People Are Strange
Lyra jumped up off the couch at the sound of Bon Bon coming through the door. "What'd she say, what'd she say?" she asked, hopping from her left hooves to her right.
"Princess Twilight," said Bon Bon with a great air of calm that was counter to the mood of her very best friend, "said she had spoken with Princess Celestia, and they both agreed it would be okay for me to remain on assignment here in Ponyville."
Lyra squealed and nuzzled Bon Bon's cheek. "That's great! Because otherwise you'd have to move back to Canterlot and you know how much I hate being there but I'd totally put up with it to be with you, but you're not moving anywhere, you're staying here!"
"I'm still under cover, though," Bon Bon said, "so I'm not... you know, that other name. Not even when we're alone."
"That's alright," Lyra said, trailing behind Bon Bon into their kitchen, "I like your real name better."
"Lyra, the other one is my real name."
"Not to me."
She plucked an apple out of the fruit bowl and gave it a nonchalant munch. As she was chewing, a thought occurred to her.
"Say," Lyra said, "if you're a secret agent..."
Bon Bon peered out the window, checking surreptitiously up and down the street before going back to preparing dinner. "...Yes?"
"Then do you, like, know all this secret stuff that ponies aren't meant to know?" she asked with eyes shining. "Like, conspiracy stuff?"
Sighing, shaking her head, and rolling her eyes all at the same time apparently wasn't enough for Lyra to get the hint. "Lyra, we've been over this a thousand times. There's no--"
But Lyra was not listening. "Like, do you know who was really behind the Kanterly assassination? Or what the Wickergate coverup was really about? Ooh, ooh, or what about PKUltra, is that real? What about the Fillydelphia experiment? Or--"
"Which one was PKUltra," Bon Bon asked, rubbing her temple, "was that the submarine that could go to the moon?"
"No, the hypnotic mind control program to create a hidden army of unwitting sleeper agents!"
"Uh huh." Bon Bon slid the carrots she had been chopping into a pot on the stove.
"Come on, you can tell me! I won't tell anypony. I didn't say anything about your secret alter-ego, did I?"
Bon Bon turned around to look at Lyra. "Lyra, that wasn't even for half a day."
"But I totally could have told the whole town, and I didn't!"
"You couldn't have, they were all either prepping for the wedding or fighting a bugbear."
"Yeah, well, uh..." Lyra had apparently exhausted her rational arguments, and now had to fall back on her old standby when things were not going her way: big sad puppy-dog eyes and begging. "Pleeease?" she pleaded.
"Lyra," Bon Bon said, placing what she hoped was an authoritative hoof on her shoulder. "Even if any of those things existed, and they were being kept secret, I wouldn't know about them. The monster division hunts and contains strange creatures. Nothing else."
"So..." Lyra looked up from the floor with a hopeful expression. "What about Project Blue Book?"
"Aliens don't count as strange creatures."
"Black-eyed colts?"
"No."
"What about Hayvid Ike's avian conspiracy?"
Bon Bon furrowed her brow. "Which one is that?"
"That all the princesses and most important pegasi are really part of a race of extra-dimensional intelligent birds bent on conquering ponykind," Lyra said with a straight face.
"That's racist and stupid, no."
"But where did Twilight Sparkle get her wings from, if not--"
"Look," Bon Bon said, "none of this stuff is real. It's all made up by ponies with no sense of control in their lives who just want to believe there's some order to the completely random things that happen every day. Most of the reasons anything is ever kept secret are actually very boring. You don't really think any of this wild stuff happens, do you?"
"Well... not really, but it would be kind of cool to know about. If it did."
"But you couldn't tell anypony, and if you did most likely they wouldn't believe you."
Lyra studied Bon Bon's face in silence for a long time. "...You'd tell me, right? If something actually was true?"
Bon Bon gave her a cryptic smile. "That's classified," she said.
Lyra punched her in the shoulder. "Come on, you wouldn't even tell your best friend?"
"Couldn't," Bon Bon said somberly. "I couldn't tell you."
"Man," Lyra said, "it must suck to be a secret agent."
Bon Bon pressed her muzzle against Lyra's cheek. "Good thing I'm just a small-town candy maker, then," she said.
-/-
Bon Bon felt something poking her in the shoulder in the dark.
"Bon Bon?" Lyra hissed. "Bon Bon? Are you awake?"
"I am now," she said, and fumbled for the light.
"I was thinking," Lyra stated. She was sitting up in bed, and didn't react when Bon Bon finally found the switch on her lamp.
"What about, Lyra?" Bon Bon mumbled through a mouthful of sleep. She squinted at the clock.
"So, you're staying here in Ponyville," she said, "but you're keeping your secret identity."
"Lyra, do you have any idea what time it--"
"That means," she continued, "there must be something here in Ponyville still that you're doing! Some secret monster business that you and Princess Twilight are up to." She looked down at Bon Bon, grinning.
Bon Bon blinked. She lay her head back down on her pillow, and switched the light off. "Even if we were," she said, "I couldn't tell you what it is."
"Aha, so it is something!"
"I didn't say that."
"What if I try to guess what it is?"
"Goodnight, Lyra."
"Is it Bighoof?"
"Goodnight, Lyra."
"A barghest?"
"What's a-- you know, never mind, it's not a barghest."
"Is it the goat-sucker?"
Bon Bon buried her face in her pillow.
"What about a Mokèlé-mbèmbé? There might not be enough water around here for a Mokèlé-mbèmbé, but maybe there's a big enough lake in the Everfree Forest..."
"If I tell you," Bon Bon said, her voice coming out muffled, "that there is something Princess Twilight wants kept quiet, will you please go to sleep?"
Lyra considered this in the dark. "Alright," she said at last.
"Then I am telling you. I'm not telling you what, and you are not allowed, at all, to tell anypony else. Okay?"
Lyra settled in bed next to Bon Bon. Somehow, she could tell that she was smiling. "Okay," she said. "Goodnight, Bonnie."
Bon Bon turned over on her side. "Goodnight, Lyra."
-/-
Bon Bon woke to an empty bed and the smell of pancakes.
Coming down the stairs, she found Lyra in the kitchen up much earlier than Bon Bon had ever known her to be, working a skillet and wearing an apron and a huge grin.
"Morning!" she exclaimed.
"You're making pancakes," Bon Bon observed, sitting at the table.
"Nothing unusual about that," Lyra said, "I felt like having pancakes this morning."
"You hate making pancakes."
"But you love pancakes. You have often told me of your love for pancakes. And I thought, as I was waking up, what a nice gesture it would be, as one very best friend to another, if I made you your favorite food for breakfast."
Bon Bon narrowed her eyes. "Lyra."
Lyra smiled at her, aiming for guileless innocence and failing completely. "Yes, Bon Bon?"
She sighed, and said with careful consideration, "If I tell what my assignment here in Ponyville is, do you promise not to breathe a word of it to another living soul?"
Holding a hoof over her heart, Lyra said with as much gravitas as she could manage, "I promise."
-/-
Twilight could hear somepony banging on her door and calling for her. Must be important. Maybe the bugbear came back. Maybe something worse.
She teleported out of bed and stumbled. Was it still dark outside? Not quite. Blinking, she pushed open the door to her castle to reveal an extremely frantic Lyra Heartstrings. Before either she could explain or Twilight could ask what she was doing here so early, a voice distracted them both.
It was loud. It was angry. It was coming this way. Both ponies turned in its direction. It belonged to a very irate Sweetie Drops. No, Bon Bon.
"Lyra!" Bon Bon shouted into the calm of the early morning, advancing on Twilight's castle. "What did I just ask you? You're not supposed to talk about this, to any pony!"
"But she already knows!" Lyra shot back, jabbing a hoof in Twilight's direction.
"That is so not the point!"
"Ladies," Twilight said, rubbing her eyes, "could you please get me up to speed on what's going on here?"
Two overlapping voices attempted to drown each other out. Twilight caught snippets of what Lyra and Bon Bon were trying to say: "just want to look at it for a little bit" and "can't trust you as far as I can throw you" stood out.
Twilight held up a hoof for silence. "I think," she said, "we'd better all go inside."
-/-
After a proper explanation and a jug of coffee, Twilight had made her decision.
"I think," she said, tapping the rim of her coffee mug with a hoof, "it would be alright if Lyra gets to see it."
Both ponies' reactions could be described as "incredulous". Both ponies exclaimed, "Really?!" However, both ponies' moods were the exact opposite.
"This is so cool!" Lyra said, rubbing her hooves together.
"Isn't this a breach of national security?" Bon Bon asked.
Twilight shrugged. "Not really. It's not like it's going to hurt anypony. I just didn't really want it getting out that I still had this thing, so try not to mention it, okay?"
Bon Bon poked Lyra in the shoulder. "See, what did I tell you? No conspiracies, no cover-ups, just boring."
Lyra frowned at her, then went back to being ecstatic.
"However," Twilight continued, "I'm going to give you some restrictions. You'll get just an hour of time, and please don't mess around too much. Just be calm. Don't upset anything."
"I can do that," Lyra said, practically jittering, "I can totally do that."
"So," Twilight said, "should we go?"
Lyra jumped off her seat. Bon Bon sighed and followed.
-/-
Bon Bon and Twilight stood in silence for a moment after Lyra had gone through.
"Do you want to go too?" Twilight asked. "You can, you know."
"No, I'm good," Bon Bon said. Another moment of silence passed, and then she asked, "She'll be okay there, right? There's nothing that could, you know, hurt her, or anything."
"Oh, no, I'm sure she'll be fine."
"Because, you know... Lyra's..." She trailed off, unable to find the right words.
"Your very best friend?" Twilight offered.
"Yeah," Bon Bon said. "Yeah, she is."
"You know," Twilight observed, "it didn't take Cranky and Matilda all that long before they were planning their wedding..."
"...Sh-shut up," Bon Bon mumbled.
-/-
Sunset Shimmer thought she recognized the girl sitting on the bench. She might go to Canterlot High. Sunset might have seen her around.
She was about to say hi, maybe ask how she was doing in math which Sunset thought they had together, but then she noticed the girl had been staring at her hands for what must have been a full minute at least and showed no signs of getting disinterested in them, and as she got closer she could hear her emitting a kind of hysterical euphoric giggling.
Sunset walked right on by the girl on the bench. Nope, she thought to herself, it is far too early to be dealing with whatever this is.