• Published 27th Aug 2012
  • 17,726 Views, 758 Comments

Only Human: A Lyra Heartstrings Production - Smoking Gun



Lyra Heartstrings becomes the showrunner for a hit new kids show: Only Human

  • ...
41
 758
 17,726

Chapter 13: Know Their Meme

Only Human: A Lyra Heartstrings Production
Chapter 13: Know Their Meme

By Smoking Gun


"Well, this is different."

Lyra stood over the hill that overlooked that housing complex. She could see several two story houses that all had the exact same green coloring. The field of houses was surrounded by a large fence with barbed wire running across it and a gate acting as the main entrance. The sign outside read 'Canterlot Military Housing.' She trotted down the road and approached the front gate. There was a booth with a mare wearing camouflage color clothing.

"Excuse me," Lyra called to the military mare. "My name's Lyra Heartstrings. Somepony is expecting me?"

The mare's face lit up. "Ah, yes! Sammy is expecting you." She pushed a button and the gate to the housing opened up. "Tell him Drill said hi!"

Lyra nodded to her Drill as she walked down the roadway. The houses all looked the same, but the outside actually had a very diverse array of flowers, trees and water fountains. Rainbow lorikeets flew from tree chirped as they flew from tree to tree, flying right past Lyra's head. Lyra levitated a note out of her saddle bag and checked the address written on it. She lowered and found herself in front of a house with a matching number on it. She knocked and waited, hearing the sound of hoof steps rushing down the stairs.

The door swung open and on the other side was a young looking unicorn stallion with a cream coat and a red mane.

"Miss Heartstrings!" he said to her as he shook her hoof. "Thank you so much for coming."

"Well thank you for having me, Samuel," Lyra chuckled. "Although, I admit this isn't what I was expecting."

Samuel led her inside. "Yeah, nopony ever does. Part of the deal when you have a military Dad."

Lyra closed the door behind her and examined her surroundings. The house was fairly dark in color, the furniture was unremarkable and there were very few pictures hanging from the wall. She gazed on the one framed photo hung near the door. A grey coated stallion with a short-cut mane stood next to Samuel and saluted whoever was holding the camera.

"Dad loves saluting," Samuel remarked as he levitated over a glass of water to his guest. "I think he saluted the pizza guy one time."

"This just keeps getting weirder," Lyra remarked as she took a sip.

"What do you mean?" Samuel asked.

"Sorry, I don't mean to sound insulting... This all just feels so... not real."

Samuel chuckled as he walked Lyra over to the dinning room table. "It's just a military base, nothing special."

Lyra sat down next to Samuel, who was at the head of the table. "It's not that... well, actually it is. But that's pretty much why I'm here."

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"We can start with this," Lyra said as she leaned towards her host. "What in God's name is a homey?"


"What in God's name are you doing?" asked Synergy as she stepped into the music room. She stood still as she watched Vinyl, lying on the floor, moving her body across the carpet.

"I'm doin' the worm," she answered. "This is my morning workout. Get hyped! Come and join in!"

Synergy closed the door behind her. "I will do no such thing. Now tell me if this room has wi-fi."

Vinyl jumped up onto her hind legs and started boxing in Synergy's direction. "Think you can take me, bitch?" Vinyl huffed.

"I think I can sit here and ignore you for the next several hours," Synergy answered as she took her seat. She lifted a laptop out of her saddle bag and. "Lucky for you there's Wi-Fi in here. Otherwise I'd have to communicate with you out of boredom."

Vinyl took her usual seat at her workbench. "Well, you know what they say about mare's when their bored," Vinyl said with a wink.

"You mean one stabs the other until they can have a bubble bath in their blood?"

Vinyl sunk back into her chair and turned away, examining her master monitor. " I'm Sorry," she mumbled.

"I'm glad," Synergy remarked, continuing to type away at her laptop. She glanced over to Vinyl who was quickly putting back on her trademarked shades.

A good while passed with absolutely with no words exchanged, just a horrible silence. Eventually, Vinyl climbed off her chair and left the room. She came back and placed a cup of coffee and put down in front of Synergy.

"Try it," Vinyl insisted. "I made it myself, so you know it's horrible."

Synergy sighed. "Scratch, what are you trying to do?"

Vinyl sighed as she collapsed back into her seat. "I usually work by myself. Short Hoof or Lyra will come and visit me every now and then, but I'm usually by myself. Now you're here with me and I was hoping I'd have somepony cool to talk with."

"Ha!" scoffed Synergy. "I highly doubt you'd find me cool. In any case, I'm not chatty in most cases. Don't take it personally."

"Hmmm... how about my place?"

Synergy froze in place, her hooves hovering over the keyboard. "I beg your pardon?"

"I mean dinner," Vinyl continued. "Isn't that employees used to do? Invite their bosses over to their place for dinner?"

"How old do you think I am?"

After a pause, Vinyl shook her head and turned back to the screen. "Again, sorry. Didn't mean anything."

Synergy took a deep breath and rested her head in her hoof. "Hypothetically, if I came, what would be on the menu?"

Vinyl smiled. "What are you hungry for?"


"I'm not hungry, thanks," Lyra insisted.

"Are you sure?" Samuel asked as he stood in the kitchen. "We've got... let me check. We have salad and what I think is orange juice."

Lyra chuckled. "I'm good, thanks. As I was saying, how exactly did you discover the show?"

"I was channel surfing," Samuel said as he sat back down. "I just watched it and I didn't want to change the channel. Lots of other ponies did."

"You mean stallions?" Lyra asked. "Grown stallions, like you?"

Samuel nodded. "Yep. Is it so shocking that you have fans?"

"Kind of," Lyra remarked. "When I was getting this pitched, a big deal was made out of this being a show for fillies, and a stallion like you is suddenly watching?"

"You do realize I'm not the only one, right? Ponies talk about it every week, write stories, make memes. All kinds of stuff."

Lyra raised her brow. "Meme?"

Samuel levitated his laptop over and showed it to Lyra. "Yeah. They're just dumb little internet jokes."

Lyra examined the screen and found a wall of images and fanart of her characters from the show. She clicked on one that was a beautifully drawn and colored portrait of all the humans together as they fought their enemies.

"This is beautiful," Lyra said as she examined more of the art. "How often does stuff like this go up?"

"How often the artists have free time."

Lyra clicked on a random image, which appeared to be a screenshot from the pilot episode. It was the scene of Diane running through the broken wall. However, the image had been altered. Diane was holding a jug of Coolaid in one hand and a Slim Jim in the other.

"I don't get it," she remarked.

"Trust me, it's funny." Samuel said. "Homies are just ponies that love your show despite what it might have been intended for. Did you mean to write a show for girls?"

Lyra shook her head. "I wanted to write something good."

Samuel nodded. "Well, good job. You know... it's actually great that you came to see me. I was hoping you'd might be able to attend something next week."

Lyra arched her brow. "Attend what?"

"Well, we're having a convention at the Canterlot Royal Hotel for Homies across Equestria. I was wondering if you, or anyone else that works on the show might like to come by, host a panel, sigh some merchandise?"

"We have conventions?" Lyra asked. "Wait, there's merchandise?"

Samuel levitated a something from upstairs. Down the steps floated a plushie of Sarah, complete with lab coat. "I got this on Ebay."

Please tell me I'm getting paid for that.

"Wow, that is... I mean yes! I'd love to come! I'll ask the others if they'd like to come too. Maybe we can bring some cool stuff to show."

Samuel's face lit up like a neon sigh. "That's awesome! Thank you so much!"

Lyra smiled. "Anytime."

Without warning, the door slammed open, shaking the portrait on the wall. Lyra took a second to make sure her skeleton hadn't jumped out of her skin and turned to look at the doorway. A large stallion that matched the one in the portrait entered the room, closing the door behind him.

"Samuel, you know you're not supposed to sit at the head of the table."

The boy quickly moved to the seat opposite Lyra at the table. "Sorry, Dad."

The large stallion approached Lyra. "You're also not allowed to invite guests over without telling me."

Lyra rose to her feet and offered her hoof to him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I was just meeting with Samuel... and that doesn't sound much better. My name's Lyra."

After an awkward moment, the stallion finally shook Lyra's hoof. "I'm Colonel Chain Command. Will you be staying for dinner?"

Glancing back at a terrified looking Samuel, Lyra shook her head. "Nah, I have to get back to my friends. But I appreciate the offer. I'll email you, Sam! By the way, Drill wanted me to tell you she says hi!"

Lyra trotted for the door and took one last look at Sam. He was still hunched over the table, but he was still able to look to her. Sam nodded and smiled as Lyra closed the door behind her. Lyra quietly trotted towards the front gate, occasionally looking back at Sam's home. None of the lights were on.

She made her way to the same hill she was on earlier that afternoon. Looking back on the complex, the houses had started to turn their lights on. Samuel's was still dark.


The lights outside of Vinyl's house were surprisingly bright. Synergy tried to see through the drapes, but couldn't see much expect for the Vinyl-shaped silhouette trotting back and forth inside. Synergy took one last look at the vodka bottle she had brought, wondering if it was big enough. Vinyls' house was no doubt covered in old pizza boxes, crappy records and the random bums she probably called her friends.

Synergy walked up to the door, knocked and waited. "Maybe bringing a bong would have been better etiquette for such an occasion," she mumbled to herself.

Vinyl pulled the door open, looking like usual self - shades and everything. "Synergy, come in. Also, sorry about the mess."

Synergy stepped inside and was absolutely stunned; the place was white. The wooden floors were spick-and-span, the walls were a clean white, and soothing hip hop played in the background.

Vinyl continued. "I usually have the place looking better than this."

"No," Synergy said, standing in shock. "It's... it's fine. Oh, and I brought this."

"Sweet, Vodka!" Vinyl levitated the bottle into the kitchen and led Synergy inside. "I'll save that for the coolers at work. I've got some wine inside."

A ding sound erupted from the kitchen.

"Pasta's done!" Vinyl rushed into the kitchen and pulled out a steaming pot of pasta off the stove.

As her host prepared dinner, Synergy examined everything around the house. The living room had a huge T.V. mounted on the wall with sleek black couches and a coffee table surrounded by large speakers. The dinning room had a beautiful black table with matching chairs and a beautiful bouquet of flowers in the center. The walls were adorn with album artwork and framed photos of Vinyl with various ponies Synergy didn't recognize... except one. It was a photo of Vinyl with her foreleg wrapped around Lyra's shoulder, and a banner above them read 'Happy Birthday Lyra.'

"You look confused," Vinyl spoke up. "You cool?"

Synergy sighed and shook her head. "Scratch, can I be honest with you?"

Vinyl placed two delicious looking bowls of pasts on the table. "Have you ever not been honest with us?"

"Touche. Look, I hate to sound rude—"

Vinyl smirked. "When has that ever stopped you?"

Synergy scowled. "What I mean is... I wasn't expecting this. For one thing, how can you afford a house?"

"I can't," answered Vinyl as she placed two wine glasses on the table. "My Dad left it to me after he died. I don't have to pay mortgage or anything."

"I... I'm sorry about you Father."

Vinyl shrugged. "I've grieved, it's fine. Let me guess, you thought it would be dank and messy or something?"

Synergy looked away nervously. "Maybe."

"It's fine, I get it." Vinyl poured wine into the two glasses. "Don't get me wrong, when I had my own apartment, it was pretty much weed, hot dudes, and more weed. Occasionally Short Hoof would come over and we'd watch crappy movies. But after a while, ponies just kind of... I guess assumed that I was always loud-messy-party-animal-Vinyl all the time. I needed it when I was playing clubs and making albums, so I made my home my escape. A nice and quiet retreat from what ponies expect of you, you know?"

A smile slowly grew on Synergy's face as she nodded. "I think I do know. It's a nice home, Scratch."

"Yeah, I wanted to take care of my Dad's place. Least I could do for him. Now sit down and eat!"

Vinyl pulled out a seat for Synergy.

"Such a gentlepony," Synergy remarked. She was about to sit down, until she felt two hooves pressed up against her flank.

"Not when I'm in the bedroom," Vinyl whispered as she leaned into Synergy's ear.

Synergy's looked over her shoulder with a death glare. "Don't push it, Scratch."

"Don't write me off yet," Vinyl chuckled as she took her seat opposite Synergy. "I did just make you dinner."


Lyra pressed the buzzer that had Bon Bon's name next to it, waiting patiently as ponies walked on the street behind her.

"Hello?" Bon Bon called through the buzzer.

"Excuse me," Lyra answered. "I heard there was a beautiful mare up there who owes me dinner."

Lyra heard the sound of a buzzer as the door swung open. She trotted in and took the elevator up to the top floor. Even though she had been there plenty of times, Lyra kept forgetting that the elevator opened up straight into Bon Bon's penthouse.

Just as gorgeous as it was the first time I was here.

Bon Bon walked out of the kitchen and waved her in. "Hey! I got the pasta ready."

And speaking of gorgeous...

Lyra walked into the kitchen and saw Bon Bon pouring pasta onto two separate plates. She wrapped her hooves around Bon Bon and kissed her on the neck.

"Let's be like those dogs and share one big plates."

Bon Bon turned to face Lyra. "Does that make you my bitch?"

Lyra tapped the tip of Bon Bon's nose. "And that makes you mine."

The two shared a tender kiss and nuzzled each other.

"How was your day?" Bon Bon asked. "Did you go see that kid?"

"Yeah... I'll tell you about that later. How about you? How did your meeting with the executives go? You get a promotion or something?"

Bon Bon slowly grew a nervous smile as her eyes darted from left to right. "Yeah, good news and bad news..."


Next: Humanity Daily!