The Mirror Pool. Small, quaint, slightly run down, and generally befitting the generalisation of a dive bar. Many suspected the only reason it hadn’t been shut down was due to the health inspector point blank refusing to go any further into it than the coat check room. Full on bar brawls were not uncommon, and roughly 20% of people entering it were statistically likely to leave wearing a pair of handcuffs. But it had karaoke, so it wasn’t a totally bad place to hang out.
It was also the occasional hideout for a trio of paranormal creatures from a magical land of colourful talking horses, but there wasn’t any space on the sign to inform its customers of this.
Said trio found themselves sat at one of the booths tucked away in the furthest recesses of the bar, nonchalantly drinking among themselves and observing the regulars, making assumptions about who and with whom the next big fight would break out.
At least, one of them was.
Aria Blaze gazed out over the patrons of the bar, eyes darting occasionally and deliberately between individuals who looked ready to do battle over the most minor of misdemeanours. Gently clutching her beer, which she brought to her lips every so often, she meticulously tracked and calculated each person’s temperament in her head. It was a natural skill of hers to predict chaos, even in situations where she was not directly responsible. Her mental countdown timer said there would be something worth watching happening within the span of about three minutes.
Not all of the three were so calm and motionless, however. Sonata Dusk, youngest of the group in physical and mental age, had something quite different to focus on. Clutching a long curly straw between her lips, occasionally sucking on it to drink from the frothy chocolate milkshake at the other end, she was totally absorbed in the race she was enacting on the table with two die cast Ferraris.
Her baby blue Testarossa was the prize of her collection, having had it and favoured it for years, and it always put up a good fight when racing. But swerving past napkins and empty glasses, it was losing significant ground to the much newer and much more agile 458 Spyder. Her eyes went wide with horror as the Testarossa took a corner too wide, narrowly avoiding the salt shaker as it zoomed past Aria’s half-eaten sandwich. She breathed a momentary sigh of relief, only to start panicking as she realised that the 458 was how only half a second behind its older opponent.
Absorbed in her own thoughts while she lightly turned her gemstone necklace over in her hand, Adagio Dazzle hadn’t even noticed the spectacle unfolding on the table in front of her. If fact, she’d barely spoken a word since they’d left the diner several hours earlier. She was less than concerned about the bar fight that was now less than a minute away, and even less so than the plight of the Testarossa underdog which was now locked in an intense battle with its vastly superior 458 Spyder overlord, as she was fixated on the rainbow that they’d seen.
She’d never been so focused on a weather phenomenon before, but in fairness, it was no more a natural occurrence than Sonata was a particle physicist. They had borne witness to raw Equestrian magic, a sensation which was almost alien to them, having not encountered such a thing since their banishment centuries ago. And the effect, not immediately apparent to her younger sisters, was dramatic; for the first time in decades, she felt nourished. The negative energy of humans, though intense, lacked the ability to sustain them in the same way that Equestrian magic did. It was just enough to keep them alive, but that was if it could be considered living at all. It was survival, nothing more.
But whatever had caused this magic was definitely Equestrian. They’d gone to investigate, of course, only to come across a human high school with a large hole where its door should have been – something which none of them were sure how to react to - and nothing more than tiny scraps and traces of the magic they were seeking. It led them to the statue in the courtyard, where it just ended. Adagio had had to lead them away quickly as the various students began to depart from what looked like some kind of prom, as she couldn’t risk them being seen. Whatever had happened would need investigating, which would mean she’d need to enrol the three of them as students. Luckily, they hadn’t aged a day since their arrival in the early colonial era.
Immortality has its perks.
But her mind was no longer fixated on the rainbow they’d seen, nor was it on their arrival in this meagre world. It was on the events immediately leading up to that, during their battle against that accursed stickhead with the never-ending beard. Their victory against him was all but certain, if it wasn’t for...
*SMASH*
She snapped out of her trance instantly as a burly man with a thick black beard crashed down on their table. Aria had seen it coming a while ago, and had long since dived away from the path of destruction, whilst Sonata’s battle of the Ferraris had taken itself off the track and had gone cross country, and she was now halfway across the bar floor heading towards the snooker table. The change of course had occurred when her supply of chocolate milkshake ran dry.
Gasping as she looked down at the mixture of crumbs, sauce and various dregs of Sonata’s milkshake and Aria’s beer that had covered her hoodie, Adagio barely reacted to the second burly man who approached their now-destroyed table.
“Hah, I thought you’d put up a better fight than that, Dusty!” the large man, who looked like some kind of biker, said with a chuckle.
Quick as lightning, however, the man who had crashed down on their table leapt to his feet and tackled the biker, hurtling and careening together to the other side of the room, where their fisticuffs continued for a few brief minutes before they crashed and tumbled out the door, straight into the hands of some waiting police officers. The station was just up the road, giving the bar a convenient fall-back when all hell broke loose, and the police station a regular customer.
“Well, that was certainly an interesting turn of events,” Aria said, sitting down casually opposite Adagio, who had managed to recover some relatively clean napkins from the remains of their table, and was wiping furiously at her hoodie and tracksuit pants.
Aria grinned cheesily at Adagio’s feeble attempt to clean herself off, which was only creating a bigger mess on her hoodie. The cold stare she received in return could have frozen an inferno.
“Why do we even come here?” Aria thought out loud, watching as the bar staff chatted amiably with the police officers who had arrested the brawlers. “The staff pretty much know every officer in the precinct.”
“Sonata likes the milkshakes,” Adagio muttered. “And the whiskey isn’t bad, either.”
Aria shrugged, noticing Sonata knocking against several tables as her race looped around the snooker table and began to head back towards them. The other bar patrons observing her were either eying her with contempt for the various drinks she’d knocked over, or just watching her out of amusement.
“So, what’s eating you up?” Aria asked, more out of making conversation than legitimate concern for her sister. “You ain’t said a word since we left the school.”
“Just trying to work out how we can approach this,” Adagio replied, resigning herself to the mess on her hoodie and throwing her dirty tissue down onto the ruined table. “I mean, we saw Equestrian magic at that school. Real Equestrian magic.”
“And felt it,” Aria noted. “I haven’t felt this good in years.”
Adagio nodded. “But when we tried to track it down, we hit a dead end. That statue must be important, somehow.”
“A portal?”
“Possibly. If it is, it’s sealed off for now, so it’s not much use to us. And there’s no telling when or even if it’ll open again.”
“It’s not something we can force, not without enough power.”
“The dose we got will sustain us for a little while, maybe a few months if we’re lucky, but it’s nowhere near enough to force open a portal like that.”
“So… any plans yet?”
Adagio huffed gently. “If we can get ourselves enrolled in the school, we can find out exactly what’s going on there.”
“Us? Go to school?” Aria scoffed, raising an eyebrow.
“Not like that, it’s not like we have to actually go there to learn anything. But actually enrolling means we can use as little magic as possible to get in. It’ll be a lot less strenuous on all of us.”
Aria crossed her arms, evidently not entirely convinced, but lacking a better plan to counter with. Centuries had passed with Adagio leading them through every obstacle, so she knew better than to argue with her. She knew there was still something else bothering her sister, but she thought it best not to bring it up.
Losing herself in her thoughts again, Adagio let silence hang between them as she thought back again over the years they’d spent in this world, and the minutes before they’d been forced out of their last world. They’d almost had the upper hoof, or fin in the case of their previous form, over Starswirl, when he’d surprised them all. Her concern was that, if Equestrian magic was present in this world, it was unlikely to go down without a fight. Whoever was wielding it might be smart enough to reach the same conclusion that Starswirl had, which would royally screw them over. Again.
What Adagio wasn’t aware of, however, was that fate can play its hand in curious ways.
The karaoke machine, sat on a stage near the front of the bar, began to blare out a familiar tune. Each of the Sirens, given their keep ear for music as it had developed over the years, knew a plethora of songs, both original to them and popular in the human society, as well as a number of Equestrian tunes during the era from which they were banished. They each recognised the introduction for Torn by Natalie Imbruglia, though Sonata was too distracted by the final leg of her race to pay it any more than a moments attention. The 458 had given up racing fair, after failing to lose its opponent, and was now attempting to ram the Testarossa off the ‘road’.
Adagio, now with a slightly clearer mind, turned to face the stage, squinting to follow the sound of the music to its source. When the lyrics kicked in, she was astounded.
The voice on the stage projected loud yet gently across the room, turning heads towards it one by one as it captured their hearts. Taking occasional moments to glance across the rest of the bar, Adagio realised that almost everyone there was now entranced by the singing, with even some of the burlier types gently swaying along to the rhythm of the song. She gave a small smile when she noticed Sonata, having won the race with the Testarossa when the 458 collided into a table leg, was now sat on the floor tapping her hands and bobbing her head along with the song.
Turning to briefly face Aria, she was greeted with the casual indifference that she expected, but when Aria noticed Adagio facing her, she gave her a small nod of approval. Which was about as close to being impressed as Adagio had ever seen her.
It was only after the song ended, when the girl on stage went back to sit down with her small crowd of friends, did everything begin to click together in Adagio’s head. The wild applause was only background noise as the gears in her brain began to turn at full speed. She’d seen that group before, laughing among each other as they flocked out of the doors at Canterlot High school.
Adagio kept her gaze fixated on the group, who finished their drinks and prepared to leave, blissfully unaware of the creature watching them from afar, meticulously making plans. She didn’t even notice as Sonata re-joined them, nor did she notice the bar staff finally start to clean up the pieces of their ruined table. She kept her eyes on the group even when they downed their drinks and made to leave.
She had a plan. All they needed was that girl.
