READ THIS STORY TO [REDACTED] INSTANTLY

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 1

"It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis." - David J. Chalmers

Twilight Sparkle suspected she had read every book in the Canterlot library. She'd read every volume in her personal archives, in the library of friendship, and, when she'd lived in Ponyville, kept a meticulous mental archive of each book in its place on the shelf, and a physical list on paper for backup, and another one on magically-inscribed vellum scroll which was immune to fire, water, Pinkie Pie, and anything else that might have rendered it unreadable.

But there was a section deep in the library within the Castle of Two Sisters that had a special category which could only be explored very slowly. It was a category of literature that required both hooves to read, in a manner of speaking. A section that Twilight knew needed to be properly and tenderly explored, word by tantalizing word, until she'd reached the end naturally, not speed-reading and notating and yelling dictations to Spike across the room, as she normally did. This was a special section.

So special, Twilight had to ensure she wasn't followed before entering. Displacement glyphs surrounded the book-case that hid the false-book pull-out entrance, a historical treatise on an early tribal cluster of ponies on a continent that, upon minor scrutiny, it could be determined did not exist. Twilight double-checked, triple-checked her surroundings, scanning visually, aurally, and magically, the final cast of a detection spell revealing not even the presence of bugs or anthropomorphic dust-mites. The section labelled EROS was finally open, and Twilight slid into the bookcase's hidden entrance ~~like a [~~REDACTED~~]~~ like a whisper slipping into a midnight breeze.

Each row of books was unlit, covered in the muffled interior darkness. But the books seemed to sparkle and sizzle, licking at the air with tongues of magic flame that were every color between the spectrum of visible light, blurring the darkness in flickering tendrils that always made you wonder if they were really there or not. The heat was just as intangible, but it came and went in the same bursts, a patch of warm fur that would suddenly go deathly cold, like swimming in deep water and suddenly finding a small radius that was as cold as a windigo's... nevermind.

Twilight moved down the rows as though she'd practiced the path a thousand times, only once reaching out her hoof to test in front of her after several turns. A bookcase materialized against her touch out of thin air, blocking the way down the row and sizzling as it solidified, though no steam or sparks appeared anywhere visible.

Smiling, Twilight corrected her path to the left and made her way around a few more towering shelves before she reached her destination.

There was one book that had drawn her attention last time in the forbidden library. It had almost jumped out at her, calling with a cover stuck out of the shelf so loud Twilight was sure she heard words in her ears. She'd taken it out, even inspected the cover, but was already spent from her night's earlier 'investigations'.

Even still, it was hard to put the thing down—it had a peculiar weightless quality to it, despite the size, and even though the title was untranslated, Twilight felt herself compelled to open the book and test its contents, to pour her eyes over the words even though she might not understand immediately what they meant. Perhaps the meaning would soak in through the symbols themselves, somehow.

But now she had done the translation. She had also, upon picking the book up a second time, noticed a subtitle, in perfectly legible modern Equestrian, and felt particularly foolish for about five seconds, blushing brightly in the secret room's camouflaging darkness.

"'Examine This Text To Arrive With Great Haste'..." Twilight read the text aloud to herself. "That can't be right, can it?"

Her translation had come out more like "Read This Book And Instantly". 'Instantly' what hadn't been specified. Twilight couldn't tell which title was more intriguing in its peculiarity. Specifically, with either title, how did the book fit in the romance section.

The 'illicit romance' section, to be particular. That was what Twilight had taken to calling it, though she took care not to do so in the company of anypony else...

Still. You couldn't judge a book by its cover, or its weird title, translated or not. Heck, Twilight had once been glued to the pages of a good Daring Do fanfic for the last week, and that was only titled Daring Do Has An Adventure With Gargantuan Poultry. There was a lot you could do beyond a title.

Unable to contain her anticipation any longer, and frankly wanting to get the evening on with so she could get her daily dose of dopamine bursts and go back home to get some sleep, Twilight flipped open the cover of the book to a blank page. She flipped the first page over, revealing the title, embossed in silver lettering that shimmered even in the complete darkness. It reminded Twilight to turn on a light, which she did with a quick glow of her horn which lit the lamp she had also left on the reading table from last time. It was important nopony else knew how to get here via the secret path... other than Princess Luna and Celestia of course, who had both built the place. Though, it was Princess Luna who'd told her of the area... maybe a princess of the night needed more time to herself alone with her... thoughts.

This was it. The first page. Even though it'd be hard to compete with Twilight's last read, she had such a good feeling about this. Her body was beginning to experience physical reactions not suitably described in a family friendly story. So, we'll leave them out.

There was the first page though. It started a little above halfway down, with an old-fashioned chapter heading and big, block-printed letters, that had either been done by a very antique press, or copied meticulously by hoof, maybe even steadied by magic.

Twilight began to read the first page.

She began to, and then she was.

When she started, she couldn't stop.

She read the first page like a single word, drinking it in from the letter at the top of the page to the bottom in a single motion.

Then she had an [REDACTED].

It was very loud. Not at all appropriate for a library.

And it was long. It kept going. Twilight had enjoyed some erotic literature before, but nothing that had warranted the use of a tarp or a stop-watch. Seconds became minutes. Minutes blurred into each other, records shattering under the hands of the clock as the hours spun on. Twilight collapsed onto the floor of the library, the book falling with her, landing sprawled open on the same page, her body rocked with the convulsions of... stuff. You know. Ask your mom if you don't.

It was therefore only maybe by sheer coincidence, or some capricious fairy that had waited until the last minute but still had Twilight's best interest at heart, that Princess Luna stumbled on her junior, slumped over and gurgling with the mysterious tome still open in front of her, the single page unmoving and uncovered.

In the ensuing panic, Princess Luna had snapped the book shut without even bothering to read it. Probably she'd put it on the desk not assuming a book could have anything to do with Twilight's sudden and worrying collapse. But she left it up on the desk just the same, and there it remained, just feet from Twilight and the guard-ponies that Luna let in especially to carry her out, ensuring them that if they repeated the existence of this location to anypony they would be jobless and possibly REDACTED-less by the end of the night. Early night.

But somewhere on the other side of Equestria, or more accurately roughly on the same side but in a sort of slightly different location, like maybe an hour's drive away by carriage, half an hour if you didn't stop for pee breaks—twenty-five if you flew, and twenty if you flew with a complete disregard for the safety of yourself or others, or in other words were Rainbow Dash—anyway, somewhere far away-ish, we'll say, a signal had come in, which had been sent by Princess Luna and her guards whether or not they'd noticed or even known about it. And the signal sent a beep to a contraption on the ornate wood desk of a small pony who was sitting in a businesslike chair behind it.

The small pony was named Cozy Glow, and she had a mane of swirled bluish turquoise curls, a light peach-pink coat, and a cutie mark of a chess piece—a rook, specifically. She stared for a few seconds at the small, spinning light as it flickered in circles on her desk, then shut it off with a small button affixed to the bottom of the light. She clicked a few other, unlabeled buttons on her desk, then sat back in her chair, leaning away from her desk and towards the window at the opposite end of the room.

The plate on the front of her desk said 'DIRECTORR'. The second R was crossed out. A giant bookcase, which from the looks of things, had been undisturbed for some time, lined the wall behind her desk. Many of the volumes simply said 'BOOK' on the cover.

And somewhere else, in a place not particularly far from this one, but still far enough that a tiny button sending information invisibly was quite an accomplishment (and was quite an accomplishment anyway, when you thought about it, really), another light blinked, and an alarm began to beep, loud and hideously, playing two notes the maximum distance possible from each other without a single detectable shred of harmony, until a green hoof switched it off with a stern finality.

The green hoof picked up a set of sunglasses, and put them on the face of the pony the hoof belonged to1.

"We're on call," the green pony said.

"Word."

"Please don't say that again."

Author's Note

1: Is this the worst sentence ever written in the history of the world? You be the judge, dear reader. - Ed.

Chapter 2

Lyra and Bonbon located the Castle of Two Sisters with relative ease (it was on the map, after all), but struggled a little when it came to finding the secret library entrance. In the end, Bonbon had stumbled on it when she leaned against a shelf to catch her breath, and that was as good a method of discovery as anyone expected of the organization anyway. So that had gotten them inside.

Once they entered, and Lyra had begun to illuminate the mysterious rows with her glowing horn, the pair was still careful to keep an eye out for anypony else there, even though the relative conspicuousness and secrecy of the location meant it was unlikely that a usual guard task-force had been dispatched to investigate. Whether anypony knew besides Princess Luna and her few privileged guards was a mystery. One Lyra and Bonbon intended to solve, eventually.

No guards—but Bonbon swore she spotted a mouse poking out from behind one of the bookcases. Lyra was unconcerned.

Then there was the crime scene. A single fallen, multiply-disturbed patch of missing dust where Princess Twilight had fallen and displaced the years-old collection of grime. Scuff marks from where she'd been dragged, as well as merging sets of hoofprints leading back and out of the library. And there was the desk, a single, closed volume on top, the gilded cover shimmering under the glow of Lyra's horn.

"Why is the floor so sticky?" Lyra raised a hoof from the ground, and it peeled up like the soda-drenched carpet at a movie theater. It seemed to be localized mostly in the area of the reading desk.

When Lyra spotted the book, she reached for it immediately, but Bonbon batted her hoof away like a mother interrupting her foal as they grabbed at a tasty piece of candy. Or a rock, which to some foals might be just as tasty.

"Are you nuts?" Bonbon asked, half-rhetorically. "We're on the scene of the incident and you're going to handle the only out-of-place object in sight? What if it's an anomalous entity?"

"It's just a book." Lyra shrugged, but backed away from the desk. "But I guess you're right. It's not like we haven't seen more boring stuff than that turn out to be weird."

Bonbon nodded. "Exactly. It's only been a few weeks since the toilet-paper-worm."

Lyra shuddered.

"Don't remind me," she said.

Lyra lifted her sunglasses with one hoof to peer at the cover of the questionable text she was now mentally referring to as a 'book-like-object'.

"'Expedient Deliverance Upon Textual Ingestion'? The buck does that mean?"

"Maybe it's a bad translation," Bonbon offered, and got closer to the desk again to check the cover for herself, though she managed to keep her hooves at a distance this time. "Hmmm... I think those runes are Proto-Equestrian, but they might be Terran Cuneiform Script as well..."

"Languages are your thing. If it's all runes inside, and we can't translate them, it's still capable of acting anomalously through the text, correct?"

Bonbon nodded. She peered closer at the book's cover, whipping a magnifying glass out of her suit and holding it over the subtitle first, then the untranslated original above. "Correct. Technically even reading the title could impart memetic influence... though our glasses generally protect from targeted thaumic disruptions. Mine do, anyway."

"Lucky you, getting to try out the new Mark 2's. I've had these since I joined s—I mean, since I joined. They've never let me down once."

"Mark 1's aren't even fully immune to cognitodisruptors at a range of ten yards," Bonbon recited absentmindedly as she scrutinized the corners of the cover, peering at the edges of the material, which seemed neither leather, nor paper, or in fact any material she'd ever seen before at all. "You really should request an upgrade."

"Are you kidding? They're not even broken!" Lyra knocked sharply at the right lens of her glasses, then the left. Though the lenses were thin, they clunked responsively like thick plate-glass, and indeed, seemed no worse for the roughness after Lyra had thumped them a few times.

Bonbon shook her head. "Whatever. I think this should be clear to open. Even with your cheapo specs, we should be okay. I should be, I mean."

Lyra rolled her eyes, but was unfortunately still wearing her sunglasses, meaning the gesture went entirely unnoticed by Bonbon.

"You can go ahead and read it. I'll be here to help if anything goes crazy," Bonbon said.

Lyra nodded. She adjusted her sunglasses in place with one hoof, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly through her nose. She bit her tongue for a second, then tucked it back into her mouth.

"Okay," she said. "Let's do this."

Chapter 3

The Canterlot hospital was a state-of-the-art facility, which meant a dedicated diagnostics team and research facility, putting thousands of pony-hours into researching and curing new diseases and ailments. If you got a curse put on you, Canterlot hospital could help. They could magic you better from whatever ailed you.

Princess Twilight had a bed in the intensive care unit, which she might have gotten anyway, given nopony present wanted to risk letting a member of Equestrian royalty slip away on their watch. The newspapers would have a field day.

Even though a gauntlet of permissions and key-cards were required to access the appropriate wing, Lyra and Bonbon managed to glide through the hospital staff like a pair of ghosts. Every time a door opened, one of them was behind to hold it open, and without being questioned once, the pair made it to the ICU and Twilight's bedside without being noticed at all. It was amazing what kind of things you could get done if you kept your mouth shut and moved around like you knew what you were doing.

There was a large set of complicated-looking monitors and apparati beeping beside Twilight's bed. The little line that blipped up and down, something else that seemed to be delivering some sort of fluid through a clear plastic bag and tube... And Twilight's eyes were closed, her snores wheezing softly through her nose. Whether she was dreaming or in the emptiness between fantasies remained to be seen.

Lyra and Bonbon shared a look in the otherwise empty room.

"'Incident report indicated that POI-0001, aka Twilight Sparkle, had sustained lasting physical and mental damage from her encounter with the anomaly'," Bonbon read from a dossier she'd pulled out. "'Recommend allowing substantial recovery time and handling all requests for information with the utmost care and delicacy. Also recommend restricting the presence of cucumber, zucchini, and any similarly shaped vegetables until POI-0001 shows significant signs of recovery.'" Bonbon finished reading the dossier and tucked it away into a suit-pocket. "Does that sound like our usual mode of operations to you?"

“Not even the bit about zucchini.” Lyra shrugged. She was checking the various dials and machines hooked up at Twilight's bedside, poking them absentmindedly to see if something would beep extra loud or otherwise alert somepony of their presence. The machines seemed mostly docile, though that one did continue beeping quite regularly...

"Keep in mind it's very possible the princess won't even remember what happened," Bonbon said. She walked a little closer to Twilight's bedside and stared at the sleeping pony. Her eyes were closed tight, a fitful sleep, but every so often they would twitch, and flicker, like a dog who was dreaming of a rabbit hunt. Or a rabbit hunting it.

"We need all the information we can get," Lyra said. She stood up from the machines she'd been examining and turned towards Twilight on the other side of the bed. "You gonna try waking her up, or should I?"

Bonbon sighed and pulled out a small, unlabeled plastic bag from her suit's inside jacket-pocket. She undid the tiny zip seal at the top and held the bag in her hooves for a few seconds, jostling it from side to side to equalize the diminutive mound of powder inside. Then she held it underneath Twilight's nose, just for a second or two, before she pulled the bag back and tucked it inside her suit again.

Sure enough, Twilight began to cough and sputter like she was waking from a drowning. She shook her head from side to side and hacked a few times, whatever was crowding her lungs evidently content to remain there regardless of her effort. When the coughing fit had passed, only a few tiny throat-clears remained, and then suddenly Twilight was awake, wide-eyed, staring at Lyra and Bonbon on either side of her and clutching her blankets as though they might protect her from a nighttime monster. Unfortunately, whatever monsters were on the prowl right now couldn't be dissuaded with blankets.

"Hey," Bonbon said, trying to find her most accessible 'we're happy and not here to hurt you' tone. It was a difficult rung in between 'listen to me or one of us is going to die right now' and 'please pay no attention to anything I'm saying while my partner finds their way to whatever we intended to relocate without your awareness'. 'We're relocating it so no one else steals it', Lyra would say sometimes. Bonbon liked that quote.

"He... hello?" Twilight said. She blinked a few times, clearing the sparkles of iridescent hospital lighting from the edges of her eyes. "Um... are you two doctors? How long have I been here?"

"We're part of the hospital's quarantine department," Lyra said smoothly, sidling up closer to Twilight's bed. "We've been assigned to investigate the incident that led to your hospitalization. The one in the library."

Twilight blushed furiously, as though she'd suddenly forgotten her life was at stake if it meant revealing her illicit night-time reading habits.

"Um... the... 'library'?" she said.

Lyra nodded, sunglasses over her eyes. "Uh-huh. The secret library."

Twilight blushed even brighter and tried to cover her face with her hooves unsuccessfully.

"Oh, but, I really don't know much about the old castle, it's been abandoned for so long..."

"Localized thaumaturgical readings suggest a disruption of at least [REDACTED] designation. And the concentration of energy and its resulting displacement could tear a pony limb from limb and leave their organs in a pile on the carpet. Does this sound anything like something you saw before you were incapacitated?"

Twilight's cheeks glowed a permanent lavender-red mix. She shook her head and tried to look off into the distance where her conscience could freely funnel her excuses. Still, there were very few escape paths left. Pure ignorance could benefit, perhaps.

"I'm not sure," Twilight said, looking around as though for a script that might help her move forward in the conversation. "I don't really remember what happened, I was just, sort of, so overwhelmed… Wait, did you just say ‘REDACTED’ out loud?"

"The dispatched unit—"

"That's us," Lyra interjected.

"—recovered an anomalous object of significant thaumaturgical intensity at the site of the incident." Bonbon studied her notes for a moment, then reached inside her suit-jacket-pocket, which seemed to be infinite in both size and containment, and pulled out a book. The book.

INHUME THESE WORDS EXEUNT POST HASTE

Twilight shrieked and recoiled back in her bed, throwing the blankets up over her head and cowering underneath like a filly fighting a nightmare.

"Get that thing away from me!" she said. She batted at the blankets with her hooves as though trying to increase the distance between her and the thing in question.

Lyra and Bonbon shared a look.

"Hmm," Lyra said. "Looks like that's the one."

Bonbon nodded. "Yep. That's the one."

"Should we bother to stay and ask more questions?"

"I don't think there's anything we could use for the report."

"What about first-hand incident testimony?"

Bonbon looked at the hospital bed, where Princess Twilight was covered in blankets, shuddering and mumbling under her breath, vague incoherent protests involving the word 'book' and 'I wasn't...'

"If you want to ask her again, be my guest," Bonbon said.

Lyra looked at Twilight's bed once, royalty cloaked in white sheets, before shaking her head and sighing.

"Fair enough. Shall we?"

Twilight Sparkle was so invested in keeping the object away, in concealing herself under the blankets the same way she had as a foal, keeping the monsters of the darkness away, that by the time she finally felt safe enough to peek out from the covers again, the book, and the two ponies who'd brought it in, had vanished.

There was just the gentle hum and beep of the many machines, one of which was ringing closer together than it had before. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Chapter 4

ITEM: SCP-XX69

OBJECT CLASS: Euclid

SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES: SCP-XX69 is to be held at all times in an airtight, opaque container, and to be sealed with at least one sequence of external locking mechanisms. It should be kept in an area free of light and humidity and only removed from its container for study under direct supervision. Under no circumstance should SCP-XX69 be observed, handled, or stored anywhere within the proximity of individuals who have gone at least seventy-two hours without an encounter of a [REDACTED] nature with another being.

DESCRIPTION: SCP-XX69 is an anomalous entity/object resembling a heavy-bound library book with silver-embossed text. It is inordinately light despite its substantial size, and can easily be lifted or carried by a single pony. The front of the object/entity, also referred to as the 'cover' in its book-like state, will contain one instance of an untranslated title, and one instance of a translated title, usually in parentheses below the untranslated instance. This title reconfigures regularly whenever the object/entity is not under direct observation, as well as the contents in a textual format, which will be different every time they are examined.

While the title usually contains some reference to expediency or arrival, there has as yet been no consensus or regular determination of its exact meaning.

Whenever examined by a subject possessed of even mild [REDACTED] frustration, the object/entity will produce an autoerotic stimulus reaction which will quickly or instantly result in [REDACTED]. This [REDACTED] will be prolonged for a duration correspondent to the accrued [REDACTED] frustration of the subject. In instances over three minutes in duration, this can have noticeable harmful side-effects, including muscle cramps, friction burns, prolonged dehydration, or, in severe cases, permanent debilitation or death. Subjects reportedly experience little or no awareness of pain or injury during these instances, and will furthermore be unprovoked to escape SCP-XX69's machinations once underway. In select cases subjects have even been known to resist attempted aid, deep under the object/entity's psychosomatic hold.

Subjects who have encountered SCP-XX69 directly but survived may report ongoing instances of impotency, [REDACTED] dissatisfaction, and difficulty sleeping. Some have requested reintroduction to SCP-XX69 in a private context, but all requests of this nature have been denied.

Any usage or study of SCP-XX69 should be closely monitored by containment staff. Proper cleanup procedures should involve wet-wipes and a solution of at least 70% alcohol.

ADDENDUM: Don't put your [REDACTED] away yet! Click here for the [READACTED]-est [REDACTED] you've ever seen...

Chapter 5

"Um, excuse me," came a soft but stern voice from behind one of the bookcases, "but I don't suppose you were actually planning to examine a potentially anomalous object without the appropriate containment team on site."

Lyra and Bonbon turned from the desk and the beginnings of their object-investigation to find Fluttershy walking calmly out from the innumerable shadows, into the plain view of Lyra's glowing horn. And behind her...

"What's it doing here?" Lyra asked with a scowl. "My partner and I have this investigation more than under control."

"My dear, I am the containment team. Did you think I'd let my sweet pal Fluttershy poke her nose into an anomaly without someone along to help her out?"

Discord wormed his way out from behind Fluttershy's shadow, manifesting without regard for local spatial constituencies or the laws of reality in general. Simply nothing one moment, Discord the next. Grinning obliviously with that stupid halo over his head.

"Subject assignment DSCRD-XXX1 is approved for anomaly containment only at the behest of the director," Bonbon said. She pulled a clipboard out of her suit and scanned down from top to bottom, then flipped the second page and scanned it as well. "Ah. Here it is." She showed the page in question to Lyra, pointing with her hoof at a marked entry towards the end of the text. "'Senior Director [REDACTED] approves the use of Thaumiel class anomaly DSCRD-XXX1, only with the presence of its approved handler, Agent [REDACTED].' See?"

Lyra stared at the clipboard, daring its words to shift and vanish in response to the pure ire pouring out of her eyes. But maybe the sunglasses shielded from that too. And so the words remained.

"Lucky," she said with a huff, and turned back to the book. Then around again, facing Fluttershy. "Well, what do we do then? Do you want to take a look at the thing?"

Fluttershy flapped her wings and floated over to the reading desk. She appraised the waiting book with an eyebrow raised, and almost immediately after reading the title, jerked her head away so her eyes were nowhere near the embossed text.

"It's emitting a high level of ontokinetic interference," Fluttershy said, reaching her hoof out towards Discord, who smiled and passed a covered mask with a shaded visor to her out of nowhere. Fluttershy strapped it onto her face before turning to continue, still squinting appraisingly at the unusual volume. "Do we have confirmation that this is the object that caused Princess Twilight to require hospitalization? You did interview the subject before attending to the incident scene, didn't you?" Fluttershy turned to the two suited agents behind her, who had taken equal interest in the floor and ceiling respectively. Lyra's hornglow was still the only available light-source, which made her look extra-awkward pretending not to notice she'd been asked a direct question.

Fluttershy cleared her throat pointedly, which finally got both Lyra and Bonbon's attention.

"Hmm?" Lyra said. "Sorry, I was trying to stand still and not do anything to get in your way. Containment team and all."

Fluttershy rolled her eyes underneath the mask's shaded visor. Unfortunately thaumic resistance worked both ways, which meant no Stare™ unless she took the mask off. Luckily she was with someone who could problem solve in her stead when necessary.

"We were waiting until the subject was guaranteed some semblance of consciousness before conducting an interview," Bonbon said. "And if the anomaly is powerful enough to cause substantial physical or mental harm, it seemed more important to deal with it first."

"Why don't you just tell the director she goofed on the assignment," Lyra added, frowning with her forelegs crossed in front of her chest. "I'm sure she'll take that well."

Discord, who had been so far mostly ignoring the verbal banter, sidled up to the reading desk and began to poke at the cover with one of his claws extended, lifting it up and then letting it settle back down onto the pages with a gentle woosh and dislodged bits of dust.

"Hey, watch it," Lyra said. She swatted at Discord's claw, but manage only to hit a giant foam-finger that had materialized overtop of his hand. It had a picture of Lyra's face draw in a caricature style, which looked remarkably similar to the 'smiling poop' glyph they'd encountered on an anomalous artifact last month. The damn thing still hadn't stopped ringing...

"Entity DSCRD-XXX1 has higher clearance than either of you," Fluttershy reminded, her voice as gentle as a teacher correcting in a kindergarten classroom. "It's necessary to wait until he's finished assessing the object before continuing your investigation. Um. If that's alright with you."

Bonbon and Lyra both rolled their eyes, but stepped back simultaneously from the desk, glaring at Discord as he twisted and swirled in size and shape, wrapping himself around the book and then diving inside the pages, no longer visible to anypony watching.

"Ooh, my, this is quite a spicy one... did you really say that Princess Twilight was found reading it? Goodness, what a scandal if somepony were to find out..."

"Just hurry up and tell us what's in there," Lyra said, huffing a breath loudly through her nose. "We didn't come for a theater performance."

A snap of fingers, and floodlights poured into the library, dousing the team in so much brightness the library appeared to have migrated to pure daylight. Lyra squinted even through her sunglasses, and Bonbon shielded her face with her foreleg, gritting her teeth and lowering her eyebrows.

"A theater performance? What a marvelous idea! I dare say it's been a while since we put on the ol' tights and teleprompter... do you have time for a one act play?" Discord's voice seemed to come out of the air from everywhere, making its way to your ear without using any in between material to travel. It was like somepony holding a megaphone to your head and speaking through it in whispers that only caught the vibration of their throat.

"Discord!" Lyra yelled, snapping first at the book, then upwards towards the floodlights. "Cut it out! We need to get this investigation done now!"

"Pony lives could be at stake," Bonbon said. She looked to her partner, who was fuming still, and then to Fluttershy, who's expression hadn't changed an iota since her first arrival. Calm, compassionate, and unforgiving.

Fluttershy tilted her head, considering the floodlights and confetti that had begun to sprinkle from overhead.

"Discord," she said, her voice simple and stern. "We don't have time for that right now. Can you please finish checking out the book?"

"Oh, fine," Discord said. An invisible claw-snap and the floodlights vanished, along with the confetti, though a few pieces remained sprinkling over Lyra's nose, and a long streamer that looked as though it had come out of a noisemaker.

Lyra glared at the ribbon that had affixed itself to her nose. She blew it off with a puff of air aimed up from her mouth, but didn't move otherwise, forelegs still crossed in front of her chest.

"You two are never any fun," Discord concluded. A soft whirring sound began to echo through the confines of the hidden library, and Lyra's hornglow took over once more as the only source of light.

It sounds like a termite chewing very fast through an encyclopedia, Bonbon thought.

After only a few more seconds of whirring and tiny chomping sounds, Discord reappeared, whirling his way in a spiral shape thicker and thicker as he emerged from between the pages of the book. He ballooned a little bigger than normal, then seemed to catch himself, and giggled as he shrank back down to his usual height, just big enough to tower over a pony and poke at them with a smirk from above.

Fluttershy smiled at him and raised her hooves for a hug. Discord smiled back as he wrapped his mis-matched arms around her back, one hand still wearing the foam-finger with Lyra's face.

"Good job," Fluttershy said, finishing her hug with an extra little squeeze. "Can you please tell us what you found?"

"I'm not sure you're going to like it," Discord said. His voice was uncharacteristically heavy, as though no matter his efforts, something was managing to worm its way in through his psyche and through the output of his tongue. "Even I had a hard time, and that's saying a lot, considering my subscription to Ponehouse Monthly..."

"Just tell us what it is," Lyra said. "Then we can grab the thing and get the buck out of here."

"After enacting proper safety and containment precautions," Bonbon added hastily, her hoof jutting up like an answer in class.

Lyra shot her a look, but once again, the sunglasses rendered it mostly ineffective.

"Right," she said with some difficulty to her speech. "After that."

Fluttershy looked between the two of them, but didn't shift her expression, a simple distant appraisal from a pony that could sweet-talk you into good health or crush you like an ant underneath an anvil.

"Settle in," Discord said, pulling up an antique rocking chair from nowhere. "Because this one is going to take a while. Now, how many of you have heard of Ponehub before?..."

When the ~~girthy~~ ~~throbbing~~ lengthy discussion had concluded, even Lyra's mouth was hanging open. She snapped it shut after a few seconds, though she found her tongue poking into the corner of her cheek mostly of its own accord for a little while, until she thought hard and forced it to be still.

"Wow," Bonbon said, the first voice after the air had hung heavy with Discord's finished instruction. "I can't believe Princess Twilight—"

"No, it makes sense, she's cooped up reading all day, it sort of gets to you after a while—" Lyra said.

"Yeah, but for it to do that much damage, she must have been concealing some really egregious—"

"Do you think she's fallen down the fanfiction wormhole again? Rainbow Dash was never the same after she read Muffins—"

"I'm pretty sure it was My Little [REDACTED], actually—"

"Hush." Fluttershy.

It worked. Bonbon and Lyra both fell silent.

"We need to get this to containment immediately," Fluttershy said. "If it's exactly like Discord says it is, we might not have much time."

"We've both got our thaumic disruptors on," Lyra said, indicating her shades and the pair that Bonbon was wearing as well. "And even without them, Bonbon and I kind of—"

"We're not sure the localized effects will be that overwhelming in our case," Bonbon interrupted. She gave Lyra a look that translated even through dark glass, and Lyra blushed faintly for a few seconds before her cheeks returned to their normal pale green.

"Even so. Let's not take any chances." Fluttershy gestured to Discord, who was now wearing a full hazmat-style suit, and holding a pair of extended prongs. He nodded, and moved towards the desk, holding the prongs tentatively in front of him, gently lowering the grabbing end towards the book until he could just touch the corner of the cover... then picking it up, moving it, slowly, slowly, off the desk, holding it just over the entrance to an opaque black bag that Fluttershy had opened, dangling the thing right against the opening... and then dropping it in, Fluttershy snapping the bag shut and yanking the cord from the end, which sealed it even tighter with a burst of magic sparks and sudden, instantly dissipated heat.

"There," Fluttershy said, smiling. "Now it should be safe to transport."

"Which is our job," Lyra said, reaching for the bag.

Discord snatched the bag and jerked it out of her way while sticking out his tongue. Lyra growled quietly and glared at him. But with a sideways look from Fluttershy, Discord sighed, rolled his eyes, and relinquished the sealed bag to Lyra's outstretched hooves.

She held it for a moment, studying its weight. Seemed... light.

"Give it here," Bonbon said, holding an even bigger black bag open at the top. Lyra did as instructed, dropping the thing inside, and Bonbon tied and sealed it shut with another rip-cord, fusing the sides together and locking the book in an even tighter confinement.

"Was that necessary?" Lyra asked, eyebrow raised.

Bonbon shrugged.

"Eh. I didn't want anypony making a mess on the way back to HQ."

"Fair enough."

Chapter 6

Cozy Glow was behind her desk, holding a grey plastic thing that looked sort of like a remote-controller, but sideways and with only a few buttons. She was trading her attention between a monitor on the far end of her desk, and the two ponies, Lyra and Bonbon, that were in front of it.

"Status report," she said, then looked back at the monitor screen. She stuck out her tongue between her teeth and squinted a bit as she watched it, moving her hooves along with the controller between them. She grunted a few times, then smiled, set down the controller, and took a drink of a fizzy, sweet-smelling liquid sitting in a cup next to her. A large piece of pizza was beside it, with a single bite missing.

"We successfully located and contained the anomalous object," Bonbon said, reading from the top of her clipboard. "The object in question, designated SCP-XX69, appears to be a written volume of text that manifests anomalously as a combination of hazardous physical and psychological effects upon the reader." Bonbon double-checked her notes while biting her lower lip. "Primary interactions include a title page that reconfigures each time it is left without observation, and a body of text that does the same, rearranging so that it is never the same twice. In addition," Bonbon flipped to the next page of her clipboard and began to read with assistance from the topmost text, "the object manifests hazardous behaviour in direct proportion to... to..." Bonbon held her clipboard unsteadily in one hoof, her other jittering a little as it traced across the line on the page. "...in direction proportion to... the affected subject's, um... residual... [REDACTED] frustration..."

"Their what?"

Cozy Glow took a bite of pizza and chewed it noisily while picking up her controller. Her eyes were still glued to the monitor.

"Their, um, residual, [REDACTED] frustration..." Bonbon repeated nervously. She looked down at the clip-board, but the text remained unchanged.

"What does that mean exactly?" Cozy Glow asked.

"It means that if you read the book, the more [REDACTED] you are but the less you do about it, the more you'll get hurt." Lyra shrugged. It often seemed assignment write-ups used too many words to say what you could just blurt out in a sentence. That was just one of many issues with the foundation, if you were counting, and Lyra had a tally two meters long somewhere in her personal affairs drawer...

Cozy Glow set down her controller and pushed a button in the center, which seemed to halt the action of the monitor to her right. She leaned forward in her desk as she finally looked over the written report that had been laid in front of her by Bonbon at the start of the meeting. She studied the words on the first page twice over, then flipped to the second and read it too, half-stopping every sentence as though the text was in some made-up language, or suggesting something simply impossible, like finding a line at the grocery store with nopony in front of you.

"It says here the book's translated title is 'WHATEVER YOU DO HURRY UP'. Is that accurate?"

Bonbon shrugged, and looked to Lyra, who did the same. Bonbon mouthed the words 'you do this one', and though Lyra groaned, she took off her sunglasses and cleared her throat just the same.

"The title changes, like Bonbon—er, like Agent [REDACTED] was saying," Lyra said. She coughed loudly, and thumped a hoof against her chest. No matter how many times she tried, she never got used to pronouncing that stupid word. The brackets were especially troublesome. "That's just another version—"

"—manifestation," Bonbon added.

"—of its initial text. Whatever it says, the effect in an unprotected environment is to give anypony reading it an intense urge to check out the rest of the book. Which, as also described, will probably mess them up in some way or another..."

"And this thing is in containment already?" Cozy Glow asked. She picked up the report, studied it one more time, then set it back on the desk. She considered her controller again, then picked it up, pressed the center button, and turned back to face the end-of-desk monitor, which was emitting beeping sounds in concert with her button presses.

Bonbon nodded and tucked her clipboard away back inside her suit. "It is. Special Agent [REDACTED] and Thaumiel-class entity DSCRD-XXX1 were both of assistance with the containment procedures."

"Unnecessary assistance," Lyra said.

"Hmm?" Cozy Glow looked up briefly from her screen, but only for a few seconds before returning back to it.

"Nothing, Director."

"Very good." Beep boop. Cozy Glow's hooves blurred as they jumped between buttons and directional inputs. She narrowed her eyebrows and began to squint, once again sticking her tongue out between her teeth. "If there's nothing further, you're dismissed."

Lyra and Bonbon both nodded, bowed deep towards the desk, and saw themselves out, shutting the office's hulking, ornate door behind them with calculated silence, not letting it slam into place, but holding it just until the edge of the door peeked with the other, and then relaxing it gently as a baby dove.

Cozy Glow spent a few more minutes eye-locked on her screen before she threw her controller over her shoulder. It bounced off the wall and skittered across the carpet, seemingly unharmed, but scarred for life regardless.

"Shoot!" she said. "I was half a second from a PB!"2

Author's Note

2: Cozy Glow's run was invalid for several reasons regardless, including segmented gameplay, pausing the timer during RTA recording, and modifying console hardware to cause the game to run three times faster than usual. - Ed.

Chapter 7

It wasn't often you found yourself out on the same assignment twice in one week—barring localized temporal interference, which, to be fair, there was a lot of in proximity to the Agency and its goings-on.

Lyra was more put out than Bonbon about the whole thing. She pouted the whole way to Ponyville, verbalizing most of her complaints without regard for whether or not they received answers.

"Why are they sending us to scour the locals for information like a bunch of greenhorns?" she asked, tapping her hoof impatiently in the back-seat of the carriage transport. All black painted, black windows, and black stallion pegasus pulling the thing in front. It was more conspicuous than cozy, but nopony wanted to debate the aesthetics of camouflage with the Director. Or anything, for that matter.

"Your horn is green, as a matter-of-fact," Bonbon said, nose deep in her pile of notes. "Besides. It just means they trust us. They didn't want anyone else to handle the investigation since we already know so much about the anomaly."

"The book, you mean."

Bonbon shrugged. "It might not even be a book, at a strictly atomic level. We might be talking about a living organism that reconfigures itself to look like a book."

"A [REDACTED] book."

"'Illicit romance' is the technical term. But, yes. A [REDACTED] book."

Lyra sighed and looked out the window, which was pointless given they were painted black instead of tinted. Somehow the finer points of two-way glass were also not on the organizations list of issues to address. Still... if she tried really hard, she imagined she could see some trees. Or a bird. That was sort of nice, at least.

"Remind me why we're doing this again," Lyra said.

"To ensure the safety of Equestria and all its occupants."

"From a [REDACTED] book?"

Bonbon shrugged again. She looked up from her notes and tilted her head to the side.

"You never know. The average pony could be carrying a lot of pent up... energy."

"Something we wouldn't know anything about."

"No. Of course not."

"Hmm."

When the carriage stopped at its destination, Bonbon and Lyra exited wordlessly. Before the carriage had drawn away, they were blurred lines in the crowd, somehow blending in despite their businesslike attire. Nopony seemed to notice them as they came, and nopony noticed them as they went, or as their carriage lifted back off and disappeared into the night's sky. Late afternoon, at least.

Chapter 10

Nearby—not more than a few blocks, in fact—somepony of no particular interest otherwise was exiting Mr. and Mrs. Cake's bakery, and carried his purchase, neatly wrapped in brown paper, down a nearby alley to unseal it and take a bite. The pastry squirted a thick load of creamy filling onto his chin, and he licked it up eagerly, making satisfied slurping noises as he downed the delicious white goo.

Without the sound of hoofsteps, a figure appeared at the end of the alley, and moved forward just as silently. They were small, but holding an object almost their size: a book, snapped closed, and tied shut with a ribbon of string.

The pony eating his pastry looked up as the figure undid the string, opened the pages of the book, and pointed it forward.

There was a noise something like a seagull imploding. Maybe a pufferfish that had been punctured very suddenly. Then there was a squelch. A lot of fluids displaced all at once. Cream filling. [REDACTED].

When the last of the mist had settled, the figure opened its eyes, smiling, and shut the book.

"Very good. But we still have a lot of testing to do."

The voice was high, manipulative, and possibly possessed of a Napoleon complex, if they have those in Equestria.

With no further exchange, the figure left, carrying the book beneath a dark cloak, a small trail through the red and white splotches that littered the alley.

Chapter 11

"I think Pinkie Pie might be weird enough to warrant her own classification," Lyra said. She was sitting on a generic-looking wooden picnic bench and leaning against the table-top. Her suit was ruffled, and her glasses were up on her forehead, just below her horn. "In fact, I think I've argued that in at least two meetings since last month."

"Her classification is a particular issue," Bonbon said. She was flipping through an index book of some kind, pausing every few pages to check the header and then flipping further, searching for something buried inside. "Every time we submit one, it gets rewritten in resolution and published with errors."

"And whenever we retract her classification, somepony submits one in the same place," Lyra said, sighing. "With more errors."

"It seems like the localized displacement aura she emits applies even to instances of interaction that are purely textual or theoretical," Bonbon said. "It's possible just by mentioning her in this conversation, we're opening the way to an anomalous disruption."

"Chance taken," Lyra said. "At least if Pinkie Pie were here she could wiggle her ears or smell her tail or something and tell us where this Celestia-forsaken book is."

"Anomalous object," Bonbon corrected. "Or SCP-XX69 if you want to be even more technical."

"Would you please tell me how you and everypony else are pronouncing that? Am I just supposed to say 'ecks ecks' before the number? I feel like I should just say it as a word. Scpxxsixnine. Jeez. That's a mouthful. Almost as bad as—"

"Lyra, focus. Lives are at stake. Several of them possibly important."

"Now that's the funniest thing you've said all day."

"Did Granny Smith give you anything? Derpy just kept getting distracted and talking about muffins."

Lyra sat up more properly on the bench and pulled her notes out of one of her suit pockets4. "Let's see... 'a cider churn with a mind of its own'... 'the milk delivery 'been late the last two days'... 'you young ponies never seem interested in stories, that's the strangest thing i 'ever seen'... and 'wha, who'sat, where's my chewing teeth?'." Lyra frowned at the list before she folded it up and tucked it back into her pocket. "So... maybe?"

"There's gotta be something we missed. Usually Ponyvillians can't shut up when something weird is going on."

"Did you just say 'Ponyvillains'?" Lyra asked. "Because if so, that's a really convenient way to refer to Equestrian troublemakers. Though, it doesn't really make sense in the context of what I just said."

"I said Pony-vill-i-ans. Like ponies from the town of Ponyville."

"Isn't the correct term 'Ponyville-ites'?"

"Lyra, I swear to Luna's left ni—"

"Ahem," said a third voice, melodious and devilish. "Did I hear somepony call for a deus ex moi?"

"Not you again," Lyra said.

Sure enough, it was DSCRD-XXX1. And his handler a few steps behind.

"Oh. Hello," Fluttershy said sweetly with a bat of her eyelashes. "We didn't mean to intrude. Is this a bad time?"

"Yes," Lyra said.

"No," Bonbon said, walking over to the pair with her pages of notes out. "We could use all the help we can get. If you two have any leads..."

"As a matter of fact," Discord said, smiling smugly, "it just so happens that before stumbling into the two of you, we came across a rather grisly scene that most certainly could be the work of nothing other than our missing anomalous object..."

"What are you talking about?" Lyra asked. She got up from her bench to join the miniature congregation, by now late enough at night that the market square was fairly deserted, save a few wanderers ambling home from the bar or just out for a late night constitutional. Derpy's confusion was beginning to make a little more sense.

"Patience, patience, little miss mint chocolate," Discord said. He gave Lyra a pat on the head and dislodged her sunglasses, dropping them onto her nose and skewing them sideways so only one eye was covered.

Lyra glared at him, at least one eye given the benefit of actually being visible in his direction.

Discord simply smirked.

"Are you gonna tell us or not?" Lyra asked.

"Oh, fine, spoil-sport." Discord stuck out his tongue and swirled around into a spiral shape a few times before vanishing in a puff of smoke. He reappeared with the same odorous poof, this time holding a whiteboard and an ostensibly erasable marker. With a few quick flashes of his talons and the marker, the board was painted into four panels, an alley scene taking place in pieces on each of them.

"Here's what we suspect happened first," Discord said, pointing with a single extended claw to the first panel. "Some innocent pony, out to pick a night-time snack, maybe the victim of evening munchies—"

"Ahem," Lyra said.

"—yes, moving on. And then in the second scene, our victim comes across the perpetrator, as you'll see in panel three..." Discord gestured to the bottom left corner of the board, where a shadowy figure had emerged from the side of the drawing. "And our conclusion, whereupon only the perpetrator remains, and our poor, normal pony... well, speaking of remains..."

"There was nothing left of him?" Bonbon asked, raising her sunglasses and looking at the board and Discord incredulously.

Discord nodded, and Fluttershy did the same.

"Not a trace," Discord said wistfully. "Except, that is, of the... shall we say, 'bodily fluids'?"

"'Bodily fluids'?" Lyra said. "Do I even want to know?"

"Oh, let's not get too intense, everypony," Fluttershy said meekly. She wiped a hoof across her forehead, which, while sweatless, had begun to increase in temperature. "Keep it to the necessary details. Um. If you don't mind, that is."

Lyra and Bonbon shared an eye-roll, but Discord seemed perpetually delighted as long as he was in their proximity and capable of annoying them.

Still. This was a clue. An anomalous object that could do that kind of damage, just based on a few pent-up leather fantasies or mental pictures of [REDACTED] bent over, showing off her [REDACTED] to everypony... Lyra shook her head and shivered. She hated to think what it might be capable of in the wrong hooves.

Could there be 'right hooves', when it really came down to it?

"Come on," Bonbon said. She tucked her notes away and double-checked her sunglasses in place. "We've got a lead."

"I bet it's not even that good a read," Lyra said. "It probably spends like ten pages just talking about dresses or something."

"Lyra. Come on."

"Sorry."

Author's Note

4: You can pick which one. The intrigue of reader interaction builds suspense and drama~! - Ed.

Chapter 12

What followed was something like a game of chutes-and-ladders, not in any other way than it was long, frustrated, and seemingly arbitrated entirely by chance. Every location they checked would be barren, until finally the will to continue had been exhausted, the search given up—and there was another one, a pony huddled against a dumpster, shivering and babbling lewd or ludicrous nonsense to itself. A broken leg, an injured hip. Lots of friction burns. Luckily there were relatively few explosions, at least of the fatal variety. Lyra and Bonbon had both taken to wearing plastic hoof-guards while investigating. Certain sticky stains might not wash off, so to speak.

Everypony they spoke to, whether fully conscious or not, had the same story to tell: mysterious figure. Something that looked like a book. Then a jolt of lightning to their [REDACTED]. Metaphorically speaking. Some ponies used more colorful language than others.

"It felt like I was getting [REDACTED] right in my [REDACTED]," one of them said, an older-looking mare with heavy red lipstick and a heart-throb cutie mark. "To tell you the truth, I got [REDACTED] all over myself... it was like this one stallion, he put me up in the [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] until I couldn't walk for a week! Haha!"

"That's very useful information," Lyra said, and left before the urge to vomit became overpowering.

Overnight, the moon was a beacon leading their chase. When it vanished, things became a struggle against the sun, the sense of daytime pushing them towards sleep but thrashing and crying every step of the way. Lyra downed a cup of coffee each hour, while Bonbon somehow found the strength to keep her eyes open while sober. Maybe she just didn't envy the crash that came after a tower of caffeine that high.

But eventually, even the emergency reserves of willpower ran out. Lyra and Bonbon settled on the same anonymous bench they'd used before, somehow existing in a place just outside the proximity where anypony seemed to care to notice it.

"Did we find anything useful?" Lyra asked. She wiped a hoof across her forehead and lifted her glasses up, leaving a dent on either side of her nose. With her other hoof, she massaged the bridge of her nose, one side, then the other, and let out little 'aahhs' as the built-up pressure relaxed ever-so-slightly. Searching for anomalous objects was a guaranteed headache waiting to happen.

"Not really," Bonbon said, not even bothering to reference her notes. "Conflicting simultaneous reports of a green monkey with a question-mark mask, but never identified in reference to our investigation. And a blue hair." Bonbon sighed. "A single, blue hair."

"Huh. A blue hair?"

"A blue hair."

"Do you think that confirms my theory?"

"I guess we'll find out when we get back to [REDACTED]."

Lyra shook her head. "Hey," she said. "I feel like I've seen that question-mark thing before." Lyra pondered for a moment. "Did it have a name?"

"Let's just go give our report," Bonbon said, sighing and getting up from the picnic bench. "The Director's not going to be happy either way."

"No, seriously, I feel like he's all over the place, repairing fences and babysitting and stuff, didn't we give him a room that one time when—"

Bonbon walked off without bothering to interrupt her partner. She just sighed, and tried to shield her eyes from the morning sun as it peaked over the mountains.

Chapter 13

Cozy Glow was deep into a report when Lyra and Bonbon knocked on her door. She buzzed them in, and the door swung open, but she didn't raise her eyes from the dossier in front of her, and she continued scanning it even as Lyra and Bonbon entered the room and took up their spots in front of her desk.

"Status report," she said, eyes moving side to side over the detailed text.

"We were unable to reobtain the anomalous object-slash-entity-question-mark," Bonbon said, standing tall and holding herself sternly in position. "Anomaly designation SCP-XX69 is at present unaccounted for. We've been able to surmise from various localized disturbances that the object is either acting autonomously and interfering with the well-being of the nearby populace, or that somepony in possession of the anomaly is using it for a similar purpose."

"You think somepony stole it?" Cozy Glow raised an eyebrow and looked up from her paper.

Lyra shrugged, but Bonbon maintained her posture and gave a reserved nod.

"Affirmative. The pattern of encounters isn't stochastic enough to suggest an autonomous operation. It seems like somepony's plan," Bonbon said, her voice ushering the final syllables uneasily. "Somepony using it. Dangerously."

"What's so dangerous about a romance book?" Cozy Glow asked.

"Well, as it indicates in the safety report, the object, while it appears to be a book, may in fact be a sentient anomalous entity capable of reconfiguration at a molecular or even subatomic level."

"Uh-huh. And why is that dangerous?"

"The book is of particular hazard to ponies who, um... haven't been 'intimate' in at least a seventy-two hour period before contact with the object," Bonbon said. She shuffled her hooves uneasily, unable to keep her gaze steady.

"Seventy-two hours?" Cozy Glow asked.

Bonbon nodded.

"At maximum," she added. "Really, even a few hours, with the right pony, could result in—"

"I think I've heard everything I need to," Cozy Glow said. She kicked her legs up onto her desk and leaned back in her oversized chair. "I'll call for you if I require any further information."

Bonbon nodded and bowed. She turned to leave, but noticed on her way to the door that Lyra was still standing in place, staring at the director behind her desk, or more particularly, at the bookcase immediately behind her. One of the books had actually been read, from the looks of things.

Cozy Glow didn't notice at first, but after a little while Lyra's presence became obtrusive, and she couldn't help but look up to find the mint-green pony still staring steadfastly in her direction.

"Yes?" Cozy Glow said. "Is there anything else you need, agent? You're dismissed. Didn't you hear?"

"I didn't take you for much of a reader," Lyra said. She walked down to the end of Cozy Glow's desk where the flat-screen monitor was, then around to the other side, strolling closer to Cozy's chair with every step. "Most of your entertainment beeps or vibrates, doesn't it?"

"I beg your pardon, agent?" Cozy Glow sat up fully in her chair, which, even at her diminutive height, gave her an imposing presence, especially coupled with the stern stare and forelegs crossed across her chest. The glare was particularly debilitating, even at a distance.

"Just noticed this," Lyra said, tapping a spot on the wall-covering bookcase behind Cozy Glow's desk. "Figured most of these were just for show, but one of them is missing, and there's something else in its place..."

"You're not both implying that the Director stole the object, but also that she hid it in plain sight for anypony to see?"

"That, is exactly what I'm implying. And I think if you check this particular volume, you'll see my guess is more or less one hundred percent—"

"Ahh! Lyra!"

A burst of bright blue magic shot across the room from Cozy Glow's chair directly towards Bonbon, a star-studded burst of fireworks that was so big and brilliant it knocked her off her hooves and sent her flying, landing with a loud and unpleasant-sounding thud against the ornate wooden door.

The explosion from the burst of magic was enough to give Lyra pause for just a moment, to almost dive for Bonbon before it blew her back, shielding her face and eyes with a raised foreleg and her Mark I specs...

Cozy Glow jumped out of her chair and dived for the bookcase while the blue dust of the explosion was still settling, and she snatched the book of Lyra's interest from its place as she tumbled past, rolling over herself a few times before ending up in the corner of the room, panting, at the far end of the just-for-show bookcase.

"Told ya," Lyra said, before getting back to her hooves and rushing to check on Bonbon. Her partner seemed scuffed, but nothing was broken, and she managed to get up with only a shoulder to lean on for assistance. That did still leave the matter of—

"Neither of you move, or I'll open this thing and turn you both inside out!" Cozy Glow said. She was holding SCP-XX69 at face level, shielding herself with it like... well, a shield. The cover had been reconfigured again, this time with the subtitles reading WE BET YOU'LL ENJOY OPENING THIS RIGHT NOW AND READING EVERY WORD. 'Enjoy' looked especially strange and wiggly.

"Out of all the anomalous object you could have taken, why this one?" Bonbon asked. "I know Ponyvillains aren't really known for explaining their motives in elaborate speeches just before their thwarted, but I thought maybe, just this once..."

"Hey, I told you that was a good word!"

"Hush, Lyra."

Cozy Glow seemed to consider the proposition, by which it could be said she at least didn't flip the cover free and expose the two agent ponies to an eldritch plumbing of their psychosexual depths. But the possibility hovered there, just as Cozy's hoof did at the edge of the cover, and it would only take one word in their eyes to turn the tide. One word without those stupid glasses...

Bonbon had reached the conclusion long ago that her eyes were worth protecting indiscriminately, but she wasn't ready for the direct and forceful approach of Cozy Glow's magic, which was to instead target the area of her head just around her sunglasses, make her jerk forward and then throw her head back, and sure enough, the tiny black vision protectors were hurled across the room, landing with a scuttling sound somewhere below a desk or file cabinet, or one of those fake books, maybe. Lyra's glasses did the same behind hers, flying in the opposite direction, but still moving generally too far away to be of any use. Both their eyes were exposed, and Cozy Glow was smirking, her horn settling with a faint glow from her heavy use of magic.

"Come on, Director. You don't wanna do anything rash," Lyra said.

"Come one step closer and I'll give you a rash," Cozy Glow said, holding the book out in Lyra's direction. “Right on your [REDACTED].”

Lyra shrank away from it and shielded her eyes with her foreleg.

"Look, there's no reason anypony has to get hurt. Why don't you just set the ess see pee... argh. Why don't you just set that thing down and we'll talk this over?"

Cozy Glow shook her head.

"Nuh-uh. Somepony always talks me out of my evil plan. Not happening this time. I found something way better than friendship."

"Sex is not better than friendship," Bonbon said with a huff, her eyes narrowing angrily even though she might be only seconds from a messy, embarrassing demise.

"Not sex. The ability to debilitate anypony at a whim. Or kill them. That's what I found."

"Oh. You know, I don't really feel like that might be so much better than—"

"Silence! Feast your eyes on these lustful passages, and give yourself up to the power of libido-wrangler, Cozy Glow!"

Bonbon shrieked and attempted to shield her eyes, but she could already see the first page coming out, she could see the text embossed at the top of the pseudo-paper...

But then Lyra was in the way, and that was enough shield to block everything, except Lyra's face, which was dead set staring on the open 'book'.

She had one eyebrow raised, and seemed to be confused.

"Is something supposed to happen?" she said. She yawned and scratched her mane. "I'm reading it, but nothing's happening. Some kind of story about flowers?" Lyra yawned again, her eyelids fluttering sleepily. "Yeesh. Does this get any better?"

"Let me see that," Cozy Glow snapped. She pulled the book away from Lyra's face and opened it to investigate for herself, somewhere in the middle section, it didn't matter as long as there were words on the page...

"Oh," Cozy Glow said.

"Oh no," Cozy Glow said.

"Why are there so many stories about me," she said.

She began to sweat and blush simultaneously.

"Why are so many of them with this, this, weird question-mark guy..."

Cozy's brow began to pool with beads of perspiration. Her mane dampened and her curls straightened, her entire forehead doused in sweat.

"Why... Why do I sound so stupid in so many of them... Why do I... keep repeating the same words... over and... over and... over and..."

"Duck," Lyra said.

"Goose," Bonbon said.

"No, I mean get down—"

"IIIIIKKKUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—"

Pop. Or 'splat', perhaps more accurately.

There was a lot of mooshy stuff.

At least their hooves didn't get sticky again.

Chapter 14

Bonbon was carrying a report under one foreleg as she walked down the hallway. The halls were uniform black, undecorated, though there was a water-cooler halfway down the hallway in either direction. Though 'halfway' didn't mean much when none of the doors or directions were labelled either.

Still, Bonbon seemed to know where she was going. She made her way to what looked like a mail-room, an unlocked door that led to a tower of boxes, also unlabelled, but filled with bits of paper, letters and clipboard pages and all sorts of miscellaneous files. Without stopping to even check the box, Bonbon slid her report into place in the third spot from the right, second row from the top. She shut the door behind her, but left it unlocked, as it had been when she'd entered.

Lyra was waiting outside the room for her when she exited, leaning against the wall with her forelegs folded over her chest.

"Ready to head home?"

Bonbon nodded. "Ready."

The two held hooves as they walked down the hallway.

"So why didn't the anomalous object... why didn't the book work on you?"

Lyra shrugged.

"Dunno. Maybe I'm just not the easily frustrated type."

"Do you want bottom or top tonight?"

"Maybe both?"

Author's Note

Executive Producer: KENT WEED

Chapter 8

The meeting went something like this.

Cozy Glow: "Somepony's stolen SCP-XX69."

Lyra: "How are you pronouncing that out loud, exactly?"

Bonbon: "Hush."

Cozy Glow: "Are you two listening?"

Lyra: "We are, but I don't know about her."

Bonbon: "Uncalled for!"

Cozy Glow: "Listen3. I need the two of you out there looking for clues. If it gets back that we've let an anomalous artifact slip only a day after containing it in the first place, there could be serious lasting damage to our overall reputation."

Lyra: "I thought our specific goal was not to have a reputation. Exactly what kind of reputation are you talking about here?"

Cozy Glow: "That's classified information."

Lyra: "Oh [REDACTED]."

Bonbon: "Lyra! Language!"

Lyra: "Sorry."

Cozy Glow: "I don't think you need any more information. Ponyville should be your first place to look for leads. It's unlikely SCP-XX69 will return to its place of origin. Now that it’s loose, it will most likely be looking for a large congregation of... ice-cube biting. Or something like that."

Lyra: "Ice-cube biting?"

Bonbon: "You've never heard that before? Supposedly ponies who bite their ice-cubes are harboring a lot of pent up—"

Cozy Glow: "Enough! Get to work, the both of you!"

Lyra & Bonbon: "Yes, ma'aam."

Door. Beep. Boop.

And scene.

Author's Note

3: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. - Ed.

Chapter 9

"It was just last night, if'n I recall correctly... or maybe it was Tuesday," Granny Smith said. She scratched at a long white hair on her chin as she stared in the general direction of the sunset. "Hmm. Tell me, what day is it today?"

"It's Thursday," Lyra said. She tapped at her clipboard with a pencil, which had been dulled and sharpened several times without writing anything down.

"Pardon? The 'first day', was it?"

"Thursday," Lyra repeated, louder this time. "Tee aych, you are... that day?"

"Oh, yes! Good ol' Thursday... I remember it like it was yesterday..."

"It's today," Lyra said.

"Whassat?"

Lyra smacked a hoof into her forehead. She looked around for Bonbon and started tugging at her ear with her other free hoof, the pre-established 'get me the buck out of here' signal.

But Bonbon was dealing with her own issues.

"We're wondering if you've seen anything unusual around Ponyville recently," Bonbon said. She had her own clipboard, which was covered in annotations but so far no recorded interview answers.

Derpy was staring at her bemusedly, her head tilted a little to one side, her eyes perpetually crossed.

"Unusual?" she said, working the word over in her mouth.

Bonbon nodded.

"Mhm-hmm. Unusual. Have you seen anything like that?"

Derpy considered with a hoof over her mouth. She looked up in the sky, at the pegasus weather team swooping overhead and reorganizing the wind-currents and batches of clouds. Further past that, she could see Canterlot castle on the horizon, the home of the two princesses who raised the sun and the moon each day, arbitrary defiance of any other natural system that might have emerged in their stead. If she looked down just over the roofs of Ponyville, she could see the occasional parasprite skirting in and out of view, meeping bashfully as it was caught and then vanishing as quick as it had poked its head out. Derpy could see a mix of all three pony races mingling in the market square, the hidden earth energy founding the town brewing silently under their hooves. She saw ponies with markings on their flanks telling them their life's work and talent, a glyph that appeared from nowhere and was aligned by the ethereal energies of 'friendship'.

Derpy blinked.

"What exactly do you mean by 'unusual'," she said slowly.

Bonbon sighed.

"This is going to take a while, isn't it," she said to herself.

Though she was far away in the crowd, trapped down another wormhole of Granny Smith's recollecting, Lyra nodded. The sentiment required no verbal transmission.