//------------------------------// // Frozen Heart // Story: Legends Never Die: The Search For Sunny // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Permafrost tore away from the main headquarters of the Legion of Doom, his pegasus comrade close behind him. The ground passed beneath him at a frightening speed, and he was going so fast that several branches thwacked him in the face, but he didn’t care. He was fueled by anger, blind rage, all directed at one pony. “Um, Permafrost?” Sour Lavender ventured hesitantly. “Uh, we were supposed to turn back there-” “Silence!” the unicorn snapped, whirling around and running the other way. Sour Lavender blinked, confused, before following. He had never seen Permafrost act this way - usually, it was Candy Floss who did the whole storming-off-in-a-blind-rage thing. The night sky above was already dark, devoid of a moon, and the stars did little to light the way. Even worse was the thick canopy above them, making it almost impossible to see. Permafrost had lit his horn, but the cold blue glow only stretched a little bit around them, and Sour Lavender, for all his confident banter and boastful comments, was feeling a little afraid. He nearly stepped on his unicorn companion’s hooves, and the hiss that Permafrost gave him was more than enough warning to never do it again. “Here,” Permafrost whispered, stopping all of a sudden. The pegasus bumped into him, but the unicorn was so distracted with what was in front of him that he either didn’t notice, didn’t care, or didn’t feel like scolding. He crouched low, dousing his horn and creeping forward in a crawl. Sour Lavender gave him a strange look before following. Finally, Permafrost held up a hoof, and the pegasus inched up beside him, halting behind a thorny bush and peering through the holes. In front of them was a camp, a small camp, with just a campfire in the center of a clearing and six ponies spread out around it, fast asleep. Permafrost narrowed his eyes at the ponies - he recognized all of them except for the pale one with the curly mane curled up beside the red earth pony. She had wings and a horn, but they were solid, real, not at all like Sunny Starscout’s. There was a kind of air around her that made the unicorn think that she wasn’t from this time - it was the same strange aura around Tirek, Chrysalis, Cozy Glow, the Legion of Doom. An aura of ancient, strong magic that hadn’t been ripped away and then returned. This was a pony who was not like the rest. But it was not the pony he was looking for. The pony he was looking for… was right next to this strange pony - the stallion who had jumped in the way between Candy Floss with the memory stone and Sunny Starscout. The pony who had almost dragged ponykind into war the first time magic was returned. The kind of pony who was desperate to do something - anything - to save his friends. Pay any price. Make any sacrifice. All these friendship ponies were like that - selfless and saving the day and whatnot. Really, it was quite exhausting. “What are we even doing here?” Sour Lavender demanded under his breath. “Why do we have a death wish?” “We do not have a death wish,” Permafrost muttered, slowly standing up. “We have ambition.” He took a step into the clearing and stopped, standing still as the other stallion - Hitch Trailblazer, if he remembered correctly - rolled over in his sleep, and the white pegasus - Zipp Storm, crown princess of Zephyr Heights - threw her wing over him, not waking up. “I think ambition is a death wish,” Sour Lavender whimpered as he creeped after Permafrost, the two approaching the red earth pony - Sprout. Son of Phyllis Cloverleaf, owner of Canterlogic. His association had collected quite a bit of information over the generations. Permafrost lit up his horn, the cool blue light contrasting with the warm golden glow of the smoldering remains of the fire. He shot a beam of light straight at the earth pony, and it connected at his forehead. The stallion twitched but didn’t wake. A second and third beam stretched out from where the original met the pony’s head, connecting with the unicorn and the pegasus’ heads. Permafrost muttered the words of the spell under his breath, and with a final push, the spell was finished, and the beams of light vanished. Breathing hard, the two turned to see one of the pegasi stirring - the younger one, the pink one with the fluffy wings and the cell phone obsession - and sitting up, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Both ponies simultaneously let out a fearful snort, and Permafrost teleported them both out of there, reappearing in their original spot. “Like I said,” Sour Lavender panted, kneeling on the ground and trying to catch his panicked breath. “Ambition - death wish.” “We got what we needed,” Permafrost snapped, shushing him and peering into the campsite. The fool pegasus was checking her phone, groaning as no connection showed up. “Now we have a potential bargain that will save us in the future - something that will give us a leg up.” “Can we get the valuable bargaining tools in safer ways next time?” Sour Lavender asked, standing up and shaking out his wings. “And can we go now?” Permafrost rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he snapped, turning to leave. The walk back was much slower than the walk there, though Permafrost wasn’t completely sure he did that intentionally or not. He had a lot on his mind, so he assumed it was on purpose. Besides, who in their right minds would want to run back to three of the worst villains in Equestria? Just the fact that they went around declaring that made Permafrost feel inferior, like all the things he and Sour Lavender and Candy Floss had done had amounted to nothing. Sure, they basically had - but they were still impressive feats, right? You would think, Permafrost grumbled to himself as he trudged along, that other villains would recognize and appreciate the deeds of others. Perhaps things were different where they were from. Or maybe we are just that - a bunch of inferior failures who couldn’t bring down one earth pony with a magic memory-erasing rock. He growled in frustration and kicked a nearby rock so hard that it lodged itself into the trunk of a nearby tree. The Bureau of the Protection and Separation of Equestria’s Citizens, or the B.P.S.E.C., was founded around a singular goal - ponies were not meant to live together. They were just too different - there was nothing to go off of, no reason to do so. So they originally focused on spreading rumors about the other pony tribes, to make them distrust each other. The other tribes saw what was happening and decided that they didn’t want any part in it, so they withdrew to their respective kingdoms. The ponies eventually divided, and the B.P.S.E.C. wiped everypony’s memory to keep them safe and happy. It should have been a flawless plan. A perfect plan. One that seemed to work exactly how it was supposed to - at least, at first. But of course the old ‘Guardians of Harmony’ (Permafrost sniffed whenever he heard the name, as he always saw them as destroying harmony, not protecting it) had to write down absolutely everything, and somepony got their dirty little hooves on that, and they just had to go about spreading the word that “harmony and friendship means we should work together and not divide” and all that nonsense. And then they passed it onto their children, and their children, and their children, and that was how Sunny Starscout became the absolute worst pain in Permafrost’s flank literally ever. That pony was foolish - there was no way around it. The stupid mare simply refused to see and acknowledge defeat, even if it was dancing in front of her face. For the stars’ sake, she was mind controlled! Her worst enemies could enter her head at any point in time, and she had the guts to still go around spreading all of her useless friendship riff-raff. Don’t pretend to know ponies when you don’t really know them at all. Permafrost snorted. As if he needed to be told that! Really, she should listen to her own advice. She had no idea - no idea what he’d been through, what he’d done, what had been taken away from him. She didn’t know what he was feeling, she didn’t know what he wanted, she didn’t know what he would do to get it. Stupid mare. Caring about other ponies would get you killed - that was the first thing he remembered his father telling him. Unbidden, the image of his father’s face suddenly swam in front of him - a stern-faced stallion with a grayish-bluish coat and a stiff purple mane, his violet eyes empty of any love or care, but this was how Permafrost learned how to live - it was better this way. He didn’t need his father to care about him… right? He felt a jolt deep inside him, and the world suddenly wavered in front of him; he faltered and stumbled over a rock, crashing to the forest floor. As if from across the world, he head Sour Lavender make a cry of surprise, felt hooves around him, dragging him away, and he couldn’t do anything about it, and he hated it, but right then, he didn’t care, because he was remembering, things he swore never to remember, and yet- It was his first time in the hidden fortress, his father pushing him forward from behind, his face a slab of stone, his footsteps unfaltering, unstopping, yet agonizingly slow- Clop. Clop. Clop. His father shoved him unceremoniously into a dark room, a room lit only by a glowing green stone in the center, and around it were a total of four ponies - two fully grown ponies, one a mare and one a stallion, and two foals, looking just as afraid to be there as he was. His father pushed him up beside them, and with a jolt, he noticed that one of the foals was a pegasus and the other an earth pony. He looked fearfully at the older ponies, and saw that the mare was a pegasus and the other stallion an earth pony as well. He scooted away from the pegasus - in the eerie green light of the stone, his purple coat and pink mane looked strange and most definitely evil - and bumped into the earth pony, who shared his fearful expression. He started - he wasn’t aware that earth ponies had the brains to be scared or frightened. Or have any feelings, really. Somepony snorted, and the three colts looked to see another pony stepping out of the shadows, and this one was a unicorn with a pale yellow coat and a dark green mane that was slightly overgrown. The new pony eyed the foals with distaste, and he felt himself straightening, wanting to show this unicorn that he was able and capable. “These little wimps are the ones we’re entrusting our legacy to?” the unicorn snapped, rolling his eyes. “Doubtful.” “We’re doing the best we can,” snarled the pegasus, her wings flaring in indignation. He took a step back and eyed her apprehensively. “There’s not a lot of ponies willing to commit themselves now - everypony’s happy enough where they are.” “Whatever,” the unicorn growled, stepping forward and picking up the glowing green stone. “Let’s just get this over with.” Staring down at them with a frown, the unicorn addressed the other three ponies in the room. “Erase what makes them weak, easily defeatable. I expect this will be quite a lot.” The pegasus sniffed, but he felt like he was the only one who noticed. The unicorn turned and focused on the young earth pony first, holding the stone high, and it blasted a beam of green light directly at the tiny, shivering colt. He gasped - this must be magic. I thought all magic was gone, he thought. But if this is here… then maybe other magic can come back, too. The colt glowed green, and glowing ribbons were pulled out of his head as if by some magical force and sucked into the stone. He thought he saw what looked like a blue-gray stallion with a purple and blue mane and glasses, a wooden pendant hanging from his neck of a six pointed star, but they were there and gone before he could look again. When the stone finally dimmed again, releasing the colt from its grip, the tiny pony collapsed to the floor, shaking. And when the colt stood again, the look that he gave the other ponies was different. He stepped back in shock - and fear. This was not the same sniveling pony that had stood there before - there was an emptiness in the colt’s eyes, but now a fierce gleam, too, one that scared him. Would the same thing happen to him? What would the stone take from him? The unicorn sniffed and turned to the pegasus colt and repeated the same process, but he didn’t watch this time. He looked at his father, at the green light reflected in his father’s eyes, the stone cold expression, and for the first time in his life, he felt really afraid. Something was about to be taken away from him - something he wasn’t sure he was ready to lose. As the small pegasus staggered to his hooves with that same new, frightening gleam in his eyes, the unicorn turned to him, lifted the stone, and he braced himself for the worst- The doors were shoved open with a BANG, and a pegasus dashed into the room, panting. The unicorn lowered the stone, looking at the newcomer with distaste, but he felt like he could have hugged this pony. Whoever the pegasus was, he had just saved him from something awful. “Pardon my intrusion,” the pegasus gasped, “but the - the royal family. In Zephyr Heights. They - they can fly.” “What?” the unicorn snarled, shoving the stone back into place and whirling to face the other pegasus in the room. “What sort of thing is this? Magic can’t be returning - we would have felt something.” He glared at the earth pony in the room. “You. Stay here. Everypony else, come with me. We’re going to infiltrate this system and find out what’s going on.” With a swish of his tail, the unicorn was gone - taking his father with him. And when they returned three days later, the unicorn seemed to have forgotten that there was one little colt who hadn’t had his memory wiped - one little colt who still remembered… An earlier memory: He was held in the arms of a beautiful gray unicorn, her blue eyes sparkling, her silver mane cascading over her shoulders, and she was singing him a song, and it was so lovely, and there was another colt there, one older than him, one who was nearly full grown, with a gray coat like their mother and a scraggly purple mane that was already beginning to turn white, and his father was there, looking proud - an expression that he had never seen on his face again. And then he was ripped from his mother’s arms, and she and the older colt disappeared, and he was left with his father - his cold, distant father- “Perm! Hey! Snap out of it!” Somepony was slapping his face, and Permafrost blinked his eyes open to see a purple pegasus standing over him, looking worried, and when Sour Lavender saw that he was awake, something that looked like… relief crossed his face. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The purpose of erasing all memories of feeling loved or cared for or really anything was to keep them focused on their mission and completely unsentimental. If this pegasus was acting like he cared about Permafrost… something went wrong. “Don’t call me ‘Perm’,” he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. It was still dark out. How much time had passed? It felt like none at all. Sour Lavender sat back as he stood up, and the world swam in front of him again, but he forced the dizziness away - he was not weak. He was strong. “Come on. Let’s go.” The pegasus looked like he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. As they trudged along, Permafrost heard Sunny Starscout’s voice in his head. Can you really blame me for trying to save you? She’s trying to protect us, he thought, and that, combined with the memory of his mother, of being loved, cared for, warmed his whole body, right down to the tips of his hooves, but his heart remained hardened. Caring about other ponies will only bring more trouble than they’re worth, he reminded himself. Don’t let the darkness in. Don’t let them see who you really are. Don’t let them think you’re weak and insignificant. Hardened heart. Frozen heart.