Turning her head, Rarity kissed Sonata's cheek. "Do you want to tell them?"
"I already said I'm a siren." Reacting to the kiss, Sonata felt strength well up in her. "Buuuut I guess I should explain everything, just so everyone knows the deal about my sisters—former sisters.
"A siren draws magic from emotions—the stronger the better. Here it takes a lot more emotion than in Equestria, but we could still do it. Sirens work in two ways: while we can, we slip around the edges, using our song to take control of key people—"
"Hold on." Cutting in, Shining Armor narrowed his eyes. "Mind control? Really?"
"I am not going to demonstrate, but yeah." Sonata found herself leaning against Rarity a little more. "Also, magical blasts. Lots of our magic has to do with our voices, and—" She choked on the words, realizing she had been using we. "You don't want to deal with empowered sirens is all I'm saying."
Limestone Pie smiled the kind of smile you hope is truly aimed at someone else. "If you give me their descriptions, I could make sure authorities are on the lookout for them. Won't mean they get arrested on sight, but if any of the stuff you mentioned happens they'll be high on the list of people to look for."
Sonata Dusk bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. A battle raged in her mind. On one hand Adagio and Aria were her sisters—even if she considered them no longer so—and on the other hand they were unrepentant monsters.
A hand on her shoulder (on the side opposite Rarity) startled Sonata. She tilted her head up to see Limestone Pie looming over her.
"They're your sisters, I get that." Despite wanting to find and capture the missing sirens, Limestone Pie was a Pie through and through. "If Maud or Marble went off the rails, I wouldn't turn them in."
Pinkie Pie exclaimed and pointed to herself. "What about me?"
Looking at her sister, Limestone rolled her eyes. "Pinks, you went off the rails years ago." She gave Sonata's shoulder a little squeeze before leaving her be. "Okay, what about fire wings over here."
"Not much to say about me. I'm from Equestria, I was born a pony, and while I came here to—to raise an army to take over my home, I had some friends who showed me how much of a jerk I was." Sunset looked around at her friends, smiling, and got a lot of supportive smiles back. "When I had my head straightened, and everyone started getting magic, I found out I can read people's memories just by touching them."
"Actually," Pinkie Pie said, "It's more like she gets to see what they are mostly thinking about. So if she touches someone who is planning their big, evil scheme, she will see that." She booped Sunset on the nose. "Buuuuut if they're thinking about, say, inflating a balloon then that's all she can see."
Even Sunset Shimmer stared at Pinkie in surprise. Of course, Limestone was just grinning.
Pinkie blinked innocently. "What? It's true. I've been testing things whenever she touched me."
Putting her hand over Pinkie Pie's mouth for a moment, Sunset attempted to plead with her girlfriend. "Pinkie, please don't go into—"
As she curled her hand around Sunset's wrist, Pinkie Pie smiled and kissed the fingers covering her mouth. Tugging the hand away, Pinkie Pie smiled at Sunset. "What about your wings?"
"I don't really know. Every time I've transformed before, except once, I just got ears. I didn't have wings back in Equestria." As she mused, Sunset noticed the odd looks from everyone again. "What?"
"Except once?" Applejack's voice held the edge of suspicion. "Let me guess, you got big, flaming wings then?"
"Y-Yeah. It was right after Twilight—Princess Twilight—stopped me. I felt down all day, and you guys were there to help. I felt so good about it I climbed onto the school roof and watched the sunset. The whole night I couldn't stop thinking about how lucky I was to get a second chance. When dawn came, I ponied up and had those—these—wings. It hasn't happened since, until now." Letting out a sigh, Sunset Shimmer looked at Applejack and saw only support in her friend. "I thought it was just leftover magic from Twilight's—princess, again—crown."
Applejack cut in before anyone else could be pointed out. "Well, Ah'm just a simple farm girl. I don't got wings, or diamonds, or any of that magic." She let out a chuckle. "Ah'm a little stronger than Ah was before, though."
"Oh!" Rainbow Dash got everyone's attention with her exclamation. "Hey Applejack, can you help me getting my engine home from school tomorrow?"
The implication wasn't lost on Shining Armor. "You can lift an engine I take it?"
"Near's Ah can tell, Ah can lift about fifteen ton." The shocked look on Shining's face only made Applejack smile more.
Shining Armor hadn't spent all his life training in the military or Crystal Prep Academy. There had been a golden time where a gangly, geeky teen had had something else to focus all his time on. "Required secondary powers."
"What was that?" Cutting in, Limestone squinted at Shining. "What'd you mutter?"
"Required secondary powers. Basically in—in comic books, super heroes have to have more than their obvious super powers to just exist." Shining grit his teeth against the deadpan look of idiocy that Limestone shot his way. "It's true. Applejack would sink into the ground if she didn't have some kind of fancy thing just keeping her up when she was lifting huge weights."
Everyone but Applejack went quiet. "Huh. Ah guess you're right."
"And you, speedy," Shining said, pointing at Rainbow Dash, "I bet you have really fast reflexes. You can't run really fast without something like that."
Rainbow Dash shrugged her shoulders. "Well duh."
"And you, wolf girl, you can understand and talk to them, right? And they always do what you say, so there must be mind-control in there." Shining Armor was nerding out pretty hardcore, all his old memories of comics coming back to him and pushing him on.
"Um, no." Her voice soft, Fluttershy had to repeat herself before Shining turned to look at her. "I would never make an animal do something it doesn't want to." She managed to spare a little smile to Sonata, and got one in answer.
Undaunted by a mistake, Shining Armor pushed on. "Well, still! You all must have extra little powers that you don't even realize!"
"I hate to break it to you, but you really only found one. We knew about Rainbow Dash's reflexes already, and if you knew anything about Fluttershy you would have known she doesn't force animals to do things." Sunset got to her feet while she was talking, and she felt her wings burn on her back (though they didn't seem to actually burn anything). "We're all being really honest with you. Can you try not throwing it back as insults?"
"I'd ask how a dork like you got into SIGINT, but I know they're full of nerds. How about you keep your trap shut, sir, and let the magic, superpowered young women tell us what they can all do?" Limestone once again used her most sarcastic and polluted sir she could. "Okay, so we know about the animals, I assume you can fly too?"
"Y-Yes. A little." Fluttershy didn't like all the attention on her again, but it was a bit easier to think without Shining yelling his assumptions. "I-I've been practicing, too."
Limestone had to restrain herself from demanding the shy girl speak up. "Cool. Pinks?"
"Silly Billy. You know mine already." Pinkie Pie managed to keep a silly grin up for nearly ten seconds before Limestone's steady look cut through to her. "Oh, alright. I can make things go 'splodey!"
Just raising one eyebrow, Limestone Pie used her big sister expression on Pinkie Pie.
"I can touch things and make them explode." Sticking her tongue out at her sister, Pinkie Pie reached up and pulled a lower eyelid down to complete her stink-face at her sister. "Small things don't hurt, so I don't use big things. Sprinkles, glitter, even desiccated coconut is fine. Goes pop but doesn't go pop!"
"Well." Sunset looked Shining Armor directly in the eyes. "What do we do now? You say you needed to know all this and now you do. So what do we do now? Is there some kind of government register?"
Limestone Pie cut in before Shining could get a word out. "There's no official register. But I'd bet your names are all on a list at the local police station. They're not stupid, even if they don't think you did whatever they are investigating, if something magic happens you'll all be first to visit."
"But we've like, handled everything so far. Why would they want to bug us about stuff?" Gesturing at her friends and herself, Rainbow Dash felt she knew the answer already. "Ah forget this. Look, we appreciate the warning, but there is no way we aren't going to help people if they need it." With her piece said, Rainbow Dash jumped to her feet and started walking for the door.
Pinkie Pie looked to her sister first, and got a light nod. "I might go too. Hey Rainbow, want to have lunch at Sugarcube Corner?"
Reaching up to take Pinkie Pie's offered hand, Sunset looked around the rest of her friends. "I think we all need to talk about this, minus mister muscles. Sorry, Shining, but there's a lot for us to take in."
Twilight, however, was stuck. She looked at her friends, then to her big brother. "I need to go with them." She watched her brother stiffen a little, and cursed the scared tone in her voice. Standing up, she took a few steps after her friends.
"Twily, I—" Shining was halfway through giving his little sister an order before he stopped and bit down on the words to stop them getting out. "Have fun, Twilight."
When all the teenagers were gone (and Sonata too), Limestone Pie stood up. "If I find out you put my sister or her friends in danger, I'm gonna come for you, you know that right?"
"Same. We're both stuck in this shitstorm-in-the-making. This isn't normal magic." Shining Armor didn't hold Limestone's threat against her—he felt the same way. "Right now the school's going to be the best place for them. At least if someone does try to pin anything to them, they'll have alibis and can show that they aren't just spending all their time doing bad shit."