//------------------------------//
// CMC - Discovery 
// Story: Life From Strife 
// by Draxonos135 
//------------------------------//

The Battle of the Bands came to an end as the swirling pillar of rainbow friendship dissipated, and once the Rainbooms had been declared the winners, everybody began walking back home. Among these people were the trio of Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo, still wearing their musician outfits.

"Well, we didn't win, but at least we had fun, right?" Sweetie Belle spoke, shrugging her shoulders. "Or, at least, we had some sort of fun before the Dazzlings came around."

"Dude, I don't remember anything from the point they showed up in the cafeteria until the Battle of the Bands," Scootaloo remarked with exasperation, rubbing her head. "If we did have fun, then those memories were blocked off."

"Well, at least there's a silver linin' t' this," Apple Bloom said. "Ta Dazzlings were beaten and will never hurt anyone again!"

"Help!"

Startled by the call for help, the trio ran after the source and stopped as soon as they a peculiar, yet disturbing sight: Adagio Dazzle, carrying a seemingly unconscious Sonata Dusk and Aria Blaze on her arms, walked weakly across the ground, scanning her surroundings with tired eyes.

"Please... somebody help!" she shouted with desperation. "Somebody!"

Suddenly, she tripped and hit the ground, dropping her fellow sirens on the ground. She began crawling across the floor, still looking at her surroundings as her eyes lost their shine.

"Please... help us!" 

Then, she stopped as her eyelids began feeling heavy, and her eyes began growing faint.

"Help... them..."

Until finally, she herself collapsed. The trio came out of hiding and ran up to the unconscious ringleader, with Apple Bloom being the one to vocalize their thoughts:

"What ta heck was dat!"

"From the looks of it, they were calling for help," Scootaloo remarked, crouching down next to Aria's body. "As far as we know, though, it could be a trap."

Sweetie Belle didn't listen to the last part and rolled Adagio up, before she lifted her eyelids. Her eyes had become completely blank; no pupils or sign of life in them. 

"Sweetie Belle, don't go around doing thi-what happened to her eyes?!" Scootaloo exclaimed, stealing a glance at the duo.

"I..." Sweetie Belle closed Adagio's eyes. "I don't have a good feeling about this."

"Then let's get outta here!" Apple Bloom suggested. "Trap or not, ta Dazzlings are dangerous!"

Sweetie Belle turned back to the motionless siren. "I don't know, they don't seem to be... moving."

She promptly laid her head down Adagio's chest, and the ensuing silence sent a shiver down her spine.

"Girls," Sweetie belle clasped her hands and turned to her friends. "I don't hear a pulse."

Scootaloo was the next to rest her head on Aria's chest. "This one doesn't have a pulse either!" 

"Neither does this one!" Apple Bloom stood up. "D-Do ya think they're... dead?"

"No, Apple Bloom, I'm pretty sure their hearts are just taking a nap," Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "Even so, why did they die? The only thing Sunset and her friends did was destroy their gems and ruin their voices!"

"Maybe they felt such great despair that their own bodies couldn't take it?" Apple Bloom suggested. "One of mah cousins once felt such great despair, she died on ta spot."

"Oh, that's horrible, what happened?"

"They cancelled her favorite show on ta night of its season finale."

"Now I just think she took it way too hard!"

As the argument continued, Sweetie Belle looked at the bodies, and promptly tried to lift the ringleader's motionless person.

"Sweetie Belle, what are ya doin'?"

"I want to take the body somewhere else; if they stay here, then somebody else could stumble upon them, and I don't want to think the kind of chaos that would arise from them seeing a dead body," the girl argued. "I mean, just think about what would happen if Sunset and her friends saw them like this!"

That was enough of a convincing argument, as Scootaloo and Apple Bloom promptly grabbed Aria and Sonata and dragged the trio off to elsewhere.

They were surprisingly light, all things considered.





The trio eventually found a place to hide the Dazzlings, or at least store them somewhere, and that was at a cottage they had found in the middle of the forest near the school grounds.

What was a cottage doing there in the first place, they didn't know, but it didn't seem to be inhabitted, so the chances of the Dazzlings being found was pretty small.

That was more than enough to make them worry, though.

"We can't keep them there forever," Scootaloo stated.

Apple Bloom shrugged. "Ah don't know, ah once heard how Granny Smith buried a family pet, and it took years 'fore anybody found 'em."

"Yeah, but these are three interdimensional grief-sucking sirens, Apple Bloom, not a dog."

"Our family pet was a cat!"

"Doesn't matter, Scootaloo's point still stands," Sweetie Belle stated. "If the sirens just suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth, it's only a matter of time before people start wondering what happened to them. And even if they stay hidden forever, they could still decay like most dead bodies do."

"And once dat happens, ta cat will be outta ta bag," Apple Bloom folded her arms. "Ah see what ya mean, but what can we do?"

Sweetie Belle hummed for a moment, then got an idea. A horrible, terrible idea. "We could revive them!"

Scootaloo took out her phone and pushed some buttons, though since it was off no sound came out. "Hello, mental house? Yeah, I'm just calling to tell you that one of my friends has gone completely insane!"

"While ah don't like ta joke, ah gotta agree with Scootaloo on this one," Apple Bloom frowned. "Ta Dazzlings caused so much trouble for everyone, and ya want t' revive them after Sunset and her friends just beat them?"

"Girls, you don't understand: Sunset and her friends didn't just beat them, they killed them," Sweetie Belle argued. "Accidentally, yes, but that's even worse than if they had done it intentionally; right now they must think they just defeated them. And I'll bring this up again; can you imagine how they'll react when they see the Dazzlings' dead bodies?"

"They could always just assume somebody else killed them," Scootaloo frowned. "Which, now that I think about it, would be just as bad as if they thought they themselves did it."

"Alright, let's assume all three of us are okay with ta idea, how are we gonna revive them anyway?" Apple Bloom shrugged. "We don't have anythin' like a spell dat can revive ta dead. And even if we had it, ah doubt it'd have instructions t' revive ta sirens."

"Well, this is just an idea," Sweetie Belle twiddled her fingers. "The Dazzlings ate negative energy to feed themselves, right? Maybe that energy helped keep them alive. So, if we want to revive them, we just need to gather enough negative energy to feed them and boom, back to life!"

"There's still the problem of us not having anything that can tell us how to revive them, though."

As if on cue, something fell down and caught the attention of the trio. They got up and walked to a bookshelf nearby the lifeless sirens, and spotted a book on the ground.

The title of the book? "Revival: Giving Another Chance at Life".

"Well, this is convenient," Sweetie Belle said with a smile.

"Ya say convenient, ah say horseapples," Apple Bloom stated.

"Yeah, Sweetie Belle, a book about revivals falls down just as we mention the topic? Don't you think that's a bit suspicious?" Scootaloo rubbed her arm. "In fact, how do we know this place isn't a magical place itself?!"

"If it, Sunset and her friends can deal with it later, like they always do," Sweetie Belle as she opened the book and began surfing its content. "For now, let's focus on reviving the sirens."

Eventually, Sweetie Belle reached a page about sirens. And while Scootaloo and Apple Bloom exchanged looks, concerned about the requirements-primarily "grief" written in bold-Sweetie Belle focused on the fact there was a page at all.

"Bingo!"