Saturday Evening
When Sonata got back into her apartment, she was half expecting Aria to come and start barraging her with the usual insults as she locked up. Unfortunately, it was worse than that. Aria was sitting nearby while Adagio was standing probably five feet away from the door with her arms crossed.
Sonata suddenly felt small when she saw the other two sirens fuming as they waited for her to say something.
"Hi, Adagio, Aria. What's going on?" Sonata said, hoping that she hadn't just made a huge mistake by saying anything.
Adagio took a couple of steps towards her, forcing her to back up into the door. Then she slammed a hand right next to Sonata’s head, causing her to flinch.
"Don't you give me that, you half-wit!" Adagio yelled right in her face. "We've been waiting here for you to get back since the afternoon! We even sent you several texts to get back here immediately!"
Sonata quickly pulled out her phone and almost gasped when she found that there were ten unread texts. She then noticed that the alert settings had been turned off. The earliest one was sent at one thirty. "I'm sorry, I was trying to stay out of your way, so I went out to get some fresh air," she explained.
"Yeah, with some guy," Adagio said, "Aria followed you earlier today, and told me about it while we were waiting for you to drag yourself back here."
"I-I was going to let you know," she said trying to calm down Adagio.
Adagio took a deep breath before changing her tone completely. "Oh, that's quite alright. I think he could come in handy."
Sonata, now completely aware of Adagios intentions pleaded. "Wait, please. I don't want to get him involved with any of our plans."
Aria then scoffed, "What? Are you worried that he's going to get hurt? That everyone else might treat him like us? If he's seeing you, it’s going to happen regardless, lame brain."
"A- uh…oh," Sonata tried to say something against it, but Aria made a good point.
"Besides, all you really have to do is keep on seeing him so you can get in close with him," Adagio said.
"Of course, we could always just get rid of him, if you want," Aria chimed in.
"Alright, I'll do it. Just don't do anything to him," she unwillingly agreed.
"Good," Adagio smirked. "Now that that's settled, you're going to be helping us gather some things tomorrow. I think we may be able to transfer whatever magic that is left in our broken pendants into similar stones and start over from that. Also, we will be going back to the school to figure out how Sunset Shimmer got that other Equestrian girl here."
"Are you sure about that, I mean, it seems too risky to go back there after everything that happened," Sonata said, "And wouldn't they have kicked us out after that?"
"Oh please, stop your whining, Sonata," Aria said. "If anyone tries anything I'll make sure they pay. Anyways, you have that guy. It's not like he'd let anything happen to our poor little defenseless idiot."
Between the anger, fear, and frustration; Sonata couldn't think of anything to say in response to Aria and just kept quiet.
"I'm fairly confident we'll be fine to return there. I mean, look at Sunset Shimmer. She practically did exactly the same thing as us, and they let her stick around," Adagio reasoned.
"I guess that does make sense," Sonata said feeling defeated. I hope it doesn’t go completely wrong.
"Good, now that that is out of the way, I'm going to be heading out to stretch out my legs," Adagio said. "But you two had better be ready for tomorrow."
With that, Adagio gave Sonata a gesture to get out of the way of the door and left. Aria got up from her seat and walked over to her too.
"You know, as fun as it was to follow you two morons around this morning, I've got other more worthwhile things to do," Aria said and left the apartment as well.
Sonata couldn't help but feel some relief as soon as Aria and Adagio had both left. On the one hand, at least the worst part of that encounter was over, and she wouldn't have to deal with them for a little while longer. On the other, she felt uneasy about the new plan and what could happen to Slate. At this point there wasn't much that she could do to stop it, so she decided to shoot Slate a text.
Back at Slate’s apartment
I had barely finished sweeping the living room while dad was busy cooking dinner. He was telling me about how hectic the whole day had been and how he hoped that the new branch of the business would get better sometime soon. I wasn't entirely paying attention though, and would just answer with a generic "uh-huh" or "yeah" as I swept up a pile of dust into the nearby dustpan and emptied it out into the kitchen’s garbage bin.
As I took the broom and dustpan back to the closet, I checked my phone for any messages that I might have missed. There was one from Sonata which read, "Hey Slate. I wanted to let you know that I'm not going to be able to hang out tomorrow."
In response I sent, "Alright, well hopefully I'll see you in school. You do go to CHS, right?"
Another text arrived shortly, this one read, "Yeah, why do you ask?"
"I don't think I saw you there the first few days that I went."
"Oh, I was sick on Wednesday and Thursday, and kind of just stayed out on Friday."
"I see."
"So, could you tell me which classes you have? Maybe we have some together."
I quickly went to my room and snapped a picture of my schedule and sent it to her.
She then replied "Cool, we have a few of them together, we even have the same lunch period. I'll see you Monday."
I replied with, "Ok, I'll see you then, take care," and placed the phone back in my pocket. I still had plenty of chores to finish up if I wanted to be able to do anything else, so I continued working until dinner was ready. All in all, the day went pretty well.
After getting those texts from Slate, Sonata could at least relax about seeing him during school. Still, she needed something to get her mind off of the plan.
She went ahead and took a shower to get ready for the night. When she finished up, she put on some PJs and sat in the living room while looking over the previous week's newspaper. Surprisingly, there had hardly been any coverage of what had happened last Friday. There was a review though, that read "A spectacular light show capped off the finale of the CHS Battle of the Bands Competition." She didn't even bother reading past that and instead got a small snack from the fridge and went back to watch TV for a while.
Nine o'clock rolled on by and neither Aria nor Adagio had returned yet. She might have worried a bit more if it wasn't for the fact that she wasn't looking forward to any more tongue lashings anytime soon. So she went to her room and just turned in for the night.
She slept soundly throughout the night. Then morning came along and there was a sudden loud banging that had scared her awake; causing her to roll out of bed and straight onto the floor with a loud thud.
"Ow, my head," Sonata groaned as she picked herself up and rubbed a small bump on her forehead. "I guess this is how Slate felt yesterday. Ow. Alright, I'm up and getting ready!"
"Well get ready faster! We have several places to get to, and I don't want to spend forever getting out of here!" Adagio yelled from the other side of the door and left to finish up.
Sonata changed out into some street clothes and brushed her hair as quickly and carefully as she could before putting it into a ponytail. When she finished washing up, she headed to the kitchen where the other two had already been eating. They must have gotten up way earlier than her that morning, which was surprising since she didn't even hear when they had returned the night before. She quickly got some cereal for herself and scarfed it down. The other two would have rushed her as soon as they were done if she didn’t.
Shortly after breakfast, they were out the doors of the apartment complex and walking towards downtown.
"So what do we need for your big plan this time, Adagio?" Aria asked disinterestedly.
"We need to get some chalk, candles, and three new pendants," Adagio said.
"That's it? Why not pick up some glitter or some arts and crafts paper while you're at it?" Aria asked sarcastically. "Other than the new pendants, the other things seem pretty useless, kind of like Sonata," she said smirking over at Sonata.
"You are!" Sonata yelled back and glared at Aria.
"Shut your mouths!" Adagio snapped. "We need these items to make an array to transfer the energy from the broken pendants to the new ones."
"Oh, so you're going to try and use some sort of alchemy, right?" Sonata asked, now intrigued.
"Ye-Yes," Adagio replied, genuinely stunned that she had picked up on what her plan entailed. "How'd you even guess that?"
"Hello, one of my favorite anime was all about that sort of thing," Sonata responded with a smile. "So when you mentioned an array, I kind of figured that's what you meant."
Adagio shook her head and responded with, "Whatever, let's just get the stuff fast."
They went to several different stores looking for the supplies. It wasn't hard to find some chalk at the first arts and crafts store they checked ironically; and they found some similar looking pendants at a jewelry shop in lower downtown. What they did have trouble finding unfortunately, were the candles. Adagio explained that they had to be the kind that were made with actual animal fat, so it took some time before they came to a shop that carried any.
The shop sold occult stuff and was kind of dark and gloomy. There were lots of skulls, incense, and statues along with other dreary items throughout the store. The black and white striped shopkeeper however, didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the shop’s very off-putting atmosphere. She was very friendly in helping them find what they needed and was more than happy to sell them those candles. She even did so in rhyme.
After the purchase, the Dazzlings left right away while Sonata started shaking off the shiver that had been running up and down her spine.
"Ugh, I'm glad we're out of there. That place was giving me the creeps the entire time we were in there," she said, raising an arm to show Aria and Adagio the goosebumps that had shown up.
"Man, you're such a wimp," Aria said rolling her eyes. "Let's go back to the apartment and get that array done so we can get our powers back."
"Not just yet, Aria," Adagio said scowling. "Even with an array set up, it wouldn't have any effect. We still need a fully intact, magical item to act as a conduit to transfer the magic from our pendants to the new ones. Which is why we need to go back to the school and find out how the Rain Booms got that other girl here. They must have something that we can use."
"Whatever, Adagio, let's just get something to eat then," Aria whined, "it's been four hours since we had breakfast, and we're already going on five."
“Yeah, I think my stomach is eating itself,” Sonata added.
Adagio pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration and sighed, "Fine, we'll pick up something on the way back." They did just that, and stopped along the way at a pizza parlor and bought a large pizza.
By the time they made it back to the apartment, it was already going to be three in the afternoon. The sirens ate lunch in silence, which was pretty much the norm for them since the atmosphere around them was very tense no matter what.
As for the rest of the day, they didn't really do much else. Sonata was texting back and forth with Slate to pass the time. Aria was reading some magazines on the couch. And Adagio was busy studying a book on alchemy to make sure she could reproduce the array once they had a magical item. In a way, Adagio’s planning had brought them back to a relatively neutral state, unlike the past week. The day ended on a pretty good note as they waited for the school week to begin.