//------------------------------// // The Fight Continues // Story: Legends Never Die: The Beginning of Harmony // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Zipp, Kailani, and Hugo had cornered Permafrost, and wherever the unicorn tried to break free, one of them would attack, directing his attention away and giving the others a chance to prepare themselves. Zipp was still angry with him for that whole chaining-them-up-and-stealing-their-memories incident, and she wasn’t going home without some revenge being dealt. She spread her wings and took a flying leap through the air, landing on Permafrost’s back and knocking him flat while he was distracted (and annoyed) by Hugo listing off the first one hundred digits of pi. The unicorn struggled under her weight but couldn’t move. He tried to use magic to get her off, but couldn’t get a clear range for his spells, so the pegasus remained. Permafrost spotted Kailani taking a step forward to help, and a nasty grin spread across his face. Lighting up his horn, he sent a powerful blast, more powerful than he had ever done before, straight at the hippogriff. Kailani froze - literally. She was now covered with a thin yet strong layer of ice, frozen in place, and Zipp was not happy. Over the past half week, she had grown quite close to the hippogriff, and she was her friend. And she did not like her friends to be frozen by the very same unicorn who had chained her and her other friends up and stolen their memories. With an angry roar, the future queen of Zephyr Heights slammed Permafrost’s head into the ground with a satisfying crack, and the unicorn yowled in pain. “Let her go,” Zipp growled in his ear, and he flinched away from her wrath. “Or else.” He had the nerve to squeak, “Or else what?” She ground her hoof into his back, and he yelped. “Do it,” she snarled. “Now.” Permafrost hurriedly lit his horn, and the ice around Kailani shattered, the hippogriff imprisoned inside gasping as she was set free. Zipp leaped off of Permafrost, completely forgetting about him as she wrapped her wings around her friend. Behind her, Permafrost struggled to his hooves, his horn glitching slightly as he lit it. Sour Lavender, perhaps seeing that the fight wasn’t going his way, was trying to escape, but Thunder and Zoom put a stop to that, with Toots and Sweets on the ground as backup. The two Zephyr Heights guards put themselves in front of the fleeing pegasus, their arms spread as wide as they could make them, their wings even wider. The purple pegasus growled and tried to duck underneath them, but Toots and Sweets blocked his way out there as well. The two Canterlogic employees pulled out a very special gadget - a portable unicorn entrapment device that sprung out from a tiny box instead of being installed in the streets. They had only been able to make one successful one before the pony tribes united, so it hadn’t been displayed at their annual showcase, and they had halted production when magic returned. But Sweets had the idea of arming themselves with some of the more harmless things that Canterlogc engineered, just in case. With Thunder and Zoom bearing down on him from above, Sour Lavender tried to fly low through the gap between the two pegasi and earth ponies. Sweets pressed the button on the side of the tiny box in her hoof and tossed it into the air. The metal box expanded, spreading out and growing walls and ceiling until the pegasus was entirely trapped in a metal box. Sour Lavender shrieked with panic and tried to backtrack, hitting against the solid metal wall as the box plummeted to the ground. Toots and Sweets bumped hooves. Inside the box, Sour Lavender sat dejectedly in the cold metal cage, huffing. He couldn’t believe that he, a pegasus, the most technologically advanced species of ponies, had been beaten by some earth ponies and their magic-growing box. His head jerked up as he suddenly heard Permafrost holler in pain, and he knew instantly that the unicorn was in trouble. So? he scoffed to himself. Why should I care? Still, the longer he sat in the darkness (except for the hole in the roof), hearing the sounds of the battle around him and knowing that the pony that he may have, once or twice, considered a… friend, was in trouble, awakened something in the pegasus. He was done waiting in the dark, hiding in the shadows, letting those he cared about getting hurt. Though he didn’t remember anything since before he joined the organization with Permafrost (and he had his suspicions why), he knew that he didn’t want to lose the unicorn. Filled with a different kind of strength, he rammed against the side of the box until it tipped over, landing on the release button and causing the box to shrink back into miniature form. Thunder and Zoom leapt forward, wings spread, preparing to grab him again, but the purple blur that shot out wasn’t heading for the edges of the swamp, like they thought he would be. He was streaking towards another group of ponies and creatures… and when the two royal guards saw who he was heading for, they took off after him. Zipp ducked the icy blast of magic that Permafrost sent her way, and Kailani dashed away, discreetly sneaking up behind the unicorn with Hugo, who looked incredibly nervous about the whole thing. Though, to his credit, he still went through with it. The unicorn’s eyes were so focused on Zipp, filled with so much hate, that he didn’t notice the hippogriff and griffon as they crept up behind him. But somepony else did. Sour Lavender flew through the air, knocking into Hugo. The two purple creatures rolled across the ground, with the pegasus on top, pinning the griffon’s arms to the ground as he struggled. “Hugo!” Kailani cried, running to help her friend. Permafrost stared openmouthed at the pegasus, as if he couldn’t believe that he was here. As the hippogriff finally threw him off, Sour Lavender landed next to the unicorn and stood in front of him protectively, wings spread. “What are you doing here?” Permafrost demanded. “What, you thought I would let you fight all by yourself?” the pegasus barked back, though there was something in his expression that told Permafrost that wasn’t the only reason. “We’ve got a pact, remember?” Permafrost shrugged. He had honestly forgotten about that. But as Zipp, Kailani, Hugo, Toots, Sweets, Thunder, and Zoom surrounded them, the two ponies stood back-to-back, Sour Lavender’s wings spread and Permafrost’s horn alight, and they prepared to fight. But for now, they were in a stalemate, not going anywhere for the time being. Cozy Glow was dealing with Izzy, Ash, and Brooks, and it looked like she was going to win for a moment. As she was now an alicorn, and the others had no magic whatsoever, it seemed, at first, that it was a clear victory. She twirled around, her horn lit, as she fired blast after blast after blast at the unicorn, dragon, and kirin. The spells came to her naturally for some reason, and she took this as a sign that she was destined to have control over all the magic. Still, something inside her tugged at her mind, and she knew it was important. Worry about it later, she told herself. You’ve got a battle to win! Even though their magic was gone, Ash could still breathe fire, and Brooks could still turn into a nirik. The fiery kirin danced around her now, avoiding all her magic beams and retaliating with his own blasts of fire that she had to put up magic shields to protect herself from. Even so, the force was enough to send her spiraling backwards through the air, where she fell victim to Ash and her fiery breath. Still, Cozy wrapped beams of light around both the nirik and the dragon, holding them to the ground for the time being. She smirked with satisfaction and lowered her shield. Then something hit her in the back of the head: a large clump of swamp muck. Growling furiously, she whipped around to see Izzy standing next to what looked like a stick-and-stone version of the earth ponies’ splat-a-pults, scooping up balls of muck and launching them at the alicorn. Cozy Glow growled and sent a blast of magic straight at the cursed contraption, but just before she sent it, a ball of mud hit her right in the face. Izzy giggled and laughed as the tiny alicorn gasped and wiped the sludge off her eyes. The look on her face was so murderous that Izzy stopped laughing at once. “You’ll pay for that,” Cozy snarled. She put a protective bubble around her that was soon covered on one side with balls of swamp sludge, and the other side entirely engulfed with flames from Ash and Brooks. Inside the bubble, Cozy Glow’s horn glowed brighter. The bubble expanded rapidly, a swirling ball of out-of-control magic that knocked all three of them off their feet and hooves and causing Izzy’s contraption to crumble to dust. “Ha!” Cozy crowed when the magic finally faded. Izzy looked at her destroyed sludge-a-pult and sighed, lowering her head. The alicorn hovered over the three creatures, pointing a hoof at them as she told them, “You will never beat me! I have more power than all of you-” “What’s going on?” called a familiar voice from across the muddy lake. Cozy froze and whipped around to see Lofty Skies, Jinx Evergreen, and Rose Blossom standing at the edge of the forest. “Oh, no,” she whispered, automatically trying to sink into the background so that they wouldn’t notice her. The earth pony filly’s eyes locked on her and widened in shock. “Cozy Glow?” Rose Blossom asked in a shocked voice. Jinx and Lofty Skies followed her gaze, their jaws also dropping and their eyes widening. “What are you doing?” Jinx asked, her eyes flying between Cozy, Chrysalis, Tirek, Permafrost, Sour Lavender, and the ponies and creatures fighting them. They finally landed on the glowing green bell in the center of it all, and the puzzle pieces seemed to click in her head when she took a moment to regard the fact that Cozy Glow was now an alicorn, and hardly any of the ponies and creatures were using magic. She gasped and said, “You’re stealing magic?” “It’s not what it looks like,” Cozy protested, holding out her hooves in apology. “Why would you do something like that?” Lofty Skies demanded, spreading her wings and flying towards the alicorn, studying her from a distance. “The Cozy we know would never do something like that.” Cozy flinched, and, tears of anger and pain streaming from her eyes, she shouted, “The Cozy you thought you knew was a fake! I’m a fake! For all of my life I’ve been deceiving ponies and creatures alike to gain power! There, I said it! Everything was a lie! For a moment, I thought I liked being friends with you, but I should have known it would have ended like this! I never meant for you to find out like this - I never wanted to hurt you - I just felt so happy, but it never mattered anyway! Nopony really cares about me, do they?” Her overwhelming emotions made her horn spark brighter as it lit, and she disappeared in a flash of light, reappearing just inside the mouth of the cave, on the ground once more, and she ran deeper into the hideout, sobbing. Lofty Skies, Jinx Evergreen, and Rose Blossom exchanged a look, and none of the Crusaders were sure what to think about this. “Did you hear that?” Lofty Skies asked her friends as she flew over. “She didn’t say that she liked pretending to be our friend - she said she liked being our friend.” “But she lied to us,” Rose Blossom protested. “Like, big time.” “She’s been stealing magic from the ponies who brought it back,” Jinx added. “And she’s working with those two - stars, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. They’re the three villains that everypony’s warning us about. We never should have trusted her.” “But she’s-” “Our friend?” Rose Blossom scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Stars, Lofty, she’s nothing but a liar and deceiver, and that’s all she’ll ever be. I should have expected so from a pegasus.” She covered her mouth with her hooves as soon as the words were out of her mouth, and she looked to Lofty Skies with a horrified expression. “I - I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you, I just…” She sighed and shook her head. “Old habits die hard.” “It’s okay,” Lofty Skies assured her. “Mistakes happen. Maybe we should give her a second chance.” “It’s one thing to give a pony a second chance,” Jinx said thoughtfully. “But how do we know that she’ll take it? How do we know that she won’t just lie to us again?” “I guess we’ll have to trust her.” The pegasus looked at the cave into which the filly had disappeared. “She may not deserve it… but shouldn’t we at least try? I get the feeling that nopony ever really tried for her. Maybe we should change that.”