> Changing Tune
>  by Eyeswirl the Weirded
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Going Home
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Talent was a funny thing.

If someone was good at something, it wasn't weird to think that was the only thing they'd be good at, like there was a limit on how great one person could be. It wasn't true, at least, in the sense that some people weren't worthless when they couldn't do what they were known best for. People could do a lot of things, and with practice they could do whatever they set their-

Ugh, I'm starting to feel like I've been listening to these dorks for too long.

Aria Blaze silently shook her head, careful not to let her ponytails dangle over the side of the roof  by the side of the school building where either of the Rainbooms on the bench below might see them. Adagio would probably flip if she heard she'd been caught spying on them, after all, with how much had been going wrong lately. Luckily, that wouldn't be a problem, because Aria had a knack for going unnoticed when she wanted to. Wearing her hoodie might have made concealment a little easier, but it was getting too damn hot out.

"Do you ever get homesick, Sunny?"

Sunset Shimmer smiled a little. "Not really, Pinkie, there's nothing for me back home."

Aria felt a familiar weight in the back of her head, like a load of bricks on her patience. Urg, personal lives again!

"Are you sure?" Pinkie asked, "You could pop back any time with the portal open."

Her eyes shot open. Wait, what?!

Sunset shook her head. "I'm happy here, but if there's ever another problem, I guess that would be faster than waiting with the book again."

Pinkie giggled. "I guess I can kinda see why you're not in a big hurry, just sticking my face through the statue out front was weeeeeird!"

Aria dared lean over the edge of the roof just slightly, thankful that the angle of the sun wouldn't be projecting her shadow where they could see.

Sunset smiled a little wider, amused. "If you think that was weird, imagine turning into a creature you've never heard of when you were all the way through." She glanced away, her grin growing rigid as she spoke softly. "Something I've got a bit more experience wi-" She was cut off by Pinkie doing that friendly arm-wrap-around grapple thing humans do, Sunset hesitantly returning it. 

As they muttered about apologies and acceptance and letting go or something she really didn't want to hear again, Aria slipped away to the staircase she'd gotten up here with. She finally had something to tell Adagio.


---


The lead Dazzling didn't look hopeful as she leaned against a pillar under the bleachers out by the football field, their regular spot this last week. "Business as usual, Aria?" Having her spy on the girls that destroyed their gems didn't sound like a great plan to begin with, but right now it was all they had. "Magic of friendship this, joys of being together that, all amid absurd hijinks that nobody bats an eye at?"

For once, she didn't have to complain about overhearing the Rainbooms' stupid, boring banter or not caring about their stupid, boring daily struggles, even if the three of them had gotten a little amusement out of mocking those things. She smiled, even Sonata getting up from drawing circles in the dirt with a fingertip as if she sensed that something important had happened. "They say there's a portal, open all the time."

It was rare to see Adagio really surprised, but something in Aria cherished the wide-eyed shock. "What?"

The twin-tailed siren nodded, putting her hands on her hips. "They said it was in the statue in front of the building. That might even be where Twilight Sparkle came from when she started all this."

Sonata clasped her hands together, starting to smile. "Like, does that mean we can go back? Back to Equestria?"

She shrugged a little. "Where else would it go? I mean-"

They were cut off by the sound of Adagio's slow-building, slightly creepy laughter. As many times as they'd worried about Sonata giving them away, Aria had always thought that laugh was the biggest signal for 'we're definitely bad guys.' 

Their occasionally scary leader flashed a familiar, malevolent smile. "We move at night." She sashayed across the floor, looking more pleased than she had in days. "It won't do if someone sees us trying to access the portal, and nobody will know where we've gone by daybreak."

Aria couldn't help raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms, her face doubtful. "Are we really just gonna assume it's true? What if-"

The sinister smirk hadn't dissipated. "What if they knew you were there and felt like toying with us? Are you telling me you're not as good at staying camouflaged as you say?"

She gritted her teeth. "No, I just-"

Adagio stepped closer to touch a finger to her angry back-up singer's lips. "Relax. Even if it isn't true, we have nothing to lose." She glanced to Sonata, who looked like she was struggling to decide whether she was nervous or excited about all this. "Be ready."


---


10:00 p.m. 

The school was closed and everyone had gone home. Now was their chance. The trio furtively approached the statue, caution not entirely related to the possibility of being  caught coloring their movements. Adagio stopped in front of the statue, motioning for Aria and Sonata to check the sides while she tried to riddle out how a statue might function as a magical doorway. 

Was it always here? Could we really have come back at any time? 

Part of her didn't want to believe that, if only because it would mean they'd spent the last several months in this miserable little world looking very foolish. It didn't matter how she worded it in her head, that there was a doorway home here the whole time made her feel like an imbecile, whether she'd had any way of knowing about it or not. Regardless, they'd have their revenge on that wretched pony wizard, but first, the portal! 

Do you have to use a spell on it? Is the figure atop the pedestal related somehow? Perhaps there's a mechanism or-

"Hey guys," called Sonata from behind the opposite end, "I can fit my whole head through here! Oh, and there's this place on the other side!"

She resisted the urge to facepalm, instead running around to see Sonata's lower half sticking out of the stone, a thin ring of ethereal light circling her waist. Ordinarily, ordering Aria to pull her back would have been Adagio's first instinct, but part of her feared that if they were to try it, all they'd get of her was the waist-down. Somehow. Just looking at half a person was proving to be somewhat nauseating, so it might have been good fortune that Aria showed her usual degree of patience, delivering a swift kick to Sonata's hindquarters to push her through the portal entirely. 

Chuckling, she turned to Adagio. "Always wanted to do that. We goin' or what?"

Replying with a curt nod, she steeled herself as best she could and leapt straight at the flat, stone base of the statue, thankfully not breaking any bones as the world exploded into light. It couldn't have been longer than a fraction of a second, but in that time, there was nothing, and everything at once. The sensations of every sound she'd ever heard were rolled into a deep, bellowing howl assaulting her eardrums until she collided with something soft, something slightly less soft landing directly on top of her.

The area was dark, but it took only a few seconds to realize they were now a Dazzling dogpile, Aria having landed on Adagio, who landed on Sonata, who had been massaging her sore posterior. Not quite as bothered by the weight of the two of them, she turned with an annoyed expression on her face. "Heeey! Which one of you kicked my-..."

Growing wide-eyed, the three of them made the same realization at the same time: They were not great, scaly mer-horses as they once had once been. They were not in their old bodies. They were ponies.

To say this disturbed all three of them would be an understatement as they shared a short moment of screaming panic, Adagio being the first to use words. "Wh-what?! Why?! Why are we-what magic is-?!"

Aria rarely sounded so frightened, rapidly turning her head back and forth to look at her sides. "What are these things?! Get'em off me, get'emoffme!!"

Equally rare was a moment in which Adagio felt compelled to do more than shout one of her underlings into silence, trying to hold Aria still in her hooves (Aaaaagh!) long enough to remove whatever was stuck to her. "Hold still, I'll-" she felt the thing she was holding move on it's own, "oh stars, they're alive!"

"What," she practically shrieked, her legs shaking, "WHAT are alive?!"

Trying to pull them off only elicited pained cries from Aria. "I don't know, it's too dark in here to see!" She at last found a second in which to examine their surroundings, the dim glow of the... mirror? The strange collection of objects connected to what she guessed was this world's answer to the statue-portal was the only source of light in the room, but the way it glinted and glimmered off the outstandingly well-polished floors and walls suggested they may have been in the Crystal Empire. Shining walls or not, though, she couldn't make out what was attached to Aria.

Breathing heavily, terrified tears in the corners of her eyes, Aria managed to hold still long enough to stand at the best angle of light she could find to see what was stuck to her sides. It was then that she was aware that she could acutely feel these things, not unlike the sensation of having fingers had been... She willed them to move. They did. Holding up both, she could see that they were wings. 

I'm a pegasus?! 

She could see Adagio staring at her in surprise. That expression quickly became annoyance. "Aria. You're an idiot."

The retort came as her face burned red. "Sh-shut up, how was I supposed to know what they were?!"

Irritation and relief blended together into a pleasant apathy as Adagio looked around for Sonata. Luckily, her blue cohort hadn't wandered off, but was sitting in a nearby corner. 

Her head down. 

Silent. 

Alarmed again, Adagio rapidly approached her. "Sonata, what's wrong?!"

Her ponytail (which looked a little weird on a pony, which already had a tail) shook along with her head as she banged it against the wall a few times, still facing away. "There's something stuck to my head!"

She put a hoof (Aaah!) on Sonata's shoulder. "Let me see."

Sonata turned around, her eyes wide and watery, a long spike sticking straight out of her forehead. "I'm a frea-hee-heek!"

Smirking a little, Adagio glanced back at Aria, who didn't seem any less embarrassed than a moment ago, turning away with a huff and an annoyed flap of her wings. "The polite term is 'unicorn'. It's a type of pony."

The blue filly's miserable expression faded immediately. "Oh. That's ok then!" 

Quickly checking herself over, Adagio found that she had no abnormal protrusions, and would likely be the most inconspicuous of the three. Apart from her hair, which was about as full and fluffy as it had been on her human form, the bulk of it resting on her back and reaching to her almost-equally large tail. It was then that they heard clicking, clacking noises, like a collection of sharp little objects repeatedly impacting the floor. Getting louder. Closer. The lead siren quickly moved behind the portal's bulky machinery, directing her minions with a loud whisper. 

"Someone's coming, hide!!" They followed her example nicely as the clacking noises, claws, she guessed, came to a stop.

"Uugh, Twilight?" The speaker was audibly tired, sounding like a young male. "What're you doin' in here?"

Silence held them by the throat for nearly a minute.

"Huh. Goodnight? I guess?"

The moment they heard what were probably departing foot(claw?)steps again, Adagio and Aria breathed a silent sigh of relief.

At least until Sonata spoke up. "Goodnight!"

Two hearts stopped along with the clacking claws. The young night sentry chuckled, suppressing a yawn. "Not even gonna ask, Pinkie. 'Night." The sound resumed, eventually dissipating.

Gingerly stepping out from behind the portal, Adagio formed a plan. Step one was to make time to berate Sonata later, or have Aria do it for her. "Alright," she said speaking quietly, "we have to get out of here. If the portal was her doing, we're most likely in Twilight Sparkle's fortress, and I don't need to tell you what happens if we're caught in here."

There was a short silence before Sonata tilted her head. "What?"

Adagio face-hoofed, recoiling in surprise to find hooves hurt a little more than hands did when applied quickly to the face. Making a mental note to be gentler with her expressions of frustration from now on, she waved the hoof she'd unintentionally punched herself with. "Let's move."

Keeping quiet and sticking to the shadows as often as possible, they followed Aria's lead in looking for the exit undetected. Luckily, there were signs posted in crude marker, complete with big, red arrows and designations. It was almost as if the residents didn't know their way around their own keep. Despite winding up on the roof somehow in the first twenty minutes, they eventually found what must have been the front door, cool night air flowing over them as they stepped out into the dark.

This, clearly, was not the Crystal Empire. Glancing back and forth between the shimmering, crystalline palace they'd just escaped and the common, thatch-roofed cottages, Aria was sure something was badly out of place here. "I don't get it," she muttered to the others, "where the hell are we?"

"Still too close to Twilight Sparkle's territory," answered Adagio, "we have to get far from here before we can begin rebuilding our power."

Sonata glanced around, uncertain. "Yea, but, where to? And how?"

Gritting her teeth, their brilliant leader had to utter a short collection of words that always made her feel like a failure. "I don't know. Perhaps if-wait!" She looked at Aria, who looked back at her like a deer in headlights. Making the mental note to purge human phrases and mannerisms from her behavior later, she smiled. "Aria, fly up and scan the surrounding area."

Aria gulped. Adagio might not have been aware of it herself, but her smiles almost always looked a little threatening. She wasn't really sure about being high off the ground, either. "Uh, I'm not sure that's the best ide-"

The puffy-maned earth pony raised an eyebrow. "You're a pegasus. In addition to the power of flight being a reasonably useful skill, don't you think it'd be suspicious if we had to tell peop-err, ponies, that you can't fly?"

Clenching her jaw, she had to agree. Good thing she wasn't afraid of heights. Just the painful part at the end of the fall. How hard could flying be, anyway? She flapped her wings once, then a few more times, willing herself to lift off the ground. She did. Wings beating faster, she started to levitate upwards, higher and higher, until the tops of the houses ceased to be the tallest things in her field of vision. (Twilight's stronghold was apparently a tower, she noticed) Looking around, all she could tell was that it was dark, and really hard to see anything. She knew better than to shout down to the others and risk giving their positions away, instead flying a little higher. She caught sight of a set of lights like those they'd seen on trains in the human world; a collection of lit windows with a big one at the front. 

Huh. Did they have trains in Equestria...? 

They'd only gotten fleeting glimpses of pony society while spreading their songs, but she didn't remember anything like that so many months ago.

Glancing down, she realized she'd flown higher than intended, the ground looking about a mile further away than it should have been. 

Eeep!! 

Her eyes snapped shut, along with her mouth to prevent an undignified scream, and, regrettably, her wings. She dropped like a rock.

Adagio and Sonata noticed immediately, calling out in unison. "ARIA!!" Both of them moved to catch her, Sonata's horn emitting sparks as their purple friend fell slightly slower, coming to a stop on Adagio's back, and consequently her fluffy mane. Barely grunting with the impact, Adagio turned her head to look at Aria. "What happened?! What did you see?!"

Realizing she was no longer at risk of a horrific splatter-death, she quickly hopped down, straightened her fur with a hoof, and immediately got tackled to the ground by a blue blur. 

Sonata standing on top of her might have been a lot more annoying if not for the worried expression on her face. "She got shot down! They know we're here, and Aria got Rat-Tat-Tat'd out of the sky, just like in that movie about the guys in the metal birds!" Her concern turned to a contemplative look as she brushed a hoof against her chin. "What were those called, anyway?"

"I think," Aria deadpanned before steadily raising her voice, "they were called GET OFF ME, SONATA!!"

"Keep it down, you idiots," hissed Adagio, "low profile, remember?" She'd figured being sent to another world would, by itself, carry a risk of permanent psychological damage for all of them, but it looked like the worst they had to deal with was the ways in which Sonata might have been influenced by human entertainment. Acceptable losses. "Now," she said as Aria got to her hooves, "what did you see that made you lose wing control?"

"Uh, well..." Averting her eyes, she brushed the back of her head. "Th-there was a train?"

Adagio again looked considerably surprised. "A train? As in, those rectangular, mechanical transportation circuits they had in the other world? I can see where that would be surprising, but..." She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, silently asking another question, which was answered with an equally silent scowl. Adagio shrugged. "No matter, that should be the quickest means of making distance between us and Twilight's forces. Which way was it?"


---


The arrangement of the train station was uncanny. It looked just like those of the human world,  but with pony passengers and operators, including the conductor; a blue-grey, black-maned stallion checking a gold pocket watch. Ignoring the few tired-looking late-night riders getting on or stepping off the platform, Adagio whispered to her cohorts as they approached the conductor. "Remember, they spoke differently in the other world, and we adapted accordingly," she grinned, feeling a tingle of nostalgia, "but now we return to familiar shores, and mine tongue has not forgotten it's roots."

Aria nodded, re-familiarizing herself with the old speech. "Art thou certain of this, Adagio?" She gestured vaguely in the direction of Twilight's Suspiciously Empty Fortress. "Mine recollection of the equine realm is surely askew, but when last we shadowed these lands, a search for two sights we've held this night would surely have been for naught."

She rolled her eyes. "Prithee, Aria, thinkest the power that tore our own asunder be of any less than the most potent Equestrian sorcery? No other magic but that of our world did we feast on in what was nearly our night of triumph, and by no other have we returned." 

Aria shrugged, her uncertain expression suggesting she was just being cautious. The conductor waved to them with more energy than most would have at this hour. "Hey there, folks! Where're y'all headed?"

Blinking twice at the mostly unfamiliar dialect, Adagio shrugged it off. "Hail, operator. We seek to board thy vessel and sail over the horizon upon its steel tread."

He gave them a long stare. "Huh?"

She tried again, gesturing to the train. "Yonder machinery proves most suitable for travel, does it not? Mine followers and I would see it employed to such ends, were it permissible to thee."

He scratched his head with a hoof in a manner suggesting he had no idea what she was saying. "Are you guys like... actresses?"

Mildly confused, she glanced back at Aria and Sonata, who both looked equally unsure. She started to form a plan, smiling back at the conductor. "Ah, of course. We three are thespians of the utmost-"

Sonata raised a hoof. "Um, Dagi? Why are you talking funny? I can hardly understand a thing you're saying!"

Aria face-hoofed, figuring their ditziest member just hadn't been paying attention the last few minutes as Adagio froze. On some level, Adagio knew she should have made sure Sonata wasn't... Sonata, before trying this. She just piecing together how she'd punish Sonata for a plan ruined so soon when the conductor started to laugh.

"Hahaha! She must be the comic relief! That's important, ya'know, I've seen enough plays to know things can get real sour if there's nothing to break up the tension every now and then. You gals need a ride? It's five bits per ticket."

The ability to magically enlist anyone into doing one's bidding with but a held note was a very convenient kind of magic for day-to-day use. However, it meant never having much need for currency. Having been in Equestria again for at most an hour or so, the trio found themselves with neither to help them, as Adagio realized at exactly that moment. "I, er, w-we're, we have, uh, traveled far from our field of renown, and expenditure has proven... costly?" She smiled sheepishly, trying to work out where they could hide on a train as stowaways without anyone noticing.

He frowned. "Oh." Glancing around and seeing a grand total of zero ponies in the immediate area, he spoke quietly, a conspiratorial grin forming on his face. "Tell ya what, I'll let you guys on for free if you can get me a ticket to your next big show! Are you heading to Canterlot? Snazziest theaters in Equestria up that way."

Adagio smiled. "This seems agreeable, good sir. Let us be your patrons this night, and you may later be ours." They would probably need a source of money later, but lying cost nothing at all.

The conductor beamed. "Fantastic! I know it'll take a while before you're on stage, rehearsals and paperwork and set-up and all that, but when you do, just mail an invite to old All Aboard!" He stepped aside, letting them be seated in an otherwise empty train-car. 

Finding themselves otherwise alone, the three spread out a little, each lying on different seats as fatigue of the evening's events caught up with them. When the train started to move, Adagio huffed. "What spellwork be at play that Equestria should employ the same speech as that of another plane?"

Aria shrugged. "Mayhap that they prefer a more succinct means to express their thoughts?"

She raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "To such a degree that the whole of their society has adapted it in under a year?"

"Well," came the reply as Aria lowered her head, as though expecting a hostile response, "'Tis something of a cumbrous tongue, Adagio..."

"Blasphemy!!"

Green-streaked twin-tails shook with a purple head. "I'm just saying, it's a lot easier to talk like they did in the other world. The way we used to talk is kinda... flowery, isn't it?"

Yellow cheeks tinted red and puffed out in annoyance. "Bite thy tongue! The words of a siren should hold all the majesty of their songs, not a thought spared for the idle convenience of-"

A blue hoof waved irritably at the two. "Hey! Can you guys keep it down? I'm tryin' to take a nap over here!"

Feeling a little drowsy herself, Aria didn't bother with a retort. Adagio huffed, more annoyed about having to abandon her preferred dialect for the second time than at Sonata's outburst. 

I suppose it isn't as if we were born talking like that, it was something picked up from the first sapient lifeforms we encountered. But still! 

Apart from the muffled noise of the wheels on the tracks, the train-car was silent for the next several minutes, the three sleepy sirens getting comfortable for the long ride. Adagio spoke quietly. "You two have done well, by the way."

Aria lifted her head, visibly surprised. "Huh?!"

Adagio nodded. "We infiltrated a powerful mage's quarters from within and escaped without so much as raising an alarm, doing the same with the town as a whole. You made use of unfamiliar appendages with no time to practice to spot the train where otherwise we may have wandered for hours in the dark." She smirked a little, looking over at Sonata, who laid facing the window. "Even you were of some use in convincing the conductor to let us ride, and free of charge at that." There was no reply from the unicorn sprawled out on the train seat, apart from a soft snore. The small smile didn't fade even as Adagio rolled her eyes.

Some level of her quiet amusement must have been contagious, as Aria chuckled, settling her head on her forehooves again and yawning. "All things considered, this is going pretty well so far. What's the plan from here?"

"For now? We wait. I'm forming a plan, but we need to know a bit about..." She blinked, glad Aria wasn't looking directly at her as her face tinted red. "Err, where did the conductor say we were going?" A short series of movements that might have been a shrug, might have been Aria getting more comfortable, was all the answer she got out of her newly winged companion, apparently asleep as well. 

This was going to bug her now. The name of the place was on the tip of her tongue, an air of familiarity about it as she, too, drifted off to sleep.
> Chapter 2: The Plan
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Light burrowing through her eyelids was all Adagio needed to know it was morning, but the sensation of the train coming to a stop was a welcomed addition. Rising gracefully with a stretch, she stepped off the seat she'd slept on. Looking toward the others, she could see they were still fast asleep, Sonata somehow having managed to wind up lying on her back, hooves in the air, two seats away from where Adagio'd seen her the night before. This was far from the strangest thing Sonata had done in her sleep. Wasting no time contemplating tying her down for a night just to see what might happen, Adagio stamped a hoof on the floor of the train car. "Wake up, it's time to get moving." 

Aria groggily complied, shaking off sleep by replicating the motion a dog might use to shake off water. Once Sonata was roused as well, Aria chuckled. "Hey, nice tattoo, Adagio."

"What?" Looking herself over again in daylight, she caught sight of a mark on her flank, an identical one on her opposite side; A purple octave note partially obscured by a large, orange gemstone. They were similar to the emblems adorning the pants in her human form's dance outfit, was that why they were on her backside now?

Sonata gasped. "You've got one too, Aria!"

The pegasus had more than wings stuck to her sides now; a silver star with a curved, violet line sticking out from the top and bottom. She did not seem thrilled to have a 'tattoo' of her own, but Sonata went wide-eyed, turning to show them her side. "Oh, do I have one too?!" It was a pink heart with a jagged, blue eighth note over top of it. They quickly learned that, scraping at the marks with their hooves doing nothing to remove them, they were quite stuck with their flank symbols. 

Aria groaned. "Either of you know how to get rid of these? They kinda scream 'stare at my ass!'"

Glancing out the train window, Adagio smiled. "Don't worry, it looks like everyone else has them too. We won't stand out so long as we can maintain a low profile." She and Aria both gave Sonata a pointed look, but to their surprise, she actually nodded, giving a crisp salute. Time would tell whether that was a good sign or a bad one as they headed out to see the sights of their new city.

They quickly learned that it was indeed a city, as the streets seemed to stretch much further and many of the buildings were much taller than in the village of Twilight Sparkle's underlings. On the topic of the difference in living conditions of different classes, such as a princess living in a crystal spire and her peasants living in cottages, this was almost certainly a wealthier part of Equestria, the ponies and buildings alike adorned with visually appealing, but unnecessary decoration. Not that the three of them (well, at least two of them) didn't understand the use in good appearances.

Suddenly, Sonata gasped, the other two turning to find out why. They looked at a large, well-polished window, (or possibly a mirror for someone that wanted to be vain from across the street) seeing only their reflections. "Omigosh, we're... we're..."

Aria rolled her eyes. "If you say 'ponies', I am going to deck you."

She grinned brightly. "We're cute!"

Her two companions replied in unison. "What?!"

Nodding at their reflections, Sonata beamed. "Look at us, Don't we just look... cuddly?"

Taking a good, long look in the window/mirror, Aria badly wanted to retort with something scathing, but felt too perturbed by the sight of herself. Soft, plush fur, small, stubby hooves, round, little heads, and big, doughy eyes? It was a far cry from the graceful majesty of their shimmering hippocampus bodies, a change that fully sunk in now as one they'd have to live with.

"We... might be stuck like this for a long time," their leader sighed. No matter, she was sure that, as far as ponies went, they still exuded more graceful beauty than child-like 'cuteness'. 

Continuation of their quiet exploration of the new area took the group down a nearly-empty street, where Aria felt free to renew last night's question. "So, how's that plan coming along? What are we gonna do here?"

"For now? It's still a work in progress, but I think if we can repair the gems, we may be able to pick up from where we left off before that wretched little pony mage banished us." She glanced about as they walked, an eyebrow raised. "That it was a unicorn other than him sent to deal with us in the other world tells me he may have expired on his own since then, but we should still be careful."

"He did look like kind of a geezer," Sonata agreed, "I guess he's probably pushing up dai-WAIT!" The three of them stopped, Adagio turning to look back at the others. "You still have the gems?"

Adagio nodded, drawing a small pouch from within her explosively poofy mane. "I gathered up what I could some hours after they were destroyed." She smiled down at the bag of broken jewels, her eyes alight with dark ambition. "They're only powerless fragments now, but if we can stir up enough negative energy, they might just be mended through a kind of magical jump-start." After several seconds, she noticed her cohorts were giving her odd looks. "What?"

Aria raised an eyebrow. "You keep stuff in your hair?"

She scowled, feeling a light warmth in her face. "What of it?"

Purple wings flicked upwards for a fraction of a second as Aria placatingly raised a forehoof, looking away. "Nothing, nothing!"

"Don't look at me like that, we don't have pockets anymore and it's the last place anyone would think to check for precious stones!"

"Then," Sonata spoke up, raising her own forehoof in a more inquisitive fashion, "does that mean you're hiding stuff in your tail, too?"

"What?! Why would I do that?"

She answered with a completely straight face. "Who would think to check your tail?"

They stood in silence for almost a minute, Adagio eventually opting to continue exploring the city she still couldn't remember the name of as she turned away. "You did, just now. Now let's keep moving." After about half an hour more of aimless wandering, the trio overheard a pair of ponies raising their voices not far away. Adagio immediately grinned, inadvertently frightening a nearby group of foals before making her way toward the scene with Aria and Sonata in tow.

"Spring," a mare in a cool-blue sweater-vest said to a one in a wide-brimmed, mint-green hat, "that is a Spring look!"

"Rubbish," she retorted, "this chapeau is a first-rate design from the finest shop in the city, and most definitely in-season!"

Sweater-vest scoffed. "If that season weren't Spring, maybe, we're in the middle of Fall! And what shop is it you get your out-of-fashion items from?" 

Green-hat harrumphed. "It is a fall look, and I doubt you could even afford to set hoof in such an establishment!"

Aria nudged Adagio, who was grinning with all her usual malicious mirth at the sight of an argument. "Hey," she uttered, keeping her voice low, "I don't see the mist, you?"

The sense of satisfaction she'd developed watching these things fading as she was snapped out of her thoughts, Adagio whispered back to her. "No. We'll likely need discontent on a much larger scale if we're to renew the gems, but-" the sinister smirk returned, "perhaps we can make use of the fashion industry somehow?"

"It's totally a Spring look," Sonata added quietly.

Before her fellow pony-sirens could ask how she could tell, the pony in the sweater-vest pointed her snout skyward. "Somepony like you wouldn't know style if it bit your poorly-groomed tail off! I've lived in Canterlot more than long enough to know when something is out of season!"

Canterlot, thought Adagio, THAT was the name of this place! 

Her smile slowly disappeared as her eyes widening with alarm. She quickly looked at Aria and Sonata to find the former had roughly the same look (Sonata was still looking at the green hat) as they shared a thought in tandem with facial expression. 'Canterlot' was the name of the town in the other world. 

That didn't make sense. 

Aria and Adagio didn't wait for Sonata to forget to follow them when they went somewhere and grabbed her at the same time, bringing her along to an area full of chairs and tables, but no ponies, about a block away.

Aria glanced about suspiciously, as if anticipating an attack from unseen forces. "Canterlot. Wasn't that... the name of the town that...?"

Adagio made the conscious effort not to do the same thing. She had to keep it together. "It was. But, we're still all ponies, (aaah!) it can't be what it sounds like!"

One of Sonata's ears flickered. "It can't be heavy hoofsteps?"

Facehoof. Carefully this time. "I mean from the looks of things, we've been sent back somehow. Or something. Why would the city have the same name as one in another world?!"

Aria shrugged, trying to convince herself that everything was fine and sounding about as sure of that as she felt. "M-maybe that pony's been through the portal too? I mean, if it's always open, and Twilight Sparkle got through-"

"What would visiting a town in another world, in the form of an alien biped, have to do with hats being in-season?!" That question was the most nonsensical thing Adagio could recall herself ever saying.

Sonata was looking away from the two of them. "Uh, guys?"

"I don't know," Aria countered, wings flapping once in irritation, "how do you explain the name?!"

Adagio grit her teeth. "I can't call it a coincidence, but as it's unlikely all of us simply misheard it, I-"

"Guys?"

They both turned to her. "What?!"

There was a sound of somepony clearing their throat, the group turning to look at a unicorn stallion in a tuxedo collar and a long, golden mane. Annoyance shown clear in his bright-blue eyes. "This isn't private property, but I'll no less ask what brings the three of you to a normally-deserted patio."

Realizing how suspicious they must have looked right then, Adagio formulated a short-term plan. She displayed a calm, charming grin. "Oh, we just needed a quiet place to rehearse some lines, we're thespians, you see, ladies of the stage." She casually brushed a lock of her mane aside while shooting Aria and Sonata a split-second glance. Aria subtly nodded, communicating that she got the message. Time would tell if Sonata could play along as well. 

"Actresses?" The stranger tilted his head a little. "You don't look familiar. Where do you usually perform?"

She chuckled, admiring her own hoof as she spoke. "Oh, we're new in town, seeking greener pastures, expanding our horizons." She nodded to her right, "This is Aria Blaze," then to her left, "Sonata Dusk," then gestured to herself, "and you may call me Adagio Dazzle."

He eyed them curiously for several seconds. "Hmph... Never heard of any of you." 

Something in his tone aggravated Aria considerably. "What, you know every actress in the world?"

There was a flicker of surprise on his face before Adagio cut off his reply, redoubling her effort to look friendly, but not quite amorous. "And what brings you here, if you don't mind my asking? Is there something troubling you?"

Focusing on Adagio again, he all but sneered. "There is nothing troubling me at all."

Hook. "Oh?" She asked, maintaining a sympathetic tone, "Is that why you frequent a place you know to generally be vacant? When some-" she caught herself in a fraction of a second, "-pony wishes to be periodically alone, it's usually an indicator that something is amiss, wouldn't you say?"

He rolled his eyes. "I do not 'periodically' isolate myself, I was just wandering through town on a whim."

Line. "I see. Then how do you know this area is 'not private property', and 'normally deserted'?"

His surprised expression told her he was caught in a lie and he knew it. "I, I..." Adagio felt a small sense of satisfaction as he glanced nervously about, but she kept it off her expression as he went on. "It's, uh..."

Sinker! "Perhaps," she said with a tinge of suggestion, "we could hear about it while you show us around town? We are a little new here, after all."

"Hel-loooo," Aria and Adagio braced themselves, "we're way new here. We just got off the train this morning aft-" She was cut off by a wing whapping her on the back of the head. "-ow!" Aria whistled innocently, not entirely sure how she pulled that movement off.

Visibly confused, the stallion eyed them curiously before seemingly remembering the conversation. "I, err... Very well, suppose we'll begin with the local area?"

Adagio let out a soft, lady-like laugh. "Might we have your name first? It would only be polite."

Now he looked surprised. "You don't recognize me? At all?"

Sonata always had an odd sense of timing to look cheerful. "No sirree!"

Aria shrugged, rolling her eyes. "You don't know every actress in the world, we don't know every guy who walks around by himself. Shocker."

Before Adagio could silently express irritation at her undermining the efforts to charm and manipulate their new acquaintance, he snorted with amusement, smirking a little. 

"No, I suppose not. I am Prince Blueblood, at your service." 

He finished the statement with a quick bow, Adagio making the mental note to pounce on any odd behavior from her cohorts, or at least make sure he didn't notice. 

We cannot afford a repeat of Sunset Shimmer right now.

He started walking, the Dazzlings following as he spoke. "This is the older part of the Downtown area, little to make it stand out from the rest of the city other than how little generally goes on here..."


---


After a brief tour of the Marketplace, he'd shown them around the Residential District, asking what family they'd known that urged them to come to Canterlot, but Adagio quickly thought up a story about the three of them starting entirely fresh. It wasn't even a lie, technically. The following conversation went from where they'd planned to stay, to how much money they had on them, to when the last time they'd eaten was. 'Before we entered the portal some time last night' was off the table in terms of explanation, but Blueblood suggested a trip to the food court next. Strangely, Adagio didn't need to say a word for him to offer to pay for their meals, but it did provide a window in which to ask about what it was that made him want to spend time alone at the patio they'd met in.

Sitting across from the three of them at the table they'd been seated at, he repressed a groan. "Suppose that brings us to the social structure of the city. If you must know, some colleagues of mine have been inquiring as to the state of my bachelorhood. More specifically, whether or not I've found accompaniment for the upcoming charity drive at Fancy Pants's -that's a particularly well-known and popular name in these circles- chateau on the edges of the upper and middle housing areas." 

There would be time later to rant about Fancy's obvious attempt to look 'closer to the hard-working every-colt' by living next to, but pointedly not in one of the less extravagant homes. Though actually doing so would probably raise the same few questions over and over again from his peers, which Blueblood could appreciate not wanting to deal with. Another time.

Adagio delicately sipped on tea she didn't catch the name of. She'd had to pointedly clear her throat when Aria and Sonata practically started scarfing their meals down like what Aria had described one of the Rainbooms doing with an entire cake, by herself somehow, to avoid suspicion. Still, she silently conceded that not having eaten in the better part of a day and not being able to fall back on the energy of the gems might leave a pony-siren somewhat famished. "I see. And what is it you intend to do regarding this shortage of pleasant company for an important event?" 

She glanced at Sonata, who was chewing on a steamed carrot. For reasons Adagio had never dared question, Sonata never said anything compromising when her mouth was full. It was possible she possessed impeccable table manners when not starving, possible she was just too tuned out while feeding to hear and respond to anything anyone was saying.

"Well..." Thoughts muttered by some of those nearby the times he'd been asked if he had a date again bounded through his head.

"Of course not, he is the most eligible bachelor in Equestria!"

"Maybe when he's a little older? Fancy Pants never has any trouble bringing friends."

"Maybe somepony should look into arranged marriages?"

Suppressing the idea of smothering certain ponies to death with a giant hat, he eyed the trio curiously. "What might you three be doing five days from now?"

Adagio displayed a perfect imitation of mild surprise. "Us, Mr. Blueblood?" Quickly looking back and forth between Aria and Sonata was purely for show, but the 'uncertain' look on Aria's face suggested she was playing along. This might have been the only time Sonata's general cluelessness worked to their advantage. "We're not even certain where we'll be staying tonight, let alone where we might find ourselves in the better part of a week." Something about dishonesty just tickled her all the more when what she was saying was technically true. The plan was still vague at best.

He smiled a little. "Perhaps I can be of use in resolving both problems? There remains a great quantity of the city to be seen and ample space in my place of residence. Hosting three performers far from home would be little trouble, if you would oblige."

It was, Aria thought, remarkable just how much underlying malice a friendly, grateful grin could project when Adagio did it, but her newest puppet apparently didn't notice. 

Maybe it's just me? 

Maybe Adagio's other skill, if not tricking people (ponies?) into doing what she wanted them to do, was scary smiles. She snuck a quick peek at Sonata, who was innocently polishing off her cup of tea, as Adagio shook hooves with Whatshisname over an arrangement for them to stay in the city.

"Well then," their oddly terrifying leader said with smile, "we'll be imposing on you for a time. Where did you say you lived again?"


---


Fifteen minutes later, he was showing them the gates to the largest structure they'd seen so far; Castle Canterlot. 'Prince' Blueblood was, it seemed, more than just a fancy name. As they trotted past the guards in heavy, golden armor, Blueblood leading the way, Aria could see by the look on her face that Adagio was making one of those now-or-never decisions. Probably about turning tail (which the three of them were still getting used to having again) and fleeing to find another city or sticking it out here, in what might have been the heart of the enemy government. It seemed safe to assume they were allied with Princess Twilight, even if her town was comparatively modest. 

Maybe she just taxes the fur off her subjects? Might explain why she lives in a crystal tower. 

Anyway, if she knew Adagio, the chance to wrap a high-ranking pony authority around her finger hoof would be too much to resist, and they'd be taking their chances with the most powerful pony she could play like a fiddle.

That didn't get rid of a particular niggling thought in the back of her mind, however: Why would a local leader have been wandering around by himself?

He didn't bother with a tour of the interior, just told them that if there was anything they needed, castle staff would likely see to it before heading to the guest rooms. "If it isn't too much trouble," Adagio half-purred, "could the three of us share a room? We just-" she quickly wrapped her forelegs around the necks of the other two Dazzlings, pulling them close in a surprise group-hug, "-hate to be separated from each other for long..." 

Before Aria could verbally object, the hug tightened, particularly around their throats so as to deny the possibility. Adagio was getting frighteningly serious about whatever scheme she was cooking up in all this. 

Raising an eyebrow, Blueblood nodded once. "I'm sure it could be arranged, though you'll probably be better suited to one of the larger rooms, in that case. This way, please."

When Adagio let go of them to follow, Sonata tenderly rubbed her neck while whispering to Aria. "Jeez-Louise! I was turning blue for a second there!" 

A deadpan stare was her only reply.


---


The prince had left them waiting in a parlor, saying he had a few things that required his attention but that their quarters should be ready before too long. Aria didn't want to think about what kind of time frame they worked on here if an hour was 'faster than anticipated', if the mustachioed stallion in the red tail-coat was to be believed. He led them to what he referred to as the Pisces Room of the Nothern wing, the door and interiors largely consisting of cool blues and pale greys.

Adagio stood staring out towards the balcony of their large, circular room as the sun began to set. The view was incredible, not only for the gleaming light wrapping around the city structures, but for the distant horizon that looked so far below it was as if she was looking out at it from the top of a mountain. 

That must be a trick of architecture I've never even heard of. Is our host trying to impress, or do all the rooms of the castle offer such a feast for the eyes?

Aria sat on one of three soft, elegant beds that were placed radially along the walls of the room, feeling freer to speak while the door was shut. "Alright," she huffed to Adagio, "what was that about?"

Turning away from the slow-dimming scenery, she raised a brow. "What was what about?"

"Oh I don't know," Aria answered with a roll of her eyes, "damn-near strangling us?!" There was a flicker of fear in the back of her head when Adagio's gaze hardened, her voice low.

"I couldn't very well risk a dent in our solidarity should either of you have said anything unfortunate." She crossed the room in graceful strides, stopping about half a meter from where Aria sat. "It'll be easier to collaborate if we remain together, no chance for someone to get suspicious if they notice the three of us meeting up to talk in private as often as is needed. Besides," she glanced at Sonata, who had taken to standing out on the balcony to wave at random ponies just beyond the castle walls, "do you really want her out of our sight for any longer than is strictly necessary?"

"Gasp! Hey guys, you should see this! It is soooo pretty out here!"

Aria clenched her jaw with worry, repressing a shudder at how fast they might find themselves in prison. Or worse. "Yea, good point."

"Good," she replied with a curt nod, "as we're quite possibly in the pony capitol right now." There would hopefully be time later to uncover the structure of Equestrian government, but so far it appeared there were little communities connected by train paths, each ruled over by a different prince or princess. Presumably there was a king and queen somewhere, but for now they were dealing with a prince, which brought her to the plan. "We have perhaps five days to make a servant out of our host, or we'll likely be back where we began this morning."

"Right. So, how do we do that?"

Smirking, Adagio whistled for Sonata to join them. When they were all together, she donned her most sinister grin. "Alright, we have at our hooves an opportunity to rebuild our power like never before. Influence over those in charge of that school will be nothing to having a national authority figure under our sway."

"For realzies? How are we gonna brain-wash him if we can't sing?"

She chuckled. "He is a stallion, we are mares. More specifically, I am a mare he already has his eye on. I'll make him my thrall within three days."

Sonata giggled conspiratorially, but Aria wasn't sure that was what Blueblood was thinking when he looked at any of them. Still, if wasn't her that had to do the goo-goo eyes, without being able to sing him into happy servitude at that, she wasn't about to complain.

"The plan is simple; I need you two to go out and accompany him for an evening each, get to know as much about him as you can, and report your findings to me. I'll be effectively avoiding him until my turn comes, giving him little more than brief glimpses and short greetings with just a hint of flirtation to remember me by. Then, after he's had a few days of pent-up curiosity and a subconscious longing for my company, I'll use what I've learned from your excavations into his psyche to ensnare him. Once we hold a prince in our power, it will be child's play convincing him to raise taxes, close businesses, and otherwise make decisions to sew as much anger and resentment in the population as possible, showering the city, perhaps the nation, in negative energy!" 

She held up a hoof in a theatrical manner, her eyes burning with fierce intensity. "And then, as ponies far and near grow more and more frustrated the further we push him into despotism, our time will come again as the gems, repaired by the sheer breadth of hatred in the air, will re-form to grant us our voices back! With them, at last, all the power in the world will be ours to drink in, and nothing, not even Princess Sparkle, will be able to stop us!"

She finished her speech with what was unmistakably maniacal laughter. Aria and Sonata shared her malevolent spirit, but their own laughter still sounded more like girlish giggles than evil cackles. Luckily, there was no one present to point these things out to the three of them.

"Ok," Aria picked up, "so how are you gonna convince Blueblood to go along with the first part?"

It seemed like there was an evil smirk for every occasion, including a suggestive sort of confidence. "Leave that to me, I won't need more than a few sentences at most to convince him to spend a bit of time with us individually."

"Alright." Turning their heads simultaneously, the two of them noticed Sonata was still giggling. Aria applied a correcting hoof to thwap her on the back of the head.

Now silent, Sonata immediately adapted a wide-eyed vaguely contemplative look, as though something in her head had been jolted into action via percussive maintenance. "Gasp! Fake names! We told the prince our real names, not fake ones! What if somepony figures out who we are?!"

Distantly proud of her for adapting pony speech so quickly and faintly irritated with her for apparently forgetting their own just as fast, Adagio touched a hoof to Sonata's shoulder. "Relax. We've been away for around half a year, we look nothing like we used to, and even our most recent enemies probably never knew us as more than 'the sirens', or our group name." She didn't remember the names of more than Twilight Sparkle or Sunset Shimmer herself, but that didn't seem important right now. "Even if Princess Sparkle hears about the three of us, it's unlikely she'd understand who we were. Besides," she gave Sonata a pointed stare, "in the event we were to have a slip-up with cover names, even once, the aliases would likely prove our undoing."

As Aria contributed to the accusatory look with her own, Sonata's eyebrows furrowed. "Hey, I'm starting to get the feeling you guys think I'm an idiot or something!" She tried to put her forehooves on her hips a few times, but found that keeping her balance in that pose was extraordinarily difficult for a pony, and settled for standing on all fours with an angry look on her face.

The other Dazzlings, who knew they wouldn't safely be able to use that name anymore, exchanged deadpan stares before she spoke up again.

"I'm not stupid!!"

"Right," Adagio said with a nod, "then you won't mind accompanying me to the nearest library tomorrow to get started on learning how to use-" she indicated Sonata's horn, "that thing."

She blinked twice. "What thing?"

Adagio confirmed that she had mastered the art of the facehoof without hurting herself. "The magic spike sticking out of your head!"

"Oh, that!"

Aria shook her head. "Urrgh. This is what I mean when I say you are The Worst."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

Adagio silently backed away from their inane little exchange, content to lay on her bed, put a pillow over her head, and let the two of them work things out themselves this time.

"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too."
> Chapter 3: Books and Princesses
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aria woke to the sunrise, orange light streaming in through the balcony. Glancing about, she saw that Sonata was, as usual, the last one to wake, still softly snoring into the opposite side of her bed from where the pillow was placed. 

Pretty tame for her, actually. Wonder if she's deliberately keeping from doing anything weird, somehow, because we're in a castle?

Looking back towards the balcony, she saw the orange puff of hair she'd come to associate with their leader since the day they first took mammal forms. Not caring if Sonata woke up, but moving quietly anyway, she stepped out onto the balcony herself. Standing behind Adagio in the chilly morning air as the sun burned on the horizon, the light seemed to wrap around her in a way that made it look like she was glowing, practically on fire. Aria had three guesses as to her facial expression at that moment. "Uh, hey," she ventured, "what're you doing out here?"

Adagio turned to face her not with a diabolic smirk, much to her surprise, but a puzzled expression. "It really looks like we're very high up, doesn't it?"

Glancing past her, Aria nodded. "Well, yea, we're in a palace and all. Don't they usually build those in high places?"

"It's more than that, look." She gestured to the horizon. "It looks so... distant, so far down, from where we're standing. Where did that train take us? When did we get so high up?" Silently cursing the fact that they'd slept through the ride and thus missed the shifting of scenery, she contemplated having Aria fly about to give her some insight as to their exact location. 

She probably hasn't gotten the hang of that yet, and it would likely draw too much attention were she to fall again. 

There was also the danger of broken limbs, but they'd caught her just fine last time.

Aria shrugged. "I dunno, does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! If we're not to raise suspicion, we can't be utterly ignorant of our environment. We'll have to learn more about this place than a general layout of the city, starting with geographical standing. Perhaps I can find a map or-"

She was cut off by the sounds of knocking, along with the voice of the mustachioed stallion from the day before. "Good morning ladies," he called through the door, "breakfast will be served shortly, Master Blueblood has requested that I retrieve your company for the meal."

Sonata jumped from where she'd been sleeping. "Chow time! Let's go, guys!"

It was right about then that the two on the balcony realized that they hadn't eaten since the day before. Again. Having to actually appease their stomachs was still weird.


---


On the way to the dining room, they learned the old pony escorting them was named Kibitz, and that he'd apparently been working at the castle for many years. If Adagio was thinking of a way to use that information, she didn't say as much. Once they were seated and greetings were exchanged, the three found a fairly wide selection of food already on the long, long table. It seemed like something of a waste, because apart from a few servant ponies going about their business, there were only the three of them and Prince Blueblood at the table.

"So," he began, "how are you three finding the castle? Is everything to your liking?"

Unfortunately, Sonata hadn't yet distracted herself with anything on the table, and as such had the capacity to answer. "It's great! The beds are so soft it's like they're made of clouds!" 

Blueblood nodded, taking a sip from his glass. "Cumulus-weave, if memory serves, to say nothing of the quilts. It's amazing what pegasi can come up with, no?"

Aria flinched, feeling like she should have known what that meant, but Adagio stepped in with a calm grin. "Our accommodations have been exquisite, thank you. Might you have any plans for today?"

"I do have a few obligations to attend to, in addition to the day-job. I never did ask what it was, beyond a tour of the town, that the three of you might be in search of."

Picking up a nearby scone to focus on, Adagio demurely looked away. "We have little in the way of an objective. For the last few months, we've essentially been wanderers, so meeting you has been a blessing." She finished by taking a quick bite of the scone, finding it to be warm, buttery, and delicious. 

"You must have some stories to tell."

She spared a split-second glance at Sonata. Syrup-slathered toast in mouth, there was nothing to worry about. Moving her head just barely enough to meet his eyes, Adagio displayed a small smile. "I'm afraid it's not as interesting as it may sound, which is why we've been meaning to find a place to settle down, at least for a little while."

Blueblood smiled in kind. "I'm sure your presence here is no great burden, perhaps there's something in Canterlot to your tastes?"

She smiled wider, looking directly at him now. "That was what I meant to ask about, actually. Sonata has been looking for a book on magic for some time now and I'd like to assist her. Is there anywhere we might find such a thing, locally?"

He almost laughed. "A spellbook? In the right neighborhoods, you may trip over them walking down the street. The study wing of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns -open to the public on week days- should have more tomes available than you'll likely see in most parts of Equestria combined."

It was good timing that Sonata had just taken a bite of what was apparently a particularly tasty donut, because the look of delight on her face was a dead ringer for somepony hearing that they'd soon have what they'd spent too long looking for.

"Splendid," Adagio continued, "but even when we find a book, there's no knowing how long we may be preoccupied in learning to use the spells." That one wasn't a lie at all, she had no idea how one went about using magic outside of singing.

The prince chuckled. "Say no more, I'm well aware the difficulties that can accompany arcane mastery, never mind prerequisites for some of the more advanced spells." Looking away, he grumbled about something that sounded a lot like 'underwater basket weaving', but Adagio was sure she'd simply misheard him.

"Well," Aria spoke up casually, having finished a plate of pancakes, "I'm available today. Or later tonight, if you're busy." She hadn't forgotten what she was supposed to do today and it had been more than a few sentences.

Swallowing the last of the scone, Adagio's face brightened for more than a small sense of pride in her subordinate. "Excellent idea, Aria! Perhaps you could join our host in exploring the city further?"

Looking a little surprised, Blueblood turned to Aria. "I have time this evening, yes. Is there anywhere in particular you'd like to visit?"

Cooly averting her eyes, she crossed her forelegs and shrugged. "I don't know, what do they do for fun around here?"

Opening his mouth and shutting it again told her there was something he decided not to say. She felt like there were more reasons to be suspicious of this guy all the time. "It depends on one's tastes, I think, quite a wide and varied city, if one knows where to look." 

He caught her look, the one that said 'and as I got here yesterday, I DON'T know where to look. You dunce.' 

"Might I suggest the Mauvaise Fracture? Something of a new establishment in the last few weeks. Business has been so-so, but there are a few talented chefs working there in addition to some small-time, but not unskilled performers for ambient experiences, and it's rarely very crowded."

A place they play music and not a lot of ponies around to listen in? Sold! She smiled a little. "Yea, that sounds good."

Mostly pleased with the outcome of that exchange, Adagio glanced to Sonata, who was staring at two well-fashioned, but empty seats at the head of the table. Sonata seemed to sense this, and turned to look at her inquisitively. "Hey, is somepony missing?"

Kibitz, standing by that end of the table, cleared his throat. "Princess Celestia has opted to dine in her study this morning, Princess Luna finished breakfast -dinner in her case- about an hour prior."

Adagio looked at Blueblood, incredulous and a tad offended, but trying to contain her expression to just curiosity. 

There are two princesses already living here? His wives? Did he mean to make us his concubines?!

The apparent playcolt of a prince raised an eyebrow, his tone dull, as though having to spell out the punchline to an overused joke. "Princess Celestia and her sister? Rulers of all Equestria? Perhaps you've heard of them?" When the only reply was confused/worried/curious stares from all three visitors, he looked back at them in surprise. "Truly? I might understand with Luna, she's been, err, out of the picture for a while, but surely you know of She Who Raises the Sun?"

'Raises the sun,' mouthed Adagio before stammering together a question. "I-I, what are you talking about?"

He stared back at them, eyes wide. "Where did you say you three were from...?"

"W-we, we're-"

Suddenly, he smiled. "Well, at any rate, I should introduce you to them. They are family, after all!"

Cold dread slithered it's way into Adagio's stomach. Right next to the delicious, fresh-buttered scones. By the look of her cohorts, a similar feeling was winding through their entrails as well.


---


Once breakfast was finished, the four of them, three having had no viable excuse to refuse the coming meeting, stood at a large, ornate door. "Auntie Celestia, are you preoccupied at the moment?"

The answer came in exactly the voice they'd heard from Principal Celestia, albeit somewhat muffled by distance and the polished wooden door. "Oh, not at all, please come in!"

As they entered, what little relief Adagio felt that the princess was not Blueblood's wife, but his aunt, was crushed under the barely-contained panic that they would still be dealing with a princess in seconds. There was always the chance Twilight Sparkle and this 'Celestia' weren't on speaking terms at all and she would have no reason to suspect them, right?

The room itself was, as expected, extravagant, but less so than she might have guessed for a 'Ruler of Equestria.' Plush carpets, intricately-decorated furniture, golden fixtures, all of this was present, but in no greater quantity than in the room the three of them were staying in. 

Is Twilight Sparkle just some kind of opulent egomaniac? I don't even see any crystals in here.

Out of a doorway came what may have been the largest pony in the world; a white creature featuring appendages of all three pony types they'd seen thus-far. Sonata felt silently abashed at her moment of panic back in Twilight's tower, with those wings, that flowy mane, and a horn, Celestia was the prettiest freak unicorn she'd ever seen!

She smiled pleasantly, apparently making no notice of the three staring at her in shock. "Good morning, Nephew. Is there something I can help with?"

He nodded, gesturing to his guests. "There are some ponies I'd like you to meet; Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk."

Celestia externally displayed only a warm grin. She knew it was too soon to dare dream that any of them were his fillyfriend, but they were definitely cute enough to be! 

Though at this point, he could date a diamond dog and I'd be happy. 

The graceful Princess of Equestria™ contained the urge to skip with glee that he'd brought home friends of any kind. "Pleased to make your acquaintance!"

Adagio was first to recover, trying her hardest to display a pleasant and civil expression. "H-hello, uh, Princess Celestia, we, we're... we're..." she could feel her knees shaking. If Twilight Sparkle had the power to stop them by standing close to some flunkies, she could only imagine how little it would take for 'She Who Raises the Sun' to annihilate them even if they'd had their full power. 

The princess only kept her warm smile, quite accustomed to roughly this reaction to meeting her for the first time. 

I wonder how Twilight's been handling it? 

The best thing to do usually seemed to be staying as casual as possible, things like 'please don't worry, I'm not going to banish you anywhere' being surefire ways to make ponies self-conscious, often making composure more difficult. Not that that wasn't adorable sometimes, but the last thing she wanted to do was scare them off. Her tone was gentle and patient. "Yes?"

Taking a quick breath, Adagio's brain kicked into high gear. She spoke a little faster than was strictly necessary, but managed to knock the stammer out of her words. "We're pleased to make your acquaintance, Princess. Your nephew has been kind enough to offer lodging here in the castle for the next few days, so we'll be imposing on your staff for a while."

"I see! There's more than enough room here, so please make yourselves at home."

Adagio did something between a deep nod and a low bow. "The hospitality of your family is most appreciated."

Celestia giggled, somehow sounding like the chiming of bells through a voice. "Please, stay as long as you like, it's no trouble." She held a hoof to the side of her muzzle, voice low and conspiratorial. "If anything, I have trouble finding enough for those working here to do."

The ponified sirens all blinked once in unison as Blueblood rolled his eyes. "That's because you do as much as possible yourself, Auntie."

She stuck out her tongue mischievously. "What's the fun in doing nothing?"

"Fair enough." He nodded to the trio. "Anyway, would you mind telling your sister of their presence in the castle, when she wakes? I'd rather not risk a repeat of the last 'intruder' incident."

Celestia facehoofed, sighing. "Yes, I'll pass it along. That poor griffon..."

As he turned to leave, Adagio took her cue to get out of there while things were good, her movement snapping Aria out of the terrified daze she'd spent the entire encounter in. To the dismay of both, Sonata remained where she'd stood, staring straight at Celestia, who took notice with an inquisitive gaze. "Yes? Was there something else I could help you with?"

Sonata beamed. "I really like your mane!" 

Surprised, Celestia's mouth made a little "o" before she smiled brightly. "Why, thank you!"

Adagio silently hoped that was a point in their favor. "Come on, Sonata, we still have to find that book."

"Ooh, right!" she quickly waved goodbye and followed the rest out.

Alone, Celestia returned to her study. 

What a lovely group of fillies! The violet one didn't say anything, but that still went over pretty well! 

She did her best to ignore the sense of impending doom, meddling in her nephew's relationships (the word being used in the loosest possible sense, though she thought he was onto something with that disk jockey) never seemed to produce more great-to-the-Nth-power grandfoals. He could handle things on his own, right? Looking over a zoning document from the Crystal Empire, she felt an impish smile spread across her face.

I don't think Twilight would reasonably care one way or the other, but if Luna and I are to know about Blueblood's new friends, perhaps the Princess of Love would like to as well...?


---


Blueblood made good on his offer to show them the library of a prestigious school by having a random guard walk them there, saying he had business to attend to. In the gentle din of the city streets, Aria felt confident that the guard wouldn't overhear them whispering. "Hey, you think something's up with our 'friend', the prince?"

Glancing at her, Adagio kept her voice low as well. "How so?"

"You didn't notice him staring at you, back in the princess's room? And it wasn't like a, just-heard-us-sing, would-do-whatever-we-say kind of look, it was almost expectant. I think he was waiting for you to do something."

This seemed to give her pause. "That is certainly worth noting, but I think we may have been overly cautious of Celestia. She didn't seem to mind us at all. If anything, she looked pleased we were there."

Aria rolled her eyes. "No shock there, with the pretty little act you've been doing."

"Of course," Adagio said with a hint of irritation, "it's that act that's keeping us above suspicion. You could stand to be a little less vitriolic, you know."

Gritting her teeth, Aria had to remind herself to keep walking with the others to avoid stamping a hoof in frustration. She wasn't sure what it meant that she felt her wings twitch. "Oh, come on! Don't you think something's weird here? He takes in three strangers off the street, introduces them to the ruler of the country the next day, and just silently watches, not saying another word about it? He's up to something, I know it!"

"As are we," Adagio hissed, "it's easy to suspect others when they have a reason to suspect you, so we must be on guard against ourselves just as much as anything else."

"Ourselves?!"

She gave a curt nod. "Paranoia is just as toxic to a covert operation as incompetence. I'll admit that circumstances aren't perfect here, but as they're still going better than we could have dreamed, I'm not about to compromise our progress over a vague sense of uneasiness. If we were playing it safe, we'd have probably made some excuse and left when he brought us to the palace."

Trying not to scowl, Aria opted to go along with the plan for now, but damned if she didn't hate how it was turning out. When they reached the library, Adagio and Sonata went inside, Aria having only come along to know where they were if she needed to find them. She was escorted back to the palace by the guard that brought them. That he didn't say a word the whole trip was just another red flag to her.
> Chapter 4: Learning Experience
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A problem with not knowing the culture of a civilization you're infiltrating is having no idea how you must look when doing things. For example, two grown mares entering a library in search of a beginner's spellbook (Adagio wasn't even sure that was what they called them, but Blueblood didn't say anything) that only one of them would be able to use. Luckily, any concerns about whether or not an adult unicorn looking for the most basic starting points in casting spells would turn heads and raise eyebrows were quashed when the pony at the counter, a dull-blue mare with a grey-ish mane, barely gave them more than a glance before pointing them to the right bookshelf.

"Hey, Dagi?"

"What is it, Sonata?" She was leafing through the first volume of Your Horn and You, which sounded a little less patronizing than the book right next to it, That Pointy Thing On Your Head and the Stuff You Can Do With It. Not that she was ruling anything out yet.

"What do you think Aria's up to right now?"

"I would guess something between complaining to herself about things and lying about in a bored daze." Next page. "Which is fine, because I didn't specifically tell her to do anything else. Ah!" She slid the book across the table they'd been seated at so Sonata could see the instructions for what the letters in bold indicated was a light spell. "See if you can perform this one." She couldn't remember if ponies had flashlights or not, but it seemed as good a starting point as any.

Sonata smiled, spending a minute or two scanning the page before sparks of magenta flickered on her horn. When they stopped, she looked at Adagio. "Did it work? It doesn't look any brighter in here."

The room was indeed well-lit by ornate chandeliers, so she couldn't say whether the spell was even cast. "I definitely saw something, try again."

She did, a few more sparks gathering at the tip of her horn before the effect fizzled out. "Now?"

"I don't think so. Whatever it is you're doing, can you do it harder?"

"Hold on to your hairband!" She audibly grunted with the exertion, but with no increase in magenta embers.

Adagio wondered if it was actual magical fire that made unicorn magic, and in that moment had a theory. "Hold on, let me touch it."

"Huh?"

"Do it again, and I'll check the temperature to see if it's making a difference."

"Ok!"

Holding a hoof to Sonata's horn, she didn't really feel any warmth from the energies that may or may not have been making the room imperceptibly brighter. "Hmm. Nothing, can you-"

"Again, harder?"

"Smart girl."

"Hmmmrrrrrgg!"

No change in temperature. "Again."

"Rrrrrrrmmmm!"

It was a little hard to tell through the layer of fur on her skin now, but she might have felt the tiniest trace of heat. "Keep going."

Veins visibly rose on Sonata's face. "RRRRRRRRRRGGGH!!"

Her whole horn was sheathed in a thin, magenta glow. Adagio withdrew her hoof, grinning with delight. "Yes, excellent! That should be-"

She was cut off by a pony quickly stepping from behind a shelf, raising her voice considerably above what they'd thought would be permissible in a library. "What the hay do you think you're doing in here?!"  She was a pink earth pony, her mane a dark purple. She seemed to have a light-blue handkerchief tied around her neck for some reason, but at least it was in-season. Anger in her expression immediately melted into confusion as she looked at the two of them, sitting at the table as they had been, a beginner's spellbook between them. "What, um... W-what are you guys doing?"

Adagio raised an eyebrow. "I'm helping my colleague here learn a few spells. Is that a problem?"

The stranger immediately went red in the face, badly stammering her reply. "I-I-I-I, I uh, wh-what kind of, s-spells were you, I mean, you can't cast spells like that in-"

"Miss Polomare? What are you shouting about over here?" The pony they'd seen at the desk stepped from behind the pink newcomer, who jumped in fright. "Did something happen?"

Still blushing furiously, 'Polomare' pointed a hoof at the two at the table. "Th-these two were practicing se-erm, I mean... unauthorized spells in the library, okay?" 

"Really?" There was a tinge of very well-contained panic as Adagio watched the desk pony step closer, Sonata looking at the book curiously. Taking a minute to read the spell they'd been attempting, the apparent librarian's face contorted to an unamused scowl. "Oh," she deadpanned, "yes, I agree, it's a travesty that ponies can do this kind of thing in broad daylight."

Daylight, thought Adagio, maybe it really is just too bright in here to see the effect of the spell?

She turned to Suri Polomare, her voice suggesting patience was very thin. "Imagine, ponies casting starter-level light spells in public. There goes the neighborhood."

The unfortunate librarian's assistant could barely form a sentence, her embarrassment only deepened. "B-but I-I-I, it sounded like, I-I was s-sure they were-"

"We'll talk about this later, Miss Polomare, just get back to dusting the shelves."

As much as she'd wanted to protest the situation, Suri knew she was lucky to have even this lousy job, for now, with pretty much the whole fashion industry giving her weird looks. As such, her reply was much more in line with library audio regulations. "Yes ma'am."

She said a few hasty apologies and the two departed, leaving Adagio and Sonata alone again. "What," Adagio muttered, "was that about?" She could admit that more light wasn't strictly needed right then, but it was hardly worth raising a fuss over. Had they committed some kind of faux pas? The librarian didn't seem to think so.

"Beats me," Sonata said with a smile, "but I think I've figured this spell out!" Not exerting nearly as much effort this time, Sonata's horn was again sheathed in a thin magenta glow, a sphere of dim light in the same hue shining at the tip.

Adagio grinned in kind, until she glanced at the book. "It says it's supposed to be a pure, white light."

"Aww, shoot!"


---


There weren't a lot of ponies in the castle around noon, not even that many guards. Aria briefly pondered whether or not it was likely they had anything really valuable lying around with this low (for a castle, at least) security. Stealing wasn't an option, of course, even if things ended up going south with the prince and they needed money to get by on, because Adagio would murder her if she got caught and blew their cover. The sirens had never killed anyone, never even saw much blood in the worst conflicts they'd started, but when she looked their leader in the eye, Aria sometimes wondered how far she would go if truly provoked.

Still, innocently walking about, concealing herself as best she could when she heard ponies talking, was perfectly fine, right? Few had anything interesting to say, talk of sporting teams, of weather reports, of a new paint job covering up some cracks in a wall somewhere, and more that made her feel like she was spying on the Rainbooms again was all she heard for the first hour or so. 

And then she heard somepony talking about the prince.

"Hey," one gold-plated stallion said to another, "you heard about what Blueblood's been up to?"

"What, he does things? First I'm hearin' it."

"Heh, yea. He brought three fillies here. Cute ones. They're staying in a room in the Northern wing."

"Probably shouldn't, man."

"Shouldn't...? Oh, I know that! Anypony that comes with that guy is on a strict speak-when-spoken-to basis."

What?

"Yea. Not sure what it is about bein' Celestia's nephew that brings in the weirdos, but after his last fillyfriend..?"

"PON-3 was actually a little different than the usual."

"In that Ralph's left ear never healed right."

"Ok, there's that, but you know what I mean! He sees a magician for a while, she goes and tears up a town with black magic."

"Ralph's left legs never healed right."

"He takes a liking to Celestia's pupil as a colt, she flies into a rage, swears vengeance on the princess, and disappears into a mirror-portal thing."

"Ralph's left ribs never healed right."

"He's seen chatting up some stunt flier, she causes a hurricane at the Wonderbolt academy."

"Ralph's left wing never healed right."

There was a pause. "Is Ralph really all mangled now, or...?"

The other guard chuckled. "Nah, just seein' if you were awake."

With the clank of a hoof against a helmet and a little more laughter, the first speaker continued. "This is serious! He goes out with a mare nopony's ever heard of or seen before for, she vanishes without a trace."

"That one doesn't sound so bad."

"We saw her again, remember? She was wearing the face of Princess Cadence before the invasion."

"Oh, yea. Ralph's left-"

Another clanking noise. "Really?!"

"Guardin's a dull job, gotta make your own entertainment."

"Ugh. You get what I'm saying though, right? Anypony with Blueblood is bad news."

"We could keep an extra eye on them, but then we have to deal with Blueblood himself if they complain."

"Do you think that, if we did that and got fired, we'd be hired back when they turned out to be as insane as every single other friend he makes?"

"Wouldn't wanna chance it."

"Right. We stay away as much as possible and hope if they ever snap, it's far away from here."

Slinking away as the conversation died down, Aria tried to put her thoughts in order. 

They know. Or, they really, really think they know, but they do, because we are! And, Blueblood is cursed. They're trying to stay away from us, though, Adagio might be happy about that. We're gonna die. 

She had to make her way back to the Pisces room to be able to take several deep breaths and let her wings flap a few times (whatever it was that was making her want to do that. Panic, maybe?) without  fear of somepony noticing. Sitting on her bed, she knew she needed to calm down, but every possible reassurance she came up with for herself was immediately countered by three ways it could all go wrong. Her wings started flapping faster as the stress ate away at her focus. 

The prince is onto us, the guards are onto us, Adagio doesn't give a damn, Sonata's a bonehead, we might as well just-

Bonk!

Her head lightly impacted with the ceiling, which made her look up, then down in alarm as her wings unconsciously stopped what they'd been doing. She fell on the bed, which caught her so gently it was as if she'd laid down on it normally. What did Blueblood say about cumulus stuff earlier? Didn't matter, she had something to distract her until the panic died down; the two appendages she needed a better control on and the ability to fly.

Glancing out at the balcony, she immediately decided against testing her abilities there, but this room was big enough to move around a little. She opted instead to try liftoffs for a while, maybe even getting the hang of landing.


---


"Ooh, let's try this one next!"

Scanning the page, Adagio raised a curious eyebrow. "Why would you want to be able to turn toast back into bread?"

"I dunno, maybe if it's burnt or something?"

"The idea behind all of what we're doing here is that food not be a prime concern in the relatively near future." Having been overheard once, she knew better than to say anything specific.

Sonata frowned a little. "Hm, I guess." Flipping the page, she brightened again. "Look, a spell for instant sunglasses!"

Of the twelve spells they'd looked at here in the library, the one for making light had been the only one that didn't sound utterly useless. Well, the 'uses' were clear enough, it was just that no sensible pony would prioritize being able to make things stick to other things for a short time or detect frogs. Still, she supposed that if they left with Sonata not knowing much more than when she started, they'd truly wasted their time. She sighed. "Alright, give it a try."

As Sonata briefly studied the page, Adagio tried to imagine what she'd do if this spell blinded either of them somehow. The magenta glow on Sonata's horn indicated that she'd at least gotten a feel for casting a spell, followed by the world tinting darker. Blinking twice, Adagio took the conjured sunglasses off, silently marveling at the creation of a physical object through ethereal energy, and wondering what else could be done with that kind of power. 

Looking back at Sonata, she found the unicorn to be beaming proudly. "Neat, huh?"

She couldn't muster more than a deadpan stare. "Are there any useful spells in that book? Magic that might actually benefit us in day-to-day life?" It was doubtful there was a such thing as magic that conjured food, or every eating establishment in Equestria would surely be out of business, so she didn't bother asking about that specifically.

"Maybe, I'll check!"

As she flipped through the pages, Adagio checked the clock on a nearby wall. It was still too early to return to the castle, Aria's meeting with Blueblood shouldn't be starting for another few hours, so they had to stay out of sight to keep the plan on track. She tried to think of something to look for in the spellbook, something she could feasibly tell Blueblood if he asked what they'd been hoping to find, specifically, but the only magic she'd ever really known was that of the gems.

Anything destructive wouldn't do, as it was virtually guaranteed that there would be battlemages (the two princesses they'd met and one they'd heard about came to mind) more powerful than the best Sonata could hope to be, and brute force wasn't really their style anyway. Well, apart from forcing others to do what they said, but she liked to think of that more as enticing the enemy to fight on her side. There was a subtle art to that kind of manipulation, or the targets would most likely realize they weren't acting of their own accord and promptly stop if the song wasn't powerful enough to completely overwhelm them.

Perhaps she could say that while they found a thing or two, the magic they were looking for eluded them? She could coyly wink and say a mare has her secrets if he asked what it was, specifically, but that was a gamble of arousing suspicion versus... arousing something else. She decided against it, if he pressed further thinking it was flirtation on her part, she'd have no answer. As such, they needed to find something worthwhile before returning to the castle. Well, telling what technically amounts to the truth has been working out so far.

"Sonata, is there anything you've ever wished you could do on a whim, but couldn't?" If they could find something she actually wanted to be able to do, the story she gave this morning would be air-tight.

Thinking for a moment, she nodded. "Kinda-sorta? I mean, there's something that I might want to do that I can't that I would if I could, but if I do then I will, so does that mean I should?"

"If you can't and you do, then you can, so yes." Aria would always groan or facepalm(hoof) when Sonata talked nonsense. Adagio liked to treat it like an exercise to keep her mind sharp. "Now what is it?"

Sonata smiled. "I wish I could show exactly what I was thinking!"

"What?"

She pointed a hoof across the table. "See? That! Whenever I'm talking and nopony knows what I mean? I wish I could just like, POOF what I was saying so everypony understands, y'know?"

"Some kind of reverse-telepathy, you mean?" She didn't dare contemplate the existence of spells that let the casters peer into the minds of those around them, if only because the likely series of related counter-spells, detectable to scryers or not, was a can of worms that would likely amount to nothing but headaches were she to open it.

"I dunno, just something I could do that makes everypony like 'oh, that's what you mean,' or at least make it a little easier to figure it out. Do you think there's a picture-book spell?"

"There are pictures in this spellbook. Give me a moment..." Checking a few pages in the index, she found Projection under the list of spells. There didn't seem to be anything along the lines of an effects index, but she supposed searching for spells based on what they did would require a book all on it's own to cover the sheer breadth of possible descriptions. Turning to the appropriate page, she waited the minute and a half it took Sonata to read and possibly memorize the instructions. That was something she'd have never given her credit for, actually, but time would tell if her apparent aptitude at this held in the long run.

Her horn flickered a few times, beams and spots of light appearing and fizzling out as quickly as they came. By the look on Sonata's face, this was one of the upper-beginner spells, which might have put it on the level of 'normal.' 

Would it raise questions if I asked Blueblood about these things? He's had a horn for years, he must know a thing or two by now. 

After a few attempts. she managed to summon a rectangular window of light, only for it to dissipate an instant later.

Sonata glanced up at her almost fearfully, likely afraid she was taking too long to pull it off.

Adagio regarded her coolly. "Just focus. Remember, this is still a beginner-level spell, or it wouldn't be in this book." If magic was like much of anything else, it was probably easier when you were calm and collected, and they weren't in a rush anyway.

The struggling sorceress smiled shakily. "R-right!" 

In the next several minutes of attempts, she managed to project vague, badly-distorted images through the little window framed in magenta light, until eventually managing what looked like a picture of the instructions for the spell she was casting. The words were too blurred to read, but that Adagio could make out even that much seemed like good progress.

As Sonata was staring straight at the book, Adagio cleared her throat and the image shifted to a fuzzy, orange blob when Sonata looked up at her. "What?" The reply was a quick nod to the floating image, which started to grow sharper. The two of them could barely make out the image of Adagio, sitting at the table exactly as she was, an eyebrow curiously raised. 

One wouldn't know that by looking at the projection, but it was what the real one was doing as she pieced together how the spell might have worked. "This may be just what you were hoping for, Sonata. It seems to show what you're currently imagining, which, if you're not imagining anything, is just whatever you look at."

"Yea, it said something like that in step three. So if I think about...?" She closed her eyes in concentration, the image shifting to what looked like some kind of stick, curved around to form a hook at one end, the whole thing white with red stripes. Or red with white stripes, hard to say.

"I don't think it's coming in clearly, the picture still makes no sense."

Looking at her ethereal creation, Sonata shook her head. "Nope, that's totally what I meant to happen!"

"What is it supposed to be?"

She answered entirely too cheerfully. "I have no idea!"

"Then why did you want to picture it?"

"I saw it on the way here, some ponies were moving one of these big, crooked, stripey-thing sticks somewhere, along with some leafy, circle things and-Gasp! I can show you!" Closing her eyes again, Sonata changed the image to a bushy ring, or a ring-shaped bush, with bells and red bows on it, then shining, well-decorated orbs with little hooks on the top. 

Not sure what to make of the random objects, Adagio no less smiled, seeing a perfect demonstration of the spell in action. "Right, well, it seems like you have a good hold on that spell now." 

"Yep!" Looking at her lightly-glowing creation with a smile, the image shifted, then continued to project exactly what it had been.

Adagio blinked. "Wait, why is there an extra layer of the frame? Did something go wrong?"

"I don't... think so? It's still just the thing I was thinking about." Looking at it harder, Sonata tried to see if something had changed besides the magenta border of the frame looking a little thicker. The image shifted again, she could clearly see a little of the library around the image, within the image, around the image, and within the image again.

"S-Sonata? Are you  thinking about the image that you're projecting?"

"No, I'm thinking about the image of the image of the image I'm projecting, so why's it doing this? Hang on a sec, let me see if I can..." Her tongue poked out of the counter of her mouth as she concentrated, the layers of the hook-orb things spreading out above them, each image branching out one after the other, creating a chain of hook-orb frames. Then more. 

And more. 

And more.

"What are you doing?!"

"I don't know!" The picture spread like wildfire, until there was a cloud of the copied image shrouding the two of them and many of the surrounding shelves. "Huh. I might be overdoing this a bit."

"You think?"

They heard a chuckle in the sound of the desk pony's voice. "While it's nice to see such holiday spirit, we really don't need help decorating the library for Hearths Warming this year."

Thankfully, whatever it was keeping the spell going evidently vanished, the floating frames following suit. With a grin similar to the one she displayed right after grabbing Sunset Shimmer's arm, Adagio seized the opportunity to mitigate the situation. "Sorry about that, she's never done that spell before." She was starting to miss lying, but there was an odd feeling of security in not doing so.

Strangely, there wasn't a hint of irritation in Unnamed Library Worker's expression. "Please, don't worry about it. It's always nice to see some seasonal cheer, even weeks early. Will you two be checking out that book, then?"

Glancing at Your Horn and You, Adagio determined that Sonata being able to practice spells in private sounded appealing for at least four different reasons.

Sonata blinked twice. "What book?"

Five reasons.

Amused, the librarian indicated the plainly-visible tome on the desk, the one they had been using for an hour or two. "That one there, unless there are others you'd like to borrow for a while?"

Adagio did her best to smile pleasantly. "There may be a few we'd like to look at, can we get back to you?"

Still looking cheerful, she nodded. "Certainly, let me know if there's anything you need. And, happy Hearths Warming, you two!"

With that odd closing note, she was off, leaving them alone. Connecting a few dots, Adagio made a guess that the hook-orbs Sonata saw and filled the room with were involved in this 'Hearths Warming' holiday somehow, which came only in weeks. The librarian's utter lack of annoyance at Sonata's shenanigans told her it must have been a well-loved one, at that. What kind of opportunity that was for them, she'd have to find out when-wait...

They were in a library, a treasure trove of information. Too jubilant to feel like an idiot for only realizing this now, she instead felt a vicious grin spread across her face. "Sonata?"

Her enthusiasm must have bled into her tone, because her cohort jumped, looking back at her as though expecting new orders. "Y-yes?"

"What's the most advanced spell in that book?"

She leafed over to the table of contents. "Umm... It says the harder ones are overrrr..." More page flipping. "Here! Why?"

"See if you can cast any of those. I'll be looking into a few things that should make our-" she glanced about, wary of the librarian, Polomare, or anypony else, "-task here more manageable. Take your time, let me know how many you manage and how well, would you?"

She gave a crisp nod. "Can do!"

"Good, I'll be back in an hour or so." Getting up from the table, she wandered out of the manuals section, briefly scanning shelves for books on history, newspapers on recent events, and information on Equestria in general. Maybe I can learn a little about Twilight Sparkle and our host while I'm at it...


---


When the consequences of screwing something up weren't all that bad, or were even kind of nice, if you were into that kind of thing, Adagio said it was something between a soft penalty and rewarding failure. Possibly a pyrrhic victory. Lying on the soft, soft bed, Aria couldn't decide which her repeated almost-successful landings were. She'd flap her wings, get a feel for how hard and how fast she had to do that to just hover in place, float up to the ceiling, stop flying, then try to start again so as not to hit the ground as hard as possible. That was why she was still practicing over the bed, which got a little cosier every time she failed.

It was when she tried just stretching her wings out as tautly as possible that she learned doing that made her glide, not fall slower, which ended with her landing face-first against the wooden foot of another bed. Tenderly rubbing her snout, she guessed it was at least lucky she didn't break anything, in the room or her body, as either would have raised questions later. She wanted to experiment with gliding a little more, but the room was too small for that kind of thing.

Getting up, she floated into the air again, dropping about halfway up, and impacting the mess of quilt and pillow atop what used to be a well made magic bed a little softer than the last several times. That probably had more to do with her not having fallen as far than the speed at which she tried to recover. With several more attempts, she determined that maybe she just wasn't high up enough to get enough lift to not smack into the bed. At least she mastered gently drifting down with controlled wingbeats, settling on the bed a final time for the day. Glancing out the nearest window, she guessed it was getting late in the afternoon. When was she supposed to meet Blueblood? Did they set a time, location, anything? 
She couldn't remember, and felt like there was something she hadn't wanted to think about anyway. Lazily flopping down on the bed, she opted to get a nap in before the time came to go with the prince and try to get into his head.
> Chapter 5: Miscommunication
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aria was jolted awake by percussive noise against wood, nearly jumping off the bed before quickly glancing every which way for the source. The sun was setting, or rising, she couldn't tell, her thoughts going as fast as her heartbeat. 

How long was I out?! What did I miss?! Where are the others?! What's-

"Hello, Miss Blaze?" It was-whatshisname-Kibitz, calling through the door. "Your scheduled appointment with Prince Blueblood is due to begin in approximately ten minutes, are you well?"

"I-I, uh, yea, just gimme a minute." Taking stock of the situation, she determined that Adagio must have kept away like she said, so their story was still solid and, apart from what she'd overheard today, everything was going okay. Now all she had to do was hang around the prince, get an idea of how he thinks, and tell Adagio everything she learned. 

Ready as I'll ever be.


---


"So," Blueblood began as they walked out the palace gates, "what have you been up to today?"

"W-what?" Turning to look at him wide-eyed, for even a fraction of a second, was a mistake she was nanoseconds too slow to stop herself from making. He'd actually said it very casually, as one might if idly curious, not accusing. 

Dammit!

He regarded her with an upraised eyebrow. "I asked, 'what have you been up to today?' How you spent the day up to this moment?"

She scowled a little. "I know what it means!" 

He knows. I listened in on those guards and he knows somehow, I know he knows, does he know I know he knows I know?!

"Well then?"

"Huh?"

He looked a little annoyed. "You haven't answered the question."

"Oh, I, uh-" Snuck around your castle, eavesdropping on your guards? Learned they don't like you? Barely learned to fly? Took a nap? "n-nothing much."

"I see." 

By the way he was looking at her, that sounded exactly as suspicious as she feared. Changethesubjectchangethesubject! "So, where's this Mauvaise place?"

He nodded to a tall building in the distance, its lights glowing brighter in indirect proportion to the dimming sun. The neon sign made it a lot easier to tell which one he was leading them to.


---


Aria had to forcibly remind herself not to look around for any possible funny business. There was a line between cautious and crazy-paranoid, but it had never been fuzzier than when she was around the prince. Scanning the area out of the corners of her eyes probably wouldn't reflect too well on her, either. Still, casually analyzing her surroundings, the restaurant itself looked okay. Shelves and hanging collections of all kinds of miscellaneous, yet expensive-looking junk, blood-red carpets and matching cloth on every table, dark, smooth wood making up most of the furniture, and ornate metal on the lights, windows, walls, doors, and some other things that might have just been there for symmetry, all so polished they probably saved a little money on lighting.

Blueblood started small-talk the moment they were seated. "This is by no means the most exquisite establishment in the city, but more akin to what you may see in any given place of fine dining." He chuckled. "Still leaps and bounds ahead of most places you've eaten in, I imagine?"

She blinked. "Huh?"

"Your group has been travelling for some time, correct? I'd imagine not everywhere catered to more sophisticated tastes."

Right, the story Adagio fed him about us wandering all over the place. "Uh, yea-I mean no, not everywhere had... carpets..."

He stared back at her in mild surprise. "Indeed?"

"Or-" she glanced to a nearby shelf of possibly decorative stuff labeled 'The Fruits of Zebrica', "stuff in jars?" It was painfully obvious just then why they usually let Adagio do the talking. Swiping a menu off the table, Aria quickly buried her face in it. 

Okay, I need to calm down. What have I got? He asked about what kind of places we've eaten at, maybe he's got high standards? But then he wouldn't have come to less than the 'most exquisite' place he knew. 

As she tried to figure out what to make of that, Blueblood spoke again. "What sort of places have you been to? Are you new to Equestria?"

The lower portion of her face still obscured by the menu, she clenched her teeth. Dammit, more questions! "We've been away for a while, just wanted to drift, I guess." That wasn't a good answer. Counter! "What about you? Ever get out of the city?"

He shrugged. "Every now and again, though primarily on business."

She found an angle. Turning her head so as to only see him out of the corner of her eye, she went for a calm, vaguely interested tone. "Business, huh? What might that be?"

"Honestly? The long and short of it is that I'm an accountant." He caught her perplexed stare as the menu blocking her face slipped to the table and went on. "A lot happens in Equestria and somepony has to balance the books, in addition to keeping track of money for events, repair bills following disasters, give or take the world-fixing waves of magic -sometimes referred to as a Code E.O.H. in the filing circles- that may render that funding open for something else, et cetera."

Aria stared back at him. 

Wow. I have never been so lost, and so bored, at the same time. 

The description came across so dully that she could barely process what she'd heard. Not even Sonata had ever managed that, and she took to counting the stars in the sky a few times. Out loud.

It must have showed in her face, because he looked just slightly offended. "Well, nopony ever said being an accountant was exciting. On that note, what sort of work have you three found in your travels?"

Crap! "I, we-"

She was saved from adlibbing some kind of career on the road by the waiter coming to take their order. In the silence that followed the waiter's departure, she had roughly three and a half seconds to think up a change of subject before the faintest twitch of mouth muscle suggested Blueblood was about to ask again. "So, what do they think of singing around here?"

The delivery was faster than necessary, she had nowhere to go with that subject, and the sentence itself was awkward, but he didn't react to any of it. Aria liked to think she wasn't an idiot, she knew she was messing up badly here. Nothing as damning as what Sonata might have blurted out by now, but definitely giving him enough to be suspicious about. That he kept acting like nothing was the least bit amiss told her either he was an idiot, or he wasn't missing a beat and just wanted to mock her, to pretend she was covering perfectly just to rub it in. 

"It's considered a perfectly valid form of artistry," he answered calmly, "if that's what you mean. Are you a troupe of singers, in addition to your acting talents?"

Speaking of salt in wounds... 

"No," she growled, "not so much." It was stupid to angry about that one, though, moreso as it was Aria herself that brought it up.

It looked like he was starting to get irritated with her responses, but every time his eyebrows furrowed or he started to scowl, it would flip right back to the mostly passive expression he had a second before. 

Why?! There's nothing keeping him here, is there? Is he-

Adagio. He was probably trying to play nice in the hope she wouldn't say anything to the one he was really interested in. Did that mean Adagio was right all along? Aria really didn't get that impression, but if he wouldn't press her too hard, she'd take this truce-type thing for all it was worth.

She forced a friendlier tone. "So, what-" stopping herself, she realized outright asking what he thought about Adagio might clue him in that the three of them were paying attention to who he was paying attention to, which didn't seem normal. "ahh, nevermind."

Now he only looked curious. "What is it?"

She shook her head, forcing a smile. "Nothing, nothing!"

"...You're sure there's nothing you'd like to say?"

YES, quit asking!! "Not a thing, Mister Blueblood."

"I see... Well then, what are your thoughts on singing on a professional level?"

Hell. Talking to this guy is Hell. 


---


The day was ending and the library was closing, but Sonata had a new spellbook to study until the time came to return it, having performed all of the more difficult spells in the one they'd started with at least once. As for Adagio, she'd spent the last few hours learning a little about pony culture, and wasn't confident about what she'd found. More immediate in her thoughts, however, was the fear that they wouldn't be able to get back into the palace without the prince or a guard with them, but the stallions at the gate didn't so much as make eye contact as the two tentatively stepped through the front door.

It was with mild embarrassment that Adagio had to let one of the pony maids guide her and Sonata back to the Pisces room after about twenty minutes of wandering, neither quite able to recall which corridor was the 'Northern' wing. Or which floor it was on.

When the door was shut, Adagio smiled. "No sign of Aria, which means we made good time. No telling how soon she'll report back, but we've done our part in the plan today."

"Um... W-was part of that plan messing up our beds?"

She turned to Sonata, eyebrow raised. "What are you talking about?"

She nodded to the disaster area of strewn pillows and ruffled blankets atop the cumulus-weave mattress Aria had slept on. And apparently done something else on, while they were out. By the crater-like mark in the quilts, it looked as though a pony's body had impacted that space very hard, many times. 

The two sirens turned beet red as Adagio struggled to form words. "W-w-what...? WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE DOING WITH HIM?!"

Sonata twirled her ponytail around a hoof, looking primarily at the floor. "I, uh, it looks like she was-"

"I know what it looks like, I just can't believe she'd, she'd..." 

Wait, did she do this on our account? Throw herself at him to get information? Or, has she chosen to make him fall for her instead? 

Not that it was a problem if she was. If anything, Adagio was just stunned, both by Aria's willingness to do so and the apparent boldness of her method. Letting Blueblood touch any of them had never even entered the equation in the original plan, but for Aria to seduce him in a single day... "I... I think..."

Sonata turned to her, still blushing furiously, but with an inquisitive look on her face.

Adagio spoke quietly. "I think I've been underestimating you two."

Curiousity became surprise. "Huh?"

"I-"

The two of them were startled by a knock at the door and the familiar voice of Kibitz. "Good evening, ladies. I was informed of your presence in the castle and wish to extend invitation for dinner, in the event that you've not fed already this evening."

They exchanged whispers. "Sonata, did either of us eat anything at the library?" 

"I don't think they had a snack table, I checked."

Adagio shrugged. "We'll talk about this after dinner."

"Alrighty!"


---


Two out of three sirens again stood in the presence of Princess Celestia when they arrived in the dining room. Along with her, yet another alicorn.

"Greetings, visitors," the latter called with a smile as they were led to the table, "please come and join us, that we may grow closer and share tales of-ow!" Luna turned to look at her sister while lightly massaging a rib.

With the same warm grin they'd seen this morning, Celestia gently cleared her throat. "Welcome. Please, have a seat."

The two of them obeyed, sitting in roughly the same places they'd been that morning. As some manner of apple-based meal was brought out, Adagio determined that the princesses were trying to be welcoming, even friendly. Why, she wasn't sure, it could have been anything from genuine hospitality to a trap, as Aria seemed to suspect. Probably for the best that she wasn't present.

"Good evening," she began somewhat nervously, looking at the dark-blue mare near Celestia, "I don't believe we've been acqaint-"

"You may call me Luna!" She waved a hoof in the air. It may have been a regal gesture they weren't familiar with, and she may have been just waving. "What shall we call you?"

"I am Adagio Dazzle," she gestured to Sonata, who again stared at the alicorns in all their floaty-mane splendor, "this is Sonata Dusk, and..." She glanced about somewhat awkwardly. "Uh, the last of us isn't here right now, but her name is Aria Blaze."

They jumped at Luna's loud reply. "Pleased to meet you!"

Celestia bell-chime-giggled again. "Please forgive my sister's enthusiasm, it's rare that we have the pleasure of guests in the castle. What can you tell us about yourselves?"

Adagio did her best not to look like, for lack of better words, a deer in headlights.


---


"...So in short, to enter the more prestigious dining halls in the hopes of actually ingesting a substantial meal is effectively senseless. It's not the food patrons are buying there so much as their own presence on those floors."

"Ugh, you couldn't have just started with that?" He had spent maybe ten minutes explaining how seeing and being seen was some big, elaborate show among ponies around here, how the pricier places were so hoity-toity that just paying for a reservation, being allowed inside, was more the point than anything those places were supposed to do with their customers. While part of her wondered what arbitrarily decided which spots were and weren't haute courture or whatever, it didn't change that she was so bored she couldn't bring herself to care about mouthing off a little.

The whatever-this-thing-on-her-plate-was was decent, but she was so sick of this that Blueblood visibly getting at least a little bit angry felt like a tiny victory, even an odd kind of relief. "Well, I thought if you're only going to respond with incoherent babble, I may as well fill the silence."

"What?"

He rolled his eyes. "You've not said a thing of note since the evening began. I can appreciate that talking isn't everypony's strong suit, but most don't try to avoid it so desperately as to act as though the simple act of communication eludes them."

She felt her cheeks flush and a vein rise in her forehead. "Maybe there are things I'd rather not talk about. Do they have privacy in your stupid, over-priced little town?" She didn't know how bits translated to dollars, but the numbers on some things she'd seen since they arrived in Canterlot were always between high and absurd.

"Of course," he half-smirked, "for those willing to pay for it. On that note, might I ask how you three have been getting by, however long you've been traveling?"

She nearly slammed a hoof on the table. "Am I poking you for details?!" So much for... whatever it was holding him back a little bit ago.

He propped his head up on a hoof, that elbow resting on the table. "Apart from that question?"

Her teeth ground together. "You know what I mean, smartass."

"Yes, how dare I ask simple questions? Oh dear, there goes another one!" As her only immediate reply was an angry snarl, he went on. "You know, I'd almost think you were hiding something, was it how you stayed fed that you're so desperate to cover up? Are you bank-robbers?"

While having realized a little while ago that it was probably a trap, it was fortunate that she'd taken him up on the offer to go somewhere without a lot of others around as she raised her voice. "No!"

"Then what? What are you-" He stopped, his eyes widening for a moment. "Oh... I'm sorry."

Bubbling rage simmered down to cautious curiousity. "What?"

He looked away. "Nothing, nothing, I'm sure you only did what you had-"

She stood up, placing both forehooves on the table. "What is it?"

"It's perfectly understandable," he said while still avoiding eye-contact, "I wouldn't go sharing that kind of thing either if I were you, in Canterlot above all."

"What do you think we did to-" Then it clicked, Aria's face slowly going red for other reasons than anger as her eyes widened. "You... y-you think we're-?"

Holding up his forehooves placatingly, he still wouldn't look at her. "Like I said, not judging, it's a hard world out-"

"WE'RE NOT PROSTITUTES, YOU STOOGE!!"

The few ponies in the area turned their heads, Blueblood glancing around at them before coughing once and finally meeting Aria's gaze again. "My bad?"

Emitting something between a sigh and a groan, she sat down again, crossing her forelegs. "Jerk."

"Hmph. Well, if you weren't so evasive, perhaps I wouldn't have to make unfortunate guesses."

"Maybe if you weren't so nosy!"

"Maybe if you weren't completely insufferable!"

"Maybe if you didn't make me sick!"

Glaring at each other, the two of them could feel the other patrons staring at them too. "It's getting late," Blueblood muttered, "shall we head back?"

"Yea," she replied through gritted teeth, "sounds good."


---


The Pisces door closed as Adagio slumped against it. "That, was exhausting." Somehow, she'd managed to steer the conversation away from any questions they couldn't rightly answer, carefully deflecting topics in such a way as to not completely avoid them or make up new details Aria wasn't there to hear.

"I think they like us!" Sonata had proven more capable of dealing with two princesses at once than Adagio had ever dared dream, when her mouth wasn't full. When they asked her anything, she'd give a simple answer, an insanely convincing smile displayed the whole time. She mimicked their behavior well, commenting on things casually and bringing up topics so fluidly it was like she was in their heads.

Adagio chose to ignore the possibility that she was just too air-headed to see the danger they were in, for now. "Speaking of ponies 'liking' us..." The two of them again found themselves looking at the mess that was Aria's bed, a blush creeping up their necks. "She... Where do you think they are now?" She stepped closer to the messy mattress as if to divine clues from it.

"I dunno... Where do you go after-"

"I-I wouldn't know either!!" Adagio might have had her share of conquests, but leaving her partner short of breath in a disheveled heap was about as far as she got in terms of follow-up. 

Does Aria do things differently? I never found concrete proof that she or Sonata ever really indulged their urges. She took a calming breath. "At any rate, I think we can work with this. It doesn't really matter which of us has him wrapped around a hoof, so if Aria's snagged him, kudos to her."

Sonata looked less sure. "I-is it really okay? I mean, what if he gets her, uh, y-y'know...?"

Adagio's eyes widened. Were they even physically capable of having children? Her thoughts on the matter were arrested with the clatter of the door swinging open and slamming shut.

"Man," Aria complained, "I hate that guy!"

Before another word could be said, Sonata zipped over to inspect the purple pegasus, visibly worried. "Aria! Are you okay?! What did you do?! Where did he touch you?! Are you gonna have babies?!"

Aria choked on air, straining to speak in a hoarse whisper. "Freaking, WHAT?!"

"You're very brave," Adagio said softly, "doing what you did."

"What are you guys talking about?!"

She nodded to the bed, looking away with a blush. "Really, I didn't know you could be so..."

Aria's jaw dropped, her face feeling like it had caught fire. "I-I, n-no, no we did not, I did not, w-with, with-"

Sonata tilted her head. "Really? Then why's the bed all... uh, bow-chicka-wow-wow?"

Volume control was broken. "I WAS JUST PRACTICING FLIGHT!!"

There was a pause, broken by Adagio. "Then, you were just jumping up and down on the bed all day? Does that mean you haven't enslaved the prince?"

"ARRRRGH!!" Aria collapsed, the stress of the day finally proving too much for her.
> Chapter 6: Cloudy, with a Chance of Headaches
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning, the trio were seated on cushions set in the center of the room. This was mostly because that's where they'd found Sonata sprawled out on the floor. "Alright," Adagio began, "we're all rested, time to go over yesterday's events. Sonata, do you remember any of the spells from the first book?"

She grinned brightly, casting the projection spell with the image of a big, glowing 'YES' in the frame.

"That's new," remarked Aria.

"Indeed. Now," Adagio and Sonata turned to look at Aria at the same time. "about what you were doing while we were out..."

Her cheeks lit up as she scowled. "I told you, I was just getting the hang of using these stupid things!" She didn't flap her wings hard enough to lift off the ground, but hard enough to get the point across.

"Then how did things go with Blueblood?"

Aria froze, badly wishing she could stop herself from sweating. "I-I, it, uh, h-he was-"

Orange eyebrows furrowed dangerously. "Aria?"

Gulping once, she took a deep breath and told them the whole story of that evening, from when Kibitz woke her up to when she slammed the door upon return. More terrifying than standing in front of Celestia the day before was the way Adagio glared at her for the first half of the story. Worse than that was when she began to smile, the grin getting wider and more sinister as she went on, to the point even Sonata looked scared on Aria's behalf. When she ended the story, trembling, Adagio let out a low, slow-building laugh that nearly made her underlings hug each other, one last time, for support. 

"Excellent work, Aria."

Aria and Sonata both blinked, thrown. "Huh?"

The killer grin hadn't gone anywhere. "I hadn't even thought of such a strategy, this is perfect. While I don't think you meant for this outcome, he's grown to despise you just as much as you do him, correct?"

Having gotten roughly that impression, she nodded, her fear cautiously subsiding. "Uh, yea?"

"Good. What I said about you being nicer? I take it back, keep up what you're doing." In response to the confused stares she was getting, she went on. "It's simple, if he hates you, I'll look all the more appealing by comparison. If anything, that's more viable than trying to win him over on my own. With his view of me tinted through how he looks at you two, this will be all the easier!" There was a short cackle, but Aria felt like it was on her side now. "You've done well, make no mistake of that, it's just a matter of how we play our cards."

The feeling of not-going-to-die was warm in her chest as she smiled back. "Thanks." Sonata smiled too, looking at her with relief. 

"On that note," Adagio continued, looking at Sonata, "inconsistency in our behavior would likely draw his attention, you keep doing what you've been doing as well."

Aria rolled her eyes. "Not like we have to worry about him liking her either."

Sonata scowled. "Oh, yea? Well we'll never have to worry about anypony liking you!" She projected an image of a tomato being squashed by a mousetrap. Nopony particularly cared to ask.

Before the bickering could escalate, Adagio stamped a hoof. She wasn't done yet. "Which brings us to what I learned in the library." She shook her head. "I peered through the newspapers of the last year or so. A twisted freak stealing the magic of the entire nation? An invasion of the capital by creatures that don't exist? Pies raining up and dancing bufallo being the least of anyone's worries? False, all of it, I must have found some hypothetical interest section, or a crackpot's passion project. There's no way the population would carry on peacefully with their lives if such disasters happened within the span of one year." She huffed, crossing her forelegs with more than a hint of annoyance. "There's no mention of us anywhere, either, though I guess that's a point in our favor." The bit she found about Celestia apparently having a particular fondness for cake was amusing, but hardly relevant.

Judging by her tone, Aria still had bile to expel from the deflected argument. "You took time to tell us we don't know any more than the day before?"

"I took time to tell you to be careful what you say outside this room," Adagio replied with just a tinge of venom, "being from an unspecified region of great distance only gives us so much leeway." 

Sonata raised a hoof in schoolfilly fashion. "Creatures that don't exist? Then how'd they get in the papers?"

"Changelings," Adagio deadpanned, "bug-like shape-shifters that feed not on misery, not on the pain of others, not even something as powerful as hatred, but love? Love is weakness! How could anything draw real power from that?!"

Aria chuckled, having known better than to ever believe in changelings. 

Wait, what did those guards say about somepony wearing somepony else's face...? 

She shook her head. It couldn't be the same thing, probably one of those skin-'em-alive deals. Or illusion magic. Still, that reminded her of something. "Hey, I overheard some of the guards yesterday..."


---


"So," Sonata summarized, "everypony the prince so much as talks to will probably rob a bank or something?"

Ignoring her uncanny choice of words, Aria turned to Adagio, who looked flummoxed.

"He... He, just happens to...? That's quite a coincidence, if he isn't some kind of living warning system. But, if that were the case, why weren't any of those mares stopped before they could carry out their deeds?" Pausing for a long moment, she let out a breath. "I suppose we'll just have to be careful, but if everypony is suspicious of us due more to proximity to Prince Blueblood, perhaps their fears can be assuaged with time? We need only refrain from spreading disaster to break the pattern, after all."

"Unless we end up doing whatever 'PON-3' did, they wouldn't talk about that one."

"So long as we behave, I'm sure it'll be fine."

"You're not worried Blueblood himself is up to anything?"

There was a light eyeroll. "No, Aria, I'm not, because he'd almost certainly get nothing out of it. Think about it, all that we do is to return to what we were before, to spread our songs and reap the power and adoration that came with doing so. What does the nephew of She Who Raises the Sun stand to gain, really? If I'm not mistaken, he already lives in the palace in the capital, -I confirmed it yesterday, this is the pony capital- with money and leisure with which to do whatever he pleases." She brushed her chin thoughtfully. "I suppose it's possible that this dayjob of his, whatever it is-"

"Accounting," Aria deadpanned, "he told me he's an accountant."

Adagio nearly laughed. "Alright, so he might have a dull occupation, but I imagine even the worst days he deals with are easy compared to managing a country. As such, usurping the throne would be senseless, no matter what power he might gain in doing so, for all the risk and hassle that came with it." This was why Adagio never wanted to actually rule a territory, of any size. To be adored was all the power she'd ever want over a population.

Aria didn't quite look satisfied. "Don't peop-ponies, well, both I guess, tend to do senseless things all the time?"

"Yup," Sounded off Sonata, projecting an image of Twilight Sparkle and her flunkies holding hands in a circle in the gym, shouting 'friendship is magic' in the early phases of the Battle of the Bands back in the other world, to the amusement of the other sirens.

When the chuckles subsided, Adagio went on. "True. Suppose we'll have to hope a coup isn't in his plans?"

"Just hope it isn't?"

She shrugged. "What else can we do, Aria? It won't matter when he serves me in the next few days, so it's best to leave him to his own devices until then."

The image of a big question mark appeared over Sonata's head. "So what's the plan for today?"

Adagio grinned at her. "I'm glad you asked. We learned from Aria's efforts that he probably doesn't have a lot of excitement in his life, tonight we'll learn a bit more. Show me that you can learn as much from a pony as you can from a spellbook once we've arranged for the two of you to be alone for a while."

"We're leaving Sonata with that guy?!"

The image over said unicorn's head would have been something between a frowning face and one blowing raspberries, but the note of worry in Aria's voice gave her pause.

Adagio spoke calmly, but firmly. "While I understand your concern, any information at all may make a considerable difference. If he's as suspicious of us as you are of him and not acting on it, nothing she could say is likely to make much of a difference." She quickly turned to Sonata. "Not that I don't want you to be careful, understand?"

The Projection spell fizzled out as Sonata nodded twice, smiling nervously.

"I still don't like it," Aria muttered as she folded her forelegs, "there's definitely something fishy about that guy..."


---


Standing in his chambers, Prince Blueblood fixed his bowtie in a mirror, ready to face the day, his guests in particular. The previous evening hadn't been pleasant, but definitely a step above some other dates he'd been on. Dealing with Miss Blaze again might be a tad awkward, but he had an idea. With any luck, they'd go along with it, whatever their plans here were. 

"There's definitely something fishy about those three..."


---


Breakfast was tense for the sirens with two princesses and Blueblood all in the room at the same time, but other than Aria and Blueblood avoiding eye-contact, the meal was actually uneventful. Pleasantries were exchanged, some confections were ingested, (most of all by Princess Luna, who seemed more focused on the meal than conversation. It was something she and Sonata had in common) a little small-talk was passed around, and then everypony moved on with their day.

Blueblood walked with them on the way out of the dining room. "Might you three have any plans today?" He went on before they could answer. "I ask because I was tasked with filling in for Princess Luna at the opening of a new museum in town this afternoon and was told I could bring a guest." Technically, it had just been that one, tired joke again, but this time he'd had a retort.

"Oh?" inquired Adagio, who was only about half as surprised as her face suggested, "what might you be doing that called for the attention of a princess, Mister Blueblood?"

"Just a standard ribbon-cutting ceremony, followed by a short tour of the building. We'll be free to roam at leisure afterward, if there's anything in particular you'd like to see."

Aria pointedly didn't look at or speak to him, glancing instead at Sonata, who bore her usual vacant smile. A quick elbow to the ribs seemed to wake her up. "Ow! I mean, I'll go! I totally like looking at, uh, old stuff."

He smiled a little. "Splendid. The museum opens in a few hours, would you like to be escorted or meet at the ceremony?"

Being that she and Adagio might not have found their way back to the castle yesterday if not for it being a big, towering castle, Sonata decided that looking for this place on her own might be fun! But following Blueblood was probably faster. "I'll go with you, I guess."

"Understood. That reminds me, did you find what you were looking for yesterday?"

"Huh?"

"Yes," Adagio cut in, forcing a reasonably convincing smile, "she was so enamored with the availability of spells, she just didn't want to stop!" 

Agh, I'm technically telling the truth again. Why does that make me feel so... off? It's fine, I can stop any time I want. 

She felt better already!

He nodded. "Good to hear. I'll see you in a bit, good day."

When he was out of earshot and it was clear there was nopony else around, Aria turned to Adagio, but was answered before she could ask. "Yes, it's a little odd that he didn't ask all of us to join him, more-so in that he didn't specifically ask me. Regardless, with the information gained by the end of today, I'll know enough to ensnare him myself the next time I get him alone."

She started walking back to their room, her cohorts following. "You really think you'll get enough info on his head from what we've got so far plus whatever Sonata can figure out?"

Now there was a face blowing raspberries, but as she hadn't figured out the spell for making sounds yet, (let alone how to integrate it into the Projection spell, that was SUPER tricky!) it was silently ignored.

"No, I think I'll get it from what we have so far, what she picks up on today, and what you can tell me after investigating his chambers."

"Huh?"

Adagio nodded once. "You were likely onto something this morning. Did you notice that he waited until the princesses had gone before asking if we had plans? It may have just slipped his mind until after the meal, perhaps they take their dining very seriously, and it may be that he doesn't want them to know what he's up to, to say nothing of Princess Luna looking perfectly healthy when we saw her. You know what to do?"

Aria grinned with barely-contained delight. "Ohh, yea."

They walked quietly through the halls for all of four seconds before Sonata spoke up. "What?"

Adagio almost facehoofed, but barely kept from tripping and falling while walking on three legs. "She'll wait until you're out with Blueblood and use that time to sneak into his chambers. There, she'll find whatever she can, perhaps a diary, that might tell us a little more about what he's thinking. Got it?"

"Ohh! Got it!"

Aria rolled her eyes. "Y'know, a pony that wasn't stupid might've recognized a pattern by now."

Sonata's face scrunched up in annoyance. "Oh yea? Well at least I'm not a bird-pony who can't fly!"

"Y-you little-!"

"Quiet," hissed Adagio, barely over a whisper, "your quarrels can wait until we're not at risk of being overheard." When they got back to the room and closed the door, she turned to look at Aria. "On that note, how did flight go yesterday?"

Her cheeks lit up, but for different reasons than before. "Uh, well... I can get off the ground...?"

Sonata snickered, Aria scowled, Adagio raised an eyebrow. "Landing was the problem?"

"Kinda."

"I see. Ordinarily, I'd suggest practicing that or something, but flying indoors seems akin to sprinting at full speed through a crowded hallway-"

"Hey," Sonata complained, "it only happened that one time!" The day they arrived in the other world and first stood on legs had been quite the educational one.

"-so I would advise against it. For the sake of keeping a low profile, we'll need to find somewhere open, yet secluded." She sighed a little, not sure how to work out such a paradox. "Perhaps there's a location in Canterlot that suits our purposes? It's a big enough city, after all."

Aria silently noted the irony in possibly being able to find a place like that herself while airborne if not for fear of crash-landing into it.

"On that note," Adagio said while approaching the door, "let's see what we can find. Come on, Aria."

As the pegasus moved to follow, Sonata held up a hoof. "What should I do?"

There was a shrug. "See what you can do with the spellbook? Just don't burn the castle down, please." Adagio wouldn't admit to it aloud, but she'd said that just as much because it'd be hard to find their way back without the structure still standing as for the obvious reasons.

Sonata made an angry face. "I won't burn anything down, I'm not stupid!"

Aria chuckled. "Right, catch ya later."

As the door slammed, (Aria could stand to be a little more careful herself, she'd have to point that out when they got back) Sonata huffed, taking a seat on her bed with The Wonders of Magic, the book they'd picked up when she'd managed the harder spells in Your Horn and You. 

Oh, boy, the spells in this one are ALL kinda tricky-looking! 

She wondered if there was some kind of relation between book title and how hard the stuff inside was. The few times she found herself away from the others in the other Canterlot's library, she noticed that the books in the kiddie section all had happy, fun titles, like The Places You'll Go or Three Little Pigs, whereas the stuff Adagio actually looked at was more like Human Anatomy and The Art of War. Those were always more...

What was the word? Business-y? The covers were dull and un-decorated, the letters were all the same blocky font. This book was more like those than the first one. Was there some kind of connection between a book's hardness to understand and the friendliness of the title? And cover? And the stuff inside?

Whatever. I know what I mean.

She wondered if that was why Aria and Adagio could be so... stuffy! 

"I don't get why they do that," she said to herself, "you can be good at stuff without being a sourpuss! Right?" Looking down at The Wonders of Magic, Sonata felt the fire of determination stir in her chest! "Right! And I'll show them both!" She'd get good at casting all kinds of spells without being snooty, starting with -she flipped to a random page- Transmogrification! 

She decided to flip over to the glossary first to see what that word meant.


---


"Um, Adagio?"

She glanced about as they walked, visibly scanning the town. "Yes?"

"Are we just wandering around at random?"

"Of course not!" There was a pause. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, uh," she tried to word it in the lightest way possible, Adagio was looking a little angry already. "it's just that we've passed that hat shop three times now."

They stopped walking, Adagio staring straight ahead without saying a word. In all the time Aria and Sonata had followed her, that pose usually meant that she was either seething with rage, or too embarrassed to look at them. With the way her insanely poofy mane hung by the side of her face, Aria couldn't even read her expression, just waiting in uncomfortable silence until a reply came.

"O-of course, haven't you noticed? That shop is on the corner of an intersection, the roads passing it linking to different areas of the city. We keep passing it because the roads from completely different areas lead back here."

"Uh-huh." That doesn't really explain why we've gone down some of the same roads more than once... "Maybe we should have asked Blu-" She stopped herself, which made Adagio look at her with a curiously raised eyebrow. "Uh, nothing, nevermind! We'll find the right place on our own just fine." 

Smiling at her with what might have been pride, Adagio nodded once, returning her attention to a path she was pretty sure they hadn't gone down yet.

Aria let out a quiet huff at the idea of Blueblood coming to their rescue.

As if we'd need help from that stupid, stuck-up... 

Asking him would have raised questions anyway, and they didn't need his help! Besides, why would he know where they could find an area with enough room to fly around, but hardly anyone to see and ask questions about an adult pegasus that didn't know what she was doing?

Going up a short series of stairs, they found themselves at the top of a roof, benches and mounted binoculars strategically placed to catch tourists. That there was nopony else there at the time said it wasn't working. 

"Damn," Adagio uttered while examining one of the binocular towers, "as suspected, they even charge to look at things here.

There was no way Aria would think about asking that jerk for money, either. Hopefully Adagio's pride would keep her from doing the same.

"I spotted these peeking over the rooftop about a block away, but it looks like we can't use them. No matter, you said you'd mastered ascension, at the very least?"

"Err-" I don't like where this is going! "well, yea, but-"

"Good, fly up and see what you can find." Anything visible from the binoculars is definitely subject to scrutiny anyway, come to think of it.

Remembering that Adagio caught her back in Twilight's village, Aria took a deep breath, spread her wings, and lifted off. Counting the wingbeats, she levitated about as high as the roof would have been back in the room and looked around. Not really able to see much better, she turned in mid-air to get a wider view, realizing a second later that she'd never tried that manuever before. She dared fly a little higher, then a little more. She could see almost the entire city, consciously stopping herself from having a I-can-see-my-house-from-here moment. 

Seriously, that's something Sonata would do.

She heard Adagio call out from below. "Can you see anywhere suitable?" 

Glancing downward, her wings started beating faster, which was several degrees better than stopping altogether. "Not yet!" She could still see a lot of ponies walking around all over the place. There was a relatively consistent ratio of open space to population in most areas, but for every meter she flew higher, it got harder to see the details below. It was while squinting to see whether a pack of spots below were ponies or more of those display mannequins that she was blindsided by something soft. She whipped to face whoever was touching her, shoving them away. "Hey, do ya mind?! I'm-" It was a cloud. She had just touched a cloud.

Touched. A. Cloud.

Looking down at Adagio, she couldn't quite tell if the lapse in reality registered on her yellow face at that distance. Now seemed like a good time to try going down, she wanted to be on the floor right now. Slowing her wingbeats, she fell, immediately flapping harder as panic needled at the back of her head. Luckily, she had much more time before hitting the ground out here than she'd had in the room, and was able to slow to a stop just about four meters above the ground, where she stopped flying entirely, and impacted a little harder than she'd have liked on the roof next to Adagio.

"Well done. What did you see?"

"Clouds!"

Adagio was not amused. "That's not what we're looking for."

"I touched one!"

"What?"

After briefly recounting her experience with all the composure of Sonata the first time they saw a car, a mix of amazed confusion and child-like wonderment, Aria looked back up at the fluffy, white, tangible thing. "I didn't know you could touch those."

Adagio wracked her brain, trying to reason how it made any sense. "I... You can't, I mean... Do you remember back before we were banished? We flew through the clouds the first time we tried to find out what lay beyond them." It made sense at the time. If the sky was above the sea, what was above the sky? The air got painfully cold before they could find out and they never tried again. There was nothing to adore them up there anyway.

"Maybe, but..." Glancing upwards, Aria stared at the cloud she'd bumped into. "Maybe it was just that one? One sec."

Adagio watched as she lifted off again, ascending much faster than the first time to reach a cloud a little further away. She started to fly away from the roof, where Adagio couldn't possibly catch her in time if she fell. 

You idiot! Don't wander off! 

She'd be a lot angrier if she wasn't starting to feel so bewildered. Aria wasn't just touching the cloud, she was pushing it. Pushing clouds through the air. Hovering next to one for a few seconds, she flew over it, and stopped flapping her wings. Adagio felt her heart leap into her throat, but Aria just stopped harmlessly on top of the thing, looking around like a cat that just climbed to the highest point in the room. She waved down at Adagio, getting a hesitant, perplexed wave back.

It looked like Aria's mouth was moving, but Adagio didn't hear anything. Aria stamped on the cloud a few times before jumping up and down, a bolt of lightning firing out of the bottom and singeing a rooftop below. Silently wondering if they'd be charged with property damage, Adagio looked up again to see Aria flying towards her at reckless speed, unable to give more than a startled shriek before impact.

"Di-hid you see that?!" Aria was beaming, wings fully extended as she stood on top of Adagio, who looked up at her irritably.

"See what?" she asked, her tone all but shouting 'get off me, you idiot!'

Aria was beside herself with excitement. "Lightning! I can stand on the clouds, command them to shoot stuff! I am a weather goddess!!"

With her back to the ground, Adagio caught sight of something in the sky she hadn't noticed while watching Aria. "I'm not sure it's anything special," she said neutrally.

The Bringer of Lightning was incredulous. "N-not anything-?! Oh, you're totally jealous!"

Shoving her off, Adagio got to her hooves. "It's not that, it's-"

Aria smirked, stretching her wings proudly. "Y'know, maybe I should be the one leading, I've never seen you shoot lightning at, well, I guess there was that one time with the static electricity, but still-"

Adagio grabbed Aria's head in both forehooves, pointing it in the direction she'd seen two other pegasi pushing a cloud around. It was possible that was their occupation, by the matching shirts and hats they were wearing.

Aria deflated, her wings drooping lowest of all. "Aww..."

While her first instinct would have been to remind her minion of her place as forcefully and bitterly as possible, Adagio felt a strange pang of sympathy at her dejected expression when faced with the absence of any real power. She knew how it felt, after all. "There, there," she said, surprising both Aria and herself as she gently put a hoof on the former's shoulder. "It was still very impressive. It took Sonata a few tries to cast a spell at all, and you did... whatever you did up there without even knowing it was possible."

Aria smiled a little. "Th-thanks." As they made eye-contact, the two of them immediately broke it, taking a step backward. "So, uh, maybe I could just use the clouds for practice? I mean, there was hardly anypony up there, so..."

"Actually," Adagio said, grateful for the change of topic, "I'm not certain that's still necessary."

"Huh?"

"You didn't notice? You flew just fine while messing about with the clouds. If you can do that much, that should be all we need."

"Oh." She hadn't even really realized she was doing it. A little more practice might have been nice, but she figured the need for a private spot was pretty much void now. "So, what's next?"

"It should be a while still until Sonata goes to that museum with Blueblood. What say we explore a little longer, just for the sake of it?"

As they started down the stairs, Aria chuckled. "Might not hurt to build a mental map of the place, or we might be seeing the same hat shops a lot."

"And what exactly are you implying?" Adagio demanded with a raised brow, but her tone lacked the usual sense of menace.

"Nothing," Aria answered with a hint of a smile, "nothing!"

"Hmph. Did you see anything interesting while you were up there?"

"Was a little more blown away by the power to touch clouds."

"I suppose there's no shame in that. May as well wander for a while, we can even truthfully tell anypony who asks that we were familiarizing ourselves with the area a little more." She'd lie about something. It might not be anything important, but she wanted to lie about something soon.

As they walked with no particular goal, Aria reflected on their little exchange just a moment ago. That might have been the closest Adagio'd ever been to joking with her, like what she'd seen the Rainbooms do with each other. Weirder still were the small smiles on their faces, staying there for the better part of the afternoon.


---


Having spent most of the day thinking about how things went with Aria Blaze, Blueblood opted to try a few things differently this time. Perhaps his first mistake had been sending Kibitz, for that official 'royal welcome' feeling. It didn't seem to take, and he knew he couldn't fault the old butler, because he'd been doing that kind of thing since before Blueblood was born. Of course, it was entirely possible that Miss Blaze was just a cold, hateful, irritating, unpleasable harridan of a pony, but he couldn't assume the same of... Which one was I going with tonight? Sonata somethingorother. None of them talked an awful lot, but when they did, they only used each other's first names outside of introductions.

Given what he'd seen of her so far, Sonata seemed a lot more... pleasant? She certainly smiled more, but he got the impression she was a few guests short of a banquet. Approaching the Pisces room, he didn't need to listen carefully to hear what sounded like half an orchestra as conducted by Discord, but as that freakish serpent spent more and more time in Ponyville since the Tirek incident, the one he helped cause, forgiven immediately of course, that probably wasn't the case. He dared knock on the door. "Hello? Is everything alright in there?"

The cacophony came to an end with what sounded like cymbals crashing together, followed by rapid hoofsteps before the door cracked open.

"Hi," said a magenta eye, "I, uh, j-just need a sec, are you in a big hurry?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Great, back in a minute!" 

The door closed again, the noise from before returning with gusto, like the manic orchestra was sips away from overdosing on caffeine. Blueblood knocked again. "The ribbon-cutting ceremony isn't due to begin for another half an hour, but may I ask what you're up to in there?" As the only response was a few more minutes of noise, he momentarily put aside the faux pas of entering a lady's room without her express permission and opened the door himself. What he saw may as well have been a scene from another world entirely.

Sonata was standing on three hooves, her back-left twirling a colorful ring tied with strings to other things, the things tied to those strings flapping outward like wings. They were colorful and misshapen slats, like puzzle pieces, appearing to levitate where they were and constantly rattling as they impacted each other, held in place by the strings from the ring like balloons that weren't balloons at all.

That was the most comprehensible thing on her person at that moment.

There were turning tubes and perforated pipes, bloated bags and bending bars, machinery, or something, the likes of which he'd never seen on her back. The mess of metal, wood, and what might have been polyester moved and grooved as her head bobbed. By the look of the mechanism covering her mouth, it was possible she was producing some amount of the sounds by blowing into it, but he couldn't be sure. He couldn't even be sure how much of the arrangement was three-dimensional, given the constant motion, it was like looking at one of those impossible staircase pictures from the right angles.

She stopped, the ring and its things clattering to the floor as she looked back at him curiously. "So, how am I doing?"

His mouth twitched, not a single coherent thought in his head.

"You know, demonstration of musical theory via... um... hang on." She looked over at a book she'd propped up on a cushion on the floor, studying it for a good minute as Blueblood studied the contraption on her back. It made precisely as much sense motionless as it did when activated. "Aw, shoot," Sonata continued, "I need a third-tier acoustics spell for the boom-bombers and-"

"What."

"I said, I need a third-tier, WAIT, is it fourth? Or second? Is that where I'm messing up?"

He managed a sentence. "What are you doing with this?"

"Oh!" She turned to him, the corners of her eyes suggesting a smile. "I wanted to show that you could make every kind of music at once with the right background music and back-up singer spells, so I magic'd up some stuff to do that with! Then they started disappearing like a minute later, so I looked into making stuff last longer over in the section with the-" several rows of pipes on her back dissipated into nothing, "oh, darnit!" She sighed, throwing off the abomination of sound as more and more of it began to vanish.

"I had all kinds of instruments going there, too! Whipper-whappers, dingle-dongles, twin twisters and flip-flappers, all going and blowing like three-horn ker-snappers!"

"Those sound like words out of The Hat on the Ca-" he nearly choked when she turned to look at him, sputtering nonsense for several seconds when he saw that she had cat whiskers. 

"Hey, are you okay?"

By some great feat of willpower, Blueblood managed to compose himself after about a minute of looking away, closing his eyes, and taking several deep breaths. "One," he uttered when he was able to speak again, "how did you come up with any of that?"

"The whipper-whappers, ding-"

"Yes. Those."

"I made 'em up!"

"Of course. Two, how did you come up with any of that?"

"Magic!"

"Which spells?"

"Huh?"

"Which spells were you casting to achieve that result?"

"Oh! Uhh..." She flipped through the book. "I think it was, might'a been... this one? And, maybe this too?" After another minute or two of searching, she shrugged. "Maybe I should've asked for a bookmark?"

She did this with no clue how? Is that even possible? It felt like a moot question. "Right then... Three, why do you have cat whiskers?"

She blinked. "I have cat whiskers?"

'Run,' said a voice in his head, 'run now and never look back, you can always take your chances with Adagio Dazzle later, right?' But he would not run away. "Yes," he answered in completely level tone, "yes you do."

Reaching up to brush a hoof against them, she looked genuinely surprised in addition to weirdly adorable. "That's funny, I don't-OH!" She beamed. "It worked! The Transmogrification spell worked!" There was a long pause. "Kinda!"

"Is there a counterspell?" While he didn't want to diminish whatever sense of accomplishment she'd gotten out of that, she couldn't very well-Dusk! Her last name was Dusk! She couldn't very well show up to a public event, even a minor one, with cat whiskers. Or any other kind, really.

"Is that number four?"

"What? I-yes, yes that's question four, I suppose."

She nodded. "One sec!" A moment later, Blueblood remembered that he knew a simple cancellation spell himself, and promptly cast it. Sonata smiled. "Oh, great! They went away on their own! Now we just need to find that counterspell and we'll be good to go!"

It was another exercise in willpower to just let her keep looking for it. Who knew, maybe she'd actually have use for it soon? Possibly the next few minutes?

She found it. "Great, now I just need a bookmark spell!" More flipping. More finding. "Aha! Now to... Oh, darnit!"

"Well," Blueblood intoned, feeling like being psychologically beaten senseless was the worst she could do to him, "I suppose you'll be putting that musical project on hold?"

Her head tilted. "Musical project?"

His eye twitched. "The. One. With. The-"

"Hold that thought, Mister Blueblood, I know we're only up to five questions, but I think the other fifteen'll have to wait, the ribbon-thingy should be starting soon!"

Big colts don't cry, he thought as she galloped out the door, big colts don't cry.
> Chapter 7: Day of Dusk
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We're here!"

"Yes," breathed Blueblood, "we're here." When Sonata said she liked 'looking at old stuff', she must have meant it, because she loudly exclaimed that they'd reached their destination; Archive Harmony: History of Today, every time they passed a place with red ribbons on the exterior of the building. As Hearths Warming was coming up, that was about a third of them. 

Approaching the podium at the front of the building before a crowd of around thirty, he whispered to the sanity hazard at his side. "Please, wait here."

To his immediate surprise, Sonata just nodded, standing still just off stage while the curator motioned for Blueblood to join him.

"He-llo, Your Highness," said the curator with a wider smile than was strictly necessary, "so glad you could join us here!" He was a relatively thin stallion, light-grey fur, black, slicked back mane, a purple blazer his choice of attire for the grand opening of his establishment. 

"Of course," Blueblood said with a practiced grin, "I'm always pleased to come out and meet the ponies." It was a lie, but with one of his guests nearby, he had to behave. Besides, things always went smoother when he just went along with things. 

Might have saved some time with Miss Dusk, come to think of it... Was she just testing me? Was it because of how things went with Miss Blaze?

The curator's voice bubbled up to the forefront of his awareness. "-ke to begin?"

"Certainly." Blueblood took telekinetic hold of the comically over-sized scissors and waited for his cue.

Nearly beaming, the curator stepped behind the podium to face the crowd. "Welcome! We are pleased to announce that Equestria at last has halls dedicated to the preservation and remembrance of the events that shape our world as we live and breathe, a temple to the betterment of our lives, a shining cathedral to the accomplishments of the heroes of our age, particularly the saviors of our world; Princess Twilight Sparkle and the bearers of the Elements of Harmony!" There was a bit of eye-rolling by two or three older-looking ponies in the crowd, but he didn't seem to notice. "And so, without further ado, I wish to declare Archive Harmony: History of Today-" The crossed blades sliced effortlessly through the red cloth barring the doors. "-open!"

His part essentially done, the prince paid no mind to the light applause and ponies moving to follow the curator inside, instead turning toward Sonata. "So, would you like to go in now, or-" He paused. She was staring at him wide-eyed, as though he'd just grown wings. "Ehm. Hello? Miss Du-"

"How did you do that?!"

Taken aback, he quickly scanned the area. "Do what?"

She waved her forehooves in the air as though conducting an orchestra. A more level-headed one this time. "The, the floating, with the scissors and the ribbon without needing to tie them to things so they don't get stuck to the ceiling!"

He was hesitant to respond, as the answer felt deceptively simple. It was like she was winding up another mental trap and if he replied with the obvious answer, he'd be stuck here another ten minutes desperately trying to follow her twisted machinations. Still, as it was the only hope he'd had so far of getting a better understanding of the trio he'd invited to the castle, he dared take the plunge. "Telekinesis." She only stared back at him. "It's a basic spell, rather useful?" She only kept staring, a thousand terrible things likely working through her head as all fought for the chance to fling themselves from her tongue, willing to die for the honor of being first to further scar Blueblood's bruised psyche.

Before the first strike could be launched, however, they heard the curator. "Prince Blueblood? Are you coming?"

"Oh, yes," he called over his shoulder, "be right with you." Returning his attention to Sonata, he cleared his throat. "Shall we proceed?"

She smiled. "Let's go!"

As they entered the building, Blueblood at last felt some small sense progress. She'd never seen telekinesis before... He noticed her taking notice of the ponies around them before looking him in the eye. 

"Are these all friends of yours?"

He nearly laughed out loud. Those in the crowd joining them at that moment, while mostly familiar faces, were by no means 'friends.' He'd barely call them acquaintances. Now how to explain that to somepony that might only be asking to mess with his head later? 

"There are certain kinds of ponies," he began quietly, "that attend, frequent, or at least make a point of making appearances at facilities catering to particular areas of interest. Each have their own reasons for doing so, perhaps they're studying the related field, perhaps it pertains to their place of business, and maybe they're simply curious." Sonata seemed to be following along, or at least keeping eye contact in expectation of more, so he went on. "Then there's another sort of pony that may attend in hopes of being confused for one of the aforementioned sorts of pony, whom they are not at all." He spared a glance to find mostly just that last category, ponies he'd seen who claimed to be 'really interested' and 'deeply invested' in some other things they'd demonstrated no recollection of a few weeks after. 

What was the term younger ponies were using? 'Hipster'? He felt like he should know this, he was only twenty-four. 

Regardless, her reaction to this next statement would almost surely be telling. "The ponies with us now? Mostly that last batch."

Sonata raised an eyebrow. "They don't really care? That's dumb! I learned that learning to learn stuff can be-" an image of an open book with a rainbow over the pages appeared over her head, "-great!"

The curator called over his shoulder the moment he heard the sound of a spell being cast. "No magic in the museum, please!"

Cancelling the spell, Sonata lowered her head, smiling sheepishly at the ponies that had turned to look at her.

Blueblood, however, was silently flummoxed. Again. 

...So, not only is she not just pretending to be interested to appear intellectual, she knows the Projection spell without ever having heard of telekinesis? 

Maybe it was an act. Maybe she anticipated his thoughts and said what she thought he thought she'd say if she really were a scholar. Adagio had said that it was Sonata specifically that had been looking for a spellbook for some time... 

You are an enigma, Miss Dusk, but so help me, I will understand you better than I understood Miss Blaze by the end of this outing!

Another thought occurred. If she had more in common with Princess Twilight than the wanna-be's did, his explanation a moment ago probably sounded really patronizing, but she barely reacted. 

Yet another layer to the mystery... Should I apologize later?


---


"Featured here are the fragments of what could be gathered from the Castle of the Two Sisters, the ancient armor of Nightmare Moon!"

As the curator stood next to the tall, black, alicorn ponnequin adorned with the broken, blue remnants of mail that likely only ever saw two battles, Blueblood opted to tune out his speeches, instead whispering to Sonata. "So, how are you finding things so far?"

She glanced at him once before refocusing her attention on the Nightmare Moon display, her face a mix of awe and worry. "Hey, um... How many winged fre-I mean, winged unicorns are there?"

"Winged...?" He glanced at the display. "You mean alicorns? Princesses? Four, that I know of." It depended what sort of mood Discord was in, really.

She looked back and forth between him and 'Nightmare Moon', pointedly his sides and it's wings. "Are all princesses alicorns?" It looked like she was genuinely confused. "Why don't you have wings?"

Irony. 

It felt like Blueblood had just been offered a chance to turn the tables on a silver platter. Turn the silver platter. If this wasn't another ploy to addle his brain again, he could probably-

But, no, I'm not that petty and spiteful. 

Besides, he sensed a different kind of opportunity. "Princesses are given their title and alicorn status when they accomplish something sufficiently... worthy, I suppose." Sonata blinked twice. She was cute when she was confused. "I haven't done anything 'worthy' to be on their level." 

Neither did Cadenza, but I suppose Auntie's clairvoyant ways worked out on that one. 

He might have argued about the validity of awarding princess status to a filly that befriended some witch in town nopony's ever heard of, but it was clear she and her oaf of a husband had the Crystal Empire pretty much handled, so good on them.

This didn't quite seem to settle her thoughts, as she again exchanged looks with the black ponnequin in the ruined armor. "Was Nightmare Moon a princess? What did she do?"

Surprisingly for a speaker at a museum, the curator said almost nothing about the Nightmare Moon display itself, talking nearly the whole time about what a great accomplishment it was for Princess Twilight and her band of merry mares. While flattering for any of the Element Bearers in attendance, (zero out of six) it would have done nothing to enlighten the blue filly at his side before the curator waved the group over to the next exhibit.

"She wasn't quite a princess," he answered as succinctly as possible, "let's keep moving."

If the glances over her shoulder as they walked to the next exhibit were any indication, that answer only made Sonata more curious. If one were to take such behavior at face value, in addition to the earlier indications that she had never seen the most commonly-used spell in the world before, it would seem that Sonata Dusk had been very, very far from Equestria for her entire life. While it wasn't unheard of that there could be ponies in other places and it seemed to fit with what Adagio Dazzle had first told him about their group, it felt off.

Very off.

'Three-horned ker-snappers' off.

She was most likely playing another game with him, another round of-

but she looked so lost, so sincere in her surprise, that I'm inclined to believe she's really never heard of Nightmare Moon. 

Looking about as the curator gushed over the significance of a glass case containing a withered, black vine that evidently survived the Plunderseed Incident, it seemed that not a single sight in the room was familiar to her. There were little pedestals everywhere, containing what labels claimed were the ball used to lure Cerberus back to Tartarus, shattered fragments of a glass slipper, Mare-Do-Well posters, a pile of scrap metal purportedly part of the Super Speedy Cider-I'm not even going to read that whole title, one of those ridiculous Discord lamps, and more.

While it was more than reasonable to not know what some of these things were related to, (he suspected the broken glass and scrap metal were just there to fill up space until the Element Bearers did something more memorable) Sonata kept roughly the same wide-eyed bewilderment throughout. 

Really? You haven't heard a thing about the Plunderseed Incident? Everypony else has, it wasn't that long ago...


---


Having eventually gotten bored and a little tired wandering around Canterlot, Aria and Adagio returned to the palace. Not that there was anything wrong with Adagio's navigational skills or anything, but Aria suggested they just ask somepony where Blueblood's room was so they could have a little talk with him. Seeing the purely practical benefits of this plan, Adagio agreed. For practical reasons.

"Alright," Adagio whispered as they stood outside his door, "there doesn't seem to be anypony around, let's move." Aria nodded as Adagio stepped forward to knock gently, her cat-coaxing voice doing nothing to diminish the menace of her smile. "Hello? Prince Blueblood? If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to have a chat with you."

No answer. As expected. She opened the door, peering inside to find nopony at all. As expected. Stepping back, she nodded to Aria, who went inside, and took her place by the door as it shut.

Knowing Adagio would be doing her coy-flirty-I'm-just-waiting-for-Blueblood-oh-ho-ho thing if anypony came by, Aria got to work inspecting the room. She brushed a hoof against the carpet, nullifying her suspicions that it would be one of those weird, thick carpets that left imprints and marks where you touched it. Sonata had had fun brushing one of those back and forth for about two hours once, doodling with the way the fabric looked different if brushed in different directions. More importantly, the fact that this carpet wasn't one of those meant it wouldn't give away that she had walked on it, so she didn't have to worry about flapping her wings to stay off the floor and risk blowing papers around or something.

Still, she moved carefully, not so much as brushing against anything for fear of having to reset what she disturbed, lest it be noticed that somepony was in here. Obviously, not everypony-Man, I hate adding 'pony' to things-was so meticulously tidy and organized that the slightest disturbance to their quarters would raise an alarm, you could probably shuffle things all over the room and the inhabitants might not even notice, but it was a risk she saw no need to take. 

Besides, Prince Jerkface is probably one of those proper-place-for-every-little-thing types. 

That, she hoped, could work to her advantage as she tried to riddle out where a very organized pony might keep their evil plans and incriminating secrets.

Her first stop was the bottom-most drawer of his desk. Ledgers, documents she couldn't make heads or tails of, records, and some pens were all she found. She thought the letters in the top drawer might have yielded a clue, but there was no way she could tear them open, read them, and seal them again in a way that wouldn't be noticed. Still, that most of them were addressed to places other than Canterlot told her he had a lot of pen pals, that he must have kept in contact with ponies all over the place. Adagio would want to know that.

As satisfied with the desk as she was going to be, she replaced everything exactly where it had been and shut the drawers before moving to what she guessed was his bedside table. The little drawer-thing next to his bed. It was kind of a big bed, she noticed, even compared to the big, soft, cloudy beds back in the Pisces room. You could easily fit like, four ponies on that thing! With room to stretch out! Did he sleep on clouds too? She gingerly ran a hoof along the soft, smooth, royal-blue quilt, finding it to be cool to the touch. Pressing a hoof against the surface, she couldn't really get a feel for how soft it might have been, and stood on it with both front hooves. More of the same. She pressed her face against the bed, gently resting the upper(front?) half of her body on it before sighing contentedly. Very soft. She remembered the crick in her back she'd gotten after falling asleep on the bleachers during the early stages of the Battle of the Bands.

Stupid piano couple and their stupid lullaby. Sonata honked my nose to wake-

Aria was jolted awake by a thumping noise at the door, emitting a barely-muted shriek of panic as she smoothed out the surface she'd rested on. That noise meant the coast was clear outside and Adagio was asking for a report. Aria quietly scurried to the door and cracked it open. 

Adagio didn't turn to look at her, not even changing the coquettish expression on her face as she scanned the halls. "Anything yet?"

"He's got contacts all over the place, at least five towns popping up more than once on the letters in his desk."

"Suppose that's something."

Closing the door, Aria got back to work. Time to look at that bedside table now. Opening the drawer, the very first thing she saw was a gold-trimmed, jewel-encrusted book with the word Diary in big, pointy, fairy-tale-penmanship letters.

Jackpot!

She opened it.

Dear Diary,

...

...

...

Aria swore under her breath.

It wasn't that he had written unflattering things about her so much as that he had written nothing at all. Flipping through it from cover to cover, she found that 'Dear Diary' was the entire extent of the words in that book. Why did he have the damn thing?! Whatever. Waste of time. Adagio didn't need to know about that. 

Replacing the not-diary exactly where it had been, she kept picking through the obvious places, the tabletops and storage compartments, before checking under the bed, behind paintings, and in the back of the closet.

There were fancy clothes in all three locations, perplexingly, which at least put to rest her thoughts about his proper-place-ness. 

What would she think if I told her the guy she's pretending to be hot for is off his nut? Doesn't matter, I need to find something substantial before-

Another thump at the door. Aria gulped. Desperately glancing around the room again, she took in every detail she could bake into a pie of information to stuff down Adagio's throat.

That was a weird metaphor... Anyway!

One step toward the door, Details! Blue stuff everywhere, is he a narcissist?

Two steps, Not likely, only mirror is in the conjoining bathroom.

Three steps, Wait, did I check in there?!

Four steps, No. No, and don't be an idiot.

Five, Oh, I know!!

She cracked the door, Adagio's question coming in the form of a curious glance. "Got a theory," Aria whispered, "apart from some clothes stuck in weird places, his room is totally normal. Err, normal for a rich guy's. Sit-com, even." Adagio arched a brow as she looked at Aria out of the corner of her eye, waiting for more. "No books, no posters, nothing to show he has any hobbies, nothing to set it apart as a room somepony lives in. I think he's got another room, another house somewhere, the place where he actually hangs out during the day."

Adagio nodded a little, still alert for others coming down the hallway. "That or he's very, very dull. Either way, I can work with this. Anything else?"

"That's about all I've found in there, unless you want me to check the bathroom." The last part was said sarcastically, but for a few seconds it looked like Adagio was actually considering it.

"No," she decided, "best we get out of here while the coast is clear. Come on."

As Adagio stepped away from the door, still cautiously glancing about, Aria slipped out of Blueblood's room and gently closed the door behind her, the two of them casually walking down the hall to await Sonata's return in the Pisces room. Or lunch, if they could remember where the dining room was.

"I didn't even hear anything outside," Aria started conversationally, "did you keep anypony from asking what you were up to without a word, or...?"

Adagio chuckled. "No, nopony even walked by. You were clear the whole time."

Something about this irked the sneaky pegasus. "You mean I didn't even need to be quiet? Come to think of it, couldn't you have gone in yourself?"

"Nopony came by, but if they had? I'd rather the one of us better at hiding have some measure of warning if the other couldn't keep the visitor out." Aria looked back at her in what she meant to be a 'yea, I agree' kind of way, but Adagio looked slightly embarrassed. "I know, I know," she said with a light shake of her head, "my hair doesn't exactly blend in, ever, and we don't have the proper means of concealment in this world." 

There was a pause. "The way you move is kinda wonky too."

"What?!"

"That 'I own everyone and everything here' walk? Not good for going unnoticed, and you do it constantly, even as a pony."

Slowing her pace for a moment, Adagio felt very self-conscious. She moved with her shoulders up, back lightly arched, her behind swaying gently with each step, and her head held high. She couldn't quite argue. "Thanks for the tip," she hissed.

Aria smirked. "Any time."

They were quiet for a few minutes of hallway wandering. "For the record," muttered Adagio, "it's an 'I own everyone and everything everywhere' walk."


---


Things were going well.

He still hadn't gotten much out of Sonata in terms of information, but as far as aneurysms were concerned? Doing great! She was much more tolerable company than Aria Blaze had been, at any rate, content to ask questions rather than recoil from them. However, this meant there was almost no time to ask much of anything about Sonata herself, let alone the others. 

The group stood before a blank pedestal labeled 'King Sombra's Horn', which sounded a little grizzly even without the curator talking about getting the ponies of the Crystal Empire to part with it. 

"I know the dark, tyrannical monster that enslaved them all is part of their history, but surely they see that the horn is part of the rest of Equestria's history too? They tell me every time I write that the horn, seen falling just after Sombra was magnificently dispatched by our heroine Princess Twilight Sparkle, simply hasn't been located since, but somepony must have happened across it by now."

Blueblood had heard it was actually a combination of Spike The-Dragon and Princess Cadence (that there might have earned her title, at least) that dealt with the monster, but he wasn't much interested in that right now. Again, Sonata looked at him with that strange, wide-eyed, feed-me-knowledge face. He couldn't tell what it said that they were getting to the point that words weren't always necessary so soon. "Dark overlord, reigned over the Crystal Empire until his shenanigans got him banished to a glacier." Short explanations were best, he had learned.

"Bani-shenanigans? I'm starting to see a pattern here."

Nearly every time the curator introduced an exhibit of something related to one of Princess Twilight's adventures, a similar exchange took place, until the curator announced the end of the tour. "Well, that concludes the highlights of Archive Harmony: History of Today, but I'm certain there'll be more to see in the coming years." He ended the statement with a little chuckle before saying they were more than welcome to take a look around for themselves and that an assistant would be happy to answer any questions. A moment later, a pony Sonata vaguely recognized walked in with a tired expression.

Fired, then hired, in the same day, Suri couldn't decide if she was lucky or unlucky to be working at a museum that only brought her in because they needed more staff to open. Still, after the incident at the library and the argument with her employer that followed, this was a job, at least. Forcing a smile, she looked to the band of ponies that were already beginning to wander around glancing at things. "Hi, welcome to Archive Harmony. I'll be here if you have any questions, heheh, okay?"

"Ooh, ooh, over here!" A blue, waving hoof caught her attention, as did the blue face next to it. "I have questions!"

Suri's jaw nearly fell open in shock. It was all she could do to not cry out 'YOU AGAIN?!' in an accusing and get-talked-to-in-the-back-room kind of way. Gritting her teeth, but keeping a smile as best she could, she moved towards the filly that got her fired yesterday. "Y-yes...?"

Sonata smiled a little. "Can I see the nightmare princess again? I'm wondering how she got her wings."

"Queen," Blueblood corrected quietly, "Nightmare Moon considered herself as more of a queen." He'd never heard of a 'king' or 'queen' that wasn't evil somehow. Zebra Emperor, Buffalo Chieftain, etc., even the Diamond Dog Alpha Male, was a decent, if dumb fellow, but the Changeling Queen was decidedly vile.

"Yea, what he sai-" It was then that Suri noticed that next to her newest nemesis was none other than Princess Celestia's nephew. Eeek! "Hello," she said in a mechanical monotone, her eyes wide and not focusing on anything at all, "Prince Blueblood. Haha. Nice of you to visit."

"Indeed."

A minute later, they again stood before the remains of Nightmare's armor.

"So," inquired Sonata, "How did she get wings?"

She tried to forget the presence of the guy that would... do, something to get her in serious trouble if she acted weird to focus on the pony that had already done that once. "W-what?"

The image of a close-up of the ponnequin's wings floated over Sonata's slightly incredulous head. "Hellooo, the flappy, feathery things you see on birds?"

"I know what wings are." The given question just wasn't the sort of thing Suri had been briefed on in terms of things to say about the exhibits, not helped by the other mare's tone. "I'm not really sure how she got 'em, okay?"

"For realzies? You're not very good at this." 

That she said it so matter-of-factly only aggravated Suri further as Blueblood turned away to cough into a hoof, pointedly obscuring his mouth. Was he laughing at her? "I think," she said in as level a tone as she could manage, "she kinda always had them? Like you've always had a horn?" 

"I haven't always had a horn," replied the 'unicorn' filly with a perfectly straight face.

Now Suri's jaw did drop. 

Is this bitch just messing with me?! 

She glanced at Blueblood, sure he'd be laughing even harder, but he looked just as surprised as she was.

"I-I'm sorry," he half-mumbled, looking at Sonata, "what?"

Noticing the perplexed looks she was getting, Sonata forced a wide, guilty smile. "Haha, did I say I didn't always have a horn? I did! Have a horn, I mean! That's what I meant. To say."

Suri slooowly closed her mouth. She wouldn't fall for it this time. She'd ask no questions, make no assumptions, give the newest bane of her existence nothing to work with, and walk away. And that's exactly what she did, whatever-her-name-was's stupid questions be damned.

Feeling like that little tidbit was the most he could have ever reasonably hoped for, Blueblood cleared his throat. "Well, I, uh, suppose we should be heading back soon. Shall we?"

Sonata smiled more normally. "Uh-huh!" 

He bought it! I am sooo smooth.


---


The Pisces room, later that day...

"So, you guys wanna hear how my day went?"

Aria rolled her eyes. "No, we all came back here to stare at the ceiling together." Sonata looked up. "Out with it, hair-brain!!"

"Hey," Sonata retorted, tearing her gaze away from the artfully-decorated ceiling, "you've got twice as much hair as me, so if anything you're even more-"

"Enough," growled Adagio, for reasons that had nothing to do with her having the most hair of any of them, "What did you uncover with the prince?"

"Oh, it was great! We went to the place with the ribbon and Blueblood cut it in half! He did it with this crazy, floaty, flying scissor magic. I gotta look that up in the book later. Then we went inside and there was a black fr-err, alla, al, alley... alicorn? A princess who didn't move or talk and wore cracked, blue stuff held on with clear tape." An image of just that appeared above her head. "I never found out how she got wings. And then, there was..."

Her descriptions continued in that fashion until she wrapped up with missing horns and bani-shenanigans. Even with visual aid of the projection spell, Aria and Adagio looked hopelessly lost.

"W-what," Adagio muttered, trying to decipher where the facts ended and Sonata began, "what sort of museum was this...?"

"A new one! The guy in purple (I guess he owned the place?) who showed us around kept saying it was stuff that happened not too long ago, mentioning Princess Twilight a lot. Did you guys know she's done the rainbow-blasty thing more than once? Usually without even singing?"

Adagio's mind flashed back to the newspapers she saw the day before, some of the headlines eerily fitting with a little of what Sonata described. 

It couldn't be. How could all of that happen in such a short span of time? Everypony we see acts so normal...

"So," Sonata wrapped up, "that's how it went. What about you guys?"

Aria shrugged. She hadn't really expected much out of Sonata anyway. "We took a look around his room, or one of them anyway. Learned he's an obnoxious jerk and a boring stiff."

Sonata tilted her head. "Like, both? At the same time?"

"Yea, I was shocked too."

"Specifically," interjected Adagio, "it seems he has little in the way of leisure activity, at least in readily recognizable form. It's possible he's leading some sort of double-life and the room Aria inspected is just the one they know about here at the palace. However, as there's no time to shadow him and see what he does day-to-day, I'll work with what we've gathered thus-far."

The way she moved a forehoof suggested she wished ponies had fingers to count off with. "We first found him 'wandering' the city alone, denying anything was amiss the first time he was pressed, which means he's probably the proud type. The letters in his desk were likely business contacts, not friends, which means he would be lonely. He proved patient up to a point with Aria, and when his expectations weren't met, grew cross with her. This suggests he, as royalty, is accustomed to getting what he wants before long."

"So," Aria pondered aloud, "shouldn't he already be pressing us harder with questions, if that was what he wanted yesterday?"

"He invited us here so his colleagues wouldn't make fun of him for coming alone to that charity thing in a few days. That he seems to be acting as though your dinner date never happened indicates that is his primary objective."

Aria was sure she wouldn't have even reacted if not for Sonata smiling slyly at her, quietly sing-songing. "Aria had a da-ate~!"

The purple pony's face flushed in irritation, gritting her teeth as she grabbed Sonata in a headlock. "Shut. Your. Face."

Adagio cleared her throat, visibly annoyed. Her cohorts separated. "I need only act as his ideal partner and he'll never want to be without my company again. From what we've seen of him, that's a calm, patient sort that listens to what he says, that assures him he's every bit as good a pony as he wishes he was. Finally, did you two notice something he didn't do in our time here?" She answered before anything stupid could be said. "He never came by for... illicit reasons. Never propositioned any of us for a roll in the overpriced hay. I trust you would have told me had he approached in such a fashion?" This time she waited, Aria and Sonata nodding that he'd made no such advances toward them. "So he's not looking for an easy lay, but companionship, a pony to talk to." Adagio let out a sinister chuckle, smirking at Aria. "And as I've already heard enough about that sort of thing to replicate the desired behavior..."

Aria chuckled a little too, pleased all her time spent listening in on the Rainbooms and griping about it afterward wasn't for nothing.

Now it looked like Adagio was trying to form a fist. Dramatically. "He's as good as mine." The trio stood in silence for a moment. Adagio shrugged, moving to rest on her bed. "I'm done, you can hurt each other now."

Aria needed no further prompting to pick up where she left off, administering noogies as Sonata squirmed and complained for the next fifteen minutes.


---


Meanwhile, Blueblood paced his room, trying to get his thoughts together.

Won't say where they're from, no agency in Equestria has ever heard of them, they told me they're actresses, but they haven't asked about anything suiting that career even once. Did they leave their home because they were weary of it? Tired of where they lived just as much as what they did? Possible, but they claimed to be rehearsing when I first met them. Then again, I initially lied about what I was doing there too.

Did that ghost-town patio just attract dishonest ponies? Maybe the reason it was almost always vacant was because ponies compulsively lied and nopony could stand it any more.

Stay focused! Miss Blaze was clearly hiding something, Miss Dusk was clearly screwing with me, and in both cases it worked! I know nothing about them, anything I learned since we met could be part of an act, but everything about those three SINGS trouble! If I could just-

He was startled by a knock at the door. "Prince Blueblood?" It was one of the maids. "I have this week's files from Appaloosa for you."

"Ah, come in." 

Looking over the folder, he noticed the maid was still standing there. "I'm sorry, was there something else?"

"Yes, Your Grace. One of your guests asked directions to this room earlier today, I think she wished to speak with you."

"Oh? Which of them might that be?"

The maid blinked, averting her eyes for a fraction of a second. "It, uh, it was-orange-IMEAN, Miss, um, the one with-"

"-orange hair," he offered, sympathizing with not having a perfect memory for names, "Adagio Dazzle?"

"Er, yes, thank you sir, her. It was during your outing today."

He nodded. "I see, thank you for informing me. Would you inform the chefs I'll not be attending dinner this evening? There are a few matters I wish to attend to."

"Very well, Your Grace."

As the door closed, Blueblood smiled.

Miss Dazzle wishes to talk, does she? At last! Talk we will! 

But first, he levitated a coat from his closet and checked the pockets. "Now where was...? Nope." Another coat. "Not here either. Maybe-ah!" He levitated a painting off the wall and the vest that had hung behind it, retrieving a slip of folded paper from the front pocket. "There you are!" Unfolding it, he looked over the little list of private meeting places he'd made note of over the last few years. The Amour des Etoiles cafe would do. Replacing the note, vest, and painting, he put on one of the non-storage coats and headed out the door. He had to make a few reservations.


---


Kibitz again came by to let the secret sirens know that dinner was served, but he didn't mention that apart from themselves, only Princess Luna would be attending. She seemed no less happy to have company, urging them to sit closer to the head of the table. Unless they preferred talking loudly? That was most acceptable too!

Adagio opted for the usual seating arrangement, making it easier to whisper to her subordinates when necessary with less risk of the princess overhearing what wasn't being broadcasted. 

"How fared your day, guests of Blueblood?" It wasn't the Royal Canterlot Voice, just very, very loud.

With an uncertain measure of luck, Sonata was happy to oblige Luna's offer. "Pretty good, thanks. How was yours?"

Luna laughed. It might have been easier to do than a loud chuckle. "I rise with the moon, dear filly, through the days I sleep."

"Okay then. By the way, why are we being loud now? We've pretty much just talked normal before!"

"Yes," boomed Luna with a slightly mischievous smile, "But neither Sister nor the young prince are present. As such, phooey to decorum! Shout with me, and let us be jovial!"

"Okay!" Sonata then went comparatively silent as she nibbled on some lettuce, leaving the others to fill the silence.

Aria took a moment to clear her throat. "So, are those two doing something together, or...?"

Luna seemed to ponder this, but shook her head. "It is doubtful, he was not present for Sister's teleportation spell." She had said something about visiting Cadence. On that note... "So, which of the three of you seeks our nephew's hoof?"

It was through sheer poor timing that Aria had been trying to tune out the cacophony by taking a drink of what might have been wine, might have been plain grape juice. Either way, the liquid sprayed like a fountain before she choked out a reply, conveniently at Luna's desired volume. "WHAT?!"

By the complete absence of server ponies, Adagio guessed they had been through evenings with pretty much just Luna before. Probably for the best. "What she means is-" Mouth still full, Sonata cleared her throat meaningfully at her while nodding to Luna, making Adagio feel oddly abashed. "Er, I..." 

Probably best not to risk offending a princess by refusing her whims. 

"Ahem, what she means to ask is which of us is most likely to one day be more than a guest of the prince," it was while making a point of turning her head away that Adagio started to feel silly, "not that I mean to say anything of myself on the matter." Conveniently for her act, she started to blush, primarily for the realization that attempting to sound coy and coquettish did not work when speaking very loudly.

"Oh-ho," crowed Luna, "Might this be the reason I hear whispers among the maids of your wish to visit his chambers?"

Adagio smiled sheepishly, a little more genuinely than she would have liked, as the statement echoed through that part of the castle. Even Aria looked embarrassed for her.

"There is no need to be so reserved, I am certain Dear Nephew would welcome company! So many hours he spends with those unintelligible forms, some time away from them would do him good." She smiled a little wider. "As it happens, I suspect he may or may not have taken a particular fascination with a recent acquaintance of his. In the event that one such somepony were to fancy him in kind, I would certainly understand if they wished to keep the matter between them until it were formally shared between the two of them."

"Good to hear," muttered Aria under her breath, giving Adagio a look she interpreted as 'this is all part of the plan, right?'

Truth be told, it was going about as well as loudly shouting her intentions could reasonably hope to. Adagio smiled at Luna, trying to convince herself the whole castle had better things to do than listen in on them. "I certainly look forward to our next meeting, whenever that may be." Considering the current phase of the plan, maybe this was good timing?

Not long after, the trio excused themselves, for reasons that had nothing to do with Luna's insistence that she was the princess of the night, and all that went on through it's duration. So they could ask her anything about those things. Really. They found their way back to the Pisces room without assistance this time.

"So," said Aria with a raised eyebrow, "guess you've got a new boyfriend, then?"

Adagio sighed with barely-contained annoyance. "Provided the target doesn't hear what most of the castle no doubt heard and take offense? It's possible. At the very least, I think I have Princess Luna's approval, which can only work to our benefit."

Sonata smiled. "Told you they liked us!"

"Surprised you would notice," scoffed Aria, "that's gotta be the first time you've ever shown awareness during a meal."

"Hmph," she replied, raising her snout not unlike some of the nobleponies they'd seen since their arrival in Canterlot, "It's rude to talk with your mouth full, everything else is fair game. If you weren't so rude, you'd know that."

"Oh, bite me!"

"See what I mean?! Rude!!"

"Tch. You're gonna turn into one of those stupid, smarmy, stuck-up stiffs."

"I am not!"

"Are too."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

Trying to ignore the sense of deja vu, Adagio took her place on her bed for the night. One good thing she could say about being banished? Her hair had helped to cover the ears of her other form a lot better for moments like this.

"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too."
> Chapter 8: "Can We Talk?"
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Aria groggily pondered when it was that Adagio became a morning pony. 

Possibly when she became a pony? 

The massive puff of orange hair near the door obscured it's owner's face from the side as she looked over a piece of paper. Aria meandered over, yawning into a hoof. "Hey, what's up?"

She was snapped wide awake by the return of Adagio's more sinister grin when she suddenly turned to face her. "I found it pushed under the door. It's from Blueblood, addressed specifically to me."

Aria glanced over to where Sonata was supposed to be, not seeing her there. She gulped. "And, that's, good, right?" She forced a smile. Badly.

Adagio chuckled almost maniacally. "Yes, Aria, this bodes well. He wants to meet me, alone, in what the letter hints is a private area, tonight! This is exactly what I needed."

As Aria wondered whether or not Adagio knew how what she just said sounded, there was another split-second scan for Sonata, to no avail. "Okay, so, what do we do now?"

Adagio approached Sonata's empty bed. "Wake up!" She stamped a hoof by the edge of the lightly embroidered quilt, hanging just off the floor. A startled shriek came at the same time as a thumping noise, followed closely by a pained groan.

Sonata's groggy, blue, slightly sore head popped out from under the bed. She gave a plaintive whine. "Whaaat?"

"Get up, we're going to the library again following breakfast."

"Huh?"

"Ditto that," remarked Aria, "don't we already have a book for magic?"

"Yes," answered Adagio, still smiling evilly, "but this time we find all the information we'll need, to sway both the prince and this world when we have them in our grasp! And I know just what to say if anypony asks what we're doing there..."


---


"Man," huffed Aria as the three of them entered CSFGU's library, "I can't believe they bought that."

Adagio chuckled. "You know, with how easily we've been getting by with Princess Celestia and her sister, I'm starting to wonder if bewitching their counterparts was even necessary." With a split-second's reflection, her smile disappeared. "Though I do wish that were still an option."

"So," Sonata asked, glancing around inquisitively, "what are we looking for this time?"

"I'd like to double-check what I found last time. I'll find those insane articles again, you two see what you can dig up that might pertain to those stories." Her cohorts nodded affirmatively, if with some reluctance on Aria's part.


---


About an hour later, Adagio sat at a table covered in newspapers, very annoyed.

'Archfiend Tirek Battles Princess Twilight for Control of Equestria' 

Is this meant to be humorous? 

'Nightmare Moon Threatens Nighttime Eternal'

You're kidding, right? 

'Royal Wedding Crashed by Changeling Queen'

Just perfect. 

'Chocolate Rain and-'  

Adagio slapped the paper on the table, resisting the urge to scream in frustration. Get the local newspapers to make up a story about checker-pattern fields and giant houses of cards? Sure, why not, what's the fun in making sense?!

"Goin' well over here, I guess?"

She didn't look up from the table. "Not now, Aria. Have you found anything substantial?"

"I looked, but there aren't any books on the stuff in those papers. If it was all recent, I guess they wouldn't stick it in the history books yet?"

The two of them heard Sonata, accompanied by rapid hoofsteps. "Guysguysguysguysguysguysguysguysguys!!"

They replied in unison, but kept library volume rules in mind. "What?!"

Sonata stopped to catch her breath, holding a book where they could see. "Ok, you know how you asked us to go looking for stuff that happened?" To a pair of unamused nods, she went on. "Well I figured, 'if we wanna know what we missed, why not start with US and go from there?'" She put the book on the table and started flipping pages. "So I found us!"

When the flipping stopped, Adagio found herself smiling with nostalgia for their old bodies, though the artist really didn't do justice to the way their scales shined with iridescent glow in the sunlight. "They remember after all. And?"

Sonata wore a strange look of worry and despair. "Check the dates. Between any of those papers, and the time it says we were banished."

Picking up a newspaper while glancing at the book, Aria raised an eyebrow. "What? What does that have to do wi-" She stopped, her jaw going slack, her blood going cold.

Adagio wasn't looking much better, sitting perfectly still as her eyes rapidly jumped from paper, to book, to other papers, growing paler as she desperately willed the numbers to rearrange in her sight.

The two of them remained in shocked silence until Sonata determined that saying it out loud fell to her. She did so quietly, hoping that would make it better somehow. "We're over a thousand years in the future."

No response.

"Guys? I said we're-"

"Well," uttered Adagio flatly, "this explains the change of speech."

They were again quiet before incredulous, confused laughter bubbled up in Aria's throat. "W-what? You're thinking about that right now?"

"Yes," she answered entirely too calmly before changing the subject, still not looking up from the papers. "and if anything, this works to our advantage. A thousand years of not being around likely means we've all but faded from general memory, everyone who would have recognized us even if we'd returned to our original forms are long dead. Given that we had no allies, that's entirely a positive thing." Now she looked them in the eyes. "As such, we press forward." 

There was a moment of Aria and Sonata looking back and forth between her and each other, as if trying to swallow the news in one bite. Seeing the resolve, the sheer force of will in Adagio's eyes, they relented to her command once more. "O-okay," muttered Aria, "what next?"

"Sonata, you look for information on this 'Hearths Warming' holiday we heard about last time. Aria, see what you can find on the places the letters in Blueblood's desk were addressed to, I'll be looking into how Equestria functions in this... new age." Shifting the newspapers into a pile, she muttered to herself. "Has to mean something that they can just shrug off crisis after crisis."

Aria raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said all of it was-"

"Yes," she grumbled, less than pleased to be proven wrong about something, "but with what we've seen, Princess Twilight, the stories in the papers, what Sonata described in the museum? It all fits, and Twilight Sparkle was at the center of each event. We'll have to be careful or we may fall victim to her magic again." As the two of them set off to find the designated information, she willed herself not to think about everything they'd lost since meeting that infernal wizard. 

It doesn't matter. I'll ensnare the prince, he'll do whatever we need him to, and then everything will be fine. Everything will be fine!

A while later, Sonata made her way back to Adagio just as she was putting the last of the newspapers back where they'd been.

"Hey, Dagi?" 

"What is it, Sonata?"

"I've been wondering; the stories with all those guys locked up in Tartarus; why weren't we sent there?"

"What, to the massive caverns guarded by a three-headed dog?"

"Yea. I mean, not like that would have been any better, but since it was probably Old Beardy that locked up half of those guys, why would he do something different for the three of us?"

Adagio chuckled. "That would have been a sight. The three of us, 'contained' in a prison full of angry inmates brimming with negative energy, but a tune away from being a happy workforce, desperate to escape? Even if starting the most destructive riot in history wasn't an option, with our gems, we could have likely gotten Cerberus to chew through our binds and be off, maybe tell him to go play fetch with the sun on the way out." She leaned a little to get a better look at the book balanced on Sonata's back. It was green with red lines along the edges. "What's that there?"

Sonata jumped in panic, rapidly turning back and forth. "What's what?! Is it on me?! Is it a spider?! HELP!!"

One corrective dope-slap later, they'd set the book on the table. The Joys of Hearths Warming, went the title. "Ah, good," Adagio said with a nod, "let me know what you learn from this one, I'll see what I can find regarding..." She paused, not sure how to word it. "The, nation in general, I suppose." Perhaps the system of government would be a good place to start.


---


Adagio was starting to feel like an idiot. It seemed like every time she set herself to research something, her results were useless, baffling, or both. Such was the case when she tried to figure out who was really 'in charge' of Equestria. Blueblood had said his aunts were the head of state, but there were all these other offices and titles of ambiguous meaning. Towns everywhere with mayors, nobility that did, what exactly? Did ponies operate on something like feudalism? Were they capitalistic like the other world's residents had been? And what was this about buffalo chieftains? Was tribalism alive and well too? What the hell kind of hierarchy were they running here?!

She groaned, resting her head on the table. 

Knowing that princesses are at the top is good enough, right? 

That didn't explain why Twilight Sparkle wasn't here in Canterlot, but Adagio badly hoped it meant there'd been a falling out of some kind. Whatever, if they just knew who the most important ponies were, she wouldn't have to tell the others that she'd failed twice in a row. That both of them had generally succeeded at their tasks only made her look worse.

Approaching Adagio's table, Aria didn't envy her. Looking up stuff in old books was about as exciting as it sounded to begin with, looking up government workings had to be like watching paint dry one drop at a time. Getting her attention, Aria shared what she'd found about the places (it was initially only the three or four she could remember the names of, but Adagio didn't need to know that) in the letters. Appaloosa, Fillydelphia, Las Pegasus, Manehattan, and some others that weren't included in the addresses.

"So what you're telling me," Adagio summarized, "is that in addition to the thatched-roof cottages we saw outside Twilight's keep and the lucrative buildings we've seen in this city, there are dusty towns akin to what you'd see in those cowboy movies and bustling metropolises like those in the other world, and the Crystal Empire, which apparently got wiped off the map for about as long as we did before miraculously returning, all existing simultaneously?"

"Yup."

There was a long silence as Adagio tried and eventually gave up in connecting the dots as to how things must have changed in the last millenium. "Let's go see what Sonata's found."


---


"So," Aria mused, "it's basically Chr-"

Sonata nodded. "Kinda. Winter holiday, everypony getting together, weird food, warmth and friendship all over the place."

The sound of a slow-building cackle from Adagio drew their attention. She was smiling maliciously, even for her. "Hearths Warming. The most festive of holidays in the coldest time of year, light in their hearts against the encroaching darkness of the season, love and joy spreading like wildfire to warm even the coldest spirits..."

Adagio getting poetic, for lack of better words, usually meant a big plan was in motion, Battle of the Bands big, but her fellow sirens couldn't help a worried glance at each other.

She emitted a low chuckle before smiling with faux-sweetness. "It's all so perfect, isn't it? Why, could you imagine if something were to happen on such a day?" Her smile again grew dark. "Something so tragic, so horrible, that all those warm, fuzzy sentiments going around were to be converted into anger and resentment? Understanding would become suspicion, feelings of camaraderie would become feelings of betrayal, and all would blame each other in their hurt, certain that the disaster was anyone's fault but their own. And best of all, we won't even have to sing to make them do it. Under the right circumstances, ponies will argue and hate each other all on their own, and when that happens? Our encore, a thousand years overdue, will shake the foundations of this realm! When our voices are restored to their full power, we'll make sure the only thing in the world that isn't utterly despised, is the three of us!"

The mastermind to the destruction of Hearths Warming was milliseconds away from beginning a loud, maniacal laugh when Aria put a hoof over her mouth, whispering through her teeth as she quickly glanced around. "Cool it, will ya? We're in a library!"

Adagio blinked twice, equally surprised and annoyed to be cut off in her rant monologue mad rambling explanation, but silently consenting that maybe this wasn't the best place for it. She cleared her throat. "Right, well. After tonight, we can get Blueblood to assist with this phase of the plan." As he likely understood the workings of the holiday better anyway, it was perhaps less than sensible to hammer out specifics right now. 

The next hour and a half was spent looking up a few more things, sharing findings, Adagio getting frustrated with a stuck sliding ladder needed to reach a particular book, (it's not stuck anymore) Aria and Sonata getting into an argument over whether or not princesses were nocturnal and Celestia was some kind of mutant, and some other shenanigans that almost got them thrown out before they opted to go back to the castle and, given all the activity of the last few days, just rest for a while.


---


Later on that day, the trio waited in the Pisces room in their own ways. Aria got bored and fell asleep, Sonata practiced sound spells in a more controlled manner than the day before, and Adagio went over the lines and thought processes she'd use to convince Blueblood she was everything he could ever want in a mare.

For the third time in recent memory, Aria was jolted awake by a knock at the door. "Good evening, ladies," called Kibitz, "there are reservations for Miss Adagio Dazzle at the Amour des Etoiles cafe, complete with escort should she see fit."

Adagio smirked, whispering to the others as she approached the door. "Be good while I'm gone, you may be welcoming a princess when I return."

Aria rolled her eyes, Sonata stared intently at Adagio's sides as she went out the door. When they were alone, she turned to Aria. "Is she growing wings? Or do you get a horn first?"

Aria repeated her last action. "She means she's gonna charm that jerk so hard he might propose to her." A confusing thought ocurred to her. "Or, would that make them king and queen? Isn't that how it works?"

Sonata shrugged. "Maybe, but I think kings and queens are like, automatically bad in this world."

"Huh. Wait, if queens are 'bad' and princesses are 'good', does that mean Adagio thinks she's turning 'good'?"

"Or bad while making Blueblood a bad prince."

"Would that be good or bad?"

"Uhm, I don't... Bad for Equestria?"

"Screw Equestria! I wanna know if it's good or bad for us!" 

"Yea, me too."

Neither of them knew what it would mean if Adagio suddenly decided to go straight or something, but it didn't seem likely regardless. "Anyway, I don't remember that being a thing back when-"

"A thousand years ago?"

The two of them stared at each other in silence as the reminder of their predicament sunk in. Aria got off the bed, casually paced over to where Sonata was sitting, and sat next to her, looking away. She spoke softly, as if afraid the walls would hear. "How you holding up, Nata?"

Sonata's reply was just as quiet. "I think I'm okay, Ria. You?"

She shrugged a little. "It could be worse, right? If we didn't come out of the portal-" she examined a hoof, "-different, we'd have gotten caught like, right away, right?"

Sonata nodded, starting to smile. "Yea. Besides, like I said before... At least this way, we're cute!"

Aria snorted, the corners of her mouth just slightly inclined upward. After another quiet moment, she nudged Sonata. "Any idea what's up with Adagio lately?"

Sonata shook her head. "No, but I know what you mean. Ever since the Bee-Oh-Tee-Bee, she's been scarier than ever. But at the same time? Like, nicer."

"Right?!"

Both of them remembered that night very clearly.


---


"Dammit, Sonata, will you give it a rest?! Our magic is gone, and so are our voices!"

"Oh, like moping about it is any better? That's all you know how to do when things go bad, isn't it, Aria?!"

"Shut up!"

"YOU shut up!"

As the two glared at each other, both realized they were unconsciously waiting for something. That something currently stood a few feet away, staring at them, dead silent and utterly expressionless. They shared a tinge of uncertainty as they looked at her, Sonata the first to verbalize their mutual question for her. "Uh, D-Dagi? Aren't you gonna yell too?"

Hollow eyes stared back at them, slowly turning toward the sky. 

"Bit of a set-back, isn't it?" 

The others felt their jaws drop. She'd said it so calmly, so casually, one would think she were discussing a sudden rain on an otherwise sunny day, but before they could say anything, she turned and walked away.


---


"I-I was sure," muttered Sonata, "that she would get mad. Like, really, really, madder-than-she's-ever-been mad. But, nothing."

Aria nodded. "Yea. The way she's flipped out over stuff before, I thought she'd be livid after what happened that night. Ever since, it's like all we can do is wait for the axe to fall, but at the same time, s-she..." She spared a quick glance at Sonata, just to make sure she was paying attention. Aria didn't like making eye contact when they talked like this. "Yesterday, when you were with Blueblood? I think she might have trying to be friendly. I mean, she talked in a way I don't think she'd ever normally talk to either of us."

Sonata nodded. "She was really patient with me in the library, the first time we went. No 'Hurry it up!', no 'Stay focused, you idiot!', she hardly even gave me the usual mean stares."

"And, back when we were on the train? I don't know if you heard it, but she actually complimented both of us."

"Huh. She's done that a couple times, actually, since we got here. She used to only do it when we pulled in a lot of negative energy together, and we can't even do that anymore!" Sonata looked around the room, visibly worried. "What do you think it means?"

Aria gulped. "It means she's gonna explode, sooner or later. When she does, it will be biblical, the ground will shake and the sky will turn red, they'll make a two-hour documentary on it and the victims will be remembered as heroes. B-but, hey!" She managed to force a small smile. "Maybe it'll be at Blueblood, and not us?"

Sonata copied her expression. "And then she'll go back to normal?"

Smiling got a little easier. "Normal for Adagio."

The two of them giggled together.

There was another quiet moment. The pair didn't need to look at one another to feel a little better about having gotten recent worries off their chests, in a way they would never try with Adagio. Probably because half of their worries were about Adagio herself. 

"Hey Ria," Sonata picked up at normal volume, "have you ever been a pony before?"

Aria was sufficiently thrown. "Um. What?"

"Before this time, I mean? Have you ever turned into a pony, with wings or otherwise?"

"Of course not," she deadpanned, turning to look at Sonata now, "why would you  think I had?"

"Then why did you know how to move with four legs?" Aria's mouth hung open in confusion-addled silence. Sonata elaborated. "I've never been a pony either, but we all knew how to move, like it was nothing. When we first turned into humans, I remember all three of us having trouble staying upright for at least a few minutes, but pony bodies? Got it in a pinch. Isn't that weird?"

The Hippocampus-turned human-turned pegasus's mouth remained hanging open, utterly lost for a response. Sonata waited patiently, her eyes saying it was just as much a mystery to her and she'd very much like an answer soon. Aria eventually got her mouth to work again. "Huh. Now I kinda wish Adagio was here, bet she'd have some kind of explanation."

"How do you think the thing with the prince is going?"


---


Walking alongside the armored pony leading her to Blueblood's meeting place, Adagio decided it was probably for the best that he wouldn't so much as turn his head to catch sight of her; her smile might have been a little too enthusiastic at that moment. 

The building they stopped at seemed very unremarkable from the outside, at least compared to the rest of Canterlot, but the interior was a different story. Very dark, velvety blues and violets made up the plush, immaculate floors, walls, and ceilings, spotlessly clean apart from the odd white, glimmering stones embedded in seemingly random places. The combined effect of the small, shining stones and the dark environment was surreal, like walking through the depths of space. A waiter of some sort had evidently been expecting her, as he took over when the guard left with little more than a nod. 

As she was guided through the dimly-lit, well-furnished building, Adagio felt the faintest tingle along her spine. Knowing she was going to meet a stallion in private in a dark place, the cafe had an almost sensual feeling to it. If that was his intention, she'd use it for all it was worth. She was led to a large, black cylinder with a sliding door, the waiter gently pressing a button on the side. A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing a small, dark, circular chamber with a long, curved bench set around a little table.

But it was definitely too small for the first thing that sprung to mind to be done comfortably. 

Just as well, still not planning anything like what I thought Aria got up to, but hopefully he won't notice that.

Blueblood sat at the side of the table opposite the door, waving her in. Adagio was already wearing her 'friendly' face, making sure not to lay it on too thick just yet as she sauntered in and sat across from him. When she was seated, Blueblood's horn lit up and a valve on the wall behind her turned, closing the door and leaving a dim ceiling light as the only source of illumination.

"Welcome," he said, "I trust there were no problems on the way?"

"None at all," she cooed back.

"Good, good. Have you ever been to a place like this?"

She gently shook her head, resting her head on her forehooves, her elbows on the table, and her eyes firmly on his. 

"It's essentially a hybrid of restaurant and observatory, leaning toward the latter. On that note, would you like anything? They serve a variety of teas, coffees, and plates of bite-sized refreshments."

"It's not really food I'm interested in, Mister Blueblood." 

A lie! Finally! 

It was only technically untrue, in a really roundabout sort of way, but right now she'd take it.

To her mild surprise, he didn't seem to take the hint in that statement, just smiling normally. "Fair enough, definitely in the right building for that line of thought." He nodded upwards to a tube with a glass orb hanging down over the center of the table. "That's the main attraction to these booths, mixtures of magic and machinery that redirect the light in the night sky to be displayed in their respective chambers, letting guests view the stars as though they were out in the clear countryside without having to leave the city." He grinned a little wider. "Astral projections, if you will."

As he went on explaining how exactly the glass circles on the roof and a series of long tubes aligned to form the display that could be activated by a nearby switch, Adagio struggled to keep her alluring expression. Listening to him was part of the act, but something felt amiss. Shouldn't he be looking at her a little differently? This felt like one scholar sharing findings with another, not a meaningfully romantic outing.

"-which would bode ill for astrocartography. Thankfully, anypony qualified to make use of these systems likely wouldn't make such mistakes. But you're probably not interested in that, either?"

She felt a twinge of alarm, but kept it from her face. He'd said it very casually, still smiling as though nothing was the slightest bit out of place. "Well, fascinating as it is, I'm afraid my attention is..." she reached across the table to gently brush his hoof with her own, noticing right away that fingers were a lot more useful for light, coquettish touching, "elsewhere."

He chuckled lightly. "As is mine, truth be told, which is why I'd like to know a little more about you."

Here it is! "Anything at all."

"Thank you. Where did the three of you perform, before coming to Canterlot?"

She averted her eyes just slightly, tilting her head as though briefly reminiscing. "Ohh, here and there, though those days are quite past us now."

He nodded once. "Why did you want to leave?"

She internally smirked, having prepared an adequate defense against that kind of inquiry. She lowered her head to look down at the table for six and a half seconds, looking up with a sad, apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, a lot of things happened back home, and-" her lower lip quivered for a fraction of a second, her eyes misted over just enough to be perceptible in the dimly-lit chamber, and her breath hitched just slightly. "-we, my companions and I, don't really call that place home anymore."

He nodded again, giving her an understanding sort of look. "I see. For whatever it's worth, you have my condolences."

She shook her head, blinking away the tears that had been forming. "It's alright, we, we're quite past it now." In her mind, Adagio was laughing maniacally with the thrill of another deception. Although they really did flee from a place they had no reason to stay in. Another dimension probably qualifies as very far awa-

Shut up, brain, I'm counting this as a lie!

"How long have you known your companions, Miss Blaze and Miss Dusk?"

She displayed a warm smile. "Oh, I can't remember a time I was without them. I think of those two as family, we're all very close." 

Technically true again...

"I see. Next, what exactly is your troupe up to, here in our fair city?"

She blinked once, her mask nearly slipping. Didn't I already answer that one? "I... We're-"

"Broadening your horizons, seeking greener pastures?" He kept the same, ordinary smile, in stark contrast with his next statement. "It's passable, but are you sure there isn't something else you'd like to tell me?"

She gaped at him. "I-I beg your pardon?"

"For your alibi. That's the term, isn't it? For a falsehood being used as cover?" Before she could react, he reached out a hoof, speaking softly. "It's alright, really. I think I can help."

Quite a few thoughts shot through her head at that moment, a half-dozen impulses whirring about as she tried to best decide which would be the wisest course of action. She tried speech. "What?"

He nodded affirmatively. "Do you know why I wanted to talk to you in a small, private booth? Where the walls are thick enough that scholarly discussions of the stars and romantic sentiments alike are effectively muted to the rest of the world? I've tested these chambers, nopony could hear us even with their ear pressed up against the door, you can speak freely here."

Her ears drooped, her voice shook, but she managed to contain herself to a quiet question. "H-how much do you know?"

"I know that the three of you are hiding something. I know you're all very new to Equestria. Miss Dusk saying it out loud certainly helped, yes. I know you couldn't possibly be affiliated with any theater or film industry in the country. I know that, however far you've traveled, you would have learned more about recent events than you seemed to know when first I saw you if you'd come by normal means. I know your group is up to something. Most importantly of all? I know I can help."

Adagio looked him in the eye. Stared at him, bore into his soul with all she had. He didn't budge. If he was lying, he was better at it than she was. They'd come too far to run away now, and for all she knew, he had guards right outside the booth if she tried to escape. "I'm listening..."
> Chapter 9: Partnership
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pair in the Pisces room opted to lie on their respective beds as they talked, waiting for their leader's return to tell them whether all was well or that it was time to flee the city. They'd gone through a number of topics as they waited.

"...And that's pretty much how I learned I could walk on clouds."

"Wow! I saw a spell for that, but it looked even harder than the super springy spell you'd need to jump up that high!"

"So unicorns can do it too? Figures."

Sonata smiled mischievously. "We should like, both get on a cloud to hide from Dagi, just to see what she does!"

Aria snickered at the thought. "Probably storm around with that, 'when I find those idiots,' look on her face, or yell for us to come out." The smile slipped away. "Or, if she spots us, find a way to take down the cloud."

Sonata's eyes widened. "Can you do that?"

"Most likely. I pushed one around just yesterday, so if there's a way to shoot down clouds and she needs one to fall, she'll probably be the first to find it. And if we hopped to another one, you just know she'd keep at it until she'd grounded every cloud in the sky."

"Haha, yea... Scary." 

Aria found herself smiling almost hopefully. "But, that scary, I'll-get-what-I-want-no-matter-what-ness she has is usually on our side, right?"

Sonata looked like she was thinking hard. "I... I guess so?" She grinned. "Hey, yea! It's way less scary when you think of it that way!" After a short silence, Sonata frowned again. "Ria? Why don't we get along this well when Dagi's around?"

Feeling a small pang of shame, Aria turned away, shrugging dismissively. "You know why. It's just how we are, how we've kinda always been. What would Adagio say if she noticed we weren't in each other's hair all the time?" It was for roughly the same reason that Aria still forced herself to try to poke holes in Adagio's plans and disagree with her whenever possible; she was too smart not to notice if that stopped altogether.

Now it was Sonata that offered a hopeful smile. "That we're best buddies and she doesn't have to worry about us getting on her nerves anymore?"

Aria was less optimistic. "Or that it must mean we're plotting against her and she'll have to do something nasty to 'keep us in line'?"

The grin gave way to an angry pout. "Why do you have to be such a downer all the time?!"

Aria scowled in reply. "Why do you have to be so brainless?!"

"Oh yea? Well you're a bird-brain!"

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Does too! Bird-pony, bird-brain!" She concluded by blowing raspberries, the two of them glaring at each other when she was finished. They held the stares for several seconds before each of them started to smile, quiet giggles following. "You really are kind of a downer sometimes," said Sonata with a perfectly straight face.

"Hey," Aria huffed, "I'm just realistic. It pays to remember that stuff doesn't always go smooth. In fact, I was thinking that if Adagio doesn't get back by later tonight, that'll be our cue to high-tail it outta here." She glanced at the door to the balcony. "Got it all planned out; I'd slip out the door, fly straight up, and use the cloud cover to get as far from here as possible."

Sonata frowned, looking hurt. "What about me?"

"Springy jump and cloud-walking spells, remember?" She'd have felt bad about having no plan whatsoever for Adagio's escape, but she knew their leader. If Adagio didn't come back at all, she wasn't in trouble, she was dead.

"Or you could carry me."

She raised a doubting eyebrow. "I'm not saying you're fat, but..."

Blue cheeks tinted red as Sonata's face scrunched up. "I mean once I use a feather spell!"

Now the brow was raised in ordinary curiosity. "Feather spell?"

Her irritation forgotten, Sonata smiled. "It's a spell that makes whatever you cast it on really light, good for moving companies and ponies weighed down with too much stuff to get heavy things from one place to another with minimal ex, e-egg, uh... Hang on." She picked up the spellbook, flipping through to find the right page. "Aha! With minimal exertion!" She continued with her nose in the book, reading off the description like a student called on in class. "A less sensible pony might first think of a spell to enhance one's physical strength, but with this comes the difficulty of adapting to one's new-found might in short, irregular terms. Example: A pony employing the feather spell runs no enhanced risk of tearing a door off it's hinges." She looked up at Aria with a smile, as though expecting to be congratulated.

"Pfft, nerd."

Sonata scowled. "Bite me!"


---


"If I'm to be of any use to you three, I'll need to know what you're planning. What can you tell me without jeopardizing your efforts up to this point?"

Adagio sat with her forehooves crossed, looking across the table in the dim little chamber as though she expected Blueblood to pull his face off to reveal Princess Twilight, playing an insanely elaborate joke on her. "That depends, who else knows we're here tonight?"

"Well, Kibitz and whomever he may have informed as to my whereabouts, but I've not shared a breath of my observations of you three and I alone wish to aid in your efforts... Once I know what they are, mind you."

She was just slightly incredulous. "You must see how this sounds. How could you think I'd trust you with my plans?"

He smiled, not in what she now realized had been a business smile akin to her own when she wanted somepony to do something, but an earnest grin. "I could have simply reported my suspicions to the guards, or any of the princesses, could I not? I could have had the three of you put in chains and interrogated, could have simply asked you to leave (probably with guards behind me, to make the point) if I weren't interested in what you had to offer. I didn't, because I am."

"Why? What do you think we are?"

"I'm glad you asked! I think you're part of a pattern, a recurring theme we have here in Equestria. I don't know if things are different in other parts of the world, I'm never there long enough to see it through, but here, we seem to have something of a knack for bringing in disaster."

The headlines seen in the library flashed through her memory. "Yes, and?"

"And you, your group, have a certain..." He waved a hoof uncertainly, searching for the right word, "Well, let me put it this way: do you play cards at all?" She shook her head. "Drat, this is the only example that comes to mind. There are games that are often used to gamble as much as to pass the time, and in it the players bluff and lie to each other about their standing as the game goes on."

Adagio smirked a little. "That I'm familiar with."

He nodded once. "Then you understand when I say after a while, one may learn to spot the tells? I've seen ponies like you before, Miss Dazzle, and-" he glanced away, muttering under his breath, "well, not all of them were 'ponies', per se, but that's beside the point, -and trust me when I say I've noticed a few things. Your initial story about being actresses was viable, you all have the looks for it, but 'we're rehearsing for a play' is perhaps the oldest go-to excuse for strange behavior in the book. That I never heard about you three performing such scenes again or asking where you might be able to find employment akin to what you were familiar with in Canterlot was nothing if not a red flag."

She nodded a little, as though making note of it for later.

"When most ponies are invited to Castle Canterlot, they react like tourists." He adapted a face of faux-astonishment in what Adagio guessed was imitation. "'Oh, what nice tapestries,' 'those windows have such outstanding craftsmanship,' 'everything is just so amazing!'" His expression became a tired deadpan. "That kind of thing. That I didn't hear a word to that effect for once was gratifying, but also a hint."

Adagio rolled her eyes at this. Rarely would an act be worth debasing herself with that kind of sycophancy. Or fake fascination with interior decorating.

"I've also noticed that the three of you eat very little during breakfast and dinner. Shortly after the first time we met, I recall you drinking maybe two cups of tea and eating a single sandwich."

The look on her face suggested Adagio was utterly lost. "What's wrong with that?"

Blueblood was similarly confused. "I... I think it would mean, for normal ponies, that they would be very hungry? Or filled their stomachs when nopony was looking, but I couldn't guess why one mi-" he stopped, feeling he was initiating a hoof-in-mouth moment in line with what he'd said to Aria at the Mauvaise Fracture, "-I mean, nothing, nothing outstanding." She looked back at him curiously, but before things could get awkward, he moved to the next point of suspicion. "And then there were my outings with the other two."

Adagio facehoofed, groaning.

"You don't seem terribly surprised."

She sighed. "Honestly? No, but I needed them to gather information on you for maximum effectiveness."

"In what, pray tell?"

To hell with it, no sense in lying right now. 

She answered entirely in a tired deadpan. "Getting inside your head, figuring out how best to behave to turn you into my eager, mindless servant with wiles and wit alone."

Blueblood chuckled. "Would you believe something like that has already been attempted? Not with ordinary charm, mind you, but full-fledged mind-control? It worked fine, until the target's sister showed up poking holes in the trickster's performance."

Adagio was not amused. "Ah, well, thank you for the warning." It was odd just how calm she felt, knowing the pony across the table could likely have her and the others locked away forever with little more than a word, if he wished.

He only smiled back. "You see? This is one of the ways I can help, I know what's been tested in the last, ohh, year or so?"

"All of that really did happen in the span of one year?!"

He blinked, confused. "I'm sorry, all of what?"

He's not a mind-reader, then. Good, good. 

She cleared her throat. "I was doing a bit of research at the library. Twice, actually. What I came across in terms of recent events, I first dismissed as the work of utter lunatics." She shrugged. "In hindsight, I suppose my own experience lends credence to the stories of 'Twilight Sparkle vs. the forces of evil.'" Blueblood's head tilted searchingly, though he didn't actually ask. Adagio took a deep breath. Telling him anything at all was a gamble, but so was trying to back out now. "Before I share any further, you are aware that of those two categories, my group is not on the Twilight Sparkle side of things?"

He nodded. "We can't all be the 'Princess of Friendship.' Does that mean you'll accept my offer?"

Still not at all comfortable with the way this was turning out, she and her cohorts essentially at the mercy of another, but relieved their being discovered at least seemed to be going well, her reply was barely over a whisper. "I'll need you not to ask too many questions, to trust that we'll keep you informed when it's strictly necessary. Alright?"

His expression suggested a hint of disappointment, but he nodded. "Very well, but please let me know how I may be of assistance. And, forgive me if this is overly presumptuous, but you're the brains of the outfit, aren't you?" He knew it was possible that Sonata's ditzy persona was all an act and that she was secretly the one in charge, but he wanted to hear it from one of them first.

She nodded slowly, though the answer had felt abundantly obvious.

"Good, good, just double-checking. If it's at all possible, I'd be more than happy to covertly assist in your plans during our outings, or even in the day-job. Careful allocation of funding under the right bureaucratic label might raise more eyebrows if not for all the legal jargon one would need to know to understand the effects. I can think of some things that can be done cheaper at no cost to anything more than somepony's vanity, if bits are needed."

Adagio felt she'd earned a question herself, even if a dangerous one. "Why are you so eager to help us?"

This seemed to give him pause for thought as he carefully picked an answer. "I suppose it's a matter of principle."

"Do tell?"

He looked at her very seriously. "I've lived in the palace for the better part of my life, Miss Dazzle, and in that time I've had the privilege of going out to see places of considerably poorer standing, to witness more of the world in the span of a few years than most will their entire lives. The most common sight of all? Problems. Everyone, every member of every species, without exception, has something that stands between them and blissful happiness. However, looking at any given member of any population, I see more faces smiling and carrying on with their short, little lives as though all was well and always will be. The same faces that lived to see their world threatened with terrifying frequency."

He wasn't so into his speech that he stopped looking across the table to see whether or not she was still paying attention, but Adagio knew a villainous rant when she heard one. From the sounds of things, he'd been building this one up for a while. Perhaps she could use this...

"I've pointed this out, to quite a few supposedly sapient lifeforms, and the most common responses? Indifference, or even ignorance! Even if they know that Nightmare Moon could have plunged the world into eternal darkness, that threats from millenia ago could resurface to wreak havoc at any time, that the Spirit of Chaos was set free on a hunch that he could be tamed,  they don't care! And for the record? That last one backfired predictably. He's supposedly come around for real this time thanks to the usual suspects, and as before? Nopony cares."

Spirit of Chaos? He couldn't mean-

He went on, cutting her thoughts short with exasperated hoof gestures. "I've watched these ponies carry on in their daily lives, all smiles and normality until something happens, and when it does it's like nothing of the sort has ever happened before, like they never could have seen it coming. And once it's resolved? Right back to status quo! It's like they're willfully blind to the danger, just pretending nothing ever goes wrong until it does! Everypony acts like we aren't at risk of utter annihilation every time this happens, and sooner or later, our protecting heroes are going to lose, but everypony just ignores that!"

The pace of the rant increased with the volume of his voice. "Do you see what I'm getting at here? They lie, to each other and themselves! Once I realized that, everything was so much clearer; ponies can act the way they do because they lie, they pretend things are fine when they're not! The problems I alluded to earlier, from those of the highest ruler to the humblest serf, can go without consideration by any and all, like they'll just go away on their own! Because ponies would rather pretend to be 'happy', to pretend that the daily struggles they live with just don't matter!"

Blueblood paused to take a breath, much calmer when he spoke again. "I'm tired of the lies, Miss Dazzle, tired of fake smiles, tired of willful blindness, tired of everypony going around pretending nothing is wrong. I want to show them, to make the world see beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there is indeed something wrong." He looked her dead in the eye with a very serious expression. "I think you, your group, are just what I've been looking for to do so."

Adagio raised an eyebrow, feeling the tiniest bit insulted. "We're the something wrong you want to show them?"

His eyes widened in surprise. "What? No! I mean," he scratched the back of his head awkwardly, visibly sweating even in the dim light of the chamber, "well, technically that's part of-but, I don't, that wasn't what I meant by-"

Internally smirking, she draped a hoof over her eyes and turned her head away, projecting as much hurt into her voice as she could. "T-to think, you only offered us help because you think we're a problem, weak, pitiful outcasts that don't belong in this world!"

He held up his forehooves placatingly. "No, wait, I'm sorry, please, don't cry! I-I only meant that there was a general problem, not that you were that pr-... Are... Are you, laughing?"

What had been quiet snickers became full-on cackling as she resumed her previous forelegs-crossed pose. She smirked at the relieved, but definitely unamused prince across the table. "You might try wording your statements more carefully, both for the sake of keeping secrets and general use."

Speaking through gritted teeth, he decided to do just that. "Thank you so much for the advice, Miss Dazzle."

"No, no," she replied coolly, "thank you."

He raised a perplexed eyebrow. "For what, specifically?"

For telling me you're susceptible to crocodile tears. 

She was just a little annoyed neither Aria nor Sonata had thought to test that, but perhaps no convincing opportunities arose. "Ohh, nothing," she said with a smile, innocently averting her eyes, "getting back to your reason for helping us, what exactly is it you think we'll be able to do to those ends?"

"Ah, right." he composed himself by crossing his forehooves on the table again. "Spending so much time thinking about the sorts that usually end up battling the Element Bearers, Twilight's crew, I've had more than a few thoughts on what I might say to those entities if I ever had a chance to meet them before they enacted their plans." He smiled. "However, rather than a pointer or two, 'don't stand still when they're charging up the rainbow laser,' perhaps I could do something more practical. Knowing that I alone would never stand a chance where so many other, more qualified, err-"

"Villains?" She took some measure of pride in the word.

"I would use the term 'Folk of Moral Flexibility.' Anyway, if those much more powerful than me all failed, I would surely fare no better in a direct assault. My ambition goes thus: having found some Morally-Flexible sorts to associate with, I would like to help them along in secret, to keep them from doing what I know won't work, so that when they succeed, for once, all of Equestria, all of the world, will have to stare their victory in the face, and, at last, see the way of things as I do!"

It was, Adagio thought, a pity Blueblood didn't seem to think of himself as 'Morally Flexible' enough. Scheming all this time, hiding his true intentions even from his aunts, world-altering plans, a hint of vengeful loathing? He would play the part well. Did he even realize he had raised a hoof defiantly against the skies (ceiling) towards the end there?

"As such," he continued with a pleasant smile, "I must ask; what might you need from me?"

The question actually gave her pause for thought. "Then, to summarize, you wish to force awareness of the darker aspects of life upon the world? To stop them from being happy?"

"They aren't happy, that's the whole point! No matter what the princesses say, ponies aren't bright, cheerful beacons of warmth and friendship deep down, they're cold, cowardly, petty, and spiteful! If you could see how the 'Canterlot Elite' behave when they're-" he seemed to realize something, chuckling, "well, stick with me, and you will! You'll see just how fake, just how negative some ponies really are!" 

Myself included, he noted somewhat ruefully, if I'm really doing this...

She smiled. "Of course, I couldn't agree more. Bringing out that negativity is our business, though admittedly for less altruistic reasons than your own."

He smiled hopefully. "Does that mean you accept?"

Savoring his anticipation for a few seconds, she nodded. "I think we can be of use to one another, Mister Blueblood. Is there anywhere all four of us, you, Aria, Sonata, and myself, can gather in private? I'd like to have those two present when we go over the plan."

"Yes," he said, looking exceptionally pleased, "there's an airship that hardly sees much use, I'm sure the crew that work on it will be happy to see it employed."

She raised a cautious eyebrow. "Crew?"

"Oh, just the captain and some engineers, they'll be well out of sight, and out of earshot, when we're talking, I assure you."

Adagio grinned. "Perfect."


---


Adagio and Blueblood parted in the castle foyer, her having plans to explain and him having arrangements to make, but they agreed on Adagio bringing the others around the back of the castle, where a carriage would be waiting to take them to the airship, where Blueblood would be preparing things, first thing in the morning. It was with a certain measure of pride that Adagio found her way to the Pisces room all by herself! 

Nopony said she couldn't, of course, but if they had, they would be looking very silly right now. 

Anyway. 

The muffled voices on the other side of the door told her Aria and Sonata were still awake, which would save her the trouble of having to shake Sonata conscious. Possibly having to locate her first as well. She opened the door, grinning confidently. "Good news, girls, we have a new best friend in the castle."

The two looked at her as she closed the door, Sonata the first to ask. "Does that mean Operation Lovey-Dovey Prince worked out?"

Blinking once, Adagio remembered that things hadn't gone 100% the way she planned. "Err, well," her face twisted a little, as though tasting something sour, "actually, no. Though he does know we aren't just wandering actresses now."

Sonata gasped. "You told him?!"

Aria furrowed her eyebrows. "No way, all your griping at us about giving it away and you're the one who-"

Adagio reinforced her expression with anger. "He figured it out listening to you two, you dolts!" Her cohorts were silent, giving each other worried looks. She let out a breath. "However, the situation turned out better than you might believe; he wants to work with us." She looked at Aria, receiving only a dazed 'what' kind of face in return. 

Sonata proved more vocal. "Huh. Didn't see that coming."

Adagio spent the next half hour explaining what the prince had said to her and that they'd be talking to him about their next move in the morning, Aria's face alternating between smug, annoyed, confused, and alarmed the whole time.

"Dammit," she muttered, "if he wanted to cooperate, why couldn't he have just come out with it?! Would have saved a lot of time and headaches!"

A yellow head nodded. "It might have, but how might one phrase such a thing?" She adapted a face and tone of mock-sweetness. "'Hello, I'm looking for some help in uprooting the order of the land, are you doing anything along those lines? Oh, don't worry about being apprehended for treason, complete strangers, I would never tell my princess aunts or the many, many armed guards in my employ!'" Dropping the act as Aria scowled at her, Adagio shrugged a little. "Granted, it apparently turned out to be true in this case, but I can tell you how I'd have responded if he'd used that approach."

"Tch," Aria nearly spat, "you sound like you're glad he was screwing with us."

She chuckled. "There's nothing wrong with admiring the cunning and patience of another, and he went to considerable lengths to show he meant us no harm with his facade. Not at all different from what we've been doing, really."

Aria turned away, hoping the motion of draping a blanket over herself would hide the shiver that ran along her spine in the face of Adagio's creepy, other-ponies-being-evil-and-conniving-makes-me-hot grin.

Sonata seemed to remember her question from earlier. "Hey Dagi, have you ever been a pony before?"

Adagio stared back, as lost as Aria had been when she was telling them about Blueblood. "...What?"

One clarification later.

"Hmm," pondered Adagio, "that is odd, but perhaps it's because we've already grown accustomed to walking with two legs, and four isn't a considerable step forward in motor skill? For one reason or another, I know all of us ended up crawling at some point while we were banished, and this-" she cantered around the room for emphasis, "-doesn't feel terribly different."

Sonata nodded. "I guess that makes sense." She smiled at Aria, who grinned a little in return. One good thing they knew they could say about their scary leader? She was usually pretty good at making things better, even weird stuff that didn't matter.
> Chapter 10: Collaboration
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning, the trio stood looking out over the royal gardens from a stone balcony just around the back of the castle, the promised carriage pulling up a minute or two after they arrived.

Once the three of them were seated and the carriage was in motion, Adagio went over the plan. "Alright, when talking starts, we let him believe he's in complete control, sharing only what he directly asks and-"

Aria interrupted with an uneasy expression. "You're enjoying this way too much."

If the diabolic grin she'd been wearing since the door closed wasn't hint enough, Adagio's sinister chuckle said a thing or two about her intentions. "He's shown us he can be underhanded, I won't underestimate him twice. Wait and see," she said under her breath, her tone just faintly suggestive as she began staring off into space, "I'll show you who the true mastermind is!"

Sonata leaned a little closer to Aria, smiling as she whispered. "Aren't you happy for her?"

"Kinda creeped out, actually," Aria whispered back, "who likes this kind of stuff?"

"I think it's cute, she's found a playmate!"

Adagio seemed to snap out of her megalomaniacal, possibly-erotic fantasizing. "What was that?"

Sonata jumped. "I-I said Aria's hair smells like grape!"

The carriage was silent, two confused sirens staring at the third.

Adagio shrugged, looking out the window towards the landing platform the airship was waiting on. "That's nice, Sonata."

Aria gave Sonata a look as though she wasn't sure how she should respond to the 'grape-scented' remark, the unicorn in question smiling sheepishly as her cheeks tinted red.


---


The carriage stopped at the end of a long runway, the trio getting out to get a good look at the airship.

Aria gaped when she saw it. "No. Way."

It was huge, appearing to be a hybrid of boat and blimp, the balloon a massive, purple fish-type of thing, complete with a tail fin that might have been used for steering. The ship attached by a number of tethers was extravagantly decorated as well, similar shades of purple to the balloon used toward the underside, giving the appearance of riding along waves, complete with large, yellowish fins that were presumably also for steering in some way.

The carriage driver was already heading back, but Aria kept her voice down just in case. "D-does... does he, Adagio, did you tell him we were-?"

"Hm? What's got you so agitated?" She paused to examine the ship, not seeing the problem. "What, that the theme seems to be-" Her eyes widened for a split second before a cat-like smile found it's way onto her face. "Ohhoho, I see. Well-played, Prince Blueblood, you must be craftier than I thought..." He even got it roughly to my preferred color scheme!

Sonata, as usual, was hopelessly confused by her companions' vagueness. "What?"

"Urg," Aria groaned, "don't you get it? He's known the whole time that we're sirens, and got 'em to make a whole... floaty, boat-balloon thing just to rub it in!" Now that she was thinking about it, what did the word 'Pisces' mean? The name of the room he had them put in? She couldn't recall exactly, but she knew it was something that made her want to knock his snooty block off even more.

Blueblood stood at the base of the ramp leading up the ship, smiling. "Welcome!" 

Adagio's followers weren't sure how to place the smirk she was wearing now, but they knew they didn't want it pointed at them. "Good morning, Mister Blueblood. Might I ask how long in advance you prepared this vessel?"

He looked surprised for a second. "Oh, some time last night, I suppose. Shortly after we returned?"

The trio shared a split-second look. Whoever Blueblood had working for him must have worked fast!

"Now then," he continued, moving up the ramp, "we can converse on board, breakfast with a view at the ready."


---


They soon found themselves in an eloquent little room, wide windows on each side, offering a breath-taking view of the world below. In the center was a long table with multiple large dishes, nothing disturbed by the gentle motion of the ship. 

"Please," Blueblood said as they were seated, "help yourselves, I suspect we'll be talking up here a while."

"Indeed," said Adagio with that same unplaceable look on her face, "to begin, how long have you known the truth?"

"Well," he said with a shrug, "I had my suspicions, as I said, but I wasn't sure until some time last night." He chuckled. "Good thing, that, to discover the three of you were essentially normal would have been awkward to say the least."

"No, I mean," she waved a hoof to indicate the immediate area, "the specifications of this ship are a little too... precise, don't you think?"

He stared back at her, lost. "What?"

Aria groaned. "She means 'how long have you known we're sirens?', you dunce!"

Adagio shot her a mildly pouty glare, as if she was more disappointed than angry. "That is not how you play this game."

"Ooh," ooh'd Sonata, "we're playing a game?"

"Hey look," Aria quickly deadpanned, "they've got cheese here."

"Oh, boy!"

Sonata engaged in eating and thus not talking, Adagio smiled a little. "That, Aria, that was much better."

"Thanks?" She decided to grab a bite of fruit tart herself.

Blueblood raised a hoof, looking uncertain. "Um, pardon me, did you say you were sirens?"

Aria and Adagio looked back at him, equally confused.

"There are stories among sea-faring sorts about those creatures, monsters that lure non-aquatic lifeforms to their doom with spell-binding songs, drinking in their feelings of anger, pain, and despair like some magical inhalant." He looked around at the three of them, the smallest trace of fear visible in his eyes. "Is... is that what the three of you-no, that makes no sense. Why would you be, but, that would explain why you didn't..." Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a deep breath. "Are you telling me that you are those nigh-mythical beings?"

Adagio nodded slowly. "I, we were under the impression you already knew. Why else would you bring us aboard a vessel that resembled a fish?"

His eyes widened. "Oh!" There was a short, slightly abashed chuckle. "Would you believe that's pure coincidence? My family has a long history of sailing, the design of this ship was my idea of honoring that." He glanced around the corners of the roof, speaking quietly. "This was actually meant to be a gift to my mother and father, but they seem to prefer traditional navy-class vessels for their oceanic voyages. No idea when they'll be near Equestria again, but to answer your question, no, I did not know that you were sirens that looked like ponies." He gestured at the three of them with a hoof. "On that note, perhaps you could explain? I don't remember anything about shape-shifting in grandfather's stories."

Adagio deflated a little. He's really not playing along? No elaborate game of intrigue, no psychological cat-and-mouse, nothing? Perhaps this is another ruse...

The table was silent, apart from Sonata happily ingesting various kinds of cheese. Aria looked at Adagio in anticipation of a reply, but their leader just looked lost and maybe kind of depressed, so she spoke up herself. "Actually, we're not too sure why we look like this either."

She shared the short version of how they got banished to the other world, took on alien forms, and eventually found their way back to this one, looking like they did now when they stepped out of Twilight's mirror-statue-door thing. She left out the part about their gems being shattered, both in case Adagio had a plan for that, and not really wanting to share that information anyway.

When she was finished, Blueblood nodded a little. "That's quite the story. And now that you've returned, what might be on the agenda? Revenge? I'm not entirely certain, but most are under the impression that Starswirl is quite dead."

"Simple," said Adagio, recovering from her sad moment, "we need to drum up as much negative energy as possible by getting the population to fight itself, ponies arguing and expressing hatred for each other on as wide a scale as possible. Outright violence and riots are best avoided, however, as dead and unconscious ponies are... less productive to our cause." She smiled a little. "Or any, really."

Blueblood nodded, doing a good job of masking whether or not that sentence bothered him at all. "Indeed. Get ponies to hate each other, then? Not an impossible task, but it's typically sorted out again before long. What did you have in mind?"

Her grin grew devious. "You have a holiday here called Hearths Warming? A festival of cheer and good will?"

He looked the tiniest bit uncomfortable. Adagio didn't miss it. "Yyyeesss...?"

"What might it take to turn that on its head? To leave all who would have taken even a modicum of pleasure in seasonal celebrations seething with rage and cursing those they once held closest?" She closed the statement by biting into a tomato, making it the first thing he'd seen her eat today.

Something in the back of Blueblood's mind recoiled at the sheer -he could deny it no longer- evil of the idea, of whom he was involved with, but he steeled himself. He would help, no matter how wicked the scheme. This was for the greater good. 

Besides, nopony really believes in all that 'Hearths Warming Cheer' rubbish, do they? It's all about the sales, the spectacle, the facade of the thing. 

He folded his forehooves under his chin, elbows resting on the table. A tiny part of him wondered if the trio joining him today knew that was kind of a faux pas in fine dining. "It wouldn't be easy, I think. There are a lot of little things, little parts that make up the whole that is Hearths Warming. Ponies may be upset about a thing or two going wrong, but we'll have to be thorough to orchestrate an outrage on the scale you're looking for. Did you have anything in mind already?"

Adagio shrugged. "Not really. I was hoping you could lend a few tips, actually, being raised in Equestria? Unless you're about to tell us you're in the same boat we are." She blinked, glancing at their surroundings. "Figuratively speaking."

Blueblood nodded, mentally going down the list of yearly sights the holiday brought. "There are all manner of general festivities; feasts among the ponies, 'banquets' by the wealthier citizens, (it's effectively the same thing, just with longer, more self-aggrandizing speeches) parties of one kind or another, standard celebratory events painted the colors of the holiday. There's also caroling, the act of going door to door singing seasonal songs more or less for it's own sake. Not a greatly popular activity these days, at least in Canterlot." 
He smiled a little, feeling what might have been some kind of twisted pride in his own short bout of Morally Flexible thinking. "However, none of this gets into full swing until right about the end of the day before; Hearths Warming Eve. That is when an annual tradition takes place; a play retelling the events of the founding of Equestria. Every year at the end of the play, ponies leave the theater with that all-important 'holiday cheer' at it's peak, the sense of camaraderie and good will coloring their mood for the next day or three, if all goes well." 

Aria looked bored. "You going somewhere with this?"

The prince's grin tinted toward fiendish, finding a strange kind of Morally Flexible mirth in what he was about to suggest. "If all goes well, I said."

Adagio seemed to take the hint, her own smile much more malevolent than his. "It hinges on this play, does it? If something were to go wrong, very wrong, then all would carry their outrage and disappointment with them for some time?"

"The ponies who care about that sort of thing, yes. According to the yearly theater revenue on a few particular days, that's about ninety-five percent of them."

There was a short cackle from the siren leader. "Then that's where we'll strike. Can you give us any specific details of this year's arrangements?"

"Not off the top of my head, but getting the basic information shouldn't take long." He smiled wryly, glad his title might actually be useful to something he wanted to do for once. "It'll only look like I'm scouting the place out with thoughts of bringing company, at that, so the theater designated for it may well trip over itself to tell me what I want to know. It's still a few weeks away, so things aren't likely in place yet, but when they are, we'll know exactly where the pieces are arranged."

"Excellent," she replied, "I'll be waiting for details."

With the plan roughly squared away, there was a bit of a lull in conversation.

"So," offered Blueblood, "let's talk a little about the princesses. You've already made an enemy of Twilight Sparkle, it sounds like, you met my aunts, and-"

"Yea," interrupted Aria, "I think Luna might have a screw loose."

He raised an eyebrow, looking the tiniest bit offended. "I beg your pardon?"

"We ate dinner with just her last night," clarified Adagio, "it was a little odd." Then she began to blush, averting her eyes. "On that note, it's possible she, and probably half the damn castle, may think you and I are an item now."

His face grew contemplative. "We could use that, actually."

The trio's eyes grew wide, Adagio the first to speak the thought. "What?"

Blueblood seemed to realize what he said, sweating a little as he quickly and emphatically reworded the sentiment. "Wait-I mean, f-for the plan, you know? Let them think we're a couple so you three have reason to stay in the castle? It wouldn't be unexpected, with the time your group has already spent here, and I recall Auntie even extending invitation to that effect," he glanced away, sounding annoyed as he muttered, "her meddling again, but this time I'm grateful for it." His eyes were equally panicked and inquisitive. "So, what do you think?"

Blinking twice, Adagio smiled. Every time I think he's going to get irritated, he does something completely different. Is he really not playing a game with me? "That arrangement should suit our purposes, yes."

Sonata resurfaced from her feeding frenzy for a moment, looking pleased. "We'll have to yell at Princess Luna that you guys are a thing now."

Blueblood chuckled. "I take it she asked you three to shout across the table yesterday evening?"

There was an annoyed nod from Aria as she took a bite of Prench toast. 

"You could have refused. While not attending to important functions, my nocturnal aunt is nothing if not whimsical, but she wouldn't persist in something she knew made others uncomfortable." 

Adagio facehoofed, hard. I humiliated myself for nothing, then. Outstanding. Then again, she at least seemed to get Luna's approval out of it, so maybe that was a small victory. "I think two princesses like us, at least, so this may go over rather well."

Sonata looked at Blueblood as Adagio bit into a danish. "You said there were four princesses, right? Other than the one with the broken armor?"

"Yes, the last is Mi Amore Cadenza, or 'Cadence'. She rules over the Crystal Empire alongside her idiot husband, Princess Twilight's brother..."

He spent the next half-hour explaining the relations and roles of the four princesses, and the next twenty minutes after that summarizing the crises that led up to where they were today. The stunned silence he got in reply said it was a lot to take in, so he'd let them digest it all in their own time.

"C-changelings," Sonata uttered as Adagio and Aria traded worried looks, "are real?"

Blueblood nodded. "As I said; infiltrated, replaced Cadenza, bewitched Shining Armor, invaded the city. I may not have been in the room when their queen overpowered Celestia, but that's what happened." He shook his head in mild exasperation. "All of those things happened, I was there for half of it! And yet, everypony just goes merrily along with it, no matter how many lives could have been shattered, no matter how close to oblivion we linger. That, has to stop."

"Too true," conceded Adagio somewhat nervously, "and Twilight Sparkle was at the heart of it all?"

He shrugged. "More or less, I guarantee things wouldn't have happened the way they did-" he looked to the window, "-without her influence."

The others whipped their heads to face the same window, half-expecting to see Twilight floating just outside, already charging up her gem-destroying magic. Instead, they saw something almost as frightening far below; her crystal tower.

There was a short-lived panic as Aria accused Blueblood of being stupid/crazy enough to fly the boat-blimp thingy close to Twilight's turf, but he defended that they were already relatively close, explaining the proximity of Ponyville, Twilight's new place of residence, and Canterlot. This was followed with assurances that they had nothing to worry about, Twilight hardly ever visited, and she likely wouldn't have given the time of day to anyone but Celestia or Luna, as she hardly ever interacted with anypony at all prior to finding the Element of Magic.

While that had been going on, Adagio looked out the other window and noticed that Canterlot was, indeed, built on a mountain, which explained the view from the Pisces room. Returning her attention to the table, she raised an eyebrow. "And what of Discord?"

"May betray us again at any time, but he supposedly means it this time when he says he's reformed."

"Tch," Aria spat, "yea, because that guy's totally good for his word." The irony of those words coming from a siren hit her roughly half a second after she said them.

Blueblood didn't seem to think anything of it, instead smiling. "Indeed, but that's the world we live in now, and that's the world we're going to change, isn't it? On that note, we should probably go over the plan for tomorrow's event."

Sonata blinked twice. "What event?"

There'd be time later to formally ask whether or not she had been toying with his brain all this time. "The charity drive, the thing I first invited the three of you to attend. As it's being hosted by Fancy Pants, we can be reasonably sure that everypony who's anypony will be there."

Adagio grinned. "Making contacts, then? You'll be introducing us to the most influential members of the community so we'll know who to twist to our ends?"

"In Canterlot, we usually just call it 'making friends,' but yes. Talk to random ponies, mingle, see whom you might be able to make use of and who has no place in your plans. Once you have something in mind, I'll provide all the money and information you need to make it a reality."

Aria huffed, not sold on how smooth it all sounded. "Yea? What makes you so sure a bunch of rich stiffs, 'anypony who's anypony,' will even talk to any of us?"

He smirked, which only annoyed her further. "You'll be there as guests of Prince Blueblood. They'll be as eager to be seen talking with any of you as they are Fancy Pants himself, for at least a few days."

What's this, thought Adagio, a smile akin to the one she wore when boarding the airship stretching across her face, a tinge of vanity? There may be hope for him yet...

Aria just rolled her eyes. "Yea, whatever. Speaking of ponies you hang around..."

She briefly shared what she'd overheard the guards talking about a few days ago, all three sirens giving him inquisitive looks as she wrapped up.

Blueblood rolled his eyes. "I was hoping to save this little facet of high society life for later, but no time like the present. You really can't believe everything you hear, Miss Blaze, most of what you heard is false."

She raised an eyebrow. "Most of what I heard?"

There was only a faint blush. "W-well, to start, I only briefly knew Trixie Lulamoon, but it was years before she made her debut in Twilight Sparkle's -yes, Trixie became one more of those- life story. I did spend a few minutes in the company of Lightning Dust prior to her dishonorable discharge, (or whatever they call it) but she immediately dismissed me as too dull to hold conversation wi-" he scowled, "something you find funny?"

Aria tried to hide her snickering by stuffing a donut into her mouth. "Nah, nuffin'." Glancing over at Sonata, it was hard to tell if she was just really enjoying another chunk of cheese or if they'd had the same idea.

Seeing that Adagio only rolled her eyes at her minions' antics, Blueblood went on. "Right. There's no proof to the assertions that the mare I introduced to then-Captain-of-the-Royal-Guard Shining Armor was the Changeling Queen," he looked just slightly remorseful. "but it would explain a thing or two." That she more or less lost interest in Blueblood himself might have had something to do with his not gawking at her like Twilight's idiot brother did. 

Really, I know her dress was a little risque for a garden party, but I didn't know we hired guards from colt-scout troops. 

Maybe there was something to the name?

"Another one," said Adagio with an inquisitive look, "was said to be Celestia's student."

"Ah, well..." He scratched the back of his head, averting his eyes. "She was, I didn't really know her, but Sunset Shimmer was more of a distant, coltish crush than anything else." He noticed Aria and Adagio staring back at him in shock, Sonata's mouth hanging open as she visibly tried to piece something together in her head. "What?"

Composing herself in the blink of an eye, Adagio cleared her throat. "As it happens, we ran into Sunset Shimmer in the other world. That she was tutored by a princess might explain a thing or two."

Reading Aria's anger and Sonata's downcast expression, Blueblood connected a few dots himself. "She works on the Twilight Sparkle end of things now, I take it?"

Adagio's icy reply gave him a hint as to how their encounter went. "You could say that."

"Rrrright, well, that sums up the rumo-"

"Wait," Aria interrupted, "there was one more, somepony named 'PON-3'?"

Blueblood facehoofed, muttering under his breath. "Of course, couldn't forget that one, could we?" He gave them a tired look, but the trio of stares said he probably wouldn't get by without sharing this one. "DJ PON-3 is the stage name of one Vinyl Scratch, whom I saw for about a week. She's an eccentric sort, but not terribly dangerous, give or take random injections of percussive noise. Palace staff were not the only ones who did not approve. The end."

Aria raised an eyebrow. "And that all of them did something bad is a total coincidence?"

Blueblood threw his forehooves up, exasperated, which Adagio interpreted to mean he'd been asked about this before. "It's not my fault! Yes, all of them have had lapses of sanity, but all of those times, I had nothing to do with it! 

"So," Adagio asked, her face contemplative, "when you said you'd learned to 'spot the tells'...?"

Composing himself by resting his forehooves on the table, Blueblood took a deep breath. "Those experiences may have helped, yes."

"Hey, guys?" Sonata was looking downward, visibly confused. "I feel, like, weird." She put a hoof over her stomach, not showing any sign of being in pain, but definitely baffled. "Not bad-weird, but..."

Adagio and Aria turned to Blueblood, faces lit up with surprise and darkened into a scowl, respectively. "You bastard," accused the latter, who was starting to feel something strange as well, "you brought us here to poison us!!"

Blueblood's jaw dropped, Adagio's expression quickly turning to doubt. "Wait, that makes no sense, he's been eating from the same table as we have." 

Perhaps it was some combination of chemicals mixed into different dishes and only he knows where the right poisons and the right effective antidotes are, banking on us ingesting them haplessly while he would know what was in what.

Sonata shook her head. "I said it wasn't bad-weird, Aria! I just feel like... What do you call it, that feeling when you know you don't need to eat anymore, but like, more?"

The possible poisoner prince blinked twice, feeling a familiar sort of dread in answering one of Sonata's questions. "You mean, full?"

She still looked confused. "I don't know. Up to now, we've always eaten until most of the pain stopped, or, until it was just normal again."

"Same as anypony else," said Adagio with a roll of her eyes. "We're effectively on a forced diet in regard to our normal means of sustenance, but ordinary food seems to work in short for-" She blinked, realizing something had changed in the last hour or two they'd been sitting and eating here. It had been almost unconscious, the way she'd kept eating as they talked.

Hunger had always been there, a constant, driving force for the three of them for as long as she could remember. The first way they ever found to appease it was by absorbing power that appeared when others weren't happy with each other, and they stuck to it right up to the day they were banished. The energy in the other world was badly lacking and there were a few times Sonata got desperate enough to imitate what she'd seen others doing.  

"Huh. I'd prefer a tasty shouting match or a lover's quarrel, but this isn't so bad!"

When their gems were broken, Aria and Adagio were forced to do the same, eating enough to get back to the point the gems would take them. To them, being 'full' was when the stabbing pain of hunger became a dull ache, the feeling they'd always known and couldn't recall not feeling. She was brought back to the conversation by Aria's voice.

"Alright, alright," she said while folding her forehooves and looking away. "I might have jumped the gun on that one."

"I should say so," muttered Blueblood, "thinking I'd go to all this trouble just to..." He shook his head. "So, hunger. The Changeling Queen had taken in enough energy to overpower Celestia herself and still wanted more. Does that ring a bell for you three?"

Sonata nodded. Even after getting the Rainbooms' magic at the Battle of the Bands, she was still hungry for more power. How much would she have had to absorb to feel like she did now, after just a few plates of stuff?

"We, uh," Aria still wasn't making eye contact with anypony, "kinda thought everyone had it like this. Ponies, people, fish, manticores, and so on. I mean, how often do you hear stuff like 'it puts food on the table' or 'I have to feed my family'?"

Blueblood stared back at them, expressionless. These three have spent their entire lives hungry. Is it the same for all entities like them? For Discord? Or the Changeling Queen? What about Celestia and Luna? Do Cadenza and Twilight feel this too? Problems. Everypony had problems...

Noticing the uncertain looks his three guests were giving each other, Blueblood opted to change the subject. "So, where did you hear about what amounts to my love life, exactly?"

Aria shrugged. "Heard some guards talking about it. Did you know they think you're a doom magnet?"

His answer was completely deadpan. "It has not escaped my notice." Considering whom he was talking to, he couldn't begrudge anypony that thought as much.

"Another thing," she said with a raised eyebrow, "why was your room so blank? It had this empty, hotel-room feel to it."

Blueblood looked surprised. "What were you doing in my chambers?" He wasn't sure if he'd been asking too many questions by this point, but Adagio wasn't displaying any outward signs of annoyance.

Aria froze. Before she could explain the circumstances behind her intrusion, Adagio put on a shocked expression. "Why Aria, I had no idea you indulged in such hobbies!"

"WHAT?! I-I don't, I was, b-because you told me to-"

Sonata started laughing out loud, Adagio's own act falling to poorly-hidden giggles as Aria turned red. Noticing Blueblood's bewildered look, Adagio chuckled. "Sorry, it was part of the investigation phase of my earlier plan."

"Ah, well..." Given the way he investigated their claims under the guise of budget reports, it didn't seem fair to judge them for being equally clandestine with their curiosity. He shrugged. "To answer the question with another, did your investigation happen to include Castle Canterlot itself?" Aria was still grumbling under her breath as Adagio shook her head. "When it was constructed, it was a larger, more lavish palace than Celestia had use for. Over the centuries, she decided on uses for as many chambers as possible. To date, there's a reading room whose shelves are stocked mostly with fiction, a gym, a place for board games, a theater..."

Eight minutes later.

"...an arcade, what amounts to a spa, a small chamber with two chairs primarily used for staring contests, and, of course the ball pit. None of this counts the massive garden, containing a cage-less zoo, tennis courts, mountain-cli-"

Aria nearly screamed. "ALRIGHT, we get it!!"

Blueblood just nodded. "Good, because I grew weary of giving tours ages ago."

Adagio looked baffled. "H-how... how is it that we've never noticed any of this in three days of staying there?"

"How often did you open random doors?"

Sonata scratched her head. "Uhh... Never?"

"Many rooms have been re-purposed multiple times, so labeling has low priority. Truth be told, I think most palace staff simply familiarize themselves with their regular work areas and two or three leisure rooms and leave it at that. Circling back to the original question, I don't keep much of anything in my quarters because it would do little more than clutter the space with things I could find in another room." He looked away, scratching his head. "I could probably stand to organize a little better, if anything."

Glancing at Sonata and Adagio, Aria decided against asking about the blank diary. No sense in giving them more ammo.

"So," Blueblood inquired after a short silence, "are there any other questions?"

"Just the one," replied Adagio, "you're certain nopony at all knows what's going on with the four of us?"

He smiled humorlessly. "Let's just say the activities of the castle accountant are not closely monitored. Not even Princess Celestia herself thinks of you three as more than possible fillyfriends."

Aria raised an eyebrow, something in that last part sending shivers through her guts. "What, you even keep secrets from your family? That's pretty cold."

"Hmph." Blueblood narrowed his eyes. "You don't know my family. Did you know that the Nightmare Moon of legend was Celestia's little sister? I didn't until the day she arrived in the palace. Princess Cadence's role as ruler of the Crystal Empire? She and Twilight Sparkle becoming princesses at all? The plan to reform Discord, if it's even over yet? All news delivered to me, whom Celestia trusts to sort out the nation's tax systems, at the same time as everypony else." His voice took on a slight edge, but with a hint of acceptance. "You wonder if I feel guilty about not telling them what I'm up to? No, no I don't." 

There was a long silence as the sirens stared back at him, Adagio surprised to find herself speechless.

Adapting a cheerful tone, he forced a smile. "Good thing, too, as I don't think we'd get far in the plan otherwise!"

And then she was back. "Right," said Adagio with a relaxed smirk, "we'll see who we can make use of tomorrow." She fluttered her eyelashes teasingly. "You'll introduce us to prominent ponies, of course?"

"Of course."
> Chapter 11: Doors and Jelly
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Late that afternoon, the sirens opted to explore the castle a little. Blueblood had left them to the carriage to take them back to the castle as he headed off to attend to the day's paperwork. They were sure they had collectively eaten more on that boat-blimp today than in the entire past week combined, which left the trio feeling a little bloated. Still, Adagio didn't want to risk what she'd heard so many times and now finally understood about gaining weight from overeating. Not that she was the least bit self-conscious about the width of her flanks.

As such, she insisted they move around a little, if only to walk off what they could while (finally) doing what they'd resisted the quiet urge to do thus far; go around opening random doors. The first few were closets, bathrooms, guest rooms or servant quarters, and yet more hallways, but before long, they discovered a room full of swords and fencing equipment.

They took a long look at the room's contents before Adagio spoke, an eyebrow raised. "Would either of you like to be cut to ribbons in the next fifteen minutes?" Two heads shook. "Good, let's skip this one."

And so they did, moving right along to the next door, which was the same thing, but with spears. And fencing equipment.

Sonata tilted her head, the image of a closet door nearly breaking off its hinges from internal pressure floating over it. "You think they just had too much of this stuff to put in a box or something?"

"None of it looks rusty," observed Aria, "but I don't remember anything about the army making a difference for any of what we saw in the papers. Think it's all for show?"

Adagio pondered this for a moment. "I'll ask Blueblood about the Equestrian military soon. Until then, next room."

Aria felt it was again time to take up her usual role. "So, any reason we aren't splitting up, checking different doors?"

"Ignoring that it'll be night soon and no sane pony wanders a largely unfamiliar area alone after dark?" Adagio glanced toward a nearby window as the sun's rays faded to the orange of encroaching dusk, then more pointedly to their immediate surroundings to find nopony else around at the time. "I'd rather not have to explain if somepony asks why we saw fit to divide while casually looking around together."

Nodding in an 'oh, yea.' kind of way, Aria followed along without any further complaint. 

Sonata got the next door, finding it to be the room Blueblood had mentioned with nothing but two chairs, the one for staring contests.

Walking over, Adagio tilted her head. "That... that really exists. I was sure he was pulling our legs with a few of those examples, but if not, don't walk straight into any door without looking around first. Good advice in general, but it likely goes double for the Slide Room." The image of a really big slide floated over Sonata's head, juxtaposed with a question mark. "Either it's a room full of slides for some reason, or the first steps into the chamber are accompanied by a long, slippery fall, right behind the doorway. We should be careful."

Gulping, her followers nodded in unison.

The next door they opened was apparently a bowling alley. With none of them knowing how bowling was done with hooves, two of them not wanting to see Sonata try it with her loose (keyword; loose) understanding of telekinesis, they moved right along to the next one.

Then came something weird. Behind the next door was a small, square room, that they could not explain. In the room's center they saw a large drain. A single pink cloud did it also contain. Out of that cloud poured chocolate, like rain. For a moment they felt that they'd all gone insane.

"'Scuze me, ladies!"

Turning as one, the trio were fortunate enough to be too flabbergasted to adequately display shock, so when they saw Discord himself slither through the air over their heads through the doorway in serpentine fashion, none of them emitted more than a long, quiet, strained breath. They watched in silence as he, whistling in reverse, landed on what amounted to his feet, casually strolled over to the cloud with a newspaper tucked under one arm, stuck his head into the pink mass, and began shouting incoherently, even if most of it weren't muffled by the cloud. While he did this, flailing his arms (only one of which turned into a flail for the duration) and flapping his bat-wing, the feathery one just twitching every now and then, the trio silently stepped back, closed the door, and spoke very, very quietly.

Aria started. "That was Discord."

"Well-observed, Aria," noted their calmly-sarcastic leader, "nothing escapes you. For Sonata's sake, however, I'll say now that we should watch our thoughts."

Sonata immediately fixed her gaze on the projection of a thought bubble at the tip of her horn, which in turn became a thought bubble in a thought bubble, and then another thought bubble in another thought bubble. It continued in that pattern until Aria slapped a hoof to the back of her head, the spell fizzling out in indirect proportion to Sonata's irritated glare and Aria's smug smile, respectively.

Rolling her eyes just as much out of exasperation as the usual reasons, Adagio leaned a little closer to the rain-drain absurdity room, hearing Discord apparently still busy with his task. Hoping that meant he couldn't hear them, she whispered to the others. "I mean he can likely read our minds, so be careful what you're thinking when he's near!"

Aria raised a doubting eyebrow. "You don't think that's a little paranoid, even for you?"

"No," their arguably just-paranoid-enough leader hissed back, "becau-"

"Yea," concurred Sonata, still massaging the back of her head, "I didn't see any brain-reading spells in the hardest part of the book. What makes you think he can even do that?"

"Because he's one of the oldest ones of the dark age, you idiots!" She turned away from them, gazing out a nearby window into the night sky with a mix of anger, fear, and defiance on her face. "If power to tear reality asunder is but a flick of the wrist away, how hard do you think it'd be for him to scry our thoughts?" In Discord's case, she'd make an exception to her taboo on that idea.

There was a pause, neither Aria nor Sonata answering her. She was certain the latter would say something stupid, at least. When she turned to look at them, only Aria was present. The purple pegasus glanced about, looking confused. "Hey, where'd she-?"

They heard Sonata's voice from the chocolate rain room, the door now open. "Hi, Discord! Do you know what my friends and I are here for?"

Adagio and Aria felt their hearts stop, jaws nearly hitting the ground as their once-magical throats emitted only silent screams.

"Hm," thought the spirit aloud, "if I had to guess, I'd say..." There was a snapping sound and what might have been a bubble popping. "You're a tribal awareness program!"

The two still out in the hall felt the ice-water in their veins quickly thaw. Confusion was apparently very warm.

Discord went on. "An earth pony, a unicorn, and a pegasus, brought to the palace for one of those political things you ponies get so serious about? Or maybe you're just the cast for this year's Hearths Warming play? Are you the pony playing Princess Platinum this year, my dear?"

She giggled. "Beats me!"

They heard him chuckle. "Well, get back to me when you know, would you? I might actually attend this year, and it would be so pleasant to have something other than a well-portrayed Chancellor Puddinghead to look forward to."

"Sure thing, buh-bye now!" Their blue accomplice confidently trotted back out to the hallway with a calm smile on her face. "Secret's safe, isn't that great?"

Adagio was on her in an instant, forehooves on Sonata's shoulders, letting out a long, agitated breath through her nostrils as her face contorted with rage. "Never." she growled through gritted teeth, "Do, that, again!"

Sonata smiled sheepishly. "What, what'd I say?"

Feeling relief as it seemed that Discord didn't know (or at the very least, didn't care) what they were really up to sank in, the pulsating veins in Adagio's forehead started to lose intensity as she let out a ragged breath, sinking to the floor. "I need to lie down."

She immediately found herself lying on her stomach on a cozy, queen-sized bed in the middle of the hallway. While it was soft and welcoming of her pony frame, its arrival only fired up the worst of her imagination. "Wh-wha-?!" She quickly rolled onto her back and looked around, taking in whatever her eyes would still allow before madness took her. The rest of the hall was normal, with Aria and Sonata were standing about a meter away looking about as bewildered as she was while the latter poked the bedspread with a testing hoof. "What just happened?!"

"Well, I am sorry for eavesdropping," came a reply from above, "but I heard you were a little tuckered out."

The group looked up to see a crib mobile floating over Adagio's hallway bed. Hanging from it were plastic ostriches, window frames, ice cream cones, a Teflon frying pan, and a pointy clown hat. The rim of the hat flapped open and shut, a long, lone fang protruding from it along with Discord's voice. "I could also bring you a glass of warm, chocolate milk, just restocked the cloud!"

Looking up at the slowly-rotating mess of things, Adagio didn't say anything in reply, using every ounce of her willpower just to not curl up in fear. If she was lucky, it wouldn't look anything like she was cowering. 

That Aria didn't get even a sliver of satisfaction from seeing their big, scary boss getting intimidated for once (apart from meeting Celestia and at the Battle of the Bands) left her feeling a little surprised and a little ripped-off.

Some little part of Adagio chose to believe that Sonata was deliberately getting the focus off her. "Restocked? What?"

A tiny Discord formed out of the hat, dressed like a clown as he hung by the top of his head from the hat, playing soothing, harp-like melodies on an upside-down banjo. "That room with the cotton candy cloud? One of the many, many, many ways I like to help out around here is to keep the castle supplied with Chocolate milk." The drain led to a number of places, mostly dining areas, via crafty use of wormholes, but he didn't see a need to explain that right now. Nor how what wasn't imbibed at the end of a day went on a train to Horspain to fall neatly on a plain. It was a compromise.

Sonata smiled up at him. "Well, that's nice of you!" She stepped forward to stand up on her hind hooves while resting the front ones on the bed. "Did you poof up this thing, too?"

Nodding a little as he spun on the slowly-rotating mobile, the tiny DisClown again strummed the banjo that made harp noises. "Yes," he answered while looking down at Adagio, who had sat up to look at him, "how is it? I know cumulus-weave is all the hot sauce these days, but I'll never get tired of good old jelly-mesh mattresses!"

Finding the surface beneath her hooves and hindquarters to be indeed plush and almost squishy, she didn't dare try to peek under the quilt for fear caution of falling into a vat of slimy goo. Her face and voice were closer to neutral than she'd have thought she'd be capable of in these circumstances. "I-it's, very, soft...?" 

Can he sense fear even if it's not outwardly visible? Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink!!

To Adagio's immediate pride, Aria was fairly calm about the situation, looking more like she was waiting for the punchline of a joke. "I don't think they'll let her just sleep in the middle of the hall like this."

Shrugging, Discord snapped the hairs of his tail and regained his usual form in a flash, floating next to the bed with arms crossed and his nose raised slightly. "She only said she needed to lie down, I didn't hear anything about where this emergency rest was due to happen."

Not noticing his amused little grin at all, Adagio felt beads of sweat under the hair hanging over her forehead, smiling sheepishly. "I-I'll be certain to word my fatigue more carefully next time, thank you."

"Good," he replied cheerfully, donning a little, dark-green army hat and saluting with a very serious expression, "because wording is half the battle!" The one against confusion and spontaneous hallway beds. Obviously.

Paying no attention to her comrades' perplexed stares, Sonata tilted her head a little. "Hey, do you live here too? Why haven't we seen you around the castle at all?"

"Ohh, I've been around. I don't live here, exactly, but I've definitely been around! Over and under too! But not within, because eesh!" He shuddered a little, then scratched his beard in a pondering fashion. "The palace is usually bland as blank billboards, but I'm pretty sure I heard whipper-whappers and dingle-dongles the other day." Seeing only confused stares, he shrugged, snapping his talons. "Oh, but where are my manners?" Rhetorical question. He summoned a tasteful top hat and lifted it to bow at them. "I'm Discord, Spirit of Chaos and former ruler of the world at least twice, whom might the three of you be?"

Adagio tried to hop off the bed to take up a more formal stance, but almost tripped (onto a soft bed, but still) as her hooves shifted in the jelly-bed under her, hoping she didn't look nearly as foolish as she felt while trying to regain her balance.

Sonata didn't seem to notice this, smiling at Discord. "I'm Sonata Dusk," she motioned to her respective companions. "Aria Blaze, and Adagio Dazzle, and it's nice to meet you!" She finished the intro just in time to see Adagio make her way off the bed, landing a little haphazardly before assuming the most poised, most dignified stance she could manage, Aria just smirking a little.

Discord smiled too. There was something he liked about these three, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Nor a claw, a feather, a mandible, or any other extremity he could dream up at the moment. This would require thinking. "Groovio. You know," he said while eyeing Sonata, "I never did get an answer for your question, what brings you lovely ladies to our humble biggest-castle-in-Equestria?"

"We are guests of Prince Blueblood," answered Adagio in a businesslike manner, forgetting to include a cordial smile, "we were invited to stay here for a time."

At the sound of that name, Discord looked like he'd tasted some very sour milk. Not even chocolate. "Eugh," he said with a shudder, "Blueblood? The palace paperwork pony? There are others that sign and stamp things all day, sure, but none that don't do something more interesting in their downtime!" Well, not that he'd be able to investigate further, since that little talk with Celestia. Speaking of. "I used to think his aunt was dull, but that guy's too boring to even hold conversation with!" He couldn't help a little smile as Aria started to giggle. She hid it behind a hoof while pretending to cough the moment Adagio, whom he just noticed looked second in fluffiness only to one of Fluttershy's fatter critters, gave her a flat stare.

"Yes," answered Miss Fluffy Fluffs in calm, concise fashion, "we are staying in the Pisces room in the Northern Wing, should you have need of us."

Discord would have chuckled and issued a non-sequitur, but the sheer seriousness rolling off the Great Cuddly-Wuddly reminded him too much of Boreblood himself. Maybe they were distant royal cousins or something? Not even goofy nicknames were helping much. "Well," he said with his best, most convincing, most Celestia-fooling smile, "I do so hope you enjoy your stay, got to run now, ta-ta!"

He vanished in a flash. Aria just covered her ears when Sonata's mouth started moving, uncovering them when Adagio finished a disinterested eye-roll. "I think we've seen enough of the castle tonight," she all but ordered, "let's head back."

As they moved toward the Pisces room, Aria glanced over her shoulder. "So, we leavin' the bed there, or...?"

"I don't see why not," answered Adagio with an apathetic shrug, "we've already got three of our own." The one that felt like jelly was soft, yes, but it gave and bent and folded under her weight a little too easily. She wasn't even sure how they'd have transported the thing. 

Should I be grateful that he conjured it for me, or worried? 

If he read their minds and knew what they were really up to, then one:

She would have to smack Sonata upside the head. Smack her like she'd never been smacked before! Right upside the head! This was assuming she still had limbs with which to smack anypony by the time she was sure of this. If not, it would be a task of utmost importance delegated to Aria. A lot.

And two:

It could mean that he was just playing with them, that he was acting friendly to lull them into a false sense of security. What was that thing he'd summoned above the bed while she was on it? One of those rotating crib toys for babies? He was calling her a baby, mocking her in everything but word! And sadly, compared to himself? He was right. Even at a hundred times their age, a hundred times their full power, it was doubtful they'd stand for long against the progenitor of chaos magic. If he really did know, they were finished. She hadn't fallen for his trap, though! In telling him exactly where they were staying, he'd have no incentive to go looking and thus no vested interest by the time he found it himself! Ohh, yes, Adagio wasn't inexperienced herself in this department!

Though maybe he really didn't know what they were up to. He was supposed to be reformed, but who was to say it wasn't part of a greater scheme to...

While their leader's internal rambling went on, Sonata nodded to Aria and slowed her pace just enough to fall behind Adagio and whisper to Aria, who had taken the hint and done the same. "Do you think she's okay?"

"Yea," she replied with an eye-roll, "why wouldn't she be?"

Her face mixed with worry and fear of a coming blow, Sonata glanced behind Aria as they walked. "Well, did you see how we just went right past the room?"

Whipping her head around to check, she looked back and forth between the door to the Pisces room and Adagio, who was just staring straight ahead as she marched. 

Ohhh, boy.

Sonata frowned. "That, and you saw her face when he first showed up, right?"

"Yea..." It was weird, actually, Aria herself didn't trust Discord as far as she could throw him, but she'd been way more afraid of Celestia when they first saw her. 

Maybe she just has issues with Discord in particular? He's supposed to be all about mind games, and that's kinda her thing. If I were as crazy-paranoid as Adagio, bet I'd have been sweating too. Isn't she forgetting something, though? 

"Your little question didn't really help, y'know."

Shrinking back with contrition, Sonata glanced back and forth between her and Adagio. "H-hey," she called out, loud enough to be heard, "Dagi?"

The reply came in a mumbled, absent-minded kind of way. "What is it, Sonata?"

"Sorry about the thing with Discord."

"Hmph." There were just a few seconds of worrying silence. Sonata kind of wished it stayed that way. "You could have gotten us all killed," she uttered quietly, "or worse. I've told you countless times to be careful, and sooner or later, you will find out why."

Not saying a word, Aria silently studied the look on the unicorn's face. As she'd feared, every word must have cut deep, because Sonata was close to tears. But, for once? Aria knew how to fix it. She brushed Sonata's side with the tip of a wing to get her attention, then nodded to Adagio, walking faster to be just a little bit ahead of her, Sonata following her cue by walking in the same place on Adagio's opposite side.

Still completely spaced out, Adagio kept walking down the hall leading further from their destination. When they came to a hallway intersection Aria knew would loop back to the Pisces room if they made the right turns, she stepped a little further in front of Adagio to head down the hall that would lead back to the room fastest, Sonata mimicking her perfectly. 

Noticing her supposed followers both taking the same route at the same time, Adagio snapped to attention. She turned to follow and then usurp their pace in an instant, hoping they didn't catch her old bane getting the best of her again. A few minutes later, they entered the Pisces room.

"Y'know," Aria began conversationally, "I don't know if that guy-" something told her not to say his name right now, "-can't read minds, but if he can, I doubt he always remembers to." That got Adagio's full attention. "I mean, you remember what it said in that paper? That he got duped by the magic-drainer guy? If he was in his head the whole time, that'd have been pretty tough to pull off, right?"

Her eyes widening as she took in that precious detail, Adagio started to smile. Not her usual grin, either, but a wide, hopeful, we-aren't-totally-screwed smile. "You... y-you're right! If he'd been capable of such a thing, he'd be a fool to let it fall into disuse often enough to be forgotten at all!" 

Can't believe I missed such a thing! Unless... 

The corners of her mouth flickered, her smile starting to recede. 

Aria and Sonata knew exactly where her mind was going, and the latter took her cue, smiling. "So, tomorrow is the big shin-dig, right? We go with the prince to meet ponies, eat party food, get the plan going, all that jazz?"

Adagio was the sort of schemer that could see plans within plans, even failed ones, bits and pieces of this or that line of actions coming up again later as part of deeper, more insidious machinations. She must have been seconds from thinking Discord getting turned to stone twice, broken out, supposedly reformed, back-stabbing the ponies, then getting drained, reforming again, and possibly planning to back-stab them again, or not, was all part of some greater plot. That kind of thinking was like a snake eating its own tail, so Adagio's face showing the exact moment that paranoid thought bubble deflated and blew away when lanced with her own, active, actually-existent schemes gave Aria a warm, contented feeling.

"Right," answered Adagio with a familiar smirk, "I'll stick to Blueblood so we can cement the image of being a couple in everypony's heads, you two stay with us long enough to make it clear that it's not just my favor they should be courting to get to his. When it should be reasonably clear that the three of us are with him, spread out and-" she chuckled, actually feeling just a hint of giddiness for this stage of the plan, "-do as you will! Eat your fill at the buffet tables, sip wine we'd never be able to afford on our own, dance to your heart's content, and talk to whoever approaches you." She knew both knew to never be the ones approaching others so as to maintain as much mysterious allure as possible, so she didn't say it.

Aria smirked a little too, raising an eyebrow. "The objective is to have fun?"

There was a short cackle, indicating Adagio was just as pleased with the idea. "Within constraints, yes. Nothing unusual; don't blow our cover, keep your eyes open, report what you find to me. Other than that? What better way to act natural than to go to the event in earnest?"

A projection of colorful sparks and confetti appeared over a beaming unicorn's head. "There's gonna be so much CHEESE!"

Still giggling in her half-malicious way, Adagio nodded. "Yes, Sonata, just don't forget what we're there for." To her immediate satisfaction, Sonata responded with a nod and a crisp salute, (silly, yes, but with Sonata, she'd take it) not losing her smile. "Oh, and don't tell Blueblood what you'll be doing," her already-sinister smirk tinted toward lewd again, "I want to see how much of it he can piece together himself. Any questions?" There were none, both cohorts looked pleased with the plan in motion and there was nothing left to do for the day. "Good, see you both in the morning."

Then she crawled up on her non-jelly bed, lying down and getting some rest in earnest.

Silently watching her, Aria got the lights, headed to her own bed, and flopped down on it at about the same time as Sonata did hers. Then she waited and listened, hearing Adagio's breathing pattern change in just minutes. Getting up, Aria crept over to Sonata's bed, hoping her confident grin was audible in the dark room. "How was that?"

Sonata sounded happy with their joint maneuver. "Thank you, Ria!"

Facing away from her to ignore the sudden warmth in her face, Aria looked instead to the one they'd learned those kind of psychological gymnastics from. It was another weird feeling, taking what she'd seen Adagio use to intimidate and control people and employing it on Adagio herself, mainly to calm her down and tell her when she was wrong without actually challenging her at all. 

If she ever figures out we manipulate her, even a little, would she get mad? Or, would she be proud? 

Another, more horrifying thought occurred. 

No, wait, the way she responds to what she thinks Blueblood is up to... What if she LIKES it?!

"It's nice having her happy, huh?"

Snapping out of her weird thoughts, Aria was again grateful for the dark. "Y-yea, I guess."

Sonata muffled a giggle into her quilt. "It's like, she carries us from plan to plan, always tries to make sure we're going somewhere, but sometimes, she needs us! Just makes ya feel all fuzzy, right?"

Okay, Aria thought with an unseen grin, heading back to her bed, that's enough for one day. "Go back to sleep, Nata."
> Chapter 12: Meet and Greet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"CRAP!!"

Rare was the day that Sonata awoke first, but her exclamation startled both of her companions into jumping from their beds and blearily looking around before settling on the source of the outburst.

"What," demanded Aria, irritation clear in her eyes "what's your problem now?!"

Sitting on her bed, Sonata held her forehooves to her cheeks in horrified fashion. "We don't have any dresses!!"

"Oh," muttered Adagio through a facehoof, "knew I was forgetting something." She saw Aria giving her a confused look. "For the party later tonight? Showing up naked probably won't do us any favors. Perhaps our benefactor can be of assistance here." She wasn't sure why that drew a little groan from Aria. What was the point of having allies if not to exploit what they had to offer?

Blueblood himself was welcome to at least try to do the same with them any time. Really.


---


A little later that day, the four of them stood in the palace wardrobe, a large room that seemed to be comprised almost entirely of dressers and cabinets.

"So," summarized Blueblood, "you left the other world without taking anything with you?"

Aria scoffed. "Duh, we weren't exactly loaded and nothing we had over there would have fit our bodies over here, even if we hadn't turned into ponies."

"I see." He spoke at a considerably higher volume, "Well, it's certainly a shame you three have nothing to wear to the charity drive tonight." And then he waited, looking quite pleased with himself. He only grinned wider as the sirens looked around, perplexed.

Raising an eyebrow, Aria opened her mouth and was immediately silenced when a cloud of black and white blurs rushed past them twice. When it was gone, she, Sonata, and Adagio were all wearing identical dresses save for color. 

Now garbed in a black tailcoat himself, Blueblood smirked. "Haha, I love doing that."

While Adagio and Sonata looked themselves over, Aria couldn't help feeling just a little violated. "You, what, doing what? You have some kinda spell for dressing and undressing ponies?"

Sonata's ears perked up.

Chuckling, Blueblood shook his head. "Not quite. Certain members of the palace staff have been asked to outfit party guests on short notice so many times, they take pride in doing it this way now. Truth be told, all I probably had to do was whistle." Looking them over himself, he couldn't help finding the maids' choices in dress style to be oddly appropriate for these three.

The dresses were svelt, tight-fitting, relatively shiny things, leaving the forelegs essentially bare while covering the hind legs almost entirely, trailing off a little in a long, pointed end under the tail that didn't quite touch the floor. Each was trimmed with light, thin ruffles of soft fabric, traced along the edges of the legholes and leading down to the tip at the end of the dress. Adagio's was purple with a lighter purple trim, Aria's was dark green with purple trim so dark it was nearly black, and Sonata's was maroon with soft pink trim.

Aria wanted to complain about some aspect of what just happened, but when she looked at Adagio, she saw a hint of that lewd little oh-you-sneaky-bitch smile of hers. This quickly shifted Aria's priorities to a change of subject. "Uh, okay, so, dresses taken care of." She looked at Blueblood. "Who're we looking for at the shin-dig tonight?

"Well..."


---


It proved to be a long, somewhat stressful day periodically broken up by complete non-sequiturs as the four worked out exactly what they intended to do. They went over the full list of names of important ponies and distinguished between which held sway over the workings of the city, and some extent of the nation, and which were celebrities that could help move the hearts and minds of the masses with the right manipulations, to give them a push in the wrong direction, as Adagio put it. Eventually, it was time to set off.

"Alright," began Blueblood as the four rode in the carriage to Fancy Pants' chateau, "I'd like to go over the general plan one more time." Predictably, Aria let out a sigh of irritation from the seat across from him, but he ignored it. "You all know what to say if somepony asks about your background?"

Sitting next to Aria, Sonata recited what had been drilled into her in only around twenty minutes. Twenty-eight if one counts the time spent trying to wrangle derailed instruction back on track. "The heavy implication of disaster back home is a good deflector. Even if ponies want to know, it's a faux pas to pry for details on what is clearly a painful story. In fact, if we play it up in public, we won't have to share anything at all, those nearby more likely to glare the inquisitor into submission than encourage further prodding of details."

Adagio loosed a sinister chuckle, but glancing to the seat next to him, Blueblood was almost certain he saw pride in her eyes. They moved to Aria as though issuing a command.

"We act casual," she recited while crossing her forelegs, "stick close at first, then spread out as the party gets underway. From there," she couldn't help smiling just a little, "we talk, drink, have a good time, and see how many of the possible candidates discussed earlier we can snare." That the proud look was now directed her way sent a pleasant tingle through Aria's chest, but she hadn't forgotten her role, looking pointedly at Adagio. "And...?"

"Ehm," Adagio blinked once, starting to blush, "and, none of us, under any circumstances, are to smile 'like the Queen of the Damned right after a mass suicide,' or laugh in the same way."

Smiling, Sonata reached over to pat her shoulder. "Baby steps, Dagi."

Puffing out her cheeks in a little pout, Adagio hmph'd and folded her forelegs. "I can't believe that in all the time we've been together, neither of you have ever said anything!"

Aria shrugged, looking away. "We've, like, never had to worry about keepin' our cool under cover for a long time before, it's just never really mattered like it does now, y'know?" 

That, and I think the effort of saying it to your face might have shaved a few years off my life. Not doing it would have bit us in the long run, but still...

Blueblood offered his 'date' a sympathetic smile. "I maintain that among the upper-crust of Canterlot, there are more than a few ponies who wear such expressions frequently." 

Not all the time, nor at such intensity, but still... 

"Few actually have valid reason to, but you'd likely not have drawn too much attention provided none out of six particular mares ever saw you."

"But," sighed Adagio, "it's still better not to take the chance, to come across as nonthreatening as possible, most of all for myself."

"At the same time," Sonata added cheerfully, "nopony will take you seriously if you just look like foreleg candy, so no need to act like a brainless hanger-on!"

This made Adagio smile too, but before she could reply, the ponified sirens heard Blueblood say something under his breath while gazing out the window.

"And praise Auntie for that." After a moment's silence, he turned back to them, looking the tiniest bit abashed. "Haha, sorry, you'll see when we get there. At which point...?"

"We stick together for a bit," chirped Sonata.

"spread out once things have gotten busy," continued Aria.

"and make a point of leaving together so as to avoid appearing too accessible." Adagio finished with what she told herself would have to be her last fiendish chuckle for the evening. "The more hapless nobles we have competing for our attention, the more wealthy aristocrats there are eager to throw their resources at our hooves, the better our odds of destroying that play, the holiday, and the peace of Equestria along with it!" She paused, looking at Blueblood. "Speaking of which...?"

"No news yet, I'm afraid, but I'll keep you posted. With any luck, an apparent interest from the royal family will speed things along."

"Hm. Well, we'll cross that bridge later. For now-"

"Party time!!" 

Sonata's fellow conspirators gave her unamused, inquisitive stares. 

She wilted under their gaze, smiling sheepishly. "Haha, I mean, completely tame, not-draw-too-much-attention-y party, time?"

Aria would have placed bets on who was the most likely to make them look suspicious, but the only pony in the cab apart from herself and the two prime suspects was Blueblood.


---


True to plan, the prince and his three guests walked in as a unit, and already heads were turning. However, this likely had less to do with his having brought three mares to the event and more to do with him having brought anypony at all, to his slight chagrin. Still, ponies were looking their way and whispering, and by the restrained smiles his co-conspirators wore, it seemed they relished the attention, even as they made a show of not holding their heads too high while vacantly looking around. Not wanting to waste any time, Blueblood led them straight to their host for the evening. 

There he is, thought Blueblood as they approached, Look at him. Smiling, waving, undue cheer exuding from his every tainted pore. I loathe you Fancy Pants. I loathe you with all of my being.

"Ah, I say," Fancy Pants indeed said, "Blueblood, old boy, good to see you!"

"Likewise." 

With ALL OF MY BEING. 

He was, as ever, surrounded by unthinking yes-ponies, though Blueblood honestly couldn't say to what degree he was aware of their nature. Also, Fleur De Lis. Just kind of there. Like always. Blueblood gestured to the trio. "I'd like you to meet Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk." For their part, they did a fine job of looking like ordinary fillies who were just happy to be here.

Fancy nodded, smiling. "Pleased to make your acquaintances! Fancival, Ebeneezer Pants at your service, friends call me Fancy." 

Slightly annoyed that he wasn't kissing her hoof, Adagio hid it behind a smile rehearsed just hours before. 

Look as though you're apologizing for something or just made some kind of mistake, like the others coached you. 

She did, the grin coming out almost sheepish as the tiniest blush formed on her cheeks. "Charmed. My companions and I are new in town, so it means a lot that you would welcome us." She had to think humble thoughts to keep from smirking as she nodded to Blueblood. "We've already been blessed with the good fortune to have one pony show us such kindness, but," she added a measured giggle, "w-well, it's nice to see it in others, too."

"Quite right," concurred Fancy, just loud enough that all those nearby would hear, "the spirit of benevolence is the heart of tonight's gathering, and I hope it will prove alive and well before the eve's end."

"On that note," Blueblood added with an almost disinterested expression, "you can expect the usual stipend delivered within the next hour or so."

Fancy smiled. "Crackerjack! Can always count on you to chip in when it counts, Prince Blueblood."

Aria caught herself before she could ask how much he gave. 

Sonata, however, did not. "What's a stipend?"

Aagh! Aria internally screamed, You could at least ask the right question, you dunce!!

But, as ever, Adagio was there to cover for the slip-up, even remembering to make the new, practiced smile as she chuckled. "A regular payment, Sonata, I suspect our friend here-" she lightly nuzzled the side of Blueblood's face with her own, so quickly and casually that most of those who caught it didn't even react right away, "-is a regular donor to good causes."

Mentally noting the few wide-eyed stares they were getting, Blueblood didn't really react to the fleeting embrace either, as though such a thing was already very common between them. "Indeed. I'll refrain from numbers, however."

Fancy flashed him a knowing smile. "Afraid to intimidate potential givers?"

Blueblood returned it. "No, no, just worried I'll reveal I've not been giving enough!"

And then, Sonata noticed, a thing happened. Fancy and Mr. Blueblood started to laugh, the ponies standing near Fancy started to laugh a second later, and Adagio was doing this cute little giggle, way different from her normal thing! It sounded so warm, so voice-cuddly, that Sonata found herself giggling more with the eldest siren than the rich guys' joke. 

Aria didn't laugh at all, more than happy to maintain the 'cool, aloof' shtick Adagio had recommended for her, but she did form just a tiny smile.

When the laughter started to die down, Fancy kept his winning smile. "Well, I shan't keep you, old boy, please enjoy the festivities!"

Blueblood externally did the same. "Of course."

I hope you fall in a hole and your horn snaps off. 

He led the sirens away, stopping at a mostly vacant spot near a marble column. "I'll procure beverages, please wait here."

When he was gone, Aria looked at Adagio, but kept her voice down. "Not gonna lie, was holding my breath there."

That she maintained the 'friendly' smile even as her voice took on a little edge served as a reminder of Adagio's true nature. "Your faith in my abilities is noted."

EEK! 

"W-wait, I didn't mean it like-"

"Relax. You figured out flying on the, er, fly, just leave looking soft and approachable to me. In the mean time, you two remember your roles?"

"Eh, yea, I'm good." She and Adagio looked to Sonata, who was watching Blueblood visit the hors d'oeuvres table. A quick elbow to the ribs won her attention.

"Ah, r-right!"

Aria would play cool and hard-to-get, Sonata would be bubbly and talkative, both strategies geared toward making other ponies talk about themselves, to impress or to sate curiosity respectively. All of them knew what to do.

Blueblood returned, levitating a little plate bearing four filled wineglasses. 

In hindsight, I could have asked one of the server ponies to get them for me. I bet Auntie would say it's better to be proactive anyway. 

Regardless, he spoke when all three of his guests held a glass. "Try not to react too much, but have you seen the eyes directed your way? I counted four nearly gawking at you on the way back alone."

It was with a split-second shift of facial muscles that Adagio stopped herself from smirking, instead adopting an almost bashful grin as she fleetingly scanned the eyes that seemed to be directed at her group. "Yes, yes we have." She once again felt pride in her followers as they assumed their roles with natural fluidity, Sonata smiling and waving at some of those looking at her, Aria rolling her eyes and looking away. Adagio could almost see them both picking out targets already, though she herself would meet whoever Blueblood could find to introduce her to. 


---


A little later, Fancy Pants gathered the room's attention to deliver a short speech about benevolent nature, inspirational ponies, the spirit of generosity, and some other things that few, if any, of those present likely gave a damn about. 

Soliloquize about your virtues all you like, thought Adagio, but none of it lasts when things go wrong.

When it was done, the many guests collectively seemed to breathe out a little, chatting and mingling with more energy than before. The four conspirators in the crowd (well, the four with the most ambitious goal) took this as their cue, Blueblood taking Adagio to make a few particular acquaintances, Sonata wandering off in no apparent direction, and Aria casually standing by the column, looking as though nothing in the room interested her beyond the refilled glass she swiveled in a hoof.

Alone, the purple pegasus resisted the urge to smile about being able to spend most of this thing away from Blueblood. Adagio was more than welcome to keep him busy all night, or at least away from her. Judging by how he barely responded to anything she said today, the feeling was probably mutual. She did worry a little about Sonata, though, which at least made keeping a small frown of boredom easier. Looking around, she didn't see what she would never admit aloud was her favorite unicorn (it was a damn short list), but she did catch sight of a jazz band setting up on the far side of the room.

This made her bored frown shift to an agitated scowl. 

"Why hello there!"

Aria contained her reaction to simply turning her head just enough to catch sight of the speaker, a tall-ish, thin, beige unicorn with a short, blonde mane and white glasses. And some kind of stupid sweater. 

Remember, small statements, short answers to any questions, make them work to get every word out of you.

Meanwhile, she'd hope Sonata didn't do anything stupid while working the opposite angle; talking a lot without really saying anything. "Yea?"

He smiled. "My name is Trenderhoof, but you can call me Trend."

She barely tilted her head enough to qualify it as a nod, her eyes going right back to her drink. Swish. Swish. The hard part was not smiling at all as she practically heard him looking at her in surprise. Even without her gem, she could almost feel his little sense of disappointment at losing her attention so soon, along with the momentum of his confidence as he readied the second attempt.

"So, what brings you to the big drive tonight?"

Not looking away from the glass she was lightly twirling around, she shrugged. "Here with friends."

"Oh," he said with a little chuckle, "well, I'm here on my own. That's my style, intrepid reporter, braving the scene alone! I'm not a reporter, though, I'm more of a journalist!"

He writes for someone, Aria noted, gets the word on something out somewhere. That could be useful. Adagio might want this guy for something. 

She granted him eye-contact, not missing the way he perked up a little when she did.

Oh, good, and he's easy to read! 

"That right?"

He brightened a little further. "Ohh, most certainly! You see, I go out into the world to find untapped greatness, the unnoticed, the unappreciated, the unduly obscure, and bring it to the limelight for everypony to embrace!"

Aria kept her bored expression. "Mmhm. And?"

"And, well," he answered with a little chuckle, "you strike me as a very interesting pony. What is your name, my lady?"

She made him wait the better part of ten seconds as she slowly scanned the room for nothing whatsoever, as though internally debating whether to continue the conversation or just walk off without another word. "Aria Blaze."

His grin held strong. "Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Aria Blaze! Do you prefer 'Aria,' 'Miss Blaze,' just 'Blaze,' or 'Miss Aria'? Is there a preferred nickname?"

Feeling only a little sadistic, the only answer she gave was a shrug, the motion so small she was worried she'd have to address him verbally to say she didn't care. 

Luckily, he ventured a guess, fear and desperation building in his eyes. "May I call you Miss Blaze?"

A tiny smile was used to signal that his choice was acceptable, and it was written all over his face that that was what he was thinking as she gave him a subtle nod. Truth be told, she'd have given the same reaction to anything but maybe "Miss Aria," because somehow it sounded like "Miss Frilly Teacups" to her.

"Wonderful," he exclaimed with renewed hope and vigor, "you know, your style reminds me a little of the Goth look, a movement by disaffected Manehattan fillies; shaded, but urban, composed on the outside, but untamed beneath! It doesn't see a lot of wear around these parts, which I feel is a travesty." 

Something about the light, airy, almost poetic way he spoke told Aria that deep down, this guy was a sissy.

"It fits city life very well, you know? That repressed, hurting attitude bubbling under the stressful hum-drum of one's busy day, pain of the spirit cast aside and ignored before the go-go-go that is an urban living! But you, Miss Blaze, you wear it so keenly as to stand as the very embodiment of Goth! From the style of your dress, to the wear of your mane, to the chilling hold of your gaze, the very image of dark allure!"

Aria gave him a little smile, but more because she was cracking a rib trying not to laugh than out of appreciation for the comment. 

Five minutes. Five minutes with the real Adagio and this guy would rethink everything he's ever known about 'dark allure.'

That might actually get to happen. Once they didn't need him anymore (if at all) and could afford to let loose, she would pay good money to see her eat this sucker alive. But until then, she would have to hear him talk, let him get invested in her, and report to Adagio later.

"But enough observation, what can you tell me of your sad, sullen song?"

In a feat of perfect coincidence, she clenched her teeth a little and gave him a hard stare, which was roughly what he may have been hoping for. Keeping her lid on, she glanced away. "What's to tell?"

This seemed to encourage him. "Ohh, so much said with so few words! You are a fascinating individual, Miss Blaze!"

Somehow, she was starting to regret this.
> Chapter 13: Abrasion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Think humble. Think apologetic. Think "I've just done something wrong."

It wasn't that hard, once she got into the mindset, and for once, letting her nervousness show was actually helpful, in that it got a little easier to project the warm, disarming little grin she was using to cover up her normal one. Her 'scary' one. The one that, only today, she learned 'gave children nightmares.' She even remembered to adjust her gait after what Aria had said the other day; making sure to keep her head down a little more and trying not to let her hindquarters sway as much. 

Admittedly, this routine would be easier if she weren't fighting the urge to make that detrimental grin on account of the looks she was getting while walking around with Blueblood. Pacing the carefully-polished floor, it was almost palpable to Adagio just how badly some of these ponies wanted to talk to her, Blueblood, or both, and the thrill of her plans making the transition to reality brought her to her current mantra.

Think humble. Think apologetic. Think "I've just done something wrong."

It dampened her fun a bit, but when they got back to the Pisces room, she'd be free to laugh and laugh and laugh! Until then, she let Blueblood lead her to the first Important Pony they could find. As it happened, that was a pony Adagio recognized as Sapphire Shores (Blueblood had pictures for most of the ponies on his list), who smiled brightly as she stepped in front of them. 

"Ohh, somepony get me a seeing-eye dog, because I don' be-lieve my EYES!!"

She was wearing a white, shiny... thing with dangling straps and glittering curls sticking out in random directions from her hackles, like a once-respectable white dress had been torn apart, glued back together, and sprayed with a sticky, reflective fluid. Judging by the way the shinier areas of the dress looked a bit like water cascading down a smooth surface, this might well have been the case. 

"Good evening Miss Shores," replied Blueblood, showing no outward sign of confusion or discomfort at the walking spectacle in front of them, "might you be making a contribution as well?"

"Pfft," she snorted, rolling her eyes and dismissively waving a hoof, "Blue, Blue, Buh-loo, you know I just have my agent sing all that number jazz!" She stepped closer to Adagio with a big, big smile. "Besides, I think we-" she dragged the word out as if it were part of a song, "ahhhhll know the big question tonight; who're your new friends, Blue?"

Almost reflexively, Blueblood gestured back and forth to the two mares. "Sapphire Shores, Adagio Dazzle, Adagio Dazzle, Sapphire shores. I'm sure you'll meet the other two in due time."

Think humble, think apologetic, think "I've just done something wrong!"

Adagio managed a sheepish little smile. "Hello there."

Looking her up and down, Sapphire nodded. "Hello here, there, and wherever else, Hon! Diggin' the spikes!"

Considering that Sapphire was looking upward when she said that, Adagio guessed she meant the hairband. "I, y-yes, it's-" 

Something I probably shouldn't be wearing if I want to look friendly and approachable? Dammit, Aria, why didn't you say anything about that?! 

"-umm... an, heirloom...?" She wanted to think that the nervous grin she was making was entirely deliberate.

Whether or not that was actually a good reason to wear spikes all the time may not have mattered, because the Pony of Pop™ stepped forward, wrapped her forehooves around Adagio's neck, and squeezed her. "Oh, you are just! Too! Kuh-YOOOOT!!"

It hopefully helped her act that Adagio blushed under the stares she was getting from over Sapphire's shoulder. The sensation was weird and uncomfortable, so she quickly wriggled out of the other mare's grip.

Blueblood continued to not look surprised. "You've never been one for the more formal avenues, have you, Miss Shores?"

She giggled, shooting him a little wink. "Maybe not, but I know I wasn't the only one, Hon."

"I've quite moved on, I assure you."

Still smiling, she nodded. "Same here, but still... good times, right?" That he didn't smile back told her how he still felt about the whole incident, but looking at the slightly lost face on his ultra-fluffy date reminded her that this was kind of a private thing. "So, you gonna be around long, lil' darlin'?"

Adagio snapped to attention. "Yes, I-I mean, we -my companions and I- we've only just gotten settled, for the most part...?" 

Sapphire chuckled. "Well, I do hope y'all like it here!" She nodded to Blueblood. "You be good to them girls, 'kay?"

Considering what he was going to help them do, it took considerable effort not to smirk. "But of course."

"Great!" She again stepped close enough to pull Adagio into a hug, lightly nuzzling her face with her own. "Seeya 'round, cutie, and lemme know if you eeeevah need some help!"

Blushing again, Adagio at least had an easy time keeping up a meek smile. "Of c-course, thank you."

When Shores cheerfully sauntered off (somehow, it was news to Adagio that one could cheerfully saunter), Adagio kept her voice down. "That was the leading pop star you mentioned?"

"Yes," he answered while looking around for anypony that might have been heavily involved with the upcoming holiday, "she holds a few shows to sing spiced versions of Hearths Warming songs every year, though I don't know how much use that will be to you."

"Old flame of yours? I don't recall her being mentioned with the rest." He looked at her in surprise, but she only arched an eyebrow. "I may be able to use her relation to you somewhere down the road, and as it appears that she likes me, that may be soon."

Morally Flexible, Blueblood reminded himself, for the greater good, I must be willing to be Morally Flexible. 

Taking ponies he'd known for years and knowingly turning them over to Adagio for her(their) insidious machinations was a horrible thing to do, but he again steeled himself with the reminder that this was for the best. "We were friends due to being stuck in a similar situation for a while, but there was never anything between us."

"And this situation was...?"

He glanced away. "Best discussed another time, as it's an issue she may not like learning you heard from somepony else."

Adagio just nodded. 

Testing and/or teasing me with secrets, or earnestly telling me I'll have better luck if I get her to share on her own? Does the topic even matter? Time will tell, but for now: Think humble. Think apologetic. Think "I've just done something wrong."


---


Parties were great!

That was Sonata's primary thought as she inspected the snack tables, or whatever the fancy word for those was, because not only were they piled high with tasty-looking stuff, but ponies were watching her everywhere she went! Munchies and attention! All without that metallic, negative energy aftertaste! And speaking of taste, she started with the nearest cheese-wheel!

Not far from her, Marigold Harshwhinny leveled disdainful looks, both at the young mare making a spectacle of herself by sticking her face straight into the hors d'oeuvre table, and the many standing around just watching her do it. Rolling her eyes, she determined that, as usual, pointing out errors fell to her, and approached post-haste.

"Pardon me, Miss Dusk?" Irksome as it was to have to repeat herself twice before being heard, Harshwhinny kept a cool head until the response came, even if it was in the form of a dumbfounded look from a pony with her mouth full.

"Wuh? 'ow'd you know muh name?"

"I was paying attention when Prince Blueblood announced you. More importantly, while I can appr-... Would you perhaps consider closing your mouth when you chew?"

"'m tryin', buh thurs'allot'a chuz in thur!" Yea, yea, talking with your mouth full, but Sonata was with the prince now, so she was pretty sure she outranked  everyone here!

Her eye twitching, Harshwhinny decided against a lecture about biting off more than one could chew in favor of her original thoughts. "While I can appreciate not wishing to offend anypony by flaunting unicorn magic to aid in the dining process, offending ponykind as a whole really isn't an improvement. Honestly, you would have to be doing parlor tricks to irritate anyone by eating with magic, so a little telekinesis won't-"

"Ooh," Sonata said excitedly, having chewed up and swallowed about 85% of that mouthful, "I can do tricks, wanna see?!" 

Without waiting for an answer, Sonata conjured a big, glowing ball of outward-facing trumpets that blared in a variety of pitches, none of which would win any prizes at an orchestra contest, but sounded pretty neat to her. Whatserface must not have agreed, though, because she made a face like she'd found something wet and sticky stuck to the underside of her hoof, made a little 'hmph' noise, and walked away.

Yeesh, everypony's a critic. Well, whatever.

Since she was pretty sure she had literally her whole life's worth of missed meals to make up for, Sonata got right back to it!


---


In all her time staking out the Rainbooms, just watching them and waiting, Aria liked to think she had a pretty good thing going with patience. That said, the past twenty or thirty minutes of listening to Trenderhoof go on and on about himself and his stupid little exploits in 'journalism' (which, Aria had learned in detail, pretty much boiled down to "hey everyone come look at this thing I now know all about because I put its hat on") had her struggling to not scream something Adagio would tan her hide for at the top of her lungs, let alone maintain her passive, aloof expression. Luckily, Trenderhoof continued to read this face as her 'Goth' look, which unluckily kept him talking with fewer and fewer pieces of potentially useful information.

Then came hope, in the form of another pony who wanted to talk to her.

"Excuse me," some otherwise unremarkable noble-type cut in, "but I do believe I heard something along the lines of black lace fittings?"

"Er, yes," answered Trenderhoof, eyebrow raised, "Goth clothing is known to be intricate and-"

"Fascinating," interrupted the newcomer, who wasn't even entertaining a pretense of actually talking to Trenderhoof as he focused solely on Aria, "I'd love to hear all about your style, are your sisters dressed in light-Goth, then?"

Realizing that her dress was just a differently-colored version of Adagio and Sonata's, Aria felt the prickly panic of a hole in her story, but not having actually said that she was dressed Goth, she saw a way out. "No. Didn't actually have a lotta clothes with us when we got here, made due with what they dressed us in at the castle."

New Guy opened his mouth to say something, but was ironically interrupted by an even more pompous-sounding pony than Trenderhoof. 

"I say," announced a grey stallion with white hair done up in a beehive-looking thing with a long twirly bit hanging off, sunglasses covering his eyes (despite being indoors, which Aria could have sworn was freakin' rude) that made it look like he was just really interested in the distant ceiling with how high he held his snout, "did I hear correctly? Those dresses are from none other than the Royal Palace?"

It probably would have been rude to respond with "That's what I just said, dumbass," even in line with the cold act she was going for, so it was fortunate that Interrupting Guy did his thing a quarter of a second before Aria opened her mouth.

"Ohhh, so the the princesses have an interest in Goth culture?"

"That's most likely recent," Trenderhoof said with an arched eyebrow in what Aria read as an effort to regain control of the conversation, "the return of Princess Luna and all things Nighttime would almost certainly call for some renovations in style to be made."

White Hair offered Aria a little smile as he lowered his shades. "Hoity Toity, by the by, pleased to meet you. You are staying at the palace, are you not? Have you witnessed either of the princesses in dark petticoats? Long veils? Black and white stripes?"

"No," she said in a tone that she hoped implied "and piss off." She didn't like Blueblood, didn't like Trenderhoof, didn't like ponies in general, but somehow, she liked this pony even less. It must not have taken, because he didn't even make a face like Trenderhoof did the first time she snubbed him.

"Princess Luna must have bat accessories at the least?"

Trenderhoof interrupted Aria's non-answer of "How should I know?" before it even left her lips.

"Actually, while the dark and 'spooky' have their place amid Nightmare Night decorations, the ghosts and ghouls are not actually a key element of Goth chic."

He looked so proud of himself that Aria almost wanted to say something contrary just to make him look like a doof, but, as what she guessed was in line with the plan, the stooges around her kept talking.

"I thought," said another new pony that didn't stand out, for some reason looking squarely at Aria with a hopeful smile as he spoke, "that anypony wearing bat paraphernalia was cultural appropriation."

"It's not," added Hoity, "at least when not done tastelessly. Thestrals tend not to be overly particular about anypony's fashion anyway, and the Goth scene most likely started with bat ponies."

This time, Aria had to speak up. "Bat ponies?"

The question won her four confused stares, Trenderhoof the first to actually answer. "Y-yes, the... the ponies with fangs and bat wings? You've never seen one?"

Cover story, cover story!!

"We're not from around here," she said with a mild shrug as she turned her head away, "never even heard of 'em."

"Little wonder, that," chuckled Hoity, "they aren't the most populous species to begin with, mostly come out at night and, frankly, tend not to be the most well-off, either, certainly not enough to attend a gathering like this." Besides, bat wings clashed with just about everything.

Aria barely grunted in reply, but internally, she skipped with merry joy at having a new nugget of info. A less privileged underclass of pony that fly like pegasi and only come out at night? She didn't need to think hard to know that Adagio could twist that into some kind of interracial conflict, maybe even spark a full-scale class war.

That reminded her to get back to mining for more, but...

"I heard they were all exiled when Princess Luna was originally banished."

"No," Trenderhoof flatly corrected Interrupting Guy, "no they were not."

"But that would explain the poverty," offered a noble mare Aria didn't recognize.

"Nonsense," said the guy that showed up after Hoity, "were earth ponies ever banished?"

Hoity, bearing neither horn nor wings, raised an eyebrow above his sunglasses. "I beg your pardon....?"

As Hoof-In-Mouth guy looked back apologetically, Aria internally sighed. It was going to be hard to get any useful information out of these ponies until they were done talking politics.


---


The party had been going for at least an hour and a half, and while internally pleased that she had gotten the names of several influential ponies as well as invitations to personally visit their places of business, Adagio could feel herself wearing down. More worrying was that she didn't have time to think about why she was getting tired so easily now, the docile act taking most of her focus just to keep an 'evil' smile from slipping and possibly putting off any of the dozen or so ponies near her at any given time. 

This was her first time cooperating with someone other than Aria and Sonata rather than just using them, and she didn't have a feasible back-up plan for if that went wrong yet.

Luckily, her doubts and worries helped fuel the act, and judging by the faces of the ponies around her, her bashful, nervous routine was easily endearing her to the Canterlot Elite. And why wouldn't it? It wasn't as though they weren't all smug, stupid, self-important creatures shaped by their wealth and their community to latch onto any sense of superiority they could sniff out, and the looks she'd been getting, the patronizing stares of 'Oh good, something I can feel better about myself for' and 'this one is no threat to me' convinced her that the day of reckoning couldn't come soon enough.

Well, no, maybe not all of them act that way.

Sapphire Shores had offered her assistance if it were needed, but she hadn't felt condescending about it. Adagio had gotten a different vibe from her in general, and at least a few others that weren't openly thinking of themselves as royalty in waiting, but she knew that even they would show their true colors sooner or later, whether it was her own doing or not.

"Prince Blueblood," came the voice of a serious-looking pony in a suit and thick glasses, "I was hoping you'd still be here, saves me a trip back to the office. We need to talk about those renovations in the advertising department if we're to get the billboards up before Hearts Warming."

Nodding, Blueblood turned his head just enough to look at Adagio. "I'll need some time to sort this out, will you be alright on your own for a while?"

Wearing a smile that suggested faint, but visible anxiety, Adagio nodded and cantered off in no particular direction. 

He's either testing me, specifically my ability to do this on my own, or he's honestly hung up with business at a bad time.

They were equally as likely at this point, she decided. She'd come to wonder if he'd intentionally set her up for that undignified moment with Sapphire Shores as a show of dominance, but he did nothing whatsoever to signal 'Yes, I did that on purpose, so you better follow my lead.' Or maybe, with this facade she had to put on now, it was actually Aria setting her up. She was the one that had taken the time to coach Adagio through it, saying that if she smiled like she was embarrassed about something, she actually looked pretty friendly.

If she was just trying to get me to humiliate myself, if she would dare prank me with something this important, she'll soon wake up face-to-face with a hollow pony suit made of her own skin.

Of course, again, the fact that this was actually working suggested otherwise. While nopony outright galloped over when they saw that she was alone, many eyes followed her as she cautiously wandered the area, though she didn't beckon anyone by looking at them for longer than a second. Not that that stopped ponies she wasn't looking at from stepping forward anyway.

"I say, hello there, Miss Dazzle!"

She turned to see none other than the host of the event and what Blueblood described as his Prench-accented shadow; Fancy Pants and Fleur De Lis. The latter stared directly at her with a particularly intense, focused gaze.

Afraid I'll steal your stallion? Don't worry, dear, I already have my own wealthy, influential partner.

"Hello," Adagio answered in a polite, quiet tone, making sure to work just a bit of unease into her smile, "did you... need something?"

He chuckled. "Only the assurance that all is well with you, Miss Dazzle." He briefly glanced around. "Where is Prince Blueblood?"

"He is speaking with a colleague or business associate, I think."

"Ah," said Fancy Pants, unsurprised, "busy even here, it seems, but that's our Blueblood."

Then this is normal for him, and you didn't organize a distraction to speak with me alone?

"Is that common, then? He hasn't stopped to talk with such ponies since we got here."

"Well, as the head of a major financial government office, I suppose most of the city's businesses must speak with him here and there, and at gatherings such as these, those ponies tend to be in one place anyway, so it's hardly his own fault that some might jump at the opportunity." He briefly surveyed the immediate area. "Still, there was a time when he'd have at least had it wait until later, 'keep work at work' as they say."

Genuinely curious, Adagio let her tilted head and wide, innocent eyes speak for themselves. 

Fancy smiled a little. "Princess Celestia's nephew was  once a much warmer, happier fellow, the kind of pony that could lighten the mood of a room just by strolling in."

"If a bit of a ponce," added Fleur.

"Fleur," chided Fancy, only a hint of sternness in his tone despite the amused smile he visibly tried to surpress. He shook his head as she giggled into a hoof before looking back at Adagio. "He had his faults, like any of us, but..." His smile faded. "Well, I'm afraid I can't pinpoint when the change took place, but somewhere over the last... oh, several months now, I suppose, something in him has shifted. And not for the better, I fear."

Seeing the surprise in Adagio's face, realization sunk in that he might be needlessly worrying this poor filly. "I mean, that's not to say that there's anything wrong with Prince Blueblood, just that he used to be a more cheerful chap, right Fleur?"

It took Fleur a moment and a light nudge to rejoin the conversation. "Hm? Oh, yes," she answered, "a few terrible habits aside, he was once among the most spirited of Canterlot nobility." 

Tempted though she was to ask about 'terrible habits,' Adagio sensed some kind of trap in the words, and decided against being labeled some nosy gossip by prying. That wasn't even accounting for the fact that Fancy Pants was apparently some manner of rival to Blueblood and everything he said had to be viewed through that filter. On that note, maybe she could run some mild counter-gossip of her own. "I couldn't guess what his behavior may have entailed before," she said with a modest grin, "but he has treated my sisters and I very well in our time here."

Looking pleased to hear this (perhaps even genuinely so), Fancy Pants nodded. "The hospitality of the royal family is well-known and long-standing in Equestria, ever since the first Hearths Warming, be it to foreign dignitaries or even those who just couldn't find shelter for the night."

And then Adagio smelled blood, sinking her fangs immediately by putting on a confused, faintly distressed face. "'Couldn't find shelter'? I, I thought the goal of this gathering was a charity drive?"

Perplexed, Fancy's smile diminished somewhat. "It is, and we raise tens of thousands of bits every year to aid those in need."

"I see," she said as though she were trying to work something out. "And, if I may, how much of that funding goes to soup kitchens and shelters as opposed to security spikes?" Fancy and Fleur stared back at her in shock, so she quickly clarified. "I haven't been here for long, so I couldn't speak of the situation in this city, but I've traveled far, and in that time, heard of measures taken by property owners to deter anyone from lingering outside their buildings." Deliberately averting her eyes for just a few seconds to show vulnerability, she took up a sad, but accepting smile. "I know they're referred to as 'anti-loitering' fixtures by those paying for them, but anyone can see that the placement of such things is always done to deter transients from sleeping in those areas, or even just stopping to rest."

Luckily for her group, they could just sing the owners of any establishment they chose into letting them rest not just on the premises, but inside, anywhere they wished. Or at least, they could before. Using the sense of loss to attain the necessary level of tremor in her voice, she took full advantage of the pitying looks on Fancy and Fleur's faces as they visibly inferred that she had been in this situation herself.

"B-but, uh," she continued, not certain that letting her growing fatigue show would help the performance, "I-I'm sure your generosity renders such things irrelevant, giving so much to ensure that nopony even need worry about coming across... deterrents, of that fashion."

The pained, regretful look on Fancy's face, his smile entirely erased, was answer enough. Adagio wasn't sure if he was thinking about homeless ponies in his local area or in less wealthy provinces than the nation's capital city, but his quiet, contemplative tone suggested that he knew he wasn't making the difference he wished he was. "Y-yes, we... things are, good, here in Canterlot."

Seeing Fleur gently place a hoof on Fancy's shoulder and him faintly smile back at her, Adagio waited until the instant that his mood seemed brightest before delivering the killing blow with a warm, grateful, and recently-practiced smile. "Oh, yes, very much so! My sisters and I are blessed to have been taken in here, and it means a lot that you would welcome us."

It was a good thing she was already smiling, because Adagio wasn't sure she could completely keep any grin off her face at the brief moment of shock and dawning horror that moved across Fancy's before he returned a slightly rigid smile. "Quite, quite, you... Please enjoy tonight's festivities, Miss Dazzle, to your heart's content."

He barely stopped himself from pointing her to the  hors d'oeuvres  table, knowing that she likely got plenty to eat at the palace, but his heart sunk just a little anyway when she perked up, said "I'll certainly try!", and wandered off. Before he could dwell on whether Blueblood only took those three fillies in under the guise of wanting to bring company for tonight or if he was going to be throwing them out of the castle tomorrow, Fleur's soft, honey-like voice sounded close to his ear.

"I would not worry for her, Mon Cher, I am sure she has been well-taken care of."

"What makes you so certain?"

"Well, she may have been a little on the thin side, but did you see that plot?"

If he had been drinking wine, he'd have spat it right out, feeling heat crawl up his neck. "Fleur!!"

Fleur De Lis, as usual, showed not the faintest sign of shame. "What? You must have seen it when she turned away, and one does not get such big, round flanks by being malnourished."

"Even so, it does not mean she and the other two were always so well-off! She may have been speaking from experiences long-past!"

"Oh," Fleur said idly as she looked in the general direction Adagio had gone, "that's sad."

"Yes," sighed Fancy, "yes it is. For her and everypony else." 

He had seen "anti-loitering" spikes first-hoof, and knew exactly what she was talking about. He'd never approved of such things, not the least because the money could have indeed gone toward something that helped the homeless, not hid them, but that didn't stop a few business owners from having them installed in this very city. Knowing there was nothing he could do beyond publicly expressing disapproval of such practices (and he heartily did!), he sighed, looking at Fleur.

"Did you not say that you wished to touch that mare's mane, if only for a moment?"

Fleur giggled. "I did, very much, but the timing of the thing just wasn't right." She playfully nudged him with a hoof. "You didn't even introduce us."

Fancy blinked, then facehoofed, making Fleur laugh a little louder.

"Perhaps when next we meet? Prince Blueblood is sure to keep that one with him."

"One certainly hopes so; the colt could use a nice filly in his life."

Not far from them, Adagio rejoined Blueblood, who had wrapped up with the other pony.

"My apologies. Did you meet anypony interesting?"

She read that as 'did you get to talk to anyone, or were you just kind of wandering around?' Wearing the same smile with which she'd left Fancy Pants, she giggled. "I'll tell you later."

"I, see." 

With how weary she'd been looking as the evening wore on, he'd been worried he'd find her either collapsed in a circle of gawking ponies or curled up in a quiet corner somewhere. Possibly in her own mane. Adagio (the real one, that is, if one assumed that the devious mare he'd been dealing with for the last few days was indeed the 'real' one) seemed like the proud type, but maybe...?

"Perhaps we should regroup at the castle? The others are bound to have had their fill of this by now."

Mulling it over for a moment, Adagio briefly scanned the party guests. Most of the ponies that expressed an interest had already introduced themselves or, she suspected, sent a friend to scout for them, and she alone had more than enough ponies to keep her busy for at least a week. "Alright. I think I saw Aria in the same spot as a little while ago, shall we?"

Quietly relieved, Blueblood smiled.


---


"I'm so sorry, but it seems we've found someone more qualified for the job, so I'm afraid we'll have to let you go."

It still burned her, the horseapples reason Suri had been fired from that stupid farce of a museum, but apparently thinking out loud that one of the Element Bearers' accomplishments weren't all that impressive was grounds for termination. That stupid, boot-licking suck-up curator wasn't going to get anything out of those mares anyway, and Suri took solace in the knowledge that he'd probably be closing down in a few weeks.

Hay, with the money he must have blown to get all those 'relics,' maybe he'll be ruined. Serves him right.

She'd gotten lucky with Fancy Pants being short on staff for tonight, but the job hunt would be on again soon. Not that it wasn't nice to know that she'd eat this week! That is, as long as she could avoid-

"Man, you've got a lotta jobs, huh?"

Her.

From the moment she saw Blueblood walk in with those mares, she'd done her best to avoid going near any of them, even the yellow, fluffy one and the purple, scowly one that she knew nothing about, but she was supposed to keep the snack table full and that got harder and harder to do without running into her blue nemesis. A couple hours into the party, here they were again; face-to-stupid-smiling-job-endangering-face.

"Yea," Suri replied icily, "I get around, okay?"

"Cool," Sonata responded without the faintest hint of understanding or even having cared, "do you have those circle things here?"

"Circle... things...?"

"Yea, y'know, the round ones!"

Suri's first instinct was to ask one of the other serving ponies if it was even allowed that guests order specific hors d'oeuvres as opposed to shutting their stupid, rich faces and just eating anything from the wide selection of random crap that was already all over the place, but all of them had long abandoned the main table in favor of walking around with trays. 

Cowards!

That just left her, alone with the monster. "You mean the brie? It's right there, so-"

"No, like a sugary round thing!"

There were a lot of things cut into circles, but she didn't really know which ones had sugar. She pointed to the first thing she saw with frosting. "That?"

"Nope!"

"What about-"

"Nah."

Suri's eye twitched and her jaw clenched. "M-maybe, you could be more specific, okay?"

Rolling her eyes, Sonata let out a quick groan. "Ugh, you know, the twisty things!" It was too bad that she couldn't just use the Show Me spell, but they apparently didn't like tricks here.

"How can it be round and 'twisty'?!"

Sonata gave her a blank stare. "I dunno." 

Must not rage, rage is the mind-killer. Or at least the job-killer.

She tried to think, but nothing she'd ever seen at any party she'd ever been to, high society or otherwise, fit the description of 'round, twisty, sugar-thing.' Then it occurred to her that this idiot probably wasn't thinking of something you'd normally find at either of those places, but something she saw somewhere else once, something they don't normally serve in Equestria. She and her sisters were from so far away that they were practically aliens, right? She had an idea.

"Do you mean like a... sugared, pretzel, or something?" For but a moment, she had hope when Sonata looked thoughtful.

"Uhhh..."
























"...?"























"...Nuh-uh!"

Suri nearly swore. Explosively. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she found that she still had some clean words left, delivered slowly so as to carefully control output. "Do you know what this thing is made of?"

"Food!"

"Specifically...?"

"I'unno, whatever they make other donuts out of."

Something crashed into something else in Suri's head, leaving large cracks and a worrying sound of leaking fluid. "It's a donut?! Why didn't you just start with that?!"

"I told you it was round!"

"A LOT OF THINGS ARE F-"

"Miss Dusk," came Blueblood's voice, freezing Suri solid in an instant, "it's time to go."

Sonata looked over to see the prince with Adagio at one side, looking a little sleepy, and Aria on the other, grumpy as always. "We going home?" Blueblood nodded, so she walked over to join them.

"Wait," uttered Suri as it clicked in her head what Sonata was trying to ask for, immediately taking a few steps to grab it from the table, "wait! Crullers! The things you were looking for are called crullers!"

Looking over her shoulder, Sonata smiled. "Aw, no thanks, I'm pretty much full anyway."

And off they went, leaving Suri standing perfectly still with the pastry in hoof. Very slowly, she lifted it to her snout and took a bite. 

It wasn't as sweet as throwing it at Sonata would have been, nor screaming at her, nor even the mild, inconsequential victory of having found what she was looking for before she decided she didn't want it anymore, but it made her feel a little better all the same.