Legends Never Die: The Search For Sunny

by bookhorse125

Lightning in the Storm

Zoom Zephyrwing anxiously paced in front of the door that led to Phyllis Cloverleaf’s office, her fellow guard standing by the opposite wall, immersed in his cell phone.

They’ve been in there for a while, Zoom thought, her panic growing. At least five minutes. Her queen’s instructions had been to wait outside the room while she had a private discussion with Alphabittle and Phyllis Cloverleaf, but it was taking all of Zoom’s self control not to go bursting in there, wings spread and shields at the ready, to rescue her queen from imminent danger that she could only begin to imagine. Despite the fact that all three pony tribes were on good terms with each other now, when it came to her queen, Zoom didn’t entirely trust her with anypony else - especially with the fact that the new enemies that Equestria was facing apparently had the ability to control ponies’ minds.

The very thought sent shivers through her wings as she thought of Sunny Starscout being mind controlled, if that was what really happened. The guard and the pony in Zoom were constantly fighting with things like these - her inner guard would say that Sunny had broken the law and was an enemy and a danger to Equestria, while her inner pony would insist that there had to be some kind of mistake - the Sunny she knew would never have done this.

If Zoom could find a way to somehow get rid of one or the other, leaving her with only one mindset, she would do it in a wingbeat. But, she would ask herself, if that were to happen, who would I give up? The ability to be a pony, to have friends and feelings and care for others? Or the ability to commit herself to protecting her queen and keeping her home safe?

Argh. Why did decisions have to be so hard?

Thunder looked up suddenly, his face alarmed.

“What?” she snapped. Her queen could be in danger right now, and she wasn’t there to protect her, and she would never forgive herself if something like that happened, but at the same time, if it had to come between that and-

Stop it. This is your purpose - this is your life. You can’t toss it all out the window like that.

“You were growling,” Thunder informed her, his expression now more concerned than alarmed now. “Are you okay?”

As if sympathy was what she needed right now. “I’m fine,” she said quickly, resuming her pacing as his gaze returned to whatever he was watching on that ridiculous phone of his. Now and then, she looked at the oak door as she passed it, wondering if she should press her ear to it or push it down or something like that. And with every tiny blip or bleep that came from Thunder’s phone, her patience wore thinner and thinner.

“What in Equestria are you doing?” she eventually demanded, whipping her head around to glare at him. He jumped, losing his grip on the device and almost sending it clattering to the ground.

“Nothing!” Thunder said as he scrambled for a hold on his cell phone. Zoom caught a glimpse of a pink pony with a purple mane adorned with a golden crown and bright hazel eyes, and her anger melted away at the sight of Princess Pipp.

“You’re watching Pipp’s old videos?” Zoom scoffed, tossing her head, pretending to not care. Caring about other ponies made her look weak and not at all like the kind of pony you would want protecting the queen of Zephyr Heights, so she tried to look like she didn’t whenever she was on duty.

“No! I mean, yes,” Thunder mumbled, turning off his phone and sliding it under his wing, a trick he had learned from the princess. “I just miss her, that's all.”

The worst part about it was, Zoom felt the exact same way. Her job was to protect the queen, but she also felt she was entitled to protect the princesses as well, and she had unintentionally grown quite fond of them over the years, in a way that she never felt about Queen Haven. When Haven was first arrested and a warrant put out for the arrest of the princesses, Zoom had felt like she had failed. She hadn’t known that the royals couldn’t fly, but she still felt like she was entitled to protect them, flying or no. Despite that, she listened to her inner guard’s advice, pretending like the queen had deserved her fate. How relieved she had been when the queen was given back her throne - now she didn’t have to fight herself to make her decisions.

And she had thought that had been that. Everything was fine again - her inner arguments were over smaller matters that didn’t carry half as much weight as that one. Then magic was in jeopardy, the royal family on the run again, but this time, Zoom chose to listen to her inner pony, choosing to stand with her queen. But that had ended with her memory getting wiped - that awful, awful feeling of not knowing who she was or what she was doing or if it was right.

So now that the princesses themselves were once again in jeopardy - and she had a sinking feeling that the queen was, too - who would she listen to? Would she betray the ponies she had been sworn to protect for the sake of the law - ponies she now realized that she truly cared for? Or would she risk losing herself to stay loyal to them?

The argument was giving her a headache, and she gritted her teeth, rubbing her temples under her helmet with her hoof. Then she noticed that Thunder was giving her a concerned look again, and she stood up straight, ignoring the jabs of blinding pain that were shooting through her head.

Stand tall. Stay loyal. Protect. Obey the law. Make the right decision. Make the best decision. Don’t let them see you as weak. Don’t be weak. Be strong.

Loyal. Protect.

Obey. Law.

Which to choose?

The door opened, and Phyllis Cloverleaf led the way out, followed by Her Majesty and Alphabittle. Zoom and Thunder stood at rigid attention as they exited. Zoom was thankful for a distraction, and another came from the other end of the hallway, as that nervous earth pony was back - Toots, she thought his name was - with the rest of the guards, all looking like they had perfectly pleasant voices in their heads that didn’t argue and fight and demand her attention that she had to pick from, and neither of the options were appealing.

“Thank you, Toots,” Phyllis Cloverleaf said. Zoom blinked - was it just her, or did the earth pony sound like she was about to cry? She cleared her throat and tried again. “You are excused.” Looking relieved to get away, Toots nodded to both Phyllis Cloverleaf and Queen Haven before he scurried out of there. Alphabittle looked thoroughly offended that he hadn’t acknowledged him, but Queen Haven put her hoof on his shoulder, giving him a reproachful yet teasing look that put Zoom immediately on guard. Was this a trick? A ruse planned by the unicorns to get in the pegasi’s inner circle, gaining their trust before they launched an attack where they stole their magic and took over their city?

Stop thinking like that, she commanded herself.

But still… all the same. Her eyes narrowed at Alphabittle, and the unicorn seemed blissfully unaware. I’m watching you, buddy. If you try so much as one thing with my queen… Then she realized that everypony was following Phyllis down the hall and scurried into formation beside Thunder.

“Where’re we going?” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

Thunder shrugged. “Something about magic and readings and scanners and fancy technology that I’ll never understand,” he whispered back.

Once again, they were led to the elevator, with Phyllis Cloverleaf, Alphabittle, and Queen Haven squishing in with Zoom and Thunder. Phyllis pressed a button, and they descended down past the first floor and into the basement. Once there, Phyllis remained in the elevator to bring the rest of the guards down, and Zoom had to give her props for doing it herself instead of waiting for somepony else to do it - or just letting them figure it out on their own.

Her commander had done that in training - gave them all shields, set them in front of a bunch of automated unicorn robots, and told them that they couldn’t go to lunch until they had blocked every last horn on those unicorns.

That had not gone well.

Zoom kept her eyes open as Phyllis led them through the factory to wherever they were going to see these fancy signals that Queen Haven had apparently taken an interest in. There were many things that looked harmless, but she wasn’t going to be taking any chances. Some of the ponies down here were quite surprised to see the group of pegasi and a unicorn with their boss - one even looked like it was about to faint.

Phyllis pushed open the door, and led Queen Haven and Alphabittle into a small room. Zoom hesitated before following, and apparently Phyllis had the same idea, because she said, “Maybe they should wait out there - it gets pretty crowded in here.”

The queen started to nod, but then she stopped, catching Zoom’s eye. The guard immediately assumed a straight posture and a blank expression. “Ms. Zephyrwing can join us. I trust her completely.”

Feeling a rush of pride, Zoom followed her queen into the room, resisting the urge to grin like a foal presented with ice cream. As it was, once Phyllis shut the door, she put her guard up.

The room was full of computers and instruments and a giant map of Equestria that, for some reason, had a red blinking light up in the northern mountains. Zoom narrowed her eyes at the map - she didn’t trust all this fancy technology as much as Thunder did - the only use she had for her cell phone was receiving messages from her commander about emergencies.

Also in the room was another earth pony, this one bubble gum pink and a darker pink mane in a pinned-up ponytail. She, too, wore a collar and tie like Toots, and the name on the tag said, in neat print, Sweets.

Toots and Sweets, Zoom thought to herself, resisting the urge to snort. It sounds so ridiculous.

“I heard that you detected something like this a few weeks ago,” Haven began, frowning at one of the bleeping computers. “Does this mean-”

Phyllis shook her head, having guessed what she was thinking. Zoom kept her face passive, but in her mind, she was trying to figure out what her queen was talking about. Then she remembered meeting a light pink alicorn by the elevator, one who appeared to be not exactly from this time. She was supposedly from up north…

Those were already there - we picked them up as soon as we turned this thing on. A bit alarming, wasn’t it, Sweets?” The other earth pony nodded empathetically. “And they were more of alerting us that there was a pony with powerful magic up there, and we think there was a very powerful spell cast - but if it was there, it disappeared before we could take a good look at it. And there’s always been a constant signal, some kind of magical artifact up there that’s probably very powerful. But this…” Phyllis Cloverleaf shook her head and gestured to the red squiggly lines on the screen. They looked jagged and seemed to form shapes that looked like crystals. “It seems different. A different kind of magic, or a different purpose for it. Perhaps something that is… less lovely than Flurry Heart.”

“So, there’s something dangerous up there?” Alphabittle demanded, his horn sparking. Zoom had noticed that unicorn horns tended to give off a little magical feedback when the unicorn in question’s emotions were running a little high. “What are we going to do about it?”

Haven sighed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have all the guards I can spare hunting Sunny and… the others down. I don’t think I’ll be able to contribute anything.”

Somewhere, deep down inside, Zoom wanted to raise her hoof and volunteer to go check it out by herself. She would take down whatever evil was brewing up there and prove to her queen that she was a good, loyal guard that she could count on and trust… and the rational side of her knew that would never happen like she was envisioning it.

Wait. These machines could detect magic - powerful magic, even magic from ponies. It could detect Flurry Heart, and she was a… what did they call it? An alicorn? Yes, that was it. A pony with both wings and a horn. Just like Sunny. So did that mean…

“Our best hope,” Haven was saying, “is that they’ll get our message and go investigate. Other than that, there’s not much we can do at the moment except pray.”

Phyllis nodded and pushed open the door, leading the way out, but Zoom hung back, eyeing the earth pony sitting in front of one of the computers. It suddenly began beeping more than usual, showing a new pattern of squiggly lines, these ones that were less jagged and sharp than the other ones, forming what looked like stars for brief moments before it disappeared again as Sweets pressed a button. She caught Zoom looking and said, “We’ve been getting that one occasionally, though I can’t pin-point its exact location, and it doesn’t seem to be much of a threat.”

“Uh, huh,” Zoom nodded, tilting her head at the earth pony. “Your machine… it can it detect ponies? Like, if they had a lot of magic?”

She nodded. “Of course, we tuned it to only sense a lot of magic, so that pony would have to be very powerful, but it’s possible, of course.” She beamed with pride and sat up straight. “Like I always say, ‘Magic is science that hasn’t been explained-’ ”

“Right, great, thanks,” Zoom said quickly, hurrying out of the room as she caught sight of the queen leaving. She closed the door behind her and hurried into her spot.

“Where were you?” Thunder muttered under his breath, but she didn’t answer.

Her inner guard and inner pony had gone silent, as if they had found a common ground. The reasoning behind it may vary depending on who she was listening to, but both sides of her could agree on at least one thing - Sunny Starscout must be found.

Author's Note:

Hopefully I'll have this story completed by today, tomorrow at the latest, and the next one the day after. Already have the cover art done! (Believe it or not, but one pony takes a lot less time to draw than seven ponies.)

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

Comments

[Yoshifan30]

Argh . Why did decisions have to be so hard?

Tell me about it 😒

[Yoshifan30]

So apparently Zoom is having conflicting feelings about this whole situation she wanted to find sunny and the others but at the same time she needs to stay with Queen Haven and protect her no matter what I'll give her that she is very loyal but Phyllis tell the others about the magical power source coming from the Crystal Empire and it was like a dark magic over there and I get the feeling that could be king Sombra or the king storm whichever they're both not good there are threats but anyway apparently Zoom is having some thoughts of going after sunny and the others again Brave but still who Could That Be in the Crystal Empire I guess we'll find out next time

[Phetiamwantip]

Your new chapter is amazing so far. Also, no worries, bookhorse125. We'll wait, and remember: Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.