Chapter 4: Suspicion-ing Begins
Lyra Heartstrings slowly opened her eyes and sat up in her bed. The sun was rising now. She turned to look and saw that her alarm clock had about one minute before it was due to ring. She sighed and magically tapped it off until the next day cycled. A yawn escaped her mouth as she looked to the other side of her bed. It was empty, save for an undisturbed pillow.
She dragged herself out of her bedroom and dragged her hooves with her down the hall. She cracked open a door that wasn't completely closed in the first place. She rubbed her eye with a hoof and looked around. A few scattered paraphernalia littered this room. In the center was a familiar friend, scrambling through papers and tools like a mad mare.
"Bon Bon, what are you doing?" murmured Lyra in an annoyed sense of wonder.
Bon Bon's gaze shifted from one page to another. "It had to be. It's gotta be. The Doc never lets ordinary ponies in aside from Muffins."
Lyra moved inside the room and tapped her friend on the back. "Bon Bon, did you ever go to sleep last night?"
Bon Bon turned her head, revealing her bloodshot eyes. "How can you possibly think about sleeping?! This time is way too serious for something so common and trivial!"
"Uh-huh... sure..." Lyra blinked and slowly backed away. "I'm going to go start some breakfast for us and then hit the shower. You okay with hard-boiled eggs and waffles?"
"I'm serious, Lyra!" Bon Bon grabbed onto both of Lyra's sides and held firmly. "Something foreign has invaded our world from beyond the stars!"
"Uh, yeah?" Lyra used her magic to gently nudge Bon Bon off of her. "Her name is Princess Luna. She used to be Nightmare Moon before the Elements of Harmony brought her to her senses. That's kind of last year's news, isn't it?"
"No, not right next to the stars!" Bon Bon groaned while holding up a random paper page. "Beyond the stars! I'm talking about aliens!"
Lyra deadpanned. "That's a picture of a werewolf, Bon Bon."
"Huh?" Bon Bon glanced at her illustration, quickly realizing she had grabbed the wrong one. "Oh, shoot! Wrong stack..." She picked up a few other pieces of paper before smiling in delight. "Ahem... I'm talking about aliens!"
Despite the image being correct, Lyra still looked unimpressed. "How about I at least get some hot water started for tea, and you can tell me all about it. Does that sound fair?"
"Good idea!" Bon Bon turned around and grabbed two pens and blank pages at once. "Their absolute zero nanobots can't withstand boiling temperatures!"
Lyra was at the doorway by this point, rolling her eyes. "Shall I load the waffles with extra brown sugar so that their mind-probes won't be able to handle our constant twitching?"
"Lyra, you're a genius!" Bon Bon scribbled notes with her right hoof while performing equations with her left. "With our combined intellect, those little green ponies won't know what hit 'em!"
Lyra trotted out and muttered, "I'm too tired to know if that should offend me or not."
---
Phlip-Phlop was rather offended at being treated like a dance floor. TIR was doing some benign choreography that she had long since given up on figuring out. Rather than waste her necessary breath to shout at him for rudely waking her up, she silently reached out one of her PAK's metallic legs and slapped him far away from herself. She then used her gloved hand to pick up a thermos of sugar water with trace amounts of coffee and chugged half of its contents.
"Journal Entry: Day 7. Resource gathering has accelerated months ahead of schedule." She used her booted feet to walk over to her giant computer monitor. "Options are not as limited as the day of arrival, though the Gallop-Free present on this planet will be a wild card. With all of this available, it may be possible that the direction of completing the mission will soon face an obstacle." She squinted her solid magenta eyes. "Choice Paralyzing."
"Don't you mean 'Choice Paralysis', Master?" asked TIR as he cartwheeled back within the base's vicinity.
"No, you dumb bolt-bucket." Phlip-Phlop shook her head. "All dramatic concepts must end with an '-ing'. It is by law of the Tallest!"
"Oh." TIR blinked twice. "Carry on, then."
"Computer!" She pressed a bunch of random buttons on the alien keyboard. "Offer suggestions for the next course of action!"
"Um... shouldn't you decide how you'd like me to organize my suggestions before you start the search engine?" The screen flickered between slightly brighter and slightly dimmer with each deep-voiced syllable. "A generic list will just hasten the approach to hitting the Choice Paralyzing."
"I'll cross that bridge when I get to it." She gritted her zipper-like teeth. "Now do what I told you to do!"
"Y-Yes, ma'am." The computer started a list of all the possible options. Words in the Irken tongue rushed upward as the display scrolled through every single one of them.
Phlip-Phlop's eyes swiveled back and forth, trying to keep up with it all. TIR used that time to practice some cross between the Macarena and the Robot styles of dancing. The computer occasionally blurted out some weird, buzzing noise when it was forced to push two screens' worth of text beyond the scope of its singular display. Finally, the words came to a halt. Phlip-Phlop fell backwards, barely extending her mechanical legs in time to catch herself.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" she yelled to the sky.
"I warned you." The computer's speaker imitated a sigh.
TIR switched to a move that looked like a spinning ice skater while balancing on one foot.
---
"Ah-ha!"
Lyra jumped back at the sudden exclamation from up the hall. She quickly eyed the two mugs that she was fighting to regain balance of as they floated in her magic touch. Trying to hurry but still being careful, she awkwardly power-trotted over to Bon Bon's workroom.
"What happened?" Lyra pressed her hoof against the door while keeping the mugs of tea in a balancing act.
"Lyra, perfect timing!" Bon Bon motioned with one hoof while adjusting some dials on a radio. "Listen to this!"
Bon Bon clicked a button and a couple reels turned slowly. A sound emitted from the tiny speaker. It screeched loudly and painfully. Lyra slammed her hooves above her head on her ears. The floating mugs cracked, despite her magic pressing no harder on them than it had been. None too soon, Bon Bon clicked the button marked with two vertical bars.
"Proof positive of an alien's cry." The earth pony mare practically beamed at her apparent accomplishment.
The little green unicorn was busy massaging her temple. "Are you sure? That could have been somepony randomly stubbing their hoof against a pebble... or on one of those poorly designed toy blocks."
"This is no mere Terr-Craft-Go Block induced, painful scream." Bon Bon chuckled. "Notice how it exists on these two frequencies simultaneously, without them collapsing into each other until the very end." She pulled out a hoof-drawn line graph for emphasis. "This is the very nature of an alien's voice box."
Lyra tilted her head while also magically setting the breaking mugs down on some empty desk space. "So... what does this mean? The alien stepped on a Terr-Craft-Go Block?"
"Oh, Lyra..." Bon Bon pulled her friend into a one-hoofed hug. "Lyra, Lyra, Lyra... while you are lovable, you are also slow to understand. But that is alright. I'm here for you... and to protect you!" She galloped toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Lyra followed with her eyes.
"To confirm my research with one who shares in things both alien and beyond our world's understanding!" With that, Bon Bon was gone from sight and the house.
"So... Spike's comic book collection?" Lyra muttered while lowering her head. "And you forgot about your tea and breakfast."
She tried floating over one of the mugs in her magic hold to sip its contents. Unfortunately, the mug chose the moment just before it reached her to finally shatter, spilling the slightly darkened liquid onto the floor. She sighed as she threw the handle into a nearby garbage bin.
"Maybe it's time to visit Minuette again."
---
"Time to snap out of it, Phlip-Phlop." The invader drummed her gloved appendages against her cranium. "You can figure this out. We've all been through the Irken Academy's million laser-pointers of doom. This is squeedly-spooch play in comparison." She cleared her throat. "Computer, review mission objectives and play them back to me."
The suggestions faded color to allow for a slightly smaller window to appear on screen. "1) Capture, control and/or destroy currently occupied planet. 2) Re-purpose whatever remains of the planet's resources and inhabitants into something for the Irken Empire. 3) Hail the Tallest forever and ever."
"Right." Phlip-Phlop used one of her mechanical limbs to tap some individual keys. "Weed out the suggestion list until we're left with only the mission-critical tasks."
"Acknowledged. Scanning..." Several items were thankfully deleted from the eyesore of a gargantuan list. What were left of the words had digital lines drawn between them and the respective mission objectives.
"Excellent..." Phlip-Phlop grinned devilishly as she rubbed her imitations of fingers together.
"So, when's our next party attendance?" TIR leaned around as if to glance over his master's shoulder.
"If we play our cards right, never," she responded to her robot. "The first thing we need to do is corrupt the local government figures. With careful placement, the long-term end will see the population practically begging to be taken over by someone else." She walked over to one of her supply crates and shuffled through its contents. "But first things first."
"Wait... no more dance raves?" TIR's mechanical gob frowned a little as his eye lights curved up to either side of his face.
"Focus, TIR!" Phlip-Phlop slammed a pen-shaped object into the robot's claws. "Our mission starts with the little things. Go in disguise and flash this memory-eraser in the mayor's eyes. Once should suffice." She pulled out a small bracelet from the crate. "Meanwhile, I'll hit her with a tiny dose of Greedy Serum to slowly increase her desire for fleeting things like money and junk. In a matter of days, even the most brain-dead of the ponies will have to see that she's unfit to enforce their laws and they'll demand for her to leave office."
"Why? Is she sick?" TIR imitated a blinking motion.
"No, you fool." Phlip-Phlop pulled him a mere inch away from her own face. "We're going to be the ones corrupting her. Eventually, the princesses too."
"Corrupting the government! How brilliant!" TIR pulled back and cartwheeled around the base perimeter. "Who needs rulers? ~No kings, no queens, la-la-la, la la, la...~"
She slammed the rest of her mechanical legs out of her PAK against the ground. "Idiot! There will be rulers!"
He stopped mid-cartwheel. "But you said-"
"I will rule this planet... and by proxy, so will the Tallest." She shook her head and sighed. "I swear, sometimes I think your brain was partly constructed from some primitive life-form instead of an artificial intelligence." She activated her Flo suit and TIR's hippogryph disguise. "Now, get going. And for Red's sake, don't get spotted."
"Yes, Master Phlip-Phlop." The hippogryph's eyes briefly flashed red before returning to their normal disguised color. His wings flapped and sent him one way while Flo's wing jets flew her in a slightly different arc pattern.
---
Muffins "Derpy" Hooves was having a bit of trouble. She checked her schedule for weather clouds at least three times that morning just to be sure she had it right. But as she was going over the locations and times in her head again, she was flying nowhere near those places. She groaned sadly as she slowly pushed her cloud around. This lightning wasn't just going to start the drizzle over the hydro-power plant by itself. If only she could remember which direction it could be, then she would be right on time for something.
The poor pegasus was only further confused by what she saw next. A hippogryph was dancing in the middle of the air to some unheard tune. It didn't make any sense to her because no pony was belting out a song anywhere nearby. There wasn't any band passing through town today either. So, what was going on?
"Um, excuse me sir." She tapped the fellow on the shoulder. "Are you feeling okay?"
The hippogryph gasped and turned on a dime. "I've been compromised! Evasive action!"
He lifted a red ball-point pen and pressed his claw against it. The next few moments felt very... green light.
...
Muffins "Derpy" Hooves was having a bit of trouble. As she was going over the cloud schedule in her head again, she found she was flying nowhere near where she was supposed to be. In fact, she had suddenly found it very fun to start bouncing on the thunderhead like a trampoline. Before she could stop herself, a lightning bolt slammed right into the town hall, causing the tip-top of the roof to crack and crumble into itself.
"Maybe if I jump on it some more, it'll recharge the lightning and no pony will notice." The pegasus smiled to herself as she thought of the solution out loud and continued to trampoline off the cloud.
---
Bill. Sign. Bill. Sign. Bill. Sign.
Mayor Mare's jaws were starting to ache from swiveling her quill across papers so many times. For a moment, she decided to set it back down into the ink and just breathed. She fiddled with her tie with one hoof and adjusted her glasses with her other hoof. Then, she picked up a stack of random junk mail and slowly sorted things into the never-ending "recyclable" pile.
A cracking noise caught her attention. "What was that?"
She flinched when she heard a crash somewhere beyond the wall. She set her stack back down on the center of her desk and trotted out of her office. Inside the main hall, she saw something that made her mane stand on end. Her eyes opened in shock at the top of town hall's roof currently sitting on the conference hall's floor. Her wordless question was answered when she saw a haphazard lightning cloud outside and the pegasus jumping up and down on it.
The mayor groaned. "Why couldn't it have been a monster attack? At least we have insurance to cover those kinds of damages. But no, a singular pony crashing or having an accident, and suddenly they expect us all to pay out of pocket."
She exhaled and held a hoof against her head as she walked back into the office. If she knew anything, it was that girls that want to have fun would not be satisfied until they got it all out of their systems. Telling "Derpy" to stop had a tendency to backfire horribly on anything she touched.
As Mayor Mare sat back down at her desk, something pricked the side of her neck. It stung more than it hurt. She reached up her hoof and scraped the intrusive feeling off. It seemed to evaporate, but it briefly looked like the strangest mosquito she had ever laid her sights on. With that annoyance seemingly taken care of, she went back to wondering how she would raise enough money to fix the current and most likely future damages to town hall.
One flyer in the junk mail stood out to her heightened awareness. It was an upcoming rodeo over in Canterlot. Normally, she didn't think she would care about such an event so much. However, her eyes gravitated toward the first-place prize money stated at the very bottom. That amount looked very attractive to her and she grinned as she knew just the pony from Ponyville who would love to participate.
She was so busy thinking about ways to spend the extra money, that she didn't notice the laughing green and blue mare flying away on two rocket-like plumes.
---
Bon Bon was walking away from the library with some of Spike's comic books research materials. As she started to gallop, she heard something like rockets and looked up. She saw a strange green mare and... were those rigidly metal wings? She quickly flipped through one of the paperbacks until she found a page with a panel of a cyborg pony from outer space.
She looked back to the sky. "I've got you now."
---