Aria’s eyes snapped open as cold water poured over her, gasping as she sat bolt upright in bed.
“Wakey wakey!” grinned Sonata, making no move to hide the bucket in her hooves. “Eggs and toast!”
Normally her sister’s butchering a rhyme that even a three year-old could have gotten right would have set Aria’s teeth on edge. But at the moment she barely registered Sonata’s presence. Her brain was too busy trying to process how her sudden rise into a sitting position had left the room spinning, making everything lurch in a nauseating manner. The only distraction from the disorientation was the pounding pain in her head, drawing an agonized moan from her lips as she gingerly put her hands-, no, her hooves to her head in an effort to make the hurting stop. “Wha…” The sound of her own voice was comforting, though it didn’t help with the pain, and she licked her lips before trying again. “Where…?”
“You’re in one of the guest rooms in River’s mansion,” answered Sonata, the smirk audible in her voice. “And it was totes hard to find, let me tell y-”
“Loud!” rasped Aria, her voice wracked with misery as she squeezed her eyes shut. “Too loud!” She moved her hooves over to the sides of her head, only to feel around in confusion when she couldn’t find anything there. A second later she remembered again that she was a pony now, and moved them upward to the top of her head where her ears had already flattened, pressing them down further to try and block out the agony that was her sister’s voice.
“WHAT WAS THAT?” bellowed Sonata, her smile making it clear that she knew exactly what she was doing. “YOU HAVE TO SPEAK UP! I TOTES CAN’T HEAR YOU IF YOU MUMBLE!”
The pain spiked so hard that Aria’s eyes opened wide as she spasmed, the motion sending her tumbling from the bed. Landing heavily on the floor, she felt her stomach give a dangerous lurch, causing her to look around the room wildly. Spotting an open door beyond which a tiled floor was visible, she crawled toward it, barely managing to make it inside and reach the toilet before she began heaving her guts out. It was only after she’d completely emptied her stomach – retching several times with nothing to show for it in confirmation that there was nothing left for her to disgorge – that the nausea finally settled down to bearable levels. Groaning in misery, she managed to flush the consequences of her overindulgence away before hauling herself over to the sink, rinsing her mouth out several times before gulping down the water in large swallows. Her stomach gurgled unhappily at being refilled so quickly, and she forced herself to drink slower, knowing that the water would help.
It was only after she’d forced herself to guzzle enough water that she felt vaguely bloated that she turned to the medicine cabinet, sending a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening that there’d be some painkillers there. But apparently no one heard her, the shelves being completely bare and earning a weak curse from Aria as she closed the cabinet. Settling for splashing some water on her face, she turned around and trudged back to the bedroom, giving Sonata a withering look as she crawled onto the part of the bed that hadn’t been soaked by her sister’s rude awakening. “Go away,” she spat miserably.
Sonata’s response was a snort. “After how long it took me to find this place? No way! It even got all dark and creepy outside when I started getting close! I’m amazed there wasn’t a moat around the door, one filled with robots, or tigers, or robot tigers! I bet that they’d roar and shoot missiles out of their mouths and-”
“Go away now,” growled Aria, covering her ears again, “or I swear I’ll use my magic-”
“-like you did on Celestia?” interrupted Sonata, giving Aria a pointed look.
For a moment Aria didn’t respond, her anger turning into bitterness as she was reminded why she’d come here in the first place. “That’s right,” she finally spat, her voice turning petulant.
Sonata’s amusement died away at her sister’s admission of what she’d done. “Aria…”
“Don’t even start with me, Sonata. I don’t want to hear it right now.”
But Sonata ignored her warning. “Do you have, like, any idea what just happened because you did that?”
The upset tone in her sister’s voice made Aria’s lip curl in a sneer. “Let me guess. Those two principals or whatever they are decide that Lex was too awful for them to want to work with? Maybe a fight broke out and they beat the stuffing out of him?”
“Yes!” huffed Sonata. “Well, except for the stuffing part. Lex totes kicked their butts, but he went overboard doing it, and-, you know what? Nevermind. The point is that we’re gonna go find Celestia, like, right now and you’re gonna undo that spell you put on her!”
Aria’s sneer morphed into a full-blown scowl then. “Make me.”
Sonata rose to all fours, stomping a hoof. “You think I can’t?”
“I know you can’t.” Her voice filled with scorn, Aria raised a hoof to point at Sonata threateningly. “I have more magic than you now, remember? You’re still stuck with enchantments and sound-magic, while I can do all that and use those other spells I learned while I was trapped with the sahuagin. So if we fight, I win.”
Sonata narrowed her eyes. “Oh I really don’t think so.”
“You don’t think at all,” shot back Aria, managing to give a mocking snicker despite how horrible she still felt. “If that spell I put on Princess Wavy-Hair hasn’t worn off by now, then it’s about to.”
“Huh?” Her angry expression falling away in favor of a look of surprise, Sonata blinked. “What does that mean?”
Aria took a long moment to roll her eyes at how stupid her sister was. “I used an enchantment on that pony princess to make her think that Lex wasn’t trustworthy,” she said, making sure to say each word slowly in order to make it clear how little she thought of Sonata’s intelligence. “When’s the last time any of our enchantments ever lasted longer than a few hours? Even when we met their human counterparts during the Battle of the Bands back on Earth, we needed to refresh the spell every so often, remember?”
Frowning, Sonata tilted her head. “Oh yeah…” she said at last. “We did do that a couple of times, didn’t we?”
Aria shook her head in exasperation, only to stop with a grimace when it threatened to make the room spin again. “No kidding, you dimwit. I cast that spell on her when I ran into her here a little while ago, and now it’s…” Pausing as she realized that there was no clock in the room, Aria eventually decided she didn’t care. “And now it’s later, so it’ll expire on its own if it hasn’t already.”
Her brow furrowing as she thought that through, Sonata shook her head. “Hang on. Doesn’t that mean that she won’t know she was enchanted if we don’t tell her?”
“Probably,” shrugged Aria. “She seemed somewhat suspicious of Lex already, so I doubt she’ll wonder why she suddenly didn’t trust him at all. So?”
“So that means that she’ll totes think those were her own thoughts even after the spell ends,” snapped Sonata with an angry huff. “She’ll still keep thinking Lex isn’t trustworthy, especially after what happened!”
Aria managed another mocking laugh, getting comfortable at the foot of the bed. “I’m a little curious now, what did happen? You said he fought those two, won, and went overboard doing it?” The corners of her lips curled up in a leer. “Did he make them put on a little ‘show’ for him in front of everyone? One where he got in on the action too?”
A confused look crossed Sonata’s face. “What, you mean like a concert? Because Lex doesn’t sing.”
Aria couldn’t even come up with a response, just giving Sonata a nonplussed look.
“What?” asked Sonata, clearly confused. “He doesn’t.”
“Just tell me what happened,” sighed Aria disgustedly.
Huffing, Sonata quickly recapped what Lex had told her, along with her brief encounter with the alicorn princess in the hallway a few minutes ago. “…and Celestia seems, like, super upset about the whole thing, even though it was kinda her and her sister’s fault, except I guess not her because you put the whammy on her, but her sister and that Silhouette jerk still totes got what they deserved.”
Aria shrugged, not impressed with what Lex had done. So he’d chopped the wings off of one of those princesses. It’s not like he took away her voice, she thought bitterly. But she managed to keep that thought from showing on her face. “Great, whatever, so what’re you bothering me for if they all got what was coming to them?”
Sonata’s answer came immediately. “Duh. You’ve gotta go take that spell off of Celestia so that she’ll know that Luna and Silhouette got what they deserved! That way, she won’t think that Lex is a bad guy, and everypony wins! Well, everypony who deserves to, I mean.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Aria didn’t bother looking at Sonata as she spoke, instead reaching a hoof out to touch her pillow. Grimacing as she felt that it was still wet, she turned it over, sighing when she felt that the bottom was damp too. “Those princesses are already gone.”
“What?!” Sonata was ready dash out the door, but managed to catch herself, biting her lip as she realized that if she left now she might not be able to find her way back here again. “No way! I was just talking to them!”
“You talked to them while they were leaving here, right? Where exactly do you think they were going?”
“T-to apologize to Lex,” stammered Sonata. She’d just assumed at the time that Celestia had been taking Luna along because she was hoping that Lex would fix her the way he’d fixed River when she’d apologized, and the guards and doctors were tagging along because they were worried. But looking back, Celestia hadn’t said anything of the sort, and had gotten angry when Sonata had mentioned that idea…
Aria had already come to the same conclusion. “You really think she’d apologize to him while she’s under a spell that makes her think he’s not trustworthy?”
“But…but…”
“They’re gone,” stated Aria flatly. Normally she’d have smirked while driving the point home, but for some reason her heart wasn’t in it anymore. Lying down, she turned so her back was to Sonata. “You saw them getting ready to run back to wherever it is they came from, and now they’re already on the move.”
“So that’s it then?” Sonata’s voice was incredulous. “They’ve, like, already left, and now Celestia’s going to think that she made up her own mind that Lex is a bad guy?” Her bottom sank back to the floor as she sat down. Celestia and Luna weren’t what she’d call tough, but she knew that a lot of ponies listened to them, and if they went around telling everyone that Lex was a some sort of monster… “This is awful.”
“Oh don’t act like you’re not happy about this,” snorted Aria, still facing the wall. “It’s exactly what you wanted.”
Completely flabbergasted, Sonata could only stare at her sister. “Say what now?”
“Now you get to run back to Lex and tell him what your worser-than-worst sister did.” Curling into the fetal position, Aria’s voice was subdued as she spoke. “When he finds out about this, he probably won’t stop at just taking away my voice. He’ll probably turn me back into how I was and throw me back in the ocean at the very least. Or maybe he’ll banish me to some other world instead. Then you just have to scare off blondie and you can have him all to yourself again, just like you wanted.” She gave a hollow laugh at that. “You’re welcome.”
Sonata was silent for a long moment, thinking that over. She’s probably right, she realized. Lex hates it when we enchant anyone without his say-so, let alone to make a fight happen. And he definitely wouldn’t pull his punches where Aria’s punishment was concerned. The thought made Sonata bite her lip as she looked at where her sister was curled up on the bed, the picture of misery.
After a long moment, she let out a sigh. “No.”
For a moment Aria didn’t say anything, but after a second she turned just enough to glance back over her shoulder. “What do you mean no?”
“I mean no.” Meeting Aria’s gaze directly, Sonata gave her a small but genuine smile. “I won’t tell Lex what you did.”