They fled. Flurry watched them flee, disappearing into the mountain range, and while her brain told her to pursue them, she couldn’t. She couldn’t force her hooves to move in any other direction than the one she was running now.
“Sunny!”
Izzy reached her first, tackling the earth pony as she shakily stood up, knocking both of them into the snow. Sunny wrapped her arms around the unicorn and squeezed her, wishing she could stay here forever, surrounded by her friends, and there were no villains in sight, and everything was fine. She stood up and brought Hitch, Sprout, Zipp, and Pipp into the group hug, taking a deep breath as her friends surrounded her.
“You’re okay!” Hitch broke away and studied her from top to bottom. “Wait, are you? Did they do something terribly awful?” He whipped his head around to glare at the direction that the Legion of Doom had run, as if preparing to run after them and give them a piece of his mind.
“I’m fine,” Sunny insisted, extracting herself from her friends’ hug, unable to wipe the grin off her face. She turned to Flurry. “So, what’d you guys do while I was gone?”
“Oh, you know, we just sort of… hung around,” Flurry said arily, her own face covered with a goofy grin of her own. She spread her wing over Sunny’s back and pulled her in for a hug, and Sunny knew that everything would be fine.
“Um… you’re going to have to explain this,” Zipp said, and Sunny saw her new and old friends staring at each other awkwardly. Flurry seemed to finally really process what she was seeing.
“I was wondering where they had all gone,” she said quietly, and Sunny stopped.
“Wait, you knew about this?” Flurry shrugged, and Sunny made a sound that sounded like a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “Of course you did.”
She walked over to stand between the two groups and said, “Izzy, Hitch, Sprout, Zipp, Pipp, Flurry - this is Imara, Ash, Kailani, Little Braveheart, Brooks, Midnight, and Lukas. Oh, and that’s Hugo up there,” she added, pointing up at the zeppelin, which landed gently on the ground, the purple griffon inside waving from where he stood behind the wheel.
“But…” Pipp’s gaze flitted between them all. “What are they?”
“Imara’s a changeling,” Sunny explained, and Imara transformed into Sunny, mimicking her movements behind her back without her noticing, “Ash is a dragon, Kailani’s a hippogriff - or a seapony, depending on the time - anyways, Little Braveheart here’s a buffalo, Brooks over there is a kirin, or a nirik when he’s angry, so don’t make him angry-” She caught Imara in the corner of her eye and glared at her; the changeling shifted back to her original form with an innocent smile, “-Hugo’s a griffon, Lukas is a yak, and Midnight’s a-”
“Crystal pony,” Flurry interrupted, taking a step forward and studying the dark blue pony. “You used to be a crystal pony, didn’t you?”
He inclined his head. “Your Highness.”
“Oh, don’t bother with formalities,” she insisted, “call me Flurry. Where have you been all these years? I wasn’t aware there were any crystal ponies left.”
He looked awkward. “There… probably aren't,” he admitted, giving all of them a quick glance. “Things have changed so much since… I don’t think… I think I’ve been gone for a while. Everything seems so… different.”
Flurry nodded. “I know how that feels,” she said quietly.
“So…” Izzy shifted her hooves. “What do we do now?”
“Do we need to go after them?” Imara spread her wings and lifted into the air, her hooves balled into fists, but she deflated when Sunny said, “No.”
“What?”
“We can’t defeat them yet,” Sunny explained regretfully. “We could hardly hold them off before - we need time to get stronger before we face them. Besides, now we know what their plan is, and we can watch for any signs of them.”
“But you could just do that thing again,” Imara pointed out, a hint of desperation in her voice. “I mean, did you see yourself? You practically wiped them off the planet-”
Sunny shook her head. “It wasn’t like that,” she whispered. “Whenever that happens, I… I lose control, and then Cozy Glow creeps back into my head. She almost made me hurt you guys, and I - I couldn’t do that. But I feel like they’re going to use that power to control me, and I can’t let that happen.” She lifted her head and rolled back her shoulders. “I’m never doing it again.”
Imara nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said, thinking. “So… how do we do that?”
“We could use the Elements,” Zipp suggested, then muttered to herself, “No, those were stolen by them. Argh, I really wish I could fly right now.” She flexed her injured wing and winced.
“How about we start with something smaller,” Sunny suggested, walking towards the Crystal Empire. Once she reached the edge of the shield, she turned back to face her friends, looking particularly at Flurry. “Like… getting your kingdom back?”
Deep inside the Crystal Empire’s palace, three ponies had no idea what had just happened - other than the fact that they were now covered with a crystal sheen, and the black crystals that had acted as their cage had vanished in a burst of bright light. Haven, Phyllis, and Alphabittle looked at each other, all thinking the same thing.
The two mares ran forward and pulled open the door, bursting into the hall and disappearing before Alphabittle could blink. “Hey, wait for me!” he called following their hoofsteps, but they had vanished. He gave a long suffering sigh and lit his horn, trying to remember that location spell.
Meanwhile, Haven had spotted a window and dashed towards it, pushing it open and throwing herself out, spreading her wings and catching the breeze. She looked down and caught a glimpse of a group of ponies standing in front of the palace, looking very confused, and though she thought she saw a few ponies she recognized in the bunch, her daughters weren’t there, and she pushed onward. She turned and spotted another group of ponies walking down the street towards the castle, and the moment she spotted the pony in front, she knew who it was.
Sunny led her friends into the city, her wings and horn out and glowing brightly, not sure what they would meet. According to her friends, some of the Zephyr Heights guards had been under Sombra’s mind control, and she wasn’t completely convinced they wouldn’t just arrest them all on the spot. And then there were her new friends…
But then she spotted the ponies at the base of the palace, and she realized she didn’t know many of them. Of course, all the earth ponies she had seen around Maretime Bay, and there were Toots and Sweets from Canterlogic (what they were doing there she didn’t want to guess), as well as a number of unicorns and pegasi including Thunder and Zoom from the Zephyr Heights royal guard. Whereas everypony else’s jaws dropped, Zoom’s eyes merely narrowed. But Sunny never halted her step.
“Zipp! Pipp!”
The two pegasi started and stared at their mother, who had landed on the edge of the road and was now running towards them.
“Mom?”
Haven threw her wings around her two daughters and pulled them into a hug so tight that they almost couldn’t breathe. Zipp managed to wiggle her hurt wing out of her mother’s embrace so that it wouldn’t get squished.
“Oh, my darlings! I missed you so much!” She stepped back, releasing them, looking them up and down. “Are you alright?”
“Mom, what - what are you doing here?” Pipp asked, massaging her neck. “I thought you were back in Zephyr Heights - wait.” She and her sister shared a look. “Did you… did you come all this way… just to find us?”
“But what are you doing here?” Zipp gestured to the gleaming palace behind her.
“Oh, we got captured,” Haven said like it wasn’t a big deal. “These ponies appeared out of nowhere, and they had the creepiest eyes, like they were zombies, and they grabbed us and dragged us back here! I told that horrid Sombra pony that I was the queen, and he threw us in some kind of prison that we were just now released from, and I knew it had to be you!”
“Us?”
“Ack!” Sprout let out a cry of surprise as he was attacked by his mother, who pulled him in for a hug and seemed to never want to let go.
“Oh, sugarcube,” was all she could say without completely bawling.
“Mom? What-”
He was interrupted by a panting, sweaty, out-of-breath Alphabittle, who was dragging himself over to them and promptly collapsed onto the street.
“Why does that place have so many rooms?” he gasped.
Flurry giggled. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” she snickered as the wheezy unicorn tried to catch his breath. “Perhaps my first royal decree is to have labels on all the doors - and giant signs pointing to where the exits are.”
“That would be very helpful,” Alphabittle agreed from the ground.
Haven spotted the two ponies decked out in royal guard uniform from behind her daughters, and she gently pushed them aside, saying, “What are you two doing here?”
Thunder squeaked and tried to hide behind Zoom, who rolled her eyes. “Kidnapped and dragged her against our will.”
“While we were out looking for Sunny,” Thunder added unhelpfully, and Zoom glared at him. He quickly realized his mistake and, nervous sweat making his helmet very uncomfortable, pointed at Sunny, saying, “And we found her! Yay…” His voice trailed off as Haven threw them a furious glare.
“I’m going to be having a talk with your commander when we get home,” she said through clenched teeth.
“As for you two,” Phyllis added, breaking away from Sprout to march up to her two employees - though Toots was much bigger than her, he quailed under the look she gave them. “Do not even get me started. You are going to be in very big trouble.”
Behind her, Izzy sighed. “The days when being in very big trouble was our biggest concern,” she said wistfully, staring at the sky with wide, blissful eyes. “How I miss them.”
Flurry sighed and stepped forward, taking the floor. “All right, first order of business is to get everypony back where they belong.” She turned to address the ponies standing by the Crystal Heart, all looking very confused. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions, so let me try to answer them.
“You were kidnapped by a pony known as King Sombra. For as long as he has existed, his goal has been to take over the Crystal Empire - but in the past, there have always been the crystal ponies who live here for him to enslave. Now, however, this once prosperous Empire is empty, abandoned. So he sought out others in other parts of the world, bringing them back here - and waiting for me.
“Sombra’s greatest strength is his ability to show ponies their greatest fears, which he does to control you. All we can do is not be paralyzed by the fear. Know that there is always hope on the horizon, no matter how dim, and light in the darkness.”
“How do we get back home?” one of the unicorns asked.
Hugo raised his claw. “I have a zeppelin,” he offered, doing a mental headcount of the ponies in front of him. “It should be big enough to fit all of you.”
It was the first time that the others really noticed that the other creatures were, indeed, other creatures and most definitely not ponies. Most of their eyes widened, jaws dropped, and a few took steps back. Haven automatically pushed her daughters behind her to protect them, but they rolled their eyes and stepped away.
“Girls,” Haven said in a weak voice, “I think you have some explaining to do.”