The Mall and the Misery

Chapters

Scheduling Conflict
Caffeine and Criticism
Long Break
Watching TV
Eel With a Gun
Negotiations

Scheduling Conflict

Noble birth, centuries of experience, immaculate beauty, and the occult synthesis of draconic blood-pacts and hippocampic choral magic – all these elements of Adagio Dazzle’s person harmonized as one to orchestrate the magnificent concerto which was the siren’s life.

…Though, to be frank, the piece was going in a rather experimental direction at the moment, which Adagio had not the palate to appreciate. With her bloodstone heart ripped from her neck, the only things that remained to distinguish Adagio from the dull, uninteresting humans around her were her pride, her memory, and the bonds she shared with her siren sisters.

And there was one mare more responsible for this fall from greatness than any other…

…

Adagio never imagined that, on the day she finally stood over her nemesis-among-nemeses, Sunset Shimmer – the last and mightiest foe to stand between the sirens and their glorious return to Equestria – as she lay sprawled across the floor in a pathetic heap, bawling her eyes out, all on her own… that it would be at a moment as infuriatingly inconvenient as this. This whole time – five years, very soon – the siren had thought she would wield the choice of the time and place in which, by her own two hands, her vengeance would finally be wrought.

But instead, Adagio was otherwise preoccupied with a completely unrelated errand. Those once-scaled arms of hers – that should have been clutching her restored heart-necklace and perhaps a chalice of brandy – were laden down, instead, by half a department store’s inventory worth of shopping bags. The inability to cross her arms and laugh wryly at Shimmer’s apparent defeat at another’s hands made it all the more disappointingly difficult to savor the sorry sight before her, on the food-court floor of the Crystal Empire Mall.

The enemy was too lost in her grief to even notice her. Adagio still had the element of surprise, at least. She debated, briefly, whether she’d have time to walk her bags to the car and come back, but time was probably of the essence.

So she walked up to Sunset (heels clicking on the tiles with every step) and toed her in the ribs with her boots, uttering a sultry, “Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Shimmer didn’t even look at her – didn’t so much as gaze upon the golden visage of her foe. She just kept sobbing into the linoleum, like she was attempting to mop the floor with the ragged shudders of her torso and the half-apron about her waist.

“…Excuse me,” Adagio insisted, kicking Sunset a little harder…

…to just as negligible an effect.

“Ugh!” She leaned over to growl in the ear of the flame-headed maiden at her feet. “Sunset Shimmer. Acknowledge my presence at once.”

Finally, Shimmer responded, between choked sobs, “…Adagio? S’at you?”

“Do you mean to imply you’ve forgotten the face of your oldest enemy?”

“Nooooo…”, Shimmer whined. “I just– I didn’t notice you! I’m sooooorry!”

Adagio was taken aback by the apology-wail, but pressed on nonetheless. “Why in the world are you lying here, so wretched and…?” She didn’t bother coming up for another adjective. This wasn’t turning out to be very fun. Just kind of annoying.

“I don’t know…! I’m just… sad as hell! For no fucking reason!” Saying that seemed to open the floodgates of her eyes even further.

Adagio stepped back, wary of getting her shopping wet, but after setting the bags down, she dove back in to grab Shimmer by the collar. “Oh, for Luna’s sake– Pull yourself together, you miserable little girl! I am a dignified woman, and it reflects poorly on me to have a nemesis as pathetic as you are behaving here.”

“I caaaaaaan’t!” After a few sniffles and heaves, Shimmer then asked, “Wait– What do you mean, ‘nemesis’…?”

Adagio reeled back, dropping Shimmer back into the puddle of her own tears in the process. “What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’? In what realm of discourse are we not mortal enemies?”

“I thought– I thought we moved on from thaaaat!” The sobbing intensified. “You even said so!”

“I have no recollection of saying any such thing!”

“It was in– In a time loop. I went after you three because I thought you were being evil again but you were just minding your own business and I’m still so soooooorry!”

Adagio squinted. Part of her wanted to inquire as to under what circumstances she would deem it advantageous to pretend apathy towards Shimmer, but the smarter, better, rest of herself decided chronomancy was a subject best left to the whelk-heads.

So instead, she revisited an earlier tack.

“Moved on? From having everything taken from us? Perhaps Sonata might forget and forgive like that, but I have been dreaming of my vengeance for five long, rotten years,” she hissed.

Shimmer froze mid-sob and propped herself up on trembling arms. Tears still streamed from her puffy, cyan eyes, but in the darkness of her pupils an ember of wrath gently smoldered, which no waterworks could extinguish. “So you’re the one who did this to– to me,” she accused, as calmly as she was able.

Adagio tutted. “Please, Shimmer. The pleasure of this whole revenge thing is in taking it yourself, which is how you can be sure that this one wasn’t me. Do you really think I would still be so displeased as I am now if I had actually achieved what I’ve wanted for so long?”

“I know I was.” She heaved a remorseful sigh, then shook her head. “Which is why I can’t take you at your word–!”

And then Shimmer lunged at Adagio. The siren barely had time to flinch before Sunset grabbed her by the arm, rolled up the sleeve of her jacket, and clamped her hand around her wrist.

There was no time to demand of Shimmer what in Tartarus it was that she thought she was doing. The words were strangled in the back of her throat by the… psychic seizure? – for lack of better word – that took hold of her.

The train of her thought had been hijacked, flitting from memory to memory without her say. There was Adagio in her coat closet, putting on her puffiest, spikiest, warmest purple jacket in anticipation of the dreary chill of Foalbruary (or, as the humans called it, Footbruary). There she was, driving her car to the mall, swearing under her breath at the slush on the roads and the drivers who sped on like it wasn’t even there.

There she was at the jewelry store, sparing a longing glance towards the garnets and rubies but settling instead for the diamond necklaces she planned on all along: something blue for Sonata, something pink for Aria, and a little something yellow for herself. At those prices, they were certainly laboratory-manufactured, but they were still more expensive than they would have been in Equestria, where diamonds and other crystals just grew in the dirt like seeds. When the clerk asked if she wanted them wrapped, she, of course, agreed.

And then there she was buying some other things for her sisters at other outlets in the mall, slowly accumulating shopping bags until the moment she was passing through the food court, en route to her car, and discovered Shimmer there.

At that point, her assailant let go and relinquished control of her thoughts back to its rightful owner. Then, she curled up in a ball and started wailing even louder. “You were literally just shopping for your sisters! That is so sweet I can’t–” Her faculty of speech completely gave out at that point.

“You just… read my mind, didn’t you?” Adagio stepped back, rubbing the spot on her wrist where Shimmer had touched her like it was dirty. “Sunset Shimmer, don’t you ever do that again.”

“I can’t believe I did it to you a-fucking-gaaaain I’m sooooorry!”

Obviously, Adagio wasn’t about to accept her apology, but there was a desperation in the tone of Shimmer’s grief that touched the muse in Adagio. This was more than mere misery; it was the despair of thinking she’d finally found the solution to her troubles, only for it to be a false lead.

That very despair painted so many of the siren sisters’ years in this world: every rumored magical artifact they chased down, only to discover a hoax and a piece of overpriced garbage; every fairy-circle Sonata stepped in, hoping Pedestria’s fay-folk would abduct her back to, inexplicably, Equestria; every alchemist and occultist they’d charmed into their service, only for the so-called ‘expert’ to turn out to be either a huckster, or simply deeply deluded.

“…So you believe yourself to be bound by a spell,” Adagio inferred.

“I literally can’t stop crying for no reason and it suuuuuuucks! I don’t know what else it could beeeee!”

Adagio nodded. “And presumably your cohorts are on the case as we speak?”

“No…”

Adagio scoffed, “Isn’t that what friends are supposed to be for?”

“It’s not their fault! I haven’t told them yet! I just… Every time I pick up my phone, I think about, ‘What if this spreads to them!’?”

“I see.”

Adagio retrieved her gilded phone from her purse and redialled her most recent contact. Technically, it was a shortcut for a three-way call to both of her sisters, but Aria hardly ever picked up the phone unless Adagio called her directly.

Sonata Dusk, however, picked up right away. “Yellow?”

“Sonata, I need you to call Shimmer’s pink friend and tell her that her friend is having a…” Now that she was talking aloud instead of hissing and whispering in hushed tones, it became somewhat necessary to mind what she said around the bystanders. “…A serious emotional crisis at the Crystal Empire Mall, that’s going to need all of her gang to solve.” Adagio had had what little fun she could extract from this encounter; now it was time to dump this problem on someone else.

“Oh, okay! I don’t even need to call Pinkie, actually; hold on–” And then Sonata hollered, “Hey, Pinksies! Sunset’s probably crying her eyes out, too!”

And then Sonata put her phone on speaker-mode, whereupon the pathetic lamentations of Sunset’s normally-bubbly friend carried unpleasantly into Adagio’s ears.

“I don’t think she’s good to help right now, to be honest,” commented Sonata.

“Are you at her hou– Nevermind.” Sonata had been consorting with the enemy for a few years; Adagio had better priorities than to deride her about it for the umpteenth time, especially when her fraternization (sororization?) happened to be useful right now. “New plan: get ahold of all of her other friends and confirm whether they’re just as grief-stricken as she, then report back to me.”

“Awww, come on. Do I gotta talk to those jerks? Pinkie’s the only one I like!”

The crying in the background got even louder. “Why won’t you give my friends a chaaaaaaaaance?!”, Pie wailed.

“Ack! Okay, okay,” Sonata pleaded, clearly not to Adagio, “I’ll check in! I just gotta steal your phone real quick–!”

Adagio hung up there, to save time.

“Well, Sunset Shimmer, the good news is, you never had to worry about transmitting your sadness to your little friends. The bad news is that they’ve already got it, from the sound of things.”

Shimmer reached a new pitch of anguish, slamming her hands against the linoleum as she wailed inconsolably.

“Unfortunately for me, this means I can’t just hand you off without looking like an utter banshee in front of all these people. So what we’re going to do, Shimmer, is you’re going to get up, follow me to my car so I can drop these off,” – Adagio picked up her shopping as she spoke – “and you’ll tell me a little more about what’s going on.”

“I– I still don’t trust you. What if you– While we’re alone–”

“Shimmer, at least one of your friends knows for certain that I was the last person seen with you. I would be nothing less than a moron to try getting my revenge now. Now, come along,” Adagio instructed, awkwardly extending a bag-laden hand to her enemy, who used it to clamber just as clumsily to her feet – without any mind-reading this time, thankfully.

“Okay…”

Author's Note

These things never happen when you want them to.

I like the sirens. It's a shame that I like the Shadowbolts so much more that it keeps me too busy to write about my favorite fishponies.
They're all fun in their own way; I don't think I can claim a favorite siren. This story's only about Adagio because Sunset needs to be shipped with someone for the contest, and Adagio's the only siren who I feel has potent chemistry with the fiery unicorn.

The hints of siren backstory here are something I intend to get into with the Season 1 finale of my Empathy is Magic series... when I get there. I still have to finish the season premiere.

Caffeine and Criticism

The trip to the parking lot was quick. Adagio hated to linger in the cold. There were a great many aspects of terrestrial life she detested, but the way the freezing air made her nose get all prickly inside ranked quite high among them. Anything that made her miss living underwater did.

Shimmer didn’t say anything the entire time; just sobbed into her sleeve. Probably for the best; if she had to split her focus between walking and talking, she’d probably take a tumble into the slush.

There was one thing worth noting in the lot: another familiar car, belonging to Sonata.

Now, Adagio couldn't rule out the possibility that Sonata and Pie happened to be at the mall, too, but during the phone-call, it didn’t sound like it. Other than the crying, there wasn’t the noise of shoppers bustling about, and her sister’s voice was reverberating off of carpet, not tile.

Furthermore, the fact it was her personal car and not the Dazzlings’ tour van made it all the more likely that it wasn't Sonata who drove it here.

The simple fact of the matter was, Sonata was the one who went out and did all the household shopping, for which she took the tour van and its cargo space. If she was here to shop (or, say, to drag five or six weeping college students here in a frankly implausible timeframe), she would have taken the van.

So perhaps it was Aria Blaze who’d driven Sonata’s car here, instead.

Perhaps she was shopping for anniversary presents, too. She didn’t, usually, but five years was a milestone.

On the other hoof, though, Aria was more the type to order anything she needed online. Losing her sirenic powers turned her lazy and reclusive, withdrawing from everything. Her laziness could have cut the other way, too, though; she might have procrastinated until now, one day prior, to get something at all.

As to why she would take Sonata’s car when she had her own vehicle…

You could say Aria was the family mechanic.

She was not a very good mechanic.

Her own motorcycle spent more time out of commission, half-pulled-apart in the garage, than it did on the road. Speaking of, there were also the road conditions to consider: all that slush, cold wind, and rock salt wouldn’t be good for Blaze’s beast. Better to risk her sister's ride.

In any case, Adagio ought to keep her eyes out for either of her sisters.

When they got back indoors, Adagio ushered Shimmer into the empty Astradoes by the entrance, where she placed an order for a caramel soy macchiato. She was going to need the caffeine.

To keep things simple (and somewhat indebt Shimmer to her), she also covered her enemy’s cinnamon latte and chocolate croissant.

Fortunately, it was late enough in the day that the only people who were going to overhear their conversation were the disinterested wage-slaves winding down the last hours of their shifts.

Satisfied that Shimmer’s croissant would soak up her tears, Adagio launched into her inquiry. “What is it that you were doing when this began?”

“I was just getting off work at the– at the–”

“At the Fugu Bowl, yes.” Adagio whipped her stirring-straw through the milk until the original heart shape warped into a treble clef. “I used to frequent the place, before I spotted you behind the counter. You make for a charming food-servant, but you must understand: I'd prefer my rice balls without spit in them.”

“I wouldn't do that–!”

“Perhaps not.” And perhaps it would be disappointing if she didn't. It would mean this nemesis-ship wasn’t so apparently one-sided.

“So you were clocking out,” Adagio restated, to get back to the point. “Give me something more specific, would you?”

“I was– going to eat dinner. I get an employee discount, so… –I always… yeah.” Shimmer shook her head, straining against the inarticulacy of immiseration. “I was on my way to a table when– when I took a sip of my– and–” As she got closer and closer to the moment, her heart knotted and twisted in her chest. Adagio could just about hear her heart quickening and weakening.

Adagio leaned forward. “It happened right then?”

Through a new torrent of tears, all Shimmer could do was nod.

“Perhaps you were poisoned.”

“I… I don’t know. I wasn’t the best at… alchemy when I was a foal…”

Shimmer sloppily neglected to keep such matters hushed. The barista’s dishrag stopped squeaking against the pastry display case quite so rapidly.

“…But,” she continued, “where would you even get ingredients for a potion on this side…? –Besides, I poured my drink myself… –from the soda fountain.”

Adagio tapped her fingers on her chin. “And yet, there weren’t any other diners driven to tears. Then, did you let your soda-pop out of sight at all, even for a second?”

Realization hit Shimmer like a wave. “I… –For just a minute. I left it on the counter, I mean– Just for a minute–!”

Adagio tutted. “Careless, careless. That’s plenty of time for someone who has it out for you to slip something in your drink. You’re very fortunate that I’ve been watching over this one.”

Shimmer glanced at her latte. She’d barely even touched it.

“Drink,” Adagio urged. “It’s the least you could do after I paid for it.”

“I’m… not thirsty…”

“Please, Shimmer, if you’re going to let a lady down, at least tell a better lie. You’ve cried enough to fill a swimming pool. You don’t think those tears came from thin air, do you?”

“…Caffeine’s a diuretic, though…”

“Oh, now she’s an expert on alchemy… Tch. Next time, I’ll just get you the water-hose.”

“…Next… time?”

Adagio had no idea where that came from. There wasn’t going to be a next time if she could help it. “…Drink your coffee, Shimmer.”

Begrudgingly, Sunset Shimmer complied. Sip by sip, it seemed to soothe her nerves, the hysterics and shakes settling into a semi-stable depression.

Adagio took this opportunity to study her adversary.

Mostly, how she was dressed. For someone who, every time Adagio had the misfortune of noticing her. rocked the bad-girl black-leather look (better, frankly, than even Aria), it was downright shameful to see Shimmer in her work attire.

See, if it were Adagio behind the counter, the uniform would actually match her complexion. The dull blue of Shimmer’s kimono would have made Adagio’s golden skin and coppery hair pop even more than they already did.

On Shimmer, though? It looked atrocious next to her ketchup-and-mustard hair. She should’ve gotten a job at Burger Princess.

And what was that in her hair? On a whim, Adagio reached over and plucked a garish green ornament out of a yellow strand, turning it over in her hands. It was an oversized plastic barrette, in the image of a pufferfish.

She thought to drop it in Shimmer’s coffee, just to be mean, but then she met its exed-out gaze. The oversized bauble stared blankly up at her like… well, the dead fish that it was supposed to be.

Shimmer sniffled. “Do you like it?”

“…Do I like it?”

“…If you want it…–”

“Shimmer, are you offering a dead fish to a siren you depowered? Will you commission for me a painting of my sisters and I slain at your feet, next?”

The “Oh…” Shimmer let out in response was hollower than any bell. So she wasn’t even trying to insult Adagio with a symbol of her defeat. What a shame.

“Besides, sea-green is Aria’s color; not mine, and most certainly not yours.”

“I’m sorryy…”

Adagio put the unsightly thing out of sight. “Moving on… Do any of your lackeys work here, too?”

A spark of that incense lit up again. “They’re my friends.”

“Of course, of course. Answer the question.”

“…There’s Rainbow Dash. She works at the Shoe Boxer. She isn’t off ‘til eight…”

With a tut and a sip of her coffee, Adagio remarked, “Two years into university and you’re all still working high-schooler jobs.”

“It’s…the– the economy…”

“Isn’t it, dearie?”, interjected the nosy barista, with a flick of her purple bob.

Sunset seemed to recognize the woman and gave a wave. Thankfully, a customer came to order and prevented her from joining the conversation in any material capacity.

That said, it was time to move on before the staff tried to intrude on their private discussion any further. “Well,” declared Adagio, over the last dregs of her macchiato, “I still haven’t heard back from Sonata, but I think we should check in on that airheaded egotist you tolerate so well.”

“She’s more than just– that…! She’s brave, and confident, and… and…”

Author's Note

With all this costume criticism, you might accuse me of writing Adagio as "What if Rarity was a bitch, instead of being Best (Mane 6) Pony?"

I ask you this, in turn: do you really think Sonata "Taco Dress" Dusk or Aria "Whatever The Hell She Was Wearing During 'Find The Magic'" Blaze are the Dazzlings with an eye for fashion?

Long Break

“You know, Shimmer, I didn’t take Dash for the literate type.”

Adagio leaned against the open doorway of the Shoe Boxer break-room, where they found Rainbow Dash sitting tense and upright on the couch with her face physically buried in some schlocky YA novel. One of A. K. Yearling’s wastes of paper, by the looks of it.

Shimmer completely ignored Adagio’s snark – how rude! – and instead scrambled to her friend’s side. “Rainbow! Please tell me you’re okay!”

Dash scooted away from Shimmer, her face still entombed between those pages. “Y… Yeah, of course I’m okay! Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“Oh, thank Celestia…” Shimmer breathed a sigh of relief, like a gullible little guppy. “It’s– Someone got their hands on Equestrian magic… –again. They got Pinkie and they got me, and I– I wanted to make sure they didn't get you, too!”

“Well, like I said, I'm doing… awesome!”, Dash insisted, still hiding her face.

“That's great!” Shimmer awkwardly wrapped her arms around Dash, who was too intent on holding up her book to reciprocate. “That means you can help us track down whoever did this!”

“Oooh…,” Dash said, wincing. “Uh… sorry… I… can't. Still got a couple hours before I'm free…”

Shimmer pulled back with the most delightful face of utter bafflement. She may well have been too confused to keep crying, in the brief window before the use of words came limping back to her. “Are… What? Someone’s running amok with magic and you’re… What? What?”

“I'm really sorry, but I– I can't just leave. The store, I mean. Not this room…”

“…I can’t– I can’t believe Miss Spring Breakdown doesn’t want to run off to take down a b–…” Shimmer lost the spirit to finish her sentence, but Adagio couldn’t help but snort at the words she was so sure would come next: ‘bad guy’.

“ …Yeah…”

Shimmer’s shoulders slumped. Adagio couldn't be certain whether she was still buying this bullshit or not, but she was clearly disappointed, either way.

Perhaps it was time to unmask the blue blowhard. From what Adagio remembered of her, Dash was a belligerent loudmouth with zero impulse control. Five years ago, her attention-seeking personality almost saw her own garage-band break up with minimal actual magical interference from the sirens whatsoever. “You should at least look a lady in the eye when you turn her down, Rainboom.”

“No, uh, this book’s really good– Wait.” Suddenly, an anger more like lightning than Shimmer’s inner fire shocked Dash’s system. “Hey! I know that voice!”

“Took you long enough.”

Dash ripped the book away from her face, except for the two sodden pages that tore themselves out, glued to her cheeks by yet more tears. “You…! …Siren!”

“…I have a name, you know. Adagio Dazzle. Don't tell me you've forgotten that easily?”

The shoe-store clerk ignored Adagio’s remark completely. “I bet you did this to me! –To us,” she amended, noticing the inflammation of Shimmer’s face. “Didn't you?!”

She tried to peel the pages off her face, but they crumpled into wads of inky pulp in her fingers. Still, she threw them at Adagio – and with a hell of a throwing arm. Despite her efforts to step aside, they still met their mark, and even stung a little through the siren’s puffy coat.

Adagio said nothing, instead focusing on getting the ruined paper off her clothes before the ink stained them. In any case, she had no reason to believe Dash would listen to her, no matter what she said.

Shimmer was going to set her straight, anyways. “No, Rainbow, she… She didn't.” Quieter, she added, “I checked…”, and started weeping all over again.

Dash made no apology for her accusation, nor her assault. “Then why’s she here?! With you?” All things considered, she held her composure remarkably better than Shimmer. Her anger seemed to be keeping everything but the streams of tears down her face in check. Perhaps other strong emotions would override this default sadness the same way.

Adagio crossed her arms in performative indignation. “Why, at this point, it’s to clear my good name. Every Rainboom I stumble across seems to think I don’t have better things to do than to magically manipulate random peoples’ emotions.”

That got Dash bristling even harder. “Because you did that! A lot! For a really long time!”

“Yes, I suppose I did.” The key was to react as flatly as possible when one’s hypocrisy was pointed out, to offer neither an argument nor an apology. The subtext: ‘Yes, and what are you going to do about it?’ It left the self-righteous feeling deliciously ineffectual.

But it wasn’t Dash who answered the challenge, despite how apoplectically-red she got. It was Shimmer, stepping between them and saying, very firmly, “Adagio, stop. If you’re going to harass my friends, you can just– Go home.”

Adagio flinched. “…Pardon?”

“You can go back to whatever you were doing before.” She wiped the tears off her face like they were nothing more than the morning’s eye-crust. They were replaced with new ones in seconds, but the gesture filled her with conviction all the same. “It’s fine. We’ll take it from here.”

“You’re not supposed to be back here, anyways,” muttered Dash.

But Adagio didn’t leave.

When it became apparent to Shimmer that she wasn’t hearing Adagio’s heavy boots clomping away, she said, without even looking at the siren, “You got what you came for, didn’t you? You wanted to clear your name. Consider it cleared, then: you’re not the villain today.” Her shoulders jerked with a stifled heave. “–Just an asshole…”

There it was again. A different note of that same solutionless despair. It played Adagio’s heartstrings so tenderly that she couldn’t think of a less cliché metaphor.

Except, this time, the problem she wanted to solve was Adagio, wasn’t it? And not the kind of problem you solve by disposing of it, if she was still so torn up inside after telling her to scram.

“…Shimmer.”

“Go.”

“Shimmer.”

“Please, don’t.”

“Sunset Shimmer, I did not get what I came for.” Adagio made a show of scrutinizing her nails, refusing to look Shimmer in the eye no matter how much her sense of diplomacy told her it was the correct move. “As you might recall, I told you at the food court that leaving you in this state would make me look like a banshee.”

– “…make you look like what you are…”, grumbled the peanut gallery, through gritted teeth –

Shimmer’s retort was a little less bark, a little more bite. “Well, you’re out of the public eye, now.”

“And yet, I still look like a bitch.” Her hand dropped limply to her side.

– “…because you are one…” –

“Adagio, what are you actually trying to say?”

Another flinch from Adagio. This was unbecoming of a mare as dignified as she. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t always mean what you say.”

“…I have been known to tell a lie here or there, I suppose. What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know, I– Clearly I’m wrong, but I had– I had this feeling. That maybe you actually wanted to help, for– I don’t know why. But you could have just driven off and left me in the parking lot. There wasn’t anybody watching you there. And you didn’t. Why?”

– “And why do you care whether we think you’re a bitch?” –

“…Cutting right to the point, I see.” And yet, for all her claims of sight, Adagio could not bring herself to look up. She did not want to see the rings of ice around the fire in Shimmer’s eyes.

“Please, Adagio.” It wasn’t ‘please’ the way Adagio said ‘please’ – ‘please don’t waste my time’ – even though, by all means, she had the upper hand in this exchange. It was an earnest plea from someone who really wanted Adagio to look her in the eye. “Just give me a straight answer.”

But Dash answered for her, before Adagio could open her mouth. “Come on, isn’t it obvious? She just wants to snatch the magical doohickey for herself so she can get back to messing with people’s emotions! The thing she does.”

Shimmer seemed to be considering the words of her counsel very seriously. “I… guess I was too optimistic…”

“Oh, that’s it, isn’t it?”, Dash laughed, through her tears. “Bus-ted. Well, you know what, Dazzhole? You can go f–”

Dash was silenced by the golden fingers pinching her lips shut. It was a technique long practiced on Adagio’s sisters, whose bickering in their hungry years could go on for hours if Adagio didn’t mediate.

“Rainbow Dash,” Adagio enunciated, “I don’t need a magic stone – or whatever it is that assails you – to manipulate anyone’s emotions. I’ve been cracking stonier hearts than yours for centuries, with and without the tatters of choral magic that remained to us on our arrival. Now, I’m going to trust you to shut up and permit me my own explanation, because if you don’t, I’ll show you just how fragile that fickle drum in your chest really is.”

She released Dash from her grip. Rubbing her muzzle, she said nothing, but gave the siren a glare almost as spiteful as one of Aria’s.

“…Go on,” urged Shimmer.

“Sunset Shimmer, I want you to call to mind one other thing I told you before: that it reflects poorly on both of us as nemeses for you to be rendered so pathetic.”

“…You’re not my…–”

“–Which is why I intend to help you catch the culprit, restore you to your former worthiness, and grind whoever it is under the heel of my boot.” Adagio finished her declaration with a stomp so resolute the coffee-pot on the counter clattered on its plate. “I insist.”

At last, with her intent declared, Adagio was finally able to meet Shimmer’s eyes.

Whatever fire Adagio might have expected in them was gone. There was a silence to accompany its absence, which stretched seconds into minutes.

Dash then broke this silence with an inexplicably-smug, “Ohhhhh, I get it.”

“Get what? You say that as though you still believe I'm up to something.”

“I mean… you are.” She put her hands on her hips. It was amazing just how cockily she could grin with tears streaming out of her eyes. “I just had the wrong idea!”

“It would seem you still do.”

“Nah, nah, nah. My gaydar doesn’t lie. You're one-hundred percent crushing on Sunset. Is this ‘nemesis’ deal how sirens flirt or something…? I mean, me and AJ got something sorta similar goin on, so I get it, but…?”

Adagio clamped down on the third full-body flinch she felt coming on. She could not afford to lose her composure here, no matter how outrageous the accusations leveled against her were.

But she did need to retort, lest her silence be construed as an admission of guilt. “Please. If I were attempting to seduce Little Miss Shimmer, I assure you my methods would be nowhere near so circumspect: an insincere apology for past behavior, followed by ever so many sweet little compliments. ‘Oh, the way your hair catches the light like flame in the evening sun.’ ‘Oh, the crack of your smile warms me up like the crackling of logs on the fire.’ ‘Oh, the way you melt into my touch like you’ve come in from a long, hard life in the cold.’ That’s how the song and dance goes.”

Shimmer was silent, but the blush on her face indicated that Adagio’s words would have had the intended effect.

Dash snorted. “…You’ve really put a lot of thought into the moves you’d put on her.”

Adagio inspected her other set of nails this time. This was the limit; if she did it a third time, she wouldn’t have the plausible deniability that made her own brand of arrogance so intoxicatingly irritating. “Does it really come as a surprise that I would plan out how I might break my enemy’s heart from within?”

Before Dash could come up with a counterargument, however, Shimmer did something which Adagio could never have predicted.

She burst into laughter – laughter through tears, but laughter all the same. Or perhaps she was laughing so hard the nature of her tears changed completely.

Dash looked on with a confusion that soon faded back into magically-induced misery, and truth be told, Adagio wasn’t clear what she was laughing about either…

Except for the distinct note of mockery in-between her chuckles.

“…I fail to see what’s so funny, Shimmer.”

“Oh– I’m sorry, I just– I’m not trying to be mean, but– I never realized you could be such a cornball!” She tried to get ahold of herself, but like a plague, her mirth spread to her insolent friend, and now both of them were laughing.

At Adagio Dazzle.

“What do you mean?”, she very carefully did not demand. She just asked.

“I mean– Okay– Listen– Those lines would be sweet if you meant them– But oh sweet Celestia, literally everyone tries a fire metaphor with me, oh my god.”

Before Adagio could deride Shimmer for crying out to the divinities of two different worlds in the same breath (she’d only lived what, a decade in this world? and she’d already gone native) Dash affirmed, “She’s right!”, doubled over wheezing and clinging onto Sunset for support. On her free hand, she started counting, “Twilight, Pinkie, Trixie, pony Twilight, Wallflower…” She gave up on counting, but kept going. “Trixie again, me, pony Pinkie, Trixie a third time… It’s like a requirement! You gotta do it if you wanna get with her!”

There were a lot of questions raised by that list that Adagio did not have the time nor energy to inquire further into.

“I really don’t know why,” confessed Shimmer.

“It’s ‘cause you’re smokin’ hot!”

A stifled snort puffed out of Shimmer’s lips as she punched her alleged friend in the arm. “Shhhhut up, you dork!~”

Meanwhile, despite her efforts to remain composed, Adagio couldn’t help but shift on her feet. “Would that not play in my favor? Hackneyed as those particular turns of phrase may have been,” she reluctantly admitted, “they’d nevertheless allow me to follow the typical course and slip into your heart undetected.”

Shimmer fought off an entire new wave of laughter to retort, “I mean– No? Maybe for a little bit– But then the moment we hold hands–”

Ah. Right. The mind-reading magic Shimmer was weaponizing towards her self-righteous vigilantism. It seemed to require skin contact.

“…I think we’ve strayed from the matter at hand,” Adagio artlessly deflected. She was too… She wasn’t mad, or embarrassed. Just… annoyed. Yes. She was just momentarily irritated at Shimmer getting the better of her (just this once! in an utterly inconsequential battle of wits!), and that was putting her off her game. She continued, “We’ve yet to determine how, exactly, Dash fell under this sadness-spell.”

The sales clerk in question deflated, the wind vanishing from her sails, as Adagio’s words brought her back to the moment it set in. She stumbled back onto the couch and hid her face in her book again.

But she did talk. “I… don’t know, okay? One minute, I’m helping Tennis Match try on her new special-order sneakers; the next… I’m running back here so no one sees me crying for no reason like I’m twelve again.”

Adagio noted this ‘Tennis Match’ character as a name in her list of suspects, though she did not mark her as very likely. Adagio was more interested in the means at the moment, anyway, so she pursued her personal theory. “Did you drink anything around that time?”

Dash lowered the book and stared at the ceiling for a good long while before answering, “…I don’t know…”

“…You don’t know.”

“I mean… I might have taken a sip from this…” She patted the – in retrospect – very conspicuous half-gallon water bottle carabinered to her belt loop.

Ah-ha! “And there we have it. Someone poisoned your water.”

Dash shook her head. “Nah. I never let this bad boy out of my sight.” Unhooking the canister, she took a long pull of water. Not sounding any more depressed than before, she said, “Tastes normal to me…”

”…Nevermind, then. Shimmer, do you have any ideas?”

Taking a seat next to her friend, Shimmer asked, “Do you mind if I…?”

“Go for it.”

And as they held hands, the very moment that Shimmer locked fingers with Dash’s, her eyes flashed white.

This must have been what her ability looked like from the outside. What Shimmer was seeing, feeling, thinking, Adagio wasn’t sure she wanted to know. The airhead’s thoughts interested her about half as much as the bubbles where Sonata’s brains should be.

No more than fifteen seconds after it started, the light faded, and a look of determination set upon Shimmer’s brow. “There was water on the counter. It started right when Rainbow put her elbow in it.”

“…I thought it was just condensation off my bottle…”

Adagio hummed in thought. “Then my poisoning theory isn’t entirely off-base. It must be the kind that can be absorbed through the skin.” She was, unfortunately, reminded of an affair with the mob back during Prohibition, involving a steamy bath and the lover she found lying in it. “But that also would imply our culprit planted it there while Dash was away, just like when you set down your beverage. There’s a camera watching this place, isn’t there?”

“…Yeah, there is.”

“All the stores have one,” Shimmer confirmed, but she frowned. “But… it’s all centrally– Mall security handles it. –All of it. I don’t know if they’d let us in.”

“Wait, did I forget to tell you?”, asked Rainbow, overcome with a sudden excitement.

“Tell me what?”

“Junie got the job!”

“She did–? Wait, you mean–?!”

“Yeah!”

Adagio stepped into their exchange with a, “Pardon me; who’s this ‘Junie’?”

Suddenly remembering that an enemy under truce was in the room, her enthusiasm quickly cooled. “Junie’s one of my other g–… one of my friends. She used to work at the movie theatre, but now she’s on the security team.”

Sunset spared a little chuckle.

“Hm?”, Adagio queried.

“Oh, there’s just… history. She didn’t always want to be on that side of the camera.”

Dash got out her phone. Its sky-blue case was scuffed all over and it was cracked to hell and back. It was a surprise the touchscreen even worked. “I’ll let her know you’re on your way.”

“Aren’t you coming?”, asked Shimmer.

“I… I can’t.” She hung her head in shame. “I want to, but… I’m kinda still on the clock –and, okay, I just… can’t be seen like… this.” She gestured at the mess that was her face.

There was something or other Adagio had in mind to highlight her cowardice, but Shimmer cut her off. “I totally understand.”

“–But hey… If you need me for a friendship laser septablast (or if your new girlfriend turns into an even worse bitch than she already is),” – she unsubtly pointed her thumb at Adagio – “call me. I’ll be there, tears or no tears.”

Sunset Shimmer gave Rainbow Dash a deep, warm-looking hug. “I know. Thank you so much.”

Author's Note

To be clear, gaydars aren't real. While it is true that there are common personality traits that might suggest the possibility of homosexuality, it's all just vibes-based bullshit in the end.
That said, Rainbow Dash is absolutely the type to believe in a gaydar.

I actually had Rainbow Dash just say "Gayyyyyyyyyyyy" originally, but that didn't quite make sense with the way I see the Equestrian and Pedestrian worlds being just way less homophobic in general than ours. Obviously, she wouldn't have meant anything insulting by it, being a huge lesbian herself, but ironic homophobia doesn't really scan in a world that barely has unironic homophobia.

Watching TV

The door to the CCTV monitoring office opened, electronically, on its own, as the two of them approached. Dry-ice fog billowed out from the darkness like so much cigarette smoke.

From deeper in the room, by the bank of monitors that were the only source of light therein, a deep, sultry voice that sounded like a poor imitation of Adagio Dazzle’s trademark purr beckoned them from behind a tall swivel-chair. “I’ve been expecting you. Come in.”

“Why, thank you,” Adagio coolly replied.

“Oh– wow–”, the other dame coughed, letting slip the girlish squeak that was her genuine register. “You, uh, do a better fifties-femme-fatale than me.”

“It’s just my speaking voice, doll.”

There was an audible delay before the surveillant replied, “Well, I mean, still. You’d be great in a remake of… Sorry, I’m rambling.

“I’m Juniper Montage, but you can call me Officer,” she giggled. The chair swivelled around to reveal a rather unremarkable, plain-looking girl who must have been deeply aware of how bland she looked, judging by how attention-grabbingly she dressed. The security button-up was probably non-negotiable, but her glasses screamed ‘type-cast me as a secretary’ and the film reel scrunchies partitioning her deep teal hair into pigtails screamed ‘unimaginative movie nerd’. “Hi there, Sunset and– Oh my gosh, Sunset, have you been crying?”

“Oh thank Celestia you’re not. But– Yeah, I… I have. –But don’t worry about it! ”

“Um, okay…”

“So you’re a mall cop, now?”, Shimmer asked, in a blatant, artless attempt to distract from the obvious signs of her misery.

“Oh! That’s me! They needed someone who could watch TV for eight hours, and that’s basically what I do all day, anyways!” The smile she flashed was a certain kind of petty-devious, where she thought she was getting away with something, but that something wasn’t actually any sort of misdemeanor to begin with.

“How’s Rainbow? I saw you two go to the Shoe Boxer breakroom, but our cameras aren’t set up back there for privacy reasons.” – A fact about which she seemed a bit miffed.

Grimacing, Shimmer left it at, “She’s… Kinda having a rough one, too.”

“Phooey. And your new special friend…?”

“I am not her ‘special friend’,” denied Adagio ever so strenuously, “whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Oh, that’s just what Dashie told me.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“You sure? Her gaydar doesn’t lie.”

“Completely.”

Montage squinted at the siren, apparently investigating for herself, only to find something else in her visage. “Whoah, I gotta say, it’s not just the voice! You look just like you walked out of one of the classic Daring Do movies – like, from the Cabbage Leaf era – and into a Heated Debate.”

Adagio scowled, just a little, at the comparison. Heated Debate was Sonata’s store of choice for when she needed to dress in black, but Adagio and Aria had better taste than that.

But, hm. Cabbage Leaf had her run of the Daring Do role back in the sixties. Those were the good years of the franchise, before the senior Yearling passed the torch of writing the novels they were based on to her utter hack of a daughter.

Montage snapped her fingers, apparently not even noticing Adagio’s disdain. “Yeah, yeah, you look just like Gilded Idol! Gosh, the sixties were such a different time – back then, a virtually-unknown actress like Adagio Dazzle could just show up on set one day, demand to be cast as the villainess, get the role just like that,” – the siren’s anger-attuned ears detected a bit of buried envy, there – “set the model for casting for the next half-century, and just… disappear.”

To Adagio Dazzle’s left, Shimmer was staring at her, her jaw hanging slightly.

“Rumor has it,” Montage rambled on, “that she was absolutely terrible to work with. Just a huge flirt who kept getting the cast and crew to fight for her attention.” She shrugged. “I don’t know; could have just been a scapegoat-y excuse for terrible set conditions making everyone a little crazy.”

Shimmer’s stare had transformed into a glare.

Adagio played it cool, thoughtfully resting her fingers on her chin. “How did the line go?” Memories of co-stars flubbing their lines and forcing her to retread her perfect performance over and over again flooded back to her. There was a reason she didn’t stay in the business. Nevertheless, “Ah, yes– ‘No, Daring Do, I expect you to die.’”

Now it was the clueless movie buff’s turn to pick her jaw up out of her lap. “Wow! That’s a… spot-on impression!” A subtle twitch of the eyelid told Adagio she was starting to get the sense that something weird was happening. “Is there an impersonation contest or a convention or something going on…?”

Both Adagio and Shimmer shook their heads.

“Allow me to introduce myself.” One hand to her chest, she gave a grandiose bow. “Adagio Dazzle; occasionally an actress, always a star. You’re a fan of mine, I gather?”

“…N– No,” Montage stammered. “I mean, I mean– No, you can’t be her. You’d have to be in your nineties.”

“You could say the years have been kind to me.” Adagio clicked her tongue. “Until recently, at least.”

Montage turned to Shimmer, hoping she’d back her up, but all Shimmer had to give her was more head-shaking.

“…No way.” She stared dumbly at Adagio’s beautiful face – tried to blink the image away – but now that she’d seen the truth, it couldn’t be denied. She turned again to Shimmer. “Is this another magic thing? Are you going to tell me she found a crystal or something that made her immortal and gave her magical powers? And she did terrible things with them, but now she’s a good person?”

Adagio started with a chuckle, but the mirth was gone with that last part. “Your description was shockingly accurate until you got to the end. I am most certainly not ‘a good person’, nor do I particularly plan to be. Nevertheless: am I to assume by your familiarity with the subject of magic that Shimmer’s gang of thugs stole and destroyed your personal property, too?”

“Um, something like that, but really, it can’t be anywhere near as interesting as, um, your story.” She made a show of adjusting her gaudy glasses and straightening her posture. “But look, uh, if we don’t change the topic I’m gonna totally fangirl out, and that would be really embarrassing. I do wanna hear more, but… Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Shimmer slumped her shoulders. “Oh– Yeah, there is…”

In the interest of keeping things moving along (and, perhaps, to leverage the adoration of her fan), Adagio talked over Sunset. “We need to skim through the security footage for Shoe Boxer from the past couple hours. There’s been an incident, if you catch my drift.” Thankfully, there was nobody else in the office to suggest reporting this through the mundane, official channels.

But still, Montage hesitated, craning her head around to study the mural of monitors behind her. “I haven’t seen anybody going on a rampage today…”

Shimmer shook her head. “That’s not– We haven’t gotten to that point… –yet. We’re trying to deal with it before it turns into a– well– you know…”

“Another ‘Manday Mirror Mayhem at the Mall’,” Montage sighed. “Okay, I’ll help.”

The camera-copper scooted her rolling chair across the room to a laptop set up in the corner. After a quick dive into the files (or whatever it was she needed to do; computers were Aria’s area of expertise, not Adagio’s), she pulled up a quartet of hour-long videos.

“What are you looking for?” She set the playback speed to whatever four arrows meant and hit some button or other that made them all play at once.

“Let’s start the moment that Rainbow Dash puts her elbow on the counter and then runs off to the break room,” explained Shimmer.

“Alright, I’ll be watching for that. Could you guys keep an eye on the live feed and tell me if you see any funny business?” She pointed to the wall of televisions without turning away from the tiny laptop screen. “Please?”

“Of course,” Shimmer promised.

Likewise, from Adagio, “I might as well.”

The next few minutes passed dully and uneventfully. There were no armed robberies or savings-fueled riots to entertain the siren; the best she got to witness was some snot-nosed kid dropping his ice cream twice in that short span, to the irritation of his beleaguered mother.

Their vigil finally came to an end when Montage shouted, “Got it!”

Both investigators rushed over to her side, hovering over her shoulders. Closing all the other recordings, she full-screened the moment in question and played it back in slow-motion.

There Dash was, handing some sporty cyanette her receipt and a shipping-bag of shoes. The moment she was gone, Dash’s customer-service smile dropped to a bored frown in a flash. She leaned on the counter – and bam, there she was, rushing off-camera as though nature were calling.

“That’s it! Great!” Montage earned herself a hug from Shimmer.” Okay, so now we gotta rewind until we see whoever it was that did… whatever it was. –To that counter, while Dash was away.”

“On it!”

Being only several seconds prior, the precise moment in question was on-screen before Montage even enunciated her ‘t’.

Unfortunately, the only thing the camera could tell about their suspect was that she was a gal. The angle was terrible, keeping her face out of view, as well as whatever she used to get the counter wet. She had on a ratty gray hoodie that kept her hair hidden, and the whole ensemble was too bulky to get much of an idea of her build.

And yet.

– And yet! –

There was something very familiar about her sullen slouch, about the way she stomped as she walked away from the trap she planted. Adagio didn’t like it one bit; she had a nagging feeling about her. Nevertheless, she asked, “Have you seen this individual on-camera before, Montage?”

“I think so!” Quickly, she opened another video. There, this hooded culprit was, loitering outside the food court. “She was there for a while. I figured she was waiting on someone.”

“Yeah, she was waiting on me to get off work so she could give me– crying poison, I guess!”

Adagio put a hand on Montage’s shoulder and instructed her, with the utmost gravity and clarity, “Show me where she entered the building.”

That took a few tense minutes of skimming on Montage’s part, during which time Adagio loomed over her like a dragon, tapping her fingers impatiently on her sleeve. Finally, she settled on a single still frame that only served to deepen Adagio’s frown: hands in her hoodie pockets and face turned away, the culprit was caught mid-shouldering-open the glass door.

“…Is that the Astradoes you took me to?”, asked Shimmer, pointing to part of a blurry green sign hanging near the entryway.

“It is,” Adagio stated, through gritted teeth. She walked back over to the wall of live-streams. “Officer Montage, do these cameras show the parking lot, too?”

“They sure do!” She gestured in a circle; the relevant monitors formed a ring around the interior shots.

It took Adagio only a few moments to see just what she needed to see: one familiar car, blanketed under fresh snow.

“She’s still here,” she determined. “Find her.”

Montage shot upright, muscling the investigators out of the way. Her eyes darted and raced like sailfish across the screens. “Found her! She’s–”

“–That’s… the door to this room,” Shimmer observed.

The blurry little figure on the screen, who’d been leaning casually against the wall up to this point, suddenly took off and bolted.

Adagio’s blood ran cold. “…Oh, you dam-rutting whorse-daughter,” she spat, making Shimmer blush like a bonfire and Montage just stare at her, confused. “Follow me, Shimmer, and hoof it,” – she was already halfway out the door – “You’re going to stop me from killing that slimy little eel.”

Author's Note

It's pretty obvious who the culprit is, but this was really only a little bit about the mystery.

Juniper Montage is... apparently really slept on. Prior to me uploading this, she's only got 70 fics on Fimfiction credited to her.
Granted, she doesn't have a whole lot of personality in the show, but that's certainly never stopped me from pulling one out of my ass and assigning it to a girl before.

Eel With a Gun

Adagio had done some running in her life before. How many arguments did she instigate all too eagerly – all too hungry for negative energy – only to wind up in the middle of a bar-brawl or a gunfight? Too many times to count.

Or what about the night Shimmer and her goons shattered the Dazzlings’ pendants and their dreams? Bereft of what little magic this world left them, the siren sisters had no choice but to put as much distance between themselves and the mob of freshly-disenchanted teenagers who, at best, wanted to keep pelting them with garbage. At worst? It didn’t bear thinking about. The only thing to do was run away.

All this was to say that it would have been such a pleasant change of pace to be the one doing the chasing…

If only her quarry were someone she didn’t care about.

“I’ve already figured you out!”, she hollered at the fleeing suspect, as she wove through the thinning evening crowds. Adagio kept in steady pursuit, with Shimmer lagging only a few paces behind. “Running won’t save you, now!”

The perp did not respond.

“Who is she?!”, Shimmer gasped, as she finally caught up.

“The only idiot she can be!”

The thing about hoodies was that they weren’t exactly designed for long, voluminous hair. Adagio had it the worst, of course, what with the curtain of golden curls bouncing around her shoulders, but even though her sisters were straight-haired, they, too, kept theirs long – all the way to the waists.

The suspect held her hood in place as she ran, but she wasn’t looking where she was going. Crashing into some blue-haired pretty-boy, she stumbled to the ground and had to catch herself with both hands. That’s when the tyrian-and-sea-green twintails popped loose.

There went Aria Blaze’s disguise. Adagio might have already known it was her, but now Shimmer saw, too.

That tumble cost her some precious distance, too. Aria was arguably the fittest of the trio, but her idea of fitness was being able to beat anyone who tried to mess with her or her sisters into the pavement as brutally quick as possible. She could punch all the bags she wanted, but unfortunately for her, so long as she neglected cardio, she was going to run out of breath by the time she was cornered into a fight.

Meanwhile, Adagio went for a jog every other morning. She had an image to maintain, after all.

So, to put it simply, she was legitimately gaining on her sister.

Aria seemed to realize that, too. With the nearest exit still a long ways away, she abruptly swerved into a nearby shop.

It wasn’t until Adagio followed her through the open doorway (with Shimmer, not quite so motivated by her rage, huffing and puffing, seconds behind her) that she understood why Aria had darted into a dead end.

In the middle of this tiny electronics outlet, Aria Blaze stood with a water-pistol pointed directly at her pursuers. The sole clerk lay on the carpet nearby, pitifully weeping as he crawled behind the counter with a fresh wet stain on the crotch of his khakis.

“Hold it!”, barked Aria, her fist raised to smash the ludicrously-expensive ultrascreen TV next to her. “One more step and you're footing the bill, Shitter.”

Disappointingly, Shimmer actually hesitated, as though any legitimate court of law would look at the security footage and hold her to account for this damaged and almost-certainly insured merchandise.

Adagio brushed aside her sister’s warning with a strained-through-the-teeth, “Please, sister dear. How much could your little hostage possibly be worth? A million, tops?” Then, turning to Shimmer, she teased, “That’s pocket change. I'll just add it to your tab.”

“Uh… thanks…?

“Hah!”, Aria sardonically barked. “Somebody’s got herself a sugar-mommy. Wonder how that happened.”

“Not you, too–” Adagio took a step forward, only to have to duck back out of the way of an arcing jet of water, which sparkled and glimmered with the magic of Equus. Streaming over her head by the narrowest margin, it instead splashed the face of the mall-cop who’d apparently been approaching from behind. This musclebound refrigerator of a man immediately dropped to his knees in abject grief and whimpered incoherently into his hands. Something about kittens?

When Adagio turned back around, she was staring down the nozzle of her sister’s gun. “Next one’s going in your eye, Puffy, if you don’t get your fat ass back outside.” Aria cocked her head towards the black scrying-orb built into the ceiling, and pointed her chin at the slowly-accumulating bystanders with their phones out. “You don’t want everybody to see you crying, do you? I hear they’ve got a Rodeit board just for videos of public meltdowns. Someone could score some hefty karma if they get a good angle on a minor celebrity like you, you know.”

And just like that, several of the rubberneckers’ phones fixed on Adagio specifically, thirsty for those juicy, made-up internet points.

“Fine, fine,” assured Adagio, backing out of the store. She had to admit, for such a blunt instrument, her sister was doing a surprisingly-competent job of working the crowds.

“However…”, she intoned, and casually sauntered up to the blubbering wreck in uniform. She snatched the earpiece out of his ear without any contest. After a quick wipedown on his sleeve, she cleared her throat and spoke into the attached mic, “Attention, boys and girls. This is Adagio speaking: big sister to the dipshit of the day. As such, I'd like to try talking her down, first, if it’s no bother,” she purred. “If you’d still like to make yourselves useful,” she added, “I’d be ever so grateful if you ushered all these busybodies away. They constitute a safety hazard, wouldn’t you agree?”

– “…Why’d you put on a Southern accent when you said that…?”, murmured Shimmer. –

The handful of mall cops arriving on scene actually gave an adoring salute to Adagio, as though she genuinely fit into their command structure, and immediately set about clearing away the onlookers. A chorus of “Nothing to see here”-s and “Move along”-s stamped out all the idle chatter.

“As you can see, two can play that game,” taunted Adagio, as she felt the last camera’s glare turning away from her skin. There was a reason the siren sisters left all the talking to their eldest.

Aria was unfazed. Just as Adagio opened her mouth to taunt her again, the insolent brat stepped on her words. “Lemme guess what you’re gonna say next: ‘you should try sticking to your strong suit’?”

She was spot-on, but Adagio refused to let her know that.

So Aria kept running her mouth. “Yeah, well, I am.” She twirled the water-pistol around her finger. “I still got this magic gun, don’t I? That’s the strongest suit I got.”

Shimmer tried to interject, “But it’s two against–”

Aria cut her off. “Puffy’s a priss, and you’re piss-useless in a fight without your buddies. What’s it you do, again? Mind-reading?” So she had been spying on the investigators at least as far back as then.

“…You won’t get away with–”

“Yeah, you can shut the hell up already.”

Aria spritzed Shimmer directly in the face, sending her spiralling back to the bottom-most pit of despair. She crashed to the ground with a horrid wail.

“This is between me and my sister, anyways.”

“It is,” agreed Adagio, stanching, as best she could, the anger flaring up in her heart at what Aria just did to her nemesis. Maybe there were some other emotions in there, too, but as long as Adagio didn’t let them into her voice, they weren’t real. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, sister dear. Let’s start with why you’re acting against my orders, hm?”

“Orders?”, Aria snorted. “What kind of authority do you think you still have anymore, Puffy?”

“The authority that comes from being the eldest, smartest, and most driven of us.”

Aria rolled her eyes, but before she could retort–

From the floor, Shimmer sobbed, “–Wh– wh– wh– what orders…?”

Adagio crossed her arms. “My standing orders to my sisters, as of our disempowerment, were to lay low and stay out of your band’s hair wherever possible. It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that running off alone on any ill-advised revenge schemes would just end poorly for all three of us. Such as now.”

“Hah!” There was nothing friendly about Aria’s smile. “I don’t see how you’re any worse off. Got yourself a new doll to play with. Good for you. Luna knows you need it. When’s the last time you got laid?”

“Not as long ago as yours,” Adagio deflected, though it was true that she’d been enduring a bit of a dry spell. A one-night-stand here or there, but nothing that entertained her heart. To her (concealed) embarrassment, Sonata was the only one still in the game, so to speak.

“Yeah, well. Maybe I just don’t like fuckin’ monkeys the way you do.”

Adagio didn’t care to discuss her sexual preferences with her middle sister in the middle of an open shopping mall, so the only thing to do was to change the subject to something Aria couldn’t ignore and stubbornly drag the conversation back from. “I should think it’s because you’re always cooped up in your room, playing your video games and driving up our internet bill. Is that where you found your new toy, by-the-by? Dregslist or somesuch?”

“This little number?” Aria inspected the plastic children’s toy in her hand. “Nah, I snatched it off some kid at the waterpark. When he found it missing, he was crying just as hard as everybody he thought he was playing with.”

“You can’t have forgotten, sister dear, that it’s Foalbruary– Footbruary. Whichever. The pools have been closed for several months now, sister dear. You mean to tell me you’ve been sitting on Equestrian magic for that long? Without telling us?”

“Yep,” she yepped, with a definitive click of the lips on the plosive.

But Adagio demanded an explanation. “Why the Discord not?!”

“Supposed to be a surprise.” Aria spat on the carpet. “So much for that, now.”

Adagio took a step back. “…A surprise. In Footbruary.”

“Starting to put the pieces together, are you?”

“I… have an inkling.”

Aria dropped the hand she held in front of the television, because she must have known Adagio was too invested in this narrative to lunge at her, now. She relaxed a bit, but kept her gun pointed at her sister. “…All this hard work, all this patience, all for nothing. Nothing ever goes my way.”

Adagio chose not to bring up that Aria was specifically selected to become one of the first three sirens in existence. The moody little mope could spin the highest of honors into another of life’s indignities whenever she was in one of her states. It came part-and-parcel with the girl’s special talent.

“You know, I thought I was doing something nice,” Aria continued. “That’s what you were doing here, weren’t you? Shopping for consolation presents?”

Shimmer let out a feeble, “…Your anniversary…”

“Of the day you killed us,” Aria bluntly stated.

“I didn’t–”

“We weren’t gonna die. Now we are. You did it. That’s killin’. Doesn’t matter how slow.” She aimed her gun like she was going to shoot Shimmer again, but when the Rainboom started sobbing even harder, all on her own, she just shook her head and went back to her discussion with Adagio. “The 22nd’s tomorrow. I thought Tuna might be out shopping for the big-ass feast she always cooks, but none of these Rainbooms work at a grocery store, so she wasn’t gonna be a problem.”

Speaking of, Sonata still hadn’t texted Adagio back, had she? Now wasn’t a good time to check, unfortunately.

“And you, I figured the deadline to get something was too close. Surely Miss Big Plans got her milestone anniversary presents well in advance, I thought. She ain’t gonna be at the mall while I’m wrapping up the last couple presents.” She snorted. “And then you had to go and strut into the food court right after I spiked Shitter’s soda. What’s the big idea, Puffy? Why’d you wait until today? Was five years not long enough to be important? What’re you waiting for? Ten? Twenty-five? Fifty? We don’t got too many more left, after that.”

“The big idea is that I don’t trust you and Sonata not to paw through my closet for your presents like a pair of brats, up at midnight two days before Giftsmas. For your information, I placed the order for the centerpieces back in Juguy, and I have the receipts to prove it.”

“…Whatever.” The utterance of a graceless loser. “Doesn’t change the fact that you ruined all my hard work. Spoiled yourself like those Giftsmas-brats.”

“So this was your gift? Getting our revenge all on your own?”

“Yeah. Thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy?! I don’t know how you came to that conclusion! Setting aside the rank insubordination, have you forgotten that Sonata has – despite her best interests – made friends with one of them?”

“Yeah, well, she’d get over it. She still hates the others.” It was clear that she hadn’t given more than a couple thoughts to Sonata’s feelings. “Anyways, I was gonna deliver that one” – she pointed the gun at Shimmer – “in a box, straight to your room, all tied up and ready to get your fun in. Ain’t that what you’ve been jilling yourself to, every other damn night?”

Adagio refused to give that comment the legitimacy of a response. Not here. Not in front of Shimmer. “So not only would you have shattered what tenuous peace we had with these brutes, you’d have brought them to our doorstep! Was that seriously your plan?!”

“You’d find a way to weasel us out of it. I know you would. And it all woulda been worth it, just to see you get that evil look in your eye again.” She shook her head. “Though now, I’m starting to think it’s never coming back. You’ve gone soft, Pufferfish.”

“I have not.”

The clerk, who’d been peeking over the counter, ducked back down again the moment Aria started shouting and waving her gun around.

“You totally have! You get on my case for rotting in my room all day, but all you’ve done for the past five years is sit on your ass, drink our booze, watch TV, and put on a nice, smiling face for the monkeys every time you go outside! I haven’t heard a single damn peep from you about getting back at the Rainbooms, or getting our gems back, or going back to Equestria! You still wanna call yourself leader, Adagio, so tell me: what’s the plan?”

“There is none.”

The gun-waving stopped. “Say that again?”

“There is no plan,” Adagio admitted. “There’s no plan to mire ourselves in a pointless cycle of revenge. There’s no plan to go back to poisoning every good thing we have with our hunger for strife. There’s no plan to go back to a home that doesn’t even remember us, and wouldn’t want us if it did.”

“Hah. I knew it. I fuckin’ knew it.” For a moment, Aria seemed to be taking it in stride, shaking her head and pacing back and forth. Then her fist came down hard enough on the display shelf to crack the particle-board. “You’ve been wasting our time this whole– this whole time! And we don’t have much left!”

Oh, if Adagio still had her spines, they’d be punching clean through her jacket. Her voice raised, her stance widened, her hair standing up on end, she shouted, “Has it not occurred to you that all of this idleness has been in the interest of protecting the two of you ingrates?! I loathe these humans as much as you do, but–!”

Aria wasn’t intimidated, no matter how big Adagio got. “Do you, now? ‘Cause I dropped the human you hate the most right into your lap, and what do you do? You go on a date with her!”

Adagio couldn’t help but deflate, slightly. “This– This has not been a date! All this has been is me cleaning up the mess you made!”

“You got coffee together. Literally the most basic first date you can do.”

“I needed information from her!”, Adagio defended.

“Then why didn’t you ditch the bitch once you had it?”

“That Dash girl never would have trusted me without Shimmer’s word.”

Aria waved the idea off. “I’m sure you’d trick that dumbass into telling you something.”

Adagio found herself pitted against a terrible choice: if she wanted to convince her sister it wasn’t a date, the only way out was to admit that Aria was overestimating her abilities. There had to be some way to eat her crabcake and have it, too. “Let’s just say I was hedging my bets.”

“Sure you were.”

Drat. Adagio put it too delicately; Aria wasn’t convinced at all.

But the middle sister did have something else to say. Lowering her water-gun, she announced, “Look, Adagio, I’m done here. Present’s a bust. I said my piece. Now, I just wanna go home and play Princess of War. You coming?”

Adagio just stood there, gobsmacked. The gall!

“Hello? Equus to Puffy. Tell the mall fuzz to let us go and we’ll dip.”

Even Adagio’s composure could only hold up for so long. The rage was getting harder and harder to bottle up. After several seconds’ silent glaring, Adagio finally recovered enough clarity to string the proper words together.

Those proper words were not very kind. “…You want to go back to your cave, you rotten little eel? You’re going to fix this” – she pointed at Shimmer – “first.”

“What, you want me to kill her? Here? With the cameras and witnesses and everything?”, she asked, deliberately misunderstanding the directive. Aria knew damn well what her sister meant.

Nevertheless, for the ears of the concerned mall cops nearby, Adagio had to clarify. “No, you cheeky dolt, what you’re going to do is undo the waterborne curse you’ve put on Shimmer and her friends, and you’re going to apologize to them before they get it in their heads to kick our asses about it.”

Aria shook her head again. “Can’t do that.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I mean I can’t.” She holstered the pistol in her belt. “You ever try to un-shoot someone with a real gun? Yeah.”

“So you’re saying it’s permanent.”

At this knowledge, the volume and intensity of Sunset’s cries only increased, because of course they did.

Aria shrugged, crossed her arms, and leaned against the TV. “Maybe. Or maybe it goes away. Dunno. Don’t care, either.”

Flinching, Adagio pointed out, “And yet you still shot at me?!”

“Relax, Puffy.” She raised her hands pacifyingly. “The guy behind you was my target. I just needed to scare you.”

“Just to scare me? –Give me that,” the eldest demanded, taking a step forward.

In an instant, Aria’s hand was on the grip again. “…No?”, she replied, with the same incredulity as though she’d been asked to surrender her bloodstone pendant.

“No?!”

“That’s what I said. It’s mine.”

“I don’t trust you with it. Hand it over.”

The pistol was fully drawn, now, and pointed straight at Adagio’s chest. “Why don’t you take it from me?”

That was it. Adagio had had enough. With an arm raised to cover her face, she lunged at her sister.

Aria had time for one shot, and it landed true. Dead center-of-mass.

Unfortunately for her, it splattered uselessly against the impermeable polyester fabric of Adagio’s puffer coat.

Half a second later, Adagio’s handbag collided with Aria’s face.

Author's Note

It's Aria Blaze! It was kinda obvious. If you somehow didn't guess it was her, tell me who you did guess in the comments.

Negotiations

Everypony, from the pegasi in the clouds to the hippocampi of the deeps, had a special talent, and the sirens were no exception.

These three were marked by fate to be singers. Now, it must be remarked that a hippocampus claimed by song was like a unicorn whose truest passion was magic, or a pegasus with a pair of wings stamped on her hindquarters, or an earth pony with… whatever it was that earth ponies did.

That is to say, such hippocampi were nothing special…

–except for the fact that the Dazzlings were damn good at singing. So peerless were they with their gifts, in fact, that these three ponies alone were chosen by the temple to be plucked from whatever past lives they had to receive a blessing nopony else in history had received: sirenity.

The ensuing result – that they immediately went rogue with their newfound power – could have been predicted if anypony involved in the process considered the personalities of their chosen candidates:

A young noblemare, second in line, who passed her many idle hours pitting her suitors against each other just for the honor of hearing her melodic voice as she turned the victor down;

The strange little filly from the hidden compound, whose every flight of fancy was taken as prophecy by the cultists that raised her, whose every impulsive desire was attended to with the gravitas of a Lunar mandate, whose every childish tantrum was validated as grounds for the immediate removal of whatever or whoever she didn’t like;

And – who could forget – the conquering princess of the orphanage, who got her spot at the top of the toy-pile as much by pitting foals against each other as she did by kicking them down herself…

Aria Blaze.

Her special talent was to sing the dirges and laments of the sea. Aria could play those darkest instruments of the heart – rage, grief, disgust, despair – as any virtuosa would a violin. Compared to Adagio’s insincere balladry and Sonata’s hymns to the inane, Aria and her elegies were practically born to be what it turned out a siren really was: a glorious, terrible sorceress whose control over the heart and mind was a ravenous fire, devouring the wrath and woe she stirred up in her wake only to spread more.

And for Aria? There was neither anypony nor any ape whom she couldn’t find a way to royally piss off.

Adagio Dazzle was both of those creatures, in a sense, and she was absolutely furious.

At some point, the water pistol flew from Aria’s grip. When it happened, or where it landed, Adagio paid no mind to. All she could focus on was smashing her purse down like a large rock on Aria’s stupid, jeering face. The middle sister, pinned supine on the carpet, tried to shove the eldest off of her, but Adagio would not budge from her straddling-spot.

This struggle continued, progressing and retreating back and forth, for some time, before a third party wrapped her chubby arms around the both of them with a running tackle, scooping them up into an inescapable hug.

“Oh my gosh! You guys are fighting again!”, rang Sonata’s bubbly voice, in the flesh. “This is the best anniversary present ever! –And it’s not even the big day!”

“Sonata Dusk!”, huffed Adagio, squirming like a fish in a net and inelegantly flailing her purse in Sonata’s general direction. “Let go of me at once!”

Aria echoed a similar sentiment, though she was muffled by the unfortunate placement of Adagio’s chest. Speaking of, the punches Adagio was presently taking to the ribs were almost certainly going to leave bruises in the morning. Luna be praised that Aria had left the stud-knuckled gloves at home that day.

Try as they might, words and violence did little to pry the youngest sister from her elders, as they so seldom did. They just had to wait until she’d hugged herself out.

In the meantime, Adagio had a question – no, a stern inquiry – for Sonata. “Did I not specifically state that you were to text me back once you'd found out whether all of the Rainbooms were under the crying spell?”

“Uh, yeah? And I did.”

“No, you didn't.”

“I totally did!” Just as suddenly as she snatched them up, Sonata let her sisters go – and go they did, directly back to the ground. Worse, Aria was far too lean to pad Adagio’s fall, and failed to protect her head at all from the hard carpet below. “Look!”

When Adagio cleared the stars and her hair from her eyes, she beheld Sonata’s phone, shoved right into her face, showing several messages – each a report on the four unaccounted members of Shimmer’s gang – claiming to have been delivered but not read. Sonata even pinged Adagio with a few |Yello?|s and |Answer your dang phone already|s at the end.

Quickly, Adagio fetched her own phone from her purse. Mercifully, it hadn’t been damaged by the bag’s use as a bludgeon. However, to her great confusion and dismay… Sonata was completely correct. Adagio’s notifications were stuffed with unread texts, each received at various timestamps within the last two hours.

“…So you did,” she was forced to concede. “How could I have missed these? Was I really so focused on my investigation?”

From below, still pinned and smothered, Aria growled, “…too busy… on your fucking date…”

There was something wrong, though. The heat was gone from her words, and her arms lay passive and limp at her sides.

Adagio scrambled to get up, even though she knew what she’d see: her sister, Aria Blaze, red-eyed and staring the kind of daggers that only find themselves in the hands of those powerless to sink them into anything. Seconds later, she smashed the back of her own head against the floor and began to weep through clenched-shut eyes.

It was immediately obvious to Adagio what, how, and when it happened. The sorceress had fallen under her own curse. There must have been some of that enchanted water still clinging to Adagio’s coat when Sonata pressed the two of them together, and that’s when it touched her bare face.

“I just want to go back…”, was all she groaned. If she said anything else, she probably would have started openly crying, and Aria would sooner chug gasoline than let someone see her doing that.

Of course she wanted to go back. She was always the best at being a siren. Adagio told herself that Aria needed a thinker like her new big sister to steer all that brute talent in a productive direction (and Sonata would just sort of be there, also) – but really, Aria had her own cunning, her own ambition. She probably could have done fine on her own if she’d really, truly gotten sick of her family and cut them out for good.

She didn’t, but she could have.

But, being the best siren… she probably took it the worst when the siren sisters lost their sirenity.

She used to be such a firebrand. As leader, Adagio really couldn’t ask for a better lieutenant, though this was another thing she would never, ever say aloud. Adagio’s wiles could score her any number of sycophants, but what she really needed was the kind of critic Aria was, determined in her own spiteful way to find fault with every plan Adagio made. More often than not, Aria was just an idiot who clearly didn’t understand Adagio’s grand designs, but every now and then, hers was the voice of common reason that revealed some hidden grave error in Adagio’s lofty calculations.

Nowadays, though, Adagio wasn’t making plans, and Aria wasn’t picking them apart. All Aria did anymore was sit in her room, glued to her computer. The only times she left her cave were to eat (or rather, to throw something together to eat in her room) and to be dragged out by her sisters because they needed to record a new song.

And for this whole fiasco, Adagio supposed.

Aria hid her weeping eyes behind her hands. Her whole body shook and trembled to keep the sobs inside.

…It took a few seconds’ fiddling with the snaps and the zipper (and an extra dose of caution to do so with her gloves still on, lest another siren succumb to the water’s curse), but soon enough, Adagio’s jacket lay inside-down over her sister’s face. Nobody should notice her tears, now.

Adagio turned to Sonata. “We need to find a way to undo this curse. There should be an enchanted water-pistol nearby; that’s the weapon that caused this.”

Sonata was about to respond, when someone else entirely responded instead.

“On it,” drawled the wannabe-cowgirl from Shimmer’s gang, establishing her inexplicable presence in the store.

Adagio turned around to discover that all of the Rainbooms were here. Every one of the seven maskless vigilantes that constituted her nemesis’s league of magic suppression stood huddled by the entrance in varying levels of duress.

Shimmer herself, of course, leaned against Dash for support, who herself didn’t look much better than she did at the Shoe Boxer. The prismette kept her head down, and pointedly turned away from the ceiling camera.

Sonata’s friend – Pinkie Pie – was there, as well, putting on a smile for everyone, even through her sniffling. For the life of her, Adagio could swear Pie was a fellow member of the curly-hair club, but she must have taken a hair iron to it all since their last encounter, because now it all fell about her face like a mourning veil.

As to the alicorn Princess whom Shimmer had called in for backup, those five years ago, Twilight Sparkle was… utterly without the confident bearing or dorky suspenders Adagio remembered her having. Her hair was conservatively bunned and she clutched a pair of nerd-ass glasses in her hand so as not to get the lenses wet.

Come to think of it, Adagio recalled that, in this realm, the True Princesses of Equestria were counterfeited into doppelgängers in such vulgar roles as school administrators; perhaps the same could be true of upstarts like Sparkle? Granted, this one looked a bit young to be a principal.

The band’s costumer, Rarity – a mononym, unfortunately, so Adagio couldn’t spitefully refer to her only by her last name – also avoided letting her face be seen, despite how captivatingly wretched she would have looked on the silver screen, herself. Mascara ran down her cheeks, as though she’d just ended a bad relationship with a squid.

Frankly, it was a better look than any of the stage-costumes she made for the Battle of the Bands, back in the day. Every one of those derivative things was ‘inspired’ by some overplayed act on the radio or other. To borrow a word from Aria’s lexicon, the girl was such a normie. She probably listened to The Skarabs every day.

…If the Skarabs hadn’t broken up of their own accord, Adagio would have happily stepped in and done it for them.

Otherwise, there was that talentless hanger-on who was only in the Rainbooms because she was their friend, and perhaps some collective delusion that playing the tambourine constituted pulling her own weight. Fortunately, Fluttershy was a compound mononym. –Shy, true to her name, hid herself behind the largest of the group: Miss Pie, who was presumably also true to her name. Though, periodically, she broke from her cowering to shoot a death-glare at the store clerk peeking over the counter, for some inexplicable reason.

And, lastly, there was Applejack, marching over to the source of all their grief. Her face was clean – no tears, no irritation – but there was an undeniable morosity to the downturn of her gaze and the heaviness of her step.

Heavier still was the tread when she slammed her jack-like boot down on that accursed children’s toy hard enough to send plastic shrapnel flying, every which way, clear across the room.

“My bad,” she stated, realizing what a mess she'd made.

And yet, for all her bad, all at once, the mood of the room lifted. Tears dried up and the shakes-and-gasps all stilled. Pie’s hair ballooned back into its old curly curtain. It was all as though the tethering weeds at the bottom of a deep, dark lake finally slipped its grip off their collective ankles and let them buoy up to the surface.

All except Aria, who still lay shivering under Adagio’s jacket.

But there were more pressing concerns. “Where did all of you come from? Did you just crawl out of the walls like woodlice?”

“Oh, actually,” interjected Sonata, “that was me! I figured you weren't ignoring my texts on purpose this time, so I thought maybe whoever or whatever got Pinkie and” – she pointed her thumb at Shimmer, behind her – “Sushicorn here, got you too.”

“So you decided to assemble all the other Rainbooms to come to our rescue.”

–Jack coughed. “To Sunset’s rescue, at least.” When Rarity lightly elbowed her in the ribs, she added, “But it is a good thing you’re alright, too, Miss Dazzle.”

“Really, even if Sunset didn’t factor into the equation, Sonata did seem quite distressed,” Rarity acknowledged. “It was impossible to say no to the poor dear.”

“And lemme tell you,” Sonata continued, “I had to drive all around town to collect ‘em all, and they were crying the entire time, and we had to get Burger Princess so Pinkie had something to cry into, and that meant getting everyone something. It was such a pain!” She looked at her middle sister on the floor with a snort. “Guess I didn’t need to, though!”

“Quite so…” Adagio fixed a stern gaze on the only other sister still standing. “Sonata, you do understand that, had I been successful in securing the source of this magic for ourselves, you would have brought these brutes straight to me?”

She frowned. “Well, yeah, but I thought we weren’t doing that anymore? ‘Cause we’d get our butts kicked again.”

“Very good. At least one of you listened to me.”

She pumped her fists in the air and grinned like such a precious little doofus. “Woohoo! Do I win a prize?”

“That remains to be determined.” Adagio turned to the Rainbooms, stepping between them and the girl on the floor. “So, you’ve helped put a stop to my sister’s little spree. What are your intentions with her, now? Or, for that matter, with us?”

Half of the Rainbooms opened their mouths, but they all cast their eyes toward Sunset Shimmer and the deep breath she took.

Shimmer stood tall. –Shy and –Jack were both taller, but the former was too afraid of her own body to act the part, and the latter postured herself too humbly to accept it. Both of them lacked the poise and intensity that made Shimmer feel almost like an alicorn among ponies.

There was a fire in her eyes, yes, as she met Adagio’s, but it wasn’t some dim, snuffed-out ember in the ashes like it was before the Battle of the Bands, nor was it the out-of-control blaze she’d heard Shimmer used to be before that. Instead it was the blue ring of flares around a gas-stove burner, steady and focused and ready to be put to productive use.

“We’re not the police, Adagio, and we’re not going to hand you to them, either. We’re going to do what we always do – what we were too slow, too untrusting, and too busy catching our breath to do the first time – and ask you three to be our friends.“

Several members of her group looked uncertain about her claim, but they did not challenge it. She really was their leader.

But the cashier was not among her herd. “Hey, hey, hey, now, I don’t know what this is all about, but that girl” – he pointed at Aria – “shot me with a water gun that had… something in it! That’s assault! I could’ve been drugged, or–”

“Zephyr Hyacinth Breeze,” interrupted –Shy, with a sternness Adagio never could have expected from her, “do you really have to do this right now?”

Adagio took the opportunity to add, “…Knowing that, if video evidence was brought to court, you would be seen having your pants wetted by Aria’s toy and immediately bursting into debilitating tears.”

Breeze put his fingers on his chin. “You know what, maybe it was just water after all. I think I’ll just be…” – he went back below the counter – “…down here.”

“Good boy,” stated Adagio.

–Shy seemed to nod in agreement.

The lead siren crossed her arms and turned to face Shimmer once more. “So. That’s it, then? You just want our friendship? What, precisely, does that entail? Mandatory check-ins? Court-ordered sleepovers?”

Shimmer shook her head. “It’s just an offer. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.” With a sigh, she said, “I really hope you do, though. Just leaving you like we did after the Battle… It’s been weighing on me for years, and the usual way we do this hasn’t been an option, because until now, you’ve all just kept out of trouble – which, hey! That’s a good thing, and we really appreciate it! But it also means that, all this time, I just couldn’t figure out how to make it right.”

“Assuming replacing our bloodstone hearts is out of the question, what’s been stopping you from making this offer of friendship at any point within the past five years? Why only now?”

Shimmer frowned. “Because you would’ve said no,” she stated, completely avoiding the rhetorical trap Adagio set for her.

“I would have, yes.” Adagio half-turned away. “Sonata’s her own mare, and her forgiveness is hers to dole out,” she admitted, “but as to myself… The wound you dealt me may have begun to scar over, but it’s still tender underneath.” She spared a glance to the girl on the floor. “And Aria may well never heal at all. Just because I don’t want war doesn’t mean our peace has to be friendly.”

“It doesn’t have to be unfriendly, either. Maybe–” She stopped herself, and paced a bit, before picking back up. “Maybe you’re right, but maybe the reason you’re not healing is because you’re not treating the wound at all. I know we took a lot from you that we can’t give back – not without letting other people get hurt – but there are other ways we can help.”

“Like what, Shimmer?” Adagio jerked her head back to stare the woman down.

The siren counted ‘one’ on her fingers. “We can get any material possession we want.” At a certain point, their money started making its own money, and they’ve been flush ever since.

A second finger. “We can sing again, almost like we used to.” Voice retraining got them back into singing form – as it were, letting dark magic do the all singing for them left them a bit rusty, but it was nothing irreparable – and vocal processing got them sounding as deliciously evil as the gems used to make them sound, whenever they needed it for one of their darker pieces.

A third finger. “We even have a friend of our own.” Calling their neighbor, Lemon Zest, a friend was exaggerating, but Shimmer didn’t need to know that. “Sonata has even more than just the one.

“So I ask you, Shimmer: what can you possibly offer us?”

“More friends, for starters – but also… do you really not want to go back to Equestria?”

The retort to that first offer died in Adagio’s mouth.

Unflatteringly, it was Sonata who answered that one. “Wait, for realsies? You’d just… let us go back?”

“It’ll have to be supervised, either by me or Princess Twilight herself, but… yeah. It’s something we’ve discussed.”

“Well, shoot, Sushicorn, you’ve got yourself a deal!” She forcibly grabbed Shimmer’s hand and gave it a vigorous shaking, much to the sushi-unicorn’s surprise. “I was probably gonna make up with you jerks eventually, but too late! No take-backsies!” She pumped her fists and did a little shimmying dance. “I’m gonna go swimming in all my favorite rivers, and sing to all my favorite fishies, and eat all my favorite flowers, and–!~”

With her hands over Sonata’s mouth, Adagio wrested control of negotiations from her simple-minded little sister. “You’re forgetting, child, one important thing.”

“Hmph?”

“There is nothing for us there. I’m reliably informed Shoepultlantis isn’t even on the map anymore. Nothing but ruins at the bottom of Lake Michigatlantis, now.” She let Sonata go, satisfied that the pout on her lips would keep her shut up. “The fact of the matter is, all we have anymore is on this side of reality.”

“It doesn’t have to be for good,” claimed Shimmer. “When Mom – I mean, Princess Celestia,” she corrected, and rudely ignored Adagio’s raised brow, “told me that I could pack up and move back to Equestria if I wanted to, I said no for the same reason you did. All my stuff is here. All my friends are here. I make the trip as often as I can, but Pedestria is my home.”

Adagio was silent, for a spell. She didn’t want to admit Shimmer was right, but she did want to see Equestria again, one more time: to feel its currents on her scales – or fur, if she happened to revert back to a hippocampus – and lie among the grasses at the bottom of the lake. She supposed it was on her bucket-list, now that she was expected to kick that very bucket at some point.

She paced from one side of the room to the other, arms crossed, putting on the look that she was deep in thought, when really, she was just procrastinating on giving Shimmer an answer. After all, somepony else had yet to voice her thoughts.

“…Adagio,” the jacket on the floor finally muttered. Any longer, and Adagio would have had to prod her. “You’re waiting on me, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Certainly not,” Adagio lied. “Simply mulling it over.”

“You know what’s gonna–” A loud sniffle could be heard, and Adagio was beginning to regret laying the thing inside-down on Aria’s face. “–gonna happen if you don’t take her up.”

“Oh?”

“I’m gonna have to do this shit again.” She slammed her fist on the floor beside her. “Gonna have to kick their asses all over again – and you won’t help me, so I’ll be all on my own, again – just so I can go home.”

The Rainbooms were collectively tensing up, but they let the sirens keep talking.

“Will you, now?”

“…Adagio,” Aria said – no, begged, but she tried to mask it with a tough voice. “Don’t make me do this again. I–” Another sniffle. “I fuckin’ hate working on my own. Keeping secrets from you two, celebrating my wins alone… It’s the fucking worst. So for fuck’s sake, just make nice like you’re so good at. If I’m gonna die, I’m not gonna–” Here, her voice cracked. “I’m not gonna– I don’t wanna die on this side.”

Adagio solemnly nodded, not that Aria could see.

“Very well. It would seem I’ve been outvoted,” she mused, as though she ever put anything to a vote when she didn’t A: already know both how her sisters would vote; and B: that they’d vote in her favor.

She turned to the leader of the Rainbooms with a subtle, confident smile. “Shimmer– Sunset Shimmer,” she corrected, then, “–Sunset, I hope you know what you’re getting everyone into, letting us into your lives like this. Misfortune follows the three of us like a loyal shark. I’ve lost count of the relationships we’ve ruined. Really, you couldn’t ask for worse friends.”

“These girls couldn’t ask for a worse friend than me, back when they met me.” Six arms found their way to her back, patting or half-hugging or rubbing her shoulder. “And they’re still with me.” Sunset stuck out her hand for a shake. “Do you want to be, too, five more years down the line?”

“Well, if you’re so sure you can handle us… then I, Adagio Dazzle, in my capacity as leader of the Dazzlings, declare hostilities between our bands to be officially over.” Adagio took that hand and gave it a firm but unaggressive shake. “Though, it is such a shame to lose a rival as compelling as you.”

“Well, about–”

Sonata interrupted Sunset to holler, “Hey! You guys hungry?”

The Rainbooms murmured various replies, but Dash – Rainbow, rather – was the loudest to answer, “I just got off work. You have no idea.”

“Then come on! I know this Meskiddan restaurant in town where the tortillas are to frickin’ die for, and they just keep coming! It’s on me! Drinks, too, as long as you don’t puke in my van!”

“…Some of us are still underage,” commented Rarity.

“And I’m 500 or 2,000 years old, so you just let me order ‘em! C’mon!”

Ignoring any other objections, Sonata led the charge past the security line with all of the Rainbooms – with varying degrees of reluctance – in tow.

All of them, that is, except Sunset Shimmer herself. She stayed behind, even as the mall cops themselves determined that the situation was under control and that their work was done here, and as that Breeze fellow warily excused himself to the break room, leaving just the three of them alone in the store.

Sunset walked over to Aria, and Adagio followed in case she tried to pull any mind-reading funny-business.

“So… is there anything we can do for her?”

“Loudly discuss the idea of helping her and then don’t,” answered Adagio. “Best to leave her until she’s ready to get up on her own; she’d just get fussy if we actually tried to comfort her.”

Sunset chuckled. “Sounds kinda like Rainbow.”

The lump on the floor resented that comment, and expressed as much by weakly kicking in the direction of its speaker. Sunset stepped away, unharmed.

“I still wanna do something, though…”

“You can fuck off,” Aria impotently growled. “That’s what you can do. Both of you.”

“Well, well. I think we should listen to the poor dear, Sunset,” agreed Adagio. “Shall we follow your compatriots?”

“Sure, but… could we hang back a bit? I wanted to talk about something with you.”

Adagio was already walking, but slowed her step to walk beside Sunset. “Oh?”

“Yeah, so…” She rubbed the back of her neck in what seemed to be deliberate, telegraphed awkwardness. “Slap me if I’m as off-base as everyone else, but I have been picking up on something that feels like romantic tension from you.”

Adagio raised her hand for violence, but shot a look from her eyes that read, |Keep talking.|

Sunset did not flinch. “And I just wanted to say, if you wanna go on an actual date sometime, I’m down for it.”

She made no effort to protect her cheek as Adagio… lowered her hand. “It seems my legendary allure has claimed another heart.” She pretended to inspect her nails (and then seriously inspected them when she found one of them chipped from her sisterly quarrel). “So you want a do-over; is that it? One where I don’t antagonize you the entire time? What a pity, then, that I’m not interested.” Not in some lovey-dovey courtship with the mare who should have been her nemesis.

“Well, it’s good thing that’s not what I want, either.”

Adagio arced a brow. “Are you trying to reject me after I’ve already rejected you? You should know that that isn’t how this works.”

“That’s not what I’m doing at all, Dazzle. Didn’t you want a rival?” Her voice took on a scorching edge that set all of Adagio’s nerves a-cooking. “I just think it’s been really unfair that you got to rip into me all day without any pushback, all because I was too much of a sadsack to jab you right back. Well, next time, I’m gonna give it back as good as I’m getting it and wipe that smug grin off your beautiful face, you conceited old hag.”

Gone was the steady stove-flame in her eyes. Gone was the low crackle of a fire kept under control. Now, within those warm, black pupils raged a riotous bonfire, as though a stray spark tumbled into some long-dormant kindling deep within her soul.

Despite the sneer on Sunset’s face, she gave a wink. Though it pulled Adagio away from the energy of the moment a bit, it did make it clear that this fire, too, was under control.

“Well, now, Shimmer,” Adagio purred. “Perhaps I might entertain the idea, after all. I should warn you now, however: you may have thought I was letting you have it earlier, but really, I've been holding back, out of the kindness of my heart – what with your condition and all.”

“Is that it?”, Sunset – Shimmer – scoffed. “All you’ve got to say is ‘uh, uh, uh, well I was going easy on you’? That’s nothing.”

Adagio hummed. “I suppose I should also mention, lest it ruin our alliance, that I've never been a particularly loyal lover, and I don’t intend to change. That’s not a dealbreaker, is it?”

The heat cooled down for a moment. “…I’m literally dating more than half of my best friends at any given time, Adagio. That’s not a problem at all.”

There was, admittedly, a hypocritical pang of jealousy, so even though Adagio supposed she wasn’t in a position to be the star around which her collection of playthings orbited anymore, she had to say something. “Half a dozen lovers at your disposal already, and you’re so sure there’s room for me?”

“What I want from you isn’t something they can give me. I love them all to bits, and they love me back, but… I’ve needed a healthy way to let my meaner urges out.”

“I assure you, I’m anything but ‘healthy’. Nevertheless…” She reached into her purse. “Here's my business card, Shimmer. Don't call me until you've come up with some better material. You sound like such a tryhard.”

And then Adagio strutted ahead, the heels on her boots clicking on the tile floor, carrying the last word with her. Part of her wanted very much to stay behind and continue their repartée – it had been ever so long since she’d engaged in such delectable nastiness – but denial was just as important a tool in her arsenal as the common insult. It wouldn’t do to get all that energy out in one go.

What she didn’t expect was for Shimmer to run up, cram her hands into Adagio’s purse, fish something out, stick it in Adagio’s curls, and abscond like some petty thief before Adagio could even piece together what it was she did.

Feeling around with her hand, her fingers pricked on the dull quills of Shimmer’s pufferfish barrette. Taking out her travel-mirror, she decided, after several seconds’ staring, to leave it there.

…And then she looked a little lower on her face, and damn it all, she hoped the blush on her cheeks was gone by the time she made it to the restaurant.

Author's Note

This isn't a redemption story. The sirens aren't ready to apologize yet, even if they have their regrets.
But they don't need to be redeemed to be deserving of kindness, friendship, and the weird kind of love that Sunset wants out of Adagio. Ponies can have little a toxic lesbian situationship, as a treat.

Anyways, now that I've written how the Dazzling sirens formally declared truce with the Rainbooms, I can write about their return to Equestria. According to my timeline, if it's 2019 in Pedestria, it's 2019 in Equestria. Foalbruary 2019 puts us somewhere in the back half of Season 9, so who knows how I fit siren shenanigans into that slump.