Lyra Heartstrings threw her curtains open, delighted at the prospect of enjoying a new day. Trotting to the bathroom, she began her daily wake-up routine, starting with a nice shower. She turned the horse-faucet and let the horse-water course through her horse-hair. Humming a quiet tune to herself, she picked up her favorite bottle of shampoo, The Scent of Music, and began lathering her mane and body. Soon after she’d started this process, though, she realized something felt off about the substance she’d just coated her body in. It made her feel… groovy.
Lyra stayed perfectly still for a good few minutes as the water rinsed the soap and suds out of her fur. She could feel her hooves starting to tremble, slowly at first but getting more violent as time crawled on. All of a sudden, she rose, standing on her hind legs. Her hooves clapped in front of her, and she lost all control.
The dance that she performed in her bathtub that morning was one unlike any other previously seen in Equestria, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. It was a dance of pure smugness, as if she'd just killed everyone else in Ponyville and remained the last equine standing. She could've sworn she heard a short funky little tune as she flailed around rhythmically.
As fast as she’d lost control of her body, she regained it. Out of breath and a little scared, she looked down at her hooves in wonder. After a moment of contemplating what in Celestia’s name just happened, she looked back to the shampoo bottle, grabbed it, and started scanning over the ingredients list, trying to discern what had just caused this sudden display of sheer virginity.
Lyra shook her head rapidly, spraying water all over the walls and shower curtain. She took another look at the bottle, looking over the ingredients list again. Did she hallucinate? Perhaps this was one of those “herbal” shampoos that had been all the rage recently. It could have been a side-effect, albeit a rather unusual one…
She ultimately shrugged it off, and decided to be more careful with her shampoo purchasing in the future. Besides, it made her smell pretty good, if she said so herself. She stepped out of the shower and dried herself off with the nearest towel. But something still felt… off. She was overwhelmed with a strange urge, as if she wanted to descend into Ponyville with a glider or something. She tried rubbing her temples to clear her head, but to no avail.
“I think I need some fresh air,” she finally said, and with that she headed out the door.
“Lyra, what the fuck are you doing?”
Lyra’s first instinct was to react with surprise at the vulgarity of what had just been said to her, but for some reason she was overpowered by a burning need to, instead, reply with something even worse. She felt like she needed to bash Twilight Sparkle over the head with a pickaxe.
“Oh, my," said Twilight, realizing what she'd just said. "I don't know why I phrased that so distastefully. Sorry.” Lyra, however, didn't answer as her facial expression gradually shifted into one bestowed with the rage of a twelve-year-old. Before Lyra could enact her plan for victory over Twilight, her hooves slammed back onto the ground and all her weird thoughts vanished.
“Ugh,” said Lyra, “Sorry, Twilight. Something weird’s happening to me, and I don’t understand what. Ever since I took a shower this morning, I’ve been feeling constant urges to dance at random and destroy everything I see. With a pickaxe, specifically.”
Twilight just stared at her for a minute. “Huh. That’s… definitely not normal. Maybe I can run a few tests on you?”
“That’d probably be for the best,” said Lyra.
The walk back to the castle wasn’t easy, though. Twilight kept having to levitate Lyra back to herself, as she had developed a tendency to grab every possible building material she saw and attempt to build various nonsensical structures with them. She even smacked her hoof on Derpy’s head, slightly fixing her eyes for a minute while Lyra profusely apologized.
Eventually, the two of them managed to make it into Twilight’s castle, though not before Lyra tried to break the doors down. Twilight decided the best course of action was to simply teleport Lyra into her lab, lest she try to break any tables on their way there.
As soon as Lyra got a bearing on where she was, she couldn’t help but admire the place. “Alright, where we droppin’, gals?”
Spike slapped her on the face. “Snap out of it!”
That managed to at least temporarily jolt Lyra out of whatever deep recess of darkness her mind had wandered into. “Spike, grab the brainwave scanner. We have some tests to run,” Twilight ordered.
“Got it,” said Spike. “Wait, I don’t know what that is.”
Twilight slapped and dragged a hoof down her face. “Do you always have to be so worthless?”
“J-Jeez, Twilight, sorry,” said Spike. He went over to one of the shelves and grabbed a device that seemed to fit the description. “Is this it?”
“Yes, yes, now bring it over and attach it to Lyra before she starts to dance and break my lab equipment.” Spike handed the helmet-like device to Twilight, who levitated it over onto Lyra’s head. Lyra started to feel her hooves shake again, and looked desperately at Twilight and Spike.
“Oh, not again! Twilight, quick! Do something!”
Twilight conjured up a magical cell around Lyra, letting the wire to the scanner go between the bars and into a machine she was currently monitoring. As soon as the cell manifested, Lyra found herself dancing on her hind legs yet again, in the same fashion as that morning.
Twilight and Spike stared at the reader in wonder, neither one of them saying a word. They looked back at Lyra, who finally finished her anti-mating dance and fell back on all fours. “Well…” Twilight trailed off.
“It’s like I said,” said Lyra, letting out a sigh. “It’s been this way ever since I used that shampoo.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about that,” Twilight stated.
“What, then?”
“That machine over there is for reading your brainwaves,” Twilight pointed over at a machine in the opposite corner of them. “This one is for spying on the populace.”
“I’m not following.”
Twilight smirked at the screen before shutting it down. “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, as for your new-found dancing habit…” Twilight trotted over to the other machine with Spike in tow. “These readings are telling me one of two possible explanations: One, you have a malignant brain tumor.”
Lyra swallowed. “And the other?”
Twilight walked back to Lyra. “Tell me, what brand of shampoo did you use this morning?”
“The one I always use, The Scent of Music, I always buy it from Aloe.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “Oh. That explains it, then.”
“Did she scam me out of my V-Bucks?”
“No, she- What? No. Didn’t you hear? That stuff was recalled recently. Somehow, a bunch of Poison Joke got into their most recent batch.”
“So it’s not a brain tumor?” Lyra asked hopefully.
“Well, Poison Joke affects everypony differently, but I doubt it would do that. No, it’s probably the machine acting weird, since Poison Joke has magical properties. Not only that, but the effect seems to be slightly contagious, somehow. Your very presence is causing a significant rise in toxicity levels between both me and Spike.”
"T-Toxicity?"
"Not in the literal sense. More of a behavioral toxicity."
“Oh, is that why you called me 'worthless'?” said Spike, who looked like he was still stinging a bit from that.
“Y-Yeah, that’s right,” said Twilight, rather sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”
Lyra sighed with relief. “Alright, so how do I fix this?”
Twilight grinned slightly. “Thankfully, we have a cure in a book somewhere around here.”
Just as Twilight turned around to search for it, however, Lyra started getting the shakes again - this time, of a decidedly more violent-feeling nature. “Uh, T-Twilight?”
“Spike, where the hay is that stupid book?”
“I don’t know, Twilight! Learn to keep track of your stuff!”
She turned around, glaring daggers at Spike. “What did you say?”
“I mean, uh… Hey, something’s going on with Lyra again!” Spike pointed at her cell.
“Something feels different this time!” Lyra’s hooves were shaking uncontrollably, and her right hoof was violently twitching towards her left hoof. “I need a pickaxe! Somepony get me a pickaxe!”
All of the sudden, she broke off a bar of the magical cell, and started hacking away, trying to escape her glowing prison.
“What the hell?!” said Twilight. Lyra only kept swinging away at the bars until they snapped. Twilight stepped back. “How did you even…?!” Lyra didn’t answer. Her sights were set on one thing, sitting on a lab table in the back of the room.
Twilight saw exactly what she was eyeing. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Spike! Why did you have to bring a pickaxe down here?!”
“What? I didn’t bring it down here! You did weeks ago!”
“...Oh. Right. Well, still! We-” She cut herself off as she saw Lyra burst from her cell, making a run straight for the pickaxe. Twilight was faster, however, as she quickly levitated the pickaxe high in the air, far too high for any normal pony to reach. Lyra let her gaze follow the pickaxe into the air for a moment, but then snapped it towards Twilight. “Lyra! C’mon, stop-”
Lyra didn’t let her finish, instead dashing directly at Twilight. Before Twilight could say anything else, Lyra swung her hoof down on her head.
Right onto Twilight’s horn.
“OW!” shouted Twilight, reeling from being attacked in such a sensitive spot.
Lyra didn’t fare any better, her forehoof bleeding from smashing it down on a sharp horn. The pain managed to seemingly bring her back to the world of the sane, if only for a short time. “I’ve been hit at 105!” She screamed in panic, her blood still dripping lightly onto the floor. Twilight regained her bearings and, after a brief moment of contemplating what on earth Lyra had just said, levitated her into the air, out of harm’s way.
“I need that chug jug!” Lyra thrashed her body towards a giant blue beaker on the lab table, unaware that she wasn’t moving anywhere.
“SPIKE!” shouted Twilight. “Get me that book or I swear, I will drop-kick you into a wood chipper!” Spike flipped her the middle finger, a gesture she didn’t recognize, before he scrambled out of the room and went searching for the book.
Lyra, on the other hand, was growing more and more agitated - that is, until she remembered that she, also, was a unicorn. With a mischievous grin, she grabbed the beaker in her magic and zoomed it over towards her.
“NO!” shouted Twilight, grabbing the beaker with her own magic and entering into a tug-of-war of sorts. Some of the blue liquid started to spill over the sides and onto the floor.
“I need that shield!” Lyra shouted.
Unfortunately, Twilight grossly underestimated the extra magic force that the Poison Joke and her addled mind gave her, and Lyra successfully pulled the beaker close enough to her to start drinking from it. A grim expression overcame Twilight’s face for a moment, but she regained her focus and gave the potion one last yank, sending it flying into a wall, where it shattered and sent the remaining blue substance everywhere.
“NOOOOO! I ONLY GOT A THIRD OF MY SHIELD UP!” Lyra thrashed even harder against her magical restraints. “You’re blocking my Victory Royale!”
“SPIKE!”
“I’m here!” Spike was suddenly by her side shoving a massive book at her with a worried look in his eye.
“Great!” Twilight shouted. She snapped her gaze toward Lyra. “Lyra, I’m going to put you down now, do you understand? I need you to calm down for just a minute!”
“You’re not even building! There’s no way you can win!”
“Lyra, I know the secret to you earning your... Victory... Royal, or whatever you said!”
“W-what? Am I in duos?”
“Yeah! Sure!” said Twilight, finally seeming to get the hang of this strange dialect Lyra had adopted. “Listen, I know the secret to making even more of that… shield that you drank!”
“You do? HOW?! I need a full shield!”
“I can get you your full shield, Lyra, don’t you worry! But you’ve gotta listen to me very closely, you understand?” Twilight was beginning to strain a bit with holding her in the air for so long.
“O-ok Twilight. But hurry! The storm is coming!” The panic in her eyes almost made Twilight feel sorry for her.
Almost. “Okay, I’m going to put you down now! Once I do, I need you to face directly toward that shelf opposite of me!” Twilight slowly started lowering her towards the earth, sweat beading her face. Finally, Lyra’s hooves touched the ground, and the aura disappeared. “Now, you see that shelf up there, that holds all those jars?”
“Yeah… are they coming from there?”
Instead of answering, Twilight levitated the book from Spike’s hands and smacked Lyra over the head with it.
The weight of the book and Lyra’s fatigue from the war for the beaker caused her to instantly be knocked out, as she slumped to the floor in a heap.
“Woah!” Spike exclaimed, in pure shock. “Jeez, Twilight! Why’d you do that?!”
“Well, I’m not gonna wait and see if she whacks us with a pickaxe!” Twilight huffed and set the book down. “Besides, the herbal bath needs a good few minutes to take effect. I don’t think I could’ve gotten her to sit still that long.”
“Well, what exactly do we need to make this bath again?”
“Just leave it to me, Spike. I need to do this fast, and you certainly took your sweet time with the book.” Twilight left the discouraged dragon with his head hung while she waltz over to the ingredients section of her lab. She gathered all the herbs she needed and started preparing the bath.
Lyra jerked awake to a rather pleasant smell. That, and a rather pleasant feeling around her body. She looked down and, to her surprise, she found herself in a bathtub, filled to the brim with some sort of concoction she couldn’t imagine the ingredients of.
She looked around the bathroom she was in, but it didn’t seem to be hers. She finally caught eye of Twilight, who was sat in the corner, evidently having been waiting for her to wake up.
“Well? How do you feel?” Twilight put her book down, cautiously walking over in case something went wrong.
“Like I need to sue a shampoo company.” Lyra sat up inside the bathtub, rubbing her head where a welt seemed to have made its home. “...What happened to my head?”
“Well, I was a bit tired of your constant wiggling, so I decided to knock you out for a bit!” Twilight smiled sincerely, as if she enjoyed knocking her out.
Lyra thought of objecting to this, but recalling exactly how she was acting, she somehow couldn’t blame her. She sighed and climbed out of the tub, grabbing the towel set out for her and started drying herself. “Well, thanks for helping solve that whole thing. Are you doing fine with the whole, you know, ‘toxicity’ thing you mentioned?”
Twilight stopped dead in her tracks. “W-what did you just say?”
“You know, how it was causing you and Spike to act like jerks to each other?”
Twilight’s eye twitched a few times before she came to the realization. “O-oh! Yes, I, uh… I think so?”
“Well, that’s good. I don’t know how Spike would take being called ‘worthless’ in any other context.”
“I think he’s doing fine,” Twilight smiled as Spike walked into the room with a dejected demeanor.
“Well, I do know one thing,” said Lyra. “I'm staying far away from Poison Joke as long as I live.” She set the towel down, and stretched her legs, glad to be back in control of her own body.
“Yeah, you’d better, you dumb f-” Twilight stopped herself. “Ugh. Sorry, I don’t think it’s completely worn off for me. I might have to jump in that bath too.”
Lyra cocked her head, but didn’t say anything. Shaking her head she thanked Twilight and bid her farewell as she went home. Once she arrived, she realized she needed to use the restroom. She headed upstairs, but stopped, realizing she heard the shower running. But… she did turn it off before she left.
Right?
“Oh, shoot! Bon-Bon!”
Author's Note
