Sonata caught the last question from the green-eyed woman that stank of dark magic. "Uh, hi. Why are you in my city?" Bluffing was Sonata's strong suit, though usually she played toward being dumb. She had the idea, however, that showing either of these two weakness would be bad.

Casual and non-threatening—with as much magic as Sonata was carrying—was never to be discounted, or so Storm believed. "Oh! Is this your city? Look, we're not trying to cause any kind of turf war, just here to kill one annoyance, actually."

"Someone from out of town!" Abacus picked up on Storm's angle and ran with it. "So, if it's not too much trouble, we'll leave you to your—city—and we'll just—"

"No," Sonata said.

"No?" Storm asked.

"No." Casually, Sonata lifted her hand up to stroke along the gemstone at her throat. She recognized the panic in Storm's expression—and it almost made her sick. For over a thousand years she'd smoothed out such expressions of terror with her magic. "No, this is interesting. What poor little morsel are you hunting?" The wording came back to Sonata so easily. Describing people as food made her hate this even more.

Storm was left to reflect quickly on his life-choices, and an upcoming one. Could he live with himself if he—personally—wasn't the one to kill Twilight Sparkle? "A pony. A princess, actually. Wings, horn, the whole business. She's all alone in a city that doesn't know what to do with her."

Sonata could remember the old days, and how much she'd preferred pony over all others. Adagio and Aria, too, had preferred harassing the pony tribes. Walking closer, trying to bring that old hunger and desire to the fore, Sonata licked her lips. "Tell me more. I haven't eaten a pony in—one thousand two hundred and fifty-two years." As she spoke each word, her voice became more and more deep.

"Y-Y-Yes! Of course. It would be fine if we helped each other and put an end to this pony." It was one thing to pit her will against a foreign monster and partner with it, but a thousand plus year old creature could, she assumed, think her around in circles. "Isn't that right, your kingship?" She looked at Storm for help.

Just as shocked, Storm nodded. The very idea of denying Sonata access to whatever she wanted was now a lost cause. Storm just hoped he could make something beneficial happen out of this encounter. "Yes! Yes of course!" The choice had been stolen from Storm. "We'll help you find the pony, and in return you'll—"

There was always her ultimate out, Sonata knew, but she hadn't come so far from the bad old days only to resort to mind-control at her first opportunity. That it was an all-or-nothing gambit didn't encourage her either. "I'll let you live in my city. It's been so long—I'll let you feed in my city for the price of an alicorn."

Limestone grunted out a swear word. Her phone was in her pocket because the stupid hire car didn't have her hands-free gear in it. "I need to pull over and check that."

"Okay." Twilight had been focusing on her detecting spell. It should have been picking up only dark magic and electricity-based magic, but it was finding nothing. She considered casting a spell from each of the fields just to test it when she heard Limestone use five curse words she'd never heard before—she could tell they were curse words by the tone. "What's a rhinoceros taint, and why should Sonata smell like one?"

Putting her phone on speaker, Limestone played back the message. "That's why. Ugh, I didn't ask her to do this. She should have just gotten out of there as fast as she could!"

"But if they'd already seen her, running away would have encouraged them to chase her. You can track her phone, right?" Twilight asked.

"Yeah, we can track her phone. Gimme a sec to get that set up." Limestone hadn't had to use the tool before, but she'd studied up on it. The most important part was having a reason to use the thing—which she judged she did. The software on her secure phone took some screwing around with to get it to work, but when it was all said and done… "I got nothing. This can't be right. Okay, history… Nope, it can't track before when I put in the request."

"Sooo?"

Her thumb flying over the touchscreen, Limestone started on a new submission. "I can't track her phone like this, but I can submit a request for the last cell tower she was near. That'll take a day or two."

"I could try using magic to find her?" Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof. "Of course, if she's actually with the Storm King like you said, it means he might detect me searching."

"Damn it. This has gotten us nowhere. Now we still don't know where they are, and Sonata's been captured."

Twilight paused, taking in that assumption and teasing at it. "Maybe not."

"What do you mean?" Limestone asked.

"You only look at Sonata and see someone who's mended her ways. Anyone from Equestria who knows of sirens—like a well-travelled despot we both know—would see her as the pinnacle of tyranny. Sirens are apex predators unlike any other."

Barking a laugh, Limestone shook her head. "Are you telling me they'd be scared of her?"

"Scared, wary, possibly even willing to make a deal with her." Twilight fidgeted with her hooves. "If she plays it smart, she could even steer them into giving themselves away. But it worries me, too."

"Huh?"

Twilight hated having to spell it out. It hurt to have to question the motives of someone who seemed to have found the path of friendship, despite their history, but she had to ask, "How sure are you that she won't go back to her old ways?"

"She wouldn't. I'm sure." The problem for Limestone was, once the words were spoken by Twilight, they insinuated themselves in her head the way no magic could. "She's had plenty of chances to do the wrong thing, and every time she's chosen good."

"Okay." Twilight didn't feel okay, but she felt the need to say it regardless. "Then we wait for either the information you requested or for Sonata to contact us."

All day they'd been talking crazy plans, and each time Sonata had reviewed the destruction they'd cause and almost gagged. The Storm King had wanted to go in blasting. Sonata figured he had this idea that sirens were the ultimate badass fighters and—even to herself—she had to admit that they could be, but it wouldn't be the style of one that has owned a single city for so long.

"No, no, NO!" Sonata risked putting some power into her voice to drive the point home—a window exploded somewhere in the house. "If I find out you have caused even more heat in my city, I will rip your head off and feed you to a dragon!"

It was hard to keep her sanity, but adding hidden silliness to her act was helping. Trying to imagine what Thunderbolt would think if she ripped the Storm King's head off and offered it to him was one of the little things that kept her going. "I have one, you know. Great big thing that used to be my pet dog. It's been a little strange what's happening, but when life gives you lemons, you make a tangy salsa."

"You have a pet dragon?!" Storm stared at Sonata in shock before regaining his normal aplomb. "Actually, that doesn't surprise me. What emotion did you say you fed on again?"

"I didn't." She felt constantly under attack as first one, then the other, would try to catch her in a lie or giving up a secret. "How about I call him?" Pulling out her phone while both Storm and Abacus stared at her, Sonata noticed she had no signal. It wasn't easy to keep the panic out of her voice. "What's up with phone reception here?"

Abacus turned to look at Storm and rolled her eyes. "Just stop doing it for a minute, okay?"

"This is a bad—" Storm got no further.

Rushing at Storm, Sonata fought her distaste down and embraced her siren side as she grabbed them by the throat and lifted upward to pin Storm against the wall only an inch from the ceiling. "I'll make this really easy for you."

The raw rage on Sonata's face actually started to worry Storm, and he couldn't stop trembling as her magic seemed thick in the room and pouring off her like some kind of miasma.

"I'll send the text message, then you can drop whatever bullshit it is you're doing, let the text go through, then you can start doing it again." Sonata waited for Storm to nod before pulling her phone back out with her free hand—still holding Storm against the wall.

Trying to channel Adagio was both disgusting and abhorrent, but it worked for Sonata.

—Thunderbolt, please, can you fly by the following address and just set a bunch of shit on fire? I'm in real trouble here, but please don't try to save me. Uh, and can you maybe burn a swear word? I'm working undercover,— Sonata sent.

She followed that up with the address. Putting on her best smile, Sonata looked up at Storm. "Please?" Both messages sent quickly before the mobile network cut out again. "You know, Dark and Stormy, you might just be useful to me after all. Can you do this to police equipment too?"

Let go suddenly, Storm dropped to the floor and into a crouch. "I ca—" He rubbed his neck, still able to feel an echo of how tight Sonata had held him. "I can disrupt any of this radio wave equipment."

Sonata focused more on Aria's style now. She leaned forward at the waist and offered Storm a hand while showing off her cleavage. "See? Was it so bad to make yourself useful to me? I take care of my tools, Storm King."

Staring up at Sonata, Storm felt a shiver down his spine. This was something he'd never dealt with before. Since he'd risen to power, there'd always been an angle for him to take. Sonata Dusk was a bigger force of nature than even the storms he held sway over. All he could do while his mind ran through this was nod.

"Good boy. I promise you'll get everything coming to you." Sonata believed the words wholeheartedly. Helping Storm to stand, she turned to look at Abacus. "I suppose I'm going to have to go through some stupid show of force with you, too?"

With her back to the glass window at the back of the living room, Sonata felt more than saw the wave of heat hit her back. She let the reassured smile she felt inside show on her face. The sound of twelve feet of dragon slamming against the ground worried her, though.

Turning around, Sonata marched to the door and flung it open. "There you are! I don't need a scene here. You can fly back."

Studying Sonata, Thunderbolt squinted at the two behind her. One looked mostly human, if not for some weird magic effects around her eyes, and the other looked like some kind of snow yeti. Marching forward, Thunderbolt bowed his head before Sonata and rumbled a purr. "Are you safe?"

Leaning forward, Sonata ran a hand over Thunderbolt's head and pressed her mouth to the side of his head. "Yes and no. They might be too powerful for you and me to take directly. They think I'm some powerful, evil siren, and I'm doing my best to let them believe that until Limestone and the princess show up. Can you text them to let them know where I am?"

"Of course." Thunderbolt let out another purring rumble and waited for Sonata to let go before he stepped back from her. "Until you need me again," he said, spread his wings, and took to the sky again. Aiming himself toward Rainbow's house, he pulled out his phone and carefully started forwarding the message Sonata had sent that included the address, and a description of what just happened.

Turning back to her two "friends", Sonata shrugged. "Dragon's gonna dragon. Do you have a hose?"

Walking past Sonata, Abacus lamented her garden, her lawn, but most of all she lamented the flames. "Why did you call this beast here?!"

Sonata cursed that she had to channel her former friends again. It was with Adagio's sneer that she looked at Abacus. "Because you didn't fear me. You weren't scared of what I would do. You thought I was controllable." Marching right up to Abacus, Sonata called some power into her voice. "You should fear me, you should be worried you might ever displease me, because if you don't"—pulling out her phone, Sonata raised an eyebrow—"I'll call him back to finish the job on this block."

The chill in Sonata's voice, magical and unnoticed by Abacus, slipped into her and she found herself taking a step back.

"Perfect!" Sonata brightened. "Just what I wanted." She was good at hiding how terrified she felt, after all, it had been all too easy to make these two magical powerhouses fold.

Author's Note

Rarity: Have you seen any parasite symptoms on your sister yet?

"Oh, thank goodness no." Rarity had a look of disgust on her face that she quickly schooled back to simply horrified. "Twilight did a little scan of her and found that the things are dormant. Her running hypothesis is that the beastly little creature requires a certain amount of sexual activity in the form of hormone production before it will start growing. She said—Twilight that is, not Sweetie—it was the only thing that made sense, since it requires those hormones to grow."

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
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