Anon rolled his green head around and around on his green neck, wincing and grinning in alternation as the vertebrae of his spine crackled audibly. “Oh, yeah. That’s the spot.”
“Um,” said Lyra, nervously, as she cautiously approached. “Anon?”
He looked down at her — though looked was a strong word for it, given that he had no eyes — and as always, she flinched back a little from the sight of that horrifying question-mark face.
“What’s up?” His tone was jovial, as though there was nothing the matter.
As though he wasn’t standing atop a pile of bodies.
Lyra swallowed. “Well…it’s just…”
She tailed off, and Anon sighed. “Come on, Lyra. Spit it out.”
“Well…” Lyra summoned all her courage, and tried to do as he said. Best just to spit it all out, and deliver the disagreeable truth all at once. “Here in Equestria, we — we don’t really like to kill things.”
“Really?” he sounded surprised. “I mean, I guess that makes sense. Vegetarians and all. But what about the prophecy? These guys were the baddies?”
Lyra compressed her lips. “I guess, but like…they weren’t that bad. They were pretty scary, but they were just big rabbits.”
“Really?” Anon stooped down and grabbed one by its pustule-covered ears. “This thing is just a big rabbit?”
Its bloodshot eyes glared sightlessly into Lyra’s, narrowed into slits of hatred. The mouth was an open festering sore: punctured in a dozen places by its own overgrown fangs, thick dark blood oozing from the wounds.
Lyra edged back from the gruesome creature, nearly as big as she was. “It started off as one, anyway.”
“Until the Bunny Plague got it,” said Anon easily, dropping it again. It flopped back to the pile of its fallen brethren with a horrible squishing sound. “And then I got it. Just like the prophecy foretold.”
“Well, yeah.” Lyra paused. “But it’s just when Princess Celestia summoned you, she kind of thought that you’d…have a special magic or something to turn them back. Or that you’d have the power to command them to stop rampaging or something. Not that you’d just…” she blanched again and gestured at the battlefield, littered with diseased corpses.
Anon scoffed. “Oh, come on. You ought to be grateful. I just saved Equestria! These little bastards would have been at the gates of Canterlot before the end of the week.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“—I mean, why didn’t you say something before now?” Anon demanded. “You could have said ‘hang on’ at literally any point.”
“Not really,” snapped Lyra. “I tried, but you just screamed and ripped the head off another one. I’ve been hiding behind that boulder for the last three hours because I wasn’t sure you weren’t going to rip my head off.”
“Hey!” Anon crossed his arms, the upper curve of the question mark lowering as he glared at her.“I wouldn’t have done that! I love ponies.”
“Bon Bon was right about this assignment.” Lyra sounded close to tears now. “I never should have applied.”
His teeth audibly snapping together, Anon loomed over her. “Oh, yeah? But then you’d never have met me. Your best friend, remember?”
Lyra took a single step backwards, but her jaw jutted out, and she held his gaze. “I’m not so sure I want to be your friend after all.”
“No,” snarled Anon, “But if you’re not my friend then you’re never going to see these again!” And he raised both his hands, uncurling the ten green fingers and brandishing them in her face.
Though the threat of violence had not cowed her, Lyra did pale a little at that. She did love hands. All those tendons, all those tiny bones. So endlessly dextrous and moveable. Better than magic, almost. If there had been a way to trade in her horn — or a way to remove the hands from the human and keep their friendship and not his — but no. That could never be. And the way she had seen those hands used; not to peel an orange or whittle a wooden sculpture, as she had dreamed — but to rip and rend. She had seen Anon plunge one of those moss-coloured hands into the chest of a monster-rabbit and pull out its still-beating heart. She had seen him pry the eyes from their agonised sockets. She had watched him tear them limb from limb.
Not even the fact he had hands was enough to save their friendship.
“I don’t care,” she said, marvelling at her own bravery. To think that she was speaking this way to the creature that had murdered an army!
Anon’s lips parted in a snarl more feral than any that had ever distorted the face of a monster-bunny, and he took another step toward her. “Is that so?”
Lyra gulped and tried to remember if she knew any shielding spells.
A strange noise — like a crack of thunder, almost, though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky — made them both turn toward it. A purple-blue laceration in the sky splintered outwards, growing and spreading, until finally it cracked open like an egg, revealing a mess of spiralling colours and a mish-mash creature stepping out from within.
“Oh, Celestia! Where are you?” the strange creature carolled, and Anon stared in shocked silence up at it standing on thin air.
“Discord?” Lyra called up to it, and it immediately popped out of existence before reappearing at her side.
“Ah, the tooth pony! How are you? Fluttershy sends her best wishes, but she’s still enjoying a little relaxation time after all the stress of post-vacation travel.”
He grinned toothily down at her, and Lyra reluctantly smiled back.
“Not the dentist, Discord. That’s Minuette. I’m the harp one.” She turned to show him her cutie mark. “Lyra, remember?”
“Ah yes, of course.” He didn’t sound as though he particularly cared. “Where’s Celestia? I thought she’d be here, enjoying the Discord’s-on-vacation gift I left her.”
There was a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of Lyra’s stomach. “Discord, you don’t mean…were the rabbits your fault?”
He pressed a hand to his chest as though wounded. “My fault? No, dear Lyra, they were my pleasure.”
“Discord,” said Lyra, with lips that felt numb. “Ponies were hurt by the rabbits.”
Discord frowned. “Did nopony work out the tummy-tickle rabbit reset I built in? I thought that’d be the first thing you’d try.”
There had been a reset? Lyra thought of the lives lost, the hospitals filled with the wounded — and her heart twisted in her chest. “We — we didn’t know what to do. Celestia had to go to the Oraculum. There was a prophecy.”
“Yes,” Anon interjected, muscling forward, “Which I fulfilled.”
Discord turned towards the primate, taking notice of him for the first time. “What is…that?”
His chest puffing outward, Anon stuck out a hand to be shaken. “I’m Anonymous. Anon to my friends.”
“Celestia had to call in outside help,” Lyra whispered. “Interdimensional help. And he…”
Mutely, Discord turned to follow her pointing hoof. And finally, he took in the whole scene. Lyra, the alien, and the pile of mutated, deceased bunnies. The colour left his face — literally drained away, dripping onto the floor beneath his feet. He turned back to Lyra, a washed-out grey shadow of himself. “Are those all of the rabbits?”
“Yes,” said Lyra and Anon at the same time. One spoke with sorrow, and one with pride.
Discord began to physically shrink. “It was supposed to be a present. A little parting gift for Celly — and a way to keep dear Angel and his friends entertained while we were away. He does so often tell Fluttershy how much he’d like to be big and strong. So I thought — two birds with one stone. A little chaos, a little destruction, Angel has fun, Celestia gets to be a hero again, and everyone’s happy. ”
“You’re welcome,” Anon beamed.
“Oh dear,” Discord murmured, as though he hadn’t heard. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. She isn’t going to be happy. She isn’t going to be happy at all.”
“Celestia will be pleased,” Anon said stoutly. “I did exactly what she wanted. I solved the problem.”
“You’d better get going,” Discord said to Lyra. “You don’t want to be here when this goes down. Home to Fun Fun?”
“Bon Bon,” corrected Lyra, but she nodded.
A snap of his fingers, and she was gone.
“And me…I think I’d better not be here either,” Discord muttered. “Let her get it out of her system, and we’ll talk later, when she’s calm. After I’ve resurrected Angel.” He scanned the pile of dead rabbits with nervous, quick movements. “Let’s see, let’s see…ah!” He snatched up one of the malformed purple brutes and threw it over his shoulder.
“Hey!” Anon said indignantly. “Where are you going? What about me?”
Discord hardly spared him a glance. “That’s really none of my concern, but if I were you…I’d start running.”
“Where’s Lyra gone?” Anon asked plaintively, but his only answer was the report of Discord’s final finger-snap — and then he and the rabbit corpse were gone.
“This isn’t fair!” Anon complained, to the empty grassland and the pile of bodies. “I’m a hero!”
There was no answer.
“I am,” he insisted. “I want the medal Celestia promised me.”
He turned toward the direction in which Canterlot lay, a half-baked plan of walking there and demanding his medal clearly forming in his mind, but before he could take a step —
A crack of thunder sounded, and yet another rip in the spacetime continuum opened. And from it stepped a shape, dark and terrible, a wind springing up from nowhere to whip the tangled pink strands of hair back from its face.
“Where,” it said, in a voice that should have been gentle and melodious, yet somehow set every nerve ending in Anon’s body afire with the warning that this thing was a predator, this thing was dangerous, and he needed to run — “Where is my Angel Bunny?”
