//------------------------------// // Between a Throne and a Hard Place // Story: Legends Never Die: The Return of the King // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Zipp Storm felt the wind throw back her mane and slide under her wings, pushing away her worries and making her feel so alive. Despite the dire circumstances, she allowed herself a smile. This. This was what had been taken away from her all her life, all because some ponies decided to be complete idiots. But she couldn’t blame them - at least not all of them - because it wasn’t entirely their fault. They had forgotten everything, but she could blame the ponies who decided to erase all their memories, and that was completely justified. Right? Argh. Now she was going to find out that they had wonderful reasons for doing what they did, and feel completely guilty for thinking that. Why did life have to be so complicated? Couldn’t she say that ponies did dumb things and not have to suffer the consequences afterward, because they did do dumb things? Why did they all have to have really good reasons? That made it really hard to dislike them, even though they did so many awful things. Focus on now. She could contemplate the complexity of the world later. Right now, she needed to find Hitch. The stallion had taken off into the woods with the intention of finding Sunny on his own, without the help of his friends. Though Zipp could understand his frustration and desire to find the earth pony mare - she wanted to just as much as he did - this was a very irrational decision for the sheriff of Maretime Bay. For as long as she had known him, Hitch had made logical choices that made sense. This didn’t make any sort of logical sense. “Hitch?” she called, cupping her hooves around her mouth to amplify the sound. When the call went unanswered, she skidded to a stop, hovering in midair, and tried again, but louder. “HITCH! Are you there?” Her sharp hearing picked up a slight rustle up ahead, and Zipp flew towards it as fast as she could. She had been at this for hours, and her friends’ continuous search of the surrounding forest had detailed that there was not another living creature within a several kilometer radius, so this was more hint than she had gotten all morning. Was it even morning anymore? Zipp paused to look up at the sky and saw that the sun had begun to drift down the westward side of the sky - it was afternoon now. No wonder her stomach was growling with hunger. But the good news was that Hitch’s must be, too. She had to keep going to find her friend. Tucking in her wings, Zipp folded into a dive, plummeting towards the ground at such a high speed it made her eyes water, expertly weaving her way around the bare tree branches and landing lightly on the swampy ground. She folded in her wings and looked around, searching for something - anything - that could point her in the direction of Hitch. Luckily, she didn’t have to look hard. Imprinted into the mud was a set of hoofprints, leading away from the direction Zipp had been coming from, and upon closer inspection, she recognized the hoof shape - slightly larger than any of the mare’s, but smaller than Sprout’s. While she was thrilled to have found a good lead, it was yet another concern for the future queen of Zephyr Heights - Hitch wasn’t one to leave such an obvious trail. Which then made her think that maybe this was a false trail meant to deceive her, but based on the sheriff’s recent behavior, Zipp had to guess that Hitch was so consumed with finding Sunny that all traces of logic and thinking things through had left his mind. For some reason, she felt a pang of jealousy - would he do the same thing for her? Or did he care about Sunny… more than he cared about her? Zipp forcefully shook her head, pushing the thoughts away. She couldn’t think like that when her friends were in danger. Spreading her wings, Zipp took off and found a stick with some leaves still attached to the end and flew above the trail, hiding what she could. Eventually, the path ended in a very scarce area of the woods, surrounding a muddy lake. The hoofprints went into a scraggly bush and disappeared from sight. Curious, Zipp dropped the muddy branch and lowered herself to the ground, hitting the mud running. She poked her head inside the bush and gasped. “Hitch!” He put a hoof to her mouth to shush her, and she glared at him. He mouthed, “Quiet,” and she nodded, getting the message. The earth pony removed his hoof and slid to the side, allowing Zipp to squeeze into the bush herself. “What-” she started in a quiet whisper, and he pointed a hoof through the bush, where a large rock formation was visible. Zipp squinted through the drab green leaves and saw that it bore a striking resemblance to a ram’s head, complete with the horns. The eyes and mouth were mouths of caves, which all seemed to connect, and they were filled with a golden light that told her that whoever was in there had lit torches. “This is it,” Hitch whispered, more to himself than Zipp, but she caught it anyway. “What?” “This is where Sunny is,” he murmured. “I’m sure of it.” “How can you tell-” He silently pointed to a pony emerging from the cave. She was a young pegasus foal that Zipp had never seen before, her coat a coral pink and her curly blue mane neatly groomed, not at all what Zipp would have expected from an isolated cave in the middle of nowhere. Still, the moment she laid eyes on her, Zipp knew who she was: “Cozy Glow.” Hitch nodded. “The others are here, too. Including those two ponies who had the memory stone and tried to erase our memories,” he said in such a quiet voice Zipp had to strain to hear it. The thought that Permafrost and Sour Lavender were here - and unharmed - made Zipp’s blood boil, especially as she remembered what they and their little organization had done to her, her friends, her family, her subjects, and ponies she hadn’t even met yet. And it was all for such a worthless purpose that Zipp felt like she was justified in hating them for their actions. “What are they doing here?” Hitch shrugged. “Teaming up with them, I suppose. Probably to get revenge.” He paused. “Maybe that’s why they wanted Sunny. They could have taken any of us - but they took her, and I refuse to believe that there wasn’t any sort of reasoning behind that.” His voice had been growing steadily louder, and he clamped his mouth shut before their location was revealed to Cozy Glow. The pegasus frowned at the bush but didn’t say anything. Instead, she groaned and called inside, “There’s literally no sign of her running off - this is pointless!” “That’s because you haven’t left the cave!” snapped another voice in response, this one male and rough. “Perhaps if you actually looked, you might find something!” Cozy Glow grumbled and spread her wings, lifting off into the air and scanning the ground beneath her with a furious expression, muttering, “Don’t know why I have to do this now when I could be useful anywhere else…” “They’re looking for somepony,” Zipp muttered. She turned away from Cozy Glow to look at Hitch, and the crestfallen look on the stallion’s face didn’t go amiss. “What’s wrong?” He stood up, his expression miserable. “She’s not here. She left.” Zipp realized what he was saying. “Sunny?” He nodded. “But… but that’s a good thing, right? They don’t seem to know where she’s gone - she’s free now, Hitch. That’s what we were hoping for. Right?” He shook his head, his ears drooping and his eyes downcast. “We were hoping that we could get her back,” he mumbled. “I… I want her back, I need her back. And now we have no idea where she is.” He turned and burst out of the bush, running away into the woods, not looking back… again. “Hitch!” Zipp hissed after him, scanning the sky for Cozy Glow. but the filly had disappeared. She cautiously stepped out and chased after the stallion. I am not about to lose you again, you pony with horsefeathers for a brain, she thought. “Hitch, come back! Oof!” Zipp stumbled back, massaging her muzzle, when she realized what she had bumped into. “Hitch! Don’t you ever run off like that again, you-” She paused. “Are you okay?” For the stallion was standing in the middle of a small clearing, completely still, staring at something resting on a rock on the other side of the break in the trees. Zipp’s voice seemed to snap him out of his trance, and he walked forward to pick it up. Zipp had no idea what was going on, but she followed him, wanting to see what it was. It was a lantern, a small pink one, the flame long gone out, with a small clip on the bottom that implied that it was supposed to hold something. Like a message. Or a drawing. Zipp remembered her and her friends sitting around a campfire on their first adventure, Izzy explaining why she came to Maretime Bay in the first place - she had found a message, sent by Sunny, saying that the unicorns and pegasi had friends in Maretime Bay, and that they should come visit them. A message sent by lantern, Izzy said. But why would a lantern be here of all places? Unless… “You sent Sunny a message,” Zipp guessed aloud. Hitch nodded, turning around and showing her the lantern, which now sat in his hoof. Zipp gently picked it up and studied it - it really was pretty. “But… what was it?” “Something Izzy came up with,” he mumbled. “She wanted to give Sunny hope that things would get better, that we would come and find her. It was that little drawing Sunny sent out as a kid.” He kicked angrily at a small rock, and it skittered across the clearing. “Not that it’ll do any good now,” he said in a louder voice that made Zipp flinch - she wasn’t used to hearing him so angry. “Since she’s gone.” There was silence, and Zipp came up with an idea. “Maybe then you could come to the Crystal Empire with us,” she suggested. “Help defeat King Sombra - then we’ll all be able to help look for Sunny.” Hitch looked shocked and angry. “I can’t just abandon her!” he protested. “What kind of a friend would I be? No, I’m staying here until I find her.” “But you have no idea where she’s gone!” Zipp reminded him. “I have to keep looking! I can’t just leave my best friend alone in stars know where without at least trying to find her!” Hitch stamped his hoof. “I’m staying to look for her. And I’m not leaving until I find my best friend.” “But you’re abandoning your other friends!” Zipp told him, her voice turning desperate. “Hitch, we need you. We can’t defeat Sombra without you, and you can’t find Sunny without us!” She held out her hoof, saying, “Please. Just come back with us. I promise we’ll find Sunny as soon as possible - but it seems more likely that she’ll just find us. And she would want us all to go help Flurry Heart defeat King Sombra.” He still looked indecisive, so she sighed and resorted to a new tactic. “Hitch, look. You’ve been given responsibility over Maretime Bay, right? You’re in charge of it.” He nodded. “Would you endanger the entire town just to do something that would happen on its own anyway?” “Of course not,” he said quickly, then paused. “Well… it would depend on the thing.” “When you’re put in charge of something…” Zipp sighed and swallowed, still not believing that she was about to say this. “As rulers, our job isn’t to listen only to our hearts or our heads - it’s to listen to both. Sometimes the logical decision is better, and sometimes the non-logical - but I’m telling you, right now, we need you, and you need us. So instead of dividing…” She offered him her hoof again. “How about we stick together?”