Truthseeker

by RB_

A Daring Interlude

Lyra was going through the morning’s newspaper when the shop’s door’s bell rang. She was sitting in the living room, but the door to the storefront had been left open, and through it, she could hear everything going on around the counter.

“Hello, ma’am. Welcome to Bon Bon’s Bon Bons. What can I do for you?”

A few moments of silence, probably the customer looking at what was on display. Lyra turned to the next page. Sports. She probably wasn’t going to find anything relevant in an article about Fleetfoot’s recent track times, so she moved on.

“One box of pecan crunchers, please. Say, do you know a mare named Lyra Heartstrings? Your mailmare told me she lived here.”

Lyra’s ears perked up.

“She does,” Bon Bon said, raising her voice slightly. “Why, who’s asking?”

“My name is Sandy Shores, and I have—”

“Bonnie, she’s lying,” Lyra called out. She rolled off of the couch she’d been sitting on.

“Okay, you caught me. My name is A.K. Yearling, and—”

“The author of the Daring Do books?”

“Yes, that one. Are you a fan?”

“Ah—hm—yes, you could say that.”

Lyra rounded the corner and stepped into the shop proper. “Bonnie,” she said, “she’s still lying.”

The pony looked at her through her glasses. “And you’re Lyra Heartstrings, I’m guessing?”

“Yep. Now, why don’t you tell us who you really are? Because we’re on high alert at the moment, and Bonnie here”—she patted Bon Bon on the shoulder—“is a little bit overprotective.”

“Ah. Good to see you live up to your reputation, Heartstrings.”

Lyra raised an eyebrow. I have a reputation? Since when?

The pony removed her hat and glasses. Bon Bon’s eyes widened.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Daring Do, and I need your help.”

─────

“So there we were, at the top of Starswirl’s Tower,” Daring said, Bonnie listening with rapt attention. They’d retreated to the living room after hanging a ‘Gone Out, Be Back Soon’ sign on the shop’s door.

“’Don’t do it,’ I yell at Dr. Cabellaron. ‘You don’t know what might be in there!’ But he laughs.”

“’What is in Starswirl’s Abandoned Box, Daring Do,’ he says, ‘is sure to be your demise!’ He swipes the box off the pedestal, raises it above his head, and throws it at the ground!”

“And?” Bonnie asked.

“I dove behind a workbench just as it crashed into the stone floor, smashing open in the process! But what came out was nothing like what Caballeron was expecting. You should have seen the look on Caballeron’s face when it turned out that all that was inside the box was a bunch of flashing lights!”

“What, that was it?” Lyra said. “All that, and all that was in the box was a lightshow?”

“That’s about the same thing he said, actually,” Daring said. “But really, he’s lucky it didn’t melt his face off or something. That pony is way too careless around random magical artifacts.”

She looked over at the thing in Lyra’s magic—or tried to, anyway. “How’s the thingy going?”

“It’s going,” Lyra said.

The ‘thingy’, as Daring had put it, was a little wooden puzzle box. It sort of reminded Lyra of a rubik’s cube, except with engravings on each side and meant to be opened.

What was most interesting, though, was that Lyra was the only one who could actually focus on it.

“I found it in a temple in Southern Equestria,” Daring had said. “I know there’s something important inside, but I can’t focus on it long enough to make any headway.”

“Sounds like a perception filter,” Lyra had replied.

“You mean a Notice-Me-Not enchantment?”

“Same thing, different terms. Here, let me try.”

She’d been working at it for the past twelve minutes, during which Daring had, with a little bit of goading from Bon Bon, begun to recount her most recent adventures.

“So, how did you know about me, anyway?” Lyra asked, rotating a piece for what felt like the twentieth time. “Are you an Owl too, or…?”

“Oh, no,” Daring said. “But I’ve crossed paths with a few in my adventures. One of them pointed me to you.”

“Good to know the system works, then.”

“It always does.”

With a click, the final piece of the puzzle box slid into place.

“Done,” Lyra said.

“Oh, the enchantment’s gone,” Daring said. “I can finally see the thing that’s been causing me so much annoyance lately.” She got up and walked over, Bon Bon following behind her. “Do you want to open it, or can I?”

“You’d better do it,” Lyra said. “You’re the one with experience opening random magical artifacts.”

Daring smiled, and reached out with her hooves. Slowly, carefully, making sure to point the opening away from them, she opened the box.

When nothing immediately bad happened, she placed it down on the table and spun it around. Inside was a scrap of paper, yellowed with age but otherwise intact. Daring pulled it out with a wing.

“Looks like a map,” she said, reading it over. “…And the directions are written in old Equestrian.” She squinted at it a little. “In code. Great.”

“Well,” she said, slipping the box and the map into a saddlebag and putting on her disguise, “that’ll be fun. Thanks for the help, you two.”

“No problem,” Lyra said.

“Come back again if you ever need anything,” Bon Bon said as they walked back out to the shop front and Daring approached the door.

“Will do,” she said, and then she was gone.

Lyra waited a few more seconds, then turned to Bon Bon.

“She’s gone,” she said. “You can let it out now.”

Bon Bon’s grin grew about three sizes, and she began giggling. Because, as Lyra knew, Bon Bon owned every Daring Do book on the market, and was a little bit more than just a fan.

Comments

[Darkest Dreams]

Sweetie Drops the secret agent. Soon to be released as written by Bon Bon.

[TheStratovarian]

Hehehe, first hoof fun. And that was some likely extreme self control!

[Nyperold]

8518512
"You know, I'm only allowing this because most ponies think it's fictional, Former Agent Drops."
"Yeah, yeah..."

[FanOfMostEverything]

Even when gods clash, life goes on. Sometimes that life involves an adventuring archeologist stopping by. C'est la vie.

[Lab]

Wouldn't Lyra's ability work for seeing through a code? Or is a code more of a puzzle than a disguise?

[Maxes Altho]

8720388
The message itself would be truth, therefore the code is just the message in essentially a different language