“So ya sure you don’t have any apple pie around here, Lucy?” Justice asked the woman as they – along with Sonata and Su-Z - rode the elevator.
“Yes, Justice, I’m sure,” Lucy answered, sounding a tad peeved.
“You sure you’re sure?” Justice then asked.
“Yes, Justice, I’m sure,” Lucy once again answered, this time through gritted teeth.
“What’s with her and doing that bit?” Sonata whispered over to Su-Z.
“No idea,” Su-Z whispered back just as the elevator dinged, indicating that they’d arrived at their destination.
Once the elevator doors opened the four women exited the compartment and began to walk down a large but narrow antechamber, not entirely unlike the one that connected the club’s entrance to the outside world. Though the two major differences between that antechamber and this one were that this one was far more lavishly decorated and it didn’t have a door at the other end of it. Instead, it opened up to an even larger room that was just as opulent and grandiose as the elevator compartment was, if not more so.
“Wow,” Su-Z once more remarked as she took in the magnificence of the room.
Sonata also found the room they were now in to be palatial and extravagant but she chose to remain silent, figuring it best to keep a demure manner about her around Lucy.
A number of things about the room caught the eyes of the Dazzling and PostCrush girl as they followed Lucy and Justice through it. Things like expensive-looking paintings that adorned the walls, elegant crown molding that ran all along the edges of the ceiling, and lavish pieces of furniture that sprawled across the floor. But perhaps what caught each of their eyes the most were the series of five pedestals that were located along the far-back wall and behind a desk covered in ledgers that they were walking towards. Each of the pedestals sat a different height and most were adorned with an item atop it. The pedestal to the very left displayed a small, very embroidered box with Greek symbols on it, and the one next to it displayed a wooden staff with an owl totem that sat on the top end. The pedestal in the middle had an unsettling-looking, spike-laden mask in the shape of a heart atop it, and the one next to that pedestal displayed a black notebook with ‘arvc-5’ written on it. The final pedestal was the only one with nothing on it.
“Now let me make sure I understand the situation,” Lucy said as she walked around behind the desk, took a seat, and planted her elbows on top of it as she intertwined her fingers. “You used a perdition tablet, Sonata, but you don’t want to send anyone to Hell. So you’ve come to me in the hopes that I’ll break the contract between you and Justice so that you’re not stuck with her by your side for the rest of your life, correct?”
“Um, yeah, pretty much,” Sonata replied as she and Su-Z each took seats in front of the desk.
Justice decided to remain standing and took a position at the side of the desk.
“So can you do it? Can you break the contract?” Sonata continued.
“Of course I can,” Lucy answered in an uncharacteristically amiable manner. “And I’d be more than happy to do that for you, my dear.”
Despite Sonata’s desire to remain reserved in her emotions she couldn’t help but dawn an expression of surprise upon hearing Lucy’s answer.
“Seriously?” Su-Z asked, sounding just as surprised as Sonata looked.
“Seriously,” Lucy replied as she opened one of the desk drawers and withdrew a piece of paper out of it. “There’s just one little thing I need you to do first, Sonata.”
“Yes, anything!” Sonata exclaimed as she jumped out of her seat.
“I just need you to sign this for me,” Lucy said as she held the paper up to the Dazzling. “You and your -”
Cutting Lucy off mid-sentence, Sonata snatched the paper from the woman’s hand and reached for a nearby pen so that she could sign it and finally put an end to all of this madness. But just as the Dazzling was about to put pen to paper she realized just what it was that Lucy had given her.
“This…this is a contract for my sisters and I to perform at your club,” She said aloud.
“It is. As a matter of fact it’s the same contract I offered the three of you a few years ago,” Lucy elucidated. “So if you could just sign it and then get your sisters to do the same I can send Justice back to Hell, where she’ll be out of your life forever.”
“Why do I suddenly feel like an unwanted child at a custody hearing?” Justice randomly chimed in.
“Quiet, Justice,” Lucy retorted.
As Sonata looked over the paper in greater detail she saw that it was indeed the exact same contract Lucy had offered her, Adagio, and Aria to perform at Chaus a while back. The exact same one that they had turned down because it would have prohibited them from performing anywhere else and would’ve essentially allowed Lucy to withhold all of their pay from them until it expired.
At first Sonata was confused as to why sending Justice back to Hell was contingent on her and her sisters signing the contract. From where she stood it appeared that the contract and Justice had nothing to do with one another, so why was Lucy saying that she required a signed contract before she could get rid of Justice for her? But soon enough, the Dazzling understood; Lucy didn’t need the contract signed in order to get rid of Justice for her, she just wanted the contract signed in exchange for getting rid of Justice.
Despite the Dazzling’s initial displeasure with Lucy’s little quid pro quo she had to admit that she was tempted to accept it in order to free herself of Justice. Thankfully though the temptation didn’t last long, as soon she realized two things. One, she could never ask her sisters to accept such an awful deal, especially for the sole purpose of her own gain. And two, even if she could commit such an incredibly selfish act there would be no way for her to do so without revealing to her sisters that she’d summoned a demon from Hell anyhow.
“I’m not signing this,” She said as she dropped the pen and held the piece of paper out in front of Lucy. “And I’m not asking Adagio and Aria to sign it either.”
An uncomfortable moment of silence fell across the room as Sonata and Lucy stared one another down while Su-Z and Justice looked on.
“Are you sure about that, Sonata,” Lucy eventually said as she leaned back in her chair. “Don’t forget, I’m the only one who can break the contract between you and Justice. So unless you’ve suddenly changed your mind about not wanting to send someone to Hell, you need me. And I’m not going to give you what you want without you giving me what I want in exchange.”
Sonata did take a moment to reconsider her decision like Lucy suggested. Though not her decision to refuse the woman’s trade-off, but rather her decision to not have Justice send someone to Hell for her.
“Actually, now that you bring it up, Lucy, I think there is someone I want to send to Hell,” She said.
Both Lucy and Su-Z’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates upon hearing Sonata’s remark.
“S-Sonata?” Su-Z uttered in disbelief.
“O-Oh, you don’t say,” Lucy then said as she tried – and failed – to hide her surprise. “Well, pray tell, who is this someone that you’ve suddenly decided you want sent to Hell?”
“…You,” Sonata replied acutely.
An unsettling silence fell across the room once again as both Lucy and Su-Z’s eyes somehow widened even more than they already had. A silence that was only broken when Justice smacked both of her palms down on the desk and began to chortle loudly.
“Oh damn!” The demon girl managed to say through her laughter. “She turned the tables on you, Lucy! She turned the tables on you good!”
Justice then removed her right hand from the desk and placed it on Sonata’s left shoulder.
“I gotta say, Sonata, I don’t think there’s a demon in Hell that could’ve pulled one over on Lucy like you just did,” She told the Dazzling.
Without saying a word, Sonata removed Justice’s hand from her shoulder in a very deferential manner.
“A little quick to declare that Sonata just ‘pulled one over on me’, don’t you think, Justice?” Lucy then said as she regained her composure.
“Nah, not really,” Justice replied. “I mean, we all know you don’t want to go back to Hell, Lucy. And since Sonata just threatened to have me send you back down there if you don’t send me back down there first, well, it kinda means you lost this one.”
Hearing Justice tell Lucy that she lost brought a cocky, triumphant smile to Sonata’s face. Of course the Dazzling already knew this to be the case from the moment she came up with the idea of threatening to have Justice send the woman back to Hell, but hearing Justice say it aloud filled her with a sense of triumph that she couldn’t help but show.
That is, until Lucy started to laugh.
“Ahahahaha!” The Queen of Hell cachinnated as the Dazzling’s smile quickly faded. “Come now, Justice, do you really think that I’ve lost just because Sonata threated to send me back to Hell?! Ahahahaha!”
“Well not anymore,” Justice replied awkwardly.
As Lucy continued to laugh, Sonata tried to figure out exactly why it was the woman was so amused. As far as she could tell her plan had been full-proof. Either Lucy sent Justice back to Hell for her or she would have Lucy sent back to Hell by Justice, those were the only two options there were. Neither of which were considered favorable by the club owner. So why in the world was Lucy laughing right now and saying that she hadn’t lost?
“I can tell you’re confused, Sonata. So allow me to explain,” Lucy said as she ceased her laughter. “You see, Justice is right about one thing; I don’t want to go back to Hell. I’ve been up here for seven years now and I’ve grown rather fond of Canterlot. It’s a surprisingly interesting city, and one that I have no plans of leaving anytime soon. But even if I were to leave it because of, oh, I don’t know, someone using a perdition tablet to send me to Hell I can always just come right back.”
It was at this point that Sonata realized why it was Lucy had been so amused by her threat.
“After all I did manage to get out of Hell once before, I think I can manage to do it again,” Lucy continued as she dawned a cocky smile similar to the one Sonata had only a minute ago.
As the realization of the critical flaw in her seemingly full-proof plan sunk in Sonata couldn’t believe that she’d overlooked such an obvious factor. Of course Lucy would have no problem getting out of Hell a second time, Justice had mentioned earlier that when the woman had done so the first time she’d been able to do it with ease. So it only stood to reason that she could do it again just as easily, making the threat of sending her back to Hell virtually no threat at all.
“Regardless though you’re of course still free to have me sent to Hell so that you can get rid of Justice. It’s not like I’d be able to stop you or anything if that’s what you really want to do,” Lucy continued arrogantly, before suddenly becoming noticeably astringent. “But just know that if you do choose to send me back down there I’m going to be very, very upset about that.”
The severity with which Lucy expressed her feelings towards being sent back to Hell cut through Sonata’s soul like a knife through butter, so much so that the Dazzling’s fear of her sisters finding out about Justice quickly became overshadowed by a newfound fear of what might happen if she made Lucy upset. She knew that if Adagio and Aria found out about Justice they would be incredibly upset with her, no doubt about it, but she also knew that no matter how incredibly upset they might get with her that she would be all right. Inversely, she knew that if she got the Devil herself upset with her then there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell that she’d be all right.
Face the ire of her sisters or face the wrath of Lucy, those were the only two options Sonata had left at this point. And despite her great displeasure with either of them the Dazzling knew which one she had to go with.
“Come on, Justice, Su-Z,” She said defeatedly as she turned around and started to walk away. “We’re leaving.”
“Okie-dokie,” Justice said as she followed behind the Dazzling. “Later, Lucy.”
“Goodbye, Justice,” Lucy replied pompously, without taking her eyes off of Sonata.
As Sonata slowly but surely made her way back towards the elevator she could feel a tear or two start to form in the corners of her eyes. Not only had she failed to get Lucy to send Justice back to Hell for her but she’d been utterly humiliated in trying to do so. When she’d agreed to appeal to the Queen of Hell for help she thought that, at worst, she’d receive a simple no for an answer and that would be that. Instead she ended up being on the receiving end of a very ominous threat and forced to walk away with her metaphorical tail between her legs, and the worst part of it all was that she was responsible for this outcome. She’d chosen to threaten Lucy first and put the woman into a position where she had to strike back at her. She had no one to blame for what had just happened with Lucy and would happen next with her sisters but herself, and the emotional toll of that fact was quickly starting to manifest itself physically as she walked.
But just as Sonata reached the center of the room and could feel the first teardrop begin to fall down her cheek she heard the sound of a cellphone camera going off from back by the desk, causing her to stop.
The first thought that came to the Dazzling’s mind after hearing the camera click was that Lucy was capturing her defeat for posterity so that she could look back on it for a good laugh whenever she wanted. But when she turned around to confirm this speculation she immediately discovered her assumption was wrong. She didn’t see Lucy pointing a cellphone at her like she’d expected, but instead saw the woman looking curiously over at a still-seated Su-Z, who had her phone out and pointed squarely at the desk.
“What are you doing?” Lucy asked the PostCrush girl.
“Taking pictures,” Su-Z replied casually, right before she took another picture.
“Of my desk?” Lucy said perplexedly.
“No, of your ledgers,” Su-Z answered.
Just then Lucy swiftly looked down at her desk to see that she did indeed have ledgers scattered all across it. Open ledgers.
“T-Those are private!” The club owner barked as she hastily tried to close all of the ledgers before Su-Z could take any more pictures of them.
“Well then you probably shouldn’t have left them laying out in the open like that,” Su-Z replied in a wiseass manner, eliciting a very visible look of irritation from Lucy.
“Just leave, Su-Z,” The woman said sternly as she stood up and pointed over towards the elevator. “And delete those pictures you just took on your way out.”
“No, I don’t think I’ll leave just yet,” Su-Z replied staidly as she too stood up. “And I don’t think I’ll delete the pictures I just took either. At least not until you send Justice back to Hell for us first.”
Feeling confused about what Su-Z was doing, as well as concern for the girl’s safety, Sonata quickly made her way back over to the desk and put a hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“Forget it, Su-Z. Let’s just go,” The Dazzling told the PostCrush girl.
“I’ve got this, Sonata,” Su-Z assured her friend as she placed a hand on top of the Dazzling’s and gave her a warm smile. “Trust me.”
As much as Sonata wanted to insist that Su-Z give up on whatever game it was she was playing and leave with her and Justice she found herself unable to do so. The more the Dazzling looked upon the affable face of her friend the more she felt a renewed sense of hope that there really was some way to get Lucy to send Justice back to Hell for them. Maybe it was because of the high-level of confidence behind that affable smile or the fact that Lucy had gotten so quickly riled up by the PostCrush girl’s actions, but Sonata chose to trust that Su-Z knew what it was she was doing.
And so, still not knowing just what game Su-Z was playing at, The Dazzling returned the former popstar’s warm smile and gave a small nod before gently removing her hand from the girl’s shoulder.
“Now as I was saying,” Su-Z said sternly as she once more addressed Lucy. “We’re not going to leave or delete the pictures I just took until you send Justice back to Hell for us, Lucy. Or else.”
“Or else what, exactly?” Lucy asked, sounding borderline incredulous at this point.
Now it was Su-Z’s turn to dawn a cocky, triumphant smile.
“Or else we’re going to -” The PostCrush girl began to say, before cutting herself off as her phone started to ring. “Oh, that’s probably Dolly. Just a minute.”
As Su-Z put her phone up to her ear and started to walk over to a more isolated part of the room Sonata and Lucy exchanged puzzled glances with one another. Had each of them really just bore witness to the same thing? Had Su-Z really just cut herself off in the middle of such a heated conversation to take a phone call? Neither woman could fully wrap her head around it.
Though for Sonata there was more than just confusion swirling around inside her head, there was also no small amount of frustration mixed in there as well. And with each passing second that the Dazzling tried to understand what had just happened that frustration boiled ever closer to the surface.
Sonata simply found herself unable to comprehend how Su-Z seemingly believed that she could hit some imaginary pause button in their arbitration with the Queen of Hell like it was nothing. Like doing so wasn’t going to negatively affect their colloquy with the woman. The Dazzling was no master adjudicator but she did know enough about the art of negotiation to know that you didn’t walk away when you had the upper hand, and they’d most certainly had the upper hand. Su-Z had managed to get Lucy agitated and she very well could’ve had the woman in the palm of her hand if she’d only finished her sentence. But instead she’d chosen to cut herself off in the middle of that sentence – all so she could take another phone call from Dolly.
This was the third time within the last few hours that Su-Z and Dolly had shared a mysterious phone call. The first- and second-times Sonata had been able to keep her emotions and anxieties regarding them in-check, but now the Dazzling found herself unable to do so again. The frustrations she’d been feeling towards Su-Z and Dolly’s calls rapidly blended together with those from her having to deal with Justice and Lucy, and eventually created a feeling so strong that it could no longer be contained.
“Are you kidding me?” She said as she made her way over to Su-Z. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”
“Huh?” Su-Z muttered as she lowered her phone from her ear and turned around.
No more than a second after Su-Z finished turning around she found Sonata standing a mere three feet away from her with an outstretched hand.
“Give me the phone, Su-Z!” The Dazzling demanded.
Sonata’s sudden change in mood confused Su-Z, though her confusion was swiftly overshadowed by fear that she’d inadvertently incurred her friend’s wrath.
“Um, I can’t really do that, Sonata. I’m kind of using it right now,” The PostCrush girl replied tentatively.
“Give…me…the phone!” Sonata reiterated.
For a brief moment Su-Z diverted her attention away from Sonata and over to Lucy - who was still standing behind her desk - in the hopes that maybe the club owner would somehow intervene in the conversation. Perhaps by providing some explanation for the Dazzling’s current mood for example. But as soon as the PostCrush girl saw that Lucy seemed just as confused as she was she brought her attention back to Sonata.
“A-Are you feeling all right, Sonata?” She then asked her friend. “You seem a bit…frazzled.”
It was hard for the Dazzling to discern if Su-Z was being serious or not, and in all honesty part of her was sort of hoping that the girl was just being flippant right now.
“No, Su-Z, I am not feeling all right!” Sonata replied irately. “In case you haven’t noticed I’ve been having a really, really bad day!”
Sonata then lowered her hand and began to pace back and forth in front of Su-Z.
“I mean, with everything that’s happened today I’m starting to think that I’m in my own personal Hell right now!” She continued. “In the span of just a few hours – a few hours - I’ve had to deal with my sisters getting upset with me over that stupid tablet, summoning an incredibly annoying demon whom I can’t seem to rid myself of, -”
“Annoying?” Justice spoke up softly. “I’m not annoying, I’m awesome. Right, Lucy?”
“Ehhh,” Lucy replied dubiously.
“- getting humiliated by the Queen of Hell, and my daughter making numerous inexplicable phone calls to one of my housemates!” Sonata continued. “I am far from feeling all right, Su-Z! Right now I…I feel like my whole world is spinning out of control and there’s nothing I can do to stop it! Like I’m completely and utterly helpless right now!”
Just then the Dazzling ceased her pacing.
“I know there’s nothing I can do about how Aria and Adagio feel, and from the looks of things I don’t think there’s anything I can do regarding Justice or Lucy either,” She then said wearily as she once more held her hand out in front of the PostCrush girl. “But there may be something I can do about Dolly. So please, Su-Z, I’m begging you, just give me the phone. Just let me talk to my daughter and make sure she’s okay.”
Su-Z was of two minds about what she should do. Part of her wanted to hand Sonata the phone so that she could help ease some of her friend’s distress, but another part of her wanted to hold onto the phone out of a sense of respect for Dolly’s privacy. After all, Dolly was her friend too. As much as she wanted to help Sonata she wasn’t sure that handing her phone over to the Dazzling wouldn’t result in a betrayal of Dolly’s trust in her. Earlier when they’d spoken the girl had made it clear that she didn’t want to talk to Adagio, so did that also mean she didn’t want to talk to her mother either? It seemed like a reasonable assumption that she didn’t, but the PostCrush girl wasn’t certain of it.
The more Su-Z tried to figure out what the best course of action to take was the more she started to feel like she was in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scenario. No matter what choice she made she was going to end up hurting someone, the only question was whether that someone was going to be either Sonata or Dolly.
Though thankfully before the PostCrush girl had to make such a difficult choice she heard her name called out through the phone, prompting her to place the device back up to her ear.
“Dolly?” She spoke into it. “…Yeah, that was your mom just now. She says she wants to talk to you.”
The next few seconds were filled with silence as Su-Z listened to Dolly through her phone, with only the occasional ‘Uh-huh’ uttered by the former popstar to break it up.
“You sure?” The PostCrush girl eventually said. “…You sure you’re sure?”
A subtle, involuntary twitch overcame Sonata’s left eye for a couple of seconds after hearing Su-Z say this.
“…Okay, just a sec,” Su-Z then said, just before lowering the phone from her head and holding it out in front of Sonata. “She wants to talk to you.”
Within the span of exactly one second Sonata swiftly took the phone from Su-Z’s hand and put it up to her ear.
“Dolly?!” The Dazzling said disquietly into the device.
“Mom?” Dolly said back through the phone. “What’s going on? Did I just hear you say something about summoning a demon and getting humiliated by the Queen of Hell?”
“Never mind all that, honey,” Sonata replied hurriedly. “Just…are you all right?”
“Um, yeah. I’m all right,” Dolly answered, sounding mildly confused.
“Oh thank goodness,” Sonata said softly to herself.
“Why would you think I wasn’t all right, Mom?” Dolly then inquired.
“W-Well,” Sonata began to say as she desperately tried to find the best way to explain herself so as not to come off as being an overly apprehensive parent – even though arguably that was exactly what she was being at the moment. “You and Su-Z have just been calling and texting a lot today, and when you said you didn’t want to talk to Aunt Adagio earlier -”
“Ah, that explains it,” Dolly interrupted. “Let me guess: After I told Aunt Adagio I didn’t want to talk to her she got all manic and started speculating that I was in some sort of trouble that I didn’t want her or you or Aunt Aria to know about. And ever since then you’ve been worried that she might’ve been right, right?”
“Um, y-yeah, pretty much,” Sonata replied somewhat embarrassingly.
“Mhmm, I figured. You and Aunt Adagio may have changed but neither of you have changed that much,” Dolly remarked.
“Y-Yeah, I guess not,” Sonata then said very embarrassingly as a dark red blush quickly began to overtake her face.
“Well if it’ll help give you and Aunt Adagio some peace of mind I’ll explain why I’ve been talking to Su-Z so much today,” Dolly assured her mother. “See, earlier this week I went to -”
“No, Dolly, you don’t have to do that,” Sonata hastily interjected. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Even though you’re my daughter you’re also an adult, and I have no right to make you tell me or make you feel like you have to tell me what’s going on in your life if you don’t want to. I trust you, honey. I know it may not seem like that after I got so hysterical just now – sorry about that by the way - but I do, and if you tell me that you’re all right then that’s all I need to hear. Yeah, I’ll probably still be a little worried about you later, but I’ll just have to deal with it.”
A few seconds of silence followed.
“A-And I’ll make sure Aunt Adagio deals with it too,” The Dazzling then added. “So, um, don’t worry about her getting even more manic or anything.”
“…Thanks, Mom. I’m glad to hear you say all that,” Dolly eventually said. “Thing is though, I’m actually okay with telling you about what’s been going on with me lately. In fact, I want to tell you about what’s been going on.”
“You do?” Sonata asked.
“Uh-huh,” Dolly assured her mother. “But maybe we should wait until later to talk. You know, after you get done dealing with…whatever it is you’re dealing with involving a demon and the Queen of Hell.”
Just then Sonata remembered where it is she was and what it was she’d been doing before speaking to Dolly. The Dazzling quickly turned around to see Justice and Lucy both staring at her, the latter with her head resting atop her right hand and an irksome expression on her face and the former with her usual affable smile plastered on hers.
“Um, yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” She agreed. “How about I call you this weekend?”
“Sounds good,” Dolly replied. “Talk to you then, Mom.”
“Right, talk to you then, honey,” Sonata said. “Bye.”
“Bye,” Dolly then said just before she hung up.
Her conversation with her daughter now over Sonata lowered the phone from her head and handed it back to Su-Z.
“Thanks,” The Dazzling said with a hint of awkwardness in her voice as the PostCrush girl took her phone back.
“No problem,” Su-Z replied, with the same hint of awkwardness, as she put the device back into her pocket.
Sonata was unsure of what she should either say or do next. She knew she needed to get back to her dealings with Lucy and Justice post-haste, but she also knew that she had to issue an apology to Su-Z first.
The Dazzling was fully aware of how horrendously she’d just treated her friend. All day Su-Z had been nothing short of a kind and supportive friend to her and she’d repaid that kindness and support by blowing up right in the girl’s face. She’d allowed her frustrations involving Justice and Lucy to get the better of her and took them out on the former popstar in a tirade of misdirected anger, and she felt just awful about it. She needed to apologize to her, she wanted to apologize to her, but for some reason she found herself unable to find the right way to do so.
Despite Sonata’s inability to find the right apologetic approach though she opened her mouth with the intent of offering her friend an ‘I’m sorry’, figuring that that would be a good enough place to start and she could just wing it from there. But before the Dazzling could even get out the ‘I’m’ Su-Z walked up to her side and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Come on,” The PostCrush girl said dogmatically as she looked her friend square in the eyes. “Let’s finish up here and go home.”
Su-Z then flashed Sonata a small smile, removed her hand for the girl’s shoulder, and started to walk back on over towards Lucy’s desk.
Sonata turned around and watched in awe and confusion as her friend made her way back to where Lucy and Justice were. She’d expected the PostCrush girl to be angry with her, or the very least upset, but instead she was acting as if no altercation had just transpired between them. The whole thing made absolutely no sense to the Dazzling. However, given that there was still the matter of dealing with Lucy at hand she decided it best to just go with the flow. She still felt a burning desire within her to issue an apology to her housemate, but since Su-Z didn’t seem at all perturbed at the moment she felt she could wait until later before doing so. Though not too much later.
“Done with your little episode of Days of Our Lives?” Lucy asked Su-Z acrimoniously as the girl approached her desk once more, causing her to remove her head from her hand and assume a more up-right position in her chair. “Because believe it or not I have better things to do than bear witness to whatever drama it is that’s unfolding within the Dazzling household.”
Realizing just how far from the conversation she now was, Sonata quickly made her way her way back over to the desk as well.
“Sorry for that interruption,” Su-Z apologized, though somewhat disingenuously, once she reached the desk. “Now where were we?”
“Oh, oh!” Justice piped up just as Sonata rejoined the group. “Lucy had told you to leave and delete those pictures you took, Su-Z, but you said that you weren’t leaving until Lucy sent me back to Hell, or else. Then Lucy said, ‘Or else what, exactly’, and then you started to say something but stopped half-way through when your phone started ringing.”
“Thank you for that recap, Justice,” Lucy said, now sounding somewhat disingenuous herself.
“Right, right,” Su-Z then said as she recollected her thoughts from right before her phone had rung. “What I was going to say was, ‘Or else we’re going to send these pictures of your crooked ledgers to the IRS’.”
As soon as Su-Z uttered the words ‘crooked ledgers’ and ‘IRS’ Lucy’s eyes widened noticeably and she quickly shifted from an up-right seated position to a more kyphosis one.
“C-Crooked ledgers? T-These ledgers aren’t crooked, they’re anything but crooked,” The club owner said apprehensively as she heedless started to grab as many ledgers as she could. “What on earth would possibly make you think they were crooked, Su-Z?”
“Because they look an awful lot like the crooked ledgers that the IRS kept showing Kiwi and I during our audit,” Su-Z explained as she planted her palms down on the desk and leaned over it slightly.
Just now realizing how pointless it was for her to be gathering up her ledgers since Su-Z had already taken multiple pictures of them Lucy ceased frantically culling the numerous record books up in her arms and sat back down.
“Forgot about the part of mine and Kiwi’s fall from grace where our label was keeping crooked books, huh?” The PostCrush girl continued. “That’s okay, most people do. They always seem to remember how Kiwi and I asked for more money but forget about how our label was investigated by the IRS for tax fraud, and just how much time we spent in an IRS office getting grilled over how much we knew about it. Which, just for the record, we didn’t know anything.”
It was at this moment that one of the many ledgers Lucy was still holding onto fell out of her arms and hit the floor, creating small thumping noise that no one, not even Lucy, seemed to notice.
“I gotta tell ya, being audited like that was definitely one of the most unpleasant things I’ve ever been through,” Su-Z went on. “But despite how grueling the whole ordeal was there was a silver-lining that came from it, and that was that I learned how to spot a crooked ledger when I see one.”
The PostCrush girl then placed her right index finger one of the few ledgers Lucy hadn’t managed to scoop up.
“And these? Oh boy are they crooked,” She then remarked bumptiously.
“Yeeeah, I kinda doubt that,” Justice chimed in. “I’m not sure what you think you saw in those ledgers, Su-Z, but I can guarantee you that it wasn’t anything crooked or fraudulent or whatever else that’d basically boil down to tax fraud. Right, Lucy?”
Lucy said nothing in response.
“Right, Lucy?” Justice reiterated, sounding noticeably less confident this time.
Once again, Lucy said nothing in response. She just continued to stare up at Su-Z in a distrait manner as yet another ledger fell from her arms and onto the floor.
“Oh, Lucy,” Justice then said disappointingly.
Just then Lucy suddenly let go the remaining ledgers she’d been holding onto and stood up vehemently, startling everyone else in the room and causing Su-Z to take a step or two back from the desk.
“Well sorry for doing what I had to in order to keep this club running, Justice!” The club owner hollered. “You think I wanted to fudge my books?! That I wanted to commit tax fraud?! No! The only reason I did any of that was because I didn’t have any other choice! Within the second year of opening Chaus I ran out of money and I had to either shut it down or lie to the IRS, and there was no way in hell I was going to allow this club to be shut down!”
As Sonata continued to watch things unfold she couldn’t believe what it was she was witnessing right now. Lucy Beel, the normally cool and collected owner of Chaus and the only person she’d ever met who even came close to rivaling her mother in terms of having a peremptory presence, acting so incredibly flustered and defensive. It was a side of the woman that she hadn’t known existed. Heck, it was a side of the woman that she hadn’t even conceived of existing. But it was a side of Lucy that the Dazzling was glad to see as it humanized her a bit, making her seem less indomitable and therefore more capable of being bested.
“And don’t you dare go judging me, Justice!” Lucy continued to holler at the demon girl. “You want to call me a hypocrite for committing tax fraud after I told you and every other demon in Hell not to do it, fine! I’m a hypocrite, I admit it! But I will not have any of my demons acting all sanctimonious like those arrogant-ass angels up in Heaven, got it?!”
“Okay, okay! Sorry, Lucy,” Justice apologized.
Her heated tirade towards Justice finished Lucy turned her attention back over to Su-Z and Sonata.
“Now let me make sure I understand the situation,” The Queen of Hell said coolly, yet also sharply. “You want me to break the contract between Sonata and Justice, Su-Z, and if I don’t you’re threatening to send the pictures you just took of my ledgers to the IRS, correct?”
“Yep,” Su-Z replied with conviction. “And just an FYI, I still have the number of the agent who handled our audit in my phone so I can send her the pictures lickity-split. And with as big of an opportunist as she seemed I guessing that once she sees the pictures of your ledgers she’ll be very interested in taking a look at them first-hand.”
An unsettling silence fell over the room as Su-Z and Lucy simply stared one another down, which Sonata couldn’t stand in the least. The Dazzling’s nerves had already been on-edge for a while, and now with this eerie reticence they weren’t getting any better. Quite the opposite in fact. The stillness and tension that was presently permeating the room’s atmosphere caused the pony-tailed girl’s mind to conceive no small number of ways in which things could quickly turn ugly for her and Su-Z. It was clear to her that Lucy felt that she’d been backed into a corner, and from personal experience she knew just what a person in such a position was potentially capable of. And given that Lucy was the Queen of Hell she fathomed that the woman was potentially capable of even more than she could possibly imagine.
To say that Sonata felt anxious right now would’ve been a gross understatement.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence – but was in actuality only about five seconds – the Dazzling’s neurasthenia worsened to the point where she could no longer take it. She quickly formulated a plan in her head to buoyantly step in and tell Lucy that she was fine with being stuck with Justice and that she and Su-Z would leave her office without sending any pictures to the IRS. It wasn’t a very elegant plan, or even a very good one, but she knew that it would likely diffuse the tension in the room and help soothe her frayed nerves. Of course she also knew that this plan wouldn’t solve the problem she’d come all this way to have taken care of, but so long as she and Su-Z left unharmed that was all that really mattered to her at this point.
After taking a second to mentally steel herself Sonata took a step forward with the intent of ultimately placing herself between Su-Z and Justice, but when she saw Lucy sit down she stopped dead in her tracks about halfway there.
“Fine,” The Queen of Hell said bitingly. “You win, Su-Z.”
As much as Sonata tried to contain her astonishment at what she’d just heard she found herself unable to do so. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and a small ‘huh’ escaped her mouth as her mind temporarily entered a corybantic state. Thankfully though this all went unnoticed by Lucy, whose attention was fixated squarely on Su-Z and Su-Z alone.
“All right then,” The PostCrush girl replied. “Now if you’ll just undo the contract I’ll delete the pictures from my phone and we’ll get out of your hair.”
Lucy then snapped her fingers, producing a small flame that flickered out of existence just as quickly as it had appeared.
“Done,” The woman said.
“Justice,” Su-Z said as she turned towards the demon girl. “Is the contract actually broken?”
“Yeah, it’s broken,” Justice confirmed.
Feeling sufficiently satisfied by Justice’s affirmation that the contract between her and Sonata was now null-and-void Su-Z took her phone out of her pocket, tapped it a few times until she opened the app that contained the pictures she’d taken, and then turned the phone towards Lucy. After a few seconds of allowing the club owner to look over said pictures Su-Z turned the phone back towards herself and selected each one individually before hitting the delete button, erasing them all at once. The PostCrush girl then turned the phone towards Lucy once again to show her that she’d upheld her end of the agreement.
“Thank you,” Lucy said politely yet acridly just before gesturing over towards the elevator. “Now if you don’t mind I’m a busy woman with a club to run, so unless you’re planning on staying for a few drinks downstairs I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Fair enough,” Su-Z said before turning towards Sonata - who by now had managed to get her astonishment under control. “Let’s go, Sonata.”
“Y-Yeah,” The Dazzling simply replied.
“Bye, Justice,” Su-Z then said amiably to the demon girl as she and Sonata started to make their way over to the elevator.
“Bye, Su-Z. Bye, Sonata,” Justice just as amiably said back as she gave both girls a genial wave goodbye.
Sonata didn’t say anything to Justice as she walked closely behind Su-Z through the large room. Now that she was free of the demon she didn’t want to have anything more to do with her. All she wanted now was to just get home and pretend that everything that’d happened over the course of the last few hours hadn’t.
As the Dazzling and PostCrush girl continued to make their way towards the elevator to leave they each discreetly looked around the room a bit more. They had no real desire to do so, per se, but both of them found it practically impossible not to take the opulence and extravagancy of it all in. The room truly was nothing less than a triumph of modern architecture and design, and both Su-Z and Sonata couldn’t help but wonder just how much of it had been paid for by money that Lucy hadn’t reported to the IRS.
“Oh, Su-Z,” Lucy abruptly vociferated out to the two of them just as they reached the antechamber, causing them to stop and turn around. “Just a FYI, my offer from the other night to have PostCrush perform here still stands. Be a dear and tell Kiwi that for me, will you?”
“Sure,” Su-Z less-than-convincingly said before turning back around and entering the small chamber.
Sonata quickly followed her friend once more, and in no time at all both her and Su-Z crossed through the large, narrow room.
The instant the Dazzling and PostCrush girl reached the elevator Su-Z hit the button to go down, and thankfully this time the doors opened right away. The two girls entered the lift before the doors even had a chance to fully open, but once they were inside they both remembered something; the last time they’d gotten into the elevator Lucy had needed to enter a code in order to get it moving. They turned their attention towards the control panel where the keypad for the code was. Sonata feared that one of them was going to have to go back out and ask Lucy for the code, something that she definitely didn’t want to do and suspected that Su-Z didn’t want to do either. Su-Z, however, didn’t think such an action would be necessary. She noticed that the keypad was adjacent only to the up button and came to the conclusion that this meant the code was only needed if one wanted to go up. Figuring she had nothing to lose by trying to go down without entering the code the PostCrush girl hit the corresponding button and, much to her and Sonata’s relief, the doors closed and the compartment began to move.
Neither girl said anything as they rode the elevator back down to the club, nor did they say anything as they got off the elevator and made their way through the club - which was now open and already full of patrons. It wasn’t until they were outside of the club and on the streets of Canterlot City that one of them spoke up.
“Oh thank goodness that’s over,” Su-Z huffed out as she bent over slightly and grabbed her knees. “I’m not sure how much longer I could’ve kept it together in there. Lucy is really, really scary.”
“Y-Yeah,” Sonata replied, surprised by the PostCrush girls sudden change in disposition.
As Sonata watched her friend vent her anxieties her mind began to drift back to her need to apologize to the girl. The obligation she felt to do so still burned strongly within her, and although she wasn’t sure that now was the best time to issue an apology on account of the fact that they’d literally just left Chaus she couldn’t wait any longer to say what she knew needed to be said.
“S-Su-Z?” The Dazzling softly started to say. “Listen, I wanted to tell you that -”
“I’m sorry, Sonata,” The PostCrush girl spoke up reservedly, suggesting that she hadn’t heard her friend speaking, as she let go of her knees and stood up straight.
“…Huh?” The Dazzling then uttered bewilderingly.
“I’m sorry for making you worry about Dolly,” Su-Z explained. “I know I should’ve told you that right after the phone in Lucy’s office but we were still dealing with Lucy and Justice and, well, I guess I’m sorry for that too. But mostly I’m sorry about everything involving Dolly.”
The sheer amount of confusion Sonata was feeling right now was indescribable, though if she did have to put a description to it she most likely would have said something along the lines of how it felt like someone had taken the majority of her words right out of her mouth and placed them inside Su-Z’s mouth.
“No. No, no, no,” She managed to say. “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you, Su-Z. It was wrong of me to yell at you like I did back there in Lucy’s office and demand you give me your phone. It doesn’t matter if I did those things because I was worried about my daughter, my actions were completely uncalled for.”
“No they weren’t, Sonata,” Su-Z replied. “You had every right to be upset with me, I’m the one who acted wrongly. I shouldn’t have assumed that Dolly didn’t want to talk to you after she said she didn’t want to talk to Adagio. Plus I should’ve picked up on your concerns earlier after you’d asked me if I’d tell you if Dolly was ever in any kind of trouble.”
The PostCrush girl then let out a dejected sigh.
“I’ve been a terrible friend today,” She self-criticized.
“No, no, you’ve been a great friend today,” Sonata declared. “You helped me out on the farm, you offered to help me plan a prank for Rainbow Dash’s birthday, and you helped me deal with summoning a demon from Hell! If anyone’s been a terrible friend today it’s me.”
“That’s not true, Sonata,” Su-Z replied, somewhat heatedly. “I’m the one who’s been the terrible friend today.”
“No, I’m the one who’s been the terrible friend today!” Sonata retorted, very heatedly.
“I’m the terrible friend!” Su-Z insisted.
“I’m the terrible friend!” Sonata likewise insisted.
“Are we really arguing about this?!” Su-Z inquired.
“Seems like it, yeah!” Sonata answered.
A moment of silence fell between Sonata and Su-Z but was quickly broken up by the sound of laughter emanating from both girls.
“Why don’t we just agree that both of us haven’t been very good friends today?” Su-Z blithely suggested.
“Yeah, okay,” Sonata just as blithely concurred.
After the Dazzling and PostCrush girl finished laughing they decided to share a warm and friendly hug to further show that they were no longer angry with one another. Though sadly the hug didn’t last very long as almost immediately after it was initiated Sonata’s phone began to ring.
“Oh, that’s Adagio’s ringtone,” The Dazzling said as she removed her phone from her pocket and answered the call. “Hey, Dagi.”
“Sonata Dusk, where the hell are you and Su-Z?!” Adagio hollered at her through the device, at a volume so loud that Su-Z was able to hear it.
“W-We’re downtown,” Sonata answered, taken aback a bit by her sister’s harsh tone. “Is everything all right, Dagi? You sound a bit…frazzled.”
“No, everything is not all right!” Adagio said. “You and Su-Z almost burned the whole damn house down!”
“We what?!” Sonata replied.
“Yeah, you idiots left the oven on!” Adagio screamed.
Sonata was once again greatly confused. She knew she hadn’t turned on the oven before she’d left, and she didn’t recall any moments where Su-Z had turned it on either. For a moment the Dazzling couldn’t figure out how it was that the oven had been turned on if neither her nor Su-Z were the ones responsible, but soon enough she was able to deduce what had most likely happened; Justice had turned the oven on whilst in the midst of making her apple pie.
“O-oh, yeah, the oven,” She said, pretending as though she had just recalled turning the appliance on. “S-sorry about that, Dagi. I started making an apple pie and I forgot about it.”
“An apple pie?!” Adagio replied in confused fury. “Since when the hell do you make apple pie?! You know what, I don’t even care! Just get back home right now so you can help clean up this mess you made!”
“Yeah, okay, we’ll be right home. Bye, Dagi,” Sonata said right before she ended the call and then gave a small sigh. “Great, something else my sisters are upset with me about now.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Su-Z said as she wrapped her right arm around her friend’s shoulders. “I’ve got your back.”
The continued kindness and loyalty that Su-Z was showing Sonata, despite all of the hardship they’d been through today, instantly lifted the Dazzling’s mood. She of course knew that even with Su-Z having her back she was in for it when she got home, but just knowing that her friend would be there for her made her feel a bit more at ease.
“Thanks, Su-Z,” She said staidly.
“No problem, Sonata,” Su-Z said back as she removed her arm from the girl’s shoulders and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Now how about we brainstorm a few ideas for that prank for Rainbow Dash’s birthday while I request us an Uber?”
“All right,” Sonata agreed.
“Great!” Su-Z replied as she started to scroll through her phone. “So just to get the ball rolling, how do you feel about something involving fireworks?”
“Well this was a fun day, don’t ya think so, Boss?” Justice asked Lucy.
“’Fun’ isn’t quite the word I would use to describe today, Justice,” Lucy grumbled in response.
“Ah buck up, Lucy,” Justice replied. “So Su-Z bested you, big deal. We all get bested from time-to-time, and not to sound like an arrogant-ass angel or anything but it is kinda your own fault for committing tax fraud and leaving the evidence laying out in the open.”
“Getting bested by Su-Z isn’t what’s bothering me, Justice,” Lucy explained. “Well maybe it’s bothering me a little, but what’s really got me vexed is that I let another chance to inveigle the Dazzlings slip through my fingers.”
“Huh,” Justice uttered in mild surprise. “I didn’t know that Sonata and her sisters were such popular performers.”
“Please,” Lucy remarked derisively. “The Dazzlings are about as popular as Triangle Sally or Bro-Botix.”
“Who?” Justice inquired.
“Exactly,” Lucy said. “Look, the point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t want the Dazzlings to perform at my club because I think they’ll bring in the crowds. No, I have other reasons for wanting them under my employ.”
“Aaaah, I gotcha,” Justice said as she leaned in closer to Lucy. “Care to share what those reasons are?”
“Really, Justice?” The club owner chortled as she got up from her seat. “You think I’m going to share that information with you after the way you shared my feelings towards the IRS with Sonata and Su-Z?”
“Well when you put it that way I guess you’re not,” The demon girl replied sullenly.
“You guess correctly,” Lucy said as she turned around and looked at the various items lining the back wall of her office. “But don’t worry, Justice, I’m not mad about what happened today. True the Dazzlings may have eluded me once again, but it’s of little consequence. I’m all but certain that another opportunity to ensnare them will present itself in due time.”
It was at this point that a devilish smile appeared on the Queen of Hell’s face.
“So all I need to do is simply wait patiently for that time to come,” She concluded.
“Cool, cool,” Justice replied nonchalantly. “But, uh, while we’re waiting patiently for that time to come do ya think maybe we can get some apple pie?”
Lucy couldn’t help but roll her eyes and let out a small sigh in response to Justice’s request.
“Fine, Justice. We can get some apple pie,” She capitulated.
“Awesome!” Justice replied cheerfully.