“Another on your left!” Bon Bon called as she dropped to the floor, sliding below the robot’s punch and twisting to unleash a powerful kick, crushing the delicate electronics inside its torso. At least Agent Furlong’s briefing had been accurate about that much, even if it had vastly underestimated how many of them there were.
“On it!” Across the room, three mirrors flashed in the too-bright fluorescent lights as Lyra’s magic kept them busily deflecting every laser the two – now three – robots surrounding her shot at –
Another laser flashed past, singeing Bon Bon’s mane. She cursed internally as she whirled – how many times had Agent Furlong told her that getting distracted would get her killed? He’d never let her live it down if he turned out to be right – and uppercut the next nearest attacker.
Several hectic minutes later, she and Lyra were the only ones left standing, their chests heaving from the exertion.
Bon Bon sidled around a sparking wreck to approach her partner. “Any injuries?”
Lyra shook herself all over, test-stamped both front hooves, and then smirked. “Nothing you can’t kiss better later.”
“Ly– Agent!”
Agent Furlong had mentioned there was reason to believe their target had hacked the S.M.I.L.E. network at some point; hopefully long enough ago that Bon Bon was registered as retired in Ponyville, and Lyra nonexistent. She doubted he’d have sent them on this mission, otherwise. She hadn’t even known the organization had an interdimensional branch. Sometimes, she wondered if she’d ever find out the full extent of their reach.
The likelihood that this Doctor Doomhooves wouldn’t find out about her and Lyra after they’d broken into his secret stronghold, wrecked his defense bots, and (hopefully) stolen all his data was slight, but Bon Bon saw no reason to make it easy for him.
Lyra rolled her eyes, tucked her mirrors back into her mane, and grinned again. “Fine, fine, I’ll be professional. Those idiots said it was this way, right?”
Bon Bon facehoofed. “It’s I.D.I– oh, never mind. Yes, let’s go.”
Whoever named the Inter-Dimensional Incursion Opposition Taskforce sure had had an interesting sense of humor, though.
Subject 0075-B status: Within expected parameters
Progress to the next stage of the experiment is recommended
Bon Bon resisted the urge to bang her hooves – or perhaps her head – against the keyboard. The next stage of what experiment? What subject? Why did these mad scientist types never take coherent notes?
She glanced to the side at the small box Foxtrot had given her, now plugged into the mainframe and quietly humming as it – theoretically – downloaded everything.
At least a quick check of the most recently opened files had only netted surveillance footage of the locations the other agents had been sent to draw him out, and … whatever this incoherent shorthand was meant to be for.
A very familiar explosion of confetti obscured the view from one of the surveillance cameras, and Bon Bon resisted the urge to grin. Speaking of Operation Distraction From Klaxons, it looked like it was going perfectly according to plan. And with F.R.O.W.N. also in play, perhaps they’d handle Doctor Doomhooves themselves, making this little intelligence mission obsolete. She’d have to come up with a suitable way to prompt Pinkie for details the next time she dropped by Sugarcube Corner.
“Um, Bo – Sweetie? I uh. Found something.”
Bon Bon trotted over immediately. Anything was more interesting than watching the download and trying to parse mad science-ese. She considered correcting Lyra, but if she’d missed hacking any of the interior cameras, maybe they’d ignore it as a pet name.
“Define ‘something’,” she said, amused, as she wriggled her way between two large stacks of equipment. “We really need to work on your status reporting skil–”
What.
Suspending in a strange liquid that glowed green enough to make Bon Bon’s coat almost match Lyra’s, was an unconscious pony. A very familiar unconscious pony. One who Bon Bon saw in the mirror every day.
“We have to get her out of there,” Lyra said, and gestured towards a nearby control panel. “You can do it, right?”
Bon Bon hesitated. “Are you sure that’s wise? We don’t know who – what – she is. She could be some sort of plant, intended to replace me.”
Was this Subject 0075-B? What was the next stage?
Lyra bit her lip. “I –” she shook her head vigorously. “No, never mind. I’m being stupid.”
Bon Bon put a hoof on her shoulder. Much as she’d resisted dragging Lyra into this lifestyle, her partner had a knack for intuition that she herself sometimes lacked. “You’re not being stupid. I don’t even have to hear what you said to know that. What is it?”
Lyra backed a careful two steps away; unease growing, Bon Bon lowered her hoof and didn’t attempt to follow.
Lyra glanced between the pony in the tube and Bon Bon, bit her lip again, and said, almost inaudibly, “... What if you’re the plant?”
“I’m not,” Bon Bon said immediately, sharply, and she knew immediately too loudly as Lyra flinched. “It doesn’t make any sense – you know me, you know everything we’ve done together, we’ve known each other for –”
“That could just mean that they used some sort of – mind whammy to give you her memories,” Lyra said hesitantly. “I know we can’t do that yet, but …” she touched her mane, where she kept the one mirror she hadn’t been using to deflect lasers.
Would replacing other ponies’ memories really be that much harder than erasing them? Bon Bon wasn’t a unicorn. She didn’t know. And Doctor Doomhooves – his technological creations surpassed even S.M.I.L.E.’s. It couldi be possible.
“Or, or … maybe you were replaced a long time ago? Some sort of long-term plant? I didn’t know you before you came to Ponyville …” Lyra shook her head vigorously. “I hate that I’m even thinking it, but – how can we know?”
“That’s just because I –”
There hadn’t been a date on the report.
Bon Bon rushed back over to the mainframe. The file’s last-modified time, surely –
Two minutes ago. Because the downloader locked the files after downloading them.
The file creation times, maybe she could –
She half-saw Lyra approach, sitting still that careful few feet away, and it looked like she was just concerned, but what if she was concerned that Bon Bon would ruin all their hard work if she really was a plant?
All the file creation times, of every file she cross-checked, were the same date: two days ago.
Bon Bon wanted to have a word with whatever horribly inefficient updater Doctor Doomhooves used, that felt the need to overwrite every single file, almost as much as she wanted to cry.
“I –” she let her hooves fall off the keyboard. “I’m me. But I can’t prove it. Not without spending more time than we have trying to parse these awful un-timestamped documents.”
She could remember things from before Ponyville – birthdays, passing friendships, her training with S.M.I.L.E. She could remember the first time she met Lyra, and how her smile had lit up the room. That had to be real, didn’t it?
But maybe what she’d always thought of as the fallibility of pony memory was more than that. Maybe her memories were just as fake as the documents she’d worked with Foxtrot to create before coming to Ponyville, the ones that claimed she was just a simple country pony named Bon Bon.
She hauled herself back to her hooves, and gestured for Lyra to follow. “I’ll open the tube,” she said. Hesitated. “If you – you should take her with you. Take the downloader with you, too. We – you – need the information there. I can show you how to operate it before you go. I can –”
If she wasn’t … her. If she was compromised. She couldn’t return to S.M.I.L.E.; she already knew too much of the inner workings of the organization she’d spent her entire adult life working for. (The organization she remembered spending her adult life at. That could be a lie, too.)
She wasn’t sure what she’d do next. But she trusted S.M.I.L.E. to find her again, once they figured out whether she was, well, her. Agent Furlong had dragged her back out of retirement once; she was sure he’d enjoy the chance to do it again. Or ... well. If not, she could depend on them to Def Ref her, and return her to the blank slate she should have been all along.
Lyra lunged forward, wrapping Bon Bon in a hug. “I’m not leaving you here,” she said forcefully, and buried her face in Bon Bon’s neck. “I’m sorry, I’m being paranoid, I just – I can’t just leave you here. Either of you.”
Oh.
It wasn’t what Special Agent Sweetie Drops should do, but Bon Bon let herself lean into the hug, anyway.
Finally, though, she pulled away, and smiled weakly at Lyra. “Then let’s get me out of here.”
Lyra nodded firmly. “When we get home, I'll make frozen cocoa for all of us.”
They could figure the rest out later.
