//------------------------------//
// 5. Tissue Paper 
// Story: Pinkie Pie Swear 
// by Annuska 
//------------------------------//

	“This is the place, girls.”

Adagio Dazzle exhaled slowly, eyes wandering the school courtyard before turning to the sky, where five and a half months earlier, an impossible array of rainbow beams and lights had materialised and shot out of the heavens. The slight quaver to her normally composed tone betrayed her exhilaration.

“We’re so close. I can feel it.”

Even Aria Blaze – a hard-to-impress critic of, well, everything – couldn’t help letting a smile slip through her typically aloof expression. She said nothing, but as she followed Adagio’s gaze, her smile turned up to a smirk.

To the left of and approximately three steps behind Adagio, Sonata Dusk stood with one arm folded behind her back, holding onto the other lying flat at her side. She too looked around, observing some of the . . . interesting décor the school showcased: a golden horseshoe-shaped sculpture standing near the sidewalk, an imposingly large horse statue in the centre of the yard, horsehead busts at the corners of the school building, stained glass windows – one of a horse (surprise!) and one with a strangely familiar star shape –

– she thought it was all a little uncanny.

Finally, she glanced up at the sky: clear, blue, and not a trace of a cloud or rainbow – magical or otherwise – to be seen. Five and a half months ago seemed like an eternity now – but maybe it wouldn’t have if she’d never done anything stupid for two of those months.

Sonata had resolved not to think about that anymore, though. She was optimistic, bright, refreshed, excited. She was eager to have her true magic again, to regain the thing she’d lost so long ago, to feel that intense power chorusing through her like blood through her veins, revitalising her like chilling ocean air. She let go of her arm and lifted her hand to her mouth, giggling at the thought.

She was excited, even if some remnant of something still tugged at her inside.

That morning had been one of both excitement and nervousness (of nervicitement—wait, Sonata, stop) as Adagio relayed the barebones plan for the day:
  1. Arrive at Canterlot High School and go through the motions of being new students (ID cards, class schedules, so on and so forth).
  2. Meet with a designated student volunteer to be shown around the school. (Imperative; they needed to know the school inside and out, said Adagio, but still: yawn.)
  3. Drag entire student body into enchantment at their most crowded and vulnerable time: lunch. (Cutting it close there with their scheduled tour.)
  4. Gain back their true Equestrian power. (The fun part.)

Again, barebones; Adagio liked leaving some room for flexibility, a 1-2% margin of error to her otherwise certain figures. Aria may have had some choice words for her at any given moment, but Sonata trusted their eponymous leader’s ability to deal with any difficulty that arose and she trusted her ability to iron out any crease in a plan.

Even if she still held a little resentment for being told by said eponymous leader that they didn’t need her, Sonata Dusk, folding creases in herself by way of getting involved with humans – and so it was really for the best that it was over – and everything would work out, she’d see.

Not exactly the comfort Sonata wanted after a breakup.

But other than those comments, she had found her roommates’ reactions to her sulky attitude during that period to be strangely understanding and in sharp contrast to their initial reactions to her weekly outings. Maybe sometimes she forgot that they could be nice to her, and that she did appreciate them.

Not that she would tell them any of that.

“Sonata! Are you coming or not?”

Sonata looked toward Aria to see her and Adagio some feet away, both giving her the same raised-eyebrow look.

“’Course I am,” Sonata responded indignantly, sprinting after them.





The din of the Canterlot High cafeteria wasn’t a novel sound.

It was almost mundane, despite the fact that it was one of the few times during the school day that her and her friends’ schedules aligned and they could all socialise, but it wasn’t anything new; it wasn’t particularly interesting, even though she loved socialising with her friends, and it wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary.

But it would stick with her, anyway.

True to routine – which was partially actual routine and partially the routine of changing up the routine – Pinkie Pie picked up a lunch tray, flipped it into the air, grabbed an orange, caught the tray, set the orange down, and started through the line, deciding she was in the mood for something not predictably sweet and not on the advertised menu. Line passed through, salad on tray, juice box grabbed, Pinkie took her seat at the table she and her friends always shared.

Also nothing too strange, and yet –

Wait a second. Hadn’t her thoughts veered this way before?

She veered them back in the opposite direction, lest she go down a less-than-happy path into a swamp of ensnaring molasses and nostalgic melancholy.

After all, it was the day before the Canterlot High Musical Showcase, and Pinkie had more than enough reason to be excited instead of sad! Following months of dedicated practise and refining her drumming skills and making posters out of paint and sprinkles and glitter and icing, her band would finally perform for the whole school (along with a number of other talented students, of course) and raise money for a good cause while they were at it!

A bit of nostalgic melancholy tugged at her, anyway.

She had wanted a special someone to watch her perform, and she’d been certain and positive and sure – about 99.9% sure, to be exact – that it was going to happen, even if she, at the time, hadn’t gotten the chance to ask that special someone just yet. Pinkie had a sense about these things and she couldn’t understand why it fell into that 00.1% percentage when she had wanted so badly for it not to, sense or no sense – just like she had so badly wanted everything else about the short-lived relationship to not go wrong.

She was just thankful she had such good, dear friends to be there for her in her not-so-much-like-the-usual-happy-bouncy-Pinkie and more-mopey-and-confused-and-prone-to-crying-Pinkie time.

And one of those dear friends now sat in the empty seat across from her, pulling Pinkie away from her nostalgic melancholy thoughts and back into the present, and Pinkie smiled at her – but her friend seemed distraught, not even carrying a tray of food with her.

Sunset Shimmer had earlier informed her friends that she’d volunteered part of her lunch hour to show some new students around and give them a good first impression of her, maybe deter some of the rumours (which, unfortunately, were not rumours) from influencing their opinion of her first – but now, she told them, she couldn’t shake the impression the new girls had given her. There was something off about them – or maybe it was just them acting weird around her – maybe she was too late.

Pinkie frowned as she watched Sunset drop her head onto the table.

Even after Sunset recovered (from her head-on-table position, anyway, thereafter taking to gazing out the window, head rested in her hand forlornly) and the other girls had resumed their conversations, Pinkie kept playing Sunset’s words over and over in her head like a broken record:

Something off about them. Off. Off.

Tugging again. Gears shifting. Something ticking?

Pinkie turned to Rainbow Dash, in need of a distraction—

—and then the cafeteria doors swung open, distracting Pinkie from her distraction as she looked over and caught sight of two vaguely familiar faces and one very familiar face, with her blue hair done up in a signature high ponytail, all three vocalising harmoniously and spellbindingly – and the shifting gears gained momentum until they were whirring rapidly and at once, something clicked into place in Pinkie’s head and sprang out at her like a jack-in-the-box.

A jack-in-the-box that also screeched really loudly and clanged cymbals cacophonously when it popped out.

“Ohhhh,” she said aloud, perhaps more to herself than to Sunset and the rest of her friends, the sound of melodic singing now overtaken by hostile ruckus. “They’re that kind of off.”

And by they, she meant Sonata.


·✫✫✫·


Okay, summary:
  1. That was definitely Sonata.
  2. Those girls were probably definitely her roommates.
  3. Sonata had some weird magic.
  4. She wasn’t lying about having an enchanting voice.
  5. Enchanting voice probably was the weird magic.

Conclusion: Yikes.

The walk from the cafeteria to Principal Celestia’s office was an unusually slow one for Pinkie (as in, she almost kept pace with her friends, only bounding a foot or two in front of them) as she tried to shift through all the confetti and tissue paper and streamers of her thoughts to put them into place. Tissue paper should be in gift bags, streamers hanging from the ceiling, confetti flying in the air.

Better.

Item one: There was no way it wasn’t Sonata because – unless she, like Twilight Sparkle, had some doppelgänger running around – who else had such pretty long blue hair done up in a high ponytail most of the time and sweet cerise eyes and the most adorable smile and—

Item two: Of course, she’d never met Sonata’s roommates, but it seemed highly improbable that Sonata would be singing bewitching songs and doing mesmerising dances with anyone else. Also, they were the same girls Sonata had walked into Sugarcube Corner with the day they’d first met. Pinkie vaguely recalled something Sonata said about the three of them having plans in the works.

Welp.

Items three, four, and five: The other kids in the cafeteria were properly dazed – and angry at each other – and rapt with every word Sonata and her, uh, friends? sang to them. Pinkie’s friends were properly dazed because it was such a strange sight to see. Pinkie was properly dazed because her ex-girlfriend showed up out of nowhere and started singing enchanting songs to her schoolmates. Wrap around back to item number three.

Again: Yikes.

Did all this have to do with why she left so suddenly that night? And stopped answering her texts? And ignored her calls? And—

Pinkie stuffed some mental tissue paper back into a bag. Focus, Pinkie, focus.

Focus-Pocus!

Pinkie wanted to laugh at that one, but she just felt sad, if she was being honest with herself – and she tried to always be honest with herself. Even when it meant admitting that her ex-girlfriend that she still missed and cared for was maybe hiding things from her all along and probably taking part in some weird school-domination plot that made things fifty times more complicated and was also still avoiding her.

Did Sonata . . . see her, though?

Tissue paper. Gift bag.

Okay, so the girls would talk to Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna, see what they had to say about all this. They had, after all, been witness to the (admittedly hard to miss) Fall Formal debacle and seemed strangely aware of things like magic – something that, prior to last semester’s formal, Pinkie herself only thought came in brands of faerie tale (awesome! but not real) or Trixie Lulamoon at a talent show (real! but not awesome). Pinkie was sure they would have some insight into the matter, and could ease all their minds, know how to handle the situation – and then, maybe Pinkie could have some idea of how to talk to Sonata, iron things out with her –

– or at least get some closure.