Chair-bound

It was still dark as Aria, Adagio, and Sonata Dazzling stood out front of Canterlot High School. There were only a few signs that there had been an altercation involving Equestrian magic had happened here, a patch of concrete was a brighter shade of grey than the surrounding concrete, the bricks in a section of the wall were a different color, a few of the were lopsided, the glass in one of the windows still had the manufacturer's sticker in the corner, the metal of one of the front doors was slightly warped.

The three sirens began to inspect the school's facade.

Aria ran her hands across the door. "Whoever was using Equestrian magic had to be pretty powerful."

Sonata rapped her knuckles on the lopsided bricks. "Shoddy craftsmanship. These first couple rows look to be haphazardly laid down, almost like they were done by teenagers. But no self respecting contractor would use hire some kids, right?"

Adagio placed two fingers above her right eye in frustration as she debated, not for the first time, the merits of not turning her youngest sister into fish sticks. She turned away from the school's facade and began walking over to the statue. After a few steps she stopped as a small glean from the concrete caught her eye. Squatting down, she brushed the dirt and dust away, revealing a tiny sliver of a translucent white crystal.

Picking up the tiny translucent white shard in her fingers, she sniffed it, then placed it to her tongue. Equestrian magic had been used here! Though it had long since dissipated, this tiny shard was a bit of thaumitanium, and was proof that Equestrian magic had been used here. Back in Equestria, thaumitanium was a common crystal that formed when a lot of magic had been used in the area, but was completely unseen or unheard of on Earth. Adagio stood upright, holding the sliver of crystal between her fingers. "Girls, look at this."

Aria and Sonata walked over.

Aria squinted her eyes. "It's a shiny rock."

Sonata grinned. "Adi, I didn't know you like shiny rocks! Now I know what to get you for your birthday."

Adagio gave her sisters the side-eye. "And that's why I haven't turned either of you two into fish sticks. Your stupid would make them taste bad."

The two younger Dazzling sisters gave their elder sister a scrunchy-faced glare.

"Now listen good, or I'll get a wood chipper and mulch the two of you into chum. This is a fragment of thaumitanium. It only forms where a lot of magic has been used and as such, has never been seen on this world."

Aria scrunched up her face and crossed her arms. "I knew that."

Sonata slapped Aria on the shoulder. "No, you didn't. 'Cause I woulda known it too."

Aria shoved her sister. "I did so know it."

Sonata shoved her sister back. "Nuh-uh!"

Quickly the two sisters devolved into a shoving bout as they alternately shouted, "Did!", "Not!", "Uh-huh!", Nuh-uh!" and blowing raspberries at one another.

Adagio, her face red as a beet, rounded on the two arguing sisters. "Enough!" A visible aura radiated off of her and the teeth in her mouth became dagger-like. She flexed her hands as they began to transmute into fin-like claws. "I swear you two fucking barnacle-brained idiots have been nothing but a pair of boulders around my neck my whole life! Give me one good reason why I shouldn't rip out your swim bladders and smother you with them, right here, right now!"

"B-because whoever was here using Equestrian magic went back home through the statue." Sonata pointed a trembling finger at the plinth of the horse statue.

"Eh?!" Adagio spun on her heel and stomped over to the statue's plinth. Here eyes went wide when she saw it. There! In the dirt at the base of the plinth! There was half a boot print! She pressed herself up against the statue's plinth and took a deep sniff. A small chuckle leapt from her throat as she whispered, "Yes! There it is! The portal that brought us to this world! Once we figure out how to open it, no more feeding on bland human suffering!"

Aria stepped up behind her older sister. Uh, Adi? Adagio? Are you okay?"

Adagio spun around to her sisters, her face a mask of manic glee. Aria immediately retreated back to Sonata and cowered behind her.

Adagio threw back her head. "Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Muh-wah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" She walked over to her sisters, arms extended, which caused the two to flinch and throw up their hands defensively. Adagio wrapped the two of them in a hug. "Yes! Yes, I'm perfectly okay!"

Aria, unsure of what to do next, darted her eyes back and forth. "Uh...are you sure everything is--Sonata! What are you doing?!"

Sonata had her arms wrapped around Adagio's back. "Mmm! Hugs are nice."

Adagio maneuvered herself so she was between her sisters and draped her arms around their shoulders. "I don't know about you two, but I'm hungry. What would you like to eat?"

Without pausing, Sonata raised her fists in the air and shouted, "Tacooooosssss!"

Adagio sighed, but was in too good of a mood to be annoyed at her sister. "Alright, tacos it is."

"Yahoo!"

Neither of the three noticed the small silver cylinder hidden in the statue's mouth.

Cozy Glow sat in front of Lightning Dust. The teen sleeper agent created by post-hypnotic suggestion sat unconscious in a chair. Electrodes were attached to her head that ran to an EEG that scrawled erratic patterns.

Underhand scowled as she looked over the readings. "You know I'm not one to question orders."

Cozy Glow quirked an eyebrow. "But?"

"But this isn't going to work. We've not had enough time to program in any obedience protocols."

"We've gotten some good Intel from her. Turns out that the events that happened at the school have something to do with that Sunset girl. You know the one in the wheelchair?" Cozy gestured.

Underhand scowled even harder. "But we can't get any clear information from her. As soon as she mentions that Sunset girl, she then mentions someone called Short Fuse. Every time when she mentions him, she goes into hysterics, and then Back-stab and I have to pin her down, and sedate her."

It was Cozy's turn to scowl.

Underhand continued. "And that sedative keeps her loopy for a couple of days, so we have to keep her here before letting her go."

"Not before giving her a dose of blue screen, right?"

Underhand snorted in derision. "Of course. What do you take me and Stab for, a couple of coyotes working for a cartel?! Unlike some people in this basement, Back-stab and I didn't spend years rotting away in a UN prison."

Cozy screwed up her face in anger. "You know as well as I, that wasn't my fault. If it weren't for that traitor Hen-peck reaching out to that hacker D1sc0rd, who in turn reached out to INTERPOL, none of us would have gotten burned in that Manila job. If I hadn't contacted Number One personally and convinced him to let the other operative go to ground while I and I alone took the fall. And I didn't give up any secrets. I promised Number One that I'd only admit to what they had on me and nothing else. Which I did, thank-you-very-much. You both know what would've happened to me if I blabbed."

Underhand decided to slightly change the subject. She gestured at the unconscious Lightning Dust. "So what do we do with her? We can't keep pumping her with sedatives and blue screen."

Back-stab, without from looking up from from his computer screen said, "Why not keep her here for the next three days, pumping her so full of scag that she doesn't even know which way is up, then on the night of the third day, giver her a lethal dose and dump her off of a bridge? It'd be your classic story of a troubled teen getting mixed up in drugs and committing suicide."

It was rare for Back-stab to speak up, but when he did, he usually had a good idea. Just as Cozy was about to tell him to do it, the computer started beeping.

"We got a live one!", Back-stab said excitedly. "Got a signal from the sensor you planted, though it's much weaker."

Cozy and Underhand crowded around the monitor as Back-stab let his fingers dance across the keyboards. "I installed a Specter box linked to the school's cameras while you were 'playing schoolgirl'."

Cozy nodded her head in approval. Back-stab was a man of extraordinary talent.

"Alright, let's see what we've got." Back-stab typed out a few lines of command in a small sub-window and multiple live-stream windows popped up on the screen shoring different parts of the school." He closed the windows that weren't necessary, leaving just three that showed any pertinent information.

The three Specter agents watched as the grainy image two young women cowered in each other's arms as something blurry and staticky loomed near them.

Cozy leaned closer. "Can you clean this up?"

Back-stab ran a few lines of code. "Can't. This is caused by some sort of localized EM field."

The three Specter agents watched as the static on the image cleared up and a young woman with orange hair in a massive style could be clearly seen. Back-stab quickly did a screen cap of her face. He then ran the footage back until he could get clear screen caps of the other two's faces. After some cropping of pictures and running their faces through facial recognition software, dozens of images popped up on the screen.

Cozy leaned even closer to the screen. "It can't be! Some of these are paintings from over a thousand years ago."

"Fifteen hundred years at least, if these paintings are to be believed." Underhand tapped her finger on the screen. "This painting's from the siege of Naples. And this one's from Henry VIII's court. And this one's from Nicolas II's personal estate. And this one's from a concentration camp at the end of WWII that held Russian POWs, looks like they were held there as prisoners, but they don't have that hollow-eyed stare. They seem to disappear until two thousand and four, when someone snapped a picture of them at Fallujah. Whoever these young women are, they always seem to show up whenever and wherever there's a lot of tragedy and death."

"So it appears we've got a trio of immortal ladies who show up whenever there's tragedy and death on a large scale. I wonder, do they cause the tragedy and death, or are they attracted to the tragedy and death?" Cozy's face twisted into a wicked smiles as she rubbed her hands together. "Number One's going to love this! We haul in three legitimate immortal, supernatural ladies and we'll be living the high life! No more assassinations of leaders of third-world hellholes! No more running honeypot schemes on pedo politicians! I can't speak for the two of you, but this bitch is going to living it up in Monaco, pissing away thousands of Euros in its casinos, when she's not sipping champagne and eating caviar on her mega-yacht, while baking to a crisp in the Mediterranean sun."

Underhand gestured to Lightning Dust. "So, what do we do with her?"

Cozy shrugged. "Though I like Stab's idea, I don't think we can have her sitting around here for three days out of her mind on heroin."

Back-stab picked up a small wooden box, opened the lid and pulled out a syringe of brownish liquid. "I'll keep her locked up in the van for a couple of days, geeked out on scag. I'll give her a big enough dose of blue screen that the only thing she remembers is the scag and orbiting Jupiter. I know where there's an abandoned house that serves as a shooting gallery. I'll pawn her off to the gang that runs that place, wait a few hours and make an anonymous tip to the police. Pretty sure her parents have put a missing person report out on her."

Sunset laid on the soft leather couch in the therapist's office, her wheelchair nearby. She'd be getting to school late that morning as this was one of her scheduled meetings. Luna is sitting in a soft leather easy chair on the other side of the room. She drew in a breath as she thought about what she was going to say, she didn't want to blurb about how magic was real to her therapist, Doctor Shratchen Sniff. "Every night I have the same nightmare. I'm standing in front of all my students out front of the school. A demon who looks a lot like me appears in front of me, and then it sets fire to everything. As I'm watching everyone I know burn away to ash, Short Fuse steps out from the flames, his hand is a fusion of flesh and gun. Then the demon fuses with him, he then levels his gun hand at me and just as the gun goes off, I snap awake drenched in sweat."

Doctor Scratchen Sniff adjusts his thick glasses and scribbles down a few notes. His old, weathered face having more lines on it than a road map of the greater Canterlot City area. The wrinkles around his mouth ripple and flow as he scrunches his lips up in thought but says nothing for a long moment. "And you have said before that when you're awakened by that nightmare, your foster mother makes the both of you hot cocoa and then has you talk about the dream, yes?"

"Yeah. It helps a little."

The wrinkled corners of Scratchen Sniff's turned up in a slight grin. "One can never undervalue the therapeutic benefits of hot cocoa." His face immediately returned to a professional mask.

For the remainder of the hour Sunset would answer more of Scratchen's questions.

Once the hour was up and Sunset was wheeling herself out, Scratchen gestured to Luna. "A moment, Miss Luna?"

Luna stopped and turned to the doctor. "Yes, Doctor Sniff?"

Scratchen Sniff flipped his notepad closed and groaned as he stood up, old joints cracking and popping like muffled fireworks. "It's clear that Sunset has post-traumatic stress disorder. What with the freak pipeline explosion that ran under the school's atrium and surviving the near-fatal shooting. But she's hiding something."

Ya don't say. What with her being an inter-dimensional mythical creature and whatnot. Luna thought it, but she didn't say it.

Scratchen continued. "I believe that Sunset has abandonment and trust issues. Young people who have been abandoned by one or both parents often use bullying and violence as a wall to protect themselves from being abandoned by someone else. It's a whole 'I'll reject you before you can reject me' mentality. I'm also concerned that she may have been abused, and I don't just mean someone took a belt to her, though that could be the case too. I mean...sexually. Often young people who wind up on the streets are fleeing from their abusers and all too often they wind up being abused by someone who at first appears charitable and kind, offering them a warm, dry place to sleep, and some warm food. They often use the excuse 'I did this for you, now you owe me.' If the young person in that situation refuses, things can get...messy and violent. I'm not saying she was abused, I'm saying she might have been."

"And if she has been abused, what are the signs she might have been?"

"Wearing revealing clothing in inappropriate settings or hypersexuality as they feel that's something about themselves they can control. Inversely, she could be adverse to being touched or avoiding interactions with individuals that match the gender of her abuser. Alternately she could do things to make herself unappealing, such as wearing clothes that make her look unattractive or refusing to shower so she smells bad. Though I have seen extreme cases in all directions."

"Sunset's always been very clean. Even when she was homeless, she never showed up smelling like a dumpster and her clothes were always clean. She's never been one to wear overly revealing clothes or clothes that hid her body." Luna inwardly chuckled at the memory of Sunset' first year at CHS when she wore some outfits that looked like the worst fashion trends of the seventies threw up on her. "As for sexuality, I can't speak to what she has and has not done before this past Fall Formal. After she was shot and I became her foster mother, she's always been on-point with getting up on her own, using the bathroom and showing on her own. She even refuses to be pushed to and from the car by me, and to classes by her friends. She's even been showing up on time and not skipping classes. It's almost as if since she got paralyzed, she's been wanting to prove to herself that she can be independent. Honestly, I'm proud of her for that, almost as if she's thumbing her nose her handicap."

Scratchen smirked at that. "That is an admirable trait." His expression returned to its professional mask. "I only brought those up to you because in my professional experience, young people who have suffered multiple traumas, they often attempt to conceal them, especially from people they're not close with. If she or one of her friends says anything that is concerning, don't be afraid to bring it up in our sessions. Therapy is meant to bring down the walls we have built between ourselves and others, and to undo the hurt we have suffered. I remember many years ago a certain young woman and her sister who were attending sessions in my office, and with time we worked through the hurt." He patted her on the shoulder. "Well, I've taken up enough of your time. You've got a teenage foster daughter to take care of and a school to help run. I'll see the two of you in ten days, yes? Just talk with Gladys and we'll get you an appointment set up."

***

Luna and Sunset were sitting the car together.

"Geez, that woman was old!", Sunset exclaimed. "I bet she's older than Princess Celestia and most ponies think she's immortal."

Luna, not for the first time, inwardly balked at the mention of a pony princess that had the same name as her older sister. Sunset had told her of the many similarities between their two worlds, at least where naming conventions were concerned. She decided to let it fall to the side. "Yeah, Dr. Scratchen Sniff was old when Celly and I were teenagers. I hear there's a betting pool on how old she is. Celly's joked that there's a photo of her being Sigmund Freud's university professor and in that picture, she's still old."

The two shared a laugh at that mental image.

Luna cranked up the car. "Seeing as we've lost half of the day already, why don't we go get a couple of burgers and shakes for lunch? You won't have any other classes until after lunch."

Sunset held up both fists. "Let's goooooo!"

Principal Celestia looked over the school files and transfer papers for the three teenage girls sitting in her office, Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk. She looked over the top of the files to the elderly man sitting with them, who had introduced himself as their grandfather and legal guardian, he had introduced himself as Station Wagon. He looked to be a little out of it...normal for men his age She looked back to their files. Everything seemed to be in order, their grades and attendance were exemplary. All three girls were in music club back in their old school.

Celestia closed the files and laid them on her desk. "It must be difficult raising triplet girls all by yourself."

For several long seconds he did not respond until the orange-haired girl nudged him. "Uh, yeah. These three have been quite a handful, but I'm glad to have them. It's a shame their parents died when they were so young. Drunk driver."

"No need to go into detail." Something didn't sit right with Celestia. These three teenage girls had a gleam in their eyes that felt old, very old. Then there was their grandfather, he appeared to be out of it, and then there was the occasional strange shimmer in his eyes. Maybe he has undiagnosed dementia? She had no way to prove or disprove anything. "Normally it's Vice-principal Luna who handles new students' joining our school so late in the year. But she's out on personal business today so..." She stood up and put on a magnanimous smile. "I'd like to welcome you to Canterlot High School. Just talk to Miss Inkwell on your way out and she'll give you your school schedule. Too bad you missed breakfast. Ah well, you'll like lunch. It's Taco Tuesday."

Sonata was practically vibrating in her seat.

The three girls rose to their feet, the orange-haired one nudged the old man, who thanked Celestia.

Adagio stopped Station Wagon in the school's foyer. The medallion on her neck glowed as a mist-like aura flowed from it and she began to harmonized an almost hypnotic tune. "~You will get in your car, drive until you no longer recognize anything and then drive off a bridge.~"

Station Wagon's eyes flashed a sickly green as he repeated the command in a monotone voice, "I will get in my car and drive until I no longer recognize anything, and then drive off a bridge." He walked out the door, repeating the phrase over and over in a monotone voice.