It started, as so many of life’s problems do, with gossip.
It is a well known fact around Ponyville that Rarity loves to gossip. Few are those who could call themselves so much as her acquaintance, yet have never spoken with her of some juicy secret in loudly hushed tones. Less well known is Sweetie Belle’s habit of eavesdropping on her sister’s gossip. It makes her feel included and grown-up.
All of this means that when ponies started whispering that Lyra and Bon-Bon, Ponyville’s most prominent fillyfoolers, were on the verge of splitting up, it was not long before the news reached a certain over-excitable young unicorn. Thus, it was not long before she became entirely too concerned over what she heard, and decided to take action.
Apple Bloom was surprised to find Sweetie pacing anxiously in the CMC clubhouse when she arrived. It was no minor walk from Ponyville, so normally she was the only one to arrive at Crusaders meetings on time.
“Apple Bloom!” Sweetie cried. “Can you make a love potion?”
“Y’mean like last Hearts ‘n Hooves Day?”
“Not a love poison, a love potion. Something not too strong.”
“Ah suppose Ah probably could look up how. But why would ah want to?”
“For Lyra and Bon-Bon!”
Apple Bloom stared at Sweetie, but she showed no signs of explaining herself. “What d’they have t’do with anything?”
“They’re not in love anymore!”
“An’ this is our problem why?”
“Because it’s so tragic! Oh, such cruel fate!”
“Have y’been reading Rarity’s books again? Don’t y’keep getting grounded for that?”
“That was only once, and only some of the books are ‘not suitable for fillies,’” Sweetie briefly imitated Rarity’s refined tones. “And that’s not the point! They need our help.”
“Remember what happened last time? Nopony needs that ‘help.’”
“But it’s different this time! We’re not forcing them to fall in love. We’re just making them remember.”
“Ah’m not gonna be a part of this.”
“Please?”
“Ah said no.”
“But they need us!”
“No, an’ that’s final.”
Sweetie’s eyes widened, shimmering on the verge of tears. Her face fell. Her posture drooped. And her voice became something to break the hearts of even the most fearsome of monsters. “Is it because you don’t want to be my friend anymore? I guess I should just go.” She started to slowly trudge towards the doorway.
“Sweetie Belle, Ah’ve seen ya use that on yer sister. Ah’m not gonna fall for it.”
Sweetie turned to face Apple Bloom, restored to her former state. “Please?”
“No.”
“Pleeeaaaase?”
“No!”
“Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssse?”
“Yer gonna keep asking until Ah say ‘yes,’ ain’t ya.”
Sweetie nodded.
Apple Bloom sighed. “Fine, ah’ll see what Ah can do. But once Ah make this potion, Ah want out of this plan.” Without waiting for a response, she walked out of the clubhouse.
Scootaloo arrived as Apple Bloom was leaving. “Wait, where are you going?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you decided what to do today without me.” When Apple Bloom ignored her, she tried asking Sweetie instead. “What’s her problem?”
“She doesn’t want to help Lyra and Bon-Bon.”
As Sweetie Belle explained herself again, Apple Bloom headed for the library to look for a recipe for a love potion. Preferably one that never caused any kingdoms to fall.
A few hours later, after an afternoon of halfhearted crusading, Sweetie and Scootaloo returned to the clubhouse to find a small sealed bottle full of slowly bubbling pink liquid. Underneath was a note: “Have them drink this. Make sure they’re near each other. P.S. Twilight doesn’t know I borrowed a bottle, so don’t let anypony see it.”
“Excellent.” Sweetie rubbed her hooves together. “Now we just need to follow Lyra and Bon-Bon around until we can sneak the potion to them.”
Scootaloo looked at the setting sun. “Actually, can we do this after dinner? My mom will kill me if I’m late.”
“Fine. But right after dinner, we make our move.”
“Sometimes you scare me,” Scootaloo muttered as she got back on her scooter and rode for home.
As night fell in earnest, Scootaloo was once again cruising the streets of Ponyville, towing a wagon containing Sweetie Belle and a completely inconspicuous towel that absolutely wasn’t covering up any secret potion bottles. They were having trouble finding their targets, but they weren’t too worried. It was the weekend, so they had a couple hours to work with before Scootaloo needed to be home, and longer still before Sweetie’s curfew.
Eventually, though, they thought to check the Pet Center fundraiser, and were rewarded with success. There was Bon-Bon, watching some bunnies play. And there was Lyra, looking at birdhouses, on the opposite side of the fundraiser from Bon-Bon. Scootaloo stopped behind a small bridge over a stream, where hopefully nopony would notice them.
“Oh, I hope we’re not too late,” Sweetie said. “They’re not together at all!” She pulled out the potion and attempted to remove the stopper with her magic, but it was in far too tightly for her novice telekinesis.
“Let me try.” Scootaloo took the bottle, and quickly found that she couldn’t get nearly a good enough grip with her hooves to open the bottle. After some wrestling with it, she ended up biting the stopper and pulling on the bottle (with Sweetie’s help) until they separated. Through some miracle, the bottle was more or less upright when it opened, so she didn’t accidentally drink any of the potion, though she did splash quite a bit of it into the stream.
Sweetie looked around for their victims. Was Lyra going to leave? She was awfully close to the edge of the fundraiser. “We’ve got to hurry!” She levitated over an empty cup. “Pour me some potion; we need to split up.”
Once the potion had been divided, Sweetie set off for Lyra with her share hovering unsteadily behind her, while Scootaloo balanced the bottle on her back and started darting from shadow to shadow towards Bon-Bon in a manner she presumably thought was secretive.
Fortunately for Scootaloo, she was headed for the largest concentration of adorable animals in the area. Half the ponies she passed were too enraptured with fluffy kittens and puppies chasing their tails to even notice her, and the rest were still too distracted to concern themselves with what some filly trying to be a ninja might be up to. Slipping the potion into Bon-Bon’s water turned out to be trivial, with how little attention she was paying to anything but the implausible fuzziness of a certain chinchilla.
Sweetie’s job was somewhat harder, as Lyra was apparently not thirsty. She followed for a while, hoping for some sort of opening with no luck. Then she ran out of patience, threw the potion at Lyra’s face while she was talking, and quickly hid behind a bush.
“Psshh,” Lyra sputtered. “What was that? And where did it come from?”
Sweetie assumed that meant she had gotten some potion in Lyra’s mouth. That meant it was time to regroup with Scootaloo and see the plan succeed. It really felt great to be helping ponies like this.
Scootaloo and Sweetie had found a hill that allowed them to see most of the fundraiser, and settled down to watch Lyra and Bon-Bon reunite. This gave them an excellent viewpoint to watch Lyra stick extremely close to Blues’ side, and to see Bon-Bon develop a sudden fascination with a seal.
“Shouldn’t they be together again by now?” Scootaloo asked.
“Maybe it takes a while to take effect.”
“It’s just that Lyra and that stallion look a lot like a couple.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. We just need to wait for it to start working.”
“Also, I’ve never seen a grown-up enjoy bouncing a ball with a seal quite so much.” Indeed, Bon-Bon and the seal were playing with a beach ball, and they both looked positively ecstatic.
“It will work. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“I think something may have gone wrong.”
Sweetie abruptly started crying. “We messed up! I just wanted to help, but instead I ruined everything! Now their relationship is dead for sure.”
“Oh. Um.” Scootaloo awkwardly patted Sweetie on the back in what she hoped was a comforting way. “I’m sure it will be alright.”
Sweetie latched onto Scootaloo and started crying in her mane. “No it won’t! We made them love some random stallion and a seal and now they’ll never even talk to each other again and it’s all my fault!”
“No, it’s fine, because . . . because we can fix it! We’ll make everything work out fine. Lyra and Bon-Bon will be even more in love than ever!”
“Do you really think we can?”
Scootaloo forced herself to smile confidently. “Of course.” She really hoped they weren’t about to make things worse.
The only problem was that they had no idea how to reverse the effects of the potion. They spent over an hour trying whatever they could think of, from splashes of water to contriving reasons to force Lyra and Bon-Bon to talk to each other, and nothing worked. All they accomplished was to make everypony (and seal) involved in this fiasco annoyed for various reasons. At least, all they accomplished until the fundraiser was approaching its end.
“Hey! Ah didn’t know y’all were gonna be here.” Apple Bloom greeted them from behind.
“Oh! Uh, hi,” Scootaloo replied. “Same here. Could we talk, um,” Scootaloo looked for somewhere that nopony would be able to hear them, “over there?”
Once they were away from prying ears, they explained everything that had happened, and begged Apple Bloom to help them set things right.
“Ah told ya this was a bad idea. It’s a good thing Ah found a potion that would wear off on its own. They’ll be back ta normal by tomorrow morning.”
“So we don’t have to do anything?” Scootaloo asked.
“Don’t and shouldn’t. If y’all don’t make things worse, we can just pretend this all never happened. Ah would sure like ta forget that Ah let you talk me inta making another love potion.”
“But what if they hate each other because we messed up and made them fall in love with the wrong ponies?” Sweetie asked.
“Ah don’t think we’re the real reason they’re breaking up, and their relationship ain’t our problem.”
“Aren’t we even going to apologize to them?”
“Do ya want to be grounded again for meddling in love?”
And that was the end of that discussion.
As it turns out, Bon-Bon and Lyra stayed together. Rumor has it that they did break up briefly, though. Supposedly they each got into some crazy rebound relationship, quickly regretted it, and got back together because they were now afraid of being single.
But you know what happens when you pay too much attention to silly rumors.