"Awesome as we wanna be!"
As they all sang the final line, Rainbow Dash's hand arced downward in a power-chord that echoed through the crowd. A touch of her hand and the guitar's voice was silenced. Turning, she looked at Sunset and almost freaked out all over again at how amazing she looked.
Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash noticed, had walked to the front of the stage and was talking to the crowd. Having been friends since each learned how to walk, it was an amazing sight for Rainbow. Her shy, reclusive best friend had real confidence. She had a moment to wonder if it was the magic or Fluttershy spending so much time with Bridget before Fluttershy called out the next song name.
Waiting for Pinkie Pie to mark the intro and start the beat, Rainbow Dash came in at the same time as Sunset Shimmer. The crowd was dark (except for a few single glows of light from phones or lighters) except for the front row. Rainbow saw Spicy, Sonata, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and even Shining Armor. She ignored the odd vibe the big, white-skinned guy gave her and threw herself into her music.
"We've just got the day to get ready, and there's only so much time to lose. Because tonight, yeah, we're here to party, so let's think of something fun to do!"
As the seven Rainbooms sang together, playing together, their power swelled higher still and each felt a rush of more magic push through their bodies.
Hair became manes, ponytails became actual pony tails, and each of the girls with wings felt a surge in their flight muscles. It was old hat to them by now, but just like every other time they had ponied up that far they were not the only ones affected.
Magic rushed out. It flooded from the stage and spread into the crowd. The noise everyone at the concert was making tripled as they discovered that the little bit of magic on stage was actually a huge surge. Though the Rainbooms, playing their music, didn't notice.
The band's "plus ones" were the first to be hit by the wave of magic. Spicy the actual first.
"What—?" The rush of feeling that flooded Spicy had him reluctantly pull his attention from the stage. He felt alive, seriously alive. The dim night became brighter to his eyes as he turned to Sonata. He froze as he looked at the gossamer wings adorning Sonata's back, and the sense of power that radiated from her. Her cute ears were merely the icing on the cake. "Are you alright?!"
Bouncing up and down, Sonata threw her arms up and squealed in excitement. "Never better!" She had heard enough of Spicy's question to assume what it was. When she turned her eyes to her boss, however, she froze. His blue hair had darkened a little, and the red of his skin had somehow crept up to the tips of his hair. She ignored most of that, and even the odd, tufted ears, to stare at his leathery wings. "Wow!"
The scene repeated through the crowd.
"How'd the school get a magic group in here? This is awesome!"
"I don't care if magic wears off quickly. Rock on Rainbooms!"
Magic had existed in the human world long before Sunset Shimmer entered it, before even the sirens were banished to it, but human magic was weak—temporary. But it wasn't human magic that grew ears and wings among the crowd.
The hype the crowd was sending back to the girls on stage was building a feedback loop. They played harder because the crowd cheered harder, and the crowd cheered harder because magic and music poured from the Rainbooms.
Talking with Principal Cadance had been tough before the magic started flowing but once a few thousand college students, on a high from a winning football game and a school year finishing, started ponying up it became impossible.
President Hurricane had been engaged in a shouting-conversation right up until the point his wings grew. He turned to look at Principal Cadance after giving his new limbs a few flaps, only to find her not just similarly blessed with wings, but more. Cadance's skin glittered like diamonds, reflecting the low lighting around her like a billion diamond facets.
Staring at her hand, Cadance was stuck. She couldn't think a word let-alone say one. Her fingers were translucent. She held her palm up between her and the dim lamp and could see the pink of her flesh made crystalline. When she turned her hand just right, and two facets matched up, she could actually see through as if her hand were pink glass.
"Principal Cadance?" Hurricane tried to suppress his giddy childhood self who wanted to spread his wings and fly. There was business to do, and he had to assure himself that this wouldn't be the only time he got to have wings. "Principal Cadance!"
"S-Sorry, President Hurricane. This is unexpected. You said there might be something exciting, but this…" Her voice trailed off when Cadance caught sight of one of her crystalline wings. Feathers made of perfect, living crystal bent and changed light so that hundreds of millions of colors sprayed out of them. "Fantastic."
"It is." Hurricane's attention was on the stage once he took in that the crowd was reacting positively. "It really should be studied."
On stage, Fluttershy was flush with friendship, music magic, and the little confidence Bridget had begun to instill in her. She had learned from her lupine companion that you could be a lone wolf and not be terrified to talk to strangers.
She bounced in place as she sang—with her friends—the last line of the song. "Shake your tail 'cause we're here to have a party tonight!" A wave of applause and cheering rushed through Fluttershy. Friendship and music magics reacted most powerfully to the crowd, building her higher and higher.
"Thank you everyone! We have a special song next, but it's not for me to sing!" Everything came out in a yell for Fluttershy, but thanks to the microphone the crowd could hear her anyway. She turned to Sunset and held out a hand.
Sunset walked across the stage to Fluttershy and hugged her. At first she had been worried that her wings might burn her friends, but the truth was they weren't even hot. She took the microphone when Fluttershy offered it.
Adjusting her throat, Sunset Shimmer held the mic to her mouth. "This is a song I sang to cheer my friends up when they needed it." The subtle adjustment to her throat for singing, the first breath to support notes, and Sunset opened her mouth.
Rainbow Dash had hurriedly swapped to the acoustic guitar, the sound-box sealed over, just for this one song. As Sunset started to sing, she strummed in support.
"So you have magic, and it's not that great. But when it found you, you know it was fate." Sunset held her guitar still with one hand and the mic with the other. At her side, Fluttershy was gently tapping her tambourine. "And it might seem scary now, but it can be wonderful, too." She heard Applejack come in with an electric guitar (the bass not needed). "So how about we embrace the magic, and make the magic part of you?"
Pinkie Pie had joined her friends in the song, but while she beat out the backing she started to see what was going on in the crowd. A moment of shock hit her that caused her tail to bounce and jostle around a few times.
Hearing the theme of the song, the crowd surged louder still to show they were embracing the magic. Among the crowd was winged and pony eared folk aplenty, but there were others. One girl at the back had a cascade of feathers down the back of her head—and huge wings compared to the other students—and there were several students whose skin had darkened significantly while their hair merged into a long fin down the top of their head.
Still standing at the back, now trying to pick their jaws up, Chris and Star stared at each other.
Chris's hair had grown long, and a pair of diaphanous, insectile wings sprouted from her back. Star, on the other hand, looked reasonably like her normal self, barring her pony ears. Neither was prepared for the second wave of magic.
Watching her friends, Pinkie Pie felt only a rush of vigor and excitement as Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Sunset experienced wing growth. Rarity and Twilight also grew cute little spiraling horns from their foreheads, but what Pinkie did get to experience along with all her friends was her legs adjusting, shifting, and her feet changing to hooves.
For a hot second Pinkie thought she might miss a bass kick, but she quickly discovered pony legs and hooves were built to kick.
With the changes to the girls on stage, everyone in the crowd surged with their own changes. Hair turned to manes, ponytails turned to pony tails, and somehow everyone got louder about how awesome they thought it was.
But the changes weren't quite complete for the girls. Where before they had been covered only in skin, now a thin layer of fur coated each, and just as the song finished Sunset felt her face push forward into a short muzzle.
It was right then that Sunset started to freak out. She looked down at her hands, then across at Fluttershy.
Fluttershy watched Sunset's reaction in confusion. "What's—?" She didn't get past the first word. Her mouth worked just fine, for a mouth with a longer tongue, a muzzle, and a slightly changed dental layout. She almost dropped her tambourine.
Spicy saw the moment when the band realized, collectively, that something was wrong. He turned to Sonata and tried to yell to get her attention, but she was too busy stuffing something into her handbag. "Sonata!"
Turning to look at Spicy, Sonata followed his directed gaze up onto the stage. The Rainbooms looked ready to panic. "Come on!" She didn't care if Spicy didn't hear her, she figured he would follow her actions with his own.
Shoving herself up to the edge of the stage, Sonata felt a moment of panic. She was a siren, about to get on stage before thousands, and she had only to open her mouth to capture their minds. Painful memories mixed with Fluttershy's song cut viciously through the thought. Spicy had used her moment of indecision to get up beside her. "Get them off stage and see if you can get the other three to get their butts up here."
"Are you kidding? If the Rainbooms don't keep playing, I don't think they would accept another band up here." Spicy waved a wing at Rainbow Dash to get her attention. "Can you lot keep playing, or are we gonna have to do a runner?"
Rainbow Dash's ears, tuned for Spicy's voice, locked onto her boyfriend. "Don't get on the stage! If they see you get up here, hooves and fur will be the last of our problems." She turned to her friends. Twilight was taking notes, Sunset was trying to support a hyperventilating Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie and Applejack were just staring at each other.
The Rainbooms had been Rainbow Dash's band before, and though she had conceded that it was a group effort, someone needed to grab that mic and talk the crowd down. Marching over to center stage, Rainbow Dash reached past Sunset's flaming wing to grab the mic stand. "Wow! You guys are awesome!"
Running on pure ego, Rainbow Dash couldn't stop or she (and possibly the concert) would explode. "I bet you're all really pumped to be magical ponies, right?" A wave of sound that was like nothing Rainbow had ever experienced before washed onto the stage. "Well so are we! But this is going a little further than usual. Would it be cool if we leave, WAIT!" It took every ounce of breath in Rainbow Dash's body to be heard—even amplified—over the crowd. "After one more song?"
The almost wild mob settled into an excited cheer again.
Pulling back from the mic, Rainbow Dash looked to her friends. Things had calmed down a little while she called to the crowd. Applejack was helping Twilight, and Fluttershy now seemed more interested in inspecting her own wing than freaking out. "Hey, guys, can you get it together for one more?"
"Sure. Of course we can, Rainbow." Sunset Shimmer was in full-on sarcasm mode. Her sass levels were almost maxed out by the situation. "We're all mutating into ponies, I'm on fire, and you want us to sing a song?"
"It's either that or we leave the stage, let the riot happen, and spend the rest of the week hiding from the police." Fighting sass with sass, Rainbow Dash pointed out at the crowd. "You think they'll just let us leave? I told them one more song, I sold it to them, just make sure it's something uplifting."
The truth, even with a layer of hyperbole, sunk into Sunset. She looked at the crowd and didn't need to touch any of them to know they were at a fever pitch. "You're right. Ugh, alright." Sunset turned to her other friends. "We need to do one more song. Does everypony—" She blinked sharply twice. "Okay, gotta get used to this. Does everybody think they can get through Legend You Were Meant to Be?"
Scanning around the wreckage of the band (the members, not their instruments thankfully), Sunset watched as each of them nodded. "Alright. Twilight, set the levels and join me up here. Fluttershy, you pair up with Rainbow Dash. Applejack, you and Rarity pair up on the last microphone."
Twilight made sure the mix was right, turned up all four stage microphones, and walked over to Sunset. Something caught her attention right away. "You have wings, but no horn. I thought you're a unicorn pony?"
"Questions later. We sing this and get out of here." Sunset waited for Twilight to nod before she turned for the mic stand.
Watching the Rainbooms start their last song, Sonata's hand traced up to her neck. Along with the collar she enjoyed wearing there was a leather thong. She hadn't put on the thong, it had appeared when the Rainbooms reached their "hooves and horns" stage.
Sonata's delicate fingers traced down the thong to the gemstone hanging from it. She could feel it, hungry and empty. Tucking the stone inside her top, Sonata turned her eyes up to the stage and focused on Rarity.
The song was doing its job. Rainbow Dash played her guitar and sang the group parts of the song, but after Fluttershy sang her lyric, Rainbow pulled the mic from the stand and pumped her wings. "Look at me now, I'm soaring high. It's never boring in the sky!" She did a loop in the air and landed back on the stage beside Fluttershy. With the magic of their song in the air flying was easy.