It's Like A Hobby

by Regina Wright

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Alternate Universe
Length: 2002

Lolly Blue, a mare of many illegal talents, has come to Ponyville on holiday and had the horrible luck to have the missing Bon-Bon resemble her. Ponyville deserves to be burned down. It's the best solution to all of their silly little problems.

Lolly Blue, a mare of many illegal talents, comes to Ponyville on holiday and her luck scorns her to have the missing Bon-Bon resemble her. It's not a particular big deal to her because she's rather used to seeing her doppelgangers and imagines it has to do with her family line. Mother-side and to keep it short, she doesn't want to have anything to do with her mother's side of the family. But of course, Bon-Bon and all the freaks of Ponyville pull her into their messes to fix… and setting things on fire isn't as quick a solution as it used to be.

AN/Takes place before the Canterlot Wedding

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-21 13:10:02 UTC

They Won't Stop Screaming

It's... uh... confusing to have random strangers, a group of very neurotic mares if anypony wants details, paying this much attention to her. Crying. Shrieking. Emoting unwanted feelings at her while taking her to a hospital. She's guessing the visit is to have her head be seen by a doctor? That's kinda normal, right? It's normal to drag ponies they don't know and force them to see a doctor? Right? The group did quiet down when they came into the waiting room but all it took was...

“Is this a new virus! A memory-eating curse!” shouts a trio of mares with flower-related cutie marks. They ignores her glare and keep on going. “What if we're next? Oh the horror!”

And it starts all over again. The hissing. The screeching. The fluid spraying into her fur by all of the ponies hugging her as some sort of torture method. The running snot that has no business to be on her body. Has nopony heard of personal space?

She's already tried to explain to them that this is probably a case of mistaken identity. Guess what, she's not so sure what happened? One moment she was telling them, politely, to kick rocks as she was waiting at the train station. The next, she was being forced through the swinging doors of the hospital. So surprised at their ability to haul her through town quickly that she didn't put up much of a fight.

“Your name is Bon-Bon! Don't you remember me? I'm Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings! We've been living together for months! Bon-Bon, please remember! I can't handle being the responsible one, Bon-Bon! You were supposed to come back from your trip from Canterlot a week ago.” A green mare, born by parents who were too lazy to just name her Lyrical.

Lolly shouldn't be talking with all of the names she's been willingly called herself. And boy, let her tell you, she's proud of'Hellion Knockback' but still, Lyra? With that kind of a last name? Go back to the library section of romantic heroines, ya spoiled brat!

“I go by many names but none of them is Bon-Bon, lady.”

A clean town, a slightly newer name. She's gone and spoiled herself with a fresh name cause she's on holiday. Or is soon to be. A clear slate should bring about good things, right? It's not true in the least, but Lolly tries her best to believe in it. Who's going to call her out in Ponyville anyway? These mares might but they'd never get that far with this Bon-Bon nonsense they keep on spouting.

Names only matter on graves, after all. For now, her name is Lolly Blue.

Her last name, Ribbon Splitter, is still too hot in Holly's Shade for her to be using if she wasn't on'the job'.

Lolly isn't particularly interested in encouraging anyone to come and pay her a visit. And even though, Holly's Shade is all the way on the other side of Equestria, stupidity can catch like wild-fire by anyone or anypony. They ought to know better to go looking for her when she goes on holiday. But it's too much for them, her one-sided weak'enemies'. She's such a generous mare. Letting the mindless and useless fools think that they could ever be equals to her. What a soft heart she has!

Her enemies, walking punching bags, are lost if they can't have her full attention at all times. With any rumor of where she might be, oh how they come running. Stampedes of dragons would be quieter. They show up. Lolly has to slam somepony into the wall a couple of times so they lose consciousness. A sleeping hostage rigged to a exploding rune combined with a mind-reading glass is the best kind of hostage!

Nopony ever dies in these encounters. Maybe. If they do get away, it's already too late to stop the secondary rune from distorting their memory of the event. And a city block goes has to go up in flames cause how else could you interrogate a entire squad of unicorns at the same time?

Lyra, and her lovely, lovely name turns to a mildly concerned nurse/doctor/patient/escaped mental patient and makes gestures at her. The mare's voice goes higher and higher like the scream of a Royal Guard makes when you pour a kettle's worth of hot boiling water on his precious horn.

“I... I think she's suffering from amnesia! And do you see those scars on her fur! Bon-Bon did not look like that when she left here! Do something!” Lyra manages to say something comprehensible to Lolly' ears.

She shoves Lolly forward, toward the doctor person as if she's sacrificing Lolly to stay with a sack of Silver Mist, sweet illegal drugs, while she runs away to get back-up. It would be such a nice gesture if only she actually knew these ponies.

It all ties in when she opened her mouth to them when she was catching a train out of Ponyville. Not what she said but the reason why she was out in daylight and not-declaring holiday by sleeping in. Mingling among the ponies not in'the know' is uhh, quite rare. And really hard for her to understand'why not'?

There's no desperation here, for starters.

No rage. No glee. No audacious ambition that you can choke and drown in. Bathe in like places like Holly's Shade, Evening Tide, Filadelphia. Manehatten is the worse of it all, in its corrupted beauty. Wide eyed, foul-tongued and forever caught in a three-way pissing contest with Canterlot and Cinder Rock.

Ponyville, in comparison, is a sleepy little town with lulling it's townsfolk with an imaginary contentedness. It's a rather stagnating place despite all of the action written in newspapers everywhere. Battle of Nightmare Moon that, Return of the cutie mark plague this and things that of that nature are exciting. Different. Clean. Not terrible things that go on and on by ponies that can be anypony. Things that other cities' papers cover and covet as they try to shuffle the usual gang-banging and scandals to the third page.

Lolly is almost sick of the place. Of the ponies. Their contentedness is a little hard to swallow. It's just so different from what she's used to. No selfishness. Not a true'I' can be found in Ponyville. The ponies here speak in'they' and'we' and'other ponies'. They indirectly describe themselves in how they are seen by others.  But it's everywhere. It's in the blood of the folk who lived here. It inflicts those who come. Maybe. Folk can talk everything and anything about the crazy things that happen to the town. But never about the town. Not really. Not wholly. Ponyville's is a stage, hollow and empty until something, somepony says “Action!”

She hasn't felt any different. Hasn't felt the banal attachments that the few she chatted with seemed to expressed. Then again, why would she? Her holiday is starting and all of her filthy compulsions won't, can't creep back into her life for several months. For as long as her holiday lasts, she is merely Lolly Blue. A tourist who’s come to enjoy the sights.

However, that kind of thinking gives her the heebie-jeebies so in her friskiness, she planned to hold off her holiday for a week.

Make a little dough and mischief. Step and snuff out another soul in a city not here, not'Ponyville', and see if Death was ready to even the score. Could he stop her today? Not likely. Not likely at all. But enough pride. Death might tire of her foolishness and kill her off right now.

“Bon-Bon!” Lyra speaks and Lolly wonders if she's been talking the whole time, “Just tell us what happened. I asked Derpy to go and check on you and she said that you never arrived at that candy convention. Then I left, trying to find where you went, and ponies remember you never getting off the train. They told me that you were crying and refused anypony to comfort you!”

A friend, of a friend, of a drinking buddy called in a special favor cause they knew that she was going to be off the map for a couple months. Small-time stuff. Arrange for some unlucky ponies to require serious medical aid. Frame a up-and-coming stallion who hasn't paying the right kind of tribute to the right ponies for embezzling. And her usual trademark, delivering messages by burning down a store-house of things that shouldn't be going to Filadelphia.

“whaaaa-,” Lolly blinks, “ I'm sorry, I tuned you right out. But back to the main point, doesn't your teeth hurt, clattering together like that? Going on and on about this amnesia thing? I am not Bon-Bon and I'll prove it to you, ya weeping willow. And for dignity's sake, pull yourself together!”

“But you're Bon-Bon!”

“Come off it, will you? I'm going to ask you some simple questions to make it easy to tell me apart from this Bon-Bon. And the same goes to the lot of you as well! I don't care who answers but I rather make this quick. Question 1: Did Bon-Bon grow up Ponyville?”

“Of course.” Lyra says, squeaking with her terribly shrill voice. Agony on the ears. Somepony should tell her to drink some water.

“I didn't,” Lolly slurs on the word “didn't”, stretching and holding the last syllable. “I don't know a thing about this place and I really don't care to know more than necessary. I don't know any of your names. I don't know who any of you are in Ponyville. And I'm going to assume that this Bon-Bon was one friendly duck to have so many of you willing to harass a lookalike.”

“You do know that you wouldn't know them if you did have amnesia.” The doctor/serial killer/perpetual brooder steps in. Unneeded and completely unnecessary. Where was she, earlier in that gaze of hers, that not giving a crap zone? Doctor must be on something to not kick everypony out of the waiting room already. Why is this professional just tolerating this craziness!

“I very much doubt that this Bon-Bon's amnesia could be so severe that she could have flipped her personality. Bon-Bon is a friendly mare, right?” Lolly asks, and the groups agree with nods and yeses. “And I am very much not. Question 2: Did Bon-Bon have any family?”

“Her parents work abroad in international work. I've seen them a few times and Bon-Bon's a only child.” Some mare steps up to the plate. Her bright orange hair and tan skin reminds Lolly of a bad milkshake she had in a Las Pegasus bar. Thing had her camped in the motel's bathroom for half-day, it did. Ergo, the mare shall be referred indefinitely as Bad Cramp. If she even sees her after this...

“Well ain't she a lucky doll. Mother took off to places unknown. Father died, working and drinking himself to death. I'm the youngest of five children who all reacted to dear daddy's death in peculiar creepy ways,” Lolly chats as the group of mares stare at her in horror and pity, “But I'm the only one who does petty things so all of my siblings try to spring a intervention when they can track me down. Morning glories for that.

"And now you know that I'm not Bon-Bon, huzzah! Amnesia sufferers shouldn't have flip their base personality or have different facts of their lives. Do you hear how very much assured I am of myself? I am not Bon-Bon!”

“Then who are you?” It's the thrice cursed doctor/mist sniffer/oral enthusiast again.

“I am... not telling you and this is where I run away. Tat-tah!”

Lolly bolts through the hospital's doors and makes an abrupt right. The group of mares keep on running straight, onward like naive fools, yet to realize that she's not running in front of them. Lolly hopes that it won't be until she's secured herself to the next train heading to Cinder Rock.

“I'm going to find this Bon-Bon and break her legs.”