It was a bright and sunny day in Ponyville, as it always ever was. By order of Celestia herself, the entire month prior to Twilight Sparkle’s ascension to the throne would be solidly good weather, and Ponyville’s own weather teams were still headed by close friends of the soon-to-be Ruling Princess, so that order was doubly followed.
As were other, more odious orders.
I’m just sorry it came to this, Octavia Melody sighed internally as she took tea, but never drank, with Bonbon and Lyra Heartstrings in their garishly-colored home. Not that Octavia had room to talk, living with Vinyl Scratch herself, but she would argue that purple-blue went together better than blue-pink-green.
“That’s hilarious, Tavi!” Lyra proclaimed with a snort. They were in her upstairs tearoom, enjoying a cup while catching up, before they inevitably had to get down to business.
Ah, yes, Octavia sighed again, business…
“Well,” she smiled, “You know how Vinyl gets around cats…”
Another round of giggles and chuckles signaled the end of that amusing anecdote, though Octavia wished it to last a few more seconds.
Well, best not drag it out.
“So, have you two decided?” she asked, eyebrows raised, “Your bridal marches?”
The subject returning to the business of weddings, Lyra’s and Bonbon’s being the next big scheduled event of Ponyville’s social calendar after the Coronation, both brides-to-be smiled warmly.
Bonbon spoke first, saying, “We figured it’s easiest to have us enter alphabetically. So, I’ll start at the front with the Mayor presiding…”
“We’d like you to play something light, and bubbly, while ponies are waiting,” Lyra joined in, one hoof grasping onto her beloved’s, “And then shift to Ash, Oak, and Farewell when I need to walk in.”
Octavia frowned, “That’s… an unusual request. Isn’t that song a touch on the melancholy?”
“It was the song I was playing when we met,” Lyra gazed into Bonbon’s eyes, “It… never sounded sad to me after that.”
Octavia’s heart skipped a beat.
How horrible.
“How adorable!” she said, one hoof over her heart, “You two are just a joy!”
Bonbon beamed brightly at this, and then stared down at the table between them.
“Sweetie?” she cast an eye over to her partner, “Did you forget the gumdrops?”
Lyra’s eyes widened. She looked to Bonbon, then to Octavia. Finally, she stared down at the table, where only a teapot sat, and her mouth fell open in obvious shock.
“Oh, my!”
“Er,” Octavia glanced between the two fiancées, “Is there a problem?”
“I forgot to bring table snacks!” Lyra hopped up to her hooves and immediately trot to the door, “I’ll just be a minute!”
As Lyra made to leave, Bonbon caught her forehoof again.
“Hey,” the blue-and-pink-maned pony smiled, “I love you.”
Lyra paused… and then smiled back.
“I love you too, Bonbon.”
And, with a quick peck on the lips, she made her way from the room.
With the minty green unicorn gone, Octavia finally took a moment for herself. Ever since she’d arrived to discuss the wedding, she’d been in a constant haze of laughter and conversation with the two mares, chatting about this and that, him and her, and all the other gossip one would expect from a rural little town like Ponyville.
She also had a job to do. The tearoom was on the second story, with windows on three sides, and a set of couches and a table dominating the middle of the room. The door on the fourth wall led down a staircase back to Bonbon and Lyra’s living room, and the pantry where Lyra was no doubt rifling through for her forgotten snacks.
Bonbon’s voice, when it came, came out low, and quiet.
“So… you haven’t touched the tea.”
Octavia held back a sigh, hoping to hold onto the room’s previous warmth a moment longer. But it was not meant to be.
“You know I hate the taste of truth serum and poison,” she said, setting down the tainted porcelain cup, “Agent Sweetie Drops…”
Bonbon set down her own cup, and kept her hooves visible, “I had to be sure. I still hear rumors from my old contacts.”
“There’s no orders for them,” Octavia said, quickly, measuring her own breathing as she spoke, “So, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“And Lyra?” Bonbon’s voice came out just as quickly, but just above a whisper, “What are your orders there?”
Octavia’s lips drew into a thin line.
From the way Bonbon’s eyes winced, that was all she needed to see.
“Who?”
“You know I cannot say,” Octavia shook her head. Then, she paused. It honestly wouldn’t hurt anything.
She sighed, externally, for once.
“I will say, the proscription was ordered from the highest of authorities.”
Bonbon snorted a laugh out, “And I gave her an extra licorice in her candy orders. That purple…”
“Careful, Miss Drops,” Octavia frowned, “I’d hate to add outright Treason to whatever list has gotten you killed.”
Bonbon bit her tongue, and remained quiet a moment.
“Will it hurt?”
“No. I… I promise you.”
Bonbon nodded, slowly. She didn’t say, but Octavia could tell she appreciated that, all the same.
“Lyra?”
Octavia’s throat seized up. This was always the worst part of the job. The part where she really had to be honest, but wasn’t supposed to.
Still…
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally, “Lyra knows too much. And… the order was for her too…”
Bonbon sighed.
“Then, you know how this ends…”
She didn’t hesitate. Her training in monster hunting showed through, like the sun breaking cloudcover. If Octavia wasn’t better, she might have even been caught off-guard by Bonbon’s sudden explosion of motion.
As it was, Octavia leaned back in her seat, allowing the tip of the dagger balanced on Bonbon’s hoof to fwip across her vision, instead of its intended target. She struck out with her forehoof, catching the blade on its flat, and sending it clattering across the hard, wooden floor, even as Bonbon reared for a second strike.
The scrum was brief, a mishmash of hooves clacking against each other as Bonbon continued her furious assault, and Octavia calmly deflected blow after blow.
Bonbon leapt back, giving Octavia the opportunity to stand up herself. But, if the yellow mare had hoped to find a weakness in Octavia’s form, she was sorely disappointed.
Octavia knew her duty. Friendship was the death of duty.
So, she had spent the morning settling into that comforting, dark place those of her kind had been trained to go to, whenever Duty demanded something like this from them. She knew her eyes would narrow, and focus, in a way that would trigger the prey-response in most ponies.
Bonbon wasn’t most ponies.
Most ponies, even earth ponies, wouldn’t have the thought to kick up their tea table, and send it careening across the room with a second kick.
S.M.I.L.E. training does wonders, doesn’t it? Octavia mused to herself, even as she spun away and under the airborne table, and swept up her teacup simultaneously with a free hoof. I’m so sorry that I’m that much better…
The teacup’s saucer cracked across Bonbon’s snout, causing the monster hunter to flinch away. That would be the death of her, as Octavia swept forward like a fish in water. The razor blade in her collar dropped into a hoof, and she sliced at her target’s jugular…
“Gotcha!” Bonbon’s eyes snapped open, a wicked grin accompanying them. Octavia tried to pull away, but momentum was her enemy now as the other mare caught her hoof, and with a hard wrench, lifted her up and into the air.
Horseapples!
Octavia twisted her back in midair, determined not to end up with her back on the floor and a knife in her gut. But Bonbon was fighting with the same manual, it seemed, as she let go immediately, allowing her former wedding-musician to sail through the air.
But, instead of crashing down in a heap, the Trottingham-born mare slammed her hooves down in a near-perfect landing, right on the back of the couch, tipping the whole thing back, and offering her a moment of cover.
“I’m sorry, Bonbon,” Octavia invoked her friend’s true name, at least true to her, and pulled out a hoof-crossbow from her long, dark mane, “Orders are orders! You know I can’t disobey those!”
“I know, Tavi,” Bonbon’s voice came back, bristling with rage, “And once I kill you, I’m going Diehard on Sparkle’s flank!”
“Pardon?” Octavia slapped a bolt into place, and primed her weapon.
“Human-world movie,” Bonbon explained, almost conversationally, as if that answered anything, “Oh, and… did you know that S.M.I.L.E. classified you ‘Sicarios’ as Monsters?”
The grenade hit the wall above Octavia’s head with a heavy thud, where it almost seemed to stick for the span of a single heartbeat, before it dropped directly into her lap.
“Bloody he—”
Octavia wasted no time, leaping back into action, and sailing over the upturned couch.
The knife missed her eye, but Bonbon was also an earth pony, so Octavia knew her cheek was probably bleeding heavily from the grazing blow, even as the knife sailed past her, and embedded itself in the wall.
There was no time to do anything else, as a solid wave of percussion followed in her wake. Fire and smoke filled the room instantly, as an unutterable silence drove aside all sound with a lion’s roar.
Octavia knew she was lucky. The couch took most of the shrapnel. She was also lucky that Bonbon had flinched away from the blast.
As she landed, Octavia slipped the piano wire from her collar, and quickly gathered it in her hooves.
Pity, she thought as she laced the fatal loop over Bonbon’s head, I sincerely hoped for your success. Never use explosives indoors, not when the other pony’s been conditioned against inner-ear trauma…
She snapped the wire loop tight with a hard pull of her forelimbs. The wire bit down into soft… keratin. Bonbon’s hoof raised at the last possible moment, catching the wire, and halting its deadly arc towards her throat. Not that Bonbon’s strangled cry wasn’t still a ‘good’ sign.
“Clever girl,” Octavia grunted, and began to shift the wire’s angle down, towards where the hoof met flesh, “But it’s over…”
Octavia’s blood froze as she felt it, something flick her mane down the back of her spine. The sudden motion caused her to stiffen for a fraction of a second, and then spin around. She held Bonbon before her as a pony shield.
Lyra racked another bolt into her much larger repeating crossbow, and leveled the terrifying weapon in her magical aura. The spent shot had clearly been a warning, with the bolt now exiting the building through one of the cracked and broken windows.
“Put her down!” she cried, an angry scowl marring her usually happy face, “Or I put you down!”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Octavia leaned out from her cover as far as she dared, “I have orders.”
“And I have a crossbow!”
The room fell silent. A regular Mexicolt standoff. The one couch was a flaming wreck, burnt stuffing still drifting through the air. The table was overturned, the tea set shattered.
“Ah,” Octavia nodded, understanding finally clicking into place, “’Gumdrops’ is the crossbow. You taught her code?”
Bonbon didn’t need to say anything. She couldn’t. Nodding was also off the table, presently.
“I said,” Lyra’s voice went very cold, “Put. Her. Down.”
Octavia’s eyes held Lyra’s own.
“You love your partner,” she said without inflection.
“No duh,” Lyra responded in kind, “I’m marrying her.”
“Not that I didn’t mean it when I sincerely congratulated you on that fact,” Octavia’s eyes flicked off the one side, “But, I love my partner too.”
Bonbon and Lyra’s eyes met. There was a brief, infinitely short moment, where they each recalled Octavia’s previous words, when she’d first entered their home this morning.
“Oh, Vinyl? Sore throat, I’m afraid…”
Every piece of glass in the entire house, shattered.
Every plank of wood, cracked.
The foundation split, and the supporting walls fell in. Smoke and debris came down like rain, the entire house vanishing like a foal’s toy set after somepony gave it a good kick.
Vinyl Scratch loved her job somedays.
Today? Not as much. But, the chance to blow something up was still alright.
She racked another round into her own heavy crossbow, and began to trot through the wreckage. She found Tavi quick enough, and gently pulled her friend from the rubble. She was alive, and breathing.
Heck, Octavia was awake.
“Thanks, love,” she said quietly, sadly checking for her missing bow and collar. She seemed to have misplaced them. “See the targets anywhere?”
Vinyl nodded in their direction. She’d seen them. The blue-maned unicorn pulled out a second set of earmuffs and hoofed them to her partner. Once the brown mare had placed them over her ears, they began to walk.
Bonbon was pulling Lyra out of the rubble when they caught up.
“Come on, Lyra!” she was grunting with the effort, “Wake up! They’re gonna…”
The ear-splitting noise hit, just then. A tone pitched to precise, pony-paralyzing perfection. Bonbon and Lyra’s bodies seized up, their muscles contracting painfully as every nerve-ending began to shriek at them.
Bonbon knew what this was. There was no conditioning against it.
Her eyes tracked Octavia and Vinyl as they approached, a small, black music box drifting in the latter’s magical grip alongside her weapon. The sound was coming from there… and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
“I want you to know,” Octavia’s voice cut through the cacophony, “I always considered you and Lyra my… my friends. I didn’t want it to end this way, but somepony sent out the call.”
She wasn’t lying. Ponies were notoriously bad at making crocodile tears. Even Vinyl looked shaken, if that were possible.
Bonbon tried to form a response. But the sound was literally twisting up her brain-signals. All she could do was stand there, Lyra in her forelegs, and watch the end approach.
“I’m sorry…” Octavia took up the crossbow herself, and leveled it. “I’m so… so sorry…”
“STOP!”
A purple blur came roaring down from the sky, crashing into the pile that once was Bonbon’s kitchen. There was some thrashing and smashing sounds, but before too long, a familiar Alicorn rose up out of the wreckage.
“Stop! Stop!” Twilight Sparkle cried, her ears twisting up in knots as Vinyl’s music-box assaulted her, “There’s been a mistake!”
With a nod from her partner, Vinyl cut the power to her device, allowing their two targets to collapse with relief, and for their Boss to shake loose the effects of that sound.
“Princess?” Octavia frowned, “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on!?” Twilight stumbled through the piles of splintered wood and glass towards Bonbon, “What’s going on!? You’re trying to murder our friends!!!”
“Well… yes,” Octavia tilted her head towards her target, “That’s generally how a Proscription works.”
Twilight reached her friends, and effortlessly hauled several tons of debris off of them in an instant. Lyra was pulled up into Bonbon’s embrace, and subsequently supported her weight on her fiancée.
Both mares scowled at the Princess.
“Did…” Lyra growled, “… did you put us on a Proscription!?”
“What’d we ever do to you!?!”
“Nothing!” Twilight’s mane frazzled at the ends, “I never did that! This is all some horrible misunderstanding!”
Octavia lowered her weapon, and gave Vinyl a worried look.
“Um,” she winced, “So… you didn’t order me to kill Lyra and Bonbon so the government could seize their assets?”
“Noooo!” Twilight cried in an exasperated whine, “Well… kinda…”
Bonbon shrieked, “KINDA!?”
The purple Alicorn rubbed the back of her neck, and gave the soon-to-be-wed couple a sheepish grin.
“So… there’s apparently this old pegasi tradition whenever a new Supreme Leader is put in power, called the Proscription. And… Celestia never took it off the books when she and Luna combined all the old systems together a thousand years ago…”
Bonbon’s scowl deepened.
Twilight, fearing what would happen when she stopped talking, just kept on it.
“That’s where they have a bunch of political enemies killed to shore up the new administration and collect a little extra tax. And, well, I guess since the new system supposed all Alicorns as Supreme Leaders, it’s only ever come up twice in the past millennium.”
Octavia shrugged, somewhat irritated that the Princess was apparently lecturing her on her own job. “Naturally. I remember Cadance sending us after a few of her old boyfriends. And some of Shining Armor’s old girlfriends…”
Her face scrunched up.
“Um, Princess? Were… were we not supposed to shoot your old Levitation Professor? Elisha Oats? Back when you first ascended, I mean…?”
The Princess smiled, “Nah, that was fine. He kept checking out my flank.”
Lyra snorted, “Seems like a pretty minor thing to get assassins sic’d on you for…”
“I was eleven at the time.”
“…” Lyra said.
Octavia and Vinyl squirmed.
“So… when you said to ‘take care’ of Lyra and Bonbon…?
“I meant that I wanted you to literally take care of them!” Twilight’s left eye twitched, “I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay for the wedding dinner, and you know how these two get with too much cider in them!”
The assassins winced under their Supreme Leader’s shouting, silently thanking all that was good that the residents of Ponyville were used to a lot of weirder things happening, as they were merely glancing curiously towards the mountain of rubble with a Princess screaming atop it.
“Bonbon,” Octavia’s ears splayed back against her head, “I… I am so sorry about all of this. Can you…?”
A hoof settled onto her shoulder, a little blood seeping from where it’d been cut by piano wire. Octavia looked up into Bonbon’s face… and her heart began to beat back to life.
“We’re still friends, of course,” the S.M.I.L.E. agent… smiled. “And, we’d be delighted to still have you perform at the wedding ceremony.”
Tears began to form in Octavia’s eyes, and even Vinyl stamped her appreciation into the remains of the house they’d just torn down. Such news, after a terrible mistake could only…
Lyra stepped forward, shooting everypony a 'Nasty' look.
“But, we need, like, a week to get over this,” she said, casting the Princess a look that could shrivel a flower, “We love you all… but today’s a bit of a disaster.”
“Yeah…” Twilight sighed, “Looks like ponies got a little… overeager, what with the Coronation coming up. I’ve been running ragged all over trying to make sure no pony’s been taking my off-hoof comments too seriously. I’m just glad nocreature was hurt!”
“And I am terribly ashamed of my behavior,” Octavia bowed her head again, “If there’s anything I can do to help make this right, please, let me know right away.”
Bonbon shook her head, and fixed the Princess with another smile.
“Nah, I know how these things can just… happen. Besides, I’m sure Twilight here would love to magic us up a fixed house, right?”
“Oh, right… no problem!” the Princess beamed.
The mares began to walk, carefully, from the wreckage. They all had some experience with magic, so they were each aware the Princess needed a little bit of distance to safely… perform...
As they reached the road, they paused. There was a rather strange sight approaching them. More so than usual, actually, as this particular wall-eyed pony was… in the nicest way possible, a strange sight most of the time.
Coming up the street towards them was Ponyville's beloved, Derpy Hooves, the town’s mailpony.
She was smiling brightly in the shining sunlight, and whistling a jaunty tune.
She was also covered, head to hoof, in gallons of blood.
None of it was hers.
As Twilight stared, dumbfounded, Derpy walked straight up to her, and gave a crisp salute.
“Operation complete, ma’am!” she said in her slow, airy voice, “Anything else you need taken care of?”
“Derpy…” Twilight glanced around at the other four mares, who were rather fixated on all the viscera dripping off the mailpony, “Um… I didn’t send you a letter recently, did I?”
“Of course not!” she smiled, “I got the order from Canterlot. I just had to… deliver a package… over to Ponyville Orphanage.”
Princess Celestia leaned around her sister’s bedroom door, and looked about for her dearest sister. Said sister sat on her bed, the latest edition of Cosmare open before her.
The Solar Princess smiled. “Oh, Luna?”
“Yes, sister?” the Moon Princess said in a bored voice.
“You sent that package already, I hope?”
“Oh, indeed, sister mine,” Luna grinned wickedly, “The package was handled by Our finest agents.”
“Oh, good!” the elder sister turned away, “I hope those orphans enjoy the early Hearth's Warming presents I sent them.”
“… Presents…?” she responded, weakly.
The five mares standing in front of Derpy glanced around the mailpony, and took in the sight of a black plume of smoke rising ominously from down the road. They each quietly wondered how they didn't notice that before. And then, they returned their wide-eyed stares to the pony before them.
Derpy smiled at Twilight, glad to have been of assistance in this time of transition. Had to keep up traditions, after all.
“I delivered the shit out of that package…” she smiled.