My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic meets BioShock. Is a mare not entitled to the sweat of her brow?
Siren Song, the beautiful, lovely, and privileged student of Princess Celestia, has convinced her teacher to let her venture beyond the palace walls and go abroad to study art.
However, studying art is only a cover story; Siren is on a different mission. A long time ago, Celestia had a falling out with another one of her most promising students: Twilight Sparkle. Having seen her mentor's lingering sadness over the affair, Siren has decided that she would find Twilight and talk her into burying the hatchet. She gets on a boat traveling to the last place Twilight was known to be, but just as the boat approaches, it is attacked and sunk by mutants the likes of which Siren has never seen.
She wakes up in the slums of Vision, an underwater city designed to be a utopia where ponies could carve out their own place in the world away from Celestia's perceived tyranny. Ripped apart by civil war, Vision has become a hell under the sea, where ponies are hung for shoplifting, predatory mutants walk the streets, and money can buy anything.
Having been told that Twilight had died in Vision a while ago, Siren's only mission now is escape, and her only hope is the powerful councilmare and Voice with an Internet Connection, Trixie, who intends to ransom her. But in order to get to her, Siren needs to journey across the city, all the while having to deal with predators, stress, injuries, a ponyhunt, and the increasing realization that she's not quite the upstanding pony she had always considered herself to be.
The first book of the series, Siren Song, is complete, and can be found here
. The second book, Daring Do, can be found half-complete here. Unfortunately, the author has announced the series' cancellation in order to pursue original fiction. He'll instead upload deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes content, a series bible, and more.
This fanfiction contains examples of:
- Anti-Hero: Siren.
- Addictive Magic: The ADAM equivalent here is Heart's Desire and Poison Joke. Heart's Desire, to give you the extra skills that come with Cutie Pox, and Poison Joke, to keep it in check. The problem is, you develop a tolerance to the Poison Joke, and not getting enough of it causes you to become a mutant.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Green describes Trixie's deal with Diamond Tiara as this. Pity she doesn't take it.
- Ax-Crazy: Whitewash and Rarity turn out to be this.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Echo's disguise while walking about The Pavillon? Goggles and clipboard.
- Benevolent Boss: Diamond Tiara genuinely cares for those under her, bringing her into conflict with Trixie when she thinks Siren got several of her guards killed during a riot.
- Berserk Button: Green despises those whom she considers parasites. Understandable, given that she considers them to be the reason Vision is falling apart.
- Body Double: Trixie has one.
- Body Horror: The Markers, especially White Wash.
- Broken Aesop: In-universe. Foal!Siren once got sent to a shrink for reading one into a fairy tale.
- The Caretaker: Apple Bloom is Scootaloo's.
- Charm Person: Green, through Heart's Desire, has the Would you kindly... power.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Daring Do mantle.
- Creepy Child: The Little Sisters.
- Creepy Monotone: Berry Punch is very deadpan. It occurs to Siren that she manages to sound disinterested even when shouting for help.
- Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Siren and Swiftwing.
- Dead All Along: An interesting twist. Siren, just after waking up in Vision, unintentionally kills a mutant who attacks her. Not realizing he's dead, Siren flees from him, magically chucking things behind her as she runs. Hiding in a darkened room and trying to hold the door shut, she becomes convinced that the mutant has found another way in and goes into a Troubled Fetal Position, hallucinating him pawing at her until she faints. She discovers the corpse after she ventures out of the room.
- Defector from Decadence: Epiphany. Exactly as planned.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Berry Punch's backstory. She mentions it in such a nonchalant way that Siren is taken aback.
- Siren was trying for a kind of suicide when she drank the mantle. She expected to vanish into a new (heroic) personality, but Daring Do doesn't quite work like that.
- Dynamic Entry: Green.
- Emotionless Girl: Berry.
- Eye Scream: How Rarity gets her comeuppance.
- Fantastic Drug: Poison Joke.
- Fantastic Racism: Siren has a subconscious sentiment against earth ponies and pegasi, and a conscious one against Markers.
- Functional Addict: Green? Yes. White Wash? Not so much.
- Genre Savvy: Echo.
- Heroic BSoD: Between stress and seeing a new messed up thing every five seconds, Siren has pretty much been here for most of the story.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Green.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Zephyr is one of the few legit nice ponies in Vision, so it's a bit a Wham Episode when we come across her and Soft-Spoken Sadist Echo.
- Hitman with a Heart: Green seems to be this.
- I Choose to Stay: Siren turns down a chance to leave, so she can try to rescue Green.
- Intoxication Ensues: Siren after taking Daring Do.
- It's All About Me: Siren, made worse by circumstances. A Flashback Nightmare shows that she had more than a trace of it as a foal.
- Jerkass: Although Siren, Trixie, and Diamond Tiara all have their moments, Echo conveys this with almost every line.
- Kick the Dog: Siren has several. Special mention to when she mocks Swiftwing's wing enhancements. Even she realizes the sheer pointlessness of what she just did.
- Made of Iron: Green comments that Siren has a remarkable ability to take damage and keep going.
- Manipulative Bitch: Siren.
- Mistaken for Junkie: Siren is this after all the contradicting drugs she'd been given warp her mind.
- Oh, Crap!: When she learns that Rarity's about to show up, Green all but loses it.
- Pet the Dog: Siren starts to get more of these moments as part of her Character Development.
- Phlebotinum Dependence: Poison Joke.
- Poisonous Person: Berry Punch, perhaps.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Not even Vision can change this about Rarity.
- Quick Nip: Echo. As he comments, if you're going to drink something every day that will eventually kill you, better alcohol than Poison Joke.
- The Quiet One: Berry Punch.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In Daring Do, Echo gives one to Siren, and she gives a better one back.
- Room Full of Crazy: White Wash's pets.
- Replacement Goldfish: In a flashback, Luna accuses Celestia of seeing Siren as one.
- Sanity Slippage:
- Happens as a marker's addiction gets out of hand.
- The relatively sane Green deteriorates rapidly once she's tied-up, blindfolded and at the mercy of Rarity.
- Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Siren buys herself a second by imitating Sweetie Belle's voice.
- Sherlock Scan: Siren is good at this. It saves her with White Wash.
- Shout-Out:
- Trixie informs Siren that if she can't make it out of Serpent's Wharf, the Markers will kill her and rape her, and if she's lucky they'll do it in that order.
- Siren mentions the fan songs Lullaby for a Princess and The Moon Rises.
- When she first meets Epiphany, Siren is passing the time by reading Fallout: Equestria.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Echo, though not quite soft-spoken, is very well enunciated.
- Taken for Granite: Epiphany and Green.
- Tempting Fate: Green tries to encourage Siren by telling her that she's as good as home. Siren points out that in a play, that's usually a sign that something's about to go horribly wrong. She's right.
- Third-Person Person: Trixie, even in private.
- Trauma Conga Line: Siren's stay in Vision has been this.
- Underwater City: Vision
- Undying Loyalty:
- Whatever else can be said about Siren, she seems to adore Celestia wholeheartedly.
- The as-of-yet-unseen Rainbow Dash seems to inspire this in her subordinates.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Siren's high strung and paranoid mindset has her seeing nothing but evil in ponies who are going out of their way to help her. This helps with White Wash, who appears to the reader as a genuinely kindhearted vet until Siren rubs her the wrong way and she flips her shit.
- What Were You Thinking?: "Did you just agree to complete a vital mission on a short time limit with no idea-" "Shut up, Berry. When I want your opinion I'll ask Trixie."
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Trixie tries to pull this on Echo. He kills two ponies and escapes.
- Younger Than They Look: Berry Punch appears to be in her late-teens, despite being forty-seven.
- Your Days Are Numbered: The Markers.
