Aria awoke and realized the situation she had put herself into. There was only one escape route from her bedroom, the door. The fire escape was in Adagio's room, and Aria did not like her chances with the three-story drop straight onto the concrete below. She pushed the dresser out of the way. She would have to face Adagio sooner or later. Might as well be now.
Adagio was sitting on the couch, absorbed in her book. She heard the door creaking open, but kept reading. Aria crept past, trying to be sneaky. Adagio's stern voice caused her to jump. "You know, I would be a lot less angry if you hadn't acted like such a little brat last night. That was how I would expect a child to behave." Adagio was berating her without even looking up. When Aria didn't say anything, she continued, "If you don't have work today, you should just leave. Before one of us does something she'll regret."
Aria took the hint and left, grabbing a quick breakfast before getting the hell out of the apartment5. Outside, she had to figure out where to go. She had a couple places she liked to hang out when she was angry, the park a few blocks down the street being one of them. She walked over silently, avoiding looking at the few people strolling around. The park was empty. She looked around to confirm her observation. Sure enough, there wasn't a single kid in sight. Weird. It's the weekend. In the past, parks like this one would usually be crawling with brats at this hour. Where were all the kids? Probably still sleeping or playing video games.
Aria say down on a swing, and allowed herself to space out. It was a beautiful, tranquil spring morning. There was a warm wind blowing, and songbirds singing in the trees. She closed her eyes, and let herself be at peace...
"Hey Ari!" Came a familiar voice. Aria's eyes shot open, and a loud groan escaped her mouth. It was Sonata. Of course it was, she loved the park too. Aria had never seen someone as happy on stupid monkey bars as her.
"Go away Sonata." She growled. At this point, she was better than Adagio, but still one of the last people Aria wanted to see. Surprisingly, Sonata kept her distance, which left Aria in relative peace until she saw a group of girls walking their way.
Aria groaned again, even louder than before. It was Sunset Shimmer and the Stuck-Up Snob Squad; the group of assholes who ruined her life. Sonata saw them too from atop the jungle gym, and stealthily climbed up into a huge oak tree as the group walked into the park.
Rainbow Dash didn't see Sonata, but she did see Aria. "Ugh, first one of them crashes AJ's party, and now another one of them is hanging here!" She complained.
Rarity nudged her, "Now, Rainbow Dash, let's not be so rude. She isn't hurting anyone."
Pinkie Pie wasn't paying any attention to her friends. Instead, she was twitching erratically, while her face contorted into uncomfortable looks, and her giant cotton-candy hair stood up on end. Aria thought she might have some sort of disorder, or had just eaten so much candy it had finally overwhelmed her body's ability to withstand it. When her friends noticed this, they looked worried.
"Somethin' wrong pardner?" Applejack asked.
"P-P-P-PINKIE SENSE!" She shrieked, as a large branch fell out of the tree and hit Applejack squarely in the head. The severed tree limb had knocked her flat on her ass, and left her head spinning.
"Ow, now what in tarnation was that?" She growled, putting a hand on her scalp. A trail of blood had begun running down her head, which Rarity quickly covered with a handkerchief. Everyone looked around for the source of the falling branch. They couldn't see Sonata hiding in the treetops, and assumed it had just naturally broken off and fell. They shrugged and moved on, presumably to find somewhere else to be little goody-goody bitches. Aria was confused. Sure, Sonata defined the term ditz, and accidentally hurt people constantly (especially Aria), but Aria couldn't see her intentionally harming anyone. She saw something peculiar as her fellow Siren climbed down. There was a cloud of green mist pooling on the ground where Applejack fell, the telltale sign of bad emotions. Aria quickly took out her amulet, and part of the mist was drawn into it.
She approached Sonata, curiously. "Hey, what was that about?" She asked. Sonata was absorbing the remaining energy into her own gem. The reaction had been alarmingly powerful. Even in broad daylight, Aria could see the gleaming power of the crystal shards from a good distance away.
Sonata looked around nervously as Aria approached her, "If I tell you, you won't tell Adagio will you?" She stammered.
Aria grinned. Sonata wanted to keep secrets from Adagio? "Sure, I won't tell her."
Sonata inhaled, and began talking at a ridiculous speed. "Okay so I was at this party last night with a boy from school and Applejack was really pissed off that I was there, and I felt a buzzing in my pocket, so I went to check my phone, then I remembered I don't have a phone, and I looked and saw my pendant was glowing! Well, the pieces were glowing, anyway. Applejack made so much energy that it put some of the pieces back together!" Aria inspected her shards. The reaction had been astonishingly powerful. She had gone from about thirty shards to twenty. Way more powerful than what she had gotten in the restaurant.
Aria had an idea. It was incredibly risky, because not only did it involve keeping secrets from Adagio, but it also meant having Sonata keep that same secret. She decided to test Sonata's resolve to see if she could be trusted. "So Sonata, why don't you want me telling Adagio about this?"
"Well if I told Adagio, I'd have to tell her I was with a boy at the party, and then I'd have to tell her who I was with, and she'd probably get really mad and say I couldn't see him." That was good enough for Aria. She had a good reason to lie, to keep her little boyfriend a secret. She could work with that.
Aria's plan was pretty solid. If Sunset and her friends could produce that much energy with a little prank, focused efforts would net huge quantities of power. Aria had a great mind for torment. Her angry, brooding nature allowed to dream up downright cruel things that could make people despair or rage. She would be the brains, and Sonata would carry out her plans, siphoning off their misery to repair their amulets. And after hers was done, Aria would strike out on her own. She would deal with Sonata in due time, because if she was going to leave, it wouldn't do to have either of the others at their full power. But for the time being, Sonata would be... useful. That's a sentence I never thought I'd use. Aria mused.
She felt a smile coming on. Aria felt excited for what she was going to do. The only times she could immediately think she had felt so eager were far in the past. Her performance at the Emperor's coronation was one of them, although she had enjoyed singing with Emperor Nero as he played the fiddle during the fire of Rome.
She put her arm around Sonata, and began to explain her plan to her new minion, "Okay Sonata. We're going to go after those girls, and make them so angry, so miserable, that they'll never want to see us again."
"But they already don't want to see us." Sonata pointed out. "That's how I got all that power last night, remember?"
Aria facepalmed, "I mean so that they're afraid of us. We're going to make their lives hell, and use their energy to fix our amulets."
"And then we'll help Adagio, right?" Sonata's question was the one Aria was dreading. She needed to be crafty with her answer. She had to say no, but say it vaguely so that Sonata wouldn't know it.
"We'll worry about her later. For now, it's important we don't tell her. It'll take too long to fix all three of our amulets at once."
"So we'll take care of you and me, and help her out later?" Sonata asked.
"Sure, that's just what we'll do." Aria sweetly answered, crossing her fingers behind her back.