"Um, excuse me," came a soft but stern voice from behind one of the bookcases, "but I don't suppose you were actually planning to examine a potentially anomalous object without the appropriate containment team on site."
Lyra and Bonbon turned from the desk and the beginnings of their object-investigation to find Fluttershy walking calmly out from the innumerable shadows, into the plain view of Lyra's glowing horn. And behind her...
"What's it doing here?" Lyra asked with a scowl. "My partner and I have this investigation more than under control."
"My dear, I am the containment team. Did you think I'd let my sweet pal Fluttershy poke her nose into an anomaly without someone along to help her out?"
Discord wormed his way out from behind Fluttershy's shadow, manifesting without regard for local spatial constituencies or the laws of reality in general. Simply nothing one moment, Discord the next. Grinning obliviously with that stupid halo over his head.
"Subject assignment DSCRD-XXX1 is approved for anomaly containment only at the behest of the director," Bonbon said. She pulled a clipboard out of her suit and scanned down from top to bottom, then flipped the second page and scanned it as well. "Ah. Here it is." She showed the page in question to Lyra, pointing with her hoof at a marked entry towards the end of the text. "'Senior Director [REDACTED] approves the use of Thaumiel class anomaly DSCRD-XXX1, only with the presence of its approved handler, Agent [REDACTED].' See?"
Lyra stared at the clipboard, daring its words to shift and vanish in response to the pure ire pouring out of her eyes. But maybe the sunglasses shielded from that too. And so the words remained.
"Lucky," she said with a huff, and turned back to the book. Then around again, facing Fluttershy. "Well, what do we do then? Do you want to take a look at the thing?"
Fluttershy flapped her wings and floated over to the reading desk. She appraised the waiting book with an eyebrow raised, and almost immediately after reading the title, jerked her head away so her eyes were nowhere near the embossed text.
"It's emitting a high level of ontokinetic interference," Fluttershy said, reaching her hoof out towards Discord, who smiled and passed a covered mask with a shaded visor to her out of nowhere. Fluttershy strapped it onto her face before turning to continue, still squinting appraisingly at the unusual volume. "Do we have confirmation that this is the object that caused Princess Twilight to require hospitalization? You did interview the subject before attending to the incident scene, didn't you?" Fluttershy turned to the two suited agents behind her, who had taken equal interest in the floor and ceiling respectively. Lyra's hornglow was still the only available light-source, which made her look extra-awkward pretending not to notice she'd been asked a direct question.
Fluttershy cleared her throat pointedly, which finally got both Lyra and Bonbon's attention.
"Hmm?" Lyra said. "Sorry, I was trying to stand still and not do anything to get in your way. Containment team and all."
Fluttershy rolled her eyes underneath the mask's shaded visor. Unfortunately thaumic resistance worked both ways, which meant no Stare™ unless she took the mask off. Luckily she was with someone who could problem solve in her stead when necessary.
"We were waiting until the subject was guaranteed some semblance of consciousness before conducting an interview," Bonbon said. "And if the anomaly is powerful enough to cause substantial physical or mental harm, it seemed more important to deal with it first."
"Why don't you just tell the director she goofed on the assignment," Lyra added, frowning with her forelegs crossed in front of her chest. "I'm sure she'll take that well."
Discord, who had been so far mostly ignoring the verbal banter, sidled up to the reading desk and began to poke at the cover with one of his claws extended, lifting it up and then letting it settle back down onto the pages with a gentle woosh and dislodged bits of dust.
"Hey, watch it," Lyra said. She swatted at Discord's claw, but manage only to hit a giant foam-finger that had materialized overtop of his hand. It had a picture of Lyra's face draw in a caricature style, which looked remarkably similar to the 'smiling poop' glyph they'd encountered on an anomalous artifact last month. The damn thing still hadn't stopped ringing...
"Entity DSCRD-XXX1 has higher clearance than either of you," Fluttershy reminded, her voice as gentle as a teacher correcting in a kindergarten classroom. "It's necessary to wait until he's finished assessing the object before continuing your investigation. Um. If that's alright with you."
Bonbon and Lyra both rolled their eyes, but stepped back simultaneously from the desk, glaring at Discord as he twisted and swirled in size and shape, wrapping himself around the book and then diving inside the pages, no longer visible to anypony watching.
"Ooh, my, this is quite a spicy one... did you really say that Princess Twilight was found reading it? Goodness, what a scandal if somepony were to find out..."
"Just hurry up and tell us what's in there," Lyra said, huffing a breath loudly through her nose. "We didn't come for a theater performance."
A snap of fingers, and floodlights poured into the library, dousing the team in so much brightness the library appeared to have migrated to pure daylight. Lyra squinted even through her sunglasses, and Bonbon shielded her face with her foreleg, gritting her teeth and lowering her eyebrows.
"A theater performance? What a marvelous idea! I dare say it's been a while since we put on the ol' tights and teleprompter... do you have time for a one act play?" Discord's voice seemed to come out of the air from everywhere, making its way to your ear without using any in between material to travel. It was like somepony holding a megaphone to your head and speaking through it in whispers that only caught the vibration of their throat.
"Discord!" Lyra yelled, snapping first at the book, then upwards towards the floodlights. "Cut it out! We need to get this investigation done now!"
"Pony lives could be at stake," Bonbon said. She looked to her partner, who was fuming still, and then to Fluttershy, who's expression hadn't changed an iota since her first arrival. Calm, compassionate, and unforgiving.
Fluttershy tilted her head, considering the floodlights and confetti that had begun to sprinkle from overhead.
"Discord," she said, her voice simple and stern. "We don't have time for that right now. Can you please finish checking out the book?"
"Oh, fine," Discord said. An invisible claw-snap and the floodlights vanished, along with the confetti, though a few pieces remained sprinkling over Lyra's nose, and a long streamer that looked as though it had come out of a noisemaker.
Lyra glared at the ribbon that had affixed itself to her nose. She blew it off with a puff of air aimed up from her mouth, but didn't move otherwise, forelegs still crossed in front of her chest.
"You two are never any fun," Discord concluded. A soft whirring sound began to echo through the confines of the hidden library, and Lyra's hornglow took over once more as the only source of light.
It sounds like a termite chewing very fast through an encyclopedia, Bonbon thought.
After only a few more seconds of whirring and tiny chomping sounds, Discord reappeared, whirling his way in a spiral shape thicker and thicker as he emerged from between the pages of the book. He ballooned a little bigger than normal, then seemed to catch himself, and giggled as he shrank back down to his usual height, just big enough to tower over a pony and poke at them with a smirk from above.
Fluttershy smiled at him and raised her hooves for a hug. Discord smiled back as he wrapped his mis-matched arms around her back, one hand still wearing the foam-finger with Lyra's face.
"Good job," Fluttershy said, finishing her hug with an extra little squeeze. "Can you please tell us what you found?"
"I'm not sure you're going to like it," Discord said. His voice was uncharacteristically heavy, as though no matter his efforts, something was managing to worm its way in through his psyche and through the output of his tongue. "Even I had a hard time, and that's saying a lot, considering my subscription to Ponehouse Monthly..."
"Just tell us what it is," Lyra said. "Then we can grab the thing and get the buck out of here."
"After enacting proper safety and containment precautions," Bonbon added hastily, her hoof jutting up like an answer in class.
Lyra shot her a look, but once again, the sunglasses rendered it mostly ineffective.
"Right," she said with some difficulty to her speech. "After that."
Fluttershy looked between the two of them, but didn't shift her expression, a simple distant appraisal from a pony that could sweet-talk you into good health or crush you like an ant underneath an anvil.
"Settle in," Discord said, pulling up an antique rocking chair from nowhere. "Because this one is going to take a while. Now, how many of you have heard of Ponehub before?..."
When the girthy throbbing lengthy discussion had concluded, even Lyra's mouth was hanging open. She snapped it shut after a few seconds, though she found her tongue poking into the corner of her cheek mostly of its own accord for a little while, until she thought hard and forced it to be still.
"Wow," Bonbon said, the first voice after the air had hung heavy with Discord's finished instruction. "I can't believe Princess Twilight—"
"No, it makes sense, she's cooped up reading all day, it sort of gets to you after a while—" Lyra said.
"Yeah, but for it to do that much damage, she must have been concealing some really egregious—"
"Do you think she's fallen down the fanfiction wormhole again? Rainbow Dash was never the same after she read Muffins—"
"I'm pretty sure it was My Little [REDACTED], actually—"
"Hush." Fluttershy.
It worked. Bonbon and Lyra both fell silent.
"We need to get this to containment immediately," Fluttershy said. "If it's exactly like Discord says it is, we might not have much time."
"We've both got our thaumic disruptors on," Lyra said, indicating her shades and the pair that Bonbon was wearing as well. "And even without them, Bonbon and I kind of—"
"We're not sure the localized effects will be that overwhelming in our case," Bonbon interrupted. She gave Lyra a look that translated even through dark glass, and Lyra blushed faintly for a few seconds before her cheeks returned to their normal pale green.
"Even so. Let's not take any chances." Fluttershy gestured to Discord, who was now wearing a full hazmat-style suit, and holding a pair of extended prongs. He nodded, and moved towards the desk, holding the prongs tentatively in front of him, gently lowering the grabbing end towards the book until he could just touch the corner of the cover... then picking it up, moving it, slowly, slowly, off the desk, holding it just over the entrance to an opaque black bag that Fluttershy had opened, dangling the thing right against the opening... and then dropping it in, Fluttershy snapping the bag shut and yanking the cord from the end, which sealed it even tighter with a burst of magic sparks and sudden, instantly dissipated heat.
"There," Fluttershy said, smiling. "Now it should be safe to transport."
"Which is our job," Lyra said, reaching for the bag.
Discord snatched the bag and jerked it out of her way while sticking out his tongue. Lyra growled quietly and glared at him. But with a sideways look from Fluttershy, Discord sighed, rolled his eyes, and relinquished the sealed bag to Lyra's outstretched hooves.
She held it for a moment, studying its weight. Seemed... light.
"Give it here," Bonbon said, holding an even bigger black bag open at the top. Lyra did as instructed, dropping the thing inside, and Bonbon tied and sealed it shut with another rip-cord, fusing the sides together and locking the book in an even tighter confinement.
"Was that necessary?" Lyra asked, eyebrow raised.
Bonbon shrugged.
"Eh. I didn't want anypony making a mess on the way back to HQ."
"Fair enough."