Lyra
The bell attached to the door of Ponyville Library's entrance rang as the teal pony cantered in, a look of determination plastered on her face. She looked around the library, her gaze soon falling on a lavender unicorn that had just had its attention stolen from a book opened before her on a desk.
“Oh, good morning Lyra!” Twilight greeted happily as she turned away from the open book. “How may I help you today?
Her mission was clear, and her alloted time did not allow for anything more than meager small talk at that point. Lyra had to take the initiative and push for her objective.
“Oh, I just stopped by to check out a book is all,” Lyra replied with a warm smile as she casually cantered over to the large bookshelves.
“Need any help finding your book?” Twilight asked as she approached her side.
No, there would not be any help for Lyra... the utmost secrecy was required for her assignment, so nopony should have even the slightest hint that she was up to anything at all... she just needed to keep up her guise for a little while longer.
“Nah, that's alright, I can find it myself. Thank you, though.” Lyra kept looking through the vast number of books on the walls, narrowing her search down the first two letters at that point.
“Alright then,” Twilight nodded and returned to her desk, picking up where she last left off.
Anomalies of space... After effects of Magic Poisoning... Agriculture for eggheads... aha! Lyra's horn flared as she grabbed onto the book of interest with her magic. She floated it to her side, keeping it against her coat so that nopony could see the title. Her eyes darted left and right, followed by her exiting the library at an unusually quick pace. She had already left with the door closed behind her and traveled down the main Ponyville road before Twilight realized she was alone again.
Objective complete, but mission status still pending. Lyra made her way through town, her destination clear as there seemed to be no more obstacles in her path. She took a glance up at the clock tower as she passed by it. The time displayed 1:15 pm which, for Lyra, was right on schedule. She hurried through the marketplace, being careful that a certain pony didn't see her through the crowds... if the package was discovered at that time, she would have to abort the mission. And that... she simply could not allow.
She dashed around groups of ponies, leaped over barrels and carts, dipped under a few signs and lay-hanging banners, and finally, her base of operations came into view. She swerved past a few ponies attending a flower garden and made her way up to the front door, giving off a breath of relief at reaching a safe point. She turned her head to the left and right, making sure nopony had followed her.
After opening the front door to her base of operations with her magic, she swiftly entered and closed the door behind her before making her way down the main corridor. The establishment was dark, and quiet... just as she needed it to be.
“Just as planned...” she allowed her self to mutter as she retreated to her command quarters.
The stage was set, and all the instruments were in place to begin her most important operation yet. So far her mission was a success, with every objective completed... save for the last two. From where she stood directly behind the control panel, she first needed to adequately decipher the intricate mechanics residing inside her target's composition. She laid the tome she acquired earlier from the magician's archive, feeling a slight ping of guilt from having to steal it, but quickly pushing the feeling aside after reassuring herself that it was for the best.
The mission came first, no matter what. The pages of the tome fluttered open as her magic pushed them over, her eyes quickly scanning over the contents of each page. Her heart skipped a beat as she caught a glimpse of her target, and quickly flipped the pages back to it after having accidentally gone too fast to stop herself. When the magic faded away from the pages, her gaze was filled by multiple illustrations laced with an enormous amount of small texts, footnotes tagged to different parts of all of the pictures. It was all so very overwhelming at first, but her trained eye and an unprecedented amount of focus to the subject kept her emotions in check as she flooded her brain with information.
There was so much knowledge to gain from just two open pages, and it all flashed through her mind so quickly. Every word, every symbol, every line and every scribble was soaked up like a sponge by her hungry eyes. After running over the last few words of the final block of attached notes, she flipped the page out of instinct, hoping there was more data to access. She was elated to see that indeed, there was more, but the span of illustrations with attached notes only continued for another page, not stretching over beyond the spine of the book.
With the end in sight, Lyra worked as fast as she could to finish soaking up the last of the displayed information. Configuration... structure... cooling and heating systems... accessories... design flaws and perks... everything. She didn't care about whether or not it was good or bad, or whether or not it looked weird. All that mattered was she had it in front of her, and in her head. The second to last step had been completed... gather the information. All she needed to do then was perform the spell, and her mission would be complete.
As she took a couple steps back from the book, she began to think back to all the work she had put into her project up to that point. All the years of speculation, all of the constant attempts with using magic in a trial and error system, only to yield negative results every time. The strange looks she got from others, as well as the accompanied gossip and bad rumors, but most importantly of all... the interference of her ultimate nemesis.
Lyra never thought her to be such a threat at first, but after discovering her plans, the two had become forever locked in a battle of wits and emotions. There had been victories and defeats on both sides, and at one point a loss almost causing Lyra to break down and abandon the project all together... almost. But she never lost hope, she never lost faith, because she knew what she had to do. She had a mission, a calling by destiny itself for her to do what had to be done.
These thoughts passed through her mind as she began to formulate a spell in her horn, one that would finally put her struggles to an end. The spell she was crafting was not one she had gathered from the book, or anywhere at all to be exact. Truly, Lyra's dedication to her mission stemmed so far that she studied for months on how create new spells in the hopes that crafting one herself would be easier than spending many months scouring every library in Equestria for a spell remotely close to what she was looking for.
No, she needed to do it by herself. She needed to feel what she wanted to feel, to see what she wanted to see, and only after processing the data from the tome did she know what she wanted to feel and see. Everything had become so clear since she read the three pages of information, so wonderfully explained in just the way she had hoped. The pictures allowed her to formulate the raw image for the spell in her mind, to forge the proper shapes and attributes to what she was crafting. The notes added in the finer details, allowing her to tweak and adjust her spell how she needed to. And finally, oh so finally, after all her years of searching, she laced her spell with the last, overlapping layers of magic, finally ready to flood it with energy to ignite the spell and have it do what it was meant to do... what she meant for it to do.
But just as her mind began to lose itself in a state of euphoria, a sudden bang made here eyes widen with fear and her heart sink with dread. No... no no no, not here, not now! She screamed at herself as her eyes darted side to side, hearing the rapidly approaching hoofsteps. How did my nemesis know I would be here, how was I discovered? I'm on the verge of mission completion, and... SHE has to come in here!
“Lyra!” Bonbon called down the hall as she quickly made her way to Lyra's bedroom, her voice thick with blatant frustration. “What in Equestria are you up to this time!?”
“N-nothing, Bonbon!” Lyra replied with panic apparent in her voice.
Bonbon stopped in front of her door with an expressionless face, giving out a long sigh at her suspicions being confirmed. “You took that book from the library without checking it out, didn't you?”
“What book?”
“Lyra!”
“What!?”
“I'm coming inside now,” Bonbon said as she raised her hoof up to the doorknob.
“N-no, no! It's okay, you don't need to come in!” Lyra replied.
Bonbon tried to turn the door knob, but felt resistance as she noticed a light teal glow emanating around the piece of metal. After another sigh, she raised her voice up louder than before. “Lyra, stop using magic to block me out of the room!”
“I'm not using ma-”
“Yes you are, Lyra!” Bonbon interrupted, almost fuming. “Stop acting like a little filly! I know you stole that book on anthropomorphism from the library, but what I don't know is what exactly you're up to this time!” She took a step back before ramming her side into the door, making it shudder loudly from the impact. “And I can already tell it's nothing good!”
“It's nothing bad this time, I promise!” Lyra pressed her weight up against the other side of the door, hoping in vain to keep Bonbon out. “Just please trust me on this one?”
Bonbon took a step back from the door she had been pressing against and pointed an accusatory hoof against it, even though she knew she couldn't see her source of irritation directly. “Lyra, when we became roommates, you assured me that the stuff with humans was all a thing of the past. But here you are, still stuck on them!”
“But I'm not caught up on humans anymore, honest!” surprisingly, that wasn't entirely a lie.
Lyra had been turning her focus away from finding out about humans to actually trying to experiment with becoming one. After many failed experiments, one of which being so horrid that the two agreed to never speak of again, Lyra decided to take an alternate approach to becoming a human, and simply focused on a few other defining qualities...
“Then why are you trying to keep what's going on in the room secret, Lyra? What are you hiding?” From there Bonbon proceeded to go off on a rant about how her roommate was always doing weird, non-socially acceptable things.
It was then that Lyra realized Bonbon was no longer applying force to the door. She took a step back, realizing that she had just been granted a small window of opportunity. If Bonbon got in, then she would surely disrupt the delicate mental archiving of all the knowledge Lyra had recently acquired with her lectures. Furthermore, her nemesis would surely take the tome away from her, and return it to the archive of vast knowledge. She had to make a move, right there, right then, and so... she did.
Lyra's horn flared as she quickly put the spell together in her horn, weaving the magic just as she had before. She knew it wasn't smart to put a spell together – especially one she made up on the fly – in such a haste, but the situation called for it. She could hear Bonbon's ranting out the door, but paid no heed to it. Listening would only break her concentration, and she needed as much of it as she could get.
“And even your own sister said she loves her cello move than you, and-” Bonbon paused, her ears perking up as she heard something from the other side of the door. She expected to be hearing Lyra try to retort somehow, to defend herself and justify that she wasn't crazy. But instead the only thing she heard was a light hum, the distinct sound of a unicorn horn charging up a spell. Panic set in on Bonbon as she realized Lyra might just be about to take it too far... again. And if she stole a book on anthropomorphism, then... “Lyra? Lyra!” Bonbon cried, the desperation in her voice evident. “Don't you dare be trying something crazy in there again! Lyra!!” She reared her front hooves back, pushing on the door with all her might. With that mighty blow, the door swung open with a loud crack, revealing a large flash of magic accompanied by a ping noise.
Smoke followed soon afterwords, and a lot of it. Bonbon carried herself through the smoke, coughing as she waited eagerly for it to clear. Whatever Lyra was planning, it seems that she succeeded. But the part that scared Bonbon the most was that she didn't know if she wanted Lyra's spell to work correctly or not. And as the smoke cleared from the room and revealed the figure before her, she still couldn't decided whether or not it was a success, because her mind was too gripped by shock to tell.
Did... did it work? Lyra thought to herself as she opened her eyes. She wasn't breathing at the moment, holding her own breath intentionally from the anxiety of unleashing such a spell on herself. The most immediate thing she noticed was... well, the smoke. But as she let our her breath and proceeded to take another one in, she felt her chest move in ways it had never done before. Her eyes widened as she felt her chest move, as well as the other parts of her body begin to shift in ways they hadn't before.
It was then that she realized she was standing differently. She shifted her limbs slightly, feeling that she only had two on the ground, and the others were by her sides, hanging freely. She lightly shuffled her lower appendages, feeling that she still had hooves on them. Oh no, hooves again... did I prepare the spell well enough ? She moved her head to the left and right, trying to see if her neck was the same, only to find out that it was indeed different. She then tried wagging her head, and the balance offset from her actions made her realize that she was significantly taller as well. This is sorta like when I try to stand straight up on my back hooves she realized as she shifted her legs again. Only... more stable.
By then the smoke had cleared significantly, and though she couldn't tell what part of the room she was facing yet, she noted that her teal and white hair was hanging over a part of her face, just like it usually was. Her stance still confused her, and so in an effort to figure out just exactly how her legs were keeping her upright, she turned her head down to take a look. Immediately her gaze was filled with two large teal... lumps. She didn't quite know how to characterize them other than that, but they were lumps. Two of them, on her chest, side by side. She vaguely remembered some part of human anatomy carrying such a trait, but dismissed it for the time being. She bent over slightly as she looked down, seeing her hooves firmly planted on the floor with her fur still covering her fully. Weird, I still got hooves there, but what's...
Lyra's heart skipped a beat. She moved her other two limbs a little bit only to feel that there were not hooves on them, but indeed a collection of long, slender appendages. Her eyes grew even wider as she slowly brought the ends of her arms up to her face, noticing the sleek design of her biceps and the rigid shaft of her forearm. But what excited her most of wall was what hung at the end, the collection of bones and muscle in a complex structure that allowed for very intricate, detailed movements.
“H-hands...” Lyra whispered to herself as she held them in front of her face. Finally, after so many years of trying, she had acquired the one thing in all of Equestria that she desired the most. I, I don't, I just... I her mind drew close to short circuiting as she attempted to process not only the new information, but also handle her consciousness' unintelligible babble. She flexed and stretched her new hands, turning them several times over to inspect the joints and junctions. Sure, they were still covered in a light coat of her teal fur, and though she had forgotten to add in fingernails like the illustrations often showed, she still had the skeletal structure of a human hand... a real, live, and this time functioning human hand. She could feel every move she made, every twitch from her nerves and every shift of her muscles. The curling and uncurling of her fingers, the twisting and bending of her wrists. She felt it all, and she could not be any happier.
I have them... she began again, her mind successfully keeping itself from a meltdown. T-they're mine... all mine! I have hands, wondrous, glorious hands! Hah, and they work! They really, truly work! She brought one of her hands close to her face to feel them as she let the other extend outwards, fully erecting her fingers to put them on display. She rubbed her curled fingers against her cheek as if they were a newborn foal of hers, but at the moment they seemed just as important in her mind. As she gazed at her work in front of her, realizing that her mission had succeeded, she could only think of one word to say in her moment of triumph.
“Hands!” Lyra cried with glee, her eyes glittering from pure joy.
Behind her and to the side slightly, Bonbon could only stare with a twitch in her eye at what she saw before her. Lyra... standing on two hooves with a sleek, tall body, and... tentacles coming from where her front hooves once were while still being covered head to toe in her regular coat, as well as still having her regular mane and tail. Even her cutie mark was still there, tattooed on right where she assumed was Lyra's mutated flank.
There were no words that could come out of her mouth. The intensity of her roommates euphoria was matched only by her state of shock and confusion. She just stood there, her left eye twitching uncontrollably as she looked at what she hoped was the result of some sort of drug Pinkie Pie slipped into her food during lunch. But it was not fake like she hoped, no way it was. Her hope of discovering the whole situation to be a side effect of some hallucinogen was dashed as the... thing turned around to face her, showing off the mutilated ends of its new limbs right to her face.
“Look, Bonbon!” Lyra said triumphantly with a grin on her face that rivaled that of Pinkie Pie's. “I got hands now, see!? Just like humans!”
Lyra's fortune in not fainting after realizing that her spell worked was not shared by her roommate's. She watched with a confused look on her face as Bonbon's head swayed for a few moments with her eyes being half-lidded, and then finally topple onto her side, out like a light.
“Um... Bonbon?” Lyra bent down and poked at her roommate's side with her finger closest to her thumb. “Y’alright?”
