Legends Never Die: The Beginning of Harmony

by bookhorse125

Ship in the Sky

After a very rushed operation where all of Sunny’s friends grabbed the little supplies they had picked up and said good-bye to Alphabittle, Haven, and Phyllis (Flurry had invited them to stay in the Crystal Empire for as long as they would like, and as the outside world was a bit hectic at the time, they agreed to lie low until it had all calmed down), the eight ponies and seven creatures stood on the deck of the zeppelin as it took off into the sky. Just like the day before, it was clear and breezy, with a hint of cold in the warm air.

Kailani stood at the back, watching the Crystal Mountains retreat behind them, an unsettled look on her face. She shivered and rubbed her arms. Everyone else gathered around in a circle, Sunny in the center with her map.

“We should reach Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow’s hideout in five days,” she estimated, tracing the most direct path with her hoof. “We shouldn’t experience anything bad there. But we should talk about strategy. Together, they could easily overpower us - they’re much more powerful than we are.”

“If we work together, they aren’t,” Ash interrupted, and Imara rolled her eyes without anyone noticing.

“The magic of friendship is stronger than anything,” Flurry agreed.

“Are we really basing our entire plan on all you ponies holding hooves and, what, singing a song?” Brooks interjected, looking skeptical. “I’d rather have a back-up plan. What are their weaknesses? Are any of them afraid of fire?” Flames danced around his eyes and horn.

“I don’t think so,” Imara scoffed, stepping forward. “Look, Chrysalis is a changeling - sort of, and I am, too. So I probably know something you guys don’t.”

There was silence as they all stared at her. Pipp eventually ventured, “Which is…?”

Imara blinked. “Oh! Um, perhaps she… hm.” She frowned. “Maybe she thinks the world should work a certain way, and it doesn’t, so she’s angry and keeps trying to take it over so that she can show every creature how they should act.”

“That was extremely detailed,” Sprout hissed to Hitch, who shrugged.

“That’s one idea,” Sunny told her, looking at her other friends. “What about Tirek and Cozy Glow? Wait…” She stopped, remembering when she was held prisoner by them. She had figured out a way to reverse the mind link, allowing her to enter their minds and see their memories and thoughts.

Tirek wanted to prove himself, but felt like he couldn’t, so he stole magic to make himself feel better. Cozy Glow wanted power to keep ponies safe and happy, and secretly wanted friends, but didn’t want to admit it.

Great, she thought to herself.

She knew the weaknesses of the worst enemies in Equestrian history. So what did she do about it?

“You can’t forget,” Izzy spoke up, “that they’re working with Permafrost and Sour Lavender - they’re ponies who tried to erase all of our memories and separate ponykind again,” she explained to the creatures with bewildered expressions. “We have to find a way to make them give up this philosophy that all tribes are meant to be separate.”

“All of these sound pretty impossible on their own,” Ash said, wrapping her arms around herself and looking nervous.

“Well, we’re not doing it alone,” Little Braveheart reminded them all. “We’re doing this together.”

“Together…” Sunny sighed and looked down at the floor. Deep inside her, she knew that there was only one way to really defeat these villains and make sure that they never came back - and it involved something she wasn’t sure she would be able to do. Worse, it was something her friends couldn’t help with.

She would have to face this on her own.

“Hey, you okay?”

Sunny’s head jerked up, but Ash wasn’t looking at her; she was speaking to the hippogriff at the railing. Kailani jumped as she was spoken to.

“I’m fine,” she quite obviously lied.

“You are most definitely not,” Hugo asserted, tying down the wheel and coming over to stand beside her. “Come on, you can trust us. Who are we going to tell, anyway? Just about everyone hates us right now,” he added teasingly.

“That’s just it.” Kailani turned to face the rest of them with a worried look on her face. “The world’s against us in every way possible. We’re on our own here - is anyone else worried about that?” She rubbed her arm, looking down at the deck. “Like, does anyone else wonder… if it’ll really be enough?”

Hearing the hippogriff voice all of their inner thoughts wasn’t comforting, and most of the creatures on the ship didn’t want to admit that they had been thinking the same thing - it would feel too awkward.

Zipp finally stepped forward. “I feel that way all the time,” she admitted.

“Me too,” Pipp added. “I just never said it out loud.”

“We’ll be fine,” Little Braveheart said brightly. “I mean, have you heard about what these guys have done?” She waved her hoof at the ponies around her. “Combine that with our raw awesomeness, and you’ve got a recipe for success. We stick together, no matter what. And we are so going to defeat these guys.” She stuck out her hoof in front of her, saying, “Who’s with me?”

Sunny, Izzy, and Ash immediately put their hooves/claws on top of Little Braveheart’s, joined soon by Brooks, Lukas, Hitch, Sprout, Kailani, Zipp, Pipp, Midnight, Flurry, and Imara. Even Hugo reached his claw over from where he stood behind the wheel.

The small moment was enough to give Sunny immeasurable hope. Even if she failed, her friends would be able to carry on without her - they would save Equestria if she couldn’t, she was sure of it.

Zipp finally spread her wings. “I’m going to scout out ahead,” she announced, but her sister stopped her.

“Uh, no you’re not! Trust me, you are in no condition to-”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, flapping her wings and rising into the air. She flinched a little and sank a tad, but one look at Pipp’s face made her brush it off like it wasn’t much.

“I’ll come, too,” Kailani decided, flapping her own lavender wings and joining the pale pegasus in the air. “I’ve just got - the strangest feeling.” She shrugged, and the two zoomed off, as if they had never been there. Sunny retreated to a quiet corner of the zeppelin and pulled out her Journal of Friendship and began reading. Hitch came over and sat beside her.

“Who wants to play charades?” Imara suggested, and Izzy quickly agreed. The two dragged the others into it, playing the game in the center of the deck.

“A rusty nail!” Little Braveheart guessed.

“Correct!” Izzy cried, picking up another slip of paper and reading it.

“Um, a street lamp!” Midnight guessed.

“Yup!”

“The plastic container that toothpicks come in!” Pipp said confidently.

“Yes! You guys are really good at this,” Izzy said as she dug in the basket for another paper while Hugo kept time on his watch.

“How?” Imara asked incredulously. “How are you guys getting that from… from that?”

“It’s Izzy,” Sprout whispered to her. “Best not to question it.”

---

“You said you had a strange feeling?”

Kailani hesitated. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I don’t know what it is, just this kind of chill that says something else is coming. We’re missing something important here, and I don’t know what it is. But there’s a kind of imbalance… I was feeling it when Sombra was in the Crystal Empire, and when he was defeated, I thought that would be that. But now it’s back… and it’s different.” She rubbed her arms. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“My mom had something like that,” Zipp told her as they flew through a cloud, goosebumps springing up on her skin. “Alphabittle told me about it - he said that, on the morning before they left, she said she felt like a scale had been tipped - a scale of good and evil, light and darkness.”

“So what do you think it means?”

Zipp shrugged. “I’m not sure.” She sped up suddenly, flying up towards the sun and flipping upside down before looping back to fall into formation besides the hippogriff.

Kailani gaped. “H-how did you do that?”

“Oh, that?” Zipp snickered. “Just a little trick I’ve been working on.”

“That was awesome!”

“That was nothing. Watch this.”

The pegasus poured on speed, flying in tight formation around clouds and diving through them, transitioning seamlessly into another flip, another twirl, another loop-de-loop. When she was finished, the immediate surrounding sky was clear of clouds, and Kailani just about forgot to flap.

“Woah,” she whispered hoarsely, awestruck. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

Zipp shrugged. “I mean… why not? We’ve got time, right? Okay, so, the first thing you want to do on those tight turns is fold in your wing like this…”

They worked on flying tricks for at least an hour, probably more judging by the sun’s position, but it barely felt like fifteen minutes to Kailani. The thrill and rush of soaring through the sky at such speeds was exhilarating, and she didn’t think she ever wanted to come down. She would never look at the sky the same way again.

“Oops.” Zipp looked back behind them. “I think we went a little far. We should be heading back.”

As they flew, Kailani asked, “Did you mean what you said back there? About… worrying if we would be enough? Or were you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Of course I did,” she said sincerely. “I worry about it all the time. Me and my friends started out as just a small group of ponies wanting to change the world - bring magic back, unite the tribes, that sort of thing. And as time went on… we kind of graduated to bigger crises. And every time we go to fight the bad guys and rain down magic-of-friendship-induced-justice on our enemies, I always wonder if we won’t be able to do it. Everypony has a breaking point, right? So I wonder when we’ll meet ours… and I wonder if this is it.”

“Wow,” Kailani whispered. “That’s… like, my thoughts exactly. It’s so weird to hear someone else say them.”

Zipp laughed. “Same. Say, what do you do back home? Your home, obviously - what’s it like back there? I haven’t seen anything outside of Zephyr Heights for my entire life until this point,” she added ruefully.

“I know, right? And then the world is so much bigger than you thought,” Kailani agreed. “Well, I mean, I’m not royalty or anything, but my dad is the captain of the royal guard, and he keeps trying to get me interested in that, but I’m not really, especially since I would have to make decisions about protecting the entire hippogriff population, which usually involves going underwater… and I hate having so much weight on me. I prefer the open skies… just me and the clouds and that bird over there.” She sighed contentedly.

“Can you believe I couldn’t fly until just a few months ago?”

“What? How did you survive?”

Zipp shrugged. “I lived through it, and even I’m not sure how I did it. What’s it like underwater? Can you, like, hold your breath really long?”

Kailani gave a sly smile. “Not really. I’m not supposed to tell non-hippogriffs, but this-” she held up her necklace “-is part of a magical pearl that can transform us into seaponies. When we came out from under the water, we wanted a way to travel between the two worlds, so we smashed the pearl into tiny pieces and gave each hippogriff one. I always prefered Mount Aris over Seaquestria, personally, but whenever there’s a crisis, we always retreat under the waves.” She let the charm thump back onto her chest with a sigh.

“At least you don’t have to make tough decisions like that,” Zipp said ruefully. “I get to be queen of Zephyr Heights one day, and believe me, my mother has made it very clear that I don’t get a choice in that situation.”

Kailani gasped. “Really? That is so cool! Tell me literally everything.”

They continued to talk for the rest of the flight back to the zeppelin, and Kailani felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders. Confiding in other creatures - making friends with them - made her feel like her world had been opened up even more.

Also, Zipp was a fantastic flight coach.

Author's Note:

Summer is just around the corner - can anypony else feel it? Excited or not excited?

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

Comments

[Yoshifan30]

“We should reach Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow’s hideout in five days,” she estimated, tracing the most direct path with her hoof.

But they might be long gone by now because they know that Sunny knows where the location is So staying there would be a bad idea for the villains

[Yoshifan30]

“You can’t forget,” Izzy spoke up, “that they’re working with Permafrost and Sour Lavender - they’re ponies who tried to erase all of our memories and separate ponykind again,” she explained to the creatures with bewildered expressions. “We have to find a way to make them give up this philosophy that all tribes are meant to be separate.”

Izzy's right because those two would do anything very dangerous if it means they will achieve that goal of separating all the tribes away from each other which I don't understand why there both stupid

[Yoshifan30]

“It’s Izzy,” Sprout whispered to her. “Best not to question it.”

Oh man that's going to be a new thing but then again she could be related to Pinkie Pie Maybe man I miss her

[Yoshifan30]

Also, Zipp was a fantastic flight coach.

Well yeah of course because she's been doing this for a while even if they lost their ability to fly just like in that episode tell your Tale

[Yoshifan30]

Well it looks like all the ponies and creatures went to the airshow and try to find the villains and need to figure out to deal with them but Sunny was still worried about the mind-link and she'll probably hurt her friends even Kailani is feeling worried about this whole situation like the whole world is against them they just need to figure out how to prove their innocence but it looks like Zipp wanted to Scouts ahead to see if there's anything going on and Kailani wants to go with her but it was really nice to see all the ponies and creature getting along with each other and even zipp and Kailani getting along as well and showing her how to do all those tricks and everything so it's nice to see that but still they had another threat coming not just only the legions of Doom but somebody who worse well I guess we'll find out next time

[StarzGecko]

So many stories to catch up of boy