Sombra's End and New Beginning

[Misty Shadow 7,846]

You can also read this on FIMFiction.net. 

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/529296/sombras-end-and-new-beginning

"How can a villain be permanently destroyed AND reformed?"

This was Sunny Starscout's first thought upon discovering an old comic book in her attic while she was cleaning the Crystal Brighthouse with her friend, Izzy Moonbow. After dusting it off, the two found that a lot of the cover was worn and faded, but could still make out the art of a menacing-looking, shadowy, gray unicorn growling and a blue, glowing, heart-shaped artifact below a title they could make out from deteriorated letters, "The Final Destruction and Redemption of King Sombra".

"Hey, a heart!" Izzy exclaimed, pointing her hoof at the heart-shaped artifact. "Kind of like my cutie mark! You don't think this scary-looking pony could be a distant ancestor of mine Auntie Buttons never told me about, do you?"

"I'm not even sure who made this comic, Izzy…" Sunny answered, still examining the cover art and noticing more faded letters. "I think these say, "S…p…i…", but after that, all I can make out is an "o" and an "n" spaced a big gap later."

"Hmm, Spion…" Izzy said, beginning to muse to herself in amusement. "Do you think whoever made this comic was some kind of super sneaky spy, documenting his intel on Equestria?"

"All I know is that it's worth looking at…" Sunny replied, opening the comic as she and Izzy began reading…

---

The story of the comic appeared to be continuing the story of an event that had been documented before it…this is what the comic entailed…

In the Crystal Empire, King Sombra was locked inside of a cage suppressing his magical powers. Princess Cadance was beside the cage, the two of them in the part of the Empire where the Crystal Heart was. The Heart had remained unmolested from Sombra's most recent invasion of the Empire, however, as with this being the fifteenth time Sombra had returned, Cadance had minimal trouble in foiling the despot's scheme.

"I have to be brutally honest, Sombra…" she told him, her voice emphasizing disgruntlement. "I'm disappointed at how half-baked your strategy was this time. You usually come up with something a little more clever, but this time, you locked yourself in a cage in a failed attempt to imitate something you saw on a magic show!"

"Hey, it was The Great and Powerful Trixie's Magic Show!" Sombra defended his ingenuity-lacking tactic.

"Listen, I'm getting tired of this!" a weary Cadance exclaimed in frustration. "We're all getting tired of this! I don't feel like getting my sister-in-law and her friends down here to strike you with a rainbow laser or a light explosion for the millionth time!"

"Fifteenth time." Sombra "corrected" her hyperbolic remark, further annoying the princess. "And you think I'm happy about it?"

"Why quite frankly, I do." Cadance made a rejoinder that surprised Sombra. "Because you'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd like for us to destroy you again just so you can get another shot at doing something stupid like this, wouldn't you? Well, not this time, bucko. This time, when we destroy you, mark my words, it's going to be for good."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Sombra scoffed, trying to call what he thought was a bluff. "What, are you going to annihilate my soul or something? This isn't God of Crystal War!"

"Oh, we'll figure something out…" Cadance replied ominously, glaring at the autocrat sternly while trying to make her voice sound intimidating. "We'll figure something out…"

---

Later, Cadance was in a room in her palace, standing at a blackboard while trying to have a discussion with her husband and daughter, Shining Armor and a teenage Flurry Heart who wore sky blue glasses, braces, and a headband strung together with varying colors of bits of crystal, and an adult Spike, the Crystal Empire's hero, about what to do with Sombra.

"Okay gang, seriously." Cadance told them bluntly. "We have to destroy Sombra for good and I have no idea how. Can you help me figure something out?"

A pensive and puzzled Flurry Heart, sitting on a folding chair beside Spike and her father, who were also sitting on folding chairs, raised a hoof.

"Yes, honey?" Cadance said, beaming brightly.

"Why can't we just try confining Sombra to a magical prison or reforming him like we do with every other threat to Equestria?" she asked bemusedly, immediately causing her mother's facial expression to go from happy to shocked.

"…That's dangerous thinking, young lady." Cadance chided her in surprise. "You know what the definition of insanity is, don't you? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. With Sombra showing no signs of wanting to change or being able to tolerate imprisonment after being destroyed this much, what makes you think this time will be any different?"

Flurry found herself squinting her eyes in bewilderment at her mother's mental gymnastics.

"…Have you ever talked to Sombra to try and see what made him evil?" she inquired.

"Um…no." her mother answered. "But I'm sure Spike has."

"I can confirm that." Spike chimed in. "Once, when Sombra was trapped, kind of like he is now, I took the time to talk to him and see what made him the way he is in an attempt to gather research for my comics documenting my experiences in Equestria. Our discussion was an eye-opening one, to say the least. Just like in one of the comics I made about him, he was abandoned at a young age. He was once under the care of foster parents who weren't very good to him. They yelled at him a lot, wouldn't let him play with his best friend a lot of the time, dressed him in some very silly clothes…"

"You see, Mom?" Flurry asserted her point. "We can't just look at everything from one side, especially when we've always been so much more patient with other evildoers who might not have been dressed in silly clothes!"

"There's something you need to understand though, honey." Shining Armor interjected. "We actually have been incredibly patient with Sombra. No other villain comes back this much. Like your mom, I'm getting really tired of him always returning. I miss the time when he didn't say a whole lot or do a whole lot, honestly."

"We knew literally nothing about his personality back then." Flurry retorted.

"True, but I have the most bizarre feeling of nostalgia for that hectic time now that I'm a lot older." Shining remarked. "After all, I got to throw your mom!"

Cadance then angrily threw a piece of chalk from the blackboard at her husband's forehead, leading him to cry, "Ow!", as he and the chair he was sitting on fell to the floor.

"If you're going to take my side on this, be serious about it!" she exclaimed.

"Ugh, throw my wife, please…" he quietly muttered to himself in indignance.

"Honestly, I'm not sure why there even need to be sides here." Flurry commented innocently. "I already have an idea about how to give both "sides" in this situation what they want."

"Regale us, what are you proposing?" Cadance asked in a moderately facetious tone.

"A way for us to destroy Sombra for good and reform him simultaneously!" Flurry proclaimed sincerely, shocking the three others. Each of the three raised their own question in puzzlement.

"How in Equestria do you plan to do that?" Cadance asked.

"Why not just destroy him for good?" Shining asked after getting up.

"Why not just reform him?" Spike asked.

"Let's just say I know some very advanced magic now that I want to use to make every pony happy, regardless of where they stand." Flurry tried her best to answer all three questions at once.

"What kind of magic?" Cadance continued to pry.

"Remember that story you told me about how I accidentally broke the Crystal Heart when I was a baby?" Flurry reminded her. "And how you had to combine a spell for reconstituting relics with The Crystalling's magic in order to restore the Heart? Well, what if I told you that I now have the power to recreate the Crystal Heart out of anything?"

"That's…an impressive power." Cadance complimented. "You are my daughter after all, the next in line to be a Crystal Princess, so I do believe you."

"Wait, I don't need to prove it?" Flurry remarked in surprise as she was already in the process of taking the crystals from her headband with her magic and transforming them into an exact replication of the Crystal Heart, stunning everyone in the room.

"Okay, partial as I am to the past, that would've been awesome to have back in the day." Shining admitted. "Would've saved us a good twenty minutes."

"How much is that in comic page time?" Spike pondered.

"Incredible as this is…" Cadance said curiously. "…how is this going to help with your plan? Sombra's locked up, the Crystal Heart's in no danger."

"I see how it could help…" Spike chimed in. "The last time I talked to Sombra, he also let it slip to me that the reason he's always able to come back is because his mystical ashes dispersed in the wind by the light can always be carried by the wind to a place where he can slowly and safely reconstitute his body. But if we had some way of trapping his ashes, having them absorbed inside of the kind of environment that would not allow them to coalesce into a shadow…"

"Wait, do you mean…" Cadance said in surprise, something slowly dawning on her.

"Perhaps it's easiest for me to illustrate what I want to do." Flurry suggested as she used her magic to levitate the chalk Cadance threw and went up to the blackboard.

She used the chalk to show the three her plan for Sombra. All three of them marveled at her unique idea.

"It's ingenious…" they collectively thought in disbelief. "I hate to admit it, but I'm more scared of her than Sombra now…"

---

Back outside the Empire, Sombra was groaning in frustration, having nothing to do in his cage.

"Ugh…" he grumbled. "Even prisoners on death row get treated better than this…oh?"

He then noticed that Cadance, Shining Armor, Flurry Heart, and Spike were approaching.

"Oh, thank darkness." he said in relief as they came up to his cage. "I was hoping your plan for supposedly destroying me for good wasn't having me die of boredom. Because at that rate, it might've worked."

"Supposedly?" Flurry retorted, pushing up her glasses with a confident smirk on her face. "No, we are definitely going to destroy you for good and reform you while we do it."

Sombra could only stare at her in bewilderment for a few seconds before bursting out laughing.

"BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

He rolled around the floor of his cage guffawing loudly.

"Oh, shut up!" Cadance cried in frustration. "You wouldn't be laughing if you saw her plan!"

"Would her plan happen to be having me laugh myself to death so I die happy?" Sombra jeered. "Is that your idea of redemption through death?"

"No, we have no intention of reforming you in death." Flurry told him solemnly. "By destroyed and reformed, I mean it literally, in life. You will be destroyed, then made anew."

"So you really are being serious…" Sombra remarked haughtily. "Let me laugh even harder. BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

"If you make fun of our daughter one more time-" Shining proceeded to irately threaten Sombra before Flurry interrupted him.

"No need to lose your cool, dad." Flurry said to him, raising a foreleg to his chest. "Let him laugh. It's not like he's getting the last laugh. Not in this form, anyway."

"Yeah…" Spike prepared to interject with his own taunt. "If you thought getting blown up by a baby dragon was humiliating, you've seen nothing yet."

"I've seen all sorts of things in the millennium of my existence." Sombra replied, unphased. "I've spent most of my time alone. I know myself better than any pony or creature ever could and I know for sure that I can not be "reformed". Though to be fair, I never thought you wouldn't be able to stop me from cracking up!"

"Don't worry, you cracking up is just Phase 1 of the plan…" Flurry retorted with a cheeky smile on her face as she used her magic to make a sledgehammer appear, surprising a now worried Sombra. "The next phase will literally blow you away, putting it bluntly…"

Sombra gulped as he saw a male, muscular, green Crystal Pony with a brown mane and tail dressed like a construction worker approach Flurry.

"Here's that sledgehammer you wanted, Dry Cement!" Flurry innocently told the stallion, a friend of her dad's she had been introduced to by him in the past, giving him the tool and causing him to smile and beam with glee before he took off. After he did, the Crystal Heart began to glow brighter.

"Now that I've lifted his hopes, it should just need one more touch of my magic…" she said before she cast a spell that made a giant blue heart made of magical love energy materialize and float towards the Crystal Heart, becoming absorbed by it and causing it to spin and become brighter than ever. Sombra's worries began to intensify.

"Calm down…" he attempted to assuage his anxiety in his mind. "I've been through this before. This time will be no different than last time…"

Sombra's attempts at alleviating his fear proved futile, however, once the Crystal Heart stopped spinning, allowing him to see what should've been his normal reflection. The legend of the Crystal Heart says that it allows a pony to see their destiny, and what Sombra saw staring back at him was…an image of the Crystal Heart with a magical ball of light shining inside of it.

And at that moment, Sombra knew in his heart that this was the end of himself as he knew it. Before the Crystal Heart's light washed over him, Flurry made a final comment…

"This is the part where you scream, "NNNNNOOOOO!", right?"

When the light gave the residents of the Empire their crystal coating while causing Sombra to start cracking and coming apart again, he simply replied…

"No, not this time. I'm getting tired of yelling, "No!"."

"Easily your best "No!" yet!"

And with that, he exploded inside of his cage, pieces of him spreading all over the cage and flying through the bars on the floor. However, his bits were not all that laid there…

"What's this?" Flurry asked in feigned surprise, looking down at the floor at varying colors of blue shards of an ancient relic. "It seems my magic was more than the Heart could handle, and so, it shattered along with Sombra. Hardly a setback, however. For this is where the second phase begins…"

Flurry used her magic to gather the pieces of the shattered king along with the pieces of the shattered Heart and levitated them in the air. Just like she had done with her crystal headband, she began making an exact recreation of the Crystal Heart by transforming the remains of Sombra into blue crystal pieces and molding them together with the remains of the Heart. Once she was done, she put the newly made Crystal Heart in its pedestal, causing a ball of light inside of it to radiate and expel a dark mist from the inside that dissipated into the air.

And with that, King Sombra was gone. For Sombra was now the Crystal Heart.

---

A few days later…

The residents of the Crystal Empire roamed the streets looking happier than ever, relishing in the now especially resplendent luster of their crystal coating. The newly made Crystal Heart was influencing the citizens to feel more hopeful than ever, the news of Sombra's final defeat and reformation providing them with additional encouragement.

Meanwhile, Flurry Heart, her parents, and Spike were all gathered around the Crystal Heart, admiring the future heir to the Crystal Empire's throne's work.

"So you're saying this ball of light inside of the Heart is Sombra?" Cadance said to her daughter, pointing her hoof at the still glowing ball of light that expelled the darkness from inside the Heart. "Is it his soul?"

"More or less." Flurry answered. "The Heart is now his body, but the particles of his body that remain in the Heart are also part of him, having been transformed from particles of shadow into particles of light."

"Llllliiiiggggghhhhhttttt…"

A low, deep voice similar to the voice of Sombra when he first returned to the Empire echoed from the Heart, startling everyone besides Flurry.

"Woah, is that-?!" Shining cried nervously.

"Relax, dad." Flurry told her father, smiling blithely. "I thought you were nostalgic for the time he was like this."

"He's back to who he was when he invaded the Empire for the first time since he escaped the ice of the arctic north?" Shining asked, bewildered.

"Not exactly." Flurry replied. "The demeanor of the Sombra from then was a product of him being in a disembodied state. This Sombra is simply still adapting to this form."

"And does he like this form?" Spike interjected.

"Yyyeeesss…" Sombra continued to speak from the Heart. "Crystal Ponies feeling hope…"

"Does that answer your question?" Flurry said cheekily. "In all seriousness, because Sombra and the Heart are one now, and the Heart's role has always been to reflect feelings of love and hope throughout the Empire, he will surely enjoy fulfilling that role, never being without a sense of purpose."

"Unbelievable, Flurry…" Cadance remarked in amazement. "How did I ever doubt you? Your strategy was perfect! You found a way to permanently dispose of Sombra that makes every pony happy…including Sombra! You've already surpassed me! Heh, I guess it pays to be a villain sympathizer!"

"Sympathizer?" Flurry replied in confusion, raising an eyebrow. "When did I ever say I sympathized with Sombra?"

"Huh?!" her parents and Spike reacted in perplexment.

"But…you were the one who was suggesting that we reform him to begin with." Cadance stated.

"Only because I wanted to be fair to him, not because I felt sorry for him." Flurry explained her true intentions. "And reforming him wasn't actually my idea. I got the idea from reading a comic book Spike wrote about him being redeemed. Dad got it from a comic convention for his collection a long time ago and let me read it. It was great, but one thing I never enjoyed about it was the rushed and cheesy ending where Sombra got off scot-free. No offense, Spike."

"None taken." Spike said with a sigh. "I'm always open to criticism, I just can't believe that my comic played the factor it did in all this."

"Well, I wasn't punishing him simply because I was dissatisfied with something I read in a story when I was younger." Flurry insisted. "All your comic did was open my mind up to another point of view, making me want to punish Sombra in the fairest way possible while also redeeming him. He needs to be both understood and punished."

"Got it." Spike replied happily. "Good to know your intentions were still pure."

"I'd wonder about that…" Flurry said teasingly. "How do you know for sure that I'm a saint?"

"…What does that mean?" Spike asked in bemusement.

"It means that you should broaden your perspective." Flurry answered. "The same way you needed to be fair to Sombra, willing to see that he was more than just an evil soul, you need to see that there's more to me than just an innocent princess. We are all amalgamations of good and bad, and I am no exception."

"Uh heh heh…" Shining chuckled nervously. "You don't have to be so modest, honey."

"It's simply the truth." Flurry bluntly retorted. "The world isn't black and white. We all have a darkness inside of us that we need to embrace. Embracing mine is what led me to come up with this plan, my plan of giving Sombra the greatest punishment imaginable and the greatest reward imaginable at once. As an alicorn princess, it is my role to punish the wicked for their sins while also guiding them down the right path."

"Good to see you're willing to…take on such a big responsibility?" Cadance said with an uncomfortable smile.

"The wage of sin is death…" Flurry said ominously. "The only way to pay the full price of your evil deeds is with your life…but what happens after you've been destroyed so many times and still continue to do evil? Because Sombra never learned from his many demises, he had to be punished a different way. Thus, I sentenced his soul to this cruel fate."

"You said that he enjoys this fate." Spike remarked. "How are you being cruel to him?"

"Can you think of anything crueler than being permanently transformed into the thing that represents everything you despise?" Flurry replied with a ghoulish smirk. "Having to suffer that fate forever while the identity you possessed and held dear for so long is forever destroyed?"

"You don't mean…" Spike said as something horrifying suddenly dawned on him.

"That's right." Flurry told him sinisterly. "What I've done to Sombra is the closest thing you can get to making him suffer eternally while also annihilating his soul…just like in God of Crystal War!"

Cadance, Shining, and Spike were slack-jawed and flabbergasted.

"Sweet mother of Celestia…" Shining remarked in disbelief. "I never knew you liked God of Crystal War too!"

"HONEY!"

"DUDE!"

Cadance and Spike respectively exclaimed those cries in disapproval as they both nudged him, leading him to grunt, "Oof!".

"I mean," said Shining, "Flurry, I appreciate your good taste, but do you know what you're saying?!"

"You say that as if I have lost my mind." Flurry replied, still speaking in an unsettling tone. "No, you simply don't understand me because you have not expanded your way of thinking like I have. The cruelest fate I've had Sombra suffer is also the kindest fate he could ever meet. Living forever as a being of pure light, only knowing love and hope, only spreading positive energy for ponies to enjoy, what better existence could one ask for? In giving him Tartarus, I have also given him paradise. Can't you savor the irony? Mother, you too are an alicorn. Don't tell me you don't enjoy the divine humor?"

"It's demonic humor and I don't enjoy it." Cadance rebuffed her indignantly. "Cease this nonsense, you are not a sadist. I will not allow you to fall to Sombra's level."

"Fall to his level?" Flurry replied bemusedly. "How can I do that if Sombra is now an embodiment of hope? Besides, I can only rise from here, not fall. I will rise to a level higher than you and Aunt Twilight. Soon, I will have dominion over all of Equestria! I will lead all of pony kind into a new era where there is only light, love, and hope...brought about through embracing the darkness! I will bring an end to all suffering, and all of pony kind shall call me…OMEGA…HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

"Ha ha ha ha ha…" Sombra began to laugh from inside the Heart too.

"BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" Flurry then began to laugh just like Sombra did in his cage, falling to the floor and rolling around.

"Our daughter's totally lost it!" Shining cried in horror. "She triumphed over the darkness, only to end up succumbing to it!"

"W-wait a minute…" Cadance said in realization, her face contorting into an embarrassed smile.

"Oh man…" Spike said, also feeling abashed as he began to chuckle. "Pfft…ha ha ha ha ha!"

Soon, he and Cadance were on the ground laughing too, as Shining continued to fret.

"Oh no!" he cried in fright. "Now, the madness has spread to my wife and the Empire's hero!"

"No, Dad!" Flurry exclaimed, talking in her normal tone of voice. "I was kidding! Did you actually think I was going to go mad with power and try taking over Equestria? You read too many comics!"

"What…REALLY?!" Shining shouted. "All that…FOR A JOKE?! …You're the best daughter I could've ever had! HA HA HA HA HA!"

After Shining fell to the ground and joined the gang in their laugh, Flurry explained the meaning of the joke.

"You get it now, right? I was serious when I said that I did what I did for Sombra to be fair to him. The joke was to show that even I, the "sweet, innocent princess", could've ended up just like him, had I embraced my inner darkness the wrong way and chosen the path of darkness. You have to see everyone and everything from more than just one side. And this way, everyone gets to have the last laugh!"

"Sweetie," said Cadance affectionately to her daughter, "you scare me more than Sombra. And I l love you for it."

"You're fearsome like your mother and a nerd like me." Shining also told his daughter something he meant to be a compliment. "The perfect combination you could get of both."

The two parents both gave their child a hug, sharing love with each other that Sombra could feel now too.

"I feel…hope…radiant hope…" he said joyfully, fully appreciating a sense of peace and warmth he hadn't felt since the day he met his childhood friend…

Seeing this sight, Spike began crying tears of joy.

"Shining, bro…" he told his friend. "Do you know any spells for helping to preserve comics better? I'm definitely making this into a comic…and I want to make sure it lasts for as many generations as possible…"

Fin

---

That was where the story of the comic ended…as Sunny and Izzy finished reading it, they noticed another page containing an author's note…

Author's Note

Something serious has happened not just to the Crystal Empire, but to all of Equestria since the time I originally finished this comic. I'm not going to whitewash the facts, make excuses for why this is happening, or give any creature reading who knows what I'm concerned about false hope or more reasons to worry. All I need to say is that our world is changing and not for the better. I've seen a darkness far worse than the darkness that was once in Sombra engulfing this land. They call me Spike the Brave and Glorious in the Empire, but I don't feel such a lofty title suits me anymore, since I'll never be half the hero Twilight is. The best thing I can do right now is leave messages behind for our generation and the generations that follow to read, so that her legacy will never be forgotten. I have to thank her brother too for making my goal during this plight possible. I'm writing this message for the reprint of this book because I feel the moral of this story is something all of Equestria needs right now more than ever.

Always keep your mind open. You have to look at everyone and everything from more than just one perspective. Don't just seek to destroy what you think is evil, remake it into something beautiful you can share with those you love. Don't just hate who you believe to be your enemy, accept that you have darkness in you too and laugh. This is a time where we all need to understand each other more than ever and not forget…

…

…

…light will always be with you.

That was where the author's note ended, some of the words having become too worn and faded for Sunny and Izzy to read.

Finally closing the book, Sunny and Izzy found themselves feeling a myriad mix of emotions, astonishment, curiosity, and puzzlement being the predominant ones.

"Wow, that was…a lot to take in." a befuddled Izzy commented.

"It's amazing…" Sunny said in fascination. "Spion…must actually be Spike the Dragon…my dad told me about him. He was Twilight Sparkle's assistant, her royal advisor and royal recorder who sought to preserve Equestrian history with the help of her brother, Shining Armor. I was worried all of his comics would have been dust by now, but we've had one of his books here the whole time!"

"So he's not a spy?" Izzy replied in disappointment. "Dang it, that means I can't make the Sparkle Seven references I wanted to!"

"That's not what's important, Izzy." Sunny told her friend solemnly. "What's important is that Spike put his heart and soul into ensuring a crucial lesson would never be forgotten no matter how bad things in Equestria got. Flurry Heart…she was just like me. She saw that things needed to change, so she spoke up and made that change. And more importantly, she didn't allow her accomplishment of changing the status quo to make her arrogant. That joke was her way of showing that just like Sombra, she had darkness inside of her too. She wanted to use that darkness as a way to make other ponies happier."

"Don't forget the way she unicycled Sombra!" Izzy exclaimed in admiration. "What if it isn't him, but her who's actually one of my distant ancestors Auntie Buttons never told me about? Then again, I'm sure Auntie Buttons would want me to know about a pony as awesome as her! If we are related to Flurry, she might not know. Regardless, it's fun to think of that as a possible reason for the Moonbow family's creativity!"

"Flurry's also Twilight Sparkle's niece…" Sunny remarked, musing to herself. "I have wondered to myself at times about what my family history entails. I don't think it's just a coincidence that I united the pony tribes and made friends with you, Pipp, Zipp, and Hitch as part of a prophecy passed down in my family for generations. My last name, Starscout, could be a reference to how Twilight loved to stargaze, I gained alicorn powers just like Twilight, and that prophecy showed how much my family valued the importance of friendship just like her…could it be…"

"Oh my hoofness!" Izzy exclaimed in apparent realization. "Something I never thought of before just hit me! The greatest similarity between you and Twilight!"

"What?!" Sunny cried curiously.

"You're a complete and total dork too!" Izzy blurted out.

The two stared at each other for a moment before they fell to the floor laughing.

"Yeah, that's the best argument for my possible relation to Twilight." a jovial Sunny said. "But what matters most is the present."

The two got up off the floor.

"Come on, we can clean another time." Sunny told Izzy. "For now, let's go meet our friends and see if they're in the mood for smoothies. We got to tell them what we learned today."

"Alright!" Izzy exclaimed cheerfully. "I can't wait to see what I can unicycle with our empty cups! Maybe I'll even tell every pony what got me into unicycling to begin with!"

After Izzy made that declaration, turning her head as she and Sunny went to the front door of the house to depart, a familiar light began to glow inside of the bits of crystal in her headband, a headband just like Flurry's…

A voice just like Sombra's echoed familiar words from the light…

"Hope…radiant hope…"

The End and the Beginning