//------------------------------//
// Oratorio 
// Story: Getting the Band Back Together 
// by FanOfMostEverything 
//------------------------------//

Aria had punched a lot of things over the years. She usually imagined they were another siren's face, whichever one had annoyed her more lately. Few of those punches had actually made contact with her fellow prisoners in this stupid world, but she fondly remembered every one of them.

Thus, when her fist sank into something much more soft and yielding than Sonata's nose, she immediately knew something was wrong.

"Come on, keep it up!" The old man who Sonata had come in with pranced about, suddenly between them and wearing so much paisley-print padding that he looked like he was being eaten by an especially ugly couch. "You think you'll win the championship like that?"

Aria snarled and tried to dart around him, but the tough old meat was more agile than he looked. She got angrier, and did what she always did when she got angry.

The punch only made the man's snaggletoothed grin get even wider under the football helmet he definitely hadn't been wearing earlier. "That's more like it! You're a killer! You're a wrecking machine! You're gonna eat lightning and crap movie quotes!"

Aria huffed. Her stupid ape lungs and stupid noodle arms were burning. Even before she'd lost everything, she'd usually settled fights with only one or two blows. Now that she couldn't sustain her meat body with negative energy, now that she actually had to choke down matter just to keep the pulsing, oozing organs that kept her going from betraying her like everything else...

She felt tears running down her cheeks, and that made her even angrier. She lunged at the man, jaws open and teeth that were at least a little familiar ready to tear out his jugular.

She tasted nothing but foam rubber. Spitting and sputtering, she froze as she felt something wrap around her, tight as a hungry squid.

"It's okay, Aria. I'm here."

"Who asked you to come?" Aria thrashed until Sonata let her go, then shot to her feet, glaring at the sparring partner who didn't even have the decency to get eaten. "And who the fu—"

He bowed, back in the ugly suit he'd been wearing when he came in, pads nowhere to be seen. "John Q. Discord, Ph D. and a bunch of other fun letters. Charmed, I'm sure."




1 You're Discord's lackey? (lit. Like are you sucker-fish of Song-Shredder?)

2 The waves led my path (lit. Lead (past tense) waves claim-me traveling.)




Aria took an involuntary step back. Her gaze snapped to Sonata. "Bu ke ki hishrvpeshe bo Reiipivzheerv?"1

Sonata closed her eyes and, head bowed, said, "Mmriieiish shuplii leybli siirirm."2

Aria groaned. "Only you, Sonata."

"Hey, hallucination dude, you get that?"

Everyone turned to the other occupant of the cell, a green-skinned woman with darker green stubble along her scalp and jagged, lightning-like facial markings that pegged her as a griffin aspect.

Mr. Discord shrugged. "I'm afraid I didn't have time to turn on subtitles, but I assume Miss Blaze was so surprised by her devastatingly handsome rescuer that she briefly forgot how to speak Wranglish. Girls, I don't suppose you'd be willing to confirm that for Miss...?"

The woman crossed her arms. "What kinda crummy hallucination doesn't know my name?"

"Shut up, Helga," said Aria. "No one cares about you."

"A griffin aspect whose name doesn't start with G?" Mr. Discord scribbled something in a notebook he was now holding. "Thank you, ma'am, you're an invaluable data point."

Aria gritted her teeth. "No one. Cares. About you. You know what we called griffins back in Equestria?"

Sonata's hand shot up. "Ooh! Ooh! I know!"

"Shut up. You don't. First, because you don't know anything. Second, we didn't call them anything, because no one cared about them."

"Shows what you know," said Sonata, hand on her hips. "I always called them in-flight meals."

"Why did you even come here?" Aria growled out, eyes locked on Sonata's neck and remembering one of the few good things about fingers.

"Because I missed you." After a moment, Sonata pouted. "Didn't you miss me?"

The question caught Aria so off-guard that it even put her out of her strangling mood. "No, because we're sirens and I'm sane. But I guess that's too much to ask from you. I thought we agreed to never see each other again or we'd end up trying to kill each other."

Sonata looked away, digging a toe into the concrete floor. "Yeah, but when you're not there, it feels like it's killing me anyway."

"Heh. Sisters," Helga said from her bunk. "Am I right, hallucination dude?"

From next to her, Mr. Discord said, "Well, I was usually the one who started it, but she was usually the one who finished it. There's a reason I used to call her Fist."

Aria whirled around to them. "Dammit, Helga, what did I tell you?"

Sonata jumped on top of her. "Oh, are you Aria's prison bi—?"

Helga held up a hand. "Girl, you're cute and you bug the ever-loving crap out of Blaze. That's two points in my book." Faint talons emerged from the extended fingers, little more than the reflection off of their razor edges. "Finish that sentence and you'll lose twenty."

Sonata considered that for a moment before shrugging. "Eh. I can take you."

"Get off of me!" Aria cried, thrashing beneath her but unable to shift the heavier load.

"Girls, entertaining as this would be normally, we are on a bit of a time crunch here." Mr. Discord reached out and plucked Aria out from under Sonata, then stared straight at her with the intensity of focused madness. "Ms. Blaze, we're extending you a one-time get out of jail free offer with minimal strings attached and a very generous benefits package." He adjusted his top hat and twirled his mustache. "What say you?"

"Why bother?" Aria swept a hand over the cell, something like a smile tugging at her lips. "Have you seen this place?"

"Yes. It's a prison. My skin's crawling just being in here."

She scoffed. "Yeah, they call it a prison. But these days, people think they have to feed prisoners. Now I have my whole life planned out: Step one, punch cop. Step two, free room and board. Step three, repeat as necessary." Aria folded her arms and allowed herself a smug grin.

Mr. Discord quirked an eyebrow. "Elegant in its simplicity."

"Better than anything Adagio ever came up with."

"It really is," said Sonata.

"And you aren't worried about constantly being surrounded by convicted felons?" Mr. Discord dipped his head to Helga. "No offense, miss."

"None taken. Blaze, you're a crazy bitch, but you brew some killer prison hootch."

Aria spared her a glance and a grudging nod. "Decades of experience." To Mr. Discord, she said, "Of course I'm not worried. I can kill a man with my thumbs."

"She can. I've seen her do it."

Aria rolled her eyes at Sonata. "Obviously. You're the one who dared me to." Aria turned back to Mr. Discord. "These women don't scare me any more than Sonata does. And she's actually a threat."

"Aww, that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me."

"Shut up, Sonata. Also, you're literally Reiipivzheerv himself. Sonata may be crazy enough to cozy up with you, but I'm not going to wait until you think it'll be funnier to make us fight to the death than serve you."

Mr. Discord sighed. "Goodness me. I really must speak to my old friend about the importance of reputation. Rest assured, Miss Blaze, I have no gladiatorial intentions towards you or Sonata. I'm willing to offer you everything this facility can and more: better food, better living conditions, more freedom, even all the cops you can punch."

Aria crossed her arms. "I don't know. I can punch a lot of cops."

He smirked and snapped his fingers, and a blue-skinned uniformed policeman manifested without further fanfare. "My name is Officer Bodybag," said the policeman. "I exist to be punched."

"Specifically, he's a philosophical zombie," said Mr. Discord. "He isn't sentient, but he provides all the catharsis of sticking it to the man fist-first. I can manifest dozens of his like at a time."

Aria looked over Officer Bodybag, cracked her knuckles, and unloaded a haymaker right into his nose. She clicked her tongue as he got back on his feet. "It's better when they scream."

"We can hash out the particulars afterwards. I assure you, Miss Blaze, you won't get a better offer than this, not least because going by your appearance, you may not survive the rigors of mortality long enough to complete your proposed cycle even once. So again I ask, what say you?"

"If she says no," said Helga, "any chance I can get on board?"

Mr. Discord turned to her, an eyebrow quirked. "Don't you think I'm a hallucination brought on by garbage-bag schnapps?"

She shrugged. "Got nothing to lose if you are."

"Can't argue with that," Mr. Discord said with a smile. "However, I'm sorry to say that the offer's only open to my assistant's colleagues."

"Damn." Helga fell backwards until she was lying on her mattress.

"So Helga won't be coming?" said Aria.

Mr. Discord tilted his head. "Do you want her to?"

"Depths, no!"

"So..." Sonata gulped. "You are?" 

Aria glared at Sonata. The seconds stretched on, one siren glowering, the other biting her lip nearly to the point of drawing blood. Aria moved her gaze about the cell, stopping on the beds, the toilet, the bars. Finally, she shrugged. "Eh, fine. But I'm holding you to the cop punching."

"I'll make you a dojo," Mr. Discord said as he rose from the bunk, adjusting his gi.

"Wait," said Helga, frowning in thought. "If this is real, how are you all going to get out of here?"

Mr. Discord grinned. "I'm afraid that's the wrong question, miss. What you should be asking is how did we get out of here?"

"Huh?" Helga blinked, and by the time her eyes opened again, she was alone in the cell. "Huh. Damn." She checked under Blaze's mattress. The garbage bag was still there. "So it goes."





The next thing either siren knew, they were in a moving car with Mr. Discord at the wheel, pulling away from the Bloodstone Women's Correctional Facility.

Aria squirmed in her seatbelt. "How come she gets shotgun?"

Mr. Discord's face poked out of the back of his seat. "Do you think the two of you could share a backseat without constantly pestering each other?"

Aria glowered at it, refusing to let him see any shock. "I could ride shotgun."

The head shook itself. "You're the new hire. She's employee of the month. Give me some quality lackey work and we'll talk."

"I am not your lackey."

"Like it or not, lackeyhood's what you signed up for. You have to do something to earn all the cops you can punch."

Sonata piped up. "So are we going back home now or what?"

Both Discord heads whipped to face her. "What? Go home?" cried the one on his neck. "The quest's only half-finished! What kind of epic journey involves backtracking? We may have tricked the trolls into staying up past sunrise, but that doesn't mean we've cheated our way through the riddle contest, much less charmed the dragon."

Aria pressed herself into the backseat. "So, does he start making sense after a while, or am I just going to have to get used to gibberish?"

"Bah. Been here for centuries and you've never bothered to culturally enrich yourselves." Mr. Discord turned onto the freeway. "Come on, we have one more damsel to rescue from languishing in mediocrity."

"Wait, are you actually going to grab Adagio? Seriously?" Aria turned to Sonata. "After all the shit she's put us through, you're actually crawling back to her? I actually almost started respecting you after you walked out on her."

Sonata said nothing, staring out the window.

"You seem to assume that she's any better off than you were," said the extra Discord face, now looking down from the ceiling upholstery.

Aria refused to acknowledge it with eye contact. "I kept myself in prison for a reason. I don't get what this world has become, and I don't really want to."

"I thought you'd enjoy the magical influx."

She shifted focus to her own window. "Whatever."

"Come now. I can't help if you don't open up." The silence stretched on for a few moments before being broken by a snap.

The middle of Aria's forehead opened up like the door of a cuckoo clock, and a tiny version of her emerged from the bloodless opening. "I meant the world of apes with tools more powerful than most magic," squeaked the brief Aria, her larger counterpart stunned by her very existence. "Adagio was the only one who really fit in in this world. Following her lead was our only option. We needed each other just to pull in enough energy to survive. Now, I'm stuck in a stupid body that's— Hey!"

"Okay! Okay!" growled the greater Aria as she wrestled with her thoughts. She managed to shut the door and found no sign of it once the sound of its latch reverberated through her skull. "Point is, I don't belong here. Neither does Sonata. If we drag Adagio into this, we'll either end up killing her or working for her again."

"You underestimate yourselves. And me. Particularly me."

Aria considered this, rubbing her forehead. "Okay, yeah, you're a factor. But we're not. Especially not Sonata."

"Hey! I'm a lot smarter now than I ever was before."

"Pssh. I'm sure."

"I bet you don't even know where we're going!" said Sonata.

Aria met and matched her glare. "Do you?"

"Uh..."

"... Oh dear, I knew I'd forgotten something." Mr. Discord took a sharp right turn that by all rights should've sent them into a guardrail. Instead, they pulled into a driveway. "We will have to make a brief stop after all, girls. All this talk won't mean much if we don't have Adagio in the first place."

"And the police will probably be looking for me," said Aria.

Mr. Discord chuckled as he opened her door for her. "You may be a new hire, my dear, but some benefits start on day one."





"Okay," said Helga, bravely maintaining her footing despite the floor rolling beneath her. "I'm drunk and possibly stoned, and even I don't think this is going to work."

"My name is Officer Bodybag," said Officer Bodybag, wearing a skin cap with a green-and-purple buzz cut over his uniform cap. "I exist to impersonate Aria Blaze."

"Yeah, bangup job. They're never gonna notice."

"Thank you."

A guard walked by the cells, barely glancing in and not slowing her pace as she went by.

Helga watched her go. "... That should not have worked."

"My name is Officer Bodybag. I am good at what I do."