Masked Pony: Agent of SECT

Chapters

Chapter 0
Chapter 1
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 2

Chapter 0

Ponyville. It was a nice, quiet town, the perfect place to disappear. At least, it was nice and quiet most of the time, when monsters weren’t attacking. During school hours. On weekdays.

I sighed. No matter how many years of monster hunting experience I had, I would never be able to deal with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. There was no way the amount of taffy they'd been working with had been enough to cause the disaster they'd caused. I suspected chaos magic, but I'd never been able to actually prove it.

It was my own fault for letting them try to help. It had just been impossible to say no to them when they asked so nicely!
“I’m awful sorry about the mess, Miss Bon-Bon,” Apple Bloom said.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to help clean up?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Princess Twilight says I’m getting much better with my magic! I hardly ever set things on fire!”

“I-it’s fine girls,” I said, forcing a smile and turning to them. Scootaloo tried to say something, but her mouth was still glued shut by taffy, just like half of my shop. “Why don’t you go and get cleaned up before that sets and turns as hard as a rock?”

The three left my shop before they could destroy anything else. I helped them egress quicky with a broom and some very aggressive cleaning in their direction. When they were gone, I collapsed against the door, already exhausted. It had been a long day, and when I got home, it was going to get longer.

Today, I’d promised my roommate, my best friend, that we’d talk about the secrets I’d been keeping from her.
I looked back at the molten taffy spilled across the counters and floors. Maybe a few hours cleaning up here wouldn’t be too bad after all.

When I opened the door, I could feel the argument ready to start. Lyra was sitting on the couch, and she didn’t turn when I walked in.

“I thought you’d decided to run away,” she said. “Since your secrets are so important to you.”

Wonderful.

“Lyra, I wouldn’t run away from you,” I said. “I promise. I just…” I sighed. “Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

“Oh,” She said, her tone changing. She dropped her defensive stance and looked at me with sympathy. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was that kind of day.”

I smiled a little. “It’s okay. I’m going to pass it on when I send their families a bill for the damages.” I looked towards the kitchen. “So, how about I get started on dinner…”

“I’ll order a pizza. That way you can have more time to explain all these secrets of yours.” She patted the couch next to her. I tossed my saddlebags to the side of the door and trotted up to sit. She didn't shy away from me, which was a good sign.

“Okay. Where should I start?”

“You can start with who you really are,” Lyra grumbled.

I sighed. “I told you already. My real name is Sweetie Drops. I used to be part of an anti-monster organization. Most of the details are top secret, and I can’t really tell you much more than that.”

“You have to be able to tell me more than that!” Lyra groaned. “How much of what you told me about you is true? Like, do you even like daisy sandwiches?”

“Lyra,” I sighed. “Of course I do. The only things I lied to you about were my name and where I came from. Everything else, everything that’s really me -- that’s all true.” I smiled, and she gave me a nervous smile back. “I swore an oath never to tell anypony about this stuff.”

“It just hurts, you know?” Lyra sighed.

“I know,” I said, nuzzling her. “I’m sorry. You know, you’re the only one I would trust with my secrets. And the only reason I didn’t leave when the bugbear showed up.” I smiled sadly.

“So where do we go from here?” Lyra asked.

“The same place we were going before,” I said, putting a hoof around her shoulders. “Nothing about my past changes what we have now. Lyra, when Celestia disbanded the organization I could have gone anywhere and done anything. I chose to come here, and I chose to be with you. As a best friend. “

“But…” Lyra still looked unsure. “You didn’t even know me then!”

“That’s true. And when I was new in town, and really alone, you were there for me. You even bought some of my first batch of candy.”

“That was good stuff. I still remember it.” Lyra smiled. “You gave me a discount because busking with a lyre doesn't really bring in the bits.”

“That wasn’t the only reason,” I said. “I also gave you a discount for being a cute mare.”

“And I gave you a special performance for being the sweetest pony I know,” Lyra smiled.

Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.

With the Bugbear back in Tartarus, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders banned from my shop for a month, I was sure things were going to, finally, quiet down.

That was when the last person I expected to see again walked into my shop. And yes, I meant person, not pony.

“Well, this is quite a bit different from your last office,” came the voice, the tone making my skin crawl before I even turned to look. A griffon stood in the doorway, looking at my displays with a bored but critical eye. “Much more brightly colored, and far less screaming.”

“What do you want, Gerson?” I muttered. The only pony still in my shop looked at the griffon, with his ragged black feathers like a vulture, and made her exit, shooting me a sympathetic look. I kept eye contact with Gerson, just daring him to do something stupid. Part of me was already giving him a visual patdown, trying to see if he was carrying any anomalous items or weapons. I didn't spot anything, which just meant he was hiding them well today.

“Is it really so awful for me to come looking for an old friend?” he asked, grinning with his cracked beak.

“It is when you’re blowing my cover,” I said. “And besides, we were never friends with the Griffon Occult Coalition. We wanted to keep things safe, you wanted to turn them into weapons.” I glared at him.

“Come now,” he sighed. “We worked together quite a bit.” He picked up one of the bonbons I had on display and ate it. “Hm. You have quite a talent for making candy. You could make a living doing this!”

“I do,” I pointed out.

“True enough,” he agreed. “But think of how much greater you could be! You could have anything you wanted. It’ll be just like the good ol’ days before you got burned and cut loose. Heard anything from Celestia lately? Does she even remember you exist?”

“Shut up,” I said. “And get out of my shop.”

“That’s too bad,” Gerson sighed. “I like you, Sweetie Drops. We could have made a great team.” He tossed a few bits on the counter. “For the candy.”

He walked out, and when the door closed behind him, I almost collapsed, leaning against the counter, the stress nearly breaking me. What was he doing here?! The GOC had been a thorn in Equestria’s side for as long as it had existed.

The smart thing to do would be to go to Celestia. The Princess should know about this. If the GOC was working this close to Canterlot… but my last orders had expressly forbidden me from doing anything. I wasn’t even sure if any of my usual methods of communication would get through.

And, unfortunately, he'd been right about one thing. She'd cut me loose. She didn't care what happened to me. I was on my own.

“Bonnie, what are you doing?” Lyra groaned.

“I’m looking for something,” I said, pulling another box aside in the attic. I hadn’t gone through any of this since I’d moved in with Lyra. Neither of us had been able to afford a house alone, and once we’d started living together I couldn’t exactly have risked her finding my old gear, so it had gone unsorted into the attic crawlspace.

“I know that,” Lyra rolled her eyes. “What, though?” She opened one of the boxes I’d set aside.

“Careful,” I said. “Some of that is--”

“Woah!” Lyra gasped, as she pulled a helmet free of the cardboard. It had been periwinkle blue and white, but time and my very careful storage method of shoving it in a cardboard box had made the paint darken to gunmetal and grey “What is this thing?”

“It’s just part of my old armor,” I said. “We were supposed to be totally anonymous, so it’s a little different from Guard armor. Full mask helm to conceal my identity, a bodysuit to cover cutie mark and coat, better enchantments…” I shrugged.

“Ooh!” Lyra tried to pull the helmet on, her horn catching on it. “Aww… It doesn’t fit.”

“Sorry, Lyra. It’s fitted. Even if you skipped the helmet, the rest would be too loose.”

“So you admit you’re chubby?” Lyra asked, grinning.

“I’m an earth pony! We’re naturally a little stockier than unicorns!” I huffed. “Besides, I make candy. It’s natural that I’d have a few extra pounds. A thin chef is a bad chef, as they say.”

“Sure, Bon-Bon.” Lyra snickered. “At least you don’t have to worry about that, candyflanks.”

I blushed and took the helmet from her hooves, putting it back in the box. “Stop it, Lyra. Some of this stuff is dangerous.”

“Fine,” she sighed, sitting down on another box. It let out a chittering beep, and my ears perked up.

“Move,” I said, pushing Lyra away and opening the box she’d half-crushed. Inside, carefully packed away, was exactly what I was looking for. I grunted as I pulled the heavy device free and set it down on the floor of the attic, checking it for damage.

“A belt?" Lyra asked. "We have a bunch of those already, you know. And this one's got a big, ugly buckle..."

"It's the rest of my armor," I said. I tapped a button set into the side, and two of the six lights set into it came to life. "Not much of a charge left, but good enough for a little while..."

"No offense, Bonnie, but I don't think a belt and a helmet are much protection."

"The belt creates the armor," I explained. "I don't know exactly how it works, but it weaves magic around your body and kind of hardens but stays flexible around the joints. It's got some enhancement spells worked into it. Resistance to magic, poison and heat resistance, that kind of thing."

“Woah,” Lyra whistled. “That had to be expensive. I'd love to take it apart to see how it works...”

“It was necessary for agents in the field,” I said. “Can't carry guard armor with you everywhere, and the helmet collapses a little to make it easier to conceal. When I had to abandon ship, all of the equipment in my cell’s safehouse became my responsibility. I couldn’t sell it, and it seemed like a waste to just bury it, so I hung onto it.”

“Nostalgic?” Lyra asked.

“Part of me didn’t want to admit it was over,” I sighed. “Celestia… she cut us loose, but I thought someday I’d see a message that said ‘it’s time to come home.’”

Lyra looked down at that. I stepped away from the boxes to nuzzle her.

“Hey, harpbutt. That was a long time ago. The only home I want to come back to now is this one, okay?”

She nodded, quiet for a moment. “Then… why are you taking this out?”

“Something happened today, and it makes me worried,” I said. “Something that SECT would have taken responsibility for, a long time ago.”

“SECT?”

“Special Equestrian Combat Troop. I guess it doesn’t matter if you know the name, since there are no records anywhere and it doesn’t even exist anymore. One of our old rivals popped out of the woodwork and…” I shivered. “I just… if anypony is still listening, they need to be warned. If he could track me down, he could track down the others, too.”

“So you’re just going to send them a warning?” Lyra asked.

“That’s all,” I said, nodding. “Just a warning.”

I didn’t get any sleep that night. Every shadow looked like a griffon agent watching. Every motion outside the window made me jump.

What was the GOC planning? Why were they here?

And why did they come for me?

Chapter 1

I had a few ponies that were regulars in my shop, even in the off-season between the holidays. There were always foals, but they weren’t regulars as much as a convenient way to dispose of old and irregular stock -- I may have worked for the government in the past but that didn’t mean I was going to take the last bit from a foal’s pocket.

My better-paying regulars, on the other hand, came in two varieties. First, there were the ponies who found they needed chocolates and flowers for their significant other on a regular basis. I didn’t ask why, and I didn’t want to know.

The second type just ate candy as a regular part of their diet. They also tended to talk more.

“...simply dreadful!” Rarity sighed, as she continued speaking. Her usual order was already wrapped up and on the counter. She’d been telling me a story for ten minutes now. “I shall never get the honey out of my good beekeeping outfit!”

“You… have a good beekeeping outfit?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“Bon-bon, you should know better. It’s hardly as if I would have a bad one.” She laughed. “I had thought it would offer some protection against the Bugbear--” I shivered at the name. “It was half bee, after all.”

“Wasp,” I corrected, on reflex.

“Hm?” Rarity asked, looking up.

“Nothing,” I said. “So after you found the hive, you said Princess Twilight used a smoke spell to pacify the larvae?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t think I got that far…” Rarity frowned. I hadn’t actually been paying attention, but I knew how to handle the Bugbear. “But yes. I suppose I got distracted by thinking about my outfit. It was supposed to be a commission for Bumblesweet, but the honey will simply never wash out of the velvet trim.”

“But now you can make an improved version,” I suggested, smiling. “With all that experience from in-field use!”

“I suppose you’re right,” Rarity mumbled, mostly speaking to herself. “I could add more padding to the knees, and use a lighter mesh for the veil…” She tapped a hoof against the ground as she trailed off. “I must strike while the inspiration is with me! Wrap up my order, please.”

I pushed the plastic bag towards her, and she nodded, grabbing it and dropping the bits on the counter along with a generous tip before leaving, already pulling out a sketchpad to note down her ideas.

I shook my head. To be honest, Rarity was one of the least crazy ponies in town. Dramatic, but at least she’d only turned evil and insane once. I figured everypony was allowed one bad day.

“Are you gonna go and make sure the Bugbear hive is gone?” Lyra whispered, right into my ear. I jumped, almost going right into a tray of candied fruit slices.

“Where did you come from?!” I demanded.

Lyra grinned at me. “I came back to see you on your lunch break. It’s already past noon.”

“Stop trying to blow my cover,” I hissed. “I only told you because you’re my best friend! Do you know how much trouble I’ll get in if everypony knows?”

“None?” Lyra guessed.

“Wrong! I’ll get court-martialed! Worse, it’ll be a double secret trial, and I’ll end up banished to Stalliongrad without a winter jacket!”

“Princess Celestia wouldn’t do that,” Lyra snorted. Her expression faded as she saw my expression. “Would she?”

“You don’t want to know,” I muttered. “Lyra, promise me you’ll keep this a secret?”

“I’ll Pinkie--”

“Lyra. Just a regular promise.”

“Alright, fine, I promise.” Lyra sighed. “But shouldn’t you check the hive?”

“I’m sure Princess Twilight took care of it,” I said. “And even if she didn’t, the Royal Guard would have cleaned up whatever was left.” I bit my lip, looking out of the window. “I’m sure of it.”

I could picture a swarm of Bugbears, rising up out of the Everfree.

“I’m sure of it…”

I was in the Everfree within an hour, closing the shop and practically running for the edge of the woods. I had to know for sure, to make sure that the Bugbear and its hive had really been dealt with properly.

The Bugbear had been one of the largest threats to Equestria seen in a hundred years. It had been created in a freak accident when a unicorn had attempted to simultaneously corner both the honey production and guard-animal industries. It had been a narrow thing. If we hadn’t been prompt in dealing with it, half of the country would be covered in giant, hairy hives.

I trotted quietly along the obvious trail Twilight had left. She was the easiest pony to track in Equestria. Sure, Rainbow Dash left a rainbow contrail, but that faded after a few seconds. It was nothing compared to the path of destruction our Princess of Friendship managed to leave wherever she went.

“There it is,” I mumbled to myself, as I stepped over a fallen, burned log, careful not to catch my saddlebags or heavy belt on the ragged branches.

The Bugbear hive was almost as big as Ponyville's Town Hall, or had been before fire spells had collapsed it, the wax running and melting into rivers as wide as streets. It was going to take a while to check to make sure none of the larvae had survived. Ideally, it was the kind of job that would be done with magic, but that wasn’t an option for me.

Just as I was about to step onto the road of yellow wax, I heard a branch break behind me. I spun, instincts taking over, my hoof lashing out at chin height. Before I connected with anything, I felt somepony grab my ankle and twist, and I was suddenly flat on my back with a hoof on my chest.

“Did you forget all your CQC training?”

I blinked up at the pony over me, her draconian wings casting her in shadow.

“Hoss?” I was stunned. I hadn’t seen Glee Club, my old boss, in… well, since things had gone bad and we went our separate ways.

“It’s been a while,” she said, stepping off of my chest and offering me a hoof. “No one has called me Hoss since Joe retired.”

“He always did like nicknames,” I said, trying to catch my breath for a moment. She wasn’t heavy, but she could just project force, the same way a cat could weigh almost nothing until they stand on your chest and feel like they’re crushing your ribs.

“You haven’t changed much at all, Sweetie. You came unarmed and unprepared into the very den of danger.”

I frowned as I stood with her help, looking at her. The batpony was the same as I remembered. She was still toned and almost impossibly strong for somepony with wings. Her dark coat concealed more than a few scars, though she was wearing a heavy oilcloth cloak that concealed even more.

“I didn’t come completely unprepared,” I said, patting my saddlebags.

“You would already be dead if I hadn’t stopped you,” Glee said, stepping past me. She grabbed a branch in her teeth and threw it at the solid-looking river of wax, the wood cracking the thin shell and revealing steaming hot wax underneath. The branch smoked and steamed as it was caught in the sticky wax, dragged under by the slow flow under the surface and vanishing.

“The wax takes years to cool completely,” she explained. “If you fell in, you’d boil alive without any protection.”

“Then I’m a step ahead of you,” I said. I took off my saddlebags, reaching into one before kicking them aside. When I turned back to her, I had my helmet in my hooves, and my old belt around my waist.

Glee smiled. “So, you kept your copy of the Generation 4 armor.”

The G4 armor had been developed only a few years before the return of Nightmare Moon, to provide a lower-profile alternative to the Night Guard armor we had been using. Only a few prototypes had actually been made, as it was exponentially more expensive than the enchanted armor the more normal branches of Princess Celestia’s armed services enjoyed. Until activated, it looked like nothing more than a heavy belt with an ornate buckle.

“What else was I going to do, sell it?” I asked, shrugging.

“Some would have,” Glee said. “I’m sure there are many ponies who would tell you it wasn’t healthy to cling to such a dangerous part of your past.”

“You’re not one of them, though,” I said.

She smiled faintly. “No.” Glee Club turned to look over the ruins of the hive. “The Elements did a fair job of tending to this already.” The way she said it was tinged with disappointment like she'd been hoping for some trouble. I'd shown up with my old gear, so maybe I had been, too.

“Did you get my message?” I asked.

“You’re not the only one that can’t let go of the past,” Glee said, stepping away from me. “I’m glad you’re doing well. You seem happier than you were before.”

“How have you been since…” I trailed off. Glee turned back to me, smiling again.

“There’s always a place for ponies with skills like ours. I’ve been doing what I can to keep Equestria safe.” She nodded to the hive. “Though sometimes it feels as if this is why Celestia disbanded our unit. Not because of Nightmare Moon, but because SECT’s methods weren’t needed in her Equestria.”

“What do you--” Glee’s head snapped up, and she shoved me back before jumping herself, a stick strand of webbing slamming into the ground between us.

I looked up as I rolled back to my hooves. A twisted form loomed in the trees above us, a monster with the front half of a pony and the back half of a huge spider, with eight glowing eyes to match its eight mismatched legs.

“Perhaps there’s some work to be done after all,” Glee said. “I hope you still remember your combat training, Sweetie.”

“It’s not something you can forget,” I said. I reached towards my belt with a hoof. I had to hope it would still work. The unit hadn’t been maintained in almost a decade. If the magical battery was damaged, nothing might happen at all. Or it could explode.

I steadied myself and hit the button on the buckle. The enchantments kicked into action, drawing mana in from around me, the belt vibrating as it waited for a command word.

“Henshin!” I yelled, the belt beeping in response as it accepted the command.

Magic surged around me, tingling as it settled around my body. I didn’t know enough about magic to have the technical details on hoof, but I knew it turned magic directly into a tough kind of cloth called Sol Fiber, strong enough to deflect blades and teeth.

I picked up the helmet I’d dropped, putting it on as the flare of magic started to fade, the Sol Fiber connecting to the tough metal and creating an airtight seal. The forest seemed to light up around me as the enchantment on the lenses of the full-face mask activated. As the armor settled around me, I felt stronger, faster. It was the Sol Fiber giving off magical energy, letting my own earth pony talents play with a larger magical reserve. It had always felt nice, almost addictive to some ponies, which was one more reason it had never been rolled out to the Royal Guard.

“I’m not familiar with this creature,” Glee said, stepping back. “Be cautious. It could be more dangerous than it looks, and you seem to have put on a few pounds since we last met.”

“I make candy!” I said defensively, though my objections were cut short as the monster dropped down between us, the Spider-pony hissing through a mouth full of fangs dripping with venom. It was definitely not the most attractive monster I’d ever seen, but they couldn’t all be half-succubus sirens.

The monster turned to Glee, so I did the only thing I could think of and kicked a rock at it, the stone smacking into its bulbous rear end with a satisfying sound, right near the big marking it had of a bunch of flowers. I wasn’t sure what kind they were - every time I tried to strike up a conversation with the experts in town, they ended up fainting at the sight of their own shadows. They had lived here longer than I had, though. Maybe they just had some kind of PTSD from the biweekly monster attacks.

The spider-thing spun around and focused on me, forgetting about the batpony. Not normally what I wanted from a monster, but I wanted to show Glee that I hadn’t gotten soft. I probably wanted to keep her from getting eaten, too. Might be nice to return the favor from where she’d made sure I hadn’t boiled alive in wax.

The spider charged me, lunging with those dripping fangs. I dodged to the side, and was thrown back by its powerful legs, landing on my face like an idiot.

I got back up, blushing and trying to make it look like I’d meant to do that. I hadn’t been this sloppy a few years ago.

Spider legs raised up and slammed down towards me like scythes. I was ready for them, bracing myself against the ground and rearing up to deflect them aside with my forehooves. The armor sparked and smoked as stressed Sol Fibers leaked magical energy.

As the legs deflected to my sides, the body of the spider-taur was left exposed. I dropped back down to all fours and turned, kicking up and back as I spun. My rear hoof slammed into the joining between soft pony flesh and hardened chitin, the armor releasing a small magical charge that left a burning hoofprint in the monster as it stumbled away.

“It takes a little bit to get back into the groove,” I said. The monster growled and circled around me, wary now that I’d actually hurt it.

Its maw opened, and it spat a ball of webbing at me. I instinctively tried to bat it aside with a hoof. I realized my mistake when it clung to my leg like a leech, the weight and impact twisting me until my hoof hit the tree behind me, webbing splattering against it and gluing my foreleg to the trunk.

“I’m not impressed,” I said. “I can break--” I tugged at the webbing. My hoof stubbornly refused to move. “I can definitely break this…” I grunted and pulled harder, bracing my back legs and putting all of my weight into it.

I couldn’t break the webbing.

The spider-pony lunged at me, suddenly on top of me while I was struggling to free myself.

“I am just not that into you,” I mumbled, trying to keep its fangs away from me. This close, there was something strangely familiar about the spider, but I couldn’t quite place it while I was distracted by the imminent threat of death.

The monster lunged, and I used my trapped hoof as a pivot point, lifting myself into the air and kicking the tip of its chin. The spider’s face slammed into the tree, the trunk shattering and freeing my leg.

I was pretty sure I heard half-sarcastic clapping from Glee. I chose to ignore it for now. I knew I was being sloppy, but that happened after a few years of being retired.

“Okay,” I said, backing away quickly to give myself some space. “I think it’s time to finish this up, now that I’m warmed up.”

The spider-pony pulled itself free from the tree, shaking its head. It was dazed, eight eyes blinking out of rhythm. The trick to fighting most monsters was that there were two distinct stages to it - first, you find their weak spot, then you hit it with massive damage. You couldn’t just punch a lich to death, for example. You had to find their phylactery and destroy it, or it’d just pop right back up and tell you about how awful your mistake was.

I’d gotten a pretty good look at the monster, and my earlier attack was still bothering it. The legs and back carapace were tough, but the front half was soft and squishy.

Plus, I really was getting warmed up. It was all like riding a bike - totally awkward and something ponies really weren’t suited to, but you could learn if you put a lot of effort into it and you were willing to spend a year or so falling on your face like an idiot.

One of the things I’d learned was how to jump good. It wasn’t as easy as you’d think, if you didn’t have wings. The enhancements in the G4 armor helped.

I leapt into the air, easily clearing roof height of the average thatched-roof cottage. I needed to get off of the ground to use this attack. As an earth pony, I could channel magic through my hooves, but if I tried to channel too much, I’d end up grounding myself out. Setting up a large imbalance and hitting something, though, that would ground the energy right through it.

I twisted in the air, my rear hooves glowing as I did a backflip.

“Jawbreaker Kick!” I yelled, as I came down in a flying kick, hitting the spider pony on its vulnerable, fuzzy chest. There was a crack like lightning, and an immediate smell of ozone and burning metal.

The impact blew us away from each other. I rolled as I landed, getting up on my hooves. The spider wasn’t so lucky. Its whole body looked cracked and broken, glowing from within like a coal. It twisted and turned in pain, hissing and spitting, before collapsing in a heap.

“Huh,” I muttered. “Usually monsters explode-” before I even finished the sentence, there was an eruption of black smoke from the monster.

No, not quite black. I could see something else. Points of light, like a slice of the night sky. There was a whistling, wailing sound like wind rushing through a narrow gap, and the smoke collapsed in on itself, condensing into a shard of blue-black metal as long as my hoof, hanging impossibly in the air for a moment before collapsing to the ground, right next to-

“Daisy?” I blinked. The flower pony whimpered, as if still in the grip of some awful dream. I stepped towards her, but Glee got there first, picking up the metal shard.

“She should be fine, in a few hours,” Glee said, holding the shard up to the light. In the shadows it cast, I could still see stars.

“What is that?” I asked, slowly approaching.

“A piece of Nightmare Moon’s armor,” Glee replied. “Left behind after she was cleansed by the Elements of Harmony, like a fragment of an eggshell left after a dragon has hatched.”

“Did it turn Daisy into that monster?” I asked, checking the pony. She seemed fine, despite having been a spider-thing a few moments ago. She just looked exhausted.

“It still has some of the Nightmare’s power,” Glee nodded. “It found what she was afraid of, and the fear consumed her body and mind.”

“That’s horrible,” I shuddered. “It must have been what Gerson was after. The GOC would love to get their claws on something like that.”

“Yes, they would,” Glee agreed. “Good work, Sweetie. I’m taking the shard.”

“We should give it to the guards,” I said. “Or Princess Twilight.”

“No,” Glee said. “This is going to go to a greater purpose.”

“Ah, what a joyful scene,” said a voice from above. I looked up just as Gerson landed behind Glee. “A touching reunion between comrades.”

Glee looked back at him, then threw him the shard. He caught it easily in a talon.

“What are you doing?!” I demanded. “They can’t have that!”

“I’m joining the GOC,” Glee said. “The shard is a little gift for my new friends.”

“It’s a fine dowry indeed,” Gerson said. “Have you reconsidered my offer, Sweetie?”

“What are you talking about?” I yelled. “Hoss, you know what they’ll do with that!” I tried to rush past her to Gerson, and a bat wing snapped out and hit me in the face, knocking me flat on my flank. Before I could get up, she kicked me in the gut hard enough that I felt it through the armor. She was even stronger than I remembered, and I was coughing and trying to catch my breath even as I avoided a follow-up attack that would have crushed my helmet and the head inside it - a head I was very fond of.

“If she’s not joining us, she has to be removed from the equation,” Gerson said. He pulled out a weapon that seemed to be some cross of a magic wand, a few crystals, and a trigger mechanism from a crossbow. I wasn’t sure what it would do, but it’d probably be deadly.

“No,” Glee said. “She was a part of my unit, I’ll take care of her.”

She stepped closer, between me and the deadly weapon. I swallowed, watching her closely. I had the G4 armor, so I had an advantage. Maybe. I was out of shape, and she’d always been faster and better trained than I was. I was going to have to fight at the highest level I’d ever managed in my life. I had to strike first, to try and get the momentum. I threw a Thousand Strong Stampede Kick.

She twisted around it and her wing came down in a Night's Child Lash.

I countered with Pomegranate Cross.

Glee threw a Black Moon Howl.

I jumped over it, and my mind went blank. She had no openings. Nothing I could even start to attack.

I was totally boned.

I landed right behind her, just in time for her to lash backwards with a Manehattan Lowtown Suprise and kick me hard enough to send me flying, spinning end over end. Sky. Ground. Sky. Ground. Sky. River of wax.

My face hit the wax and I went under instantly, smashing through the thin solid crust and into the liquid, boiling wax below.

Chapter 3

It started with an empty schoolhouse. The first ponies to know that Cheerilee was gone were the foals. Then I got to be the first adult to find out when some of those unsupervised ponies trotted in looking for candy.

“Like, she wasn’t even there!” Diamond Tiara complained as she looked through the cases of candy. When I saw her I half expected she was out of school because she'd pretended to be sick. Her father would let her get away with anything as long as it meant he didn't have to deal with the fallout. “How dare she waste my time by making me come to class when she doesn’t even bother showing up herself?”

“Clearly she doesn’t respect you,” Silver Spoon agreed. Unlike her best friend, Silver Spoon's parents wouldn't have simply let her cough a few times and stay in bed. It wasn't well-known, but they'd occasionally made specialized silver weapons for the Royal Guard in troubled times.

“She didn’t leave a note?” I frowned. Cheerilee usually left a note on the door if she was too sick to teach.

“No! We sat and waited for almost an hour, then Apple Bloom decided she and her friends should be the teacher until Cheerilee got back, which obviously I couldn’t allow,” Diamond Tiara huffed. “After all, if anypony was going to be the leader, it’s me. It’s basically my special talent!”

“I thought your talent was picking out jewelry?” Silver Spoon whispered.

“Cutie marks can mean more than one thing!” Diamond Tiara snapped.

“Here’s your candy, girls,” I said, giving them chocolate before they could start an argument in my store. “Now why don’t you head on home and let your parents know I’ll check up on Cheerilee?”

The teacher lived near the schoolhouse, in a quiet part of town. I kept tabs on ponies, but I hadn’t ever visited her before. I didn’t have a foal or a little sister to drag to school, so our paths rarely crossed except for the day after Hearts and Hooves day, when she came in to buy a lot of cheap leftover chocolate to eat alone.

I knocked on the door. It was entirely possible she was just too sick to even leave the house and leave a note. I doubted it, because I was smart enough to add two and two and get trouble.

“Cheerilee?” I asked, knocking again. “It’s Bon Bon. Are you okay?”

No answer.

There were a few ways I could open the door. I could buck it right off its hinges. I knew how to pick simple locks, and the tumbler lock on her front door definitely qualified. I even had some tools hidden in my mane for just such an occasion. The problem was that it would take a few minutes, and it was the middle of the day. Ponies would see me.

I was going to have to come up with a better plan. A window would be faster, but even harder to hide than the door. Maybe a back door? I could get privacy to pick the lock, then.

“Wait, what am I doing?” I groaned. “This is Ponyville.” I tried turning the door handle, and it opened. Nopony locked their doors around here. I was starting to fall back on bad habits and old ways of thinking. Not everything needed a tactical solution here. Which was one reason I'd lost my old job.

I pushed the door in and trotted inside.

“Cheerilee! I’m coming in! If you’re here, I’m sorry, I just want to check up on you!” I shut the door behind me as I entered. She didn’t have a very large house, just two floors and a hoof-ful of rooms.

I did a quick search, and didn’t find anything until I got to the bedroom.

“Oh no,” I whispered. The bed was empty, but whoever'd slept in it last hadn't fixed the sheets. In fact they'd torn them in half along with the mattress. I lifted one ruined foam slab from where it was lying, and thankfully didn't find Cheerilee. There had been some kind of fight here, but not a spot of blood anywhere.

I was leaving when I spotted it. A single pink scale, almost as large as my hoof.

"Where did you come from?" I whispered.

I grabbed the belt from where I’d left it, checking the magical charge. The excitement and extended use from being buried in wax had drained it even further. I had maybe an hour left before it would be gone for good.

“Wonderful,” I sighed.

“Bonnie, I finished it!” Lyra said, proudly. She held up an instrument case.

“...I really hope that isn’t a viola, Lyra.”

“I got the idea from one of those old detective books where the Stalliongrad Mafia carried crossbows around in guitar cases!” Lyra explained. “You said you used magical armor so you could hide it when you didn’t need to wear it, right? Well, it’d be pretty worthless if you had to carry around a big sword. Nopony does that.”

“Almost nopony,” I corrected. “Remember when Rainbow Dash decided that fencing was the next cool thing after Daring Do and The Book of Nine Swords?”

“That lasted like a week,” Lyra shrugged. “And everypony stared. Especially when she tried to do weather duty by cutting clouds in half.” She smiled and patted the case. “This baby will mean you can tell people you’re just on the way to saxamaphone practice.”

“Lyra, you’re a musician. Even I know it’s not called-- you know what, never mind.” I opened the case up. My helmet was set into one side of the case, and on the other… “Endless Night, Lyra, what is that thing?”

“Well,” Lyra said, nervously. “I was able to save the sword blade. And part of the flail. And the wood from the crossbow! They were all enchanted, too!”

“Normal weapons don’t usually work on monsters,” I agreed, still looking at the mess she’d made.

“So what I did was, I used the wood and reshaped it using a Warp Wood spell to make it into a new handle. But I didn’t know if you liked the sword or the flail better, so I put the sword on one end, and the chain and ball I saved from the flail on the other end!” She picked it up with her magic and almost hurt herself just lifting the ungainly mess.

The sword’s blade was short, wide, and thick, the kind of broad and heavy weapon that worked best with earth ponies like me. The flail took a lot more finesse to use, and you could easily hurt yourself with it if you didn’t know what you were doing. I had extensive combat training with it.

On the other hand, I had absolutely no idea how to use a weapon with a sword on one end and a flail on the other, with only a short handle between them.

“Lyra, this is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I know, right?” She smiled. “You can fight two monsters at once!”

“I meant dangerous to me, Lyra.” I sighed. “I’ll get killed if I use this!”

“Just try it,” Lyra begged. “I, um… I can’t take it apart. The enchantments kind of… stuck together like magnets.” She gave me a nervous smile.

“Lyra…” I groaned. She offered the weapon to me. “It’s better than nothing.” At least I’d already be wearing a helmet when I inevitably smacked myself in the face with it.

“I’ll try to come up with something else,” Lyra promised. “There are still some bits and pieces left, like the crossbow mechanism.”

I smiled and put a hoof under her chin. “Lyra, thank you. I’m not angry at you or anything. I’m just worried about Cheerilee. This is a big help. I really appreciate you and how you're helping.”

She grabbed me and pulled me into a hug. “Promise me that you won’t get hurt?”

“I promise.”

I had to admit, the instrument case was a good idea. Ponies didn’t even ask me about it -- with all of the spontaneous musical numbers that went on around here, most of the population of Ponyville could carry a tune or play an instrument or three. An instrument didn’t raise any eyebrows, it just meant I was overprepared.

Tracking Cheerilee down was my first concern. From the mess in her bedroom, whatever happened was going to leave a trail. There hadn’t been any signs of struggle downstairs, but when I finally got around the house and into her backyard, I’d found a wide hole in her fence, more than wide enough for a pony to trot through.

I checked the broken boards and found a single clue -- another pale pink scale, almost like a rose petal. It was the same as the one from the bedroom, so I was on the right trail.

“I hope it’s not a pink basilisk,” I muttered. “I hate basilisks. They smell so awful!” I followed the scrapes in the dirt as they turned into more subtle marks on the road.

The cobblestones were scraped in a wide, sinuous pattern. There were hoof marks over the streaks of dust and grime. Ponies had walked by after the creature had been through here. There weren’t any ponies around now, though. It was like the whole block had been abandoned.

“I don’t like this…” The tracks went into an alleyway. I grabbed what looked like a tarp to pull it out of the way. It had an odd texture to it and--

Oh. It was a snakeskin. A really big one. Like, big enough that I could use it as a blanket.

That was when I heard the screaming.

“Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaake!” Given the high-class Trottingham accent, it could only be one pony, a cello-playing earth pony that Lyra had invited over a few times for practice.

I grabbed my helmet from the case and slapped it on, hitting the activation button on the G4 armor.

“Henshin!” I yelled, the magical armor activating in a bright flash. Suitably disguised, I glanced at the awkward weapon Lyra had made for me. “...Nah. I’d just end up hurting myself.”

I ran out into the street, leaving the weapon in its case in the alleyway. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it really should have been a pink half-pony half-snake with flower petals around its fanged face like a cobra hood and a body half again as long and sinuous as Discord.

Octavia was running from where it had surprised her, slowed down by her cello. Other ponies had gotten considerably further. I ran out between them just as the snake-pony lunged for her, rearing up to catch its wide, fanged maw with my hooves.

“You know, normally I’d try to talk sense into you,” I said. “But we’re in the middle of town and I figure I’ve got maybe five minutes before the Elements show up and this gets awkward.” I shifted my weight, trying to push the monster back.

The pink snake, who I had to assume was Cheerilee, suddenly reared up, leaving me stumbling and off-balance. Its tail slammed into my side, and I was sent right across the street, my back hitting a street light so hard that if not for my armor, I would have ended up wrapped around it like a noodle around a fork. Even with the armor it knocked the wind out of me and left me seeing stars.

“Right, okay. She’s still got that good old earth pony strength.” I should have learned not to underestimate civilians a decade ago. Heck, I had learned it. I’d just also forgotten after more than half a decade of retirement.

A tail as thick as my front leg wrapped around my neck and started squeezing. I could hear my helmet creaking as the sturdy material resisted the constriction.

“Lyra… would be really jealous… if she knew I was getting hugs from another pony…” I gasped, trying to free myself. Part of me still hoped Cheerilee was in there somewhere and I could reason with her. It was the stupid part of me, which is maybe why it was still working while I was blacking out from a lack of air.

I felt my hooves leave the ground as Snakeilee picked me up. That was good and bad. On the one hoof, I had no traction and leverage. On the other hoof, my whole body weight was on my neck and making the strangulation even worse.

Wait, that wasn’t good and bad. That was bad and worse. I got those confused sometimes when nothing good was happening.

I curled up, wrapping my back hooves around the snake tail and getting some of the pressure off of my neck. She started flicking her tail, trying to dislodge me like I was something unpleasant stuck to her hoof. I gave her a little of her own medicine, squeezing as tight as I could.

She hissed in pain, and a shadow fell across my vision. I let go just as her mouth closed on where I had been, and her fangs sank into her tail.

The snake-pony screeched and let me go. I gasped, finally filling my lungs again. I sometimes forgot just how nice it was to be able to breathe.

“Take this!” I yelled, spinning and bucking the monster. It was like hitting chain mail over a bunch of twisting rubber hoses. The scales gave for a moment, but I couldn’t punch through them and they bounced right back into shape.

The snake hissed as it focused on me again. I had a feeling even if I used my Jawbreaker Kick, it’d just bounce off. Blunt force was probably the worst way to handle this. I needed something sharp and pointed - the snake’s fangs had gone right through the tough scales.

I just wasn’t sure where I was going to find something in the middle of Ponyville on very short notice. A regular knife or stick wouldn’t work, and the only real weapon I could think of was the awful thing Lyra had bodged together.

Well, if I was going to get killed, I was going to get killed doing something stupid, just like my parents always warned me I would.

I ran for the ungainly weapon and grabbed it with a hoof, unlocking my helmet’s jaw to get a grip on the short handle with my teeth. I just had to come up with a brand-new fighting style on the fly.

The monster reared up, spreading its fangs wide to show me the fangs in its maw, dripping with venom. Maybe it was sizing me up to make sure it could swallow me whole. I’d seen snakes contemplate their prey, waiting for just the right moment to strike, back when I was doing survival training. I’d also seen a snake get killed by a rabbit, of all things.

I jumped for the monster. If I was going to have a chance, I had to be aggressive. I swung the flail end of the weapon towards the thing’s snout and hoped for the best. The handle pulsed in my teeth, like a heart beating.

The chain shot out, like a line from a fishing rod, the flail’s head wrapping around the snake’s mouth and pulling tight, snapping the monster’s jaw shut.

“Lyra, I am going to kiss you!” I smiled, the words muffled around the handle in my mouth. Maybe this thing she’d given me wasn’t as useless as I’d thought. If I lived through this, I’d make her the special chocolates tonight.

I landed next to the monster and yanked, the weapon’s enchantment working with my motion and cinching tight to reel the beast in.

SECT agents were trained in close quarters magical combat. CQMC. All ponies could use magic at extremely close range: unicorns could create magical blades with their horns, pegasus ponies could form electrical charges or even ice blades along their wings, and earth ponies could channel energy through their hooves.

If we had the right weapon for it, we could channel it through that, instead. Most weapons, even the ones that the Royal Guard used, weren’t appropriate for it. They’d just fall apart, the magical energy damaging them instead of the target.

Fortunately for me, I had exactly the right weapon for it. They might have been old and rusting, but they were still SECT weapons. I grabbed the handle with both front hooves and channeled energy into it as the snake was dragged towards me, slamming the blade home through its tough scales and into the rubbery flesh beneath.

There was a surge of energy, and a sharp pop like a balloon exploding. Mist covered the square, and Cheerilee fell to the ground, dropping down right in front of me.

“Are you okay?” I asked, putting a hoof to her face to make sure I hadn’t accidentally hurt her.

“W-where am I?” Cheerilee asked, dazed.

“Safe,” I said. “You’re safe now.”

“It’s coming from over here!” A raspy voice yelled. I recognized it instantly. Anypony who’d ever had to make a claim on their pegasus insurance knew exactly what Rainbow Dash sounded like, mostly the noises she made after going through a window.

“Time for me to leave,” I said. I grabbed a humming, hissing piece of dark metal from where it was vibrating against the cobblestones.

“Wait, who are you?” Cheerilee asked, struggling to get to her hooves and failing.

“Just somepony passing through,” I said, before galloping off, the dark mist letting me slip away before anypony else saw me

Chapter 4

“Dash, I told you already it wasn’t any of us! Rarity has all our Mare Do Well costumes and I checked them myself. None of them have been worn lately.” Twilight was looking over her shoulder when she pushed her way into my shop. I had a pretty good guess as to whom she was speaking, which was confirmed as the cyan pegasus hovered in after her.

“Masked ponies just bring back a lot of bad memories,” Dash said, frowning. “Can you blame me for being a little suspicious?”

“Masked ponies?” I asked. Twilight trotted up to the counter, nodding.

“There was a monster attack right in Ponyville! Apparently some masked pony fought it off, but nopony knows who it was, or where the monster went.” Twilight glared back at Rainbow Dash. “She’s convinced it’s one of us trying to play hero again.”

“...Again?” I frowned.

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “I-it’s nothing! Just forget I said anything about Mare Do Well!”

“I think I can manage, as long as you buy some of my new Sugar Star Swirls.” I held up a tray of the candies.

“I can do even better than that,” Twilight said. She levitated an improbable number of scrolls out of her saddlebags. “These are for you. I was able to get some research done for you. It was actually very interesting! Did you know the standard guard enchantments from the Lunar Rebellion era were far more complex than enchantments today? Apparently the few suits that remain are prized possessions for--”

“Boooring,” Dash said, knocking over a display of boxed chocolates in the midst of trying to figure out a way to do a barrel roll in my shop's limited airspace. I wasn’t sure if the destruction was on purpose or not. All I knew was, I hadn't yet regretted getting pegasus insurance.

“Thanks, Princess,” I said. I wrapped up a few of the candies for her. She counted out a dozen bits and put them on the counter. “These are just as a thanks! You don't have to pay me.”

“It’s to make up for Dash’s mess,” Twilight said. “Let me know if you need any help with more research. I’m not sure what this has to do with chocolate, but I’m really excited to see what you come up with!”

“So am I,” I said. “I’d just better come up with it fast.”

“I didn’t know you had a deadline.”

“You’d be surprised at how much pressure a candy maker has to deal with.”

“Lyra?” I threw my apron on its usual hook, feeling more exhausted from a day working retail than I did from fighting a monster. “Are you here?”

“I’m in the basement lab!” Lyra shouted, her voice muffled by distance and hardwood flooring.

“We don’t have a basement lab!” I retorted. Even so, I followed the voice downstairs, to what I knew was just storage space.

Or at least it had been storage space. Cardboard boxes had been shoved to the side, and a workbench covered in woodworking and engraving tools sat in one corner. Circles were chalked onto the walls and floor apparently at random.

Lyra was sitting on the bare stone floor with a map of Ponyville in front of her and the shard of dark armor dangling from a fishing rod like she was going angling in an atlas.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m trying out a divination spell I heard about once,” Lyra said. “It usually uses a pendulum and some crystals, but I think this will work if I fiddle with it. And since my cutie mark is for a harp, um…” she frowned. “I was going to say I was good at fiddling, but that’s a violin.”

“Right…” I said. “I didn’t even know you had this down here.”

“All unicorns have labs,” Lyra said, with a mild shrug. “Ponyville zoning laws mean we can’t have towers, so most of us set ours up in the basement. You should see Princess Twilight’s! She’s got an interocitor with all the expansion packs!”

“You’ve been in Princess Twilight’s lab?” I blinked.

“Well, yeah,” Lyra said, looking at me oddly. “I went to school with her, Bonnie. We’re old friends.”

Sometimes I forgot my marefriend went to a good school and wasn’t just the silly pony I’d fallen for. “Sorry,” I apologized.

“It’s fine,” she said, shrugging. “Anyway, I’ve been poking at this thing all day and I just can’t figure it out. It doesn’t do anything. It’s the most boring highly-charged magical object I’ve ever seen.”

“Well the GOC want it,” I said. “It has to be worth something.”

“It’s made out of a magical material, but you said it’s a part of Nightmare Moon’s armor, so that’s not surprising. There’s some kind of energy in it, but it isn’t reacting to anything I do. I tried casting some scanning spells, heating it, falling asleep with it under my pillow, hitting it with a sledgehammer, you know, all the standard tests.”

I nodded along with her.

“I’m starting to think it’s sort of like a dead battery,” Lyra said. “Whatever I’m sensing could just be a residual charge, and it needs a hundred times that to actually do whatever it’s supposed to do.”

“If we’re lucky we’ll never find out,” I said. “The GOC was one of the most powerful occult organizations in the world until the fall of the Griffonian Union and the loss of the Idol of Borealis. They started out protecting griffons the same way I was protecting ponies, but when they were cut loose, the higher-ups took all the dangerous stuff they’d been containing and started using it to make a profit. There are rumors they’ve caused droughts, started wars, that their enemies disappear off the streets…” I shook my head.

“So whatever they’re doing with this stuff is trouble,” Lyra guessed.

I nodded. “Either they were hired to cause trouble, or they’re planning on being paid to make it stop.”

“This really sounds like a Princess-level problem…”

“No!” I snapped. Lyra flinched like I’d slapped her. “Sorry,” I said, sighing. “I just… this is personal.”

“That’s the problem,” Lyra said. “It’s too personal.”

“I know.” I took a deep breath. “I promise if I get in over my head, I’ll get help. I mean, I already asked you for help, didn’t I?” I offered her a weak smile.

Lyra frowned, then gave a sigh she must have learned from me putting up with some of her crazier ideas. “Okay,” she relented. “As long as you aren’t putting other ponies at risk. I don’t like you getting into trouble, but that’s your choice.”

I nodded.

“Now the reason I said that,” Lyra continued. “Is because the shard is acting weird.”

I looked at the fishing line. It was still swinging, but it was at a definite angle, like it was being pulled by a magnet.

“Where’s it pointing?” I asked.

“Hold on, we have to let it settle a little,” Lyra said. “It goes slow at first and then it’ll lock into place all at once.”

I bit my lip and watched as the pendulum arc got smaller and smaller before turning into small, frantic circles around a single building.

“I can’t believe you came with me,” I hissed.

“You need a cover story,” Lyra whispered. “Just trust me. We’ll do ‘Get Help.’”

“What?”

“You know. ‘Get Help!’”

“We’re not doing that.”

“Do you have a better plan? It’s perfect.”

She put her hoof around my shoulders, pushed me into the door, and we stumbled into the Ponyville General Hospital Emergency room. Lyra moaned like she’d gone drinking with Vinyl and I held her up while she slumped and did her best to look even more green than she usually was.

“Get help!” I shouted, feeling like an idiot. Lyra made me stumble forward another step, and I just barely held on to the bag we’d shoved my helmet and belt into.

“What’s wrong?” Nurse Redheart asked, rushing out from behind the desk to help take Lyra’s weight.

“She, um…” I hesitated.

“Bad candy…” Lyra groaned.

“Oh dear,” Redheart sighed. “Usually I only see this with foals after Nightmare Night. Come along, we’ll make sure it’s nothing serious…” she sighed and rolled her eyes, admitting us into an exam room and helping Lyra sit down before leaving to get something. Hopefully, something that would hurt when she used it.

“I don’t make bad candy!” I growled.

“Chocolate frogs,” Lyra countered.

“We are not having this discussion,” I said. “That was Discord’s fault and you know it.”

“They had bones, Bonnie! Bones!”

“See if I make you anything special for next Hearts and Hooves day,” I huffed and trotted over to the door, looking out into the hall. “You’ll be fine here on your own. Keep Redheart busy until I get back. I’m going to look around.”

“Do you even know what you’re looking for?”

“No. But I’ll find it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

I shrugged and slipped out into the back hallway. I might not have known exactly what I was looking for, but so far the shards had been turning ponies into monsters. It wasn’t a subtle effect. I didn’t hear screaming yet, so maybe we’d gotten here ahead of disaster instead of after it.

I heard ponies talking ahead of me and ducked into a closet, keeping the door cracked open to look.

“...clean bill of health,” Doctor Horse said, as he turned the corner.

“Thank you so much for seeing me,” Cheerilee said. “I just wanted to be sure after… whatever happened.”

“Yes, I did hear there was some excitement,” the Doctor said. He chuckled. “Maybe even a new masked hero?”

“All I know is, they saved me,” Cheerilee said. They walked past the closet, and I cracked the door a little more to watch them go the rest of the way down the hall. “And the weird thing is, after all that, I stopped being so afraid of snakes…”

They took the corner, and I stepped out. It was good to know Cheerilee was doing well, but maybe the shard had just been pointing at the pony it had been infecting. I wasn’t sure what we were going to find, and that might have been it right there.

“I don’t need help finding ponies that were already hurt,” I said. “I need to find ones that are in trouble right now.”

Because we live in a universe founded on the Strong Narrative Principle, that was when I heard the scream.

I pulled the belt out of the bag. I touched the battery test, and it blinked with a red warning light. If there was trouble, I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to deal with it.

Nurse Tenderheart threw herself out of an exam room in clear panic, terrified beyond the ability to even coordinate her legs correctly. I ran to her, trying to help her up. She couldn’t stand, even with help.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She pointed.

Something made of metal and glass and looking like somepony had turned the concept of sharpness into a living being screeched at me. I yanked Tenderheart away, down the hallway. Spikes as long as my leg sank into the floor where we’d been standing like they were fired from a crossbow.

I pulled her into the closet I’d vacated a few moments ago, making her sit down at the back.

“It was Cloud Kicker,” she whispered, struggling for breath in the middle of her panic attack. “I needed to get a blood sample, but when I pulled the needle out she acted terrified, and then--”

“And then she changed?” I asked.

Tenderheart nodded.

“Stay here,” I said. “I’m going to get help. She won’t find you here, okay? Don’t be afraid.”

If she could manage not to be afraid, I’d ask her for lessons. I left her in there when I went out into the hall, locking the door behind me.

“Just work for a little while longer,” I whispered, pulling the helmet on and activating my belt. “Henshin!”

The Sol Fiber formed just as the monster managed to figure out how to fit through a doorway and get into the wider hallway, buzzing like a mosquito with wings made of a latticework of razors. A long glass-bodied syringe hung under it from where the pony’s tail should have been, curled around under it like an angry wasp’s stinger.

“Why couldn’t it have been another snake monster?” I whispered.

It screeched again and fired the needle from that huge syringe at me. I reacted on instinct, raising a hoof, half-stepping to the side, and letting it deflect off my armored fetlock almost entirely by luck. Hoss had been right - I’d forgotten almost all my CQC training.

She charged at me, wings buzzing. Even her snout was as sharp as a scalpel, cutting through the air like a scythe. I jumped, touching down on her back and bouncing off, slamming her into the tile floor hard enough to crack it and getting behind the creature.

“How was that?” I asked, like she could answer. I didn’t think she could even understand what I was saying.

The needle monster lunged at me, not bothering to turn. It just came at me tail first, that huge steel spear aiming right for my chest.

“Catch!”

A fire extinguisher arced through the air towards me. I caught it on instinct, holding it up like a shield. The monster hit it needle-first and everything went white. The monster buzzed past me, and I lost track of it in the haze that filled the hallway. A shadow appeared at my side and I almost kicked it out of reflex.

“Are you okay?” Lyra asked, coughing and trying to cover her mouth. “I can’t see anything!”

“I’m fine, but which way did it go?” I asked.

“It didn’t go that way,” Lyra said. “It must have gone past you.”

“Come on, let’s get you out of this. It can’t be good for you to breathe it in.” I took her hoof and guided her out into the clear. “Thank you for the save.”

“I thought you’d be yelling at me for getting involved,” Lyra said, shaking dust out of her coat once she could see and breathe again.

“I’m starting to think you were right that I can’t do it all alone. You found the monster, and you probably just saved my life.” I smiled, not that she could see it. “Just take cover once we do find it again. I don’t want you getting extra holes for my sake.”

“Deal,” Lyra promised.

I nodded and we trotted down the hallway.

“Where would I go if I was a huge monster…” I muttered.

“It was flying, so we should think like a pegasus,” Lyra suggested. “Look for open spaces and anything shiny. Pegasus ponies love shiny things.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed, kicking it into high gear. We took two turns, sticking to the widest hallways, and I was starting to think we were going the wrong way until I heard the scream.

Doors to the hospital’s atrium hung open. I charged in and saw ponies scattering. Where was the monster?

“Bonnie! Duck!” Lyra shouted.

I threw myself down, and the monster swooped through where I’d been. I caught a glimpse of it as it passed - the huge syringe tail was shattered, just a mess of broken glass now. The fire extinguisher explosion hadn’t been kind to it.

“Right, flyer. I should have looked up,” I said.

It was a hard habit to get into for an earth pony. My brain worked better in two dimensions than three. I watched it buzz back up, high out of reach. It flew into a window, cracking the glass but not quite breaking through. Thank Celestia the insurance companies had made them invest in Rainbow-proof glass. Their pegasus insurance premiums were even higher than mine.

“We need to keep it from getting outside!” I yelled. “There’s no way I can fight it if it can just fly away!”

“There’s another door over there,” Lyra pointed. “If you can wrestle it inside, I can cast a mage lock on the doors so it can’t escape!”

“Good plan!” I agreed. I just had to make it angry. I grabbed one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs and kicked it up at the buzzing horror. It smashed into the needle hornet like a catapult stone, the monster bouncing off a wall and barely catching itself before hitting the ground.

It glared at me, hissing through a face like an angry butcher’s knifemare.

“Didn’t like that?” I asked, grabbing another seat designed to make ponies need to see a back specialist and kicking it into the monster. This time, it had plenty of time to see it coming, and it caught the plywood and burlap cannonball, tearing it in half before screeching and flying at me.

I bolted for the doors Lyra had pointed out. I could feel it hot on my trail. Some sixth sense told me to duck, and I threw myself to the ground and rolled through the double doors, the flying blender missing me by inches when it flew through where I’d been. Ponies screamed and cleared the hallway. The monster slammed into a wall, unable to turn quickly enough in the tight space.

I looked back. Lyra was almost at the doors. I closed them before she got there, twisting the manual lock. I saw her shocked look through the thin windows in the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked, jiggling the handle.

“You need to keep it locked,” I said. “If you’re out there, it can’t get to you! If something happens, get Princess Twilight, okay?”

She nodded reluctantly, and a golden glow wrapped around the doors.

I turned back to the monster.

“Now I just need to figure out how to actually deal with you,” I said.

It made a sound like knives being sharpened and launched itself at me, slamming into Lyra’s wizard locked doors, bouncing off them with obvious surprise and hitting the wall. Black film prints imprinted with ghostly skeletal shadows fluttered down around it.

I glanced up at the sign hanging down from the ceiling.

“Imaging…” I whispered. I’d been here before. It was only briefly, after I’d pulled my shoulder out of socket working taffy too much, but I remembered one particular machine and all the warnings that they’d given me before going into it.

I had a bad idea, but it might just work.

“Come and get me!” I yelled. I gave private thanks to whatever regulatory body made hospitals put up clear signs.

The monster got up on unsteady hooves, sparks flying from the sharp edges, and it saw me wiggling my rump at it in what I hoped was enough of a taunt to make it forget about escaping.

From the sound, it was working. I couldn’t chance a look back, and after that screech I took off like Nightmare Moon herself was at my heels. I had to let it stay close so it would follow me where I needed it to go.

I spotted the doors, and the warning tape on the floor showing the minimum safe distance.

The monster’s screech sounded like it was coming from inches behind my head.

I threw myself down, and it went right over me again and through the doors, into the large exam room.

The technician inside screamed from his station.

“Turn it on!” I shouted. “Now!”

The stallion slapped at a button surrounded by warning signs, and the lights flickered. There was a deep hum you could almost feel in your bones, and the monster was sucked sideways, slamming into a huge donut-shaped machine and sticking to it like flypaper.

“MRI,” I said, panting. My armor wasn’t magnetic, so when I stepped inside I didn’t feel a thing. The monster, on the other hoof, was stuck so firmly the blades that made up its wings were actually bending as I watched. “Magnetic Resonance Imaging. For a monster made out of steel like you, that translates to checkmate.”

It screeched. The magnet made a strained sound.

“Jawbreaker Punch!” I shouted, slamming a hoof into its chest. There was a flash of light and sparks flew from the impact.

Cloud Kicker dropped to the ground. The ominous sound of the electromagnet quieted to a background hum.

I turned to the tech. “Shut it off. Thanks for the help.”

He nodded mutely, and the machine fell into silence. With a clatter like somepony dropping a fork, a twisted shard of dark metal fell out of the core of the machine. I grabbed it before anypony else could see.

“Call somepony to look after her,” I told the tech. “She’ll be fine.”

“What? Where…?” Cloud Kicker groaned. She looked up at me. “Who are you?”

“Just somepony that was passing through.”

I bowed politely and excused myself.

Chapter 5

“I had to disengage the armor in a janitor’s closet,” I said. “About two seconds later, Twilight and all her friends ran right past me. I don’t think any of them knew I was there.”

“That light doesn’t look happy,” Lyra said, poking at my belt.

“It’s bad,” I agreed. “It means I have maybe a minute of charge left. Maybe.”

“Not enough if another monster shows up,” Lyra noted. “Hey, we need a better word than just ‘monster’. I’ve been thinking ‘Phobia!’” She grinned. “It’s got a ring to it, right?”

“It fits,” I agreed. “It turns out Cloud Kicker had a big fear of needles. Cheerilee was afraid of snakes.”

“And Daisy was terrified of spiders,” Lyra finished. “I think these Nightmare Shards are using a pony’s biggest fear as a power source.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and the next pony will be afraid of something harmless like clowns.”

Lyra shivered. “That’s not funny! Clowns are terrifying!”

“Lyra, they’re literally ponies in bad makeup and worse outfits,” I said. “What are they going to do, juggle aggressively?”

“That’s not the point,” she said. “They--”

The doorbell rang.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “I’ll go see who it is.”

Lyra nodded and got back to poking at the shards of dark metal, and I ran upstairs, closing the basement door on the way. The doorbell rang again just before I got there.

“I’m coming!” I shouted, pulling it open .”Sorry, about that, I was-- Princess Twilight, what are you doing here?”

“Hey, Bon-Bon,” Twilight said. She looked around behind me. “Is Lyra here?”

“She’s downstairs,” I said. “In--”

“Basement lab,” Twilight nodded. “Every unicorn in town has one. I wish they’d change the zoning laws so we could get proper towers… Anyway, that’s fine. I needed to talk to you. Could we just… step outside for a second?”

“...Okay,” I said, through the lump in my throat.

Princess Twilight backed up a step and I followed her out, shutting the door behind me. I thought I’d been careful. Sure, I’d made a few obvious mistakes, asking her to do that research for me. She might have even been told about my past by Celestia. I’d never really pressed her to find out how much she knew. She’d always treated me like a normal candymaker, so I’d assumed she was in the dark, but what if I’d been wrong?

“You’ve heard about the monster attacks in town, right?” Twilight asked.

I nodded.

“I’ve been researching them, and even though I’ve been too late to see things myself… it’s… I don’t know how to say this…” She bit her lip, looking oddly nervous. “Is there anything you’re keeping secret...?”

I hesitated.

She glanced at the door before finishing. “...About Lyra?”

“About… Lyra?” I repeated.

Twilight nodded. “With the last attack, ponies reported seeing her, and I was able to detect her magical signature. I know you might not want to hear this, but I think she might be involved in this somehow.”

“That’s…”

Twilight put a hoof on my shoulder. “I don’t want to think it either. She was one of my best friends when I was a filly. That’s why I want to trust she was just a bystander. Can you keep an eye on her, just in case?”

I nodded.

“Thanks,” Twilight sighed. “And keep it quiet, okay? I don’t want to worry her if there’s nothing to it.”

“I’m pretty good at keeping secrets,” I assured her. She looked confused for a moment. “Nopony else in town knows how to make half the candy I do,” I supplied. Twilight smirked and laughed a little.

“That’s true,” she said. “Try not to let her drag you into any kind of trouble, okay? She gets excited easily and an innocent pony like you shouldn’t be involved.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Twilight blushed and looked ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just-- Lyra--”

“I know, it’s probably nothing,” Twilight said. “I just have a feeling. The next time a monster shows up, she might be…”

My belt was almost completely drained. A lot of ponies could have gotten hurt in the last attack. There was a pony right in front of me that was better equipped to deal with the issue, and the only reason I hadn’t told her everything yet was my pride.

“The truth is--”

I was cut off by a crash of thunder. Twilight looked up at the same time I did. Grey clouds were starting to fill the sky, and the first drops of rain fell on our upturned faces.

“I didn’t think there was rain on the weather schedule today,” I said.

Twilight sighed. “Rainbow probably forgot to update the calendar. What were you about to say?”

“It’s nothing,” I said, losing my nerve. “Do you want to come in until the rain stops?”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I need to check on a few other things. Just remember what I said, okay? Keep an eye on Lyra.”

“I will.”

She nodded seriously and ran off, an umbrella of magenta magic forming over her head. I stood there and watched her grow as the rain picked up, letting myself get soaked. What was I doing? I should have begged her for help. If nothing else, she could have--

“Bonnie, are you okay?” Lyra asked.

She pulled me inside and wrapped a towel around me.

“You were just standing there in the rain,” she said, worried. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied. I’d been doing a lot of lying lately. I locked the door. Thunder shook the house. “This storm wasn’t scheduled, was it?”

“No, but it happens sometimes,” Lyra said. “Remember last month, when that tornado came out of the Everfree while half the weather team was away watching the Mustang Mile?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said, getting more worried. “Think it’s the kind of thing a pony might start to get night terrors about?”

“I…” Lyra hesitated. “You know, the basement is the safest place in a storm--”

“--And you can try some magic to find out if we should be worried?”

She nodded.

“Okay, so, here’s the problem,” Lyra said. I was sitting with a cup of tea and trying to warm up a little. Standing out in the cold rain had been stupid, and I was shivering because of it. “How much do you know about storms?”

“Well…” I thought about it for a moment. “I know as much as any pony. They’re a lot of rain and wind, they make lightning…”

Lyra nodded. “So, not much.”

“It wasn’t exactly part of my training.”

“Storms are basically huge engines that run on heat and water,” Lyra said. “They replenish pegasus magic over a wide area, which is why one gets scheduled every so often even though nopony likes them. All those sunny days clear skies sort of… somepony told me once it was like planting the same crop in a field for too many seasons. It takes something out of the air that the storm puts back in.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “That actually makes sense.”

“Great! The good news is that I’ve helped you learn a useful fact about storms. The bad news is it’s a giant mass of magic and I can barely detect a thing.”

“Barely doesn’t mean not at all,” I said, hopefully.

“Right. So, after the bad news, comes the worse news.” Lyra swallowed. “There’s a Nightmare reaction. And as far as I can tell? The Phobia is a mile up, somewhere in the middle of that storm.”

She glanced back at the map of Ponyville. The pendulum she’d made with the scrap of Nightmare Moon’s armor and fishing line was pointing almost straight up, impossibly pulled towards the ceiling.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said. I walked over to her workbench. “Any luck recharging my G4 armor?”

“None,” Lyra sighed. “There’s definitely some way to do it, but I’m worried if I take it apart, I won’t be able to put it back together. It’s much more complicated than the enchantments on your weapons.”

“Yeah…” I sighed and touched the charge indicator. It blinked a slow red, the charge left in the belt barely enough to even make it glow.

“Speaking of which, I was able to make something with that leftover crossbow mechanism,” Lyra said. “I wanted to at least do something useful when I failed at charging the belt.”

She dramatically pulled a dropcloth away to reveal… I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, actually.

“Is that…?”

“Now I know what you’re going to ask,” Lyra said. “Where did I get an oboe on such short notice? I actually already owned one! My talent is with string instruments, but you know how college is. You sort of experiment with new things.”

“And you experimented with…”

“Woodwinds, yes,” Lyra said, patting the tangle of metal and dark wood. She’d somehow joined the instrument to the crossbow trigger using a worrying amount of twine. A steel canister was brazed into what had been the reloading mechanism, and the whole thing looked less like a weapon and more like somepony had really messed up making a saxophone.

“It’s… it’s definitely something,” I said. “I’d really like to know what that something is.”

“Well, I couldn’t save any of the crossbow bolts,” Lyra said. “All the enchantments on those were on the wood shaft and fletching, and that was too rotten.”

“And you solved this problem by strapping an oboe to it.”

“Technically it’s mostly oboe by weight, so it’s the other way around.”

I just stared at her.

“Okay, so, look.” Lyra grabbed it with her magic and pulled a charging handle. The contraption rumbled and shook in her magical grip. “What I did was, there’s a pressure tank here, right? Have you ever heard of a potato gun?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a step up from a pumpkin trebuchet,” she explained. “It’s basically just a tube and you launch stuff out of it with compressed air.”

“Okay. And this launches…?”

“That’s the really brilliant part! It shoots air bullets, so you never need to reload! You just hold the trigger down to charge it up, then BANG!” She grinned. “I hacked the accuracy and power enchantments on the crossbow bits so it keeps the compressed air together for longer!”

“That’s perfect!” I gingerly took the weapon from her. “Maybe if we get high enough, we can hit the Phobia without having to get close! What’s the range like? A hundred yards?”

“Well, uh, shorter,” Lyra said.

“Not ideal…” I muttered. “We might have to figure out some way to lure it closer to the ground… Fifty yards?”

“I did some tests, and I think, at full charge, it could just about reach… the other side of the basement.” Lyra smiled nervously.

“...That’s like, ten yards.”

“At full charge.” Lyra winced at my expression. “I wasn’t expecting you to have to fight a storm, Bonnie! It was the best I could do!”

“Sorry,” I sighed, trying to stop glaring. “It just means we’re going to need to figure out a way up there. And we’re going to need disguises.”

“Disguises?”

“Ponies have been talking,” I said. “I’m supposed to keep an eye on you just in case you have something to do with the monster attacks.”

“Really?”

“Hey, that’s why my armor comes with a mask.”

“I think I have something that might work…” Lyra muttered, pulling open boxes. “Aha!”

She held something up.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

It was the worst skeleton costume I’d ever seen. A black bodysuit with a few white ribs painted onto the sides.

“I’ve got ski masks, too!”

“Why do you have these?” I asked.

“Eh, well, you know. Necromancy club.” She shrugged. “Do you want it or not?”

I sighed. Another sacrifice for the good of Equestria.

“It’s not gonna work, Bonnie,” Lyra said.

I glared at her and tugged at the rope I was holding, struggling to wrap it around the stake I’d kicked into the dirt.

“It’ll work fine,” I said, spitting it out after tying a quick knot. “Twilight left a checklist in the basket. We just lay out the envelope, activate the burner, and hold it open until it can stand on its own.”

“What did the checklist say about launching in the middle of a storm?”

It had been one of the first items on the list.

“...it suggested caution depending on the prevailing wind speed.”

“You mean it said not to do something stupid like try to fly a hot air balloon into a thunderstorm.”

I sighed. “Okay, yes, it had a list of acceptable airspeeds, and this is… way above it. But it’s the only idea I have for getting into the air. You said it yourself - the Phobia is up in the storm somewhere. If we’re going to do anything about it, we need to start by getting up there before anypony gets hurt! Every pony on the weather team is in danger!”

“I mean, yeah,” Lyra admitted. “But there has to be a better option than stealing Twilight’s hot air balloon. Actually, isn’t this treason since she’s a princess?”

“It’s… it’s only light treason.”

“I don’t want to do any kind of treason, Bonnie!”

“No one wants to do treason,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes… You have to look at the rules and break them because it’s what’s best for other ponies. I’m not doing it for myself, so it’s okay!”

“So… since we’re not doing this just for you, we can go get ponies can fly and have them deal with it?”

“Don’t be silly, Lyra.”

Another rope tore free, and the balloon envelope flapped in the wind uselessly. I grabbed for the last line, but I was too late. The knot came undone, and the whole balloon flew up into the sky, sans basket and, more importantly, us.

“Maybe we really can’t launch in this storm,” I admitted.

“Got any better ideas?"

I sighed. “We need something that can stand up to the wind. If we had an airship, that might do it, but the closest dock is in Canterlot and by the time we got there and back it would be all over.”

“Could we lure it closer to the ground?” Lyra asked.

“We don’t even know where it is, or what it wants, or what it looks like or… anything!” I groaned. “There has to be some other way up there…”

Lyra bit her lip. “Pinkie Pie…”

I felt a shiver go down my spine. “What about Pinkie Pie?”

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Lyra screeched, right in my ear.

I fought to keep the rattling machine under control and glared back at her.

“It’s just lightning!” I shouted. “Keep pedaling!”

“We’re gonna die!” Lyra screamed.

“Pinkie Pie said it was perfectly safe,” I reminded her. “We even asked to borrow it instead of just stealing it!”

“But neither of us knows how to use a helio-chopter!”

“That’s why you need to keep pedaling! We don’t know how to land!” Not wanting to fall to my death was a really good motivator. “Look at that!”

I pointed over to the side. A few members of the weather team were struggling to break up some of the smaller clouds. The clouds weren’t cooperating.

Sunshower bucked at a thick cloud, and it recoiled like she was hitting a living thing.

“That’s not normal,” Lyra said, her pedaling slowing.

The cloud broke apart into a half-dozen shapes that swirled like tornadoes of black smoke. I could just barely make out a core to each of them, pony-shaped and just barely more solid than the rest. They roared with the voice of the typhoon and lunged at the shocked pony.

I put my weight into the turn, putting our flying machine between Sunshower and the monsters. And then we kept going, because I had no idea how to actually make it hover in place. We flew right into their formation, and I fumbled for a weapon, grabbing my sword-flail.

“Watch out!” Lyra shouted.

“I’m trying!” I yelled.

Two of the things couldn’t get out of the way in time, and the blades of the helio-chopter slashed them apart, the monsters puffing into white, friendly clouds before blowing away.

“On your left!” Lyra yelled.

I glanced left, saw nothing, then remembered Lyra had a terrible sense of direction.

I swung at the same moment the monster slammed into my right side. It exploded into vapor, but not before I was thrown out of the seat. If I didn’t have the flail in my hooves I would have fallen a long way down. I had to react in an instant, swinging the chain to lasso the front end of the flying contraption and just barely keeping my grip when it went taut.

“Lyra!” I shouted.

“I meant stage left!” she yelled back.

“When we get back home we’re going to have a long talk about directions!”

“Again?” Lyra groaned.

I was about to yell something unkind to her, but my keen instincts, supplemented by Sunshower yelling a warning, alerted me to a more pressing matter. I kicked out, swinging to the side and extending the chain connecting me to the flying machine, the monsters barely missing me while I struggled to hang on despite the momentum. You know what hooves really aren’t great at? Keeping a really strong grip on anything.

“Use the Oboelaster!” Lyra shouted.

“We’re not calling it that!” I countered, grabbing it from the other side of my belt with one hoof and pulling the charging handle with my teeth.

The three extremely angry clouds swooped in big circles, lining up for another pass at me. I was lucky. They weren’t very smart. They just came right at me, not expecting any kind of attack.

I pulled the trigger, and had the most terrifying few seconds of my life. A lemon-shaped glowing ball smacked into one of the creatures, and I had a great view of it exploding as I swung back from the recoil and up towards the huge, spinning blades of the helio-chopter.

Everything slowed down. I saw my life flashing before my eyes. My parents, who I wish I’d visited more often. Meeting Celestia for the first time. Training with Hoss. Lyra kissing me when I came home crying and couldn’t tell her why.

A gust of wind caught me, and I was carried away from the swirling death blades. I had one last flashback to when I’d been working on banana taffy and got the extract all over my face. I still couldn’t look at bananas without feeling a little sick.

The sword jerked in my hooves and I barely held onto it as the chain went taut again.

“Are you okay?!” Lyra shouted.

“I’m not dead yet!” I shouted.

“Hold down the keys for an F-sharp and it’ll fire a wide-angle blast!”

I looked at the half-oboe, half-weapon.

“What?!” I yelled.

“A F-sharp!”

“Lyra, I don’t know how to play one of these! And even if I did, I couldn’t do it with one hoof!”

“Then give it back to me!” Lyra huffed.

I tossed it up, and she caught it with her magic. I took the opportunity to hang on to my more useful weapon with both hooves.

Lyra held down four keys and fired the oboelaster. A wide cone of force and air blasted out, tearing the last two monsters apart when they came around for another pass.

“See?” she yelled. “Easy!”

“Lyra when we get back home we’re going to have a long talk about making things other ponies can actually use,” I said, glaring up at her. “Help me up!”

“I donno, are you gonna keep yelling at me if I do?”

“Lyra, I swear to Celestia--”

Thunder cracked past us, accompanied by a flash so bright I was blinded for a few seconds. My threat was completely swallowed up by the crash of sound, which was too bad because it was a really good one.

It happened again, and this time I saw the bolt as it streaked by, jumping from cloud to cloud around us like a circling shark. I didn’t know much about weather but I was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.

“Helmet!” I shouted.

“What?” Lyra yelled, rubbing her ears.

“Give me my helmet!”

Lyra levitated it down to me. She had enough common sense not to just toss it. I wiggled my head and helped her pop it into place. This time, when the lightning flashed by, the auto-dimming filter in the helmet let me get a look at what we were facing.

The last time I was in an art museum, I saw a picture somepony drew, a portrait made without ever taking their pen off the page. It was a single, unbroken line that never crossed itself, swirling and swooping and looping around to turn that single black line into Princess Luna in silhouette, even capturing a distant sadness to her gaze.

The Phobia looked almost like that, a single line twisted into the shape of a pony. The electric outline danced and jumped, the Phobia moving in sudden jerks and bursts from one position to the next.

“Oh that’s not good,” I whispered.

It looked at me, moving from one cloud to the next, and I recognized exactly what it was doing. It was like a cat, getting ready to pounce.

“I hope whatever is left in this thing is enough,” I said, reaching one hoof towards my belt. “Henshin!”

It jumped at the same moment the Sol Fiber started forming. Everything went white and my whole body turned numb, all pins and needles. Was this what dying was like? Was death itchy and unpleasant?

My vision cleared, and I was somehow still dangling from a whirling flying machine being pedaled by my best friend.

“I’m not dead?” I asked, shocked, literally and figuratively.

I looked down. The armor had formed just in time, and on my belt the slowly-blinking red light had been replaced by a solid green.

“How did-- it recharged my G4 armor!” I gasped.

“Are you okay?!” Lyra shouted.

“I feel great!” I yelled up at her. “I think we can actually win this!”

“I’m glad one of us thinks that!” Lyra panted. “This is starting to get really hard, Bonnie! Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns didn’t really encourage us to do a lot of cardio!”

I nodded up at her, the wind gently pushing me around. With the lightning Phobia circling around us and waiting for another chance to strike, it felt like we were in the eye of the storm, walls of black clouds swirling around the clear patch of sky we were flying through.

“Just hold out a little longer,” I said. “Once we’re safe, I’ll get us down to the--”

Something bounced off my helmet. Then my shoulder. Then a dozen other places.

“Ow!” Lyra shouted. She covered her face with her hooves. Hail pounded down around us, already the size of golf balls and getting bigger with every passing second. An umbrella of golden magic formed over her, and almost immediately fizzled out when chunks of ice slammed into it.

The Phobia laughed with a voice somewhere between cracking ice and crashing thunder. The clouds were a vortex around it, winds coming right at is at the direction of beating electric wings.

“Sorry for dragging you into this, Lyra,” I said. “But all I can do now is try to make sure you get out!”

I kicked my back legs, trying to get some momentum. I’d been almost stationary on the chain, but like a foal on a swingset I could build up speed. Pinkie’s flying machine started spinning above me. It was suffering even worse than Lyra in the hailstorm.

I swung one last time, then let go.

“Come on, I’m right here!” I yelled. The Phobia twitched from one side to the other like an excited kitten and pounced.
I twisted in midair and sparks flickered around my back hooves, flashing through every color of the rainbow.

“Jawbreaker Kick!”

I was half-worried I’d go right through the lightning monster. It didn’t even look solid. When my hoof neared it, it felt like pushing the north poles of two magnets together, but there was something there. I hit it hard enough to feel it in my bones, and with a final clap of thunder I was through it and back into open air.

I looked back, and saw Sassaflash falling down, trailing sparks. Her wings snapped open on their own, and she started spiraling down slowly like a leaf.

I wasn’t so lucky. I fell a lot more like a brick than a leaf. The clouds started breaking up around me, giving me a nice, clear view of the ground.

“Hold on.”

A hoof grabbed the scruff of my neck, and the fall slowed. I heard wings beating the air above me, struggling to arrest the drop entirely. I don’t know if it was intentional or luck, but we stopped just above the ground, and when the pony holding me let go, I barely even felt the drop as we set down on top of Town Hall.

Glee Club landed next to me, the batpony looking just as inscrutable as always.

“Hoss,” I said, backing up a few steps.

“If I was here to hurt you, I would have just let you fall,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

She looked up at the sky. Sunlight was just starting to peek through, shafts of light like spotlights blinking on over the town.

“Go home,” she said. “Go back to Canterlot, or Seasaddle, or anywhere else.”

“I can’t do that. I’ve got friends here.”

“That’s why you need to leave,” Hoss said. “Take your friend with you before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what? What are you planning? Why did you defect?!”

She looked away. “You were able to make a life for yourself after Celestia abandoned us. Not all members of SECT were that lucky. She cut us loose and gave us nothing. Soldiers who had served her for decades, casually tossed aside. And for what?”

Hoss pointed without looking. Right at the huge crystal castle looming at the other end of town.

“She traded us for that.”

“It was best for Equestria,” I said.

“Was it best for Equestria that we were left out in the cold? She could have done something, shown us the loyalty we showed her. Instead, she disavowed us, pretended we never existed. You can’t tell me it didn’t hurt.”

“It did,” I whispered.

Glee Club nodded. “Then you can understand, at least a little.” She gave me a sympathetic, sad look. “I never wanted to hurt you, Sweetie Drops. You were a good agent, and a better friend. That’s why I saved you, and why I’m trying to keep saving you by telling you to leave.”

“But whatever you’re doing, can’t you do it without hurting anypony?” I asked.

“Everything hurts somepony,” Glee Club said. She held up a shard of dark metal. “I know you have two of these. The GOC will pay well for them. Enough for you to start a new life anywhere you want.”

“I already have the life I want, right here.”

She nodded. “I understand. For now, I’ll let it go, in the name of our old friendship.” She offered a hoof, and I took it, shaking. “Next time we meet, we’ll be enemies again.”

“Sorry.”

She shook her head and gave me an amused smile before flying off, just before the clouds completely broke overhead.

“Watch out!” Lyra yelled. I looked up to see a spinning, out-of-control flying machine.

“Oh buck,” I swore.

Chapter 6

“The good thing is, they’re only making us pay for part of the damage to town hall,” Lyra said. “Pinkie says we’re square with the flying machine repairs, too, as long as we bring her some of that really good dark chocolate you use.”

“That stuff is imported,” I said. “It would be cheaper to actually pay somepony to fix her helio-chopper!”

Lyra shrugged. “We’re not going to jail, Bonnie. Let’s count our blessings that ponies just think we’re crazy for flying into the storm and not anything worse.”

I sighed and shook my head.

“Excuse me,” I said, stepping past a golden-armored guard and almost bumping right into another one. I glared up at him, annoyed. “Ponies are trying to shop!” I snapped at the armored, armed, trained soldier.

“We’re here to keep ponies safe,” he said, with more patience than I deserved. “Move along, please.”

I huffed and turned away, Lyra giving me a look but staying quiet until we were out of earshot.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t like having all these guards around,” I said.

“Weren’t you basically a guard?” Lyra asked.

“I was an Agent. It’s completely different. Besides, these guards seem like rookies. The last thing I want in a pinch is an armed pony with no idea what he’s doing in a fight.”

I saw Lyra looking at one of the guards. She didn't seem convinced.

“You lived in Canterlot,” I said. “You know what the really professional guards look like. They’re like statues, and they know how to keep watch while keeping out of the way. Look at them.”

I motioned with my head.

“They’re getting distracted, they don’t have overlapping lines of sight, and they’re not paired up. If I wanted to, I could slip right through without them seeing anything. And if I could do it, a trained GOC agent could do it too.”

“If it helps, I don’t think we’re the only ones complaining.” Lyra looked the other way. A crowd was gathering, and the purple pony they were converging on was just a tiny bit taller than the average mare, making it easy to pick her out of the crowd.

“--I said-- it’s for-- I know you have questions--!” Twilight sputtered, trying to answer ponies in three directions at once.

She vanished in a flash of magic and reappeared on top of a stack of crates that the farmers had unpacked and set to the side.

“Okay, everypony, please calm down!” Twilight said, her voice echoing slightly with the sound of a voice amplification spell. “I know you’re all worried, but if you give me a chance, I can explain everything.”

The crowd’s roar dropped to a murmur, and the herd converged on her. Lyra and I slipped in with them, getting to the front of the pack.

“As you know, we’ve been having some unusual events inside Ponyville,” Twilight said. “There are reports of monsters, strange masked ponies, ponies reporting missing time, and bad dreams. The guards are here to help keep everypony safe, and if you give it a few days, you’ll hardly even notice them. They’re trained and able to deal with any monsters or masked ponies you might be worried about.”

“What about the bad dreams?!” Roseluck wailed.

“I’m sure Princess Luna will help with them herself if it’s anything more than night terrors,” Twilight assured her. “The important thing is, we’ve dealt with monsters before, and we’ll do it again. Nopony has gotten seriously hurt, and this time instead of being on our own, we’ve got plenty of pony power to help out.”

“Not that they’ll be much help,” I muttered under my breath.

“While I have the chance, I’d like to introduce the commander of our new local guards. He’s an experienced soldier who had a very impressive resume. Commander?”

She looked down, and a pony stepped out of the crowd, his armor trimmed with slightly more care and more glit than the rest. He was a unicorn stallion, not the buff kind that usually joined the guard, but small and athletic, with a tan-colored coat and flowing blond locks.

“No way,” I muttered.

“Good morning, Ponyville--” he started, his voice much quieter than the Princesses’. He looked up at her, and she gave a shy smile and cast a spell. When he continued, his voice was amplified as well. “That’s better,” he said. “Good morning, Ponyville. My name is Commander Ace. I assure you, there’s nopony better suited to this than the ponies here today. It will take a little while for us to get used to patrolling your town, and you’ll need time to get used to us. Hopefully, by the time this is settled and we’re headed back to Canterlot you’ll miss us instead of being glad to see us leave.”

He laughed, and that laugh took me back more than a decade.

“What’s wrong now?” Lyra whispered.

“I know that pony,” I hissed. “He’s not a Royal Guard! He was an Agent of SECT, like me!”

“Thank you again for the chance to serve,” Ace said, looking up at Twilight. He thought he was so charming, and unfortunately, he was. The princess blushed and nodded. “All a soldier like me asks for is a chance to do what’s right.”

She nodded, and Ace trotted off. But not without looking right at me and nodding just the tiniest bit.

Princess Twilight cleared her throat. “I hope that answers all your questions. I’d also like to remind everypony that after the unfortunate incident with the Tooth Breezie and our slow response time, we’ve created forms for witnesses and victims to fill out so we can collate information. Please remember to ask for form M-14 if you’ve only seen the monster, M-15 if you are the monster, M-16 if you’re a victim of the monster, and all forms have to be filled out in blue or black ink.”

She waved to the crowd and took off into the air. I didn’t watch her go. I had more important ponies to keep an eye on.

“Can you take care of the shopping on your own?” I asked.

Lyra nodded, and I gave her a kiss on the cheek. When she trotted away there was a bounce in her step and I couldn’t keep a smile off my face.

It was just too bad I had to go after some other pony instead of her.

He was marching out of the market, flanked by two of the absolutely rubbish guards that he’d posted around town. I was able to get right behind him before I cleared my throat, and the two rookies jumped at the sudden sound.

“Commander Ace, can we speak privately?” I asked.

He didn’t look surprised when he turned around.

“Of course. I always have time for a concerned citizen,” he said. “You two, the Mayor requested to have guards posted at Town Hall to protect the work crew putting the roof back together. Go keep an eye on things there until your shift is over.”
They nodded, saluted, and trotted off.

“The street is still a little public,” Ace said. “Let’s step over here.”

He led me into an alleyway, his horn flashing pale pink for a moment as the sounds of the marketplace faded away.

“The spell will keep eavesdroppers from listening in,” he said. “It’s been a long time, Agent Sweetie Drops.”

“It has been,” I agreed. “And the last time I saw you, you weren’t a part of the Royal Guard.”

He nodded. “It was sort of a sideways promotion after, well, you know. I was owed a few favors and I called them in. To be honest, I’m mostly faking it.” Ace laughed and shook his head. “I couldn’t resist this assignment, though!”

“Yeah. Lots of old friends seem to be popping up out of the woodwork around here,” I said.

“You’re talking about Glee Club.”

“Yeah.” Ace looked around like she might appear from the shadows. “That’s why I’m here. When I heard Hoss had shown up, I couldn’t let somepony who didn’t know anything stumble into trouble.”

He put a worried hoof on my shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know these guards don’t look like much, but they’re the best I could get on short notice and, well, they can keep their eyes open and yell a warning. If something bigger happens, I’ll get involved myself.”

I felt some of the tension start to drain out of me.

“How much do you know about her plans?” I asked.

“Not as much as I should. We should meet up sometime and compare notes.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I promise to keep it professional. I heard you settled down with a marefriend.”

I tried to hide the blush. “It’s not…”

He shook his head. “I’m jealous. Of both of you! You found a way to get away from the life, and she gets to spend all her time with you. If there’s anything I can do to help while I’m here, let me know.”

“Thanks, Ace,” I said. “I just didn’t expect to see you. I was worried.”

“You know what?” He grinned. “There’s a concert tonight. Some of the locals are putting it on. You should get out and do something fun while you’ve got somepony watching your back.”

“So he’s on our side?” Lyra asked.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Lyra, what the buck is this?”

I pulled something green and covered in spikes out of the shopping bag. It felt like it was made of iron and from the smell it was already going rotten.

“It’s a durian. There was a special on them.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I muttered, being very careful to put it far away from the other groceries while touching it as little as possible. I needed to remember to never let Lyra do the shopping alone. “The thing about Ace is that he was a spy. You never stop being a spy. You learn to think a certain way and manipulate people and…” I sighed. “I know it’s hard to understand.”

“Nah, I get it.”

“You do?”

“Sure. Like how you were a spy and you still constantly do spy stuff.”

I sputtered. “I do not constantly do spy stuff!”

“Remember that time you secretly ran around town fighting monsters without telling Princess Twilight or any of the other ponies who might be able to help you?”

I glared at her.

“What?” she asked. “You don’t remember? Because it wasn’t all that long ago.”

“This is different,” I promised. “I’m just… vigilant. Ace used ponies. You could never tell what he was really thinking. I only know one thing for sure -- he said he was here just to protect ponies, and that means he’s got something else up his sleeve.”

“I think technically they’re called gauntlets,” Lyra said. “Or does armor have sleeves?”

“If it’s plate armor, they’re rerebraces,” I corrected. “Gauntlets are a griffon thing. Anyway, the Royal Guard hasn’t used full plate since the refresh in 990.”

“Are you sure?” Lyra asked. “I could swear some of the guards had sleeves…”

I paused and thought back to the market. She wasn’t wrong.

“That’s… hm.” It was just strange enough to make the part of me that was still a secret agent very suspicious. “That’s besides the point. He invited me to the concert tonight. You know what that means?”

Lyra hesitated. “That we aren’t going, because it’s a trick?”

“That’s what he’d want me to think! You have to learn to think three moves ahead, Lyra. He said he wants me there, which means he wants me to think I should stay away, which means he actually doesn’t want me there, so we have to go!”

“...Does that mean we’re not getting dinner tonight?”

“Just bring a snack,” I sighed.

“I can’t believe you brought that thing,” I groaned.

“Hey, you said bring a snack, and you said you didn’t want it in the house,” Lyra said. “I just gotta figure out how you actually eat a durian and then I’ll have a delicious dinner.”

“I can smell it from here, Lyra. It’s not going to be delicious.”

“Don’t judge a book by its… odor?” Lyra frowned. “Something like that.”

“Just keep your eyes open for anything strange,” I said, trying to ignore the smell coming from the burlap bag she was carrying.

“How do they put up these stages so quickly?” Lyra muttered. We were outside the temporary venue, and unlike most musical performances in Ponyville, there was a definite inside and outside. Temporary walls had been put up all around it, with guards at the entrances. They were high enough that I could just barely see the top of the stage from where we were, spotlights shining into the sky.

I shrugged. “It can’t be that hard.”

The sun had dropped below the horizon, and it was getting dark enough that I almost wished I had a light. Almost. Instinct told me it was better to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

“You just don’t appreciate it because you’re not a performer,” Lyra said. “The stage alone would be tough, but Princess Twilight got lighting and a sound system working, too! Trust me, that’s not easy. Even with a team of professionals, audio equipment is spiteful and malicious and wants to fail at the worst time.”

“Is that literal, or…?”

“Most of the time it’s not literal,” Lyra admitted. “But if you ever go to the Canterlot Silver Stage’s backroom, bring a bag of salt to throw at anything that jumps at you.”

I rolled my eyes. It was even odds on that just being a weird theatre tradition or some kind of necromancy and I didn’t want to deal with it right now.

“You know, I could have gotten a spot on stage,” Lyra said. “We could have investigated this from the inside. And I could have performed. And made some money.”

“Being in the middle of the danger is a good way to get hurt when it starts,” I said. “And it’s a free concert, Lyra. You wouldn’t have made a single bit.”

“I guess,” Lyra sighed. “But why have bouncers at a free concert?”

“It’s called crowd control,” Commander Ace said. His horn lit up, revealing him standing in the shadows ahead of us. “Good
evening Sweetie, and… Lyra, was it?”

“Crowd control?”

“It’s about keeping ponies where they need to be,” Ace explained. “Like how you two should be inside instead of lurking around in the dark. A pony could get the wrong idea and think you were up to something.”

“That would be awful,” I said.

“Exactly,” Ace said, with that winning grin of his. “They don’t know you like I do. Remember that great time we had in Buckapest?”

“When were you in Buckapest?” Lyra asked.

I sighed. “We went there investigating-- it’s not important. Things went really poorly.”

“I think it went well,” Ace said. “Both of us are here to talk about it.”

“My knee still aches when it gets cold,” I said.

“Probably my fault,” Ace sighed. “I’ll make it up to you. How about we get a drink? I saw a bar a few blocks away that had some interesting cocktails on the menu, since you don’t seem all that interested in the music.”

“Royal Guards aren’t supposed to drink on duty,” I reminded him.

He shrugged. “When you’re in charge there’s some flexibility in those regulations.”

“I’m flattered, but I don’t want you to get in trouble,” I said. “How about instead you tell me what’s really going on?”

Ace hissed through his teeth. “You really don’t trust me? I’m here to help, Sweetie.”

“Ace, I’m not an idiot and unlike the Saddle Arabian floozies you ditched me for in Buckapest, your charms don’t work on me.”

“That hurts me, Sweetie,” he said, putting a hoof to his heart and groaning. “I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble. Why are you so determined to get yourself into it?”

“It’s a bad habit,” I said.

Ace sighed. “Then I guess I don’t have a choice.” He waved to two guards standing behind us. They trotted up, closing in on us. “Take these two to whatever passes for a holding cell around here,” Ace ordered.

“Bonnie, you promised I wouldn’t get arrested today!” Lyra whined. One of the armored ponies grabbed her hoof, pulling her away from me.

“You’re not going to be arrested,” I said. “Because these aren’t real Royal Guards. They’re mercenaries.” The other one tried to grab me, and I knocked his hoof away.

The ‘Guards’ looked at Ace. He sighed.

“What gave them away?” he asked.

“Well, for one thing, they’re all using old surplus equipment,” I said. “You’re lucky Princess Twilight didn’t notice. She’s got an eye for detail.”

“It’s old?” Ace frowned.

“They’ve got sleeves,” I said.

“They haven’t had those since the refresh in 990,” Lyra said, very smugly repeating something she’d only learned a few hours ago. “Everypony knows that.”

“That’s what I get for buying cheap,” Ace sighed. “You could have spent the night in a warm cell. Your loss.” He looked at the guards and nodded.

They reached for weapons.

Lyra and I reacted at almost the same moment. I kicked the one next to me in the neck, and he stumbled back, grabbing his throat and coughing. Lyra’s captor was a lot less lucky. She swung the burlap sack with her dinner into his face, smashing the durian open. He screamed and a terrible smell filled the street, the mercenary fleeing with the bag stuck to his snout by the durian’s spines.

“That didn’t look pleasant,” Lyra winced.

“And you were going to eat that thing,” I reminded her.

“Mercenaries are so useless,” Ace sighed. “Well, it’s just like Hoss always said. If you want somepony killed right, you have to kill them yourself.”

He tossed the golden guard helm he was wearing aside and pulled something else out.

“G4 armor?” I whispered.

“You didn’t think you were the only pony that held onto their set, did you?” he asked. He settled the masked helmet over his head. “Henshin.”

The darkness was banished by a flare of red light. I shielded my eyes from a blast of wind, and when I could finally look again, the transformation had finished and the armor was fully formed around him.

And because he was a showoff, he’d posed dramatically and looked back at me from over his shoulder.

“Your fate is mine to decide.”

“Bonnie, he’s so much cooler than you!” Lyra hissed.

I rolled my eyes and pushed her away to a safe distance. “Henshin!”

He didn’t wait politely for me to finish. Before the armor had even fully formed, twin floating blades were coming down at me, each of them shaped like a crescent moon, scimitar blades with no handle. Typical unicorn weapons -- no considerations made for actually holding the things without magic.

I dodged one, knocking the other way with my own sword-mace and taking two steps back while the armor sealed itself.

“Really, a sucker punch?” I asked. “That’s so like you.”

“And that weapon isn’t like you at all,” he said. “What is that even supposed to be? It’s a sword on one end and a flail on the other… how do you even use it without stabbing yourself or getting tangled up?”

“Technically it’s a gyrspike,” Lyra said. “If you watched more Hipponese animes you’d know they’re powerful killing tools.”

“Is that why you made it like this?!” I demanded, glaring at her.

“It’s what I had to work with, and it’s been okay so far, right?”

“Add that to the list of talks we’re going to have.”

“Aww… I hate having to have talks. I always end up sleeping on the couch…”

Ace laughed. “Ladies, please, don’t fight when we’re trying to kill each other!”

I jumped over a glowing blade coming at my knees, and Lyra threw a shield in front of herself, blocking his other crescent blade.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted, swinging the gyrspike and extending the chain, whipping the flail at him. It caught him totally by surprise, slamming into his ribs and throwing him against a brick wall hard enough to kick up a cloud of brick dust and broken mortar.

“Okay,” he wheezed. “I admit, you’ve got some muscle. It’s just too bad you don’t have the brains to match.”

I caught the light a moment too late. A blade was only a hair’s breadth from my head, vibrating in the air. Golden light fought against Ace’s aura.

“What?” Ace asked. A second blade slammed down and stopped even further away.

“You know, I don’t like to brag,” Lyra said, her horn glowing. “But let me say this to start -- I’m fairly strong!”

“Serves me right for underestimating civilians,” Ace grunted. His aura disappeared from the blades. “Let’s see how you deal with this!”

His horn blazed with light, surrounding his whole body in an aura. He jumped into the air, and the aura exploded behind him, propelling him like a cannonball. The aura around him formed into a rock-solid sphere.

“Goal Kick!” he yelled. I raised my hooves on instinct, bracing my back legs against the pavement. Ace hit me, and sparks flew from my armored shoes. I could feel the armor fighting against the impact, being ablated away and immediately reforming, the charge draining with every moment.

“Hey dummy!” Lyra yelled. “This is for making me waste my snack!”

I looked to the side at the same time Ace did. Lyra was holding the Oboelaster.

“What is--” he started.

HONK

The wave of force hit Ace and launched him straight up into the air, his shield vanishing as he totally lost control.

“Get him, Bonnie!” Lyra shouted.

I nodded to her and jumped, twisting around in mid-air as he fell.

“Jawbreaker Kick!”

My hoof impacted his chest, and he flew straight down, slamming into the ground like a meteor. His armor evaporated, and he didn’t get back up.

I landed next to him, breathing heavily.

“Is he…” Lyra asked.

“He’s just unconscious,” I said.

“Good.” She trotted up to him and kicked him in the ribs. “That’s for trying to kick me! And that one’s for the durian! And that one’s for Bonnie--”

“Lyra, stop it. He’s unconscious.”

She kicked him one more time. “I don’t like jerks that try to kill my marefriend.”

“Neither do I,” I promised, leaning into her. I’d have kissed her, but I was wearing a helmet. “Grab his belt. I don’t want to leave something dangerous in his hooves.”

“Oh hey, he was a unicorn, right? So…” Lyra wiggled the helmet off his head and put it on. “Nice! It’s got room for my horn!”

She bent down and took off his belt, then started rummaging around.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Lyra held up a bag and shook it. It jingled.

“I’m a professional, Bonnie. Since I’m not being paid for the concert and I’m going to have to buy dinner later, I’ll let him pay for it. Call it a jerk tax.”

I snorted but didn’t stop her. Ace was the kind of pony who deserved to have his pockets picked. Lyra put the bag away and took the helmet off, looking at me.

“So, uh… should I leave? I know this is probably going to turn into a monster fight, and I don’t want to get in the way. You almost got hurt really badly last time, and part of that is my fault. You were trying to protect me, and…” she trailed off.

I put my hoof on her shoulder.

“We’re partners, Lyra. I worry about you. I want to protect you. But I also couldn’t do this without you. You saved my life more than once, and with that armor, maybe I can afford to worry a little less about you being hurt.”

“Really?”

“Sure. But that means you’re stuck with the weird oboe gun. I can’t use the stupid thing.” I held up my other hoof. “And don’t say it’s not stupid. You know I don’t have any musical training!”

“I keep offering to teach you,” Lyra said, smiling.

“Maybe next time,” I said, with no intent of making that a promise. I took the helmet from her and put it securely on her head. “It’s going to feel tight at first. The material forms over your coat, so it’s practically skin-tight. It loosens up when you start moving.”

“Okay, stand back,” Lyra said. “Here goes nothing. Henshin!”

I stepped back on instinct, the armor blazing with light as the Sol Fiber grew across her body. When it was finished, she looked almost exactly like me, except for the color.

“Hey, why is mine all bright red and green, and yours is, um…?” Lyra asked.

“Grey and sort of… dingy?” I asked. “I didn’t do maintenance on mine for years, Lyra. It works fine, but the colors faded.”

“Huh. At least ponies will be able to tell us apart,” Lyra said, bumping her flank against mine playfully. “So what next?”

“Next we figure out what they’re up to,” I said. “Let’s put Ace somewhere safe and look around.”

Chapter 7

“Do you think it’s okay to leave him in the dumpster?” Lyra asked. We were already a few blocks away, and from her tone, I could tell the adrenaline of the fight was wearing off and she was starting to think about the consequences. It was when most civilians started to fall apart. We’d taken the G4 armor off so we wouldn’t have to answer questions if we ran into somepony we knew.

“It’s fine. They only take those away on Thursdays,” I said, trying to reassure her.

“Isn’t it Wednesday?”

“We’ve got bigger things to worry about,” I said. It’d serve him right to wake up in the town dump. “Somepony at the concert must be their target. We need to figure out who. If we can stop it before they get turned into a Phobia, we won’t have to fight anypony at all!”

“That would be nice,” Lyra agreed. “And probably less traumatizing for everypony involved. But what are we supposed to do? We’ve walked basically the whole way around the venue!”

“And we haven’t seen much,” I admitted. “Any ideas?”

Lyra stopped and sat down, thinking. She grabbed a stick and started drawing in the dirt.

“Okay so, let’s think about this logically,” she said. “Maybe we can work out their plan from what we know.”

“We know they’ve herded everypony into one place,” I said.

Lyra nodded. She drew a few stick ponies and a circle around them. “Almost the whole town. So that means either they want everypony involved, or they want everypony distracted.”

“You know, these last few monster attacks…” I muttered. “They want the Nightmare Shards, but they were nowhere near the Phobias. They got lucky with the Lightning Phobia, but it was hard to miss the magical storm hovering over time.”

“The Needle Phobia never even left the hospital,” Lyra pointed out. “And you caught the Snake one before Rainbow Dash arrived, so no way could anypony else get there in time.”

I blinked, realizing what was going on. “The GOC doesn’t know where the Phobias are going to appear!”

“That’s why they want all the ponies in one place!” Lyra said. “They either have a way to force a Phobia to appear, or they know one is going to appear tonight, so if everypony is packed into one walled-off spot, they can be sure they’ll be able to grab it!”

“That doesn’t help us much, though.”

“Sure it does.” Lyra smiled. “It seems like Phobias are triggered when a pony is confronted with something they’re afraid of. There are only a few ponies feeling nervous right now, and they’re even more tightly corralled than the rest of the town.”

“The musicians,” I whispered.

“Want to bet somepony’s going to get stage fright?” Lyra asked.

“We’ve got to get backstage,” I said. “You’re brilliant, Lyra!”

“You’re an idiot, Lyra!” I hissed.

“We got in, didn’t we?” she asked, giving me a smug look. I glared at her and put the cello case down next to the door. Thankfully, nopony had bothered checking it. The fake guards were lousy at their jobs. Unfortunately, the scheduler was excellent at hers.

“You told them we were performing!”

“And? I used to busk during college for spending money. I can improvise for a few minutes. It’s no problem.”

“If the problem was you being on stage, it wouldn’t be a big deal,” I said. “The problem is you told them we were doing a duet!”

“I needed to say that so they’d let you come backstage with me!” Lyra protested.

“Lyra, I can’t play any instruments! The last time I tried playing a kazoo, it made the saddest note anypony has ever heard!”

“We don’t have to be any good,” Lyra said. “And we might not even go on stage. We’re just backup in case somepony runs under time or there’s a delay or something.”

“You better hope we don’t end up on stage, or else I’m going to embarrass myself in front of the entire town,” I grumbled.
“I know, I know. And then I’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

“You won’t be laughing when you find out where I put the couch.”

“What does that mean?” Lyra asked.

I gave her a look.

Lyra made a noise very similar to the kazoo I’d traumatized. “You’re scarier than the monsters, Bon-Bon.”

The door popped open, and I instinctively reached for the first thing on hoof that might serve as a weapon.

“Is there anything special you two need to set up?” Mayor Mare asked, poking her head into the room. She glanced at my hoof. “Is that… talcum powder?”

“...I chafe?” I offered, putting down the ‘weapon’.

“Oh! They make creams for that, you know. It’s much more effective than talcum powder.”

“I’ll ask Nurse Redheart about that next time I see her,” I mumbled, my cheeks starting to burn red.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anypony,” Mayor Mare winked. “But about your set--”

“We don’t need anything special,” Lyra assured her. “We’re just on standby to fill in, right? It’d be a problem if we needed speakers or something.”

“Oh, nopony told you?” Mayor Mare asked. “You’re on in ten! The Ponytones need a few extra minutes to finish preparations for their set, so you’ll be going on as soon as DJ Pon-3 is done!”

“That’s… great!” Lyra said, forcing herself to smile.

The lights flickered above us. I glanced up on instinct.

“She must be pulling out all the stops,” I said.

“That’s odd,” Mayor Mare said. “I’m sure it’s just--”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. The lights went out entirely, blanketing us in total darkness. The distant beat of the music was suddenly silenced. That lasted just long enough for somepony to draw breath and start screaming.

Lyra’s horn lit up, giving our small dressing room a golden glow.

“I need to go,” Mayor Mare said. “I’m sorry about leaving you here, but I’m sure it’s just a minor technical glitch! Please stay here until we can get this fixed.”

“Sure,” I said. “Stay safe.”

Mayor Mare nodded and left, closing the door. I waited a few moments. I heard her stumble into something and swear before walking away.

“We’re not really staying here, are we?” Lyra asked.

“Of course not,” I said, opening the cello case and strapping on my belt. I tossed Lyra hers. “If this is a coincidence I’ll eat my helmet.”

“It’s not going to be easy finding a monster in the dark,” Lyra pointed out.

I held up a hoof for her to be quiet. Somewhere, not far from here, somepony screamed. “Not as hard as you think.”

“Well, you’re the professional,” Lyra admitted.

“And you’ve got the light, so you lead the way.”

Lyra nodded and grabbed the Oboelaster on her way out, and I followed close at hoof. With the lights out, the backstage was a cluttered mess. The stage had only been built a day ago and it already felt like a disused basement full of generations worth of antiques.

“So what would a stage fright Phobia even look like?” I asked. “I’ve never been on stage. It’s sort of a liability for a secret agent.”

“I donno,” Lyra said. “The pony couldn’t transform into a stage, could they? That would be weird. Maybe they’d be covered in eyes because they’re afraid of everypony staring at them!”

I nodded. That made sense.

“I bet it’s Fluttershy,” Lyra continued. “She’s terrified of everything, and she was supposed to be performing with the Ponytones tonight!”

“I hope it’s not one of the Elements. I’m no magical expert like you, but mixing whatever Harmony magic is inside them with the Nightmare Shards seems like a recipe for disaster.”

“Would she explode?”

“If we see blast marks and a lot of yellow feathers everywhere, we’ll figure that out really quickly.”

The light from Lyra’s horn flickered.

“That’s weird…” she muttered. She stopped walking and her horn flared brighter, but the cone of light she was projecting shrunk moment by moment. “Something’s wrong.”

“It shouldn’t be this dark,” I said. “Even if somepony cut the power.”

“It’s worse than that,” Lyra said. “Look.”

She pointed. There was an open doorway leading to a loading dock. We walked to the doorframe and looked out. It was pitch black.

“No lights from the town…” I muttered.

“No lights from anything,” Lyra said, looking up. “I can’t see the stars!”

“I don’t think this is a stage fright Phobia. I think it’s a Darkness Phobia!” I put my helmet on, and my view instantly improved. “At least the darkvision enchantment seems to be working.”

“Darkvision?” Lyra put her helmet on, the light dropping for a moment until her horn popped out of the appropriate hole in the helmet. “Oh neat! That’s way better!”

“Suit up,” I said. “No point in doing it halfway.”

Lyra struck a pose.

“You don’t need to do that, Lyra. They’re just voice-activated.”

“Yeah, but it’s really cool! Woosh! Swoosh!” She did something that she probably thought looked like martial arts but was a lot more like ballet. “Henshin!”

She transformed in a burst of crimson light, still holding that dumb pose.

“It makes me look heroic!” she said, excited.

“Whatever makes you happy. Henshin.” I very deliberately didn’t strike a pose.

“Now let’s split up and--”

“Shhh.” I put a hoof to her lips. Well, you know, to her mask where her lips would have been. “We are not going to split up. That’s how ponies get into trouble. We’re going to stick together.”

“But then how are we going to find the monster?”

“It has to be creating this darkness. The darker it is, the closer we are. The light you made was brighter in our changing room than it is here, so we must be closer than we were before!”

“Let’s follow the bouncing ball,” Lyra said. The glow from her horn focused into a sphere the size of my hoof, then dropped to the ground, leaving only a dim aura that showed she was still controlling it.

The ball rolled out the door, and as we followed it, it got dimmer and dimmer until we were chasing after little more than an ember. Lyra stopped, holding up a hoof.

“Bonnie, the stage is up ahead. Whatever we’re after, it’s out there.”

“Not ideal, but--”

“But if ponies hear us using our real names, the whole town will know we’re the ones doing this. It’s bad enough Twilight already thinks I’m involved! I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, she’s super smart, but she also gets distracted.”

“We’ll use code names,” I said.

“You can be Candybutt, and--”

“Just Candy is fine.”

“But I like your butt!”

“I know. Now let’s find us a monster, Harp.”

Lyra nodded and stepped forward, pushing a curtain aside. I heard them, even if I couldn’t see them. Screams in the dark, ponies out there that needed help, and Lyra and I were the only ones who might be in a position to do anything about it.

We couldn’t see them, just barely to the edge of the stage even with the night vision in the helmets, but I could feel it. There was a different atmosphere out here.

“This feeling…” I muttered.

“Even if we can’t see them, it’s different being out in front of ponies, isn’t it?” Lyra whispered. “Remember, this isn’t just our chance to get the monster, we have to make a good impression, too. We’re playing to an audience, and we want them to know we’re heroes!”

“You’re going to do more poses, aren’t you?” I groaned.

“So are you, if you know what’s good for you,” Lyra countered. “If we sell Twilight on the idea we’re the good guys, we might not have to explain why we beat up somepony she thinks is a Royal Guard Captain.”

“Good point,” I admitted. “I’ll do the stupid poses.”

Lyra gave me a quick pat on the back. I carefully walked over to the one thing I could see on the stage. A fallen pony. She was clutching her head and shivering. I touched her, and she screamed and kicked me in the gut.

“Oof!” I grunted, holding her still and recognizing her as, unsurprisingly, one of the town’s musicians. “Calm down, Miss!”

“Who are you?!” Octavia demanded, looking into the darkness and trying to make me out. She didn’t have the benefit of a light-enhancing spell, so I doubt she could even see as far as her snout.

“I’m just a masked pony that happened to be passing through,” I said. “Call me Candy. Do you know what happened?”

“Yes, but you have to be quiet!” Octavia hissed. “It can hear us! It’s busy with the ones out there, but it’s going to come back!”

I nodded, realized she couldn’t possibly see it, and squeezed her hoof to let her know I understood.

“I was performing with Vinyl,” Octavia said. “We did a trade, earlier she was my backup while I was leading, this time, I was letting her sample me live-- the important thing is halfway through the set, she had some kind of panic attack and when I went to check on her, there was something wrong with her eyes and-- and--”

“We’ll save her,” I promised.

Octavia returned the squeeze, and I helped her over to the side of the stage so she’d be out of the way, keeping my eyes open and searching the blackness around us. I couldn’t see much further than hoof’s reach. I turned to look at Lyra, who was facing out towards the crowd, searching the darkness.

“Harp, do you see anything?”

Lyra shook her head. “Is that supposed to be a rhetorical question?”

I was still holding Octavia’s hoof when she screamed.

A shadow had fallen over her, and it took me an instant too long to realize it was one that couldn’t possibly have a source. There was no real light, the only reason I could see anything was the enchantment on my helmet.

The shadow wrapped around her neck, and her screaming stopped. She let go of me to grab at her ears.

“I can’t--” she said, deeper panic setting in. “I can’t hear! I can’t hear anything!”

I reached for the shadow itself and it was like touching ice. It peeled away from Octavia and curled around my hoof, more like a black ribbon than a shadow.

“Oh buck!” I swore, yanking my hoof back and stumbling into Lyra, ripping the shadow right off the ground as I did. It stood up on wobbly legs, even blacker than the darkness around us, just a flat silhouette almost shaped like a pony.

“Is that the Phobia?” Lyra asked.

“Maybe!” I said. “Get ready!” I whipped myself around, the weightless monster coming with me. Lyra braced herself and kicked as it came around. Sparks flew from her hoof when it connected, bright enough to light up the stage. The shadow screeched and ripped apart like cheap fabric, fading into nothing.

“I got it!” Lyra cheered.

“Good work, Harp,” I said. I lowered my hoof and stumbled. “Oof!”

“What’s wrong, Candy?”

“I can’t feel my leg,” I said. “It’s all pins and needles…” I looked at Octavia. She was trying to say something, but nothing was coming out of her mouth. “And she can’t hear anything!”

“Wonderful. So the ponies screaming out there can’t even hear themselves?”

“If we beat the Phobia, it should have made this magical darkness vanish,” I said. “This doesn’t make sense… it can’t be a fear of Darkness. How does being numb or deaf fit with that?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think that was the only one.” She pointed, and at the edge of my vision I could see them. They were waiting, wavering shadows cast by nothing and standing up on their own.

“They must be some kind of construct, like the cloud-ponies in the storm,” I said.

“But there were only a couple of those!” Lyra shouted. One of them lunged at her, reaching with a hideously extended leg that rippled like a flag in a strong wind. She jumped back, right into another one of them, and I saw her stumble and start to fall, her back right leg collapsing under her.

I swung the gyrspike, wrapping the chain around my fetlock to swing the blade through the shadow, the black shape shredding into ribbons.

“Bo-- Candy, I can’t feel my leg!” Lyra yelled.

“My foreleg is the same way! I think it’s just the feeling - I can still move it okay!”

“That’s not normal for fighting monsters, is it?”

I shrugged, using the motion to duck away from a swipe from another shadow. “There’s no real normal for this, Harp. It’s always a learning experience!”

“That’s totally unfair!” Lyra jumped, her horn glowing dimly. I saw a bubble form under her, popping her higher into the air and out of the reach of another monster. The golden light of her spell sent it stumbling back, hissing.

“That’s it!” I gasped. And sufficiently distracted by my great idea, one of the monsters grabbed my helmet, trying to pull it off. I cut myself free, but not without everything turning grey. “Wonderful, there goes my color vision.”

“Do you have an actual idea?” Lyra asked. “Because I think I just lost my sense of smell! This helmet stank like Ace’s cologne and now I can’t smell anything!”

“They don’t like light! You need to make the strongest light you can!”

“We’re literally in a patch of magical, infinite darkness that swallows light,” Lyra pointed out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I was speaking to a graduate of the greatest magic school in the world, not some random unicorn off the street who only knows enough spellcraft to make my card appear out of a rigged deck!”

“How dare you compare me to Trixie!” Lyra’s horn blazed with light, and a ball as big as her head appeared between us, shining bright enough to push back the dark ten paces in every direction. The nearest shadows evaporated into nothing, and the rest hissed, flaking away at the edge like leaves burning in a pyre.

“That’s perfect!” I shouted. “Great work!”

“What? My ears are ringing!” Lyra shouted.

“Sight, feeling, hearing, smell…” I counted off the symptoms. “It’s not stage fright. It’s not darkness. It’s sensory deprivation!”

“Is that better or worse?” Lyra asked.

“I have no idea! Can you move the light? We need to find it, and it’s out there somewhere.” The shadow-creatures were keeping to the edge of the light, unable to approach.

“No. And before you ask, I don’t think I can make another one. That really took it out of me.”

“Okay, then we need to make it come to us. Octavia said it was hunting by sound, so we need to make a lot of noise! Look around for drums or, or cymbals or--”

Lyra cleared her throat and held up her weapon. “How about a magical oboe cannon?”

“That’ll do.”

“Let’s see, lots of noise but not a lot of force…” Lyra muttered. “Let’s try a B-flat!” She pointed the oboelaster straight up into the air and pulled the trigger. The sound it made was like every instrument in an orchestra playing the same note at once.
It echoed through the blackness, and for a moment there was silence, and then the howling started.

“I think that got somepony’s attention,” I said, peering out into the dark. From the sound of that howl, I could guess which direction it would come from.

Lyra stepped up next to me and pointed her blaster into the blackness at eye-level. “I’ll stun it, then you finish it off,” she said.

I nodded tersely. I’d be happy with any plan that meant she wouldn’t accidentally shoot me in the back.

The first thing I saw were fangs as long as my foreleg in a mouth big enough to swallow me whole. I’d been expecting something the size of a pony, not something the size of a dragon! Lyra fired, and the impact made it flinch to the side. That’s the only reason the jaws didn’t snap shut on me.

I got a good look at it as it ran back off into the dark. It was like a huge hunchbacked wolf, its eyeless face sprouting tendrils like a catfish’s whiskers, as pale as some hideous cave beast that had evolved away from the light of the sun.

“Oh buck,” I whispered. “She’s big.”

“I’m gonna need a bigger wind instrument,” Lyra said. “So how do we fight a monster that size?”

“There’s not exactly a manual,” I said. “This is real life, not O&O. Keep your eyes peeled. She could come from any direction.”

“I mean, not any direction,” Lyra said. “We’re up against the stage curtain.”

I glanced up at the curtain because I half-expected the Phobia to be hanging from the fabric. Thankfully, just this one time the universe didn’t do the obvious ironic thing.

“Don’t tempt fate,” I warned her, just in case. “I swear there’s just enough chaos magic around this town to make us regret saying anything Discord might laugh at later.”

“Ugh. I don’t know how Fluttershy can stand him.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t mind if he showed up right now as long as he was here to help,” I said. “Get ready to blast that monster again. I’ll be ready for it this time.”

This time I had almost a full half-second of warning. I heard stage equipment crash to the ground and turned before the Phobia reached us. I don’t know if it was smart or lucky, but I was right between it and Lyra.

I ducked and kicked up into its jaw. The massive fang-filled maw snapped shut, and Lyra’s blast of sound and fury went wide. The Phobia rolled with the hit, shaking it off and tackling Lyra, knocking her to the ground before galloping off into the dark.

“Are you okay?” I asked, helping her up.

“Yeah, but it knocked my oboe into the shadows,” Lyra said. “Sorry.”

“We need to keep it from getting away,” I said. “We can’t chase after it with all these shadow-creatures.”

“I forgot to bring my monster-fishing net,” Lyra said.

“Maybe we have one right here. Do you have those knives Ace was using?”

“Yeah, they’re part of the armor,” Lyra said, pulling one out. “I don’t want to use it on the monster, though. It might hurt the pony inside. Transformation magic is tricky with injuries. Sometimes they carry over, sometimes they don’t.”

I nodded. She knew more about it than I did. “Don’t worry. I don’t want you to use it on her. Not exactly.”

I explained my plan to her.

“That’s like, two-thirds of a good idea,” Lyra said. “But on the other hoof it’s sixty percent more of a plan than I had. I don’t even know where I’d get that much olive oil…”

The howling picked up, getting closer by the second.

“Great, because we’re about to put it into action!” I said.

The Phobia burst into the light, pale to the point of almost being translucent, the shadows scattering away from its paws.

“Now!” I shouted.

Lyra’s hovering blades slashed at the stage curtain, cutting the ropes holding it up. It weighed too much for her to carry by herself, but it only took a tug for her to make it fall the right way.

The stage curtain dropped down over the Phobia, the heavy fabric nearly knocking it over just from the mass alone.

“Nail it down!” I shouted.

Lyra drove the crescent blades down through the fabric and into the stage, sinking them into the wood and holding the curtain down taut over the struggling monster.

“That’s not gonna hold it for long!” Lyra warned.

“It only needs to hold for a second! Remember what I told you about using the magic in the armor?”

“Basically?” Lyra said, which sounded a lot more like a question than the kind of firm, confident statement that would have been comforting what with the wolf monster starting to tear through the velvet curtain. “I’m a quick study!”

“You better be!” I yelled, charging at the monster. Lyra came at it from the other side. I jumped and twisted in midair, and she popped herself into the air with a magic bubble, her forehoof glowing. “Jawbreaker kick!”

“Orchestra hit!” Lyra shouted.

We connected at the same time, the golden sparks when our hooves connected exploding into light as the darkness evaporated around us in an instant. My vision cleared up in the same instant. I landed next to Lyra, the feeling coming back to my legs.

“Orchestra hit?” I asked.

“Hey, if you get to have a cool attack name, I do, too.”

“It needs some work.”

“Everypony’s a critic. Quick,” Lyra whispered. “Strike a pose!”

“Huh?” I blinked and followed her gaze out to the crowd of ponies watching us. Most of the town was still here, staring at the stage. At me.

Lyra nudged me again, and I followed her lead, trying to take something like a heroic pose. I felt like an idiot. An Agent should never even be seen, much less be seen on stage posing like a comic book hero!

“Vinyl!” Octavia yelled, running over and tearing at the stage curtain, pulling the unicorn free of the torn velvet.

Vinyl wordlessly looked up at her and gave her a small smile. Octavia held her hoof.

“Thank you,” Octavia whispered, not taking her gaze off her duet partner.

I nodded, dropping the pose. “I’m just glad we were able to save her.”

“Hey!” somepony yelled. Lyra and I both looked up to see Princess Twilight trying to push her way through the crowd towards us. Thankfully she seemed to have forgotten she could fly above it.

“Candy, I think it’s time to book it!” Lyra said, grabbing the weapon she’d dropped.

“I need to ask you some questions!” Twilight shouted.

“Sorry, Princess, I can’t chat right now,” I yelled back, the helmet disguising my voice a little. “I was just passing through.”

I saluted and ran towards the back stage, pushing Lyra to make sure she kept up with me. I bolted towards the exit, but she grabbed my hoof and pulled, taking me the other direction.

“If we just run outside, ponies are bound to see us,” Lyra whispered. “I have an idea. Follow my lead!”

We got to the changing room a few seconds ahead of Twilight. Lyra threw all our gear into the cello case and slammed it shut at the same time the door popped open, the Princess of Friendship looking sweaty and annoyed.

“Where are they?!” Twilight demanded.

“Princess!” Lyra gasped in mock surprise, bowing. I followed her lead, just like she asked, and bowed alongside her.

“What? NO, no nono,” Twilight sputtered, her anger immediately diffused by awkwardness. “I don’t-- Lyra, we went to school together! You don’t-- please don’t bow!”

“What happened, Princess?” Lyra asked. “We were getting ready to go on stage, and then everything went black and there was this howling… was it some kind of monster attack?”

“Everything is fine,” Twilight assured her. “Everypony is okay. Did you see--”

“It wasn’t Princess Luna, was it?” Lyra asked, cutting Twilight off before she could start asking questions. “She’s one of my favorite princesses, no offense, and I can’t imagine she’d turn evil! Again.”

“No, it wasn’t Princess Luna,” Twilight sighed. “You girls really didn’t see anything?” She looked at me.

“It was really dark,” I said, lamely.

Twilight made a frustrated sound somewhere between a growl and moan of pain. “Where are all the guards?” she muttered. “They should have seen something but I can’t find any of them!”

“Does this mean our set is canceled?” Lyra asked.

“Yes, your set is canceled,” Twilight groaned. “Just… as long as you’re not hurt, just go home. I’m sorry for bothering you.”

“It’s no problem, Princess,” Lyra assured her.

Twilight grumbled and trotted out the door, yelling for her friends to keep looking. Lyra gently closed it behind her.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said quietly, in case somepony was listening at the door. “I was sure she’d try to search the room.”

“She gets distracted easily,” Lyra said. “As soon as we bowed she was worried more about that than finding any mysterious ponies. She hates being treated like an authority.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “She gave us permission to go, after all.”

“Yeah, it’ll be good to drop this off at home,” Lyra said, picking up the cello case.

“Before we do that we have to find the Nightmare Shard,” I said. “The Phobia would have dropped one, but I couldn’t spot it before we had to run back here.”

Lyra nodded, and we carefully avoided Twilight and her friends on our way out to the stage.

“Just two mares, walking casually,” Lyra said. Then she started whistling.

“I can’t imagine why you were never recruited as an Agent,” I told her.

“I know, right? I’m really good at this secret stuff. I’ve even got connections with royalty!”

“It made you much better at lying to your old friend,” I agreed.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

I smiled at her. “I’m just teasing you. I just want to finish this up and go home before anything else happens.”

We trotted out on stage.

“If anypony asks, we came out to get set up for our set,” I whispered. “Everypony else is confused, so if we act like we don’t know what’s going on, we should fit right in.”

I didn’t expect anypony to even bother with us. They were all too busy -- most of the town was trying to get out through the few exits through the barricades. A few ponies here and there were taking care of others that had gotten hurt. I wondered if it had been the Phobia or blind and scared ponies trampling each other.

“Do you see it anywhere?” I asked.

“No,” Lyra said. “It should be around here, right?” She lifted the edge of the fallen curtain, checking under it.

“It should be,” I agreed. “I’ll check the DJ table. Maybe it ended up on that side of the stage.”

“It’s called a turntable, not a DJ table-- hey, it’s that guy!” Lyra looked past me and pointed off the edge of the stage.

I turned to see a familiar, smirking stallion with a black eye, right at the front of the crowd. The ponies around him hadn’t really noticed him.

“Looking for this?” Ace asked, holding up the Nightmare Shard.

“Give it to me,” I said.

“Sorry, somebody else is paying a lot more. But you can keep the G4 armor. It’s outdated anyway.” He winked, though with one eye swollen almost shut the effect was a little spoiled. “I’d say it was nice seeing you again, but you’re a real bitch.”

I jumped down after him, but he just stepped back before I even reached the edge of the stage, disappearing into the press of bodies leaving the grounds. I shoved past the pony in front of me, trying to spot Ace again, but he was gone.

“Dangit,” I muttered. “Sorry, Berry Punch. I was just-- never mind.” I didn’t even feel like coming up with a lie. “Lyra?”

She shook her head.

“I can’t see him either,” she said.

I gave the crowd one last look. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter 8

“So, that’s five,” Lyra said. “How many are there?”

She was trying to make the two shards we had fit together, but no matter how she turned them, the edges didn’t quite match.

“I don’t know. That’s half the problem.” I sighed and picked up a different scroll. I had to give Princess Twilight some credit - her research was really thorough and her hornwriting was impeccable. I could read every individual word perfectly, even if I couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was actually trying to say.

“Maybe we should just like, drop the ones we have in a bucket of concrete and then throw the bucket into Tartarus,” Lyra sighed. “If they’re important to these ponies, getting rid of them should mess up their plans, right?”

“That depends on what their plan is,” I said. “Maybe they don’t need every single shard. Plus, we need these shards for your tracking spell. If more show up and we don’t know where or when, ponies could get hurt.”

“I hate not having clear answers,” Lyra said. “Is this a bad time to ask if you’ve thought about telling Twilight?”

“I thought about it.”

“And?”

I took a deep breath. “We’ll tell her. That last fight was… the whole town was trapped by that monster. If something had gone wrong, I don’t know what would have happened to those ponies. The GOC might want these Nightmare Shards, but they haven’t even been trying to defeat the Phobias.”

Lyra smiled. “Great! I was really worried, Bonnie. I love you, but other ponies are more important than pride.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, smiling weakly. “I don’t look forward to answering all the questions she’s going to have, but I guess she’s technically allowed to know any classified information I have.”

“Unlike me,” Lyra pointed out.

“You know, there was actually a clause in the SECT charter about spouses and marefriends,” I said. “Too bad I couldn’t get you sworn in before Celestia disavowed us.”

Lyra smiled. “You know, I could get in at the Guild of Buskers, Street Magicians, and Escorts. Then we could be part of my secret society. You only get kicked out if you reveal a trick to a non-member.”

“Do you mean card tricks, or the kind escorts do?”

“Let’s just say there are things you can do with a grapefruit no non-member is allowed to discover.”

“I don’t even want to know.”

Distantly, I heard the clock tower strike eight.

“I need to go open the store,” I said. “Are you going to be okay here?”

Lyra shrugged. “Sure. I’ll go over Twilight’s notes again to see if I can figure anything out. If the tracking spell picks anything up, the first thing I’ll do is come get you, I promise.”

“Good. I love my smart marefriend.” I kissed her on the cheek and ran out the door. Even secret agents had to pay bills.

I liked working in my little store. Making candy helped me get my mind off things. It was a form of meditation, heating sugar syrup just the right amount, adding just so much color, a touch of citric acid, a twist of flavor. It wasn’t like the candy you’d get at Barnyard Bargains, made in a factory by ponies whose special talents involved pulling levers and pushing buttons all day.

I emptied the copper kettle onto the cooling table and let it sit for a bit. This batch was tangerine, which to a discerning pony was considerably different than a mere orange. It needed to be tart and sweet and just a little more refined. Then I brought out the bench scrapers and started working the cooling mass.

Something I’ve never been asked (but I wish somepony would ask because it’s one of those conversations I’ve had in my head a hundred times) is how a world-class secret agent could also be a world-class candymaker. Both professions take a huge amount of work, and there’s almost no overlap between them.

It all has to do with the time I got my cutie mark. Ironically, at the time I was trying to make a sandwich--

The door burst open in the middle of my internal monologue.

“We’re not open for another hour,” I called out. “If that’s you, Derpy, just leave the packages next to the counter.”

“Bon-bon?” Princess Twilight called out.

“I’m in the kitchen,” I said. “Sorry, I’m working with hard candy right now, so I can’t leave it for long.”

Things were nearly silent for a few seconds, and I could hear the hesitation in the quiet.

“Now, you need to stay calm and listen,” she started. I dropped the bench scraper I was holding and stormed out. When somepony was telling you to stay calm it was because they knew you were about to be very un-calm.

“What happened?” I demanded.

Twilight cleared her throat and scratched her foreleg nervously. “I know this is going to sound bad, but do you remember when I warned you about Lyra the other day? We need to bring her in to answer a few questions.”

“We?” I glanced over at the door. Two of Ace’s fake guards were standing there.

“She’s connected to all this, and it’s important to find out how. It’s going to be fine. Commander Ace went to speak with her himself--”

“You did what?!”

She furrowed her brow. “I took the time to come down here and talk to you myself because I knew you’d be upset. Bon-Bon, Lyra is one of my old friends but--”

“You dumb bucking mule!” I snapped. Twilight’s ears folded back. “Ace isn’t a real Royal Guard!”

“Now I understand you’re upset so I’m not going to get mad at you for calling me names--”

I shoved her aside, and she hit the wall, a jar of lemon drops shattering at her hooves. I stormed over to the guards standing next to my front door.

“You can get out of the way or you can regret it,” I warned them.

“Bon-bon, you need to stop!” Twilight yelled. Princess Twilight. Just by shoving her like that, I’d committed a pretty serious crime. “We can go together and get this all sorted out!”

I was losing too much time. Ace had sent her here to keep her from knowing what he was doing and to delay me. All he’d really done was taunt me enough to get me really mad.

The jar of caramels was next to me. I grabbed it and threw it at one of the guards. It shattered against the hoof he raised to protect his face. Both of them flinched when glass shards exploded everywhere.

Mercenaries and soldiers were very different, and don’t let a merc lie to you and tell you otherwise. A mercenary only fought when it meant profit. Their first instinct was to retreat from overwhelming force.

I grabbed the hoof the first pony was holding up and threw him backwards over my shoulder. I wasn’t a unicorn, so I couldn’t sense the spell coming, but you develop a kind of intuition about things when you’ve been a field agent long enough. He took Twilight’s stun spell for me with a loud yelp.

“Thanks!” I yelled to both him and the Princess. They’d done great work solving each other as problems. The second guard grabbed for a baton and came out swinging with, really, surprising discipline considering he was here in unfamiliar gear and trying to pretend to be an actual Royal Guard.

He probably didn’t expect me to use his height to my advantage. I ducked down inside his swing and reared up, headbutting his chin. The helmets were great protection against stray rocks and sticks, not so much for a hit to the jaw. He crumpled. If there hadn’t been an alicorn just about literally on my tail, I would have stopped to grab his baton.

I kicked open my own front door and ducked and rolled out of it, trying to avoid any stray stun spells even if I was pretty sure Twilight wasn’t going to try it again after a little friendly fire.

The house wasn’t far from the shop. Our house. A few years ago I’d been living above the shop and Lyra had spent half her nights in hotels and the other half crashing on couches or the local Guild hall. We’d gotten it together, so I could stop living in an attic and she could have a real roof over her head.

And now the front door was lying in the street.

Two ponies in gold armor dragged Lyra outside.

“Lyra!” I shouted, bolting for her.

She saw me and tried to fight her way free, but she was a musician and scholar, exactly the sort of pony these mercenaries felt safe marehandling. One of them punched her in the side, knocking the wind out of her.

“Get away from her!” I yelled.

If I’d been thinking clearly I might have remembered that there was an alicorn on my tail. I don’t know if moving serpentine would have actually helped, but maybe I would have at least avoided the stun spell that hit me in the back and knocked me to the ground in a twitching mess.

“Lyra…” I groaned.

A pony stepped over me, smirking down at me.

“That’s a good look for you,” Ace whispered so only I could hear it. “Down in the dirt where you belong. This is what happens when you decide to interfere in my ops.”

“Is she okay?” Twilight asked. “I wasn’t sure how much it would take to stun her, so I sort of--”

“She’s fine,” Ace assured her, looking for all the world like a caring, responsible civil servant. “You did well, Princess.”

“And you’re sure Lyra is the pony behind it all?” Twilight asked. I was half-sure she was doing it here because she wanted me to hear it. The way she looked down at me only confirmed that.

“You saw what was in the basement,” Ace said. “Parts of Nightmare Moon’s armor, spell circles dedicated to tracking them down, that research she tricked poor Bon-Bon into gathering for her… really, it’s just so much evidence I don’t think anypony could come to another conclusion.”

“But she was one of my first friends…” Twilight muttered.

“And that’s why we’re going to treat her gently and get all our questions answered before we make any decisions,” Ace said.

“I’ll go with you. She might talk to me.”

Ace shook his head. “I’m sorry, Princess, but you’re too close to her. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.”

“What about Bon-Bon?” Twilight asked. “She’s just caught up in all this. It’s not her fault.”

Ace rubbed his chin. “Put her in the local jail. It’s better to separate them anyway. Once she cools down, you can explain things to her. It’s a bad situation, but like you said, it’s not her fault.” He looked down at me and smiled, then fired his own stun spell right between my eyes.

I woke up with an awful headache. A real guard might have at least pretended they weren’t just shooting spells at helpless ponies. Ace wanted me unconscious instead of just stunned. If Princess Twilight hadn’t been there, I probably wouldn’t be waking up at all.

Not that I was happy about where I woke up.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been in Ponyville Jail, but last time I’d been bailing Lyra out. The cot was even less comfortable than it looked. I pulled myself to my hooves and trotted over to the bars, rattling them. They were too strong for me to break. At least there wasn’t a guard standing there to deliver some sarcastic message about the GOC’s evil plan and how I’d fallen right into their clutches.

Instead, and this was even worse, after a few hours spent alone and wondering if I was going to end up dying of thirst, I had a personal visit from royalty.

I would have been flattered if I wasn’t thinking about strangling her.

“So, first,” Princess Twilight started. “I wanted to tell you I forgive you. I know you wouldn’t normally attack me, and you were worried about somepony you care about.”

I folded my hooves and said nothing.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Because I didn’t want you to get in trouble for a misunderstanding, I contacted Princess Celestia to ask her about a pardon. I was… somewhat surprised by her reply.”

I glared through the bars. Twilight pulled out a scroll, holding it like a shield between us.

“As it turns out… she didn’t actually assign any guards to Ponyville,” Twilight said, laughing nervously, her ears flat back. “Which means they were… fakes. Which you knew about before I did.”

She fiddled with the parchment, rolling and unrolling it like it was going to change what was written on it.

“So it turns out that Lyra might have been kidnapped,” Twilight said. “And it might be slightly my fault. But in my defense, you didn’t explain anything, and they had paperwork that looked really official, and I thought they were guards!”

“And?” I asked. Twilight jumped a little at the sound of my voice.

“Princess Celestia also said… I should just listen to you and do whatever you say.” Twilight frowned. “She knew you by name, which is a little weird. Not that she doesn’t know a lot of ponies or that you’re not important, it’s just that you make candy, and that’s not really--”

“Just open the bucking cell,” I sighed.

“Oh, right. I just have to--”

I watched her struggle for a few moments. “It’s a magic-proof lock. The keys are behind you.”

“Haha, right,” Twilight laughed. “Otherwise unicorns could just walk right out, couldn’t they?”

I rattled the bars pointedly.

Twilight fumbled with the keys and eventually let me out. Most of the time I really liked Princess Twilight. Aside from having saved the world once or twice, she was among the rare members of royalty that didn’t throw their title around. When she wasn’t responsible for stun-spell hangovers she was even pretty good company.

“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”

I started trotting away. She lost a few seconds to her need for neatness, putting the keys back where she’d found them and closing the cell door.

“So…” Twilight said, when she’d caught up. She was such a smart pony but she couldn’t take a hint.

“I already thanked you for opening the door.”

“No, I mean, what are we doing? What’s the plan? I’ve got the girls ready back at the castle and-- Bon-Bon? The castle is in the other direction.”

“I’m not going to the castle,” I said. “And you’re not coming with me.”

“Whatever happened, it’s my fault, and I want to help,” Twilight said. “Please? I need to at least try to make this right. Lyra is my friend and--”

“You didn’t act like it.”

My front door was still lying in the street where the mercenaries had left it. Nopony had even bothered moving it. They’d just gone around it, pretending it wasn’t there. Inside wasn’t much better. Ace had clearly told them to have a little fun. Just about everything they could break was broken.

“I didn’t…” Twilight hesitated. “I can fix all this! I know some spells--”

I ignored her and went upstairs. The pulldown stairs for the attic were still shut, so they probably hadn’t bothered going in there. I yanked the cord and stormed up there while Princess Twilight was busy throwing magic around.

Thankfully, what I needed was still there. I grabbed the old hatbox and brushed a layer of dust off the top before taking it down with me.

Twilight had just about gotten the hoofprint-covered door back on its hinges.

I pulled the kitchen table upright and sat the box down on top of it, opening it up and removing the contents. I didn’t need the darts or the tiny injector, so they went to the side. A thin book was under them, and I pulled that free.

“What is that?” Twilight asked.

“It’s what I need to find Lyra,” I muttered, opening the book. The pages had the slightly unpleasant, plasticy feel of waterproofing. The first few were instructions on how to use the injector, the next were on how to figure out if someone had used one on you. In the middle of the book was what I really wanted - a slick-surfaced map of Equestria, with a few dots scattered over it.

“These are enchanted,” Twilight noted, picking up one of the darts. “Where did you even get them?”

“They were standard-issue,” I said absently. “The dart is for targets at range, the injector is for close-in work. They inject a small metal chip under the skin for tracking.”

“You implanted a tracking chip in your marefriend?!”

“It’s called being a good, thoughtful partner!” I snapped.

Twilight sucked air between her teeth but, very wisely, didn’t refute that.

“Besides, you’ve got an embedded tracker too,” I said.

“What?!” Twilight sputtered and looked at her own flank. “Where? When?!”

“Celestia’s personal students always get one,” I told her. I went over the scattered dots on the map and found the one I was looking for and groaned when I saw where it was. Twilight tried to look over my shoulder. I closed the book. I hated ponies doing that. It was bad for operational security, and it was just plain rude.

“So, where are we going next?”

“You go get your friends and stay in the castle,” I said. “I didn’t want you involved in the first place. Lyra was the one who wanted to tell you about everything.”

Twilight frowned. “Doing things alone is a mistake. Celestia wanted me to listen to you, but I’m sure she meant to help you, not just get out of the way and make you do it yourself.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“Maybe. But I want to help, and I don’t want Lyra to get hurt because you’re being stubborn.”

That made me match her frown. I was being stubborn. She was one of Equestria’s greatest heroes and I was refusing her help because… why? Because somepony I knew was a manipulative jerk had tricked her? Because Celestia had hung me out to dry and I didn’t want help from any Princess?

Probably that last thing.

“Okay. You’re right,” I sighed. “You get your friends, I’ll find an airship.”

“An airship? Why do we need an airship? Bon-bon? Bon-bon!"

Chapter 2

Drowning in boiling wax was probably one of the least pleasant ways to die. The G4 armor was protecting me pretty well from the heat and suffocation, but I had no leverage and I’d never really learned to swim, especially not against a thick, sticky current like this. The wax was cooling around me, forming a crunchy, candy-like shell. Or maybe more like a fly caught in amber? I couldn't help but go right for the candy comparison.

I was never going to be able to explain this to Lyra. Literally. Since I'd be buried alive. Maybe my ghost would haunt her and pass along a message. I’d met a few ghosts, and they didn’t seem to have it all that bad. No Elysian Fields, sure, but you got to spy on your friends and family and occasionally throw a teacup or something.

My poltergeist planning session was interrupted by a sudden tug, like gravity suddenly going in another direction. I recognized it instantly - telekinesis, and from a fairly strong unicorn. Was I about to be exposed in front of the Princess’ student? I just hoped it wasn't Trixie. I couldn't bear it if I owed Trixie my life.

“Oh wow,” said a familiar voice, though I couldn’t see anything with my face covered in muck. “I hope that’s not stuck to your mane.”

The wax sheath around me cracked, and I was suddenly able to move, struggling in midair against yellow magic. It blinked out, and I dropped to the ground, exhausted and unable to stand. I tugged the helmet free, and the suit unraveled, dissolving into tiny lights as the Sol fibers broke down into ambient magical energy.

“I’m starting to remember why I was enjoying my retirement,” I mumbled, staring up at the sky until Lyra stepped over me, blocking my wonderful view of the clouds.

“You okay?” She frowned. “You look kinda… loopy.”

“I’ve been having a bad day,” I sighed. “How did you find me?”

“The magic of love,” Lyra said. I glared at her, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. I put a tracking spell on you so I could watch you kick some flank. Unfortunately…” she coughed. “You sort of got your plot punted, Bonnie.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. Then a memory hit me like a brick. “Daisy!”

“What about her?” Lyra asked.

I rolled my eyes and ran upstream. “I have to make sure she’s okay!”

The flower pony was curled up on the grass where I’d left her.

“I guess Gerson didn’t care about her…” I muttered. It wasn’t like Glee to leave a potential witness or victim alone in the woods, but it also wasn’t like her to betray Equestria and join our enemies, so maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought.

“Is she alive?” Lyra asked. Before answering, I checked her pulse. It was strong but slow, and she was covered in sweat.

“She’s unconscious.” I looked off to the side, where I’d dropped my saddlebags. Lyra saw where I was looking and grabbed them with her magic, dragging them closer. We’d been friends for so long that it was like we could read each other’s minds sometimes.

I grabbed my canteen from one of the bags and emptied it over Daisy’s face. She woke up almost instantly, sputtering and panicked.

“Spiders!” She screamed, flailing with her hooves. I grabbed her, holding her still until the last remnants of the nightmare faded. “W-what happened? Where am I?” She looked around.

“You were…” I paused. My old training kicked in. “You were sleepwalking. We saw you walking into the woods.”

“Sleepwalking?” She started to calm down. That was good. “So all of that was a dream…” She took a deep breath, relaxing. “Thank Celestia! That was such a terrible nightmare! And… in the middle of the day?” She frowned, looking up at the blue sky.

“I guess you don’t normally sleepwalk?” I said. “Did you… do or see anything strange?”

“I remember I was looking for wildflowers in Whitetail Woods,” Daisy said, thinking. I helped her sit up. “Some ponies prefer wild-grown flowers over farmed ones, you know? So I can charge a premium for them! I found these great looking zinnias in a really strange blue color, growing in this little crater. I ate one to make sure it was okay, and then I saw something shiny in the middle of the patch and then…” Daisy shook her head. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

“Those flowers must have been bad news,” Lyra said, noticing my expression. “How about we help you get to the hospital and they can make sure it’s all out of your system?”

Daisy nodded weakly, and we started back into town. I kept looking over my shoulder, half-expecting Glee to show up and finish the job.

“You could go to the Princess,” Lyra suggested.

“Which one?” I asked.

“Celestia,” Lyra said.

“She disbanded SECT. She wouldn’t be too happy I was still hanging onto government property and, technically, disobeying a direct order.”

“Twilight, then. She fights monsters all the time.”

“She worships the ground Celestia walks on. That’s the same as telling Celestia, just with extra steps.”

Lyra groaned. “Luna, whatever! If Nightmare stuff is involved, she should be--”

“Kept away from it,” I said. “She could be vulnerable to possession!” I shivered. “That could even be their endgame! Bring back Nightmare Moon to destabilize Equestria!”

“Ooookay…” Lyra looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“You don’t know the GOC like I do. They’ve done lots of awful things. They tried to start famines, ruined crops, once they even tried to bring the windigos back to Equestria!”

“Cadance?” Lyra asked. "Not asking if she's a windigo, just saying we could tell her."

“It’ll take too long to get word to the Crystal Empire,” I said.

“Well great, I'm out of ideas unless you want to staple a horn to Derpy and make her the Princess of Muffins.” Lyra huffed.

“I have to take care of it myself,” I said. “It’s the only option.”

“It’s not the only option, you’re just being stubborn!” Lyra said, standing up.

“Take care of what?” Pinkie Pie asked. She hadn’t been at the end of the table a moment ago, but she was there now.

Oh right. Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten into an argument at Sugarcube Corner. After getting my flank kicked I just needed something sweet, you know? I had two milkshakes in front of me already, and Pinkie had a third in her hooves. It wasn’t even the first time this had happened. Not as awkward as when she appeared at our breakfast table, at least. Or the time she thought I was pregnant.

“Work stuff,” I said. “It’s no big deal. I just had a bad day and Lyra is… helping me cope.”

“That’s good!” Pinkie smiled. “You two make a cute couple!”

That was silly, of course. Lyra and I were just best friends. Best friends that lived together and slept in the same bed and sometimes--

The important thing is that neither of us had actually proposed yet, so we filed taxes separately.

“Thanks, Pinkie,” I said, not wanting to start an argument. She bounced away, taking one of the empty glasses with her.

“You’re going to get fat,” Lyra noted.

“I got a lot of exercise today,” I replied. “Look, all I have to do is find Gerson, find Glee, stop them from doing whatever they’re doing, and make sure nopony finds out. It’s easy.” I hesitated. “Yeah. Easy. I can do it.”

I couldn’t do it, and all of Equestria was doomed. How was I supposed to stop one of Equestria’s greatest heroes? Glee Club had saved Equestria a dozen times without stepping out of the shadows, and she’d taught me everything I knew.

Not everything she knew, clearly, given how easily she’d beaten me.

The Fortress of Friendship, the Castle of Magical Acquaintances with Benefits, Twilight Sparkle’s Demesne. Or as some of us had taken to calling it, the crystal eyesore that had lowered all of our property values. I was standing right at the doorway. All it would take was one knock, a quick explanation, and she and her friends would go off and save the world. I didn’t even need to be involved.

She was the real reason SECT was gone, after all. Twilight Sparkle and the Elements had clearly always been meant as our successors, and they’d defeated foes that SECT would never have stood a chance against. Nightmare Moon, Tirek, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, terrible threats to the stability of Equestria.

I didn’t even need to knock. Just a short letter would do. I could even preserve my anonymity. It’s what Princess Celestia would do. Had done.

Lyra would be disappointed. She really wanted to think of me as a hero, and she just got so excited about things sometimes. I knocked on the door. It was the stupid thing to do but I was just full of stupid ideas.

“Hello?” Spike opened the door. I briefly wondered if a baby dragon could help, and if he'd be able to resist the urge to tell everypony what was going on. “Oh hey! You’re Lyra’s friend, right?”

“Best friend,” I agreed, smiling. “Is Princess Sparkle in?”

“Yeah, she’s just in the lab. Well, actually, I think it’s supposed to be a ballroom, but she moved all her lab equipment in there because ‘science is more important than dancing.’” He scratched his head. “Do you want me to get her?”

“Not if she’s busy,” I said. “Do you think she’d mind if I used her library? I need to do some research and Canterlot is pretty far away.”

“As long as you put the books back,” Spike frowned. “I already have to reshelve enough with Twilight. You’d think she could manage it herself, what with having all the power of a goddess and telekinesis and teleportation, but no, I have to do it with my bare claws. Do you know dragons can still get papercuts?”

“No I, um, didn’t know that,” I admitted, forcing myself to keep smiling.

“I didn’t either until the first time I was in a bookalanche. I couldn’t tell which way was up and I was worried I’d have to start eating pages from the thesaurus just to stay alive!”

“The library, though?” I prompted, interrupting his story. He sighed and waved for me to follow him.

An hour later I’d found a lot of books and had more questions than answers. Celestia had almost erased Nightmare Moon from history at some point in the past, and her deliberate sabotage along with the passing of a thousand years made it almost impossible to get any real information.

“You’d think they’d put all the relevant information somewhere just in case it was needed,” I mumbled, as I flipped a page. It was a book on magical armor, though it didn’t have anything on shattered bits of an ancient godlike creature’s barding.

“Bon-Bon? What are you doing here?” Asked a voice from directly behind me. I shot up to attention as Twilight looked past me at the books that were open in front of me. “Ancient Equestrian Myths, Encyclopedia Magicka, The Spookytime Ledgers- what’s all this about?”

“Well…” I hesitated. I could still just tell her. She gave me a confused look. Was it treason if I lied to her? She was a Princess now, and it was usually treason to lie to royalty.

Then again, she was indirectly responsible for me losing my last job.

“I was researching Nightmare Moon,” I said. “For candy reasons.”

Candy reasons. Good work, Sweetie Drops. No wonder you never got promoted into management.

“Oh right, Nightmare Night is coming up in… two and a half months?”

“Right!” I said, grasping onto the rope she’d thrown me to pull myself out of the hole I’d dug. “For Nightmare Night. I thought reading into the ancient legends would give me some inspiration.”

“But magical armor? And… possession magic?” Twilight frowned. I was going to have to think fast to make sure she didn’t suspect anything.

“Twilight,” I said, cutting her off, deliberately not using her title. She might remember that she could give me an order if I used her title. “Surely you agree that accurate and detailed research is important to any endeavor?”

“Well of course it is!” Twilight agreed, nodding quickly.

“Then you know I need any information you have on Nightmare Moon, her armor, and any other Nightmare-related magic. And you can’t tell Celestia or Luna. It’s…”

“A Nightmare Night surprise?” Twilight guessed.

“That sounds great!” I said, patting her shoulder. “I knew you’d understand. Also don’t tell your friends.”

There wasn’t much point in staying while the finely-tuned fact machine called Twilight Sparkle was on the job. Worse, I’d already had to lie to her and I was halfway sure that was technically treason. So, I found something else I could do that would help pass the time and get something useful done.

“...Why are you digging a hole?” Golden Harvest asked, as she looked over the fence into my backyard.

“I’m putting in a garden,” I said, though with the shovel in my mouth that was muffled a little. I hated digging holes. I wasn’t sure why we were called earth ponies when we were clearly not built for actual earth moving.

“That’s kind of deep for a garden,” Golden Harvest said, skeptical. “That hole’s deep enough to bury somepony.” She paused, I moved more dirt out of the growing hole. “Did you kill somepony? Was it Lyra? Because she’s kind of annoying and if you need help moving a body, I can totally keep quiet.”

I stopped what I was doing to look at her.

Golden kept going, despite the look on my face. “I mean, she’s cute, I guess, but you deserve better. Maybe somepony who has toned flanks from working for a living, who knows what it’s like to grow up in Ponyville…”

“Goldie, I didn’t grow up in Ponyville.”

“Well, still, you know. If you ever need company.” She winked.

The back door opened, and Lyra trotted out, with two drinks.

“Hi Carrot Top!” Lyra smiled, waving.

“Oh, yes. Hi, Lyra. That's still not my name.” Golden Harvest frowned. “I’ll just… be going, then.”

“You know, she’s kind of grumpy but she has nice flanks,” Lyra commented. She passed one of the glasses over to me and I grabbed it, draining the lemonade. Digging was thirsty work. “So why are you digging a hole? Is it a trap? For a monster?”

“No, Lyra,” I sighed. “I just… buried a few things here.”

“Is it a corpse?”

“Why does everypony think I kill ponies and bury them in my backyard?” I growled and started digging again, the tip of my shovel finally hitting something more solid than dirt. I dropped it and started moving dirt with my hooves.

“You’re just grumpy sometimes,” Lyra shrugged. “And what else would you bury? Unless… is it treasure? I bet it’s treasure!” She clapped her hooves in excitement as she looked in and saw the rectangular shape I was outlining.

“It’s--” I sighed. “Just help me with this.” I stepped aside and let her grab it with her magic, pulling it free and dropping it on the lawn.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had buried treasure?” Lyra asked.

“It’s not treasure.” I pulled myself out of the hole with some difficulty and looked at what we’d uncovered, pulling away the tarp I’d wrapped around the old footlocker. There was a big tear in it, probably from one of the dozens of disasters that seemed to strike Ponyville on a regular basis. The metal locker was rusted, and I was starting to feel worried.

“Then what is it? More secret spy stuff?” She looked over my shoulder as I checked the locker.

“I thought it was too dangerous to keep weapons in the house,” I explained. “And it felt right to bury them, you know? Like somepony in need would find them in a hundred years.” I sighed. “Instead I needed them in less than ten.”

“The box looks pretty messed up,” Lyra noted.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, though I was definitely not sure. I hadn’t bothered locking the box - anypony who had a shovel and a strong enough back to get to it already had the tools and strength to just lever it open, so it seemed pretty pointless. I flipped the catches open and lifted the lid, only to be greeted with a musty smell of rust and rot.

“Horseapples,” I mumbled. There had been all sorts of useful things in there. A mouthblade, a flail, and even a crossbow. Had been. Now there were just scraps lying in a puddle of rusty water and mud. I picked up the crossbow to look at it, and the entire mechanism fell off of the handle, falling back into the water with a spash that sent very unpleasant water splattering onto my face.

“...It’s junk, Bonnie,” Lyra said.

“Yes, Lyra,” I grumbled, trying to find something that was still useful. The edge on the blade was still okay, a thick layer of grease having protected it in the sheath, but the wooden handle had cracked away from the tang. The flail had suffered almost as badly, the three chained balls twisted together and screeching as they moved. The crossbow was a total write-off.

I slammed the trunk shut.

“I’m guessing it wasn’t like that before?” Lyra asked.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to fight monsters bare-hooved.” I sighed, kicking the trunk in frustration.

“I could help!” Lyra said. I gave her a very skeptical look. “Building instruments was part of the advanced magical music course I took at the school for gifted unicorns. I built my own lyre, you know.”

I looked at where it was sitting in its stand. It was, admittedly, very well-made.

“Okay, and it does look good, but there’s a big difference between building a guitar and building a weapon,” I said.

“Remember Mare Do Well?” Lyra asked.

“How could I forget,” I muttered. Rumors were that at least two or three ponies were still operating under the identity across Equestria. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to thank them or punch them out. Maybe I was just jealous that they still got to live the dream of being a hero.

“Back in Canterlot, we had somepony like her named El Kabong! She would swoop out of nowhere and bash evil-doers with her trusty combat guitar! I actually saw her a couple of times. Fighting for the weak and unprivileged, stealing from the rich to give to the poor!” Lyra swooned. I could see why she was so excited about me wearing a mask now.

“Right. El Kabong…” I frowned. The name was vaguely familiar. Not as famous as the Mare Do Well these days, at least in Ponyville. I’d read a few stories but never bothered really looking into it. A lot of ponies naturally had a hero complex, though most of them went into the Guard.

“The point is, I know how to work metal and wood, and I know some spells that might help repair some of the damage.” She picked up the box. “Just wait! It’s gonna be great!”

“I won’t hold my breath.” I sighed and started pushing the dirt back into the hole.