6. The Talk

So here I was, at last. Sitting in a library that was eerily familiar, looking across the way at six multi-hued, anthropomorphic ponies... and one dragon. THAT meeting had been another shocker, for when Twilight called me out to meet her “number one assistant!” Spike the dragon, I found another key difference between the TV show and this world I had landed in. Spike was huge! Well, okay, that’s exaggerating a little, but I was expecting this little kid of a dragon, one that maybe came up to Twilight’s stomach, now that she was standing on two legs. I was -not- expecting what amounts to a teenage drake that was actually taller than both of us!

Come to think of it, the height thing was already bothering me a bit. I’m a pretty tall guy, over 6 feet, so I always notice when someone is taller than me, because it doesn’t happen much. Except so far, -all- of the ponies I’d met were taller than me! I really wish I’d thought to measure myself against something at that point, because it wasn’t until later that I found out they don’t use the same standards of measurement, and I’ve never figured out a good conversion between ‘feet’ and ‘spans,’ the main unit used here. It’s less than a foot, I’m sure of that, but I don’t know by exactly how much, so knowing that Twilight is 8 and 3/10ths spans tall doesn’t really help me figure out what that would be back in my world.

But I’m getting distracted. All of the girls were back in Twilight’s house to hear my story, only I still didn’t know where to start off. And it certainly didn’t help that they all looked totally sexy and naked! Well, except for Rarity. She was actually wearing a shirt, which was a simple but elegant thing that stayed on with a single button at the top. It actually did cover her breasts, but since she wasn’t wearing a bra it was making it -harder- for me not to stare, visualizing what I’d already seen before. She’d put her hat on the hat-rack when she came in. Oh, and Applejack hadn’t. Other than that, they were all naked.

I mentioned I was distracted, right?

Hearing Twilight clear her throat brought my wandering attention back to the matter at hand. “So,” she started. “I guess we can start with who you are? Um, what’s your name?”

I had to blink at that. ‘Wow, I’ve already spent the night here and I never introduced myself?’ I quickly shook my head as thoughts of what my grandmother would have had to say about my manners ran through it. “I’m very sorry about that. My name is Leon. I would have tried to introduce myself sooner, but things were… crazy.”

After a murmur of hellos from the group, including an unnecessarily loud “HI LEON!!” from Pinkie, the silence descended once again. For me at least, it was the awkward situation, plus the fact that I was still having a hard time believing this wasn’t some kind of dream, that kept me from talking. I think the others were feeling pretty awkward, too, except that Pinkie was looking completely cheerful while slowly bouncing up and down on her seat, and Twilight was literally sitting on the edge of hers with eyes that seemed to burn with her curiosity.

I finally got the courage to break the silence. “So, if I can ask a question, how did you find me?”

“Heh, that part was easy!” Rainbow declared from her position above the couch most of the others were sitting on. Idle flapping from her wings seemed to be keeping her afloat.

“She’s right!” Pinkie exclaimed. “We were all in the Castle of the Two Sisters, and I thought everypony was having a ‘Have fun scaring each other’ party, so I was helping by playing scary music on the organ I found! Then everyone decided to leave, and we went outside and there was a WHOOOOOSH! and a BANG! BOOM! and there was a bright white light coming from the cave where the Tree of Harmony grows and Twilight was all, ‘Ohmygosh! The Tree is in trouble!' And Rainbow was all, 'Let’s go check it out!' And we all ran down and we thought we were going to fight something and we saw this strange creature on the ground looking up at the tree and it was you and then MMRRFFPH APHFRRDR….”

Applejack, hand over Pinkie’s mouth, gave her a look. “He knows what happened from that point.” She waited until she heard a muffled ‘Okay!’ from Pinkie before putting her hand back down, then looked back over to me. “Ya never did really explain how ya’ got here, sugarcube. Mind tellin’ us now?”

I nodded half-heartedly. “I’m willing to try, but it still sounds crazy in my head. So… fair warning, okay? ‘Cause if it doesn’t make sense to you, then I’m not going to be able to help.” So I started off by telling them about what I considered to be my near-death experience, only I kept ending up talking about stuff that happened earlier and earlier as Twilight immediately hit me with a barrage of questions about why I walking by a street, what cars and trucks were, what an AFB was, and so on. I had to cut her off when I realized I was about to start trying to explain what the United States was, asking her to save those questions for a later time so I could finish telling my story. She looked frustrated by this, but quickly agreed, which caused everyone else to let out sighs of relief. However, all of the girls seemed a bit disappointed by the lack of detail I could give them about the first place I woke up in.

At this point I had to ask for something to drink, as my throat felt sore and dry. I was suitably impressed when Twilight managed to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen using her magic… without ever leaving her seat. After having a drink and giving my thanks, I continued on through to the part where they had found me. As the girls sat silently contemplating all I had told them, a thought suddenly occurred to me. “Um, Twilight? Have you sent Princess Celestia a letter about this yet?”

That earned me another stunned look from the group, which honestly was starting to get old. Taking a deep breath, I decided to grab the bull by the horns, so to speak. "Okay. I guess I should try to explain how I know all these things about you.” I tapped my fingers a couple times on the arm of the chair, then winced as the clacking noise forcibly reminded me that they weren’t really fingers anymore, although I wasn’t about to just call them claws either. “Alright, I’ll start with what would be easiest. Do you guys have TV shows?” When the blank looks continued, I pressed on. “Okay, what about… movies?” That earned me some slow nods. “For fun?” Confusion. “I mean, movies for entertainment, as opposed to, say… instructional.”

Rainbow gave a huff and blew a lock of her hair out of her face. “Just gotta use all your big words…” I heard her mumble. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t trying to be all that quiet about it. The rest looked like I had lost them, but thankfully Twilight was nodding fairly enthusiastically, so at least somepony was getting it.

“Okay then, well all of you, and this world, are featured in a ‘show’ that is played on TV, which is basically having small movies that you can watch in your house all the time.” I decided to not try to go into too much detail on the differences between the movies they seemed to have and how TV actually worked. Of course, Twilight later made me go into so much detail that I ended up explaining things I didn’t even realise I knew about, but as I said, that was later. “Anyways, the show focuses mainly on what the six of you here do, day in and out. If what I’ve seen in this show is accurate, then I think I know a lot about all of you, and a fair bit of this world you live in, at least as far as Equestria is concerned. But…”

I trailed off as I decided to openly let myself gaze over their bodies. I’ll admit, being the only one in the room being fully clothed, at least by my own standards, had the advantage of helping to hide my reaction to openly looking at six gorgeous girls wearing nothing or the next thing to it. Each girl would perk up a little as my gaze wandered over them, Rarity looking back coyly, Applejack simply tilting her head to the side with a questioning expression, Rainbow Dash actually striking a pose in mid-air with a smug smile… and Fluttershy trying to somehow fit between Pinkie Pie and the back of the couch. “... But I’m not sure how much I can trust what I saw. I’ve already found some major differences.” I eventually finished with.

“Like what kind, darling?” Rarity asked while fluttering her eyes at me. She was even giving me a look, and I wasn’t so comfortable with it. I knew Rarity was someone who loved getting attention, but it almost felt like she was … I don’t know, pushing at me somehow. Felt a little creepy, really.

I took another deep breath with my eyes closed and slowly let it out. “Well, um… you all look… uh, I mean, you don’t have…” huge tits and an ass that even a boob-guy like me can appreciate. “I … just… you…” I snapped my fingers as I thought of something that would show the huge difference without making me feel like a pervert for saying it out loud. “Look, I don’t mean to shock or insult you, but in this show you walked on all fours.”

That one took them a second to process, and while Twilight suddenly got a thoughtful look on her face, Applejack was quick to pipe up. “Wait a darn second! Yer sayin’ we walked around like a dog?!” I nodded softly, trying to show with my expression that I wasn’t trying to be insulting. AJ continued to stare at me for a bit before leaning back and shaking her head. “Well I’d sure say THAT was a difference!”

Feeling better now that I'd found an angle to use, I tried to keep the train of thought going. "Yeah, that is. And Spike here is another one." That comment brought the young dragon's head up, and I suddenly wondered if I had actually been boring him earlier.

"What's so different about me?"

I think the guy was trying to sound tough and upset, but it mostly came across to me as sounding nervous. Not that I could blame him. "Well, Spike, again meaning no disrespect, but the last part of the show I saw still had you looking like a little kid." Hearing that out loud sounded worse than it had in my head, so I thought I should give the guy a bone. "You certainly didn’t look like a tall, muscular drake that most guys would hate to meet in a dark alley."

For a minute I thought maybe I'd laid it on too thick, because Spike still looked like he was trying to decide whether to be insulted about his 'kid' status on this show, or being impressed with how he really was. But then he straightened up a bit and actually started flexing his arm. I think my mouth fell open a bit at that point. I shook my head a little, thinking to myself, ‘Well, the show got -that- part right!’ Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack were all shaking their heads with resigned grins, while Pinkie and Fluttershy didn’t seem to be affected. Strangely enough, Rarity had a different expression than any of the others, but I couldn’t quite place it. It was gone quickly enough as she returned an attentive expression towards me, but I kept wondering about it. It almost looked like… admiring? But that didn’t make any sense to me.

Now, ever since I’d realized where I ended up, I had a number of things I was wondering/worrying about sitting in the back of my mind, and one of those decided to float to the top at this point. Clearing my throat, I looked back over at Twilight and, with some hesitation, brought up my worry of: “So, if the Tree of Harmony now has the Elements of Harmony, how do you guys, um... keep Discord under control?”

Twilight drew a deep breath, but as soon as she opened her mouth to answer… another voice cut in. One that was FAR too familiar.

“Oh, that’s easy. They don’t!”

With that the room suddenly became dark. Disco-style lights started zig-zagging all over the room, but I couldn’t see a disco ball or anything else to cause the effect. And music started to play, which I could easily recognize.

*Discord, I'm howlin' at the moon*
*And sleepin' in the middle of a summer afternoon*
*Discord, whatever did we do*
*To make you take our world away?*

*Discord, are we your prey alone,*
*Or are we just a stepping stone for taking back the throne?*
*Discord, we won't take it anymore*
*So take your tyranny away!*

The heavy techno-beat even let me realize instantly which remix this was, namely TLT’s. As the song called out “Discord!” in its broken up way, the man… creature himself rose up out of the floor, bowing back and forth. “Yes yes, their hold on me was relinquished, leaving me free to do as I wish once again!” The funny thing to me right then was realizing that he looked exactly like he did in the TV show. Which was good. Really good. I heaved a mental sigh of relief that I didn’t have to find out what Discord’s junk looked like. Then I had to mentally slap my brain for coming up with a mental picture of it anyways.

My reaction, I’ll admit, went through a few stages. The first was to give Discord a deadpanned look. My thoughts were along the lines of, ‘Really?’ I mean, this was a cartoon character known for much tom-foolery and messing around. Then my brain started turning over the little fact that I was -in- said cartoon… and not looking particularly cartoonish at the moment. And that meant this Discord was real… as were his powers… and his penchant for being unpredictable…

And now there was nothing that could stop him.

I’m sure my expression must have started to show the dawning fear as I reached those conclusions, but then I realized something else. Something that had been bothering me a lot, like the height thing. It -sounded- like Discord, just the way I remember him. And the 6 girls plus one dragon? They didn’t. Close, but not exactly like I remembered. And Spike’s voice wasn’t actually that close, really.

But this isn’t what caused my expression to turn into a frown of supreme annoyance. This voice difference wasn’t what made me begin glaring with an intensity that would have sent young Airmen scurrying for cover. No, what suddenly sparked my anger was the -other- place I remembered hearing that voice.

“It was YOU!”

“I beg your pardon?” Discord blinked down at me with a slight sneer. “What was me? Many things are, so you’ll have to be specific.” He settled back to wait for my response, crossing his arms… which I suddenly noticed didn’t appear to be connected to the rest of his body. For some reason.

Taking a breath, and realizing that everyone in the room was looking at me now, I laid out my accusation. “You’re the reason I’m here. It was -your- voice that I heard while floating in that… wherever place between worlds. I -know- your voice.”

Discord tilted his body towards me, getting uncomfortably close as he put his hands to his cheeks with a bright expression on his face. “Oh my! Are you a fan of mine? How wonderful! Here!” With a snap… also a familiar sound… he was suddenly holding a large fountain pen and a shirt, which he promptly started to write on. “Here you go. One autographed shirt for my biggest fan in Ponyville!” By reflex I took the shirt as he offered it to me, staring down at it dumbly for several seconds.

Wait a minute.

I looked up from the t-shirt I never noticed being removed to glare at this nonsensical creature. “How… did you get the shirt I was wearing?”

Discord waved a han-... paw in a nonchalant manner. “Details, details. Now!” He clapped his… okay I’m just calling them hands!.. He clapped his hands together. “You were saying how you’ve heard of me?” He batted his eyes which seemed to be larger than before and suddenly having exaggerated eyelashes.

Taking a deep breath to help calm down… and noticing that my shirt was back on somehow (I wondered if it was actually signed)... I reminded myself that this creature had crazy powers, and to try to stay polite. It was hard. “You… are the one who sent me here, aren’t you? Something about sending me back would be a waste…?”

Discord rubbed his hands together with a gleeful expression. “Oh, yes, a terrible waste. It’s going to be so much more -fun- with you here. So many carefully made plans ruined thanks to an element of chaos added!” At this point he dissolved into a fit of chuckles that sounded kinda close to an evil laugh to me.

While my fear level started to rise again, Twilight decided to get back into the conversation. “Discord! What about your promise? You aren’t supposed to be hurting ponies anymore!” Rainbow Dash and Applejack backed her up with sounds of agreement, but Discord didn’t look at all bothered by it.

“Please, Princess,” he started. “I would never do anything to upset my dearest Flutterbutt…”

“FlutterSHY,” Dash interjected with an eye-roll.

Discord continued with a hand wave in Rainbow’s direction. “...whatever. Anyways, the point is the plans that will be ruined are ones you -want- me to stop. Besides, you’ve got to let me have a little random chaos from time to time or I might just go crazy from all this ‘nice and pretty’ normal you all seem to love so much.”

I seriously felt like barfing when he mentioned going crazy. His eyes -literally- rolled around in his head.

With a sweeping bow to the room at large, Discord made his farewell. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to discuss with dear Celly.” With a poof of smoke, he disappeared from sight, but an echo of his voice lingered. “But don’t you worry, I’ll be around….”

Twilight waved her hand in front of her in an attempt to disperse the smoke. “Sorry about all that, Leon. But you don’t need to…” She was interrupted with a serious coughing fit, causing her to wave even harder at the lingering haze. “Sorry. You don’t need to worry too much about Discord. He really seems to want Fluttershy to be his friend, and he’s not ready to jeopardize that yet. At least, I don’t -think- he would.”

While that wasn’t the most comforting way to phrase it, upon further thought I simply shrugged. “Well, he -is- the god of chaos. I guess that’s the best anyone can hope for.” Twilight gave me a small shrug and smile in return. Looking out a window off to the side I ended up thinking out loud, “Damn it, I still had a lot of questions to ask him…”

To my surprise, Fluttershy had moved to stand next to me, which I realized once she spoke at almost a normal conversational level. “Oh, please don’t worry about Discord. He’s trying to get better at interacting with other ponies. Really!” I really wanted to give her a nice smile in thanks for trying to reassure me, but I ended up quickly looking away with an embarrassed look instead. With her standing next to my seat it put her breasts at just above eye-level for me.

I had a small internal chuckle at my own expense as I realized I probably looked more like typical Fluttershy right now than -she- did. Not that this helped me change my reaction. “Uh, thanks… Thanks Fluttershy, I…um…” I coughed into my hand, still not daring to look in Fluttershy’s direction while I could feel the heat in my face.

“Oh! That’s just adorable…” Rarity squealed a little before raising a hand to try and cover her grin. I kinda felt like shooting Rarity a look for that, but instead just dipped my face a little lower. I noticed, however, that while everyone else looked fairly indifferent to what was going on, Twilight was staring at me pretty intensely.

When she saw me look her in the eyes, she tilted her head a little, one ear up and the other off to the side. “Why…? Is something the matter, Leon? Why are you suddenly… doing -that-?” She gestured at my head to show what she was talking about.

I sighed into my hand. This was a topic I had been actively trying to avoid. I was already trying to explain TV shows, talking trees, being human… I really didn’t want to add explaining why nudity was a problem to a group of nudists. I glanced around the room for a bit trying to find some way out of this, then lowered my head and raised my hand to cover my eyes with another sigh.

I heard some shuffling noises, then felt a hand on my shoulder. “Leon?” Asked Twilight. I willed myself to stillness, instead of jerking away from the contact like my first instinct was. I concentrated on breathing evenly, instead of hyperventilating. Meanwhile my mind raced in circles as it tried to come up with something to say or do that would get me past this point without wanting to die of embarrassment. “Leon?” Twilight asked again, sounding very concerned now, the other girls making similar noises.

‘Damn it! This is making things worse. But what the hell do I say?! How can I explain … Gah!’ My mind continued on its hamster wheel of indecision until I succumbed to the temptation of trying to simply escape. “Can I… explain later?” I asked in a quiet voice.

There was a pause that went long enough for me to wonder if they’d even heard me, but finally Twilight simply said, “Alright.”

Fully in a funk now, I still couldn’t summon the will to face any of them, and eventually I heard the girls start to head out, mentioning various things they needed to attend to as they said goodbye to Twilight and me. I made myself lift a hand to wave, to at least acknowledge them. I almost didn’t notice it, but Spike left as well, apparently doing something with Rarity. Soon enough, it was just Twilight and myself in the tree-... house… library thing.

As Twilight sat back down in the chair across from me, I was finally able to make myself look up again and gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that,” I began. I spent a few seconds trying to come up with something else to add, some kind of explanation, but eventually just shrugged at her. She seemed to understand my difficulties as she shrugged back.

“So…” Twilight twirled a bit of her hair… mane?... around with a finger. “Do you think you could answer some other questions now?” I honestly thought she looked pretty cute just then. It was obvious that her curiosity was at war with her attempts to be polite and not push me. The emotions were plain on her face.

I was able to dredge up a weak smile for her. “Sure, I owe you some answers. Where should we start?” I honestly didn’t mind telling her about me or my world, and I understood her thirst for knowledge. So I settled in for a what I knew would be a lengthy conversation.

The rest of the day went by relatively quickly. I told Twilight all about humans, our lack of magic, the United States, cars, airplanes, the US Air Force and so forth. In return, Twilight explained some things about living in Equestria. She was more than happy to satisfy my curiosity of how their magic worked. A lot of stuff she tried to explain went over my head, but I think I had a good grasp on the basics of how earth, pegasus, and unicorn ponies accessed the magic within themselves and used it to effect the world around them. I sort of got the impression that Twilight was pretty happy just having someone who was actually interested in listening to her explanations.

We ended up talking right through lunch. We probably wouldn’t have noticed dinner either if it weren’t for Spike returning and asking if we were ready for him to make it. I wasn’t surprised to discover that dinner consisted of a large salad. At least the ingredients were all really fresh, and the salad dressing (which was apparently apple-based?) was pretty tasty. Thankfully I was able to flesh out my meal with peanut butter sandwiches and milk. I had some thoughts about needing to figure out how I could get the nutrients I knew I needed in what was definitely a vegetarians-only area, but decided to worry about it later. After the stressful morning, a long conversation... not to mention everything that had happened yesterday still affecting me... it wasn’t too surprising that I was feeling sleepy even though it was relatively early in the evening.

Being much more coherent than last night, I took a few minutes to familiarize myself with my sleeping arrangements. The guest-bedroom I was using seemed to be down a little off-shoot from the main library room. I was very grateful to find a bathroom was located next to it, though I would still have to use the one upstairs when I wanted to take a shower. That thought also made me start thinking about my clothes, as I had been wearing mine for quite a while now and I was sure I must be starting to smell fairly ripe. I wasn’t too sure how I could approach the clothing problem without running into the … nudity issue. At least the show let me know who the best person was to ask for custom clothing.

For now, I decided to just sleep in my pants, without my shirt. Getting undressed, I noticed that the back of my shirt WAS signed by Discord… or at least I assumed the scribble was meant to be his signature, anyways. With a shrug and a sigh, I laid down and quickly fell asleep.

Author's Note

I realize as I get ready to publish this that not a whole lot actually happened, but any good building needs a solid foundation and I feel like that's what I'm working on right now. Hopefully people will be willing to stick through this bit until stuff starts to get interesting.