Sunny 10

by CrossOverLord

And Then There Were Ten: ACT 5

Sunny Starscout was not okay. 

Maybe better than she’d been mere moments ago when in the blink of an eye following her second proper supernova and the ensuing recoil she’d been pushed into the ground with even more crater crafting strength by an explosion of blue and pink lightning, but still not in any way okay. 

It wasn’t the pain. No. She’d gotten more or less accustomed to that by now, even as physically and mentally stunned into silence as she was.

It was the uncertainty. 

Not of whether or not the flying saucer mechano-crabs had been decisively defeated. For the evidence that indeed they had soon fell from the air, Sunny and her crater being peppered by bazillions of pieces of alloyed metal and non-metal that’d at one time been the automatons. 

No.

It was the uncertainty of what’d happened to her friend. 

To Zipp.

For it’d been much too long post that most thunderous detonation, yet the pegasus still could be heard not. 

Once sufficient feeling returned to her fiery form, Sunny lifted her upperform and whispered in horror, “Oh no.” Hurriedly, she returned to both feet and climbed out of the crater. The moment her knees touched terram etiam, she stood up, cupped her hands around her mouth into the shape of a cone, and yelled, “Zipp! Zipp! Where are you!? Are you okay!? Do you need help!? Please, tell me where you–!?” 

She was halted from properly ending the question when the princess in question suddenly descended from the aether not a foot away in front of her. Of course, the impact with the floor and the tremendous surprise Sunny suddenly was saddled with causes her to tumble backwards into the crater till she was right where she’d started–its center. 

“Hey.” 

Sunny shook her head and stared up to find Zipp looking down at her. Immediately, comparisons to when the pegasus first saw her in her transformed state back at the pod crater were made, though at least, she noted, the princess seemed in far more amicable a mind if her smirk was any indication. 

“What’s up? Aside from me, obviously.” 

What was up, apparently, was Sunny’s time as the mystery entity of enigmatic igneousness. 

Just as she sighed in a sense of ease that Zipp had outflew and/or not been too affected from the shockwave of deep azure and rose lightning, a few strange things, even by the standards of previous happenstances, occurred. 

The hourglass symbol of black and white at the base of her neck shimmered red off and on in tune with ten blitzingly speedy and somewhat sonorous beeps.

A flash of emerald light radiating from the aforementioned hourglass symbol and much akin to the very one that’d made her into the blazing being she’d been for the past ten minutes obscured her and the surrounding locale. 

And, most importantly of all, once the light faded, she could see clearly that she was back to being, well, herself again. 

Sunny. 

The friendly, neighborhood, smoothie mare. 

Apricot coat, magenta and purple mane with rainbow streaks, presumably emerald green eyes, four hooves and legs and weirdo space watch attached to the left lot of her hooves and legs, and cutiemark composed of one large pink star with a blue trail and two smaller pink stars. She was so herself that she couldn’t even find a single bruise or tuft of singed fur or anything that visually demonstrated all she’d endured since the pod-crash, and felt as though she’d been given the rest she would’ve if she’d stayed slumbering in the cave. 

Sunny Starscout was back to normal. 

Sunny Starscout was… okay. 

Zipp, however, was not. 

As the now untransformed earthpony lifted her now equine form up halfway and stared at her hooves as she waved, rotated, and otherwise maneuvered them about as though she still feared they were illusions yet and searched for any seams at all to confirm or deny this, she was brought out of her disbelief momentarily when next she heard her friend speak. 

“You… you… you were Sunny? Are… Sunny!? This whole time!?” 

The earthpony focussed up at the pegasus to find her jaw somehow even more towards the ground than when she’d first seen her as the combustible creature she’d been for the past third of a half-hour. 

“Ummm… yeah?” She chuckled anxiously. “I tried to tell ya, but you didn’t exactly seem to be in listening mode there, soooo… sorry?”

As Sunny grinned uncertainly and Zipp gasped in total shock and surprise, a familiar feminine voice the earthpony instantly recognized as Izzy rapidly cried forth, “Zipp! ZIPP! Is that you!? If it is, then we have to worry! A-gigantic-alien-robot-just-dropped-in-from-outerspace-and-sent-two-crab-looking-drones-after-Sunny-I-think-For-what-I-don’t-know-but-I-do-know-that-we-have-to-help-her-before-they–”  

Once the unicorn stepped into view there at the edge of the crater though, her words stopped suddenly, doubtlessly confused by the sight of said depression in the earth, Sunny seated at the center of it with the weirdo space watch on her left hoof and so many fragments of what were the crab-looking drones Sunny’d hardly heard her mention all around the earthpony. 

“Uhhh… what’d I miss?” Izzy asked. 

Zipp, in the meantime, huffed as she fainted and collapsed face first into the crater. 

“Hitch?” 

“Yeah, Pipp?” 

“I’ve meant to say this a while ago, but I think now’s the single most apropos time to tell you.” 

“Tell me what?” 

“That sometimes, your powers scare me.” 

“Me too, Pipp. Me too.” 

The sheriff sighed, cleaning some dirt out his eye with the back of his hoof and casting it into the roiling lava of the extemporaneous volcanic crater many thousands of feet wide by many thousands of feet in depth of his own accomplishment. 

Upon the destruction of Hitch Keep, the eponymous earthpony felt himself grabbed and hoisted into the sky by his light purple pegasus pal over the immense and intense light, heat, and force sieging his senses even through the cover of the tree and his forelegs. In the brief moments before their climb ended, he wondered why Pipp would go against his orders so soon when the detonation hadn’t even reached its end yet since she was supposed to hover around the site in case the giant robot somehow needed more power sent its way to be stopped. 

Once the explosion faded into the aether and normalcy, or what counted for normalcy in those woods, returned, though, and Hitch’d massaged his eyes so they no more shook about and he could see right again, he learned the pegasus’s reasoning as soon as he looked down. 

The spot where he’d been seconds prior was… gone.

The tree and the ground below the tree had slid and tumbled into the pyrous pit.

The consequences of him and his sandcastle accidentally striking a faultline, no doubt. 

Hitch’d miscalculated. A lot. While the effects on the landscape were still far and above closer to his estimates than Pipp’s, it was most certainly larger enough that if she hadn’t flown to his rescue… well… it wouldn’t be fun having to escape, that was for sure.

In acknowledgement of this teeny, tiny, little factoid, after brushing out some more dirt for the fire, from his hair this time, he said, “By the way, thanks for not listening to what I said and saving me the trouble of having to get outta–” he waved towards the lava abyss, “that. Kudos. Kudos all around.” 

Pipp snickered, annoyed and amused in equal measure. “It was nothing. Oh! And I’m so glad you understand why I couldn’t just wait and text you to get your approval to leave my post. Really, you’re TOO kind,” she said with sarcasm substantial enough that it had its own orbit. Much more consistently seriously, she swiftly added, “Speaking of getting outta–” she pointed with her snout towards the fire pit, “that… think the big bot managed or…?” 

Hitch huffed, half humored, half incredulous Pipp would even bring forth such a question with such an obvious answer. “Doubt it. Seriously doubt it.” 

“Yeah. Though so.” She sighed. “Silly to ask, I know, but I still think it needed to–” 

A roaring, rumbling rose from the lava in concert with a great figure also rising from it. 

“No,” Hitch and Pipp both whispered in total disbelief. 

As the lava coating the figure fell away, removing all hope that it was something else, the earthpony and pegasus gasped as they saw the head of none other than the giant robot.  

Looking.

Straight.

Up.

At.

Them.

And though Hitch didn’t have proof more concrete than the fantastic fear he felt, between its fiery backdrop, the molten rock still attached to much of its form and the cracks in whatever material composed its ‘eyes’, the giant robot was angry.

Very.

Very.

VERY… angry.

“And-then-you-showed-up-and-then-Zipp-collapsed-from-the-revalation-that-I-was-the-walking-talking-birthday-candle-she’d-spent-hurting-and-then-saving-from-the-flying-saucer-mechano-crabs-and-then-you-bunnyhopped-into-the-crater-and-then-you-sat-down-and-then-you-started-explaining-things-and-then-I-started-explaining-things-and now we’re here.” 

Sunny Starscout was not okay. 

Sunny Starscout had just spent the past two minutes or thereabouts telling Izzy Moonbow everything that’d happened, everything she herself endured that night, after yon unicorn’d spent two minutes or thereabouts telling the earthpony everything that’d happened and that she’d endured that night. 

Sunny Starscout huffed and puffed, requiring ten whole seconds to catch her breath. 

Sunny Starscout could no longer hold back her tears. 

Sunny Starscount hugged her friends and weeped like a baby into her shoulder.

“There, there, Sunny. It’s okay,” Izzy shushed soothingly as she patted the earthpony on the back, again like a baby. 

“No it’s not!” Sunny lifted her head to try and brush away some of the tears blurring her vision, yet no matter how much she tried, it only helped a little. “This was supposed to be a fun camping trip, and it turned into… into… this!” She cried anew, head tilting downwards. 

“I know, I know. Honestly, I wish things went as planned too. I mean, I like adventure, but not this much adventure. All you gotta do though to stop being so gloomy and get back to being sunny, Sunny, is to follow my lead and just look on the brightside!” 

Sniffling, Sunny brought her head level with the ground again and asked in nonplussed manner, “Brightside? What are you talking about? What brightside could there possibly–” 

“Well, for one: everypony’s all right. Maybe not as all right as they usually are, but all right all the same. For two: we have a fun story to share with ponies from now on into forever. I pledge no tall tale they could tell attains as much altitude. And for three: even though it was very scary–very, VERY scary, even–you got an awesome, super cool, ancient, hi-tech magic watch that fell right outta the stars outta the deal! I mean seriously! Our side’s so bright I think I’ll need to borrow Hitch’s or Pipp’s sunglasses when we see ‘em next!” 

Izzy chuckled and despite the sorrowful mental state she was in, not long later, Sunny found herself laughing too. Not chuckling, not so grandiose and warm was her laughter, yet still, it was laughter, and an unmistakable upturn in how she felt, the crying finally stopping. 

“Yeah. Yeah… I guess there really is still a lot to be, well, me about. Thank you, Iz.” 

“You’re welcome!” 

A few more seconds passed, Sunny finally having removed enough of her tears that she could see more or less a hundred percent clearly. “I have to say though, if what you said was in ascending order–” 

“Nope! No particular order here!” 

Now Sunny did chuckle, through mouth and nose, a storm. “Somehow–” she started, getting a hold of herself, “that doesn’t surprise me. In any event, I gotta take issue with that last one being involved whatsoever in the blessings column.” 

“What? Why!?” Izzy asked, pulling back from Sunny slightly as she pushed her back, just as slightly. “It’s awesome, super-cool, ancient, and hi-tech magic, just like I said! Maybe even alien in origin in some way like all the bots!” 

“Iz, the whole, ‘aliens’ idea–” Sunny began with tremendous air quotes on those last two words with her hooves, “hasn’t been sufficiently confirmed yet, sorry to say.” 

Izzy sat down, crossed her frontlegs over her chest, and went, “Harumph!” as she pouted like a three yearling. “Maybe not sufficiently for you, but upon all the knowledge I’ve accrued from all the relevant works of fiction I’ve gone through and the extensiveness of all the evidence we’ve witnessed tonight, I’m saying: aliens did it!” 

Sunny sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose, annoyed by her friend’s insistence, yes, but honestly glad said friend had lifted her demeanor up to the point where she could worry about arguing with her in the first place. Inwardly, anyways. “Regardless, interesting as it is–” she lifted her left wrist and the watch in question that’d stuck itself upon her wrist for everypony’s ease of sight, “it’s caused half the problems I’ve dealt with tonight. We’ve dealt with tonight. Especially if your hypothesis about the bots being alien mechanisms seeking this supposed alien mechanism on my foreleg here is true.” She sighed again, bringing her left frontleg down and pointing at Zipp’s still unconscious form to her right. “If you’re correct, then it’s thanks to this watch that Zipp’s in the condition she’s in.” 

Sunny leaned back and sat down, forehooves held sadly under her chin. She looked across at the unicorn, who no more acted as a foal and instead mirrored the earthpony. 

“Well, when you put it like that,” Izzy began, head tilting to the side, “I guess I can understand where you stand. Plus, I’d probably be real unhappy too eventually if I had a watch latched to my wrist that just wouldn’t let go no matter what I did. Despite how neato it is.” 

An anxious silence descended upon the crater, stopped from being totally quiet only by the rainfall, which was now in gentle form. 

Of course, Sunny wasn’t joyous about taking away Izzy’s optimism. She never was. Every time she had to, she was reminded of the day the city council of Maretime Bay and mayor both told her that her idea for a strategic smoothie reserve was cool, but impractical. And colossally costly for very little, if any, concrete gain in the long or short term. Yet, the earthpony had to be the voice of unidealized reality here. She had to. Too many times tonight had been hopeful that night, and time and again her hopes were half actualized at best or just completely pushed by the wayside. Though Izzy powering through every, any, and all negative experience and holding onto everything, anything, and all things positive was her most magical, amicable, and admirable ability, it could not be Sunny’s conviction, sadly. Not presently. 

Verily, that didn’t stop the unicorn from trying, though. Hardly was that how the smoothie blended. 

“Well,” Izzy started, “maybe… the watch can be part of the solution too instead of just the problem.” 

Her words and ensuing smile caused Sunny to shake her head and sigh in exhaustion. “I should’ve figured you’d say something like that.” 

“What?” Izzy asked, visibly perplexed. “It’s true. Honestly, Sunny, while I get your POV, I’m surprised you of all ponies don’t seem to be even mildly appreciative of the possibilities!” She stood up on her backlegs and pointed her frontlegs suddenly and overdramatically. “I mean: THE POSSIBILITIES! Just think about ‘em!” 

“Honestly, Izzy, I’d rather not,” Sunny said, hugging herself in fright and shivering. 

“No! Not the bad! The good!” Izzy shouted, bringing her frontlegs upon the ground again. She then looked contemplative, hoof massaging her chin as she quickly added, “Or potentially good. Maybe even more neutral.” Certainty returning to her mien again, Izzy stomped both her front hooves prior to saying, “The point is: the watch, whatever trouble it may’ve brought, can’t be all bad, and likely, it’s really, really, REALLY good! I mean, think about it! You yourself said Princess Twilight Sparkle, THE PRINCESS TWILIGHT SPARKLE, probably had a hoof in creating that device if the FACT that both pods it crashed down in had her cutiemark on them was anything to go by! Those bots were probably bad guys trying to take an awesome, super-cool, ancient, and hi-tech magic and GOOD secret in that watch that SHE made and use it for their not awesome, un-super-cool, current, still probably hi-tech magic, but obviously EVIL secret plan to take over the world!”  

The earthpony prepared a protest, yet stopped at the last moment. Something in what her unicorn friend’d said had just then managed to advance beyond the thicket of her own personal and opposing thoughts and feelings, and held in its hoof the light of truth. What she’d mentioned concerning Princess Sparkle’s mark being on the pods that’d contained the watch. 

Yes. Yes… that was it. The Princess of Friendship was a paragon. The epitome of equinity’s decency. A hero whose name and likeness belonged in the dictionary entry for the very word hero. If she of all ponies had any part to play in the invention of any invention, its purpose could only be intentionally malevolent in the hooves–or various other tactile means–of those who would willingly misuse, misapply, and mishoofle it. From there, it really would be a short, especially well-founded leap to conclude, as her friend had, that the flying saucer mechano-crabs and that huge tripedal robo-bug they’d launched from that the aforesaid unicorn’d mentioned had descended for just such a purpose. Their actions certainly leaned more towards that idea.  

The simple smoothie mare looked down at the watch–really looked at it–again.

Sunny had to admit, Izzy’s perspective did have some very, very, VERY valid reasons.

Hitch had to admit, he did not see this happening. 

He did not see the giant robot enduring Hitch Keep’s destruction as well as it had. 

He did not see the automaton raise its right arm out towards him and Pipp.

He did, however, see something retract from beneath its wrist–a relatively thin, grayish metal tube. 

And, he did see the end of the tube glow with an angry, red light.   

Eyes widening even further as he understood what was about to occur, Hitch yelled out, “Pipp! Get us out of here, right–” 

Thankfully, the pegasus princess didn’t need much prompting on his part, dodging the red beam of energy right before it was fired by the bot. The sheriff hadn’t the chance to catch his breath though when the automaton fired again, the beam being continuous in nature this time, forcing Pipp to continuously evade its aim. 

“I think you made it mad!” she shouted. 

“Nah! Really!? You think!?” Hitch shouted in reply. “What else are you gonna tell me is new!? That the daylight sky is blue!?” 

“I was just saying! No need to be mean!” 

“Well stop just saying and just get to getting us gone!” 

“Well I can’t!” 

“What do you mean you can’t! All we literally need is some altitude here!” 

“Easy for you to say! You’re not the one constantly having to change flight patterns here to avoid being hit! Something that’s, for the record, really hard to do when you’re only going in one direction like you want me to!” 

Hitch grumbled and was set to argue some more when the giant robot performed the unexpected that the sheriff really probably should’ve expected with a basic application of prediction. It raised its left arm, from which another relatively thin tube of grayish metal appeared from under the wrist of, and fired another unending beam of angry red energy at the disagreeing duo. 

Pipp’s manner of avoidance had been seriously and celeritously oscillating before, yet now it was positively vertiginous, Hitch’s eyes rolling in place like water mill wheels in a raging rapid, his head spinning like a titanic top, and his shouts of terror rising to the outer reaches of the sky. “Whaaaaaaaa!” In a desperate attempt to keep some miniscule control of the situation, and direct it for the better, he tried once more to convince the pegasus that they needed to gallop bravely away from all this danger, yesterday. “Huuury uuup alllreeeaaadyyy Piiip! Ssstttoppp ttthhhe cannn’ttt-dddooo atttitttuuude, hhhooolllddd a cannn-dddooo ooonnneee annnddd ffflllyyy usssss awwwaaaaaayyyyy! Faaaaarrrrr as yooouuur wwwingggsssss cccaaaaannnnnn carry!” 

“Hitch! If I couldn’t before, what makes you think I could now!?” 

The sheriff huffed, planning to press the matter, when he had to pull one of his forelegs back to only just dodge one of the beams. It was then he knew the princess was correct and that acting otherwise could serve no purpose but their defeat. So instead, upon getting the timing more or less accurate so that his words were far more easy to hear if also a lot more intermittent, Hitch yelled, “You’re… right! I’m… sorry! Let… me… get… you… an… opening! Throw me… at… edge… of… crater!” 

“What!?” the pegasus asked, confused and surprised. “Why!? How’re you even gonna get away!?” 

“I… didn’t… say… to… leave… me! Just… grab me… again… when I’ve… resolved… the situation!” 

“Huh!? What’re you even planning against that thing if you’re best only slowed it down!?” 

“Honestly… dunno! Guess I’ll… throw a rock… at it! Or… something!” 

“Are you crazy!?” 

“It’ll be… a big rock! I… promise!” Hitch suddenly tilted his head sideways and had to pull his left shoulder out of Pipp’s grasp to avoid both of them being hit by both of the beams just then. “Now go! Stop… second guessing… and–!”

Finally not needing to be told any longer, Pipp performed precisely as instructed. She twirled around for several revolutions, managing to evade the beams and spin Hitch around like an out of hoof teacup ride, before taking her hooves away from his shoulders and letting him fall swiftly towards the earth. 

“Goooo!” Hitch shouted all through his brief, downwards flight in the direction of terra firma. 

“Recharge, complete. Ten minutes of transformation remaining.” 

Sunny and Izzy leapt back synchronously at those sudden words, and when they landed, the stability of both was so unstable that they collapsed onto their sides onto the crater floor. Mirroring one another further, neither remained long on the ground though before jumping up onto their hooves again, yelling, “What!?” and turning their attention to the source of the sentence that’d caused everything that’d happened in the past three seconds or so. 

The watch.

Of course it was the watch. 

As Sunny systematically analyzed the device, noticing for the first time a very dramatic change in its aesthetic design, she realized something at least as puzzling. “Wait… that voice just now. It… it sounded like–” 

“You,” Izzy ended for her, eyes wide before looking inquisitively to the side as she massaged her chin with a hoof and quickly added, “I mean, a super serene and peaceful and maybe a little sleepy version of you, but still… you.” 

Indeed. It was her own voice that Sunny heard, her tone sounding exactly like the mysterious male voice that’d spoken when the pods have been opened as Izzy’d said in so many of her own words. 

“Well. That’s… a thing… apparently,” the earthpony thought. “A very weird thing.” 

Izzy gasped with such a total lack of warning, that the surprise brought Sunny out of her thoughts, listening intently as the unicorn shouted, “And look! Your watch! It stopped being all red and black and is back to being all green and black like you said it was when you’d found it!” 

Again, Izzy was correct. For the ten minutes or so it’d been since Sunny was her normal self again, the device in question had been glaring red where once it’d been emerald green. That was, until the earthpony’s voice had sounded what it’d had, the watch now as normal as she was currently–as it had been when she’d discovered it in the pods. 

Curiouser and curiouser.

“You’re right,” Sunny admitted. “On both observations.” 

Izzy gasped even louder, standing on her backlegs as her forehooves were pressed against either side of her head in epiphany as she shouted, “Wait just a second here! Do you think those things also mean–” 

“That the watch can maintain morphing for ten minutes before requiring a break of ten more minutes?” Sunny completed for her.

“Well, yeah.” 

“Well, given that it basically just told us that, in my voice no less, and it seems exactly like it was just before it latched onto my hoof… yeah. Yeah, I think so.” 

“Cooooooool.” 

Izzy’d said that after just… appearing behind Sunny and staring down over one of her shoulders at the watch. Yet the earthpony wasn’t frightened into movement, equally as focussed on the device as the unicorn as she was. 

“Yeah. I’ll admit. It is pretty cool,” Sunny responded, hardly above a whisper with a renewed sense of childhood wonderment and inquisitiveness not unlike what she’d felt when she noticed Princess Twilight’s cutiemark on the pods. She sat down on the ground and brushed her right hoof over the watch, her immediate concern very much to study it further–an idea she concluded Izzy shared completely. Something echoed in the back of her mind though. Something that Izzy’d said when she’d been explaining the events of that night from her perspective. Something that ultimately stopped Sunny from pressing the big green button on the watch again and seeing what happened. For the moment, anyways. 

A sudden snore brought the simple smoothie mare’s eyes over to Zipp’s still slumbering-from-total-revelation-overload form and she trotted towards her upon seeing for the first time that her head rested on an alloy plate that’d once been part of one of the flying saucer mechano-crabs. With great care, she pulled the plate from under the back of her friend’s head and placed said head onto the crater floor. It wasn’t much better a pillow, but it certainly had to be an improvement considering it was a much softer surface than whatever those drones were made from. 

It was then, upon sighing at the pegasus’s state, that she was given the final catalyst to put to words the thought holding her from testing the watch and its secrets, her expression resembling the one she always had whenever she was far from home and had forgotten to water her garden. “Iz,” she started, trying yet not really succeeding in keeping out the sudden wave of worriment that’d struck her from her voice. “Pop quiz: what can you tell me about how Hitch and Pipp are doing against that colossal, mechanical mantis you mentioned?”

Izzy scratched her head and brow, confused, yes, yet more disappointed at Sunny’s change in priorities. To her credit though, she didn’t argue, and, sitting down, placed her hooves against either side of her head and said, smiling sadly, “Alright. Personally, I think they’ve got a hoofle on things, but if you want, I can see what the ole’ friendship sense is saying, no prob. Just gimme a sec to check the voice mail.” 

“Thanks, Iz,” Sunny said with a breath of refreshed serenity. “That’s all I ask.” 

Nodding in decuplicate, Izzy then imitated a phone ringing once, twice, then thrice before nodding again, though more slowly and continuously and with a comically focussed visage, as she said, “Ahuh. Ahuh. Two new messages. Sunday at three A.M. Hitch and Pipp’s interception of the giant robot is going–” 

 The unicorn’s mien instantaneously went shocked and surprised, just as instantly reminding Sunny of the look Zipp had prior to fainting. 

Though the earthpony feared the answer, though she knew the answer, she still felt she had to ask, “Not good times, I take it?” 

Izzy, as quick to respond as she was, for many moments could not say anything else sans, “Uuuuuhhhhh…” 

He was worrisomely close prior to impact, so close he’d make sure to never mention it in any future retellings of the tale to anypony, before deciding on just what course of action he would gallop down to achieve his stated goal. When he finally had something concrete in mind, though, Hitch sought it out with his typical clarity and capability. 

Willing the earth beneath to compress together and mimic the elastic properties of things like plastic or rubber or Zipp’s homemade marshmallows she ‘cooked’ whenever she felt like attempting the culinary arts, he hit the floor on his forehooves, bounced up ten feet into the air, flipped himself the other way ‘round, willed an even larger square area of earth he couldn’t see far deep below the surface to resemble playdough so, and stomped down on all hooves when he landed with all the tangible and intangible might he could. 

An avalanche, a landslide, a great wave of rock and dirt fell forth from the edge of the crater and struck the giant robot, who neither moved nor seemed to notice, focussed still on trying to aim its lasers onto Pipp as it was. Upon completing his backflip away from the tumbling terrain under him and landing tens of feet away on far more reliable dirt, Hitch couldn’t even see the automaton anymore it was so obscured by earthen debris. He didn’t stop to respite safely and securely in his victory, though, for he knew how weak and tenuous a trophy it truly was by this point. Instead, he looked up towards the pegasus, who was huffing and puffing and floating in place now that she had a few precious seconds to herself to rest, and yelled out, “Pipp! Sonic cry! Now!” 

“Wha!? Why!? I’m tired! And by the looks of things, the robot–” 

“Is probably digging itself out as we speak! We can’t take chances! Remember!?” 

As if to support his view, two continuous laser beams, undoubtedly from its wrist cannons, dug through the rocky dirt it was buried beneath, both ponies jumping back in fright as said earthen debris then began to shake, the giant robot’s hands soon rising through.

“Pipp! Please! Stop just hoverin’ and get ta hollerin’!” 

Requiring no further prompting, Pipp took ten more deep breaths, just in time for the giant robot’s head to break through the rubble, and yelled out, “OOOKKKAAAY!”

Of course, it was not a simple word she’d said, for it was one spoken with all the power of her sonorous magic reinforcing it to rock crushing intensity. Intensity enough that the automaton was knocked back into the lava and back out of sight, that the crater in its tremendous entirety collapsed in upon the automaton, and, of course, that Hitch was brought to the ground, hooves over his ears, shaking and shrieking in pain from the mere wake of the auditory assault, regretting his command to the pegasus very, very much as he was thrown careening quickly into dreamland despite his best efforts to remain awake. 

  
“E’yup. Not good times, no,” Izzy completed prior to celeritously adding before Sunny’s predictable reaction, “However, I have the very strong feeling that our friends’ve finally turned the corner they needed and are set to ultimately win against that big meenie robot!”

“That you talkin’, or the friendship sense?” Sunny asked, unconvinced brow raised. 

Izzy’s signature larger than life, genuine, and warm grim seemed to turn forced, a single line of sweat trailing down the left side of her face. Eyes moving every possible way except Sunny’s, the unicorn replied to the question with one of her own. “There’s… uuuuuhhhhh… a… difference?” 

As if to support Sunny’s view that Izzy’s optimism was obscuring something, namely the trouble her friends that weren’t present were in, she saw from one of the upmost corners of her eyes a figure flying through the night towards the crater. A swift turn of her head there, and she gasped at the sight of the younger princess of Zephyr Heights carrying the unconscious form of the sheriff of Maretime Bay–who appeared as though he needed weeks of vacation to return to his typical state–in her forehooves. 

“Pipp! Hitch!” 

Sunny dashed beyond Izzy and stopped right in front of the purple pegasus right as she landed and placed Hitch softly on the crater floor. 

“Pipp! What happened!? To you!? To–” she pointed to the sheriff. “What happened to his face!? Was–was it the giant robot!? Did it hurt him!?” 

“That?” Izzy asked, just appearing to Sunny’s right and looking down at Hitch’s uneasily slumbering self herself. “No, that’s just from when–” 

“No time to explain!” Pipp suddenly, terrified, and out of breathedly yelled. “We have to move! We have to run! It–it–it’s chasing after us and I don’t think we can–” 

The purple pegasus stopped when she noticed Zipp, gasped, pointed a hoof there, and asked, screaming, “What happened to my sister!? Was–was it the drones!? Did they hurt her!?” 

“That?” Izzy asked, just appearing to Pipp’s right and looking down at Zipp’s uneasily slumbering self herself. “No, that’s just from when–” 

“No time to explain!” Sunny suddenly, terrified, and out of breathedly yelled. “Pipp: focus! What’s chasing after us!? Is it the giant robot!?” 

Pipp didn’t respond immediately, taking many more breaths before she was ready to respond. When she was though, she answered Sunny adequately with her first word. “Yes.” Upon completion of a few more breaths, she further said, “We did everything we could, pulled out all the stops to stop it, but it wasn’t enough! Never enough! I even dialed my sonic cry to max volume, all the way to eleven and beyond, knocked Hitch right into dreamland as a result on accident… and still… a few seconds later… it just… got… back… up… again. Lasers… blasting… legs… running… to get me… as I flew away after grabbing Hitch again… with everything… I had… left.” 

Suddenly, Pipp collapsed forwards, thankfully not hitting the ground, though, due to Sunny and Izzy rushing towards her and holding her up. 

“Ahhhh!” the younger princess yelled out. “Oh is my throat sore,” she then said, voice raspy.

“Take it easy, Pipp. Just take it easy.” Sunny looked over to Izzy, a face of immense disappointment at her failure to tell her the simple truth about how Hitch and Pipp fared sans any positive, yet ultimately pointless, intuition.

When the unicorn realized the earthpony was looking at her so unhappily, the sweat started falling from her brow once more, her lips forming the word, ‘Sorry’, sans sound. 

Sunny sighed, her visage losing its severity as she decided to drop the matter and save it for later. In the here and now, she turned her head back at the purple pegasus and said, “Rest now. Rest. It’s okay. You’re safe. You and Hitch are both safe. We’ll–” she looked down at the watch. “Hoofle it from here.” 

Pipp’s reply was as swift as it was surprising. “No. No. No, no, no, no, no! I can’t! I won’t! Not until I’m sure that… that… metal monster can’t get to me or anypony else!” 

Sunny was about to try and convince her that she’d played her part and needed a break. 

That was, till Izzy suddenly shrieked, “SUNNY, LOOK OUT!” 

From the upmost center of her eyes, Sunny turned her head up just in time to see a massive metal arm and the four claws on its hand reach down towards her. The simple smoothie mare’s eyes hardly had time to telegraph the sudden fear she felt before her world disappeared in a flash of azure.

 
When the light faded, Sunny found herself, Pipp, and Izzy… not where they were. She couldn’t say precisely where. Not yet, anyhoof. Only that by all the empty space, the empty sky in her periphery vision, that wherever they were was most certainly not the crater. 

A little looking at her left, and she found Zipp and Hitch were with them, remaining unconscious on the ground. A little more at her right, and she discovered the ground seemed to go on to a point and then just stop till open air was all that she could see, the earthpony deducing from this that wherever they were was elevated in its topography.

When Izzy fell onto the ground, wheezing and holding her head, she also decided how she and her friends had gotten to wherever they were so quickly and, carefully placing Pipp onto the floor, yelled, “Iz!” She rested a hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder as she rolled to and fro in pain. “You… you… you just… teleported! All five of us! Away from the giant robot! That’s… that’s amazing! You’ve never been able to do that before! You’ve hardly managed to teleport only yourself in the past, and now: four other ponies with you too!” 

“Yay. Go me. Woo-hoo,” Izzy weakly grumbled. “If only I didn’t have this doozy of a headache because of it, I’d be standing and celebrating with you right about now.” She closed her eyes and grit her teeth, brow knitting together. “I mean, I knew traditional unicorn teleporation could be tiring, especially when moving multiple ponies, but not this painful! Ooooowooowwooowwooowwooowwooow! I’m never trying that again! Never ever forever ever again!” 

As the unicorn continued to complain, incredibly well founded as it was, Sunny couldn’t help patting her friend on the shoulder, smiling sadly as she said, “There, there, Iz. I’m sure when this is all over, you’ll be galloping at the chance to be like Princess Twilight before she was a princess and trying teleporting an entire stadium of ponies elsewhere.” 

“Uhhhh,” Pipp suddenly grumbled. “Speaking of teleporting, is Iz feeling okay enough to tell us where we are now?” 

Though Sunny had been much more concerned for the well being of the unicorn, she had to admit that she’d intended to ask her that herself before the extent of her agony was shown, and was thinking of asking her now since Pipp’d brought the issue to the top of the list. 

Thankfully, Izzy was cognizant and composed enough that she required no further inquiry on the earthpony’s part to answer, “Yeah. Yeah, she is. Just a little though.” The unicorn, with help from Sunny, stood again, if on shaky hooves, and finished her response by saying, “We’re on a hill, like, three miles away, or something like that, that I saw earlier when I was galloping towards where the friendship sense told me Sunny here was.” 

The aforesaid smoothie mare gasped, “Wait,” her eyes widened in realization, “was there a hole hewn into that’s twice my size, by chance before a trail of destruction though the forest.” 

“Yeah. Weirdest thing too.” Then, at super speedy pace, she added, “I-mean-not-as-weird-as-everything-else-but-still-kinda-hard-to-miss-the-local-landscape-being-rearranged-LIKE THAT.” 

Sunny chuckled, glad that Izzy was evidently rapidly returning to her usual state if that example of talkativeness was anything to go by. “Yeah. My fault there. I don’t think I mentioned it when I was giving the summary of what I’d gone through so far tonight, but I sorta, kinda caused all that destruction trying to get away from Zipp when she was fighting me because she thought I was a monster.” 

“She did WHAT!?” Pipp yelled, standing up with only the unexpectedness of that revelation to help her. “Why would she–!?” 

“Because, to be fair, I kinda was at the time,” Sunny swiftly explained. “A tall, two leg walking, two armed, firestarting monster of lava, lava rock, and, uh, fire.” 

“You were what!?” 

By this point, Izzy’d bounced back completely. In such good health across the board was she that she even lifted Sunny’s left hoof for her to show Pipp the device latched onto there. 

“This watch looking whatchamacallit Sunny found! See? It-turned-her-into-some-fiery-something-or-other-and-your-sister-didn’t-know-so-she-jumped-to-the-conclusion-that-the-fiery-something-or-other-Sunny-was-had-foalnapped-Sunny-or-something-and-then-jumped-into-action-by-zapping-and-hitting-the-fiery-something-or-other-Sunny-was, alot, and then–”  

Unfortunately, or maybe most fortunately depending on one’s ability and inability to understand Izzy’s vocal velocity, her mile a minute recollection was halted by the sound of dozens of trees snapping, a noise rising louder by the second and signaling the doom that remained fast in its approach, if delayed for the moment thanks to the unicorn’s efforts. 

“It’s still on the way,” Pipp said for the trio of scared looking ponies. “That oversized insect is still heading our way!” 

Sunny promptly shook the fear off her face via the shaking of her head, replacing it with a mien that spoke far more of determination and only mild fearfulness. “Right.” She turned to Izzy and said, “Sorry, Iz, but I can’t stay for storytime. It’s fight the giant robot time for me.” 

“Awwww…” Izzy said sadly, head tilted floorwards just as sorrowfully. 

“You’re going to what!?” Pipp yelled. 

“Hopefully?” Sunny replied to the purple pegasus. “Give an amazing demonstration of the watch’s list of features followed by a decent report of myself.” She looked back down at the aforementioned device, staring intently into the hourglass of green and black. “If all goes well,” she sighed. 

Sunny sat down and pressed the big, green button with her right hoof. As expected, the faceplate popped up atop a miniature, cylindrical tower, also of green and black. As she’d planned, she brought her right hoof down towards it. Just as she would’ve pressed upon it, however, she stopped, her eyes having observed something… new. A facet of the watch she’d never seen before and now realized for the first time. 

The hourglass within the faceplate was… gone. In its place was a green and black diamond, within which, over much of the green, was an outline, a silhouette, an icon with an uncanny and remarkable resemblance to the fiery creature she’d been.

“Wait a second…” 

“What is it? What’s wrong, Sunny?” Izzy said, just appearing in front of the earthpony and looking down at the device herself. 

“What’s wrong? Ha! What’s right should be the question!” Pipp said. 

Sunny sighed. “While that’s probably true and I’m the last pony to disagree, to answer Iz,” she pointed down at the entity depicted on the faceplate, “I think I’m looking at an image of what I’d transformed into.” 

“What!? No way! Ooo! Ooo! Lemme see! Lemme see!” Izzy, head somehow keeping still in place while the rest of her jumped parallel to Sunny’s right before said head turned a full 180°, looked down directly where Sunny’s sight was set with eyes then not upside down relative to the picture the device showcased. Obviously, she then gasped dramatically. “You’re right! It is! It totally is! That’s so… so… cool! Like, seriously awesome! How could you’ve possibly not noticed that before!?” 

“Well, wasn’t exactly focussing on the minute details what with all the terror and all.” 

“Oh. Right.” Izzy suddenly looked rather apologetic. “Sorry.” 

“It’s fine.” Sunny tilted her head to the side. “I wonder though…” 

Carefully, she placed her right hoof on the right side of the faceplate and, more carefully still, tried to see if she could move it in some way–clockwise, counterclockwise, or in any wise. Her curiosity had much verity, and was rewarded by the faceplate and its tower both turning in either direction most easily. 

What’s more, the icon changed concurrently. 

When the faceplate and its tower went left, the silhouette of a similar tetrapodal and bipedal entity to that of the fiery creature she’d been appeared, differing in that it seemed overall more bulky and broad shouldered with said shoulders each possessing a spike of some sort slanted at a slight angle and the being’s head between said spikes being decidedly more rhomboid and less on fire with another smaller spike seemingly emanating from the top.      

When the faceplate and its tower went right… an image far greater in its familiarity greeted her. 

So familiar was it, that Sunny’s eyes widened as though they’d just beheld an old, dear friend that she’d never actually met, yet felt an amity towards beyond words, for she’d known it and its kind prior to ever properly speaking.  

So familiar was it, that Izzy, voice slight and shaking, asked, “Is-is-is that what I think it is?” 

Sunny, her voice only slightly less slight and shaky, said, “Yeah. Think so.” 

“What!? What is it!?” asked Pipp. “Will somepony PLEASE stop ignoring my plight and tell me, FULLY, what on equis is happening!?” 

“It’ll all make sense, soon. Or as much as it can anyways. I promise.” Sunny looked up from the watch and, pointing to Pipp and Izzy, said, “Right now, though, I need you and Iz here to back up away from me. And hurry, because if my ears are correct, we’re only a few seconds away from the robot breaking through the treeline.” 

Pipp prepped a protest, yet was stopped by Izzy just appearing next to her, grabbing her, and pulling her away as the unicorn said, “I’d listen to the lady if I were you! Wouldn’t want to accidentally be squished now, ya know!” 

Again, Pipp was about to disagree boisterously, yet by then Izzy’d gotten them so far away that Sunny couldn’t hear her over the noise of the automaton’s tree crunching advance. 

Yet not far away enough that the unicorn felt comfortable.

“Hey Iz, do you mind moving yourself and Pipp a little further actually!?” she yelled to ensure she was heard. “Just to be sure!” 

A salute super silly in its super seriousness later, and Izzy followed her instructions flawlessly. 

Yet still, Sunny was unsure the distance between them was enough.

“A little further!” 

Izzy repeated her salute and her backwards jumps, the latter in particular bringing Pipp much chagrin. 

Sunny however, remained unsure STILL. 

“Just a LITTTLLLEEE further! Like, three more decent jumps, and we should be good to go!” Sunny blinked quickly in sudden realization, and just as quickly added, “Oh! And while you’re at it, could you please bring Zipp and Hitch with you, please!? I almost forgot about them! Sorry!” 

The purple pegasus was not the only pony super annoyed this time, the unicorn tilting her head skywards and grumbling in concert, yet ultimately carrying the white pegasus and the sheriff over to her in the blue glow of her magic, jumping back thrice more with the two unconscious ponies of their quintet telekinetically following in tow, placing them with utmost care on the floor, and yelling out, “There! Now quit stalling and show that big metal meenie what you can really do and your super special awesomeness already!” 

“Gotcha, Iz!” Sunny waved and then stared back at the watch and the icon upon it, which in that moment, she thought seemed to stare back at her. With a determined–and admittedly a little crazy–grin, she said to herself, “And oh, how I intend to.” 

Indeed. 

If whoever stood behind the drones and the giant robot wished for the watch so much, she would let them have it. Just not in the manner they foresaw.   

Sans any further consonant, vowel, or delay–important or no–Sunny Starscout then slammed her right hoof against the faceplate of the mysterious watch on her wrist and its tower, both collapsing back into said device.

In a flash of light emerald light, again, her person was enveloped and she was rendered visionless momentarily once more. When it faded, Sunny Starscout–as her friends and she herself knew her anyways–had disappeared once more. 

Humongous height. 

Tail as long as she was tall.

Wings that when unfurled spanned easily double such length. 

Four lizard-like legs, the forelegs so dexterous they were more akin to an arm-leg amalgam. 

Colossal claws at the end of each reptilian toe. 

Titanic teeth reflecting an astonishing marble as she scowled. 

Apricot scales instead of fur. 

Magenta and purple spikes with rainbow streaks on top atop her head in place of her mane. 

Emerald green, saurian eyes where her much warmer, equine ones had just been.

A boiling inferno seemingly about to race forth with every breath she took. 

A dragon.

A true, real, bona fide dragon. 

That was what the watch’d transformed her into this time. 

An individual of a race not graced by the light of equestria’s moon in ages. 

An individual that immediately upon confirming her current state, leapt from the hill with all her mighty legs and single flap of her formidable wings followed by many more such movements of said wings in rapid succession, propelling herself forwards then downwards towards the giant robot, which’d just then cleared the treeline. 

The impact was… not all that she expected.

Oh, the noise was cacophonous and the two of them did go sailing through tree upon tree upon tree, yet despite the vastness of the collateral damage caused, the automaton didn’t seem all too affected. In fact, when their momentum slowed to nil after touching down onto the ground and digging a very, very long trench within, Sunny honestly felt she’d hurt herself more than the giant robot. It didn’t help that she’d decided to mimic many superheroes from many different forms of media she’d read, watched, and played over the years and flew fists first into the machine’s chest–literally the place where it was probably the most well armored. 

“WOOOW THAT’S PAINFUL!” she thought to herself as she jumped back onto her back into the trench upon arriving at a complete stop, shaking her hands and wincing and gnashing her teeth to attempt and remove the agony she felt. 

She was only mildly successful.

What helped her much more, as it turned out, was the giant robot returning to its pointy feet, leaping hundreds of feet into the air, and plummeting like–fittingly enough–a meteor towards her. 

Fear instant as that tended to overshadow other emotional burdens. For a while, anyways. 

“EEEP!” Sunny bellowed in her booming dragon voice much louder than she intended, unaccustomed to speaking with such stentorian intonation as she was. 

Celeritously, she rolled to the side, escaping not a moment too soon before the automaton’s most unsoft landing. Her wrath reascending to its status as her dominant mental state, Sunny hesitated not in her retaliation, a prodigious tail whip knocking it away from its footing and onto the forest floor on its back. Though the aforementioned tail didn’t hurt that much less than her hands, the extra scales and bulk did reduce it enough that she was in sufficient condition well enough to follow through by leaping speedily via her back feet and diving at the monumental machine with her claws pointed towards its head–specifically it's visual sensor. 

A superb plan, she surmised. After all, the structurally weakest component of any robot was always the sensory gear, and of all portions of the automaton cracked by the powerful efforts of her friends, she’d noted during her opening attack that the visual sensors were the most so. 

This course of action, like to work as it would’ve, however, was intercepted from completion when Sunny was herself intercepted by both of the giant robot’s wrist lasers, the beams of a continuous intensity she failed to anticipate. Such energy was she struck in the stomach with that not only did her plummet halt–extremely painfully she might add–yet she was lifted into the night sky at an altitude far above what her and the automaton achieved during their recent leaps. So far above was she launched that she reached a thousand feet before the beams ceased being fired, and when all was said and done, her cartwheeling arc back to equis’ surface spanned a little more than a mile. 

By contrast, the ‘dirt angel’ she made was only five fold her own diameter upon her impact with the ground–and the tree that’d been standing over that ground for likely hundreds of years at the least before she slammed into it and turned it into small fragments of timber wood. 

The agony, though, eclipsed both by country miles upon country miles.  

Dragons of the Harmony Era were tough. 

Tough enough that they routinely swam through rivers and lakes of lava and magma as easily and even joyfully as Sunny swam through the calm waves at the beach, treating volcanic eruptions like oversized waterslides. 

Tough enough that they routinely ate rubies, emeralds, sapphires, quartzes, diamonds, opals, garnets, topazes, red beryls, and lots and LOTS of obsidian and other precious–and quite a few non-precious–stones with nothing except their bite force. 

Tough enough that even drakes–that is, young or child or even baby dragons–could accomplish such amazing feats of heat and kinetic and dental and tummy durability and jaw strength and were counted upon to do so as simply as a foal could run around having fun on a summer’s day. 

Yet, that hurt. 

Not so much the crash as what caused the crash, yet still, it hurt. 

The affected sector of her stomach, that she now clutched as she grit her tremendous teeth and huffed and puffed rapidly, had been hit so hard that the scales there were blackened by carbon scoring, bent concavely as opposed to their typically convex angle, and she thought she felt a profound bruise along the skin beneath. Double checking the veracity of the latter with her fingers, she winced as she definitely confirmed it was true when she pressed said digits a little too much, immediately pulling them back and screaming, “AHHH, AHHH, AHHH, OWWW, OWWW, OWWW, THAT IS NOT GOOD!”  

Indeed. Another collision like that with the automaton’s extended laser beams, and she was out. The figurative game ending before she’d even really begun. No three strikes required, no umpire to help her by saying that was against the rules. 

What was much worse, however, was the giant robot suddenly sprinting through the lane of trees in front of her, wrist lasers at the ready. 

“WHOA!”

She hadn’t the time to move out of the way. She hardly had the time even to think. Even her intuitive reaction to the threat was only a second of inaction apart from calamity. Yet, such a phenomenon did not befall her thankfully… for the moment at least. The totally titanic torrent of flame cascading forth from her mouth saw to that, and while it didn’t instantly stop the giant robot, it did slow it down, and more importantly, pushed its arms back just as its rubicund energy was about to fire, sparing her the trouble, though burdening the poor trees around the machine to being cut in twine as it eventually slid back on its back upon the ground before ceasing its blasting of energy since it couldn’t currently point them at its intended target. 

Not daring to cease her own blasting of energy of a sort, Sunny capitalized on this reversal of fortunes without haste. She took to the sky with a few flaps of her wings, still breathing fire on the giant robot and dived upon it for a claw strike again. This second time, the sharp fingernails impacted the mystery material of the visual sensor sans any delays, setbacks, or etc. 

A thundering… yet disappointing… clang ensued, supported by, of course, the noise of a large crater being formed–which she was sadly quite accustomed to by then. Much as she was with the aforementioned disappointment. Despite all the sound and fury of the event, is signified a mere magnification of the cracks Hitch and Pipp’d created, yet not a full collapse, and absolutely not her claws crashing right through as she’d pictured. 

Still, she reasoned, that just meant she had to try more and with a little more force. Once, twice, thrice, four fold, five fold, six fold, seven fold, eight fold, and nine fold time, Sunny threw her claws quickly against the visual sensor. She only used her arm strength and didn’t try leaping aloft to amplify her attacking power, true, yet if the manner in which the cracks deepened was any indication, she really didn’t need to. 

The issues rearose, though, when she realized she was losing control of her breathing, needing more and more air to maintain her attack on the sensor which obviously meant less and less air for fueling the fire projected at the automaton to keep it pinned. Thus, between the ninth hit and what would’ve been the tenth, the flames she sent had lost so much concussive energy, that the giant robot managed to bring one of its hands forward in a catching block of Sunny’s falling hand, brought it other to catch-block Sunny’s when she threw it at the sensor in response, and then, because the robot’s AI was evidently more concerned with efficiency than imaginativeness, of course, the automaton charged up its wrist lasers to shoot at her again, the devices tilting to take aim right at the spot on her belly where they’d fired before to make matters even worse. 

“OH NO YOU DONT!” 

Pulling with her arms, her legs stepping on the machine’s chest, and flying with her wings, Sunny launched herself and the giant robot into the aether just prior to the beams being emitted. She leaned backwards, tilted the machine upwards, and successfully removed herself from its grasp–kicking the automaton away with all her strength as it uncontrollably blasted its lasers continuously about everywhere except at the transformed mare. She then drew her tail back, flew up towards the twirling robot, and tail whipped it so strongly upon its head that said bot sailed off into the horizon at celeritous pace. 

“WOOOOHOOOO!” Sunny shouted triumphantly, hovering in place, fists extended victoriously towards the storm clouds, which in that moment, seemed to dissipate a substantial amount. “HOW’S IT FEEL FIGHTIN’ SOMEPONY YOU’RE OWN SIZE, ROBO-BADDIE!? YEAH! PROBABLY THINK TWICE ABOUT VEXING MY FRIENDS NEXT TIME, HUH!?” 

She prepared herself to give chase, yet halted at the last second, a word in the last sentence she’d spoken echoing through her mind. 

“Friends.” 

“FRIENDS.” 

“FRIENDS,” she said aloud. 

Silently gasping, she broke the sound barrier in a single push of her wings against the air and raced against the clock to stop or at least reduce her terrible mistake. 

“--and then Sunny turned into a giant dragon, and then she left so fast she mach cone indicating she was moving at supersonic speed, and then she made a whole new trail of destruction right over there when she hit the giant robot at supersonic speed, and then you demanded an explanation after the two of us were done looking on with awestruck looks on our faces, and then I explained everything, and then you told me to explain everything again except slower this time because I was talking too fast for you to understand, and then I did, and then I finished, and then you looked like your sister did right before she fainted, and now,” she took a deep breath for ten entire seconds, “We’re here.” 

Izzy Moonbow truly hoped her clarification of the facts was sufficient for her friend to understand. After all, in the unicorn’s experience, there were few things just as or more confusing than channel surfing, finding an episode of a new show that appeared interesting, yet tuning in during the middle of events, which was essentially what happened to Pipp. She also hoped that overburdening of data didn’t cause her a fitful slumber like her elder sister.

“I mean, the information I shared was a little crazy, but not THAT crazy!” she optimistically thought to herself. “Really, it’s got nothing on the big fight between Princess Twilight and Tirek the Terrible that destroyed Books and Branches. Now THAT was crazy!” 

Izzy smiled at the memory of when Sunny’d first recounted that account, yet frowned when she remembered both pegasus princess sisters were in dreamland for that.   

Thankfully, her smile returned when, upon a skyscraper sized sigh, Pipp fell backwards on her back, obscured her face with her forelegs, and said, determinedly, “When this is all over, I’m gonna need a hooficure the likes of which Equestria has not seen for ages.”  

Izzy chuckled at the purple pegasus’ melodramatic declaration, complete with ‘Woe is me!’ mane flip, and in that moment truly appreciated her drama queen credentials being given to her when she was only a filly. 

“Never fear, Pipp! If there’s one thing dragons way back when in the day were known for, it was for being the physical powerhouses they looked like and were basically as big as.” She tilted her head to the side, hoof pressed on the side of her head in reflection. “Also for being really big meanies before the Elements of Harmony and their friends managed to prove to enough of them that being much nicer was much nicer, but mostly that first thing I said!” she finished, all smiles again.  

“What? Does your friendship sense, that you just got done telling me you didn’t listen to when me and Hitch were hitting the giant robot with everything we had and still couldn’t stop it, tell you that Sunny’s having a much easier job?” Pipp asked with sarcasm enough that, if it were water, would fill all the numerous craters formed that night and then some, her upper form tilting up at ninety degrees to stare disbelievingly at the unicorn. 

Izzy shook her head. “No. The giant robot cartwheeling through the air towards us faster than sound moves through air at that altitude tells me that, silly.” She pointed a hoof at the horizon at the sight she’d just mentioned that she originally noticed out of the corner of her eyes. “See?” 

Pipp lifted a questioning brow, yet when she returned to standing on her hooves, and she saw what Izzy was talking about, her eyes widened. Despite her initial response to this unfortunate occurrence being quite cool, calm, and collected, Izzy’s eyes widened concurrently, the seriousness of the situation finally being understood. 

In further synchronicity, Izzy and Pipp both said a surprisingly level and typically volumed, “Huh. Well okie-dokie-lokie, then.” 

Then, once more at once, they both shrieked. 

“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO–!” 

 
Over and again, Sunny Starscout repeated that lone, simple word aloud as she flew in the direction she’d so foolishly sent the giant robot in thanks to her tail whip with utmost haste.

During this time, she also repeatedly said the lone, simple word, “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid–!” to herself in her mind. 

For indeed, what else could she say outwardly and inwardly? 

Sunny’d been so busy fearing the machine landing another hit with its lasers and getting away and making it go away and even simply enjoying the power of her present form combined with her eons of acquaintance with it and not being or feeling powerless whatsoever for once since the night’s strange turn against her that she never once paused to consider where the giant robot was sent, so long as it went. 

And now her friends, the very ponies she was trying to protect in the first place by propelling herself and the automaton away in her initial attack could very well be set to pay the price for her questionable fortune in finding the watch, anyhoof.

“Don’t think like that!” she thought, mental state finally changing gears if only a little. “Do not! No! I’m sure they’re fine! I’m sure they saw the bot in time and got out of the way and are perfectly–”

The sight of the giant robot frozen like a popsicle within a rotund block of ice rotating and floating about a few feet above the hill where she remembered her friends to be arrived into view. 

“SAFE AND SOUND?” she finished aloud, the immense confusion making her raise both eyebrows. 

Extra carefully, she hovered to a stop ten feet over and ten feet next to the most strange sight and landed with the gentleness of a droplet of water spilled from a quarter inch above the ground. She leaned down and looked below the unexpected ice sculpture to find none other than all four of her friends beneath. Three of them lay slumbering upon the ground, and of those three, one was snoring with such chilling force so celeritously that by such a boreal breath alone, she was holding the robot up and spinning and doubtlessly was also the reason it’d frozen in the first place. The other one, the fourth friend, stood awake, waving at Sunny as though nothing’d happened and everything was absolutely normal.  

“Hey Sunny!” Izzy greeted cheerfully. “What’s up?” 

The transformed mare’s eyebrows rose even further, joined by wide eyes in her overall jaw wide expression. She formed her hands into fists and massaged her eyes a little while before bringing them down again only to massage her eyes again when she still didn’t believe what she was seeing. 

“I’M SORRY, WHAT’D YOU SAY?” 

“I asked, ‘What’s up’?” Izzy then squinted and, holding out a hoof to shade her eyes while trying her best to keep her vision in Sunny’s general direction, added, “Though, now that I’m looking at them up so close, think you could pretty please close your muzzle or something so that your teeth are hidden again? Because they’re SOOOO shiny! Like, really, really, REALLY shiny! And reflective! I think I saw myself standing here smiling before I couldn’t google the stinging in my eyes anymore.” 

“OH. RIGHT. SORRY. MY MISTAKE.” Sunny coughed into a fist to steady her voice, trembling with puzzlement as it was, and was extra super careful to make sure her teeth couldn’t be seen as she spoke. “UHMMM… I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE NOTICED, IZ, BUT ‘WHAT’S UP’ IS THE GIANT ROBOT TWIRLING AROUND IN AN EVEN GIANTER ICECUBE. AS IN, IT’S RIGHT ABOVE YOU AND EVERYPONY ELSE.” 

“Gianter isn’t a word, silly!” Izzy said, giggling. “And I should know since I make new words all the time.” 

Sunny blinked. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then she shook her head. She sighed and closed her eyes, at the outset to let go of her annoyance at herself for not seeing the approach of a response like that, yet ultimately, over the immense ease she felt knowing that her friends were all okay and not suffering the consequences of her own mistake. 

Still, there was one rather obvious question aloft in the air that required resolving. 

So obvious, that when Sunny reopened her eyes, Izzy answered it, at least in part, by saying, “It was all thanks to my excellent quick thinking skills!” 

The transformed mare snickered. “YEAH. THAT MUCH I FIGURED.” When her vocalized humor stopped, she then asked, rhetorically, “FOUND A WAY TO GET PIPP TO GO TO DREAMLAND AND SNORE A LITERAL STORM, I TAKE IT?”

“E’yup!” Izzy suddenly appeared contemplative. “Though now that I think of it, it wasn’t actually ONLY my mental capacity for rapid adaptability that gets kudos! Without a particular book here, which somepony I know is the author of, Pipp and I would’ve had to probably jump off the hill with Zipp and Hitch!” 

“WHAT BOOK?” Sunny asked, brow raised.

“This one,” Izzy said, grabbing a hardbound tome more titanic than several school textbooks put together out of her mane and holding it up for the current dragon to see.  

The transformed mare squinted her eyes and read the title aloud. “The REAL History of Ancient Equestria, by Sunny Starscout. Forward by Argyle Shine and–”

Sunny Starscout felt tears begin to well up in her eyes and her voice crack like the automaton’s visual sensor.  

“No, no, no. Don’t go back there, Sunny. Stay sunny, Sunny. Stay sunny,” she swiftly said to herself in her mind. “Not here. Not now. Not in front of your friend when you just won against that mechanical monster and this awful, horrible, terrible night. It’s a happy, if really weird, time, so above all else, just please, stay sunny, Sunny! Please stay–” 

“Sunny?” Izzy said suddenly. “You’re... you’re… crying.” 

The transformed mare immediately wiped away her tears and hastily replied with, “UHHHH… YEAH. I’M… UHHHH… JUST… REALLY GLAD YOU ALL ARE ALRIGHT.” Even more hastily, and in an attempt to change the subject, she got back onto her two back feet, grabbed the frozen robot, and said, “Here, let me move this bot-sicle here out of–” 

The moment she placed it on the ground to her right and away from her friends, the automaton demonstrated that it was not in fact defeated by melting the ice around its arms via its wrist lasers, spinning the top half of its forms around its axis so swiftly thanks to the wrist lasers having weakened the ice so much that it broke away in a miniature hail storm, and knocking Sunny back and on her back in the process. 

“Sunny!” Sunny heard Izzy yell as she tried to stand up again with the help of her arms, legs, and wings and just before her efforts were shown to be for naught when the giant robot, true to its tactical pattern thus far, struck that spot on her stomach it had earlier with the awful results Sunny was trying to avoid. 

“AHHHHHHHHH!” the transformed mare yelled, the force from the two lasers striking her so strongly that yet another crater was being formed right there atop the hill. 

If there was anything in the brightside column about this sudden renewal of the battle between the bot and her, the first would have to be that without gravity on the automaton’s side, the pain, while immense, was not so that she couldn’t think of a way out. The second, which was thanks to the first, was that she was able to roll herself onto her hands and feet, the much denser and tougher scales of her back enduring the energy much better and subsequently less agonizingly for her.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to close the distance the way she needed for a proper counterattack, and even if she could stand up and sprint towards the machine, given how far it was it’d probably just evade her charge. 

So, since the giant robot hadn’t really changed its stratagem, she deemed she’d keep to the same gameplan too.    

The setup, however, required a little more this time. 

“Izzy!” Sunny yelled. “Force field over you and the others! Now! And it BETTER be all around you four!” 

“What? Why do you want–” 

“DON’T ARGUE! JUST DEFEND! NOW!”

The unicorn, confused as she sounded stuttering and sputtering at the outset of her response to the command, nevertheless acted fast and magicked the magical barrier into being that Sunny wanted. Or at least, she thought she had, as Izzy said, “Defense at the ready!” 

In any event, the transformed mare took her word for it, turning her head around and firing fire as much as she could at the automaton again.

Just like before, the giant robot was pushed back onto its back, yet Sunny stopped breathing so hard once this happened, not wanting to have the mechano menace slide back against the ground and break the shield Izzy had raised, struggling as she doubtlessly was to maintain it from even the edge of the cone of flame buffeting it.

Because propelling herself onwards upon her legs was out of the question since she had difficulties even standing up and keeping standing up, she used her wings to steady herself like two additional arms against the ground, and in a single pushup–ceasing her fire breath to breathe normally again to prepare for what happened next–she gained enough forwards and upwards momentum to crash onto the giant robot and tackle it further into the hill, tail slamming onto its legs, knees driving into its center, and hands grabbing its wrists as it tried to aim the lasers there at her again, all three serving to keep the robo-bug pinned and unable to retaliate properly as Sunny then open her jaws wide around the visual sensor on its head and bit down on it with all might musterable. 

Back during round one of their fight, Sunny didn’t want to use her teeth offensively even though she’d numerous chances to. She felt she’d plenty of other, better options available at the time and, considering how tough the giant robot was, greatly feared a repeat of what’d happened when she tried to bite the watch earlier, only now in her dragon form. 

Those concerns have evaporated by this point. 

Everything else, even what worked, was insufficient to win. 

She couldn’t think of another avenue of approach that didn’t extremely risk the automaton just blasting her with endless energy beams again. 

And, perhaps most importantly of all, Sunny Starscout was curious to see if her dragon teeth could succeed where her dragon claws could not in finally breaking the proverbial weakest link in the figurative chain comprising the mechanical monster. 

The sensor’s cracks widened further, that much was certain. 

Yet still, no matter how much pressure she applied, no matter how much she struggled as the automaton struggled to remove its head from her jaw’s grasp, the orange, crystalline material just would not fail fully. 

And despite letting go temporarily to bite it anew many, many, MANY more times, she only had weakening, not collapse, to show for it.  

Not just for the sensor, either. 

Slowly, Sunny’s grip on the giant robot’s arms lessened, her own arms tiring from the endeavor. Calamity almost impacted her as a result when the automaton acquired leverage enough with one that it was able to fire at her face, the beam striking her forehead, an eyelid she just clocked in time, her nose, her upper lip, and her teeth. 

“YEOWWWWWWW!” 

She recoiled back from the painful scare following this. So much so that she was nearly struck by the wrist laser again and the one on the machine’s other hand. 

Thankfully, just as they were about to converge on her visage, she regained control of her mind and refocused and reconcentrated her efforts solely on ensuring the robo-bug didn’t hit her by forcing its arms down with her own again, both emitters eventually stopping as once more it appeared they were without a clear or merely likely targeting solution.

“WOULD YOU MAYBE, KINDA, SORTA PLEEEAAASE STOP BEING SO ANNOYING FOR ONCE!? LIKE, JUST SOOOO ANNOYING!” 

Unfortunately, it effectively said no in as many, silent words, ever persistent in its attempts to overpower her and reclaim the initiative in the fight. While it was true that now that she didn’t have to allocate air and energy to trying to chew through the visual sensor that she honestly felt she could sustain this combat with the giant robot ad infinitum even with the damage she’d experienced, she recalled she had not that kind of time. That she was working against the clock here. Sunny suddenly tried so hard to remember how long it’d been since turning into a dragon and leaping off the hill that if it’d been possible to sweat in her draconic state, she would’ve. She finally realized that even her most charitable estimates gave her only about four minutes left before she was back to being her usual smoothie mare self and had to wait ten more minutes before transforming again.  

“Sunny! Sunny!” 

Fire breathing was a no go. With her fortune, the visual sensor even now would withstand the effulgent force and leave her without enough normal breath that the situation, less than ideal as it already was, could completely reverse for the worse for her. 

“Sunn! Yoo-hoo! Sunny!” 

Yet, besides that, she couldn’t think of anything. Anything whatsoever different and decisive enough to turn the tide of battle once and for all. Nope. Nothing worth the likely risk of the status quo going to the giant robot’s favor and–

“HEY SUNNY!” 

“WAHHH!” 

On her snout. Izzy Moonbow’d just appeared on her snout. Of course, Sunny reclined in shock, nearly forgetting to keep the pressure on the automaton prior to correcting this potential mistake before it was an actual mistake and pinning the robo-bug down with more might. 

Feeling safe and secure once more, or as much as she could in the scenario, Sunny’s wide eyes then turned towards the, relative to her current giganticness, little purple unicorn atop her scaly, reptilian nose, and asked the obvious. “IZ… IZZY? WHAT… WHAT’RE YOU DOING HERE!?” 

“Sorry! Didn’t know how else to get your attention speedily enough.” 

Sunny’s brows then furrowed furiously and she further asked, “AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING AFTER THE OTHERS LIKE I SAID!?” 

“Well, see, that’s the thing,” Izzy started, sounding about as intimidated by the transformed mare in front of the automaton below as a foal would be of animatronics of the two at a themepark. “I was, just like you told me, and then BOOM!” She clashed her hooves before her for emphasis. “The barrier my horn was holding up got busted into a BAJILLION pieces by a wandering laser beam!” 

Sunny gasped. “IS EVERYPONY–” 

“They’re fine!” the unicorn answered swiftly.

Sunny hardly had the time to breathe easy before her friend continued. 

“But if you can’t shut down this oversized abacus, none of us are gonna be! By my count, you’ve only got three minutes left before you’re just a normal, not that tough or strong, pony again! Two minutes and fifty-five seconds now! Two minutes fifty-three! Two minutes and fifty–”

“ALRIGHT ALREADY IZ! I GOT THE IDEA MYSELF, LIKE, HALF A MINUTE AGO! DO YOU GOT A NEW POINT OR–?” 

“Yes! I was getting to it!” Izzy pointed at Sunny’s mouth. “It’s your teeth! They’re the solution to all our problems right now! It’s been staring us in the face this whole time! Literally! For me anyways! Before I had to look away! Because they were so bright! Like I said earlier!” 

Now Sunny looked confused at the unicorn. “WHAT? WEREN’T YOU WATCHING? I ALREADY TRIED CHOMPING AND IT DIDN’T WORK!”

“No! Not chomping! Smiling! That’s how we defeat it! That’s how we win!” 

If she could’ve scratched her head with a hand or her tail, she would’ve. Such as things were, and since she couldn’t tilt her head for fear of her friend falling off, she simply raised a brow, asking, “I DON’T–HUH?”

“You wanna know why that laser went my way in the first place?” 

Sunny nodded… uncertainly and cautiously, Izzy as still as a doll despite the movement. 

“Because your teeth!” She pointed towards her mouth again. “When the giant robot was trying to break your hold and blasting at your face, it hit your teeth and deflected off towards me before you brought its hand back down and it stopped!” 

The transformed mare’s incredible incredulity expressed on her mien at this, were it electricity, could’ve powered every city ever in existence in ponydom, and several in griffondom, and then some ten times over.

Izzy grumbled at Sunny’s disbelieving look and, pointing to her right, asked in rhetorical fashion, “If I’m wrong, then explain that extensive, several feet deep trench running on the ground right next to our friends.” 

Sunny’s eyes followed to where the unicorn pointed, finding Zipp, Hitch, and Pipp still lying unconscious on the hill with the very trench she’d just mentioned spanning a great length beside them like she’d said, indeed.  

“HUH.” Eyes narrowing in thought, she replayed the memory of what Izzy spoke of in her mind, inquisitive moving her tongue over the division of her draconic dentition struck by the beam and noting that despite the pain still there, nothing so much as the most miniature chip could be felt. This fact, combined with her recalling how tunnel visioned–and tunnel hearinged–she was, had her conclude the same as Izzy, Sunny voicing her agreement via gasping the words, “YOU’RE RIGHT…” Then, much more triumphantly and over joyfully, she yelled, “OF COURSE! THE POWER OF REFRACTION! DRAGONS WERE KNOWN FOR HAVING TEETH SO SHINY, LIGHT AND LIGHT-LIKE ENERGY BOUNCED OFF LIKE THEY HIT A SPRINGBOARD WHILE FALLING DOWN ON A POGOSTICK!” 

“Which was why dragons would have one of their own replace broken mirror balls at parties when they couldn’t find any non-broken ones to use, remember?” Izzy added. 

“I SURE DO NOW!” Sunny replied, nodding. “I MEAN, HOW’D I EVEN FORGET SUCH AN AWESOME DRAGON FACT!?” 

“Probably ‘cause you were busy with other things,” Izzy said, shrugging. “It happen–ooooo! Butterfly!” she finished as a butterfly landed on her nose. 

Nodding some more, Sunny said, “ALRIGHT THEN, IZ: LEAP AWAY FROM MY SNOUT AND GET YOURSELF AND THE OTHERS TO A SAFE DISTANCE! OH! AND ENJOY THE LIGHT SHOW! NOW GO! THERE’S NO TIME TO LOSE!” 

“Hear ya loud and clear, Sunny! Your voice in this form kinda makes it hard not to!” Izzy said, sitting down, left hoof saluting, right hoof reaching into her mane to grab Hitch and Pipp’s sunglasses that she apparently had for some reason and placing them both on her face, one on her eyes, the other on her forehead. “Oh! And don’t forget Sunny,” in sing-song fashion, she finished with, “SMILE, SMILE, SMILE!” 

Without any further words, Izzy leapt from Sunny’s nose–the butterfly on the unicorn’s nose flying away–landed after a triple somersault back on the hill, and galloped away out of Sunny’s sight at her left towards Zipp, Hitch, and Pipp. 

Turning her attention back at the automaton, the transformed mare roared, “OKAY, ROBO-BUG: YOU WANNA PLAY LASER TAG!? THEN LET’S PLAY! JUST REMEMBER THAT WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND!” Slowly, ever slowly, so that she maintained control and the plan proceeded as, well, planned, she decreased the amount of force used against the automaton and angled its hands towards her scowling visage. Predictably, the machine couldn’t help exploiting the opportunity, the ruby-red glow of its wrist lasers powering up reaching her eyes and,far more importantly, striking her teeth as she grinned, causing them to sparkle. “LET’S SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT, YOU TECHNO-FREAK!” 

The wrist lasers completed their charging sequence and fired through the diminutive space separating them from the mien of the transformed mare. 

And, just as she’d expected, both beams bounced back the moment they contacted her teeth and collided with the visual sensor.

“CHEEESEEEE!” Sunny said as best she could through her smile. 

And, just like that, in less than ten seconds flat, it was all over. The laser beams broke through the glass-like material entirely in a wave of sparks and destroyed electronics, the wrist lasers stopped, and the giant robot’s head fell back upon the ground along with the rest of its form. 

With the largest of sighs, Sunny closed her eyes and her mouth, let go, and fell over backwards onto her own back, a titanic thud resounding throughout the hill, giving thanks to Faust for every fraction of a second she felt the serenity and accomplishment that then hugged her physical and metaphysical self. 

For finally, her task was finished. 

And, as it turned out, so too was the night. 

She reopened her eyes and looked over to her right, the brightness and warmth her oculi sensed being confirmed upon witnessing the very sun that’d once been lifted up every morning by Princess Twilight, Princess Celestia before her, and the most fortunate unicorns in all the land before her, rising over the dark storm clouds of the eventide before, and bringing with it the promise of a whole, new day.  

“Glorious,” she thought, tiredly. “Simply… glorious.” 

Like what’d happened prior, the hourglass symbol of black and white at the base of her neck glew red in perfect synchrony with ten rather rapid and a little loud beeps. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Once again, a flash of emerald light radiated from said hourglass symbol, rendering Sunny back into the friendly, neighborhood smoothie mare she truly was, even if now she had an immovable, mysterious, magic, ultra super powerful alien watch adamantly set on her wrist. 

“That’s still gonna take some getting used to,” she said to herself in her mind, tilting her head slightly to her left to look at the device there that’d literally fell out of nowhere. “Still, I got all the time in the world to figure out this little puzzle here. Me–” She smiled again, like she had when she’d experienced her childhood dream of being a dragon at the sound of approaching hoofsteps, and looked up to find Izzy trotting over Sunny’s other–and still unconscious–friends following and floating above the ground in the glowing grip of her magic. “And the best friends a pony could ask for.” 

As Izzy stopped before her, speaking a mile a minute she was in such amazements and joyousness, hopping around her and telling her how awesome her achievement was–Zipp, Hitch, and Pipp slowly groaning awake between the rays of the early morning and Izzy having them hover up and down as they trailed her as she went up and down–Sunny happiness blasted off into outer space. So tremendous was it, that to not sing the song that then reentered her thoughts would’ve made her feel as sad as she had when she was wandering the woods upon awakening and leaving the cave the night before. 

“Oh Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,

Please shine down on me!” 

Sunny Starscout was not simply just okay in that moment. 

Sunny Starscout, was okie-dokie-lokie.