//------------------------------// // A little Competition // Story: A Queen's Perspective - Rainbow Rocks // by gerandakis //------------------------------// "Welcome to the first ever Canterlot High School Battle of the Bands. I believe I speak for everyone when I say it is by far the greatest thing we have ever done here at this school!" Principal Celestia's opening address had just begun. Twilight and her friends had arrived just a minute before and Twilight already wished she was somewhere else, the aura of positivity from the six girls around her was helping, but still the sirens' manipulation of the cheering students' minds was clear on her empathic senses and making her stomach turn. The fact that Principle Celestia would not normally say such a thing being a good indicator that the sirens likely had an even tighter grip on her and her sister was not helping. "We are so glad our three newest students encouraged us to turn this event into something exciting!" The agreeing mumbles of many students were accompanied by three smug expressions from the sirens and seven pairs of rolled eyes from Twilight's group. The Vice-Principal now took over for her sister. "But, as this is now a competition, we can only choose one winner. Who is it going to be?" Immediately the students began arguing once more. On the other side of the crowd the three sirens were growing increasingly excited, to anyone else safe for, perhaps, Twilight, the situation would seem to be little more than a small group of arguing teenagers. To the sirens however, the crowd was shrouded in a green mist. One that moved towards the three and gathered into three streams of green, each flowing into one of their necklaces. No one, not even the sirens themselves, could see that the glow of the gems was growing ever so slightly stronger, but the three could feel their power rise along with it. "You feel that, girls? Our true power is being restored." Adagio Dazzle was clearly excited at that prospect, a spike of emotion that caused Twilight to give her a worried glance, not that Adagio noticed, she was too preoccupied with the power flowing into her and the rather malicious giggles of her two sisters. By the time she looked over to the Rainbooms again, Twilight had already averted her gaze once more. "And that's before we've tapped into the strongest magic here." At that Aria scowled at the group. "But the Rainblossoms, or whatever they're called, aren't under our spell. How exactly are we supposed to get to their magic?" Adagio didn't share her sisters worries. "The Rainbooms are just as capable of falling apart as anyone else. They just need a little ... push in the wrong direction. I have a feeling everyone here is going to be lining up to give them a shove." Aria and Adagio shared a malicious grin, Sonata meanwhile had found her sisters' discussion to be less than fascinating and had returned to gazing across the crowd which had now started to scatter and move into the gym. On two sides of the hall two girls were enjoying the performance onstage, Pinkie and Sonata were smiling happily and looking upon the two performers onstage, clearly appreciating their music. They were, however, the only ones. The rest of the crowd were showing everything to sKepticaly raised eyebrows to outright facepalms at the performance. Snips and Snails seemed oblivious to all of it. A wince ran through the crowd, as noisy feedback rang from the speakers. "Please do not drop the microphones." Principal Celestia called out in exasperation. "Yeah! Bam!" Snips called out, while Snails just laughed. "In your face, Rainbooms!" Behind the six others, Sunset gave a small smirk. At least they got the name right. Sunset had always had excellent ears and with years of experience in listening in on private conversations she had been the only one of the friends to overhear the sirens' conversation before. "'Least we know one group who won't stand in the way of us gettin' to the finals." Rainbow stood beside her strapping her guitar on. "Let's get ready to rock!" "Wait!" Pinkie interrupted, "Where's Rarity?" At that moment the jingling of metal could be heard. Turning around the girls saw Rarity wearing a rather bizzare outfit. A plain white top served as the backdrop for a long golden necklace and a pale brown jacket with strips of metal hanging from it's sleeves, making it obvious where the jingling had come from. Additionally she wore a headband and bands around her ankles, both with strands of fabric hanging down from them and both matching the color of the jacket. As she reached them she looked to be somewhat out of breath. And as she spoke her voice very much supported that impression. "Oh! Here! I'm here!" She was met with a number of stunned expressions from most of the girls and a sKeptically raised eyebrow from Applejack. "We will be performing in front of an audience. I'm not going to wear something fabulous?" Rarity gave a mildly annoyed grunt at her less fashion forward friends' eyerolls, but noted that Twilight simply closed her eyes and shrugged. Applejack gave a sound of mild annoyance but didn't comment further. Moments later, the six girls had taken center stage while Sunset watched them from behind the curtain. "Remember, we have to be good enough to make it through but not so good we let the sirens see the magic within us. They could realize we plan to use it against them." Twilight reminded the others. "Got it! Be cool enough to win, but not so cool that we end up showing off the whole ears and tails and rainbows thing. Sooo ... about twenty percent less cool." Twilight rolled her eyes as this Rainbow Dash once more reminded her of the one she knew from Equestria. Pinkie banged her drumsticks together and counted them on and as one the girls begun playing the song 'Shake your Tail'. Twilight had taken part of the evening to learn the songs the rainbooms had in so she had no problem keeping up. As they started, Twilight noticed something. Not only could she sense the emotional background noise from the crowd in front of them, she also picked up emotions from the gantry above them, where the lighting and some other stage tech was hung. Curious and once more demonstrating a queen's impressive ability to multitask, she opened up her empathic senses, she had kept closed before to ward of the effects of the sirens' manipulation, and immediately felt five signatures above them. She knew it would look strange if she was to look up in the middle of the song and she likely wouldn't be able to see anything anyway, with the lighting shining down at her. Instead she closed her eyes, still focusing part of her mind on singing the song, and used her psychic ability to scan her surroundings, and immediately detected five students standing on the gantry above them. On the gantry Photo Finish stood flanked by her two assistants. In her hands she held two large magnets bound to strings with which she wanted to interrupt Rarity, the jingling metal parts of her outfit immediately obvious to the photographer's trained eyes. She began lowering the magnets but soon gained a look of surprise as the air around them seemed to warp and the strings that once held them went slack. The magnets were simply floating in midair. "What iz happening?" She murmured to herself, eyes wide and locked onto the magnets. A small distance beside the three girls whose eyes were now locked onto the floating magnets, stood Snips and Snails next to one of the lights pointing down at the stage, they had already pointed it at Fluttershy, well aware of the girl's shyness. As Snails went to turn on the light, however, he found his finger getting stuck on something hard. Looking back at the light he found the object to, in fact, be the switch he had meant to flick into the 'on' position. He tried once more to move it, but found to his dismay that the switch wouldn't budge. Snips had now noticed his struggle and went to help him. With them being so distracted by the disobedient switch, neither one of them noticed that one of the plugs in the switchboard at the end of the gantry had unplugged itself. Together the two of them managed to flick the disobedient switch only to find that the spotlight still didn't react. They looked at eachother, confused. After a moment Snails' eyes followed the cable connecting the light to the switchboard that connected the power to all the lights up here. His eyes widened and he pointed at it. Snips followed his gaze and soon found what he meant. The two silently stalked over to the switchboard and put the plug back in place. Their jaws dropped as the spotlight still didn't turn on. While they stalked over they failed to even notice that the music below them had stopped. While the Rainbooms had not poured their emotions into the song, they had nonetheless played it to perfection and the two principals that were acting as the jury gave them approving nods. As the girls vacated the stage, Snips and Snails had once more reached the light and tried once more to flick the switch. Once more there was much more resistance than the little switch should have given. Snails went to help his friend who was now once more struggling with the defiant piece of electronics. The moment the girls had left the stage however, Twilight released her Psychic hold, the magnets dropped down until they were hanging from their strings once more, Foto Finish trying desperately to stop their descent. At the same time the switch suddenly gave way and Snips and Snails, who – in their focus on the switch – had failed to notice that the light was now pointing in a different direction entirely, yelped in surprise and tumbled backwards and over one another as the light shone straight into their eyes, momentarily blinding them. The damage was marginal, but they were dazed for a moment. Their yelp however got the attention of the Vice-Principal, who looked back up at the stage from her grading sheet and saw the magnets dangling there. In that moment Sunset, who had watched the entire thing, struggling not to burst out laughing, flicked a switch behind the curtain, cutting the power to the switchboard above. As the lighting above the stage went out, allowing a clear view up to the gantry, the Vice-Principal's face was marred by a frown and with a single gesture, she ordered the five students down. A few minutes and a stern lecture about the gantry being off-limits while the stage was occupied later the contest had two bands less participating in it as Luna, despite all arguing and pleading had disqualified them all as punishment. Luna turned towards the gathered crowd, Celestia standing behind her with folded arms, both wearing rather imposing frowns. "If anyone else is planning to cheat in this competition, I would strongly reccomend them to reconsider." The Rainbooms and Sunset meanwhile were having an agitated discussion about the attempted sabotage next to the stage. It was Rarity who first noticed something was off. "Darling, are you alright?" Twilight was leaning against the stage next to them, her chest rising and lowering rapidly and sweat on her brow. "Oh yes, I'm alright, just a bit out of breath." "Why?" Rainbow asked obliviously, "What's so hard about singing?" "She wasn't just singing," Sunset explained between a renewed round of chuckles, "She was using her powers to stop the sabotage. You should have seen Snips and Snails, their faces were priceless." She looked to the side, gazing at nothing in particular. "Now that I think about it, they should remember that you can do that, weird. Oh well, they never were the brightest." "You mean other than when the light came on?" Pinkie asked, with an entirely straight face. After a short moment, however she burst out laughing and the others fell in a second later. "Well," Twilight said finally, "they learned an important lesson today: Don't try to use stealth and subterfuge against a changeling queen. Unless you're one yourself, you don't stand a chance. That's our schtick." Once more the girls shared a laugh before walking off to prepare for the next round. On the other side Adagio and Aria were watching them. "Well, that didn't work out as planned." Aria finally frowned after the girls had left. "Don't worry sister, there are plenty of chances left for them to break apart." Adagio answered, though her confident expression was slipping slightly. "Shake your tail-" "SONATA!" Adagio and Aria cried out simultaneously as they whirled around to face their youngest sister. "What?! The song is good."