“Lyra? Are you okay in there?” Bon Bon asked from outside her friend's bedroom door as she knocked lightly with her hoof.
She was answered by a series of sniffles from her roommate before Lyra finally answered. “I'm....fine. Just leave me alone.”
“It's been three days, Lyra. I know the break-up process is painful but time will heal all wounds.”
“You're only saying that to make me feel better. And it's not working.” She began crying loudly again from the other side of the locked door.
Bon Bon put on a coy smile as she came up with an idea. “Would a special snack make you feel better? I could whip up something just for you.”
“Would...would you make my favorite?” Lyra sniffled through her words.
“Yes, your favorite. I need to go pick up some ingredients. While I'm gone, why don't you get cleaned up and I'll have a treat whipped up in no time.”
“O-Okay.”
As the earth pony gathered her saddle bag, she heard a knock come at the front door. After she secured her bag, she opened the door to see the cause of her friend's grief. “Oh hello. Noteworthy.” She spoke quietly as to not alert Lyra. “What are you doing here?”
The blue unicorn stallion nervously rubbed the back of his head before he answered. “I came to see Lyra. I know things didn't turn out well the other day, but I was hoping we could talk and work things out.”
“Who is it?” Lyra shouted from upstairs. “Is it Noteworthy?”
Bon Bon cautiously answered her friend. “Y-Yes.”
“Tell him to go jump off a bridge!”
The two ponies looked to each other nervously before the mare responded again. “Yeah, I'm not going to tell him that, Lyra.”
“Then tell him to drop dead.”
“Not gonna tell him that either.”
“Then you drop dead!”
The response angered Bon Bon as she fired back. “You drop dead!”
“You drop dead!”
“You drop dead!” She calmly turned back to Noteworthy who looked even more nervous than when he had arrived. “Sorry, she might need some space. Give her til this weekend and she might be up for a chat.”
“Noted. Thanks anyway.” The unicorn promptly turned and left the homestead.
“Alright, time to get those ingredients.” Bon Bon headed out to the market to pick up the prime ingredients for her special crème filled delights. She acquired most of what she needed but was shocked to find that one of the key ingredients was sold out. The only thing that could make it worse was made worse when she found out that the item was available locally but only grew in the depths of the Everfree forest. “Horse radish.” She said as she stood on the edge of the wooded area.
“Well, not going to find that root just standing here.” After taking a deep breath, she took her first steps into the forest, making sure to keep track of her direction with her compass as she headed deeper. Finding the root wouldn't necessarily prove difficult as they generally grew in the shade of large boulders. The difficulty came with the forest and it's all too dangerous wildlife. Bon Bon was sure it was nothing a retired spy who once combated a bugbear and came off the winner couldn't handle. Still, it would be nice to not have to deal with something if it could be avoided.
About an hour had passed by her watch as Bon Bon had not even seen so much as one boulder. “Searching for giant rocks should never be this difficult.” She trudged through the thick underbrush of the forest only to pause momentarily as she heard the wooden steps of one of the forests more tenacious predators, timber wolves. There were at least three of them by what she could tell as she crouched down next to a row of bushes. Peering underneath, she saw the wooden paws of the creatures get closer and closer to her position. The wolves stopped on the other side as they sniffed the air.
The apparent alpha of the group growled as it put it's nose to the ground before it looked around and howled. Bon Bon held her breath as they continued on in the opposite direction that she was headed. A sigh of relief turned into terror as the three wolves leaped through the bush and targeted the pony. “Crud!” The alpha lunged at the earth pony, who jumped up and sprung off the creatures head as the second charged at her mid-air. She twisted her body and slid across the back of the wolf and landed down on the ground behind them. This left the third that charged her from behind.
As it barreled toward her at full speed, she reached into her saddle bag and used her grappling cable to hook onto a nearby tree and pull herself away on the attached rope. This action caused the wolf to miss her completely and crash into the other two, smashing all three to pieces. “That won't keep them down for long. Now to...” Her thought process was cut short as the branch she swung snapped and she was hurled through the air and down a steep hillside. Her descent was eventually and painfully halted as she smashed into a hard unforgiving surface. She managed to pry her face from the object only to look up in amazement.
Looming over her was one of the rocks she was looking for, which meant... “Cinder roots!” She said excitedly as the leafy tops of the plants were visible under the shade of the boulder. “Now I just have to ...” The moment of triumph was cut short as she felt something tug on her tail and lift her into the air.
“Hooves off, puny pony!” A red dragon said as he held her up. He was no where near as large as the many dragons she had seen but also much bigger than the one dragon she was accustomed to seeing daily in Spike. He also sported a set of tattered orange wings which, while in rough shape could clearly still get him airborne as well as proved he'd been in a few good scraps. “Those cinder roots are mine.”
“Says who?”
“Says Garble. Me!”
“Listen, lizard lips, I need those roots to get my friend out of a heartbroken funk and you...”
Garble put a hand up to silence her. “Stop. Lame pony friendship garbage. Don't care. Now scram before I toast you for lunch.”
Bon Bon was tired from walking, searching, getting attacked by the timber wolves and falling down the slope. This dragon getting in the way of her goal had just pushed her over the edge. Using the fact that she was suspended by her tail, she used momentum to catch the dragon by surprise and kick him in the face, knocking him over as she ran and frantically pulled the cinder roots from the ground and placed them in her saddle bag.
“Hey those are mine!” He shouted as he got to his feet.
“I don't see your name on them.” Bon Bon laughed as she sprinted back into the forest. She'd have to figure out a way to navigate back up the slope to make her way home but for now her main concern was to get a good distance from the dragon.
“Get back here!” The dragon jumped to his feet and took flight to give chase.
The earth pony struggled through the thick undergrowth of the area as she could hear the flapping wings of the dragon not far behind. A few seconds later a fireball whizzed over her right shoulder and crashed into a tree which caused it to burst into flames. She galloped as hard as she could until she spotted a rock dead ahead of her. Using every once of her strength she sprung off the rock and leaped to a ledge just above it.
“You're not getting away from me that easily.” Garble charged forward only to find the rock had risen from the ground and that the rock wasn't a rock but a now awoken cragodile. He tried to brake mid-air only to find himself inside the creature's mouth. He managed to pry the cragodile's mouth open and strained to keep himself from being eaten by it as he attempted to worm his way out of its mouth.
“Later, scale face.” Bon Bon laughed as she watched him in his precarious situation as she prepared to take off. She stopped however as she spotted a second cragodile come from behind him and began to open it's mouth to make him a meal as soon as he exited the first creatures mouth. As much as she wanted to see him humiliated, not a bone in her pony body wanted to see the jerky dragon done any permanent harm.
“I must be crazy. Curse my big pony heart.” She leaped back down and on top of the first cragodile's head before shooting forward to her target of the approaching creature. She swiftly used her rope, wrapping one end around Garble's waste and the other around the snout of the creature she had just landed on. The second cragodile panicked immediately as it thrashed about and, by Bon Bon's design, yanked the dragon out of his predicament. Having gotten him out of the cragodile mouth, Bon Bon turned to Garble. “Cut it, quick!”
The dragon complied and slashed off the rope around him and attempted to get at the pony to get the root from her saddle bags. She kicked away from him and the two squared off. “Seriously? After I just saved your tail.”
“Hand them over!” He lunged at her only for the pony to dodge and caused him to ram into one of the cragodiles again. It turned to him and opened it's mouth wide as it prepared to chomp down on him.
“Look out!” Impulsively, she pulled off her saddle bags and hurled them into the stone beast's throat, which caused it to choke momentarily. Enough time for Garble to fly out of the way of the writhing cragodile, whose tail spun around and hit the unsuspecting Bon Bon. The blow sent her flying a good distance away and down a muddy hill as she tumbled before finally making a hard landing at the bottom. Through her blurry vision she could just make out the silhouettes and glowing green eyes of snarling timber wolves ahead of her. She struggled to get to her feet only to collapse from pure exhaustion and soon lost consciousness as the beasts were mere yards from her.
Her eyes shot open and she instinctively jumped back to defend herself from the wolves. She was shocked to find nothing but piles of smoldering wood ahead of her. “What the..? Never mind. It's been a long day. Guess I'll just head...home” Bon Bon felt something bump against her legs and looked down to see a few cinder roots sitting in the dirt, not buried like they should be but laying on the surface. “Weird.” She gathered them up as best she could and carried them by their leafy tops before she proceeded to look for a vantage point to get her bearings.
Her saddle bag, which was now presumably in the stomach of a monster, had her compass and other tools in it and Celestia wouldn't hold the sun just for her. And she definitely did not want to spend the night out here. As she struggled to make heads or tales of the place the earth pony halted as she saw a tree, recently uprooted, laying on the ground. As she approached it she spotted even more of them every few hundred feet, knocked or bent over and all tilted in the same direction. Without much else to go on, The pony followed them and after a good walking distance found herself on the edge of the forest that looked out toward Ponyville. “Home sweet home.”
After she had cleaned herself up from her heralding little grocery run, Bon Bon got to doing what she did best in her civilian guise; baking. “Bon Bon, you're back.” Lyra hugged her from behind excitedly as the baker was already in the middle of making her treats, set out on four separate trays.
“Yeah, the shopping trip took a bit longer than I anticipated. You wouldn't believe how far I had to travel to get some of those ingredients. Feeling better?”
“Uh huh.”
Then it was all worth it.”
“Awe, you didn't have to do all that for me,” She looked over the trays of delicious looking chocolate dipped confections. “but since you went through so much trouble.” The unicorn grabbed one of them from the second tray as her friend was focused on making some others.
“Not that tray.” Bon Bon's warning went unheeded as her roommate bit down into the chocolate treat only to let out a yelp and spit it back into her hoof.
“Ow, what's in these things, rocks?” She wiped the chocolate off to see a green gemstone. “Hey, what's the big idea?”
Bon Bon answered as she continued to work. “That tray is not for you. It's for someone else.”
“Who eats chocolate covered gemstones?” She stopped to think before Lyra put on a devious smile. “Ooh, you have a crush on Spike, don't you?” When she didn't get an answer it only encouraged her. “You do. You have a crush on him. I'm gonna go tell him!” She dashed out the door in a puff of smoke.
Her earth pony friend merely chuckled as she looked up where Lyra used to be. “And she's back mares and gentle colts.”
Dragon Lands (One Day Later)
Garble exited a large cave. “I'm headed out ma.” He shouted back inside as a booming voice answered him.
“See you soon Garble. Thanks again for the cinder roots. I'm feeling much better.”
“Uh huh. I'll be at the fire range if you need anything else.” He departed and joined the other teen dragons at the fire range as they launched flames at the stone target dummies. “Ready to see some target shooting genius?”
“Incoming!” One of the others shouted as a gray griffon came in, full speed for a landing. They all dove to the ground and covered their faces.
“Um, hi.” They opened their eyes to find the griffon standing right in front of them. “I'm Gabby, your friendly neighborhood delivery griffon with a special package for...Gurgle?”
“It's Garble.” He snatched the red package from her as she smiled and flew off. He cracked it open and looked inside. The box contained what looked like chocolates and a note that read:
Thanks for saving my flank out there. I know you didn't have to and I appreciate it. I don't know if dragons really do friendship but if you're ever in Ponyville, don't be afraid to drop in because you'll have at least one friend here.
Bon Bon
“What is it dude?” One of the other dragons asked as they looked on.
“Nothing, just some lame pony junk.” He tossed it over a mound and flew off. “I'm off to do some gorge boarding.”
“Whatever dude.”
The others went back to what they were doing as Garble made sure none of them were watching. Making sure no one else saw, he rounded back to collect his package and tossed one of the chocolates in his mouth. “Mmm, chocolate covered gems? Huh, maybe some ponies aren't so lame after all.”
