when worlds collide

Zipp was the first to spring into action. She took off with incredible speed, flapping her wings desperately to try to catch up to the changelings. Pipp knew her wings weren't going to move fast enough so she followed with Sunny and Hitch on hoof. They all knew where they were headed. They all also knew they wouldn't be there in time.

* * *

Izzy had finally arrived at the lighthouse. She had cried the whole way there. She knew Hitch didn't mean it like that. He was probably just flustered. She knew though, that in her outrage, something was true. Hitch would never want to be with a pony like her.

She climbed the lighthouse onto the balcony and she stared down with tears still in her eyes. I could end this all now She thought. She hated herself for thinking this way. She didn't know what to feel anymore. She wanted to believe, deep down in her heart that there would be ponies who would mourn her death. But the only image in the front of her mind, was an empty funeral hall.

She turned away from the balcony. She went back inside and looked to her left. She saw cans of paint still left over from when they had remodeled the brighthouse. She used her magic to levitate the can towards herself and looked inside each one until she found what she was looking for.

Black. Pitch black.

She threw the paint all over the glass doors leading out to the balcony. If I can't see it, then I can't think about it. Out of sight, out of mind. She knew the others would probably get mad at her for ruining the glass but she didn't care. She slowly walked into the bedroom that the five of them shared and walked towards her bed. She surveyed everything she saw. Fluffy pillows, craft supplies, and a strange amount of googly eyes. She encased the googly eyes in her purple magic and levitated them towards herself, as she grabbed them with an outstretched hoof. She walked over to the balcony and threw them off. She thought that she could at least throw something off of the balcony today. She just needed to make sure it wasn't herself.

She sighed with satisfaction as she heard the shattering of the glass below her. And the rattle of plastic as thousands of googly eyes spilled everywhere. Suddenly, she heard the beating of wings. But these weren't pegasus wings. These wings sounded different. Like those of a fly you would swat away without skipping a heartbeat. She looked up to the sky and suddenly found herself wishing it were just flies. Hundreds of changelings began to turn the sky black.

There were a few that landed right next to her. She quickly kicked them with a hoof and raced inside. She locked the doors on both floors. she thought her friends had surely seen the horde, and were on their way back now. But she didn't know if they would come back to save a pony like her.

She collapsed onto the bed. And began sobbing once again.

* * *

Hitch was the first to reach the brighthouse. After a while of flying, Zipp had to join them on the ground. The others were still a few meters back. They all came rushing up hoping that the changeling horde hadn't seen them.

"Everypony look." Hitch said while surveying the ground in front of them. "Broken glass and... Googly eyes?" He was confused. he was sure this was probably one of Izzy's strange possetions. But why is it out here? And why is it shattered?

Pipp breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh thank goodness." she breathed out. "That was just Izzy's googly eye jar. Thank god she finally got rid of that. It's been creeping me out for ages now."

Pipp gave a small wince of pain as she was smacked by her sister. Hitch's thoughts however were on other things. I really hope Izzy hasn't hurt herself at all. He thought as he was reaching for the door. He put a hoof on the door only for the knob to jiggle and the door to not open. This was strange. They never locked the brighthouse under any circumstances. He figured this was a good excuse. there was a giant changeling mob terrorizing Maretime Bay and she probably didn't want to see him anyways.

Zipp and Sunny kicked off the ground and flew up to the glass door. They couldn't understand what they were seeing though. The door had been splashed with some liquid. Whatever it was, they definitely couldn't see through it.

"Watch out Sunny!" Zipp yelled as she landed, turned around and bucked the door as hard as possible.

There was a sound of glass shattering, and a scream of pain.

Sunny looked down to see that the door had in fact broken. But a piece of glass had lodged itself in Zipp's hoof. Sunny landed next to her as blood began to pool around her leg. She looked inside and Izzy was lying face down on her bed.

Izzy didn't even care if the changelings broke in at this point. Let them kill her. It wouldn't matter in the slightest to anypony anyways. She perked up though, when she heard Sunny's voice from the other side of the now broken door. She looked over to see Zipp lying on the ground and Sunny panicking, not knowing what to do.

"Okay hold on Zipp" Sunny was saying. "Maybe we can find a medic pony or somepony like that." Sunny began to put pressure near the top of Zipp's hoof in an attempt to stop her from bleeding out. Zipp winced at the pain but made no movement to stop her.

Izzy rushed over and gasped at the sight in front of her. By now, Zipp's back legs were covered in her own blood. Zipp was going to pass out if this continued. Izzy got down to get a better look at the glass. It had broken through the soft part of her hoof but it had made a clean cut. Izzy used her magic and began to wiggle the glass. Zipp was screaming with every movement but the piece of glass was soon out.

Pipp had flown up now to see what all of the commotion was, but looked down to see her sister passed out and covered in blood. "What happened!" Pipp yelled while looking from her sister to the piece of glass still being held in Izzy magic.

"Your sister tried to buck the glass door open and ended up with a shard of glass stuck in her hoof." Sunny explained. "Not really the brightest idea but it kind of worked I guess."

"Are we gonna have to fight off all of these changelings?" Izzy asked with sadness and fear glistening in her eyes. She was certain Sunny would want to help the citizens of Maretime Bay as much as possible so she turned to walk inside to gather a few things when she heard her answer.

"No."

"Wait really?" Izzy was shocked. This was incredibly out of character for her friend. Usually she would spring into action at the first chance she got but this time, she was standing here refusing.

"The best way that we can help all of these other ponies, isn't by temporarily holding back the threat. It's by taking it out at the source. We need to find a way to destroy these three. I think our first target should be Tirek. He will become more and more like a god as he sucks magic from other ponies."

Izzy silently nodded and went downstairs. She looked out the window and saw Hitch standing outside comforting some of the other woodland creatures. Izzy hesitated for a few moments and then reluctantly opened the door.

Hitch raced inside and shut the door quickly. "Oh Izzy! Thank God! I really need to talk to you. Back at the campsite-"

"Not now." Izzy cut him off. Mostly because she didn't want to hear his apology. No she thought in her head. I'm just not ready to hear this right now. "Zipp is in trouble upstairs and we need to leave as quickly as possible."

"Leave!" Hitch asked surprised. "I thought we were going to fight off these changelings to help everypony else."

"No." Izzy replied. "We are leaving to find something to defeat the three villains." She made sure to make her tone of voice sound as angry as possible but what she didn't want to admit to herself was that she wasn't really mad at him, she was just mad at everything else.

They walked upstairs and Hitch raced over towards Zipp. After Sunny explained to him what happened, his brain immediately began working. "We need to get her to a hospital or something!"

Sunny looked at him like he was a colt. "do you really think there will be any openings at hospitals? These changelings are wrecking havoc throughout the entire town and you think we can get room at a hospital!"

As she was saying this, Pipp yelled over to them and pointed her right forehoof towards the rest of the town. To Sunny and Hitch's horror, Maretime Bay was in flames.

* * *

Hitch couldn't believe it. The town he was born in. The town that he and Sunyn had become friends in. The town that could even withstand Sprout's childish wrath. And it was all being burned to the ground.

On the floor, Zipp awoke with a start and jumped to her hooves before immediately collapsing to the ground. It took her a second to remember what had happened to her. She looked down at her hoof and breathed a sigh or relief when she saw that the glass piece was gone.

She drew in a shaky breath and began speaking. "You guys know that hooves can take multiple moons to heal right? We're going to need some serious healing magic or I'm going to be out of commission for the rest of this mission."

Izzy gave a half-hearted smile. "I know a really good healer back in Bridlewood. If we could get back there, she could easily heal your hoof. You'll still need to rest a few days but it would definitely be better than waiting moons for it to heal."

Zipp shoots a skull-piercing glare at Izzy before shouting, "We were already on our way to Bridlewood! But no, the great and self-important Izzy needed to run back here just because a dumb stallion hurt her feelings! We wouldn't even be here if it weren't for you Izzy! My hoof wouldn't be hurt and we would probably be in Bridlewood by now!"

Izzy couldn't believe this hostility from Zipp. She had seen her get into fights with her sister but even those never resulted in screaming. Izzy found herself getting angry as well. "Well excuse me! At least I didn't accuse my friend of having sex with another friend!" she spat back.

Hitch could tell he was blushing at the moment. On the bright side, no one was looking at him. All eyes were glued to the heated exchange between the unicorn and the pegasus.

"Fine Then! Explain it to me! Why were you sleeping with Hitch then? And why were you two holding each other that way! Excuse me but if that's not bucking suggestive, I don't know what is! If you ask me. In fact if you ask ANYPONY they'll tell y-"

"He was helping me through a tough time!" Izzy cut the pegasus off. She didn't want to hear it anymore. "I don't know if you noticed princess but my best childhood friend was just murdered. In fact, I didn't see anypony lifting a hoof to help except for him! And I will not stand by while you accuse the best stallion in the world of doing a horrible thing he didn't do!"

Hitch found himself turning that last line over in his head. Did she mean that she liked him or that he was just the only stallion she was close to at the time. This mare was harder to read than any criminal he had ever dealt with.

No one spoke for a while. Sunny sat up and said "Alright everypony. Let's just forget what just happened okay? We need to get out of here fast. Izzy, We can put Zipp in your unicycling cart and we can pull her along. Let's go."

* * *

they walked in silence for a couple hours. Sunny was using her magic to pull the cart along because her magic was much stronger than Izzy's. The motor cart had run out of gas about sixteen miles ago. Hitch tapped Izzy with his hoof and gestured for them to fall back.

They began to walk slower than the rest of the group for a few seconds to let them get about thirty feet ahead of them. They still spoke in whispers even though they were pretty sure it would be hard for the others to hear them.

"did you mean what you said?" Hitch asked. "About me?"

Izzy thought back for a second trying to remember what she had said about him. There were a lot of things said during that conversation. "Yeah I did" she replied.

Hitch sighed. "Listen." he started. "About what I said. I didn't mean it like that. I really do like you. You're one of the best friends I've ever had. You really are a great pony Izzy. I know you've been going through some hard times lately. Just remember that I'm always here to help."

Izzy choked back some tears. One word he had said hurt her more than any changeling or centaur could have. friend. She looked at him and said softly, "thank you. You're the best friend I've ever had too."

Hitch almost winced at that word. friend. When he had said that, he was testing her. The last thing he had wanted to do was to tell her that he loved her and then have her reject him. He would be the laughingstock of the friend group forever. Not to mention things would get awkward between him and Izzy. He decided to try to pull her away from the "friend" mindset. "What about Sunny?"

Izzy replied, "Sunny's great and all but what I said back there was true. Sunny barely even tried to comfort me. We sat outside Bridlewood for a while but we never really talked about it. You didn't just comfort me but you held me. You made me feel like I was finally safe."

Hitch smiled at her and she smiled back. The first genuine smile he had seen on this unicorns face for a while.

Izzy ran forward and caught up to Sunny. "Sunny I'm tired. can we set up camp here? We're about halfway there."

"Yeah sure Izzy. I'm pretty tired as well. Hey everypony we're going to set up camp!"

* * *

They all sat around the campfire that they had made. Zipp was laid down on a sleeping bag and she was already asleep.
They didn't bring much food and there was nothing to cook over the campfire. Sunny and Pipp were laughing about something on Pipp's phone while Hicth and Izzy sat in silence next to each other.

Sunny looked over towards Izzy and said, "Hey Izzy, if you don't mind talking about it, what exactly was your connection with Geode."

The question instantly sparked tears. Izzy began crying once again. Hitch and Pipp glared at Sunny who put her hooves up in defense. "Hey! I was just asking. you don't have to answer if you don't want to Izzy."

Izzy sniffled and looked up. "n-no." She stuttered out. "It's okay." She drew in a long shaky breath.

"you see..."