The sound of hooves clip-clopping down a tile hallway roused Zipp from her sleep, the sharp yet muted staccato dashing away her soaring dreams. The white pegasus groaned and rolled over, sprawling out on the bed. She figured it must either be Pipp or her mom getting up in the middle of the night to use the fillies’ room or to fill up a glass of water—she just wished they’d do it quieter, or at least remember that they could fly now and flutter along the palace’s gilded halls to keep the noise down. But when the hinges on the window at the end of the hallway squeaked open, Zipp grew curious… and concerned.
She rolled out of bed, blue hooves landing on a plush throw rug that muffled their fall, and the pegasus yawned and stretched out her wings before she quietly padded over to the door. Gently pressing down on the latch, Zipp swung the door open with her hoof and stuck her head through the gap as it glided open on well-oiled hinges. She caught a glimpse of a silhouette perched on the windowsill at the end of the hallway, and when she blinked to try and focus on it with sleepy eyes, the figure hopped out of the window and into the night sky.
“Wha…?” Zipp mumbled to herself, and she rubbed at her eyes with her feathers. She glanced in the opposite direction down the grand hallway, noting that the double doors to her mother’s master bedroom were still firmly shut, but her sister’s bedroom door was ajar. “Pipp?” she asked aloud in a sleepy murmur, and now even more concerned, she made her way to the open window as her hooves clopped against the marble floors of the palace. The cool air of the night coming in through the window greeted her face even before she stuck her head through the open portal, and she had to shield her eyes for a moment as the bright midnight lights of Zephyr Heights and its many skyscrapers nearly blinded her through the wispy clouds that drifted over its mountain perch.
When her eyes had adjusted some, Zipp let them wander around the city before her, moving up and down the white and gold architecture and darting between colorful advertisements in the city that never slept. She didn’t really expect to see her sister out in the night; there were too many bright lights and shifting shadows for her to pick out a little pink pegasus slipping away under cover of the night. At any rate, she assumed that Pipp was just slipping off to film some kind of video challenge or something of the sort. Social media was her younger sister’s life, and the lengths she went to create ‘content’ for her ‘Pippsqueaks’…
The amount of time her sister wasted staring into her phone when she could be doing something useful or fulfilling only left Zipp shaking her head. But it got Pipp the spotlight she craved, and if it kept the public eye off of herself, then Zipp was more than content with letting her younger sister steal the show.
She was about to go back to bed and write off the whole situation as Pipp being Pipp, but she stopped when she did one last sweep over the palace grounds before closing the window and turning away. There, on the garden balcony overlooking the steep drop off the side of the mountain, staring into the moon, was a pink pegasus with fluffy white wings sitting still as a statue.
“Pipp?” Zipp wondered aloud again. Quiet introspection was never her sister’s forte. The only time Pipp wasn’t singing or talking was when she was asleep or absorbed in her phone. She definitely wasn’t asleep, as far as Zipp could tell, and she stared up at the moon, not at a glowing rectangle in the darkness. It seemed so unlike her that Zipp ultimately decided to hop through the window and glide down to check in on her.
The grass softly crunched under her hooves as she landed, and after a brief shake of her wings to get her feathers back in order, Zipp folded them against her sides. Insects buzzed under carefully manicured hedges and fireflies added wan pulses of yellow-green light as they lazily bumbled to and fro, but Zipp ignored all of that, her attention focused on her sister. She stopped a few tail-lengths away, and after struggling for a few moments to come up with the right words to say, she instead resorted to a simple, “Hey, Pipp.”
Her name got the first sign of life out of the pink pegasus Zipp had seen thus far. “Hey,” was all she said, but it was quiet and restrained—hardly the Pipp that Zipp was used to. She didn’t even take her eyes away from the night sky nor acknowledge her sister in any other way.
Zipp took a step closer. “Soooo… you doing something out here? Some kind of meditation or something? Some kind of challenge?” She looked around Pipp’s hooves but didn’t see her phone. “Where’s your phone?”
“In my room,” came Pipp’s reply.
Zipp stopped dead in her tracks and blinked. “Oh,” she said. “This is serious then,” she quietly added to herself. Raising an eyebrow, Zipp slowly plodded closer until she was standing by Pipp’s side, but still her sister refused to look at her. “What’s wrong, Pipp?”
Pipp’s muzzle scrunched up for a second before settling back to a mask of neutrality. “Nothing,” she said.
“Uh huh.” Zipp sat down next to her sister, though still a cool distance away. “That nothing must be pretty important to get you to put down the screen for five minutes.”
The comment got an irritated flick out of Pipp’s tail. “Go away,” the younger pegasus snapped. “Just…” A huff and a growl. “Leave me alone.”
“Soon as you tell me what’s really going on, I’ll be out of your mane. Then you can keep an eye on the moon, make sure it doesn’t go anywhere.” When Pipp didn’t answer, Zipp cocked her head at her. “This about your… what is it, your Instapone thing? Just make some apology video or something and they’ll all forgive you for the concert. You’ve done it before.”
“It’s not about them,” Pipp said, and for the first time, she took her eyes away from the moon. When she looked at Zipp, there was anger and hurt in them. “It’s about you!”
Zipp blinked. “Me?” she asked. “What did I do?”
“You left me there!” the younger pegasus exclaimed. “Hanging from wires, a fake for all the world to see! You could have done something, coulda… I don’t know!” Pipp’s lip trembled and she sharply turned away. “But you ran off and I had to get out of that mess myself. I barely got away before they arrested Mom!”
“You know why I had to run,” Zipp protested. “Remember the whole crystal thing? Bringing magic back to the world, the fate of all ponykind in the balance? It’s only been like a week, Pipp. I would have helped you if I could.”
“You could, but you didn’t! I had to escape and find you, and you were about to leave me behind!” Pipp bared her teeth in hurt and her eyes started to shine. “How do I know you’re not going to do it again?”
The pain in her sister’s voice took Zipp aback, and it took her several seconds to find her voice. “Pipp, you’re my sister,” Zipp assured her, and she scooted a few inches closer. “I didn’t know what I was going to do at that moment. I had to think about getting the rest of us to safety, but I would never leave you behind. I care about you too much!”
“Do you?” Pipp asked in a quiet voice. “You and Mom never had any time for me when we were fillies. You never cared. Why should now be any different?”
“Never…?” Zipp stared blankly at her sister as she tried to parse out what she just said. “This isn’t just about the concert, is it?” she asked Pipp, and when Pipp sniffled, Zipp closed the remaining distance between her sister and herself. “Pipp… tell me what’s wrong. Honestly. I need to know what I did wrong.”
Pipp sniffled again, and her fluffy white wings trembled. “With you and Mom… I-I sometimes feel like the third pony pulling a two-horse cart. Mom’s the queen and you’re the heir. You’re more important. You’re her favorite. I’m just the spare daughter with the pretty voice. She doesn’t have time for me, and you don’t want anything to do with me. You’re both too important for me.”
“That’s not true,” Zipp said, forcefully. “The whole plan I had with Sunny and Izzy only got as far as it did because you had all of Mom’s attention, Pipp. She was so happy and proud to see her daughter perform that she shut everything else in the world out. Even me.”
“Because I have to compete with you for her attention.” Pipp’s hurt accusation accompanied a soft growl in her throat. “The rest of the time? It’s all ‘Put the phone away, Pipp,’ ‘You spend too much time on the Internet, Pipp,’ ‘Why can’t you be more responsible like your sister, Pipp?’ But how can I be like you when there’s only one heir? When there’s only one Zipp Storm?”
A tear fell from Pipp’s pink cheek. “Mom doesn’t have time for me and you don’t want anything to do with me. The only time I feel like somepony appreciates me is when I’m streaming or singing. And even then, they only love me because of what I can do, not because of who I am!”
Pipp shuddered and wiped at her nose with the back of her hoof, while Zipp could only look on in shock, mouth slightly agape. She wanted to deny everything Pipp said, to tell her younger sister that she was just being paranoid or confused, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, because a part of her worried she was right. Their mom was queen, and she always had to have the interests of her subjects at the front of her mind. And when there weren’t any pressing concerns to address, their mom turned her attention to her, the heir to the throne, often to scold her or chastise her about the weight of the crown and the responsibility that came with it. She had spent countless hours bickering back and forth with their mom over the responsibilities of being the heir apparent, and when she wasn’t doing that, Zipp often found herself either practicing her parkour around the mountains or in her hidey hole in the abandoned station trying to unlock the mysteries of aerodynamics. When was the last time she’d been to any of Pipp’s rehearsals? When was the last time she’d done anything together with her sister before Sunny and Izzy made their way to Zephyr Heights and turned her world upside down? How long had it been since she’d shown her sister she was loved?
It put Pipp’s addiction to her social media and her stardom in a completely different light. It gave the pink pegasus the attention her mother often couldn’t spare her or her sister was reluctant to give. And while their adventure with Sunny and Izzy and Hitch had brought them together for a time and put those feelings on the backburner, now that they had returned to Zephyr Heights, that loneliness and fear of being left out must have struck like a sledgehammer. Of course it made sense that now would be when Pipp finally cracked; their adventure with Sunny had brought the family closer together, and now that it was over, how could she know whether things would change or if they’d just go back to the way they were?
Zipp wrapped her wings around her sister and pulled her close to her chest.
The pink pegasus froze, unsure of what was going to happen next. But Zipp just closed her eyes and leaned into the embrace, hugging her sister tight. “I’m sorry,” she murmured into Pipp’s ear. “For leaving you hanging. For not being there. For ignoring you. I haven’t been a good sister. But I can try to be a better one from now on.”
Pipp trembled once. “Really?” she asked, her voice a tiny whisper.
“Really,” Zipp assured her. “We may not be two of your ‘Littlepipps’ or whatever you call them, but Mom and I? We’re your number one fans. Mom loves to listen to you sing. You were the star of the show that night, and nopony was as into it as Mom was. And after we ran all across the country with Sunny and the rest of our friends? I know you’ll always have my back. So I’m gonna do my best to have yours.”
She gave Pipp another squeeze. “So, what do you say? Sound good to you?”
The pink pegasus shivered. “But how do I know you’re not just saying that? How do I know that you actually mean it?”
“Because if we can befriend an earth pony and a unicorn, we can befriend each other,” Zipp said. “We’re family. We’re sisters. We’re supposed to love each other. Just because we haven’t been the best at it before doesn’t mean we can’t try now, right?”
Her sister sniffled again, but she leaned into Zipp’s embrace and nuzzled her chest. “Y-Yeah,” the popstar princess choked out. “Thank you, Zipp.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Zipp told her. She held the embrace for a few seconds longer, then relented so Pipp could sit upright. When she did, Zipp gave her a gentle bump, shoulder to shoulder. “So, when are you singing next?”
Pipp sighed and grumbled, some of her usually colorful presence and personality beginning to creep back into her. “Beats me. They basically canceled me after that show. Canceled! Me! Can you believe it?”
“They did seem pretty mad,” Zipp admitted. “As far as revolutions go, that whole ‘lock up the royals for not being able to fly’ thing happened pretty fast. At least it sort of worked itself out when we got magic back. But, uh, yeah, that sounds like it sucks. How are you gonna get out of it? Get ‘uncanceled’?”
“Like you said, it’ll have to be an apology video or something of the like.” Pipp huffed and let her wings droop. “I’m going to have to put on so much mascara and just really go to town on the eyes. And get a lemon for the tears. I hate that part.”
Zipp raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t seem all that genuine of an apology if you have to set it up.”
“It is!” Pipp protested. “It is a genuine apology. But my fans only appreciate drama, so you really gotta turn everything up to eleven.” She gasped and turned to Zipp. “Idea!” she sang. “If I get you and Mom in on the video too, then it can be an apology from the whole family! That’ll really bring in the views!”
“If you say so,” Zipp said with a roll of her eyes. “But I’m not putting on makeup and pretending to cry on stream.”
“Oh, you don’t have to, Mom’s good at playing the part. Besides, the whole ‘emotional princess’ thing was never really your style. Your fans always liked how serious and disinterested you were.”
Zipp’s eyebrow climbed high up her white forehead. “Wait… I have fans?”
“Of course you do, silly filly,” Pipp said with a chuckle. “Ponies are always asking me when’s the next time I’ll get you in a video. Though of course, they’re just strangers on the Internet. You’ve got a bigger fan living right down the hall from you.”
Zipp looked at Pipp, and when she saw her younger sister’s smile, she couldn’t help but smile back at her. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. They shared a sisterly nuzzle, and when Pipp yawned halfway through it, Zipp patted her on the back with her wing. “Come on, it’s late. We should get back to bed.”
“Yeah… a princess has to get her beauty sleep,” Pipp said. Then she winked at Zipp. “I know how much you need it.”
“Har har,” Zipp said as both ponies stood up. But before they took off, Zipp had one more thing to say. “Hey, Pipp?”
“Yeah?”
“Love ya.”
Pipp giggled and smiled. “Love you too, sister.”
Author's Note
I really enjoyed the G5 movie, and especially Zipp. When I saw the art I used for the cover of this story, I knew I had to write something inspired by it.
