A dozen croissants. Two blended caramel iced coffees. One sugar cookie, one almond cookie, a small milk. An English paper, math worksheet, documentary to watch for history; Maud’s lunch, a bath for Gummy (with laundry detergent), letters to her parents and younger sisters; an easy solution, Sonata’s hand, a different song.
The last orders of her most recent shift. Homework needing to be started; chores to be done at home; things she really wanted.
Pinkie breathed out heavily and stopped drumming. Even thinking about any and everything but the song the Rainbooms were currently “practising” wasn’t enough to keep her on track. The melody was already stumbling over itself and only weakened further with the absent drum beat, but Pinkie couldn’t bring herself to care as she balanced a single drum stick atop her index finger, entertained more by the strive to keep equilibrium between the stick and her finger than the strive to create equilibrium within her own band.
Applejack and Rarity, however, were not as amused by her antics as she.
Pinkie caught their coupled glares and sheepishly dropped the drum stick back down into her hand, poising herself to start again – and start again she did, unhappily and grumpily.
The previous night’s sleepover had been fun, great!—until Pinkie woke up the following morning (that is, this morning) from a dream in which, contrary to the previous day’s embarrassing display of not being able to summon the magic rainbow laser light show, the girls had succeeded in doing just that; and following the magic rainbow laser light show and its resulting stripping-of-evil-magic via magic-of-friendship-magic, Sonata – no longer able to create disharmony between anyone with her singing, no matter how beautiful it sounded – refused to forgive Pinkie and hated her forever and told her she’d never liked the cookies in the first place and had been lying about that all along and also that the necklace she had given her was tacky.
Pinkie knew at least part of that was nothing more than the hyperbolic nature of dreams, but the fear seated itself in the party space of Pinkie’s mind nonetheless and made a mess of the streamers for a good time.
A counter spell to the Dazzlings’ musical spell – their new plan – couldn’t be as harsh, though, right? Less dramatic than the magic rainbow laser cyclone born of the magic rainbow laser light show, and not magic stripping? If it was to counter what the Dazzlings’ magic did – incite contention and competition – then, theoretically, it should only negate it and not necessarily destroy it—
Pinkie was just reaching for some way to justify her very honestly not personal assault against Sonata (and her room/bandmates) at this point.
Responsibility versus emotion was a losing battle on both sides.
With a lacklustre finish, the song ended, and Pinkie slumped over her drum set. Twilight insisted they take it from the top once more, and it was all Pinkie could do to keep from groaning in response. Rarity, however, insisted on taking a short break for costume fitting— to which Applejack voiced her disapproval— to which Pinkie mumbled that Rarity only wanted to make things fun and isn’t that what being in a band is supposed to be?— to which Sunset reminded them they were on a fifteen-minute deadline to sign in for the first round of the Battle of the Bands and didn’t have time for disagreements or another run-through.
And just like that, Applejack’s shed descended into a chaotic flurry of breaking down instruments, packing said instruments into cases, and narrowly avoiding one another as six of the seven girls rushed to clean up the small space – only to be stopped at the threshold of the door as Twilight’s vocal panicking reminded each of them that if the song didn’t work the first time, the Dazzlings would know for sure what they were doing and sabotage them and it would be lights out, curtains, end of the show.
Applejack brushed it off – they’d buy some more time – and Rainbow agreed – they’d just join in the competition for real.
Pinkie looked away and swallowed back hard. The (work-in-progress) counter spell song wasn’t fun, the pressure of time ticking away wasn’t fun, and the thought of facing off against Sonata definitely wasn’t fun.
A change in wardrobe might’ve been at least a little fun.
The itinerary for the Battle of the Bands was as follows:
Wednesday (today) and Thursday (tomorrow) would cover the rounds leading up to the semi-finals, which were scheduled to take place on Friday; Saturday evening would see the final round and the ultimate winners of the battle.
Sonata knew, of course, the ultimate winners would be the Dazzlings.
She also knew she had two days to enact her scheme (which fit snuggly and conveniently into their overall scheme, as spearheaded by Adagio) and gain her own victory. She knew that the Rainbooms possessed the magic they had spent the past five and a half months preparing to take, the magic they had spent the last thousand years yearning to have once more – and she wanted it.
Just not from Pinkie Pie.
She wanted something very different from Pinkie Pie.
And if Pinkie was no longer part of the Rainbooms, Sonata reasoned, the magic from the other five would be enough to satiate them, and Pinkie’s former involvement in the band would become a non-issue—
—and the something that had hit her with such intensity the day before were words spoken by Pinkie herself: she and her friends’ relationships hadn’t been the best until very recently. It wasn’t just a small piece of personal knowledge fed to her during a brief conversation in Sugarcube Corner some four months prior, it was an opening, an opportunity.
After all, her friends were weird – and already, the Dazzlings had been privy to whispered gossip about the Rainbooms: the girls who until the previous semester had hated each other, one girl who had been last semester’s Fall Formal Princess and possessed a magic crown, and one girl who had once driven the school apart as Queen Bee and now struggled to fit in with her own friends. Whispered gossip spoken in hostility upon seeing the Rainbooms’ band insignia on the competition board that the Magical Princess had returned only to give the Rainbooms an edge over everyone else, that they would use the former Queen Bee’s cunning to take out those who weren’t bested by the Princess – and with each cold word, the Dazzlings revelled in being fed with both vital information and intense negativity.
And the more Sonata watched the Rainbooms, the more confident she was in her idealisations.
Their first performance was a complete disaster if only because of their fellow students’ attempts at sabotage. Subsequent performances narrowly pushed them through the rounds, narrowly beat out their competition, narrowly maintained cohesiveness between the girls, each presentation slightly more chaotic than the last, slightly less unified than the last.
It was like watching the undercurrent pull them in, and the Dazzlings’ subtle encouragement of the Rainbooms’ rivals was edging them toward the erratic ocean.
After all, like Adagio said: they just needed a little push in the wrong direction.
·♪♪♪·
Sonata did enjoy watching them play, though, despite the increasing instability in their acts.
She thought Pinkie was skilled with her drum set (and how adorable was her upheld enthusiasm, even when everything was falling apart around her? a confetti canon in the drum? genius! fun! totally Pinkie! Sonata’s heart was all a-flutter) and she felt each strike upon the drum, each cymbal crash, each thump of the bass reverberate within her chest, spark her desire anew.
It was really too bad they’d have to break up.
Better the band than she and Pinkie, though.
Pinkie knew Sonata was watching her.
Well, she knew all three of the Dazzlings were watching them – waiting for them to slip up badly (and she often wondered how much they knew, despite Twilight’s insistence that the Rainbooms not show their magic) – but she felt Sonata’s eyes on her especially all Wednesday and Thursday long.
She did, after all, have a sixth sense for these things.
Like a . . . Pinkie sense. Some kind of tingling in her arm, or itching at her head, or shivering in her spine, but she was still trying to figure out all the signs and what they meant.
So there was really no telling what her sense was saying to her about Sonata now, but it differed only marginally from the feelings she’d gotten about her months ago – which, admittedly, weren’t very clear, being muddled up with her own feelings for Sonata.
And they were still muddled with her own feelings for Sonata and now only muddled further by the emotions intruding on her carousel of thoughts, her party space, her no-longer-cotton-candy-cloud dreamland, by way of the incidents that kept pushing her band to the edge right as they managed to pull back from it.
Twilight scribbled in Fluttershy’s notebook furiously, barely attentive to anything happening around her until she was needed for a song; Fluttershy regarded Rainbow Dash with an unusual callousness with each passing performance in which one of her songs was pushed aside for one of Rainbow’s; Rainbow Dash maintained an aloof coolness and confidence that none of the other girls could hope to touch upon, simply because it was unrealistic; Applejack continuously lost her temper at Rarity; Rarity continuously accused Applejack of being an overgrown child; Sunset Shimmer grew increasingly distant and quiet, often hanging back from the group.
And Pinkie Pie wondered with each won round how.
How were they beating out more put together bands and their performances? How were they still keeping any semblance of harmony with one another? How could she have gotten so intimately mixed up with someone who was now, in effect, her enemy?
How, how, how?
The party space of her mind had become a proper mess of streamers and tissue paper that had been shredded apart and mixed in with the confetti, driving her own confusion and irritability, and while banging on the drums was a good release, a great way to get the frustration out, it only lasted so long.
Well into Thursday, Sonata began to panic.
The Rainbooms were still together and still doing well – well enough to have made it into the semi-finals against Trixie Lulamoon’s band, opposite the Dazzlings facing off against Flash Sentry’s band.
Despite all her efforts – her efforts and the efforts of her bandmates – the Rainbooms gave her no opportunity to intrude. In even their weakest moments, when Sonata could have pushed her way in and persuaded Pinkie to rethink her involvement in the band, the girls shied away from the company of their schoolmates, the Dazzlings included.
Maybe that had something to do with their little talk they’d had with Sunset Shimmer the day before. Which was totally unfair because she had approached them.
Sonata could feel her plan dissolving into sand and slipping through her fingers.
“They’re doing better than I thought they were gonna,” she remarked to Adagio, trying not to sound as anxious as she felt.
“Let them,” Adagio said with a grin. “All the better for the eventual crash and burn.”
Aria laughed.
Sonata didn’t.
“Good luck in the semis tomorrow, Lamebooms,” Trixie said in passing, flipping her hair as her two bandmates followed her toward the gymnasium door. “You’re gonna neeeeed iiiiit!”
Rainbow Dash laughed as if it were nothing more than an empty threat. Applejack shot a particularly nasty look in Trixie’s direction. Twilight frowned – and then jumped as a hand touched her shoulder.
“Good luck for real from us,” Adagio said sweetly, lifting her hand from Twilight’s shoulder to her hair as she wrapped her arm around the back of her neck like a snake poising for a chokehold. “I have to say, we’ve really enjoyed all the, heh, friendly competition.”
Sunset looked away.
Twilight’s discomfort was visible, but she could only stammer out a weak mumble that Pinkie didn’t quite hear as she looked in Sonata’s direction – and to her surprise, Sonata smiled at her – but it was a hesitant, half-smile, as if she were forcing it.
Pinkie didn’t know what it meant, but she smiled back, just as hesitantly.
“Excuse me, Miss – uh – Dazzling,” Rarity interrupted, stepping forward.
“Dazzle, actually,” Adagio corrected. “But you were close.”
“Right, yes, well.” Rarity gave an airy laugh, tinged with blunt animosity as she pulled Twilight out of Adagio’s grasp and back into the Rainbooms’ vicinity. “Thank you very much for your well-wishes, but we have a lot to do, so if you wouldn’t terribly mind excusing us—”
Aria scoffed audibly, and Sunset looked back at her with narrowed eyes.
“Oh, of course not! In fact, we have quite a bit to do, ourselves – don’t we, girls?”
Sonata and Aria nodded, and the two bands parted ways – but Sonata couldn’t help brushing her hand gently against Pinkie’s as she passed her.
And Pinkie couldn’t help holding on for a brief second that ended all too quickly.