Lyra looks up from her breakfast salad as the earth pony ambles in. “Good mo- er, morning…” She blinks and stares down at her salad.
Bonbon raises an eyebrow, spotting no blush. “What is it?” she asks.
“Salad,” the answer comes. “I thought it the least offensive dish in my repertoire.”
She sighs, hanging her head. “It’s the bedmane, isn’t it?”
“Huh? Oh- um… yeah.”
She runs her hooves through her mane, straightening out the scraggly mess a little bit. “There. Now, what did you mean by ‘least offensive’?”
It’s Lyra’s turn to sigh, her mane hanging smoothly over her back. “I’m not a very good cook,” she mutters.
Bonbon snorts, trotting up to take her seat. “You kidding me? This looks delicious.” She takes a bite as the unicorn’s staring contest with her salad intensifies. She finishes off that bite and nods the affirmative. “It is delicious!” She hides a smirk behind her next bite; her reward had been yet another intensification of the staring contest.
She pauses after the second bite, gazing across the table at her tour guide and impromptu housemate. Then she tilts her head. “You’re doing it again,” she states.
“Wha-Huh? D-Doing what?” The salad wins as Lyra looks up sharply.
She smiles. “Well, either you’re an amazing actor, or you’re using an illusion spell alongside an aural dampener.”
Her eyes widen. “Wh-what? N-No, no, I’m not.” She averts her gaze.
“You’re not?” She slides a hoof around the upper rim of her salad bowl. “Then why are you acting so embarrassed, but not blushing at all?”
She closes her eyes, twisting away. She takes a deep breath, before turning herself back forwards, eyes closed, to answer haltingly. “There’s- no- dampener- involved.”
She raises her eyebrow. “So… You’re using a disguise spell with a draw below your natural thaumic regeneration rate to hide a blush.”
The resultant nod is fairly perceptible, but still insignificant.
“What about your endurance?”
She shrinks into the chair. “I’ve been… Practicing.”
She nods slowly. “Ahh… Why use an illusion? Trying to hide a bedmane or something?”
“Because…” She shudders, and allows the illusion to collapse, pointedly holding herself still.
“... Oh. Then… Why didn’t you look like that last night…?”
She reinstalls the illusion. “I used a lesser illusion,” she states. “I was running on the edge of thaumic exhaustion.”
She smiles. “Tired or not, you’re still cute when you blush.”
She falls off her chair.
She lets out a sigh, sitting at the desk in her bedroom, running her new manebrush mindlessly through her mane with one hoof. It’s Monday today- and she’s successfully established her cover as much as she can in only a week’s time. Today, he will stop by, hopefully while her friend is out; she would hate for the unicorn to experience his favorite way of preventing information leaks. In any case, he’ll be coming for her establishment report and delivering her first assignment.
She reads down her report one last time as she finishes brushing, before rolling it up, sealing it, and hiding it in her mane. At least he’s not allowed to approach her in the bedroom- too bad that’s the only place he can’t come. He almost makes her regret accepting the offer and becoming a full Field Agent. He had made her regret it flat-out, then she met Lyra… and now, she’s glad she made the decision. He’s going to make her life a pain, but the unicorn is worth it- easily worth the pain, a hundred times over.
She glances at the clock. Lyra’s probably already headed out by now; she’d said something about the local DJ last night.
So she walks to the door, takes a deep breath, and opens it.
He doesn’t show up right away. No- but she’s come to expect him shortly after she leaves her bedroom. Especially if she acts like she’s not expecting him.
Right on schedule, as soon as she arrives in the kitchen, he arrives. She knows it’s him; he’s the only Contact Agent she’s known to make the Fog feel malevolent.
She breathes a sigh, scowling at the sudden darkness. “Oh, right,” she states. “You’re here.”
His sneering voice answers from just behind her. “Well of course,” he states. “I thought you’d be expecting me.” He lets out a snort of laughter. She hates how it sounds.
She nods. The Fog might be blocking out her vision, but his will still be unaffected. “Regardless,” she begins. “You’re here for my initial report- and to deliver my first assignment, right?”
He chuckles softly. “Or so they say,” he states. “I wonder why they want you in the desert, eh? Think they-!”
That’s when everything seems to change hooves. She feels his touch against her flank, in a very inappropriate spot. She’s tempted to lash out at him, but she risks damaging the furniture.
But less than a second after that touch, she tenses all her muscles anyways as she feels a sudden- and powerful- shift in the local magic fields. His oration cuts off at the same moment, becoming a strangled yelp of what sounds like panic.
A second later, the shift completes, lightning fast- and she realizes that whatever spellwork this is already has a strong hold on her… When it starts dumping information straight into her brain… and taking instruction from the same.
Well then. Her new friend isn’t only an amazing companion, but she’s really good with her spellwork. The security spell he just triggered has already seized control of his magic- and is fueling itself on it, completely neutralizing his attempts to fight back in the process. It’s also locked onto her- apparently, Lyra added her to it- as a source of control information.
She takes a step forwards, turning to face him in the blackness, and smiles evilly at him. It’s also feeding her a clear, 360-degree view of her surroundings, independent of her eyes- and such petty details as line-of-sight… and she can feel a recording function running in the background. Hiding this powerful- and complicated- of a security spell from her senses would have been incredibly difficult- and from his senses, nearly impossible. Yet she’d done it- and he’s now been caught red-hooved.
He tries to flee, but a mere thought of hers triggers a binding function, effectively gluing his hooves to the floor.
She raises a hoof and slaps him across the face. “Be nice,” she orders, and releases the binding function.
He doesn’t seem to notice, staring at her wide-eyed the way he is. “What…?”
She smiles at him, and holds out her hoof. “My orders?” She demands.
He slowly extracts and hoofs her the scroll from his saddlebags- by hoof, rather than by magic.
She takes the sealed scroll in her hoof, setting it on the table next to her as she draws her report from her mane. “My report.”
He accepts it slowly, placing it into his saddlebags.
“Anything else?”
He shakes his head slowly.
She gives a sharp nod. “Then go.” She points a hoof at the door.
He jolts into motion, marching steadily out to the door. She lets him go- and distinctively feels when he leaves the property; the security fields seem to reset themselves, disappearing back to imperceptible as her world returns to normal.
She shudders. Quite the experience that had been… Wait.
A small scroll materializes slowly in front of her, formed out of golden energy flowing up from the basement. It completes its formation, changes to look like paper, and falls towards the floor.
Her forehoof flashes out to catch it- and as she does, she instantly knows it’s the thaumic recording of the entire incident.
Her new friend and housemate is an excellent spellcaster.
Of course, she’d looked her up, investigated. The unicorn had come up clear- though a few years ago, she’d made frequent railway trips. She hasn’t yet been able to turn up the record on exactly where she was going, but she’d often been gone for several days at a time… Then she’d suddenly stopped.
Ever since she’d started, apparently, her home had become subject to frequent intruders. She’d grown quite adept at catching them- and, unless the reports are wrong, the unicorn had demonstrated a gradually increasing power level- and skill- in those captures over the years… Yet never anywhere else. Though she had demonstrated signs of a deepening thaumic reserve- and growing endurance limit.
That was years ago. Now…
She can see the results herself. Security spellwork worthy of Princess Celestia herself. The standing spell had been undetected by a trained Contact Agent- and had enough power hidden in it to generate this thaumic scroll completely without either extra power or a special trigger.
That she came in second in her class at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, behind Princess Twilight Sparkle herself, is hardly a footnote on her record.
As a matter of fact, when she’d read through the report she’d been able to compile from all the official sources, it had read not like a report, but like a collection of footnotes missing a report. She’d made sure to mention that in her report, alongside a note that she plans to investigate this absence whenever she has time, alongside her duties as an Agent.
She smiles, placing the thaumic scroll on the table next to her orders before unrolling the aforementioned orders to scan down them.
There is no mention of a desert. He’d been lying.
She’s not surprised.
As a matter of fact, her orders are to stand-by and maintain her cover until such time as the Agency has a mission to send her on. Apparently, they’re fresh out right now.
She smiles. She knows exactly how she’s going to keep her skills fresh in the meantime.
Three days pass in this manner. It’s now Thursday morning; she still shudders every time she leaves her room in the morning and hears her friend still in the house. It normally only takes a few days, she’d been told, for the Agency to come up with a fresh assignment for any given Agent- that is, when there’s no backlog. When there is a backlog, it is, rather self-evidently, instant.
She hasn’t been able to dig up much anything more. She’s got a lead, though; sometime either today or tomorrow, she should be able to get her hooves on a record of exactly where Lyra traveled back in the day.
She opens her bedroom door and walks out, towards the dining room. Her ear twitches; Lyra is talking downstairs. She shudders, and continues on her way.
She pauses for a second when she hears a second voice- male, but unfamiliar- speak up. From the kitchen, where Lyra’s voice is wafting from.
She proceeds down the stairs, approaching the door slowly. She strains her thaumic senses, trying to get a feel for who is-
She nearly lets out a yelp when the unicorn’s security fields seem to understand her desire and feed her the requested information. Lyra is in the kitchen, talking to a couple of Royal Guards. The fourth member… Oh. She should have expected her friend to have a solution to his favorite method of information retention. He’s standing between the two guards, thaumic inhibitor clamped around his horn.
She calms her senses- releasing her hold on the security fields- and walks calmly into the room. They weren’t lying- the scene is exactly as she saw.
“Mornin’,” she greets her friend, before looking towards the Guards. “Something happen?”
One of them nods gravely while Lyra speaks up, gesturing towards the dark-colored unicorn between the two Guards. “Yep! Malevolent Darkness there decided he wanted to break into my house and clobber me.” She snorts. “Didn’t work very well.”
“Ahh… Okay.”