S.M.I.L.E. Agent Aria Blaze

by Hopeful_Ink_Hoof

Because I'm Freefalling

Author's Note:

For those who haven't read the blog post: I have decided to stop working on this story for various reasons. I don't know if it's permanently cancelled, or on hiatus for an extended period, but I won't be writing it any more for a long time.

I still have multiple chapters that I have written. As such, I will continue to post them on the regular schedule. However, once I catch up to where I stopped, that's going to be it. No finale. No ending. Just stopping where I gave up.

Again, apologies to those of you who enjoyed it.

Aria Blaze grinned to herself as she swam. Powerful tail muscles flexed and shifted, sending her forward. She could feel the cool water rushing across her scaled body. Her dorsal fin stuck out above the water, cutting a line across the surface. Every sense was open, taking in the sense of terror from every creature as they fled from her.

It would put a smile on her face if she did not have one already.

Aria turned, and dove down. She worked her way deeper and deeper, further into the depths. When the light was barely visible, she turned and swam toward the surface. Every muscle in her body pumped with all its power.

The siren breached the surface, doing so with such force that even her tail left the water.

She was flying.

Pink feathered wings flapped excitedly, letting the pegasus climb higher and higher in the clear blue sky. Aria stretched her forelegs out in front of her, getting in better position for proper flight. Her eyes narrowed and ears pulled back against head as the wind rushed across her. She could feel it blow her mane and make her tail snap and wave behind her like a flag.

Aria did an aileron roll, laughing as she did.

Music filled the air. Aria could feel it tickling her coat as it wrapped around her. It stabilized her, helping her fly straighter. It pushed at her, making her want to climb higher and higher. So she did. She climbed and climbed, making her way up and up.

The world vanished far below. There was only Aria, endless sky, and the sun.

Feathers melted. They stretched and flopped as they dripped away. Globs of wax hung in the air like bubbles, or left pink streaks across the sky. With each loss, her wings grew shorter and shorter. The shrinking forced her to flap faster and faster, leaving more streaks and causing more and more wax to fly off.

With a loud POP! two crayons came off of Aria's shoulders. With her wings gone, she fell, spinning through the air. All four legs flapped as fast as they could. Aria tried making her twin-tails and actual tail spin like propellers, to no effect.

She hit the water back-first, slipping beneath the surface.

Something swam toward the now human Aria Blaze. At first, it looked like a black wolf, but as it got closer, the muzzle was too wide, teeth too long, and the "paws" were large and webbed. It grinned at her, bubbles escaping from between its teeth. A whip-like tail lashed back and forth behind it.

The tail lashed around, a hand on the end of it grabbing Aria by the throat and snapping shut. It turned and dove, pulling her down by her neck with it.

Aria screamed, bubbles escaping her mouth and breaking for the surface. She tried to grab at the hand and tail, to pull them off and free herself, but she could not get a good enough grip. Her hands would just slide off.

A line of rainbow light shot up through the water, striking the tail. The hand let go as the tail was turned into eyeballs. The eyes all turned toward Aria, staring at her as they floated up toward the surface.

With a gurgling yelp, the creature fled.

A glowing white light appeared beneath Aria. It grew larger and larger, brighter and brighter. As it got closer, it took on the shape of a horse.

No. An ALICORN.

Aria found herself on the creature's back as they surfaced. It turned its head around, looking at her with glowing white eyes.

WHY DO YOU HOLD ME BACK?

---

Aria opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. She did not really see it at first. The head of the glowing alicorn filled her vision, its words echoing through her mind. As the sound faded from her ears, so did the image from her sight. Soon it was gone, leaving Aria Blaze alone in the quiet darkness of her room.

Just a plain, white, ceiling.

Tossing aside the sheets, she got up and made her way to the bathroom. At the sink, she turned the cold water on, letting it run before splashing some onto her face.

She turned it off and looked at herself in the mirror. Purple eyes stared back at her.

But who was staring back? Or, would it be more accurate to ask what? She was no longer a siren. Those powers were gone, probably forever. Although, they did not entirely miss it (as Sonata had made them realize not too long ago), it had been who they were, what they were, for so long. In fact, when they had gone back to Equestria, they had been changed into ponies. Aria in particular had been a pegasus. She had not really spent much time to get used to it, either. Since their arrival, they had looked human, but never actually were.

Her gaze drifted down to her right hand. When she had punched the light, it had cut up that hand, enough that it had needed to be cleaned and bandaged. The next day, it had been pretty much healed. Now, there was no sign that anything had even happened.

Aria's attention returned to her reflection. A thought occurred to her. One that in under circumstances, she may have dismissed. As it was, however, she figured she may as well. No reason not to, after all.

As she made her way to the kitchen, the smell of chocolate filled the air.

Sonata Dusk sat at the kitchen table, dressed in her Mane-iac pajamas. Her hands were clasped around a mug, head down as she was staring into it.

"What are you doing up?" Aria asked.

Sonata jumped, jerking the mug. Some of the contents splashed out, spilling onto her hand. She looked up, raspberry eyes blinking as Sonata's attention came back to the present and processed the question that she had been asked.

"Couldn't sleep," Sonata answered. She glanced down at the mug "Thought the hot chocolate would help." Her gaze flicked up at Aria again. "There's some left if you want."

"Maybe after," Aria replied.

"After what?"

Stopping in front of one of the drawers, Aria opened it and pulled out a pair of scissors.

"What are you doing?" asked Sonata.

"Cutting my hair," Aria answered. From all the time it spent in twin tails, her hair tended to be separated into two sections, even when not being held by her hair bands. While it could be annoying when she wanted to simply let her hair down and hang free, it normally made things easier went she wanted to gather it up. Such as when she to put it back up in the tails.

Or in this case, cut it.

She collected the hair on the left side of her head.

"Why?" Sonata asked.

"Why not?" Aria retorted. "We've changed it before."

"You mean like that time you first learned about Punk Rock and got a Mohawk?"

Aria froze, entire body tensing as the memory came back. Her eyes narrowed as she turned her head, glaring at the other siren.

"We agreed not to talk about that," she growled out. Her face then took on a vicious smirk. "Just like we agreed to never talk about your beehive."

The comment caused Sonata to shrink down in her seat. Her gaze shifted to the other side of the room as she brought hot chocolate to her mouth. Aria could not see it, but she was pretty sure that Sonata was blushing at the memory.

Aria's attention returned to her hair.

"Besides," she continued, "everything's different now. We're not going back to Equestria, we don't have our powers, we can't feed on dark magic any more even if we wanted." She let out a sigh. "We're not even planning revenge for losing them anymore. We even helped the Rainbooms. We don't think of them as friends... or at least I don't, but..." Aria shook her head. "I even have a job now. One where I am working to keep humans safe from what we used to be and who knows what else."

With her free hand, she grabbed the scissors.

"New world. New life. New look."

Aria opened the scissors and brought the blades to her hair. As she cut, she could hear the hiss of metal sliding against metal, and the crunch of the hair being severed. The cut portion fell, one part hanging limply in her hand, as the other came to rest against her head once more. She had forgotten how much her hair could weigh on her head until she noticed how much lighter her scalp felt.

The process was repeated with the other side.

It was not short enough.

"Hey, Sonata, mind helping me out?"

"Sure," Sonata replied as she stood up. "What do you want?"

With a flick of her wrist, Aria flipped the scissors so that she was holding them by the blades. She walked over to Sonata, holding them out for her. One leg reached out, foot twisting to hook the leg of a chair. With a practiced motion, Aria simultaneously pulled the chair out from the table and turned it around to face her.

"Cut it short," she ordered. "'bout finger width."

After taking the scissors, Sonata moved behind Aria. She ran her fingers through the recently cut hair, then gripped it firmly between her pointer and middle fingers. The hiss-snip, hiss-snip of the scissors cutting filled the silence as she worked.

It was a sound that quickly started to get on Aria's nerves.

"So, why couldn't you sleep?" she asked Sonata.

The cutting paused for a second.

"I've... been thinking about getting a job," Sonata answered as she resumed cutting. "I mean, that was part of the idea, wasn't it? You work for SMILE, our records get wiped, we are given all that stupid government paperwork like birth certificates and high school diplomas, and then we get jobs. Right?"

"Well, technically you don't have to," Aria replied. "We still have a lot of money saved up. You use some of it to go to college. Or just live off it."

"I want to though," Sonata replied. "I want to get a job. I want to prove I can get one. Without mind control or blackmail. I want to prove that I can take care of myself. That I don't need you or Dagi looking out for me all time."

Aria was suddenly very worried about the fact there was a sharp metal object so close to her head.

"Sonata," she started.

"I know, I know," Sonata continued. "I am the baby of us, and you've always had to look out for me. Even back when we were pups and you had to get Canto Mesmer to leave me alone --"

"She was a bitch, anyways," Aria mumbled to herself.

"-- but I'm not a baby, and I'm not an invalid. I can take care of myself!"

The sound of scissors cutting and Sonata huffing filled the air.

"Besides, it's not fair. You shouldn't be the one doing all of the work. We should all do our part."

"Alright, alright," Aria huffed, rolling her eyes. "I get your point already. You want to work." She started to turn, but stopped as she remembered that her hair was being cut. "So, what are you gonna do?"

Sonata let out a sigh.

"That's part of the problem," she answered. "I have to figure out what I want to do, and what I can do. I mean, as far as everyone is concerned, I'm eighteen and just graduated from high school. Even if I wanted to put 'able to manipulate people into distrusting each other and acting against their own well-being' on my resume and they believed me, I would still have to get real work experience or something before they made me a manager. So whatever I end up picking has to be something that I can get with no prior experience. Then there's the question of taking the skills I do have, and how to word them so they sound like they would be useful and relevant. And that doesn't even take into account what I actually want to do, you know? Like, figuring out what I would like to do for hours and hours, for days on end, or at least what I could tolerate enough to go through with it."

"Okay, yeah," Aria conceded. "I get it. That is a lot to think about."

"Yeah," Sonata agreed.

The cutting continued.

"I'm sorry."

"What?" Aria asked, turning to look at Sonata.

"I said I'm sorry," Sonata replied. She gently took a hold of Aria's head and moved it to face forward. "Head straight. I'm almost done." The sound of cutting resumed. "It's... something else I've been thinking about lately. Something I have been trying not to think about since... the battle..." Sonata let out a sigh. "I owe you an apology. I owe you so much more than that."

"You're not making any sense."

"It's my fault," Sonata declared, and Aria could hear the sadness in her voice. "If we hadn't met, if I hadn't forced you to be my friend, then you never would have gotten involved in Adagio's plan. You wouldn't have been brought into this world with us. You wouldn't... be stuck here, doing this..."

She gave a sniff.

"Are you done?" asked Aria.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm done."

"Good. Because I want to look at you when I say this."

Aria got up and turned to face Sonata.

"Sonata, in all the years we have known each other, that is by far, the STUPIDEST thing you have ever said."

Sonata took a step back, eyes going wide.

"Ar--"

"Shut up!" Aria snapped. "I'm talking, and I want you to listen. And I mean really listen. Because I want this to get through that chunk of rock you use for a brain." She pointed a finger at the younger siren. "My being here is not your fault!"

"But--"

"NO!" Aria cut. "My life, my choices. I chose to put up with you, I chose to defend you, and to keep doing so, I chose to go along with Adagio's plan for Equestria, and I went along with the plan to attack Canterlot High. I chose to stay with you doofuses through all that crap, I chose to stay here with you two when we could have gone back to Equestria, and just like I chose to work with SMILE so we could get those stupid papers. Understand?"

Sonata gave a nod while chewing her lip.

"Good!" Taking a step closer, Aria's eyes narrowed. "And if I ever hear you talking about how this all your fault again, I will give you an atomic wedgie."

"W-what's that?"

Aria grinned.

"It's where I grab your underwear and pull it up by so hard that the waistband goes up over your head."

A squeak escaped Sonata as she took a step back, eyes going wide. Most likely she was remembering the non-atomic type wedgies that she had experienced in the past: such as when Sonata had worn a thong, sharing that it was also called "butt-floss," and Aria had given her one, explaining that, "you have to really get it up in there if you want to floss properly."

Aria reached up and gave Sonata a gentle pat on the cheek.

"Glad we got that cleared up."

Turning away, she started for the cabinet, wanting to grab a mug so she could enjoy some of the hot chocolate.

Aria barely made it three steps before she was tackled from behind. She could feel a head pressing against her back as scrawny blue arms wrapped around her waist and squeezed tight.

She let out a huff of annoyance as Sonata hugged her.

She did not push away.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Aria tried making her twin-tails and actual tail spin like propellers, to no effect.

Silly Aria. You're not a party pony.

If you never do continue this story past hte backlog, I hope you explain this dream sequence. I have my suspicions, but I'd love to know for sure.

Even if I wanted to put 'able to manipulate people into distrusting each other and acting against their own well-being' on my resume and they believed me, I would still have to get real work experience or something before they made me a manager.

Amazing.

Fantastic bit of character interaction. Here's looking forward to whatever's left.