L-B-X ~Lyra-Bon Bon Extreme~

Chapters

The TBS Teasers / A Scattering of Ideas (Noncanon Draft)
The L Arrives / Beware the B
A Matter of T

The TBS Teasers / A Scattering of Ideas (Noncanon Draft)

Author's Note

This chapter contains the three scene ideas I first had for this story in almost the exact form I thought of them; they are not directly connected nor interdependent, but that usually comes later in the writing process. The full-length story I eventually came up with does not involve most of these scenes, and several Rider System details were changed, but I'm keeping them here because I still like them. As such, the “actual” story outside of this chapter does not correlate to any of what is written here, so this one is entirely skippable without loss of understanding. In detail:
The B Teaser has been picked up for an almost seamless adaptation into a later point in my story.
The S Teaser, while many of the story elements it featured will be applied, the actual events will probably not be needed to showcase them, as they would be introduced individually far sooner than this event could happen.
The T Teaser, then, I’m still on the fence about. On the one hand, it could factor its aspects in like S, but on the other, it seems to serve best as a general cold-open introduction (like a pre-airing pilot episode), which the finalized story doesn’t have.

(The content of the former Author’s Note and “fourth scene” of exposition have been removed so as to not give away future story developments for new readers.)

The TBS Teasers / A Scattering of Ideas (Noncanon Draft)

Bon Bon awoke to find herself with her hands tied behind the back of a chair. In her line of work, this was bound to happen eventually. Actually, it had already happened a few times, which is why she was already working on secretly untying herself. To pass the time, she decided to take a look at the room she was trapped in. It was generic enough: roughly box-shaped, white plaster walls, lamps hanging down from the tall ceiling, one door on the wall to her left, the chair she was tied to sitting in the middle of the floor, and a table in front of her. On the table sat a box with several clear plastic objects in it. Upon seeing them, she pulled at the rope around her wrists. No good, yet.

Then the door opened, and a man in a suit walked in. He had dark gray skin and pale teal hair that was styled in a slightly curved-back mohawk, sort of clashing with the “official” look the suit was trying to give. He picked up the box off the table and held it in front of Bon Bon. It had six rectangular slots on the top of it in a 2-by-3 pattern, five of which were filled with transparent plastic objects that resembled flash drives.

“My, my,” he said, “now this is quite the collection of Gaia Memories you’ve got here.” He put a pair of fingers on the brown and light gray Memories on the bottom row. “Two.” He moved his fingers to the white and darker gray Memories in the middle row. “Four.” He moved his fingers to the top row, but paused at the lone pale beige Memory. “Five. Now, it seems to me like this case is capable of holding a full set of six.”

“I’m planning ahead,” Bon Bon said simply.

“I’m going to put this plainly,” said the man. “Where’s the green Memory?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bon Bon replied in a sweet-sounding voice.

The man took a breath before pausing with an open mouth, and, trying to sound as friendly as he could, said, “We’ve seen you with a green L Memory before, one that is…of particular interest to us. Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” Bon Bon said very matter-of-factly.

“Wrong answ—”

“With me,” Bon Bon added, “but I can get it for you.”

Somewhere in a large dimly lit multi-floored hangar-like room, a girl with pale green skin and minty green hair, who was listening through Bon Bon’s mind to the conversation while reading five books at once, looked up. She took another sip from the straw in her mouth before slamming the wheat cola cup down on the floor of metal grating in front of her.

“Show time,” Lyra said, before jumping up.

“How about you just tell me where it is,” the man continued, “and I’ll go get it. It’ll save you the trouble of a trip, and it’ll save me the risk of letting you go.”

Bon Bon smiled as the rope tied around her wrists fell limp. “No need. I can have it right here as easy as three…”

Back in the hangar, Lyra dashed across the walkway portion of the second level’s metal grating floor, skidding to a stop at the far end to leap down to the first floor below. She landed feet first and dove forward, rolling over once so her feet were flat on the ground again, before pushing off and sprinting the last few steps. She turned around in midair, landing with force back-first into the large red cushioned chair in front of an assortment of display screens, letting it spin a few times from momentum as it slowed to a stop. She loved doing that.

“…two…,” Bon Bon continued.

“One green Gaia Memory coming right up!” Lyra said with excitement as she held up in her left hand a transparent light green Gaia Memory with a script ‘L’ fashioned after half a lyre on the center front. She clicked a button below the letter with her index finger.
Lyra

She then slid the Memory into the rightmost of two red slots attached to the silver gadget setup strapped around her waist like a belt, a green flash coming from the Memory as it clicked in. It then glowed and dissolved into what resembled green streams of code that faded away. Lyra put her hands behind her head and lay back.

“…one.” A green light started glowing from the right side of the fanny pack strapped around Bon Bon’s waist. Bon Bon smiled up at the man. “See?”

With a puzzled look, he reached down and unzipped the top of the pack. He tried to look inside, but as he pulled the flap forward, the zipper continued to slide down the side and then across the bottom before the whole pack came loose and pulled off.

“What the?” he said as he dropped the empty pack before looking back and seeing strapped to Bon Bon’s waist the same type of red and silver belt device that Lyra had been wearing, with a light green Gaia Memory sitting loosely in the right slot.

Before he had a chance to react, Bon Bon kicked up with her right leg, hitting the box out of his hand and knocking the five Gaia Memories loose and into the air. Dropping the rope that had bound her hands, she jumped out of the chair, bringing her right foot back down and kicking the chair back. Her left hand flew around and hit the top of the green Memory, pushing it down fully into the slot with a green flash. Her right hand shot up and snatched the pale beige Memory, bearing a script ‘B’, out of midair, her finger clicking the button on the front.
BonBon

She slammed it down into the left slot on the red and silver device with a blue and pink flash, and then with both hands pushed the two Memory slots out to the sides, pivoting at their bases, making the assemblage now resemble a capital ‘W’.
LyraBonBon

Bon Bon spread her arms open in a “come at me” stance. A pale green script ‘L’ with a darker green outline and a pale beige script ‘B’ with a blue and pink outline appeared in front of the red belt device. The ‘L’ then rotated down forward and the ‘B’ rotated up backward, letting the images of half of a gold lyre and half of a cluster of three blue and yellow wrapped candies rotate into the letters’ respective former positions. The half-and-half image disappeared into a flash, and green, blue, and pink electric bolts shot out into swirling rings of the same colors, which broke apart into a cloud of debris that flew onto Bon Bon starting from the feet up, assembling itself into a full-body suit of light armor that was pale green on the right half and pale beige on the left half separated by a silver double line down the middle. Each side bore a wristband, ankle band, shoulder pad border, and ‘V’-shaped stripe across the chest that was mint green for the right side and a double stripe of blue and pink for the left. A silver ‘V’ was attached to the forehead of the suit’s mask, with its arms spiking out like glaring eyebrows over a yellow right eye and a blue left eye, which flashed to signify the transformation was completed.

Bon Bon reached out and grabbed a Gaia Memory out of the air with each hand at once, reached again and grabbed the remaining two, and then turned and thrust her left leg forward, kicking the man in the chest and knocking him back, where he fell backwards over the table and took it down with him. Bon Bon put her right foot on the box, which had fallen to the floor, and flipped it back, catching it on her foot before tossing it back into the air where she caught in between her Memory-holding hands, clicking it onto the right side of her belt. She held up the four Memories in front of her to check them, then clicked them into their slots in the box. Behind the fallen table, the man staggered back to his feet. The green right side of Bon Bon’s armor suit stepped forward and pointed at the man.

“So, you wanted that green Memory so badly, huh?” said Lyra’s voice as the suit’s yellow right eye lit up with each word. “Let’s see how much you still want it after this.”

The man only smiled and breathed a brief laugh before reaching into his suit and holding up a Gaia Memory of his own, this one almost black and bearing a ‘T’ fashioned after a lightning bolt shooting from a cloud. He clicked the button on it.
Thunderlane

He turned the Memory in his fingers so the connector was facing out, then reached behind him and plugged the Memory into his back. A dark swirling cloud encircled his body as lightning began flashing around him. Bon Bon took a step back.

“Uhhh oh,” she and Lyra’s voice said together.

The wall of the hallway outside burst open as Bon Bon was knocked through it, hitting the far wall as the electricity from the hit dissipated off her armor. She quickly got up and leapt out of the way of another yellow lightning bolt as it flew out of the hole in the wall and zapped the spot she’d been rammed into. Getting back to her feet, she turned back up the hallway towards the hole.

“Okay,” Lyra’s voice said, the yellow eye lighting up, “maybe my Memory isn’t the best one for this situation.” Under Lyra’s control, Bon Bon’s right hand reached down and turned the belt’s Memory slots back vertical, sliding the green Memory out. Lyra put the Memory into the top right slot in the box before reaching down and taking out the brown Memory from the bottom row. She held it up and hit the button. “Let’s try this one, instead.”
TimeTurner

She slid the Memory into the right slot before pushing the slots back outward.
TimeTurnerBonBon

A brown script ‘T’ outlined in darker brown and the same ‘B’ as before appeared in front of the belt, rotating to make a yellow hourglass and blue and yellow wrapped candies half-and-half image. The image disappeared in a flash, and a wave of energy flowed right from the suit’s silver dividing line, turning the green half to brown. Though the mint green bands became dark brown, the suit’s eye stayed yellow.

Bon Bon took on a fighting stance as a rumble of thunder echoed out of the hole, before something stepped out. It looked like a person-shaped black storm cloud monster, with flashes of yellow lightning jumping back and forth over its surface between random points. This was the Thunderlane Dopant.

The Dopant threw out its arm and shot a lightning bolt at Bon Bon, but this time, the TimeTurner Memory activated its power. The lightning bolt, and in fact the entire scene around her, slowed to a crawl, and she sidestepped to the left, letting speeds return to normal and the bolt fly harmlessly past her.

Surprised, the Dopant shot another lightning bolt, but Bon Bon slowed it again, this time jumping to the right to dodge. Bon Bon ran forward at the Dopant, which shot a third lightning bolt, and Bon Bon slowed it yet again to jump up over the attack and the Dopant, in midair pushing the Memory slots back vertical and pulling her Memory out of the left slot, sliding in the darker gray one before pushing the Memory slots back outward and touching down crouched behind the Dopant.
TimeTurnerOctavia

The brown script ‘T’ and a black-outlined gray script ‘O’ appeared in front of the red Driver belt, rotating into a yellow hourglass/pink G-clef note half-and-half image which disappeared in a flash. A wave of energy swept left from the silver dividing line, and the left half of Bon Bon’s armor turned gray and the bands black, the suit’s eye staying blue, and a cello bow materializing, strung over her left shoulder.

She reached behind her back with her right hand to grab the handle of the bow, whipping it back around to the front before standing and spinning right, slicing the Dopant across the back and causing a spray of sparks. It staggered forward and turned to see her holding the bow sideways against the forward-facing palm of her left hand, and the bow’s string start to glow pink.

“Insert clever music-based comment here,” Bon Bon said.

“Original,” commented Lyra’s voice.

The Dopant lunged forward, but Bon Bon’s right foot flew up to intercept it, and she slashed it with the bow to knock it back, sending a spray of sparks flying. She ran up to slash it again, but the Dopant swiped its left arm out, hitting the bow and sending an electrified jolt through it and up Bon Bon’s arm. She spun and kicked her left leg around at it, but it threw its right arm at her. Literally. The cloud arm surrounded itself in lightning and broke off, flying forward and hitting her in the chest, dissipating in the process, and knocking her back up the hallway. Still shaking from the electric discharge, Bon Bon stood back up, watching the Dopant’s right arm reform with a fresh rush of storm clouds from the rest of its body.

“You have too much energy,” Lyra’s voice said, the right arm under her control raising the bow it was holding and Bon Bon holding out her left arm. “How ’bout a lullaby to send you off to sleep?”

The Dopant gathered lightning around itself before charging forward, but Bon Bon held her left arm up in a defensive position. Lyra then set the bow against the gray-armored arm and slowly slid it across, pink sound waves emanating from the string’s contact point with the arm. The waves washed across the Dopant, making it stop in place. It charged up more lightning on itself, but Lyra pulled the bow back across the arm, a second round of pink sound waves washing over the Dopant, making the lightning flashes subside. The Dopant’s balance wavered and it staggered as if it was falling asleep where it stood, which it sorta was.

“Now let’s finish this,” Bon Bon said. Leaving the Driver’s slots angled outward, Bon Bon pulled the Octavia Memory out of the Driver’s left Memory slot and plugged it into the bottom of the bow’s handle.
Octavia

She held the bow horizontal against her raised palm, and the string again started glowing pink.
MaximumDrive

“Octavia! Rapid Crescendo!” Bon Bon and Lyra’s voice shouted together.

Bon Bon jumped forward. The Dopant shot another bolt of lightning at her, but she slowed it and ducked sideways to avoid it. Stopping right in front of the Dopant, she struck forward with the bow, skidding it to the left across the Dopant’s midsection as if it was a cello, sending a spray of sparks and leaving behind a glowing pink streak. Before it could react, she quickly slid the bow back to the right across the same path, then back to the left then the right again and again at increasingly blurring speeds, each swipe making the pink streak grow larger. After one final swipe to the left, she gripped the bow tighter and spun to swing it to the right, a pink trail streaking from the bow’s tip as she slashed it right and down across the Dopant. A large shower of sparks flew from it as it was knocked back, and the force of the swipe spun her a half turn to face away as the storm cloud Dopant exploded into a burst of flames.

The man fell back into the wall and bounced forward, landing facedown on the ground, and the Thunderlane Memory skidded away from him across the floor. A gray foot coming down stopped the Memory. Bon Bon picked it up, tossing and catching it again.

“I’ll be taking that,” she said. She pulled the Octavia Memory out of the bow and turned her Driver’s Memory slots vertical again, taking out the TimeTurner Memory. The armor and bow shattered away as the Lyra Memory dissolved into green code from its slot in the box.

Bon Bon held up the three Memories in her hands before clicking them into the three empty box slots. She then took a black strip from a nearby pocket and flicked it. The strip popped open into a black fedora, which she slipped onto her head as she started running up the hallway to look for a way out of the building.

* * *

Bon Bon pushed the doors open and stepped into bar. She scanned the scene. About half the seats filled in an uneven pattern, at least twice as many glasses sitting on the tables as people in the seats, the ambience of indistinguishable chattering. Yep, this was your average run-of-the-mill bar, be that a good thing or not. Let’s get this over with, she thought.

She started across the room to the specified row of stools. In the process of passing parallel to another row along the side, some guy spun around on his barstool to face her.

“He-llo—”

“Not happening,” she said without looking over and kept walking. The guy paused with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds, then, still his posture still frozen, used his foot to turn his stool back around to the bar.

“Ooh,” Bon Bon heard someone sitting near the guy say, “shot down and shut down!”

She rolled her eyes as she reached the appointed spot and sat down. She didn’t like these kinds of places, and that was part of the reason why. She wouldn’t even have been here, had she not been asked to by her latest client. The anonymous client had wanted to meet here as opposed to at Bon Bon’s detective office for reasons of their own. They probably figured that a crowded public place was more secure for discussing potentially sensitive information than an isolated office designed for such discussions for…some reason. She’d never got that line of thinking. If they didn’t want to be seen approaching a private detective, why didn’t they just wear a heavy jacket and a hat while walking to their offices?

Naturally, her suspicion meter had gone into the red at this request, which was partly to blame for some of her projected apprehensiveness. She didn’t want any unneeded wildcard factors to have the chance to distract her. Still, she liked taking on these “ordinary” kinds of cases, those that were firmly rooted in the regular world and not in some way tied to Gaia Memories. They helped to serve as an anchor point for her life, to keep her grounded and able to see just how insane some of the Memory-related stuff could get. Unfortunately, Gaia Memories were so unpredictable that they could surface at any time, so Bon Bon never went anywhere on a case without her Double Driver and set of Memories, whether or not she expected to use them.

Bon Bon was pulled back into the moment by glimpsing something out of the corner of her eye. It was a woman with pale violet skin and puffy purple hair making her way up the row stool by stool from Bon Bon’s right. She wondered if this could be—

“Hey-llo,” the woman said in the same tone as the guy from before.

“Really?” Bon Bon said in annoyance, failing to stop herself from throwing her hands up.

Bon Bon turned to the woman, seeing that she had some sort of spider-looking tattoo or something pattern over her lips, and an absentminded stare in her eyes. On a rather solid hunch, Bon Bon held her finger up in front of the woman’s face and moved it back and forth. Her eyes didn’t follow.

“Look,” Bon Bon said in the kindest sounding voice she could muster, which wasn’t much, “I’m here to meet with someone specific, and I don’t want someone like you scaring them off by being…”—the woman hiccuped—“that. I’m sure you can’t comprehend a word I’m saying, but could you just, y’know…scram?”

The woman turned and slowly slid away back down the counter. Bon Bon turned forward and went back to waiting. Then she heard a clattering behind her, and turned to see the woman trying to push her way through the crowd of patrons.

“What the?” Bon Bon whispered. Then a thought hit her. She looked down at her right hip to see that the zipper on the cover for the Gaia Memory case was partly open. She yanked the cover completely open and saw the case. The top and middle rows were empty.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Bon Bon cried, looking up and seeing a cluster of Memories held tightly in the woman’s left hand. She pointed and shouted across the barroom, “Hey! Stop her, she has my—uh…” How could she talk about Gaia Memories in public without giving anything away?

The woman looked around at the eyes jumping to her and, seeing that her escape would no longer be covert, turned back to Bon Bon. She raised a small clear purple object in her right hand and clicked something on it.
BerryPunch

Bon Bon was disappointed that she wasn’t as surprised as she thought she’d have been. “Oh, every time.”

The woman flipped the Gaia Memory upside down in her hand, and Bon Bon now realized that the strange tattoo pattern over her lips looked exactly like a Living Connector. The woman tipped her head back and plugged the Memory into the Connector as if she was chugging a bottle. The Memory glowed and was absorbed into her before she was engulfed in a burst of liquid. In her place now stood what was apparently the BerryPunch Dopant: a monstrous amalgamation with the body and head of strawberries and limbs made of grape clusters. The patrons that had gathered around the suspected thief slowly began reacting and started to flee, many trying to climb onto tables, those with sense left about them heading for the doors.

“Why?” Bon Bon continued to groan. She pulled the zipper of the fanny pack around her waist all the way around, tearing the pack off and tossing it aside, revealing the Double Driver that it was the pack’s sole purpose to conceal, and grabbed the Driver’s right Memory slot.

Off in the underground hangar, Lyra was sitting on the metal grating second floor, holding a small vial in one hand and a mini brush in the other, trying to paint her nails. It was something she’d heard about females often doing in the outside world, and had decided to try it for herself while Bon Bon was off working a case that she wasn’t needed for.

“Lyra!” Bon Bon’s voice suddenly shouted in her head. A jolt of surprise jumped through Lyra, and she immediately dropped the vial and brush, her leg kicking out and knocking over several more of the vials arranged in front of her. She quickly tried grabbing and standing the vials back up, only managing to knock others over in the process, as Bon Bon’s voice continued. “A Dopant just went and stole half the Memories, including mine!” Upon hearing that, Lyra looked over and down to—“Don’t you dare try to get to your favorite chair first! I don’t want any delay!”

Lyra fumbled to pull out her Memory and hit the button as quickly as she could. Bon Bon was not someone to mess with when she was angry.
Lyra

Lyra slammed the Memory into the right slot on her Driver with a green flash, and the Memory glowed and dissolved into streams of code. In the right Memory slot of Bon Bon’s Driver, streams of green code materialized into the Lyra Memory. Bon Bon took out the light gray Memory from the bottom left slot of her box.

“Hey, look,” said the guy from before, walking up on her left, “if you could just give me another chance, I think that…” Bon Bon turned her head and gave him a blank stare. Then she clicked the button on the Memory.
Derpy

Keeping the blank stare on him, she pushed the Lyra Memory fully into its slot with a green flash before shoving the Derpy Memory into the left Driver slot with a pale yellow flash and pushing the slots to angle outward.
LyraDerpy

A mint green-outlined pale green script ‘L’ and a pale yellow-outlined light gray script ‘D’ appeared in front of the Driver before rotating into a lyre/bubbles half-and-half image, disappearing with a flash that shot green and yellow electric bolts out into swirling rings that broke apart into a cloud of debris which assembled itself onto Bon Bon as a light armor suit pale green with a yellow eye on the right half and light gray with a blue eye on the left half. The eyes flashed to signal that the transformation was complete.

“R-right…,” the guy said, slowly turning and walking away again. Bon Bon turned back to the Dopant.

The BerryPunch Dopant seemed surprised at Bon Bon’s transformation, taking a step back. It seemed to try and speak, but only managed to gurgle before hiccuping. A small crowd of bar patrons who apparently thought it was a good idea had begun approaching the Dopant as if to fight it. The Dopant swung its right arm at them, throwing a barrage of large grapes at them. Upon impact, the grapes burst like water balloons, drenching the people in some purple liquid resembling grape juice. It then swung its other arm, throwing more apparent grape juice balloons at patrons on the other side. Bon Bon watched as the affected people began staggering aimlessly around the bar, but consistently forming a blockade between her and the Dopant.

The Dopant tilted its head and waved at her before turning and making a beeline for the door. Bon Bon looked down at her right hand.

“It probably won’t work,” Lyra’s voice said, the suit’s yellow eye flashing. “They don’t seem to be listening to anything right now.”

“You’re right,” Bon Bon said, preparing to raise her left arm. “Guess it’s a good thing this is one she didn’t take.” Bon Bon jumped up and threw her left arm into the air, a giant bubble inflating from her hand that let her float forward over the staggering crowd. “Give back those Memories, Dopant, before I—”

The Dopant turned and swung its arm and let loose another barrage of grapes at Bon Bon, hitting and drenching her and bursting the bubble. As she began falling from the air, she felt her mind cloud and her vision blur. Suddenly her right hand, under Lyra’s control, grabbed her left arm and pointed it down, another bubble inflating from her left hand a second before hitting the ground. She rammed into the bubble instead, a much softer hit, and it slowly deflated, easing her to the floor.

Bon Bon looked up to see what she figured was the Dopant escaping through the door as several ghostly images of both it and the door drifted back and forth across her vision. She struggled to her feet and ran forward, bursting through the doors into the nighttime street outside. She looked around frantically, and though she couldn’t see clearly, she saw enough to tell that the dark street was also empty. She let herself stagger back and leaned against the door frame for support.

“And she’s gone,” Bon Bon breathed, exasperated. “I’ll even bet she was my anonymous ‘client’ all along.”

“I think that this resembles the state one is left in after consuming copious amounts of a particular beverage,” Lyra’s voice observed. “I’ve come across many sources all but praising it, but if this is what it’s like, then I can’t imagine why.”

Bon Bon sighed at Lyra’s tangent. “I guess the key is when you’re in this state you don’t notice it, or you don’t remember it afterwards.” She pushed the Driver slots back vertical and pulled out the two Memories. Her armor shattered around her as the Lyra Memory faded into streams of code.

Back in the hangar, streams of green code reassembled themselves into the Lyra Memory in the right slot of Lyra’s Driver. Lyra opened her eyes and pushed herself up from the floor into a sitting position, seeing that she had fallen into and again spilled the vials of nail paint. She wiped a hand across her cheek and found it dripping with the paint. She slapped her hand onto the floor in frustration.

* * *

Bon Bon was climbing through an air vent. Despite how cliché and paramount this was for the spy and detective genres, she’d actually never done this herself before. She now also wondered why anyone had before, as it was extremely cramped in this square passageway and every tap against the flat metal walls sounded like it echoed throughout the entire building. It was also a rather nice day outside, meaning that the building had decided not to employ its air conditioner today, and the air here in the ducts was rather still and stuffy.

Meanwhile, Lyra was, as usual, sitting back in her cushioned chair in the luxuriously cooled hangar secretly located underneath their detective offices. She wasn’t doing much right now, just waiting for Bon Bon to encounter some sort of trouble and need assistance through the Double Driver. Sometimes she did other things while she waited, but nothing had perked her interest today.

Lyra yawned. She spun her chair around again, letting it slowly bring itself to a stop. She’d almost locked down the equation for how long it would take to stop after a push of a given force, and which direction it would be pointing when it did. She knew that such equations already existed, but she liked solving puzzles herself first before checking her work. As she’d correctly guessed, she eased to a stop facing the display screens for the security cameras. Her eyes shot open at what she saw.

On the feed from outside the front door, a group of three men and two women was slowly approaching. The one who stood out the most, and was likely the leader of the group, was the woman with red and yellow hair standing at the back. She motioned her arm forward, and to of the others walked up to the door. Lyra knew the sign in the window said that “The Detective is Out”, but that apparently didn’t stop them from pulling at the locked door.

“Uh-oh,” Lyra whispered to herself. She reached down and grabbed her Double Driver. “Uh, Bon Bon, bit of a problem here.”

Bon Bon stopped crawling as she heard Lyra’s voice in her head.

“What’s the matter,” she responded with a huff, “does your mini-fridge need restocking? I’m a little busy here.”

Lyra leaned forward and clicked on the camera’s audio feed.

“If you need to use a Memory to bust open a door…,” said the red and yellow haired woman as she pulled her palm from her face, aiming it up and fanning her fingers out with a flick of her wrist in a sign Lyra had come to associate with frustrated annoyance.

“Unless a team of Gaia Memory-wielding people are closing in on your position as we speak,” Lyra said, “I think this should take priority.” There was no immediate response. “You there, Bon Bon?”

“Huh?” Bon Bon finally said. “Y-yeah, it’s just…that’s kinda sudden, are you sure? How did they find it?”

“You do advertise it,” Lyra pointed out.

“That I’m a detective, yes,” Bon Bon said, “but not a Kamen Rider.” She worked her way to a corner in the vent shaft so she had enough room to maneuver into a sitting position. “Since I’m all the way across town, I won’t be able to come to your rescue, so you’re on your own.” This time there was no response from Lyra’s end. “Lyra, did you hear…wait. You’re in your zone again, aren’t you?”

Lyra was indeed “in her zone”, head down and eyes closed, the state of mind where she could skim the surface of the information hidden deep in her mind. It’s where she’d been just before she’d stopped Bon Bon from using her own Gaia Memory on herself, and it’s where she’d gotten her information about Dopants and how to deal with them. She’d often try this to get them out of a seemingly impossible puzzle, though it didn’t always work. This time, Lyra just hoped there was something in there she could use. Some source of inspiration… Suddenly a thought hit her. She looked up and said, “Reverse the Memories.”

“What?” said Bon Bon.

“Put your Memory into the Driver’s right slot,” Lyra explained, “and see if it gets transferred to my Driver.”

“Do the Drivers even work that way?” Bon Bon said. “That sounded a lot less certain than usual. Is this another thing you just seem to know, or are you guessing?”

An alarm went off in the hangar as a red light on the control board underneath the screens started flashing, prompting Lyra to check the feed again. From a camera inside the office, she could see the intruders filing in and fanning out.

“Well we’d better find out quick,” she said, “they’re inside right now!”

“Okay then,” Bon Bon said, propping herself up against the vent wall. She took out her Gaia Memory and hit the button, hoping that anyone nearby really didn’t care about suspiciously loud voice-like noises coming from the inactive air vents. “Here goes nothing.”
BonBon

She clicked the Memory into the right slot on her Driver with a blue and pink flash. A second later, it dissolved into streams of blue and pink code, and Bon Bon leaned back as she felt herself blacking out...

Streams of blue and pink code materialized into the BonBon Memory in the right slot of Lyra’s Driver.

“So far, so good,” Lyra said, standing in the middle of the hangar’s lower floor and clicking the button on her Memory.
Lyra

She pushed the BonBon Memory fully into the slot with a blue and pink flash, then shoved her Memory into the left slot with a green flash, and pushing the Memory slots outward.
BonBon Lyra

The script beige ‘B’ and green ‘L’ appeared in front of the Driver and rotated into a trio of wrapped candies/lyre half-and-half image, which disappeared in a flash and shot out blue, pink, and green lightning that formed rings of the same colors, breaking apart into a cloud of debris that assembled itself onto Lyra as Bon Bon’s usual armor, but this time with the left half being green with a yellow eye and the right being pale beige with a blue eye. The eyes flashed to signal the transformation complete.

“Whoa,” said Bon Bon’s voice as the blue right eye lit up. “This feels weird.”

“You get used to it,” Lyra said.

“Speaking of,” Bon Bon’s voice continued, “maybe you’ve been locked up in here for too long, I mean, do you even have muscles? We need to install a home gym in here. I say exercise should be your next escapade into our culture.”

“Really?” said Lyra as she started making her way to the emergency side tunnel exit. “You’re gonna get into that now? And I thought you physically having the rest of the Memories with your unconscious body was our only problem.”

“You go off on worse tangents all the time while I’m trying to concentrate,” Bon Bon’s voice countered.

“No I don’t,” Lyra said as the tunnel door slid open, revealing a vertical shaft with a series of handles running up the side. “Do I?”

”Do you even listen to what you’re talking about or realize how distracting it can be?”

“I…,” Lyra trailed off. Instead of responding, she just started climbing.

In the upstairs office, some of the intruders had returned to the woman with red and yellow hair empty-handed.

“Keep looking,” the woman said. “Of course they wouldn’t just be lying around out in the open. Can’t you think of these things yourself?”

“Not any better than the others,” one of them responded.

“You’re like a little kid,” continued Bon Bon’s voice. “You say you act like you do because you don’t know better, but there’s a point after which you should have learned by now.”

“Keep talking,” Lyra shot back as she kept climbing the mounted handles up the round metal-walled shaft, “that flashing eye might be enough that we won’t need the lights in here anymore.”

“At least I’m not the one who’s gonna feel this tomorrow,” Bon Bon’s voice said. Then she added more quietly, “Maybe this’ll give you a taste of what I’m always going through.”

“What do you mean?” Lyra asked, any previous maliciousness in her tone disappearing. “When you get knocked around in a battle, I feel it, too.”

“Wait, you do?” Bon Bon’s voice said in surprise. “You’ve never told me you did.”

“And why would I need to?” Lyra snapped. “It doesn’t affect you, does it?”

“Well, no, but,” said Bon Bon’s voice, sounding concerned, “it’s the kind of a thing…I mean, I just thought—”

“If we keep this up,” Lyra cut in, “Double will be too out of synch to function. Let’s just agree to settle this later, okay?”

Bon Bon paused. “Alright, then,” her voice said. “Which means I’m locking you in to there being a later, so let’s not lose this one.”

The woman was standing in a large, open, and largely empty warehouse-like room sitting adjacent to the detective agency. She had her lackeys searching it, this time not for hiding spots, but for trap doors or other secret entrances. She’d found nothing useful in the obvious rooms, and just knew there had to be others hidden somewhere. She also just knew that there was someone staring at her.

“Looking for me?” said a voice behind her. She turned to see Kamen Rider Double standing atop a large crate near the wall. The woman snapped her fingers, and her four-person entourage ran up and gathered in front of her.

“Hmm…,” the woman said, carefully analyzing the Rider. “You look different than usual.”

“Yeah,” Lyra said, “I think I like it this way better.”

“Hey!” cried Bon Bon’s voice with a flash of the blue eye.

Lyra jumped down from the crate and stepped towards the intruders. The woman snapped her fingers again. Each of the four people reached into a pocket—the same pocket for each—and pulled out what looked like dark gray Gaia Memories, but with something resembling rib cages reaching around from the back on the portions above and below the image at the center, which, instead of being a script letter, was on all four Memories an equal sign. They each clicked the buttons on their Memories in turn from left to right.
Equal
Equal
Equal
Equal

In the same order, they each sequentially dropped their Memories from their fingers to a full-hand grip, held out their left arms, and jammed the Equal Memories into an identically-placed Living Connector on their outer forearm. In a flash, each was outfitted in a black outfit whose chest, sleeves, and pant-legs were covered in a pattern of horizontal white lines resembling both a ribcage and equal signs. They each wore face masks bearing a similar pattern, though the white stripes here were physically raised off of the mask’s surface like ribs. Another snap from the woman, and they ran forward at once.

“I think have something you may want to have a listen to,” Lyra said.

She threw her right hand forward, and three blue and yellow-wrapped candies flew out at the Equal Dopants. They unwrapped in midair and grew to several times larger, hitting the ground by the Dopants’ feet and exploding into a large cloud of dust, making them skid to a stop.

“Oops,” Lyra said, lowering her right arm. “Right, gotta remember that everything is on the opposite side this time.”

“I was about to tell you that,” piped in Bon Bon’s voice.

“Every power is in the other hand,” Lyra continued to herself.

Lyra threw her left hand forward, and this time a gold lyre flew out, which she quickly clamped her fingers to catch. She passed the lyre to her right hand, and then brushed her left hand across the strings. Waves of green energy emulated from the humming strings, washing over the closest two of the Equal Dopants as the dust cloud cleared. The Dopants stopped and swayed, their eyes starting to glow green. Lyra brushed the strings again, in the process waving her hand and pointing at the other two Dopants. The two Dopants with green eyes turned at rushed the others, slamming into them and batting them wildly with their arms.

The woman stepped forward and gave a chuckle. “Ah,” she said as Lyra turned to face her, “now I see why we want the green one so badly.” She reached into her jacket and held up a yellow Gaia Memory bearing a script ‘S’ fashioned like a yin-yang symbol, clicking the button.
Sunset

Lyra looked on as the woman was engulfed in swirling red and yellow energy, getting rammed by a sudden wave of heat.

The L Arrives / Beware the B

Hello. My name is Bon Bon. I'm a private detective. Nice to meet you.

Running a private practice, work can be… inconsistent at times. Naturally, I have to supplement. If you ever met me, you'd think I just ran a small-time sweet shop. And I do – baking just comes naturally to me, so it's an easily maintainable cover. "Bon Bon's Bonbons", selling delicious candy bonbons, with free samples served in glass dish bonbons, all run by me, Bon Bon. Insert overused movie reference here (bwoooong). But you'll find my true business run out of the back. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find me, then consider your case taken by me, the ace detective, only used by those who know or by those who hear. Or, admittedly, by those who can read the small sign in the front window. What? I've gotta advertise somehow.

I've gotten all kinds of requests from the folks of this city. Sometimes, it was just a lost dog. But other times… it was a lost turtle. Tortoise, more accurately. Sure, I know what you're thinking: "Oh no, the tortoise escaped. Quick, check the front yard, maybe you'll catch it before it reaches the sidewalk." Well how was I supposed to know that this particular tortoise had some crazy propeller contraption strapped to its shell? That's when I figured out I really needed to invest in a helmet. At least I hadn't had to worry about paying for a haircut that month.

But for sure my biggest case ever, or at least my biggest case yet, whether I knew it or not, was sitting right in front of me.

“Alright, let’s start with the easy part again,” Bon Bon said with another sigh, resting her chin in her hands and joining her fingertips at the bridge of her nose. She had beige skin and long blue and pink hair with curls at the ends. “How did you get inside my shop?”

Across the desk from her, a young woman around her age with pale green skin and minty blue-green hair with a white stripe at the edge sat in a wooden chair, back arched forward with legs crossed and arms folded in, looking off at an angle. “I don’t remember,” she said absently.

This “interesting character” was under interrogation. Or at least she would be if she were answering anything. Just last night, she had, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly appeared in the basement of the building where Bon Bon’s detective agency was based—a room that had still been locked from the outside—with nothing on her but a locked silver briefcase. (And her clothes, of course—what were you thinking?) The alarm hadn’t gone off, and there was no sign of forced entry. And now she had the nerve to claim she didn’t know how she got in and, what was more, has no recollection, period.

“You don’t remember,” Bon Bon repeated as close to how she thought a psychiatrist would speak as she could. “Okay then, how about what you were doing in here?”

Her “guest” looked at something apparently interesting up on the ceiling. “I don’t remember,” she said again, with as little conviction as before.

“You’re not making this easy for either of us,” Bon Bon said, shutting her eyes for a second. Propping up her elbows, she laced her fingers into a net and rested her chin on it. “It’s a simple question: why were you here?”

“I don’t…,” the girl started to say yet again, but she stopped, looking back forward and staring through what was in front of her, instead seeing backwards, down into the deepest reaches of her mind. “It was something,” she said, for the first time sounding serious, “…something important.”

Progress? Bon Bon leaned forward with hope. “And what might this important thing have been?”

The girl paused for a second, thinking, eyes scrolling back and forth as if reading from something that was invisible to Bon Bon’s eyes. She finally spoke: “I don’t remember.”

Bon Bon’s head dropped through her finger net and hung over the desk. She grabbed the back of her head and started massaging it, letting out a long hissing breath. “Alright, then,” she said, flipping her head back up to attention. “How about we start with your name. I’d at least like to know who to lodge a formal complaint against—and don’t you dare say you don’t remember.”

Noticeably cut off from her default answer, the girl paused for a second. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a clear, slightly oversized green flash drive. She stared at it before hitting a button on its front. A sudden voice announced:
Lyra

“I…,” she said, looking up, “I think my name’s Lyra.”

Bon Bon had no reactions left.

* * *

Now, I know what you're thinking. Why not just drop her off at the nearest police station and be done with it? Well, the thought had crossed my mind, buuuut… I was a detective. And a true detective couldn't allow a mystery to stand unsolved before them. Nothing was taken, and this Lyra didn't seem dangerous, so there was no need to involve the police only for them to be equally stumped, not yet. No, I would solve this mystery first. I would solve… "The Mysteries of Lyra". That's a catchy title, no? Almost sounds like something else I've heard of before.

Anyway, first things first: I had to find out who Lyra was. And who better to ask for help in this matter than the good people of Canterlot City...

The women who run the flower shop would surely see everything happening in the city.

“Nope, sorry.”

Okay, so not there. If Lyra was local, then the school might remember her.

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

There’s gotta be something at the hospital.

“Wish I could help.”

This guy waiting for a cab?

“Whadda you askin’ me for?”

Random person she just ran into?

“Green, you say? Now that’s a rarity. And I don’t mean Rarity, she’s totally different.”

“Okay, thanks for your time,” sighed Bon Bon as she turned and walked away. Perhaps she had overestimated the good people of Canterlot City.

As she walked away, however, she didn’t notice the person she’d just talked to, a young woman with pale blue skin, pull out and flip open an oddly-shaped dark blue cellphone with unusual pale turquoise pieces on it. She raised it to her ear, looking after Bon Bon.

“It’s possible,” she said quietly. “I’ll have to look into it further. Maybe give her a test, something sure to reel her in…”

The sweet shop Bon Bon’s Bonbons was an inconspicuous establishment when viewed from the outside, a mere 1-story building with a sign over the front windows, nowhere near as extravagant nor well-traveled as the rival Sugarcube Corner, but that worked to Bon Bon’s advantage. Past the front wall presented to the street, the premises were deceptively expansive. Patrons would enter into the operational sweet shop with glass case displays and counters in front of a door on the left leading to the kitchen. But a second open archway on the right led deeper into the structure, bringing those in the know to her detective offices, bearing faded green walls with some black-and-white checkerboard patterns. She made carefully sure that she never attracted so much attention with the sweet shop that she would ever be too distracted from her detective agency caseload.

After returning from her failed escapade, Bon Bon had quickly noticed one difference from before she’d left: someone had taken the whole bowl of candy samples she’d left on the counter. “The sign said they were free,” Lyra had pointed out. Bon Bon let her have them. She had other things to worry about right now.

Bon Bon sat down at her desk in front of her typewriter, staring at it for inspiration. There had to be some way to find out who Lyra was. Hmm. Of course! She’d once met someone who claimed to know everyone in town. Where did she lose that contact info this time?

She opened a desk drawer and began shuffling through it. Moving a manila folder aside, she briefly caught a glimpse of something she didn’t recognize, but before fully processing it, she’d already tossed the folder back in, knocking the object further back into the drawer. She closed it and looked in the next one down, again not finding what she was looking for. She glanced back up at her desk in the process of leaning over to check drawers on the other side, catching sight of her Rolodex. Wow, way to go, detective.

She turned the dial, flipping through the cards to find the name while trying to remember what the name actually was. No, wait, she hadn’t listed that girl under her name, but the most memorable things about her. She checked under ‘E’. Ah-ha, there she was: under ‘E’ for “excitable”, “eager to help”, and “extremely overactive”. As she grabbed the card, the image of that object in the drawer flashed in her mind.

Bon Bon paused in surprise as the image faded. She shook her head, taking the card and looking around for the phone. It was probably on the shelf where it had always been after her desk had become too crowded, but the journey is half the adventure, and checking the most obvious place first just takes away that part of the fun. Eventually finding it right where she’d expected it was, she stared down at the card, but as she tried reading it, her mind was focusing elsewhere, on the unknown object from the drawer.

Deciding confidently to ignore the drawer and the object within, she slapped the card down next to the phone and walked right over to the drawer. At the corner of the desk, however, her foot caught on a silver briefcase. The thing that Lyra had with her when she’d ‘arrived’, Bon Bon recalled. I should probably see what’s inside; maybe it’ll help identify her… did I just think a semicolon?

She knelt down and picked up the briefcase, shaking it in her hands. Nothing sounded loose inside. She set it down again and gave it a look-over. It was an ordinary-looking briefcase, silver, rounded corners, and with a three-digit combination lock under the handle made by those dials that show one number at a time. Except this one used letters. Even though the dials didn’t look nearly big enough to have 26 sides to them, sure enough, she was able to scroll through the entire alphabet on one of them. Why not ask Lyra for the combination? Have you heard her answer to everything else?

Bon Bon turned the three dials to read “A-A-A” and pulled at the case; it didn’t budge. She turned the third dial once to read “A-A-B”, no luck, then to “A-A-C”, same result. After tossing a few numbers around on a calculator, she concluded there were seventeen and a half thousand possible combinations to this lock. She’d be here a while.

On a whim, she twisted the dials to try “O-O-O”; nothing. She gave an amused chuckle as the thought crossed her mind to see if “B-O-N” could possibly work. And her mind was suddenly back on the object in the drawer she needed to get back to. Wait, why do I need to get back to it? Yes, of course, maybe she could use it as a tool to help open the briefcase. Yeah, that made sense. Wait, how? Because it did, stop thinking.

Bon Bon slid back into her chair at the desk, opening the top drawer again. She pulled the top folder out and shuffled through what was left before grabbing what she immediately knew felt “right”. She pulled it out and held it in an open hand. It was a flash drive, clear beige, a tad larger than most, and had a small black and white picture in the middle that looked like a pair of wrapped candies stacked on top of each other like a 2-piece snowman, almost shaped into a capital ‘B’. Yes, this was it. This is what she was looking for. The thing that was calling her, almost as if by name…

Lyra walked past the empty arch doorway of the office, still munching on her “free samples”. She glanced over at Bon Bon, then noticed what she was holding in her hands and staring at with total focus. Deep inside her mind, something clicked. Before the candy bowl had hit the ground, Lyra had already raced over and snatched the flash drive from Bon Bon.

“Hey, what gives!? That’s mine, give it back!” Bon Bon said of the object she’d never seen before. She reached for it, but Lyra held it out away from her. She grabbed Lyra’s shoulder and tried reaching over to her hand, but Lyra ducked down to the floor and curled tight around the flash drive. Bon Bon knelt down, grabbing Lyra’s elbow and pulling, but Lyra tugged back and held firm, not even saying a word. This girl…

Bon Bon crouched down further to see Lyra’s face, and stopped short in shock. Lyra had an intense look in her eyes the likes of which Bon Bon had never seen before, not in anyone and especially not from the distracted demeanor of Lyra previously. Her mind was also beginning to realize that she didn’t even know why she wanted the flash drive so badly, even while she still did. With a sigh, she gave up.

“Fine, keep that thing, too!” Bon Bon huffed, standing back up. She turned and walked away, mumbling, “The sooner I get rid of you…”

After she’d left, Lyra remained curled on the floor. She was satisfied with the outcome, but didn’t know why.

It was that night, around ten or so. One particular door at the back of Bon Bon’s detective agency area led down to a curious space. The basement underneath her shop was a large open all-gray room with minimal lighting: two stories high, with the only flooring at the second level being a metal grating against two opposite walls connected by a catwalk bridge; down below against one wall was a large panel of camera feeds and a cushioned office chair. Bon Bon had no idea what the previous owner had designed it for, but it felt like it could either be a superhero cave or a fallout bunker. She barely used it as more than a conversation starter.

One feature that wasn’t usually present, however, was a large zipper running horizontal across one of the walls on the lower level. It had been here this morning, but having found Lyra on the upper level, Bon Bon never looked down here to see it. It was sitting zipped closed, but its teeth were only loosely meshed together.

The zipper rattled. A second later, a patch of it bulged out as if being pushed by something on the other side before several of the teeth split apart and a set of wooden claws poked through. The paw behind the claws pushed the lower lip down to the floor, zipping open the crack in both directions. A set of bark-brown jaws with spiked peg teeth emerged, and the creature they belonged to stepped out into the room.

Upstairs, Bon Bon was sitting up late in the dark of her office, thinking back over her ‘incident’ with Lyra.

Wow, what had that even been about? The heck got into me all of a sudden? She glanced down at the top drawer that now contained no objects of interest. The flash drive had risen back to the top of her mind a few times since, but she’d restrained herself from thinking much about it, calling that look of Lyra’s back into her mind when the urge to go retrieve it had resurfaced.

Suddenly, the sound of wooden crates sliding and toppling echoed up from the basement. Don’t tell me that’s Lyra again.

Bon Bon left the office and went over to the basement door in the next room, but found it locked from the upstairs again. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s used that trick, Bon Bon though, unlocking the door and descending a short flight of stairs through a narrow cement hallway. She pushed the next door open and looked out into the basement from the second level grating.

“Is that you again, Lyra?” she called into the room. “What is it you’re trying…,” she trailed off as she scanned the basement but found no trace of the green girl. All she saw were the marker boards on the walls, the chair and screens below, and all the crates and boxes of stuff piled around. And there was a large wolf creature made of sticks, logs, and branches with glowing green eyes standing in the middle of the floor.

Wait, what?

The wooden wolf turned toward her voice and snarled. Bon Bon let out a scared whine as she turned back to the staircase and slammed the door behind her, but the door slammed so hard it bounced itself back open again. With one leap, the Timberwolf was in the open doorway and beginning to claw its way up the stairs behind her.

“I didn’t hear anything about this!” she screamed as she reached the top, spinning around the wood door as she shut and locked it. She leaned her back against it and slid down to the floor with a deep sigh.

Meanwhile, Lyra was sitting on an inflatable mattress Bon Bon had provided in a spare side room that wasn’t used for anything. She was holding her green flash drive in her hand while staring at the silver briefcase sitting across from her which she had no better idea how to open than Bon Bon did. She had a feeling whatever was inside was important, and wondered if it had something to do with why she’d made such a big deal about taking Bon Bon’s flash drive away. She looked down at her drive. If only she remembered what it even was. Or anything.

A howl from the Timberwolf suddenly pierced her thoughts, but before she could look up in surprise, her gaze snapped up forward as somewhere, deep in her mind, the sound triggered a spark, and a deeply hidden memory breached to the surface. She jumped up and grabbed the briefcase.

Bon Bon tilted her ear to the door, suspiciously hearing nothing. Then a set of wooden claws stabbed out through the door to the side of her head, tearing gouges down out of the wood as she jumped up. She backed over to the far wall as the Timberwolf rammed its head through the clawed part of the door, snapping its jaws but reaching nothing. As it pulled its head back in and stuck its leg through again to reach around, scratching up the floor, Lyra walked into the room through the archway to Bon Bon’s right.

“No, get away!” Bon Bon said, but Lyra only turned her head. She had that look again, and Bon Bon hushed up as the green girl held up the silver briefcase, spinning the dials to spell out the combination “L-B-X”. The locks clicked and the case opened, revealing a silver object with a red decoration looking like a backwards ‘J’ sitting in a foam alcove. She pulled out the object, slapping it onto the front of her waist as a black band shot around and connected into a belt, and set the case down again. Removing it from her pocket, she held up her green flash drive, clicking the button. {Lyre Effect}
Lyra

The door cracked in half with a ram from the Timberwolf, and Lyra slid the flash drive into the slot inside the neck of the backwards ‘J’ buckle with a small green flash. She pushed the apparatus out to the right at a 45-degree angle.
Lyra

—repeated the belt as a pale green script ‘L’ appeared in front of it, flipping down to be replaced by half of a gold lyre. In a flash, the symbol shot out a pair of green energy rings with green lightning bolts flashing inside them. As they grew as tall as Lyra, the rings burst apart into a cloud of debris that flew in and accumulated onto her.

Bon Bon stared in shock. It was too dark in the room to see more than a silhouette, but Lyra’s new covering reflected a shiny green, like a full body-fitting suit of armor, a pair of large eyes shining yellow under a set of V-shaped spines on her forehead. Lyra stood silently, glaring forward, an ominously imposing figure in the darkness. Could this really be the same girl that hadn’t known her own name earlier today? Could she really have this kind of power?

The door split apart as the Timberwolf landed in the room at last. It stared at the figure standing to challenge it, tall enough to look them in the eye, giving a snarl. Lyra stepped forward. Immediately a glow from the belt made her look down, and she saw a second red slot arm materialize onto the left side of the buckle. The two slots flipped themselves back up, and her armor coating faded to gray and shattered, falling off and disappearing. She stood in surprise for a second, Bon Bon looking on in confusion.

“Well that was anticlimactic,” Lyra whispered to herself.

The Timberwolf pounced at her, but she ducked left, its claws only knocking the case sliding across the floor. It hit the far wall, standing up on its spine and spinning to a stop. Then the bottom of the case fell open to reveal a second compartment. Sitting inside was another belt, this one already with two slots.

Seeing the second belt, the other half of the incomplete memory rose to the surface. Now it was all clear. Ignoring the Timberwolf that was raising its claws at her, Lyra dashed over to the case. As the Timberwolf ran at her, she grabbed onto the belt, pushing the case down to close the top cover, and threw her arm back, keeping hold of the belt and letting the case slide across the floor. The Timberwolf stepped right on the sleek case and its leg slipped out from under it, sending the case towards the back wall as the wolf crashed to the floor.

Lyra rushed over to Bon Bon, pushing the belt onto her waist before she could react, a strap looping around left and clicking onto the right side of the belt. She grabbed Bon Bon’s hand and pushed something into it. Confused, Bon Bon opened her fingers: it was the beige flash drive Lyra had snatched from her earlier.

“This?” Bon Bon asked. “B-but didn’t you…earlier—”

Lyra cut her off, staring urgently into her eyes, “Do you have the courage to ride with the devil?”

Bon Bon didn’t know how to answer, but before she could ask for clarification, the flash drive in Lyra’s belt glowed green and disappeared into strips of green code, rematerializing in the right slot of her own belt. The look in Lyra’s eyes faded and she leaned off to the side, falling unconscious. Bon Bon grabbed her but could only slow her descent.

“Lyra?” Bon Bon said, patting Lyra’s shoulder. “Lyra, wake up, this is no time to…”

Bon Bon looked up to see the Timberwolf back on its feet, staring her down. This was it. No questions could help, no answers mattered but one. Do you have the courage? To be honest, she had no other options than to just go for it and hope for the best. Standing tall and holding the beige flash drive, she felt for and pressed the button. A voice announced:
BonBon

She paused in shock at it saying her name. Is that what the ‘B’ meant? Her? It had told her it was special. It really was like it was made just…for…her…

Bon Bon shook the thoughts aside again and slammed the drive into the belt’s left slot with a blue and pink flash. She tried pushing the slots out like Lyra had, but they wouldn’t budge. The Timberwolf snarled and crouched, preparing to strike. Taking a closer look at the belt, Bon Bon saw that the green flash drive was sitting up higher than the beige one and pushed it down, triggering a green flash. The slots easily tilted outward, the belt calling out:
LyraBonBon

A script green ‘L’ and beige ‘B’ with blue and pink outlines appeared in front of the belt, the ‘L’ sliding down and being replaced by an image of half a gold lyre, and the ‘B’ sliding up and being replaced by an image of half of a trio of blue-and-yellow-wrapped pieces of candy. The images shot out a green ring and a blue and pink ring both with colored lightning shooting around inside them, and after growing as tall as her, burst apart into a cloud of debris. Bon Bon watched frozen as the debris accumulated itself onto her, connecting like precut puzzle pieces into another sleek suit of body-fitting armor, the eyes flashing on to signal the transformation’s completion. She stared at the armor. It looked like stacks of smooth metal V-shaped bands with accordion-looking rubber joints. While her right arm, and indeed entire right half, was the same shiny green she’d seen on Lyra, her left half, split right down the middle, was a far paler, non-shiny color; in this darkness, she could only guess at beige. Wrist and ankle bands were pale on her right side and dark on her left, but again, it was dark. Seeing the light from the suit’s eyes faintly illuminating the room, she saw that the right eye was again yellow, while the left eye was blue. Okay, she thought, I guess this is just what happens when… whatever that was happens.

Having paused at the lightshow, the Timberwolf was done waiting. It lunged forward at Bon Bon, but she instinctively kicked up with her left leg, catching it in the throat in midair. She spun around right and kicked it in the face with the sole of her right foot, knocking it to the side. Landing, Bon Bon paused in surprised delight. She’d only imagined that she could do that before.

“I knew it had to work somehow,” said a voice as the suit’s right eye flashed on and off with each word.

“Whoa, who’s there?” Bon Bon said in surprise, looking over right where it sounded like it had come from.

“Calm down,” the familiar voice continued, right eye flashing, “it’s me. I’m in your mind.”

“Lyra?” Bon Bon said, looking over at Lyra’s unconscious body. Just go with it, Bon Bon. “How is you being in my mind supposed to be calming?”

“On your right!” Lyra’s voice shouted.

There was a flash as an energy construct of a blue-and-yellow wrapped candy appeared over Bon Bon’s left fist, and she turned to the right with a punch, the wrapping falling off to reveal a foot-wide gray ball that she rammed into the open jaws of the pouncing Timberwolf, jolting it to a stop. Bon Bon pulled her hand out of the now-solidified ball, sandy powder falling out with it. The Timberwolf hobbled backwards, muffled growling escaping its mouth as it tried to keep its head aloft with the heavy object lodged in its jaws.

Bon Bon took a closer look at the gray ball as the Timberwolf tried clawing at it. “Is that a cement jawbreaker?” she asked. She looked down at her armored hand. “I never knew I was that good at making candy.”

“That’s your Memory’s power,” Lyra said.

“Memory?” Bon Bon said in confusion.

“And here’s mine,” continued Lyra.

Bon Bon’s right arm flicked its wrist, completely out of her control, and its palm started glowing green. She realized it had to be Lyra, what with her in her mind and her right half green, as the hand traced a rough U-shape in a streak of green energy, the right end reaching higher than the left. A gold lyre materialized from the green trace, and Bon Bon reached her left hand out to grab it by the shorter side, spinning it around and resting it in her arm. Lyra brushed her (Bon Bon’s right side was basically Lyra’s now) fingers across the lyre’s strings, playing some notes but also making a faint green energy ring appear on the lyre. She brushed back and forth, playing a melody as the ring grew brighter and stretched narrower forwards and backward, collapsing to an oval then a line, now looking like an arrow sitting on a bow.

The Timberwolf raised it head high and slammed its jaws down onto the floor, splintering them and smashing the cement jawbreaker apart. It stood back up, lower jaw still resting on the floor, but in a green glow the wooden jaw rose back up and reconnected, lost teeth floating back into place. It let out a growl and raised it right paw to lunge forward again.

Before it could leave the ground, Bon Bon pointed the lyre forward and Lyra swiped her hand back across its strings, firing the green energy arrow. It buried itself in the Timberwolf’s chest, the creature freezing as the arrow’s green glow faded. The Timberwolf moaned as a pulsing sound rose, then with a flash it burst apart as if it were a balloon popping, leaving behind a faint white cloud as strips of moss and dead leaves rained down to the floor.

Bon Bon’s arms dropped to her sides as she stepped back and leaned against the wall, dropping the lyre; it faded and disappeared before it could hit the ground. She looked down at the red belt and the flash drives it held. She was too stunned and exhausted to be excited right now. Taking the obvious path, she pushed the slots back up vertical. A second later, the suit’s colors faded to gray and it shattered and disintegrated off of her, Lyra’s flash drive disappearing into strips of green code. It reappeared back sitting loosely in the right slot of Lyra’s belt, and she stirred again, leaning up.

“What was that?” Bon Bon asked. “What just happened?”

“Of course,” Lyra said in realization, “it’s us.” She looked up at Bon Bon. “We’re Double.”

Bon Bon looked over to her. “We’re what?”

* * *

So what did I do next? After the wooden wolf and the flash drive belt and the transformation? I did what I always do to clear my mind and collect my thoughts. I pulled out my typewriter.

Bon Bon stopped typing. Sitting in the dark office, she glanced over at the hanging wall clock, the hands showing just past three. She gave a long sigh.

She was letting Lyra stay in the spare room for as long as she needed. Lyra clearly didn’t know any place to go otherwise, and after helping her through an ordeal like that without being asked, she wasn’t about to be ungrateful.

Down in the basement, the zipper slowly pulled itself back closed, completely this time, a pulse of light running across it as it faded away, leaving only the wall.

Bon Bon looked over to the red belt and clear beige flash drive sitting on her desk. After using the belt, she hadn’t felt any more nagging compulsions, but she had a feeling that she hadn’t seen the end of these crazy flash drives. The rest may still be unwritten, but there was no denying that this was only chapter one. She jumped down a line and kept typing.

My name is Bon Bon. I'm a private detective. And these are my stories.

LB____

Next Case:

“Where are you going?” Lyra asked.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Bon Bon replied. “I’m a detective.”

They’d called it “the Slowdown”, Bon Bon recalled to herself, walking up to the building. She suddenly felt like she ran into an invisible wall of air as the scene around her came to an abrupt standstill.

As the device whirred to life, the ceiling lights began flickering on and off and the walls started shaking, prompting several of the people sitting around Bon Bon to jump to their feet in panic.

“You don’t even know what mystery you’re trying to solve,” said the man in the brown overcoat. “That’s where we’re different. I know exactly what I’m solving.”
A Matter of T

* * *

Here is what I dream, for “Lyra-Bon Bon Extreme”…

“What were you doing in my shop?” Bon Bon asked.

The Timberwolf growled as it stepped closer.

“I don’t remember,” Lyra answered.

“The power of time is mine,” said the man in the brown coat, “and it will obey ME!”

“I’m the only one,” a woman holding a bowstring said as a melody played, “who deserves this fame.”

A green energy arrow hit a crystal monster, causing barely a scratch.

“I’m getting reminded of this story,” said Bon Bon as she backed away, “about a bird and a mountain, counting out eternity.”

Right half brown, Kamen Rider Double flipped an hourglass on a handle and it spun upside down. Something sped forward, Double leaning back to avoid lightning-fast swipes and jabs from an opponent glowing with a rainbow aura.

“Police are still baffled by a string of robberies of priceless artifacts from museums across the city,” reported a newswoman.

“And you’re oh, so good,” said the green dollar sign monster as it approached the man. “And you’re oh, so fine.” Contempt rose in its voice. “And you’re oh, so healthy in your body and your mind.”

“Howdy, class.”

Looking at an image of a red-violet skinned woman on a TV screen in a dark warehouse, Bon Bon reached over and flipped on the light switch. A deep yet high-pitched maniacal laughter echoed through the building.

A blue skinned woman sat in the corner of a white padded room. “Beware, Rider,” she mumbled. “Beware the People With No Names.”
LuckyClover

“That Memory,” Lyra said as the Memory sank into the man’s arm, “i-it’s not…right…” Gray outlines appeared over the man’s face, and he morphed into a silvery gray monster with a pair of long straight horns pointing outward from its head. It raised its right hand with a giant pair of claws and approached.
MaximumDrive

A shiny light blue-armored Rider jumped, feet trailing electricity, and kicked into a large projection of a snowflake, the projection spinning and folding into a pointed funnel around their feet.

In a dark alley, a cloud of flames accumulated into the form of a flaming tire in front of a black figure with glowing orange seeping from cracked rings across their body. The tire spun and flew backwards, attaching over the figure’s chest diagonally down from their left shoulder, spinning to a stop. A pair of headlights flashed on as the figure’s eyes.
Standing By

A barrage of blue laser blasts flew past the light blue Rider and hit the approaching monster.
Complete

A black Rider with white zigzags bordering and covering their armor punched forward, shattering a round blue magic seal and sending a purple-cloaked figure stumbling back.

A pair of red robotic birds flew overhead, dropping to Bon Bon and Lyra a yellow Memory and some gadget that looked like a brownish gray animal skull. Lyra held up the gadget and a Memory flipped down from the “skull’s” neck.

A black figure covered in white ribcages approached a lavender-skinned girl in an alley.

“Spike!” the girl shouted, tossing a small green object forward. The object honked twice as a set of lights flashed, a miniature roadway appearing in midair beneath it.

A trio of figures stood on a building’s rooftop. They pushed the solo right slots of their belts outward.
Mysterious

Purple ‘M’ emblems spun in front of their belts, debris from purple energy rings accumulating onto them as purple Rider suits with dark blue masks and capes and purple hats, pairs of light blue eyes flashing.

The steaming red and gray figure held the red and yellow sun-shaped disk armament on their left wrist in place, glowing yellow-orange cracks beginning to run from it up their arm and across their chest.
Gi-Gi-Gi-GigaDrive

“Be warned,” the two voices of Kamen Rider Double said in unison. “We settle things two,” they held up two fingers, then pointed forward with one, “…on one.”

Author's Note

Full versions of "Cyclone Effect" on YouTube appear to be out of order right now, so I had to link the first verse/chorus-only version I found, alert me if you find a full version.

A Matter of T

Bon Bon stared at the beige flash drive, her ‘Memory’, as Lyra had called it. She now clearly saw her name in the lower corner by the button and repeated numerous times in faded text in the background of the candy-formed ‘B’. Somehow she’d looked right past that before.

It had been an early morning, but the night hadn’t shaken much else loose from Lyra’s steel-trap mind. She’d expanded the name to ‘Gaia Memory’, remembering that ‘Gaia’ was not arbitrary but not why. What she didn’t remember was why she’d talked about “riding with the devil” last night. Kinda important of a detail to forget.

Then an alarm clock went off. Again.

Sitting all over the table and counters of her detective office was every alarm clock, hourglass, and egg timer she never realized she had, each set to go off at a different time by guess who. She’d been awoken to this scene after barely a half-night’s sleep by the first clock, and it had quickly become apparent that trying to hunt down and un-set each of them was impractical. Some were even hiding in drawers.

‘Why?’ she’d asked deflated after finding Lyra re-setting some of the timers that had already gone off. ‘It’s important,’ Lyra had replied. ‘How?’ ‘I don’t know.’

Bon Bon did have a separate apartment where she was technically supposed to live, but she spent about half her nights at the detective agency anyway, being its only member and all; that’s why she’d been so prepared at accommodating Lyra, who she wasn’t about to leave here unattended.

Speaking of, the alarm clock was still ringing. It wasn’t even hiding, the strawberry-shaped alarm clock was clearly sitting on the other side of the table. She was making a statement. Little to win, but nothing to lose.

As the seconds rang by, Lyra shuffled silently over to the fruit clock, stopping like a deer when she met the headlights of Bon Bon’s stare. Eyes locked, Lyra slowly reached and clicked the alarm off, then picked it up and started winding it up again, holding the stare while shifting her feet to slink back out of the room very noticed.

Bon Bon sighed into her coffee. Her mind was probably filled with bouncing thoughts of wooden wolves and magic flash drives, but her sleep-deprived state refused to acknowledge them. She’d decided to put off dealing with last night’s events until the ethereal ‘later’ that would never truly come. She knew they’d probably make themselves come up again, but she’d make them wait as long as possible first. That always worked.

Then another ringing started. But it wasn’t an alarm clock this time. Bon Bon snapped to attention and was at the shelf in a second.

“You know who you’re calling?” she answered in a dramatically serious tone. “I see.” Pausing, she glanced towards the spare room in the back. “Consider it done.”

After gathering up a few things, Bon Bon leaned into the doorway for the spare room. “Behave while I’m out, and don’t touch anything…else.”

Lyra looked up from tapping an hourglass. “Where are you going?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Bon Bon replied. “I’m a detective.”

* * *

Nothing can invigorate a detective like the rush of a new case, awakening the thrill of the hunt for a new answer. This time was a report of a mysterious phenomenon, an impossible occurrence that bends the very laws of physics out of any recognizable shape, which must be investigated immediately. The client is a concerned young woman on scene who's chosen to remain anonymous, a common enough occurrence in this profession.

Bon Bon looked with arms crossed at the somewhat busy university campus from outside the main cluster of buildings, a fair establishing shot if she was judging. She started walking up.

She'd called it "the Slowdown": sudden time freezes where everything almost stopped for a few seconds. Before last night, I would've thought the very idea ludicrous, but after what happened… I was more willing to have an open mind about such things. But in all honesty, I didn't think there was going to be much to these repor—

Mid-step she suddenly felt like she’d been grabbed by an invisible hand of air as a brief flash brought the scene around her to an abrupt standstill. Sound around her ground to a creaking halt. Her foot was still in the air, but though she felt off-balance and that she was probably falling, she was barely moving.

“What the heck?” she tried saying, but her words fumbled out incoherently from a mouth that was moving too slowly to form them properly.

She tried looking around. Her head barely tilted, then the invisible grip briefly slipped and let everything slide forward for a second before getting slogged down again. Birds hung in mid-flight. The breeze had stopped. She’s tried stamping down to steady herself at the beginning, but her foot still hadn’t hit the ground.

Then everything lurched back into motion, Bon Bon stumbling and stutter-stepping to catch herself. Gulping deep breaths, she looked up at the university.

“There it was again!” came a voice from nearby.

“That’s it, I’m skipping,” said someone else.

…reports. At least, not yet.

Walking through the now slightly less-busy campus, Bon Bon wondered about what could have caused that ‘Slowdown episode’. More rather, she worried that it might be connected to what had happened around Lyra. Forget that that might mean having to ask Lyra for help—that was bad enough. The problem was her detective business had never delved into the apparent supernatural before, and she would never admit this, but she wasn’t sure her skills would keep up. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for.

And then she found it. Something from the corner of her eye grabbed her, and she slipped through the sparse current of students to reach several copies of a flier on a bulletin board. The dark blue pages discussed some sort of demonstration scheduled for later that day, hosted in the Physical Sciences Building by a Professor Turner. But what had drawn her over was a yellow hourglass symbol next to their name.

Time freezing, and suddenly an advertisement for an hourglass? Shaky, but it’s a start.

She looked around for a campus map, but instead saw someone stopping to address the tour group following them, likely for prospective students. As the guide walked on again, Bon Bon shuffled over and silently merged into the herd.

Soon the tour passed into the lobby of the multi-storied building Bon Bon was waiting for.

“This building contains the classrooms, labs, and other facilities for the physical sciences,” the guide recited with an excited facade, “which contain physics, astronomy, inorganic chemistry, and Earth sciences like geology and meteorology.” Then a hand started waving from within the group. “Yes, who’s that?”

“Will we be seeing that demonstration on the flier?” Bon Bon asked, pitching her voice up to sound younger. She was good at disguising her voice, it was a helpful tool at times.

“Later,” the guide said with a hidden sigh, “we’ll be coming back around for it. Now who can name some of the physics areas you can major in here?”

As the tour group moved on, Bon Bon hung back while pretending to read a random poster. After watching them leave, she scanned the walls for a reference map and saw a listing for Dr. Turner on the fifth floor, heading for the elevator.

After an elevator ride longer than the stairs would have taken, she perused the hallway until seeing the hourglass from the poster on the placard outside an open door. Pacing around inside was an aqua blue-skinned young woman with dark blue and white hair wearing a white lab coat with an hourglass pin. Upon noticing Bon Bon, she walked over and stopped in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Excuse me,” Bon Bon said, “the poster didn’t say much, and I’m curious about some of the details of this upcoming demonstration…Professor Turner?”

The girl stared at her, unimpressed. “Minuette. TA.”

“Right…,” Bon Bon said sheepishly. Then she took a closer look. “Have I met you before?”

“No.”

Pause.

“So, about the demonstration?”

“It’s not happening right now.”

Insulted pause.

“Could I possibly speak with Professor Turner myself?”

After a second, Minuette called over shoulder, “Doc! Someone who thinks they’re smart wants to talk to you!”

“Thanks,” Bon Bon said flatly.

Minuette shrugged with a smile, stepping out as a pale brown man with pointy brown hair in another lab coat with a bigger hourglass pin and carrying a small stack of paper came to the doorway.

“You wanted to speak to me?” he said in a British accent, shifting under his coat. “I don’t recognize you, are you a student?”

“Actually, no,” Bon Bon replied, “I have nothing to do with the university.”

“Oh,” he said, stopping. He started backing inside again. “Well, then if it’s no bother, I am rather busy—”

“I’m a private detective,” she continued. “I’m actually here to investigate reports of something termed, ‘the Slowdown’.”

Minuette made a silent, “Oooh.” She slipped behind the frozen Professor Turner back into the room with a, “Buuusted.”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes, well…”

Bon Bon smirked. “Am I in the right place?”

“Look,” he said quietly, “I didn’t want to admit anything because the university might take away my funding, but yes, the Slowdown was me—but not on purpose. It’s an unintended side effect of something I’m working on.” Bon Bon crossed her arms. “I’m pretty sure I’ve isolated the problem and we’re working the kink out now, so you can tell your client that whatever they were concerned about, they’re never going to have to worry about it again. In fact,” he shuffled through his papers, “I have a demonstration later today of the finished product, so you can come and see it at work for yourself, Slowdown-free, just in case you need to be sure.” He handed her another copy of the flier.

She took the page without looking at it. “Believe me, I will.”

So, problem solved, right? I wasn't satisfied. I may have discovered the alleged source of the Slowdown phenomenon, but I had only the unreliable promise of it being solved. A true detective would not rest until they had with certainty resolved the case, and I intended to see it through. Though actually communicating this back to the client might prove difficult.

Dealing with an anonymous client means working without the context of their motivation for concern in the issue, and the lingering question of why. Maybe they had something to lose if it was known they raised the alarm, like someone close to the project…

No matter who, however, there was clearly more to learn about this Professor Turner, who was apparently capable of creating this … … (find different way to say "phenomenon" later).

* * *

Bon Bon had quietly rejoined the tour group as it passed back by the science building heading for somewhere else, but she slipped away again while they were passing an administrative building with a label for Records she saw through the glass doors.

Staying outside and circling the building, she found a side door. She carried a lock picking kit with her for just such occasions, but on a whim she tried the handle. It opened. She tiptoed through the dull empty hallway until she found the Records door, beyond which was a stuffy, half-lit room filled with beige and gray metal file cabinets. Bingo.

A printed-out page reading ‘Personnel’ was taped to the wall over several cabinets with small labels of alphabet sections on each door. Finding the one for ‘T’, she gently lifted the drawer over the first bump on its track to avoid a loud lurch, then let it glide open. Scanning through the name tabs, she found the folder labeled ‘Turner’.

The file wasn’t very thick. Professor of Applied Physics and Lab, full name Dr. Time Warner Nathan-Turner Whooves. Yeesh. Nothing much biographical. Hired several months ago after coming highly recommended by his previous employer, ‘SKI’, no elaboration. She flipped back and forth. It almost felt like some pages were missing—

A shrill ringing echoed through the room as her bag vibrated. Fighting a heart attack, she quickly squeezed the bag to muffle the sound as she rifled through it, probably bumping into everything else twice before finally ripping out her smartphone. It was the office, and there was only one person there. -beep-

“Lyra!?” she hissed quietly. “What are you doing?”

“Something probably more legal than you, with that response,” she replied.

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “How did you call this number?”

“Oh, I just dialed every possible number in sequence until I got yours.”

The silence hung.

“Lyra…,” Bon Bon growled.

“Kidding,” she said. “It was in your spinning pages thingy. ‘Sweetie Drops’ isn’t your real name, but there’s no one else with that name, and it felt like it just had to be you.”

“I meant how did you even know how to use a…wait, what? Yeah, that’s my fake cover name if I ever need to give one when I don’t want someone to know I’m a detective—back to you knowing how to use a phone.”

“So, detective,” Lyra continued, “find any clues yet? I can help if you give me a few hints.”

“How could you help, you don’t even know what’s going on.”

“You muttered ‘Slowdown’ before you left,” Lyra said. “That’s not a name, but it narrowed the list quite a bit, however…,” holding a pencil, she looked down at the piece of paper in front of her, “I’m not sure if I’m following the right angle here.” The page had the sketch of a surprised-looking snail.

Bon Bon gave a blank stare. “Lyra, what are you on about? Actually, drop the ‘about’.”

“Say it with me…I don—”

“You don’t remember,” Bon Bon sighed.

“So, clues?”

Bon Bon looked down with a groan…and then saw something. Kneeling to reach around the side of the file cabinet, she retrieved a broken half of a nametag. The first half was gone, but what remained bore an engraved “~~W~~Hooves”; the ‘W’ was scratched out, trenches scoured in the tag’s surface, and the ‘H’ had clearly been made capital after the fact by a permanent marker.

“Thanks for the commentary,” Lyra said.

“What? I wasn’t—”

“Please?”

Bon Bon sighed. “Hooves, first with a ‘w’, then without. Someone made a point about changing their name.” Why was she entertaining this? Right, so Lyra could distract herself. Meanwhile, she needed to think. This tag had the same last name as Professor Turner’s full name, which he seemingly wasn’t using. But the handmade edits instead of a new tag? Why would someone do that to their name? Was it his, or could it be…

“So,” muttered Lyra, “we’re on The W Search, is it?”

Bon Bon stared a second. “Huh?”

“This could narrow down what ‘Slowdown’ is,” Lyra continued.

“Oh, I already found that out.”

“Huh? Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because we’re not partners, I’m the detective and you’re a houseguest, now get back to your alarm clocks and let me do my job.”

She almost hung up before Lyra added, “You didn’t happen to find another Gaia Memory, did you?”

“No, and I’m not going to,” she insisted. “The main case is almost wrapped up, I just need to watch a science demonstration for some probably big, homemade machine to confirm the results.”

“Aww, and I wanted to help…”

Bon Bon paused. Lyra did sound kinda sad for real…

“Hey,” Bon Bon said, “if you know how to use a phone, do you know how to use a computer?”

The demonstration was being held down the hall from the lab; a big open beige room, the carpeted kind with the sliding inner walls, one of which had opened to make the room double-wide. Its windows looked out upon an inner-campus courtyard, but the blinds were drawn. The only furniture besides the table in front of the windows was several rows of folding chairs set out for the gathering audience. Barely half of them were occupied, though, so Bon Bon was easily able to claim two seats in the front row.

The nametag was intriguing, but might not be relevant. This machine, however, might just put the case to bed.

Bon Bon propped up her phone against her bag on the chair to her right to broadcast the events live to Lyra through the shop basement’s computer setup, probably the first time it was properly being used during her residence.

Yes, to bed, like she would go tonight, no matter what alarm clocks there might be. Letting out an early yawn, she slouched back into her chair to watch events unfold.

On the table in the front, some indistinctly large and boxy thing sat under a dark blue sheet, the supposedly ‘fixed’ Slowdown device. As the clock reached 2 and everyone’s casual mutterings died down, Professor Turner shuffled up to the table and turned up the side of the sheet, pulling something from his lab coat pocket.

Bon Bon sat up in shock upon seeing it was a slightly oversized clear brown flash drive. You’re kidding me. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Lyra to have seen it or not. Of course no one else in the sparse crowd reacted as he plugged the apparent Gaia Memory into a vertical slot on the end of the machine. How does he have one of those? Lyra’s armor and belt briefly flashed into her mind. And what’s he using it for? I mean, power source for the Slowdown machine, obviously. But why would he be showing it off? He even knew he was inviting me here!

As he slid the sheet off the device, which looked something like a blocky engine, someone suddenly sat down to Bon Bon’s left and leaned over to her.

“Heh, guess how pretentious this guy is,” the woman said smugly, gesturing at Professor Turner. They were a bit short and stocky with pale dust blue skin, slate purple hair, and a grain stalk pin. “Talked a big game in college, and then fell off the face of the earth. Now he’s back as if he’s invented sliced bread.” Probably a jealous rival scientist. She didn’t even bother looking Bon Bon’s way when talking. Bon Bon leaned away and tried watching Professor Turner closer. Undeterred, the woman continued, “He makes it out like this is some ‘crazy’ new thing, but I snuck a look at his blueprints, this is nothing but a power generator, it’s not even fancy.” Bon Bon’s head twisted to them. What? The woman subtly gestured around. “This is probably just a big show to excuse his budget.”

Confused, Bon Bon looked back to Professor Turner as he turned to the audience. If the machine’s not the source of the Slowdown, what is?

“You are about to witness a true marvel of invention,” he began, his prior nervous demeanor gone. “Too long has the progression of time tormented us. But with this,” he looked to the machine, “I can say, ‘no more’.”

Reaching over, he flipped a switch. The machine activated, mechanics whirring as it began to shake intensely. A mutter rippled the crowd as the table started to shake, followed by the floor and chairs. The lights flickered as concerned audience members began to stand up. Professor Turner ignored them, staring silently at the machine.

Already getting up, the woman said, “Okay, th-this is just that show I was talking about before, and…” She darted off, shoving her way to the front of the crowd now heading for the door. “Out of the way, someone smarter than you coming through!”

Amidst the panic, Minuette merely watched unnoticed from the sidelines.

As the room emptied, Bon Bon stood up, not to flee, but to confront Professor Turner. Noticing this, he looked over intrigued.

“So the Slowdown wasn’t enough for you, was it?” she accused. “Are you ramping up to freezing the whole world?”

“That’s still what you’re focusing on?” he replied, a bit surprised. “I told you that was just a side effect.”

“Likely story.” She folded her arms. “I know how you’re powering that device, and I’m here to put an end to your scheming.”

Professor Turner’s look softened. “Oh, so you’re going to stop my plan, are you?” he teased, shoving back his lab coat to put his hands in his pockets. “Just for laughs, though, let me pose to you a bit of a question. What is my plan?”

Bon Bon’s intensity stalled out. “Well…ahm…”

“You call yourself a detective?” he said. “You don’t even know what mystery you’re trying to solve.” Bon Bon flinched. He turned serious again. “That’s where we’re different. I know exactly what I’m solving.” He pulled the Memory from the machine, which sputtered out, glancing at it to mutter, “That’s got to be enough.”

Now what? Bon Bon watched puzzled as Professor Turner slid his watch up his arm to reveal some form of spider-like tattoo inside his left wrist. He pressed the button on the Memory.
TimeTurner

Shoving the plug end of the Memory onto the tattoo, he was covered by a flash of light and a burst of sand, the cloud falling to reveal…something else. Standing in his place was a steampunk monstrosity: a body of bronze gears, limb segments formed from gold-rimmed hourglasses constantly draining thin streams of sand, a yellowed working clock face borne on its torso, and its head a glass shell filled with the whirring and clicking golden components of some unknown clockwork mechanism.

The only other observer remaining, Minuette casually watched the two as she backed out the side door she was next to.

Staring at the clockwork robot, Bon Bon slowly picked up her phone.

“Lyra…,” she muttered, “what just happened?”

“That’s what happens when Gaia Memories are used, people turn into a monster like that called a Dopant.”

“That would’ve happened to me?” Bon Bon asked quietly, still staring. “You saved me from that?”

“You’re welcome, finally,” Lyra moaned. “You need to fight it into submission as the armored warrior I called Double, it’s the only way to stop it.”

“Of course,” Bon Bon said, remaining motionless. “R-right.” Forcing herself to shake, she came back into focus. “If that’s what it’ll take, then I’ll do it.” She grabbed her bag and started racing to the door.

“Where are you going?” Lyra’s voice harped.

“I have to get back to the shop to get the things we used to transform.”

“No, no,” Lyra insisted, “your Gaia Memory and Driver, you have them.”

Bon Bon stopped halfway through the chairs. “What? No I don’t.”

“You did last I checked.”

Phone against her shoulder, Bon Bon opened her bag and shuffled some of the loose objects around. Sure enough, both the red buckle and her beige Memory fell into view. She lifted them out in one hand. “Lyra, you sneaky little—”

“Transform!”

Bon Bon dropped her phone into the bag and the bag to the ground, pressing the buckle against her waist for a black strap to wrap around into a belt. She turned back to the Dopant, right hand raising and triggering her Memory.
BonBon

Having been ignoring her, the TimeTurner Dopant turned to the sound.

“Another one?” it said in a warped version of Professor Turner’s voice. “There are more?”

“Not just one,” Bon Bon announced. Lyra’s Memory materialized in the Driver’s right slot from strips of green code. Bon Bon stuck hers into the left slot with a blue and pink flash, with the same hand shoved Lyra’s fully in with a green flash, and then pulled the slots out to the sides. A script green ‘L’ and beige ‘B’ appeared over the buckle, flipping into gold lyre and blue-and-yellow candy half images.
LyraBonBon

With a flash, the images shot out green and blue/pink rings around colored electricity which quickly burst into a cloud of swirling gray debris that assembled themselves onto her as a figure-fitting suit with silver V-spines for angry eyebrows, her large round eye covers flashing. The sleek suit was formed from layered V-shaped bands and had a vertical silver line down the center dividing Lyra’s shiny lime green right half from Bon Bon’s beige left half. Lone V-bands on the chestplate, shoulder pads, wrists, and ankles were a pale seafoam on the right side and dark blue and pink layers on the left. The left eye cover was blue, and as Lyra stepped her side forward, pointing out, the yellow right eye cover flashed with each syllable.

“Be warned,” she said, “we settle things two-on-one.”

“Uh, what are you doing?” Bon Bon asked.

“Giving us a catchphrase.”

“Please don’t give us a catchphrase on your own.”

“That device of yours,” the Dopant observed, glancing down at its own form, “such a refined process. If I could use that, then maybe…”

Not waiting, Bon Bon ran up and gave a solid punch to knock it stumbling back. She stood still a second, then started shaking her hand. “Ow…”

“But I don’t have a reason to fight you,” TimeTurner said after steadying himself. “Now, I’m afraid I must depart. Ahhhhhhh—aaaa!” He spread his arms wide, and a red wave flashed through the air bringing motion to a standstill.

Bon Bon suddenly felt gripped by the same invisible hand as before, if not tighter, as everything was restrained in place. All sound but the slowing second hand of the wall clock ground to a halt.

tick

tick…

… tick…

…

… tick

tick

The hand had let go. Bon Bon looked around. Nothing seemed different.

“What?” TimeTurner muttered, looking at his hands. “Why don’t you listen to me, I’m not trying to make that happen. Is it still not enough power?”

Bon Bon tried a karate chop at the Dopant, but he blocked it and knocked her away with a palm slam.

“Your equipment,” TimeTurner said, stepping towards her, “it might just be what I need.”

Getting back up, Bon Bon shouted, “No deal!” She dove at him, but another flash wave slowed her to a crawl in midair. She watched him step aside, unrestricted by the Slowdown, before it abated to let her continue her lunge right past him, getting slammed in the back flat to the ground. This was tougher than last night’s wild animal.

“Any time you’re ready,” Lyra commented.

“You try it!” Bon Bon shot back.

Then a hand grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back to her feet, TimeTurner reaching in to make a grab at her belt.

“Hey!” Bon Bon swung out to hit him with a sidehand, a blue and yellow candy wrapper energy construct forming over her left hand that burst into a wave of fire on impact. The Dopant stumbled back, a crack now running across its chestpate clockface. Red-Hots, Bon Bon mused, looking at her slightly smoking hand, spicy.

“Ah, good,” said Lyra, “you remembered you have superpowers, too.”

Suddenly another red wave flashed through the room, slowing sound and motion as Bon Bon tried turning towards the Dopant, but it easily strode out of view. A few seconds later and the grip gave way, Bon Bon spinning to see a flash fade as a reverted Professor Turner slipped out into the hallway.

“Oh no you don’t.” Bon Bon raced to the doorway, but saw the professor ducking into the stairwell at the end of the hall, so she raced the other way to the elevator to cut him off. It was still on this floor, so she dashed in and hit the ground floor button. After a second, the doors slowly slid shut. After another second, the floor gave a slight lurch as the elevator began to move.

In the wide stairwell at the edge of the building, whose walls were giant windows onto the bright and beautiful day outside, Professor Turner loudly shuffled down the stairs, taking them two at at time.

The elevator was moving. Slowly, almost silently, but it was indeed moving. Probably.

Professor Turner slowed down a bit, panting to catch his breath. As he turned on the next landing, he spotted a bird perched on the branch of a tree outside the large windows. Oh, how nice.

The elevator was still silently moving. Bon Bon gently tapped her foot.

Professor Turner had stopped in the middle of the steps to squat down and retie his loose shoelace.

The elevator continued to move silently. Bon Bon pretended to check the watch she wasn’t wearing. Thinking it had to be wrong, she tapped it, then held it up to her ear.

Professor Turner exited the staircase on the ground floor while straightening his tie before powerwalking down the entire length of the building to the main exit.

The elevator was still moving along silently. Bon Bon kicked the wall.

The elevator finally lurched to a stop with a ding, the doors sliding open just in time for Bon Bon to see Professor Turner reach the main doors. He noticed, and hurried out into the courtyard. Bon Bon rushed out the doors to catch him, but found herself in the middle of the crowd of those who’d evacuated from the building, those closest turning and reacting in shock to Double’s armor.

“A monster!” someone shouted.

“What, are you kidding?” said the intrusive woman from the audience, who was near the front of the crowd. “That’s not a monster, it’s armor, clearly a robot.”

Ignoring them, Bon Bon scanned the crowd, spotting Professor Turner trying to shove through the mass of people but finding himself stuck by the living wall. Someone in an important-looking suit, possibly the dean, came up and grabbed his shoulder, saying something Bon Bon couldn’t hear. Professor Turner scowled at him, turning back to stare at her. Then he held up his Gaia Memory.
TimeTurner

Attention turned to the bright glow, and a new wave of panic spread through the crowd. The dean recoiled as people started shoving to get away, the fringes of the crowd dispersing.

Backing away, the woman pointed at the Dopant nervously. “Now that is a…nnnnh—” She gave up and ran.

The Rider and Dopant slowly circled each other as the courtyard emptied.

“You’re already not helping me,” TimeTurner said, “why make it worse?”

“I’m protecting others,” Bon Bon replied.

“From me?” The Dopant shook its head. “No clues at all, detective.”

TimeTurner charged and took a swing at her, but she ducked to the side. TimeTurner took a few extra steps to stop himself, giving her a chance to rush up. In a flash the Slowdown gripped her again midstride, but it was looser this time, and she slid out of its grasp after only a few seconds, grappling him in a bearhug. Her mind celebrated deducing that his power had to be given ample time to be charged up, while her body was easily peeled off and sent tumbling with one swing from his arm.

“Blast,” he muttered, glancing at his hands. He marched towards Bon Bon.

Pushing herself up, she prepared to react, but suddenly her right foot kicked off, rolling her left past the Dopant. Lyra flicked her right wrist to glow green and traced out her golden lyre into Bon Bon’s left hand, quickly brushing its strings to send out a horizontal green shockwave with a high sound. It cut through the Dopant, causing several of its hourglasses to crack and sending it stumbling back, leaking more sand than usual. It’s been weakened, Lyra’s instinct told her, now is the time to strike. She pulled her Memory out of the Driver while leaving the slots angled.

“What are you doing?” Bon Bon asked, trying to turn her head as if she could look at her silent partner. Lyra slid the Memory into a slot set inside the end of the lyre’s higher back arm, an open square on the side letting its ‘L’ be seen as its green projection flashed in the air in front of it for a second.
Lyra
Maximum Drive

With the sound of charging pulses of energy accompanying the melody, Lyra brushed back and forth on the lyre, a green energy ring appearing over the strings and flattening into an oval. Bon Bon remembered what a simple attack did to the wooden wolf. This had to be stronger, but…

“Lyra, what are you doing?” she repeated.

“We have to do this,” Lyra replied, focused more on the attack than her. The oval collapsed into a thick line.

“But there’s a person in there!”

“He’ll be fine.”

Bon Bon felt herself aiming the lyre at the Dopant, who was trying to stay standing.

“How do you know that?” she pressed.

“Just trust me!”

Lyra held her hand out past the lyre. Bon Bon panicked.

“No!”

As Lyra stroked back across the lyre, Bon Bon pulled her arm down and away, the energy arrow firing at an angle and exploding on the patio near the Dopant’s feet with a spray of sparks and dust.

TimeTurner looked to them, then swung out his arms. A flash brought the Slowdown, catching the cement debris as he turned and fled, leaking midair streaks of sand as he went. Once out of sight, the Slowdown relented, and the sand trails fell to the ground.

Lyra’s face wasn’t visible, but Bon Bon could read the sting in the hanging silence. “Lyra, I—”

Lyra pushed up the Driver slots and pulled her Memory out of the lyre. It faded into strips of green code as Double’s armor faded gray and shattered off of Bon Bon, leaving her standing alone in the courtyard. She looked down with a sigh.

LB____

The Mystery Continues…

“The missing ‘W’ is the key,” Bon Bon said, “I just know it.”

“At least you know what you’ve lost,” said Lyra.

“The power of time is mine,” said Time Turner. He held up his Memory. “And it will obey ME!”

Kamen Rider Double stood with their right half green and their left half light gray.
Secrets of the D