Izzy never found Sunny until late that evening, because Sunny was busy filling in for Queen Haven, Phyllis Cloverleaf, and Alphabittle as best she could - with Pipp’s help, of course. Pipp announced an unscheduled concert that afternoon that she would launch a new song at, though, so she had taken most of the morning off to hastily finish something that she had been working on. There were a lot of questions about where Haven was, but Sunny was able to brush most of them off by saying that the queen was likely just busy, and assuring the askers that they would see her sometime during the festival.
Sunny just hoped that would be true.
But, all in all, the day went smoothly. Sunny didn’t have time to appreciate most of the festival because of her stressing over… well, everything, but everypony else seemed to be having a good time. Sunny was relieved that she could have dinner, maybe watch the light show projected on the side of the Zephyr Heights palace, and then go to bed and finally relax. Perhaps she would wake up and realize that this had all been a bad dream.
As the sun went down, however, Pipp flew up to Sunny and asked her if she was planning on filling in for Haven during the large banquet that evening as well. A feeling of dread settled over Sunny as she remembered how she was supposed to attend a dinner with some of the most influential ponies in Equestria - a dinner that all three missing ponies would be most certainly noticed at. Furthermore, Zipp was supposed to be there, too - and Sunny hadn’t seen her friends all day.
“Yes, of course!” she said cheerfully in response to Pipp’s question. “Can you handle all the stuff with the light show, and-”
Pipp nodded, her eyes stressed. It had been quite a day for all of them. Sunny leaned over and whispered into Pipp’s ear, “Meeting in my room tonight. We’ll find out what’s going on.” Pipp took a deep breath and nodded again, this time stronger, before she flew away to where the crowds were gathering on the dark side of the palace as the sun continued to sink.
Sunny sighed and pulled out her cell phone and dialed Zipp’s phone number. She didn’t pick up, but that wasn’t out of character for her. Sunny bet that Zipp was getting really close to cracking the case of where Haven and the other missing ponies were, and wasn’t paying attention to who was calling her. So Sunny dialed Hitch instead, and the sheriff immediately picked up.
“Sunny? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Sunny lied. “Hey, is Zipp with you?”
There was muffled dialogue in the background, and Hitch said, “Yeah. Why?”
“Can you tell her to please go to that dinner tonight? It starts in fifteen minutes, and we need to keep up the everything-is-normal facade. It’s in the Great Hall-”
“Yeah, she’ll be there,” Hitch said. “We’re working on something right now, but…”
“Meeting in my room later,” Sunny told him. “Tell us then. We’ll figure everything out.”
“Yeah… see you then.”
Sunny hung up and put her phone away just as Izzy came running up to her, holding Sparky and, for some reason, a whole bunch of scrolls, suspended by her magic. “Sunny!” Izzy gasped and panted. “I… need… to-”
“Not now, Izzy,” Sunny said, closing her eyes and concentrating. Her alicorn form shimmered to life around her, and she spread her wings, taking to the skies. “I’ve got to go to this fancy dinner tonight - I’ll meet you in my room in an hour and a half, okay? We’ll figure everything else out then, okay?”
“But this is-” Izzy watched as her friend flew away, glowing wings and horn seeming brighter in the coming night. She sighed. “-important.”
Sunny met Zipp in the hallway outside the doors that led to the Great Hall. The pegasus princess was disheveled and looked exhausted, but she was frantically trying to make herself look presentable before they entered the room.
“Who’s all in there?” she asked, jerking her head at the closed doors.
“Um, Elderflower from Bridlewood, a few earth ponies, but mostly pegasi,” Sunny said, opening the door a peek and looking inside. She took a deep breath. “Well. You ready?”
“Yeah,” Zipp said, her voice miserable.
Sunny pushed open the doors, and the two ponies walked inside.
There was a long table with six chairs on each side and two at each end. Five seats were empty and nine were full. All chatter stopped when Zipp and Sunny entered. The two of them trotted down the length of the table and took their seats next to each other near the end. Zipp glanced sideways at the larger, more ornate chair at the end of the table next to her and quickly looked away again. She took a deep breath and stood up. All eyes, some of them judging, some curious, were on her.
“Everypony, I would just like to thank you for coming tonight,” she said awkwardly. “I, um, I’d just like to say that… well, my mom - the queen,” she added with a touch of ferocity, as if she was still fighting against her own unexpected ascension to the throne, “has unexpectedly fallen ill. She has a, uh, a cold, and we thought it best for her to get some rest today.” She nodded as if to confirm this, and some of the muttering ceased. “So… I offered to fill in for her for… tonight. And however long this lasts.”
There was no more confusion after that; Sunny caught a few ponies looking around like they were looking for some ponies that were absent, but there was quiet and polite discussion and no mention of how Queen Haven, Alphabittle, and Phyllis were not present. Nopony talked much to Zipp or Sunny; they seemed to be thrown a little bit at Haven’s absence. An hour after they walked in, Sunny and Zipp both excused themselves for the night and left the room.
“Oh, thank the stars,” Zipp moaned once they were out. She tipped her head back and shut her eyes in bliss. “I have decided that I hate being queen, and that was just one dinner.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Sunny tried to say, but Zipp huffed, and she decided to drop the subject. “Okay, let’s go to my room and see if we can crack this case-”
She paused as she heard hooves behind her. Sunny stopped and turned around to see Zoom and Thunder marching in-time as they followed the two of them. Sunny glanced at Zipp’s expression; the pegasus had her eyes shut and her mouth pressed in a tight line. She shook her head and continued walking.
Hitch, Pipp, and Izzy were all waiting in Sunny’s room when she and Zipp pushed open the door and shut it behind them. Sunny could hear Zoom and Thunder taking positions outside the door, and she tried not to worry too much about it. They likely didn’t think that she and her friends were in danger, not really. It was just because of protocol, right?
“Where’s Misty?” Sunny asked, looking around and noticing that the unicorn was gone.
Izzy shrugged. She was still holding all those scrolls with her magic, but Sparky was scampering around on Sunny’s bed, messing with her pillows. “I haven’t seen her since this morning,” she said, frowning. “Haven’t any of you?”
“No,” Pipp said quietly, “but I doubt I would have noticed her if I was looking.” She was hanging her head listlessly and looked so tired and broken that Sunny felt a pang of guilt for some reason.
“It’s alright, sis,” Zipp tried to tell her. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“We did find something interesting,” Hitch said. “We found Cloudpuff locked away in a closet, and he told us - well, he told me - what happened.”
“It wasn’t anything very useful,” Zipp grumbled. “Hitch says that Cloudpuff said that he woke up at midnight and saw something dark slinking in the window. It passed right through the smallest slit between the window and the frame, and then he blacked out. When he woke up again, he was in the closet.”
There was silence as the other ponies digested this information. “So you think that was what happened to all three of them? What was that thing?” Pipp asked.
“We don’t know,” Zipp snapped frustratedly, beginning to pace. “We went to the restricted section of the library to see if we could find anything, but there’s nothing in there about mysterious shadow creatures that could kidnap ponies.”
“Mysterious shadow creatures,” Sunny whispered to herself, something clicking in her mind.
“And why would they kidnap them, anyway? What do they want with Mom and Alphabittle and Phyllis? What do they have in common?”
“They’re all parents?” Hitch suggested.
“Then why not every other parent in Equestria?”
“Maybe it’s a gradual thing,” Izzy supplied. “Maybe more ponies will be taken tonight.”
The thought was terrifying, and Sunny felt a wave of panic wash over her. If Haven, Phyllis, and Alphabittle were first, then who was next? They didn’t have any way of knowing. She looked around her, at all of her friends, and she thought, If my friends are here, then I don’t need to be afraid of anything.
“We should stay together,” she decided. “We shouldn’t leave each other alone. Everypony needs to pair up. I can’t help but feel that we’re stronger when we’re together.”
There were nods all around. Sunny took a deep breath and felt some of the tension ease out of her shoulders.
“Uh, Sunny?” Izzy shuffled her hooves nervously. “I really don’t want to ruin this… moment, but you’ve been getting letters all day.”
“Letters?” Sunny turned to her, certain that she had heard her wrong. Then Sparky caught all of their attention as he made a strangled sound before he coughed a curl of flame that transformed into a scroll before their eyes.
“I don’t know how!” Izzy wailed, levitating her scrolls over and dropping them on the floor in the center of the room. “Sparky was just coughing them up one after the other, and they’re - they’re from-” She rummaged in her mane and pulled one out that was already partially opened, its wax seal broken. Izzy passed it to Sunny, and she unrolled it all the way and looked at the signature at the bottom, and almost choked.
“It’s… it’s from…” Her voice seemed to fail her, and she looked more closely at the seal on the broken wax. The design was familiar to her, she recognized it, but she hadn’t seen it in so long - she had thought that… maybe… they weren’t sending them…
“Are they all…” Sunny gestured to the massive pile - there had to be at least two dozen, maybe more, not counting the one that Sparky just coughed up.
Izzy nodded.
“How…”
“I don’t know,” she repeated quietly.
“Okay, okay, who is it from?” Zipp demanded, taking the letter from Sunny and scanning it quickly. Her eyes widened and her hoof slackened, allowing Pipp to take it from her, read the signature at the bottom, and gasp, dropping it; Hitch retrieved it and made a strange sound like he was trying to scream without opening his mouth.
Sunny reached for the letter again, hope flooding her; after so many months of silence, so many night spent wondering, so many letters she thought went unanswered - here they were, here was proof that they were still her friends, and she wanted nothing more than to get the answers she had been asking about, but before she could read that first letter through, the door suddenly burst open.
Misty stood in the hallway, her green eyes fierce, her horn aglow as she held an unrolled scroll next to her. From the look on her face, Sunny could easily guess that she had read what the letter said, and she felt all the hope that had flooded her just moments ago drain away.
“Hey, ponies,” Misty said, narrowing her eyes at them as she moved the letter so that she could read it. “I don’t suppose any of you were going to tell me who Kailani is?”