Canterlot High OSS: Gerald's Secret Weapon

It had been a long road, living in this alternate dimension, but Gerald hoped that it was almost over. It had all began when Sunset Shimmer, Princess Celestia's protegee prior to Twilight Sparkle, used Celestia's moon-phase mirror to sneak into the Crystal Palace and steal Twilight's crown, and the Element of Magic along with it. Not knowing what to expect, the princesses, Celestia and Luna, sent Twilight after Shimmer through the mirror. Her objective was to recover the Element, and she was supposed to do it alone out of concern for the balance between worlds, but Gearhead gave her an imitation Magic Element that could be used on its own, and Spike ran through the portal after her. Gearhead followed later, using his specially-created Gatekeeper armour, equipped with solar core turbines, or Alicorn Engines, designed specifically to create and stabilize portals between Equestria and wherever Shimmer had taken the Element.

Things had not gone as planned, when Shimmer came back to Equestria in demon form at the head of a small brainwashed army. Their numbers forced Princess Celestia to make a hard decision, and she destroyed the portal, or more accurately the points anchoring the portal to both dimensions. The energy unleashed had fried Gearhead's Gatekeeper armour, rendering it useless, but Shimmer was most probably defeated and captured -- Gearhead and Twilight had not had any word from Princess Celestia since then.

Gearhead, taking on the name 'Gerald Green,' began to search for other usable portals. He used his time to study computers, and found information on data slicing, or hacking. He funded his efforts with some of the gemstones he had brought over in his armour for emergency funds, and by working for the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency tracking down and reporting illegal rings. He also did some digital trading on the side, so he could afford a small house and all the electronic equipment he bought and customized. Gerald was shocked to learn that the safeguards he had developed for the Alicorn Engine's simple operating system back in Equestria would not have stood for long against one of Earth's hackers. As a result, when he had the free time, he rewrote both his OS and his safeguards.

The amount of free time Gerald had dropped dramatically when the Sirens surfaced and started making trouble at Canterlot High School. Since the Sirens relied heavily on magic, it would have been much easier of Gearhead and Twilight could access their own, but it was harder to each this world's 'magic stuff.' Gerald had found it to be more subtle. He could only use it perfectly when he was near an open portal, and even then, only when he had his Geargem Dagger on him, as it acted as his spell medium. Gearhead was an Earth Pony with the other tribes' magic, so he was used to keeping such a measure. Twilight, by contrast, was not, so she had largely given up on casting any sort of spell. In the end, it was only by working together and keeping their guard up that the band, Sonic Unity backed by 'DJ-Pon3,' managed to defeat the Sirens and shatter the gems powering their magic even in this world.

As the de-powered Dazzlings fled, the second enemy, about which Gerald knew because he had stumbled on them by accident, and then been captured, tried a sneak attack. It did not work, because Gerald still had the ability to detect magical auras when it happened. Using his newly-restored and reconfigured Gatekeeper, Gerald forced his opponents to pull a fade-and-run to attack another day. This gave the Elemental Six the opportunity to regroup as well, and for Gerald to tell them all about the threat the faced: he remembered them from his first pass through Equestrian history. Memories from before the rewrite was something Gearhead only had in common with two other beings: his oldest brother, Verdant Vines, and Discord. Now everything was different.

The moment of calm also allowed Gerald the opportunity to reflect on the curious thoughts and facts he had concerning the Dazzlings. They were a trio of young women, and while they looked and acted like teenagers in this world, they had been malice-spreading Sirens in Equestria one thousand or so years ago. Here, too, they had used their magic and their voices to manipulate the people around them, generating waves and auras of negative emotion, and absorbing that into the pendants they had worn on chokers -- it turned out they consumed such negative vibes, like inverted Changelings, but without the shapeshifting as well.

The Dazzlings' leader and brains was Adagio Dazzle. The warmth of her bright orange and red hair (of which she had a surprising amount) belied her pure malice. Gerald was surprised that with all the spikes she wore she did not end up poking anybody, but she was obviously careful, even if these spikes were not intended as weapons. Aria Blaze was Adagio's second, if only by the virtue of not being the Cloudcoocoolander of the group. Her whole persona was dark, from the hair she wore in twintails to her clothes to her morose personality. Even when she snarked on Sonata Dusk, the actual Coocoolander, Aria's efforts only seemed to be half-hearted. As for Sonata, any thought that she might not actually have been evil went out of Gerald's head the moment the three of them confronted him about his interference. Sonata had cheerfully joined in with the others in trying to sink his spirits. She might often be silly enough to remind Gerald of Pinkie Pie, but she had no less ill intend than her friends.

If you could even call the Dazzlings friends, because they fought and argued with themselves as often as with anyone else, when they thought no one was watching. Maybe it made sense, since dissent was what they ate. Other than that, when they sang they had perfect teamwork, so they knew when to come together when it counted. Other than that, they never seemed to truly cooperate, which was the opposite of the Sonic Rainbooms thanks to the Sirens' interference.

As Gerald sat at his custom computer rig and typed in the command to go through camera footage for three specific faces, he reviewed the Dazzlings's actions over the past few days. It was something in the way they acted, and the way they posed and danced, that bothered him. He knew there was something he was missing, and he would have it if only he knew where, exactly, he was looking.

It was odd, but at their first appearance in front of the school, the Sirens had sung of having a battle of the bands event instead of the musical showcase that had been originally planned. The magic in the song turned the united student body against each other, separated not into cliques as Shimmer had done, but into smaller musical bands. And even as the Sirens divided the students, they touched them, or at least Adagio did. They had not done that while singing again, perhaps because their magic had required it back then, but not afterwards. Or maybe touching their audience would have looked too out of place to pass muster during the Battle of the Bands.

Or maybe because the song's lyrics had been divisive, they needed something else to balance it back out, because all the rest of the Sirens' songs had been about how the audience was falling under the Sirens' control, and would adore them, happily letting them make the decisions from then on. It would have been nice to correlate this guess by also knowing about the song they had performed for Principal Celia and Counselor Selena, but that was impossible.

Gerald felt there was something in all the touching and the lyrics about being 'adored' that spoke to a deeper need that the Dazzlings had always had. This was something about which he could only ask them in person to confirm it, and to do that he would have to find them first. This thought also led him to another: through Starswirl's and his own group's actions, the Dazzlings were in a world where there probably no longer possessed skills relevant to survival. This was now his fault, for shattering their power. Well, there's nothing to do but take responsibility for that, by giving them the beginnings of a way to get along in this world.

Gerald's fingers flew across the keyboard: It was time to get started.