Quantum Vault

by WishyWish

5.5 - Heartbond II

June 13, 2015

Ponyville

Saturday

Author’s note: This installment of Quantum Vault contains stronger imagery than readers may be used to from the story thus far. Reader discretion is advised.

The moment the door to the modest cottage slammed shut, Lyra hastily bucked the heavy sitting room couch back up against it. She never realized just what a wonderful deal they had gotten on such a well-made piece of furniture last year. The couch was a solid oak frame under soft upholstery, which made it durable, and, much to her chagrin when they had dragged it all the way to the front door, very heavy.

Lyra spoke without waiting to catch her own breath. “Did you get it?”

Bon Bon, bedecked in saddlebags and sporting a utility belt, sunglasses, and a grappling hook at her hip, was as much out of breath as her companion. She remained silent, trotting to the kitchen with Lyra in curious tow. There, she yanked a couple of burlap sacks from her bags and spilled their contents out onto the counter.

“Three tomatoes, two cucumbers, an apple, two quarts of water, and an open box of crackers,” Bon Bon took inventory aloud. “Oh, and half a loaf of bread. The other half had mold on it. I cut that part off. Beggars can’t be choosy.”

Lyra levitated a cucumber in the glow of her magic and squeezed it lightly. “This is overripe,” She complained.

“It’s edible!” Bon Bon, who was already disappearing into the sitting room, called out. “If we make sandwiches with it in the next day or two it’ll be fine.”

There was a shuffling sound, followed by an exhausted ker-plop. Lyra unmistakably recognized the sound as her companion shuffling off her gear and slumping straight onto the carpet, in lieu of the absent couch. She filled a glass with precious water from the household reserve and floated it along with her into the sitting room, where she sat down next to Bon Bon. The earth mare was lying on her side, her flank rising and falling with fatigue. Lyra smiled softly and offered the waiting glass.

“Drink.”

Bon Bon made a face, “We agreed not to fill any cups over halfway. We have to ration what we have left.”

Lyra’s expression was just as stubborn – she had learned a few things about dealing with earth pony stoicism in her years living with one. She waved the glass in Bon Bon’s face. “Then I’ll drink whatever you don’t. Rationing water won’t do us any good if we don’t ever drink any of it.”

Bon Bon hesitated, but finally gave in, allowing the magical glow from her friend to bring the glass to her lips. The contents were drained in less than four seconds. Lyra overturned the glass and shook it, a smug, victorious grin on her lips.

“See? You were thirsty. You need to drink when you’re thirsty.”

The special agent roughness on Bon Bon’s lips morphed into a sly, and somewhat weak, smile. “…what would I do without you?”

“I know what I’d do,” Lyra sighed, sitting back. “Starve to death.”

The two sat in silent observance of the macabre comment. When Ponyville had begun going crazy, and their friends had begun gradually succumbing to the madness, the pair did the only thing they could – they holed up in their home, trying to make the place look deserted. They boarded the windows and even purposefully destroyed their hanging window box flowerbeds, leaving the contents to wither and die in the sun. Bon Bon, with her skill as her alter ego ‘Special Agent Sweetie Drops’, was far stronger and more agile than even natural earth pony tenacity would suggest, making her the logical choice to foray into town whenever it was absolutely necessary. Lyra, wanting to feel useful, had taken it upon herself to see to every other affair of the house – food preparation and comforting her dear companion chief among these.

Filling the latter of her two duties, Lyra got up and moved over to her precious harp. Seating herself daintily on a stool and crossing her hind legs in a fashion that was so uniquely ‘her’, she began to strum idly at the strings, drawing her hooves over them to enchant the room with a melody worthy of being doused in fairydust.

Bon Bon let out a sigh and stretched out, looking every bit a beached whale in contrast to her village-spelunking self from moments ago. “Nopony does that better than you.”

Lyra, still strumming melodiously, grinned and wiggled her rump. “It’s what my cutie mark is telling me, after all.”

“No, I mean it—" Bon Bon sat up, her expression laden with honest praise. “I dunno what other ponies are into, but I swear, you make the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. If you took it on the road I bet you could call it ‘instrumental therapy’ and make a killing.”

Lyra slipped off her stool and slunk over to the other mare, coming up beside her quite closely. “You’d miss me then.” She caught Bon Bon’s waggling ear in her teeth and gave it a playful chew. The earth pony blushed.

“…y-you shouldn’t do that…”

“I’m tired of this,” Lyra whined, letting go of the ear and yanking on the rug with her magic such that Bon Bon, yelping, found herself flat on her back and prone. In an instant the unicorn was standing over her, grinning mischievously down. “I’m tired of this ‘don’t touch me’ junk. I’m hungry, scared, and lonely.” She blinked, “…I miss you and you’re right here next to me.”

Bon Bon huffed out a breath and folded her forelegs over her chest. “I-I’m not in the mood. That’s all.”

Lyra only giggled. “Yes you a-are—” She sang, lightly blowing on the tip of the earth mare’s muzzle. “All your crazy super spy skills and you let me literally pull the rug out from under you? Don’t lie. You stink at it.” Her smile softened. “At least around me you do.”

Bon Bon, blushing furiously, moved her forelegs and allowed Lyra to trace a hoof in circles around the fluffy softness of her chest…until the hoof abruptly stopped moving. The pleasant petting was replaced by a painful tugging sensation, as though Bon Bon’s entire weary body was a strip of flypaper, and Lyra was trying to escape.

Bon Bon frowned, watching Lyra trying in vain to remove her hoof from her companion’s body. Eventually the unicorn resorted to levitating over a small spade from Bon Bon’s pack. With a bunch of prying and a number of unpleasant grunts, the two ended up in a mutual sitting position, Lyra cradling her hoof.

“You know why we can’t touch,” Bon Bon explained. “So we don’t end up like…them.”

Silence returned to the sitting room, broken only by the muffled howls, cries, and caterwauling from ‘ponies’ outside.

“What’s…what’s going on?” Lyra repeated the question both of them had on their lips a thousand times already. Bon Bon couldn’t be upset with her for asking it again.

“I don’t know. But it’s not safe outside anymore. I might be able to get out of town by myself, but I don’t think we’d both make it, and even if we did…where would we go?” Bon Bon shook her head derisively. “We have to stay here. Until help arrives. If we just keep making it look as though nopony lives here, we won’t get noticed.”

Lyra was on her hooves. She paused before the obscuring drapes, wanting more than anything to part them and let some sunshine into the sitting room. “How do you know that?”

“…it’s worked so far. And I don’t have any better ideas.”

Lyra refused to turn around. “You should leave. You’re right. You could probably make it out of here. Go. Go and bring back help.”

There was a shuffling noise from somewhere behind the beleaguered unicorn. She ignored it until she felt a hoof resting on her shoulder. “W-wait, you’re not supposed to touch—”

Bon Bon smiled wanly and stroked her friend’s mane with an oven-mitted hoof. “Lyra…how could I do that?”

“Y-you just…” Lyra made mock galloping motions with her hooves. “You put one hoof in front of the other, and you just…do it.”

The oven mitt had moved to Lyra’s withers, and the unicorn sighed, the warmth of her companion’s smile never faltering.

“I won’t leave here without you. I’d rather be one of those things out there then not have you in my life.”

“B-but…” Lyra felt the mental alarm – the warning that her floodgates were starting to open. She sniffed sharply, battling against the urge to break down, but she was steadily losing ground. “…but I could never live with myself if…I…I love you…”

Bon Bon’s voice came in soft coos – far more harmonious than Lyra felt her music could ever hope to be. “I know. I love you too. We’re okay. We’re safe in here. And we’re going to make—”

The rest of the sentence was crushed under a chunk of debris that nearly took Lyra’s head off as it sailed by.

“The kitchen!” Bon Bon was on her hooves and in full defense mode in the turning of a second. Dashing into the kitchen with her partner on her heels, she found the remains of a wall, an obliterated sink and countertop, and precious produce scattered all over the floor.

And a single pony that had once been two.

For one paralyzing moment, there was nothing but the huffing of breath and blank stares both from within the house and without. The creature that had apparently destroyed the wall just by ramming into it was hugely over-muscled. A broad, powerful stallion, its white coat was mottled with patches of fire engine red, and it bore a cutie mark in the shape of a dumbbell overlaying an open-faced, bright green apple. The beast had two tails, five legs, and its head looked as though some cruel artist had grabbed two unfired clay sculptures of ponies and mashed them together. Each eye had a different expression and color, except for the third one in the middle, that was in the shape of an hourglass and bore two separate pupils. The creature threw back its ‘head’ and let out a guttural bellow through yellowing teeth.

“EEEEEEYEEAHHHHHHH!”

Lyra cowered behind her companion, quickly losing herself to uncontrollable quivering. “…what…what is that…?”

Bon Bon, her eyes narrowed, managed to dodge her companion’s subconscious need to lay a hoof on her shoulder for support. She stepped in front of Lyra, pulled a pair of shades from somewhere in her mane, and sat them on her muzzle. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it’s in our home, and it has to leave.” Steeling herself with a breath, she stomped her hoof and scraped it against the floor in challenge against the creature that dwarfed her at least three times in height. “Hey! Hey you!”

The monstrosity, its expression constantly shifting between anger, pain, and general insanity, turned to focus on the tiny pony who had called it out.

“You heard me!” Bon Bon cried. She whipped out a wallet (again from some inexplicable location inside her mane), flipped it at the creature, and stuffed it away. “My name is Sweetie Drops, special agent of S.M.I.L.E! And I’m giving you till the count of three to turn your bulky biceps and that green macintosh on your rump around and get outta here, or…or else!”

“EEEEEEYEAHHHHHH!” The creature howled once again. It then hefted the entire kitchen sink, balancing it on one hoof. Both mares ducked and braced themselves for the item to be hurled in their direction, but no such attack came. When they looked up, the monster stallion was…pumping the sink and grinning, as one might do with a dumbbell.

At a loss, the mares stared at one another. Lyra only shrugged, but Bon Bon, taking the initiative, smiled cautiously and stepped further into the kitchen, keeping her eyes on the beast that was exercising with part of their kitchen.

“…clean up the food and take it into the sitting room…” Bon Bon ordered Lyra softly. She then brightened, raising her voice as the unicorn behind her scrambled to comply. “Aww, I get it! You just wanted something to play with, right? Tooootally understand. I mean, I like to work out too, you know?” She took up a pair of empty milk bottles in her hoofs and began pressing both of them over her head in time with the pumps of the kitchen sink. “See?”

Lyra gathered as much of the useful produce up in her magic as she could and levitated it safely out of the room. All the while she had the curious spectacle playing out in the corner of her eye. It was quite possibly the most bizarre thing she had ever seen outside of a dream. A tiny mare with cool shades on was doing lifts with empty milk bottles resting on the flats of both her front hooves; perfectly in time with the sink-bench presses of the five-legged, three-eyed, multicolored, manticore-sized thing with tiny little pegasus wings and the torn remnants of a yoke around its neck. All ‘three’ of them were enthusiastically smiling at one another.

“Right, so…” Bon Bon glanced back at Lyra to ensure that she had finished collecting the valuable commodities. “You found your wonderful thing to play with so…” She then tossed both the milk bottles out the hole in the wall and into the street. “Here! Fetch!”

The monster brightened, its three ears perking, and turned to follow the bath of the discarded bottles. Bon Bon turned away and back to Lyra, brushing her hooves together as with a job well done.

“There,” Bon Bon smiled, “No problem! We don’t need the sink without running water anyway. We’ll just patch up this wall, and everything will go back to nor—“

“EEEEEEEYEEEEEAHHHHHHH!”

Lyra watched in horror as the household’s kitchen sink, discarded over the shoulder of the retreating behemoth, crashed into the back of Bon Bon’s skull. The earth mare’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she crumpled on the spot, the sound of the monster’s gleeful cry mingling with the anguished scream of her mate.

Lyra was by Bon Bon’s side instantly. She turned Bon Bon over and cradled her head in her lap, the sensation of warm blood pooling around her knees as she fumbled with a water bottle, spilling most of it while attempting to levitate it to her friend’s lips.

“B-Bon Bon…!” Lyra’s eyes were already crowded with tears. “…s-speak to me!”

Bon Bon fluttered her eyelids and tried in vain to bring the room into focus. With a soft smile, she reached up and just barely brushed the unicorn’s cheek. “….you’re not…s-supposed to touch m-me...” she croaked.

“I don’t care!!” Lyra shouted, wetting Bon Bon’s lips with some of the precious liquid. “I…I don’t care what happens…I-I can’t…go on without you…”

“R-relax,” Bon Bon tried to take some of the liquid but ended up coughing it out. “I-I’m fine. It…it d-doesn’t even h-hurt…”

The earth mare trailed off. Her eyes were still open, but her body was as slack as a bag of rice. Lyra tried to get her attention, but the fallen secret agent just stared off into space, her chest patiently rising and falling.

Lyra glanced outside through the hole in the wall, unable to hear her own cries. Outside, an unchecked fire had spread to three buildings. Two colts, joined into a single hip and hind leg, were collapsed on the ground, trying in vain to kick their way apart. An old nag lying next to a walker on its side wasn’t moving. Laughter from somewhere in the distance sounded otherworldly. The monster who had destroyed Lyra’s home and broken her lover was already finished with the milk bottles, and was now attempting to rip wheels off a produce cart in hopes of finding another challenge.

Nothing outside reminded her of Ponyville anymore.

Lyra did the only thing she could do.

She shut her eyes and wrapped her forelegs around Bon Bon, throwing herself into a hug with the mare she had been desperate to touch for weeks.

“S-stop…” Bon Bon whined, pushing ineffectually at her partner with the only foreleg she could still lift, “…d-don’t…”

Lyra held on until she could feel the rooting stickiness in her coat. “…s-shh…” She cooed, “J-just…shh…you’re gonna be fine now…”

Much to their wishes, the two ponies were never apart again.

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