“Swim faster!”
“I’m swimming as fast as I can!” I yelled, struggling through the water, the Crown of Leucosia slowing me down as I pulled it along behind us.
“You shouldn’t have gotten distracted during those swimming lessons,” Adagio admonished, flicking her tail to knock a spear aside before it could reach her.
“I was distracted because you decided we were going to go skinny dipping! And that’s besides the point -- I shouldn't even have to run! This is all your fault!”
“How was I supposed to know seaponies keep fish as pets?!” Adagio yelled, looking back and wincing as a bolt of lightning crackled through the water, the jagged beam curling and missing her only out of dumb luck.
“I guess Princess Skystar wasn’t kidding about lightning cannons!” I yelled. I had no idea how the armored seaponies were dragging the huge things through the water while they swam after us. They were practically as large as siege weaponry, but the two guards lugging them weren’t having any issues keeping up.
“Can’t you blast them with magic?!”
“Spells don’t work the same underwater!”
“I thought you were Celestia’s favorite student!”
“No, Twilight was Celestia’s favorite student! I’m the one that got into screaming matches with her!”
“Well pardon me for assuming she’d teach you something useful!”
“And pardon me for not sticking my head in a bucket so I could learn how to weave baskets at the bottom of the ocean!”
Another bolt of lightning crackled past us, close enough to leave me tingling and numb.
“They’re catching up, and their aim is getting better!”
“I’ve got an idea!” Adagio said. “Can you buy us a few minutes?”
I nodded and started knitting together a shield. I should have been able to do it in the blink of an eye, but this was like, well, underwater basket weaving. I’d never been all that good with shields to begin with and everything was slower and more difficult down here. The magic didn’t move correctly, and that wasn’t just because I had fins instead of hooves.
The shield came together just in time to catch a blast of electric force, sparks crackling along the surface of the shield as it formed along us, the competing magical energies splashing outwards as a multicolored aurora that filled the water in a chaotic mess of color.
“What’s your idea?” I yelled, over the popping and hissing of the superheated water bubbling at the surface of my shield. These seaponies were playing for keeps.
“Give me the crown. I’ll put it on.”
I gave her a look. “Adagio, I don’t think they’ll stop just because you’re wearing a hat.”
“The crown is magic, right?” She asked. “It might be able to do something! When it was whole, it had powers my sisters and I were never able to replicate on our own!”
I held the Crown of Leucosia up, trying to get a feel for it.
“I can’t tell,” I said, after a moment. “There’s too much interference and--”
My concentration was rocked by another blast of thunder, sending a numb pins-and-needles feeling down my horn from the feedback. I could tell already I was going to have a wicked headache in the morning.
“Just give it to me!” Adagio demanded, sweeping it up with a cloven hoof.
I let her have it, not fighting to keep my grip on it with my magic already strained.
She delicately placed it on her brow, closing her eyes like she thought it would bite her.
The massive golden crown, big enough for most ponies to use as a throne, settled onto Adagio’s head. Part of me expected a flash of light, or a blast or force, or for her to turn into a demon. Maybe that last one was just a personal fear - it was probably relatively rare for ponies to turn into demons when they put on a crown they didn’t deserve.
Not that Adagio didn’t deserve the crown, but she had defiled it, and I’d met too many enchanted items that carried grudges to feel safe.
“Did it work?” I asked, after a moment.
“I don’t feel any different,” Adagio said. She opened her eyes and looked at the scar on her chest. “Shouldn’t I be feeling something?”
Another blast of lightning rocked my shield, the already-fragile enchantment buckling and deforming, starting to deflate like a rubber ball with a hole in it.
“If I get out of this alive I’m going to learn to cast spells underwater.”
“It’s not doing anything, Sunset!” Adagio snapped.
“Don’t yell at me! I’m trying to help!”
The hippogriffs crowding around and beating on the failing shield parted, Queen Novo swimming up to the edge to glare in at us, holding an orange fish in her front hooves.
“When you ate Coral you left her mate and child alone in this world,” she said, bitterly. “I raised them like they were my own children!”
“It’s true!” Skystar added, peeking out from behind a rock. “We had dinner together, and went on family trips… well, not really trips. We were in hiding. But we went to events, and isn’t it still sort of a trip even if you’re just going to spend time with friends? I think--”
“This isn’t the time,” Queen Novo said. “Leave before you get hurt.”
“Hey, that’s a good idea,” I said. “We’ll go. We didn’t mean to cause trouble, we’re very sorry, and we’d very much like to just go home and work on our apology letters!”
“I was talking to my daughter,” Novo said, humorlessly. She looked over her shoulder at Skystar. “I don’t want you to see what happens next. Stratus, take my daughter back to her quarters. Make sure she stays there until I return.”
One of the guards saluted and led Skystar away. She looked back with an expression filled with more worry than I wanted to see.
“You’re no longer welcome in Seaquestria,” Queen Novo said. She clapped her hooves, and currents of water shredded what was left of my shield. “And you are no longer welcome to any of its gifts or magic.”
“Fine! Just take the stupid thing!” Adagio plucked the crown from her head and threw it towards the crowd, guards diving aside as it crashed through their ranks like a golden cannonball, bouncing along the seabed and stirring up the silt.
“It was never yours to give back,” Queen Novo snapped. “Stealing something doesn’t make it your own.”
“It didn’t work anyway,” Adagio grumbled. “It’s just a trinket.”
Queen Novo glared at us as the guards reformed their ranks around her. “The only thing you value is power, and I am glad I have seen your true faces before you could be allowed to possess more than you deserve.”
“That’s not true!” I swam between her and Adagio. “This isn’t about power! I just wanted to help her because she’s been hurting, and… I blame myself for what happened.”
“I already forgave you for it,” Adagio muttered.
“There’s a big difference between forgiveness and actually making up for what you did wrong. The girls and I broke your gems, and that’s why you can’t sing. You might have forgiven me, but until I can do something to fix my mistake, I’m still going to carry that weight.”
I turned to Queen Novo.
“Whatever we did wrong, give us a chance to make it up to you. I know how hard it can be to regain the trust of somepony you wronged, but I want to make the effort. I want to fix what went wrong and make things right between us. No running or hiding or fighting.”
I held out a hoof of friendship.
Queen Novo looked at it, then at my face.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“Sometimes when you wrong somepony, you can’t fix what you did wrong. You can’t bring Coral back from the belly of the beast you seem intent on defending. I don’t think a monster like that could really care about anypony.”
I glared at her. I’d have slapped her, but you didn’t generally slap somepony whom you were trying to beg for mercy. “She loves me.”
“And I loved Coral. You can’t make this right, Sunset Shimmer. Do you know why she can’t sing? Because she’s a monster. Whatever you did to her, it was punishment. And now she’s going to be punished again.”
“I won’t let you hurt her,” I said, sending enough magic through my horn to give it a harsh glow. It was mostly a bluff. If we were out in the open air, I could have taken her, but down here I had no ideas what spells would work.
“I’m not going to hurt either of you,” Queen Novo said. She waved a hoof, and a rush of sparkling magic washed over me.
I noticed I had hooves again, though it would have been better if I’d noticed I had lungs. I sucked in a breath and found only ice-cold seawater when my body craved air.
“Sunset!” Adagio was screaming. I’d be screaming too if I could breathe enough to do it.
I closed my mouth, trying to keep the air in despite the crushing pressure of the depths around me. Adagio lunged, and the hippogriffs forced her back with a cordon of spears and nets.
“Attacking me won’t do you any good,” Queen Novo said. “How long can she hold her breath? A minute, maybe two?”
“And you’re calling me the monster?” Adagio growled. She reached for me, and more seaponies got between us, cutting her off.
“You are a monster,” Queen Novo said. “Even if you don’t want the title, that’s what you act like. Now, you will beg me for forgiveness and I will consider allowing you to leave with your pony.”
She gestured to me. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been busy drowning. Adagio didn’t beg. Of course, I also thought she didn’t cry, and I’d been wrong about that.
Adagio looked Queen Novo firmly in the eyes, braced herself, and started making a noise like a cat with a hairball. She choked and gasped, struggling and curling up on herself in pain.
“Is it that hard?” Queen Novo asked. “You can’t even lower yourself to save your marefriend’s life?”
Adagio looked at me and opened her mouth again. I could see her fighting for breath almost as much as I was, trying to force something out.
“I can see you’d rather let her die than admit how wrong you were,” Novo said. “Deep Blue, take her to the cells.”
One of the seaponies swam towards me and I struggled, my vision going black around the edges. I tried casting a spell to make him back off, but somewhere between the saltwater and my lack of concentration, it just turned into a few loose sparkles in the water.
The water vibrated around me. That’s the only way I can describe it. Partly because I was about halfway to passing out at the time. It was like someone had turned the universe into a giant tuning fork.
The guard coming towards me covered his ears, and his eyes flashed with green light from within.
Like notes descending a scale, the pure power of the vibration around me settled from just energy into a perfect C-sharp.
Adagio’s eyes were closed in concentration as she forced the note out, as long and powerful and carrying as whalesong. I could see the water shuddering in front of her with the force of the song as it twisted and turned, as entrancing as it had been when she and her sisters had taken over the school.
The seaponies turned on each other like griffons fighting over a bar tab, lightning cannons and spears forgotten as they started pummeling each other with hooves and tail-slaps, Queen Novo knocking out one of her guards with a particularly vicious left hook.
Adagio rushed towards me, fangs bared and maw open, an onrushing tunnel edged in fangs as long as my hoof.
I shook my head and tried to tell her not to do it, but all that came out were bubbles that represented the last of my air as her maw closed down around me.
Obviously I didn’t die. That didn’t mean it was particularly pleasant.
The next thing I was really aware of, aside from foul air, pressure all around me, and warm darkness, was being spat up.
I landed in the sand, covered in mucus, spit, and the contents of Adagio’s stomach, including one unfortunate clownfish.
“Are you okay?” Adagio asked, sounding panicked.
I tried to answer and started coughing, water pouring from my mouth. “I’m gonna be sick,” I said, weakly.
She relaxed. “If you can complain it means you’re fine.” She hit the sand hard next to me, like a beached whale but more attractive.
The clownfish next to me flopped weakly at me and I threw it back into the ocean.
“So much for her saying we couldn’t fix things,” I muttered. “Take your stupid fish back.”
I laid back on the sand and winced as something hard pressed into my back. I rolled over and pulled it free, revealing a license plate.
“I don’t even remember going to Louisiana,” Adagio muttered, when she saw it. “It must have been Mardi Gras in ‘72. That whole week was always a blur.”
“You ate me,” I said.
“Well,” Adagio said. “Not all the way.”
“You ate me!”
“It saved your life! I used the air in my swim bladder to let you breathe. Do you know how gassy that makes me? You should be thanking me for not letting you drown.”
“You ate me.”
“I’m starting to get a sense of deja vu. If it makes you feel better, think of it as a great big hug from my insides to your outsides.”
“It was not at all like a hug.”
“Well, then at least we made it.”
"And you sang."
Adagio smiled. "Either the crown did something, or maybe I just needed to be sufficiently motivated."
“Where are we, anyway?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Adagio shrugged.
“Great,” I sighed. I pulled a sopping, sticky lock of mane away from my face. “I can’t believe I spent all day underwater and the first thing I want is a hot shower.”
“...So we saw an airship flying by, and Adagio convinced him to take us along to his next stop,” I finished.
“When you say convinced, do you mean… convinced, or…” Twilight made air quotes. “Convinced?”
Adagio rolled her eyes and snorted.
“The kind where you don’t imply that she used mind control,” I said.
“Actually I was implying she might have threatened his life,” Twilight said. “Your story more or less matches what Queen Novo told me. I don’t think I need to tell you that I’m disappointed.”
“Why?” Adagio asked. “Everything worked out fine for me. I’m quite satisfied with the result.”
“You almost caused a war.”
“It’s not the first time. At least it wasn’t over some idiot’s awful fiddle playing this time.”
“Just let it go, Twilight,” I suggested. “She saved my life, and nopony got really hurt.”
Twilight didn’t look convinced.
“And we learned a valuable lesson about friendship!” I suggested, elbowing Adagio. It took a few times for her to notice me poking her.
“Hm?” She looked down at me.
“Friendship lesson!” I hissed. “We rehearsed this!”
“Oh, right, that,” Adagio sighed. “What I learned is that fishes are friends, not food.”
“See, Twilight? She learned her lesson.”
Twilight pursed her lips. “Fine.”
Adagio blinked, surprised. “Really? It worked?”
“No!” Twilight glared at both of us. “I’m sending you both back with homework. Thankfully, I have quite a few worksheets. Before you’re allowed to return to Equestria, I expect all of them to be finished.”
“Twilight, you can’t be--”
“And there will be a test on the material!” Twilight yelled. “So take notes. It’s open-book.”
I’ve made bad decisions in my life, but Adagio isn’t one of them.
I flipped through the movies and TV shows for the tenth time since I’d sat down, pausing on a documentary on coral reefs, my feet up on the kitchen table on top of one of the thick piles of worksheets we’d been sent home with.
“Do you think we should get a pet fish?” I asked.
“Don’t even start,” Adagio snorted. “The last thing I want is a snack you have to feed. It entirely defeats the purpose.”
She got up and stretched, arching her back. That did interesting things to her chest and she knew it was going to make me look. Maybe they really were bigger than mine.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
I was too distracted to respond.
“My eyes are up here,” she whispered.
“I was just trying to decide if you were--” I looked away and stopped bothering trying to explain. “Never mind.”
“If you get bored, you could always join me,” she suggested, rocking her hips suggestively before she closed the door to the bathroom. Most of the way. She left it cracked open enough to give me tantalizing glimpses as she undressed.
The sound of running water filled the air. After a few minutes, it was joined by notes, faint at first and getting stronger and more confident.
I turned the TV off and walked to the bathroom to take her up on her suggestion.