“Sunset, over here!”
Sunset turned to see Sonata Dusk, wearing a pink and white striped shirt and jeans skirt combo, waving at her from a table in the middle of the food court. Her sister Adagio, sitting next to her wearing a purple dress suit, was also looking over at Sunset in spite of rolling her eyes at the spectacle her younger sibling was making.
Sunset smiled, paid the stall vendor for her cappuccino and made her way over to the two Sirens. “Hey, Daj. Hi, Sona,” she greeted them, taking a seat. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“You think it could ever get boring in the Mall’s food court with this one around?” Adagio dead-panned, indicating her sister who was pushing a huge platter of nachos into the middle of the table for all of them to share.
“I hereby declare this meeting of the Reformed Villainesses Social Club open,” Sonata said brightly.
Adagio groaned. “That joke gets funnier every time we all meet up. Every. Single. Time.” Those last three words had been punctuated by clenched teeth.
Sunset chuckled. An outside eye would claim they never changed, but she’d come to know the difference between how Adagio used to be around her sisters and the actual older sister she’d become to them. “Ari couldn’t make it?”
“Nah,” Adagio replied, taking a sip from her ice coffee, “this new job keeps her moving all over the country on business trips. We barely get to see her.”
“Right, what’s she doing now? Something with sales?” Sunset asked, snacking on some of the offered nachos.
“Pharmaceutical Sales Rep,” Sonata answered, pulling up a picture on her phone to show Sunset. “Check this out.”
The grumpy expression was the same, but everything else seemed very, very different. “Wow,” Sunset muttered with a grin, “Aria Blaze wearing a grey pants suit. Now I’ve seen it all. And how are you two doing?”
Adagio shrugged. “Making a living. I had years of practice as a kindergarten teacher before turning it into a career, after all.” She nodded towards her sister. “I practically have the patience of a saint now.”
Sonata giggled. “She says that now, but you should have seen her during our first week. She was seething.”
“Well, those were my favorite pair of pants,” Adagio grumbled, “now they’re an art piece with a dozen little hand prints in finger paints all over them. I’ve learned my lesson. Only wear old clothes to work.”
“I feel that,” Sunset laughed. “I was actually sporting the Aria look my first day. It wasn’t me, and the chalk dust wasn’t helping.”
“I’ll bet,” Adagio sighed. “Still wouldn’t wanna trade with you. Teenagers are the worst. Then again, you turned us into respectable members of society, so I figure you’ve got it handled.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Sunset said sagely while taking a sip from her beverage. “It was all you. You put the work in. Frankly, when you showed up at Canterlot U during freshmen orientation five years ago, I was convinced that you were there for some whacky revenge scheme against me and my friends.”
Sonata suddenly elbowed her sister and gave her a look. Adagio replied by furrowing her brows and pressing her lips together in a thin line. But Sonata nodded her head towards Sunset several times.
“What am I missing here?” Sunset asked.
“Come on, Daj,” Sonata said in a whisper that wasn’t a whisper. “You’ve been telling me for years that you wanted to get it off your chest.”
“You want me to do this right here, right now? Also, you never told her?”
“I promised you I wouldn’t back then,” Sonata said, closing her eyes.
“Appreciate that, sis,” Adagio said quietly. Then she looked towards the ceiling, groaned loudly and added in a monotone: “Alright, fine! We, that is I, had an evil, dastardly plan to take you down when we enrolled. There, I said it.”
Sunset simply gave her a flat stare. “I’m shocked,” she said in a voice that betrayed a shocking lack of any shock.
Adagio looked at her sister angrily while gesturing towards Sunset.
“Duh,” Sonata said flatly. “Of course she figured that much out, even back then.”
“What I never did figure out,” Sunset said while taking another sip from her drink, “is what the actual plan was and why you abandoned it. So I’m all ears if you’re finally ready to enlighten me.”
Adagio sighed. “It was dumb. You had so much magic inside you, the idea was to suck out your soul, condense it into solid form and then use that to make new Siren gems for the three of us. We would have gotten our powers back and you would probably be a vegetable in a hospital bed right now, if your body had even survived your soul being torn asunder that is.”
Sunset blinked. “Yikes,” she eventually said with a shudder, “thanks for not following through on that one, I guess.”
“I’m sure your friends would have found a way to defeat us and put you back together with a rainbow sparkle beam or something if it had ever gotten that far,” Sonata chimed in.
Sighing again, Adagio continued: “You can probably see the flaw in my ‘brilliant’ plan already. It would have required magic for us to enact it and get our magic back. We figured magical things kept happening around you girls, so some opportunity might present itself if we stuck close to you.” She rested her forehead against the palm of her hand. “But then you girls just … kept inviting us to student parties, or to join your study groups, or cook together in the dorm’s kitchen, especially the pink one.”
Sunset could feel her breath catch for a moment at that and she lowered her head slightly.
“Anyway,” Adagio went on oblivious, “the right chance never came along, and then after a couple years had passed …”
“The Maretime Bay incident,” Sunset said sadly, her eyes a million miles away.
“Right. The well of Equestrian magic in this world seemed to be well and truly dry after that.” Adagio laughed ruefully and finally managed to meet Sunset’s eyes again. “Tell you the truth, I’d already given up and accepted my fate at that point. It was just the final nail in the coffin. After a while, life without magic didn’t seem so bad, not bad enough to risk it all on some harebrained scheme anyway. Not when we were suddenly all figuring out things we were good at without magic. And even if the opportunity had ever come up and I was still willing to see it through, I couldn’t be sure anymore that everyone else was still onboard with the plan.” She looked over at her sister.
With the spotlight on her, Sonata suddenly became very interested in the tabletop immediately in front of her. “I, uhm, that is …” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “That year we were dating, after you came back from Germany? That was never part of the plan, … in case you were ever wondering.” That last part had come out in a hoarse whisper, barely audible.
Sunset was taken aback for a moment, looking over towards Adagio who quietly nodded at her to say something in response. Seeing Sonata’s trembling hand on the table, Sunset put her own hand on top of hers. “To tell you the truth, I did wonder at first,” she said softly. Then, when Sonata looked up at her tearfully, she added with a smile: “But not for long. So it makes me happy to hear you say that.”
Sonata finally smiled back and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
Adagio made a gagging sound and broke the moment after a while. “Blergh! Alright, therapy session over!” she declared. “You and your friends magic-of-friendshipped us. Whoop dee doo! Now stop this saccharine sweetness before you give me diabetes, and let’s talk about something else.”
Sunset and Sonata both blushed as they realized they were still holding hands and pulled back. “Alright, Daj,” Sunset laughed, “what do you wanna talk about then?”
She shrugged. “I dunno, how about that weird girl hiding behind the trashcan who’s been watching us since you sat down?”
“What?”
“Oh yeah, I was wondering about that, too,” Sonata added while nonchalantly resuming her work on the nachos. “Maybe she’s hungry. Should we invite her over?”
Adagio simply pointed over Sunset’s shoulder.
When Sunset turned around, wide eyes stared at her. “Eeep!” The girl broke into a dead sprint, knocking over the trashcan she had been using as cover in the process while someone shouted from across the food court. “Hey, damn kids!”
“Sunny Starscout?” Sunset muttered, this time sure she recognized the fleeing backside after having seen it several times in as many weeks.
“You know her?” Adagio asked.
“Yeah, I mean, not really. She’s one of my students.”
Sonata shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to come over and say hi, but was too shy to do it,” she suggested.
Sunset remained quiet for a while before turning back to her two companions. “Yeah, probably something like that,” she said finally while the way she said it spoke volumes more.