It started with an empty schoolhouse. The first ponies to know that Cheerilee was gone were the foals. Then I got to be the first adult to find out when some of those unsupervised ponies trotted in looking for candy.
“Like, she wasn’t even there!” Diamond Tiara complained as she looked through the cases of candy. When I saw her I half expected she was out of school because she'd pretended to be sick. Her father would let her get away with anything as long as it meant he didn't have to deal with the fallout. “How dare she waste my time by making me come to class when she doesn’t even bother showing up herself?”
“Clearly she doesn’t respect you,” Silver Spoon agreed. Unlike her best friend, Silver Spoon's parents wouldn't have simply let her cough a few times and stay in bed. It wasn't well-known, but they'd occasionally made specialized silver weapons for the Royal Guard in troubled times.
“She didn’t leave a note?” I frowned. Cheerilee usually left a note on the door if she was too sick to teach.
“No! We sat and waited for almost an hour, then Apple Bloom decided she and her friends should be the teacher until Cheerilee got back, which obviously I couldn’t allow,” Diamond Tiara huffed. “After all, if anypony was going to be the leader, it’s me. It’s basically my special talent!”
“I thought your talent was picking out jewelry?” Silver Spoon whispered.
“Cutie marks can mean more than one thing!” Diamond Tiara snapped.
“Here’s your candy, girls,” I said, giving them chocolate before they could start an argument in my store. “Now why don’t you head on home and let your parents know I’ll check up on Cheerilee?”
The teacher lived near the schoolhouse, in a quiet part of town. I kept tabs on ponies, but I hadn’t ever visited her before. I didn’t have a foal or a little sister to drag to school, so our paths rarely crossed except for the day after Hearts and Hooves day, when she came in to buy a lot of cheap leftover chocolate to eat alone.
I knocked on the door. It was entirely possible she was just too sick to even leave the house and leave a note. I doubted it, because I was smart enough to add two and two and get trouble.
“Cheerilee?” I asked, knocking again. “It’s Bon Bon. Are you okay?”
No answer.
There were a few ways I could open the door. I could buck it right off its hinges. I knew how to pick simple locks, and the tumbler lock on her front door definitely qualified. I even had some tools hidden in my mane for just such an occasion. The problem was that it would take a few minutes, and it was the middle of the day. Ponies would see me.
I was going to have to come up with a better plan. A window would be faster, but even harder to hide than the door. Maybe a back door? I could get privacy to pick the lock, then.
“Wait, what am I doing?” I groaned. “This is Ponyville.” I tried turning the door handle, and it opened. Nopony locked their doors around here. I was starting to fall back on bad habits and old ways of thinking. Not everything needed a tactical solution here. Which was one reason I'd lost my old job.
I pushed the door in and trotted inside.
“Cheerilee! I’m coming in! If you’re here, I’m sorry, I just want to check up on you!” I shut the door behind me as I entered. She didn’t have a very large house, just two floors and a hoof-ful of rooms.
I did a quick search, and didn’t find anything until I got to the bedroom.
“Oh no,” I whispered. The bed was empty, but whoever'd slept in it last hadn't fixed the sheets. In fact they'd torn them in half along with the mattress. I lifted one ruined foam slab from where it was lying, and thankfully didn't find Cheerilee. There had been some kind of fight here, but not a spot of blood anywhere.
I was leaving when I spotted it. A single pink scale, almost as large as my hoof.
"Where did you come from?" I whispered.
I grabbed the belt from where I’d left it, checking the magical charge. The excitement and extended use from being buried in wax had drained it even further. I had maybe an hour left before it would be gone for good.
“Wonderful,” I sighed.
“Bonnie, I finished it!” Lyra said, proudly. She held up an instrument case.
“...I really hope that isn’t a viola, Lyra.”
“I got the idea from one of those old detective books where the Stalliongrad Mafia carried crossbows around in guitar cases!” Lyra explained. “You said you used magical armor so you could hide it when you didn’t need to wear it, right? Well, it’d be pretty worthless if you had to carry around a big sword. Nopony does that.”
“Almost nopony,” I corrected. “Remember when Rainbow Dash decided that fencing was the next cool thing after Daring Do and The Book of Nine Swords?”
“That lasted like a week,” Lyra shrugged. “And everypony stared. Especially when she tried to do weather duty by cutting clouds in half.” She smiled and patted the case. “This baby will mean you can tell people you’re just on the way to saxamaphone practice.”
“Lyra, you’re a musician. Even I know it’s not called-- you know what, never mind.” I opened the case up. My helmet was set into one side of the case, and on the other… “Endless Night, Lyra, what is that thing?”
“Well,” Lyra said, nervously. “I was able to save the sword blade. And part of the flail. And the wood from the crossbow! They were all enchanted, too!”
“Normal weapons don’t usually work on monsters,” I agreed, still looking at the mess she’d made.
“So what I did was, I used the wood and reshaped it using a Warp Wood spell to make it into a new handle. But I didn’t know if you liked the sword or the flail better, so I put the sword on one end, and the chain and ball I saved from the flail on the other end!” She picked it up with her magic and almost hurt herself just lifting the ungainly mess.
The sword’s blade was short, wide, and thick, the kind of broad and heavy weapon that worked best with earth ponies like me. The flail took a lot more finesse to use, and you could easily hurt yourself with it if you didn’t know what you were doing. I had extensive combat training with it.
On the other hand, I had absolutely no idea how to use a weapon with a sword on one end and a flail on the other, with only a short handle between them.
“Lyra, this is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I know, right?” She smiled. “You can fight two monsters at once!”
“I meant dangerous to me, Lyra.” I sighed. “I’ll get killed if I use this!”
“Just try it,” Lyra begged. “I, um… I can’t take it apart. The enchantments kind of… stuck together like magnets.” She gave me a nervous smile.
“Lyra…” I groaned. She offered the weapon to me. “It’s better than nothing.” At least I’d already be wearing a helmet when I inevitably smacked myself in the face with it.
“I’ll try to come up with something else,” Lyra promised. “There are still some bits and pieces left, like the crossbow mechanism.”
I smiled and put a hoof under her chin. “Lyra, thank you. I’m not angry at you or anything. I’m just worried about Cheerilee. This is a big help. I really appreciate you and how you're helping.”
She grabbed me and pulled me into a hug. “Promise me that you won’t get hurt?”
“I promise.”
I had to admit, the instrument case was a good idea. Ponies didn’t even ask me about it -- with all of the spontaneous musical numbers that went on around here, most of the population of Ponyville could carry a tune or play an instrument or three. An instrument didn’t raise any eyebrows, it just meant I was overprepared.
Tracking Cheerilee down was my first concern. From the mess in her bedroom, whatever happened was going to leave a trail. There hadn’t been any signs of struggle downstairs, but when I finally got around the house and into her backyard, I’d found a wide hole in her fence, more than wide enough for a pony to trot through.
I checked the broken boards and found a single clue -- another pale pink scale, almost like a rose petal. It was the same as the one from the bedroom, so I was on the right trail.
“I hope it’s not a pink basilisk,” I muttered. “I hate basilisks. They smell so awful!” I followed the scrapes in the dirt as they turned into more subtle marks on the road.
The cobblestones were scraped in a wide, sinuous pattern. There were hoof marks over the streaks of dust and grime. Ponies had walked by after the creature had been through here. There weren’t any ponies around now, though. It was like the whole block had been abandoned.
“I don’t like this…” The tracks went into an alleyway. I grabbed what looked like a tarp to pull it out of the way. It had an odd texture to it and--
Oh. It was a snakeskin. A really big one. Like, big enough that I could use it as a blanket.
That was when I heard the screaming.
“Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaake!” Given the high-class Trottingham accent, it could only be one pony, a cello-playing earth pony that Lyra had invited over a few times for practice.
I grabbed my helmet from the case and slapped it on, hitting the activation button on the G4 armor.
“Henshin!” I yelled, the magical armor activating in a bright flash. Suitably disguised, I glanced at the awkward weapon Lyra had made for me. “...Nah. I’d just end up hurting myself.”
I ran out into the street, leaving the weapon in its case in the alleyway. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it really should have been a pink half-pony half-snake with flower petals around its fanged face like a cobra hood and a body half again as long and sinuous as Discord.
Octavia was running from where it had surprised her, slowed down by her cello. Other ponies had gotten considerably further. I ran out between them just as the snake-pony lunged for her, rearing up to catch its wide, fanged maw with my hooves.
“You know, normally I’d try to talk sense into you,” I said. “But we’re in the middle of town and I figure I’ve got maybe five minutes before the Elements show up and this gets awkward.” I shifted my weight, trying to push the monster back.
The pink snake, who I had to assume was Cheerilee, suddenly reared up, leaving me stumbling and off-balance. Its tail slammed into my side, and I was sent right across the street, my back hitting a street light so hard that if not for my armor, I would have ended up wrapped around it like a noodle around a fork. Even with the armor it knocked the wind out of me and left me seeing stars.
“Right, okay. She’s still got that good old earth pony strength.” I should have learned not to underestimate civilians a decade ago. Heck, I had learned it. I’d just also forgotten after more than half a decade of retirement.
A tail as thick as my front leg wrapped around my neck and started squeezing. I could hear my helmet creaking as the sturdy material resisted the constriction.
“Lyra… would be really jealous… if she knew I was getting hugs from another pony…” I gasped, trying to free myself. Part of me still hoped Cheerilee was in there somewhere and I could reason with her. It was the stupid part of me, which is maybe why it was still working while I was blacking out from a lack of air.
I felt my hooves leave the ground as Snakeilee picked me up. That was good and bad. On the one hoof, I had no traction and leverage. On the other hoof, my whole body weight was on my neck and making the strangulation even worse.
Wait, that wasn’t good and bad. That was bad and worse. I got those confused sometimes when nothing good was happening.
I curled up, wrapping my back hooves around the snake tail and getting some of the pressure off of my neck. She started flicking her tail, trying to dislodge me like I was something unpleasant stuck to her hoof. I gave her a little of her own medicine, squeezing as tight as I could.
She hissed in pain, and a shadow fell across my vision. I let go just as her mouth closed on where I had been, and her fangs sank into her tail.
The snake-pony screeched and let me go. I gasped, finally filling my lungs again. I sometimes forgot just how nice it was to be able to breathe.
“Take this!” I yelled, spinning and bucking the monster. It was like hitting chain mail over a bunch of twisting rubber hoses. The scales gave for a moment, but I couldn’t punch through them and they bounced right back into shape.
The snake hissed as it focused on me again. I had a feeling even if I used my Jawbreaker Kick, it’d just bounce off. Blunt force was probably the worst way to handle this. I needed something sharp and pointed - the snake’s fangs had gone right through the tough scales.
I just wasn’t sure where I was going to find something in the middle of Ponyville on very short notice. A regular knife or stick wouldn’t work, and the only real weapon I could think of was the awful thing Lyra had bodged together.
Well, if I was going to get killed, I was going to get killed doing something stupid, just like my parents always warned me I would.
I ran for the ungainly weapon and grabbed it with a hoof, unlocking my helmet’s jaw to get a grip on the short handle with my teeth. I just had to come up with a brand-new fighting style on the fly.
The monster reared up, spreading its fangs wide to show me the fangs in its maw, dripping with venom. Maybe it was sizing me up to make sure it could swallow me whole. I’d seen snakes contemplate their prey, waiting for just the right moment to strike, back when I was doing survival training. I’d also seen a snake get killed by a rabbit, of all things.
I jumped for the monster. If I was going to have a chance, I had to be aggressive. I swung the flail end of the weapon towards the thing’s snout and hoped for the best. The handle pulsed in my teeth, like a heart beating.
The chain shot out, like a line from a fishing rod, the flail’s head wrapping around the snake’s mouth and pulling tight, snapping the monster’s jaw shut.
“Lyra, I am going to kiss you!” I smiled, the words muffled around the handle in my mouth. Maybe this thing she’d given me wasn’t as useless as I’d thought. If I lived through this, I’d make her the special chocolates tonight.
I landed next to the monster and yanked, the weapon’s enchantment working with my motion and cinching tight to reel the beast in.
SECT agents were trained in close quarters magical combat. CQMC. All ponies could use magic at extremely close range: unicorns could create magical blades with their horns, pegasus ponies could form electrical charges or even ice blades along their wings, and earth ponies could channel energy through their hooves.
If we had the right weapon for it, we could channel it through that, instead. Most weapons, even the ones that the Royal Guard used, weren’t appropriate for it. They’d just fall apart, the magical energy damaging them instead of the target.
Fortunately for me, I had exactly the right weapon for it. They might have been old and rusting, but they were still SECT weapons. I grabbed the handle with both front hooves and channeled energy into it as the snake was dragged towards me, slamming the blade home through its tough scales and into the rubbery flesh beneath.
There was a surge of energy, and a sharp pop like a balloon exploding. Mist covered the square, and Cheerilee fell to the ground, dropping down right in front of me.
“Are you okay?” I asked, putting a hoof to her face to make sure I hadn’t accidentally hurt her.
“W-where am I?” Cheerilee asked, dazed.
“Safe,” I said. “You’re safe now.”
“It’s coming from over here!” A raspy voice yelled. I recognized it instantly. Anypony who’d ever had to make a claim on their pegasus insurance knew exactly what Rainbow Dash sounded like, mostly the noises she made after going through a window.
“Time for me to leave,” I said. I grabbed a humming, hissing piece of dark metal from where it was vibrating against the cobblestones.
“Wait, who are you?” Cheerilee asked, struggling to get to her hooves and failing.
“Just somepony passing through,” I said, before galloping off, the dark mist letting me slip away before anypony else saw me