Rara could practically imagine the headlines flooding through Equestria’s tabloids as she lounged in an apple-patterned hammock. ‘POP SENSATION GOES SEVEN DAYS STRAIGHT WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE.’ While some would argue that she’d never done anything productive in her life, or put out anything worth listening to, she’d tell them straight back that catching up with an old friend pretty much fulfilled that goal, especially when that something involved airing out everything she’d kept hidden for far too long.
“Checking the tabloids immediately after a song’s release is the most annoying thing you can possibly do for a singer,” she muttered. “I appreciate what my fans do for me, don’t get me wrong, but if it was written for a particular reason, I’d tell them. All I’m saying is, songwriting shouldn’t be a passive-aggressive cat-and-mouse game of figuring out who offended who. It should either come from the heart, or from a soulless cash-grab paid writer who at least knows what he’s doing.”
Her cowboy-hat-wearing friend simply stared at her in absolute bewilderment, wondering how she could’ve gotten roped into such a thing. For some reason or another, when Applejack had offered Rara a chance to vent about the past few years, she’d expected a lot more crazy stories and a lot less ranting about the industry.
Rara, for her part at least, seemed to take the hint and immediately quit talking.
“Sorry,” she whispered, taking a sip out of her bottle of apple juice. “That was the last singer thing I needed to get out of my system.”
“Ya promise?” Applejack asked, shooting her a teasing grin.
Her black-maned counterpart matched it with the sort of perfectly coordinated smirk only pop stars could truly master and shoved her friend’s hammock towards her.
“Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a cupcake in my eye,” answered Rara.
She still hadn’t quite mastered all the motions that went with this ritual, but Pinkie Pie had insisted on teaching her immediately after the concert. By that, she’d apparently meant demonstrating it in front of Svengallop and ‘accidentally’ hitting him as hard as she could with her invisible cupcake. Rara had always loved her fans, but after that display, she had a feeling Pinkie Pie would stay one of her favorites for a very long time.
Instead of going back on some other music-related tangent, she peacefully watched the sun set on yet another fulfilling day, one of the few when she’d truly felt like herself. Of course, seeing the verdant leaves of the orchard barely touch the fiery sky was another bonus. It was the sort of sight she’d seen day in and day out on the gilded cage she’d called a tour carriage, but somehow, everything about it seemed new and almost freeing. She could certainly see why so many ponies in Ponyville broke out into song when scenery like this was in their backyard.
“Actually,” Applejack spoke after several seconds, “there is somethin’ I’ve been meanin’ to ask you. Not sure if it has anything to do with singin’, but—“
In the serenity of the situation, the question had almost shocked Rara to the core. Still, after a few seconds of gaining her composure, she had enough reason left in her brain to give a single nod and a wave of her hooves.
“When everypony said you moved to Canterlot—you know, after the camp and what ‘ve you—what exactly were you doin’ there? ‘Cause everypony always told me—“
“I was shooting a reality show,” Rara answered without a single hint of humor in her voice. “I came in fourth place.”
Other than her strange level of excitement over an honor that happened at least ten years ago, she barely showed any emotion, as if she’d had to answer this question time and time again. Granted, it wasn’t as if Applejack hadn’t heard about the event, or her friend’s involvement in it, but—
“Everypony’s talkin’ about your pal from camp!” she could vaguely remember Big Mac saying. “She made it on Equestria’s Got Talent! Let’s go to the movies and watch it!”
“Yeah, and I’m Princess Celestia,” Applejack had replied. “You just wanna get outta applebuckin’, don’t ya?”
Her younger self kept yelling at her brother to pull his weight until the flashback suddenly ended, leaving Applejack with an odd look on her face.
“Big Mac was right,” she muttered to herself in awe. “And here I thought he was just tryin’ to get outta chores again. I oughta tell him I’m mighty sorry once he gets back.”
Come to think of it, Rara hadn’t seen much of anypony around the farm all day. All the better, she thought to herself, to reveal everything here and now, of how she’d trotted onto the talent show circuit to face the worst of results. With the reveal of Countess Coloratura’s true identity, she’d already been getting enough reminders—and enough fanmail—of what had likely been the most embarrassing experience of her life.
Granted, it hadn’t started that way, and she decided then and there to pad her explanation out with those sorts of memories. Even if she knew she couldn’t hide anything from Applejack, there were still parts of the story that would test their friendship to its ultimate limit, or at least merit some teasing laughs along the way.
With each prepared breath Rara took, she felt a weight lift off of her. She hadn’t thought about her EGT days much in the past few years, giving her enough distance to soar past any embarrassing memory. And, judging from the curious look on Applejack’s face, the cowpony was willing to pardon them all.
The other pony barely had to say a thing before Rara spoke the words that would take them both back to another time. A time when everything was simpler, yet strangely far more complicated as well. Talent shows, Applejack would see, had a way of doing just that.
“I figure I might as well start from the beginning, so I’ll lay it all out,” she whispered. “It’s a story about a move, a competition, and how I became the ‘Siren of Canterlot.’”
****
As she spoke, she closed her eyes, and she was no longer in her own time. Rather, she imagined schools, camps, and all the other places of her youth. This did her well when she described them to Applejack, especially considering her memories of them were a bit rusty to begin with from the years she’d spent shoving them out of her head.
Before she’d went to Camp Friendship, all other ponies had ever given her was weird looks. Even she felt that there was something different, something that wasn’t quite right about herself, but she hadn’t quite known what it was until she went on stage with Applejack.
It’d hit her like a ton of bricks, to be honest—or a ton of feathers, to quote a trick one of her campmates had just played on her a few days before. During her performance at the camp talent show, Rara had noticed familiar faces within the crowd—and they weren’t the foals she knew. She’d scanned back and forth between the makeshift podium and these odd figures, trying to piece together what was going on while still making it look like she was staring at the crowd. In truth, however, if she’d figured it out then, she surely wouldn’t have made it past the first verse before exploding in a cloud of nerves.
Four ponies, ones her parents had taken her to see once at the cinema, sitting with one hoof in front of them as if they were about to push an invisible buzzer. But then again, that was how things normally worked when they watched a performance. They were the undisputed talent scouts of Equestria, who’d searched far and wide for its best acts. Sapphire Shores herself had been signed to their label.
And Rara, the tiny, unassuming ticking time bomb of nerves and youthful despair, was somehow enough to make them stop in their tracks. To be fair, the feeling had been mutual.
Her notes had cracked so minutely that only the most attuned of ears could hear them falter, and only the most observant of ponies could see her quiver where she stood. The feeling was very, very, indisputably mutual.
As she sang, she could practically hear her voice being drowned out by elimination buzzers, the very sounds of fear. Yet somehow, when she’d ended, the four were still staring at her, mouths agape. And, as she very quickly noticed, all four of their front hooves had automatically joined together in a single spot. She could practically feel what they were about to ask her, and even then, it was still a surprise.
She’d trotted into camp with nothing but a new uniform, and here she was, with a ticket to the Canterlot auditions and, admittedly, a very soiled new uniform. Unfortunately, this little adventure would take her outside Ponyville, the town she’d come to love, for a while, but she didn’t hesitate for a single moment.
“I will come back,” she whispered as the train took her farther and farther away. “But you taught me how amazing everypony’s talents are, and I’m not going back until everypony sees me shine.”
As Rara—the older, more jaded Rara who knew exactly what was going to happen here—came back into reality, she remembered the one thing the judges had told her before her journey began.
“They say only ten foals per generation can sing like you do. Most of them, we don’t reach in time, and they come to take their gift for granted.
“Learning to sing with an adult’s voice is known as the ‘Gift of the Siren.’ And we believe you, and you alone, have the talent to wield it…”
****
“Or at least that’s the story they tell all the foals,” Rara deadpanned.
Applejack practically swore she could hear one of Granny Smith’s old records scratching in the distance. Or it could have been in her head. Usually, when it came to life at Sweet Apple Acres, it really could go either way.
“So ya mean the Gift of the Siren ain’t real? I mean, with a name like that, and the sirens Twilight’s met, it don’t sound like a good thing to have at all. But horseapples, Rara, how could your voice not have some kinda magic? It hasn’t aged a day since we were young’uns!”
Somehow or another, Rara was so flattered by Applejack’s compliment that she didn’t even think about the strangeness of Princess Twilight coming across sirens. Or she figured the Princess of Friendship had already come across so many odd things that siren sightings were just a drop in her bucket of weirdness. It really could go either way.
“Um…Equus to Rara? Ya still in there?”
After Rara blushed for what had to have been a minute straight, Applejack had started waving her hoof in front of the songstress’s face, almost falling out of the hammock as she did so.
“Anyway,” Rara continued, finally freeing herself from the dreamland that pops up whenever a cute friend compliments you, “it doesn’t exist like you think it exists. My vocal cords just developed earlier than other foals, not because of some siren curse or anything. Heck, for something that shows up only ten times a generation, I saw at least one other filly that could do the same thing I could. So either I’m incredibly special, or it’s just as much of a hoax as Hoofdini’s Blessing.”
“Uh, come again?” Applejack asked once she’d heard the last part of the sentence.
“Hoofdini’s Blessing. Every generation, ten young ponies are given uncanny sleight-of-hand abilities so they can be renowned throughout the land. There’s also the Mermare’s Magic for ten young dancers, and the Gryphon’s Grit for escape artists—“
Applejack raised a single eyebrow as if she knew the answer to every question in the universe.
“There’s ten of ‘em too, right?”
“No, there’s actually fifteen. Five of those are destined to die in freak accidents, so technically it ends up evening itself out in the end, really.”
The look of unease on Rara’s face as she stared at the ground said it all, to the point where Applejack barely had to ask if five foals had really died on set. To make matters even worse, she distinctly noticed that her friend only nodded three times, as if that damage wasn’t enough already.
Wisely choosing not to think too hard about the sorts of things Equestria’s biggest talent show did in the shadows, Applejack pushed on to the audition phase. And, as usual, all it only took a single moment to take Rara straight back there.
****
Rara had been placed in the children’s category of Equestria’s Got Talent’s Canterlot auditions, saved for last as all the best acts tended to be. She’d give her performance, and she and the two ponies that came after her would gather at the stage once all three acts were over. There wasn’t really a quota on how many would go through at this point—she’d once seen them accept all three auditioning ponies—so she figured it was just another thing that made the competition far too complicated.
Her performance had been just as stellar as her last, to the point where even the larger stage didn’t affect her anymore. She’d sung her heart out, made the judges fall in love with her yet again, and now she waited in the wings as the other two acts performed. One other singer and one magician.
Eyeing the foals she’d be competing with, Rara’s most lingering question would be the one that would be answered first as the former took the stage. The foal singer’s nametag had been puzzling her all through the day, and it seemed the answer would be even stranger than she could imagine.
“My name is Sapphire Ocean,” the other Siren’s Gift filly said with a confidence Rara could never dream of matching. “I’ll be singing my favorite Sapphire Shores song for you today.”
Even as Rara had spent every waking moment ogling the filly’s tag—or at least, every moment she wasn’t practicing—that sentence still made her raise an eyebrow. For the love of Celestia, it had to be a stage name. No loving parent would deliberately name their child anything so unattainable, especially not when the filly had a blue mane, white fur, and dreamed of becoming a singer.
Heavens above, it was like she’d time-traveled to when Sapphire Shores was a foal. Or Sapphire Shores was involved in an illegal cloning program. Both options creeped her out endlessly and equally.
“My dream is to become the next Sapphire Shores,” Sapphire Ocean continued. “So I’d like to dedicate this song to her, wherever she is, and to my little sister, Shores Ocean.”
Now, the judges’ eyes were twitching right along with Rara’s, and a couple even had half a mind to press their buzzers then and there.
“That name doesn’t even make any sense!” one yelled.
“Of course it does! My name is Sapphire, and my sister’s name is Shores! It’s crystal clear!”
To take a tally of the room at this point, the tiny blue magician filly had crouched behind Rara, Rara herself begun to stare into the void of a blackened auditorium as if doing so would give her any further explanation, and the judges were attempting a hoofball-style huddle to come up with a witty comeback to such an inexplicably strange situation.
“Sapphy,” one judge finally asked in a slow voice, using the foal’s preferred name, “it’s safe to tell us here. Is your family a Celestia-forsaken Sapphire Shores cult?”
“No,” the foal answered in an all-too-chipper voice. “Princess Celestia hasn’t authorized our organization yet.”
As she sang, her voice was amazing, possibly even better than Rara’s. But even then, none of the judges pressed the ‘automatic live show’ buzzer as anticipated. They were all too busy facehoofing.
****
“So,” Rara explained, “Sapphy declared herself my rival after that.”
Applejack held out a hoof expectedly and stared her friend straight in the eyes as if awaiting the world’s most delicious apple fritter. (She wouldn’t settle for anything less.)
“Well, technically, she didn’t say it. Her manager did. After hearing my performance, Sapphy was apparently so mad about not being the only Siren’s Gift contestant that she gave me the silent treatment all the way through the contest. And she got fifth in the whole thing, so that’s saying something. Anyway, her manager told me that Sapphy wasn’t there to make friends, and I asked her why she wouldn’t want to make friends. Making friends with other singers is the best way to get critiques on your work, and Equestria is a land of friendship anyway. Besides, why wouldn’t you want to be friends with a crazy clown who can shoot himself out of a cannonball or a taxi driver that can sing opera?”
Applejack’s eyebrow raised in her deadly way once again, leaving Rara to talk even more to fill in the gaps. Finally, however, even the Element of Honesty herself had grown impatient.
“So what about Trixie?” she asked. “Did she make it in with you and the Sapphire Shores clone or not?”
“That’s actually kind of an embarrassing story,” Rara replied, laughing as nervously as she could. “I take it you know her?”
Her friend gave her a nod that could tell a million stories, of which only about ten or so were good ones.
“She broke down on stage. Her trick was perfect, but she’d never performed in front of strangers before, so she spoke really quietly, and you could tell she was nervous. They buzzed her four times, and the really snarky judge from Trottingham told her she needed more showmanship.”
This time, Applejack actually managed to fall off her hammock, this time due to her laughing so hard. Then again, Rara did have to concede that, for somepony who’d gotten to know Trixie at her most showy phase, imagining her acting more like Applejack’s friend Fluttershy would be pretty amusing.
“Boy, that sure as hay backfired, didn’t it?” Applejack chuckled before letting herself get back to Rara’s story.
“Anyway, I felt really bad for her, so I gave her this really nice turquoise brooch I found at a flea market back home. I told her to audition next year, and wear it so she’d look fancier on stage.”
At that moment, Applejack took a break from laughing and made yet another harsh realization.
“Wait a sec. Trixie still wears a turquoise brooch.”
Reaching out across her hammock to ruffle Rara’s mane, she teased, “I’ve got competition, don’t I? For—for being your best pal, at least.”
The singer could still tell from her friend’s profuse blushing and her hesitation on the last sentence that she’d meant something far different, but Rara chose to let that fly. For today, at least.
“That’s actually the kinda embarrassing part. Trixie said she’d wait for me forever and that I was a ‘knight in her time of need.’ I figured she’d forget about it like everypony else, but I just got a letter from her today. Being a fanfilly about my new songs and promising to meet me and be with me forever and…I’ve only met her once.”
“Yeaaaah,” Applejack muttered, creeped out for the third time that day. “Anyway, how’d the rest of the contest go?”
Rara took a deep breath, anticipating what would happen in her memories. While all the rest of her memories of the contest had been fun or at the very least amusing to look back on, this would be the kicker. The one thing she’d never expected, and preferably never wanted to consider ever again.
“Nothing really exciting went on,” she sighed. “At least, not until the riots happened…”
****
Months of journeying, auditioning, and everything that had went with it had ended in just a few short moments. Rara had been corralled into a group of four, this time to determine who would make it into the top three. This would determine who would get a recording deal, or a show in Las Pegasus. Whose dream would come true, and whose star would fall from Princess Luna’s sky.
Everypony around her had told her this would be a cinch. All three of the other acts had made mistakes that burned in the public’s eye even months after the fact. One pony was legitimately good, another had accusations of fraud flying over his head every week, and the others were the Flim Flam brothers.
Looking back on it, Rara always had thought they should’ve stuck to singing and dancing. Sure, the way they held each other close as they moved was creepy to her even as a foal, but placing third on Equestria’s Got Talent and reaping its rewards had to have been better than their questionable career as con stallions.
Sure enough, though, everything had failed in that moment. Rara had gotten so popular, entire advertising teams were scrambling to promote her, telling audiences that voting against a foal was a ruthless and heartless act. It wasn’t their failure that hurt her, but rather the wait—it’d taken two weeks for all the voting letters to come in to be tallied, two weeks Rara had spent anticipating, tasting her dream.
That had been her first clue that the “Gift of the Siren” might not have just been a fancy name. The power she took on stage, even though she didn’t use it for evil as the mythical sirens had, was still overwhelming. Instead of negative energy, she could feel herself practically absorbing all their cheers and applause. She’d never considered herself to be much of an attention seeker, and yet the day after she was eliminated, she suddenly found herself falling ill.
Still, once she’d regained her composure, she’d realized that perhaps fourth place wasn’t such a bad place to be, and from there, her dream had sparked anew. The entire train ride back to Ponyville, Rara had fidgeted in anticipation, awaiting hugs from friends or perhaps even a party thrown in her honor.
What she would find there turned out to be far worse. The town was in shambles, fire flew from buildings as far as the eye could see, and ponies screamed throughout the streets. They carried no signs and yelled completely unintelligibly, yet their message ran loud and clear.
Whatever magic had brought Rara’s voice to the level it was had graduated onto a whole other stage. As tears swept through her eyes, memories flashed by of the utter discord she’d brought on stage that night, the curses and jeers thrown high as the filly trotted off the podium for the last time. That sight had been enough. She was too powerful.
For two whole years, Rara vowed she would never sing again.
****
“What the hay?!” Applejack interrupted, her hooves flying wildly about. “I mean, gosh, that had to be rough, but never singin’ again? Why would anypony get a cutie mark in somethin’ if it was just gonna hurt somepony else?”
“It was the worst,” Rara answered bluntly, taking a long breath. “The temptation was always there, but I got into playing the piano instead. I thought maybe, as long as the music didn’t come from my voice, I’d be okay.”
After a few seconds of uncharacteristic seriousness, a smile crept onto Rara’s face yet again.
“But then I found out there wasn’t really a riot after all. Sure, ponies were pretty mad that I didn’t win, but it never went past peaceful protesting. Dragons had just ransacked the village on the exact same day I came back, and I’m pretty sure they don’t watch EGT.”
Applejack felt the temptation to remark either on how Rara apparently considered a dragon attack to be a relief or on Spike’s huge collection of ventriloquism-related paraphernalia, but chose not to comment on either front.
“But anyway, by the time I started singing again, plenty of other Siren’s Gift fillies were getting popular. As much as I might complain about the fanmail, I’m actually relieved ponies still remember me. But back then, I thought I was washed up at eighteen, and when you’re washed up at eighteen, you tend to make bad decisions.”
“Like Svengallop?” Applejack asked.
“I was just flattered somepony remembered me,” answered Rara, playing with her hair nervously. “But I think we all know enough about that, right?”
Somehow managing to get their hooves to intertwine without falling out of their respective hammocks, the two childhood friends stared out into the night sky, looking out to the constellations and thinking of all the stars in Equestria—in both senses of the word. That peace could’ve lasted forever, but just like the stories she’d heard about sirens, Rara could sense another question on Applejack’s mind.
“You wanna know about whatever happened to Sapphire Ocean, right?” she wondered, still staring out at the stars, remembering a mare she’d seen once behind the turntables of a Manehattan club.
“She’s into different music now. And let’s just say…she’s in a better place.”
Author's Note
~~Ventriloquist Spike was just a throwaway line and now I want to write it, gosh darn it!~~
Anyway, that takes us up to Rarajack, Sapphiratura, Raratrix, and I'm already working on some CocoRara AU ideas. I have a Rara shipping problem. And an America's Got Talent problem, hence why this headcanon's been in my head forever.
