The Life of Lyra

by SigmatheAwesome

3 Invasion

"So..." Bon Bon raised an eyebrow.

"So," Lyra continued. "The magical networks of bipedal creatures have to be angled in just a way so that they can stand straight without losing balance or having extremely short lifespans."

"And..."

"The networks have to be balanced in terms of magical layout." Lyra pushed glasses up her nose, looking at her research journal. "Which is why none of the bipeds of our world can't use magic or fly." She smiled, pleased with herself. "It would be, evolutionarily, impossible."

Bon Bon rubbed her chin. "A cute theory, but what if we say that, for example, evolution didn't happen, and instead everything was created by Divina and her sisters? Why didn't they give races like minotaurs magic?"

Lyra searched her brain for an explanation. "Well, it could be one of those typical myths of a deity gifting her chosen race in favour of the others, or that through some sort of need ponykind was given magic to assist in a epic battle or-"

"Lyra," Bon Bon put a hoof over her mouth. "I get it."

Lyra grinned sheepishly. "Heh heh, sorry, I just got excited."

"Your life's exciting enough as it is. Just take things a little slower." Bon Bon smiled cutely, making Lyra blush profusely.

As if to ruin the moment, Pinkie's head literally popped out of the plant next to the awkward column. "Lyra!"

"Wah!" Lyra yelped. "Pinkie, what the heck are you doing here?"

"Oh, hello Pinkie." Bon Bon replied calmly. "How are you today?"

"I'm super-duper!" Pinkie replied, climbing out of the potted plant and walking up. "Except for a weensy problem that I need Lyra's help for."

"Oh no, I am not helping you with cupcakes." Lyra crossed her hooves. "You know I'd just poison half of Ponyville."

"There's a bigger problem than poison." Pinkie grabbed Lyra by her sides and hoisted her into the air. "Come on!"

"I'll see you later, Bon Bon." Lyra gave her roommate a pathetic wave

"Close your eyes!"

"Why would I need to do tha-?" Lyra started, but she was pulled into a spectral, kaleidoscopic tunnel before she could finish.

She nearly lost her lunch once she emerged from the other end, somewhere near the outskirts of Ponyville. A cluster of trees, barely enough to be a forest, stood to her right as she faced the town.

"Goodness sake, Pinkie, how do you cope with that?" Lyra fell on her flank, head spinning like Derpy's right eye.

"I close my eyes, silly." Pinkie grinned, helping Lyra up. "So, wanna have a guess at what's coming?"

"Zombies?"

"Nope."

"Ghosts?" A flashback of Brightstar crossed her mind.

"Nuh-uh."

"Uh... Extra-dimensional pony-like metal constructs with arcane weaponry?"

"Nah."

"I'm out of options."

Pinkie giggled. "It's extra-dimensional pony-like metal constructs with arcane weaponry with four eyes."

"So, basically what I said, but with a minor additional detail."

"Yep."

Lyra sighed, walking forwards. "So, where are these guys?"

Pinkie pointed away from Ponyville. "That way, three miles."

Lyra corrected her path, Pinkie trotting behind her.

Wait.

Pinkie's trotting?

Oh dear.

She turned to look behind her, and saw that tell-tale look in the party pony's eyes, a confident grin stretching across her face.

Most ponies knew of Pinkie's normally bouncy-happy nature. A few were aware of her other side, a depressed, borderline-insane pony that craved friendship.

Lyra was the only pony aware of her third form, a... Shall we say, hotblooded personality.

"Look, Pinkie, I really appreciate you asking me for help, but what can I do anyway?" Lyra stopped and turned to face Pinkie. "I'm just a regular unicorn whose only magic is telekinesis, backing music and sound amplification, and my only ability is a slighty-above-average intelligence and a highly-unusual mindset."

"These things are weak to sonic attacks."

"Yeah, military grade sonic spells. I should probably mention right now that I don't have any offensive magic at all."

Pinkie giggled, in a way un-befitting to her current state of mind. "That's why I brought you a weapon." She pulled a strange device from nowhere and tossed it to Lyra.

"Where in Equestria did you-?"

Pinkie smacked a hoof over her mouth. "Not enough time. They're here." She pointed to the sky, and Lyra's eyes widened immediately.

An enourmous, vaguely horseshoe-shaped thing the size of Canterlot itself moved slowly through the air, surrounded by a cloud of tiny black dots. An ominous, deep tone went right through Lyra's bones.

"WHAT THE HAY IS THAT THING?!" Lyra screamed, her instinct to run and hide with Bon Bon rising. "There's no way I can kill that! No darn way!"

"Don't worry, I have a plan." Pinkie pulled out an enormous light and waved it around. "Yoo-hoo! Hey, you dumb machines! Come and get me!"

Lyra went pale.

Two of the dots flashed with light, and started to grow larger. Within seconds, Lyra could make out the shape of some sort of flying device built for ponies.

As the two things swooped past, Pinkie leapt up and smacked one of the pilots off the thing, using her tail to grab onto the device. Lyra panicked, ducking as bolts of crimson light roared over her head and struck the ground with a deafening blast. The machine turned upwards to strike again, but the pilot smashed into a random tree branch and the vehicle spun around and landed nose-first into the ground next to Lyra.

"W-what the hay was that...?" Lyra finally uncovered her eyes and looked around, jumping back when she saw the vehicle next to her.

"Jetbikers." Pinkie replied, parking hers next to Lyra and leaping off.

Lyra examined the sleek machine stuck in the ground. "Well, if I wasn't full of adrenaline I'd be much more fascinated."

A mechanical whirr resounded from the forest, and a large equine machine (indeed with four eyes) burst through the branches. After a second it turned to face Lyra, it's eyes changing from green to red.

Lyra screamed and, without thinking, pulled the trigger on the strange device Pinkie had given her. A visible shockwave burst out and smashed into the machine, shattering it into many tiny pieces.

"Well done, Lyra!" Pinkie cheered.

"I... I need a drink..." Lyra gasped, her breath heavy.

"I'll get you one after this." Pinkie grabbed the unicorn's head and turned it sharply to the large thing. "Now, what I want you to do is to take the Jetbike and fly right into the mouth of the mothership, destroy the main computer and fly out again. All of these machines will shut off and self-destruct after that."

"W-wait, why can't you do it?!" Lyra said, as she was forcefully deposited onto the Jetbike, which Pinkie had somehow managed to put in the right place without Lyra's knowledge.

"Because." Pinkie replied simply, then kicked the thing to turn it on.

"Because what?"

"Because." Now, to make this thing go, you have to put your hooves in those holes there and-"

Lyra pushed her hooves in the two hoof-shaped holes on the front of the device. Without warning the Jetbike soared off at incredible speeds with a high-pitched whine, Lyra barely managing to steer it and keep the strange sonic gun from slipping out of her magic.

Eventually she straightened it out, aiming directly for the horseshoe. "Well, this isn't so bad-"

Almost all of the black dots flashed with light, and a hail of small red bolts started to rain past her.

"Spoke too soon!" Lyra screamed as she weaved past the deadly bolts of deathly death clumsily. Several of the black shapes roared past her in a blink of an eye, and through a holographic display she could see those jetbikes turning around and gaining on her.

She slammed her hooves forwards, and the jetbike roared even faster. She could see a bright light in the centre of the horseshoe's internal curve, and did her best to aim for it as more jetbikes dodged past her and bolts of red energy bounced off the hull of her bike.

The horseshoe started to turn slightly, trying to use it's bulk to block her. Lyra narrowly missed the underside of the arm turning towards her, an array of red lights illuminating her as she sped past them. After a few agonisingly long seconds of trying not to hit the underside as it moved downwards, she flew into the open circle, the illuminated door clearly in view. "Finally, now I can-"

Suddenly, a storm of red lights from emplaced projectors along the entire inner curve went right past her, and she screamed as she hit the device full-throttle. Behind her she could hear explosions resounding as, because of the poor design of the ship, the turrets slowly blew up each other in the hail of fire.

As the door approached Lyra pressed her nose on a button that looked vaguely like a 'shoot deadly things' button. Instead she gained even more speed, which was just enough to get half of the jetbike through the door as it shut quickly. The jetbike, with only the thrusters that were on the front half of the thing still running, bounced around an apparent hangar before ricocheting into a hallway, smashing into several of the large ponybots before blasting through a door where a large computer lay. The jetbike sputtered and skipped along the ground, knocking Lyra off and into the air. Lyra span wildly for several seconds before smashing into something large and the sound of glass cracking, before gravity started to affect her and she hit the metal deck with a heavy thud.

After a few seconds, Lyra pulled herself up weakly. "Owowowowowow..." She pressed a hoof to her back and felt a warm, wet patch, and her eyes traced up to the giant computer screen and spotted the crack directly above her. "Jeez, that's big."

She heard metallic hoofsteps behind her, and she turned sharply to see one of the ponybots looking down at her. She stood up immediately.

"Eheheheh... Uh, sorry for intruding, my crazy friend wanted me to do some insane thing like shut down your network and-"

A bolt of red energy zoomed right past her, hitting the wall behind her and creating a smoking crater.

"Apology unaccepted, it seems!" Lyra started running as the ponybot kept on firing at her. "Wah! Watch the tail!"

As she leapt behind a random crate in the room, something flashed through her memory. She immediately dived out of cover, but then stumbled over the shattered remains of the sonic gun she must have let go of as she was launched off the jetbike. She righted herself just in time to have another bolt of energy miss her, and she galloped to in front of the computer. "Oi, ya big tin can! Come and get me!"

The robot just stood there.

Lyra waved her hooves. "Yoo-hoo!"

No reaction.

Lyra frowned. "Fine, I'll do it my second way then." She grabbed the weird thing attached to the side of the ponybot that was making the red bolts of energy in her magic and started to yank. She swore she saw genuine shock on the robot's face as she did that. "Gimme!" Eventually she pulled it free, and aimed the pointy bit at the robot.

The robot just stood there.

"Err... Oh look, a trigger." She used her magic on the trigger. Nothing. And still nothing after the next seventeen times. "What the hay?"

"Power connection." The robot replied in an eerily hollow mare's voice.

"What?"

"That thing doesn't have a power connection."

"Oh." Lyra looked at the device. Then she just rolled her eyes and smacked it repeatedly into the robot's head until it broke and the machine fell limp. Then she jammed it into the computer repeatedly until a self-destruct warning rung out. "Haha! Lyra saves the- wait how am I going to...?"

She looked around the room. The junked remains of a robot, robot gun, jetbike and sonic gun was all that remained. What was worse was that she could start feeling herself getting lighter.

"Running time!" She dashed through the halls, beating a barely-alive robot with the robot gun and passed through the hall, feeling her hooves starting to leave the solid floor. She just reached the hangar as gravity gave up on her.

The hangar was a mess. Jetbikes and other nastier-looking things were also weightless, and she had to use her magic to push herself along. Then, gravity started to reverse, and she felt herself drifting and then falling to the roof. Which was good because she didn't have much distance to go, and she quickly stood up in her gravitationally-correct way.

The large, heavy vehicles, though, had much further to go. She galloped forwards, barely dodging a giant war machine crashing and embedding itself behind her, and she grabbed a jetbike and flew it outside just as the other fifteen machines crashed into the other jetbikes and roof of the mothership. Outside, the world was upside down, and the machines were going crazy, zooming around and crashing into the mothership. Lyra weaved through the chaos and out into the open, although dangerously close to the ground.

She tried to pull the machine to a standstill but the jetbike just kept on going. And just as she tried to turn she found herself screaming through the Ponyville streets, narrowly dodging the other ponies. She could see a familiar house coming up close, just as the machine started to give out.

With a scream she let go of the machine and let it fly skywards as she bounced painfully on the ground, skidding on the cobblestone streets, crashing through the door of the house ahead of her and almost tearing down the wall she smashed right into back-first.

After a few tense seconds she fell limp. "I've gotta stop doing that."

She heard hoofsteps running right up to her, and strong earth pony hooves scooping her up. "Lyra?!"

She opened her eyes and they immediately fell onto the blue eyes of Bon Bon.

That explains why her legs were soft and smelled like candy... Lyra smiled. "Sup?"

Bon Bon sighed, exasperated, and dropped Lyra on the floor - back first.

Lyra screamed in pain, writhing around comically. "Ow! Owowowowowowowowow!"

"Good to see you're ok." Bon Bon managed a smile.

"Oooooooooooooowwww!"

"Though I have to clean that blood up now. Ugh, that'll take forever."

"Bon Bon I know we're friends but can you please shut up and help me 'cuz I am need of serious medical attention."

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. "Of course. Though, you'll help me with the blood. And the door."

"Deal."

Author's Note:

This chapter, particularly the latter bits, was immensely fun to write. Ending's a bit weird, but then again this is an almost weekly occurrence for these two.

Also, I'm not tagging this story with gore because it's not excessively violent, just a little bit of blood because smashing into glass does that.

Comments

[phallus of malice]

llamatastic.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sonofabitch-hare.jpg
You don't get to leave me hangin' for months and then not even say why in AN.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pillow to cry into.

[SigmatheAwesome]

3908130 I didn't think it was necessary to mention my hiatus, it's really not that important in the great scheme of things

[phallus of malice]

3908629
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Alright man