How do you keep going when you sing the line, 'Nothing can stop us now,' only to be proven wrong?
Three sirens sit backstage immediately after Rainbow Rocks, publicly defeated by the Rainbooms and stripped of their magic jewels. Will they regroup and attack from a different angle? Find a way to fix their pendants? Self-destruct? Or find redemption? How do you keep going when you sing the line 'Nothing can stop us now,' and then something does?
There shouldn't be any spoilers for anything post-Rainbow Rocks.
That was it. That was the question there was no escaping, whichever way her mind turned. It hardly surprised her that the others were thinking it too. But it was a mark of just how shaken they were that it had been aired aloud by Aria, rather than Sonata. Did she dare give them an honest answer? Or was it confidence and optimism they needed right now, however false she knew them to be?
She could include them in the discussion, perhaps even the decision; list the ideas that had occurred to her and see if they had any of their own, then assess them and decide how to proceed. That would let the other two know that all three of them were in this nightmare together, reminding them that they still had each other, even if they had nothing else. Three minds were also better than one for spotting the flaws in plans for going forwards, and in their precarious position they couldn't afford to miss any.
But that also risked them getting attached to ideas that wouldn't work or took them in the wrong direction, and it might encourage questioning her judgement. And it meant letting Sonata in on the plan, whatever it was to be, which she had a habit of accidentally talking about in front of others.
Leading small groups was difficult; everyone tended to feel that they deserved a say in the decision making in a way that wouldn't happen with a larger army. And an army they were, they had to function in battle as a unit, and while the other two had their strengths, she felt by far the best suited to leading them.
But they were sisters, too. And the only companions each of them had. Maintaining her position as leader wasn't much of a concern if there were nobody to lead. This fall could break them, and this might be her last chance to stop that. She couldn't take that risk, and so opted for honesty. Also, she wanted to.
"I don't know."
She heard her own voice say the words, noticed its shell-shocked tone. It was an accurate portrayal of how she felt. But even with the despair, and the life she knew shattered at her feet, she couldn't turn off the internal psychoanalysing of her choices. That drive to read peoples' reactions, calculate their thought processes and respond in a way that would bring about the best outcome; that was rooted deep within her. She was a siren: manipulation was what she did, and she was very good at it.
Without turning her head, she noticed Sonata slump slightly further in response. The scorn she expected from Aria never came. Things really have got bad then. Her answer might have been the right one, but perhaps it hadn't been enough.
"I've had a few thoughts," she continued after a few seconds. "We're alive, first of all."
Aria gave a snort and directed a disgusted expression towards her, as if being alive somehow weren't enough. Sonata looked up in her direction, but didn't sit forwards at all. Adagio wondered if her sisters had considered their own mortality, and the risk they often faced. It wasn't a topic she usually dwelled on, but events of the last half hour had highlighted it as if for the first time.
"Seriously, that unicorn in the sky could just as easily have cracked and shattered our bodies, rather than just our pendants. We needed them to sustain our voices, but our physical health will be fine without them."
From Sonata's expression, that really hadn't occurred to her, leaving her staring into middle distance at nothing in particular. In fact, even Aria looked a little shaken, although she tried to hide it and managed quite well. Her sneer contained a level of viciousness rare for her, and Adagio knew that she faced another battle just to get Aria into something resembling an open and receptive state of mind. She resented this a little; the world was something she would gladly expend the energy to rage against, but her fellow sirens requiring the same effort to be brought onside was frustrating. Aria showed no signs of backing down, and spoke her mind with something of a growl.
"That sounds a lot like giving up. Just accept it and move on, is that the plan?"
She wanted to snap something back in response, of course. Like maybe Aria's neck. But escalating the conflict probably wouldn't help them find a way out of their problem, even if it would make her feel better for a moment.
"I don't have a plan," she replied, trying to keep her voice calm without sounding like a patronising parent. "As I said, just a few thoughts. And top of the list is that at least we're not dead."
"Great. Confidence-inspiring. Next?"
Sometimes hostility could only be defeated by more hostility. She settled for a firm glare, holding Aria's eyes until the other looked away, and hoped that would suffice for now. Words being exchanged would have dragged Sonata into it as well, whom she was trying to avoid distressing further.
As if thinking her name had awoken her from her dead-eyed stupor, Sonata spoke up, blue ponytail swinging away as she turned to face them.
"Can we just get out of here?"
She looked a state. As soon as they'd got backstage they'd brushed what they could off their clothes from where the crowd had pelted them, but Sonata still had bits of lettuce in her hair. Her voice, her expression and her posture all said that she was tired and feeling more than a little broken.
Adagio's eyes flicked across to Aria, knowing the way she responded to people that others might describe as pitiful. Aria's usual frown, however, fell away, leaving just the bags under her eyes as she added her agreement.
"Actually, yeah, let's do one."
Didn't you just have a go at me for a plan perceived as 'give up and move on'?
This was the situation Adagio never liked being in, where she had to argue against her sisters' united front. Especially now, when they both sounded so defeated, and their agreement with each other was the very thing she'd been working towards.
"I don't think we should leave. Not yet."
Both sets of eyes were fixed on her, one widening and one narrowing.
"I just wanna go home," Sonata whimpered.
That was a sentiment Adagio could sympathise with, remembering their banishment. But right now the price was too high, and whatever was left of her pride after their humiliation didn't like the idea either. The decision was a tactical one, though, at least primarily. Could she appeal to siren solidarity, or distract them with it?
"All we have left in the world is each other. What's so special at home that's not already here?"
"Bed," sighed Sonata, at the same time that Aria muttered, "Vodka."
She couldn't begrudge them their coping strategies, and sooner or later probably ought to think up one for herself too. She tried to smile but wasn't sure how much of it came through. That was probably her cue to explain her reasoning.
"If we leave, we'll appear firmly defeated, and will be relegated forever to the bottom of the social food chain. We'll be seen as helpless, free to be victimised by whoever feels like pushing us about. With no magic to back us up now, all we have is our reputation."
Sonata didn't look like she was getting much of it, the words almost making a rushing noise as they soared over her head. Aria's face was darkening, she plainly understood but didn't like what she heard. Adagio continued, trying to make herself sound reasonable.
"But if we stick around, and leave at the time we were expected to head off anyway, then it'll look to everyone else like tonight was only a setback, one from which we could claw our way back, and that will offer us a bit of protection."
She had tried, at least, but it didn't look like her calm voice and reasoned argument had worked. Aria could need managing at the best of times, and the evening's events looked to have made her less stable than ever.
"'The social food chain?'" came the bitten-off reply. "We don't need protection, we just need to get out of here. Leave town, never come back here. Let them think what they want about us - I don't care."
You never did, Adagio thought. Aria's particular brand of self-confidence had always been complete indifference to other people, and it had served her well. She certainly had none of Sonata's insecurities. But such wilful blindness to the behaviour of those they'd been coexisting among, and often preying on, wasn't exactly sound strategic thinking. That was one reason Adagio had never felt threatened by Aria for the role of leader; the other girl didn't have the self-detachment required to separate how she wanted to view the world from how she needed to. Now they were powerless, they would need every edge they could scrape together, and the warning signs in others' behaviour towards them could not be ignored if they wanted to survive.
Thinking of being powerless and of needing every advantage they could get led her to an argument that made her stomach sink with its seriousness, a bottom line that overrode most other concerns. Hopefully it would be enough to bring Aria around.
"I don't want to walk onto that stage again while the crowd is still out there," she began. Sonata looked horrified at the thought, and Aria shuddered. "But I also don't want to walk away from here without the shards of our amulets."
No answer was made to this, and Adagio realised she might have inadvertently returned their thoughts to the core of the miseries they were dealing with that evening. She looked at the floor, folding inwards a little on the decrepit old sofa they all slumped on. Sonata sat on her left, knees together daintily, which made her look all the more fragile. Aria sprawled on her right, having barely moved since collapsing there after they had brushed their clothes down. The sofa was small enough to push the three of them together, giving them the reassuring comfort of physical closeness without needing to actively address the issue with tactics like hugging.
Adagio broke the silence herself, in a much quieter voice, her eyes still downcast.
"I know there's probably no way we can fix them, but I want mine just in case."
Aria started nodding almost imperceptibly, staring unfocused at a distant point on the dusty wooden floor ahead of them as if hypnotised, and Adagio knew she'd reached her. She turned her head to Sonata, met her watery gaze and tried to offer a small smile. Sonata looked at her pleadingly, almost trembling, and when she spoke Adagio heard disbelief and desperation.
"Y-you don't think we can g-glue them back together?"
Aria instantly supplied an answer, bluntly but not forcefully.
"No chance."
Adagio was torn between wanting to dampen the blow and not wanting to get Sonata's hopes up. Given that they were trying to salvage what they could and come up with some kind of plan of action, and that Sonata would be no help at all with that if she were a sobbing wreck, Adagio leaned towards the first option. The only optimistic response she could think of was a long shot, but even if the other two picked it apart, at least they'd be discussing options.
"No chance in this world, at least. If we could get them to Equestria then it might be a different story."
If we could get to Equestria, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. That was clearly the thought behind the look Aria gave her, but thankfully it was not aired aloud. She moved to refocus their discussion before Sonata figured it out for herself.
"So after tonight, we could go anywhere, do anything. Any ideas?"
Ever-full-of-her-own-ideas Aria apparently had chosen that moment to keep quiet. But that was ok, she could still be useful for spotting problems, as long as it didn't lead to a decision being taken that she would later declare she had no input towards. This meant it was Sonata who haltingly responded.
"I-I was doing some reading about a place called Vienna." Adagio tried to look encouraging, which spurred Sonata on, continuing more confidently. "The internet said it was the most musical city in the world."
For several reasons, the suggestion was honestly more thoughtful than Adagio had expected. She had had trouble convincing Sonata to do her share of the online research work while planning their move on CHS, as reading wasn't exactly her thing, but it sounded like she'd become so engrossed that she'd expanded her search beyond the list of topics Adagio had provided.
Unfortunately, while the subject had evidently appealed to Sonata when she had been reading about it, their situation had changed mercilessly since then, and living in the most musical city in the world while unable to sing sounded, to Adagio at least, like torture. How could she point that out without going straight back to their broken jewels? Vienna, that was in Austria, she remembered from her own online studying, and Austria was in central Europe. That might be the angle she needed!
"How's your Austrian?" she asked, knowing none of them had looked at foreign languages. Sonata looked down and away for a moment or two, furrowing her brows, then she lifted her chin haughtily and closed her eyes, blind confidence personified. She spoke in a much lower pitched voice, imitating that of a large man, with a thick accent.
"Hasta la vista, baby."
Before Adagio could react, Aria snorted with laughter, and continued to do so despite straining to hold it in. Sonata, far from being upset at being laughed at, brightened and looked across at them enthusiastically. Aria, slightly redder in the face, turned to face them as well before speaking, and her mirth took any sting out of her criticism.
"I hate to break it to you, but we're not leaving the country without passports, and we're not getting those without background checks."
Adagio, grateful that Sonata didn't turn and look behind her at the thought of 'background checks,' filled in the gaps before one siren grew frustrated with the other's habit of not getting things.
"...And since none of us have backgrounds in this world of more than eight months..."
Sonata nodded her understanding, rolling her eyes as her smile evened out, as if to say that she might have known.
"So we're stuck in this country."
It hadn't been a question, but Adagio thought it needed responding to anyway to avoid the conversation stalling and giving time to dwell on darker thoughts.
"Looks like. And in this country, girls our age have to go to school by law."
Sonata greeted this with the look of a frightened animal, while Aria made a frustrated noise and looked like the annoyed teenager she often was. Adagio could almost hear the 'it's so unfair' cliché being thought.
"Is there anywhere in this country you'd particularly like to go to school?" she asked, unable to help sounding uninspired.
"Anywhere but here," Aria shot back.
As expected, Aria's suggestion was reactionary rather than visionary. At least Vienna had been a positive, active suggestion, Adagio thought. Having said that, planning was useless without being adaptable to changing situations; there was definitely a place for reactionary responses.
"Ok," she replied, trying to sound constructive, "so we need to weigh up the arguments for going somewhere else against those for staying here."
That was the right approach to any decision, which Aria knew as well as she, and so should find difficult to object to. And if Aria turned out to be right, and finding a different school elsewhere were the best way forward, then weighing the arguments should bring them all to that conclusion, and ideally raise any potential pitfalls they'd then be able to address. Aria responded immediately.
"I can think of seven reasons to leave, each a different colour of the rainbow."
Where is the line between strategic withdrawal and retreat, between retreat and simply running away? And how much of my own reluctance to leave is based on pride and stubbornness? It had to be said that she'd thought Aria many things during their time together, but never cowardly, so perhaps Aria's motivations at that moment were more trustworthy than her own.
Adagio puzzled it over briefly, but Sonata had no such troubles and promptly took the conversation in an entirely different direction.
"Oh yeah, they are, aren't they? But with, like, white instead of green!"
Her Aria train of thought derailed, Adagio turned to the issue at hand, of how difficult the Rainbooms were likely to make life for them going forwards.
"I can't see them being too much of a problem. Looking at how they were with Sunset Shimmer, I think they'll want to be friends with us."
It hadn't been hard to find out about Sunset's history, there'd obviously been something a bit 'off' about her from the start, and the other CHS students had been all too willing to talk about it.
"That is kinda their thing," Sonata chimed in, nodding.
But as Adagio thought further about parallels with Sunset's situation, still talked about despite having come to a head six months prior, a flipside was thrown up that she had not previously considered, something she thought best to mention.
"The rest of the school, I'm not so sure about..."
Sonata looked worried, adding, "The principle and the VP..."
Adagio grimaced. Presumably Sunset had not brainwashed and enthralled the head teachers. In fairness, though, she had terrorised their students for two years and blasted a hole in the school, and they hadn't kicked her out.
"...Yeah. But I'd be amazed if we sit here until the Rainbooms go home tonight and not one of them tries to approach us."
Sonata looked a little happier at this. Aria did not.
"Them liking us?" Aria hissed, staring at the two of them. "Not the problem!"
Sonata was taken aback, even moreso as Aria leaned closer, but Adagio held her ground and forced herself not to arch an eyebrow. The last thing they needed now was for Aria to think they weren't taking her seriously. Which was a challenge, given her next sentence.
"I wanna burn down their houses."
"Ooh, ooh," came Sonata's excited reply; Adagio's head span round to face her, and this time an eyebrow did rise, "with them inside!"
"Well yeah," Aria answered as if explaining something obvious to a child, "there's not much point otherwise."
So we’ve gone from running to revenge. Both were natural responses, and it was probably inevitable that they’d both be suggested, but Adagio wasn’t sure which was worse. Any form of withdrawal to her was instantly tied to weakness. She supposed that at that moment the three of them were weak, and might never be strong again, but the association in her own head and the disgust that came with it were too strong to overlook.
They had always stood their ground. When Starswirl – that wretched pony – had cast his spell, the howling vortex had ripped the sky open, tearing their claws from the rocks they had clung to and swallowing them up, and even then they had screamed defiance at him with every breath until the wormhole closed. At least vengeance was in keeping with their nature; it was a sentiment she could firmly get behind. And they did have the opportunity to carry it out, one they had never been afforded with that wizard. Scarswirl, that’s what ponies would have called him after we were finished.
Was Sonata right to be excited about the idea? Would it be fun? Or would it be done in seething anger, watching the flames bitterly rather than cackling about it together? She pictured it: pressed up against a wall in the shadows, peeking out from beneath her hood to look back at the red glow down the street she had come from, before steeling off to the next house on her list. And when she’d reached the last one and carried out the final act, she’d stand leaning on the picket fence between the street and the front lawn, watching the roof collapse in as the timbers were consumed, feeling the flames also devouring all her hatred and fury at being defeated. The hoodie would be long gone, with no more need for hiding, and she would stand there staring up at the roaring inferno, slack-jawed, as if hypnotised by the cleansing fire, until they came to take her away. All that would remain were embers; of their enemies, and of their own futures.
Adagio felt the twinge in the muscles behind her eyes as she refocused on things immediately in front of her after so long staring blankly at nothing. She tried to pinpoint how the vision had made her feel. It had been satisfying, almost rapturous; it had even felt right, like they’d come full circle or got closure or whatever overused phrase people described those particular feelings with. It had also felt futile.
“It’s an option,” she said, as the other two turned to her. She paused for a moment to consider the logistics. “Seven houses, three of us – we could do it.”
Surprise flickered across Aria’s features, quickly replaced with a cruel smile. Sonata grinned too and clapped her hands, more a picture of childish exuberance than of malice. I could let them do it. I really could. All Adagio had to do was keep quiet. If she said nothing, they’d go for it. They’d be off the leash, and every fiery fantasy would be fulfilled. She wouldn’t have to push them towards it, perhaps wouldn’t even need to plan and direct. Just not talk them out of it.
She had always been the driving force behind the three of them, had always had the crucial say in all the decisions. She had steered them wherever they had gone, keeping a constant, detached eye out for anything that might trip them up, or could be twisted to their advantage. Did she not deserve a break, when they were at their lowest? Wasn’t it somebody else’s turn to do the right thing, the selfless thing of putting reason over emotion, and just let her sit back and enjoy a little vengeance?
But however much harder their defeat made it to summon the energy to keep fighting (something from which the thirst for vengeance was curiously exempt), she knew that that particular immediate and total form of revenge would come at the expense of her sisters’ lives. Having lost so much in one night already, it made protecting them all the more important, including from their own natures if necessary, as it usually was. And that meant it was up to her. She couldn’t expect others to clean up her mess. She had led her sisters into battle, into their present predicament; and she knew that only she could lead them out again.
“We could pull it off,” she sighed, “but I don’t think we could get away with it.”
She looked down at the floor, but from the corner of her eye saw Aria crossing her arms, defiant but saying nothing. Sonata dropped her hands to her lap and pouted, her enthusiasm ebbing.
“How would they know it was us?” she asked.
The answer sprang to Adagio’s lips immediately, but she caught herself at the last moment, thankfully before she had started to turn towards Sonata to answer the question, at which point stopping would have been too obvious. Let Aria take this one, she has to hear it from her own mouth that it’s doomed to fail. Adagio kept her eyes down and straight ahead, wondering how long Aria would let the pause stretch for before feeling forced to respond.
After a couple of seconds, Aria threw up her arms in frustration. “Because,” she rolled her eyes, “the whole school would label us the chief suspects, with the strongest motives.”
Nodding without glancing aside, Adagio schooled her features into a thin-lipped expression of commiseration, instead of showing the quiet pride she felt in her fellow siren. Accepting that there are some problems she can’t solve with fire? That’s almost maturity! She turned to Sonata, who had that worrying look of trying to figure out a problem. Knowing how much effort such things were to her, and how many other, more solvable issues they still had to talk through that night, Adagio moved to head it off.
“We’d have no alibis, and there’d most likely be supporting evidence against us like CCTV or witnesses, so we’d be caught as soon as we were investigated.”
Sonata’s furrowed brows slowly rose again, but the rest of her face fell. Adagio made her tone less weary and more gentle, to try to balance crushing a suicidal plan with crushing Sonata’s confidence.
“That kind of thing only works if you’re not seen to be connected with the victims, and so would never come under suspicion in the first place.”
Feeling like she was giving Sonata tips and tricks for one day becoming her own diabolical mastermind, Adagio reached over and squeezed Sonata’s knee affectionately. That kind of physical contact was a calculated risk; it was very unusual for Adagio to need to do such a thing, which made it difficult to predict how it might be received. She was fairly sure that a reassuring touch would be welcomed when their circumstances were so bleak, but the very act of her doing something so unlike her might only hammer home to Sonata how far things had really sunk. Either way, the gesture didn’t seem nearly as out of place as it would have done if she’d tried it on Aria.
“Could we pay someone else to do it?” Sonata interrupted her musings, sounding shrewd.
On second thoughts, it was sweet when Sonata tried planning, but perhaps for the best that it didn’t happen too often. Adagio gave her a wan smile.
“If we could afford to place bounties on seven peoples’ heads, we’d be living in a bigger house.”
Not that their house was small, and not that it didn’t contain some expensive hardware, things she was now more glad than ever to have had the forethought to set up, back when anything she wanted was only a song away. But the house had been bought to blend in, a lair in which to spend six months researching and plotting their move, so it was far from ostentatious. She had been fine with that when she saw it as a disguise; now that that mediocre mask might become the reality, she was less sure.
“Blackmail?” Aria suggested, as if only mildly invested in the idea, knowing it was unlikely to work. That was good, that meant that most of Adagio’s job was already done, she just had to finish off.
“I think, for most people, spree killing would take more persuasion than just seducing them and then threatening to tell their wife...” On her right, Aria tsked in mock offence at the thought of others not simply doing as she commanded, while on her left Sonata ruefully shook her head.
“...Which is a shame, ‘cause that’d be really easy,” Adagio finished. Her sisters nodded glumly. At least it was good to see Aria calmer than when the subject of arson had first been raised.
“Could we fake an alibi?” Sonata asked.
Perceptive child. Adagio raised an eyebrow almost involuntarily. She puffed out her cheeks a bit and blew air out between her flattened lips, her that’s-a-tall-order expression.
“Not impossible,” she began slowly, “but not without a lot of planning. That tends to be how people do it in fiction.” Sonata leaned in, interested, so she hastily added, “Although, in fiction, they usually get caught.”
Sonata sat back, and after a moment Adagio did the same. She saw Sonata tip her head back onto the top of the sofa cushion, staring up at the ceiling. A cursory glace upwards told Adagio she wasn’t missing much, just dim lights, dull paint, and the odd bit of chewing gum. Aria was looking down at the fingernails on her outstretched right hand atop the sofa arm, picking at them with the thumb on the same hand. They sat that way for a couple of minutes, while Adagio weighed up the best way to restart conversation on a more useful subject. Before she could make any decisions, however, Sonata spoke up, not breaking her gaze at the ceiling.
“What would happen if we were caught?”
“We would go to prison for a very long time, probably the rest of our lives,” Adagio answered immediately, not unkindly but also not in a way that invited much argument. The sentence would surely be life, but with good behaviour they might someday make parole. Not that there would be too much hope of good behaviour if Aria were involved, which would inevitably affect all three of them.
Sonata rolled her head towards Adagio and met her eyes, acquiescence and acceptance passing between them. Adagio felt a tiny bit of the tension in her shoulders relax, knowing that the idea had been put to rest, and that her sisters were safe from their own destructive impulses for the time being. Sonata looked back up to the ceiling, then closed her eyes and smiled fondly to herself.
“It’s a nice thought though, isn’t it?”
Aria finally looked up from her nails and gave the others a wicked smirk. Think you might be preaching to the choir there, Sonata. Thoughts of choirs and their ethereal voices were uncomfortably close to home for Adagio, so she tried to focus instead on how safe it would be for her to agree. For all that she had been trying to talk them out of the idea, her own imaginings had not been without merit, and it was important that she not be seen as too aloof from the others’ feelings, instead sharing some common ground between the three of them. She weighed those considerations against the risk of making pyromania seem like a viable option again and decided to give it a try.
“There is something enchanting about it.” She gave Sonata a sad smile. “So little effort to wreak such devastation.”
On her right, Aria chuckled softly.
“You’ve got it all worked out, I take it?”
It was hardly the most complicated set of moves Adagio had ever had to string together. It felt beneath her in its simplicity, especially when there had been a possibility it would be the last scheme she’d ever get to put into practice.
“There isn’t much to work out,” she said, turning to Aria. “A few glass bottles, a trip to the gas station, some burning rags and seven strong throws through downstairs windows.”
Aria narrowed her eyes, but didn’t stop grinning, perhaps just enjoying the fantasising, or perhaps delighting in testing their leader’s cunning. Most likely both.
“You don’t even know where any of them live,” she pointed out, almost playfully.
Adagio glanced over her left shoulder, seizing the opportunity to involve their third member in the game and potential bonding exercise.
“Sonata?”
Unexpectedly called upon to find a solution, Sonata’s eyebrows drew down as she looked hurriedly from one knee to another, biting her lip in concentration.
“Umm,” she began, “ah... there are seven of them, and three of us, so we couldn’t just, like, beat it out of them, or even threaten to. But if we could get one of them on their own...?”
“Not bad,” Adagio smiled encouragingly, but that would rely on being able to separate them and isolate one, and might alert them to our intentions. “There’s an easier way, though. Aria?”
“Ugh. School records room.”
“But,” Sonata protested, “the school will be locked up this time of night.”
“Brick. Window.”
“But we’d get in trouble for that!”
Aria slowly lowered her face into her hand, with her fingers covering her eyes, and shook her head faintly. Preventing Aria from having to offer an irritated explanation, Adagio picked up the pieces, keeping her voice gentle.
“Sonata, dear... We’d be intending to carry out seven counts of arson. Next to that, one broken window doesn’t seem so bad.”
Sonata’s features shifted from concern to consternation, before flashing to cheerful agreement, thankfully not taking the criticism to heart. If anything, now that she was engaged in the discussion and distracted from the problem looming over them all, she looked happier than she had all evening.
“You’d still need a map, though,” Aria pointed out after a few seconds, kicking off the conversation again.
“Print one each in the school office,” Adagio shrugged. Except the computers might need passwords, and nobody is actually stupid enough to choose one we might be able to work out from looking around their desk. “Or mug three people for their smartphones, or break into three cars and steal their sat navs.”
“What about the glass bottles?”
“Recycling bins en route.”
“Rags to burn?”
“Rip the bottom few inches off the back of your skirt and tear the material into strips.”
Aria stopped, taken aback. “My skirt?” she asked, her surprise giving way to suspicion, which then morphed into indignation as she crossed her arms. “I don’t see you volunteering yours.”
Adagio shrugged again. “It was your idea, this whole firestarting thing,” After that she found herself fixed with what she guessed to be a withering look.
“Is that the new rule?” Scepticism was balanced with scorn, with hints of bafflement. “Your idea, your clothes that have to come off?”
This time it was Adagio who paused. “If you like, sure.” She tilted her head and looked at Aria quizzically. “And, speaking as the person who comes up with most of the ideas, I thought you’d never ask.”
Aria tried to do withering again, and managed much better the second time around. Hard to tell if there was a blush hiding in there behind it all. Adagio schooled her features into faintly-amused indifference, idly brushing crumbs off the front of her dress, which was obviously going to need dry cleaning anyway and might still be a write off. She reached down to the bottom of the dress, sitting halfway up her thighs, and held the hemline out in Aria’s direction.
“Sonata and I don’t have many inches of skirt to lose,” she said calmly.
Sonata giggled quietly at that, having wisely stayed silent during Aria’s more heated moments. Heated moments. When discussing burning things. Aria did offer an I-see-your-point sort of nod, after which Adagio continued.
“And I know you’d love to undress us,” – she kept her voice completely even, as if discussing an unquestionable, uncontroversial truth – “but I think that might attract attention while we’re trying to be stealthy and hit seven different targets before being stopped.”
Aria’s face was frozen a picture of mild disbelief before she shook her head and looked away, as if contemplating the things she had to put up with. Adagio savoured the moment briefly, then focused on the rebuilding role she’d decided upon for herself and made her peace offering.
“Or, failing that, you could just use your wrist warmers, they’d do just as well.”
Still not looking in her direction, Aria grunted in a way Adagio took to mean that she recognised that someone had made a valid point, but nonetheless didn’t like it. Sonata raised her hand with her index finger outstretched, as if she had a question in class.
“What about getting lighters or matches?”
Aria made no move to reply in any way, so Adagio stepped up.
“Buy some at the gas station. As long as we buy some cigarettes with them, it won’t look too suspicious.”
She received an impressed look from Sonata, who was making noises of understanding. Aria turned back towards them, radiating cynicism, apathy and boredom, with undercurrents of irritation and bitterness. It was the closest Adagio had seen yet to Aria being back to normal.
“Aside from my skirt, remind me why we aren’t doing this, again?” Aria said, in a way that suggested she’d said it more to wind Adagio up than to actually support it.
But if Adagio could deal with the question seriously, she might be able to lay it to rest for the last time. She took a slow, measured breath, deciding on what she judged to be the best place to begin.
“Is it worth it?” she asked softly. “Is it worth throwing away any hope of a life in the future, any remaining chances of world domination, even any dream of freedom or self-determination?” Adagio watched Aria’s expression, noting the bite and bile gradually draining away. “Just for an hour or two of revenge against children, who beat us out of a desire to protect themselves and their friends?”
She paused, and neither of the others seemed eager to answer. Not because it was an answer they didn’t know, but because airing it aloud might feel like something akin to admitting defeat.
“Only if your best alternative does not involve surviving beyond tonight,” she said, answering her own question, as she’d expected to need to, “because that’s the only way the consequences might be worth it.”
Perhaps more was needed to hammer that final point home. Worried she couldn’t spare Sonata a glance to see how she was taking it, Adagio pressed on.
“If we did depend on negative energy for sustenance, and would imminently starve to death anyway, then, sure; it would be fitting for a final move at short notice. Or if there was no hope of us getting by using other means, and we were looking at a future of begging for scraps on the streets, then prison might not be so bad in comparison. The inferno would only be worth sacrificing your future for if you had no future anyway.”
Aria bowed her head forwards and closed her eyes, and Adagio risked glancing left, towards Sonata, who nodded bleakly.
“I just—” Aria began and then stopped herself, a long sigh escaping her. “I just hate knowing that – right now – they’re thinking that they beat us.”
She didn’t look up after finishing, continuing to hang her head. This was going to be tricky for Adagio: she needed Aria to accept the situation and come to terms with it, without shattering her self-esteem, indeed, her very identity, in the process.
“Honey,” she said, picking a term of endearment she thought comforting, knowing she’d never used it before but that it would still sound less ridiculously out-of-character for her than the four words that followed, “they did beat us.”
In a bizarre reversal of their usual roles, Sonata said nothing and sat still, while Aria looked into Adagio’s face with wide, vulnerable eyes.
“You can argue that they got lucky,” she carried on, “or that seven on three is hardly fair, or that we’re down but not out...”
She really did not want to have to say the next part. She knew it would crush Aria. The only saving grace was that she also knew Aria was bound to realise it herself soon enough, and at least having the moment on Adagio’s terms meant that she could guarantee being there to support her sister through it. It was also the only way Adagio could be sure Aria wouldn’t sneak out of the house to enact midnight fire-starting schemes in the hope of getting even.
“...but we’re sirens, and we just lost a singing contest.”
A gasp came from her left, and while Adagio knew that thinking about their situation from that particular angle might never otherwise have occurred to Sonata, she also knew that Sonata would bounce back much more quickly from it, not one for existential hang ups. Aria didn’t move or make a sound. Adagio knew she had to finish, to turn the sentiment into something that could have a positive outcome if it at least kept Aria from self-destruction, but wished it didn’t feel so much like twisting the knife.
“Even if they died, they would die victorious.”
She remembered the purification she’d felt from the flames in her imagination, the memory of her negative feelings burning up along with the last house, and she wondered if that experience might have been enough for Aria to feel like she’d won, or at least not been defeated. She knew no good would come of ever mentioning that aloud.
“If our jewels had survived, it would be different, but without our voices, getting even in a way that actually matters isn’t any more possible here than it was with Starswirl.”
She reached out to Aria and put a consoling hand on her shoulder. Unbelievably, no move was made to throw it off. Such behaviour from her sister unnerved Adagio, as she didn’t quite know how to respond to it. Were it anyone else, Adagio would have read the body language and said without hesitation that they desperately needed a hug. But with Aria, such gestures were always met with hostility, and Adagio really didn’t want Aria withdrawing into herself and raising her emotional defences even higher than usual.
But if I don’t hug her, and right now, then Sonata probably will, and that’d be even less likely to end well. Aria was still leaning forwards in her seat with her face turned towards Adagio, who determined to waste no further time. She closed the distance between them, the hand on Aria’s shoulder dropping down to slip around her waist, while the other arm encircled her at the same height on the opposite side. Adagio gently pulled Aria’s head onto her shoulder and leaned into it, remembering just in time to divert one hand quickly to pull her mass of ginger curls out of the way on that side.
And through it all, Aria didn’t pull away, or even flinch. Adagio wasn’t quite sure what else to do, other than gently squeeze Aria and rub a hand down her back, but she soon felt Aria’s arms wrap around her own frame, contracting to hold their two bodies together tightly. She felt Aria’s lungs expanding against her own chest, drawing in a deep breath, held for a few seconds before slowly being exhaled over her shoulder, and noticed some of the tension ebbing away from Aria’s body, now softer in her arms.
Unhurriedly, Aria untangled her arms from around Adagio and withdrew back to where she had been sitting before, eyes downcast, with a shy smile.
“Thanks,” she said quietly, and blushed, “I think that helped.”
Adagio offered an encouraging smile of her own and was about to respond, when Sonata jumped forwards and seized her, pulling her backwards away from Aria.
“Watch out!” Sonata exclaimed, “She’s a changeling!”
Before she even managed to regain her balance, Adagio was snorting with laughter at the many plot holes in that suggestion. After a stunned split-second, Aria too burst out laughing.
“Yeah, that was pretty un-me, huh?” Her cheeks flushed darker still, but she sounded more boisterous. Then she paused and her voice dropped again, along with her gaze. “But as you said, Adagio, all we have now is each other.”
“That’s right,” Adagio answered warmly but softly, and while she felt the moment had passed with Aria’s hug and didn’t want to push her luck trying it again, she did reach out to Sonata to offer one to her instead, reinforcing Adagio’s point while also preventing Sonata from feeling left out.
“It might feel like we’ve lost everything,” she told Aria and Sonata, looking from one to the other, “but there’s always more to lose.”
Sonata hugged her tightly, and Aria smiled but said nothing. It felt like they had made a breakthrough, if only a tiny one. Adagio hoped that meant they’d be more likely to pull in the same direction if the grand discussion continued. With that in mind, she steered the conversation back towards what they might do next.
“So in that case, girls, let’s find a way to go forwards that doesn’t write off our own futures.”
Sonata Dusk wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling. She was so proud of Aria for finally saying yes to a hug, and she was relieved that her sisters had agreed to stop fighting. But she had lost her gem. All three of them had. And that sadness wasn’t going away, and it dragged the happy bits down. Maybe that was how it felt to be Aria, all the time, only with angry instead of sad? Like, whenever something good happened, like when Sonata had cooked them a big-meat battle breakfast that morning, it should have made Aria happy, but instead it just made her a bit less grumpy for five minutes. Sometimes when Aria was talking, Sonata liked to close her eyes and imagine Aria as a talking grey cloud with a frowny face. It made her happy thinking that Aria would never know about that, and that whatever mean things she said, Sonata could always go away and giggle about Aria just being a cloud who’s angry because it’s all full of rain. But she loved her sister anyway, because a rain cloud couldn’t help being a rain cloud, and if it could then nocloud would water the plants.
Right then, Aria reminded her of a streaky cloud high in the sky on a cold, clear day. The kind of cloud that looked like thin strands of white hair. A cirrus cloud, she remembered. Sonata liked clouds, and she’d read about them on the internet after hearing that singer singing so prettily about them, even if it didn’t make much sense to her how a human could see a cloud from both sides, when they couldn’t even fly!
Anyway, where was she? Oh yeah: Aria was looking happier, and that was because they’d all agreed to work together to find the best thing to do next. But without their jewels, none of them would keep their happiness for long, and so Sonata thought the best thing to do would be to find a way to fix their jewels before they all got sad again. She knew that they might not be able to fix them, but she wanted to try really hard first, just in case there was a way. Hadn’t Adagio said something about fixing them earlier?
“You said we might be able to fix our jewels if we could get to Equestria?” Sonata asked.
Adagio pulled a face like she had trodden on something sharp. Sonata wasn’t worried, though, nobody was better at planning than her big sister, and if there was any way they could sing again, she knew Adagio would find it. There wasn’t much they could do for now, as Adagio had said she hadn’t got a plan, but Sonata knew that if she and Aria asked the right questions, and helped choose the best ideas, then Adagio would find a way to turn them into a plan, and then the three of them would know what to do.
“I said we’d have more of a chance there than here, but there are so many problems that I hardly know where to begin.”
“Ok,” Aria answered while Sonata was still thinking of what to suggest, “so what’s the biggest problem, aside from the obvious?”
Once she would have said that I was the biggest problem. In fact Aria had said that, in the kitchen the day before. Sonata had answered at the time by grabbing fruit from the bowl and throwing it at Aria, but inside she’d wished that she wasn’t the biggest problem the three of them had. She didn’t think she always was, but the other two got so shouty with her that she knew that was what they thought sometimes. And when she’d been wishing, she’d meant for her to be less of a problem, not for a bigger one to come trundling along so that she didn’t look so bad when she stood next to it.
“That once we reached Equestria, we’d revert to our 20-foot siren forms,” Adagio said, “which would lose us the ability to infiltrate and deceive.”
Sometimes Sonata missed being a siren. Well, she knew she was still a siren, but she hadn’t looked like one since they’d arrived in that world. It had felt so good earlier in the evening when they had gathered enough Equestrian magic to be able to make their siren bodies in the air. And they’d grown wings on their real bodies, too; she wasn’t sure what that was all about. Being shot at with butterflies hadn’t been so nice, but just feeling the wind on her scales again had been the best thing. And she’d mostly forgotten about the butterflies until thinking of it that moment, as their siren bodies smashing into pieces – and then their necklaces too – had been way worse than anything.
“Combat advantage, though,” Aria said, licking her lips like they were shopping for ice cream. “Size, strength, scales and teeth.”
“True,” Adagio agreed, and Sonata noticed that doing so made Aria smile in a way that really showed how much that hug had helped, “but any skills we’d gain for physical intimidation would be countered by the magic users there, who we no longer have a weapon against.”
So if they went back to Equestria without their jewels, even normal unicorns would be able to push them around? That just wasn’t right! They were sirens; ponies weren’t meant to be able to do anything to them. Even that stupidbeard pony wizard only managed to send them far away, he hadn’t actually managed to hurt them. Did that mean they weren’t really sirens anymore?
No, sirens were what they were deep down, that wouldn’t change just because they couldn’t sing, would it? And Adagio would find a way for them to sing again; so they couldn’t be sirens, then not be sirens, and then be sirens again, could they? That would be silly. So of course they would always be sirens, even if they couldn’t sing at that moment.
Adagio carried on, “We need to pass unseen more than ever before. We’ve got used to looking like those we’re living among, but that’s useless since there are no other sirens in Equestria. Thanks to Sonata, we know that there were once three sirens in this world, but they died thousands of years ago.”
Sonata giggled quietly to herself at the funny feeling in her cheeks as Adagio said something nice about her, and then thought back to the afternoon they’d learned about the other sirens. She could see the scene perfectly in her head, just as clearly as when it had happened.
She was lying on her tummy on her bed, painting her nails silver and sparkly. The door was open, and she could hear the music Aria was listening to loudly in the next room. It was something fast and messy, with noisy guitars and raspy singing, and Sonata hummed along with the chorus. But some of the words in the verse made no sense, and so once the song was done she got up and went to see Aria about it. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the next track starting up.
“Hey, Aria? What was that last song about?”
Aria looked up from sitting at her desk in front of her computer, and pulled a nasty face as she saw Sonata standing in the doorway between their bedrooms.
“The three-word repeating chorus didn’t give it away?” she crossed her arms, reaching her leg out to kick her door closed in Sonata’s face. A second later, Sonata heard the music get louder from behind the door as Aria turned it up.
Knowing Aria would just start shouting if Sonata opened the door and tried talking to her again, she instead headed downstairs, feeling her feet sinking into the fluffy white carpet. Adagio was in the lounge, sitting sideways on the bigger of the two sofas, leaning back against the armrest with her legs stretched out in front of her over the next seat. She had her laptop on her lap (which was probably a good place for something called a laptop), and a glass of red wine stood on the coffee table, perched on one of the coasters covered in pictures of tropical fish that Sonata had picked out.
That had been a fun few days choosing furniture stuff, when Adagio had given her some catalogues and a credit card, and told her to order things online for the house. The coasters were one of her favourite bits, and although Aria had said they were pointless and stupid, Sonata had seen her sister staring at them sometimes, looking like she was thinking of home.
Adagio looked up as Sonata came down the stairs, giving a smile and then going back to her laptop. The white fluffy bathrobe Adagio wore matched the carpet, which made the expensive black cordovan of the sofa look even darker, although the blue jeans that peeked out from under the robe didn’t really match anything.
“Adagio?” Sonata asked, moving to stand in front of the table with her knees together and smoothing her skirt, “Can I ask you something please?”
Without looking away from the screen, Adagio reached for her wine. She often did that when Sonata came to speak to her; maybe it was so her mouth didn’t get dry when answering Sonata’s questions? Sonata didn’t like wine, as it made her tongue go funny. White wine was worse, though. It wasn’t even white, like milk was; white wine was a silly greenish clear colour, and it tasted like bottom feeders.
“What is it, Sonata?” Adagio said, setting her laptop down, turning her head in Sonata’s direction and rolling over so she was lying on her side, but leaning an elbow on the armrest. She didn’t look bored, but not interested either.
“Aria’s listening to a song, but I don’t understand what the words mean.” It kind of sounded silly when Sonata said it out loud, like it wasn’t something she should be bothering Adagio with. Realising that, Sonata added a slightly guilty, embarrassed smile.
There was a long pause as Adagio raised the wine glass to her lips and drank, keeping her eyes locked on Sonata’s own while doing so. Held there by that look, Sonata felt more and more like she was wasting Adagio’s time, especially when she knew Adagio was busy planning their move on the school where the rainbow magic was hiding. When Adagio at last did answer, she didn’t frown or smile, just kept her voice flat like she was trying to say the words without any feelings along with them.
“Mammals are the group of animals that humans belong to, but so do cats, cows, elephants, and many others. Ponies, too. The Discovery Channel is–”
“Not that song,” Sonata interrupted, looking guilty again, “I mean the one about free running, or whatever it is.” How come Adagio didn’t know the song I meant, when Aria was playing it so loudly? And that was when Sonata noticed just how quiet it was where she stood, even though Aria was probably still playing her music just as loudly as before.
Ohhhhhh.... The soundproofing! All that special stuff Adagio had insisted they had put into the walls and ceilings before they first moved in, and cost so much they’d had to add a couple of extra days to the week they’d spent sorting out money things. Adagio had said it would be good so that they could practise their singing day or night without disturbing each other, but now Sonata wondered if Adagio had actually wanted it so badly so that she’d be able to relax quietly in the lounge however loudly Aria was playing her music upstairs.
“Ok?” Adagio said, in that voice that said she was waiting, but not for long, and Sonata panicked and made sure she was concentrating fully and not getting distracted. What was it she needed to say? Oh, right, the song thing. Yep, that was it.
“It said about spending the night in jail, but then it said listening to the sirens’ whale. But,” Sonata scrunched up her face, trying to puzzle it out, “we don’t have a whale.”
She wouldn’t mind if they did have one (she could speak whale). She remembered swimming among the whale pods from time to time in Equestria, joining in with their songs when they were in the shallows, but staying away when they went out into the deep, where the terrorsquid might have been waiting.
When Adagio answered, it sounded like she was trying talk the way people with dummies did, with their teeth stuck together. She was still moving her lips though, so Sonata wasn’t too impressed, and would have easily been able to tell it was her talking and not the dummy.
“They mean ‘wail,’ as in crying, screaming or moaning.”
Why would the whale be crying? Was it ok? No, wait a minute, that’s not what Adagio meant. If the song said wail when talking about making sad noises, then there was no whale. There never had been, even. Sonata felt a bit sad about that. She kind of preferred it her way. And now she’d thought of it, she did rather want a whale.
Just forget about the whale! That was the part of her brain that was trying to concentrate on the conversation, and it wasn’t often happy about how easily she got distracted.
Ok, so if there had never been a whale...
What did I just say?
It’s ok, I’m concentrating, I’m handling it!
...Then what had been doing the wailing? She played the song back in her mind, following the words. Listen to the...
Sirens! It was them that had been wailing! Suddenly it all made sense! ...Didn’t it?
“Oh right,” she nodded, and noticed that although Adagio still held her wine glass, there was quite a bit less liquid in it than before, so Sonata might have been standing there thinking for a while, and in the meantime Adagio must have drunk more without Sonata noticing. “But why would we be doing that?”
The moment she said it, Sonata could tell she shouldn’t have done. Adagio was looking up at her, with annoyed eyebrows, like she had much more important things to be doing than talking to Sonata about some song Aria had on. Which, Sonata, then realised, was kind of true. With her cheeks tingling, Sonata was just about to back slowly away from Angry Adagio and go back up to her room when–
Everything changed.
Eyebrows on Adagio dragged down even further, and she looked off to the floor at one side. She didn’t look angry anymore, though, she looked... puzzled? Like she was trying to figure out where the whole bowl of chocolate trifle had gone even though she’d just sat down with a spoon in front of the TV.
“...Yes,” Adagio said, looking back up at Sonata, with her head leaned to one side like a puppy. “Why would we?”
Sonata wasn’t quite sure what was happening, and it was made doubly scary by the way Adagio was looking at her while searching for an answer, when Sonata knew she didn’t have one to give. She hoped it was just that Adagio was after an answer generally, and just happened to be looking towards her at the time.
Before Sonata could even think about thinking of something to say in reply, Adagio’s hands shot out and grabbed her laptop, pulling it onto her lap again and hammering away at the keys without pausing.
“‘Siren,’” Adagio said out loud as she typed, and then looked closer at the screen to read out whatever the machine had come up with. “A device that makes a loud prolonged signal or warning sound.”
Huh?I don’t even...
“That doesn’t sound like us,” Sonata said, rocking on her feet and watching Adagio’s face for clues about what was going on.
The only warning sound or signal she could think of a siren making was the cross ‘urgh!’ noise Aria would make just before hitting something or someone, which Sonata had learned to listen out for and sometimes even managed to pick up on in time to get out of the way.
“No, indeed,” Adagio said, her eyes still on the screen and zipping side to side. Even though she often managed it when answering Sonata’s questions, it was amazing how Adagio could read and talk at the same time. Sometimes Sonata found it hard enough just to concentrate on doing one of those things, never mind both at once. “It must get the name from somewhere though,” Adagio added, looking up at Sonata quickly before diving at her laptop’s keyboard again, frowning down at the screen as she did.
“Ah, here we are,” Adagio said a moment later, “‘Siren (mythology).’” Then she went quiet, reading the screen to herself.
It was always a bit of a scary thing if Adagio went quiet when she and Sonata were having a conversation; it usually meant she was about to explode. If Adagio was just reading, and not doing anything at the same time like talking, then whatever she was reading must have been very important.
So, the sirens talked about in the song were the loud warning noise kind? And they were wailing because they were... sad... about warning people? Maybe Aria wouldn’t tell me what the words were about because she didn’t know either! She always acts like she knows so much more than me, but maybe–
Sonata jumped, nearly knocked over backwards by the impact. Looking up, she saw Adagio sitting up, singing a pure note of sound energy towards the ceiling.
Sonata knew she couldn’t see sounds, because they didn’t work like that and that was what ears were for anyway, but it felt like she could almost spot the waves of Adagio’s voice bursting out of her mouth in a tight cone pointed upwards. If it was that loud where she was standing, it must be much louder where Adagio’s voice was pointing: Aria’s room, straight above them.
Adagio stopped, but Sonata was still thinking about it when she heard the door click open at the top of the stairs, and then Aria stomp down to join them.
“Even with the soundproofing, that’s still painfully loud, Adagio. What’s so urgent you’d summon me down like that?”
“Sonata’s found something,” Adagio said without looking up from the screen. Found something? Her?! She felt something swelling up in her chest like a balloon. Was that pride? She grinned at Aria standing beside her, chiming with laughter as her grumpy sister folder her arms and took on Aria Grump Pose number three.
“Her self-respect? Her mythical second brain cell? Might need a little more to go on here.”
“Ooh, is it Nemo?” Sonata exclaimed as the idea hit her. “Did I find Nemo? I’m a blue fish,” she told Aria, closing her eyes, lifting her chin and puffing her chest out like a proud cat, “it’s what we do.”
Sonata was happily wondering if that meant she’d get to meet the cool sea turtle as well, but snapped her eyes open again the moment she heard Adagio’s ‘this is important’ voice, which hadn’t been used since the first night after they were banished. Not the ‘pay attention, you two, this is important’ one that was frowny and hard to disagree with, but the scary important one, because Adagio didn’t sound like she was acting, and was just as shaken as they were about to be.
“We are not alone,” Adagio said. Before any questions could be asked or other reactions reacted, Adagio span her laptop around and held it up in their direction so they could see.
A picture took up the whole screen, one that looked like it had been painted by hand by a painter who really knew what they were doing. Sonata could see the water drops on the rocks as if they were right in front of her (instead of right in front of her in a painting on a screen); and the waves crashing against them, sending walls of water high into the dark sky on either side of the rocks, were painted to look so real she felt she could hear the roar of the sea in her ears, and feel the spray swirling around her in the air.
The most important bit of the painting, though, was the three figures lying on the rocks in the middle: one blue, one purple, and one gold.
“How is this possible?” Aria asked, while Sonata tried tilting her head to see if the picture would make more sense to her from other angles. It didn’t.
“When were we singing on the rocks since we got here?” she wondered out loud. She certainly couldn’t remember doing that since Equestria, and her memory was usually as good for that sort of thing as any siren’s (which Adagio had said was way better than most humans’), even if she did forget what she was doing sometimes when she was in the middle of doing it.
“We weren’t,” Adagio said, in the same voice as before, “this was painted nearly three thousand years ago, on the Magna Graecian coast, near Messana.”
Three thousand years? But the three of them were only eighteen years old! Sonata knew she wasn’t very good at maths, but...
She ‘hmmmed’ to herself as she turned the problem over in her mind, which got her an annoyed look from Aria. She thought it was probably better than what Aria had been doing until that point, though: standing there biting the inside of her cheek as she thought. That was silly; thinking was painful enough as it was – chewing your own face wouldn’t help!
“Could the spell have sent us to the future?” Sonata asked. Silly unicorn wizards weren’t really strong enough to do that, were they? There must have been some other answer for the eighteen years vs three thousand thing, right?
Sonata was a bit surprised when Adagio didn’t laugh at the suggestion or look disgusted by it, so maybe it wasn’t as dumb an idea as she’d thought. What Adagio did do was move the laptop back to her lap again, quickly bashing some keys and clicking stuff with the touch pad thing. She then read whatever page she’d found, telling them what it said as she did so.
“Three millennia ago in that part of the world, King Pyrrhus drove back the Romans from Magna Graecia, never again to secure a foothold there.” Sonata saw Adagio’s eyes drop lower down the screen as she skipped to the next bit worth saying. “...Time went on, Greece and Rome became allies... They remained so until Rome fell, about fifteen hundred years ago...” None of this made much difference to Sonata, and she didn’t really understand why Adagio was saying it in the first place, but there was probably some important reason that would be obvious by the time Adagio was done. There normally was.
“Their pantheons of gods were combined over the centuries and spread throughout the world...” Adagio carried on, then skipping even further down the page, “...and were ultimately abandoned around seven hundred years ago, when science came to prominence.”
Standing there trying to think stuff through (and probably looking just as confused as she felt), no new answers came to Sonata as Adagio finished reading and put the laptop to one side on the coffee table, turned so that all three of them could see the picture of the painting on the screen. Sonata almost sighed happily when Adagio’s next line sounded more like her old self.
“But there’s nothing here about having evolved from magical talking ponies during that timeframe, so no, we’re not just in future Equestria.”
She could have just said that... But then Aria often got annoyed if Adagio didn’t explain what was going on and how she knew stuff, so maybe Adagio was being nice and hoping Aria would help think of answers with them.
On Sonata’s right, Aria now bent over forwards to look closely at the picture on the laptop, holding herself up with her hands on her knees, her nose only a few nose-lengths away from the screen.
“It’s unmistakeably us,” she said without looking around, “but we’ve never looked like that.” Sonata leaned in beside her, trying to see more closely but taking care not to get in Aria’s way. She also looked back to make sure she wasn’t blocking Adagio’s view, but saw Adagio sitting upright on the sofa looking straight ahead, doing her thinking face.
“Gossamer wings,” Aria pointed, “pony ears, glowing red eyes.”
“Longer hair, too,” Sonata added, glad to be able to contribute something helpful when they were all a bit stuck.
“Oh that’s good, I really thought we were lacking in the hair department.”
No, we’ve got, like, loads more of it than all the other humans we’ve seen, so that’s not– oooh! Was Aria doing that thing where she said something but meant the opposite of it, which definitely wasn’t confusing? Yeah, like that, ‘definitely not confusing!’ I have so got this! Sarcasm, that was the one.
All the same, Sonata thought maybe it would be best not to mention that Aria sort of only half had longer hair, with her bunches the same length as they always were, only now with a long straight bit of hair hanging down between them, which looked kinda weird. Yeah, no, she wasn’t gonna say that out loud to Aria.
“So that’s us,” Sonata said, pointing at the painting on the screen, “but not us?”
It sounded stupid and probably impossible, but it was the only way she could think of to explain it that fit with everything they knew. She wasn’t sure if it made it all more or less confusing though.
Adagio whispered something from her spot on the sofa, and Sonata straightened back up to look at her again and concentrate on what she was saying, because it sounded a lot like she’d whispered ‘a world without shrimp.’ Sonata hadn’t seen anything else helpful about the painting anyway, and a moment later Aria stopped leaning down too, standing beside her and giving Adagio the ‘wat’ look normally saved for when Sonata tried new ways of mixing foods together at dinner. Even though sometimes it worked really well!
Sonata felt her mouth go a bit dry looking at Adagio, who still hadn’t moved from how she’d been staring at the wall in front of her, and must have spoken without looking round either. Sonata didn’t get a good feeling from that, as Adagio was usually really good at thinking of stuff while the three of them were in the middle of things, and then just lead them through it as they went, instead of needing time to work on it on her own beforehand.
Once Adagio realised Sonata and Aria were standing there watching her again, she shook her head and blinked a few times, like a fluffy bunny rabbit waking up. And then she smiled! A nice little smile as she looked up at them that said she thought she had an answer. Sonata pressed her hand against her heart in relief, and knew that everything would be ok.
“It came up in one of those shows we watched a few weeks ago to learn about life in high school,” Adagio said. “A different version of a familiar character appeared, from a world where different choices had been made. A parallel universe, they called it.”
Once Adagio had said it, Sonata remembered some of the details: the nerdy girl had shown up wearing black leather, and that meant she was bad now (and that was when Adagio had forbidden any of them from wearing anything black or leathery when made their move on the school, once they were done preparing). But soon the show had then had the girl in leather standing next to her normal self, so they’d been two different people even though they were the same person.
Again, Adagio picked up her laptop and set it down on her lap. “Ok, ‘parallel universe,’” she said as she hit a few keys, and then sat reading the screen for a couple of seconds. “A hypothetical self-contained reality co-existing with one’s own.”
I think I understood most of that... maybe? Most of the words on their own, at least, but together they sort of just made word soup. Adagio moved the laptop back to where it had been before, so all three of them could see it. The screen showed a white page covered in small black writing, with a bigger heading in the top left saying ‘Parallel Universe.’ Sonata again leaned in closer to read more clearly, noticing her sisters doing the same.
The few minutes that followed for Sonata had her standing there reading the screen and trying to turn the words and ideas over in her head, building them into a picture she could use and understand. It felt like doing a jigsaw puzzle, like the one Adagio had bought her of the world map to help learn the names of the different countries, only this was less like the pieces were neatly cut and meant to fit together in a particular way, and more like blobs of scrambled eggs she was mushing together in a frying pan like she was trying to rebuild the original unbroken egg.
She giggled to herself on the inside at the thought of trying to mend an egg.
She knew Adagio and Aria probably got a lot more of the writing on the page than she did, and that was fine ‘cause they were good at that kind of stuff and she could always ask one of them if she needed to know for anything she was doing, but she at least followed that there would be different copies of the same world, which all started out the same, but where different things happening back in the past had led to the present being a bit different for each copy. Like maybe in one world men wore skirts and women wore trousers, that sort of thing?
Eventually Aria spoke, straightening up slowly as she did so.
“So the unicorn exiled us to an alternate reality,” she said, then nodded towards the screen as Adagio flicked it back to the painting again, “and they’re the ones originally from here.”
Sonata stood back up too, from where she’d been crouching on the floor to read the screen without getting in the others’ way, and felt her knees complaining about being kept folded for that long. She watched Adagio sinking back into her seat and stretching her back, saying nothing but clearly agreeing.
That’s the answer, then? There are copies of us already in this world?
It was good to have an answer to the problem and to have solved the mystery and stuff, but also, there were three more sirens out there! And one of them was another Sonata Dusk! She could go find them and introduce herself – well, they’d recognise her, of course, but, oh, that would mean she’d have to explain where she came from and how she got there, and that meant studying stuff to make sure she got it right. But then she might have a siren sister she never fought with, like a twin but even better! And they could do all kinds of fun things together that Aria and Adagio never wanted to do like take loads of selfies of them in different outfi–
No, hang on, there’s a problem here.
If the other sirens could take selfies, why hadn’t they done that instead of being painted? ...Why? Umm, think, Sonata, think! Why would anyone want a painting instead of a photo? Because they were old-fashioned and stuff? Or, no, not old-fashioned, old! They had a painting done because it was too long ago for selfies to be a thing. In fact it was aaaages ago, the other sirens would be, like, ancient by now.
Oh, no, wait. They’d be dead by now.
Huh. No twin for me then. Sonata stared down at her hands, wondering how she’d lost a sister she never had. Three sisters, really, that she wouldn’t ever get to meet, since the other Aria and Adagio would have been just as old. But why? Why were they so old when she, and her proper sisters, were still so young?
“But why are we here now,” she asked out loud, finding no answer on her own, “when they were so long ago?” Seeing her sisters both look in her direction as she spoke, she continued, “If they’re us, shouldn’t we have the same birthdays or something?”
And then she spotted the look Adagio was giving her. Adagio had never looked at her like that before! That was the look Adagio did when she was impressed. Like, really impressed, the kind of thing that only happened when someone thought of something before she did. Sonata had seen the look directed at Aria once or twice, but had never been on the receiving end of it herself. It almost felt like a mistake for it to be heading her way.
Aria, looking more relaxed as she stood with her hands in her pockets, said, “We suggested time travel; it could have been both.”
One unicorn could send them across parallel universes and through time? That made being defeated by him feel a little less bad, if he had really been that powerful. But Sonata had found it hard to believe that a pony could have that much power when time travel had first been mentioned, so the idea of him doing that and different universes too...? Could all unicorns do that? She didn’t think so, or she and her sisters might have been stopped sooner. So what made that one pony so special?
“In fact,” Adagio said, sounding cunning, as she always did when discussing plans, “if you were trying to banish something to as far away as possible, so it could never return and” – her voice dropped to more of a growl – “wreak the vengeance it promised on you,” she paused for a moment to smile at them, showing all her teeth, “wouldn’t you throw it through distance and time, if you could?”
If she could? Sonata knew Adagio could be pretty scary when angry with her, like all her hair made her seem big and dangerous. Although she’d been just as scary at times like that when they lived in Equestria and none of them had hair, so it couldn’t just be her looking like a lion. Sonata looked at Adagio’s smile, one of the nastiest she’d ever seen from her sister (and much nastier than she’d ever received), and tried to imagine how she’d react if she were a pony wizard receiving that look.
Yeah. Yeah, I’d banish her as far away as I possibly could, and I still wouldn’t feel safe afterwards.
“So,” Aria shrugged, “we’re in a parallel world, three thousand years in the future.” Until she said that, she’d been staring at the carpet off to one side for a while, but as she spoke, she looked up, and seemed ok with it all. Maybe the carpet held hidden answers for how to deal with stuff? Or maybe it was just relaxing to fill everything you could see with fluffy white carpet, like a nice warm blanket for thinking that made the bad stuff seem not quite as bad, and also got rid of all the distractions so you could just work on how to make the bad stuff go away completely?
Maybe that was why Sonata liked clouds, which were also white and fluffy? Apart from clouds being pretty, anyway. Although the white carpet did look very nice too, so maybe they both did both things. Didn’t pegasus ponies use actual clouds for carpets? And if they really were good for thinking, did that make pegasi super-smart? ...Was that why Adagio suggested the white carpet to begin with, when Sonata had been picking furniture stuff?
“Looks like,” Adagio nodded. Neither she nor Aria looked upset about it, but not hugely happy either, apart from perhaps it being good to have an answer. Sonata wasn’t sure what to feel, it was all a bit too strange and far away from her actual life.
“What does that mean?” she asked. Obviously she knew what it meant, they’d just spent ages going on about it, but what did it mean for them? And what would they do now they knew it?
Aria shrugged again, still not taking her hands out of her pockets. “The home we knew is gone, even if we could get back to Equestria now.”
What would have happened to their cove, and Sonata’s little corner of it filled with all the pretty shells and shiny things she’d collected when the three of them were small? Aria said their home was gone, so maybe they wouldn’t even recognise which cove was theirs if they went back.
But they’d left the cove long before they were banished from Equestria, since they’d grown too big for it, so it wasn’t like they could have gone back there anyway. It was still sad, though, knowing the waves would have washed everything away as if she’d never been there at all.
“Everypony we encountered during our Equestrian campaign is dead,” Adagio said, reaching for her glass of wine on the table, which had been left forgotten while they’d all been talking. She sounded serious, like, not sad about it, but like it meant something important to her.
Not so much to Aria, who said, “Meh,” and made her nope-don’t-care face. Sonata kind of agreed; it wasn’t like they had been planning to ever go back there anyway, or knew any of the ponies’ names.
“Including the wizard,” Adagio said back quickly, over the top of her glass before taking a sip.
Oooh, except that one! We knew his name!
Sonata reacted without even thinking about it, taking a step closer to Aria, lifting her hand up and shouting.
“High five!”
A couple of months later, a little way across Canterlot, Sonata Dusk sat in a dirty backstage room on a smelly old sofa covered in food stains, and smiled to herself. That had been such a great day!
Still grinning at the memory, Sonata brought her mind back to the present. Not much had changed since she’d been away: the lights still flickered, the sofa still smelled funny. Aria was in the middle of saying something, though, so Sonata put on her listening face and made out like she had been paying attention the whole time.
“Ok,” Aria said, counting on her fingers as she said each thing, “so we can’t get ponies to use their magic for us, as they’d never trust us in our siren forms...”
Oh dear, how long had Sonata drifted off for? Not, like asleep-drifted-off, but wandered into her memories without a guide and hung out there for some time.
“...Can’t get dragons or anyone else to as they couldn’t be trusted not to overpower us when we’re magically defenceless...”
It sounded like she must have been gone for a while, as Aria was listing things like they’d already been talked over, and Sonata didn’t remember any of that. It wasn’t like she’d really have been able to add much, though; even Aria was way better a planning stuff than Sonata, when she didn’t get bored and start punching people.
“...Couldn’t buy or steal new gems as there are no other sirens to get them from...”
Yep, Sonata remembered that bit! As in, remembered talking about it. She remembered when she’d helped them realise it, too – she’d been lying on her bed, doing her nails, and Aria had been listening to – No! Stop it! Focus, Sonata, in case there’s anything you can do to help now like you did back then. No more flashbacks, they need you here.
“...And the chances of us just finding new gems we could enchant are very low when we have no magic to do so.”
That was the full list, then? No pony help, no dragon or changeling help, no siren help, and no way of doing it themselves. Dragons and changelings were always unfriendly, but weren’t ponies supposed to be nice and helpful and stuff? What was the point of that, if they wouldn’t help sirens learn to sing again?
Sonata bit her lip as she tried to watch Adagio without her noticing. Like, obviously Sonata was looking at both her sisters, because that was what Adagio had said you were meant to do when people were talking, so it was normal to be watching them. But Sonata tried to really look, to see how Adagio was doing, as it was her trying to put it all together in a way that would get them their powers back.
Was Adagio ok? Where was the little smile she usually had when she was planning stuff?
Stupid ponies, not helping and leaving it all up to Adagio to puzzle her way out of the mess! They needed punishing. No one was going to make her sister feel like that. Once Adagio found a way to get the three of them to Equestria, Sonata would...
Would what? She had no magic she could hurt ponies with. That was kinda the whole problem. Adagio had said that sirens couldn’t control ponies when they had no magic.
But then how come humans could? They didn’t have magic.
Humans kept ponies as pets. They rode them and made them pull ploughs and do whatever they wanted! So if Sonata could just find a–
I am a human!
Well, sort of. She and her sisters were all still sirens. But also kind of humans too. They looked like humans, at least. Would that be enough? Could they use their special human powers to push the ponies around?
But why hadn’t Adagio already thought of that? She’d been talking about them returning to Equestria as sirens, but they were human now. Adagio knew that, of course, so Sonata had missed something. But what?
“Why do we think we’d turn back into sirens?” she asked. Adagio and Aria both turned to look at her, but they didn’t quite look angry enough for her to think they’d already answered that question sometime when she’d been daydreaming and not paying attention. “This is what we look like now.”
In Sonata’s mind, coming from lots of memories of similar talks, she could almost see Adagio taking a sip of wine during the moment she waited before answering.
“Do you remember when we first arrived in this world,” Adagio said, “and woke up in these bodies?”
Shuddering, Sonata felt her tummy tighten up like she was going to be sick. Was she turning green just from thinking about it? “That wasn’t fun at all,” she said, looking down at the floor. Without really meaning to, she felt her hands rubbing over her belly, feeling the skin beneath her top, all smooth and tingly now. The scrapes from where she’d pulled herself along the ground that day had healed ages ago, but she still turned her head away from the memory of the pain.
On the other side of the sofa, she saw Aria move her normal crossed arms lower, covering her own tummy.
“No it wasn’t,” Adagio agreed, and even she looked like she’d eaten something bad, like cauliflower cheese or something. “And we were very lucky the alley the portal dropped us in was so quiet.”
Sonata’s eyes widened, not really having thought about that before. Would they even had had the strength to sing someone into leaving them alone, if they’d been found? So, so tired after the thing with Starswirl, and all bleeding as they found out how much tougher than scales skin wasn’t.
“We still did fairly well,” Aria said, “compared to how long it takes humans to learn to walk.”
And humans had never had tails, as far as Sonata knew. So they’d never had to get used to the feeling of telling your muscles to split your tail in half each time you wanted to move one leg on its own.
She looked down at the insides of her hands, again seeing smooth skin. The marks were gone, leaving no sign of her screwing her fists up so tight that the nails went into the flesh.
“We did,” Adagio nodded, looking across at Aria for a moment before looking down at the floor in front of her, “but it still took us days to get back into fighting shape. That one bit of magic put us straight out of action.”
Aria looked unhappy but didn’t argue, and her being that way with Adagio often meant she was about to snap at Sonata instead. Aria didn’t say anything else, though, so maybe possibly that hug earlier might have cheered her up just a tiny bit? Or at least made her feel like they were all trying to fix the same problem? Even if Adagio is the one who’s best at finding the answers, and we’re just here to help.
Sometimes it was freaky how thinking Adagio’s name could make her look at you, like she knew, but Sonata was pretty sure it was just very clever guessing what you were thinking, and not actually hearing it for realsies. “So, do you remember what we concluded at the time?” Adagio asked as the turned to Sonata.
Concluded at the time...?
That sirens were better things to be than people? That the new world they were stuck in was stupid, like the people in it? That being helpless was the worst thing of all, like they were just tiny little ponies or something? They had definitely decided all of those things!
Before she managed to get any closer to knowing which one Adagio meant, Aria spoke. “If Starswirl had that kind of power, why’d he wait to use it until after banishing us?” Sonata could hear Aria rolling her eyes.
I don’t know, I’m not a pony wizard, he probably did lots of dumb things...
Adagio took over, not sounding nearly as bored, just like she was trying to break it down so Sonata would understand. “He could have foregone the whole magic battle thing of him being humiliatingly defeated.”
That had been pretty funny though! At least, until he’d crawled back while they were busy laughing about stuff and cast his horrible curse. Happily giggling amongst themselves, enjoying having everything they’d ever wanted. Hoofsteps of a pony trying to be sneaky, soon leading their eyes to the familiar unicorn. Snarls of sirens. A flash of yellow light. And then the sky began to scream.
Sonata blinked to wipe away the flash of memory, but luckily it had only lasted a single moment, so she hadn’t missed anything, and Adagio didn’t look like she’d noticed.
“One use of that spell and it would have been over,” Adagio carried on. “But he didn’t, and the body change struck as we arrived in this world.”
Smack! Sonata heard the noise straight out of another quick memory she hadn’t asked for. Smack as the hole in the sky threw them out of the spinny, stretchy colours that had been making her feel sick, and dropped them from midair onto the hard road below. All they knew of their new bodies at first was pain.
Biting her teeth together, Sonata wanted to shake her head to clear the flashback out of her view, needed to, but that would make it really obvious to the others she’d been distracted when they’d been talking.
She swallowed, hoping she could force the flashback down to her stomach instead. But it didn’t work like that, did it? Flashbacks weren’t flapjacks.
“So it was probably because we arrived in this world,” Aria said.
So the magic hadn’t come from Starswirl, but from the world when they first appeared there? Even though the big problem with the new world was that it didn’t have magic like Equestria did? Maybe it just had a special bit of magic for squishing visitors from other places into new shapes.
“So we’d fit in with all the people here?”
Was there any way that the three of them could get hold of that magic and use it to help them get new gems?
“Exactly,” Adagio said. “The magic of this world made us look like people, because that’s what people in this world look like.”
So Adagio definitely called it magic, the thing that made you different shapes to fit in, like how everybody at the supermarket wore the same uniform, and if Adagio knew it was magic but didn’t talk about a plan to use it, there probably wasn’t a way. Unless Sonata had thought of something Adagio hadn’t...? No, that wouldn’t happen; Adagio thought of everything. Didn’t she?
“So if we go to Equestria…” she said slowly, probably just to make sure Sonata got it. Equestria was like a different supermarket, then, with blue uniforms instead of red? So if you wanted to look like you worked there, you had to change clothes to match? Which was stupid, because everyone knew how bad it was to turn up wearing the same outfit as someone else. Like, every TV programme they’d watched had said that, so they’d make extra special sure their outfits were all different. So were supermarkets badly dressed on purpose?
“Yep,” Aria said.
“...We’ll look like ponies?” Sonata finished, only realising after she’d spoken that Aria had already answered the question.
“Wait, no,” Aria said, shaking her head quickly side to side. “Not that.” She looked straight at Sonata and made a confused face, the kind Sonata often recognised in the mirror. “So close.”
Aw, I got it wrong? ‘So close’ is good though! Maybe next time? Like maybe if next time Aria asked questions about cooking instead; Sonata could answer those easily! Or driving, maybe? She’d had to learn all that stuff for the test anyway. Even though she could have sung her way through it, if Adagio hadn’t been all like ‘do it properly so we don’t die!’
Then Aria did a big sigh. “We came from Equestria, so we already know what we look like there.”
“Like, siren-shaped?”
As in, like the kind of shape they’d been in Equestria before when they did their singing and tried to take over and stuff. Not the shape they were right now, even though they were still sirens, so human shape was also kind of siren shape now?
“Yes.”
But if there were no sirens in Equestria, because they’d been banished to this place instead, then how would Equestria know what siren-shaped was?
Actually, if they were the only sirens left, then didn’t siren-shaped mean whatever shape they were? So at the moment it really did mean human-shaped, because that was the shape that every siren alive looked like?
By that point, Sonata’s eyes were starting to hurt from being crossed for too long.
“But what if going there again makes us into ponies?” she asked. What if the shape change brain looked at them and saw no magic jewels, and so didn’t realise they were sirens?
Aria looked like she was stuck on pause, sitting there with her mouth a bit open.
“Then tricking unicorns into enchanting us new gems should be a lot easier,” Adagio said, like it would be easy and they didn’t need to worry about it. She always knew what to say of course, and she ran her fingers through her big fluffy hair as she talked. “But since that’s very unlikely, let’s not count on it while planning.”
Yeah, but ‘easier’ sounded good! So, if that was the way to make it easy, then wasn’t that what they should do?
“So if we could trick them if we looked like ponies,” Sonata said, “then why don’t we disguise ourselves?”
One of Aria’s eyebrows lifted upwards, like a pretty purple caterpillar. The thin, wiggly kind, with all the hairs pointing the same way so it looked tidy. “I don’t think a long, hooded cloak is going to cover it,” she said.
How come? That worked with their hair, didn’t it? Hoodies were sort of hooded cloaks, and after a bit of practice they’d figured out how to stuff their hair into their hoods without messing it up or looking like they had weird head bulges. So why couldn’t they do the same in Equestria with cloaks?
“Only magic would get us around the size difference,” Adagio explained in that voice which meant she was trying to be patient but it wouldn’t last much longer.
Sonata knew that voice could be a warning, and that she should perhaps not say anything else. But they were so close to an answer, if they’d just let her finish and tell them her plan just in case she’d accidentally thought of a really good one. “And we have none,” Aria added, rolling her eyes.
But that wouldn’t matter, because unicorns! Why couldn’t Aria see? She thought she was all clever, but sometimes Sonata had to explain really simple stuff to her, like not to eat too fast or she’d get tummy ache.
“But what I’m saying is, why don’t we trick a unicorn into doing it for us? That way we wouldn’t need our own magic!”
No? Neither of the others were getting it. Aria was doing her grumpy cloud thing, with how her eyebrows sat flat, like angry hats for her eyes.
“You want to trick a unicorn into using magic on us so we can trick unicorns into using magic for us?”
“Oh,” Sonata slumped in her seat. “Well, when you say it like that…”
Adagio rubbed her chin and tapped a finger against her lips. “The idea isn’t entirely without merit, though. I imagine a disguise spell is at least easier or less specialised than a gem finding or –enchanting one.”
Huh? That sounded like it was something, then, like maybe they could at least get a tiny bit of use out of it? And her idea hadn’t been totally stupid?
“So, what,” Aria said, “any old unicorn can disguise us, and we then use that to get the help we need from one of the few unicorns who could provide it?”
All the same, maybe it would be best if Sonata kept quiet for a couple of minutes, just in case she came out with two kind of not great ideas in a row.
“That’s the theory, yes,” Adagio said. “All we’d need to do is manipulate one regular unicorn.”
“ ‘Manipulate one regular unicorn’ without using any magic.” Aria made her I-don’t-believe-you face with both her eyebrows going way higher.
That face made at something Adagio said was normally how their fights started. Next, Adagio would give Aria an angry look, saying something quietly but like she was trying really hard not to shout. And after the yelling at each other had stopped and one or both of them had stormed off to their rooms, Sonata would have to cook something that smelled extra yummy for dinner to lure them both back down again.
How could she do that if they argued now, when they weren’t at home? What could smell so good it would reach them anywhere they could run off to in the city?
Maybe if I put all the spices and chillies we have in big cauldron of tikka masala and stood outside stirring it?
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Adagio said with a sad look.
Huh. That was different. Maybe perhaps possibly they wouldn’t fight? And Sonata wouldn’t have to find a witch’s hat to wear while cooking? You couldn’t use a cauldron without a witch’s hat; that was, like, the rule or something.
Adagio gave Sonata a smile but still looked sad. Like she wanted Sonata to be happy when she wasn’t happy herself, maybe? Then she looked back to Aria and carried on speaking. “Completely the opposite – that’ll be the toughest part, and it’s highly likely to fail.”
Sonata looked from one knee to the other as she tried to figure out the answer, but it was like trying to grow flowers when you had no seeds.
“But how could we get anyone to do what we want without magic?” she asked, tugging on her ponytail as she thought.
“Sort of the question of the evening, really,” Aria said. Grumpy cloud became grumbly cloud, like how back at the cove they’d hear thunder out at sea. Thunderstorms weren’t much of a problem when you lived in the water anyway, but if Aria went full cumulonimbus that evening it might ruin everything.
Although ‘going full cumulonimbus’ was definitely the cleverest thing she’d thought of all day, and she tried not to let her smile at it show in case the others thought she wasn’t listening to them.
After making an unpleasant face agreeing with Aria, Adagio talked more encouragingly and held out a hand like she was inviting them to join in. “So, we need to be more creative about it. If magic is off the table, what’s left?”
And Aria didn’t just snap back, she stopped and thought for a couple of seconds first with her head leaning to one side like a puppy. Which was definitely a good sign, even if she still sounded like none of the ideas she suggested were worth bothering with. “Hard leverage is pretty much out when they have magic and we don’t. Force would be hopeless, and hostage-taking almost as bad.”
Like, taking a unicorn’s family away until they did what you said? That could work! Unless they accidentally picked a unicorn who hated their family or something. Nah, unicorns were ponies, which meant they were full of love and stuff, so that wouldn’t happen.
But what would happen? Aria had already said it wouldn’t work, and she was really good at the detail stuff like that. And she was right; the three of them couldn’t just run up to a unicorn and stuff its foal into a sack, because the unicorn could just magic it back out again before they could escape with it. And then the unicorn would probably be cross and try to punish them or something unfair like that, and they wouldn’t be able to use magic to fight back.
So if the unicorn caught them during the foalnapping, they were in trouble. Could they do it when the parent wasn’t around, like at school? No, the teacher would just call the unicorn police if they weren’t a unicorn themself. What about when the foal was alone – maybe they could catch it walking home from school or something?
Still, though, if the unicorn had magic and they didn’t, fighting them and getting the foal back would be easy. Unless…
“What if you kept a hostage somewhere secret, so the unicorn couldn’t just rescue it?”
Would that do it? Nopony could save something they couldn’t find, right?
Aria shook her head, and it being a sad shake instead of an angry shake only made things the tiniest bit not quite so bad. “Locator spell,” she said. “Wouldn’t stay secret for long.”
“Oh.” Sonata felt her shoulders slump from where she’d perked up a moment before. “Is that really a thing?”
There was always something, wasn’t there? Some stupid little thing she hadn’t thought of, put there just to spoil her idea? Details were the worst!
“It was in that TV show we watched,” Aria shrugged, “sounds believable enough that unicorns could do it too.”
It had only been, like, an hour since Sonata had lost her magic, and already she hated unicorns so much for being able to do it. They just needed to be put in a hole somewhere. In the dark. With an owl. But nooooo, thanks to the stupid locator spell somepony would be able to find them and get them out again. And then she’d be left trying to cheer up a lonely owl, and that was a night she didn’t want to go through again.
“There are other methods of leverage, though,” Adagio said, with that low tingle in her voice that boys liked. Girls too. And probably, like, slugs and statues and everything; Adagio just had that effect generally. At least the giant sky pony couldn’t take that away. And it couldn’t hurt how well Adagio could plan stuff either, right?
Ooh, but leverage! ...Not ‘butt leverage,’ that was something completely different, but like, ‘yeah, but, leverage!’ Anyway, the main thing was that Sonata knew about that! Like when the wizard girl had pulled the lever earlier and dropped the Rainbooms in a hole. Adagio had said she’d pushed them, but Sonata knew it had actually been a lever. How come Adagio hadn’t known that, when the lever was right in front of them? Were levers just one of those things, like driving and cooking, that Sonata knew more about than Adagio? That was kind of a scary thought. She didn’t like being the one who knew the most about things! What if other people asked her about them, as she knew stuff, but she got mixed up and told them the wrong thing?
Oh, maelstrom! And what else could be on that list, along with cooking, driving and levers? What if it’s something extra-special important, and Adagio needs it for her planning?!
Sonata let out a big breath through her mouth as she looked ahead of her with wide eyes. Being clever was hard work! Maybe that was how Adagio felt always? Maybe she was tired the whole time, from knowing so much, and just wanted to sleep? And that was why she got so shouty with Sonata and Aria if they made too much noise fighting?
And if being clever was making Adagio tired, could she keep it going forever, as Sonata had always thought? Or would she have to stop and rest sometime? Maybe Adagio was stupid in her dreams at night! That might be why she got grumpy if Sonata woke her up in the middle of the night? Because that would mean she’d just interrupted Adagio dreaming of being in math class giggling over not knowing any of the answers or something?
Wait, I was thinking about something. Just a moment ago; I was thinking about something important, and it mattered for what we were talking about, but now it’s gone. Sonata hated it when that happened.
Aria was making more noises and faces about not believing Adagio, saying, “We’d be going in as sirens, as in: creatures ponies would naturally flee from.” She didn’t take her eyes off Adagio as she spoke. “And you’re thinking we can go from zero to ‘sell out your species for me’ in less time than it takes anypony else to raise the alarm?”
Ooh, that was it! Levers! If they found the right lever, then they could drop a unicorn into a hole too, right, just like the wizard girl had done? Levers didn’t just appear, though, they’d need to build a trap and then trick the unicorn into stepping in the right place.
Oh, but hang on. No, that couldn’t be right.
She’d wanted to drop the unicorns in a hole before, and Aria had said that wouldn’t work because of the map spell thing. So it wouldn’t work for a trap either, would it?
Hm.
‘Sell out your species for me,’ Aria had said. That sounded more like it! That’d be a much better thing for unicorns to be doing than finding their way out of holes. Would Starswirl have sold out the other ponies for them and left Sonata and her sisters to it if he hadn’t been such a loser he didn’t know how to talk to girls? If he’d tried admiring their beauty instead of being jealous or scared of it?
Maybe they should have said nice things about his ratty beard or something. Even if it did make him look like somepony who’d enjoy rubbing up against foals on the bus. But then it didn’t really matter what he looked like; they were sirens – ponies were meant to want them, not the other way around.
“We are sirens,” Sonata said, “isn’t that kind of our job?” Sometimes Adagio would get cross if Sonata interrupted when she and Aria were talking, but she hadn’t looked ready to answer before Sonata spoke.
“The odds aren’t good, no,” Adagio said. Sonata had never seen Adagio make that face before when talking about her own plans. Like, sometimes when Sonata cooked something weird-looking, like red-wined fried eggs, then Adagio would make that face before trying it. But Sonata’s cooking experiments didn’t always work. They usually tasted interesting, but not always the kind of interesting you’d want to taste again.
But seeing Adagio make the same face over something as always-right as her planning was both sad and scary, like breaking your favourite lung. Sonata lifted her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, putting her feet on the rim of the sofa cushion.
Aria said, “Face it, Adagio: I know showing up and being adored is our thing, but without our voices we just aren’t that loveable.”
Whatever it was Adagio was looking at somewhere in front of her must have been really interesting, because she wasn’t blinking or taking her eyes off it, just staring straight ahead at it. “Too frightening to be loved, but not so frightening as to be obeyed,” she said, almost in a whisper.
Is that what we are, then? Kind of medium-frightening?
“Exactly,” Aria grunted.
Adagio rubbed her chin, like she’d be stroking her beard if she had one. Maybe she should grow one, just to show Starswirl what a proper beard was supposed to look like on a good-looking person, not just something grown by some loser pony to hide a weak chin. Not that he’d be able to see it, since he was far away and dead. But maybe it would help the three of them feel better, to see a good example of a beard? And make some happier beard memories?
“What if,” Adagio said, still stroking her not-beard, which was a sign she was thinking up ideas and stuff, “we didn’t have to start from scratch?”
But wasn’t scratching a good place to start? If ponies tried to attack them when they went back to Equestria, they couldn’t fight with magic, so they’d have to use their sharp hooves or their teeth. And they might get full up quickly if they just ate all the ponies who came at them, so scratching and stabbing was probably a good thing to do at first. At least until tired or peckish.
It couldn’t have been that good an idea, though, or Adagio would have been ok with it. Wouldn’t she?
On the other side of the sofa, Aria copied Sonata’s pose of looking at Adagio while listening to her, trying to figure out what she meant.
“What if we could manipulate a pre-existing bond?” Adagio explained. Scratch that – sort of explained?
Hee hee, ‘scratch’ that!
“Well, that’d be great,” Aria said, “but remember the bit where everypony we knew in Equestria died thousands of years ago?”
That might not be a bad thing, though, since if any ponies remembered anything about them it probably wouldn’t be anything good. So maybe it’d be better to start from– Oh, from scratch! I get it now! Sonata found herself doing a huge smile, but luckily Aria and Adagio were looking at each other so no one noticed and she didn’t have to give an awkward explanation.
“Yes they did,” Adagio said. “But if there were copies of us in this world, then maybe in Equestria there are copies of people we know here.”
Copies of people we know here? Like… Ooh, the blue girl with the wizard hat! She was the one who’d been helpful for pulling the lever and trapping the Rainbooms, so maybe the pony her would be useful too.
Shaking her head, Aria said, “But those copies would never have met us.”
“No, but part of manipulating people is knowing what they’ll respond to, and figuring that out is a sliding scale from instinct and deduction, then best guesses, to trial and error.” Adagio ran a hand through her hair. “We could skip that step and go straight to what we know works best with them.”
Across the sofa, Aria was looking up in various directions, tilting her head this way and that while her expression changed. After a few seconds, she said, “Assuming that would be the same universe to universe.”
Adagio gave a little shrug, the movement of her shoulders sending ripples through her hair. “Seems a reasonable enough assumption to be worth a try.”
But Aria made a feeling-sick face and shook her head again. Sonata looked around the edge of the room to see if there was a bucket or something in case Aria was actually sick, but couldn’t see one.
“One of the staples of the mirror universe idea in fiction is that the good guys are evil there,” Aria said. Then she frowned, but it was more thinking cloud than angry cloud. After a second she added, “And normally better dressed.”
“Well yeah,” Sonata blurted out. “Evil people always are.” At least she’d worn the pretty, dark pink Westwood jacket the day before instead; she’d have been even sadder after getting off stage if that had been ruined too.
It wasn’t often Sonata looked to her sisters to find them both nodding to what she’d said, and it made her feel warm inside, spreading from her chest out to the rest of her. She wished she could take a picture of it to keep it forever, but thought that looking through her bag and then pulling out her phone would probably put them off.
It didn’t last very long anyway, though, as Aria said, “So the same tricks might well not work on them,” and gave a sad kind of shrug like nothing could keep her happy.
Which was a bit rude, Sonata thought, and maybe silly too, given how Adagio had always fixed everything before. Well, not getting back to Equestria since they were banished – not yet, anyway – but they hadn’t really been trying that hard. Equestria was full of ponies, and none of them had really wanted to see ponies again anytime soon, even after learning that the ones they’d met wouldn’t be around anymore.
But now they had a reason to get back there, Adagio would be thinking about the problem more, and would find a way, so it would be fine. And Aria should have known that!
Yeah, but… Aria was clever. Much cleverer than Sonata. And so if Aria didn’t believe that Adagio could fix things, maybe Sonata was being stupid for not agreeing?
Well, no, ‘cause Adagio’s, like, super-clever, and she thinks we can–
No.
No, that wasn’t right, though, was it? Adagio hadn’t said it was something they’d be able to do once she figured out how. She’d said it would probably fail, and that she didn’t even know where to begin. Just like she’d said there was no chance they could fix their gems if they stayed in the human world.
So if Adagio was always right, and Adagio could do anything, then what happened when Adagio said she couldn’t do something? How did that…?
Sonata forgot how to Sonata. She just sat, not moving, not really seeing, going back and forth between ‘Adagio can do anything’ and ‘Adagio knows everything, and said she couldn’t do something’ and hoping an answer would appear.
She could kind of hear her sisters talking, like they were echoey and far away.
Adagio’s voice said, “So until we know more about the link between worlds, it’s too risky?”
“If it doesn’t work out,” Aria’s voice replied, “we’d be back at trying to form strong bonds from nothing.”
There was a grunting noise Sonata thought sounded like Adagio agreeing, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to check.
