The pegasi in Zephyr Heights have not yet learnt of the magic of not hating everypony different, Sunny and Pipp want to change that. Now if only Pipp would stop live streaming and help.
The pegasi in Zephyr Heights have not yet learnt of the magic of not hating everypony different, Sunny wants to fix that. However Pipp Petals sees that it is a gigantic Public Relations nightmare, so she decides to step up and fix it.
Also Pipp and her family are wanted criminals, so it’d be good to sort that out as well.
Pipp groaned as she endlessly scrolled through the infinite void of hatred that was scrawled all over her Trotter profile. The last time she had gotten anywhere near this level of kickback had been when she spilled an iced coffee on a filly. So she was not surprised by the absolute wall of abuse that was being thrown at her. She wasn't even surprised by the magnitude of anger. It was nearly certain that being revealed as a fake would have gotten a decent level of heat in response.
"I always new u were overhyped #cancelPipp" - PonyDewBetter98
Pipp frowned as she scanned through the messages looking for a common thread to focus on. This was an absolute public relations disaster and she could already tell that it was going to take her a long time to sort out all of this mess. Though there was something more vicious hiding under the surface of the typical flaming that kept pulling her back.
"The royals need to be removed, they lied and tried to let the unicorns and mud ponies in #cancelPipp #cancelZipp #cancelQueeny" - StallingStallion
Unfortunately, Pipp simply didn't have a few weeks to fix it. Unlike her past minor indiscretions, lying about flying was a very serious issue that could very well still have actual real legal repercussions. So a simple apology and a promise to be better would not be enough, heck actually improving herself and making sure that she learnt would not be enough here. That was like her ultimate apology material and it was useless here.
" PippPetalRoyal I luved u but nw you love thosebad unicorns and earth ponies. we both knw that thay smell bad so get away from thm b4 you smele 2" - Hay Hey Girl
Pipp frowned as she tried to decipher the mess of text before giving up and assuming that they were angry. There had been a few positive comments scattered through the avalanche of anger, but it did little to make her feel better. Negativity wasn't that unusual on social sites, though that didn't mean that it didn't hurt to read. Her fans nearly wanted her wings stripped from her. Some of them may have meant it metaphorically, but some seemed a lot more literal in their demands.
"the next time she shows her face we're goin to tear those fake wings off. Have you seen how fluffy the fake things are. No way they are real. She's clearly a dirty earth pony in disguise, so I think we should make sure she is one" - HorstTheRaddish
Pipp nervously swallowed and reported a message. Unfortunately, she knew it was unlikely that the site would actually take down the message. Her wings involuntarily fluttered as she pouted at the criticism of her wings. She didn't spend an hour each morning preening her wings perfectly for somepony to accuse her of having fake wings. She shook her head to clear the complaints about her wings from her head, she had more important things to worry about.
In truth, she did not blame anypony in Zephyr Heights for hating her. She knew that she deserved it. She had betrayed them. She had lied to them for years. So it was right for them to hate her. Though that did little to make her happy about it.
Maretime Bay was showing off its best light, the rich morning sun streaming over the seaside port. However, the wonderfully clear weather did little to help Sunny to enjoy the sun. Sunny was exhausted. Why she thought that it would be a good idea to meet up with all of her new friends early in the morning was beyond her.
Sure, she knew that they needed to get started on getting the unicorns and pegasi to also learn that they should all get along as well. Pipp had tried to show her some of the issues online that was happening back in Zephyr Heights, and Izzy had mentioned that not everypony fully understood it all. It was all very important, but Sunny also liked sleeping in. A life of waking at seven every workday had trained her to sleep late on weekends. So it was a sleepy Sunny that was trotting along that morning.
Izzy had been the first to get there, with Hitch arriving soon after with Sunny. Hitch had wisely gone for a big breakfast from the cafe, with Sunny and Izzy going for milkshakes instead. A decision that Sunny was already beginning to regret as the sugary drink wasn't agreeing with her for breakfast. Pushing it away slightly, her thoughts returned to the two missing friends from the table. Sunny had made sure to tell them last night to meet up, but the two royal sister pegasi had not shown their muzzles yet.
"I'm going to win if you don't try harder" Izzy called out before diving back to her milkshake and doing her best to inhale it as quickly as ponily possible. Sunny rolled her eyes and returned to her own drink without much concern. She didn't remember ever trying to make it a competition. Then again, she had just been nodding along with whatever Izzy was saying.
Sunny winced as Izzy noisily tried to suck the last of her milkshake out of the bottom of her glass. Turning and giving her best glare at Izzy, Sunny wasn't surprised to see that Izzy was entirely ignorant of Sunny's annoyance. She cared about the unicorn, but it still did irritate her and a sleepy Sunny did not respond well to annoying sounds. Sunny reached out and pulled the clearly empty cup away from Izzy, cutting off the irritation at the source.
"Can you just not do that now?" Sunny asked with an eye roll.
"Didn't get much sleep?" Hitch asked from beside her, though his attention was on the large plate of food sitting before him. He was already regretting ordering far too much. "Didn't you get the main suite?"
"I did, and I definitely appreciated it. I never would've been able to afford it on my own." Sunny groaned, rubbing one of her eyes with a hoof. "The bed was amazing, but I just couldn't stop thinking about what comes next."
"What comes next?" Izzy asked curiously, cocking her head to the side. "I thought we were just going to plan a proper sleepover at your home in a few days."
"I wish," Sunny yawned, covering her muzzle with her hoof before continuing. "We have shown everyone in Maretime Bay, but that is just the start."
"What's just the start?" Sunny span around to see Zipp hovering over them. She landed down beside them and leafed through the cafe's menu. "Also, do you know if they have any fish here?"
"Fish is a pegasi dish, so good luck finding that in an earth pony town." Izzy pointed out. "They barely had any crystal infused stuff either."
"I'm not sure that sugar counts as crystals," Hitch cut in with an eye roll, but Izzy just waved him off. She didn't need Hitch and logic taking away the perfect reason to order dessert for breakfast.
"Anyway," Sunny rolled her eyes at her friends' antics before turning back to Zipp. "I wanted to introduce everypony to the power of friendship so that they don't need to be scared of each other anymore."
"So what, you want to do some sort of road trip to Bridlewood and Zephyr Heights? Zipp asked with a smirk. "Sounds fun."
"Where is Pipp anyway?" Sunny asked with a frown. "I wanted to make sure you both have time for it."
"Pipp's probably lost in her phone again," Zipp replied with a roll of her eyes. "Pipp's great with that online stuff, but she does tend to get sucked into that world far too much."
"I think I saw her near the beach," Hitch supplied helpfully, still lost trying to finish off the ridiculously large breakfast that he had ordered. How was he supposed to know that a big breakfast would have enough on the plate to bury a small foal?
"Ooh, I'll go get her~" Izzy called out as she sprang to her hooves, the sugar streaming through her giving her the dam of all sugar rushes. She quickly bolted off before Sunny could get a single word in.
"So, what is good to eat here?" Zipp asked, fiddling with the menu with her wingtips.
"Do you want to share?" Hitch asked, the desperation in his voice incredibly evident. Zipp didn't hesitate. She may have been a princess, but free food was free food after all. Sunny did note with amusement, that Zipp's table manners didn't quite match her princessly upbringing as the pegasi gorged herself on Hitch's food.
"I think that's enough for me," Sunny pushed away from the menu and sighed, her appetite completely gone. Sunny pulled herself back onto her hooves and went to leave, before pausing and looking back at Zipp and Hitch. "I am going to go see if I can help the repair ponies fix my home. If you see Pipp, make sure you tell her what the plan is."
Pipp let out an absolutely adorable yelp as she felt a foreleg wrap around the back of her neck. She quickly turned to see Izzy's face a hoof length from her face. She had been so utterly engrossed in endlessly doom-scrolling through the hate-filled feed that she hadn't heard the unicorn's arrival. It wasn't like Izzy had made any attempt to be sneaky at all. In fact, Izzy had been singing a few bars to herself as she tried to look over her friend's shoulder before trying to give her a side hug.
"What are you doing?" Izzy asked her, looking over Pipp's shoulder so closely that her muzzle was almost embedded into the side of Pipp's mane. Pipp tried to lean away, but Izzy just moved closer to ensure that she violated Pipp's personal space as much as ponily possible. Izzy was that kind of mare at times. The others had made some attempts at teaching her personal space, however, everypony knew it was a losing battle. "Oooh, you've got a lot of words on that little screen. Can I have a look"
"You probably shouldn't look," Pipp tried to angle to screen away from the inquisitive unicorn, but Izzy just leant over until she lost her balance and fell on top of Pipp, squishing the smaller princess under her. Pipp squirmed out from under the unicorn and shoved her away. "Seriously, Izzy. I like you, girl, but take a hint."
"Okay", Izzy clambered off of Pipp's back with a smile, "Sunny wanted me to tell you that she wants to get together some sort of plan to visit all of our homes and get started on making sure that all the pony races like each other. Of course, she wants to see how to fit it into your royal schedule duty things."
"What royal duties," Pipp rolled her eyes, "we are literally wanted criminals. Not much point trying to perform to an audience that despises your existence."
"Wasn't your mother meant to be all queeny and apologise so everypony likes you again?"
"Seriously, when has mom ever even given you the impression that she knows anything about how to make a proper apology," Pipp huffed before returning to fiddle with her phone and quickly closing the Trotter feed.
"I'm sure it'll be fine," Izzy told Pipp as she pulled the smaller mare into a hug, "Sunny's wants to get the crystal rolling and meet all the other pegasi. So I'm sure it'll all work out when they see what great friends we can all be."
"Hang on," Pipp pushed her way back out of Izzy's embrace and grabbed the bubbly unicorn's shoulder, "when did Sunny want to do this race relation tour thing?"
"Not sure, if you and Zipp are free we might be able to head to Zephyr Heights tomorrow. Sunny was super duper excited to get started as soon as pony possible."
Pipp groaned as she realized the absolute mess that was awaiting all of them if Sunny was planning what Pipp thought she was planning. Hitch had been telling Pipp about Sunny's tactless attempts to unite the races in the past. The mare was determined, but the results had left a lot to be desired.
"I have to talk to Sunny before she does something stupid."
Sunny sat on the grass in front of the construction site that had been her home yesterday. It was tortuous just sitting there waiting, but Sunny was determined to do the right thing. The construction ponies had gotten rather cross at Sunny's attempts to help, so she had been relegated to lookout duty. Of course, they hadn't told her what she was meant to be looking out for, but she figured that she would know it when she saw it.
It did give her time to get her own thoughts in order at least, though it wasn't all sunshine and happiness beneath her magenta mane. Sunny sighed as she leant over with a hoof awkwardly supporting her head as she thought through the mess that was sitting waiting for her. A week ago she was just trying to get everypony open to the idea of being friends with each other.
Sunny smiled weakly as she thought back to the simpler times when she could just come up with a plan and try it out, knowing that the only thing she was risking was the town's already low opinion of her. Today was a completely different world, and while there was a lot of good with it, there was a lot of bad as well. Every pony was now looking at her, expecting her to somehow make every pony become friends overnight.
The pressure was intense and she didn't want to let any pony down. Thankfully she already had a plan in place and she knew that it was going to make every single pony become friends. Well, she hoped that they all would at least.
"Hitch said you would be here," Pipp commented as she sat down beside Sunny, shoving her from her muddled thoughts. "though I'm not sure why? Surely you trust the repair ponies to fix everything, right?"
"I did try to help them out, but they said that they needed a lookout," Sunny told Pipp with a smile, determined to do a good job to make up for the three sheets of drywall she had managed to destroy.
"Right" Pipp wasn't convinced but knew better than to actually say anything. "Anyway, Izzy was telling me that you had some plan for reuniting everypony?"
"Yeah! It's going to be awesome to finally extend the hoof of friendship," Sunny couldn't help smiling at the thought of her dreams finally becoming reality. "We can show them all that all three pony races can be friends and no one needs to hate each other. Aren't you excited as well?"
"I guess," Pipp told her as tactfully as she could, "but don't you think that you're rushing this?"
"Why should anypony be forced to live another day thinking that their only friend is fear?" Sunny was frowning at Pipp now, rather disappointed that her friend didn't seem as eager. "Why should anypony go a single day more as enemies? Everypony deserves to be friends and no longer be afraid."
"I'm not saying that everypony shouldn't be friends!" Pipp yelled in frustration before pausing to calm herself down. She carefully took a deep breath before continuing. "I'm just saying that we need to be methodical at this. You can't just turn up everywhere and wave a wing or horn in some pony's face and make them instantly be friends."
"Why won't that work?" Sunny wasn't frowning as much, though she clearly did not see the issue that Pipp was trying to explain. "It worked for you, as soon as you saw us we were all friends."
"No it didn't," Pipp shot back. "I did not trust you, Hitch or Izzy, when I met you. I stayed because I wanted to help my sister, not you. I pretended to be your friend that first night to earn your trust."
"What do you mean, Pipp?" Sunny's mouth was hanging open as she stared at Pipp in surprise. "You got on so well with us that night. Izzy and you got on well, especially when she was talking about the color of your sparkle."
"I hate aqua-marine," Pipp blurted out. "It is not my sixth favourite color, it's not even in my top ten. Admittedly most of my favourite colors are in the fuchsia and coral ranges. I do stretch out to heliotrope at times, but the whole cyan range is really not my thing. Also, don't even get me started on forest green, whoever likes that mess of a shade should be dropped into the ocean."
"I think you're going off-topic here," Sunny interjected, now more confused than shocked. "What did you mean by pretending to be a friend? Are we not friends?"
"We are friends now," Pipp huffed, "it just took more than a single evening for me to really trust you and want to be friends. I just faked it for the first bit because I wanted to know what you were up to and to make sure my sister was going to be safe around you. So no, we were not friends at first."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"To show that not everypony thinks like you. I want you to take it slowly."
"I know that you're worried," Sunny rested a hoof on Pipp's shoulder. "But I promise that everything is going to work out fine. As soon as everypony sees how good friends we are, then they will want to be friends as well. It's that simple."
"I don't think it is that simple Sunny."
"The day after tomorrow, when we all go to Zephyr heights, I'll prove it to you." Sunny gave Pipp a quick nuzzle on her cheek. "You don't need to worry about anything but getting to have fun with your fans. I promise."
Pipp frowned and rolled her eyes, but didn't respond. Sunny missed seeing Pipp's silent response, her attention back on keeping a lookout on the repairs being made to the lighthouse. Pipp made her leave, knowing that she had some things to sort out.
"Hey Hitch," Pipp called as she strolled into the Maretime Bay's sheriff's office. "Have you got time to talk?"
"He's out keeping the streets clean," A nasal voice came from beside Pipp. This time she managed to avoid yelping like a surprised filly, mostly. She turned to see Sprout with his hind hooves on his desk and his chair precariously tipped back balancing on two legs. A crossword puzzle was open in his lap. "I can help if you need it."
"I'm not sure if you're going to be much help for this," Pipp wrinkled her muzzle, "I kind of need to talk to someone who's been friends with Sunny for a few years."
"Sunny, Hitch and I have been friends for years," He paused and then grimaced, "well if you ignore these last few days. Sunny and I are not exactly getting on that well after what I did."
"Sunny seems to be a forgiving type," said Pipp, "so you're probably fine."
"Well, I hope I'll be able to make it up to her eventually, but I am trying to keep my distance for now." Sprout shrugged. "Better to spend some time avoiding her, than to force her to pretend to be nice to me."
"I'm not sure she really understands how to not be nice."
"Which gives me an even better reason to not force her to be nice to the pony that destroyed her home and nearly killed her," Sprout responded dryly. "Anyway, I do know Sunny well so if you need to know anything about her I can probably help. Favourite color, you name it I probably know it."
"Really?" Pipp did not believe him.
"Yeah, it's turquoise by the way." Sprout dropped back onto all four hooves and strolled over to Pipp. "So what did you want to know?"
"Well, I kind of needed to work out a way to slow down Sunny's reuniting everypony project before she rushes and makes a mess of everything," Pipp complained. "She just wants to rush out and make everything better somehow, but I don't think she has really thought any of it through at all."
"Yeah, you're not going to find a way to stop her." Sprout told her with an eye roll. "This has been a dream that she has had for pretty much her whole life. Hitch and I have tried to stop her down in the past, but nothing can temper her. So you're just going to have to make the best of whatever happens. I mean, for all you know she could be right and everypony may just get along."
"I really don't see that happening."
"Look outside, I can see Zipp and Izzy having a smoothie drinking contest in full view of everypony. A unicorn and a pegasus just sitting there out in the open, and no pony seems bothered in the slightest. A week ago Izzy caused a literal riot on sight and now look around. If it worked here, then what makes you think that it won't happen in Zephyr Heights or in the Bridlewood forest."
"I think I know Zephyr Heights better than anypony else." Pipp huffed, annoyed that yet another pony wasn't taking her concerns seriously. "I've been looking through the social media feeds and unicorn and earth pony sentiment is definitely not positive at the moment. If Sunny drags Hitch and Izzy there, then it'll probably just start a riot that never ends. We need to have a plan or something, maybe get some important people from Zephyr here first and try and ease them in. You know, some sort of actual plan."
"Sunny isn't a planning type of mare," Sprout told Pipp, "she had a vision and come to Tartarus or high water she will make it happen. You should've seen what she used to do to try and teach us about unicorns and pegasi in the past. Every week there was a new attempt until she started running low on ideas. Just be thankful you avoided the leaflet drop debacle. It took almost a week to find every scrap of paper."
"So, what you're saying is that I can't really make her plan anything."
"Not really, I think you're just going to have to work around whatever Sunny wants to do. Sunny doesn't change her mind."
"Sunny isn't that bad, Sprout." Hitch cut in as he trotted into the office, unbuckling his sash and laying it over the back of his chair. "So what are you trying to stop her doing?"
"Oh, hey Hitch," Pipp said, "I just had some concerns about the trip to Zephyr Heights and I wanted to slow Sunny down a bit for general sentiment to improve, you know?"
"Things seem to be going pretty good here?" Hitch shrugged.
"That is what I was trying to tell her," Sprout commented as he went back to his crossword puzzle, "but apparently Princessy Pipp doesn't think we know what we are talking about."
"Look, in Maretime Bay their sheriff was still liked by everypony when they introduced pegasi and unicorns," Pipp complained, "however it's not the same in Zephyr. Zipp and I are still literally wanted criminals who are hated for an entire reason not related to unicorns or earth ponies. Neither of us is in a position to vouch for anything. So you're just going to get the same panicking you got the first time you went there. Nothing is going to change, because for them nothing has changed."
"Pipp, pegasi have got their wings back!" Hitch argued, gesturing to Pipp's fluffed up wings. "Doesn't that change things?"
"Why would it change anything?" Pipp argued back. "They don't know that it was unity between the tribes that brought it back, all they know is that their royal family faked their flight. Then they kicked out the royal family, and then a day later they could fly. They didn't go through what we went through. They weren't there when the races came together. They don't know."
Hitch frowned. "Is it really that bad?"
"Yep," Pipp pulled out her phone and quickly tapped her Facehoof account. She shoved her phone to his face, "they are blaming unicorns and earth ponies for everything. Some are even accusing unicorns of stealing my flight. So things are that bad."
"Isn't this just some ponies venting online?" Hitch asked. "They don't actually want to do inappropriate things with unicorn horns, right?"
"Well, yeah," Pipp huffed in irritation. "Yes. They are exaggerating, but you can still see what they truly want behind their words if you read between the lines."
"I think this pony wants to use unicorns as oversized darts?" Hitch carefully pushed the phone back to Pipp. "I think that is a bit extreme. They are probably just joking or something."
"Okay, fair. If they are making comments like that then they are probably not angry." Pipp sighed as she took back her phone. "It's the ponies who make statements as if they are true that is the real issue. Look, just forget it. The point I was trying to make is that Zephyr Heights is not yet ready. We need to do more than just shove a unicorn in front of them and shout hooray."
Hmm," Hitch scratched his jaw as he thought over Pipp's point. "Okay then, what do you think that we need to do then?"
"Get Sunny to take everything a lot slower. Find someone that the pegasi in Zephyr Heights respect and get them to slowly introduce them all. Unfortunately that all takes time, and Sunny is going there in two days, so we need to work something out and do it quickly."
"So, you don't have a plan either?"
"Nothing that I can pull off overnight," Pipp admitted. If I had a few weeks, maybe I could fix this mess. But I have nothing that will work overnight. I need to buy some time and figure this mess out."
"Why is this something that you alone need to do?" Hitch asked as he sat down beside her, nudging her phone away from her hoof. "Your mother is right now in Zephyr doing her best to make sure that every pony understands, right?"
Pipp rolled her eyes at Hitch and shoved her phone over to him, a news article on the screen.
"Queen Haven returned to the empire today to try and explain the century-long fraud that the royal family had thrown on the innocent public of Zephyr Heights." Hitch read aloud as he scanned down the page, frowning as he continued. "However despite many attempts to explain the 'good'(sic) behind her clearly selfish acts, she was unable to actually provide any good reasons for the deception. Ultimately Zephyr News is forced to conclude that Queen Haven is definitely a phony pony fully of perjury and fakery."
Hitch stopped reading and raised an eyebrow to Pipp.
"Yeah, the Zephyr Newspaper isn't exactly what you would call..." Pipp paused as she searched for an appropriate word, "...competent? Anyway, the point is that things are not going all that well for mom. I love her, but she isn't all that great at the whole public relations thing. Look, I'm going to see if I can put a plan together, but can you see if you can slow down Sunny or something?"
There was an awkward silence as Hitch looked over at Sprout as if hoping for some level of support. Sprout didn't even look up from his puzzle.
Hitch sighed and turned back to Pipp. "I can't help you. Sprout was right when he said that Sunny isn't that easy to persuade when she has her heart set on something."
"We can't do nothing!"
"Look, Pipp," Hitch put a foreleg around her and pulled her against him, "I know that you are worried about this. I also know that you want to make sure that this all goes well, but I think that you're just searching for a problem to solve. Even if this goes wrong, it just means that we wait a week and try again."
Pipp shrugged off his leg with a pout and glared at him. "I understand Sprout trying to brush me off, but you are meant to be my friend. You are meant to believe me."
"I believe that you believe this, isn't that enough?" Hitch tried to placate her, but Pipp just shoved past him, glowering back at him before shutting the door behind her as hard as she could. The door smoothly shut with a click, stealing from Pipp even the joy of slamming the door. She walked off with a frown knowing that everything was now much harder.
She stomped angrily past Zipp and Izzy's impromptu smoothie drinking competition, ignoring the weird looks that the two sent her way. Pipp wandered aimlessly through Maretime Bay lost in thought as she tried to piece together the mess she had in front of her
The biggest issue sitting before her was that she just didn't have a week to sort it out. Sunny had the brilliant idea to take all of her unicorn and earth pony friends to Zephyr Heights within the next few days with absolutely no understanding that the pegasi there still thought that they were all evil creatures. Sunny had been completely obstinate about it, and Zipp hadn't even backed up her own sister. So now Pipp had just a single day to try and repair her own social media following, get her sister shoved into a good position, and somehow convince an entire city that unicorns and earth ponies were all okay.
"What am I going to do?" Pipp asked herself quietly as she fiddled with her phone. She kept on tapping back and forth between Trotter and Facehoof in the desperate hope that a good idea would present itself. "Think, Pipp. You've had to cover for Zipp in the past, surely you could do the same here, right?"
"Augh, no. A song is not going to fix this when they don't like you," Pipp groaned and covered her eyes with a hoof. "Okay, I need to think this through properly. What options do I have, and what do I need to do?"
"I need to somehow get Zephyr Heights to not attack Sunny when she turns up the day after tomorrow," Pipp mused to herself, tapping her chin with her hoof. "I don't need to fix everything, I just need to get everypony to know that the unicorns and earth ponies are the reason they can fly. Then they are going to welcome Sunny, Izzy and the others with open hooves."
"I still have a lot of subscribers," She pulled out her phone and quickly started jotting down any ideas that she could think of. "Sure, they may only watch to hate on me, but it is still an opportunity. I can sing, I can fly. I've got to be able to do something with this."
"Wait," Pipp froze as an idea hit her, "I can still live stream. Sure most of my followers aren't happy with me, but that just means that they are even more likely to switch over if I stream. Okay, this won't be fun, but this could totally work."
Chuckling to herself, Pipp tapped out some more notes. "Start a stream, give a proper apology, and then talk about how we can now all fly because of friendship. This should be easier than that endurance live stream challenge. I just have to make sure to be clear about it and then end the stream saying that my friends are coming so that they can all be friends. This could totally work."
A small part of Pipp knew that there was also a large chance that this wouldn't work, but she quickly pushed away that thought. Now was not the time for more negativity. She glanced around and was happy to see that no other ponies were around, so she wouldn't have to worry about anypony appearing in the background and scaring her audience. She checked her phone's battery life, happy that she had remembered to charge it this time. Starting a stream and then spending the first five minutes running for a charger was not an experience that she wanted to repeat.
She checked the notes on her phone again before opening the TrotTv app. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Pipp's hoof hovered over the start stream button.
"You can do this Pipp," she told herself as seriously as she could, "you've done hundreds of live streams. The only difference between those and this is a little anger in the audience. You can do this."
Steeling herself for what she knew was the come, Pipp tapped the little button. Nodding her head to the ten steady beeps that counted down to the start of the stream. Right now she knew that thousands of phones across Zephyr Heights would be buzzing, thousands of ponies were pulling out their phones to see a notification of Pipp's stream, thousands ready to jump into her chat. She swallowed nervously as the countdown hit zero and her live stream went live.
She didn't get a single word out before she saw the chat explode in action. Comments flying as emoticons flashed over the screen, however despite the ferocity of the comments Pipp was a seasoned veteran of reading the pipsqueak chat. She could already see confusion and anger beginning to flash through the comments as angry red emoticons flashed along the screen edge.
A lesser mare would have been overwhelmed at the sheer sensory overload, or at least from the knowledge that thousands were studying her every move. Pipp was not a lesser mare, her mother may have been the queen of Haven, but Pipp was the ruler of the online world. She was here to claim her throne. Either that or get chased out of town, she knew that it was a coin flip at this point.
"What is up everypony!" Pipp called out, knowing better than anyone that now was not the time for some false apology or fake sob story. "This week has been a long time coming. So let's be very clear. I am not going to try and trick you. I lied about being able to fly, and I always knew, even from a young age, that I could not fly. This was wrong and I should have never done it, and I want to make it up to everypony that I have let down."
Pipp paused to check the chat, wincing a little as she saw little change in the anger that had been thrown her way. She mentally floundered as she searched for a way to try and drag herself back. The chat's words were starting to nibble into her, but she mentally brushed it off. Pipp could take a little heat, she had done something wrong after all.
"I know that a lot of you are angry with me, and that is okay. I did do something wrong and I should not expect a simple apology to make everything okay. So I am going to stay on this live stream as long as I can and answer anything you want as truthfully as I can. If I am honest, I hope that you can understand why I did what I did and why I now need your help."
She glanced at the chat and paused for a few seconds to see what appeared in chat, though she was disappointed as the insults just seemed to fly. Normally her mods would've done a decent job and kept the chat somewhat under control, but she could see that they were joining in on the attack. She wasn't going to get much help from them. However, with a little perseverance, she eventually did start to see actual questions appear, though they were far from helpful.
"Let's see," Pipp mumbled as she read through the questions, hoping to desperately find something reasonable. There just simply wasn't anything she could answer. There wasn't any way to give a nice answer to a question asking for you to tear off your own wings. Pipp sighed and decided to just start at the top.
"Alright MarelyWeird asks, are you an earth pony with fake wings?" Pipp scoffed as she fluttered her wings at the thought that they were false. She beat her wings and hovered in the air, lifting up the phone so that they could get a proper view of her. "I can fly now that magic is back, my wings are and always have been real. Okay? Let's see what is next."
"SquidStallion asks, how are they real if your wings are so fluffy?." Pipp paused and rolled her eyes as she hovered back to the ground, flaring her wings as wide as she could manage so that the camera would easily see them. "I spend an hour preening them every day to make sure that they look this way. It takes a lot of effort to make them look like this. On to the next question."
"There's got to be something else," Pipp muttered as she scanned the chat as questions shot by. She skipped over far too many questions about whether the fluffiness of her wings meant that they were fake. Pipp felt the bite of the negative comments start to sharpen, but she was resilient. Finally, Pipp got to a question that wasn't about her wings, however, it was becoming harder and harder to actually find questions. The chat was getting angrier by the second and Pipp knew that she was not making things better.
"ErammarE wanted to know why I never told anyone that I couldn't fly," Pipp chuckled, "well done for being the first to not complain about how much I preen my wings. So this isn't an easy question for me to answer for a lot of reasons, and some of those reasons are not as simple as others."
Pipp knew that she was rambling, but the sad truth is that she didn't really have a decent answer for this. The main reason was because her mother told her to lie, and Pipp didn't see much reason to go against her. However, she also didn't want to just blame everything on her mother. That did little to make the chat's harsh comments not start to dig into her, forcing her to focus on appearing happy so that they wouldn't see a mopey Pipp.
"Look, I just don't have a good reason for what I did." Pipp nervously admitted, trying to balance being truthful with the actual truth. "I was always hiding it from the day I was born, so it took a long time before I even realized that I was hiding something that mattered. So it just never really reached a point for me to realize that I had to tell everypony."
Pipp winced as she saw the chat respond especially poorly to her statement. There was a verifiable flood of angry face emojis flowing over her screen as her audience took offence. This was far from the reaction that she was hoping to get, but she wasn't that surprised. Pipp carefully took her next breathe calmly, making sure to at least appear unconcerned. She knew that an over-reaction was always taken worse than an under-reaction. Crying or yelling can be endlessly rehoofed across the net before the stream even ended, but a calm Pipp reading comments were much harder to meme.
Unfortunately angry emoticons was not even the start of issues heading her way as she felt her phone vibrate with a notification. Pretending the read through the chat, Pipp checked the message to see that it was from one of the brands she represented. Pipp quickly schooled her features as she read the message informing her that they were no longer going to be working together.
She switched back to the chat to see the insults start to appear, accusations flying and even threats threading their way through the comments. She gulped nervously as the vitriol spread. They were no longer asking insulting questions, they had moved on to outright attacks on her. When she had started the comments were mostly disappointment with a small amount of hope that she would fix everything. Now they were outright hatred, and she quickly closed the chat so that she wouldn't need to look at it. No pony could read that and feel okay.
Pipp froze as the wall of hatred hit her, their words digging deep into her and repeatedly reminding her that she had failed them all. She valiantly tried to push past it and return to the search for questions, but it was just simply too much. The comments were flying quickly through the chat almost faster than she could process them, every comment that she did process doing its best to tear just a little more away from her. Desperately she tried to keep a smile on her face and not cry.
She could feel herself reaching her limit and knew that she had to end this. Feeling like an absolute failure, Pipp ran through a quick non-committal farewell before killing the live stream. Her hoof almost missed the end stream button due to her shaking so much.
Feeling utterly overwhelmed, Pipp sat down on the ground and stared at her hooves, her phone lying on the ground now that she no longer had the energy to keep holding it. Pipp stared into the nothingness around her, unsure of what she was supposed to do now. For years her audience had been the closest thing she had to friends, stuck in the castle on her own; she hadn't had many other options. Sure Zipp had tried to get along with her, but they were siblings.
When she first found Trotter it had being amazing to find so many other ponies that she could talk to and spend virtual time with. Pipp sighed as she thought back on the early days, back when her follower count was in the two-digit range and she could actually read every comment or trot sent her way. It had been so wonderfully peaceful back then and little Pipp had made so very many silly mistakes in those early years.
Pipp quickly rubbed the moisture out of her eyes. This evening's live stream was a wake-up call to her. Her followers were not just her fans, they were the closest things that she had to friends. Or they were until Sunny, Izzy and Hitch turned up. But she didn't want to lose her old friends to get her new ones. She needed them more than she ever wanted to admit to anypony, and now they were gone. Her friends now hated her.
A smaller part of her felt even worse to realize that her audience had never been her friend at all, she pushed that part deeper. There were just some things that she just wasn't ready to deal with.
The friends that got her through her younger years now despised her and wouldn't care if they found her in a ditch with broken wings. Some would even want to make that a reality. She did know that for most of the comments they were exaggerating their anger to make sure that she saw it, but that did little to make her feel better. The deepest hurt was just knowing that her old friends hated her.
Pipp closed her eyes and took two deep breaths, putting her hoof against her forehead to calm herself. She could feel herself slowly calming down, but it was far from enough. So she repeated the breaths again, in and out over and over. She focused on each breath, pushing everything else away as she pushed herself to calm. It took a long time, but she did eventually manage to centre herself and pull herself back to a level head.
She knew that as bad as everything had gone so far, she couldn't just give up and lead Sunny to a city full of angry pegasi. Pipp wanted to fix this, and she needed to fix this, so she was going to do her absolute best to fix it.
"Come on think," Pipp muttered to herself as she racked her brain in a desperate attempt to try and resolve the mess that was unravelling before her. Her audience despised her, that was unfortunate but not unexpected. "So your audience doesn't like you. You already know that. Push past it and work out what options you have."
Pipp tried to pull the threads together but she couldn't find any way to make them want to actually listen to her long enough. If she couldn't work out a way to sort this out, then Sunny would be walking into a dangerous riot tomorrow. She had seen the tech shown off at Canterlogic and it had been scary, but she knew that the Pegasi didn't need fancy tech to be dangerous. All it took was one angry or scared flying pony and Sunny would find herself falling into a ravine somewhere. Pipp knew that she had to sort this out, and she had to do it now.
Pipp paused and tapped the phone off as a thought struck her. She had been going about this all wrong, she didn't need to fix their public image of her. She just needed to get them to change their view of the other pony races. Pipp frowned as she followed that trail of thought as it just led straight back in a circle. The best way she could think of to fix their view of the other races would be to have someone they respected convince them.
Pipp ran over the options she could think of, anyone with a decent audience that she could use to try and help. However, she quickly came up mostly empty. Zephyr News would have been an okay option if they were actually interested in reporting newsworthy content, but they mostly just existed to add commentary to her live streams from what she could see. To make things more awkward, they were currently very clearly using Pipp's negative attention to make themselves the de facto source of gossip across the city.
So they were a worse option than Pipp herself.
There was really only one other option that Pipp could think of, and she knew it was a long shot. Pipp had been an influencer for years in Zephyr, running in the spotlight leagues ahead of everypony else. However, there was one other who could've easily joined her in the spotlight.
Her sister, Zipp.
Zipp was not a fan of the influencer lifestyle, she saw it as invasive and irritating. She also loved to complain to Pipp about how the whole thing was vapid and annoying. However, Pipp knew that Zipp's real issue was that it was just overly political at times and she wanted to spend her time getting away from the politics that invaded their lives. Pipp embraced it, Zipp instead chose to have a sensible work-life balance.
"Zipp would have a much easier time showing that she was doing the right thing," Pipp smiled as a plan began to form. There was a lot of risk behind it, and Zipp would probably not be happy with Pipp when she found out. However, Pipp didn't see any other way to convince everypony in Zephyr Heights.
Pipp was going to tell everypony about Zipp's secret flight research, and she was going to make Zephyr love Zipp. However, for tonight, she just wanted to find somepony who wanted to cuddle. Somepony who cared.
Sunny's couch was not the most luxurious couch that Zipp had gotten to sleep on. Zipp was a princess after all and that had allowed her to enjoy some of the softest couches and beds known to pony kind. However she was still a pegasus that liked her naps, so even Sunny's subpar couch was good enough.
Thankfully Sunny's home was not entirely destroyed by Scout's robotic menace. The living area had been mostly intact. So after the repair ponies had finished checking it over and shoring up a few walls, Zipp made sure to claim the couch as soon as she could to enjoy a proper nap. Sunny wisely decided to go distract Izzy and let Zipp enjoy the relaxation, and Zipp only needed to beg for a few minutes.
Zipp had almost gotten to fall asleep when she was jostled awake by a pair of soft hooves shaking her. Groaning, she opened her eyes to see that Pipp was currently kneeling next to her looking nervous. Zipp's complaints died as she saw the worried expression on her little sister's face. Groaning, she sat up, giving Pipp a quick glance as she did so.
"Can I stay with you for a bit?" Pipp asked nervously, biting her lip.
Zipp wanted to ask what was wrong, but she knew that her sister would just clam up at the first sign of a question. Instead she just sat up properly and unfurled a wing, gesturing for Pipp to settle down beside her. Pipp didn't hesitate, settling down into her sister's embrace and sighing as Zipp covered her with a wing. It had been a long time since Pipp had needed a proper wing cuddle from Zipp, but it had been a very stressful day.
"You look exhausted," Zipp pointed out, hoping that her little sister would take the bait and tell Zipp what was wrong. Unfortunately Pipp didn't comment, so Zipp curled her front leg around her sister's back. Pipp put up no resistance as Zipp pulled her close, letting them both settle into the warmth between them. Pipp was soon resting her head on Zipp's shoulder with her eyes closed as she tried to push away the bad thoughts.
"I tried to live stream," Pipp began before wincing at the negative thoughts that followed up her failure. "It didn't go all that well."
There was a long pause as Zipp waited for Pipp to continue, before realizing that she did not want to talk to her about it. Rolling her eyes she shuffled closer and arched her wing to better wrap her dejected sister into a proper wing cuddle. Pulling Pipp into her lap so that they could have a proper cuddle.
"I'm sure the next one will go better," Zipp responded quietly.
"I don't think they want me" Pipp mumbled miserably as she tried to move closer. Zipp responded by tightening her hug and settling her chin on to the top of Pipp's head. Pipp felt her eyelids start to grow heavy in her sister's comforting cuddles. "My friends are all gone."
"I'm always here for you, sis," Zipp tiredly mumbled as she felt Pipp's breathing begin to slow. "Why don't you have a nap and forget it for now?"
"I need you, Zipp." Pipp sleepily returned as she shuffled deeper into the sisterly embrace and let sleep take her. The quiet tell tale sounds of Pipp's adorable snoring soon filled the room as Zipp settled down against her sister. Zipp didn't fall asleep as easily, worrying about what Pipp had said.
Zipp had trouble returning to her nap. Her thoughts stuck on Pipp as she thought over the misery that Pipp had accidentally let her know. In the past Pipp had always tried to keep a perfect mask of happiness to drive up her glamour mare persona, however Zipp had always been able to see through it. However this was the first time that Pipp hadn't made any efforts at all to pretend to be happy. The idea that Pipp would just give up worried Zipp a lot.
Pipp's relationship with her audience had always been one that made Zipp worried. To find her sister so openly sharing so much of her life with everyone in the kingdom was not something that Zipp would ever understand. Pipp did seem to enjoy the attention, though Zipp did not even begin to know why. In the past Zipp and her mother had both worried that it was just some sort of short term obsession, but over the years it had simply grown. Now the social media empire that Pipp had created was one that Zipp worried about. All it would take was a few more bad experiences, and Zipp worried that Pipp would fully withdraw into the online world.
Zipp vowed to try and pull Pipp away from her phone and spend some more time with her three new real friends. Unfortunately, Zipp knew that tearing the phone away from her sister's hooves was an impossibility. So she would just have to keep an eye on her sister and try to push Pipp away from the online world and instead focus on the real one.
Zipp's musings were interrupted as she heard a call from Izzy about lunch. Pipp groaned from her lap, knowing that the short period of peace between them was over.
Getting to Zephyr Heights was not that simple of an exercise. It wasn't exactly a hop, skip and jump away. Just a few days ago it would've been an overnight trip to get back, making it very difficult for Pipp to get her plan together before Sunny turned up, but with her wings she could halve that travel time, probably. With sunset approaching in a few hours, Pipp knew that she couldn't delay her departure any longer.
Or at least that was the idea going through Pipp's head as she stood on the stone path that led there, tentatively flapping her wings and trying to get the courage to push herself into the air. She had flown a little over the last few days, but the prospect of trying to fly long distance was a daunting idea. The idea of flapping her wings for the hours that it would take to get back seemed exhausting to her, but she also knew that she had to do it.
"What are you doing?" Zipp called out from overhead. Pipp groaned as she heard her sister's wingbeats touchdown beside her. So much for her stealthy escape.
"I'm not exactly living up to my sneakiness level. Izzy wouldn't even count this as low level sneaky," Pipp groaned before turning to her sister. "How did you know I was here?"
"You've been talking about nothing but trying to change pegasi opinions in Zephyr Heights for the last day. Then you tell us that you need to go feed your dishes. It wasn't hard to figure out." Zipp pointed out with a chuckle.
Pipp just huffed and turned away from her sister's accusations, which were annoyingly accurate.
"Look, sis," Zipp began. "I know that you want to go there and try to win everypony back over, but I think that maybe we should focus on things that are a little more important. So just stay with us for the journey instead of trying to fly ahead. I think it would be good for you to focus on your friends a little more and ease yourself off the phone a little. Give your trotter profile a break, okay?"
"Do you honestly think that this is about my trotter profile?" Pipp angrily yelped as she shot her sister the strongest pout that she could manage. Zipp wisely managed to avoid booping her adorable nose, though it was not easy for her. "Every pony in Zephyr Heights hates mom, every pony there hates me, and every pony there hates you. But guess what, that isn't all they hate. They hate unicorns, and they hate earth ponies."
"They don't hate-"
"Yes they do," Pipp interrupted, shoving her phone in Zipp's face. "Every news site, every comment thread, everywhere. They weren't here to see unity brought back flight, they saw nothing."
"Then we just need to tell them."
"How are we going to do that"
"With words"
Pipp bit back a yell as she glowered at her sister, "how are we going to make them believe anything we say? They hate us and think that we ran off after being revealed as fakes. Some are already thinking that we were the reason that they couldn't fly. We can't just 'tell them'. We need to convince them."
"Oh, so running off on your own is supposed to fix that somehow," Zipp shot back sarcastically.
"I have a plan," Pipp was exasperated with the entire conversation. "Look, maintaining the royal image is my thing. I know what I am talking about here. So just let me head off early and try something. If it works, great. If it doesn't work then we are no worse off."
"Are you sure you want to go alone?"
"This is my thing, Zipp. So just let me do this."
Zipp sighed and scrunched up her muzzle in thought, nibbling on her lower lip as she ran through her sister's words. Zipp knew that her sister was probably right, but that didn't mean that she liked it. She groaned. "Fine. I'll just tell Sunny and the others that you flew ahead or something."
"Thanks, I mean it." Pipp smiled as she opened her wings and gave them a flap. "I promise, when you get there it'll all be dealt with."
Pipp flapped her wings as hard as she could, her body throwing itself into the air as she twisted to catch a thermal. "See you later," Pipp called back to Zipp as she pumped her wings.
Good luck," Zipp called after her, they both knew that Pipp was going to need it.
Pipp panted as she forced her wings to flap just one more time before she gave up, spreading them wide and letting herself slowly glide down to the ground. As soon as her hooves made contact with the dirt she pulled in her wings and slumped over. Her attempt to fly the entire way to Zephyr Heights in a single evening was not going as well as she had hoped.
"Okay, so flying long distances is exhausting," Pipp panted as she laid on the grass and tried to regain her breath. She was relieved to know that she was most of the way back to Zephyr, but she was absolutely exhausted. Her wings were drenched in sweat and she was even starting to feel the feathers beginning to clump together and provide significantly less lift.
"Note to self, don't try to dry your forehead sweat with wings," Pipp chastised herself as she finally felt her breath returning to her lungs. She tenderly stretched out one of her wings again, tentatively giving it a gentle flap, grimacing at the effort it required. Groaning to herself she pulled herself back onto her hooves to continue to journey on the ground.
In truth she was always going to make the end of the journey on hoof to avoid getting spotted by any patrolling guards. However she still had at least another half hour of trotting left before she got close. Pipp sighed before picking the pace to a proper canter, huffing as she tried to keep a steady breath.
"Zipp probably could've done this whole journey in an hour," Pipp complained to herself between pants, ignoring how ridiculously sweaty she had become. Pipp tried to speed up to a proper gallop before quickly slowing down again as she felt the tell tale sign of a stitch forming.
Pipp was not the most energetic of ponies, preferring to focus on building up her online following before she built up any leg muscles. However she was not entirely weak either. The wirework needed for her performances required a strong amount of upper torso strength, so she had spent a lot of time exercising in preparation. Unfortunately this did little to strengthen the muscles in her shoulders or knees, so she was soon struggling to keep up the effort.
In the end it took nearly an hour before she even reached the outreaches of the city. Night had fallen and she was barely trotting by the time she finally stepped onto the smooth concrete of Zephyr Heights. The pale yellow lights of the streetlights almost felt comforting for her, up until she saw the wanted posters plastered on the walls demanding the detainment of Pipp and her sister. Zephyr Heights felt decidedly less welcoming after that.
"Okay Pipp, time for you to be at least medium sneaky," she muttered to herself as she stealthfully trotted through the city streets, making sure to stick to shadows as much as possible. The flight may have been exhausting, but at least it had smoothed down her wings and reduced the chance that someone would recognise her. Though with her face still plastered over half the advertising within the city, she knew that she couldn't become complacent.
Unfortunately it was at this point that she realized the biggest problem with her original plan. Pipp had wanted to run the livestream from the airship station that she was all too aware that Zipp used to hide at, but the only way she knew to get there was from the castle. She stole a glance up at the castle and frowned as she saw most of the walls had at least a pegasi guard watching over it. She quickly ducked back into the shadows before they could spot her. The guards were clearly on the lookout for the two fugitive princess pegasi.
It was here that she knew that her medium sneakiness was going to become important. Sure, the castle was definitely a no go zone, but the airship station was still accessible from the air. All she had to do was go around the edge of the castle and hover down to the abandoned airship station entrance that was beneath. Hopefully everypony was still not used to flying pegasi and would keep their eyes on the ground. She carefully ducked down another alleyway before reaching the edge of the ravine that separated the castle from the rest of the city.
Carefully Pipp gave her wings a flex, ignoring the tiredness that had begun to seep into her bones. She was tired, but she also knew that she had enough energy in her for a short flight. Besides it wasn't like she could just go to the castle gates and get let in, her mom had not done a very good job at appeasing the pegasus public.
"It's just like mom to make things harder than they need to be," Pipp complained to herself before throwing herself forward and into the dark misty sky, trying to keep her wing beats as steady as she could. She didn't need to fly fast, she just needed to do it slowly. She flexed her wings with a slight flare, enjoying the cool breeze as it passed through her primaries. She stilled her wings as she saw a guard stand nearby, thankfully she had plenty of distance in the air and was able to silently glide overhead.
As she approached the walls of the castle things became more difficult as there were numerous lights that lit up the facade, forcing her to keep her distance as she maneuvered past, trying to keep close enough to the castle that anyone looking up wouldn't see her, but also far enough away that the facade lights didn't make her glimmer as brightly as a Hearth's Warming tree. It was difficult to manage and more than once she strayed too far either way, however luck was with her and soon as she glided into the abandoned station, flaring her wings to bring herself to a gentle landing.
Of course she ended up flaring a little too early and fell the last few hoof lengths, but she was able to catch herself without too much drama. Now she just needed to get a quick rest before Pipp cleared her sister's name and made sure that every pegasi knew that they should love Zipp. Pipp yawned and didn't even bother looking for a decent place to rest, instead just curling up on the ground surrounded by her sister's secret flying research.
"Did she really just leave?" Sunny asked incredulously, shocked that Pipp had just run off on them. "She knows how important this is for every pony."
"She said that she needed to sort something out first." Zipp awkwardly tried to excuse Pipp's behaviour, but it was clear that Sunny was not happy at all. "I'm sure that by the time we get to Zephyr Heights she will join us and it'll all go fine."
"Pipp has made it quite clear that she isn't going to be joining us." Sunny huffed and turned back to the smoothie sitting in front of her, wondering what she was going to do now that one of their number had run off on their own. "She probably thinks that I am trying to force everyone to be friends. Pipp already told me yesterday that she didn't agree with what I was trying to do."
"She isn't against what you are doing, none of us are," Zipp tried to continue defending Pipp, but she could tell that it was a lost cause.
"Just stop," Sunny groaned, rubbing her eyes carefully with a hoof. "It's not like this is the first problem that I have faced, an annoyed princess is easier to deal with than a four storey high robot. I just need to work around the problem and make sure that I can do what I need to do."
"What we need to do, right?" Zipp asked awkwardly as she sat down beside Sunny as the earth pony noisily drank the rest of her smoothie.
"Isn't that what I said?" Sunny asked with a shrug, pushing away the now finished drink. She yawned and checked how high the sun was, groaning as she saw that it was still a while before midday. "I wish that the sun would hurry up. You know, the day/night cycle used to be controlled by two immensely powerful alicorn goddesses who could make the sun and moon move to their whim."
"I know, you've already told me three times," Zipp rolled her eyes, hoping that Sunny would at least have enough tact to not start another historical lecture on the special six friends. The stories were interesting the first time Sunny told her, but repetition did not help. "I think it's time we went back to check on how the rebuild is going, staring at the sun isn't going to make the day go faster."
"I know, but we can't just keep waiting," Sunny groaned, resting her head on the table in front of her. "Every second that goes by it feels like another second where I could be helping every pony to be friends. I can't just sit here and wait when there is so much that I have to do."
"None of that is going to change the fact that Hitch's shift is on today," Zipp waved off Sunny's concerns. "So how about you and I go for a walk today. Stressing about this isn't going to change anything. Either way, tomorrow all four of us are going to be heading to Zephyr Heights."
"You just don't get it," Sunny complained, her voice muffled as she kept her face buried in her hooves on the table top. "I am the one that has to make sure this all happens, they all expect it."
Zipp just rolled her eyes before resting her foreleg on the table to prop up her head. She knew that today was going to be a long day.
The sun shot through the stained glass windows, casting it's savage burning light directly into Pipp's sleeping eyes. Swearing in a very unmarely way, Pipp yawned and turned away from the light, before opening her eyes and realizing where she was. She pulled herself onto her hooves, wincing as she felt her back complain about the night's floor sleeping on the hard tile floor.
Pipp's back wasn't the only thing sore from the night spent roughing it. Her forehooves were all equally unhappy, and somehow even her hips hated it and no amount of stretching would alleviate the dull ache. Groaning to herself she also felt her stomach start to grumble, reminding her of how many meals she had managed to miss in her mad rush to get to Zephyr Heights early. So it was with a few dull aches and a hungry tummy that Pipp decided to explore the abandoned airship terminal and come up with some sort of plan.
It turned out that Zipp had a lot more secrets hidden within the abandoned airship station. Sure, Pipp wasn't surprised to see a lot of chalkboards 'acquired without permission' covered in the supposed secrets of flight. However Pipp was surprised to find a whole lot of super unhealthy snacks hidden everywhere.
Of course, candy and almost stale cupcakes were not what one could call a balanced meal for breakfast, but Pipp couldn't really bring herself to care. In anything, the intense sugar rush would just make her come up with a plan even faster than before. So, with her stomach no longer grumbling at her and enough sugar running through her veins to cause her to constantly vibrate off the excess energy, Pipp was ready to think.
Pipp quickly realized two very important things. The first was that the airship station had seen better days and was honestly a bit of a hazardous place to be. The second was that it was very difficult to calmly think up plans when one was hyped up on sugar. Neither really helped her planning, so it ended up taking more than an hour to plan out and sketch up a plan for her next video.
Research on her phone had actually brought up some rather interesting things about flight in the capital. While the magic of flight had somewhat returned, it was barely enough to support much more than gliding on thermals with a little flapping. For some strange reason the flight had not yet fully returned to Zephyr Heights, and Pipp realized that a fair amount of the anger from the last stream had been from an audience thinking that she was faking flight again. She needed to be extra convincing this time around.
After a few practice takes and rehearsals Pipp was happy with the flow of the livestream and was ready to go for real. In all honesty, she was not looking forward to it. The chat had been particularly vicious with her last time, and she knew that as soon as she hit the start stream button those same comments would be thrown at her. She knew that they were just words and that it was just ponies venting at her, but that did little to stop her feeling horrid at every bad word aimed her way.
Her hoof hovered over the start stream button as she tried to psych herself up for the stream, however she just kept on seeing the anger waiting for her. Just the merest twitch of her hoof and all of her ex friends would be throwing anger at her. However, she pushed past her worries and tapped the small button, the phone instantly switching over to streaming mode. Within just a few seconds the comments started to fly by, and Pipp couldn't stop herself swallowing nervously as she saw the hatred re-emerge.
"Hello, everypony," She called out nervously into the phone, not able to keep the nervousness out of her voice. "I understand that my last live stream did not go down well. I don't blame anypony that was unhappy with me. I know that I did wrong, so I was going to stop doing any live streams. However there is something more important than me that I wanted to talk to you all about."
Pipp paused to check the chat, before quickly minimising it as she was hit by the wall of anger directed squarely as her. She took a deep breath to calm herself, this wasn't for her. She was doing this for Zipp, Izzy, Hitch and Sunny. She knew that she just had to power through this and make sure this all worked out.
"I am not live streaming today to try and beg for forgiveness. Today's live stream isn't even about me. Today's live stream is about a mare who tried to tell everypony, a mare who was driven to find out the truth of our lost flight. The mare who is part of the reason that flight is starting to return."
Pipp paused for a dramatic reveal as she quickly twisted around so that the chalk drawings by Zipp filled the video. "Princess Zipp Storm."
"For years my sister had been sneaking down to this abandoned airship station to try and relearn the power of flight." She turned again to reveal one of the powerful fans that Zipp had been testing with. "She actually was able to maintain a glide with one of these fans, and I am pretty sure that she used to sneak out to ride low level thermals around Zephyr Heights entry ravines."
"So even if you dislike me, you should at least know the truth of Zipp's work to bring back flight to everypony. She never wanted to keep it a secret, but she was unfortunately never in a position to make it known that we were unable to fly. So instead she would spend every waking minute she could spare running tests or doing research down here."
"However, that isn't what I started this live stream to tell you. The most amazing thing is that she actually did succeed." Pipp flared her wings as she angled her phone to do her best to demonstrate that there were no strings attached to her. "I didn't fake my flight from the last video, flight is slowly returning to every pegasi. Soon you will all be able to fly, and it is all thanks to Zipp and the three friends that she made last week."
Pipp tentatively opened the chat in the desperate hope that her audience would finally listen to her and return to at least loving Zipp. However her dreams were dashed as soon as she saw the first comment flash by the screen accusing Pipp of lying about flying.
Pipp thought back to Zipp's words when she convinced her little sister to join her in the journey to bring back magic. Zipp had been so sure that returning magic to everypony would make them so excited that they would just forget what happened. Pipp hadn't believed her at the time, knowing far too well that the everyday pony would remember. However for just a few brief minutes Pipp had believed Zipp. That little glimmer of hope that bringing flight to everypony would make them love her again, and now Pipp knew that her sister was wrong.
She could see the hatred bleeding through the comments, each one digging just a little deeper into her. She had known going into this that there would be anger, but somehow every little negative comment just was like a needle digging into her flank. Each one was annoying, but on mass it was almost unbearable. Somehow the fact that now the comments were starting to focus on her sister as well made it that little bit more painful to read.
Pipp was failing and she didn't know how to fix any of this. In the past her apologies had been easy enough, often focused on small mistakes that were easy to rectify and make sure that they never happened again. This was something much more fundamental, this was a mistake in who she was. They weren't angry that she was careless or stupid. They were angry about the decisions she made and why she made them. They were angry at who she was deep down.
Pipp blinked back tears as best as she could to try and regain control over herself, but she knew that it was becoming too much. She wasn't even talking back to the chat, just endlessly doom scrolling through the venomous words that spat bitterness with every syllable. Pipp tried to push through it, to pretend that she was okay, but she couldn't.
She sat down on her rump heavily and tried to rub the moisture from her eyes with a hoof, but it did little to clear her vision. She knew that she was seconds away from crying and there was nothing she could do about it. So with a quivering hoof she jabbed at the button to end the live stream, before dropping her phone beside herself and staring glumly at the dusty floor.
Pipp had failed and she knew that when her friends arrived in the evening it was going to go badly. She had tried being selfless, making it about Zipp and the magic that everypony deserved, but it had not worked. If anything, her attempts had made everything worse.
Pipp's vision started to blur as tears slowly started to fall, landing on the dusty surface between her hooves. She made a weak attempt to wipe her eyes clear before giving up and slumping over against the hard wall, lost in her own misery.
A small part of her knew that it was ridiculous to even be affected by some mere words written anonymously online, but a bigger part of her knew that behind every negative comment there was a real flesh and blood pony. Behind every angry comment there were real feelings of anger and betrayal, and it was all her fault.
Pipp didn't know how long she sat there in silence staring into nothing as she let herself sob. Her online friends hated her, her real life new friends were going to get hurt, and everything was her fault. She didn't know how to handle any of this mess, and she didn't even have a plan left to try. She was lost in her own misery and she couldn't find a way to get free.
A loud snap suddenly dragged Pipp out of her gloom and she quickly jumped to her hooves, her heart thumping as fear raced through her. The entirety of Zephyr Heights hated her and she suddenly became aware that her new friends were not the only ones in potential danger. She had betrayed everypony and it was naive to not realize that an angry mob could easily form. They might even demand her wings on a platter fried in oil and seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika.
Pipp paused as that horrifying mental image bounced around her mind, before she quickly shoved it away. Now was not the time to scare herself when there was somepony nearby trying to find her. She nervously crept forward through the messy airship station, her eyes darting around as she desperately searched for what had made that sound.
"Hi Pipp!" A voice called out from behind Pipp, she quickly spun around to find herself face to face with two young mares. One was a short pale green pegasi filly with a full mint green mane, the other was an equally young pegasi filly with a grey coat and an orange mane. However the most surprising part was that both had ridiculously happy smiles on their faces.
"Told you that Pipp's live stream was from here," The grey filly told the pale green filly as she nudged the other filly with her shoulder. "You wanted to check the alleys, but it was obviously the secret base in the castle."
"Who are you two, and how did you find me?" Pipp asked nervously, glancing behind herself at the stained glass windows as she contemplated making a run for it.
"Oh, I'm Soarin Sunset," The grey filly told Pipp with a smile, "and this is my little sister, Northern Lights." Soarin Sunset gestured at the lime green pegasi beside her.
"We saw your stream and we wanted to make sure you were okay," Northern Lights told her, giving Pipp the most ferocious puppy dog eyes to have ever existed. The cuteness nearly gave Pipp a heart attack, but she was a resilient mare who knew better than to kneel over at the first sign of adorableness. "Are you okay? You looked a little sad before."
"Things could be better," Pipp sighed and winced at the crestfallen expressions that now adorned the young fillies' faces. "I was hoping that everypony would listen to me this time and let them all know that unicorns and earth ponies can be our friends. Unfortunately I wasn't strong enough to do it."
"But you're Pipp Petals," Soarin Sunset protested with a pout. "You're the most bestest mare we know. You are great enough to make every pony be friends."
"No, I am not," Pipp told them miserably, turning away from them. "I'm a failure who wasn't able to do the right thing."
"You always told us to be friendly and help each other," Northern Lights pushed her with her cheek to try and get the older mare to look at them. "You know, Pipp Pipp..."
"It's not time for a Pipp Pipp Hooray," Pipp mumbled. "This is a mess that I don't know how to fix with everypony rightly hating me."
"We don't hate you," Northern Lights told her as she stared at the mare with the most diabetes-inducing pout of adorableness ever performed. "You're Princess Pipp Petals. We could never hate you."
"Well you should!" Pipp huffed as she stared at the ceiling wondering what else could go wrong. "This mess is all my fault."
"It's not your fault, right Northern?" Soarin Sunset countered stubbornly.
"Yeah, none of this is your fault!" Northern agreed eagerly, hoping that she would be able to cheer up her idol.
"I know that this is my fault," Pipp groaned as she sat down with her back to the fillies, shrugging off the hoof that one of the siblings put on her shoulder. "I spent years trying to pretend to be the perfect Princess Pipp, and now everypony who looks at me sees that fake Pipp instead of me. It doesn't matter that I wanted to do the right thing now. For years I was doing the wrong thing, and that is really what matters."
"Why did you do the wrong thing?" Soarin Sunset asked carefully, the two sisters moving to sit in front of her and stare up at her with their adorableness on full power.
"Why?" Pipp laughed bitterly. "I did it because that is what everypony wanted. They all wanted perfect Princess Pipp who could gracefully fly through the air and sing. When I first started I didn't use any strings. My sister and I had just enough residual magic to glide down, so I started my older shows like that, hovering down and singing. It wasn't enough. Every day, I saw comment after comment from people demanding that I do more and more. Asking why I was being lazy. So do you know what I did?"
"No?" Northern Lights shot a glance at her equally confused sister. "What did you do?"
"I tried harder." Pipp exclaimed angrily. "I put everything into my shows. I trained for hours every day to be the perfect singer, I tested wirework for weeks, I dieted and exercised to make sure that I was light enough to move how I needed without straining the wires. I spent months perfecting the wirework, and then on my first perfect performance it all went to Tartarus. That show was half a year in the making, and now everypony just points at it and calls me a lazy fraud. I put my heart and soul into it and now it is just yet another symbol of me being a bad pony that everypony should hate. It doesn't matter what I was trying to do, or why I was doing it.
"All I wanted was to put on a great show, and now everypony hates me because of it." Pipp paused and let out a loud sigh. "Do you want to know what the worst part is? The thing that actually hurts me the most."
"Please, can you tell us?" Soarin Sunset asked, her voice barely more than a whisper as if she was afraid to hear the answer.
"The worst part is that everypony's anger with me is anger that I earnt and deserve." Pipp felt her phone vibrate, but ignored it. Knowing all too well the amount of vitriol held within the notifications. "I did something incredibly bad, and nothing I ever do will make up for it. I voluntarily faked my flight and perpetuated the myth that the royals could still fly. I used my position to lie to everypony. I betrayed everypony's trust, and there probably is nothing I could ever say to make up for it. I can't just say sorry. I can't fix the fact that I lied. I can't pretend that I just made a simple mistake. I chose to keep the lie going every day that I pretended to hover on a wire. I chose to keep the lie going when I spent a month of flight choreography. I chose to be a bad pony who lied about everything."
"Why did you lie about flying?" Northern Lights asked quietly, the two sisters moving to be closer to Pipp as if worried that she would leave if they didn't stay close.
"I don't even know to be honest" Pipp admitted, "It didn't even start as a lie for me. I was always taught that I would be able to fly, but I just wasn't ready yet. In truth Zipp and I could glide, and with the right updrafts I swear Zipp was able to hover. We did have some residual amount of magic, but it was never enough to fly." Pipp paused, wondering if she should continue, before rolling her eyes and continuing anyway. "Eventually I just got sick of not being able to fly for real, so mom helped me practice. She set up wires that I could attach to so I could hover with her. Obviously I did eventually work out that she was also attached to those same cables and everything kind of fell apart. I was stuck in the lie as well. I had told everypony that I could fly, and that my mom could fly, but it was all false."
"Did you ever think about telling the truth?"
"Personally, I never questioned it. But my sis never liked us faking it." Pipp chuckled bitterly to herself. "Mom always told us the same thing, we have a duty to protect everypony and keep up the lie. To make pegasi feel safe. Mom genuinely believed it, so we did as well, until we didn't. Though, then what was I meant to do? Zipp chose to try to convince mom to tell everypony the truth, I chose to make something for everypony to like. I kept up the lie while Zipp searched for a way to actually fix everything."
Pipp frowned, turning away from the siblings as much as she could. "You don't have to tell me that Zipp chose the better option. I knew that it would be better to stop lying, but Zipp had been trying for years with nothing to show of it. So I decided to try a different option. A much worse option."
"Why do you still lie about flying?" Northern Lights asked quietly as her sister continued to tap on her phone. "We all know that pegasi can't fly, so why do you keep pretending? You know that we'd still love you without the flying."
"Still lying?" Pipp frowned and turned back to the two sisters. "That's what I have been trying to tell everypony. Zipp worked out how to bring back flight to everypony with the help of a unicorn and two earth ponies."
The two just stared at her, unconvinced.
"Fine, I'll prove it!" Pipp rolled her eyes as she flared out her wings as wide as she could before flapping them down as harshly as she could, her entire form jumping into the air and staying afloat with her wings flapping carefully. The two sisters stared at her in surprise, their mouths agape as they stared at her. "See, no hidden strings or thermals to keep me in the air."
"H... how did you do that?" Soarin Sunset finally asked, her stutter both adorable and worrying. "Are you actually flying?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell everypony," Pipp landed beside the two twins. "Zipp discovered that our flight can be returned to every pegasi, but it requires us to all live in harmony with the unicorns and earth ponies."
"Don't they smell?" Northern Lights asked, doubt evident in her voice.
"After a long gallop they might've a little," Pipp rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof nervously. "I'll be honest, they didn't smell any worse than Zipp whenever she forgets the deodorant."
"Do you think that we will be able to fly like you?" Soarin Sunset asked quietly, knocking Pipp off her trail of thought and onto a better path.
"Not sure," Pipp sighed at the question, knowing that there was really only one way to let them fly and it would require a unicorn and earth pony meeting them. Pipp's phone vibrated and she grumpily pulled it out, lifting an eyebrow as she saw multiple messages from Zipp. She opened them to see that the others were barely more than a few miles away, she frowned as she knew that she had failed them.
Pipp's eyes snapped open as she looked back at the two siblings beside her realizing that there actually was something that she could do. Sure, there was a bit of a risk, but if it worked then it would fix everything. She smiled at the opportunity sitting right in front of her. If the other pony species couldn't make it to Zephyr Heights, then she was going to take Zephyr Heights to the others.
"I can give you your wings," Pipp told them with a smile, "but you're going to have to trust me. Pipp Pipp Hooray?"
"Pipp Pipp Hooray!" The siblings cheered together, smiles plastered over their faces.
Pipp swallowed nervously and hoped that she wasn't about to make a massive mistake. She just hoped that Zipp hadn't watched her previous attempt crash and burn.
Sunny was not in a good mood and Izzy was not happy with the dour tone of her friend at all. They were meant to be happily trotting along the path to Zephyr Heights, talking and making jokes together as friends. Instead Izzy was just slowly walking while Sunny stroppily stomped ahead of them, and Zipp and Hitch were bringing up the rear.
"Can we please stop for a few minutes, Sunny?" Hitch tiredly called out as he plodded along from the back, trying his best to stay alert and awake for the journey. "We've been walking for hours and I think we all need a quick breather."
"We've got to get there," Sunny called back, not even bothering to turn her head as she stared determinedly at the path ahead. Her own breathing was nearly as laboured as Hitch's, and she was very much aware that he had been working preparing for their trip that morning. However that did little to make her even entertain the idea of stopping. She had to get to Zephyr Heights, she couldn't let them down.
"Hey, you are starting to look a little woozy. Are you okay?" Izzy asked as she trotted up beside Sunny, giving the mare a gentle nudge to get her attention. "Hitch isn't the only one who needs a quick rest, you know?"
"They can rest when we get there," Sunny replied between breaths as she tiredly kept walking ahead, still not even looking back. "We have to get there so I can make them all friends. I have to."
"Okay, it's time to stop Sunny" Izzy stepped in front of Sunny and crossed her forehooves as grumpily as she could. She even made sure to put on her absolute best pout. It was utterly adorable.
Sunny just stepped around the Izzy adorableness blockade and continued her bitter walk. Izzy looked back at the other two, gesturing for them to try something. Hitch groaned and picked up his pace to a canter to catch up with Sunny. As soon as Hitch got alongside her, he grabbed her on the shoulder and pulled her to a stop.
"Hey I w-" Sunny tried to complain before Hitch covered her muzzle with a hoof.
"We are all tired, we need to rest," Hitch told her, not even bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice. He pulled his hoof away from Sunny's face. "So we are all going to sit down for a little while and regain a bit of strength before we continue. Okay?"
"Fiine," Sunny sat down heavily, ignoring the fact that she probably hurt her flanks doing so. "Five minutes, then we keep going."
"Ten minutes and stop complaining," Hitch shot back as he turned and waved for the others to join them.
As they sat down, a quiet buzzing sound broke the quiet. Zipp quickly pulled out her phone, silencing it with an eye roll. However she paused as she saw the notification that she had missed a completed live stream from Pipp that morning. Thankfully some smart pony had made sure to clip the entire thing, so Zipp quickly put on some headphones and pressed play.
Zipp frowned as she realized that Pipp was standing in the airship station. It almost felt like her sister was betraying her by invading her personal room. The feeling was somewhat alleviated by the fact that the station was a public space anyway. However, whatever misgivings Zipp had disappeared as Pipp began to try and explain why she was live streaming.
Zipp smiled as she heard Pipp talk about Zipp in such a happy tone, trying to plead with the audience to care about what Zipp had been trying to do. It was sweet, in an incredibly invasive and awkward way, but still rather sweet. Zipp frowned as she saw that the comment fly past did not share Zipp's positive nature. On screen, Pipp was struggling as her audience lashed out. Zipp sighed as she paused the video, unwilling to watch her sister crash and burn any longer.
"What are you watching?" Izzy asked from beside Zipp, who merely rolled her eyes at the sudden appearance of the unicorn.
"I was just watching a live stream of Pipp trying to make everyone like her," Zipp responded with a shrug, putting her phone back into standby and pulling off the headphones. "She wasn't doing all that well."
"It didn't look like it was going that well," Izzy muttered. "Any ideas on how we can help her? My magic can do all sorts of cool stuff, like sparks and..." She trailed off.
"You can't think of anything other than sparks, can you?" Zipp smirked, "You don't need to worry about Pipp. It's just internet ponies getting angry at her. It's not like they are real or anything. Ponies just like to vent, you know?"
"Pipp didn't seem to think the same way," Izzy pointed out.
"Pipp thinks a lot of things, not all of them are correct." Zipp countered.
Izzy didn't look convinced, but wasn't willing to actually make an argument over it.
"Sunny, what's wrong?" Hitch asked cautiously as he sat beside Sunny, frowning as he saw how jittery she was behaving. "You're acting like you've been living on coffee for a week."
"You wouldn't understand," Sunny rolled her eyes. "It's like every second is another second of failure counting against me. I need to make sure that every pony is friends. You understand that, right?"
"I understand why it is important, and why it should be done." Hitch told her quietly. "What I don't understand is why you feel that you have to rush out and do this all right now."
"I just have to." Sunny snapped, crossing her arms.
"Sunny?" Hitch asked, unsure what was wrong with her.
"Okay, it's been ten minutes," Sunny called out, ignoring Hitch as she pulled herself back onto her hooves again. Grimacing as her leg muscles complained.
"It's been two," Hitch tried to argue, but Sunny wasn't hearing it.
"We've been waiting long enough," Sunny shot back as she started to continue their journey. She knew that the longer they waited, the higher the chance that she would fail to do what she had to do. She had to do this, and she couldn't delay. So it didn't matter if she was tired, she was going to keep trotting until they made sure that every pony all across equestria knew that every pony could be their friend.
Izzy, along with the others, stared at her as she walked off, before huffing in irritation and quickly cantering to catch up with the bitter Sunny. Izzy knew that today was going to be a tiring one, but hopefully the pegasi of Zephyr Heights would be ready to help the travellers rest their tired hooves. Hitch and Zipp followed closely behind.
Sneaking out of Zephyr Heights was not easy, the sun was high in the sky and there wasn't a single shadow to hide in. Thankfully Pipp had a lot of experience avoiding fans, so it wasn't that difficult to make her way around the edges of the city and stick to more empty parts of the kingdom. Initially Pipp had struggled to keep all three of them hidden, before remembering that she was the only one actually hiding. So she was able to send the two young fillies ahead.
Unfortunately her luck was not infinite and when it ended it tended to do so very abruptly. Pipp had just ducked down another alley to avoid a small crowd of pegasi who didn't look happy when she crashed straight into the side of one of the Royal guards. Pipp knew the mare by name, but knowing that her name was Zoom Zephyrwing didn't mean that the guard wasn't going to arrest Pipp on sight.
"Hi?" Pipp weakly waved as she pulled herself back onto her hooves, wondering if she should make a run back into the crowd. "Now I know that we-"
Pipp never got a chance to finish her attempt at making peace before Zoom grabbed her and bodily shoved the princess behind a trash can in the alleyway, a single hoof holding Pipp against the wall and out of sight. Pipp tried to get back to her hooves, but Zoom didn't loosen her hold at all.
"Be quiet!" Zoom Zepyrwing harshly whispered into Pipp's ear as she pushed the pegasi against the wall before turning back to the alleyway entry, her eyes narrowed. After a few tense seconds the guard let out a breath and removed the hoof holding Pipp down. "Sorry about that, the other guards nearly saw you."
"You were protecting me?" Pipp asked in confusion, rubbing her sore forehoof from the earlier shove. "Aren't you meant to arrest me or my sister on sight?"
"The royal guards are here to protect the public ponies and the royal family," Zoom Zephyrwing told her with a shrug. "My fellow guards may have decided that a few lies about flight were enough to throw away their oath, but I don't see it the same way."
"So you're okay with it?" Pipp asked carefully.
"Of course I am not okay with what your family did," Zoom turned back to Pipp with a smile, "Lying is wrong filly, but I made a pledge to keep you safe. Just because you lied about being able to fly doesn't mean that you deserve to be hurt by fools trying to get revenge. I've been guarding your family for years, also it doesn't hurt that I was there when we all got back our wings. It makes it just that little bit easier to see the good in you."
"That's good to hear, would you be willing to help me a little more?" Pip asked nervously, not that eager to take advantage of somepony that had helped her so much already. "I need to get to the Zephyr Heights ravines."
"Why would you ever want to go there?" Zoom asked carefully, giving another glance back towards the alleyway entrance to make sure that they were still unnoticed. "It'll be difficult to get out of the city today, every pegasi is on high alert for any apparent unicorn or earth pony attackers apparently."
"What if we flew?" Pipp asked nervously, flexing one of her wings out and gesturing into the sky.
"Hmm, they wouldn't be able to stop us," Zoom muttered with a look of contemplation on her face. "Though they would be able to track us down by just following us on the ground. There will be a lot of pegasi guards that'll be on us quickly. The nobles have taken a fair amount of control and appear to be very eager to protect Zephyr Heights, no matter what the queen tries to tell them."
"Wait, is mom okay?" Pipp bit her lip nervously.
"She is fine, they are just keeping her under castle arrest." Zoom chuckled. "Honestly I am not really sure what the nobles' plan is at this point. Technically she was never removed from power and no noble is willing to try and be the one to suggest forced abdication as it would basically force all of the nobles to argue over who gets to be the next king or queen. So it's stuck in this awkward stalemate as far as I can tell."
"Okay, good," Pipp smiled. "I have a plan to try and fix this mess. You saw how the magic of friendship allowed us to fly again, so I was hoping to make a live stream of that happening and make everypony learn how to do it themselves."
"Where are we going to find a unicorn and earth pony willing to be friends with ev..." Zoom Zephyrwing covered her face with a hoof and groaned. "That orange earth pony is heading here to make friends, isn't she?"
"She's more of an apricot orange," Pipp muttered before focusing back on the real issue at hand. "Sunny, Izzy, Zipp and Hitch are all going to be here in less than an hour. I want to make sure that everypony in Zephyr Heights learns that being friends is the best thing and that they don't have to be scared. To do that I need to show them being friendly with pegasi, so I need your help to get me there. I already have two pegasi fillies who are willing to try, we just have to make sure it happens and every pony sees it."
"I accept this directive, Princess Pipp Petals," Zoom Zephyrwing gave Pipp a quick bow before flaring her wings. "I will not fail you or the kingdom. Now, brace yourself. You're not the only pegasi who can fly."
Pipp barely had a chance to let out a princessly yelp before Zoom Zephyrwing grabbed her around the barrel and dragged her into the sky, the guard's wings beating furiously to propel them skyward. Pipp pulled her wings in tight to keep the air resistance as low as she could as they shot through the sky faster than Pipp thought possible.
"I can fly you know," Pipp tried to complain, but she knew that she was a long way from being anywhere near as fast as Zoom Zephrywing at full flap. The guard's wings were nearly beating the air into submission as they shot through the sky over Zephyr Heights. The wind was streaming through Pipp's mane and she couldn't help laughing at the ridiculous speed that they were going at.
It was barely more than a few minutes and furious flapping before Zoom angled her wings into a sharp dive. Plummeting to the ground and such a high rate of speed should have been scary, but Pipp could only feel excitedly vibrating through every part of herself. Even her very mane felt like it was quivering to the beat of their descent. As the ground approached Pipp pushed out of Zoom's hold and prepared to land.
Up ahead Pipp could see her four friends trotting along the path, engrossed in a deep conversation of some kind. Izzy seemed to be trying her hardest to annoy Sunny and Hitch by constantly tapping them on the barrel before jumping back as if she was a mischievous cat. Zipp was trotting in front of them with her eyes firmly on the path ahead, Izzy seemed to at least have enough self preservation to not bug the tense pegasus.
Grinning to herself, Pipp pulled her wings back as far as she could, holding them as tight as she could manage to pick up speed, leaving Zoom far above her in the clouds. The speed of the fall was exhilarating, and a part of her wished she had some way to record her, though she knew that at this speed she would have struggled to keep her phone in her hooved.
The ground approached quickly and Pipp smirked as she flared her wings as late as she felt she could, swooping out of the dive and shooting towards her friends at a frankly ridiculous rate of speed. At the last second she flared her wings as much as she could, throwing herself nearly vertical as she stopped on a dime. She quickly twisted into a backward flip to find herself landing perfectly on all four hooves only a few pony lengths away from Sunny.
"That was a sweet dive, Pipp," Zipp called out as she trotted over the Pipp and gave her a quick nuzzle. "I assume it all went well?"
"Not exactly," Pipp winced before opening her eyes wide and trying to placate her sister. "But I have a plan that should work, I even have help from a guard to make it work, as well as a few pegasus fillies who should be perfect."
"What is this about a plan?" Sunny asked with her head cocked to one side in interest.
"I know you said that every pegasi would be happy to make friends now that they can fly," Pipp rolled her eyes and turned back to Sunny. "It was a great plan, except for one little itty bitty problem. No pegasi in Zephyr Heights can fly!"
"That guard is flying," Sunny gestured behind Pipp.
"Actually, ma'am," Zoom Zephyrwing interjected as she flared her wings and landed perfectly beside Pipp. "I'm the only flying pegasi in Zephyr Heights apart from Queen Haven and Princess Pipp. Every pegasi who didn't witness your temporary ascension still can not take to the air."
"My temporary what?" Sunny asked with a raised eyebrow before shaking her head. "Look, this seems like not much of an issue. We just need to show everypony that you can fly and then everything will be fine."
"It's not quite that simple," Zoom began with a frown.
"Did you manage to make your Pipsqueaks forgive you?" Izzy cut in with a smile, shoving past Sunny before grabbing Pipp and pulling her closer to whisper in her ear. "Also who is our new friend?"
"This is Zoom Zephyrwing, she's a palace guard who agreed to help me." Pipp told her as she struggled out of the tight grip of Izzy. "However the Pipsqueaks are not entirely happy with me. Luckily, I've also got two pegasi who are still fans. And they are ready to meet us at the city edge. We're going to make sure to have a proper livestream of them learning to fly so that every pegasi in the city learns the truth. That way you don't have to deal with rioting ponies, and my family has a chance to not be locked up forever. Win win and all that."
"Sounds like you've got a real plan" Hitch told Pipp with a smile, looking impressed. "I didn't know you had some real planner skills in you. Sunny and I kind of just figured that you were just an influencer pony, but it's good that you have planning skills too."
"Hey!" Pipp shot Hitch and Sunny a dirty look. "My live streams take a lot of pre-planning thank you. You can't just start a stream and hope it works out. You need to plan it out, make sure that everything is fully charged, coordinate timelines with my chat moderators and ensure that I am not going to be interrupted by a royal duty. Not to mention planning out what to say, what things you want to show on stream, and backup plans for when things go wrong. Planning stuff is my life, thank you very much."
"Wait, you script out your live streams?" Zoom asked, sounding more than a little put out at the revelation.
"I don't script them," Pipp rolled her eyes and waved her hoof dismissively, "I think a better term would be to say that I plan them so that they aren't boring. There isn't a script of words for me to say, but there is some form of plan for what I want to do or say. Some live streams are spur of the moment, but if any last more than a minute then they are properly planned by your proficient pre-planning, Princess Pipp."
"Ooh, I always adore alliteration also" Izzy cut in as she leant over Sunny's back. Sunny quickly pushed the over-eager unicorn off her back and onto her own four hooves.
For a few moments all of the ponies stared at Izzy, unsure of how to respond. Pipp took a moment to try and straighten up some of the feathers that Izzy ruffled, before giving up and accepting that she would just need to give herself a proper preen later.
"Anyway, we probably should get our cute butts to the city and meet Pipp's pegasi helpers before it gets too late," Sunny paused to look at Izzy's smiling face again, expecting an interruption, before turning back to the others. "So w-"
"Let's go!" Izzy called out, interrupting Sunny as she shoving past all of them and trotting forward. Sunny groaned and soon they were all on a canter along the trail towards the city.
It was a hard trott up the hill and even Pipp was starting to tire from the effort. The only pony who seemed not affected was Zoom, though even her pace has slowed. Pipp was panting more than she wanted to admit, but she was still keeping a strong look out for her two younger fans, hoping that they had made it.
Eventually the ground rounded a bend and she was able to spot her two favourite Pipsqueaks sitting on the path ahead. Pipp leapt into the sky and without a word shot forward to meet her fans, closing the gap as quickly as she could. She landed roughly in front of them and pulled out her phone, fumbling with the small device to get her live stream software prepped and ready. There was only one take at this and she had to do it perfectly.
"We're ready to f-" Soarin Sunset tried to start before Pipp held out a hoof to silence them.
"Okay we're going live in a few seconds," Pipp told them, putting in her best effort to be serious. "My friends are down there and will be here very soon. I want you to meet the two earth ponies and the unicorn, just try to hear them out. The unicorn might be a little silly, but that just makes her more fun. As soon as you are feeling the change, you can fly. You don't need to say anything if you don't want to, the stream is just here to capture what happens. Okay?"
"So make friends and fly," Northern Lights clarified, nearly bouncing on her hooves as she eagerly awaited her potential new friends. "This is going to be so cool."
"Super cool with Pipp Petals too," Soarin Sunset agreed, her own adorable tapping a tell tale sign of her own excitement. "I don't know what's cooler, getting to hang out with Princess Pipp, getting to fly or getting to meet a unicorn and earth pony."
"I mean, clearly Princess Pipp is the coolest," Northern clarified as seriously as she could between giggles, before becoming a little more serious. "I am a bit nervous meeting them, are you sure that they are safe?"
Pipp didn't get a chance to respond before Soarin Sunset cut in. "They are friends of Pipps, or course they are going to be nearly as cool as her."
Pipp smiled weakly, knowing that her actual friendship with the three approaching ponies was a little threadbare for the most part. She liked Izzy, Hitch and Sunny; but she was nowhere near as close to them as Zipp was. Pipp felt more than a little bad at misleading them, but she was out of time to try and make it clearer, noticing with a bit of panic that the others were getting a lot closer.
"Excellent, okay they are nearly here, so we're going live." Pipp told them, jabbing the start button and mentally crossing her hooves that this would all work out. Obviously she couldn't actually cross her hooves for real as she still needed to be able to stand and hold her phone, but she assumed that mentally doing it would be enough.
As soon as Izzy and the others came into view, Northern Lights and Soarin Sunset cheered. Soarin Sunset turned to the phone that Pipp was holding and decided for herself to address the live stream audience. Northern didn't seem quite so eager to be on camera, but the excitement of Soarin Sunset was infectious enough to keep her from hiding.
"Hello every pony!" Soarin Sunset called out at a volume that was more than a little too loud, Pipp's phone struggling to handle the high volume being thrown at it. "Princess Pipp Petals showed us that she could fly and now we're going to show every pony how they can fly too."
Pipp smiled from behind the camera, glad to see the young pony stepping into the presenter role so easily. There was nary a trace of nervousness on the young mare as Soarin Sunset gave everyone a quick summary of what Pipp had told her.
"So that means all we need to do is learn to be friends, and we'll be able to fly." Soarin Sunset paused, looking a bit stuck. Clearly the youngling wasn't quite sure how to continue. Pipp knew better than to let Soarin Sunset flounder any longer so she quickly cut in, talking over the phone without turning the camera back on herself.
"So to learn to fly is a three step process," Pipp narrated as she gestured to the two siblings sitting in front of her. "The first step is to find a unicorn and earth pony that would make great new friends. Lucky for you two, I just so happen to have some I prepared earlier."
Pipp spun the camera around to see Hitch, Izzy and Sunny trotting up the path towards her. Zipp and Zoom were both lagging behind in no rush to catch up just yet. Pipp put a hoof out beside the camera, making sure that it was clearly in view of the camera, and gestured as clearly as she could towards her friends as they grew closer. She waited for them to get a fair bit closer, before spinning the camera back to Northern Lights and Soarin Sunset as they patiently sat there. The two fillies were clearly very nervous at what was about to happen, and Pipp could not be more excited. It was almost too difficult to hold her phone steady due to how much she was quivering in excitement.
"Northern Lights and Soarin Sunset here are going to show you all how to fly," Pipp told her live steam audience, making sure to stay out of the shot. This was meant to be about two young fillies, not her, after all. Pipp couldn't help smiling as she saw the view counter absolutely sky rocket, clearly ZBS had picked up her stream already and was broadcasting it to every pegasi with eyes and/or ears in all of Zephyr Heights.
"Are you sure that they are safe?" Soarin Sunset asked nervously, her earlier fears re-emerging as she was forced to face ponies that she had been told to be wary of for her entire life. She leant away, shrinking back a little at the approaching ponies. "My dad always said that earth ponies squish little pegasi for fun."
"My brother told me that unicorns can zap your brain and make you like broccoli," Northern Lights added, a frown appearing on her face. Clearly the two had not entirely gotten over their worries, so it was time for Pipp to do her best to help them.
"You don't need to worry, my little pipsqueaks," Pipp did her best to placate the two worried pegasi. Pipp glanced over to finally see her friends arrive, stepping back to properly get both groups in camera shot. "These are my friends, so I promise that you'll be great friends with them as well."
Sunny slowed to a stop in front of them, Izzy slightly misjudging and crashing into Sunny's behind and sprawling onto the ground. Sunny shot a look back at Izzy, before returning her attention back to the two young pegasi fillies and letting Hitch pull Izzy back to her hooves. Thankfully the two pegasi fillies found Izzy's antics more amusing than worrying and did chuckle a bit at the unicorns silliness.
"Hi, I'm Sunny!" Sunny waved to the two pegasi sisters as she stepped a little closer and held out a hoof to them. She patiently waited for either to accept a proper hoof shake with the earth pony. Hitch stayed back to give them space as well, but Izzy of course made no such attempt. The unicorn instead loped right over to them past Sunny in her excitement to meet new ponies, almost knocking Sunny over in the process again.
"Hello even more newer friends, I'm Izzy" Izzy cheered as she pulled Northern Lights into a tight hug. Luckily the pale green pegasus filly just let the older unicorn get her a proper snuggle and wasn't all that irritated at the impromptu hug.
Soarin Sunset managed to completely dodge Izzy's haphazard attempts to include her in the hugging as well. Instead ducking past and shooting Pipp a bemused expression before instead reaching out to Sunny's hoof nervously. The young pegasi filly paused for a second to gather her courage before firmly grasping the earth pony's hoof with her own.
"Welcome to Zephyr Heights," Soarin Sunset nervously told the much bigger earth pony, the size difference between her and Sunny becoming very evident as she held the much bigger pony's hoof. "Pipp said that we should be friends and then we can fly."
"That is what I said!" Pipp called out from behind the camera at them, chuckling at the nervousness of the two fillies. Pipp had to admit that Izzy was a little too energetic for the meeting she wanted to film, but it was mostly working out.
"It's good to meet you, Soarin Sunset?" Sunny told her with a gentle smile, though even Pipp could see that the earth pony was raring to do more than give a nice hello.
Noticing the eager expression growing on Sunny's muzzle, Pipp quickly took a few steps closer to properly focus on Sunny. After spending a few days with Sunny, Pipp had gotten good at knowing when the mare was likely about to start giving a big impassioned speech. It was time for Pipp to make sure that everypony heard what they needed to know.
"Myself and my friends are here to teach every pony that they no longer need to live in fear of each other. Imagine if you could have a friend who could use magic, or fly, or be...um strong or something." Sunny trailed off as she got a little stuck in her speech before shaking herself back on focus and continued, "The point is that we need to learn to be together as one, to have peace with pegasi, unity with unicorns and... something with earth ponies?"
Sunny paused and frowned, "I really need to plan out these speeches better."
"What about 'Pacifism with Ponies'?" Soarin Sunset provided.
"That's probably a little too generic," Sunny muttered before shrugging, "we can workshop it later. What I want to say is that I know that many years ago we all had magic, the earth ponies managed the land, the pegasi flew and controlled the weather, and the unicorns managed the connection between them. We were friends, we were together as one."
"So we should learn to be friends to be magic?" Northern Lights asked, having finally managed to free herself from Izzy.
"It's simpler than that," Izzy told them, sliding in beside Sunny and forcing Pipp to step back a little to get the unicorn visible to the livestream. "Friendship doesn't give us magic, the magic that we all want is friendship. It's sitting there in our hooves waiting for us to look down and notice it. There is nothing stopping us from taking it, except for ourselves believing that we shouldn't. I spent years in Bridlewood believing that friendship was something that I will never be able to get for myself, until I received a letter telling me that there were friends waiting for me in Maretime bay. However even with that I was too scared to go, afraid like you that the other ponies wouldn't like me.
"But I knew that I couldn't just stay in Bridlewood and feel my life slip by when I could instead go out there and do what I needed to do. So I made the journey to Maretime bay, I met Sunny, and now I can do this," Izzy raised here horn and focused for a second before her horn glowed a furious golden hue, the others all paused in anticipation, before a flare of magic shot out of Izzy's horn and into the sky. The magic twisted up in a graceful beam of rainbow golden arches before fading as quickly as it began. "I can also open baked beans with it, but I could do that even before I had magic. Horns are that cool."
"I'm not offering you magic," Sunny told the two pegasi fillies, "you already have it locked inside of you wanting for the instant you want to let it out. I'm just here offering you the hand of friendship. So, do you want to be our friend?"
Soarin Sunset and Northern Lights looked at each other for a second before smiling and both reaching out to Sunny and tapping hooves with her. However as soon as their hooves met there was a flash of light between them, the edges hinted with a rainbow color, before abruptly fading. Confused, the two young fillies looked around, unsure of what happened. Pipp trotted closer and gestured for the two to look down at themselves.
They did so and let out excited yelps as they saw the golden magic settling throughout their wings, lighting up the edges of their primary feathers with a beautiful soft light. Northern Lights tentatively flapped her wings, giggling as she felt herself become lighter with just that small amount of movement. Soarin Sunset copied before them two looked at each other with mischievous grins.
"First one to the castle?" Northern Lights asked Soarin Sunset cheekily.
"Starting now!" Soarin Sunset shot back before flapping her wings as quickly as she could and pulling herself into the sky. Northern Lights quickly followed after. Zipp tensed, ready to fly after the two fillies to make sure that they didn't get in trouble, but was stopped by the raised wing of Zoom Zephyrwing.
"I'll keep an eye on them," Zoom Zephyrwing told Zipp and Pipp, before giving them a quick bow and jumping into the air. "It will be good to see your new friends in the city flanked by you both."
Pipp gave her a quick wave, before realizing that she was shaking her phone and probably causing some motion sickness for her viewers. Blushing in embarrassment she quickly steadied her phone and pointed it towards Sunny, gesturing for the earth pony to talk. Naturally Sunny just looked at her in confusion, but Zipp quickly picked up on the unspoken request.
"This is what Pipp and I have wanted to share with you all for the last few days," Zipp spoke clearly, taking her time to address the phone as if talking to a crowd. Based on the number of viewers currently tuned into Pipp's live stream it was probably the largest number of ponies that either sister had ever talked to. "I know that there is a lot that we need to say and make up for, but for now we just want you to listen to Sunny Starscout first, the mare who taught us all how to be true friends."
Zipp pushed Sunny in front of the tiny camera and gestured for her to talk, but Sunny still looked a bit confused by it all.
"Who are you talking to?" Sunny asked nervously, Pipp had given Sunny a basic level of understanding of live streams but she didn't fully understand the concept. "Are these your pipsqueak fans?"
Pipp winced, "I am live streaming to pretty much all of Zephyr Heights right now. So if there is anything that you want every pony to know, this is the best opportunity you could ever have to tell them."
"Oh, excellent !" Sunny's eyes opened wide and she smiled as she saw the opportunity before her. Sunny wasn't much of a pre-planner, but she knew when to take an opportunity by the hoof. "Hello every pony, I am Sunny Starscount, and I have spent my life trying to reunite the pony tribes so that we can all learn the truth of our past. We can stay separated by distrust or false worries, or we can all learn to choose friendship and love. It's only through reaching true unity that we can all get back all that we have lost. There is more than just flight or spells waiting for us, there is friendship as well. There is love just waiting in the wings."
Sunny paused for dramatic effect, though it was slightly ruined by the ridiculous smile plastered over her face and the bouncing of Izzy beside her. However there was an awkward pause as Sunny just continued to stand there and make no indication that she was going to continue talking. Pipp groaned and knew that Sunny needed some help, so she quickly turned the camera on herself.
"We can choose friendship, we can choose love, and we can choose to be together." Pipp told her audience as she gave her best smile, "So join me in opening your hearts to every pony. Together we can be magic."
Pipp turned the camera back to the others and let the perfect silent hang, the others not wanting to interrupt the perfect moment. Until Izzy interrupted the perfect moment to pull Sunny into a hug and congratulate her on the perfect speech. However Pipp did not look away from her phone, a feeling of worry starting to hit her. The numbers were gone.
"Something wrong Pipp?" Zipp asked, trotting over to see what was worrying her little sister. "There aren't any mean comments are there?"
"No, I think it might be worse," Pipp muttered as she furrowed her brows and tapped at her phone. "The viewer count just dropped to absolute zero. No one is watching the live stream any more. No comments, no watchers, nothing."
"What?" Zipp asked, pulling her sister's hoof over so she could see the screen for herself. "Did they all leave when Sunny was talking? Or did it break?"
"No, the stream is still broadcasting," Pipp muttered in confusion. "It's like they all just decided to stop watching at the same time?"
"I think I know what happened," Hitch cut in, pointing with a hoof towards Zephyr Heights. Zipp, Pipp, Sunny and Izzy turned and were all shocked to see a strange multicolored blur floating over the top of Zephyr Heights. At first they were all confused on what the strange thing was, before they realized that it was heading closer.'
"What is that speckly mess?" Izzy asked, tapping her muzzle with a hoof in deep concentration. "It looks like a cloud, but it's all wrong and also not a cloud."
"It's not a cloud" Zipp told them all, her better pegasi eyesight quickly confirming that she was seeing something that a week earlier would have been impossible. "It's flight."
"What?" Hitch asked, completely confused.
"It's a flock," Zipp told them with a smile, "I've dreamt of this moment for years. The day that we can only join one."
"You asked for every pegasi to welcome every pony into their hearts," Pipp told Sunny with a chuckle, doing her best to clarify Zipp's dazed words. "So every pegasus with wings in Zephyr Heights is flying here to give a welcome to you three first."
Izzy, Hitch and Sunny could now make out that the massive nebulous form was not some strange sparkly cloud, but was actually thousands of pegasi all flying towards them. It was not just a simple uniform flock of pegasi flying in unison, but instead a mess of flapping wings and movement as the flapping ponies all jostled through the air in any way they pleased. Amazingly it seemed that no matter how chaotic the fliers were, every pegasus seemed to know how to ensure that not a single mid air collision occurred.
The front of the flock was already beginning to head to the ground around them, most of them made up of the royal guards that had earlier manned the castle. As soon as their hooves hit the ground they spun around, facing the landing crowd as they stood in a perfect circle around the five pony friends. Overhead the rest of the city slowly made their way to the ground as well. Two guards, in the circle surrounding them, stepped aside to allow a familiar face to land and trott over to them, Queen Haven.
"You're okay!" Zipp called out happily as she galloped over to her mother and glomped her. The two fell over as Zipp's speed overbalanced her mother's grip. Chuckling, the two pulled themselves back to their hooves and properly embraced, Pipp fluttering over to get a quick hug as well before pulling out her phone and filming as much as she could. Something told her that this was some primo content that just deserved to be captured.
They all watched as the remainder of the gigantic flying flock landed around them, the excited chattering of the various ponies reaching a nearly deafening pitch. Sunny and Hitch were absolutely amazed by the sheer numbers that surrounded them. Izzy seemed lost in her own world of amazement as she got lost in the new friends just waiting to be discovered before her.
"It's good to see you both," Queen Haven smiled as she pulled Pipp back into a tight hug beside Zipp. "Things have been a little tense over the last few days as every pony wasn't fully sold on unity. However it seems if one can't tell a pony the truth, you can always just show a pony the truth instead."
Pipp looked over at their other three friends and smiled at the progress. Izzy was already talking to some of the guards, who were in turn giving her a hoof bump in response. Sunny and Hitch were a little more hesitant but were also trying to make conversation with the nearest pegasi. The castle guards were doing a good job of crowd control, letting in some just pegasi to talk at a time and making sure that the crowd never surged forward. It was something they had been forced to learn after a few too many of Pipp's performances had gotten a little too popular.
Meanwhile Queen Haven was staying a fair distance back from the edge of the circle of guards, content to get a few more moments to talk to her daughters. It had been a nightmare for a few days and she was quite happy to see how Zipp and Pipp were fairing.
"Do you think they'll ever forgive us for lying?" Pipp asked nervously as she looked out at the happily smiling mass of pegasi that surrounded them.
"I dare say that they already have decided that there is nothing to blame on you two." Queen Haven admitted with a shrug. "They seem rather happy with how everything is right now."
"We still did not do right by them," Zipp muttered, guiltily flapping her wings.
"No. I did not do right by them," Their mother admitted, frowning as she spoke the bitter truth. "I kept that lie alive to maintain my position in life. However you two are an entirely different matter. You both did what you felt was right for your fellow pony. Pipp, you lifted their spirits and kept the dream of flight alive for them. You wanted to make them happy despite everything. Zipp, you searched for a way to bring back flight. You wanted to give them back what they had lost."
"I'm not sure I did that," Pipp muttered, no longer willing to look her mother in the eye. "I just flapped a bunch and sang. Zipp was the one that actually did something."
"What I did?" Zipp snorted, "I wanted everyone to be able to fly, but I didn't actually accomplish anything other than a few burnt out fans and some smashed chalkboards. Let's face it, neither of us actually helped."
"And yet here we are surrounded by hundreds of happy pegasi who can now fly," Queen Haven pointed out. "You two helped Izzy, Hitch and Sunny repair the unity that was always sitting hiding under the surface. I am hearing both of you desperately trying to blame yourselves for not trying hard enough, for only trying to make things better instead of succeeding. That's a fool's errand to judge yourself on your failures alone, to ignore your efforts and successes."
"They shouldn't respect us for just trying." Pipp shot back bitterly. "They shouldn't respect anything about us after everything we did."
"Everything we did?" Queen Haven asked with a smirk. "I'd say that everything you two did earnt quite a lot of respect in the eyes of every pony here. You two are the reason that pegasi were able to reunite with
"Maybe everyone can respect Zipp," Pipp argued, stamping her hoof adorably. It was hard to be stern when you were a hoof width shorter than every pony else. "I don't deserve any respect. I got revealed as a fraud to every pony, so I basically didn't have a choice."
"You can't tell me that you didn't have a fallback plan after getting exposed at your performance." Queen Haven tapped Pipp on the snout with her hoof. "You've always been the tricky little planner with escape plans and fixes hiding in that little noggin of yours. However you didn't take any of those options, when you heard of your sister's plan you switched to help her. Didn't you?"
Pipp nervously rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. It was true that she had quite a few options to fix what happened. A few well placed sock puppet accounts and some careful messaging immediately after the performance would've gone a long way to fix her image before it really went bad.
However Pipp knew that her mother was also correct that as soon as Pipp heard what Zipp's plan was everything changed. Pipp knew that she was making life harder for herself later to not get ahead of the negative press, but she also knew that she had to help Zipp. The chance to bring back everypony's magic was too large of an opportunity to ignore. No matter the negative repercussions.
"That doesn't stop me feeling guilty," Pipp muttered before being pulled back into a hug from Zipp who then immediately followed it up by messing with Pipp's mane. Pipp shoved Zipp away with a laugh. "Stop it, I'm trying to be serious here."
"How about we stop feeling guilty about the past," Zipp told Pipp as she gave her little sister a nudge with her foreleg, "and instead try to make sure that Izzy and Sunny get to make all the flying friends they want. Got any plans for that?"
"I always do," Pipp smirked as she raised her wings and gestured towards Sunny and Izzy. With a simple nod the two sisters flapped into the air and flew over to Izzy and Sunny, tackling their friends. Queen Haven just rolled her eyes and sat back, knowing that when the two started communicating wordlessly them things were about to get silly or stupid. Queen Haven also knew better than to try and stop her daughters when they were determined.
Within seconds Sunny was in the air, held aloft in Pipp's forelegs. Izzy was a little more squirmy but Zipp was not far behind pulling Izzy into the air as well.
"Wait, what are you doing?" Sunny called out in confusion as Pipp pulled her higher. Sunny was not the lightest pony to exist, so it was more than a little difficult for Pipp to pull her into the air. However Pipp persevered and perspired, straining her wings as she flew. Soon enough
"I'm giving you a chance to make some flying friends, and to make sure that they make friends as well." Pipp cheered as she leveled off her flight, hovering in the air over the crowd with Sunny hanging beneath her. Sunny looked down and saw that her hindlegs were only a few pony lengths away from the crowd beneath. Meanwhile Izzy was chanting for Zipp to speed up and catch up to Pipp.
The pegasi looked up at the two royal sisters and their non-flying cargo. Their attention leaving each other and focusing back on Zipp and Pipp as they hovered overhead. Zipp and Pipp slowly hovered through the air before moving over onto a gentle hill, touching down as carefully as they could to not squash their friends. Soon the crowd jostled closer to try and get a good view
"Ponies of Zephyr Heights," Pipp called out, hovering just overhead to make sure that she was visible and audible to everyone. Sunny awkwardly hung beneath her looking rather annoyed with her flying friend as she dangled from her hooves. "Our friends need to talk to all of you so please be quiet and listen."
As the crowd slowly began to fall silent Pipp gently hovered down to the ground, being careful to make sure that she didn't land on Sunny again. Eventually the crowd did become mostly silent and Pipp quickly pulled out her phone and started recording again. Sunny awkwardly stepped forward to try and address the crowd, before she was abruptly interrupted by a question yelled out of the crowd.
"Are you the avatars of being friends," A young voice called out from nearby, Pipp smirked as she saw that it was Northern Lights holding up their hoof. Pipp was glad that Northern Lights had received her message. No matter how good your plans are, you still need allies to make sure that those plans come to fruition.
"I wouldn't say that we are the avatars of friendship or anything," Sunny meekly tried to respond before Pipp rolled her eyes and shoved Sunny forwards. She hadn't gone to all the effort of planning this for Sunny to chicken out.
"We literally are showing ponies how to be friends," Pipp groaned. "An avatar is the embodiment of a pony or idea, we are both of those things. So answer the question."
"Ah, we are not that at all," Sunny replied meekly, smiling weekly for the crowd.
"Sunny!" Pipp groaned and pulled Sunny back before turning to the crowd. "Give us just a second to work this out."
"Are you saying that we each represent an element of harmony and friendship," Sunny countered with a whisper to Pipp. "I'm pretty sure that isn't true, also there were six elements of harmony, and there are only five of us."
"Maybe one of us has two elements?" Izzy asked weakly before frowning at the idea, not liking the unhealthy power dynamic. There was an awkward pause as they tried to work it out. The crowd of pegasi were at least content to wait for them to figure it out. Sunny greatly preferred them over the considerably less patient Canterlogic event crowd.
"Wait, I think I get it. We don't each represent one element, we represent far more than that." Hitch realized as he turned back to Sunny. "Think of the original bearers that you told me about, were they each more than just the one element that they represented?"
"What do you mean?" Sunny asked in confusion. "Fluttershy was kind, Rainbow Dash was loyal, Applejack was honest, Rarity was generous, Pinkie Pie was always making laughter, and Twilight Sparkle was the spark of magic that held them all together."
"No, that was never the case," Pipp smiled. "You can't tell me that Applejack was never loyal, that Rainbow Dash wasn't honest, or that Pinkie Pie wasn't kind. They were all so much more than just a single trait that ruled them. They didn't represent a single element of friendship and harmony. They represented all of the elements of friendship and harmony whenever they were together. They were all kind, they all brought laughter, they all were loyal and dependable, they were all honest, they were all generous, and they were all the spark that held it all together."
"The same is true for you five. All five of you represent the elements within yourselves and what you did to bring back our flight and introduce us to unity." Queen Haven told them loudly, her voice casting out over the crowd. "However the same is true for every pony who accepts those around us. The magic of unity is something that we should all have. Sunny has shown us the way, Zipp, Izzy, Pipp and Hitch have proven that it is possible. So now we all need to raise our wings and prove that we can all embody the elements."
Sunny stepped up, knowing that there was one final thing that she needed to say. "I did not bring friendship and unity to you all. Friendship is not a one way trail, it's two or more. So I did not do it," She paused and gave her best smile, pushing away the nerves as best as she could. "We all together brought friendship and unity to one another."
"Friendship is what we can do together, and together we can all be the spark that allows friendship to truly blossom." And with an ear splitting cheer from the crowd, the five friends knew that they had started something much bigger than themselves.
