...Nothing's Changed At All?
Dating a celebrity, it turned out, was like signing a contract. Sunset’s decision to date Rara--and Rara’s decision to date her in turn--was very much an impulsive one, though not one without its logic. For the last month, the two of them had stayed in the music room together after school for at least two hours a day, and only separated when Rara had some kind of event afterwards. Photo shoots, interviews, volunteer hours at the animal shelter. Not all of Rara’s activities were defined by her celebrity status, but to Sunset, they might as well have been.
There was Rara the person, the siren, and Rara the brand. Over the past month, Sunset had gotten to know the former so much that the latter almost seemed to fade away unless someone else brought it up. The rules they had to follow to make sure no one brought that other side up were simple, yet far more strict than anything the average high school student could probably fathom.
Rule #1: Sunset would stay out of the public eye and wouldn’t attend any events a regular high school student would be turned away from--i.e. movie screenings, recordings, or anything that would draw any suspicion.
Rule #2: They could go out on dates together as girlfriends, but Rara would have to disguise herself so people couldn’t figure out who she was. Sunglasses, a different hairstyle, “what basically every star has to do to keep themselves from being seen in public.”
Rule #3: No public displays of affection unless at least one party wears a disguise. This included school, to Sunset’s dismay, and meant that the dreams she’d always had of kissing someone in the hall before class would have to stay just that--dreams.
Rule #4: People could know that Sunset Shimmer and Coloratura knew each other, or even that they were good friends, but they could never know that they were together.
“You’re involved with one of those record companies, huh?” Sunset had asked a week or so after Rara brought the rules up. As strange as these requirements were, Sunset had heard enough gossip about foreign idols to know exactly what Rara was getting at without her actually saying it. For how little she knew about idols in her country, they could still have those sorts of rules.
“What record companies? I don’t understand.”
“You know, that whole love ban shit. Guys can’t fathom the idea of not being able to take you home with them, so you have to suffer for their fantasies. Except you’re kind of a rebel under that dorky exterior and figure you’ll just tell the company to screw themselves if they ever find out about us. I’m all for sticking it to those sexists.”
For the slightest of seconds, Rara’s face flashed to an unreadable expression, one that Sunset had grown all too acquainted with. From what little she’d been able to deduce, it always seemed to show up whenever she was deep in thought or whenever a memory came to her--but even that was just speculation. Rara might have been an enigma, but to Sunset, she was the best kind. A multi-layered puzzle that just made Sunset’s love for her grow stronger and stronger every time a new layer was unveiled.
“I think you’ve been hanging out with Pinkie so much, you’re beginning to think like her,” Rara said, gently poking Sunset’s nose as she did so.
“That’s terrifying,” Sunset quipped straight back. “Probably the scariest thing anyone could ever tell me.”
“You know what I mean. I haven’t hung out with you guys much, but it seems like she’s listening to a new K-Pop band every time I see her. Idols on this side of the ocean don’t really have to go through any of that love ban stuff. I just…”
Rara clasped her hands together, one of her nervous tics that never seemed to happen on TV. Before, Sunset swore this girl had a completely persona on stage, but as she watched her now-girlfriend’s interviews back, she could see that Rara often hid her hands from the cameras. There were times, wonderful times, when Rara the siren and Rara the brand were one and the same.
“I’m concerned for you, Sunset. The other students still aren’t quite used to me, and they hated you so much before...I don’t want anything like that to happen with us. People aren’t always the kindest to celebrities’ lovers, especially if they aren’t famous.”
“You think I’ll be the school’s Yoko Ono if people find out you’re dating?”
“I wouldn’t have put it in those blunt of words, and I probably would have used a different reference. But that old soul rocker in you is too cute for me to disagree with.”
Rara chuckled a little, a real chuckle that sounded completely unlike any of the laughter she’d had to rehearse, and took a deep breath before going on further.
“I know this isn’t fair to you, but it just has to be for a little while. Until everyone gets used to me, okay?”
In any other situation, this wouldn’t have been fair, but Sunset knew what she’d been getting into when she confessed her love. Rara was a star who valued her privacy, and if she valued Sunset’s too, then that could only mean good things. Besides, from the tabloid articles she’d studied before she got into this relationship, there were certainly worse things a celebrity could do with a rando like her.
“Okay,” Sunset replied, giving Rara’s hand a small squeeze.
****
The next time the rules were about to come up, a more pressing concern came to Sunset’s attention. They’d been together for two months, never thought to question the rules that formed their whole lives. But Sunset still questioned Rara’s siren nature. Coming from the girl who’d wanted to analyze everything about her friends’ magic just under a year ago, it was only natural.
“Tell me about what you were gonna say yesterday, before you got that phone call and had to leave in a hurry. How did your parents teach you to control your magic?”
For a minute, Sunset worried that Rara would misunderstand her, think she was intentionally trying to change the subject, but instead, she just went on seamlessly into the next topic.
“Right. The problem is, there isn’t really a tried-and-true way for sirens to control their magic. It’s one thing if you’re like the Dazzlings, sirens with hate in their blood, but most of my kind’s specialities were in lust, mind control, that sort of thing. It’s easy to make someone lust after a siren, but a little harder to make them fall in love. And when you’re in my field, both are easy to induce even as a human. As a siren--”
Suddenly, Rara froze up, flinching even from Sunset’s touch. She’d had a few flareups like this from time to time, when someone touched her without warning, but Sunset never seemed to set them off. Sunset had always figured it was some sort of survival instinct for idols, to keep creeps from touching them too much, but her new psych class that semester was starting to challenge that theory, bring up all sorts of questions she could never ask this early in a relationship.
Who hurt you? Are you getting help? Is that why you came to CHS?
And then, another set of letters would always come to her mind.
Do you have PTSD?
By the time Sunset reflected on it hard enough, Rara’s flareup had already stopped, and her voice was moving a mile a minute again.
“In my grandparents’ days, no one really wanted to suppress it. It was how we survived as long as we did in Equestria. So my parents had to improvise a little with me, try to keep me from controlling people using the only method they knew. It was kinda like, you know, ‘conceal don’t feel.’”
Sunset wasn’t sure if her mind latched onto that reference because she wanted to take her mind off the grave situation, or because she didn’t want to hurt Rara more than she already had. But nevertheless, it spotted a moment for some prime romantic teasing.
“Seriously? That movie?”
“I know you can be an insufferable hipster sometimes, but I happen to like Frozen,” Rara retorted. That was one of Sunset’s favorite things about her--she didn’t look it, but she definitely knew how to tease right back. “It’s one of my favorites, actually.”
“It’s cool. You just don’t really seem like the type who goes out and sees movies like that. I mean, what teen idol has the time to see all the newest cartoons?”
“One, Frozen’s been out for years. Two, I was at the premiere, so I know I saw it before you did. Three, the company wanted to cast me as Elsa, but my manager wouldn’t let me audition.”
Rara simply shrugged with that all-too-common resigned look on her face, the same one she always had whenever she brought up Svengallop. She’d fired him six months ago, to almost no media fanfare, and every once in awhile, she still felt the need to rant about him. She didn’t exactly have the chance to at her old agency, where he’d felt the need to micromanage everything from her music to her look. At this point, Sunset had given up on understanding Svengallop’s logic about anything--any reasonable person would have been able to see that Rara was better without all of his unnecessary changes.
“Okay, okay, you got me,” Sunset conceded. “But I’m not sure the Elsa thing is the best example. You seem pretty good at controlling your powers, and you sure haven’t let them flare up lately.”
“You don’t know that,” said Rara, clutching her hands tightly again.
“I know what a siren spell looks like. And the only spell you’ve cast at CHS is making everyone want to be your friend.”
“Not at CHS. At my old agency. There was someone I liked there. I--I thought I could use my magic to make him like me back, and...I can’t do this, Sunset.”
Instead of a flareup, Rara looked like she was about to break out in tears. Hell, she looked like she was about to break, period.
“Can’t do what?”
“Any of this. I can’t talk about it, even with you. I can tell you I liked Svengallop, but I can’t tell you what happened after. How my magic backfired. What happened as a result. All I can tell you is...I twisted him beyond recognition. That was what he told me when I fired him.”
Rara was about to leave the room, running away from the entire situation, when Sunset connected the dots.
Idols didn’t just leave their managers because of a few bad business decisions.
Idols didn’t attend regular schools just to get away from it all.
If an idol recoiled at someone’s touch, there was a damn good reason. Or, for those unlucky few, several reasons.
“Back up, Rara,” Sunset whispered, a slight growl edging her voice. “Are you telling me your manager did that to you? I swear to Faust, if he ever tried to get in your pants--”
“Not tried,” Rara barely managed to utter. “Did. Several times. With other girls. Never...before I used my magic on him.”
All Sunset could do was curse under her breath and watch as everything seemed to make sense, from Rara’s trepidation towards her powers to the way she’d always seemed to build walls between them. Sunset had often considered what she would do if she found out one of her friends had been assaulted--wished she didn’t have to think about such things, but the world she’d walked into was too fucked up not to plan for it. But in the moment, all that came to her was blind rage--not just towards the perpetrator for being the sort of pedo manager that gave every other manager a bad name, but towards her girlfriend for victim-blaming the worst person she possibly could.
Herself.
“Don’t tell me your magic had anything to do with it!” Sunset screamed, halfway to tears. “Do you honestly think he was some moral beacon before you messed with him? Well, newsflash: you didn’t! You’ve told me before that siren songs bring someone’s darkest desires to light. Well, doesn’t that just mean he was always fucked in the head? Are these really your thoughts, or is this just some bullshit he told you so you wouldn’t report him to the cops?!”
As soon as she noticed that her tone was only making Rara tremble more, she lowered it, tried not to explode again. Even as everything around her--her heart, Rara’s tears, the storm approaching just outside their window--seemed to explode in her absence.
“I never told him I was a siren,” croaked Rara. “Only you.”
“Then that doesn’t matter,” said Sunset, wrapping her girlfriend up in her arms. “I know it’s hard to believe such things, especially when he treated you so kindly before. He probably wanted you to lower your guard, or make you think you’ve twisted him when it’s really the opposite. It’ll be a process, but eventually, you have to believe that you didn’t bring this on yourself.
“Magic has limits, Rara. No matter how powerful it is, it can’t change someone’s heart. If you’re ever worried about doing the same to me, remember that. There’s no way someone as great as you could ever corrupt me.”
She reached out towards Rara, waiting for the permission she needed to hold the traumatized girl close to her heart. Whether it was because of the sound of the physical storm, or because she needed shelter from tempests of the brain, Rara snuggled close to Sunset and sank into her girlfriend’s warm touch.
****
By then, both had assumed that everyone had left the building, and the sound of the thunder drowned out any footsteps they could have heard.
“Look at you two lovebirds,” Applejack said as she approached the music room, without a single hint of malice in her voice. “Can’t believe it’s your six-month anniversary already.”
Rara had already begun to nod off, too worn out from the confessions and the rain to even fathom staying awake. But Sunset’s gears began to turn even faster than before. Applejack may have been Rara’s best friend, but to her knowledge, there was no way she could have known about the two of them...could she?
“Ah, c’mon, don’t act so surprised, sugarcube. We could all see it at the lake house last summer. You and Rara were onto each other like bees to honey.”
Either this was some elaborate prank, or Sunset’s world was about to be turned on its end.
“I--I’ve never been to the lake,” Sunset tried to say. “We’ve only been together two months. I’d never met her before she came to CHS, honest.”
Applejack gave her the usual skeptical Apple look before letting out a long sigh and coming to a startling realization. One that was probably just as startling to Applejack as it was to Sunset herself.
“Do you remember anything from last summer?”
Sunset tried to bring back a memory, any memory, but still came up short. Such a thing had to be impossible, she told herself, figuring it had just been the kind of lazy summer where every day effortlessly flowed into another. That was what people tended to mean when they said they couldn’t remember their summer, after all.
But Sunset had to remember at least some things. Cheerilee had wanted her class to read another classic book over the summer, one about a misunderstood monster and the man who had brought him to life. Sunset had seen some of the movies about this monster and remembered really enjoying the book, but she’d only started reading it two weeks before school started. She never waited that long to finish any school project, swore she’d already read it before, but didn’t remember anything about it as she combed through the pages. At the time, she figured she’d just read it so early in the summer that she’d already forgotten it.
But now, as she similarly combed over her summer with no real results, all she could do was shake her head in shock.
“Then c’mon,” Applejack said, taking her hand and jerking Sunset from her seat. Away from Rara, and towards the raging storm. “We’re going Memory Stone hunting. If that bugger left any fragments, and if it’s still locked onto your magic signature--”
Sunset didn’t even want to consider the rest.
****
The rest, it turned out, fell into place like clockwork over the past few days. Sure enough, a small fragment of the Memory Stone was still in the parking lot, and while Sunset was relieved to find what she was looking for in such terrible weather, she was also frightened at the implications it brought. She hadn’t had to deal with that thing since last semester, so surely all the rains before then had to have lodged it deep into the ground, underneath layer after layer of dirt and mud. Yet when she and Applejack found it, it was only barely touched by earth--meaning someone had to have used it recently.
But who?
If Sunset were a real detective, she would have been able to solve that question by dusting it for fingerprints, or taking it to some lab or another. But the shard was so small, Sunset doubted any fingerprints would even show up. Unfortunately, no one on her team of quasi-magical girls had an ability that could trace it back to a particular person, and the one person Sunset would have suspected most had a solid alibi.
Wallflower Blush had pretty much stayed out of her life for the whole school year, figuring that as much as she had reformed, she would never quite feel comfortable befriending Sunset. Sunset respected that and kept her distance, allowing the once shy girl to make her own friends. But if Wallflower didn’t do it, and only a select handful of CHS students even knew about it, then who could have wiped her memory?
Sunset had always heard that in situations like this, there were three things to consider--means, motive, and opportunity. Everyone at CHS could, hypothetically, stumble upon this broken stone and summon just enough magic to use it. It worked instantly, so there wasn’t any real opportunity that needed to arise in this situation. But for there to be a real motive, someone other than Applejack had to have known about her and Rara.
It was easier to go through the details of this case than it was for Sunset to consider the implications of them. Just imagining months of her life ripped away from her, unable to ever be returned, scared her to the bone. Somehow, all this had gotten to be even more horrifying than her last run-in with the Memory Stone, if such a thing was even possible.
Only one person seemed to line up with Sunset’s suspicions, and that was the scariest part of it all. Even in a criminal investigation, the victim’s lover was always suspect--was more often than not the perpetrator.
There’s no way. It makes absolutely no sense, the good cop on Sunset’s shoulder told her.
Rara’s the only one who knows, the bad cop responded in turn.
Days passed, and Sunset still couldn’t bring herself to confront Rara over this--though not for a lack of trying. Rara had been absent for days, and even though she was the prime suspect, Sunset couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for her. This was someone who’d poured her heart out to her about the worst thing that could happen to a girl, pushed herself to a point where she couldn’t even bring herself to go to school the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after.
Magic has limits. No matter how powerful it is, it can’t change someone’s heart.
If Rara did this, she had to have a good reason for it.
And so, Sunset waited on until the day she returned.
****
Sunset couldn’t say for sure how long it took Rara to come back to school--three, four, five days--but when she did, she summoned her into the music room much as Rara had once done for her.
“Does this look familiar at all to you?” she asked Rara as she held out the Memory Stone. Sunset forced herself to keep a level tone, even though every lead she had at this point seemed to point to her girlfriend.
Fear instantly seemed to pulse through Rara’s body, and she stiffened up in shock. As much as Sunset hated to admit it, she knew the look of guilt when she saw it.
“Y--yeah. I found it in the parking lot not long after I came here. What is it? I doubt it’s just some shard of glass.”
She could be covering for someone else, Sunset thought to herself. There’s still a chance. There always will be.
“It’s part of something called the Memory Stone, a magical artifact one of the students found last year,” explained Sunset. “Like the name suggests, it can remove memories of anyone the caster chooses, and after a certain amount of time, you can never get them back. Last year, someone used this to make my friends forget me, and the days I spent fighting it were some of the worst ones I ever lived. I--I thought it’d been destroyed, but after finding this...I just don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Sunset let out a single, sorrowful sigh and leaned up against a table, as if that was the only thing that could keep her steady in a time like this.
“I don’t even know if I can trust you.”
The next wave of shock hit Rara this time, more rehearsed, more subtle. Her eyes seemed to dilate, but she showed little emotion other than that. Sunset was tempted to touch her, to see into her thoughts, but she figured that after everything the girl had been through, going into her mind would be a new level of invasive.
“Why not? Sunset, what happened with this stone? How did you find it?”
“It’s funny,” replied Sunset, not finding it funny at all. “Applejack came by last time we were together, while you were asleep. She knew about us, but she thought we’d been dating for longer than we had. She swore we had this fling at a lake last summer, and when I couldn’t remember it, or anything else...I went looking for this stone. And here I find it, clearly used by someone. Someone who knows about us.”
Rara just shook her head at the revelation, taking a seat next to Sunset but nevertheless keeping her distance.
If things kept going at this rate, Sunset might never hold Rara in her arms again. Or worse, she would, and she wouldn’t even remember it in a few months.
“That’s impossible,” Rara said. “If someone knew about us, it would’ve all over the school by now.”
“That’s exactly what I thought, too. Which can only mean one thing. The minute you asked what I was holding, I knew you were hiding something. Because I already told you about the Memory Stone, and where it exploded.”
In that moment, every single one of Rara’s rehearsed motions broke. She flinched right where she sat, and froze in place.
“I--It’s not what you think, Sunset!”
“That would mean something if I knew what to think right now. But I don’t want to hate you for this. I know you have a good reason, so if you could just open up and tell me why you sealed all our memories away--”
“I did it for your own protection,” Rara interrupted. “I appreciate what you told me before, but there’s no way of knowing if it’s true. If my magic can corrupt people, then I thought maybe this stone could save them. I’d heard rumors about it and the things it could do, so I searched for it a couple of days before I transferred. I sang to you when the trip ended, so you wouldn’t remember meeting me, but ever since, I kept wondering if it was enough. But sure enough, after using my songs and the stone, you only recognized me from TV. Part of me almost wishes it could have stayed that way.”
Rara’s head sagged down on her shoulders, as if she was collapsing from all the pressure the world had brought upon her. But, as Sunset was starting to realize, even though her career had been nothing but hell, at least part of that pressure was self-induced.
“Why can’t it?” Sunset asked. “If you went to all this effort to make sure I didn’t remember you, then why did you approach me again.”
“It was a split-second decision, done purely on instinct. I regretted it the minute I did it, and I thought maybe...if I kept concealing my darker side, then maybe we could start over. We could have a life together.”
“Well, we won’t be having one now.”
Sunset hadn’t expected that last sentence to come out as harshly as it did, but it flowed out anyway. Part of her had almost expected that Rara would anticipate this reaction, but tears still seemed to flow from her girlfriend’s face.
“You said it before, at the lake,” Rara whispered. “You came in contact with a magical artifact and corrupted yourself. You spent months terrified about that same thing happening to you again. You said you’d do anything to stay on the path of good. That was when I knew I was destined to lose you.”
Sunset’s head sunk into her hands, and she brushed her hair back over her head with pure exhaustion.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Sunset groaned. “I don’t live in fear of taking risks just because they could hurt me. And even if I did...I’m not your manager! That should be obvious, but I don’t think you understand at all, Rara. This whole ‘cursed magic’ thing is just your way of justifying everything those people did to you. You can’t comprehend that he betrayed you in the worst way, so you’d rather think you drove him to madness or some other bull. It’s easier for you to walk around saying you’ve got a curse than it is for you to actually trust that people can be better.”
For the slightest of moments, a look of understanding sparked in Rara’s face, but it dimmed just as quickly. In the time it took for it to dim, she’d already wrenched the shard from Sunset’s hand.
“As long as there’s a one percent chance you’ll turn out like him, I have to do this! I want to believe you, but there’s no way I can risk seeing you corrupted again!”
“Let me just go over this one more time--when I was corrupted, I was a demon. I flew around, burned shit, and terrorized people. Even at my absolute worst, I never hurt anyone like that. What I’m trying to say is, if being with you meant turning into a demon again, I would’ve done it for you.”
“I know you would have. But it wouldn’t have been right for you. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself for me. All I wanted to do was protect you.”
“All you really did was punish me.”
If tension was like a sword, that sentence pierced the room straight down the middle. For several seconds, neither girl dared to speak, lest another barb hit them where it hurt most.
“What makes you say that?” asked Rara.
“Let me tell you--magic can’t change a person’s heart. No matter how hard you try to wipe someone out of a person’s life, remnants still stay. You can make a person forget, but you can’t make them fall out of love.”
With a long, nostalgic sigh, Sunset continued, “I knew from the minute I met you that I would fall in love with you. At first, I thought it was just some silly celebrity crush I didn’t even know I had. You have any idea how much that can mess with somebody’s head? Like, I wanted to hold you forever, and I barely even knew you. And once I did know you, I learned that there was so much more time I could have spent with you, so many more memories we could have had together, that could never be brought back. Making a person forget all the amazing times they’ve had with their lover? That’s a punishment if I’ve ever heard one.”
Rara just stood still for more minutes than Sunset could count, reflecting on all that she’d done in the name of protecting her girlfriend.
“I didn’t mean to,” she finally uttered. “I just thought that the best way of making sure people never see the dangerous side of your power was to keep pushing them away. If that casting agency would have known about my complex, I would’ve been cast as Elsa for sure.”
That last remark was dumb, so mind-numbingly dumb. But somehow, it still made Sunset feel at least a little better. Helped her understand the girl that had become such an enigma.
“I know you didn’t mean to,” Sunset replied. “You’re too good for that, Rara. But it’s time you realized how good you were and let yourself believe that your powers aren’t what’s dangerous. It’s your mindset. Have you ever seen a therapist about any of this?”
The singer simply shook her head.
“I never thought they would understand me. I can’t exactly go up to one and tell them I’m a siren.”
“You don’t have to. All you have to do is say you think you’re bad for what happened to you, and they’ll understand. Under all that magic stuff, it’s pretty much textbook victim-blaming.”
Sunset took the stone back from her, pondering what to do with it even after her decision had already been made. She knew now that Rara wasn’t ready for a relationship, never really had been after all the wounds still fresh in her mind. So there was just one way to make sure those same wounds couldn’t reopen again.
“What do you say about restarting this level?” she said, holding the stone out for Rara to see. “If we wipe both our memories at the same time, we won’t have the same issues we did last time. And since I had a feeling you were going to do that anyway, now might be the best time for a new start.”
Sunset had expected Rara to refuse, or at least protest, but instead, she just lifted her head towards the wall and let out a deep sigh.
“So the mermaid and the prince both turn into seafoam. Not quite the happy ending I would have expected, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll channel more magic into it this time, so we won’t forget anything else about this semester that doesn’t involve the two of us.”
She gave Sunset a tender kiss on the cheek, as if doing so would heal both of them to their core.
“Next time, if we still find our way to each other, I’ll know it’s meant to be. They say if lovers were really meant to be together, they’ll find each other in the next life. I know it probably sounds stupid, but you know me.”
“Mermaids are hopeless romantics,” Sunset whispered as she channeled her magic into the stone and the whole world disappeared around her.
And as it did, all she heard was a single song:
You’re too good for me
And I know you’ll never agree
But now I’d like to be free
From the girl who’s too good for me
****
Sunset awoke, as if from a daze, inside the music store she loved. She didn’t remember much about the place, but she did remember the song that used to play there, the one that brought her to her sweetheart.
She didn’t know who her sweetheart had been, even if they had been a boy or a girl, but the song still echoed through her head.
The store was little short of a wasteland now, with Going Out of Business signs littering the ceilings and with half of its inventory depleted. Looking at it just made Sunset feel numb, as if she was never really sure whether or not she had ever been in this place before.
She knew she had. But when?
Being in this store felt like being in a void, especially considering the fact that it was completely silent. No laughter, no chattering, no music. She’d come here to look for the song she’d nearly forgotten, but came up empty.
There was nothing but static all around her, as if she was a TV who didn’t know which channel she was supposed to be on. Everything around her was overwhelming, crushing, desolate.
She should have remembered a time when it wasn’t this way. She should have remembered the face that had beckoned her there.
But right when she was about to, the TV in her mind shut off. The dream was over.
(If there had ever been a dream to begin with.)
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Sunset Awesomness17 · 20k words · 11 5 · 873 views
Stats
Page generated in 0.09 seconds
Total duration
965 users online
107,033 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I’ll be honest, I thought this was a RWBY crossover at first glance with a title like that.
This was really good. I enjoyed it! <3
9804185
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
This was... interesting. I wish I could say more than that, because I really want to like this a lot, but that's the word that springs to mind the most as I'm reading this.
I loved the opening scene. I remember clearly seeing this on the main page, clicking to the first chapter, reading the first few paragraphs, and going, "Yeah, I need to read this." There was such good atmosphere, Sunset's love of music felt so real, and it ended on such a compelling proposition. At that point, I was hooked. And the scene of Coloratura coming to CHS for the first time, I liked quite a bit too.
But then, by the time I got to Coloratura talking about her parents, the overwhelming impression I had, that persisted throughout most of the story, was that all the really interesting stuff has already happened and now I'm mostly just hearing Sunset and Coloratura discussing it, and it came across as just being kind of detached and by extension flat. I was still engaged, and interested in knowing what happened next, so I feel like the underlying story is pretty solid, but the presentation just left it not really doing much for me.
I would be willing to read more of this version of Coloratura. Probably a lot more. And I would read a story about sirens being banished to the human world because they can't control their magic and it affects ponies without them meaning for it to happen. But this just felt lacking the way it was presented. Not a bad read, though.
Welp. I fuckin' ship it.
Some really good ideas in this story, and I particularly like that penultimate scene. Solid drama. :)
One of the best exchanges I've ever read. XD