Ponyville’s Stirrup Street.
August 30. Three days after “Sonic Rainboom”, two days after “A Bird in the Hoof” and one day after “Family Appreciation Day”. Monday.
Dear Lyra,
Could you come by my place after you finish your busking this morning? I have something important to ask you.
Your Friend,
Bon-Bon
P.S. I’m opening the shop late today, so just let yourself in. I’ll be waiting for you in the living room.
After giving the letter to Derpy and setting up the “Closed” sign, Bon-Bon headed up the back stair of her shop to her living area. The first room off of the top of the stairs was the living room.
Twenty minutes later, Bon-Bon finished adjusting the last of the invisible wires that outlined the four walls, floor and ceiling of her living room. She stepped into the neighboring bathroom and checked a cabinet under a sink, where the various wires were attached to two large unicorn batteries in series. Gauges on top of the batteries indicated that they were at full capacity.
“My coat is red,” she stated out loud, then nodded at her ability to state the lie.
She then stepped into the living room.
“Cows la-a-a-a-A-A-AY!” she tried to say, as an incredible pressure built inside her head. “—DON’T lay eggs,” she finally was forced to say.
The Truth Field was in successful operation. She checked the batteries once again—they were now at 95% each.
Her trap laid, Former Agent Sweetie Drops went to the sideboard to make some tea.
After all, you couldn’t perform a decent interrogation without a cup of tea!
"Starsinger they wait for your songs,
Out on that wide milky highway, you see.
Starsinger they’ll all sing along,
Come out to the starlanes with me.”
Lyra trotted down the street, singing and strumming a happy tune on her lyre that none of the other ponies recognized. (She usually skipped over the part where she identified herself as the “gypsy companion” to the main character in the song.) She stopped on seeing the time on the town’s clock tower. “Oops, I’m late,” she said to herself. “I hope Bon-Bon won’t be too mad.”
She walked up to the door of the closed sweet shop, double-checked Bon-Bon’s letter, and knocked just to be sure. When there was no answer, she got out her key and let herself in.
“Bon-Bon, I’m here!” she called out after she was inside.
There was no answer.
She went up the stairs, looking curiously around her at cameo portraits of members of Bon-Bon’s family. They looked suspiciously like the generic cameos that you got when you bought the picture frames.
“Bon-Bon?” she cried out again.
Still no answer.
Looking through the open doorway, she saw Bon-Bon in the living room. She was engrossed with a large book that was sitting on the main piece of furniture in the room, a large coffee table. A small couch was on each side of the table; Bon-Bon was sitting in one of them, with a pair of saddlebags right next to her. A tea set was sitting on a cozy on the side of the table opposite the earth pony, and a drained teacup was within reach.
“Hi, Bon-Bon,” Lyra said as she walked into the room. As was usual with Bon-Bon, she never seemed to recognize her own name being spoken. Lyra put a hoof to one ear as she tried to figure out the weird sensation she had experienced on crossing the threshold.
With a resigned shrug, she dropped the matter and walked over to the kettle to pour herself a cup of tea. Lyra used her levitation to add some sugar and cream and took a sip. A quick application of her magic brought the mixture to the perfect temperature, and she sipped once more, smiling at the taste. She remained standing, wondering how long it would take Bon-Bon to notice her. Lyra turned her head and saw that the book her friend was poring over was one of the volumes of Star Swirl’s Encyclopedia.
Bon-Bon was indeed studying the reference volume. She was looking over the entry for Timber Wolves, absorbing every detail of their fighting strategies.
She closed her eyes, and imagined herself in the Everfree, confronted by three of the creatures. Using the knowledge from the text she jumped and rebounded from one tree to another, effortlessly evading her attackers’ every move. And then she turned to the offensive. She cornered the smallest of the creatures and with a mighty blow destroyed it. She turned to the others, bloodlust in her eyes…
“Bonny!” Lyra said firmly, tapping Bon-Bon on the shoulder.
Bon-Bon jumped, but quickly recovered from the interruption of her dark fantasy. “Oh…Lyra. We need to talk.” With a frown, she turned to the saddlebags resting on the couch beside her and began digging through their contents.
“Oh?” asked Lyra. She took up a very un-ponylike posture on the couch facing Bon-Bon’s. She rested her head in her forehooves as she leaned her elbows on the table and leaned forward.
Bon-Bon leaned back in apprehension—it was an extremely-unponylike pose. “Is this you?” she asked.
Placed onto the table between them was yesterday’s issue of the Cloudsdale Herald’s sports section. The front-page picture showed the Wonderbolts holding Rainbow Dash aloft at the Cloudsdale Auditorium. A sea of faces could be clearly seen behind them, including Twilight Sparkle, Applejack and an uncharacteristically enthusiastic Fluttershy. Bon-Bon’s hoof was pointing at another unicorn’s face, one that was hard to recognize with the graininess of the image.
Lyra looked down at the image for a moment. “Yup. That’s me.”
While she was answering, Bon-Bon had reached into her bags to remove a photograph. It was a color enlargement of the newspaper photograph, much clearer than the newspaper copy, and clearly showing Lyra’s face. “It will make things a lot easier if you don’t—” Bon-Bon began, before realizing that Lyra hadn’t tried to lie. “Um…”
Lyra picked up the photo. “Wow, Bon-Bon! You must have gone through an awful lot of work to get this! Do you know somepony at the Herald?”
“Yes, he’s an old friend of…hey wait a minute! I’m asking the questions here!”
Lyra positively beamed at the last thing Bon-Bon said. “Check!” she exclaimed.
“What? No, forget that. I demand an explanation!”
"Check,” Lyra muttered under her breath. Bon-Bon failed to notice.
“How were you able to attend the Best Young Flyer’s Competition? Those bleachers are made of cloudstuff—no earth pony or unicorn can sit on them without falling through.”
“Oh?” Lyra asked in ignorance. She examined both photographs. “Well, how are Twilight and Applejack sitting then? I’d mention Pinkie Pie as well, but…well…”
“Yes, I’m willing to leave Pinkie Pie out of this. Twilight and Applejack—and Rarity, who was cropped out of this photo—were able to sit because Twilight had cast the Cloud Walking spell upon them.”
“Ah,” said Lyra. “There you go.”
“Are you saying that Twilight cast the Cloud Walking spell on you?” Bon-Bon asked warily. “Because I asked Twilight afterwards, and she said—”
“No, I mean that I cast the spell,” Lyra said with a grin at coming up with such a good answer. “On myself.”
“I happen to know that Cloud Walking is an extremely difficult spell. Certainly not a spell that an ordinary unicorn can cast. What are you hiding from me?”
Lyra leaned back a bit in response to Bon-Bon’s severe stare. “Well…um…I’m a graduate of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”
“Why did you never tell me before?”
“Well…um…” Lyra said, casting about for an answer. “Graduates of that school have a certain…reputation…of being unicorn supremacists. And since I never use any of those spells here in Ponyville, I figured that I didn’t need to complicate our relationship with that particular revelation.”
“I can’t believe it,” Bon-Bon said, shaking her head. “How could you keep a secret this big from me? We’ve spoken in this room before!”
Lyra turned her head partially, mostly to hide the rising eyebrow.
“You were in the school during the time when Twilight Sparkle was a student,” Bon-Bon continued, “and therefore you must have known her.”
“…Yeah…” Lyra reluctantly admitted. “But you’ve made up with her, right? I mean, you must have joined her club in order to get a hold of that volume there.”
“That means nothing! You lied to me about Twilight Sparkle!” Bon-Bon countered weakly. “I just…I don’t think we can remain friends with secrets like this between us. I don’t want to see you again.”
Lyra got up, her mouth agape. “Just like that? One little secret on my side, while you…is ‘Bon-Bon’ even your real name?”
Bon-Bon jumped to her hooves. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.
Lyra waved her hooves playfully. “Hey, I was only joking on the fact that you never seem to notice when somepony calls your name. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Bon-Bon snarled. “Get out of my sight!” she hissed.
Lyra backed away slowly. “I’ll get back to you when you’ve calmed down.”
“Get out of my life!” Bon-Bon screamed.
With a bewildered shake of her head, Lyra retreated.
Bon-Bon went straight for the bathroom batteries.
“95%?” she said incredulously. “How can they still be at 95%? Even if she was the most-powerful unicorn in existence, she still should have drained the batteries! How can she lie and not even be detected?” She returned to the window, to see a disheartened Lyra making her way down the street, her head bowed.
“Is she even really a pony?” she asked herself.