Truthseeker

by RB_

Recovery

The door to the hospital room slammed open. Lyra winced, but thankfully enough time had passed that the action only caused her slight discomfort. Besides, upon seeing who it was that had kicked the door open, she would have been fine either way.

“Bonnie! You’re ba—mph!”

She was cut off as Bon Bon’s hug cut off her air supply.

I’m sensing a theme here, she thought as she moved her own hooves around Bon Bon’s torso and squeezed.

“Oh, thank Celestia and Luna you’re alright! Pinkie told me everything, I came as soon as I heard, I—oh, Celestia…”

Lyra rubbed her back. “I’m fine, Bonnie, I’m okay…”

They stayed like that for a little while, holding each other, Bon Bon sobbing into Lyra’s chest a little and Lyra doing her best to reassure her that she was fine. At last, Bon Bon pulled out of the hug, wiped her eyes, and gave Lyra a look-over.

“Not so pretty now, huh?” Lyra said.

“Oh, you look fine,” Bon Bon said. “How bad is it? Does it hurt?”

“Everything aches a little, but it’s been getting better. The doc says I’ll be free to leave by tomorrow afternoon, and then—”

“Take things easy for a while?”

“A week or two, yeah,” Lyra said. “When did you become a doctor?”

“I’ve been where you are before.” She sat down against the side of the bed. “Oh, Celestia, Lyra, I’m so—” she started to say, but Lyra cut her off.

“No. No, you aren’t doing that thing,” Lyra said. “This was my fault.”

Bon Bon made to deny it, but Lyra shut her up with a glare. “My fault,” she repeated.

Bon Bon sighed. “Well, alright… In that case, what in Celestia’s name were you thinking!?”

There we go, Lyra thought.

Bon Bon then spent the next several minutes explaining, in detail, why Lyra was an idiot for endangering herself, why she couldn’t ever do something so reckless ever again, and why if she did Bon Bon would lock her in a padded cell. For her own protection, of course. Lyra just grinned and bore it.

“…so from now on, you leave the crazy plans to me!”

She shifted her narrowing gaze over to Pinkie Pie, who had slunk into the corner of the room and was looking rather sheepish. “And I’ll be talking to you later.”

Pinkie gulped.

“So, how did things go down south? Did you find the Alpha?” Lyra asked.

“No,” Bon Bon said. “Only some very, very large footprints. We’ll have to try again next year. Preferably with more ponies.”

After a few minutes, the rest of the Ponyville Owls began to show up, first Ditzy, then Bloo, followed shortly by Octavia and Vinyl. Pleasantries and well-wishes were exchanged, and then it was time for business.

Pinkie Pie shut the door, then performed the same odd ritual she always did at their meetings, pressing her hooves against the doorframe and murmuring in a tongue only she knew.

“There we go,” she said after the task was complete. “Now we won’t be disturbed. So, Lyra, what’s going on? You said you had something really super important to tell us?”

“I do,” she said. “It’s about the mare who Pinkie, Winter Bell and I encountered last week, the one who put me in this bed.”

Lyra began to recount her entire experience, starting with her arrival at Sugarcube Corner. Partway through the encounter with Hollyleaf, she was interrupted.

Bloodleaf, Vinyl said, a grim look on her face.

“What?”

The plant Hollyleaf was using to boost her magic. It’s called ‘bloodleaf’. Grown normally, it has green leaves, and it’s a great cure for hornrot. But…

“But what?” Lyra asked. Vinyl removed her shades.

It isn’t named for its leaves. If you grow it in soil suffused with the right ingredient, it turns red and becomes a magical amplifier. Three guesses as to what that ingredient is.

“…Blood?” Bon Bon asked.

Pony blood, Vinyl said. And for a plant that size, plus several more, you’d need a lot of it. A full stallion’s worth, even.

“A full…” Lyra’s eyes grew wide. “Soft Stitch’s extra victim!”

Vinyl nodded. Could be. The timing lines up for bloodleaf’s growth cycle, too. Octavia was giving her an odd look. Vinyl shrugged. I shacked up with an herbal healer for a few years back in the day. This stuff rubs off on you.

“She may have used his activities to hide her own,” Bon Bon said. “It would explain a few things, but it raises more questions, too. The killings were being kept a secret from the public. How could she have known about them?”

“Still, it’s a lead,” Lyra said. “It’s worth checking into.”

“Agreed.”

Lyra went back to her account, but it wasn’t long before Winter Bell chimed in.

“Mama’s not sure what she did to us, exactly,” the filly said. “It was like suddenly I couldn’t reach out to her, and she couldn’t feel me, either. It was just for a second, but…”

She shivered. “I never want it to happen again.”

Lyra continued. This time there were no more interruptions, excepting a few gasps when she relayed what Apporoth had told her. She left out the conversation she had eavesdropped on, however.

“…And that’s when I woke up,” she finished at last.

“So basically,” Octavia said after a moment, “We have a major threat to all of Equestria on our hooves, and we have no idea what it is, what it wants, or how it works except that it somehow defies death itself.”

No pressure.

“Yes,” Lyra said. “Ultimately, though, she’s my responsibility now that this is a matter of gods and champions.”

Bon Bon stepped up to the side of Lyra’s bed. “She’s our responsibility. We’re a package deal, remember?” Just that statement alone made Lyra beam.

Pinkie stepped forward, too “Us too. Equestria’s future is our responsibility too, remember!” The rest of them nodded.

“You’re an Owl, Lyra,” Ditzy added. “The rest of us are behind you, no matter what.”

I’m with you too. I owe you one after Manehatten, anyway.

Lyra’s smile only grew bigger.

“Alright,” she said, “then we’re in this together.”

Comments

[RB_]

8432850
Feel free to ignore this—lord knows, you're not wrong—but here's my thinking on it:
For the sake of Truthseeker's canon, I've been treating each season as taking place over roughly a year, as it suits the sort of timeframe I want. Truthseeker itself takes place in a bit of rubberband time that begins roughly during the season six hiatus (which I'm counting as actual in-universe time where not much was happening around Ponyville, I believe Lyra references that in one of the early chapters). According to the timeline in my notes, Bon Bon's Agency shut down about a year or so before the start of season one, which I think is fairly reasonable. This means she's been out of service (and running a candy store to boot) for around 7-7 1/2 years. Furthermore, her training would have been very generalized, as it was likely based on more conventional military combat training. Remember, most of the weirdness in Truthseeker's world is unknown to even the government; the Agency was going in largely blind.
Fleur, on the other hand, has been combat-trained since a very young age. Beyond that, she also has a good two-three hundred years of combat knowledge, gathered by her family, about a lot of things the Agency didn't even know about. Her family's legacy is a major resource. She also hasn't been running a candy shop for the past seven years. She's also meant to be a few years older in Truthseeker canon, as I recall, but that's neither here nor there.
The bit in Whitechapel Vigilance was still a mistake, though. No idea what I was thinking with that one. Probably something along the lines of, "Oh crap, I've written myself into a corner."

[Nyperold]

I like that a Badflank (relative) Normal can make an Eldritch Abomination gulp.

[Trump]

What a satisfying series! Fresh new concepts, tightly plotted, narrated with just the right amount of detail.
Thank you!

[FanOfMostEverything]

Hmm. This is all more connected than expected. Still, with so many angles of attack, even a champion of Falsehood will be hard-pressed to fool all of the agents all of the time.

[Emil]

8433122
Huh, missed this comment until now.

The way I later thought of it was that the Agency was probably built to deal with all covert threats to the realm, so Owl-type threats were only a small subset of those compared to conventional ones. Spying on and/or fighting ponies, griffons, minotaurs, and other "normal" threats require different specific skills compared to Owl threats even if there's a large overlap with being good at combat in general. Like how a top heavyweight mixed martial artist is going to be favored against nearly all other humans in unarmed combat, but their training will only help them so much if the mission is to fight bobcats.

And, of course, there's the time spent learning normal espionage skills, which don't apply against feral monsters.

[Quiznak]

“Alright,” she said, “then we’re in this together.”

Princewhateverer song plays...