely figured that there was something strange about Sunny. On the one hoof, at least she wasn’t going crazy. On the other, did that mean that there really was something wrong? Something serious? She and the other mare met the others in front of the Canterlogic factory, where they were happily talking amongst themselves. “Good morning, Sunny!” Sprout greeted her cheerfully, but instead of responding, Sunny flinched and avoided his gaze. Sprout winced and tried to make himself as small as possible, and Zipp nudged him gently, giving him a small smile of encouragement. “Hey… you okay?” Izzy asked, taking a step forward and tilting her head at her friend. “You don’t seem like yourself today.” “I’m fine,” Sunny said absentmindedly as she reached into her bag, pulling out her broken necklace and pouring it into Izzy’s hooves. “Can you fix this, please? Flurry found it on the floor last night, broken.” Her tone still suggested that she didn’t believe Flurry’s story, and the alicorn wilted. “No magic. Just glue.” “...Okay,” Izzy said in a confused voice, taking it from Sunny and putting the still-intact string around her neck. “But you do know that magic would probably work better-?” “I don’t care!” Sunny snapped, taking Izzy aback. Sunny’s eyes widened as she realized what she had said, and she reached out to the unicorn. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I didn’t mean it like that. I’d just like you to use glue, please.” Flurry heard a sharp intake of breath from Pipp, and she turned to see the pink pegasus staring at her phone screen with a confused and alarmed look on her face. “What’s up, sis?” Zipp asked, coming around to take a look for herself, and her forehead creased in worry. “Is it anything we should be worried about?” Hitch carefully asked, his tone implying that he was referring to other things - probably more recent events, from what Flurry had heard about their adventures. “It’s my mom,” Pipp said, her voice shaking just a tad. She took a deep breath and steadied it. “She wants us to come to Zephyr Heights right away.” “I’ll teleport us,” Izzy offered, lighting up her horn. “NO!” Sunny cried, leaping forward. Izzy doused her horn, and all of them gave Sunny confused looks. “Don’t. Let’s just walk. It can’t be that important, right? Otherwise she would have made it sound more urgent. Besides, I just…” She broke off, shaking herself as if to get rid of a fly. “Let’s just go.” Flurry spotted Hitch and Sprout talking quietly to each other at the back of the group, and she slowed down until she was walking with them. “Is she… always like this?” she asked, looking at the earth pony in the lead. Hitch and Sprout shook their heads. “I’ve never seen her like this,” Hitch said in a worried voice. “It’s very unlike her.” “And what’s all that about not wanting to use magic?” Sprout added. “She’s always wanted to have magic, to see magic, for magic to be a thing! She literally went on two quests to bring magic back, and now she’s being cautious about using it?” He blew a frustrated breath and his shoulders slumped. “And now she’s acting like I never changed…” “I’m going to go talk to her,” Hitch said, quickening his pace to catch up to Sunny. After a while, he doubled back to regroup with Sprout and Flurry. “Okay, something is definitely up.” “What’d she say?” Sprout asked. Hitch looked like he didn’t know where to start. “Well,” he decided, “I asked her what she thought about magic, and she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. It all seems a little risky, don’t you think? I mean, ponies have gotten along without magic for years now… Do we really need it?’ ” “Are you kidding me?” Flurry burst out while Sprout shook his head. “I know!” Hitch exclaimed. “And I asked her if she was still friends with Sprout, and she said, ‘I guess so. He did a lot of bad things, though.’ And I asked her if she forgave you, and she was like, ‘Sure? I don’t really care.’ What in Equestria is that all about?” Hitch shook his head and gave his friend a strange look. “Why is she acting like this?” Sprout whispered, his posture slumped again. “Could it be a spell?” Flurry asked. “Impersonation? Some sort of brainwashing or mind control? Have you guys ever had something like that happen?” Hitch and Sprout exchanged a look. Sprout nodded, and Hitch called, “Hey, Pipp! Come tell Flurry about Midge.” The younger pegasus sister looked a bit surprised and slowed down so that they could catch up. “Midge is one of my royal guards,” she explained, still looking a bit confused. “He was one of the ones who really cared about me, but it turns out, he wasn’t actually a pegasus. He says he’s a creature called a changeling, and they can take the form of any creature in existence. He’d been spying on me and my family for years, and we never knew. Why?” She gasped and looked at Sunny. “Are you saying that Sunny could be…?” “An imposter?” Flurry shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought all the changelings had reformed - well, except for Chrysalis - but maybe they… unreformed with all the mistrust going around.” She sighed. “Well, changelings can only take the form of a pony - they don’t have all their memories or experiences. So far, she seems to remember everything that’s happened, albeit in a very strange new light. If she gives any indication that she doesn’t know something, then we’ll have a good reason to suspect her. But for now…” She shrugged. “Let’s consider other possibilities, besides that.” “You mentioned mind control,” Sprout prompted. “Is there really a magic spell for brainwashing or mind controlling?” “Izzy’d probably know about that,” Pipp suggested, waving the unicorn over. “She’s been studying magic non-stop since we found some Ancient Equestrian spell books. There must have been something in there.” “Hi guys!” Izzy grinned as she bounded over. “What’s up?” She looked at their serious and worried expressions and seemed to put two and two together. “Is it about Sunny?” she said in a stage whisper that Sunny could probably hear. “We were just wondering if you knew any magic spells for mind control,” Hitch said slowly, looking at Flurry with a question in his eyes. Please don’t ask me, please don’t ask me, please don’t ask me, she thought desperately. Just thinking about it was making her woozy - there was no way she would be able to talk about what happened with him… “Not that I’ve found so far,” Izzy said, lowering her voice. “I mean… there could be some, right?” “I think I found one,” Zipp interrupted, coming down to land gently beside her sister. “I was looking through all those books that we found, and while I’m nowhere near close to getting through all of them, I did find a legend of a dark unicorn who had the power to take over ponies’ minds.” She glanced up at Sunny. “This doesn’t seem like one of those times, though. I mean, Sunny’s completely normal… except for the fact that she had a complete personality turn around.” Hitch sighed. “Let’s just… keep a close eye on her for now. We can always check in the airstation to see if there’s anything there.” They kept walking for the rest of the day, not resting for very long. When the towering buildings of Zephyr Heights finally came into view, Flurry let out a relieved sigh. Her relief seemed to be shared by the other ponies. Once they stepped inside the city limits, Thunder rushed forward with three other guards behind him. “Thank hoofness,” the green pegasus panted as he skidded to a halt. “We thought you might get here sooner, but…” He trailed off as he saw everypony except for Sunny’s frantic head shakes. “Anyway. The queen’s got a bit of an emergency on her hooves, and she was hoping that you could help her.” “What’s going on?” Zipp demanded, taking a step forward. “A couple of unicorns from Bridlewood,” Thunder exclaimed, turning and leading them towards the castle. The other guards went ahead of them, asking pedestrians to move to the side to let them pass. “Say they saw a strange creature like a pony, only… different. I’ll let them explain.” The elevator never seemed to move more slowly. Zipp looked like she wanted to burst through the windows and fly to the top herself for more than half the ride. When it dinged as it reached its destination at the top of the mountain, the ponies inside practically shoved the doors open themselves and ran into the throne room. Queen Haven was seated on her throne, Zoom at her side, talking with a pair of unicorns on the throne room floor. Izzy gasped when she saw them. “Lemon Pie and Glacier?” The two unicorns looked up as they entered. One was blue with a purple curly mane and the other was pink with a yellow mane. Their eyes lit up when they saw Izzy. “Do you know them?” Sunny whispered to Izzy, looking apprehensive. Izzy nodded. “They’re some of my best friends from Bridlewood.” She grinned at the unicorns and waved, but Sunny looked slightly hurt, as if Izzy were replacing her with these two. “They have a… very curious story,” Haven interrupted, looking hopeful now that Sunny had arrived. “Tell them again.” The pink one, who must have been Lemon Pie, nodded. “We were helping take down all those signs in front of the forest, you know, since we don’t need them anymore. But when we were heading home afterwards, we saw this pony in the woods.” “She wasn’t really a pony,” Glacier added. “She was like, really tall, and had a crooked horn, like somepony took huge chunks out of it. And Lemon Pie says she had these weird wings - not like a pegasus, but like some sort of really strange bug. But her legs had holes in it, which was really weird - like, how does that work? And Lemon Pie went up to her and asked who she was-” “-and she just laughed and changed form,” Lemon Pie finished dramatically. “She turned into a bird and flew off! It was so weird!” Flurry Heart froze, her head beating a thousand times a minute. She knew that description… How many times had she stared at her when she visited her Aunt Twilight, wondering why she would do things like that? How many awful stories had she heard about her evil schemes that almost pulled off? How was she here now? The door burst open before any of them could speak, and a pony rushed in, colliding with Sprout and sending both of them toppling to the ground. The new pony stood up, looking around. His eyes lit up when he saw Zipp and Pipp. “Oh, thank Celestia,” he said, offering a hoof to Sprout to help him up. “I wasn’t sure where to find you, and I need to talk to you.” “Midge?” Everypony looked surprised, and Flurry couldn’t help feeling that she was missing something here. Pipp walked up to him as if he were an old friend. “What’s going on? Why are you looking for us?” “Something’s going on in the forest,” Midge said hurriedly. “One of our scout teams reported that they saw a strange figure in the woods, so we doubled patrols. Then one of them came back… but they were completely drained of their magic.” The entire room gasped in horror. The unicorns quickly lit up their horns to make sure they still worked, and the pegasi flapped their wings. “Their magic must have been stolen,” Sunny reasoned, “since not everypony was affected.” “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Pipp promised Midge, who looked reassured. “Keep an eye out for that creature that you saw. I have a feeling that it has something to do with this magic stealing.” “What if it gets worse?” Haven asked as soon as Midge left. “What if everypony’s magic starts being stolen and they blame us for it and decide that they should get rid of us?” “I’m sure that won’t happen,” Zoom tried to comfort her, but it did little good. “We’ll find this magic thief and this shapeshifter,” Sunny told her, lifting her head confidently. “I’m sure we will.” She turned to her friends, a question in her eyes. “Any ideas on where to start…? We could go check the books again…” “Excuse me, Your Highness,” Flurry said, stepping forward and bending her legs into a polite bow, “but does Zephyr Heights have a royal garden of some sort?” Haven looked taken aback, but she nodded. “I can have one of my guards show you-” “I know the way,” Pipp interrupted. “I’ve been there loads of times. Come on, it’s this way.” She smiled at her mother and turned to leave, but then two more guards burst into the room. “Pardon our intrusion,” one of them panted. “But the prisoners you recently acquired? The unicorn and the pegasus with the memory stone? They’ve disappeared.”