//------------------------------// // Chapter 37 // Story: The Siren // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash got through the party only by saying and doing as little as possible. But inside her head, her mind was racing. I suppose Rozetri is where Pinkie Pie gets her powers from, she thought. Twilight would be happy to hear that…if the sight of her didn’t melt her brain. Why am I taking this so well? One of my best friends has a monster for a roommate! Why do I take everything that’s not directly about me so well? Other ponies can’t shut off their ‘emotional brains’ at will. For that matter, what’s wrong with me? Why was Rozetri unable to erase my memories? How was I able to resist Nightmare Moon’s mind magic, and how come I know what monsters are thinking just by looking at them? These were the thoughts that swirled through Rainbow Dash’s brain for the rest of that night. Somehow, she managed to get back to her cloud home without leaving anypony the wiser. And they continued to swirl around her brain as she lay in her bed, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Her last thoughts before dropping into slumber were of the nightmares she had had as a filly. Nightmares that provided an explanation for all of the strange things she had been able to do. ~ ~ ~ A few hours later, Rainbow Dash woke up. It was still the middle of the night. She was floating near the ceiling. But she wasn’t flapping her wings. Rainbow experienced a terrific sinking feeling in her equivalent to a pony stomach. She looked down…to see her unconscious pony body. With a feeling of inevitability, she drifted along the cloud ceiling until she reached her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. What she saw was a pale olive translucent brain—a pony brain this time—with ten long olive-green tentacles dangling below, a large yellow beak, and her own cerise pony eyes. What she saw was herself—her true self. Rainbow Dash said nothing, for she had left her emotions behind in her physical body. She coldly noted her see-through state and speculated that like sirens she appeared to be half-spirit and half-material. She made a note to go to the library the next morning to find out the pony name for her species. She then floated back into the bedroom and lowered herself back into the pony body that she controlled like a puppet. She slept soundly the rest of the night, and it was only with the morning that the screaming began. Fluttershy walked up to the open library door the following morning. A sign stated that the librarian was away for the afternoon on personal business. Fluttershy knew what that business was: Twilight and Spike spending the day in Canterlot. Fluttershy walked into the library, and began to look around. In the reference section in the back she found Rainbow Dash. There was a tall pile of books beside her and she was slowly making her way through one of them. “Ugh!” she groaned. “I know I said I love books now after discovering Daring Do, but I hate reference books!” Then she looked up. “Fluttershy!” she exclaimed, flying in front of the books. “It’s not what it looks like!” Fluttershy raised one confused eyebrow. “Well, no I mean…wait! You can help me!” She raced over and grabbed Fluttershy’s shoulders with her front hooves, pushing her over to the books. “There’s a bedtime story I told you once—one of the ones I learned during the Racing League’s Campout. It was the one with the extinct monster that was accidentally raised from the dead—the floating brain with—” “—Ten dangling tentacles and a big orange beak.” “Yellow actually. Wait, you remember?” “I still have nightmares about it,” Fluttershy said dully. “Oh,” Rainbow said, sinking to the floor and pulling her head in. “I’m sorry. I…something made me think of that story, and I’m trying to look it up. Do you remember what it was called?” “It’s a grepp,” Fluttershy said. “Ah, great!” Rainbow Dash said, giving Fluttershy a brief hug. She turned back to look at the books. “I wonder if it’s in any of these books. I wanna know about the real thing, not the made-up one in the story.” “I can tell you that,” Fluttershy said quietly. “You can?” Rainbow said, turning back around. “Yes. I looked them up to try and get rid of the nightmares. It didn’t help.” Rainbow winced. “Sorry. Again.” “It’s OK,” Fluttershy said softly. “What do you want to know?” “Well, tell me about them. What do they do?” Fluttershy frowned. “They float around at night until one of them is right over the head of a sleeping pony, then the tentacles grab the poor pony’s head and suck all the memories out, leaving the pony with permanent amnesia. The grepp then eats those memories.” “That’s awful.” “Yes,” Fluttershy said with a nod. “They also use those memories to lure other ponies to their doom.” “Because grepps can perfectly imitate any pony’s voice,” said Rainbow, supplying one of her own previously unexplained talents. “That’s right,” said Fluttershy. “Grepps are very hard to stop, because they are not entirely material, and because they are much smarter than the average pony.” Great, Rainbow thought with a roll of her eyes. I’m not even a good grepp. “How do they fly?” “Oh, they are really slow,” said Fluttershy. “That’s the one way the monster book said you can get away from them. If you see one, run, and they will never catch up.” That actually made Rainbow smile. So my speed is me. I wasn’t born with it. I got this way because I trained my tail off. The smile dropped off of her face. But now that I know for sure… “Fluttershy, I have to leave.” She flew out of the library, with Fluttershy following. “Oh, are you going to see your family?” Fluttershy asked. Rainbow looked mournfully behind her. “No, I’m leaving forever.” She turned forward and started flying faster, hoping to outrun the other pegasus. “I found out something horrible about myself, and now I have to go, before the Apples find out.” “Before the…what is that supposed to mean?” Rainbow looked back and was surprised to see that Fluttershy was keeping up. “I’m awful, Fluttershy. And I don’t deserve to be around regular ponies.” She had reached the door of her cloud house, and reached out a hoof to open it for the last time. A surprisingly strong hoof reached out to stop her. “What is that supposed to mean?” Fluttershy demanded. Yes, demanded. Rainbow was so shocked by this action that she said the first thing to pop into her mouth. “I’m a monster, Fluttershy.” “OK,” said Fluttershy. “‘OK’? ‘OK’?! Did you hear what I said? I’m a grepp, Fluttershy! A grepp that’s inside a pony body!” “OK,” Fluttershy said, sitting down on the cloud. “When did this happen?” “When I was born, I guess?” Rainbow said, growing more agitated. “Do your parents know?” “No! No, I don’t think they could keep a secret like this.” Fluttershy nodded in understanding. “So, one of them was like you, and didn’t know it. The same thing for one of their parents, and their parents, and so on back to some clever grepp who first figured out how to do it before their kind went extinct.” “Yeah, I guess so,” an emotionless Rainbow said, before she turned her emotional brain back on. “Now wait a second! How can you be so calm? Why don’t you hate me?!” In a flash, Fluttershy had grabbed Rainbow’s head and pulled it against her chest and started slowly caressing it. “There, there,” she said soothingly. “It’s alright. You’re not a monster. Not really. You haven’t eaten anypony’s memories, have you?” “Never!” Rainbow declared, her voice muffled by chest fluff. “There, see? You’re a pony at heart, regardless of what you might really look like. Your friendship with us is real, and so is your cutie mark.” “Wait,” Rainbow Dash said, pulling her head out of Fluttershy’s grip. “I need to check.” She looked around her to see if any pegasi were watching them, then walked into her house. Fluttershy followed her, into the house and up the stairs to her bathroom. Rainbow looked back. “Are you sure you want to see this?” she asked. Fluttershy paused for a moment, then firmly nodded her head. Rainbow Dash floated up out of her pony body. Fluttershy started shaking, her eyes firmly on Rainbow’s grepp form. Rainbow’s second pair of eyes put on a troubled expression, then quickly turned to get a look at its side in the mirror. Sure enough, the lightning-and-cloud cutie mark was emblazoned on the rear sides of the floating brain. Rainbow returned to her body and turned fearfully to face Fluttershy. Fluttershy closed her eyes and took in several deep breaths. Slowly, she calmed down. “W…well?” Rainbow asked. She herself started trembling in fear of what was about to happen. Fluttershy opened her eyes and looked directly into Rainbow’s own. “You’re just as nightmare-inducing as the other grepps,” she said. “But…I’m not afraid of you. Because you’re my best friend.” She put on a warm smile. “Still?” “Especially,” Fluttershy said, her smile growing. “I now know you better than ever, so I know more than ever how wonderful a pony you are.” Rainbow shook her head incredulously. “How can you say that?” she repeated, looking down at the floor. Fluttershy reached out a hoof to raise Rainbow’s head. “Because I’m a monster too,” she said. She stopped and blinked a couple of times. “Wow. I thought it would be a lot harder to admit it than that,” she said to herself. Rainbow frowned. “Wait, you’re a ‘monster’…do you mean that thing about not understanding other ponies?” “No,” Fluttershy said somewhat firmly. “I’m a monster…like you. Do you remember after the Rainboom, how I hid in my Ponyville house and wouldn’t let anypony see me?” “Yeah,” said Rainbow slowly. “I thought it was because you were traumatized by everything that happened to you.” “I was traumatized,” Fluttershy said. “Because your rainboom made my true form come out. I’m a gainsayer.” Rainbow Dash shrugged in ignorance. “It’s kind of like a decaying corpse of a pony, but with back-tentacles gripping the aether for wings, claws instead of hooves, and these really creepy eyes,” said Fluttershy, looking down at the cloud floor. “I wrote a letter to Mother, and she came out with a birthing unicorn. The reason why Dad disappeared before I was born—” “—Is it because he was one of those things?” Fluttershy opened her mouth, then chose to nod instead. She waited a bit before continuing. “Did you ever wonder what birthing unicorns do? Well, it turns out that most ponies are not born looking nearly identical to every other pony. Birthing unicorns have one spell in common that they cast on a foal when the parents don’t like what she looks like: the hereditary illusion spell. It’s…well, I guess Twilight would know better than me, but it’s kind of an illusion, and kind of a transformation. And the foal ends up a perfect little pony…just like everypony else.” Fluttershy turned her head to look out the tiny window of the bathroom. “Mom paid this birthing unicorn extra, to make me look like a pony instead of a gainsayer. And your rainboom caused it to start failing. “I had a lot of time in that house to look at myself in the mirror, Rainbow.” She turned to look her friend in the eye. “I saw my new cutie mark on that awful corpse flank. And I saw how my animal friends stayed with me. And I had Mom to tell me what I’m telling you—that you’re exactly the same pony you’ve been this whole time, just in a body that you don’t want. …The grepp body, not the pony one. “Dad wanted to be a pony. More than anything in the world. And his fondest dream for me was to be the pony that he could not. So…that’s what I did. “I can’t turn that spell off, Rainbow. If I could, I’d show you what I look like, what I really look like. So, you’d know that you’re not alone. Anyway, that’s—” Fluttershy wasn’t able to finish her sentence, because she was enveloped in a fierce hug by Rainbow Dash. “Thank you,” Rainbow said quietly around more of Fluttershy’s fluff. “Thank you, thank you. I didn’t want to go away.” She lifted her head to look at Fluttershy. “But now I’m scared of the Apples.” “Don’t be,” said Fluttershy. “I never told them the truth, but there’s no way that they don’t know. You know how I am with secrets.” “You kept this one pretty well from me.” Fluttershy smirked. “Face it, Rainbow: this isn’t the sort of thing you’d be able to figure out on your own.” “No, I suppose not,” Rainbow said simply. She sighed as she sat down, pulling Fluttershy down beside her. “So that’s two more secrets I have to keep from the others.” “Oh, do you have more?” Fluttershy asked, before catching herself. “Oh, wait. No, don’t tell me. You wouldn’t be a good friend if you told everypony their secrets.” Rainbow nodded sadly. “That’s right.”