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The Supervillain Flu

by TheDriderPony

Chapter 3: Dr. Puzzler and the Mute Mechanic

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Dr. Puzzler and the Mute Mechanic

Meanwhile, in another part of the town...

Bon Bon turned the key and locked the door of her Sweet Shop. She felt a little annoyed at having been open only a half day, but there was nothing to be done. No one wanted to buy chocolates when they were sick and besides, she had her own invalid pony to take care of.

On the way home, she stopped to pick up a few groceries. Orange juice, ginger pop, soup stock, and whatever other fragments of folk remedies she thought she remembered being good for a cold.

I hope Lyra's been doing alright on her own, she mused, Hopefully she's just been sleeping.

The lights were off when she opened her front door. Which was odd, because most of the rooms had large windows, meaning that somepony had intentionally covered up the windows so it would be dark. Bon Bon sighed, realizing she was probably in for another repeat of last night. Flicking on the light, she found herself face-to-face with the reverse side of a high-backed swivel chair. As the light came on, the chair slowly began to rotate.

"Hello... Bonnie." In the chair sat a mint green unicorn. An angry red scar crossed one of her eyes, marring her otherwise perfect complexion. She sat upright in an unusual, and frankly uncomfortable-looking position for a pony. Upon her crossed legs sat a white cat with a purple bow which she stroked slowly. "How nice of you to join us."

Oh no, not this again. Bon Bon took a deep breath and let it out slowly before responding. "Lyra, I have three questions. One, where did you get a cat? Two, how did you get that scar? And three, most importantly, why are you not in bed where I told you to stay before I left?"

Lyra only continued to calmly stroke the cat as she replied. "To answer your questions in order: I found it. It did not like being found. I feel weirdly compelled to do certain things."

The earth pony mare snorted. "Like last night when you felt 'weirdly compelled' to hold my mane care kit for ransom?"

"Which," Lyra interrupted, "You still have not paid. I wouldn't normally accept an I.O.U. for a ransom, but you have proven honorable in the past."

There it was again. 'Proven honorable in the past'. Another of those strange little turns of phrases that had been slipping into Lyra's vocabulary since her sickness had started. That and her sudden tendency to booby-trap the house like a poorly written character in an unlicensed Daring Do knock-off. "Mhm." She murmured noncommittally. "Let me get back to you in a week. So, you went cat-hunting. I guess exercise is good for a cold." Was that right? Medicine had never been her strong suit. "Was that all you did today?"

"Oh I have been most busy, most busy indeed. But now," Lyra steepled her hooves and grinned maliciously.

"I want to play a game."

Ah, and the games. The other strange quirk of her illness. Bon Bon smirked. "Well it's a little early in the day for Spy vs. Spy, and I think both of our catsuits are in the wash."

A blush spread across the mint mare's cheeks that had nothing to do with her fever. But she composed herself and continued.

Lyra gave her chair a slight magical push, just enough to roll herself off to the side. On the ground behind her sat seven identical leftovers jars. "If you go into the kitchen, you will find that your precious exotic coffee beans are missing. They are now inside one of these jars." She raised a hoof. "But be careful, as the other six jars contain deadly, deadly primed mousetraps!"

I wonder if she's even trying? Or maybe, though she driven to do these things, a part of her is trying to tone them down as much as possible. The former spy mused as her steel trap of a mind near-immediately found a solution. I mean, she put them on the carpet for Celestia's sake! I can clearly see that one is heavier than the others.

"What will you do? Will you forgo your most crippling of addictions, or risk having terribly sore hooves for the next few- hey! Let me finish before you- oh."

But Bon Bon had already moved forward with full confidence and taken the second jar from the right. With a slight shake, she could easily hear the coffee beans within.

"I'm going to make lunch." She announced. "Do you think you can keep down some vegetable soup, or would you prefer just a broth?"

"...Broth please." Lyra requested meekly, punctuated with a cough.

Bon Bon moved to enter the kitchen, but paused a moment before her hoof crossed the threshold. "I'm not going to find any more little surprises in the kitchen, am I?"

"Ah ha, your second challenge!" Lyra swung her legs wildly to awkwardly scooch her chair closer to the kitchen door, the cat jumping off her lap in the process. "Inside, you will find that all of the connections between the kitchen functions and their switches and valves have been mixed up. Can your neat, perfectionist nature deal with such chaotic illogicalness to successfully create a meal, or will you be forced to go and buy me an ice cream instead?"

Bon Bon peeked inside. The kitchen was a mess. Pipes and wires were connected haphazardly across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Luckily, six years of of bomb disposal training made it easy to see how all the new connections were set up. She could only raise a hoof to her face. "Lyra, did you get any sleep today? You were supposed to be resting. You know, so you can get healthy?"

"I am healthy!" she insisted. "You may not like it, but this is what peak-" but her final words were lost to a terrible coughing fit.

Bon Bon's gaze softened. She couldn't stay mad at her seeing her sick like that. "Go back to bed. I'll bring you your lunch when it's ready."

Lyra could only nod weakly and turn to trot upstairs.

That Lyra, Bon Bon mused with a shake of her head and a small smile. She's lucky she's so adorable...

Remembering the new layout of the kitchen controls, she turned the cold water faucet to ignite the stove's pilot light, and clicked the switch for the overhead fan to turn on the gas.

As she flicked on the food processor to begin filling a pot with water, she noticed a pony trying to get her attention. It was her neighbor, waving from her own kitchen window just a few feet away. Welcoming a bit of sane conversation, she more than willingly opened her window.

"Good day Bon Bon," her neighbor greeted, "Lovely weather we're having."

"Hello Octavia," Bon Bon replied. She and Octavia were not the closest of friends, but they made quite good neighbors. And given the... eccentricities, of their respective housemates, they each took some solace in having a 'normal' friend to vent with.

"Everything going all right with you?"

"Oh, as well as can be expected."

"Good, good." Small talk and formalities completed, she finally jumped into the topic she'd been dying to ask about. "So I've heard this new strain of flu has had some rather odd symptoms. How's Lyra holding up?"

"Oh, more of the same." Bon Bon smiled slyly. This is how most of their conversations tended to go. A bit of meaningless small talk that eventually devolved into an unspoken competition over whose roommate had done the most outrageous thing lately. "She's been setting up traps all over the house to try and force me into no-win scenarios. Like last night, she took the knob off the tub so the flow couldn't be stopped and locked me in the bathroom with it. She said that 'if I was so proud of my intellect, then I should use it to escape'.

"Goodness! Clearly you did, but how?"

"She left the plumbing tools under the sink and the window unlocked."

Octavia nodded. "Ah. Yes, I can see how that might simplify matters. On an unrelated note, might I borrow your secret spice again? I feel this dish is still missing the right kick."

With a nod, Bon Bon reached into a cupboard, behind the false panel, and retrieved a small vial of pressurized fluid. With a care and precision that only earth ponies learned how to do, she tossed it across the gap perfectly into Octavia's waiting hoof.

"Ta." With a light tap, she added to her dish two spritzes of the chemical weapon that had once incapacitated a Minotaur warlord's security detail. Not that she knew that, of course. The whole mission was classified and redacted.

She tossed the vial back, again landing it perfectly in the other pony's hoof. Bon Bon stored it away and reached for a knife to begin cutting up the vegetables for her soup. "But enough about me and Lyra, how's your patient?"

Octavia sighed. "Not terribly much better than yours, I fear. I keep having to save her from financial ruin."

The candy mare arched an eyebrow. That was certainly a teasing boast. "How's that?"

"She keeps taking apart all her expensive audio equipment to try and build robot soldiers with which, as she claims, to conquer the world."

For a brief moment, Bon Bon had a flashback to the mechanized foot soldiers of Tesla Coil the Technomancer. "Are they... operational?" She asked as a hoof reached dangerously close to her emergency beacon.

The cellist snorted. "Heavens no. Vinyl, clever and inventive mare though she is, is no engineer let alone a roboticist. At best she's created amusing figurines, some of which still function as speakers." The hoof was put away, leaving the beacon to its quiet slumber. "Still, it seems like every time I turn around I trip over another eight of them. Oh, and her sore throat's gotten worse. Poor mare can't even whisper now."

Bon Bon shook her head. "Terrible shame, and she has such a sweet and lovely voice too." Suddenly, her ears pricked up as she heard tell-tale banging sounds coming from the floor above her. "Excuse me, but I think somepony is trying to install a swinging blade pendulum over my bed. Again."

Octavia joking made shooing motions with her hooves. "Go ahead, deal with your patient." She grimaced. "I have a terrible feeling mine may have gotten up to something as well while we've been talking."

With that, Bon Bon pulled her windows closed and her head back inside, though not in that order. After a moment, Octavia did as well.

The cellist turned down the heat and plated a healthy scoop of the reddish-brown sauce she'd been simmering. Adding a golden tinged drink to the tray, she carried the meal across the house to where she could hear the slight *tink!* of metal on metal.

"Vinyl? I know you're up, so I've brought lunch."

She pushed open the door just in time to catch the end of a series of flashing lights. She set down her tray and turned to face her flatmate. Vinyl's eyes were bloodshot and in a constant state of watering. Despite the sweat plastering her mane down, her blanket was suspiciously pulled up to her neck and tucked in tight.

"Say it again, but slowly."

With an exaggerated sigh, Vinyl began flashing her horn on and off. When she had lost her voice the day before and she and Octavia had been experimenting with alternative forms of communication, they had stumbled upon a remarkable cosmic coincidence. Not only were were both of their fathers former military, but both had also drilled Horse Code into their daughter's heads from an early age. This discovery led to their current set up. Besides, their combined fragmented memory of the language was still clearer than trying to read Vinyl's hornwriting.

"No," Octavis replied sternly, "It's not ice cream, it's a vindaloo."

Angry, pouty flashing replied.

"I know you don't care much for spice, but my mother swears by this technique. Nothing will beat a cold faster than a spicy meal washed down with honey and lemon."

This earned her only more angry lights.

"Well you're not taking over the world on an empty stomach, that's for sure." She cast her eyes about the room as she realized that something was missing. "Hold on... Vinyl, what's happened to your keytar?"

In an amazing act of misdirection and subterfuge, Vinyl looked away and pulled her comforter slightly higher up over her face.

Frowning, Octavia darted in and grabbed the corner of the blanket in her teeth, ripping it away.

"Vinylll..." she moaned when she saw what was there.

It was a long centipede-like creature, its legs composed of keys cannibalized from the missing instrument. Possibly sensing light, it shifted on Vinyl's belly amongst makeshift tools and unused parts and lifted its 'head'. A power button flickered on and off a few times, like a cycloptic eye blinking. It walked in curious circles, never leaving the body of its creator, its legs playing scales and arpeggios as it moved.

"You're doing insects now? Wasn't the sea creature set unsettling enough? What's next? Birds? Dogs? Should I wheel in the refrigerator and your turntables so you can make a pony? Hey, stop taking notes! I'm not trying to give you inspiration."

The notepad dropped back behind her pillow as Vinyl's horn cut out, and on, and back out again.

"No, it is not for the greater good. I know you have these strange urges, but if you keep this up our house is going to end up looking like a roboticized reflection of Fluttershy's!"

Until that point, Octavia had not known that snark could be conveyed via Horse Code.

"Oh, is that how it's going to be then? Well you just earned yourself a second plate of vindaloo once you finish this one."

Vinyl grimaced and reluctantly levitated over a spoonful of the spicy mush under her caretaker's watchful eye. Maybe if Octavia would leave for a few minutes she could build something to eat it for her.


Author's Note

Interesting side note, I have apparently developed the powers of that guy from Inkheart.
By writing about characters with colds, I seem to have developed one myself.
*Atchoo*

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