//------------------------------// // Gear Up // Story: Secrets // by bahatumay //------------------------------// Bon Bon entered the animal shop and glanced around, as if a bit confused. She wandered briefly, then trotted up to the counter, where a mare with a long, messy mane stood cleaning a water bowl, with a mouse perched on her shoulder. “Well, hey, there,” she said, donning a big city accent. “Just moved here, and my neighbors are all raising chickens, you know, for their eggs and since they can eat kitchen scraps and such. Never really dealt with them before. Can you hook me up with, like, chickening 101?” “You really must be new in town,” the mare sighed sadly, setting the bowl down. “Normally, I’d tell you about our free-range farm, but there was a fire, a couple days ago.” She picked up the mouse and nuzzled him gently. “There were…” she paused and suppressed a sob, “no survivors.” “A f-… a fire?” Bon Bon said, her accent slipping a bit in her shock. She quickly recovered and placed a hoof on her chest. “Celestia’s teats! Hope they caught whoever started it.” “Wasn’t anypony’s fault,” she said sadly, setting the mouse back up on her shoulder. “They did an investigation, and it turned out to be an accident. They said the chickens must’ve bumped an old heating element, and it just… caught fire and it spread.” “Yeah. Tragic,” Bon Bon said, doing her best to show some empathy. “That’s terrible. Anyplace else I can look?” She shook her head wryly. “That farm supplied almost all of the stores in town. The waiting list for any chicken is a few paces long, now.” “Well, tits,” Bon Bon swore again. “Uh, thanks anyway, though.” She turned and left the store, and quickly headed into the alleyway where Lyra was waiting. Try as she might, she couldn’t escape the reality. “She’s doing it,” she moaned under her breath. “She’s making another one.” “She’s what? You can just make a basilisk?!” Lyra asked, shocked. Again, there was just so much in this world she didn’t know! “Basilisk,” Bon Bon started, as if reciting from a dictionary. “Large snakes born by hatching a chicken egg under a toad. Venomous, class five—death almost certain upon bite. Basilisk venom is particularly nasty stuff. If it gets your bloodstream, it'll kill you in minutes, and it burns the whole time. It's very acidic, like their blood. If it gets sprayed on your skin, it burns like fire and it'll most likely kill you if too much hits anything sensitive like your underbelly or any mucus membranes.” “There was nothing comforting about that,” Lyra said quietly. “There are a few ways to kill a basilisk,” Bon Bon continued. “One’s a rooster’s crow. Somehow its frequency is just right and something resonates in its brain and something snaps and it bleeds out. The other is mirrors, turning its own power against it. We developed mirrored, polarized sunglasses as protection, but they’re not foolproof.” “Few usually means three,” Lyra said, half joking, half hopeful. Bon Bon cracked a wry smile. “The third way is the old fashioned way: hit it with sharp things until it stops moving.” Lyra gulped. Plan F again. “I see.” Oh. Maybe that's what the ‘F’ stood for. Fashioned.  Bon Bon gestured with her head. “Come on. We need to gear up before we can fight. We’ll need mirrored sunglasses and a hoe, maybe a shovel.” “Where do you get those, anyway?” “SEMHA hideouts. We stash them everywhere. Probably pick up some other stuff on the way.” “I thought you said we couldn’t go to those,” Lyra said. “We couldn’t, when we didn’t know who was chasing us. But now we do. And we know she knows where they are, too. So we have to get there first, before she does.” Bon Bon grinned wryly. “Hope you like running!” “Nothing,” Lyra said, pulling out and dumping out the drawer. “They’ve all been smashed.” Bon Bon swore under her breath. “Horseapples. This is the third place we've tried and nothing.” “Is there a fourth?” Lyra asked. Part of her was hoping Bon Bon would say ‘no’. They’d been running for a while now, and they weren’t even in the main part of the city anymore.  Bon Bon shook her head, and then paused. “Actually, yes. There’s a back room at a motel nearby we sometimes used. I’d almost forgotten. It might be ransacked by now, but it’s worth a try. If I forgot, maybe Sparky did, too.” Lyra put on a forced smile. “Lead the way.”   Lyra glanced around. This wasn’t a great motel. With slightly rundown walkways and paint peeling in the corners and baseboards, it looked like it was the perfect place where you could go and not have any questions asked about your identity or destination. Bon Bon trotted like she did at the casino, eyes forward, ears up, ignoring everything else. Then she suddenly stepped aside and held a foreleg out, stopping Lyra short.  Lyra stopped, too. If she listened closely, she could hear the sound of glass shattering. “Well, well, looks like we’re just in time,” Bon Bon whispered. She ushered Lyra underneath a nearby stairwell, in the shadows. “Stay here.” She strode forward. Lyra listened. She could hear more drawers opening and other things breaking. A few whispered voices, was that Bon Bon? Had she been caught? And then Bon Bon emerged, strolling nonchalantly. She ducked into the alcove and backed against the wall. “Did you find any?” Lyra asked eagerly.  In answer, Bon Bon held out two pairs of sunglasses. “Did you really just waltz in there and take the sunglasses?” Lyra asked incredulously.  “Sure did. Remember, if you look like you know what you're doing, most ponies won't bat an eye.” “Nice,” Lyra said, sliding the sunglasses on the top of her head. “Now what? Where do basilisks hide?” “My best guess is Golden Thunder’s actual hideout. It's a powerful weapon, but basilisks are mean as they get. It'd turn on her without a second thought. She'll keep it close, so it can't be used against her.” “But we don't know where she is.” “No, we don't,” Bon Bon conceded. “But these guys did not look professional. Most likely hired help. And if they’re hired, they won’t get paid until the job’s done. Which means…” “When they go back to get paid, they’ll lead us right back to Sparky’s new base,” Lyra realized. “And from there, we can follow her to the basilisk.” Bon Bon nodded proudly. “You would have made a good agent.”