The following is a non-profit fan-based work of fiction. My Little Pony Friendship is Magic and all subsidiaries are owned by Hasbro studios, DMX media and Lauren Faust.
Not a Keeper
By WIL_I_ZIN
Edited by BradtheBrony
Bon Bon sat on the couch, idly tapping her forehoof against the plush lining. She was nervous, not incredibly nervous though. She was more like the kind of nervous you get when you can’t remember if you turned off the oven, or payed your water bill on time, or the kind where your parents might drop in any day to scrutinize everything you own. The cause of the cream-colored candy curator’s current conundrum was due to something missing from her home: Her housemate and eccentric best friend Lyra wasn't there.
Lyra had not come home from her usual rounds of playing in town for bits last night, and Bon Bon was beginning to get anxious. Not that Lyra coming home late was anything new. Nor was Bon Bon her mother. It was the fact that Lyra had the tendency to get herself into very troublesome situations. Ones that usually required an extensive amount of bits to cover and enough public embarrassment to want her to become a hermit in the Everfree Forest. Much like that zebra who enjoyed her mint drops.
Bon Bon knew she shouldn’t worry too much. After all, it was past midday and if there were any major acts of destruction caused by Lyra, she would have already had the victim at her door with Lyra giving Bon Bon the worst “you-just-kicked-my-puppy-dog” face. Dear Celestia! That face should be branded illegal for how many times it’s coerced Bon Bon to pay for Lyra’s antics. She sighed deeply and slouched further into the recesses of the couch, hoping that maybe just this once Lyra wouldn’t come home with an incredibly wild and equally impossible tale.
“Hey Bonny! I’m home, and you won't believe the incredibly wild and almost impossible tale I have to tell!”
Bon Bon took a moment to curse whatever greater power ran the universe, because she was damn sure it was out to buck with her. The moment ended when Lyra—looking rather worse for the wear—trotted into the living room with the widest smile she had ever seen on her friend. Lyra’s mane and tail were disheveled more so than usual and it looked like there were a few sections missing, like the time Lyra insisted on cutting her own mane to save money. The saddle bags hanging on her sides looked in about as bad of condition with burn marks and a few cuts across the sides. The worst offender, however, was the smell.
Lyra reeked with the odious stench of something that had crawled into the sewer, died, became undead, rolled around in manure and week old garbage, went on a drinking spree, vomited upon itself, and then died again.
“Lyra… you look horrible,” Bon Bon politely stated as the stunning combination of odors assaulting her nose knocked her brain back into the fetal position and sent it crying into the far corner of her cerebral cortex.
“Oh, this?” Lyra said motioning to her entire self. “Just a few scuffs, no biggie.”
Bon Bon’s face fell flat while her nagging sense started to kick in. “You smell terrible too. Just where have you been, Lyra?”
Lyra’s grin grew ever wider and she struck a pose. “Well, my dear Bon Bon, the answer to that question is a story of epic proportions!” Lyra stood on her two hind hooves—an action that always weirded out Bon Bon—and began to gesture wildly. “A story that will shock and amaze! One to be told for countless generations! One that will rock the very foundations of Equestrian society as we know it!”
“Please tell me you’re not pregnant,” asked a deadpan Bon Bon.
“YES! I was vis-...” answered Lyra with glee before shifting into horror. “Wha- what?! NO!”
“Oh thank Celestia,” sighed Bon Bon in relief. “For a moment I thought you had gone and done something crazy.”
“Bonny we both know I would be horrible with foals. They’re, like, super sticky and stuff!” Lyra dismissed the idea with a wave of her hoof. “But no, that wasn’t it!” Lyra shifted back to quivering with excitement, waiting for Bon Bon to ask the inevitable question.
Bon Bon sighed, deciding it was better to get this over with and quickly; the smell was starting to thicken. “What happened L-”
“I was abducted… BY ALIENS!” squeed Lyra, jumping off the floor and flailing about midair like a giddy school filly getting asked to the prom.
Bon Bon remained as neutral as she could. Showing any emotion would only excite Lyra more, much like a shark smelling blood in the water. “Lyra, that's impossible,” Bon Bon retorted. “Aliens aren’t real.”
“But they ARE real Bonny!” Lyra insisted, pressing her face right up to Bon Bon’s own. “I was on their ship! IN SPACE!” Lyra’s proximity forced the hanging putrid smell to come screeching right up Bon Bon’s nostrils like a rabid starving squirrel up a tree full of acorns. Bon Bon’s willpower was all that was holding her back from throwing up all over the newly washed rug on the floor. She took as deep a breath from her mouth as she could before slowly pushing Lyra back away from her nose.
“Lyra, I would love to hear your wonderful story about little green ponies from outer space,” began Bon Bon with the most stern motherly voice she could manage, “but you smell just plain awful. You are going to march right up those stairs and-”
“Oh, the smell? I can take care of that!” dismissed Lyra as she charged up her horn. In a small flash of magic the offending odor dissipated and was no more—though the taste in Bon Bon’s mouth would take awhile to get rid of. “See, no more stinky.”
“Where in the world did you learn a spell to do that?” asked a surprised Bon Bon.
“College.”
“Lyra, you never graduated college. Heck, you were always out partying and jumping any stallion that looked at you,” Bon Bon said, remembering the days when she and Lyra were college roommates… Bon Bon realised not much has changed since then.
“True, but when you come home smelling like stale beer and those two hunks from Physics 101, you don’t always have time to shower. So I just learned a spell that blocks B.O.” Lyra explained, chuckling at the memories of her youth. “Anyway, I have to tell you this now, while it’s all still fresh in my head.”
Lyra backed up and sat on her haunches in front of her housemate. Bon Bon then made a mental note of burning the rug—and possibly the entire floor—after this was over. She sighed and resigned herself to whatever crazy delusions Lyra was suffering from. It was probably just Lyra misinterpreting a bad dream she had from sleeping outside or maybe mistaking some swampgas as it hit a weather balloon or somesuch. “Okay Lyra,” groaned Bon Bon. “How did you meet the little green ponies?”
“Actually Bonny, they weren’t ponies, and they definitely weren’t green…”
The sun had set over Ponyville and all good little ponies were settling in for the night. A few late night stragglers were making their way home from closing up their shops or coming back from visiting friends, but most were done for the day and made haste for their abode. All except for a mint green unicorn who was sitting within the park gazebo softly playing her lyre to the stars above. Unfortunately the stars were a fantastically stingy bunch and no more bits had fallen into her tips dish next to her.
“Oh well,” sighed Lyra examining her earnings for the day. “It wasn’t too bad of a turnout today.” She took the bits from the dish and deposited them into her saddle bags. She made enough to buy groceries for the next few days and maybe a few extra brownies from Sugarcube Corner. Busy fantasizing about future chocolate delights, Lyra failed to notice one particular star in the night sky slowly getting brighter.
“I wonder if I could sneak in a whole pan?” wondered Lyra out loud as she walked down the park path toward her home. Bon Bon was always in competition with the bakery, and she might not take kindly to her friend supplying her competitor with more business.
While Lyra struggled internally whether there was enough space in the kitchen for a hidden compartment of sweets, the streaking star in the sky was getting larger. The light then melded into five individual spotlights slowly spinning above Lyra like a group of circling sharks about to attack their prey.
“Or maybe a whole box- huh?” Lyra suddenly found herself in the center of a shaft of light. She turned her head skyward to behold the beam trailing all the way up into the sky surrounded by the other twirling lights. She held up a hoof to block the searing beam to try and see the source, but it was far too bright for her to tell. “Rainbow Dash, is that you?!” she shouted out at the source of the lights. “If this is some kind of prank, it's not very funny.” Instead of hearing Rainbow Dash’s trademark laughter, the object above began to hum. Lyra squeaked when she felt the ground beneath her give away as she slowly began to ascend upwards.
“Pokey Pierce, did Dash get you in on this too?” Lyra called out nervously, but again no response came. Closer and closer the source of the lights came into view, till Lyra could barely make out what looked to be some sort of flying saucer! “Wait a minute, this ist a prank, isn’t it?” Lyra questioned out loud. As if to finally answer her questions, the bottom of the hovering object opened up and Lyra’s body slowly ascended to its entrance. “This is real,” she stated, dumbfounded. “Oh my Celestia, this is real!” A flash of emotions shot through Lyra, as would anypony who was currently being abducted by aliens. As she neared the opening she could only shout out one last desperate cry, “This is so awesome!” before the craft’s hatch slammed shut behind her. Then, in a streak of light, the alien disk zoomed across the sky and into the stars.
Berry Punch, who had just rounded the corner of the street, had witnessed the entire event with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. She looked around to see that nopony else was nearby, meaning she was the sole witness to the events that just unfolded. She also saw a nearby sign just to her left advertising two-for-one drinks tonight (“Only at The Prancing Pony Tavern”). Thus with five small trots, Berry Punch was inside the building and asking the bartender to open a tab.
Lyra opened her eyes to blinding white. A dull whining sound pierced her hearing and caused her to flatten her ears. It brought little relief, however, for as the whining dissipated it was replaced with a throbbing headache. “Ugh,” she groaned. “It feels like my head is trapped in a vise.”
“Actually it's a short term memory inhibitor,” responded a odd sounding (but cheerful) voice. It was like somepony was speaking to her through a speaker that was also underwater. Lyra tried to bring a hoof up to her head, but found her body sluggishly responding. “Try not to move so much,” said the voice again. “You’ve just had our language downloaded into your brain and your body is still recovering.” Lyra didn’t quite understand what the voice was saying, but the words ‘brain’ and ‘recovering’ stuck out to her the most. For a moment she was worried she and once again gone to one of Pinkie Pie’s parties and overdone it to the level of being hospitalized. Again. This month.
“Ugh, please tell me I didn’t use Pinkie’s party cannon to play Mile High Club with Thunderlane again,” she groaned as her hooves finally came to rest on a small metallic cap that was planted firmly on her head. “Oh Celestia, I shattered my skull?!” she exclaimed, beginning to panic.
“Now now,” said the voice trying to soothe her. “You’re in perfect health; you’re just experiencing mental alteration sickness. You’ll be fine in a matter of moments.” True to the voice’s words, Lyra’s vision began to slowly return as the dark blobs soon became vaguely recognizable shapes. She found herself on a long medical bed in a circular white room surrounded by many hovering screens flashing with words and diagrams in an alien language. What was even more alien, however, was the creature standing beside her.
Lyra’s addled mind could only describe the being as the unholy love-foal abomination of a minotaur, a squid, and a mad scientist. Dark purple leathery like skin that stretched and changed hues as the creature breathed; multiple tentacled appendages on its body that seemed to leak ooze; attached to where a mouth might be was a machine that whired and blinked different colored lights. Worst of all, covering its entire body: A horribly tacky doctor’s outfit!
“Woah, you look amazing!” gasped Lyra.
“Truly?” said the being as it held up a tentacle and scrutinized it. “I’m just an average Kalamarian. Well, one with four doctorates in the field of medicine, ho ho!”
“Wait, you’re a doctor? An alien doctor?” Lyra questioned with disbelief that quickly morphed into shock. “Oh no! Does this mean you’re going to... probe me!?”
“What? No!” exclaimed the doctor with indignation. “I swear, what is it with lesser evolved species and their fascination with rectal exams?”
Lyra, however, refused to remain unconvinced by his protests. She knew this was how aliens worked. First they’d lure you in with niceness and well wishes. Then possibly show off some particular skill or technology that would impress you. Finally you’d have a couple drinks and then ‘bam’! You’d wake up, your butt hurts, and you can’t remember the past six hours! Of course, Lyra considered she may have been confusing alien abductions with her college days. Either way, Lyra didn’t trust these aliens, and she wasn’t about to let her guard down for any reason.
“Aside from that, are you perchance hungry?” asked the alien doctor. “Post cranial operations always make me famished... care to join me for dinner?”
‘Oh Celestia, they want to suck out my brain and eat it!’ internally screamed Lyra. She swallowed nervously and said, “Uh, no thanks, I’m not that-” Her rumbling stomach betrayed her protests, however, with a mighty gurgle that echoed around the room. ‘Curse you stomach! Why must you always betray me like this?!’ Lyra thought.
“Well that is certainly a yes, I would assume? If you would follow me please.” With that the Alien doctor slithered over to the door and it automatically opened with a ‘Whoosh!’ of air. The doctor stepped through the doorway while Lyra herself hopped down from the bed and greeted the ground with her face. “Oh by the way you might experience a little dizziness; do be careful,” the doctor called out to her. Lyra’s only response was a low grumble and rubbing her sore muzzle with a hoof as she made her way to the door.
Stepping through the doorway, Lyra saw that the next room was much more spacious than the last one. There were now multiple different aliens in this room, each looking weirder than the next. They were all in front of small desks with many floating screens like the ones in the previous room. Though each one seemed to be preoccupied and didn’t notice Lyra and the doctor’s entrance.
“What is this place?” asked Lyra as she followed the alien doctor through the room.
“Oh this is our research and cataloging room,” the doctor explained. “In here we observe and analyze new worlds to gain a better understanding of our universe.” He motioned a tentacle over to one of the aliens who seemed to be sketching out many diagrams of technology and architecture. “Dariopis over there is looking at the many ancient and modern marvels your world has created.” The doctor then pointed to a different alien who was wearing what looked like headphones and seemed to be swaying to an unheard rhythm. “Susuplay has been recording and cataloging your world’s many forms of music and audio entertainment.”
“5.5,” stated one of the aliens in the corner. Lyra turned her attention to the new voice and saw a utterly bored alien looking at his screen.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
“Oh…” the alien doctor hesitantly responded. “That’s Greg. He was given the task to rate all the written works your world has come up with. Lately he’s been stuck going through a very long series of stories I believe you call Transformares?”
“What, really? That book series was just a very long running filly’s series, nothing important,” said Lyra, confused.
“Well, he’s been on a binging mood lately. Supposedly he claims it's a series of avantgarde storytelling disguised as simple media for youth. He’s actually made a two hundred page thesis on it.”
“Oh come on!” protested Lyra. “Who could find that much time or put in that much effort over-analyzing a piece of foal's entertainment?”
Meanwhile back in Ponyville, a young pink baker was sleeping soundly when abruptly she sat up in bed, wide awake and fully alert. She looked out her window... and while she could only see the stars, she knew that somewhere out there, somepony was attempting to out meta her. And they would rue the day they tried to do so!
Back in space, Lyra and the alien doctor had moved on into a long corridor that would lead them to the mess hall. Lyra’s mind, meanwhile, was elsewhere as she thought back to what she just saw.
“Obviously they are gathering intelligence on us to see what our weakness are,” she hypothesized to herself. “They could know about how warlike the yaks are, or maybe use changeling infiltrators to take over the government, or maybe even use the dwindling peanut butter supply to completely destabilize our economy!”
“And here we have the mess hall,” the doctor announced as he passed through another doorway. Lyra followed after him and found the room to be completely unsurprising. It almost looked exactly like the lunch room in her old college, just with off white futuristic looking chairs and alien language on the walls. The far wall was dominated by a large machine that had a single tiny screen.
“So uh, where’s the food?” asked a nervous Lyra, desperately hoping that unicorn wasn’t on the menu.
“Due to the wonders of our technology, we can actually produce nearly anything your tastes’ desire,” said the doctor as he strolled up to the machine. “Simply state your dish to the W.H.O.P.P.R. and it will instantly create it for you.” To demonstrate, the doctor pressed a red button on the gigantic machine and spoke clearly at it. “One plate of Shamsoldorf, please.”
“~Affirmative, one plate of Shamsoldorf,~” repeated back the machine. A whir and a beep sounded from the device followed by a slot opening up and sending out a plate filled with a noodle like food covered in a purple sauce. The doctor took the plate and set it on a nearby table.
“W.H.O.P.P.R.?” questioned Lyra.
“A Wholesome Home Of Plenty Perfect Recipes,” the Doctor elaborated as he sat down at the table. “Go ahead, we even uploaded some of your own culture’s foods.” Lyra warrily looked at the machine as if it might bite her own head off.
“If these aliens could make food out of nowhere, they could outlast any conflict with Equestria!” she thought. “I better find a way to disable it, for the good of Equestria! But how to do it without being discovered?” After a moment's time of pondering, Lyra knew just how to defeat the alien menace. She wasn’t the cleverest of ponies, so she’d have to use the second best way of outsmarting somepony. By pretending to be unabashedly idiotic!
Lyra pressed the button on the machine and spoke clearly at it. “I would like one cheesy hayburger, no cheese.”
“~Affirmative, one hayburger,~” responded the machine.
“No,” interrupted Lyra, “ one cheesy hayburger, with no cheese on it.”
“~Aff- irmative, one hayburg~”
“No! I said, one cheesy hayburger,” repeated Lyra once again, “but with no cheese on it.”
“~Aff--mat--ive. Cheese, no cheese hay. Burger cheese,~” sputtered the machine as smoke and sparks began to shoot out of it. “~Haycheese, burger, hayburger- cheese cheese ch-ch-ch-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-~” With a poof of smoke, out of the slot came a single hayburger with a slice of cheese on the side of the plate. The machine then powered down and began to vent smoke.
“Wha-what in blazes happened?” asked a startled and confused alien doctor. “I’ve never seen a W.H.O.P.P.R. act like that before!”
“Beats me,” said Lyra as she bit into her food. “Probably was malfunctioning; it didn’t even let me have it my way.” The doctor was quite confused at Lyra’s supposed idiocy, but decided to sidestep the subject.
“Yes well, at least it tastes good?”
“Meh, it's decent. It's no Five Mares Burgers and Pears,” said Lyra swallowing the last of her food.
In truth it was an amazing meal that rocked the core of Lyra’s taste buds. Never before had she tasted such a rich combination of flavors in just a simple meal. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t be swayed by such astounding cuisine. She couldn't let the aliens break her with culinary delights forcing her to give up Equestria’s secrets, even if they somehow had a recipe that had never-melting ice-cream or infinite chocolate.
“Oh, well I’m sure there are plenty of other things that might interest you aboard this ship. Why don’t I give you a little tour of the bridge?” the alien doctor proposed. “After all, all the most important and interesting things happen there.” Lyra’s ears perked up at the suggestion. The bridge would definitely be the place for her to discover any dastardly plans that the aliens had for Equestria!
“Sure! I’d love to see it,” she answered while plotting her next move. The doctor then lead her through the ship until they reached the epicenter of the whole craft. The bridge itself was yet another circular room, only this one had multiple tiers to it. In the center sat a huge shiny table that projected the image of Lyra’s planet just above it. Around the center of the room were two other levels that surrounded it, all equipped with even more floating monitors and aliens. One of the aliens, upon seeing Lyra and the doctor, waddled over to them.
“Hey doc, I see you got a new candidate for the exchange program?” said the short balding alien.
“Yes indeed,” the doctor replied, patting Lyra on the back with a tentacle. “This young mare seems to be a musician. It will be a most interesting exchange.” Lyra internally recoiled both at the doctor’s words and at the slimy appendage that was touching her withers. By the nine levels of Tartarus she had never felt so disturbed than she did at the moment that tentacle touched her. Furthermore, the aliens were looking to exchange her?! It was just like out of that movie she saw, Invasion of the Pod Ponies! And she was going to be their first victim unless she were to do something drastic.
“Oh hey!” Lyra blurted, attempting to garner as much attention as possible as she moved up to one of the tiered levels. “What do these things do?”
“Hey hey!” exclaimed the short alien waddling up after her. “Those consoles are vital to controlling this ships inner workings.”
“Oh you mean I could fly the ship with this?” Before any alien could protest, Lyra began to hit random buttons on the screen.
“No!” shouted the short alien before he shoved Lyra aside. “That was the weapon station!”
“~Firing laser cannons.~” came a robotic voice from all around them followed by a distant and dull ‘Foom!’
“Oh no! Don’t tell me we hurt anyone!” protested the alien doctor. The short alien with his tiny stubby arms tapped furiously away at the console before breathing a sigh of relief.
“It’s okay everyone, the beam was set to such a low amplitude it's about as harmful as a laser pointer.” Explained the short alien to his colleagues. “There’s zero chance of that doing any harm.”
Meanwhile on a hill in Ponyville, a young filly and her mother were doing some late night stargazing. Young Dinky Do jumped back and forth from her telescope to her mother as she showed off all the things about constellations she had been taught in school that day. Then she noticed something strange, a star that wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Mommy mommy!”Dinky excitedly yelled as she waved at her mother. “You have to see this. I think I discovered a star!”
“Oh?” responded the mare with golden eyes. “Let’s see what my little muffin found.” She put her eye up to the telescope and saw that indeed there was a bright light in the sky where none had been before. “Oh my, I think you have! This is really amazing Dinky.” However the light began to get brighter and brighter, until a dull red beam shot down from the sky and through the telescope right into the mother’s eye.
Much screaming and a rush to the hospital later, Derpy Hooves was diagnosed with irreversible eye damage. Her daughter would forever blame herself for what had happened to her mother and would give up her dreams of being an astronomer to instead work as an art critic.
Once again back on the ship, Lyra was chastising herself internally. While she hoped to do something big to mess with the aliens, accidentally hurting somepony back on the planet was the last thing she wanted to do. She would just have to change her target and try again.
“Just what were you thinking you daft creature?” yelled the short alien at Lyra as he bopped her head with his stubby arms. “You could have caused a galactic incident!”
“Now now Commander Flufenstuff,” admonished the doctor. “I’m sure it was just her being over eager. No need to blow it out of proportion.”
“Y-yeah.” affirmed Lyra as she slowly backed up. “It was just an-” Lyra interuptered herself as her behind bumped into another console hitting yet another button by ‘accident’.
“~Artificial gravity, disabled.~” the same robotic voice from before announced. To the alarm of everyone in the room, the floor fell away as they all began to float upwards.
“Agh!” screamed the commander in anguish as his short limbs flailed around uselessly. “Somebody turn it back on, and stop her from pressing any more buttons!” The doctor attempted to gain traction with his tentacles, but they weren’t stretching far enough to grip anything that was bolted down. Lyra meanwhile grabbed one of the floating objects with her magic.
“No wait, I can fix this,” she squealed. “All I have to do is hit that button again and we’ll be fine.” She pretended to line up her shot to the button she had previously pressed, but when she threw her projectile she instead ‘flubbed’ the throw spiraling it in the wrong direction.
“No! That’s the-”
“~Warp speed activated.~”
Then everything went sideways as Lyra and the entire crew were smashed into the wall like bugs in a pegasus’ teeth. The ship itself roared with power as it zoomed through the cosmos without its crew to safely guide it.
Elsewhere on Equestria’s moon, a lone blue alicorn was rolling the last stone into place for her magnum opus.
“It hath taken me many a year, but I was finally able to turn my self-loathing and pent up frustration into a creative form of expression,” Princess Luna stated proudly. She had spent the past nine hundred and ninety nine years stuck on this hunk of stone. Many of them were spent brooding and planning revenge, but eventually her rage subsided and she began to reflect on her actions. The raging Nightmare that she once was had been smothered out and she could no longer hear its taunting voice.
Luna then spent her time on the moon sculpting and building monuments and statues out of the stone. Her greatest one however was a representation of her sorrow and lament at her actions as Nightmare Moon, but also represented her hope for forgiveness and new beginnings. Soon the stars would align and she would be free from her prison. She would return not with malice and hatred, but with humbleness and repentance. And with that she would bring her creations and share them all with ponykind that they might inspire future generations to-
It was at this moment that a blazing fast UFO blasted across the moon’s surface and right though Luna’s entire collection of work, turning it all to powderized moon dust. As it slowly settled back to the surface of the moon, Princess Luna’s eye began to twitch erratically.
“SISTER!!!” bellowed Princess Luna. “If war’s thine desire…” Slowly the darkness that had been buried came rising back to the surface. Letting that pit of despair swallow her up again, Princess Luna transformed once again into a wicked mare of evil. “...then war thou shall receive!” Nightmare Moon then lifted her head back and cackled madly into the abyss. Which no one could hear due to the absence of air molecules in space... except for the moon rats that had very, very good hearing.
Once again back on the alien craft, Lyra was discovering all the wonders of having your insides feel like they were liquefying due to gravitational force. While this certainly would put a major kink into the alien’s plans of world domination, Lyra herself wasn’t too keen on ending up as a giant splat on the wall. Stretching out her magic again, Lyra wrapped it around the ‘warp speed’ button and pushed down with all her magical might. The force of the ship moving against her was almost too much for her to bear. She gave one finally burst of energy and the ship came to a hasty, but gradual stop.
“Whew!” she said once her hooves were firmly on the floor. “Thank Celestia I was able to stop the ship, huh?”
“You didn’t stop it,” the Commander responded gruffly. “The doc did.” True to his words, the doctor had used his powerful tentacles to push against the gravitational force and shut off the warp drive by hitting the button on the console that was on the complete opposite side of where Lyra was aiming.
“Wait, if I didn’t shut down the warp drive, what did I do?”
“~Cargo containers, ejected,~” answered the robotic voice from the ceiling. The entire crew gasped in response.
“All our research!” cried one.
“And the artwork!” exclaimed another.
“And my anatomical photographs!” shouted the doctor. To which everyone turned and stared at him with bewildered and very disturbed eyes. “Which I use completely for scholarly purposes. He he heeeeeeeeh.” His attempts to laugh it off were met with the same stares as before.
“Ugh, we need to catch those containers before they collide into an asteroid field or something,” the Commander said before pointing a stern appendage in Lyra’s direction. “First however, we must deal with her.” Lyra’s ears folded back in fear and she began to backpedal. She knew the aliens might catch on to her plan. Her only hope now was to fight them to the death to protect the ones she loved!
“Get her off the ship, we’re abandoning the program on her planet for now.”
“Wait, what?” asked a befuddled Lyra. “You’re… kicking me out?”
“The exchange program was to be a way for both of our cultures to learn from one another. You’d gain our vast technological advancements, while we would gain culture and arts that would expand the minds of future generations!” the doctor explained enthusiastically.
“Unfortunately, your race is far too accident prone and has a severe lack of tact. Which means your race is far too under-evolved for this level of galactic interaction,” added the commander. “So we will not be sharing our vast technological knowledge, nor will we gift you any of our amazing discoveries, like never melting ice-cream or infinite chocolate.
“But wait,” interjected Lyra. “What about me? You expect me to go back home after experiencing all of this?”
“Actually that’s something I prepared for ahead of time,” the doctor said as he gestured to Lyra’s head. “That short term memory inhibitor I installed into your brain will activate the moment you leave the ship. We install those into all our guests in case of situations like these.”
“Oh… so does that mean you’re going to take me home?”
“Actually we’re hovering over the town we picked you up in... close enough.”
With a press of a button, the floor opened up below Lyra and she promptly fell out of the aliens’ spacecraft like a sack of bricks. Her limbs flailed about as she fell straight into a soft but incredibly dirty landing. After climbing up out of the mess Lyra now found herself in the dumpster behind Sugarcube Corner, filled with week old bakery products, expired party supplies, and a slew of other bits of trash. Lyra nearly lost her lunch at that moment: For while the smell was terrible, the aftertaste was worse.
Terrible tastes and smells aside, Lyra just experienced the most incredibly wild and equally impossible thing that could happen to somepony. As the sun began to rise, she ran off toward home excited to share the story with her best friend.
“And that brings us here,” finished Lyra with a grandiose gesture of her forehooves. “Sooo? What did you think Bonny?”
Bon Bon could only stare at Lyra in pure indifference.
“Really, you, of all ponies, thwarted an alien invasion?” Bon Bon asked with incredulous belief.
“Well… thwarted... accidentally annoyed into submission. It's all the same, right?”
“Lyra, I don’t believe you.”
“Oh come on, Bonny!” pouted Lyra. “Why not?”
“Because about a month ago you said an alien was living in your closet.”
Lyra balked. “Well, how was I supposed to know that it was a family of squirrels?! They sound an awful lot alike in the middle of the night!”
“Or the time last year you thought aliens were invading on Nightmare Night?” continued Bon Bon.
“Even Mayor Mare was with me in saying those costumes were pretty darn convincing!”
“And didn’t you say the aliens put some sort of memory thing in your brain? How would you remember all of this if they did?”
“Well, maybe being slammed around in the ship or when they dropped me in the dumpster and I hit my head could have damaged it!”
Bon Bon shook her head in response. “Lyra, it's always ‘aliens, aliens, aliens’ with you.” Lyra crossed her forelegs and pouted in response. “Now I know you really, really want me to believe that there are little green ponies from Mares, but the fact of the matter is you don’t exactly have the the best track record with this subject.”
“But Bonny-”
“No buts!” chided Bon Bon. “Right now there are three things you need to do. One: Take out the trash because you were supposed to do it last night. Two: Take a shower asyour spell is starting to wear off. And three: Find something besides aliens to occupy your time. Play a game, practice your lyre, or read a book even!”
With her magic, Lyra reached into her saddlebags and pulled out a small mechanical device and attempted to show it to Bon Bon.
“But I grabbed this off of one of the aliens and-” Lyra’s words were only met with a stern glare from Bon Bon which silenced her protests. “Okay Bonny, I’ll stop pestering you about aliens.” Bon Bon hesitated for a moment before hugging her friend while patting Lyra’s head.
“It’s okay to have a passion Lyra,” Bon Bon said, releasing her best friend from her embrace. “But maybe have one that doesn't end with you in the dumpster?” Both of them giggled at the silliness of it all. “Now, I’m going to go have a date with a bottle of sanitizer. You should get started on that list.” With that Bon Bon left the room for the kitchen, leaving Lyra alone with the alien object still in her magical grip. Lyra sighed deeply as she looked forlornly at the object.
“Probably just a useless piece of junk anyway,” Lyra grumbled as she tossed into onto the pile of garbage bags next to the door. Not a half second later, there was a high pitched beeping followed by a flash of light as the garbage bags disappeared from sight. Lyra stood bewildered by the sight and dully shouted out to her friend. “Uh, Bon Bon? The uh… the garbage is taken care of.”
“That’s nice dear,” Bon Bon nonchalantly responded from the other room.
Meanwhile, hundreds of years in the past, a bright unicorn colt by the name of Sombra was having a lovely day at school in the Crystal empire. It was show and tell day and he was presenting his prized crystal collection. Everything was going swimmingly... until multiple bags of garbage appeared above his head and deposited their smelly contents upon him. The students laughed. The teacher laughed. Sombra laughed... as he enslaved them all. It was a bad time.
With her singular chore out of her way and done, Lyra decided to go have a bath like her best friend suggested. A nice bubble soak and a good book, it would be the perfect solution to both requests. Just before she headed upstairs to the bathroom Lyra pulled out a random book from the shelves of Bon Bon’s collection.
“Myths and Legends of Equis,” Lyra read the cover aloud. She did always love tales of the fantastical, maybe just a few of these stories would inspire her to find a new passion in life. Though Lyra seriously doubted anything could pull her away from her love of aliens. Flipping the book open with her magic, Lyra scanned the book until a particular page caught her attention.
“Oooooo, what’s a human?”
END
