Coral came from the reclusive underwater city of Moonreef near the Whitewater Strait. She's heard all kinds of myths and legends about land-dwellers, some true and some false, and came ashore to find out for herself. She recently comes from Crimin Isle, where she was found guilty of a murder she didn't commit. She totally trades on her reputation as a stone-cold killer who killed a man with nothing but a boot.
 
Her family wanted her to join the Moonreef military, but she heard tales of Bannermanes and one day wants become one of them.
 
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Moonreef was a quiet town, but Coral was not a quiet Seapony. Far out in the boonies (or as they are called in the sea, lagoonies) the town was idle and almost drifting. Quite literally. The homes and businesses were dragged along the loose silt of the ocean floor, moving in formations with currents that dragged them slowly around the whole of the high seas at a rate of almost 16ft per year. However, even while continually moving, life in the town often stayed surprisingly still. Coral liked it.
Active and curious, Coral Abyss spent her younger years with her schoolmates, hearing tall tales from all of the seabound traders that would stop in on the way to the larger coastal cities like Aqua Marina. Her and her best friend Pearl Shining would hang out in the town center, spending the loose change they could scrounge on Barnacle Bites and Sweet Bubbles, waiting patiently like fishermen for some interesting wanderer to catch their eye. One day they even talked to a Pony from the land that had come all the way out to Moonreef as part of a road trip vacation. Her voice barely carried over the funny helmet that she had on. They tried to buy her some Sweet Bubbles, but they kept popping on the way through the tube into the helmet. All three of them giggled at that.
Visitors were common in Moonreef. It just wasn’t a place that anypony tended to stay. At least that was the conclusion Coral came too in the years after Pearl’s death. She had gotten sick, and not much later she was being buried. Life felt different after she was gone. Pearl had been her anchor, it seemed, and without her Coral was ready to set out on the seas!
She said her goodbyes to her family and set off to Aqua Marina, the big city. At least, it was the biggest one near her. Right on the coast, regularly trading with land, there was no better place for a seapony to go to live the metropolitan life. With her savings and her dedication, she settled in fast, getting an apartment and pretty soon getting a nice job at AmbuloCorp, the leading manufacturer of Sea Legs™. Sea Legs™ of course being attachable prosthetic legs that allowed seaponies, with the help of some other surface gear, to venture forth on land for the sake of diplomacy and trade. It was a cushy job that gave her a reasonable amount of spare income and free time. Free time that would soon be taken by spending time with Riptide.
Riptide was an interesting friend to have. She first met him on her commute, coming back from her upstanding career on the L-sub while he was going off to work third shift at the SeaShell Corner Store. The two hit it off and Riptide soon became Coral’s window into something she had sought much more than financial stability or marketable skills: a social life.
Nights and weekends spent with Riptide could go anywhere. Sometimes it was just dinner, sometimes it was meeting new friends, sometimes it was a party or a club. It was like a current, the way that she was being pulled towards all of them. She was too far gone before she even realized she was being pulled under.
It was a bad plan to begin with. Not that a good plan would’ve done her any better. They would’ve set her up as the fallpony either way.
She had been refusing to let them joyride the Sea Legs™ for a while now. Even good friends didn’t make her want to betray her career. At least not much. She was willing to show them the factory though, and that was her mistake.
After they had locked her in a closet, her pounding and yelling hardly traveling through the water outside the door, they had apparently run into trouble when trying to steal some Sea Legs™, and that trouble was Amos, the old security guard. Coral had eaten lunch with him as long as she had worked there. His body floating there, killed by head trauma in a struggle, it was enough to stun her when they let her out.
Riptide and his friends only argued briefly, while Coral sat in a daze. It didn’t take long for him to convince them to leave her behind. They didn’t even actually steal anything. It took even less time for the police to arrive.
Riptide and his friends got away while she was charged with accessory to murder. 15 years. 8 with good behavior. Those 8 years went by pretty fast for her. Prison was a safe, sanitized, claustrophobic, and monotonous experience. Glub Gills was her closest thing to a friend in there, a guard at MolluskMax Penitentiary, one of the guards that seemed to have her interests at heart. The small talk and fleeting connection they had formed over the years came to pay off handsomely when she helped petition for Coral’s early release.
So there she was, barely a penny to her name, her job and friends gone, and the only home she had known for years was prison. There was nothing left for her in Aqua Marina. It wasn’t hard to see that. It was time to go home.
Moonreef had shifted almost 100 feet since the last time she saw it. It wasn’t only its position that had changed though. She reflected on all the changed faces, not welcoming or understanding, all the whispers of “criminal” and “murderer” that seemed to float behind her wherever she swam, she reflected on all of it as she laid anemones on her parent’s graves. No one had written to her in prison to tell her that they had died.
They had left her the house, but she didn’t want to settle in Moonreef. She was meant to keep swimming on. The house sold well, or as well as she needed it to. She kept some photos and her mom’s Shell necklace, it had a photo of the three of them in it, but otherwise sold everything to the highest, fastest bid. She knew exactly how much money she would need to buy some Sea Legs™ and a water suit, and she even had enough left over to take a safe amount of cash with her.
She would go to the surface. A new world for a new life.