On that fateful Friday night, everything was set. By 6:30 p.m., Sonata was getting herself ready for the night. She enjoyed a quick shower, begged Adagio to do her hair, and started preparing her makeup before finally slipping into her new dress, which, while a little on the short side, was still tasteful, and the aquamarine looked perfect on her. Sonata was so glad that she had made peace with everyone after the Battle of the Bands, and that Rarity was kind enough to help her get the proper attire.
Meanwhile, Adagio was making plans of her own. She had decided that today would be a cheat day, and she could eat as many prepackaged cookies and donuts as she wanted. On top of that, she had her secret, guilty pleasure that she had never even partaken in. The other girls would laugh at her, mock her and scorn her for it, which is why Adagio had decided to wait until she knew the other two Sirens would be gone before reaching under her bed, pulling open her shoebox, removing the DVD, and bawling her eyes out to The Fault in Our Stars.
Aria Blaze’s plans were a tad bit different. While the other girls were fully prepared for the night, Aria, in a feat of airheadedness that she swore she could never defend, had entirely forgotten about her date. Instead of getting ready for the orchestra, Aria was having a conversation she vowed she would never have. Again.
“You’re trying to tell me that you honestly believe that anyone from Marvel could go toe-to-toe with DC’s greatest?” asked Button Mash in disbelief.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Their roster is amazing, but when you look at DC, they have…” Aria waited a moment, holding her comic in one hand and gesturing for Button to speak with the other. “Superman. That’s it! Superman, and Batman on a good day. Meanwhile, Marvel has Ant Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Cyclops, Deadpool. Should I go on? I think I should, cause I didn’t even scratch the surface.”
“Look, I’m not saying Marvel doesn’t have some good heroes,” explained Button. “I’m saying that their best is nothing compared to DC’s worst.”
“Really? You do remember that you have Aquaman, right?”
“We try to forget about him.”
“DC has one hero that can’t be beat, and that’s Superman. Anyone else, and Marvel has the one. So that’s makes it a bajillion-to-one, but hey. That one point is something to be proud of,” remarked Aria.
“But all those bajillion are nothing to our one,” argued Button. “We have one Million-Dollar Hero. You have a hundred Fifty-Cent ones.”
“Whatever. I don’t have to defend myself to you,” scoffed Aria. Her fingers traced the spines of several comics before she found some she liked and pulled them from the box. “I’m out of here.”
“Where ya goin? Got a hot date?” said Button sarcastically.
The comics hit the floor, and a gasp escaped Aria. Her eyes shrunk to pinpricks, which was nothing compared to how her gut felt. It seemed as if her insides were folding in on itself.
“What time is it?!” demanded Aria. Button tilted his head in confusion. “Time! What time is it, little man?!”
“Uh…” Button whipped out his cell phone. “6:48. Why?”
Aria screamed something that Button couldn’t understand. It wasn’t English, he knew that for sure. It was a loud, shrieking yell of some tongue that he had never heard before.
“What?” asked Button.
“The Siren language,” explained Aria. “It means… Well, you’ll learn what it means when you’re older.” She gripped one of her pigtails angrily. “How in Tartarus am I supposed to get home in 12 minutes!”
“Where do you live?” asked Button.
“Across town!” shrieked Aria. “I blew it! Game Over, man, Game Over!”
“Dude, calm down. Where do you have to be so badly?”
“I have a date, and I have 12 minutes to find a dress, get into it, put on my make-up, maybe buy some flowers, I dunno,” Aria twisted her hair angrily. “Sony’s gonna be pissed. This was my one chance and poof! Gone.” She dropped her hair and pointed a finger at Button. “And it’s all your fault!”
“What?! How is it my fault?!” he demanded.
“If you weren’t so terribly wrong about comics, I wouldn’t have wasted my time talking sense into you!”
“I was wrong? And that’s coming from the girl with three vintage Teen Titan comics in her hand?”
“They’re the only ones I don’t have! They’re for collection purposes!” yelled Aria. While the two were arguing, they didn’t notice someone else enter. The blue-skinned girl’s smirk fell when she realized that the only two people in the shop couldn’t care less that she was there. She adjusted her hair, straightened the star clip near the top of her head, and cleared her throat.
Nothing
“Hello!” she said. “You have a customer!”
“You better get acquainted with the dirt, cause if I miss my date, you’re going six feet under!” threatened Aria, grabbing Button by the collar.
“Hello! Does anyone work here?!” asked the girl.
“I do. I’ll be with you in a second, Ms….” said Button. The girl smiled.
“Finally! You may call me the sensational, spectacular, unbelievable, unachievable, incredible, intangible, The Great and Powerful-”
“Tripsy,” said Aria. “I remember you from the Battle. You were super easy to control.”
“Trixie. The name is Trixie. The Great and Powerful Trixie!”
“What do you want?” asked Aria. Trixie pouted slightly, but slithered over to the box of comics.
“Trixie is looking for three very special comic books to finish her collection.” said Trixie. “You do have them, don’t you?”
“We’ve got everything. What’re you looking for?” asked Button.
“Trixie desires Showcase #59: The Return of the Teen Titans, Teen Titans #1, and Teen Titans #22: Origin of Wonder Girl.” listed Trixie. Aria scooped up her dropped comics, the three that Trixie was looking for.
“Yo. Tripsy,” said Aria. “I have them.”
“What?! NO! Trixie has scoured Canterlot City in search for these books, and now she has been beaten to the punch by this…” Trixie flipped through her mental thesaurus for a second. “This jezebel hussy!”
“Hussy?!” Aria’s blood went from chilled to boiling.
“Trixie knows what a Siren is! She did her research! What have you to say for yourself, you floozie?”
“That wasn’t us! Those myths were made way before we even got here!” growled Aria. “I don’t have time for this! I need to get across town in… How long before seven?”
“You have five minutes,” said Button. Aria screamed something else profane in her native tongue before dropping onto her butt. She felt the tears coming, but she refused to cry in the middle of a comic book store, in front of a freshman and a narcissistic magician. That would be beyond pathetic. Instead, she buried her head in her lap and let out a stream of swears that only she understood.
“Hm… Trixie needs the comics, you need a ride…” mused Trixie. “It would be an injustice, nay, a travesty if you were to be late. Mayhaps we could make a deal of some sort?”
Aria spiked up, then glared at Trixie. At that moment, Aria was forced to make a decision she never would have thought she would have to: Would she rather read old comics or go out with Sonata?
“You want the comics?” asked Aria. “Get me a dress and bring me home in the next five minutes, and they’re all yours.”
“Try not to vomit in Trixie’s car. Come now, Jezebel,” said Trixie, digging in her pocket for her keys. “You don’t have a problem with Trixie running a few red lights, do you?”
Aria tripped out of Trixie’s car dizzily, clutching her bouquet of roses tightly. As much as she disliked Trixie, Aria had to give her some credit. While she was still a few minutes late, she wasn’t terribly tardy. On top of that, she was in a nice, short, single strapped black dress, and she had time for some flowers. If Sonata liked it, then Aria thought she could live without her precious comics that she would almost definitely find on eBay for eighty-bazillion dollars more than what she was going to pay for them.
Aria sighed and pulled the hem of her dress down to about half the length of her thigh. Yes, Aria was going for a slightly more daring look than her date. She knocked on the door and waited expectantly.
Then she remembered that she lived there, and pulled open the door to let herself in.
“It’s about time you showed up,” growled Adagio, wrapped in a large blanket on the couch. “I’m all for being fashionably late, but I don’t think Sonata quite understands the concept.”
“Shut up, Adagio, I don’t have time,” snarled Aria. “Where is the little moron?”
“Upstairs. If you two do still plan on leaving, be quick about it.”
Aria ignored Adagio, but agreed that they should leave as soon as possible. She half-ran up the stairs and down the short hallway to her room. Their room. Aria gulped and opened the door to find, to her shock (and various other emotions) a very naked Sonata sprawled out on Aria’s bed.
“Knock much?” asked Sonata dejectedly. Aria caught an eyeful and quickly averted her eyes, blushing intensely.
“Sorry, I, uh… Sorry,” said Aria, staring at the door. “Is there… Is there, like, a reason that you’re butt-naked? Or on my bed?”
“Oh, I was already on your bed when I made the phone call,” said Sonata.
“Uh-huh. So that’s why you’re on my bed. What call?”
“Remember when you gave me that phone number earlier? To check on our seats?” said Sonata. “I called it, and they said that the orchestra was cancelled!”
“Why in Tartarus are you naked?!” asked Aria finally. “That’s the only problem that really matters!”
“Oh, I was so sad that we couldn’t go, so I just took everything off. I was going to change to some jammies, but I just decided to sit here,” sighed Sonata. “I was really looking forward to going out with you, Ari.”
Aria finally looked away from her door. To her own shock, her eyes naturally locked with Sonata’s. They were glistening with tears, her big, bright, once-happy eyes. Aria clenched her jaw, then strode into the room.
“Gimme your phone,” demanded Aria. Sonata shrugged slightly and tossed her smartphone to Aria.
“What’re you doing?” asked Sonata. Aria didn’t say anything, and instead surfed through the web. After a few moments, she let out a triumphant shout.
“Put your clothes back on,” commanded Aria. “And try something a little more casual. We have a new venue.”
Sonata and Aria walked from the concert with their arms hooked, and with Sonata leaning her head against Aria’s shoulders. Sonata was beaming and even Aria was clearly happy, though that was more from Sonata than the music.
“OMG, that was the single greatest thing ever.!” declared Sonata. “How’d you get tickets? Someone at school told me that the One Direction tickets sold out on day one!”
“Niall owed me a favor,” said Aria simply.
“And how did you get them to sing for me like that?”
“He owed me a few favors,” Aria grinned at Sonata as they walked, chatting and smiling and even laughing. It was an amazing experience; They had lived with each other for over a thousand years, but they were still learning about one another.
“Wait, wait, when did you meet 1D?” asked Sonata as they neared their home.
“Don’t judge me,” said Aria. “When they were first coming up, I… I was kinda their groupie.”
“What?”
“It was a one time thing, but I had a… a night with the boys that they probably didn’t want their precious Directioners to find out about.” Sonata nodded and let the thought stew in her head. It wasn’t until Aria was unlocking the front door did Sonata connect the dots.
“Hold on a sec! When you say ‘they owed you a favor’, did you actually mean that you blackmailed them?” asked Sonata.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” asked Aria. Sonata nodded. “Then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
She pushed open the door and gestured for her to date to enter. Another thing that Sonata never knew about Aria, besides the One Direction thing, was that Aria was a perfect gentleman in many ways. Chivalry wasn’t dead, Sonata decided. It just switched gender.
Sonata smiled and stepped into the house. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw on the other side.
The T.V. was flipped onto its side, surrounded by an amassment of candy wrappers and soda cans. On the couch was a trembling lump in a blanket, which occasionally let out a pitiful whine. Aria followed behind Sonata, keeping her eyes peeled for whoever had broken into their home.
“Dagi?” Sonata said tenderly.
“Go away, Sonata. I don’t want you to see me like this,” sobbed the lump
“Who was it? Did you see his face?” asked Aria. She was practically begging to run into the thief. That would surely get her some points with Sonata.
“Of course I saw his face. I watched the whole bloody movie,” said Adagio.
“What? Nobody broke in?” asked Aria, slightly disappointed.
“No, no, that was me. Don’t worry, I’ll bring it in first thing in the morning. I have the warranty,” sighed Adagio. “I think I’m ready to come out.”
The three of them stood motionless for a while, Aria and Sonata waiting for their fearless leader to shed the safe confines of her blanket.
“What’s stopping you?” asked Aria.
“My… my mascara is running. I can’t come out like this,” said Adagio. “Go upstairs! You must have so much to talk about!”
Aria shrugged her shoulders and offered her hand to her date. She led Sonata up the stairs, the both of them laughing at Adagio. Before they knew it, they were collapsing on Aria’s bed, laughing hysterically.
“And we vowed to follow her to the ends of the Earth,” laughed Aria.
“She can be really silly sometimes,” agreed Sonata. She got her laughs out, and took in a deep breath. “This was fun, Ari. We should do this all the time.”
“Maybe we should,” said Aria with a smirk. “You should drop out of school. We’ll have more time to hang out then. Get closer.”
“I have an even better idea! You can start coming to school again!” said Sonata. Aria’s smile fell into a glare in record time.
“That’ll be the day. You couldn’t pay me enough to step foot in that shack,” snorted Aria.
“Come on! You need to make some more friends.”
“I have friends,” lied Aria.
“That one freshman at the comic store doesn’t count,” said Sonata matter-of-factly. “I swear, the girls are super sweet! And they’re willing to look past the whole mind-controlling-the-school thing!”
“I guess that is a be-. Wait, what?!” yelped Aria. “I swear to God, Sony, if you tell anyone that I know that little snot stain, I will slaughter you!”
Sonata let out a girlish giggle, which had the dual effect of infuriating Aria and making her blush at the same time.
“Why do you have to be so friggin cute?” Aria smacked her with a pillow. “I’m serious, by the way. I will make you disappear, Sonata Blaze.”
A half-second passed before Aria realized what she let slip. Before she could start taking it back, Sonata had her most smug grin on.
“You know, that’s basically proposing,” said Sonata. “Already thinking about marriage? It’s only the first date, Ari.”
“But there will definitely be more, right?” asked Aria.
“Do I get to call you Aria Dusk?” asked Sonata.
“Call me whatever you want,” said Aria, closing her eyes in contentment. “Just stay away from ‘Jezebel’, kay?”
“Jezebel?”
“A long story. Maybe school wouldn’t be such a bad move,” mused Aria. “At least that way, I could get my comics back from Tripsy.”
“Don’t you mean Trixie?” asked Sonata.
“Wow, you’re already nagging me to death, and we’re not even official yet,” said Aria. She felt Sonata’s lips press against hers softly, lingering for a second before retreating.
“There. Totes official,” said Sonata. She pulled out her phone and opened Facebook. She scrolled around, selected her status and changed it with a smile.
In a relationship.