The Little Mermare

Perched atop his nest laying on a rock, Cheese Sandwich, the seagull, was preening himself, and humming. The sun shone high over the bird, as his beak thread through his yellow feathers.

It had been a pretty uneventful day for Cheese. He’d woken up, flew to the Pony Kingdom to snatch his breakfast, screamed at a diving bird that came too near to his nest, and began preening. As he moved to his other wing, a voice called out to him across the water.

“CHEESE?!” The gull’s head shot up, with a smile. He knew that voice. Grabbing the device that the pony’s used to look far away, Cheese chuckled.

“WHOA! Mermare off the port bow! Twilight! How’re you doing, kid?!” he shouted, not realizing till he pulled the device away from his eye that Twilight was right in front of him. “Heh, now that was a doozy of a swim, Twi!”

"Cheese, look at what Spike and I found in a new wreck!" the Little Mermare said with delight, dumping her satchel onto the seagull's rock.

"Hey! Surface pony stuff, huh? Well, why didn't you say so! Let me take a look," he said with a grin, rifling through the contents from Twilight's satchel.

Aside from the items she'd taken from the latest wreck, she also had picked up many more that day. It had been very productive. Cheese sifted through the miscellaneous items, until his feathers gripped the small, metal trident. His beak fell open in a gasp and his eyes widened as he gazed at the mini trident. "Great Googly Moogly! I haven't seen one of these in years! Whoo-hoo-hoo! This is a doozy!"

"What is it, Cheese? What?" Twilight asked in excitement. The gull's reaction made her even more overjoyed about her find.

"It's a dinglehopper," Cheese said with a chuckle. "The surface ponies use these things to style their manes and tails. Watch!" Gripping the dinglehopper tight in his feathers, Cheese lifted it to the top of his head where a tuft of brown feathers sat, and twirled the dinglehopper through it, as if the feathers were spaghetti. With a hard yank, Cheese freed the dinglehopper from the feathers, resulting in the top of his head resembling that of a bush. "Voila!"

"A dinglehopper," Twilight said with astonishment, gazing at the little metal trident as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Carefully placing it on Cheese's rock, the purple mermare reached back into her satchel and retrieved the bulbous, curved object. "What about this one?" Twilight asked.

"Shut. My. Beak! Is that what I think it is? A bulbous banded Snarfblatt!" Cheese said, taking the object from Twilight and spinning it around. "Oh, these things are incredible. They date back to olden times when ponies would do nothing but sit around and stare at each other all day. It got very, very boring. So the ponies invented these in order to make beautiful music. Allow me." Taking a deep breath, Cheese blew hard into the curved end of the Snarfblatt. Out of the bulbous end came a coagulated mix of seaweed, sand and water. Cheese wheezed and choked, coughing hard.

"MUSIC?!" Twilight gasped, gathering up the dinglehopper and every other item and shoving them into her satchel.

"Blegh! It's stuck!" Cheese coughed, before Twilight pulled the Snarfblatt away from him with her magic.

"Oh no, the concert! My mother is going to KILL me!" she yelped, placing the Snarfblatt back into her satchel. Finally, she and Spike pushed away from Cheese's rock, waving goodbye to the bird. "Goodbye, Cheese, and thanks a lot!" Twilight said, before she and Spike dove back under the sea.

"Anytime, kiddo! Anytime!" Cheese called out to the empty sea, before returning to preen himself.

Twilight swam home, as fast as her fins could carry her, unaware that she was being watched. Two sets of eyes, glowing with malicious intent, beheld the Little Mermare, with the spikey purple fish following close behind.

Aria and Sonata, the Sirens, grinned as Twilight and Spike swam away. Each were of sinister countenance in their own way. Sonata, the blue one, was less mature than Aria, but no less evil. She possessed a childlike demeanor, but underneath simmered a mind of cunning. Aria, the magenta one, by comparison, was more akin to anger and rage-fueled emotion, and as such was less apt to fully concocting her schemes.

But the two of them, even combined, posed little threat to Twilight and Spike. No, the two of them were merely a looking glass for the true terror of the sea.

The estranged younger sister of Celestia and Luna, Adagio.

The three royal sisters, when they were growing up, lived together in harmony. But once grown, Adagio became ambitious, eager to assert her independence from both of her sisters. The biggest example being her unwillingness to conform to the visage of a merpony. She found her natural Siren form to be beautiful, but Celestia disagreed. Luna, fortunately, was more willing to give her younger sister the acceptance she desired. But it wasn’t enough.

Eventually, Celestia and Adagio’s relationship deteriorated, leading to Celestia issuing an ultimatum to her youngest sister. Either Adagio would conform to the visage of a merpony or she would be forever banished from the court. With that, Adagio’s hatred for her elder sister nearly filled her inner being, along with disdain for Luna for not standing up for her. But, Adagio reluctantly conformed as Celestia wished, and the three sisters returned to their joint rule. That is, in public. In private, the story was different.

As the years wore on, while she was blessed with her children, Celestia’s temper grew. Her patience, in turn, began to wear thin. As such, Luna was always needed to keep her sister in check, as well as to mentor her nieces and nephew. But, Adagio followed a different pastime. If she could not be happy in her natural form, then she would seek another way to gain her happiness. And she did, in the practice of black magic.

It was this practice which sealed her fate.

It was on the day of the celebratory banquet for the birth of, ironically, Twilight. All the creatures of the sea were in attendance, paying their respects to the little sea poppet.

Adagio, too, was scheduled to be in attendance. But she arrived late, and not alone.

Flanking her were Aria and Sonata, shocking Luna and enraging Celestia. It was clear to the Sea Queen that her younger sister had used the black arts to split herself in thrain to create the other two beings. Adagio, Aria and Sonata, however, did not see fault in their arrival, and as such, proceeded to try and bless Twilight as everyone else had. But Celestia denied them, ordering Adagio to destroy the other two or face banishment.

Finally, the youngest royal had had enough. Her hatred had grown steadily through all the time she continued to spend in Celestia’s court, and now, it was full to boiling. Not only did Adagio refuse to follow Celestia’s order, but she, in fact, attempted to attack her sister, with Aria and Sonata’s assistance. Adagio had decided that if they could not rule jointly, then she would rule alone. But, with Luna’s assistance, Celestia was able to defeat and banish all three Sirens, and there they remained, in the hollowed-out carcass of an ancient sea beast, deep in the depths of the Dark Waters.

Adagio watched through Aria and Sonata’s eyes, sneering at the sight of her youngest niece. The pain she’d endured at the celebratory banquet had not yet left the lead Siren.

“Yes, hurry home, Princess. We wouldn’t want to miss Mummy’s celebration now, would we, hmm?” she snarled to Twilight’s image. “Ha. Celebration, indeed. Please! In my day, we had grand and fantastic feasts, when I still lived in the palace.”

Unfurling herself from within the shell she called a bed, Adagio slithered to her vanity.

“Now look at me. I’m wasting away to nothing out here! Banished, exiled, practically starving. Shining Armor and the girls have all been forbidden to even speak about me, and the last time Luna came around, well, I can barely remember. While Celestia and her sycophantic subjects celebrate her continued rule. Ugh! They’re all deluded! They cannot see her for what she is, and yet I’M labeled as the monster! If they want to celebrate, I’ll give them something to celebrate!”

Flaring up her magic, she levitated a tube of lipstick and applied a thick layer of it to her lips, before turning back to Twilight’s ever-retreating image.

“Aria! Sonata! Follow my dear niece. I want you both to keep a very close eye on her, understand?” she barked to her sisters, before a grin filled with nothing but pure evil stretched across her face. “She may be the key to Celestia’s undoing.”