The Dazzling Pizza Delivery

As long as the clouds indicated good weather, there was a reason to smile, right?
Right?

Adagio had no idea when her and her sisters' job as pizza delivery girls started to fall apart, but if she had to bet on a specific event, she would say it all began with that group of squirrels that wreaked havoc in the kitchen.
Or maybe it was the attack of that raccoon with the funny mask.

Either of those reasons could serve as a valid event for telling herself: 'Come on, act like you should. What? Haven’t you learned anything during all these long years of humanity? Don’t you think enough time has passed for you to be up to the task as the older sister? What’s wrong with you?' But, no matter how much she wanted to see it that way, things simply refused to work.

Her boss, whose facial wrinkles far surpassed those of a century-old tortoise, had already issued more warnings than Adagio could remember. But one thing was clear: at the slightest mistake made by her or her sisters, they would be fired immediately. And to make matters worse, the old man's Italian accent was raspy, a voice faker than the existence of the Piltdown man. The cherry on top was that any mention of this would result in immediate dismissal. What happened to freedom of expression? For reasons like these, they missed the 20th century.

Resting her face in her hands, she began to think for the fifth time about the current state of the pizzeria, which could be summed up in the subtle word: failure. The taste of those pizzas, judging by the few slices the Dazzlings had tried on weekends, was enough to say that it had a nice flavor, but still far from being rated as outstanding. It was precisely this, combined with the gradual lack of customers, that led the pizzeria to launch the promotion: "If your pizza isn’t delivered within an hour, IT’S FREE!"
And while sales rose for a few days, the current state of the business returned in less than two weeks.

In conclusion, something had to be done about it.

"Anything new?" Sonata asked as she approached the table they used to inhabit during long periods of waiting.

"No," Adagio simply replied. "Still no orders."

It was Aria who felt the need to fix the situation, though she had recognized some time ago that the issue was out of her hands.

Even though they never said it out loud, the three had grown somewhat fond of that pizzeria. The workplace incidents often triggered a series of laughs, and under ordinary circumstances, it was fun to secretly mock their boss’s face.

The job of making deliveries was fun at the very least; the constant frenzy and the adrenaline of riding the motorcycle formed a combination worthy of applause. It was impossible for them not to indulge in their selfish side when they remembered that, despite the long distances and obstructive terrains they had to cross, they never failed to deliver the pizza within the sixty-minute period. Another star on the list. The tiny, imaginary list.

"You know what," Aria said after a while, "we should revive our attempts at world domination."

Then, suddenly, three notifications lit up the screens of their phones.

"Finally!" Sonata exclaimed, pulling the device from her pocket and confirming that it was a new delivery.

For her part, Aria couldn’t believe what she was reading: "But..."

"This is..." Adagio stammered, incredulous and paralyzed by the message she was reading. "Incredible!"

The notification indicated an order from an anonymous account that ordered none other than the most expensive pizza in the place. But below the name and profile picture (which was nothing more than absolute darkness), the specifications space had been used to write the following message: 'That promotion looks nice, frankly, it adds some excitement to all this. I propose a bet: if you manage to deliver the pizza to me in less than an hour, I’ll give you a reward of...'

"Fifty thousand dollars!" The words burst from Adagio’s throat with blazing enthusiasm.

They were precious moments of happiness until Aria intervened with a shout that perfectly contradicted her sister’s excitement.

"Damn it! How I hate them!" she bellowed, doing her best to keep her anger from making her rip out and chew on her hair.

"What are you talking about?" Adagio dared to say.

"Uh... Yeah," Sonata said. "Look at the location."

Adagio obeyed immediately, the app loaded, and after waiting for a few eternal seconds, the user’s page was presented. Under his profile, the buyer’s location was marked in the North Pole.

"He’s a freaking troll," Aria muttered, clenching her fists on the wood. "The day I find him, I’ll use his eyes as a nail drawer."

"That’s cruel," Sonata commented just before putting away her phone and resuming her bored posture.

The silence of discouragement lasted much less than they expected. Adagio’s laughter filled the room.

"Look at her, she’s gone crazy," Aria said, not bothering to hide her smile.

Adagio’s hand slammed against the table.

"THIS IS OUR OPPORTUNITY!" she announced.

"What are you talking about?" Sonata inquired, tilting her head.

"That fifty thousand dollars will be ours," Adagio explained. "We’ll teach that prankster that he shouldn’t have messed with us."

"Oh, really? I need you to be more specific," Aria commented, disinterested.

"Come on, imagine his face when he sees us at the door and has to hand over all that money," Adagio said, already succumbing to the tempting desire to hold so many bills in her hands. "We’ll go to the North Pole and beat him at his own game."

"Do you hear yourself? I think I need to explain to you that getting to the North Pole in less than an hour is... I don’t know... Impossible!"

"Uh, we’d need something faster than a motorcycle," Sonata opined, bringing a hand to her chin.

Another laugh from Adagio appeared.

"I have an idea," she finally declared.

When Twilight finished dinner, she supposed the best thing to do was to continue working on her project—a small perpetual motion device. Or perhaps she should take the opportunity to resume her attempts to solve the zero theorem. The idea of visiting her friends was also tempting.

After all, that train of thought was interrupted when someone knocked on the door. Was it just one person? The knocks seemed to come from several limbs at once. As far as she could remember, she wasn’t expecting any visitors nor had she arranged any outings with anyone.

She approached the door with some caution.

“Hello?” she said as she opened the door, sounding more confused than she intended. Three girls she was sure she’d seen somewhere before were standing on the doormat. But noticing the pizza box they had with them, she thought she knew what this was about. “Sorry, I didn’t order any pizza.”

“It’s not about that,” Adagio replied, making an elaborate hand gesture. With a voice as cordial as it was authoritative, she said, “We need to use your teleporter.”

“My what?”

“You heard her,” added Sonata. “Where is it? We don’t want to be rude, but time is running out.”

“So, speak up already,” Aria said as she stepped forward.

Seeing them all together, those hairstyles, those faces... memories began to resurface.

“Oh, I remember you. You’re the girls from the Starswirl Music Festival, aren’t you?”

“Less talking, more teleporting,” said Adagio. “And don’t worry, as a thank you, we can give you an autograph or a photo.”

“Hmm… okay? Can I ask how you know where I live?”

“We know Sunset, and she knows you, it’s not that complicated.”

“Well, that makes sense. Just one more question,” Twilight said. “What makes you think I have a teleporter?”

“Sunset said you were the perfect person for what we’re looking for. She mentioned a lot of those science experiments you did and used a bunch of long words I don’t care to repeat. You wear glasses, so you must be smart, right?”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Take it however you want.”

“Well, yes, Sunset told the truth, but I’m sorry to say I don’t have any teleporter...”

Silence.

“What was that?” Aria demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“You were going to say something else, but you stopped,” she clarified.

“It’s just that…” Twilight murmured, scratching her neck. “About that, I might have something similar,” she declared, folding and extending her fingers in weak attempts to shake off the insecurity in her voice. “It’s not exactly what you’re looking for, but it serves an identical function…”

“WHERE IS IT?!” the three sirens exclaimed in unison.

Twilight had no idea how much time had passed since the last time a guest visited her shed. She had received warnings about the Dazzlings' past and knew the trouble they had caused at Canterlot High, but their behavior suggested they had changed to the point where they could easily pass for a group of ordinary girls. For Twilight, that knowledge was enough.

"So, if I understand correctly, you need to travel to the North Pole to deliver a very expensive pizza to regain your boss’s trust, raise a large sum of money to help the business, and avoid getting fired, right?"

"That's right," Sonata confirmed.

"I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but I'm very sure it's climatically impossible to live at the North Pole."

"In that case, you'll figure out the exact location of that individual, and we’ll set the 'beat-down' plan in motion. You can do that, right?" Adagio commented. "We'll shake hands and share a secret we'll take to the grave."

"I tolerate you being so direct," was all Twilight said.

"How does it work?" Aria asked from a few meters away, pointing at the device that would help them.

"In simple terms, it’s a quantum teleportation machine," Twilight began to explain. "It can move particles from point A to point B almost instantaneously, thanks to entanglement."

"Is that all?" Sonata inquired. "Is it really that easy?"

"Well, I've only used it on inanimate objects, gradually increasing the size to test its limits. Also, I've never tested it at a distance greater than a meter, but since I made the adjustments, it hasn’t shown any flaws," Twilight explained. "You just want to send the pizza, right?"

"Yes," Adagio confirmed, nodding her head.

"Alright."

Adagio placed the pizza box inside the teleportation machine, and along with her sisters, they stepped back until Twilight indicated it was safe.

The machine didn’t look like what any of the three had imagined. If it weren’t for the dozens of inventions filled with cables and shiny metals surrounding them, they might have thought it was a bad joke. The second machine that would serve as the destination for the object was not necessary, as Twilight clarified that in extreme cases like this, she could set geographical coordinates for the dematerialization and regeneration of the particles. The only difference it made was the slight risk that the matter could be affected by a lack of particles, but since the pizza was just food, the change would be negligible.

The teleportation device resembled a cubic cabin with an internal area that could hold the same space as a vertically positioned office desk. A shiny silver box with rounded corners. The cabin door began to close, and the pizza remained visible through the machine’s glass wall.

"Where should I send it?" Twilight asked from the control panel.

"To the North Pole," Sonata said.

"No, I mean the specific location," Twilight continued when no answer came. "The North Pole is a huge place. Where exactly do you want the pizza to appear?"

"It doesn’t matter," Adagio responded with apparent indifference. "Send it to the center of the place. That way, there’s a better chance the buyer will find it, right?"

"Right," Twilight replied. All she wanted was to finish this as soon as possible and go rest.

She entered the coordinates on the panel and activated the electromagnetic charge of the teleportation machine.

"All set. It won’t take more than a minute," she announced, already removing her lab coat. "By the way, if you're hungry, I wouldn’t mind offering you some food. My mom made vegetable stew. Would you like some?"

"Oh, that’s very kind of you," Adagio replied, showing palpable modesty. "But we have other plans."

"Really? Like what?" Twilight asked with false interest. She could already picture herself curled up in bed while correcting her previous practical theories and reviewing relativity theory once more.

That was until she heard, in enthusiastic murmurs, the number three, then two...

And then one.

"NOW!!!" Adagio’s voice commanded, filled with massive leadership as the Dazzlings rushed to the teleportation machine just before it started closing.

It was a moment when Twilight would swear her heart stopped beating.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled, her voice filled with terror. She quickly headed to the control panel, which seemed to have moved a hundred meters away. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!"

"Sorry," Adagio declared with a sly grin from inside the machine, "but we have no intention of failing this mission."

It’d be a quick and trouble-free trip; a few quick photographs to serve as evidence. That way, who would dare reproach them for giving a beating to a miserable prankster? No one but him would get hurt.

"I didn’t calibrate the machine for humans!" Twilight shouted.

But as she pressed all the buttons installed on the panel, she tried to ignore all the times she had warned herself about the risks of operating a device like this. A glowing, red triangle encircling an exclamation mark appeared on the screen and blinked with such urgency that Twilight considered breaking the machine. Unfortunately, the time it would take to find a hammer was longer than the thirty seconds she had.

Then the machine began to tremble, shaking with a turbulence that darkened the scientist's hopes.

"Hmm, is this supposed to happen?" Sonata asked, noticing the smoke starting to rise outside the glass.

"Do we still have siren genetics?" Aria mumbled, failing to steady her voice and trying to move back despite the limited space. "She said 'humans.' That doesn’t have to include us, right?"

But the more Twilight tried, the less she could ignore the warning she should have considered when offering her help to the Dazzlings. Sweat began to coat her arms, and panic hit her as she looked up and saw her shed being flooded with a large amount of black smoke and blue and orange sparks emanating from the machine.

"I..." Adagio said with a barely audible voice and trembling feet. "I think I’ve changed my mind."

She didn’t hesitate to take a small run-up and use the side of her body to slam into the glass. She had assumed that would be enough, and upon impact realized her mistake. Together, the Dazzlings hit the armored glass with both their arms and legs. Horrifying screams and wails began to be heard. The glass showed no damage.

'Alert. Alert. Alert.'

Twilight couldn’t remember ever typing so quickly before. Her heart rate soared to her throat, and she found herself at the mercy of her own invention. The urgency she felt in those seconds made her fingers tremble.

'Alert. Alert. Alert.'

When the lens of her glasses turned red, she pressed the button to her right and pulled with all her strength the lever that rested beneath the table.

A powerful sound erupted and shook the floor one last time. The lights grew brighter, and the last thing Twilight saw before the teleportation machine disappeared were the terrified and desperate faces of the sirens.

In the background, the darkness began to fade.

It was curious, another testament to the extensive and deteriorated resilience of human consciousness. A flickering spark, seemingly numb from natural dizziness, appeared. But her eyelids still felt heavy.

She assumed it was instinct, a concept she thought she had left behind over a year ago, specifically since the last time she had fainted. Hello? No, her lips still couldn’t move.

Her ears couldn’t inform her of the new sounds.

She made another effort to recover, and after an endless series of attempts, the reality of whether they were real or not, Adagio managed it.

The Dazzlings awoke from their stupor at the same time. The pain in their joints was unbearable.

Gradually, the smoke began to clear.

"Damn it," Aria muttered, holding her head and assuming she had discovered a new type of muscle pain. "Is everyone alive?"

"I need a new pelvis," Sonata mumbled, clutching her hip. "And maybe a new neck."

Adagio merely blinked and tried to clear her vision.

Aria helped Sonata to her feet and signaled Adagio (twice) that she would not follow any more of her ideas.

"Fair enough," Adagio murmured as the smoke finally dissipated and the door began to slide open.

They emerged one by one, slowly, sharing the faint hope that they were still in Twilight’s shed.

Had the sun always been this bright?

The air felt suffocating, as if it carried a pressure that could almost be described as tangible. Gigantic trees with long leaves loomed impressively. The ground was damp, thick, and identical to that of a swamp.

Looking up, the Dazzlings saw a volcano dominating a vast array of flora and thick tree trunks of a new hue.

"Nice job, Adagio," Aria commented. "You sent us to a tropical jungle."

Then, suddenly, the grotesque roar and presence of a Tyrannosaurus Rex shattered what little skepticism they had left. It was as if they had landed in a world; a world that does not cater to wishes. They didn’t dare move, but just looking around made it clear that there were other giant insects and creatures they only remembered seeing as fossils in museums.

"Uh," Sonata murmured, understanding with a nervous laugh, "I think we traveled back a little bit in time."

Forcing herself to accept reality, Adagio swallowed.