The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 2

Ponyville.

“Monster!”

The cry rang out over the Ponyville marketplace, galvanizing the ponies into action. The shopkeepers did their best to protect their wares in the precious seconds afforded them, kicking support poles out of the way to shut storefronts, or at least throw a dirt-colored tarp over their items. They then joined the other ponies in a rapid stream out of the market plaza, before looping around as if to re-enter it. There a ramp led downwards, under the Records Building.

Just as the ponies began to enter the underground space, the gigantic Mexicoltan redknee tarantula, five times the height of a pony, crawled into town. Without hesitation she immediately began tearing down every building she could see. Her blood-red eyes were brimming with rage.

At the back of the stream was Mrs. Lemon Peel, interrupted in her tour of the village. The visitor allowed herself to be pulled along as she looked around her. She was equal parts horrified by the sight of the creature rampaging behind her, and in awe at the determination of the ponies around her. Mrs. Peel had witnessed multiple instances in the past where ponies faced with danger had degenerated into near-suicidal panic. But this group was disciplined. They had a plan in their retreat, and they knew it would work.

“There it is!” cried out a voice in the sky, the voice of the pegasus Rainbow Dash, flying overhead and acting as scout. “Now where’s Pinkie Pie?”

“I got ‘er in my sights!” came the voice of the earth pony Applejack, whirling a lasso over her head with her mouth and somehow managing to speak quite clearly despite that.

A great cheer erupted from the fleeing crowd of ponies.

“Aim for the front-left leg,” directed the voice of the unicorn Twilight Sparkle. The visitor pony had to crane her neck to see her, as she was standing on the roof of the Records Building beside a cowering pegasus. “Fluttershy says that she seems a bit lame in that one.”

By this time Lemon Peel had been swept into the underground structure, so she had to hear rather than see what happened next. The crowd had by this point slowed from a run into a brisk walk, as future obstructions slowed them down.

“Look out!” cried the receding voice of Rainbow Dash.

“There you are!” the extremely close voice of Pinkie Pie cried out. She was right in the visitor’s face, back-pedaling as fast as she was walking.

Peel cried out in shock.

“I’m Pinkie Pie,” she said, ignoring her outburst. Then she reached out and tapped Peel’s muzzle with a hoof. “And you’re Mrs. Peel,” Pinkie said, glancing up at the tip of her own mane. She produced a clipboard from that mane. “First order of business: Are you here for the day or are you moving to Ponyville?”

Peel looked around her wildly, trying in vain to reconcile the current conversation with the current crisis. “I…I’m moving here,” she said. “My husband got a post with the Royal Guard and…”

She was stopped by a pink hoof pressed against her lips. “Normally I’d be all for hearing your complete origin story, Emma, but right now I’m overdue to help my friends take down a nasty critter. Can I put your welcome party down for this Friday?”

Peel looked back over her shoulder at the sounds of scuffling between the pony defenders and the giant spider. “Alright,” she said. “Pardon me for asking, but shouldn’t you be, um…helping?” She looked back to see that Pinkie Pie was nowhere to be seen. Despite the fact that she was an earth pony, Peel craned her neck up to see if she had somehow flown away, as that was the only possible way Pinkie could have left the confines of the narrowing tunnel.

“Cowabunga!” her voice could be distantly heard. It did indeed sound like she was falling from a considerable distance.

“Nice landing!” Rainbow Dash complimented her.

Apparently, Pinkie was now on the tarantula’s head.

“What…but…how?!” Peel demanded of the pony walking beside her, the town’s self-appointed tour guide.

“That’s just Pinkie Pie,” Braeburn said with a sigh. “Ponyville’s one-pony welcoming committee.”

“When did she learn my name? I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

“Remember when she touched your muzzle? It was probably then.”

“What?!”

Braeburn sighed. “Like I said, it’s just Pinkie Pie. I swear, the ponies that haven’t changed their minds ‘bout Ponyville after seeing the monsters, all flee after meetin’ Pinkie Pie. She’s completely harmless though.”

Along the left inside wall of the artificial cavern was a large, opened door, a wooden oval that resembled a bank vault door. Big Mac stood at the ready to swing the door shut at a moment’s notice. Standing beside him was Mayor Mare and her assistant Raven. “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine…,” Raven counted as the visitor and her guide walked past them.

The path ahead split into two narrow passageways, each only wide enough for a single file of ponies. The visitor was jostled towards the left-side passage.

“Mrs. Peel, where’d ya…” Braeburn’s voice called out.

A hoof reached out and yanked the earth pony Lemon Peel rightwards, towards the other passage.

“Sorry about that,” the guide said. “That one’s for unicorns and this one’s for earth ponies.”

“Thank you, Braeburn,” Mrs. Peel said. She looked over at the passage she was no longer headed towards and saw that indeed only unicorns were passing through it. There was a faintly glowing blue substance coating the roof of the hallway, and the horns of the unicorns slid along it. In the passage she was now walking through, the same substance was on the floor instead of the roof, and an odd tingle passed through her hooves as she walked on it.

Braeburn saw where Peel was looking. “Don’t worry about that none,” he assured the visitor. “We’re just giving up a tiny part of our magic to power the defenses.”

“What about the pegasi?” Peel asked, seeing no passage set aside for them.

“The pegasi don’t take to enclosed spaces very well…except Fluttershy,” Braeburn explained. “They’re perching on top of Town Hall right now.”

It was at that moment that Lemon Peel finally emerged into the central cavern, lit by natural sunlight piped down from the surface of the plaza above. There was enough room for all the ponies—including the re-united unicorns—to gather, but the majority of them kept walking, taking numerous curved paths that led up to differently sized smaller caverns. All of the mini caverns looked out over the main cavern, and the acoustics of the place ensured that anypony standing at the central lectern could be heard by all.

Peel stopped for a moment in confused recognition. “Do…do they already know?” she whispered to herself.

Braeburn nudged Peel’s shoulders with his own. “Welcome to the Bunker, the pride and joy of Ponyville!” he exclaimed. “Pokey Oaks built it seventy-five years ago, and Ponyville never would have survived to the present day without it. Ain’t it incredible?”

“That it is,” Peel replied. “How deep does it extend?”

“Oh, this is it,” Braeburn said, suddenly very serious. “That was the number-one rule Pokey laid down: ‘Take the ponies out of natural sunlight’, he said, ‘and they’ll stop caring about whether the surface world lives or dies.’”

And indeed, the entire cavern complex was lit by piped-in sunlight.

Braeburn’s smile returned. “Come on, let me show you around.”

~ ~ ~

Braeburn and Lemon Peel stopped at the entrance of one of the larger caverns, a classroom, with Cheerilee front and center. Pony parents dropped off their children here, in hopes that whatever brief lesson she might improvise might distract the students from the stress of what was going on outside.

"Why do we need class?” Snips whined as he was dropped off. “It’s summer!”

“Hey, look Snips!” his friend Snails said, pointing to the name of the lesson on the board: Monsters.

The pair raced into the classroom after that. Shortly afterwards Cheerilee completed a roll call: “…Sweetie Belle, Truffle and Twist. That’s everyone!

“Now that we’re all here, let’s begin.” She underlined the word “Monsters” on the chalkboard with a piece held in her teeth. “What can you tell me about monsters?”

Braeburn was prepared to continue the tour but stopped on seeing Mrs. Peel watching attentively. “I could use a bit of a lesson myself,” he whispered to his companion.

In the classroom a flurry of hooves popped into the air, and Cheerilee started calling on them.

“They’re big, giant…monsters!” Snips exclaimed.

“They eat ponies for breakfast!” Diamond Tiara exclaimed. Quickly collecting herself she added, “But I’m not scared.”

There was a clamor of other voices. With a frown, Cheerilee stomped her hoof, and the students quieted down.

“Perhaps I need to be more specific. Where do monsters come from? Snails?”

“The Everfree?”

“Yes, most of them do come from the Everfree,” Cheerilee admitted. “But monsters can show up anywhere, at any time. Where, in general, do monsters come from?”

Most of the hooves went down. Twist’s, though, started shaking frantically, accompanied by a quiet “I know! I know!”

Cheerilee smiled indulgently. “Twist?”

“They’re made from exsesss magical energy!” Twist exclaimed with a lisp.

“That’s right!” Cheerilee said, turning to write the words “Rogue Magic” on the chalkboard. “Do you remember last week, when we talked about where ponies get their magic from?”

“Sunlight!” the students chorused.

“Yes, but ponies cannot convert all of the sunlight they absorb into magic. The excess is called…” She waited in vain for an answer, before tapping the words on the chalkboard.

“Rogue magic?” Scootaloo said experimentally.

“Yes, rogue magic,” said Cheerilee. “Rogue magic wanders around, invisible, until eventually enough of it gathers together near some innocent creature. That creature is then transformed into a monster! Today’s monster was just an ordinary spider before rogue magic turned it into a hulking mass of destruction!” She seemed perhaps a little too enthusiastic over the mental image conjured by that last sentence. Seeing the looks on the foals’ faces, she calmed herself down. “Anyway, the vast majority of monsters only have a limited store of rogue magic, and when they use that up they turn right back into the creature they originally were.

“What Applejack and her friends are doing right now is wearing the monster down and trying to keep it from causing too much damage. By doing this for long enough, the problem solves itself, and we can all go back into the daylight! Now, are there any questions?”

A nervous hoof rose into the air.

“Yes, Truffle?”

“Miss Cheerilee, if monsters are innocent creatures before being transformed, why do they all want to hurt us?”

“That’s a very good question, Truffle! The fact is, nopony knows why all monsters want to hurt ponies and destroy the things that ponies built, just that they do.”

Another hoof.

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“What happens to the monsters that you can’t wear out?”

Cheerlilee frowned a little. “Those monsters eventually get tired of fighting and go back into the Everfree, to come back out and fight another day. And when enough of the same kind of monster get together, they breed and create a whole new race of monsters. That’s why the Everfree is so incredibly dangerous.”

There was a moment of silence as the pony students contemplated all of the horrible breeds of monsters believed to live in the Everfree.

Eventually another hoof rose into the air.

“Yes, Featherweight?”

“Could we make the monsters go away if we used less magic?”

“Hmm…another good question. Mrs. Peel, could you help the class out by answering some questions?”

Lemon Peel, startled to be called out, walked cautiously into the room.

“Class, this is Mrs. Peel, a reporter for a magazine called Mare Trotting Monthly. Her husband, Ragamuffin, is the Princess’ newest royal guard! She told me that she and their son Pipsqueak are moving to Ponyville.”

This earned a round of “oohs” and “aahs” from the class.

“Mrs. Peel and her family are from Trottingham, which was only recently added to Equestria,” Cheerilee explained, using a mouth-held pointer to show where on a world map the city was located. “Trottingham is part of the Griffish Isles, which as the name suggests is mostly populated by Griffons. We’ll cover the history of those islands in a future lesson. Tell me, Mrs. Peel, are there any monsters on the Griffish Isles?”

“Other than the sea monsters?” Mrs. Peel said cheekily. “We have a lot of those.”

“Technically those are sea creatures, not monsters,” Cheerilee corrected.

“Try telling that to them,” Peel joked. “But otherwise, no, we do not have any monsters on the Isles. There isn’t enough magic to sustain them.”

“Any why is that?”

“Not enough ponies, and being so far north, not enough sunlight.”

“And what’s life like in Trottingham?” Cheerilee asked.

“Not very good for ponies,” Peel answered with a frown. “The rocky ground barely yields enough food to live on. The weather is completely uncontrolled, and when we earth ponies get sick, we get really sick.”

“Yes, Sweetie Belle?” Cheerilee said in response to a raised hoof.

“Earth ponies? What about the pegasi and unicorns?”

“Oh, there are none of them in Trottingham. They get sick and have to leave if they stay longer than a month.”

Cheerilee nodded sadly. “That’s why we put up with monsters, class. Because otherwise Ponyville would be just like Trottingham.”

The students nodded silently in agreement that they definitely didn’t want to live in Trottingham.

Lemon Peel realized that her hometown had just been insulted, but just sighed and started walking towards the door.

“Oh wait!” Scootaloo exclaimed, jumping up and waving her hoof in the air.

“Yes, Scootaloo?” Cheerilee asked.

“Is your husband really in the Royal Guard, Mrs. Peel?”

Peel walked back with a proud smile. “That he is, Scootaloo. He is in fact the very first recruit from Trottingham.”

Another hoof. “Yes, Diamond Tiara?”

“Why are you moving to Ponyville? Aren’t the guards supposed to live in Canterlot instead of in this dump?”

“Diamond Tiara! Mrs. Peel, I apologize for my rude student. You don’t have to answer that question.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Mrs. Peel said, relaxing a bit. And you’re far from the first to ask, she added mentally. “You see, the royal barracks are for soldiers, not for their families. I looked around Canterlot, but prices there are a bit much, and we would like to save money for our relatives back in Trottingham. So my cousin Applejack recommended Ponyville.”

“Applejack’s your cousin?!”

“Snips! Raise your hoof first.”

Snips raised his hoof.

“Well, we know the question now, so remember that for next time. Mrs. Peel?”

“Well, she’s actually my third cousin. Applejack’s great-grandmother was the sister of my great-grandmother, and she and her family traveled to Equestria to settle in the new town of Ponyville. The Apple clan originally came from Trottingham.”

There were now a lot of eyes eyeing the world map, and some students looking forward to that lesson on the Griffish Isles.

After all, the Apple Clan were Ponyville’s self-appointed Defenders, and every pony in town owed their lives many times over to Applejack and her relatives.

Author's Note:

Notes for Chapter 2.