Adagio and Aria stared at their younger sister then turned towards one another and exchanged glances.
"Well, I don't have any other ideas." Adagio finally said, looking back at Sonata. "Come sister, what did you find?"
"Well, I was looking around the school and I found this in one of the music rooms." She unfurled the scroll and showed it to her sisters.
"A map?"
"Wait, Aria. These lines." Adagio traced one of the lines on the map. "Could it be?"
"What? Do you know what those are Dagi?" Sonata looked at her elder sister expectantly.
"Leylines." Aria breathed, "That's what we've been feeling. How did we not realize?"
"Calm yourself, sister." Adagio comforted her. "After all, we haven’t been near any in centuries. It's not really surprising that we wouldn't recognize them. It seems Sonata just found us our backup plan."
The Rainbooms had departed the gym and were heading towards the outdoor fields, for a short moment they stopped, marveling at the sheer size of the stage that had been constructed over the morning.
"Wow, how is the school affording this?" Rainbow asked incredulously.
"I may have had something to do with that." Twilight pointed out with a sly grin.
Five pairs of eyes turned to look at her with stunned and confused expressions, Sunset meanwhile merely gave her a knowing smirk.
"Well," Rarity said finally, "shall we have a look? Test the waters as it were?"
"Yeah, let's go!" Rainbow agreed.
The seven made their way up onto the stage. They gazed across the vast empty space before them, up to the hills beyond the field, past the edge of school grounds. Above them were various pieces of lighting and sound equipment Twilight was eyeing curiously, Rainbow was giving the amps and other musical equipment onstage an inquisitive glance. Rarity seemed to be daydreaming about something and Applejack and Fluttershy were simply sitting at the edge of the stage enjoying the view. Sunset and Pinkie were idly chatting.
"Well, seems like the stage is all set." Rainbow finally spoke up after finishing her investigation of the amps.
"It certainly seems so, Rainbooms."
The girls turned at the voice, their eyes narrowing when they saw the speaker. Trixie was standing at the edge of the stage, flanked by her other two band members.
The girls got up and gathered up behind Rainbow, who then spoke up.
"What are you doing here, Trixie? Pretty sure the losers are supposed to be up there in the cheap seats."
She pointed her finger at the open space beyond the stage. Trixie didn't even turn to look, instead continuing to give Rainbow a singing glare.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie is the most talented girl at Canterlot High. It is I who deserves to be in the finals. And I will not..." She snapped her fingers "...be denied!
One of her assistants grabbed a lever at her side and pulled it, with an audible clanging noise, a trap door beneath the girls swung open and they dropped into a storeroom beneath the stage.
Trixie gave a malicious cackle. "See you never!" With that she turned around and walked off, her assistants, following her, left the lever to swing back on its own sealing the trapdoor shut.
Form the hill beyond school grounds the three sirens watched the exchange take place.
"Told you someone would give them a shove." Adagio gave a sinister chuckle.
"She didn't shove them. She pulled a lever."
Aria groaned but otherwise ignored her younger sister. "We still don't have their magic though. And I don't think we'll get it either."
"We may not have their magic, sister." Adagio pointed out with a smile. "But we do have this!" She rolled out the map they had found before. "Now we've been using our magic plenty while we were here. It looks like the leyline nexus is beneath the school, but it's probably too far down for our magic to reach it."
By now Aria had exchanged her usual frown for a genuinely intrigued expression. "Then the next best place would be here." She put her finger on the map, pointing out a smaller secondary nexus where the leylines split up further.
"Hey, I know that place! That's Sugarcube Corner." Sonata suddenly chimed in.
Adagio grew a sinister smile. "Well come on then girls, it'll be another hour before the final round and Sugarcube Corner just earned itself a private performance by the Dazzlings."
Laughing, the three sisters walked off.
"So. What do we do now?" Rainbow said, deadpan.
"I can't see anything" Fluttershy spoke quietly, her voice shuddering.
"Hold on girls," Twilight spoke up, extending her psychic abilities, feeling out the room they had found themselves in, after a moment she felt a doorknob and then a small box with a switch. There we go! she focused on it and flicked the switch. With a flicker the overhead lights came on to the left and right of the trapdoor.
"Oh, thank you." Fluttershy gave Twilight a quick hug.
"Alright, now how do we get outta here?"
Rainbow walked up to the door and tried to turn the knob. "Nope. Who designed this thing? There isn't even a lock on this door, the knob on the inside just doesn’t work." She gave a groan of exasperation.
Sunset walked up to her fellow Equestrian. "Could you use your telekinesis to open it, Twilight?"
"I can try, but I don't think it would work." She walked up to the door, laying her hand on the door and closing her eyes to focus. After a few seconds she reopened her eyes and shook her head. "It's no good. The psychic power can't get through the door. If there was a lock, I could maybe funnel it through there but without that it won't work."
She sat down leaning against the wall and Sunset sat down beside her. "So it doesn't work like magic?"
"No. It works differently. I asked Cadista to teach me something more about it after the last time I was here. That's why it's grown more powerful. I've been practicing. The main thing is that if I want to affect the physical world, the psychic power basically becomes like an invisible form of matter, so it can't go through normal matter. It can only phase through matter if it's meant to affect the minds of others. It's not all that effective against solid matter but it's very effective when used against magic."
"Ah so it's a kind of rock-paper-scissors situation?"
"Rock-paper-scissors?"
Sunset facepalmed "Oh right that's not a thing in Equestria."
"Wait!" Rainbow jumped in. "How do you not have that in Equestria?"
Sunset gave her a sKeptically raised eyebrow. "Rainbow, how about you find that out for yourself. Go through the mirror, then try playing rock-paper-scissors with hooves."
Rainbow scratched the back of her head. "Right, ponies, somehow I keep forgetting about that."
"Well to answer your question, darling," Rarity chimed in, "rock-paper-scissors is a game in which the players simultaneously form symbols with their hands. Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beat paper." While she explained she used her right hand to demonstrate the different symbols."
"Oh, I see, then yes, it works kinda like that."
"Twilight, I have an idea." Sunset turned to Twilight whispering in her ear.
Twilight leaned to her to listen. "Well, yes.", "I guess that could work.", "Well alright, I don't like doing it, but I guess it's really the only option."
"What are you two on about?" Applejack asked, staring at the two with a skeptically raised eyebrow.
Sunset got up, arms crossed before her chest, a sly smirk playing across her lips. "Oh you'll see."
Fluttershy sat down next to Twilight. "Are you sure you're okay with ... whatever Sunset suggested?"
Twilight put an arm around her shoulder and smiled softly. "Don't worry Fluttershy. It's a thing I can do. I knew there would come a time when I'd have to do it. Don't worry about me."
Applejack seemed placated by that. "Alright, then now what?"
Twilight stood up next to Sunset, matching her smile. "Now, we wait."
In Sugarcube Corner meanwhile, the Dazzlings had arrived.
Adagio turned to speak to her sisters in a hushed voice. "The magic is here. Can you feel it?"
Rather then answer her sisters simply gave her rather manic grins and nodded.
"Then let's go."
Sat in a corner booth the sirens looked at each other, the gems in their pendants momentarily gleaming. Then, as one, they raised their voices.
For a moment the idle chatter in the restaurant seemed to die down, then it devolved into agitated squabbles and outright shouting. Customers and staff alike started arguing about whatever they had been speaking of before. The voices of the sirens, magically amplified, carried above it all adding to the eerie ambience.
Invisible to all but the three sisters a green mist started seeping from the squabbling patrons and descended down onto the floor where it gathered. However, this time, unlike they had done so many times before, the sirens didn't will their pendants to absorb the energy they had released. Instead they simply waited, letting the energy start to slowly sink into the floor.
The mist seeped through the ground, beyond electrical lines and sewers, until it made contact with the leyline node beneath.
Suddenly the three sirens felt the pressure of the magic build up at their necks, and quickly willed their pendants to absorb the power. The green mist came back up as a compact sphere with arcs of bluish-white lightning coming off of it and surging throughout it. Three arms formed from the mist and soon made contact with the red gems. In that moment, they seemed to act like miniature tornadoes and within seconds the mist was gone, absorbed into the pendants, a few remnant sparks dancing around them, leaving a distinct taste of ozone in the sirens' mouths. The gems were now visibly emanating a soft red glow.
"Do you feel it sisters? Our true power is restored. After all these years. Now the 'Rainbooms' will learn what we can do."
Aria and Sonata joined in her malicious cackles, only keeping quiet because the knew they were in a well visited café.
In the storeroom beneath the stage. Rarity was in her element, it just so happened that she had stored some of her designs in this very room for use in the finals. In her professional opinion they were some of her finest work yet.
"Rarity, there is more important things than our outfits right now." Applejack groaned in exasperation.
"Oh, and what would that be, if I may ask darling? It's not like we have much else to do right now."
"Oh alright, fine. Give it here."
With a victorious smirk Rarity handed Applejack the dress, an ensemble of a green top and a yellow skirt with stylized red apples sewn onto it.
The others were handed similarly thematic dresses.
Soon enough the girls were suitably dressed and ready to rock. All they need to do now was wait for the audience to show up. And they didn't need to wait long.
Vinyl Scratch was approaching the CHS outdoor sports field. She hadn't come to school today since all the classes had been canceled in favor of the 'Battle of the Bands's early rounds. She didn't understand why, but all her fellow students had been acting strange ever since yesterday's lunch break and so she hadn't bothered to come in for school.
She had however no intention of missing the finals of this contest. When she approached, she found that she was one of the first ones there. She sat down to wait for the others to appear.
She could feel a strange sensation at the back of her mind, but she gave it no heed.
Twilight meanwhile was standing in the storeroom beneath the stage. So someone out there is unaffected. I need to know why. Well, here goes. She focused on the one mind that was not under the sirens’ influence and gently coaxed it to make it more open towards her suggestion. She took care to take matters slowly, she did not want to risk damaging the mind of a student, after all.
Over the next quarter hour she felt more and more students gather, the audience steadily growing.
Just as she heard the ringing of the microphone above their heads, signaling Principal Celestia’s opening announcement, she felt the other mind's resistance falling away. For a moment a shimmer of green washed over her eyes.
<Come to the door at the back of the stage and release us.>
At the back of the audience a green shimmer could be seen behind a pair of purple shades.
"Yes, my Queen."
As Vinyl Scratch got up from her seat and walked to the backstage area, Principal Celestia announced that the Rainbooms had not appeared and that 'Trixie and the Illusions" would fill in for them.
As Trixie took the stage, Vinyl walked up to the door and opened it.
"I have come to release you, my queen."
Twilight looked at her with a stunned expression. "I may have gone a little too far. One moment."
Twilight focused, once more her eyes glowed green and, once more, that glow was mirrored behind Vinyl's shades. After a moment Vinyl shuddered and shook her head. Twilight looked at her with a slightly worried expression. "Better?"
After a moment, Vinyl seemed to have caught herself and gave a thumbs up.
"Wait, you mind-controlled her?!" Rainbow burst out from behind Twilight.
"I did. I don't like doing it, but desperate times call for desperate measures."
"You can do that?!"
"Well, yes, that's also part of my psychic repertoire."
"How did you know about that, Sunset?" Fluttershy asked their friend.
"She told me about it after ... well you know ..."
"So Vinyl, you know what we need to do?"
Vinyl gave another thumbs-up and Twilight went to explain. "I tried to give her a loose idea when I took control of her mind." She turned to Vinyl "Sorry about that by the way."
Vinyl simply waved her off and motioned for them to follow.
After they had left the storeroom, Vinyl pointed over the crowd at one of the hilltops beyond school grounds.
"You got a plan?" At Rainbow's question Vinyl simply nodded.
"Okie, dokie, lokie, we'll meet you there." At Pinkie's words the Rainbooms walked off to the nearest gate off school grounds while Vinyl confused all of them by walking off in the direction of the parking lot.