And Then There Were Ten: ACT 1:
Have you ever had a memory or dream or just experience so amazing, so tremendous, so unbelievably pure in its perfection that just the lack of it made you want to cry oceans? Even if things weren’t bad per say by any of imagination’s contortions? Sunny Starscout did.
Sunny Starscout was not okay.
In her case the memory or dream or experience was all the above, and that night, had befallen her in the form of the second harder than the realization by the pegasi of Zephyr Heights that their monarchs were given to flights of fibbing over flying. It’d been awhile since its full force struck her. Well beyond a year. Even during the lowest points of her big adventure with tons of fun to bring back friendship and fellowship to Equestria several months back, she’d only had to deal with glimpses, fleeting stills of eternity and its garden. Not the entirety of the pulchritudinous, if lugubrious, motion picture from Acts 1 to 3 as she just had.
It was to nopony’s surprise then that she awoke from her sleep with a fitful start, standing up on all hooves with all the fore-warning Izzy gave that fateful day she just strolled right into town, though with far less friendliness and far further fret furrowed into her features.
“Stay sunny, Sunny. Stay sunny,” she whispered, both to keep herself calm and keep from waking up her friends as they still slumbered soundly in the cave they’d taken refuge for the night after Hitch got them all lost. “Remember what day taught you about breathing. Remember, remember.”
She placed her left fore-hoof on her chest and began the deep breathing exercise she’d been taught. One atypically grand inhalation followed by a short, staccato succession of three very short exhalations. As she repeated this for the better part of a minute, she fluttered her eyes shut and then open, shut and open, shut and open until she felt sleepy and the peace that accompanied it overwhelmed the despondency weighing her down like a brick horseshoe.
Ever slowly, she found herself kneeling and laying back onto her side, resting her head upon the nice soft rock pillow she’d settled on for the night, drifting back to that harmonious realm of dreams once the domain of Princess Luna. She thought of all the things that were good and true and beautiful in that great, big, off-kilter, topsy-turvy world of hers. All the things that relaxed her, put her at ease, and ever had made her smile.
Sunshine. Ladybugs. Clapping her hooves. Doing a little shake. Smoothies. Her friends.
Her family.
This time, the tears tumbled out her eyes and down her face as she jumped awake onto her hooves, and she had to cover her visage to keep her sniffling down as not to alarm her friends. She did not, could not, wish to bother them. But she couldn’t stay.
So, carefully, taking extra care to avoid accidental splashing in any large enough pool of water in her path, Sunny left the cave and her friends behind. She had no idea where she was going or where she’d end up, but she did know she’d be back. Just as soon as she cleared her head.
As she entered the forest nearby, she hung her head down low and whispered a silent prayer to The Beyond. “Please, Faust, help me settle my thoughts. When the sun comes up, help me to face my friends with all the smiles and sunshine they expect.”
She looked up between the leaves and the branches of the trees around her, doing her best to try and find all the heavenly glory of the moon. But even in those rare instances where she could find the night sky through all that canopy, she could barely see it and its accompanying stars, the storm clouds that had confined her and her friends to the cave in the first place remaining ever present even considering it was only mildly drizzling.
But hope still lingered, and as such, to hold onto something so preciously pure and fleeting, she began to do so as she’d often had after bringing back the arcane force of amity to her home and folk.
Sunny Starscout, closing her eyes, started to sing:
“Oh, Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,
Please shine down on me.
Oh, Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,
Hiding behind a tree...
These little children are asking you,
To please come out so we can play with you.
Oh, Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,
Please shine down on me.
Oh, Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,
Please shine down on me.
Oh, Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,
Hiding behind a tree...
These little children are asking you,
To please come out so we can play with you.
Oh, Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,
Please shine down on...
Please shine down on...
Please shine down on me!”
For many minutes did she sing her song, and as time passed, she felt better and better, like her normal self when she usually woke up. She only stopped when she felt the light of the moon and its attendant stars glow ever brighter until she opened her eyes, realizing that she’d not only cleared the forest, but that the small storm and its clouds had passed, no longer blocking the night sky anywhere on the horizon she could see. Including the town of Maretime Bay, which she could see like a distant work of art off in the distance from the rolling hill she’d unknowingly climbed.
Despite the unexpected hurt and heartache she’d undergone, in the end, at least she knew where home was.
In more ways than one.
Letting out a sigh, she looked up towards Faust and whispered a quick, “Thank you,” and walked back towards the cave, content on humming happily to herself with all intent to tell her friends that though they’d been lost, at least their village was none too far. After a nice couple winks of shut-eye, of course.
Half-way through the woods however, something felt strange. Whether wrong or simply just not quite right she couldn’t rightly declare, but she most certainly could tell that it felt, well, strange. The fur on her neck stood straight, not out of the creeps, but because the weather that’d been made cool from the breeze and the rain suddenly spiked like somepony had turned up the thermostat in the vicinity twenty degrees to a nice and toasty eighty fahrenheit. Then it felt like how she’d been laying next to the fire in the cave. Then she saw the shine of a bright light illuminating the space around where she trotted. Then she stopped in place, twisted around, and looked up into the night sky to find…
… a meteorite, that although no greater than one of her Smoothie carts, nevertheless descended from on high at re-entry speed far faster than any pegasus she’d yet to witness after their magic had returned to them.
Bearing. Down. Upon her.
Despite the ever intensifying heat, Sunny, ironically, froze.
10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10
MANY MOMENTS PRIOR…
“Status report!”
Vilgax was having one of his better days of late. Angry and commanding as he sounded, as he always sounded, to those privileged–or perhaps underprivileged–few who knew him, in unignorable undercurrent of excited hope flowed through that mere two word order he’d barked. It had not begun boding so well, true. The Galvan patrol fleet defending his quarry had been double what his intel wing had most likely estimated. Apparently the product of The Old Frog getting particularly paranoid and jumpy at the last minute, even for him–though of course, Vilgax had his doubts and suspicions. When being as mighty as he was and playing for more might still, one had to be. Regardless, and worse, the hull classification had been changed too, rendering focussing in on his quarry before it took off and left him with an angry nest of proverbial lepidopterrans that so many Galvan battleships and their attendant escorts tended to be like looking for a nemuina in a sea of tokustars.
But find the crafty craft he had. With a thousand capital ships and many more times that in sundry strikecraft, all equipped with the greatest scanners he and the other greatest minds of Vilgaxia–and a few other minds from other words after some compelling diplomacy–learning the pinpoint location of his prize had proved an endeavors great enough for only ten minutes. Not the ten seconds maximum he’d been hoping for when jumping out of hyperspace, but still within the acceptable margin of error for the mission’s parameters. So long as help had not arrived before he could the ship he sought down, it mattered not in the long run.
And chase it down he had.
An Uxorian light cruiser was normally much vaunted for consistently ranking in the top three of its type in terms of speedy acceleration in all the known galaxies. Even with the various aftermarket modifications made to his flagship, the Chimeran Hammer, pushing the engineering of a battlecruiser to its absolute maximum, normally he couldn’t hope to keep up in a race. Besides, galvan mods were usually better anyways.
That was where the techadonic tachyonic tractor beam his forces had acquired came into play. With it, his ship could push or pull objects away even over faster-than-light distances. While the rate of acceleration or deceleration remained as the traditional gravitic tractor beam, the extended effective scope proved more than enough to slow the light cruiser to laser cannon range, where even its doubtlessly modified shields proved only worth half a minute of his time.
Even as it activated some strange, new, likely highly experimental and decidedly non-hyperspace dependent mode of FTL travel in a desperate attempt at escape, even as ten entire galvan battleships turned their turreted and fixed-lateral mounted guns on his ships at the eleventh hour to stop or even hinder his ship’s collision course with destiny, Vilgax remained Vilgax.
He did not stop. He did not cease. He did not relent.
At an astonishing percent of the speed of light, the Chimeran Hammer crashed into the light cruiser just as it would have darted away untold light years to safety, blasting out precise chunks of its hull with the intent of rendering the vessel inoperable all the while lazing it with everything else he had, even point defense, in the sadly very real chance it still functioned after a ram of such magnitude.
Then, well, Vilgax really didn’t know what happened. An ever shifting, ever morphing kaleidoscopic menagerie of colors danced from the monitor screens of the bridge in erratic, nonsensical patterns. Even through the filters of the panopticon of electric eyes dotting the ship’s hull, it was all quite oppressive in its biliousness, even to a Chimera as genetically and cybernetically enhanced as Vilgax. For not the first, and doubtlessly not the last, time, he gave thanks to The Divine for the decision to crew the Chimeran Hammer entirely by drones excluding himself. He loved his people dearly, but manning his flagship was a task they simply did not have the stomachs for.
What Vilgax could tell was that the entire rather unpleasant experience lasted for all of a hundred seconds, as lingering as the pain in his eyes was as he massaged them back into focus with one of his two clawed hands.
That his ship, badly damaged as it was, the details of which he aimed soon to learn, was still well enough intact that the crewmen drones remained busily at work.
That the enemy ship they had impacted wasn’t even firing back anymore, the fact that the Chimeran Hammer was wedged deep enough into the back of the vessel that the bow poked out clean through the other side probably having something to do with it.
Hence, the immense joy he felt building up in his soul as his crew responded to the order he’d barked by sounding off all info relevant to their present, seemingly fortuitous circumstances.
“Milord, all external shield emitters are down and only the central internal ones remain one-hundred percent functional!” cried the force-field specialist.
“The bow armor belt has almost completely lost its integrity! Combined with the systemic fracturing along the rest, it’s one good impact away from catastrophic splintering sire!” called the armor technician.
“The hull has suffered major breaches in fighter bays 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12 and we’ve incurred minor atmospheric leakage in the cargohold, messhall, and your private quarters, oh mighty Vilgax!” said the hull monitor.
Vilgax grumbled, hoping his personal Sumo Slammer’s holo-card collection hadn’t been lost to the vile void, but not willing to remark further in order to hear the rest of the admittedly far more important, if less personal, damages.
“Half of all external sensors are down, even the nano ones oh great one!” said the sensor manager. “Though the internal ones are still active!”
“As is the entirety of the comms-array, my liege!” said the communications officer.
Vilgax nodded his approval. Good. That meant that wherever they were, they did not float blind, would be able to assess their situation accurately, and if need be, hail for help.
“The same cannot be said for the STL and FTL engines, my sovereign!” announced the chief engineer. “Both are in critical condition and would take weeks to repair to even emergency condition unless we reached drydock!”
That was decidedly not good news, but with comms still working, a drydock could be brought to them in at most, a few days, so it would only prove a moderate set back, if even that, at most.
“All primary weapons are in similar shape, sire! Particularly the hammer cannon! ‘Tis an act of providence the point defense cannons are even functioning at ten percent capacity!” said the weapons officer.
Vilgax figured that was the case since the hammer cannon and techadonic tachyonic tractor beam basically were the front of his ship which he’d rammed the other ship with, so no big surprise there.
“And all anti-grav except in the center has been disabled!” called the gravitics master.
Vilgax honestly didn’t care about that last one since there were, to this day, even galvan ships in service that viewed ship-wide anti-grav systems as a nice, but ultimately unnecessary amenity, and he could endure far greater minor inconveniences.
Nevertheless, he nodded, and now that he was aware of the condition of his own vessel, it was time to learn about the one for the one he’d chased. “Status report of enemy Uxorian light cruiser!”
“Even worse, sire!” said the sensor manager, bringing up a live-feed of said ship on the holo-gram well situated immediately in front of Vilgax, the poor starcraft looking like some strange, alien vegetable stuck to the tuning fork that was the Chimeran Hammer. “Shield emitters, armor, hull, sensors, communications, both engine types, weapons, and anti-grav appear critical or totally destroyed. Atmosphere leaking from nearly ninety-percent of the surface.”
Vilgax swirled one of the tentacles on his chin in deep contemplation. “And you’re certain of this deduction?”
“Unless the vessel is in possession of some new galvan wonder-spoofer we’ve yet to account for that could remain operable after a hit like that, it would appear so.”
A few more moments spent in silent, reticent thought was all he needed. Much as he was loath to do so when victory had not yet been technically achieved, Vilgax could not help himself in the moment. For he was near, so near to finally achieving his goal, of finally defying those who had and would stand in his way for nonsense ideals that were as candles to the sun of what he would usher in for the cosmos.
He permitted himself a smirk. One oh so self-assured that total, final, decisive victory was now truly in his grasp, and that it was a mere matter of time, a triviality, a formality before it was literally in his grasp.
Before the omnitrix was in the palm of his claws at last.
“Then the matter is settled. Or soon will be at any rate, I should say.” Vilgax lifted himself out of his command throne and stood up. “Prepare a boarding party.”
“Milord?” asked the sensor officer.
“This is too important a matter to leave to the combat oriented drones alone. I’ve delegated my tenebrous burden one too many a time, and I am most eager to have it lifted. To finally see it part, and bask in the everlasting glow beyond,” Vilgax said as he walked towards the sliding doors leading out into the hallway. “You have the deck.”
“You have the deck.”
“Yes, milord” the sensor officer declared much more proudly and quickly than any biological under his command would, unwittingly vinicating Vilgax’s decision and making the chimeran’s chin-tentacles slither in satisfaction right as he was about to press the button to the doors. “I shall steward and safeguard The Hammer in your–”
Vilgax’s pause in step followed the sensor operator’s pause in voice immediately, and the lord and master of all chimeran-kind turned around to find yon drone looking squarely down at a flashing and bosterously blaring screen.
Before he could ask what was wrong, the bridge erupted into a cacophony of heat, flame, and force.
Then, tenebrity.
10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10
Zephyrina Storm awoke shivering and feeling her throat dryer than the charcoal bricks that would forever and always be the result of her trying to bake souffles. It was a relatively recent phenomenon, yes, but one technically repetitious enough that she really should have solved it or otherwise adapted to it by this point.
She did not.
Just like the first time in her life this had ever happened to her person, it remained equally, deeply, annoying.
Sleepy as she was and quite aggrieved over being so rudely forced from her sleep, she was about to make herself even more annoyed via the usual sparring match of shouts, but ground her teeth at the last moment. She took a deep breath and calmly, carefully, so as to not upon the others the same frustration she’d been fettered with, walked over to Pipp’s saddlebag on the other side of the cave. A journey that seemed so slight considering the cave was naught but two, maybe two and a half carrot dog carts in breadth.
Yet when compounded with each colossally cautious step she took in the dim light of the fire and the fact that the same arid, downright arctic breeze that rendered her so cold and parched to begin with even still did billow all over her head, it felt as though she was a foal sneaking around Zephyr Castle again. A palace taller than all the skyscrapers of the surrounding cityscape. From top to bottom. Every inch a creaky, misaligned floorboard. Every few seconds her face feeling like it needed ten minutes in a hairdryer to properly warm-up. All in low, flickering, lighting.
She knew not how she managed, only that she did, diving out of the way of what would have been the next of her sister’s galeforce snores to strike her, rummaging through the saddlebag next to her, and retrieving a nice, full bottle of water to properly irrigate the dusty desert that was her esophageal area.
Upon the first wondrous sip, so soothing was it, she permitted herself a slight exhalation of satisfaction, believing herself secure that it was too small for anypony else to hear.
“Can’t sleep either, huh?”
It was not.
“Ahhhhh!” Zipp yelled in totally dignified, totally not overtly girlshing, shrieking.
Sadly, that was the least of the indignities that would befall her in the immediate future.
In a flurry of events too quick for even her to follow, well acclimated as she surmised herself to be to the speed at which she could fly thanks to her restored pegasus magic, Zipp leaped greatly into the air in her fright. More than she had intended, her wings’ reactionary flap of fear propelling her muzzle first into the cave’s ceiling hard enough that she rebounded off, landed muzzle first on the ground, and did so with such strength that the stalactites near her visage’s initial meeting with stone fell upon the top of her head like the lightning bolts that were hers to command.
To no pony’s surprise, all she could utter was a simple, “Ow,” afterwards.
But that was not the end of things, or even the worst of them. No. That came when all the ruckus finally got to Hitch and Pipp and caused them to scream out as they awoke.
“Camera flashes everywhere!” shouted Hitch.
“Ah! The plain Jane dresses are attacking!” yelped Pipp.
Not only did their clamor make Zipp’s migraine mount to further heights, but in the case of the latter’s sonorous projection, it proved to be the most cataclysmic. As well as seismic.
For in much the same manner as Zipp’s magic permitted her a specific acumen over the classical element of lightning, Pipp had been granted the same degree of particular acuity over its twin, thunder. Pipp being, well, Zipp’s sister, hadn’t yet seen fit to pursue mastery over this area of her magic, at least, not to the same extent Zipp herself had. No. Pipp was ever concerned with, what to her anyways, were more pressing business. Like taking two whole hours to style her mane in front of the mirror every morning or something.
Because of Pipp’s lack of regimentation, many an otherwise avoidable distress was caused, the most consistent and persistently facehoof worthy of course being her tendency to, rather more literally than normally, snore a storm, sending hurricane-like gusts of air strong enough to chill her and make a craggy desert of her throat even from across the room at the top of the Brighthouse, a great more distant than the space between them in the cave. Sometimes, when Pipp had a particularly vivid nightmare, she would wake up screaming with enough power to partially, occasionally fully, shatter all the windows located there. Or, such as now, shout with force enough to cause the cracks Zipp had created in the ceiling to widen astronomically, leading to the complete collapse of its structural integrity and for it to cave in on the four of them like Zipp’s hopes and dreams of having a nice, restful, uneventful night where she didn’t have to screech at her sister.
For the moment, however, she was more preoccupied with simply trying to breathe as she desperately attempted to paw her way out from beneath the rocky rubble. As well as trying to get the first pony she could think of to help save her. Izzy and Pipp must have been in the same dire straits, for in a unison rarely shown when they were actually intentionally trying, they shouted the exact same thing she did at the exact same time.
“Hitch! Do something! Anything! Please!”
Six seconds passed on by in silence and Zipp, plus everypony else undoubtedly, thought their earthpony pal must have been sent back to sleep after a fashion by all the stone that used to make the cave’s ceiling. That fortune did not favor them especially that night.
Hitch’s sudden cry of command at the seventh silent second was thus understandably most spirit soaring.
“Boo-yah-kaw-shaw!”
With a flash of magic, as evergreen as emerald grass in the center of spring, Zipp could feel the debris above her crumble to the rough consistency of gravel, the wreckage of the cave below her and at her sides dissolving to little more than clumps of dirt. All the mass pinning her down now so diffusely distributed and lighter in effective weight to her, it was a simple matter of digging herself up until her head sprouted out onto the surface like a mayflower, followed closely by the heads of Izzy, Pipp, and of course, Hitch.
“Everypony okay?” the sheriff asked.
“Okay? Okay!? I’m great!” said Izzy. “That rocked! Pun totally intended. Let’s do it again! Let’s do it again!”
“Yeah, let’s… not,” Pipp said, pulling her forehooves out from the ground to straighten out her mane.
“You say that like you have a choice,” Zipp said, shooting her sister a glare. “At the rate you’re going, you’re liable to bring down the house again, whatever new makeshift shelter that’s gonna be.”
“No idea what you’re talking about, sister dear,” Pipp said in her iconic singsong voice as she finished ensuring her hairstyle’s iconic status was fully restored and trotted along dusting it out.
“Don’t play clueless with me, Pipp!”
“You can’t play at being what you already are.”
Zipp pulled a hoof out the rubble to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Right. Sorry. Forgot I was talkin’ to the reigning Queen of Cluelessness for a sec here.”
“Hey now, name calling’s uncalled for,” said Hitch, pulling his hooves from the rubble and putting them up placatingly.
“Yeah, sis, what’s your deal?” Pipp said, finishing her clean-up of her mane and glaring right on back at her. “Way you’re acting, it’s like you think I caused this cave in or something.”
Zipp pressed her hooves against either side of her head before throwing them up in sheer vexation. “You did! You totally did! All of this, LITERALLY ALL OF THIS, is your fault!”
Pipp gasped at the claim, hoof on heart. “Il sussulto! The audacity!”
“Yeah, I’m with Pipp on this one,” said Hitch, eyebrow raised as he scratched his head. “It was an accident. I don’t see how–”
“See? See nothing!” Zipp interrupted, pointing at her sister. “You should have heard her!”
“Heard me what? Snoring?” Pipp said sarcastically with a dismissive wave of her hoof.
“No!” Zipp yelled. “I mean, yeah, that too, but–”
“Now look, Zipp,” Hitch began, “I know you’ve been real bothered by your sis’s aerokinesis and her putting proficiency in it low on her list of priorities, but color me skeptical as to how she went from chilly breezes from across the top of the Brighthouse in her sleep to walking, talking bass cannon.”
“Yeah!” Pipp proclaimed, pointing at her sister. “And all that’s forgetting the simple, undeniable fact that I don’t snore in my sleep anyhoof.”
Zipp sounded like Izzy’s motor-trike backfiring as she tried forming cogent words in response she seethed so. She pulled herself full free from the rubble in her mad state, skipped over next to Pipp’s head with such force that some dust got in her sister’s eyes and noise, pointed down at her, and screamed, “You do too!”
Pipp, after wiping and snorting away the displaced dirt, huffed and puffed and blew Zipp a few feet away. As Zipp’s wings flared to steady and slow herself and her hooves touched terra firma again, Pipp plucked herself out the rubble, flew just in front of and just over Zipp, pointed down at her in like manner as Zipp had a moment ago, and promulgated, “Nuh uh!”
Lightning sparked across Zipp’s eyes, literally, and she flew up to eye-level with her sister, pressed the tip of her muzzle against her sister’s such that Pipp was forced back a few inches, and sternly announced, “Uh huh!”
Pipp pushed her head back against her sister’s, reversing the gains in space she’d made. “Nuh uh!”
Zipp again pushed against her sister’s head, reclaiming her gains. “Uh huh!”
Pipp pushed back against her sister. “Nuh uh!”
Zipp again pushed against her sister. “Uh huh!”
Pipp pushed back. “Nuh uh!”
Zipp pushed again. “Uh huh!”
Pipp pushed. “Nuh uh!”
Zipp pushed. “Uh huh!”
“Nuh uh!”
“Uh huh!”
“Nuh huh!”
“Uh huh!”
“Nuh huh!”
“Uh–”
“STOP IT!” Izzy suddenly yelled with all her speechable strength, leaping out of the rubble to a greater altitude than Zipp and Pipp were, forehooves covering her ears like a foal forced to listen to a lecture on the joys and benefits to not eating anything sugary or carbary. “STOP FIGHTING NOOOW!” She placed one of her hooves on Zipp’s shoulder and the other on Pipp’s, dragging them down rather uncomfortably back down to the ground despite their best attempts to remain airborne. When their hooves were on the planet again, Izzy said, “You two shouldn’t be yelling at each other, alright? If you absolutely, positively, sure as sugar…ly… have to be angry at anypony, it’s me.”
“Say whaaaaat?” Hitch asked as he pulled himself free of the rubble before cantering over, face full of interestedness.
“Yeah, Iz,” Zipp began, “how could you be the one who–” She stopped suddenly when something that’d been lingering in the van of her inquisitive mind clicked at that very moment. When she finally put two and two together. The voice from earlier, the one that has asked, ‘Can’t sleep either, huh?’, the one that’d so startled her, that’d started this entire series of unfortunate events… was Izzy’s.
Zipp’s eyes were as wide as zeppelin’s broadside, her pupils compressing to the side of pinpricks.
“It was you!” she announced, an accusatory hoof shooting Izzy’s direction. “You were-the-one-who-startled-me-which-made-me-jump-into-the-ceiling-which-made-me-crack-the-ceiling-which-woke-up-Pipp-which-made-her-finish-the-demolition-job-by-sonic-crying-right-at-the-weak-spot-I’d-made-which-made-the-whole-cave-crash-down-around-us-like-a-giant-jenga-tower!”
For the ensuing several seconds of silent uneasiness, Zipp’s friends–and sister–could naught but gawk at Zipp and her display of pure phonated promptitude, their eyes mirroring her own during the epiphany she just had.
“Wow, Zipp. Just… just wow,” muttered Pipp, totally stunned.
“Yeah,” said Hitch with a quick, unexpected snicker and change in demeanor from out left field to Zipp,” ever since magic came back, you really have gotten super-speed! Your motormouth was running almost as lickety-split’s as Izzy’s!”
“Or my Auntie Motormouth!” Izzy added lickety-split.
Zipp’s gaze tightened in positively livid nonplus at the others, preparing to admonish them like her mother that one time she and Pipp had the brilliant idea to skydive off the tallest tower of Zephyr Castle when they were little. Yet, perhaps quite fittingly, she rather super-speedily paused, full consideration of their words and their meaning beginning to dawn on her.
She asked, with a brow decisively more quizzical than acrimonious, “Wait… what? Are the three of you honestly standing there telling me that you didn’t… get any of what I just said? Like, at all?”
“That’s a great big, haytalian no from me, sis,” Pipp said, shaking her head side to side.
“E’Nope. Sorry, Zipp,” Hitch said, shrugging his shoulders apologetically.
“Eh, sorta, kinda, vaguely… a?” Izzy said, scratching her head.
Now that attained Zipp’s attention and got her to look even more surprised than at the revelation Izzy was the prime factor behind her larger woes in the past five minutes.
“What was that you were saying about needing control over one’s newfound magic powers again?” Pipp asked with such sarcasm that one could build a brand new Brighthouse with it as she mockingly put her hoof to her ear as though she didn’t quite get what’d been said earlier.
Just like that, Zipp was back to being irate again. “Gahhhhh! You don’t get to talk, snorer, so shush!” she declared, accusatory hoof pointing.
“Hard of hearing and hard of controlling her supernatural celery it seems.”
“Celerity,” Hitch corrected.
“That too,” Pipp said, brushing aside his concern for accurate word use aside with a hoof, much to his apparent chagrin. Her gaze then narrowed at her sister and she hoof pointed right on back as she said, “Anyhoof, I thought I already told you that I don’t snore, blabber!”
“Do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do t–”
“TERRIFI-MONGOUS FAMILY–and friends–SHOULDN’T BE FIGHTING SO HORRIBI-BAD!” Izzy absolutely suddenly interrupted so loudly that everypony else, even Pipp and Hitch, no strangers to loud music, covered their ears in agonized reflex. “GOOGOLY-PLEXILY SO WHEN THERE’S SOMEPONY ELSE TO BE MAD AT IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE MAD AT ANYPONY! NAMELY–” she paused for dramatic, some might say melodramatic, effect, and in her normal tone and pitch, normal for Izzy anyhoof, finished by saying, “me.”
Upon a good headshaking, some stretching, and a couple slaps for good measure to cease the onset bewilderment, Zipp and the other two’s attention fell squarely, some might say more than a little irately, on Izzy.
“Still think I’m loud when I supposedly snore, sis?” Pipp said, sidelong glare shot at her sister, muzzle upturned in noble hauteur.
Hitch groaned as if to say without speaking, ‘Are we still on this!?’
“Yes. Yes I do,” Zipp said matter-of-factly curtly, putting up a mirror to her sibling’s look. “But that’s really besides the point now, isn’t it?” Her muzzle leveled and her gaze fell back to the lone, quite multiloquent, unicorn of the group. For her part, Izzy was still all smiles as she ever was, showing no outward sign at least of being troubled. Zipp did her best to correct this in her admonishment. “Izzy! What were you thinking!?”
“I know, I know, my bad, my bad,” Izzy said, hooves raised and pushing against the air ina gesture intended to cool Zipp’s ire.
It didn’t work. Like, at all.
“Your bad!? Your BAD!?” Zipp giddyed-up on her back-hooves, forehooves lifted up to the sky. “Your bad brought down on a cave on our heads and could have had us stuck under tons of rocks good!”
“Yeah, uh, how’d that happen again?” asked Hitch, scratching his forehead. “Little fuzzy on the details here.”
Zipp ran a hoof through her mane and let out a grumble somewhere between a sigh and moan. Taking extra care not to speak at super-speed, she managed to convey in a rushed yet ultimately intelligibile cadence, “I just told everypony, Hitch. You know? When I was apparently talking a hundred miles a second? Izzy here startled me which made me jump into the ceiling which made me crack the ceiling which woke up Pipp which made her sonic cry right at where the crack I’d made was which made the whole cave crumble around us like a giant jenga tower!”
Hitch elevated a questioning brow and looked at Izzy for confirmation or contestment of the claim. He found the former when the unicorn sadly nodded. Raising a hoof to his chin, he looked back to Zipp and said, “If that’s true, then technically it sounds to me it was really more you and Pipp’s fault for–”
“Shhh!” both pegasi sisters shushed, turning to Hitch, each a forehoof pressed against their mouth.
“Aw, come on!” Hitch said, throwing his hooves up in exasperation. “It is! It really is! You guys are being way too harsh! You, Zipp, especially!”
Zipp prepped to retort, but Izzy did so for her. “No, no, no. They’re right. Zipp, especially.”
Izzy looked downcast towards the ground. “Ever since magic returned, my brand of it’s tuned my knack of surprising ponies to eleven. Sometimes, I surprise myself with where I pop-up, but this wasn’t one of those times. No. I saw Zipp wake up, but instead of just getting up and walking over like a normal pony, I just had to appear behind her without making a sound and try striking up a conversation that way. Like, hello Izzy! Of course that was going to lead to a dangerous, if a little funny in hindsight, chain reaction, like it does basically every time you try it! Like that one time Hitch was walking out the donut shop with all those boxes of baker’s dozens perched precariously on his head! Or that one time Pipp was walking out the Radio Shed® with all those loudspeakers perched precariously on her head! Or that time Zipp was walking out the quill and sofa store with that sofa, quill, and inkwell perched precariously on her head! Or–”
“Alright already, we get it,” Zipp interrupted, hoof soundly meeting mien. “Please, don’t remind us further about all that. We’re still trying to forget, you know.”
Pipp shivered. “Sometimes, I still find pieces of voice coil in my mane.”
“Your mane? Ha! Sometimes, I still find dried out mango jelly gunk and papaya sprinkles in mine! Which makes keepin’ it stylin’ even more of a chore. I mean, do you know how much work goes into keeping it lookin’ so impeccably statuesque?” Hitch said, pulling out his shades from nowhere, putting them on, and striking a pose like a sculptor was nearby trying to chisel his features into marble.
“I can imagine, tipo,” Pipp said, drawing her own shades from the aether, and mimicking Hitch’s stance before the two of them then began to try and out pose the other for the imaginary statue artist in front of them.
Rolling her eyes at this vignette of vanity, Zipp looked back at Izzy and with a wave of her hoof, hurried her to continue.
Izzy blinked, apparently having lost her train of thought like the others sans Zipp, and said, “Oh. Right.” After coughing into her hoof both to reorient her voice and get everypony’s attention, Hitch and Pipp included, she said, “The point is, it was my mistake. Me, myself, and I’s fault. Nopony else’s really, and I’m sorry. Really sorry. Really, really, authentically super verifictionally, sorry. I promise from now on to stop being a hazard to myself and others by surprising them ever again till I’ve fully mastered my arcane gifts!” She stood proudly, eyes and chin and horn held high. “Cross my heart–” She crossed a hoof over her heart. “And hope to fly–” She stood on her back-legs and flapped her forelegs as though they were wings and she was trying to take off. “Stick a cupcake in my eye!” She returned to a quadrupedal stance, grabbed some mud nearby, and smeared it over her right eye with a press of her hoof.
“Uhhh,” began Zipp, flabbergasted more than the first time she was ever pop-quizzed on explaining the difference between inductive and deductive and abductive reasoning, “what was… that?”
“The Pinkie promise,” Hitch said, nodding sagaciously. When Zipp and her sister looked to him even more confused, he quickly added, “Apparently, the way Sunny tells it, it was a special pact, a crucial covenant that the element of laughter, Pinkie Pie, made when she was firmly for serial. Basically, to break a Pinkie promise would dismantle the foundations of a friendship and at least level things back to square one. Not unsalvageable, but a really hard castle to cobble the cobblestone back together, you know? Take it from me. Speaking from experience here.”
“Huh. Really?” Zipp paused to consider his words, tapping her chin in fascination. “That’s actually a top-notch interesting fact from antiquity. How come this is the first time I’m hearing about this?”
“Wait, what?” Izzy said, tilting her head to one side. “This isn’t the first time you’ve heard about it. Don’t you remember? That first night me, you, and Zipp all slept over in the Brighthouse? All of us huddled next to the fireplace sipping hot cocoa while Sunny told us so many wonderful, miraculous, awesome things about equestria from a thousand years ago?”
Now it was Zipp’s–and her sister’s–turn to head tilt.
“Wait, wasn’t that the night after the day Sunny and Hitch gave us the grand tour of the town and Hitch was real upset because he forgot to clean up all the anti-unicorn traps and Izzy kept activating and getting caught by them?” Zipp asked.
“E’yup,” Hitch said with an exasperated sigh.
“The same tour where after that bad business got sorted out, Sunny made us try so many smoothie combinations from her stand that we gained double our usual body weight and had to proper diet and exercise for weeks after to get back to normal?”
“E’yup!” Izzy said, beaming grin never fading.
“The same tour and following smoothie surfeit sesh that made us both really sleepy afterwards and made us fall asleep five minutes into Sunny’s reminiscing?”
“E’yu–” began Izzy, still all smiles and sunshine and ladybugs before cognizance dawned and she gasped, forehooves on either side of her head yet somehow not falling forward in accordance with the laws of physics. “You what!?” she exclaimed. “That was the most eye-opening, jaw-dropping, most spectacularing twelve hours in the history of, like, ever!”
“Apparently not since we, you know, slept through the bulk of it,” Pipp said with a shrug so nonchalant that if it were any more so someone could be forgiven for thinking she was about to snooze then and there.
Izzy’s eyes erupted into a conflagration so bright it could probably have been picked up by satellite, her growl so menacing it could have disassembled Sprout’s robot all on its own.
Zipp had to do a double-take and massage her head to ensure her sight was accurate, that her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her by imaging what she saw as some clever visual metaphor for the abstract concept of Izzy’s sheer, searing, outrage at her sister and her words. When nothing had changed after the triple and quadruple take and their attendant eye rubbing, only then did she say to herself that, no, no, her eyes really were on fire. Very fulgent fire too. No doubt an unconscious consequence of Izzy™ brand magic.
The aforesaid unicorn looked prepared to speak, but before she could, Zipp smartly–and probably rightly–intercepted her at the pass lest fire proceeded forth from her mouth too and Izzy ended up breaking her Pinkie promise after having just made it.
Zipping in front of Pipp to shield her, Zipp said, “I’m sure sis here meant that after everything that happened that day, especially the fact we were probably made of ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent fruit juice, veggies, and honey mustard by the time we made it to the Brighthouse, we were so tired that not even the eye-opening, jaw-dropping, most spectacularing lesson on Equestria’s real history could keep us awake.” When Izzy’s gaze seemed to soften, but still remained quite literally fiery, Zipp zipped to add, “But I’m sure if we had we’d feel the exact same way you do about it,” she tilted her head quickly towards her sister and asked, noticeably intense edge in her voice, “right, Pipp?”
Swift on the uptake, Pipp furiously nodded, totally not saying in a panic, “Yeah, yeah! What Zipp said, Izzy. Ancient history sounds like the best and not, like, totes boring at all!”
The two pegasi sisters then put on their best unquestionably convincing grins of assurance and totes did not silently berate the lone bead of nervous sweat that ran down the forehead of each.
Perhaps they shouldn’t have been so pusillanimous however, for it only took three whole seconds after for Izzy’s countenance to resume its conventional carefree condition as she said, “Sounds okie-dokie-lokie by me!”
“Uhhh,” responded Zipp and her sister.
“An old saying,” Hitch explained. “Folksy way of saying, okay.”
“By Pinkie Pie?” Zipp and Pipp asked at once.
“By Pinkie Pie,” Hitch replied, nodding.
The two sisters sighed, both roughly running a hoof from forehead to chin as they did.
Zipp herself wanted nothing more in that moment than to just fall tumble backwards into sleep, much too tired as she was to deal with the excitable unicorn.
Her anomalous amigo, as ever though, possessed a competing plan.