The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 38

That night there was a knocking on Rainbow’s bedroom door. The knock sounded like a wooden door knock, despite the door being made of cloudstuff.

Rainbow sat up in her bed and turned on her firefly light. “Come in…however many there are of you.”

The door opened, to reveal Pinkamena. “I got your note,” she said dully.

“You didn’t have to come over tonight,” Rainbow said. “I said the next time you felt like being serious.”

The brain slug Rozetri showed herself. “I felt that you resisting my power made this a priority.”

Rainbow sighed. “Yeah, well I just found out why last night,” she explained. “I think I’m your cousin or something.” And she rose up out of the pony Rainbow’s head as that form slumped into unconsciousness, revealing her true form—what she had decided to call “Rainbow Grepp”.

“Wow!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “You look weird!”

Rainbow the grepp laughed, a pure, happy pony laugh. And then laughed some more in delight at learning that she could laugh like this. “Pinkie…” she began to say in a clipped parrot-like voice—the native voice of a grepp. But then she used her imitation ability to assume her own pony voice. “Don’t ever change, Pinkie!”

“OK!” chirped Pinkie. She then looked back and forth between the grepp and the serious Rozetri. “In fact, I think the two of us will stay out for this. No offense, Pinkamena, but you’re kinda a downer. … She said she was OK with staying out of this.”

“Are you from this world?” Rozetri asked with her distinctive voice.

“Yes,” answered Rainbow Grepp.

“What of your ancestors?”

“Also Equestrian, as far as I know.”

“Then we are not related, because I am not of this world,” said Rozetri.

Rainbow’s beak twisted into a smile. “What kind of world are you from?”

“I don’t know…” the blob answered, its unfocused eye growing even more unfocused. “I remember almost nothing about myself.”

“Well, my powers are memory-based,” Rainbow said, approaching the other brain creature with a couple of tentacles upraised. “Maybe I can get them back for you…”

“No!” Rozetri cried out in fear, pushing out a force-field that sent Rainbow Grepp slamming into a cloud wall and partially through it. If that wall had been made of terrestrial materials, the frail grepp would probably be dead.

“I…I’m sorry!” Rozetri cried out, sending a wave of healing magic over Rainbow Grepp.

Rainbow for her part was more concerned with being exposed, so she raced back into her pony body and then used her pegasus powers to repair the wall. “Watch it!” she cried.

Rozetri looked mournfully at the ground.

“Aw, it’s OK,” Rainbow said, approaching the blob and patting it lightly on a part that didn’t look like it might collapse from the pressure of a single hoof. She then looked down at herself. “Hey, do you mind if I stay like this? I really think of myself as a pony.”

“Hey, that’s alright. You do you!” exclaimed Pinkie. She looked over at her companion. “Rozetri here is pretty scared of what she really is.”

“More like terrified,” Pinkamena added in a brief cameo.

“Well can you blame me?” Rozetri asked sadly.

Pinkie Pie took in Rainbow Dash’s curious expression. “How about we exchange origin stories?” She climbed up on the bed, sitting down and patting a spot before her for Rainbow to sit as well. “Rosy, you float over there.” After waiting to see that her two requests had been fulfilled, she began:

---

When I told the Cutie Mark Crusaders my cutie mark story, and later you, I wasn’t exactly telling the full story. The big picture was the same, but…

Pinkamena didn’t fit in. At all. And everything just made her sad. But then your rainbow boom turned everything around for her. She was truly happy, for the first time in her life. But at the same time, she wasn’t allowed to be happy. And with all that magic what came out of it was me, Pinkie Pie. I was a voice in Pinkamena’s head, but with the way things were going for us, she preferred if I was in charge most of the time, so I guess we became Pinkie Pie with some Pinkamena instead of the reverse. And Pinkie…and I…had to leave the farm.

I…To keep things from getting weird, we use “I” most of the time…I was heading down No Pony’s Road when this bright light came out of the sky and smashed into me! And I kinda died…

---

Rozetri took over next:

---

I was in a big round spaceship when I crashed into Equestria. Machines were sparking and melting, and a voice told me that the ship would self-destruct in ‘five hundred rels’, whatever that was.

I wasn’t just in a spaceship. I was in a machine inside that spaceship, a machine made for me to operate with my tentacles and my thoughts. It was a machine of destruction, a machine for enslavement. And most of the controls for my spaceship had the same function. I was an emissary for war, sent to conquer this world by a race so arrogant they thought I alone would be sufficient, and so hateful and paranoid that they considered even this perfect world a threat to them.

In the time I had before the ship destroyed itself, I could save my machine of destruction, or I could try to save the dying pony before me, and so almost certainly doom all of us to being consumed in the coming explosion. Confused, unable to remember anything, I reached out to the pink pony, and saw its life flash before my eyes. It was another power of my species, to absorb the mind of another, to take it over it in my mission of slavery and conquest.

But what I saw changed the course of my newborn life. For even with the pains of Pinkamena’s conflict with her family, I still saw a wonderful world, and a wonderful race. A race that deserved to exist, to thrive.

And only after this revelation, did I see the other thing, the thing that would have doomed Equestria if I had learned it first. I learned of the existence of magic, and that I innately had complete command of it. I had only just arrived, and I was already more powerful than the majority of unicorns. In a little time, I indeed could have conquered Equestria all by myself.

But because of my contact with Pinkie Pie and yes, even Pinkamena, I decided that I would use my power to subvert whatever purpose I had in my past life, to help these two to achieve their dreams of making everypony they met happier. I healed them, I contained the spaceship explosion and made sure that it was utterly annihilated, and in turn they accepted me as their new sister. Together we set out for Ponyville, there to start a new life with the Cakes and eventually all of you.

---

"So, you don’t remember anything of your life before the crash landing?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Nothing but an endless number of pop culture references from however many worlds I conquered before coming here,” said Rozetri.

“Those are fun!” Pinkie Pie added. After a moment, she clarified: “The references, not the conquering.”

Rainbow nodded. “Alright, I won’t fix your memories. Assuming I even knew how to do it. I’m not a very good grepp.” She then told what little she knew about herself and her origins.

~ ~ ~

Rozetri hummed, which with her voice was quite…memorable.

“With enough magic, you might get more of your abilities back,” she offered. “You might regain the ancient grepps’ legendary intelligence.”

“No thank you, Miss,” said Rainbow. “I’ve done quite well for myself as a musclehead, and I don’t intend to totally become an egghead anytime soon.”

Rozetri sighed—another odd sound—but accepted Rainbow’s decision.

“So does anypony else know about you?” Rainbow asked. “Your family, or the Cakes?”

“Neither,” said Rozetri. “Princess Celestia knows, and perhaps the other princesses as well.”

“Princess Celestia is such a wonderful ruler,” Pinkie explained. “I knew if I told her the secret that she wouldn’t tell. And, being in charge of everything, she deserved to know!”

“Oh,” Rainbow said sadly. “I suppose that means I need to tell the Princesses as well.”

“No, you don’t,” Pinkie said simply. “Rozetri could take over Equestria if she wanted to.”

“You couldn’t,” said Rozetri. “I scanned you, and you don’t have the power to do anything as a grepp.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said with a smile. “And that’s fine with me.”

Author's Note:

The notes for this chapter can be found with Chapter 39.