In Which Lyra Executes Her Brilliant Plan
Darkness. Her oldest ally. It surrounded her; bathed her in its cold shadows so that she may be shrouded from her enemies. All around her the darkened forms of living room furniture further hid her from wandering eyes; especially the large couch that the seafoam unicorn was currently crouching behind.
She dare not move from her hiding place, not even the slightest twitch despite the lingering leg cramps currently assaulting her resolve.
She had considered stretching her legs for a bit, maybe grab a quick snack from the nearby kitchen to quell her growing hunger, but the delusions were almost immediately discarded. She would remain squatting behind the admittedly small loveseat until such a time as her query returned from its latest mischievous deeds. The pain in her legs was nothing compared to the pain in her soul, and the only hunger she felt was the hunger for justice.
And some candy. Justice and candy, the most bittersweet of combos.
Though the candy would have to wait for now. Lady Justice was a fickle mistress, and for now she called for stealth. It wasn’t exactly easy to remain hidden whilst munching on a bar of chocolate, especially if BonBo- Ahem, a certain conniving temptress had made them.
As for the reason behind her secrecy, well, a certain item had recently turned up missing in the unicorn’s household.
Normally, missing objects wouldn’t be a problem, given how, despite her usual geniusness, the unicorn had a tendency to misplace things. This, however, was a different situation entirely.
The item in question was something very dear to the unicorn; something that had a very special place from which it was never meant to be moved. This same very special place was also only known to two very special ponies. The unicorn herself,
And the pony she was currently waiting for.
“Lyra! I’m home!”
Alas, the traitor doth return.
Standing in the doorway that was currently bathing the living room in light was a cream colored earth pony. A swirling mane of pink and navy sat upon her head, and a brown bag of groceries was carried in her foreleg. The mare squinted as her eyes tried to adjust to the darkness of the room before she eventually stepped inside, her back leg kicking the door shut as she walked.
A dim yellow aura shimmered to life from the horn atop the hidden unicorn’s head, as she prepared a spell to incapacitate her target. Seeing as she was safe in her hiding spot, the unicorn allowed herself a predatory smirk. The turncoat seemed so innocent, so unsuspecting. It was the perfect cover-up.
Receiving only silence in reply to her greeting, the cream colored earth pony sighed as she trotted further into the unicorn’s trap.
“I swear, Lyra, if this is another early Nightmare Night prank I’m going to take your-”
The betrayer’s threat hung unfinished, for just as she’d walked past the unicorn’s couch, the shadowed figure had loosed her charged spell directly at the unsuspecting fiend.
The snitch was asleep before she hit the ground, crumpling into an undignified heap on the floor with nothing but the not-so faintest of snores to signify that she was alive.
The shadowy unicorn stood over the sleeping mare, a large burlap sack clenched in her golden magic.
Step one of her highly sophisticated, and incredibly well thought out plan had been executed without incident, and now began phase two: get the soon to be prisoner into the interrogation room.
Taking the burlap bag in her forehooves, the figure began using her magic to try and lift the other mare into the open bag.
Unfortunately, a small, nearly insignificant detail had managed to escape the unicorn’s most careful plans. Her target was really bucking heavy.
“Sweet Celestia, Bon-Bon. Did you eat a chocolate train?”
After what was surely at least three hours of valiant attempts to get the sleeping mare into her sack, the unicorn was forced to admit that her magic simply wasn’t strong enough to lift a clearly slightly overweight pony. Out of breath, but not out of mind, the unicorn was forced to resort to plan B, which was no less brilliant and well-thought than plan A.
A pale golden aura surrounded the sleeping mare’s forehoof, before her entire body was pulled along by the glowing appendage. With her interrogatee dragging along the hardwood floor behind her, the unicorn began the arduous trek to her top secret interrogation room.
Perhaps she had put a little too much power into her spell.
It had been ages since Lyra had dragged the traitor to her top secret interrogation room, and the seafoam unicorn had been growing increasingly bored as she waited around for the Beneighdict Arnold to wake up. She couldn’t get up and do something else, seeing as it was absolutely essential that the unicorn be present at the time of her captive’s awakening. It wouldn’t exactly send a very good message if the backstabber woke up alone, only to see her captor walk in with forelegs full of fruit snacks.
No, she was a professional. And professionals had foreboding images to maintain.
So, with her back ominously turned to her bound captive, Lyra sat in her fancy big-boss office chair and stared at the blank wall in front of her.
Any second now the devious cutthroat would awake, and the interrogation would finally begin in earnest.
Any second now, she just had to be patient.
Patience was good. Waiting led to lots of good stuff; like Hearth's Warming presents, and cake.
Yep, just a little longer an-
“Gah! Why won’t you wake the buck up!?”
The unicorn spun her chair around to point an accusatory hoof at her still unconscious captive.
“You know what you’ve done! The firm hooves of justice cannot be escaped in the veil of dreams!”
Climbing atop the table that separated them, Lyra grabbed the tied up mare sitting across from her and began trying to shake the mare awake.
“Awaken and face your judgment coward!”
A loud snort interrupted the unicorn’s tirade, followed closely by the mare beneath her fluttering her eyes open.
“Huh? Lyra?”
The unicorn froze as the other mare came to. Of all the times to wake up…
The faith breaker confusedly tried to assess the shadowed surroundings, only to adopt an unamused stare.
“Lyra, why am I strapped to a chair in a dark room?”
The unicorn quickly backed up to her side of the table.
“Wait! Hang on. I had this whole opening thing planned out. Stay right there.”
The earth pony looked down to her bindings before shooting Lyra a flat glare, but the unicorn ignored it as she sat in her chair and quickly spun it to face away from her captive.
After waiting the appropriate amount of time for the maximum dramatic effect, Lyra began slowly twisting the office chair around until she was once again facing an unamused Bon-Bon. The unicorn pressed her forehooves together in front of her whilst she leaned back into her plush office chair. She put on her most serious business face before speaking in a low, menacing voice.
“Welcome, my child, to the end of the line.”
Contrary to how Lyra expected her captive to act-- which was wetting herself and begging for mercy --Bon-Bon simply raised an eyebrow in response to the unicorn’s theatrics.
“Are you done?”
See, that right there was the problem with captives these days. They had no respect for proper theatrics. Well, if the hostage wanted to get straight to business, then Lyra’d get straight to business!
The unicorn violently slammed her hooves onto the wooden table, sending a fair amount of loose dust into the surrounding air.
“Where were you on the night of last night!”
“Isn’t that a little redundant?”
“Don’t dodge the question!”
The treasonist sighed, no doubt preparing a devious lie to cover her tracks.
“I was here, making chocolate.”
Lyra stared icily at the convicted.
“I see.”
Standing up from her swervy chair, Lyra slowly began to circle the wooden table, never once making eye contact with her disgruntled captive.
After finding her way behind the liar’s chair, the unicorn paused in her stride and stared off into the distance.
“I don’t suppose you have any witnesses to back up your claim?”
She couldn’t see it, but Lyra could practically feel the annoyance dripping from the traitor’s words.
“You were there, Lyra.”
The unicorn chuckled softly; she had her now.
“I see. And this, ‘Lyra’ would attest to the fact that you were, in fact, making chocolate? As opposed to say, oh, I don’t know. Stealing one of the only things that gives my life meaning!”
At her final declaration, Lyra grabbed hold of her captives head and whipped it around to face the leftmost side of the interrogation room.
“Lyra,” breathed the earth pony, “it’s dark. I can’t see anything.”
The unicorn huffed in agitation; how could she have forgotten to give the fugitives eyes time to adjust to the dark? Now her big reveal was ruined because of the stupid lack of light. Did the dark even know how much work went into planning a reveal like that? Of course not; it was just like the darkness to be so selfish. Why, just moments ago it had pledged to help the unicorn bring a stop to the tyrant baker, and now here it was assisting their enemy.
Perhaps the darkness was a double agent hired by the dishonored to lure Lyra into a false sense of security so that it could sabotage her plannings? Truly, then, the unicorn had severely underestimated her now more comparable adversary.
“Um… Lyra?”
Oh, right. Interrogation.
The unicorn released Honerless One’s head, as she sulked over to the rooms light switch and unceremoniously flipped it. The lights blared to life almost instantly, causing both ponies to wince at the sudden optical assault. After her eyes had readjusted, Lyra bounded back over to the secured mare and snapped her head back towards the leftmost wall.
Along the wall, a bed and shelves were stacked haphazardly atop themselves, as were various sheets and knickknacks that had been thrown onto anything that could hold them. The wall’s two windows were also completely covered by various pieces of stacked furniture, blocking out the golden rays of the then evening sun.
Standing uniformly amongst the chaos, and looking to be the only objects placed with any sort of care, where exactly eleven vinyl, bipedal figurines. Each figure remained in, for lack of a better term, mint condition; never once having been taken out of their clear plastic packages, and never once having been ‘played with’ like some lesser ‘toys’.
These beautiful collectables were Lyra’s most prized possessions: her collection of Human™ action figures from the My Big Human comic book series. (Which, by the way, she was also privileged to own the complete series)
Each individual figure was unique, colorful, and well designed with obvious quality craftponyship. She knew everything there was to know about this collection of figures, issue date, initial artist, the characters themselves.
And, more importantly, the fact that there were supposed to be twelve figures in her collection. Not eleven.
Clearly somepony had stolen one of her figures, and considering Lyra had only trusted such an important collection’s location to two ponies, one of which being herself, there could only be one possible culprit. All she needed was a confession.
Lyra swept her hoof in a grand motion towards the looming mountain of furniture.
“Do you notice anything different?”
Bon-Bon stared emotionlessly at the stacks of wood and linens.
“You decided to rearrange our bedroom.”
Lyra stared in shock at her captive as she tried to recompose herself. Did the theiftess think this some kind of joke? Did she think it in good taste to soil the grave nature of her offense with dry humor? The very notion that there existed a pony so low as to mock Lyra’s unwarranted misfortune soiled the unicorn’s pure soul. She’d have to take a break from the interrogation and cuddle some puppies whilst eating a jar of chocolates in order to replace the innocence she’d been so shamefully robbed of.
She’d have to stop by that Fluttershy pony’s place to see if she could borrow some puppies real quick. The butter pegasus would understand, she was basically the spitting image of innocence, kindness, grace, and some other words she’d heard the fancy Canterlot ponies use that one time she visited. Though even with the puppies taken care of, that was only half of the cleansing ritual. She’d still need an entire jar of the sweetest chocolates fresh from the hooves of a loving grandmother.
It was too bad Lyra didn’t know a loving grandmother. Maybe she could ask BonBon? The mare made the best chocolate, plus she was always complaining. Just like a real grandma! She’d just have to untie her real quick and-
Oh. Oh no. Uh-uh nuh-uh. Nice try un-best pony. It was a clever attempted diffraction, but it took more than petty mind tricks to throw Lyra off her game. The unicorn was quite a bit more tactically geniuser, after all. She had a fancy degree and everything.
Lyra narrowed her eyes. It was time to demonstrate her superior wordplay.
“I don’t think you understand the question,” began the unicorn, “Do you notice anything missing?”
“Yeah, order.”
Okay, that one was kinda funny. On any other day Lyra would have at least provided a courtesy chuckle, but her patience for verbal jousting had to run thin.
“Enough games!”
The unicorn jumped on top of the interrogation table and shoved her face into her captive’s. The startled earth pony tried to lean away from her, but her fixated chair prevented her from escaping Lyra’s completely justifiable fury.
If the traitorous wench insisted on doing things the hard way, then she would have to stay and face the wrath of a unicorn with nothing left to lose and only two days until retirement.
Unfortunately, Lyra couldn’t find a unicorn like that on such short notice, so the traitor would just have to face an angry Lyra who technically didn’t actually have a “real” job.
“My first edition Rainbow Power palette-swap Naycholas Cage from the second series of My Big Human figurines is missing! And you were the only pony I even considered entrusting with its location! So you’re going to tell me...” Lyra reached behind the pony formerly known as BonBon, and switched on the Lamp of Truth before shining it in her hostage’s face.
“What in the nine/eight levels of Tartarus did you do with my collectable figurine!?”
There was no escaping it now. No more lies. No more tricks. Lyra had gotten out the Lamp of Truth, which meant the convicted would be forced to break down in hysterics before babbling out a confession. The cops in comic books did this all the time, like in the My Big Human comic issue fourteen. Where Abraham Lincolt and Batman had been falsely accused of-
“Wait, you mean that ugly doll thing?”
Lyra slowly nodded, though her collectable figurine was most assuredly not ugly. It was eccentric.
“I sold it.”
Wait, what? Well then that couldn’t possibly be right. The stupid Truth Lamp must be broken again because there is no possible way that the pony sitting across from her would commit such a deeply scarring and emotionally obliterating transgression. Like, heh, she was evil, but not, like, that evil. Right?
Right!?
Oh dearest Princess Sparkle, please let her have simply misheard.
“What, uh, what did you just say?” asked the baffled unicorn, though it came out more as a half whisper.
“We needed some extra money to pay for that hole in the wall you made doing your last, ahem, ‘grand experiment’, so I sold it to that Time Turner stallion.”
Yep. Nope. Definitely heard right.
At this point, Lyra wasn’t sure her jaw could open any further. How could Bon-Bon say something like that so calmly!? Like it was no big deal! ‘Hey Lyra, I just sold one of your most prized possessions to your mortal enemy. Hope you don’t mind.’ Well Lyra did mind! Lyra minded a whole heaping bunch! Not only had the one pony that she trusted with her figures’ location burned that trust to the ground faster than Lyra’s last attempt at making dinner, but now Time Turner wasn’t going to shut up about the newest addition to his collection at the next MBH club meeting!
There was only one appropriate response to such information, and Lyra’s most eloquent brain decided to deliver it in the most profound of ways.
“Buh, wah, how could- why!?”
The she-demon rolled her eyes.
“Oh quit being so dramatic, you’ve got another one exactly like it.”
“Another just-! Puh! That ‘other one’ is a normal series two Naycholas Cage. Not the highly sought after and extremely rare series two Naycholas Cage with a Rainbow Power palette-swap! There’re only, like, a hundred of those in existence!”
The unicorn was beginning to hyperventilate; her figure, in Time Turner’s hooves! The situation couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Of course, having lived in Ponyville for almost her entire life, the unicorn knew that she was going to be proven wrong.
“Relax Lyra, it’s just a toy.”
Just a- relax- toy!
An unexpected error has occurred, please restart your Lyra.
The unicorn sat frozen atop the table, her gaze locked downwards as her cascading ice blue hair hid her face from view.
After almost a minute, the unicorn had finally recovered enough to speak, though her words were so quiet that even Fluttershy would have had trouble hearing them.
“Getout.”
The shyster blinked in confusion.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear you.”
The unicorn huffed and spun around to face away from the prevaricator.
“I said get out! Leave! Skedaddle! It’s clear to me that you value our relationship as much as the trust you’ve spat on. We. Are. Through. You may show yourself the door.”
A sigh sounded from behind the green unicorn, though she refused to dignify it with her attention.
“Okay Lyra. First of all, I’m still tied to this chair, so I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. Second, this is my house. If anypony was going to be leaving, it would be you. Third, seriously? All of this over a toy?”
Lyra whipped back around to face the crusher of lives.
“It’s not ‘just a toy!’ It’s a first edition palette swap. It’s worth more than Princess Celestia’s right slipper! Not only that, but you sold my beloved figure to Time Turner of all ponies! Time Turner! You know I hate that guy!”
Lyra once again spun away from the object of her anguish, crossing her forelegs to further pronounce her distaste.
After another sigh, Lyra heard the worm-tongue speak up.
“Fine. What can I do to make it up to you?”
Hah! So the treasonist wished to repent for her sins? Well unfortunately for her, Lyra was in no way the forgiving type.
“There is nothing that could possibly make up for this grievous offense.” The unicorn furthered her point by splaying her ears flat against her head. She didn’t want to hear any of the snake’s petty consolations.
“What if I got your doll back?”
“Impossible.”
“Couldn’t I just buy a new one?”
“Heresy.”
“How about I make you a great big batch of your favorite mints?”
“Incomparable!”
The fencer went quiet after that, hopefully to contemplate her horrible, stupid, ugly, stupid, existence in her stupid, evil life.
“What if...” began She Who Shall Not Be Named, “What if I...”
“Stay your words, defrauder. There’s nothing you could do to erase this glaring stain from our relationship. The sea of history shall forever remember your betrayal.”
“What if I helped you with your... project?”
Hang on a tick, was the chouser being serious? Without turning her head, the unicorn swiveled her ears to make sure she was hearing clearly.
“I thought you said it was a, quote, ‘incomparably wasteful expenditure of time and resources,’ end quote.”
A sigh greeted the unicorn’s ears.
“Yes Lyra, I did. However, if we put this whole mess behind us, then I’ll help you with your... Ugh, project.”
Lyra couldn’t believe it. This was probably the greatest news of her entire life! On one hoof, she still wanted to be mad at Bon-Bon for selling her figurine. On the other hoof, who the hay needed figures of humans when she would be meeting the real things! She was already almost done building her inter-dimensional portal, but with Bon-Bon’s help she’d be trotting around the human world in nearly half the time!
The sound of a throat clearing interrupted the unicorn’s excitement.
“So, do we have an agreement?”
Lyra turned and smiled at the cream colored mare.
“I can’t even remember what we were arguing about.”
Bon-Bon smiled back at the mint unicorn, just as Lyra jumped off her table and began dancing around the room.
“This is going to be soooo great! Just think about it! You and me, the first ponies ever on Earth! We’ll meet humans, and drive automobiles, and watch television, and eat chemically enhanced produce, and participate in underhoofed politics, and join riots, and meet the real Haymes Bond; oh I just can’t wait! I’ve already got the preliminary designs for the portal laid out, so if you help with the actual construction, we’ll be out of here by Hearth’s Warming! I’m just so excited to have somepony help out! We’ve gotta get started right away!”
Lyra stopped in her dance of excitement before dashing out of the room and down a hallway towards her basement. She thought she heard somepony shouting from back in the interrogation room, but that would have to wait until later. There was science to be done; all with the help of her new assistant.
Wait, where was her assistant?
Author's Note
Whelp. There goes my firstest fanfic ever.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
