Izzy wakes up feeling extraordinarily cozy and opens her eyes, being instantly greeted by the sight of Sunny and realizing that her head was still on Sunny's lap. She also realized that Sunny still hadn’t woken up so she sits up and gently nuzzles her sadly. “Please wake up soon.. please Sunny.” she says before turning to the rest of her friends and seeing they were still asleep, Pipp and Zipp both sleeping on either side of Hitch, leaning against him while he was just sleeping against the couch. “Awwww.” Izzy says quietly, smiling at the adorable sight. She sees Pipp's phone buzzing nonstop and hesitantly picks it up and what she finds is shocking. She starts frantically shaking Pipp, trying to wake her up and after a few attempts, the younger royal sister finally wakes up.
“Whaaat Izzy? It’s still early right? Go back to sleep.” Pipp says groggily, putting a pillow over her head.
Izzy grabs the pillow with her magic and lightly whacks Pipp on the head with it multiple times. “No! Time! Look!” she shouts, waking up everyone else- except Sunny obviously- and holding Pipp's phone close to her face until she grabs it and gasps seeing at least a thousand messages from her Pippsqueaks that contained the words “MIDNIGHT IS LOOKING FOR YOU GUYS!!!” or “Not to alarm you, but that other alicorn is after you. BTW, LOVE YOU SO MUCH PIPP!!!” or “You all need to run, like, NOW!” and all of a sudden a live broadcast notification popped up on the screen with the same symbol she saw on the syringe, a skull with a star in it's mouth and she looked around at everyone else, silently asking if she should watch it just to see what’s going on and after about a minute, they all nod and she hesitantly taps the notification and is instantly greeted by the faces of Midnight, one of the Deathbolts and a pony in black armor with purple lights. Only thing was that Midnight had her back turned to the camera. They weren’t doing anything but just.. standing there. Then Midnight suddenly spoke.
“Good morning Equestria. If you saw the fight from about a day or two ago, then you know who I am.. or do you? See all you know about me is that I’m an alicorn, good or bad, a lot of you already know.. but you don’t know my name. I.. am Midnight Starkiller.. and I am here to protect you all.. from Sunny Starscout. See, she may seem good on the outside but she’s pure evil. You only know her as the mare who brought magic and friendship back to Equestria.. but do you know why she did it? You see, she didn’t know friendship would come back but she did know magic would come back.. she wanted a war between Earth Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi. She’s already brainwashed her poor.. so called “friends” into believing she’s actually good along with the citizens of Maretime Bay and Zephyr Heights. Well I refuse to let her brainwash anyone else..”She says, pausing for dramatic effect.
“I swear I will stop her before she can hurt or destroy anyone or anything else.. it’s a shame I had to pretend to be bad too but no more.. I need your help.. to everypony out there who hasn’t been brainwashed.. help me end this. Because if we don’t, the rest of Equestria could end up looking just like these three unfortunate places.” She continues before images of Zephyr Heights, the island with the volcano, and Askari's village, all destroyed, pop up.
After roughly 10 seconds, more than 100 comments and counting were on the screen, rooting for Midnight and saying some very mean things about Sunny. It broke everyone’s hearts to see ponies turning on Sunny so easily and possibly them. Sunny suddenly groaned in pain as her eyes started blackening again and instantly, Artemis and Brightburn were right by her side, using a spell to keep the darkness under control and dull her pain. Everyone then heard Midnight say something that sent chills through their bodies.
“Then you can all join me in Maretime Bay during the time of my next broadcast, that’s where I’m going now to begin the next part of my plan. Sadly I will have to use force to take over, lethal if necessary. I do hope you all understand. But don’t worry, it’ll all be worth it in the end.. see you all soon.” She says before the broadcast ends and everyone has shocked and horrified looks on their faces.
“Oh no.. she’s on her way here! We need to get Sunny out of here!” Brightburn says frantically and everyone agrees and someone bursts through the doors, catching them all off guard until they see Phyllis.
“I heard everything, and I want you to take Sprout with you.” She says and Sprout looks shocked and shakes his head, disagreeing with her decision.
“What about you Mom?! I can’t just leave you here!” he says and Phyllis sadly shakes her head and that’s all the answer he needs to know that she’s not planning to go and that she knows her own fate. “I can’t go.. I won’t go!” he says and Phyllis suddenly glares at him.
“This is not up for discussion Sprout!! You have to-“ she starts to say but before she can finish that last sentence, she hears ponies coming and they sound angry and she realizes they must be coming for Sunny. “Damnit.. please just go Sprout.. I’ll be alright.” she says, trying to reassure him and he hesitates before asking if she promises. She puts her hands on either side of his face, smiling at him. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye..” she says before kissing his forehead and walking out, leading everyone towards the emergency exit. She lets them all go through and closes it when they’re gone, praying for the safe return of her son.. and for Sunny to wake up and stop this madness.. someday.
Behind the hospital
“Come on! Thunderbird called HQ and told them to send a jet right away. It should be right up this way!” Artemis says to everyone as they run as far away from the hospital as they can, Sunny on Thunderbird’s back. As they got to the small ship, everyone boarded very quickly, Artemis going to the front seat on the left and using the controls to turn the airship on and slowly lift off. Everypony else looked through the back and saw ponies running towards the ship and Hitch urges Artemis to speed up the process. And speed it up, she did. They were out of there faster than you could process.
As they flew out of the area, everyone sighed in relief.. until Artemis let out a gasp of surprise, warned everyone to hold on, then made the ship take a hard right while spinning. After everyone got their bearings, they realized that she swerved past Midnight’s giant airship/armored blimp.
It started firing at them when they went past it and everyone had to hold on to something or each other once again as the ship dodged between blasts and they eventually manage to escape. They all sigh in relief once again, Pipp having managed to stop herself from losing her lunch from yesterday. Izzy and Hitch sit down next to Sunny and frown. Everything was going so wrong.. and now they’re hope that everything would be alright again was depending.. on a long shot. They just had to hold strong.. for Sunny's sake.
Pipp and Zipp sit by them and Brightburn comforts Sprout who’s visibly upset about the entire situation. Thunderbird was now helping Artemis pilot the ship. They would be ok.. if the crystals didn’t just disappear into thin air when magic returned.. they were still out there somewhere.. they had to be.