Sunset looked up in horror at the green mist rising up through the stage's false floor from her arguing friends, as the pieces of the puzzle came together.
"Stop! You have to stop!" She shouted, getting the Rainbooms to cease their bickering. "This is what they've been after all along! They're feeding off of the magic inside you!"
"How can they be using our magic? It's the magic of friendship." Applejack asked.
"Ever since you started this band, you've been letting little things get to you. I never said anything, 'cause I didn't feel like it was my place. Not when I was so new to this whole 'friendship' thing. I still have a lot to learn. But I do know that if you don't work out even the smallest problems right at the start, the magic of friendship can be turned into something else." Sunset told them.
"I can't believe all this tension was happening right under my nose and I didn't realize it. I'm supposed to be the one with all the answers. And all I've done since I got here is let you down." Twilight added.
"I don't think anyone's supposed to have all the answers. But you can count on your friends to help you find them."
"I think you already have. Come on, we need to get out of here!"
One by one, they all gathered up and put all their weight into the locked trap room door. Twilight was first, then Sunset, then Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Rarity, and finally Rainbow. Twilight, with the force of her six friends against her, suddenly found it difficult to breath, and instinctually pushed off of the door, sending everyone but Fluttershy to the floor as she caught her breath. A moment later, a knock sounded on the door, before being seemingly effortlessly pushed open by none other than a familiar purple dog.
"Spike!" Twilight exclaimed, reaching forward and pulling him into a hug.
"Sorry I took so long. I had to find somebody who wasn't under the sirens' spell to help me get you out."
They looked to the doorway, to see the school's resident disc jockey, Vinyl Scratch, peek around.
"Why isn't she under their spell?" Twilight asked.
"Never takes off her headphones."
The musician gave a smirk and a thumbs up.
"Come on, y'all! Time to prove we've still got the magic of friendship inside us!" Applejack said, getting to her feet.
"And there's only one way to do it!" Twilight stated.
"We're getting the band back together?" Pinkie asked excitedly.
"We're getting our band back together!"
"Whee!"
"Ooh, which version of the counter spell are we going to play?" Rarity asked.
"I don't think it matters what song we play, as long as we play it together as friends." Twilight answered.
"I know just the song." Rainbow confidently said, causing some light looks of concerns from the others.
"Fluttershy's written a really great one."
The tambourine player nearly melted in response.
"We're about to save the world here. Personally, I think we should do it style." AJ commented. "Rarity?"
"I thought you'd never ask!" The fashionista replied, pulling over a rack of outfits.
In record time, the Rainbooms changed outfits and grabbed their instruments, running out towards one of the amphitheater's side exits. They'd need an elevated position to reach the entire crowd, and it also had to be far enough away from the competing speakers.
"Back there!" Rainbow said, pointing to the highest hill behind the crowd, between the amphitheater and the neighborhood. Sunset helped Pinkie push the cart her drum kit was stacked on, noticing Vinyl split off from the group and run to the parking lot, as the chorals coming from the stage overtook everything else in the area...
Maybe they'd pull this off... Somehow.
Sunset stood uneasily as the three draconic apparitions circled in the reddening dusk sky overhead. The heavy guitar riffs blasted from the amphitheater's speaker system, as the teenage crowd below swayed in tranced motions. The six Rainbooms watched worriedly for any sign of the flying monstrosities closing in.
Twilight was the first to notice them group up to the east and begin to swoop down. Vinyl saw it second, and the band heard her crank her station's speakers. Pinkie began with a short interlude, getting the rest of the group in sync, and Vinyl's speakers let loose a surge of magical energy towards the swooping sirens, who broke off their dive and split off. Charged diamonds erupted from Rarity's synthesizer, halting the charge of the purple siren. Glowing butterflies began to gather around Fluttershy's tambourine, and as she outstretched her arms, they bolted forward, causing the turquoise siren to rear up defensively.
"~Oh-oh, oh-whoa-oh!" Twilight's falsetto surged towards the yellow siren, but instead of being deterred, the creature answered with her own, higher falsetto, with such force that it began to physically push Twilight back. The other two regrouped on both sides of Adagio, and let loose another harmonized falsetto, nearly shoving Twilight into Pinkie's drum set. Their voices became louder and more forceful, and every member of the Rainbooms was knocked off of their feet. Twilight couldn't hold on to the microphone as she fell, and it flew out of her hand, colliding with Pinkie's right crash cymbal.
As the attack wasn't focused in her area, Sunset had managed to stay on her feet, along with Spike. As the waves passed over her and subsided, she felt something hit one of her boots, looking down and seeing Twilight's mic. She bent down to pick it up, and as she held it, she wondered if this was the closet she would get to being in the Rainbooms.
"Sunset Shimmer, we need you!" Twilight shouted.
Not believing what she just heard, she took a moment to swallow her fears and uncertainty, taking a deep breath as she stepped up in front of the others. Fluttershy turned to Vinyl and gave her a hand signal to skip to her song's bridge. Sunset removed her jacket, as a gust of wind caught it and carried it a few feet before it fell to the grass. Vinyl spun up the disc, and the bridge to 'The Music of Our Friendship's final verse began. Sunset took another breath as she brought the microphone up. She had one shot at this.
"~You're never gonna bring me down
You're never gonna break this part of me
My friends are here to bring me 'round
Not sing just for popularity," she sang as she helped Twilight to her feet, who was immediately ready to continue.
"~We're here to let you know, that we won't let it go
Our music is a bomb and it's about to blow
And you can try to fight, but we have got the light
Of friendship on our side!"
As the chorus approached, the rest of the Rainbooms had recovered and were on their feet playing, and Sunset's confidence only grew as she stood next to Twilight singing, watching fearlessly as the trio of draconic sirens dove towards them again.
"~Got the music in our hearts! We're here to blow this thing apart!"
Sunset saw a wide rainbow explode outward from the group, flinging the apparitions away, washing over the crowd, and still she kept singing.
"~And together, we will never, be afraid of the dark!"
She was prepared to keep singing with the final chorus, but she felt herself go weightless as a warm energy enveloped her entire body. She felt as if she was being carried as she let her arms leave her side and closed her eyes. Her ears tingled as she heard the Rainbooms continue to sing.
"~Here to sing our song out loud
Get you dancing with the crowd
As the music of our friendship
Survives, survives!"
She opened her eyes, felt her incredibly long ponytail, the pony ears on the top of her head, and saw that the others had joined her in midair.
She had never felt magic like this before in her life. What she had felt at the end of the Fall Formal had been humbling. But this... this was empowering. She watched as the prismatic beam rose from the group, and wondered what it was going to be like for the trio about to be on the receiving end of it. Would it do to them what it did to her?
She heard the crowd below join in on the final repeat of the chorus as the glowing holographic alicorn that had formed from their magic rise to meet the siren's apparitions. A brilliant beam of magical energy shot out from the tip of its horn, disintegrating the siren's draconic forms and continued down to their human forms on stage. She couldn't even begin to make them out in the beam, but as she was again blinded by a flash of white and their song came to an end, she knew they had triumphed.
She felt the grass under her boots again as she heard... Booing from the crowd below? Indeed, as she reached down to grab her discarded leather jacket, she saw the Dazzlings retreat from their place on stage, dodging food projectiles as they went. Then, as the trio made for the parking lot, the crowd, nearly as one, turned towards the back hill the Rainbooms stood on, and began to cheer uproariously.
"We did it!" Twilight exclaimed, nearly tackling Sunset in a hug just after she got her jacket back on.
Sunset's lips trembled in a smile as she returned Twilight's hug as she looked down on the student body applauding and cheering up at her and her friends.
"Yeah, we really did."