Everyone followed Rainbow Dash, which didn't surprise her as much as Limestone Pie in particular. The gray-skinned woman walked at Rainbow Dash's side in a way that felt comfortable. "I really hope this isn't a trap."
"You and me both." Limestone Pie had prepared for it being a trap. A gun would be too much to bring, but in her back pocket was a little surprise that fit over her knuckles. "If this goes south, get everyone out and let me take the flack, okay?"
There was an edge in Limestone's voice that told Rainbow Dash that Limestone could be counted on to do everything she said. "If it does, I get them out and come back for you." As they neared the house, Limestone Pie stepped before Rainbow Dash.
Tuning her senses as high as she could, Limestone took one last glance at the "squad" she had with her. They weren't her squad—they were civilians. "Civilians who can do all sorts of crazy stuff." She kept her voice low as she muttered, stuffed her left hand into the back pocket where the brass knuckles were, widened her stance a little, and knocked.
The door opened before Limestone could finish rapping it three times. She tensed her muscles, expecting a black-clad arm to grab her and pull her inside—she braced against such an attack.
"You're all standing around on the street looking like that?" Shining Armor lifted a hand up to press it firmly to his forehead. "Get inside before someone here calls the police." He moved back from the doorway, giving his sister's friends (and some of their friends) room.
Limestone didn't relax in the slightest. She walked forward, avoiding Shining Armor while she paused in the doorway. The moment her eyes adjusted, and she saw the living room of the house (with one young woman sitting in it), she relaxed. "Yeah, well, safety in numbers and all that."
Shining Armor recognized the way Limestone had stood: he'd seen plenty of marines move like that, usually the ones who knew what they were doing in a fight. If he hadn't been quite so worried about attention he would have cracked a smile.
Walking in behind Limestone, Rainbow Dash's ears twitched and flicked around like crazy, but when she saw Twilight, she rushed into the living room. "Are you okay?"
As her friends filed in, Twilight looked from Rainbow Dash to them and back. "Well, yeah. My BBBFF's back!" Just saying it made Twilight perk up more. She looked her brother and realized he had returned to the aloof person again. "Oh come on, Shiny! They're my friends. They're not going to attack me or anything."
"It's not them I'm worried about, Twily, it's the attention they're generating. Look at you!" Gesturing around the room, Shining Armor spotted a new face among the crowd. "Who're you?"
"Sonata Dusk." Sonata got her name out before Rarity could beat her. "When my friends are facing something bad, I'm not going to sit back and let them do it alone." There was more than a little vehemence in her voice, even some steel.
Blowing out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding, Shining Armor forced himself to sit down on the one free seat in the room. "This is about all this magic. You need to stop being so—so obvious with it."
"Why? No one seems to mind." Applejack couldn't help but want to counter everything Shining Armor said.
"There's a reason why no one takes much notice of magic, it's weak and practically useless. But regardless, the police do keep track of this stuff. If something starts happening, you know who's going to be their first contact?" Gesturing around the room, Shining's question was rhetorical enough that no one tried to answer it. "But stuff's—"
Everyone watched as Shining Armor jumped to his feet and looked out the front window of his house.
"That's what everyone knows. But sometimes there's something bigger. There's the normal kind of magic, so weak and temporary that no one actually cares about it. Then there's this." Shining pointed to his sister, reluctantly, then around the room. "So long as everyone thought you only had the first kind, it was fine. That the concert magic wore off the crowd helps that, but this is more." Again he pointed around, but only at the girls who were still ponied up.
Limestone Pie was in a mental quandary—although she wouldn't have used that word. Shining Armor sounded like he was telling the truth but, as a non-commissioned officer, she knew that there was a difference between what someone thought was the truth and facts. "If that's right, then whatever is giving them magic must be something pretty crazy."
Seven young women all shied back in their chairs.
"Equestria." Sonata was not one of the ones slumped back. She looked at Shining Armor, and Limestone Pie, and repeated herself. "Equestrian magic. This,"—Sonata reached to Rarity's nearest ear and just barely touched it—"is from Equestria. And if there's more and more of it happening, then I have bad news for you."
Shining and Limestone both locked eyes with an apparent expert.
Sonata, with her girlfriend and mistress beside her, felt strong enough to continue. "Well… There's going to be more of it. It's positive magic, despite how some individuals might use it. It grows friendships, and builds towns, and defeats monsters."
"And how do you know this?" On his feet, Shining Armor's hand reached for a sidearm that wasn't there.
"Shining! Stop!" Twilight, too, jumped to her feet. Rather than stopping there, however, Twilight walked over and stepped between Sonata and her brother. "You're the one here who is 'Escalating threat,' so back off! Sonata isn't perfect, but she's my friend!"
Limestone Pie got to her feet and moved to stand beside Twilight. Her stance had gone from relaxed to on-guard. "Listen to your sister, boss, she's thinking clearer than you are."
The words sounded like they were from the mouth of a petty officer, to Shining, which made them worth listening to. That his sister had thrown his own words back at him stung, too. He stepped backwards and sat back on the couch. "I need to hear all this from the start. How did you—any of you—get this magic?"
All eyes in the room went to one woman: Sunset Shimmer.
"I'm not human." Sunset Shimmer saw Shining Armor and Limestone Pie tense. "I mean, I am when I'm here—" She stopped, remembering the wings still on her back.
Sonata, figuring Sunset needed more support than the others needed to be relaxed, jumped on her chance. "Me too!"
Smiling, Sunset Shimmer reached over and got a fist-bump from Sonata. "I ran away from home, ran all the way through a magic portal. I got here with a pile of gems that I took and no sense of what I wanted. Then I found my way to school and—"
But it was too late. Pinkie Pie inhaled. "Then she went a little crazy and wanted to take over the school, used stolen magic from Equestria to do it, tried to fight off the princess who came to stop her but the princess saved the day, became bestest friends with us, and helped Sunset realize what she was doing is wrong."
"Yeah." Sharing a look with Limestone, Sunset nodded. "That."
"Then it was our turn. We—me and my sisters—saw the magic they used to stop Sunset. I'm a siren." Feeling it was time to bare all, at least to Shining Armor and Limestone Pie, Sonata looked around the others for support and only got encouraging smiles. "We took over the school, brain-washed anyone who tried to challenge us, and were powering up with a concert when she,"—Sonata Dusk pointed an accusing finger at Fluttershy, who immediately tried to hide behind Applejack—"defeated me completely."
"She defeated you?" Limestone didn't bother pointing at Fluttershy.
"Yup!"
Limestone's eyebrow rose further. "All of you? How many sisters did you have?"
"There was Adagio, Aria, and me. And no; she only defeated me. When they played the song she wrote, I couldn't fight them anymore. We had them, and with them the whole world." Sonata reached her hand to her chest and pulled the bright gemstone out.
A collective gasp left almost every throat.
"Their concert restored it. I guess I'm a full siren again." Brushing fingers over the gemstone, Sonata felt Rarity's arm pull around her.
"Aaaand that's where I came in." Twilight Sparkle looked around at her friends, her eyes catching on Sunset and Sonata's faces in particular—they gave her the strength to continue. "I made a machine to track and capture magic. It worked, but their magic was more than it could handle, sorta.
"I let Principal Cinch talk me into unlocking it, the magic consumed me and made me want more. Midnight Sparkle—" Twilight cut herself off sharply. "No, I was a monster. But my friends saved me, showed me what was important."
Shining Armor gritted his teeth. He'd been there for the start of that incident, and felt he had been part of the problem. "There was one more incident."
"Gaia Everfree." Rainbow Dash wanted to stick up for her friends, but so far it had literally been their story to tell. Now it was her turn. "Someone found these geodes that we think came from Equestria. They gave her access to all kinds of crazy plant magic, but it turns out they were made, we think, for us."
"You stopped her." Shining Armor was confident of this point. He'd seen the report that the huge magic effect had just ceased. "So two of you are from Equestria, Twilight's machine stole Equestrian magic and it infected her, and you mean to say it infected someone else. Where are these geodes now?"
"Pretty much. And I leave mine at home. It doesn't seem to do much anymore, but wow did it unlock this awesome magic in us!" Rainbow Dash looked at Shining Armor, returned his gaze as best she could, and tilted her chin up.
"You move fast." Shining Armor pointed at Rainbow Dash, then aimed his finger at Rarity. "Some kind of force-field." He looked at Fluttershy again, and did a double-take as he noticed Bridget. "Commands animals? Holy shit. Is that a wolf?"
"She talks to animals, and Bridget is half-wolf." Applejack moved closer to the edge of her chair Bridget was standing beside—Fluttershy was effectively hidden behind both of them. "And she don't like accusations." Finishing off, Applejack felt like she should add something more. "An' neither do I."
"Everyone, cool it!" Limestone glared around, even meeting the eyes of the wolf. "Why don't we all play show and tell? Okay, maybe not show, but tell us what you do. Starting with you." She was pointing at Shining Armor. "What's your game, sir?" Limestone made his title sound almost as big an insult as the next half a dozen swear words she could think of.
Shining Armor clamped his mouth closed for nearly ten seconds, but in the end it was Twilight—his little sister—that undid him. "I graduated at Annapolis in electronic engineering—"
Limestone cut in. "He's SIGINT!"
Grinding his teeth, Shining gave a small nod. "Yeah. I was." He turned his head to look at Twilight, and the tightness left. "But then I found out about Twily."
"You quit the forces for your sister?" Again Limestone was the first off the bat, and her voice held a new respect for Shining Armor. "Shit."
"Family." An actual smile graced Shining's face. "It's more important than all that shit."
"Damn straight, sir." Limestone said the honorific the way it was meant to be said. "So, I guess I'll go next. Got recruited six years ago now, right out of graduation, and haven't looked back. They broke me down in Basic, built me back up, and now I'm the hard arsed bitch you see before you. I'm on leave because they said I was too fuckin' good."
Shining Armor rolled his eyes almost as much as everyone else did. "What rank?"
"Corporal. I was youngest in our squad. I've seen action, too, and enough to know that protecting this,"—Limestone Pie gestured at her sister's friends—"is what I'm good at. And I can sniff officer bullshit a mile off. Next time just serve us the truth and I wouldn't have been ready to turn your face into paste."
Gesturing to Rainbow Dash, Shining Armor was glad that his own rundown was accepted. "You're fast, what else?"
"I can fly, these aren't just for show, you know?" Rainbow Dash spread her wings as far as they would go—not even as far as she could spread her arms. "Well, when we're all shooting off magic I can."
"Twilight?" Shining pointed at his sister.
Twilight Sparkle was more relaxed than ever now her brother had calmed down. "You know, pew-pew. Magic. I can lift heavy things, or a lot of light things. I-I've flown too, but not as much as Rainbow."
"Darling, it's a little more than that. What about all those gizmos?" Rarity, with one arm around Sonata to hold her close, raised an eyebrow at Twilight.
"Well, yeah. I can make some things. I'm working on an AI powered drone that could follow people around to take remote selfies." Waving a hand as if it were nothing, Twilight pointed at Rarity. "How about you?"
"You all know my little trick." Rarity, one arm still around Sonata, held up her free hand as if she had a drinks tray on it. A perfectly flat diamond suddenly appeared on her hand. Thin as a razor blade, the hard surface glowed softly. "I can make these in whatever shape I wish. I can move them around. They're super strong." As she spoke, Rarity demonstrated by making an entire tea set out of diamonds, then had them serving invisible drinks, and lastly she tossed one tiny cup to Shining and Limestone.
"Before we got our geodes I could make these and they would crumble the moment I wasn't thinking about them." Levitating the set to the coffee table in the room, Rarity set them down. "I'm not sure if anyone would pay you for a diamond tea set, but it certainly isn't going anywhere."
Limestone had dealt with a good deal of things that were supposed to be unbreakable—she knew the joke, after all: "If it ain't broke, it hasn't been issued to the infantry." Holding the little cup in her strong hands, first she tried to crush it. Then, when her first try failed, she tried to pull it apart. "Huh. This stuff's pretty tough. Hold yours up for a sec."
Having been trying to break his own cup, Shining Armor held it up to Limestone only to see the woman fitting a set of brass knuckles on her right fist. "Whoa! Wait!" He pulled the cup back. "If you do break it there'd be bits of broken—whatever this is—everywhere. Probably in me."
"Pfft. Pussy." Holding her own hand up, the cup in her palm, Limestone brought her fist into it as hard as she could.
Rarity just smiled as Limestone Pie opened her hand to reveal the teacup still okay. "I made a chandelier out of it at Camp Everfree, it lasted all night without me concentrating on it, and was still there the next morning."