Legends Never Die: Friendship is Magic

by bookhorse125

On the Outskirts

“What’s wrong?”

“What?” Pipp’s head jerked up, and she looked around to see who was talking to her. When she finally saw Zipp’s eyes on her, she shrugged and went back to staring at the floor. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I mean, except the fact that we’re about to march into battle again.”

“Pipp-”

“You know, after the whole Opaline and Allura and everything else that had happened, I thought we were kind of done with this sort of thing. I mean, doesn’t it just seem that every time we stop an evil villain’s revenge plot that another one pops up again? It’s getting kind of exhausting.”

“Pipp-”

“I mean, if I had a dollar - no, a dime! If I had a dime for every time some villain turned up for us to fight, then I’d have…” Pipp stopped, muttering to herself as she tried to count in her head.

Zipp sighed and mentally ran through the list in her head as well. Sprout, Permafrost, Candy Floss, Sour Lavender, Sombra…

“Twelve,” she said after a while. “Twelve dimes. Though if you count all the shadow wolves individually you might have twelve thousand.”

Pipp shrugged. “It feels like a lot more and yet not as many at the same time,” she said, her eyes vacant and her expression distant. “But I guess I was hoping that sometime in there we would get a break or something. A time when there aren’t any creatures out to get us or to destroy magic or disrupt harmony or whatever else they set out to do.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I miss being normal,” she confessed. “Not having everypony keep staring at me and expecting me to do something great. Not having to be the one they all look to when bad things happen and someone has to go fix it, and it’s got to be me because I did it last time.” She took a deep breath to keep from ranting. “But, anyway, here we are.”

“Pipp.” Zipp looked at her sister firmly. “You and I both know that you’re not really that bummed about not being normal. Yes, this craziness gets tiring after a while, and I want to go home, too. But what are you really thinking about?”

Pipp hesitated. “Nothing.”

“Pipp.”

“Fine!” she burst out, then looked around to see who was listening and lowered her voice. “You know how Imara’s aunt was trapped by the shadow wolves, and then she found her at Opaline’s lair, and she was almost herself again before the wolf took over?” Both sisters simultaneously glanced at Imara, who was sleeping in her hammock at the other end of the hold and the only other creature down there besides them. Zipp nodded. “Well… I was just thinking… that means that the ponies inside those wolves can fight back.”

“Maybe.” Zipp shrugged. “I remember that I tried to fight back a couple of times, but every time I did…” She shivered. “I couldn’t. It was easier to just give in. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“Me, too,” Pipp admitted. She scooted closer to her sister and leaned her head on her shoulder. For a moment they were silent in the comforts of each other’s company, and then Zipp broke the silence.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I was just… thinking,” Pipp said slowly, trying to find the right words. She sat up and looked right into Zipp’s eyes.

“Zipp… one of those wolves is Mom.”

Zipp looked down at her hooves. “I know,” she said. “But Sunny can free her. When this is all over, we’ll get Mom back, Pipp. I promise.”

Her younger sister sighed and leaned her head back against the wall of the ship, her eyes closed. “I know,” she whispered. “But I hate feeling so helpless. I want to go save her, get her back, and I want to do it now. But I can’t.” She shrugged. “We just have to trust in Sunny.”

“And Sunny has never let us down before,” Zipp reminded her, grabbing her hoof. “She probably doesn’t even need our help.”

“Guys!” Little Braveheart called as she poked her head down the staircase. Imara blinked her eyes open and sat up. “Sunny needs our help!”

---

“Look!” Little Braveheart cried, pointing into the distance, where the last golden sparks from what must have been a massive firework were slowly fizzling out and drifting down towards whatever lay beyond the clouds. “This giant explosion of golden light appeared a minute ago. It must have come from Sunny! She must need our help!”

“Unless maybe Skyros frequently sends up random fireworks,” Brooks muttered to himself.

“Or maybe it’s a call for help,” Midnight said, his hoof resting on the crystal pendant hanging around his neck, like he was trying to see what could be wrong. “Like an alarm system or something?”

“Something’s wrong,” Izzy said in a confident voice. “That we can all agree. But what?”

“Wolves,” Sprout suddenly spoke up. All eyes swung towards him, but he was staring off into the distance, his gaze distant. “I can sense them. They’re here.”

“He’s right,” Kailani added. “There’s something dark over there. Something evil.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Misty asked anxiously. “Why are we still standing here talking about it? Let’s go!”

“It could be a trap,” Comet mused beside her. “Grogar could have already invaded the city and captured all of our friends and sent up a fake distress signal to lure us into an ambush.”

“Not Sunny,” Hitch said, shaking his head. “Sunny would never get captured.”

“Hugo!” Imara suddenly yelled to the griffon. “Get this thing moving. Our friends need our help, and we’re not going to keep sitting here bickering like children while they fight on their own. It might be a trap, and it might not, but that doesn’t matter, because we’re going no matter what.” She glared around at all of them as if daring them to prove her wrong.

Hugo gave a hasty salute and scrambled back to the bridge. He flicked a few switches and turned a few dials and pulled a lever, and the zeppelin slowly pulled back and away from the cloudy bank where it had been sheltering. He spun the wheel, and the ship swung around the massive towering columns of clouds and into a bright, glowing light.

For a moment, the creatures were all blinded, and they blinked hard to regain their sight, trying to shade their eyes from the sun. But after a while, they realized that the sun wasn’t there, and that the bright, blinding light was coming from the very stones of the city itself. Skyros reminded Pipp somewhat painfully of Zephyr Heights, but the architecture was more ancient, consisting of pillars and columns and courtyards and domes and sweeping arches. Clouds banked around the floating city amongst the silver waterfalls that cascaded over the edges into the unknown, and just beyond the edges of their vision, the stars gleamed faintly and distantly.

It looked, in short, like paradise.

Except for the fact that all of the arched gates in the perimeter of the city wall were swarming with black shadow wolves as they poured in and began to roam the streets in search of unsuspecting victims.

“Get us in there!” Imara shouted to Hugo, her eyes alight with a fierce kind of fire. She steeled herself and prepared to throw herself off the side of the ship.

“Wait!” Ash cried, holding out an arm to stop her. “Shouldn’t we make a plan? Or figure out-”

“There’s Sunny!” Rainbow Dash called out. She was flying before the zeppelin as it went, and now she pointed out a glimmering golden light hovering over a swirling storm of shadows that grew angrier and more frenzied by the moment.

“Let’s go!” Imara shouted before leaping into the air, spinning around, and flinging herself down towards the city. As she free-fell towards a pack of wolves, she shifted form into a massive eagle, swooped down, and grabbed one of the shadow wolves in her gigantic claws. The wolf, caught by surprise, retained its solidified form, so that Imara was able to snatch it up and toss it in the air.

“Get us down there!” Brooks yelled at Hugo, flames and tongues of fire rolling off his horn and flickering in his mane and rising up from his hooves.

“No!” Lukas cried back. “If we land this ship the wolves could swarm it, and we could lose our only way out of here!” He looked back at Hugo, whose eyes were wide with terror and panic with everyone yelling different instructions at him. His claw twitched towards the brake so that they could stop and figure out what to do, but he also knew that they didn’t have any time to spare.

“What do we do?” Ash asked softly, gripping the railing with her claws as she looked down at Skyros.

“I have an idea,” Zipp said suddenly. She spread her wings and took off, hovering just a little bit above the others so that everyone could see her. “Hugo, do you see that building at the center of the city?” She pointed to the largest dome of all, and Hugo, after adjusting his glasses, nodded. “Make for that. Rainbow Dash, come with me, and we’ll meet you there.”

Rainbow Dash nodded, and together the two pegasi flew off as Hugo navigated the zeppelin closer and closer to Skyros.

“So, what exactly is your plan?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, you do have a plan, right? You’re not just making this up as you go along?”

“Oh, I’m totally making this up as I go along,” Zipp said with a grin. “But I do have a plan. Well, a kinda-sorta plan. I’m in the beginning stages of formulating the outline for a plan.”

“Oh. So we should all be good then.” Rainbow Dash returned her smile. “Can you… explain it to me, then?”

Zipp explained it in the best way she could, but they were flying so fast and her brain was already so scrambled that she wasn’t sure if she was explaining it well enough. But Rainbow Dash nodded and seemed to understand, so she had to hope that everything would work out in the end.

As the zeppelin came into position above the building in the center of the city, they found a huge bank of clouds that had been moved next to them, with the small shapes of Zipp and Rainbow adding more chunks of cloud by the minute.

“What are you doing?” Kailani called to them.

“Getting you guys down from there,” Zipp called back, and then she and Rainbow Dash began flying in tight spirals around the cloud bank, packing it together and lengthening it so that, in a whirl of speed, wings, and fluffy wisps of cloud, a ramp suddenly appeared out of it, stretching from the zeppelin’s deck down to the cobblestone street below, which was crowded with two dozen ponies that all looked like they had wings and horns. One of those shapes flew up to the ship, and all of them saw that it was Flurry Heart.

“Thank the stars you guys are here,” she said, breathing heavily. “The wolves started their attack, and we have to get all of these alicorns out of here as soon as possible - there’s a portal in that building there that leads to Equestria - but there’s so many of them-” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Just help out wherever you can and stay safe.”

“Let’s do this thing!” Little Braveheart yelled before she took a running leap off the edge of the zeppelin and onto the cloud ramp. She slid down, hooting and hollering all the way, and then slid off the end, flipped in midair, and landed on her hooves in front of a crowd of astonished alicorns. “That was AWESOME!” she cried out. “Let’s do it again!”

One by one, the non-flying creatures slid down the slide and arrived safely on the ground. Hugo anchored the zeppelin above Skyros and slid down last. When all of them had finally regrouped on the ground, they all kind of looked around, a bit unsure of what to do.

“Guys!” Twilight called out, also flying through the air with Flurry Heart. She pointed towards a street. “Wolves at two o’clock!”

The shadowy forms of Grogar’s army were beginning to make their way towards them as the distant form of Imara’s giant eagle screeched in the fading light.

Author's Note:

Here's the last chapter for today, and the last regularly-scheduled chapter until August. I love all of you guys, and I promise I'll keep posting throughout the summer, so keep checking in. Thank you so much.

Constructive criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading!

Comments

[Yoshifan30]

“Oh, I’m totally making this up as I go along,” Zipp said with a grin. “But I do have a plan. Well, a kinda-sorta plan. I’m in the beginning stages of formulating the outline for a plan.”

Yeah that sounds about right how she will roll like that

[Yoshifan30]

“Let’s do this thing!” Little Braveheart yelled before she took a running leap off the edge of the zeppelin and onto the cloud ramp. She slid down, hooting and hollering all the way, and then slid off the end, flipped in midair, and landed on her hooves in front of a crowd of astonished alicorns. “That was AWESOME!” she cried out. “Let’s do it again!”

Boy in the face of danger she always finds a way to make the most fun time for herself

[Yoshifan30]

The shadowy forms of Grogar’s army were beginning to make their way towards them as the distant form of Imara’s giant eagle screeched in the fading light.

It looks like we're going to have our little Showdown

[Yoshifan30]

Now this is where everything's going to get crazy so it looks like the Pegasus sisters are having their talk about the situation but then it looks like Sunny gave a warning sign to everybody and it looks like every creatures are getting ready to prepare for a huge battle and it looks like things are going to get very wild I wonder if they're going to win this and part of his tyranny I guess we'll find out next time

[Magic135]

Let's get ready to rumble.