The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 34

The House of Enchanted Comics, Canterlot.

The afternoon of December 19. October had ended with “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000”, followed by “Luna Eclipsed”. November had “Fall Weather Friends”. December so far has had no episodes, but “Hearth’s Warming Eve” will be in six days. Sunday.

Rainbow Dash was feeling rather proud of herself: She had finished all of her Hearth’s Warming shopping for the year, and the actual holiday was a full week away! Usually, she’d wait until the night before, and get frustrated that everything she wanted to buy was out of stock.

And now that her friends and family were taken care of, it was time to take care of herself. She just had to slip into this cloak to keep anypony she knew from seeing her walk into this den of egghead iniquity.

(“Iniquity”, is that the word? she thought to herself. That word from the Planet Wars comic page with all the cool aliens.)

She had the list Spike had given her of cool comics to read, with most of the titles crossed out and a few new ones written in by herself. She started cautiously walking up and down the aisles of comics inside the shop. About a third of her attention was devoted to finding the trade paperback of Maretropolis: The New Frontier, and the other two thirds was making sure that nopony saw her.

Her attention was suddenly attracted to a stand with a glass case at the end of a row, resembling the elaborate getup that Twilight used to protect her Miscellanea book. Inside the stand was a single fat comic book dated from thirty years ago. The cover showed a scene, set in a large sewer, of a group of misshapen ponies cowering in cloaks, being threatened by a robot pony the size of some of the monsters Rainbow confronted on a regular basis. The robot was holding up one glowing hoof, ready to blast the group to oblivion. Standing before the would-be victims was a brave zebra with a particularly tall mohawk, one eye blue, the other yellow. Her fur crackled with electricity and above her was the speech bubble: “Would you act so cruelly? Then you must go through me!” The title of the issue was Uncanny M-Factor # 13—ENCHANTED ISSUE.

“A fellow connoisseur of the classics, I see.”

Rainbow whipped her head around to see who was addressing her, and found her face buried inside the oversized hood of her cloak.

“Ah! Allow me…”

Rainbow’s hood was lowered, and she found herself looking into the blue eyes of a purple-pink unicorn mare. “Better?” she asked.

“Ah, yeah,” Rainbow said. She raised a hoof. “Rainbow Dash.”

“Starlight Glimmer,” the mare said, before completing the hoof bump. She glanced around and remarked, “Not very original with the attire, are we?”

Rainbow looked. She noticed for the first time that the store had two kinds of ponies in it: happy foals and fillies, and guilty mares and stallions. The latter group were all wearing cloaks like she was. She gave off an awkward laugh.

“Own up to your nerdom, be proud of it!” Starlight proclaimed, a bit too loud for Rainbow’s taste. She pointed out the pin with the logo of the shop that was on a lanyard she was wearing. “This is my store, after all.”

“It is?”

“It is.”

“Huh.” Rainbow pointed at the rare issue. “Maybe you can help me then. I don’t think I’ve seen this title before.”

“Not surprising,” Starlight replied. “It’s an import from the Eastern Griffish Protectorate, by a couple of pony expatriates: Clear Mount and Tall Smithy.”

“‘M-Factor’,” Rainbow said, pointing at the title.

“The ‘M’ stands for ‘mutant’,” Starlight explained. She pointed to the misshapen ponies. “It’s set in a future where too much magic has resulted in the occasional birth of strange-looking ponies with even stranger powers. They are hated by normal society, even as they act to protect that society from the forces of evil.”

Rainbow shivered. She had had nightmares in her foalhood, nightmares of being picked out for her unusual mane or some undefinable quality that nevertheless terrified her, chased by her friends and family for being too different to be considered a pony anymore.

Next to her Starlight smiled as if she could see what Rainbow was thinking. “This particular issue was very important to me. I got my cutie mark while experiencing it.”

“‘Experiencing’ it?” Rainbow asked.

Starlight explained the concept of enchanted issues, and how they allowed the reader to experience the storyline of the comic. “I got to play Lightning here,” she said, pointing at the zebra. “Defending the morelacks from the Guardians and becoming their leader after a trial by combat. I came out of that experience a completely new mare. You might even say that in some ways I’m still living out that experience of mutant liberation.” Noticing the odd look that Rainbow Dash was giving her due to her own manic expression, she shook her head to clear it.

“As you might be able to figure out from that description,” she continued, “M-Factor was considered ‘too grim’ for young readers by the comic sellers of Equestria at the time, and so the imports from the EGP stopped. Hence the price of this particular issue.”

Rainbow looked at the sticker on the corner: B200. She whistled. “Too steep for me.”

“It’s the fair market price,” said Starlight, leading Rainbow down an aisle. “Although if I still didn’t own my fillyhood issue I might be tempted to claim that one for myself. Perhaps you’d like to start with this.” She showed Rainbow another comic: Power Ponies #53: The Power Ponies vs. M-Factor! It was only 8 bits. It showed the familiar superhero team on the left and a group of strange-looking characters that included the Lightning character from before on the right. Imprisoned in a clear bubble between them was a pony with eagle wings.

Rainbow picked up the issue and looked through it. It looked like a good buy—she already enjoyed the Power Ponies, and this issue went out of its way to introduce M-Factor and what they were doing here, by way of a rogue time portal to their dystopian future. (“Dystopian!” she thought. Another comic book word! I really gotta watch out or I’ll become a major egghead without realizing it.) “Thanks, Starlight! I think I’ll get…” She looked around, to find that Starlight Glimmer had disappeared without her noticing.

She shrugged and got back to looking for the other comics on her list. This time she didn’t bother trying to be unnoticed.

Author's Note:

Notes for this chapter can be found with Chapter 35.