My Little Pony: Harmony and Chaos

by AlphaToothless95

Life in the big city

“You can run.” The familiar voice sounded out as Sunny continued to run to who knows where. “You can hide.” The voice continues until Sunny stops right in front of a cliff, just narrowly avoiding sliding off. Sunny turns to face the direction she was running from only to see nothing.

“But I’ll be right here on every side.” The voice says before Sunny is suddenly yanked backwards by her mane and dangled off the cliff by Midnight. “So long as you’re alive, I will be too! You can never truly get rid of me. In fact, by killing me, you just made yourself more susceptible to becoming me!” Midnight says before punching Sunny down into the abyss below them. Sunny screams the whole way down until she crashes through the roof of a cave and lands painfully, tumbling straight into a wall. Sunny groans in pain and slowly gets up, looking around and realizing that she’s in some sort of… temple? What was strange was that there were statues of Alicorns in each corner of the temple.

Before she can think too much about it, Midnight bursts through the roof of the temple and lands so hard she causes it to shake and makes dust fly everywhere. Sunny covers her face with her arms until it stops and she looks to see Midnight slowly standing up straight and facing her. Sunny stands up too as Midnight starts walking towards her.

“Haven’t been here in a while. Such good memories. Slaughtering the council of alicorns, taking this place for myself, planning invasions and whatnot. Hm… maybe when I take over your body, I’ll try to find this place again.” Midnight says and Sunny shudders at the thought of Midnight taking control of her body and using it for whatever evil deeds she had planned which, knowing her, involved a lot of killing and destruction. “It would be nice to have a do over by slaughtering the new Alicorns of your generation.”

“No… I won’t let you!” Sunny screams, trying to believe it herself but she was quickly losing all confidence in herself and her abilities at this point. She wasn’t in any mental shape to face Midnight again and her magic was unpredictable now, she couldn’t even use it in her dreams. For all she knows, her magic is what’s causing her to have these dreams in the first place.

“Oh Sunny… you can’t stop me. You never could. That’s not your destiny. Your destiny is to become just like me… or worse than I ever was.” Midnight says before suddenly going to grab Sunny by the throat; however, Sunny moves just in time, rolling out of the way and starting to run away. She doesn’t get far though as Midnight blasts a hole through her leg, causing her to fall and scream in pain, holding her leg with both hands. That felt so real… was this even a dream?!

She turns onto her back and glares at Midnight as she glares down at her. She grabs Sunny’s mane and uses it to hold her up, making her shout in pain, trying to free herself. “I’m giving you a chance to make this way less painful for you and your friends. Normally I’m not so generous, but you’ve managed to earn my respect by doing what the others were too weak to do. I’ll let you think about it some more but until then, tread carefully 'Princess.'” Midnight says before she forms a magical blade and stabs Sunny with it, the intense burn from the magic causing her to let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain before she suddenly jumps awake, looking around frantically and breathing heavily.

She checks the spot where Midnight stabbed her and sighs in relief when she finds nothing. She checks her leg as well and realizes that it really was just a dream… so why did it feel so real? “Morning sleepyhead!” Izzy shouts, causing Sunny to scream in surprise and fear. She realizes it’s just Izzy but her relief suddenly… turns into anger and annoyance.

“Don’t do that! What the hell's wrong with you Izzy?!” Sunny shouts, causing Izzy to recoil like she had been physically struck. It’s only when she starts seeing tears in her eyes that Sunny realizes what she just did. She covers her face and looks down in shock and shame. “Oh gods… I’m so sorry Izzy, I-I didn’t mean to snap at you. Sorry, I just… I had another nightmare. I think it really messed with my head this time.” She explains and Izzy gives a faint smile but Sunny could tell she was still hurt.

“It’s… It’s fine. I get it. I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that… I’ll leave you alone and let you get dressed.” Izzy says before she starts walking off and Sunny instantly gets up and goes after her.

“Izzy wait!” She shouts, wrapping her arms around her stomach and keeping her there. “Please… I’m so sorry. I… I don’t want you to leave… I’m actually not ready to be by myself right now so… stay with me. Please.” Sunny pleads and Izzy sighs before looking at her with a smile.

“Ok… I’m here.” She says and Sunny smiles back as Izzy turns to face her. “And you don’t have anything to apologize for Sunny-bun. You’re going through a lot, ya know. I’m sure if I had an evil alicorn constantly bothering me in my sleep everyday for years, I’d be cranky about it too. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you and I always will.” Izzy says, leaning her head against Sunny’s as best she can. Sunny smiles loving at her as she grabs both of Izzy's hands.

“I love you too… and I always will.” She says before kissing Izzy, causing her to do the same in response. This goes on for a full minute until Izzy pulls away and chuckles a bit.

“Ok ok, hold on there. It’d probably be best for you to get dressed before we end up keeping the others waiting.” Izzy says, winking at Sunny who blushes and looks at herself, just now remembering she was still in her sleepwear. She giggles sheepishly and rubs the back of her head.

“You’re… probably right. Wait.” She looks around and seems to just now realize they’re on a train and she remembers what was happening today, causing her to go wide-eyed before squealing, literally squealing, in excitement as she rushes to get her clothes on, accidentally putting her pants and shirt on backwards before Izzy laughs and decides to help her. As soon as they’re done, Izzy says she’ll wait outside while Sunny finishes up. Once she’s gone, Sunny puts on her shoes and grabs her jacket and is about to depart until she realizes something she had just seen in the corner of her eye. She looks at the window again and sure enough, her reflection wasn’t her own… it was her dark self.

“What…? No.” Sunny says before rubbing her eyes to make sure she was still awake. Once she does, her reflection is back to normal which confuses her but calms her down a bit. “That was weird…” She says before walking off to join her friends in another train car. She sees Twilight and her friends too and everyone greets her before they all look outside the windows and see a city in the distance. Not just any city, their destination, the new city of alicorns. Everyone looks amazed at how beautiful it was from there and they couldn’t even begin to imagine how beautiful it would look while walking through it.

“It sure is beautiful, isn’t it?” Twilight asks, chuckling at everyone’s reaction to the sight of the newly built “kingdom of alicorns.”

“Understatement of the century.” Zipp says and her sister quickly agrees along with everyone else.

“It is gorgeous~. One question though. Do you think they would mind if I just took a few pictures, or maybe livestream for a bit as soon as we got there?” Pipp asks, gaining a chuckle and eyeroll from her sister. “Whaaat? Sis, you really expected me to experience this for myself and not share it with my Pippsqueaks? It’s like you don’t know me at all.” Pipp says and Zipp gives a short “That’s fair” kinda look before Twilight answers Pipp's question.

“Well I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you taking pictures, but a livestream might be a different story. I don’t know if they’re ready for everyone to see what they’ve built yet. Sorry if that’s a let down, but you understand, right?” Twilight asks and Pipp sighs but nods, gaining a smile from Twilight.

“Wait, when was all this built.” Zipp asks while looking at the city, curious as to why it seems like it hasn’t been opened or revealed to the public yet.

“According to Twilight, they officially finished it a year ago but they started building it soon after Midnight’s defeat. They wanted their own place to call home, one that could sustain all of them and pay tribute to Alicorns of the past.” Solaris explains and Twilight nods.

“These guys can be kinda skittish about who they want showing up. It depends on how much they trust you.” Rainbow Dash says but this causes something… unexpected. Sunny and Solaris look at each other and frown and Dash immediately realizes why. “Oh no no no, it’s not like that. If they didn’t trust you two, they wouldn’t have invited us and told us to bring you if we wanted.” She says and they both stop frowning but she could tell that the guilt for what they had done in the past still lingered… and it probably would for the rest of their lives.

“Hey come on ponies, turn those frowns upside down! You’re here now and besides having fun while you are, that’s all that matters.” Pinkie says, earning a smile from everyone and nods from Sunny and Solaris.

“You know what? You’re right. Whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter now… we need to be in the moment… besides, we’ve got promises to keep.” Sunny says, placing a hand on Solaris’s shoulder who smiles up at her and agrees. She was right, it’s time to stop thinking so much about the past and what could’ve been done differently and start looking towards the future, being in the moment and right now, they were just mere moments from walking through the biggest city they’ve ever seen.

---

City of Alicorns/New Skyros

They hadn’t known quite what to expect but the reality was way better than they thought it would be. Of course there were Alicorns everywhere but there were also buildings with a similar color palette to Zephyr Heights but a striking resemblance to Canterlot. There were giant statues of Alicorns from the past or at least they assumed. There were crystals lining each pathway through the city, fountains, parks, an arena just outside the city, most likely for training and there was a giant tower in the middle of the city, where the new “council of alicorns” usually resided. This was where the most powerful and influential alicorns in the city came to talk, plan, organize, all kinds of things.

As they walked through the city, they were completely mindblown by everything. This was incredible. Everything was incredible, especially the fact that the Alicorns made all this by themselves. After about ten minutes of walking through the city, a few of the local alicorns saw them and recognized them immediately, especially Sunny. “Oh my gods, guys it’s her!” One says excitedly before a bunch of them fly to them and soon, they’re surrounded by excited Alicorns that really wanna get to know each of them.

Sunny starts getting overwhelmed by all of this, not being used to this much attention still and also not being in the right mindset or mood for this but before she can say or do anything, a familiar voice cuts through the crowd and gets them to back up. “Ok everyone step back! Give everyone’s favorite heroes some room to breathe around here.” The voice says and when everyone backs up, Sunny looks to see Brightburn standing there with two other alicorns. One was dark blue with a blue mane and the other was a pale yellow with a dark pink mane and a horn that constantly glowed.

“Brightburn! It’s good to see you.” Sunny days and Brightburn chuckles and walks closer to her with the other two Alicorns.

“Good to see you too. All of you. It’s been a while.” Brightburn says before getting pulled into a hug by Sunny, causing her to chuckle and hug back. She was just thankful this wasn’t one of those hugs where Sunny used more strength than necessary. She definitely didn’t want a repeat of last time when she had made Sunny so happy that the girl nearly crushed her lungs, her ribs, her spine, and nearly popped her head off with a hug and probably would’ve if she hadn’t teleported out of it. A good but painful memory if she said so herself. Once they break the hug, Brightburn backs up and takes a moment to really get a good look at everyone. There’s a few slight changes, but not many. Some she could sense, some she could see.

Afterwards, she backs up and introduces the two Alicorns she was with. “I’d like you to officially meet Solar Flare and Lunar Frost.” She says, both Alicorns nodding when their names are said. Sunny then remembers the last time she had heard those names and she perks up a bit.

“Wait, I know you two. You’re the alicorns who saved Askari when she was attacked by Magma all those years ago. Aren’t you? Then after that, you were doing quite a number on Midnight's army for a while.” Sunny asks and they both nod and bow to her, causing her to get a little nervous.

“It’s an honor to finally meet the Princess of Unity herself.” Solar Flare says and Lunar Frost agrees.

“It’s surprising that we’ve never spoken in person, but we’re flattered that you’ve heard something about us.” She says and Sunny smiles and nods, telling them to keep up the great work and they both smile, despite trying to hide their excitement, and nod. They then start helping Brightburn give them a tour through the city before they walk to the tower in the middle of the city and enter, walking into an elevator and going all the way to the top floor. The view is absolutely stunning, especially with how the sunlight reflects off the buildings, the ground, the water, everything.

“This is… unbelievable.” Sunny says, much to everyone’s agreement as Pipp snaps a few photos of the view. Brightburn chuckles, slightly shaking her head as she continues giving the tour.

“You can thank Artemis and Thunderbird for helping us set all this up. Those two have been a real help. Speaking of which, you’re probably wondering why I stopped really working with and traveling the world with them, huh?” She asks, earning a nod from Sunny. “It’s… a long story but to keep it short. I saw that this place needed a leader to hold everything together… or at least a few, just to be safe. Since I didn’t do much during the real fight against Midnight, I decided to step up and help out here.” She says and Sunny smiles and nods, understanding perfectly well.

“As long as you’re helping ponies, it doesn’t matter how you do it. Every bit helps.” Sunny says and Brightburn smiles and nods in agreement.

“Speaking of which, what’s been going on with you? I heard about Canterlogic. How are you handling it?” Brightburn asks and Sunny and the others look hesitant, causing her to frown a bit. “That bad, huh?”

“We’ve been getting… sidetracked. To say the least. We made a new friend, someone from Twilight and her friend’s past showed up and we had to save them and tell the others that she was back and on the way, we got attacked by a Pegasus and a Unicorn which caused a bridge to collapse. Then another unicorn showed up, the same one who attacked Canterlogic, along with a huge Earth Pony. And I mean huge.” Izzy says, holding up her arms and spreading them wide to emphasize her point.

“It was weird, she had a physique that could probably put even an alicorn to shame, she had enough strength to stop a punch from Sunny and enough durability to survive a… almost full strength one?” Hitch says with a confused tone to that last part. He still didn’t know much about alicorn strength or how much his friend had so his description wasn’t going to be fully accurate.

“Sunny even went totally berserk on her and she wasn’t even fazed. Oh, and she broke her shield when she was trying to protect Izzy.” Pipp says and Sunny sighs, getting nervous because of how much her friends were revealing.

“The weird part was… it was like they had some of Midnight’s magic and were utilizing it into their weapons and their abilities. And it seemed like they had been watching us for a while.” Zipp explains, and that last part makes Brightburn nervous. Twilight notices and steps forward a bit.

“Don’t worry, if they were watching us right now, they would have struck already. Everything’s going to be fine.” Twilight says and after noticing Brightburn starting to calm down she then looks between her and Sunny. “I do need to talk to you about a few things, but first, do you have any other shields Sunny can use as a substitute for her old one?” She asks and Brightburn smiles a bit and nods before leading them to the weapons testing area and Brightburn walks to some sort of small device sitting on a table and picks it up. She holds it sideways and suddenly the thing in the middle of it turns and expands, multiple plates forming together to make a shield.

“Whoa… a collapsible shield?” Sunny asks, her eyes full of excitement. Brightburn chuckles a bit and nods.

“Yep, one that can absorb kinetic energy from attacks and turn it into magic that you can send right back, all better than your old shield did. Now you don’t have to carry a shield on your back the whole time whenever you head into battle and you can have it with you at all times.” She says, giving it to Sunny and showing her how to attach it. “It’s also pretty durable so it can tank just about any powerful attack thrown at it.”

Once she steps back, Sunny gives a small flick of her arm and the shield forms, glowing a golden orange color, showing that it’s adapted to Sunny's magic now. Sunny smiles and looks amazed and suddenly a few rainbow colors shine around it at the same time as her Alicorn form comes out on accident before completely engulfing the shield and when it stops, the shield is orange and purple with a gold star in the middle of it. Everyone looks amazed at this, including Brightburn.

“Whoa…” Everyone says in unison. Brightburn and Twilight both exchange looks to each other before turning their attention back to Sunny. Sunny just now notices that she turned into an alicorn on accident and looks around, confused. Just as she’s about to question it, Twilight speaks up as if she knew what she was wondering.

“I think your alicorn form was triggered by your emotions Sunny… Is this the first time that’s happened?” Twilight asks and Sunny thinks about it before answering.

“Actually… no. This has happened a few times but this is the first time it’s happened like this. And the shield… it transformed like when the jet Artemis and Thunderbird gave us was damaged and then all of a sudden, it was repaired and it looked different. Right before it was repaired, it started glowing a bunch of different colors just like what happened now.” Sunny explains, much to Twilight and Brightburn's surprise.

“New magic…? Well… newer magic.” Brightburn says to herself before she looks at Twilight then back at Sunny. “Tell you what, go with Solar Flare and Lunar Frost and they can help you test your shield and your new magic out for a bit. Twilight and I have important matters to discuss. Sunny looks between them and hesitantly nods before going to the two aforementioned alicorns and her friends follow. Twilight's friends follow soon after when Twilight tells them to go and supervise.

“Alright, what did you need to talk to me about that the others couldn’t hear?” Twilight asks and Brightburn sighs and teleports them outside before stomping one foot as it glows green and suddenly green mist forms on the ground in front of them before a plant grows in that spot. Twilight looks shocked, amazed, and horrified as she realizes this must be Earth Pony magic. “So that’s what you meant… Magic is evolving… and I had a feeling this would happen. When Opaline placed that spell that started messing up time and space, I knew there would be consequences even after me and my friends stopped it.”

“Twilight, it’s not just that. I’ve been sensing new magic in Sunny, both light… and dark. Even worse, the dark side seems to be getting stronger the longer it goes on. I need to know, has she been having nightmares, outbursts or fits of violence? Anything at all that seems out of the ordinary for her?” Brightburn asks and Twilight sighs and hesitates before looking Brightburn straight in the eyes.

“I’ll tell you on one condition. You cannot tell any of the other alicorns anything about this. Who knows what they’ll do or how they’ll react? I can’t put Sunny through that. She’s been through enough.” Twilight says and Brightburn hesitates but then nods and gives Twilight a reassuring smile, assuring her that this will be their secret. “Ok… Thank you Brightburn. Now… here’s everything that I know so far.” Twilight says before explaining everything that she had been told. Little do either of them know, they weren’t exactly alone as Opaline was using the mirror pool to watch and listen.

“So… there’s new magic… and not just in alicorns. Earth Ponies can grow plants. Hm… and Twilight doesn’t want the other alicorns to turn on Sunny due to her dark magic.” Opaline says, smirking as an idea comes to mind. “Too bad because that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” She continues before using her alicorn empathy to communicate with her minions.

“Get ready for a special trip everyone. You’re all going to the city of alicorns to cause chaos. Stormcutter, help make Ragnar a new hand that's more powerful than his previous gauntlet. Misty, you will continue pretending to be friends with those ponies after this but make sure they don’t figure out what you’re doing.” Opaline says before she sees Sparky in the mirror pool and she sees his dragon fire change a piece of equipment into a cake. She chuckles sinisterly as another idea presents itself.

“And Nightshade… come and meet me in the training area… there’s a spell I want you to perform while everyone else distracts the rest…” She says before stopping her Alicorn empathy and speaking out loud to herself. “They have no idea what they’re in for…”