“It’s my fantasia and none of your own,” the unicorn said. “I wrote it specifically for the concert, and it’s my piece. You’ll just have to write your own. And you’d better hurry, cause there’s like two days until the concert.” She flashed a quick smile.
Her earth pony companion, a grey mare with black mane, only sighed and shook her head. “You’re so stubborn, Lyra. It is amazing ponies still like you and want you to perform for them.”
Lyra just smiled and kicked back in her chair, teetering uncomfortably close to falling backwards. As was her custom, she was sitting straight up instead of curled up on the seat like a regular pony. “I’m pretty sure they like me because of my pride and stubbornness. You’re just an earth pony, you wouldn’t understand.” She reached over and patted Octavia’s hoof.
“For that matter,” Octavia said, slapping away the hoof and hopping down from her chair. “Neither do I understand why I am still friends with you.”
With that, the mare left the café, leaving Lyra to stew alone in her own thoughts. She sat there for a little while longer, sipping her tea and thinking. It was her way to kind of – well, no let’s be honest, it was her way to be a complete jackass. It was, on hindsight, surprising that Octavia had lasted for over a year of being friends with Lyra. Most of her other “friends” ditched her when they realized Lyra wasn’t exactly the nicest pony around.
Sure, she was a happy pony, except for the part where she wasn’t. There was a good reason behind that. It was hard to live life when she’d had the taste of something better than mortal life. When she used to be Up There, in Heaven.
Oh, yes, there was one thing that was truly unusual about Lyra. She was not a pony, at least not in the normal sense. In fact, she was an angel from Heaven. Her problem was simple, as it were.
Heaven did not like her. It may have had something to do with the fact that she was, at her core, a boorish person who was full of herself and made sure everyone knew it. After roughly twelve thousand years of her self-indulgence, the angel Gabriel – and a few others – had grown tired of Lyra and politely petitioned God to be rid of her.
She very quickly found herself quite literally ass-first on the world Epona as a newborn. Lyra had dusted herself off (figuratively, she couldn’t easily move on her own yet) and found the land of Equestria to be grossly saccharine. For most of the first few years of her new mortal existence, she spent barfing in disgust. And then she stopped being a foal, and became a filly.
It was during these formative years as a filly that she stopped throwing up in disgust and learned to appreciate Equestria for one sole reason: Ponies liked it when she played the harp or lyre. Her angelic skills for playing music had been transferred to her new body, and she exploited it as best she could.
By the time Lyra was a teen, she had become something of an idol in Equestria, and she enjoyed every minute of it. She started travelling Equestria, doing concerts.
It was before one such concert that she got a surprising visitor. Gouts of flame shot from the sky and struck the ground beside her, flames licking at the grass. Lyra looked over, a deadpan expression on her face. From the fires stepped a great and terrible creature, having four wings and four faces looking in each cardinal direction.
“LYRA HEARTSTRINGS!” boomed the voice of Gabriel. “I BRING YOU A MESSAGE FROM THE LORD.”
“Tell him to shove it,” Lyra said, looking back at her harp. She was tuning it and didn’t want distractions. There was only about an hour before her concert, and Gabriel was being rude by interrupting her before she got ready.
“ONE DOES NOT TELL THE LORD GOD TO ‘SHOVE IT’. OKAY, LOOK, MICHAEL SENT ME DOWN HERE TO GIVE YOU A MISSION. IF YOU ACCOMPLISH IT, YOU MAY RETURN TO HEAVEN. UGH.”
Lyra dropped her harp, letting it bounce on the ground a few times. She spun to face Gabriel, gold eyes wide with excitement. “No way! Really? I can get my wings and boobs back?”
The beak on Gabriel’s hawk-face looked like it was about to twist in disgust. “UGH… I SUPPOSE, IF SUCH BASE THINGS ARE WHAT YOU DESIRE. ANYWAY, YOUR MISSION IS TO PROTECT THE TOWN OF PONYVILLE FROM THE ARMIES OF THE DEVIL. PONYVILLE IS VERY IMPORTANT TO THIS WORLD’S DEVELOPMENT. AND YOU KNOW HOW LUCIFER IS. HE’S… SCHEMY.”
“Screw that,” Lyra crowed. “I get breasts back!”
The massive form of Gabriel shuddered. “THAT IS, FORTUNATELY, ALL. GOOD –” he sniggered. “I MEAN, GOOD LUCK.”
Lyra ran a hoof down her torso. “I get them back, finally.”
She galloped forward and hugged Gabriel’s leg. The angel shivered again and shook his foot a little to dislodge the little pony. “PLEASE LET GO, I MUST GO BACK. PLEASE STOP TOUCHING ME.”
Lyra let go, just in time as the pillar of flame consumed Gabriel. In a whirlwind, the flame died and Gabriel was gone, leaving behind a scorched earth.
She leapt in the air, squealing. “I get to be an angel again! Hell yes, I get to have boobs again!” With another squeal of joy, she jumped again, landing firmly on her butt. Lyra let out a muttered swear.
Something hit Lyra, snapping her out of her reverie. It was a golden arrow, sticking out of her eye. She popped it out. Judging by the lack of pain, it was a spiritual arrow. Stuck to the head of the arrow was a rolled up note. Lyra unraveled the note and gave it a once-over.
It read: To Lyra Heartstrings,
Your final challenge is here. A spirit known as a Taraxippus has haunted Ponyville for the last few months, devouring travelers and small animals. Stop neglecting your duties and go vanquish it. If you do this, you may return to Heaven immediately. If you fail to defeat it within the next 48 hours, your opportunity to reclaim your position in the 2,225th place of Harpists will be lost FOREVER.
Cheers!
Michael the Archangel (Mike to his friends)
As she finished reading, the note caught fire. Lyra let out a shriek and tossed it away. A few patrons looked her way. Blushing, she waved at them. She’d forgotten that things of the spiritual realm were invisible to plebeians.
Looking down at her wristwatch, Lyra saw that a timer had started to count down on it. She had forty-seven hours and fifty-nine minutes, twenty-four seconds left on the clock.
“Eh,” she said. “I’ve got time to sleep.”
Thirty-two hours, twenty-two minutes, and fifty seconds.
“Eh, I’ve got time to hit the gym.”
Thirty hours, forty minutes, and twelve seconds.
“I can go party for a little bit.”
Ten hours, ten minutes, ten seconds.
“I… uh I’ve got a thing. Concert thingum. Yeah. The Tara… Tara… the thingy’ll still be there when I get done.”
***
The door to the mares’ dressing room burst open, revealing a haggard Lyra. Her mane was messier than usual, and she had bags under her eyes.
“Sup, skanks?” she asked, stepping through the threshold.
Octavia and Vinyl Scratch – or DJ P0N3 or Super Skank or whatever you wanted to call her – looked up from their mirrors.
“Yo, Ly,” called back Vinyl. “It’s been awhile. Like twenty minutes! How off the chain was that party, man?”
“It was pretty off the chain, yo.”
“You two were partying before you came here?” Octavia’s voice was high in disbelief. “You two are ruffians! Scoundrels! Wastrels! How dare you call yourselves musicians!”
Vinyl pointed back at Octavia, who was in the corner of the messy room. “Get a load of this guy.”
Lyra laughed and sat down opposite Vinyl, looking into her mirror. Taking a hairbrush in the grip of her magic, she began to run it through her mane.
It was, of course, at that moment that an arrow struck the mirror. With a sigh, Lyra looked at the note attached to the arrow.
LYRA
You do realize there’s three hours until the deadline? The Taraxippus is still haunting Ponyville. Get out there!
Irritatedly,
Michael the Archangel (you can’t call him Mike)
Gabriel appeared in the mirror, pointing to a digital clock as if to say, “Check ’em”.
Lyra gulped. Sweat began to dampen her fur, and her heart started to race.
Gabriel’s wolf face smiled as the clock turned from 3:00:00 to 2:59:59.
“I gotta go do a thing I forgot about!” Lyra shrieked, falling off her perch.
Vinyl lowered her trademark shades to watch Lyra in the mirror. “Dude, you just got here and we go on in like… fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, well, this is important. Like, insanely important. More important than music.” Lyra rushed for the door, practically knocking it off its hinges as she tore it open.
“What could be more important than music, man?” Vinyl asked nobody in particular.
“Being a complete arse, it would seem.” Octavia sighed. “It looks like it’ll just be us, as usual. I should’ve know better than to trust her.”
***
Lyra looked down at her spiritual wristwatch. It was currently operating as both compass to lead her to the Taraxippus’ lair, and as a reminder that she only had three hours – well way less now – to find the beast. So far, the compass had led her into a sparse forest that seemed empty of both ponies and beasts.
So enrapt in the compass was she that Lyra failed entirely to notice a small sapling in front of her. She smashed face first into it. Lyra could only imagine that Gabriel was laughing his rump off at her clumsiness.
Rubbing her face, she noticed that her wristwatch had fallen off. Her heart skipped a beat, and she leapt up, beginning to dig around for it.
I can’t lose that! It’s my only hope! Those thoughts rushed through her brain, a mantra that was keeping her sane.
There it was! A bit of glimmering gold hanging from something stained a dark, moldy green! Lyra ran up to it and grabbed at it with her hooves.
“Excuse me,” rumbled a pleasant-sounding voice. “What exactly are you doing to my tail?”
Lyra looked up and saw that the green thing was attached to a gigantic turtle-thing. Its shell was mossy and its dopey face had fangs and sharp teeth instead of a beak. The monster kinda hurt to look at, so Lyra turned her gaze back to the wristwatch, and tugged on it again.
“I’m tryin’ to get my wristwatch off your tail, moron.” She stood on her hind legs and crossed her front legs. “You aren’t helping much, y’know.”
The monstrous turtle sighed. “I haven’t really had a very good week, you know. First I had a little bit of unicorn stuck between my teeth and couldn’t get it out. And then I found out goblins took over my cave to party, so I’ve been stuck in this forest.”
Lyra rubbed the back of her head. A goblin party, huh? She’d heard those were some of the best parties. For a moment, she thought about asking him where the party was, but then her mission came back to her.
“You think you’ve got it hard? Try getting kicked out of heaven and stuck in this body for twenty years. And then try finding out you can go back but only if you vanquish a bunch of monsters. Right now I’ve gotta kill a Tara… Tara…”
“A Taraxippus?” asked the turtle with another sigh. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.”
“You’re the Tara thingy, aren’t you?”
“I am afraid so,” the Taraxippus said. “My name is Gafredallopxerxes the Fifth (Esquire, mind you), but you can call me Fred.”
Lyra groaned. “Okay, look. Let’s just get this over with. Let me vanquish you, okay? Then I can go be an angel again, and you can come back in a few millennia when you’ve regenerated and keep eating ponies.”
“Waiting is overrated,” Fred said. “I’m afraid I cannot acquiesce to your suggestion. In fact, I think I might have to eat you. I haven’t had a good meal since I got locked out of my home, and you look like you’ll do nicely. A little fatty, perhaps, but I’ve had worse.”
“Fat? Fat? *FAT*?” Lyra was trembling, eyes wide. “I’ll show you fat!”
There was one angelic power that she had kept after the fall: the ability to manifest objects out of thin air. Her favored weapon to use against monsters was a double-barreled revolver. She’d seen it once in a comic book and it was called Repentance. The Ponysher used it in his comic. Lyra hadn’t been allowed to read gory comics, but she did it anyway.
With a flash of golden light, Repentance appeared before her. It looked just like it did in the comics – really, really stupid and impossibly huge. Gripping it with a magical hand, Lyra fired a couple shots at the Taraxippus. The bullets struck home, chipping off huge portions of shell.
“Alright,” Fred rumbled. “I’m quite angry at the moment, just to let you know. There’s no good reason for such violence. I just want to eat you is all.”
Manifesting another angelic weapon – this one a magical longsword from a book she had read once – Lyra took a swing at Fred’s leg while still firing mana bullets at the massive Taraxippus.
“Right! That squeezes it.” Fred shook, and his shell erupted, becoming a pair of giant stone wings. His body deformed from a bizarre turtle into that of a bipedal, goat-headed creature. “There’s more than one way to spook a horse.”
He tackled Lyra, wings beating a quick tempo. Fred rose from the ground, and started heading towards town. Lyra failed to notice, as she caught sight of her wristwatch on the Taraxippus’ tail.
“Hey, you never gave that back!” she shouted. With a great effort, she tried to reach it with her hooves, since her magic hands were busy with guns and swords. Her attempt failed, of course, because she was a small pony and Fred was a giant monster whose tail was longer than she was.
One of her magic shots from Repentance struck home, hitting Fred in his big dumb goat face. With a caw of pain, Fred let loose of Lyra and began to fall towards the ground.
Lyra smiled and banished her weapons, replacing them with a magical parachute. She drifted slowly to the ground while Fred rocketed downwards. He crashed into something down below. It sounded like wood, and she could hear terrified shrieks from below.
Craning her neck to look down, she saw that it was the stage where her concert had been scheduled to be held. Vinyl Scratch and Octavia were huddled together on what remained of the stage. Most of the stage had been destroyed by Fred, who was attempting to stand.
Lyra killed the parachute and fell, slamming into Fred’s back, knocking the Taraxippus back down into the ground.
“Have no fear, ponies! Lyra is here to save the day!”
She manifested a giant spear, and thrust it into Fred. Black blood geysered from him and Lyra beamed at the horrified ponies all around her.
“I do this all the time,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”
“Dude that’s pretty wicked!” shouted Vinyl, breaking free of Octavia’s grasp. “Like, pretty darn metal wicked!”
“I believe what my companion is trying to say is What the hell just happened?”
Lyra shrugged. “Oh, nothing. I just vanquished a monster. No biggie, you don’t have to thank me.”
The two other mares looked at each other dumb-founded at their friend’s sudden badassery. Lyra simply hopped off Fred’s disintegrating body and dusted herself off. She smiled and waved to the stunned crowd.
Mid-wave, a thought struck Lyra like a runaway train: What time was it? She giggled to herself madly and scampered over to the crumbling corpse. Grabbing the tail, she ran down its length until she found her watch. It was a little tarnished, but still working.
Ripping it from the tail, Lyra looked at the face. It read “-00:03:22”.
Lyra’s response was unprintable. With a loud, equally unprintable shout, she smashed the watch on the ground. She collapsed and started to tears quietly. Curling up into a ball seemed like a good idea at the time, so that was what she did. Shaking with her sobs, Lyra failed to notice one important thing.
She was beginning to float, and something like a spotlight had begun to shine on her.
“Am I just super high right now or is she floating?” Vinyl asked.
“I do believe she is floating.” Octavia rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Yep, Lyra was floating.
“LYRA HEARTSTRINGS!” boomed a voice. It was a familiar, annoying voice.
Lyra opened her eyes and blinked away the tears. Gabriel hovered before her, arms crossed and his lion head looking at her with an amused expression.
Something felt different about her, she realized. Like she was a little heavier in places. She looked down. She was stark naked, and had two very nice, round objects on her chest.
“Titties!” she shouted.
“VULGAR, BUT YES. I DIDN’T EXACTLY EXPECT THIS, BUT MICHAEL GAVE YOU A REPRIEVE SINCE YOU VANQUISHED THE TARAXIPPUS EVEN A LITTLE AFTER THE DEADLINE.”
Lyra groped herself for a moment before looking back up at Gabriel. “Dude, I could kiss you.”
“PLEASE REFRAIN.”
Suddenly she was falling again. With a shriek, she landed on her butt. The angelic spotlight was starting to fade, as was Gabriel.
“What the hell, dude! I’m still here!” Lyra shouted to the heavens.
“OH I NEGLECTED TO TELL YOU,” Gabriel’s voice echoed. “PART OF YOUR REPRIEVE INVOLVES BECOMING HEAVEN’S ENVOY TO EPONA. GOOD LUCK.”
Lyra crossed her arms, pushing her breasts up. “Man, this sucks.”
The last Lyra saw of Gabriel, he was giving her a big smile and two thumbs up.
The last Gabriel saw of Lyra, she was giving him a grouchy frown and two middle fingers.
