“Get out of my bar,” Berry Punch said, leveling a dirty gaze at Bon Bon.
“Oh, c’mon,” Bon Bon replied with a type-IV smile, a S.M.I.L.E. classic for when one needed to ingratiate oneself with a civilian without crossing into the dangerous territory of patronizing them. Even though I’m technically a patron…
“At least let me order something, Berry,” Bon Bon said, using her tried-and-true pleading voice.
Berry Punch didn’t flinch. “No.”
“But—”
“Nah-ah,” Berry waved her hoof in Bon Bon’s face. “Nonononono; no. No. Remember last time?”
“You’re really gonna bring up last time?”
“Yes, I am,” came Berry’s curt reply. “Not just last time, but every time I can remember in recent history. You enter my bar, order something, and then, before I know what’s going on, there’s a giant hole in my wall.”
“That was just one time.”
“Or my roof caves in.”
Bon Bon’s smile faltered to a type-VII: embarrassed. It was more of a situational smile, in that it tended not to be very useful unless the target was susceptible—which Berry Punch proved not to be.
“Or there’s a mysterious outbreak of parasprites.”
Type-VIII, embarrassed with blush; apparently Berry Punch was immune to that one as well.
“Or it catches fire—”
“C’mon Berry, you know me!”
“Yeah, I know you, ‘Special Agent Sweetie Drops.’”
Bon Bon gasped. “How—”
Berry crossed her forelegs and stared daggers. “Tell your ‘best friend’ ‘Agent Heartstrings’ to stop leaving her orders here. And tell your silly spy organization that their letters aren’t self-destructing like they’re supposed to!”
“First off, those are classified. You shouldn’t have looked at them.” She frowned. “And I don’t know what you’re insinuating.”
“Look, Bon Bon,” Berry pressed a forehoof between her eyes before lowering it back to the counter. “I know how to put two and two together; and I’ve figured out… that you’re pissing me off.”
Bon Bon opened her mouth to answer but a light tremor made itself known through the floorboards. Another, and the glasses hanging behind Berry jingled.
“Rumble, rumble; it’s for you,” Berry said flatly. “Now get out of here before you make my insurance premiums go up again!”
Bon Bon swore as she slowly made for the exit. It’d only taken a month for her to be perma-banned from Berry’s. It was all thanks to S.M.I.L.E. essentially putting her in charge of Ponyville monster containment while Princess Sparkle and her friends were out of town on an extended “friendship mission.” She had resigned herself to the fact that there was no telling how many more weeks she’d have to put up with this, but without her favorite watering hole, it was going to be a bear.
Speaking of bears: as she opened the door to the outside, the shadow of an Ursa Major passed over Bon Bon. The massive, semi-transparent constellation of a bear passed between her and the sun as it lumbered down the street… or carved a new street in its wake. It towered higher than all of the town buildings, most of which were around the size of the soles of the beast’s paws—perfect squashing size.
Sighing, Bon Bon looked into her saddle bag to see what supplies she had with her: one grappling hook, one pair of binoculars, two pairs of shades, one Mare-portable Prototype Reflector Deflector (or MPRD—patent pending)—two emergency flares, one emergency S.M.I.L.E. beacon, one portal grenade, and a bag of imported Saddle Arabian oats. Sighing again, she donned a pair of shades and shouldered the grappling hook.
“The horror, the horror!”
Bon Bon’s gaze was drawn to the fainting trio of flower ponies, who were right in harm's way, as usual. She facehoofed, and silently cursed their mastery of placing their carts right in the path of whatever monster decided to stroll through town. “No time for backup; guess I’m gonna have to bear down and deal with this myself.”
Thankfully, it doesn’t appear to be on a rampage yet—
One massive paw landed on the roof of a modest sized store, crushing the entire building with a splintering “crunch.”
Well, better the Quills and Sofas emporium than Berry’s tavern, she thought, rushing to aid the fallen flower fillies. She grunted as she pushed the prone pile of Daisy, Lily, and Rose out of their positions in the perilous path of destruction. She momentarily lamented that their carts would be obliterated. And as the flower stalls were smashed to bits—I mean pieces, not the currency; I mean, wouldn’t that just be weird—she paused for a moment to think about her next move. Ok, Ursa Majors don’t normally come to town; something must’ve brought it here. What could have possibly—
An odd deep grumbling sound echoed across the town. It repeated every so often, reminding Bon Bon almost of—Snoring?
Bon Bon darted through the crowds of gawking townsponies and clambered up the candy-coated siding of Sugarcube Corner—the tallest structure she could reach quickly—and took out her binoculars. She hoofed the zoom dial as she scanned across town in the direction that the snoring seemed to come from.
Bon Bon spotted something unexpected clear across town in the School of Friendship Amphitheatre. She blinked twice, rubbed a hoof against her eyes, then looked back through the field glasses, confirming that she indeed saw a terrified Octavia Melody playing the cello whilst an Ursa Minor slumbered in the vacated stands.
“Oh no.” Bon Bon was pretty sure that if Octavia was in danger, that danger was about to be multiplied tenfold when—
“Ah, there you are Vinyl,” Bon Bon said, instinctively throwing her grapple to the next building over. Vinyl Scratch was rolling a fairly large looking speaker onto the stage, apparently falling back on her—usually catastrophic—goto method of “wubbing” problems away.
“I should really have a name for this type of situation,” Bon Bon said as she dropped the binoculars and swung between two buildings, executing a perfect landing roll onto the street. While trying to think of a proper title—she truly did run into this exact scenario far too often for it to not have a name—she also hoped that her full gallop through the crowded streets would get her to the stage before the “sick beats” began. A rampaging Ursa Minor would be hard enough to get out of town without causing widespread devastation; with the Major on the way, those chances would be even more slim.
“Hi Bon Bon!”
No. Not here, not now. “Hello Lyra,” she said to her “best friend” in a tone flatter than flapjacks. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Naw, it was completely planned, bestie,” Lyra said, purposefully bumping her rump into Bon Bon’s and threatening to send them both careening into a hay-bacon cart.
“Planned?” Oh right, dummy, she was supposed to be a substitute teacher for music classes at the School of Friendship today! And you’re running in a direct line from Berry’s—
“Well, yeah,” Lyra chuckled. “It’s just after 11am, which means you prolly just got kicked out of Berry’s bar, so I figured that’d be the best place to find you. Oh, that reminds me, our class somehow summoned an Ursa and put it to sleep in the bleachers.”
“You were coming to get me?” Bon Bon felt a warmth in her chest. “That’s so sweet—” Her mind corrected her swiftly enough. “—and also… uncharacteristically practical of you.”
“I know, right?” Lyra was all smiles. “Sometimes I surprise even—”
Lyra ate a face full of carrot cart.
Sighing with relief, Bon Bon galloped onward. Wow, I was scared there for a moment, but everything is as it should be; me running towards danger, and Lyra running into inanimate objects.
That only left Vinyl Scratch as a potential threat to her efforts to save the town. From past experience, Bon Bon knew that while Ursas were an actual physical threat, they tended to be benign more often than not. It was well-meaning but featherbrained ponies like Lyra and Vinyl who acted as catalysts to agitate the creatures into tearing up towns.
Speaking of which, she could hear an electric buzz tickling her eardrums, a herald of the epic wubs that would soon fill the air with the roars of dubstep-disrupted Ursa sleep, and the screams of townsponies. Well, more screams at any rate, she thought as she passed a crowd of wailing ponies traveling in the opposite direction.
“C’mon Vinyl,” Bon Bon whispered, “please don’t be done with the wires yet, there’s always more wires with you; please, let there be more wires.” She secretly dreaded the day that Vinyl discovered wireless speakers.
Rather than directly enter the amphitheatre, Bon Bon opted to circle around to the back, to avoid waking the Minor, if she could help it. As she entered the backstage area, Bon Bon noticed a huddled group of theatre goers.
One of them, a slim unicorn in a red robe, glanced at her, then stood. “You there! You’re obviously some kind of Government Agent—”
Bon Bon sighed; nopony was fooled by the shades anymore. Most of the S.M.I.L.E. agents pined for the olden days, when all that was needed for a proper disguise was a simple pair of aviators and perhaps a rubber muzzle.
“—and I demand that you take action this instant!”
“Really Sir?” She said, fumbling with her saddlebag for a second. “And what is your name?”
“I am Chancellor Neighsay, here to catalogue the atrocity that is the substitute teacher system at this abomination of a school. I was attending this mediocre performance when I was assaulted by a very large—”
“That’s fascinating, Sir; can you—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” Neighsay interrupted. “Do you know who I am?”
“No, but do you know what this is?” Bon Bon raised her MPRD; Neighsay and the other theatre patrons stared at the esoteric device. Then the MPRD flashed, followed by a high pitched whine as it recharged its magic-capacitor.
As the ponies sat, dazed and highly suggestible from the short term memory wipe, Bon Bon tried to think quickly of a plausible cover. “You never saw me here. Princess Twilight and her friends showed up… out of the blue… and dealt with the Ursas, then left, so… go about your business… but avoid… the umm… the Ursas.” She pressed her hoof to her forehead. Ugh, I’m going to have to call S.M.I.L.E. to do another town-wide wipe, aren’t I?
“Excuse me, Miss—”
Ugh, Neighsay again.
“—I’m supposed to be going about my business, but I don’t even know where I am; the last I remember, I was in Canterlot, when that hack headmare, Princess Sparkle, and her under-qualified teacher friends, somehow beat up an Ursa onstage—”
Celestia above.
The MPRD flashed.
Bon Bon looked Neighsay in his dazzled eyes. “You’re at the Ponville School of Friendship to view the highly-talented substitute teachers Twilight left performing a spectacular music recital. Princess Twilight and her highly-qualified friends saved you from a rampaging Ursa. You want to go home now because—” Ugh, think, Sweetie Drops… “—because you’re embarrassed that you failed to act in a crisis situation. Yes; that’s it. Now go home and think about how other ponies are more heroic than you!”
Neighsay started to cry as he trotted off.
Did I overdo it? She watched Neighsay caterwaul towards the school’s main building. …Nah.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a vibration she felt through the floor. It was the unmistakable rumble of a subwoofer powering up. There’s no time! Gallop! Moving as quickly as her hooves would carry her, she rushed out onto the stage, where Octavia, trooper that she was, continued to play a classical piece despite the expression on her face, which was contorted in fear—as terrified as one might expect when one sees their roommate ready to concuss a constellation creature with a cacophony of wubs—because there, at the opposite end of the stage, stood Vinyl Scratch, with her volume already cranked to 11, and with her hooves on all of the dials and pedals.
“Vinyl!” Bon Bon did her best to stage whisper to the DJ, but the headphones Vinyl wore precluded any such attempt.
Her head swinging back and forth, almost as if she were in full denial, Bon Bon quickly scanned the stage, and found what she was looking for. Just as Vinyl began to slide the mix dials, to unleash her sickest of beats on the slumbering Ursa, Bon Bon dove, her hoof catching on one particularly thick wire. She pulled with all of her might, as well as using the strength of her dive, to pull the plug at the end of the wire from its socket.
Sighing loudly, Octavia continued to play, apparently relieved despite still being more or less trapped into the performance.
Vinyl’s eyebrows rose above her shades, and she swiftly started pushing dials up and down the board. “Hay! What gives? Where are my wubs?!” She turned a beshaded glance at Bon Bon. “You?! Again?!”
Right, I haven’t been able to use the MPRD on her because she refuses to take those blasted shades off.
“Plug my setup back in,” Vinyl shouted, “or I’ll show you how to appreciate the arts!”
“Please, Vinyl,” Bon Bon pleaded, “let me take care of this situation, I’m trained—”
“The only thing you’re trained at, is killing my groove!” Vinyl abandoned her table and started advancing on Bon Bon.
“C’mon Vinyl, that Ursa Minor’s mother is on the way; we’ll have a Major problem if you get the kid cranky before she arrives!”
“I’ll tell you who’s about to have a major problem, Sweetie Drops!”
Bon Bon honestly didn’t know why she bothered with the alias anymore. Maybe it was to keep S.M.I.L.E. happy; they didn’t like agents using their code names in public. She’d chosen the name Bon Bon because it was tangentially related to her callsign. At least Lyra still called her by it, even if it was getting to the point where most ponies in town knew her secret identity anyways—
Vinyl was tapping her. “You ok, Bon Bon? You zoned out for a minute there.”
“Yes,” Bon Bon replied. “Sorry, you had me thinking about something else… hay, behind you, look out!” She pointed a hoof past Vinyl and the stands.
“Nice try, Bon Bon, but I’m the undisputed master of the whole ‘behind you’ gag; most ponies are worried that I’ve snuck a giant speaker behind them or something. It’s kinda funny, since I only do that, like, half of the time.”
The crunching sound of crumbling stone, the groan of bending metal railings, and the total eclipse of the sun heralded the Ursa Major’s arrival.
Vinyl turned around, lifted her shades up so they rested on her horn, and kept looking up, up, up, until she saw the Ursa Major’s face, which stared down at all of the ponies on stage with a look of benign curiosity.
Vinyl looked between the Ursa Major and her current speaker setup a few times. Then she cracked a mad grin. “Looks like it’s time to fire up the BASS CANNON!”
“Hey Vinyl,” Bon Bon said, aiming the MPRD at the DJ.
“Yeah, what—” Vinyl looked down.
The MPRD flashed.
Bon Bon lowered the device and leaned close to Vinyl. “Princess Twilight and friends saved the day, blah blah blah, get Octavia and clear out.”
“Does this mean I can stop playing?” Octavia looked hopeful.
“Absolutely! Have you ever seen one of these?”
“No, what is—”
The MPRD flashed.
“Princess Twilight and friends, blah blah, ask Vinyl.” Bon Bon shoved the cellist and DJ backstage as the Ursa Major decided to sit, crushing the delicate landscaping of the park and the entirety of the street leading up to the amphitheatre.
Definitely going to need to call in S.M.I.L.E. on this one.
She set off the emergency S.M.I.L.E. beacon and checked her bags for the remaining equipment. She would have to contain the situation herself, but she was already down her grapple, having left it attached to the Saddle Superstore, and her binoculars, which graced the top of Sugarcube Corner.
Odd, didn’t I have more in here? She thought while rummaging around, coming up with only the portal grenade.
“Wait a minute.” Bon Bon’s eyes narrowed. “My oats are gone too—”
A sudden hissing sound drew Bon Bon’s attention over to a beshaded Lyra, who held an ignited flare in her magic.
“Lyra, freeze!”
“Get the kid,” Lyra yelled, swinging the flare back and forth like a madmare.
“What kid—the Ursa Minor?! Get rid of the flare!” Bon Bon couldn’t believe—scratch that, she could totally believe that Lyra was doing this.
“Get the kid!”
“Get rid of the—” Bon Bon facehoofed. Oh, I never should have taken her to see that dinosaur movie.
While the Ursa Major seemed more nonplussed than irritated, content to watch the show that was playing out below it, Bon Bon knew it was only a matter of time before Lyra did something else to endanger their lives. Abandoning all hope of shooing the creatures out of town peacefully, she took out her portal grenade and started fiddling with the settings. She settled on “XXXXXXL” aperture size, and “Tartarus” as the destination. Then she thought better of it and went for an extra “X.” “At least they won’t be able to cause any severe property damage in there while they’re waiting for relocation,” Bon Bon mused.
Lyra threw her flare at the Ursa Minor—
I was wondering when she’d try to get us killed.
—and lit the second flare, waving it around as the perturbed Ursa Minor roared its discontent over getting hit in the face with a stick of burning magnesium.
The section of the bleachers where Lyra had been moments before was obliterated by one of the Ursa Major’s paws, producing a horrible grinding sound and a shower of sundered stone. If the accompanying bass roar was any indicator, the Ursa Major wasn’t too happy about its child receiving a flare to the face either.
Bon Bon hit the activator and hurled the grenade to land at the Ursa Minor’s feet. With any luck, it will—
The portal opened up with a loud “whoomph.” The spire prisons of Tartarus became visible, with the center of one just on the other side of the portal. The Ursa Minor, its front paws already past the portal edge, teeterd for a moment before falling in, snarling and swiping the whole way.
The Ursa Major leveled a hateful gaze at Bon Bon that turned her legs to Jell-o. Thankfully it decided to stalk through the portal into Tartarus instead of remaining to take out its rage on her and Lyra.
It did stomp its hind leg one last time as it passed through the closing portal, however; a move that shattered entire sections of the amphitheatre grounds, and caused large pieces of the stage ceiling to fall to the ground. One steel i-beam struck through the stage about twenty hooflengths in front of Bon Bon.
As luck would have it, there was a massive crossbeam under the stage about ten hooflengths in front of Bon Bon, making an effective seesaw of the boards she stood upon. The ceiling beam nailed the floor in such a manner that she was catapulted, screaming, into the air.
Bon Bon was too overtaken with shock and terror to think coherently during her ascent. But on her way back to the earth, as she plummeted past several startled pegasi, she reflected on how her only consolation was in a job well done…
+++Operation “Papa Bear” Post Op Transcript+++
Heartstrings: “Agent Furlong!”
Furlong: “Agent Heartstrings, report!”
Heartstrings: “The Ursa Minor and Ursa Major have been contained in Tartarus, Sir!”
Furlong: “What about exposure?”
Heartstrings: “A good deal of the town saw it, Sir; we’re probably looking at a class-III memory wipe.”
Furlong: “Celestia above. Where is Agent Sweetie Drops?”
Heartstrings: “Dead, or trying to get into Berry Punch’s bar… or both.”
Bravo: “Sir, Sir!”
Furlong: “Yes Agent Bravo?”
Bravo: “We’ve recovered Chancellor Neighsay, Sir…”
Furlong: “And?”
Bravo: “And it seems somepony used a Reflector Deflector on him…”
Furlong: “But… he’s one of Equestria’s council members! He’s a protected individual under our charter… who—”
Bravo: “Agent Sweetie Drops must have done it. Odd, since we sent a letter with the updated list of non-acceptable memory-wipe targets.”
Furlong: “Agent Heartstrings?”
Heartstrings: “We never got any letter… And we definitely didn’t leave the letter we never received in Berry Punch’s bar; that would be irresponsible.”
Furlong: “…That would be irresponsible… Agent Bravo, how bad is the damage?”
Bravo: “He likes Princess Twilight now, thinks her and her friends are heroes.”
Furlong: “Celestia above. Well… we can’t very well hit him with a Reflector Deflector again, we’ll just have to cook up a good cover story… either of you got anything?”
Heartstrings: “We could say that some kid stole all the magic in Equestria, and that a bunch of Twilight’s students saved Neighsay and defeated her?”
Bravo: “That’s a horri—”
Furlong: “Sounds plausible, Bravo, make it happen.”
Bravo: “...Yes, Sir.”
“—So, what’ll ya have?”
Bon Bon’s eyes slowly adapted to the lower light levels inside Berry Punch’s bar. “What?”
“Good, so you are alive.” Berry sat behind the bar, her forelegs crossed, eyes wide.
“What did you say?” Bon Bon felt like she’d been run over by at least three carts, and she seemed to be covered in bits of thatch and wood.
“I asked you what you’ll have.” Berry said, her eyes narrowing.
“Does… does that mean I can order a drink?” Bon Bon couldn’t believe it, after all this—
“No!” Berry shouted, pointing at the Bon Bon shaped hole in the roof. “Get out of my bar!”
