Chapter 5
“I had to disengage the armor in a janitor’s closet,” I said. “About two seconds later, Twilight and all her friends ran right past me. I don’t think any of them knew I was there.”
“That light doesn’t look happy,” Lyra said, poking at my belt.
“It’s bad,” I agreed. “It means I have maybe a minute of charge left. Maybe.”
“Not enough if another monster shows up,” Lyra noted. “Hey, we need a better word than just ‘monster’. I’ve been thinking ‘Phobia!’” She grinned. “It’s got a ring to it, right?”
“It fits,” I agreed. “It turns out Cloud Kicker had a big fear of needles. Cheerilee was afraid of snakes.”
“And Daisy was terrified of spiders,” Lyra finished. “I think these Nightmare Shards are using a pony’s biggest fear as a power source.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the next pony will be afraid of something harmless like clowns.”
Lyra shivered. “That’s not funny! Clowns are terrifying!”
“Lyra, they’re literally ponies in bad makeup and worse outfits,” I said. “What are they going to do, juggle aggressively?”
“That’s not the point,” she said. “They--”
The doorbell rang.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “I’ll go see who it is.”
Lyra nodded and got back to poking at the shards of dark metal, and I ran upstairs, closing the basement door on the way. The doorbell rang again just before I got there.
“I’m coming!” I shouted, pulling it open .”Sorry, about that, I was-- Princess Twilight, what are you doing here?”
“Hey, Bon-Bon,” Twilight said. She looked around behind me. “Is Lyra here?”
“She’s downstairs,” I said. “In--”
“Basement lab,” Twilight nodded. “Every unicorn in town has one. I wish they’d change the zoning laws so we could get proper towers… Anyway, that’s fine. I needed to talk to you. Could we just… step outside for a second?”
“...Okay,” I said, through the lump in my throat.
Princess Twilight backed up a step and I followed her out, shutting the door behind me. I thought I’d been careful. Sure, I’d made a few obvious mistakes, asking her to do that research for me. She might have even been told about my past by Celestia. I’d never really pressed her to find out how much she knew. She’d always treated me like a normal candymaker, so I’d assumed she was in the dark, but what if I’d been wrong?
“You’ve heard about the monster attacks in town, right?” Twilight asked.
I nodded.
“I’ve been researching them, and even though I’ve been too late to see things myself… it’s… I don’t know how to say this…” She bit her lip, looking oddly nervous. “Is there anything you’re keeping secret...?”
I hesitated.
She glanced at the door before finishing. “...About Lyra?”
“About… Lyra?” I repeated.
Twilight nodded. “With the last attack, ponies reported seeing her, and I was able to detect her magical signature. I know you might not want to hear this, but I think she might be involved in this somehow.”
“That’s…”
Twilight put a hoof on my shoulder. “I don’t want to think it either. She was one of my best friends when I was a filly. That’s why I want to trust she was just a bystander. Can you keep an eye on her, just in case?”
I nodded.
“Thanks,” Twilight sighed. “And keep it quiet, okay? I don’t want to worry her if there’s nothing to it.”
“I’m pretty good at keeping secrets,” I assured her. She looked confused for a moment. “Nopony else in town knows how to make half the candy I do,” I supplied. Twilight smirked and laughed a little.
“That’s true,” she said. “Try not to let her drag you into any kind of trouble, okay? She gets excited easily and an innocent pony like you shouldn’t be involved.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Twilight blushed and looked ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just-- Lyra--”
“I know, it’s probably nothing,” Twilight said. “I just have a feeling. The next time a monster shows up, she might be…”
My belt was almost completely drained. A lot of ponies could have gotten hurt in the last attack. There was a pony right in front of me that was better equipped to deal with the issue, and the only reason I hadn’t told her everything yet was my pride.
“The truth is--”
I was cut off by a crash of thunder. Twilight looked up at the same time I did. Grey clouds were starting to fill the sky, and the first drops of rain fell on our upturned faces.
“I didn’t think there was rain on the weather schedule today,” I said.
Twilight sighed. “Rainbow probably forgot to update the calendar. What were you about to say?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, losing my nerve. “Do you want to come in until the rain stops?”
She shook her head. “Thanks, but I need to check on a few other things. Just remember what I said, okay? Keep an eye on Lyra.”
“I will.”
She nodded seriously and ran off, an umbrella of magenta magic forming over her head. I stood there and watched her grow as the rain picked up, letting myself get soaked. What was I doing? I should have begged her for help. If nothing else, she could have--
“Bonnie, are you okay?” Lyra asked.
She pulled me inside and wrapped a towel around me.
“You were just standing there in the rain,” she said, worried. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied. I’d been doing a lot of lying lately. I locked the door. Thunder shook the house. “This storm wasn’t scheduled, was it?”
“No, but it happens sometimes,” Lyra said. “Remember last month, when that tornado came out of the Everfree while half the weather team was away watching the Mustang Mile?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said, getting more worried. “Think it’s the kind of thing a pony might start to get night terrors about?”
“I…” Lyra hesitated. “You know, the basement is the safest place in a storm--”
“--And you can try some magic to find out if we should be worried?”
She nodded.
“Okay, so, here’s the problem,” Lyra said. I was sitting with a cup of tea and trying to warm up a little. Standing out in the cold rain had been stupid, and I was shivering because of it. “How much do you know about storms?”
“Well…” I thought about it for a moment. “I know as much as any pony. They’re a lot of rain and wind, they make lightning…”
Lyra nodded. “So, not much.”
“It wasn’t exactly part of my training.”
“Storms are basically huge engines that run on heat and water,” Lyra said. “They replenish pegasus magic over a wide area, which is why one gets scheduled every so often even though nopony likes them. All those sunny days clear skies sort of… somepony told me once it was like planting the same crop in a field for too many seasons. It takes something out of the air that the storm puts back in.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “That actually makes sense.”
“Great! The good news is that I’ve helped you learn a useful fact about storms. The bad news is it’s a giant mass of magic and I can barely detect a thing.”
“Barely doesn’t mean not at all,” I said, hopefully.
“Right. So, after the bad news, comes the worse news.” Lyra swallowed. “There’s a Nightmare reaction. And as far as I can tell? The Phobia is a mile up, somewhere in the middle of that storm.”
She glanced back at the map of Ponyville. The pendulum she’d made with the scrap of Nightmare Moon’s armor and fishing line was pointing almost straight up, impossibly pulled towards the ceiling.
“We’ll figure something out,” I said. I walked over to her workbench. “Any luck recharging my G4 armor?”
“None,” Lyra sighed. “There’s definitely some way to do it, but I’m worried if I take it apart, I won’t be able to put it back together. It’s much more complicated than the enchantments on your weapons.”
“Yeah…” I sighed and touched the charge indicator. It blinked a slow red, the charge left in the belt barely enough to even make it glow.
“Speaking of which, I was able to make something with that leftover crossbow mechanism,” Lyra said. “I wanted to at least do something useful when I failed at charging the belt.”
She dramatically pulled a dropcloth away to reveal… I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, actually.
“Is that…?”
“Now I know what you’re going to ask,” Lyra said. “Where did I get an oboe on such short notice? I actually already owned one! My talent is with string instruments, but you know how college is. You sort of experiment with new things.”
“And you experimented with…”
“Woodwinds, yes,” Lyra said, patting the tangle of metal and dark wood. She’d somehow joined the instrument to the crossbow trigger using a worrying amount of twine. A steel canister was brazed into what had been the reloading mechanism, and the whole thing looked less like a weapon and more like somepony had really messed up making a saxophone.
“It’s… it’s definitely something,” I said. “I’d really like to know what that something is.”
“Well, I couldn’t save any of the crossbow bolts,” Lyra said. “All the enchantments on those were on the wood shaft and fletching, and that was too rotten.”
“And you solved this problem by strapping an oboe to it.”
“Technically it’s mostly oboe by weight, so it’s the other way around.”
I just stared at her.
“Okay, so, look.” Lyra grabbed it with her magic and pulled a charging handle. The contraption rumbled and shook in her magical grip. “What I did was, there’s a pressure tank here, right? Have you ever heard of a potato gun?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a step up from a pumpkin trebuchet,” she explained. “It’s basically just a tube and you launch stuff out of it with compressed air.”
“Okay. And this launches…?”
“That’s the really brilliant part! It shoots air bullets, so you never need to reload! You just hold the trigger down to charge it up, then BANG!” She grinned. “I hacked the accuracy and power enchantments on the crossbow bits so it keeps the compressed air together for longer!”
“That’s perfect!” I gingerly took the weapon from her. “Maybe if we get high enough, we can hit the Phobia without having to get close! What’s the range like? A hundred yards?”
“Well, uh, shorter,” Lyra said.
“Not ideal…” I muttered. “We might have to figure out some way to lure it closer to the ground… Fifty yards?”
“I did some tests, and I think, at full charge, it could just about reach… the other side of the basement.” Lyra smiled nervously.
“...That’s like, ten yards.”
“At full charge.” Lyra winced at my expression. “I wasn’t expecting you to have to fight a storm, Bonnie! It was the best I could do!”
“Sorry,” I sighed, trying to stop glaring. “It just means we’re going to need to figure out a way up there. And we’re going to need disguises.”
“Disguises?”
“Ponies have been talking,” I said. “I’m supposed to keep an eye on you just in case you have something to do with the monster attacks.”
“Really?”
“Hey, that’s why my armor comes with a mask.”
“I think I have something that might work…” Lyra muttered, pulling open boxes. “Aha!”
She held something up.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
It was the worst skeleton costume I’d ever seen. A black bodysuit with a few white ribs painted onto the sides.
“I’ve got ski masks, too!”
“Why do you have these?” I asked.
“Eh, well, you know. Necromancy club.” She shrugged. “Do you want it or not?”
I sighed. Another sacrifice for the good of Equestria.
“It’s not gonna work, Bonnie,” Lyra said.
I glared at her and tugged at the rope I was holding, struggling to wrap it around the stake I’d kicked into the dirt.
“It’ll work fine,” I said, spitting it out after tying a quick knot. “Twilight left a checklist in the basket. We just lay out the envelope, activate the burner, and hold it open until it can stand on its own.”
“What did the checklist say about launching in the middle of a storm?”
It had been one of the first items on the list.
“...it suggested caution depending on the prevailing wind speed.”
“You mean it said not to do something stupid like try to fly a hot air balloon into a thunderstorm.”
I sighed. “Okay, yes, it had a list of acceptable airspeeds, and this is… way above it. But it’s the only idea I have for getting into the air. You said it yourself - the Phobia is up in the storm somewhere. If we’re going to do anything about it, we need to start by getting up there before anypony gets hurt! Every pony on the weather team is in danger!”
“I mean, yeah,” Lyra admitted. “But there has to be a better option than stealing Twilight’s hot air balloon. Actually, isn’t this treason since she’s a princess?”
“It’s… it’s only light treason.”
“I don’t want to do any kind of treason, Bonnie!”
“No one wants to do treason,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes… You have to look at the rules and break them because it’s what’s best for other ponies. I’m not doing it for myself, so it’s okay!”
“So… since we’re not doing this just for you, we can go get ponies can fly and have them deal with it?”
“Don’t be silly, Lyra.”
Another rope tore free, and the balloon envelope flapped in the wind uselessly. I grabbed for the last line, but I was too late. The knot came undone, and the whole balloon flew up into the sky, sans basket and, more importantly, us.
“Maybe we really can’t launch in this storm,” I admitted.
“Got any better ideas?"
I sighed. “We need something that can stand up to the wind. If we had an airship, that might do it, but the closest dock is in Canterlot and by the time we got there and back it would be all over.”
“Could we lure it closer to the ground?” Lyra asked.
“We don’t even know where it is, or what it wants, or what it looks like or… anything!” I groaned. “There has to be some other way up there…”
Lyra bit her lip. “Pinkie Pie…”
I felt a shiver go down my spine. “What about Pinkie Pie?”
“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Lyra screeched, right in my ear.
I fought to keep the rattling machine under control and glared back at her.
“It’s just lightning!” I shouted. “Keep pedaling!”
“We’re gonna die!” Lyra screamed.
“Pinkie Pie said it was perfectly safe,” I reminded her. “We even asked to borrow it instead of just stealing it!”
“But neither of us knows how to use a helio-chopter!”
“That’s why you need to keep pedaling! We don’t know how to land!” Not wanting to fall to my death was a really good motivator. “Look at that!”
I pointed over to the side. A few members of the weather team were struggling to break up some of the smaller clouds. The clouds weren’t cooperating.
Sunshower bucked at a thick cloud, and it recoiled like she was hitting a living thing.
“That’s not normal,” Lyra said, her pedaling slowing.
The cloud broke apart into a half-dozen shapes that swirled like tornadoes of black smoke. I could just barely make out a core to each of them, pony-shaped and just barely more solid than the rest. They roared with the voice of the typhoon and lunged at the shocked pony.
I put my weight into the turn, putting our flying machine between Sunshower and the monsters. And then we kept going, because I had no idea how to actually make it hover in place. We flew right into their formation, and I fumbled for a weapon, grabbing my sword-flail.
“Watch out!” Lyra shouted.
“I’m trying!” I yelled.
Two of the things couldn’t get out of the way in time, and the blades of the helio-chopter slashed them apart, the monsters puffing into white, friendly clouds before blowing away.
“On your left!” Lyra yelled.
I glanced left, saw nothing, then remembered Lyra had a terrible sense of direction.
I swung at the same moment the monster slammed into my right side. It exploded into vapor, but not before I was thrown out of the seat. If I didn’t have the flail in my hooves I would have fallen a long way down. I had to react in an instant, swinging the chain to lasso the front end of the flying contraption and just barely keeping my grip when it went taut.
“Lyra!” I shouted.
“I meant stage left!” she yelled back.
“When we get back home we’re going to have a long talk about directions!”
“Again?” Lyra groaned.
I was about to yell something unkind to her, but my keen instincts, supplemented by Sunshower yelling a warning, alerted me to a more pressing matter. I kicked out, swinging to the side and extending the chain connecting me to the flying machine, the monsters barely missing me while I struggled to hang on despite the momentum. You know what hooves really aren’t great at? Keeping a really strong grip on anything.
“Use the Oboelaster!” Lyra shouted.
“We’re not calling it that!” I countered, grabbing it from the other side of my belt with one hoof and pulling the charging handle with my teeth.
The three extremely angry clouds swooped in big circles, lining up for another pass at me. I was lucky. They weren’t very smart. They just came right at me, not expecting any kind of attack.
I pulled the trigger, and had the most terrifying few seconds of my life. A lemon-shaped glowing ball smacked into one of the creatures, and I had a great view of it exploding as I swung back from the recoil and up towards the huge, spinning blades of the helio-chopter.
Everything slowed down. I saw my life flashing before my eyes. My parents, who I wish I’d visited more often. Meeting Celestia for the first time. Training with Hoss. Lyra kissing me when I came home crying and couldn’t tell her why.
A gust of wind caught me, and I was carried away from the swirling death blades. I had one last flashback to when I’d been working on banana taffy and got the extract all over my face. I still couldn’t look at bananas without feeling a little sick.
The sword jerked in my hooves and I barely held onto it as the chain went taut again.
“Are you okay?!” Lyra shouted.
“I’m not dead yet!” I shouted.
“Hold down the keys for an F-sharp and it’ll fire a wide-angle blast!”
I looked at the half-oboe, half-weapon.
“What?!” I yelled.
“A F-sharp!”
“Lyra, I don’t know how to play one of these! And even if I did, I couldn’t do it with one hoof!”
“Then give it back to me!” Lyra huffed.
I tossed it up, and she caught it with her magic. I took the opportunity to hang on to my more useful weapon with both hooves.
Lyra held down four keys and fired the oboelaster. A wide cone of force and air blasted out, tearing the last two monsters apart when they came around for another pass.
“See?” she yelled. “Easy!”
“Lyra when we get back home we’re going to have a long talk about making things other ponies can actually use,” I said, glaring up at her. “Help me up!”
“I donno, are you gonna keep yelling at me if I do?”
“Lyra, I swear to Celestia--”
Thunder cracked past us, accompanied by a flash so bright I was blinded for a few seconds. My threat was completely swallowed up by the crash of sound, which was too bad because it was a really good one.
It happened again, and this time I saw the bolt as it streaked by, jumping from cloud to cloud around us like a circling shark. I didn’t know much about weather but I was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.
“Helmet!” I shouted.
“What?” Lyra yelled, rubbing her ears.
“Give me my helmet!”
Lyra levitated it down to me. She had enough common sense not to just toss it. I wiggled my head and helped her pop it into place. This time, when the lightning flashed by, the auto-dimming filter in the helmet let me get a look at what we were facing.
The last time I was in an art museum, I saw a picture somepony drew, a portrait made without ever taking their pen off the page. It was a single, unbroken line that never crossed itself, swirling and swooping and looping around to turn that single black line into Princess Luna in silhouette, even capturing a distant sadness to her gaze.
The Phobia looked almost like that, a single line twisted into the shape of a pony. The electric outline danced and jumped, the Phobia moving in sudden jerks and bursts from one position to the next.
“Oh that’s not good,” I whispered.
It looked at me, moving from one cloud to the next, and I recognized exactly what it was doing. It was like a cat, getting ready to pounce.
“I hope whatever is left in this thing is enough,” I said, reaching one hoof towards my belt. “Henshin!”
It jumped at the same moment the Sol Fiber started forming. Everything went white and my whole body turned numb, all pins and needles. Was this what dying was like? Was death itchy and unpleasant?
My vision cleared, and I was somehow still dangling from a whirling flying machine being pedaled by my best friend.
“I’m not dead?” I asked, shocked, literally and figuratively.
I looked down. The armor had formed just in time, and on my belt the slowly-blinking red light had been replaced by a solid green.
“How did-- it recharged my G4 armor!” I gasped.
“Are you okay?!” Lyra shouted.
“I feel great!” I yelled up at her. “I think we can actually win this!”
“I’m glad one of us thinks that!” Lyra panted. “This is starting to get really hard, Bonnie! Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns didn’t really encourage us to do a lot of cardio!”
I nodded up at her, the wind gently pushing me around. With the lightning Phobia circling around us and waiting for another chance to strike, it felt like we were in the eye of the storm, walls of black clouds swirling around the clear patch of sky we were flying through.
“Just hold out a little longer,” I said. “Once we’re safe, I’ll get us down to the--”
Something bounced off my helmet. Then my shoulder. Then a dozen other places.
“Ow!” Lyra shouted. She covered her face with her hooves. Hail pounded down around us, already the size of golf balls and getting bigger with every passing second. An umbrella of golden magic formed over her, and almost immediately fizzled out when chunks of ice slammed into it.
The Phobia laughed with a voice somewhere between cracking ice and crashing thunder. The clouds were a vortex around it, winds coming right at is at the direction of beating electric wings.
“Sorry for dragging you into this, Lyra,” I said. “But all I can do now is try to make sure you get out!”
I kicked my back legs, trying to get some momentum. I’d been almost stationary on the chain, but like a foal on a swingset I could build up speed. Pinkie’s flying machine started spinning above me. It was suffering even worse than Lyra in the hailstorm.
I swung one last time, then let go.
“Come on, I’m right here!” I yelled. The Phobia twitched from one side to the other like an excited kitten and pounced.
I twisted in midair and sparks flickered around my back hooves, flashing through every color of the rainbow.
“Jawbreaker Kick!”
I was half-worried I’d go right through the lightning monster. It didn’t even look solid. When my hoof neared it, it felt like pushing the north poles of two magnets together, but there was something there. I hit it hard enough to feel it in my bones, and with a final clap of thunder I was through it and back into open air.
I looked back, and saw Sassaflash falling down, trailing sparks. Her wings snapped open on their own, and she started spiraling down slowly like a leaf.
I wasn’t so lucky. I fell a lot more like a brick than a leaf. The clouds started breaking up around me, giving me a nice, clear view of the ground.
“Hold on.”
A hoof grabbed the scruff of my neck, and the fall slowed. I heard wings beating the air above me, struggling to arrest the drop entirely. I don’t know if it was intentional or luck, but we stopped just above the ground, and when the pony holding me let go, I barely even felt the drop as we set down on top of Town Hall.
Glee Club landed next to me, the batpony looking just as inscrutable as always.
“Hoss,” I said, backing up a few steps.
“If I was here to hurt you, I would have just let you fall,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
She looked up at the sky. Sunlight was just starting to peek through, shafts of light like spotlights blinking on over the town.
“Go home,” she said. “Go back to Canterlot, or Seasaddle, or anywhere else.”
“I can’t do that. I’ve got friends here.”
“That’s why you need to leave,” Hoss said. “Take your friend with you before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what? What are you planning? Why did you defect?!”
She looked away. “You were able to make a life for yourself after Celestia abandoned us. Not all members of SECT were that lucky. She cut us loose and gave us nothing. Soldiers who had served her for decades, casually tossed aside. And for what?”
Hoss pointed without looking. Right at the huge crystal castle looming at the other end of town.
“She traded us for that.”
“It was best for Equestria,” I said.
“Was it best for Equestria that we were left out in the cold? She could have done something, shown us the loyalty we showed her. Instead, she disavowed us, pretended we never existed. You can’t tell me it didn’t hurt.”
“It did,” I whispered.
Glee Club nodded. “Then you can understand, at least a little.” She gave me a sympathetic, sad look. “I never wanted to hurt you, Sweetie Drops. You were a good agent, and a better friend. That’s why I saved you, and why I’m trying to keep saving you by telling you to leave.”
“But whatever you’re doing, can’t you do it without hurting anypony?” I asked.
“Everything hurts somepony,” Glee Club said. She held up a shard of dark metal. “I know you have two of these. The GOC will pay well for them. Enough for you to start a new life anywhere you want.”
“I already have the life I want, right here.”
She nodded. “I understand. For now, I’ll let it go, in the name of our old friendship.” She offered a hoof, and I took it, shaking. “Next time we meet, we’ll be enemies again.”
“Sorry.”
She shook her head and gave me an amused smile before flying off, just before the clouds completely broke overhead.
“Watch out!” Lyra yelled. I looked up to see a spinning, out-of-control flying machine.
“Oh buck,” I swore.
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Ah, never mind. Again.
Regardless of the story, your Lyra and Bonbon always have a fun dynamic.
Sadly, it'll probably take some tragic, preventable explosion before the local legislature even understands the need for the change, much less considers it.
There's the Strong Narrative Principle again.
I really like this justification for storms existing.
That doesn't answer the question. That only raises further questions.
Ah, the Frankenstein Method. Handy.
And... yeah, Bonbon, now is the time you say something. Though that recharged armor has me worried she won't bother. Still, she's not the one who can make amends here. Even Twilight isn't. This goes all the way to the top, and that's where a truly lasting solution can come from, assuming anything Celestia does at this point can assuage those years of abandonment and betrayal.
Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe Twilight can help. This does seem to fall in her wheelhouse. Heck, I'm surprised the Map hasn't picked up on this one. We'll see where it goes from here.
Better than some of the names KR has come up with.
Again, not the dumbest weapon in KR history (looking at you high five axe).
...oh my God....is....is Lyra suggesting she dress up like a SHOCKER GRUNT???
10569089
I am incredibly glad someone caught on that they were dressed like Shocker Combatmen