The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 16

Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres.

August 1. Two days before the episode “Applebuck Season”. Sunday.

Lemon Peel and her son Pipsqueak were standing in front of the barn at Sweet Apple Acres. She was wearing a light gray roll-neck undershirt under a tailored darker gray wool jacket with slight shoulder pads, fastened by four cloth buttons. She was wearing four black cup shoes. He wasn’t wearing anything, as was usual for young ponies…or changelings.

“Mrs. Peel, Pipsqueak, allow me to introduce you to Checker and his daughter Twist. They’re friends of the family.” Applejack stepped aside to allow the two pairs to get to know one another.

Lemon Peel looked cautiously at the fat earth pony and his skinny daughter. The father had a pale-yellow coat, similar in color to her own, but with a fuzzy neon blue mane and tail. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater checkered in yellow and brown. He had an old-fashioned radio microphone for a cutie mark. The daughter was yellowish gray in color with a bright red fuzzy mane and tail. She had no cutie mark and wore a pair of purple-rimmed glasses. The father stood confident, while the daughter partially concealed herself behind her father’s legs.

Peel and Twist’s eyes went wide at the same time.

Twist pointed at Mrs. Peel and her son and quietly but urgently tapped another hoof against Checker’s side.

“How are they doing that?” Peel asked Applejack.

“Well as I’ve mentioned before,” Applejack began, “there are some ponies in Equestria with unusual abilities. Very unusual abilities.”

Pipsqueak had been doing his own quiet examination of the two ponies and in a too-loud voice he whispered, “Are they going to hurt us, Mum?”

Realizing that they were feeling just as uncomfortable as she was doing a lot to calm Twist down.

“It’s nice to meet some more changelings,” Checker said with a friendly grin.

“Did…did you already know, or…?” Pipsqueak asked.

“Oh, I could see it,” Checker said, tapping a hoof next to his eye.

Peel shuddered—a pony like him could be a changeling’s worst enemy.

“Do you think that he and the Basilisk…?”

“Could be related? Maybe,” Applejack said. “For obvious reasons, the Apples have been good to Checker’s family for generations now.”

“Now, now,” Checker said with a smile. “You’ve gone far beyond the kind of bribery I might expect under the circumstances. Did you know that the Apples saved my daughter’s life?” He looked back at Twist, who smiled with uncertainty back at him. “She was born with a defective heart. When one of Applejack’s cousins fell during a monster attack, Applejack convinced the filly’s family to donate their heart to Twist. The heart was a perfect match.” The stallion paused as a sudden revelation came to him. “It…it was perfect because that dying changeling made that heart perfect for her in her dying moments. Perhaps even prolonged her pain doing so. For that gift alone you will have my undying loyalty. And it is but one of dozens of acts of generosity and kindness that I can name.”

“So, this is how you pay for your alliances,” Peel observed archly. “By overpaying for everything.”

“By genuinely caring about all of our relationships,” corrected Applejack. She then rolled her eyes a bit. “And overpaying for them.

“Now you hold still while I get Apple Bloom.”

---

A few minutes later, Applejack walked out of the farmhouse, with a blindfolded Apple Bloom standing on her back.

From her mobile perch, Apple Bloom carefully turned her head, first this way and then the other. Despite the cover to her eyes, she could “see” the emotions of the ponies and creatures around her quite easily. There were Big Mac and Granny, probably looking out at her from the side window of the farmhouse, wishing her luck. Below her was Applejack, keeping her emotions in check so to act as the impartial judge of her upcoming test. Over there was Winona, running up to sniff at the two of them for a moment before resuming her game of chasing—and being chased—by one of Fluttershy’s rabbits. And finally, over there were Mrs. Peel and Pipsqueak, maybe here to take notes. Mrs. Peel took a lot of notes around her, Apple Bloom observed.

Applejack stopped at what Apple Bloom thought was near the pig pen in front of the barn. At Applejack’s unspoken instruction, her sister hopped down to the ground. Applejack carefully lined her up to face a particular direction. “Now Apple Bloom,” Applejack said calmly. “This will be your final test to determine if you’re ready to join regular pony society. Are you ready?”

“I am!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, nodding her head vigorously. The blindfold nearly slipped off during this maneuver, so she raised a hoof to put it back in place.

“Now have you been fasting like I’ve told you?” Applejack asked.

“Yup!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. “I haven’t…I haven’t fed for a week!”

She was going to say, “had any love” instead of “fed” but stopped at the last second. With the blindfold on, she couldn’t be 100% sure that she was only surrounded by changelings at that moment, despite what her emotion senses told her. After all, this was a test of how well she could maintain her composure when surrounded by those that didn’t know the Apple Clan Secret.

“Very good.” Applejack moved in front of her and took off her blindfold. “Your test is simple: I want you to go over to Mr. Checker over there and say ‘hi.’” She then stepped aside and calmed her emotions even more than they were before.

Apple Bloom was confused—she knew everypony currently on the farm, so who was “Mr. Checker”? And that’s when she saw the two ponies. Two ponies that had absolutely no emotions to read. It was like they were made out of cardboard instead of flesh and magic.

The first and most-important part of her training kicked in then: not to give away her reactions. Instead of the shock she was feeling inside, Apple Bloom shuffled a hoof and looked down, like she was merely shy to meet a stranger.

Meanwhile she was trying to figure this out: were those two actually ponies with no emotions, or were they illusions? Bloom supposed that as far as this test went—as far as real life went—it didn’t really matter. Bloom had an advantage at this moment: she knew that something was wrong, but “Mr. Checker” potentially didn’t know that she knew. Using the next part of her training, she lifted her head to read the stallion’s emotions the hard way, by observing his expression and how that was supported or contradicted by his body language. Apple Bloom knew that a small percentage of ponies spent their lives lying, and therefore were impossible to correctly read. But the method she used should work on 90% of ponies. This pony did not mean her harm.

So, she put on a quiet smile, flicked her tail a bit, and began to advance towards the two anomalies.

Checker lowered himself down to the ground to be closer to Apple Bloom’s level and extended his two hooves. “Oh, aren’t you adorable!” he exclaimed. “Come over here and give me a hug!”

Apple Bloom’s step faltered, but only for an instant. For at that moment the absence of emotion was replaced by a veritable torrent of love, all directed at her.

Apple Bloom now knew why she had been asked to starve herself before the test. It wasn’t to hone her emotional senses. No, it was to make her more vulnerable to undergoing a “starvation attack”, when a hungry changeling would involuntarily revert to their true form when exposed to a strong source of love. Mr. Checker was doing this to her on purpose. Mr. Checker was the test.

I…am not a monster, Apple Bloom recited to herself as she continued to slowly cross the immense space between Applejack and Mr. Checker. I belong to the hive, and the hive belongs to me, bound forever by our shared love. I will never betray the hive, and they will never betray me. My hive will always love me, even if they cannot feed me now. When I have no love, I will feed myself on that hope.

As she walked, Apple Bloom cast her eyes about her. She saw Winona continuing to play with that rabbit. She saw her brother and grandmother watching through the window and understood why they held back their love in that moment just like Applejack did. And she looked curiously over at the shy filly standing behind the terrifying Mr. Checker.

Apple Bloom remembered the other part of her oath, the part she had added herself. I am a member of the Herd. I will love Equestria and its ponies whenever I am able. I will work to make the goals of the Hive the same as the goals of the Princesses and their ponies. And these two were among those ponies.

Apple Bloom reached Mr. Checker. “Hi,” she said politely, stopping out of the stallion’s reach. “It’s nice to meet you. Is that your daughter?”

Checker blinked for a moment, then lowered his arms and stood up. “Yes, this is Twist.” The love he was radiating was now gone, leaving him once more transparent to Bloom’s emotional senses.

“Hi, Twist,” Apple Bloom said. “My name’s Apple Bloom. Are you going to school this fall?”

“Yess,” Twist said with a lisp. She spent a moment stealing herself, and then closed her eyes for a moment.

At that moment, Apple Bloom could feel Twist’s emotions, her true emotions. She was scared and she was worried, and the two emotions appeared to have different causes. She looked right into Apple Bloom’s eyes, showing that she knew exactly how vulnerable she had made herself just then.

“You did it!” Applejack exclaimed, running over and lifting Apple Bloom up. “You passed the test!” She held Apple Bloom up in her arms and fed her as much love as she could handle.

“I did?” Apple Bloom asked, a grin growing across her face. She almost didn’t notice her emotional need being diminished, so happy was she.

“You sure did. But I’m going to have to deduct a few points for failing to keep track of your surroundings.” She pointed over at Mrs. Peel and her son.

Apple Bloom and the others looked where she was pointing and were surprised to see Mrs. Peel comforting her clearly traumatized son. “What happened?” she asked.

“He transfformed when Daddy releassed hiss luff,” Twist said. “Mrss. Peel helped him change back.”

Apple Bloom blinked. “And you weren’t scared?”

“Only a little,” Twist said. “I’ve been trying to get one of you to do that all day, even since I found out you were changelingss.”

Now Apple Bloom was struck by a bout of genuine shyness. “Would you like to see what I look like?” she asked.

Twist bobbed her head up and down almost as hard as Apple Bloom had done earlier.

Apple Bloom looked over to her older sister for permission.

“Go ahead,” Applejack said indulgently. “It’s the least we can do for them after asking them to waste a day acting as our test equipment.”

“Alright, here goes…” Apple Bloom said, before a wave of green magic revealed her true form to an excited Twist. The same bright yellow, red and orange colors, but on epicuticle and chitin rather than hair and fur.

“Wow!” Twist exclaimed.

Apple Bloom took a moment to examine herself with her segmented red eyes, so rare was it for her to be exposing her true self outdoors. Warily, she scanned the sky for pegasi, before remembering that she could emotion sense any pony within shouting distance. Maybe a spy pegasus in the stratosphere could see the flash of magic, but there was no way that such a pony would ever be able to see enough to tell for sure what she was. But just to be safe, she walked under the nearest tree. “So what do you want to know?” she asked with the metallic twang that all changelings could pull off, but hardly ever used after emerging from their cocoons.

Author's Note:

See Chapter 17 for the notes for this chapter.